I’m starting to get embarrassed by these “I switched to *” posts. But I did it again anyway. After some nasty file corruption issues with my FreeBSD setup, I moved to my current NetBSD/SliTaz dual-boot. I’m afraid to be too confident, but so far I like it. NetBSD is rock-solid, and SliTaz is very exciting. I love Tazpkg/Tazwok, the init system, and the overall simplicity of SliTaz. I might have to work on getting a Security Team started…
My Linux career is over. As of today, my main machine runs FreeBSD! I love the simplicity, stability, and elegance of this awesome OS.
I recently had the chance to try out CRUX. It’s a very good distro. I simply adore their handbook; thorough yet concise. Compiling everything irritated me a bit, so I’ll stick with SliTaz and Slackware for now. Still, CRUX was fun and I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who wants a very simple and elegant distro.
I have SliTaz printing and scanning! HPLIP is now working perfectly. I posted an extremely ugly guide in the Hardware section of the English SliTaz forums if anybody’s interested.
I’ve replaced my Arch partition with SliTaz, and overall I’m pleased with the change. Everything from Arch now works, except printing (an issue for another day; right now I’m booting into my loyal Slackware to print) and the proprietary NVIDIA drivers (which isn’t an issue because I’ve stopped using those wretched pieces of trash). SliTaz is delightfully minimal and uses only 32 MB of RAM on boot. I like Xvesa so much that I’m now using it on Slackware as well. Aside from some trouble with cplay (mpg123 & ogg123 are broken in the SliTaz repos), all my favorite software has installed fine. I got the cplay issue fixed by compiling the backends myself.
More info will be posted at some point, so stay tuned (if you haven’t passed out from boredom yet).
I just spent a little while playing with the Xfce 4.6 prerelease from muflax’s excellent repo on my Arch partition. In a word: outstanding. Here are a few more: spectacular, remarkable, understated, elegant. If they keep this up and fix the couple bugs I saw by release, this could be a Project of the Year Award winner.
I’m a minimalist. There’s nothing better for me than a minimal dwm setup, configured through the source. However, I’m also a realist. Most people don’t really want to configure their window manager through the source code, and they also want things like panels and desktop managers. I have always thought that Xfce provided a superb middle ground between minimalism and ease of use for the inexperienced or unmotivated. The 4.4 release in particular was great. Xfce has always had the big stuff down: everything is stable, just enough features are available (the xfwm4 compositor is a good example here), and resource usage is light. Where Xfce has suffered in the past is polish. When I say polish, I don’t mean that the desktop is shiny. Instead, I mean that all the little stuff works as expected. Those tiny little components of the UI that make such a difference subconsciously have always been lacking in Xfce. Until now…
After upgrading from the aforementioned repo for Arch, I switched my .xinitrc from dwm to Xfce and proceeded to the desktop.
One thing was immediately apparent: the tooltips shown over the launchers have been redone to be a bit cleaner. The change is very aesthetically pleasing, without a lot of in-your-face bling. One of the biggest new additions to Xfce 4.6 is a unified settings manager.
The settings manager again represents a good compromise. It provides a unified place for configuration, but stays reasonably lightweight and clear. Clicking through the choices opens the config windows up inside the main window, with an ‘Overview’ button to return.
The settings windows have undergone subtle modifications in the transfer to the overall window. The old ‘User Interface Settings’ window has become a subtle new ‘Appearance’.
It is still possible to open the individual settings in their own windows, including the new ‘Sessions and Startup’.
When integrating the different settings windows into one cohesive whole, the Xfce team made some small but powerful adjustments. For example, the ‘Workspaces’ window has been redone somewhat, and now appears clear and concise, making choices apparent at a glance.
The ‘Desktop’ settings have received a much-needed tuneup. The new design offers more choices in a cleaner way.
One potentially controversial choice is the new xfce4-settings-editor. It provides more advanced options in a registry-like window, much like GNOME’s gconf-editor. I can deal with this, provided that it isn’t used as an excuse to remove options from the main settings editor and provided that it stays reasonably well organized.
EDIT:A bit more testing show that this only lists the settings I’ve changed (I think). This could be useful…
Lastly, the logout window has received some new buttons. They’re greyed out for me because of a temporary PolicyKit bug (to my knowledge), but should work in the final.
I was extremely impressed by the way the Xfce team added small but noticeable tweaks to a solid product. The settings window is better organized, the panel is slightly sleeker, the mouseover effects are clearer, and the prerelease desktop feels much stabler than a well-known x.1 release recently *cough*. They have made Xfce a cohesive whole while retaining its valuable minimalism and modularity.
I haven’t really lived up to the warning in my first/second post so far. Most of my reviews have been relatively upbeat and positive, even about flaws. That’s all about to change. I have my award for “Dumbest Idea Showcased on 2008/11/13″, and it’s ugly. From the Introducing KDE 4 blog’s report on all the glorious features coming out in version 4.2, a little piece of blinding stupidity has emerged from the void of idiocy. That’s right, Plasma now has a web browser widget! A screenshot:
As the determinedly upbeat blog cheerfully reports, “It use webkit as a backend, it isn’t the fastest web browser ever, but it’s quite good anyway, you can zoom in/out text, reload, go back and forward.” Imagine that! Zooming and a back button! It just makes me want to bounce around happily and use exclamation points too much! If you thought that was all, “It even has bookmarks”!
This sickens me. It isn’t just the absurd uselessness of a web browser with no meaningful features that sits around constantly on your desktop. It’s the way this has been lapped up by so many hopeful users. Like so many other ‘features’, this is an example of form without function. Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with mindless eyecandy; if people want it, they have every right to use it. But this is worse than that. It’s a pretty interface masquerading as functionality. When the blog author waxes rhapsodic about the new previewer Plasmoid and how it can be “integrated in the file manager as an action”, he blatantly ignores actual efficiency. In the time it takes to right-click a file and navigate to “Preview this file”, couldn’t you just double-click and open it in an actual application? One would think so, but perhaps a nice glossy interface takes a while to load its apps.
This rant wasn’t meant as an insult to Luis Augusto Fretes, the blog’s author, or any of the posters in the Ubuntu Forums thread on the subject. I’ve made some pretty strong statements; remember that I consider the state of mind stupid, not the people themselves. This is just my opinion (albeit a rather strong one), and others are perfectly welcome to their own. Life is better when you don’t take things too seriously 
Why there was no good choice, but there was a right choice
Published November 8, 2008 Uncategorized 2 CommentsI’ll preface this by explaining my political views. I believe that government is good when it is controlled by the people. That’s why I think the federal government has extremely limited value. It should handle foreign relations (including a strong defensive military) and provide basic regulations for all states to follow. All other decisions should be made at the state or local level. Why? Because the federal government is out of control. If you want to affect something in the federal gov., what do you do? Call your representatives, of course. However, even here in Alaska, we still have tens of thousands of people for each representative. Even if you manage to get something introduced, by the time it leaves Congress it will have dozens of additions and modifications. Only when the government is close to the people, not insulated behind layers of bureaucracy, can we hope to see effective governance. Local governments provide the people with control.
Why was Obama a bad choice, but still the right choice?
With that said, let’s look at the presidential election four days ago. Aside from the dangers of Sarah Palin one thready 72-year-old heartbeat from the presidency, there were some major problems with voting McCain:
* Rewarding the Republican Party would have been a mistake. More on this later…
* Obama has the ability to inspire. Much of the president’s power comes in the form of trust (of the people). Even if he’s incompetent, he may be able to push the country forward with the naïve enthusiasm of the masses
* If Obama picks many former Clinton advisors, things might turn out less-than-terribly. Bill Clinton and his staff did an acceptable job of balancing the country (with a lot of help from an economic bubble).
* Almost everyone else in the world wanted Obama to win. A little popularity may be useful at times.
What’s wrong with the Democrats?
It’s pretty simple. The Democratic Party fundamentally believes in government making its citizens’ choices for them. I don’t think that’s right, especially at the national level. A policy of big government is only tenable when the people have the reins.
What’s wrong with the Republicans?
The Republican Party has given conservatism a bad name. Only in America would “conservatives” spend a trillion dollars on a war against a country that presented no real threat. Only in America would “conservatives” pack a fortune in pork for “roads to nowhere” (and I live in Alaska!) onto completely unrelated bills. And only in America would “conservatives” consider it government’s responsibility to tell people who they can marry. The Republicans have formed a party of corruption and incompetence. They need to change or disintegrate.
Where’s the third choice?
If the two main political parties are problematic, where’s the alternative? There is none. Here are some other parties:
* The Greens: A policy of rabid anti-corporateism doesn’t appeal to me.
* The Libertarians: I believe that government must be locally controlled, and careful thought should be taken before enlarging it. However, I don’t believe that government is evil.
* The Constitution Party: The religious zealots and isolationists don’t do much for me.
* The Alaska Independence Party!: I couldn’t help it. How can anyone lose with DeNardo and friends?
The electoral college: can we have stupids now?
If nothing else, we should abolish the electoral college. It represents one of the dumbest ideas in the history of government. Drop it NOW.
Inspired by K.Mandla, I’ve added a page for my favorite software. It’s still under construction, and I was too lazy to take my own screenshots (maybe some other time), but it might be useful. If you have suggestions, let me know.
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