No Such Weblog

These are the nights when I regret my decision not to go for a Mac as my Laptop: As if it was 1995, I'm sitting here, sleepy, waiting for my PC to finish compiling the Linux kernel -- which takes eternities.

The reason? I was stupid enough to install Redhat's Fedora Core 3 on that truly cutting edge thinkpad I use, without checking that this problem (which is the same as this problem) was actually fixed -- it isn't, not even in the latest "testing" kernel. Linux has been running rock-solid on this machine for the past six months, until the latest so-called stable kernel, which will leave the keyboard in a completely useless state after any APM suspend/resume.

So I'm now rebuilding the last useable FC2 kernel (which doesn't seem to be available in binary RPM form any more) for use on FC3, to get back my laptop's full functionality.

(Meanwhile, the PDA is still in the process of being repaired; replacement devices can't be made available, I'm told.)

After the kernel compilation orgy last night, Fedora Core 3 now runs reasonably stable -- sort of, since OpenOffice has some problems. Not only do the same documents look different now when printed -- most of the user interface is displayed in a way that's somewhere between ridiculous and unreadable.

As I said yesterday: These are the things that make me wish I had taken a Mac.

(Turns out this is an X server problem; thanks to the people at RedHat, I now have a work-around.)