Got Beagle cooked up yesterday in my repository… and it is cool.. Still have some issues to work out, but I think they are related to the inotify patch to the kernel.
I need to figure out how to how to make the inotify device automatically and how to make the dbus and beagled startup to happen automatically for all users…
Thanks to the fine developers over at Specifix, shadows are available! So, I have created a shadow of their main distro using the conary label conary.vandine.org@ken:desktop (this namespace will change when we think of a cool name). This shadow will be used to add some very cool, more bleeding edge stuff for a desktop distro. Things like Beagle, Dashboard, etc.
The GNOME folks are working on some very cool stuff, and we want to create something that can really showcase it. There will also be a shadow of this distro which will be used to create a LiveCD. Very cool stuff.
If you are interested in discussion, we have a general discussion mailing list as well as a commits watch list.
Well, I have made progress towards my goal of porting Specifix Linux to PPC. I now have Ubuntu installed on my ibook with Conary installed and working.
Yes, on my iBook. For anyone that has been reading this blog, I know I had explained that I was going to do this on the Dual G4 I bought off eBay. Plans changed, Laurie now has lots of free time on her hands and will be using the G4 alot. It is the only desktop class box we have, and she will be doing lots of graphics work which is much easy with a real monitor and mouse. On that note, if anyone is looking for someone to do work with their digital photos, let me know. She does great work!
Now onto my Linux/Conary install. This was not that simple, first Ubuntu doesn’t have all the development tools installed by default which in general is a good thing (imho). So, I had to install the necessary tools which took a little time. I also had to install Python2.4, and elfutils. Elfutils is a problem on Debian based systems due to some sort of licensing issue which I do not understand. So, I had to install elfutils from source, and of course it didn’t build well. So, I eventually extracted the source tarball from the SRPM for Fedora PPC, thanks Fedora! That built just fine.
After all that, I now have a working Conary. I have cooked up several troves… and it feels good!
Now it is time to bootstrap… more to come soon.
Well, i pre-ordered a copy of iLife ‘05 to help with my home video project. It was to be delivered by the 22nd. Well, Fedex says they delivered it yesterday… but to the wrong address. Funny thing, they have 2 addresses that they delivered my one package to. Neither of which is mine… not sure how that happens. I guess they have some magical machine to clone my copy of iLife and give it to multiple people. Sigh…
Tonight we had sushi, nothing fancy… but we pickup some various rolls at Harris Teeter. It was soooo good. I have never bought sushi @ the grocery store before, and I was pleased. Perhaps you really can get edible sushi at the grocery store? Perhaps it was just because I had such a craving for sushi tonight? Perhaps Microsoft makes a descent Operating System? Nah, that one can’t be true 
Well, today I packaged up gnome-blog for Specifix Linux. It is a very simple applet that allows you to post to most popular blogging systems.
It is very simple, and easy to use… so now I have no excuse not to post to my blog often 
We’ll see if my pattern changes!
So the G4 I bought off Ebay works great! One problem, the ATA interface on the Sawtooth doesn’t see more that 127GB of my 250GB drive I added. So I had to buy a Sonnet Tempo ATA133 PCI card. Now it should see the whole drive, and it should also perform a bit better… Can’t wait to get it installed so I can finally get to work on all those videos Laurie is waiting for
Don’t buy one! I picked one up early this year, figured it would be handy to have on hand for when I needed to get a box without functioning wireless on my wireless network. Sounds simple, it is a bridge from wired ethernet to wireless. Driver independant, system independant, and is supposed to just work. Well, I have never gotten it to work consistently. Until last night, I never really spent much time on it because I really didn’t have a big need to have it… it was more of a “for when I need it” item.
So, last night I tried to setup the G4 I picked up off eBay and figured this was a good thing to use the game adapter for. Of course it didn’t work… so, my first step was to upgrade the firmware on the game adapter and the Dlink wireless router. The firmware upgrade went sore on the router… and brought my home network down 
Lots of headaches… tried to reset the router which did seem to get it back up and running again. Then I couldn’t login to it, I had forgotten the default password and the manuals were long since tossed (or in a box, not sure). And, of course I didn’t have a number for Dlink. Couldn’t get online to look it up… etc… Called 800 directory assistance and they said they didn’t a listing… Crap! So, I dug thru a box of old CDs to find the original CD that came with it. Whew… got things back up and running pretty quickly then.
Long story short, the Linksys game adapter is crap… and I wouldn’t recommend buying one. Now I guess I need to buy an airport extreme for the G4. The big question, is there a linux driver for it… I need to do some research today.
I am finally settled into the new house and it is time to get back to my projects. Here is a list of what I am working on:
I have promised Laurie I would get all of our videos of Ashlyn edited and on DVD, so that has to be high on the list
I really want to build the specifix distro on PPC, which is due in tomorrow (I can’t wait). It will be a dual boot box, so when I am not editing the videos I can compile Linux applications.
GNOME LiveCD, this has slipped a bit. The goal is to create a conary based LiveCD to be used by the GNOME Marketing folks for demos, propaganda, sending out for reviews, etc… Once I get a few things worked out, this shouldn’t be that big of a project. My first list of packages are here.
MythTV distro, conary based distro that is skinnied down to just include necessary tools for a full functioning MythTV box. I have some of the recipes and had them in a repository, but it is fried and I need to start from scratch.
Anyone know how to clone a human?
Just picked up an old Mac on eBay, Dual processor G4 450Mhz. Good machine, I hope to get it in a week or so. First order of business is to cook up a Conary based distro for PPC
The primary purpose for this box is video editing. I have a ton of digital video that needs to get edited and burned to DVD. Kino is nice, but it isn’t quite ready for prime time (yet). So, for now I will dual boot this box with OSX and Specifix Linux. I have committed to getting the video to DVD by mothers day. After that, it may become just Linux, we’ll see.
