Tag Archives: KDE 4

News Flash – Matthias Ettrich Gets a Medal, the N900 Gets Reviewed

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Dorian continues his quest in pursuit of sanity, salvation and free time under the combined mountains of e-mail and code.  He sents his regards and asks yet again for patience.  As a token, he gives you his take on the latest cool developments in the consumer Linux space.

Matthias Ettrich Awarded the German Medal of Merit

Matthias Ettrich, founder of the KDE project, received the German Medal of Merit for his contributions for the common welfare.  Specifically for his founding of the KDE project.

Dorian’s thoughts: As a rabid KDE user, thank you for starting this awesome desktop project.  Thank you for kickstarting the project that is pushing the Linux desktop computing experience forward in ever increasing terms of usability, aesthetics, flexibility and freedom.  Thank you, and thanks to all the contributers of KDE and the wider libre software community.

An In-Depth Review of the N900

Still wondering whether or not to get the Nokia N900?  Well take a look at this in-depth review of the pre-production N900 from The Nokia Blog.

Dorian’s thoughts: I’m still thinking of getting it.  I wonder how it compares to my current 5800 XM in terms of hardware, but I think it is much, much better… Still waiting for availability of the unit in Canada, and for a review of a production variant too.

Review of Ontario Linux Fest 2009

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Two weekends ago I went to Ontario Linux Fest 2009, held here in chilly Toronto for the third year in a row. And for such a young conference, it was quite good.  In fact good enough, that longer review of the event is in order:

Morning Keynote – Changes to the GPL

The day started with me rushing out the door in the morning, to catch a morning bus.  I made a bit later, missing the first part of Bradley Kuhn‘s keynote.   I rushed in, grabbed my conference package, put on my name-tag and rushed to hear the second part of the keynote.  Brad discussed the changes between versions 2 and 3 of the GPL (GNU General Public License).  As someone who followed the licenses and uses the GPL in my current project (justCheckers), it was pretty interesting to hear about why behind the changes.  The original GPL2 was quite brief for a software license, but not quite as understandable as the GPL 3.  The GPL 3 helped simplify the license, made it international and got rid of some icky loopholes.  After the keynote, I did a quick swag run even buying a fleece from the Eclipse guys from Redhat.  (And no Nick, I wasn’t there just for the swag I just haven’t gotten around to contributing to Eclipse just yet.)  I then quickly popped quickly back in for the first track of sessions.

Session 1 – Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Cheryl McKinnon from Nuxeo did a talk on ECM.  I can definitely relate to having to hunt down information in the mess of Office documents and e-mails at the office.  I can just imagine what happens at larger organizations that have less rigorous guidelines to handling documentation.  So I definitely see the need software that handles such data, especially in terms of productivity and maintaining documents for regulatory purposes.  I can’t understand why every organization doesn’t have at least a wiki.  Interesting note that the concepts I learned in a university course on information science, really applies here.  Managing the capture, collaboration, review, publish, archiving and search-ability of information is really a science on to itself.  No wonder open source vendors like Nuxeo, Alfresco and MindTouch that provide ECM solutions in a flexible and low-cost way are such a big hit for enterprises.  There also was a neat discussion on how Nuxeo can do both centralization (bring documents into itself) and management of meta-data (like the locations and “tags” related to scattered documentation).  Really neat.

Session 2 – Ubuntu Moblin & Netbook Remixes

Jorge Castro from Canonical of Ubuntu community fame presented the Ubuntu Moblin and Netbook Remixes.  As with any live demo, the demo technology co-operated with Jorge like any demoed technology or self-conscious prima donna.  Still the Ubuntu Moblin Remix looks gorgeous.  It sports a nice, simple, elegant and understandable user interface.  However this remix qualifies as a tech preview more than something to hit the mass consumer.  Still I think people will be impressed when they change over from Windows to something like Moblin.  It looks a far bit of effort was put into making refactoring the UIs to fit a smaller, wider screen.  The Netbook Remix looks great too, and if you are reading this and running Ubuntu 9.10… switch over to the Netbook UI, you’ll love it even on your main system.

Lunch Chat 1 – Free Software and Its Impact on the Future of the Software Industry

I skipped out on the last session of the morning to pester Brad Kuhn with a few questions.  It started with an innocent question about his opinion about certain companies planning on moving from the GPL to the Apache licenses.  Brad figured out that I had read one of Matt Asay’s blogs on the topic, and went on a mini-rant.  Apparently Matt is one of Brad’s “nemesis” (not that they don’t get along rather their views on software freedom are quite different).  Brad envisions a future where software stops being a “big box” industry of packaged software products to more of a lawyery/consultancy profession.  I have to agree with him on that, and I don’t mind such a future being a consultant by trade.  However I did point out the difficulty one runs into with consumer-level products or projects.  Basically how does one sufficiently fund a project like Inkscape?  One way would be to sell a proprietary product, which defeats the purpose of going open source.  Another way would be to offer a service.  The heart of the problem is how to finance a regular development and enhancements (like usability) on a regular basis… and still get someone to pay for it willingly.  It isn’t an easy problem to solve… A problem that I plan on working on in my semi-stealth project… But Brad tried to convince it wasn’t as big of a deal as I think it is.

Lunch Chat 2 – Decoupling User Interfaces from the Application Backends

Feeling now famished for lack of a breakfast, I went out with Scott from the GTALug for pizza.  Scott is into user interface design both on a hardware and software level.  We both agreed that user interfaces should be loosely coupled to their backends.  In enterprise web application design the concept of different views for different users and environments comes to mind.  Scott introduced me to the concept of a framework that allows for completely decoupling the user interface with the underlying application, called Metisse.  It allows for building UIs at runtime using a widget palette or toolkit… brilliant!  That would let developers concentrate on what they are good at: application development and design.  And HCI/usability/graphics designer concentrate on what they are good at: design kick-ass usable user interfaces.

Session 3 – Building Business Applications Using SugarCRM

Right after lunch, I went to a more practical session by John Mertic, a developer at SugarCRM.  The session was naturally about developing applications using SugarCRM.  It looks a very nice application, and CRMs apparently can solve a lot of problems centred around customers.  Even just using SugarCRM to manage a client’s organizational contacts would save a lot of my time at work.  However since I work in Java and not PHP, thats not really an option.  But it looks like a neat application, the latest version SugarCRM 5 being all built in PHP and using the YUI (used to use ExtJS).  There is a vibrant community forge and marketplace around the application.  Neat.  Also neat that John just published an Apress book called: The Definitive Guide to SugarCRM.  See a pattern, yet? 😉

Session 4 – World Domination, Documentation and Ponies

OK, I admit it as a writer masquerading as a software developer,  (Or is it the other way around?) I actually enjoy writing documentation.  Some would even say, I enjoy writing documentation too much.  So I jumped at the opportunity of hear Emma Jane Hogbin talk about world domination through good documentation.  Actually I was disappointed by the lack of talk on world domination.  But there was much talk of ponies… oh and documentation.  I swear I’ve never heard anyone comparing documentation to wearing high heels.  I guess the analogy of it being sexy and painful makes sense.  But then again I’ve never (or do I ever plan to) worn high heels, so I’ll trust the ladies on this one.  Still it was an awesome and enlightening talk.  I’ve never consider all the various audiences (devs, users, marketing) and types of documentation.  I must agree with Emma’s statement, that if you are doing a lot of work documenting how to use your program… maybe reconsidering how the UI is done is in order.  The concept of automating documentation and using an XML source is new to me.  But I will have to look into technologies like pywebdoc, Mallard and DocBook.  Emma went through the Capture, Organize, Translate, Output, Review and Revise cycle, using the Status.net documentation efforts.  (Emma’s project on writing open source documentation.)

Session 5 – The Look at Introducing FLOSS into Education

Karlie Robinson of On-Disk did a talk about her experiences with connecting the OLPC, Fedora and RIT together.

Afternoon Keynote – How Linux is Like Music

The conference wrapped up with Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier‘s afternoon keynote.  Zonker is an incredible speaker, and he also threw plush penguins at the crowd which instantly made the keynote awesome.  Alas I didn’t have any thing worthy to add to the conversation so I didn’t get another plush penguin. 🙁  But I’m getting ahead of myself…  Zonker talked about how we should move away from the tired analogy of choosing operating systems like cars.  Rather he suggested how choice of OSes and Linuxes should be compared to bands and musicians:

  • Fedora -> Frank Zappa
  • SuSE -> The Who
  • Ubuntu -> Duran Duran (Hurrah, I mean huh?!?)
  • Gentoo -> Write your own sungs in your own built studio (Damn right!  Sorry, ecstatic ex-Gentooer here.)

A bit zany, but with a nickname of Zonker… 😛 Ok, I’ll stop teasing.  But he did go into the problem of widespread Linux adoption: better self-marketing, pre-installed PCs (we are getting there slowly), market shift to the cloud and mobile (at least we have that one covered to a degree) and  the in-fighting that the F/OSS community seem to love (welcome to the new face of anarchy and things to come?).

The Pre-After Party

At this point most of the participants went out to either go home or wait out the time for the reception.  Having come alone, I felt like I’d love to mingle at the afterparty but I needed to do something while I waited.  Fortunately, the KDE 4 guys (Troy Unrau, Shawn Starr and Eugene Trounev) were quite welcoming and let me tag along with them.  Troy was pulled into the speaker’s dinner so I didn’t get to talk to him much.  But Shawn, Eugene and I chatted for a bit, grabbed a quick bite to eat at Burger King and came back to chill at the venue.  Shawn works on developing plasma, while Eugene makes graphics for KDE Games.  Actually if you count myself and Troy in, we each represent a different aspect of the KDE  project: Shawn – developers, Eugene – artists, Troy – marketing and myself – the humble user/wannabe contributer.

When Eugene found out about my semi-stealth project, he suggested I should join the KDE Games and look into the Gluon project.  I’m planning on getting involved, once I’ve hacked around with Qt, something I started on recently.

The After Party

The conference wrapped up with a reception sponsored by Google.  Actually I got a good amount of useful swag from Google, and the free booze was much appreciated.  At the reception I got to mingle with the presenters, organizers and participants of the conference.  I got to discuss the finer points of revision control systems (CVS, Subversion and Bazaar) with a Bazaar/Launchpad developer, Aaron Bentley from Canonical.  Also got to watch Brad Kuhn and Jorge Castro get into a heated but amicable debate about Mono, software patents and why Canonical should stop releasing and supporting proprietary software.  And I got to chill and talk about Apache Qpid (a reliable message queueing system, think something like IBM’s MQ) with Redhat’s Rajith Attapattu.

I left the reception really, really late.  And I got home around 2 in the morning, which just goes to show how awesome of a conference OLF2009 was.  After the conference I felt a lot smarter, enlightened and inspired to contribute back to the Linux and libre software community.  I’m almost sure I’ll be at OLF2010 whenever that comes around.

Links to what others had to say about OLF2009:

  • Troy Unrau [http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/23041.html]
  • Eugene Trounev [http://my.opera.com/it-s/blog/show.dml/4455292]

Linux… the Future of Computing

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I’m a Linux user.  So I always like to strain my ear to hear news about Linux.  But this I didn’t expect.

Caroline and I did a bit of computer shopping before going to watch a film together on Saturday.  While we wandered the aisles in the nearby Futureshop, she turned and asked me what I knew about Linux.  I was surprised.  Caroline is a very smart and talented girl.  She finished statistics at the University of Toronto after all. But she is not a person who follows computer tech.  She further told me that her mother told her that Linux was the future of computing.  And then she asked whether Linux was for her.  To top it off, we bugged the local salesperson… and I had an intelligent conversation about what computer she should get.  (No offence to the smart Futureshop employees out there, but a good chunk of your coworkers are not all that knowledgeable about computing as they should.)  And the salesperson, said he that his life would be easier if PC came pre-loaded with Linux.  I took this all in… amazed.  After some thought on what she would be using the computer I told her to stick with Windows for now.  Why?

Linux and Linux-related technology looks like very much the future of computing.  Thanks to the free software licensing, active communities and flexibility of open source development methodologies, many vendors are looking toward using Linux.  For a vendor Linux provides a way out of the per unit licensing problem.  Also it lets the vendor to control the build out of  a product from top to bottom.  Linux appears creeping into non-desktop computing platforms.  We hear about Linux competing with Windows in the netbook market.  We hear of Linux taking on cellphones with projects such as LiMo, OpenMoko and Google’s Andriod.  The hyper-fast development pace makes Linux progress in leaps and bounds past its competitors.  Nokia heavily invested in Linux with their Maemo-powered Internet Tablets.  Intel invests in Linux with drivers and Moblin.  nVidia and ATI both crank out graphics drivers like no tomorrow.  Dell and HP are each trying to outdo each other selling Linux servers and laptops.  News articles compare Ubuntu Linux on the same level as Windows XP & Vista and Mac OS X.  So forth and so on.  Five years this was unimaginable.  When I installed Linux on my laptop and desktop machines in 2002 and 2001… I could not imagine Linux being more than a cool minor alternative.  Something to play with, and use for fun computing.

So with all these cool developments, why did I not sell Linux to Caroline?  I could of.  Linux could work for her.  But I didn’t because Linux is the future of computing.  Linux exists in the present of computing, but the technology is still in a transitionary stage.  The next few years is where we leap the chasim from novel innovator toys to mainstream consumers.  However along the way there are growing pains.  Graphics and sound need to get up to par.  Support companies need to spring up around the technology.  We are getting there.  But right now, I feel uncomfortable offering Linux to a mainstream consumer and leaving them to their own devices.  If I were to support the system, I could easily setup a Linux system that Caroline could use and enjoy.  A Linux system could be setup to let her do her surfing, watching TV, connecting her digital camera and media organization.  But she could only turn to me for help if something goes wrong.  This is not something I want to inflict on either her or myself.  In a few years time, yes, Linux will work for her.  But it will most likely be everywhere and work for everyone.

An Encore

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I didn’t update my blog yesterday.  Life turned out busier than I could imagine.  I am still catching up on things.  I took on so many tasks.  I have a trip to plan.  Writing and reading just piles up around me.  I’m not sure in which direction I should concentrate my efforts.  My efforts to catch up look comical at times.  And my only wish is that I too like those Hindu gods, could possess extra sets of arms and infinitely divideable attention, so I could actually finish everything.  Yet, with all the additional emotional chaos in my life, I still manage to move forward.  In the past, I would of just curled up and moaned myself to sleep.  Today I no longer have that luxury, I need to execute my plans and execute them well.

So a quick update is in order.

Writing

I’m still maintaining my daily blog entries.  Not a simple task at times, I keep on scrunging around for topics to write about.  I’m not sure how my PWC friend, Marika manages to update her blog twice a day and still find time to write books.  I’m marking her as yet another example of the craziness, creativity and sheer amazing output that Finns are capable of.  My own novel writing ground to a halt.  Too many distractions and too many random tasks are to blame here.  However, the novel is moving towards an iteration of an earlier novel idea and elements from other ideas.  I plan on dredging up those previous stories, modifying them to fit the theme and context of this novel.  It’ll probably end up looking like a post-apoc scifi “Jungle Book” of sorts.  If you can get that around your head, great, now help me understand it! 😀

Coding

I’m changing gears at work, so hobby programming is not on my list of high priorities at the moment.  I plan on getting back to Qt as soon as the rest of my life falls into place.  Also I’m holding back from contributing to the KDE and maemo projects for a bit.  I do need a bit more motivation to get involved.  Many using the platforms more often will make that happen.  But still need a working IT before I can even think about developing for maemo.

Life

Learning to feel at home driving.  Cellphone enroute.  Things starting to fall into place.  I just need more time, to get everything done.  Working on bring some sanity and regularity into my life.  This should help on the health side, cut down on giddiness, increase productivity and increase self-satisifaction.  With the warmer weather coming, I plan on getting out there more often.  So projects might need tabling until I have more time.  And a big thing is a planned trip, which will resolve certain important and nagging questions in my mind.

Dinner at Prince

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Tonight I met up with one of my friends from my professional writing course, Andrei.  Since I could meet him in the early evening, that meant I could get some extra sleep and start work later.  Extra sleep is always a welcome change in my schedule.  Commuting to work by bus not so much.  Work turned out busy as usual with training and work on particularly sticky issue (read issue as a bug, enhancement, change request or combination of the former).

Meeting up with Andrei is always a pleasure.  We ate dinner at Prince, the Japanese eatry near work.  I highly recommend that place if you are up for some Japanese food.  We talked a lot about writing, university, the economy (everyone and his pet dog’s obsessively favourite topic it seems nowadays) and philosophy in general.  I even got into a rant about why technologies such as Linux, KDE 4 and Maemo excite me.  Hehehe… I had a lot of fun.

Interestingly it seems that nowadays my weeks are jam packed with meeting interesting people and having fun in general.  I don’t know if it just a bit coincidental luck.  Or is it because I’ve tried to take a more positive and active approach to life.  Or is it a combination of both?  I wonder…

The New “Mojave” Experiment

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I have a few friends working at Microsoft.  And a usual conversation goes in the direction of which is better Microsoft or Linux.  Then the flames roll in from across the horizon, and everyone ends up agreeing in disagreeing.  I’m planning to bring this fight to the next level. With any luck this will end up on the Linux Hater’s Blog. So in valiant attempt at freetard glory and to fire the next salvo in this eternal epic battle, I present the following:

The link to the original ZDNet Austrialia article is [here].  From this video we learn that: KDE 4 kicks ass (thanks KDE and Qt devs), Aussie geeks also have a sense of humour, people like flashy, swirly things, Windows 7 soooo ripped off KDE 4, and that we can learn absolutely nothing from silly experiments.

Building a Community

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Ok.  Aaron Seigo of the KDE project is a genius.  He really is.  Not only does he lead the absolutely revolutionary Plasma project in KDE, but he also knows what he is talking about.

Anyway he wrote a kickass article about how to build a community in open source.  And I’m too lazy to write one myself, since my experience is not as long or as exciting….  Or I might write it up later for reasons of posterity.

Without out further ado: advice from Aaron on building a community in an open source project.

The Forecast for 2009

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First of all: Happy New Year everyone!  I hope everyone had a great time celebrating Christmas and ringing in the new year.

So it looks like the second day of the new year is slowly coming to a close.  This year promises to be as exciting and interesting as last year.  Maybe even more so.

This year I plan on finally achieving the goals I sat out last year.  I have a lot of writing and coding ahead of me.  Hopefully I will get involved with the KDE and Maemo projects early this year.  Also the transition from student life to corporate IT worker should sink in soon.  I am optimistic I will grow drastically in all aspects of my life this year: academic, professional, artistic and personal.

However some doubt, and grey clouds lie on the horizon this year.  The situation on the economic front looks dire.  I worry since the parallels of the great depression and hell that followed afterwards are there.  Except that this time around ideals seem more distant, nations seem more violent and the machines of war are far more lethal and potent.  And I don’t think literature or computing will cut it to get us out of the mess, we set upon ourselves so long ago.

Hopefully, my darkest nightmares will not realize themselves.  They did not solidify last year.  Instead many a happy accident happened.  And this year looks like many more happy accidents will occur.  But this I wouldn’t put up a todo list.  It doesn’t seem practical, and doesn’t account for the unexpected.

BBLUG in Review

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Ok, so I didn’t expect BBLUG to go off without a hitch.  However it doesn’t seem like a Linux or BSD-only tech group is all that interesting.  I’m still debating whether or not to continue this LUG experiment.  Maybe we can start a computer group, but that is really not my interest nor do I have a ton of spare time for organizing a general group.  I blame it partially on my lack of advertising.  But also maybe the FOSS environment is not as exciting to others as I thought.  KDE 4, Compiz, Maemo, Linux are all interesting technologies, and is interesting to see the how FOSS newcomers react to seeing alternative computing ecosystems.  However computing is at the end of the day an enabling technology.  The technology itself while interesting, doesn’t look as interesting as what you can do with it.

Still… thanks to Rudy and Ryan who came out yesterday.  I’m glad I wasn’t the only person at the meeting.  Next time, lets just go out somewhere to chill.

Updates to Life

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I haven’t blogged about myself in a bit. So here is an update on me:

@ Work:
Have less than a month left of my probationary period at work. All the signs, indicators and omens point towards my staying on as a fully privileged employee of VisionMAX Solutions. I am very pleased with this situation. I can’t stress how much I enjoy hacking away at a web application. My only rant is not being able to see the forest from the trees at times. And I’m outgrowing my aversion to spontaneous human interaction.

@ Life:
I’m still figuring out how balance work and life. I seem to be winning that battle. Actions and rituals smooth out over time, so long as no one turns my universe on its head. God promises not to. And people are too busy in-fighting. So nothing should change in that manner. Hopefully I’ll be able to take on more stuff in the future. Anyone following my journey through life on Facebook, don’t hold your breath. I’m migrating away from Facebook, since I don’t have any say in how my information and content is handled.

@ Writing:
As noted earlier, I don’t blog (or journal) as much as liked to. But that just because I’m adjusting to everything nowadays. However, I do have success in my writing of prose. Right now I’m writing chapters 2 and 3 of a dark science fiction novel. I’ve uploaded all my typed up writing so far to Google Docs, for my own convenience. However that also means I can share my current drafts with anyone with a Google account. If you’re interested (and I know you personally), I’ll let you see what I wrote so far. Just e-mail or IM me.

@ Coding:
Outside of work, I don’t do much coding. However I plan on getting involved with the KDE and maemo communities in the near future. I would love to learn C++ and further the state of art of both KDE and maemo. Watch this space for further details.

You got your update of Dorian already. Now go do something productive!