Posts for 2016 April
Code and Google translate: awesomeness
Post by Nico Brailovsky @ 2016-04-08 | Permalink | Leave a comment
Some time ago I found out one of my articles was translated to another language (yay for that, woo for not letting me know about it). To understand what my own article said, I had to use Google translate on the site. Guess what? c++ and Google translate can produce hilarious results:
# The include "throw.h" the extern "the C" {void seppuku () {throw statement the Exception () ; }}
Another one I liked:
the struct the Exception {};
#ifdef __cplusplus
the extern "the C" {
#endif
void seppuku ();
# Ifdef __cplusplus
}
# endif
Now you know it. Next time you're looking at some incomprehensible c++ code, run it through Google translate. It may improve it.
Ubuntu 15.10: Ubuntu ME
Post by Nico Brailovsky @ 2016-04-05 | Permalink | 4 comments | Leave a comment
Warning: semi-useless rant ahead. TL;DR: Avoid Ubuntu 15.10 - it's the closest Linux has ever been to Windows ME.
I have been using Ubuntu for a while now. From the time when Canonical actually mailed real, physical CDs of the distro. So get of my lawn.
In all of my Linux years I have never, ever, had such a horrible installation experience as I did this weekend with Ubuntu 15.10. I may go as far as saying not even Windows ME was this horrible to install. I hit dozens of critical show-stopper bugs, from poor UEFI support to an installer that crashed when clicking "Go back". And that's only the installation, don't get me started on the new KDE Plasma 5 desktop... (hint: my big desktop screen is NOT a phone. Swiping to login? Bad idea for a mouse).
A few hints for any other poor souls that made the fatal mistake of installing Ubuntu ME: * UEFI? Say no. Get a different computer if you can. Try to set it in legacy mode if you can not. * Try not to repartition and install Ubuntu on the same go. Even more so if you have UEFI. First install, then rearrange partitions with a live cd. * If you get a few (or a few dozen) "system crash notifications" when starting up your GUI, check /var/crash. Delete everything from there. * If you want Kubuntu, don't install Ubuntu and then apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. That's broken. If you want Kubuntu just get its install image. * Don't install Kubuntu. Really, it's horrible and it crashes. (You though I called 15.10 Ubuntu ME for no reason?) * Don't like Gnome? XFCE is usable and can be configured to look more or less like a sane version of KDE. It still crashes but at least it's quick to boot. * If you get a disk check on every startup just disable it on fstab. No, it's not nice. I haven't found any other workarounds yet.
I have no idea when has Ubuntu gone so horribly bad, but I'm not looking forward to installing any Ubuntu distro anytime soon. I wonder what Slackware looks like these days.
2016? Still not the year of the Linux desktop.
Update: XFCE is great... except it doesn't really support moving the mouse. Seems Ubuntu is having a nostalgic release and decided to introduce old bugs from 2012!