Red Hat Linux 9.0.93 beta, codenamed “Severn“, was released today. Read more for a quick commentary and six screenshots of the release.Installation hasn’t changed much, it is now more refined, and the last bit about configuring graphical/text mode booting and X configuration is now completely gone. Red Hat Linux beta has successfully probed my E-540 Sony 21″ monitor and my Matrox card, but for safety reasons, defaulted it in 1024×768 res instead of 1600×1200@85Hz (monitor’s recommended). All hardware is working correctly, it even found my USB Creative WebCam Pro for use with GnomeMeeting.
After you install the 3 CDs and you do the first booting, right after the kernel is loaded, you are greeted with a graphical booting procedure. It is plain, but it works… I have to note here that while Red Hat successfully told LILO to load an SMP kernel for my dual Celeron system, it would stop loading the OS right after initializing the swap. Reseting the machine and booting with the non-SMP kernel, worked fine.
There is a first-time wizard, where you can create new users, subscribe to Red Hat Network etc. After that, Gnome is loaded and it looks pretty much, exactly the same as in Red Hat Linux 9. There are of course some new packages, like Evolution 1.4.3, Mozilla 1.4, but a lot of other packages are still not updated, e.g. OOo, the core Gnome itself (2.2.0 the About box says), but they should be before the release.
There are updates on many preference panels, and a few news ones too. There is new panel for graphics display (and even a per-user resolution panel –no need to be root to change your res), an updated package manager panel, updated hardware list panel etc.
There are still a few bugs around, which is normal, as this is a beta. Most noteworthy are Mozilla’s fonts which are now bolding on many web pages where it shouldn’t (including osnews’ and parts of slashdot’s), the Theme Manager has a problem when displaying the little theme thumbnails when changing themes, notification area is completely buggered up on my fresh installation. I am sure these small problems will be fixed before the final version though.
I hope some packages will be added till then, like the Vera fonts (which exists on Rawhide, but not on Severn). Another addition I would like to see is BlueFish 1.0, Gnumeric 2.x and AbiWord 2.0. At least two of these packages should be releasing their final versions before the release of Severn itself in October.
Please note that the screenshots below are showing the Gnome desktop using the high quality Vera TTF fonts, which I installed afterwards. The default Red Hat installation is still using the Sans fonts as in its previous versions.
…and now I know. Time to update that default theme guys? Just maybe? Guys?
I think that Redhat should not have skipped version 8.1. Version 9 should have been called 8.1, and this looks like a good candidate for 8.2. Nothing much has changed just some newer versions.
(and even a per-user resolution panel –no need to be root to change your res),
You could always restart X by pressing Control-Alt-Backspace instead of rebooting.
Thanks for the screenshots!
I’m just curious, why have Mozilla bold fonts on many websites, does Redhat change the Mozilla Code? Not only include the new version 1.4?
> You could always restart X by pressing Control-Alt-Backspace instead of rebooting.
What are you talking about? I said “be root”, not “reboot”.
> Nothing much has changed just some newer versions.
Yup, not big changes. The one big change was RH 8. That was a big change, at least it looked like it was. This version seems more incremental than anything innovative or something…
>I’m just curious, why have Mozilla bold fonts on many websites, does Redhat change the Mozilla Code?
It might just be a bug of Mozilla in regards to interaction of the new FontConfig, not a concious change. I just hope that the RH guys will have a look at it and see what’s causing it.
I guess they just wanted to follow the trend, like Mandrake 9, Slackware 9… In fact, Slackware jumped from 4.x to 7.0 just because of that.
Its out this morning and you already got it installed, played with it, and wrote a review? Woow, that’s real fast! Thanks anyhow!
I think RedHat’s new development model will be better. It will strike a prudent middle ground between Debian and Xandros. If there would be new distros, I hope they would all standardise around RedHat.
I could do it even faster if I was not debating with myself if I should bother download it or not, for nearly two hours.
version numbers get incremented when the release breaks binary compatability, not when the gui gets changes. it so happens that the usually happen in the same release. there were major “under the hood” differences between 8 and 9 (for one, the kernel threading model is new and incompatable, aparently).
Except for Mozilla, the fonts look pretty good. Are those the defaults ?
> Except for Mozilla, the fonts look pretty good. Are those the defaults?
Read the last paragraph of the article again.
Eugenia did you install Epiphany yourself or was it part of the beta?
It is part of the beta.
The only changes I made to the installation is when I installed the Vera fonts and AbiWord 1.92.x from Rawhide. All other stuff you see there, came with the beta.
Looks the same as RH8 and RH9 too me
Except for that damn mozilla. I hope they plan to fix it. It’s really ugly.
Eugenia,
Now that RedHat is adopting a more open development model, do you have any plans to help out? I remember you had some plans about how things could go better. You can at least do mockups and have others implement them. ???
Well, that was always one of the complaints about Red Hat. No RPM uninstallation tool. Now there is this Remove Software button in the package manager, can it remove rpm’s you have installed from other sources? It would be nice to have a screenshot of it.
Besides of this, I’m just hoping for even more polish and performance. There is no need to innovate right now, as they are on the right track. More consolidation of the base system would be great, improving bootup and shutdown speed is a must in the long run… If they could pull this off (for example by making certain services start in the background and/or simultaneously), it would be a killer “feature”.
Graphical bootup should also help making everything feel more like “one piece” instead of a bunch of software thrown together.
This consolidation is the one and only reason I go for Red Hat instead of Debian or Gentoo.
Also I’m wondering if it wouldn’t make sense to through out most of those old screensavers… Some are really kickass, but they kinda get lost between all the mediocre ones. A new screensaver has to be there anyway somewhere in the future, the motif password dialog doesn’t quite cut it. =)
>do you have any plans to help out?
I am going to Europe for long vacations soon and I will have limited internet for more than a month, and when I will be back no desktop-related changes will be allowed in the source tree, so…
Looks nice so far, I don’t see why they should change the them when they update versions, sure this one was introduced in version 8, but look how many years windows stayed with the same basic look (Win95/NT, 98, ME, 2000).
As for usefull improvements, user changeable resolutions, and a menu editor for Gnome would be some of my top choices.
Still, so far looking nice and a really good peak at the beta there Eugenia.
OS News looks like piss on Mozilla.
“improving bootup and shutdown speed is a must in the long run”
As Red Hat is a _server_ OS, bootup and shutdown speed isn’t an issue because a server should be powered on 24/7.
I have RedHat Rawhide installed and am wondering if there’s a way for me to enable the same type of graphical booter that there’s now apparently in “Severn”. What packages do I need installed?
No idea… It seems to be more than just a few packages threw in. I suggest to actually install Severn itself to avoid weird problems.
have they included bootsplash (http://www.bootsplash.org) it loads this as background when the kernel loads, you can also have silent mode. is this feature available in this beta ?
Not that I know of. The graphical boot starts AFTER the kernel has loaded in text mode.
No, the Red Hat Linux release (soon to be called Red Hat Linux Project) is mainly meant for students and hobbyists as their main OS or just to learn. It makes an excellent server, but it’s more of a general purpose OS.
It’s also the base for both enterprise server and workstation releases. Not long in the future, I expect it to be the base for home desktop releases, too.
Do those Vera fonts work on all distros and window managers? Where can I find info on how to download and install those, or are they exclusively a Redhat thing ?
They work everywhere: http://www.gnome.org/fonts/
Yes, they work everywhere, they are just regular TrueType Fonts.
Just google: Bitstream Vera Fonts and you’ll find the download. Its on the GNOME FTP server.
Huh! I found the problem. Red Hat has made a bug and both the Serif and Sans Serif settings of Mozilla are pointing to the same fonts by default! Just change the “Sans Serif” fonts from the drop down menu to “Sans Serif” for all the subsequent categories on its sub menu, and it fixes the problem. Now all fonts, on all web sites, are looking good again.
Ah okey, my mistake!
Anyway, your idea of how to make the os faster is pretty good! But I think that most ppl will behave like today’s nerds (read: me) in the future and never shut of their computers either. Mostly because i think email will be more important and you will want to get notified when you get an email. And other uses for always leaving the computer on is: listening to internet-radio[*1], reminder shedulers, downloading odd media on p2p[*2], etc etc..
[1] But I think regular stand-alone hardware musicplayers will include a ethernetport apart from the classical radio-antenna.
[2] For odd media there can be several days of waiting time until someone with the odd media connects to the network and the client starts downloading.
So, I guess the test 2.6 kernel is not included?
Graphical boot screenshot should be interesting. Eugenia, can you take some of this and put it here? Please…
Thanks
I don’t think I know how to get a screenshot while nothing has booted yet. There is no shell at this point, therefore I can’t use “import” or any other utility to grab the screen.
The only way to do that is use VMWare and I don’t wan to spend 3 hours waiting for RHL to install on my old dual celreron under vmware…
It is just a very plain full screen window with a small window in the middle with a progress bar. That’s about it…
Eugenia
How abt digital camera??
Does the graphical boot look like SuSE’s? Better look or not that good?
I’de like to see Boot Screenshots as well. You CAN do this, see this page:
http://rhl.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/
“During a graphical installation, you can press SHIFT-Print Screen and a screenshot of the current installation screen will be taken. These are stored in the following directory:
/root/anaconda-screenshots/
The screenshots can be accessed once the newly-installed system is rebooted.”
pi;
I’m referring to graphical boot up NOT the graphical installation. I pressumed the graphical installation is not much different from ver. 9.0, although the release notes mentioned new things abt anaconda.
But I think that most ppl will behave like today’s nerds (read: me) in the future and never shut of their computers either.
That might be true, but only if they can make all computers completely silent… Then there are laptops. Some kind of advanced suspend mode might improve this, but I’m sure you still want to turn off your laptop completely from time to time.
Well, imagine your TV set would need two minutes to “boot”.
That would suck.
Doh! I read “graphical boot” not “graphical install” when I read that… oh well…
But in 2005 we will have RH 50.0 🙂
http://rhl.redhat.com/participate/schedule/
Schedule
Cambridge
July 21 2003 – Beta 1 release
August 8 2003 – Stop Ship Mode starts (only StopShip bug fixes after this point)
August 18 2003 – Beta 2 release
September 15 2003 – Beta 3 release
October 6 2003 – General Availability
Cambridge++
No dates set yet, but a driving goal or defining characteristic will be the 2.6 Linux kernel — unless the 2.6 Linux kernel takes too long to arrive. That is, we’ll shorten the schedule to accomodate an earlier release of the 2.6 kernel, but not lengthen it to accomodate a later release of the 2.6 kernel.
It is faster than RH 9?
Not to troll, but am I the only one who thinks that Bluecurve is rather, well, UGLY?
Well, I like it (its the only thing I like about RH).
But they offer other themes as well, so you’re not stuck with it.
I think they are trying to do a “middle of the road” look, since they’re target seems to be “the general population”.
Well, imagine your TV set would need two minutes to “boot”.
That would suck.
Actually my TV (a Philips 32″ Widescreen) takes about 20-30 seconds to start. Yes, that sucks!
I have tryed to edit my x file in this beta but.. whats wrong with it..
# XFree86 4 configuration created by redhat-config-xfree86
Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Default Layout”
InputDevice “Mouse0” “CorePointer”
InputDevice “Keyboard0” “CoreKeyboard”
InputDevice “DevInputMice” “AlwaysCore”
Screen “Screen1”
Screen “Screen2” RightOf “Screen1”
#Option “Xinerama”
EndSection
Section “Files”
# RgbPath is the location of the RGB database. Note, this is the name of the
# file minus the extension (like “.txt” or “.db”). There is normally
# no need to change the default.
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Red Hat 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.
RgbPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb”
FontPath “unix/:7100”
EndSection
Section “Module”
Load “dbe”
Load “extmod”
Load “fbdevhw”
Load “glx”
Load “record”
Load “freetype”
Load “type1”
EndSection
Section “InputDevice”
# Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1))
# Option “Xleds” “1 2 3”
# To disable the XKEYBOARD extension, uncomment XkbDisable.
# Option “XkbDisable”
# To customise the XKB settings to suit your keyboard, modify the
# lines below (which are the defaults). For example, for a non-U.S.
# keyboard, you will probably want to use:
# Option “XkbModel” “pc102”
# If you have a US Microsoft Natural keyboard, you can use:
# Option “XkbModel” “microsoft”
#
# Then to change the language, change the Layout setting.
# For example, a german layout can be obtained with:
# Option “XkbLayout” “de”
# or:
# Option “XkbLayout” “de”
# Option “XkbVariant” “nodeadkeys”
#
# If you’d like to switch the positions of your capslock and
# control keys, use:
# Option “XkbOptions” “ctrl:swapcaps”
# Or if you just want both to be control, use:
# Option “XkbOptions” “ctrl:nocaps”
#
Identifier “Keyboard0”
Driver “keyboard”
Option “XkbRules” “xfree86”
Option “XkbModel” “pc105”
Option “XkbLayout” “no”
EndSection
Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Mouse0”
Driver “mouse”
Option “Protocol” “IMPS/2”
Option “Device” “/dev/psaux”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5”
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “no”
EndSection
Section “InputDevice”
# If the normal CorePointer mouse is not a USB mouse then
# this input device can be used in AlwaysCore mode to let you
# also use USB mice at the same time.
Identifier “DevInputMice”
Driver “mouse”
Option “Protocol” “IMPS/2”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/mice”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5”
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “no”
EndSection
Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor1”
VendorName “Monitor Vendor”
ModelName “NOKIA 920C”
DisplaySize 360 270
HorizSync 30.0 – 96.0
VertRefresh 50.0 – 160.0
Option “dpms”
EndSection
Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor2”
VendorName “Monitor Vendor”
ModelName “Unknown monitor”
HorizSync 31.5 – 37.9
VertRefresh 50.0 – 70.0
Option “dpms”
EndSection
Section “Device”
Identifier “Videocard1”
Driver “tdfx”
VendorName “Videocard vendor”
BoardName “Voodoo5 (generic)”
VideoRam 65536
EndSection
Section “Device”
Identifier “Videocard2”
Driver “mga”
VendorName “Videocard vendor”
BoardName “Matrox Mystique”
EndSection
Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen1”
Device “Videocard1”
Monitor “Monitor1”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1024×768” “1024×600” “800×600” “800×480” “640×480”
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen2”
Device “Videocard2”
Monitor “monitor2”
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection “Display”
Depth 16
Modes “800×600” “800×480” “640×480”
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section “DRI”
Mode 0666
EndSection
tnx..
You are not telling us anything what the problem is. And btw, does your computer has two graphics cards and two monitors?
First, what problems are you experiencing with X and Second – are you running 2 video cards with 2 monitors on the same system?
well.. im not trolling it works fine with mandrake.. so.. and btw: i can take in on the rh beta list.
They removed the Glide3 driver, so your Voodoo5 is not going to be all that amazing, I would imagine.
Some people hate it when I say this, but… nVidia’s dual out implementation is not perfect, but it is a damned sight better than using two different cards for it. I’ve used a TNT2+G200 and a Radeon+G200, and neither would do accelerated 3D. Pop in the GF4 MX, and suddenly, I’m doing whatever resolutions I want up to 2560×1024.
-Erwos
Not to troll, but am I the only one who thinks that Bluecurve is rather, well, UGLY?
Only the window decoration, in my opinion. The rest is OK. In fact, if anything, I find Bluecurve extremely useful, since it looks the same both in GTK-1 and GTK-2. I swear, the moment I saw the default GTK-1 appearance, I was about to puke all over my monitor. Ugly.
no, they dident. and the glide i alive at sf.net http://sourceforge.net/projects/glide/ soon v. 5.. but i can run this Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory http://www.fileaholic.com/cgi-sql/file-info.sql/148503
in 640 * 400
soo iam happy..
Is there a build of WINE available for this version which isn’t uber-crashy?
Is there an Mp3 player installed?
Does the Apple iSight cam work in Gnomemeeting? ( yeah, long shot I know but it would be cool if it did )
Hmmmm…that was funny LOL HAHAHAHA.
Actually, you don’t have to be root in 8 and 9; you have to know the root password, though.
And if you want to zoom in you can always hit CTRL+ALT+(+ or – on the number keys on the right)
>Is there a build of WINE available for this version which isn’t uber-crashy?
No.
>Is there an Mp3 player installed?
No.
>Does the Apple iSight cam work in Gnomemeeting?
No.
>Actually, you don’t have to be root in 8 and 9; you have to know the root password, though.
Yeah, and as they say in Greece “Don’t call me John, call me Johny”.
>And if you want to zoom in you can always hit CTRL+ALT+(+ or – on the number keys on the right)
This gives you virtual resolutions, not real ones.
Eugenia I am jealous.
If I were to write what you wrote it would be like this,
Red Hat Linux beta has successfully probed my E-200 Sony 17″ monitor and my Matrox card, but for safety reasons, defaulted it in 1024×768 res which is the (monitor’s recommended).
:B
What’s so special about Gnome-Screenshots???? You can make Mandrake, SuSe, all of the *BSD and any OS that runs Gnome make look like this, can’t you?
LoCal
There is nothing special. They are just shots of the latest Red Hat beta. Nothing more, nothing less. People have being asking for some, so here they are.
The only different thing they got than other Unices with Gnome are its pref panels I guess.
Eugenia
Well seen that they don’t plan on releasing it till october at the earliest, it should have Gnome 2.4 which is planned to be released in september (must get back to translating it into irish
Given that it’ll take at least 3 months before 2.6 settles down i’d say redhat are going to wait till it’s released.
Redhat should wait for the 2.6 kernel and Gnome 2.4…well, maybe not Gnome 2.4 but for sure the 2.6 kernel.
RetHat just sucks course of lack of REAL posix and libc2.2 -compat- 2.3. The only diffirence for me with 7.x and 8.0/9 is Bluecurve theme of desktop – other are just experimental stuff for “we are the best and first developers of linux desktops”. Anyway MOST of software can’t wort with utf8 in i18n way, so maybe you can use it, but the rest of this world can’t.
Are you sure Bitstream Vera is not included? It is listed among the packages on the “Package List for Severn” page:
http://rhl.redhat.com/projects/package-list/
Hi,
– does the new Redhat support real ACPI? I mean *not* the outdated acpi patch included in 2.4.21.
– what about crypto filesystems? Those are really usefull on notebooks.
– What about cpufreq(d)? Does Severn support Speedstep?
– What about ACLs?
Only the window decoration, in my opinion. The rest is OK. In fact, if anything, I find Bluecurve extremely useful, since it looks the same both in GTK-1 and GTK-2. I swear, the moment I saw the default GTK-1 appearance, I was about to puke all over my monitor. Ugly.
This is a problem I’ve noticed with Linux. If you wish to change themes, after doing so you will have a very inconsistent look. There could end up being different themes for Qt, GTK1 and GTK2. There should be some kind of universal theme selector that makes all 3 looks the same.
Originally posted by JSplice…
This is a problem I’ve noticed with Linux. If you wish to change themes, after doing so you will have a very inconsistent look. There could end up being different themes for Qt, GTK1 and GTK2. There should be some kind of universal theme selector that makes all 3 looks the same.
A good idea is if they had one file that describes a theme, and then GNOME and KDE developers can create translator programs, that translates it into native GTK and QT themes.
What do you think a good idea? Would it solve the problem for widgets?
I tried it, and it works with rh9
u only need:
1. download rhgb rpm from rpmfind.net
2. install it.
3. edit /etc/sysconfig/init, add GRAPHICAL=”yes”
4. set to use graphical login e.g. gdm
i tried to configure samba using redhat-config-samba… it just destroyed the contents of /etc/samba/smb.conf 🙁
Also, when the bugbuddy came up because something crashed, it crashed to, so it tried to load bugbuddy again, which crashed, …
…and other tools for the 2.6 kernel. I installed the 2.6 kernel from http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.5/, but I can’t get X to work (some problem with the mouse). I only had to install the kernel and kernel source, the rest of the updated stuff seemed to be in severn already.
modprobe mousedev (dont know why it doesnt load automatically)
“ installed the 2.6 kernel from http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.5/, but I can’t get X to work (some problem with the mouse)
I ran the nvidia driver installer but as soon as I click yes to the question, it freezes.
Red Hat is DEAD.
rpm sucks.
Wow! The SCO / Microsoft Spin Doctors are soooo articulate!
Redhat is dead
Where did you see that? Where’s the news? Where’s the URL of the news? I would like to see it
(Which of course, you don’t have since it’s not true)
rpm sucks
Tell us WHY rpm sucks, what did you not like about it. Tell us your reasons.
yep… its only you. *windows XP* is ugly
I installed it this morning and have been playing with it. I have to say that I like it. I still do not like the fact that I have to sign up with the RHN to get updates.
>Are you sure Bitstream Vera is not included? It is listed among the packages on the “Package List for Severn” page:
Yep, it didn’t installed on my Red Hat then for some reason. I had to download and install it manually.
what is the difference?
what is the difference?
I believe Rawhide is Redhat 9 plus updated packages that fix bugs etc.
I believe Rawhide is Redhat 9 plus updated packages that fix bugs etc.
But I have noticed that a lot of the rawhide packages are not available through redhat 9 up2date…
rawhide is just redhat’s latest and greatest packages… many of them are “unstable” but have the latest and greatest features…
Rawhide is RedHat’s equivalent of Debian unstable/testing and Mandrake’s Cooker
These packages are tested in Rawhide until they are deemed stable enough to include in standard Red Hat
Go to http://rhl.redhat.com/download/rawhide.html. Should give you the info you need.
bluecurve definitly needs an upgrade. it was ahead of time in rh8, but compared to xd2, it now looks outdated and boring.
also, none of my main issues with rh, like being able to stream files from windows-pcs, tight integration of an audio- and videoplayer as well as inclusion of java re, flashplugs etc., not to speak of better printing (guess this will only get comparable to windows when hp etc. will finally deliver drivers) or a successor to rpm (admitted, might be still too early) seems to have been adressed!
i must say, progress could really be faster in a lot of areas.
my prediction was 1 year ago that linux would be comparable to windows on desktop in 1-2, max. 3 years, but as progress is crawling, i fear it might take longer.
what a pity, i would love to change back to rh, because xd2 seems more buggy and unstable, but it is not worth the work.
So, is that a guy or a girl in the screenshot?
It is a girl, last time I checked. It is me.
I guess this better driver and higher quality driver can show it clearly that I am a girl:
http://img.osnews.com/img/3904/isight.jpg
I am not impressed with the Creative Webcam driver on Linux. It is much worse than the quality I get on Windows with the same camera, no wonder you couldn’t tell.
I suppose I believe you now. Get some highlights or something!
Someone said that you still have to sign up for RHN in order to get updates, which sort of pisses me off since I’m tired of receiving their spam almost every day. Will I now be able to install it on > 1 computer using the same e-mail address, without having to change entitlements every time I want to update?
You can log into http://reh.redhat.com and select under you perference NOT to receive Errata email updates
Just wanna know if this version is beta-qualitty or usable for production. I’m also curious if someone has tested kernel 2.6-test1 and if its usable? Thanks allot, Marc.
Does this version of RHL include ACPI support? I would love to have it on my laptop. Thanks allot!
Erm, it is a beta, so it is what you expect: beta quality.
Yes, there is ACPI AFAIK, according to the release notes.
ACPI IS A kernel thing, and ACPID is the deamon. if ther is no ACPI support, all you have to do is a simple kernel recompile and install/start acpid daemon…
–Peace
Bahamot,
No it doesn’t work with Red Hat 9.0. If you update your initscripts, it may very well fsck up your installation. And you can’t install it without updating them. If you can, pointme to the location of the rpm.
error: Failed dependencies:
initscripts >= 7.22-1 is needed by rhgb-0.9.4
Did RH ever get around to having a GUI for editing your menus? That dropped out in RH 8…which is when I stopped using it.
No
Why don’t they change to i586 builds when Mandrake and SuSe have already done it and the minium requirement for installation is pentium class processor?
I have just installed it in my RH9. It works fine no need to edit anything but you just have to install the new initscripts. BTW, the background of the graphical boot sucks for me. It just appears blurry no matter what, so I changed the default to a plain blue bg that goes well with bluecurve. Any idea on how to make it display the bg in truecolor mode?