Amarok: I am very, very, very sorry.

I want to apologize to all those people I have told in the past that I do not like Amarok.

I’m not sure if it’s just the latest version, or if my attitude has changed, or what, but wow, the new Amarok is slick. I don’t really need the whole organization feature of it, but I look at it as if they are easy-to-load directories now (like adding a directory in XMMS). I’ve had issues in the past with performance and stability, but Amarok has been rock-solid for me lately.

What can I say? I was wrong, and I am now changing. I still use XMMS to play a single music file outside of my music collection (like something disposable that I download), so I won’t rid myself of it anytime soon, but for my main music playing duties, Amarok has replaced it.

Nice work, Amarok devs. Now let’s get that thing running in Windows and take over the music playing duties on that “other” OS.

Heaven and Hell

I am a member of the Ubuntu Forums (http://www.ubuntuforums.org), and I try to help people.

And even if the person has no idea what he’s talking about, is ranting on about something completely silly, whatever, I am always kind, courteous, and nice in my posts, and try to help them as much as possible (to the limit of my ability and knowledge, anyway).

It strikes me as odd, then, that I also participate on the imageboards on 4chan, the site of the worst scum and villany on the Internet. Yeah, I generally stay out of the chaos and porn of /b/ (not to mention pictures that would make even the bravest and strongest person break down and weep for humanity), but I do participate in other boards, especially /v/ (videogames) and /g/ (technology).

The /g/ board is what contrasts most with my civil tone over on the Ubuntu forums.

On /g/, I curse, call people names, tell them they are idiots, and defend my viewpoint with an almost troll-like passion. I sometimes try to help, but I sometimes do so while making disparaging remarks.

The place just gets to you, ya know? I just found it to be an interesting contrast; my kind, civil side on the official Ubuntu forums, and the evil bastard on /g/.

I’m proud to say, however, that I keep both sides separate.

KDE Konfusion

I like KDE. Or at least I try to.

But one issue always comes back to bite me with KDE, and no matter what I do, it comes back again and again. KDE always blanks my screen.

It isn’t power managment, because 1) it’s turned off in the KDE control panel and 2) my monitor doesn’t go into standby as it does when power management turns it off.

It isn’t a screensaver, because the KDE screensaver I have set is 1) not set to automatically come on and 2) is set to be the Clocks screensaver.

There are no other settings in KDE’s control panel to control these things. I have added BlankTime, StandbyTime, SuspendTime, and OffTime all set to 0 in xorg.conf. I have issued the xset s 0 && xset -dpms commands (which prevent the issue from occuring in fluxbox). Oh, sure, at first it works, but give KDE enough time and it resets these back to blank my screen again when I least expect it. No, I do not want my screen to blank. I turn off my monitor when it’s not in use, making the automatic blanking useless, and the fact that something is completely out of my control irritates me to no end.

So what’s up, KDE? Seriously, why do you do this to me?

I have yet to find an answer. Grr. Sticking with fluxbox.

Silverlight and Linux.

So the deal is that Microsoft is creating its own version of Flash. Never mind what the Microsoft supporters tell you about how Silverlight is somehow different, it’s simply Microsoft Flash.

Now this alone is disturbing enough. Microsoft enjoys creating its own versions of everything solely to attempt to draw Microsoft users away from the other, superior (and often cross-platform, and sometimes even open) technology to lock them into their own, and attempt to pull others away from their platform by telling them they have to run Windows to use their technology.

But wait! This time, Silverlight is “cross-platform”! And not only that, it’s going to be “open source”, or as we all know, “shared source” as Microsoft calls it. Microsoft has released it for Windows and for Mac OSX. Woo! Cross-platform! Well, except for embedded devices, Linux, BSD, QNX, etc. And “shared source” — well, we know what Microsoft means by that — here’s the source, but don’t mess with it. Definately not “open.”

But apparently Mono is going to try to open it up a bit, just as they did the .NET platform. Win-win, right?

Well, no.

Just like Mono implementing .NET opens a huge can of worms by placing Microsoft-owned technology on open platforms has invited potential trouble in the future from Microsoft whenever it decides that Mono is important enough to Linux to attack it, so does Silverlight. I would rather concentrate on making a truly open multimedia platform for browsers instead of going with Microsoft’s ticking timebomb of a solution, or even staying with Flash. Instead, we go with a Microsoft solution, which Miguel de Icaza seems to have been doing with Gnome for quite some time. Gnome has a very Windows feel to it overall, it has the equivalent of a registry (gconf), and it’s beginning to integrate .NET via Mono.

I believe we need to keep away from Microsoft’s “innovations” and create our own open-source, Free implementations. Silverlight is a bad idea to begin with, made worse by someone wishing it upon the open-source community.

No, thank you.

Quick post: Pidgin Beta, erm, 2.0.0

Click for full size

Pidgin 2.0.0 Beta 7 was released a few days ago, so I naturally wanted it. Compiling went easy, though I did already have all of the -dev packages needed to build it, so you might have to grab several to compiile it yourself. Seems to install alongside the installed gaim beta 6, so I didn’t even have to remove it. Seems stable and ready to go, so hopefully the 2.0 final is right around the corner.

Check it out.

Update: Final version (2.0.0) is out today. Go get it. Figures that as soon as I get the beta up and running, they decide to bring out the final.