Arch on Me, Myself, and Technology

Weechat v0.3.0 released

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:46:23 +0000

So lately I’ve been using this awesome IRC client called Weechat! It’s minimal, yet highly configurable. It’s got me addicted to it! Weechat + Screen is the best combo! Anyway, a groundbreaking new version has been released today. And if you’re on an equally awesome distro (Arch), then you should have it ready in your repository 🙂

Sametime (meanwhile) support in Pidgin on Arch Linux

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:50:40 +0000

We use IBM’s Lotus Sametime as our IM client at work. And i like to be signed in all the time even on my Arch machine at home. Pidgin does support sametime protocol, but through an external library called meanwhile. Although most popular distributions have meanwhile in their main repos, Arch does not. It has the meanwhile library in AUR. And due to this, the pidgin in Arch has meanwhile support disabled. But even so, the latest stable meanwhile library (1.0.2) has a nasty bug which does not report the correct online status of buddies. Most online buddies are shown as being offline. The problem has been fixed in the SVN version, but unfortunately ALL distributions carry the buggy version of meanwhile. It took me around 5-6 months to get to the root cause of this bug, and yes, i have managed to fix it in Arch. I’m providing here a compiled version of the fixed meanwhile library (64 bit). I’m also providing a complete tutorial on how to compile pidgin with meanwhile support on Arch.

Kernel 2.6.28. Now with stable EXT4!

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 11:17:14 +0000

So.. A few days back, Kernel 2.6.28 was released. And amongst the many new features, the thing that attracted me most was stable EXT4 support. For those of you who dont know, EXT4 is the successor to the most widely used linux filesystem, EXT3. EXT4 boasts of being a hell lot faster than EXT3, and ofcourse with added features.

Archlinux just released Kernel 2.6.28 into it’s [core] repo a few days back, and since then im in a dillema whether i should switch to EXT4, or be content with my current filesystem, JFS. Switching to EXT4 means that I will have to re-install Arch, once the new installer CD with EXT4 support comes in (which should be soon). And configuring Arch _exactly_ the same way as it is right now will be almost impossible! I mean with all the small tweaks and configuration changes i’ve done over one year now! Will be a HUGE task! And nowdays, i really dont have time to mess with something that’s working absolutely the way i want it to work.

Im back!

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:12:33 +0000

Hmm.. So i’ve been out of the blogging scene for quite sometime now. Mostly, i’ve been busy with work, and yeah, i’ve been spending all my free time watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S, just like Nidhi 🙂 Now that i’m finished with all 10 seasons, i think ill get some time to post here 🙂

So lets see.. What all is new.. On the linux front, i’ve migrated from Ubuntu to Arch Linux, which according to me, is the BEST distro out there! I love the fact how everything “just works” and how i have the latest software all the time. The best part is that its a rolling release, meaning no more waiting for updates or adding third party repos for new stuff. I evaluated Debian and Gentoo, before moving to Arch. Debian always had some or the other problem. It wasnt just stable enough for me. And Gentoo on the other hand was too time consuming and crude. Arch is gonna stay on my PC for a long, long time! 🙂