RC3

Three little letters... Hopefully this will become 1.0! (Three more little characters). There are no new features I want to add so the only looking for major bugs and translations.

And about translations... I made a script to import the translations provided in the Gnome version. This was mostly done to stop duplicate work of people not knowing about the Gnome version. (Note to self: I need to get the translations pushed the other way so the Gnomers don't waste too much time too).

I guess a lot of them had been automatically done by some tool as they were completely junk! Then people pointed out they were "fuzzy" and thus are not actually used. Whoops...

There is now a good amount of translations for the following languages:

• English


• Finnish


• French


• German


• Italian


• Lithuanian


• Panjabi


• Spanish


• Swedish


• Turkish

But I want more! Send me your translations! Now! OK, not right now but very soon!

The Gnome and sf.net codebases now match for .py and .glade files. This means after 1.0 I will only work on the Gnome version and periodically backport the changes.

RC2 Away!

OK I did release RC2 a while ago... Turns out my bug doesn't seem to be a problem anymore. Not sure what's going on there - I was probably just tired. So RC2 has the changes previously mentioned and also it now autodetects the Diablo (I've packaged this) and HoiChess. Note to self: Check if a package already exists before packaging it...

These changes are in the Gnome Games CVS repository (I think some made it into 2.17.1). So hopefully at 1.0 the Gnome and Sourceforge version will be synchronised. At that point I'll only be making changes to the Gnome version - I will consider backporting at milestones to make glChess 1.1, 1.2 etc if users want it.

Release Candidate 2

glChess release candidate 2 is all ready to go... Except there seems to be a bug in dpkg-dev. So you'll just have to wait. It fixes a 64 bit bug, a 3D bug and adds fullscreen mode.

Changelog:

2006-11-02 vers. 1.0 RC2
o Fix to lib/glchess/scene/opengl/png.py to fix CRC check on 64 bit
systems (Bug found by Michal Bentkowski).
o Fix to lib/glchess/scene/opengl/opengl.py to stop exception
selecting outside board in 3D mode (Bug found by Michal Bentkowski).

2006-11-01
o Moved glade files to top-level directory.
o Make symbolic link so Glade can find the icon when not installed.

2006-10-31
o Added fullscreen mode.

2006-10-30
o Explicity kill the about dialog as Gtk+ 2.10 does not do it
automatically.
o Got rid of bogus GtkWarning from GtkComboBox on startup.


New open-source nVidia effort

There's a new project called Nouveau to make some open-source nVidia drivers for DRI. This sounds great as DRI seems to fit in well where nVidia just made up new architecture everywhere. From the Nouveau web-page it sounds like it's not too hard to write drivers - all you have to do is convert OpenGL calls to appropriate format for the hardware. All the OpenGL state machine work is done for you by Mesa (and is shared between all the DRI drivers so bugs get fixed once only).

Back in the day I used the Utah-GLX nVidia drivers which were quite buggy but then it was a bonus to have 3D support. The commercial ones were just that much more reliable that I eventually changed to them. I haven't bought a nVidia card since though. If these new ones turn out OK that would change :)

Go open-source!

Upgrading to Edgy Eft

So I've just started downloading the 1GB or so to upgrade from Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft. This is not automatic - but it makes sense as users should stick with the Long Term Support releases unless they know what they are doing (though an advanced GUI element would be nice).

Will report back on success/failure.

UPDATE: The next day...

Worked pretty much fine. Had to do at least one extra upgrade after it had finished to get everything updated, however this was shown by the automatic updater tool so normal users shouldn't have a major problem.

Firefox 2 is nice. Now uses the standard icon (Ubuntu decided they could live with that unlike Debian?). Movies work out of the box so can browse Apple.com trailers etc. It has crashed once on me so far (but new crash catcher seems nice). Hopefully Edgy will pick up the flash 9 plugin when it is formally released.

Startup screens etc seem more colourful and cleaner - a bonus for Joe User. The startup actually seemed slower, but that could just be because there is no boot text now. I must check if escape shows it as it can be very useful.

Aside from that haven't noticed any stand-out changes. I guess it's mostly just polish. I must try Rhythmbox/Banshee - I think they'll support my iPod now. Things like F-spot are formally supported (it uses Mono) so might start using that more.

Just realised that 3D acceleration is not working. But I think it's this bug and it currently marked as "High importance, fix released" so might be solved soon. Basically when I try and load the DRM module I get:
FATAL: Error inserting drm (/lib/modules/2.6.17-10-386/kernel/drivers/char/drm/drm.ko): Cannot allocate memory

glChess - still not in the top 100!

The statistics show glChess has hit a new high - Ranked 109th on the 25th October 2006! I think I'll be happy once it breaks 100...

By the way I'm in Singapore on the way to Syndney - I have to unlearn all my British keyboard skills (of course my laptop will still be British).

Ubuntu backup tool

The next Ubuntu release has a simple but handy-looking new tool. Due to all user-owned files being in one directory in Unix (which I think is a great strength of the system), this tool will help Joe-user to safely back up just the files that count. When recommending people upgrade (for instance my dad) I always worry how to tell them how to back up. This will give some piece of mind.

Serious Ubuntu bug finally fixed

I updated my system today and this bug has finally been fixed. This bug has been around for approximately 6 months and even though the cause was identified (in the way translation files were being generated) early it took a ridiculous amount of time to be fixed.

I really wonder why a bug of this severity (caused dd (at least) to segmentation fault) in a distribution marked as Long Term Support that was repeatedly reported from many users was not put to a higher priority. I hope there is a central bug triaging group in Ubuntu that lists and works to diagnose and fix the top 10 bugs.

glChess 0.9.12

Made a new release because some users were hitting an exception when stock icons couldn't be found. If the icons aren't there now I just don't display them. Bonus new features: new/updated translations and support for UCI chess engines.

Managed software

I had always considered that Linux distributions were disadvantaged compared the commercial OSs because of the software installation procedures. Use case: a user finds some application on a web page they want to try. When the try to install they have to worry about multiple distributions, multiple versions, root access required... My first impression is bye-bye user.

BUT

I've been cleaning spyware off a number of peoples PCs recently and have come to realise that for low-tech users this is in fact a big advantage. By being able to pick software from a distribution provided list these users cannot install malicious software. Talking with a middle-aged couple showed there were key applications they wanted (e.g. Google Earth) and they installed other things (some of which were spyware) but wouldn't have been upset if they couldn't. They were used to Windows running slowly (due to the spyware) which meant they were used to a poorly performing computer. I expect this sort of user makes up a large population and would have a positive experience using Linux.

HOWEVER

The current distributions only provide a subset of available software. To provide access to the long tail of available software a user-rating/validating system is required. Idea: When a user downloads a file from the Internet the file is checked against a distribution provided list (using URI or hash etc). If the file is not on a white-list they get the option to install anyway and inform the distribution that they have installed. In this way the distribution knows what is being installed allowing a) files to be blacklisted and affected users to be informed and b) the distribution to know which packages they should include in the distribution repository. This of course has some privacy issues but most users can trust their distribution and always include an opt-out option.

Note there is a packaging format called Zero Install that if adopted would make installing simple.

GPL Battle Chess

Another fullscreen GPL chess client. Looks like this one is aiming for animation (i.e. Battle Chess). Compiles and runs well on my system.

glChess status

So I have gone through two glChess releases since the last release. 0.9.10 fixes a bug where upgrading users would hit a configuration exception. 0.9.11 is basically a big pile of polish. I've made 3D and Python imaging support optional which should make the user experience a lot better (at least it should half work on difficult systems). Lots of UI, theme and GUI integration changes too.

Oh and glChess has been accepted for inclusion in Gnome Games! I guess I really am fulfilling my goals from my first post. Yay!

Google Code Search

All ye bow down to our Google overloards... For from the mighty palace of computation comes Codesearch

Dreamchess

Dreamchess - another GPL 3D chess engine. As with most 3D clients I have seen it appears to be targeted at full screen users.

New glChess name

For 1.0 I think glChess should have a new name... It has been suggested to use a generic chess name like "Checkmate". The problem with this is generally these names have already been used. I think it's important for a project to have a name that stands out and it doesn't have to relate to the project (see Mesa).

So I was thinking perhaps "Looking-glass Chess". For those familiar with Lewis Carroll will get the reference. It feels a little bit of a mouthful, what do others think?

From a user-perspective this would only be in the about dialog and on the webpage. All menu references and window titles would just be "Chess" as Gnome started doing from 2.?. The binary has a character inversion from glchess to lgchess.

glChess 0.9.9 (2D support)

Here is what the new release looks like:



You can switch between 2D and 3D using the menu. Unfortunately the app still depends on OpenGL but in the next release it will disable the 3D option if OpenGL isn't present. These optional dependencies are going to create a testing issue - the plan is once 1.0 is present only make 1.0.x releases after a lot of testing using VMware player. More frequent but less tested releases will be released using 1.1.x.

This release also fixes a number of regression bugs. I have removed another accidental DBUS dependency and fixed the broken game saving. There are a number of changes to help in reporting bugs - the text output contains more useful information. The autosave feature should also work after exceptions are encountered.

An insight into software development at Google

Here is a very long but well written post about agile development (notice the small 'a'). It's written by a developer at Google.

My development style has always been very pick-and-mix. i.e. When I see some other developer doing something that works I tend to try that at the next available time. While I keep meaning to read formal Agile development books the above suggests I shouldn't bother.

Linux networking is driving me insane

Can anyone tell me what is wrong with this:

# ip route add 192.168.7.7 via 10.1.1.1
RTNETLINK answers: Network is unreachable

I want to route packets to a specific address to a specific gateway. I don't care if either of these addresses are known. As long as they are valid addresses attempt this route.

Linux routing (at least using the ip command) seems to love to second guess what you want. If it thinks it knows better then it damn well tell me why it can't do this. "RTNETLINK answers: Network is unreachable" is not an acceptable error.

Creating Passionate Users

If you're a software developer if you're not already reading it then read Creating Passionate Users. Hell, any productive industry will do.

I think I picked the link up of one of the frequent rants on Luis Villa's blog. The law industry is in for trouble with this guy ;)

More Tetravex tinkering

Now I have finished scratching my last itch with Gnome Tetravex. Look at the perdy colours!



Basically I combined the Resistor colour code and the Tango colour palette. I think the colours are a little garish (the numbers could be softer) but I'll leave that for the more artistically inclined.