Day: July 27, 2002

Gentoo interview: Tinyminds is running an interview with Gentoo‘s founder, Daniel Robbins.  It looks like they are working on a more automated install while still keeping it real.

DR: Yes; we have a beta Anaconda installer and a beta live CD installer that uses Debian’s “discover” hardware detection code. We also have a developer working on an in-house installer. So expect some nice things
in the future 🙂

*important note:* We will always have a “bare-bones” shell-based installation method available for those who want to be in total control of the installation process. A well-documented bare-bones install using standard Linux tools is a essential part of Gentoo Linux that is not going to go away.

Gentoo is also one of the quickest distributions to pick up GCC3.1.

DR: Yes, we’re already at gcc 3.1 but the official release will be at LinuxWorld San Francisco on August 13-15th, 2002. We’ll probablly be hanging out in the .org Pavillion at the penguinppc.org and/or Aurora Sparc Linux project booths if you want to visit us.

How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: in Python even. This looks like a very good freely available book available under the free documentation license. It is available in HTML, PDF, PostScript, and LaTeX.

Hop-on says, “No really, we’ll have disposable cell phones someday.” Having first read about the technology a year and a half to two years ago, I’ll have to say I’ll believe it when I see it.  Here the story.

Sun and Apple team up: CNet reports that your favorite non-Microsoft office suite might be coming to an OSX box near you.

“I don’t want to sell StarOffice for OS X,” Siress [Sun’s senior director of desktop marketing solutions] said. “I want Apple to bundle it. I’ll give them the code. I’d love it if I could get the team at Apple to do joint development and they distribute it at no cost–that it’s their product. Nobody makes a product more beautiful on Apple than Apple.”

There is a lot of work ahead of them though.  Staroffice has a look and feel that is consistent across all the platforms that it runs on, something that would likely have to change to appeal to mac users.  Yet another thing to keep tabs on.