The Curious Engineer

All blogs / Linux / Unix

Felipe Contreras

felipec.wordpress.com

Linux / UnixDev tools / editors / IDEsSociety / politics / economy

’10’15’20’25
Posts
273 from 9 Jan 2006 to 4 Oct 2026
Posting
now and then (3 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://felipec.wordpress.com/feed/

2026 2

  1. 20 years of blogging
  2. How Dilbert’s creator trolled a Nobel laureate

2025 16

  1. Cambios históricos del ingreso en México
  2. On being wrong
  3. Open Ideas; a new project to refactor freedom of speech
  4. The Ruby community doesn’t have a DHH problem
  5. The murder of Charlie Kirk proves the woke left has lost it
  6. pactropy 0.1 released
  7. Ruby gems still broken after 15 years
  8. The etymology of pull requests
  9. How I compile and run software (e.g. XLibre)
  10. Xorg neglect and XLibre slander
  11. Myths about X and Wayland
  12. Meet Enrico Weigelt, the maintainer of the new XLibre fork
  13. Linux drama: Rust advocates respond nonsense
  14. Rust doesn’t belong in the Linux kernel; it’s all about ideology
  15. C idioms; it’s the processor, noob
  16. The best minimal zsh configuration

2024 15

  1. The Linux Foundation is wrong about sanctions
  2. Linus Torvalds is wrong about Russians
  3. In defense of Richard Stallman v2
  4. A body of work of an atypical programmer
  5. Linux proves Elon Musk is wrong about entrepreneurs
  6. Explaining the modulo/remainder nonsense
  7. Everyone is using modulo wrong
  8. Reviewing Terrence Howard’s 1×1=2 claim
  9. The myth of Mexico’s extreme poverty
  10. Simplifying the xz backdoor
  11. xz backdoor and autotools insanity
  12. The stupidity and arrogance of GNOME developers
  13. The analytics of attention; you love controversy
  14. Proof that the Git project doesn’t allow criticism
  15. C skill issue; how the White House is wrong

2023 9

  1. git-fc 0.1: a new fork of git for users
  2. My ban from the Git project: the defense I was denied
  3. Authoritarianism in the Git project
  4. One decade later, GNOME still sucks
  5. Fixing Ruby gems installation part 2
  6. GNOME’s horrid coding practices
  7. How Mexico got COVID-19 stats correctly
  8. Mathematically proved: Steven Crowder v. The Daily Wire
  9. A meta discussion about the burden of proof

2022 8

  1. Ruby: for the love of god, stop using sudo
  2. Fixing Ruby gems installation once and for all
  3. My tone doesn’t make me wrong, or how I convinced the Ruby project to fix an inconsistency
  4. Good taste
  5. Matemáticas de la revocación de mandato
  6. dot-team: a new way of managing dotfiles
  7. xfce-config-helper 0.1 released
  8. Refactoring JavaScript promise tests

2021 9

  1. Cambios en la distribución del ingreso en México (2018-2020)
  2. How not to ban a prolific git developer
  3. The git staging area, the term literally everyone agrees with
  4. Freedom of speech in online communities
  5. How a proper git commit is made (by a git developer)
  6. Why is git pull broken?
  7. git update: the odyssey for a sensible git pull
  8. Adventures with man color
  9. The visual style of a programmer

2020 3

  1. Why renaming Git’s master branch is a terrible idea
  2. The amount fallacy
  3. What does “flatten the curve” really mean?

2019 2

  1. How a modern troll argues
  2. First principles of income distribution

2016 4

  1. The power of words
  2. Being honest about Islam
  3. Basics in rational discussion
  4. The vanguard in the war of ideas

2015 6

  1. Social justice warriors and feminism, poster boys of the regressive liberals
  2. Los salarios en México y las malas estadísticas del INEGI
  3. Best TV series of all time
  4. Understanding the Enigma machine
  5. The white and gold dress, and the illusion of free will
  6. My favorite public intellectuals

2014 5

  1. Sorry Lennart, but you are wrong once again
  2. What’s missing in Git v2.0.0
  3. Git v2.0.0, what changed, and why should you care
  4. Is ‘git pull’ broken? If so, what’s the fix?
  5. Using Git with triangular workflows; tips, tricks, and more

2013 8

  1. Demystifying the init system (PID 1)
  2. Announcing git-fc; a friendly fork of Git
  3. The Linux way: never ever break user experience
  4. Advanced Git concepts: the upstream tracking branch
  5. An in-depth analysis of Mercurial and Git branches
  6. What’s new in Git v1.8.4 Mercurial bridge
  7. What it takes to improve Git or: How I fixed zsh completion
  8. The problem with GNOME 3

2012 12

  1. Bridge support in git for mercurial and bazaar
  2. Progress through the years, and Ruby awesomeness
  3. msn-pecan 0.1.4 released
  4. Without dissent, there’s no progress
  5. Top 10 suggestions from the 2011 GNOME user survey
  6. Analysis of the 2011 GNOME user survey results
  7. Half a million views, and stats
  8. The meaning of success
  9. No, mercurial branches are still not better than git ones; response to jhw’s More On Mercurial vs. Git (with Graphs!)
  10. gst-av 0.6 released; more reliable
  11. EFI adventures
  12. Android vs. Maemo power management: static vs. dynamic

2011 24

  1. A tale of just another Linux kernel bug
  2. No project is more important than its users
  3. No, GNOME doesn’t want user feedback; how I argued in favor of voting in bugzilla, and got banned as a result
  4. Unique Mexican music; Son Jarocho, folklore and more
  5. Scrobbler for Maemo, now both on N900, and N9
  6. N9 Swipe undocumented feature; activate sane behavior
  7. msn-pecan 0.1.3 released
  8. Why geeks should be your target for marketing
  9. My disagreement with Elop on MeeGo
  10. After two weeks of using GNOME 3, I officially hate it
  11. Gems from /r/atheism
  12. GNU/Linux is more ridiculous than Linux/GNU/KDE/GNOME/Mozilla
  13. Command history meme
  14. gst-av 0.5 released; now with video encoding and decoding support
  15. Getting proxy support on GNOME; for real (libproxy-simple)
  16. Pidgin picking the wrong DVCS again; Mercurial
  17. msn-pecan 0.1.2 released; critical bug-fix
  18. Looking for job
  19. Why United States of America is a stupid name
  20. Holy grail of packaging; yum history
  21. Why Linux is the most important software project in history
  22. MeeGo scales, because Linux scales
  23. Nokia; from a burning platform, to a sinking platform
  24. Mercurial vs Git: it’s all in the branches

2010 19

  1. Why Maemo Downloads are screwed
  2. My ARM development notes
  3. GStreamer, embedded, and low latency are a bad combination
  4. gst-av 0.4; better performance for flac, vorbis and mp3 (part 2)
  5. Mark Shuttleworth’s PR stunt to make Canonical not look like a leecher
  6. gst-av 0.3; better performance for vorbis and mp3
  7. msn-pecan 0.1.1 released; important bug-fix
  8. felipec’s installation notes
  9. Avoid Reply-To munging; mail as mail was meant to be
  10. Scrobbler for Maemo 2.0 released; now with love support
  11. Open Source and a new kind of management
  12. maemo-scrobbler 1.0 released; last.fm+libre.fm multi-scrobbling
  13. Important msn-pecan bug-fix for battery drain
  14. msn-pecan 0.1 released; the best option for Pidgin/libpurple
  15. msn-pecan 0.1.0-rc4 ready for testing; thanks valgrind!
  16. Pidgin vs msn-pecan; bug numbers don’t lie
  17. msn-pecan now in Maemo’s extras-testing
  18. msn-pecan 0.1.0-rc3 ready for testing; featuring direct file transfers
  19. Why bugzilla sucks for handling patches

2009 24

  1. Setting up QEMU with a NAT on Linux
  2. msn-pecan on the N900; great address-book integration
  3. msn-pecan 0.1.0-rc2 ready for testing; now with N900 support
  4. GStreamer development in embedded with sbox2
  5. git send-email tricks
  6. New project: gst-dsp, with beagleboard demo image
  7. Ripary and linux 2.6.31
  8. My favorite fringe theory: we evolved from aquatic apes
  9. Who wrote Pidgin’s msn? Not who you think
  10. How msn-pecan fixed a 6 year old bug, how Pidgin didn’t, and stole the fix
  11. msn-pecan 0.1.0-rc1 ready for testing; on the way to the first serious release
  12. Don’t underestimate Google Chrome OS, or Google for that matter
  13. libmtag-0.3.0: moved to git
  14. New adium build with msn-pecan 0.0.19
  15. msn-pecan 0.0.19 released, more stability and “now playing” support
  16. Response to Christian Schaller — Google, the LGPL and software patents
  17. Installing scratchbox 1 and 2 for ARM cross-compilation
  18. C programming hints and code-style (part 1)
  19. How to explain FOSS to normal people, or: What does mountain bikes, rap music, and FOSS have in common?
  20. OMAP3 public DSP binaries now work
  21. 100,000 views, and some stats
  22. msn-pecan 0.0.18 released, now with voice clips support
  23. Pidgin brainstorm back to life
  24. Pidgin devs just don’t get it

2008 27

  1. gst-openmax demo on the beagleboard
  2. PSM option poll
  3. Collaboration; the most valuable lesson companies should learn from open source
  4. libmsn-api plan
  5. msn-pecan 0.0.17, the beginning of a new era
  6. Announcing codeswarm.rb 0.1
  7. radeonhd: better is worse, or: how to loose a contributor
  8. Richard Stallman’s cloud computing nonsense
  9. Continuations in C; easy asynchronous stuff
  10. Ogg Vorbis and Maemo 5; technical standpoint
  11. msn-pecan 0.0.16 released
  12. Global Instant Messaging Market Share
  13. msn-pecan 0.0.15 released
  14. Pidgin; how not to choose the right SCM
  15. TED videos about open source
  16. msn-pecan 0.0.14 released
  17. msn-pecan 0.0.13 released
  18. msn-pecan 0.0.12 released
  19. The future of address books; not e-d-s
  20. msn-pecan 0.0.11 released
  21. msn-pecan 0.0.10 released
  22. Transcoding for the Internet Tablets the smart way
  23. Why I use Fedora
  24. msn-pecan 0.0.7 released
  25. msn-pecan 0.0.6 released
  26. GStreamer hello world
  27. N8x0 Amazon bestsellers

2007 44

  1. msn-pecan now with direct connection
  2. GStreamer hands-on introduction
  3. N810 ars technica review
  4. N810 in WebbAlert
  5. Alternative MSN plugin for Pidgin
  6. Linux on board: Developing for the Nokia N800
  7. Android looks more than good
  8. Fedora 8 quick review
  9. Fedora 8 network install from USB
  10. Technology that just doesn’t work
  11. Simpsons scenes and their reference movies
  12. Ruby-msn update: now with groups
  13. git and changelogs
  14. Get to know a little bit more about Mexican culture
  15. Linux, Marketing and Desktop-readiness: A concrete rant
  16. NFS in Fedora 7 (and iptables)
  17. The Programming Languages Race
  18. TED: Ideas worth spreading
  19. The future of packaging software in Linux
  20. Fedora doesn’t have a target market?
  21. Ruby library for Windows Live Messenger (MSN)
  22. GstOpenMAX kicked off!
  23. GPLv3: Microsoft’s plans?
  24. ATI R500 Driver
  25. Pablo Francisco Stand Up
  26. libmtag-0.2.0: Now with a CLI
  27. Fedora 7 install from usb
  28. How to update to Fedora 7
  29. More Ruby vs Python
  30. Starcraft 2 Trailers: Hell, it’s about time!
  31. Ruby Sheller Screencast
  32. libmtag-0.1.0: New project, new release
  33. Links for 08.05.07: Slashdot stuff, Open Source releases
  34. Rodrigo y Gabriela
  35. Going deeper in search for the right thing
  36. Ruby vs Python on Web2.0: Twitter
  37. Gaim/Pidgin rants, MSN history
  38. Some device autoplugging magic in GNOME
  39. libmtag: simple music tagging library
  40. Bugzilling
  41. Ruby Twitter CLI Screencast
  42. Unmount power
  43. Links of 15.04.07: Web2.0, Open Source Software and Books
  44. Fedora 7 test 3 struggles

2006 36

  1. Automounting a storage device with GNOME
  2. Ruby on Rails on Fedora Core 6
  3. Waves almost as fast as light
  4. Unique?
  5. Creative Commons Search (new tabbed interface)
  6. Free language courses
  7. Public Domain Torrents: Classic Movies and B-Movies For FREE!
  8. How experts are made
  9. Scott Adams for puppetmaster
  10. Google Code Search
  11. links for 2006-10-04
  12. The Best Public Domain Movies (Free!)
  13. Linux gaiming and the blogosphere
  14. Meet Tim Bray
  15. Blogging with GNOME
  16. Who Hugo Chavez really is?
  17. Spread Free Culture
  18. Discussion 2.0 *beta*
  19. Open Source massive unification
  20. Spread Free Culture
  21. Source code is your friend… but it’s high maintenance
  22. Dummer Kid
  23. Java 6, great for the desktop
  24. Amazing 3D Sidewalk Art Photos
  25. 3D as easy as crayons
  26. Voting Machines Hacked
  27. Amazing kid
  28. Free TV episodes: Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (fun and enlightening)
  29. Be young again? At least mentally
  30. Photorealistic CG Water
  31. Git Goodness
  32. More crazy stuff about World of Warcraft
  33. 3D Animation of Linux source code development
  34. Web 2.0 – The Internet revolution explained: del.icio.us
  35. Web 2.0 – The Internet revolution explained: Wikipedia
  36. Hello world!