ken’s blog

Foresight developers and community members have been hitting the streets in NC over the past couple days.  What brings them from all around the world to the humble south you ask?  Foresight 20/20 of course!  It has been so exciting preparing for the first official gathering of Foresight developers, we will surely have fond memories of this event.  If you are in the area, we will be kicking off in the morning at 9am and after wrapping up for the day heading out for dinner and drinks, on both Saturday and Sunday.

Foresight Linux 2.0 has been released, featuring GNOME 2.22. Available for download from rBuilder for both x86 and x86_64 architectures.

Foresight Linux is a Linux distribution for your desktop that features a rolling release schedule that always keeps your desktop up to date. Foresight includes innovative applications that make using your computer easy, including Banshee for music management, F-Spot for photo management, as well as vibrant user and developer community.

New in Foresight 2.0:

The Foresight 2.0 features a new tar-based installer, that should install in less than 10 minutes, including formatting a 200 GB hard drive. Foresight is also developing new editions including KDE and XFCE in addition to GNOME available for x86 and x86_64 processors. Foresight is proud to be the first distribution to ship with:

• PackageKit to help users update their system and add and remove software
• Syslinux, a new bootloader to replace GRUB.
• GNOME-Do: GNOME Do allows you to quickly search for many items present in your GNOME desktop environment (applications, Evolution contacts, Firefox bookmarks, files, artists and albums in Rhythmbox, Pidgin buddies, etc.) and perform commonly used actions on those items (Run, Open, Email, Chat, Play, etc.).

Users should also find it much easier to use binary video card drivers from Nvidia and ATI than in Foresight 1.x. Transmission is also included as the default Bittorrent application.

For more information, please visit http://www.foresightlinux.org/

Because your desktop should be cool.

Updated:

Wow time flies… I just renewed the foresightlinux.{org,com,net} domains, which reminded me it has been 3 years since the first release of Foresight. My baby is growing up

Macbook Air vs. Commodore 64, amazing the Macbook Air wins

I finally got around to setting up a commit mail list for the GNOME Developer Kit. If you want to keep an eye on what is going on, check it out. You can of course subscribe, or just follow the feed.

So I finally got notification that I could get my n810 in the US… yay! Rushed over to the site they sent me to just to find out them rejecting my discount code. The error I get is “there is no balance”. Is anyone else experiencing this? I used the contact page to ask for help, but no reply yet.

UPDATE: Just talked to OgMaciel, he said this is the same problem he had when he ordered his n800 last time around… this is a sad trend!

February will be a busy month, first SCALE in Los Angeles and later in the month FOSDEM 2008 in Brussels. There are a couple of *don’t miss* talks on the packaging track at FOSDEM this year:

• Conary Packaging: Simply Powerful by Michael K Johnson
• PackageKit by Richard Hughes

I am also very excited to get the opportunity to hang out with some of the long time Foresight contributors, Antonio Meireles (doniphon), Mark__T and hopefully some others from Europe (pscott I am looking at you!).

I am hoping to do a lightening talk on the GNOME Developer Kit in the GNOME Dev room.

It is 2008, time for predictions/wishes/etc. Every year people predict “This will be the year of Linux on the Desktop” and later people make jokes about it. The thing is, people assume that declaring it the year for Linux on the Desktop means Linux will dominate the desktop. I see it differently, it is more about accelerating the move to Linux as the choice Desktop. And what do you know… last several years we have been growing like crazy, each year demonstrating more growth than the last.

I am going to put it out there, (drum roll) this year will be the year of the Linux Desktop

I will predict that we will experience even more growth than last year, and 2008 will be a banner year. Linux isn’t perfect as a desktop yet, but none of the alternatives are either.

The areas I really want to see improvement:

• Printer detection/configuration/driver selection
• Better Open Source video drivers

Short list huh? We are close… I am just not thrilled with any of the Linux printer detection/configuration tools. I want it to be dead simple, and imho not even Mac OS X can get that right. I struggled getting an HP printer to work on 10.3.9, so painful!

And don’t get me started on video drivers, it isn’t so much about the quality of the drivers (which needs improvement too), but hardware support. If someone buys a new laptop with the most current ATI video card, it needs to be well supported by a free/open driver at the time it was purchased. Not told “download the closed driver” or use the vesa driver for ~6 months until we get initial support for your device. Or even worse… just stuck not knowing what to do and give up on Linux. I don’t know how to solve it, but it needs to happen.

I have converted most of my family over to Foresight Linux with great results. First impression has really been GNOME related, things really just work how they should and they all say they would never go back to windows.

So lets ride this wave M$ has given us with Vista… the best thing to happen to Linux on the Desktop yet

We have been on the hunt for a volunteer to head up a GNOME booth at the Southern California Linux Expo in February, but no luck yet, which is very disappointing. I would really hate for GNOME to miss the opportunity to participate in SCALE. I will be at SCALE myself, working the Foresight booth and giving a GNOME talk.

The great guys running SCALE have been holding a spot for GNOME, which I really appreciate. Is there anyone in California (or willing/able to travel to LA) who can take the lead on this? Or even just help out? Surely there must be someone in southern California who loves GNOME that would be willing to hang out and talk to folks for a couple days, it really is fun. Any takers, please let me know.

I found some time today (while taking a break from the excitement at Disneyland) to update the anaconda images for the installable iso. I leaned toward the GNOME Love artwork, I just love that heart