2004.03_Muse 0.6.3, Debian Installers, Mandrake 10 Preview.pdf

NEWS

Software

Software News

Easy Install

People often complain about the Debian

Installer, but “Which one?” asks Rick

Moen. Rick’s new website describes all

the known ways of installing a Debian

system and rates all the known installers

of the current Debian-based distributions

including run-from-CD variants, unoffi-

cial installer images, installation from a

USB memory stick, and many more.

The standard Debian installer was

mainly designed to be flexible on “multi-

ple architectures from a range of media

with minimal assumptions as to graphi-

cal support”, as well as being “modular,

usable over any and all network trans-

ports and other console access me-

chanisms and resistant to hardware

problems”.

However, some users would prefer an

easier approach to setting up a new

Debian system with a “preferably graphi-

cal installer that aggressively probe[s]

hardware (which they know little

about)”.

The page so far describes and links

more than 70 different ways to install a

new Debian GNU/Linux setup and offers

useful hints and tips about how to “roll

your own”.

Inspired by the MusE 0.6.3

The new version of the Linux Music Edi-

tor MusE is available for download.

MusE provides sequencing of both midi

and audio and, among other things, also

implements support for LADSPA (Linux

Audio Developer’s Simple Plugin API),

Jack and ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound

Architecture).

MusE allows the import and export of

midifiles, organizes songs in tracks and

parts, which can be

arranged with the

part editor. Editing

can be performed in

real time (i.e. while

playing), while both

real-time and step-

recording are poss-

ible. Users can also

configure up to eight

midi ports.

The latest version

is mainly a bugfix

release, but since

some bugs were con-

sidered

serious by the developers, “all users are

encouraged to upgrade”. MusE is

published under the GPL. The source

code can be downloaded from Source-

Forge.

■

http://lmuse.sourceforge.net/download.

php

http://www.ladspa.org

http://jackit.sourceforge.net

http://www.alsa-project.org

■

relatively

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/

installers.html

http://www.debian.org

Happily ever after

In December last year, the KDE Integra-

tion Project was launched by Jan

Holesovsky. This follows on from Jan’s

work on KPart Cuckooo, which allows

OpenOffice.org to be an embedded

viewer capable of displaying OpenOf-

fice.org and Microsoft Office documents

in a Konqueror window. His work on the

Integration Project is now starting to pay

off in the form of the KDE Native Widget

Framework (KDE NWF), a development

version of which is available for down-

The KDE Native Widget Framework is

“a way to get the look of the host plat-

form in OpenOffice.org”. Instead of real

KDE widgets, it uses the QStyle API to

draw its widgets the same way KDE/Qt

would. The current development version

can draw KDE-style push buttons, radio

buttons, check boxes, and list boxes.

The new QtGTK library marks another

step in the integration process. Until

now, it has been impossible to mix Qt

and GTK+ in the same application,

because Qt and GTK+ rely on different

event loops. It was therefore impossible

to use dialogs from one toolkit

while building the GUI in

another. To address this prob-

lem, Zack Rusin and Daniel

Molkentin wrote QtGTK, which

“integrates the Qt event loop in

the Glib event loop”. It has now

become possible to use any KDE

technology (i.e. dialogs, DCOP,

KDE IO) in any GTK+ applica-

tioni, which will allow easy

integration of any GTK+ appli-

cation with KDE. “Those

projects emphasize KDE’s ongo-

ing focus to be the integrative

desktop that finally consolidates the situ-

ation”, says Ralf Nolden, a member of

the KDE e.V. executive board.

■

http://kde.openoffice.org

http://developer.kde.org/documentation/

tutorials/qtgtk/main.html

March 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

■

NEWS

Software

Gaim on for Yahoo!

Ve rsion 0.75 of the multi-protocol instant

messaging client has been released. The

developer team announced that this

release contains several bug fixes, the

most important being that it now works

with Yahoo! again.

The ABC of Music

A new development version of abcm2ps

has been made available. The command

line tool, which converts abc files to Post-

Script format, is an extension of abc2ps

and can handle many voices per staff.

The musical notation language abc

was originally designed to notate folk

and traditional tunes in ASCII format.

Since 1991, when work on abc started,

several tools for different platforms have

been developed. It’s possible to play abc

files on a computer using tools like

playabc or abcMIDI. There are several

programs that allow abc to be rendered

into PostScript, and even a program that

Gaim is GTK2-based and compatible

with AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!,

IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr net-

works. It’s even possible to log in to

multiple accounts and networks at the

same time. Some of the program’s fea-

tures are away messages, typing

notification, and MSN window closing

notification. So-called Buddy Pounces

notify the user, send a message, play a

sound, or run a program when a buddy

comes online, is away, or returns from

being idle.

Gaim 0.75 features Yahoo! file transfer

and chat joining fixes, Mozilla Firebird

support and various translation updates.

RPMs of the program are available for

several Linux distributions, as are a

Debian package, Windows binaries, and

the source code.

■

http://gaim.sourceforge.net

Lindows Calling

LindowsOS 4.5 has been released. The

new version of the distribution ships

with Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)

technology, which allows its users make

high-quality free phone calls over the

Internet, to anyone with a SIP phone or

SIP-enabled computer anywhere in the

world.

Although SIP users will only be able to

call other phones that use the same tech-

nology, which is sure to grow in the

coming months, Lindows’ CEO Michael

Robertson is convinced “there’s a real

parallel here to MP3. That was about the

digitization of music, while this is about

digitization of voice

calls. The same

reverberations that

went through the

music industry are

going to go through

the telecom indus-

try.”

Other exciting fea-

tures which can be

found in this new

version of Lindow-

sOS 4.5 include

improved hardware

support, such as for

laptops, integrated

translations of web

content from or into six different lan-

guages, a full office suite and integrated

multimedia tutorials that cover every-

thing from simple desktop navigation to

setting up a wireless internet connection.

While you can download LindowsOS

for $49.95 or purchase the packaged ver-

sion for $59.95, KDE developers can

download LindowsOS for free. Michael

Robertson thanked the KDE community

for “the effort, skillful programming and

good organization”.

creates MusicTeX or MusiXTeX from abc.

abcm2ps by Jean-François Moine was

designed specially for music with more

than one voice per staff, i.e. organ

music. Sources for the last stable version

(3.7.17), the development version

(4.0.7) and several abc organ pieces can

be downloaded from the author’s web-

site.

■

http://moinejf.free.fr

http://lindows.com

http://www.sipphone.com

http://dot.kde.org/1073932908

Mandrake 10.0 Preview

MandrakeSoft has released two Man-

drake Linux Cooker snapshots. The new

pre-beta-version of the distribution fea-

tures kernel 2.6.0, KDE 3.2 beta and

XFree86 4.4 beta and new versions of

Mozilla, Xchat, Gaim and Samba.

Since this is only a pre-beta snapshot,

bugs and missing packages are to be

expected. Users who want to test the

new look of Mandrake 10.0, can report

bugs via MandrakeSoft’s Bugzilla. The

two ISO images are available for down-

load from the worldwide network of

Mandrake ftp mirrors.

■

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/

cookersnapshot.php3

http://qa.mandrakesoft.com

March 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

■

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: