10 Types Of People

Just thought I would put a wee blog post out to let people know that I am now officially engaged to Faye (@framemybear on twitter). I will post picture and explain how it happened another time, but I’m kinda busy just now

**EDIT** Spelling mistake – “not” changed to “now”

• Google and China

So, I’m sure you all know the details, so I will spare you the details. I will give you my opinion however. I think this is a great thing for Google to do. Now, I am not saying that it is good that Chinese people won’t be able to use google services. It is a good thing that Google are no longer just doing whatever it takes to get money. I’m not saying that Google are an amazingly moral company, but it is a step in the right direction.

I’m not sure how the Chinese government will take this, but I don’t think they will just ignore it. They won’t change their ways, but it is quite embarassing to have a huge company like Google to just up and leave when they aren’t happy with the terms of what they wanted anymore. It isn’t a huge thing that will make lots of changes in the world, but it might help.

• Gmail https

Looks like Gmail is using https by default now. This is very good. Means that gmail is fully encrypted. Who can say this is a bad thing, except hackers

• Youtube possibly using html5?

Youtube are redesigning there website, and are asking for your opinion. The most popular thing that seems to be dominating the poll is using html5 with ogg instead of the default being flash. Google officially replied to these and said:

We’ve heard a lot of feedback around supporting HTML5 and are working hard to meet your request, so stay tuned. We’ll be following up when we have more information. We’re answering this idea now because there are so many similar HTML5 ideas and we want to give other ideas a chance to be seen.

So, it seems that HTML5 with ogg will be implemented in youtube 2.0. We don’t know if it’ll be the default instead of flash, but at least it’ll be there. It sounds great doesn’t it.

• Nokia 5800 firmware update

Not many people will be interested in this, but the Nokia 5800 firmware has been updated to v40. It has features such as

• kinetic scrolling
• much better homescreen
• better sensitivity
• new screens for calls

So yeah, I can’t wait till I get this update for my phone. At least it’ll make the phone useable for the next few months, until I can get a new phone. It isn’t the best phone ever, but I’ll survive with these cool updates.

So these are just a few things that have happened recently. None of them get a post of their own, as I don’t have that much to say, but I felt that I needed to give them more than just a tweet.

Ok, now this issue has been running around the blogosphere for a while, so I’m going to post my thoughts on it. You may have seen my thoughts on other services, and they are part of what I’m thinking, but i didn’t express them very well, so please take this as my official stance on the issue.

Let me first get the facts right. If I don’t have this right, then please let me know. I believe that Ubuntu is dropping the GIMP because it is not needed, and they are keeping f-spot as it is a photo “editor” as well as manager. Ok…

This is how this blog post will be structured…

1. F-spot is rubbish.
2. Mono is huge
3. Gimp is not necessarily needed, but we need a replacement
4. Summary

F-spot is rubbish
Ok, who uses f-spot? Not me. Not my previously-linux-using girlfriend who is a photographer. Not any photographer I know. Not any linux-user that I know. This bit is not an anti-mono rant. I have nothing against mono, I use it myself. This is an f-spot rant.

F-spot is a chunky, horrible looking application, which promises lots of things and then doesn’t deliver a single thing. It messes with photos, where they are stored, their meta-data and in one case actually resized a whole bunch of my gfs photos, and deleted some. We had a backup for some, but not all, of the photos. Yes, I know, we should keep backups, but we didn’t for once, and ended up losing some.

I challenge 1 person to use f-spot for 2 weeks, and then come and tell me it is a good application. It isn’t. It is also not a photo-editor. I mean, seriously, what sort of photo editing would you do with f-spot? I wouldn’t…

Mono is huge

Name 1 application that uses mono in the default Ubuntu install. f-spot. Anymore? No. None. Banshee never ended up in the default install, did it? No. They took it out.

So, my point is…f-spot is a crap application, take it out, and then you have a huge amount of free space on the Ubuntu cd. Is that not the reason they want to take GIMP out? Space saving? Yeah…so get rid of mono.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying mono is rubbish and we shouldn’t use it. I do use mono. Only for one application, but still. I can only think of 1 application that uses mono that is actually any good. Gnome-do. And seeing as Ubuntu won’t include that in the default install, we should get rid of it.

Some people say it can be used for porting apps to linux from .net. But it hasn’t. It would be a fantastic thing to do that, but it hasn’t been used for ANY app to port over yet. So why are we including such a huge thing in the default install?

Gimp is not necessarily needed, but we need a replacement

I’ll be honest with you, I uninstall GIMP as soon as I install Ubuntu. Because I don’t use it. I think it is a fantastic application, it is massively amazing and very important for the FLOSS community.

My question, however, is whether or not it should be in the default install of Ubuntu. I am of the opinion that it is very very complex and far too big and complex for the majority of computer users. Most people won’t really want a huge photo editor in their install, and if someone does, its really not hard to install it.

What I think we need is a replacement for GIMP in the default install, but make it really easy to install it. Well, we don’t need to make it really easy to install…it already it. “sudo apt-get install gimp” or go to the software centre, find gimp and click on install.

So the question is, what should we replace it with? Gthumb? Xpaint? I’ll be honest with you, i’ve never used them. I don’t do photos. If there is no replacement for gimp that is good, then don’t get rid of it. But we need a sort of “paint-style” app for ubuntu that will do simple stuff, like cropping, resizing, rotating, simple drawing (squares, circles) and then everyone is happy.

Conclusion

F-spot is crap. Get rid of it.

Now that f-spot is out, get rid of mono. Its a space hogger.

Get rid of gimp, and replace it with a “paint-style” app.

Right. I’ve taken far far too long to post this, so here we go. I’m sitting down to write it and not getting up until I’m finished.

I have 3 computers that I use daily. My desktop, my netbook and my server (o, btw, I’ll be posting about my server sometime soon). And so, I decided to try and get all these running Karmic. Some experiences were great, some were not so.

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Some of you may know my father. He has recently installed Ubuntu on his laptop, which is great, I’ve been bugging him to ditch Windows for ages, and this, I feel, is the first step towards a Windows free home. We’ll just have to wait and see. But the point is, he has been blogging about using Ubuntu, and although he has only had it for a week, it seems quite boring to be honest.

I remember, even last year, people would set up things like this, and they’d be like “Well, I’ve just learnt how to install via the command line.” And then suddenly, the next day it’d be. “I had to recompile my kernel to be able to use ‘X’”. This was really exciting stuff, but Linux seems to be getting quite boring now. It all just works now adays. ALL of his hardware (except the 3G dongle) worked out the box, and the 3G dongle is just 1 change in the config to make it work. The only problem he had was the size of the default partitions. That really is a papercut, and I should add it to the list sometime.

So, is Linux getting boring cause it just works now? Should I move to something else? Haiku perhaps?

Go read his blog btw, I’m sure it’ll get more interesting soon. He will experiment. He will break things. Just wait and see

Welcome to what I am going to call (in my sad head) blogging wednesday. Now, wednesday is the day when I get most time to study. Which means that I also have most time to take breaks. And in those breaks, I am going to be blogging. Because I don’t blog enough, and my “To-blog” list has been mounting up for a while. But anyways, on with the blog.

I was listening to an episode of TuxRadar (a podcast from the great guys at Linux Format magazine) the other week. And every week they have an “open ballot” where they put out to the people on their website, what they think on a particular topic. That particular episode had the ballot title “Do distros release too often?”

Obviously, this was in reference to distros such as Ubuntu and Fedora, who release every 6 months. And some of the thoughts were that 6 months isn’t long enough to make big changes. But then, some other thoughts were that longer releases then end up with older software.

Lets take Ubuntu and Oo.o for example. Oo.o 3.0 came out at the end of last year, I think. And the problem was that 8.10 had just been released with 2.4, or whatever the release was before that. And a distro is not going to make such a huge change to a distribution when they are releasing in another 6 months. So, this meant that people were either stuck without Oo.o 3.0, or they built it from source or installed about 30 .deb packages.

So, we have 2 sides – it is too long or it is not too long. Now, the problem we have is that businesses don’t want the newest software all the time. Some things are good, but its not necessary. However, you have people who are like me and are obsessed with getting the newest software asap. I mean, I use firefox 3.6 and thunderbird 3.0 on Ubuntu 9.10 for goodness sake.

So…as most of you will know, Ubuntu adopted what they call the “LTS” releases. These are releases that happen every 4 releases (give or take). And the difference between these and normal releases are the fact that they are built to be rock solid, they are supported for longer on both desktop and server. And this is great. It means businesses can update every 2 years, get the newest software, get a really stable system, and have it supported for a long time. What business wants to upgrade all their computers every 6 months? Not many.

However, I don’t think that Ubuntu put enough emphasis on LTS versions. I think most general people should use LTS releases, unless they really want the newest version of “x”. So, my question is this – “Should Ubuntu put emphasis on the LTS releases being the stable release, and everything else is for people with a reasonable understanding of computers?”

The other thing that was bounced around was rolling releases. The idea was that rolling releases could happen with Ubuntu, and then every 2 years, they take a snapshot, make sure there are no bugs, and then release it as an LTS. This would encourage people to use the LTS, but would also allow geeks to use the newest stuff all the time.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I wonder what people think? I do think that 6 months is not too short. At all.

I found this video today, and thought it was absolutely hilarious. Enjoy, while I write some more blogs

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube

Have you ever wanted the power that you gain from compiling everything from source? But do you run Ubuntu rather than something such as Gentoo? Do you not like compiling, and would like an easy way to compile your installation? Then look no further than apt-build

Note: this guide is specific to Ubuntu.It should work on most other deb based systems, and may work on other systems using a different packaging system, but some things may be different.

Also note that this will increase the total install space of your operating system quite a bit, as source takes up much more space than binaries. My install is about 8 Gig now.

Now, the installation of apt-build is a wee bit more difficult than just “sudo apt-get install apt-build”. Although that will install apt-build, you will have to do a few other things as well.

Ok, so first of all, install using “sudo apt-get install apt-build”. During the installation, it will ask you to choose the strength of compiling that you use. Basically, you can choose how specific it compiles. If you have a very low-power processor and don’t want to wait for hours, use light or medium. If you have a bog-standard processor, use medium, and if you have a really nice processor (or you don’t mind how long it takes) then use strong.

Then it will ask you to choose your processor. It is important to note that there are very few processors that are listed here just now, so if yours isn’t listed, don’t worry. Choose one that is very similar to your processor, and we will make it more specific later on. For example, I am running an AMD phenom, but it doesn’t currently have that in the list. So I chose Opteron.

If your installer doesn’t ask you what you want to use, then throw this command at it “sudo dpkg-reconfigure apt-build”.

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A couple of things that I needed to say, first of all, Firefox 3.5 has officially been released! Woop! That is good. It is 2 times faster than firefox 3, 10 times faster than firefox 2 and it implements the new HTML 5

So I would advise you all to get it asap.

Second of all, an update on my sound issues with Karmic Koala…it has now completely died. It doesn’t recognise my sound card anymore. Really annoying…I’ll have to file a bug for this.

Sorry about all the posts I have posted today, but I needed to say these

I have decided that I am going to go through the whole of Karmic Koala’s development, and will write bugs, and document my problems etc with it.

So, I just upgraded from Alpha 1 (in which nothing was different really…just a debian sync) to Alpha 2.

What happened now? My audio setup has been mucked up. Woop! I had a great pulseaudio setup with pavucontrol, and everything was working fine. Now…its gone back to only 1 output working. Which is kind of annoying. Will try and fix it and see if I can.

I have also notices that firefox 3.5 is in the repo now (although it is called firefox-3.1, even though the version number is 3.5b4).

Gnome 2.27.1 is the version now, but I can’t see anything different with it, and also the kernel has been updated to 2.6.30-5.6.

Apart from these things, I can’t notice anything else really new, but it is only the second alpha, so there should be lots more to come.

***EDIT***

Turns out the problem lies with firefox. I can have more than 1 app using my sound card. Unless one of them is Firefox. If firefox uses my sound card, nothing else can. And if something else is using my sound card, firefox can’t. But, everything else seems fine. Odd.