KDE 3.4.2

After i finished my job at the seminar, i went to my campus to check whether there is an update for Slackware, and it did. One of the biggest packages were the KDE packages, which was 3.4.2. There are totally 207 MB for KDE packages only, not including the other packages. Now, my laptop and desktop has been using KDE 3.4.2 and being updated :)

FOSS Seminar

Yesterday i made the final preparation for today's seminar. The seminar will start at 7.30 AM, so please make sure that everyone involved with this seminar come befofe the event started. It is supported by STMIK AKAKOM, PCPlus, Jogja LUG, and Khansa Group.

PCMAG

I browse the Internet and found a new magazine that have a subscribtion services. I was suprised that it was so cheap. They offer $1 for each issue. I'm not quite sure whether it's really $1 for each issue. For more information, try to browse the PCMAG website. If you find more information about it, please let me know.

Another checkout

Soon after i found that my old CVS account didn't work anymore, i do another checkout to the Mandriva's translation project. This time, i only checkout the Indonesian PO files, not with the POT files. It takes some times, but it's still reasonable. I have to setup CVSROOT again, but luckily, i saved my old tutorials, so it's quite easy to do the same thing again once you experienced with it.

Installing Irda and Bluetooth

In the next few days, i will try to search for information about how to install and configure irda (infrared device) and bluetooth on laptops for Linux platform. I want to make sure every devices on my laptop is working well and enabled. Fow now, all devices is working well, except for infraread, bluetooth, and internal modem. My Wireless device has been working and it can be used instead of internal modem which is somehow will be confusing and hard to install.

I have download some packages for irda and bluetooth but i haven't tried it yet. Maybe when i have spare time, i will configure it, since i don't use that devices as much as the wireless devices, so it's not in my high priority list.

Looking For Books

Yesterday, me, my friend, and my lecturer went to Semarang to search for imported books. We went at 8 AM and got back at 7.30 PM. Unfortunately, the book store wasn't as complete as in the Surabaya, so we only got some books. I bought one book only. Perhaps we will travel to Surabaya, but not this week, because we still have lots of work to be done this week.

JavaScript and Remote Scripting

Since i met CSS and PHP, i start to dislike Javascript, since its implementation were different in many browsers, so developers and programmers had to create a lot of code to maintain the accesibility levels in order to be working over multi browser and multi platform. I started to learn CSS as a new way to design a web page and give it a new artistic layout, rather than using some Javascript tricks and PHP as the server-side scripting to create a dynamic web site.

Lately, the Javascript is back with another technology, Remote Scripting. It allows you to communicate with your server-side programming language even without refreshing the page. Some of great examples can be found in the Sajax's project or Sitepoint. The idea was cool, but it's quite confusing, especially when your page must work on every browser, since each browser has its own syntax.

Slackware 10.2

I can't wait for the next Slackware 10.2 release which i don't know for sure when it will be released, but i'm pretty sure that it will be released this year. Some news site has reported that Patrick will release it this year. I have asked him once, but he replies "It will be released when it is ready". For me, "Ready" means stable and yes, it is one of the most stable distro i have ever tried. One problem that exists until now is the udev packages. Packages 0.6x is having trouble with the ALSA issues, so it is downgraded to 0.58. If it isn't stable yet, Patrick will use 0.54 version for the next release of Slackware Linux. You can see it from the Changelog

Firefox 1.1 Delayed and Renamed 1.5

I was quite dissapointed when i read the news that the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.1 will be delayed, since i'm waiting for it because it will include one facility that i have been waiting for, the Software Update facility. It enables users to download patches only rather than the whole application of Firefox which is approximately 5 MB for Windows and 8 MB for Linux platform.

The good news is that new version of Firefox 1.5 will include more facility that it will offer from the previous plans, such as Improved Extension System and Scalable Vector Graphics. The next 1.5 version will be available around September and the beta release will be available around August. Check out their updated roadmap.

Meanwhile, the update for Mozilla is available. It skipped 1.7.9 version since it has the same problem with Firefox 1.0.5, so it is named 1.7.10 now.

Java Module

Next week, me and my friend are going to make an extra class for Java programming, with Swing and Applet as the materials. I haven't finished the modules, but let's hope by next week, it will be finished completely, and we can start the extra class smoothly. I used Core Java, written by Marthy Hall as my primary reference and with other reference book, including Indonesian book. It should be ready in the next two or three days. I have to check the exams first, since i have to submit the points tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

A Bug or What?

I just upgraded my Firefox to 1.0.6 and my OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta to 1.9.118, the latest version available until today and after i run updatedb and reboot, i couldn't even logged in into my KDE with a message similar with "Can't start KDE because don't have any write permission to $HOME". I was suprised and shocked, because i never changed any permission to my home directory, so i rebootted and login into text mode and see the permission for /home/willy and it was owned by root users. So i tried to changed the permission into 777 by giving chmod 777 /home/willy. It worked, but i guess it wasn't a good idea, so i tried to change the owner by using chown -R willy:users /home/willy and also giving read-write permission only for me with chmod 755 /home/willy and reboot again. It also works, so now everything is back to normal.

I don't know what is the main problem, but OOo 2.0 installer has a bug when it came in the third phase, which is personal data transfer. It opened a warning that it couldn't open 2 file in the home directory. I suggest for production use, don't upgrade to OOo 1.9.118 for now. It's better to wait for the next release while waiting for further investigation.

OpenOffice.org 1.9.118

Another updates comes from OpenOffice.org's development team, which has released OOo 2.0 beta build 1.9.118 which fixes a lot of bugs and also integrates many child workspaces. There are 680 issues found on the latest version of OOo 2.0 build 1.9.118. It's getting better for an OpenSource Office Suite with so many community supports. Had problems with previous version? Try this version and perhaps your problems has been fixed in this version.

MySQL 4.1.12 and PHP 4.4.0

I upgraded my MySQL into the latest version, MySQL 4.1.12 and it surely changed a lot, especialy in the password column and also the character set being used (now it supports for UTF-8). I have to recompile my PHP so that it will include mbstring extension, needed by the phpMyAdmin and also MySQL. At first, i was faced with so many errors, including a miss type parameter for including mbstring in the PHP's configure script. Luckily, the PHP Developer Team helped me by giving me the correct syntax. Finally, i made it and now it's working normally again just like when i use MySQL 4.0.24.

Harry Potter 6th Edition

In 16 of July, the whole world was waiting for the time when Harry Potter, Half Blood Prince was released simultaneously, but in Indonesia, people are waiting for the Indonesian edition, that should be released in about 6 month (probably more). I just came from book store and saw that there was still a lot of that novel in the rack, without being touched, since it was in English. I'd like to buy that, but since i have also followed the Indonesian version since the first edition, so i didn't buy it now and will wait for the Indonesian version.

Kernel 2.6.12.2 and IPW2200

After i downloaded the latest kernel version for Slackware, kernel 2.6.12.2 and some other packages, i installed it and somehow, the IPW2200 Centrino driver for my Centrino didn't work anymore. I have tried to reinstall it but still it didn't work. So i have to reboot and use the previous kernel version and found the answer that there are some problems when we use kernel 2.6.12. The solution was to upgrade the IPW2200 driver to the latest version, 1.0.6 which fix this bug and it did work.

Please take a note that to install IPW2200 1.0.5 and above, you must also install a new subsystem IEEE80211 before upgrading the IPW2200 driver. Also make sure that you have removed all the previous modules by using remove-old script included in both package. After that, have a nice day with Internet again. Now both my laptop and desktop are running with kernel 2.6.12.2 :)