I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, as I have been thinking about it for some time.  I’ve been working really hard on this presentation for tomorrow afternoon at the Southern California Linux Expo this weekend.  So I’d like to discuss what I’ve been working on and provide my links to slides (odp and pdf format) for those who wish to download them.  I’m guessing I’ll get asked where my slides are at least once, so here they are, right here, on this post.

Anyway, I’d like to discuss a little about the presentation’s concepts and tools here.  That way, if you did attend my talk, you can refer here to some of the points I’ll make.

First off, I’m going up against the Ubuntu Community Manager, Jono Bacon.  I wish him luck though, as I will swear less in my presentation :)  But I digress, I’m in the theater, so that should make room for the large crowd I’m expecting.  If you were worried you might not get into my presentation, don’t!  There’s plenty of seating.

Okay, now to my real points, I’ll be talking about three technologies used to build a full distribution.  Built and maintained within the fedora application space.  I think that’s great:

1. livecd-tools – This toolkit provides the building blocks for creating your own spin (or remix).  We’ll discuss how to use livecd-creator and livecd-iso-to-disk out of this package.  In fact, if all goes well, I’ll build a new Fedora LiveUSB right in the presentation.
2. pungi – This application is used for building Installation Media.  It can build CDs, DVDs or even provide for a network based install.
3. revisor – Revisor provides both of the above tools in one configurable GUI.  However, it also has a very powerful and flexible GUI.  In fact, the Fedora Unity group creates an updated ISO and makes it available about 3 months after each release using Revisor.

I hope this little review page can provide some answers to questions, plus access to my slides and any other resources you might need.

Cheers,

Herlo

FUDCon F10, for me, was a time of realization.  Understanding what it is to get involved in projects that scratch that itch.  For providing services toward something I’m good at, into a larger community who could really take advantage of that service.  And while I am still feeling my way through the Fedora world, I think a few things are clearer now after reflecting on this last FUDCon.

I want to record and stream audio and video.

I’m thinking that along with the Fedora Talk project, I could configure and use tools to provide a non-interactive streaming server for certain events/presentations.  What I am thinking of here is things like FUDCon keynotes and sessions.  In fact, I plan to purchase a higher quality microphone / mixer combo to better record the audio at the source.

Video and screencasting in real-time seems a bit more of a challenge.  Putting that together with the streaming audio seems like a fun project and scratches several itches I’ve been experiencing lately.

I need to learn how build better RPMs

Spot taught a great session at FUDCon F9 in Raleigh about RPM packaging, and Rex Deiter talked this time about becoming a package maintainer.  I’ve got a few packages that I’d like to get into the fedora tree, and I think by the end of this year, that can happen.  I’m okay at packaging, but haven’t ever submitted a spec file to spot.  While I’m nervous about how ugly the first package will look, I’m also excited at the prospect of learning better and more efficient ways of building useful tools for the masses.

I think everyone should build their own spin of Fedora

After the 5+ hour session on Friday’s hackfest regarding the spins website and what the spins SIG has already accomplished, I’ve taken some initiative and started to create content to help the prospective spin enthusiast.  I’m a big fan of the Eee PC and am looking forward to purchasing the 901 in the winter.  Until then, I’m planning on helping improve the spin process so we don’t fail to release spins again.  The custom and official spins ‘built with Fedora’ can be so much more prolific if we just provide the right tools to build a spin.  It really should be nothing more than, here’s my kickstart, build me an iso.  This would of course have to follow the general standards for acceptable software.

The relationships (FUDBuddies) made at FUDCon are up my alley

I met Rex Dieter, Mo Duffy, Ray Strode, Dennis Gilmore and Ian Weller this time.  We had great conversations about the world and of course Fedora.  I also got to talk more to Toshio, Greg and J5 who I had met previously at FUDCon F9.  I indeed learned a bunch from Toshio about TurboGears too.  Its something I’ll treasure for releases to come.

To end this post, I’ve got some audio of the olpc session and paul’s keynote, as well as some photos I’ve posted around the interweb, enjoy.  Paul’s keynote will also be up on our new FedoraTV Miro channel, check it out!

Cheers,

Clint

I quickly grabbed some coffee and an apple and headed in after Max.  Little did I know how great this fest was going to be, all 4+ hours of it.  After a good list of goals, Max handed control over to Mo and off we went.

Discussion surrounded three main stories, one for a user wanting to download a spin, one desiring to submit a spin and one for reviewers of spins.  As it turns out, developing stories for the first two were pretty easy, and just before 11, we had a good idea of how to implement applications for these two users.

However, the third story, the one for reviewing.  Yeah, that one.  Well, I guess I just need to ask one hard question.  The question I had was a simple one, but the answer is apparently much more complex, including both technical and legal questions about third-party distributions.  And while it seems like a simple distinction, I brought this upon myself, uncovering a discussion that has been going on for 2+ years now.

The biggest problem is for those spins that include software not in the fedora repositories.  How do we treat these spins?  The discussion ended up being that while hosting these spins might not be feasible, we’d like to have a way to market the spins as built on Fedora or something similar. It seems that this is a good choice, but it needs to go through legal.

After an hour long discussion about these details (which I caused), we tabled it and came up with a good list of tasks to get the project started.  Thanks to Ian Weller, there’s a good wiki page covering much of this discussion.  In fact, I have a couple of tasks to complete this week.

At the end of the day, I ended up with some Red Hat folks at Legal Sea Foods, good wine, great company.  If I wasn’t so tired, I’d have stayed much longer.  Good times…

Tomorrow’s FUDCon barcamp looks to be pretty interesting.  I plan to attend the video tools, the getting contributors and bug triage.  In addition, there will probably be a couple that will come up tomorrow morning, so we’ll se how it goes.

Cheers,

Herlo