…just another hippy blog

Coffee … break !
Originally uploaded by Christiane Michaud.

Sorry folks, I was lying. This post is not about wynona. I’m really really sorry.
I have spent the whole day trying to build an apache module using Qt and qmake so I have to blog about my success.

I know, the guys at apache (btw. I’m really impressed by their work) advise against writing C++ modules or linking shared libraries, but I’ll have to do that for a project I’m working on at Clickout Ltd. so we’ll have to discuss those issues some day.

Nevertheless, the traditional mod_helloworld buit with no hassle on windows but there was no way to make it work on Linux/GCC so I had quite some fun figuring out the issue. So, here is a quick tutorial
Read more

OMG I just realized I have a weird and terrifying creature in my KUbuntu KDE 3.5.8. One thing I do appreciate in KDE (and, generally speaking, Linux) applications is consistent UI elements and few people trying to reinvent the wheel who usually end up creating painful and horrible usability enemies.

But this makes my neckskin crawl. Who the hell put a slider and a push button in my KDE menu?!?







Edit: I don’t need to add that the push button label will actually change to the opacity value as soon as you move the slider, ensuring that only a lobotomized squirrel could understand that pressing it will reset the opacity to 100%.

Born In The USA
Originally uploaded by hippy.dream.

I have finally managed to install the latest OpenSuSe distro on my laptop. KDE is evolving quite fast and I think that SuSe is one of the most user friendly distros right now.

I was going to update my desktop with the latest SuSe too.. but I had my usual bunch of problems. First the installer wouldn’t even load. I supposed there was some problem with my bios, so I had to check that too. A bios update solved my problem.

Read more

“WALTHAM, Mass.-02 Nov 2006-Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. today announced a set of broad business and technical collaboration agreements to build, market and support a series of new solutions to make Novell and Microsoft® products work better together. The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other’s customers with patent coverage for their respective products. These agreements will be in place until at least 2012. Under this new model, customers will realize unprecedented choice and flexibility through improved interoperability and manageability between Windows® and Linux.” (source: Novell Press Release)

This is some interesting news (yes, it’s no news any more, but I had no time to comment it earlier) - though I am not surprised about it. Reading the “Joint letter to the Open Source Community” on the Novell website, there are a few interesting points in the agreement:

1. Novell and Microsoft are releasing each company from the other’s patent portfolio. This means Microsoft won’t sue Novell for patent infringements and Novell won’t sue Microsoft.
2. Virtualization. The companies will collaborate to allow Microsoft being virtualised on Linux and vice versa. Note: Microsoft and Novell are already collaborating on the Xen project along with other top-level companies Intel, RedHat and AMD.
3. Office Open XML. Novell will be writing the code to allow OpenOffice to access the new Microsoft Office XML file format.
4. “Under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice as well as .NET and Windows Server.”

A recent post published on ZDNet by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, “The world just isn’t ready for Linux”, has cought my attention.

The author states that there are “areas Linux could improve on in order to transform itself from an operating system into a desktop platform”: gaming, software support, stop assuming that everyone using Linux (or who wants to use Linux) is a Linux expert, hardware support.
Let me point the spotlight to the words “Linux could improve” and express my personal opinion.
Read more