So, I finally got my blog back up and running again after taking a year-long hiatus. I must admit, part of what got me motivated to get the blog rolling again was the cool LinuxPlanet blogs site organized by Dave Yates and Linc Fessenden. Great idea, guys and Linc, thanks for adding in my blog, cobwebs and all. Hiya, LinuxPlanet. :-)
Anyway, it's been a busy year, to say the least, and I have a lot of catching up to do:
Well, the Slackware team led by Patrick Volkerding has done it again -- released a fantastic version of Slackware Linux. This release has some really great changes, including a default 2.6.21 kernel, modular Xorg 7.2, HAL, and lots more. Get it here. And if you like and use Slackware, please consider visiting the Slackware store to purchase an official CD or DVD set, or start your own Slackware subscription. I have had a subscription for several years and it's a great way to support the project.
Thanks to Pat and the rest of the Slackware team on a great release!
Update: I have a new version of my BuildSBO script available for download. This version adds the ability to set the local mirror with a command line option and also allows a user to build more than one package at once, e.g., ./buildsbo foo foo2. It has been working well for me, but YMMV. If you test it out, please let me know if works ok or if you run into issues.
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The Slackware -current changelog had been pretty quiet since the last entry in early November, 2006. Some folks at LQ.org were wondering what was going on. Other folks who have pretty good ears to the ground knew that there were massive changes going on in Slackware behind the scenes.
Well, on St. Patrick's Day, Patrick Volkerding released a huge slew of updates to the -current branch of Slackware. Some of the major changes include:
And as my grandmother used to say, there have been "a whole mess" of updates and changes to various packages, including these interesting tidbits.
All in all, it looks like Slackware 11.1 (12.0?) will be a pretty major update. It great to see my first, true love going through these changes. I imagine that some of these changes will require some updates to the various installation scripts and the like as well. It will be fun to monitor the development cycle.
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My newest SlackBuild, for the great GTK+ file manager PCManFM, is now available at SlackBuilds.org. I will upload the files and a binary package to my /files directory shortly.
The only issue with this package is that for some reason I could not get it to run on a Slackware system with the 2.4 kernel installed. The package compiled fine, but segfaulted about 2 seconds after opening up, without any helpful error messages in the terminal. I tested the build on two vanilla 2.4 systems with the same result. It works perfectly on a Slackware system with a 2.6 kernel. I contacted the PCManFM developer to see if he had any ideas but have not received a response.
If anyone happens to figure out why it does not work on a 2.4 kernel, please let me know.
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Last night, I submitted two new SlackBuilds to SlackBuilds.org, one for the Openbox window manager (which I love), and the other for the ObConf Openbox preferences manager, and I see that they were accepted into the repository today. I will upload both of these SlackBuilds and the binary packages to my /files directory shortly.
I have nearly completed the testing of my feh/imlib2/giblib suite of SlackBuilds. I really try to make sure these submissions are nice and polished before submitting them to SlackBuilds.org.
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A few Slackware items... my Audacity, wxGTK, and Graveman SlackBuilds are now up at SlackBuilds.org. I also updated my emelFM2 SlackBuild to bump it up to the 0.3.1 release.
I am also working on a new SlackBuild for feh, the awesome command-line image viewer. Feh is one of those excellent little command-line tools that can be so darn handy in so many ways. I usually use it to draw my backgrounds in Fluxbox or other similar window managers, but it has so many uses. I believe Dave Yates of the Lotta Linux Links podcast uses feh to draw his weather map image grabs and to display his web cam shots.
Anyway, it turns out that feh appears to depend on both Imlib2 and giblib. I say appears, because nothing in the feh documentation expressly states those libraries are dependencies, and when I run "./configure --help" on feh it seems to say those two libraries are optional and can be disabled by passing --without-giblib or --without-imlib2 at the ./configure stage. I tried that, but no luck. The ./configure complained of missing giblib and imlib2.
So, it looks like I need to create SlackBuilds for giblib and imlib2 as well -- actually, I have already created all three SlackBuilds and am testing them now :-). I may contact the feh author and see if he can clarify whether these libraries are in fact required, since it's always nice to reduce the number of outside dependencies as much as possible. Update: I contacted feh's author, Tom Gordon, and he confirmed that both giblib and imlib2 are required: "Unfortunately the 'optional' part is a red herring, due to a bug in my autoconf setup - both are required for a happy, healthy feh."
In any event, we'll see how it goes.
The last Slackware item is that I have finished recording my Linux Reality "special episode" on Slackware and should have it cleaned up, edited, and posted in the next day or two. Hopefully, folks will find it helpful. If it piques the interest of just a few listeners, then it will be worth it. Slackware has taught me so much that I think it's a wonderful distribution for those that have a desire to dig a bit deeper into the system.
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I was *this close* to uploading my Audacity-1.2.5 and wxGTK-2.4.2 SlackBuilds to SlackBuilds.org when I noticed a brand spanking new version of Audacity-1.2.6 available for download.
So, I pulled my scripts and packages and reworked and retested them. One odd thing happened -- when building the audacity package, I got errors for a missing library, soundtouch. This error was correct in that I do not have that library installed, but why did I not get a similar error when building Audacity-1.2.5? Very strange. It turns out that including soundtouch is a ./compile option which I then disabled and Audacity-1.2.6 built and installed fine. But I still can't figure out why that error did not appear when building 1.2.5?
Anyway, before I upload this stuff to SlackBuilds.org, I have put the build scripts and the binary package in my slackbuilds section under /files. If you wish, please feel free to test the binary or the SlackBuild and let me know how it goes. Please note that Audacity requires wxGTK, which is the other SlackBuild and package that I have uploaded to /files. Also, please read the Audacity README since it describes some other packages that need to be installed, all of which can be found on the standard Slackware installation disks. If one does a complete Slackware install then those packages are already installed of course.
Update: My Audacity and wxGTK SlackBuilds are now available at SlackBuilds.org. They are also available in my /files directory along with pre-compiled binaries.
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Slackware Linux uses SlackBuilds as a way to build and maintain packages. There is a great community site, SlackBuilds.org that is attempting to keep a repository of high-quality SlackBuild scripts.
Recently, I decided to take a stab at creating some SlackBuild scripts, and contributed my first one to SlackBuilds.org for emelFM2. I am in the process of creating two more SlackBuilds, one for Audacity and one for wxGTK-2.4.2, which is required by Audacity.
I am going to upload my SlackBuilds and the final packages to my /files directory, and will also post updates to the scripts and other things related to SlackBuilds.
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The guys over at The Linux Link Tech Show interviewed Patrick Volkerding of Slackware Linux last night and it was a fantastic interview. I have mentioned my love of Slackware many times and it was so cool to hear Patrick live. If you have not checked out the interview, head over to the TLLTS site and check out the archives and download the MP3 or Ogg Vorbis version of episode #164.
Great job Dann, Alan, Pat, and Linc!
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Finally, after seemingly endless development, Slackware 11 has been released. Although I have been a Slackware subscriber for years and look forward to receiving my official disks, I run a script that rsyncs with both Slackware -stable and -current, and builds a CD or DVD ISO at my option. So, this morning when I saw the announcement, I built a DVD ISO which is now waiting for me at home. :)
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