Another Opinion Among Many

I’m writing this post from the Gentoo Live CD of the latest snapshot 2006.1. I’m trying out the new GTK+ installer to see if its better than the last one. I also want to see if I can install a binary version to get things running quickly. Its been about 20 minutes and it looks like I’m almost done. Maybe another 10 minutes. That would make this install about twice as fast as the Windows XP install I last did (without the drivers for my sound and video cards and printer, that is). We’ll see how it goes. I’ll be trying the new Freespire 1.0 as well later (to see if I should recommend it to the newbies).

Update

Its been about an hour now and it looks like there’s a ways to go yet, so I guess that even a networkless install of Gentoo is still a tad time consuming. That’s alright. I still want to find out if its worth it to do it the “easy” way.

Update 2

Its installed. That took about 3-1/2 hours. That’s longer than it takes to install Windows XP but much shorter by far than installing from source. The next “emerge –sync” will likely show a need for a serious update, but that’s all later. Its too bad that Gnome is the default desktop. Perhaps next time I’ll see if I can install with Fluxbox instead. Or, maybe there’s a binary for KDE. We’ll see how it goes. So far so good.

Update 3

Blasted the Gentoo Live CD install off the drive to see what Freespire was like. So far, this is proving to be one slick offering. There are a few things that are a bit annoying (like not getting into CnR rigght away because of a known bug setting up accounts - solved by creating another with a different email address). I’ve still got to figure out how to successfully swap the default boot order for the operating systems to make Windows boot by default on this machine. A review will follow shortly.

I was perusing the goodies in the WordpressDashboard this morning and came across this entry. You know how I love new software. I couldn’t resist. I downloaded and installed Swift - a new browser on the Windows platform. Its definitely alpha, as many features need to be implemented, but OMG its fast! The MDI reminds me of earlier versions of Opera and the speed reminds me of the first Phoenix builds (a la 0.1). Damn, it renders pages fast! But, there’s no flash and AJAX doesn’t seem to work well. The scroll wheel on my mouse doesn’t scroll the page, and the password field on the WP admin login screen doesn’t show with it, so I know that there’s a long ways to go yet.

I haven’t felt this excited about a new browser since that September day when I downloaded Phoenix 0.1.

In case anybody was wondering, I’ve been busy this weekend playing around in my sandbox (an XAAMP setup on my computer with Wordpress and a ton of plugins installed).  What I really wanted to do was see what I could do with the theme that  you’ve all seen for the last few weeks, since I migrated my site to another server.  Since there was so much good reaction to  Fredrik Fahlstad’s fGreen Wordpress theme, I decided to work with it, instead of build one from the ground up.  I fear, though, that I’ve taken it a bit too far to simply say that I’ve made a few modifications.  Its no longer fGreen by a long shot.  So, I introduce you to, what I will call fGold, unless Fredrik objects.
Here are a few things that I can recall that I did to get the site to look the way it does now (and I’m not done with the archives page):

• re-colored the fGreen theme stylesheet to red and gold
• changed or replaced all the images in the theme
• changed colors in the css file for the AJAX live comments
• changed colors in the css file for the Extended Live Archives plugin
• changed the color of the  balloon tooltip (may be changing the shape later)
• edited the footer to share credit with Fredrik Fahlstad since I used his theme as a guide
• fixed a few bugs relating to the archives page and how the photo gallery fit the theme

Something else, I’m sure, but I can’t remember now.  I’ll make a list of plugins that I use, in case anyone cares, and maybe even go clean the code again.  I have been trying to call plugins with the “if (function_exists(’function name’))” condition so that the page will display if the plugin doesn’t exist.  However, I’ve not checked all of it yet, so don’t expect a release any time soon (I’ll want to keep it to myself for a bit anyways).  But, you never know…

comments and bug pointers are welcome and encouraged - thanks

So, I’ve been known to be a bit adventurous when it comes to software.  I don’t always wait for the stable version to come out before I download and try.  This has not been the case for Firefox until lately.  I’ve been following the 1.5 tree, like most people who use the browser.

That changed when I saw that there was a 2.0 beta to play with.  i downloaded it and began to use it.  The way tabs are opened instead of new windows by default was nice (shades of Opera).  And, there were a few other little nice things as well.  The drag that I found was that my favorite extension, WebmailCompose, did not work.  I did like the improved load time of the new beta, as well as the recover after a crash choice of opening session as it was.

Since my favorite extension didn’t work, I figured why not go back to the way it was in the beginning when I was one of the first to download the first Phoenix browser (0.1), in the days of Netscape 6.2.2.  So, tonight, I resume my former role as crash tester (AKA alpha/beta tester) for Firefox.  I’m now running version 3.01a (did you know such a version existed?).  We’ll see how it goes.

and BTW you can use the MR Tech Local Install 5.2 plugin to force an extension to pretend its compatible, so I do have webmailcompose again!

So, I decided, before putting it away for a while in the closet (until I find a place to set it up), to try getting a GUI to work on the UltraSparc.  So, what to try?  What to try? The whole idea of compiling source code for days just come up against a barrier did not taste too good.  Reading the 2+inches thick of Sun manuals didn’t taste too good either.  So, I tried once more to do the Debian thing.  After all, it was with Debian that I first got Linux installed on my PC those years ago (thanks for the help and all the cheerleading, Devin).

I chose to do the Netinstall image, which was about 100 megs, as opposed to a whole CD.  i always like doing it this way, as the programs are the freshest this way, and you control what goes on the machine.  Also, if it works, then you know that you got your internet connection up as well.  Bonus.

So, the short story is that this old fellow seems to have a screen resembling one like many others out there now, like Windows machines, and most Linux boxes (used at home).  So, now that I know this can be done, its time to set up the webserver, PHP, MySql, etc and start developing some Wordpress themes on my own machine.  Woo!

For those who want a more detailed rendition of my installation experience, wait for the page to appear in the sidebar (will be annoucing it when its written, as well).  Oh, and in case its not already apparent from my previous announcements like this one, I am writing this post from the Sparc right now.

If you’re like me and you right click a lot on your Windows computer, then you may also dislike scrolling down to “Properties” or whatever and getting stalled on the “Send To” link, as it searches all the places to send your file to. I don’t use this feature at all, so the 10 second “stupid break” just pisses me off. This page has a registry fix that makes the option go away (at least until the next critical update that restores it…). Cheers.

Haven’t been posting much lately, as I’ve been busy reloading my computer after installing a freeware game that borked the entire system.  Thankfully, I dual-boot most of the time with a superior operating system to Windows (sorry, Bill, but your baby didn’t grow up yet) and I could access my files from the other operating system.  Windows wouldn’t even reinstall without a full format, as some nasty .dll file installed by that game was trying to access a part of the hardware wrong, causing a super crash.

At least it gave me something to write about for a minute!