Sorry I missed in December the annoucement release for the 8.920, but from what I’ve seen. zypper up do the job for you

Quick Résumé about 12.1

AMD rename their installer, So Sebastian did the same for his script.

I will just copy/google translate/paste here the comment made by Sebastian Siebert on his blog :

With this version AMD Catalyst Gnome 3.2 issues (flickering and screen cracks) are finally resolved.
According to AMD, the notebook with the PowerXpress technology (Intel-/AMD-Grafikkarte – discrete GPU) should work again.
I would be grateful if someone could test this functionality for me and give me feedback. Thank you.

See more at Sebastian’s blog. Don’t be shy, you can leave there the result of test in english too
See below what to do in case of troubles.

The rpms version 8.930 are available from Friday January 27th

My advise is to firstly remove any existing version with zypper rm, then just zypper in the new version, even if 8.930 are the first version I’ve seen making its upgrade correctly.

As usual, I let the last 2 previous versions in the repository, just in case you need it.

Catalyst 8.930 fglrx 12.1 in action

Tested on a fresh 12.1 + updates with a stock kde 4.7.2

Factory rpms are not available actually, I’ve not be able to build a new building machine for it.
Anyways, factory and 12.2 should keep their effort on debuging and testing widely the free radeon driver.

One-click-installer

As nobody killed me about the one click installer available, I upgrade its status to RC (feedback welcome)
For 32bits system :

For 64bits system :

(*) To know which kind of system you have, open a console, then run uname -a, and look the output if you see x86_64 on the line you are running a 64bits, otherwise a 32bits.

Installation, Caution, Troubles

Installation

Please refer to my previous article where all the installation procedure are explained.

For a first installation, if you don’t remove radeon from the initrd, you will get in trouble. Don’t thanks who removed that from the wiki.

Caution

• Wrong (to my point of view) create an xorg.conf file which is unneeded if you work with /etc/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf and have driver “fglrx” inside
• AMD CCLE didn’t get correctly upgraded if xorg is running during the upgrade. My advise, let’s go to console and as root do the following :

  init 3
  rcatievenstd stop
  zypper ref
  zypper up
  init 6
  

  Let the package rebuild the kernel driver. And for me I always remove the newly xorg.conf file created.
  reboot is mandatory!

Debuging troubles

I recommend in case of trouble the use of his script which can collect the whole informations needed to help you. then you just have to issue a simple commande in console to collect all informations, you can review them, and finally transmit them

su -c 'sh makerpm-amd-12.1.sh -ur'
The sytem report 'amd-report.txt' was generated.                                                                                                                    [ OK ]
Do you want to read the system report 'amd-report.txt' now? yes/no [y/n]: y
Are you sure to upload the above-named system report to sprunge.to? yes/no [y/n]: y

The report was uploaded to sprunge.us.
   The link is:  http://sprunge.us/ZVRP

Copy paste the link in the comment zone of Sebatian post

Statistiques

December 2011 as shown a big bump on the server : 50,212 unique visitor for a roughly 320GB traffic for the rpm

1582GB has been distributed during 2011.

That’s all folks! Have fun!

If you live in the North hemisphere as I do, it’s winter time actually: cold temperature, freezing wind, snow … and 20 years older than your twenties, then you want to keep your head warm.
So the mission was : “what can I design (in other words : what crazy new idea can I have?) funky to wear, well fitting with the car design, and the rest of a geek’s wardrobe?
A beanie sounds perfect!

What

Something simple, quickly available, uni-geek-sex, nice etc. So 10 days ago, I’ve done my shopping with my favorite partner, and agree on a model, then checked cost and delivery time.
Here’s the picture, of how it should look.

I hope you will love it, and fight to get one for you?

Where When can I grab one?

There will be a small series (99) available on openSUSE’s booth during Fosdem (4-5 Feb) in Brussels. I will sold them 10€/piece, and half the money will goes to Fosdem organization. The rest cover the pre-serie cost.

My advice, don’t be in late!

How to build your own?

If you can’t attempt Fosdem, or can’t have one, you can easily start your own local production. I’ve choose the Myrtle Beach (MB 7584) white/lime,a Beanie with contrasting border, 100% polyacryl. They should be available in any clothes advertising shop. Then the logo is printed on it, better to have it embroidered but this is more expensive.

Have fun!

But in the uni-kit-verse there’s one you must known, especially if you are the proud owner of a laptop or one of this computer the manufacter deliver its firmware only in DOS exe format.
FirmwareUpdateKit (was introduced in 2008 in openSUSE by Steffen Winterfeldt

How that works?

As the title of the post give you the right command, open a console, then use the cnf (command-not-found) tool to learn what to do

Install the package

cnf fuk

The program 'fuk' can be found in the following package:
  * FirmwareUpdateKit [ path: /usr/bin/fuk, repository: zypp (repo-oss) ]

Try installing with:
    zypper install FirmwareUpdateKit

Pretty clear and cool, let’s install that stuff!

sudo zypper install FirmwareUpdateKit
root's password:
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...

The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
  FirmwareUpdateKit syslinux 

2 new packages to install.
Overall download size: 758.0 KiB. After the operation, additional 2.1 MiB will be used.
Continue? [y/n/?] (y): y
Retrieving package syslinux-4.04-12.1.3.x86_64 (1/2), 642.0 KiB (1.9 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving: syslinux-4.04-12.1.3.x86_64.rpm [done]
Retrieving package FirmwareUpdateKit-1.1-14.1.1.x86_64 (2/2), 116.0 KiB (178.0 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: FirmwareUpdateKit-1.1-14.1.1.x86_64.rpm [done]
Installing: syslinux-4.04-12.1.3 [done]
Installing: FirmwareUpdateKit-1.1-14.1.1 [done]

Get your bios

Nothing easy for that, you will have to surf on boring mfg website, and find an appropriate bios for your computer.

Be serious during that selection, you can screw up totally your computer

Time to fuk

As always before running a program, it’s always good to check if there’s the fine manual (not the case here) or try a -h –help

fuk --help
Usage: fuk [OPTIONS] FILES
FirmwareUpdateKit version 1.1.

Create bootable DOS system and add FILES to it.
The main purpose is to assist with DOS-based firmware updates.

Options:
  --grub                        Add boot entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst.
  --lilo                        Add boot entry to /etc/lilo.conf.
  --title TITLE                 Use TITLE as label for boot menu entry.
  --iso FILE                    Create bootable CD.
  --floppy FILE                 Create bootable (1440 kB) floppy disk.
  --image FILE                  Create bootable harddisk.
  --run COMMAND                 Run COMMAND after booting DOS.
  --verbose                     Be more verbose.

Nothing complicated as a nuclear plan here, everything seems to be self explicit.
Let try it, and install a new grub entry for the new A8 version for my lappy.

fuk --verbose --grub --run M4600A08.exe /home/bruno/src_tmp/HARDWARE/DELL_M4600/M4600A08.exe
/tmp/fuk.lSVIgS0cMt/fwupdate.img: chs = 186/4/16, size = 11904 blocks
- writing mbr
- writing fat12 boot block
- copying:
    /usr/share/FirmwareUpdateKit/kernel.sys
    /usr/share/FirmwareUpdateKit/command.com
    /tmp/fuk.lSVIgS0cMt/config.sys
    /tmp/fuk.lSVIgS0cMt/autoexec.bat
    /home/bruno/src_tmp/HARDWARE/DELL_M4600/M4600_A08.exe
c-3po:~ #

That’s all I’ve now a new entry in my grub list

title Firmware Update
    kernel /boot/memdisk
    initrd /boot/fwupdate.img

Apply

Now just reboot and use the grub entry, then upgrade your bios, like you will normally have done with you old complicated build iso, or diskette (I’m joking)

AMD/ATI Catalyst 11.11 / fglrx 8.911 rpm are available

Call the 911 to rescue your gfx!

Quick Résumé about 11.11

Several of you has all kind of non feature (mostly called bugs) with Gnome3.2 and kde4 etc…

I will just copy/google translate/paste here the comment made by Sebastian Siebert on his blog

Okay, now that was a long night for me was.  I’ve researched intensively since yesterday evening after the problem of GNOME 3.2 and the XvBA hardware acceleration on openSUSE 12.1. Here, a blog reader has pointed out that the direct installation of the AMD Catalyst could solve the problem. However, I think the direct installation of anything since like AMD will move the existing files, and thus endangering the integrity of files. But I had to start somewhere and so did the RPM package and direct install AMD compared. I could detect no difference in principle, except that some files were installed in a different directory, where they had really nothing to be related. I could at first make any sense why the RPM installation failed. To me a very banal story is remembered. A specific search path ld.so.conf could possibly be kicked out in openSUSE 12.1. I have my current openSUSE 11.4 /etc/ld.so.conf compared with that of openSUSE 12.1 and lo and behold some search paths were removed. I have the necessary path to /usr/X11R6/lib/ or created and /usr/X11R6/lib64 in /etc/ld.so.conf.d/fglrx.conf for the fglrx driver, and lo and behold “vainfo” tells me that everything is in order. Now comes the interesting question: Is the problem fixed with GNOME 3.2 now? The answer: YES!  So, dear people, you invite the makerpm-ati-down script with the updated packaging script installs the driver as usual and have fun with the new openSUSE 12.1 and the AMD Catalyst driver.

All rpms are updated now

The 8.911 version are available from saturday November 19th

My advise is to firstly remove any existing version with zypper rm, then just zypper in the new version

Factory rpms are not available actually, Factory 12.2 has just change it’s version number in /etc/SuSE-release and thus is not detected for the moment.
The next version should see 12.2 supported (December). Anyway you have to debug radeon on factory please!

Others things

I need you! (remember)

Even if today I already change the main ATI wiki page there will have a lot of stuff outside which contain the old server address. If you can fix them each time you saw that error, it will help any potential users to get the right informations.
About the wiki, the page need also your love and contribution, look at the wiki team remark in the header. So if you feel comfortable with wiki syntax, your help in fixing SDB/ATI will be really appreciate.

- Are you a virtuoso on forums, please pick and paste those informations there!
- Are you a social network addict, please forward as much as you can!
- Are you a designer/artist, I need something great to the home page of geeko.ioda.net, contact me, let a comment

You are brave, and knows how to fix your computer? There a beta one click installer available (feedback welcome)
For 32bits system :

For 64bits system :

(*) To know which kind of system you have, in a console look at the output of uname -a if you see x86_64 on the line you are running a 64bits, otherwise a 32bits.

• 11.11 Quick review :
• Catalyst 11.11 installer (pdf). You can always look for supported chipset at 11.11 Release Notes
• Get the cheat-sheet 11.11 version
• Kernel 3.1 is supported
• Support of openSUSE 11.2 is removed, if you are still using it with Evergreen project, I’ve kept the repository with older version
• Tested and working on stock 11.4 with a HD5750
• Tested and working on stock 12.1 with a HD5750
• Tested with flash 64 under Firefox 7.0.1
• Sebastian Siebert (freespacer) : 11.11 article (German)

I’ve created now a repository dedicated to 12.1, so if you are using 12.1RC please switch to that one, next month it will differ from the Factory one

zypper ar -c -f -n "ATI/AMD fglrx non-official" http://geeko.ioda.net/mirror/ati/openSUSE_12.1/ "ATI/AMD FGLRX"

Installation, Caution, Troubles

Installation

Please refer to my previous article where all the installation procedure are explained.

For a first installation, if you don’t remove radeon from the initrd, you will get in trouble. Don’t thanks who removed that from the wiki.

Caution

• Wrong (to my point of view) create an xorg.conf file which is unneeded if you work with /etc/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf and have driver “fglrx&quot inside
• AMD CCLE didn’t get correctly upgraded if xorg is running during the upgrade my advise, go to console and as root do the following :

  init 3
  rcatievenstd stop
  zypper ref
  zypper up
  init 6
  

  let the package rebuild the kernel driver. And for me I always remove the newly xorg.conf file created.
  reboot is mandatory!

Be there : rendez-vous at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/ama%20gi/139/50/21

Just copy & paste the url, for a direct teleportation in our Geeko Place, once you are in SL

Small, big, bright green, yellow green

Even avatars…

To fix that, Bruno Friedmann (tigerfoot) & Françoise Wybrecht (Morgane Marquis) invite you to come at Geekos Place on SecondLife and grab your own plush for free.

A long dream has become true last week, with the effort of several people contributing together to make Tigerfoot’s dream a reality.

comparing real and first draft

The long way to find the right texture and text

Small and sweet on women's avatar shoulder

Don't forget our party's balloon and t-shirt!

Resizing Geeko plush is allowed to fit your style

The SL plush is really similar to the new real one, and is full open, so you can adapt it to your own needs or way to live with a plush on shoulder.

We also now have our own big Geeko on the sim, in which you can hide yourself if you want.

Adapt the size and position, it's free to modify

Have Fun!

RC1 Party Time

Be there @ Geekos Place

Reminder

The RC1 parties is tomorrow Saturday 21 October between 3-5pm and 6-8pm CEST (1-3pm, 4-6pm UTC)

Geeko : I love riding

Imagine it!

A few months ago, I’ve started to look for my next car. Then a crazy idea emerged, why not a Geeko’s car?

Find it!

At that time Gilbert my mechanic [www] told me that Ford will get a new Fiesta model called Sport+ with a more powerful engine, a new look & feel. I went to the exhibition and made a short test drive. The car was cool. The exhibit model was in blue with 2 white stripes.

Blue? Green would have been cool isn’t it?

Fiesta Sport+ with original stripes

Draw it!

Several weeks have past (Gnome3 launch, DesktopSummit, OSC11 preparation), but the idea stayed in my mind. Good news, the model exist in white with blue stripes too.

After finding a collada model compatible with Blender and pattern for printers coming from ccvision.de (Ford_231 for reference) I started imagine how I can transform it. Playing with demo pictures gimp, blender and inkscape, my project started to look as I wanted : green it will be!

Order it!

End of August the things became more serious, the old one was on good shape, the price and primes for the new one were all interesting and inside my budget, let’s order it!
Unfortunately, the delay to get the car and the design done before OSC11 was too short. At least let’s get the car nude white.

No need to say that we enjoyed the journey to Nuremberg with the new car. Okay back home I let the car for two days with the instructions to print it.

Gosh the result totally blew my mind!

A cool Geeko Green Car

We use the original Ford design for the stripes

Anybody should see where we are located on internet!

The url is made with the same dark gray used for the bumper down part

Free Future, my moto on connect.

Geeko(tm) on windows

Enjoy it!

Happy ambassador & proud member

Now who want to help me to find some events & funds to go there and show it!

Drive carefully, Have fun!

Geeko place on SecondLife

Ladies & Gentlemen, months after the first virtual party [1][2][3] organized for 11.4 launch,

Françoise (aka Morgane Marquis) and myself (tigerfoot) organize 3 new parties on SecondLife [4] to welcome and fest our next release openSUSE 12.1, coming around the 11.11.11.

• Three virtual great Saturday: October 22th, November 12th and December 10th.
• From 6 to 8am Australian DJ Ariella is back again.
• From 9 to 11am (SL time : utc-9) we will have the pleasure to listen American DJ Esquivel.

You should take this opportunity to try Second Life, creating an avatar, coming to dance and drinking some beers with us at Geekos Place.

Geeko in Linux tribe place

What’s new ?

From January to march 2011, we did rent a land, which cost much less than in real life, but had a cost. Yes it’s money and time to organize party, to find good DJ, invite people and for the main point : to get people come to your place. So after 10 great evenings with around 30-40 people, we decided to slow down. In April, we discovered the linux tribe sim. The place has been created to promote opensource, and even started recently a learning place (blender, gimp …).

Finally our Geekos Place is much smaller, but has found a place in the middle of the penguins tribe.
Thanks to them.

Second Life (SL) in a few words

Second Life represent millions of avatars (names and password), but let’s say about 40 to 60’000 people are connected at the same time (from USA to Europe, Australia, Africa …). As most of these visitors have a programmer or design profile, they can’t stand themselves from buying a land, creating a place, testing new concepts or scripts. So in fact, SL is a huge great creative space … and seems sometimes like a desert (as less people stand together on a same place).

Why Second Life ?

In January, we start looking for open groups on SL … and we were surprised to see a list of hundred of those. Then we discovered that if some were listing the different Linux distributions, most of them forgot openSUSE. Worst when we arrived on the penguin tribe sim, it seems we fall inside an Ubuntu fan club. We heard that openSUSE was too difficult to install! Beg your pardon ? lol.
Ok, we won’t go to SL for a competition (in term of fight), but just to be where users and contributors can be!

Even if SL is not that easy to use, as it need a powerful openGL 3D stack, and specialized client software [5], it’s a surprising place to visit

Real and virtual life

We could start a big talk on "what is real or not?" But who cares?

We just invite you to come, try it, Have a lot of fun, and represent openSUSE on a virtual place.

We found 2 great DJ, Ariella from Australia, and Esquievel from the USA. Both are mixing great rock and pleasant music. And we have to remember that they are not paid, except with the tips they receive during the party from you and us. If you are not an addict of SL perhaps you don’t know that pretty cheap to give generous tips on SL. And each buck earn is really appreciate by the DJ. Think about it!

Act Now!

Can we count on your energy and joy?

Don’t wait the last minute! Create today your avatar, and come as soon as possible, get and wear your free Geeko t-shirt! If you need help to move or to find the place, just IM Morgane Marquis or Tigerfoot. See or hear you soon.

Related links

1. Previous Article: Party RC1
2. Gallery March 10th
3. Gallery March 11th
4. secondlife.com
5. Software Phoenix Viewer SecondLife Viewer

I’ve rebuild and published the new rpms on October 1st

fglrx 8.892 Catalyst 11.9 in action

• 11.9 Quick review :
• There’s no full changelog for Linux, but Catalyst 11.9 installer (pdf). You can always look for supported chipset at 11.9 Release Notes
• Get the cheat-sheet 11.9 version
• Kernel supported up to 3.1x version
• Removed support of openSUSE 11.2, if you are still using it with Evergreen project, the repository still exist with older version
• Tested and working on stock 11.4 and kde 4.7.1
• Check that kernel module build correctly under factory

Sebastian Siebert (freespacer) : 11.9 article (German)

fglrx 8.891 - Catalyst 11.9 playing flash video and mp4 file

Installation, Caution, Troubles

Installation

Please refer to my previous article where all the installation procedure are explained.
For a first installation, if you don’t remove radeon from the initrd, you will get in trouble. Don’t thanks who removed that from the wiki.

Caution

• Wrong (to my point of view) create an xorg.conf file which is unneeded if you work with /etc/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf and have driver "fglrx&quot inside
• AMD CCLE didn’t get correctly upgraded if xorg is running during the upgrade
  my advise, go to console and as root do the following :

  init 3
  rcatievenstd stop
  zypper ref
  zypper up
  

  let the package rebuild the kernel driver. And for me I always remove the newly xorg.conf file created.

Troubles

Some instabilities could happen. In case of crash like no keyboard, mouse, and blackscreen on reboot. Try to shutdown properly your computer with the shutdown poweroff button (or remote ssh). On reboot, just add 3 at the end of grub line to restart in console mode.
Then with yast or zypper you can always remove the actual version and try the previous version available in the repos.
Or remove it totally and reuse free radeon driver. Think to remove any reference to fglrx inside xorg config files. and remove the blacklist radeon.

Under kde4, some system settings in Desktop Effects can drop you out of sync with your screen. alt+shift+F12 (disable desktop effect toggle keyboard shortcut) can restore your desktop.

What about tumbleweed, factory?

Users have reported that version 8.861 of catalyst 11.6 compile correctly under Tumbleweed with 2.6.39 kernel and the driver is ready for kernel 3.0x, so until xorg change too much and then AMD support for the new version, installing the 11.4 version should work.

For factory, I’ve build a repository (see previous article) that can be used, and fglrx build.
The new package are called SUSE121.

Next month we will be closer to the 12.1 release, and then I will start to open a openSUSE_12.1 repository

Stats Numbers ?

All proudly served by openSUSE 11.4 powered server!

Have a lot of fun!