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Distrowatch Weekly (4-2-2007)

Distrowatch Weekly is out, and the April 2nd edition has some kind words for the first Foresight Newsletter:

It is always a pleasure to report that a project has gone out of its way to complement its distribution with additional material. Last week, Foresight Linux, an rPath-based desktop distribution with focus on the latest GNOME technologies, announced the launch of its new monthly newsletter: “The first Foresight Linux Newsletter has been released! The current edition reports about what’s happening with Foresight Linux, including information on the latest release, security updates, tips and tricks, what’s in development, and Foresight in the press.” Glancing through the first issue, this has to be one of the best distribution-specific newsletters available anywhere. Complete with a “Letter from the Editor”, a tip for ATI graphics card users, introduction to the Banshee music manager, the newsletter is well worth a read even if you are not a Foresight Linux user.

Thanks for the kind words, and now the bar has been set for future issues.

In other news, I’ve also updated the RSS feed for the Foresight Newsletter, you can subscribe using a feed I created in Feedburner. Just pop this in to your favorite RSS reader to subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/foresightnewsletter (Just a bit easier than the other RSS feed, and a bit shorter).

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Foresight Newsletter launched

The Foresight Newsletter has launched! This first edition brings you a report about what’s happening with Foresight Linux, including release news, security updates, tips and tricks, what’s in development, Foresight in the press, and highlights one package in detail.

You can also subscribe to the newsletter (and future editions!) in your favorite feed reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines by copying and pasting this link.

Special thanks to Thilo, Kevin Harriss, António Meireles and Ken Vandine for contributing and editing.

Top 5 Distro's over the years

Tristan Rhodes blogs (seen via Planet Ubuntu), about Distrowatch‘s Top 5 Distro’s from 2002 until today. It is, as Tristan mentions, unscientific as Distrowatch ranks it by click through’s to that distro’s information page on Distrowatch. It’s interesting to see the changes through just 5 short years.

I eagerly look forward to the day Foresight is on the list.

Quake Wars gets a release date

Michael Larabel, of Phoronix fame, has a blog post noting that Gamestop has started pre-orders for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and Best Buy will begin pre-orders on April 12th, with the game being released on June 5th, the first time I’ve seen a release date assigned.

As I’ve noted previously, this is the first time in a long time I’ve been this excited over a game release. Since I gave up Windows 2 years ago after being a hardcore gamer for many years, I’ve cut way back on my gaming, and have pretty much turned into a console gamer. I still play Battlefield 2 about twice a month at a buddy’s house who has an extra PC set up for me, which is quite fun when playing with friends in a squad. I’m hoping ET:QW takes the squad based, objective elements to a new level for a first person shooter. That, and it’s the Doom3 engine, so it will be gorgeous. Once UT2k7 comes out later this year, I should have plenty to keep me busy gaming on the Linux platform.

I did have UT2k4, Doom3 and Quake IV installed on my Linux PC, which reminds me I need to get it installed on my new Foresight installation, and throw up a wiki page for installing 3D games on Foresight.

Foresight Newsletter

I posted to the lists last night to discuss creating a Foresight Newsletter.

The short story is, what would you want to see in a newsletter, and how often would you like to see it published? Send an email to the list with your thoughts, or help edit the Newsletter wiki page.

As far as publishing frequency, the newsletter will only be as good as the content included! I’ve volunteered to pull it together, and will have a rough draft up tonight for the first issue. Don’t be surprised if I come knocking looking for more content for future issues too, so collaboration will be key!

I’m also looking for a volunteer to quickly put together a WordPress / WordPress-MU theme. We’re thinking of publishing the newsletter on a blog to make it easy to update and subscribe to via RSS, though that part may not be ready by the weekend.

I believe a newsletter is a great tool for marketing and promotion, and keeping users informed of what’s going on with Foresight, especially for those who may not subscribe to the lists, visit the wiki or IRC, and show active Foresight is.

Foresight Linux on a Toshiba A135-S4467 Laptop

I mentioned in my last post, that I purchased a Toshiba A135-S4467 laptop yesterday. The following is a very long post, including the laptop’s specs, installing Foresight, and some of the challenges I have figured out or am trying to overcome in getting Foresight Linux.

If you don’t want to read a very long post, you can stop now. The short version of this story, is that after a user error in getting wireless to work, performing sudo conary updateall fixed my two major issues, including the wired ethernet and my sound. I wasn’t even done typing this blog post, when after performing updateall and then rebooting, all was fixed. If you would like to read about my user errors, and challenges from an out of box experience with a new computer and a default Foresight installation, read on. As I mention at the end of this post, my experience definitely gives me perspective as I help write documentation for Foresight, such as the upcoming Getting Started guide. I’m not an expert Linux user by an means, but I can poke around, and if I had problems with a default install such as below, imagine what a new user to Linux might feel like.

Installing Foresight Linux 1.1 on a Toshiba A135-S4467 Laptop

The laptop is a little larger than I wanted, 5.8 pounds and a 15.4″ widescreen, but the price was definitely right. Speeds and feeds:

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T5200
  • 15.4″ Widescreen (1280×800)
  • 1 GB RAM
  • 160 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
  • DVD-RW/DL
  • Intel 3945ABG wireless
  • Realtek 8101E 10/100 NIC
  • 4 in 1 card reader
  • 1394 mini / 4 USB

In researching a laptop purchase, I knew I wanted a Core 2 Duo, even a lower end one, at least 1 GB Ram, a widescreen screen, and as many Intel components as I could. The hard drive is much bigger than what I’ll need in a laptop, and I love having a DVD-RW. According to some reviews I read, I basically traded a larger hard drive for a weaker battery against a comparable Dell, and that’s a trade-off I’ll take, as my primary purpose is to use it in the family room. I plan on keeping up on my writing for Foresight, including Wiki pages, things such as the Getting Starting guided, and contributing to the marketing efforts (and a surprise to be named later) as I camp out on the couch in front of the big TV. Secondary use will be portable, to the local LUG, or for trips home to Milwaukee.

I’ll preface this next section by saying, even after using only Linux for the last two years and off and on for 6 years before that, I’m still not an expert by any means. Google and how-to’s are my friend, and I barely can work my way around the command line in loading modules in to the kernel or what not.

I’ve run in to a couple of gotcha’s along the way. It turns out a couple are user error so far, and a few I haven’t figured out yet. They could be issues with Foresight, as I did test the latest Ubuntu Feisty Fawn LiveCD, which did work. This isn’t a criticism of Foresight – I love Foresight, and I love being on the cutting edge. That, and Ubuntu has an army of developers and volunteers, and we don’t…yet. I mention this as maybe they’re a few things to work on in the future, as one reason I bought this laptop is it appeared to use fairly standard hardware.

Installation took just over an hour, about 80 minutes, using the 2 Foresight CDs. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I just blew away Vista without ever booting in to it, formatted the hard drive and away we went. Installation appeared to be as normal as it was on the 3 other desktops I’ve installed Foresight on, if just a touch longer.

On my first boot, it hangs for 3 minutes on the sound card, with the error appearing on the screen:

EIP: [<f89f7e63>] get_input_type+0x59/0x80 [snd_hda_codec] SS:ESP 0068:f7563e7c<br /> udevd-event[952]: run_program: ;/sbin/modprobe' abnormal exit<br /> </f89f7e63>

It then continues to load modules, and tells me the Intel 3945ABG module not found – this is the built-in wireless. I knew from past Foresight installs that the firmware is included in the default install, I’ve even seen it checking to see if the module should be loaded on my desktop. It’s one reason I bought this laptop as I knew it should be compatible. We’ll come back to this in a bit.

It then hangs on trying to load eth0 for about 2-3 minutes. (Which always seems longer than it really is). It gets past that with an “OK”, tries to load video, and just hangs for about 10 minutes at which I reboot.

Similar process, pause on the sound, Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG not found, pause at eth0, and then X loads, and I’m prompted to finish the installation by creating a user.

Success! I’m in. I’m quite happy to see that the Battery Applet is installed by default, as Foresight and GNOME recognize I’m running on a laptop.

Network manager doesn’t see an eth0, and wireless doesn’t work. That’s ok, I’m all about the eye candy, so I go to work on getting my xorg.conf setup. After using Google, I edit my xorg.conf and replace “vesa” with “i810”, and also add the 1280×800 resolutions. I ctrl-alt-backspace to restart X, and I’m still in 800×600, but my xorg.conf looks right. I reboot, same thing. Asking for help in IRC, Thilo points me at System –> Display. I’ve never seen that before, but I choose the Intel i810 driver there, restart X, run it again, choose my resolution, and I’m now using the Intel driver. Compiz works as normal – just enable the applet, set a couple preferences for wobby windows and such, and I have my eye candy! Performance is better than expected – I can grab a window and throw it around the screen with animations, and you really have to know what you’re looking for to see it hiccup at all.

I have my visuals, so it’s time to go for sound. I click on the Volume applet, and two dialog boxes immediately pop up:

Dialog box 1:

The volume control did not find any elements and / or devices to control. This means eitehr that you don't have the right GStreamer plugins installed, or that you don't have a sound card configured.

Dialog box 2:

No volume control GStreamer plugins and / or devices found

At this point it was getting late, so I threw in the latest Ubuntu Feisty Beta LiveCD, and my wired NIC and sound worked. It was nice to confirm the laptop wasn’t defective, but showed I still had a way to go in getting the laptop working with Foresight.

I got home from work today, and went back at it. The default kernel in a Foresight Linux 1.1 installation is 2.6.19.2-0.2 – according to one forum posting I found, this should control my NIC just fine, as it was added in 2.6.19.1. I’m stumped on that one, but you can see my dmesg output. It recognizes the right card, but it’s not active in NetworkManager or System – Admin- Network. Doing a “lspci | grep Ethernet” also shows RTL8101E PCI Express Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 01).

In browsing through dmesg, lo and behold, it tells me my wireless radio is off. Aha! So I hit function – F8 to turn it on, but Network Manager doesn’t see it. I reboot twice, and still nothing. I flip through the user manual, which is absolutely worthless, as it doesn’t cover any of the function keys on the laptop, nor does it bother to tell me there is a toggle switch under the keyboard out of sight, that by default is turned off, which just happens to be the wireless radio. Flip that on, a pretty green light turns on, reboot, and voila, wireless. Choose my network in Network Manager, enter the WEP key and now we are in business. I then proceed to grumble under my breath about Toshiba’s default configuration out of the box.

With the exception of the sound and wired NIC issue, I’m pretty happy so far. I have 3D effects working, after some user error, the wireless is working (and I’ve done my conary updateall), and the laptop feels quite snappy. I haven’t ventured into suspend and resume yet, as we all know how challenging that can sometimes be in Linux. The other item on my to-do list is to get scrolling working on my Synaptics touchpad.

As I mentioned above, my first updateall made this the sound and wired ethernet work perfectly. A big shout out to the Foresight developers for how fast they update the distro in being able to fix those kind of issues. This is just my story and experience, and yours will vary. This experience, and the things I learned, definitely give me perspective as I start to write a Getting Started with Foresight guide – if I learned new things, such as setting up the Display, imagine what a person totally new to Linux might feel like.