Month: April 2008

Preupgrading Fedora 9

Fedora 9 is coming Real Soon Now ©. I mentioned before that I am desperately waiting for this release, since it brings KDE 4 and Firefox 3. One thing that I haven’t seen noticed anywhere until I read this interview is “preupgrade”. It sounds pretty cool:

By now, the “preupgrade” package should be available in updates-testing for Fedora 8. Enable the updates-testing repo and install it. It currently shows up as “Upgrade Fedora” in your Applications -> System menu.
From there, it’s very simple – follow the screens to choose what to upgrade to, wait for everything to download, hit “Reboot”, and the upgrade will begin!

Basically, what happens is that Fedora 9 installer is downloaded together with all the required packages, while you are still using Fedora 8. Once everything is in place, you can simply reboot and upgrade your system, without burning any CDs or DVDs or waiting for long downloads while having nothing to do.

Thou shalt not ignore warnings

Here is a quote from a wise comment in the discussion of the “Linux system programming” book review:

Build your code with -Wall -Werror (or your compiler’s equivalent). Once you clean up all the crud, that pops up, crank it up with -W -Wno-unused-parameter -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith. Once there — add -Wreturn-type -Wcast-qual -Wswitch -Wshadow -Wcast-align and tighten up by removing the no in -Wno-unused-parameter. The -Wwrite-strings is essential, if you wish your code to be compiled with a C++ compiler some day (hint: the correct type for static strings is ” const char *”).
For truly clean code, add -Wchar-subscripts -Winline -Wnested-externs -Wredundant-decls.
The people, who wrote and maintain the compiler, are, most likely, several levels above you in understanding programming in general and C-programming in particular. Ignoring the advice their code generates is foolish on your part…
As a minimum, solved warnings will make your code more readable by reducing/eliminating the “Why is he doing this?” questions. More often than not, they point out bugs you would otherwise spend hours chasing with a debugger later.
And they make your code more portable. But if you don’t understand, why a warning is generated — ask around. Don’t just “shut it up”. For example, initializing a variable at declaration is usually a no-no. If the compiler thinks, the variable may be used before being initialized, scrutinize your program’s flow. If you can’t figure out, it may some times be better to disable this one warning temporarily with -Wno-uninitialized to move on, instead of shutting it up for ever by a bogus “= 0” or some such…

Rally 2008 : Cyprus Rally in, WRC out

Homeboy Media News lets us know that the Cyprus Rally is back this year ( official web site confirms the news). The even will take place between Friday, May 16th and Sunday, May 18th.

Takis Kyriakides, Cyprus Rally Head of the Course, said “the new route will incorporate old tracks, which have been kept in fine condition through re-grading operations and regular maintenance, and the new ones designed and constructed this year”.

However, the event will not be a part of the World Rally Championship (WRC) as it used to be during the last few years. There was a chance that Cyprus would come back to WRC schedule this year, but it just didn’t happen. Next year maybe.

The Simpsons Movie

Are you a fan of Simpsons? If so, this ,”The Simpsons Movie” is the absolute must see for you. But then again you probably already watched it. Me, on the other hand, is not a big fan. I like to watch an episode of Simpsons now and then, but I am getting tired of them pretty soon. And that is probably the reason for it taking almost a week for me to watch the whole movie.

Normally, I allocate time for movie watching in such a way that I won’t be interrupted. But during the last week I simply didn’t have that luxury, even though the movie was already rented. So, I decided that technically this movie is not a film (it’s an animation), so the normal guidelines can be bent a little bit. I saw the whole thing in about three or four sessions, with a little bit of overlap to get me back to where I stopped the previous time.

I have to say that this movie is nice. It is not disconnected from the cartoon series. It’s just longer and has a bigger story, but overall it looks and feels like the usual Simpsons. The animation is the same, the humor is the same, and the sound might be slightly better than the TV version (I don’t have anything at hand to confirm it). So, what’s more there to say? It’s the Simpsons. If you like them, watch it. If not, then not.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

PrimeTel submarine fiber landing station

(Can you pack any more technology terms into that title?)

Apparently, PrimeTel is working hard on improving broadband connectivity on the island of Cyprus. In this blog post, Vladimir Ivaschenko links to this article, which explains:

PrimeTel is building a new, independent, privately owned Submarine landing station in Yeroskipos, Cyprus as per the global specifications of Reliance Globalcom. It aims to gain access to new international cables and capacity, and has secured 5Gbps of capacity globally with an option for further upgrades in the future. The project is expected to be completed by 2009.

This sounds very cool, and I hope that the project will be completed on time and that we all, broadband users, will benefit from it. (Not that it will stop any of the local forums whining about Cyprus connectivity options or anything.)