Archive for the ‘Linux’ Category

Running Mendeley 0.9.8 on Fedora 14 (x86_64)

Mendeley is a combination of a desktop application and a website which helps you manage, share and discover both content and contacts in research.

The Desktop version offers automatic extraction of document details, management of your papers with full text search, sharing and synchronization, among other features. The website provides an online backup of your library, a variety of statistics about your research behavior, a research network and a recommendation engine for papers that might interest you.

When I discover this application I thought it was awesome and wanted to use it for my own research needs. However, every time I tried to install it on my fedora (first fedora 13 and now fedora 14) I was presented with some problem: sometimes I couldn’t even start the application because Mendeley was unable to load libssl, although the library was packed with Mendeley Desktop for Generic Linux. When I was finally able to fix the problem linking the version of  libssl installed in the system, the application wouldn’t start due to a compatibility problem between the system’s libssl and the Qt libraries packed with Mendeley so I had to download the latest Qt for my system and remove the packed libraries in order to finally run application. However, there was another problem, I could explore my local library and add new papers but couldn’t synch that information with my account on the website… and it was like that for a long time, until today, when I decided to look for a solution again and this time I found it. Continue reading →

Install Minecraft in Fedora

Minecraft is this game everybody is talking about lately. I found out it existed about two weeks ago and after playing around with the Classic mode in the Left-Handed Toons server, I was convinced I wanted to buy the alpha version which is currently under heavy development.

So I withdrew some founds from my oDesk account and bought the game last friday. That means I was now able to download the jar file and start the game in my computer using my minecraft.net username and password… and so I did.

The thing is having to double-click a jar file every time I wanted to play the game doesn’t look like the best way to “install” an application I’m sure I’ll be using quite often during Christmas. I’m a fedora user and I wanted Minecraft to be available in Gnome at the Applications menu, right under the Games category like any other game.
I decided to spent some time trying to get that done and as result I created the following Bash script.

Continue reading →

Advanced Authentication in TurboGears 2 – Part 2

This post is the second of three posts about advanced authentication in TurboGears 2. In Part 1, the first post, we learn how to manually configure authentication and authorization in a TurboGears project. The same results can be achieved using the quickstart command, however, configuring the authentication middleware manually give us more control and allow us to easily add support for other authentication methods.

Part 2 is about adding support for FacebookConnect which allow users to login to a website using their Facebook acounts. You should read and complete the 9 steps from Part 1 before start following the instructions below. A working TurboGears 2 project including all changes introduced in Part 1 can be downloaded from GitHub.

After you have downloaded the project from GitHub or completed the steps in Part 1, let’s continue the process by adding FacebookConnect support:

Continue reading →

Install Firefox 4 Beta 2 on Fedora 13

Mozilla just released Firefox j 4 Beta 2 with a cool set of features and I want to test it. I installed the first beta manually in my desktop pc running Fedora 13, but I was wondering if there is a better way. Fortunately, there is one: you can install Firefox 4 Beta 2 using Remi’s repo, here is how:

First you need to configure the repo, so you need to run the following snippet as root

rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/remi-release-13.rpm

Then you can install the beta release of firefox using:

yum --enablerepo=remi install firefox4

You may need to anser ‘Yes’ to the question about if you want to import the GPG key for the repo. And… that’s all. now you can see for yourself what Firefox 4 Beta 2 can do.

Finally, this is not an update of the firefox package you probably already have installed, it only adds another entry to your Applications menu allowing you to run the new versión of Firefox.

You can see more information in Remi’s post and Remi’s repo configuration page.

Sincronizar iPhone y iPod Touch con Rhythmbox

No hace mucho fue liberado fedora 13. A pesar de tener varios asuntos pendientes con la Universidad decidí sacar un rato e instalar la nueva versión de mi distribución favorita en mi computador de escritorio.

¿Qué me motivó?

He usado fedora desde hace cuatro años y en cada versión reafirmo mi decisión de mantenerme con esta distribución. No tiene que haber un motivo especial, es simplemente the right thing to do :P. Sin embargo, esta vez había un motivo especial, quería ver lo que fedora 13 tiene para ofrecer en soporte para iPhone y iPod Touch. Dejando de lado algunas aplicaciones que debo usar ocasiaonalmente para cumplir con mis deberes académicos, iTunes es lo unico que me obliga a tener una partición con Windows en mi computador, asi qué, entenderán que estoy ansioso por encontrar alternativas en el mundo Linux.

Fedora 13 trae, como es usual, varios cambios pero hoy solo quiero revisar lo que puedo hacer con mi iPod Touch y Rhythmbox. Veamos…