Today while on KDE Planet, I saw a neat little app that the Pardus guys annouced seeing an opportunity to make life a little easier for me or whoever else uses Synergy I decided I needed to package this guy and include him for the next Alpha release. However my initial tests lead me to an issue in PyKDE4, it seems this same issue cropped up in 4.6.1 was submitted from Fedora for upstream inclusion into KDE was included in KDE 4.6.2 but then regressed in KDE 4.6.3. Of course no one knew this and of course I end up finding it. So my solution for now was to rebuild kdebindings 4.6.3 for Synergy reapplying the patch until everything is sorted with KDE 4 and Fedora. It’s kinda funny because the kdebindings package in the KDE 4 suite is the most frustrating to me as it seems in some way it gets broken a lot. By no means am I blaming anyone this one package has the bindings for Ruby, Python and various other scripting language all with different versions to watch and maintain. Almost seems like a moving target. In any case the cool little app is working and is in the Synergy Linux repos, soon to be included in the last Alpha coming soon, Alpha 3.
Category: Applications
June 14, 2011
QuickFormat – a simple GUI for Formatting Removable USB Drive
June 10, 2011
Look Familar, Synergy LiveMedia Creator
So I have a lot more stable version of LiveUSB Creator that I have renamed LiveMedia Creator, why you may ask? Because it just doesn’t write to USB. Yesterday I installed one of my post Alpha 1 builds onto my EeePC and was surprised how well things worked, using “Live Mode” as a compression method too squeeze a 3G system into 580M space so I can use 3.5G for more fun stuff. The memory improvements from the Pre Alpha 2-0.13 release really shine. I regress though, I am writing this too talk about the changes (though hackish) I have done to LiveUSB Creator. On the Live 
CD (or USB Key) it allows you to install onto the first device (/dev/sda1). I have mainly tested this on Fat32 partitions and keys, but it works well. Something that I also wanted to be able to have happen is to be able to daisy chain. For example if I install from CD Rom to a USB Key I wanted to be able to then install a “Live System” using the newly created USB Key onto yet another USB Key. Before with LiveUSB Creator you weren’t able to do this. It looked for the isoLinux Folder and when found renamed it syslinux after it was copied to the new device, on systems that had already been copied using LiveUSB Creator the isolinux folder it was looking for didn’t exist because it had been renamed syslinux so the install failed to other media. I have it set now to where it looks at the source media and if it doesn’t find the isolinux folder it will then see if a syslinux folder exists and if so copy it and skip the renaming. So far with most of my tests things have gone well. My next step is I want to be able to “snapshot” Live Systems, but that might be a while.
** Edit **
For those of you who want to know just how hackish my changes are you can find the source here
June 9, 2011
Blogilo now a standalone package
At one point Synergy Linux was based on Unity Linux, which was based loosely (in a matter of personal definition) on Mandriva. One thing great and sometimes annoying (for the packager) was how Mandriva split apart packages. An example would be kdepim, you could install blogilo, kontact, kmail, and korganizer all separate. Which was a great space saver if you didn’t want to whole kdepim suite installed to just one one application, blogilo.
With Fedora this isn’t the case. You end up with a very vanilla-esc package that will install everything, wanted, or not. In the case of kdepim I stripped out kmail, korganizer and a few other kdepim apps because they use Akonadi and I still feel that:
1. Akonadi hasn’t caught on enough yet, to be something wanted by a majority of users.
2. The Database Backend (MySql) is way too system intensive for what it’s used for (at this point), storing contacts.
Akonadi is still installed as it’s needed for kde base packages now but without these applications installed and calling it I have been able to disabled it as a back ground process so it won’t call mysql and waste memory on something that’s not being used. With kdepim uninstalled though it leaves out one application that is quite handy (at least for me) Blogilo. So last night I pulled it from the latest kdepim release and it’s now offered in it’s own package and actually will be installed by default on Synergy ISOs after Alpha 1. I hope those of you who blog can enjoy it as much as I do.
June 8, 2011
Copy Current Live System?
Owning an older EeePC 701, I am pretty limited on disk space. Though I do have a MSI Wind with a much larger screen and a 160G drive the EeePC works great in the car when tethered with my phone. So I still get a decent amount of use with it, plus it uses SSD and gives the feel it’s more durable. However the 2-3G to install Fedora or Synergy on it just for basic applications come really close to filling the drive and not leaving much for anything. If I had the 2G Surf model of the EeePC it owuld be nearly impossible to use. To get around this I have edited Fedora LiveUSB install to treat the EeePC SSD Drive as USB Sitck and Install compressed, then I use the persistent storage to make sure my changes get saved. It works out well.
You can see the difference with the “Copy running LiveSystem” You can click this option select a “Persistent Storage” size and then click “Create Live USB”. For now this option only works from CD and still has some issue, but I have been able to get it too work. I’m not sure if at this point I am going to continue changing LiveUSB or create a separate application.
You can find this application on the Live Desktop underneath the “Install to Hard Drive” Icon. Use with Caution though as it allows you too install to sda1 which will wipe out any existing data on sda. **Warning** Make sure you know what you’re writing too or are on a test machine if you’re testing this application.
June 7, 2011
Synergy 2 Alpha 1 is Released
The Synergy Linux team would like to announce it’s first official Alpha for Synergy 2. This Alpha comes with some fixes for memory usage (Running at 180M Idle) a still buggy Compressed install method and limited amount of Applications. This is not the Final application set for Synergy 2 final. Suggestions are always nice.
Both 64Bit and 32Bit isos can be downloaded Here:
http://synergy-linux.com/latest-iso/
More information can be found on the Forum
March 15, 2011
A New Beginning, Test Release 0.33
At around 667 Megabytes Synergy Linux is proud to announce it’s first official test release based on Fedora.
We’re really not that different just yet then any other Linux distribution (Fedora 14 KDE), other then we have a few packages I have repackaged, right now we’re more of a proof of concept, but we may be useful to someone who likes KDE 4 and various KDE applications and wants something up-to-date.
ISOs for both x86_64 and i586 can be found here, along with md5sums
http://synergy-linux.com/iso/fedora/synergy/
More detailed information follows.
Base System:
Kernel 2.6.35.11
Xorg Server 1.9.4
(No Hal)
Desktop Environment:
KDE 4.6.1
Using Oxygen-Gtk as default theme for KDE and GTK Applications
Applications:
–Games–
-KMahjongg
-KPatience
-KMines
–Graphics–
-Okular
-Gwenview
-KolourPaint
-KSnapshot
-KColorChooser
-KRuler
–Internet–
-Blogilo
-Krfb
-KGet
-Akregator
-Kopete
-KPPP
-Konversation
-KMail
-KNote
-KRDC
-Ksshaskpass
-Konqueror
–Multimedia–
-KsCD
-Juk
-Kmix
-Dragon Player
–Office–
-KAddressBook
-Kontact
-KOrganizer
-KTimeTracker
-KWord
-KThesaurus
–Utils–
-Ark
-Klipper
-KCalc
-KNotes
-Kwrite
-KPackageKit
March 8, 2011
GoodBye Hal
Stripping down my livecd build last night I took out Hal just too see how far Fedora has come along. Everything installed fine it seemed until I ran the acanconda live installer (liveinst) at which point it crashed asking for hal-lock. Running the LiveCD though everything else seemed to work. KDE seemed to funcion fine, the system just seemed fine without Hal. So I decided to see if I could find anything to change anaconda to not need Hal anymore, udisk would be a find replacement and I couldn’t see why they hadn’t started using it. After a quick google search I found this:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=670312
So this just means I need to update anaconda if at all possible for the Fedora 14 version I am basing Synergy off of and I can then drop Hal offically. That also means Fedora is a lot closer then some would have thought too dropping Hal. Synergy is as close as a few hours at least for our core package set.
July 26, 2010
New Package: Aurorae Designer
Just packaged and put Aurorae designer in the Synergy KDE 4 repository, people will see it synced to the Unity KDE 4 repository either in the next few weeks when 4.4.5 final is released and tested on our end, or if I get a lot of requests to move it over. However a lot of the KDE 4 users I know of using Unity and KDE 4 are using our Synergy KDE 4 repository so if that’s you then you have this package now.
What is it?:
For those of you who remember Emerald from the distant compiz past that you will feel right at home with the concept of Aurorea Designer. Basically it allows you to edit window theme. So if you’re anything like me and you’re in search for that perfect window theme and you find an Aurorae theme that might be close but still needs a little tweaking.. well this is the application for you. It will allow you to tweak your newly found close to perfect Aurorae theme to perfection (in your own mind).
kde-apps.org Link:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/AuroraeDesigner?content=122763
Screenshot:
