Data Circle

“I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them.” – Linus Torvalds, Post to linux-kernel mailing list

I saw this a couple of days ago, and I’m still not sure whether Linus is having a joke or being serious. I see his point about OpenBSD—they are rather obsessed with security—but I think it’s bad form for someone as well-known as Linus to go around bashing other projects, particularly when Linux systems use some of the same software (e.g. OpenSSH). This is part of the problem with geeks running large projects—you combine egos, technical smugness and superiority, and often a lack of social skills and put them into a forum (mailing lists) where you can say what you want with no immediate indication of whether you’ve offended someone or said the wrong thing.

I’m actually surprised that no one has picked Linus up on this, so perhaps he was just having a laugh, or no one dares to upset the Lord and Master of the Kernel.

I recently upgraded to the latest release of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) and one of the first things I noticed was that the fonts in Firefox looked very odd, particularly on sites using sans-serif fonts such as Verdana or Arial (and their equivalents). At first this didn’t bother me too much, but over the course of a few weeks it became a real bug bear, and I was beginning to use my Mac or boot into Windows XP just to look at websites, which obviously isn’t ideal.

Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy fix for this problem—simply install the package ‘msttcorefonts’. You can do this via the graphical package manager (System->???????? ????? ????????Administration->Synaptic Package Manager) or using the command line with ‘sudo aptitude install msttcorefonts’. You might need to reboot your system after doing this, but it all seems to be working again for me.

Slackware release announcement: via Digg

The creaking Linux distribution known as Slackware has clocked over another major version number to make it to 12.0. Amazingly, Slackware is still largely maintained by one individual, Patrick Volkerding, although of course most of the software behind the distribution is maintained by hundreds of other open source developers. It’s finally managed to bring itself out of the dark ages with the 2.6 kernel being the only one officially supported (until fairly recently Slackware still used 2.4 by default). Most of the other software is up to date, such as KDE 3.5.x and gcc 4.1.x, so you can rest assured that you won’t be running a system several years behind anyone else’s.

What puzzles me though is why Slackware is still going. I can’t see anyone using it as a desktop distribution, when Ubuntu has pretty much wiped the floor with everyone else (although Fedora and SUSE are catching up fast and provide excellent alternatives), but neither can I see anyone using it on a server where the market is split between free (mostly Debian with the odd smattering of Gentoo) and enterprise distributions (RedHat and SUSE mostly). I suppose if Volkerding enjoys working on the project and there is still a large enough user base to justify it then that’s a good enough reason in itself, but I haven’t heard Slackware mentioned in any Linux-related conversations for a long time.

A few weeks ago I reported on the K3b fundraiser, which asked for donations to help pay for new hardware to support the project which provides one of the best and most useful pieces of software for Linux desktops. According to KDE.News, the fundraiser has been more successful than could be imagined, with the required amount being raised in two days and in the end nearly five times as much money was donated as was asked for. Some of this was raised by Linux distributors such as Mandriva and Linspire (I’m actually surprised that none of the major distributors didn’t pay for the entire fundraising event and then class it as some form of sponsorship – I feel there was a PR opportunity missed there), other funds came from the general public.

Anyway, Sebastian now has the hardware he needs, so hopefully we’ll see his excellent efforts to improve K3b continue well into the future.

Support the K3b developers via KDE.News

Sebastian Trueg, the lead developer of the K3b CD burner for Linux, is asking for donations to help towards the purchase of new hardware to help with the continuing development of the software. K3b is one of those “essential” applications that I always install on a desktop Linux system, so I hope it gets the funding it needs.

K Desktop Environment 3.5.1 Released at KDE Dot News

The latest version of KDE has been announced. You can find out more information from the release notes and the changelog. Being a minor release, most of the changes are either performance improvements or bug fixes, but it’s good to see development on one of the two most popular desktops for X Windows proceeding at a steady and fruitful pace.

In a message entitled GPL V3 and Linux – Dead Copyright Holders sent to the Linux Kernel Mailing List on Wednesday, Linus Torvalds explained why the Linux kernel will not use the third version of the GNU GPL which is currently being drafted. He makes an interesting point that I hadn’t considered before – that the “or, at your option, any other version” clauses isn’t actually part of the licence. He’s also firmly against the conversion by the sounds of things, ending his email with “Conversion isn’t going to happen”.

Further coverage

• Linus Says No GPLv3 for the Linux Kernel at Slashdot
• Torvalds Says No GPLv3 For Linux at Beta News

Many people, including myself, have never really got the hand of how the Debian release scheme works. What’s the different between stable, unstable and testing? What are all these strange codenames that appear to be references to the Disney film Toy Story? Although there is some official release documentation, it’s not very clear and is spread out over several different documents.

Thankfully, PerfDave has written a document entitled Debian Release Nomenclature, which explains the whole process in a much more concise and simplified manner than the official Debian documentation. It’s a useful piece of material to read for anyone running a Debian machine (even though I’m a FreeBSD man normally, the virtual machine providing backup mail and DNS services for most of my domains runs Debian).