ken’s blog

Announcing Foresight Linux 0.9.8.3

This release includes a bunch of version bumps and bug fixes. Most significant updates are Firefox 2.0 and Flash 9. Also sporting Conary 1.1.10 and rAA 1.0.7 which we have started to rebrand for Foresight. It still has the rPath look, but is now labeled “Foresight System Manager” and will soon have a full Foresight look and feel. Mono, F-Spot, Banshee and Beagle have all been updated.

Our installer has seen some major changes. The most noticable change is the updated artwork, however behind the scenes there are some significant improvements. There was a problem with installing on systems with limited memory. That is fixed now and as a side effect a couple of steps in the installation that had been rather slow are significantly faster.

The Foresight community has been growing for sometime, and lately growth has seemed to accelerate. I want to thank all those that have helped get us to where we are today. It has been a great journey. Let’s keep it up!

Help Wanted
We are always looking for more contributers. Right now I think we need help with marketing more than anything. If there are any volunteers to help get Foresight on every PC (I dream big), please let us know!

Firefox 2.0

There has been so much hype about Firefox 2.0, I figured I would blog to let folks know it is available in Foresight. To get it:

sudo conary update firefox

Last night was like a big “Web browser” night. I ended up packaging opera and flock into foresight.rpath.org@fl:1-contrib and of course updating firefox to 2.0.

Flock is pretty interesting to me, it is a so called “Social browser”. It has an interface for dropping your photos into flickr, posting to your blog, etc.

Pumpkin patch… fun!

Made our anual visit to Ganyard Hill Farms today. As always, had a blast and the kids didn’t want to leave.

Drew decided he had to actually lift a pumpkin

I think I can…

Yeah man, I knew I could!

GConf diff tool

Now this is useful, a tool to diff your gconf settings and what is default. Very useful for a packager!

http://www.robster.org.uk/blog/2006/10/17/gconf-diff-tool/

Banshee plugins

I packaged up some banshee plugins, the alarm, beagle and show track on change plugins. You can find them in foresight.rpath.org@fl:1-contrib (which is in your path if you are using Foresight). For info check out http://banshee-project.org/PluginRepository

sudo conary update banshee-alarm-plugin
sudo conary update banshee-beagle-plugin
sudo conary update banshee-showtrackonchange-plugin

Blowing Rock, NC

Back from a short family vacation in the mountains. We had a great time! Kids had a blast, and I think Laurie mostly enjoyed it despite getting hit with some nasty allergy attach. We stumbled on this great little lake, trout lake, where it seems people take their horses to ride. Saw some horses trotting out in the water, it was pretty cool.

The North Carolina mountains are pretty amazing, I would highly recommend a visit

Version 2.0 of JonDesign’s SmoothSlideshow Javascript Library is out

The new version of this impressive little tool features useability improvements, major code rewrite (now using MooTools and objects), graphic changes and bugfixes.
As always, this lib provides a simple way to install great looking slideshow or showcases to your website, in less than 20kb of javascript code.

This is the library used to display the screenshots on the Foresight website, we love it!

read more | digg story

Cool new screenshot interface

Jon has integrated his smoothslideshow stuff into our Screenshot page. Check it out, it is pretty slick.

Announcing Foresight Linux 0.9.8.2

I am very pleased to announce Foresight 0.9.8.2. This is an incremental release to the 0.9.8 series. Xorg now includes AIGLX support by default, beryl (compiz fork) will be coming real soon. GNOME has been updated to 2.16.1.

Other updates:

• glib=2.12.4
• gutenprint=5.0.0
• raa=1.0.6
• gimp=2.3.11
• gnome-sudoku=0.6.1
• gtk=2.10.6
• pango=1.14.5
• pygobject=2.12.2
• pygtk=2.10.2
• evolution=2.8.1
• MPlayer-codecs=20060611
• brasero=0.4.91
• last-exit=3
• mono=1.1.17
• Mesa=6.5.1
• gnome-cups-manager=0.31
• glipper=0.89-1-1

Please file issues at https://issues.foresightlinux.org, they are appreciated!

New website is up

The Foresight website has been rebuilt using Django. The new site looks pretty similar, but is really a big step forward for us.

For starters, the planet is back. The new planet is actually running Feedjack, a django based feed aggregator.

There is also now a screenshot interface. Currently it still looks similar to the old site. But it is completely integrated into django. There are categories and versions associated with the screenshots to help keep things organized. We also plan to add an interface for users to contribute screenshots.

Another planned feature is a forum. It isn’t done yet, but Jon has been working hard putting this all together for us. Thanks Jon!