Ruby 1.9.3 is *finally* released. Their NEWS and ChangeLog are available.
And I have packages built for slackware-current and slackware64-current here:
ruby-1.9.3_p0-i486-1_vb.txz [MD5] [ASC]
ruby-1.9.3_p0-x86_64-1_vb.txz [MD5] [ASC]
Again, these are built on the -current development branch, so use at your own risk. 
Take care,
vb
This year has been a nice for socializing with nerds. Attending conferences is something that can get tiresome, if the content is something you do not find interesting or stimulating. Thankfully, I have no required conferences, so I can be choosy (schedules permitting). Naturally open source and languages would top the list of places to attend.
First off, was hanging out with the KDE folks in San Francisco, CA for CampKDE – April 4,5 2011. There were a number of good talks, and a great opportunity to shake the hands of names that I have seen around, as well as meeting many new folks. The kde-promo team has a YouTube channel, that they have published all the talks and interviews to. http://www.youtube.com/user/kdepromo
The talk I gave there is titled “Slackware: Quickly and Easily Manage Your KDE SC Hacking.” You can get the slides in [PDF] or [ODP], plus the videos posted on the kde-promo channel have the full talk (youtube.com/watch?v=Qs7vR3POHeo), as well as an interview afterwards by Wade Olson (youtube.com/watch?v=YIpUmPul1i4).
Next, was down to Spartanburg, SC for the SouthEast Linux Fest (SELF) – June 10-12, 2011.
This is the third year that I have attended SELF, and second time to speak, but what differentiated this year from any other speaking engagement (in the past, or distant future), was that it was a talk title “Slackware Demystified”, and none other than the founder of Slackware Linux, Patrick Volkerding was not only in attendance, but sitting on the front row! The slides from this presentation are available in [HTML] or [PDF]. Unfortunately, the videos have not been published yet. Hopefully they will actually get them published, unlike the previous two years…
Lastly … so far, was a local conference, that I did not speak at, only attended. JrubyConf – August 3-5, 2011. While I use MRI Ruby much more than JRuby, this conference was a great way to be around and hear from many brilliant folks (Like Wayne Seguin, Charles Nutter (headius), Nick Sieger, and Jim Weirich, to name a few), plus I felt that I needed to make up for missing out on RubyConf taking place in Baltimore, MD.
The KDE folks strongly encouraged making it to the DesktopSummit, which was hosted in Berling, Germany this year. While it was surely appetising to think of attending, it did not work out this time. It would have been nice to shake hands with some fellow contributors, like Eric Hameleers (alienBob). Better luck next year.
All good times, I look forward to next year, or event the rest of 2011.
Feel free to leave feedback on the talks.
Take care,
vb
If you are one that is not afraid to recompile your kernel, then here is a little treat for you.
http://slackware.com/~vbatts/things/linux-2.6.37.6-logo_slk.patch.gz
This patch applies to the Linux kernel source stored in /usr/src/linux of your Slackware Linux 13.37 install. If you do not have a ‘.config’ file present, then do
#> zcat /proc/config.gz > /usr/src/linux/.config
#> cd /usr/src/linux
#> zcat $PATH_TO_DOWNLOADS/linux-2.6.37.6-logo_slk.patch.gz | patch --backup -p2
Assuming there are no errors, then you can proceed along with
#> make bzImage
#> cp arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-1337-2.6.37.6
If you are running the ‘-smp’ kernel, then append ‘-smp’ to the kernel version. To determine if you are, then run
$> uname -r
The assumption with this option, is that this new vmlinuz will be using the kernel modules provided with the package
‘kernel-modules-2.6.37.6*’.
IF you want to differentiate this kernel from the stock installed kernel, open the ‘.config’ file, search for the CONFIG_LOCALVERSION line, and set the value to something brilliant, like
CONFIG_LOCALVERSION="_1337"
This however, will require to (re)compile all the modules and the bzImage kernel. So then it may be just as easy to do
#> make tar-pkg
#> cd tar-install
#> rm -rf boot/vmlinux* lib/firmware/
#> ts=$(date +%s)
#> makepkg -l y -c y ../linux_2.6.37.6_1337-${ts}-$(uname -m)-1_mine.tgz
#> installpkg ../linux_2.6.37.6_1337-${ts}-$(uname -m)-1_mine.tgz
Explanation of events here:
In Either Event, you will need to:
If You Want to fetch the kernel source, rather than use /usr/src/linux, download it here http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.37.6.tar.bz2
Also, so that you are not suspect of malicious kernel patches. The patch adds ‘drivers/video/logo/logo_slk_clut224.ppm’, enables this logo image to be chosen with the config option of ‘CONFIG_LOGO_SLK_CLUT224′.
Then BEHOLD!
Take care,
vb
Some time ago, the brainstorm of a simple GUI package viewer for my Slackware desktop would be handy. While completely unnecessary, I thought it would be neat.
So what did I do? Created a project on github.com for an application that did not exist yet, and commenced to reading the source of others with similarly simple application frameworks.
While having the project created out on github was a reminder, it was not much for encouragement, so the idea lay dormant for a while. With a free moment this past weekend, I solidified several ideas and actually sought to make headway on this task. But I will say, that having the project on github for so long, has increased the rank on Google’s search results for “dobbage” so that is a plus
While I am crafty with many tools/languages, my weapon of choice remains ruby. For my development time, I can get an idea prototyped very quick. At which point I can decided whether it is worth it to use another language (for performance, etc.). All that to say, dobbage is written in Ruby.
Initially, I had thought that ruby-gtk2 would be the windowing toolkit to use, but then Qt and QtRuby are included in the stock Slackware installation.
I must say, there is not an abundance of applications to find, that are written in QtRuby, the bindings to access the Qt libraries is very nice and extensive. This is my first “GUI” application, so it’s all new to me. The Qt API documentation is written for C++, but once you get the hang of translating their C++ explanation to a Ruby implementation, then it’s all gravy!
Dobbage only has one dependency, that is not included in a stock Slackware install, and that is my slack-utils ruby library, which can be built as an installable Slackware package, or available as a rubygem. slack-utils does provide several command line tools, but more importantly, it includes a library for a Slackware Linux harness.
Right now, dobbage only shows information for packages currently installed, and for “removed” packages. Removed packages include previous iterations of upgraded packages. There is a little fancy-ness in the status bar too. Other ideas include the ability:
In any event, the code is available at github.com/vbatts/dobbage and here are a few screen shots.
Take care,
vb