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

KDE: Rex Deiter at Akademy 2008

Yet again, I’m late with blogging my life:

Here is the proof that RahulSundaram was looking for from Rex Dieter.

Event: 9th to 15th August 2008, Sint-Katelijne-Waver, Belgium. Akademy 2008

For more details, checkout the following urls:

• Rex’s report.
• Akademy 2008 Group photo.

Filed under: belgium, fedora, kde

Rawhide and KDE4′s preparation

Since last week, the following packages were marked as “dead.package” for rawhide:

• kdmtheme

kdmtheme has just had a bug fix release (1.2.2) for F-7 and F-8.

• marble
• d3lphin
• kalgebra

This means that they will be shipped with F-9 along with the KDE4 family and not as a separate package.

Kevin and Rex have already obsoleted these packages in the KDE4 packages in order to make yum update from F-8 to F-9 less painful. Well I recently upgraded from F-7 to F-8 WITHOUT any troubles.

If before F-9′s release,:
* KDE3 icon sets
* KDE3 kwin decorators
haven’t yet been ported to KDE4, I fear it would be time to obsolete them as well. So please, if you like a particular kwin decorator or kde3 icon set, please encourage upstream to port it. A mere simple mail to the developers might make you happy.

Filed under: fedora, kde

KDE: F8 Werewolf’s Ksplash mockups

Following the discussion with Rex and Kevin on #fedora-kde(on F8 ksplash), here are the constraints:

have a proper color gradient from the splash_top to splash active/inactive bar

the actual inactive/active bar is with echo icons but fedora’s kde uses crystal icons by default

not enough time before F8

My two mockups of F8 Werewolf’s kplash mockups:


Which one do you prefer ?

Filed under: artwork, fedora, kde

FEL – Fabless Semiconductor business model

You don’t have financial strength to invest in building your own foundry in order to fabricate your chips?
You are opting for a fabless business model for trial (focusing on design and outsourcing the actual manufacturing) ?

The Fedora Project proposes a free fabless semiconductor business model for your needs, thus allowing you to stay focused on cutting-edge design, and not invest in manufacturing.

With the “Fedora Electronic Lab” along with its RPM package management, any electronic engineer can deploy his/her VLSI simulation environment quickly and easily. You will have tools for RTL simulation, place & route, timing closure up to digital physical design. In addition, 7 opensource technology libraries are available with a feature size up to 0.13µm.
You are free to decide whether your design process will be either top-secret or open to the world. However the simulation tools will be free. Processes can be modified and created graphically (if desired).

Extensive work was done to provide enough interfaces useful for your automated configuration scripts (e.g Makefiles).

On the Fedora Electronic Lab livecd, you will benefit from the KDE desktop environment in terms of

Project implementation tracking capabilities

Visibility to assigned tasks, resources and issues

The Fedora Repositories entail a wide range of applications with graphical means to manage all aspects of data flow throughout an enterprise in a highly efficient manner.

Filed under: fedora, Free Electronic Lab, kde, VLSI

FEL – Test 2

Fedora Electronic Lab Live CD Test 2 was released today.

Use get-fedora wiki page to download a copy.

Filed under: alliance, fedora, Free Electronic Lab, kde

KDE: d3lphin replacing dolphin

Those who have installed dolphin on their fedora in the past, will notice among their updates:
Installing:
d3lphin i386 0.9.2-2.fc7 updates 1.3 M
replacing dolphin.i386 0.8.2-2.fc7

dolphin has been replaced by d3lphin on FC6 and F-7.

dolphin-0.8.2 (dolphin kde3 branch) is unmaintained.
d3lphin is a fork of dolphin which includes some minor improvements and fixed some bigger annoyances.

Filed under: fedora, kde

KDE4: rdieter’s rpms

Last weekend I gave a try to rdieter’s KDE4 rpms. They look promising. I’ve compiled kdepim without some buildrequires, tonight I’ll try to meet the buildrequires and rebuild.

Filed under: fedora, kde