Download it from here as always.

Oh, and for good luck, I’ve also uploaded it to badgerports.org (which should now display okay on smaller displays), for use with Ubuntu 10.04, where support for authoring with Moonlight is included. It’ll be in the main Ubuntu 10.10 repository at some point in the future, also with Moonlight support.

Enjoy.

I know monodevelop-debugger-mdb is busted – it’s temporary (until this evening). Or you can install this package manually as a workaround until then. There’s still no support re-enabled in Monodevelop in Lucid for Mono 2.6′s Soft Debugger – this will happen at a later date, once I decide on how to do it.

It didn’t take me long to realise the most obvious way to develop such an editor: GRUB2′s canvas-based layout system has an awful lot in common with XAML, so the obvious choice was to develop using Silverlight (or, more specifically, Gtk.Moonlight). Larval’s internal theme format is XAML files, which are then exported to (and imported from) GRUB2′s simple text based files.

The biggest piece of work, to be honest, is the Managed implementation of a PF2 font reader/writer, so you can design a theme using the regular TrueType fonts of your choice, then have them automatically ported to PF2 format as required.

I look forward to plenty of community input on Larval, once it reaches a point where I’m sufficiently pleased with my (Ms-PL licensed) code to share it with the world. Until then, you’ll have to make do with the above screenshot!

[Edit: If it wasn't obvious, this was mostly an April Fool. Mostly. I DID knock together a Gtk.Moonlight UI, and I *DO* think it's a good idea. But there's no code, and no real desire to write the required amount of cruft]

I ended up speaking with the upstream GRUB2 team (which has certainly lead to a strange alliance in one case) about Colin’s GSOC themes, and as it turns out, the main reason there’s no theme supplied with GRUB2 is that Colin’s themes use non-Free elements (proprietary fonts like Helvetica are used heavily). Since I had learnt the theme format to a basic degree in doing my Ubuntu theme, I proposed making a genuinely Free theme – starting with a Debian theme, and moving on to a generic “GRUB2″ theme afterwards.

As I went along, I found a handful of bugs and feature oddities, which have almost all been fixed with incredible turnaround by Vladimir Serbinenko, the current maintainer of the “gfxmenu” code (there remain some questions regarding RTL support in themes, and how to gracefully deal with different aspect ratios) – and I want to extend my thanks to him for his help. However, at this point in time, I’m pleased to announce a theme I’d consider ready for public consumption.

It’s obviously not perfect, and it uses the old visual style from Debian Lenny, but it’s a fully Free starting point, which hopefully can be deconstructed by others seeking to make their own themes. It ought to scale fully to any 4:3 resolution. And it may explode and eat your disk on any version of GRUB2 Experimental other than r1499. Generally, the README is a good starting point.

Oh yes, an URL. Try http://retro.apebox.org/grubthemes/

I’ve been speaking with some folks on deviantART regarding using their Debian-themed wallpaper in future releases of my themes package, but for now, this should be enough for gfxmenu to get a little more exposure and a little more testing. And, hopefully, shift artist focus back from the theme-incompatible BURG fork to the real GRUB2 project.

Definitely a fine use of your moneycash.

• Chicken Little Remix will no longer be updated. There will be no 10.04 from me.
• I will no longer be visiting certain websites, under any circumstances, courtesy of 127.0.0.1 entries in /etc/hosts. This includes sites such as Ubuntu Forums, some blogs, and some “news” sites.
• I will be blocking some people from Twitter, in order to avoid their @mentions from appearing to me.
• I may (this is undecided) opt to change my anything-goes policy regarding comments on my blog. Redacted comments will have their content deleted, to make it clear that a comment is redacted, not held in moderation

Some things, however, will NOT be changing.

• I will continue my efforts in Debian. In fact, these efforts will be redoubled.
• I will continue my efforts in Ubuntu. In fact, these efforts will be redoubled.
• I will maintain my existing IRC, Twitter, email & IM presence.
• I will, when the opportunity arises, combine sweet and savoury foods.

Thank you for your time.

Braaaaaaaak bok boooooook bok bok bkaaawk bok bok bok bok bok:

• Bok bok LiveCD
• Wallpaper bkawk bok bok
• Cluck cluck Gnote
• Booooooook bok Solang bok bok bok

Bok bok booooook Mininova:

4577800beda226d815f98bc8d79521cd  clr-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso
f97179e5b13f3aceb6c9d98d2c7e6ef5  clr-9.10-desktop-i386.iso

Bkaaawk bok bok bok boooooook bok braaawk bok bok booooook bok bok bok 10.04? Bok bok boook charity, bok bok videogames, braaaawk money.

Bok bok.

Now, once upon a time, the online functionality was mostly offered via a proprietary P2P-and-DRM-based system called Kontiki. Kontiki was unpopular for various reasons – for example, it was Windows-only, and banned by several Internet providers due to the use of P2P (e.g. I know such technology is still banned on the University of Oxford network). As a result, this lead to the introduction and eventual replacement of browser-based streaming solutions, starting with the changes made to BBC’s iPlayer. iPlayer is nowadays a combination of an Adobe Flash service for web surfers, an unencrypted MP4 streaming service for users of mobile devices such as iPhones, and as of a couple of weeks ago, has streaming support built directly into the PlayStation 3′s user interface too. Oh, and on the PC, it supports DRM-based downloading courtesy of the Adobe Air platform, on Windows, Mac, and Air-capable (x86) Linux. Channel 4′s service 4od, and Five’s Demand Five, are also based on Adobe Flash, and streaming-only. They’re basic and functional.

The final interesting one here is ITV’s ITV Player. ITV Player was, until about a week ago, the only non-Flash service, instead making use of Microsoft Silverlight. They have now changed to be Flash-based, like their peers, meaning the entire market mandates use of the Adobe Flash plugin – or, at a push, command-line utilities or browser plugins which grab the raw video files from the broadcasters’ servers, in violation of their licenses. Why is this interesting? Well, when ITV Player used Silverlight, we could watch TV using Free Software: Novell Moonlight 2.0 Beta 1.1 and above worked fine with it, on i386 and AMD64 (and other architectures with a recompile). Now that it’s using Flash rather than Silverlight, where do we stand for watching streaming TV legitimately with Free Software? Let’s take a peek!

Firstly, some preamble. I’m running Ubuntu Jaunty, and I hand-compiled a SVN (I think SVN? Maybe Bzr) snapshot of Gnash revision 11485 to ensure I had an up-to-date view of proceedings. It definitely seems to be working, as I’m introduced to the world of Flash advertising via Gnash, and Youtube.com also works, more or less. And I’m not discussing Adobe’s Flash plugin here, for various reasons:

• It’s proprietary. Boo.
• It’s i386-only in several instances – a beta of an AMD64 plugin exists, but your browser will crash on BBC iPlayer sites if you have the iPlayer Adobe Air app installed, as Air is i386-only. And the packages in Ubuntu install the i386 plugin alongside the abominable and crashy nsPluginWrapper.
• Did I mention it was proprietary? If the only way to surf the web on a Free OS is with proprietary software, then we’re not doing very well.

So, Gnash it is. Firstly, it’s a PITA to compile, as upstream seem to have misunderstood how AutoFoo works – i.e. it detects that you don’t have headers installed for certain features, and tells you so, yet still enables those features at configure-time (and obviously fails when building). Hey guys, if I don’t have qapplication.h, take the hint and disable KDE support for me like every other bloody app does. With that out of the way, let’s get to it!

BBC iPlayer

Well, what does the landing look like?

BBC iPlayer Landing

Looks fine to me! Let’s try playing a show!

BBC iPlayer Playback

Oh. Um… Never mind, then. Seems iPlayer’s JavaScript to detect Flash presence doesn’t pick up on Gnash, and it bails out. Score so far: 0/1

Demand Five

Another former Kontiki partner, how do these guys fare?

Demand Five Landing

Hey, that looks pretty good to me! Perhaps we’re onto a winner this time?

Demand Five Playback

Poot. Gnash is definitely being invoked – see the context menu there – but it sure isn’t doing anything useful. Score: 0/2

Channel 4 4od

How do those hip cats at Channel 4 fare?

Channel 4 4od Landing

Hm… Gotta confess, not feeling too hopeful about this one…

Channel 4 4od Playback

Oh, well, even worse than iPlayer. What you folks might not recognise is the missing “Play” buttons which are supposed to be to the right of the program descriptions in that list of episodes. Presumably more Javascript/Flash interop failure. 0/3

ITV Player

Last, but not least, how does the newest entrant into Microsoft-free streaming fare?

ITV Player Landing

Now, now, in fairness, it’s always been this bad, even when they used Silverlight – weirdos that they are, ITV have always used Flash for their navigation, even when they used Silverlight for playback. The Flash-based navigation you (don’t) see here is barely any better even with the proprietary Flash plugin. What the proprietary plugin does NOT do, however, is consume the 750 or so meg of RAM that Gnash did when sat idle on this screen. I mean, that’s not a problem, that’s why I have 6 gig in here, but still, not wise on Wifey’s netbook.

ITV Player Playback

Oh. Well then. 0/4 it is.

So?

What annoys me here isn’t so much that nothing works. I’m used to there being temporary gaps in Free Software functionality, that’s pretty normal. But I’m greatly vexed that one of these four used to work on a Free platform, and now it doesn’t – and that places like UbuntuForums are filled with people celebrating that fact. Celebrating that ITV have stopped using the evil nasty Microsoft system which happened to have a functional Free replacement – and that they’ve now moved to a non-Microsoft system which mandates a proprietary plugin. It’s not the first time either – Major League Baseball in the USA used to use Silverlight for their HD streaming, and now they use a combination of Flash and a proprietary Windows-only extension to Flash to make it load WMV files – this is considered a victory. It really isn’t. We should NEVER be forced to use Proprietary software in order to surf the web – yet now we’ve gone from having access to 25% of the UK’s streaming TV services via Free Software to 0% of them, and people are happy about it.

So, I want you to think long and hard about this question, one which seems to get the oddball answer far too often: What is more important – promoting Free Software, or demoting Microsoft Corp?