Bodhi ARMHF Alpha for Nexus 7

Earlier this month we collected enough donations that I was able to pick up a Nexus 7 to do some development work on for Bodhi. Today I would like to share our first public images for the Nexus 7. They install, they boot up, and they are semi functional. By that I mean the touchscreen and wireless work OOTB and the interface runs smoothly on the device. I haven't had time to try and make audio work fully yet - but I have gotten some noise to come...

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Bodhi ARMHF Alpha for Samsung Chromebook

As I mentioned in a post last weekend, I've got my hands on the new Samsung Chromebook. The hardware in this device is simply awesome (full formal review forthcoming), but ChromeOS left me wanting a real operating system with non-cloud applications. Thankfully I've been working on Bodhi's ARM branch for awhile now and it proved fairly simple to get at least a base system up and rolling on the Chromebook (largely due to the fact that ChromeOS...

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Bodhi Linux ARMHF RootFS

If you've been following my blog (or my updates on Google+) then odds are you know I currently have my hands on two ARM devices (plus a third in the mail) I am working on creating Bodhi Linux images for. With this in mind I've decided I am going to start maintaining a generic ARMHF root file system to make creating Bodhi Linux images for new ARM devices easier for myself and others.You will always be able to find the latest copy of this file system...

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HOWTO: Start an SSH Session from ChromeOS

My lovely fiance knows how much I love my toys and opted to get me one of the new ARM based Chrome books as an early Christmas present. I'd been talking a lot about the device because the hardware on it is fairly fantastic for the 250$ price tag it comes with. At any rate - I'll be writing up a full formal review of the device at a later date (once I have had a chance to use it more). I also plan to create Bodhi ARM images for the device once time permits.Until I have time to get Bodhi running on the device though I am stuck with ChromeOS - which...

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Bodhi Linux Nexus 7 Drive

So I was on the Kernel Panic Ogg cast last night (the episode should be for download later this weekend). While we where discussing a number of things related to Bodhi our ARM port and tablet interface came up. ARM hardware is a very different beast from your normal x86/64bit devices. Meaning even if you have functional kernel drivers for a given device - you still often need a seperate file system images for each device you wish to be easily installable on.Currently we provide easy to install ARM images for the RaspBerry Pi and the Genesi...

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MK802 Media PC Review

I recently made a post comparing the specs of the A10 based MK802 to the RaspBerry Pi. For those who are unaware the MK802 is a low cost, Android based media PC you can pick up on Amazon for less than 40 USD. A little over a month ago I replaced my desktop sized media computer with an MK802 - today I would like to share with you my thoughts on the device.The Hardware:The MK802 is a little bit larger than a flash drive and the...

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HOWTO: Check Hard Drive Health with Linux

I've been experiencing full system lockups on my netbook off and on for the last few weeks now. Up until recently though they had been few and far between so I'd just been ignoring the issue. A few days ago however they got bad enough to the point where I had to restart my system three times in the same hour.Needless to say shortly after that I started running system checks. A quick boot into memtest showed that my RAM was A-OK (which is...

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Two Years of Bodhi, Three Years of Blogging

This year has flown by. My entire life - both on the internet and off the internet has been moving at a rapid pace and I have enjoyed almost every moment of it. I've been so focused on my last semester of graduate work that I completely forgot to make two posts I've been making every year.The first is that Bodhi is two years old now! It was on November 16th, 2010 that I first announced the project I had started with a couple of...

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Raspberry Pi vs MK802

There has been a ton on news in the open source world revolving around the Raspberry Pi. It was one of the first low cost, ARM computers to be targeted at the hobbyist and educational markets. I've owned a Raspberry Pi for many months now and while it does an alright job at playing media files and acting as a small server - for most computing tasks it simply didn't have enough resources available to be useful.My dedicated x86 media PC I'd been using...

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Linux FUD in College Education

My fiance started a new class this week - an MIS (Management Information Systems) class. While we were having dinner tonight she brought up the fact there are some - lets say - colorful definitions of Linux in her wonderful "Experiencing MIS" text book.Under a section titled "What Does a Manager Need to Know About Software?" there are a number of things presented to the reader as "facts" that I just have to disagree with. It starts with a nice table describing that describes typical users for Windows, OSX, Unix and Linux desktop users. What...

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Giving Android a Chance...

It has been about six weeks since I have posted anything - and even longer than that since I posted non-Bodhi related content. I'm currently working through my final semester of graduate school and what little time I have extra has been going towards working on Bodhi things of the late.Today however, I am bothered enough by something to share my feelings about it. If you have been by my blog here before then you might know that I am not a fan of Google's Android operating system. In fact in the past I have written why I feel it is removed...

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Bodhi Linux 2.1.0 Released

I'm happy to release to everyone our first scheduled update release of Bodhi Linux's 2.x.y branch - version 2.1.0. For those that want to get straight to the disc images you can find them in 32bit flavor here and 64bit here. There are a number of wonderful changes/improvements to this disc over our 2.0.1 disc released a couple of months ago. I'm going to outline the more important of the changes in this post, but you can always find our full change...

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Bodhi's ARM Branch Moves to ARMHF

After doing some research and testing for the last week I have arrived at the conclusion that Bodhi's ARM branch will best serve our users by moving our core from Debian Wheezy ARMEL to utilize Debian Wheezy ARMHF. I'm not going to get into the technical difference between the two platforms here - just know that in general ARMHF is faster.With this change however, there are some slight changes to our ARM repo details. If you have Debian Wheezy ARMHF...

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That Good Old Linux FUD

Who doesn't love a good Monday morning rant? I caught this article on the news feed of my favorite Linux news site this morning and I must say it upsets me a lot. The too long/didn't read version of this guy's article is that Android is "usable" for most users, while he finds desktop Linux lacking in the usability department. He cites a number of reasons why the distribution he selected (Fedora) isn't "usable" compared to Android. Honestly all of them are your normal anti-desktop Linux FUD and I am tired of it.Oh man - all your hardware doesn't...

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HOWTO: Launch OMXPlayer via a GUI

I'm going to be on an ARM kick for the next two weeks before my fall classes start up. In addition to porting Bodhi to the Pi one of my goals is also to replace my media PC with a Pi. Even though the processor in the Pi is fairly weak, it can decode HD video using it's GPU chip if you use the proper media player. This means that your old favorites like VLC and mPlayer will not work, so we must turn to a tool designed just for the Pi: OMXPlayer.Now because OMXPlayer is still very new, it is still very basic. So basic in fact it's key bindings...

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HOWTO: Clone all Programs Installed via Apt

Today I would like to share a nifty trick for cloning your application selections installed via the apt-get package manager. It is as simple as running two commands. First on the system you wish to clone, open a terminal and run this command (which is on pastebin due to blogger formatting issues).Next, simply copy the package-list to the system you wish to setup a copy on. Finally open a terminal and run:xargs apt-get install -y < package-listIn the same directory you copied the package-list file too. Please note that this trick...

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Bodhi Linux RaspBerry Pi Beta

Edit/Update: You can find the latest release here -> http://www.bodhilinux.com/downloads_mobile.phpA little over six weeks ago I posted a very early image of Bodhi for the RaspBerry Pi. Today I am happy to let everyone know that I have published what I consider to be a "beta" quality image:Bodhi for Pi: http://bodhilinux.com/downloads_mobile.phpThe download comes in the form of a compressed .IMG file, which can be extracted and...

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HOWTO: Create and use .IMG files from the CLI

Now that Bodhi's second stable release for the desktop is settling down, I am going to be putting a bit of focus on our ARM releases for the next couple of weeks. ARM images typically are provided in the form of .IMG files. Using a downloaded .IMG file is fairly simple. You can write it to a drive of your choice with a single command:sudo dd if=myfile.img of=/path/to/drive bs=1MOne thing worth noting though is that /path/to/drive should not include any partition number. An example path would be something like:/dev/sdbNote that writing large images...

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Bodhi Linux 2.0.1 - Bug Fix Release

Some of you might be slightly confused by this posting since our 2.0.0 release was published just five days ago. No piece of software is perfect and our 2.0.0 release is no exception to this. Since we released last Thursday our 2.0.0 discs have received over 15,000 downloads - a number the Bodhi team and I are extremely happy with. With this large influx of users we have received a piles of user feedback and bug reports...

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Bodhi Linux 2.0.0 Released

Well boys and girls the wait is finally over. After two months in the making 2.0.0 is officially our stable release. This build features the stable Linux 3.2 kernel, PCManFM file manager, the latest version of the Midori browser:and finally the brand spanking new Terminology terminal emulator:Bodhi 2.0.0 is our first stable release to be offered in both 32 and 64bit flavors. Please note the torrent download is much faster than the direct...

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Bodhi Linux 2.0.0 Release Candidate

A little over six weeks ago I posted about the first Bodhi Linux 2.0.0 public image. We have had three other builds release since then and today I would like to announce the availability of build 5 for download. I am stamping this build as our "release candidate" meaning that is is a stable working environment and something extremely close to this release will become our "stable"/final 2.0.0 release by the end of this month.What is missing from this release still? Of note our AppCenter is still in the process of being transitioned over to work...

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HOWTO: Make your QT Applications Blend In

Since Bodhi Linux includes GTK applications by default, you will find they have a fairly neutral tone that blends fairly well with the rest of the system. Beyond this Enlightenment has a built in tool for changing the look of GTK applications.What is a person to do though when they install VLC or some other QT application for the first time and it looks like this:First off - don't panic! It is a fairly simple/quick fix to get your QT applications...

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E17 heading towards a Stable Release - No Really!

I've been pushing the Enlightenment desktop for some time now and for as long as I've been promoting it I've also been warning folks that it is under heavy development. Well folks - Duke Nuke'em Forever might have beat them to a release, but E team is prepping for a major (stable!) release themselves.The E release manager has setup a wordpress you can find here to follow more specific details about the upcoming release. What can you do to help out...

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Some Bodhi Linux Video Goodness

I'd like to take a moment to share a few wonderful videos one of the Bodhi team members has taken the time to put together. This first is a short sound byte/advertisement for our upcoming 2.0.0 release:These next two show case the winners of our Desktop of the Week contest:2nd Quarter Winners 20121st Quarter Winners 2012Enjoy! ~Jeff Hoogl...

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Is Blizzard banning Linux Users?

While some companies like Valve are working on porting their software to run natively on Linux, it appears some other large companies are going to the extreme to prevent users from running their software on free operating systems.The company I am talking about? None other than Blizzard Games. Late last month users started reporting on the Wine APPDB page for Diablo 3 that their user accounts where getting banned simply for running their games using Wine! So this is me providing a fair warning to everyone else out there running Diablo 3 via Wine...

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Bodhi Linux ARM Alpha Release for RaspBerry Pi

Edit/Update: You can find the latest release here -> http://www.bodhilinux.com/downloads_mobile.phpI've been busy with lots of different Bodhi things of the late. The latest of my many projects has been getting the Bodhi desktop functional on the RaspBerry Pi:This first release while having some rough edges does give you a fully functional Enlightenment desktop on top of a Debian Wheezy ARMEL base. I am providing two different downloads which...

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Bodhi Linux ARM Release Candidate for Genesi

Edit/Update: You can find the latest release here -> http://www.bodhilinux.com/downloads_mobile.phpEarly this year I posted about our beta release of Bodhi on ARM for the Genesi Smartbook. Today I would like to finally follow up that beta release with something that I consider "release candidate" quality. The hardware is 99% functional with this release including the ability to suspend the system. Other small improvements include functional...

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A Bodhi Linux 2.0.0 FAQ

I've been getting a good deal of redundant questions regarding Bodhi's upcoming 2.0.0 release. Today I would like to address a few of the more common questions I've been getting.When is the release date?No idea. I live strictly by "its ready when its ready" philosophy for the software I work on. Setting strict release dates causes buggy software to be marked as "stable". Our targeted release month is July - but who knows it could be ready before then.What is the main difference between 2.0.0 and 1.x.y?The Ubuntu base is the main difference. Our...

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Filling out my FAFSA on FOSS

I want to remind every out there of something:Never doubt that your voice matters.Over a year ago I wrote a post complaining that you where unable to complete the "free application for federal student aide" from an FOSS operating system without first tricking the government's website into thinking you are running Windows.It was time for me to renew my application (it is something you update every year in the US) and I had my user agent changer all ready to go, but before I simply admitted defeat again I first tried with my normal browser settings....

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