There's no Place Like ::1

A long time ago I stopped using Fedora Core Linux. Although it was a rock solid distribution, I missed the “there is a package for everything” that Debian based distributions offered me.

This week I am working with a buddy that installed the latest Fedora Core 8 on his laptop. Three days have passed and he is still compiling packages manually :-) So it seems that nothing as changed. Any contrary opinion?

For instance, AFAIK Fedora has the biggest pre-packaged Perl CPAN module tree. However, I still have to install Catalyst and DBIx::Class manually (yes, Debian based distros do it right!). Ruby-DBI is still a PITA to install on Fedora, but it’s naturally available on Debian based distros, including the patch for SQLite3 support!

Oh and BTW, 64 bits Desktops still sucks…

...so awkward! Took me a full hour to get used to the movement (or the weird acceleration?) of my external Logitech mouse.

Fortunately, Google told me I’m not the only one with this opinion, and pointed me a bunch of hacks :-)

PS – Created offline and posted using MarsEdit trial. Not bad… still missing tags…

Today a friend of mine sent me this link. It is a full blown introduction course on Linux Device Drivers programming.

I’ve tried a lot of times to learn how to program the Linux Kernel, not to do some actual driver, but to better understand how it works (and maybe someday send real patches and contribute to a better free world :-)). I have red half of the O’Reilly’s Linux Device Drivers, but gave up lacking motivation.

Now this course gives a little more motivation: first I like the slides format, secondly his work is centered towards building a real drive for a real hardware device! That sounds great! Can’t wait to read the slides.

The slides currently in Portuguese only, but it seems that the English version is expected soon.

After several years using the mbox format on my personal email server, I decided that it was more than time to move to a better format: Maildir.

The move was triggered when I started to have real problems consulting the boxes remotely over IMAP (I use dovecot). The folders started to get messed up and the system was slow.

I always knew that maildir have clear advantages for my scenario, but I thought that I would have a hard time migrating my services and scripts. I was surprised how easy it was when I really got my hands dirty!

First, used a great Perl script mb2md to convert my existing mailboxes. Then changed some lines on my Postfix configuration. Since I do my mail processing with the Perl module Email::Filter, it was just a mater of changing the paths, and it worked magically!

Never thought it was so easy…. Oh, and dovecot now behaves correctly :-)

Goodbye mbox, you served me well…

Mark this day on your calendar! Google finally launched the Android SDK. I was impressed with the feature set: Linux Kernel 2.6, FreeType, SQLite, OpenGL, WebKit and a optimized Java byte code interpreter!! Opensource geeks, rejoice! :-)

There is an excellent video where the API is explained in good details. Maybe my Internet connectivity is having problems, but I had a hard time just to download the movie (I didn’t even try to watch it in real time).

I’m curious about the modifications made by Google to the standard Linux Kernel, for instance, how do they optimize it for mobile (and possible real time) usage. At the same time, Google announced big quantities of money for the best applications for the Android! Kudos for Google! Can’t wait for a phone with Android…