While I’m not really sure why no one threw up a stop to this in the Canonical brainstorming session that produced ‘Ubuntu Unity’ one can only have a laugh about this and hope we don’t get our pants sued off even though we named our distro first.

If things do get hairy, I’m sure we can change our name to ‘Unity Ubuntu’ or something similar to properly confuse everyone.

So, on behalf of all the Unity Linux developers, I’d like to thank the Academy and give a special shout out to Ubuntu for making our name known!  Thanks Mark!  Oh and good luck with that Unity thing!

* devnet removes tongue from cheek

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Ubuntu Names Their Desktop After Us? originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on May 10, 2010.

I knew from experience in the mid-nineties that Slackware was probably the most Unix-like distribution out there…I felt at home there quite a bit after learning the *nix ropes on Solaris 2.0.  So we configured a Slackware 8.1 dual processor tower server he was lucky enough to acquire as our home firewall-all-around-great-linux box.  He took his beginning steps there and flourished since our Air Force job already had us jumping around in a VAX/VMS mainframe.  We had many late night hacking sessions attempting to get things to work or compile there.  We also had a multi GB shared hard disk (unheard of at the time!) shared over samba.

After I got moved out, I continued to keep the Slackware box up to date.  I moved onward to Slackware 9.  Samba operated like a champ and Slackware was a great routing system and dhcp server.  Then I discovered ClarkConnect and loved the web interface.  I could do things in half the time!  I could do them over the web from work without SSH tunneling!  All this appealed to me at the time.

I continued to run ClarkConnect from that point on and have continued to all the way up to when it changed to ClearOS this past year.  Indeed, I have ClearOS now as my central server.

The only problem is that I’ve suffered 2 of the most catastrophic losses of files in my samba shares when running ClarkConnect/ClearOS…and I didn’t draw the lines together  on these separate incidents until just recently.

The first loss came when an entire samba share was completely eradicated…13GB of music was just gone.  The second loss happened just the other day when tons of scanned pictures just VANISHED into thin air.  Each time these happened, I was using ClarkConnect/ClearOS.  Each time it happened a few users reported instability in the forums of those distributions.  I am not sure how it could have happened and I was caught completely off guard on the second time…my backups were not yet configured since it was a new server.  The first time it happened…I didn’t know the value of having a good backup routine.  So each time, no backups   Lesson learned the hard way but learned nonetheless.

I recall running Slackware on my server and NEVER having the problems I have had with ClarkConnect/ClearOS.  This got me rethinking my home server design.  Servers should be the epitome of stability.  One should be able to migrate from one version of the operating system to the next with few hiccups.  When considering each of these it is very apparent that I should be running Slackware core on my main samba server.

I will be making that transition in the next week or two and moving to a Slackware core based server.  I’m not sure what to use for backups across the network (I usually mirror the drive to an NTFS drive in my Windows based multimedia server) nor backups locally to other hard drives.  If you have any suggestions, I’d really like to hear them.  Also, I’d like to know what readers consider using for a server.  Please vote for your favorite below and drop me a comment letting me know specifics and thanks for your help!

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Rethinking Home Servers originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on April 17, 2010.

Very interesting stuff…much like what rMake does for Conary and Foresight Linux…but applied to RPM’s instead of conary changesets.  Just the same, it’s interesting that such a small team of developers are showing their prowess in development and making strides toward building a robust developer community.

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Unity Linux Automates Build Process originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on April 12, 2010.

I thought I’d talk today a bit about that.   I’d like to talk a bit about what Unity uses for it’s ‘guts’.  I’d also like to dispel some myths surrounding Unity.  Lastly, I’d like to talk briefly about how Unity is doing all it can to further Open Source and Linux by contributing to projects it is involved with.  The reason I know so much about this topic is that I’m the webmaster and host for the Unity Linux Project as well as one of the documentation team members.  So, let’s take a look first at what Unity Linux is…

What is Unity Linux

Unity Linux is not a conventional distribution of Linux.  It’s a core on which developers can build their own distribution of Linux.  We’ve set out from the start to provide an excellent minimum graphical environment that gave developers “just enough graphics” for them to create something.  The smaller, the better.  We elected to go with Openbox because of it’s size and stability.  We selected using Mandriva as our base because of the number of packages they provide and the quality of those packages.  We pushed lxpanel as a minimal panel because it provides just enough functionality for distro developers to see what they’ve installed after they’ve installed it…it also is familiar to most people whereas Openbox right click menu’s may not be.  All in all, our target for the core release is developers.  We’re not designing this basic desktop to be used by end users.  We’re not trying to win any awards with our awesome minimalistic desktop skills.  Why would we do this?  To answer this, you have to take a look at our developers.

One of our developers, Kdulcimer, is the lead developer of TinyMe Linux.  A few years ago, he created a fantastic minimalistic “remaster” of PCLinuxOS.  It was wildly popular and continues to be so today.  Kdulcimer was one of the first developers that elected to go with Unity Linux for his core.  Our other developers saw what Kdulcimer did with his distro and how small he made the core.  They learned from how he did things and applied it to Unity.  Thus, Unity has a small base…as evident by both the beta releases.  Upcoming release candidates will be very much the same.

Lead developer gettinther does a good job explaining what Unity is:

One of the big issues facing small distros around is that there’s a limitation in the ability of each group to maintain a healthy up-to-date core.  Most people prefer to focus on the DE / user interface, working on the look&feel rather the the internals.  Those distros end up with stale core which in turn causes numerous “hard-to-find” issues.

Most of the distros with us existed before Unity, like Tinyme, Sam (abandoned project now), Granular, Synergy (formely eeepclos).  The idea is to create distros only insofar as “presetting desktops by people who love those desktops”.  Rather than having a “one shoe fits all”, we decided to provide a core module and look after maintaining it.  Each branch distribution joins the team and has full developer access.  For Unity to become a full fledged distro means favoring a DE over others.  By limiting the scope to the core product (we maintain the various DE too but leave the DE specific changes to the branches).  It makes it a little more difficult to install stuff but it also means that all DE are looked after.

As far as the user is concerned, it means the each branch has their word in the development of the core which ensures that the distro is well supported.  It pools the efforts of each distro who would otherwise be on their own so means a large development team and as such better packages.

So Unity Linux is a base on which to build.  A foundation for “remasters” to build from.  But what is a remaster?  What technologies does Unity use? Let’s take a look at the internals of Unity next.

Unity Linux Internals aka Guts

When we initially set out to not only have a small graphical base but also to wrap around the LiveCD project.  For those of you who don’t know what LiveCD is..you can visit the old berlios.de project page:

The project features automatic hardware detection and setup, and utilises compression technology to build a LiveCD from a partition much larger than would typically fit on a CD. (Up to 2GB for a normal 650MB CD.) When booting from this LiveCD, the data is transparently decompressed as needed. LiveCD now supports udev.

Currently,  Mandrakelinux and PCLinuxOS are supported as a host for creation of the LiveCD, i.e. we are only able to create LiveCD’s from a MDK or PCLinuxOS install. The LiveCD scripts are still beta, and bugs are being eliminated. Your help and feedback are appreciated!

The set of scripts allows a person to make a liveCD copy out of their desktop for backup purposes or as a standalone linux distribution.  When you create that new ISO or backup ISO, you have ‘remastered’ the master copy.  So the livecd scripts are really just a set of tools that allows a user to create something new or backup their existing desktop as a live CD.

The project at berlios was taken over by Didouph as lead developer just before Unity was formed.  There hadn’t been much work after Tom Kelly left the project quite a long time ago, but Didouph was optimistic.  When he joined Team Unity, he placed LiveCD development on the back burner and worked hard with the graphics team on logo development.

Later, it became apparent that in order to keep creating a great distribution that could remaster itself, we needed to make improvements to the code of LiveCD.  First off, it needed 64bit support.  Secondly, it needed better detection than what it had.  Third, it needed to have internationalization work done.  Fourth, it needed to support higher kernel versions than what it did.  All those things have been accomplished with internationalization still being worked on.

When we initially took over the ‘modernization’ of LiveCD we didn’t all flock to berlios to do so.  Work instead began when we gave a small sliver of our own SVN over to LiveCD.  It made sense geographically for our developers to have the ability to commit code in the same place instead of at a third party (berlios); the reason being, we needed many commits fast and didn’t want to wait…we were ready to move forward with it immediately.  We snagged the GPL’d LiveCD code and located it on our SVN.

Since Didouph was the maintainer of LiveCD, we felt it only natural that Unity would lend a hand to him and his project by taking over development.  An entire team working on LiveCD would mean greater output and more advancement.  Thus, Unity maintaining the LiveCD project was born.  Anyone is welcome to take the code and use it how they seem fit.  We’re working on getting LiveCD it’s own proper SVN or Git repository at a public site away from Unity Linux…if you’d like access (read only) to LiveCD SVN, drop Unity Linux a line via their contact page.

Common Myths Surrounding Unity Linux

Heard any good ones lately?  If I don’t cover the ones you’ve heard here, please leave me a comment and I’ll address yours specifically.

Myth #1 – Unity Linux is just PCLinuxOS rebranded

Most of the developers of Unity Linux were contributors to PCLinuxOS during the time that Texstar had stepped away.  As contributors, they were not part of the developer team.  They had limited access to the core, iner-workings of PCLinuxOS.  How do I know?  I was a developer…the main web developer…for PCLinuxOS and I monitored all mailing lists, all websites, and even was chief of MyPCLinuxOS.com.  There were very few people on the development team of PCLinuxOS that are now part of Unity Linux…because the PCLinuxOS development team was kept small.

When Unity Linux initially was started, the contributors and developers that were involved grabbed a ‘snapshot’ of the PCLinuxOS repositories and began working on bringing packages to updated versions.  They quickly ran into trouble because PCLinuxOS used such an outdated toolchain that many new packages wouldn’t compile with it.

After some discussion, developers abandoned PCLinuxOS packages and instead worked with Mandriva packages.  This allowed Unity to move forward sans old toolchain and outdated core.  Now most of this stuff doesn’t matter to the end user…they just want a stable environment.  But the Unity Linux developers wanted to push forward with the latest kernels, the latest rpm version, and the latest smart package manager versions.  Doing so required massive leaps forward even from Mandriva.

As you can see, while Unity Linux originally started with a PCLinuxOS fork, they abandoned that fork and rebased on Mandriva.  They now stay inline with Mandriva development.  If you have Mandriva and Unity Linux questions, please stop into the Unity Linux chat channel on Freenode: #unitylinux and ask proyvind questions…as he is the Mandriva Linux representative that works with Unity Linux

Myth #2 – Unity Linux Stole mklivecd aka livecd from PCLinuxOS

This is a pretty funny one and I’ve seen quite a few references to ‘stealing’  GPL code.  First things first:  You cannot ‘steal’ GPL code.  It just can’t be done.  Secondly, the LiveCD project was stagnant and had a SINGLE developer working on it.  That developer joined Unity Linux and all 25+ developers there decided to help him make some progress on it.  In the meantime, they took the initiative to make improvements.  For example, they gave it 64bit compatibility.  They gave it have better detection.  They took the code and gave it better international language support.  All those things are made available for FREE to any distribution wanting to download a snapshot from SVN.

Now, if anyone has a claim to LiveCD as ‘theirs’ it would be Jaco Greefe who was the principal on the project LONG before any distributions other than Mandrake aka Mandriva even worked with it.  Texstar grabbed what Jaco’s project mklivecd and used it to create the original PCLinuxOS 2003 release.  This release was based on Mandrake 9.2 at the time and a few other Mandrake developers began to debug the script through the creation of PCLinuxOS.  Mandrake was a trademarked name, so Texstar named it PCLinuxOS.

As you can see, if any one distribution has claim to mklivecd, it would be Mandrake aka Mandriva which was where the script creators came from.  It’s also where the script was first made useable.  However, claim that Texstar made it into a nice package with PCLinuxOS…that is totally true.  What we’re doing now by developing it is making sure it continues to progress into the future with 64bit support and even when udev is dropped from Linux…no matter what, we’ll make sure it works…and hopefully it will work for more than just Mandriva derived distributions.

There have been many attempts by Unity Linux developers to get other distributions that use mklivecd involved with the development of it.  That invitation is always open to any and all distributions that use it.

Myth #3 – Unity Linux wants to steal away users from other distributions of Linux

The main reason this isn’t true is that Unity Linux targets DEVELOPERS.  We don’t target end users.  If end users like Unity, GREAT!  If not, we don’t worry about it.  Unity Linux has derivative distributions called “branches” that work to target the end user.  Unity Linux itself is targeted squarely at distribution developers and advanced users who want to be able to use the mklivecd scripts.

Myth #4 – Unity Linux DOESN’T use PCLinuxOS at all in development

This is half true.  We don’t ‘use’ PCLinuxOS to create things…we use it as a mirror synch.  Paul Grinberg, a developer on the team, has a PCLinuxOS box that he doesn’t use.  During the initial setup of Unity Linux, we based things on PCLinuxOS before purging and switching to Mandriva.  Since the developer mirror server (referred to on the mailing lists as the dev server) still ran PCLinuxOS and Unity Linux didn’t have a release yet, we saw no reason to change it.

As Unity Linux still has no stable release as of March 29, 2010, that developer mirror server still runs PCLinuxOS and pushes uploaded packages developed on a Unity Linux server to various mirrors for propagation.

In other words, the PCLinuxOS server Unity Linux uses is just a web server.  It will be replaced with Unity Linux when 2010 is released.  Until then, taking the time to wipe it out and repopulate it would throw a kink in the flow of package development so developers have put this ‘to-do’ item as something to be accomplished after stable release.

Unity Linux and Open Source

Unity Linux does a great job of contributing to projects upstream.  As an example, David Smid, a Unity Linux developer, is also a Smart Package Manager (SPM) developer.  This allows Unity the ability to test the latest and greatest SPM and get things quickly patched/fixed/redesigned.  Other projects such as mklivecd are developed openly by Unity Linux and contributors are welcome.  Unity Linux contributes bug finds to Mandriva through use of the Mandriva Cooker repository.  Unity Linux developer Paul Grinberg contributed Google Map integration for MirrorMon, which you can view on our Mirror Status Page, back upstream to the creator of MirrorMon.  Unity Linux also contributes upstream to rpm5.org.

Unity Linux also has a working partnership with Yoper Linux.  Why?  Because Yoper Linux uses many of the same core technologies (Smart, rpm5) that Unity Linux uses and because the lead developer, Tobias Gerschner, is an all around great guy .

You can see everything that Unity Linux works on by visiting our repository:  http://dev.unity-linux.org/projects/unitylinux/repository

Development is done in the open, not behind closed doors:  http://groups.google.com/group/ul-developers

Unity Linux strives with an almost rabid will to keep everything in the open for users and branch developers so that they are not left wondering what’s going on with their distribution.  The Developers continue to try and engage other distributions to work with them and will continue to do so in the future.

Closing Thoughts

Unity Linux doesn’t target the same users as your average distribution of Linux…they’re after the more savvy users out there.  The ones that want to create something and make something from the core image.  Users that like to tinker and mess and break things.

Unity got off to a rough start with much FUD slinging and accusations.  Hopefully, the actions you see that Unity has taken to keep it’s project open will show the intent of the developers…to make a great core on which others can branch from all the while remaining open and free for everyone.

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What Is Unity Linux? originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on March 29, 2010.

Drop into a different tty.  Login as root…if you’re on the liveCD, the password is root.  Execute:

ps aux | more

Make note of the PID for X and GDM.  Write them down…replace the terms below with your PID numbers:

kill -9 PID_for_X && kill -9 PID_for_GDM && do-vesa

You now should see something other than black screen with mouse cursor.  I’m not sure how many systems this affects…but I know my Dell Latitude D630 laptop took it on the chin for this one.  Not a huge problem for a Beta…I mean, a distro can’t be all things to everyone.

Overall though, Unity 2010 Beta 2 is much more solid than Beta 1 was for me after getting by the initial X problem.  Everything works as it should as far as sound, Internet, and wireless are concerned.  I quickly removed PCmanFM and replaced it with Thunar, my file manager of choice.  I removed LXPanel and installed Tint2.  Installed Nitrogen to manage wallpaper.  Installed Parcellite to give me a clipboard,  Installed volwheel to give me a volume applet to control volume.  Installed Pragha to give myself a great music player.  Installed Irssi to allow me to get my IRC fix and put pidgin in play to IM.  I had a usable, customized desktop within about an hour.  And it’s been really solid…just as solid as my Arch Openbox desktop I run at home…which makes me feel good about this Beta.

So what else have I been working on?  I’ve been working on a large (VERY large)  tutorial on file permissions and making use of groups for file/directory access to add to the tutorials section of YALB.  This thing has been in work since last year and I’m attempting to finish it up before the months end to give a good representation of what file permissions in Linux are for and how they work with users and groups.  I’m also going to write up a tutorial on how to customize Unity 2010 Beta 2 into a lightweight Openbox desktop.  So, some good updates hovering on the horizon.  Stay tuned

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Unity 2010 Beta 2 Impressions originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on January 15, 2010.

Foresight Linux is the exception.

Now, this isn’t because they don’t WANT to have a Live CD…they do.  The problem is that rPath, the creators of rBuilder Online, have discontinued the Live CD image creation type.

There was no announcement…no news posting…no clue dart thrown toward Foresight for this discontinuation.  There was only a comment on a single bug in the rPath issue tracker just this past May…Formally discontinued…which in my opinion, is a HUGE mistake as far as community goes.  Why? Because a community is a solid base on which to stand for any distribution or toolset for open source.  rPath has essentially dismissed a feature that the community would find valuable and in the process alienated anyone who finds this feature valuable or desirable.  But I’m not here to talk about whether or not people want to develop their own distributions on rBuilder Online using rPath tools nor the incentive to do so…I’m talking about Foresight. 

So, what incentive does rPath have to help Foresight by fixing it?  Not much…I’m sure there will be those that argue: “rPath has customers and their first allegiance needs to be to them” and those people would be right.  But can’t the Foresight community pick up the torch for Live CD building  on rBO and develop it as a community effort?  Can’t a license be found that it can be released under that would prevent forking?  Can’t it be modularized as a ‘plug-in’? I don’t pretend to know the answer to those questions…I just think that Foresight will continue to suffer as they have been for many, many months now with respect to not having a Live CD.

I’m sure that there will also be those out there saying “but Foresight has a bunch of Virtualized Images to choose from!! No one really cares about a Live CD!!” and I’d say you’re halfway correct.  Developers don’t really care about a Live CD…but those that Foresight attempted to attract…the end user…they DO care about having something they can ‘try before they buy’.  It is my belief that Foresight would be a crap-ton more popular if they had a Live CD.

So What Solutions Are There?

I don’t think rPath will suddenly fix the broken Live CD creation in rBO.  I don’t think they’ll release the code anytime soon (though this is more likely than a fix).  So in the meantime, what if Foresight helped out with LiveCD project that recently was taken over by Unity Linux?  Both Unity and Foresight are Red Hat like distributions and use similar file structures and OS organization.  I think that if Foresight were able to integrate LiveCD onto the distribution, a huge niche would be filled.

Where to Start?

Being involved both with Foresight Linux and Unity Linux gives me a unique perspective on what areas of collaboration could be developed.  One thing is for sure…having both distro development teams onboard would be a huge boon to LiveCD development…and Foresight could suck in SRPMs quite easily from Unity to hit the ground running right away.

I am by no means offering to be the head of this project because I can’t even begin to know where it would start or finish.  I’m just offering a workaround to a problem I’ve seen Foresight have for longer than it should have.  I know the Unity Linux guys would welcome anyone wanting to get involved with helping LiveCD development.  Would Foresight be open to this?  I can’t answer.  I hope so…Foresight needs a Live CD if it hopes to attract more people to it…and that’s something I’m keen on seeing.  Is this something you’d like to see as well?

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Foresight, rPath, LiveCD, and Unity Linux originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on October 14, 2009.

Foresight is toying with the idea of having a sub-project (completely separate from Foresight Linux base) that it has tentatively called ‘boots, a Fedora remix‘ (a play on Dora in Fedora for those of you with kids).

What would happen is that mirrorball, a tool from rPath that ‘sucks in’ repositories, would pull in a Fedora repository into a separate Foresight repository.  From there, it is fully consumable by any product/project that is hosted on rBuilder Online from rPath.  Conary really is one of the most innovative package managers on the planet and I’ve mentioned it once or twice before (never got around to part II on one of those though).  The ability to fully suck in a RPM repository is already being done with CentOS and Scientific Linux on rBuilder Online…even Ubuntu is currently being done as well…so we have proof that it is totally possible.  Once imported, Conary takes over the management of said packages.

So what does this give Foresight?  A few things:

1. Testing of packages in 2 communities
2. Developer eyes/chatter in 2 communities
3. The ability of Foresight to cherry pick packages from a large base
4. Compare and contrast for packages from 2 different sources to track down bugs

So, as I said, I was wrong initially and I hope this clears up what Foresight plans to do.  A sub-project will be started that imports the Fedora repository changing them from (rpm to Conary) allowing Foresight to both test and cherry pick packages from a larger base hopefully freeing up a bit more time for Foresight architects.  Phew!  What a mouthful, run-on-sentence that was!

Why Conary?  How does this help Fedora?

I know some of you may be asking Why Conary?  What does it have over RPM that Foresight should suck in a repositoroy and change it to Conary packages?  The reason this is an absolute necessity is because the tools on which Foresight are built (rBuilder Online) works with Conary only…that means ISO generation and repository hosting are all mandated to be Conary based.

The other interesting part about this is that Conary blends version control with package management.  It deals with changesets as packages.  Imagine SVN…you have a local changeset that  you’re working on and the version inside the SVN repository differs from that.  You can then diff the state of your local copy to see how it differs from the remote copy.  This allows you to see the changes you’ve made and allows you to see what code may be broken.  Also, commits are numbered automagically so that you don’t have to worry about breaking things much because you can rollback to a previous known good state.

The same is true with Conary…you can rollback to previous known good states.  You can also diff each changeset locally with the remote repository.  Now imagine this with Fedora packages…if something is broken, chances are Foresight will find a fix for it much more quickly than someone in Fedora…a single command can diff the previously known good version with the broken version and find out the shortcoming.  Or perhaps a known good verion in Foresight that isn’t Fedora based might be used to diff the Fedora RPM version and find out the differences in them.  In all, it’s going to help developers track down problems faster.  This helps Fedora…they now have a small number of Foresight developers who will be working with hundreds of popular Fedora RPMs looking to see if they work or are broken.

Most of the benefit will be measurable in Foresight because they’ll be able to use just about any package Fedora creates…but the Foresight community is FULL of very capable developers…guys that really know what they’re doing.  If they can make this a collaborative effort Fedora will gain exceptionally smart developers as well…even if testing packages on a different platform, they’ll have eyeballs on these packages and if a fix is found or made for them they will definitely go upstream to Fedora.

Hopefully, this puts things right from my initial wrong.  I don’t claim to be an insider for Foresight…I just know a lot of the people involved and ask questions a lot….I also pay attention to the developer mailing list.  If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I’ll attempt to track down answers for them

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Clarification on Foresight and Fedora originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on September 9, 2009.

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.

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Foresight and Fedora, ClarkConnect Becomes ClearOS originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on August 27, 2009.

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/

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Unity 3.7 Snapshot Preview Out originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on June 30, 2009.

After some initial toolings in Arch and Gentoo, I settled on Slackware…which was my first distribution I tried ever in 1995.  It felt good to be coming back to Slackware…there is a simple elegance about it.  It’s ultimately fast on just about every system I’ve put it on.  I really like the unix like rc files Slackware has; to me, it’s simple to get things working.  This could be because I cut my teeth on Solaris…but then again, I think it’s much easier to manage system services by making an rc file executable (chmod).  Sure Red Hat style is ok with ‘service name start|restart|stop’ but I really like going into a directory, listing it out, and seeing all my services that execute on startup in green.  Maybe it’s my nostalgia getting the best of me.  I’m sure that’s it.

Regardless, I stuck with Slackware only a short while because I was interested in XFCE (not that Slack doesn’t have XFCE…just that I wanted to see a distro that prides itself on XFCE) and decided to give Zenwalk 6 a try (I’ve tried Wolvix already…it just didn’t click with me).  I’d heard nothing but good things about this distro and it is Slackware based, which makes all the nostalgic parts of me tingle.

I installed and all I can say is WOW!  It’s a fantastic implementation of XFCE regardless of distribution.  The Slackware speed and rc system are there, greeting me on each startup/login.  XFCE is done brilliantly there and really feels like a superb implementation.  Updating is a snap with netpkg, something I haven’t had any experience with…it does the job nicely though.  Overall, I’m quite satisfied with Zenwalk and will be sticking with it for a while.  I’ll post back from time to time with any tips or tricks I might find as I’m stretching my legs so to speak in my new environment.

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Slackware and Zenwalk originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on June 4, 2009.