Posted by lostson on September 22, 2009 – 5:59 am
So I was thinking lately about the system tray and its uses, and I have come to the conclusion that I am not sure if I need it. I will explain, I often have pidgin, liferea, and rhythmbox running at all times, and what has been annoying me is that to get at these apps I have to take my hands off of my keyboard to move my mouse to the tray to click on the icon and bring them up. Now this is really no hardship but it still can seem like kind of a pain sometimes. I am very use to Alt+Tab’ing my way to the app I am looking for.
I can see some things like network manager or update notifiers but why all these other applications. For instance I am working on a application for Identi.ca and have been pondering if I want to add system tray support or not. I want to add some notification’s to it but when I get notified that something has happened I would rather just use Alt+Tab and pull it up read what I need to then Alt+F9 it back to where it came from. Now of course this can make for a rather loaded up taskbar but still makes it rather quick and easy to get to the app of your choosing. I do use mail-notification and that pops up in the tray and that is a nice feature, liferea’s system tray icon changes color and can list the number of items updated and this is nice as well but then again I have to move to my mouse again.
All in all it really boils down to “to each his own” but my 2cents is that for alot of things this really isn’t needed with using multiple desktops and other various features and keyboard shortcuts, there really is only a few instances where this may be required. What do you think ?
Posted by lostson on September 13, 2009 – 6:55 am
Ok then LinuxCon is fast approaching and it is getting all kinds of press, but I have a complaint and that is that it is gonna cost me 500.00 bux just to register to go to the thing. Plus if you read the banner above the registration banner it is merely another 143.00 a night to stay at a hotel. So now we’re at almost 1000.00 just to get setup but yet this doesn’t even include my air fare or if i am gonna drive there so lets just round it out to 1500.00 and I am not even there yet. Plus lets not forget food, coffee and beer and probably some trinkets. Wow this is affordable in today’s economy is it not. To me this all seems so ironic that I support Free and Open Source software but yet it will cost me a small fortune to go to a convention about the software I love so much.
As a simple minded home user(to whom these conventions never seem aimed at, or we are just forgotten about) I suppose I don’t understand how things work. I have been a linux guy for years I spend all my free time pissing off my wife and kids as I toil in front of my screens learning to code run servers and support my distro of choice. Yet prices for conventions and tests and classes are so outrageous that the average joe like me would never be able to afford to go. I find this all so damn disgusting and it just irratates me to no end.
There is a fine list of speakers and things to do while there and these are included and that’s great, but I really hope that these speakers are not getting paid to speak. Yes you read that right, most of these guys are already high up in the food chain and have enough funds to live out their lives so they better not be getting paid to be there, that to me would be just another slap in the face. The fact is the home user( you and me) are hardly ever recognized in any way shape or form for the support and things we do( other than new software being released) we are the alpha and beta testers of code, bug submitters, master of home servers and home based web sites dedicated to the power of linux. We spread the word tirelessly to our friends and family but yet everything is merely aimed at corporations because this is where the money is at.
I can only think if I had this kind of money laying around that I could waste on this kind of convention, how much better this money could be used if donated to my distro of choice or Dekstop of choice I’m sure CentOS or Gnome could put my 1500+ dollars to good use, probably to send someone out there to see your neat and tidy little convention, hehe.
I know the Linux Foundation and other supporting cast does alot of very good work and I appreciate all the hard work these people do, please don’t misunderstand me I am a linux user and always will be but things like this are really starting to piss me off. So please keep up all the good work you do but I hope all you drink sipping pinkie extending yuppie scumbags fall and break both of your hands while your playing wii bowling!!
Posted by lostson on September 9, 2009 – 5:35 pm
Filed under Linux, centos
Someone asked me what distro I was using the other day and I told them CentOS. They responded with “the versions of software in that distro is soo old it must look like crap compared to the newer more bleeding edge distros?” I simply replied not my desktop looks quite serene, and to back my position up i give you this
serence
So I believe now it is time to close this with my response which is “Bite Me!”
Posted by lostson on September 8, 2009 – 6:53 pm
Well the day usually starts early 5am or better. Stumble to bathroom brush teeth look at self in mirror spit and repeat. Downstairs make pot of coffee, take dog out, induce self with nicoteine. Come in house fill coffee cup and up to my office.
Sit down try to open eyes hit email hotkey. Go through mail see if I can help anyone out or maybe learn something new. After this bring liferea out of the tray and check all the hotspots planet CentOS, forums and Mantis bug tracker peruse the titles. Bring up firefox and go log into the forums, go through all new posts again to see if i can help or learn something new. No new posts on the planet so no reason to go there this early, maybe someone will post something later today. Check Identi and twitter for new CentOS posts and tibbits and see if any of the CentOS crew posting anything slick as well.
After all that it is off to the wiki looking for things that haven’t yet been covered and maybe I can write up something and send it off to the docs mailing list for approval. After that its off to Mantis and check out bugs, read up on the new ones if they pertain to the version I am using then i try to duplicate if possible, make comments where I can and try to be helpful. Now of course while doing this IRC is on the desktop as well and one eye keeps a watch on #centos and #centos-social for more things to talk about or try and help or learn something as well. So by now its 6 – 630am or so and I am caught up, depending on how busy the overnight was in the forums and other such places. I can now start to track down news on the net about CentOS and hopefully contribute something to the CentOS site for people to read and enjoy.
All in all I stay very busy with CentOS related ideas and projects, and have even been busy working on ideas and such for a CentOS podcast as well. So as you can see you can stay very busy with trying to help out and keep up with things and maybe even do some trivial stuff to help dev’s, or maintainers to get other work done. The only bad part is I get three days off a week and can put alot of effort in on those three days. The other four I work eleven plus hours a day so often by the time I get home I am wiped out and the wife and kids like to spend time with me as well. The only thing I can say is there never seems to be enough time to get to all the projects and posts and ideas one may have. Although my time is limited I do enjoy doing the tiny little bit I do get to do. Oh yeah did I mention writing blog posts about CentOS as well.
Posted by lostson on September 6, 2009 – 4:30 am
Ok Ok we have all seen the pressers that rhel has released the update to 5.4, and as cent users we know that means new stuff for us as well. The recent posting on the ml was two to four weeks. So there everyone is aware now of a time frame. There are some known hiccups when upgrading so you may want to read this before upgrading to make sure you know whats gonna happen, or you can be like me and quickly upgrade and hope nothing breaks, nothing like living on the edge!!
A thread has also been started on the CentOS forums about the 5.4 release and you can keep up with that here. Also the mailing lists contain information if you prefer that route. All in all excitement is in the air for the new release, now to sit on my hands and be patient and wait for the announcement that it is hitting the mirrors. Pretty convenient that this release comes right before a holiday weekend and everyone has an extra day off ? Ironic even ?
