Stella GNU/Linux is finally born. It is a desktop focused, Gnome2 based Centos 6 remix (exact words of the maintainer). The features look really neat if you are looking for a CentOS/RPM based OS that is rock stable rather then bleeding (buggy) edge...
You can get it here (1 Gbps, IPv4, IPv6).
I don't use FTP anymore to transfer files.. However today I *had* to. This is the day I realise that I still haven't found the perfect FTP client.
Don't get me wrong, I like this program, however it's when I need to "get" recursively that I start to have to think.. is it "mirror" or "mirror -R" ? .. knowing that one of the options will delete stuff remotely I have taken the habit of simply not using this tool. It does seem completely stupid to have such an option when most people are used to the "-r" switch.. . why would "get file" become "get mirror directory/" ? So close yet, no. (And yes, I know, I can be that way : ] ).
hmm, well, it's actually the program I've used the most, it has bookmarks and stuff, uses the normal "-R" syntax, it also has some neat features useful when scripting. However it does not support any form of encryption, so it can only be considered private if used in 1855. Another issue I encountered today, is when I finally was going to recursively get a directory I got this new and neat error:
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
Yes, directories are not tar archives, thanks for the heads up.
This one seems cool, I'm sure it's the best one for me EXCEPT (of course) that whoever develops this program does not seem to care about the users enough to leave a help file or something. There is a manual, but say you copy a file that already exists, you get a nice prompt:
Overwrite? [yncauR, ? for help]
And yes, the "?" has no effect (in my case at least). Even the "help" command does not work. So this could be the one, but I might never know. To be fair, I met this program only recently so maybe when we get to know each other better things will work out... .
I think that the 3 developers need to get into some threesome and bring to this earth a decent, simple, functional command line GNU FTP client that works..
The other evening I attended a conference by RMS on Free Software and digital exclusion. The talk was interesting and motivating as usual, even though I already agree with 99.99% of what he had to say. There was one point however where in response to a question he said:
Don't be defeatist, take a constructive approach.I could not help myself from noticing that even at a Free Software conference by RMS himself so many people were armed with computer-phones running one of the most (if not the most) restrictive operating systems known to human kind. And many of these people seemed to be big fans of Richard Stallman.
Today while writing this up I found an audio recording of the talk in mp3 format as well as a video... . in Flash format on Indymedia !! Really ? Yes really. The same on another site, although there is a an "alternative" OGV format.. Shouldn't it at least be the other way around ?
So tell me, how can I not be defeatist ? And what do RMS fans think when they take a picture of themselves with RMS using their Iphone ? Are they totally missing the point ? Which brings me to my first question.
The strongest point (most probably went unnoticed) in my humble IMHO was: If we encourage people to use Free Software by pointing at some kind of practical advantage and not talking about it as justice versus injustice we wont teach people to keep their Freedom. This is precisely the root of the Freedom issue, digital or analog.
This work is licensed by Emmanuel Revah under a Creative Commons 
