Data Circle

The stable version of Debian, codename Lenny, has been updated today, with security fixes for a number of core packages including base-files and perl. To upgrade on most systems, you’ll simply need to run the following commands as root:

aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade

For those who haven’t used aptitude before, it’s the slightly improved version of apt-get, and the recommended tool to use by the Debian Project.

I have been using the latest version of Ubuntu for a couple of weeks now, and so far it is proving to be a fairly robust and reliable system—certainly good enough for me to do my job, write development code and work on my thesis on a daily basis.

The only problems I have encountered so far are:

• Corrupt tracker index problem – I can’t believe this made it into the final release as it seems to have affected so many people it should have picked up in testing. There is a proposed solution and a workaround, but unfortunately everyone seems to be using the latter (can’t blame them – having a working machine is generally more important than testing bugs for most people). If I get a bit of time over the weekend I might install a separate instance under VMWare and see if I can do some testing.
• Freeciv doesn’t have any sound, unless you install the freeciv-sound package—and even then you’ll be lucky to get music. I don’t think this is a Jaunty-specific problem though.
• Although the function buttons on my laptop still work, I no longer get any visual feedback when using them—before upgrading when I altered the volume a bar would appear on screen showing me the current setting. This isn’t a major problem as the functionality still works, but having no visual feedback is a bit annoying.

Other than those issues though—some of which I hope to look into and file bugs for—everything seems to be running fine. Now if only I could get Alien Crossfire to play under Wine…

For those of you who haven’t heard already, the latest version of possibly the most popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty” was released earlier this week.

I’ve been an Ubuntu user for some time now, and it is without a doubt the best distribution for the desktop (I’ve used most of the major ones, so I can say that with some degree of experience). In fact, apart from the occasional problem with printing and wireless, I find that Ubuntu beats XP hands down for Just Working. Even my Vodafone 3g dongle works better in Ubuntu than it does in XP —no software to install and connection is much easier. If it wasn’t for the fact that people occasionally send me documents which don’t look right unless opened in the latest version of Word and I could get to grips with the Gimp as a substitute for Paint Shop Pro, I would probably delete XP altogether.

A word of warning before you rush to update though – make sure you read the release notes as there are a couple of irritating bugs. I was hit by the corrupt tracker index problem when I first logged in and it took me a while to figure out how to fix it. Hopefully the known issues will be fixed in the next few weeks though, so if you’re really paranoid you might want to postpone an upgrade until then.

Linux – Stop holding our kids back at Blog of helios

Some people shouldn’t be allowed access to computers…

“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.