My first custom compiled browser

Yesterday I compiled mozilla icecat on my laptop. Its the first time, I have compiled any of the most commonly used softwares. Other than few missing libraries which I had to install, the installation went perfect. It took almost twenty minutes to compile and install the full thing.
Why did I do that ? The main problem I was seeing in most of the firefox family browsers was inability to render indic texts properly. It requires a special rendering support from "Pango" library and most of the ubuntu repositories have firefox binaries with pango disabled. It was funny that kubuntu 7.10 (32 bit) installed on my lab box had pango enabled firefox. But I could not find 64 bit Iceweasel/Firefox binary with pango enabled. I know it had some bugs which manifested themselves by miserably slowing down the browser. But AFAIK this bug was affecting 32/64 bit binaries alike. Anyways, other than this practical reason, I just wanted to compile firefox once on my box. So I did it. I chose Icecat (which is new name of Iceweasel) just because its "all free". Its working great... Even the indic text is rendered beautifully.

Meanwhile, I would like to note that the only broser that currently passes the acid2 browser test is konqueror. None if the most popular browsers IE, firefox or Opera pass the test. And after fiddling with konqueror for a few weeks I think its not that bad...it just has a different ways of doing things.

Anyways, For most of us compiling a browser may not be a big deal but I am feeling great. The joy of having something custom built for yourself is something I cannot explain.

Alvida Suse

Suse had been my preferred linux distro for last three years. Though there were a lot of things I did not like, it was only distribution other than Fedora and Mandrake which had entire off-line RPM based installation kit. People who have grown up without internet or with dial-up network (whose optimal connection speed does not shoot above 128Kbps) will understand importance of having an offline installation kit. I usually find Suse much intuitive and easy than Fedora. But I should agree that I never had any opportunity to use Mandrake. But Suse had its drawbacks. I think their release cycle is slow and they for some reason do not distribute RPMs of a lot of popular softwares. In fact, I found that Suse RPMs are most defficult to get (if Novell themselves do not distribute them). And if you are using a x86_64... God bless you.

I had made up my mind to replace Suse with kubuntu but was being lazy to do so. The final nail in Suse's coffin came when I decided to update my Suse distribution including the kernel. I was expecteing graphics drivers and Alsa ro break (because I had custom-compiled them) but no that was not enough. My wireless lan (I was usinf ndiswrapper) collapsed. Despite reinstalling Alsa, Amarok kept crashing. And today evening,even my ethernet went down. It wasn't really a problem in Suse, but I had a scapegoat already infamous for previous crashes :-D

So finally my favourite distribution of three years was laid to rest. I installed kubuntu. The main reason being large user base (which just increased by one :-) ) and ease of updating and maintaining stuff.....

So here I am, writing this post from freshly installed kubuntu system. The most amazing thing about linux systems is if you just keep your /home and / on separate partitions, you can just keep changing the distros without affecting any of your personalize settings. I still do not understand why Windows does not allow to have "documents and settings" folder on separate partition. It will save Windows use a lot of trouble. Not that I care about it... Just a passing thought.

Alvida Suse...May your soul rest in peace....

Swiftweasel

For quite a some time I was looking for a 64 bit version of firefox/iceweasel. Though I did not find any, I found this and this. I decided to experiment with swiftweasel. And I must say it does run a bit faster. The difference is not too much. But some websites do load few milliseconds faster. If you test with something like google.com you will never feel the difference. So choose your test cases wisely. Besides, It also has many customizable features, which are attractive.
One small issue (which may not be an issue, who knows) is that the 64bit version is compiled for AMD Athelon and I have Turion X2 (64 bit dual core). The websites recommends Athelon64 build for AMD 64x2. But I am curious to know if a fully custom build can still save me a few milliseconds....