I upgraded my server from OpenBSD 4.3 to 4.4 a week or two ago and it was simple, quick, and painless. I really enjoy using OpenBSD on the server, and have spent a fair amount of time with it on the desktop as well. With recent additions of WPA, DRI for Intel and ATI chipsets using free drivers, and other enhancements, there is really nothing I cannot do on OpenBSD that I could do on other *nix operating systems. For those that need java, there are now java packages available in -current. About the only thing missing is Flash, but to me that is not a negative since I have absolutely no use for Flash. If I want to watch a YouTube video, I just download it using any one of the many scripts or Firefox extensions and then watch it in mplayer or VLC. In any event, that one negative is far outweighed by the positives of using a completely free operating system that is arguably one of the most secure. If you have not spent time with OpenBSD, I highly recommend checking it out.
Ever since I got my Acer Aspire One a few months ago, I have stuck with the default Linpus Linux operating system, since it worked fine and allowed me to do the three things I most commonly do on this netbook: surf the web, check email, and use a terminal. However, the tinkerer in me has been itching to try some other operating systems on this machine and so I've done just that.
After experimenting with OpenBSD on the Aspire One (which worked very well indeed) I now have a (mostly) working Debian Lenny install. For the most part, I followed the instructions on the Debian wiki with a few minor modifications. I basically did a minimal Debian install and built it up from there to where it now runs Xfce with a few extra applications. I will post more details soon, with some explanations of the additional tweaks I had to do to get things working pretty well. In the end, the Acer Aspire One is one great netbook, very hackable with a very active community at the AspireOneUser.com website. There are excellent forums, howto's, modifications, and hacks for the Aspire One at that site.
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I just voted at a polling location around the corner from my office -- early voting rocks. I was in and out in 10 minutes, although other polling locations around town are seeing pretty sizable lines. It is great to see so many more people voting this year here in North Carolina, where turnout seems to be surging. Nationwide, it looks like there is a good chance this year's vote may exceed the 64% turnout in the 1960 election between Nixon and Kennedy, which is the record during modern American history.
So, I finally got my blog back up and running again after taking a year-long hiatus. I must admit, part of what got me motivated to get the blog rolling again was the cool LinuxPlanet blogs site organized by Dave Yates and Linc Fessenden. Great idea, guys and Linc, thanks for adding in my blog, cobwebs and all. Hiya, LinuxPlanet. :-)
Anyway, it's been a busy year, to say the least, and I have a lot of catching up to do:
North Carolina's 'One-Stop Voting' started up October 16, 2008 and runs through November 1, 2008. More information is available on the North Carolina State Board of Elections website. I am definitely going to take advantage of this early voting to avoid the long lines on Election Day. It looks like voter turnout will be pretty strong this year, especially since North Carolina has become such a battleground state in this year's election.
Two entirely unrelated things:
I had switched from using Gmail for my domain to an account with Tuffmail but I may now consider moving back to Gmail. Tuffmail offers a great service with many cool email features, but it is nice being able to fall back to the Gmail web interface if necessary.
It looks like the audio from my ~45 minute interview with the North East Ohio Open Source Society might be available soon. That would be cool. I thought the NOOSS guys did a great job with the interview and it was a lot of fun. I rambled on about Linux, BSD, programming, and all sorts of fun things.
I received an "official invitation" to attend the KDE 4.0 Release Event at Google from January 17-19, 2008. I bet this will be a really great event and I would love to go. Hmmm... San Francisco in January? I bet the wife would enjoy it as well. We'll have to see what can be worked out. :-)
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Over the past few months, I have begun learning the ins and outs of Debian packaging, and have started adopting a few orphaned Debian packages. One of these packages, openbox-themes (1.0.2), was just accepted into the Unstable archive, where it will eventually propogate down to Testing. There is one other orphaned package that I have adopted and am working on, and am considering adopting a third. I met a couple of Debian developers at Ohio Linux Fest, and they said they would sign my GPG key, which is a good thing to have when maintaining Debian packages. Anyway, whether it's working on Debian packages, FreeBSD documentation or ports, or Slackware Slackbuild scripts, I have discovered that I really like working with operating system projects on software packaging and the like.
I am going to post another entry shortly with some good resources on Debian packaging.
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I'm sitting in the Columbus airport (gotta live free airport-wide wifi) and thinking back to what a great weekend this was. The speakers were excellent. I particularly enjoyed maddog's presentation -- he's extremely inspiring -- as well as the presentation put on by the two GNOME developers on GNOME 2.20 that stepped when Warren Woodford of MEPIS was unable to attend. Additionally, the talk given by Debian Developer Roberto Sanchez on Debian packaging was very timely as well, since I have recently starting working on some Debian packages.
I also did a live broadcast interview with the folks from the Northeast Ohio Open Source Society. Excellent questions from people attending live as well as via IRC made it great fun.
The Google afterparty was a good time, and it was a pleasure once again seeing and hanging out with my fellow Linux podcasters and the many Linux Reality listeners who were extremely gracious and flattering in telling me how much they enjoy the podcast.
Now, I just have to wait for my flights and get home. :-)
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I arrived in Columbus, OH about 4pm and just a couple of hours later, met up with a bunch of folks at the pre-party at Barley's Ale House, including Dann, Linc, Pat, and Alan of The Linux Link Tech Show, Dave Yates of the Lotta Linux Links podcast, Jeremy Garcia from Linuxquestions.org, Drew Curtis from Fark.com, John "maddog" Hall, lots of fellow TriLUG members, including Tanner Lovelace, Matt Frye and Mark Hinkle, and tons of great Linux Reality listeners. It was a fantastic time, and I am really looking forward to the talks tomorrow.
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