Conary 2.3.10 is a maintenance release
New Features:Iv'e been working on a wiki page that kinda feels useful and seems very easy to find what you are looking for.
Talking about this page: http://www.foresightlinux.se/wiki-en/
Today i spended some time to update wiki to latest mediawiki: 1.18.1
Also changed from ReCaptcha to QuestyCaptcha, will use a manually question that's pretty easy to answer.
So the whole wiki included all pages been created by me. So alot of time been added to that wiki.
Has it been worth anything? Do anyone feels like it's a good idea and I should continue or put it on hold?
Just wonder, as it feels alot of time goes into wiki. Don't want to let all the time go to waste.
Also today, deleted 2 pages from spammers. So i hope the change of captcha will do a difference.
Hello all,
Just fixed torrent files for gnome 32bit and 64bit. xfce 32bit and 64bit.
Would like to get some seeders with the torrent files, doesn't mather if you only seed a little. Any seeds are welcome.
Thanks in advance all, apriciated alot.
All torrents are located at: http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrents&;category=186
The files are from fl:2-qa label.
Many users wonders if there is a GUI for installing, searching or uninstalling packages for Foresight Linux.
And yes, there is. Called PackageKit.
Open terminal and write:
sudo conary update PackageKit gnome-packagekit
Now you can easily install packages, but personally I still stick with terminal.
Can't live without "conary search *packagename*" :)
During this year, www.foresightlinux.se was remade. Today it handles swedish and english. Also a more user friendly wiki was created
http://www.foresightlinux.se/wiki-en it's still in develop stage though. It's just a way to make newcomers for Foresight to easy find the information they are looking for. It's setup an easy way to find what you are looking for.
English wiki
The english wiki only been available less than a month, still got 1,378 hits. That's awesome. Still I haven't really advertise about it.
Top 3 pages been:
http://www.foresightlinux.se/wiki-en/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.foresightlinux.se/wiki-en/index.php?title=System-model
Blog posts
Top blog posts been during past year:
http://www.foresightlinux.se/en/blog/introduction-to-foresight-linux
http://www.foresightlinux.se/en/blog/xfce-tips-tricks-and-tweaks
http://www.foresightlinux.se/en/blog/add-blocklistblacklist-for-transmission
New ISO available
We also released new iso, 2.5.2 with activated system-model. More info about the release will come in near future.
Can download them at:
http://www.foresightlinux.se/wiki-en/index.php?title=Download
http://www.foresightlinux.org/download/
We hope to get some torrent download too.
2012
For 2012, I promise I will write alot more in my blog and continue updating wiki page.
Feel free to write in forum to suggest what you might want to read in my blog.
As we all noticed, forum is currently down. We don’t know yet when we manage to get in up again.
So in the meantime, we created at temporary forum that can be used: http://www.foresightlinux.se/en/forum
We hope to get the old forum up as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.
Here is a few updates that's been coming into Foresight fl:2-devel label, past few days.
banshee 2.3.3 (thanks to Tomas Forsman)
bluefish 2.2.1 (thanks to Falk Wittwer)
gmpc 11.8.16 (thanks to Falk Wittwer)
google-ctemplate 1.0 (thanks to Jon Anderson)
hotot (built from git, 2011.12.22, Tomas Forsman)
jd 2.8.2 110808 (thanks to Yukimi)
midori 0.4.3 (thanks to Mark T)
mysql-workbench 5.2.36 (thanks to Jon Anderson)
nautilus-dropbox 0.7.1 (thanks to Tomas Forsman
tor 0.2.2.35 (thanks to Falk Wittwer)
vlc 1.1.13 (thanks to Falk Wittwer)
+ alot more.
Mysql-workbench and google-ctemplate are newly added in our groups, so still only available in fl:2-devel. Thanks again Jon for these.
In case you want to get Fedora 16 (or other Linux 3.1.0-based distro) to properly install VMware Tools under VMware Fusion, there’s a patch I came up with, based on other patches I gathered from the intertubes.
Posted in the hopes it saves someone some time.
New Chapter
Last October I celebrated a couple of milestones in my life:
Needless to say, each one of those milestones were very important to me as they mark important decision points in my life! Every single one of them changed my life for the better and I can’t help but feel blessed that I have so many things to look forward to at end of the year that remind me how lucky I have been!
Last week was my also an important day for me, as I was offered and accepted a job to work at Red Hat as a Senior QA Engineer for their CloudForms team! I assure you that it was a bitter sweet moment for me, for a really loved the work I had been doing at rPath. But the chance to work on Red Hat’s cloud initiative was too much of a temptation for me to pass! I have been truly blessed for having had the chance to join rPath 5 years ago at a point where they were still trying to establish themselves among the big technology providers out there. Five years later they’ve accomplished their goal and I can look back and feel proud that all the late nights, cancelled vacations and hard work paid off!
This December I get to work on a very exciting project with a great bunch of guys trying to accomplish a similar task! I am extremely excited about the potential that CloudForms and its derivatives will bring to the masses and I can only hope to be able to look back five years from now and be able to celebrate another job well done!
To infinity, and beyond!
Conary 2.3.9 is a maintenance release
Bug Fixes:Conary 2.3.8 is a maintenance release
New Features:It isn't often that I find myself checking snopes before posting about something that happened to me. As in never. Until now.
I was heating filtered water in the microwave oven for tea, in a glass mug. It seemed to be taking a long time to boil (I wanted strong tea, so I was going to steep it just off boiling). As I peered through the microwave's window, there was a muffled explosion, and boiling water and steam spewed out of the microwave. I immediately turned off the microwave and tentatively opened the door. 90% of the water was no longer in the mug. Some of it was still in the microwave; the rest was on the cupboards and floor.
I immediately googled "microwave exploding water" and found that the first hit was a snopes page (True!), the second a link to Steve Spangler Science with more confirmation, and the third hit was a mythbusters video showing exploding water in slow motion.
Wow, I'm glad that happened before I opened the microwave door. It was more likely to have happened when I moved the mug or dropped tea into the water, so I count myself lucky.
So, a Public Safety Announcement: If you are microwaving water, especially filtered water, add a wooden stir stick or some other non-metallic object to provide a nucleation site to prevent superheating and possible subsequent scalding.
Sometimes, even that you used:
Gnome panel, go to System > Preferences > Preferred Applications
It won't open chromium when you try to open a http link from pidgin or similar.
To make that happen, we need to edit the file that handles it.
As pidgin and most of the applications in gnome uses xdg-open to open things.
Lets start with edit the file that opens firefox instead of chromium when clicking on a url link.
Open terminal and write: sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/defaults.list
Edit all net-firefox.desktop to be instead: net-chromium-browser.desktop
like:
x-scheme-handler/http=net-firefox.desktop will be now: x-scheme-handler/http=net-chromium-browser.desktop
Save the file, and should work now.
Happy browsing.
Conary 2.3.7 is a maintenance release
New Features:Getting started with Foresight Linux - Part I
I asume everyone uses system-model, as I will write everything from that point of view.
When you installed or deleted anything in Foresight, it wont be installed again. Even if you kept running Foresight for a year or two. Only way to get it installed again, is to re-install it.
After getting some applications and packages installed, you might wonder what have you actually installed except packages that comes with Foresight as default.
It's very easy to find out, open Terminal and write:
sudo gedit /etc/conary/system-model
You will now see a file that contains all packages that been installed or uninstalled:
install group-gnome-dist-devel
install python-inotify:python
update chromium
update thunderbird
update filezilla
update fribid
update nvidia nvidia-kernel
update virtualbox-ose virtualbox-guest
update wine
erase gnome-do do-plugins
update dbus-sharp-glib:devellib dbus-sharp:devellib galago-sharp:devellib libappindicator:devel libgnomeprint:devel libgnomeprintui:devel ndesk-dbus-glib:devellib ndesk-dbus:devellib
update unique:devel
update libgee:devel
update gnome-menus:devel
update python-ctypes:python python-keybinder:python
update theme-greenland
update chromium-libpdf=zinden.rpath.org@fl:2-devel
update xbmc
Let's start with testing to delete this line:
update xbmc
running: sudo conary updateall, getting now:
[tforsman@localhost ~]$ sudo conary updateall
[sudo] password for tforsman:
The following updates will be performed:
Erase libmicrohttpd(:lib)=0.9.3-1-1
Erase rtmpdump:runtime=2.3-2-1
Erase xbmc(:data :lib :runtime :supdoc)=10.1-2-7
continue with update? [Y/n]
As you see, it will also remove uneeded dependencies that are no longer in use from other packages in your system. That will keep your system very clean and without any uneeded dependencies installed.
Also possible to install something temporarly, that will be removed as soon you do sudo conary updateall or installing/erasing a package.
So if you plan to get something temporarly, install it like:
sudo conary update filezilla --ignore-model
Install XFCE or GNOME
Xfce
It's very easy to install xfce or gnome in your current Foresight system. To install xfce, run:
sudo conary update group-xfce-dist
or
sudo conary update group-xfce-dist-devel
Last one will also install development packages.
Gnome
For gnome, run:
sudo conary update group-gnome-dist
or
sudo conary update group-gnome-dist-devel
Last one will also install development packages.
Reboot, open system-model file, remove the line that contains the group-****-dist that you want to get rid of. run updateall and whole environment for that system will be gone. In other words, you can easily change from gnome to xfce and back again (or have both installed).
Use same system-model in several computers
Many users has found out that you can use same system-model file in several computers. So you can easily get same packages. Will save alot of time, specially in newly installed Foresight Linux computer.
Search available/installed packages
To search packages in your system or available packages:
conary search *virt*
you can see something like:
virt-manager=/foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel/0.8.6-1-1[is: x86_64] (available)
virtualbox-guest=/foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel/4.1.0-3-1[desktop is: x86_64] (installed)
virtualbox-ose=/foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel/4.1.0-3-1[desktop is: x86_64] (installed)
virtualbox-kernel=/foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel-kernel/4.1.0-2-10[is: x86_64] (installed)
Need more help or information?
Join us at internet relay chat (irc). The Foresight Linux channels are hosted by the Freenode IRC network. #foresight
Ask anything in our Forum.
Look in our wiki for finding information.
Getting involved
I'm planning to write: Getting started with Foresight Linux - Part III
Will have information about getting more involved in Foresight Linux and look into how packages are created for Foresight. Will be more for users that want to get even deeper inside Foresight.
So stay tuned.
After getting interested in Foresight Linux, + got a brief how conary works in Foresight. You want to get more information how to get started.
Let's get started with downloading Foresight Linux. We also got testing iso available for Gnome:
Testing iso 2.5.1 Only Gnome available
Regular users
32bit: http://www.rpath.org/downloadImage?fileId=43350
64bit: http://www.rpath.org/downloadImage?fileId=43354
Developer users (also newest packages available):
32bit: http://www.rpath.org/downloadImage?fileId=43360
64bit: http://www.rpath.org/downloadImage?fileId=43357
We will soon update "Regular users" repo, hopefully in within few days. There is some huge differences within those iso files right now.
Like: First two iso has kernel: 2.6.38.8 Developer iso files has kernel: 3.0.6 (after updateall)
If you plan to testrun Foresight, maybe developer iso is a good choice. Will include developer applications too, but can be uninstalled. All updates ends up in developing repo first, so it might be little unstable from time to time. (right now, it's stable as a rock)
Also the biggest change from iso 2.5.0 to 2.5.1, is system-model.
Some reviews of Foresight
Written by Eddie (Eggdog): http://almostconnecticut.net/linuxismylife/2011/05/foresight-linux-xfce-and-me/
Written by Carl D: http://all-tech-thoughts.blogspot.com/2011/06/foresight-linux-review.html
Youtube video, from thisweekinlinux: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSum8UrO0Nc
When the installation of Foresight Linux is done, you can start with reading "Foresight User Guide" in the menu.
Getting started
Update whole system, open Terminal and write:
sudo conary updateall
Install Nvidia, Nvidia-legacy or ATI binary drivers.
Uninstall specific applications
sudo conary erase *****
Install specific applications
sudo conary update *****
If you managed to remove something, like: chromium:runtime or deleted a file in your system. Then run a sync to syncronize. (either with a name of that package or whole system, just remove packagename)
sudo conary sync *****
If you managed to change a configuration file, and can't remember how to make it default again. Use repair to make it default. Don't need to reinstall whole package.
sudo conary repair /path/to/the/file.conf
To use rollback, you can rollback latest changes or last 2,3,4 changes in your system.
sudo conary rollback 1
To rollback to a specific change in your system, then we need to find out what change to go back to
sudo conary rblist
Will show something like:
r.19:
updated: chromium(:data :doc :lib :runtime :supdoc) foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel/14.0.835.204+2011.10.05-1-1 -> 15.0.874.104+2011.10.24-1-1
If your system been running for awhile, then you might need to use: sudo conary rblist|less or sudo conary rblist > rblist.log first one will show only a few at the time, second one will create a rblist.log in your computer and easy to open it and look.
To actually rollback
sudo conary rollback r.19
Remember it will delete anything that's been installed after that point too.
Install specific troves only. As you might know already, conary creates troves from packages. So if you only need filezilla:runtime, you can install it like:
sudo conary update filezilla:runtime --no-deps
--no-deps, to make sure it wont pull in any other dependencies. As we only want the files:
[tforsman@localhost ~]$ conary q filezilla:runtime --ls
/usr/bin/filezilla
/usr/bin/fzputtygen
/usr/bin/fzsftp
If you want to know what files are in filezilla:runtime, and don't have it installed. Then we can use rq to find out. If removing :rutnime, you will instead see all files from that package.
conary rq filezilla:runtime --ls
If you want to find out what file comes from which package
conary q --path /usr/bin/filezilla
[tforsman@localhost ~]$ conary q --path /usr/bin/filezilla
filezilla:runtime=foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel/3.5.1-0.1-1
To remove a file in your system and won't come back, even if you update the package
sudo conary remove /path/to/the/file
Remove the file named path from the system, and record in the Conary database that the file has been removed. After this, doing conary update will not replace the file. (If future versions of the component rename the file, the removal will track the rename; that is; if you run conary remove /foo/bar and /foo/bar is later renamed /foo/blah, when you update to a version of the component that now contains /foo/blah instead of /foo/bar, /foo/blah will not be created on your system as a new file.) The remove command can also be invoked as rm.
Foresight Linux is an OS for your computer/laptop. And here is some info about Foresight Linux:
i686 is a much more modern architecture. It includes practically every processor that’s Pentium II or better. x86_64 is a 64 bit extension to the x86 architecture. x86_64 processors can still run 32 bit operating systems (e.g. i386) if you so choose, but they’re also capable of running 64 bit operating systems.
Watch the presentation that Michael Johnson gave at FOSDEM 2008 and from Antonio Miereles with slides.
Watch how fast a user in Foresight can update a package to newer version.
That’s little info in generally. Let’s dig little deeper now.
At anytime an update fails Conary will rollback to the previous job leaving your system dep complete and fully functional.
How Conary Organizes Packages
If you use debian or rpm repositories…you know that inside a repository directory “stable” (as an example) are all the stable packages for your distribution. The packages are versioned according to their upstream version (if the repository maintainers are sane) and maybe arch and revision number. This is done by hand. It is managed by hand. If developers/packagers cross names between repositories you are brought into dependency problems. To illustrate this concept, if you and I both packaged firefox3 and named it accordingly…and someone used both your and my repository…our versions would conflict because the packaging system wouldn’t know which one to install.
Conary takes the manual operation from this…if you use a Conary based system, yourrepositories ARE VERSIONED. In other words, the repositories aren’t static directories that contain a bunch of packages…they are versioned branches that contain components of software.
These components (packages) are also versioned according to upstream version…but revision is handled automatically by Conary…no manual process. This eliminates the possibility of having two packages named the same exact thing in different repositories. In other words, if Joe Schmoe is packaging Liferea for his apt.joeschmoe.com repository and names his package the same thing as say Joe Smith’s package for Liferea in his apt.joesmith.com repository we run into problems. With conary this NEVER WILL HAPPEN…EVER. This kills about 90% of dependency problems all together.
But what about arch? Arch is architecture…32bit or 64bit…PPC and more. Once again, you’re bit by the possibility of conflicting names across repositories. You’re also limited in the name because a developer has to put the architecture INSIDE THE NAME. Take a look at liferea as an example: liferea-1.2.2-2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm. Is this easy for an end user to understand? Is it the same as liferea-1.2.2-2.el5.rf.x86-64.rpm?
Conary takes a different approach. Each package has a ‘flavor’ that it is ‘cooked’ (committed) in. There may be a 64bit flavor, 32bit flavor, Xen flavor, and so on. This flavor is visible to the user only if the user requests to see it…and it is NOT inside the name of the package. The package is still called, simply enough, liferea. Revision number, arch, upstream version, etc…are all handled automatically by Conary.
You can see how creating and maintaining software would rely less on a manual process and more on automatic source controlled one with Conary. You can also see how organized Conary is with its packages. (this chapter comes from devnet)
Conary treats packages as change-sets and not as a bundle of files. This means that when updating a package, Conary communicates with the repositories to determine what needs to change on the system to install the new package and only downloads the bits needed for that change. There are many advantages to this approach, but most visible to the user is the efficiency in bandwidth and speed.
When updating a large package for the first time, you will essentially download the full package, however, when updating in the future the downloads could be significantly smaller. Here is an example: installing Abiword 2.2.6 on a system for the first time would be approximately a 15MB download, however updating to Abiword 2.2.7 is only 2.4MB.
First, Conary warns you if you are about to remove a component that is used to resolve a dependency elsewhere on the system. Conary keeps track of these dependencies for you. Second, you can use the –deps option to display dependency-related information. Furthermore, you can also use –file-deps to list component dependencies at the file level. Results display what the trove “requires” to resolve its own dependencies and “provides” to resolve other packages’ dependencies.
You don’t have to track this information unless you really want to do so; trusting Conary’s warnings is usually enough to prevent mistakes when installing and removing software.
It is different, but part of the same package. When the package name is followed by a colon and another name,such as “chromium:runtime” and “chromium: doc,” this references a component.When the package is first built, Conary separates out the files into components.Each component represents some logical grouping of files within the package,such as everything needed to run the software or the documentation for how to use the software.This gives the flexibility for other packages to resolve dependencies by bringing in components rather than entire packages.It also gives users the freedom to uninstall components that are just taking up space without removing an entire package.But, enough about how awesome Conary can be.
So unlike other packaging systems, where you might have 2 packages, firefox and firefox-devel, Conary would have one package with the devel headers split into firefox: devel. This is a great thing, you no longer end up installing -devel packages from random repos in your sources.list just because it looks like a newer version. The devel headers are just part of the same package, you just don’t have to have them installed. These components combined with rich dependancy information really shines.
On Debian or RPM based systems, when you do upgrade, then thepackagemanager will pick the latest version from all packages. That is,
if you upgraded yesterday, and i upgrade today then our systems may be different because i might have picked up a newer version of some package. In Conary, all packages that are available for install are assembled into a group. This group is created by the distribution developer. When the group is built, it stores the version of each package. As a user packages are then installed from this group.
Just like packages, the groups have versions. When a package is updated, the group needs to be rebuilt (with a simple command) and when i update my desktop then the package manager first checks for a new version of the group, and then finds out which packages are updated within the group.
To go back to the example, if you upgraded yesterday, and i upgrade today but i want a system identical to yours, i can ask you for the group version that you have and select that version explicitly. You can imagine how that simplifies testing. If a user has a problem, usually all we need to know is the version of the group. That alone will tell us every version of every single package that you have installed. Or consider corporate deployment. The best practice for RPM and Deb, as hinted in the article above, is to create a company internal repository where you can control exactly what versions are available, and then synchronize machines.
With Conary, all i need is the group version, or, the new system-model file.
System-model
A new update mechanism called “system model” is added. In this model, a file called /etc/conary/system-model describes what should be installed on the system. This file is modified by certain conary update commands, and can also be edited with a text editor. The system model allows a system to be updated relative to a search path that includes groups as well as labels, leading to more coherent sets of updated packages. It also allows re-starting updates with transient failures; the filename /etc/conary/system-model.next is reserved for storing the system target state during an update operation.
This ability is so significant that rpath, the company which develops Conary even offers RHEL and CentOS (and Ubuntu Server) repackaged in
Conary. (and apparently Conary is now available for Windows too) If you want to create a custom system for many machines, you can create your own group, inherit an existing group and make the necesary changes to it. A group can contain packages from multiple repositories, so there is no problem to mix and mach and still have full control over what is going on. This reduces the effort needed to create a derivative distribution by a huge amount.
Groups also help with automated rebuilds of the source. If a library is updated, then all packages that depend on that library can be rebuilt automatically with a single command.
Recipes for packages are astonishingly short. In most cases it only takes specifying of an URL and some dependencies in order to build a
package. Conary also remembers if i remove packages, even files, so when a group or a package is updated, then such removed files are not reinstalled.
The system model mode is intended to become the normal update mode for Conary-based systems in the future. It works by creating a set of troves that define the system, and then moving the system to that definition. It is conceptually similar to building a group into a repository and then migrating to that group. Significant differences include:
In a group, all trove references are absolute, but in a model,you can choose whether references are absolute. Migrating to a specific version of a group will always move the system to the exact set of packages referenced, but re-applying a system model will update troves that are not pinned down to a specific version. There is no group name for the set of troves.
There is no version for the set of troves. (The version operation in a system model does not provide conary versioning.) Path and version conflicts are not checked when assembling the set of troves. (No group policy is run at all.) This means that path and version conflicts will be found only while installing the packages.
A system model that installs only a single group will function similar to migrate mode. The most obvious difference is that migrate mode honors variations in byDefault settings in the system database(that is, an optional component of the trove(s) migrated to that has been installed on the system will still be installed after the migrate operation finishes), whereas a system model update honors those changes only if they are represented in the model itself.
Thanks eMBee & devnet for information......
Download Foresight Linux
Official iso 2.5.0
Foresight Linux GNOME Edition 2.5.0 x86
http://downloads.foresightlinux.org/gnome/2.5.0/foresight-2.5.0%2b2011.03.23-x86-dvd1.iso
Foresight Linux GNOME Edition 2.5.0 x86_64
http://downloads.foresightlinux.org/gnome/2.5.0/foresight-2.5.0%2b2011.03.23-x86_64-dvd1.iso
Foresight Linux XFCE Edition 2.5.0 x86
http://downloads.foresightlinux.org/xfce/2.5.0/foresight-2.5.0%2b2011.03.23-x86-dvd1.iso
Foresight Linux XFCE Edition 2.5.0 x86_64
http://downloads.foresightlinux.org/xfce/2.5.0/foresight-2.5.0%2b2011.03.23-x86_64-dvd1.iso
Testing iso 2.5.1 Only Gnome available
Regular users
32bit: http://www.rpath.org/downloadImage?fileId=43350
64bit: http://www.rpath.org/downloadImage?fileId=43354
Developer users (also newest packages available):
32bit: http://www.rpath.org/downloadImage?fileId=43360
64bit: http://www.rpath.org/downloadImage?fileId=43357
Testing iso 2.5.2 Gnome and Xfce iso
Developer iso, also from developer repo.
Gnome: foresight-2.5.2+2011.10.24-x86_64-dvd1.iso
Gnome: foresight-2.5.2+2011.10.24-x86-dvd1.iso
Xfce: foresight-2.5.2+2011.10.24-x86_64-dvd1.iso
Xfce: foresight-2.5.2+2011.10.24-x86-dvd1.iso
Also look at: Getting started with Foresight Linux - Part I
I like green and grey color, they match very good with eachother. I don't want to use too much green though. And if you want to get the theme I currently using in Foresight Linux, you need to open terminal and write:
sudo conary update theme-greenland
If you recently installed Foresight Linux and updated it to latest packages, you might see this in terminal when using sudo with gedit (not all will see this):
(gedit:4068): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to set the permissions of `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: No such file or directory
This is a GUI application built on top of libraries which make no security guarantees, no file locking guarantees or anything. So that means a large amount of code running with permissions it was never meant/designed to cope with (GTK/Xlib/gedit proper). On top of that the code assumes a functioning GNOME environment (or at least a functional ~/.local/share) which in the case of the user root is a big assumption to make (because root was never meant to run any desktop at all).
To make the warning go away, open terminal and write:
sudo mkdir -p /root/.local/share
As it so happens the directory which does not exist is a directory which is not supposed to exist in the first place. (~/.local being what it is).
Move away your user's /home/.local/share folder and start gedit.
Gedit assumes a working desktop environment installation, with ~/.local tree and all. It warns when it doesn't find one. For /root no such tree ought to exist (it is created on first run of a desktop session, which root is never supposed to do).
Gnome Pie is an application inspired by a World of Warcraft addon called OPie, that tries to offer a different way of launching applications in Gnome.
Gnome Pie consists on multiple "pies", and each one is triggered by a keyboard shortcut you set.
Each "pie" has it's own role: a category of applications, a media control "pie" (play/pause/previous/next), a "pie" that allows you to control the focused window (maximize, unmaximize, close, etc.) and so on.
You can of course create new or delete some of the already existing pies so you have full control on what each pie does.
With Gnome Pie you can basically add as many commands that can be accessed using keyboard shortcuts to a single "pie" so you only have to remember one keyboard shortcut, which some of you might find useful.
"Pies" can only trigger applications / commands and run various keyboard shortcuts but you can't combine applications with actions - for instance, you can't select a file and perform some command or do any other fancy stuff that's available in Synapse or Kupfer.
To install it, open terminal and write:
sudo conary update gnome-pie=@fl:2-devel
You also need to make sure that you have activated compositing manager, or it will not work properly.
Use metacity as compositing manager! To do so:
- open a terminal
- type gconf-editor
- press return
- navigate in the opened window to apps->metacity->general
- check compositing_manager
If you don't have gconf-editor installed, you can install it from terminal with:
sudo conary update gconf-editor
Many users really hate gnome 3, and start to look at other linux os that still runs Gnome 2. Foresight Linux is still one of those Linux OS.
So if you plan to change to a dist that still runs Gnome 2, give Foresight Linux a try.
We will change to Gnome 3, but no date is set yet.
Depiction of Spanish atrocities in the New World
Today I ran my first first 5K mud run. I was part of a 4-person co-ed team from the Raleigh Trail Runners meetup group.
The obstacles were numerous and challenging, but we all had a blast. It is definitely not your typical 5K run. The run itself was actually the easy part. I am very curious how long it took us to finish the course, I know the start time but none of us paid attention to the finish time. Results will probably be posted over the next few days.
20 of the 32 obstacles were featured in these short video clips on YouTube before the race, but there were some surprises (like obstacle 21, The Weaver, where you had to go over a log and under the next one (for a total of probably 16 logs) without touching the ground. This Google Map has a description of all obstacles and links to the video clips above.
Damage: $32.50 (not bad at all for a race!), a scraped and bumped knee, a few minor scratches in addition to a rather large one (most of them from The Weaver).
For the low-end cost of the race, the race was incredibly well organized. Building that course must have been a huge volunteer effort.
Conary 2.3.6 is a maintenance release
New Features:There isn’t many softwares out there that can record your desktop to make a presentation or some guide of something.
But there is a few, so here goes:
Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software
recordMyDesktop has both a command-line interface and two frontends, a GTK and a Qt graphical frontend.
XVidCap is another pretty good GTK-based recording application. The first thing which jumps into attention when starting XVidCap is a red rectangle which can be moved around and resized and which will allow you to record only a certain portion of the desktop.
Just like recordMyDesktop, Istanbul saves the screencasts into the free Ogg Theora format.
But they all suffer from same problem, no application above is good enough to make detailed presentations or high quality guides in the linux desktop. Then we are down to the last application that can screencast your desktop. Only Istanbul seems to be active developed today too. But tried it and crashed alot. To be honest, i didn’t manage to save any record of my desktop without Istanbul crashed.
The best one out there today. And how can you record desktop with ffmpeg? It’s all about how ffmpeg is compiled in your Linux OS.
You must make sure you got ffmpeg compiled with:
--enable-x11grab
In Foresight Linux, it’s compiled liked that. If you use Foresight Linux, open terminal and make sure you got the right version installed.
sudo conary update ffmpeg
For the record, here is how ffmpeg works:
ffmpeg [input options] -i [input file] [output options] [output file]
Now it’s time to test it, open terminal and write:
ffmpeg -f alsa -i pulse -f x11grab -r 30 -s 1024x768 -i :0.0 -acodec pcm_s16le -vcodec libx264 -vpre lossless_ultrafast -threads 0 output.mkv
Similar command, with less detailed sound and stuff:
ffmpeg -f x11grab -s 1024x768 -r 25 -i :0.0 -sameq output.mkv
This will create a output.mkv with great detailed screencast/record of your desktop. As soon you are done recording, push “q” and it will stop in Terminal. Also change 1024×768 to your screen resolution before you run the command.
This is probably the best way to create detailed screencast with great resolution and no loss of details.
Wont dig any deeper about remaking the file to other formats. But will update this post soon to add few ways to remake mkv file to other format, if someone wants that.
Added few hours today, to build file-roller without gnome dependencies. You might wonder why?
Let's start with xarchiver, most users use that for xfce, lxde or openbox. But it can't handle 7zip, rpm, iso, pet and more files that's packed with similar compression. Also go other way around, can't compress most common compression filetypes with archiver.
Some filetypes might be easy to get going with archiver, but not all. And there isn't a big different in resources or size between those two archive managers.
With file-roller, you can open all types that archiver can and alot more. Same way with compressing files to different filetypes.
So, how do change to get file-roller instead of archiver?
Open terminal and write:
sudo conary erase archiver
Time to install file-roller
sudo conary update file-roller=foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel
This command will only be used for now, when the groups are rebuild and pushed to fl:2-qa, you only need to use:
sudo conary update file-roller
[TForsman@localhost file-roller]$ sudo conary update file-roller
Resolving dependencies...The following updates will be performed:
Install file-roller(:config :data :lib :locale :runtime)=foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel/2.32.2-0.8-1
continue with update? [Y/n]
And I only have XFCE installed, and only file-roller will be installed. And works perfectly.
Hello all, time to get some info whats been updated week that past. Picking the updates that users might want to know about.
Wine 1.3.29
Openshot 1.4.0
Banshee 2.2.0
xfce packages, some been sync to latest version.
Firefox 6.0.2
Thunderbird 6.0.2
Flashplayer 10.3.183.10
Shotwell 0.11.2
Teamviewer 6.0.9258
Minus-uploader 1.7
Chromium 14.0.835.186
Transmission 2.40b2
Deja-dup 19.92
And alot more, but these are probably the ones that users might use most in their computer.
I updated my blog to 3.0.5834 beta. Hopefully everything went fine. Can't see any problems right away, and everything seems intact.
If getting/seeing any weird problem that you haven't seen before, please let me know and I will try to fix it as soon as possible.
Pete Savage: Git In The Trenches
For those who follow my many different projects and enterprises, you probably already know that I have been hosting a podcast called Castálio Podcast, a bi-weekly show where I interview people from the Brazilian FOSS world and talk about their likes, dislikes and what events and factors shaped their lives!
When I asked my listeners if they would be interested in an episode in English with someone new and exciting, the answer was an overwhelming ‘Yes!’
So for my very first episode in English I chose to interview a good friend of mine from several years: Pete Savage! During the next 58 minutes we talked about how we first met through a PyGtk video he posted a while back during a Linux User Groupmeeting, how he first got involved with Edubuntu, and then moved on to several other projects such as ProgBox and GeekDeck, about the books that he’s written including the reason for writing “Emblem Divide“, how much the Japanese culture plays a role in his daily life, and his Top 5 movies, books and movies! While the episodes’ in English future are yet to be determined, this latest episode can be downloaded here and you can also subscribe to it via the following channels:
Some blog posts might be private and only visible for registered uses. Because some posts might not fit in certian feeds sites or just don't need to be spread out in all search engines.
If you usually follow my blog, I recommend to register too. You might get a cookie or two :)
XFCE - Tips, Tricks and Tweaks 1
When you installed XFCE, it can be hard to get your clock to look the way you want. So let's start fixing it up.
To open the properties dialog, right-click the plugin on your panel and select Properties.
The properties dialog allows you to use a “Custom” format string for your date or time options. The format string you enter should be compatible with strftime. Here are some format string specifiers from the “date” command's help:
%% a literal %
%a locale's abbreviated weekday name (e.g., Sun)
%A locale's full weekday name (e.g., Sunday)
%b locale's abbreviated month name (e.g., Jan)
%B locale's full month name (e.g., January)
%c locale's date and time (e.g., Thu Mar 3 23:05:25 2005)
%C century; like %Y, except omit last two digits (e.g., 21)
%d day of month (e.g, 01)
%D date; same as %m/%d/%y
%e day of month, space padded; same as %_d
%F full date; same as %Y-%m-%d
%g last two digits of year of ISO week number (see %G)
%G year of ISO week number (see %V); normally useful only with %V
%h same as %b
%H hour (00..23)
%I hour (01..12)
%j day of year (001..366)
%k hour ( 0..23)
%l hour ( 1..12)
%m month (01..12)
%M minute (00..59)
%n a newline
%p locale's equivalent of either AM or PM; blank if not known
%P like %p, but lower case
%r locale's 12-hour clock time (e.g., 11:11:04 PM)
%R 24-hour hour and minute; same as %H:%M
%s seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
%S second (00..60)
%t a tab
%T time; same as %H:%M:%S
%u day of week (1..7); 1 is Monday
%U week number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)
%V ISO week number, with Monday as first day of week (01..53)
%w day of week (0..6); 0 is Sunday
%W week number of year, with Monday as first day of week (00..53)
%x locale's date representation (e.g., 12/31/99)
%X locale's time representation (e.g., 23:13:48)
%y last two digits of year (00..99)
%Y year
%z +hhmm numeric timezone (e.g., -0400)
%Z alphabetic time zone abbreviation (e.g., EDT)
First of all, you need to have a steam account. It's free too. Get it here: https://store.steampowered.com/login/
Then you need Wine, open terminal and write
sudo conary update wine
Then you need to install steam, you can do it from here: http://cdn.steampowered.com/download/SteamInstall.msi
Pretty straight forward, double click on SteamInstall.msi and wine should pick up and install it. Atleast in Foresight Linux.
When its done, start it and login. Feels kinda obvious :)
Now we need to grab Portal and make sure we own it to your Steam account. Go here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/400/
And just push install, it will be available in steam and being able to download there and playable there too.
And yes, it's approx 5GB big.
This offer only available to 20 September, so you better hurry to grab your copy for your Steam account.
Top new features in this release:
sudo conary update 0ad=gameway.rpath.org@fl:2
Tired of dropbox, skydrive, box.net and all the other cloud services out there? Then you might want to test minus, offer 10GB from start. Can't get any better start than that.
Minus is a simple file sharing platform that allows users to upload, publish and discover photos, docs, music, videos and more. Drag and drop files onto Minus and start sharing today.
Registration is Free! By creating an account and signing in:
sudo conary update minus-uploader=@fl:2-devel
Django
I rebuilt the appliance to use the latest Django 1.3.1 release to deliver the security fixes found in the previous version. There are also several other updated packages included.
If you want to play with this appliance, feel free to download it in the following formats:
Speaking of Raw Filesystem images, here’s how I currently use it with QEMU. In my .bashrc file I have an alias that will boot them and redirect it’s internal ports 80 and 22 (apache and ssh) to my system’s port 8080 and 2222 respectively. I also forward port 3389 for Windows systems.
sudo qemu-kvm -m 2048 -hda "$1" -boot c -soundhw ac97 -redir tcp:8080::80 -redir tcp:2222::22 -redir tcp:9999::3389
So when I call my alias and pass a raw filesystem image as an argument, I can then use localhost as the destination to my http and ssh connections.
Django Dev Kit on QEMU
I also have a special configuration in my .ssh/config file to make it easier for me to ssh to these virtual systems and not have to change my known_hosts file every time I boot a different system and try to ssh to localhost on port 2222:
Host qemu
User root
Port 2222
Hostname localhost
StrictHostKeyChecking no
UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null
Here is a list of video players that works in Linux, and little info about some players. Listed like: Parole, whaawmp, umplayer, xine and alot more.
Conary 2.3.5 is a maintenance release
New Features:First of all, chromium doesn't ship with inbuilt pdf reader. Only chrome do that. So we need to install pdf for chromium, easiest way is to install it with conary.
Some users has noticed that conky works in a different way in XFCE than Gnome. Specially how it updates the desktop. Sometimes it can take a long time to make it load the background image for you conky in XFCE. But I got a solution
If you plan to see what your system is actually booting up during the boot of your Foresight Linux OS, then you need to install bootchart. Also read how to generate the picture file.
Sometimes your laptop might not respond when you pull out the power cable, so you can’t see how much battery you have left until it needs to be charged again.
Some users might pull out and put the power cable in, then pull it out again. That might work sometimes, but annoying.
Few updates ago, transmission removed blocklist from their application. So now users need to add a own address to get it back again.
So just add this address and you are using same as you did before. As transmission used same file, but it was located on their server instead.
But I think I can do alot better now instead. So now I will use a integrated blog inside Foresight site. That means I can easier to make backups.
First of all, I probably made XFCE use little more processes and made it little heavier than it usually is. But if you love the layout and the applications, you might consider using it anyway. And some users don’t like Gnome 3 at all. So this post might help you consider trying XFCE again.
Packt Publishing
The 2011 Open Source Awards was launched on the 1st week of August by Packt, inviting people to submit nominations for their favorite Open Source project. Now in its sixth year, the Awards continue in its aim of encouraging, supporting, recognizing and rewarding all Open Source projects.
The 2010 Open Source Award Winners included the Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award winner CMS Made Simple, Open Source JavaScript Libraries Award winner jQuery and Pimcore the winner of the Most Promising Open Source Project Award.
The 2011 Awards will feature a prize fund of $24,000 with several new categories introduced and the vote of the public becoming more influential. This year all CMS projects will compete in an even tighter contest in the Open Source CMS Award category with the now defunct Hall of Fame CMS finalists re-entered into the CMS category. Projects such as Drupal and Joomla! will face off with CMS Made Simple and MODx for the first time since 2008.
While the Most Promising Open Source Project and the Open Source JavaScript Libraries categories will be back for a second year, Packt is introducing new categories for Open Source Business Applications, Open Source Multimedia Software and Open Source Mobile Toolkit and Libraries. These new categories will ensure that the Open Source Awards remain committed to providing the platform to recognise excellence within the community while supporting Open Source projects both new and old.
“We’ve managed to continue to provide new levels of accessibility for Open Source projects, while encouraging a more competitive nature in the contest by increasing the public votes influence. Additionally, we thought it would be a great idea to reward more projects thus we’ve introduced sub-category awards across a number of the categories during the voting stage. We expect the Awards this year to be bigger and better.” said Julian Copes, organizer of this year’s Awards.
Packt has opened up nominations for people to submit their favorite Open Source projects for each category at www.PacktPub.com/open-source-awards-home . The top five in each category will go through to the final, which begins mid-September. For more information on the categories, read Packt’s recent announcement: www.packtpub.com/blog/2011-open-source-awards-announcement
Having bought books from them before, I’m very happy to support their initiative and invite the readers to not only participate of this event but check out their books and EBooks as well!
Deformed Man Toilet
Strange Juice
Openbox 3.5.0 was released yesterday, and with it several bugs got fixed and a few new features were added. Out of these features the one that I liked most was the ability to add icons to menus (and submenus as well)! Yeah, I know some other managers already do this but for someone who enjoys running Openbox because of its simplicity and keyboard binding limitless possibilities, I was sure glad to see some eye candy make its way to it.
So, if you want to try it, make sure that your distribution has the new Openbox compiled with Imlib2. Next, add the following line to the <menu> section of your rc.xml file:
<showIcons>yes</showIcons>
Then, modify your menu.xml by adding an icon attribute to what ever menu item or menu you want to add an icon.
<menu id="apps-net-menu" icon="/usr/share/icons/Tango/24x24/apps/internet-web-browser.png"/>
<menu id="apps-net-menu" label="Internet">
<menu id="apps-net-browsers" label="Browsers">
<item label="Firefox" icon="/usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/firefox.png">
<action name="Execute">
<command>firefox</command>
<startupnotify>
<enabled>yes</enabled>
<wmclass>Firefox</wmclass>
</startupnotify>
</action>
</item>
.
.
.
</menu>
Make sure to restart openbox and enjoy your fancy new menu!
Aline Duarte Bessa - Accerciser
Another episode of my Castálio Podcast, this time with Aline Duarte Bessa, another Brazilian who is participating of the GNOME Women Outreach Program (GWOP). Even with a fever, cold e technical issues getting a working system to record this show, she was gracious to spend some of her free time and tell me about her current task of updating the developer’s documentation for Accerciser.
The episode, recorded in Brazilian Portuguese, can be downloaded here!
Castálio Podcast
The idea of doing a podcast is something that has tickled my curiosity fancy for quite some time. As a matter of fact, I am already the survivor of 2 other mildly successful attempts, which sadly, died prematurely due to commitment issues from my partners and my inability to record and edit audio using Linux.
About 6 months ago the need to scratch this itch came back in full power, and thanks to the support of my friend Evandro Pastor, Castálio Podcast was born! Instead of getting together with a couple of friends and discussing about technology and current events, I wanted to do something a bit more different and avoid the typical routine by turning it into a talk show-like interview program. Every other week I’d invite someone from the Brazilian Free and Open Source world and have a chat about their childhood, upbringing, and the tv shows, movies, books and music that shaped them into who they are now. To quote my good friend Kurt, it would be “the equivalent to opening a friend’s MP3 collection and seeing what that person was like“! 
Shortly after we recorded our second or third episode, Evandro who not only served as the host (while I chatted with our guest) but also recorded and edited the audio, had a severe case of tendinitis and was not able to participate anymore. Once again I was faced with the old dilema of not having anyone else to run a podcast or to record and edit it… but this time I didn’t want to see another attempt of creating a podcast die a premature death… I had too much vested already on it!
So for the last 6 months I’ve been interviewing, editing, publishing and maintaining the podcast during my free time and having a blast! So far all of my guests are Brazilians and the podcast itself caters for the Brazilian and/or Hispanic audience, but an episode in English is in the works for the very near future. Through the 12 episodes I’ve recorded so far I had a chance to chat with some really interesting, fun and exciting people, such as Igor Soares (Fedora Embassador), Lucas Rocha (GNOME and new Mozillian), Johan Dahlin (Stoq), Diego Zacarão (Transifex) and many others who totally opened up themselves to me (and our followers). I learned a lot from these chats and was inspired by their stories of success, failure, innovation and adventures!
Did you know that Johan is a Swede but lives in Brazil and speaks fluent Brazilian Portuguese? That Lucas used to be part of a Guns and Roses, Metallica, Iron Maiden and Nirvana cover band when he was only 13-years-old? During the many hours spent talking to my guests I learned about their likes and dislikes, what books and music they enjoy, and indirectly became more acquainted with the real person behind the IRC nick/email address!
I’m really glad I decided to continue with this project and didn’t give up early on. You’ll be glad to know that Evandro is recovering from his tendinitis and may be able to drop by one of these days. The next 2 episodes are already recorded and more guests are scheduled to talk about their passions and projects on different topics, including arduino and writing books! If you know someone whom you’d like to learn a bit more about their story, drop me a line or a comment and hopefully I’ll be able to schedule something.
Here’s to the next 6 months!
Summer Cleaning
After debating for the last couple of months about re-organizing my two blogs into a more intuitive (perhaps logical even?) format, I finally took advantage of some down time over the weekend and made a few changes. From now on, www.ogmaciel.com will no longer be my blog written in English, but instead will serve as a “business card/window” into my world. My “English” blog is now hosted on en.ogmaciel.com and my “Brazilian Portuguese” blog lives on pt.ogmaciel.com.
If you happen to maintain one of the blog aggregators (aka “planets”) I kindly ask you to update my feed as follows:
One more thing I did over the weekend was to change my email signature to no longer include “GNOME Board of Directors“. Sometimes I catch myself remembering that wasn’t too ago that I dreamed of joining the Board and making a difference… I feel that I learned a lot about the GNOME project as a whole, as well as about a lot of the people behind it. I didn’t fulfill all of the things I wanted to accomplish (work, real life and a bit of inexperience got on the way of things some times) but I sure hope that people will appreciate the things I did get done. In the end I chose not to run for re-election because the time is just not right for me, but I don’t rule out running again in the near future.
Anyhow, update your feeds and best of luck to the new GNOME Board of Directors!
Igor Soares - Projeto Fedora
I had a chance to interview Igor Pires Soares from the Fedora Project and chat about how he got started with translations, participating on several organizing committees and his travels around the world! He talks about getting lost in Chile, learning English and Spanish, the role his university played on his career, his top 5 books, movies and his interest in music, including a very special moment during a U2 show in São Paulo. The interview is in Brazilian Portuguese, but anyone who can speak Portuguese or Spanish should be able to enjoy it!
Download it now or follow it via the iTunes Store.
Conary Policy 1.2 is a maintenance release
Bug Fixes:
IRC Meeting
Howdy fellow GNOMErs!
I’d like to invite you all to join us once again for another GNOME Foundation IRC Meeting!
When: Wednesday, June 15th, from 14:00 to 15:00 UTC (your local time)
Where: irc.gnome.org, #foundation
Foundation IRC meetings are just that, meetings held on #foundation in irc.gimp.org to discuss current matters related to the GNOME Foundation. Any GNOME Foundation member or non member are welcome. As long as you contribute positively to the discussion you are welcome.
The meeting is moderated by Board members that are present, and they will guide the discussion through all the Agenda topics. Everyone can comment and speak at any time, just remember to be respectful and concise so it’s easy for everyone to follow the discussion.
Tthis is a great opportunity to discuss the topics you care about, or to get more information from the Board if you think we’re not communicating enough on some topics 
The agenda of the meeting is really up to you!
So please add the agenda items you’d like to discuss to http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/MembersAgenda
Your topics will automatically appear on the meeting page: http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/MeetingAgenda
For reference, the minutes of the last meeting are available at: http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/
Thanks,
Og Maciel, on behalf of the GNOME Board of Directors