Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Synfig for Slackware Part 2

Now the craziness begins:

There is  document for the old Synfig called slack-required:
atk >= 1.32.0-i486-1
atkmm >= 2.22.5-i486-1sl
cairo >= 1.10.2-i486-2
cairomm >= 1.9.8-i486-1sl
cxxlibs >= 6.0.14-i486-1 | gcc-g++ >= 4.5.2-i486-2
expat >= 2.0.1-i486-2
fontconfig >= 2.8.0-i486-1
freetype >= 2.4.4-i486-1
gcc >= 4.5.2-i486-2
gdk-pixbuf2 >= 2.23.3-i486-1
glib2 >= 2.28.6-i486-1
glibc-solibs >= 2.13-i486-4
glibmm >= 2.27.99.2-i486-1sl
gtk+2 >= 2.24.4-i486-1
gtkmm >= 2.24.0-i486-1sl
libX11 >= 1.4.3-i486-2
libXau >= 1.0.6-i486-1
libXcomposite >= 0.4.3-i486-1
libXcursor >= 1.1.11-i486-1
libXdamage >= 1.1.3-i486-1
libXdmcp >= 1.1.0-i486-1
libXext >= 1.2.0-i486-1
libXfixes >= 5.0-i486-1
libXi >= 1.4.2-i486-1
libXinerama >= 1.1.1-i486-1
libXrandr >= 1.3.1-i486-1
libXrender >= 0.9.6-i486-1
libpng >= 1.4.5-i486-1
libsigc++ >= 2.2.9-i486-1sl
libtool >= 2.4-i486-1
libxcb >= 1.7-i486-1
libxml++ >= 2.33.2-i486-1sl
libxml2 >= 2.7.8-i486-3
pango >= 1.28.4-i486-1
pangomm >= 2.28.2-i486-1sl
pixman >= 0.20.2-i486-1
synfig >= 0.63.02-i486-3sl
zlib >= 1.2.5-i486-4

Now the current Slackware is the 14.2 release candidate which within the last few months has added most of the current packages of those they didn't have already.  The only issue is mlt, which is not on the list but is required.  For any problems go to: slackbuilds.org  But of course a lot of this software has changed.  So we will edit the slackbuilds, and the order we edit them in is both the order we run them in and the order of complexity:simplest and first is ETL.

Open ETL.SlackBuild in a text editor, find the line:

VERSION=0.4.11
and change it to:
VERSION=0.4.19
 
Also change :
 
ARCH=${ARCH:-noarch} 
 
to:
if [ -z "$ARCH" ]; then
  case "$( uname -m )" in
    i?86) ARCH=i486 ;;
    arm*) ARCH=arm ;;
       *) ARCH=$( uname -m ) ;;
  esac
fi
 
 Save it into a directory with the ETL source code. Then type either type "sh ETL.SlackBuild" in that directory as root or, if you have fakeroot installed type "fakeroot sh ETL.SlackBuild".  Either way, ET-0.04.19-x85_64-1_SBo.tgz should be in this directory.  As root, type "installpkg" and install it, before continuing on.  Now things get more complicated.

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Synfig for Slackware Part 1


I'm interrupting my series to discuss  a program which was an inspiration for this blog. I always wanted to do animation but I couldn't get along with people well enough for the traditional stuff.  I liked Macromedia Director but couldn't afford it, and by the time I cold Adobe owned it  and their DRM made me allergic to their products.

Synfig Studio is an open source vector animation program.  As such it has its issues.    The vector drawing component in particular is abomination.  While the Blender project has done several proof-of-concept projects, most notably Big Buck Bunny, a group of Russians have been working on Maria Morevna  since 2007, which recently morphed into a web series.   And which is trying to raise money to finish the first episode while supporting development of the software.


I may get back to that but some disclaimers first.   Since it is oen source Ican install it on Slackware.   How, the article's  topic, is crazy and I take no responsibility for anyone who follows my lead.  In particular the second step.   I'm on a new computer and I'm repeating these steps as I type them but while they've  worked for years a time passes they get crazier.

Slackware is close enough to plain vanilla Linux  so it's pretty straightforward to compile and install programs, but if you just do that the OS won't know where they are.  Debian has deb files, Red Hat/Fedora rpms and Slackware tgz or txz files.      You can create your own files.    In Slackware you use SlackBuild scripts.  You can get them for old versions of  Synfig at Slacky.eu.    You need 3:

ETL
Synfig
Synfig Studio


I only linked to the scripts.  Get the source code here:
Synfig source
Again, get all 3 packages.  




Friday, March 4, 2016

My history with Slackware Linux part 3 Debian and Distro-Hopping


Another successful iso burning was a debian net-install disk.  It was only about a hundred fifty megs and once I figured out how to connect it to the internet, the computer with the CD burner became a debian machine.  I learned to use apt rather than rpm, the Red Hat installation files.   I also started learning about live-cds.  Knoppix, the Ubuntu installation disk, dyne:bolic which thrilled me as I was an artist, DSL (Damn Small Linux) and many others.  All of the above except dyne:bolic were based on Debian so I got to know it very well.  The only problems I had were with PulseAudio (for which reason I do not consider Lennart Poettering a hero) and Mono (ditto Miguel de Icaza though he did a lot of good things with Gnome).

I began to meet other users again at about this time and one fellow at the Seacoast Linux User's Group told me he had spent two weeks installing Debian into someone's computer.  Since I had first spent most of a day doing it,  that surprised me until I learned he installed them from a set of CDs.  A LARGE set of CDs which was too large, in fact for him to install everything.  It was also about then I started cartooning again and as you will see above a lot of what I drew was about what I know.  I managed Slackware again briefly, but  had learned Gnome, I wanted Gnome and they weren't supporting it.  So I settled for Debian with a gnome desktop (he lives in a cute little house and smokes a pipe, the gnome).

Then  came the two programs I mentioned above,  and other issues and I began to lose patience with Gnome.  Dyne:Bolic came along and blew my mind.  The desktop image was very cool.  It was clearly a vector drawing and they had a vector drawing program called Inkscape.  I'd had vector drawing when I came back to college.  For me it was like all the best parts of watercolor an none of the other stuff.  Dyne:Bolic had something else too: the xfce4 desktop.  I very soon switched full time. 

Dyne:Bolic was one of many programs I ran from CDs.  These included Knoppix, DSL (Damn Small Linux) Ubuntu and even as my computers changed Fedora.  I came to appreciate both how Ubuntu was taking over mindshare and, since it was a debian derivative, Debian was taking over how most of us ran Linux.  Slax, a slackware derivative, was fun but one day my mind was blown, while playing with dyne:bolic when I found installpkg removepkg and pkgtool on it and realized it was nothing more than a repackaged Slackware.

Round about 2007, as I was switching to laptops, I got fed up with Debian.  I threw Fedora 9 on my machine, and it ran sweetly till I upgraded to Fedora 10.  Fedora was still, to my mind, a resource-hog.  So I decided to try Slackware for a few weeks.  I'm essentially still on it.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

My history with Slackware Linux Part 2: Brought to you by Red Hat.

Red Hat Linux wasn't Slackware, but it was good enough. Red Hat Linux wasn't Red Hat Enterprise Linux either - yet. I set it up as a dual boot, and I had a problem setting up sound at first, but I learned about the DOS program RAWRITE.EXE and the GNU dd (disk duplicator) and started to get a feeling for how Windows pads and changes your files to make them "safe" (which they aren't anyhow).  Doom was apparently not available for Slackware either (on disk) but I bought Quake and was able to get assistance installing the Linux version through ID software who made it. 

That is a digression to get into: ID software used Open Source tools like GNU.  They read the license, and had no problem at the time following it.  What it said was that if you create derivative works, such as a program which can only the compiled on it, you must make the source code freely available to all users to change as they see fit.  The way this is supposed to work is this: there is really no conceptual difference between a game program and a program interpreter.  The game program though is not the game: it is the game engine which interprets key strokes, mouse movements and mouse clicks and displays graphics and sound effects which advance the session.  I did not look closely enough at the source code to be sure that the game engine for quake, one of the last engines they open sourced, could only be compiled with gcc.  That would have compelled them to open source the game engine.  The game engine though was not the game.  I bought the game, which included graphics, a score by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and other creative things which were inarguably the property of ID software.  The GAME of Quake was never supposed to be open sourced - only the Game Engine.  If that. ID was generous responsible an still deserve support but some confused kids and some horribly cynical people abused this to send pirated games around.  You can still play the Doom Engine for free as PRBoom, and there are games based on other engines like OpenArena.  ID Software certainly deserves props for doing it for as long as they did, as, despite some things, does Apple for the Darwin Kernel.

For about a year I was happy learning about my computer.  I eventually found in the local "transfer station" (junkyard) a computer with a cdrw and a dying hard drive.  It was about my birthday and after reformatting and putting Linux on it I was able to use it without replacing the drive until Labor Day.  And I could have used it longer.  When Red Hat 8 came out I bought that as well (at about the same time).  Then came Fedora.

What I had been buying at Staples was openly a contract with Red Hat to use a testing version of their Operating System which, once all the bugs were worked out, they would take and distribute a stable version, with consultants they charged for, to corporate clients.  I was paying money because I, at the time, did not understand how to download and burn an ISO boot disk or use rpm and yum files to update.  In 2003 they marked a major upgrade to their OS by renaming the version I used Fedora I and the stable version Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

I went to Staples to pick up Fedora and not only did they not have it but the sales clerk gave me a lecture about how I should never use Linux because installing it voided my warranty (which is why I bought refurbs from small shops usually).  I managed to burn it as one of my first successful attempts.  It brought both my computers to a complete standstill.  It used more memory than I had.

Before I went back to Slackware I had an equally rewarding experience with Debian, which I shall describe in part 3.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

My history with Slackware Linux, part 1.

What is Slackware and why do I use it?  Slackware is the oldest currently maintained version of GNU/Linux out there.  My first exposure to it came in 1994 when Rhode Island College installed it as a dual boot in one of their computer labs because Netscape was available - at the time - only on Unix and GNU/Linux and they certainly couldn't afford Unix.

I'd been studying art and programming while working as a clerk typist.  My exposure to computers had usually been to the Mac or to MS-DOS/Windows (this was the transition era) or the VAX though I'd done one temp job where I could use any program I liked, so long as it was the Unix program vi.   Slackware changed my understanding of what an operating system does completely.  I knew it provided an interface between the applications programs we use and the hardware, but DOS and the Mac tried to coddle us while Slackware, being relatively Unix-like even then, was so austere I could watch and read documentation abut how my computer, which I was using that minute, did what I told it to.  I could only compare it to Underground Comix from the sixties: Volkerding, Torvalds and friends were reinventing computing the way Greg Irons, R. Crumb, Gilbert Sheldon, Rius et. al. had reinvented storytelling.  Further, a lot of the people I was reading about were involved in the Church of the Sub-Genius, which I knew from Science Fiction Fandom and WFMU.

At the same time it was not only advanced enough to play Doom on, the shareware version came with the distro (so people were playing it). The GUI was X-Windows,which I'd seen both at Brown and in Movies like War Games, and the only reason I didn't try to install it then was because after my computer broke I couldn't afford another.  I was definitely having fun.

I moved to New Hampshire after that and it was the new century before I could get another computer.  I was using Netscape at the library and using grex (www.cyberspace.org) to keep my skills from atrophying totally.  When I got a computer it had a cd-rom, which was a good thing.  Things like Linux.  In '94 you could even run it from a couple of floppies.  This was a cd/r not a cd/rw on a Windows 98 machine but it was god enough.  Given the options I went to Staples and bought a CD with Red Hat Linux 7.