Pre-Alpha RC1

June 2nd, 2008 at 22:46 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Blogging, Days in My Life, Software Development, Web · Comment 

I am in the midst of getting the KazeServer to roll out. During this pre-Alpha RC1 stage, works have been a little pressured especially cleaning up parts of the codes to make it neater and more efficient. A number of factors are also affecting during pre-Alpha stage.

One of them is the gnat Ada compiler issue on Ubuntu Hardy Heron or 8.04. Hardy comes with gnat-4.1 with a number of packages not added. Without these packages, I can’t build AWS-2.3. So, I have to roll out Alpha RC1 on Mac OS X until Ubuntu Intrepid or 8.10 with gnat-4.3 is released (hopefully with gnat-4.3 by October). I have another option which is I have to move to Debian Etch with gnat-4.1 but including the libaws-2.2.

libaws-2.2 is a pre-built library for AWS on Debian Etch. I am developing using gnat-4.4 and AWS-2.3 on Mac OS X. Moving to Debian Etch means I am downgrading the version of gnat and AWS and I feel a little skeptical about it. This is one thing I hate most, version inconsistency among the Linux distro.

After talking to my friends on this matter, it looks like I have few choices but to target on Mac OS X for the moment considering the tasks of installing and get the Debian Etch up and a whole lot of uncertainties in gnat-4.1 and AWS-2.2.

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Why I like Ubuntu?

October 12th, 2007 at 17:27 · Filed Under Blogging, Call Me a Geek, Computing, Linux, Software Development · Comment 

Since I switched to Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 on Spetember 26, I have been working on Ubuntu with a multitude of tasks including test compiling some Ada source codes of previous project, working on my latest Ada project, blogging, surfing, downloading torrents and many more. I personally find Ubuntu is really an OS for the human.

Unlike many other Linux favor such as Caldera (now SCO), SuSE, RedHat; it has come out of competition neatly. Based on Debian, it has a better packaging of software packages which makes installation and upgrading software components very easily and almost without hassle. The only hassle I see is when downloading some large files during a slow connection or heavy Internet traffic.

The auto-upgrade is the feature I like most in Ubuntu. It works seamlessly and the new software components are well tested before the release. I had had my system corrupted when I was using SuSE and not so long ago on FC5 (Fedora Core). Causing a lot of valuable data and time. What can I say? So far, so good!

The software update is also very frequent. This always keep my system up to date with the latest release of Ubuntu’s software components. Well done!

The other neat feature is the easy activation of SCIM, a Smart Common Input Method for all Unix-like OS for inputing complex character sets like Chinese and Japanese. This gives me another platform of choice when updating my blog and other websites (blogs) with Chinese and Japanese characters. I will write about how to activating SCIM later.

I hope Ubuntu will be the Linux for my secondary working platform.

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Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

September 26th, 2007 at 23:37 · Filed Under Blogging, Call Me a Geek, Computing, General, Linux, Mac OS X, SCM, Software Development · 1 Comment 

A few months ago, when fornax’s hard disk was dead, I upgraded it from 40GB to 160GB and installed Debian Etch. Debian Etch has once again boosted my confidence about Linux. The graphical desktop was working up to my expectation. It could support up to 1280 x 1024 resolution! Upgrading Debian is easier compared to other Linux distros like SuSE, RedHat and etc. Actually, I quite like Debian to power fornax as an alternative development platform and also for some general purpose computing and testing purposes. I did not blog about my Debian installation a few months ago. I should blog about Ubuntu installation to record my experience.

Today, after some months, reinstalled fornax again with Ubuntu 7.04, code named Feisty Fawn. The UI is even more superb than Debian. Everything has been nicely done and packaged. To my surprised, I can run KDE applications from Gnome’s menu. This could not be done in Debian and some other Linux. How nice!

As the matter of fact, I did not like Gnome very much because KDE applications would not appear in Gome’s menu. Ubuntu has changed my perceptual experience about Gnome and once again Linux!

I find Ubuntu has more human touch than any other Linux distros. I also find that Ubuntu is very closely competitive with Mac OS X!

Really, I have download Ubuntu’s alternate install CD in June but I had never had a good reason to install Ubuntu over Debian. This morning, I had to install and configure many software, for instance, Subversion, apache and many other software development tools; it gave me a good reason to install Ubuntu. Not because Debian did not have all these software packages (Ubuntu is based on Debian), it was because I had to do most of the tasks which were almost like installing a fresh system.

Ubuntu’s installation is easier than Debian and faster. I had it up and running in less than 20 minutes!

Now, fornax has once again become my Linux development platform as well as SCM (Source Code Management) server. Oh! I run ktorrent for downloading movies as well. It really flies and sucking all the bandwidth. I have to stopped ktorrent whenever I want to work on Internet.

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