cestdelamerde.com

January 11, 2008 kde.org annouced KDE 4.0 is released !

Unfortunately, this release is not really ready for day to day use.

The new interface is beautyful but lacks of configuration options (eg:resizing/masking the taskbar).

A lot of application that used to work in kde 3.5 does not work anymore (eg: Kopete has a random behaviour when it talks to some Jabber servers).

Some kickass features in applications have been disabled : it is not possible to access directly to a tab in Konsole using a keyboard shortcut, adding custom applet (like a "show desktop button") to the taskbar seems not possible anymore....

Even worse, some settings are not accessible through the control panel anymore, eg: the number of desktops available for application windows can only be configured by right-clicking on the pager taskbar applet, the taskbar options (size, automasking...) seems to be gone, when removing the pager applet, there seems to be no way to enable it back !

After some time, keyboard shortcuts did not work anymore : Alt+TAB just does nothing, Ctrl+Shift+N (new tab in Konsole) split the screen...

So do not even think about installing it

Today at approximatively 22:30 CET google servers (at least google.fr and google.com) were apparently down : they displayed the welcome page of the Apache Httpd web server. See the screenshot below :

A few days ago, I've installed Firefox 3 beta 2 for Mac OS X.

It features new security mechanisms, a new URL bar auto-completion, a download manager that can be used by a human, a new password management and a faster rendering engine a bit more integrated to the os.

The first thing that surprised me is the new rendering engine using a new way to render fonts that forbids the use of non anti-aliased fonts : even setting "AppleAntiAliasingThreshold" to a very high value does not disable anti-aliasing

Anyway, it looks faster and this is a good news as Firefox is quite slow compared to Internet Explorer and Opera. But the more useful new feature is the way stored password are managed. The password manager do not ask you anymore before submitting a password form if you want save this password, but it asks you after you've submitted the form. This is especially useful because you can choose to remember the password only if the login was successful and not a priori.

Download Firefox Beta Version.
Firefox 3 beta 2 Release Notes.

During past few weeks, cestdelamerde.com was down because my dsl modem was unable to provide a stable connection. I finally choose for the new year to host this website at Gandi.

As everybody knows, font AA sucks a lot Especially the Apple sub-pixel rendering that seems to only works well on apple screens !

If you are using Tiger you can use the wonderful Unsanity Silk. It lets you control font rendering by application, fonts can be substituted...

Unfortunately it does not work with Leopard anymore. So here is a hacky method to disable font AA in mac os. It used to work with all mac os x versions (10.x) :


defaults write .GlobalPreferences AppleAntiAliasingThreshold 200


The above code disables font AA for all fonts having a size less than 200 points (this value can be increased if needed). However, title bars and menus are still rendered with some anti aliasing

General thougths : The case against blurred fonts

More about MacOS X subpixel font AA : Sub pixel antialiasing

A few weeks only after the Leopard release, Apple released an update to Leopard : 10.5.1 Releases Notes

Even worse : the above update fix really serious security issues : 10.5.1 security fixes

Those hot fixes just remember me how often Microsoft is releasing updates for Windows... (and how serious security issues they are trying to fix )

Gentoo Howto

Dell provides a nice docking station where the Dell D630 can be plugged on. But Linux kernel lacks support of this kind of hardware. Even if a "dock" ACPI module is existing in recent 2.6 kernels, it fails to provide ACPI events to acpid : it just have not been implemented in the kernel code :( The quick hack below send some crappy events to the ACPI event bus :

--- ../../../linux-2.6.22-gentoo-r9/drivers/acpi/dock.c 2007-10-31 17:30:44.000000000 +0100
+++ dock.c 2007-11-09 15:06:25.000000000 +0100
@@ -68,6 +68,8 @@

static struct dock_station *dock_station;

+static struct acpi_device device;
+
/****************************************************************************
Dock Dependent device functions
*****************************************************************************/
@@ -320,7 +322,7 @@
if (event == ACPI_NOTIFY_EJECT_REQUEST)
dock_remove_acpi_device(dd->handle);
else
- dock_create_acpi_device(dd->handle);
+ device = dock_create_acpi_device(dd->handle);
}
mutex_unlock(&ds->hp_lock);
}
@@ -333,6 +335,7 @@
changed.
/
kobject_uevent(&dev->kobj, KOBJ_CHANGE);
+ acpi_bus_generate_event(device, event, num);
}

/**


In Gentoo the event can be matched using the code extracted from my /etc/acpi/default.sh :

if [ $1 = "GDCK" ] ;then
export XAUTHORITY=/var/run/xauth/`ls /var/run/xauth/`
export DISPLAY=:0
if [ $2 = "00000000" ] ; then
logger "docking ?"
else
logger "undocking ?"
fi
exit;
fi


Unfortunately, this quick hack fails to detect the first "undock" event if the laptop is docked at boot time...

Having the dual head working properly on Linux is a pain in the ass. Especially when your laptop comes with an Intel card.

For an unknown reason using the latest stable intel drivers of the Gentoo linux distribution, getting the DVI output of the docking station working is not possible ; you have to unmask the intel drivers package to get it work. Unfortunately, even with the last drivers, it fails to detects video modes of the DELL 2007WFP flat screen It detects a wrong 1680x1050 video mode (59Hz instead of the required 60Hz). Even worse, this video mode is not selected by default and only detected if X starts while the laptop is docked. To solve this, a ad-hoc xorg.conf file must be setup :

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "dvi"
Option "PreferredMode" "1680x1050@60"
Option "Position" "1280 0"
Modeline "1680x1050@60" 147.14 1680 1784 1968 2256 1050 1051 1054 1087 -HSync +Vsync
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "lcd"
Option "LeftOf" "dvi"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "i810"
ChipSet "965GM"
Card "i810 965GM"
Option "monitor-LVDS" "lcd"
Option "monitor-TMDS-1" "dvi"
EndSection

Even with this config specials scripts have to be written in order to get it work (this must be launched after the X startup) :

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/xrandr --output TMDS-1 --mode 1680x1050@60
/usr/bin/xrandr --output TMDS-1 --pos 1280x0


By default, the Leopard TimeMachine is not able to write to Windows network shares. But it comes with an hidden option that allows this to happen. You only have to do this :

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1