Way back in June, Peter discussed KIO, KDE's backend system that applications can use to read and write virtually anywhere. GNOME, with GnomeVFS, provides similar functionality, though admittedly it is lacking in several areas. The project basically was started off on the wrong foot, and it has been a mess from a developer standpoint ever since.
GIO/GVFS aims to fix this. Essentially, it is a GNOME version of KIO, and will be shipped with GNOME 2.22 in March. (Actually, it will be shipped with Glib, which is shipped with GNOME.)
Applications are gradually migrating over from GnomeVFS to this new framework, which is still being developed. Where GnomeVFS fails, GIO/GVFS picks up. One complaint about GnomeVFS is that mount points cannot be accessed by non-GnomeVFS-aware applications. GVFS uses a FUSE bridge to make these publicly accessible. (FUSE, for the uninitiated, is a filesystem that can be run in userspace.)
This FUSE bridge makes it possible for literally any application to use GVFS, even if it is not aware of it. GVFS can mount remote filesystems to a local directory where any application can read or write to them. This makes way for a large amount of possibilities with new applications.
Look for the GIO/GVFS combo to be available in GNOME 2.21 later this year or early next, and a stable version to come with GNOME in Spring 2008.
Well, no, not a food olive bazaar (though that would be tasty), but rather Olive, a GTK GUI for Bazaar, a version control system similar to GIT and Subversion. We're not going to go into the differences between the systems, but rather focus on this interesting application, now merged into the Bazaar GTK project.
Olive basically takes all of the CLI commands for Bazaar and mashes them into a nice, clean GUI.
You can view differences in a window, as well as all of your changes and branch statistics. There isn't much more to it: it really is just all of the CLI commands presented in a nice way. How handy (and possibly tasty).
Note: This only applies to Ubuntu 7.10. Later releases included automatic configuration of X and as such this is no longer required.
Remember the good old days when to change a screen resolution or driver, you had to edit xorg.conf or reconfigure X.org? Those fine times are now over, or they will be, with the release of Ubuntu 7.10.
As of an update from a few days ago, users are now able to access a graphical user interface for editing xorg.conf, though only for graphic and display settings. This tool has support for dual monitors at the moment, and with the release of X.org 7.3 it will be possible to add even more. You can turn on and off both (or one) of your monitor(s), change the available resolutions, orientations, and set mirror or exteneded desktops.
On the Graphics Card tab, you have a selection of drivers and video memory. You can pick your graphics card and have it select a driver for you, or you can choose the driver yourself (useful for binary ATI/NVIDIA drivers).
The Test feature as of writing is a little buggy, but this is an alpha version still; updates will follow.
This feature is actually Ubuntu-specific at the moment, though other distributions are sure to adopt it soon. It is part of Ubuntu 7.10's "Bullet Proof X" blueprint that states, in a general sense, that if X for some reason fails to start, then it will fall back to a failsafe mode with this GUI running to help get you back on your feet.
There is much improvement to be made with X as 7.3 releases, but whether this will make it into Ubuntu 7.10 in time is another story. Feature freeze is now in effect, however it was broken for an X update once before. Whether we'll see it all depends on when it is released. Count on FOSSwire for our take on X.org 7.3 later this month or next.
