Colin Charles Agenda

I figured it was time to redesign, what was essentially 2004, on bytebot.net. Its 2007, so with the power of “badges”, I’ve made the site feel a lot more updated. I’m feeding photos from my Flickr account, last played music via last.fm (I’m not really big on their widget, but I’m trying hard to not have to parse rss myself), bookmarking via del.icio.us (with comments, so its also occasionally blog-like), and micro-blogging via Twitter.

The fact that I can still do all this entirely in HTML (with great help from JavaScript and some help from CSS), still amazes me - who needs PHP! For constantly static text, Apache does server side includes, something I’ll be using in due time, when I fix/template all the local content. I have to update the talks page (so many Impress files sitting all around).

Anyways, if you’ve got a Twitter account, I’m bytebot there. Who else is twittering?

Yes, in the real world, we all have to run applications that are not provided via the excellent universe of Debian software packages. Some of these, even have to be binaries that you download via the Internet.

But with stupid error messages like these:

[-(~/Downloads/skype-1.4.0.58_alpha)> ./skype bash: ./skype: No such file or directory

It sure makes one wonder, doesn’t it? Thats right, this is 64-bit Ubuntu trying to run a 32-bit application. In fact, these failures will apply to upstream Thunderbird (because in Ubuntu’s infinite wisdom, its stuck at Thunderbird 1.5), GizmoProject and so on. On Fedora, multi-arch is handled a lot better - RPM actually brings in useful 32-bit libraries, and you can run upstream Skype, Gizmo, Thunderbird, with no worries. Its all transparent.

I just wish there was better error reporting. So I don’t have to fire up strace (I sure as heck don’t expect my mother do to so) to see what the real problem is.

Note to Debian-based-distros (Ubuntu in particular): You’re a big boy now. Dell is going to ship you. Most likely on Core 2 Duo machines. People are not going to want to run 32-bit Ubuntu on them, because they bought an advertised 64-bit processor. Laptops (mine even) support 4GB of RAM out of the box (yeah, except 2GB chips cost an arm and a leg).

I’m told that a 32-bit chroot is what I need to set up to make my life better again. Is that so?

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, multi-arch, multiarch, 32bit, 64bit, binaries, dpkg, chroot

It is great to see that Palm is now embracing Linux. I however think that embracing Linux to be relevant again seems like a rather daft idea.

Palm made great products. As someone that had a PDA when it was cool to own one (early 1998, Palm III), I have to say that counting the taps you needed to make to get to an application was what was significant then. Usability was a key focus. Grafitti was something that required learning, but once the hang of it was gotten, it was easy. The idea that you could beam contacts, memos, calendar entries and even software, was simply fabulous. In the early days, I’ll admit to even using the occasional “payware” for free, thanks to this wonderful beaming technology.

I matured after a while, and realized that carrying a cell phone, wallet, keys, coins, and a PDA just didn’t make so much sense. This must have been the stage when I moved from cargo pants, to Dockers Mobile Pants, to just regular pants, when you don’t have all the fancy pockets. I had several Palm PDAs, even a Handera 330, then most recently the Tungsten C.

What worked? Its simplicity. What didn’t work? The ridiculous cost of shareware. A cost you never recouped when upgrading, or even stopped using the piece of software. Horrendous syncing technology, even on the Microsoft Windows platform (double contacts, deleted memos, and the like would happen from time to time).

Over the years, the expandability was good. The Handera meant I had CF and a SD slot, the Tungsten C gave me WiFi, and in the future, it looks like Palm will be releasing an OS that has Linux underneath it.

Will they go all the way into making it into a product that users actually want to use? Or are they hoping that developers fill in the gaps, ala what Nokia is doing with the Maemo platform and the N770/N800. Will people start expecting that because the base is Linux, all software on the Palm will have to be free? Remember though, the operating system under it never mattered - it was always the usability and ease of use.

Technorati Tags: palm, linux, nokia, maemo, pants, usability, handhelds