After playing with kamoso for a bit I have decided to put it on the LiveCD for those of us who have webcams and are enthralled (at times) by them. 
Here’s a Screenshot.
Category: KDE 4
June 25, 2011
New Package included on the LiveCd for your WebCam Needs
June 25, 2011
Synergy LiveMedia Bug fix and feature preparation.
In Alpha 3 Richard reported that the Synergy Live Media Creator, also known as the “Compressed Installer” for us limited on hard drive space, wasn’t smart enough to properly calculate the size left over for a persistent overlay file. Of course it will do it properly for ISO files but installing while running Live it didn’t. So I spent some time today working on that and also preparing for future features by adding a drop down. As of right now you can only install a “Clean” system while running live. Meaning none of your changes while running live will be copied over to the new media. However, it is my plan to implement a “Current” install that will copy over the current “Live” system with all of it’s “Current” changes. This will allow those of us running “Live” on our devices like the EeePC to be able to update the squashfs image and clean out our persistent overlay, leaving more room for personal files rather than system updates.
June 23, 2011
Synergy Linux 2 Beta 1 is released.
I’m proud to announce the first Beta of Synergy Linux 2. This now issues in a feature freeze. Pretty much all the install features etc.. will be frozen unless too fix major bugs. Some things have changed in this release, we went with a greener icon theme. Maybe a little much but it was fun. There are now various defaults that are now created when users are, that are meant to make things easier. There will still be various tweaks with minor individual default application settings (most likely icons as well). I’m sure there’s a lot more stuff I’m forgetting between the nightly releases that I have been testing that has changed. Instead of writing though a huge changelog now. I am just going to remember to do my changelog page from now on and leave you with a screenshot.
Torrents can be found here:
The local ISOs can be found in their normal location:
http://www.synergy-linux.com/iso/latest-iso/
** PLEASE GIVE FEEDBACK **
Report any suggestions, question or bugs on the forum:
June 17, 2011
Synergy Linux 2 Alpha 3 (Last Alpha)
The Synergy Linux crew is proud to announce the 3rd and final Alpha release of Synergy Linux 2. In this release we include a few updates and additions. Base System Packages include KDE 4.6.4, Kernel 2.6.38.8 and all the packages that are offered from the Fedora 15 repository. Changes from Alpha 2 to Alpha 3 include some graphic work with kplash, a more simplified version of of our Plymouth theme and updates to the “Compressed Installer” fixing a bug that didn’t update UUID’s in syslinux.cfg. Additions include gtk-gnash for some flash support, Quickformat (a Simple and fast USB Drive formatter) and Arora (A Webbrowser to test gtk-gnash). The ISO already included other applications like Claws-Mail (a Mail Client) and Kword (a Word Processors). For a more complete Application list for check the forum announcement. Please leave feedback!
You can find the 64Bit and 32Bit ISOs at the normal location:
http://synergy-linux.com/latest-iso/
Expect a Torrent file to be posted soon.
** Edit **
You can find the torrent here:
http://synergy-linux.com/latest-iso/Synergy-Linux-LiveCD-2-Alpha3-x86.torrent
June 16, 2011
Some Bugs Squished
Even though Synergy Linux is still Kinda in alpha state (more like Beta) I still use it for daily use. Last night I ran a few tests on my EeePC, I have installed Synergy from a CD Rom Drive but hadn’t really practised from a USB Drive that had been installed from another Live environment. So I gave it a go, and it failed, falling too the dracut console 
after further investigation I found syslinux was looking for the drive using the UUID (A way to identify drives)of the previous install. So the config file wasn’t getting updated with the new systems UUID. After a little bit trying to find out why I created a solution and all seems well. It’s just been updated on the repos and I should have a Alpha 3 out soon with it included.. and then we go too Beta 1 
June 14, 2011
QuickFormat – a simple GUI for Formatting Removable USB Drive
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.
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