How to set default color scheme in vim

After I’ve shown you Vim and explained the most essential commands, there is  is another tip I’ll give to you. As described in the above linked article, Vim brings a really nice syntaxhightlighting implementation with it. Unfortunately, this is by default, depending on the file type and your monitor, difficult to read. So today I want to show you, how you can modify the Vim syntax highlighting scheme.
Change Vim syntaxhightlighting color scheme
Once you’ve opened Vim, you can change the color scheme with the “colo”-command.

:colo murphy

As you can see, the color scheme is set off from the command mode. In this case, the command is “colo” followed by a space and the name of the color scheme you want to use. (If you like, you can use “colorscheme” instead of “colo”. “colo” is just a shortcut to “colorscheme”.)
vim colo murphy  […]

Vim tutorial for beginners

vim screenshotVim is an open source text editor that runs on Linux, MacOSX, Windows and many other operating systems. If I had to describe it in just one word, then the first thing I can think of would be “powerful”. Vim supports syntax highlighting for really almost any format and has got many other extras.
But “powerful” also describes the learning curve, because Vim can be fully controlled via the keyboard. There are tons of commands and shortcuts you can learn. But however, if you once learned how to handle Vim it is a wonderful tool. Just the fact that Vim can actually be found on nearly any Linux system, no matter where and under what distribution you are currently working, is a good reason to learn at least the basics of how […]

Show all drives in command prompt

windows cmdIf you work with the Windows command prompt and want to copy files from or to a USB flash drive, then you get a problem. So how to show all drives in the commandline (cmd) from Windows? Without a list of all the drives you won’t know the drive letter of the USB flash drive and without this you won’t be able to access it.
The cmd itself doesn’t provide a command for listing all available drives. However, you can get this task done by using wmic, a command line program, which provides you access to the WMI classes by command line. And so the solution to the question is quite simple.
To show all drives in the cmd use the following command:

wmic logicaldisk get deviceid, volumename, description

How to increase storage on TP-Link WR703N with ExtRoot

tp-link wr703n with thumbdriveA few days ago I wrote about how you can flash OpenWRT on the TP-Link WR703N router and build a ~20$ cheap OpenWrt router this way. OpenWrt actually works quite well on the WR703N, but in retrospect the following problem arises.
Unfortunately the WR703N has only 4MB flash (memory), so (depending on the selected image/firmware) after installing OpenWrt there will be just about 900 kB of free memory available. If you now want to install one or more extensions for OpenWrt, which in my opinion is one of the main benefits of using a OpenWrt system, you will be confronted with “no space available” messages in really no time. One solution to “bypass” this problem is to “ExtRoot” your router.
ExtRoot is a functionality that can be used to outsource the […]

How to create an ext4 partition on Windows

Today I’ve got a quick software tip for you. The tool that I like to show you is MiniTool’s Partition Wizard Home Edition. It is a freeware for partitioning and formatting hard disks and flash memory (memory cards, USB thumbdrives, etc.).
Why do I mention this tool here? Because it gives you the possibility to partitionate and format your drives into various Linux formats (ext2, ext3, ext4) directly on Windows. This can be very useful when, for example, a USB flash drive in ext4 format is needed, but you don’t have access to a Linux PC. (Certainly, you could load, burn and boot from a Linux live DVD, but I think to use Partion Wizard for Windows is smaller, faster and therefore easier in this case.
Create an ext4 USB flash drive on Windows
After you’ve downloaded and installed Mini Tools’ Partition Wizard, we can begin with our short tutorial. If you have […]