Last night I watched Parasite Dolls on Netflix. Wow; what a bad Anime. I gave it two stars, but during the scenes when the hacker was working on his computer I felt a deep loss in my heart. It’s been about 2, maybe 3 months since I last logged into my Fedora partition. I fear that I may miss out on Fedora 13 by time I get it working. It’s a very long story to tell, but one of these days I’m going to take some time out of my busy schedule and fix my computer.

In the meantime if anyone has a motherboard that’s similar to a BioStar TA690G AM2 5.x – contact me. I think I broke mine. :’(

I think I’ve earned some FOSS badges of honor this past week or so. I’ve become very efficient at flashing my USB key and getting it ready to either boot Fedora or Ubuntu Live.  There is a way to totally customize your USB key by not having to use Pendrive or LiveUSB Creator, but I’ll leave that for the advanced post. However, in this post, I’ll talk about the basics of getting your USB key ready to test the latest versions of Fedora 13 and Ubuntu 10.04. It looks like a pretty intimidating list of what needs to be done, but they each have very short executions:

• What’s Needed
• Getting Your ISO’s
• Getting the USB Software
• Preparing Your USB Key
• Boot via USB key

As a side note, I’m a little embarrassed to say that I did this in Microsoft Windows.  At the time, I couldn’t get into my Fedora 12 x86_64 install. It was a simple GRUB issue, but I didn’t make the effort to correct it. Quite the irony (-5 HP).

What’s Needed

I’m going to primarily reference the Fedora Project, but the concept is basically the same for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. You will need:

• A USB Flash Drive with at least 1 to 2 GB of storage (here’s a list from Newegg).
• A Linux distribution’s “Live” ISO file (ex: fedora-13-x86_64-Live.iso, ubuntu-10.04-Live.iso, scrappydolinux-x86_64-Live.iso, etc)
• Software to convert the Linux distribution’s ISO file into a working bootable format. The two most popular are:
  • Pendrive [software] [article] – the information architecture for this web site is horrible (just an FYI).
  • Fedora LiveUSB Creator [web site]

Getting Your ISO’s

So; you’re ready to get your ISO file. All (or most) Linux distributions have a list of additional servers that are hosting various files. Since they “mirror” what’s on the main web site, other people can get to that data quicker. If the main server is bogged down with users trying to get the latest distribution release then the mirrors can take some of that stress.  All that to say – download the ISO file that you want to put onto your USB key. In this example, I’m going to download Fedora 13 x86_64, which can be found at:

• http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/ – this is the starting point. From here I can go into whatever directory your heart desires.
• http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releases/13/Fedora/x86_64/iso/Fedora-13-x86_64-DVD.iso – it’s a pretty ugly URL, but whatcha’ gonna do!?

Download the ISO file onto your computer somewhere for safe keeping. You’re going to reference it later.

Edited after Peter’s comment below. Fedora also has alternative versions of its distro, which are tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application sets. For instance in my original post I used Mobiln as an example of “mirror site”. In fact Moblin is something specific to mobile users (ex: netbook) and it’s really awesome. You can find out more from their Spin site.

Getting the USB Software

For Ubuntu and Fedora the recommended software used to get your USB key ready for booting is Pendrive and Fedora LiveUSB Creator (as mentioned in the “What’s Needed” section). Fedora LiveUSB Creator software will need to be installed, but Pendrive (also known as Universal USB Installer) runs out-of-the-box. In this scenario, install Fedora LiveUSB Creator.

Preparing Your USB Key

I’m expressing a big fat /facepalm as I write this, but in Windows (ugh) you can open Windows Explorer (keyboard shortcut Win+E), right-click on your USB key drive and do a quick format. You can leave the default setting (file system: FAT, Allocation 32 KB, etc) I believe the software does it too, but I haven’t verified that. Once it’s formatted you’re ready to go.

1. Run the Fedora LiveUSB Creator program from the Start Menu.
2. Click the “Browse” button under “Use existing Live CD” section.
3. Locate your Fedora-13-x86_64-Live.iso file.
4. Select your USB key under “Target Device” section.
5. Choose the amount of extra space you’d like to use for miscellaneous storage (totally optional)
6. Click on “Create Live USB”.

For Universal USB Installer, it’s recommended that you use their preset distribution list. I’ve tried it a couple times with “Try Some Other Live Linux ISO” and I end up with errors and a non-working boot sequence.

I’ve rinsed and repeat this process numerous times while testing different devices. It was smooth sailing for the most part (I hope that’s your experience as well).

Boot via USB key

You’re almost there… that sweet-spot of booting Linux (temporarily) onto your existing hardware. The main thing you’ll need to figure out is whether your BIOS supports booting from a USB device. When you boot your machine and you see one of the bootable devices as “USB-ZIP” then you’re good to go! If not, reference your motherboard’s manual and see how to enable this feature.

So; once you make it past the machine boot sequence and choose “USB-ZIP” (or if you set it as the primary or secondary choice) then the rest should be cake. It’ll start like any other normal LiveCD. It’ll give you the options of choosing to run the distro, install it, test it, etc. Have fun whoring-out your system to the array of Linux distributions available in a try-before-you-buy format. Apple and Windows can’t do that! Booyah!

References

• Fedora Project [download] [mirrors] [torrents]
• Live CD
• Mirror web hosting
• Ubuntu Desktop Edition [download] [mirrors]

Today, May 25th, is known by many devout Star War fans as “Day of the Jedi“.  Yet after doing a little bit of research I now know that today is really “Geek Pride Day“. I like “Day of the Jedi” better! I missed posting something on the epically-coincidental “May the fourth be with you” Day (May 4th) so I made sure not to miss this opportunity.

What is “Day of the Jedi”? For those poor Star Trek souls that don’t know, I’ll shed some light on the subject. Or you can look it up on Wikipedia like I did.

The Profound Meaning of Day of the Jedi

The release dates for the original Star Wars series were Episode IV: May 25 1977, Episode V: May 21 1980, and Episode VI: May 25 1983. So; choose the common denominator (May 25)… and there you go! Now go out side or on the Internet and show Star Wars even MORE love than you already do!

Rights and Responsibilities

What really made me want to write a post were the “rights and responsibilities” of Geek Pride Day. You can find it on their Wikipedia page.

A manifesto was created to celebrate the first Geek Pride Day which included the following list of basic rights and responsibilities of geeks.

Rights

1. The right to be even geekier.
2. The right to not leave your house.
3. The right to not like football or any other sport.
4. The right to associate with other nerds.
5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
6. The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
7. The right to be out of style.
8. The right to be overweight and short-sighted.
9. The right to show off your geekiness.
10. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities

1. Be a geek, no matter what.
2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
4. To save and protect all geeky material.
5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a “museum of geekiness.”
6. Don’t be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.
9. Never throw away anything related to geekdom.
10. Try to take over the world!

Why is this Post Categorized as Linux-Related?

That’s a very good question. 1.) I put this paragraph (or disclaimer) here because this post will be picked up by Planet Fedora. 2.) I could be over-generalizing, but I’m assuming that there are more Star Wars fans within the Linux community than in Windows, Mac, or whatever non-Linux community is out there. 3.) After posting this I realized that TODAY is the release date for Fedora 13 Goddard! Now that must tell you something about the Fedora Project folks. They know how to release a distribution in style! Enjoy this very special day of the Jedi and go install Fedora!

I almost blew my lid when I finally found this web site. I’ve been searching the Internets for anything with the keywords “boxee”, “rpm”, “fc12″, and “fedora 12″. My only result was an RPM for Fedora 10. The version of Boxee was x.7.x and the most recent version of Boxee is x.20.x. That wasn’t going to work – I HAVE to have the latest, I’m running Fedora for peace sake – how much more bleeding edge can I be!?

Well; luck would have it, I came across a forum thread where kurgan posted his latest Boxee/Fedora 12 build. The Great Guin smiles upon us all! So; I’m posting this blog entry to help spread the good word that a Fedora 12/Boxee RPM is out there!

Introducing Boxee Fedora 10/11/12 Port – Boxee Forum Thread

There is an Alpha and Beta version available. Please take the time to view the readme file. I figured you wouldn’t so I posted it below. As of 10 January 2010 this is what it reads.

A couple of notes about this port. The rpm will create necessary symlinks for the Boxee dev’s prebuilt binaries to work. I found them to be their rtorrent, flash player, flash libraries, and some of their xulrunner stuff. Without the symlinks, flash apps such as Hulu and Youtube will give you the “meatspin”. The symlinks created by this rpm are necessary because this package contains pre-bundled binaries built against libraries with a different naming convention than Fedora. Given this fact, a standard rpm -ivh will fail due to dependancy errors. Running the rpm install with the –nodeps is necessary at this time.

It is worth noting I do not run pulseaudio with Boxee or XBMC, so I recommend removing it since pulse cannot do SPDIF passthrough.

My initial testing on F10 has been positive, and I have found no problems thus far. I am able to play dvd .iso’s as well as dvd folders (play VIDEO_TS.IFO works for me), and flash based apps work. Unfortunately, Hulu content is not working with the Beta builds. At the moment, I cannot get any Hulu content to work with any Linux distro and the Firefox browser, so I do not think this is a Boxee specific issue.

Due to an rpmbuild error about an invalid rpath in one of the Boxee pre-built flash binaries/libraries for xulrunner, I have to use the following command when building:

QA_RPATHS=$[ 0x0002 ] rpmbuild -ba rpmbuild/SPECS/boxee.spec 2>&1 |tee box_rpm.log

Installing Boxee

Since it’s an RPM, you’d think it’ll be easy to install. Well of course it is stupid! Just joking. You can either double-click on the .rpm file or run the following command after you “cd” your way into the directory where you saved the .rpm file.

# yum localinstall --nogpgcheck boxee-0.9.20.10263-0.1.b.fc12.x86_64.rpm

Using YUM “localinstall” will install the package and any dependent packages needed. The code above was shared with me from a comment “bronson” made. I’ve been looking for this kind of command for quite some time. So; thanks bronson — you’ve enhanced my Linux experience by so much.

Running Boxee

The Boxee link is conveniently placed within your “Applications | Videos” menu. When you run it for the first time, don’t expect it to actually load completely. If it does crash, run the launch file in terminal to then see what the error is:

/usr/bin/run-boxee-desktop

For me, I was missing two libraries. I installed them and I was good to go!

# yum install faac glew-devel

About two plus weeks ago my nVidia GeForce 8600 GT video card died on me. It was a sad sad day in Fergyville. The mayor of town gave a heart-filled eulogy and instructed all residences to put their flags at half mast. I found a spare video card and saw it had a VGA port. So; I then ordered a DVI (f) to VGA (m) adapter from Cables for Less and waited another couple days for it to arrive. When it finally arrived, low and behold my spare video card was actually an AGP card and my motherboard only has PCI Express slots. I went spiraling down into a very deep depression (for about 2 minutes). I’ve been without my Linux partition for roughly two weeks and it was driving me insane.

When all hope was lost, I accidentally realized that my motherboard has an on-board video port. How could I have missed that!? I’ve disregarded on-board video for so long that I no longer see them when working on my computer. I was happy to see it, but when I loaded my Linux partition, I didn’t get nice, clear graphics. Instead I got fuzzy and impossible to work with X session.

It Works on… Windows!?

It’s kind of hard for me to admit this, but the on-board video DOES work in my Vista partition. I installed the drivers from the motherboard CD and to my surprise I was able to play Battlefield 2 (low specs though). How can this be… Windows should NEVER trump Linux… that’s just LAW!

Fedora 12, My Hero!

I spent the next couple of days on IRC and countless search results on how to fix this matter. Most of the responses were to try out Fedora 12 and see if it works then. I was very reluctant to do that. I finally got Fedora 11 all tweaked out the way I wanted and Linux distros really aren’t the best thing to do an upgrade on. It’s always best to do a clean install. I wasn’t ready to do that again. Someone suggested I at least try the Fedora 12 LiveCD. I thought, “yeah, that should be too difficult to do.”

I downloaded the 600+MB file within a matter of minutes and loaded it onto a USB drive. To my surprise, X worked. I immediately installed XChat and told my friends on #fedora-social. So; I then backed up my home directory and preceded to install a fresh copy of Fedora 12.

Always Learning

One of the greatest benefits to running Linux full-time is the learning aspect of it. I’m so used to doing a full DVD install of the distro that I take for granted what’s NOT installed if I was to scale back a bit. For example, I did a LiveCD install. It went fairly quick, but then I realized that some of the apps I’m used to having weren’t installed. No worries, just YUM the mess out of the terminal and I’m back in business. What I’ve learned this go around are the names of these vital GUI applications I’ve become dependent on. Damn I love Linux!

To my dismay, after installing Fedora 12, I soon realized that the famous “Docky” theme for Gnome-Do did not come stock. After some poking around their forums I saw that there was some legal issue between Gnome-Do and Apple. Blah blah blah, I have no time for Apple’s whining and pouting. They’re interfering with my FOSS-time. One person made it clear that even though this feature has been removed from the Fedora repos, you can always install Gnome-Do from source. Ha! What a noble idea, I thought to myself. I’ve gotten so used to repos and RPMs that I haven’t had to install anything from source in quite some time. Well- that alternative install method works and I jotted it down for ya’.

Where to Start

The first thing you should do is get your “development” environment ready to compile things from source. It’s pretty easy to do, just install some tools and libraries. In my case, I installed Fedora 12 from a LiveCD. That means it didn’t come with EVERYTHING pre-installed. No worries, just YUM-it-up!

The first thing I did was install a lot of tools and libraries via the “groupinstall” option:

# yum groupinstall "development tools" "development libraries"

That roughly installed about 149 packages. I then went to Gnome-Do’s web site and they suggested the following packages:

# yum install gtk2-devel gnome-sharp-devel gnome-desktop-sharp-devel gnome-keyring-sharp-devel mono-addins-devel ndesk-dbus-devel ndesk-dbus-glib-devel notify-sharp-devel GConf2-devel

This command yielded about 34 packages to be installed.

Up Next: Grab the Source File

Now go to Gnome-Do’s web site and try and find the source file! I say that jokingly, of course, they actually do a good job of pointing you to the right file. But for your convience, I have a direct link to gnome-do-0.8.2.tar.gz. Here’s the link to their launchpad site: https://edge.launchpad.net/do.

Last: Compilation

Once you’ve acquired the tarball- it’s time to unpackage the package and start the compilation process (sounds exciting, eh!?). Run these commands one at a time:

$ tar -xvzf gnome-do-0.8.2.tar.gz
$ cd gnome-do-0.8.2
$ ./configure
$ make
# make install

The first time I ran Gnome-Do and tried to go into the “Preferences” section, it crashed on me. Simply try again. Find the “Appearance” tab and choose “Docky”. Oh the joy of seeing it load. I could be incorrect, but if it doesn’t load, you’ll need to run Compiz first. God speed my fellow FOSSventurers. Let me know if you had a good experience with getting Docky to work.

Wow, I am totally blown away by this task of getting the Facebook protocol to work on the instant messenger client, Empathy. I used to have it working on Pidgin, but lately it’s been a crapshoot. I went to IRC to get some help and low-and-behold, someone gave me a RTFM response. Just lovely, how helpful IRC. From the podcast world, I’ve heard that GNOME is shipping with Empathy as default instead of Pidgin. So; I thought I’d start using it… these desktop guys MUST know what they’re talking about.

Well; so far, I’m not impressed with Empathy at all! Pidgin looks a lot better and my SOUND actually works. Damn! I really wish SOUND wasn’t such an issue in Linux. We’re making heads spin with the amount of computing we can do, the available apps in x86_64 architecture, and the overall desktop stability… yet SOUND has ALWAYS been an issue since I started with Fedora 8.

Attempting to Install Facebook Plugin

So; I thought I’d really give it a go and install the Facebook plugin. I downloaded the same file that’s being used for Pidgin (at Google Code) and tried looking for an “Empathy” folder. After running a “locate” command, I noticed that Empathy really didn’t have a lib64 or some other home folder. It has a folder, but it’s only holding xml data nothing really concrete to the actual program. I saw some .so files but that wasn’t helpful to me. After researching some more, I realized that Empathy is really a client to Telepathy. Oh great, down that rabbit hole we go! So; I then did a “locate” for it and saw the same structure. “OK, this doesn’t make any sense to me! Where am I supposed to install this facebook plugin!?”

So; after some more research, I find myself at this really dated bug report. It’s basically saying I need to edit two files and put in the Facebook protocol. “Really!? Are we really in the early 2000s and I need to MANUALLY input protocols in Linux? Damn!” I did it anyway and after restarting Empathy, I got Network error. “OK, I’m done! I don’t need this kind of stress for a stupid IM protocol.”

So; in the end… I’m trying out ugly Empathy and we’ll see if it grows on me… Like a fungus! I posted something to an existing forum topic, let’s hope that gives me the salvation I’m looking for.

I’ve been using the Hulu.com services from time to time to catch up on shows I’ve missed. I don’t have cable so this is a great alternative for me. I remember hearing about Hulu Desktop on a podcast a while back, but I totally forgot about it. Well, earlier this week a friend on Twitter mentioned it and that sparked the tech-geek in me to try and install it. Lucky for me, they have an RPM and a DEB installer. For you hardcore-Linux enthusiasts or masochists, I’m not sure if they have source files available.

Installing Hulu Desktop

I’m using Fedora (of course, it’s the distro of champions) so I chose the RPM route. It was very easy, simply download the RPM file and double-click it. It’ll check for dependencies and install what’s needed.

Flash Hiccup

When the program starts for the first time, it told me it couldn’t locate the Flash plugin. To my surprise, the error message was very helpful. It stated

If you do not have it installed, please modify ~/.huludesktop with the correct location
of libflashplayer.so.

Unless I’m mistaken, under normal circumstances I usually point the apps to the “/usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so” file. Well when I tried that, it didn’t work. After a couple of minutes of searching, I saw that the “nswrapper” version is what the app was looking for. I did a locate and copied and pasted the location to that nswrapper file.

$ locate libflashplayer.so

My Overall Impression

In the end, it was a pretty straight-forward installation and the error messages are actually helpful. I like the application a lot. The interface is slick and while your putsying around different show listings the show that you’re currently watching is still playing in the upper left corner. That’s sweet. I think I can get better video quality if my nVidia drivers worked properly. Let’s hope Fedora 12 fixes that issue.  Now I just have to move my desktop machine downstairs and hook it up to my television set and we’re off to the races!

September 19th was the Atlanta Linux Fest, which had about 700+ people show up – don’t quote me though, there were a lot of different head-counts being tweeted that day. That number sounds great, but it’s nothing in comparison to the once great Atlanta Linux Showcase that was started by my LUG, Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts. With that selfless promotion out of the way, it looks like ALF has a great start to making the city of Atlanta a hot spot for FOSS conventions in the future.  It was a tiring day, but I think Nick and Josh from the Ubuntu Podcast will continue to run this event for years to come.  I’m not certain if there were other folks or organizations that started this, but Nick and Josh were certainly considered the poster children for it.

This was my first convention and because of my impulsiveness – I experienced the event in a slightly different way. As I registered for the event, I saw the option to “volunteer”.  I thought to myself, “What better way of jumping into this event.  See the front and back end of it all.”  With that said, I only attended one workshop (Running an Open Source Business, presented by Tarus Balog of OpenNMS) and their was an in-prompt-to entrepreneur meetup. Overall; I had fun. Next time, though, I will register as a regular-folk and attend as much workshops as possible. It was amazing seeing fellow geeks huddled in one area with a common goal of being themselves and talking about what we love – free and open source software.

My wife, @fossthreads [identica] [twitter], was a vendor at the event and just as luck would have it – the Fedora booth was right next to us! Sweet! I didn’t talk to them much though… I was too busy. Now don’t get me wrong, the STAFF of the event didn’t hold me at gun point telling me to “do this” and “do that.” I really did volunteer, sacrificing the experience of the workshops for the experience of helping to operate, hopefully, one of many-to-come Linux-related conventions. I was actually falling asleep in the workshop I did attend, but that’s only because I was very tired at that point in the day.

The Unsortable List

I was very excited when I reached the venue. I got my ALF t-shirt, badge, and asked them what they wanted me to do. They asked me to greet the folks and let them know there were four places at the front desk where they could sign in. Later on it was apparent that the IBM facility had a WiFi connection, but a lot of people didn’t know how to connect.  I asked someone about it and they said they have a list and folks that preregistered get their own username/password. I said, “Awesome! Can I have a list?” They gave me one and I walked around (for about 5 minutes) like a big shot!  Thank the maker – that no one asked me for any WiFi information.  As I looked through the list to get myself familiar with it, I realized that this particular spreadsheet was sorted by registration date! What!? I don’t even remember when I registered.  It was about 6 – 8 pages and after 2 minutes of searching, I couldn’t even find myself on the list.  Who printed that sheet!? It must have been a joke.

Micro-blogging

One of the most exciting aspects of the day was tweeting about it while I was dead in the middle of it.  When I noticed that folks were looking for coffee and they didn’t find any, I thought it would be helpful to use the #atllinux hash and spread the word. I ended up using that mechanism to confirm and inform folks various things going on during the event. It was very cool and I felt very connected with all these avatars!

My First Meetup

Nick Owen from WiKID tweeted about an open spot in the schedule and asked if folks wanted to do a quick meetup. Me, Christopher Johnson from if PEOPLE, Josh Sweeney from <ALT> Invest, Sanjay Parekh, Matt Smith, and Urvaksh Karkaria graciously strolled into the conversation and thus the meetup took place. Coincidently; this “first” convention procuded a lot of “firsts” for me: live tweeting, the convention itself, an entreprenur meetup, volunteering outside of a church event, and rubbing shoulders with vendors of an event.  So; again, event though I didn’t see all the workshops – I still had a great time.

I’m primarily using this blog platform as a time stamp. I’m very proud of what I have been able to produce. I didn’t think it could be done, but the trick is just getting used to the software. That is all for now. I plan on posting the graphic and link this weekend. “My I have some Bluefish to go with The Gimp!?”