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Unity 2D to enter GNOME:Ayatana soon…

May 19th, 2011 by

In the past days I’ve been packaging and fixing some issues on Unity 2D for inclusion on the GNOME:Ayatana repository in the openSUSE Build Service.

This gave me an excellent opportunity to test a few components share by both, Unity and Unity 2D, which is the case of ‘unity-place-applications’ and ‘unity-place-files’, both using Zeitgeist which is already in Factory for the upcoming openSUSE 12.1. We thank the integration of this packages to Federico Quintero. Thanks Fred.

A few more additional packages need some care and once they get updated and tested they will be uploaded to GNOME:Ayatana, at which time I will provide an installer (1-Click) for those willing to test Unity-2D. Unity 2D will be the first application to use the indicators I have prepared in the past which all all found working, except 1, the AppMenu (strangely it works on GNOME2 panel without issues).

This is how Unity 2D looks like. There are transparencies because I enabled ‘composite’ on metacity, which works very nicely. As far as I could understand, the developers of Unity 2D are also looking into implementing Compiz with Unity 2D, which would be sweet.

Unity introduces the ‘dash’ which is pretty much the following screen. Transparencies are enabled (though metacity composite) and the notification bubble belongs to NotifyOSD (already present in openSUSE 11.4 as optional). This is one of the three issues I have to fix, the icons displayed on the dash should have text underneath, it’s not showing. The top icons are quick links to Program Categories and the ones bellow are the default applications which are setup in GNOME.

The launcher panel on the side auto-hides, and seems to be working. The three icons displayed in last are respectively: Workspace selector, applications menu and files. Everything seems to be working with them, and the 2 last are components shared with Unity, and they both rely on Zeitgeist. Here’s a few captures of what they do…

There’s also a feature from Unity which is cute… The title artifact of the decorator window (metacity, which required a few patches) is removed and implemented on the top bar when the window is maximized. Sadly for me the AppMenu (menu proxy) isn’t working properly, this is another thing that needs fixing…

This should cover pretty much the functionality that is available currently. There’s a few issues still remaining before I can push this to GNOME:Ayatana:

- I tried not to have the need to patch gnome-session, but since Unity relies on the Session Indicator to have this functionality, gnome-session will need to be patched (should be ok, because it also requires the backport patch for  defining –sessions for openSUSE 11.4).

- Unity 2D itself relies on a few gconf hacks that should be on a schema file. I’ve talked to upstream and this is planned already, so once it’s release, that’s when it will be published.

- There’s one issue also with backgrounds and workspace switcher… unfortunatly the workspace switcher only renders wallpapers if they are in image format (no .xml stuff), so this can turn some wallpapers not to render, which eventually ends up in the background of the switcher being the one defined in GNOME as solid color.

So the order of TODO’s for GNOME:Ayatana is pretty much this one:

1. Implement dependencies and then Unity 2D;
2. Make sure Compiz is well implemented, because Unity will require Compiz at it’s best shape;
3. Make sure nux and other twisted dependencies are properly implemented;
4. Implement Unity itself;

This are the latest news for GNOME:Ayatana…

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Posted in Build Service, Desktop, Distribution, GNOME, Usability | 3 Comments »

A few improvements…

May 18th, 2011 by

A lot more to fix...

Posted in GNOME | Comments Off

Advancing with GNOME:Ayatana repository

May 17th, 2011 by

Last week I’ve received an email from Bruce Byfield asking a few questions about this project. I’ve replied honestly as I would to anyone, I’ve faced several issues, and it sounded wise to me to hold a bit this. Since the Beta release of Natty that I’m following a technology forum in Portugal (over 150.000 users) and making a few notes on what peoples perceptions are about Unity and Natty.

From what I see amongst this segment of the Linux users in my country, it’s interesting… While legacy users are moving away from Ubuntu to other alternatives seeking GNOME3 (no one seems to be moving from GNOME/Unity to KDE), others are satisfied with Unity. The biggest problem with Natty users so far comes regarding Networking issues and hardware compatibility… and once more Ubuntu’s kernels seem to be driving some people to desperation with the classical MCE’s.

A few days (4 days ago), Compiz 0.9.5 has been released. I’ve taken a look on the Ubuntu package and the patch level has dropped substantially, which points that upstream has absorbed most of them. Dominique already has 0.9.5 prepared on X11:Compiz (though the version needs a bump on the spec) and I’m going to test them out and start branching them over to GNOME:Ayatana during the next days and depending on the availability of reviews. This should be peaceful.

For this repository I’m going to enable a small pattern to provide a simple 1-Click Installer for Compiz alone, this means that people will be able to test the patched version of Compiz in which Unity will be build upon in the future.

After Compiz is established on GNOME:Ayatana, I’m going to get back to Unity and prepare Unity2D for deployment (being Unity a task for the future).

Now if some people wonder why all of this innactivity? The answer is simple… GNOME3 was being prepared and launched, and it deserved all the spotlights! Now that GNOME3 has proudly established itself on it’s segment and despite the press attacks, the communities I keep tracking, I see what seems to be a substantial increase of interest on GNOME3. I would personally consider GNOME3 launch a success.

Posted in GNOME | 1 Comment »

openSUSE 11.4: Built to Rule Gnome

May 6th, 2011 by

Six years ago, when I joined the Novell team’s office in Cambridge, some of my cohorts in what used to be the Ximian Red Carpet team had an expression: “Red Hat 7.3 + Ximian Desktop” – they sometimes used it to indicate what had been a quantum leap in the Linux Desktop experience of the Gnome Lineage.  Having been personally a vi+terminal kind of guy, and the Konsole being a great terminal multiplexer since times ancient, I had some precise idea of what KDE releases I had particularly appreciated as smoothly integrated (SuSE 6.2 comes to mind), so the expression stuck in my mind as the ultimate paragon of a Gnome setup.  Sure, great things happened since, but the first time you did not have to grease the wheels of every detail for hours to have a smooth environment certainly sticks in your head in a certain indelible way.

openSUSE has been a pretty good Gnome distribution for a long time now, but 11.4 really gave me a different feeling: I found only 1 bug I care to solve in my laptop support, and the defaults I had out of the box were all more than good, they were pleasing.  It is not just functioning well, it is smooth, it has a quality that is hard to describe but we all know it when we see it.  Which is just so damn awesome :)

Usually I tinker for days to get an environment I am comfortable with (I am a clinical case, I do this on OS-X, Windows and Linux irrespective), but in this case, I had to do very few things to get a very nice setup for my work laptops, both esthetically and functionally. So here comes my ultimative Gnome quick setup guide to a rocking openSUSE 11.4 Gnome experience.

F2′s Quick-Yet-Awesome Gnome Environment Recipe
In no particular order, proceed through the following steps

  1. Pidgin
    su
    zypper in pidgin
    Make it a Gnome startup application
    Control Center | Startup Applications | /usr/bin/pidgin
  2. Flash Player
    Yes, you still need it. Yes, we do love HTML 5 nonetheless.
    zypper in flash-player
  3. Glipper
    A clipboard manager, to keep multiple recent cut&paste targets simultaneously at hand.
    Head to the buildservice and help yourself to a one-click install.
    Logout. Log back in. (suggestion of a smarter way to do this would be appreciated)
    right click | add to panel | clipboard manager
  4. Gnome Do
    Setup Gnome Do to run at login (it is now in the default install)
    gnome-do
    preferences | general | start Gnome Do at login
    fixing hotkey to ctrl-enter
    Select the Glass theme – matches the openSUSE default theme better on 11.4
    I really wish there was a way to have Gnome Do autoclear its buffer after 1 second (or even better when one retypes a similar string), typos are rather defeating in its default mode (“pidxpidgin”, anyone?)
  5. Firefox
    Fix Firefox’s backspace key behavior to match non-Linux platforms (page back) rather than the do-nothing default:
    navigate to About:config | browser.backspace_action = 0
  6. Hostname
    Set a hostname if DHCP does not do it for you.  No self-respecting terminal monkey would have a random hostname!
    YaST | Network Settings | Hostname/DNS
  7. Tilda
    You just cannot overestimate how helpful Quake Terminals are.
    One click install
    tilda -C
    fix hotkey (keybindings | grab keybinding) to <ctrl>grave
    increase buffer (scrolling | Scrollback | 1000)
    Now fix the appearance (the defaults work anywhere but they are ghastly-lookin’ :)
    general | enable Double Buffering [x]
    appearance | height | 66%;  width 100%
    enable transparency [x] ; Level of transparency 30
    enable pulldown [x] ; Delay 15000 usec
    use image for background [x]
    I use a Gimp-scaled version of the desktop wallpaper there (defaults are in /usr/share/wallpapers)
    Make it a Gnome startup application
    Control Center | Startup Applications | /usr/bin/tilda

    Tilda is the crankier bit (even with all that tuning, it is not yet as smooth as Visor at pulldown, there is still some flickering left).  I am not going to go all-out and say that 2011 is the year of the Linux Desktop, but it sure feels pretty nice an environment to work in, and configuring was quite fast, which means most defaults are better than good.

    Suggestions, corrections and additional ideas are welcome. Ramble on, I am reading!

right click | add to panel | clipboard manager

Posted in GNOME | 5 Comments »

Gpick – An advanced color picker…

May 5th, 2011 by

It was brought to my attention through I article (german) the existence of gpick, an advanced and high featured color picker. I’ve taken a quick look at it to make it available for openSUSE as it seems an interesting tool for artists and web designers (maybe GTK3+ themers) and others.

To build this package a few files are generated with the Lemon Parser Generator which isn’t really available. I’m contacting upstream regarding the possibility of including the generated files in the tarball, or eventually if that fails, I’ll probably need to include lemon.c, hand compile it and hack scons build to use the local binary to generate those files.

The screenshots have a tiny glitch on an icon, this is mainly because I haven’t rebuilt the icon cache when I took them. I look forward to explore the possibility of having such a great tool available for openSUSE 12.1.

UPDATE: I’ve made available a small test package on home:ketheriel:gpick (needs some work before submitting to factory) which should be working. Any testing/feedback will be most welcomed. Also enabled builds for Fedora 14, since I believe this package isn’t available for Fedora.

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Posted in Artwork, Desktop, Distribution, GNOME, Packaging | Comments Off

Mockup :: GNOME3 and YaST

April 30th, 2011 by

With the release of GNOME3 I would assume that people are interested in seeing how YaST2 (suggestion: rename it to YaST3 !!) is going to take form with GTK3. Of course this means eventually writing another application in GTK3, hopefully different from the old gnome-control-panel ‘style’ which was actually pretty confusion from the user point of view as it was far too close to gnome-control-center, thus confusing new comers.

My suggestion (unaware if it’s possible or not) was probably to explore GNOME3 features to serve YaST integrated already with GNOME3. This could be an interesting approach as it would offer integration and some advantages:

* Better integration with GNOME3 without having to write(/maintain another application;
* Take advantage of YaST2 modular structure;
* Present YaST in a prime space in GNOME3, thus offering a openSUSE differentiation point;
* No conflicts with possible KDE existing front-ends for YaST2;
* Improve users experience.

My proposal would be something like (maybe to be served as an extension for gnome-shell). Please neglect my ‘lame’ photo manipulation skills:

Mockup: YaST2 on GNOME3

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Posted in Accessibility, Artwork, Desktop, Distribution, Factory, GNOME, Systems Management, YaST | 8 Comments »

The ‘DreamChess’ incident!

April 25th, 2011 by

Today I was reading the openSUSE forums and found an interesting thread on the ‘Games’ section, from which I quote:

“I remember playing DreamChess on Ubuntu, but the one is not available for Suse 11.4 KDE.”

I’ve taken a look around, gathered the stuff required and made a quick package of this game, thus pushing it forward to the games repository. Within a few minutes of the submission, the package was approved and it’s ready to be served to the masses.

We can’t leave transitioning users from Ubuntu unhappy can we ?! Once more thanks to Dimstar and Prusnak for the quick answer in getting this package into the games repository.

DreamChess 0.2.0 on openSUSE 11.4 with GNOME3

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Posted in Desktop, Distribution, GNOME, KDE, Packaging | 1 Comment »

Gnome3 launch party @ Zürich report

April 10th, 2011 by

Gnome3 launch party in Zürich, April 8th 2011

ETHZ building

A group of 20 people met in ETHZ F26.3 room Friday afternoon (3pm to 7pm). To assist the Gnome 3 Launch party. We were expecting more people, but a so sunny weather, and a Monday off in Zürich doesn’t help to keep people inside after a long winter. :-)

Marcus Moeller showed us a deep overview of the whole Gnome 3 desktop, with the strength and weakness (non yet finished features or controversial ones).

Then there’s some talks about features, what will happen unity/ubuntu/gnome etc …

On my side I did a late presentation about what’s openSUSE project is, and its associated SUPER COOL tools like OBS and susestudio.
It was supposed to last 15 minutes long. I was asked only Tuesday night to do it! But in fact we spend more than half an hour demoing obs and susestudio. Really was cool to do.

openSUSE project presentation

A special thanks to Biju Gopi Thilaka for setting up that party.

Biju Gopi was kind enough to share his slides with us, so keep reading …

(more…)

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Posted in Artwork, Base System, Contrib, Desktop, Distribution, Events, GNOME, lizards.openSUSE.org | Comments Off

GNOME3 iso by fcrozat and ATI radeon driver… a quick easy fix!

April 10th, 2011 by

Hi all,

For some time I wanted to check out GNOME3 and gnome-shell… My current chipset is ATI M92 RV710 and while the thermal performance with the proprietary driver is somewhat what I expect, the open source radeon driver does overheat my laptop a lot compared to flgrx. For the time being, fglrx isn’t really a choice because it just borgs the ‘activities’ bar on top… And until ATI fixes their driver, there’s no other choice than running with the standard radeon drm driver, which does provide a very pleasant experience with GNOME3 / gnome-shell.

For all that matters, KMS is to be enabled, period, full stop. And from this point… we have two options regarding power management:

1. Dynamic Frequency switching (not really working for me);
2. Profile based frequency switching (does provide what I need);

For all that matters regarding ‘profile based frequency switching’ we have 5 profiles available:

  • “default” uses the default clocks and does not change the power state. This is the default behavior.
  • “auto” selects between “mid” and “high” power states based on the whether the system is on battery power or not. The “low” power state are selected when the monitors are in the dpms off state.
  • “low” forces the gpu to be in the low power state all the time. Note that “low” can cause display problems on some laptops; this is why auto only uses “low” when displays are off.
  • “mid” forces the gpu to be in the “mid” power state all the time. The “low” power state is selected when the monitors are in the dpms off state.
  • “high” forces the gpu to be in the “high” power state all the time. The “low” power state is selected when the monitors are in the dpms off state.

Now, what I did might not be an option to everyone, but for sure it does provide a nice solution for my problem… So be mindful of that… this is a personal preference based on the fact that I don’t require intensive GPU usage, neither I run intensive GPU requiring applications within GNOME3/gnome-shell (I have a normal openSUSE 11.4 with GNOME 2.32.x with fglrx dual boot config for those apps).

The first thing we might want to do is to switch to profile based frequency switching… how do we this? As root:

[code] echo profile > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method[/code]

Now we have to pick one of those 5 profiles… and since I’ve already stated… I want the ‘low’ profile since I don’t really do much intensive GPU work…

[code] echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile[/code]

Now… you might want to check out the different profiles and the different clocks used… this can be done through:

[code] cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info[/code]

and will report something like this:

[code]linux-331w:~ # cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info
default engine clock: 680000 kHz
current engine clock: 299530 kHz
default memory clock: 800000 kHz
current memory clock: 249750 kHz
voltage: 900 mV
PCIE lanes: 16[/code]

This one is using the ‘low’ profile… Feel free to test stuff around and find which one better answers your needs… Also there’s far more that can be done… I hope this helps ATI users with DRM driver to bring out the best of your system and improves your GNOME3 / gnome-shell experience, at so that you can run it with good thermal performance without fglrx.

NM

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Posted in Desktop, GNOME, Kernel | 4 Comments »

Gnome 3 Launch Party Friday 8th April in Zürich Join us!

April 6th, 2011 by

gnome3 made easy

Gnome 3

Wake up ! it’s today ! Happy celebration

Learn a bit more about Gnome 3 : gnome3.org

Launch party in Zürich

If you can join the Launch Party in Zürich Friday 8th April 2011, 15h00 to 19h00

Deeper informations : visit the info page, or read the full invitation letter

Don’t hesitate to join!

Remember Zürich is less than one hour flight away from any major city in Europe, and well desserve by train. Weather will be nice and warm. So you didn’t have an excuse to not come! :-)

I will talk about openSUSE, and how to get Gnome3 in it, I really will be happy if any other geekos around could come and join

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Posted in Distribution, Events, GNOME | 2 Comments »

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