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djotaku's twitter feed
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- kaspersky is blocking google! wtf!
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Jan
17
Fedora Core 5 Test Release 2 Part 1
Category: Fedora | 
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I decided to do something I’ve never done before, I’m going to install Fedora Core 5 Test Release 2 and actually help with the debugging process. It was a bit of an internal struggle. By taking part in the debugging, I get to see the new technologies instead of being surprised in March when it comes out as a final release. But, having my laptop here with no real purpose, and thus no consequences if something is broken in the software, I decided to install it. In a previous press release they said that test release 2 would allow upgrading from FC4 (whereas test release 1 did not); if this is the case, then I’ll be doing it on the laptop. If not, I may use some kind of emulation to run it on my Windows Box.
The first thing I notice upon boot up is that there is a new logo for Fedora Core. I really like it! It symbolizes not only the official break from Red Hat, which now allows the Fedora Project to manage things, but also is very fun and trendy. There is a very thoughtfull warning that this is a test release. After selecting my language, it searches for previous Fedora installs, so it will probably allow upgrades. (yay!) It DOES allow upgrades, joy! Things look so much cleaner on the install screens as the left-hand pane is now gone. It never contained highly useful information anyway. This darned laptop is painfully slow. The upgrade from Core 3 to 4 took about 11 hours. I wonder how long things will take this time.
While I’m waiting, by the way, if you click on the torrent link to the right, you can download it too. Just remember, this is a test release and could break things. Don’t use it on your production machine. I am not, as you can infer, installing it on my nice new emachine. I do almost every computer task on this computer except those exclusive to Windows (Adobe and Civilization 4), so I am not eager to see it broken. Dependencies checking takes forever! (On the laptop)
I’m really looking forward to giving beagle and fspot a look-through. I’m very happy they’ve been included in this release as both as MAJOR technologies that push Linux into the Mac OS realm and even better than MS realm. Of course, I believe that Linux is its own beast. It should NOT seek to emulate Windows OR Mac. If you think Linux needs to be more like Windows, you are using the wrong OS - go back to Windows or use one of the free Windows clones. Same thing for Mac. However, if there is a technology that becomes standard to computing like, for example, the ability to search files indexed by the computer, then I think all OSes should have them.
Well, installation has begun. Just in case it takes a long time, I’ll see you on the other side of the installation with my comments and reviews.
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Jan
17
Changing your grub screen
Category: Linux | Leave a Comment
While I was fiddling with grub as part of my experiment to get rid of the graphical boot, I noticed the picture grub uses when I boot in. For Fedora Core 4 users, I’m talking about the blue screen with the words Fedora Core where grub gives you a few seconds to choose a different kernel or OS before booting in. I decided to make my own, to truly customize my computer! Afterall, that’s one of the things that REALLY attracts me to open source.
So what do we have to do? First open up The GIMP and load in the picture you want for your grub screen. Then scale it down to a reasonable size. Fedora’s file, for example is 480×640. Save it as filename.xpm.gz and then go to a term and su to root. Copy your new image to /boot/grub. Finally, edit your /boot/grub file by changing the splashimage= so that the last thing on there is the file you just created. Now reboot to see your new, customized startup!
The first time I did this, it didn’t work right - the grub screen was an evil rainbow of display problems, but the computer booted fine, so don’t worry if you mess up. So there are two things I did to make it work perfectly. First, in GIMP I clicked on Image -> Mode -> Indexed. I changed it to 14 colours as required by the spec. I also didn’t save it as an xmp.gz. When I used the command file on my original image and the one I was replacing, they were different. Mine said, a gzipped file. The original was, a gzipped file - was originally blah.. So instead, I saved it as an xpm and then used the gzip command to zip it. So it worked exactly as it should after that.
In case you may not have noticed, since you have to reduce the number of colors in the image to 14 (from millions in a JPEG), it’s best to choose a simple image, not a one with lots of subtle shade variations. With a bit of practice you’ll get it right!
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