I have been using open source operating systems for a long time. My first meeting with them were in 1997-1998, when I was introduced to Red Hat Linux. Back then, the system was already very advanced, with art and documentation, and the system was very stable. The only thing missing was the user friendliness (which today seems to have replaced the stability). After this, I was introduced to the BSD's by a room mate when I went to university. BSD seemed more primitive in some ways, but I was assured that it was simpler / cleaner than Linux. Also, the system was rock solid - stable as diamond.

Open source systems used to be all about stability. Today, this might still be the case at the core, but how these systems are packaged and distributed somehow ruins it, and the systems come out full of bugs. Seemingly, the bugs only grow in number, as developers seem more keen to develop features than to make the system more stable. It's like the developers aren't using the software themselves.

As a principle, I think a developer should use the software he or she is developing - if not, they are not really equipped to know how to make the program appealing. It is all about good craftsmanship - and not so much about taking advantage of the accessible software repositories (cvn/svn/git etc). Even though it might be trendy to be contributing to a project, mass subscribtions of developers could lead to bugs and unfinished features.

I hope we get back to the age of stable oss projects. Right now I feel I am jumping from distro to distro trying to find a place where progress haven't been replaced by regress and bloat inflation.

Yesterday evening I finally managed to get into AROS OS development again with a new build system working on my AMD64 machine (under i386 ofcourse). I submitted some changes to Wanderer so that the toolbar works properly and the windows refresh better, plus a small fix to Wanderer prefs. But it's just a start of more to come, as it is very comfortable to work with.

As for Lunapaint, v0.3.1 is well underway and has allot of new features, plus improvements. The major benefit of this version is the font functionality to place text on canvas, the dpaint keyboard shortcuts and working style plus added layer functionality (opacity and so on).

AROS is becoming more and more useful. More developers from the outside (also from the outside of the Amiga community) have shown up and gotten their hands dirty with AROS coding :-) - 2007 is gonna be a great year for AROS! The new web server and ftp server that was just released will make it much easier for developers to test their networking code, and also to transfer files to and from AROS. Furthermore, we are getting networking functionality in the linux hosted development enviromnent, so that developers who run AROS hosted on linux can develop and test their networked applications without QEMU/VMWare or AROS native (it's just speedier this way =)).
The AROS SVN is also now continuing to show activity like just before the new year, and bug fixes and improvements is showing up there.

So all in all, it's a great start on 2007!

Spam is really getting to new heights! It truly is proof of the lowliness of some people. I've had to close the possability of anonymous comments - it just can't be used anymore.

I haven't posted in a while - I've been very busy at the same time as I've worked allot on Lunapaint v0.3 which is due for xmas =) Anyhow, I'm gonna start posting a bit again, to give some progress updates. Stay with me!

I released a new version of Lunapaint today. My app is now at version 0.2.6. The main features are PNG export and a new GUI rewamp. There haven't been too many bug fixes though, so the bugs that were discovered in 0.2.5 should still be in here, except for the showstoppers which leads to a crash.
Anyway, now that Cristophe has committed himself to Wanderer I thought I'd use some more time on Lunapaint to get it to version 0.3. There aren't that many things left, and it should mostly be about closing some bugs and adding polish. With bugs in mind, I set up a forum at:

http://www.sub-ether.org/phpBB2/

Please use this forum to post your experiences and bug reports. Other than that, paint pretty pictures and have fun!

With my first small commit yesterday and todays commits, I guess I'm finally a real AROS coder! I've started fixing some identation things in the AROS sources and my first real "work" was to fix the icon listing a bit in Wanderer. I've been annoyed for a long time that the icons have been overlapping (text under icon underneath) - so I've fixed it and cleaned the code a bit. I've started to make some ideas of where to go from here, and I think the first thing will be to perfect the icon listing with graphical list modes and so on.

Traditionally, AmigaOS listed black text on a light background. I really like this and played a bit with different ways of rendering the icon text. Next I want to add some list modes to Wanderer Prefs, like; Outline (from today, only a bit more optimized), Dropshadow, Shadow(old style), Bevelled, Rounded background.... you know what I'm talking about. It could also perhaps be an idea to give all the icons a effect, like in KDE, so you could for example make all icons grayscale, or blue... We'll see.

The big point is that I've finally started on the AROS sources, and it makes me a bit happy and... sentimental and.. :-) You know.

Long live AROS!

As development goes on on Lunapaint, I've started reading some tutorials on bsd socket programming. The reason is that I want to be able to code some network tools for AROS, for starters, to add to the usability of the OS. I've never programmed any network tools before, so it's gonna be an interesting process. Async coding, which is something you need to understand before doing any serious network coding, is something I'm used to doing with Javascript and AJAX, so there's really nothing new in that area, although C has quite a different mentality. But I think I'll have some fun tools on show in a couple of weeks.

I've often thought about making some kind of Web browser, based on HTTP, but not on HTML. I know about all the accessability issues people are having with badly implemented Flash pages and javascripts which are "misbehaving", but that's not a problem I'm having in mind when I think about my own idea. I'm imagining a new visual browser, for people who aren't impeded, like something out of a hollywood movie - or kinda like a graphical BBS client - with animations, music, sound. Not to strike down at people who are blind or have other disabilities preventing them from using such a browser, I'm aiming this at people who want an audio/visual experience, like a movie, a game and so on. Perhaps I could even call it an online diskmag browser. For this I'd need to develop a simple scripting language, preferably based on Javascript, and then some simple way of downloading content. It could be a nice project to develop... although I dunno how much time I would have for it now... Ideas aren't bad though ;-) We will see if I get anything done on it.

I've not yet committed any changes to AROS' Wanderer desktop. I think me and Craid would have to combine forces and talk about it before I start making any serious effort. The Wanderer code is quite clean, so it shouldn't be too hard to modify it and understand it. AROS is seriously lacking in the Desktop area, so it is high in my thoughs from week to week. I'm juggling allot of projects now, so I'm not making any promises. But I'm gonna keep you updated on what's happening.

I thought I'd be delayed with Lunapaint v0.2.4 as I had a couple of beers and felt distain from coding. But after three beers I started up and finished the oh so boring canvas scrolling code. And it works perfectly. No more slow, lagging scrolling. Mmmm.

So I think I will be on time anyway. On sunday I'll release v0.2.4 for everyone. And you'll be better off for it :-D

Anyhow, there's been allot of discussion around at Amiga related sites. People seem to miss the fact that AROS has the escape route people have been missing for a long time. Ok, it's hard to install right now, but not for long (I hope). It already enables you to be productive in many ways. Please join #aros and follow the progress, it's much more interactive than any forum site. You'll talk to the developers.

Anyhow, I'm on my 8th. :-D I need to get back to the party on #aros ;-)