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badcomputer.org

friday, august 11, 2006

Darren the blogger...

Well, this blog of mine is now syndicated thanks to Steve Dibb (beandog) over at larrythecow.org, which is an aggregate of Gentoo users' blogs. I realize I don't talk that much about Gentoo here, but perhaps this will give me a reason to talk more about my favorite OS. In any event, this makes me want to talk a little about how my blog came to be.

I came late to the whole blogging scene (not that I am a part of any 'scene' now...), as most I visited seemed like vapid wastelands of some random stranger's day-to-day tedium, and I didn't want to be a part of that. However, as of about three years ago when I moved to badcomputer.org I always had a 'journal' sort of deal going on on the front page of my site. I was not using any special software, it was all just manual static pages. After a while I decided to roll my own quick-and-dirty comments code so people could leave a note if the spirit took them. The comments are stored in my DB, but the journal entries themselves are still just static pages. If the front page was getting too crowded I just excised the bottom half to an archive page manually. Not very hacker-like, I know, but I updated so infrequently it was never a practical problem.

Well, inspired by my desire to get this load of crud syndicated, I spent a few moments yesterday reorganizing my blog posts so each would have a permanent home on its own page (much like canned blog software), thus making it possible to create an RSS feed. So, now we have Darren's blog Mark III. It is still mostly a manual affair here, but when I get the time I will write some code to automatically parse my latest three entries, and post them to the main page of my site. I will also have to write a script to create the feed itself.

...and Gentoo

So lets talk Gentoo. I have seven computers, and five of them run Gentoo. One is a PowerMac G5 which runs OS X, and the last is running Arch Linux. Let me say here: when I first started with Linux all those years ago I installed Redhat 7.3 on my Mom's old box. I won a Redhat 8.0 box set from linuxquestions.org so I installed that too, but by then I was already wanting to try something new. So, I installed Arch when I got my own computer. I was very happy with Arch, as it was more hands-on and flexible than Redhat. After a long monogamous relationship with Arch, I ended up having an affair with Gentoo, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Or is it?

You see that first desktop of mine, I still have it. It's still running, and it is still running Arch. It is not my main desktop anymore, as I have designated this box to be my media server, and occasional spare workstation for visitors. I am seriously starting to consider dumping Arch and throwing Gentoo on there though. Why? Well, it seems to me in the last year or so, Arch (which is known for being bleeding edge) has become so bleeding edge that I am constantly drowning in blood. It's a server right? So I want it to just sit under a desk and serve my oggs to me. I am always forgetting to do a "pacman -Syu" so when I do remember it wants to update _everything_ and invariably this ends up borking my system in some way. It seems Arch has become too ridgid in the past little while. Case in point, a few updates ago after updating there is a message printed to the screen which tells me that I must either upgrade to vanilla 2.6.16 kernel or use Arch's canned kernel in order to support some esoteric udev feature else my box won't reboot. To a hardcore Gentoo-head, this was basically equivelent to slapping me in the face. Who the hell are you to tell me what kernel to use?

So: Sadly I think that very soon now I am going to have to put this Arch out to pasture and install good old Gentoo on the box. And why not? After being granted so much control over your box it is hard to put up with anything other than total freedom, and that is what Gentoo gives me. So if I haven't said it enough in the last little while, thanks Gentoo devs, we all appreciate the hard thankless work you all do to ensure we continue to have this freedom.

And Arch: Thanks for the great times, we had our moments, but I'm afraid I need to be with someone more in tune to my interests. *kisses*

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