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]

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.

If you’re running a non Debian (or the current posterchild for Linux – Ubuntu) system, you can’t simply add conkyForecast to your repository source and do a text-based installation.  I’m running the almighty Fedora, so I won’t be running this command any time soon “$ yum -y install conkyforecast“.  You can always install it from source, if you can even find the tarballs.  There are a couple hoops to jump through in order to properly set it up, hopefully I can cover them all.  I’m also assuming that you have conky already installed.

Where To Download the Tarballs

The starting point, for us all, is http://www.kaivalagi.com/node/2.  He has a really great post on how to setup your Ubuntu repository so you can then simply Apt-get the forecast package.  For the rest of us, here’s where you can get the .tar.gz file:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/m-buck/ubuntu/pool/main/c/conkyforecast/

Where To Store the Files

I was a bit confused at first.  Most conky config examples had their extra conky features stored in a [dot] scripts folder in their home (~/) directory.  I thought this was odd, but followed the crowd anyway.  After downloading the conkyForecast files I realized its programming file is set to look in the “/usr/share/” folder.  So; don’t waste your time putting it into a special little place in your home directory. Extract the files into “/usr/share/conkyforecast/” folder.

How To Configure conkyForecast

This is actually a VERY important step.  I’m the kind of guy that doesn’t read the README file, but I needed to read it in order for it to work.  Here are some guidelines:

• Copy the conkyForecast.config file into your home directory and then edit it.

$ cp /usr/share/conkyforecast/conkyForecast.config ~/.conkyForecast.config
$ nano ~/.conkyForecast.config

• If you want the information displayed in a non-English format, edit line 7 (LOCALE).  The codes are in the README file.
• Lines 8 and 9 (XOAP*) are the most crucial components.  These variables allows you to pull data from www.weather.com.  If you don’t have this information, you’ll never see any weather data.
  • In order to fill in a “PARTNER_ID” and “LICENCE_KEY” you’ll need to register an account with Weather.com and add the XOAP service to your account.
  • Follow this link to start that process. http://www.weather.com/services/xmloap.html
  • Once you register you’ll get an email with the needed information.
• Fonts! You’ll need to download and extract certain fonts.  The fonts directory is located at “/usr/share/fonts”.
  • Poky
  • OpenLogos

Now that you have all that together you can edit your ~/.conkyrc file and add the necessary code to embed weather updates onto your desktop.  Here’s a great example: http://randomwish.blogspot.com/2008/07/isnt-conky-best-you-like.html

My Forecast

Here’s my implementation of the conky script in the previous URL from Blogspot.

I still don’t know the full story about this GNOME Do program, but so far it’s the best thing… besides slice bread…  you just can’t beat that!  I’ve heard about this package when Fedora 9 was released.  I installed it on my laptop, but never really learned, nor took the time, to understand how it works.  Recently, there was a blog post (LifeHacker) that highlighted the new “Docky” theme, which gives your Linux box a certain popular MAC component.  I’m not going to take a sip of the hateraide, this Docky component is awesome and it’s given my Fedora 10 a new lease on life!

Installing GNOME-Do

The popular distributions have it in their repos, such as: openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.  The only problem is some of the repos do not have the latest version yet – v0.8.0.  That version has the whole “Docky” thing.  Simply use your distro’s text installer; mine is YUM.

YUM install gnome-do

You can always install it manually, using the source files, but this is no easy task if you’re a Linux newb.  It requires other packages, such as: bzr, glib-sharp, glib-, gtk+-2.0, and much more.  I had the toughest time finding some of the dependent files.

Social Media to the Rescue

I posted a “call for help” on Identica and Matthew Schick came to my rescue.  He had it working, from source, and he even made some RPMs.  I quickly downloaded his RPMs and they installed without any issues.  So; visit his site to get the latest version.  Thanks Matt!

• http://www.excentral.org/fedora/10/
  • flickrnet – required
  • gnome-do-plugins – optional
  • gnome-do – required

What Does GNOME Do, Do!?

Beats me!  Ha-ha!  You’ll have to check out the web site for detailed informaton on that.  Besides the whole Docky thing… you call it up by using WINDOWS+Spacebar on your keyboard (it can be changed in the preferences).  Once the GNOME Do console/window is up you then type in a document you’re looking for… a program you want to run, etc.

In order to run it, for the first time you can either type in “gnome-do” in your terminal or use the one-time run window (ALT+F2).  Once it’s running you can go into preferences and have it automatically start on login.

That’s the extent of my knowledge.  If you know more, please post a reply and share your experience with GNOME Do!

Audio Review of Gnome Do

ProductiveLinux, episode #20 has a very good review of this new version of Gnome Do.

I’m a bit confused by the methods people go about reporting news now-a-days. I’m probably late to the game, but it seems that everyone is stealing, borrowing, whatever from each other and you have to dig down into 2 or 3 levels of blogs in order to get the one true article that was written about the subject.

I forgot how I found it, but the title “Ubunut 8.04 vs. Fedora 9″ caught my eye. I followed it to www.OSnews.com to read a small excerpt of a much bigger story found elsewhere. How long has this been going on? I remember when I first started reading GoogleNews, I noticed that they would have an intro sentence and the real story was somewhere else. That trend (whether started by Google or not) is the norm sharing stories.

I use GoogleReader and it’s amazing how all these supposed news web sites are basically fancy portals to the real news web sites.

Technically, my immediate family is a linux-family; meaning that we run some form of linux on our main computers as our full-time operating system. My wife made the switch this weekend and she was pretty excited about it. We all know it’s going to be a rough ride until we fully understand how things work, but this is very cool news. I’m running Fedora 8 and she’s running openSUSE 10.3.

We wanted her to run Ubuntu 8.04, but had a very tough time getting it to install on ANY computer we have in the house. It keeps freezing up on the boot menu. So; until we figure out what the deal is we looked distros that are backed by major companies.

Later on through forums and mailing lists, I realize that the problem might be the MD5SUM check.  The issue is the ISO file I downloaded passed the SUM check, but it’s very possible the CD isn’t burning right.  Who knows, we’ll figure it out sooner or later – as long as we have working linuxboxes!

I did learn a bit or two about LiveCDs verse AlternateCDs. It would seem that LiveCDs are in an experimental stage so it may not work all the time. The AlternetCD is basically the full-install CD that the distros used to primarily come on. Funny thing is you learn SO much while going through your headache(s).