HOWTO: Watch Netflix on Bodhi Linux

Not being able to utilize the Netflix video streaming service has been an issue on the Linux desktop for the past few years. This is due to the fact that Netflix utilizes Microsoft's Silverlight technology for video playback.

For the last few months though we have been able to watch Netflix in our native browsers on Linux using a Wine pluggin wrapper called Pipelight. Today I would like to walk you through the short process of using Pipelight to watch Netflix under Bodhi Linux.

Step 1 - Install Chromium or Firefox

Pipelight needs Chromium or Firefox to work. So if you are still using Bodhi's default browser Midori - you will need to install one of these other two browser. You can obtain your browser of choice by clicking on one of the links below:

Install Chromium Browser

Install Firefox Browser

Step 2 - Install Pipelight

Next we need to install the Pipelight plugin by clicking on the link below:

Install Pipelight

Pipelight depends on the Microsoft corefonts package. This means that if you do not already have these fonts installed they will be installed as part of the installation of Pipelight. When installing these fonts you need to agree to an EULA, to navigate to the Accept button you will need to use the tab key, and then press the enter button to select it.

Step 3 - Setup a User Agent Changer

The User Agent is a little code in your browser that tells the page you are viewing what browser you are using. In order for Netflix to even offer us the Silverlight player it needs to think we are on Windows. To do this we install a user agent changer browser plugin. Install the proper plugin linked below for your browser:

Chromium User Agent Changer

Firefox User Agent Changer

After you have the user agent changer installed - set your browser to detect as "Windows Firefox".

Step 4 - Watch Netflix!

Enjoy! If you have any questions or issues feel free to drop a comment below or open a support request on the Bodhi user forums.

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Test E18, EFL 1.8.0, and Terminology 0.4.0 on Bodhi Linux

As of this past weekend the testing builds of the Enlightenment window manager DR18 (E18 for short) are in the Bodhi Linux testing repository. The following are the steps you need to take if you would like to install and help test the future of the Enlightenment desktop on your Bodhi Linux install.

Step 1 - Add the testing Repository

First we need to add the testing repository to our software sources. Open our sources.list with sudo using the following command:

gksudo leafpad /etc/apt/sources.list

Towards the bottom of the file you will find a line that reads:

deb http://packages.bodhilinux.com/bodhi precise stable

After the "stable" component we want to add the "testing" component. To do this we edit the above line to be:

deb http://packages.bodhilinux.com/bodhi precise stable testing

Save and close the file.

Step 2 - Upgrade to EFL 1.8.0

Open your terminal emulator of choice and run the following command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

This command will tell you that it wants to remove a number of packages (ecore edje eet eeze efreet eina eio embryo emotion eobj ethumb evas). This is fine - all of these packages have been merged into one "efl" package. Let the upgrade command complete.

Step 3 - Install E18

The default "enlightenment" package in Bodhi Linux will remain as the DR17 desktop - we will not be forcing anyone to upgrade to E18 so long as E17 still builds with the latest Enlightenment Foundation Libraries. This means to replace E17 with E18 we need to install the E18 package. In your favorite terminal run:

sudo apt-get install e18

It will tell you it wants to remove the "enlightenment" package - let it. After it finishes installing you should restart your desktop environment. 

Congrats, you now have the E18 desktop to play with!

A few Notes

I would like to remind everyone that this is pre-release software and you should expect to encounter issues. You can report/discuss the issues you are having in the testing section of the Bodhi forums.

At this current point a number of the extra modules (such as places and the engage dock) that the Bodhi profiles use are not currently built for E18. We will be working on adding support for these over the next few weeks.

In this same vein - a number of the existing E17 themes will have issues running under E18. They will all need updates to function with the latest version of the desktop. So when trying to confirm bugs it is always best that you are using the "default" E18 theme when testing things.

If you run into issues getting the testing repo added or the software installed I would encourage you to please open a thread on our user forums as opposed to simply posting a comment below. It is much easier to debug software issues on a forum than in a comments section.

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland

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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 out of the speakers.

With the help of my lovely fiance I filmed the following short demo video of Bodhi running on the device:

Anywho - installing Bodhi on the Nexus 7 follows the same process as installing Ubuntu on the device. I don't have an automated installer finished just yet so you will need to install the Bodhi images using a manual install process. This can be done using the following steps:

Step 0 - Getting the Tools

Installing Bodhi on the Nexus 7 can be done from any Linux distribution so long as you have the proper android tools installed (if you are using Bodhi on your desktop the Android tools can be found in our repositories). Namely you need the fastboot command.

Step 1 - Unlocking your Nexus 7

The bootloader on the Nexus 7 needs to be unlocked to accept other operating systems. Start with your device off, then while holding the volume down button power the device on - you will soon see the bootloader screen. Attach the Nexus 7 to your computer with a micro USB cable and run the command:

sudo fastboot oem unlock

After you run this command your Nexus 7 will ask you to confirm you want to unlock the bootloader - do so. Then run:

sudo fastboot reboot-bootloader

to finish the unlocking process.

Step 2 - Get the Bodhi Files

You need to download and then extract both the tarballs found here.

Step 3 - Writing the data to the Nexus 7

Open a terminal to the directory where you extracted both the files you downloaded above. Then run the following commands in order:

sudo fastboot erase boot

sudo fastboot erase userdata

sudo fastboot flash boot boot.img

sudo fastboot flash userdata rootfs.img

sudo fastboot reboot

After you run the last command your Nexus 7 will reboot and automagically extract and install the Bodhi file system on your device (this will take a few minutes). When it is finished it will boot right into the Bodhi desktop for you.


User Information

Default username:

armhf

Default password:

bodhilinux

The default user has sudo rights.



Getting Support

Please, please, please do not make a comment on this post asking for support with an issue you encounter with installing/running Bodhi on your Nexus 7! Comments asking for support will be removed from this post. Instead please open a support request thread in the Nexus 7 section of our user forums. It is much easier to manage/search/solve issues in a message board format than a comments section.


Other Notes

I do consider this an alpha quality release. As noted above the sound still doesn't work by default and I am sure there are some other minor niggles that need to be worked out.

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

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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 is Linux based).

Now, unfortunately the current install process for getting an alternative operating system to boot on the Chromebook isn't as easy as our Genesi images - but if you follow the instructions I provide below to the letter you should have Bodhi booting on your Chromebook in no time!

Please note following these steps WILL permanently delete all local data and configurations of your ChromeOS! It essentially restores the system to factory defaults.

Step 1 - Boot in Recovery Mode

Make sure your chromebook is off. Then hold the escape and refresh keys (where f3 should be) and power on the device. This should get you to a recovery screen - press ctrl+d followed by enter. The system should now reboot into recovery mode.

Step 2 - Get to a TTY with Internet

Once the system reboots in recovery mode it will take a few moments to get everything configured (this requires no user input, just waiting - so grab a snack). Once the system starts up select a wireless access point to connect to, but do not log into a Google account. Now that we have an internet connection you need to drop to a TTY. To do this press ctrl+alt+-> (The "->" key is where f2 would be on a standard keyboard).

For the username type chronos and then press enter - no password is needed.

Step 3 - Download and run Bodhi installer

From the tty run:

wget http://goo.gl/HFG6a

Followed by:

sudo bash HFG6a

Both of the above commands are case sensitive so make sure you type them correctly! After running the second command you will be provided with some information about your Chromebook - press enter to continue.

Step 4 - Choose how much space you are giving Bodhi

The installer will prompt you for how much space you want to give to Bodhi. Enter an integer amount for how many gigs you would like to give Bodhi. On the 16gig smartbook the most I would recommend giving to Bodhi is 9gigs (with the max being 10).  For reference the base Bodhi install occupies around 1.6gigs. Once you select an amount of space to give Bodhi the drive will be re-partitioned automagically and then your system will restart. When it starts back up again you will need to walk through the ChromeOS setup process once more - again get as far as the Google login screen but do not log in.

Step 5 - Getting the Bodhi Filesystem

Get to a TTY again by following the instructions outlined in step 2 once more. Then run the same two commands provided in step 3. This time the Bodhi installer will see your drive has already been partitioned and it will begin downloading the Bodhi Chromebook image which it will then install. Note that this will take awhile depending on your internet connection speed as a 300MB tarball needs to be downloaded and extracted. After it finishes installing your system will reboot and you will be greeted by the Enlightenment desktop!

User Information

Default username:

armhf

Default password:

bodhilinux

The default user has sudo rights.

Getting back to ChromeOS

If you need to get back into ChromeOS after installing Bodhi on your Chromebook - don't worry it is still there. In a terminal client on Bodhi run:

sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 0 -S 1 /dev/mmcblk0

Once you are done with ChromeOS you can run the following in the ChromeOS TTY to get back to Bodhi:

sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 5 -S 1 /dev/mmcblk0

Getting Support

Please, please, please do not make a comment on this post asking for support with an issue you encounter with installing/running Bodhi on your Chromebook! Comments asking for support will be removed from this post. Instead please open a support request thread in the Chromebook section of our user forums. It is much easier to manage/search/solve issues in a message board format than a comments section.

Other Notes

In the current image the track pad is kinda fickle (tap to click doesn't work) and OpenGL support is currently non-functional. Other than that the image is very functional - I have been using it for my day to day activities for the last week now and I have been very pleased with the results. With that being said - please note I consider this an alpha quality release and as such Bodhi's ARMHF testing repos are enabled by default in the current Chromebook image.

One other thing to note is that the top row of keys acts as "function" keys (f1-f10) in Bodhi as though it was a normal keyboard. I personally use the volume up/down/mute keys often on my systems though - as such I have bound the alt key to act as a "function" key normally would on a laptop. Meaning alt+volume key will perform it's indicated action. Also - to make any noise come out of the speakers see this.

Closing Remarks

I would like to extend my thanks the author of this post who created a script for getting Ubuntu setup on the Chromebook. My own Bodhi install script is based directly on his.

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

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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 while interesting leaves some to be desired. At the very least I need my operating system to have a web browser and a ssh connection - the former ChromeOS provides very obviously (the whole OS is one giant web browser). Getting an SSH connection from the device was not as straight forward however. I started by searching for a terminal emulator on the Chrome Web Store. As you can see - there are a few options there, but none of them would successfully open a ssh connection to my build servers from my Chrome Book.

A little bit off searching on the Linux answer machine yielded me a proper solution from the comment section of a posting. To get a SSH connection on ChromeOS you do not need to add any software! Pressing the key combination:

ctrl+alt+t

Will open a browser based terminal emulator called "crosh" in a new tab of your browser on ChromeOS. Now my build servers are accessed from a non-default ssh port. On any Debian based operating system I would use the following to connect:

ssh -p username@myserveraddy.com

The ssh client on ChromeOS doesn't seem to like the -p argument for a port number though. I found two ways to connect to a ssh server using a different port number. The first is simply:

ssh username@myserveraddy.com

The second is a whole lot less intuitive. In order you type:

ssh

host myserveraddy.com

user username

port  

connect

Have fun sshing from ChromeOS!

~Jeff Hoogland

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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 good considering one stick of RAM is stuck to the netbook's mother board). The next piece of hardware I checked was my netbook's SSD. Almost all modern hard drives have "SMART" controls today to allow you to check their current health status.

I booted my netbook from a Bodhi live USB drive and did a quick:

sudo apt-get install gsmartcontrol

GSmartControl is a GUI front end for smartmontools - a library that lets you interface with your drive's SMART controls and run various health checks on the drive. The interface is fairly straight forward and right clicking on one of the displayed drives gives you the ability to begin checking it.

There are options for a short test (which takes a minute or two) or a longer test (which can take up to several hours on larger drives to complete - depends on the size of your drive).

After my netbook finished the longer test I was greeted with some bad news - my SSD was failing in one area and getting close to failing in others:

At any rate GSmartControl is a fantastic tool for checking the health of your drive that is fairly easy to use. Hopefully the results of your drive check will be better than my own!

~Jeff Hoogland

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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 (for play/pause/stop/quit) only function if the program is launched via the CLI. Knowing my Fiance and friends who often use the media PC would give me no end of grief if they had to open a terminal to play movies - I set about finding a solution. Today I'd like to share that fairly simple solution with you!

To allow users to simply "double click" on a media file via the file manager and have it open in OMXPlayer you need to create a .desktop file for OMXPlayer. Open a terminal on your pi and run:

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/omxplayer.desktop

For it's contents paste:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=OMXPlayer
Categories=AudioVideo;Player;
Exec=omxplayer -o hdmi %f
Terminal=true
Icon=emblem-video

Save and close the file (ctrl+x in nano) and you should be good to go! When you double click on a media file in your file browser simply select Open With: OMXPlayer! Please note some users have reported this doesn't work with LXDE - I cannot confirm this though as I only use E17 and it works fine there :)

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland

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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-list

In the same directory you copied the package-list file too. Please note that this trick only works when your two systems in question have exactly the same sources/operating system version.

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland

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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=1M

One thing worth noting though is that /path/to/drive should not include any partition number. An example path would be something like:

/dev/sdb

Note that writing large images can take a good deal of time depending on the speed of your drive and that this command will not give you any feedback until it finishes.

Now, perhaps you are like myself and have some interest in creating/distributing .IMG files of your own. Creating image files is also fairly easily and uses the same dd command. An example of how to create an image file is:

sudo dd if=/path/to/drive of=image.img

Note that this command copies the entire contents of the drive - meaning if your drive is large your .IMG file will be equally large! Now, what do you do if you only want to copy part of your drive? Simply add one argument to the above command of course! For example to only copy the first two gigs of data on a drive to a .IMG file use:

sudo dd if=/path/to/drive of=image.img bs=2048 count=1M

I am by no means an expert at using dd, but if you run into any issues feel free to drop a comment below and I'll do my best to help you out.

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland

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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 to blend in with the rest of your desktop. You first simply need to install the QT theme manager - on Debian based systems such as Bodhi this can be done from the command line via:

sudo apt-get install qt4-qtconfig

Once this package is installed a new option should appear in your menu under "Preferences" labeled "Qt 4 Settings". Launching this will present you with a window the looks something like this:

Only your "GUI Style" will be something other "GTK+" by default. To change this simply select "GTK+" from the drop down menu and then close the settings manager.

You should now be all set with nicer looking QT applications:

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Give Network Manager Sufficient Privileges

Nm-applet is easily one of the most flexible network connection tools available under modern Linux distributions today. Because of this it is my network manager of choice. The only issue is that under a good deal of modern window managers (such as E17) nm-applet doesn't let your normal user connect to new networks without a bit of additional configuration.

The following is how to get around the message:

Failed to add new connection: (32) Insufficient privileges.

From the 0.9.x revision of the network manager.

It is a fairly simple fix that simply involves creating a configuration file. Crack open your terminal emulator of choice and run:

sudo nano /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pkla

For the contents of this file simply paste this and then save+close the file.

Note if your user will need to be part of the netdev group for that code to function (if you don't have a netdev group, any group your user is a part of will work). To check the groups your current user is in simply run groups myusername in terminal (replace myusername with the name of your user clearly).

~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Diablo 3 on Linux

Like many nerds around the world this evening I am prepping for what, odds are, will be the first of many all-nighters involving Blizzard's soon-to-be-released Diablo III (which releases tonight at midnight!). If you have been by my blog before then odds are you will know that I prefer to do as much of my gaming as possible on my operating system of choice: Linux. Something else you may or may not know is that I am also a large fan of the company Code Weavers that produces the commercial Wine software Crossover.

Want to know the reason I am such a fan of Crossover? A few weekends ago I spent about 6 hours trying to get Wine sources to compile with various patches to make the Diablo 3 open beta work on Linux. The result? I ended up hanging my head in defeat and just playing on my OSx86 system so I didn't miss the weekend event. At that point Diablo 3 didn't work OOTB on default Wine builds or Crossover.

This morning I dropped by #crossover on FreeNode to check in with the Crossover folks to see what their plans were for the Diablo 3 release due out tonight - were us Linux folks going to have to wait?

Nope!

The Diablo 3 release is something they had been very aware of and had been testing rigorously in-house. I was informed they had internal builds of Crossover where Diablo 3 was functional enough to play this very day. In fact within three hours of my speaking with them they had an "unsupported build" release that was functional with the Diablo 3 installer (note: if you are not a current Crossover customer that above link will not work for you).

I promptly installed the update and was on my merry way:

As of now if you are using Crossover 11.1 or newer Diablo 3 is now officially supported,

Now - if you are not interested in supporting Crossover - you can attempt to succeed where I failed and compile Wine with some of the patches listed on the Diablo 3 Beta AppDB page. Odds are if you wait for the next Wine developmental release or two, Diablo 3 will just start working by default - the Crossover folks are one of the lead contributors to the Wine project and most of their code improvements go upstream.

Trouble Shooting Tips:
If you are having issues getting it to run via the latest Wine builds it might be worth your while to use winetricks to install the "vcrun2008" package.

If your login attempt is hanging at the "authenticating credentials" step, exit Diablo, open a terminal and run:

echo 0|sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope

~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: TI-83 Emulator on Linux

When you are trying to show a classroom full of students how to enter a complicated equation into their calculator it is pretty much always best to give an example. In order to do this in an effective manner I like to be able to display the calculator on the projector. Most students today have a TI83/84 model so being able to have an emulator for one of these on my laptop is essential. The following is how I went about getting a TI-83 emulator setup on my Bodhi Linux machine:

First - Download, Compile, and install Tilem

My TI emulator of choice is called "Tilem". It is an open source project and you can download the latest source code here. Extract it's contents and do the:

./configure
make
sudo make install

dance that compiles so much software. If the software doesn't compile for you first try be sure to check the README file and the configure script output - odds are you are simply missing a build dependency. If you can't figure out the issue on your own pastebin the error message and post it in the comments - I'll do my best to lend a hand.

Second - Obtain and use a ROM Image

There are a few different ways to get an image of a TI-ROM. You can dump the ROM off of a physical calculator you own (mildly complicated, check that README file for details on this) or you can hit Google. I found a good TI83 download here.

Next simply launch

tilem2

and point it to the location of your calculator ROM file. Once you select it your TI emulator should appear on screen:

Enjoy!

~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Run your Games in a new Xserver

When I play a game that runs full screen on Linux but still want to have things running in the background I'd like to check on here and there without closing my game I typically launch my game into a new Xserver instance. This fairly simple setup allows you to change between Xserver instances by using ctrl+alt+f7 and ctrl+alt+f8.

To launch your application into a new Xserver instance you simply need to launch the program as follows (I'll use Desura in my example):

xinit /home/honey/desura/desura %U -- :1

Once you run this your screen will flick once or twice as the new X instance is created and the program is automatically launched within it. This new X will be accessible via the keyboard shortcut ctrl+alt+f8, to get back to your previous X instance simply press ctrl+alt+f7.

Now, one other thing to note is that on some Linux distributions you may be greeted with the following message when you try to run xinit as a normal user:

X: user not authorized to run the X server, aborting.

Don't panic, the fix for this is also simple. In terminal run:

sudo nano /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config

This will open a file for editing - we only need to adjust one line. Make sure somewhere in this file is the line:

allowed_users=anybody

Save and close the file and the above xinit file should now work. Happy gaming folks!

~Jeff Hoogland

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LibreOffice Math/Formula Editor Examples

While I love technology another one of my passions is mathematics. I am currently working on a graduate degree in this field. I like to type a good deal of my course work so it looks presentable.

I know the industry standard for typing mathematics is using a software such a LaTex or Lyx, but I haven't quite made the leap from using LibreOffice as my every day word processor as of yet. Thankfully, LibreOffice comes with a fairly power equation editor - if you know how to use it! The following is my personal cheat sheet for using the editor - enjoy!

If you'd like to download a copy of this you can easily copy and paste I've got an ODT version here and a PDF version here.

~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Bodhi Linux on Genesi Smartbook

Edit/Update: You can find the latest release here -> http://www.bodhilinux.com/downloads_mobile.php

I mentioned a short while ago that Genesi had become a Bodhi affiliate. They sent me one of their Smartbooks to get hacking at and today I would like to share my first batch of public files for it. The following is a short HOWTO for getting a Debian Wheezy file system with the Bodhi Enlightenment desktop running on your Genesi Smartbook.

First - Preparing the SD Card:

You will need an SD card that is at least 4GB. We need two partitions on this card, the first is a small EXT3 partition (at least 64MB) and then a second EXT4 partition that takes up the remainder of the card. Use your tool of choice to prepare the SD card, personally I prefer "GParted":

Second - Getting the Files:

Two archives contain everything you need to get Bodhi rolling on your Smartbook. Grab the latest rootfs and boot partitions from here.

Third - Extracting the Files:

Place the boot archive in the ext3 partition of your SD card and extract the files there. Place the rootfs archive in the ext4 partition of your SD card and extract the files there.

Thats it - you are all set! Simply place the SD card in your Smartbook and boot it up. In a few moments you should be greeted with an Enlightenment desktop. The default user information is:

Username: bodhi
Password: bodhi 

The bodhi account is configured to be able to use "sudo", but a root account is also in existence with a password of "bodhi".

Known Issues:

This is a early release for others wanting to help me test and debug things. It is fairly functional in it's current state, but please be aware of two issues with the first release I am aware of -

• Audio is non-functional
• Shutdown/Restart/Suspend cannot be done via Enlightenment Menu

If you figure out a fix for either of these please pass it along!

Installing to Internal Memory:

If you like the Bodhi image and want to install it to your internal system memory (typically much faster than an SC card) it is fairly easy to do so. By default the internal drive has two paritions, one located at /dev/sda1 and a second at /dev/sda2. Mount these while booted from the SD card and remove their current contents. Then simply extract the boot archive to /dev/sda1 and the rootfs to /dev/sda2. Finally, you will need to remove the default boot.scr the boot archive provides and rename the boot.scr.sda to simply boot.scr

Trouble Shooting:

If you encounter an issue getting Bodhi setup on your Smartbook please do not leave a comment here about it. Instead open a thread in the Genesi Section of our user forums.

Photos:

Finally here are a couple of slightly terrible photos of Bodhi booted on my Genesi.
 

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Setup Comp-Scale under Enlightenment

What is Comp-Scale?

Comp-Scale is an Enlightenment module that uses compositing features to allow you to switch between active windows and your current virtual workspace in a fancy method.

Installing Comp-Scale:

If you are using Bodhi Linux comp-scale is installed by default on your system. If you are using a different base system I advise building the latest comp-scale module from the E SVN.

Loading Comp-Scale:

If you installed the module correctly you can now go to Settings->Modules->Look and load Comp-Scale:

Setting Up Comp-Scale:

There are two different methods of settings up Comp-Scale. First you can simply add click-able gadgets (Settings->Gadgets) to your desktop or shelf:

Or you can setup key bindings:

What does Comp-Scale Look Like?

The first gadget - Scale Windows - gives you a composited view of all the windows on your active work space:

The second gadget - Scale all Windows - displays all open applications running across all your work spaces:

Finally, the third gadget - Scale Pager - triggers an overview of all your virtual work spaces:

Closing:

Short Enlightenment tutorials are something I hope to start doing on a regular basis. The Enlightenment desktop is extremely flexible and there are a great number of things you can do with it. Personally I learned everything I did about the desktop largely by following the IT flow chart and I advise everyone else interested in learning the desktop to do the same. The Bodhi Guide to Enlightenment is also a great resource for learning the E17 desktop.

If there is something you are interested in learning how to do, drop a comment below and hopefully I can address it in a future post

~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Get right to X with No Display Manager

GDM, KDM, LXDM, LightDM - so many display managers so little time! If your not sure what a "Display Manager" does on your Linux system, in short it is the piece of software that starts your graphical user interface and manages your user login.  I've been doing more and more work with ARM hardware of the late and most times with embedded devices there is little (or no) need for a display manager to be present. You want to get right to your desktop and just start using the system.

If you have a single user computer odds are you also have no need for a display manager to be cluttering your system. The solution is to simply have your desktop GUI of choice auto-start when the computer turns on. To do this we are going to use a simple, but effective, piece of software cleverly called "NoDM".

Before we begin, you first need to disable or uninstall any current display managers running on the system (look into your display manager documentation on doing this, it varies with each display manager).

Next you need to install NoDM. On a Debian/Apt based system it is as simple as running:

sudo apt-get install nodm

After your package manager works it's magic you need to edit at least two lines in the NoDM configuration file. Typically this file is located at /etc/default/nodm, to edit it open it as super user with your preferred text editor. For example:

sudo leafpad /etc/default/nodm 

The default configuration file should look something like this. The two lines we need to edit most are:

NODM_ENABLED=false

and

NODM_USER=root

The first line you simply need to change to read:

NODM_ENABLED=true

The second line you need to make equal to the username you want to be logged in with.

Finally you need to tell your system what type of session to start when X is spawned. For instance I prefer to use the Enlightenment desktop, so in my ~/.xsession file I add the following line:

enlightenment_start

To add this line to your .xsession file via the CLI simply run:

echo enlightenment_start > ~/.xsession

If you are using a desktop other than Enlightenment you will need to figure out what that desktop's start up command is. Have any questions feel free to drop a comment below and I'll do my best to help out.

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Force Skype to use Alsa on Linux

Like it or not Skype is a popular piece of software. In fact it is so popular it is the only piece of voice communication software a number of my friends will use. Because of this I have an account an use it on my Bodhi system every now and then (at least it has a native - if poor - Linux client and I don't have to run it via Wine). In case you didn't know - Bodhi ships with just the Alsa sound server by default (there are a number of reasons for this - none of which I am going to get into here) and luckily Skype installs and works perfectly fine with Alsa - until pulse audio shows up that is.

It seems something I installed recently drug pulse audio in with it as a dependency - this would be fine and dandy except for the fact that my Skype audio (input and output) 100% stopped with the addition of pulse audio to my system. Apparently the authors of Skype (in their infinite wisdom) made it so that if Skype is launched while pulse audio is installed Skype will use pulse (and only pulse) without the option to change back to Alsa. As I mentioned above my Skype audio was non-functional under pulse (for whatever reason) so I sought out a method for forcing Skype to use Alsa without having to remove pulse audio from my system.

The Solution -

To start, you need to close Skype and then kill the pulse audio server. To do this in one swift command open a terminal and run

killall skype && killall pulseaudio

Next you need to tell your pulse audio server not to auto launch itself (which it does by default). To do this we simply need to add one configuration setting to a file. To do this run the command:

nano ~/.pulse/client.conf

In the text file that is opened paste the following line:

autospawn = no

Save and close the file (ctrl+x when using nano), launch Skype and you should be good to go.

Hope this saves someone the 20 minutes I spent crawling around Google to track down this information.

~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Use APT without the Bloat

Today I would like to share a small tidbit with all the users of APT distros out there. One of the reasons Bodhi Linux is so light weight and snappy is because when I install all the base packages for Bodhi I install them with the minimal amount of extra dependencies.

For whatever reason a good deal of Debian packagers like to tack on a whole slew of "optional" dependencies to the packages they create. By default apt-get installs all of these extra dependencies on your computer. If you are like me and don't want all the extra bloat it is as simple as running apt-get with on extra argument:

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends foo 

In the above example "foo" is the name of the package you wish to install. Doing this can save a good bit of space on your system. For example:

sudo apt-get install abiword

VS

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends abiword

or

sudo apt-get install k3b

VS

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends k3b

~Jeff Hoogland

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