2008-11-25 von ekkehard.

My database management system ADB (working title) is going version 0.1.0, and it’s the first public release of it. You can already use it for some stuff. It contains an early version of the base library (work is still in progress, of course). Test programs that are included can serve as examples, and the source code is well documented. The code has been tested some, and should be relatively bug-free. License is GPLv3. Usage in free software projects is encouraged!

ADB Version 0.1.0 (format: gzipped tar)
ADB Version 0.1.0 (format: zip)

Geschrieben in Personal Projects | 1 Kommentar »

2008-11-18 von ekkehard.

Today, I was playing with the thought again to purchase an AIX workstation one day when I can afford them, and I was surprised to see that IBM is going to give its Intellistation POWER Series workstations the boot in January ‘09. A black day for AIX on the desktop. I really wonder what’s the problem there, warehouse costs? IBM has a history of burying its best stuff (like OS/2 for instance). Some years ago, I enjoyed hacking away on an RS/6000 workstation running AIX 4.2, and it was a pure joy. Not only the kernel, but also the admin tools, like smit and smitty. Their blade-centric solution uses Windows as a client for workstation application. This truly sounds like IBM wants AIX only for servers anymore. I’m not amused. Although, eXceed on Windows with an XDCMP server running on AIX might also be a viable solution … whatever. But it can’t beat a native POWER box sitting on your desk, that’s for sure.

Geschrieben in Hardware, OS News | Keine Kommentare »

2008-11-18 von ekkehard.

Tonight, I restored a backup I made on Blu-ray disks. Restoring a folder of merely 60,000 files took over 6 hours. While Blu-ray is the best option for optical storage of 25 GB per disk and beyond, reading speeds are more akin to old QIC streamers … (along with the odd seeking noise)

Geschrieben in Hardware | Keine Kommentare »

2008-11-18 von ekkehard.

Yesterday, Australia’s PC Authority interviewed Richard Stallman, the head of GNU and the FSF. In that interview, Stallman talks about free software and the difference to mere open source. A very interesting read!

Geschrieben in OS News | Keine Kommentare »

2008-11-14 von ekkehard.

After ditching Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)  for Debian 4.0r5 (stable), I have another story to tell.

Did I say that I need DRI? OK, I did in my comment to my recent Ubuntu 8.10 article. Well, that does work with Debian. After trying to keep my home directory, I did a clean install.

I installed Nero and Adobe Reader  using GDebi (which is contained in GNOME), and had to give up on my Fluendo codec pack and PowerDVD, because those work only on Ubuntu, and had to resort to other methods for that.

To get Flash support, I found some workaround on the Debian Wiki pages. Adobe Flash has been removed from the official distribution out of security concerns, but it can be re-added with some shell commands. Heeding the Wiki’s warning that my system would be less stable now, I ventured on.

For streaming video, I resorted to installing the VLC media player and its Mozilla plug-in.

Being satisfied, I decided to install some fonts and installed almost all “xfonts” and “ttf” packages. However, the Helvetica font did not have any umlauts and displayed them with regular letters (which is sort of confusing when reading German text). By using the tkfont program, I was able to find out that the “cronyx” font packages were responsible for that. Nice!! After removing those,the Helvetica font appeared normal again. Now, how do I make GNOME pick TTF fonts over bitmap fonts? No clue.

Configuring the printer was easy. Configuring the scanner impossible. Even when SANE has all access rights to the device, it says “invalid argument”  when opening it. So I guess I’ll be using OpenBSD for scanning.

Well, that’s  it for now.

Geschrieben in OS Experiences | 2 Kommentare »

2008-11-01 von ekkehard.

Recently, I’ve begun creating a new C++ database library, codenamed ADB (for A Database … I know, I know …). I’m not sure yet whether I’ll add features from my super-fast Natter/Adder/Natrix database concepts. The API will be ridiculously simple to use, yet powerful enough to provide database functionality for any application. It will be 64-bits, as Natter was, and hence scale well. I’ll GPLv3 it, most certainly. The C++ code will be mostly portable, supporting advanced compilers like Comeau C/C++ which support the “export” keyword for templates. Workarounds for some missing C++ features will be included (requires some POSIX APIs and 64-bit arithmetic).

Geschrieben in Personal Projects | 2 Kommentare »

2008-11-01 von ekkehard.

Ubuntu Linux 8.10 (codenamed Intrepid Ibex) is out!

Upgrade from 8.04 worked like a charm (almost, I had to edit the xorg.conf afterwards).

Features include: New versions of GNOME, GCC, X and version 2.6.27 of the Linux kernel.

More links: Desktop features, What is Ubuntu Desktop Edition, 8.10 release notes.

It appears to be a lot faster than the previous release, probably thanks to the new kernel. Someone on Slashdot reports it even outperforms Vista (which is somewhat surprising, because Linux was always faster than Windows, but it’s nice to see its speed being noticed; as a developer I know that the Linux kernel is about 1000 times faster than the Windows kernel; for instance, when it comes to task switching).

Geschrieben in OS News | 3 Kommentare »