dwc

Yay, Binary Distributions

The following package will be installed or updated:
 svk
The following 115 additional packages will be installed:
 algorithm-annotate-pm algorithm-diff-pm apr apr-dev apr-ssl apr-ssl-common apr-ssl-shlibs aprutil-dev autoconf2.5 automake1.9 bfd-pm bison class-accessor-pm class-autouse-pm586 clone-pm586 compress-zlib-pm586 cyrus-sasl2-dev cyrus-sasl2-shlibs daemonic data-hierarchy-pm586 data-uuid-pm586 db43-ssl db43-ssl-shlibs db44-aes db44-aes-shlibs devel-stacktrace-pm encode-pm586 file-chdir-pm586 file-type-pm freezethaw-pm gawk gdbm3 gdbm3-shlibs getopt-long-pm586 gettext-dev glib glib-shlibs gmp gmp-shlibs guile guile-dev guile-shlibs html-parser-pm586 html-tagset-pm html-tree-pm586 io-digest-pm io-pager-pm io-string-pm ipc-run3-pm libapr0-shlibs libaprutil0-shlibs libgmpxx4-shlibs libmpfr1 libmpfr1-shlibs libtool14 libtool14-shlibs libwww-pm586 libxml2 libxml2-bin libxml2-shlibs locale-maketext-lexicon-pm586 locale-maketext-simple-pm m4 neon24-ssl neon24-ssl-shlibs openldap23-dev openldap23-shlibs openssl097 openssl097-dev openssl097-shlibs perlio-eol-pm586 perlio-via-dynamic-pm perlio-via-symlink-pm pkgconfig pod-escapes-pm pod-simple-pm python-nox python23-nox python23-nox-shlibs python23-socket-nox readline readline-shlibs readline5 readline5-shlibs regexp-shellish-pm ruby18 ruby18-dev ruby18-shlibs svk-pm586 svk-pm586-bin svn-client-ssl svn-mirror-pm586 svn-simple-pm586 svn-ssl svn-ssl-dev svn-ssl-shlibs svn-ssl-swig-pm586 svn-ssl-swig-pm586-shlibs swig swig-shlibs system-openssl-dev tcltk tcltk-dev tcltk-shlibs term-readkey-pm586 texinfo text-aligner-pm text-diff-pm text-table-pm time-date-pm uri-pm586 vcp-pm586 xml-autowriter-pm586 xml-parser-pm586 yaml-pm

Oh. My. God. Must install Gentoo on PowerBook.

Gentoo Overlays

The Gentoo Overlays site is now public. I saw bits and pieces about it on Gentoo Universe before the release, but it's still nice to see such a well executed idea.

Each project or developer gets their own Subversion repository and Trac installation. Commits are aggregated using Planet to the main overlays page.

It's stuff like this that makes me love Gentoo.

I'm especially interested to see what happens with Project Sunrise. On the one hand, it could be a great source for software that isn't in the main Portage tree for one reason or another. On the other hand, it might get quite chaotic. :)

The Correct Fix

is to set HTML files to open in your preferred browser.

Why doesn't GNOME use the Preferred Applications setting to begin with?

And why I can't I tell Nautilus that I want my preferred browser to open the file in a new tab instead of a new window?

Ugh.

Fucking GConf, Revisited

One disadvantage to my GConf hack for Gossip logs is that Nautilus apparently uses the file:// schema to open files like, say, when you double click on them. Whoops.

This obviously won't do.

Totem

I got pretty excited when I started seeing news about Totem on Planet GNOME. The Linux desktop lacked (lacks?) a decent media player that normal people can use, so a simple application that works with GNOME seemed like a pretty nice development.

As of GNOME 2.10, Totem became the "offical media player of the GNOME desktop environment". When an application is included in the GNOME desktop, that often means that various settings default to using that application. For example, Totem appears to be the default handler for mms URIs.

This would be great, except for the fact that Totem exits without so much as an error window when fed an mms URI. (Actually, it segfaults, but apparently the bug-buddy hooks are missing…)

Well, no big deal. I'll change the handler for mms URIs.

Start looking in Desktop → Preferences. Hmm, maybe Preferred Applications? All I see there is Web Browser, Mail Reader, and Terminal.

Maybe it's Multimedia Systems Selector? Hmm, nothing about URI handlers there. I guess there's no "user-friendly" UI for this…

Sigh. Time to open up gconf-editor for the millionth time. At least there's a find command… (For future reference, the path is /desktop/gnome/url-handlers. A bunch of them default to using Totem.)

So, I have to ask: Why is Totem the default handler for mms URIs if it can't fucking handle them? MPlayer, while not all GNOME-friendly, handles them fine. I really need to drop GNOME…

Eugenia.

Eugenia, who runs OSNews.com, also maintains a Slashdot journal. I don't normally read it, but found this post via Planet GNOME.

I won't speak to the content of her post (there's plenty of commentary available on Planet GNOME and elsewhere in the solar system). But I wanted to point out the fortune quote which appeared at the bottom of the Slashdot page when I loaded it:

Keep your mouth shut and people will think you stupid; Open it and you remove all doubt.

Cleaner Themes

John Palmieri (J5) has some thoughts on themes.

Specifically:

…I would like to see cleaner themes where the window flows much better instead of windows that look like a collection of elements.

Not to pick on J5, but his mockup illustrates a problem I have with some recent GNOME themes. These themes blend the title bar and the window contents, making it less obvious what part of the window you can grab to move the window. Making the title bar visually distinct avoids any confusion.

Apple's brushed metal interface also blends the title bar and window contents. Despite my general dislike of Apple's brushed metal, I will give Apple credit for getting one thing right: you can grab anything that looks like the title bar to move the window. (Hmm, I wonder if this is the case with Mail and Spotlight.)

These GNOME themes don't let you grab the window to move it anywhere except the title bar, but there's little or no difference between the title bar and the rest of the window.

Hmm.

Feathers on my breath

DVD Players Redux

At Elliot's suggestion, I gave VLC another shot. After a few false starts due to poor USE flag choices, I'd say I'm pretty happy with it. Here's what I settled on:

First I added media-video/vlc ~x86 to /etc/portage/package.keywords. The USE flags I settled on were:

[11:52:01 dwc@fortuna ~]$ emerge -pv vlc

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild R ] media-video/vlc-0.8.1-r1 -3dfx +X +a52 +aac +aalib +alsa (-altivec) -arts -bidi +cdda +cddb -cdio -debug -dts -dvb +dvd -esd +fbcon -ffmpeg +flac +freetype -ggi +gnutls +gtk2 -hal -httpd -joystick -libcaca -lirc -live +mad -matroska +mozilla +mpeg +ncurses +nls +ogg +oggvorbis +opengl +oss +stream +svg +svga +theora +unicode +v4l +vcd -vlm +wxwindows -xosd +xv 0 kB

Total size of downloads: 0 kB

I may add ffmpeg and live, but that will mean accepting ~x86 on those packages as well.

The DVD video output is smooth. It disables xscreensaver while playing (though I had to add screensaver to the "extra interface options").

The only complaint I have is that the GUI requires wxWidgets, wxGTK in my case. I don't have a problem with the toolkit itself, rather that VLC is the only package on my system to use it. I would much prefer a native GTK+ interface, but I understand the need for abstraction.

Also, I tried creating a xine config with the appropriate deinterlacing options and copying it to ~/.gnome2/totem_config, but I still couldn't get the DVD video to look right.

I just want to play a DVD.

Normally I find Linux better suited to my needs than commercial OSs (including Mac OS X; sorry, Paul). It's easier to reconfigure something if you don't like its behavior, packages are easier to manage, and so on.

But sometimes, a simple task like playing a DVD can be a huge pain.

Ogle claims to be the first DVD player for Linux with menu support. It lets you skip chapters and fast forward - basic features you expect from a DVD player, implemented well. The lack of rewind is annoying, but not a dealbreaker.

Recently, Ogle has been having some trouble DVDs from Netflix. They will play fine for a while and then fast forward on their own. The discs look okay, so maybe it's a problem with my hardware. But not all DVDs exhibit the problem, so I'm at a loss.

All things considered, I figured I should look for another DVD player.

mplayer is, well, mplayer. It supports lots of formats. It plays DVDs, but does not support menus, meaning you have to know the title number (e.g. mplayer dvd://1). Also, gmplayer is proof that skins lead to horrible user interfaces. So scratch mplayer off the list.

xine plays a lot of different formats, like mplayer, but also supports DVD menus. Its default interface also has the skins problem. The gxine frontend is nice, but there's a bug in the current version. So these won't solve my problem.

Totem is another frontend for xine (or GStreamer), specifically designed for GNOME desktops. Sounds perfect. Unfortunately, I can't get it to deinterlace video. I think it's possible by mucking with ~/.gnome2/totem_config, though.

Finally, none of these players disable xscreensaver out of the box. I think mplayer has an option, and xine probably does. But not Totem, as far as I know. So I resort to ~/.bash_profile hackery:

totem() {
    xscreensaver-command -exit
    $(which totem)
    xscreensaver -no-splash &
}

Sigh.

Evince

GTK+ 2.6.2 was released into Gentoo x86 yesterday or today, which means I finally got a chance to try Evince. And, oh my god, it totally rocks.

If you haven't had the pleasure of viewing PDFs on Linux…you're lucky. Xpdf was still the best viewer in my opinion - it's not slow like GPdf and the scrolling makes sense.

But Evince is fast like Xpdf and - this is the best part - displays a thumbnail of each page off to the side like Apple's Preview. There's an ebuild available, though it hasn't made it into Portage proper yet. Add it to your overlay and give it a shot.

1394 Power-Only Cables

So I've always found it annoying that I can't connect my second generation iPod to a computer and play music at the same time. The iPod shows the "OK to disconnect" screen while connected, which prevents you from using it. (Apple supposedly fixed this in the newer iPods.)

This has become more of a problem recently as my iPod's battery life is on the decline: while I used to get a good work day of listening in, it's down to 4 or 5 hours now.

I can hear you asking, "Why don't you bring your power brick?" Well, I could. But that would mean remembering to pack one more item in my backpack every morning before heading to campus, and I'm not very good at remembering what I need to do in the morning. I might be able to buy another power brick from Apple and keep one at work, but Apple usually charges insane prices for items like that (*ahem*).

So what I've been thinking about is building my own 1394 cable. The cable would have a standard 6-pin connector on each end. I could either leave the data pins disconnected, or (as Mark suggested) have a switch which disconnects the data pins when in the off position.

Before spending time and money doing this, does anyone know if this is a solved problem? I've searched around but can't find much.

GNU Screen, Pork

When I first started using GNU Screen, it was to have a single instance of my email client available all the time. I spent a decent amount of time importing mail from old installations of Outlook, Pine, and other clients from long, long ago, and I wanted to be able to access that mail from anywhere.

Then, something clicked. I started using screen for emerge sessions. Or if I needed to work on my Web server.

I eventually switched to irssi and added it to my screen. This was a diffcult transition, because I really liked X-Chat. But in the end, I valued having a single, universally accessible IRC client over the gooey goodness.

A few months later I started to feel the itch again: I wanted a console-based AIM client. Until recently, I ran Gaim. Out of habit, I always used multiple screen names - one for home, one for work, and one for my laptop. I saw this as nothing more than a hack to get around the fact that AIM's presence support blows. (Which, by the way, Jabber gets right.)

Now, I had seen naim, but was turned off by its use of TOC. I wanted a client which talked OSCAR.

I had also tried BitlBee - which was nice because it let me use my IRC client, but sucked because it was too far behind on libgaim "releases".

Last night, I found pork. I'm finally using one screen name. Finally.

Dear Ubuntu Developers

Please add a more obvious way of updating packages. A lot of people are coming here looking for a way to easily update their systems, and all I've said is that I tried Synaptic.

Michiel Sikkes' proposal looks promising; hopefully Canonical will include something like this in the next release.

If you're currently using Synaptic, Ubuntu has some documentation on their wiki.

ARGH

ARGH. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: STOP USING emerge -U. That is all.

Gentoo Portage (Again)

Another really nice feature in Gentoo Portage is called "overlay". PORTAGE_OVERLAY (in /etc/make.conf) lets you specify a directory for your own ebuilds.

Overlay is especially useful in two situations:

1. If you need a package that isn't in Portage, and don't mind writing a simple ebuild script. Instead of placing the file in your copy of the main Portage tree (/usr/portage), you can store your own ebuilds without losing them when you emerge sync. This can also be used to manually bump the version of a package when Gentoo's package maintainer is delaying.
2. If you want to try out a specific version of a package that is otherwise masked (by ACCEPT_KEYWORDS, for example), you can copy the ebuild (and related files) to your overlay and modify the KEYWORDS to match your ACCEPT_KEYWORDS. Obviously, packages are usually masked for a good reason, so use this with caution.

Gentoo Portage

If you ever decide to run Gentoo (if you like Linux, I'd recommend it), and you need to pull a package from the testing area (e.g. ~x86 - some people call this "unstable"), please don't do ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -pv category/package. I see this all too often in #gentoo and on the Gentoo Forums (including in the Forum FAQ).

The preferred method for doing this since Portage 2.0.50 is to add an entry to /etc/portage/package.keywords:

category/package ~x86

For example, here's my current /etc/portage/package.keywords:

# ALSA - Hasn't fixed minor sound problems with xmms-crossfade
#media-libs/alsa-lib ~x86
#media-sound/alsa-utils ~x86

# XMMS
#media-sound/xmms ~x86
#media-plugins/xmms-crossfade ~x86

# GKrellM
app-admin/gkrellm ~x86
x11-plugins/gkrellm-volume ~x86
x11-plugins/gkrellweather ~x86

# Bluecurve for latest KDE
x11-themes/redhat-artwork ~x86

net-im/gaim ~x86
net-www/galeon ~x86
net-p2p/nicotine ~x86

Passing ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" to emerge can lead to issues with calculating dependencies - since you are accepting the testing packages for that emerge session, you might pull other packages from ~x86 based on those dependencies. When you use emerge again without the ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86", you might be forced to remove some of those packages.

If you want to pull a package from testing (which you might need to do to get new features or to fix some bug), start by adding that package to the file. If you get an error in calculating dependencies, add that package to the file. It can be somewhat tedious, but it's safer than ACCEPT_KEYWORDS.

I highly recommend you read man portage and the Portage Manual on the Gentoo site. One of Gentoo's strongest points is the documentation of these features that make it so flexible.

Currently Reading

Reading Generics in C#, Java, and C++. Somewhat disappointing, really, that Java can't do generics right. (Via developers.slashdot.org.)

THAT'S IT

Suresh sent me this article about how some kid gutted an Apple PowerMac G5 to replace it with a mediocre PC. I'm sorry, but no rational person would gut a dual G5 to install a crappy motherboard and an Athon XP 2200+.

It's a good thing my parents don't know anything about computers, because I'm sure they would be really angry if they knew what I did. I have to say that I'm happy - I can keep on using XP.

OH MY GOD

Optimizer? What a stupid name.

I purchased a JanSport Optimizer (carbon and black) for my PowerBook from eBags on Monday, January 12. They estimated it would arrive on Friday, January 16, so I was a little concerned when I never received a shipping notice.

Just to make sure they hadn't forgotten about my order, I called them on Friday afternoon. After hearing about five reminders that I could check my order status on the Web, I was connected with a service representative. "I'd like to check on the status of my order," I said. The service rep was nice, and immediately saw why I was calling when he pulled up my order. He told me that he would have to either call me back or email me after talking with the fulfillment department, so I asked him to email me.

On Saturday, I got an email saying that they had sold out of the bag I ordered. They offered to give me a 20% discount and free shipping on another bag, but I was pretty set on the Optimizer. I ended up buying it at another online store, but I would still recommend eBags due to their attention to service.

PowerBook!

I got my PowerBook this evening. I've been playing with it for the past 6 hours or so, and now my back hurts because I can't come up with a good configuration on my desk. Suresh suggested connecting it to my monitor, but I'm not ready to do that - I still plan on using Linux on a regular basis.

I'm making another attempt at moving to irssi (from X-Chat) so that I can easily chat from different locations. Screen is my friend.

I'm a little bothered because I purchased my PowerBook the day that iLife '04 was announced, but didn't receive it. I qualify for the Up-to-Date program, but that costs $20.

Ross: Ryan in fact mentioned it to me by email. :-)

I'm interested in the mokeys.org journal system - being able to control who sees what posts makes so much sense. Nathan also mentioned this idea a few days ago.

When Worlds Collide

From Robert Love:

More Stubbies a few nights ago. It is easily my favorite bar in downtown Gainesville. I am going to miss this city.

I had no clue that UF had such an esteemed kernel and GNOME hacker. And he goes to Stubbie, no less! I think he'll be happy in Boston - from what I've heard, the beer only gets better.

In case you haven't been, Stubbie (I think that's the correct name, though it sounds weird when you're saying it) is a "t-shirt pub" in downtown Gainesville that has over 120 beers. In a city full of sports bars, it's paradise. I last went with Mark to celebrate the release of the new UF Calendar. Mark treated me to Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout and a Murphy's.

Now - why "When Worlds Collide"? Stubbie is apparently owned and operated by the daughter of a professor in the Chemical Engineering department, where my father worked. Weird.

Vim

Here's an interesting concept: making Vim into a Bonobo component so GNOME applications can use it. It's called gnome-vim (also vim-bonobo). Using Vim in Evolution is something that both concerns and intrigues me at the same time.

I found it through either Planet Gnome or Planet Debian; I can't remember which since the two are sort of blending together in my mind.

CVS, bugs, validation

The idea of putting my home directory in CVS scares me.

When I first got comfortable with CVS, I thought it might be neat to put my entire home directory in CVS. I came to my senses, and decided against it. There are too many applications running that update too many files to reasonably keep track of things, and CVS wouldn't really help me. I would end up with log messages like "stuff" and "I'm leaving work, this is a commit". (Here's a link for those curious: Anonymous CVS access via ssh - something I've always wanted to work on.)

Work: We recently reached our 100th bug in Bugzilla (an off by one error, so silly). I also recently expanded my knowledge of CVS by creating a branch of one project. Keeping things in sync between the branches has proved interesting.

Personal: I'm really thinking about moving to Subversion. I'm curious to see if it supports branching any better, but to tell the truth, I don't think I would have the occasion to create a branch on school or home stuff.

I also made some effort to improve the security of my SSH keys. I went through all the computers I login to, removing old known_hosts, stripping authorized_keys, and adding passphrases where I didn't have them. I also installed Keychain where it was easily accessible (including my work machine - I was surprised to find a Debian package).

Email clients, etc.

When I initially moved to Mutt, I basically just imported my old mail without worrying about organizing it further. I didn't fully understand Maildir format, and I didn't realize how much I could do with fetchmail and procmail if I organized my folders intelligently.

I finally found the time to reogranize things yesterday. I'm definitely reaping the benefits with Mutt now. I've got the tab key bound to display my folders. Hitting tab again displays my mailboxes, along with the number of unread messages.

Another reason for reorganizing my email was to try Evolution again. I was tired of using two desktops - one for Mutt and one for J-Pilot - when I could use just one for Evolution. I figured that I could still use Mutt to access my email remotely, but use Evolution for when I'm in front of my computer.

I was impressed with Evolution's ability to read my Maildir mailboxes, and also with it's GnuPG support. The next step was to try to setup my Visor with gnome-pilot, which I figured wouldn't cause any problems.

Boy, was I wrong. Maybe it's the fact that I'm running Linux 2.6.0 (which absolutely rocks, by the way), but gnome-pilot caused some serious problems. After telling gnome-pilot to use a USB cradle, I instructed it to get my user ID from the device, since I already had a decent amount of data on there that I didn't want to lose. No matter what I tried, gnome-pilot would bomb out at this point, causing my mouse cursor to freeze. Other USB devices didn't seem to be working, so I was glad to have my keyboard's PS/2 cable plugged in. Switch to desktop 1, sudo /sbin/shutdown -r now. (I learned the first time around that neither switching to a virtual console nor zapping X worked.)

After a little bit of searching, I found another person with the same problem, but no resolution (granted, he probably sent it to the wrong place). I've given up on gnome-pilot, since J-Pilot and pilot-link have served me well for years, and resorted to bitching about it in #gfd:

<dwc> it's official: gnome-pilot is a piece of dump
<@cxreg> piece of dump
<@zaxon> wel what do you expect
<@zaxon> a gnome can't honestly be expected to be a good pilot i mean how can he reach all the levers and buttons and such with those little arms.

Galeon and Firebird

As previously described, I'm very much a fan of Galeon. My feelings on the GTK+ 2 version of Galeon have been mostly positive - as long as they keep the current feature set, I'm happy to see a GUI upgrade. Unfortunately, the development version is lacking features, slow, and unstable, which has forced me to go looking for alternatives.

First, a little back story. I wanted to "upgrade" from Debian testing to unstable because I was tired of using fairly old versions of packages. Specifically, I badly wanted to get away from Mozilla 1.0 and Gaim 0.64. I knew going into this that I would be forced to use galeon/unstable (version 1.3.9), but decided overall the upgrade would be worth it.

Issues I've had with Galeon 1.3.9 include the following:

• Switching between tabs takes much longer than in previous versions. I think that the Galeon developers wrote their own tab widget for this version, since the close boxes don't highlight the same way as GTK+ 2 tabs do in, say, Gaim.
• Printing and changing a saved password (using Mozilla PSM) causes Galeon to segfault.
• Preferences have been dumbed down somewhat, as the history page alludes to. I've gotten used to typing "gconf-editor &" instead of going to Galeon's preferences window. (gconf-editor is similar to regedit for you Windows users.)
• Ctrl+U no longer works for viewing the source of a page.

I've tried Mozilla, and it doesn't crash when dealing with PSM or printing, but certain widgets move around when I'm typing. This may be due to my GTK+ theme, but I decided not to bother with it.

Currently, I'm using Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 with the Tabbrowser Extensions. Reasons I don't like Firebird include:

• The close button that the Tabbrowser Extensions give you on tabs isn't, well, a button.
• You have to be very careful when dragging a bookmark or a tab in a browser window. Firebird has grabbed my cursor from X a number of times and my only way out is to press buttons until Firebird dies or zap X.
• The UI is similar but different than my GTK+ applications.
• Middle click doesn't seem to open a link in a new tab, even though it does on Windows.
• Ctrl+Backspace doesn't delete in the address bar intelligently. It usually ends up deleting the entire URL. If I have my cursor at the end of the string "www.google.com" and I press Ctrl+Backspace, only "com" should be deleted.

Don't get me wrong, Firebird is a decent browser - and probably the best for Windows - but it doesn't give me as much joy as Galeon 1.2.

Xkb

I've been having some kind of weird keyboard sampling problem in Gentoo from the beginning. Sometimes the S, C, B, and N keys "miss" - I hit them (sometimes with quite a bit of force) and they don't appear in my buffer. Other times, the shift key will get stuck, most often when typing "::" in Perl modules. I've even had my keyboard randomly display a bunch of characters repeated - as if I had typed C-5 x in XEmacs. After going through most of the search results for "keyboard" in the Gentoo Forums, I think I've narrowed the problem down to XFree86. It might also be a problem with the combination of XFree86 and Sawfish, but I can't tell.

The most enlightening thread so far suggested that I disable Xkb (Option "XkbDisable" "yes") and pointed me to an email on the XFree86 mailing list. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that the email received any replies, so I'm left to wonder if they fixed this bug in XFree86 or not.

I did in fact disable Xkb, but this solution is less than ideal. It leaves me without the multimedia keys (great for XMMS) and the Windows key (which I had grown accustomed to for launching applications). I'm going to give it a try - right now, the keyboard sync issue is more annoying than not having extra keys by far.

Galeon

I know it was posted on Slashdot, but there is an interview with the Galeon developers. I've used Galeon since version 1.2.3, and am currently using version 1.2.5 from Debian testing at work and 1.2.11 in Gentoo at home. Tabbed browsing has always been done right in Galeon (minus a few quirks with forms). Mozilla Firebird, even with the Tabbrowser extensions, doesn't compare. ("It's hard to give a time estimation, but I expect a 2.0 release before the end of the summer." Yay!)

Panther

From the Panther fast user switching page:

Because we can
Mac OS X animates transitions from one user to another. The current desktop becomes a texture placed on a 3D cube that rotates out of view while the incoming account desktop rotates into view on another side of the cube.

Mahjongg

Hmm....

Gentoo

I recently installed Gentoo 1.4_rc4 on my home computer. Overall, it has been a fun process, but there have been a number of snags along the way.

The most annoying problem has been MP3 playback skipping in XMMS, which has not happened to me since the days of my AMD K6-266. I tried a number of suggestions from the forums, but nothing worked until I enabled DMA on my hard drives.

Another annoying problem is with Sawfish, which I am currently using as my window manager with Gnome. I have had Sawfish "lock up", not to the point where it completely stalls, but that any operation other than moving windows around fails. This seems to be a problem with librep, and is not very common, so I have not attempted to solve it past the killall -9 rep solution given in the forums.

Anyway, I've got a new screenshot showing off my new desktop:

As I mentioned, I'm running Sawfish with Gnome on XFree86 4.3.0. I am using the Bluecurve-Prion theme for Sawfish and the Mist theme for GTK+ 1 and 2. You can also see XMMS 1.2.7, GKrellM 2.1.10, and gnome-terminal 2.2.1 (because it has keyboard-enabled tabs!). I'm using Galeon 1.2.8, Gaim 0.61, and Mutt 1.4.1i, which are not shown in the screenshot.

(Okay, I've finished showing off. Heh.)

iPod Play Counts

Oh, yeah:

As of firmware version 1.3 the windows iPod appears to support play counts. Firmware version 2.0 even allows star ratings to be set on your iPod. Both pieces of information is stored in the Play Counts file on the iPod (before version 1.2 this file was simply empty) and with the help of Malcolm Barbour (a very friendly Windows user) I managed to break down the information stored in that file. Expect gtkpod 0.52 to support both ratings and playcounts -- and therefore smartlists.

AI

Some people still don't get it:

The match was announced at the exclusive New York Athletic Club, at an hors d'oeuvres-and-wine reception for international press - all for the chess equivalent of Michael Jordan sitting down for a game of Sega NBA 2K3.

I think the artificial intelligence of Deep Junior is just slightly above that of Sega's NBA 2K3, but I could be mistaken.

Regardless, I'm getting pretty excited about this next match between Garry Kasparov (whose Web site has gone down, apparently) and Deep Junior. I'll be watching the matches, despite the company's slightly idiotic browser check (it catches Galeon 1.2.6 compiled against Mozilla 1.1 as too old). Their Flash application to play the games in realtime sounds very cool.

Switchers

So the Switchers do get iPods. I was right.

Multimedia

For those using Linux, I recommend the following multimedia applications:

• XMMS - duh
• Grip - a frontend for cdparanoia and lame (or your preferred encoder)
• Cantus - a very powerful MP3 tag editor
• Ogle - impressive DVD player

Installing Linux

Well, I'm back where I started - using Red Hat 7.3. Gentoo was nice, but Galeon was very unstable (because Gentoo uses gcc 3.2, and Galeon doesn't like gcc 3.2).

Also, I found an interesting article about Mac OS X from a Linux zealot's perspective, in response to Tim O'Reilly's switcher stories. I have to say - the author of the Freshmeat editorial, J. Paul Reed, is brutally uninformed about Mac OS X.

Red Hat?

Red Hat recently released Psyche (version 8.0) of their Linux-based operating system. It's clear to me that Red Hat is taking very logical steps toward bringing Linux to the desktop. I applaud Red Hat's numerous efforts to improve the quality of Linux as a desktop operating system, including their new Bluecurve (Flash required) desktop theme.

I've always loved Red Hat because they setup the stuff that I don't want to bother with, so I was really excited when I saw that Xft was installed along with the FreeType libraries to enable anti-aliased fonts in many applications (Mozilla and Galeon being notable exceptions; was it a licensing issue with the infamous Web Fonts?).

It's gotten to the point where Red Hat's default setup is too ingrained in the user environment for me. For example, the XMMS default skin is effectively inaccessible through the skin browser (it doesn't remain chosen after restarting XMMS). To get around this, I had to move /usr/share/xmms/Skins/Bluecurve-xmms.zip out of the way (e.g. to /usr/share/xmms/Skins/was-Bluecurve-xmms.zip).

I might install version 8.1 or 8.2 on my computer, maybe even on my family's computer, but I can't run Psyche. Sorry, Red Hat:

(02:15:33) Joe: rh8 is the windows of linux
(02:15:36) Daniel: to get the xmms default skin back, i had to move the redhat skin out of the way
(02:15:37) Joe: nifty
(02:15:44) Joe: wow
(02:15:45) Joe: thats gay
(02:15:54) Daniel: so now i'm running a broken as ass install of windowmaker
(02:15:57) Daniel: but yeah
(02:16:03) Daniel: rh is the windoze of linux
(02:16:05) Daniel: they finally did it
(02:16:12) Joe: you knew it was coming
(02:16:23) Daniel: yeah, i was hoping it would be better than windows
(02:16:24) Daniel: but it's not

Oh, and what's up with XMMS skipping while playing MP3s? XMMS has never skipped while playing MP3s, even on my 266-MHz AMD K6 with 32 MB of RAM. Now, on my Athlon XP 2000+ with 512 MB of RAM, it skips.

Who's up for a little Gentoo?

Hammer

Heh. See also: original article.

Mac OS X Articles

Articles I'm currently reading:

• OS X Server: First Impressions
• Mac OS X DP2: A Preview
• Mac OS X Update: Quartz & Aqua
• Mac OS X DP3: Trial by Water
• Mac OS X DP4
• Mac OS X Q & A
• Mac OS X Public Beta
• MacWorld Expo San Francisco 2001
• Mac OS X 10.0
• Metadata, The Mac, and You
• Mac OS X 10.1
• Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
• Q&A with Steve Wozniak

Lesson in Networking

How to DOS your own network:

1. Connect one end of a patch cable to a port on your switch.
2. Connect the other end of the patch cable to another port on your switch.
3. Watch your switch and computers get mad.

This lesson was taught by Paul.

Benchmarking

After reading this article on AMD's Opteron, I ran the OpenSSL benchmark on my workstation:

[dwc@fortuna dwc]$ uname -a
Linux fortuna 2.4.18-4 #1 Thu May 2 18:06:25 EDT 2002 i686 unknown
[dwc@fortuna dwc]$ cat /etc/redhat-release 
Red Hat Linux release 7.3 (Valhalla)
[dwc@fortuna dwc]$ openssl version
OpenSSL 0.9.6b [engine] 9 Jul 2001
[dwc@fortuna dwc]$ openssl speed
...
sign    verify    sign/s verify/s
rsa  512 bits   0.0010s   0.0001s   1021.0  14064.4
rsa 1024 bits   0.0043s   0.0002s    233.7   4956.0
rsa 2048 bits   0.0244s   0.0007s     41.0   1484.3
rsa 4096 bits   0.1621s   0.0025s      6.2    397.7
sign    verify    sign/s verify/s
dsa  512 bits   0.0008s   0.0009s   1326.1   1166.0
dsa 1024 bits   0.0021s   0.0024s    480.8    408.3
dsa 2048 bits   0.0068s   0.0083s    146.1    120.2

Considering that my processor (Athlon XP 2000+) has a little over twice the clock rate, the 800-MHz Opteron put up some pretty impressive numbers. Of course, there are too many variables in the benchmark to take it seriously - such as the memory hierarchy, the operating system, and the version of OpenSSL - but it's an interesting comparison nonetheless.

Here's another article that gives a better comparison of the Opteron and the Itanium processors, which was the original point of all this.

Mac OS X

This update is for Kim. First, I wholeheartedly recommend getting a Mac, but only if it runs Mac OS X and has lots of RAM. :-) I've been using a 500 MHz G4 at work for about a month now, and I love it. I made some screenshots (1 and 2), which show me running lots of fun stuff: XDarwin (running Window Maker, of course), Chimera, and a few other nifty little applications. (I'm using two monitors, in case you are wondering why there are two screenshots. :-P)

And I thought Romeo and Juliet was hilarious. :-)

WeirdX

WeirdX in action.

bbpager

I have a pager.

VPN

This one is pretty crazy. I've got a VPN client going and a number of remote X clients going through the VPN, which is so cool. You might notice the rather frustrating problem of maintaining proper X authentication cookies...one I still haven't figured out. :-(

Window Maker

My latest screenshot. I love Window Maker.

Now Window Maker

I'm trying Window Maker because AfterStep wasn't being very nice. So far, I'm quite impressed, but there was this whole little incident where the (local) X connection was reset, causing my X server to die...never seen that one!

WINE Funny

Unfortunately, my system is not compatible.

Creative

I received a response from Creative Labs support. Now, I'm confused.

Creative Support

I contacted Creative Labs support about the installation of spyware. No response yet.

Spyware

Spyware sucks. It's time for counterexploitation.

AMD Extreme Performance Project

I won a new AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (released today!) and Gigabyte motherboard from AMD's Extreme Performance Project. Sweet!

Static Electricity

Needless to say, I was shocked when my Visor Edge wouldn't turn on this morning. I think it has something to do with electrostatic discharge, but you would think they would ground the metal case. Still under warranty, so no matter.

Heh

Yep, there's a shock.