Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:31:41 GMT | 1 comment
I have been waiting for KDE4 for a while already.... And now it has gotten much closer to the goal and it's time for a real survival test...
Due to my old computer slightly lacking horsepower, I recently switched from Gentoo to Ubuntu. tried Gnome for a little while but wasn't for me, really. Then I installed kubuntu-desktop and followed the quick steps shown on kubuntu.org about KDE4 rc2. Really easy install...
From KDE 3.5.8 I could already see many applications in the menu which had got duplicate for their KDE4 counterpart letting me try them from within my desktop. but on the early morning of December 26th, without knowing if it would work at all, I decided to give the already installed KDE4 a try. Without expecting much it shine onto my screen promptly.
Fired up, I am looking at what is to become the next best and most popular desktop on the planet. Let see what Santa-san has in store... read on for more details ...
Read more...
Posted in KDE, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Sat, 24 Nov 2007 22:37:55 GMT | no comments
Le samedi 1er décembre prochain, le groupe
Linuq organise une journée "Porte ouverte à Linux". Au cours de cette
journée, ses membres feront des démonstrations des logiciels libres
répondant à presque tous les besoins domestiques et démontreront
qu'ils ne demandent pas plus d'expertise que les logiciels
propriétaires classiques. Mieux, ils vous montreront que tous ces
logiciels peuvent s'installer en quelques instants et gratuitement
avec une distribution Linux. Il en existe de nombreuses, mais les plus
facilement utilisables sont les distributions Mandriva, OpenSUSE et
Ubuntu. Encore mieux, ils se proposent à vous aider à installer une de
ces distributions dans votre ordinateur (inscription requise sur
www.linuq.org).
Les logiciels libres ont pris un essor extraordinaire depuis 15 ans
dans tous les domaines, que ce soit Internet qui n'existerait tout
simplement pas sans les logiciels libres (le contrôle du trafic est
assuré par des logiciels libres, les centaines de milliers
d'ordinateurs de Google fonctionnent avec du logiciel libre, les deux
tiers des sites web utilisent essentiellement du logiciel libre, ...),
plus près de nous, le plus puissant ordinateur du gouvernement du
Québec fonctionne sous Linux.
Les logiciels libres offrent de nombreux avantages: évidemment ils
sont gratuits (sans piratage!), mais aussi ils sont très sécuritaires
(à l'abri des virus), légers (pas besoin d'un ordinateur dernier cri),
compatibles avec les formats de fichier habituels (texte, image ou
son), faciles à utiliser, durables (ils ne vous forcent pas à changer
quand vous n'en n'avez pas besoin), à la pointe de la technologie. Ils
sont à nous tous, que nous ayons ou pas participé à leur écriture.
Pourquoi organisent-ils cette journée? Ils le font pour diverses
raisons, certains par fraternité, d'autres parce qu'ils aiment
bricoler leurs logiciels et partager leur passion, mais tous parce
qu'ils trouvent normal de « redonner un peu à la communauté ». La
plupart d'entre eux n'utilisent que des logiciels libres, du moins
quand ils ont le choix.
La journée se déroule de 9 heures à 17 heures au locaux 2325 et 2327
du Pavillon Palasis-Prince de l'Université Laval. Il est à noter que
le stationnement est gratuit la fin de semaine. Pour faire installer
sur son ordinateur, une inscription est requise en remplissant le
formulaire sur le site web www.linuq.org.
Posted in Linux, Français
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:18:51 GMT | 1 comment
I just made a small discovery last night. I already knew about ext2fs but it was not really stable, rather incompatible and as far as I remember, read-only. So, rather useless.
Now there is something I would call "new". ext2IFS. IFS for Installable FileSystem. it is simply wonderful. and for anyone using windows who needs access to their ext2/3 partitions, try this one out.
As you already know. your data is the most important part of computing. and with all open source software, I recommend reading all the documentation. in this case, it is all shown during the install process. please read it or don't cry when something happen.
Posted in Linux, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:15:32 GMT | no comments
To follow my last post. Here is the list of interesting articles I fall upon today. As I already said. Today has been a very rewarding day for finding interesting articles. So, here it comes. I will not place them in order of preference but instead I will try to place them in order of accessibility (less geek to the geekiest)
The police to start analyzing our urine through the sewers. That's the cherry on the sundae. If they bring their sample extraction device all the way to our houses. Not only they will be able to know who use what drugs but also what other consumer products we use. Then use the data for marketing purposes. That's the beginning of real privacy violation. And people worry about computers?
Get Rich Slowly. No comments, excellent reading. And this article really makes me believe again that justbudget is totally appropriate and does help in financial Independence.
Plasma VS LCD HTTV comparison
Computing article ... lots of good points. last page is Linux Kernel stuff
only, kinda technical. But the first two pages are interesting to anyone curious about computer history. It brings a fresh point of view on the truth. Linux lovers be careful. I knew XOrg had great optimization needs but this article simply make me wish I had something better than Linux to run my favorite desktop environment.
Call me ignorant but I don't even understand how a project like a free browser might need a CEO. This article explains it all. How is Mozilla Firefox making $US55million a year? (and much more...)
More Linux related articles from apcmag. I think today was the first time I was visiting their site and one of the reason I am blogging about it today is to make sure I will visit them again.
And finally the article that brought me to their site. The Linus Torvalds Interview on Linux 3.0.
Posted in Tech / Computers / Programming, Linux, Drugs, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Thu, 23 Aug 2007 09:40:52 GMT | no comments
Today has been a very rewarding day for finding interesting articles. Apart from the articles that I will mentioned in my next article here is one for my readers who runs the Gentoo operating system.
http://apcmag.com/6636/Gentoo tip for the love of tmpfs
Basically the idea is to mount a virtual file-system over the directory that stores temporary files used during compilation of new software (/var/tmp/portage). As most you you might know, Gentoo includes a system that automatically compile and install software for you. The great part is that it is very easy to use, the down part however is that it sometimes takes hours to install a certain software. The Hard Drive being the slowest part in the equation has just to be removed.
To try it out simply add this line to your /etc/fstab file and mount it as root or reboot.
none /var/tmp/portage tmpfs size=212M,nr_inodes=1M 0 0
You might also want to kill the content for the directory before, as it most probably contains lost of useless data which would then be hidden behind the mount.
rm -fr /var/tmp/portage ; mkdir /var/tmp/portage
Now the guy in the article use a 1412M sized tmpfs virtual partition on a 2G of RAM system. I really wonder how this would work on a 512MB RAM system. It might just swap all the time removing the whole idea. So I'm not sure this tricks helps people who really needs help. (the people with regular hardware)
What I really would like to understand is how the tmpfs kernel module know when to delete or not a file from the memory. I'd be afraid that it kills some .o out of the memory before the full compilation comes to an end. Or that it keeps all these temporary files in memory for hours after the compilation is done. I'd like to understand the magic.
For more Linux related article, checkout their Kernel Knowledge page
Update: Then later I found in the comment it is useless to add an extra tmpfs as Gentoo always have one enabled.
And I Quote ....
"You can always do this by using the existing tmpfs, /dev/shm. /dev/shm will allocate up to 1/2 of your system RAM for tmpfs and it should already exist. To use it change/add the following three lines to your gentoo /etc/make.conf file:"
PORTAGE_TMPFS="/dev/shm"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/dev/shm"
BUILD_PREFIX="/dev/shm"
Good luck in your trials. And please post comments on your experimentations.
Posted in Tech / Computers / Programming, Gentoo, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Thu, 05 Apr 2007 05:35:23 GMT | 1 comment
Wireless
Cable
Conclusion
My wireless router(BLW-HPMM) and my wireless card(SMC2835W) are very good ;)
Posted in Tech / Computers / Programming, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Sat, 17 Feb 2007 05:35:30 GMT | no comments
So I wanted to have a sneak preview at KDE4 and also have the development environment ready in case I find some time to fool around.
So I compiled KDE on my gentoo system. I simply followed the various instruction found on the developer website. I created a kdefour user. Installed cmake and Qt 4.2.2 normally using gentoo portage system. and from kdelibs into the user home directory.
that's what my .bash_profile looks like
kdefour@krypton ~/usr/build $ cat ~/.bash_profile
# /etc/skel/.bash_profile
# This file is sourced by bash for login shells. The following line
# runs your .bashrc and is recommended by the bash info pages.
[[ -f ~/.bashrc ]] && . ~/.bashrc
export YACC='byacc -d'
#export QTDIR=$HOME/usr/qt
export QTDIR=/usr
export KDEDIR=$HOME/usr/kde
export CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull
export PATH=$HOME/bin:$HOME/unsermake:$QTDIR/bin:$KDEDIR/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QTDIR/lib:$KDEDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
function cmakekde { cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$KDEDIR \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull $@ && make VERBOSE=1 && make install
}
kdefour@krypton ~/usr/build $
and I created myself a small rebuild script
kdefour@krypton ~/usr/build $ cat rebuild
#!/bin/sh
source ~/.bash_profile
modules="kdelibs kdepimlibs kdebase koffice kdegames"
modules="koffice kdeutils kdenetwork kdemultimedia kdepim"
build_dir="/home/kdefour/usr/build/"
src_dir="/home/kdefour/usr/src/"
for i in $modules
do
echo $i
#echo $build_dir$i
#rm -fr $i
mkdir -p $build_dir$i
if [ -d $src_dir$i ]
then
(cd $src_dir$i; svn up)
else
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/$i $src_dir$i
fi
cd $build_dir$i
time cmakekde $src_dir$i
if [ $? -ne 0 ]
then
cd -
echo $?
break
fi
cd -
done
kdefour@krypton ~/usr/build $
and here is a small screenshot for the curious
Posted in KDE, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:28:42 GMT | no comments
If you are like me, you like system that works and you care much more about the latest version of KDE than the latest version of XOrg. especially when updating KDE is pain-less and bug-free while XOrg means talking with God, backup-ing your Mother and what not.
So I wanted to be able to run
emerge -avUNt world
like everyone else, while staying on XOrg 6.9
Like you might know, the recent portage are not forcing us to do the update. you cannot run 'emerge world' without upgrading. and upgrading is far from being easy. While preventing portage from forcing is not as easy as it sound. It is not that hard. thanks to /etc/portage system.
here is how to do it.
- first add the following lines in /etc/portage/package.mask
### I dont want to update X
>=x11-base/xorg-x11-7.0
>=app-doc/doxygen-1.4.5
>=media-gfx/imagemagick-6.2.5.6
>=x11-libs/qt-4.1.4-r1
>=media-gfx/graphviz-1.16-r2
>=app-office/openoffice-bin-2.0.3
>=media-libs/libsdl-1.2.8-r2
x11-libs/libXScrnSaver
### END
- then add the following line in /etc/portage/package.unmask
<x11-base/xorg-x11-7.0
after that you might get 1 or 2 more problem. I remember I also had to modify an ebuild and remove a useless dependency on a package. if it does not work for you. please comment below. I'm gonna help you to go through it and I'll update this post for a more accurate information.
have a nice day.
Posted in Tech / Computers / Programming, Linux, Gentoo, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Mon, 23 Oct 2006 12:10:00 GMT | no comments
Apparemment il y aurait des efforts de la part du Gouvernement du Quebec en regards avec l'OpenSource. C'est dure de dire a qu'elle point ils sont serieux et jusqu'ou il se renderont. Mais deja, cest un debut. Et tres apprecier, du moins en ce qui me concerne. Idealement, nous verrons de plus en plus de projet de ce genre et plus d'aide sera apporter au monde du logiciel libre. Lequel a son tour aidera le monde entier, encore plus que deja.
reference
Posted in Linux, Canadian Politics, Français
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Sat, 14 Oct 2006 05:25:00 GMT | no comments
KDE, the world famous open source desktop environment is now 10 years old. WOW.
Matthias Ettrich's 14th October 1996 announcement original post
It's the great moment for KDE right now, KDE 3.5.5 just got released. The most powerful and stable release ever. and KDE 4 is just around the corner. KDE4 Beta Packages already available for Mac OS X and for Linux
I think its a great time to watch screenshots and try it out (Kubuntu, Sabayon) and get involved
KDE Happy 10 years and we wish you another good 10 years.
omedeto & gambatte
Posted in Tech / Computers / Programming, Linux, KDE, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Sat, 23 Sep 2006 08:41:00 GMT | no comments
I got it. I finally understood this quickly aging 2001 Microsoft Windows XP system. No more regular 6 months reinstallation. I am currently using my windows system and the famous firefox webbrowser to write this blog post. Although I installed it more than a year ago, its still amazingly stable. The solution ? Everyone is listening ?
Simple, If a Windows system usually last about 6 months or close to 180 days of uses. I just use my windows system only one day every 1 or 2 months. This way, my windows can potentially last 180 to 360 MONTHS !!!! Is this not very super crazy amazing!?!?!. Its more than enough long to survive before Apple Leopard comes out (Spring 2007).
In the mean time, If you wonder what to use the other 27-30 days of the months. Get yourself a copy GNU Kubuntu Linux. It's very inexpensive and definitely worth every penny you'll invest in this operating system.
comments very welcome.
Posted in Tech / Computers / Programming, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Tue, 19 Sep 2006 03:23:00 GMT | no comments
I was using skype quite often before and quite like it too. they've done a pretty amazing job. Yet, there was many little things I was not happy with and I keep this old habbit to try out what's available see If I could not find any better. The main reasons I wanted something else is because release for Windows, MacOSX and Linux are not in sync and features sets are so different, it's quickly becoming different software. While they first advertise their software to be using Qt and full cross plateform. I remember The KDE News Site advertising Skype as this freshly created startup that commercially use Qt and we were all so excited about getting a decent VoIP cross-plateform. The other reason is, I never got it to work under Linux. If you have a desktop, with one simple sound card and a stupid basic microphone plug onto it, it should work. but if you have a laptop, with some weird sound card, a USB mic, or worse a USB webcam with internal microphone. just forget about it. There is tons of hacks around the internet. but seriously. none works. and think about it, when you want to call your mother and you are paying for a software, hacking around is not really what you want to spend time on.
So times has changes now, and there is various alternative. Gizmo and WengoPhone to name the two most serious ones. Both free, opensource and available on all commun plateform. There is others choices under linux, but I would want to make them appear worth than they are so I'm just not gonna name them.
So, few months ago, I decided to give a serious try to WengoPhone and bought 10Euro worth of credit. cost me roughly 14.50$can. They had a god promotion such as If you were buying credits, you would not used them. That's it fee calls. Sounded weird, but I tried it. So it last about a month, I could call my family for free, seeing my credits jammed at 10.22Euro.
To that point, things were great. I was using my girlfriends windows computer and I could do my calls for free. I was also looking for a cheaper altertive over to skype and Wengo is definitely cheaper.
but then a few flaws started to appear. You contact list is local to your wengo install. so if you switch computer, user, or reinstall wengo, you'll loose your contact list. I learned quickly how to not use their contact list and just use my address book for the number I have not memorize. Something a user should never have to do. Also, if there is two user logon on your windows machine at the same time, only one instance of Wengo can run at the same time, the second one simply won't launch.
As wengo is a french company, and all calls are virtually routed from France, every occupied-messages, dialing-error-messages or any type of message you usually hear from your phone company is in French. bonus points for people who doesn't understand french.
but the windows client works, well, the old version. the latest beta crash on started up. I submitted a bug report more than a month ago and nothing has changed, so I have to use the version 0.99
At work, I am using Mac, the beta version of Mac works. well, I have to launch it 3 times as it crashes on startup as well. but after 3-5 crash it seems to figure out his way through and then I can makes calls. weird? funny? I don't know but it's certainny nor fun nor quick to use.
So today I went on their website again to see if they had release a new beta. unfortunately not, but what I noticed though is the fact they are stating their BETA for PPC is "For advanced users only" while the BETA for Intel isn't. Well, it could be true, but let me doubt here. the look of this strangly look like a copy paste of the Win32 version, which states the BETA is "For advanced users only" but the 0.99 version not. which makes sense. so they copy/pasted this block, replace the version for the proper Mac version, but forgot they were both beta and they did not duplicated the warning for advanced users. A minor error you will tell me. but I seen so many mistakes of that kind on their websites, thinking about the actual code of the application scares the hell out of me. Such People lacking attention to details such as this can only provide crashing applications.
I'm gonna slowly use my wengo credit and then might switch back to Skype. well, I'll see at that point. but changing evil for worse was not for all the best. except that I could try out this app. I guess its something more under my belt but how usefull is it?
ah,... those guys over at WengoPhone.
I should mention a bit about Gizmo Phone project. I have not seriously try it, just installed it and did couple of tests, but nothing serious. but they also have an interresting promotion. They allow free calls between gizmo users. Skype also advertise something like that but there is a big different. Of course, all software as such allow you to do audio conferencing over the internet. but What Gizmo allow is different. You can call your friends real phone number for free if your friend as an account on gizmo and he had this phone number to his user profile. I don't know how secure it is to put your phone number in there. but I would expect that only my trusted contacts can have access to this information. but the point is. you sign up, enter your phones into your profile, your friend does the same and when he is not online, you can call him for free using gizmo. They are sure losing money on this. but they wants users so. way to go.
maybe gizmo is next finally, I don't know.
I hoped you enjoyed readings and won't post your useless thoughts on the comment box below.
Posted in Tech / Computers / Programming, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Sat, 12 Aug 2006 07:35:00 GMT | no comments
Maybe some of you have tried the excellent Enlightenment 17. Although still under heavy development, its definitly worth the look. Luckily for us gentoo user, there is ebuilds already done which makes the compiling task easy. Still, when is time to upgrade, it's a not all automatic. The problem is; all packages keeps de same version (9999 for development). So, if you re-emerge e, it will not re-emerge all the dependencies, because they are already installed and the version number has NOT changed. So You have to check all the dependencies and make sure to re-emerge them all, in order. its a bit of a pain in the butt when you just want to see the latest development the team has made. So I wrote a script to make it even easier. I wrote it few months ago while I was doing it by hand. and Few days ago, I thought I might upgrade E17 again and check it out. so I tried out my script which worked with not too many bug fixes ;) hehe.
click more for the script and to send comments
Read more...
Posted in Tech / Computers / Programming, Linux, Gentoo, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Tue, 09 May 2006 13:25:00 GMT | no comments
Do Microsoft still owns important part of Apple? Do Mr Bill Gates received huge money from ipod sales and Mac switcher as well? I'd like to know if it is still the case. Because if so, things could become very scary.
Read more...
Posted in Random Thoughts, Tech / Computers / Programming, English
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Sat, 15 Apr 2006 06:59:00 GMT | no comments
Anyone had fun with ALSA before ? Some would say its much better than OSS and much more powerful. Some would simply say the it supports more cards (well of course, development on OSS is kinda stopped for a while already) anyway.
Who need this kinda of configuration ? why there is so many options to this config file ? its like your computer could really have 5 different sound card and reroute them in some weird way. well, buy a mixer. got true use for all the power ALSA offer ? please comment below.
I'm just to a point where, even though you are a geek programmer, if all you want to do is software or web development. You don't really want to understand the fully underlying sound system of your operating system to chat with your girlfriend. There is advantage Linux has I can't live without but there is huge whack of extra time that you have to spend in order to get things working. And some of you who does not have problem, well either you have not used it long enough or you are just as picky as I can be.
anyway, I did not want to troll about anything today. I'm just very tired of rebooting on windows when I have to do my phone calls. And the good news is: I found this little hack that I need to get both my soundcard device and my USB microphone as default device.
somekool@krypton ~ $ cat /etc/asound.conf
pcm.!default {
type asym
playback.pcm {
type plug
slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
}
capture.pcm {
type plug
slave.pcm "hw:1,0"
}
}
somekool@krypton ~ $
that's it. so now I can just use arecord to record my voice without needing any options to specify the proper device.
somekool@krypton ~ $ arecord file.wav
well am I happy ? not really. skype needs OSS or OSS emulation to work. it does not use ALSA directly. but OSS is too old. and I can't really switch my system to it. so I'm not sure if I can get an OSS-emulated device for my USB microphone or If I really need to get arts to see my microphone. arts seems the easiest way to get everything working. but for some reason, it still does not see my microphone.
Hey you out there who knows all about it but are just a little to shy to help. show yourself off it will be highly appreciated.
Posted in Tech / Computers / Programming, Linux, KDE, Gentoo, English
