Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Month: August 2012 (Page 2 of 2)

EOL for old releases

August 9, 2012 / / 8 Comments

People who are reading Slackware ChangeLogs out of habit will have noticed this in June, but others may still be unaware.

Slackware has a history of releasing patches for versions of the distro going back as far as Slackware 8.1 (which saw the light on 18 June 2002). That is a longer “long-term support” (LTS) than any other Linux distro out there!

With each release that followed, the work load of backporting patches to old Slackware versions became bigger – naturally so, since Pat saw this as his sole responsibility and none of the others in the team were involved. This summer, the point was reached where decisions needed to be made in order to keep the work manageable when yet another release is going to be added: version 14.

And so, almost 10 years to the day after Slackware 8.1 was officially released, the following text appeared in the ChangeLog.txt of all releases from 8.1 upward to 12.0:

Thu Jun 14 05:02:39 UTC 2012
####################################################################
# NOTICE OF INPENDING EOL (END OF LIFE) FOR OLD SLACKWARE VERSIONS #
#                                                                  #
# Effective August 1, 2012, security patches will no longer be     #
# provided for the following versions of Slackware (which will all #
# be more than 5 years old at that time):                          #
# Slackware 8.1, 9.0, 9.1, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 11.0, 12.0.           #
# If you are still running these versions you should consider      #
# migrating to a newer version (preferably as recent as possible). #
# Alternately, you may make arrangements to handle your own        #
# security patches.  If for some reason you are unable to upgrade  #
# or handle your own security patches, limited security support    #
# may be available for a fee.  Inquire at security@slackware.com.  #
####################################################################

Yes folks, this is Pat’s EOL announcement for all Slackware releases prior to 12.1. The aforementioned date of August 1st ihas come and gone. From now on, you will only see new patches arriving for Slackware 12.1 , 12.2 , 13.0 , 13.1 and 13.37 (and of course any newer version that follows). Rest assured that your favourite distro will remain strong, focused and secure as ever!

Eric

Commercial games and Linux

August 9, 2012 / / 15 Comments

Almost two years ago I wrote an article about how the Open Source ecosystem can interact with commercial game developers.

I decided it was time to write an addendum to that post. Why?

Last month, Valve Software finally revealed that they are in the final stages of porting their Steam client to Linux, news that was highly anticipated after Phoronix mentioned this for the first time. This Steam client for Linux will be accompanied by the port of a tripe-A game: Left 4 Dead 2. Valve opened a dedicated Linux blog which was so swamped with enthousisast comments that they had to define a new comment policy. Great news and it deserves a great deal of respect.

Commercial enterprises getting themselves invoved with the Linux platform… that was bound to provoke reactions. And indeed , Richard Stallman wrote a post where he critizizes Valve’s effort. The core sentence there is “Nonfree game programs (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their users“. I beg your pardon?

I really wished he would have been able to distinguish between the GNU/Linux ecosystem and the applications which can be used on top of that. The two are separate, Richard!

I am of course well aware of the philosophy behind the GNU project. It has given us a wealth of first-class software and I agree that without GNU, we would not be free to choose the OS we want to run on our machines. I work for IBM, and I realize all to well how a total vendor lock-in can not only smother your clients, breed arrogance, but also cause that vendor to buckle as a result of its arrogance. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM for instance – where you also find how IBM managed to re-invent itself and start committing itself wholesale to Linux by multi-billion dollar investments into the Linux developer scene.

But I am straying off the path here.

I have never been comfortable with zealots who claim that they alone hold the truth. Therefore, Stallman’s article made me sigh rather than angry – it was all so predictable. There is nothing unethical about earning money. There is also nothing unethical about earning money on the Linux platform. Look at Redhat, they made a billion dollars on Linux! People can be driven to great achievements but everyone’s motives are different. I am glad there is diversity. Valve is driven by a desire to produce a first-class game playing environment and create the games to match. That they want to earn money from their efforts is good. Triple-A games require a tremendous monetary multi-year investment. Too many well-respected game studios are closed these days because the financial returns are not making up for the investments. I want Valve to flourish, so that they give me the freedom to buy games that I like! Suppose for a second, that they would go bankrupt – that would take away a large potential for cool games. It would take away some of my freedom of choice.

Suppose they would cease their Linux involvement as a result of the opinions of people like Stallman. That would limit my freedom to play games on a platform of my choice. I do not want to have to install Windows to play my games.  I use Wine currently and that works well enough for Steam, Valve games, Diablo III and such block busters, but it would really help if we had native releases for Linux! It is a bit unfortunate that idsoftware’s John Carmack does not share Valve’s view on the viability of Linux as a gaming market, but really this is all about getting momentum. Someone had to decide to take the plunge. Nothing against John’s opinion, I respect him for all he does (in particular for opensourcing most of idsoftware’s previous game engines and games and doing great speeches) but I hope he will come back on his view sometime. We need these games to prove to people that Linux is not just for geeks. We need more game developers to take Linux seriously.

Oh… I am straying again.

I have different ideas of what defines “freedom” than Stallman has. I hope that the disaster called “Windows 8” will actually do Linux distros a favour by further diminishing the MS Windows market share, thus allowing growth of the Linux market share. Remember again why Windows 8 is bad? Or rather, what evil can result from Microsoft’s plans for Windows 8 on the ARM market? Read a bit about Secure Boot, you can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8#Secure_boot . Dual-booting Windows and Linux? No can do! Now there is a real example of limiting my freedom!

You see, the word “freedom” is not all there is to it. It can and will be used out of context in a zillion ways. What really matters, is freedom of choice. If you are really concerned about freedom, you should sign up for the news letters of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and support them in their cause.

I can’t wait to package, install and use the Linux Steam client on Slackware. In the meantime, I think I’ll watch a video about freedom from choice… come on, join me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jVoroHx3IU

Cheers, Eric

My Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5

August 8, 2012 / / 18 Comments

Back in february I bought the camera I had had my eyes on for over a year. It was a bit too expensive to consider it seriously, but then suddenly there was a discount of 75 euros and I grabbed the opportunity. A Panasonic DMC-LX5 was finally mine.

I had been using a relatively cheap Sony CyberShot DSC-P10 camera for years, after my first digital compact, a Canon PowerShot, broke down with the infamous E18 error (which earned its own web site http://e18error.com because so many people suffered by it). The Sony camera was meant to be temporary because I did not have money for a good replacement… but the money never came. I needed a better camera badly. What I really wanted was better light sensitivity and better wide-angle.

The LX-5 offers all of that and much more, with its f/2.0 24mm Leica lens, fast power-on and AF, full metal body and a battery that should last 400 photos on a single charge. Read more about its features, strengths and weaknesses (if any) at the PhotographyBLOG. I realize that this camera is not “new”, and lots of other types have entered the market and are competing with it, but I wanted a camera that is easy to carry, enables me to point-and-shoot while keeping the possibility for manual overrides, is sturdy and offers excellent picture quality in low-light circumstances. I don’t care for replaceable lenses or GPS geo-tagging, or superzoom lenses.

I discussed cameras with collegues and friends who shoot a lot of pictures, and the outcome was that I would best by either the LX5 or a Canon PowerShot S95… the latter because it has quite similar specs to the LX5 but also because there is custom firmware for the Canon line which lets you do a whole lot more with your camera: the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK).

In the end I decided against the Canon, the main reason being resentment about the E18 error which killed my first digital camera 1 day after end of warranty.

Why did it still take a year to buy the camera? I guess it was the price point. But I was following several photography related blogs and my enthousiasm was fueled by viewing the results of shooting with a LX5. That basically pushed me that final step. Special mention to Juha Haataja’s Light Scrape blog! I was fascinated by Juha’s stills, his comments about his daily encounters with the world and his overall philosophy with regard to what makes a good picture.

I took the camera with me (of course) during my holiday in Brittany, France. Back home and behind a computer I could evaluate the results. At first, I stuck mostly to the camera’s defaults (using Intelligent Auto or “iA”) because I still needed to get acquainted to it (for some reason, I never took the time to get to know the LX5 during those first months that I owned it – too busy with Slackware I guess).  But I quickly began to experiment, with the User Manual as a guide… luckily I downloaded that to my E-reader.

I don’t know if it is the result of my fiddling with the manual controls (or even fiddling too little) but I feel that some of the JPEGs, especially those taken in bright sunlight, seem a bit “ovet-processed”. Or perhaps that is just because I have been working with a mediocre camera for so long. I discussed this with Pat (who owns a Canon PowerShot and uses CHDK) and he suggested that I should try shooting JPEG+RAW and look what difference it would make when I do the image post-processing on my computer. So, that is what I am going to do in the next couple of weeks. I compiled an updated package of RAWtherapee, an open source RAW editor with support for the LX5’s RAW image format and I am going to play with that once I have shot a couple of RAW images.. If anyone knows equivalent or better alternatives to RAWtherapee (free software!) I would like to hear from you.

Here’s a couple of sample images from that first holiday batch (all JPEG). Let me state that I am very happy with the camera. The LX5 has a good grip, and the controls are easy to operate. The camera “radiates” quality. I could shoot pictures in awkward positions without fear of letting it slip. Its low light qualities are great, and I am curious to find out about all the possibilities of the manual controls. So far, it has enabled me to take pictures in situations where I would have failed with the old Sony. Despite my earlier comment about possible JPEG over-processing, I am impressed with the quality of the pictures.

Tell me what you thnk of them. Can the camera do better? Can I do better?

Eric

 

 

 

Slackware package browser

August 3, 2012 / / 16 Comments

It was not announced with a lot of brouhaha, but there is a significant change on this Slackware page: http://www.slackware.com/packages/. As you can see, the old (and seriously outdated) Slackware Package Browser (PB) has been replaced with a new one, developed by Mario of slackverse.org.

Please check out the new PB at http://packages.slackware.com/ and give your feedback. Robby Workman has been working hard behind the scenes to create a Slackware mirror infrastructure based on MirrorBrain and the new PB hooks directly into this new mirror infrastructure. A big hooray for both Robby and Mario!

On a related note: if you are willing to setup and maintain a Slackware mirror that should become part of the new mirror infrastructure, you should definitely check out the mirroring guidelines.

Eric

KDE Software Compilation 4.9 is ready

August 1, 2012 / / 36 Comments

The release schedule is accurate as always. Today, the release of KDE SC 4.9 was announced on kde.org!

I could get the sources in time and therefore I am able to present you the Slackware KDE 4.9 packages – for Slackware-current of course (more precise, for Slackware 14 Beta1).

I assume that some of you have already downloaded and installed my earlier betas and release candidate of this new KDE series, and compared with the release candidate I previoiusly had, not much new shows up (well, bug fixes of course).

You can safely upgrade from Slackware’s KDE 4.8.4, the differences with that release are not overtly visible either, the real changes are in the “engine room”. KDE 4.9.x is an intermediate release series to prepare for the KDE Frameworks 5. The announcement page shows further changes in the development process: more attention has been going to the beta testing phase. You already noticed at the time of the first 4.9 beta, when KDE opened a “call for beta testing” page and encouraged packagers not to wait until the release candidates or the final release.

What can be told about the new set of Slackware packages?

  • There are three updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.8.4: akonadi, shared-desktop-ontologies and soprano.
  • Compared to KDE 4.8.4, there were two package removals:
    • kdemultimedia has been split up into several smaller individual packages.
    • ksecrets has been removed completely in the 4.9.x series.
  • A noteworthy feature in KDE 4.9 has been added to Okular, the document viewer in KDE. Many people will cheer: Okular is now able to save the annotations you make to PDF files.

The KDE 4.9.0 packages for Slackware 14 beta1 and newer are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper will probably be in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will have to catch up):

The accompanying README file contains detailed installation/upgrade instructions.

Also, I will repeat this bit of text which I wrote at the time of release of KDE 4.9 release candidate 1:

As you may have noticed when inspecting the above URLs, I have re-arranged my “ktown” repository. People were confused about what version would work with Slackware -current and what would work for 13.37. Also, some people have asked for sources of older releases for which I no longer host the packages.

I moved all the sources out of the package trees, you will now find a “source” directory right at the top level of the repository. Below that will be the sources of all package sets which I currently have in my repository (KDE 4.6.5, 4.7.4, 4.8.4 and 4.9.0, including all the dependencies you may want for compiling it on Slackware 13.37). The packages will be available below a toplevel directory equal to the Slackware version they were compiled for (at the moment those are “13.37” and “current“). Below that you will find the actual KDE versions and further down, the 32-bit and 64-bit packages.

Have fun! Eric

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