Posts Tagged ‘emulator’

tmux – FreeBSD, BSD* and Linux alterinative to GNU screen terminal emulator

Thursday, November 1st, 2012

tmux gnu screen (newer) alternative terminal emulator for Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD
After my yesterday blog post explaining basis GNU screen use, I've decided to blog a bit more on the topic as I find terminal emulation to be quite interesting 🙂

Just like on on GNU / Linux, GNU Screen is available and installable via FreeBSD port – /usr/ports/sysutils/screen. Though screen is compatible with FreeBSD, it is not from scratch written to run on BSD architecture, but rather ported. Besides, that within the fild of terminal emulation, there are plenty of recent developments and feature richer programs available from install already. One of those I reference is tmux..  tmux's is superior to screen in that it is a re-writen terminal (from scratch) terminal emulator – multiplexer (as referenced in man tmux).

Another fundamental difference is it comes licensed under "less restrictive" BSD license (interesting fact is BSD has only 3 clauses), whether to GNU Screen applies GPLv 2 / 3 (4 freedoms clauses).
Tmux is presently existing for multiple architectures besides BSD including Linux and even as I check in its documentation has support for HP-HX and IRIX.

To install / use tmux on FreeBSD / NetBSD install port /usr/ports/sysutils/tmux with

: freebsd# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/tmux
freebsd# make install clean
....

Installing mux on Debian GNU Linux is available straight from default package repositories, i.e. :

debian:~# apt-get install --yes mux
....

It is inteersting fact to mention, since OpenBSD 4.6 – Mr. Theo De Raddt and friends decided tmux to part of the base system! This means a lot since OpenBSD has always existed with the main ideology to be the most secure UNIX / BSD based OS around. This fact probably means from purely secure stand point tmux might be better choice than gnu screen

Another reason why tmux might be better alternative to Screen for BSD users besides security, is its configuration is much more simplistic whilst compared with Screen. If you have used screen, already you should surely know how complicated things are when it comes to configuration and screen (set) variables.

tmux's pre-defined command bindings are similar to SCREEN's, the difference is instead of Screen's:

CTRL + a + (letter)

key bindings are invoked with:

CTRL + b + (kbd letter)
 

People who already are acustomed to screen (like myself 🙂 )  would not be easy to re-learn use CTRL + b, thus it is helpful to revert default tmux CTRL + b  to screen's CTRL + a.


http://niallohiggins.com/2009/06/04/tmux-a-bsd-alternative-to-gnu-screen/

$ echo 'set -g prefix C-a' >> ~/.tmux.conf
$ echo 'bind-key C-a last-window' >> ~/.tmux.conf

Moving over virtual windows in tmux just like in screen can be done using:

CTRL + a + 1 … 9

One has to be careful, as pressing CTRL + a should be done with a llittle delay before pressing the next letter, otherwise the command does not take affect.
 

Detaching emulated session, in tmux is done like in screen with pressing:

CTRL + a + (d [half a sec delay before pressing])

Attaching to latest detached tmux session is done with:

tmux attach

 

There are plenty of other stuff and applications but here I will not get in detail as it is all  in man page.


tmux
is great for BSD users,
but for Linux users  byobu is  more interactive and user friendly (out of the box – with no need for extra configs)

Here are 2 screenshots from tmux website:
advanced tmux use 4 squares split virtual terminals / tmux use screenshot

tmux screenshot with shared multiple wins

Converting JPEG Images to ASCII Art text (picture) in Microsoft Windows (2000 / XP / Vista / 7)

Friday, May 18th, 2012

A friend of mine, just mentioned about a program ASCIIPic – capable of converting graphic images in JPEG to plain text ASCII in Microsoft Windows OSes.
Yesterday I blogged about caca-utils (img2txt) – console tool to convert picture graphics to plain text ASCII , so knowing of the Windows freeware ASCIIPic existence catched my attention and I decided to give it a try to get idea what is situation with Images to ASCII text convertion in Windows? 🙂.

1. Generating ASCII from JPEG images with ASCII Pic

As I don't have a Microsoft Windows OS at hand, I downloaded it and run it on my Debian notebook with WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) MS-Windows emulator.

For my surprise the program run succesfuly its GUI interface and worked pretty smooth even emulated on Linux.

ASCII Pic 2.0 JPG PNG GIF to ASCII text MS Windows Convertor screenshot

As of time of writting, the latest version of the freeware program available is 2.0. You see in above screenshot the program is pretty intutive to use. You select an Input file, an Output file and you're ready to Process the image to TXT.
One small note to make here is the program couldn't recognize as Input files images in PNG or GIF formats, it seems the only image formats the program recognizes as input are JPEG and BMP.

ASCII Pic Windows image to ASCII program picture shot

The converted images to ASCII results are quite unsatisfactory, I tried converting few pictures originally in size 1024×768 but the produced ASCII was messy huge (the program didn't automatically set height / width dimensions to 60×80 and therefore, when I revied the produced pictures, they were very ugly and hardly readable. It could be the same image looks better if reviewed in MS-Windows Notepad but I seriously doubt that …

I thought some improvement to the produced ASCII image might be possible from the app options so I played around with the Zoom, Negation, Brightness and Monochrome options, none of them had a drastic change on the output. Using any of the program options didn't make the output TXT "image" to look closer riginal JPEGs..

ASCII Pic 2.0 Windows picture to ASCII Program options screenshot

ASCII Pic official website contains a number of other tiny tools, like WinKill and RemoteShut, however most of the tools are already too obslete and useless just like ASCII Pic

If I have to compare ASCIIPic produced ASCII Images to libcaca's Linux img2txt, asciipic's ASCII images are a piece of crap.

2. jp2a command line tool image to ASCII generator

As of time of writting a good alternative program I found for Windows is jp2a
jp2a is a free GPL-ed software available for all major operating system architectures Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Windows.
jp2a is a command line tool and lacks any GUI interface but if compared to ASCII Pic the output ASCII image is awesome.

jp2a Windows binary can be downloaded from here , also I've made a mirror of windows jp2a bin in case if it disappears here

3. ASCII Generator 2 (asc2gen) – Windows GUI Images to ASCII generator

ASC 2 Gen is actually the best I can find program to convert images to ascii in Win as of time of writting.
Just like img2txt it generates pretty decent looking text images.

ASC2Gen failed to run emulated on my Linux host with wine version 1.0.1, hence to test it I used a a Windows host via teamviewer.

Below are few screenshots illustrating most of the options ASCII2GEN provides:

asc2gen Microsoft Windows image to ascii generator inverted penguins screenshot

asc2gen penguins in inverted color set (black color text background)

ASC2Gen backhead penguins ascii picture screenshot

ASC2GEN flipped backhed generated image to ASCII

ascii2gen generate images to ascii in colors Microsoft Windows shot

Picture to ASCII text converted with ASCII colors

Dithering Windows image to ascii text generated picture ASCII

ascii2gen dithering level option shot

asc2gen jpeg, png, gif to plain text ascii brightness contrast screenshot pic

asc2gen contrast / brigthness atune shot

ascii2gen penguins converted images to plain text inverted with capital letters for picture

asc2gen save as options shot

Something else nice is it supports a lot of image file formats as input including (BMP and GIF) images.
I've also made a mirror of asc2gen v. 2.0.0 here

While researching online, I found plenty of other Image to ASCII geneartors, however as I didn't tested them I can't say if they are  better ones.
Anyways I will be happy to hear if anyone knows other good ASCII generator alternative progs for Winblows?

The day, Today

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

The day started a bit normal. I did my morning excercise, then I prayed. I spoke with Dzemil (A macedonian colleague of mine) and we set up a meeting for 12:30, I ate. I received few calls from the office with requests to do few little things. At 12:30 I met Dzemil at the College restaurant. We spend some time talking with him and another turkish colleague. Then we went to speak with Bozhidar Bozhkov about the applications for Holland, what is the procedure of transfering from the college here to Arnhem Business School etc. Laters I went home and did some work on the servers and red and did my fourth cisco test. I went to my cousin and after that went to Javor, we went out with Ina and Javor for a coffee to Kukla. Afterwards I went home and played with Dynamips. For all that wonder what the hack Dynamips is. Well Dynamics is a Cisco emulator just like VMWare is an OS emulator with the exception that Dynamics is builded to run only Cisco’s IOS. I found that nice Video tutorial Cisco Router Emulation Software Dynamips Video Tutorial, check it out here Here . Since I needed a Cisco IOS image and I’m not a Cisco customer I used torrents to download a collection of Cisco ISO’s and used one of the isos to make it work on my Windows Vista. I have problems running it because of lack of permissions, caused by the famous UAC ( User Access Control ). The solution for me was to use a privileged command prompt and start, both the Dynamips sever and my custom configured simple1.net which connected to the server and loaded the cisco image. There is also a very nice and extended tutorial on the topic of Dynamips it’s located Here . Alto today tested the previously installed Wireshark. Wireshark is a very nice substitute for iptraf for windows it has a nice and easy to use graphical interface, supports capturing and has lot of traffic analysis possibilities I strongly recommend it to anyone coming from a Linux/BSD background like me and searching for a nice Windows substitute for iptraf. Check out wireshark on the following URL . Now I’m going to change the topic and say a few words for my spiritual state. Today it was a hard day. I was tempted by the devil to think bad thoughts and did sinned for which I search forgiveness. Life it so hard I realize it more and more day by day. Very often old spirits which tormented me for a long time are trying to come back. I haven’t smoked today also and again thanks for that should fly to God who delived me from this terrible vice. As a conclusion I should say that for everything I should thanks to God and pray for him to forgive my unfaithfulness. END—–