The Board in GNOME 3
So far, testing The Board has been a complicated matter because it involved messing with jhbuild, build dependencies, compilation of a dozen of modules, etc. Those are fine for developers but not really for the people who just want to try the app. Here’s a summary of the progress made on the creation of distro packages for The Board.
Ubuntu. Robert Ancell initially created a PPA for The Board under the GNOME 3 team in Launchpad. Thanks Robert! I then fixed a few remaining build issues on the package and created a separate PPA for The Board. It contains packages for Natty. To install The Board, open a terminal and run:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:the-board-team/dev-snapshots
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install the-board
You have to enable Ubuntu’s Universe repository. There are still a few issues with running The Board in Unity—blurred icon on panel, no status icon, etc. I’ll have to talk with the Unity team to know how The Board can be better integrated with Ubuntu’s new UX.
GNOME 3 Live CD. Thanks to the work of Andrew Wafaa, The Board packages are available for openSUSE. Frederic Crozat then integrated Andrew’s packages into the GNOME 3 Live CD. So it’s now easy to try The Board while having a sneak peak on GNOME Shell and other GNOME 3 goodies. As I said before, I’m still unsure on how to nicely integrate the app with GNOME Shell. The use of GTK+ status icon doesn’t really fit GNOME Shell’s UI design.
Fedora. Cosimo Cecchi has created Fedora Rawhide packages which still need to be updated for the latest release and reviewed. It should be available soon, I guess…
All in all, my hope is that those packages will allow more people to try The Board with minimum hassle. Keep in mind that The Board is still under heavy development and is not ready for end-users. For now, I’m looking forward to getting feedback, bug reports, and patches from insightful early testers and developers! For instance, Luc’s 15 minute review is an excellent example of the kind of feedback I’m looking for.
It doesn’t start for me in Ubuntu 11.04. You can take a look at the error here: http://pastebin.com/QjMAyZfn
@Andrew, Could you install the gir1.2-mx-1.0 package and try again? If this fixes your problem, I’ll update the package dependencies accordingly.
Great news! Any plans on adding packages for Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10?
@Dmitriy, The Board uses GNOME 3 platform which is not available on 10.04 and 10.10. It’s theoretically possible to do it, but it’s not as simple as providing packages to Natty and it could potentially mess up your system.
In Gentoo, you just need to enable the gnome overlay using layman, and then you can install it. Gentoo users will know what I’m talking about ;)
layman -a gnome
emerge -av the-board
These commands will fetch the latest sources from git, compile them, and install them.
It’s a bit wonky (f.ex: no fancy fonts), but simple testing shows that the application itself works.
@Nirbheek, Thanks for the instructions on the Gentoo side! About the font, I haven’t decided on the final UI font yet. As I mentioned before, the font you’re seeing in the demo videos is freeware, this is why I’m not shipping it with The Board. If you want things to look good for now, you can install the font separately, if you don’t mind installing freeware font on your system.
This is just a temporary (unfortunate) situation by the way. I filed a bug to track the search for a UI font. Suggestions for a stylish free (as in freedom) font to be used in The Board’s UI are welcome.
I’m with 11.04 too, Your app seems really great (I’m mean, really really). I installed package gir1.2-mx-1.0 and it sart, but it crash very often ( 30 seconds ….) What log files would you need? Where do I sent them to you?
@Kévin, A simple way to get a bit more information about the crash is to open a terminal and execute “GJS_DEBUG_OUTPUT=the-board.log the-board”. The app should spit a bunch of error messages in the terminal after crashing. It will also create a the-board.log file in the current directory. File a new bug in GNOME Bugzilla with the error messages you see in the terminal and attach the log file. Thanks!
Yes, installing “gir1.2-mx-1.0″ gets it working, thanks!
@Andrew, The package is now updated with the correct dependencies, thanks!
That’s done : (my first bug on bugzilla… Always used Launchpad before :D it’s an important day !)
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=645519
@Kévin, This is exactly what I need, thanks! I’ve seen/heard of this problem before in openSUSE and Ubuntu. Could you try to update your system (apt-get update && apt-get upgrade) and let me know if this “fixes” the problem?
Continue to crash, but not every time : only if I click the arrow!
Oh, and an idea : Instead asking for how to integrate with Unity with devs, you should ask this on ayatana maybe, the “design” mailing list (Ayatana Discussion ). I think it will receive lot of replies (it’s a very very active list if you do not know it)
Hey this looks fantastic! Is there any chance of a build for Maverick in the PPA? I would love to try it out after waiting all this time :)
@Andrew, About having a packages for Maverick in the PPA, see my reply to Dmitriy above. Thanks!
Hm…is there a way to get it maximized? I would really love to always have it open on one of my virtual desktops…at least this way I would finally use them : P
This could btw be a good way to integrate the board in gnome-shell: have it always use a whole desktop. Switching between desktops is a very common task with gs anyway.
@Murray, Yeah, good points. Those are all questions I’ll have to answer when integrating The Board in GNOME Shell.
You have a place where we can propose ideas, like mail, forum, mailing list…. or here ? (it begin really inspirat me :D Sad I’m not dev :(, just a big idea factory !!! )
@Kévin, Great, ideas are welcome, of course. I suggest you to post them separately as bug reports in GNOME Bugzilla. This way I won’t lose track of them.
Is there a 64-bit version of The Board?
I followed the instructions above but I still can’t install the-board.
Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/the-board-team/dev-snapshots/ubuntu/dists/maverick/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz 404 Not Found
@Mårten, This is because you’re trying to use the PPA to install packages for Maverick but the PPA is only available for Natty.
Hi I just installed it on Natty, on a netbook. Besides the screen being too small for the program (which kind of makes sense), I had a few bugs adding labels, and such, just thought you should know. Otherwise, I like where this is going. Keep up the good work.
@Brian, Thanks for the feedback! I’m aware of the issues of using The Board in small screens. I’ll hopefully fix it in the upcoming releases.
As for the crash when adding labels, could you please follow the instructions I gave to Kévin above and let me know if you see the same error messages that were posted in this bug report?
[...] 2011Share story: TweetVisually impressive note-gathering application ‘The Board’ is now available to for Ubuntu 11.04 users to install and [...]
[...] turns out that The Board‘s distro packages were a great success! The PPA package alone has been downloaded more then 330 times in just a week. [...]
small note: you forgot to add
sudo apt-get update
in the list of commands to install the Board
@Luca, Fixed, thanks!
I just updated, and the problems I had previously on my netbook have been resolved. Which means that it seems to be working perfectly. I also gave it hotkeys in compiz, which means I can start it instantly. This is working just beautifully. You did an awesome job.
I thought, I would just leave a few more comments after using it for a while. Pasting text into the board results in a newly created label. This works for short text entries like URLs but larger text pasting should probably use a not instead. Also using iBus currently doesn’t work in it. I don’t know if you plan to support iBus, but it would increase use in foreign countries if it could. I currently live in Korea, and sometimes leaving notes in Korean is useful.
@Brian, About the text pasting, you’re seeing an unexpected behaviour as long text blurbs are supposed to be pasted as notes, not labels. Were you trying to paste something as long as, say, a paragraph? As for the iBus support, I intend to improve the note taking experience quite a bit and that might lead to better support for input frameworks. Let’s see.