fophillips dot org‣ May 20th, 2008‣ Interesting Things

Things that have piqued my interest as of late:

Exherbo

“Gentoo done right”.

Exherbo is an upcoming distritrbution based on some of the ideas of Gentoo to create a more focused distribution honed to the needs of the small development team.

According to the site these are the main problems with Gentoo as it stands.

• Portage. The code can't deliver the changes we need in the timeframe we need. Portage haven't delivered many features needed by Gentoo; for what we're trying, it's completely out of the question.

• Management -- We see the need for management which will make necessary decisions within an acceptable timeframe and provide and ensure that there is direction.

• QA. We would rather have a small number of developers working carefully on a few things, and fixing each other's mistakes, than working prolifically on a great many things without such attention to detail.

• The users. Many other distributions attach a lot of importance to the community, to the detriment of the distribution's technical needs. We'd prefer to focus on meeting both our own needs as developers, and the needs of the real users -- a solid community follows on from a solid product.

• The developers. A developer base polarised between those who make thousands of changes every month and those who make perhaps a dozen each year does not make it easy to push forwards the sort of improvements we want.

• Lack of overall design and direction. This problem is widely recognised by Gentoo but at the same time enforced by policies allowing everybody to start their own subprojects without disussing it first. The idea is that volunteer work shouldn't be prevented but rather encouraged. We'd rather focus on a few clear goals and provide solid solutions in those areas rather than trying to do everything at once.

Despite practically begging people not to use it I will definitely be setting it up in UML soon and start experimenting.

Mobile Computing

I’ve been looking for something to replace my broken (beyond reasonably priced repair) VAIO ultra-(super-dee-dooper-)mobile PC. I did have my eye on an EeePC, and it is still a viable option. But I really can’t choose which model. I did have my heart set on a 701, but then the 900 trundled along with it’s big screen and bigger storage, even if it is £100 more.

Then I started looking at the Eee “alternatives”, things like the HP MiniNote which is certainly a lot sexier than the Eee and not much more than the 900 (even if it is a little close to the $400 mark).

Then I got looking at PDAs, and I just bid on a Zaurus SL-5000D on eBay, which may lead to me either helping develop Ångström to work, or just using OpenZaurus. It is exceedingly cheap (≤£35 inc. p&p if I win), which means I will probably end up pining for a proper laptop with my left over money.

Suggestions are more than welcome. I’m not looking for some desktop replacement thing, just something I can easily carry around in an already full backpack.

Car

I am learning to drive, at last, and I need to get myself a motor. I think I have set my heart on an MG Midget (pre 1500 (chrome bumpers ftw)). I have about a grand to spend, and I might be able to convince my parents to go halves on one. Wish me luck.

Haskell

I wouldn’t really call this a “recent” interest, I have been dabbling in Haskell ever since I discovered XMonad. I have myself a book (The Haskell Road to Mathematics, Logic, and Programming) which is excellent. I have been steaming through Euler with it at my fingertips. It is certainly my favourite language to date.

I have also began to become more confident in Lisp, but more on that another time.