Life to CURDATE();

School's almost done and the whether is cold and blizzardy. Or, at least it was a few nights ago; That's true Canadian weather for you.

I'm currently finished writing all my assignments and have a quiz and presentation left before I am free at long last. All this free time has also meant I've been tinkering around with my computer more often than usual. Take, for instance, yesterday. While no one was around to see it, I basically spent the whole day compiling on my laptop. A lot has happened since my last post and allow me to bring you up to speed.

+ Sold my Alienware machine that I previously had Gentoo on. Sad, I miss the machine, but some hardware or driver hiccups meant that it was constantly freezing. I'm wary that the problems stemmed either from a bad hard drive or the Vista drivers it came with. Perhaps it is also indicitive of some poor Kernel drivers too, I dunno. Doubtful though. One strange issue I had is that after installing Kubuntu 8.10, it would freeze if and only if the power manager was not on performance. Well such is life. Sold it, payed for another month of insurance, and purchased a beautiful Thinkpad T60 for a fraction of the Alienware's cost.

+ T60 Specs: 2.0 GHz Core Duo, 2GB DDR2 Ram, 512 MB x1400 ATI Radeon video (128 MB dedicated), 100GB 5400 rpm hard drive, 1400x1050 resolution, keyboard light, security fingerprint reader, and a decent speaker system. Total Price? $375. It was a deal to be sure, the last one in stock. Looked brand new except for the outer lid which had some scratches on it. This runs really cool, standard at 40 degrees idle to around 50-70 when working, compiling, and of course, running flash videos. It doesn't have amd64 support unfortunately, one thing I miss. But the keyboard on this thing is where it really shines. IBM and keyboards are like bread and butter. Perhaps I'll pick up an IBM Model M in my lifetime. I remember using them way back and enjoying every minute of it.

+ Installed Gentoo on the T60. Overall, things went smoothly on the third install attempt. I have issues with perfection and things weren't up to snuff the first two times. But I'm becoming more comfortable with the Gentoo environment and more prone to try fixing problems as opposed to the 'reinstall when something goes wrong' methodology which I have yet to shake off. I installed KDE 4.3.5 and that ran wonderfully.

+ Compiled a kernel for my T60. I need to enable plug-and-play usb mouse and keyboard support as those don't work yet, as well as the radeon fb compiled into the kernel. Currently it's as a module which doesn't work. However, responsiveness since the upgrade has increased wonderfully; A pre-emptive high low-latency kernel also helps.

+ Installed KDE 4.4 series unstable on Gentoo. Had some issues, will mention them in my next post. Still loved every minute of using this faster, more streamlined system.
+ Preparing my resume for my life as a cubicle slave. Just kidding though. While I have no qualms about being a code monkey/data entry clerk/ tech documentor, it's not something my ambition will sit well with over the years. I am in fact hoping to eventually work with the government on education, but we'll see where that leads me.

+ Excited to work on my own projects and plans, make some money, pay off debts (first priority), and collect more computer toys. While I love having the fastest and greatest/latest electronic toys in my paws, I also have learned to appreciate the stability and endurance of legacy machines. Remember when towers were made of steel? IBM Keyboard Model M's are still known for their quality. Nowadays, we get cheap keyboard crap built into plastic laptops such as the Toshiba A9, with one of the most gimped keyboards I've ever used. I'm still not sure which is worse: a small backspace key, or a small shift key. Both irritate me like a papercut to the eyeball.

And so, now with a moderately set up Gentoo machine with KDE I feel I am ready to start programming full force, starting with basic plasmoids and simple GUI's in QT4. I still hope to work in Java and am very proud of a Binary Search Tree I built last year for my college. Why are people still using ArrayLists and the like?


Check out my next post for KDE-specific notes and a very frustrating error I think I've gained an understanding on.

Windows 7 Versus Vista, an end user's perspective

It has been more than 4 years since last seriously using a Windows environment to do work.
I've never been a Windows expert, but I know enough about computers to do installations and driver updates without too much trouble; A couple years back I installed Windows XP on a laptop using a slipstreamed XP cd (sadly they don't include SATA drivers) so I wasn't expecting much trouble.

Both Windows 7 and Vista are the 32-bit editions, as compatibility seems to be better as such.

On my first install attempt, my current partition setup was like this:

1 Primary Boot Partition (Linux)
1 Primary Root Partition (Linux)
1 Empty NTFS Partition to install Windows on
3 Logical Partitions for Linux mount points.


Now, there is a good reason why forums will suggest installing Windows first, then Linux on top.

The first issues I encountered were:

- Windows cannot install to the desired partition error
- Windows cannot install to an external USB error

I figure it had something to do with the number of primary partitions already set up, in addition to the logical ones. Both Vista and Windows 7 had these issues and would not install on the current configuration; they don't seem to recognize logical partitions at all.

Unsurprisingly, GNU / Linux distributions will install without any hiccup given my partitioning scheme, as I successfully installed Ubuntu 8.10 on top afterwards. But this is irrelevant for this blog topic.


So I eventually caved in and wiped my hard drive of partitions and set up all my primaries using the Windows 7 partitioner. It's installed on the 2nd primary partition and everything worked fine.
My screen resolution is 1920x1200 and I was surprised that it was autodetected and set. Generally drivers are required to get it working. However, that was as good as it got. Not only did Windows 7 feel slower than Vista (based on perception, not on actual benchmarks) as windows started to lag, tasks took longer, etc. As Windows 7 detected the video card, I expected it to detect other components of my laptop. I did not install any drivers on 7, so perhaps the slowness was due to a missing component.
The kicker came when trying to watch videos with speakers plugged into the audio jack. No sound came out through the speakers. Sound kept playing from the laptop as if nothing had been recognized. Plus the sound was quieter than when using Linux or Vista systems.

And so I judged that Windows 7 wasn't ready.

On to Vista:

Like it's newer cousin 7, it would not install when my primary partitions were already in place. I wiped 7 off and began to install Vista on the same partition 7 was previously on.

Everything was the same for installation, except when presented with the desktop, resolution was reduced, blurry, and gross.
As I had the OEM driver install cd with me (a fact that is the reason why Vista was a breeze to install; without it, it would have been exponentially more difficult to work with) and soon had all drivers working.

Now Vista at this point was still working quite slow, as most people have complained about. After using the Windows Update to get all recent updates as well as some optional ones which included optimizations (highly recommended to install for you Vista users), normal desktop usage ran like a breeze.

Warcraft 3, although quite old now, ran extremely fast on full settings. As my laptop is known as a "Gaming Laptop", a moniker I dislike personally, having 512 MB of dedicated video DDR3, it's expected to run fast.

So for the simple task of playing Warcraft 3, Vista is definitely the winner.

Of course, this is purely an end-user perspective. For all the technical jargon and points that could be made (7 is faster, blah blah blah), I prefer Vista.
And the most probable reason for my preference, is the simple fact that Vista has been out longer.
It has had more time for bug reports, updates, and real-world usage. 7 hasn't been out long enough to gain the backing that Vista now has.
And that is one reason why many companies haven't switched yet, for good reason.

Personally, the only real diff I see right now between 7 and Vista is the user interface.
And both pale in comparison to speed I can achieve with linux systems.

XP runs great with 376 MB of ram in a virtual machine with 32MB video. If I need windows apps, I've got that covered.

Lastly, I'd like to give my own personal take on what should have happened after Xp.

Since the UI is so familiar and usable for most people, what Microsoft SHOULD have done, is take the XP interface and completely rebuild Windows in order to use that interface, but with a more secure and functional system and kernel.
Naturally, UI enhancements should be included, users should be given a choice of interfaces to implement. Just like GNU/Linux users can choose Gnome, KDE, fluxbox, Enlightenment just to name a few, and have those look like Mac OS-X, Windows, or just a blank desktop (minimal), Windows too should give users more choice.

For instance, some people in China have taken Ubuntu and made it into an XP clone, pixel for pixel. Link below.

http://www.thevarguy.com/2010/01/05/ubuntu-linux-clone-looks-like-windows-xp/

Is it so hard to make Windows modular so people can build their own Windows system?

Perhaps. At least there is KDE - On - Windows for those that want functionality on their windows desktop.

http://windows.kde.org/


So many opinions, so little time.
I hope this post hasn't exasperated you readers. ( lol as if anyone reads this blog =p )

And for the record, Ubuntu and popular distributions in general install in about 20 minutes. Vista and 7 in about 30 or 40.
Windows still uses a filesystem that's 9+ years old (NTFS) and support for things like FAT, FAT16/32/64.
Honestly guys, make a better filesystem.

Update August 22.2009

Well, summer has been a mix of work, friends / family, and of course: code.
School's starting in a few weeks, so we all know what that means. Less time to work on awesome pet projects. =/

I haven't had as much time to work as I want, but I've definitely made progress. After coming back from three weeks of holidays, it came as a surprise to me when I started to code and document for 6-8 hours every day without any prodding. Being in a very small company... there's still a long way to go. However, I've got command line arguments processing fine, a configuration file and logging mechanism (with console gui for output if desired) working. An accomplishment for someone with so little real-world experience as I.
This is actually the easy stuff; once the base of my libraries are created, I'll start having to learn about graphical manipulation and key controls. Even when the libraries are completed, I have an IDE planned. It should take years to complete, but I think it will benefit the open-source community once finished.

The reason I haven't been letting much out about this project is because
1. I don't think many people care right now (0 comments on all posts, no e-mails, etc.)
2. I'll need to create a portion of this project before I feel it will have any resonance with the community. So I have something to show for my efforts, especially since it's a little ambitious what I'm planning.
3. School is going to greatly reduce the time I have to work on extra projects. For instance, last semester I had an average of 3-4 hours of homework a night, moreso near the end of the year. (Why can't teachers properly balance workloads throughout the year? Oh well, they can't be blamed for every missed deadline or delay.)
4. I like keeping all 0 readers in suspense.

On a more personal note, every day I like Microsoft less and less. Not for no reason either, I've been using their OS and software for over 18 years and only in the past 3-4 have I switched to Linux. (2+ years of NOT having M$ on my computers.)
It seems that they have stopped caring about quality of software, interoperability, performance (Vista anyone?), and most of all: flexability - customizability - integration.
Look at KDE, my desktop environment. I've customized it to suit my needs so I can spend hours coding, listening to music, browsing files on my computer without having to so much as move the mouse an inch. Why can't Microsoft have a KHotKeys application?

On another note, if you're looking for a nice iso / file / squashfs mounting app, I found a nice GUI kde-app you would find useful.
Since I have starcraft / warcraft / etc. games running on my linux pc, some need the cd in order to play. Having them mounted (easily) is a blessing, so newbies please check it out.

http://www.hyperray.net/hyperget/silicon-auto-image-mounter

Back to work, For the Horde, etc.