We are in the process of transferring all of our web sites to a less expensive yet pleasantly faster and more spacious server. (Don’t I sound like an IBM commercial) The biggest push, however, is to finally abandon proprietary control panel software (which sucks anyway) and move to an GPLed control panel (more on that later).

We are also switching from Redhat Enterprise Linux to CentOS (purely an economical decision — well, that’s not entirely true. RHEL uses up2date (RHN) by default, which, IMO, really has issues. Fedora, CentOS and other open alternatives rely on YUM. Yes, before you say anything, I know that up2date uses YUM. Actually, up2date breaks YUM. Therein lies the problem).

It took me all last night and the better part of today to get the name servers up and running. I’ve done it before, but not in about four years. It all seems to be flowing like water now.

Oh yeah, best of all, we’re lowering our prices and redesigning our web site. (more on all of that later too).

There was a nasty xserver bug with the PowerPC that affected AIGLX, causing the desktop to turn blueish-purple whenever Beryl or Compiz was started.

It looked bleak for me on my iBook G4, but once again, free and open source software has proved to be ideal for quick responsiveness to bugs. A patch has been posted on the ubuntu bug list.

It works perfectly here. Be sure to test it and post your results. **flips the cube, just for the heck of it**

…with a newt, and her name is Edgy Eft. I just upgraded MotherBrain from Kubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 to Edgy Eft 6.10 Release Candidate (the final release is due Oct 26), and now I’m in GNU-heaven. While using dapper, I had made the decision to stop using XGL/Compiz for a couple of reasons:

1. No direct rendering of opengl apps and painfully slow indirect rendering.
2. No support for my wacom graphics tablet.
3. Frequent slowness and bugginess.

Well, the new version of Xorg, supplied by Ubuntu comes with AIGLX built-in (sorry Novell). It works flawlessly after following these simple instructions (for Nvidia users — search wiki for other cards and distros). And after you follow that link, you’ll notice that I’m also not using Compiz but rather Quinn Storm’s fork, which is now called Beryl and uses a window manager called Emerald (thanks Quinn).

But aside from all the eye-candy goodness, Edgy seems to provide the stability, ease of use, and feature-rich applications that have become the staple of the Ubuntu/Kubuntu. From KDE 3.5.5 to the addition of digikam into the base packages, to the slick new styles and themes, to the exciting new init system that makes booting fun (OK, now I’m exaggerating, but you get the idea).

KDE’s 10 anniversary was typified by the release of version 3.5.5, containing numerous bug fixes, khtml enhancements, and new features. Among the new features that I find most interesting, is the new version of Kopete that includes compatibility support for Adium message styles. Feel free to send me an instant message. Enjoy!