Desktop Enviroments and a new kernel

So since I’ve now got a stable install of Gentoo thats lasted longer than a month I’ve been playing a lot with desktop environments and window managers. I generally use Gnome as my default when logging on through GDM but I have also installed and tried KDE and Enlightenment (E16). I have setup paludis to use the Enlightenment overlay but I haven’t installed any of the files from it. I, of course, have used KDE in the past so there is nothing new there. I still don’t like it as much even though it does seem to have a better backend sometimes as it appears to use less memory to do the same tasks. E16 on the other hand is a whole-nother story. I installed, all two packages, and then logged out and then logged back in. My conclusions basically boiled down to the default theme is absolutely hideous. The controls feel backwards compared to every other DE I’ve tried, especially Fluxbox, which makes it extremely awkward to use. And finally the supposed ultimate level of configurability is no where to be found. There is a menu that lets you do some minor things but other than that I suppose you have to go hunting an pecking through config files. Which is something I’m used to but I really expected better. As soon as finals are over I’m going to actually install E17 from the overlay and see how it goes.

A new kernel version got released, 2.6.21 I believe it is. It has a huge slew of improvements in it. I read an article somewhere that said over 100,000 lines of code have changed. If I weren’t tired from going to bed at 7:30AM this morning I’d find it and let everyone else read it too. Torvalds claims it a great deal of bug fixing. Which excites me. I’d like to see a great more bug fixing in Linux instead of new features. Don’t get me wrong, I think new features should be a staple as well, but I think improving existing code should be a higher priority. There is also something about a new time thing. No idea what it is but I want it. =)

Enjoy the Penguins!

You knew it’d happen…

Okay, so about that last post. First off this isn’t really a response so much as it as a… look around. I’m not going to debate or fight with anyone. So with that said; I only got one comment. And at that it was not near as vulgar as expected. Whoever you are gas I appreciate your lack of profanity. My pitiful one comment made me sad though. I expected to, at the very least, have to keep one or two comments from even showing up because of profanity. But no. The community restrained themselves. I’m impressed.

I did on the other hand have, again at least, two people post about my post in their blog. At this point I’m still to flattered to be mad about something they said about me. Not that they said anything really bad about me. I just assume that people get mad.

The first post comes from Alex. Who I don’t personally, though, I did e-mail him twice. Does that count? Anyway I have a considerable amount of respect for Alex (who ever you are) as he has always been nice to me, so in response to your post about my post. Yes, I can do better. And no I didn’t try very hard. As I hope was obvious. The lack of feature comparison was intentional and I had never really planned it to be that serious anyway. If you want to know a secret I thought it was funny.

The other post, though, was from Patrick. This time I really do have idea who this is. I assume he must be close to the pkgcore team because he seemed a bit more upset about it. I’m glad he explained cokehabit’s name to me. I at least feel better about it. I don’t speak Japanese though so I still don’t get it. He is right though. The paludis team can be harsh. I forgive them for it though since they let me use their code for free. Patrick did call my post propaganda and me a fanboy. I might be a fanboy. I guess that is debatable. I’d hardly call my post propaganda though. I bet most of the dev team for paludis doesn’t even know me, much less read my blog.

Anyway. I’m glad the posts I have found about my last post did seem to keep lighthearted without getting nasty or overly angry. All that really leaves then is what does cokeha bit mean in Japanese?

Enjoy the Penguins!
(even all of you pkgcore users!)

Why Paludis?

So your sitting at your computer looking around. Your tired of portage. It just isn’t doing what you want. So you go looking around and you find two alternatives. Paludis and pkgcore. Neither have names that make any sense and yet you hear that both are better than portage. Which do you pick? If I were you I’d start off simple. Goto their respective websites and look around. Lets look shall we?

Exhibit A: The Websites and Documentation
Lets first look at Paludis’ website, specifically the Portage Differences page. Go ahead, click the link and read a little of it. It is all written out in fairly plain English. This of course assumes you’ve been around Gentoo long enough to understand a few keywords. Its color choice leaves something to be desired but the overall format is pleasing to eye and easy to read.

Now lets look at the pkgcore website. We’ll start off the with the equivalent page that we started with for Paludis. Here they call it the Features page. Now I have to give them credit here. The name makes sense is self explanatory. Now click the link and try to read it. Thats right you cannot understand a single word of it unless you wrote it. Lets take for example the “Format agnostic resolver.” Do you know what that is? What it does? Want to take any guesses? If I understand their attempt to use overly-educated sounding language it basically means you can use multiple types of formats your config files. Is it really necessary to make me think that hard? I sure as hell hope not.

Exhibit B: Developer Names
Do you really want to run software by a guy who calls himself “cokehabit?” Case closed.

Exhibit C: Language Choice
I really don’t like python. C++ on the other hand is sexy like tuna fish.

Conclusion
Looks like you should stick with Paludis. So you can read the documentation, understand it, and not worry about having your computer go through drug induced episodes.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Microsoft A National Security Threat

As I watch CNBC at this moment they are discussing Microsoft as a national security threat. Ira Winkler, one of the guest speakers, is totally off on his reasoning. MS software is not under attack because its more popular. That is a myth that should be abolished but apparently thrives despite efforts. How is MS a national security threat then? Because to many people are using to many versions of Windows and other MS products that are insecure. People, according to them, simply aren’t updating their software and replacing their out of date insecure software. I don’t personally know who Ira Winkler is but he obviously isn’t as smart as CNBC thinks he is. The other guy was worthless. I didn’t even note his name. He just backed up whatever Ira said.

As a Linux user though you should be aware of the same problems. Linux is constantly updated along with the programs that run on it. A good majority of these updates include security updates. You should always try to keep your computer relatively up-to-date, even if you don’t use Windows.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Mathematics, Computer Science, and Open Source

So you may or may not know I am about two weeks away from having a B.S. in Mathematics and a B.A. in History. As a historian I’m spot on. History always and probably always will be one of my strong points. I find myself naturally inclined toward it though I don’t really envision myself ever becoming a professional historian. On the other hand mathematics has always been one of my weaker subjects. In fact, part of my motivation in getting a mathematics degree was that people (note the plural) have told me on several occasions I wasn’t good enough, smart enough, etc. to do it. So I did it anyway to spite them . After its all said and done I’m glad I’ve done it. Especially after completing my presentation for my mathematics capstone project. I picked cryptography for my topic because I wanted something computer related. What I found was that I was only able to really understand a lot of the computer code, along with a good portion of the theory behind the code, because I could understand the mathematics laid out behind it. Now only having a B.S. in mathematics there is still a lot of math I still don’t know, but I know enough at this point I can get through just about anything of interest to me. So, I don’t know where this is going to lead me in the future, but I’m hoping for something good.

On the other hand after spending a considerable amount of time in the open source world I’ve decided that being an open source developer isn’t all that newbies dream it of being. In fact I don’t really know if I ever want to become a full dev on any project. I am at this point a pseudo dev on the Wolvix liveCD. If I were a real dev wolven (the alpha male) would probably kick me off the team. Instead I contribute what little I can when I have time and everyone is happy. I don’t even know at this point if he is even including any of the work I’m submitting but its not relevant. I did it, its available to the public if they want it. And that is all that matters.

So why not become a dev? I hate the deadlines. Gentoo, the only distro I’m even semi-aware of policy for, for example kicks you off the team after six months of inactivity. Now, not that that is a bad thing, but I don’t think I want to be forced to volunteer personally. I’ll submit patches, bugs, etc. when I please. Not when you tell me too. Thats my personal attitude toward but I think sometimes there are certain situations where a policy like the one Gentoo has in place is necessary. But that is not the kind of policy I, at this point, want to volunteer my time to. In fact it is the people like McCreesh and Brown of the paludis project that really amaze me. I wonder sometime why they really do what they do. McCreesh especially. He’s not even actually a dev anymore. Instead he’s now, as far as I know, just a lonely user. Banned from the forums even. Yet he still writes, patches, and maintains paludis like a full time job. Not only do I not really have time, right now anyway, to do that but I have no desire to either. Why would he do it? Personal gain is the only motivation I can conjure. He writes the program primarily for his own benefit, i.e. he’s sick of portage and the wants the replacement, and out of the kindness of his heart he lets the rest of us use it, and contribute to it, as well. Pretty darn nice of him, and the rest of the crew, if you ask me.

Thats all I have really. Not a very happy post. Sorry about that.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Thank you Richard Brown

If you don’t know Richard Brown or even know who he is, your not a lone. I don’t know him either. But I do know he’s a Gentoo developer and is also working on Palduis. We are publicly thanking him today for writing the following script (in ruby).

gimme.rb

What does it do? It uses Paludis’ ruby-binding to create a conf file with all of the packages you need in order to unmask a program you like. So if you want to unmask the program foo and all of its dependencies just do

ruby gimme.rb “foo”

Botta bing, botta boom! foo and all of its dependencies are now unmasked and ready to be installed. I would of course recommend you fully check everything that this scripts unmasks. There are a lot of retarded programs out there you probably don’t want.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Rbrown’s Blog Post

All Kinds of Crazy-ness

Alright, so I’ve finished my presentation for my mathematics capstone, but not my paper. The paper is probably more important and I’m hoping to make huge headway on it tonight. I also need to write my math history paper, do my math history presentation, write my english paper, and finish my history paper. So I’m busy right now to say the least. Most of this is my fault. I’ve had all semester to do all of it I just haven’t.

While working through the RSA algorithm I found out the hard way that the size of the prime numbers used determines how large a message you can encrypt. I trying to keep the primes as small as possible in order keep it simple for a demonstration. My message ended up requiring numbers larger than I wanted. Oh well I’m keeping my message.

I’ve pushed back the decision to buy a new laptop till Apple releases Leopard. I see no reason to buy a new laptop, especially a man, when they’re releasing a new version of OS X in a couple of months. I am after all in no hurry.

Another Gentoo developer quit the other day for the same reason everyone else is quitting. No offense to anyone but quitting because someone wasn’t nice to you is getting old. The first time was a bit shocking, the second was expected, but number three is starting to look sissy.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Cryptography

So I’m in the process of writing my capstone paper and preparing my power point presentation on cryptography. I can’t really say I’m a big fan of cryptography but it is defiantly more interesting as a computer science endeavor than it is mathematically. Which leads me to the whole point of this post. I am not currently in the process of writing any program that uses or needs any sort of cryptography but running on to a site that contains a mountain of source code on how to implement various forms still makes me giggle like a school girl. Aw the inner nerd in us all.

Clicky!

Enjoy the Penguins!

I’m thinking about switching

So my laptop is aging. Its about 5 years old, which isn’t bad for a lot of people but things are starting to go bad as well. Neither battery works and the hard drive is starting to grind a lot worse than it used to. So I have a feeling its only a matter of time before my laptop totally dies. So naturally I’d love to replace it. What am I thinking about getting? A mac. Good idea? Bad idea? I don’t know. I’m really worried about getting one. I have never actually owned one and never used one for more than 30 minutes in one sitting. At that I’ve probably ever used one a grand total of say eight times. So the idea of switching to OS X is a bit daunting as well. I’ve been using Linux now long enough that I feel comfortable enough with it that I can break it and fix it on my own. The same goes for Windows (at least XP and prior). Which one am I looking at now then?Yeah, thats a black one, but you can’t convince me to pay an extra $200 just so I can get a black case. Thats a macbook, not a pro. Price is really the main factor. I don’t really want to pay a lot for it. My only real requirement at this point is I’d like to have 2G of RAM instead of the stock 1G. I don’t know how much difference that will make when using OS X but it helps Windows tremendously and it did Linux justice. Suggestions and comments are more than welcome. This is after all an expensive decision.

In other more boring news I updated the license at the bottom of the blog to version 3 of the Creative Commons license. If your really interested in what license my blog is go check it out!

Enjoy the Penguins!

The BSD wireless driver controversy

I’m sure everyone has seen this on a news site somewhere. Basically the people in charge of the GPL’ed version of the bcm wireless drivers have accused one of the BDD team members of copying code and relicensing it without permission. Not a huge deal really. They only needed to remove the code in question till a resolution could be worked out then re-add what they were given permission to. Instead the BSD developer named Theo de Raadt was a total prick about it. What’s this guy’s problem? His only major complaint is they didn’t first resolve privately with the individual developer first. While I do consider that a reasonable request its also petty on the same hand. We’re talking about public code, on a publicly accessible server, under a public use license (the GPL). If there are problems with any of this, why would too not be resolved publicly? To beat it all the people who claimed infringement weren’t even mean about it. They even offered to let him use some of it under the BSD license if he would of just asked. Instead though Raadt went on a rampage about it.

This is not how developers of open source projects are supposed to act. Sounds more like something Gentoo developers would do (just joking… sorta). Anyway, lighten up, cheer up, and

Enjoy the Penguins!