ken’s blog

The other night I published isos for 0.9.3, it is a minor update from 0.9.2. There was a nasty bug in anaconda that caused grub install problems for some users, that is fixed now. Also, system-config-display was broken, also fixed in this release. Not completely however, It fails during the firstboot process. This means you will get a default resolution of 800×600, to fix:

Desktop->Applications->Display

Configure your display and logout/login.

There are also a few updated packages, the only one to note is an update tango icon set… I LOVE THEM!

It has been a long hard road, but 0.9.2 ISOs are now posted. I will say they aren’t perfect, but a huge jump from the previous ISOs released. The most noticable bug is the lack of the bootsplash. It seems broken. I haven’t even looked at it at all yet… Just glad things work.

What has changed? It would be easier to ask what hasn’t changed?

From the surface, there doesn’t appear to be a significant change.

• The gtk theme has been hacked to use colors that match our look better.
• Default icon set is tango.
• Stripped out stuff that folks won’t even miss, which shaved 120MB off the 2nd CD
• Added laptop-tools, which includes some nice wireless drivers, NetworkManager, GNOME Power, and ndisgtk (GUI for configuring windows wireless drivers)
• Convert back to using GNOME Systems Tools
• Package selection in the installer

Now the less obvious stuff, which is a much bigger change. We completely reorganized our group structure which is more like rPath Linux. Back when we created our groups, rPath hadn’t really decided yet, so we took a stab at it. Well, anaconda didn’t like it (and really hates me). It really seems to be related to the new package selection, which is oh so sweet. And instead of begging poor Matt to hack anaconda to support our groups… I decided to start over I am rather happy we did. Now it is easier for us to follow some things in rPath Linux, like the compat32 stuff needed for an x86_64 port.

Speaking of ports, there have been some cross compiling features added to conary (not released yet) which will make it easier for us to build for x86_64 and PPC. I am quite excited about that! Time to get off my lazy butt and buy a fast build box for Foresight, set the target to ppc, and start cooking!

I have begun organizing a LUG talk schedule, getting the word out about Conary and rBuilder Online. You can find the schedule here. If you are interested in having a Conary hacker visit your LUG, please let me know.

So Ashlyn is old enough to understand Christmas more, and is pretty into the decorations and Santa this year. She had a blast helping us pick out our tree at Jordan Lake Christmas Tree farm. Last night she helped me hang some lights out side and setup our decorative train in the front yard… she had a great time “helping daddy”. Tonight she got to stay up late, 10pm helping to decorate the tree. She hung most of the lower ornaments and put the star on top. Then enjoyed a nice cup of hot cocoa with mommy and daddy before going to bed. Christmas is going to be so much fun this year.

So I gave up on our (Foresight) group structure last week and rebuilt it from scratch based on the latest rPL group-dist. We had shadowed it long ago… like the first week shadows worked And since then the groups have changed allot, and we had organized it before rPL had a finalized structure. Now with package selection in anaconda there seemed to be some problems, it would install about half the troves (not even conary was installed). This new structure also includes all the fancy compat32 stuff we need to really build a real x86_64 release. So, that should be much easier now
The new version got a bump to 0.9.2, and I think it is about ready for prime time. There is one minor bug that is breaking the installer, which has now been fixed in tip (the mercurial version of cvs HEAD). So now we just have to wait for a conary release… which we are due for