UTF-8 manual pages

This is the end of an era. No more will we need NROFF/COL hacks in the setup of manual viewer (the venerable "man" program):

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/02/msg00005.html

Welcome to the 21st century, man pages :)

Gitosis on Gentoo

http://technicalpickles.com/posts/gitosis-on-gentoo

What the developers are for

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-4729493.html#4729493

c0d3g33k wrote there:

I'm a developer. (Professionally, that is, not for Gentoo). Used to be a scientist - had more fun writing the tools than doing the science. In my professional life, I've seen self-important high school dropouts slag accomplished lawyers, physicians, scientists and businessfolk, calling them "lusers" because they don't understand the sublime intricacies of Perl or HTML or XML or CSS or Struts or Java or C++ or C or Lisp or Assembly or . Self-important people who had the audacity to think that understanding a <form> tag, or a do:while loop or 'public static void main(String args[])' trumps the ability to keep somebody out of prison, or save someone's life or discover new drugs or found a successful company. Here's a wakeup call: Software development is something we used to do on the side in addition to our real jobs because it was a useful tool to accomplish our real goals. If you're a developer and you start feeling full of yourself, realize that *a lot of people can do it themselves, they just don't have the time*. It's like any other skill. Devote yourself to it and be a professional, but don't assume that your skills are the pinnacle of achievement against which all else pales. My motivation for developing software professionally is because it enables other professionals (or ordinary people) to do their jobs better, easier and quicker. The moment I forget that and assume that my self-indulgence is more important than enabling people to accomplish more with better tools, I've failed. Because there's nothing more sad than creating a tool that nobody wants to use. I hate that more than anything. Users aren't there to justify and validate your need to develop. Developers are there to develop tools that enable other human beings to do great things. My opinion of self-important developers is left as an exercise to the reader.

Don't sell yourself short as a developer - it's a wonderful skill to have. But realize that it's a skill that is fully realized only when it is enabling something else work better. You can't eat code, or drive it, or keep warm in the winter with it. But code can make these things better, more affordable, less expensive. So next time you are about to rake a "luser" over the coals, think about what they might be trying to accomplish. And realize they will accomplish it without you, easily. They have been doing so for all of history, not just since Babbage first conceived of his difference engine. So keep things in perspective.

Gentoo ravings

Dear Gentoo,

Just reading articles like this one I've just found makes strange waves inside me:

The Linux Project: Gentoo revisited

This makes me both nostalgic and alerted. Gentoo was my first *real* Linux system I've used with success for 3+ years. I suppose these were the best times for both of us, me personally and Gentoo as a distribution. Until, of course, drobbins - the Gentoo creator - left the project for a while (for financial reasons). Author of the aforementioned article is totally right in one aspect, there is something ultra-special in the way Gentoo is installed manually. You literally put your hands on the keyboard and *create* the thing, your very own Linux install, from almost nothing. Using only a mere 27MB of a stage1 image and 40MB of a compressed portage tree. I mean, the manual installation really feels like an act of creation, the flashing lines of compiler output makes a unique feeling, especially when the first successful install is made. And a quote of the blinkenlights come to mind very quickly:

ATTENTION
This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is
allowed for die experts only! So all the "lefthanders" stay away
and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working
intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked
anderswhere! Also: please keep still and only watchen
astaunished the blinkenlights.

Yes, for a long while installing packages in Gentoo is like this: you issue an "emerge" command and watch the things moving in amazement. Yes, it can become tiresome at some point, especially when packages fail to compile, give strange errors, important stuff needs to be upgraded (like gcc, python, portage) and things break in strange ways during the process... At this point you start the famous distro-hopping and wonder how much electricity is being wasted worldwide during repeated Gentoo compilations here and there.

This is the moment when one grows up and the fun is lost. At least partially.

And yet, when the whole project shows the signs of fragility, when the former head of the project makes offer in his blog to return and help, when a trustee reveals the details of healing process, I just stumble upon said article and then I don't really know what to do.

Since I've departed from Gentoo like two years ago I never felt at home. Well, maybe I do to some extent, using Ubuntu (and I love the Code of Conduct, it's a great idea Gentoo should learn from). I've contributed to the Debian and Ubuntu docs and helped to extend/update the installation manual for the debootstrap method. This is almost on par with the manual Gentoo installation method, since several config files need to be created and then the noble and dependable apt-get does the rest. Shortly speaking, the DEB files just rock. And I confess, I hate RPM (this is illogical, I know, since so many distros use it, but it gives me the creeps). To some extent debootstrap is even cleaner, all it needs is several scripts and an empty partition, the rest is downloaded and installed on the fly from a mirror server. Yes, it gives a barebone base system that boots into a command line. But mind you, I admire Debian and have the greatest respect for it, but Gentoo just feels and looks slicker, at least for me personally.

And I say yes, I would like to install it back (and I always have a spare partition where it would fit, I really do), but there is always something. The great schizm/blessing of Paludis (depending on who you ask), an exodus of Gentoo developers, ubiquity of Ubuntu (it works, it's easy and problems are very googleable and my family use it) do not make my decisions any simpler. I have even installed Arch Linux (another great distribution) and it has almost everything I would like to see in Gentoo, but it's just not the same.

Oh, Gentoo, Gentoo. Where are you going? And what should I do?

Answer: Maybe I should read userfriendly.org more often?