The Chakra Project - News

pacman 3.4.0 hits Chakra-Linux

nospam@example.com (philm) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:03:55 +0200

Well it took a little longer to adapt Chakra-Linux to the new pacman version. Our buildsys-scripts needed to be updated to work proper with the new pacman-version. All developers should update their chroots and report any problems directly back to me.

The changes in this release are detailed in the NEWS file.

Notable changes in this release:

New "Architecture" option that will restrict pacman to installing only packages from the given architecture

Installing package with -U is now smart like -S — dependencies and conflicts are now handled

New --print and --print-format options to output in suitable format for wrapper scripts

Repository updates are faster as only new entries are extracted

makepkg now aborts automatically with any errors during packaging

makepkg now allows overrides of pkgver, pkgrel and arch in split packages

...and many more improvements.

xorg18 repo

nospam@example.com (philm) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:58:35 +0200

There's a new repository for xorg-server 1.8 packages. As this release requires new drivers and reconfiguration,
I decided to put it in its own repository to not break our repos for a lot of users.

Packages have been built on top of core-testing and platform-testing
Kernel 2.6.33.6 is recommended due to DRI improvements in that version.

To use the repository, add this repository on top of core-testing to pacman.conf:

[xorg18]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

This release works with udev for input hotplugging and supports /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/*.conf as replacement for the hal .fdi files.
After upgrading to this release, configuration for input devices in hal is ignored and should be done by udev rules or xorg.conf.d files.

Documentation about this change can be found on: fedora-wiki
Support you'll find also in our forums.

nvidia-96xx user can't use this new xorg-stack since that driver don't support the new xorg-server.

KDE SC 4.4.95 released for Ashoc

nospam@example.com (philm) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:27:45 +0200

Version 4.5 of the KDE SC (Software Compilation) is just weeks away from being formally released as the six-month refresh to this multi-platform, open-source desktop stack. KDE SC 4.5 brings a lot of new features and improvements to the table, but if you're too impatient to wait around or want to see that this release comes together nicely, the third release candidate is now available for testing.

This build was done by Manuel Tortosa and me. We ship KDE SC 4.4.95 with kdepim 4.4.5 since the kdepim 4.5-beta1 is more alpha-like than any stable.

The KDE SC 4.5 RC2 release announcement can be read at KDE.org.

4.4.95 comes with lots of bugfixes and should be the last RC for KDE SC 4.5. Please post all bugs to kde.org and test it as best as you can.

Grab the latest Ashoc Image to test it live.

Chakra July Releases & Updates

nospam@example.com (philm) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:28:54 +0200

Another month and we have some news for you:

Chakra GNU/LInux repositories

We moved KDE SC 4.4 Series to desktop. Additional applications you can find in apps. According to this you have to change your repositories to:

[desktop]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[apps]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

We update that repository until KDE SC 4.5 Series get stable enough. That we started to pack in desktop-testing. Also here you need to adjust your pacman.conf file for this to:

[core-testing]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[desktop-testing]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[platform-testing]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[apps-testing]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Additional applications you can find in apps-testing and apps-unstable

Chakra GNU/Linux Live-Medias

According to our repository-changes we also updated our live-medias. We have now two images for each architecture. For the KDE SC 4.4 Series go for Phoix which you can find here. If you like to try KDE SC 4.5 Series instead you are right with downloading Ashoc which you can find also in our forum.

Troubles with x86_64 repositories

Earlier this month we uploaded some broken packages to core-testing and platform-testing which we fixed already. If you have any troubles lately read in our forum how to fix it.

KDE SC 4.4.5 moved to desktop

nospam@example.com (philm) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:43:58 +0200

KDE SC 4.4.5 got moved to desktop. We consider it as stable now. All user are recommended to change their pacman.conf-files to:

[core-testing]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[platform-testing]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[desktop]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[apps-testing]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

desktop-testing will get KDE SC 4.5 series now. I start to build KDE SC 4.5 RC2 as I wrote this news-post. All developer should create a new desktop-chroot if they want to update pkgs with patches/fixes. All patches for 4.4.5 should be added to git master from now on.

RIP KDEmod - KDEmod forever ? - KDEmod 4.4.5 released

nospam@example.com (philm) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:37:16 +0200

RIP KDEmod

Our core-team decided to stop developing KDEmod legacy and KDEmod4. Our focus is on Chakra GNU/Linux now.

KDEmod was a great project we all loved. All KDEmod user are welcome to try our new Distro.

KDEmod forever ?

KDEmod is still alive. Just the developer changed. Our new KDEmod-Teamleader is Alexander Nestorov from Spain you might know from aMSN. Atm he packs alone and need support from other developers and packagers to continue KDEmod. So everybody who want to join his team is welcome. My team and I can guide you if the KDEmod-Team needs help. We still support our old project.

Alex's first release is KDEmod 4.4.5 the last official 4.4 release of KDE SC:

Highlights for KDE SC 4.4.5 include fixes for several bugs in encoding and refreshing within KDE's Konsole, crash fixes for KDE's Okular PDF viewer, and the KDE PIM (Personal Information Manager) alarms have been fixed up.

The KDE SC 4.4.5 release announcement can be read at KDE.org. There is also a change-log comparing the KDE SC 4.4.5 release to version 4.4.4 that was released one month back.

Test this release and report back. Hope you like Axanders work. We wanna know what you think about the Developer-Change and KDEmod beeing still around. Response to this thread.

Future of KDEmod

Go to our Forum to read about the future of KDEmod.

[Development Release] Phoix B0701

nospam@example.com (philm) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 13:25:25 +0200

In the last weeks we tested some new kernel options. It didn't went as we expected so we decided to patch our kernel as minimal as possible as we did before. For all new user it is recommended to use this new Phoix build to install Chakra GNU/Linux. You can find the links here: Forum

Build-Notes

GTK2+

This image is gtk2 free, so you will miss flashplugin in this image. Also you can't
start nvidia-settings since that also needs gtk2. Use nvidia-xconfig instead.
You can always install missing packages with pacman from our repositories.

Read more about gtk-freeness here: Forum

FBSPLASH

This image sets up fbsplash for installed system. I've to find a way to display it
also on bootup for livecd but it might not be good since it is nice to see the hard-
ware detection working on livecd-bootup.

Read more about fbsplash here: Forum

System Requirements:

a Intel Pentium II or higher processor

an AMD64 compatible processor for x64 edition

384MiB of RAM for running the live system and 512MiB of RAM for the installation

around 3 Gib of available hard disk space (the more the better)

a screen capable of 800 x 600 or higher resolution

a reasonably fast internet connection, e.g. no modem (would be too slow)

Features:

Kernel-2.6.33.5-8 with lzma and fbsplash support

aufs2-20100514-4

KDEmod 4.4.5

Xorg-Server 1.7.6

Catalyst-10.6

NVidia-256 and NVidia legacy series

Known issues:

Tribe can't create partition-tables on blank disks: Wiki

Changes:

since build [0627]

addedpacks updated

real 4.4.5 locales added

fbsplash updates

cinstall updated

initscripts updated to 2010.6-2

fbsplash-scripts updated to series 2.0

kernel26 - untested patches removed - mkinitcpio updated

Feedback from the community is appreciated since we are close to beta1 E.D.N.

KDE SC 4.4.5 for Chakra GNU/Linux released

nospam@example.com (philm) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 23:06:10 +0200

Here we go again. It took us a little longer to get the x86_64 arch updated to 4.4.5 but it is now done.
KDEmod will follow early next week.

While KDE SC 4.5.0 is just around the corner, KDE SC 4.4.5 has just been released as the final point release in the KDE SC 4.4 series that was introduced some six months back. Version 4.4.5 of the KDE Software Compilation -- like other KDE point releases -- just focuses upon delivering translation updates and bug-fixes.

Highlights for KDE SC 4.4.5 include fixes for several bugs in encoding and refreshing within KDE's Konsole, crash fixes for KDE's Okular PDF viewer, and the KDE PIM (Personal Information Manager) alarms have been fixed up.

The KDE SC 4.4.5 release announcement can be read at KDE.org. There is also a change-log comparing the KDE SC 4.4.5 release to version 4.4.4 that was released one month back.

KDE SC 4.5.0 is expected to be released on the 4th of August while a second release candidate of this major six-month update should be out in about some days

Update 2010-06-03/07-01 might break your system.

nospam@example.com (philm) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:02:29 +0200

I changed some pkgs in core and platform lately. Some user have some troubles to get their system working again.
If you update your system pay attention to the pacman output.

To show that it is not so hard to deal with the latest updates and an old phoix install I wrote a little tutorial. If you missed it and you have a broken kernel I've also some help.

If you read some like this during a system upgrade:

==> Building image "default"
==> Running command: /sbin/mkinitcpio -k 2.6.33-CHAKRA -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/kernel26.img
:: Begin build
:: Parsing hook [base]
:: Parsing hook [udev]
FATAL: Hook 'fbsplash' can not be found.
==> FAIL

... then some went wrong.

Be save and don't break some stuff.

To avoid all this you can also use the new phoix-0701 image.

greez

Phil

Mirrorlist changed for Chakra GNU/Linux

nospam@example.com (philm) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:14:38 +0200

Since the 20th of June we changed our Server paths for our Chakra GNU/Linux packages.
All user should update their /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist to the latest mirrorlist

The flashplugin has a critical vulnerability

nospam@example.com (philm) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:29:47 +0200

The flashplugin has a critical vulnerability[1] in version 10.0.45.2 which is fixed in 10.1.53.64. Unfortunately, Adobe released this version for i686 only and the x86_64 port was discontinued[2] leaving the x86_64 package vulnerable. Because of that, we cannot build an updated version for x86_64. For now we will leave it up to our users to remove it or keep it installed.

We suggest using alternative options for running flash-based software on x86_64 systems.

[1] http://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa10-01.html
[2] http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/64bit.html

[Development Release] Phoix (x86_64)

nospam@example.com (philm) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:48:43 +0200

Without Drake Justice we wouldn't have this. He did an amazing job with his x64 packages. Test this image and tell us all the bugs you can find.

The initial release of Chakra GNU/Linux x64 is called Phoix and has the following features:

Kernel-2.6.33.5-1 with lzma support

aufs2-20100514-2

aufs2-util-20100514-2

KDE SC 4.4.4

Xorg-Server 1.7.6

Catalyst-10.5

NVidia-195 and NVidia legancy series

Installed locales:

catala

deutsch

english

espanol

Other locales, you can install with pacman or during install with tribe.

Even though not all packages are done for x64, we try to give you the best experience chakra can give you atm.
Download it from here: LiveCD Development Forum

[Development Release] Phoix DVD Edition

nospam@example.com (philm) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 01:08:08 +0200

We have our first DVD Edition of Phoix. Here some features to point out:

Features:

Kernel-2.6.33.5-1 with lzma support

aufs2-20100514-2

aufs2-util-20100514-2

KDE 4.4.4

Xorg-Server 1.7.6

Catalyst-10.4

NVidia-195 and NVidia legacy series

Installed locales:

all supported by Chakra GNU/Linux

Total Installed Size: 3725,37 MB

With this DVD-Edition we added most needed programs. Please feel free to tell
us what you are still missing or what shouldn't be on the image.

It took us some weeks to pull this of, so give us some feedback

Download

Phoix - Build DVD0606

KDEmod 4.4.4 released (i686)

nospam@example.com (philm) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 09:51:11 +0200

KDE has released a new version of the KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC). This month’s edition of KDE SC is a bugfix and translation update to KDE SC 4.4. KDE SC 4.4.4 is a recommended update for everyone running KDE SC 4.4.3 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. Users around the world will appreciate that KDE SC 4.4.4 multi-language support is more complete. KDE SC 4 is already translated into more than 50 languages, with more to come.
KDE SC 4.4.4 brings a number of improvements:

Several bugs in filename sorting in the Dolphin file manager have been fixed

Issues with encoded filenames in ZIP archives have been fixed

A number of bugs in games, such as KMines, KNetwalk and LSkat and KSpaceDuel have been fixed

KDEmod users just update your system with sudo pacman -Syu.

KDE SC 4.4.4 released for Phoix (LiveCD online)

nospam@example.com (philm) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:39:36 +0200

Several bugs in filename sorting in the Dolphin file manager have been fixed

Issues with encoded filenames in ZIP archives have been fixed

A number of bugs in games, such as KMines, KNetwalk and LSkat and KSpaceDuel have been fixed

For Chakra GNU/Linux you can simply update your system to get the new packages or you try our latest Phoix-LiveCD.