Planet Ark Linux
x86_64 build starting to look good
bero - May 11 2008 9:43
I've just upgraded the x86_64 build machine to the current packages - and it is finally behaving like it should.
It is not quite ready for a release yet because too many packages are simply missing (all packages that have been built before we had an x86_64 build machine and haven't had a rebuild since just don't exist) - but it should be ready soon.
There will probably be an x86_64 version of 2008.1 so people have something to work with while we're breaking dockyard-devel for moving to KDE 4.x - but it will probably be released later than the normal 32bit version.
2008.1 finally about to be released
bero - May 11 2008 9:32
Just when nobody was believing it anymore..... We're about to push out the 2008.1 release!
There have been a lot of holdups, mostly caused by assorted Xorg bugs and now they're all fixed, all other important packages are up to date, and we haven't received any reports about problems with current snapshots for almost 2 weeks.
The last known problem is the scribus plugin loader not working, causing most notably its SVG import and export to disappear - I've already tracked that one down (missing symbol export for the plugin loader) and am currently building a fixed version.
After that, it should be pretty much ready to go.
Simply Qt
David Tio - Feb 26 2008 4:24
Writing blogs is really difficult. I tried starting one in blogspot about Java in Ark Linux, but I can hardly find any time to update it at all.
Anyway since Ark Linux is heavy on KDE and the current KDE released in Ark Linux is based on Qt3 (soon it'll be based on Qt4) I think I would start another blog here to write simple Qt tutorials.
Some of you might be wondering why another tutorial when Trolltech documentation is always excellent. I am not sure myself, but since I'm in the middle of porting qtparted to Qt4, I thought I might as well write the knowledge gain somewhere and hopefully someone find it useful.
So watch out for my next entry
Kernels and diskspace...
bero - Jan 28 2008 11:38
It's release time again -- and time to make some "lesser evil" type decisions.
With multi-core CPUs becoming very common lately, we should definitely have an SMP capable kernel on the installation CD to take advantage of them -- but given we don't have a lot of extra space, that means we have to remove something else.
An obvious candidate is the UP kernel - given an SMP kernel can run just fine on UP machines, it doesn't hurt a lot, except UP machines will be slightly slower (but of course that makes exactly the machines that would need better performance slower), and of course the UP kernel continues to be available through apt-get/kynaptic for people who want to install it manually.
Other possibilities include removing the pentium3 kernel (moving pentium3 users to the generic i586 kernel), but that would not save enough diskspace for 3 SMP kernels (generic i586, pentium4, athlon).
Linux game petition
bero - Dec 29 2007 15:27
I've just been told there's a petition going on to port Oniblade
(some Windoze game) to Linux, and the developers have agreed to port it if they get 10000 signatures -- please sign it, even if you don't care about this particular game: If one game maker starts pushing out a Linux version, others are likely to follow!
Planet Ark Linux blog has opened!
bero - Dec 27 2007 20:26
For those who want to see more news than just new releases and important news - such as reports on current development issues, small news, or random rants from the team - we've opened the Planet Ark Linux blog -- take a look here
The next release
bero - Dec 27 2007 20:20
We're planning to make an interim release just before the move to KDE4 - to make the features we've worked on in the mean time -- like more graphics and WiFi drivers -- available to people who aren't ready to switch to a new desktop.
The problem is how to name it -- given that we probably won't have it done in 3 days, the logical name would be 2008.1 -- but following up with the KDE4 based release a month later as 2008.2 would imply a "small upgrade" to users just looking at the version number, and that may not be a good idea given KDE4 is a huge change.
Calling it 2007.2 despite its release in early 2008 would make technical sense, given the user visible changes from 2007.1 aren't huge - but it's somewhat odd to release a 2007.x version in 2008.
We're also considering an alternative name just for this release, maybe "Ark Linux KDE3 final", but so far, we haven't come up with the perfect choice - we welcome suggestions!
The Planet is Open
Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen - Dec 27 2007 20:13
For those who want more than just overall news from the Ark Linux team, this is where you will be able to find blog entries by the team members, including personal entries and more general development information.
Status of KDE 4 integration
bero - Dec 27 2007 20:13
People who have read our announcements and looked at the dockyard-devel tree (which still has KDE3) may be wondering what happened to our KDE4 plans.
We have packaged all of KDE4 (outside the build system) and it's running nicely - but we've decided to sort out a couple of issues before pushing it through the build system.
Most importantly, there's an (apparent) gcc problem that causes KDE4 to crash on startup when built with gcc 4.3 snapshots later than rev. 130324 - we're working on sorting this out (and using an older gcc for the test builds for the time being).
The next step is porting the kapabilities system to KDE4 - after that, KDE4 packages will go into dockyard-devel for public testing, and we'll make an alpha release featuring KDE4 as its only desktop.
New image fixes installation on AHCI SATA machines
bero - Oct 7 2007 20:35
We have found a bug in Ark Linux 2007.1 that prevents a newly installed system from booting if it is installed on a SATA harddisk using an AHCI controller.
There will be an updated release (2007.1-SR1) to fix this and a few other issues in a while - in the mean time, if you're affected by this problem, you can use the Dockyard (Development version, stable branch) image to install.
Aside from this fix, the current dockyard image is identical to 2007.1.
