ex tempore

Under some rare circunstances, on your Foresight Linux instalation, the Foresight System Manager (rAA) update process may not work correctly, claiming it is trying to update the same trove (kernel) twice. In the same way running sudo conary updateall from a command line may also fail. There is a simple workaround, already pointed by ken at our frontpage – just run sudo conary update conary –resolve; sudo conary update group-dist; sudo conary updateall from a terminal.

As usual, your feed back is welcome.

I really like SUN hardware, i even sympathize with their CEO efforts, but saying something good about the software side, is usually hard, very hard. Let’s look at Java – on paper SUN freed Java, and Java’s JRE/JDK distribution. So, on paper all is good. Of course Java6u1 is out for weeks but here – the official place – all we get to package in Foresight Linux is the previous version. A bug is, off course, open, since April 19. Still no action. Tomorrow SUN will again do a big splash, it’s JavaONE after all. What about Jonathan and Ian, of instead too much talk, and fanfarre, getting this little things solved ? A community and an user base, after all, is built not of marketing, not of thin air, but of concrete, deliverable, things.

On paper, the OLPC project is lovely – a true posterchild of the current state of opensource and its overall goals. It would show the triumph of openness, and open standards, and would provide a better world. Then – here we go to the ‘details’. According to a post from Christopher Blizzard, on his blog, OLPC is now searching for people to develop a new package manager for the OLPC, after probably finding the obvious – rpm won ‘t fit ever. This is a core issue – if the OLPC is just a RedHat ‘philantropic’ project – no more, no less – they have all the rights to do whatever they want, but if the OLPC – as it is painted – is an OPEN, and global (opensource) project, then Red Hat management must realize that there are ‘life’ besides RedHat. And that, would mean being a bit humble and to recognize that there are cool (opensource) technologies elsewhere, even some developed by former RedHat people. Packaging is a critical and core issue. If the OLPC people, due to strict corporate hubris don’t look frankly and openly at third-party open-source package management technology (like conary) they are doing the world a big disservice, and acting just like Microsoft uses to. They would be delaying, and diminishing, even making it a lot more expensive, what could really be a great project. Open Source is not only about open code, is also about frank, open, rational and clear decisions. And then, maybe not. Perhaps the OLPC is more about politics. Time will tell.