Prodigal son returns

I've been away for so long. It's a nice day to start again.

Seriously though, i'm a slacker. I have a lot to say, but not a lot of willpower to write up something coherent and publish it. Lord is my witness, it's been a couple of years since my last post, but the truth is, i rather prefer arguing in comments on YouTube. But i'll try to be a regular. I have a few things that i've been meaning to say for some time, as a lot of stuff happened since the last time i've been here: there was Snowden, there was GamerGate, there was (and still is) US presidential race, the refugee crisis... Lots of stuff to talk about. I'm not so sure my thoughts would be entirely original, but i don't really care.

And since i'm back to writing in a web interface, there may be changes in formatting, and i couldn't be arsed to manually write HTML all over again. Fuck it, let the ugly default formatting take over.

So let's rock!

Intel NUC

(yeah, i didn't write for a while - i intend to start writing again, but we'll see how long i'll last)

About a year ago I got myself a NUC. This thing has been running my home server for all this time, and i got nothing but praise for it.

First of all, the box is quite well made. They got this sensor installed that makes that famous "Intel" sound when you open the box. Nice touch, Intel! The NUC itself (i got the Haswell i5 one, the most expensive at the time) is a bit on the heavy side, i expected it to be lighter. But then again it's mostly metal, and the NUC feels quite sturdy and extremely well made. So i got no complaints there - everything is where it's supposed to be, nothing loose, nothing broken. Nice.

The hardware is quite capable - i have never run into anything that made me wish that i had a more powerful box, and i've done it all - transcode DVD's, running ZFS RAIDZ, web server (for a while), you name it - i dun it. And it's quiet too. And having SSD as system drive is very nice - updating to the next version of Ubuntu took about 10 minutes, most of which was downloading the stuff.

One minor point is that for some reason they decided to go with mini-HDMI, which i burnt myself on. But this is indeed a minor point.

I do have a few words for Ubuntu though. Stop fucking changing around udev device names, dammit! I'm fucking tired of bringing up my ZFS cluster after every update-induced reboot! Assholes!

P.S. Pretty soon Ubuntu will be at codename starting with W. I hope they choose Wanking Walrus as a codename.

vCard is broken

It's not that i don't like this format - no, the format itself is fine. It's just it's used as the one and only phone contact format for everything. Yes, it's nice and extendable, and it's probably more suitable for this increasingly mobile-only world, but it's a nightmare to use as a simple phonebook.

Do you remember phonebooks in feature phones? Where you write a name, and you add a number, and get on with your life? Well, it's impossible to use vCard as a phonebook equivalent. Case in point: say, i want to add a taxi service to my Android phone. OK, I create a contact, and... and then what? Do write "Taxi" under First Name? Or under Last Name? Or maybe under Nickname? Not everything has a first or last name, you know. An old feature phone phonebook solved this problem perfectly - a name and a number.

Case in point number two: home numbers. Suppose i know a guy who has a mobile number and a home number. Where do i put his home number? Under his name? So if i also have a contact for his wife, do i put that number as her home number too? No? So each time his wife calls me from her home number, my phone tells me it's him, instead of simply notifying me that it's their home number? File it under a different vCard? Well, what's the point of vCards if i have to file home numbers under different contacts anyway - wasn't this the problem vCards were supposed to solve?

Case in point number three: sending contacts to others. Suppose i have a contact for one of my friends - i have his two mobile numbers, his home number in different countries, his home addresses in different countries, his nickname, his birthday and all that - in other words, i have his vCard choke full of personal data. So, when i want to give my number to someone else, i go "hey, let me send you his contact"... and send all this other info that i'm not necessarily willing to share with this person? Oh, "just send a number" you say? Well again, wasn't this exactly the problem vCards were supposed to solve?

See? It's broken. It works well for address books and such, but it needs way more robustness in both fields and how they are handled by software (home numbers for different people, privacy settings for contact sharing, etc.).

Owncloud 6: could not find driver

Yes, i stumbled upon this error too. Long story short, if you have SQLite (don't do this if your DB driver isn't SQLite!), open /etc/php5/conf.d/sqlite3.ini and make sure its contents are:
# configuration for PHP SQLite3 module
extension=pdo_sqlite.so
extension=sqlite3.so


The Pengpod

I bought the Pengpod. Or, more precisely, funded its Kickstarter campaign. I wanted to have a Vivaldi tablet, but since Aaron Seigo is being such a slowpoke, i jumped on the Pengpod instead (although i'm sure i'll get me a Vivaldi as well, for reasons that will become clearer as a result of this post).

And let me tell you. Linux, not optimized for tablets, sucks cock. It really does. The default Linaro image is an atrocious experience. The main reason i wanted the tablet was for the KDE Plasma Active 3, but by the time i got my tablet, the OpenSUSE image link from the PengPod wiki was giving out error 404, and to this day still hasn't appeared. Moreover, the Plasma Active from Linaro repositories is an old version 2, and is extremely sluggish (well, Linaro is Ubuntu, so what the fuck did i expect). In other words, Linux on this tablet sucks balls. Even the XBMC, which looks cool, didn't work - or, more precisely, it did, but the touch screen doesn't work in XBMC.

So i finally gave up and installed an Android image. Now we're talking. At least it works on a tablet.

But why Vivaldi if PengPod sucks? Well, the PengPod is clearly a product for tinkerers. I'm not shy to hack away but sometimes i just want a working piece of technology. As in, i'm fine with having to do some hacking to make it work, but i don't want to do everything from scratch! I mean, there was a video of Plasma Active 3 running on exactly my tablet (PengPod 1000), and here i am, getting a 404 on OpenSUSE image for fucking three months now! I at least expected a somewhat working Plasma Active 3 when i was buying it.

The Vivaldi, however, is positioned as much more user friendly and, more importantly, it will be backed by the KDE community and official Mer images. That means i won't have to compile half of KDE repository myself just to get latest KDE Active stuff. I'm still waiting, Aaron. Please don't let me down.

Motorola RAZR i with Intel Atom inside

My trusty Galaxy S is getting old. Not in a sense that it's getting dated, no - it literally is getting old and is slowly dying. The GPS never worked anyway, the SD card already borked out once (luckily, Samsung fixed the issue for free despite the fact that the phone had Cyanogen on it), the proximity and light sensor are dead, the phone speaker is dead (only loudspeaker works)... In other words, it has seen better days.

I wasn't really on the market for the new phone though because i don't usually get me a piece of new technology until the old one is completely dead and unusable, but the ad about Motorola's phone with Atom caught my attention. I didn't like the Samsung Galaxy line aesthetically (S II sucks, S III sucks, Note is more like a tablet, everything else is for cheapskates), didn't feel like buying a Google phone (somehow the "pure" Google experience doesn't include updates to the OS, so the only perceived advantage of a Google phone is out of the window), didn't like those HTC's and LG's...

So i saw this RAZR i and figured - whtat the hell. Updates aren't happening regardless of which phone i pick, this phone got good reviews and there's even a remote chance that something from the x86 world will be ported to it - so i took the plunge.

I've read in quite a few reviews that this phone was fast. It really is fast. I guess Atom makes wonders - it really is that fucking fast. No shit. You know what, i'm not even going to bother rooting and installing CM - i did this on my Galaxy S just because the stock ROM was unbearably slow. I'll keep the stock ROM, i don't give a fuck. I still got my somewhat working Galaxy S, so i can satisfy all my tinkering needs with it.

Now, i don't care much for Angry Birds compatibility, all the apps i needed work perfectly. Kudos to Motorola and Intel for keeping the ROM almost entirely clean of custom crap! Seriously, there's like, one or two Motorola-specific apps, everything else is plain vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich. And those apps are awesome - the office suite, which allows me to view documents (didn't try editing yet) and PDF's out of the box, and the "Smart Actions" thing, which is a lot like "Easy Profiles" i used on my Galaxy S, but without the hassle.

Aesthetically, this phone is marvelous. Kevlar and Gorilla Glass rule. The battery isn't changeable without unscrewing it, but the screws are there, so it's not a monolithic piece. The screen is SuperAMOLED, it's big and comfortable to use, the Android buttons are all software, with hardware buttons only on the sides (power, volume and a hardware photo button). The phone feels great - nothing cheap about it at all. Frankly, with almost vanilla ICS, fast Intel Atom, great looks and great display, this is quite literally the best phone i have ever held in my hands. Even if i will never get any updates for it, i don't care. It's that good. Great work Motorola, great work, Intel.

Awesomebar still sucks

Awesome bar was introduced in Firefox 3. Firefox is now on version 17. That's good 14 versions ago, not to mention loads of 3.x releases. It's been 4 years now. Such a long time. You'd think i'd get used to it.

But awesome bar still sucks. After all these years. Yeah, you'll get used to it, you'll like it, it's better than the old one! No, it isn't. I didn't get used to it. I still can't. And since it's been 4 years, i don't think i ever will.

Great job, Mozilla!

Terrirism

11 September. Ah, what a great day. The whole USA is butt-hurt. They all try so hard to show that they remember, oh they remember! They always keep the thought about 9/11 in their thoughts, yeah. Somewhere between... OK, no Carlin quotes here.

But let's look at the legacy of the 9/11. The whole country is cowering in fear of terrirists. Security check here, frisk search there, X-ray scan here, pat down there. The terrorists (if there ever were any, of which i'm still not entirely convinced) have stated that their goal was to destroy the american way of life and their freedom - and from where i'm standing it looks like they have succeeded. I'm not going to go into great detail about how USA is totally different today, but let's look at another interesting thing that's happening these days.

The innocence of Islam. Oh yeah, that fucking movie. Let me get this out of the way - it sucks. It really does. As much as i love good troll, this just doesn't cut it even as a beginner troll. This is atrocious. In fact, it's so cheaply made the actors didn't even know they were in the movie about islam, they thought it was just a movie about that general period. But who cares, anyway.

The fact is, it sparked an outrage in a number of towelhead countries. So much, in fact, that some idiots even attacked a US embassy over this. Really? You protest a movie that portrays you as stupid violent crowd, and you prove its point by doing the exact same thing the movie is depicting? I mean, how stupid can you be, Allah worshippers?!

And not only that, but what the embassy has to do with any of this in the first place? You gotta pick your targets, you know. There was a guy who was killed over another movie about islam, but hey, at least he was killed because he fucking created that movie! At least those idiots who killed him have got to the right guy, who actually had everything to do with the damn movie! They didn't kill a Joe Sixpack from Alabama, they didn't attack a random US citizen and they certainly didn't attack the fucking embassy of USA! You gotta pick your targets.

Calligra lost for Words

I am an avid KDE advocate. I love KDE. I applauded when they started developing Calligra Suite. However, i've just tried Calligra words to do some basic editing. Sorry, KDE guys, but Calligra Words isn't even remotely ready for general population.

Two major gripes. First. I created a template. Then i tried to create a new document based on that template. Calligra Words has entered what it seems like an infinite loop. It stopped working and responding.

Second. I was trying to edit a document. Styles are unusable. Period. They are unusable, uneditable, behave really weird and are bug-ridden. Sorry, guys, no go. I'm installing LibreOffice. Calligra Words isn't ready. I hope it will be, some day.

Right away

Don't you just hate people who make you wait for no good reason? People who say "yeah, sure, i'll do it right away" and then dick around for three weeks making excuses every time?

Like if you want someone to send you a collection of photos and there's a fast and easy way to do it, but he or she insists on using the most inefficient and slow-ass method of sending those damn photos, and the act of sending is never actually complete because uploading a 200MB archive on a slow connection to some god-forsaken file-locker is guaranteed connection drop and reupload. And your frustration is guaranteed too because "i fucking told you this would happen, and it happened five times already and you still don't listen and don't want to change your ways and do things properly, you fucking dumb piece of worthless shit".

And you kinda feel like a dick asking and arguing about this every time because these photos aren't really all that important - it's not like your survival depends on them. But then you still kinda want these photos, and the person has already agreed to send them, so it's fair game to ask about them and try to help said person to do it more quickly and efficiently, just so you don't have to wait for another three weeks (like you already have) just to get these fucking photos you never needed to begin with.

And then they get all bitchy because you're criticizing their way of doing things and go all defensive mode, like "stop criticizing me, or i won't send them at all". Like, dude, you doing things the dumb way and refusing to change an obviously broken way of doing things is the primary fucking reason i am now complaining about it, and now you're essentially saying "shut up, i am the King of the Universe, i have those photos, you're the one who needs them, so you're getting them on my terms, or you ain't getting any at all".

And you're now faced with a dilemma - you don't want to tell this person to go fuck himself because it's one of the very few people in the world you actually care about, and you don't want to get into a stupid fight because of some stupid photos. But at the same time you still kinda want them and don't see any logical explanation to why this is fucking happening in the first place, because all it takes is 15 seconds and a few mouse clicks, and the problem is gone like it never happened. And you can't believe how the person can behave so fucking stupid and reject any attempt to speed things up despite the fact that you're both tired of this already. You don't normally have stupid people as your friends, and you know full well that this particular person is anything but stupid, so this behaviour frustrates you even more, because that's not how a smart person behaves.

And then, after a few more arguments about why the fuck doesn't he just let you do it yourself if he's too fucking stubborn to change his ways and too fucking stupid to follow your directions, you start getting the feeling that he is doing that just to annoy the hell out of you. In fact, you know that this is not true, but you still get that feeling because that would be the only logical and rational explanation for this mindblowingly stupid and arrogant behavior. You are a logical person, and you assume that this person behaves according to logic too.

Only he doesn't. He doesn't want to annoy you, and there is no logic behind his behavior. In fact, he himself doesn't have a slightest fucking clue as to why he behaves like that. He can't explain why he is doing things the way he does, despite you pointing out the obvious flaws in his actions, which even he himself admits and acknowledges. For some reason he just doesn't want to change, doesn't want to improve things, doesn't want to become a better human being, and doesn't want to give you the fucking photos any way other than uploading a huge archive to some file locker on a slow connection, wasting yet another two hours to upload 99% only to get a connection drop and start again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Try a better way? No. Why? Just fucking because.

Don't you just hate these people sometimes?

N00bs must suffer

I've been caught up in this whole Youtube thing. For a long time i tried to stay away from "watching videos" because i thought it was stupid, and went to youtube just to see clips of George Carlin, Chris Rock and the likes, and listen to music. But then i've found Ray William Johnson's channel and has been watching it for like six months now, and recently discovered a few other channels, mainly The Young Turks, The Amazing Atheist, MrRepzion, undertakerfreak and a few others.

My negative opinion towards youtube culture as a whole has shifted a bit because of these guys. I discovered that there actually are genuine people on youtube, people that have an opinion worth thinking about and that make discussion videos that are interesting to watch. Of course i'm a bit biased because turns out that a lot of beliefs they hold i agree with already, but it's still refreshing. Hell, these guys almost inspired me to make my own channel, and maybe at some point that's what i'll do.

Anyway, today imma talk about one of those videos. For those not in the know, not in the care or not giving a shit, there's this guy, MrRepzion, who was a Christian when he started making videos, but since then he slowly slided towards deism and a few weeks ago a tragedy happened - he publicly announced that he's leaving religion and is now deist. Naturally, this caused a lot of butthurt in the youtube christian community because he's a popular christian vlogger (atheist bloggers tend to be far more popular). Anyways, he made this video about how he's leaving religion, and got a few video responses, to which he made another video, in which he asked The Question - how does MrRepzion being sexually molested in church corresponds to a god that is benevolent and has a plan?

Now, i'm an atheist so for me the answer is obvious - there's no god, hence there's no plan. But since i'm such an asshole and love to argue with both sides, i'll play a bit of a devil's (or god's) advocate here and answer his question.

You see, people don't get to take all the good stuff without giving something up beforehand. That's just not how it works. In a sense, christfags got that somewhat right that this is the test that god gives you, only it's not given by god. We all have some kind of struggles in life. The question is, what do you take out of it. This is the real test. The test is not going through hell, the test is not breaking in two while you do that.

In order to get to an upper level, you have to struggle. You have to beat the boss. You have to get hit multiple times, struck down to the ground, go through hell and back, get eaten, defecated out of the predator's body and eaten by ants. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. If you're weak, you'll come out of it as a villain. If you're strong, you'll come out even stronger. It's a chance, an opportunity that can either lead you to darkness, or get some hair on your chest.

You can see that throughout the human history. The self-sacrifices of people. The struggle for the cause. The nazi death camps. Hell, you could argue that Hitler was doing god's work in a sense that he screwed up so badly and made so many people struggle that the world ended up better overall just because of how many people have struggled, and how many got through and became better people.

So i say n00bs must suffer. It's the only way.

Firefox spreading gay propaganda?

I ran the browser today (didn't run it for quite some time), and the first thing i see is the slogan:

Now get the mobile browser that’s got your back.

Am i supposed to feel comfortable having a gay browser in my phone (that is, in my back pocket, close to my ass)?

Facebook is the new Big Brother

I don't even know if i have to mention this. Some time ago, facebook had changed all email addresses to be @facebook.com by default. Then they screwed up with API which basically erased everyone's emails from phone contacts and replaced it with that new @facebook email. Now facebook is beta-testing its automagic crime detector that basically scans all communication on facebook (including private messages and, apparently, email) and looks for "suspicious activity". I rest my case. I left facebook long ago. You want to trust your private life to a private corporation - go for it.

Fringe!

I don't normally talk about TV shows. Simply because i have no TV at home and the only TV shows i ever watch are the oldies like X-Files, Psi Factor, Poltergeist: The Legacy and stuff like that. I make an exception every once in a while - Californication is a insanely cool series with Fox Mulder and lots of tits. And recently i made an exception for Fringe as well. (a friend of mine recommended to check out Big Bang Theory, and i honestly tried to watch it but it turns out i fucking hate the fake audience laughs so much i actually can't concentrate on the show itself)

Fringe were a good series. I won't talk about how this or that wasn't quite scientific, or plausible, or whatever. I have a far higher tolerance for quasi-scientific bullshit, if it goes along with the plot and fits into the setting well. I am OK with a scientist who was participating in every conceivable secret military experiment in the world, spent 16 years in a nuthouse and came out all fine and dandy. I am OK with the concept of only having two parallel universes. I am OK even with rewriting parts of the plot with a cheap move of "removing Peter Bishop from time".

What i am not OK with is logic errors. Whatever the insane bullshit story you tell, there's gotta be logic and consistency. Here are some of the most outrageous things i've noticed (there's many more of them i missed):

• Walternate is a nice guy? Sorry, but Walternate once sacrificed Col. Broyles to get what he wanted. This man is evil. And suddenly, some time in Season 4 we discover that he's actually not that bad and overall a good and trustworthy fella? Sorry, i don't buy that.
• Nina Sharp from alternate universe after Peter's erasure (season 4). Why did she appear? From where? What was her agenda? What's her back story? She suddenly appears, does some bad shit, and quickly dies. That's not how it's done, JJ.
• Observers taking over the Earth? This is CHEAP. They don't feel emotions anyway - why the fuck would they need girls, money, or power? It's so downright silly it's painful and insulting.
• September seeing all the futures but couldn't predict the one he was shot in? Bullshit. Bonus points for some shit "technology" to draw a symbol to hold him in one place that can be disabled by simply erasing the sign.
• William Bell suddenly appears, and he is being evil and playing God? Without any mention of William Bell's fate throughout season 4? In one of the previous seasons, he fucking sacrificed himself to save Olivia and others - and now he's a lunatic that wants to destroy everything and everyone? Please.
• In season 4, in the alternate timeline, there was no Peter. Peter was the primary reason why Olivias have swapped places and then came to hate each other. So, with Peter gone, why do they still hate each other?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Congratulations, JJ, you've ruined a good quasi-sci-fi series.

Keeping up with times

While i wasn't writing too much for a while, don't think for a moment that i was living under the rock. Since my last post (well, excluding Linux one) a lot of interesting stuff happened. Suffice to say that the world today is not the world it was six months ago. Yes, i'm referring to SOPA/PIPA/ACTA/TPP/CISPA/etc.etc.etc.

I am happy and cheering for the people who fought SOPA/PIPA. No, really, as much as i hate people, i can say that they've done mostly good job showing RIAA/MPAA who's the boss here. I'd like to think that they have learned their lesson, but that would be too much to ask, and the fact that they haven't changed their ways for ACTA and TPP shows that. ACTA is in a funny situation because USA has written and signed this document, but now that no one else has signed up for this, USA is pretty much the only country who signed ACTA.

Now we've got this TPP thing going. It's even more secretive than ACTA, and between countries questioning their participation in TPP, and US public figures' outright lies and corruption surrounding this international agreement, i think it's safe to say that this cancer must be eradicated the same way SOPA/PIPA/ACTA was. Recent events and news suggest that there may have been a change of heart in TPP negotiations, but i don't trust neither USTR (MPAA's bitch) nor other countries' discretion (USA's bitches). It will be interesting to see how this pans out though.

Cybermeanwhile, cybersecurity cyberis cybersorta cyberbig cybertoo. Cyberthere cyberwas cyberthis cyberanother cyberbill cybercalled cyberCISPA, cyberwhich cyberfocuses cyberon cyberhow cybermuch cyberwe cyberneed cybersecurity. Cyberin cyberorder cyberto cyberbend cyberpublic cyberopinion, cyberthere cyberhas cyberbeen cybera cyberlot cyberof cyberfear cybermongering cybergoing cyberon cyberabout cyberplanes cyberfalling cyberfrom cyberthe cybersky cyberand cyberall cybersorts cyberof cyber9/11'ish cyberstuff. Cyberi cybermust cybersay cyberthat cyberUS cyberpublic cyberis cyberso cyberdumb cyberthat cyberit cyberactually cyberbought cyberit, cyberand cybernow cyberpublic cyberpolls cybershow cyberthat cyberthey cyberfear cyberattacks cybermore cyberthan cyberterrorism. Cybercan cyberyou cyberfucking cyberbelieve cyberthat?! Meanwhile, cybersecurity is sorta big too. There was this another bill called CISPA, which focuses on how much we need cybersecurity. In order to bend public opinion, there has been a lot of fear mongering going on about planes falling from the sky and all sorts of 9/11'ish stuff. I must say that US public is so dumb that it actually bought it, and now public polls show that they fear cyberattacks more than terrorism. Can you fucking believe that?!

By the way, the previous paragraph is pretty much how US politicians talk about "cybersecurity". Throw in "cyber" here and there, and you're got yourself a new "threat" (not that terrorism ever was a threat!). They even went as far as offered a new role, someone-something-blah-blah on cyber-issues. Cyber-fucking-issues?! Any one with half a brain cell would understand that to not have power grids hacked you have to disconnect the fucking power grids from the Internet, but there's no money in that. Anonymous hacking power grids (lolwut?), scary Iranian Chinese Russian North Korean hackers (i am surprised they didn't invent cyber-Al Qaeda yet), what else? Oh yes, imaginary threats warrant surveilance society. Great. Anyways, i sincerely hope that nothing too bad comes out of it. I don't even expect them to make something good (for a nice change), just please, for God's sakes, at least don't break anything!

USA looks especially ironic in this particular case, because there has been two very high profile malware attacks on the Middle East - the Stuxnet and the Flame malware. If you don't know what that is - Google it, don't be a lazy ass. These malware attacks were actually carried out by USA. And now we fear that maybe - just maybe! - someone would perhaps strike back? How can you even justify these sorts of things? Whether the target is evil or not is irrelevant - malware attacks are illegal. Or is it only illegal and immoral whenever someone beside USA does it?

On a bright side, there's been a few booming Kickstarter projects - Wasteland 2, Double Fine, a few others... It's great to see this thing gaining traction. There were also some high profile lawsuits towards major music labels which further expose sleazy tactics the labels are using to avoid paying out artists they so proudly claim to "support". Fresh from the harvest is Def Leppard making covers on their own songs and basically recreating their entire discography so that they can get royalties out of the label.

And don't forget this whole Carreon/Oatmeal saga. It's so fucking retarded it's not even funny. FunnyJunk and Carreon, bravo, you are the worst morons i've ever seen. I mean, how can you be so fucking stupid to sue a guy who's raising money for charity?!

So, the world has changed. But at the same time, it largely stays the same.

Linux sucks!

First of all, sorry for not annoying you with much posts lately, been a little busy moving to a different place and settling in. I hate moving, i hate all this anxiety, i hate when a steady rhythm of my life is anally raped like this, but i guess that's life.

Now, Linux sucks. Yes, this is going to be a yet another post on how Linux sucks, with me bringing arguments about Linux while still assuring that i'm a fucking Linux zealot, advocate and whatnot. Yep, just like that, let's get it out of the way. I love Linux. I use it as my everyday OS, i occasionally do some development on Linux, i happen to feel comfortable in the command-line, et cetera, et cetera. That's all great.

But there's a big butt! For starters, i'm tired of and frustrated with Kubuntu. I've been using Kubuntu since, well, practically the day it showed up on the radar. I used it through 7.x series, through 8.x, through 9.x series, through 10.x series, through 11.x series, but i will not use 12.04. At least not as my main system. I'm moving to Chakra Linux. Why? Because Kubuntu is so god damn sluggish it's unbelievable. It literally crawls like a snail. Plus, i'm a bit of an adventure guy, i like adding PPA's and testing semi-stable packages. The problem with that of course is that every once in a while everything breaks. Yes, it's my own fault, but i don't care. Chakra manages to run testing branches of KDE4 without depriving me of graphical desktop every so often, so it's not like it's impossible.

The only successful upgrade to a new release i've had ever was from 10.10 to 11.04. This was Kubuntu at its best - not only it didn't break anything, it actually made things better! Not a single upgrade before or since was clean and easy - every time i had to shoot adrenaline into the kernel to bring the system up again. During big updates package manager often hangs and does nothing. Lately it's been hanging on the very last step of updates (processing triggers or something). Whether it's Muon or KPackageKit it doesn't matter - it still sucks.

Fonts. Fonts fucking suck. After - what, twenty? thirty? - years of this phrase first appearing on a public internet, it's still true. Fonts suck in Linux. I don't care that i can make them not suck, that i can edit zillion config files and install some shit just to display fonts properly - i don't give a fuck. When i install Windows, i don't fiddle with fonts. Why should i do so here?

Open Source projects. Some of them are pretty awesome, most of them suck. LibreOffice? Big fat sluggish piece of shit. Firefox? Don't get me started. The GNOME software camp? Fucking abomination. GNOME is a disease, a cancer on a free software movement. GCC? If this is the best compiler the community is capable of producing... Well, i rest my case. KDE software and KDE-related stuff (e.g. ownCloud) is probably the only worthwhile FLOSS software around, and it's not without its problems either.

Sound. SOUND!!!! How many god damn sound frameworks is enough?! OK, things have been slowly moving towards PulseAudio lately, and with version 4 my Skype is finally able to work properly without taking over my sound hardware or closing YouTube just to make a fucking call. But no pro sound so far. JACK is great as a framework but the drivers for anything remotely professional suck big time. Yes, i know it's not the fault of Linux community, but who the fuck cares? I still can't use neither FFADO nor any of the USB drivers. I keep a Windows installation just so i can record stuff properly.

Graphics. Yep, nouveau is making progress (dunno what's up with ATI, i haven't used a single Radeon in years), but gaming and GPU acceleration on Linux still sucks balls. You know what? I've decided to stick with Intel integrated graphics for the foreseeable future. Yes, i got myself the newest ballsiest Ivy Bridge Core i7, an equally ballsy Z77 motherboard, and that's it. No discrete graphics, fuck em all.

Pro software. Suffice to say, the ones that are worth something either are/were commercial (think Blender), ugly, messy and useless (yo GIMP, how's your CMYK support?), or simply crashy or amateurish (pretty much everything else). And we still wonder why, oh why didn't Linux take over the world...

Rule 34

OMG Ubuntu reports on an Ubuntu Unity lens that allows searching for porn. Big deal, eh? Well, apparently, the world is in such a sad state that people have to post this stuff with a bunch of warnings and unnecessary remarks that are really stating the obvious (such as "whether it offends you or not", in bold), and people are still whining in the comments about how freedom somehow has to be magically equated to "not offending".

If porn offends you - it's your problem. Freedom is exactly that - freedom. Including freedom to do and say what others might not like or find offending.

KDE is the most Linux desktop

This article has caught my attention, mainly because it appeared both on Planet KDE and on Slashdot. The comment section of Slashdot was particularly fun to read, because it sort of reminded me what i have seen back in the day of KDE 4.0 release.

Basically, we have loads of users whining about how GNOME changes things in a way that they aren't where they used to be any more. And then there's Unity. Unity is another topic altogether, and while it may seem that its arrival was completely uncalled for (what? another Linux DE choice?!), that is actually not true. The real reason for Unity to appear is that GNOME2 sucked and the GNOME dev team is a bunch of assholes. Mark Shuttleworth embraced the coming of netbooks and understood that the touch-enabled desktop devices' arrival is inevitable, and he simply didn't want to wait for GNOME developers to pull their head out of their asses and look into the future, not into the past. So while Unity may or may not suck (earlier versions of Unity definitely sucked, didn't try later ones), it may or may not look like Mac OS X (latest versions definitely do share a lot of similarities), it may or may not be necessary after the GNOME Shell arrival, it was necessary in order for those GNOME dumb fucks to realize that backwards compatibility is not the only thing that matters.

And finally - thank God! - GNOME guys started thinking, and they pulled their heads out of each others' asses, and they started moving, and they released GNOME 3 and GNOME Shell. I didn't get my hands on them yet, but from what i see on the screenshots, they look pretty cool. No more Windows 98-ish look, GNOME 3 looks more like a mashup of Mac OS X and MeeGo. Which is good, because these are the interfaces people consider both beautiful and usable.

But what is it? Why GNOME users are whining? Aaaah, the desktop behaves differently from they are used to. Welcome to KDE 4.0 guys, now it's your turn. Pull your heads out of your asses (i like this phrase!), change is necessary. Face it - GNOME 2 has all but stagnated. It wasn't fun, it wasn't configurable. Some people confuse GNOME 2 limitations for minimalism, but whatever. Man up, idiots, if even GNOME dipshits decided that it's time to change - that's for your own good. Remember, GNOME knows exactly what every user needs. That's why they leave out so many configuration options, isn't it?

The problem here is that people are not against GNOME 3. They are against the change. Back in the day when KDE4 was introduced, it changed everything. It was practically rewritten from scratch. Why? So we could enjoy so many great software today. I think the real KDE 4 will be KDE 5. KDE 4, while being a major rewrite, has only laid the foundations. Hell, KDE PIM got Akonadi support only on KDE 4.6/4.7 - that's more than halfway through the development cycle. Despite it being a rewrite, it's still pretty much a long ass transition to the integrated, semantic future. GNOME guys are finally moving that way too with their Zeitgeist thingie. So essentially, things change. And people don't like it.

Look, here's one for ya. You know why GTK and GNOME sucks? Look how much time it took to write Unity. After two years it's finally usable. How long did it take for KDE guys to write two (!) releases of Plasma Active? Three months? Five? Moreover, Plasma Active is practically a project of a couple of weekend hackers. Unity has corporate backing of Canonical. Plasma, KDE and Qt in general are far superior in terms of getting working (and fast!) code as quickly as possible. KDE architecture enabled writing Plasma Active in so little time. KDE architecture enabled Calligra guys to write a backend, on top of which interfaces for both desktop and mobile can be built very quickly. GNOME doesn't have nearly as much power both from user and developer point of view, and because GNOME developers are idiots, GTK will never have that power.

But as much as i despise GNOME, i have to give credit for finally growing some balls and doing GNOME 3. Also, Vala is a terrific idea. Having a real object-oriented language which translates itself into native C code? Brilliant. Now developers can have the speed of native C and experience the full glory of ass-backwards GTK and GNOME architecture. The only thing i'm not sure of is how to debug this thing if it translates to C code? It sorta reminds me of Google Dart, only in case of Vala it actually tries to solve a real world problem of trying to write object-oriented code in a language that is more suitable for low-level system programming than for GUI stuff. Time will tell though.

KGet fucking sucks

Seriously, guys, is this what you call a download manager?

First of all, the why having two plugins to do the same thing? Yes, one of the KIO-based file downloaders is multi-threaded, but why keep the single threaded then?

Second, the behavior is destructive by default. Why does it delete everything instead of leaving the files and deleting just the download job? I've just lost 20 GB worth of downloaded data, thank you very much.

Third gripe is that not only we have two KIO plugins, they also both suck big time. I mean, no matter how much i hate the thing that Firefox has become, there's still a couple of things it does best in class. One of them is download management, with help of DownThemAll extension. This is hands down best download manager available in a cross-platform manner. JDownloader sucks and will always suck 'cos it's Java. Others either don't work on anything but Linux, or don't work on Linux, or even work only on Windows. And they all suck anyway. KGet can't download for shit. It can't parse download.php-type files and rename the files afterwards, so whenever you download practically anything which is not from FTP, you're pretty much fucked, because you'll end up with a bunch of download.php files.

And final complaint is that torrent plugin sucks fucking greasy nigger monkey balls. It can't even scan files if they weren't downloaded by exactly this instance of KGet. Try to continue download with another KGet from another Linux? No luck. Delete everything. Try to transfer your torrent files from KTorrent to KGet? No luck. Delete everything, start from scratch. This isn't even funny.

Thankfully, KTorrent is one of the best torrent clients available. God bless KTorrent developers, KGet developers - burn in hell, you fuckers.

Firefox fucking sucks

I use Linux as my everyday operating system. I love KDE, i love the developer culture of Free Software, i love lots of things about KDE, Linux and its ecosystem. But there are some areas where it not only lacks - it sucks monkey balls. One of these areas are web browsers.

What the fuck?! Web browsing is just about everything most people do with a computer today, and you still can't come up with a decent browser?! Let's see what we have. Internet Explorer? Only old ass versions, only on Wine, and they suck anyway. Safari? No Linux version, and Safari is probably the most inflexible piece of software ever written. Chrome? Hands down fastest rendering and fastest Javascript, no desktop integration whatsoever (looks and feels alien on ANY desktop), extensions suck, and Google is trying to do batshit insane crap with it, like pushing to make it a gaming platform, or allow it to execute native code, or other less than useful stuff. Opera? Bloated proprietary piece of shit (i don't know what do they need extensions for - they already have everything and the kitchen sink in there), sucks at rendering and sucks at Javascript, and hipsters love it. Firefox? Piece of shit with an asshat development team.

Don't get me wrong - there was a time when i was a fan of Firefox. It was a new kid on the block, it had tabs, it was small and fast, it blew IE out of the water, and it was cool to like it because it was all open source and ideologically correct. Yes, Opera had tabs too, but Opera, while being a proprietary piece of shit, sucked then, and it sucks now. Firefox 2 ruled with all its glory.

Things started to go south about the time of release of version 3. Firefox started sucking big time back then. The most unnecessary and idiotic "feature" ever introduced was the "awesome bar". Firefox developers were saying shit like "give it time", "you'll get used to it", blablabla. Well guess what, i didn't. I still despise this fucking "awesome" bar, i still haven't got used to it, and i still miss the old address bar. Sadly, with all the addon flexibility Firefox has, no one is still able to replicate the old address bar.

Firefox also started to be a memory and resource hog. Every time a new version came out, i was pleasantly surprised that it was faster than the previous one, only to discover that it was faster due to some addons being disabled out of compatibility issues. And it got all the bloat back by the time the next release was on the way. The development team was bragging about how they work on memory problems, how they optimize startup time, how they do this, how they do that - but Firefox only seemed to get slower and slower.

Another problem with current Firefox is the development cycle. No, seriously, what were you thinking?! You want to have a rolling release? Fine, but why inflate version numbers? Why not do 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 etc.? Current alpha (Firefox 10? 11? 28?) looks exactly like Firefox 4. So what was the point of all these version numbers? Firefox management didn't just shoot itself in the foot here - it blew out both its legs with a fucking bazooka. Sorry guys, rocket jumps only work in Quake. Not to mention the whole "user is an idiot" mentality that plagues Chrome developers. Admit it, Mozilla, Firefox 4 looks like Chrome.

The main problem with Firefox though is its complete inability to integrate with KDE desktop, which is largely fault of using this piece of shit toolkit GTK+. I still can't understand why those Chrome and Firefox idiots picked GTK+ instead of Qt. Maybe back in the day Qt wasn't a viable alternative, and Firefox being so old ass and having lots of legacy code would find the transition to Qt too expensive, but Google, why?! Why?! Why did you choose a toolkit that looks like ass on my desktop?!

Complete lack of visual integration is not the best part of it, though. The best part is, since i want to have my passwords stored in my KWallet, whenever the new shitty Firefox version comes out, it breaks the KWallet addon. I just can't live without KWallet integration, and this is the only thing that breaks on every fucking update!

It's been a while since i started looking around for better browsers, but they all suck. Chrome lacks DownThemAll, which i can't live without, and is not well integrated into KDE and looks and feels like ass. Konqueror just plain sucks. Doesn't render websites correctly, no extensions, Flash crashes, and due to its swiss army knife nature, whenever you press the wrong button, some lame-ass panel or viewer shows up which i don't know how to turn off.

Rekonq? I have high hopes for Rekonq. It already has KGet integration, which is sorta like having DownThemAll, but it's not nearly there yet. It doesn't store passwords in KWallet, which is really strange, given it's a native KDE project. It also lacks extensions. Some time ago, Chrome extensions were promised, but they didn't materialize. It also promises some interesting ideas like ownCloud sync, but again, it's not ready at the time of this writing. With KGet and KWallet integration though, i can live without most of the Firefox addons (and some of them are available as Chrome extensions as well), but unfortunately some extensions i would strongly prefer having, Ghostery being the prime example (as far too small amount support the Do-Not-Track option). Greasemonkey would be good to have too.

Update: Nope, it does indeed store passwords in KWallet, it just does it differently from Firefox, which is why i couldn't locate them in KWallet Manager - they're stored under Form Data. This makes rekonq barely viable an alternative to Firefox. I wish i could import passwords though. I might look into writing a password import script either from CSV, or from KWallet itself. Probably, CSV/XML would be a lot more useful for the community. I still miss extensions though, and while rekonq has its own flavour of AdBlock, i would really love to see something like Ghostery or Scrapbook.

So, what does it leave us with? Some lame-ass half-assed slow-ass unbranded-ass browsers like Arora, IceWeasel, Namoroka or whatever their names were? Or a semi-usable extension-less rekonq?

It's really simple guys. I just want a browser that integrates with my desktop, and that is reasonably fast and allows at least some degree of flexibility. This is what i'm not getting.