It’s really sad when the Alpha release of Ubuntu makes the front page of Digg.com for Linux/Unix… but the release, after two years of development, of PCLinuxOS 2009…a distribution that challenged Ubuntu for the #1 ranking at distrowatch in 2007-8…goes completely without being dug at all. Well, to be fair, it was dugg by 18 people at the time of this post. This just goes to show you, all those people that accused PCLinuxOS of “fixing” the distrowatch.com rankings last year may have been a bit paranoid and way off base. Just the same, viral websites have an observable slant when it comes to things that are seen as cool so I really shouldn’t be suprised. I just wish that distributions that deserve praise got it when they deserve it…and that more got it more often for what they do.
Tag: linux
World of Goo Linux Port Available
I previously spoke about the game “World of Goo” a few months ago on Yet Another Linux Blog. I was eagerly anticipating the release of a Linux port of the game and attempted to drum up support for the release of the game for the Linux platform. All the efforts of bloggers everywhere has paid off. Today, 2d Boy, the gaming studio behind “World of Goo” have released a Linux version of the game!
This game is not freeware…it is 20 dollars to purchase. it also was one of the most pirated games of 2008 on the Windows platform. I myself will be legally purchasing the game for Linux in a move to show the developers that free software and open source geeks aren’t just about getting all things free and also to let my money do the talking for Linux as a viable game platform. If they took the time to make a Linux version of the game (I played the demo on Windows…it’s FANTASTIC) then I would readily buy it for 20 dollars from them. Thanks 2d Boy!
UPDATE: 2dBoy posted a few updates to their release blog posting saying that Linux sales of the game has broken records for them and has paid for them more than other platforms. They also state “There is a market for Linux games after all :))”
Broken Sound in Foresight Linux 2.0.?
Sound is broken in Foresight Linux 2.0.4 and above. This is a sporadic problem…but I know that most HDA Intel Sigmatel chipsets are having this problem (like the one on my Dell D630 Latitude). It is my understanding that this is a kernel based problem…and if it is, the last 4 released kernels onto Foresight Linux 2 stable branch have not fixed sound.
I was able to backpedal to the 2.6.27.5-3 kernel and had all of my sound problems automagically fix. I’m not sure what the problem is, nor how to fix it…but I do know that I’m not the only one with sound problems as of late. I also know that no one is motivated to fix things right now…as a developer in Foresight, I have heard nothing about a fix for this problem and even my own bug postings have went without comment.
I am attempting to draw attention to this through this post and also by creating a rollup bug listing for all sound related problems in Foresight Linux 2. If you have a problem, please visit http://issues.foresightlinux.org and file an issue there and drop a comment on my roll-up issue FL-1931 letting me know you’d like to link up to it.
Until that time, I’ve enjoyed the silence for 1 1/2 months. Some users are going on 6 months. I hope we can fix this major problem.
Force Firefox to Remember Initial Window Setting in KDE
I have a laptop with the resolution of 1440×900…so when I installed the latest TR6 from PCLinuxOS, I was dismayed to find out that when launching Firefox, it opened up in a window that was 1024 pixels. Of course, I maximized this and then closed it thinking that Firefox would remember my settings. The problem is…it didn’t remember my settings.
When I opened Firefox up again, it popped up to say hello once again at 1024 pixels. Sure, you can right click on the Firefox window bar and drill down into application specific settings via KDE (yes, it’s that configurable) but I didn’t want to have to do this…because if I did, ALL Firefox windows would open up maximized…and that includes any pop-ups as well. I also know that you can drill down even further to fix THAT problem. However, it should ‘just work’ right? You shouldn’t have to change anything at all correct? Well, I’ve found a fix that is pretty easy to accomplish…and I hope it helps the hundreds of people I found when searching through google on this.
Open up Firefox and it will open at the smaller screen size…in my case, it opened up 1024 px in width on my 1440px screen. Then, hover over the top right hand corner with your mouse until you get the resize arrow. Resize the window click dragging it to the top, right hand corner of the screen. It should ‘snap-in’ once you get close to maximized size. Now close the window, and open Firefox again. It should open up fully maximized.
I sure hope this saves someone time…because I spent the better part of a morning trying to fix this.
The Foresight Linux Search Engine
If you’re a Foresight Linux user, there are many resources you have at your disposal for documentation. First and foremost, you have the excellent guide shipped by default in Foresight accessible in the menu…but there are other resources you can search for a resolution to your problems. The Foresight Wiki and Foresight Forum are other areas that can be searched as well as the Foresight Issue Tracking System (FITS). Since Foresight is rPath Linux based, you also have the rPath mailing lists, the rPath wiki and rPath Issue Tracking System (rITS). There is also Planet Conary and Planet Foresight. With all of these resources, I found that I was jumping back and forth quite a bit while searching for information. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but it isn’t efficient.
Taking this into consideration, last year I created a Foresight Linux search engine. (You can bookmark this at http://bit.ly/foresight-search-engine because the Google url is quite long)
This search engine is Google powered and searches the following locations for you:
- http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/*
- http://foresightlinux.org/*
- http://wiki.foresightlinux.org/*
- http://issues.foresightlinux.org/*
- http://planet.foresightlinux.org/*
- http://planet.conary.com/*
- http://lists.rpath.com/*
- http://forum.foresightlinux.org
The interface is a single search blank that returns results from the aforementioned 8 sites. Google indexes those domains and searches through them for you, making it much easier to find what you’re looking for.
If you’d like to give it a try, you can visit the link above. On the front page of the search engine, you can get code to embed this search engine on any web page or add it to your google homepage as well. Hopefully, this search eninge will come in handy for Foresight Linux users.
Foresight Linux and KDE 4.2
UPDATE: Foresight Linux 2.0.6 has recently updated the stable branch with python 2.6. Therefore, much of this post is not needed to get Foresight KDE 4.2 running. I’ve crossed through the portions not needed. Thanks for reading!
I’ve been working with a lot of different distributions out there the past few days and haven’t found one that I like that has KDE 4.2 packages. Experimenting further brought me back to my old friend Conary and Foresight Linux. For those of you that don’t know what Conary is, I’ve written a Part 1 (I never finished Part 2 as I changed jobs and haven’t found the motivation) on what Conary attempts to accomplish and a bit of background on how it does things.
When I think of Foresight and rPath Linux along with Conary, I come to a direct comparison to Arch Linux…because pacman is quite similar. The main difference is that Foresight does a lot more for you out of the gate than Arch does…and arch is quite a bit faster than Foresight. Still, I decided to give KDE 4.2 a go on Foresight to see how it’s been progressing.
The first thing I needed to do was to change from the 2 branch of Foresight to the 2-qa branch. The reason for this is that 2-qa houses python 2.6, which is needed for KDE 4.2. Until python 2.6 is pushed into the stable branch of Foresight, you’ll need to move your installation to the 2-qa branch. First, using your favorite text editor, edit /etc/conary/config.d/foresight file. Inside that file, you’ll see next to the line InstallLabelPath the following:
installLabelPath foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-kernel foresight.rpath.org@fl:2 conary.rpath.com@rpl:2-qa
change this to the following:
installLabelPath foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-qa-kernel foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-qa conary.rpath.com@rpl:2-qa
or you can substitute 2-devel there if you’d like to move to the 2-devel branch:
installLabelPath foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel-kernel foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel conary.rpath.com@rpl:2-qa
Now, let’s migrate the system. Migration to a different branch will result in moving your system to become EXACTLY like the branch you’re migrating to. That means that any custom applications you have installed may be removed…conary will make your system become EXACTLY what 2-qa says it should. This is the reason I recommend performing these tasks with a fresh install before customizing.
Change with the following command:
sudo conary migrate group-gnome-dist=@fl:2-qa --keep-required --resolve
Don’t worry, 2-qa is not as unstable as it sounds…the most unstable branch of Foresight is 2-devel. To compare these branches to Debian, 2-qa is like testing while 2-devel is like unstable.
I installed Foresight Linux 2.0.6 Gnome using a DVD on a Dell D630 Latitude. Next, I like to uninstall the stuff that is extra in Gnome that I don’t use (you could say, I strongly do not like these):
sudo conary erase transmission f-spot evolution evolution-exchange tomboy banshee
With those packages out of the way, I did a full update.
sudo conary updateall
Some early Foresight 2.0.6 kernels cause random disconnects for my wireless chipset on the Dell Latitude D630 (Intel Pro Wireless) but after the upgrade this symptom isn’t present. The default 2.6.27.5 kernel made way for the 2.6.27.10 and it seems to work for me quite nicely. I did notice that the 2.6.27.10 kernel had some sound abnormalities for me with the Intel HDA sound card…so I rolled back to the 2.6.27.5 and things worked great. See this issue for more information on this sound issue.
Now we have a completely “useable” Gnome system on our hands…but we can’t have that unusable system now can we? (easy Gnome supporters…tis only a joke). Let us get a real desktop like openbo…er…KDE on there! Before I got too far though, I wanted to make sure I could play mp3’s and other restricted format items so I installed the codecs needed:
sudo conary update group-codecs
Once this has finished, let’s get KDE 4.2 up and running.
sudo conary update group-kde4=kde.rpath.org@fl:2-kde4.2-devel
Once that command has completed, you should be able to logout and log back in to KDE 4.2. The most recent builds of KDE 4.2 include python 2.6…something that Foresight Linux has been slow on the uptake with due to conary being written in python. I’m still working on testing everything…I’m not sure how well this newest build works. Look for a status update in a few days on this…
