Ionrock Dot Org

I just read the first paragraph of this article. One of things that has already become evident is that with the induction of the mac mini comes the potential issue for drivers hell. I realize this is minimal since we are just talking about a monitor, keyboard and mouse pretty much being the only items that would be connected that would be different from other machines. Now you may be saying, "But what about the g5! No monitor included!" in which case you would be so right. The problem is if someone has the bucks for a g5 then I have the feeling they have a Mac monitor as well. Everyone else is buying an eMac or iMac which both have monitors built in. I really can't imagine this will be much of an issue but if Apple continues to go down the cheaper machine path, you would think that it will have to allow cheaper hardware to become part of the equation. This will inevitably bring driver issues. Maybe it is nothing but it is an interesting dilemma.

This really leads me to one of my biggest issues with Linux and the most inhibiting aspect of it. Keeping hardware drivers in the kernel seems to be the wrong choice for a desktop machine. I say this because I have had to deal with trying to get things like the ndiswrapper working for my wireless card. Given I haven't had much time to really mess with it but if I followed the instructions, I would be looking at a kernel compile to get the drivers working. This just seems crazy to me the more I think about it. I realize server hardware doesn't change very often so this makes quite a bit more sense in that situation. Considering Linux has always been intended for the desktop (I say this b/c Linus has always worked on the kernel with his own desktop use in mind), it seems odd that it has been developed in this fashion.

Of course, one must consider the fact that I am not a kernel hacker and have no idea how to write real C code other than rolling some dice and adding some numbers. I really don't understand it all so I will stop my commentary here. My main beef is that I should NEVER have to recompile my kernel for a piece of hardware. If I do, then there is a serious problem. Will that stop me from running linux? Of course not! I like making my processor do things even if it is stupid to do in the first place. What better to waste cycles than recompiling a perfectly good kernel in order to use iwlist?

I have doing a lot of reading on XML recently. It is pretty fascinating what people have done with such a simple technology. The essence of XML is a simple tree and a verbose method of labeling things. The creation of databases based on XML is pretty fascinating to me. But what I really like the the most is object serialization. I know this is not the most advanced thing in the world but to imagine saving all your program objects and getting to return to your program exactly as you left it is pretty exciting. Especially when you consider you don't have to use a config file or anything. Instead of config files, just keep a config object. Instead of a database, just use a data structure. Of course things get more complicated but the idea is really cool. It is a built in persistance that really makes life convenient. I am sure I will get more into the whole database side of things as I learn more about XPath and everything but I still think the whole serialization thing is pretty slick.