A Man and his Penguin

No, don’t worry - I haven’t acted on my threat to switch away from Ubuntu. I found out about VirtualBox, a newly-GPLed virtualisation solution for Windows and Linux.

For simplicity, I decided to install the Ubuntu Dapper package, which is actually the Free-As-In-Beer (closed source) Enterprise version; well, it’s free for personal use. It was very easy to set up:

1. Install package
2. Add your user to the vboxusers group (usermod -G vboxusers <username>)
3. Run VirtualBox
4. Use the wizard to set up a virtual machine
5. Start the virtual machine.

Some quibbles:

The wizard allowed me to use an ISO disc image as a virtual CD, or the device /dev/cdrom; but not the /dev/dvd device. Which meant that I couldn’t install Fedora directly from my DVD, I had to make a disc image of it first.

VirtualBox’s sound output only supports OSS, not ALSA. And it doesn’t seem to work for me anyway.

Note: I found out what this problem is: You have to log out before your group change takes effect. For an unknown reason, Virtualbox told me that it didn’t have permission, when I tried to start the Fedora virtual machine. So I added root to the vboxusers group, and started Virtualbox as root. This worked.

Note: Rebooting is better.

But those are my quibbles. The speed of the virtual machine is excellent. I’ve just successfully installed Fedora, which is a better result than I’ve ever had with Qvm86. Unlike all other virtualisation solutions I’ve tried before, Virtualbox automatically set up a networking bridge to my host operating system, so if I wanted to I could write a blog post from within the VM. Right now I’m checking my webmail in Fedora. Awesome stuff; let’s hope the open-source community makes it even better!

I didn’t end off restoring Joey’s computer, but he was impressed with (a VERY old version of) Beryl. I also gave him a Dapper Live CD.

But anyway, his computer really was running very slowly. The games were basically unplayable.

Quote:

Joey: "I brought all these games."
Me: "Okay, I’ll just restart into Windows."
Joey: "Why?"
Me: "Well, those are Windows games you’ve got there!"

Also, my friend Shiv from India finally got his Dapper CD. He put it in on Windows and started installing the open-source programs on there, under the impression that they constituted Linux.

After I set him straight, he started trying to boot it. For some reason, it wouldn’t boot with the default parameters. But he had said "I’m running Linux now" when in fact he was just running Gaim on Windows, which made it more difficult to diagnose the problem!

And then he started saying that it was asking him for his language, keyboard type, and location, and that there was an error message after that point. I thought he was using the installer on the Dapper CD, and he said he wasn’t. I finally figured out that he was trying a Breezy live CD that a friend had burnt for him.

Let’s hope he can get the disc going. It’s probably just a case of using the special boot options.

Copland: Coming along nicely. I have started work on the HFS browser, and an "About" box for Copland. I also released the code for the AiffInterchange program. Plus, I found out the greatest thing for the XorgProfiles program - /proc/cpuinfo actually contains information about what Powermac is being used! For instance, it tells me that I’m running a first-generation iMac with a "750" processor (G3) running at 333MHz. Absolutely correct. This program is going to be a cinch, as long as I can get around to writing it. I have the feeling that it’s not going to make it in time for Copland Community Preview.

I’m also a little worried about disc space, so I’m going to build a first ISO without LinBolo, PearPC or Sheepshaver. However, I am thinking of packaging LinBolo and Aleph One and putting up my own little repository for Copland - all the programs Mac users would appreciate that couldn’t fit on the disc.

Isn’t it cool that Marathon Aleph One still maintains a classic Mac OS build? I played it with the Marathon 2 demo levels the other day. There haven’t been too many visible changes - just higher resolutions and different-looking menus, but now SDL has been used and the game is fully cross-platform. I’ve got a feeling that they tweaked the game engine a little to make the aliens tougher, which is certainly welcome!

I didn’t end off restoring Joey’s computer, but he was impressed with (a VERY old version of) Beryl. I also gave him a Dapper Live CD.

But anyway, his computer really was running very slowly. The games were basically unplayable.

Quote:

Joey: "I brought all these games."
Me: "Okay, I’ll just restart into Windows."
Joey: "Why?"
Me: "Well, those are Windows games you’ve got there!"

Also, my friend Shiv from India finally got his Dapper CD. He put it in on Windows and started installing the open-source programs on there, under the impression that they constituted Linux.

After I set him straight, he started trying to boot it. For some reason, it wouldn’t boot with the default parameters. But he had said "I’m running Linux now" when in fact he was just running Gaim on Windows, which made it more difficult to diagnose the problem!

And then he started saying that it was asking him for his language, keyboard type, and location, and that there was an error message after that point. I thought he was using the installer on the Dapper CD, and he said he wasn’t. I finally figured out that he was trying a Breezy live CD that a friend had burnt for him.

Let’s hope he can get the disc going. It’s probably just a case of using the special boot options.

Copland: Coming along nicely. I have started work on the HFS browser, and an "About" box for Copland. I also released the code for the AiffInterchange program. Plus, I found out the greatest thing for the XorgProfiles program - /proc/cpuinfo actually contains information about what Powermac is being used! For instance, it tells me that I’m running a first-generation iMac with a "750" processor (G3) running at 333MHz. Absolutely correct. This program is going to be a cinch, as long as I can get around to writing it. I have the feeling that it’s not going to make it in time for Copland Community Preview.

I’m also a little worried about disc space, so I’m going to build a first ISO without LinBolo, PearPC or Sheepshaver. However, I am thinking of packaging LinBolo and Aleph One and putting up my own little repository for Copland - all the programs Mac users would appreciate that couldn’t fit on the disc.

Isn’t it cool that Marathon Aleph One still maintains a classic Mac OS build? I played it with the Marathon 2 demo levels the other day. There haven’t been too many visible changes - just higher resolutions and different-looking menus, but now SDL has been used and the game is fully cross-platform. I’ve got a feeling that they tweaked the game engine a little to make the aliens tougher, which is certainly welcome!

I didn’t end off restoring Joey’s computer, but he was impressed with (a VERY old version of) Beryl. I also gave him a Dapper Live CD.

But anyway, his computer really was running very slowly. The games were basically unplayable.

Quote:

Joey: "I brought all these games."
Me: "Okay, I’ll just restart into Windows."
Joey: "Why?"
Me: "Well, those are Windows games you’ve got there!"

Also, my friend Shiv from India finally got his Dapper CD. He put it in on Windows and started installing the open-source programs on there, under the impression that they constituted Linux.

After I set him straight, he started trying to boot it. For some reason, it wouldn’t boot with the default parameters. But he had said "I’m running Linux now" when in fact he was just running Gaim on Windows, which made it more difficult to diagnose the problem!

And then he started saying that it was asking him for his language, keyboard type, and location, and that there was an error message after that point. I thought he was using the installer on the Dapper CD, and he said he wasn’t. I finally figured out that he was trying a Breezy live CD that a friend had burnt for him.

Let’s hope he can get the disc going. It’s probably just a case of using the special boot options.

Copland: Coming along nicely. I have started work on the HFS browser, and an "About" box for Copland. I also released the code for the AiffInterchange program. Plus, I found out the greatest thing for the XorgProfiles program - /proc/cpuinfo actually contains information about what Powermac is being used! For instance, it tells me that I’m running a first-generation iMac with a "750" processor (G3) running at 333MHz. Absolutely correct. This program is going to be a cinch, as long as I can get around to writing it. I have the feeling that it’s not going to make it in time for Copland Community Preview.

I’m also a little worried about disc space, so I’m going to build a first ISO without LinBolo, PearPC or Sheepshaver. However, I am thinking of packaging LinBolo and Aleph One and putting up my own little repository for Copland - all the programs Mac users would appreciate that couldn’t fit on the disc.

Isn’t it cool that Marathon Aleph One still maintains a classic Mac OS build? I played it with the Marathon 2 demo levels the other day. There haven’t been too many visible changes - just higher resolutions and different-looking menus, but now SDL has been used and the game is fully cross-platform. I’ve got a feeling that they tweaked the game engine a little to make the aliens tougher, which is certainly welcome!

I didn’t end off restoring Joey’s computer, but he was impressed with (a VERY old version of) Beryl. I also gave him a Dapper Live CD.

But anyway, his computer really was running very slowly. The games were basically unplayable.

Quote:

Joey: "I brought all these games."
Me: "Okay, I’ll just restart into Windows."
Joey: "Why?"
Me: "Well, those are Windows games you’ve got there!"

Also, my friend Shiv from India finally got his Dapper CD. He put it in on Windows and started installing the open-source programs on there, under the impression that they constituted Linux.

After I set him straight, he started trying to boot it. For some reason, it wouldn’t boot with the default parameters. But he had said "I’m running Linux now" when in fact he was just running Gaim on Windows, which made it more difficult to diagnose the problem!

And then he started saying that it was asking him for his language, keyboard type, and location, and that there was an error message after that point. I thought he was using the installer on the Dapper CD, and he said he wasn’t. I finally figured out that he was trying a Breezy live CD that a friend had burnt for him.

Let’s hope he can get the disc going. It’s probably just a case of using the special boot options.

Copland: Coming along nicely. I have started work on the HFS browser, and an "About" box for Copland. I also released the code for the AiffInterchange program. Plus, I found out the greatest thing for the XorgProfiles program - /proc/cpuinfo actually contains information about what Powermac is being used! For instance, it tells me that I’m running a first-generation iMac with a "750" processor (G3) running at 333MHz. Absolutely correct. This program is going to be a cinch, as long as I can get around to writing it. I have the feeling that it’s not going to make it in time for Copland Community Preview.

I’m also a little worried about disc space, so I’m going to build a first ISO without LinBolo, PearPC or Sheepshaver. However, I am thinking of packaging LinBolo and Aleph One and putting up my own little repository for Copland - all the programs Mac users would appreciate that couldn’t fit on the disc.

Isn’t it cool that Marathon Aleph One still maintains a classic Mac OS build? I played it with the Marathon 2 demo levels the other day. There haven’t been too many visible changes - just higher resolutions and different-looking menus, but now SDL has been used and the game is fully cross-platform. I’ve got a feeling that they tweaked the game engine a little to make the aliens tougher, which is certainly welcome!

Posted to a forum on www.linuxmail.org:

I am trying to upload a video for my friend and it is taking waaayyy to long!

If anyone could please help out, that would be great! 

How can someone who knows the word "upload" not be aware that videos are bigger files and therefore take longer to transmit?

As I’m sure many people have said: "If a picture is worth a thousand words, is a second of video worth 24,000 words?" (of course, Americans would say "29,970 words" as that’s the frame-rate of their video)

Hypercard still rocks more, but I think Pythoncard is the best darn programming aid I’ve got on my computer.

I figured out how to use it. You *don’t* have an extra script file; I’ll tell you how it works.

When you create a program in Pythoncard, two files are created. There is a "programname.rsrc.py" which is a Python dictionary containing all the information about where the widgets are, what the background’s name is, all the properties etc. Then there’s a "programname.py" which has a basic framework, importing a Pythoncard module and creating an class which inherits the module, and starting the main loop running. Then, you add methods to that class, i.e.:

def on_exitButton_mouseClick(self, event):

And that method will instantly act as a handler; whenever you click the button called "exitButton", the method will be called. Referencing other widgets is also easy:

def on_exitButton_mouseClick(self, event):
   self.components.textField.text = "Hello, world!"

as "text" is a property of "textField".

That’s all there is to it. You can use any Python module you like. With the "commands" module of Python, you can use any command-line app if you like too. I decided to use Zenity, to make up for Pythoncard’s lack of pre-built dialogs.

Since Pythoncard uses WxPython as the GUI toolkit, it all looks native. Oh sure, there are some rough spots (okay, so it’s very buggy, and RadioGroup widgets cause the program to crash), and some things I wish they’d included (painting tools, labels on the progress bars, etc) but on the whole it’s a very nice, easy-to-use GUI designer.

In a matter of an hour, I created and coded the Copland AIFF Interchange program. I’ve got it interacting with the Sox command-line program to convert AIFFs to WAVs. I am yet to stress-test it and add error handling for basic errors, and I also want to include a "Convert to FLAC" option (because I love FLAC as much as I love Pythoncard), but that stuff is seriously only another hour away.

If you want an easier way to write GUIs in Python that look just like GTK, you MUST check this out. You’ve got to download the source as the Ubuntu package is broken, but there’s not even any compiling necessary, and you can run it straight from your home directory.

http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/

1. My friend Joey is coming around. I’m going to be backing up his Windows partition, erasing it, putting Windows back on. Apparantly he’s running very low on disk space, so I won’t be able to fit Linux onto it. If there’s enough space, I’ll certainly ask again :-)  I’ll be running an XGL/Compiz session at that time lol

2. Play some networked games against him. Not sure if Nexiuz will run on his laptop, as it doesn’t even run well on my computer!

3. Try and do some more work on Copland.

I’ve got an artwork contributor for Copland now - his name is Dean, and he appears to have thought carefully about what will look good in the interface. Right now he’s just submitted some potential logos - I’ve got to get back to him at some point regarding that. They look good. And unfortunately I somehow LOST the .config directory from my interface prototype - looks like I’ll have to boot up the Xubuntu Live CD and make the modifications again. This time I’ll burn the .config directory to CD immediately so there’s no chance I can lose it.

Cool thing I learnt: Anything that you want put into the home directory of a new user on Debian systems, you can put into the /etc/skel directory. On Dapper, have a look in it - it should contain a symbolic link to /usr/share/example-content!

I’m also going to send a message to the Programming Talk forum on Ubuntu Forums and ask about my FUSE script - if they can’t help I’ll just have to write a GUI frontend to hfsutils and hfsplus myself!

And I’ll be checking out Pythoncard. I have it installed from source, since the Dapper package from the repos doesn’t work, but I actually can’t figure out how the script that you write in codeEditor gets attached/referenced to the .rsrc file in resourceEditor!

1. My friend Joey is coming around. I’m going to be backing up his Windows partition, erasing it, putting Windows back on. Apparantly he’s running very low on disk space, so I won’t be able to fit Linux onto it. If there’s enough space, I’ll certainly ask again :-)  I’ll be running an XGL/Compiz session at that time lol

2. Play some networked games against him. Not sure if Nexiuz will run on his laptop, as it doesn’t even run well on my computer!

3. Try and do some more work on Copland.

I’ve got an artwork contributor for Copland now - his name is Dean, and he appears to have thought carefully about what will look good in the interface. Right now he’s just submitted some potential logos - I’ve got to get back to him at some point regarding that. They look good. And unfortunately I somehow LOST the .config directory from my interface prototype - looks like I’ll have to boot up the Xubuntu Live CD and make the modifications again. This time I’ll burn the .config directory to CD immediately so there’s no chance I can lose it.

Cool thing I learnt: Anything that you want put into the home directory of a new user on Debian systems, you can put into the /etc/skel directory. On Dapper, have a look in it - it should contain a symbolic link to /usr/share/example-content!

I’m also going to send a message to the Programming Talk forum on Ubuntu Forums and ask about my FUSE script - if they can’t help I’ll just have to write a GUI frontend to hfsutils and hfsplus myself!

And I’ll be checking out Pythoncard. I have it installed from source, since the Dapper package from the repos doesn’t work, but I actually can’t figure out how the script that you write in codeEditor gets attached/referenced to the .rsrc file in resourceEditor!

1. My friend Joey is coming around. I’m going to be backing up his Windows partition, erasing it, putting Windows back on. Apparantly he’s running very low on disk space, so I won’t be able to fit Linux onto it. If there’s enough space, I’ll certainly ask again :-)  I’ll be running an XGL/Compiz session at that time lol

2. Play some networked games against him. Not sure if Nexiuz will run on his laptop, as it doesn’t even run well on my computer!

3. Try and do some more work on Copland.

I’ve got an artwork contributor for Copland now - his name is Dean, and he appears to have thought carefully about what will look good in the interface. Right now he’s just submitted some potential logos - I’ve got to get back to him at some point regarding that. They look good. And unfortunately I somehow LOST the .config directory from my interface prototype - looks like I’ll have to boot up the Xubuntu Live CD and make the modifications again. This time I’ll burn the .config directory to CD immediately so there’s no chance I can lose it.

Cool thing I learnt: Anything that you want put into the home directory of a new user on Debian systems, you can put into the /etc/skel directory. On Dapper, have a look in it - it should contain a symbolic link to /usr/share/example-content!

I’m also going to send a message to the Programming Talk forum on Ubuntu Forums and ask about my FUSE script - if they can’t help I’ll just have to write a GUI frontend to hfsutils and hfsplus myself!

And I’ll be checking out Pythoncard. I have it installed from source, since the Dapper package from the repos doesn’t work, but I actually can’t figure out how the script that you write in codeEditor gets attached/referenced to the .rsrc file in resourceEditor!