Captain Magnus’ weblog

GNOME 2.26.2 is now available for openSUSE 11.1. To update, follow the instructions here.

Big thanks (and please buy him a beer when you bump in to him) goes to Dominique Leuenberger (DimStar on IRC) for updating these packages.

I installed openSUSE Factory with the GNOME pattern in a virtual machine today. Here’s a screeny (If you can’t click on it to show properly, try this link);

I found 4 issues that are, more or less, broken (not broken enough to not install it on my production laptop tomorrow though); 1) The “Computer” (g-m-m) icon is cut off at the top, 2) Right click on the Desktop and then “Open In Terminal” will crash nautilus (fixed in latest nautilus-open-terminal code) 3) Yelp crashes, and 4) gdb does not work properly so could not troubleshoot Yelp. A fix for gdb is on the way so we should be able to get Yelp work very soon as well

You have to admire the new theme (Sonar) and have a close look at the window titles, with the Fifth Leg font by jimmac. Very sexy. I would love to see the Droid font being default instead of Sans, for the rest of the Desktop, but guess we still have time to try to convince people (and convince jimmac that it is the right thing).

Over at the openSUSE GNOME camp, we’ve been updating GNOME to the latest version for both current Factory and openSUSE 11.1.

Today, I decided to try it out…

The first thing I did was to use SUSE Studio to create a LiveCD (well, DVD really, since it was too big to fit on a CD). I then created a VirtualBox machine to try it out. There were a few issues running it, but I thought it might have been due having a read only file system and running virtualized etc, so I installed it in that virtual machine.

The issues (which didn’t disappear after an install) were;

1. X using 99.9% CPU
2. Trying to run something like the appearance capplet caused my X session to restart

Playing around with this a bit, I found that the work around for issue 1 was to simply kill gnome-screensaver and for issue 2, move (or delete) /usr/lib64/gnome-settings-daemon-2.0/media-keys.gnome-settings-plugin and /usr/lib64/gnome-settings-daemon-2.0/libmedia-keys.so out of the way (/usr/lib/ if on 32bit).

Once I figured out the above mentioned workarounds, I added the G:F:N repo on my laptop and ran zypper dup to update my laptop. I had the exact same issues and applied the same workarounds and it’s working very well.

For people who wants to try this out for themselfs on either current Factory or openSUSE 11.1, the repo URL is;

openSUSE 11.1: http://widehat.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/Factory:/Next/openSUSE_11.1/
openSUSE Factory: http://widehat.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/Factory:/Next/openSUSE_Factory/

A word of warning; If you’re not used to running/testing “unstable” versions, please do not “try this at home” (or rather, don’t try this on your production machine)

GNOME:Factory:Next is where we build the latest version of GNOME for
both Factory and openSUSE 11.1.

Here are some quick instruction on how to setup your environment if you
want to help out with package updates;

I will assume that you already have osc installed. All instances of
$USER below should be replaced with your OBS login id. All instances of
$PACKAGE below should be replaced with the package you are/want to work
on.

1. Pull down the osc gnome plugins

git clone http://www.vuntz.net/git/osc-plugins.git/

2. Copy the osc gnome plugin to your osc plugin directory

mkdir -p ~/.osc-plugins/ && cp osc-plugins/obs-dissector/osc-gnome.py ~/.osc-plugins/

3. Create a project in your home called “branches:GNOME:Factory:Next”
and add some repositories to build against;

osc meta prj -e home:$USER:branches:GNOME:Factory:Next

3.1 Make sure your repositories looks like this (also, that it’s not
commented out with the <!– and –> tags)


<repository name="openSUSE_11.1">
<path project="GNOME:Factory:Next" repository="openSUSE_11.1"/>
<path project="openSUSE:11.1" repository="standard"/>
<arch>x86_64</arch>
<arch>i586</arch>
</repository>
<repository name="openSUSE_Factory">
<path project="GNOME:Factory:Next" repository="openSUSE_Factory"/>
<path project="openSUSE:Factory" repository="standard"/>
<arch>x86_64</arch>
<arch>i586</arch>
</repository>


You should now be able to start updating packages in G:F:N.

The following command will list all packages in need of an update;

osc gnome t --xr --xs --project=GNOME:Factory:Next

To start updating a package from the list, use;

osc linkpac GNOME:Factory:Next $PACKAGE home:$USER:branches:GNOME:Factory:Next && osc gnome up $PACKAGE --project=GNOME:Factory:Next

Make changes as required, then commit to your branch (osc co). Once it
builds successfully, use the following to create a request for inclusion
in G:F:N;

osc submitreq create -m "Description of the changes you made" --nodevelproject

Don’t forget to explore other capabilities of ‘osc gnome’ as well

Note; If you don’t want to specify “–project=GNOME:Factory:Next” all the time, add this to ~/.oscrc in the general section;

gnome_projects = GNOME:Factory:Next

If you have any issues, ask us on IRC. We’re on FreeNode/#opensuse-gnome

Happy updating!!

Which one do you like better?

What it looks like today

This one doesn't ellipsize (ie, shorten the word and add "..." if it doesn't fit) but rather word-wrap

This one uses a generic name

This one uses the application name

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

“It was a clear shot to the shinbone, and Riker hoped it hurt like hell.”

The quote comes from Carol O’Connell; Crime School

Screenshots from openSUSE Beta4 LiveCD GNOME Install

Hello world,

Just to let you know, I’ve changed by blog to http://www.coolice.org/blog

Feeds can be picked up from http://www.coolice.org/blog/?feed=rss2

Seems openSUSE addicts now have an official drink. In Australia, we currently enjoy an Ad like this:

This is an howto for those of you with too much spare time. I will show you how to turn a 2 hour meeting into a 14 hour workday.

1. Move to Sydney
2. Get a job with a company that forces you to use the worlds most useless travel agency
3. Make sure you arrange a meeting with a customer in Melbourne
4. Use said travel agency to book your flight from Sydney to Melbourne at 7.15am. Also make sure to tell them that you want to return that same day at 2pm
5. Order a taxi for 5.45am to go to the airport
6. At the airport, try to check in electronically (which, off course, will fail)
7. Queue up to check in
8. Board the plane by going to your gate. Make sure to pass through the security checkpoint
9. Arrive in Melbourne (this should happen automatically if you boarded the right flight) at around 8.45am
10. Queue up for a taxi (this can take somewhere between 5 and 30 minutes)
11. Arrive at destination 45 minutes later (if you are lucky, time is now 9.45 so you could go for a quick coffee)
12. Have meeting with customer
13. Leave customer and try to get a taxi. This, again, is somewhere between 5 and 30 minutes
14. Arrive at airport around 1.30pm
15. Try to check in electronically, which again will fail
16. Queue up to check in (although step 15 and 16 seems repetitive, it’s necessary)
17. Arrive at counter only to be told that there you have no flight booked for the day
18. Go online to frequent flyer members page to find out that the return flight was booked for tomorrow
19. Back to counter only to be told that they can not changed it there. Have to go to their Sales inquiries for that
20. Queue up for their Sales counter
21. Talk to Sales rep, only to find out that they can not change it. Only the travel agency that booked it can
22. Ring travel agency, tell them that you actually wanted to go home the same day. Listen to apologizes while the rep changes your flight. Pay attention when they let you know that you got the last spot on the 3.30pm flight. Make sure you thank them for their efforts.
23. Queue up to check in for your 3.30pm flight
24. Enter the airport (via security check point). Get asked for permission to sweep you for drugs (this step is sort of optional. You can actually refuse, but then you are not allowed to fly)
25. You now have an hour for lunch so eat something (you will need this)
26. At 3.10pm, listen to the announcement that there is a problem with your plane. They will update you as soon as they know more
27. Keep wondering what’s happening (the airline will try to keep you in the dark as much as possible)
28. Listen to several more announcements about how they are trying to fix the issues with your plane. Also watch the boarding time moving forward all the time (3.40pm, 4.10pm, 4.40pm etc)
29. Now, and this is very important, listen to the final announcement where they tell you that the aircraft can not be fixed, but they allocated another one at a different gate.
30. Once you arrive at the gate, listen to the next announcement and laugh to yourself about those poor travelers who’s flight was canceled so that you could get an aircraft. You will feel even better knowing that most of those passengers will not be able to fly to Sydney that Friday night.
31. Finally get on plane and wait for 30-45 minutes while they try to find some missing passengers
32. You should now be on your way back home to Sydney
33. Arrive in Sydney at 6.45pm
34. Line up for taxi (this time, it’s a minimum of 30 minutes wait time)
35. Arrive back home at 7.45pm

For what it’s worth, the meeting was great