I received an email saying that epilicious didn’t work very well in epiphany 1.9.x. Since Debian isn’t packaging pre-releases of GNOME 2.14 I decided to try to get Ubuntu Dapper installed in a qemu image. I tried using the age-tested method of installing a stable version first (Breezy), and then upgrading to the unstable, not-yet-released version (Dapper).
It literally took hours to get Breezy installed. A small change of /etc/apt/sources.list later I was ready to move on to Dapper. More than 500 packages were needed to be downloaded for the upgrade. During the upgrade there was a conflict due to a file that had been moved from one package to another. There seemed to be no easy way out of the situation as the proposed solution (apt-get -f install) would remove the kernel itself. I gave up and I’ll be looking elsewhere to find a way to check out the GNOME pre-releases.
I’ve never had any problems at all taking a Debian system from stable to unstable. It has required a few steps sometimes, but I’ve always been able to rely on the packaging tools to take me from point A to point B. This really goes to show that Ubuntu, despite it’s origins, isn’t Debian.
I’m gaining more and more confidence that my decision to move back to Debian was the correct decision.
A few days ago I realised I totally missed GTalk going federated. After a bit of searching it turns out Google runs a server on port 80, so all people behind firewalls are in luck. I first tried port 443, hoping for secure communications. That didn’t work, but it turns out the Jabber protocol is better than I thought, it switches over to TLS after a brief “capability negotiation” when first connecting to a server. Great!
Next I started switching over all my contacts to my GTalk account. The Jabber roster utility was very helpful in getting all the contact details. Federation is such a brilliant idea!
The United Nations has recommended its members use open source software, particularly in areas related to health, education and international commerce, UN inspector Dominique Ouredrago said during a speech at the II international open source conference in Spain.
Well, I’m not sure it’s good enough. I’m not convinced the difference between open source and free software is understood within the UN. What they should recommend is use of free software.
Second, until there is unambiguous patenting laws prohibiting patents on software in the major markets in the world there is a threat looming over open source and free software. Will the UN address this issue as well?
The broadband connection came with a ADSL modem/router. Two problems with it, it could only handle one connected device, and it wasn’t a wireless router. A trip to PCWorld later we now have a ADSL modem/wireless router with four physical ports. Dita picked up a wireless card and is enjoying it as I’m writing this. I looked at a wireless PCI card as well, but since no-one at PCWorld could tell me exactly what chipset the cards had I didn’t bother buying anything. I can wait a few days until it arrives from LinuxEmporium.
Life is back to normal after having taking an almost year-long break. I really ddn’t think that moving to England would mean stepping back in time, but it did. Finally BT has managed to bring us back to the correct decade. We now have broadband!
A big thanks to Merula who managed to get us connected in only 5 days. A big two-fingered salute to Demon who didn’t want to engage with BT to get us connected, if it weren’t for them we would probably have had a fast connection already a few weeks ago!
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