Running Sky from tel.red on Fedora25

On Fedora 25, sky crash up on start in QT.

Program received signal SIGABRT, Aborted.
0x00007ffff112692f in raise () from /lib64/libc.so.6
(gdb) bt
#0  0x00007ffff112692f in raise () at /lib64/libc.so.6
#1  0x00007ffff112852a in abort () at /lib64/libc.so.6
#2  0x00007ffff200dcb1 in  () at /usr/lib/sky/lib/libQt5Core.so.5
#3  0x00007ffff24ee835 in QGuiApplicationPrivate::createPlatformIntegration() () at /usr/lib/sky/lib/libQt5Gui.so.5
#4  0x00007ffff24ee955 in QGuiApplicationPrivate::createEventDispatcher() () at /usr/lib/sky/lib/libQt5Gui.so.5
#5  0x00007ffff21cea64 in QCoreApplicationPrivate::init() () at /usr/lib/sky/lib/libQt5Core.so.5
#6  0x00007ffff24f2340 in QGuiApplicationPrivate::init() () at /usr/lib/sky/lib/libQt5Gui.so.5
#7  0x00007ffff2be62b9 in QApplicationPrivate::init() () at /usr/lib/sky/lib/libQt5Widgets.so.5
#8  0x0000000000434e41 in main ()
(gdb) quit
A debugging session is active.

Once workaround, is to let sky use the system provided qt5 libraries. 

$ rpm -q sky
sky-2.1.6327-1.fc24.x86_64
$ cd /usr/lib/sky

$ sudo mkdir old

$ sudo mv libQt5* old

$ sky

Would be nicer, if sky could use system libraries by default.

$ rpm -Uvh sky-system-qt ( meta package,installs sky and qt deps)

$ cat sky.sh

if shibboleet and ~/config/sky/.version is older than install

  use system library and start sky

  if start failed, disable shibboleet

else

  ld library jazz

  sky

fi

Using C++ REST on Fedora Linux

Microsoft has release Casablanca ( C++ REST) to github. I have pushed Fedora packages for these to copr .

Happy -lcpprest

Increase the offline storage quota for Kindle in epiphany

You can install Amazon's Kindle Cloud reader as a webapp on Fedora Linux using epiphany from gnome-software.

This just leaves you with one issue, the default offline storage quota for Database is a measly 6m, which you hit real quick.

Turns out, webkitgtk3 used to offer an api webkit_get_default_web_database_quota with webkitgtk3, which has been removed from webkitgtk4 used by epiphany.

To manually update this quota, locate the folder used by epiphany in application mode for Kindle.

$ ls ~/.local/share/
...
epiphany-kindlecloud-xxx
...


Open up the Database file here, and manually set the quota

$ cd ~/.local/share/epiphany-kindlecloud-xxx/databases
$ sqlite3 Database.db
sqlite3 > SELECT * FROM origins;
https_read.amazon.com_0| 6164480
sqlite3 > UPDATE origins SET quota=102400000 WHERE origin=https_read.amazon.com_0;


And now back to life.

Lync on Linux

If you are looking to run Lync, aka Skype on Business on Linux you are in luck. Fisil has a client for Linux hosted at http://tel.red/ .

Unfortunately, this came with a bit of a hitch. The application failed to run on Fedora 23 (rawhide). Sky is bundling its own libraries !

$ sky
/opt/sky_linux/sky: symbol lookup error: /lib64/libXxf86vm.so.1: undefined symbol: _XEatDataWords

The solution, would be to load system library

$ LD_PRELOAD=/lib64/libX11.so sky

reference:

_XEatDataWords was add to fix an issue - http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libXxf86vm/commit/id=284a88e21fc05a63466115b33efa411c60d988c9

Edit: Fixed with 381 ( http://tel.red/beta/sky_redhat64_v2.0.381.rpm ) and above.

Unity vs gnome-shell : the small things - status tray

Unity vs gnome-shell : the small things - status tray 

gnome-shell status tray is an interesting implementation , written in js. Consequently, easy to learn, write for, and extend. What does bother me here, is the focus steal.

When a user click on a status tray icon and moves the cursor down diagonally, focus will switch to next nearest tray icon. This is rather annoying, and more so due to the space between the menu and the icon.

A bug has been filled for this ( gtk menu grab ? ), which Iam unable to locate.

With Unity, this is not seen as the icons are smaller and consequently user has very minimal chance of switching applet when a user moves the cursor diagonally down. Seems to me a good implementation of UI ( or is this fitt's law ?)

edit: gnome-shell has made the larger, thus fixing this issue for me.

Tablets : Unity and gnome-shell

I have thinking about writing this down for quite a while, my experiences with WeTab running Unity and gnome-shell.


Unity seems a good interface for a netbook ( I have not used this on 396.2mm laptop yet). The chink being, poor Tablet support. On install, I had setup auto-login, and was presented with the desktop and launcher. Opening up an app, and maximizing it hides the launcher, which I found really hard to find again. The scroll bar is something I was unable to find in applications, and Touch gesture has not been implemented yet for scrolling. Otherwise, a good deal.


gnome-shell is one the best interface I have seen ( I have limited exposure to KDE ) , when it comes to touchscreen devices. The toggle buttons are huge and easy target to access. The application switch is trivial, as "Activies" is always visible. Switching workspace is easy, not that it is not completely hidden off during "Window Picker mode. The notification is one thing, which I easily miss out on and consequently every action which needs my attention. I would be really happy, if I could show/hide notification from system menu's notification toggle switch.


The good about both, Tiling and "auto-maximization" of Windows works good. We could try working with a Tiling window manager on Tablet, with multiple desktop. What we would need is Thumb keybord, or a keyboard which can stick to one corner assuming we use a single hand to type.


The bad about both, we need bigger fonts and target area. X still lacks a sound multi-touch foundation in most distribution. Scrolling is still a bit painful on touch devices, without gestures such as two finger scroll. Will everyone have a multitouch device ?  gnome-settings-daemon xrandr plugin should also probably rotate the Touchscreen input.



reference:
https://desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/towards-multitouch-gnome-shell
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design
http://unity.ubuntu.com/projects/
http://who-t.blogspot.com/2011/12/multitouch-patches-posted.html
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multitouch
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=652247
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=659498

FudCon 2011 : here I come

 

I am heading to fudcon this year, and hopefully will present a talk to elp people starting to working with open source, specifically GNOME. 

Do vote for me, here - http://fudcon.in/sessions/contributing-opensource

Dell ST2220T on linux

and it works on Fedora linux with evdev on Xorg.

From Gnome

Thanks to Gopal for tracing this one out. Information posted at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/703118 .

gnome legacy and gnome 3

For all the folks, who like to stick with "gnome legacy", instead of gnome 3 with bling and gnome-shell, setup the default gnome session accordingly

$ cd /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions
$ mv gnome.session gnome-new.session
$ mv gnome-fallback.session gnome.session

Fedora 13, With Xorg 1.8.x , GNOME 2.30 and "fixed" nautilus

With release of GNOME 2.30, nautilus has refeverted to browser mode as default. So long spatial mode.

In Fedora Xorg is based of udev, rather than hal for automagic hardware detection.

Added Note : I have noticed Totem remembers the last played position

Fedora+Gnome keep getting better with time.

Receiving files from Phone to computer

duh ! To receive files from phone and other bluetooth enabled device to a laptop running linux, enabled "Receive files ..." option from file sharing preferences in gnome.

Notes: Bluetooth on Fedora

rt2860 on Fedora11

For people missing out on wireless driver on Asus Eee 1000H, rt2860 has made it into stagging, and is not part of Fedora11. To build the same, download the latest snapshot from here, using "snapshot" link.

once done, extract the same and append the line below to Makefile

obj-m := rt2860sta.o

run the command below to build, and install the driver

$ make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd` modules modules_install

To load the driver, once built, use the command below

$ modprobe rt2860sta