Julien Valroff's weblog and personal homepage
Posts tagged Planet Debian
Xorg input hotplug
Apr 19th
I had written a few weeks ago about my new (almost) empty xorg.conf file and explained how I had to edit an HAL .fdi file to change my keyboard layout and define my compose key.
The Debian Xstrike Force have written a complete guide on the Debian wiki explaining this input hotplug system.
I have found that there is no need to edit .fdi files, just set the following options at the end of /etc/default/console-setup:
XKBMODEL="pc105" XKBLAYOUT="fr" XKBVARIANT="latin9" XKBOPTIONS="compose:lwin"
Even better, they should now be automatically grabbed from your existing xorg.conf when upgrading!
Switched to Pulseaudio
Mar 22nd
Following to an issue with esound not playing GNOME system sounds, I have decided to give Pulseaudio a try.
Installing the pulseaudio package pulled all necessary dependencies, including the esound compatibility plugin. I have added local users to the pulse-rt group, as recommended. After this, all worked perfectly except the main channel was muted and its volume set to 0% after rebooting.
I have found that not loading the module-device-restore does fix this issue, strangely. If you encounter the same problem, try and comment out the line load-module module-device-restore in /etc/pulse/default.pa.
On the essential role of translations in free software – GCompris in Portugal
Mar 10th
The recent problem of the Portuguese translation of GCompris shows how important a good translation is, especially as far as free software are concerned.
I have not been able to find any news in English relating this story, and think it is essential to spread it so that people better appreciate the role translators play in the free software development process.
The Portuguese Magalhães Project lead to provide 300,000 netbooks to Portuguese children aged of 6 to 10, for a fee varying from 0€ to 50€, depending on the earnings of the family. These netbooks have a dual boot, with Windows and Linux (a distribution based on Mandriva called “Caixa Mágica” – Magic Box in English).
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Controversial “Internet and creation” French law
Mar 10th
I wasn’t sure to really understand this project of law until I read a lot about it during the past days. As some of you might already know, this law, called “Internet et Création”, but mainly referred as “HADOPI” law 1, is a “Three Strikes” scheme to fight against illegal downloads proposed before the last summer by the French government, and then voted in the Autumn by the Sénat (the first of the two French houses of Parliament).
Not that I am in favor of illegal downloads of movies and music, but the way this law plans to fight against them is a real threat for French free software developers and users.
- HADOPI is the name of the possible future new institution created after the law enters in action ↩
GNOME leaves a lot of useless files
Feb 20th
I have been cleaning my ~/ and noticed a lot of files in ~/.metacity/sessions/ and ~/.config/metacity/sessions/ (800+) and in ~/.nautilus/ (600+).
Nautilus and Metacity are to blame for these behaviours. Bugs have already been reported in the Debian BTS and in the upstream bugzilla.
I hope this will be fixed shortly.
Lenny…
Feb 15th
Well, I am sure all of you have already read the announcement: Lenny (aka Debian 5.0) is out!
I have been using Debian on all my machines since at least mid 2003, when Woody was stable. Sarge was then released in 2005, then Etch the year after.
I have updated my personal repository of unofficial packages for this new stable release. I have let etch packages available (under oldstable), but will remove them in a while. This repository is mainly mainly composed of backported or patched packages for my own use, but can be used by anyone (but I do not guarantee anything 
).
My new xorg.conf
Feb 7th
~$ [ -s /etc/X11/xorg.conf ] ; echo $? 1
Yes, it is an empty file! I have just upgraded xorg to the experimental packages. hal does its job, and all devices are automatically detected and configured.
This is actually a great improvement, especially for those who had to fight against the XFree86 configuration file just to get a graphical session working, back in the late 90′s.
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Counting Debian source packages #2
Jan 17th
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