Digital Stronghold

This entry should have been posted some time ago. Well, I hope this would still serve as a valuable reference.

The most annoying part in making your OS work is the X server especially if you are using decade-old displays that can only handle a maximum of 1024x768 @ 60Hz. Worse if its EDID is not being read correctly by the driver. I guess driver writers from nVidia should pay much attention to this issue.

Video Card: GeForce FX5700 128-bit 256mb
Display: DTS CM-14D (Made in China)
Xorg Version: xorg-x11-7.1
nVidia Driver Version: nvidia-drivers-1.0.8776

Setting things for Xorg and nVidia proprietary drivers may not be of much pain for Ubuntites but it is the other way around for Gentooligans.

(more…)

F4L is an open source development environment for Macromedia Flash, a multi-platform format(swf/svg) widely used for web applications and vector animation.

I have found out that there is no existing ebuild yet for this cool project. It is not included in the official Gentoo Portage yet.

Here is the ebuild. Use at your own risk. I assume you already have a working overlay of your local portage.

in file f4l-0.2.1.ebuild

# Copyright 1999-2006 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: $
	
inherit qt3 eutils
	
DESCRIPTION="F4L is an open source development environment for Macromedia Flash"
HOMEPAGE="http://f4l.sourceforge.net/"
SRC_URI="mirror://sourceforge/f4l/${P}.tar.bz2"
	
LICENSE="GPL-2"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="~x86"
	
DEPEND="=x11-libs/qt-3.3*"
RDEPEND="${DEPEND}"
	
src_compile() {
	"${QTDIR}"/bin/qmake -o Makefile ${PN}.pro || die "qmake failed"
	emake || die "emake failed"
}
	
src_install() {
	dobin bin/${PN}
	newicon src/cursor/main_ico1.xpm ${PN}.xpm
	make_desktop_entry ${PN} \"Flash for Linux\" ${PN}.xpm Graphics
}

Enjoy!

Get in position and wait for my go. I recompiled the kernel applying Con Kolivas‘ kernel patchset for linux-2.6.18. Accordingly, his patchsets are designed to improve system responsiveness with specific emphasis on the desktop, but suitable to any workload. Feedbacks show that it scales well for a typical desktop use. If you want to try this out, here is a comprehensive walkthrough that will get you on your feet along the way.

I also felt the need of updating my Xorg. I had a smooth shift from Xorg 6.9 to Xorg 7.1. So far so good.

Firefox 2.0 rocks as well! There are obvious improvements so grab yourself one. Currently, it is masked by x86 keyword in the Gentoo Official Portage so just deal with it.

Now I can update my Gentoo box even on a daily basis. Using my 30GB USB mass storage device, I can do so even if my prepaid internet account runs zero. Here’s a short guide for those who haven’t tried this one yet.

An emerge –sync alternative would be downloading the latest snapshot on any Gentoo mirror site using a machine with a high-speed connection. You might want to salvage the /usr/portage/distfiles of your machine first before proceeding.

kee ~ # rm -r /usr/portage/
kee ~ # tar -xvjf portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /usr/
...
kee ~ # update-eix
Reading Portage settings ..
Building database (/var/cache/eix) from scratch ..
[0] /usr/portage/ (cache: metadata)
     Reading 100%
[1] /usr/local/portage (cache: none)
     Reading 100%
Applying masks ..
Database contains 11268 packages in 149 categories.
kee ~ # env-update
>>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
kee / #

Now for downloading packages for emerge.

kee ~ # emerge -fp package ... 2> somefilename.txt

The links are now stored in the text file. Download ‘em on a machine with a high-speed connection. Place all the downloaded files inside /usr/portage/distfiles of your machine then.

kee ~ # emerge package ...

I’m bored. Cheers.