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2008

Shuttle chooses Foresight for the Shuttle KPC

Shuttle released a press release today:

Shuttle Teams with Foresight Linux on $199 KPC

City of Industry, CA., MArch 4, 2008

Shuttle today announced that the newly launched $199 KPC will feature the Foresight Linux operating system. With an intuitive interface and user focused design, Foresight does away with the need for users to be familiar with Linux.

A host of the latest software is packaged with the operating system, giving users convenient and enjoyable access to music, photos, videos, documents, and the Internet. Even keeping up-to-date with the latest features and fixes is a simple process with the user friendly update button.

Foresight uses the revolutionary Conary® Package Manager developed by rPath and distributed as Open Source software under the terms of the Common Public License. With the Conary® Package Manager, the system updates only the specific files in packages which need to be updated so updating takes little time and bandwidth.

Shuttle’s KPC includes many software packages already installed, including the OpenOffice.org® office suite, the Firefox® web browser, the Pidgin instant messenger, the Banshee music player, the Totem movie player, the F-Spot photo organizer, and Compiz for 3D desktop effects. For more details visit: http://us.shuttle.com/kpc

We’re putting a lot of work making sure Foresight 2.0 is ready and polished as we are excited to introduce Foresight to new users who buy Shuttle’s KPC. A new addition to Shuttle’s family of SFF (small form factor PCs), the KPC features the ability to customize the look of the front of the computer, and features a 80 GB hard drive, Intel Graphics, 512 MB ram, and choice of Intel processors.

Shuttle KPC

More information at Shuttle’s KPC website.

Tasky on Foresight 2

[Tasky][1] is a new task management application for the GNOME desktop. Written by [Boyd Timothy][2] and [Calvin Gaisford][3], Tasky features syncing with [Remember the Milk][4], but doesn’t feature the ability to use RTM tags yet. Tasky is a great way to help implement and use [Getting Things Done][5].

I went on the adventure last night of packaging Tasky for Foresight 2 in my personal repository on rBuilder, the first package I’ve added to my own repo. After some initial hiccups with my build setup, the light bulb finally went off and I think I’ve finally figured out Conary contexts after all this time. I can’t thank Ken enough for all his help last night, from figuring out my setup to troubleshooting the rMake logs on what dependencies Tasky was missing.

Building packages using [Conary][6] is, on one hand, at times frustrating, but on the other hand, exhilarating when it finally works. And though I may say frustrating, I packaged up 4-5 Ubuntu .debs before I switched to Foresight a year ago, and Conary is still ten times easier (at least).

I started with my [recipe][7], this is the final version:

`


This file is distributed under the terms of the MIT License.

A copy is available at http://www.rpath.com/permanent/mit-license.html

class Tasky(AutoPackageRecipe):
name = 'tasky'
version = '0.1.3'
buildRequires = ['GConf:runtime', 'banshee:lib', 'desktop-file-utils:runtime',
'f-spot:lib', 'gettext:runtime', 'gnome-sharp:devellib', 'gtk-sharp:cil', 'gtk-sharp:devellib',
'gtk:runtime', 'mono:cil', 'mono:devel', 'mono:runtime', 'ndesk-dbus:cil', 'notify-sharp:devellib', 'ndesk-dbus:devellib',
'ndesk-dbus-glib:devellib',
'perl:runtime', 'pkgconfig:devel', 'intltool:runtime', 'ndesk-dbus-glib:cil', 'notify-sharp:cil']

def unpack(r):
r.addArchive('http://tasky.googlecode.com/files/tasky-0.1.3.tar.gz') ` When I first cooked it, I didn’t have any of the buildRequires listed. [cvc cook][8] kicked back the recommendations it had to add to buildRequires, and I added them. I was then given a changeset file I was able to install using Conary. And Tasky worked! The first time you run it, and choose RTM, it will open RTM in your browser, and ask you to authorize the application. After that, I had a Tasky icon on my panel, and opening Tasky I was presented with all my tasks that I’ve entered into RTM (which I need to update). Choosing the Foresight tag, I saw: [Screenshot-Tasky][9] Very pleased with myself, the next step was to [rMake][10] Tasky, and commit to my repo. However, rMake would fail. Ken showed me what to look for in the rMake log, and the Conary command to find the missing package and add to my buildRequires in the above recipe. This was the frustrating part, as it became trial and error. rMake would tell me I was missing a package, I’d figure out which one, and then rMake again (And usually pinging Ken for more help). After running rMake seven times and adding the missing dependencies, the 8th time worked, and Tasky was created by rMake in it’s chroot. The pride and excitement you feel when it works is quite the rush. I then did a rMake commit, and now anyone can install Tasky for testing, and I committed x86 and x86_64 versions. From a command line in Foresight 2, type: `sudo conary update tasky=silwenae.rpath.org@fl:2-devel` Leave your feedback on how it works for you! Tasky also features a Tomboy plugin, but I’m not an advanced enough developer to even think about how I would go about patching Tomboy to make it work. More information on the Tomboy patch and plugin [at the bottom of Boyd’s blog post][2]. Now it’s time to make sure my Tasks are up to date. [1]: http://code.google.com/p/tasky/ [2]: http://boyd.musipal.com/2008/02/tasky-cracks-whip.html [3]: http://calvinrg.blogspot.com/ [4]: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ [5]: http://www.davidco.com/what_is_gtd.php [6]: http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Conary [7]: http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Conary:Recipe [8]: http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Conary:cvc_cook [9]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/silwenae/2297654639/ "Screenshot-Tasky by silwenae, on Flickr" [10]: http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Conary:About_rMake

UT3 Delays

Phoronix has another story up on the continued delay of the UT3 Linux client, ported by Ryan Gordon, aka icculus.

One sentenced in the story rubbed me the wrong way:

Ryan Gordon, the one responsible for the Unreal Tournament Linux ports, has yet to provide the Linux gaming community with any status update or respond to our inquiries.

I don’t understand how it is Ryan’s responsibility to provide an update. It has already been covered multiple times that the Linux client is hung up due to a legal issue with some offending code in the game. We should be grateful Ryan clued us in originally to what the delay was. However, Ryan works for Epic as a contractor – he’s not an official employee, and he shouldn’t be the one responsible for updating the community. As it’s a legal issue, of course he’s not going to comment. The constant speculation and conspiracy theories have grown old quickly.

If someone wants an official quote, they should be talking to someone at Epic’s office, maybe Mark Rein. I subscribe to the UT3 mailing list, and the number of questions, comments and rampant speculation on this issue, as well as the the constant badgering of Ryan are counter-productive. If he could say something, he would.

I absolutely agree that it’s disappointing we don’t have an official statement from Epic one way or another if a Linux client will ever be released. As someone who’s an avid gamer on Linux, I’m disappointed I can’t play one of my favorite franchises. But leave Ryan out of it, he’s done everything he can.

The past week in Foresight

Lots of stuff going on:

  • Alpha 4 was released! Tons of bug fixes, OOo is back in, and still lots to do. Read the release notes.
  • Work is flying on the new website. SpecialKevin and Etank have done a ton of work, Stefw is helping with content, and Nixternal wrote some great Javascript menus.
  • Do you know CSS, HTML and PHP? Help us theme our Planet, a WordPress theme, or our new forums that will be launching soon using the new website’s CSS. Sign up on our marketing list and lend a hand.
  • The second revision to the Foresight User Guide is about half done, and I hope to have it finished this week. Writing it in docbook, and then I plan on porting it back to the wiki. Want to help? Join the docs team.
  • Dateline Fosdem: Ken VanDine, doniphon, Mark__T and more met up this past weekend. I hope they blog about it, sounds like they had a great time.
  • Do you create packages on rBuilder and commit to your own repository for use on Foresight or directly to the Foresight repo? Use your GPG key to sign your packages.
  • Congratulations to Eric Lake, Mark Trompell and Will Farrington approved as Foresight developers; and Matthew West as a Foresight member, who were all approved at last week’s Focus meeting.

More to come soon, and maybe even a really big announcement sometime in March.

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SCALE Part 2

I’ve been remiss in recapping SCALE – I really need to blog more.

In addition to all the great things I saw in the Linux community at SCALE, the best part is the face to face communication you get, especially within your own community, namely Foresight.

Spending time with Ken, Kevin and Stu, usually after the show while grabbing a beer, we had time to talk all things Foresight. Our discussions ranged from:

  • Alpha 3 blockers and next steps
  • Inclusion or exclusion of proprietary codecs. This was a pretty interesting conversation that ranged from helping a user make it “just work” to what it would take to code an application similar to Automatix for Ubuntu to help users get the codecs they need. Anyone up for coding an app?
  • Using JIRA as more than a bug tracker. There are so many features in JIRA, if we as Foresight developers can continue to add tasks to JIRA in addition to bugs, we can build a roadmap right from JIRA. Foresight continues to be a very IRC-centric community, and we don’t use the mailing lists often enough. Capturing workflows in JIRA will help both developers and users understand next steps in the development of Foresight.
  • Lots of great conversation with Kevin about the next steps for the Marketing team. From the new website development etank is rocking out on, to flyers we can pass out at upcoming shows, we talked about lots of ideas to share Foresight with new users. (And Kevin rocks more for filing these tasks in JIRA!)
  • Lots of Conary talk. Not only did Ken host a BoF session on Conary Sunday night, but I learned a ton of new things about how powerful Conary really is. I think Stu even learned something new too. 🙂

The best part of these in person discussions is how fired up and excited you get. The ideas are free flowing, and you really come back jazzed to get even more involved and make a difference. Foresight is still a relatively young project, and with so much to do, anyone can jump in and start helping on any number of tasks from web design or development, packaging, documentation writing or marketing. I continue to work on the Foresight Love project modeled after GNOME Love, and will add tasks that are easy for a new contributor to jump in and help with. I need to add some links to that page to within the wiki, and make it more specific. More to come soon.

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