Congratulations KDE Team on their Beta 1 announcement! I’ve been a fan of KDE since way back when. I don’t recall what version they were on when I first found them. I’ve tried many Desktop Environments and Window Managers and I always find myself coming back to KDE. It was always a toss up between Fluxbox and KDE for me. I finally ended up staying in KDE for my desktops and using Flux on my servers.

Recently I switched my main desktop back to Windows Vista (pausing for sighs of dismay). Right before KDE 4. Right before the beauty of Plasma. Right before KDE went to the next level! I will definitely be trying it out to see what Plasma is like. I just have to ask, WHY CAN’T WINDOWS LEARN FROM THIS!? I mean, Aero has the ability to do all of this stuff, but they don’t. Hate that.

I miss my Kontact, aKregator, and most of all amaroK! Well, anyway, I just wanted to give my congratulations to the KDE Team! I may not being in KDE anymore, but I still think of it fondly. :) Keep up the good work, guys and gals, and keep showing the world what Open Source projects can do!

Ok, obviously I’ve lost my mind. But, I’ve got two things to report with Windows Vista and Microsoft in general that now allow me to feel a bit better about my move back to the darkside.

1) I was listening to a podcast (Windows Weekly) which was talking about some of the new initiatives Microsoft was making. The key one that caught my ear was their move to opening more of their APIs! Well, that may not be “Open Source”, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction! They are a for-profit company, so I certainly don’t expect them to open their source, but open APIs are a step toward a more conformed marketplace. Conformity is good when it comes to computers. I prefer to use the term “Standards” but it is what it is.

2) Symbolic Links! No shit! There are symlinks in Vista! This has to be the #1 feature that bothered me about Windows ever since I discovered the wonders of Linux. Symlinks are such a useful feature and have been in use in the *nix world for SO freakin long! It really bothered me that Windows did not have this functionality. Especially since it was such a trivial thing to implement! But, now it’s here! I discovered it thanks to a post on the How-To Geek. Here’s the gist! Oh, and you have to run the command window as Administrator.

C:\Users\username> mklink
Creates a symbolic link.
MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target
       /D      Creates a directory symbolic link.  Default is a file
               symbolic link.
       /H      Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
       /J      Creates a Directory Junction.
       Link    specifies the new symbolic link name.
       Target  specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link
               refers to.

I’ve posted this how many times before? So, I will spare the details. The only new revelation is I know why people love Vista. Unfortunately, I also know why people hate it…

So, yeah. Here I am back on the Darkside… Anyone want to start a poll for how long it will take me to get fed up and switch back to Linux? ;)

Well, I missed a couple days there. Mostly due to a massive Linux crash that I had to recover from. Just one of those things where I was tweaking shit, and it created a cascade of seg faults, and I finally gave up and blew the system out. The best thing about Linux still remains its biggest curse. Tons of choice. Unfortunately, this means Linux does a really poor job of protecting you from yourself. :) Mac does a great job at it, and unfortunately really limits the choice you have, and Windows is in the middle ground somewhere I think. Blessing and a curse.

The one saving grace is Linux isn’t cursed with a registry. So, restoring a fresh system is as easy as reloading the files to the / partition, and my /home partition just seamlessly integrates back in. Keeping all my prefs and what not.

So, I’m back, and will be posting again! YAY!

I got bitten by the bling bug again. I listen to podcasts… It’s what I do. I’m a technologist, so many of those (read: most of those) podcasts are technology related. No, they aren’t all Linux related… I like to think I’m quite well rounded with my opinions. Sure, I evangelize Linux, but I can argue the pros to Windows, and the pros to OS X. When it boils down to it, you might as well be arguing Ford, Chevy, and GM… They all allow your average person to drive to work… It’s all preference.

So, I was listening to Windows Weekly on the TWiT network and they were talking about Vista. Specifically they were talking about whiny Windows users who moaned when OS X users got an accelerated GUI and they were still stuck in bitmapped boredom. Then when Windows ditched GDI for Aero, everyone’s moaning about the resource hog that it’s become… Well, all I could thing was, “Damn it! I’m stuck in bitmapped boredom, and I shouldn’t have to take it!” After all, I run Linux, and Linux is all about choice (usually at the sacrifice of ease of use)…

I didn’t like Beryl when I tried it, so this time I gave Compiz-Fusion a shot. As far as I can tell, there were two major projects, Compiz and Beryl, and they’ve “fused” to form Compiz-Fusion? … Don’t you wish sometimes, that you’d see something like that with Qt and GTK?

Anyway, I’m digging it so far. I’ve got my bling back! I did it because I was anticipating my buddy Kevin coming over to do some PHP shit, but he stood me up. :-P Well, at least I have my bling. :)

This is going to be a bit of a tip with some Linux evangelism thrown in. So, I apologize in advance.

So, I tinker a bit with Web Development (see Quanta Plus). Far be it from me to claim to be a professional developer, because I don’t get paid for it, but I like to think I know my shit. Just humor me. Actually, the simplicity of my tip will probably work against the whole “know my shit” thing. So, wait it out and you will be rewarded with my humility.

Lately, all I’ve been doing is playing around with themes on my blog sites. One of the most frustrating things is developing on a production server. So set up a test server, you say! I did, so shut up. So, now I use my test server to test the themes before I copy them to the production sites (and no, the theme for this site isn’t done). Well, that is a huge pain in the ass too! So, laziness being the mother of good code and practice, I came up with a solution. I still develop on my test server, but I’ve created a symbolic link on my production server files. So, when I change the test server files and upload the project, it uploads to the test server. When I want to propagate it to the production server, I just load that project and hit upload. Since the theme portion is a symbolic link to the test server files, it uploads the finished product, and I save about seven clicks by not having to copy it back and forth! SEE!? Simple!

Here comes the Linux evangelism part. What is a symbolic link, you ask? Ahhh, my simple Windows user, a symbolic link is one of the most ingenious creations in computing. Am I right, brothers and sisters in *nixland? My friends on Unix, Linux, and BSD (including OSX) know the joys of the symbolic link.

It’s a very simple idea. Basically a symbolic link is a link in your file system that points somewhere else. Could be a file or a directory. You Windows users might then say, “well, that’s a shortcut, dumbass!”

Oh, simple Windows user, you don’t know the power of the symbolic link! Unlike shortcuts, symlinks are transparent to programs. So, programs read them as their linked counterpart, which is SUPER handy. Sure, you Vista users have Junction Points now, but it really pales in comparison… Come on, Microsoft! Symlinks have been around for YEARS! Get with the program, already!