Software Free

This week's release of Fedora 9 makes carrying a full-fledged Linux desktop around on a USB drive a three-click affair. Even better, you don't need Linux installed to create it, you can leave the...

After lots of waiting Red Hat Released their latest Desktop/Server version of Fedora Linux Lets take a quick look at its feature Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by [...]

One more webcomic created in April (the last one, cross my heart), but this time I have an excuse: it was made for the release week the release got delayed, so my webcomic too (but next week...)

With my effort to translate it into Romanian I inflicted the translation pain of having to translate untranslatable expressions and play-on-words, which reminded me why I hate translations.

And 8-1=7:

As it was planned Fedora 9 (codename "Sulphur") is released today. As for me it wasn't such expected as Ubuntu Hardy Heron but it is still very important event in Open Source world. So, here is the list of new features in this version of RedHat sponsored Linux distribution:

You may remember when I talked is some older posts about how awesome Alexandru Szasz is, now here is the latest cool thing he is up to and which I think deserve recognition: he just added Fedora in his web-based translation tool, Narro, for translation into Romanian:

Just for kicks, I translated about 100 Fedora strings and it was a snap (well, I have already used the tool, translating for Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org). There is an initiative to get the Romanian community involved in this and maybe (just maybe, it is early to say) get something ass-kicking for F10 (not that hard, the translation is currently at 39% from about 15000 stings).

In a somewhat related matter, I dis a "fedora translation" search on Google and got amused by the sponsored link shown at the top of the page (the one on yellow background). I guess that's so-called "friendly competition"...

After lots of waiting Red Hat Released their latest Desktop/Server version of Fedora Linux Lets take a quick look at its feature Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project.

read more

I am not a fan of their music, but when when I learned about the second album released by NIN under a CreativeCommons license, I fired up by BitTorrent client to download and see what's about it.
But starting the client activated the seeding for my previous uploads, with an interesting surprise:

Guys, stop downloading the pre-release ISOs, those are ooold... the real deal is going to get live in a few hours, just wait a bit. Or, if you can't stand the heat, use a leaked torrent, they are all over the place, but make sure to verify the SHA1SUM before installing... (me taunts my buddy who refuses to use a leaked torrent and tries to find an unprotected FTP and continues seeding the previews, they will get yum update'd tot he final version).

Oh, and I didn't forgot (yet):

Is not hard to imagine cool stuff we can do with photos of people, see gregdek's idea about hackergotchi stickers, the old call for photos by Mo to promote spins, or a couple of ideas from me (Anaconda slides or fp.o front page banners), you know, things which could "emphasize the human nature of Fedora and the people behind the project" (he, he).

But we have a big blocker: lack of such photos... photos of Fedora contributors and enthusiasts which we allow us to use their photos (the approval part is very important).

So here is an idea: next week Fedora 9 release parties will gather all around the world a lot of right people in the right mood, so get your cameras, get approval from the subjects and let the photos flood. I am sure we can find crafty way to put them to good use.

Static routing is the term used to refer to the manual method used to set up routing. An administrator enters routes into the router using configuration commands. This method has the advantage of being predictable, and simple to set up. It is easy to manage in small networks but does not scale well.

Question: How can I save static routes I set up in my Fedora/RedHat/CentOS Linux after I reboot server?

Answer: In Fedora Linux (or RedHat, CentOS) you can set up static routes for certain network interface (for example eth1) by editing file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-eth1.

For example, you have to save static route added by the following command:

Powering robots since 2005. 'Nuff said. Now bow to your robotic overlords.

If you noticed the date for this comic, yes, it was made in April and the next issue is also made in April (that one was made for the release week and I had to delay it) but, I promise, after that there is a surprise waiting...

Last week experimented with translations for the webcomic, without success which drives me to one of those two conclusions: either is to complicated to use PO files and translating directly from Inkscape is simple enough, or I have to grow the webcomic and improve its quality to become translation worthy, so back to simple SVG this week.

I didn't forgot about the mysterious countdown, here is the current count:

Before going to the meat of this post, here is a new instance of my mysterious countdown (the bets are still open):

After my last piece about colouring the Gears in an old paper style I got some interesting feedback (not sure if that was because what I did was good and stimulated people or because it was bad and prompted for corrections). Anyway, let's play a bit with the feedback:

Jude reminds me of the sculpting tool, one of the awesome features introduced in Inkscape 0.46, which I could have used instead of node simplification. It should be used in roughenmode:

To get something like this:

I was so carried away with the idea of the Fedora 9 release countdown that I couldn't stop myself from creating a counter for a "personal" project (the counter is plain and boring: static images, without any scripting or autoupdate):

Now, obviously, the bets are open for what I am counting down to...

Sorry for the delay, this happens when the feedback is happening elsewhere , clashing with May Day and a weekend. (note: I expected a bit of controversy after the Desktop piece in my webcomic and was wondering about the silence).
As usual, Radu is strong and direct, he says "let's be honest: this is what a fanboy does when he doesn't want to admit the betrayal&quot (linking to the already famous official position from the Red Hat Desktop Team) but he also ask a question which I think deserves an answer:

"By the way, can you explain why should you fight for "Linux on the desktop", when Red Hat Inc. has stopped doing it?"

And the answer is simple as that: Because *I want* to run Linux on *my* desktop.

Do you remember the Fedora stickers kit I talked a about a few days ago? Here is an usage suggestion:

And in related news, my webcomic goes international! With baby steps, of course.

The first attempt was made by myself, I translated by hand the SVG (this is the advantage of having access to the source) and created a webcomic section on the Romanian Fedora community website.

On a strange coincidence, about at the same time lkundrak asked me for PO files, for proper translation, which make me to think of a proper solution. Then all I had to do was to remember I read a while ago about a piece by Andy about translating SVG, search for it and:

After last week I took the initial gears and made them from solid gold, not is time to talk about the completely different approach, old writing on old paper, where we will work on the strokes.

So, back to the black and white gears:

If we set the stroke color and unset the fill color will get something like this, with overlapping contours, he will have to get rid of:

So select the gear (gears if we have more) suffering due to this unwanted overlap and convert the stroke to path: