Slackware 13.1 is Near

The official announcement is not yet ready, but i'm sure that Slackware 13.1 is very close to final release as the RC 1 has been released and it's pretty stable here. I have been following -Current development all this years since i started using Slackware back in 2005 and i don't have any major problems with -Current. Basically, all my needs are fulfilled and i have an outstanding stable system on my desktop, laptop, and also workstation at my office.

As the RC 1 announcement, the base toolchain is now freezed and i believe within few batch of updates, it will soon become a final release and i'm expecting to be released by the end of this month or probably early June

This will be the first Slackware release that includes KDE 4.4.x in history of Slackware's long development

Finding Best File System

Typically, a file system is unique to the operating system, but in Linux, we have a lot of choices. Which one should we use and which one should be avoided? There are a lot of references where you can find information about each file systems, but here's one website which you can use to find the best file systems for your own machine. I hope this one suits you well

Fedora 13 Slipped Again

For the second time, Fedora 13 release schedule will be postponed for about one week due to unresolved showstopper bugs on their bug tracker. The official announcement was made by Paul W. Frields. The record of the Go/No-Go meeting can be found here.

I think it's better to have this release schedule in order to get the best user experience when using Linux rather than forcing them to do unusual things, just like what Ubuntu developers did with 10.04 LTS due to last-minute bug. More over, it's LTS version which should be more stable since it will be used by many users around the world due to long term support.

That's why Slackware never set a fixed date on release plan. It will be released when it's ready and the decision is made by Patrick himself. He knows when will the next release is stable enough to be consumed by public

I'm still waiting for the next Slackware 13.1 to be released this year (hopefully in June or worst case July).

Early Plan for Firefox 4

Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's Director of Firefox has posted an early product plan for Mozilla Firefox 4 which can be accessed on his blog. Actually it was presented on a presentation, but since not everybody can attend the seminar, he posted the video on Mozilla's server or if you prefer to watch the slides, you can watch them at SlideShare.

In short, what are they planning with Firefox 4? There are three primary goals: Fast, Powerful, and Empowering.

Talking about speed. Firefox is lagging behind Opera and Google Chrome in terms of speed, but since Firefox 3, they have been working so hard to minimize the gap and they will do more work towards faster performance on Firefox 4. It says, they are going to make Firefox super-duper fast . I'm very eager to see happening in the future.

Powerful is about supporting new and open Web standards, such as HTML 5, CSS 3, and many more. I believe Firefox has been used as a standard web browser when we want to test our web page compatibility. You can't ignore Firefox as more and more people are using Firefox as their default browser, replacing IE. The need of supporting web standards are very critical to Firefox then.

Empowering means that users are in total control of their data, browsers, and web experience. Through Mozilla Labs, we can see that there has been a lot of efforts to make Firefox more empowering. We would like to see more of it and to make Firefox the best browser.

OK, that is all and remember that that plan is not a fixed one. It still has big chance to change in the future, but i'm sure Firefox 4 will be a big release for Firefox community and also to users around the world

Mandriva Collapsed?

Mandriva, a french-based Linux distribution vendor is now looking for buyers after having financial crisis (in French). There are two potential buyers for now and i am hoping that they would find a good solution to Mandriva.

I used to use Mandriva since my early meeting with Linux around 2002. I installed Mandrake at that time and i continued to follow the distribution until 2005. I even contribute to the Indonesian translations and i got a Mandriva Power Pack VIP access at that time. I switched to Slackware since 2005 up to now, and since then, i have never used Mandriva again, even though i believe it is still a good Linux distribution.

Well, good luck for Mandriva

Youngsters

Tomorrow, i and my colleagues will have to evaluate our student's final project presentation. One interesting thing about tomorrow's event is that all of the lecturers in charge are youngsters. There will not be any senior lecturers because one of them have another important task so he asked my other colleagues to substitute for him.

I think it will be a great event

Activities on Sunday

Not much activities that i have done today. Besides finishing watching Korean drama (Witch Amusement), i only accompanied my mother to go to the super market and then i went to my girlfriend's house to fix her laptop which was infected by a backdoor.

I asked her to try using Linux, but she still refuses, even though what she needs can be fulfilled by Linux in most cases, except for gaming (she didn't play online games nor heavy games, only a small one. I believe Wine can still work in most cases). Oh well, i think i have to persuade her more often to try using Linux and get rid of Virus, Malware, Trojan, etc.

Time to Give Marking

It's weekend, and it supposed to be off work, but for me, it means that i should start evaluating my student's assignments and give marks to them. I set the deadline for the second and third assignment last night.

I was quite happy that this semester, number of students who failed to send the assignments before the deadline has decreased compared to last semester, but still there were some students who forgot to send it on time and according to the rules.

Let's hope they will manage to get better next semester

Not Yet Mature

I have tried to give more freedom to my students while they are in my class. They can turn on their laptop to surf the Internet to find more study case related to the material discussed at the class. But, in the end, they are not yet ready to be given such freedom. They use this opportunity to play games, chatting via instant messaging or updating their status on Facebook or Plurk or Twitter.

I guess nowadays students are not yet mature as they should be. It's a pity that such big chance wasted for something which i think less important than their knowledge.

Another example is when they were sleeping while i gave lectures in front of the class. Well, i don't mind if they have good reason, but is it polite to sleep while other people is talking in front of the class? Just pretend that you are standing in front of the audience and the audience were sleeping. How do you feel about that? They just don't get it.

Well, it's just my thoughts about what happened on my daily activities. I only wishes that they will change on the next semester

Last Day

Tomorrow will be my last class for this semester. For the next three weeks, the students are going to face their final exams. I hope they have a good preparation for the final exams because it will affect their final grades

Study hard

Portable Hard Drive

I'm looking for a new portable hard drive as my current one (500 GB) is getting less and lesser every day. I wanted to find the portable version so i can bring it anywhere, but for now, the biggest capacity that WDC has is 1 TB. I'm looking for 2 TB or more if possible.

Any suggestion about this?

Plagiarism

I have stated a strict rule when i started this semester that any violations to code of conduct will have a strict penalty and today, i found two different cases. I saw a verbatim copies of two different extra assignment which should be easy to be done. Actually i'm very pissed off with this action, as the assignment is very easy to be done and i thinking risking one subject for extra 5 points is not worthed at all.

I'm asking them to come and meet me this week and i hope they will give me a good explanation or else i will take serious action about this. I cannot tolerate indisplinary actions on my course

Another Behind-Schedule

Wine is now behind-schedule again. It has been more than two weeks since last release on April 16, and still no sign of 1.1.44, the next development release which should be released last week. I do hope that it will have a nice features compared to 1.1.43 since it has taken more than normal development time to release this version.

Last Week

This is the last week for the students before they will face their final exam next week. I hope they will prepare themselves for the final test.

That also means that we, lecturers will have to start working on the final test questions

Fated to Love You

For the last few days, i have been watching several Korean and Taiwanese drama and from what i have seen, Taiwanese's drama is much better than Korean. My best drama so far is Fated to Love You. It has 24 episodes, quite larger than any normal drama which usually around 16 or 18, but i think it's worthed to watch this one.

Oh and my advice is that you should prepare many tissues, as there are so many touching scenario which will make you cry. I like the moral story of this film. You should check it out.