Re: [arch-general] Vala out of date
for the 99 time, vala 0.9.x is the devel branch and i'm not going to update it. shotwell was updated to 0.7 and vala 0.9.5 is a _makedepends_ not a depends for this app Wouldn't it be easier for you and everybody else if you deleted vala from the repo completely? There are no packages that require it and users who need it have to get the latest version from AUR anyway. Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Vala out of date
On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Ionuț Bîru ib...@archlinux.org wrote: On 08/27/2010 08:58 PM, Denis Kobozev wrote: Wouldn't it be easier for you and everybody else if you deleted vala from the repo completely? There are no packages that require it and users who need it have to get the latest version from AUR anyway. there are several packages in repos that require vala at compilation. $ grep -rl vala /var/abs/ ... 5, to be precise: community/awn-extras-applets/PKGBUILD community/avant-window-navigator/PKGBUILD community/libdesktop-agnostic/PKGBUILD extra/midori/PKGBUILD extra/gmpc/PKGBUILD I don't know what's worse - installing Vala to build these from AUR or read the 1 millionth request to update Vala :) Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Vala out of date
On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Ray Rashif schivmeis...@gmail.com wrote: As a distro, we only update packages to latest stable. There are a few exceptions, especially those that are slow in releasing stable versions of their software or are generally high-level tools that rarely break. So if the maintainer of vala does not want to update to the devel version, it is perfectly reasonable, and correct. It is reasonable. As a user, I already got my information about Vala. I just wish I could get it without contributing to maintainer's aggravation though. Denis.
Re: [arch-general] donate for the improvement and development
On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Thomas Dziedzic gos...@gmail.com wrote: Always check the wiki :) http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Getting_Involved I seem to remember a website where you could post things like I want somebody to implement feature X in Arch and I will pay $N for it or I would be willing to implement feature X in Arch if somebody paid me $M for it, but it's not in the wiki. I cannot find it by Googling, either... Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux
I also successfully use Arch on Thinkpad X61. Sound, wifi and track point work with minimal setup. Extra keys require some tweaking. The display has a bluish tint by default, so installing a color profile might be a good idea [1]. There's a whole wiki dedicated to running Linux on Thinkpads [2]. [1]: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=380776sid=44e7dd2eab24100f5fa19bce14e0db6b#p380776 [2]: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki Best, Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Firefox graphics licensed under MPL
On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 3:07 AM, Jan de Groot j...@jgc.homeip.net wrote: We did that before, and we got permission to ship with branding. The issue here is that whenever we update the package or add/remove a patch, we have to ask for permission again. I did not know that Firefox is packaged without the official graphics a) because of the Firefox trademark and b) because the Mozilla trademark policy is so strict. I thought the problem was that the ones and zeros that comprise the official logo are/were under a non-free license. The LWN article certainly helped. This doesn't look a big problem for you, but it means that we have to stick to a schedule to get releases to the repository. Actually, I don't know why any distro would bother with Mozilla's branding given their policy. Denis.
[arch-general] Firefox graphics licensed under MPL
Hi archers, If you believe the comment on Mozilla's bugtracker [1] and the change to the license file [2], the previously non-free Firefox graphics are now licensed under the MPL. Does that mean that we'll be able to have official logo in the supported Firefox package? [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541761#c3 [2]: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/99d80bc3f18b Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Firefox graphics licensed under MPL
On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 12:07 PM, Xavier Chantry Mozilla actually contradicts itself on this matter. [...] But just below, the trademark policy then says this : Again, any modification to the Mozilla product, including adding to, modifying in any way, or deleting content from the files included with an installer, file location changes, added code, modification of any source files including additions and deletions, etc., will require our permission if you want to use the Mozilla Marks. If you have any doubt, just ask us at tradema...@mozilla.com. Why not do like we're told then, and send them an email? Arch has such and such package, with such and such modifications. Firefox logo is now under MPL and it looks like we can add it to our package. Can we?. Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Crisp Rendering Fonts
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Michishige Kaito chris.webs...@gmail.com wrote: Aren't raster and bitmap similar, if not equal, concepts? Yes, they are equal (or similar). There are bitmap (or raster, or pixel, whatever you want to call them) fonts that only work well for specific resolutions. Examples are Dina font, Proggy family and Terminus. Then there are outline (or vector) fonts - these scale better that bitmap fonts, but shouldn't be used without anti-aliasing. Examples are DejaVu and Liberation fonts. And then there are hybrids like ms-ttf-fonts that include both bitmap and outline versions in the same package. Bitmap fonts are designed to work well without anti-aliasing, because they have a 1:1 mapping to pixels on screen. These are the most crisp-looking, to the point where some people consider them too jagged. Then there are different flavors of anti-aliasing. The simplest form uses shades of gray (for black text) to make fonts look less jagged. It also produces the most blurry text. Subpixel rendering [1] (e.g. ClearType) uses physical properties of LCD monitors for less blurry anti-aliasing. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering Anyway, I had some headache (literally, blurry fonts...) for a while until I found out about the -lcd packages for cairo. I think there was some insight on the arch wiki[1]. Everything looks very crisp now, although I'm sure it could be better with some fine tuning. I understand that -lcd packages implement some kind of subpixel rendering mechanism. Pixels on modern are still way too huge, and even subpixel rendering does not produce great results for rendering of small point sizes. I find that bitmap fonts or ms-ttf-fonts work best for me - I use Terminus for the console and code editing and ms-ttf-fonts for everything else. Anti-aliasing is turned off for small point sizes and turned on for larger sizes. Denis.
Re: [arch-general] How to take screenshot of ring switcher ?
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Xavier Chantry chantry.xav...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 7:28 PM, Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com wrote: That's the main aim for which I want to do this. By showing them the screenshots which will look awesome to them, it may be possible to win their minds. This is the silliest reason I've ever heard for switching to Linux. Here are 25 MUCH more important ones : http://www.linfo.org/reasons_to_convert.html Oh come on, who cares about technical reasons or freedom 0. We're all using Linux just because it's cool. Aren't we?.. :)
Re: [arch-general] package manager overlay script
On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 8:17 AM, Andre Osku Schmidt andre.osku.schm...@osku.de wrote: Hello, im getting tired to be forced to remember many different options for various package managers on different distros. so i did a little script that allows me to do like asd install foo on any distro i got that script installed, and it will install the package using the systems package manager. so, before i hack this script to a better state, i was wondering does this kind of script/project already exist ? Personally, I would rather remember own commands for each package manager, or, more likely, use a cheetsheet. I'm generally wary of putting abstraction layers where they can be avoided or relying on non-standard tools for tasks like system administration. That's why I don't use stuff like alias lls=ls -la in my shell rc file - I would have to put this on every machine I touch lest I feel very awkward.
Re: [arch-general] ArchLinux in space?
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Dan Vratil vra...@progdansoft.com wrote: Hi, I was surprised when I read today that scientists found a pacman installed on one of Saturn's moons! See yourself: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/features/2010/pac-man-mimas.html This probably makes ArchLinux the furthest installed distro ever! :-) If you are looking to install Arch on something more exotic, such as your kerosene-powered cheese grater or one of Saturn's moons, please consult http://wiki.archlinux.org; :)
Re: [arch-general] Dirty fonts in Chromium
On 03/25/2010 05:06 PM, Nilesh Govindarajan wrote: Appearance of sites in Chromium is very dirty, though I didn't change the default font settings. Out of curiosity: do you have font anti-aliasing turned off on your system? Do you use ttf-ms-fonts for GUI apps? Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Dirty fonts in Chromium
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 1:39 PM, Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com wrote: anti-aliasing was disabled, enabled to see what it does (:?) Most fonts, except for pixel fonts and ttf-ms-fonts, don't work well without anti-aliasing - they will look dirty or crooked. ttf-ms-fonts are a special case because they actually include pixel versions for small font sizes. I'm one of those people who like pixel fonts - I think that pixels on modern monitors are still too big for anti-aliasing to work well. To me, anti-aliasing makes fonts too blurry. So I'm either using pixel fonts such as Dina or Terminus, or one of ttf-ms-fonts in my apps and have anti-aliasing turned off for small font sizes. But occasionally I come across a site that specifically uses, say, DejaVu Sans. Without anti-aliasing DejaVu Sans looks to me exactly like you described - dirty. Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Unable To Rendor PHP Pages in Apache
On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Ionut Biru biru.io...@gmail.com wrote: On 03/23/2010 11:12 PM, Carlos Mennens wrote: Any suggestions? yes. read the wiki about LAMP. installing packages is not enough. you have to tell apache to use php and is described on the wiki. That's a hefty article on the wiki :) I think you're only looking for these two lines that go into httpd.conf: LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so Include conf/extra/php5_module.conf Denis.
[arch-general] Ignoring packages and piecemeal updates
Hi archers, It has been repeated a lot of times that doing piecemeal updates with pacman -Sy pkgname is not a very good idea. What about ignoring packages? Is it as dangerous? And a more general question: is it even theoretically possible to have a bleeding edge distro with piecemeal updates and with no required manual intervention during updates or is it just a pipe dream? Best, Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Ignoring packages and piecemeal updates
On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Isaac Dupree m...@isaac.cedarswampstudios.org wrote: NixOS does better (at least at the theoretical stuff, though it has fewer users..it was born in academia..Basically it is archtected so that you can have multiple versions of any package installed and they inherently won't conflict with each other.). Interesting. Judging from a quick glance at the NixOS homepage, nix deals with shared dependencies by having very precise rules about which package requires which versions of shared libraries. So when a new version of libfoo comes out, all packages that depend on libfoo should be rebuilt. If package maintainers are lazy, you would end up with a system where each package has its own version of libfoo... Best, Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Ignoring packages and piecemeal updates
On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 4:48 PM, Aaron Griffin aaronmgrif...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Denis Kobozev d.v.kobo...@gmail.com wrote: Interesting. Judging from a quick glance at the NixOS homepage, nix deals with shared dependencies by having very precise rules about which package requires which versions of shared libraries. So when a new version of libfoo comes out, all packages that depend on libfoo should be rebuilt. If package maintainers are lazy, you would end up with a system where each package has its own version of libfoo... GoboLinux does something similar in that packages are installed to some place in a directory named packagename-version/ and then things are symlinked in. And how does that work out in practice? Not that good, otherwise Arch would do it too? :) Best, Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Ananda Samaddar ana...@samaddar.co.uk Would there be any enthusiasm for a dedicated security team? I feel strongly enough about it that if something can't be done then I'm switching to another distro. Despite the fact that I really like Arch, it's one deficiency is a pretty glaring one in my opinion. I hope this doesn't turn into a flamefest and my opinions are by no means meant to be a slight on the Arch devs or community. I'm going to chime in and repeat what some of the others have said - I too would like to see some evidence that Arch as a distro has security issues other that those that should be fixed upstream. Since Arch always has the latest versions of software, it should automatically have all the latest security fixes - there's no need to backport patches to old versions of software, like Debian does. Security issues arising from poor default config files should be and are addressed by individual package maintainers. Again, I'm not aware of any cases where a maintainer's poor job resulted in a security issue - probably because each package is a vanilla package and doesn't contain any customized configs (again, Debian comes to mind). Best, Denis.
Re: [arch-general] top posting
The only advantage of top posting I can think of is that it enables you to forward the entire chain of emails to a new person with one click. You could, of course, bottom post and keep the entire chain in each email, but it's probably even worse than top posting, since you would have to scroll through the whole mess each time just to see what another person said. So in office environment, top posting is probably preferable to bottom posting. Although I do switch to bottom posting even when replying to office-style communication when I get a big list of unrelated questions. Bottom posting shows its downside only when you recently joined a mailing list, for example - you start receiving emails from threads that have been going for a long time and you have no idea what people are discussing. But if you're really interested, you can always use the archive. Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux Law Office? (Was: Re: go-openoffice not opening templates - anybody else?)
On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 7:12 PM, Logan Rathbone popro...@gmail.com wrote: David, are you running (Arch) Linux in your law office? If so, could you describe your experiences? What do you use for time and billing? I too would be interested to hear about solutions for billing and keeping track of time on Linux. I do freelance web development and have to record my working hours and send invoices to clients. Right now I just write down my working hours in a plain text file and use an OpenOffice template for invoices. Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Good press at distrowatch.com
On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 11:54 AM, Dieter Plaetinck die...@plaetinck.be wrote: The config files are so powerful you can just add whichever repositories you need and add packages/groups to install whatever you want. http://github.com/Dieterbe/aif/blob/master/examples/generic-install-on-sda This should also answer Denis' question. It's probably only a matter of time before somebody releases a config file for installing a set of packages similar to a typical desktop distro, such as Ubuntu. Then Arch installer might become one of the fastest among all distributions, both in terms of actual speed and perceived speed from the user's perspective. You boot, you type aif -p automatic -c /usr/share/aif/examples/gnome-install-on-sda, you wait a bit and then you have a complete and up-to-date desktop system. No clicking 'next, next, next...' ad nauseam, no silly little choices to make. There's a pitfall though: too many possible config files and you're forcing a user to make a choice he or she doesn't care about :) Users familiar with Linux will most likely want to create personalized config files for their own needs and wouldn't rely on pre-made templates. A bit idealistic view, perhaps, but probably not very far from reality. Dieter, is it possible to resize existing partitions via PARTITIONS variable in the config file? What kind of error do you get if you put incorrect values there? Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Good press at distrowatch.com
On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 11:55 AM, Dieter Plaetinck die...@plaetinck.be wrote: did that guy actually say that point and click visual installers are a time *saver* ?? is he out of his mind? It seems that most reviews on distrowatch.com come from the standpoint that Ubuntu is the ultimate user-friendly system. Arch, Gentoo and Slackware users beg to differ, but I guess the most typical Linux user agrees and that's who they are catering to.
Re: [arch-general] Good press at distrowatch.com
2009/12/17 Ng Oon-Ee ngoo...@gmail.com: Ubuntu's installer goes much faster though, if the benchmark is 'to a working gnome system', especially for those of us with slow internet connections who aren't able to download half a Gb here and there at the snap of a finger. Maybe user-friendliness was the wrong thing to bring up, but for most reviews on distrowatch.com, working ghome/kde/[your DE of choice] systems is the benchmark. Other things, such as freshness of packages, don't matter as much, so I do believe that their reviews target a specific audience. If you're just getting started with Linux, there's a slim chance that you'll understand why systems such as Arch or Gentoo even exist from their reviews. On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Dieter Plaetinck die...@plaetinck.be wrote: it's not about userfriendliness, which is a very subjective topic. it's about time duration, which is scientifically measurable. Automated scripted installation should be faster, by definition. Is there a script / config file for AIF that will install a full system with DE, akin to Archiso-live? Denis.
Re: [arch-general] Good press at distrowatch.com
On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 12:50 AM, David C. Rankin drankina...@suddenlinkmail.com Seriously, I like the Arch installer just fine, but I can tell you that the Ubuntu/SuSE install rating most likely come from the fact that the gui installers they employ are easy on the eye and they have put a lot of effort into automating the difficult parts of the install procedure that most new users don't understand -- the partitioning. Partitioning was scary for me precisely because many systems try to hide it from the user. The data that you have might be more valuable to you than your machine. The automated partitioning tool might or might not do the right thing. And if it screws up, you have no idea what went wrong and how to deal with it. A short anecdote. Several years ago, I decided to install Ubuntu (my first real distro, as opposed to a LiveCD) on my desktop. I had two drives: 500 GiB, where my Windows install and other files lived, and an old 80 GiB drive, for Ubuntu installation. During the install, Ubuntu overwrote MBR on the 500 GiB drive and installed Ubuntu and GRUB on the 80 GiB one. Long story short, all was fine until I decided to remove the 80 GiB drive with Ubuntu from my machine - without it, Windows wouldn't boot due to missing GRUB. And in order to make the machine bootable again, I had to spend a considerable amount of time reading about bootloaders, GRUB, MBRs, partitions and all that. My point is that I'm not at all convinced that automating the difficult parts is the way to go. It might be preferred by some, but I'm not sure that they know what they're missing (I didn't). You will have to know what you are doing sooner or later. I'm also not convinced that people who do not wish to read about partitioning should install OSs on their own, but hey, what do I know :)
Re: [arch-general] Making a PHP package with the embed SAPI
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 11:56 PM, Brendan Long kori...@gmail.com wrote: I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas of how to make this a simple php-embed package that would only install the needed parts. I became curios how other distros package phc - turns out they don't. There are two packages provided on phc website, one for RPM-based systems, other for FreeBSD. Both packages are outdated and neither tackles custom php build flags. It might be that a custom build of PHP wasn't required in prior versions. Suggestion: create a PHP package built with --enable-embed flag, name it something other than php and make it a dependency for the phc package. Anyone care to comment why this might be a bad idea?
Re: [arch-general] Making a PHP package with the embed SAPI
On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:44 AM, Brendan Long kori...@gmail.com wrote: My problem isn't creating a custom php package, the problem is creating one that installs to /usr but doesn't conflict with the official php package. I'd like to be able to install it just like you can install php-mcrypt and php-mysql. You would have to modify the current php package though. Either you modify it yourself, name it differently, add the official php package to the list of conflicting packages and upload your PKGBUILD to AUR for those who would want to use embed sapi; or email the current php package maintainer and ask him to include --enable-embed=shared to the list of php extensions. Embed would then be compiled as a shared library and could be installed on demand. Or something like that. Denis.
