Category Archives: Linux

Using Qt Creator with Ubuntu 8.10

The recent change of licencing model for the Qt toolkit got it a lot of press recently. My GUI-based development experience is all Windows based, using MFC and wxWidgets. As I’ve found myself using Ubuntu and OSX a lot more recently, the idea of using Qt to write software to run on Windows, Linux or OSX has some appeal. Of particular interest was the ease with which you can integrate WebKit, allowing you to embed web capabilities into a cross-platform app with ease.

Installation under Ubuntu 8.10 is straightforward, but I’m writing this post just to note the install steps I took. Hope it helps someone!

  • Download and install the SDK, which includes an IDE
  • Once installed, there’s a few packages you’ll need to ensure your first build completes:
  • sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig-dev libxrender-dev libsm-dev libglib2.0-dev

Now you’re good to go!

Edit: Edvaldo in the comments noted he needed to install some additional packages as follows:

  • sudo apt-get install libxext-dev libxext6-dbg x11proto-xext-dev

HertsLUG March 2007

Restoring a Virtual Machine Snapshot - amazing photoshop skillsBeen a bit lax in attending the Hertfordshire Linux User Group meetings of late. Finally made it last night and gave a talk on virtual machines which I’d been promising since December. I mainly concentrated on the free VMWare Server, since I use it for day-to-day development, but others made mention of their experiences with QEMU and the intriguing EasyVMX which allows online creation of virtual machines for use in VMWare Player.

The image above was a hastily constructed graphic illustrating how a destroyed virtual machine could be quickly replaced with a backup snapshot, which I demonstrated by performing an “rm / -Rf” on a virtual machine, which was fun.

The talk seemed to go down well anyway, and I hope to become more of a regular attendee!

Linux Professional Institute Certification

Went to another meeting of the Hertfordshire Linux User Group on Wednesday night, when Rob Davis gave a talk on his experiences taking the Linux Professional Institute level 1 certification exams.

While I’m not sure that the certificate itself will carry much weight with employers, what is interesting is how studying for the certificate forces you to investigate areas you’ve not previously explored, rounding out your knowledge.

The only cost is the exam itself, which at the test centre closest to me would cost £78 per exam (US$150), and you need to sit two exams for each level of certification. Should be an easy task to persuade an employer to stump up such a small amount for getting more knowledgable employees.

There are some books around to help too. Rob read LPIC I Exam Cram 2 and wrote a review of the book on Slashdot, but (sadly) his (admittedly profusive) use of (too many) parentheses drew a few less then complimentary comments. I noticed Amazon also have an O’Reilly book published in August which I guess would be more to date too – LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition.