TL;DR: openSUSE as a project needs to raise its game, and the next openSUSE Board can guide the project to agree a tight set of goals for our releases and work to a higher standard on them. Otherwise we risk being an undirected mess of pet projects, bikeshedding discussions and bickering tribes.
Read more at my platform page. Then go and vote!
So in my head there’s a little Walter Sobchak beating on my conscience and shouting “This is what you get when you trust Facebook with your data, Will”.
The reason is that I upload photos to Facebook using KDE’s shared uploader and this has fallen victim to the whims of FB’s purge of its app biosphere. Unless the original developer can convince them that the app is not spammy, offering a bad experience or having the wrong attitude, the app, my photos (all archived elsewhere of course), but most importantly, all the kind comments from my friends and contacts that represent FB’s only value, get sent to the farm.
This is what you get when you trust one company with stuff you care about. Will.
Well, have you? Not the satisfying expulsion of excess gas, but the simplest way you can materially contribute to openSUSE.
I was just hanging in the #active channel, watching my KDE chums make their new touchscreen interface (video), when somebody complained that shared-desktop-ontologies does not yet contain the latest release needed by KDE git master. And instead of updating the package myself, I suggested they just BURP:
And by doing so we all get the latest versions in the devel project and soon in Tumbleweed and openSUSE Factory. So ambassadors, boosters and motivated contributors know how to do that right? Now you can use this glib little acronym to persuade friends and colleagues to do the same.
Happy BURPing!
I’m blatantly abusing GSoC for a project that I would like to see in openSUSE but that I’ve never had time to work on. But really it’s a worthwhile thing to have: a set of Plasma widgets that users and developers can add to their workspace to make it easy to see what’s going on in OBS in the projects that matter to them. If you want to work on a fun project with cutting edge technologies such as Qt, QML, Plasma then head on over to the GSoC 2011 Ideas Page.
What’s been going on in the openSUSE KDE team this week? The news on everybody’s lips is that the KDE project released 4.6.0 yesterday. Naturally, we’ve got it available for download for all current openSUSE releases as we prepare 4.6 for openSUSE 11.4. 4.6 brings better performance and improved power management control to the Plasma workspaces. The KDE 4.6 application releases include features such as navigation capabilities in the Marble map app, more ways to search your files in Dolphin, and photo sharing via social networks. KDE 4.6.0 is currently available in the KDE:Distro:Factory repositories. A KDE:Release:46 repository will shortly be made available, providing the point releases in the KDE 4.6 series.
But that’s not all that we’ve been up to. Amarok 2.4.0 continues to help you rediscover your music, with better automatic playlists and removable device support. We’ve packaged KOffice 2.3.1 including the realistic natural medium paint app, Krita. KDevelop 4.2, also released today, is already on our mirrors. C++ and PHP coders should check it out for its powerful code completion and refactoring support, augmented with better search and replace, improved Kate text editor, and QtHelp documentation support. digiKam 1.8.0 leads the way in professional Free Software photo management.
The team continues to work to prepare openSUSE 11.4. The openSUSE updater applet is being replaced by the more polished KPackageKit from KDE. Our beta testers have already resolved several critical bugs before 4.6.0 was released, and is assessing PulseAudio and the range of Phonon sound system options for the best audio experience when 11.4 is released. All dependencies on the old HAL system for hardware in KDE have now been replaced with udev, and have received a lot of testing. KSynaptiks has been configured by default to allow touchpad taps, but disable the touchpad when typing. And the team has been assiduously packaging new dependencies in KDE’s 4.6 releases so they are fully featured, including the Okteta hex editor plugin for KDevelop, the R backend for the Cantor math app, and the new speaker setup config module.
Artwork and branding for 11.4 is nearly complete, featuring the Celadon Stripes wallpaper by KDE’s Ivan Čukić . The mysterious-looking upstream default wallpaper ‘Horos’ is also available – just install the package kdebase4-workspace-branding-upstream. KDE’s Oxygen look and feel becomes possible in GTK apps by installing the new Oxygen GTK theme. And a number of minor tweaks to the default KDE in a new installation of 11.4 add up to improved performance, for example by deferring starting services until they are needed.
If you want to join the fun or just need a helping hand, the expert and fanatical openSUSE KDE team can be found in #opensuse-kde on IRC, at opensuse-kde@opensuse.org or at http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:KDE.
The openSUSE Conference went really well last week. There was an amazing range of material and the audience’s participation in every talk I attended showed that the openSUSE project has moved past the show-and-tell presentations of a company and its customers to a community using the event to share knowledge between its members and develop. As part of the openSUSE Boosters team, I was in it up to my neck. On Wednesday I started with a talk on image building for application authors which was well attended but I think I should tweak towards users’ needs as there weren’t many app authors present. I gave a talk about the upcoming KDE features that will be in openSUSE 11.4 on Thursday, because openSUSE 11.3 had KDE 4.4 but due to the 3 month difference in both projects’ release cycles, openSUSE 11.4 will have the KDE 4.6 releases of platform, workspaces and apps. That equals a lot of changes, so I summarized them for people who don’t read Planet KDE as avidly as I do. The Lizard Lounge event in the SUSE building on Thursday night gave everyone a chance to catch their breath drinking limited edition Old Toad SUSE beer.
On Friday I gave a spontaneous BoF on KWin’s current and upcoming features. Can you name the four ways to show your desktop in 4.5? I only had 3 until a member of the audience pointed out a 4th. And yesterday I supported Chani’s workshop on developing for Plasma using Javascript and QML, which piqued the audience’s interest by showing how KDE’s high-level services like the Plasma applets framework and the KConfig configuration storage library add value to the glamour of QML and QGraphicsView. To enable all of the audience to participate, I’d prepared another live image, this time an SDK based on KDE trunk, Qt 4.7 and latest Qt Designer 2.0.1 with all the headers and developer docu on board. This paid off, as unlike at Akademy, most people didn’t have developer builds ready to go on their laptops. Within minutes we had copies booting from everyone’s USB sticks and people were working through the included git repository of tutorials prepared by Chani, making flags change colour on click and saving applet state using only a schema file and a Qt Designer config UI.
Unfortunately the talks weren’t recorded live, but a number of people who were in other tracks at the time have already asked me about the KDE talk so I’ll record it again and upload it for you, and Chani and I will polish the Plasma material and get it online at some point.
So having talked myself hoarse, I’m taking this week off to hack on upstream KDE code and get my plans there nailed down before the upcoming soft feature freeze. In the past I tend to notice the freezes once they are past (whoops!) meaning that my openSUSE work was doomed to sit in a branch until it could be integrated next release. I hope to get some Network Management features in now and work on polish across the desktop while I’m not handling bug reports, righting wrongs on the lists and fixing build failures. See you in a week.
Next week is openSUSE Conference week! I’m using both my openSUSE and KDE blogs to remind everyone that we’re having a pre-conference meetup at 6pm for the KDE team before the real conference begins at Barfüßer in the Nuernberg old town. Remember a morning of keynotes is only fun if you have a thumping hangover from microbrewed beer (and if you’re a keynote speaker, from local schapps too)! If you are attending the conference or if you are just a friend of KDE in the area, please join in.
If you add your name to the wiki I’ll have an idea how big a table we need, I’ve provisionally got space for 20.
Paying attention at the back there? Sit up straight and listen!
It’s time for the openSUSE KDE Team meeting today at 1600UTC in #opensuse-kde. Because we’re *that tight* with those lovely guys and gals at Qt Development Frameworks we’ve got a place at Qt Developer Days 2010 in Munich on Oct 11-13 worth $$$ to give away to a deserving community member. If you want to find out about the latest developments in Qt, learn its inner workings in mind-expandingly good seminars and network with other Qt users, then come back and bring some Qt goodness to openSUSE, come along to the meeting. Even if you didn’t get into Qt development yet, the introductory tutorials will inspire you to learn at Qt Quick speed, so don’t be shy.
Note: you have to make your own way to Munich and organise your own place to stay. If you live in Punta Arenas, Chile this one probably isn’t for you.
If you can’t make it to the meeting, mail me with why you should be the one to attend at wstephenson@suse.de. But hurry, we have to decide by tomorrow!
With the release of Qt 4.7.0 it’s time to use it to build KDE packages destined for openSUSE 11.4. This means that Qt 4.7 will shortly land in KDE:Distro:Factory repositories. In a couple of months’ time it will be followed by betas of the KDE 4.6 releases. If you are using KDF just because it’s the latest KDE release, consider replacing it with KDE:Release:45 now, which will remain 4.5 and Qt 4.6 based.
You can get the latest Qt release with Qt Quick/QML and latest Qt Creator by staying with KDF.
In other KDE related news, Choqok in openSUSE Factory, 11.2 and 11.3 is being updated to 1.0rc3 to fix Twitter authentication. Amarok 2.3.2 is out and packaged in KDF, and will shortly be available for older versions in KDE:UpdatedApps. And KOffice 2.3beta1 is available for testing in KDE:Unstable:Playground. So if you’ve been admiring the Krita art showcase and think you can do better, grab your tablet and the latest code built for stable KDE releases and push some pixels! The new Bluetooth UI for KDE, BlueDevil is in testing in KDF, alongside the new PulseAudio UIs coming in 4.6, and akonadi-googledata 1.2.0 is in KDE:Extra.
As usual use software.opensuse.org to find the right repo for the KDE version you use or ‘osc repourls <reponame>’ if you prefer not to click.
Back home in Nuernberg now – Sunday has been a long day of hacking on Elgg and its plugins to shape it into a users site that knows about the social side of the openSUSE community.
Our ‘Hack Meck’ was a little bit harder after letting loose at the legendary FrOSCon Saturday night party in the balmy August air, but we still managed to put down the glow sticks, hammer the keys and reach our goals for the weekend. These were adapting the user data to include fields that are peculiar to openSUSE such as membership status and IRC cloak, enhancing the Poll plugin to meet our info gathering needs, adapting the Elgg theming to our ubiquitous Bento theme, and working on calendaring and events so that we all know what is coming next in openSUSE world and so you can display your packaging and bug-reporting achievements to the world.
When we weren’t making like a bunch of web developers, we mingled in the exhibition area, presented our project to anyone who came by the Hack Meck room and generally enjoyed seeing the diverse projects that come to FrOSCon. Thanks go to the FrOSCon organizers for making us so welcome and to the openSUSE booth staffers for doing a terrific job – we look forward to doing it again next year.
Adrian Schröter (12)
Agustin Chavarria (6)
Alessandro de Oliveira Faria (9)
Alex Barrios (12)
Alexander Naumov (10)
Alexander Orlovskyy (3)
Alin M Elena (5)
Andrea Florio (27)
Andreas Jaeger (70)
Andreas Stieger (4)
Andrew Wafaa (31)
Arvin Schnell (7)
Atri Bhattacharya (2)
Bernhard Wiedemann (8)
Bonnie Kurniawan (1)
Bruno Friedmann (45)
Carl Fletcher (1)
Christopher Hobbs (17)
Ciaran Farrell (2)
Stephan Barth (1)
Tom Schmidt (2)
Dinar Valeev (1)
Dirk Müller (1)
Dmitry Serpokryl (7)
Fabio Mucciante (2)
Federico Lucifredi (9)
Holger Sickenberg (2)
Hubert Mantel (1)
Ilya Chernykh (3)
Ismail Donmez (1)
J. Daniel Schmidt (2)
James Tremblay (7)
Jan Blunck (4)
Jan Loeser (3)
Jan Madsen (1)
Jan-Christoph Bornschlegel (3)
Jan-Simon Möller (19)
Javier Llorente (11)
Jigish Gohil (48)
Jiri Srain (1)
Jiří Suchomel (3)
Johan Kotze (5)
José Oramas M. (6)
Josef Reidinger (11)
Juergen Weigert (1)
Julio Vannini (9)
Dinar Valeev (5)
Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy (11)
Klaas Freitag (55)
Lars Vogdt (11)
Ludwig Nussel (10)
M. Edwin Zakaria (1)
Marcus Hüwe (26)
Marcus Meissner (2)
Marcus Moeller (3)
Marcus Schaefer (3)
Martin Lasarsch (8)
Martin Mohring (11)
Masim "Vavai" Sugianto (20)
Michael Andres (1)
Michael Löffler (7)
Michal Marek (7)
Michal Vyskocil (10)
Miguel Angel Barajas Hernandez (2)
Peter Linnell (1)
Nelson Marques (54)
Nikanth Karthikesan (2)
Peter Pöml (4)
Petr Mladek (59)
Petr Uzel (5)
Ray Wang (1)
Raymond Wooninck (1)
Ricardo Chung (6)
Ricardo Varas Santana (7)
Richard Bos (10)
Robert Schweikert (6)
Rossana Motta (1)
Rupert Horstkötter (10)
Sascha Manns (66)
Saydul Akram (1)
Sebastian Schöbinger (4)
Stanislav Visnovsky (7)
Stefan Haas (1)
Stefan Hundhammer (5)
Stefan Schubert (7)
Steffen Winterfeldt (4)
Stephan Kulow (17)
Suresh Jayaraman (3)
Susanne Oberhauser (3)
Thomas Göttlicher (6)
Thomas Jones (1)
Thomas Schraitle (23)
Togan Muftuoglu (2)
Tuukka Pasanen (13)
Will Stephenson (16)