Restoring Electronics-menu in Gnome3

With Gnome 3 shipped with Fedora 15, the menu “electronics” is no longer available on Fedora 15′s gnome-menu.

It was rather annoying for me, as this custom “Electronics” menu remained the first thing that non-linux users would look at if they want to embrace Free(Fedora) Electronic Lab.

Finally, I found how to fix it. It seems that the directory /etc/xdg/menus/application-merged became /etc/xdg/menus/application-gnome-merged.

$ mkdir  /etc/xdg/menus/applications-gnome-merged
$ ln -s /etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged/electronics.menu /etc/xdg/menus/applications-gnome-merged/electronics.menu

The “electronics-menu” package will soon be updated to reflect this fix on Fedora 15.

Filed under: fedora, Free Electronic Lab, gnome

FEL Spin: Switching to Gnome (desktop ks)

During the Spin session at FUDCon Berlin, I expressed my intention to  switch FEL spin from kde-based to gnome-based. I have already made the  necessary changes to FEL’s kickstart file.

My tests were successful and I am pleased with it.

Reason for the switch
Simple, my laptop (only machine I have) struggles a lot with KDE4. I am a KDE user and even a KDE booth staff for CEBIT 2007 in Germany. If I personally cannot test and qualify the spin before the release, we can’t ship it.

What does it mean for the Spin SIG ?
Nothing particularly as the dependency of the FEL spin is switched to  the default Fedora Desktop kickstart.

What does it mean for the User ?
The users are the only one which will see the difference. But since Fedora Developers spent a lot of resources on the desktop livecd (+ the fedora features) compared to the KDE upstream project, FEL users will benefit with better power management, better boot time, better distribution integration and any items from the fedora feature list.

What does it mean for the spin maintainer ?
Nothing particularly. It is just a one-line change in FEL’s ks. Since the dependency is heavily tested by the Fedora QA team, I can focus only on the goals/objectives of FEL. Since, FEL apps are added to comps, it is even easier for me to maintain the spin.

I am personnally affected by this switch, since I have never used Gnome before. However the objective is not about whether gnome or kde is good, how to focus on the electronic ASIC design methodologies which opensource software can provide. That said, desktop environments such as LXDE and XFCE are automatically discarded for FEL (at least
for the next 2/3 fedora releases) since

• Fedora XFCE spin’s history shows it was either not ready for the official fedora release or not released.
• Fedora LXDE spin is new and the first official fedora board approved spin will most probably be for F-12.

As a spin maintainer, I care a lot about the spin’s dependencies. If the dependencies failed, FEL will not be released.

I am sorry for any inconvenience that may cause you however if you want to help us, please have a look at this dynamic todo list.

I want to thank RexDieter and KevinKofler for their tremendous help since the beginning. Rex worked hard on optimizing KDE before F-11 release, at that time I was already seriously considering the switch. Rex’s optimization worked for me and thereby FEL 11 was KDE based.

Filed under: feature, fedora, Free Electronic Lab, gnome, kde

31 Dec – Pictionary – Gnome Translate

Below is a “bougie finlandaise” fired by David und Hans für die New Year Eve.

 

I’m at Mirjam’s parents’ place in Switzerland (Swiss German part). Tonight, we played pictionary in german, but I neither speak nor understand German.

However Gnome-translate proved to be a very good asset and in the end my group (Mirjam, David and I) won the game.

Filed under: gnome, mirjam, switzerland, wilchingen