Cool localisation stuff happening with PackageKit

Package spec files and PackageKit backends are rarely localised. This doesn't matter much if you speak English, but really sucks if you don't. We can't fix all the distro tools and all the packages in the world, but we can do our best to be clever:

This is with my locale set to “en_GB” and the libpackagekit results hardcoded to “fr” – the two will match up eventually of course.

Theres a new GObject called PkExtra in libpackagekit that lets you query (as a user) a small cached sqlite repository containing all the localisations and icon names. The data from this is populated per system (as root) from a few information sources:

  • All the installed desktop files in /usr/share/applications (this works now)
  • Metadata from the online desktop project (to get things like popularity, WIP)
  • Information about non-installed packages generated from the distro builder (WIP)

I don't think caching the installed icons and shipping them seporatly is a good idea, just from a size point of view.

The sqlite database is currently at 200kb in size with 201 applications installed (i.e. things that ship desktop files) so I'm guessing it would be couple of Mb with the entire fedora repository of information in and the online desktop stuff. Of course, being sqlite, it's very quick to query.

Updating the offline repo would be left to the distro packager, as of course, this stuff is all per-distribution. There is lots of stuff still to work out, but slowly, it's coming together. Comments welcome.

Nouveau Progress

I compiled the new mesa today, so I could try out the latest nouveau 3D stuff:

So close….. yet so far.

Some stuff rocks hard with the new stuff, in particular supertux runs really well now :-)

Also, thanks to Stuart Bennett, My LCD panel now uses the same dithering as the binary blob. This means it looks as good with the free driver as with the blob. We're still thinking about how we can work out what bit corresponds to FPDither.

If you are coming to FOSDEM, make sure you add Stephane Marchesin and the other guys in #nouveau to your drinks list. :-)

Dear NVIDIA and LENOVO

Dear NVIDIA and LENOVO,

Please can you tell me what bit in your NV4x BIOS corresponds to if_is_18bit, i.e. if my LVDS panel supports 24 bit colour or not.
I do understand telling the nouveau developers such business-critical pieces of information could impact future profits, and I do understand that documenting magic numbers means that the numbers could be seen by both ATI and Intel robbing you of trade secrets and your interlectual property. Not.

Thanks.

In other news, Richard was annoyed by having to manually add Option “FPDither” in xorg.conf to stop his Lenovo LVDS display looking rubbish.

p.s. Does anyone happen to have a biosmod scp file for a NVIDIA nv40 bios? Beers a-plenty if you share.

Nouveau performance improvements

I blogged a few months ago about performance improvements in nouveau, the free 3D driver for NVIDIA cards. This morning I tested with nouveau ddx from git, drm master from git and kernel 2.6.24-rc6 and used the gtkperf benchmark.

Nouveau 2007-07-13: 25.24s
Nouveau 2007-12-30: 17.88s

Quite an incredible increase in speed.

On another note, I've been able to resize my screen for the first time using the normal driver, although using experimental Randr12 mode I get this:

Fun times with nouveau… 

HIG and gnome-packagekit

Any HIG dudes got a few minutes? The gnome-packagekit project has quite a few glade files that were quickly designed, and hence the GNOME HIG wasn't a primary concern. Now the applications are being used by more and more people I think it's important that we properly conform to the HIG.

If anyone wants to help out, please join the mailing list and send us a quick email. There's also a lot of other easy stuff to do in the TODO file if you have a spare few minutes. Thanks!

Richard.
 

Hazel Blears scares me

I normally don't get political on this blog but it has all got too much. Hazel Blears is Member of Parliament (Labour) for Salford in the UK. She's also Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.


photo from telegraph.co.uk

She's one of those people that listening to is like running your nails down a chalky blackboard. She's in a powerful position and comes up with some very crazy ideas. She really scares me.

Now I feel much better.