Brandon's Blog

2/27/2006 #

Gentoo 2006.0 Released

I don’t see it as wasting my time yesterday installing 2005.0. I see it as … invoking Murphy’s Law so that the new version with an automated installer could go ahead and come out. You see, I checked the website yesterday to see if it was out, and I saw it wasn’t there.

Luckily, my plans yesterday were foiled by a combination of laziness and the fact that wireless didn’t work on reboot. Yeah, I knew how to fix it, but did I really want to? Maybe I could feel the coming of the beautiful new edition.

I just got sniped on eBay last night, so no fun for me. I wonder if they set an alarm at 3:00 AM to place the bid.

2/26/2006 #

Once Again

So many times I start up a Gentoo install while I’m working on other stuff, and I say, “Gee, I really need to get this thing compiling X11 before I go to X place in Y minutes.” This always leads to a high-pressure situation.

I have 20 minutes left and I’m untarring portage. We’ll see if it works out.

2/26/2006 #

My Snowball's Chance is Melting

No way it’ll happen. Forgot about that pesky kernel compile step, and the syncing of my portage snapshot.

Watching it now on A&E, I had forgotten how messed up The Shining was. Dang good movie, though.

One Gentoo thought: it would be better to have the USE flags update as needed, rather than making a new user feel as though they all needed to be perfect the first time through. I am tempted to test a dirty form of this strategy by basically leaving them untouched (maybe go ahead and set the kde flags, as this is what I’m going for on this build).

2/24/2006 #

Wikipedia Word O' the Day

One of my new favorites… astroturfing.

2/22/2006 #

Wow

Apple laptops hold value like none other.

2/22/2006 #

A Day with Ubuntu, A Conclusion

Ubuntu worked great through the school day, except that it couldn’t log on to an unencrypted school wireless network, even with some config file hacking. I don’t know what the deal is, but I think it involves the ESSID of the school network. Anyway, that was really frustrating.

However, OOo worked great, even when taking notes, and font rendering exceeded expectations. It was fun to work with the system, and I think I will be more open to Gnome in the future after having used a more contemporary version. I hope that GTK moves seriously forward and cuts some fat as we move toward a (basically now hypothetical) Gnome 3.

Oh, multimedia support for GNOME blows, even using non-official packages. Unbelievably bad.

2/21/2006 #

Twenty-Four Hours With Ubuntu

I couldn’t help myself, so I grabbed a full install CD of Ubuntu 5.10. I’ve installed it on Kristin’s old laptop (so, no working USB), but it looks really good overall, besides that I am horridly inept on this keyboard.

I have to say I’m impressed. KDE works with lower system requirements for now, but the whole Ubuntu desktop is incredibly appealing. Just a summary here for now (I must finish my work, which I have been doing concurrently with the install):

PRISM driver is 100% functional with my 802.11b/g network out of the box with 128-bit WEP and DHCP
HP JetDirect is working across the wireless
Evolution is checking my OU IMAP server like a champ
The side button volume controls work out of the box
OOo 2 is working out of the box, no surprises

No bugs, good look and feel (yes, I’m liking the “human” brown theme despite previous poor experiences).

Anyway, I think I’ll tote this machine to my classes tomorrow and give it a full run during class.

2/20/2006 #

Retraction

Dojo is cool, but the Yahoo UI Library is better. I’m currently looking for an excuse to try it.

2/19/2006 #

Turncoat

I’m no fan of Gnome, but looking at this makes me feel like sitting up straight and taking notice over the next year or so.

I think the world is really waiting for KDE 4, and it’s going to be incredible when it actually comes out. I believe in the artwork and the usability initiatives of KDE. I also believe in Trolltech (as covered ad nauseum lately on this page). I think something as core as a GUI toolkit (and so much more, as of Qt 4) needs that little capitalist kick in the butt to keep going and improving.

GTK is a picture of open source hell. It’s bloaty, slow, buggy, and—worst of all—stagnant. Yeah, I’m a troll; no, it’s not totally true. But it’s true enough. Look: one of the reasons I have paused on Sigma is that about 50% of my code could be eliminated by linking against Qt 4. All the networking, most of the XML, most of the string manipulation. All without opening up a QMainForm and launching a GUI. Whatcha got for me, Gnome? GLib? Ha!

KDE just makes sense, but Ubuntu (yeah, and SUSE) is keeping GNOME alive. And, that’s not a bad thing. GNOME has good potential for the business desktop, because it’s so clean.

Idea: maybe what we need for the business desktop is the concept of a “shell,” like what we have in Windows. It includes the file browser and preferably a web browser.

Idea-Idea: Could you make Firefox (Gecko) into a shell?

That makes sense. Hmm… A “web desktop,” like Windows Me, but of course not really. You could just make a bunch of libX.so-style compatibility libraries that wrap to the Gecko engine.

Wow, that seems like a lifetime of work.