Topics that tailor more specifically to a Debian audience; this category mainly serves to populate the feed to Planet Debian.
Having spent the better part of two days provisioning my new MacBook Pro’s OS X, Debian, and Windows XP instances, I am keenly aware of how much the Debian distribution’s package management system and its volume of packages have spoiled me. In that two days,… Read More »The missing ingredient in commercial desktop OS options; a package management system
An updated java-package will hit unstable in the next mirror pulse. Apologies to all for the delay; my discretionary time and that of my sponsors has been rather sparse for some time now. There are at least 9 bug reports addressed in the release. All… Read More »The long-overdue release of java-package 0.28
I recently had to provision a laptop at my client’s site for my use. Certain third-party applications that are key to managing the technology practice there are Windows-only, but I (am fortunately allowed to) refuse to have a Windows-only machine. They are cool enough to… Read More »Debian Graphical Installer — excellent work, guys
So it’s finally OK to mention it now; Java has made it explicitly possible (read legal) to distribute the Sun Java JRE/JDK on a GNU/Linux distrubtion. The new license is for Java SE 5 on Linux only, called the Operating System Distribution License for Java,… Read More »A bit chilly in a hot place; a distributable Java JRE and JDK arrives
Despite having been sick and having my wife and child get sick as well, I got caught up on some Debian work that’s been on hold for almost six months. The last part of my Philosophy & Procedures phase 1 went out last night (well,… Read More »A successful round of catch-up
I recently started syndicating the IT Conversations RSS thread on my site and saw that an mp3 of Bruce Sterling speaking at O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference was available. It’s an interesting listen; if you’re a cyberpunk fan at all, then it’s even more interesting.
Just finished a slightly overdue book review of Head First Ajax for O’Reilly, and now off for 4 hours sleep. Everything takes me longer now that my daughter is here, but it’s certainly worth it. The next thing in my queue is the long-overdue update… Read More »Getting caught up
Version 0.27 of java-package has hit the unstable archive today. Thanks to the encouraging (or maybe urging) 😉 of my colleagues in the Debian Java™ Packaging Project who still primarily run on PowerPC, support for the IBM Java2 5.0 JREs and SDKs (currently in beta)… Read More »java-package 0.27 released; IBM Java2 5.0 support added
I had so many plans for this weekend, but the first of them ate the entire two days. In working on the next release of java-package, I came across some serious issues with alternatives creation that had crept in under my watch when I first… Read More »Defraying technical debt in java-package
I recently had my Debian menu in GNOME disappear for reasons I could not explain. Since this is where the launcher for many of the applications one installs are typically housed, it was quite the inconvenience. I posted to the debian-user mailing list, and asked around on IRC in #debian and #debian-devel, but the most I ever received was a suggestion to run 'update-menus' from a command line. Having done that within the first 30 minutes of the issue’s appearance to no avail, I resigned myself to making do without the menu for the time being.