E17 review

Enlightenment has been quite interesting to me. It has not even got a beta release so far yet I like to use it. That is because, it does things differently. It is very efficient, keeps the CPU far more cooler than any other desktop environment, has nice effects already built-in, and is far snappier than most mainstream desktop environments [I am not interested in comparisions here; so I won't point to any other desktop environment in particular.].

However, there still are some issues [Actually, when you install E17 and read the about dialog, they clearly acknowledge that it is under "heavy development"]. I would like enumerate a few of them here. These are the ones that have concerned me recently while trying to make E17 my regular desktop environment.

#1. emacs bottom-line problem

Well with auto-hide on, the emacs bottom line goes below the screen. Have a look.

I would rather have it as follows:

I have started a thread in their developer mailing list about this. Apparently, the issue isn't a serious one.

#2. no create file option in file manager

Well the file manager is good; but not good enough at this stage. It open C source files in read only mode in emacs, which I don't like. It does not have options to create new files yet.

I hope this will be fixed soon.

#3. keystroke problem

This was a strange problem I noticed recently in E17. Well I guess the best way to put it is through an example. Suppose I am using chromium. I have multiple tabs opened. After some time, all of a sudden Ctrl+L does not respond. I any streamed video has taken focus. If so, I click outside the streaming video frame and try again. However, no response again. I click on the URL bar and press delete or backspace to clear the field and enter the new URL. No response. Well basically, with some apps, suddenly keystrokes do not get passed to the apps [There could be alternate explanations.]. I am clueless with this issue.

4. with streaming videos temp rises very fast

While watching online streaming videos, I have noticed the temperature suddenly shooting up very fast. With temperatures around 40-50, its fine; but when it rises till 60 it becomes alarming. This isn't very serious though as the temp falls down after streaming; though at a much slower speed.

Overall, E17 is nice. It is nice to note that E17 keeps with latest development in software. For now, it is bleeding edge; however I suggest give it a shot before believing anything about it. Its a nice experience.

Native SDK

Recently, I had been looking into image editting on the client side. I figured it can be done on the server side; but impractical. I am certain I shall have to figure out a way of doing it on the client side. Javascript seemed to be the only option and I didn't want to do javascript as it wont be fast. However, when I found about native client sdk, I thought "This is exactly what I needed."

Social Web

Facebook and Twitter were accepted very fast and were milestones of social web. However, the recent discoveries of bugs raised questions on the security assured by these sites. Orkut at least says its a beta application; while facebook takes it a step further. Facebook users have to allow third party applications. Facebook is safe as the user made the choice of disclosing information to third party vendors.

Till that it was fine; but recently a bug was discovered in facebook chat that allowed users to view their friends' chats. Another bug was discovered in twitter that allowed users to have force followers. Now the web is undergoing a paradigm shift. However, these bugs remind us to remember the basics.

Watch this video to have glimpse of the paradigm shift.


Updates: Facebook issues
1. suspicious email guess
2. cross-site scripting
3. public updates are publicly searchable outside facebook
4. openbook [This should be enough evidence.]

Finally, people seem to notice.

Software development and computer science

Its really funny that we [computer science students] are taught computer science and expected to develop software. We should rather be taught software development or expected to work on theory.

However, the complete mismatch between our course and job is the sole root of our predicament. Many hackers have written about it; yet I have not seen any academician paying heed to them. Courses are still designed anti-parallel to the requirements. Tech-schools are meant to teach us a technology; yet the courses are unable to justify there existence.

Some of the best software developers do not even have a computer science degree. Interestingly, they don't need it. Software development is a technologist job. Its more like an art. You may learn all the theory backing an art; but that will never make you an artist. All you will be is an analyst. You have to do it, indulge in the art form to be an artist. Same goes with software development. You may learn all the theory there is to it; but its only by coding that you learn to code.

IPL schedule

IPL matches are mostly scheduled to be at the home ground on one of the two teams involved in the match. [Well the number of occurances are quite high to be ruled out as incidental.] Apart from concerns of fair-play, we also need to note that this is an essential bussiness strategy to gather crowd and increase sales.

Bootchart on Archlinux

After switching to Arch linux, I thought of charting boot time. I found it to be faster than Gentoo and openSUSE.

Distribution change

So far, I have tried various flavours of linux. I have tasted various desktop environments, stability policies, maintainance policies and packaging policies. I have tried KDE 3, KDE 4, GNOME, Enlightenment, XFCE. KDE 3 is undoubtedly "rock solid". GNOME is simple. XFCE is leaner GNOME. KDE 4 has slowed down with semantic desktop. However, much of the work is yet to be done to get back the old KDE feel. Enlightement is fast and stable; however the development is on. I like working in Enlightenment. However, I also have KDE 4.

Coming down to packaging, I have experienced .debs, .rpms and compressed source files. I also have rpm packaging experience. I would say all of them solve different purposes. They define (or may be match) the distro's policies and philosophies. For business oriented distros, rpms are a good choice. However, Debian's package management is also nice. It is a mark of their stability. Compressed source files however are the most flexible ones. Gentoo's packaging clearly reflects its philosophy of flexibility.

I had been running openSUSE for a long time now. Recently, I had decided to go for a change. I wanted to go for a rolling release as I wanted to keep at the edge of technology. Moreover, events like the okular problem inclined me towards rolling release distros.

The first option that came to my mind was Gentoo: its a lovely distro. However, I didn't have time for all the compilation so I thought of trying Arch. Distrowatch said its a lean distro that provides bleeding edge software. I downloaded the netinstall image and started my installation. After multiple Gentoo installs (successful ones), I was ready for it as soon as I had the image copied to my USB stick.

One common problem that I face while installing any distro is that my internet connection is PPPoE and not many people have it so its hard to find help regarding that. To add to it, I don't like to download unnecessary packages or large images. So, I spent some time trying to figure out how to connect during installation. Once that was done, I had a pretty smooth install. Arch linux is a nice experience. However, I miss Gentoo's community support on Arch. #gentoo is far more responsive and friendly than #archlinux. Interestingly, I solved Arch problems while talking at #gentoo.

I had KDE 4 installed on it. Then I moved on to get the latest svn snapshot of Enlightenment and installed it. Both are working fine. Arch's package management is not as flexible as portage in Gentoo. Also, sometimes you need to know your way around. For example, I had installed Ark on KDE; but was not able to unzip any of my .zip files. It was because I had installed zip with it; but not unzip. After installing unzip, its working fine.

Okular problem

Recently, poppler was having a bogus memory allocation bug. It had creeped into okular. Some pdf files were rendered okay; while some others flashed instantaneously and closed. The problem was on both of my systems openSUSE and Gentoo. As soon as poppler fixed the issue, Gentoo was quick at releasing it in stable tree. It was back in February.However, not until a couple of days back was the patch provided by openSUSE. Meanwhile, the inability of accessing my documents was really pissing me off. As my linux experience has evolved, I have gradually drifted away from openSUSE; though I love it as my first distro and still have it on my laptop.

he he ...