lostsonsvault

So alot of time of my year this past year has been spent learning C and C++ and messing with gtk+ and Qt trying to figure out which toolkit and language I wish to use and stick with. There are alot of things that go into my decision. As I have been playing with both gtk+ and Qt I have gotten stuck. One point that has bothered me is that finding gtk+ docs and tutorials are very sparse versus Qt docs and tutorials are very plentiful on the internet. I have been playing with a project that I have been wanting to create and am finding that to produce this project with gtk+ is alot of coding that is vastly extended. Trying to produce the same effect with Qt and C++ is much smaller and easier to do. Now this doesn’t sway my position a whole lot but if I can create the same application with much less code and greater ease then why not. It helps me achieve my goal and end results quicker. One thing that dissuades me from using Qt though is the whole new kde4 debacle I like kde4 and used to be a kde user but with the invent of kde4 I am not that impressed. I have become addicted to Gnome over the past year though so that kinda makes my decision lean towards gtk+ because I like gnome and use several gtk+ apps that I enjoy. Gnome is so easy to use and works perfectly for everything I like to do, but I also like to use things like xmonad which lately I have become extremely addicted to as well. So I dont necessarily want to develop apps for a particular desktop. I would rather keep my apps not tied to a desktop so you can run them no matter what DE/WM you use. Also what is the deal with compiling a program with gtk+ its this big long line with all these options. With Qt you dont have to do this. Would this maybe be something one would not to do if they were using Anjuta ?

So I guess I am looking for some guidance as to why people stay with what they do and why. If anyone who does development work reads my little shitty blog I would be interested in your comments. I do not wish to start a flame war between gtk+ or Qt or fltk or whatever. I am just curious as to know why you do what you do and why. I guess I am just a impass right now as to what I am gonna do and some input would be greatly appreciated.

Well all went well with my surgery today I am at home resting and taking my meds. They actually did knock me completely out with general anesthetic which was a large comfort. I was talking to the nurse about being nervous about the epidural and they said they would knock me out if I wanted. That was a huge load off my mind. All in all I am feeling ok just really really sore. Devils was nice enough to move my computer to the bedroom so I can at least stay in touch with the planet which is great. She is the best and has been taking excellent care of me. Well better get some rest its getting late.

Well here I go off to get my hernia fix, i must say now that it is the morning of I am starting to shake and getting pretty freaked out. I know the doctors know what they are doing but still. Well hopefully I will be back home tonight and be able to post and let everyone know how it went, wish me luck !!

Well recently I have switched to debian, I am using Lenny and am extremely happy with it. Debian is simply a joy to use, easy to install and easy to setup. Whether you use APT or Synaptic for graphical package management the size of the repo’s and applications you can get your hands on is enourmous. One of the many perks of Debian. A complete install with Gnome took me about 30 minutes on my AMD 64 bit machine. Granted I also have a 15mb pipe to my house so I always do netinstall’s and those fly right along for me.

Being that I moved from Fedora after upgrading to Fedora 10 and finding it horribly broken my first choice was Debian. I have always liked Debian and have many friends that use Debian and even my wife and kids computers I have installed Debian on those and maintain them. Which is really quite easy when using stable because things just work and are so throughly tested. So one would think that I would of known better, but I personally have always used a RH derivative. I started on RH 7.0 years ago and it is what I knew. Although I did go to Gentoo for about three years after RH pulled support for the public version. Then when Fedora started getting better I switched back to that. I was always wanting the latest and greatest new software and felt Debian was a little too far behind in version numbers for me. As time has passed though I have learned that version numbers are nice but when things get horribly broken it is extremely hard to use the latest and greatest software.

So now I am using Debian and am really enjoying the whole experience. Package management is a breeze. There has been a little bit of a learning curve for me though. I am used to having a firewall by default with Fedora with a nice graphical interface to edit it at my will. Debian does not come with a default firewall so therefore no tool to edit one either. I have done some research on it though and there are many great tools out there for me to experiment with, so no big issue there. One thing I do miss is the services and runlevel editor on Fedora, I have found a tool though called rcconf which lets me turn off certain daemons that I dont personally need. I like to turn things off I dont use or need, why have all these processess running when I will never use them.  Printer sharing and setup was actually easier on my Debian machine than I thought it would be as well. Fedora has a nice tool for this as well but guess what it was broken in Fedora 10. It would not detect my printer so I could not print. This is a really basic function that should work out of the box, and in my opinion should never break although shit does happen.

As far as the Debian community goes I have found the mailing lists, IRC and the Debian User Forums all very helpful. The people have been very friendly and the mailing list is much less traffic and much more on point than what I am previously used to. The mailing list seems overloaded with people with a vast knowledge about Debian and will share that knowledge with you at your request. You have to love that it makes reading the mailing list a true joy. You can learn things without even having a problem just by perusing the mails you get, because there are always interesting tips and tricks in those emails. The community as a whole has been just a treat to those I have talked to on IRC the mailings lists and the forum.

I must admit maybe it has come with age but I have become tired of things breaking and waiting for fixes or things just never getting fixed, or having to fix them myself. Now I know this happens everywhere but the basic functionality of my computer should not be broken. Things like internet, email, instant messaging and printing should just be there after install no questions asked. After all these are probably the four main things people do on their computers. I want my desktop to work and not be intrusive to what I want to do. I enjoy working on my computer, learning new things, writing code and playing games. So the trip to debian has made this possible I am not constantly having to tinker or search forums and mailing lists to find a fix for something. I want to have fun sitting here I want to code and listen to music and blog on occasion. Another HUGE plus is the upgradable part of Debian when a new release comes out I can change my sources.list file to the appropriate servers then apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade and walla I have upgraded to the new version of Debian. I got really sick of every six months backing everything up then doing a fresh install only to find out I should not have.

All in all if you are like I was kinda on the fence getting sick of the rigamarole and just want to turn your computer on and do YOUR work not someone else’s give Debian a serious go. I think you will find that with this distro you will get things done.

Well tomorrow I will be going under the knife for hernia surgery, how fun. I am starting to get a little nervous about it, but if it stops the pain one cannot really complain. I guess the most disconcerting thing is that they are not knocking my out they will give me a epidural along with something to make me relax. Not sure if I like the thought of being awake while someone is cutting me open, but I guess that is how they do it now. After the surgery they say its about a two week recovery or longer depending on how fast you heal up and start feeling better. Hopefully my recovery is quick and I wont be in much pain afterwards.