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.

Then, it hit me, I had remembered seeing volume settings before…inside kmix; there is an area for assigning global shortcuts for volume and mute!  This should work for anyone running KDE 3.5.8 and above (I think).  Left click on Kmix in your tray and choose the mixer button.  From there, choose Settings >> Configure Global Shortcuts.  Now assign the volume up, down, and mute keys manually by clicking in the blank and pressing the hardware button.  This should work for a majority of people out there.  For me though, this didn’t work.  When pressing the keys, nothing happened.  I thought I was doomed.

I researched a bit more and found that installing a program called keytouch would allow me to, at the very least, program my keyboard in any way I wanted to program it.  I opened Synaptic and installed keytouch and keytouch-editor.  After install, I went to Kmenu >> System >> Configuration >> Hardware >> Keytouch.  It prompted me to choose my keyboard.  Since it didn’t have the Dell D630, I chose the closest thing which was the Dell D800.  I closed the application and now the volume buttons and mute button works!  Keytouch also has the ability to manually edit and also to import keytouch ‘schemas’ to give maximum flexibility.  Hopefully, this helps some of you out there that cannot get your multimedia keys working in PCLinuxOS and KDE to work!

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Laptop Multimedia Keys and PCLinuxOS 2009 originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on March 17, 2009.

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PCLinuxOS 2009 Not Diggworthy originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on March 16, 2009.

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.

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Force Firefox to Remember Initial Window Setting in KDE originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on February 10, 2009.

Read about Repository Control in PCLinuxOS

You’ll be looking for the ‘sections’ blank when viewing repository details and you’ll just need to add ‘testing’ to the end of the line (don’t replace the entires there already).  Once that is done, click the reload button in Synaptic and allow it to refresh your local rpm cache.

Click the ‘search’ button and search for the keyword ‘kernel’.  Look for the highest number of kernel that is returned.  At the time of this writing, the 2.6.26.8 kernel was the newest kernel for PCLinuxOS (it has .27 patches all over in it…so it’s quite a nice kernel).  Click and install that kernel and allow it to select any packages it needs to install.  Once installed, you can remove the word testing from the repository (this is recommended to prevent your system from downloading ALL testing packages/updates) and click the reload button for Synaptic.

Reboot and choose the new kernel on your grub menu.  Test things to see how they work.  If everything is good to go, congratulations!  You’ve just installed the latest kernel in PCLinuxOS.

To make this kernel the default one, you can use the PCLinuxOS Control Center and Change the Way the System Boots.  I’ll cover this in a later post.  Hope this helps a few of you out there.  I know it is often asked on IRC.

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Install the Latest Kernel in PCLinuxOS originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on December 17, 2008.

Build Your Own PCLOS

So, HowtoForge has a perfect desktop for PCLinuxOS 2007…how about something similar for 2008 MiniMe? I won’t go into near as much detail as they do there but I’ll go over how I get my desktop up and rolling after a fresh install of PCLinuxOS Minime 2008.

MiniMe is the lesser known offspring of PCLinuxOS 2007 that ships with a 2.6.22.15 kernel and is a minimalistic installation of the KDE desktop 3.5.9. Texstar provides this distribution for those wanting to remaster their installations…it’s a base for other remastered projects like PCLinuxOS Gnome. Remastering and the Make LiveCD wizard enable users to customize their distribution and make a bootable backup CD with all their customizations OR release their own customized distribution. You can also use the Make LiveUSB wizard to create your very own thumbdrive PCLinuxOS.

I found it strange that no one had written anything about MimiMe-to on getting PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe up and running as a desktop replacement so I decided to give it a go. The aim of this article isn’t to copy Howtoforge’s great series on perfect installations…but to show how I get PCLinuxOS 2008 Minime up to a perfect installation for me. This means all web video, audio, fonts, and tools I need are installed. So let’s get at it.

What Do We Need?

First and foremost, do a complete upgrade of your fresh installed system. Open Synaptic >> Reload >> Mark all Upgrades >> Apply. It’s going to take a while to get all the updates you’ll need. Do NOT enable the testing repository until after you install your graphics driver at the end of this article…just perform a straight update from main.

Now let’s start installing stuff that is needed on a daily basis. I’m more of a lightweight type of guy so I don’t need robust office applications so my tastes may not line up with yours. Please substitute applications where you see fit…the repositories most likely have them.

To give a brief, high level overview of my daily use applications:

• firefox3
• Opera
• K3B
• konversation
• pidgin
• skype_static
• koffice
• gimp
• Amarok
• claws-mail
• kdeaddons-kate
• kdeaddons-ark
• kdegraphics-ksnapshot (for taking screenshots)

Those are the high level applications I use on a daily basis to get things done. Whenever you are prompted to mark other packages for install, go ahead and and choose “mark”. Click apply and let the your daily use applications install.

Handy Wizards for PCLinuxOS 2008

MiniMe 2008 comes with some handy wizards for you to use to get started. On your desktop after install is a folder called “Utilities”. If you open this folder up, you will find the following options:

1. ATI-Nvidia Driver Install
2. Alsa Sound Configuration
3. Internet Setup
4. Make LiveCD
5. Make LiveUSB
6. Redo-MBR
7. Set Clock

You can use any of these you want to get things rolling. You’ll have to enable your network through the PCLinuxOS Control Center because MiniMe does not setup a network connection by design out of the box. Remember, it’s a base for building, not a full fledged distro. We have to craft it how we want it. I recommend NOT installing a graphics driver until the very end…mainly because there are some problems currently with the 173.xx driver conflicting with some packages in the testing repository. So hold off on graphics install if you can until the very last.

Make LiveCD is exactly what it sounds like. You can make a LiveCD based on your install. So after you get everything setup the way you want it to be, you can double click Make LiveCD and a wizard will guide you through creating your own customized LiveCD backup of your install.

Make LiveUSB is also exactly what it sounds like…you can make a bootable version of a USB stick with PCLinuxOS MiniME. This how-to does not cover this since we’re going for a desktop replacement and not a minimalistic install. You may want to select this option though after you’ve got things configured as you want them.

The rest of the options are fairly straightforward and do exactly what they say. Make sure you take the time to get all things working (except graphics driver) before you move on.

What Else Should We Install?

We’ll need to install a few more things to get seamless operation for PCLinuxOS on the web. There are also some packages that will make your PCLinuxOS experience a bit better that we’ll install at this step as well:

• gtk-qt-engine
• RealPlayer-rpnp
• flash-player-plugin
• java-1.6.0-sun
• flac-1.2.1
• mplayer-skins
• mplayer-gui
• mplayer
• win32-codecs-all
• sound-juicer
• flash-player-plugin-opera
• cabextract (for extracting wireless drivers if you have need to)
• webcore-fonts
• unrar
• rar
• xine-plugins
• AdobeReader_enu

Please remember to allow synaptic to mark anything extra that the packages require. After installing these packages, your browsing experience and overall appearance of PCLinuxOS should be ready for improvement. I’ll go through how I setup a few applications to give them a nice look and feel. Let’s start first with GTK applications look and feel.

Setup gtk-qt-engine in PCLinuxOS

Open the KDE Control Center and look under “Appearance and Themes” for the section “GTK Styles and Fonts”. Use the drop down menu to pick out your favorite GTK theme…and if your favorite isn’t there, fire up Synaptic again and do a search for it…chances are, it is there. Once you’ve chosen a style (I use clearlooks) click “Ok”.

This package gives your GTK applications a Gnome Feel in KDE. Without it, things look ugly. Face-in-pillow-to-be-kind-to-burglars ugly.

Get Your Fonts Setup

Configure Fonts

I setup my fonts a bit strange. I use the same webcore font (Microsoft Font) for almost everything because I like the way it looks. To do this, I set it up in the KDE Control Center and choose “Appearance & Themes” >> “Fonts”. Then, I setup each area except Fixed Width with Verdana for the font. You may like Ariel or another font…so choose it there. Don’t be afraid to experiment! Find fonts that suit you and make your desktop shine

When you’re through with the KDE Fonts, don’t forget to setup fonts in Firefox and Opera as well (if you desire to…I always do).

Setup KDE default Applications

While still inside the KDE Control Center, choose “KDE Components” and then “Component Chooser”. On this page, make sure your favorite applications are present as the default application for each area. Those to choose from are email client, text editor, instant messenger, terminal emulator, and web browser. For my email, I setup claws mail by clicking “use a different email client” and clicking the small square to browse applications. I did the same for web browser to make sure KDE knew to use Firefox and not Konqueror.

Enable Super Key for Compiz (if you use it)

If you use compiz and wanted to install it the package name is task-compiz-fusion-kde. Install this package but do NOT run it yet if you have an ATI or Nvidia card. We’ll need to install the graphics driver first. If you have another chip manufacturer (Intel, S3) for your graphics card, you should be able to install and use compiz right away.

To enable the super (windows) key, open the KDE Control Center, go to “Regional & Accessibility” and then to “Keyboard Layout”. Toggle check “enable keyboard layout” and make sure your region is in the right hand side box area as active. Click apply.

Setup Konversation in a Sane Manner

Configure Konversation

I think the default configuration of Konversation isn’t very friendly. So I take a few minutes when first firing it up to configure things. Perhaps you’ll agree with me on these. For example, I don’t like tabs on the bottom of my screen. I’d rather have those channels of chat on the left hand side so I can see them. I also like to have shell-like tabl completion. That means when I hit the tab key after typing a few letters of someones nickname, Konversation will complete their name without me typing it…much like the shell (konsole) can do with directory names. Start up Konversation. Click edit and then click the edit button again. Make sure you’ve input the nickname you need to input. If you are a freenode regular and have a registered nickname, enter NICKSERV and your password in the blanks under “Auto Identify”. Click “ok” twice and then connect.

Under “Settings” choose “Configure Konversation”. Go to the section “Behavior” and choose “General”. In “completion mode” use the drop down menu to select “Shell-Like”. I like to minimize Konversation into the tray and also like it to notify me when my name is mentioned. To do this, inside this same window toggle check “Enable System Tray” as well as the two other check boxes underneath it.

Now lets move the tabs to the left: Under “Interface” click “Tabs”. On the “placement” drop down menu choose “Left”. That’s it for Konversation.

Setup Kopete in a Sane Manner

Hiding Groups & Users

If you use Kopete instead of Pidgin, I’ll walk you through setting it up so that it has a more pidgin appearance. When you first launch Kopete, it will prompt you to setup your accounts. You should have no problem setting up all but the gtalk ones. Go ahead and setup all the other ones…we’ll set gtalk up in a second. First, let’s get the existing ones to display in a sane manner.

Under “Settings” choose “Hide Offline Users”. Then choose “Hide Empty Groups”. This will make sure not to display your offline buddies (of which I have too many all the time) in Kopete.

Next choose “Settings” and “Configure”. Click on Appearance. Click the “Chat Window” tab and choose “Get New”. A window will pop open with new themes to install. I like the theme called Fresh so I highlight it and click the install button. Close out all the windows except the configure one and then highlight “Fresh.AdiumMessageStyle” to switch to it. Click Apply.

Now click on the “Contact List” tab. Un-check “Arrange metacontacts by group” & “Show tree branch lines”. Under “List Style” choose right aligned status icons” and then check the “Use contact photos when available” checkbox. Click Apply.

I like my messages to open only one window with a new conversation opening a new tab. This prevents me from having 3 windows pop from 3 different chats from friends. Click on the “Behavior” icon on the left side of Kopete. Click on the “Chat” tab. Under “Chat Window Grouping Policy” choose “Group All Messages in Same Chat Window”. Click on the “Events” tab and make sure to uncheck “Show bubble” (unless you like notification bubbles…I hate them…I just want Kopete to flash on notification). Click Apply.

Click on the “General” tab. Make sure that the checkbox for the system tray is checked. Check the “Connect automatically at startup” box or Kopete won’t connect when you start it up. Toggle the radio button for “Open Messages Instantly”. Click Apply. Click Ok.

That should be it…I know it’s a lot but this really makes Kopete feel at home for me…almost pidgin style with better KDE integration.

Setup your gtalk follow the instructions here and make sure that if you are prompted with a pop up window choose never show this again and accept (it’s certificates for SSL and gtalk).

Improve Firefox Performance

There are tons of guides out there. I’ve looked through many of them to try and tweak Firefox performance and the one I’ve found to be the best collection of handy tips and tricks is at hugpages. Pay close attention to #13 which is the speedup I found to really make a difference.

KDE Artwork…Add More!!

I wrote an article on how to beautify the PCLinuxOS 2007 Desktop through installation of icon themes, cursor thems, wallpapers, and other improvements. Make sure that you check that post out and customize PCLinuxOS Minime 2008 and make it your own That beautification article is still valid for Minime 2008, which uses the 2007 repositories. Some of the package names may have changed but you can use the search button in synaptic to search “description and name” and find most if not all the packages.

Graphics Card

video driver installer

Setting up your graphics card is last for good reason. It should be the last thing you do unless your resolution is so horrible you need to set it up at the beginning. There is a problem with Nvidia drivers and minime. If you installed the 173.xx drivers and try to upgrade to testing, it will flag a bunch of problems. To fix things, launch konsole, su to root and apt-get clean, then apt-get autoclean.

After doing that, apt-get update and then close konsole. Use the utilities folder on the desktop to un-install the 173.xx drivers. Then perform the testing upgrade without the drivers conflicting. After the upgrade is complete, install the 177.xx drivers. This is only for the latest and greatest video cards. REMEMBER, the utilities folder has a graphics card installation tool. This is used for ATI and Nvidia cards and will install the official driver for both. A list of chipsets for each driver is inside the utility (screenshot on right) so make sure that you pick the correct driver.

If you use any other chipset besides Nvidia or ATI, your driver should be enabled by default.

Extra TidBits I like to Install

I like to be able to right click any music file in Konqueror and convert it to any format I choose. This can be done with the audiokonverter package. Search for that in Synaptic and install it if you’d like to do the same.

Ever want to search through programs you can install without opening Syanptic and without using the command line? Install kio-apt and you’ll be able to do jus that using apt:/ in the address bar where the url normally goes. Options include:

apt:/search?search expression
apt:/show?package
apt:/policy?package
apt:/list?package
apt:/fsearch?package

Want to resize your screen on the fly? Press Alt-F2 and type krandrtray. Notice the small icon that appears inside your kicker tray by the clock. You’ll now be able to resize your screen resolution on the fly. This is sometimes handy for those users who dock a laptop that has a different resolution on laptop screens than desktop ones.

Miss the Nvidia Icon in your tray like in Windows? Install nvdock and then execute it from the menu (System >> Nvidia Dock) and watch as your nvidia icon magically reappears. Right click and be brought to Nvidia Control Panel Settings.

Want some desktop search action without google desktop or the beast that is Beagle? Not a fan of tracker? Try recoll which can be installed through Synaptic.

Need a personal wiki to keep notes? I know I do. That’s why I install zim which is a personal wiki written in GTK. It allows you to quickly jot down notes and scales quickly to even provide multiple page and project tracking for your own personal notes.

Ever run across stuff on the web you wish you could clip out of a webpage and save? Enter basket. It can handle images, webpage snippets, store URLs and anything you might come across, can be saved for easy centralized access.

Screensavers are not installed by default. If you want to install screensavers, try the following packages:

• xscreensaver
• xscreensaver-base
• xscreensaver-common
• xscreensaver-extrusion
• xscreensaver-gl
• xscreensaver-matrix

Did I Miss Anything?

Did I miss anything with my helpful how-to? If so, please leave me a comment letting me know what you’d like to see added to it. I will consider this a working how-to and update it with as much as I can. These are only the applications I find useful and use on a daily basis. I installed these on a fresh install of Minime 2008 on my main system and wrote this how-to while doing it. I wanted it to be minimalistic…I don’t need much in order to be happy. Hopefully, this helps inspire you t

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Customizing PCLinuxOS 2008 Minime originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on October 17, 2008.

2007 Repositories

Something that is asked about quite a bit in the PCLinuxOS support IRC channel is “how to change repositories”.  One of the main reasons this is needed is that not all repositories are reachable depending on your geographic location.  Some of the repositories are also down at random intervals.  To equip the standard PCLinuxOS user with how to change repos, we first need to understand how the repository is structured, how the developers use the repositories, and how the community should make use of repositories.

How Are the Repositories Setup?

First and foremost, the repositories are setup in a “trickle down” model.  Updates are pushed first to the PASS server.  Only people who have donated 20 USD or more to PCLinuxOS have access to this server.  It’s fast.  It’s furious.  It’s also the first place where packages land.

Within 24-48 hours, the updates to PASS trickle out first to the Ibiblio repository…which is the MAIN repository from which all others are updated.  That means that there is only ONE repository for PCLinuxOS…all repositories are copies of the same one.  So if you have more than one repository enabled in synaptic…make sure you drop it down to a single one.

How Do the Developers Use Repositories?

The developers use different parts of the repository in the following manner.  All stable packages and software are in the repository base.  That means that if anyone updates a stock install, they’ll get the most stable packages and software.

If you are a bit adventurous, you can try out the testing portion of the repository.  The developers of PCLinuxOS push software and packages into testing that they are unsure about.  This might make some people a bit unsure themselves

Developers have a private unstable repository that they push their bleeding edge software to.  Other developers test these packages and provide feedback via the developer mailing list (private mailing list…not to be confused with the public ‘testers’ mailing list).  Once the package/software has passed preliminary testing on all the developers systems, it is pushed out into the public testing repository.

How Can You Help?

It is important for users to help pclinuxos succeed by reporting bugs in the pclinuxos forum so that developers can track them and keep people informed of fixes.  How can you help report bugs?  The way I do this is by keeping my main installation at stable and I install Virtualbox (use synaptic…it’s in the repositories!) to install PCLinuxOS again.  I then use that virtual machine to run a fully updated testing version of PCLinuxOS.  I use the Virtualbox snapshots feature to take a snapshot before a large update so that if things break, I can rollback to the previous snapshot.  It works out rather nicely and allows me to test the packages coming down the pipe.

If you do find a bug, please make sure you register for the main forums at http://pclinuxos.com and let the developers know what problem you’ve run across.  Make sure to search the forum first   Someone might have reported that bug already!

Hopefully, this will clarify a few questions people have about the PCLinuxOS repositories and the workflow in between them.

How to Change Repositories:  http://docs.pclinuxos.com/wiki/Repositories

Related posts:

1. Clarification on Foresight and Fedora I previously wrote about a possible “rebasing” of Foresight Linux...

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PCLinuxOS Repositories originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on September 27, 2008.

PCLinuxOS has a rolling release cycle. With this type of cycle, updates are continuously applied to the software repository so much so that after a bit of time, a snapshot of the repository would constitute a new release…say 2007.01 or something similar. This has always been the way PCLinuxOS is released as many of us that have been with it since the early days can attest to.

The other nice thing about the rolling release cycle is that there are no set dates to releasing. This means that the release is up to the developers. As PCLinuxOS has proven many times over…it’s about perfection. Texstar doesn’t release until he feels everything has been thoroughly tested…so much so that he often times will hold off weeks at a time for a release just to clamp down on the final small bugs that might only effect 5% of the user base. The quality of product the dev team produces is astounding because of this.

The last thing I love about a rolling release is that updates are seamless. For many of us that had Preview .81 or .71 on our boxes in the earlier days of PCLinuxOS, we found that updating all the way to .93a was a snap. That’s right, 3-5 releases could be upated via synaptic without incident. This was a huge draw to me in the early days. PCLinuxOS was originally forked from Mandriva 9.2 and developed away from it…when we rebased this past year for 2007 it was due to glibc/GCC4 updates that our small developer team wouldn’t be able to do. This rebase would prevent a user from updating .71 to 2007 now…but the concept of seamless upgrades is still one that PCLOS developers strive for. It’s going to be quite nice as development continues to be able to do this.

Is PCLinuxOS and the rolling release perfect? No. Do others get it right with a standard release cycle? Yes. Could PCLinuxOS benefit from a standard release cycle? It depends on what your definition of benefit is. If, by benefit, you mean always maintaining a set schedule of releases and giving PCLOS a software development/business type of feel…yes, it would benefit. But if you’re thinking of benefit from the perspective of an active dev team that feels little pressure or deadline…a thriving community of satisfied users that can count on seamless upgrades…I’d say that NO it wouldn’t benefit PCLinuxOS at all.

I’d like to hear what readers think about rolling updates and how they see these as beneficial or not beneficial to a distribution. Thanks for reading!

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The Absent PCLinuxOS Release Cycle originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on October 23, 2007.

Go to the Kmenu >> Run Command >> kdesu kcontrol

Enter your root password when prompted for it. You should now see the KDE Control Center. The difference here is that you’re running this as the root user so changes will be made at the root (super user) level. Go to System Administration >> Login Manager. You should have something similar to the screenshot.

Next up, go to the ‘Users’ tab and look in the center. There you can see all the system users. Check the box for root. This will hide the root user from the front KDM Login Screen. This won’t prevent you from logging in as root, but it will prevent it from displaying by default.

More PCLinuxOS tips and tricks coming soon

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Remove Root from PCLinuxOS Login Screen originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on September 23, 2007.

First, let’s mention what this guide will not cover:

1. Remote Controls
2. IR Blasters
3. Picture Quality Settings

Why won’t I cover those? Because there are infinite possibilities for each one…and it would be impossible for me to investigate them all…hardware not in my possession besides. So, this will cover installing mythtv and omit the items above. Mythtv has those items covered quite well in their documentation.

Hardware Specifications:

1. HP a1520n
2. ATI x300 PCIe VPU
3. PVR150 and PVR350
4. Sharp Aquos 37″ LCD TV
5. USR MaxG PCI Card

Install PCLinuxOS…with a twist

When I installed PCLinuxOS, I created a user “mythtv” for my main desktop user on my media center pc. This is an easy way of ensuring that your user is part of the multimedia group that some how-to’s speak about. I recommend you do this also.

I created 3 partitions on my hard drive: /boot, /, and /home. I used ext3 for /boot and /, and XFS for /home…because /home will be where my video is kept. The /home partition is rather large for me since I have a 250GB Hard disk…and boot only has 100M with / having 15GB. /home gets the rest

Another thing I did was connect a network cable despite having a wireless adapter. This is so I could setup ntp right away during first boot. It’s imperative that the time be correct for your timezone because the MythTV guide data is totally dependent upon it. Since part of the installation is downloading guide data, I also recommend you do this.

After PCLinuxOS Install

After installing, I created a directory inside my /home/mythtv folder. I changed the permissions on this folder with the following command:

[root@localhost~]# chmod -R a+xrw video/

This will be the directory I use to store liveTV recordings and shows that I record. I also made sure that the current user (mythtv) owns this directory by listing the directories with the -l flag (ls -l).

Open Synaptic, click the reload button, click the mark all updates button, click the apply button. This will install all updates for the distro and bring us up to current.

Getting Ready for MythTV and Multimedia

Next up we have to get PCLinuxOS ready to play any media we throw at it. If this is legal in your country, install the following:

• RealPlayer
• RealPlayer-rpnp
• win32-codecs
• webcore-fonts
• dvdrip
• mysql (needed for mythtv)
• ivtv (for Hauppage Cards)
• dkms-ivtv

Make sure you accept all dependencies that are marked for installation by the package selection above. Texstar and the gang know what’s going on so you’re very safe with their dependency selection.

Optional Installation Candidates:

• Google Earth
• Picasa
• Google Desktop
• VLC

Before you install the MythTV packages, we need to make sure the MySQL package we installed is up and running. Open up a Konsole and type the following:

[root@localhost~]# service mysqld status

If the mysql daemon is running, great! If not, start it with ‘service mysqld start‘. Open up the PCLinuxOS Control Center and go to System >> Services. Make sure the checkbox is toggled on mysqld so that it will start on boot.

When you installed mysql in the step above…it installed with no root password set. This is bad for security reasons…especially if you later plan on using the web plugin for MythTV where you can access program data from the web. To change this, do the following:

[root@localhost~]# mysql -u root

This logs you into the mysql console. You’ll then be able to:

[root@localhost~]# mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR root@localhost=PASSWORD('password');

Make sure you replace the word ‘password’ with a password of your choosing. This will be the new root mysql password. Keep it in a safe place away from prying eyes

Installing MythTV

Now that we’ve got the mysql server running and all the prepatory packages installed, it’s time to get MythTV installed. If synaptic is not open, open synaptic and do a search for ‘MythTV’. You should see quite a good number of packages available for install. There are only 4 packages that we need to get MythTV running…so install the following:

• mythtv
• mythtv-setup
• mythtv-backend
• mythtv-frontend

Allow those installations to also select any dependencies they might need. Don’t worry, we can install other add-ons later. After installation of these packages, we’ll need to configure the backend of MythTV first so it can scrape program data from the web and store it in our MySQL database.

Configuration

To setup mythtv’s backend, we’re going to run myth-setup (that’s the command you can run from a konsole as well). This will ‘setup’ our configuration for when we fire up the mythbackend. However, we need to give the MySQL database structure so that the data can be stored inside of it. To do this, MythTV gives you a .sql file that can be used to form the database structure.

[root@localhost~]# su

[root@localhost~]# mysql --user=root --password=passwordSETearlier < /usr/share/doc/mythtv-0.20/database/mc.sql

Now the structure is complete. It’s time to run the setup utility. Go to the PC Menu >> Multimedia >> Video >> MythTV Setup.

Step through the setup tasks. It’s ok to leave stuff you don’t know about…you can always tweak things later. Some items you must change are your IP (from 127.0.0.1 to whatever your IP is) if you plan on connecting a remote front end to it (say, one in your bedroom to the server backend in the living room). Since I run my server as a standalone one (both frontend and backend) I will leave this to 127.0.0.1.

I won’t cover all of the screens in the setup here. There is good documenation available at the mythtv website: http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.1

Only step through 9.1 on that link as we’ll need to do some more with PCLinuxOS before moving onto the next step.

Make sure that you’ve previously setup the correct lineup with zap2it…and remember that this month they’ll stop allowing free service so you’ll have to pay per month for their service. The reason you need to have an account with zap2it is so that during the next few steps, we’ll be downloading channel data for the MythTV install.

Finish out the setup configuration. Now we need to start the backend which will read the configuration we just did so that when we download channel data, it connects through the backend daemon and uses it for access to MySQL (remember the IP address and user/password in the screens?). To start the backend, open a konsole and su to root.

[root@localhost~]# su

enter your root password when prompted.

[root@localhost~]# service mythbackend start

The backend starts up and reports back that it was successful. Now it’s time to fill the database with channel data by running mythfilldatabase.
After it starts, execute:

[root@localhost~]# mythfilldatabase

This fills your database with channel data from your zap2it lineup. You now have MythTV ready to go with full configuration. There are numerous tweaks such as filters and encoders/decoders that I won’t go into here…mainly because I don’t know much about them. Experiment around and see what suits your cable signal and your install.

Problems I encountered with mythfilldatabase
My backend wasn’t running when I first executed the mythfilldatabase command and no amount of executing the command “service mthbackend start” could get it to work. So my mythfilldatabase kept timing out when trying to connect to the backend and fill the mysql database with channel info.

I isolated my problem to my /home/mythtv/video directory. Inside of this directory there is a file used by mythtv named nfslockfile.lock. This file had the wrong permissions set for it when I looked at it and mythtv couldn’t access it. So, I opened up a konsole, and ran

[root@localhost~]# chmod a+rwx nfslockfile.lock

[root@localhost~]# chown mythtv:mythtv nfslockfile.lock

Then, fired up the backend again with:

[root@localhost~]# service mythbackend start

and once that was accomplished, I reran mythfilldatabase and things were like greased lightening.

Continuing the Installation and Finalizing
After you channel data is finished downloading and reports it successfully saved in the database, you can start the front end. Before doing that though it is wise to check to make sure your capture cards are working (most happauge cards work quite well out of the box)

To do so, open up a konsole and type the following:

[root@localhost~]# mplayer /dev/video0

This should play channel video using mplayer. If it works, you know you capture card is functional. If you have a second card like me, test it out with:

[root@localhost~]# mplayer /dev/video1

You should have picture and sound from the default TV channel done during the lineup import (mythfilldatabase). If this doesn’t work for you, you’ll have to do some searching on mythtv and your model of capture card. This how-to won’t cover that but I’ll try to answer questions in the comments section.

So, we’ll assume that video is good for you and that the mythfilldatabase went fine and that you’re ready to watch TV. Open up the PC Menu >> Multimedia >> MythTV.

I also copied this MythTV shortcut to my desktop by click dragging it out of the PC menu to the desktop (choose copy here). Then you don’t have to access the menu each time, you can simply double click the shortcut.

Once the front end is up and running, you can immediately go to ‘watch tv’ though it may not look very good due to aspect ratio and filters not being set as well as quality not being set. You change these values by configuring the front end.

Configure the front end with the instructions here: http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-10.html

Now that you’ve got stuff setup the way you like it and you’re watching TV on your new MythTV box, you can add a few ‘plugins’ to supplement your experience.

I chose to install the following add ons:

• mythmusic
• mythnews
• mythdvd
• myththemes
• mythweather

You can choose others but please be advised that mytharchive currently doesn’t work as it is missing a dependency….I’ve reported the problem to the devs and it should be solved soon.

That’s about it! Pretty straight forward as long as you do things in order. I messed up 3-4 times and had to start over when creating this how-to…I installed mythtv before I installed mysql one time…I even messed up and forgot to connect the box to the internet once and banged my head at why it wouldn’t download channel data (it was the end of a long weekend and it was VERY early in the morning).

In all, don’t give up! Keep on trying and if you have questions, please ask via the comments and I’ll try to point you in the right direction.

For those of you already running MythTV…
I’m specifically interested in what combination of filters people have used for their cable TV…it seems I can’t get as good of quality with my us-cable signal that others report (I have a Sharp Aquos 37” LCD TV to display my TV on). So, if you find a good combination, please share it in the comments!

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How-To: PCLinuxOS 2007 and MythTV originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on August 30, 2007.