Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Fedora 8 tips
Gregory Gulik has some easy to use and straightforward instructions on making Fedora 8 useful
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Fedora 8 mini-review
For years now, I've downloaded Fedora Core and then Fedora from the very first version to now. I've always been excited by the technologies included (such as LVM and SELinux) and the presentation is always nice but I've also been let down after a few days by the user experience. There always seems to be something that prevents it from being my OS of choice.
The problems start as soon as you try to plug in or make work peripherals such as webcams, printers, sound cards, etc. Obviously, this is due to hardware manufacturer not being very cooperative with OpenSource development. How I wish the certified hardware program that was quickly abandoned would list instead of "barely" compatible stuff really 100% no workarounds full-functionality hardware to make purchasing easier. Linux HCL have always been complete jokes that will throw any hardware in there as "compatible" as soon as they can get a subset of functionalities working most of the time (with maybe a workaround or a re-compile of something...).
As for bugs, they are numerous as usual as soon as you scratch the surface and try to "do stuff" as a user with the OS. Connecting my Canon 850IS to retrieve my pictures? Broken. Trying to get my Logitech Fusion webcam working? Compile alpha-quality uvcvideo driver and hope that it doesn't freeze up. Sound? Not for you when kudzu crashes at startup. Try to play flash video with sound? The npviewer Firefox wrapper crashes when the sound isn't configured.
At some point, I'm also wary of reporting bugs since stuff like gdm crashing after a few CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE that I reported 32 months ago never got fixed. Or small enhancements requests for having the network proxy setting configuration actually do something system-wide. Or being able to click ftp:// url from the terminal. Or actually having Fedora follow its naming convention.
I'm using the i686 developer spins and met a bug where Eclipse help just doesn't work while verifying that a previous bug was fixed. You would think that someone somewhere would be testing for regressions, but you would be wrong!
More hairy things, such as coming back from hibernate, still don't work correctly (I lose network access and have to reboot). I have a long history trying to get this to work (a bug here and a bug there) but Fedora still hasn't got it right.
This is all within 24 hours of installing it and trying to use it... Which is quite scary: how many bugs are there once I get past those in the basic stuff?
All in all, Fedora 8 is better than all the previous Fedora 7 but it still feels like a beta in a long list of alphas instead of an operating system that is catching up to other competitors. The problem is both because the core of the system is buggy and because it has an hard time working with peripherals. Which is very frustrating because some things (such as having a central repository to install software) are a lot easier than in other OS!
Now, of course, I could spend untold hours trying to fix all these myself but for now, my free time is limited to testing each new release and keeping the hope that one day Fedora can fully replace other OS (which I would have thought would have happened years ago). In the meantime, testing it is a neat hobby...
The problems start as soon as you try to plug in or make work peripherals such as webcams, printers, sound cards, etc. Obviously, this is due to hardware manufacturer not being very cooperative with OpenSource development. How I wish the certified hardware program that was quickly abandoned would list instead of "barely" compatible stuff really 100% no workarounds full-functionality hardware to make purchasing easier. Linux HCL have always been complete jokes that will throw any hardware in there as "compatible" as soon as they can get a subset of functionalities working most of the time (with maybe a workaround or a re-compile of something...).
As for bugs, they are numerous as usual as soon as you scratch the surface and try to "do stuff" as a user with the OS. Connecting my Canon 850IS to retrieve my pictures? Broken. Trying to get my Logitech Fusion webcam working? Compile alpha-quality uvcvideo driver and hope that it doesn't freeze up. Sound? Not for you when kudzu crashes at startup. Try to play flash video with sound? The npviewer Firefox wrapper crashes when the sound isn't configured.
At some point, I'm also wary of reporting bugs since stuff like gdm crashing after a few CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE that I reported 32 months ago never got fixed. Or small enhancements requests for having the network proxy setting configuration actually do something system-wide. Or being able to click ftp:// url from the terminal. Or actually having Fedora follow its naming convention.
I'm using the i686 developer spins and met a bug where Eclipse help just doesn't work while verifying that a previous bug was fixed. You would think that someone somewhere would be testing for regressions, but you would be wrong!
More hairy things, such as coming back from hibernate, still don't work correctly (I lose network access and have to reboot). I have a long history trying to get this to work (a bug here and a bug there) but Fedora still hasn't got it right.
This is all within 24 hours of installing it and trying to use it... Which is quite scary: how many bugs are there once I get past those in the basic stuff?
All in all, Fedora 8 is better than all the previous Fedora 7 but it still feels like a beta in a long list of alphas instead of an operating system that is catching up to other competitors. The problem is both because the core of the system is buggy and because it has an hard time working with peripherals. Which is very frustrating because some things (such as having a central repository to install software) are a lot easier than in other OS!
Now, of course, I could spend untold hours trying to fix all these myself but for now, my free time is limited to testing each new release and keeping the hope that one day Fedora can fully replace other OS (which I would have thought would have happened years ago). In the meantime, testing it is a neat hobby...
Friday, December 28, 2007
lucview
- Download lucview
- sudo yum install SDL-devel
- make
- ./luvcview
I get:
[rngadam@localhost luvcview-20070512]$ ./luvcviewThis is probably related to the famous "reset problem". A physical USB disconnect, reconnect fixes it:
luvcview version 0.2.1
Video driver: x11
A window manager is available
video /dev/video0
Unable to set format: 5.
Init v4L2 failed !! exit fatal
[root@localhost ~]# modprobe -r uvcvideo...and I'm finally able to get the Logitech Quickcam Fusion 046d:08c1 to work in Skype (well, at least only it refuses to restart and I have to unplug, replug again).
[root@localhost ~]# modprobe uvcvideo
Skype 2.0 on Fedora 8
First, build uvcvideo (need developer tools):
svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunkinstall as root (su -):
cd trunk
make
make installDownload and install Skype 2.0:
modprobe uvcvideo
yum --nogpgcheck install /tmp/skype-2.0.0.27-fc5.i586.rpmAt this point, in Skype, I see the /dev/video device for my Logitech Quickcam Fusion, but all I got is a black image.
Fedora 8
Trying to set up Fedora 8. The Unofficial FAQ is really useful. Over 450MB of updates for something that was released less then a month ago is a bit much to swallow. The i686 developer spin is a must as a few things will require compiling and building stuff - pretty quick to install from a booted Live.
From my shell history:
I'd really like to get Skype Video 2.0 Beta for Linux working, however this requires uvcvideo and the pre-built version isn't working:
From my shell history:
yum -y install yum-priorities
nano /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/priorities.conf (check_obsoletes = 1)
rpm -Uvh http://www.fedorafaq.org/f8/yum http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm
yum install flash-plugin
yum install mplayerplug-in
I'd really like to get Skype Video 2.0 Beta for Linux working, however this requires uvcvideo and the pre-built version isn't working:
rpm -ivh http://drpixel.tuxfamily.org/fedora/drpixel-release-1-2.noarch.rpm
yum install uvcvideo
Error: Missing Dependency: kernel-i686 = 2.6.23.1-49.fc8 is needed by package kmod-uvc
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Kanda Sushi
Jeudi le 27 décembre pour souper, nous avons invité plusieurs amis à manger au Kanda Sushi (2045 rue Bishop, +1 (514) 845-8868, métro Guy-Concordia). Nous étions 9 personnes mais même si Min Lin avait appellé deux fois le jour d'avant à propos de notre réservation, une fois arrivée il n'y avait rien d'inscrit dans leur registre! Ce qui ne semble pas inhabituel pour ce restaurant, puisque la dernière fois c'était la même histoire...
Même si ce n'est comme la plupart des restos "Japonais" pas des vrais Japonais qui y travaillent, le sushi est d'assez bonne qualité mais l'avantage c'est surtout que c'est un à volonté sur commande ce qui permet d'essayer et de faire essayer plusieurs types de sushis.
La fraicheur n'est pas non plus vraiment un problème car le restaurant est très populaire et il y a donc beaucoup de roulement dans la cuisine. Mes plats préférés sont le sushi tamago (oeuf), les sushis anguilles BBQ, le sushi "caviar sous-marin" et les crevettes tempuras.
Il y a quand même un problème éthique à toujours inviter ses amis à des buffets qui incitent les gens à se gaver pour "entrer dans leur argent" puisque certaines études semblent démontrer que vivre dans un état constamment affamé permettrait de vivre beaucoup plus longtemps (30% plus longtemps)... Mais comme ce nouveau site charlatans.info que je viens de découvrir explique:
Même si ce n'est comme la plupart des restos "Japonais" pas des vrais Japonais qui y travaillent, le sushi est d'assez bonne qualité mais l'avantage c'est surtout que c'est un à volonté sur commande ce qui permet d'essayer et de faire essayer plusieurs types de sushis.
La fraicheur n'est pas non plus vraiment un problème car le restaurant est très populaire et il y a donc beaucoup de roulement dans la cuisine. Mes plats préférés sont le sushi tamago (oeuf), les sushis anguilles BBQ, le sushi "caviar sous-marin" et les crevettes tempuras.
Il y a quand même un problème éthique à toujours inviter ses amis à des buffets qui incitent les gens à se gaver pour "entrer dans leur argent" puisque certaines études semblent démontrer que vivre dans un état constamment affamé permettrait de vivre beaucoup plus longtemps (30% plus longtemps)... Mais comme ce nouveau site charlatans.info que je viens de découvrir explique:
Le fait que si peu de personnes aient tenté une restriction calorique depuis que le phénomène a été découvert, il y a plus de 60 ans, suggère que pour la plupart des gens, la qualité de la vie semble être préférable à la quantité de vie.La soirée s'est terminé au Starbucks Café coin St-Catherine et Crescent où j'ai fait l'erreur de prendre un mocha à la menthe poivrée dont le sucre et la caféine explique pourquoi j'écris cet article a 2am... J'ai encore des palpitations!
Monday, December 24, 2007
Veille de Noël en famille
Du porc BBQ et des pates, des patates et des brocolis chinois, du vin et des boissons gazeuses, des appels téléphoniques longue distance, des jeux vidéos, des photos de groupe... C'est ce qui arrive quand une famille reconstituée de Cantonais, de Taiwanais et de Québécois viennent ensemble pour fêter la veille de Noël!
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