Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

Fedora 27

Fedora 27Fedora 27, the latest and greatest version, has been released.  As always, a lot of work went into putting it all together.  But for personally, the new releases has stopped being exciting a long time ago.  My desktop needs have been satisfied for years.  All I need is MATE Desktop Environment (with i3 window manager), a browser, terminal emulator and Vim.  That’s pretty much it.  And it has been there forever.

So, is there anything interesting in this new version at all? Release Notes are rather thin, but let’s have a look.

  • New and improved Gnome 3.26.  I know a lot of people who use Gnome, so that’s probably exciting.
  • New LibreOffice 5.4.  Personally, I don’t know anyone who is using LibreOffice.  Google Docs is doing a pretty good job these days.
  • Security section looks like the largest area of changes.
  • Web Development section mentions Node.js 8.

If you want even more details on what has been done, why and how, have a look at the Fedora 27 changes page.

To me it looks like there is some internal restructuring and reorganization going on, with release process changes (no more Alpha releases), a lot of effort on modularity, and so on.

Hopefully, the next one will be a bit more exciting.

Amazon AWS : Scaling Up to Your First 10 Million Users

This must be one of the greatest presentations on the Amazon AWS that I’ve ever seen.  It uses a gradual approach – from small and simple to huge and complex.  It covers a whole lot of different Amazon AWS services, how they compliment each other, at which stage and scale they become useful, and more.

Even quickly jumping through the slides gave me a lot to think (and Google) about.

Firefox : The Quantum Era

“Entering the Quantum Era—How Firefox got fast again and where it’s going to get faster” is an insightful article showcasing the big changes happening with the Firefox browser.  It seems, the pendulum is swinging back towards the browser that almost became irrelevant.  I think that competition is good for everyone, and it has proven much more so in the end-user applications.  New ideas, new approaches, new technologies, and plenty of stimuli for the Google Chrome and other browser teams to respond with something even better.

WordPress 4.9 Field Guide

WordPress 4.9 is just around the corner (scheduled for release tomorrow, November 14th).  This version brings an impressive number of new features and improvements.  The stats so far are:

Roughly 400 bugs, 181 enhancements, 7 feature requests, and 42 blessed tasks have been marked as closed in WordPress 4.9.

Figuring out all these changes and how they affect you is an effort in itself.  But don’t you worry!  Here’s the WordPress 4.9 Field Guide, which showcases all the main changes and provides plenty of additional resources to follow up.

Wow!  WordPress 4.9 packs quit a punch!

GitHub : Archiving Repositories

GitHub archive repositories

Last week, GitHub introduced archiving of repositories. While it might not seem like a news worthy feature, it is quite useful for both individuals and teams.  Two particular scenarios that I find helpful are:

  1. Indicate that a particular repository / project is obsolete and is not maintained.  This should save quite a bit of time for people who randomly end up on a project’s page, via searching GitHub/Packagist/Google or somewhere else.
  2. Provide an insight into how many of the person’s or team’s profile are active.  It’s often difficult to estimate at a first glance, when looking at a GitHub profile of a person or a team who have been developing for a long time, how many of their projects are actually actively maintained.