I didn’t realise how many people would actually want to look at the Jacman source. As it turns out since I released v0.4 I hadn’t made the source available (through sheer laziness). I’ve had quite a few emails and PMs and so I have finally put an end to this omission this morning.
The source is now available via the Jacman Project page.
It’s been a while but the latest version of Jacman was finally rolled out today. Functionality wise, there’s not more to report on - I’ve added some filters to the Install dialog which should be helpful for those who simply like to browse around the package repos. The application basically received a bit of a face-lift. A new look and feel looks a lot fresher in my opinion. The eye candy has also been boosted, but it’s not easy to spot unless you are using Jacman itself (try hovering over a button. Nice, eh?!)
Give it a whirl and see what you think. Also, I’ll never say no to any Java developers who wish to help out and become part of the Jacman team 
I don’t use Linux 100% any more like I used to, which is a shame. It’s largely because I do a lot of work from home and it I need to be in Windows. And when I have booted in to Arch Linux, I tend not to pacman -Syu very often - I don’t know why, I guess it’s a it ain’t broken thing. Anyway, upgraded yesterday and I had 200Mb of stuff waiting to be upgraded, including Firefox 2. I’ve been using FF2 since it was released on Windows and I was happy to see it has graduated out of testing in AL. However, I forgotten about all the fuss about FF branding, and now AL has ‘Bon Echo’ instead.
A few things struck me:
I dare say that no-one else cares about the first two points - and fair enough. However, point three is something that slightly grated. It’s only a name, for god’s sake! Within 5 mins of launching FF2 (or BE2) on AL I was on YouTube, and whilst it seemed to work ok, I was constantly distracted with a little message about an unknown user-agent. It made me think about the fact that there are many websites looking out for that user-agent string for reasons other than browser stats.
As annoying as it is, browsers are not 100% compatible and so web devs have worked hard to try and ensure their site works great on the main browsers. Web devs know about Firefox. “WTF is Bon Echo”, I imagine they are saying.
It didn’t take me long to dive into about:config and change the user-agent back to what it should be. In hindsight, perhaps I should have left it to see if there were any possible side-effects: does gmail work properly? What about Hotmail? Meebo? And so on. So now I will need to change this manually each time pacman upgrades FF/BE, right? Bugger that, I think I’ll just download the official binary and have done with it.
Some computer users, even technically savvy ones, some times get confused about how hard disk performance is affected by the data it holds. Let me clarify: the more data you store on the hard drive, the slower it gets. It’s obvious when you think about it - each of those bytes of data adds extra weight on the disk platters which means it takes longer to spin-up and spin-down.
So, you may have thought that all those techies who keep going on about “bloat” were a crazy, but now you can see it makes total sense. Disk I/O is the biggest bottle-neck in most workstations and so reducing that is paramount. Don’t be fooled, software package size is the key factor in application performance, it’s nothing to do with poorly written algorithms, for example.
As we know, KDE is a poor performer because it comes bundled with lots of additional applications. Even though these applications are not loaded until requested, the sheer presence of them, as discussed earlier, will weigh down the hard drive. Functionality and ergonomics are not “real” metrics! Saving those micro-seconds is what keeps the world spinning around.
Continuing this, remember not to use a “bloated” OS, like Ubuntu or Arch Linux, as these OSes can occupy hundreds and hundreds of megabytes of disk space. Use muLinux or if you don’t mind the performance hit, Damn Small Linux. Don’t worry if you don’t have access to software that you want or are used to, at least the alternatives you get in these small Linux distros are also lightwight, and that’s all that matters.
Blimey, long time, no post. Moved house recently and so it took up lots of time and had all the hassle of getting my broadband connection up-and-running once again. Anyway…
For many years now, Kmail has been my favourite email client. Recently, I’ve been using Windows more than I normally do (for a bit of win32 programming) and so I installed Thunderbird. It’s pretty darn good and has improved a lot since I last used it. However, for me at least, it highlighted three small details that keep me hooked on kmail.
To be honest, I think Kmail is not always given due credit. It’s extremely well featured, responsive, robust and has plenty of nice touches. And if you want the extra groupware functionality, Kmail is properly integrated to Kontact (KDE’s Outlook/Evolution equiv).
Woo hoo! ‘About time’, I hear you cry! Or maybe not. Anyway, Jacman v0.3 is here. You’ll find:
Special thanks to the Jacman team for their contributions (including the translators).
More info can be found on the Jacman Project page. (See the Readme.txt too.)
Jacman is one of my favourite projects. I had a lot of motivation to work on it when I conceived the idea. Plus, it seemed to get a good reception for its v0.1 release. However, development had pretty much ceased. This was largely due to my relocation and new job. Plus, Jon-Anders (Sonix) has a busy workload with his studies. That said, possibly the largest factor was because my motivation had faded due to underwhelming reviews.
You see, I wrote Jacman for others. I used to see many calls in the forums for GUI front-ends. I wasn’t bothered myself - I’m fine with the command line. Yet, it seemed like a cool project and I went for it. The problem is, any negative comments about Jacman is rarely about the program itself - but simply about my choice of language. Perhaps I should have known better than to use non-Free software on an otherwise Free platform. Oh, and of course, “Java is slow”. My point is that I can never seem to have a discussion about Jacman - it always goes off on a tangent about the language! Anyone who saw the Jacman thread on the forums this week will have witnessed this.
Anyway, I’ve decided not to let Jacman fade away. I’ve been dipping into the code most nights this week - just adding a few lines here and there. Hopefully the code for the next release will be stable by this time next week, after which I’ll send out a call for translators. For the releases after that, I’ve had some great ideas on how to make the user experience even better, but I’ll keep that to myself for now. Basically, my approach now is to avoid language debates and just let the program speak for itself. I still belive that of all the pacman front-ends in development, it’s functionally ahead, but I would say that, wouldn’t I?! Fortunately, Jon-Anders and I have plenty of ideas on where to take Jacman in the future to improve it in terms of functionality and usablility.
So a minor release for AL has finally come out (Nipple or something). It’s good to see AL still marching on. Things have felt slightly sluggish recently with all the libslay stuff. I mean that with no disrespect to those working in the background - I know lots of people have been working really hard. Now that it’s out of the way we can continue to look forward to other improvements like an updated installer and libpacman to name but two.
It made me think though about my time with Arch over the past 8 1/2 months. It surprises me that I’m still using a distro for this long. It’s not all been plain sailing either - I seem to have regular problems with my Centrino wireless after the occasional pacman -Syu. I’d have normally switched by now to see what else is happening with other distros. However, I’m feeling strangely loyal and have stuck with AL even when I sometimes hungered for a simpler life.
I therefore thought it a good idea to write a follow-up to my previous Arch-related article, A Week in the Life of an Arch Linux Newbie. I thought I’d write about all the cool things AL has been upto over the past 8 months. Such an article may also quell some the complaining in the forums about our Distrowatch position - a bit of publicity to let the Linux-world know that AL is getting on with business; head down, just working
Woo hoo!
I’m so out of the Arch Linux loop at the moment. My broadband still isn’t working. I’ve canceled my account with my previous ISP (Wanadoo) for being utterly useless (i.e., taking a month to not transfer my broadband to my new address). My new ISP (BT) has promised connection for next Thursday, which isn’t bad. So, until then, I’m still on rubbish dial-up.
Anyway, tonight I realised that Jacman had made it community which is great! Thanks all for voting and for providing feedback. Not having broadband has in fact been hindering progress for the next version significantly. I haven’t been syncing with the CVS server so I can’t see what Sonix has been upto, and vice-versa. I had made a couple of significant improvements a while back, namely multi-language support and a proper preferences dialog for configuring Jacman’s options. Sonix was playing with some other features which I won’t give away just yet. Unfortunately, there’s still no news from the AUR guys regarding a sensible way for accessing the AUR database. (C’mon guys - please! Pretty please!
Basically, this time next week I’d like to release the next version. I don’t want people to think that we’ve given up working on it because that’s far from the truth. There’s still plenty of potential for it improve and add useful functionality. It’s just the circumstances of new job; new life and no broadband that’s causing some delays.