Frugalware Linux Newsletter - Issue 53

...to inform...to educate...to entertain

"We all at certain times in our lives find ourselves broken. True strength is found in picking up the pieces." - Jill Pendley

Welcome

The newsletter's aim is to keep you up to date with what's happened recently in the world of the Linux distribution 'Frugalware'.

Features of this issue include:

• What Planet are you on?
• Frugalware is beautiful
• Patches, patches and more patches from users
• Frugalware's users are people too
• NEW! - FLOSS developers are people too

Events etc

Here's a selection of events which have occurred since the previous newsletter:

• What Planet are you on?

  Devil505 and VMiklos recently made several improvements to the Frugalware Planet. Devil505 has added feeds for several developers' blogs, including his own. :) He's also improved the look of the site, with each blog entry contained in a speech bubble. I really like the result of his work and I hope you do too. VMiklos made some changes to the code behind the site so that people could choose to see only blog entries in a specific language - e.g. French. The Planet is open to anyone's blog which features Frugalware and related topics. Contact Devil505 if you would like to have your own blog added to the feed. I encourage everyone to read the Planet entries regularly because there are some very interesting blog entries there.

• Bouleetbil - "The Man Who Never Sleeps"

  Frugalware developer Bouleetbil recently packaged Gnome 2.28. For most people that would be a great achievement, and a good reason to have a rest for a week or so. For Bouleetbil, though, it seems that he needed a bigger challenge. Since then, he has started packaging a newer X.org and PAM (pluggable authentication modules), in work-in-progress repositories, while still maintaining other packages. We appreciate his hard work but, he really needs to take a break some time soon.

• Frugalware is beautiful

  Devil505 recently reminded everyone via the Frugalware forum that we have our own site dedicated to desktop customisation - http://frugalware-art.org/. It features some fantastic Frugalware-specific wallpapers with which you can decorate your desktop. Be aware that some of the wallpapers feature women in very little clothing.

  The Frugalware art site is also a great place to upload a screenshot of your desktop. Others might like to see your desktop, particularly what themes you have chosen. It's a great way of discovering wallpapers and other themes, so please take a few minutes to take a screenshot and upload it to the site.

• VMiklos is a busy, busy bee

  Like several Frugalware developers, VMiklos is involved in projects outside Frugalware. He's the sole developer of the Bitlbee Skype plugin and is very active on the Bazaar Fast Import Plugin project. The Bitlbee Skype plugin was recently upgraded to match an upgraded version of Bitlbee. Congratulations to VMiklos on his excellent work on these projects. I don't know how he finds time to maintain Frugalware and these other projects. If I find out, though, I'll tell everyone.

• KMS has been added to the kernel

  On 18 October 2009, VMiklos announced that Kernel Mode Switching (KMS) had been added to the Frugalware kernel by default. KMS is a recent addition to the Linux kernel which provides a much smoother graphical startup. Until now, as the boot process went through each phase, the graphical mode could change several times. KMS is only supported on some Intel and Radeon video cards but if your video card is supported, KMS is enabled by default in the Frugalware kernel. If you prefer not to have a graphical boot, refer here for instructions.

• Where's the wiki?

  In June 2009 the official Frugalware wiki went offline and has stayed offline. VMiklos has a backup of its contents, so you can be glad that they're not lost. Work is underway to create a new wiki site, including old content and new content. Please be patient a little longer and the valuable information in the wiki will again be available.

• Patches, patches and more patches from users

  The developer team have recently received patches from Frugalware users. User 'pete' has submitted patches to documentation, about the USB installation option. User 'Laszlo Papp' has submitted several patches for pacman. Thankyou to both these people for their hard work. Contributions from everyone are welcome in all areas of Frugalware - design, documentation, packages, ideas. The easiest way to contribute something is usually via the forums. You can also send them to the developers' mailing list but to do this you must first have subscribed to the list.

Frugalware's users are people too

What's your name?

Liaudet Gaël

What's your IRC/forum nickname?

viking

In what country do you live?

I live in France, in Normandie

When did you start to use Linux (Frugalware)?

7 years ago. I have used Gentoo before and sometimes Ubuntu. I have been working as an SME server administer for the past for 5 years. I have been using Frugalware for the past 2 months. Why? I don't know really.

What do you like most about Frugalware?

Maybe the large number of French users and build scripts which are more open than --untu. The i686 optimisation!!! i386 is dead (who has a PentiumIII?)

How did you find Frugalware - e.g. a friend/Google search?

Distrowatch

What do you do when you're not using Frugalware?

I maintain my wife!! No, not just that. My child is also good fun.

FLOSS developers are people too

Without developers, we wouldn't have the Linux kernel and all the software that we run on the platform. What motivates FLOSS developers? Why does anyone choose to spend their time writing software when they don't get paid to do so? What do developers do when they're not writing software? These questions and more are the inspiration behind this new section of the newsletter.

In interviews with FLOSS developers, we get to know them a little better as people, and what motivates them in their quest for better software. I'm very excited by this new series because I admire their work very much. I'm also very grateful to them for taking the time to reply to my requests.

Interviews in the next few issues will feature:

• Stuart Rackham - developer of ASCIIDOC;
• Michael Cornelius - developer of fotoxx, UKopp, picpuz and much more;
• The developer of Code Browser;
• Jeff Bailes - developer of Whaaw! Media Player

This issue, we have an interview with Campbell Barton, a Blender developer and part of the Open Movie team. As someone who has no artistic talent, I admire those who produce works we can all enjoy and admire. Campbell gave this interview just a few days before traveling to Amsterdam to begin work on the next Open Movie project.

Note: Campbell is the one in the middle.

What's your name?

Campbell Barton

What's the story behind your nickname?

Ideasman42, from the movie "The Castle", at the time it seemed clever, 42 because it's the "answer" of course. I might change it to something more conservative, perhaps when I hit 30 :D.

What FLOSS projects are you involved in?

Almost exclusively Blender, sometimes I consider looking into other projects but reading the code I feel like a beginner again and there's really a whole world inside Blender of fun stuff to develop. I also work on YoFrankie but mostly maintenance so far. When I get some time Id like to add some fun levels and game mechanics.

What do you like about being a FLOSS developer/contributor?

I like how I can work on things that interest me. It's incredibly fun to explore new areas along with the normal maintenance and bug fixes.

Sometimes this means addressing the needs of a specific project. Other times we implement user requests. It's important to me that users gain some value from my time.

Working with the other Blender developers is also really enjoyable. Mostly I try not to bother other devs but it's great to have their support and likewise from time to time I help others.

What don't you like about being a FLOSS developer/contributor?

Resolving some technical topics over email can be tedious especially when you throw in a mix of supported operating systems and backwards compatibility.

It can end up that making proposals for trivial changes require many qualifications and exceptions for different configurations.

How did your involvement with Blender and the Orange Open Movie Project start?

I started working at a simulation company using Blender as a technical artist, writing scripts and extending Blender when necessary. I ended up using Blender to automate their asset library pipeline. I was asked to be involved with Big Buck Bunny. Whilst I'd never worked on a movie before, being an active contributor meant it wasn't such a big change.

What motivates you to work on Blender?

I'm mainly motivated by the fact that people use Blender for really interesting projects (games, simulations, experiments, artwork, music videos), Its great that every so often I can solve problems that used to annoy me as a user. OpenMovies are a great way to stay in touch with practical issues and focus on problems artists have day to day.

What do you do outside the FLOSS world?

Sometimes I try to get other interests like facebook, bike riding or a good video game but don't find them that engaging. so... Spend time with my lovely family, not much else.

What operating system(s) do you use and why?

Arch Linux, on my main system. I like having access to the latest tools especially for development and like how it handles package management. It's relatively simple and the packages themselves only have minimal changes made. I'm a big fan of rolling releases which haven't broken my system or put me through dependency hell.

Before Arch I was on Slackware which was alright but I ended up compiling a lot of software which was great for learning but became time consuming.

Other PCs my family use run Ubuntu because it's easiest for them to use.

If people are interested in helping your project(s), how might they do this?

If you're interested in 3D graphics get your feet wet by trying out Blender. If you get past the learning curve and continue with it you might want to help improve some areas, whether it be code, scripts, docs or UI work. Otherwise if you're interested to dive right into development, join the mailing list, download the source, compile it and start looking into the code which you'd like to work on. See http://www.Blender.org/community/get-involved/

Is there anything else you think people might be interested to know?

My background is in multimedia (very 90's term!). I am self-taught in C & Python (a little C++ too).I use the Eclipse and Scite editors.

Getting To Know You

In this section of the newsletter, we get to know Frugalware Linux a little at a time. This is not meant to replace the official documentation but instead make it easier to read. This should suit those those people who, like me, have short attention spans. :)

Mirrors

Frugalware is lucky to have many package mirrors around the world, all hosted for free. Because of differences in bandwidth available, timing of synchronisation and other factors, not all mirrors are up to date. When pacman-g2 is trying to download a package, it will try to download it from the first mirror listed in its configuration file. If the package's file is not available, it will repeat the request for each mirror, in the order they're listed in pacman-g2's configuration file. In this way, you don't have to worry about the status of the various mirrors because pacman-g2 looks after this for you.

New Packages

Here are some highlights from new packages added to the 'current' repository since the previous newsletter issue.

Package's Name	Description	Maintainer
frogr	"Frogr intends to be a complete GNOME application to remotely manage a flickr account from the desktop. It uses flickcurl, from Dave Beckett to communicate with the server through the publicly available flickr REST API." Editor's note: I have checked the list of developers of Frogr and was surprised to find that Bouleetbil is not part of the team. I thought almost everything he did had the word "frog" in the name.	bouleetbil
mod_mono	Apache module for Mono	bouleetbil
gedit-plugins	Various plugins for gedit, the default text editor of the GNOME desktop environment. Included are features such as: bracket completion, colour picker, session saver, embedded terminal.	bouleetbil

Tips and tricks

Disclaimer - Be aware that the hints & tips provided here have NOT been tested and so come with no warranty.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes

Sometimes you might not try to do something because you're afraid of making mistakes. It's a fact, though, that mistakes are a natural and normal part of life. The real test of a person is not how many mistakes they make, but how they react. It's best to be honest with yourself, admit your mistake, then work out how you can fix it and avoid making similar mistakes in the future.

The FLOSS world is one where this is very important because the emphasis is on being open. Source code, artwork, and translations are publicly available, and so any mistake is also publicly visible. Don't let this hold you back from contributing to a project, any project. Instead focus on your end goal, admit your mistakes when they happen, and learn from them.

Gnome terminal's tabs

Like other terminal emulator's Gnome's Terminal offers a tabbed interface, allowing you to have multiple consoles open without using too much screen real estate. Sometimes though you may have two consoles open and decide that instead you need them arranged side by side, not within the same window. You can solve this quite easily by dragging and dropping one of the tabs to an area outside Terminal's window. The tab being dragged will separate from the original window and have its own window decorations.

This section relies on your contributions! If you have some tips and tricks that you would like to be shown in the newsletter, please post them on the forums.

Focus On Package(s)

top

top is a console real-time system resources monitor which shows details of the processes active on your system and their overall load. It's a classic utility available on all Linux and Unix-like systems. Its problem is that it's not very intuitive to use. If you have nothing else available, then of course use it. If you do have a choice, then you might prefer the application below - 'htop'.

htop

htop is a console real-time system resources monitor which is much easier to use than top. Graphical resource monitors, such as those which are part of the GNOME and KDE desktop environments are also easy to use but they have one problem: they use a lot of system resources. htop is an ncurses application which means it uses few resources itself, but still presents its information in an easy-to-understand interface. The interface consists of three sections, as you can see in the following screenshot. The upper section displays live bars which indicate total memory and CPU load. The middle section displays live statistics of individual processes. The lower section displays htop's menu, which is driven by function keys, and allows you to change htop's layout or take action on one ore more procesessesthe sort order of processes, also the format in which the information is displayed. When (not if) you need a system resources monitor, you can rely on htop to give you the information you need without putting a heavy load on your system.

Bug fixes

The following table gives you a overview of activity on bugs and feature requests as at 27 October 2009. In each cell of the table is a link to a detailed list of the relevant bugs or feature requests.

Activity	Bugs	Feature Requests
Open	133	194
Opened since the previous newsletter	11	4
Closed since the previous newsletter	109	9

Security announcements

Remember - According to the normal support arrangements for Frugalware, the release of 1.1 ("Getorin") means that no further security or bug fixes will be released for Frugalware 1.0 ("Anacreon") or earlier releases.

Here is a list of security issues which have been discovered and fixed in the 1.1 release since the previous newsletter.

FSA	Package	FSA Description	Upgrade To
FSA624	drupal6-commentrss	See FSA623 for more info.	drupal6-commentrss-6.x_2.2-1getorin1

About the newsletter

Author

The Frugalware newsletter is written and edited by Russell Dickenson (AKA phayz). Credit for the Frugalware distribution goes to the development team.

Translations

The newsletter is currently translated into French and Danish by their respective communities. Thanks to all those involved in providing and hosting these translations.

Release

To allow time for review and corrections, each newsletter is written ahead of its release date. Therefore it may not mention events which occurred in the few days before its release - e.g. security fixes. To be sure that you've got the very latest information on these topics, go to the appropriate page of the Frugalware web site.

Feedback

If you have feedback about the Frugalware newsletter - whether good or bad - please provide it via the forums. Your feedback is valuable because we want the newsletter to meet the needs of Frugalware's users.