Novell is now Patron of KDE

Great news: Novell became as first Linux distributor an official patron of KDE. I don't understand why this wasn't announced by Novell yet. I could only find Novell now listed on a webpage of KDE e.V.: 'Supporting Members', but I think this is a good step of Novell/SUSE to give some back to the (KDE) community.

Tech Tags: KDE Patron Novell

FujitsuSiemens TabletPC button module

There is, since some months, a new project to support the buttons of Fujitsu Siemens TabletPCs (T- and P-series machines with FUJ02bf pnp devices) including the 'Application Panel'. The project called fjbtndrv provide a kernel module to get the tablet button and the brightness key events via the input layer (/dev/input/event*).

Additionally, and this is IMO the best, the module catch the tablet rotation event from convertible FSC TabletPCs. This allow us now to detect the state of the tablet (open/rotated-closed) and react on the event e.g. in KDE via KRandRTray and rotate the screen. Together with IBM/Lenovo we have now a way for machines of two major manufacturers to go a step forward with TabletPCs.

I packaged a KMP rpm for openSUSE 10.3/factory. You can download the rpm (fsc_btns-kmp) as always from my home project in the openSUSE build service. The package get later included into the SUSE distribution.

What are my next planed steps to improve TabletPC support?

1. extend the wacom X.org driver to rotate automatically with XRandR extension
2. extend KRandRTray to:
• get rotation events
• get events from rotate hotkeys
• allow the user to configure if and how to rotate the screen on these events

Tech Tags: Packaging TabletPC

Fujitsu P-Series tablet driver

Since SLE10/SUSE 10.1 SaX2 supports to configure the touchscreen of the Fujitsu Siemens P-Series Tablet PCs. Unfortunately the needed driver for the X server wasn't free available at this time IIRC.

Some weeks ago I added a repackaged version (merged libtouch code from the evtouch driver and added the code to a working autotool package) of the fujitouch driver (v0.6.3) for openSUSE 10.2/10.3 to my home project at the openSUSE build service which work with Xorg 7.2. Unfortunately I had no access to a p-series machine, but I got contact to a user with a P1610 which helped with testing to get the package basically working (only rotation via tools like KRandRTray didn't work).

Now there is a new version 0.6.4 which support automatically rotation via the XRandR extension and which use the same package structure as my version of 0.6.3. You can find RPMs (including some patches to build correct) for SUSE here, feel free to install and report problems via the Novell Bugzilla. The package get merged into the SUSE distributions as soon as the driver work as expected.

Tech Tags: TabletPC Packaging

KPowersave in openSUSE build service

Since some weeks I provide SVN snapshots of KPowersave via the openSUSE build service for openSUSE 10.2 and 10.3/factory. You can get the packages from my home project. Feel free to test and report bugs via openSUSE bugzilla (assign to: dkukawka_at_novell_dot_com).
If I find the time and muse I add also packages for other distributions (patches for the spec-file are welcome) sometime.

SUSE Tablet PC support

In the last week I worked on better Tablet PC support for SUSE Products. Her now some infos about the progress:

• I packaged a special 'SaX2 Tablet PC Edition' (available for SLE10/10.2/10.3) which fix the existing Tablet PC support and provides now more support in for Tablet PCs in the Tablet section than the normal sax version (IBM X41, ACER TM C300/C301/C302 series, Fujitsu Lifebook T series (T3010/T4010), HP Compaq TC4200, Motion M1200 and M1400 and general Wacom Tablet PCs). Feel free to download and install, but also to report your special settings for other machines to me.
  
• Added a updated version of the wacom input driver (for SLE10/10.2/10.3), Jarnal and Xournal to my home project.
  
• Getting a Gateway M280e Tablet PC running. This machine use a Finepoint tablet instead of a Wacom device. You need the x11-input-fpit driver to be able to use the tablet. I added a package for openSUSE 10.2 to my home project at the openSUSE Buildservice, for openSUSE Factory/10.3 the x11-input-driver package should be up-to-date and contain a working version of the fpit-driver. To setup the device on 10.2 you need to install setserial and call this as root on command line:

  setserial /dev/ttyS0 port 0x03F8 irq 4 baud_base 38400

  For factory/10.3 this should happen automatically via HAL (a updated HAL version for 10.2 will follow the next days). To configure your X-Server you should download and install my 'SaX2 Tablet PC Edition' where you can simply select the Finepoint device in the Tablet section.

Tech Tags: TabletPC, Packaging

KPowersave Debian / (K)Ubuntu packages

Now are also updated packages (v0.7.2) of KPowersave for Debian via experimental available (see here). Thanks to Michael Biebl for packaging and maintain the package for Debian.

Also thanks to Luka Renko for update the Ubuntu/Kubuntu KPowersave package to v0.7.2. As it looks also many people would like to see KPowersave as default (see e.g. this discussion) on Kubuntu. Maybe Kubuntu can switch from the guidance-power-manager to KPowersave (since we use now HAL instead of powersave) as default under KDE ?!

Feel free to test the packages and report bugs to your distribution.

Tech Tags: KPowersave Packaging

KPowersave Mandriva/FC 6 packages

Today/yesterday I released new packages of KPowersave v0.7.2 for Mandriva 2007.1 and Fedora Core 6 on SourceForge.net. You can download the RPMs and SRPMS for ix86 and x86_64 from the project home page. Report bugs for these distributions as always via sf.net bugzilla or the powersave-users mailing list.

Tech Tags: KPowersave, Mandriva, Fedora