Friday, January 30, 2009

What happened to Firefox ?

I have been a long time user and supporter of Firefox but there are many occassions where Firefox would simply crash for unknown reason and shut itself down with crash reporters , restoe sessions...whatever but some crashes , even when you open with a restored session , would just keep crashing and crashing and crashing. Now, the same thing happened when I tried to access the BSS Subs website that subs anime videos and Firefox keeps crashing.

Hey, this is Firefox 3.0.5 guys ? Been in business for a long time isn't it and many review just love to praise how quick , fast , good Firefox is but I doubt because I always have my Firefox crash UNGRACEFULLY !!! many times.

Mozilla , time to get up and stop sleeping and make something that crashes gracefully rather than something than kills the entire browser just because one of the tabs is 'spoilt'. Why not just kill the very tab that is 'spoilt' rather than closing the entire browser ? Doesn't it sound Google Chrome like ? Yes it does and that's the idea I like but Chrome also gave me a good amount of bad headaches and ungraceful crashes by simply hanging itself rather than the supposedly all so good Chrome...but hey..maybe I am wrong because I have not used Chrome for ages since the last version 1s and till 1.whatever beta.

I wonder what is so good about Firefox when there's so much error and crashes and lag occuring on mine.... I don't see the difference between a supposed buggy and stupid IE and a Firefox that love to crash , hang , lag and all the nonsense ... except that Firefox is Open Source and Micrososft's IE isn't.

Both are shit products.

The thing that have never failed me... even once... is simply Opera browser. Some reviews call it slow but I don't mind when it does fail me once so far. No crashes... no lags...nothing from Opera.

Good to go Opera :P

So Firefox... you do better buck up and pull up your socks or else you would end up like IE... and same goes for Chrome.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Linux , XP , OS X , BSD or OpenSolaris

Well, my Win XP have been aging and so is my machine. I am looking for a suitable and stable OS to finally take over my XP box. I have tried variants of Linux distros (OpenSUSE , Fedora , Ubuntu) and now going to try LinuxMint. I am deciding whether to stay with XP or use one of the Linux distors out there.

The Linux distros I tried were amazing. But the one weak point that doomed all Linux distros are package manage / installation. Imagine where you enter a world where you have to use a command line to do installation by runing 'make' , 'make install' , './configure' commands while OS X and Windows just require you to double click and relax. Yes , there are GUI installers and you have the RPMs where you double click and scratch your head because I have seen many RPMs not showing you the process or telling you that it's being activated and is installing whatever things it is doing. Some RPMs would at least announce to you that it have installed this and that but mostly you wouldn't know what is going on... way to go RPMS... with the lousy usability for noobs.

Now , you have apt-get and yum where 'they' said that you just do some command like 'apt-get install wine' or 'yum -i wine' or something like that. Yes , it's simple because you just state whatever you want and somehow it 'magically' gives you but you have no control of exactly whatever you want. For installers , they would allow you to choose what you want to install ..etc... like asking if you want the source code given as well... no , yum and apt-get doesn't do that. No options... just install.

The worse thing about Linux is that there is so many variations of packages or installers... it literally confuses you. Another weak point is that the huge variation of Linux just sucks because you may have a software compiled for Gentoo and Ubuntu distros of Linux but you have none for a Fedora user and what if the Fedora user is also a noob like me who doesn't exactly know much about the technical stuff of Linux ? Linux really need a 'all-fit-one' installer or it would may loose potential users like ME :P .

So of all the ranting , now lets proceed to rant about XP. Yes, I am not using Vista because Vista is a notorious bloated troublemaker for any machine and I have heard enough to keep my distance with Vista. For now , XP is the most stable available and Win 7 is coming out but that would be sometime the end of this year and the huge variation of 'distros' of Win 7 Microsoft is planning for Win 7 is making me abit doubtful to getting myself to use Win 7 because.... it's one freaking Windows 7 so why make so shitty 'Home edition' , 'Basic' ...etc... Just give us a Win 7 and whatever software you want to give us , just put it together in the CD/DVD or on the MS website so we can do it ourselves and download or load it up for installation rather than having some preinstalled stuff pre-empting that we would want to use it. Xp is pretty bloated too to be absolutely honest. I can literally switch on my XP box and go to the fridge and walk one round the entire house and get back and it's still loading.

Now, let's get to OS X and hopefully no angry mac lovers would decide to DDOS my blogspot until it's brought to it's knees...

Mac ... it's definitely a work of tech-art mixture. Nice GUI , nice effects , very simple... but the simplicity is too simple , it just doesn't give you much to choose. I want a micture of simplicity with a fair amount of my control over what the system is ! Anyway, Mac is simply giving me the vibes of 'exclusive only'. It's up to you to interpret my words as good or bad but I have no idea if it's good or bad too... so don't ask me. I always have the feeling that Mac is 'cold'... I am not sure why but I would stay from Mac since I always get a 'cold' feeling from it. Ubuntu Linux is the opposite , it gives that warm fuzzy but not too overwhelming feeling. I like that. So Mac have to reach and listen more to others... this is what I thought.

BSD .... I am alien to it and it's alien to me. There's not much installers or software for BSD and it's very sure for the geeks only. I guess you would have to scratch your head and type on keyboards into command lines so often that your mouse would be really useless most of the time ? I maybe wrong because I AM alien to BSD and so is it to me.

Finally, Solaris/OpenSolaris. I did install and test out OpenSolaris and it's pretty good. I like the power of the ZFS where you can scroll some scroller and it brings you 'back in time' to view old copies of your file/folders of how they look like.... but OpenSolaris is too new...too new to be fully stable for my use.

Of all... here's what I would choose and most of them are based on how stable , how usable and how well accessible installation is.

Fedora - well... it's because there's that Yum and RPM combination and many RPMs out there have the word 'distro - fedora'. So I would be sure to know that there's lots of RPMs made for fedora. Yes , there's lots of Ubuntu installers like '.deb' files and what you know but look around you, RPMs are pretty much 'alive' out there. It's pretty usable all thanks to Gnome desktop or else Fedora would simply exist as a command line thing without GUI or at most basic rough looking GUI. Stability of Fedora is pretty doutbful because I have Fedora crash on me a few times and have difficutly installing it's installers. What a waste of potential for Fedora. If Fedora doesn't make the basics right like the installer CDs ... it just would be good.

Ubuntu - Nice work of trying to improve. Nice GUI customized with the warm colours. Very easy to navigate around and work with but...why do I need to use apt-get and aptitude most of the time in command lines ? Yes , the package manager is nice thing to have. Anyway, it inherits the problem of all Linux systems , a centralized package installer.

OpenSUSE - Makes lots of improvement in terms of GUI and effect. Inherits the 'great installation problem' of all Linux systems. Configuring yum repos are a pain in the ass... same goes for the repos for YAST. Make it easier can you , Novell ?

LinuxMint - Trying out now... no comment ...maybe the same 'great installation problem' too ? Hey, the download speed for the ISO file is so artificial and controlled... can you guys be a bit more generous rather than allowing arond 30KBps ...which means I need around 6 hours ? You need to attract users...you know ?

XP - Bloated ... bloated...bloated...and bogged down by unnecessary apps. Windows... always a system with a huge targetting cross on it because...most viruses and whatever so malicious are made just for YOU ! Windows just naturally attract the worse of viruses and malicious stuff because ... even the military of many countries are using it , I guess ?

OS X - No money for your whatever iBook it might be ! I am not so rich to afford one... and I want to reuse my box/machine.

OpenSolaris - Good potential...but you have gotta to be more mature and stable first... so grow up .. little boy :P .

Hmmmm... none of them actually fits what I want... since there's always a believe that there's no such thing as 'perfection'. Well...it's true but I gotta choose one .... maybe I would finally decide after looking into LinuxMint and I may like it from the interesting looks of the screenshots....or maybe another huge 'Linux Disappointment' ?

Firefox's awesome bar ...

I have been using Firefox 3 since the very day it was released and one thing I like and hate at the same time is the 'awesome bar'. Below is a list of my like and hates of the awesome bar...

Awesome/Like :
  • It just drops you the entire list of possible websites whenever you type something in
  • Mostly accurate 'predictions' of what you want to access
Poor/Hate :
  • It just makes the entire firefox slow because whenever you use the awesomeness, it needs to access a database of records and load them into the awesome bar and plus... you may suddenly decide to 'delete' what you type and add something else... so what happened was whenever I use the awesome bar... firefox would be a bit laggy and slow and eats up quite a bit of memory.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Git , a solution for me

I have tried to search for ways to host a project without needing to apply for this project membership or creating projects in project hosting webs like SF.net , Freshmeat ...etc... but I doubt so. So i thought of hosting a version control server but hey, I need to somehow pay some money or have my own equipments so no... I don't want to fork out money. I thought a client/server way of hosting my codes in it is just not worth it and so I was reading slashdot.com today and there , I saw the word 'git' and decide to watch the video on Youtube about Linus's speech on the 'git' he made. It's what I wanted... serverless system and it's more than serverless..it's sort of p2p and can make branches and merges and joins which is a headache in svn and cvs something simple and make it look so simple to be stupid. The sppech sounds impressive so I'm gonna try out git (I found a window's version of git released by Google since what Linus's released were *nix system's).

i would add more here after my experiments with git...

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Makagiga 3.0

Makagiga (A Java platform allowing plugins and widgets to be scripted) version 3.0 is out.

I played around and here are my evaluations.

A03 Look and Feel: I love how simple and clean A03's looks are. It makes Makagiga look very clean and neat. Simple and interactive.

To Do widget: Finally after using Notes widget to type out messy TO DO list , finally, there's a To Do widget where you can put it conveniently on your Makagiga desktop and make your To Do list looks need. It has a very simple and uncomplicated look but it packs quite a few powerful features. You can set the date and time for the task to be completed by double clicking to generate a date then right click on it and it would have a popup with a full calender chooser just to name one.

Plugin window: Looks always improve and so does it. It always gets better and more tidy.

In general, the improvements are not very drastic but they are worth it to make your Makagiga look better.

What I feel is that Makagiga is always growing and since it's a geenral platform , it has many potentials but it also lacks a central goal which is good because a general platform allows it to be very versatile but that bad thing is it has no goal but overall... Makagiga is suppose to be a general platform for others to make use of so it is moving in that direction well.

The manutil plugin would be completed soon for testing... so hopefully it makes it through and be uploaded for use.