Older blog entries for gwm (starting at number 16)

Fenasoft

Fenasoft (largest computer fair in Brazil) sucked. It's was a huge time waster. Many "web portals" and software stores all alike. I may be biased, but Conectiva's stand was the only one worth visiting. The problem is, the general public did not have enough knowledge to appreciate it. People may now know what Linux is, but it's still something they only have heard about.

Interactive Fiction

Spent the rest of the day taking the dust out of xzip. First, I tried the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game, which I had played before I knew it was also a book. This is one nasty unforgiving game. After getting killed 57 times or so, I quit. Then, I tried a IF called Photopia. If you are a IF fan, I can't recommend it enough. It is a sweet little story mixing ordinary people's lifes and fantasy. I recommend that you use frotz instead of xzip because the game makes heavy use of color - and it's a wonderful use of color too, very uncommon in the IF world. The game is available at the GMD IF archive.

Advogato

Advogato was down yesterday night, it seems. This diary entry is yesterday's.

Spent a considerable part of my day trying out the PLD. It's a very nice distribution. My problem was with installation - it was entirely in Polish, and I could not find a English boot disk anywhere else (maybe there's one and I was stupid for not looking hard enough). So I got one of the test machines and intended to install it live. Well, for various reasons, installation from the development machine wasn't working. Someone had installed Mandrake on the test machine, so I had to use it. After a few hours of rpm magic (the magic of -- force and --nodeps, that is), the system was installed, though slightly broken because of the previous Mandrake installation.

I didn't have a lot of time to play with the system, but I did notice a few strong points. First, it's a very up-to- date system. I downloaded a ISO image and it came with XFree86 4.0 and things like that. Second, the init scripts seemed to be much cleaner than the traditional Red Hat scripts (and it seems to be compatible, too). They even use "new" stuff like iproute instead of the standard netkit tools. And third and most impressive, the packaging was done very correctly. They use a lot of macro magic to make the spec files cleaner and more mantainable (things like using %configure, using macros for directory locations, tagging the language of potfiles and documentation, etc). Very cool. They also promise things like IPv6 support.

And all this from a definetely non-mainstream distribution.

Spent all day practicing my favorite sport: breaking the distro. ncurses5 is in, termcap is finally out, bash has been updated to bash 2.04 at last, man, info and doc directories now follow the FHS. Going the FHS-way is already breaking old packages, and I haven't even scratched the surface of full FHS compliancy.

Working with a Linux distribution is a fun thing; everybody loves giving opinions and complaining about the things you do (or don't), but very few people have the necessary insight to truly understand all of the issues involved. Every day I read imense threads that end up in my mail box that completely miss the point about future directions of development. Some hints:

• Linux is a Unix-like system. You cannot ignore 30 years of development trying to change major parts of it overnight (example: the security system). Concepts from single-user operating systems like MacOS or Windows are almost always unsuitable for Linux.
• Most of the obvious ideas have already been tried and failed.
• Compatibility matters. Once in a while it has to be broken in favor of progress, but do not assume that millions of users out there will happily support progress.
• Theoretical ideas and nothing are twins. If your idea has not been implemented before, you are missing many practical issues that were not predicted.
• You had an idea, you implement it. Do not expect other (busy) developers will try to implement your (probably clueless) idea just because you had it.

I'm back from my first trip to Rio. Nice city (the touristic area that I was in, of course), not so nice people (taxi drivers in particular must die). Been to some expensive restaurants (obviously I didn't pay), attended Cauby Peixoto's ("Conceiçããão..." - he rules) show at a square reinauguration in Copacabana, and been to all of the standard touristic places.

If you ask me what I think was the biggest negative contribution to the free software world, I won't even blink before answering: Open Source. I'm sorry, but I'd rather be in a community that does cool stuff and shares it than be in a community where participants are companies looking for loopholes in the community's conventions in order to make a profit. ncm has written this article that shows the kind of thing I'm talking about. Open Source turned cheating into an acceptable practice.

As far as I am concearned, however, intention does count. There are varying levels of commitment, and imposing the kind of restriction mentioned in the article denotes the lowest.

Conectiva Linux 5.1 is out - almost. Minor issues are still holding it back. This is a release I hope I'll never have to touch again, since I've played too much with it already. It's old stuff by now.

The next Conectiva Linux will be a point-zero release, which means we'll be breaking everything again. Just kidding, but there are features no other major current Linux distribution supports in our plans. I hope all of them will be adopted, but, unfortunately, we work with limited resources (like: limited time as opposed to infinity).

If you have an idea you'd like to see implemented, however, don't be shy and tell us about it - it may be implemented, who knows.

And by the way, it's Conectiva, not Connectiva.

In the dealing-with-the-real-world arena, things may improve soon. And furthermore, there may be some significant new stuff to do at Conectiva. We may have a great time in the future. Right now, it is very important that Conectiva doesn't become a souless company because it's becoming more 'professional'[1]. Professionalism is a sin, punished with death. Conectiva didn't get a hell of a oportunity with a VC because of 'professionalism', so there's no point in changing its attitude now. I've been reading a lot of diaries here, and Conectiva's story is not new: bright new company with a great culture gets funding and becomes valuable. Then top-down incompetence comes in and destroys environment, preparing for a premature brave new world of 'professionalism', employees run away scared, company dies or becomes irrelevant. This kind of thing has happened many times, and it will happen again.

Finally, in the outdoors arena, hanging 60+ meters high tied to a rope is a lot of fun.

[1] 'professional': cap. sin. 1. Idiotic, pseudo-efficient, dumb, silly, cretin. 2. Shooting itself on the foot. Opposite: efficient, smart, intelligent.

I hate security freaks.

Warning: non-technical stuff, certainly unsuitable for Advogato, in this diary entry. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

Fun day (in a morbid sense, of course). Today, ICQ got firewall-banned in the office. I don't use, like or care about ICQ, but Dilbert makes more sense to me now than yesterday. It's been so for a long time.

But this time I won't care. Apathy is so wondeful :)

Already one day late for a complete freeze (major areas are frozen, but there's still some stuff pending), the brave Conectiva Linux development team finishes the last few details for a vibrant new beta-test period. If you feel like helping during the beta-test period, send mail to beta-subscribe@bazar.conectiva.com.br. There's no such a thing like an official language yet, so feel free to write in any language you feel like.

I am indebted to claudio. I had never heard of Run Lola Run until I saw his diary entry, and enjoyed it like I hadn't enjoyed a movie for a long time. On the other hand, what's so great about Gladiator, that everyone is talking about? It's entertaining while it lasts, but that's all.