A belated post

I apologise for the length of time it's been since my last posting.

Truthfully, though, I probably just don't really have anything terribly interesting to say. Actually, let me clarify. I *could* talk about what I'm doing right now, and aspects of that which are important to me, but it's not WoW related. I don't know how much of the following my readers are going to understand or find relevant, but this is what I'm doing.

It's related to an at least partial custom Linux system which I'm in the (long) process of putting together. I've used quite a lot of different Linux distributions over the years, but truthfully the only UNIX system I've ever found that I really liked was FreeBSD. People might say that I should just use that, then, but there are a couple of reasons why I'm actually trying to clone a number of the parts of that system for a Linux environment instead.

a) Linux doesn't have package management which (IMHO anyway) is anywhere near as good as FreeBSD's ports. The package management system I'm currently working on is more closely related to ports than anything else for Linux that I've seen.

b) Although it is very user friendly in some respects, and I also praise the developers for their positive intentions, under the hood, Ubuntu has some very serious problems. Most of these stem from the fact that the Debian Project (which is Ubuntu's parent distribution) has chosen to set a number of system components up in such a way as to not even vaguely resemble any other Linux distribution in existence that I've seen.

c) Linux needs a distribution where the operating system is allowed to be itself, rather than people trying to twist it into a clone of Microsoft Windows; especially when usually they go about doing that in a chaotic way, as well. It's not that Linux can't be used for a decent GUI system; quite the opposite.

d) There are some elements of FreeBSD which (after talking to Rilgon, and engaging in my own introspection) I *won't* be copying. The main one is its' new event-driven system startup framework. I am going to use a combination of bare Sysvinit, and shell scripts tied to udev itself. I'm not really sure, truthfully, why people have felt a need to build a secondary event-driven hardware/kernel framework *on top of* udev itself, because that in itself is essentially what udev is for. I'm inclined to believe that it was intended to *supplement* Sysvinit in a clean and sane way.

Linux (or, more broadly speaking, UNIX) had a very good design philosophy to begin with however, but most of the people currently working on Linux distributions have forsaken that in order to try and create something which was going to be popular. The story there is fairly similar to what has happened with Survival in WoW, truth be told.

So yeah, that's what I'm doing at the moment. Rilgon will understand, Pike will probably understand some of it, and the rest of you will probably want to just scroll past it.

If anyone else is willing, and has some spare time, I'll also relink to something I wrote back in 2005, as well. If you're feeling adventurous and want something else to do for an hour or so a night, grab a copy of Ubuntu and follow the guide at that link, from step 2 down. You don't need to do it all at once; as I said, and hour every few days, or even one a week. It will just gradually demystify Linux for you though, if you're wondering what it is all about.

There is one other non-WoW related thing which has been on my mind lately as well, which I'm sure my trolls will have a field day with. On viewing some of my videos on YouTube, a year or two ago someone recommended I at least visit the local chapterhouse (in Sydney, in my case) of Ramakrishna Math, a monastic order set up at the end of the 19th century by the followers of Sri Ramakrishna, who was probably the most well-known of Kali's saints.

My trolls will say that, given what an emotionally unstable headcase I am, I'm about the furthest thing from monk material on the planet; and truthfully, I'd agree with them. People here no doubt know that I've probably been one the least civil, and most feral and/or savage members of the greater WoW blogging community. Getting banned from the WoW forums, truthfully, wasn't an easy thing to do.

It's the reason why I haven't done this yet, even though the person who told me about it did so probably two years ago. Developmentally and morally speaking, I'm nowhere near up to it.

And yet...for some reason, the idea just won't leave me alone for the last month or so. Maybe it is something I should consider looking into.