Raw Matter

A while ago I decided that my desktop computer would be a test platform for a few things. So at the moment it's KDE 4.1 and OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta, both from Debian's experimental distribution. Which, on a system which originally was an installation of Debian etch, means that by now not much is left over from that etch system. Long live Debian's dependency handling, which so far has never really let me down! Conclusion: thankfully I have a laptop for actually doing stuff...

• Digikam (the KDE 4 version as packaged in experimental) is completely b0rked, which is the most annoying thing because the machine is my main photo storage. (I don't do anything beyond archiving the photos, so just blowing away the digikam database is no issue, as is just putting the files into the filesystem. OTOH once Digikam's new removable-media support is tested and works, I plan to start annotating the pictures.)
• Kmail, absolutely wants to display emails in a proportional font. And I'm not going to configure a typewriter font as the default “proportional” system font... Also, but I suspect that might be an issue with the IMAP server, it still forgets the “ignored” state of mailing list threads. making any moderatly high traffic list impossible to read.
• OpenOffice.org runs for about 30 seconds before crashing. Ok, it's beta, but so far my experience with packaged stuff, even in experimental, was better. Still, I'm not complaining, I'll just wait for the next version.
• KDE 4 can't cope with multiple screens (at least if they don't have the same size.) KDE 3 was just nice on this system. I'll start filing bugs when KDE has stabilised enough. If I still have that graphics subsystem then — I've been considering upgrading to a bigger screen for a while now, which probably would mean that I'd throw away the second display, getting more desk space instead.

I should probably add that this is not a rant. I'm running software that's explicitly labelled as experimental. So people should probably view this as a response to whoever (can't find it anymore, wasn't it on Planet?) recently stated that he'd switch to the Hurd since Debian has become boring. Or as a Thank You posting for those making Debian from a “you know it's been the stable version for the last year when it's entered Debian” type of distribution into a “get it on the day of release” distribution.

PostgreSQL upgrade from 8.2 to 8.3. This really should be automated (... but I guess I understand why it's not.) At least it does work as advertised, thanks a lot to Julien Danjou. And thanks to Martin Pitt and the PostgreSQL developers for making it so painless to run several PostgreSQL versions side by side. Now there's a serious database.

Who or what is tech-faq.com? I just found out that they listed my server, without asking, on their list of public DNS servers. There also is no obivous way to contact them.

(The fact that zbasel.fortytwo.ch wasindeed a public DNS server was my own configuration mistake, of course, not theirs...)