A major change from Foresight 1.x to 2.0 (Beta) is the removal of proprietary codecs, which are no longer installed by default.
Depending on where you live and the legality of the codecs, users can install MP3 and DVD support via sudo conary update group-codecs.
You, of course, assume all legal responsibility. 🙂
Will Farrington was kind enough to write a recipe for an early look at the next generation of Banshee, which is an early alpha. I’ve been able to get the recipe to cook locally, but not on rMake, so it’s not available in the repos yet, but we’re working on it.
With the exception of two visual quirks that come and go, it’s running great. Last.fm / audioscrobbling works 10 times better than Banshee 0.13.2, and the new UI gives you the ability to view the browser on top or on the left. (The screenshot below is with the browser on the left).
Best of all, searching overall is much faster. It still has support for Smart Playlists and DAPs, and I’m going to test the DAP functionality overnight. (update – I didn’t read the Alpha notice that pops up every time you start it well enough – no DAP support or plugins yet!) I don’t see plugin support yet, but all I need right now is Last.fm.
Well done Banshee developers!
Banshee alpha running on Foresight 2.0 Beta 1:
Here are just a few things going on in the world of Foresight recently:
We have even more news in the works, so keep an eye on Planet Foresight!
Shuttle released a press release today:
Shuttle Teams with Foresight Linux on $199 KPC
City of Industry, CA., MArch 4, 2008
Shuttle today announced that the newly launched $199 KPC will feature the Foresight Linux operating system. With an intuitive interface and user focused design, Foresight does away with the need for users to be familiar with Linux.
A host of the latest software is packaged with the operating system, giving users convenient and enjoyable access to music, photos, videos, documents, and the Internet. Even keeping up-to-date with the latest features and fixes is a simple process with the user friendly update button.
Foresight uses the revolutionary Conary® Package Manager developed by rPath and distributed as Open Source software under the terms of the Common Public License. With the Conary® Package Manager, the system updates only the specific files in packages which need to be updated so updating takes little time and bandwidth.
Shuttles KPC includes many software packages already installed, including the OpenOffice.org® office suite, the Firefox® web browser, the Pidgin instant messenger, the Banshee music player, the Totem movie player, the F-Spot photo organizer, and Compiz for 3D desktop effects. For more details visit: http://us.shuttle.com/kpc
We’re putting a lot of work making sure Foresight 2.0 is ready and polished as we are excited to introduce Foresight to new users who buy Shuttle’s KPC. A new addition to Shuttle’s family of SFF (small form factor PCs), the KPC features the ability to customize the look of the front of the computer, and features a 80 GB hard drive, Intel Graphics, 512 MB ram, and choice of Intel processors.
More information at Shuttle’s KPC website.
Phoronix has another story up on the continued delay of the UT3 Linux client, ported by Ryan Gordon, aka icculus.
One sentenced in the story rubbed me the wrong way:
Ryan Gordon, the one responsible for the Unreal Tournament Linux ports, has yet to provide the Linux gaming community with any status update or respond to our inquiries.
I don’t understand how it is Ryan’s responsibility to provide an update. It has already been covered multiple times that the Linux client is hung up due to a legal issue with some offending code in the game. We should be grateful Ryan clued us in originally to what the delay was. However, Ryan works for Epic as a contractor – he’s not an official employee, and he shouldn’t be the one responsible for updating the community. As it’s a legal issue, of course he’s not going to comment. The constant speculation and conspiracy theories have grown old quickly.
If someone wants an official quote, they should be talking to someone at Epic’s office, maybe Mark Rein. I subscribe to the UT3 mailing list, and the number of questions, comments and rampant speculation on this issue, as well as the the constant badgering of Ryan are counter-productive. If he could say something, he would.
I absolutely agree that it’s disappointing we don’t have an official statement from Epic one way or another if a Linux client will ever be released. As someone who’s an avid gamer on Linux, I’m disappointed I can’t play one of my favorite franchises. But leave Ryan out of it, he’s done everything he can.
Lots of stuff going on:
More to come soon, and maybe even a really big announcement sometime in March.
I’ve been remiss in recapping SCALE – I really need to blog more.
In addition to all the great things I saw in the Linux community at SCALE, the best part is the face to face communication you get, especially within your own community, namely Foresight.
Spending time with Ken, Kevin and Stu, usually after the show while grabbing a beer, we had time to talk all things Foresight. Our discussions ranged from:
The best part of these in person discussions is how fired up and excited you get. The ideas are free flowing, and you really come back jazzed to get even more involved and make a difference. Foresight is still a relatively young project, and with so much to do, anyone can jump in and start helping on any number of tasks from web design or development, packaging, documentation writing or marketing. I continue to work on the Foresight Love project modeled after GNOME Love, and will add tasks that are easy for a new contributor to jump in and help with. I need to add some links to that page to within the wiki, and make it more specific. More to come soon.
I spent last week working at my office in Los Angeles so I could also attend the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) this past weekend. Along with Ken VanDine and Kevin Harriss, we hosted the Foresight booth on the show floor.
_
(L to R, myself, Kevin Harriss and Ken VanDine)_
We also hung out with Stu, who flew in with Ken and was manning the Bongo Project booth. Not only was Stu showing off the Bongo Project, which by itself is a cool mail and calendar server and web client, he was showing a demo of it as an rPath appliance.
(Picture taken by Kevin Harris under a CC Attribution-Share Alike license)
I attended Jono Bacon’s keynote, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Coming of the Linux Desktop which was a fantastic talk. Jono is right: it’s all about the community.
I later had the chance to catch up and chat with Jono, as well, as Ken, and we talked about the community, how we can work together, and Ken’s thoughts on helping the Patch Squad and making it easy for users to do more testing and bug triaging.
I met some folks at dinner Friday night, including Eric, Christian and Jeff, a couple of which were also at the GNOME booth next door to Foresight at the show. Chatted with Christian briefly on a new RSS reader he just started working on for GNOME, which looks awesome.
Saturday night Ken participated in the Weakest Geek competition (based on the TV show Weakest Link), and I’m proud to say he wasn’t one of the first two voted off. It was pretty darn funny, and other contestants included Ted Haeger (formerly of Novell), Jono Bacon (Ubuntu), Jeremy (Linuxquestions.org) and two others. The questions were hilarious, and some of the answers were even funnier.
Unfortunately, I missed Karen Sandler’s talk Sunday. Karen is an officer of the Software Freedom Conservancy and gave a talk on Legal Organizational Issues for Free Software Projects. I’m really kicking myself for spacing this one and missing it.
I put up a handful of pictures in a Flickr set, and Kevin has even more.
We’re still at SCALE, manning the Foresight booth and introducing Foresight to lots of new users. (I’ll need to check download statistics and see if we made an impact).
While here, Ken helped me get 32 bit Firefox running on my laptop, which is running 64 bit Foresight. (I missed having Flash).
There has been some discussion on the mailing list lately, and we are leaning towards including 32 bit Firefox by default, and leaving Epiphany at 64 bit for those users who want a 64 bit browser.
To get 32 bit Firefox installed, run the following commands:
sudo conary erase firefox
sudo conary update firefox['is: x86']
sudo conary erase nspluginwrapper['is: x86_64']
sudo conary update gtk-engines:lib['is: x86']
sudo conary erase nspluginwrapper['is: x86']
Reboot.
And voila, Firefox is now runnning 32 bit, and Flash should just work.
Thanks to Ken for walking me through it this morning.
A few anniversaries:
I’m off to Los Angeles first thing in the morning, and working out there this week. So if you don’t see me in IRC or blogging, now you know why. This weekend I will be at SCALE at the Los Angeles Airport Westin. You’ll be able to find in the bright green t-shirt. Someone buy me a drink on Saturday.