hasen

Debian’s APT system is great for installing and updating system tools.

It’s not so great for installing and updating “apps”.

Most of the user-centric “apps” don’t do anything that requires root permissions. Why does it require root privileges to install them? Because APT packages get installed to system directories.

Solution? It shouldn’t be too complicated. Make some sort of a standard way for applications to install themselves to user-specific locations (or maybe some location that’s accessible to all users but doesn’t require root permissions to write to).

There’s also a problem with PPAs. The idea of PPAs is great: provide a channel for application developers that integrates with the built-in “system update” system (i.e. APT).

It takes 3 steps to install something from a ppa:

• add the ppa
• update apt (most annoying step)
• install the application

Additionally, the ppa may provide different versions of some system libraries — not a good thing. I once had a ppa install its own version of the kernel, and one of those updates killed wireless for me (fixing the issue caused a lot of un-needed headache). The worst part is the user doesn’t realize that some ppa’s are overriding part of his system.

Why not instead, just have one command to install “app” from “ppa”, such that:

• The installation doesn’t require root permissions (see above).
• The ppa is not added to APT’s sources.
• Only the installed application knows about the ppa and can somehow update itself through it.

I’m sick of tumblr being so applish: yea, good style, but limited functionality and not much freedom. hell, it doesn’t even support comments! how stupid can you get??

I’m sick of wordpress and other engines being so bloated. Last I checked, the official wordpress hosting didn’t support markdown posting.

I just want a decent blog that supports markdown, and supports arabic posting, and has a decent style.

I can’t seem to find any such thing!

which makes me want to write my own blog engine.

Yea, I’m pretty sure every one has sort of done that by now. And I’m sure most people would dismiss this as a futile exercise, or a silly idea.

Sure, maybe I can install a wordpress instance on my server and use plugins (and bear with the bloat) instead of going and writing a new engine from scratch.

But see, there are two things:

1. I can’t tolerate bloat.
   Ok, maybe I can, but for this project, I don’t want to.

2. I have a bit of a bigger vision, and I want to use this new blog as a sort of testbed for a whole bunch of new ideas that have been floating around in my mind lately.
   So I don’t want it to be just “another” blog engine.

First of all, I’m sick of SQL, and I want to write web apps without sql. So, I’m considering this LightCloud thing, or maybe just plain old Tokyo Tyrant. I don’t know enough about any of them, but basically this is what I want to be using — a key-value storage, not sql!

After a quick overview, I’m leaning towards Kyoto Cabinet

Update: I’m actually leaning towards MongoDB now

Second, I’m sorta sick of django too, so I’m gonna try to build this “blog” thing using werkzeug (and jinja2 for templates). Maybe I’ll be using Flask, but basically — no django!!

I want a blog that I would love using. There are features I care about, and there are features I consider bloat. The things I really care about:

• Markdown support
• Arabic support
• Comments (and possibly other means of community interaction, such as upvotes/downvotes)
• Ability to organize posts into a “series” of articles.
• Smart tags (not fully sure what this means yet, but basically that tags would do something more than just serving as dumb labels)

Everything else is just bloat — at least for now.

No, it won’t be a general-purpose blog engine. It’ll be aimed at technical people, specially those who want to publish technical articles in Arabic. — Other people can use tumblr or blogspot or wordpress or whatever.

I’m starting it as a blog, but eventually I hope to blur the lines between my posts and the visitors’ comments, and even let visitors start their own posts. Making it a hybrid of blogs and forums.

inshallah when I start, I’ll keep everyone updated about the progress.