Gentoo Linux on an 11? MacBook Air (October 2010)
I just posted a page detailing my experience installing Gentoo on one of the new MacBook Air models (in my case the MacBookAir3,1 with 1.6GHz CPU, 128GB SSD, and 4GB RAM). Hopefully it’ll be useful for others.
Xfce 4.8pre2 released!
Xfce 4.8pre2 is now available for download.
It includes the following releases of Xfce core components:
exo 0.5.5 gtk-xfce-engine 2.6.0 libxfce4ui 4.7.5 libxfce4util 4.7.4 libxfcegui4 4.7.0 thunar 1.1.5 thunar-vfs 1.1.1 xfce-utils 4.7.3 xfce4-appfinder 4.7.1 xfce4-dev-tools 4.7.3 xfce4-panel 4.7.6 xfce4-session 4.7.2 xfce4-settings 4.7.6 xfconf 4.7.4 xfdesktop 4.7.4 xfwm4 4.7.3
Release tarballs can be retrieved from the following mirrors (please note that it may take a few hours for the mirrors to catch up):
http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre2/src http://www.tx-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre2/src http://www.p0llux.be/xfce/xfce/4.8pre2/src http://www.ca-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre2/src
A tarball including all individual releases can be downloaded here:
http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre2/fat_tarballs http://www.tx-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre2/fat_tarballs http://www.p0llux.be/xfce/xfce/4.8pre2/fat_tarballs http://www.ca-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre2/fat_tarballs
Release notes for 4.8pre2
We are pleased to announce the second preview release of Xfce 4.8. This release marks the beginning of the string freeze. From today on until the final release, strings may no longer be changed in the master branch of Xfce core components. This will help translators to prepare their translations for the final release scheduled on January 16th, 2011.
For this release we focused on fixing bugs in all Xfce components. We managed to close a great number of them thanks to all the persons who reported them and tested proposed fixes quickly.
A few minor panel features were added despite feature freeze. We also managed to work on two long time requests: proper support for editing the application menu with menu editors (Alacarte being the one that we tested) and integration with the Compiz viewport. Of course, this release also features a lot of new and improved translations thanks to the amazing work of our translation teams.
A list of all changes is available on:
http://mocha.xfce.org/documentation/changelogs/4.8pre2
We hope you will enjoy this release. Please give us feedback by sharing your thoughts, blogging, tweeting, denting or by filing bug reports. With your help, 4.8 will be the best release ever (at least until 4.10)!
Kind regards and thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release,
The Xfce development team
Xfce 4.8pre2 released!
Xfce 4.8pre2 is now available for download.
It includes the following releases of Xfce core components:
- exo 0.5.5
- gtk-xfce-engine 2.6.0
- libxfce4ui 4.7.5
- libxfce4util 4.7.4
- libxfcegui4 4.7.0
- thunar 1.1.5
- thunar-vfs 1.1.1
- xfce-utils 4.7.3
- xfce4-appfinder 4.7.1
- xfce4-dev-tools 4.7.3
- xfce4-panel 4.7.6
- xfce4-session 4.7.2
- xfce4-settings 4.7.6
- xfconf 4.7.4
- xfdesktop 4.7.4
- xfwm4 4.7.3
Release tarballs can be retrieved from the following mirrors (please note that it may take a few hours for the mirrors to catch up):
- http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre2/src
- http://www.tx-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre2/src
- http://www.p0llux.be/xfce/xfce/4.8pre2/src
- http://www.ca-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre2/src
A tarball including all individual releases can be downloaded here:
- http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre2/fat_tarballs
- http://www.tx-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre2/fat_tarballs
- http://www.p0llux.be/xfce/xfce/4.8pre2/fat_tarballs
- http://www.ca-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre2/fat_tarballs
Release notes for 4.8pre2
We are pleased to announce the second preview release of Xfce 4.8. This release marks the beginning of the string freeze. From today on until the final release, strings may no longer be changed in the master branch of Xfce core components. This will help translators to prepare their translations for the final release scheduled on January 16th, 2011.
For this release we focused on fixing bugs in all Xfce components. We managed to close a great number of them thanks to all the persons who reported them and tested proposed fixes quickly.
A few minor panel features were added despite feature freeze. We also managed to work on two long time requests: proper support for editing the application menu with menu editors (Alacarte being the one that we tested) and integration with the Compiz viewport. Of course, this release also features a lot of new and improved translations thanks to the amazing work of our translation teams.
A list of all changes is available here.
We hope you will enjoy this release. Please give us feedback by sharing your thoughts, blogging, tweeting, denting or by filing bug reports. With your help, 4.8 will be the best release ever (at least until 4.10)!
Kind regards and thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release,
The Xfce development team
SPAM-ips.rb
I'm sharing a small script that allows to scan IPs against Whois and GeoIP databases. It allows to quickly retrieve the geolocation of the IPs and print statistics, so that you know from where the connections are originating from. The Whois information is stored inside text files named whois.xxx.yyy.zzz.bbb.You can download the script here.
Example:
• Usage
$ spam-ips.rb --help
Usage: /home/mike/.local/bin/spam-ips.rb ip|filename [[ip|filename] ...]
• First we retrieve some IPs
$ awk '{print $6}' /var/log/httpd/access.log > /tmp/ip-list.txt
• Now we run the script with the list of IPs inside the text file
$ cd /tmp
$ spam-ips.rb ip-list.txt
Scanning 18 IPs... done.
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: IP Address not found
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: BR, Brazil
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: AR, Argentina
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: SE, Sweden
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: CA, Canada
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: US, United States
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: DE, Germany
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: BE, Belgium
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: FR, France
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: NL, Netherlands
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: NO, Norway
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: FI, Finland
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: DE, Germany
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: FR, France
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: FR, France
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: DE, Germany
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: RU, Russian Federation
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: RU, Russian Federation
3 FR, France
3 DE, Germany
2 RU, Russian Federation
1 US, United States
1 NL, Netherlands
1 IP Address not found
1 NO, Norway
1 FI, Finland
1 SE, Sweden
1 CA, Canada
1 BR, Brazil
1 BE, Belgium
1 AR, Argentina
Total: 18
I wrote this script when I noticed Wiki SPAM and concluded that SPAM originated from a single Bot master but of course I was unable to figure out which one. The script can still be useful from times to times.
SPAM-ips.rb
I'm sharing a small script that allows to scan IPs against Whois and GeoIP databases. It allows to quickly retrieve the geolocation of the IPs and print statistics, so that you know from where the connections are originating from. The Whois information is stored inside text files named whois.xxx.yyy.zzz.bbb.You can download the script here.
Example:
• Usage
$ spam-ips.rb --help
Usage: /home/mike/.local/bin/spam-ips.rb ip|filename [[ip|filename] ...]
• First we retrieve some IPs
$ awk '{print $6}' /var/log/httpd/access.log > /tmp/ip-list.txt
• Now we run the script with the list of IPs inside the text file
$ cd /tmp
$ spam-ips.rb ip-list.txt
Scanning 18 IPs... done.
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: IP Address not found
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: BR, Brazil
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: AR, Argentina
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: SE, Sweden
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: CA, Canada
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: US, United States
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: DE, Germany
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: BE, Belgium
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: FR, France
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: NL, Netherlands
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: NO, Norway
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: FI, Finland
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: DE, Germany
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: FR, France
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: FR, France
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: DE, Germany
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: RU, Russian Federation
xxx.zzz.yyy.bbb GeoIP Country Edition: RU, Russian Federation
3 FR, France
3 DE, Germany
2 RU, Russian Federation
1 US, United States
1 NL, Netherlands
1 IP Address not found
1 NO, Norway
1 FI, Finland
1 SE, Sweden
1 CA, Canada
1 BR, Brazil
1 BE, Belgium
1 AR, Argentina
Total: 18
I wrote this script when I noticed Wiki SPAM and concluded that SPAM originated from a single Bot master but of course I was unable to figure out which one. The script can still be useful from times to times.
Xfce4 Notifyd 0.2.0
Almost exactly two years after the first release of Xfce4 Notifyd, sorry for missing that, 0.2.0 is out.
Most of the work was done by Brian Tarricone, who allowed me to co-maintain this application due to his very limited free time.
The biggest change must be smart notification placement: when there are several notifications, they are placed in a grid-like way, instead of overlapping as they did with the previous version. This also comes with improved support for multiple monitors setups.
We also now support 'gauge' and 'icon-only' notifications as in Canonical's Notify OSD. Xfce4-volumed already uses this to provide a beautiful notification on volume change.
Finally, we are now compatible with the latest specification (0.9) which should fix a great number of issues which happened when applications expected us to be already doing so.
The little screencast I made a while ago:
New features of xfce4-notifyd (Jérôme Guelfucci) from Xfce on Vimeo.
Xfce at OpenRheinRuhr 2010
There will be an Xfce booth at OpenRheinRuhr 2010 on the 13th and 14th of November in Oberhausen, Germany, thanks to Enrico Tröger, Christoph Wickert, Mark Trompell and Christian Dywan.
They will be available for any information request, chit chat, technical or philosophical discussion, installation... You can also get some cool Xfce stickers or see the nice Xfce 4.8pre1 running live!
Thank you all four for this nice initiative and for others, don't hesitate to come and say hello!
Xfce alive and well: new version on its way
On 7 November, Jannis Pohlmann announced the first preview release of Xfce 4.8. The new version of Xfce, which is planned to be released on January 16th, brings much-requested features, and will close a development cycle in which the project made great strides forward.
Let’s first focus on the improvements coming in the next release of Xubuntu’s main component. Perhaps the most requested feature is support for remote filesystems. Much clamoured for, the feature required rewriting big parts of the core – something which has finally been completed.
Apart from that, the application that provides the panel(s) on your desktop has been completely rewritten, bringing a huge number of improvements, most notably in the support for multi-monitor setups, and a pet peeve of mine: the ability to drag application files to the panel to create launchers.
Also high on the wish list of many users was the ability to graphically edit the menus. Although Xfce still doesn’t ship its own menu editor, it is now possible to edit it using menu editors for other standards compliant desktops, such as Alacarte.
So, a lot has been rewritten in this release cycle – we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg above. Most important, however, are the improvements made to the release process in general, which will make the project more future-proof and will increase the speed with which new releases can be made, and lower the entry barrier to new contributors.
To start with the latter point, Xfce was one of the first of now many projects using the Transifex translation environment. Transifex makes it easier than ever for translators to help translating Xfce, as translators can now simply download the current translations and update their new translations via the web interface. I have used it myself, and it really is a huge improvement over the previous, cumbersome process. The new translation process has already attracted quite a few new translators, ensuring more of Xfce has been translated than ever, with even higher quality.
While the size of the development team has fluctuated over time (it has never been large, yet some people moved on – luckily there were new contributions as well), the team has managed to keep the desktop up-to-date with recent technologies, and has rewritten parts of the code, improving the quality to ensure it can be built on properly in the future.
Finally, the release process has been revised, now encouraging many small releases for sub-projects, as opposed to releasing all of them at once with a new version of Xfce. It is now much less work to release a new version, making that task less daunting and thus less likely to be postponed. Automatic release announcements also result in improved publicity for a new release, making it clear the project is alive and well, and more attractive for third-party contributors to help out. It also gets updated translations out faster.
All in all, the new release is shaping up to be a very solid one, closing a few big gaps in the feature set. Xfce is a truly modern desktop environment again, and what’s more important: its future, starting with the release of the new version on January 16th, is looking exceptionally bright.
In other news: as you might notice, this blog has not been updated in a while. Unfortunately, this post does not signify a change in the lack of updates. I’m really too busy with other things in my life that I’m hardly even tinkering with my computer, or actively involved with Xubuntu. So yeah, this blog is still dead. Also, it is not an official Xubuntu blog in any way, so do not draw any conclusions about the status of Xubuntu from this blog post; it is still awesome 
Xfce 4.8pre1 released!
Xfce 4.8pre1 is now available for download.
It includes the following releases of Xfce core components:
exo 0.5.4 gtk-xfce-engine 2.6.0 libxfce4ui 4.7.4 libxfce4util 4.7.3 libxfcegui4 4.7.0 thunar 1.1.4 thunar-vfs 1.1.1 xfce-utils 4.7.1 xfce4-appfinder 4.7.1 xfce4-dev-tools 4.7.3 xfce4-panel 4.7.4 xfce4-session 4.7.1 xfce4-settings 4.7.4 xfconf 4.7.3 xfdesktop 4.7.2 xfwm4 4.7.1
Release tarballs can be retrieved from the following mirrors (please note that it may take a few hours for the mirrors to catch up):
http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre1/src http://www.tx-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre1/src http://www.p0llux.be/xfce/xfce/4.8pre1/src http://www.ca-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre1/src
A tarball including all individual releases can be downloaded here:
http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre1/fat_tarballs http://www.tx-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre1/fat_tarballs http://www.p0llux.be/xfce/xfce/4.8pre1/fat_tarballs http://www.ca-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre1/fat_tarballs
Release notes for 4.8pre1
The Xfce development team is proud to announce the first preview release for Xfce 4.8. Together with this preview release, the Xfce project announces the feature freeze for the final 4.8 release which is set to be pushed out to the world on January 16th, 2011.
This release incorporates major changes to the core of the Xfce desktop environment and hopefully succeeds in fulfilling a number of long time requests. Among the most notable updates is that we have ported the entire Xfce core (Thunar, xfdesktop and thunar-volman in particular) from ThunarVFS to GIO, bringing remote filesystems to the Xfce desktop. The panel has been rewritten from scratch and provides better launcher management and improved multi-head support. The list of new panel features is too long to mention in its entirety here. Thanks to the new menu library garcon (formerly known as libxfce4menu, but rewritten once again) we now support menu editing via a third-party menu editor such as Alacarte (we do not ship our own yet). Our core libraries have been streamlined a bit, a good examplle being the newly introduced libxfce4ui library which is meant to replace libxfcegui4.
Perhaps the most important achievement we will accomplish with Xfce 4.8 is that, despite suffering from the small size of the development team from time to time, the core of the desktop environment has been aligned with today’s desktop technologies such as GIO, ConsoleKit, PolicyKit, udev and many more. A lot of old cruft like has been stripped from the core as well, as has happened with HAL and ThunarVFS (which is still around for compatibility reasons).
Thanks to the awesome Transifex translation platform, our language teams have been able to update their translations at an incredible pace. Please include them when praising this release!
A complete list of all changes since the latest stable release is available on
http://mocha.xfce.org/documentation/changelogs/4.8pre1
Below you will find download information for Xfce4.8pre1. Please give our mirrors a few hours to synchronize. We hope you will enjoy this release, feel encouraged to blog and tweet about it! Feedback is welcome in all forms. Bugs can be reported in our bug tracker as usual. We need your help to make Xfce 4.8 our best release ever!
Kind regards and thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release,
The Xfce development team
Some Xfce News
Documentation
Nick Schermer is working on the infrastructure for the new documentation. It will be written in Mallard and translatable using Transifex. There are already a few drafts available: Nick made one for Xfce4 Panel (git branch) and Jim Campbell made one for Xfce4 Screenshooter (Bugzilla entry). Once the infrastructure is ready, contributions will be welcome! I will keep you posted.
Xfdesktop4
This is the second BIG thing currently going on: Jannis is porting Xfdesktop4 to GIO. He expects to have it done by the next weekend, the current work is available in a git branch. This is one of the last remaining by tasks for 4.8, so this is a really good news! <bisounours>Rock on!</bisounours>
Xfce Settings Helper
For those of you who care, I implemented two little features last week. First, Xfce now remembers the state of the Numlock when closing the session and restores it on startup. Gone are the days of numlockx \o/. Moreover, for people using xmodmap, the settings helper automatically processes .Xmodmap on start up and when changing the layout/variant using the Xfce settings dialog.
By the way, since my last post about the keyboard settings improvement, I also reviewed/applied a few patches by Martin Pitt and Lionel Le Folgoc which fix some crashes/bugs in the new code.
Xfce Utils
I fixed a bunch of easy bugs/enhancement requests for Xfrun. It can now handle URLs, opens files with the default handlers, folders with the default file manager... I also fixed history loading for the "Run in terminal" check box, fixed handling of command line options and added "#" as a shortcut to read man pages. I now plan to work on auto completion for path and command.
I also reworked an old patch by Mike Massonnet to improve the look of the Xfce documentation, it looks really neat now. I will try to see if we can use it with the new documentation.
Goodies
Florian Rivoal, maintainer of xfce4-cpugraph-plugin, launched a "all your unmaintained goodies are belong to me" operation. Basically he offered to maintain a huge number of unmaintained goodies for which there are a great number of patches waiting for review in the Xfce Bugzilla. You can find more details on this thread. This heroic move should not make you forget that contributors/new maintainers are welcome! Florian will not be able to implement new things (or only a limited number) given the work it represents but only to keep those apps functional which is already awesome!