Mandriva

Many people are talking about the Asus Eee PC : low cost, tiny, and for the "geeks", running Linux. Mandriva 2008 Spring is compatible out of the box with Asus Eee PC. However a new low cost PC is appearing, done by a spanish company : AIRIS KIRA. This notebbok is low cost ( 299 ¤ ), and last but no least : is running Mandriva Linux !

You can download the technicals specs in PDF :

• 1Ghz Via C7-M CPU
• 512MB or 1GB as RAM
• 2GB or 4GB SSD storage
• 7' TFT at 840×480
• 2 x USB 2.0 ports
• 4in1 SD reader
• webcam ( optional )
• RJ-45 port + WIFI 802.11b/g
• weight : 1.10 kg

In April 24th, it seems that the Phone House will be selling Airis in France.

Today is the second anniversary of the Day Planner project. So hurray for Day Planner, and here’s to all the great releases to come.

In other related news, I’ve just released a development snapshot of Day Planner 0.9.
It is available at http://www.day-planner.org/index.php/download/devsnapshot. It contains all of the developed features for 0.9 (including the unfinished maemo port), but is not yet stable enough to be labelled stable, so If you’ve got time and feel like it, give it a spin and report any bugs you find. The whole iCalendar back-end has been almost completely re-written for this version, which is why I want some additional testing before I release a stable version.

Please do not package this release or submit it to news sites, it’s just a svn snapshot.

Today is the second anniversary of the Day Planner project. So hurray for Day Planner, and here’s to all the great releases to come.

In other related news, I’ve just released a development snapshot of Day Planner 0.9.
It is available at http://www.day-planner.org/index.php/download/devsnapshot. It contains all of the developed features for 0.9 (including the unfinished maemo port), but is not yet stable enough to be labelled stable, so If you’ve got time and feel like it, give it a spin and report any bugs you find. The whole iCalendar back-end has been almost completely re-written for this version, which is why I want some additional testing before I release a stable version.

Please do not package this release or submit it to news sites, it’s just a svn snapshot.

I use Google Reader to large handfull of blogs and several frequently updated websites. I'd really like a way to keep anyone who wants to know updated with my current actual subsciption list. I realize I could do manual things like export the list to OPML and post the file here on my own website, but that's static.

I know there are sites like Bloglines which make this easy, but I want to continue using Reader exclusively.

Does anyone know of a way to either:
a) create a live and public link to my current Google Reader subscription list, or
b) create a script that, when activated, will check my current Reader list and display it in a web page?

I use Google Reader to large handfull of blogs and several frequently updated websites. I'd really like a way to keep anyone who wants to know updated with my current actual subsciption list. I realize I could do manual things like export the list to OPML and post the file here on my own website, but that's static.

I know there are sites like Bloglines which make this easy, but I want to continue using Reader exclusively.

Does anyone know of a way to either:
a) create a live and public link to my current Google Reader subscription list, or
b) create a script that, when activated, will check my current Reader list and display it in a web page?

Mandriva 2008 Spring gems #1 : urpmi.addmedia --mirrorlist

This is maybe one of the most useful feature in the new Mandriva 2008.1 Spring : the ability to automatically officials or third parties repos in CLI with urpmi.addmedia. Indeed, previously users were using websites like Easyurpmi to add officials Mandriva mirrors, but also to add third parties mirrors like PLF. Whereas the Mandriva Media manager, drakrpm-edit-media, was allowing to add easily and automatically Mandriva officials repositories, it was impossible to do it for third parties repositories. On top of that it means that when using CLI only, you add to enter very complicated urpmi.addmedia commands.

Since Mandriva 2008.1 Spring, a new option have been added which allow to add mirrors from a list. With this option, urpmi.addmedia will try to add the nearest mirror. The only thing needed is a server giving the list of mirrors in a format compatible for urpmi.addmedia. This feature has been developed based on ideas from bug #29161. A new option --mirrorlist, and a new special variable $MIRRORLIST have been introduced. Let's see how to use them !

• Add all Mandriva official medias for your distribution version : This command will add all Mandriva officials medias for your current distribution version and architecture. $MIRRORLIST variable is used :urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist '$MIRRORLIST'
• Add all Mandriva official medias for your distribution version ( the long way ) : This command will be equivalent to the previous except that we will give manually the url of the server hosting the list of mirrors. Distribution version and architecture will be guessed automatically from $RELEASE and $ARCH variables : urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist http://api.mandriva.com/mirrors/'$RELEASE'.'$ARCH'.list
• Add all Mandriva official medias for your distribution version ( the manual way ) : This command is equivalent to the previous ones, except that we will define manually the distribution version and architecture. For a 32 bits version of 2008.1 Spring, this will give you : urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist http://api.mandriva.com/mirrors/2008.1.i586.list
  If you are a 64bits user, you will replace i586 by x86_64
• Adding PLF repositories : Here is the command to add PLF Free and PLF Non-free medias for your distribution version and architecture : urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist http://plf.zarb.org/mirrors/'$RELEASE'.'$ARCH'.list
• Adding Cooker Official medias ( to be used by cooker users and Mandriva contributors ) : This command will add all Cooker's medias for your distribution architecture : urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist http://api.mandriva.com/mirrors/cooker.'$ARCH'.list

As you can see, it's way easier to add the medias from CLI. As everything is done automatically, it's also easier to script urpmi medias addition. One of the direct benefit is the fact that the Mandriva 2008 Spring One will add automatically the official Mandriva repositories at the end of the installation on the hard disk if the system is detecting an internet connection. So directly atfer the installation, all Mandriva packages are directly available !
Please note that you can add only some specific media like for example main/release, or main/backports. For further informations, please have a look at urpmi.addmedia manpage.

Today, April 16, 2008, I have reached the age of 31.

As a kind of birthday present for myself (and Sanne :)), my new bed was delivered to my house today. Finally my trusty old single person bed is replaced by a nice big double bed. As a side effect, my savings account is almost empty now…

Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring

A new toy to play with: Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring.
Equipped with a fresh GNOME 2.22, and of course updated Dutch translations (thanks Rinse and Chris for your help!), it’s a pleasure to use. In this release, transferring photos to and from my phone over Bluetooth Just Works(tm), and the special keys on my work laptop are finally recognized out of the box! Read more (in Dutch) on Mandrivaclub.nl and Techzine.

» Plaats op eKudos

Everyone else is doing it!

[0 zerodogg@firefly ~]$ history | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head
279 cd
185 vim
117 ssh
75 screen
74 svn
66 wget
64 ls
60 perldoc
59 rm
58 cget

Yes, well, it’s not nice to whine, but…check this out. That’s the most important news in the Linux world from the last week, according to Slashdot.

Notice anything missing, perhaps?

Yep, according to Slashdot, a preview release of Granular Linux, a vague Gartner report on the future of open source, Red Hat sending out a press release about software patents, and a preview of The GIMP 2.5 are all more important than a new release of Mandriva. Slashdot’s been heavily neglecting Mandriva news for a while now, but failing to print a story on a major new release of the distribution - even in their Linux section, never mind the front page - is just ridiculous. Yes, we’re not the biggest distribution in the world any more, but by any sane measure we’re still comfortably in the top five or six, and clearly more significant than Granular. Yet a major new final release of the distribution does not warrant a mention. It’s just really sad to have to deal with this kind of thing on a daily basis.

If you feel the urge to write and complain, I certainly won’t mind.

As i noticed this on several others bloggers, here is my bash history. Nothing surprising for a cooker follower :
[admin@info1 Mandriva projects]$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head 189 ls 106 rpm 94 urpmq 75 cp 63 cd 55 touch 51 less 38 rm 34 mount 28 ssh [root@info1 ~]# history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head 89 urpmq 89 rpm 79 ls 68 urpmi.update 66 urpme 57 service 50 urpmi 47 less 36 cd 27 su

Enfin ! La Mandriva 2008 Spring est désormais disponible. Félicitations à tout le monde pour le travail énorme qui a été fournit. J'espère que VOUS, oui toi public, vous allez appréciez cette nouvelle version.

Vous pouvez avoir un aperçu de la Mandriva 2008 Spring en alalnt jeter un coup d'oeil à la visite guidée de la 2008 Spring. D'ici quelques jours, une fois que j'aurais fini tous mes articles, je vais commencer à bloguer sur les "pépites" de la Mandriva 2008 Spring. Normalement ce sera fait en anglais, mais il se peut que je fasse des versions en français. Donc, restez à l'écoute !

So finally Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is out. Congrats to everybody for their hard work. I hope that YOU, yes YOU, are going to enjoy this release :)

You can have an idea about what this new Mandriva release by looking at the Mandriva 2008 Spring Visual Tour. In the next few days, once I will have finished all my articles, I will begin to blog about the "secrets gems" of Mandriva 2008 Spring :) Stay tuned !

Just got my hands on a new updates build server. It’s a quad-core xeon 2.13GHz with 8GB RAM. To put things into perspective, this machine will replace 3 different machines eventually… one to do the administrative stuff (AMD Athlon64 2.2GHz w/ 2GB RAM), one to build 32bit updates (dual core P4 3GHz w/ 1GB RAM), and one to do 64bit updates (AMD Athlon64 2GHz w/ 1GB RAM). Yes… I’ve been working with those machines for quite a few years now. Current kernel and OOo builds have definitely necessitated an upgrade.

To put things further into perspective, I compiled the Annvix kernel (2.6.22.19) on the two build machines and this new one (and also on my old trusty dual-opteron 1.8GHz w/ 2GB RAM that was my Annvix build machine… since I’m no longer working on Annvix, I was initially thinking of making that machine a new Mandriva updates build machine).

The 32bit build machine compiled it in 36:35.99m using 102% CPU. The 64bit build machine did it in 28:15.13m using 97% CPU. The dual-opteron did it in 23:47.04m with 152% CPU. This new quad-core xeon did it in 12:01.66m with 229% CPU. (Note that this is a single SMP kernel, not the multi-flavour kernels Mandriva builds).

I’m absolutely tickled pink by this. =) This will definitely make secteam more efficient.

Unfortunately, it also showed that 2008.1 will not boot on this system (at least with the 64bit Free DVD installer). 2008.0 had no problem booting and installing. Unfortunately, doing my urpmi –auto-select to upgrade from 2008.0 to 2008.1, it also looks as though 2008.1’s kernel is to blame… the system is not booting at all now. =(

EDIT: using acpi=off makes it work, so the installer will run now (and the 2008.1 kernel boots, but the initrd is hosed giving the same error as 2008.0).

EDIT2: using acpi=off works, my quad-core has turned into a single-core. Definitely not cool. And acpi=ht doesn’t work… it hangs. So according to the Ubuntu wiki, this means that “the issue is in the ACPI table parsing code itself, or perhaps the SMP code”. Gustavo is telling me that there were some ACPI changes in 2.6.24, so that is most likely the culprit here.

/me sighs

So, sod major new distribution releases and anniversaries and all that malarkey - I hit a far more important milestone yesterday:

08 70 X X 9/ 7/ X X X 72 186

boo yah. next stop, 200!

Voilà, pour ceux qui n’auraient pas déjà l’info : la Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring est sortie.

Mais ce billet va plus spécifiquement parler d’un concept intégré désormais dans Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring et hérité de Fedora : Codeina (ex-Codec Buddy).

Alors pourquoi avoir Codeina dans Mandriva Linux ?

Tout d’abord, je vais vous passer toute la théorie et vous expliquer tout simplement ce qu’est un codec : c’est un bout de code qui permet de lire un ou plusieurs formats de fichiers multimédias.

Dans certains pays, suivant la manière dont ils ont été fait, certains codecs sont illégaux. Par exemple, les algorithmes pour lire et pour écrire des formats multimédias sont brevetés et ces brevets n’autorisent pas l’utilisation de ces algorithme sans avoir auparavant payé la firme détentrice du brevet. Évidemment, ces brevets sont déposés par des firmes différentes, dans des conditions différentes en fonction de chacun des formats et en fonction de l’utilisation (lecture ou écriture). Autre problème qui peut se poser parfois : l’algorithme associé au format multimédia n’est pas public et le codec a été réalisé grâce à la technique de la rétro-ingénieurie qui est parfois illégale ou du moins, douteuse légalement. Bref, cela abouti à un ensemble de codecs qu’on ne peut pas librement diffuser (même si certains d’entre eux sont des codecs libres : c’est la loi qui les oblige à n’être distribué que sous certaines conditions, que dans certains pays, mais pas la license du logiciel).

Tous ces codecs qui sont dans un flou juridique ont été évincés de Mandriva Linux (dans la distribution officielle) et la plupart des grandes distributions Linux font de même. Cela permet donc à Mandriva Linux d’être disponible et distribuée légalement et librement dans tous les pays. Mais du coup, il n’est pas possible de lire tous les formats avec une Mandriva “brute de fonderie”.

La société Fluendo a eu la bonne idée de développer des codecs en résolvant tous les problèmes légaux derrières (en gros, ils ont payé les sociétés qui ont fait les brevets pour qu’ils puissent distribuer les codecs partout dans le monde). Ils ont donc fait des codecs légaux partout dans le monde, mais évidemment, fluendo doit aussi se rémunérer et fait donc payer ces codecs (qui ne sont pas non plus libres). Dans la liste des points négatifs de ces codecs, je rajouterait la chose suivante : ils ne fonctionnent qu’avec le framework Gstreamer qui n’est quasiment utilisé que par “totem player” sous GNOME, ce qui restreint fort leur utilisation.

Bon, revenons à Codeina. Ce logiciel (qui fonctionne aussi, oh miracle, avec le framework Gstreamer) a pour but d’aider l’utilisateur à trouver un codec sur l’internet lorsque l’utilisateur souhaite jouer un format vidéo qui n’est pas supporté par sa distribution. Je classerais les types de codecs qui peuvent être téléchargés dans 3 catégories : les codecs payants mais légaux, les codecs libres mais pas forcément de bonne qualité ou les codecs libres de bonne qualité, mais pas légaux partout.

Mandriva a choisi de ne pas faire figurer cette troisième catégorie de codecs dans Codeina, ce que je trouve dommage, puisque Codeina n’a rien d’illégal en soi et peut être distribué gratuitement avec n’importe quel lien vers n’importe quel site web ou source de codecs… (sauf peut-être en Chine… ?)

Bref, pour avoir accès à la troisième catégorie, il faut utiliser le Codeina fourni dans le PLF. Mais j’ai malheureusement l’impression que ce dernier ne fait plus figurer la première catégorie (les codecs payants mais légaux partout). Ce qui est bien dommage aussi. L’idée géniale serait de faire un paquetage Codeina-all… qui a du temps à y consacrer ?

Here is the download count for Mandriva iso images on ftp.free.fr yesterday:$ GET ftp://ftp.free.fr/stats/mandriva.daily.20080409.txt | grep iso/ /official/iso/2008.1 6741 2656708887348 2.42 83.92 /official/iso/2008.0 753 205020960820 0.27 6.48 /devel/iso/2008.1 35 18410545367 0.01 0.58 /official/iso/2007.1 22 3233336546 0.01 0.10 /official/iso/2007.0 26 1270717545 0.01 0.04 /official/iso/move 6 795533110 0.00 0.03 /devel/iso/contrib 3 492062 0.00 0.00 /official/iso/2006.0 4 36204 0.00 0.00 Can someone explain me why some people are still downloading iso from 2006.0, 2007.0, 2007.1, or move ?

It looks like 2008.0 was much more successful than previous distros. Previously we had a lot of downloads when a new release was out, but on 2008.0 it increased during the life of this distro !

Yup, Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Spring has been released today. What is amazing is that it's been released on time, which hasn't been the case for years !

I've started testing it quite late in this development cycle (RC2), but I still was able to find a few annoying bugs, which were corrected on time, thanks to Mandriva's hard working team. While I was a bit disapointed with 2008.0 (and 2007.0), what I saw pleased me, ans I really think this release is Mandriva Linux at its best (200X.1 releases seem to be better at Mandriva).

Everything you should know about it is here:

• Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Tour
• Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Release Notes
• Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Errata
• Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Reviewers Guide

And the most important : the link to download Mandriva Linux with your prefered bittorrent client (Transmission in my case).
Many thanks to everyone who worked on this release. Now Enjoy !

Yup, Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Spring has been released today. What is amazing is that it's been released on time, which hasn't been the case for years !

I've started testing it quite late in this development cycle (RC2), but I still was able to find a few annoying bugs, which were corrected on time, thanks to Mandriva's hard working team. While I was a bit disapointed with 2008.0 (and 2007.0), what I saw pleased me, ans I really think this release is Mandriva Linux at its best (200X.1 releases seem to be better at Mandriva).

Everything you should know about it is here:

• Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Tour
• Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Release Notes
• Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Errata
• Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Reviewers Guide

And the most important : the link to download Mandriva Linux with your prefered bittorrent client (Transmission in my case).
Many thanks to everyone who worked on this release. Now Enjoy !

Well, was a huge journey for usr this time. 2008.1 was not only an updated 2008.0, but since early design, was clearly that we would try do a big step on our development. Just to mention what arrived since 2008.0, we're integrated Manbo labs work, which means now we're have a real common core system between us and Turbo Linux, we're integrated PulseAudio on whole distro, which was a bold move and even not been so perfect yet, for me proves at all that was the right decision, and of course, we did most of possible fixes and insanities on KDE 3 !!
I can tell, we sacrificed polish a kde 4 environment, today in contrib, due our heavy tasks to make KDE 3 as best as possible. I can't measure the stress of hunt and do changes like we want, and some couldn't be solved to last moments, but i can say was one of the best KDE deployments the Mandriva KDE team did ever. From the screensaver to the kicker changes to menu changes, all small patches and fixes almost impossible to be noted, but which took hours from us to find, or even touch in monster codes like kicker one, and integrate new features.
As i promised myself, the day we gone gold, would be last day i would see KDE 3 in my personal work machine, so now i'm using in production KDE 4.0.68 over 2008.1 base and i guess you know why ...
So congrats to everyone that did a wonderful job on Mandriva Spring and we finally break the curse