Alberto Milone's Homepage

There are a few changes in this new release:

1) the new NVIDIA driver 100.14.23 is now available

2) the new ATI driver 8.42.3 is available, however I have to say a few things about it:

* Compiz might be a bit slow, at least on my X1600 (make sure you’re using Compiz 0.6 or higher)
* Driver 8.42.3 doesn’t support ATI Workstation cards (FireGL) therefore, if you own a FireGL card, Envy will install version 8.40.4
* As AMD admits in the release notes, version 8.42.3 doesn’t work with Debian/Ubuntu 64bit, however Envy uses a patch which fixes this problem (Thanks to Aric Cyr and Mario Limonciello)

3) Envy is now localised in the following languages: Russian, French, Finnish, German, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Chile), Italian, Turkish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese, Austrian, Polish, Amharic (Ethiopian), Serbian, Slovak.
NOTE: only the GUI is localised. The textual installer is still in English.

4) I have modified “Envy legacy” so as to make work exactly like “Envy new” sure that I can maintain it without too much effort. As a result, localisation is available also in “Envy legacy”.

Translators
Amharic (Ethiopian): hb
Austrian: Paul Hoell
Brazilian Portuguese: Jose Nilton, José Tadeu Barros
Dutch: Alexander van Hoorn
Finnish: Jukka Kauppinen
French: Mathieu Velten, Christian Kaenzig, Omega13
German: Carlos Diener
Polish: Grzegorz Więcek
Portuguese: Walker Pt
Russian: Anton Starikov, Ivan Potapov, Nicholas Vavilov
Serbian: Zoran Olujic
Slovak: Michal Bellovič
Spanish (Chile): Cristóbal Tapia
Spanish (Spain): David Rando
Turkish: Serkan Çalış

NOTE1: if I forgot (or mispelled) your name, please let me know
NOTE2: if you want to translate Envy into your language, I’ll be glad to include your translation in the next release.

What makes open source projects rock?
It’s the amount of people passionate about it, willing to sacrifice their own spare time (or money) to contribute to open source projects.I would like to thank all the people who have helped this project with bug reports, donations, patches and translations. In other words You rock!

P.S. You can get Envy here as usual

Posted by Alberto Milone | October 29, 2007 3:06 pm
Filed under: Debian, Envy, Planet, Python, Ubuntu
Comments (33) |

I have added multilingual support to Envy’s next release, which is still under development, but so far I have added only the support for the Italian language as regards, the GUI. The textual installer will remain in English (at least in next release).

What can you do to help?

1) First of all install gettext:
sudo apt-get install gettext

2) download this file in you home folder.

3) Now there are two ways you can follow this step.

If your Operating System is localised in the language into which you’re planning to translate Envy (e.g. you want to translate Envy into Spanish and your OS is in Spanish) you can simply type this command:
msginit --input=envy.pot

Otherwise, if (like me) you’re using your OS in another language (I’m Italian but my Ubuntu is in English) you will have to type:
msginit --input=envy.pot --locale=the_desired_locale

Of course you will have to replace “the_desired_locale” with the language into which you want to translate Envy. For example if you want to translate it into Spanish you will have to put “ES” (so that it looks like this: “msginit –input=envy.pot –locale=ES”)

then you will be asked to enter your email address (and no, I won’t spam you ) and you will have your .po file (e.g. “es.po”)

4) you will have to translate a few lines just as I did in this example. The “msgid” contains the original text string while the “msgstr” is where you will have to put the translated string.

5) Remember to put your name in the msgstr related to the “translator-credits” msgid in your po file.
#: ../envyui/gtkenvy.glade.h:25
msgid "translator-credits"
msgstr "Alberto Milone"

6) Upload your .po file here:
NOTE: if you can’t upload the .po file you can email me the file:
[ you can find my email address on my website: http://www.albertomilone.com/ ]

And here is the result:

EDIT: so far I have received translations into:
Russian, French, Finnish, German, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Chile), Italian, Turkish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese, Austrian, Polish, Amharic (Ethiopian), Serbian, Slovak

NOTE: you can see which translations are already available here

Posted by Alberto Milone | October 25, 2007 12:24 pm
Filed under: Debian, Envy, Planet, Python, Ubuntu
Comments (21) |

If you installed Envy New and you typed “envy -t” you might have noticed this error (which you can’t reproduce if you use the graphical installer):

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "interface.py", line 13, in
from instun import main
ImportError: No module named instun

This problem is fixed in envy_0.9.8-0ubuntu5.

Thanks for your feedback.

P.S. I’m planning to set up 2 repositories (1 for Envy New and 1 for Envy Legacy) so that you don’t have to update Envy manually.

Posted by Alberto Milone | October 18, 2007 9:53 am
Filed under: Debian, Envy, Planet, Python, Ubuntu
Comments (29) |

There are a few announcements I would like to make:

1) Envy is now available in 2 different packages: “Envy New” and “Envy Legacy”.
“Envy New” supports only Ubuntu Gutsy and Ubuntu Feisty. It is compliant with Debian’s New Python Policy.
“Envy Legacy” supports all the other systems which Envy used to support (have a look at my website)
Please, make sure you select the right package for your OS.

2) Envy now features a restore function which will completely remove what Envy did to your operative system and set the driver to either “nv” or “vesa”. You can call it by typing:
sudo envy --uninstall-all

This feature was suggested by Michael Vogt so that (in the future) Update Manager will be able to call this function and clean the system before you do a dist-upgrade (e.g. if you upgrade Gutsy to Hardy). This will finally solve the problems with Envy and dist-upgrades.

3) Envy can now be removed with a simple “sudo apt-get remove envy” without any need to type “sudo rm -R /usr/share/envy”.

4) Localisation is not ready since I wanted to release Envy today and I had to code at nights (I have an exam on October 22). I’ve decided to postpone this feature (I’ll do it after the exam, I promise).

5) This release includes a few bugfixes as usual.

6) After the exam I will ask your contribution in 2 ways:
a) I will open a logo/theme contest so as to replace Envy’s current theme (which is possibly Envy’s weakest point)
b) I will ask your help to have Envy localised in your language

You can get Envy here as usual

NOTE: if you installed a previous version of Envy you will have to type “sudo rm -R /usr/share/envy” once more (this is the last time, I promise ) before you install version 0.9.8.

Posted by Alberto Milone | October 17, 2007 6:18 pm
Filed under: Debian, Envy, Planet, Python, Ubuntu
Comments (28) |

I have tested URandR on my old laptop (also known as “the hair dryer”, for obvious reasons ) which has a rather old ATI card.

If you own an ATI card which works with the open source driver (”ati”) and your OS is Ubuntu Gutsy, I would be glad if you could test URandR and post the results.

You can get it here.

NOTE: make sure you read the “Known Problems” section before you try URandR

Posted by Alberto Milone | October 16, 2007 12:11 am
Filed under: Debian, Planet, Python, Ubuntu
Comments (13) |

It’s 01:57 AM here [I code at nights since I have to study for my last exam which I hope to pass on October 22]

and I’ve just got URandR to work with ATI’s opensource driver (I mean “ati” and not “radeonhd”). Expect a new release soon.

In the meantime, if you want to play with RandR 1.2, you can have a look at this wiki page.

Good night

Posted by Alberto Milone | October 15, 2007 1:05 am
Filed under: Debian, Planet, Python, Ubuntu
Comments (0) |

If your resolution wasn’t detected properly then you should try this this bugfix release:

Furthermore a user reported that he had problems on Debian Sid (because of a different Python release) and he had to:

type:
dpkg -i –force-depends-version urandr_0.1-0ubuntu7_all.deb

and edit /usr/bin/urandr, replacing
gksudo python randrgtk.py
with
gksudo python2.5 randrgtk.py

NOTE: I’m NOT recommending such method and I promise that I’ll look into this issue.

Posted by Alberto Milone | October 13, 2007 9:02 pm
Filed under: Debian, Planet, Python, Ubuntu
Comments (0) |

What is it?

Urandr is a GUI to RandR 1.2 written in PyGTK. IT covers RandR 1.2 basic functionalities and aims to make multihead configuration as easy as possible for unexperienced users.

Usecases:

* James wants to connect his laptop to a projector without messing with his xorg.conf
* Jane has two displays and would like to work on her screens as if they were a unified desktop

What URandR does NOT do:

* It doesn’t set up your screens permanently. Your settings will be lost when the Xserver is restarted
* It doesn’t set up more than 2 screens a time (e.g. 2 DVI monitors) [THIS WILL BE FIXED]

Requirements:

* An Intel card with Intel’s modesetting driver [ATI cards will be supported in the next future]
* xorg-server 1.3 or higher (on any GNU/Linux distribution)

Known Problems:

* If you allow URandR to set up a virtual resolution, you will have to enable your external monitor (with the enable checkbox) and click on the Apply button. Only then you will be able to set your external monitor to the left (or to the right, etc.) of your main screen
* Sometimes setting the virtual resolution disables direct rendering (which you can restore by removing the virtual resolution from your xorg.conf or with URandR’s Clear button. [Make sure you disable Compiz before you use a a method other than Clone mode]

What does it look like?

You can get a deb package here here

NOTE: this program works well on OpenSUSE 10.3 and Fedora 7 but I haven’t made an RPM yet. I hope someone can help me with this (the source code in on my website) since I have never made an RPM package.

Constructive criticism is welcome.

Posted by Alberto Milone | October 9, 2007 10:38 pm
Filed under: Debian, GNU/Linux, Planet, Python, Ubuntu
Comments (21) |

Eitan Isaacson made me notice an error in Evolbck’s code. My bad, I thought I had already done that. I guess I’m way too busy and (therefore) distracted.

I have kept Envy up-to-date since new Nvidia drivers have been released. There are a few bugfixes as well.
* Added: Nvidia driver 96.43.01
* Removed: Nvidia driver 9639
* Added: Nvidia driver 7185
* Removed: Nvidia driver 71.86.01
* Fixed: buildclean did not clean Envy's folder after the build
* Fixed: Envy's GUI shouldn't be resizable
* Changed: both Nvidia and ATI's kernel modules are removed provided that they are
already installed

You can get Envy here as usual.

Make sure you remove the previous release of Envy before you use the new one:
sudo apt-get remove envy
sudo rm -R /usr/share/envy

then install the new Envy

NOTE: Envy 0.9.8 will:
* support Gutsy
* be compliant with Debian’s new Python Policy
* be ready for localisation
I have postponed all the other features I had planned since I’m extremely busy.

Posted by Alberto Milone | October 1, 2007 7:14 pm
Filed under: Debian, Envy, Planet, Python, Ubuntu
Comments (3) |