We are now one day away from the GNOME 2.18 release! If you didn’t download and test GNOME 2.18 yet (as I mentioned in yesterday’s post), Phoronix has posted some GNOME 2.18 screenshots from the GNOME / Foresight 2.18 LiveCD for your viewing pleasure.
Take a look at some screenshots, and get ready for the release.
In related GNOME news, the newly revamped GNOME website won’t be ready for 2.18 – but give us a month and we’ll have it ready for GNOME 2.18.1.
GNOME 2.18 is 2 days from release – have you taken it for a test drive yet? Thanks to Ken Vandine and Foresight Linux, there is now more than just one way to take GNOME 2.18 for a spin. VMWare images, QEMU / Parallels, name your virtualization way and there’s probably an image, in addition to a LiveCD.
Visit the downloads page and pick your way to test out GNOME. Links will be updated once 2.18 goes final. Take some LiveCDs to your next LUG meeting or installfest, and show off GNOME 2.18 powered by Foresight.
Simply Beautiful.
Linux.com has a good article up with an overview of the Conary packaging system, developed by rPath and in use by Foresight Linux. The article covers a high level overview, managing packages with Conary, and it’s future prospects.
Conary relies upon a repository that is also a source control system, complete with branches and diff-like files called changesets that identify differences between the available versions of a package. Where the leading package systems identify packages only by version number, each name in a Conary repository is a unique identifier that includes such information as a package’s location in the repository, the upstream version number, the source revision, the number of the binary build, and the specific hardware architecture for which it is intended.
That might sound like a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo, but what I’ve taken away from my brief time in the #foresight IRC channel on Freenode, is Conary is really about updating packages based on the new file changes – not having to compile from source the entire package to get to a binary, but just the changes needed to update that package or file.
Conary is the backbone behind rPath – and if you have an opportunity, poke around rPath and see how many different people are using it to create their own customized distributions and software deployment solutions (or as rPath calls them, appliances). From a NAS project to Foresight Linux to Wiki applications to LAMP, mail or VOIP servers, users, developers and companies are finding that rPath has made a toolset and packaging system to enable appliances everyone can use.
The article closes with a good summary, and a great shout out to Foresight Linux:
So far as rPath is concerned, Conary seems less an end in itself than a tool to help build the virtual appliances that are the company’s main business. Conary is used in rPath Linux, but because rPath Linux is primarily a tool that others can use to create customized distros, the best place to see Conary action is with one of the distributions built using rPath Linux and rBuilder Online, rPath’s tool that distros can use to manage the production of their versions. Of these distributions, one of the most advanced is Foresight, which specializes in providing bleeding-edge versions of GNOME.
It’s official: I’ve switched to Foresight from Ubuntu on my main computer. As I posted a few days ago in my review of Foresight, I’ve been really impressed with the distribution and the community around Foresight. The community was what made the decision easy. I would have never believed even two weeks ago that I’d have a different distribution than Ubuntu on my computer, but here we are.
Installed the brand new 1.01 release this morning, installed and configured everything to my needs (Nvidia Drivers, Compiz, Bluefish, etc), restored my data, and I’m all set. Copying my music over and importing in to Banshee as we speak. I need to learn how to install a development package, Jokosher specifically, so I can get back to creating my first Podcast. (Audacity isn’t in the repos, as it isn’t a GNOME-ish application).
I’ve signed up for the mailing lists, created my Wiki and Bug Tracking accounts (and submitted my first bug report), and look forward to joining, and more importantly, contributing to the Foresight community.