Found out you can’t use the edit function to fix typos in
your diary entries. Then you end up with the date being
moved forward.
So I am now making a new entry to replace an old one :)

Seems like Helix Code employs a new person each day, those
guys are really aiming at getting somewhere fast. Only part
that worries me a bit as that the focus of these developers
will be moved to align with the Helix business plan which
might leave other important part of GNOME without enough
developers. Then again I think the added value that Helix
brings GNOME will probably bring in a lot more new
developers as GNOME gets better at a lightning pace. People
have a tendency to be drawn towards succesful projects I
think.

Did get involved in the cschtml/gtkhtml discussion on the
gnome-list, from reading the posts here on Advogato it seems
like this has been discussed elsewhere too. Noticed btw.
that the gconf dependency of gtkhtml was removed in CVS
today.

This Debian /KDE debate is really getting me irritated.
Stupid illiterates attacking the GPL, why the heck are these
newbie dorks using Linux? If the license is such a pain for
them use another OS and shut up.

Well, I probably should try to keep to my stay-out program
and focus on doing positive things for free software instead
of letting Troll Tech and their dupes irritate me.

The Sam Lantiga interview is ready and commited, also
commited my long in the making CSC Mail review. Also Rob
Warren have written a really good article for us on OpenLaw
which went up today on Linuxpower, to bad Slashdot haven’t
linked to it, think it would have sparked a healthy
discussion.

I have also written an editorial called: The Linux desktop
Wars: Chapter Two.
None of the people I have gotten to test read it agree with
me, but I haven’t gotten any feedback that has made me want
to change it
significantly.
I let it rest a day or two, look at at it, and if I still
think it’s arguments hold water I submit it.

Hmm, looks like am an apprentice no longer, but a
journeyman.
I don’t feel any different though :)
My dia article got destroyed due to me being sloppy with a
tar command, but I learned a hard earned lesson and will
not make that mistake again, on a more positive note my
two-app article goes up on Wednesday this week and I have a
review almost done of CSC Mail.

Sent of interview questions for Sam Lantiga and Joaquin Cuenca
Abela

Lot of article ideas and so little time, next week will
probably be mostly spent setting up Oracle Applications 11i
.

I have also noted that my Linuxpower friends are not very
good at certifying me, except for Julian,
get moving guys :).

I have been wondering how come I managed to always need
so much swap space and why Linux wasn’t as fast as I felt it
should be, and yesterday I finally learned why. I
added a extra memory chip and used the top and free commands
to check that the new memory was in place, to my supprise
only 62 Megs where reported instead of the expected 150 Megs
of Ram. After some testing it seems that Linux always have
just registered 62 M and I had to set up an extra boot
parameter to get the rest. A typical example of being so
sure about what definetly isn’t the problem that you don’t
even
consider checking it.

My GNOME 1.2 article was a great hit, even got glowing
reviews from Miguel on IRC. The nice people at Slashdot even
managed to put it up at such a time that it effectivly was
up for two days.
Linuxpower managed to stay afloat (easily actually) during
the Slashdotting and traffic has been steady comming in
since.

Haven’t gotten around to proofreading my Dia article
yet since I have already started writing a new one about two
small GNOME tools called finder and grdb.
Then it is onto the editorial :)

So my GNOME 1.2 article is going up on linuxpower today. Hope
it is well recieved. One mistake fixed in editing was
writing Helix Code as Helixcode :). Only shows what happens
when you learn company names from email adresses.

Put togheter a small review of Dia last evening, will
send it of after I proof read it today. I also have an
editorial constructing itself in my mind called ‘The
political color of free software’. Since i always
considered my a libertarian I found it funny when I saw
Jeremy
Allison of Samba fame say that Free Software was clearly
Socialism, which he was a supporter of.

Speaking of interviews, the debate article that Slashdot
linked
to where O’Reilly and Todd Dickinson of the US patent
office argued over software patents was frustrating reading.
Dickinson seemed like a bad replica of Ayn Rand’s; Ellsworth
Toohey.

Wow, I am feeling woozy.
I haven’t slept all night since I and my friends where
having a lan party. Then when I got home around 5 in the
morning I sat down and wrote a review of whats new in GNOME
1.2. Just sent it of to Erik and Jeremy so hopefully it will
pop up on Linuxpower.org either tommorow or on monday.
Now it is soon time to drive over to my mothers to celebrate
her birthday….it is hard work being the son all mothers
wish they had :)

Decided to ditch my whole TurboLinux installation and go
back to using RedHat on both my machines. The 6.0.4
installation was a great disapointment with the X
configurator never managing to set up my screen correctly.
The sound config was also flawed, but I managed to get that
working eventually.

Now I am back with RH 6.2 and everything worked perfectly.
Guess the lesson is that infidelity doesn’t pay of when it
comes to distributions.

The only problem now is that the early announcement of Helix
GNOME on Slashdot, ruined the whole mirroring system which
has made all server except the master server next to
useless. Hmm.

Anyways as soon as the Helix update is finished I will write
a
GNOME 1.2 summary for Linuxpower.org

Also my hard earned lesson of the day;
don’t present
your
religious friends with titles such as ‘codegod’ or similar,
they often feel that the term ‘God’ should only be placed
upon God.

Hmm, I decided to reinstall my TurboLinux installation after
failing to build lots of things. I figured that I have
installed so much alpha level software on it, which probably
have messed up the system in the end. I have installed
TurboLinux over ftp with success before so that was my plan
now too.
What I hadn’t planed on was that the installation routine
would not support my 10/100 Compaq ethernet card so the
install failed after reformating my previous
installation…….
I ended up going to the nearest shop and buying the cheapest
PCI ethernet adapter available, which was a Accton Cheetah.
It worked perfectely, the installation even autodetected it,
and I am now in the proccess of a full reinstall. Cool thing
as that they even had a ‘For Linux’ mark on the box.
I also noticed Eskils
diary entries today, where he puts in some funny remarks in
danish about his current situation. Having a language not
understood by 99.9 of the world population (like we have
here in Scandinavia) is sometimes very fun.

Small comment in Norwegian:
Lykke til med boligjakten Eskil :)

Aargh!!!! One of the things I liked about Linux when
geting aboard was the availability of software, even if it
was under development. This meant that even if the software
wasn’t finished at least it let often let me do what I
wanted or use the program at its current level of operation.

Although I wouldn’t want to go back to the ‘good’ old days
of not having this option I sometimes get quite frustrated
with Linux and the feeling of always having to work so damn
much when I want to get something working.

Today I wanted to get some RPMS of Galway made, which
needs a couple of under development libraries, gtkhtml and
gnome-guile to be precise. Gtkhtml fails when I try to
compile it with some message about bonobo. I have bonobo and
oaf installed, but this doesn’t seem to help, neither does
setting gtkhtml to compile without bonobo support, it still
fails complaining about bonobo problems.
Gnome-guile has among other things bindings for gtkhtml so I
haven’t even tried that one.

So I send of a mail to the gnome-list about my compile
problems and decide to try to get DVD support working
instead.

First of all I then get the choice of patching my 2.2
kernel or getting a 2.3 kernel to get the UDF file system. I
choose the 2.3 kernel option. The kernel upgrade goes well
and I can mount my DVD.
The next step then is setting up the DVD playing software,
first I try a nice looking package called gdvd, but that
doesn’t compile complaining about something missing from the
gtk header file, so I instead try gdxr2 which compiles, but
doesn’t find my dxr2 device, neither does the command line
player. Aaaargh, why does everything have to been so damn
much trouble. Could be the same dxr2 /Athlon problem I have
under windooze, I don’t know, and I don’t care anymore (at
least not today). Hmm, I know things would go easier if I
where
more proficient and could fix bugs myself in the code and
and scripts, but currently I am stuck in this userland
hell.

Conclusion; sometimes life suck even in linuxland.

Well the day hasn’t been a complete waste I updated my
GNOME
enabled RPM package for Turbolinux of both Gnucash and
Abiword at ftp.gnome.org so I guess some of my effort paid
of today. And I got my daily dose of excersise
playing football (soccer) with my friends.