Andrea Olivato’s Blog

I created a quick gallery of screenshot taken from my Tytn II with new Android 1.5 installed & running like a charm (there’s not even the possibility to make a comparison with windows mobile )

In the screenshots, apart from the home screen and default programs, you can find some useful apps like Useful Switches, Google Maps, TwitDroid, some Games, Wapedia, WpToGo, Skype & much more! Enjoy it!

Gimp rocks. I find it very intuitive, simple to use and easy to learn. It has lots of features and is very expandible via scripts and brushes. Unfortunately I can’t see many designer using it out there. I bet customers usually wants a .psd, not a .xcf dammit.

Anyway that introduction was just to make me feeling a little bit less guilty about the Photoshop installation I realized some days ago, spending no more then 5 minutes configuring and then leaving  the wonderful wine-doors tool doing all the job for me.

The following article is a 3 step and nearly no interaction tutorial to install Photoshop CS2 on (quite) any Linux Environment, owning just a valid Serial Number and an Internet connection.

Below, before the article, you can have a quick graphical preview of the whole process, obtained with some screenshots

1. Install Wine-Doors

Wine doors installation depends on which distro you’re using but the package is usually shipped in official repositories. If not take a look at their downloads page which should help you. On my Gentoo box it was a matter of

autounmask app-emulation/wine-doors-0.1.3
emerge app-emulation/wine-doors

I read quickly Ubuntu/Debian instructions and it seems like you might choose to install the single .deb or add a custom repo to your apt configuration. Should be easy anyway…

2. Setting up Wine Doors

Wine Doors is terribly easy to use and intuitive. On my Gnome desktop it was put on Applications -> System Tools -> Wine Doors. If you can’t find it on your DE menu, just run wine-doors from any terminal.

To install needed core components remember to check the ‘I have a valid Windows(tm) Licence’ box.

Gentoo shipped version got a problem with programs repositories and looking for it on the internet it seems like Arch and Slackware got same problem too. Problems refers to the impossibility to find an xml file containing list of available packages. To solve it you need to open wine-doors preferences via its Edit->Preferences menu, navigate to the Package Repositories tab and add the following ones

Name: Applications
Url: http://www.wine-doors.org/repositories/applications.repo/

Name: System Base
Url: http://www.wine-doors.org/repositories/base.repo/

Name: Games
Url: http://www.wine-doors.org/repositories/games.repo/

Name: Libraries and Fonts
Url: http://www.wine-doors.org/repositories/libraries.repo/

Done this, just refresh your package list from File->Update Package List. This will take a while depending on your connection

3. Download & Install Photoshop

Here’s the funny and incredible part. On the top-right part of your wine doors window, you can search for packages to install. Write photo on it and photoshop will appear alone on your list. Just click install near its name and wine doors will start the download.

If this is the first package you install with wine-doors it will probably need to download some dependancies like fonts or core system files. Allow some time to download and install everything, then it will start downloading photoshop files. Yes, you don’t need cd, dvd or to download anything manual. Wine doors will download the cabs and install them automatically!

As soon as it finishes the photoshop download you can just follow common adobe installation wizard, writing your Serial Number,  choosing an installation location and proceeding with filescopy.  The installer will proceed like it does on any window system and alert you when it finishes.

When you got installation confirmation close the photoshop installer and wine doors. On Gnome environment wine doors is able to install menu entries of Windows programs inside your gnome menu. For example it put photoshop inside my Applications->Graphics menu.

You now just need to start it and after a few secs you will be able to use PS CS2 in your linux desktop without using fully emulated windows systems.

Dropbox is unquestionably a convenient utility for any Desktop Environment. For those who don’t know it, it’s a file sync service, useful to share files beetween two or more computers and keep them syncronized. It’s useful, for example, when you need to
keep your home computer up to date with the work one.

I used to make an intensive use of dropbox last year, but then I switched from Gnome to Fluxbox in my Gentoo work installation and stopped using Nautilus and its dropbox plugin. Since then I began starting Dropbox manually launching Nautilus when I needed to sync the files. That was really annoying…

Yesterday reading Francesco’s blog, I discovered Dropbox wiki and that it was possible to launch it from the command line! As I had it already installed on nautilus it was just a matter of starting the daemon, and that can be easily achieved by using a  python script .

The script can do a lot of things, such as installing the daemon on a non graphical environment, but I just use it to start the daemon on fluxbox startup.

Here’s how I did it on fluxbox:

1. Download the python script

cd ~ && wget https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/43645/dbcli.py

2. Open the fluxbox start script

vim .fluxbox/startup

3. Find this line

exec fluxbox

4. Before that, insert

exec python dbcli.py status &

Yes, it’s that easy! And we just have to thank Filip L. who published this script on Dropbox forums..

If you are interested on knowing all the fantastic feature of Filip’s script please have a look at DropBox wiki page

I finished realizing the second alpha of Afisufi High Tech usplash theme.  In this release I just added the possibility to show the booting text in the bottom-right corner area, matching bacgkround and text color to the theme.

I also finished working on the sources to be able to redistribute them under the terms of GPL v.3. You can find the binary and the sources in the project page.

Below you will find an updated screenshot and the new screencast.

Yesterday night I couldn’t sleep so I started developing a new usplash theme. I realized just the main loading effect but I believe that with this background the theme can become really nice! If you want to know more, go to the project page ->

Note that this theme is a pre-release version, not even near to be stable… so please,please, use it just if you’re sure of what you’re doing.

If you want to see it in action I realized a screencast from virtualbox.

Links

• Project Homepage
• Gnome Look Page
• Screencast

Setting up a svn is not a big deal on any linux box. On Linux Feed server, which is running Debian Stable,it’s just a matter of

$ sudo apt-get install subversion
$ sudo mkdir /var/svn-repos/
$ sudo svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs /var/svn-repos/dummy-project

and add the right permissions. However if you want to create more trunks, manage more users with different permission the whole process may result complex and laborious. This is why I looked for an easy-to-use web interface to administrate one ore more project, create users and groups, assign permissions to projects or sub folders.

I found Usvn a php5 + mysql (nobody likes postges out there uh???) powered admin interface, which is able to do all the operations I explained before. Obviously the whole process needs a complete control on apache and the server you’re going to run svn on, as you need to edit the apache2.conf (or httpd.conf) file, the mod_svn and mod_dav_svn activated, and obviously subversion installed.

During installation I lost 10 mins looking for the mod_dav_svn module, which I could not find with aptitude. I finally understand it was just part of the apache2-svn packagage.

So, after a bit of configuration, db setup, apache reload and  few actions more, Usvn is successfully installed, configured and ready to create users and trunks. It also support the importation of any existing repo on your panel… terribly useful if you want to start using this tool but got some existing repositories.

Here are some links:

Home Page: http://www.usvn.info
Downloads: http://www.usvn.info/download
Docs: https://trac.usvn.info/wiki/Documentation

Slim is a lightweight graphical login manager, for those who don’t know it’s something like GDM and KDM, but a bit less stressing for your hardware, very simple, minimal, easily customizable and skinnable. Also slim can be used with any Desktop Environment and got no heavy dependancies.

Fluxbox, well I hope you all have at least heard something about it, is a great lightweight window manager, that combined with a good filemanager (I prefer pcmanfm), its own panel, a light dock (using simdock here) and a bit of vim can became the right choice for any use.

Together…well you’re completely free from any Gnome,Kde influence and you got a nice and fast Desktop Environment.

For fluxbox installation and configuration there are a lot of guides. Here are my favourites for Gentoo and Ubuntu.

To install slim just use your distribution package manager. For example I did

# emerge -avt slim

or in Ubuntu

$ sudo apt-get install slim

After installin open slim configuration

# vim /etc/slim.conf

and around line 54 you will find your sessions array. Just delete sessions you don’t own or don’t want to use and then set as first session

startfluxbox

We do use the start script as doing this we will be able to use the ‘startup’ script into the .fluxbox directory to start our own apps on DE booting.

Now that slim is configured you can choose to follow the white rabbit or not. If you want to, follow those passages to disable gdm/kdm and start using slim instead.

On Gentoo just change the configuration file of Xdm

# vim /etc/conf.d/xdm

replacing your current variable ‘DISPLAYMANAGER’ from any previous value to

slim

On Ubuntu (and I believe on all the debian based) remove GDM from startup and add slim

$ sudo update-rc.d -f gdm remove
$ sudo update-rc.d slim defaults

Now just logout from any grafical interface and from your shell restart the Login Manager

On Gentoo

# /etc/init.d/xdm restart

While on Ubuntu

$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop && sudo /etc/init.d/slim start

Everything  should work fine, and you should be able to login to your fluxbox desktop. To change session just press F11 while writing your username/password!

Waking up … just some services up

init 1

Getting brain fully functional, connecting to the world

init 3
username
password
/etc/init.d/net.brain start

Look at the clock, it’s late dammit! Tought it was earlier

/etc/init.d/ntp-client start

Get out of the bed, straight to the toilet, flush the toilet

pwd
~/house/bedroom
cd ~/house/toilet
mv ~/.local/share/Trash/files/* ./
rm * -r


Whash teeths and armpit, get a bidèt

cd ~/.body/teeths && svn cleanup
cd ~/.body/armpits && svn cleanup
cd ~/.body/xxx && svn cleanup


Go back to the room, trow away the bed clothes, get the work ones, get dressed

cd ~/house/bedroom
rm ~/.clothes/debian-shirt.sh # To sleep safe
rm ~/.clothes/boxer-shorts-old.sh
wget http://clothes.lan/odd-socks.bz2 ~/.clothes
wget http://clothes.lan/boxer-shorts-new.bz2 ~/.clothes
wget http://clothes.lan/gentoo-shirt.bz2 ~/.clothes # To be powerful
wget http://clothes.lan/black-jeans.bz2 ~/.clothes
bunzip2 *.bz2


Go to kitchen, grab some food, eat it and start digesting…it will take a while…

cd ~/home/kitchen
git clone git://fridge.lan/milk ~/.body/mouth
cd ~/.body/mouth
./configure --prefix="~/.body/stomach"
make chew
make gulp
make digest
CTRL+Z


Exit home, see a fatty neighbour out of his door, say hello to him then go down the stairs ’till out

cd ~/
cd ../
ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 me me 71680 2 dic 09:10 me.person
-rw-r--r-- 1 neighbour neighbour 97280 2 dic 09:10 him.person
echo "Good morning\n";
Good Morning
cd ../
pwd
/