PlanetGobo

gobolinux: Setting up Rootless GoboLinux in a VPS running Ubuntu: These are some steps usually I follow to make myself comf... http://bit.ly/gneTi4

These are some steps usually I follow to make myself comfortable when I have to work with Debian-based distributions. The exact commands were written for Ubuntu 10.10, and they assume you have powers to run “sudo”. Most of this should be possible as well if you don’t, but the order of things switch around a bit (eg, you’d have to install ZSH using Compile). Steps 1-4 describe a minimal set. The remaining steps relate to some of my preferences.

Step 1: Download the Rootless Installer

wget http://svn.gobolinux.org/tools/trunk/Scripts/bin/CreateRootlessEnvironment

Step 2: Run it

chmod +x CreateRootlessEnvironment
./CreateRootlessEnvironment

Answer “y” when asked to recompile binaries; answer “u” (use new) when asked about settings files. Answer “y” when asked about adding the Rootless launcher to your profile files (bash_profile, zshrc, and so on).

Step 3: Switch to ZSH

You may need to install zsh first in the host system:

sudo apt-get install zsh

Now you can switch:

chsh -s /bin/zsh
echo "prompt lode cyan" >> ~/.zshrc

It’s easiest to just log out and back in to make sure your environment variables are sane.

Step 4: Fix some settings

The current version of Scripts refers to outdated mirror URLs. Edit ~/Programs/Scripts/Settings/Scripts/GetAvailable.conf and replace all references to “kundor.org/gobo/” with “gobolinux.org/”:

sed -i 's,kundor.org/gobo,gobolinux.org/,g' ~/Programs/Scripts/Settings/Scripts/GetAvailable.conf

Step 5: Install Compile

InstallPackage Compile

Choose “sa” to skip all dependencies. Your host system already has everything that’s needed.

Step 6: Install Mtail

Mtail gives us nice colorized outputs for a number of scripts.

Compile mtail

Step 6: Install Dit

Dit is my text editor.

You may need to install Subversion, Autoconf and Lua first in the host system:

sudo apt-get install subversion autoconf liblua5.1-dev lua5.1

(It should be possible to install these packages and all its dependencies in your home using Compile, but if you can, it’s easier to simply install it in the host system.)

Now let’s build Dit. Since Debian packages use a nonstandard suffix for the Lua libraries, we need to pass an extra option during build.

Compile dit --configure-options --with-lua-suffix=5.1

Again, use “sa” to skip all dependencies it may ask for.

gobolinux: LCA video: The video from my GoboLinux talk at linux.conf.au earlier this year is finally up. I can’t watch (too m... http://bit.ly/aMQ9jc

The video from my GoboLinux talk at linux.conf.au earlier this year is finally up. I can’t watch (too many claps), but it’s there for anybody else who wants.

The /System/Aliens talk from the Distro Summit is still missing in action. I’m not sure whether it’s coming or not, but it’s looking unlikely at this point.

gobolinux: Scripts 2.10.2 and Compile 1.13.3 released: More releases, all bugfixes this time. Scripts has a fix for the man d... http://bit.ly/d09rR4

More releases, all bugfixes this time.

Scripts has a fix for the man directory path in PrepareProgram (actually used by Compile), and handles dependency conversion better. It also includes updates to the database used by the CommandNotFound system as usual.

The only notable behaviour change is a special case in the useflag code: having -INSTALLED in the environment variable will now disable automatic flags from occurring at all, rather than applying the change at the end of the process. This helps debugging of recipes and is useful for targeted compilation, and the previous more consistent behaviour doesn’t seem to have a use case.

Compile has a single direct bugfix, affecting a case where a failed direct dependency would not cause the build process to terminate. It also benefits from the changes made within Scripts.

The packages are on the master now and will propagate to the mirrors shortly. You can use `InstallPackage Scripts 2.10.2` and `InstallPackage Compile 1.13.3` to install them. Please report any bugs you encounter in the bug tracker and request help either on the mailing lists or the forums.

Thanks to all those who contributed to this release, particularly “Baffo32″ who sent patches to Scripts.

gobolinux: Compile 1.13.2 released; 015 branch to be merged: There’s a new version of Compile out, with all bug fixes this ti... http://bit.ly/akqNac

There’s a new version of Compile out, with all bug fixes this time. This release fixes building from CMake recipes and corrects the behaviour of the using_X() useflag functions, which was lost in the last reorganisation. using_X() can now set environment variables and override variables set in the recipe again, while CMake recipes have their build directory correctly created.

The package is out and making its way to the mirrors now; InstallPackage Compile 1.13.2 should pick it up. There is no corresponding release of Scripts this time around because all fixes are within Compile itself. The latest Scripts release remains 2.10.1.

Following this release the 015 branches for Scripts and Compile will be merged into trunk to allow them to bed in, get more testing, and pick up the new developments in the trunk. That may cause some disruption to users who are tracking trunk tools; it may be best to hold off updating your snapshots for a few days after the merge, or be prepared to revert.

There is also a new 015 prerelease available for testing, snapshotting the state of work right now. It is available from http://karlsson.sytes.net/gobo/015/iso/GoboLinux-20100214.iso and should be functional. Testing, especially on different hardware, would be appreciated. It should boot and be able to start X correctly; where it doesn’t please make a report with as much detail as possible to the mailing list or on #gobolinux.

gobolinux: LCA day 5 and the GoboLinux talk: The last day brought the reason I was really there, my GoboLinux presentation in... http://bit.ly/50WGRZ

The last day brought the reason I was really there, my GoboLinux presentation in the very last speaking slot. Before then I made it into Sarah Sharp’s USB 3 talk, the photo management BOF, which was less useful than anticipated, and Rusty’s Wiimote presentation. The latter was both amazing and adorable, and well worth watching when the videos come out. The video of the first time it actually worked left me open-mouthed from both directions. That was the last talk I got to since I spent the next couple of hours preparing and practicing.

My slot was right before the closing ceremony and not too badly populated given that it was against at least two others I wanted to see. I don’t think it went too badly, though I did fixate on minor topics at a couple of points, and there were some good questions at the end. Since we were before the ceremony the cutoff was rigorously enforced and we actually ran out of time for them all, but I did have a chat with a couple of interested people at the stage while I was packing up.

Interestingly, and unexpectedly, an article turned up on TechWorld the next day about my talk and about GoboLinux. Some of the quoting is interesting, but the gist of it is there. The slides are also available (I think they’ll be on the conference site too at some point; at least they were collected on a USB stick afterwards), as is a more formally written-up version of the presentation. It doesn’t have all the content the talk did, since I added a few parts, including the whole Rootless section, in the aftermath of Monday’s Distro Summit discussion. Video should be available in a couple of weeks.

The closing ceremony was good enough, but ran long (and started late, so we didn’t really need to have rushed the questions so much…). Mostly that was to fit in thanks to the organisers and helpers, who really did do a fantastic job, so no complaints. Next year’s conference is in Brisbane. I’m not sure whether I’ll go or not yet, but it was definitely valuable this time so I will consider it. No speaking maybe ever again though. The Penguin Dinner that night was all right but also lagged a bit. The entertaining part of it was the Life Flight Trust donations race, which had a fivefold increase in the donation volume in just a couple of hours. I left early to get some actual sleep, so I’m not sure how high it got by the end, but it was approaching $20,000 last I saw.

I was hoping to find out the total at the open day today, but it didn’t appear to be up anywhere. I did get a lot of brochures and blurbs instead, and there was free stuff everywhere too. I didn’t end up with much of that; it was probably more appreciated by my later companion, who got all klepto (but not as klepto as she wanted to be, which seemed like a wasted opportunity). Most appreciated was the koala pen from the LCA2011 booth, so good marketing on their part. It was cute.

That’s a wrap. Later I’ll write up something on the various community engagement presentations I attended, which I think we can get some value out of. There were some others I didn’t make it into that I’ll watch when the videos become available. Right now I’m appreciating the opportunity to do something non-conference-related for a while.

Announcement: The first release candidate for the next version of GoboLinux is now up for download. In this version:

• Better printing support
• Massive update for packages
• Bug fixes post-013

Here's the ISO, the MD5, and, as always, the Bugworks. Have fun!

Benjamin Bruheim suggests a third dimension to GoboLinux, called "flavours".

So its New Year's Day, and........there's nothing to do.

Universally, all the effort towards partying went into last night's festivities, and now its time to clean up. Hopefully for ya'll, it ain't much. :-P

Anyway, I didn't even know that screenshots of GoboLinux 013 are available, but they are.........

......at Softpedia.

Strange thing is that the GoboLinux site's screenshot gallery is still showing screenies from 012 desktops at the most recent.

My favor to ask ya'll: pleeeeeeeze post some of your 013 screenshots to the main site's gallery.

Thanks.


And once again, Have a Gobo New Year.

From the GoboLinux site:

New versions for Scripts (2.6.0), Compile (1.8.0) and Manager (1.1.3) were just released. The main highlights are the improvement of the scripts option parser, and introduction of support for recipes and packages revisions. Our recipe store is going to be updated really soon to use this new scheme, so, go ahead and update those tools at your system.

Note to whom is still using Glibc 2.3.2: This package for Scripts is the last one being linked against Glibc 2.3.2. If your system is based on GoboLinux 012 (or older) and you haven't updated your Glibc yet, please do it: just install this latest version of Scripts ('InstallPackage Scripts') and run 'InstallPackage Glibc' afterwards.

This, of course, was dated from the 16th. Sorry for the lazyness on my part.

Have fun!

I thought about this a few nights ago.

I think this is the point where the FSF and Linux Kernel Team might part ways. Considering that folks on the LKML were considering banning closed-source, non-GPL drivers beginning in January 2008 because of a violation of *their* copyright stipulations, and Torvalds has virulently opposed any such move on the premise of restricting the freedom of the user (namely, in the graphics driver department), the collision of interests may lead to a fork of the kernel under the GPLv3, which provides for exactly what the anti-closed-source-driver folks on the LKML want, and have wanted for a long time.

My views on the GPLv3, though?

Forced evolution.

If Linus Torvalds was right when he said "Linux is Evolution, not Intelligent Design", then the GPLv3 will only force that evolution further. As the hardware companies (Nvidia, ATI, and all) are bound to spurn this version, a Linux kernel under the GPLv3 will have to include hacked, homemade drivers without the support of the semiconductor companies.

Hence, it will have to evolve through a trial-and-error basis unlike any other that it has faced since Linus's project first began in 1992.

It should be interesting.