Utah Open Source Planet

Recently, I announced a Fedora 10 release party here on my blog,  It turns out, that not only will it be a release party, with (hopefully) physical and electronic media available, but it will also be an installfest!!

SO BRING YOUR MACHINES AND GET THEM INSTALLED!

Victor Villa of the Utah PHP User Group (UPHPU) and a Utah Open Source Core Team Leader has offered his work as the location for the event.  It’s large, easy to find and best of all, centrally located in Draper, Utah.

We’ll have food, fun and probably even some prizes.  We’re working out the minor details but come on down and enjoy an evening of reverie with your Fedora friends!

Time to Fire It Up!

Clicking on the above poster will show the address and other details.

Here they are in print:

See you all there.

Cheers,

Herlo

Get yours today.

Fedora 10 - Released

Available at mirrors everywhere.  Also via bittorrent ? and jigdo ?.

Freedom, Friends, Features, First!  That’s Fedora!

• Take the Tour
• Read the Release Notes
• Digg it

Cheers,

Herlo

As of this afternoon, between myself and Steven Moix, it appears that almost all of the Fedora 10 Tour will be ready for the upcoming release.  Check it out for yourself, we’re only missing the release summary which should be written very soon.

Also, I should note that the countdown has already started:

Also, F10 Preview came out yesterday during the election so nobody probably noticed.  Get yours today!

Cheers,

Herlo

Got to FUDCon today after a nice semi-sleepy red-eye flight.  I was surprisingly awake for a person who has had less than 3 hours of sleep in the last 24+ hours.  As I arrived, following Max’s instructions to the Hyne’s Convention Center, an announcement.  The spins hackfest was beginning.

I quickly grabbed some coffee and an apple and headed in after Max.  Little did I know how great this fest was going to be, all 4+ hours of it.  After a good list of goals, Max handed control over to Mo and off we went.

Discussion surrounded three main stories, one for a user wanting to download a spin, one desiring to submit a spin and one for reviewers of spins.  As it turns out, developing stories for the first two were pretty easy, and just before 11, we had a good idea of how to implement applications for these two users.

However, the third story, the one for reviewing.  Yeah, that one.  Well, I guess I just need to ask one hard question.  The question I had was a simple one, but the answer is apparently much more complex, including both technical and legal questions about third-party distributions.  And while it seems like a simple distinction, I brought this upon myself, uncovering a discussion that has been going on for 2+ years now.

The biggest problem is for those spins that include software not in the fedora repositories.  How do we treat these spins?  The discussion ended up being that while hosting these spins might not be feasible, we’d like to have a way to market the spins as built on Fedora or something similar. It seems that this is a good choice, but it needs to go through legal.

After an hour long discussion about these details (which I caused), we tabled it and came up with a good list of tasks to get the project started.  Thanks to Ian Weller, there’s a good wiki page covering much of this discussion.  In fact, I have a couple of tasks to complete this week.

At the end of the day, I ended up with some Red Hat folks at Legal Sea Foods, good wine, great company.  If I wasn’t so tired, I’d have stayed much longer.  Good times…

Tomorrow’s FUDCon barcamp looks to be pretty interesting.  I plan to attend the video tools, the getting contributors and bug triage.  In addition, there will probably be a couple that will come up tomorrow morning, so we’ll se how it goes.

Cheers,

Herlo

Calling all OpenSUSE folks… Hey, quick thought… Do we have a Release Party for OpenSUSE 11.0 in the works, yet? Last time, we put one together with like 2 days to spare. That went ok and everything… I’m just wondering about the who, what, where, when, why, how details. Cuz in all honesty and actuality, I haven’t heard a peep to the effect.

Regarding anything related to any kind of OpenSUSE 11.0 release party, all I can find is this OpenSUSE 11.0 Launch Party Locations page. And I mean…, as deeply insightful and enlightening as that is, apparently I didn’t glean the information my brain seems to seek.

I can bring plenty of sarcasm and zealotry, I may be a little dim on the wit, though. If I can help coordinate or enforce or communicate with telepathic hand signals, let me know.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-May/msg00007.html

Get yours today! http://fedoraproject.org

Be sure and digg it too:

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Fedora_9_Sulphur_Released

Well, usually I forget to take pictures, because either A) I forget my camera [I brought it this time] or 2) I get wrapped up in the event and forget to bring it with me.  But this release party, I plain just forgot to charge my batteries for my camera, oops!

Fortunately, I was able to snap a few pictures with some of the spare, also not fully-charged, batteries I did have on hand.  However, others took many pictures and I’ve listed them below.

• Sheri Bigelow took some great pictures.  She is a great local photographer, web designer and the local webmistress.
• Tristan Rhodes, a local Asterisk Entrepreneur posted a good blog post.
• Here’s the pictures I took.  Not nearly as many, or as good.

To summarize the party, much celebration was had with foosball, a chess game on one of the largest chess boards around, video games, air hockey and much more was provided by CodeGreene.  The FedoraProject and Utah Open Source sponsored the food and prizes.  If you’ve never had a Chipotle burrito, they are the best burritos around.

I was able to spend time with about 5-7 people myself sharing the Preview Release of Fedora 9 (codename Sulphur) including two who had never had previous success with Fedora or Linux in general.  It was very satisfying to see things work for them.

The Ubuntu folks were there in strength as well.  The Hardy Heron (8.04) CDs were being passed out, while we Fedoran’s provided LiveUSB versions.  I even saw people taking advantage and obtaining both!  Its great to see communities come together and celebrate together.

The party continued at Salt Lake Pizza & Pasta for another couple hours.  Lot’s of talk about the releases, upcoming events, and general mayhem took place including having Heartsbane shoot beer through his nose when I swore at him!

All in all, quite a successful evening and I look forward to helping others in November at our next release party.

Cheers,

Herlo

UPDATE: Another 70+ pictures have been added, check them out!

As many of you may already know, Fedora 9 (codename: Sulphur) has been pushed back 2 weeks to May 13.  Being the organizer of the Utah Fedora/Ubuntu Linux Release Party on May 3, its kind of hard to push it back because Ubuntu’s release is still on time.

I’m glad though that the major parts of this release are feature complete and its just a few blocker bugs holding it back.  I’m also really happy to point out that because the folks at the Fedora Project are willing to push the date back, the release will be much better off in the end.

This also goes to show that while many businesses would consider releasing anyway.  Mainly because they promised something, and not releasing would cost them revenue and possible customers.  Open source people don’t follow the same mantra, and I’m proud to say that while I like meeting deadlines, if deadlines slips a little to make a better product, timelines should slip.

In the meantime, enjoy the preview release made available yesterday.  Utah will party with this preview.  Shortly after the party, an update will be made available via yum.  There are some amazing things coming out in a few weeks.  Keep your ear to the ground and enjoy the new Sulphur in your life!

Cheers,

Herlo

Get yourself some of that sulphur love!

From the mouth of the daring Mike McGrath:

The beta is live.  Go out, get people and try to crash the servers!  The
challenge is on :-P

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

Personally, I’ve been on Rawhide (the development tree) since February.  While there have been some bumpy roads, most of it has been smooth sailing.  These Fedora guys really know what they are doing :)

Tell me what you think of the latest and greatest of Linux releases?

Cheers,

Herlo

UPDATE: Feel free to digg this article if you like the beta

http://digg.com/linux_unix/The_Fedora_Project_releases_Fedora_9_Beta

The latest and greatest Rawhide of Fedora has been put into an Alpha Release.  I downloaded both the LiveCD and the DVD isos yesterday, which took 15+ hours.

Just a reminder that Alpha means its not ready for your production box, so test it extensively and give feedback.  When the Beta comes out in March, I plan to move my lappy over.  Until then, I’ll just keep testing.

You can get yours from:

http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/9-Alpha/

A list of the upcoming features for Fedora 9 are available here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/9/

Cheers,

Clint

Its been a little couple weeks since I posted anything useful in my Program of the Week (POW) series. And while I still plan to keep that up in the near future, I am going to be doing a new series, Distro Comparisons, with Flare!

My plan is to install the other two major distros of Linux (OpenSUSE and Ubuntu) and compare them with Fedora, my favorite distribution. I’ll be comparing them on installation, features, tools and any other thing that I regularly use in my day-to-day life. Once the distros are all installed (in a triple-boot, no less), I’ll be keeping each one for a week at a time over the next few months.

Over each week, I’ll write down things that are awesome, good, bearable, or just plain bug me, and each will get a score. To be fair, I’ll make sure to rank them with a maximum of +5 and a minimum of -5. Its possible that a negative score can happen, but I expect that this will not be the case for any of the distros.

Anyway, wish me luck on my triple-boot installs and my future blogging with these comparisons. I also hope this will enlighten others about the options available in each of the distros and encourage the developers to continue to improve the usability and functionality of their particular distribution.

Tonight, I’ll be installing and setting up OpenSUSE 10.3 and running it for the next week. During the holidays, I’ll be taking a bit of a break, so blogging might be a bit slower. In early January, I’ll install Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10) as well. See you all on the flip side.

Cheers,

Herlo

The POW is going to be the improvements made in the Bluetooth functionality in Fedora 8. I’m actually quite impressed with it as its been a bit of a challenge to keep my little mouse connected in the past.

Fedora 8 provides a new extended technology with its bluez-gnome package. In fact, the simplicity of it is that I only have to be able to click and approve a new device.

When I first turn on my bluetooth mouse and start to move it around, it doesn’t work, but up in the top right hand corner of my GNOME desktop is the bluetooth manager. It has a message for me:

The message indicates a click to authorize the device, namely the bluetooth mouse. (One note here, I was originally unable to use my touchpad, so I had to resort to other tactics [not pretty] to enable my mouse. Probably ought to have some other options available instead of clicking.)

Clicking on the notification window above brings me to an authorization window.

At this point, authorization is quite simple. Click yes for a one time authorization of the mouse (Note the Bluetooth Travel Mouse indicated in the description), and to authorize it more permanently, choose Always Grant Access.

That’s it. My Bluetooth mouse is now enabled and working. I’d say this is much friendlier than what I used to have to do, including running hidd –connect <bluetooth id> after pressing the little connect button on the bottom of the mouse. This is sure nice now!

Its possible, that at some point, disconnecting the device might be necessary. To do this, right-click on the nice little Bluetooth logo at the top right of your screen.

Choose Preferences. Up pops the Bluetooth Preferences window. From this window, three tabs are available. In the first (and also selected) tab, there is a section at the bottom of the window which lists the devices that are currently bonded and/or trusted. Choose the device from the list and then the appropriate action. The choices are Disconnect, Trust or Delete.

In addition to just configuring your devices, it appears it might be possible to do things like Bluetooth DUN with a Treo, or enable data synchronization between laptops. One thing I’ve always wanted to try is to get my bluetooth headset working so I could do Skype or Asterisk phone calls through my headset, to my computer and out through the service.

Cheers,

Herlo

Recently, there was a request in one of my comments on this post. The request was for an easy way to upgrade from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8. So I took this on as a bit of a challenge. I feel pretty comfortable with yum and I thought it would be a good and easy task.

A bit of warning here, make sure your current Moonshine ( Fedora 7 ) release is update by running yum update. Also, it is recommended that backups be made of files being modified. If you don’t backup the file, it may be impossible to fix in the future. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Let’s upgrade Moonshine ( Fedora 7 ) to Werewolf ( Fedora 8 ) in three easy steps:

First things first, lets print out some version info:

$ cat /etc/*release
Fedora release 7 (Moonshine)
Fedora release 7 (Moonshine)

$ uname -r
2.6.23.1-21.fc7

Its easy to tell that this machine is indeed using Moonshine ( Fedora 7 ), so let’s upgrade!

Step 1 - Modify the yum repo files

Located in /etc/yum.repos.d directory are where the yum repository files are stored. We need to modify one line so that yum will know where to look:

$ su -
# vim /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo

Find the first line that starts:

mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-$releasever&arch=$basearch

and change it:

mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-8&arch=$basearch

What changed? Well, the $releasever value is the current value for our version of fedora, in this case 7. By changing it to 8, it’ll load the correct repositories for Werewolf (F8) instead of Moonshine (F7). Save the file, and now we’re ready to move onto the next step.

Step 1 (Alternate)

Since posting this, I’ve learned that another option is available. To update the repositories, its possible to install an rpm to accomplish the same as above and it won’t require Step 3.

Choose your mirror from http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org. I picked University of Oregon’s site because it was close to me.

# rpm -Uvh \
ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Everything/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-*.rpm

Your ftp/http line here may be different, that is fine. This command installs the updated repositories for Werewolf ( Fedora 8 )

Step 2 - Upgrade

In this step, we just need to run (as root):

# yum update
fedora               100% |===============| 2.1 kB   00:00
primary.sqlite.bz2   100% |===============| 4.9 MB   00:03
Setting up Update Process
Resolving Dependencies
.. snip ..

A few prompts will appear, after the repository data is loaded, a list of several hundred megs (possibly a gigabyte or more) of packages will be ready to install. This is the moment of truth.

Transaction Summary
============================
Install     88 Package(s)
Update     836 Package(s)
Remove       1 Package(s)

Total download size: 1.0 G
Is this ok [y/N]:

Start the download of over 800 packages (in my case) and install and update your system. If you feel a bit of trepidation, I concur. Its still exciting though, isn’t it?

Is this ok [y/N]: y

Now aren’t you excited! In about 30-45 minutes, you’ll have a newly upgraded Werewolf ( Fedora 8 ).

Downloading Packages:
orca-2.20.0.1-1. 100% |=========================| 1.5 MB    00:01
.. snip ..

Step 3 - Cleanup and Reboot

Welcome to your new Werewolf. Treat it wisely. First things first though, we need to clean up our editing from step 1:

# vim /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo

Find the first line that starts:

mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-8&arch=$basearch

and change it:

mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-$releasever&arch=$basearch

Save the file, or if you prefer, copy the backup you made over the modified repo file.

In addition, there are some items that aren’t in Fedora 8 the same way they were in Fedora 7. For these, read this guide. I didn’t have these problems myself, ymmv.

To get the newly updated kernel and all the new goodness of Werewolf, a reboot is necessary. Enjoy your new Lycanthrope on the flip side.

Cheers,

Herlo

So its been a whole two days since I upgraded to Werewolf. I love it! Most everything works out of the box (OOTB), wireless, bluetooth, even suspend/resume seem to be possible for the first time!

But one of the oddities I encountered while upgrading was the names of the packages. Mind you, this is just my twisted mind being interested in some of the funny odd or strange package names I found while the yum upgrade was taking place.

So here’s the list anyway, with a short description of each. Enjoy:

• gwenhywfar - A multi-platform helper library for networking and security applications and libraries.
• meanwhile - Lotus Sametime session functionality.
• neon - An HTTP and WebDAV client library.
• coolkey - Linux Driver support for the CoolKey and CAC products.
• rarian - Designed as a replacement for scrollkeeper; A documentation meta-data library.
• openjade - An implementation of the ISO/IEC 10179:1996 standard DSSSL.
• sox - (Sound eXchange) is a sound file format converter.
• cadaver - A command-line WebDAV client.
• booty - Small python library for use with bootloader configuration.
• orca - A flexible, extensible, and powerful assistive technology.
• zenity - Lets you display Gtk+ dialog boxes from the command line and through shell scripts.
• eog - Eye of GNOME (EOG) is an image viewer.
• gok - Enables users to control their computer without relying on a standard keyboard or mouse, leveraging GNOME’s accessibility framework
• devilspie - A window-matching utility.*

This information was gathered using the command ‘rpm -qi <packagename>’.  This provided enough information to help understand at least the basics of each of these packages and whether to consider using them in the future.

The packages in italics above are packages that I consider interesting, and I plan to attempt to blog about each of them in turn as part of my POW series.

The devilspie package has a * which means that I’ve used this program before.  I quite enjoyed using the Devil’s Pie, and plan to take a look at it again in Fedora 8 as the previous package had some real limitations and lacked needed flexibility.

Please watch for the upcoming articles on these utilities.  Also, if there are packages that you found interesting during your upgrade, please comment and let me know what they are so I can learn and possibly use them as well.

Cheers,

Herlo

Wish me luck. I’ve decided to take the plunge and upgrade to werewolf tonight. After reading Max Spevack’s post about how to upgrade to Fedora 8, this post from Will Woods stating that Rawhide is now ready to go and of course the current code freeze for this Thursday’s release, I think its time to upgrade.

In fact, I plan for Fedora 9 to do this much earlier so I can help test the release. I post here and now to make sure that commit to helping the Fedora Project squash bugs for Fedora 9. I’ll accomplish this by installing it at Test 1 and actually report bugs as I find them.

Wish me luck with this upgrade and my future endeavors. I think its a good cause and a great way to get further involved with the community.

Cheers,

Herlo

As some of you may know, I am the founder of the Utah Open Source Foundation.  On November 10, we’ll be holding the Multi-Distro Release Party, and I planned on sharing Fedora (of course), OpenSUSE and Ubuntu.  Its the only Multi-Distro Release Party going on that I know of, but I could be wrong.  If you live in Utah, you should come, it’ll be a blast!

The point of this post is to ask a simple question, however.  During the promotion of this event, I’ve received suggestions beyond the three big versions of Linux that are being released close to one month from each other.  For example, OpenBSD will be release soon, and Apple released Leopard for Mac OSX, among others.  And while every operating system is welcome to participate in the MDRP, I can’t help but wonder about certain definitions.

My question is what counts as a distro?.  I mean how do you classify yourself as a distro?  Is it a Linux only thing?  Or, is it just Open Source OSes?  Maybe its nothing, and I’m just bringing this up for no good reason.

Your comments are appreciated and encouraged.

Cheers,

Herlo

The fact that Ubunut, SUSE, OS X, OpenBSD and of course Fedora are coming out about one month from each other. I thought it would be useful to have a poll about which is the better name of the latest releases. Please feel free to add your vote.

Cheers,

Herlo

I don’t know about you, but I believe that this name is the best ever! Its well timed too, seeing as a late October release was planned.

I suppose Moonshine was good for Fedora 7, and Ubuntu does its naming convention with the latest being Gusty Gibbon. I have to say though that for sure Werewolf for fedora 8 takes the cake!

I love the name, great choice! I look forward to the November 10 Multi-Distro Release Party. We can celebrate fedora 8 along with all the other distributions being released this month. Isn’t it exciting!

Cheers,

Herlo

Update: Nicu Buculei drew this amazing werewolf which I thought was just awesome!

One of the coolest new things coming out for Fedora 8, the Gnome Online Desktop! Its an amazing device, provides a simple interface for working with the new web world in which we live.

It reminds me a bit of spotlight for Mac, but this thing has much more. With all of the web integration it has, including google docs, calendar, last.fm, digg and more, you can’t pass up the opportunity to try out this amazing desktop.

I’ve attached an ogg/vorbis screencast of some of my interaction with it in Fedora 8 Test 3. Although it claims to be just a demo, it sure looks good!

onlinedesktop-screencast - 23MB (could take a while)

Cheers,

Herlo

I’m loving this, 4 distros released within one month. Of course fedora is one of them! Fedora 8 Test 3 came out last Thursday, and I’ve been playing with it a little.

It has a nice new look and feel, some cool new features including CodecBuddy, OnlineDesktop and improvements in Bluetooth, NetworkManager and PulseAudio (improved sound quality).

I’m really excited to see all of the talk about these cool new features and looking forward to helping you all install this great wonderful distro (along with Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and OpenBSD) on November 10 at the Multi-Distro Release Party at the OSTC.

I’ve also included a few screenshots for the curious onlooker:

Cheers,

Herlo

I’ve debated this for some time. How long should it be to be notified of an instant message (IM), or private message (PM), or someone saying your name in internet relay chat (IRC)? I’ve still not answered this question, but I’ve got at least a tool that will help you when irssi receives a message directly to you.

This tool was first described to me here. And I blogged about it in this previous post. The general idea is to set up an irssi script that will write out data to a file. That file, in turn was read by the tail command over ssh and a notification window would appear anytime a new message was sent directly to you.

That capability hasn’t changed. Instead, I’m trying to improve how that is done. In the old way, a persistent ssh connection was needed to tail the file on the remote machine running irssi. This caused headaches and problems; some were easy to deal with, others much harder. I think for the most part, I’ve addressed these issues.

What does the new script do you ask? Well, the perl part from the original hasn’t changed, the other script have changed, however. Its been divided up into two scripts in fact. The original script irssi-script.sh now obtains the flat file written by the irssi perl plugin using a cron job that runs every minute. The new file fnotify.sh will run every 10 seconds and check to see if the flat file has been downloaded. Once it detects a new file, it will display the contents of that file as messages using the notify-send tool.

All of the scripts are available from my svn repository at http://www.herlo.org/fnotify. Please feel free to check it out as its set up for anonymous checkout.

I’ve provided a README and an INSTALL file which should help you get the script set up for you. Please send an email to clints At UToS . OrG or comment here on the blog with any questions and I’ll happily try to help.

Back to my original question. How long should it take? Will you let me know?  Currently, this script can take as long as 1 minute 10 seconds to send notification of a message.  Is this too long?

Thank you,

Herlo

I’ve been curious lately as to how I could print labels for my Fedora 7 DVDs.  Because I am officially a Fedora Ambassador for Utah, I would like to give out nice looking DVDs with labels on them.  Well, I found a very nice lady who’s put up eps versions of such labels and I plan to take them and print a few for myself and for those I give the DVDs/CDs.  Here’s the link:

http://www.isity.net/blog/?p=60

Enjoy these labels and send me pictures of your DVD happiness.

Cheers,

Herlo

As of 8 AM MDT, Fedora 7 is available!

There are several to choose from so choose wisely. This Fedora is one of the largest undertakings by the Fedora Project. Here are just a few things you’ll get with Fedora 7:

• CD Creation Tools - Build your own custom Fedora CD/DVD with its own rpms and cateogories
• Live CD for both GNOME and KDE - Something cool to give away to somebody who has never tried Linux. Or use it for rescuing a machine.
• KVM Virtualization - A new way to make multiple operating systems run on your box.
• Tickless Kernel - Better power consumption for laptops.
• Extended wireless functionality - My wireless card will work now, yea!!!

There are many more than what are listed here. Go out and get your Fedora 7 today. There are two ways you can get the release, one by internet:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/Download — Currently, down. Keep trying!
http://torrent.fedoraproject.org - Currently working.

Or you can come to the release party tonight, where I’ll be demonstrating (hopefully) many of these cool features. You can find that announcement:

http://www.utos.org/2007/05/29/utah-open-source-the-open-source-technology-center-and-fedora-7/

And the map to the event:

http://tinyurl.com/25394b

Hope to see you with your sparkling new Fedora 7 box very soon.

Cheers,

Herlo

So, I recently installed Thunderbird 2.0 on my Fedora Core 6 box. Here is what I did to get it working:

# yum --enablerepo=development list thunderbird
. . . snip . . .
Available Packages
thunderbird.i386 2.0.0.0-1.fc7 development

# yum -y --enablerepo=development update thunderbird
. . . snip . . .
Updated: thunderbird.i386 0:2.0.0.0-1.fc7
Complete!

The great thing is Thunderbird 2.0 comes with some really cool features which I have completely enjoyed:

• Save searches as folders
• Type as you go search in the message body
• GMail and .mac accounts in two clicks
• Custom message tags

This is also fun to write as a comparison to the Thunderbird installation on Ubuntu.  I thought you’d like to hear the experience from another side.

Cheers,

Herlo