The Best Use For A Cat And A Balloon
This Just In: Linux Is Better Than OS X
Well, at least it is for me. And it's taken me $1500 to figure it out the hard way.
Converting a CVS Repository to Subversion
I had thought that this would be a straight-forward mission, but it was not. While the front-end tools look and feel very much the same between CVS and Subversion, the back ends are VERY different. Honestly, I much-prefer the CVS approach (all flat-files, predictably placed in $CVSROOT), but since that's probably part of the problem of CVS's lack of flexibility with file/directory moves, etc., it's understandable that Subversion does it differently.
After All That, Back to OS X
So I'm a little disgruntled right now. I've rebooted back into OS X and I'll likely stay here for a while. As it turns out, the show-stopper for me to be able to run Linux (which I'd much prefer) on this powerbook is not anything to do with Linux itself, but rather with the commercial/proprietary software that I find myself needing to run. I need to be able to use Moneydance to do my family's financial account management and bill paying. Moneydance runs on Java. Apparently, the only full version of Java for Linux PPC is IBM's JRE. That's right, Sun doesn't provide Linux-PPC users a JRE, how nice of them. And yes, I did spend a couple of hours trying to get cacao, sablevm, and kaffe working with Moneydance and they didn't work at all. IBM's JRE does actually get the program started and working up to a point. It poops all over itself, however, when it tries to download online bank transaction information:
Ubuntu Linux, External Speakers, Your Powerbook, and You
Yet another small blip from the life and times of a powerbook owner and Linux glutton-for-pain... I think this issue has been fixed in the Alsa 1.0.11-rc4 snd-powermac modules, but since I haven't taken the time to recompile the kernel yet and since Ubuntu Dapper Drake still only comes with 1.0.10, I'm stuck with a workaround for a time being.
Trouble in the land of Linux-on-powerbook
Stink. I am starting to question my sanity in buying a powerbook. There's just some things that aren't working and most probably are not ever going to work:
Kubuntu On A Powerbook
So, in an attempt to get back to hacking/programming again (since I'm definitely not getting it at work), I've installed Linux on my Powerbook. Actually, I'd installed SuSE 10 on it the day after I bought the powerbook 5+ months ago, but I'd never really done anything with it--partly because I really wanted to see what OS X was really like (it is REALLY, REALLY cool, but not conducive to feeling like I can start improving things/hacking/programming) and partly because neither the trackpad nor the wireless ethernet worked. But recently, the folks at the Broadcom 43xx Linux Driver project have made GREAT strides in getting the proprietary Broadcom wireless network card working in Linux. And, the kind folks with the kubuntuproject (probably also the core ubuntu project as well, but I much prefer KDE...) have made almost everything work out of the box for Linux running on the Powerbook.
Linuxworld, Boston, 2006, Here I Come!
Delete the Internet
Treo 650, VMWare, HotSync Woes
So, after several weeks of beating my head against the wall, I've found this simple fix for syncing my WinXP guest VMWare virtual machine inside my SuSE Linux host. Basically, it looks like because usbfs wasn't being mounted at boot time, VMWare wasn't getting notified of my Treo 650 as it was trying to HotSync. Make this change in /etc/fstab: