Two new software installs this weekend:

1. Mandrake 9.2 beta 1. I had a whole 20GB drive sitting in my machine at home with a lame Gentoo install on it, and I read that beta 2 will contain the newest 2.6 kernel, so I thought “what they hey” and installed beta 1. Very nice. Gnome is actually a bit faster, probably due to the fact that it is tweaked a bit for Mandrake. I guess that’s the disadvantage of using a roll-it-yourself distro like Slackware.

2. Ximian Desktop 2. I had tried this once or twice before without success, but I just let the installer run at work over the weekend, and when I got in, poof, there it was. Very nice. There were some bugs in Gnome 2.0 that sorta got on my nerves, so it’s nice to have a desktop based on Gnome 2.2. Very clean interface, and the fonts look a bit sharper too.

In other news, the new bike hit the road this morning. I’ll snap a photo this evening and post it tonight. It’s nice to be on skinny tyres again. Currently, it’s geared at 39 x 16, and that didn’t hurt too much, but I may try to pick up a 18 tooth cog at lunch, and that should allow me to climb up Stanton to get home.

Posted on 4 August 2003