uzbl, the return - day 6

uzbl, the return, day6

well, yesterday i said i was gonna start from scratch...

i thought i'd rap out an arch install in about 25 minutes, n then another 20 minutes later, i'd have a nice gui (xmonad + my config), packer, pacsync and of course, uzbl installed again, and start up a nice tight install, kept tight n tidy with pacsync...

...alas, events took a different turn.

my dual netinst cd was giving me installation problems again... i'd had this before installing arch on this laptop for bases for the arch based rown witch linux i've been developing.

it seems to somehow cut out just after package installation, and fails to reccognise the media it was being installed to after that (preventing just those last two steps).

so after the third time getting the same result (and not remembering what i did, besides blind luck, to get it to work for the arch witch install), i thought i'd just try the shortcut cheat way of getting arch installed.... archbang. ... installed it, but it failed to boot... and.. well... i could have probably tried a couple things, but i had already decided, somwhere between my second attempt getting the drives to stay awake during the arch install, and the archbang install, that i'd install slackware.

slackware 13.37

how can you resist?

^_^

since i have a 15gb partition newly freed up, n i've long been saying how much i respect slackware n will eventually use it n so on...

so... i thought, since i'm already on this uzbl unixy-goodness fest, why not get closer to the metal with the most leet sounding release of slackware ever.

it makes sense, right?

....or maybe i'm having too much of a good thing here.

configurability n unixy-goodness is good stuff.... but... maybe going for the lightest gui otion availed in the installer was going a bit far. just giving me twm. just giving me basically everything to isntall... in this new* unfamiliar os that takes a little more reading up on how to install software (and more typing) than most of everything else i've used. so much so, i ran back to my ubuntu-based squishboom install on the laptop just after installing libevent and tmux from slackbuilds.org.

* not the first time i've installed slack over the years... but the last time was so long ago, and i dont rly remember much of it, n probably didnt use it for long enough to get a proper feel for it.

it is a far cry from the simplicity of "emerge --sync && emerge tmux" or "pacman Syyu && pacman -S tmux".

and to think i used to lament on how many extra characters/options pacman and apt based distros had you typing/remembering over gentoo's simple "emerge"....


...but anyways, like i say...

it's nice feeling closer to the metal.

and it's good to learn.


learning how to live closer to the metal, means... well... basically it means you're more immediately availed the benefits of free software, the proper way.

i mean, the "open source" guys did think about the term, seemingly, longer and harder than i presume the deliberations went over the term "free software", despite, for the most part meaning pretty much the same thing.

it's about the source. the availability n freedom to get jiggy wid da source!

so the less layers of abstraction and interpolation and plastic wrap between you and the source, the better... right?

well, yes and no.

(or should that be yes and know).

convenience, oh convencience... why must you so often come ready as convenience for those who want to remain ignorant, and why must you be so inconvenient for those who want to know.

it's like the trade-off one has to make for security.
... sure you could have a completely secure locked down system, with no wires leading to the internet, and passwords required for EVERY action... but it's far from convenient.

same goes for being closer to the source. you're more closely afforded the opportunity to paruse the source code, to modify it and so on... but of course, it's not as simple as point and click gui package managers. ... n that's less convenient... if all you want is a click-n-go.

i'm not actually opposed to the idea of a click-n-go system... i just think it can be made in a way that retains that maximal expedient convenience, but ALSO provides the user, up-front, all the knowledge and source-code access that a close-to-the-metal style of package management affords.

nice ideals huh. ^_^

though i know why they've not been programmed to be so... a combination of lazyness and a perspective which says "those who want click-n-go dont want to know".... and there's an element of truth to that indeed. they dont. but is that any reason to help them remain ignorant? is that any reason to be negligent in caring for the intelectual commons? they are free software users just like everyone else... and as such, just as much developers as anyone else. who want's their software developers to be ignorant of how the software works??
....see... it's like an insideous poisonous meme, that's crept into free software from the proprietary cathedralesq model. and understandably so... in the evolutionary meme theory, you can easily see why it managed to out-compete the existing predominant meme in free software at the time of it's sneeking over... that being that hard-ass "geek it up or die" kind of elitist mentality. ...sure, it keeps your intelectual genepool rich... but small. it's off-putting to us lazy masses. n i dont say that disparagingly. lazy in the good sence. efficiency. we evolved to be this lazy. it makes sense. less effort for more gain? no-brainer. so of course plastic wrap started winning out... and just kept getting stronger as more n more arrived, self-exiled from proprietary, "windows refugees" we call them. and of course, they just kept adding to the demand (and supply) of more of this separation-from-code modality.

so yeah... that's me just re-itterating my call for all plastic-wrap to come with details on the contents.

then with a "fully informed public", we can start making smarter decisions. it's as true of software as it is for politics n grocery shopping n religion, and so on.

anyways... yeah... uzbl.

lol.

getting more used to it. though i admit, i have reached for seamonkey a couple of times.

pidgin on my ubuntu 10.04 squishboom, doesnt seem to want to retain that it's uzbl-browser i want it to use. keeps telling me that manual selected browser is not set. :/ maybe i'm doing something wrong.

i havnt done much more tweaking to it on any of my opperating systems since my epic facepalm fail.
(not sure if i mentioned this already, but shortly after my stupid mistake, i was informed that a mere cookie purge would have likely resolved my connection fail to a number of sites.)

i've just been using it. nice n simple.

on a page per page basis, it does seem to amount to a heavier ram useage, compared with my old fully kitted out firefox with bartab, n all the blockers (noscript, flashblock, adblock, ghostery, betterprivacy), and i really dont mind at all.

usually i'm a stickler for demanding things be ever less resource hungry (fighting against the tide, right?) but considering the interoperability with the rest of the system, it's soooooo worth it.

i am starting to see how despite it's slight flaws *coughpythonisslowcough*, it does, and will, confer productivity boons.

... and i'm forced to remind myself here... this is still alphaware!

it's just gonna get better. rly glad i've gotten on board so reasonably early in it's life.

i see a very long bright future for the likes of uzbl.




oh, and a bonux
(^typo worth keeping)

the moral of the story from the earlier bork...
(as repeated in the following todo)
dont go brash n insane next time something doesnt work, and instead, follow the apropriate troubleshooting proceedures.

X|


#####
todo
####

1. stop writing these silly todo lists at the end of your uzbl blogs, now that you've become fluent enough at editing the configs.
2. remember not to go brash n insane next time something doesnt work, and instead, follow the apropriate troubleshooting proceedures.
3. get a nice tiling wm and uzbl and 9menu installed on slackware. (doing that now as i write this blog ~ or procrastinating on that, and got this graphic-design brief to fullfil now too)