Midori browser font rendering

I was having issues with Midori not rendering fonts the way I thought it should in aptosid XFCE. I set a default.css in ~/.local/share/midori/styles/default.css:

* {
    font-smooth:always !important;
    -webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased !important;
    text-rendering: optimizeLegibility !important;
}

but that didn't fix what appeared to be wonky antialiasing. So I had a look in my ~/.Xresources and lo!:

Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.autohint: false
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefaul  !!! Typo here !!! Should be "lcddefault".

Things are much improved now. I'm not 100% certain that it's 100% right, but it's definitely mostly right.

The takeaway for you, dear reader, is not to ignore your display configuration in  ~/.Xresources.

Broken Netbeans C++ code completion in Debian sid

When I use the workaround I wrote about for Netbeans crashing on startup in Debian sid, I notice that some C++ code completion doesn't work as expected. In several classes I've tried writing, code completion isn't picking up stuff declared in the header file.

When I use a copy of Oracle Java downloaded just for NB (i.e., netbeans_jdkhome="/home/me/opt/oracle-java/jre1.8" in /home/me/opt/netbeans/etc/netbeans.conf), things work as expected.

Whether this is a different or related bug I can't say, but I thought it worth mentioning in case anyone else is having the same problem.

Workaround for Netbeans crashing in Debian sid

A short while ago, my local install of Netbeans 8.0.2 started refusing to start with OpenJDK on my aptosid  box. I got around the problem by downloading Oracle Java and pointing Netbeans at that via my netbeans.conf:

...
# netbeans_jdkhome="/usr/lib/jvm/default-java"
netbeans_jdkhome="/home/mithat/opt/oracle-java/jre1.8"
...

Today I found Debian bug #798924 that suggests a workaround that allows using OpenJDK. In /etc/java-7-openjdk/accessibility.properties, comment out the line:

assistive_technologies=org.GNOME.Accessibility.AtkWrapper

So far so good.

Fixing Qt5 themes in Xfce

A lot of my Qt apps (e.g., qpdfview, VLC) recently stopped respecting my GTK theme. I did some checking, and it turns out they are all Qt5 apps. Google led me to the QT5 apps don't obey GTK theme settings post at the Manjaro Linux forum, which has some interesting things to say (generally applicable to all distributions).

What I eventually did was add:

# Workaround for Qt5 app theming.
export QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE=gtk

to the end of my my .profile, logout and log back in. Works now.

Looking for a new RSS news reader

Tiny Tiny RSS is a very decent if not glamorous self-hosted, FOSS news reader. A while back the developer decided to make the install and update process git-based. In addition, "shared hosting accounts, windows and other alternative OSes, free tiers of PaaS services of any kind, is not supported. Not supported in this case meaning: it may work in your particular case but if you have problems you are on your own."

I don't know with any certainty if the deprecation of shared hosting support has anything to do with some weirdness I'm experiencing on the shared hosting account where I have my TT-RSS installed. So, I am preparing for the worst.

I want a self-hostable and FOSS solution if at all possible. The solution also needs to play well with mobile (Android), either through really good Web site design or a dedicated app. I also insist on keystroke article navigation (next and previous).

I'll update this list as I try things.

FOSS

ownCloud sports a news module. I'm taking it for a spin through a free as in beer provider. The desktop experience is fine--apart from the ordering of articles, which is almost chronological. The mobile Web experience is nearly tolerable. There is a dedicated News app, the usability of which is pretty good, but it has some arcane sync setting configs to get it to sync with the "main" (i.e., Web) list of read articles. You'd think it would do that by default.

FreshRSS looks promising, but I am having issues with the app's not marking read articles as read. I don't know if this is a problem with my provider's DB connection. (It's not the same provider as my TT-RSS install). Keyboard navigation is fine, and the mobile Web experience is workable. It's claimed that the EasyRSS app can connect to FreshRSS, but I have yet to try it. The desktop web interface also has what I feel is a significant usability issue: if you set articles to me marked as read on scroll, then when you scroll the page to select the category of feed you want to read, you manage to mark whatever articles you scrolled through at the same time as read.

Proprietary hosted

AOL Reader comes as a bit of a shock: it's quite decent. Has the needed features and the mobile Web experience is tolerable. It has a 1000 feed limit.

Feedly comes highly recommended. Its Google login isn't too heinous as far as permissions it's granted are concerned. The Twitter login however is. The desktop experience is generally good. (I haven't tried it on mobile.) The privacy policy is riddled with potential share points. The service itself serves up mixed https and http content.

G2Reader also comes highly recommended. But it lacks keyboard navigation, so poop.

Digg Reader looks promising, but I don't like that the only ways in are via Twitter ("Read Tweets from your timeline. See who you follow."), Google ("View your email address, View your basic profile info, Manage your data in Google Reader"), and Facebook (no thanks).

Feedreader doesn't seem to get a lot of ongoing love from its developers, with the most recent news being from 2015 and 2013. This makes me think it could go away without much notice.

The Old Reader has a 100 feed limit for free accounts.

NewsBlur has a 64 feed limit for free accounts.

Current thoughts

If I can't get either of the FOSS options to work to my satisfaction, I may end up using AOL Reader--subject to its not being subject to awful privacy and terms of use policies.

Debian Jessie

Debian 8.0 Jessie is out!

KB3033929 - or the joys of dual booting

I have been bitten by the bug described in Microsoft's KB3033929.

What I did to fix it:

1. Dug around and found my Windows 7 install disc. Luckily I had one. Woe be to you if your computer came without one.
2. Started my computer with the  Windows 7 install in the CD drive. Did the obvious things until I got to a dialog that gave me the option to Repair your computer--which I selected.
3. In the following window, I selected Command Prompt and ran Bootrec.exe /FixMbr
4. That seemed too easy, so I also ran the option to check for and correct startup issues.
5. Removed the Windows 7 install disc media After the automatic reboot (into Windows--bye, bye GRUB), then manually rebooted.
6. Prompted windows to try (again!) to install the offending update.
7. Rebooted to confirm that the update took.
8. Reinstalled GRUB using Rescatux.

So far, no drama.

Ubuntu phone?

It looks like an Ubuntu phone is going to see the light of day. While I really want to see this launch be a success, the description of the phone by BBC News has me less than blisteringly hopeful. And not because the offering is a low-end device. Rather, it's because the phone won't have the most valuable distinctive feature promised by the platform--conversion to desktop mode when hooked up to external devices--and it will place front and center a largely app-less Scopes UI--which seems to try to be different mostly for the sake of creating some kind of distinction.

I think history has shown that different for different sake doesn't work out well in crowded, high-tech consumer markets. Different in and of itself doesn't offer the user value. In fact, different in and of itself represents friction for the user, a friction that something of greater value must overcome--be it improved performance, better usability, increased visceral appeal (with longevity), or useful new features. In addition, the problems of being different are amplified when when it comes from an upstart that lacks the marketing muscle to boom-crash-firework users into thinking it's not what it really is.

Yes, you need product distinction to succeed in a crowded market. But it has to be a distinction that represents value, not novelty. Inaugurating the platform with  a product that's crippled in the way this one is may forever give the platform a bad reputation--which would suck.

Then again, maybe Scopes solves a problem I didn't realize I had. Which would be pretty cool.

Samba and mtp automatic mountpoints with gvfs

Apparently, if you browse to a Samba share using gvfs (e.g., from Gnome's file manager, Thunar, etc.), it has a good chance of appearing as a mounted volume in /run/user/{your-user-number}/gvfs/.

It seems to work for mtp devices as well. I hooked up my Android phone, and I got a /run/user/1000/mtp:host... directory. I tried a couple command line operations in there, and while it was slow as snails, it worked. Now I can write scripts that operate on data stored on my phone!