open up

Why open source?

aligue — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 22:12:46 +0000

The terms open source and free software become frequent to hear or to read about these days. In fact the open source community have never been stronger that any time before and it is due to the rise of many Linux based distribution to use as home desktop like Fedora or Ubuntu and the ones targeting the enterprise and server market like Redhat, Suse and Debian (100% free). The decision of dell to sell laptops and desktops equipped by Ubuntu is not a hazard!! Do you thing that the hardware giant is playing by doing that!! I don’t think so! In fact Michael dell himself has tried Ubuntu on his own laptop and after that he has taken the decision to sell it on its hardware. The open source software are being more and more stable and performs as the proprietary ones. M$ has taken 5 years to produce a sheet of software that is called Vista. The only thing to notice about it is the graphic Aero motor and that is a very small thing comparing to the desktop managers compiz or beryl. By this way Dell will increase its concurrency and sell at a lesser price the same hardware (vista is about 300$) with an operating system that is user friendly and that the crowd will regret not discovering it before.

The Hell of Dlls and the Hell of packages

aligue — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 17:37:47 +0000

Last few years ago, in the time of windows 2000 and older, many users have suffer of the Hell of Dlls. For the ones who don’t know what does this means I’ll explain it; when you install a piece of software, in the directory of installation there will be some files with the extension .dll. These files are the components needed by your program to run. But in the whole system, it must be one and only one dll with the same name. However many programs use the same dll and so, when you uninstall your program, it uninstalls all theses dlls also, and that can damage the other programs which used these dlls. The invention of the framework .NET was the solution for this problem. The framework .NET can host many dlls with the same name because they have different versions.

In the other world, the Linux world we haven’t the Hell of dlls but we have rather the Hell of dependencies. In fact software pieces in the Linux distribution are called packages. The most famous are rpm, Redhat Package Management and the Debian package management. But theses packages depends on others packages which are supposed to be installed in your system. These others packages depends also on others packages and so on. I really think that Linux won’t be a system wide used until it change this way of installing pieces of software. Linux is generally based on free software, but it does not matters for one who spends hours and evening days trying to install a package. Don’t you remember that time is money! By this way the Linux community encourage people to chose non free software which is really a kind of disappointment. In the last few days I read an article showing that Ubuntu will incorporate the CNR (Click N Run) way to install packages. And for me this is the right way; CNR is the way software are installed in windows, by some click you obtain a successful installation without any pain! Enough ‘Hell of dependencies’ !! The success of Windows is his easiness of manipulation and his simplicity not his performance ! The Linux community must understand that! We are waiting for the next release of Ubuntu 7.04 which I think will be good!

Being a computer science engineer

aligue — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:58:52 +0000

Sure, being a computer science engineer is for many people an intersting thing. And certainly it is. You learn how to create software, to develop web sites and webservices that are amazing things for the crowd. You interact with the computer with another manner that the one used by normal people. You are a hero for many by helping them to delete a file or by installing a software or by configuring the settings. All of this is great! But let’s look more closely to this engineer in his box office!!!!! Every day he wakes up early in the morning, drinks his coffee and starting his work. But what is the work of a computer engineer; it is to solve the problems of the others but doing it in computized way! You spend ten or more hours a day thinking of the solution of a problem and programming it whatever the language is ! You test your work and you deliver a kit of installation that contains your work! You boss validate it and then send it to the client! If the installed kit contains bugs, you will be bombed by mails from your boss and you will stress and stress… You begin to develop chronical deseases such as stomac aches and digest problems! Even when you tries to sleep you dream about lines of code!!

Hello world!

aligue — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 08:25:23 +0000

This is my first blog in the internet that’s why i named this page as “Hello word” as the first C program !

As a new member in this community i start by presenting my self. I am a computer science engineer. I am also an MCAD .NET. I work for a french software development box.

I hope that you will enjoy my blogs!