Occasional Thoughts

Ever heard of Design Patterns? If you are a software developer and are serious about your job, you most probably did already. Design patterns are one of the most useful and powerful tool a software developer may use. By using design patterns, you are accessing the wisdom of the whole experienced developer community through using proven, reusable best-practices and solutions.

Then install the latest HP printing software from the HP Linux Imaging and Printing site. The hplip tools that are delivered with the distributions are way out of date and I haven't found a smart channel yet, which provides RPM packages. So you will have to compile it yourself, but I had no problems at all following the installation instructions. So what do you get for it? By running hp-toolbox you have all the tools like cartridge cleaning, ink level monitoring, troubleshooting tools and more available. Just like you would expect using the drivers on the other piece of software, some people call an operating system.

Yesterday I upgraded my homeserver from SuSE 9.2 to SuSE 10.1. The update went much better than expected. Almost no problems, but with the mail server. I download the CDs of openSuSE from the internet. During upgrade I recognized that courier-imap is not included, as well as any other IMAP servers like cyrus. But after googling I found out that it is included on the retail DVD (here is a diff of the package lists). Hey SuSE! Got a good reason why such an essential package is missing on the internet versions? Well, I don't understand that.

You probably already heard that AMD performed the acquisition of ATI. InfoWorld has an article, where AMD talks about this. The usual blabla you expect from a story like that, but the very interesting can be found in the last paragraph:

Lastly, and remember you heard it here, AMD is strongly considering open-sourcing at least a functional subset of ATI’s graphics drivers. It’s time for X Window System, OpenGL, and client virtualization for which ATI binary drivers aren’t available to escape the ghetto of the 1980s-era framebuffer. And what a boon for PR. If AMD’s graphics cards were the only ones with open device drivers, it might affect a buying decision or two.

Although the question remains, what we can expect from a functional subset, this raises the hope for a fully functional open source driver for a top notch graphic card. Go for it, AMD!

One of the applications I can't live without is Synergy. At home and in the office I have a standard computer and a notebook and I am working on both almost all the time at the same time. However I don't want to turn my head all the time. So the laptop is located as close as possible to the monitor of the desktop system - no place left for two keyboards and two mice, while the Laptop keyboard and touchpad are not very convenient. And I don't want to change the keyboard and mouse, just when I do a little tiny task on the other machine. So I need a way to share these devices.