Yeah, 2011 is coming to the end, and had already switched place with 2012 in most countries already.

image

Somewhere on the road to curitiba, starting 2011....

For me, 2011 was extremely busy, exhausting but also very fruitful. I started it in a completely different situation from 2010, when I was a mere developer in Mandriva company. And during the course of 2010 and, later, 2011, I got the chance to work as engineering team leader for Conectiva, then development manager and, finally, technical diretor for Mandriva. And, after this experience, I got to move into Intel, working with even more challenging and amazing projects.

So yes, it was a hugely crazy and great experience. Thank you 2011 – despite all the problems and obstacles, you was great after all if we sum up everything.

See you all in 2012!

For those of you who couldn’t attend LinuxCon Brazil – I’ve put my presentation about Intel Linux Graphics online for you all.

(of course, if you have attended and want to see it again, you can do this too :) ).

Have fun!

Intel Linux Graphics

…or, “when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

Mandriva 2011 beta3 running on macbook air

To do a more fair comparison between Mac and Linux approaches on same hardware, I took a shot and installed Mandriva 2011 beta3 (x86-64 version) alongside Mac OS X on the same Macbook air. The process is nowhere simple nor straight, but it is certainly possible. So in case someone wants to repeat the feat, here is a quick step-by-step instruction how to do so (alternatively, for the impatient ones, you could skip till the end of this post for a simple one-step solution).

  • Download Mandriva 2011b3 from your favorite mirror. The architecture should not matter, but to get the most from the hardware I’d recommend 64bits edition (but it is solely up to you to decide).
  • Run hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o mdv2011.img Mandriva.2011-beta3.x86_64.iso to convert the image to mac-compatible format
  • Now comes the tricky part. In order to make the system boot from this image, it is not enough to create a bootable usb disk or create a local disk partition for the installation. You actually have to create 2 local disk partitions – one where the Linux will be installed, and another roughly equal to the size of the installable image (1.6GB as of mdv2011 beta3), where you should put the copy of the installation image using dd. In other words, you must do the following:
  • Open disk utility from Dock->Utilities.
  • Create a new partition with roughly 2GB in size.
  • Create another partition with the space you want for your Linux install (about 10GB should be enough).
  • Format both partitions as MSDOS FAT.
  • Plug your pendrive which will be used for installation.
  • Open a terminal, become root and run diskutil list, it should show you the partitions you have created and the pendrive. E.g., it should show something like:

  sh-3.2# diskutil list
  /dev/disk0
     #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
     0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
     1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
     2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            89.9 GB    disk0s2
     3:       Microsoft Basic Data                         29.2 GB    disk0s3
     4:       Microsoft Basic Data                         2.0 GB     disk0s4
  /dev/disk1
     #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
     0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *8.0 GB     disk1
     1:                       0x17                         1.7 GB     disk1s1

Here, disk0s3 is the partition where the Linux system will live after the installation, disk0s4 is the partition for the installer, and disk1 is the disk currently located inside the pendrive.

  • Now we have to transfer the installation image both to the pendrive and local partition. For this, first run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk0s4 and diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1 to unmount the partitions, and then transfer the image to them with dd if=mdv2011.img of=/dev/disk1 and dd if=mdv2011.img of=/dev/disk0s4.
  • !! AS ALWAYS, make sure you know what you are doing, because dd command does not likes newcomers and non-careful people !!. If you are not careful, this is the step you have the most possibility of losing all your data for good. You’ve been warned.
  • After it is done, the installation procedure is mostly prepared, but you still need to prepare your mac for multi-booting. Luckily for you, this is easy – just install refit and it should work without any configuration.
  • Now, with the pendrive still plugged, reboot your machine. On boot prompt, there will be a new nice refit menu, where you should choose partition tool and allow it to syncronize the GPT partition table with MBR. This is necessary because grub1 and low-level system utilities used in Mandriva 2011 do not support GPT partition tables.
  • Now you can try booting from your pendrive. If you receive a Non-system disk or Unable to find isolinux.bin, make sure that you have followed the steps of having the same image on both pendrive and local partition. What (apparently) happens in this case is that Mac gets confused about the local disks namings (e.g., it confuses the USB partitions with local disk ones), and isolinux gets lost trying to figure what to do and usually gets stuck. There is probably a more clean way to make this work, but as I am lazy sometimes, I just settled with this solution.
  • If you got to the grub splashscreen, congratulations, you have almost reached half of the procedure :) . Now press TAB to edit kernel parameters, and change the root=LIVE:LABEL=… to root=LIVE:/dev/sdb. This way, you are telling kernel that the partition you are booting from is in fact the pendrive, and it won’t get lost trying to solve the puzzle of GPT+MBR+multiple disks mappings (more on this later). Just make sure you select Live system instead of Installation to prevent needless reboots and problems.
  • If everything goes OK, you should be able to boot to KDE with 800×600 resolution. If you reached this point, open the konsole terminal, become root, run draklive-install and proceed with the installation until the partitioning step. At this point, the Mandriva installer gets confused by the GPT+MBR partition table as well, and gets lost about what to do. What you should do is remove the partition you dedicated for Mandriva installation (the big one, not the 2GB one), create a new one with your favorite Linux file system (I suggest ext4) and format it. Just name it as / partition and create no swap – we could always create a swap file later.
  • Now the installer will tell you that the machine must be rebooted to update partition layout and will quit. Instead of rebooting, however, just run partprobe command as root and it will re-sync in-memory partition table with the new disk content, and restart draklive-install. Now it should allow you to proceed with the installation, so just sit back and relax while Mandriva gets installed on your system. Or go make a tea or drink a beer, cause it will take a somewhat long time.
  • When the install finishes, in the bootloader installation step, make sure to install it to the root of the partition – in my case, it was /dev/sda3, but your mileage may vary.
  • The install should finish, but in case grub-install command output in the terminal gave you an error message, you must install grub manually because somehow, surprisingly, it gets confused with the GPT+MBR layout as well. So just run grub-install /dev/sda3 and it should work. If it does not, try running just grub so it would recreate the device mapping, and install the bootloader manually (this is a bit technical and tedious procedure so I’ll skip it on behalf of clarity – feel free to ask in comments if you have questions about this point).
  • Finally, run fdisk /dev/sda, unmark the /dev/sda4 (old installation partition) as active, and mark /dev/sda3 as active. Basically, fdisk /dev/sda – press – a – press – 3 – press -a – press – 4 – w should do it (/me feels like describing Mortal Kombat fatalities with this explanation :) ).
  • Reboot, and a new Linux entry should appear within refit menu. However, when you try to boot it, grub will fail, saying that it is unable to locate kernel and initrd files at correct location. This, once again, is due to mismatch between GPT and MBR partition table, and a quick fix is to change (hd0,3) to (hd0,2) for both kernel and initrd lines. Once again, I am not describing the right fix, but the quickest one.
  • When the system boots, everything should work automatically, including wifi and everything else. As Mandriva 2011 comes pre-loaded with firmware for most closed cards and devices, it all should just work out of the box.
  • Just remember to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst file and make the change from (hd0,3) to (hd0,2) there to have it permanently remembered.

So, that’s it, and if you have got through this quick tutorial to this point and managed to get Mandriva 2011 installed on your Mac machine, you can consider yourself a true geek. Of course, most of this tutorial applies to Macbook Air, because it does not has a CD/DVD port – if it had, most of those steps wouldn’t be necessary at all. But.. we do not seek easy routes, are we? :)

And of course, I mentioned in the beginning of this post that there is a way to install Mandriva on OSX in just 1 simple step. This step is very simple – just ask me to send you a .dd.img copy of my Mandriva partition to you, so you could simple copy it into one of your own partitions, and it will just work. Somehow it feels a more natural way of distributing and packaging anything on Mac platform (I mean, within a .dmg file) – so I am unsure if it is more a hack than the complete tutorial I described above :) .

P.S.: Just to update you with some timings on the same hardware. Mac OS X 10.6.8 takes approximately 10 seconds from refit boot menu towards desktop. Stock Mandriva 2011 beta3 takes approximately 12 seconds from grub menu to kdm, and approximately another 12* seconds from kdm to full-featured desktop. After some optimizations, I could decrease this time to 7 seconds from grub to kdm, and 6 seconds from kdm to full-featured desktop. With auto-login they are tied in this comparison, which is really amazing!

At request from my friends from ROSA Labs :) , I was using a mac os x-based machine this week, to get a feeling on how it works, feels and looks like. As I had never used a mac before, it was certainly a nice experience, and I think I managed to extract the feeling of what is fundamentally different between a Mac and PC-based approaches (in this case, let’s consider PC as being Linux-based OS instead of Windows, which stands in between those approaches and perhaps I’ll describe my thoughts about it later).

Hi, I'm Mac.

So, after using a Linux-based OS exclusively for my Desktop for the past 10 years or so (except the time at Microsoft where I was using a pre-released version of Vista during the work hours), I finally was able to get a hold of a MacBook Air. One thing I can say that most of the mac advertizements are true – the hardware really looks amazing and “cool”. As for the software, well, let’s go step-by-step in this evaluation.

The fest thesis I want to emphasize is that the fundamental change between the Mac and Linux Desktop approaches is that Mac does everything to force you to understand and bend to the system default settings and the way it works, and Linux is completely aimed at making the system easy to customize and adapt to you. In other words, Mac forces you to adapt to the system, and Linux focuses on making system easily adaptable to what you want. This ranges from each and every level of the system configuration, starting with the UI, standardization of the used applications, the standardized menu, dock, and so on. On Mac, it is done this way, and you should not even think on changing it – it just works and the only solution for you is to get used to it.

On Linux, the things are quite opposite on all stages. Each and every part of the system can be customized, adapted, modified; there is no single point of complete integration between applications, settings and features. It is quite common to have a Linux system with systemd+kde+pidgin+openoffice, where each application has its programming framework, UI, look-and-feel, and functionality. And by no means it makes this system a second-class citizen when comparing to a upstart+gnome+emphaty+libreoffice one. This is the biggest advantage (and, for some, disadvantage) of Linux-based approaches – the large choice without One True Way of doing things.

This also brings me back to the eternal flame was which says that “the Mac is the Best Desktop Experience out there”, which I personally cannot agree with. Yes, Mac has its own experience, but the largest drawback is that is the only experience you could get out of it. By the contrary, on Linux there are thousands ways of how one could create, customize and run his Desktop. Somebody feels comfortable with pure KDE experience, someone would feel much more natural with a GNOME desktop. Many productivity-oriented Linux desktops are running dwm, icewm, ratpoison, wm3, evilwm and many many other desktop environments with multitude of apparently incompatible applications and do not miss any of their larger cousins (like kde, gnome or xfce) features.

So to summarize it all, one big advantage of a Mac-based experience is that the entire desktop feels like an appliance. To illustrate, consider any cellphone OS, or any TV or a videogame – the things “just work”, and you have no choice nor need to modify the way they work and just go on with using them. This is certainly a huge plus for casual users who just need to use their devices to get things done – it is very hard to get confused about what to do with the system, and in most applications all keyboard shortcuts, UI, menus, appearance and so on is standardized. In other words, you don’t learn how to use a Mac or Android or Symbian, you just use it, and there is only one correct way to get something done.

The advantage of a Linux-based desktops is their absolute – and even exaggerated sometimes – flexibility. They are completely focused on making the desktop experience bendable towards what you need, at a cost of much higher entry level and necessary learning about all the puzzles which compose it. It is certainly not focused on casual users (and, in my personal opinion, it should not be), and it is more of an elitist system – only the ones willing to learn, customize and adapt the system will be able to get the most out of it. But the ones who manage to get through this exhaustive task will be truly rewarded with a system where you know exactly what each and every piece, process or file are responsible for.

In other words, Mac is an appliance, and Linux is a constructor. Mac just works (not necessarily the way you expect), and Linux gives you the possibility to make it work the way you want (at a cost of a high learning and customization curve).

So in my personal opinion, it is pointless comparing a Mac experience to a Linux Desktop one. If Mac should be compared to anything, it is to other appliance-like environments, like cellphones and similar devices for example; or to end-to-end solutions based on any OS which has the similar goals in mind (like meego, android, winphone, windows, symbian, ubuntu – and now mandriva, which has invested a lot of time of ROSA Labs designers and developers to introduced a new UI experience for the 2011 release). In such cases, the user does not cares – nor should he – about what the system is based upon – a darwin os, a win kernel, a linux or any other low-level operating system. What use gets is the overall default UI which just works, and he should adapt to.

Hi, I am PC^WMandriva 2011 (this shot was shamelessly borrowed from softpedia because it really looks awesome!)

At the end, summarizing and concluding this long text, I can say now that it is more clear for me now where the ROSA Labs designers and developers are getting their inspiration from. Personally, for me, the Rosa Panel (included by default in Mandriva 2011) feels more natural and easy to use than its Mac equivalent and more flexible and tunable than its Windows counterpart. The same way, the ROSA Launcher application feels more powerful than Mac’s finder+dockbar combination, and much more flexible and friendly than Windows 7 start menu. This, at least for me, only complements my opinion that Linux is a constructor – you can build anything from the tools and pieces it has, take the best ideas out there and use them as inspiration, and result in something new. This is specially true to the geeks (like me) who do not like some of the design choices taken by ROSA – so we can just go ahead and make the system the way we want, taking the best from the both worlds.

Hi, I'm a bit customized Mandriva 2011 - and the limit to my customization is only your imagination :)

And, of course, having the power of Linux constructor, you can certainly adapt the system towards your needs, remove or change things you don’t want, and add what you find missing.

That’s it :) .

P.S.: Please, consider everything said here as my own personal opinion. By no means it represents the official Mandriva or ROSA view on the matter. This is what I think.

P.P.S.: Some extremely interesting discussion and feedbacks in the comments, be sure to check them out. Thanks for all this feedback!

Ééééé, mais um ano está se acabando..

Nesse em particular aconteceram muitas coisas comigo. E, seguindo a tradição dos últimos anos, só posso falar duas coisas: – A cada ano parece que o tempo passa mais e mais rápido – Todos os planos feitos no começo do ano acabam se transformando de forma inacreditável :) .

Bem, alguns dos destaques de 2008, que logo-logo vai ficar no passado:

  • Encontrei a Vanessa (sem dúvida alguma uma das coisas mais legais de 2008 :) )!
  • Fui para Salvador no carnaval. Foi uma experiência única e inesquecível :) .
  • Saí da mstech, depois de 5 anos lá. Aprendi muito lá, fiz diversos projetos interessantes, achei amigos para toda a vida e cresci muito. Mas chegou a hora de procurar novos desafios..
  • Adiantei de forma inacreditável as coisas do doutorado. Se no fim do ano passado eu não sabia nem para onde ele estava indo, e hoje posso falar que o projeto está praticamente terminado, e é um projeto BOM.
  • Entrei para Mandriva. Para mim isso é particularmente interessante – estou mexendo com Linux já faz mais de 10 anos, mas nunca trabalhei em nenhum lugar que trabalhasse diretamente com software livre.
  • Realizei diversos projetos para Intel (com ajuda do Paulo, é claro).
  • Li mais de 300 livros no meu N800. Encontrei diversos livros que realmente marcaram a minha vida e fizeram pensar nela.
  • Conheci diversas cervejas diferentes (novo hobby), e comecei a “degustar” vinhos bons. Casillero Del Diablo, de 2007.. hummm…
  • Consolidei o meu hobby de fotografia. Algumas fotos receberam milhares de visitas, algumas centenas.. Mas, observando as fotos antigas e comparando com as de hoje, consigo notar o meu crescimento pessoal nitidamente.

E muitas outras coisas.

De forma geral, 2008 foi bom. Corrido, mas bom. Vamos para 2009 agora!

Death MagneticBem, depois de ouvir por alguns dias o Death Magnetic de Metallica, mudei a minha opinião sobre ele (e para melhor!). Acho que é um dos melhores CDs de Metallica dos últimos tempos. Com excessão de S&M, é o melhor CD desde o Black Album. Tá certo que Load e Reload tinham algumas músicas excepcionais, mas.. foram só algumas músicas do cd.

De forma geral, o CD é muito bom. Todas as músicas são bem diferentes. Algumas são repetitivas dentro de si (e todas são bem longas), mas nem tanto quanto no St. Anger. Temos mais solos também, os riffs são mais marcantes, e o som em si parece ser muito mais detalhado (ao contrário do St. Anger, onde o CD inteiro parece ser tocado num ensaio).

E agora com mais detalhes sobre as músicas:

  • That Was Just Your Life – introdução lenta que se transforma num riff muito bom.  Em alguns pontos fica muito repetitivo, mas em geral eu daria nota 8/10 para ele.
  •  The End of the Line – muito bom. Só achei que fica muito repetitivo em alguns pontos também. 8/10.
  • Broken, Beat & Scarred – um dos melhores riffs do cd. Ele fica na cabeça e não sai mais. 8/10.
  • The Day That Never Comes – achei ideia similar ao One. Tem alguns trechos que se repetem demais, mas a música não deixa de ser boa. Não é a minha favorita deste cd. 7/10.
  • All Nightmare Long – uma das músicas mais rápidas do CD. E uma das que mais gostei. 9/10.
  • Cyanide – achei muito boa também. Tem algumas variações inesperadas no meio da música (boas). 8/10.
  • The Unforgiven III – falem a verdade, essa é a música que todo mundo mais esperou :) . E é a música mais “leve” do cd. É bastante diferente de Unforgiven I e Unforgiven II, mas tem o mesmo tema. Também tem alguns arranjos inesperados de um cd de Metallica (piano e instrumentos de sopro, aparentemente). No meio da música eu achei que fica um pouco mais fraca a letra, mas em geral gostei da música (embora menos que de Unforgiven e Unforgiven II). 7/10.
  • The Judas Kiss – música bastante pesada. Achei que do CD inteiro é a que mais lembra o St. Anger pelo som, mas tem um solo marcante. 8/10.
  • Suicide & Redemption – depois de muitos anos, uma música instrumental de Metallica. Um detalhe importante – música intrumental de quase 10 minutos! 7/10.
  • My Apocalypse – pelos reviews que eu li na Internet, é a música que o pessoal tem gostado menos. Na minha opinião, é uma das melhores deste cd, e é uma das mais rápidas. 8/10.

De forma geral, achei o Death Magnetic muito bom. Não é o melhor CD de Metallica até agora, mas definitavamente é um CD bom.

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