Has Linux lost the ISV battle?

For as long as anyone can remember, one of the big problems with Linux has been the lack of commercial applications. Independent software vendors (ISVs) are generally sticking to Windows or OS X, resulting in very little commercial software being available for Linux. Free software ideologies aside, there are many commercial applications that Linux would benefit from being able to run.As a cross-platform software developer, there are many challenging issues that are unique to developing on Linux. First and foremost, there is the issue of binary compatibility.In order to build a x86 Linux binary that runs on as many desktop Linux distributions...
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Ubuntu and the ASUS P5Q-E Motherboard

I built a brand new PC a few weeks ago, and getting my ASUS P5Q-E motherboard to work in Linux took a few tweaks. I had taken my harddrive out of my old PC and dropped it right into the new PC, expecting it to work. Ubuntu managed to start booting, but it hanged at the earliest bootup splash screen, where the progress bar bounces back and forth. GRUB had managed to boot the kernel image, but something was wrong - The kernel image couldn't find my hard disks, so it wasn't booting.To solve this problem, I had to change the following BIOS options:Under MAIN / Storage Configuration, I had to change "Configure SATA as ..." to [AHCI]. This allowed...
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Random things

It's been a while since my last update, but I'd like to start practicing writing again, so I'd better start blogging more often. Since 2006, I've been involved with a growing open source project and that's been eating up most of my free time.In the meantime, I'm still a die-hard Linux fan, although I haven't kept up with the latest and greatest stuff as much. I've also recently started experimenting with (drumroll) Windows Vista, and I've been impressed overall with it. My wireless USB stick has the same problems in Vista as it does in Linux, so I guess that's a good thing for Linux (?!). :)Also on my list of random things to write about is Phoronix. Phoronix is a well-written Linux news site that's written and organized in a style that's aimed at Linux hardware enthusiasts. The editor(s)...
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To iPhone or not to iPhone...

$199 USD for a 3G iPhone, with a soul-stealing ridiculously-priced contract.Is it worth it?I've been considering getting an iPhone when it launches in Canada on July 11th, but rumours indicate that it's going to cost about $90 CAD/month for service with Rogers. I currently pay about $10 CAD/month for a cheapo prepaid cellphone. In 2 months I'll be moving across the country, so now is a convenient time to reconsider my options. I've decided that if I were to get an iPhone, it'd replace my landline. Does it make it any more affordable? No, $90/month on a contract for 3 years still seems insane to me.The massive draw with the iPhone for me is the...
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Debian Bug Screws us All

This morning, I spotted this nasty tidbit on Slashdot: Debian Bug Leaves Private SSL/SSH Keys GuessableIt turns out a maintainer of the OpenSSL package on Debian removed the "seeding" of the random number generator that is used to generate, among other things, SSH keys. For those unfamiliar with random number generators, they work by generating a sequence of pseudo-random numbers based on some initial seed. The default value most programmers use when seeding their random number generators is simply the time, because it changes quickly and ensures a great deal of variability in what the generated random sequence of numbers will look like. If you seed your random number generator with the same number every time, you'll end up with the same sequence of numbers being generated over and over again...
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Blogger Captcha Cracked?

I just 50+ emails from Blogger saying new comments were posted on my blog:Up until now, the spam situation with Blogger was decent. I'd only ever had the odd spam comment come through and I had been able delete them all. With this massive barrage though, I don't have the patience to go through and delete them all, especially knowing that it can happen again.For now, I'll just hope that blogger deletes the spammer's account and all of the comments he post...
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Toy Story, Cave Story, .... Ubuntu Story ?

About once a month, I receive an email solicitation asking me to promote something on my blog. 9/10 times I just ignore it, because they're usually asking me to promote a spam blog. Not cool.It looks like we did better with this month's email. Rather than a pointless spam blog, it was instead regarding UbuntuStory.com, which seems like a friendly advertisement for Ubuntu by a community member. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but if you haven't tried Ubuntu yet, I'd check out the site. Sorry, your first impression from that site will be wrong - Ubuntu won't take you on a wild African adventure, but it can make your computer much less...
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Ubuntu 8.04 Beta Thoughts

Yesterday, I decided to upgrade to the Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) Beta. I've been having problems with internet connection and I thought an upgrade might fix it, but now I'm convinced it's a problem with my LAN segment, not my card. Anyways, among the shiny new goodness:Firefox 3 - Great new GTK look on all the buttons, they don't look like they're from 1993 anymore!Wait, more crazy Firefox 3 goodness - apparently now I can cut and paste images around by right-clicking on them in the Blogger "Compose" mode.Notebooks in Tomboy! If you're a Tomboy Notes user, you won't believe how useful this is. I currently have 78 notes in Tomboy, so being able...
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HOWTO: Figure out what's using your soundcard in Linux

It's 2008, and while Linux audio is getting better for desktop users, I still occasionally find myself running into a situation where one application is tying up my soundcard. Sometimes I'll try to run jackd through qjackctl and it'll fail because Firefox has a flash video loaded in it or something like that.Anyways, to figure out what's using your soundcard on Linux, you can run:sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp*sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*The first command above will list all the OSS applications using your sound hardware, and the latter will tackle ALSA applications.For example, if I run those commands with nothing running:gamegod@home:~/$ sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp*gamegod@home:~/$ sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/* USER PID ACCESS COMMAND/dev/snd/controlC0: gamegod 6236 F.... mixer_applet2The...
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KDE 4.0 Released!

After having sworn off KDE many years ago, I might just have to give it a second shot - KDE 4.0 was just released, and brings a massive overhaul to the desktop environment. Congratulations to the entire KDE team on making this release happen. A lot of very talented people put a lot of hard work into this.If you're looking for eye-candy, check out the KDE 4 screenshots on their site. Kickoff and KRunner look well thought-out, and I'm itching to give them a try. They also look like they're better integrated into the desktop environment than their GNOME equivalents (Deskbar and any of those XP/Vista-style system panel clones).If you want to give...
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