Voyageur's corner

chromium (the web browser) on Gentoo FAQ

Voyageur — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:51:00 +0100

As you've probably already heard from one of your favourite sites (slashdot, phoronix, ...), Google has just released the first beta-quality version of Google Chrome for Linux. I figured this was as good a time as another to collect and answers a few questions frequently asked on it, or rather on chromium which is the open-source version available in portage

What's the difference between Google Chrome and Chromium? Well, chromium web site has a nice page summing it up here. So emerging chromium will get you a browser very close to Google Chrome, except the log and a few Google specific report links (the sandbox is enabled in gentoo chromium)
Why does it depend on ffmpeg (and a recent version of it)? For HTML5 audio/video tags support. There is now a USE-flag to disable this dependency if you are on a stable system and do not need this
Where do the source tarballs come from? Are they official ones? I create them manually, based on the SVN dependencies listed for each revision here. And it does take some time (checking out their huge tree, trying to get rid of as much bundled sourcecode as possible, ...) For now, I track the developer releases, but may switch to beta releases some time. Especially now that upstream is finally considering making source tarballs available Bug report is here. There is also another bugreport interested people can track, number 28287, which lists all bugs that would make our life easier, "our" as in distrib packagers, read this recent rant by the Fedora packager for chromium. Also interesting to read is Evan's answer, digging into what is exactly there in the 3rd party folder.
I want to debug/run gdb on it: again the chromium wiki has a nice page on it. The usual recommendations apply of course
Will google-chrome-bin get in the tree? This is bug #272805. Right now we have chromium-bin, installed from snapshots generated by chromium test farms, with SVN revisions close to the from-source packages. Right now I don't see a lot of benefits between chromium-bin and official google-chrome (except a shiny logo?), but if that changes I'll probably add it to tree (in addition to/replacing chromium-bin). Or if another dev decides to add it

So that's it for the first round of questions, add yours in comments if it's still unanswered

neatx and chromium in portage status updates

Voyageur — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:05:00 +0200

Yesterday, I finally found the bug which prevented neatx from working on my system (thanks upstream for the debugging), so in your next portage sync, you'll find net-misc/neatx-0.3.1_p43 ready for your testing! If you don't need vnc/sound/printer tunneling or load-balancing, neatx is easier to set up than freenx and works great out-of-the-box. Thanks again to Mike Auty (ikelos) for his work on the ebuild.

Another work-in-progress for me these days is a source ebuild for chromium (open-source version of Google Chrome). A binary version (chromium-bin) has been available in portage for some time now (with amd64 support added recently), but source version ebuild had some problems. Now my current version (available in my overlay for the curious) has fixed most of them, including use of system libraries, makefiles use instead of scons, --as-needed support, ... So why is it not yet in portage? Well, for now the tarballs from upstream are not yet available, so you won't go past the fetch phase These should be available soon, once available you can expect chromium to quickly land in a portage tree near you.

By the way, if chromium crashes at startup for you (either binary or source version), they finally found the cause: you are probably using nvidia-drivers and nvidia opengl (via eselect opengl). However the libGL.so from nvidia overrides dlsym/dlopen (dynamic linker functions) with broken replacements, breaking applications relying on these functions! Chromium devs implemented a workaround, available for -bin in versions >=4.0.208.0_p25708, but expect some breakage in time-related functions. All the gory details are here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=16800

And now to change a bit from technical talks, I wanted to say a big "thank you" to all of you Gentoo users who spend time filing bugreports, fixing, writing or rewriting ebuilds, debugging and finding the cause for all sorts of bugs (finding that some dynamic linkers break with specific video cards for example...), in short to all of you who work to make your distro a better one! And recently, a special thanks to Bernd Lommerzheim, who helps me a lot in proftpd maintenance, up to providing an entirely new ebuild for latest version, with lots of fixes and new features.

Yet another open-source NX server!

Voyageur — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:12:00 +0200

In my last post about FreeNX future, I had mentioned the efforts on a freenx-redesign branch, which seemed to have stalled.

Well, trust the guys at Google that worked on this redesign, they did not give up, and in fact publicly announced the first public release of neatx, the result of the redesign work. While still missing some of the features available in FreeNX, it does already have some original ones, like the drop-down menu for session control in rootless sessions (which is something I use a LOT when running pidgin remotely from home ). I'll make sure to prepare an ebuild (in your favourite NX overlay first as usual) when they tag a new version (first released one has some bugs that were quickly found).

Now, you may be lost between the multiple servers (including the dead ones), considering I never blogged about tacix, a remote server using NX, but with a different approach from the 'official' NoMachine way (with the specifix 'nx' user, ...), making heavy use of dbus, and with its own client. For now, it's still in the early versions, but it has potential!

So which server will you install on your (Gentoo, but other work of course) system? Here are the 'active' ones:

Official NX server (net-misc/nxserver-freeedition in portage), closed-source, limited to 2 concurrent sessions, but has all the features. If you want to quickly try NX!
FreeNX (net-misc/nxserver-freenx in portage), oldest and most complete open-source version, but its development stalled. The last ebuilds in tree use the branch from the Ubuntu folks, which fixes a few bugs compared to the last upstream source. If you want a stable open-source version
X2GO (net-misc/x2goserver and x2goclient in portage, some extended parts are still in the NX overlay). Maturing fast, and worth a try. This one is brought to you thanks to Joachim Langenbach, who does most of the work on the x2go* ebuilds

And in the future:

tacix, for its simpler architecture (think x2go without postgresql,ldap and friends).
neatx, which I hope will provide a suitable replacement for freenx soon

Incoming gnustep-make parallel support

Voyageur — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:11:00 +0100

When I add gnustep-make-2.2.0 to portage, repoman (our QA and commit tool) will at last be happy, as from this version, it won't be necessary to force -j1 make flag! This will also allow parallel make for all gnustep packages in our tree(as the gnustep eclass forces -j1). No need to sync again and again your portage tree, this version is not yet released Original announcement is here

Some other entries on my gentoo/gnustep TODO list: the Etoile packages in the gnustep overlay need some cleanup (some keywords should be dropped for example Melodie player, maybe bump llvm to 2.5, but I hope some other dev will look into it before me), and updates when 0.4.2 will be released, gnustep packages, fix AC_CANONICAL_TARGET usage found in most of gnustep-base packages (thanks Flameeyes for finding more work for us ), and filter -Werror in some of our packages (helps when switching to newer GCC for example),

FreeNX future

Voyageur — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:41:00 +0100

Hum, it's been some time since I last blogged on these Gentoo packages I handle! Let's catch up a bit!

There is a thread running on freenx mailing list about current lack of new commits in freenx SVN. Main developer seems to be MIA (after starting a migration to github) and freenx as it is needs to be rewritten from scratch anyway (some work had been done in a freenx-redesign branch, but it seems abandoned too now). Of course, the ideal thing would be to finally get NX natively in X.org, but that's not for the close future

So where does this leave us? Debian/Ubuntu packagers have created a freenx team, and manage a bzr tree with more and more fixes and updates (like shadowing local X sessions and stubs for guest sessions). Once I've figured out how to "tag" gentoo versions from it, this will probably be the new source for freenx packages (at least until upstream resumes development)

And if you want to try an alternative GPL server, remember to try x2go from the NX overlay I have not added them to main portage tree yet, but hope to do so real soon (tm)

X2go ebuilds status update

Voyageur — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:34:00 +0100

In a previous post, I spoke about new ebuilds for X2go client and server, a GPL remote desktop solution that's based on NX technology, but in a different way compared to nxserver. With lots of help from Joachim Langenbach in bug #249600, I'm glad to say now that ebuilds in the NX overlay for both client and server work fine, and will probably moved to portage soon (ldap management ebuilds will probably wait a bit longer in the overlay, as I cannot test them for now).

For pros and cons, X2go does not need a special "nx" user on the server, you can use your ssh private key (as you log in directly as your real user), both client and server are GPL are not limited in number of connections, remote mounting of directories is easy (via sshfs/fuse), administration of the server can be done via kde control panel elements (including ldap accounts, if you use it). However x2go requires a running postgresql database on the server, does not support VNC/rdesktop proxying or shadow sessions, and some of the nice advanced features seem reserved to dedicated thin clients setups (like saving your session on a usb key, ...).

Anyway, if you're curious to try it, 'layman -a nx' and then emerge either x2goclient or x2goserver depending on which computer you are

NX servers and clients, old and new

Voyageur — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:07:00 +0100

Nomachine recently released a new major version (3.3.0), which did not introduce many new features, but fixed some bugs (some keys did not work here on my french keyboard for example), and generally feels "snappier" (in my opinion of course, test and check it for yourself ). It is available in portage for both free server edition (binary only, 2 concurrent connections), and for freenx (open-source, no connections limit).

For some time an alternative client/server from 2X has been available in portage, as net-misc/nxclient-2xterminalserver and net-misc/nxserver-2xterminalserver. Based on old NX 1.5, it provided both a GPL client (missing the > 2.0.0 NX features though) and a working server close to Nomachine one. However it never really got any updates since it was made available. Upstream closed down the website, the client needs fixes for gcc 4.3 and --as-needed, does not work well with current NX servers, the server is still based on old NX code (and is probably vulnerable to some xorg security issuse), so this is last rites time for both of them. They will still be available in the NX overlay if you need them.

Open-source alternatives are availble in portage: net-misc/qtnx for client, net-misc/nxserver-freenx for server.

Now I promised to talk about newer NX systems right? A new bug report was recently opened on x2go, a "server based computing environment" which uses NX technology but is not a clone of current nxclient/nxserver. Nice thing is everything is open-source, including the client (ebuild for it already works). Now some work is needed before there is a x2goserver package in portage, but that will certainly make a nice alternative to current NX servers available. If you already use it, don't hesitate to come and comment on the bug!

Note to myself: I really need to write some documentation on all of these one day...

Etoile 0.4 - coming soon! Window Maker 0.92.1 too :)

Voyageur — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:45:00 +0100

If you wander by the Etoile web site, you'll see that Etoile 0.4 is right around the corner! Initial mail for this version detailed that "the focus for 0.4 will be frameworks, developer tools, example apps, and documentation". So the "stable" packages list will be shorter than old 0.2 release. But don't despair, you'll still get updated packages, including camaelon (GNUstep theming engine)

As for ebuilds availability... I'll update the ebuilds already in portage soon after the official release (camaelon, popplerkit, ...). The Etoile ebuilds in the gnustep overlay will come later (first cause of delay will be additional requirement on LLVM, which is not in portage for now)

On the releases news front, the guys behind the Window Maker revival have made some progress too: a Mercurial repository is up, people chat on #windowmaker (Freenode), and a new bugfix release should come quickly (this will clean up the patchet currently in use in the ebuild!). After that, new features? We'll see!

SOGo now available in the GNUstep overlay, Window Maker revival?

Voyageur — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:30:00 +0200

IF you want to try another groupware server, I finally made up ebuilds for Scalable OpenGroupware.org, SOGo for short. These are available in the GNUstep overlay for now (it seems to work fine, but I lack the full server installation needed to completely test it, mostly an IMAP server with LDAP backend).

From the SOGO folks:

SOGo is a free and modern scalable groupware server. It offers shared calendars, address books and emails through your favorite Web browser or by using a native client such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Lightning. SOGo is standard-compliant and supports CalDAV, CardDAV, GroupDAV and reuses existing IMAP, SMTP and database servers - making the solution easy to deploy and interoperable with many applications.

For the curious, a demo web site is running here. Feedback appreciated of course if you try it on Gentoo

On other news, I noticed that the Window Maker web site is back up, stating:

windowmaker.info Back Online posted on 2008-06-30 09:04:16 by kairi

windowmaker.info has been brought online as of early July, 2008. We are currently working on reimplementing the site in a more modern, safe fashion, while at the same time restoring all services required for development and communication. With that said, we are working very hard to revitalize Window Maker's presence on X Window (and perhaps beyond) desktops. With this new focus, we can now truly assert that Window Maker will be resuming active development very soon. We expect to once again provide the de-facto minimalist yet extremely functional window manager to the world.

This has been my main window manager since... well a loooong time, I'm crossing fingers and hoping it will really come back from the dead projects world!

Oh, and if you did not get the news, 2008.0 is here! Thanks release engineering team members

I almost forgot: congratulations to the new Council members, both veterans and newcomers!

New gnustep base released (base 1.16, gui 0.14)

Voyageur — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:02:00 +0200

It's been more than a year since the last gnustep major release, and while unstable packages were available in portage, I kept them in package.mask (revdep rebuild needed for every single gnustep application, API changes, ...). But that meant new applications updates (gorm for example) had to be kept under p.mask too, as they required the unstable versions).

Now the new stable release is finally here, I'll unmask it soon (just checking most application still compile). Be warned though, that both gnustep-base and gnustep-gui will force you to run revdep-rebuild. Maybe it's time to test the new and shiny cairo backend!

Testing the new "gold" linker from binutils

Voyageur — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:09:00 +0200

After reading Diego's post on linkers, I got curious (and interested) by this new linker (also mentioned in LWN and other sites).

Developed by Ian Lance Taylor (from Google), the gold linker is now in binutils, and promises link times divided at least by 5. The code I develop at work is a big C++ project, and takes a looooot of time linking indeed (especially in debug...). So let's see how to try this new linker

First, a big warning: this is still heavily experimental, I do not recommend to use it for your system itself. It only works on x86/amd64, does NOT link a kernel correctly for now. Keep a stable binutils, and use it for all your emerge operations. UPDATE: see Diego's warnings too, Remember that I only test gold on C++ debug binaries, not on system packages or other important compilations.

You have been warned Now let's see how to install a gold-enabled binutils in parallel with your stable one:

First step: enable multislot for binutils (so you'll have both unstable/gold binutils and stable binutils available with binutils-config)

# echo "sys-devel/binutils multislot" >>
/etc/portage/package.use

# emerge -av binutils

Unmask an unstable binutils ebuild, and compile it with gold enabled (thanks to EXTRA_ECONF feature)

# echo "=sys-devel/binutils-2.18.50.0.6 **" >>
/etc/portage/package.keywords

# EXTRA_ECONF="--enable-gold" emerge -av
'=sys-devel/binutils-2.18.50.0.6'

Use binutils-config to switch between your stable binutils, and gold-enabled 2.18.50.0.6 (ld --version will say "GNU gold ...")

And now back to work with greatly reduced linking times, yay!

nxcl/qtnx (open-source NX client) in portage, freenx new release

Voyageur — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:03:00 +0100

After the live ebuild version in the NX overlay, I've added the newly released 0.9 version of nxcl (base library)/qtnx (QT4 front-end), a GPL client for NX servers. For now I've keyworded them on x86 and amd64 (where I could test them), but who knows, it may work on other arches, where the official nxclient is not available!

Be warned that some options may be missing or incomplete, when compared to nxclient. But all the basics are there

In the meantime, a new FreeNX release (0.7.2) was made available. While some changes were already backported in Gentoo 0.7.1 ebuild, there are quite a few new features. Fabian Franz (main FreeNX dev, who does a great work) has posted the (long because of all the new features) announcement on the mailing list here. Here are some new features I picked up:

new helper program that should help for VNC sessions
slave mod is usable (think "This dramatically reduces session login times and makes single sign on possible")
new samba sharing system (sharing and remote printing)
New "nxsetup --test" command: this one will help a lot if you have an incorrect sshd conf for example
lots of bugfixes

I'm preparing the version bump in portage, hopefully you will get it in a few days (new installation method, patches to update/remove/...). Stay tuned! EDIT: nxserver-freenx-0.7.2 is now in portage, enjoy!

Time does fly by

Voyageur — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:55:00 +0100

The LDAP infos on Gentoo dev server confirm it:

gentooJoin: 2007/03/13

So it's been a year since I officialy joined Gentoo developers, after discovering gentoo, the forums, trying n amd64 installation with a 2004.3 CD, harassing bugzilla (and giving jakub some work) for some time...

NX does not take much of my time anymore, mostly revision bumps. I still need to write some documentation on this great piece of software (oh and add ebuilds to portage for qtnx, an open-source client I mentioned earlier).

After some work and eclass rewrite, GNUstep in Gentoo is in a much better shape: a few bugs are still opened, but most of the packages work fine now.

What's been great so far? Well most importantly: the Gentoo people. And I mean both developers and users. Developers with their knowledge, motivation, counseling, ... Users that report problems, fill bugs, help other users (forums, IRC), ...

Ok now happy Gentoo birthday me, and back to work

If you're looking for a TortoiseSVN clone for Gnome...

Voyageur — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:35:00 +0100

... be sure to check NautilusSvn. I usually prefer the command-line SVN, but I got curious about this one( meld integration, svn rev and user as columns, ...).
So what do you need to try this on Gentoo?

Python bindings for SVN: dev-python/pysvn, bug #62852, grab it in my overlay
Python bindings for Nautilus: gnome-extra/nautilus-python, bug #78021. A new version was released a few weeks ago, again grab the ebuild from my overlay
dev-python/wxpython and dev-util/meld from portage (runtime dependencies)

Then head to NautilusSvn web page and follow the README. Remember to restart Nautilus, and there you are! People motivated in writing an ebuild can visit bug #147433

ps: if you prefer konqueror, kdesvn should do the job too

New open-source NX client under development

Voyageur — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:20:00 +0100

Some days ago, George Wright announced on #nx that he just had committed a new qtnx, based on the nxcl libs. Qtnx is an open-source Qt-based NX client, and it looks like development on it is rolling again It is now based on nxcl, developed by Seb James.

In fact, George is now working for a company on a NX server (and client), their web site is desktopondemand.com. The client is GPL-2, and should support most NX features (including 3.0 shadowing). Of course it is still under heavy development, but you can find them as -9999 SVN ebuilds in the NX overlay. Just run:

# layman -a nx
# emerge -av qtnx

I hope this one will soon join nxclient (binary-only, but latest NX features) and nxclient-2xterminalserver (GPLed NX 1.5 version) in portage

Btw, the ebuild is currently marked x86, as these are the arches I test NX on. Drop me a line if it works on ppc (it should) or other arches

Gnustep unstable packages added to portage

Voyageur — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:53:00 +0100

Even if these packages are marked unstable, they do have some fixes (and the stable release is getting old). Some gnustep packages now need them in their latest versions (including gorm). So they're now available in portage (moved from the gnustep overlay), under package.mask. Be warned though that upgrading to the unstable release means recompiling every one of your gnustep packages (revdep-rebuild is your friend). A few packages had to be fixed to work with new gnustep-gui, don't hesitate to report if something does not work

The pieces to unmask are currently:

# Bernard Cafarelli <voyageur@gentoo.org (09 Jan 2008)
# Mask unstable gnustep and packages depending on it
>=gnustep-base/gnustep-back-art-0.13.0
>=gnustep-base/gnustep-back-cairo-0.13.0
>=gnustep-base/gnustep-back-xlib-0.13.0
>=gnustep-base/gnustep-base-1.15.1
>=gnustep-base/gnustep-gui-0.13.0
>=virtual/gnustep-back-0.13.0
>=gnustep-apps/gorm-1.2.2
>=gnustep-apps/simpleagenda-0.33

If you want to try the Cairo backend, this could be the right time (the unstable release works quite fine)

This brings Gentoo packages on par with the latest Gnustep Startup, have fun!

Welcome to 2008

Voyageur — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 12:02:00 +0100

I'll keep this one very short (as was the night!): happy new year! Let's see what 2008 will bring us, it started well in France (at least for non-smoking people) with the smoking ban in bars, restaurants, ...

New gnustep soon stable, new windowmaker ebuild, NX news, ... (and other things I've already forgotten)

Voyageur — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:50:00 +0100

It looks like real life finally lets me write some news on Gentoo work

GNUstep news first: packages based on gnustep-make-2.0 are now almost all marked stable (see the progress in this bugreport), there's only sparc left and then I'll finish cleaning up the old ebuilds. In the gnustep overlay, you can now find (masked) unstable gnustep and gorm releases: lots of fixes, but requires lots of revdep-rebuild!

Thanks to grobian and truedfx, you can now try windowmaker-0.92.0-r7, it has some nice features to check out. This is still my WM of choice, even if I now run gnome on the laptop (easy compiz switching, better power management integration).

On the NX front, a nice Gentoo user has filled a few enhancement bugs on freenx (startup script, utempter use, ...). I'm preparing a revbump integrating most of these, stay tuned. I'm also preparing a revbump for the free edition server, upstream has released a new version with many fixes (including some that could help people using selinux). And last, if you have problems with freenx, or freeedition server, there are two lengthy threads on the forums, where you may get help from other users. The freenx thread is here, and the one for the free edition is here

And closing this post, I'd like to say a big "thank you for all the work you've done on Gentoo" to Roy Marples (uberlord), and Seemant Kulleen (uncle Seemant)

Tips and tricks: Gentoo Linux on a Samsung Q45 laptop

Voyageur — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:01:00 +0100

I won't talk here about the difficulties encountered while installing ~amd64 Gentoo on this baby, as most of the components work quite well and without a problem, but rather about a few tips I had to dig around the Internet. Some of these tips may apply to other PCs, or other distributions too

External kernel modules to emerge

To get most of the hardware, emerge:

net-wireless/iwlwifi: even if it's still relatively new, it works much better than ipw3945 for the wifi! Update: merged in kernel, simply emerge net-wireless/iwl3945-ucode, and enable iwlwifi in kernel tree
media-video/linux-uvc: who knows, this webcam may be useful one day
x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers: yes, it's proprietary, but you need it to try compiz-fusion (add "options nvidia NVreg_RegistryDwords="PerfLevelSrc=0x2222" to /etc/modules.d/nvidia to fix flickering in X)
app-misc/sdricoh_cs: this is a *very* experimental driver for the card reader (I did not try further though, as I still have an old PCMCIA one that works fine and fast) ''Update"": turns out you don't need this one, simply use the "sdhci" module from kernel

Power management

Now, let's get the most of the battery. First some links that will give a lot of ideas to get a longer battery life:

Gentoo Power Management Guide
Intel-sponsored Less watts site: by the way, emerging powertop definitely is a good idea!
Mandatory to let your CPU rest while on battery: HRT (tickless system) patch for amd64, apply it to your 2.6.23 gentoo-sources. Update: merged in recent kernels
A patch to apply to gnome-applets (works fine here, less CPU wakeups)

By the way, nvidia broke the brightness key shortcuts while in X, but you can switch to a console (where the keys work!), adjust brightness, and switch back to X.

Gnome tips

For now, I run Gnome (2.20) on it, here a few fixes. First, the gnome-power-manager tray icon may not appear from time to time on login. This is a known problem, also known as bug 188618 to poor Gentoo developers. (Update) This was fixed by leio (don't forget to thank him), now you just need to upgrade to gnome-power-manager-2.20.0-r1 (no need to kill and restart g-p-m manually now). For other distributions, this was accepted usptream, so you should be fine soon too

OK, now that we have a battery life monitor, next tweak: if you have kept the hidden backup partition on this system, gnome will add a nice (completely useless) icon for it on your desktop. Thanks to the french Ubuntu forums, here is how to tell HAL to ignore that partition (/dev/sda1 in my case). Create a file called /etc/hal/fdi/preprobe/10ignore-disks.fdi, with these lines inside:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="block.device" string="/dev/sda1">
<merge key="info.ignore" type="bool">true</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

And voila, this one will not bother you anymore

Last thing, if you'd like to enter your password once at gdm screen, without the need to retype it for gnome-keyring (NetworkManager trying to connect to the home wifi), and even SSH passphrases, read this great planet post by fellow french conspiracy Gentoo developer remi.

Another last thing (last one I promise), about NetworkManager: this is a great tool, but it will work better if you add something like 'RC_PLUG_SERVICES="!net.eth* !net.wlan*"' to /etc/conf.d/rc (so the system does not try to start the interfaces before networmanager does). Also take a look at NetworkManagerDispatcher (bug here): this tool will automate start/stop of services when NetworkManager connects to a network (openvpn, ntpd, ...)

OK, I've finished now, thanks to the few people that are still reading

Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing: sounds nice, works great!

Voyageur — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 11:26:00 +0200

Some weeks ago, I saw this video on a new picture "resizing" technique. A white paper is also available for those interested in the algorithm.

So why did this video launch quite a buzz? Well, watch the video (if you never saw it), and be amazed by this intelligent resizing of images (changing the aspect ratio, while keeping important parts, and removing other parts). That means you can resize a photo without making the people on it look like aliens, keep the nice parts of a panorama and forget a bit about the rest...

If you want to try it, there is now a live demo available on the net: rsizr.com (flash demo, needs the newest flash plugin to work). After toying with it a bit, I can say it works as well as in the video

Next step, try it in GIMP! A plugin is available here, and an ebuild here (I'll probably add it to my overlay for testing too). I have a few pictures that will make great wallpapers, once I have them resized for my screen ratio.

Little update: the seam carver project also provides a library implementing the technology, with a little demonstration application (live this time) called arachne. Ebuild in my overlay for the curious!