By Anton Piatek, on July 29th, 2009%
I seem to recall Mark Shuttlework saying in an interview (possibly for Linux Format, possibly somewhere else) that he wanted to work with Debian to get fixed release cycles to help the Debian->Ubuntu porting efforts – It looks like he succeeded in planting the idea! I am looking forward to predictable Debian releases.
The most exciting thing I know of being attempted in the next Debian release (Squeeze) is the multiarch support, which should make running 32 bit apps on a 64 bit OS much better (currently some apps can install if you install the ia32-libs package however others need to be installed in a 32 bit chroot because they have too difficult dependencies to resolve). Redhat adopted another approach where 32 bit is more of a default than 64 bit than on Debian (On Debian a 64 bit install has absolutely no 32 bit support other than the ia32-libs package). Most 32 bit stuff seems to work ok on a 64 bit Redhat box but I don’t know how their approach relates to multiarch. The idea with multiarch is to natively support both 32 and 64 bit packages on the same system (I believe by changing the installer to put 32 bit libs in /lib32/, whereas I believe redhat uses /lib64/ for the 64 bit stuff and /lib/ is still 32 bit only).
I am very interested to see how this pans out as I run a 64 bit desktop at work with lots of 32 bit apps (and gave up on my 64 bit install at home because it was too fiddly for the 32 bit proprietary apps I want to use)
A copy of the Debian announcement is below:
Continue reading Debian annouces fixed date release cycles
By Anton Piatek, on July 20th, 2009%
Having just moved house, I have loads of things to post (via snail mail). A large number of these are change of address details for way too many companies.
I couldn’t find anything on Royal Mail’s website, nor the Post Office’s, though there is a page to locate locate post office branches. Anyway, it turns out http://www.dracos.co.uk/play/locating-postboxes/ has a rather good list of post boxes, and ties into google maps so you can easily see where they are – Fantastic!
By Anton Piatek, on July 20th, 2009%
So having actually moved in to my new house at the beginning of the month, you would have thought I would be settled and have more time for blogging…
You would be wrong – We decided we wanted some new carpets upstairs, and before we did that we thought it would be a good idea to paint the walls (that way we can’t ruin nice new carpets with paint). It turns out painting takes longer than you might think, especially when you have things like work getting in the way.
By Anton Piatek, on July 9th, 2009%
I have just moved house, and changed internet provider to Virgin (simply because they could have the internet connected in about 2 days, which is faster than getting even a BT line installed). I did some quick speed tests to show how my old provider (Be) compares to Virgin. (Note that on Be I had their 10mbit connection as I could not get any faster because I was just too far from the exchange to get any better speeds)
Virgin speedtest
Be speedtest
And in case you were wondering what a truly fast internet connection looks like, this is what I get from work (IBM Hursley – I would expect to see a seriously fast connection here)
Work internet speedtest
By Anton Piatek, on July 1st, 2009%
It’s been a bit quiet here lately, and the main reason for that is I have just bought my first house.
The months of back-and-forth with solicitors is finally over and I have the keys – YAY!
It didn’t help that the solicitors got the postal address wrong, using my current street with the postcode of the house I was trying to buy. Then the person handling the case moved departments and that left a few weeks of chasing a dead-end. Finally it is all done though, and it really wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
The fride/freezer, washing machine, dishwasher and cooker are all arriving this week (which will be kind of exciting) and after we have actually finished packing and moved all the stuff we already own that will just leave a sofa to buy (though they don’t come cheap).
So hopefully I will have some more time to write posts soon, and as I already have internet at the new house I guess I have no more excuses (other than finishing packing, moving, and unpacking that is)
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