Why Linux isn't ready for the Desktop, sortof

Good technical overview of why Linux isn't ready for the Desktop. Granted it's not perfect but it's good enough for me.

Don't take yourself so seriously!

Not too long ago crackho.com redirected to Sarah Palin's official website http://gov.state.ak.us/.

Thanks Ars

Syncing Address Books

I can sync my blackberry contacts with facebook and I can sync my blackberry contacts with with my Google address book. Sort of. All 3 ways should be seemless. Think about it.

One Day

I've got a Blackberry which I enjoy, but I'm looking ahead to a couple years from now when my contract with Verizon expires. Right now the big thing is the IPhone. But I'm not betting that right now it's that much better than what I've got. Sure, it's got the slickest interface on the planet in some aspects, but it can't be that much better than my blackberry. Why: because of Moore's Law. I'm a power user; I'm hard on every machine I get my hands on. I'm hard on the raw processing ability of the machine. As far as I know, no phone has a real processing edge. So even if the IPhone has a really slick touchscreen interface, my question is how fast will it render a 12 meg JPEG?

Why would anyone want a HD quality JPEG on their phone when the screen will never have the same number of pixels as a good flat screen monitor? I've got a better question, why would you want to have to keep up with twice as many pictures, two sizes of each? I want the computer to resize it for me. I want to be able to carry around my image collection on a SIM card and be able to view at my leisure, for example.

So yeah I like my Blackberry, but I can't wait till handheld computers catch up with the desktop. Of course I'll always want it faster but two years from now should be interesting.

USB power cables?

Yeah, I know usb does data and power. So why are we still using dumb power cords to power computers? Often a computer is plugged into an UPS which is plugged into something else. Shouldn't power management be queryable all the way to the ups? There's not much detail here because I'm not sure what to call this. If you have any comments, please.

This is a test, but read anyway...

I'm posting this from gnome-blog. It's some kind of applet for posting blogs. I hope it works. It seems easier than posting from the website, and maybe that'll get me blogging more

Quotes: Mahatma Gandhi

"Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

Quotes: Innovation Happens Elsewhere

"It's a plain fact: regardless of how smart, creative, and innovative your organization is, there are more smart, creative, and innovative people outside your organization than inside."

Quotes: Blue Mars

"If democracy and self-rule are the fundamentals, then why should people give up these rights when they enter their workplace? In politics we fight like tigers for the right to elect our leaders, for freedom of movement, choice of residence, choice of what work to pursue--control of our lives, in short. And then we wake up in the morning and go to work, and all those rights disappear. We no longer insist on them. And so for most of the day we return to feudalism. That is what capitalism is--a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And so we still hand over our lives' labor, under duress, to feed rulers who do no real work."

Quotes: C.S. Lewis

"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

make error: too many levels of symlinks

I get this error in my LFS environment when I run make for Binutils. I've tried building Binutils in my regular environment and it runs fine. Does anyone have any ideas what's wrong?

C compiler cannot create executables

As I run into problems building LFS I'll post a short summary and the solution here. configure didn't work for binutils. I must have just miskeyed something because the instructions were right. The path below is the confirmation.

http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/c_compiler_cannot_create_executables.html

LFS and sudo

My first start on LFS tonight was a false start. I probably need to add the LFS user into the sudo group so I can get root privileges when I need them.

Another tutorial I read on compiling in a chroot environment strongly suggested regular backups of progress so if something goes wrong you don't have to start all over. I'm not sure about this in LFS, but at some point I'll have to try it.

More Enterprise Build Environment

One thing a project like this needs is someone with a lot of build time. They need to have rolled LFS, Gentoo, Debian, and Redhat from scratch and be able to explain any part of the process. I'm not that person, but maybe as time runs along we'll both learn something.

I'm currently attempting to build the Linux from Scratch distro. It's more complicated than I last remember, but then I haven't tried it in the last few minor versions.

One thing I want to do eventually is put the LFS build in /chroot, my imaginary directory of multiple from scratch builds.

For this Enterprise Build Environment the Automated LFS scripts would be essential. Another book needs to be written just explaining that script. It's one thing to know how to build Linux from Scratch; it's another to tell the computer how to understand what it is doing.

This Big Hairy Audacious Goal of a EBE keeps growing out of proportion for what any one person can do. However maybe someone else will start posting about it on another website and link here. Furthermore, EBE needs to be a BHAG just to connect all the pieces. It needs to know what to do. The script to do it needs to be explained. All the code needs to be tested, bugs need to be reported, reports need to be generated, etc. As I think about this I'll try to keep my ideas in as small of modules as possible so we each can take away a piece or two.

Sucking down the code

I'm currently downloading, very slowly for some reason, with git both the Linux kernel and GNU Coreutils. I'll have to look at the Linux from Scratch manual to see what all codebases I need to download to build a running system. I'm interested in doing some of the work on an Enterprise Grade Linux Build. We'll see what happens.

Enterprise Grade Linux Build System

Another idea that has been ticking around in my head is an enterprise grade Linux build system. This of course is different from Red Hat Enterprise Linux because an EGLBS is not a product but a set of procedures for a corporation to roll its own version of Linux. Sure anyone with a little sense can re roll Debian or Red Hat or Linux from Scratch, but the process needs to be codified in several different ways if a corporation will see it as viable to roll its own instead of buying a turnkey solution.

The point is that businesses need a transparent documented build process. I'm not saying this hasn't already been done, but it doesn't seem to be readily apparent. This EGLBS needs several things to make it a successful project. First, I think, all the sources from the Linux kernel to Gnome, KDE, etc need to be in one distributed code repository. This would allow anyone to have downloaded all the source code and compile it all themselves. Second, the bug tracking also needs to be distributed this way as well. Third all the code needs to be readily testable. I once read where one build system would create another copy of the code as it compiled and tested; any code that wasn't unit tested was deleted from the copy. This would ensure that all code important enough to use would be valid.

Probably it would be best to do this type of thing with a server build first since there are less programs than a desktop would have.

Reed-Kellog System

FYI: I'm currently studying the Reed-Kellog diagramming system instead of the X Bar system. X Bar may actually be the better system because it is more language independent, but I grew up on Reed-Kellog. X Bar, however, has a recursive or tree like structure that would probably work well with Lisp as an interpreter. Lisp as the platform is the alternative to using XML; I just happen to be more use to working with XML than Lisp.

Diagramming Sentences with XML or English and Metadata

I know what you all are thinking, "Show me the code." Grandiose project ideas are fine but what we all want to see is working code. There really isn't any here to show yet; however, I have been practicing diagramming sentences with pseudo XML. I don't have a DTD file yet because I'm not particularly happy with the current schema. Anyway, my idea is to do pretty much what the title says, to diagram sentences with XML or to add metadata to English. Why? Well, then wouldn't English be machine readable? It would take a lot of processing but English XML is an audacious idea which should already exist. This is just a placeholder post. Hopefully I'll have some real code for you soon.

Lately...

I of course haven't blogged enough lately. It would help my ranking to at least have chatter for people to read. One of these days though I'll research what makes a good blog and play follow the leader...

My wife, left me back in July sometime. I guess a divorce is coming...

I've been doing a little coding on jsvim, VIM rewritten in JavaScript. I have a little code, and I also am rolling my own test suite.

I've ran into my first type error in JavaScript.

One day I'll post some code but I want it to look like a test driven Dive into Python. Good book.

Application Development in a shop that can't spell CVS.

When an IT shop uses Microsoft-esq tools, they usually use GUI's. When a Microsoft shop needs one thing done 300 times, they put 3 people on it and have them use a GUI that does things step by step times 300.

Inevitably some aspiring programmer (there wouldn't be any real programmers here) figures out how to leverage VBScript or JScript to automate things. He knocks out a few relatively major jobs in minutes instead of hours. A few people notice, and he becomes the goto guy.

Problems start at that point. An inexperienced programmer shouldn't be a large IT shop's programming lead. It's not that he doesn't have potential, he'll probably do well enough to get some kind of award (They just won't mention specifically what he did to get the award). However, interesting things happen to code when only one person is looking at it. For example, servers get called to dump all their data, over and over and over. You would think somebody would notice that in the log files. Nope. The script did what it needed to, but you might say it had a bug in it.

The problems spin way out of control when some manager wants to pass out an unreviewed script. (Now this story, doesn't have a happy ending, but so far no major disasters have occurred. Anyway.) First of all this bright aspiring coder has no clue whether he will be able to take a copy of his code with him when he leaves or whether he has any liability for the code he writes. Programming isn't his job. A manager could say he wasn't doing his specified job. (Aren't managers great?) Second, when there is no design documents or code review the coder has to figure out how to reach the requested goal in the best or simpliest way possible. In this case, he tried the best possible solution: Java. After numerous iterations later and trying VBScript, shell, and JavaScript, he gets something workable. Those last two iterations of course aren't great in a Microsoft GUI shop.

I'm being vague because company policy discourages blogs, even reading them. That's life though. It sucks. Deal with it, and keep going.

DTrace on Linux

I just added my two cents to the BS at the dtrace knockoffs post.

Maker's Mark Bourbon

I thought I'd give Google AdSense a try. My application is submitted. I'm not a big fan of advertising in general, but text links are fairly non intrusive. I've never been annoyed by them, anyway.

What would be cool is to create advertisements for other people's stuff for my website, and get paid for it. For example:


I did grab this image from the Maker's Mark website. I happen to like Maker's Mark. I don't consume it very often, and certainly not often enough, but it is excellent Bourbon. Click on the pic and the link will take you there. Go on try it. I can't encourage you with Google AdSense; you are only supposed to click on those links if you, without my prompting, notice the ads and click on the links because you want to go to that site. With this personalized Maker's Mark ad I'm not getting paid, but it would be nice to be. Now after you follow the link, you should go with a designated driver of course, and try Maker's Mark. I recommend it straight with no ice. It's also excellent with Sprite and on the rocks, but make sure you try it straight, too. Enjoy!

The Graphical Keyboard User Interface

The Graphical Keyboard User Interface is a pretty good post with some great GUI eye candy by Alex Faaborg. I could drown the world with all the bookmarks I have, so this isn't another one link blog entry. I posted a comment there. I'll be doing that some and linking to it from here.

Need USBVision driver Help

Since this is pretty important, I'm going to also submit this to the USBVision email list. A friend of mine let me put Ubuntu on his machine (a convert from Windows). However after much effort on my part I can't get the USBVision coaxial to USB converter to work. The problem for me other than my lack of luck, is that the computer will go back to Windows within a week, if we can't get this thing working.

There are multiple symptoms. The card says it is NTSC. The driver code lists it as PAL. I've tried all different things to get it to work. It's the Rev 226 one. Sorry for the lack of details, at the moment. I'll post more info soon since I don't have the device or his computer in front of me.

Setting up Ubuntu: Mozilla Thunderbird

One of my modifications to Ubuntu is to uninstall Evolution and install Mozilla Thunderbird. Why isn't TB the default already?

Having done multiple clean installs lately, I always make sure I keep track of the "jhgfjhsdi.default" folder in which TB stores all my mail. Then all I have to do is start TB for the first time with "mozilla-thunderbird -profile manager" at the bash prompt. It's weird though, I have to click on create profile to point to my profile folder. However, if I had just ran TB, it would have had selected for me to not import anything.

Maybe that's why TB isn't default in Ubuntu. BTW, I am using the 1.5 version. One day they will put 2 in the repository or I'll compile the latest and greatest myself.

Setting up Ubuntu

I'm assuming I'm not the only one who has a whole list of customization for a fresh install of Ubuntu. At least I assume so, with the existence of multiple versions (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu) and repositories of more software than you'd ever want. Until now my list of changes has been on the fly. They haven't been cataloged, backed up, or scripted. All three would be great, but I'll start with a list first. These will each be individual blog entries. Blog early, blog often

Twitter?

Does a blog entry count as clocking in? I'm here at my "office" with a view at Auburn University Library. They have almost everything a person could want, particularly wireless internet and the Wall Street Journal. However, I'm not quite sure if they allow travel cups of coffee. I'm going to have to check on that...

Rhino on Rails

Speaking of Mr Yegge, I'm looking forward to trying out his brand new Rhino on Rails. It's a port of Ruby on Rails to JavaScript. It'll be great for us self taught JavaScript guru's who would prefer to not write in Greek, Latin, or Chinese to get code to run on a server.

Of course learning Ruby, C, Lisp, etc are on the to do list. I've been through a bunch of the tutorials over the past years. I just need to stay focused on someone else's code long enough to grok it and send patches back.

Google Reader works...

I just added my feed to my view of Google Reader. It showed me my first post. I was wondering if there was any lag time between first post and when Google reader makes the feed available.

I doubt a google search will find it yet. Googling takes about a day to find updates to Steve Yegge's blog.

P.S. After I posted, I did a refresh on Google reader. Only the first post...

Making a living at Open Source

This post is mostly a placeholder. There will definitely be more coming. My goal here is to write a blog about breaking into writing open source software, and getting paid for it.