I heart OSS.

OSS means Open-Source Software. Learning is fun!
by AC - permalink

Lots of OSS news to get to this morning. First, after something like fifty-seven years of beta testing, OpenOffice 2.0 was released, uh, four days ago. Not sure how I missed that exactly. I still haven't even tried it though, because it's a 75MB installer for Windows, and my dial-up ISP won't let me finish a download like that without an executive order signed and sealed by President Nixon. And he's been dead for years.

Slashdot reports that a new OSS operating system called MINIX 3 is out. It uses an insanely tiny kernel, divides the user-mode into modules, and is just generally awesome:

...each device driver runs as a separate user-mode process so a bug in a driver (by far the biggest source of bugs in any operating system), cannot bring down the entire OS. In fact, most of the time when a driver crashes it is automatically replaced without requiring any user intervention, without requiring rebooting, and without affecting running programs.

MINIX 3 is available for download as a compressed CD image, and can be run directly from the CD-ROM. If you want to install it, you need a partition no larger than a Gigabyte. It's only 10 to 13MB, so give it a shot.

musikCube has jumped past the anticipated 0.93 version to a release candidate for 1.0. If you still haven't tried it, musikCube is an OSS mp3 player/collator with a simple, powerful interface, fantastic playback quality, plug-in support, and an infinitely customizable playlist generator. Yes, it's yet another mp3 player, but in only in the way that the sun is yet another star in the sky.

Finally, any minute now we should see the code freeze for Firefox 1.5 RC1. My last few holdout extensions auto-updated themselves yesterday and now work in Fx 1.5 beta 2, which is a good sign in itself. I think the really beautiful thing about 1.5 is that you can't immediately tell that it's any different from 1.0.7, but as you come across the changes, they're universally good. It works from a technical and end-user standpoint, something it seems like you never see in non-OSS software updates.

Lots of Firefox, with a little Netscape and Opera.

Just like in real life.
by AC - permalink

Spread Firefox is back online, just in time to pick up a nice little award for best marketing campaign from the UK Linux and Open Source Awards 2005. Gervase Markham even has a picture of it. The entire SFx site was taken down and rewritten from scratch following another hack. Oh, those crazy hackers and their crazy schemes.

Firefox hit the 100 million download mark just after SFx went back up, prompting an immediate forum blitz from the "it's popular so it sucks" crowd, who seem to think Mozilla is claiming a hundred million unique users for Firefox, which they aren't, and claiming that the numbers are misleading because they have personally downloaded Firefox seventeen times, which they haven't. You gotta love the fanboys. God only knows what they're actually fans of, but they're always crystal clear on what they're not fans of.

Netscape Browser has been updated to 8.0.4, incorporating the Firefox 1.0.7 security and stability fixes. For the record, Fx 1.0.7 was released a month ago. Way to stay on top of things, guys.

And a new Opera beta has surfaced at BetaNews. It seems to consist entirely of UI tweaks, so I don't know why the version number is being bumped from 8.5 to 9, but there it is. Unlike Netscape, which took a great browser in Firefox and turned it into a horrible mess, Opera just keeps getting better, and downloads have increased by a factor of four since the transition from adware to freeware. Good times.

I just realized that Firefox can do multiple-undo's. That's awesome.

Portable Mozilla and Fiona's third LP.

Extraordinary Machine was worth the wait.
by AC - permalink

Asa brings to our attention tonight a 2GB Memorex USB stick that comes preloaded with Thunderbird. It's meant to be a travel companion and includes Tbird as an easy way to access third-party email on the road. Remember, the more people exposed to Thunderbird, the more people will begin to realize that Outlook is a load of shit.

For whatever reason, Slashdot ran a post/link for the Firemonger Project today. This isn't a bad thing, of course. Firemonger is a sort of unofficial guerilla marketing campaign for Firefox and Thunderbird, and the more exposure it gets, the better. Firemonger is essentially a burnable CD image consisting of Firefox 1.0.7, Thunderbird 1.0.7, and a long list of plug-ins, extensions, and themes, along with documentation to help new users make the switch from IE and Outlook.

I've been preoccupied with Fiona Apple's new album Extraordinary Machine lately, and haven't thought about much else lately besides, of course, Ghost Recon, which I'm also obsessed with. I read Josh Modell's review of Machine at the AV Club, and within five minutes my copy was on order from Amazon along with a copy of Fiona's first album, Tidal, a CD I used to have two of, but somehow over the years I ended up with none of. Machine is clearly Fiona's and Fiona's alone, meaning there's just no way to categorize it, except to place it alongside Tidal and When the Pawn... My copy came as a dual-disc. The DVD side has live performances of a few songs from the new record and two from When the Pawn..., plus the video for Not About Love, which is as funny as it is awesome. It also has the DVD-audio version of the album, and it sounds so ridiculously good that there's just no reason whatsoever to flip the disc over to the CD side.

HP has bad decision-making skills.

Netscape is great and all, until you try to use it.
by AC - permalink

Netscape has managed to haul itself into the browser spotlight this week by signing a deal with HP to include Netscape Browser 8.0 on all new HP and Compaq desktops and laptops. From Ars Technica's article:

Those purchasing HP- or Compaq-branded consumer machines will be prompted during the set-up process to choose between Netscape 8.0 and current default Internet Explorer. Users will also find Netscape's icon on their desktop [and] in the Start menu, and the browser will be customized with links to HP sites.

Wow, that sounds like a really good deal, unless of course you're buying a new HP or Compaq. "Thank you for purchasing a new HP desktop computer! Which awful browser would you like to use today?" Let's see, we have Netscape, which is needlessly complicated and difficult to use, and IE6, which is dangerously vulnerable and has a shamelessly primitive UI.

Just get Firefox or Opera and tell HP to screw off. You'll be much happier in the end.

I finally got tired of not having the Show Image extension for Firefox 1.5 beta 1 and decided to do something about it myself. Suspecting that there was no reason this extension should be broken in the 1.5 branch, I took Alan Starr's advice and manually changed the em:maxVersion tag before reinstalling it. I'd been thinking about doing this with a few different extensions that hadn't yet been updated, but at this point only Image Zoom hasn't been upped for 1.5b1 (changing the maxVersion generates a chrome error in Fx 1.5 and SeaMonkey 1.0 alpha).

One more bit of Firefox news. Well, it isn't actually news since I bookmarked it over a week ago and immediately forgot about it. Brian King wrote a three-page article for O'Reilly Network called What Is Firefox. It ranges from Phoenix to the equally mythical Fx 2.0, and is interesting if not earth-shattering.

Sorry about not posting anything in so long. I picked up Ghost Recon Gold Edition last week (GR plus the Desert Siege and Island Thunder mission packs) and I'm completely addicted to it. It has its problems, and it's wicked hard, but I can't get enough of it. I'm already downloading mods, in fact. I know the whole squad-based tactical shooter thing is old now, but I never got around to playing any of them before now. The main issue I have with GR is the AI balancing. Enemy AI tends to run up near your position, stand completely hidden behind a solid object, and kill you with one magic bullet. Meanwhile, your teammates have a little game they like to play called "Let's catch stray bullets with our faces." But it's still a cool game.