GNOME 3 Live image - version 0.0.4

Another week, another release of GNOME 3 live image.

Sorry for the delay but the release of GTK 3.0 and glib 2.28 last week pushed back my planned release since I needed to rebuild the entire stack with it.

If you want to spread the word about the image, you can also link now to http://gnome3.org/tryit.html 

Anyway, what is new in this release :

• many modules have been updated to GNOME 2.91.6
• kernel 2.6.37 (desktop flavor) and Xorg 1.9.3 (ie fresh drivers for many cards) : thanks to OBS, I've been able to easily integrate those packages update on our stable distribution (openSUSE 11.3). Still no gallium driver for radeon, this is scheduled for next week.
• fixed freeze at startup on some radeon card (there was a race between graphical splash and radeon KMS)
• some additional network drivers (shaun, this release is for you ;)
• more GNOME 3 modules, based on feedback we got from FOSDEM (epiphany, evince, brasero, gnome-packagekit, file-roller, evolution, gnome-games, totem-plugins...)
• new gnome-shell, with integration with evolution-data-server (no, you won't have yet new workspace layout in this image, since GNOME-Shell hackers are still busy working on it)
• The Board is also in the image, feel free to test it

On the know issues :

• ndiswrapper is not shipped (not available for 2.6.37 yet)
• same for vmware guest (please use SUSE Studio appliance instead)
• there are some SSL certificates popups issues (when using empathy)
• changing language from gnome-control-center doesn't work

If you installed the image on a system, you should be able to update it, running "zypper dup" as root (careful, we changed a lot of things this time)

FOSDEM - New version of GNOME 3 live image

As many GNOME folks, I'll be at FOSDEM, either attending some talks or on GNOME booth or near openSUSE booth (and maybe saying hi to Mageia folks who will have their first assembly there).


And for FOSDEM, I've updated GNOME 3 live cd/usb image to version 0.0.3 : its adds more packages (including empathy), update some components to more recent version (although you won't have the latest 2.91.6 GNOME 3 pre-release, since it was a little too late to get it in time for FOSDEM).

And if you are coming to FOSDEM, take a empty USB stick with you (minimum 500MB) and visit GNOME booth : we will be happy to dump the GNOME 3 live image on it so you can test it at home or anywhere you want.

Location to download it is the same (and you will redirected to nearest mirror for free) : http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/Medias/images/iso/
If you want to play with virtual image, go to SUSE Gallery.

If you have installed previous image on a system, you can update it by running "zypper dup" as root.

Reminder : either use dd, Mdv seed or aaron tool to write image to usb. Do not try to use Unetbootin, it will break the image.

GNOME 3 live CD / USB test image

Hi everyone,

to help as many people as possible to test the (not yet released) GNOME-Shell (and GNOME 3), I've been working on a test image, which can be easily burned on any CD or dump on USB sticks, without the hassle of compiling the entire GNOME 3 stack with (the excellent) jhbuild.

This image does not modify your system in any way.

This image does not contain proprietary drivers (ie no Nvidia nor ATI fglrx proprietary drivers).

This image is a persistent image : if you dump it on a USB stick, the first boot will be very long (don't worry) because the free space on the USB stick will be allocated to store the changes done on the running image.

User name on the image is tux and password for this user and for root is linux.

Initial version of this image was created with the excellent SUSE Studio appliance generator but starting with this version, I'm using kiwi (which is also used by SUSE Studio) and OBS to generate the image directly on our build infrastructure (where GNOME 3 packages are also being build for openSUSE).

For people wondering, this image is based on openSUSE 11.3 with additional GNOME 3 packages and branding has been modified to follow GNOME 3 as close as possible (you won't see much Geeko around ;)

You can download this image (in both x86 and x86-64 flavors, but I didn't test the 64 bits version yet) from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/Medias/images/iso/ (file with the name starting with GNOME_3).

To install this image, you can either :

• burn it on a CD / DVD with your favorite ISO burner
• dump it on a USB stick, either with Mdv Seed (available for Linux or Windows) or Abock image-usb-stick or MeeGo image-writer (which is a small python wrapper around dd) like this :
• as root :
• chmod a+x ./image-writer
• ./image-writer img_file.iso

• test in in a virtualized environment (Virtualbox, ...), either using this image or the VM available from SUSE Gallery, but beware 3D support might not work properly and you might not see GNOME-Shell but the old GNOME panel instead

Live install is also available (but hidden ATM) in the image : just add "liveinstall" on the boot command line and you will get the live installer which will allow you to install the image on your favorite computer.



Among the various caveats found already :

• on some ATI chipsets, you might need to add "nomodeset" on the boot command, if GNOME-Shell doesn't start properly
• sometime, on first boot, GNOME-Shell won't be start but classic GNOME will be. Just logout and login again
• empathy is not yet on the image (as well as other GNOME 3 components)

As always, comments are welcome.