[137]http://perllinux.sourceforge.net 

     (!) [Jason] LUFS (Linux Userspace File Systems):

     [138]http://lufs.sourceforge.net/lufs

     It's designed to allow you to write filesystem drivers for linux in
     userspace. (You'd never guess it from the name. :-) )

     Bindings for python:

     [139]http://www.freenet.org.nz/python/lufs-python

     I don't know of there's any for Perl, but I wouldn't be surprised.

     (!)  [Ben]  Wow. Weird. I'm very familiar with the Perl Power Tools
     (essentially, the GNU toolkit for Unix reimplemented in Perl) - in fact, I
     recommend them to my students as a bunch of well-written code to study; I
     also  think  it's  a  really good idea of the same kind as having a
     statically-compiled shell. An entire Perl-based distro, though? Is there a
     point to straining a Camel [1] through the eye of a needle? I mean, cool
     that it can be done... but you end up with pureed camel, and who wants
     that? Messy.

     [1] Contrary to popular belief, the mascot's name is not "OCaml". Sheesh.

     (!) [Thomas] Depends how you say it. :) Usually with perl, it is with
     heavy surprise with lots of skepticism thrown in for good measure. :D

     (!) [Ben] Well, the way people seems to usually "learn" Perl (i.e., by
     looking at somebody's horrible code, figuring "I can do that!", and
     proceeding to do exactly that), I'd think it's more like "prayerfully,
     with a quiver in the voice and tears running down the cheeks". People who
     learn it the right way - i.e., by reading and following the documentation
     and    learning    from    good    examples    (e.g.,    PPT,   NMS
     ([140]http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net), etc.) - say it with a rising
     inflection, sorta singing the last part, and usually follow it up with a
     whistle.

     "O Caaaa-mel! [whistle] Heeere, Camel-camel-camel!"

     It always comes running and wagging its tail when properly invoked. Beware
     the fleas, though. :)
   _______

     Snipping some light-heartedness, somehow the topic changed to window
     managers. -- Thomas Adam

     (!) [Thomas] Don't use [141]KDE, then.

     (!) [Ben] It's certainly one of the major reasons that I don't. My current
     machine has plenty of disk, memory, and CPU for KDE to gratuitously throw
     in the trash (oops - was that my 'out-loud' voice? Darn), but I refuse to
     put up with the Micr0s0ft-style blinkenlights philosophy of the interface
     ("Fear not, small human creature; KDE has decided on everything you'll
     want and need, and will provide it for you.").

     (!) [Thomas] It does have "wizards" or the equivalent so that even the
     complete clueless can give it a go.

     (!) [Ben] What, to handle the configuration end? Nothing special there;
     IceWM, e.g., has "icepref" that does much the same thing. I'm very much a
     fan of "vi" as a configuration wizard, myself, but others may differ.

     I dislike the standard RedHat install for the same reasons (it's a minor
     dislike, but that's the reason for it.)

     (!) [Thomas] sigh. I agree. I liked it more when RH4 and the subsequent
     RH5 release used Fvwm. They now use Gnome, which is arguably better IMO,
     than KDE. Qt is horrible.

     (!) [Ben] IceWM is small, fast, and lacks nothing in features that I want
     from a WM. From Thomas' previous rantings :) , I gather that FVWM is much
     the same sort of thing. It's like having a spoon that you bought for a
     quarter; [ ... ]

     (!) [Thomas] Kind of. But there are a lot of things Fvwm does that IceWM
     does not, and while I am not going to outline the individual merits of
     each, you cannot, for instance, in IceWM do event actions. And while I
     have used IceWm, it just doesn't have..., well, it lacks something. :)

     (!) [Ben] EPID. That's why I didn't say that KDE was evil and should be
     wiped off the face, etc. - some people love it. And FVWM doesn't have a
     lot of things that IceWM has (i.e., a decent taskbar; I could never stand
     that huge thing they use that takes up so much real estate.)

     (!) [Thomas] Actually, Fvwm provides a taskbar (FvwmTaskBar) that takes up
     no more space than any "normal" task bar, plus it can autohide. You can
     also configure FvwmIconMan to act as a taskbar.

     Apart from the inherent motif theme [1] that Fvwm takes on by default (
     \o/ ), perhaps the other major attraction to it for me was the fact that
     you can define events based on actions. AFAICT this is an idiom unique to
     Fvwm, and no other WM/desktop environment (The module that provides this
     is known as 'FvwmEvent').

     Perhaps another addition that you might appreciate Ben is the fact that
     you can script commands to Fvwm, using the underlying $SHELL. There is
     even a full set of perl-bindings[2] [3]. The power that this gives, to
     allow complex things to be done simply, is quite amazing. Not only that