Planet Sabayon Linux

When KDE4 was first released I was shocked at the lack of conguration options themewise compared to 3.5 and its wealth of options, I had best note plasma however is a notable exception,  a triumph of customisation and SVG goodness!

Kwin has needed a decent engine for theming for a while, while its almost on par in terms of effects with compiz, it has always lacked the extensive customisation features provided by emerald and its various engines.

Then there is the default QT theme in KDE4.3 (oxygen). This has many fans and it is nice to see some technoloigical progress being made in terms of themeing. Personally im not a fan of the whole oxygen look as it wastes to many pixels and is mostly plain grey. In my opinion its only used by alot of people as they lack an alternative.

Currently I’m working on improving KDE4.3 experience in Sabayon, we have always shipped the excellent QtCurve Qt widgetset as a alternative to Oxygen as it very flexable, fast and can be made to look as you like, it also integrates perfectly with a GTK theme provided (no winNT style firefox!).

We have, for all the KDE4 releases, shipped with the default Kwin theme due to the lack of a suitable replacement. Yesterday however, while browsing through KDE-look.org looking for a new wallpaper for my machine, I noted the Aurorae Theme Engine. This engine is designed to KDE4.3+ and uses SVGs to decorate the windows. “Yay!” was my inital thought and I immedietly installed it from the provided ebuild ( a bumped version with some cleanup is on the sabayon overlay now).

Work is now in progress on a theme for 5.0 for keep an eye out for 50._beta3 artwork.

ooooh Pretty SVGness

I have never had a reason or gave UNetbootin a thought, but after hearing Joost brag it up, I thought I better give it a try. Testing can cause a person to go through a lot of DVDs. If you are not familiar with UNetbootin than check out their home page. It even includes how to with screen-shots. Their description:

UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for a variety of Linux distributions from Windows or Linux, without requiring you to burn a CD. You can either let it download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux .iso file if you’ve already downloaded one or your preferred distribution isn’t on the list.

So I equo install unetbootin and within minutes I have it installed. I simply start it by typing unetbootin into the terminal. I already had the iso downloaded, but I noticed the sabayon versions it has were the older ones. I still gave it a whirl with the 5.0 gnome beta iso and it had no issues at all, just properly selected the 64 bit version in the drop down box. It’s just so easy, select iso image, select usb drive and you’re done. Reboot the computer with usb boot option set and you have a very fast live dvd that you can run and you can also install the operating system to your hard drive.

So I thought wow, what a great tool.  I’ve recommended it to others before, but never actually used it.  I’m glad UNetbootin added in the support for Sabayon Linux.  I’m not sure how one goes about getting the options updated for the newer ISOs tho, but it will work with 5.0 when it comes out.

This tool should also end the “I don’t have a dvd burner” support issue.  The mini-dvd will work with a 2GB usb flash drive.  I actually went out and purchased a 4GB one just for this and it costed me $17.00.    That’s pretty cheap and I can always format it out for something else and use UNetbootin again when needed.  So save a disk and use UNetbootin.  Load up some flash drives and hand em out to your buddies to try Sabayon Linux.  It would be nice to find a flash drive maker to support the cause.

Im back! woot. After a week of holiday its good to get involved again with some Sabayon stuff. Holiday was nice got to see the Folks and have a bit of a computer detox! Im surprised I survived so long with no linuxiness to be honest.

So I come back and the branch 5 situation has changed a bit, (which 100+ testers/devel mailing list messages attest too) the 5.0 Beta1 iso has been pushed out to the testers and then lxnay decides its a good time for a holiday (good timing perhaps?). There seems to be the usual mixed issues with the first ISO spin, most issues now seem to be handled by improved entropy and migration scripts, branch 5 is shaping up nicely.

Ive switched to KDE4.3 from Gnome, So expect to see a much more polished and enhanced KDE (as you did with gnome when I switched to that) in the next release, things on KDE todo list are:

1. New QT theme (10% Done)
2. Getting sysinfo:// working (100% Done)
3. Getting sysinfo:// customised (15% Done)
4. Kicker Customisation (SL Logos etc)
5. Skel Cleanup
6. Sabayon XDG Menus Improve KDE Compat
7. Etc etc…

Feel free to add anything you want done to KDE in the comments and Ill incorporate them if appropriate.

Next post has 5.0_beta2 theme previews!

Another update here on the release cycle of 5.0 for all our thrilled fans.  Beta 1 of Gnome and KDE has been released to testers.  We will be in this phase till about Sept. 2nd as Fabio is taking vacation till than.  Once he gets back, we will than look at the issues to hammer out a beta 2.  So far I have only gotten to try out the gnome edition.  So we are kinda looking at least the middle of Sept before a final version will be out and for sure by the end of Sept, knock on wood.

I don’t know if everyone has seen this yet, but Shake0 has produced an awesome Sabayon 5.0 promo video.  Be sure to check it out.  I would love to see an artwork package that evolved around it.

I’m going to stress once again that Branch 5 is still only for experienced users.  We can not support users on Branch 5 as things can and will break till fixed.  One of the things you may have experienced lately is booting issues.  A change to grub.conf is needed.

# sed -i ’s/CONSOLE=\/dev\/tty1/console=tty1/g’ grub.conf

So for me I had to change CONSOLE=/dev/tty1 to console=tty1.  Make sure you are always running the latest version of entropy also as it’s always changing too.  Branch 5 is one busy place, even the testers are going whoa.  Super bang up job tho!

The artwork isn’t anything final yet, so bare with that.  A quick snapshot of Gnome Beta 1 5.0.  I’m not sure what changes will be implemented yet, but it’s being worked on.  Like I mentioned, I liked the idea of matching the promo video better myself.

Joost brought up the idea of artwork to match the promo and I thought that would be cool and it just so happens that I had just taken a picture out in the woods on one of my walks.  So I thought I would do a few quick adjustments just to see what it would look like.

I’m not a fan of green but I do like it and think it goes well with the promo video. Of course this is just my opinion, but I think the potential to do it is there.

Anyway, as I mention in the last post about the installer changes, here is the list again:
Installer changes:
- added i18n support
- simplified user configuration window
- ported to Python 2.6
- more code cleanup and started kudzu removal
- Encryption support through dm-crypt (LUKS — AES algorithm) working
for LVM and plain partitions
- several minor bug fixes

Well, think that about does it for this update. Stay tuned for more progress.

As our roadmap shows, the Sabayon Linux 5 release date is coming fast.  Unfortunately we are looking at a late August or first part of September for a final release. This is just a heads up for yas.  We will keep things posted here as we progress.  We hope to have our first beta disk for the testing team shortly.  Remember, you will be able to roll your 4.1 or 4.2 to 5.0 by hoping to branch 5.  Right now,  branch 5 should only be done if you are exprienced.  I have been rolling my original Sabayon Linux LiteMCE  version to current branch 5.  It works great, but there was bumps to iron out along the way.  It was expected as one needs to do a few things manually.  Hopefully when branch 5 has the green light, everyone will have a smooth ride over.  I’m not sure what the package count is currently to go from 4 to 5. I saw the other day a person report nearly 900 packages in his update.  It will depend and vary for everyone as some don’t have as much installed and some may have more installed.

Joost has been busy with getting branch 5 ready and Fabio has been busy hammering it into shape.  Our testers have been busy testing branch 5 and reporting bugs, they are doing a great job.  Ian has been working out the artwork for Sabayon Linux 5.  I haven’t even seen it myself yet, but I am sure it will be fantastic.

Fabio has also implemented i18n support on installer, as well as encryption.  This should please many.  Speaking of this, we need translators and the person to get a hold of is DHalens.  Give him a hollar at daniel.halens at sabayonlinux dot org if you have questions.

All I have to report at this moment.  Oh, and incase you missed it, KDE has released the final version of 4.3.0 on August 4th.  I believe Joost has it in branch 5 already.  I’ve been kinda on vacation mode and working with my photography stuffs.

Till next time