silentYak » Gentoo

The Software Update Paradox

RRI — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:55:07 +0000

I like to keep my software up-to-date, so I sync it with the repository every day, and see if there’s anything that needs updating.

And yet, I don’t like the fact that it takes time to perform the update, or that there is a chance that my stable system could be broken by the change, or that a package may fail to build.

So I run the update command, hoping that there’s nothing new.

Am I Cool Or What?

RRI — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:55:19 +0000

The title of this post was supposed to be “I Have A Macbook Pro Now”, but this one seemed just as appropriate. I am one of those guys who watches in disdain as others argue about “being a PC” or “being a Mac” (it’s Linux all the way for me, baby) but then I figured one must try everything in life. Yeah, I know I’m twisting a perfectly legitimate philosophy for the sake of personal gain, but this is my blog after all. Live with it.

Even the village idiot would have figured out by now that I’ve purchased a new Macbook Pro. I haven’t used a Mac before, except on rare occasions, so I’m still learning. That being said, there isn’t much to learn, apart from keyboard shortcuts. This operating system is Unix-y enough for me to feel comfortable — for example, I copied over my zshrc file from my desktop to the laptop, and voila! I have a terminal that behaves exactly like the one on my good ol’ Gentoo box.

One of the disadvantages of being a Mac user though, is that almost every silly piece of software costs $20 or more. This is slightly mitigated by the fact that almost everything comes out of the box, except for Office software (no problem though, grab a copy of OpenOffice.org before they run out of copies). But I guess that’s a totally different world, where software is free (as in speech).…

KDE 4.1: Now In Portage

RRI — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 03:11:17 +0000

The wait is finally over. KDE 4.1 is now in the official portage repository, which means that Gentoo users can upgrade to it without having to unmask any packages or setting up an overlay.

I upgraded to the new and shiny KDE 4.1 today for the first time. I could have easily gotten it from an overlay a long time ago, but then I figured it was best to wait for it to mature. Like its predecessor (KDE 3.5), this version of KDE looks quite unpolished until you spend some time customizing it. For instance, I cannot fathom the reasons behind not enabling font anti-aliasing by default. Without this tweak, all fonts look jagged and ugly. KDE also seems to have taken the path of Microsoft’s Windows Vista in terms of its color scheme: gray and black seem to be the norm.

Overall, I am not too disappointed with the upgrade, but I realize now that I’m going to have to wait for future releases for many pieces of functionality that I used to love in KDE. This is one of the downsides of having software redesigned from scratch. For instance, Amarok 2 (still in beta) included in this version of KDE, is missing several key features, such as track-queuing and equalizer support. I just wish the KDE developers had focused on having a 4.1 release that was on par with 3.5.10 in terms of features, rather than worry about the details.