Archive for January, 2009

DO NOT USE THIS CODE, KDE 4.2 HAS BEEN MOVED TO DEBIAN TESTING AND UNSTABLE, SO THIS IS NO LONGER NECCESARY.

KDE 4.2 is the new release for KDE that has been code names “the answer”(that will shut up most whiny babies who doubted KDE4 would ever be any good)

I managed to install KDE 4.2 in my recently installed Debian Lenny. I couldn’t wait until Lenny released since 4.2 seemed to be just ripe for the picking.

It was a simple process of apt-pinning

I added the following repositories to my /etc/apt/sources.list

#SID(needed because several dependencies are here)
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ sid main
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ sid main

#Experimental(the KDE4 repo)
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ experimental main
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ experimental main

and then added this to /etc/apt/preferences , (create it if you don’t have it)

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=lenny
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=sid
Pin-Priority: 300

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=experimental
Pin-Priority: 250

MAKE SURE THAT THERE ARE NO SPACES BEFORE THE “P”’s in Package, Pin, and Pin-Priority!! Gedit added them when i wrote it and i’t took me a while before i figured out what was wrong.

What this does is make sure that when you do an update, the Sid or experimental repos aren’t used. They will only be used when u call on them specifically.

To install KDE 4 run

aptitude -t experimental install kde4

To update KDE 4.2, simply do what the KDE 4.2 on Debian website says, aptitude (or apt-get) dist-upgrade

This is KDE 4.2 only a few minutes after installation, already working fast, no extra configuration needed!

(note, this should work on most debian based systems, etch, lenny,  ubuntu,etc)

Well, thanks to Fedora 10 i recently learned that if I wanted to install the (recently released for linux) driver for my Debian Lenny computer. I would need a better kernel. Unfortunately, Lenny is on a freeze right now, and neither Debian testing nor unstable have a newer kernel on stock other than 2.6.26

I decided to install the 2.6.28 kernel from source, and decided to do it the debian way, since i run debian so it makes sense, and also because word on the street is that the debian way is easier on most distros. It involves making a .deb package from the source code and then installing it, and it works wonders :).

After googling around for a little bit, I found a guide to compile a kernel the debian way (http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_debian_etch), but it was a little bit out off date and i had to tweak some things here and there to optimize it for my needs

First of all,

Install these packages

apt-get install kernel-package libncurses5-dev fakeroot wget bzip2 build-essential

this is the directory we will compile our kernel in

cd /usr/src

i went over to http://www.kernel.org/ to download the latest stable kernel, which at the moment is 2.6.28. Find the kernel and get it into /usr/src. I used wget to download it, but you could just download it by clicking on the link and then just moving it into /usr/src if you are unable to use wget.  If you can, just copy the link for the kernel and paste it after wget.

wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.28.2.tar.bz2

then we unpack the downloaded file.

tar xjf linux-2.6.28.2.tar.bz2
ln -s linux-2.6.28.2 linux
cd /usr/src/linux

Now we can configure our new kernel. I liked the idea the guy in the “howtoforge” link above had, to use the configuration file from your previous kernel in your new kernel. This insures that any options or settings that your old kernel had still apply in your new kernel. Of course we can also edit this configuration file to personalize it to our needs

make clean && make mrproper
cp /boot/config-`uname -r` ./.config

this will create a menu to config your kernel

make menuconfig

Go down the list to  “Load an Alternate Configuration File” and choose .config. After you do that you can edit and tweak this file to personalize it better, but unless you dramatically change it, it should work fine with your distribution; unless, you are trying to install a new kernel in a hopelessly out of date system, of course.

Make sure you save your work, or it wont use your settings (i’ve heard of some people do this, how?      i dont know)

We are almost done with the hard part, now its time to build the kernel!

make-kpkg clean
fakeroot make-kpkg –initrd –append-to-version=-custom kernel_image kernel_headers

(note: wordpress is condensing the two minus signs before the initrd and append into one giant one, making it so that if you just copy and paste this code it won’t work, if this happens to you just delete the giant minus sign before initrd and append and type two minus signs, now it should work)

After –append-to-version= you can write any string that helps you identify the kernel, but it must begin with a minus (-) and must not contain whitespace( i just kept custom kernel_image because it fit right, i had made several tweaks to my kernel.)

you’ll find two .deb packages in /usr/src. Now this is a tip for everyone out there who is like me and likes to reinstall their computers a lot: that took some time so far right? especially the building right? you wouldn’t want to go trought that again now would ya? Well the good news is that these .deb packages can be copied and pasted into other Debian based systems and install them there just by double clicking on them, saves you some time huh? i got copies on my FAT32 partition is use to save things i think i may reuse if i reinstall.)

Anyways, run these commands

cd /usr/src
ls -l

now to install the kernel, you can either opt to do this the easy but geeky looking way

dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.28.2-custom_2.6.28.2-custom-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb
dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.28.2-custom_2.6.28.2-custom-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb

or do it the less cool looking, simple way, just double clicking the .deb packages and installing them with something like gdeb.

now just reboot the pc

grub should automatically add your kernel and make it the default kernel

I really like Fedora

I wont say that I love it, like I do Debian Lenny, but there are some parts about it that i like more than Debian.

1) It is more bleeding edge(sort of) by that i mean that it has many more update packages than debian lenny, those packages are available in Sid though.

2) My rt2860 802.11N Wireless Card installed easily

I just added the rpmfusion repo and typed

yum install kmod-2860

This driver is supported on the 2.6.27 kernel that fedora has, Lenny has the 2.6.26 driver and I needed to create a patch so it would work on Lenny, and it still lowered the strength from 300 mb/s to 54 mb/s.

3) Fedora 10 has KDE4, and this version, although still not the greatest, is still very usable for me. The odd program will crash every couple of days or so but nothing i can’t do without, and it seems very snappy to me.

However, there is one thing that is very very bad about Fedora 10

There is not ATI driver support for Fedora 10, this means that the propietary driver will not work correctly so you cannot enable 3D effects and xgl doesn’t work.

I spent a few days looking for a way to install the ATI driver, and i thought i found one

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=155503&page=1&pp=10

I tried this and i thought i had it, the ATI catalyst control center installed and the video card was detected, but xgl did not work. Howver this way has a good reputation for x86 systems and i have a x86_64. Maybe if you try it on a x86 it will work *shrugs shoulders*.

I can see that fedora 10 is a really good system, but ever since Fedora 8, the ATI driver has been unsupported. I would happily move to this system and still use KDE4, as it worked well here and KDE4.2 comes out in a few days.

I (and I believe most people out there agree with me) like having the newest stable technology, and at least at the moment because of the lenny freeze, Fedora has more up to date software than Debian(even SID). It surprised me that things that hadn’t even yet been able to make it to SID, were included in Fedora stable, and worked great!.

But, until they decide to support ATI drivers, i dont think i will be ready to move to it. After i finish typing this i am going to boot into Lenny and install the 2.6.28 kernel. Hopefully when lenny is released Debian will  catch up to and pass Fedora again, which i think is very likely to happen.

As i write this I am currently downloading a torrent for Fedora 10 x86_64 DVD. I have been eagerly awaiting the release of KDE4, but they’re taking a fricking long time to release and every couple of months I create a new partition to install Lenny to and install KDE4, to see if they finally got most of the bugs fixed, and every time leave disappointed. So in order to break into a new change of pace I have decided to learn another side of Linux. I am going to go to the dark side and learn Red Hat Fedora ( Hopefully this time i wont quit like last time, last time i installed Fedora, updated and all of a sudden the update feature stopped wanting to work, talking about a “;” or something i don’t remember). Also since I’ve wanted to reinstall my Debian Lenny partition I am going to reinstall it too and begin anew, I have already backed up all my important information and settings to a FAT32 partition i use to keep music, videos, and .doc files.

Another reason i want to install Fedora is that, even though i really want KDE4, i’ve never used KDE. Sure i’ve played around with it a couple of times but I’ve never really learnt it, i just used gnome because it was the default on most distro’s I’ve used and it’s simple. But i know me, and i know that I love to have personalization, and KDE supposedly should give me that. I’m not going to abandon Lenny yet though, it has been good to me and so far it is the best distro I’ve met, but i know it has its setbacks, Lenny will just be on another partition, ready to access if i ever remove Fedora or dislike KDE.

I will also hopefully post a review on the differences i’ve found for Fedora and Debian sometime soon

Compiz-fusion is a very popular 3d compositioning system for linux that makes it possible to do a lot of school stuff with your computer. Compiz-fusion is so popular that getting the chance to play with it is oftentimes a large reason why people switch. This is how i installed compiz fusion on my Debian Lenny, but i imagine that the basic idea for this should work on most linux setups, with a few tweaks here and there. You will need a video card with 3d graphic acceleration with its driver installed.

$ su root

#apt-get install compiz

if you need the gnome backend run

# apt-get install compizconfig-backend-gconf

if you need the kde backend run

# apt-get install compizconfig-backend-kconf

for the settings manager

# apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

and for extra plugins(if you want them) i run

# apt-get install compiz-fusion-plugins-main

# apt-get install compiz-fusion-plugins-extra

Then go to System-> Preferences-> Sessions

under start-up programs choose new, name it compiz and put compiz in command.

click ok, close, restart and it should be running

if its not then press Alt + F2 and type compiz

if you are going to need to switch easily from compiz to metacity or window decorators then i recommend installing the fusion icon

# apt-get install fusion-icon

Someone gave me a good tip to use with the fusion icon somewhere on the internet, i dont remember where but it basically just lets me have the fusion icon ready to go in my panel without having to go to applications and start it and then having to run it from the panel. This is for gnome

go to System-> Preferences-> Sessions

under start-up programs choose new, name it fusion-icon and put fusion-icon in command.

click ok, close, restart