.._________.__ __ .__
/ _____/| | _____ ________/ |_|__| ____ ____ ____ _____
\_____ \ | | \__ \\_ __ \ __\ |/ __ \ _/ ___\/ _ \ / \
/ \| |__/ __ \| | \/| | | \ ___/ \ \__( <_> ) Y Y \
/_______ /|____(____ /__| |__| |__|\___ > /\___ >____/|__|_| /
\/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/
.___ _ _ _______ _______ _______ ________
| __| || |_\ _ \ \ _ \ \ _ \ / _____/ http://slartie.com/
| \ __ / /_\ \/ /_\ \/ /_\ \/ __ \
| || || |\ \_/ \ \_/ \ \_/ \ |__\ \ Giving you the heads up
|___/_ ~~ _\\_____ /\_____ /\_____ /\_____ / on everything console.
|_||_| \/ \/ \/ \/
===============================================================================
23 June 2013 -- slartie -- Final NEWSLETTER ISSUE 0006
===============================================================================
===============================================================================
WARNING IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
===============================================================================
If you're easily offended by foul language or views on a particular
matter, which might not agree with your own, you should probably get the
fuck out of this document right now. Seriously.
===============================================================================
INTRO
===============================================================================
More and more people are seeing this newsletter, and the feedback is
starting to come in regularly. That's good, but I'm still only getting a
few topic ideas here and there. What the fuck, people?!
You'll come around, and until then you'll just have to deal with whatever
I fucking like to write about.
Still not making any coherency promises. Just so you know.
===============================================================================
CONTENTS
===============================================================================
WARNING (It's for your own good)
INTRO (You just came from there)
CONTENTS (You are here)
TOPIC 01: My rant (Social networks)
TOPIC 02: Distro Watch (I arbitrarily think you're a retard)
TOPIC 03: Make Music (Make my ears bleed)
TOPIC 04: Links (Places to visit)
CLOSING (Final thoughts)
ABOUT (About the author)
LICENSE (Because we all need one)
===============================================================================
TOPIC 01: MY RANT SOCIAL NETWORKS
===============================================================================
Yes, Google, Facebook and Twitter own your ass when you sign up to their
services. That's fine, we know this. Everybody has hopefully made a
conscious decision about that before using them. You use their stuff, so
whatever you make with it is basically theirs. There are some caveats and
such after some lawsuits (or near enough), but that's basically the gist
of it. Got it? Fan-fucking-tastic.
Facebook is everywhere and people are over sharing like it's nobody's
business, and it's not. That's the point. They don't even care that
they're posting shit about their bladder infection to the public. To them
it's just a heads-up to people about why they're not posting 40 times a
day as usual, but the fact they're even posting about that crap in the
first place is just .. well .. fucked! Why would you post that? What the
hell happened? Are you retarded?
People in most cultures are usually very private about certain things, but
with Facebook we have 1 billion+ people, where a portion of those have
absolutely no filter on what they're sharing with the rest of the world or
their 500 'closest friends'. Without Facebook, would these people be the
crazies walking around downtown, screaming at people: 'I JUST HAD MY TITS
REMOVED, BECAUSE I LIKE A FLAT CHEST!!'?! Stop fucking over sharing! In
fact, if you'd be so kind as to shut the hell up for the next 10 years,
that would be great.
I know it's not a cultural thing. People in most of the western world keep
certain things private (offline), or share it with one or two of their
closest friends. Going from that to ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE is beyond me. I
could dig down and make an in-depth analysis, but I don't fucking care
enough.
Do I hate social networks? Hell no. If people actually used them with an
applied IQ of above room temperature, they could be great places to hang
out and share interesting things on.
Saying: 'my dog died' isn't interesting.
Saying: 'just before my dog died, he parked the car' IS interesting.
Sating: 'I think emacs is awesome' IS interesting (and relevant).
If you're going to share anything on a social network, at least make it
interesting. Put some effort into it. Half the shit people say there is a
crock of shit anyway, so make something up. Don't fuck around with emacs,
though. That's some fucking serious business.
Twitter is a mixed bag. But if you stick to the tech world, you can still
have meaningful conversations with people in 140 characters or less,
without having to hear about their sinus problems. The rest of Twitter is
as fucked up as Facebook. Celebrities going bananas with their smartphone
or just making dumbass remarks. It's a disease.
Google+ is, until further notice, the home of tech people. A few celebs
have entered as 'plussers' which in itself sounds horrendous, but overall
G+ is fairly enjoyable. I have yet to see people there talk about the rash
they just noticed on their nut sack, but it's probably just a matter of
time.
Diaspora? I don't even know. I got invited ages ago when it was still just
a tech demo. It has grown quite a bit since then, but I have no clue how
much it has grown or what kind of people use it. I'll be keeping an eye on
it, though.
If you take away anything from this, then let it be this: Delete all the
super shitty posts you have on the social networks you're on. It's a waste
of bits. If you want to share, make it interesting, thought provoking and
a discussion starter. Occasional dumpster posts are fine, but you will be
stabbed each time.
===============================================================================
TOPIC 02: DISTRO WATCH I ARBITRARILY THINK YOU'RE A RETARD
===============================================================================
'I have been using Fedora for a hundred years, and now I want to try
something different. Which distro should I pick?'
Well you could take a look at distrowatch for all your distro needs. They
have a huge database covering most of what is available out there in
GNU/Linux land. Just look at the top 100 on the right hand side of the
site, and you will find the best distros in the top 5, that's a guarantee!
We all know that only the best rise to the top. Well shit can float too.
But OK, I'll bite. Let's assume that top lists matter.
Let's take a look at the top 5: (6 month page hit rankings)
|Rank| Distro | Hits |
|----+--------+------|
| 1 | Mint | 3748 |
| 2 | Mageia | 2032 |
| 3 | Ubuntu | 2000 |
| 4 | Debian | 1759 |
| 5 | Fedora | 1524 |
What does that tell you? Does it say which distro is the best? Which one
will get shit done? Which one is the easiest to use? Which one is the most
popular? Which one that requires the least amount of maintenance? Which
one that has been deemed the most interesting, by implementing a new
paradigm for handling normal every day tasks?
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope and nope.
It tells you which of the 'accepted' distro pages have been visited the
most on distrowatch during the last 6 months. It doesn't aggregate any
data from any outside sources. It doesn't tell you anything about the
install base. It doesn't tell you shit, apart from how many unique
visitors a distrowatch page got during that time.
About 'accepted'. Well there's a fucked up system if I ever saw
one. Distrowatch won't add just any distro. No, there's a screening
process. If your distro is new and the site maintainers don't see an
immediate appeal, or they find the name of your distro dumb, or they're
too busy scratching their ass, you'll either be rejected directly, or put
on the waiting list. Of course you can pay them USD 200 and you're
instantly a part of the in-crowd. Well fuck you.
So how fucked up is this. Well, I'll give you three examples. Two who are
stuck on the waiting list and one who got rejected outright.
Raspbian (submitted on 2012-07-20) - WAITING
--------------------------------------------
The second most popular torrent on linuxtracker right now with 78,586
completed downloads since it was added on May 27th 2013. This Debian
distro for the Raspberry Pi is sitting around on the waiting list on
distrowatch. What the fuck!?
NixOS (submitted on 2007-06-04) - WAITING
-----------------------------------------
From the NixOS About page: 'NixOS is a GNU/Linux distribution that aims to
improve the state of the art in system configuration management. In
existing distributions, actions such as upgrades are dangerous: upgrading
a package can cause other packages to break, upgrading an entire system is
much less reliable than reinstalling from scratch, you can’t safely test
what the results of a configuration change will be, you cannot easily undo
changes to the system, and so on. We want to change that. NixOS has many
innovative features'
So a distro that takes on the challenges of in-place upgrades with
rollbacks, delta upgrades without disturbing running services, testing
upgrades before deployment and a lot more. How the hell does that get to
sit on the waiting list for 7 years!?
Ubuntu Satanic Edition (submitted 2008-??-??) - REJECTED
--------------------------------------------------------
They didn't like the name. They found it offensive and pointed out that
distrowatch is seen by 'very sensitive people'. So how's it any more
offensive than, say 'Ubuntu Christian Edition' or 'Ubuntu Muslim Edition'
(now known as Sabily to avoid trademark rape by Canonical) which are
listed on the site? Shut your piehole distrowatch! A distro for metal
heads has more right to be on the site than those piece of shit SUSE
Studio abominations that get accepted daily.
By now it should be abundantly clear that I don't really care much for the
site or how they handle things. You can use it as a directory for Linux
distros that have 'made it', at least into the mainsteam of sorts, but
you're going to miss out on a lot of good ones, simply because you don't
see them featured in the top lists.
At the very least, go to the Waiting List page, and have a look. There
you'll find LinuxBBQ, a distro in multiple flavors that caters to newbies
and pro users alike with releases aimed at different usage needs and
competency levels in GNU/Linux.
===============================================================================
TOPIC 03: MAKE MUSIC MAKE MY EARS BLEED
===============================================================================
I practically grew up with the computer. The C64 had just come out when I
was around 6, and one of the things it can do, is to play music. It's no
string orchestra (although some people did attempt to make it sound like
one), but the little SID chip in the C64 has a number of tricks up its
sleeves. As soon as I figured out how to make the chip do my bidding, I
started making small pieces of music. I never became a master composer - I
never really had to desire to be, so I settled for listening to all the
music others made.
Back in the floppy disk swapping 80s, a lot of music was made on the C64
and later on the Amiga and eventually the PC. 3 channel music on the SID
chip, 4 channel (eventually more) on the Amiga and n-channel music created
on PC's. Everything was done with 'trackers'. A spreadsheet like
application where you load in samples, or manipulate registers in the case
of the SID. You arrange notes on the spreadsheet, apply filters and
various other effects and let the application play it out line by
line. That's it.
That style of music creation lives on to this day. The tracker is still
popular, maybe because it's simple enough to just sit down and start
creating, and complex enough to satisfy even some of the most demanding
music producers.
As with anything else, you have to keep at it to get good. There are no
shortcuts. But hey - all tracker music is an open file. Load one up in
your tracker of choice, and you'll be able to see how the masters did
it. What's that phrase ... Imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery. Some crap like that. Go for it.
Feeling creative? Of course you are. Pick up a tracker like GoatTracker 2,
MilkyTracker, Radium or Renoise and get started. Throw your creations up
on soundcloud, and let the good times roll.
Need inspiration? Check out the modarchive!
===============================================================================
TOPIC 04: LINKS PLACES TO VISIT
===============================================================================
Stuff I've mentioned in this newsletter deserves some link love, otherwise
you'd have to step out of your comfort zone and use a search engine. Where
would we be if that was required?!
This isn't WikiPedia, so I'm only going to link to stuff I think is worth
looking at.
Renoise [ http://www.renoise.com ]
MilkyTracker [ http://www.milkytracker.org ]
Radium [ http://users.notam02.no/~kjetism/radium/ ]
GoatTracker 2 [ http://sourceforge.net/projects/goattracker2/ ]
Modarchive [ http://modarchive.org/ ]
Raspbian [ http://raspbian.org ]
LinuxTracker [ http://linuxtracker.org ]
Ubuntu Satanic [ http://ubuntusatanic.org ]
LinuxBBQ [ http://linuxbbq.org/ ]
NixOS [ http://nixos.org/ ]
DistroZilla [ http://distrozilla.com ]
Linux Distros [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Li ... tributions ]
===============================================================================
CLOSING FINAL THOUGHTS
===============================================================================
Yeah, I know. It seems like all rants, all the time. That's what I wanted
to do, so what are you going to do about it? Send in ideas? Feel free.
The music topic wasn't exactly ranty. It's almost ... informative. How's
that for a new concept? Yeah! It's all informative really. You just have
to be in the right mindset.
I actually have a few ideas for some more generally informative and news'y
(new word) content that should make it into the coming newsletters. I'm
trying to keep an eye on new releases and as soon as something major
happens, like, say Gnome decides to scrap the entire project and start
over, or KDE suddenly uses 50% less memory, I'll bring it up. Small
changes like 'fixed corrupt UTF-8 encoding' in application blah will never
find its way here.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. While working on those damn guides, I'll also
make a Tips/Tricks/Whatever section to the page or maybe a FAQ page. I
don't know yet. Something. I'll mull it over.
Until next time...
===============================================================================
ABOUT ABOUT THE AUTHOR
===============================================================================
````...-------------......````` Slartie has been working
``...-----::////////:::----....```` with open source software
`...---:://+++++oo++++++//::---....`` and the community since the
`..-:://++ossyyyyysssssssso+//:--...` early 90s.
`.-:/+oossyhddmmmmdddddhyoo+//::-----.` `.`
`.-/+osyhhhdddmmmmmmmdhyyssoo++++/:---.`.+:` He's considered a little bit
`-::/+osssyhdmmmmNNmddddddmmmdhs+///---.:+: crazy by his peers. Mostly
`-::+osyyhdmmmmmmNmmNNNNNNNNmyo++oso/::-/s- because he likes working with
.:/oydmNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNmhsoyddmmdhys/:+s. the console so much.
./syhmNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNmddms//syooydds/++`
`:+ossssssyhmNNNNNNNNNNMmmdyo+os//shds//- His day job is (sadly one
:shdhhyoooyhdMNNNNNmdmmmddNmmdhssyhyo/-` might say) working with MS
.sdo+oyyhdhhmmdhdmdhyyhdNNNNNNNdhhhyo/. Windows clients and servers.
```/yysymNNNNNmddyyddyydmmNNNNNNNNmdhhs/.```
`````.`-osyhmNNNNNmmhsymdysydNNNNNNNNNmmdhy/.````` After hours are spent with
`.....--+yhmNNNNNNMmsoymmhssssdMNNNNNNNNmdy/--...- coding, tinkering, IRC and
:-:--://+ydNNNNNNNMy+ohmdyo+oshNNNNNNNNNmds/::--:- generally being a nerd.
::::::///smNNNNNNNMmddNNNNmmNNNNNNNNNNNNNds/::::::
///////++oyNNNNNhsso++yNMNNho++sso+sdNNNmho//:::/:
+++++++++ooymNNs:--...-/++:-...-:::-:omdhs+//::///
ooooo+ooooo+smh/-://-----:::::/+hho/:-/oo//++///++ You can get in touch using:
ssssoooooosooss/-/yNdhhhhhhmmmmmmmy/-...-:/++///++
ysssssssssssso:..:+hdysssss+++oos+/-.````./++//+++ Twitter: @slartie
yyyyssssssssss:.```.-:///:/++/++:.```````:+o++/+o+ IRC: slartie (FreeNode)
yyyyyysssssyys+.`````.-:/oyyo/:-..`````./+ooo+++oo E-Mail: [email protected]
===============================================================================
LICENSE BECAUSE WE ALL NEED ONE
===============================================================================
Slartie.com Newsletter (c) by slartie
Slartie.com Newsletter is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
You should have received a copy of the license along with this
work. If not, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.
===============================================================================
23 June 2013 -- slartie -- Final NEWSLETTER ISSUE 0006
===============================================================================
Created with Emacs - http://gnu.org/software/emacs/