If you’ve used and built packages from source, chances are you’ve run into some derivation of this dreadful message:

libtool: link: `/usr/lib/libgnomevfs-2.la' is not a valid libtool archive

Unfortunately, there are a few potential causes ranging from broken packages to missing packages, but in general, they are the result of broken dependencies (missing packages are broken dependencies, after all!). Read on about some potential workarounds and solutions! Read more…

Some months back, I was playing around with software I had written to automatically decompress World of Warcraft addons, record their contents, and place them in a single zipped archive for download via our guild site. I ran into some peculiar issues with a handful of WoWAce-based addons that I eventually traced to the developer’s use (incorrectly, I might add) of Subversion externals. Oddly, the archive would behave correctly under Windows while using both the built-in Windows zip utility and 7-zip. That was when I started thinking about the blessing and curse of standards. Read more…

As you’ve probably guessed from my previous rants, I decided to try out KDE 4 under FreeBSD. It was really quite stunning, elegant, and simultaneously disappointing. I’ll cover the pros and cons here. Be aware that this is just a rough overview and covers my experiences with KDE 4 under FreeBSD; I may add another installment for KDE 4 under Ubuntu, which I have just recently installed as well.

KDE 4 is still in development and should be considered beta software. My comments here are representative of KDE 4.2.0 and, more specifically, the FreeBSD port. It is important to note that many of my complaints will probably be addressed in the coming months as the KDE developers implement missing features, fix bugs, and the KDE port to FreeBSD gains stability. Instead, it would be advisable to take my review as a commentary on the current state of KDE.

Update

I will be posting my thoughts on KDE 4 running under Ubuntu in the coming days. Canonical’s patches and additions to KDE appear to make even the older version (4.1.x) very usable!
Read more…