tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-110339702024-03-18T02:52:42.606-05:00max@pseudogen:~$Ramblings of a Fedora Linux nerd.Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-81465088826039172942015-06-10T16:10:00.000-05:002015-06-10T16:10:09.165-05:00Fedora Activity Day: Release Engineering 2015This past weekend a number of members of the Fedora Community who spend time focused on <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering">Release Engineering </a>came together for a <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Activity_Day_-_FAD?rd=FAD">Fedora Activity Day (FAD</a>) to work on some items of interest that will fix current issues being faced as well as work towards solutions for how to handle future challenges such as how to deliver the <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora.next">Fedora.Next</a> <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/council/ticket/26">Rings </a>concept in a clean, well defined, standard reproduce-able manner via build systems, tooling, and processes. One of the big items that I'm personally very excited about is <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Atomic_Cloud_Image">Fedora Atomic</a> (which is Fedora's implementation of <a href="http://www.projectatomic.io/">Project Atomic</a>).<br />
<br />
A big ticket item for Fedora Release Engineering right now is <a href="https://pagure.io/pungi">Pungi</a> Version 4 which is a complete rewrite from Pungi Version 3.x and it will enable a large array of new functionality for composes that would have been quite difficult to implement in the older version. Of those items are things such as Koji integration, enabling nightly Rawhide composes to match a normal Test Candidate or Release build, and enabling all outlets of Fedora Atomic including ISO installer and pxe-to-live nightly builds. Since this is will enable more rapid iteration on the Fedora Atomic composes and I'm very enthusiastic about that project, this is where I spent a large amount of my time over the weekend.<br />
<br />
A quick side note, I was fortunate enough to attend this event *and* I was also fortunate enough to attend a session about <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Hubs">Fedora Hubs</a> the day before the Activity Day which was amazing and I can't wait for the project to come to fruition, but I won't go too far into that because this particular post is about the FAD.<br />
<br />
Friday 2015-06-05<br />
We kicked off the <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD_Release_Tools_and_Infrastructure_2015">Release Engineering FAD</a>, the first few hours are to go back through proposed deliverables to bring everyone up to speed on all the issues, their background, the motivations to resolve, and so that we can discuss and debate what items will provide the most "bang for buck" outcome in terms of what we work on while we're fortunate enough to all be sitting in a room together over the weekend. We took a scrum-style approach, lead by <a href="https://twitter.com/iansmcleod">Ian McLeod</a>, to scoring work tasks for how long we thought the work would take over all. Once this was done, we broke out into subgroups to divide and conquer tasks. I joined <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Parasense">Jon Disnard </a>in a break out session to work on <a href="https://pagure.io/pungi">Pungi4</a> which is something that will enable a lot of other items in the deliverables list for the FAD. As mentioned before, Pungi version 4.x is a complete rewrite from Pungi 3.x and beyond what was previously mentioned it has taken compose times from 8+ hours down to roughly an hour in most cases. The work on Pungi4 was unfortunately quite a bit more than we had originally thought, there were APIs that it depended upon that were changed out from under it, there were a number of namespace bugs, and there was a considerable amount of code that we were able to remove once we realized that the data that code was parsing and producing was already held in <a href="https://github.com/release-engineering/productmd">productmd</a> which is a new dependency of Pungi in version 4 over version 3. This work continued late into the evening and on into the next day.<br />
<br />
Saturday 2015-06-06<br />
All Fedora contributors met up and did a short status check-in based on progress made and/or work completed from the previous day so that we could sort out what to work on next, re-prioritize if necessary based on if things had become blocked or not. Once this was complete, everyone broke out into groups again to continue getting work done. On this day I worked with a few more people than before including Dan Mach (the original author of the recently rewritten Pungi version 4) which as a massive help in terms of institutional knowledge. The end result from this group of collaboration was a functional pungi4 for the workflows we were testing at the time (I leave this open ended mostly because there are a *lot* of possible workflows in Pungi4 and we've not been able to test them all yet). As a result, we filed a <a href="https://pagure.io/pungi/pull-request/4">pull request with upstream Pungi</a> and continued to work on other items. However, one thing stuck out here is that iterating on Pungi was unnecessarily painful because you had to have specific access to sets of RPMs in order to perform compose workflows. This was very time consuming and did not bode well for rapid development, we started a discussion of how to improve this but that bled into the evening. We also ran into an interesting bug where <a href="https://github.com/Tojaj/createrepo_c">createrepo_c</a> will fail but report success, this is still something we're attempting to track down but reverted to <a href="http://createrepo.baseurl.org/">createrepo</a> in the interest of time. Interestingly enough we've run into a new bug here where the createrepo pathing is always prepended with a bindmounted path, but it didn't stop us and it's on the list of items to be resolved.<br />
<br />
Sunday 2015-06-07<br />
Once again, we all met and assessed the current status of ongoing work. The good news is that a lot of work had been completed at this point but the bad news is that some items ended up blocked and we had to resolve those blockers before we could move on so some of the estimates we made on Friday were off. However, we documented all of this so there was a solid plan of action to move forward with. At this point we broke out into groups again and I joined in with the group that started to discuss next-gen tooling. We diverged from writing code for a while so that we could make sure not to run out of time before discussing these next generation tools as per the agenda. <a href="https://lists.fedorahosted.org/pipermail/koji-devel/2015-June/000000.html">Koji2</a> was discussed at length and some initial design proposals should be coming down the pipeline this week on the <a href="https://lists.fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/koji-devel">koji-devel mailing list</a> (the core developers committed to getting that done soon). We started defining requirements for ComposeDB (project name pending, we don't feel this is really the best naming), a mailing list thread with initial discussion results and a write up of the end result will follow. A few of us also re-converged on the topic of slow iteration for Pungi4 development and the end result was the ability to rapidly run tests out of a git clone/checkout. With <a href="https://pagure.io/pungi/pull-request/12">this pull request</a>, developers can run tests in roughly 20 seconds (after the inital setup to create the "dummy data", which takes a minute or two) which is a massive improvement over the hour-long test runs we were having against the real Fedora rpm sets.<br />
<br />
This has been mostly an account of things I was directly involved in, there was a lot of work that got done over the course of the FAD, I couldn't even remotely pretend to be able to keep track of it all. That being said, many folks did a wonderful job of keeping tabs on their specific areas of work as well as the results of the daily check-ins, this was captured in an Etherpad <a href="http://etherpad.osuosl.org/fedora-releng-060515">here</a>. Different members of the FAD volunteered to summarize and sent out status updates, summaries, and plans of action for continued work to appropriate outlets for the different areas they worked on. All in all I think it was a successful FAD, though I lack some perspective as this was the first FAD I've ever been to. Others who have participated in FADs before had positive things to say so I feel good about it.<br />
<br />
Next, I plan to follow up and make sure to get Fedora Atomic running in Pungi4 as soon as we possibly can so that the nightly builds allow the project to iterate more rapidly. From there I hope to work on both ComposeDB and Koji 2.0.<br />
<br />
Here's to continuing to get work done in Fedora land!<br />
<br />
Happy hacking,<br />
-AdamMAdam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-31107643798852822742014-01-29T22:22:00.001-06:002014-02-05T17:40:32.253-06:00Running your own docker registry on Fedora or RHEL/CentOS 6This isn't going to be a very wordy post, it's just the process I used to setup a local docker registry for testing purposes. This can be done with either Fedora or RHEL/CentOS 6 with EPEL. I'm mostly just writing this process down because I had to look up the info from more than one location and figured I should write it down in one place so I remember next time I try to do it and hopefully someone else might find it useful.<br />
<br />
Before we start, if you're running RHEL or CentOS 6 you're going to need EPEL6 installed <a href="http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/repoview/epel-release.html">from here.</a><br />
<br />
First, install the packages:<br />
<br />
<code>
yum -y install docker-io docker-registry</code><br />
<br />
Next we need to start up the services (I know I'm not doing the native systemd/systemctl commands here but this way it works on both Fedora and RHEL/CentOS so I went that route)<br />
<br />
<code>
service docker start</code><br />
<code>service docker-registry start</code><br />
<code>service redis start</code><br />
<br />
You can <code>chkconfig on</code> or <code>systemctl enable</code> them if you so choose and they will start persistently on reboots<br />
<br />
Next up, just as an example lets go ahead and pull a docker image. (Note: you either need to do this as root or as an user that's in been added to the <code>docker</code> group)<br />
<br />
<code>
# docker pull centos<br />Pulling repository centos<br />539c0211cd76: Download complete</code><br />
<code>docker images <br />REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED VIRTUAL SIZE<br />centos 6.4 539c0211cd76 10 months ago 300.6 MB<br />centos latest 539c0211cd76 10 months ago 300.6 MB</code><br />
<code></code><br />
Now we can run a centos image as a container<br />
<code>
<br />
# docker run -t -i centos /bin/bash<br />
bash-4.1# <br />
<br />
You are able to disconnect from it but still leave it running with Ctrl-p+Ctrl-q which you will then see it in the running docker list.<br />
<br />
# docker ps -a<br />
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS <br />
NAMES<br />
ab0e4ba814ab centos:6.4 /bin/bash 50 minutes ago Exit 0 <br />
angry_euclide <br />
</code>
<br />
Next up we need to commit this with our registry (this would potentially be an image you made changes to from the base image, or otherwise).<br />
<br />
<code>
# docker commit ab0e4ba814ab localhost.localdomain:5000/centos_local<br />
6c82b393337351db8c63b807efc6700934eecc364357a26a472a899f63d4fc09<br />
# docker ps<br />
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS <br />
NAMES<br />
ab0e4ba814ab centos:6.4 /bin/bash About an hour ago Up 25 minutes <br />
angry_euclide<br />
</code>
<br />
<br />
Once that it done we can push to our registry.<br />
<br />
<code>
# docker push localhost.localdomain:5000/centos_local <br />
The push refers to a repository [localhost.localdomain:5000/centos_local] (len: 1)<br />
Sending image list<br />
Pushing repository localhost.localdomain:5000/centos_local (1 tags)<br />
539c0211cd76: Pushing [=================================================> ] 310.8 MB/310.9 MB 0<br />
6c82b3933373: Pushing [=================================================> ] 288.1 MB/288.2 MB 0<br />
Pushing tags for rev [6c82b3933373] on {http://localhost.localdomain:5000/v1/repositories/centos_local/tags/lates<br />
t}
</code>
<br />
<br />
Alternatively we can build and tag from a Dockerfile.<br />
<br />
(Because I can't figure out how to make blogger show a heredoc properly I'm just using an echo with a redirect ... it works so I'm moving on) <br />
<br />
<code># echo 'FROM centos<br />MAINTAINER "Adam Miller"<br /><br />RUN yum -y update<br />RUN yum -y install httpd<br />EXPOSE 80<br /><br />CMD /usr/sbin/apachectl -D FOREGROUND' > Dockerfile</code><maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""></maxamillion><br />
<code><eof p="">
<br />
# docker build -t localhost:5000/centos_httpd .<br />Uploading context 51.2 kB<br />Step 1 : FROM centos<maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""></maxamillion></eof></code><br />
<code><eof p=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org="">---> 539c0211cd76<br />Step 2 : MAINTAINER "Adam Miller" <maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""><br />---> Running in 7fde3245be29<br />---> 89f2c637957f<br />Step 3 : RUN yum -y update<br />---> Running in b6c6bd22fcb5<br />Loaded plugins: fastestmirror<br />Setting up Update Process<br />Resolving Dependencies<br />--> Running transaction check</maxamillion></maxamillion></eof></code><br />
<br />
<code>************************************************************************</code><br />
<code><eof p=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""></maxamillion></maxamillion></eof></code><br />
<code><eof p=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org="">******** NOTE: Lots of yum output omitted here for brevity *************</maxamillion></maxamillion></eof></code><br />
<code><eof p=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org="">************************************************************************</maxamillion></maxamillion></eof></code><br />
<code><eof p=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""><br />Transaction Summary<br />======================================================================<br />Install 6 Package(s)<br />Upgrade 57 Package(s)<br /><br />Total download size: 50 M<centos-6-key centos.org=""><br /><br />Complete!<br />---> dc4fad6ccf28<br />Step 4 : RUN yum -y install httpd<br />---> Running in 2bc296aed371</centos-6-key></maxamillion></maxamillion></eof></code><code><eof p=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""><maxamillion fedoraproject.org=""><centos-6-key centos.org=""><code>************************************************************************</code></centos-6-key></maxamillion></maxamillion></eof></code><br />
<code><code></code></code><br />
<code><code>********** NOTE: Some yum output omitted here for brevity **************</code></code><br />
<code><code>************************************************************************</code></code><br />
<br />
<code>================================================================================<br />Package Arch Version Repository Size<br />================================================================================<br />Installing:<br />httpd x86_64 2.2.15-29.el6.centos base 821 k<br />Installing for dependencies:<br />apr x86_64 1.3.9-5.el6_2 base 123 k<br />apr-util x86_64 1.3.9-3.el6_0.1 base 87 k<br />apr-util-ldap x86_64 1.3.9-3.el6_0.1 base 15 k<br />httpd-tools x86_64 2.2.15-29.el6.centos base 73 k<br />mailcap noarch 2.1.31-2.el6 base 27 k<br />redhat-logos noarch 60.0.14-12.el6.centos base 15 M<br /><br />Transaction Summary<br />================================================================================<br />Install 7 Package(s)<br /><br />Total download size: 16 M<br />Installed size: 19 M<br /><br /><br />Complete!<br />---> d1fcb707794d<br />Step 5 : EXPOSE 80<br />---> Running in 3e5baa8bf52f<br />---> 50f9343d8a7d<br />Step 6 : CMD /usr/sbin/apachectl -D FOREGROUND<br />---> Running in 916de09d72bb<br />---> 0d908165e418<br />Successfully built 0d908165e418<br />
<br />
# docker images<br />REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED VIRTUAL SIZE<br />localhost:5000/centos_httpd latest 0d908165e418 11 minutes ago 628.8 MB<br />localhost.localdomain:5000/centos_local latest 6c82b3933373 2 hours ago 594.5 MB<br />centos 6.4 539c0211cd76 10 months ago 300.6 MB<br />centos latest 539c0211cd76 10 months ago 300.6 MB<br />
<br />
# docker tag 0d908165e418 localhost:5000/centos_httpd<br />
# docker push localhost:5000/centos_httpd<br />
The push refers to a repository [localhost:5000/centos_httpd] (len: 1)<br />Sending image list<br />Pushing repository localhost:5000/centos_httpd (1 tags)<br />539c0211cd76: Image already pushed, skipping <br />89f2c637957f: Pushing [=====> ] 1.024 kB/10.24 kB 5s<br />dc4fad6ccf28: Pushing [=================================================> ] 288.2 MB/288.3 MB 0<br />d1fcb707794d: Pushing [=================================================> ] 34.76 MB/34.96 MB 0<br />50f9343d8a7d: Pushing [=====> ] 1.024 kB/10.24 kB 1s<br />0d908165e418: Pushing [=====> ] 1.024 kB/10.24 kB 1s<br />Pushing tags for rev [0d908165e418] on {http://localhost:5000/v1/repositories/centos_httpd/tags/latest}<br />
<br />
</code>
<br />
<eof p="">Now we can pull one of the images we've created from the registry.</eof><br />
<code>
# docker pull localhost:5000/centos_httpd<br />Pulling repository localhost:5000/centos_httpd<br />89f2c637957f: Download complete <br />dc4fad6ccf28: Download complete <br />d1fcb707794d: Download complete <br />0d908165e418: Download complete <br />50f9343d8a7d: Download complete <br />539c0211cd76: Download complete<br />
</code>
<br />
<br />
<eof p="">That's about it, this of course is just setup for use on the localhost mostly just as an example. The docker registry can be configured from <code>/etc/docker-registry.yml</code></eof><br />
<eof p=""><br /></eof>
<eof p="">For more information, here's a list of resources about docker registry and index:</eof><br />
<a href="http://blog.thoward37.me/articles/where-are-docker-images-stored/"><eof p="">http://blog.thoward37.me/articles/where-are-docker-images-stored/ </eof></a><br />
<a href="http://docs.docker.io/en/latest/api/registry_index_spec/"><eof p="">http://docs.docker.io/en/latest/api/registry_index_spec/</eof></a><br />
<a href="http://blog.docker.io/2013/07/how-to-use-your-own-registry/"><eof p="">http://blog.docker.io/2013/07/how-to-use-your-own-registry/</eof></a><br />
<a href="http://kencochrane.net/blog/2013/08/the-docker-guidebook/#part-6-using-a-private-registry"><eof p="">http://kencochrane.net/blog/2013/08/the-docker-guidebook/#part-6-using-a-private-registry</eof></a><br />
<a href="https://github.com/dotcloud/docker-registry"><eof p="">https://github.com/dotcloud/docker-registry</eof></a>Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-36239651923611127442014-01-14T23:01:00.001-06:002014-01-14T23:01:50.604-06:00Book Review: Ansible Configuration Management<span style="font-size: large;">Ansible Configuration Management [0]</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />TL;DR - Buy the book, it's good. <br />
<br />
This book is a great resource for any Linux administrator currently looking for a really well written, brisk paced walk through of Ansible[1][2]. I don't want to call this book an introduction to Ansible because there is a lot of Ansible coverage packed into these 92 pages, but at 92 pages I suspect most would expect it to be light on the goods but that is far from the truth. This book does a great job packing plenty of information into a small package.<br /><br /> Ansible Configuration Management starts off describing what all will be covered, the tools you need to make real use of the text, who this book is for, as well as the standard items you would find in the Preface of a book such as typographic conventions and the like.<br /><br /> Chapter 1 - Here the author kicks off with coverage of various installation methods including distribution specifics going through package managers, from pip, and coverage of how to install from the Ansible source code. From there we go into setting things up and an introductory example just to get your feet wet. Here is where I think my favorite part of Chapter 1 happens, the author covers ansible-doc which is something I feel is an extremely useful component of Ansible and I'm glad the author brought this up so early in the book to highlight reference material before diving in too far.<br /><br /> Chapter 2 - The author takes us through the paces of what is known as a Playbook in Ansible vocabulary which is how you group sets of tasks together to be reusable. I really like the approach that is taken, each section of the Playbook is broken down with an explanation along with discussion of what makes different aspects useful in actual use cases. Then we are taken through some of the basic staples in Ansible space in the form of modules. The modules covered here are what I would consider "task modifiers" for lack of a better term, these allow for modifying tasks behavior based on conditions we set on the task or just simply because the we wanted to mix it up. Again I feel the author does a good job tying the content back to real world examples that many admins experience the need to solve.<br /><br /> Chapter 3 - In this chapter we build on top of the material covered in Chapter 2 by covering more advanced topics in the realm of playbooks such as looping, conditional execution, task delegation, inventory variables, environment variables, external data lookup, storing results, and debugging playbooks and more. Once again, I'm going to sound like a broken record but I feel like the way the author doesn't just go on an academic discussion of each topic but actually ties it into an actual use case or administration task to demonstrate how the specific feature can solve a problem for you which is again beneficial. The discussion here is solid and was an enjoyable read.<br /><br /> Chapter 4 - This is where the author wraps all the previous topics together in a chapter titled "Larger Projects." This is something I'm a big fan of and one of the reasons I think that even in the short length of the book the author does a great job of breaking past the realm of introductory topics. Here we are brought through how to handle large projects of Ansible playbooks to manage complex infrastructure. This chapter walks through Includes, Task Includes, Handler Includes, and Playbook Includes. Now on to one of my favorite features of Ansible: Roles. Our author takes us through what and Ansible Role is, including some interesting notes on parsing precedence, and how to make use of them. One thing I had mixed feelings on here in this chapter is the coverage of "New Features in Ansible 1.3" as I worry this will show the books age quickly with the release cadence that the Ansible project maintains. However, the coverage in that section as well as the rest of the book's text will remain useful I'm sure for some time to come as Ansible is continuing to add features but not break compatibility as newer versions roll out. Next our author discusses ways to increase speed of Ansible runs using different techniques based on requirements and use cases as well as covering Ansible's pull mode which is something to take note of. Ansible pull mode is often considered "backwards" in Ansible lore as Ansible is primarily a "push mode" system but some SysAdmins/Ops folk still prefer the pull mode and therefore Ansible provides the functionality and our author takes some time to cover how to utilize it.<br /><br /> Chapter 5 - Custom Modules, here our author takes some time to discuss what an Ansible module is in terms of implementation, then shows how to write a simple module in the bash shell scripting language. Moving on our author shows how to write an Ansible module in Python which is what I would consider to be "native" to Ansible as all modules that are to be accepted into Ansible core must be written in Python. There is good discussion here about the integration points of the modules into the Ansible system as well as how data is passed, how debugging information is handled, and much more. <br /><br />All said and done I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Ansible and would like a well written guide to walk them through from zero to being useful configuring and deploying infrastructure services using Ansible as well as writing custom modules.<br />
<br />Hope this helps someone out there.<br /><br />Happy hacking.<br /><br />-AdamM<br />
<br />
[0] - http://www.packtpub.com/ansible-configuration-management/book<br />
[1] - https://github.com/ansible/ansible<br />
[2] - http://www.ansibleworks.com/<br />
<br />
Disclaimer: <br /> I was approached by PacktPub to review this book, I
was given a free copy in exchange for doing the review. I did however
really enjoy the book and as a side effect I purchased a copy to support
the author for their work.Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-53885080369673255702013-12-12T14:49:00.000-06:002013-12-12T14:49:03.006-06:00So, I wrote a book.<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
I wrote a book about OpenShift. I talked about it a little on twitter but didn't want to try and over sell it because I feel a little strange about too much self promotion. However, my publisher would really like to get some third party to feedback on it and requested that I post this so if you like reading tech books and writing your thoughts about it my publisher and I would appreciate the feedback.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Thanks!</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
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Packt Publishing are offering free copies of Implementing
OpenShift :<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <a href="http://bit.ly/HUa7Be" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/HUa7Be</a></span></span>
in exchange for a review either on your blog or on the
title’s Amazon page.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Here’s the blurb:<br />
</div>
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</div>
<ul>
<li><small><small>Learn more about the cloud, it's different
service models, and what each one means to their target
audiences</small></small></li>
<li><small><small>Master the use of OpenShift Online through the
command line, web interface, and IDE integrations</small></small></li>
<li><small><small>Understand the OpenShift architecture,
breaking into how the open source Platform-as-a-Service
works internally</small></small></li>
<li><small><small>Deploy an OpenShift Origin-based
Platform-as-a-Service in your own environment using DevOps
automation tools</small></small></li>
</ul>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Software
Developers and DevOps who are interested in learning how to use
the OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service for developing and deploying
applications and doing much more with it, this is a good way to
bag yourself a free guide (current retail price $12.74).</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Limited number of Free review copies are available until 20th
December 2013<br />
</div>
<small><small>If you’re interested, email Harleen Bagga at: <a href="mailto:harleenb@packtpub.com" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(238,238,238); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #466cb9; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">harleenb@packtpub.com.</a></small></small><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br />
</span>Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-41698172212367282742012-05-22T16:35:00.000-05:002012-05-22T17:00:14.073-05:00Announcing OpenShift Origin Nightly Fedora 16 RPMsHello all,<br />
<br />
I am pleased to announce the immediate availability of nightly builds of the OpenShift Origin package set in RPM form, built for Fedora 16 available to anyone who might be interested in them <a href="http://mirror.openshift.com/pub/crankcase/nightly/fedora-16">here.</a><br />
<br />
This repository should be utilized along with the instructions outlined in the <a href="https://openshift.redhat.com/community/wiki/build-your-own">"Build your own PaaS"</a> article. The nightly repository will not take the place of any of those outlined in the guide but will instead supplement what is there and offer a new development snapshot of all the packages who's source code originates in the <a href="https://github.com/openshift">OpenShift Origin github</a> repositories. <br />
<br />
A little back story on this, the OpenShift Team at Red Hat has been looking for more ways to provide the community with as many opportunities to consume the on going development snapshots of the upstream code hosted on github. We initially launched <a href="https://github.com/openshift">OpenShift Origin</a>'s components <a href="https://github.com/openshift/crankcase">Crankcase</a> and <a href="https://github.com/openshift/os-client-tools">OS-Client tools</a> on github which is something I've been extremely excited about and along with that launch was a considerable amount of documentation for getting started and involved with <a href="https://openshift.redhat.com/community/open-source">OpenShift Origin</a> which I would highly encourage everyone take some time to go check out, it's certainly exciting stuff!<br />
<br />
Now, with the advent of the nightly rpm builds my hope is that this will be the first of many steps towards the goal of delivering the code in a more consumable manner so that end users who are wanting to get their hands dirty early on are able to do so without having to build everything from scratch. Another desire as a side effect of this is that those community members who do consume the nightly builds will find the project as exciting as those of us already involved and will hopefully be motived to join and contribute! I'm also hoping that we will be able to get to a point where we can also offer nightly builds of the <a href="https://openshift.redhat.com/community/wiki/getting-started-with-openshift-origin-livecd">OpenShift Origin LiveCD</a>, that <a href="https://github.com/kraman">Krishna Raman</a> has been doing great work on, but that is currently just an idea I've been pondering and I don't want to make any promises I am unable to deliver on. We'd like to make sure everyone does know we're continuing to brainstorm ideas, take suggestions and contributions, and make strides to continue our open source commitment to the community.<br />
<br />
I suppose that's all for today, thanks to everyone who's been using OpenShift and becoming members of the OpenShift Origin community!<br />
<br />
Happy hacking,<br />
-AdamMAdam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-2353954371103885662012-03-28T12:14:00.000-05:002012-03-28T12:14:03.777-05:00NetworkManager is in @core but don't fret ....Recently there was a <a href="http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/docs/2012-March/014159.html">not so announced change</a> to Fedora's @core and that is that NetworkManager is now a part of it. This initially will cause the traditional *nix admins to have a moment of "WTF?" but bear with me as I also had this reaction but I've slept on it and it clearly has yet to kill me. Lets address a couple things in a light hearted nature of the angry mob that is the internet:<br />
<br />
<h4>WHY?!?!!@#^@!$#!@#$!%^ZOMG!#@!!11!1!$eleventyone!!?@!?@</h4> Well the motivation was simple, <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=693602">there was a bug</a> and it was nasty and decisions needed making. One was made and at first you might not be on board with it, or you might never, but at face value its not really that bad since NetworkManager has made <a href="https://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/2012-March/msg00156.html">large stride in its capability</a> and I think a large majority of previous concerns are no longer valid. The only outstanding issue that I've seen brought up is the need for multiple static route tables and if you're configuration is that advanced I imagine a "<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">systemctl disable NetworkManager.service && chkconfig network on</span>" is not going to cause you much pain and despair..... on to more rage!!! :)<br />
<br />
<h4>NOW WHAT??? CONFIG, Y U NO WORK!!?!?!</h4> The first complaint I've heard so far is that the configuration methods from the days of lore utilizing the classic "network" utility powered by our favorite set of scripts will be no more. Alas! The wonderful and whimsical NetworkManager developers have kept this interest in mind and there is /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf (which is extremely well documented in 'man 5 NetworkManager.conf') in which we see the line "plugins=ifcfg-rh" by default. What's this little gem mean? Well I'll quote the man page because I'm lazy and don't like rewriting what's already really well written:<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">ifcfg-rh</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> plugin is used on the Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribu-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> tions to read and write configuration from the standard /etc/syscon-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> fig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* files. It currently supports reading</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> wired, WiFi, and 802.1x connections, but does not yet support read-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> ing or writing mobile broadband, PPPoE, or VPN connections. To allow</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> reading and writing of these add keyfile plugin to your configura-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> tion as well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<h4><span style="font-family: inherit;">CONFIGURE ALL THE THINGS!!!1!#%$%^@#!#!</span></h4> I'm glad you asked. There is a nice little document located in /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/ entitled sysconfig.txt that has been a life saver for me and if you weren't aware of this document I suggest you get familiar because it is full of extremely valuable information, but I digress. If you open this file and navigate to the section tagged 'NM_CONTROLLED' you will see the following:<br />
<br />
<br />
NM_CONTROLLED=yes|no<br />
If set to 'no', NetworkManager will ignore this connection/device.<br />
Defaults to 'yes'.<br />
<br />
What does this mean? Well ... if you did a fresh install, chances are your interfaces already have this but if you've got a machine that's been upgrading through the timeline to this point, if you just add that little line and fire up NetworkManager it will apply your settings for you. Magic! I know, pretty cool huh? :)<br />
<br />
_____________________________ <--- the line where joking stops<br />
<br />
In all seriousness, this is a change that is bound to ruffle some feathers but the reality is that with the pace in which Fedora moves it is sometimes best to take the path of least resistance in order to solve a problem and I think that's what's been done here. If there are any real concerns (I mean really valid concerns and not just "I hate change") then I like to believe that the greater community would be willing to entertain them in the proper channels of communication and if necessary then decisions made to fix issues can be altered/modified as needed to suite the needs of the project. I think we as faithful members of the community like to knee jerk react a little too much and I'm 100% guilty of this myself, but I think if we spend some time actually processing the scenarios, possible outcomes and attempt to include as many factors as possible we can see that inclusions of things like NetworkManager into @core aren't there just to add some packages for kicks but that there's actual valid reason. Fedora doesn't change for the sake of change, its changing to make a better project and platform for all to enjoy, and in this case its about squashing bugs so our experience is more pleasant other times it about innovation.... in the end, horray for another closed bug! :)<br />
<br />
Happy hacking,<br />
-AdamMAdam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-89846118720513151142012-03-21T18:12:00.000-05:002012-03-21T18:12:26.696-05:00Dreams do come true ....Dreams do come true .... as of April 2, 2012 - I WORK FOR RED HAT!!!!!<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aab95z1HwcY/T2pYJFr0x5I/AAAAAAAAAvA/Hv8ExejrvvA/s1600/IMG_20120321_171645.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aab95z1HwcY/T2pYJFr0x5I/AAAAAAAAAvA/Hv8ExejrvvA/s640/IMG_20120321_171645.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-51304865801081541822012-03-07T20:56:00.001-06:002012-03-07T20:56:54.992-06:00Fun with bash, libguestfs, rkhunter, and academics.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sfaIzBlnsNU/T0QsTb-38eI/AAAAAAAAAtg/qajlPzlTKpI/s1600/IMG_20120221_173259.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sfaIzBlnsNU/T0QsTb-38eI/AAAAAAAAAtg/qajlPzlTKpI/s320/IMG_20120221_173259.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I recently completed my Masters Degree in Information Assurance and Security which was an amazing experience and I'm so excited to have it completed but that's not the focal point of my blog post. As the walking/talking Fedora fanboi that I am, I did my best to incorporate as much Fedora technology and Open Source Software into my studies as humanly possible. I was extremely fortunate to have a Faculty Advisor who was willing to indulge my Open Source agenda. Along the path of my studies, one thing I found extremely interesting is <a href="http://libguestfs.org/">libguestfs</a> which is primarily (or possibly solely) authored by <a href="http://rwmj.wordpress.com/">Richard WM Jones </a>who is a ninja for writing this thing in the first place but was also extremely helpful to me in irc when I was trying to sink my teeth into libguestfs for the first few rounds, so many thanks to him.<br />
<br />
I had this idea about private IaaS cloud environments where your cloud infrastructure administrators might not have root access to the VMs running within their datacenters but they still wanted to provide some level of security audits from the hosting side. Now, we can check for exploits running on these systems with standard tools such as <a href="http://nmap.org/">nmap</a>, <a href="http://www.tenable.com/products/nessus">nessus</a>, <a href="http://www.metasploit.com/">metasploit</a> and <a href="http://sectools.org/">more</a> but what about checking for malicious files on the filesystems themselves? Rootkits? Viruses? $other? Well, this is where the amazing power of libguestfs introduces itself because we can access these things in read-only mode from the level of the hypervisor (which in the case of KVM is/can be a full featured, full fledged OS as it is a hosted hypervisor) without even an account on the virtual machines.<br />
<br />
So what can we do with this? Well, I'm sure there are an endless number of possibilities as there often are with topics of this nature but I decided to write a fun proof of concept bash script (there's some awk and coreutils in there, but I generally just lump the family of *nix utils together with "bash" script claims) that will run rkhunter against libvirt guest domains and create a report with a report ID that can be called later to view the report. Now, I'll admit this is not the most elegant implementation of a reporting mechanism because I'm essentially tagging the beginning and ending of a report entry in a text file and running awk across it to produce some basic information about the run but its a proof of concept and its functional! :) <br />
<br />
I also wrote a man page and a nice little ncurses (dialog) UI for it, here's some screenshots for kicks:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgULDh9vUQGd22tm3iq3O3zalY03E164HePEtfNvzFJ2J7FeiX_EyrugZWbcnae3VIqeWknhmWTwzi_IkA8h_VnGFQ6K3Ce1jwwT0KzldyDIm_x0-5Dfp7VeAsFDv6htaVdDVQQ0g/s1600/gaudit_report_clean.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgULDh9vUQGd22tm3iq3O3zalY03E164HePEtfNvzFJ2J7FeiX_EyrugZWbcnae3VIqeWknhmWTwzi_IkA8h_VnGFQ6K3Ce1jwwT0KzldyDIm_x0-5Dfp7VeAsFDv6htaVdDVQQ0g/s320/gaudit_report_clean.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBqvqz1FG3gV4x-j7VRje9lK5PJ08C9temkHj3k-kVuknulVTiF2hqvSvmcAPgLv3yGKPz_lhWZUoHQ1vt_2k7jYQA0J-8qWFBWXasgCk1ctB0aA5nyfPGKucxt9jQ09uUBXZszw/s1600/gaudit-tui_screenshot.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBqvqz1FG3gV4x-j7VRje9lK5PJ08C9temkHj3k-kVuknulVTiF2hqvSvmcAPgLv3yGKPz_lhWZUoHQ1vt_2k7jYQA0J-8qWFBWXasgCk1ctB0aA5nyfPGKucxt9jQ09uUBXZszw/s320/gaudit-tui_screenshot.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I titled it gaudit which stands for "Guest Audit" but if someone ever decided to write a tool and wanted the name you're more than welcome to it. I don't plan to have this go anywhere beyond what its done thus far, it was just a lot of fun and I thought I'd share my exploration. Oh, and here's some code. I rolled a rpm as well, SRPM available also.. :)<br />
<br />
Source(browse): http://maxamillion.fedorapeople.org/gaudit-0.1/<br />
Source(tar.gz): http://maxamillion.fedorapeople.org/gaudit-0.1.tar.gz<br />
SRPM: http://maxamillion.fedorapeople.org/gaudit-0.1-1.fc16.src.rpm<br />
RPM(noarch): http://maxamillion.fedorapeople.org/gaudit-0.1-1.fc16.noarch.rpm<br />
<br />
Like I said, its just a proof of concept but it was a lot of fun to hack on, I hope someone somewhere might find it interesting and maybe ignite an idea to take the general concept further to build a really cool utility! :)<br />
<br />
Happy Hacking,<br />
-AdamMAdam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-28598270732663510642012-01-04T10:56:00.000-06:002012-01-04T10:56:15.404-06:00Dell Engineering Preview: Oracle 11gR2 RAC on RHEL6I've been extremely fortunate to become a part of a really cool research and development organization at Dell just a little over a year ago and I've been working towards publishing some of the fun stuff I've been working on. In recent news I've been able to publish my *very* unsupported tech preview of setting up Oracle 11gR2 RAC (11.2.0.3) on RHEL6 proper (without ASMLib). I hope someone enjoys it and feedback on the related wiki doc would be greatly appreciated. Please note the formatting on the wiki engine we use is a little tough to get used to so my spacing might look a bit odd, I'm working on it, I hope it is found to be useful! :)<br />
<br />
The article resides on the Dell TechCenter here:<br />
<a href="http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2012/01/03/dell-engineering-preview-oracle-11gr2-rac-on-rhel6.aspx">http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2012/01/03/dell-engineering-preview-oracle-11gr2-rac-on-rhel6.aspx</a> <br />
<br />
Happy hacking,<br />
-AdamMAdam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-31736227518968179182011-11-22T11:10:00.000-06:002011-11-22T11:10:40.569-06:00help-bash@gnu.org is GO!My favorite shell, and quite possibly yours, is now hosting an official user outreach mailing list for discussions related to using, scripting, learning, and more with the bash shell so join up!<br />
<br />
<a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-bash">https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-bash</a>Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-88796838347531113792011-11-03T12:55:00.000-05:002011-11-03T12:55:51.102-05:00Public Fail .... I haz oneSo, I haven't blogged in months as a side effect of being overly busy (I'm doing really good to knock out 5 hours of sleep a night right now). An unfortunate side effect of this enhanced "level of busy" is that I over commit my time without realizing it and simultaneously believe the self told lie that I have my time managed well..... here we go.<br />
<br />
First, the fail. I recently was ping'd as an unresponsive maintainer on the Fedora <a href="http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-November/158880.html">devel mailing list</a> and I would like to publicly take full responsibility, the fault was mine and I hate that it reached a point that someone had to post to the list in search of me. I will do my best to do better in the future. My apologies.<br />
<br />
Next, why have I been so busy? .... Well, I'm glad you asked. About a year ago I started a new career at Dell which has been exciting and fun and I absolutely <b>love</b> my job, but as with all jobs there are times where your To Do list gets long in the tooth. The tooth is long and since about July we've been ramped up quite a bit for a number of different projects in my organization, one of which is an attempt to try and make what we do in Enterprise Solutions Engineering more <a href="http://en.community.dell.com/dell-groups/enterprise_solutions/default.aspx">community centric</a> and more open as a process in forms of publications, communication, collaboration and the like. (Much more to come from that link in the not too distant future ... stay tuned!)<br />
<br />
What else? Well, I'm also working on my Masters Degree in Computer Science with a focus in Information Assurance and Security, I am scheduled to graduate this December and I'm currently working on my Masters Project that I started over the summer which has been a daunting task but fun along the way because I get to incorporate cool tech from Fedora. Sadly though, this does not mix well with a normal persons sleep nor hobby schedule.<br />
<br />
Next up, this one isn't a time cruncher but I thought it deserved honorable mention in the field of "what I've been up to" ..... In August I turned 25 and this year marked a decade of my use of Red Hat so I decided it was time to write my fanboi in ink, literally.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CqDevmiFkWo/ToP36b05c5I/AAAAAAAAAmE/q2Kt_xWOZXs/s1600/IMG_20110928_232905.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CqDevmiFkWo/ToP36b05c5I/AAAAAAAAAmE/q2Kt_xWOZXs/s320/IMG_20110928_232905.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />
Moving on....<br />
<br />
I got married on September 10, 2011 ... yey me!!! It was very exciting and wonderful but also a giant time sink for all the planning leading up to the event (there went more sleep) but I wouldn't have had it any other way and our wedding was perfect!<br />
<br />
Once the fairy tale day was over I sadly had to snap back to reality, my final semester of Grad School started the week before my wedding, so as soon as the Honeymoon was over it was a mad dash for the books and I've been hammering out course work along side my Masters Project ever since (along with keeping up with my full time job). All the while I'm attempting my best to keep active in Fedora land, I've been able to update a couple packages, handle some bugs, offer some karma to updates and such but I've clearly not been holding up to par what I would like to and what I have in the past. I would like to do better and I will do my best to make it happen.<br />
<br />
None of this is an excuse for my neglect to my responsibilities that I signed up for when I became a package maintainer but I wanted to first say I was sorry for my fail and also to provide a little background around factors contributing to my slip up. I just certainly don't want community members to think I was simply ignoring Fedora or my responsibilities because I am just as much a walking/talking fanboi as ever, I love the project, and I'll be here for a long time to come!<br />
<br />
Thank you for your time,<br />
-AdamM<br />
<br />
P.S. - I'm on IRC roughly 8+ hours a day because I'm fortunate enough to irc while at work.... please feel free to ping me there if you feel I've missed an email or bug report that was directed at me. Many thanks! :)Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-31872092868661180682011-04-11T22:24:00.002-05:002011-04-11T23:08:00.370-05:00Gnome3 from a XFCE user's perspective."<span class="status-body"><span class="status-content"><span class="entry-content">Just tried GNOME 3 for 30 seconds. Prefer the old version. Will say bad things about GNOME 3 whenever it is mentioned for the next 5 years." - <a href="http://twitter.com/1990slinuxuser">@1990sLinuxUser</a><br /><br />I love this quote because it makes me think of many blog posts I read about Gnome3. I also really like who ever runs that twitter account because its quite entertaining.<br /><br />I would like to take a moment to state this before we go any farther just so that people know my stance before we get anywhere:<br /><br />Gnome3 is good, Gnome3 is <span style="font-weight: bold;">damn</span> good.<br /><br />There's a large amount of people who dislike it and don't prefer it and I respect their right to their opinion but I honestly get a little annoyed by people who piss on the hard work of innovators.<br /><br />Ok, now that's out of the way lets move on....<br /><br />First, Gnome3 is pretty:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.gnome3.org/img/overview-big.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 640px; height: 360px;" src="http://www.gnome3.org/img/overview-big.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Gnome3 is good. Right out of the gate I have a lot of respect for the well thought out design with its clean and uncluttered desktop. I personally completely respect the lack of panel plugins, the lack of desktop icons, and the decision on the overview layout design for interacting with the desktop in a very intuitive fashion. Gnome3/Gnome-Shell set out to accomplish something and that was to make the Free Desktop easier to use, more productive, and to have a seamless user experience. I think these things have been accomplished with great milestones being etched into the landscape along the way. Many design decisions were made with the idea of current day work flow and user interaction in mind and I can't do anything but respect that. The new integrations with power management, NetworkManager, messenger, and notifications are nothing short of impressive and make for a solid user experience. The additions to the file manager are also highly welcomed and I think make for a far more user friendly file navigating experience. Not to mention the over all innovations in general human computer interaction: Of course we should use our computer peripherals simultaneously! It's wasteful not to. Gestures for window management? Yes, why not? is it faster to zero in on that tiny little box in order to maximize, unmaximize, or close a window or is it faster to click anywhere on that top bar and throw it into a side of the screen and let go? Go ahead and test it a few times with a stop watch, don't worry ... I'll wait ....<br /><br />.<br />.<br />.<br />.<br />.<br />.<br />Good, you try it? Awesome. See how much faster that was?<br /><br />The backlash from the community about things like this astound me. This isn't new, innovation in the Linux space isn't new by any means and the funny thing is that each great stride forward is always met with the same response: "Blasphemy!!! How dare you change $x" Think I'm crazy? Ask a KDE dev sometime how much heat they took over the rewrite. Ask Lennart how much crap he's taking over SystemD. Ask Matt Domsch how much crap he's taking over biosdevname. Go ahead, ask them and you'll get a similar response from each of them as you will from a Gnome3 developer and what amazes me is that they are so willing to take the punches and defend their stance. You know why they do? Because they believe in the tech and they know that in a year, the haters will be on to complaining about the next thing and everyone will simply be happier with the changes that they are driving which are being made for the better.<br /><br />(Yes there were great strides before these I listed and there will be more tomorrow and they day after that .... these topics are relatively current and apply to the topic at hand so if I left out your innovation then I apologize for doing so and for the crap you put up with during the initial development and release of it.)<br /><br />Alright, lets round this back to me being a XFCE user.... I've been a XFCE user since 2004 (no I'm not the most veteran user out there, if you've been using XFCE for longer, awesome ... good for you). I also really respect other desktop environments in their own right such as KDE3.x and KDE4.x, GNOME 2.x and 3.x, LXDE, as well as the vast amount of window managers turned quasi desktop environment but at the end of the day I always come back to XFCE because its my comfort zone and I like the way things are done in XFCE land. I like the strict standards compliance, the fact that I can rip and replace any one or many aspects of my desktop and replace it with another standards compliant piece of software that I thought was interesting, I love how light weight and simple it is and above all I love that it offers me the feature richness I desire while being discrete enough to not get in my way. Would I be upset if they completely dropped the current implementation and went with something wildly different like Gnome3? Maybe at first, but I wouldn't trash them for their efforts to innovate and I would certainly happily either adopt the new solution or find an alternative because there are a *LOT* of them out there and they are all waiting for a larger user base.<br /><br />Moral of the story: Gnome3 is awesome but not my personal cup of tea and I'll be staying with XFCE for the foreseeable future.<br /><br />Also, XFCE is pretty too :)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://spins.fedoraproject.org/static/images/content/xfce-screenshot-02-lg.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 375px;" src="http://spins.fedoraproject.org/static/images/content/xfce-screenshot-02-lg.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Congratulations to all those involved with the Gnome3 release!<br /><br />Happy hacking to all and for anyone interested in Xfce 4.8 ... feel free to pop over to the <a href="http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/">Fedora 15 Nightly Compose</a> page and grab yourself a bit bucket full of the <a href="http://spins.fedoraproject.org/xfce/">Fedora Xfce Spin</a>! :)<br /><br />-AdamM<br /></span></span></span>Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-83107722652089033322011-04-11T21:44:00.002-05:002011-04-11T22:24:11.501-05:00Texas Linux Fest 2011This is sadly a week over due in the blog space, but last weekend (April 2, 2011) was the second annual Texas Linux Fest in Austin, TX. This year was night and day compared to last year in terms of turn out, venue and number of vendors with booths.<br /><br />There were roughly right around 500-600 people at the event in the Hilton Downtown Austin and we filled their conference rooms right up. The Fedora booth was extremely busy! I even had a couple people from other booths come over and make comments on how busy we were which was a pleasant surprise from fellow exhibitors. Even during the "lunch break hour" (the sessions broke for lunch but the hall where the booths were hosted never had a shut down moment) the Fedora booth was a notably happening location in the exhibition hall. There were vendors from all walks of the Linux ecosystem there: Fedora, Red Hat, IBM, HP, Dell, HostGator, RackSpace, Softlayer, Webmin, Cloud.com, OpenStack, Novell/SLES, LinuxJournal Magazine, and many more (apologies to those who weren't listed ... that's just what I could remember off the top of my head a week later).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_tLHv1CmCako/TZj2tHmianI/AAAAAAAAAfs/8XnvKJ41L60/s576/IMG_20110402_084922.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 576px; height: 432px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_tLHv1CmCako/TZj2tHmianI/AAAAAAAAAfs/8XnvKJ41L60/s576/IMG_20110402_084922.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_tLHv1CmCako/TZj2iN-BIGI/AAAAAAAAAfo/9weWaqF_BYw/s576/IMG_20110402_084930.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 576px; height: 432px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_tLHv1CmCako/TZj2iN-BIGI/AAAAAAAAAfo/9weWaqF_BYw/s576/IMG_20110402_084930.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_tLHv1CmCako/TZj2VzbsieI/AAAAAAAAAfk/4RQhXeTyvOc/s576/IMG_20110402_084908.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 576px; height: 432px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_tLHv1CmCako/TZj2VzbsieI/AAAAAAAAAfk/4RQhXeTyvOc/s576/IMG_20110402_084908.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The usual swag were big hits, the Fedora buttons, ink pens, stickers as well as pressed media were in high demand and we had a box of Design Suite media left over from the SXSW event that had gone on two weeks before that were extremely popular as not many people knew it existed. Many of the conference attendees who showed interest in the Design Suite were either those who dabble in graphic design or have a friend who does it in more serious context and they've been looking for a good avenue to show off the FOSS alternatives to the proprietary tools these individuals currently work with.<br /><br />Dell also had a booth across the way from us and they were giving away a laptop at the end of the day. One of our fellow Fedora Ambassadors (<a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Juliovp01">Julio Villarreal</a>) ran over and fired up some Fedora on it and the Dell reps who were there were good sports about it and let it run on there all day which I thought was another night avenue to show off some Fedora goodness.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_tLHv1CmCako/TZj22CYAGjI/AAAAAAAAAfw/Mu3KrD3nWMU/s576/IMG_20110402_143306.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 576px; height: 432px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_tLHv1CmCako/TZj22CYAGjI/AAAAAAAAAfw/Mu3KrD3nWMU/s576/IMG_20110402_143306.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I was also extremely excited to see so many new faces in the crowd, the volume of Linux users who were likely in high school or fresh into the college scene that were very interested in what Fedora is up to and has to offer was refreshing and I hope to see many of them become key players in the Fedora of tomorrow. The OLPC XO was a big hit as was my <a href="http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook">Genesi EfikaMX Smartbook</a> that I brought along with me to show off what the <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM">Fedora ARM</a> development team has been hard at work at (very big special thanks to <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ausil">Dennis Gilmore</a> for putting up with my ultra ARM-noob self while trying to make that thing work in time for the conference). On the topic of Fedora ARM, there was a PandaBoard booth at the conference and a few of their booth exhibitors came over to check out Fedora ARM running on the smartbook and to ask questions about the efforts that were ongoing. They were very impressed!!<br /><br />There were a number of users who were interested in the alternate desktops (LXDE was extremely popular) available on the installation DVDs that were on the booth table. We gave away roughly 500+ pieces of media, probably 200-ish case badges, similar amount of stickers, all of the buttons (think there were 150-200 of those), all of the stickers left over from SXSW, and a hand full of balloons and temporary tattoos.<br /><br />The Fedora booth was stationed right next to the Red Hat booth which as I've expressed before I think is a very powerful statement to have us standing next to one another but as our own separate entities. Many times we at the Fedora booth were asked about the relationship with Red Hat as well as if we were Red Hat employees. None of us at the booth this year were "Hatters" and that came as a surprise to a number of the conference attendees but we still the same enjoyed explaining the heritage of the community centric Fedora and its long time relationship to Red Hat. Those talking points I felt were very effective in explaining many things that people "on the outside" don't 100% understand.<br /><br />All in all I would have to say it was an excellent conference and I can't wait for more like it so that we can go out and show off the awesomeness that is Fedora!<br /><br />-AdamMAdam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-87589461173950297322011-02-08T12:25:00.005-06:002011-02-08T13:03:10.862-06:00Ask not what your distro can do for you, but what you can do for your distro.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/blog/give-back-button.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 100px;" src="http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/blog/give-back-button.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/blog/pictures/buttons/you-make-it.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 100px;" src="http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/blog/pictures/buttons/you-make-it.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I've had a lot of mixed feelings in the recent Fedora Community rivalries that have spawned as there are sentiments I agree with and disagree with from both sides but I haven't been happy with how some of the messages have been expressed. Today there was a blog post from <a href="http://spot.livejournal.com/316660.html">spot</a> that addresses many things of that nature. As I read this post I was reminded of a famous quote from John F. Kennedy's January 20th 1961 Inaugural Speech and I feel it applies today still to our Country but also in recent times to Fedora. We live in a community centric culture that is heavily based on merit, those who are willing to put in the time and effort are rewarded with the respect of their peers. We do also, however, exist in a community based around freedom and that affords each of us as contributors to contribute our time, effort, and skills to what we want to. Nobody can dictate how you spend your free time, period.<br /><br />I'm tired of the fighting. Either come up with a solution and go with it, or just stop. I am directing this at both sides of the qualms too, don't think I'm taking sides or that anyone from one side hasn't done something that has angered the other. We're dividing ourselves and I don't see how its helping anyone individually or Fedora as a whole. So please, "Ask not what your distro can do for you, but what you can do for your distro."<br /><br />-AdamMAdam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-42188114263667050992011-01-15T01:12:00.004-06:002011-01-15T02:26:34.626-06:00Fedora 14 Xfce Spin with Compiz on top<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh44dy9xgdzkSC8nqJUqWhJdzrfSy7GvPprq_3I_KEbFO23uhGuh7VohYX1UOzuxuKmfEcb3JBEykNIECiz_C7PNvdQkVs8TD6VnODKZ8zn427p6BdmsD4tJQv51UAAZT2bqT0i0A/s1600/XfceCompizF14.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh44dy9xgdzkSC8nqJUqWhJdzrfSy7GvPprq_3I_KEbFO23uhGuh7VohYX1UOzuxuKmfEcb3JBEykNIECiz_C7PNvdQkVs8TD6VnODKZ8zn427p6BdmsD4tJQv51UAAZT2bqT0i0A/s400/XfceCompizF14.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562326136420030530" /></a><br />I was recently using my favorite <a href="http://spins.fedoraproject.org/">Fedora Spin</a> and I realized that there was one key thing I missed about Compiz vs. Xfwm4 (now mind you I think Xfwm4 is an amazing window manager ... but this was an itch that needed scratching), it wasn't the desktop cube, the minimization animations, or any of the many wonderful compiz-fusion plugins. It was the <a href="http://wiki.compiz.org/Plugins/Scale">Compiz Scale feature</a>. It's one of those things that I find myself using quite often because of how busy my desktop gets. I am a big fan of Compiz and have been for some time but there isn't any official built in support for Compiz in Xfce 4.6.x (current stable version in Fedora as of the writing of this blog post) so I wanted to find a way to add in Compiz into Xfce in a somewhat "seemless" or "integrated" way. Here's a short write up of what I did and I hope someone is able to use it as a basis to their own path to finding a comfy desktop.<br /><br />Install packages (as root):<br /><br /><br /><code>yum -y install compiz compiz-fusion ccsm emerald emerald-themes</code><br /><br /><br />These packages will install and give you the CompizConfig Settings Manager as well as compiz "core" and the compiz-fuzion plugins/extensions along with the emerald window decorator which is necessary if you want to have custom window decorations without relying on other Desktop Environment integration pieces.<br /><br />At this point we will likely want to attempt to run Compiz and make sure we can actually run it:<br /><br /><br /><code>compiz-manager</code><br /><br /><br />This should replace Xfwm4 with Compiz, if not there is likely an error and in that case you will need to diagnose the issue as well as solve it before continuing.<br /><br />Next we will need to edit the following file with your favorite text editor. If you don't have one I'll recommend the light weight IDE called Geany that comes with the Fedora Xfce Spin by default and is located in the Xfce Menu as follows Menu->Development->Geany. This recommendation comes mainly from the fact that it is easy to use for those not familiar with such editors as vim or emacs and this file is XML which Geany supports syntax highlighting for:<br /><br /><br /><code>geany ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-session.xml</code><br /><br /><br />In this file you will need to find the section that looks like this:<br /><br /><br /><code><property name="Client0_Command" type="empty"></code><br /><br /><br />And edit it to look like this (i.e. - delete the above and insert the following in its place):<br /><br /><br /><code><br /><property name="Client0_Command" type="array"><br /> <value type="string" value="compiz-manager"><br /></property><br /></code><br /><br /><br />At this point you should be able to log out and back in and Compiz will have replaced Xfwm4 as your default Window Manager without any need to do strange "hacks." Thus demonstrating some of the power of standards compliant software and the ability to be interchanged based on preference or personal requirements.<br /><br /><br /><br />I would like to take a moment to thank the Xfce Developers and Fedora Community for making things like this possible and allowing me to create the best desktop environment for <span style="font-weight: bold;">me </span>by using simple customizations/configurations. I'd like to thank <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Kevin">Kevin Fenzi</a> as well as <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ChristophWickert">Christoph Whicker<span style="font-style: italic;"></span><em></em>t</a> for doing so much of the heavy lifting in respect to the Xfce Spin and everyone as a whole for allowing me to be part of the process, its moments like this where I truly appreciate the power of FOSS and the communities that form as a result. Long live Fedora!<br /><br />-AdamMAdam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-36045975800288484132011-01-03T01:27:00.002-06:002011-01-03T02:10:36.390-06:00New Year, New City, and the Start of a New CareerIt has been far too long since I have posted to the world about happenings relevant to myself and to that of the Fedora world so I will attempt to recap a bit.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Where have I been and where did I go?</span><br />I left the humble little town of Huntsville, TX which is the location of Sam Houston State University. It is also where I earned my Undergraduate Degree in Computer Science, where I am continuing to pursue my Masters Degree in Information Assurance and Security via correspondence, and where I have spent the last three years working as a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Systems Administrator. While my time there was good, it was clearly time for me to move on so I began looking around for position openings at companies I was interested in working for. I was fortunate enough to get a recommendation from a fellow Fedora Community Member for a position as a Systems Engineer at Dell Incorporated. I was called in for an interview and I will assume I did well because I was later offered the position which I was extremely excited to accept. I now wear a Dell Badge and I wear it with pride, I'm privileged to get to work in a R&D lab on GNU/Linux technologies powered by Dell hardware (yes I have a Fedora machine on my workbench in the Lab). I'm really bad with words so I'll leave it at this: I absolutely love my new job. As a side effect of the new job I relocated to Austin, TX and I again find myself without the literary skill to explain my enjoyment of this town as a whole so I will again say this: I love this town.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What about Fedora? You mentioned Fedora!</span><br />I was very sadly out of the loop for pretty much the entire Fedora 14 cycle and I would like to apologize to appropriate parties for that. I am currently working on getting some priorities in line as well as having purchased a new laptop with a bit more power under the hood so that I can do more QA work in VMs. Fedora 15 will hopefully be something I can contribute more time to. I'm regaining interest in the Xfce world after my tangent off to both KDE and Gnome (I'm really just a DE nomad these days, I respect the power and offerings of all three major contenders) so I hope to find myself on the list of co-maintainers of the Xfce Spin once again and with any luck I can find myself there for the ongoing future. I've also in the last week been working on getting my EPEL responsibilities up to date with the latest EL6 release and I'm happy to see that not only is fedpkg proving to be amazing but also that there is an Olive Branch of sorts being extended to active EPEL maintainers lacking a RHN subscription for those interested in supporting EL6 for at least the time being while RHEL clones get up to speed. While this might not remain permanent, it is nice to see those within the firewall seeing the value and user base of EPEL desiring the community supported packages. I personally have two subscriptions that I use at the house because not only am I a big Red Hat fan but I'm always preaching that I don't mind paying for good software and chose to vote with my dollar. That being said, I don't think contributors should necessarily be expected to follow that same guideline so I like that steps are being taken to provide contributors with the necessary tools.<br /><br />Well .... that's where I'm sitting these days, my apologies for my ramblings if they make little sense. My blog often flows from mind to keyboard without much of a writing fundamentals filter so for my imminent grammatical errors please be kind.<br /><br />P.S. - For those who have requests in for a couple of my packages to be updated, I am working with them. There's one most notable which is Pida, its upstream release structure has changed a little so I'm going to be spending a little time getting familiar with the new code before slinging packages out.<br /><br />Night all,<br />-AdamMAdam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-75025695821792126502010-09-24T12:00:00.001-05:002010-09-24T12:02:26.578-05:00Restructure for the sake of progress.There has recently been a lot of chatter about the future of Fedora, vision statements, goals, progress and where to go from here. I would like to voice my opinion on the topic and for all who disagree please let me know why and voice your solution because I am always open to new ideas and I am definitely not saying this is the only way to continue or to solve the current issues but its the idea I had.<br /><br />First off, what's the problem? Well from my perspective there are a few but I only want to focus on a couple right now: There's a lack of focus which makes marketing really difficult as there are so many things to promote and we have such a breadth of innovation wrapped up together offering a multitude of solutions which is confusing for newcomers. This is something I would like to think that we as a project aren't fond of. Others might have opinions of what they think are problems and they might very well be problems, but these are the ones that I personally think I can offer an idea for solution.<br /><br />Our lack of focus is pure marketing pain: This rounds out a bit of the recent talks about Vision Statement which I'm not against as many appear to be and I think the <a href="http://thorwil.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/design-in-collaborative-projects/">blog post from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Thorwil</span></a> nails this right on the head. What can we do, where can we go and how do we do it without breaking up the community? My proposal for this is to continue the Fedora Project in a similar manner as it is going now but to migrate a little on how the Fedora Distribution is handled. I think we as a group should focus on the concept of a "Fedora Experience" and ask ourselves "What makes Fedora, Fedora?" I think we need to strip out a lot of our ambiguity for the official Fedora Distribution. Lets get rid of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">KDE</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">LiveCD</span>, lets throw out the Spins, and lets let the Fedora Distribution focus purely on the default Gnome offering along with all that entails as a start to finish desktop experience, the "Fedora Experience". Now before you get angry and want to throw me to the sharks please just read on and save the flame mob until the end. I just don't see a way to be able to carry on the way we are while continuing to grow adoption. If we refocus on just one installation of one environment then we are decreasing the strain of the documentation team, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">QA</span> team, release engineering, the design team, the marketing team, and others who partake in the wonders of the Fedora Distribution as we've stripped out the ambiguity of "Its Fedora because it came from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">fedoraproject</span>.org" or "It's Fedora because its all one package repository" and we just focus on one environment.<br /><br />"But Adam, you're just pissing people off and they will leave the project"<br /><br />This is true and this is false, this is inevitable and its completely avoidable, this is heavily a loaded statement. My idea is that we will restructure ourselves into forking off brands who operate under the same parent project, The Fedora Project. The idea is that those of us interested in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">KDE</span> (or $other) will break off and make "Kepi Linux" (random name I selected for sake of example) and what is Kepi Linux? Kepi Linux is a distribution of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">linux</span> focused on delivering a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">KDE</span> centric experience that is based on the Fedora Project, it is a brand. I'd like to take a moment to quickly direct <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">everyone's</span> attention to <a href="http://www.viddler.com/player/c982f773/">Steve <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Yegge's</span> talk at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">OSCON</span> 2007</a> it's only about 25 minutes but if you don't have that kind of time the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">jist</span> is, "The look, feel, packaging, and naming of a product, i.e. the brand, is more powerful than the function." I want people to take that and think about it hard for a moment because as much as you'd like to argue it at first, when you mull it over you know its true in at least some capacity. So back to the Kepi Linux example, now we have this new brand, new identity, and new outlet that packagers and developers can come together an work on that allows the specific group to focus on their own space. Essentially the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">KDE</span> SIG within the Fedora Project would be the driving force behind Kepi Linux. As long as it is structured such that we are still using the same package repository, still using the same build environment, same <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">bugzilla</span> instance (maybe with some changes for branding), the same account system, continue contributing code, content, and packages to the same project and still share the same over all goal of leading the advancement of free, open software and content then I think we can still as the community at large stick together while being slightly more focused on our own areas (brands).<br /><br />This idea probably isn't perfect and I understand that a paradigm shift like this would require a *LOT* of work from a lot of people but I think it would be a positive change in the long run. If we were to make Kepi Linux we could even have an "About Us" page that describes how we are the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">KDE</span> SIG and that Kepi Linux is a sub project of the Fedora Project but is different from the Fedora Distribution, this way we are removing the confusion from new users because if they want Fedora and they go to get.fedoraproject.org there is one option, period. We are removing the over saturation of the Fedora brand which I like to think will result positively.<br /><br />Just my thoughts on the topic, take them for what you will.<br /><br />-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">AdamM</span>Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-22243984142444476662010-09-07T10:00:00.000-05:002010-09-07T10:01:14.378-05:00Personal Priority QueueThere comes a day when I realize that I've found myself drowning long enough that something has to give. I contain only a certain amount of cycles that can only perform so many instructions within a finite amount of time. Sadly, no matter how much sleep I try and do without, I can't keep up or catch up and its time I enact a priority queue with my time.<br /><br />Lets take a quick rundown of what gets higher priority and renice what is in need of it. First and foremost is my family, period. Highest priority is obviously set to my family. Then we make our way down the chain to the essential tie between my day job and graduate school. We'll apply them equal priority. Following that we can lump in randomness and hobbies with equal priority but the only thing I really want to discuss is Fedora. I love Fedora, I love working on Fedora and I wish I could work on it all day, everyday but a sad reality is that Fedora doesn't pay the bills and Fedora doesn't land me a Masters Degree (though I do try to incorporate Fedora into my assignments in my graduate courses when ever it is applicable).<br /><br />What does this mean? Am I leaving Fedora? First off, I don't think I will ever leave Fedora because I believe in it too much and I love the community, what it stands for, and the efforts that are put into the project by it. However, I am going to have to scale back my time allotment which means I'm going to have to be more conservative with my excitement as it has gotten my hands in many pots and stretched me too thin ultimately causing my current predicament. I wanted to be able to contribute to Fedora in every way I am capable but the unfortunate fact is that I just can't pull it off. My problem is that I get too excited about too many different aspects of Fedora and I want to contribute all I can. I want to be a part of Fedora Design, Fedora QA, Fedora Ambassadors, Fedora Python SIG, Fedora Java SIG, Fedora KDE SIG, Fedora XFCE SIG, Fedora Desktop Team, Fedora Cloud SIG, Fedora ARM SIG, and other areas of the Fedora project that I find extremely interesting. Here I sit trying to find a way to keep up and I can't, I just can't. I will continue to maintain my packages and hang out in irc as much as possible but beyond that I am going to have to attempt to gracefully duck out of my other Fedora endeavors until I can find the time to really get back in the mix. I thank you Fedora, as a project and a community for offering such a cultivating and welcoming arena with so many outlets that I find so interesting that I want to dive in head first. I must take care of some other aspects of life right now but you will always be near and dear. In hopes that I am able to dive in full swing at a later date, I bid you all good luck and will continue to lurk around. :)Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-34342684344900309462010-06-24T13:23:00.002-05:002010-06-24T13:26:10.409-05:00dvtm - dynamic virtual terminal managerNot too long ago I found myself in need of organizing my terminal sessions, I had too many windows open and it was cluttering my work space and bloating my alt+tab layout. I poked around the internet and found the likes of Terminator[0] and it was nice but not my personal preference so I did a little more poking and I found my way to dvtm[1]. dvtm is a dynamic virtual terminal manager that will essentially perform tiling window management from within a terminal window. It was originally a port of dwm to ncurses and has made my life eponentially easier since I found it. I wanted to show off some screenshots in hopes that others might find it fits their needs!<br /><br />The package was already available in Fedora but since I spend a large amount of my time on RHEL machines for my day job I went through the processes to get it into EPEL, so everyone can have dvtm! :)<br /><br />Here's some screenshot awesomeness (same apps, just different layouts within dvtm):<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIAMEYnTL7PDh8LElRIhICuKeZ1NBL01HfCsciaRn94p-0V80Tn4c9JIj9Eb5dgQ8Pc1QOVeSrs1pb9iWNQxre2kOIZjXav7TfAbcqLn5RXplY202ZrgbiOUm4GqWac7Jaq8ojXA/s1600/dvtm_3.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIAMEYnTL7PDh8LElRIhICuKeZ1NBL01HfCsciaRn94p-0V80Tn4c9JIj9Eb5dgQ8Pc1QOVeSrs1pb9iWNQxre2kOIZjXav7TfAbcqLn5RXplY202ZrgbiOUm4GqWac7Jaq8ojXA/s320/dvtm_3.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5486407870668631762" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMKhHu-SWVlEY5Pt1cN88OLWpDnXAIEXDw-xDXgf0e6sSRJHNpE-1HKFzQhoOnbwdGiHfdMLP-LHcJjUw3v_U-n6Zai31qzXfSheuDuRyAsbuKB26SA6NBV3HPKPgZ2elhfWkAcQ/s1600/dvtm_2.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMKhHu-SWVlEY5Pt1cN88OLWpDnXAIEXDw-xDXgf0e6sSRJHNpE-1HKFzQhoOnbwdGiHfdMLP-LHcJjUw3v_U-n6Zai31qzXfSheuDuRyAsbuKB26SA6NBV3HPKPgZ2elhfWkAcQ/s320/dvtm_2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5486407863785945074" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp6sSNwlrQm7ZhYQjeFcZ9nrZ4el-whaOY4myhxenhogBhJDm5-jyH9Wd1qGiGjlFpNCe7KrXqzcmFqUysuWihu5fHiIM8v2YceRDkdW8GeSVTdQBwVga3p05yM7OafmnUdEeuEw/s1600/dvtm_1.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp6sSNwlrQm7ZhYQjeFcZ9nrZ4el-whaOY4myhxenhogBhJDm5-jyH9Wd1qGiGjlFpNCe7KrXqzcmFqUysuWihu5fHiIM8v2YceRDkdW8GeSVTdQBwVga3p05yM7OafmnUdEeuEw/s320/dvtm_1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5486407854058255730" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Hope people want to give it a shot! Also, be sure to read the man page, all the questions I could imagine were answered there. Happy hacking! :)<br /><br /><br />[0] http://www.tenshu.net/terminator/<br />[1] http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-48412108343870369232010-06-18T15:57:00.003-05:002010-06-18T16:01:29.894-05:00Big Fedora Logo For Fedora Planet!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBmyZv-2Wn7Rn7kkvFoNrbK7PFmUzJaaRWPx62dFDf80C2tmPx7nhHoEHRP0Smv0rc-DlaWT-9fmzwDjkUR2hTcxoS-3BuudIpj4343tUwP4q3AOSzm0Q-bYxqoYUrCVOsnrnjDw/s1600/fedoraLogo_21.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBmyZv-2Wn7Rn7kkvFoNrbK7PFmUzJaaRWPx62dFDf80C2tmPx7nhHoEHRP0Smv0rc-DlaWT-9fmzwDjkUR2hTcxoS-3BuudIpj4343tUwP4q3AOSzm0Q-bYxqoYUrCVOsnrnjDw/s400/fedoraLogo_21.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484221116876713650" border="0" /></a><br />Here's a big Fedora Logo (or at least as big as blogger.com will let me post) for those who were upset with the Ubuntu Logo that found its way on the planet.fedoraproject.org today. Enjoy and long live FOSS software!Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-50769390890167741342010-06-07T14:31:00.003-05:002010-06-07T17:05:18.870-05:00Getting CyanogenMod on your Motorola Droid (Android 2.1 OTA) from Linux.Step 1: Download sbf_flash[0], and follow his directions with 1 modification, shutdown your phone and hold "UP" on the directional pad before "just plugging it in" (note, the screen will be blank/black and have some white text on it in a very primitive font, if that's what you got you're good) and I believe the application must be run as root. Also, the sbf image you will need is SPRecovery[1]<br /><br />[0] <a href="http://blog.opticaldelusion.org/2010/05/sbfflash.html">http://blog.opticaldelusion.org/2010/05/sbfflash.html</a><br />[1] <a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?jgt1gjgx5gv">http://www.mediafire.com/?jgt1gjgx5gv</a><br /><br />Step 2: Download CyanogenMod's latest release (at time of this writing it was 5.0.7) and copy it to the root of your SDCard and rename it "update.zip"<br /><br /><a href="http://koush.tandtgaming.com//motorola/sholes/update-cm-5.0.7.1-Droid-signed.zip">http://koush.tandtgaming.com//motorola/sholes/update-cm-5.0.7.1-Droid-signed.zip</a><br /><br />Step 3: Shutdown your phone and reboot into SPRecovery by holding the 'x' key on your keyboard while it powers on (be holding 'x' before you hit the power button just to be sure). This should boot you into SPRecovery.<br /><br />Step 4: Make a backup!!! You are going to want to make a backup here just in case something goes wrong. Use the volume up/down buttons on the side of your phone to move the selection up and down and the camera button on the side of your phone (power button takes you back to the previous menu).<br /><br />Step 5: Flash the update, select "install" and in the next menu tell it to allow update.zip, then select "Install /sdcard/update.zip"<br /><br />Step 6: Install the Google Apps, first copy the gapps file over to the root of your SDCard, rename it "update.zip" overwritting the old one. And repeat Step 5 remembering to hold 'x' while booting to get to SPRecovery.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/mnzmk1nytt2/gapps-passion-EPE54B-signed.zip">http://www.mediafire.com/file/mnzmk1nytt2/gapps-passion-EPE54B-signed.zip</a><br /><br />Step 7: Reboot and enjoy<br /><br />NOTE: If your phone goes into what appears to be an infinite reboot loop, pull the battery and then hold 'x' again when you power back up to get back to SPRecovery and tell it to do a wipe of user data, its an option in the main menu. This happens but not always so don't be alarmed if it does.<br /><br />Step 8: (Optional) Download ROMManager from the App Market and buy the extremely reasonably priced Premium version that will monitor new releases of the ROM as well as automate the flashing process.<br /><br />NOTE: ROMManager is going to require a different Recovery image but it will handle the installation of this and will continue to make life awesome for you .... again, *highly* recommended.<br /><br />Feel free to come hang out in #koush on irc.freenode.net if you have questions or just want to talk about the awesomeness that is CyanogenMod on the Motorola Droid!Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-20342178967169273232010-05-17T23:51:00.005-05:002010-05-18T13:33:16.391-05:00Death to ARM, Long live ARM!Not all that long ago I wrote a <a href="http://pseudogen.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-i-hope-intel-breaks-arm-in-half.html">blog post</a> that expressed some frustrations I was having with ARM as a platform but in retrospect I think my statements were a bit hasty and overzealous. I stepped away from the unique aspect of ARM boards that make them so appealing, they are different, they are disjoint, but they are also extremely capable. We live in a world where you can't walk into the middle of a town and throw a rock in any direction without hitting a person carrying an ARM device which is an extremely powerful statement. Its a platform where extremely cool things are happening, it is the reigning champion of consumer embedded devices and as cloud computing (yes, I hate the term too but bear with me) becomes more and more the way of the future, embedded computing really will be a more viable solution for the dawn of tomorrow.<br /><br />What does this mean? Well, that depends on who you are and where you sit in the world. It means to me that I think we within the Fedora Community need to put more efforts into the <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM">Fedora ARM</a> SIG and even though I am an ARM SIG member I probably made my fellow Fedorans(?) a bit upset with my outcry as well as dealt myself a bit of a credibility blow which I have only myself to thank. In an effort to bring myself back from my current state I in the process of gearing up for doing some actual contribution to the Fedora ARM port, I've got a book entitled "Embedded Linux Primer" by Christopher Hallinan that I'm almost half way through and I've got a <a href="http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/GuruPlug">GuruPlug</a> on order from <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/">GlobalScale</a> because even if I hit fits of frustration along they way it would be ignorant of me to claim that embedded computing doesn't power the world, ARM is leading the way in that market, and I feel this is an area that Fedora could be great in. So lets hope that Apple doesn't buy ARM and screw us all. Long live Fedora and long live ARM!<br /><br />UPDATE: I have cancelled my previous order of the GuruPlug in favor of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SheevaPlug">SheevaPlug</a> for two reasons. 1) The GuruPlug requires me to buy JTAG board to do dev work and I don't want to shell out the extra cash. 2) I'm hearing reports of GuruPlugs doing random reboots when using the ethernet port. So now I just have to wait for my SheevaPlug in the mail!Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-6453134850358785442010-05-04T11:14:00.005-05:002010-05-04T11:42:04.923-05:00Vote with your dollars<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpEwSNKDfZobGmfaK4DXRMtFGwRYbl6K1HCD1gnlkqT4Kddx7hsISpcr39xkU-ChCVV9Q1TKY0-YtVVvbfXdOk5PAZBUq2_144m5E1ENCiA5RMkF5usdZpk5s6xa-ot12RfOSrLw/s1600/2010-05-01+17.17.56.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpEwSNKDfZobGmfaK4DXRMtFGwRYbl6K1HCD1gnlkqT4Kddx7hsISpcr39xkU-ChCVV9Q1TKY0-YtVVvbfXdOk5PAZBUq2_144m5E1ENCiA5RMkF5usdZpk5s6xa-ot12RfOSrLw/s320/2010-05-01+17.17.56.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467456027087754626" border="0" /></a><br />"Vote with your dollars," a phrase a co-worker said to me when we started discussing smoking vs. non-smoking dining options. It's an idea that has stuck with me ever since and I find myself applying it to anything I do these days. For example, I pay for a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription for my house even though I could run CentOS. Why do I do this? Because I want to support Red Hat, I want to vote with my dollars and let them know that I appreciate what they do for the open source software community at large with all of their endeavours.<br /><br />This past weekend I found myself at a store, I won't say which one because I need not endorse them and they certainly don't need or want a mention in my measly little blog. At this store I was on a mission to purchase a portable mouse to go along with my new Asus EeePC 1001P (which I recently blogged about). The netbook is wonderful but when I've got it sitting on a desk I'd rather have a real mouse. As I was cruising for a perfect selection I found myself with two mice to decide between, both were capable and according to their boxes they had almost identical feature sets but one was cheaper. If I were a regular consumer, I would have grabbed the cheaper one and gone on with my life and not thought anything of it, but I am not a regular consumer. I'm a voter. There was another difference between these two devices and that was that the more expensive one had an image of Tux on the side and a listing for "Linux kernel 2.6+" in the system requirements field. I was sold. I voted with my dollars and gave my money to Logitech as they took the time and money to verify functionality on a Linux machine and to print the information on their labels. So kudos to you Logitech and I thank you for your help in the struggle to push the Linux movement. While many might find this victory small and meaningless, I think this is a big statement to the world. We came, we dominated, and now your peripherals wear our insignia. I happily paid the extra money to the company that was willing to give me some peace of mind that when I plugged that mouse in to my Fedora 13 Beta powered netbook that it would work and it did and I'm happy.Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-3846939545682748572010-04-22T09:50:00.002-05:002010-04-23T13:09:26.538-05:00Why I hope Intel breaks ARM in halfI've been a growing fan of the ARM platform for a while now but as time goes on my frustrations with the extremely drastic differences between ARM boards has begun to get under my skin. I've often thought to myself, "Why can't we just take an x86 machine and shrink its components to make an embedded system on a chip that walks, talks, and acts like the same old systems we're used to?"<br /><br />In walks Intel to slaps me in the face with a big fat, "oh yeah ... we're totally doing that" and I love it. Its an amazing concept because I can take this SoC that will give me potentially days of battery life and run software that I've been running on my laptops, desktops, and netbooks since I've owned a computer. You know, software like the entire Fedora Distribution and all packages that might entail.<br /><br />Intel recently <a href="http://scoop.intel.com/2010/01/intel-moorestown-smartphones-at-ces.php">demoed tablets and cellular telephones running on Moorestown CPUs</a> that are claiming to be twice as fast as the current Pineview line of Atom processors as well as sporting a two to three times longer battery life. I'm a proud owner of an Asus EeePC 1001P and I'm getting about 8.5 hours of battery life on that thing with casual wifi browsing and a couple ssh sessions opened and this is all powered by an Intel Atom N450 which is a Pineview core running Fedora 13 Beta (full Gnome, etc. and it runs like a champ). With these claims of two to three times battery life, we really are approaching literally days of computing on a single charge from a processor that I can just fire up Fedora on. I like where this is going.<br /><br />Lets go on a tangent for a moment, <a href="http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/apple-to-buy-arm-for8-billion-22-04-2010/">Apple has put a bid out to purchase ARM</a> and I honestly hope they win it so they can absorb another platform just to kill it off. My hope is that Apple will win ARM, developers and distributors will not want to pay Apple/ARM prices or deal with their unreasonable developer agreements and will find comfort in Intel's Moorestown. Android and MeeGo are already supporting the Intel Moorestown line thanks to thier Linux roots and I like to think its just a matter of time before the mobile market abandons ARM all together. With the trend of tablet computers and smartbooks starting to gain some speed I think to myself, why divide ourselves as developers among multiple different ARM specs instead of having a standard target archticture that's been around for decades? But I digress.<br /><br />Back on topic but keeping in mind the content of the tangent, lets think for a moment what this would mean for mobile platforms. Now, I want to start with the disclaimer that I love Free and Open Source Software but lets face it, half the internet runs on Adobe Flash. So while Adobe is beating its head against the wall trying to reinvent Flash for mobile platforms using several different abstraction models to keep the insanity of supporting all flavors of ARM from killing them entirely, Intel is quietly about to unleash the answer to their problem. To be honest, I don't care about Adobe in this respect (sorry Adobe, I just don't) but what I do care about are end users. If the end user can get a brand new Moorestown powered netbook with a day or two of battery life, double the performance of the current Intel Atom processors, and slap Fedora on there with out of the box support for everything they need as well as the option to add third party repositories for things such as Flash then I'm on board. Because in reality, the only reason x86 hasn't made it to cellular phones yet is because Intel hadn't found a way to pull off the battery life needed to do it. Now that they have, and I say we break an ARM or two.Adam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11033970.post-35588435209049421382010-04-18T18:00:00.002-05:002010-04-18T18:22:57.351-05:00Fedora 13 Beta - Asus EeePC 1001PIt's tax season again and I got money back, not a very large amount but enough to cover a new budget netbook. With the budget in mind and the goal of long battery life I did my research and it was clear that the Asus EeePC 1001P (160gb version) was going to be top notch for the price. This little netbook (that I'm making this blog post from) is powered by the latest Intel N450 Pineview processor which offers some attractive bits in terms of battery life and form factor since it allows for a 6 cell battery that is almost entirely flush with the body of the netbook. For under $300 (USD) it is advertised to get up to 11 hours of battery life and is showing between 8 and 9 hours of battery life in real world usage.<br /><br />I ordered it off Amazon.com and it arrived via FedEx on my doorstep yesterday afternoon and as per the included documentation it needed to charge for 8 hours before its first use. While I don't entirely trust or believe the battery needs that much time sitting on a charger I decided to play it safe. Once that horrible waiting period was over I was finally able to get it powered up and get Fedora 13 Beta installed. I was lucky enough to guess the right BIOS key so that I could get this little guy to boot from the USB stick with Fedora 13 Beta on it before Windows 7 (that came pre-loaded on this) ever got the chance to infect my CPU and other components.<br /><br />Fedora 13 Beta installation went fine, but upon reboot the wireless card was not detected at all which was discouraging as all I could find on the internet were sources of needing to use ndiswrapper to make it function. Now, Fedora being notorious for leading the way and keeping in mind that I'm running a development build I had the bright idea to plug it into an ethernet port in order to download updates that have been rolling out as the bug squashing ninjas (Read: Fedora Contributors) find and fix problems in preparation for stable release.<br /><br />Downloads done, presto rebuilds done, package installs done, reboot, wifi!!!<br /><br />So here I am on my brand new netbook running Fedora 13 Beta + updates with *everything* fully functional and I couldn't be happier. One last piece is to find out why gnome-shell won't run but from what I understand its a graphics card specific bit because there are lots of reports of people having it up and running on other systems which is only a minor set back as gnome-shell is only a tech preview and is under heavy development itself. All in all, I'm extremely satisfied with Fedora 13 Beta + updates as well as with my Asus EeePC 1001P. Only recommendation I'd have to anyone in the market for one of these EeePC 1001P netbooks is to test out the keyboard, its just a preference thing. I like the keyboard on this quite a bit but I know of some who aren't fans so be sure to give it a test run before sinking the cash in.<br /><br />Final words: Fedora continues to kick hind parts and take names, everything on this brand new netbook is working wonderfully and I couldn't be happier. Many thanks to all those involved in making my computing experience this amazing!<br /><br />-AdamMAdam Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07645973635655131173noreply@blogger.com9