SSH - connect without password.

Some time to time, we are scavenging the internet to find how to connect to a remote host without a password with SSH. I have found this link that contains some info about it.

Also, I have decided to use KDE's 'keychain' instead of 'ssh-agent' to have a passwordless session. For this, you must add the private key or the certificate to the keychain instance. When you want to login with ssh, keychain will look for the key or certificate to login. Here are the commands to add keys to the 'keychain':

$ keychan ~/.ssh/my_pem.pem

$ ssh user@host 

If you also face bad network connection, you can use SSH in "tmux" or with "screen" to restore broken ssh connections. Alternatively, and my favourite, you also have Mosh shell which works very well in irregular network connections scenarios. With this tool, you will stop seeing "Broken pipe error" messages forever.

Vim is great

I want to avoid an ethereal war that can exist between emacs and vim when discussing which editor is the best. I have used both editors for a long time, so long that I have developed an opinion.

In my opinion, vim is much better than emacs and, to justify myself, I need to point out the drawbacks from emacs.

Vim is the most peaceful application that I have come across. Working with this editor is like being in the Zen state. It is so calm and blissful, and yet so powerful.

To start, I must tell you that I use Dvorak layout to avoid RSI problems. I advise you to use Dvorak or Colemak layout rather than QWERTY. QWERTY was built on purpose to be that awful.

Well, back to our topic. Emacs is a heavy editor that is meant for you to open once, and work there until the end of the day. People say that emacs is an OS, and they are right, but, in some situations, I start to doubt it. For example, the eshell plugin will never replace the power of the Terminator shell program.

It is painful to work with the Ctrl and Meta keys. I have even remapped the Ctrl, but the problem with the Meta key location is still there. For me, it is much more comfortable to access vim prompt than use these keys.

I have no words to express how horrible are the emacs keybindings. Most of the times, they don't make any sense at all. Therefore, I am more used to write the emacs commands than using the keybindings. In vim, the keybindings are acronyms to actions.

And finally, I have tried to learn unsuccessfully Emacs Lisp several times. Finally, I gave up and decided to go to vim once and for all. Lisp has really lots of (Lost In) Stupid Parenthesis.

The only drawback that I find in vim is since you command vim with keys, sometimes I look like an elephant trying to dance ballet on the top of a water lily.

VIM plugins

CTRLP is a fuzzy file finder plugin for vim. Like many other plugins, it is full of options that helps you navigate through files without having to list files in the main window. You can have more information about the plugin here.

This site lists vim plugins  that you can use for you to enable a tailored environment.