devnet, Author at Yet Another Linux Blog

Foresight and Fedora, ClarkConnect Becomes ClearOS

Foresight and Fedora (aka “boots, a fedora remix”)

Last week it was reported by LWN and a few other Linux news sites that Foresight Linux may employ a change of direction…that is, create a spinoff project that places the Conary package manager onto a Fedora Linux base. Michael Johnson, Director of Operating Systems at rPath (which maintains the Conary based package manager Foresight uses) summed up his post nicely:

“I think that Foresight needs to be based on an upstream distro that is regularly fully updated and refreshed, and that is maintained by distro specialists with experience and expertise that is just plain missing within the Foresight development community. That distro needs to be imported into a Conary repository; that will allow Foresight to continue to use Conary to manage the process of building a set of consistent modifications relative to that upstream distro, providing a true rolling release. That would allow Foresight developers to concentrate on only the problems inherent in integrating the very latest development source against a recent base that is relatively close to the basis on which the software is maintained.”

Michael also said that it made sense to do this based on Fedora because Foresight is very Fedora-like in filesystem and the way that things are setup and handled in the guts of the operating system (paraphrasing from what I remember of IRC discussion). Also, in a comment on the LWN thread, Michael states that Foresight, if spinning off with Fedora, would still make use of “Conary, rMake, rBuilder, rBuild, and other rPath technology” and would still use Conary as its package manager which means…it wouldn’t leverage rpm and yum to keep things up to date on it.

An independent project that Foresight maintains sounds like a HUGE undertaking…(even though I’m assured repeatedly by developers from Foresight that it won’t be because it’s “automatic”). I’ve seen automagic things in the past that won’t cause a lot of work turn out to be quite a bit of work-that-is-not-work. I find this especially odd when the main complaint is that there aren’t enough OS specialists around…it sounds a bit too large to undertake. This project actually sounds like it possibly would usurp Foresight Main (Foresight Proper…Foresight Linux…whatever you call it) which is based on the stable rPath Linux and not on cutting edge Fedora like the “boots remix” would be. Therein lies the problem. The”boots, a fedora remix” would consistently be ahead of Foresight in development if the project is started and makes progress. Foresight will continually lag behind it. Can a 100% guarantee be given that Foresight can snipe packages from “boots, a fedora remix” that would always work? If not, what does Foresight gain by maintaining the project/spinoff?

I think Foresight won’t be able to maintain an independent project based on Fedora along side of the main Foresight Linux project. Sure, they may be able to at first…but then what happens when things break? Is one person responsible? 2? more than 2? I think instead of having a separate project, Foresight might want to completely base off of Fedora. This topic is extremely unpopular with Foresight developers though.

Whether or not Foresight adopts “boots a Fedora remix” is yet to be decided. It will be set before the Foresight Linux Council at their next meeting. Hopefully, they take into consideration the amount of manpower a separate project like this would encompass and maybe consider the benefits of adopting Fedora completely as a base for Foresight.

On a similar note, António Meireles, a lead developer for Foresight Linux, has posted what direction he would like to see for Foresight Linux 3…the future major release for Foresight. With improved underlying architecture that is more inline with Fedora…he may be looking along the same lines that my post here is. Whatever the case may be, it’s obvious that Foresight is starting to show a flurry of both interest and activity which is a benefit to it.

So where does this leave Fedora? They’ll benefit from having a lot of knowledgeable developers in Foresight and a few engineers from rPath working with a Fedora based project. Foresight has a great upstream relationship with the projects it encompasses…like Gnome and rPath. I would imagine this continued professionalism and cooperation will continue should Foresight base on Fedora.

ClarkConnect Becomes ClearOS

In other news, some of you may or may not know that ClarkConnect will become ClearOS and will be completely open source. The Clear Foundation will be sponsoring the development of ClearOS which is ClarkConnect re-branded with improvements. See the full announcement here. Also, a Forum Announcement Here. This brings a lot to the table including renewed commitments to documentation, community, and the operating system as a whole. The change is set to happen in the late part of 2009.

So what does this have to do with Yet Another Linux Blog? A few years ago, I wrote a review of ClarkConnect 3.2 for home users. It was well received and still gets many hits even today. Since I’ve used ClarkConnect since version 2.1 and continue to use it today for my home network…who better to take a look at how ClearOS will measure up?

With this in mind, I contacted the guys over at the Clear Foundation and they agreed to let me blog a bit about some of the changes and improvements that will be happening with ClearOS over the next few months. So look for more exclusive information from ClearOS in the near future. They’ve also asked if I’d be interested in helping out with some community endeavors they will have going for ClarkConnect and ClearOS users. Exciting stuff! ClarkConnect has really needed this shot in the arm for about the last 2 versions…they lost a couple of really good websites with FAQ’s on them. It’ll be great to get the community involved with this fantastic Home Server distribution.

Hate KDE4? Ignorance Is Probably the Culprit

Let’s bust some myths today because a majority of KDE 4 haters out there have the same reasons for hating it. I’m pretty sick of seeing posts and news articles about “why I don’t like KDE 4” and then seeing that the real reason the person is upset is because they don’t spend an extra few moments trying to figure things out…aka lazy and ignorant.

KDE 4 was NOT feature complete when it came out in the 4.0 version. It IS feature complete (in my opinion) with the 4.2 and 4.3 versions.

Ignorant Reason #1 – I hate Dolphin and I Can’t Have Konqueror Anymore

Wrong, you can use Konqueror. You don’t have to use Dolphin, but you’ll be missing out on a lot of useful stuff. Tell you what, now that you know that you don’t have to use Dolphin, why not use KDE 4 and give Dolphin a try every so often…you can still use Konqueror in the meantime and now that you know you can, you don’t have to go around trumpeting that you can’t to everyone who will listen and saying what a piece of crap it is. Forget that you’ll lose nepomuk and the semantic desktop by dismissing dolphin. Don’t know what that is? Let me google that for you…

I sure hope this solves many peoples beef with KDE 4 right out of the gate because this is one of the reasons I find all over the web. I really think the problem is the lethargic attitude that prevails from die hard KDE 3 fans. Honestly guys, give Dolphin a try…it’s really a pretty decent file manager and is light years ahead of any other DE file manager.

Ignorant Reason #2 – I Can’t Have Folders or Files on the Desktop Anymore

Wrong. Right click on the desktop and choose “Desktop Settings”. Select the drop down menu “Type” and select “Folder View”. Your desktop now has folders, icons, and all other such things that you may want to clutter it with.

If you want to switch back to NOT using the folders and instead use widgets…right click on the desktop and choose “Folder View Settings” >> Select Type >> Desktop.

To top it off, if you select “Folder View”, the folders and icons act exactly like you would expect them to in KDE 3. Not only can you select to show your desktop folders…but you can even show a folder like /home as your default desktop…show any folder you have access to, it’s up to you. Yay right? I give it a golf clap. Let’s continue thinking out of the box and bust a few more myths.

Ignorant Reason #3 – I Can’t Move My Panel to the Top, Right, or Left.

Wrong. Click the settings icon on the right hand side of your panel (it looks like a comma on the far right side of the panel). The settings area pops open. On that bar is something called “Screen Edge”. Now, it seems pretty self explanatory that when you hover over the top of it, it gives you the 4 arrow icon that means you can drag and drop the panel wherever you want to…and being named “screen edge” seems to imply “which screen edge…left, right, bottom, or top…do I want this thing to appear on”. Then again, I can see how screen edge can confuse people when you open the settings of a panel that resides on the screen edge. Ok, maybe I can’t. Well, at least you know you can move your panel around right? Golf clap again? Who plays golf anyway?

Ignorant Reason #4 – I Can’t Resize Folders and Files in Dolphin

Wrong again. Are you sensing a pattern yet? Open Dolphin, go to the directory where you want to increase the folder size. Hold the control key down…now roll your mouse wheel and be amazed as the folder size increases. Invest all your money in Yet Another Linux Blog stock and move to Nicaragua. Golf clap on your way to expedia.com for purchasing tickets.

Ignorant Reason #5 – I Like to Use My Own Color Schemes…I Can’t Do That in KDE4.

KDE4 absolutely allows you to create your own color schemes. It really helps to look around inside the system settings tool. Go to your Kmenu >> System >> System Settings. Once there, look for Appearance. You can also use the top search

bar to look for any term…so if you were to type “color” there, you’d see that Appearance & Display are returned.

Click on Appearance and you’re taken into a wonderful world of color and granular control of said color. Change anything you’d like….go crazy. I hear pink is the new green…or is it green that was the new pink? Whatever. The only limits are your imagination. For those without imagination.

Ignorant Reason #6 – The Default Menu is Cludgy and Different and I Can’t Find Anything in KDE4

Now there is no right or wrong here…you could be right depending on who you talk to. However, the nice part about KDE4 is that they include the previous menu for you. Right click the Kmenu and choose “Switch to Classic Menu Style”. Now your menu is the exact same as it would be in KDE 3.5.10. Please remember that answers are out there…you just have to search for them.

Closing the Door on Myths

Hopefully, this closes the door on many misconceptions helps people who are ignorant to the leaps and bounds that KDE4 has made just in the past few months. I’ve grown very tired of journalists and bloggers taking swipes at KDE4 and spreading misinformation about it. If you have any questions about how to do something in KDE4, please leave a comment below and let’s work together in finding a solution.

Overheard at the Water Cooler

Heard at the water cooler recently in my almost all Windows workplace was something that took me by surprise. We have a couple of highly trained individuals here in Networking. We’re a Cisco shop, so if you know how confusing that can be, you know that not everyone can just jump right into one of those networks and know what they’re doing. These individuals were having a conversation outside of my cube so I didn’t inject myself into the conversation. But, I did ask myself, is this what Linux and Open Source is up against? If so, we still have a long way to go.

It seems an external site was attempting VPN access into our corporate network. The problem the external site was hitting was that they couldn’t initiate a session FROM their network…but someone from our location could initiate a connection TO their network. They used a Linux box to provide them VPN, Firewall, and proxy services. Now, any Linux admin worth his or her salt would have immediately known that being able to VPN back into a site but not VPN out of a site means that the firewall doesn’t have the right ports open and/or forwarded. This should have been an easy fix…but the guys at this external location evidently didn’t posses this knowledge.

Instead of blame falling on the improper configuration, open source was blamed as a whole. My colleagues stated that those “free tools people use never stack up to paid ones” and that “you get what you pay for…and if you don’t pay for it you don’t get it”. So according to these guys:

Free = poorly designed, less than good software
Paid = better designed, wicked awesome software

Which of course, you and I know is a bunch of hooey. And this is what some of the smartest guys I’ve had a chance to work with state about Linux and open source. Makes me really wonder if they know their Cisco stuff is often times Linux and open source as well. I guess maybe I should tell them sometime. Either way, Linux still has a long way to go to garner the acceptance it should have.

The Palm Pre, Linux, and 4G

Whiz bang gadgets and myself are usually not uttered in the same sentence. I’m pretty basic. I like simple desktops like XFCE and Openbox…I like plain things. Give me bread, cheese and water and I’m a happy man. Give me wine and I’m your friend for life : I’ve tried to simplify in the past few years and my cell phone has always been the simplest of the simple regardless of my carrier.

When my family cell plan was set to expire this year, we had a little more excitement than we had in years past. Afterall, phones have become small computers that house cameras, mp3 players, and fully featured calendars and applications. I’ve been doing IT for over 10 years now and have never really worked hard at making text messaging part of my work day. When I started my new job last year, I was suprised to see that that they used a beeper system that utilized SMS technology for on call technicians. This meant that I could get texts when a system went down or when my expertise was needed at work. I needed a phone that allowed me to have more options than the old standard phones I usually picked up with the plan…plus, adding texting to my basic 2 year old plan was EXPENSIVE!

After research, I found that I would go with either an iPhone or the Palm Pre. I chose the Palm Pre for 3 reasons:

Sprint has the first operational 4G network currently which is 3 to 5 times faster than 3G (go live was May 25, 2009…announced in 2006)
Sprint has better overall 3G coverage than AT&T
Palm Pre is Linux

After making that decision and getting my Pre…I have to tell you that I’ve never been more happier with a phone or device. It’s a fantastic device and the app catalog hasn’t even had developer access to it yet! I’m really looking forward at seeing what people create when the SDK is opened up and the app catalog begins to fill up.

I’ve posted a few screenshots of my Pre below…just so you know what it looks like. I’ve posted the most important screenshot at the very bottom of the post…that’s right, Palm Pre works with a KDE4 test build of Unity Linux (duh, it is Linux). I have NO regrets in my choice of the Pre at all.

Do you have any questions about the phone and Linux? Want to see more? If so, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments section.

Unity 3.7 Snapshot Preview Out

Gettinther announced that build 3.7…a developer environment snapshot intended as proof of concept…has been released. This is an unofficial release…It’s stable…but we consider it not even an alpha quality release…mainly because it is being used as a proof of concept to show the new technologies we’ve integrated. Gettinther wanted to have a bit larger test base for this release so he announced this in the forum only…but I figured that it would be nice to flash it to our Planet Unity readers.

The full announcement is in the forum here: http://forum.unity-linux.org/general-news-and-announcements/release-3-7-out

Gettinther advises, “It’s still rough around the corners so please excuse us for it. Also the shut down script in livecd mode generates errors. Those are not important and can be safely ignored.”

Please note that we have updated rpm to version 5, the package manager is now the Smart Package Manager as apt4rpm development has ceased, the livecd project has been updated quite a bit to conform to our updated toolchain as well, and detection has been pretty much rewritten to accommodate all the upgrades.

Also, remember that this is not a desktop…this is a core. Unity Linux strives to be a base for people to build from.

You may notice that TinyME influences are very pronounced in this release…this is because TinyME allows us to have a GUI with some of the least amount of requirements and dependencies. Developers needed a minimalistic GUI to test core components such as Smart and the updated Unity Control Center. Unity Linux core, on which derivative distributions (branches) will build, will be even smaller than the size of this ISO…as it will not have Xorg or a window environment.

Please report issues to the forum: http://forum.unity-linux.org/unity-linux-discussion/

Adding Color to Bash List Command

One of the things I love is being able to enter into a directory via terminal, list the contents, and quickly see which ones are executable or not and which ones are directories or are not directories IN COLOR (not everyone is perfect right?). This is specifically handy as I move through working with Slackware based distributions like the one I’m using now, Zenwalk Linux 6 and the /etc/rc.d/ directory. Most of the Red Hat based distributions out there that I’ve used have this set automatically…so I’m used to it. When I opened up a terminal in Zenwalk I found no color. A quick investigation of ~/.bashrc showed me that there are aliases set to display color…instead of ls I’d just use the letter L; 2 l’s for another option, 3 for another. It’s interesting, but not normally how I do business. See bashrc below:

devnet[~]$ cat ~/.bashrc
alias lll="ls -al --color"
alias ll="ls -l --color"
alias l='ls --color'<br />alias search='find . -name'
alias aterm="aterm -fg white -tr"
alias version='cat /etc/zenwalk-version'
alias dh='df -h'<br />export PS1='\u[\W]\$ '
export PAGER="most"<br />devnet[~]$

I don’t use those aliases much…others of you might do the ‘ll’ or ‘lll’ but it’s just not part of my routine. So, I added in just after line 4 in the code above:

alias ls='ls --color'

You can do this a few different ways…with any command line editor like emacs, vi, or nano/pico. It’s really up to you. The easiest way for new users is to use a text editor:

devnet[~]$ mousepad ~/.bashrc

This will launch the mousepad text editor in XFCE. If you’re in Gnome, try gedit. If KDE, give kwrite a try. You should see something like the following window pop up for editing:

You should see in the picture above, I’ve added in the alias needed to make me comfortable. After that, File >> Save. You’re set! Except, you may notice that when you type the command ‘ls’ there are no colors. So what gives? Well, we haven’t loaded our ./bashrc since we changed it. You don’t have to logout and back in to get things to work though…you can do this right from the terminal:

devnet[~]$ exec bash

Now try giving the ‘ls’ command a try again and you should see that it is in color. I know a lot of the more advanced Linux guys out there are probably saying, “why’d he waste a post on this! It’s easy” and you’d be right for a majority of users out there…I hope that this post finds some new user out there that may be stuck for an answer on how to do this. One final note on this as well: You will have to do this as the root user and change /root/.bashrc in order for your root user to also have color. Thanks for reading!