Wasn’t it just days ago I had a fresh Mandrake install? Yes it was…

Well, it lasted a day or so, until I tried to change the resolution on the monitor. A simple change to XF86Config right? Well, along the way things went very bad. Ok, everything went bad, really, really bad. I probably hosed something in mtab along the way, but the system was dead. So I thought I’d try a re-install. That didn’t seem to work either. Well, the first few times, but finally I got a complete install done, and it just woundn’t boot into Linux from BootX.

Thus ends my experience with Mandrake. For now anyway… If I get ambitions I might actually check to see if the CD’s are good, I have a feeling disc 2 was the problem with the install. Don’t take this as a poo-poo on Mandrake, just my experience.

I hear Fedora Core 2 runs on PPC, but it still seems a little bleeding-edgy. I might try Gentoo now (since I found the CD) or perhaps go back to Yellow Dog, you’ll find out next week!

I’m constantly surprised by the number of people who don’t quite understand how validation works. I don’t claim to be an expert, but as I understand it, you have a set of rules, and if you present something that breaks those rules, then what you have done is not valid.

People constantly posts messages to the www-validator list with the belief that their invalid HTML is somehow correct, and the validator must be wrong. (Some go so far as to suggest the validator be fixed to report their invalid markup as valid!) I can’t complain too much, because these people are most often not well versed in writing valid markup, or understanding what the DOCTYPE they chose actually allows, and they get big credit for attemping to validate their work. (May 2004 seems to have more messages than any previous month so far.)

Still, it often feels like someone keeps telling you 2 + 2 = 5, and every time you explain that it’s a simple matter that 2 + 2 = 4, another person comes along to tell you 2 + 2 = 5.

While it’s true that the W3C MarkUp Validator has it’s limitations (as most validators probably do) chances are it knows HTML better than most people do…

(And please, for the love of all that is good, tell everyone you know how to encode & into & within HTML!)

I found this in a bit of Javascript used by a banking site today:

// Ultimate client-side JavaScript client sniff. Version 3.03
// (C) Netscape Communications 1999-2001.
// Permission granted to reuse and distribute.

Obviously the “Ultimate client-side JavaScript client sniffer” was written 3 or 4 years ago, and still works flawlessly. I bet it handles everything from Safari to Firefox without a hitch!

I finally got Mandrake installed, and it took a while. There are normally two parts of the “taking a while” to deal with. There is the “this doesn’t work I need to find the answer on [search engine of choice] before I can even get the install to start” and there’s the actual install process, which always seems to take some time.

Remember, I’m attempting to install Mandrake Linux 9.1 PPC on a old Beige G3 PowerMac. I suppose we can ditch that “attempting” word, as I got it to work, but not easily…

First, there was the issue of just getting the installer to launch. Mandrake has some simple tools to do this, but they didn’t seem to work. I used BootX, and tried many variations, and finally found this thread on Mandrake 9.1 install problems that fixed things. Giving BootX the proper parameters got things going, below is what I used:

root=/dev/ram3 ramdisk_size=40000
install-text automatic=method:cdrom

Once BootX kicked the install, things went smooth, until I started to get errors installing some things. I’d guess I hit the ‘OK’ button at least 100 times after seeing ‘There was an error installing foo-1.0.1′ (or whatever the exact phrase is. Still the install finish after a few hours (hours?!) and things seemed ok. (I really should check the ISO’s against the md5sum and such when doing these things, as it may have been a bad CD, but the system did eventually get installed.)

Time to login! Hmmm, Mandrake is supposed to be so friendly, why is the menu, which is usually full of apps and such, almost empty? Ahhh, another useful thread on empty menus lead me to run update-menus, and menudrake to fix things.

Success! Mandrake 9.1 on a PowerMac…

But now what? I started using the system, and it seems ok, but certainly doesn’t wow me yet. I was pretty impressed with Fedora after using it, but Mandrake is taking a little time to get comfortable with. I suppose I’ll have to get used to what makes Mandrake, well, Mandrake, as it were.

Who knows? I might ditch Mandrake by next week and install Yellow Dog instead. ;)

I’m running Fedora at home, and though I don’t consider myself a Linux-newbie, I often like to play the role to get a feel for the current status of Linux on the Desktop. So I run up2date because the dock-thingy at the bottom of the screen tells me to, and I click-click-click my way through a bunch of updates, and at the end it tells me that I should really reboot so that the new kernel can be used. Reboot? Isn’t this Linux? I mean, it’s bad enough I often have to reboot Mac OS X because Apple has some system update that requires one, but not Linux too? Sheesh, it’s turning into a Windows world! (Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit…)

On top of that I have an older Mac that I’ve been attempting to install Linux on, and while I did manage to install Debian, I never got a GUI environment, so I burned a Gentoo CD and promptly misplaced it. I then burned some Mandrake CD’s and attempted a number of installs, after all, Mandrake is the easiest to install Linux, right? No success yet… Perhaps I’ve got a bad CD, I don’t know, but what I do know is, sometimes getting Linux on the Desktop is 10 times harder than actually using Linux on the Desktop.

I brought this up before (see Movable License and GPL & Movable Type) but either people didn’t listen because Movable Type was free enough, or perhaps because I’m some sort of crackpot, but in the Movable Type license is this bit:

Term, Termination, and Modification. You may use the Software under this Agreement until either party terminates this Agreement as set forth in this paragraph. Either party may terminate the Agreement at any time, upon written notice to the other party. Upon termination, all licenses granted to you will terminate, and you will immediately uninstall and cease all use of the Software. The Sections entitled "Title," "No Warranty," "Indemnification," "Limitation of Liability," and "General" will survive any termination of this Agreement.
Six Apart may modify the Software and this Agreement with notice to you either in email or by publishing content on the Six Apart Website, including but not limited to charging fees for the Software, changing the functionality or appearance of the Software, and such modification will become binding on you unless you terminate this Agreement.

As everyone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about says, I am not a lawyer, but to me it appears that Six Apart can, at anytime, terminate the license you have, and force you to delete the software. It also seems to say that Six Apart can change the license (”Agreement”) at anytime simply by posting something on the Six Apart web site. This is a wakeup call to people who have said they can do whatever they want with their copy of version 2.x of Movable Type.

So, am I a crackpot, or am I reading this right? I know, they won’t do it, they’re nice people! Right? Sure… I mean, I’m you’re friend, you can trust me. I promise I won’t stab you, but I might. I probably won’t… but you know, I might in the future…

I will once again reiterate. I think Movable Type is a nice piece of software, and Six Apart’s founders Ben and Mena seem like nice people, but the license just doesn’t work for me. That is all. If it works for you, hey, that’s cool, use the software, just know what you are getting into when you agree to something. (Oh, feel free to plug the URL of the current license into the WaybackMachine, you’ll find slightly different versions of the license, but they’re all similar enough, this isn’t something new.

Oh, one more thing, I think this part is new, but don’t let your kids use Movable Type, as the license also states:

The Software is not intended for use by persons under the age of 13 and may not be used anyone under such age.

So if you let your children use Movable Type, you violate the license. Heck, it might even mean that if a 12 year old leaves a comment on your Movable Type-powered site you’ve viloated the license. Who knows?

Are we starting to see the importance of licenses?

So I took some time off, had a rummage sale, upgraded to Panther, and when I come back what happens? Everything has gone all crazy…

Well, ok, everything didn’t go crazy, and really, it’s all about freedom.

See, while I took a look at Movable Type years ago, I decided it wasn’t free enough. I even went so far as to correct anyone who might have claimed MT was “open-source” because it wasn’t. In fact it had a license that was disturbing to me, in that it seemed to indicate Six Apart could terminate it at any point and force you to stop using it. That bothered me enough to not use it. I didn’t want to use it personally, and I couldn’t recommend it to commercial entities, as I thought it was too risky.

People love(d) Movable Type though, and as Mark explains, it’s partly because it was “free enough”. and it was for most people. But not for me, so I didn’t use it. Simple, eh?

Now I hear all sorts of complaints because all sorts of people are upset about the changes Six Apart is implementing for version 3.0 of Movable Type. First of all, I say “Good Luck” to Six Apart, I wish them the best, they seem to be doing what they love to do, create software, and make a living at it. I wouldn’t turn that down if the money was right and it didn’t frustrate the hell out of me. Six Apart seem like decent people, and like a decent company, but no matter who you are or what you do, at some point someone will think you are evil. Google, Blogger, Microsoft, Apple, doesn’t matter - if you do something and people don’t like it, you’re evil. Even if you do nothing you’ll be called evil for stagnating, or not changing the spec, even if it’s not a spec, or something… It’s just the way it goes. So now Six Apart is evil because of their licensing and pricing options. Next month it’ll be someone else who is evil. Maybe it’s because money is evil and any commercial entity has to make money, so they have to make evil. I don’t know…

I tried out WordPress last year, and liked it. It’s similar to Movable Type, but is released under the GPL (yay!) and written in PHP (oh well.) Just kidding, nothing wrong with PHP, I just tend to prefer Perl. So what? I’ll probably still end up using WordPress because it’s a great piece of software, I like the people behind it, and it’s GPL’d, so the future is assured.

Speaking of assuring the future, Dave tells us the Frontier kernel will be released under some open-source license. This is the one thing that could actually get me involved in Frontier again. Freedom? Control? Freedom to do what I might want to do, and not worry about the control of UserLand? Oooh, that’s exciting. I’ll be watching this one, as I’m still not sure what it all means, even after reading all 3 FAQ’s.

So the big question is, do we make a trade off between evil and not evil, between commercial software and systems that can become evil, and open-source software and systems that hopefully cannot become evil, and at what price? I will switch from the slightly-evil Mac OS X to an open-source, future-assured operating system like Linux when I am completely comfortable with using it, and when it does almost everything I need to do almost as good as Mac OS X.

Until then, let the evil continue, in small doses, where appropriate.

When it comes to Linux, I’ve mainly used Red Hat on Intel hardware, and on PPC many attempts were made to install LinuxPPC, and that never worked (well, it was 4 years ago) but I have used Yellow Dog successfully…

As much as I have tried to install Debian on PPC, I’ve never managed to get X11 to work, which is ok for a server, but I want a workstation. So, which distro should I try? penguinppc.org lists some distros, as does LinuxISO.org. I’m tempted to try Mandrake or Gentoo. I would try SuSE if I could find their PPC distro., but the fact I have to hunt around for it makes it last on my list.

If you’ve got any helpful advice on Linux for PPC, please let me know…

The W3C MarkUp Validator has been updated…

Just in time for me to try an install under Panther…

Now, if people actually read the User’s guide and Help & FAQ we could cut down on the number of people asking about ampersands and referers…

I now have notes on installing and configuring FreeTDS on Mac OS X to work with Perl and Microsoft SQL Server 2000… Which, you know, you might have to do if you’re a Perl hacker using Mac OS X in a shop with Windows guys and SQL servers…

See: FreeTDS Notes

I think I’ve finally made the switch to Firefox at the office. I had been using good old Mozilla forever, but since I installed a new machine, figured it might be time to switch. I’ve been using Firefox on Windows, and my old Wallstreet for a long time (and now on Fedora too!)

Firefox is definitely a polished app. As someone who has been using Mozilla forever, you can see how avoiding bloat and being restrictive to what goes into the browser has paid off. The result is not a crippled piece of software, but an elegantly crafted browser that is ideal for most web users. With the addition of extensions, Firefox can pretty much be made to do what you want it to do, so everyone should be happy. (Except Microsoft and the IE folks…)

I think other open-source projects could learn a lot from studying Firefox and Mozilla. One of the things I tend to look for in an application is a good plugin/extension system. jEdit has a really nice plugin system, as well as a good plugin manager, which is one of the reasons I really like it, and like Firefox, it provides a solid core as the basic text editor, and through the use of plugins can be extended to fit the need of the individual user.

I’ve also installed Thunderbird 0.6 and wow! It looks incredible on Mac OS X, and functions just as well. I think the Mozilla products are really starting to grow up.

Of course all of the Firefox/Thunderbird/Mozilla success took years to accomplish, and I have to give great credit to the people who thought far enough ahead to build a platform upon which to build applications, rather than just building applications… Yay…

This has been a terrible time for Mac-related thingies… While on the upside I did get a new G5 at the office, (initial observation: it’s extremely big, and extremely fast!) I’ve been otherwise plagued with stupid ditto mistakes, possibly failing NIC’s, Firefox and Mozilla repeatedly quitting and those damn kernel panics…It’s enough to make me switch to Linux!

Well, it’s not that bad… ;)

Oh sure! You all laughed when The King of Pointland washed and dried his USB thumb drive. I know I did…

Of course yesterday I was looking for mine and thought perhaps I left it at the office, or misplaced it somewhere else, and eventually discovered that I too ran mine through the washing machine. (I skipped the dryer though!)

And yes, my data was all still there…

I got a new Linux box a month or so ago. By “new” I of course mean a machine built out of scavenged parts hobbled together… Still, it’s new to me!

It’s an actual desktop machine, being the first Linux box I’ve owned that could run XWindows without just crawling like a snail. So onwards with the adventures of Desktop Linux!

I’m using Fedora Core 1, which I’m finding to be pretty nice. While looking through the menu at installed apps, I found one named ‘Scanning’ which is really XSane. Since I’ve got USB ports, I figured I test my old Umax scanner, and lo and behold, it sort of worked! I got line art to scan ok, but not photos. This is good, as I have to send faxes out once a month, and always hated using the buggy old Vistascan software under Mac OS 9 to do this… I’ll probably play around with it some more and see if I can get photos to work as well. Score 1 for Desktop Linux. (As long as we’re on the subject of old hardware, my next experiment will probably be with the old Palm III I’ve never got to work in Mac OS X.)

I’m finding it all quite exciting. I now have Mac OS X and Fedora right at my fingertips, with just a KVM switch to choose which I want to use…