Weekend Wrap-up

Not getting it

What’s with this community and people actually not getting it, seriously? I’ve read articles/blog posts from prominent figures in this community for weeks now and they either just don’t understand a lot, or they’re purposely writing these comments.

What am I talking about? Everything! Most important is about all the stuff written about KDE, GNOME. Even the lead developer of Sabayon doesn’t understand that GNOME 3 is obviously targeted at the mobile market! Don’t believe me that is it? Here’s a little 20/20 vision, also known as hindsight. KDE was on the leading edge of this area a couple years ago. We didn’t hear anything about the mobile markets, it was all pretty quiet of course. For good reason, think QT, and if you think that, your next association has to be Nokia. Starting to figure it out? Now what do we see a lot of on any KDE related blog? How this, or that is great for mobile applications. Of course KDE 4 was designed with the mobile market in mind. So is GNOME 3 shell, seriously. I have no doubt, and feel free to come back later to tell me I’m wrong, but you’ll be saying I was right instead, that in the not too far off future we’ll be hearing about GNOME 3 this mobile, and GNOME 3 that mobile. They just don’t want to let it out just yet, the same as the KDE developers didn’t at the start. It’s like cloud computing was, they’re all into the new hype and driving towards it as fast as possible.

LMDE

When Clem of Mint decided to create a Debian based version of Mint I smiled. First because I figured he’d try to move away from Ubuntu more sooner than later. The second was the fact that the community isn’t very skilled is my guess. How would Clem make it work for all of those people that can’t deal with something breaking, or needing a bit of extra input, from Debian Testing. We got that answer this week. 🙂

Clem, and others of the Mint community like to call Debian Testing a rolling release, it is only to a point. That’s why early adopters of LMDE will feel two lulls with pretty well no updates in this rolling release as they’re calling it. But that’s supposed to be the appeal, a rolling release, and ‘getting under the hood’ (that one always makes me smile when people type it). So what does Clem do? He kind of stops it from being a rolling release, and sets it up to hold the community’s hand by making his own repository and issuing monthly updates if I read properly. That kind of retracts from the whole rolling release theory, no? Let’s say Debian Testing gets updates for about 18 months, that’s 18 sets of updates only. Actually less with this release of course. It’s still rolling release, but it sure doesn’t sound like it when you break it down to 18 or less sets of updates, no?

Also, I was smiling about something else I read. Very few switched over, or use LMDE in comparison to the Ubuntu based version of Mint. That tells me two things, first the community might not have the skills to switch, or they believe they dont (Debian is simple people!). Second, the reason they like Mint is because it’s a pumped up kiddie version of Ubuntu. They get all the codecs and stuff installed for them instantly. That’s the only reason they’re there pretty well. Let’s face it, if Ubuntu offered the same thing, who would have switched? For that matter, would Clem even had reason to create Mint in the first place.

That makes me think though, Clem’s done well at promoting Mint to the point where it pays his way, but can he keep it up? He’s bitten off a lot here. Can he keep the majority happy with Ubuntu, even with the fact that the GNOME 2 series is going to be dropped, and still keep his LMDE base happy, while trying to work it so everyone switches over and he can drop one.

Clem wanting to drop Ubuntu is pure speculation, nothing more, I just wanted to clarify that.

Anyway, I guess time will tell. I’m only slightly curious to see what will happen in the future. It’s funny though, rolling release. 🙂

Fedora remasters

This one is quick. Why does anyone seriously use a Fedora remaster from Fedora 14? In fact, why would a developer of the remaster keep working on it when it only has 6 months support left? I only know of one other person who’s echoed the same thoughts. Really, isn’t it a waste? Can’t they at least follow the new release development cycle and release not long after Fedora does?

Isn’t it bad enough it pretty well is only supported for about a year?

Linux and Android

I’ve been noticing more and more that people are using the term Android/Linux, or Linux/Android. While I agree with it completely, didn’t Linus Torvalds himself refuse to call Linux GNU/Linux, then not long ago showed that he was unhappy with Google for not calling Android Linux/Android, or Android/Linux?

It’s usually the one that’s not as popular and in the limelight wanting to get credit when credit is due, and usually the one soaking up all the attention that doesn’t care about the first one getting their credit too.

Let’s just hope that those involved take the time out to give people the credit for their work as they rightly deserve, it’s only fair.

What I’ve got going on

I’m currently testing out a number of Firefox releases, from their stable release up.

Also, I’m working with gNewSense 3.0, codenamed: Parkes. I haven’t found any problems with it really. It’s based on Debian Stable so you can expect it to run the way it’s supposed to. Oh, that reminds me, I need to ask them what the new background image reprepsents. It might even be a new logo altogether.

Keep your stick on the ice…

Landor