Monthly Archives: May 2011

Why this Freetard sides with Android

Posted by on May 31, 2011 4 comments

This is a reply to Ryan’s Why I’m a Bad Freetard — Or the Quest for a New Phone.

It’s no secret that I’m an Android Fanboy, I really like the platform, and the idea of an “open” cellphone, but I’m well aware of its flaws.

For starters… Google has yet to ship Honeycomb’s source code, to which I say “What Honeycomb?”.

I’m sticking to CyanogenMod (Gingerbread / 2.3.4) whose code I can recompile (And have recompiled in several occasions), and I won’t migrate to Honeycomb until I can actually build it. Sure, I’m not smart enough to port Android or rebuilt without using a wiki, but I’m also not recompiling my KDE packages or my Kernel and yet I still manage to use my laptop.

And to say that there’s no community of Android enthusiasts is just wrong. There is a real community of both Android users and Android developers.

CyanogenMod is the closest we can get of an “Android Distro”. There’s others, but I’m proud to say that I’ve contributed one thing to CyanogenMod: Trackball Answer.

Sure, my contribution will never be accepted by Upstream (Google), but then again, I also never considered BlueBubble to be accepted by Fedora either, and that’s not stopping me from trying to help others.

And Android also has its fair share of Users. There’s a Facebook-like site dedicated around them, an awesome online store and even its own kind of hat. Hell, a bunch of Android Users got together to have an awesome Barbecue last year (And are planning on repeating it), and even managed to get about 1000 bucks towards a Cancer Research. Sorry, but I’ve never seen Apple fans do any of this.

Yes, Carriers are really screwing over their customers. Yeah, some hardware manufacturers really hate Freedom. Yes, Google is evil and is trying to datamine our every move. Yes, Android doesn’t follow The Open Source Way. Yes, you have to “root” the phone to make it kick-ass.

I’ve seen a lot of people complain about having to “Jailbreak” iPhones or “rooting” Androids to make’em awesome. I had to do the same with my laptop.
It came with Windows 7, and there’s no way I would’ve bought it if I couldn’t replace it with Fedora. And it wasn’t “Stock Windows 7″ either. It came with a lot of annoying crapware, and trialware too, so this isn’t something that’s exclusive to Android.

Would I have rather bought a laptop that came with no Windows? Hell yes I would’ve. But they’re so hard to find, I might as well just pick one I can wipe, and move on. The same logic applies to my phones, tablets, etc.  I won’t purchase an Android device that I can’t easily root.

I guess there’s a huge difference between Fedora and Android, and that’s fine. At the end of the day, my cellphone, like my laptop, is just a tool I use to do stuff. And I’ll pick the best damned tool I can get to do it.

There was a stubborn guy

Posted by on May 31, 2011 6 comments

There was a stubborn guy who recompiled gnome-desktop,
I don’t know why he recompiled gnome-desktop,
Perhaps he’ll fail.

There was a stubborn guy who recompiled gnome-panel,
How absurd! to recompile gnome-panel,
He rebuilt gnome-panel to recompile gnome-desktop
I don’t know why he recompiled gnome-desktop,
Perhaps he’ll fail.

There was a stubborn guy who recompiled gnome-common,
Imagine that! to recompile gnome-common,
He rebuilt gnome-common to recompile gnome-panel,
He rebuilt gnome-panel to recompile gnome-desktop,
I don’t know why he recompiled gnome-desktop,
Perhaps he’ll fail.

There was a stubborn guy who recompiled gnome-bluetooth,
How stupid! to recompile gnome-bluetooth,
He rebuilt gnome-bluetooth to recompile gnome-common,
He rebuilt gnome-common to recompile gnome-panel,
He rebuilt gnome-panel to recompile gnome-desktop,
I don’t know why he recompiled gnome-desktop,
Perhaps he’ll fail.

There was a stubborn guy who rebuilt gnome-control-center,
I don’t know how he rebuilt gnome-control-center!
He rebuilt gnome-control center to rebuild gnome-bluetooth,
He rebuilt gnome-bluetooth to recompile gnome-common,
He rebuilt gnome-common to recompile gnome-panel,
He rebuilt gnome-panel to recompile gnome-desktop,
I don’t know why he recompiled gnome-desktop,
Perhaps he’ll fail.

There was a stubborn guy who rebuilt gnome,
He’s almost done—of course!

My KDE Experience

Posted by on May 29, 2011 20 comments

A few weeks ago I wrote a review of Gnome 3 (With stuff I hated and stuff I liked separated). Since the ‘hated’ one was viewed many times more, I decided to write about the good, the bad, and the ugly about KDE 4.6.3 in a single post.

As a hardcore GNOME user, switching over to KDE felt weird. Not in a bad way, but I kept on bumping into things that GNOME did different (Not better, different) and kept missing some of GNOME’s defaults.

The Good

  • I really like the plasmoids and the desktop itself. I loved the built-in Plasmoid Downloader.
  • Everything can be configured to fit your needs. This is a GNOME user’s wet dream.
  • The app launcher is separated neatly into categories and sections. I really like this launcher.
  • There’s a billion themes I can choose from, and KDE has a built-in Theme Downloader.
  • You can actually add buttons to the title bar and customize the themes.
  • Alt-F2 launches KRunner which is the best damned thing since the wheel was invented.
  • The Notifications and Jobs plasmoid is extremely neat. It pulls all queues like transferring files and alerts into a single button.
  • GTK2 apps, like Firefox, look great on KDE.
  • K3B works waaaaay better than Brasero Disc Burner. In fact, it always works, unlike Brasero.
  • KDE has an awesome amount of screensavers. Gnome has one.
  • I can yum remove gnome* safely.
  • There’s a semi-hidden option to display preview tooltips on Dolphin. It’s awesome!

The Bad

  • The defaults. I hated a lot of them. (But guess what? They can be changed!)
  • One-click opens folders and files. Again, this can be changed, but I hate the default behavior.
  • Clicking links on Pidgin sends it to KDE’s queue (To see if the link is an image, to open in gwenview). This makes clicking links take forever.
  • I could not figure out how to play music on Amarok. I’m using Rhythmbox instead. (For the record, I loved KDE 3′s Amarok. New one’s weird)
  • Krappy Names. It’s not “klever”, its lame. Please drop it.
  • KDE’s plasma has died on me several times.
  • Nautilus used to give me a preview of text files, thumbnails of videos and pictures. Dolphin can’t.
  • File-Roller > Ark. I couldn’t move the contents of a .zip or.tarball without uncompressing and recompressing on Ark. File-roller lets me.
  • Ctrl H doesn’t display hidden files on Dolphin. Ctrl . does. This can be changed.
  • I can’t get the App Launcher to bind to ‘Super’. I had to bind it to ‘Super’-Space instead.
  • Sometimes I stare at the screen for a while and just get sad.

The Ugly

  • I could not get KDE to recognize a Bluetooth Mouse. I had to go to GNOME 3 to configure it.
  • I had KDE freeze completely, where the only cure was to mv .kde .kdeold.
  • GNOME 3 apps. They look ugly on KDE. (GNOME 3 apps on GNOME 3 look ugly too)

KDE feels really stable, despite the few bugs I’ve found so far, but for some reason, just doesn’t feel like home. I guess I’ll have to adapt myself to this.

BlueBubble Teaser Video

Posted by on May 28, 2011 2 comments

So, Paulo Cereda made this awesome “Teaser Video” for Project BlueBubble I thought it was too fun to pass. Enjoy!

Project BlueBubble’s Logo

Posted by on May 27, 2011 1 comment

I’m fairly certain Red Hat Legal has my contact data.

In case you missed it, I’m working on this little project I call “bluebubble“, which will bring Gnome 2.32 to Fedora 15 (And perhaps, Fedora 16 too).

In case it wasn’t obvious, the Logo is some sort of a parody of the awesome Fedora Logo. I decided that the logo should represent not Infinity, Freedom and Voice, but just Equals, as in “We DON’T want things to change” (At least not for a while). It was made by the awesome Paulo Cereda.

In case you’re wondering, I can’t call this “Remix” Fedora, because I’d have to go through Fedora’s packaging process which is time consuming and I don’t believe it would match Fedora’s image of staying on the “Bleeding Edge”.

I only intend to package as little as possible, too. I found out that packages like Cheese 3.0 and Gedit 3.0 work perfectly well on a Gnome 2.32, but I’m still going to provide “gedit-classic” (and more) for those who want to stick to old, dusty packages.

I’ve received a lot of feedback already, I’m glad I’m not the only one interested in this. Like I said before, I intend to maintain this for at least Fedora 15 and if Gnome 3.2 isn’t the promised land, Fedora 16 too. If Gnome 3.4 isn’t what you’re looking for, you best start looking elsewhere. I won’t keep this up eternally.

Finally, a request. If you really like what I’m doing, please Support Gnome. They’re the ones that have been doing all the hard work, not me.

I will embrace the future, once it reaches feature parity with the past.

 

Update: For an alternative logo, click here. Also made by Paulo Cereda.

Project BlueBubble

Posted by on May 26, 2011 27 comments

Impossible is nothing

“If you build it, they will come”
Field of Dreams

Update: We’ve got a logo now!

Building on the previous post, I decided to make a ‘clean’ implementation of Gnome 2.32 for Fedora 15 (And beyond!). Specifically for those of us who have already updated, and dislike the new experience.

Project BlueBubble aims to bring Gnome 2.32 packages in a Fedora-15 compatible way, breaking the least amount of packages possible. It’ll be a repository you can set up, and just “yum install gnome-desktop-classic”to get up and running. The only catch? It’s either Shell or Classic, a lot of packages conflict, but I’m trying my best to allow Gnome-Classic with Gnome 3.0 packages like gedit and totem.

The final goal? To provide installable media (32 and 64bit DVDs and CDs) that will allow you to install a straight up “Fedora Classic” experience.
This’ll be a remix though, which means we’ll have to shed the cool branding, replacing it with blue, empty circles.

My progress so far? I’ve rebuilt Nautilus, Evolution, gedit, gnome-terminal, and some others, 2.32 flavor, running on Fedora 15. Still missing the good parts, gnome-panels being ‘the big one’.

I’m renaming all my packages to -classic variants, which will get you nautilus-classic, gedit-classic and so on. Each Provides its original package, with the version it should, and Conflicts with the original version, which will probably make things complicated.We’ll see.

The target audience? I’d say its same people who want the “Old Coke” flavor to come back.

The E.T.A.? None. I don’t want to rush this. I’ll announce a public repository once I have one.

The help? I’d appreciate help, testing, and guidance. I’m flying solo here, and blind, too. Reach me at Freenode IRC. I’m in a dozen #fedora-* channels too.

I think the best thing about having switched to KDE, is that I can safely yum remove gnome* and see how my packages are working, one by one.

Finally, I want to leave you with a quote:

“The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it.” ~ Francis Crick

I’m a very stubborn man. And I really want my Gnome Classic. The future can wait.

The best of both worlds

Posted by on May 25, 2011 5 comments

Impossible is nothing

“You get the Best of Both Worlds”.
Hannah Montana

Gnome 2.32. Fedora 15. You know you want it. The above is no Gimpjob, it is an actual screenshot. And I know you’re wondering… How’d you do it?

It wasn’t simple. And I’ll let you know if I run into any additional errors in the following days. Yes, additional. Please read the whole thing before trying it yourself. Then read it again. Then ask yourself if you’re really *that* interested in Gnome 2.32.

For starters, I grabbed a Fedora 14 install, updated to the latest packages. I removed some packages I think I no longer need, to shorten the update time.

I then used “Ctrl-Alt-F2″ to switch to a console. Logged on as root. Typed in “init 3″. This’ll kill Gnome, and it’s the only way to safely upgrade.

yum update yum && yum clean all && yum –releasever=15 –disableplugin=presto distro-sync –exclude=gtk3* –skip-broken -y

Caution, a massive wall of everflowing text will show up. Any and all attempts to read it may result in nausea, confusion, dizziness and a sense of loneliness. It will also probably fail, because pygtk2-libglade requires a very specific version of pygtk2. I ended up removing pygtk2-libglade, which in turn removed a lot of system-config-* packages. Oh well, my system was already configured. I won’t need “system-config-printers”, right?

So I ran the yum command again. This time it worked. As a note, you might want to add | grep more at the end of the command, it’ll have you press ‘spacebar’ every freakin’ time and you’ll get tired of it, but at least you can read what’s going on.

yum –releasever=15 –disableplugin=presto distro-sync –exclude=gtk3* –skip-broken -y

So I waited, downloaded, installed the packages, and was brought back to my root login. I rebooted my laptop, and expected everything to fail miserably.

And it did. So I shut it down manually, added ‘init 3′ to the grub boot line, and proceeded to login as root again. I then ran:

yum reinstall systemd*

Partially because I’m ignorant, and partially because Fedora’s Common Bugs page seemed to suggest it. I also did a yum update kernel* because I was apparently still running the old Fedora 14 kernel. After that, I rebooted, added ‘init 3′, logged in as root, ran ‘init 5′, and was greeted with the gdm. Logged into Gnome, and everything was working, except for the gnome-music-applet. That thing’s broken. (But Rhythmbox works, oddly enough!)

I noticed that there’s a weird error. “Unable to fix label of /run: read-only file system.” Google revealed nothing, so I then jumped onto #fedora, and nirik suggested that I run a command

fixfiles onboot; reboot

Sorry to say, this didn’t fix the /run error. I’m hoping someone smarter might provide the solution because I’m not sure how to fix it yet. Regardless I can boot into the laptop in graphical mode. No init 3/init 5 switch required. Thanks nirik!

So, what works and what doesn’t? Well, to be safe from Gnome (s)Hell, I added gtk3 to yum.conf’s exclude list. Just open yum.conf and add:

exclude=gtk3*

Also, you might want to alias “yum” into “yum –skip-broken” because you’re forever doomed to never update any of your Gnome 2.32 packages. The rest of the updates seem to work, but some things like Firefox 4 require the newer NetworkManager, which in turn requires the new Gnome. See the problem? We’re stuck with Firefox 3.6 (Unless you had Spot’s Firefox4 installed, like I did). I’m also stuck with old OpenOffice because for some reason, LibreOffice requires stuff that requires stuff that ends up requiring gtk3.

So, besides the funky /run error, and the lack of gnome-music-applet, I can’t say I found any issues with Fedora. Even the Nautilus-Dropbox plugin works on my Fedora 15 hybrid! (Which is something you can’t say with Nautilus-3). Oh, did I mention that shutdown/reboot is broken? I’m forced to force-shutdown the laptop. Probably somehow systemd related, but what do I know?

I’m overall wary of this installation, and I’m going to try some.. alternative… methods of setting up Gnome 2.32 on Fedora 15, without breaking Fedora 15′s updates. Which brings me to the most important point of the blog. I’m seriously considering (And have already started) providing gnome-old packages. My goal is to allow Gnome Shell and Gnome “Classic” installed on the same computer, by using separate folders for file installation, and separate file names. The final goal would be letting the user choose gdm or gdm2, and using the chooser to select which look and feel they prefer.

I’m also considering providing packages like Nautilus-Old, because new nautilus isn’t dropbox friendly, and while I’d normally blame Dropbox for being slow, I’d rather provide a patch in the form of Nautilus-Old. I also prefer the old Nautilus’ Look & Feel. So… I’m wondering… where do I draw the line? Gedit & Gedit-old? Cheese? Evolution? My goal is to have as much Gnome 2.32 as I can, with as many new Gnome 3 apps as I can.

So, to summarize. There’s a Catch-22. You can get Gnome 2.32 on Fedora 15. But I wouldn’t suggest it unless you know what you’re doing. If you know what you’re doing, you wouldn’t suggest it. Ah, infinite loops. Kids? Don’t try this at home. Unless you want to. You know you want to.

Lovelock is in the air!

Posted by on May 24, 2011 1 comment

Today marks the release date of Fedora 15, and I have to admit, I’m excited.

I’ve been using Fedora 15 since the Fedora 15 Alpha shipped, and have managed to stay on through Beta and Gold without any problems.

I’m considering formatting my laptop’s drive just to try out Btrfs, but I’m not entirely sure if its safe for day-to-day use.

I love a lot of the features that went into Fedora 15, it definitely feels a lot faster and lighter, it boots very quick too, and finally has LibreOffice and Firefox4 available and lots of new software. I’m still not convinced on Gnome 3, I know a lot of work has been made on it, and that “it’ll get better”, but I’m sure I don’t want my family using it yet. I’ve moved onto KDE, but found several usability issues I’ll write about later.

Overall, I’m happy with Fedora 15 but I’m hoping a Beefy Miracle hits Gnome 3.2 so hard, it’s usable again. I miss it.

Thanks, everyone, for the hard work that was put into the distro.

Finally, the obligatory links: Feature list. Release notes. Common bugs. Download Fedora 15.

Walking Tall

Posted by on May 23, 2011 3 comments

This rant talks about the city I live in. Feel free to move along.

I’ve blogged about a whole lot of subjects, though mostly Free Software related. I’ve blogged about my life before, but never about ‘life in my city’.

I live in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. Had you asked me a few years ago how the city was, I would’ve invited you to come on over and see it yourself. Not anymore.

For the past few years, there has been a growing number of violent displays across the city, with about half a dozen people dead by stray bullets per day, on average. The ‘drug wars’ between the cartels has terrorized everyone here, and the problem is that even the cops are corrupt, and if media polls are to be believed (When are they, ever?), over 90% of my city doesn’t trust the cops, myself included.

And this situation reminds me of those old movies, where the Italian Mobs came to a restaurant and said things like “It’s a nice place you have here, it would be a shame if something were to happen to it”, because the very same thing is happening here. Monterrey opened up Casinos a few years ago, and now we’re dealing with huge cartel wars, with armed people going into restaurants, clubs, bars, car dealerships and just randomly shooting anything and anyone.You think terrorists are bearded guys that live in far-away lands? I wish.

And this has become so common, I saw a huge gunshot fight right across the street of where I was, and not a single newspaper or radio report said a word about it. Hundreds more happen which go unreported. Twitter says that a couple of trucks were abandoned, which means they probably shot at someone and kidnapped him or her, but no official reports are made. And when official reports are made, they usually sound the same: “X Drug dealers killed by our cops”, with later retractions in very tiny letter saying “Whoops, they weren’t drug dealers, they were just students murdered in cold blood by our cops”.

And part of the problem is that we can’t arrest the criminals, legally. Apparently there’s been an 800% increase of underage criminals. I’m talking about 13-17 year old kids that are handed 2000 pesos, a gun and a target, and start their (short-lived) lives as criminals. These weapons are U.S.-Made, and it’s funny how Obama expects us to arrest the farmers that grow the weed, probably against their will, when his guns are the ones causing the problems here.

Even prisons aren’t enough. We’ve got 2 near my city, and both of them have constantly had people break out of them, start riots, and even fires. Gunfights around the prisons are extremely common nowadays.

The Center of Disease Control says that in the case of a viral outbreak, you first identify how the virus is transmitted, and attempt to break the cycle and thus prevent further cases. And these cartels are little more than a plague. And here’s where I ask… How can we ‘cure’ this?
How did other places, which had mobs and similar problems stop this or at least made it look like it stopped?

The United Nations says we shouldn’t militarize the country, but why the hell not? No one trusts the cops. Our governor lives in Texas.
Even he’s afraid of living here. Mayors of lots of towns have been kidnapped, and many of them have died in the past few years.
The ones that haven’t are probably in bed with the cartels.

If militarization isn’t the cure, what is? Legalization? Then what? They’d all turn over their weapons and dedicate themselves to farming?

All the movies I’ve seen end with some sort of a hero, like The Rock, kicking ass and taking names. We need our Batman. And we need it yesterday.

 

Edit: Oh and in case it wasn’t clear. I’d really, really appreciate ideas and thoughts on how you’d propose fixing this.

CyanogenMod Emulator Update

Posted by on May 16, 2011 10 comments

One of the main reasons people visit this site is to get the latest CyanogenMod-based Android Emulator.

While I can’t say performance has gotten any better (The Android Emulator for Android 2.0 and above sucks, with 3.0 sucking hardcore), I updated the unofficial CyangenMod emulator images to a CyanogenMod 7.1.0 nightly build (Which is based on Android 2.3.4).

You can grab’em at http://nushio.fedorapeople.org/cyanogenmod/repository.xml and if you’ve already set it up, just go to the Android SDK Manager, and check your User Add-ons. It should display the updated package there.

As I’ve said before, this project is entirely unofficial, comes with no support, and will probably haunt you while you sleep. Use at your own comfort.