System preparations for the hackfest

[Jim Campbell <jwcampbell gmail com>]

Hi All,

I hope everyone is doing well, and is looking forward to the hackfest. I'm looking forward to seeing some new and familiar faces.

We'll have a lot of people there, and a lot to get through, so we had talked about some system-prep stuff to make sure that we're all ready to go. I think most of us have these items set up already, but let us know if you have any questions/problems.  

With regards to computer setup, please have at least GNOME 3.2 set up on your computer in one form or another. If I recall correctly, you can even get Ubuntu 11.10 set up with gnome shell, though there will be some minor differences between it and the standard gnome shell. You can select a gnome-shell or unity session from the lightdm greeter.

Some other handy utilities to have installed include git, yelp-tools, yelp-xsl, gnome-common (in case we want to build some updated local versions of software), and a git log viewer like tig (terminal-based) or gitg (gui-based, maintained by the gedit developers).

Speaking of gedit, I've put together two blog posts about configuring and using gedit for documentation:
http://j1m.net/2012/02/02/configure-gedit-for-documentation/

http://j1m.net/2012/02/09/documentation-and-gedit-snippets/

Of course, you are free to use your editor of choice, though.

For the adventurous who want to use development versions of GNOME 3.4, I know that Mike Hall had mentioned using the Mageia alphas (which feature 3.3.x builds of GNOME), and has also tried using OpenSUSE using the GNOME Factory repository.  Mike, have you found one of those setups easier to use or more reliable than the other? Any major problems?  I know that Fedora will soon be prepping their Fedora 17 alpha. I have not tried any of the Fedora 17 builds, though.

For the extra adventurous, you may also try setting up a jhbuild of the latest gnome shell trunk. As I mentioned, though, having at least GNOME 3.2 will be good enough.

Thanks, everyone!

Jim

P.S. If I've missed any other computer-setup suggestions, feel free to chime in with suggestions.