VMware Workstation 6.5.3 on Fedora 11/Fedora 12

Most probably if you were trying to install the latest (6.5.3) version of VMware workstation on Fedora 11 you’ve got troubles – like me. I finally (by chance) found a workaround, not a solution, to the problem.

As the installer fails during the modules compilation/installation, the only thing that you need to do is:

• remove the gcc package – that way effectively disabling the installer from trying to install/compile modules

Edir (Thanks to Gerard Braad – see comments bellow): alternatively you can only move the gcc binary, so that the installer would not find it:

mv $(which gcc) $(which gcc).disabled

• install VMware-Workstation package – bare in mind that you’ll need at least 1.2GB of free space on your root volume, during that operation
  
• reinstall back gcc ( and kernel-devel if you don’t have it) or (see above) move back the gcc binary

mv $(which gcc.disabled) $(echo $(which gcc.disabled) | sed ‘s/\.disabled$//’)

• run VMware Workstation and let it compile/install the new modules

That’s all

File indexing on Fedora 11 for KDE4.3

Today I’ve got really frustrated that I cannot search through my documents quickly and made a quick research to see why Strigi (which is an file indexing service) cannot be integrated with Nepomuk under my KDE 4.3 installation. I won’t go in details why it was not working but if you would like to make that integration you can read first that blog post which I found very useful:

Nepomuk + Strigi –> Resolving the mystery

With two words – there is a missing part which is responsible for the nepomuk->strigi integration and this is the soprano backend. Reading the instructions in the above blogpost I’ve just recompiled the rpm for the current 4.3 version of KDE.

So what you need to do is grab and install this package

#yum localinstall –nogpgcheck soprano-backend-sesame2-2.3.0-3.fc11.i386.rpm

#yum install strigi

After this – its up to you – Either reboot or relogin to your KDE session and you should see something like this:

So – fire up dolphin and start your search now!

GTD and mail filters

I was cleaning my INBOX some weeks ago when I’ve decided to give the GTD idea a try and I found an interesting fact – you do not need mail filters.

Why? I use filters in general to move different messages depending on sender or subject to certain folders upon receiving, but given the GTD idea that EVERY mail message must be processed, these filters seems to contradict with it.

How can one be certain that a message will be processed if it is delivered within a folder “Customers -> Very Important Customer” ? If it is in the INBOX I will definitely notice it, decide what to do with it and just after that move it to the respective folder. That is why I decided to remove all my mail filters after the initial INBOX cleaning and now nothing can escape from my eyes That way you also pro actively delete all non important/not needed emails that otherwise just end up in some folder and you never read them.

Now that is the way I like my email – an empty INBOX folder with not a single message left behind.

P.S. It took me a total of 1 hour to clean up the INBOX initially with 8 months of emails in it – so don’t be scared it is not that hard – DO IT NOW!