linuxsysconfig

Most Linux distributions don’t always provide latest versions for all packages within the official repository (e.g. the current VLC version in Fedora 13 is 1.0.6, the  one from the Rawhide repo — which includes packages for the next Fedora release — is 1.1.0, but the latest release as of today is 1.1.2).

So, what do you do to run the latest version?

Compile it yourself, of course.

How?

1. Download the latest version (1.1.2)
2. Unpack it and cd to the newly created folder (vlc-1.1.2). Here you will find the README file and the installation instructions (same as here)
3. Compile it. I recommend creating a new path (e.g. /opt/vlc) to use it as the installation PREFIX

• ./configure –prefix=/opt/vlc
• make
• su -c "make install"

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Yet another recovery OS has been updated this month. SystemRescueCD 1.5.8 is a minor update (the 2^nd release in 3 weeks) to provide new standard kernels (2.6.32.16), alternative kernels (2.6.34.1) and a new version of the gparted package.

Although I’m not a big fun of it (I prefer RipLinux) I wanted to give it a try, as I’d heard a lot of positive things about this OS.

Being a recovery OS, SystemRescueCD comes with lots of boot entries, as well as numerous boot options. The options list is impressive  — if you can read it (the color scheme with the blue/cyan background and the grey/yellow font is not the happiest combination). The developers even included an “out of the box” PXE boot server (which must be manually started after login) that can be used by other computers on the network to boot SystemRescueCD and  use it for  troubleshooting (http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-manual-en_PXE_network_booting).

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If you get the “Battery may be broken” message you’re most likely running Linux and Gnome. This a gnome-power-manager feature that displays the low capacity warning for broken batteries.

This can be annoying so here’s how you can get rid of it:

• install gconf-editor (yum install gconf-editor on Fedora  / sudo apt-get install gconf-editor on Ubuntu)
• run gconf-editor and navigate to apps–>gnome-power-manager–>notify
• uncheck low_capacity

That’s it.

Other battery info can be displayed with ‘cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info’.

Recent Firefox versions (3.6.X) have introduced a new way to install themes. Called ‘personas’, themes can be accessed, previewed and installed at www.getpersonas.com. I’ve recorded a screencast to show you how easy it is to do that.

You can find more info at mozillalabs.com/personas.