ken’s blog

I added a couple of new things this week, and of course they will track trunk.

• vinagre - (Very cool to see avahi support)
• conduit

Keep those suggestions coming!

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.

It’s been a while since I have blogged about the GNOME Developer Kit. It has still been building daily, so plenty of updates. I have added some additional packages by request, hopefully they will help make it into an even more useful tool.

Added:

• Anjuta
• Meld
• MonoDevelop
• valgrind
• translate-toolkit
• poedit

I have also modified the build system to use the svn revision for package version. I am now able to do a comparison of the latest revision in svn and the latest package version, and only rebuild the package if it has a new revision. Another beneft this gives us is an easy way to see what svn revision of a package you are running. Here is an example:

conary q glib
glib=r6302-1-1

More great news, Joshua Hesketh has started documenting some ways to use the devel kit for development. More coming soon… stay tuned!

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

I am heading out of town for a family vacation, and will be mostly away from the computer. We have setup the gnome-live product in bugzilla, so please use that to provide feedback, request packages, and of course file bugs. I will look forward to a full inbox when I return.

Want to improve the coolest project on the planet? Too hard to build all of GNOME from source, just to use the latest development code?

We are delighted to introduce the GNOME Developer Kit, with daily builds of GNOME. It is currently available in VMWare live image and installable ISO forms.

Once you download it, you will easily be able to update it every day with PackageKit or Conary, so no need to download new versions. There will be new downloads available regularly, probably daily, so when you download it, it will be ready to go immediately, without waiting for additional updates. The best of both worlds!

Remember, there are many ways to get involved with GNOME, not just coding. We need documenters, translators, testers, and developers. For ideas, visit the GNOME Love page.