Whew! November is finally over! I never expected it to actually be that hectic, usually because nothing much happens except in the first week (Mama’s birthday). But that is precisely what happened. Ironically, it has probably been one of the most productive months I’ve had this whole year.

I could probably say that half of the busy-ness of November was devoted to personal matters: birthdays, church/community activities, and health problems. I got a very big wake up call regarding my physical status, so I need to put a lot of effort into losing weight and staying fit. I’m not sure if the hacker’s diet is something that I can apply, given culture and situation considerations, but I’ll give it a try. In the meantime, I’ve taken some preventive measures and have declared war on all forms of soda/pop/soft drinks/whatever-you-call-them-in-your-country which started three weeks ago. That means (sniff) farewell to Mountain Dew.

But I’ve also been busy with the tech side of life. School has started again next month, and this time my subjects are more interesting and challenging (and the books equally incompetent) than last semester: Data Structures and Algorithms and Computer Structure and Organization. I’m really starting to feel that I’ve enrolled in a Computer Science course.

I was also finally able to finish (technically) a major web-related project that has been going on (very slowly) for months. It was my first attempt at using Textpattern, which probably gives me enough experience to start migrating my whole site over to it. Sure it’s not as simple as WordPress, where you can just install it (or have it installed) and blog away. But it isn’t that complicated. Understanding how it’s basic presentation components work together is the key. The hardest part for me was actually “translating” the plain XHTML/CSS to Textpattern, complete with dynamic content and such. In a way, it’s a lot like programming with a library (TXP Tags), which I actually found appealing.

Last, but definitely not the least, I managed to cram my way through my Qt book finally. Although I have to admit that skipped on a few chapters that either didn’t interest me or were well beyond my current areas (databases, threading, OpenGL, embedded). I focused mostly on the beginning chapters, which is IMHO the minimal Qt necessary to start KDE hacking. Just for fun, I put together this very simple, crude, and primitive “web browser”:

(P.S. This made an early college Windows fantasy of mine come true. But I have no intentions of going beyond that). The book, by the way, is available for free (legally) at the Qt documentation pages (unfortunately, only the first edition is available for free, which is a bit dated now).

But more than actually finishing a book that I bought a year ago, this milestone practically means that I’m ready for real KDE coding, which has been the ultimate goal for the past 2 years. I might be able to blog about the many KDE tutorials as I go along (but knowing my own blogging discipline, or lack of it, I won’t hold my own breath). Now I’m really excited.

Cheers to an eventful November and here’s to an even busier December!

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I am looking for an application to write these blog entries offline on my Dell Mini.  I write a lot these entries on my work laptop, running Vista when I am not connected to the Internet.  An example would be this post while I am at my sister-in-laws who don’t have high speed Internet.  Another use case is when I am flying and have something I would like to write.

I use Windows Live Writer a lot and enjoying its simplicity, the ability to post to multiple blogs, ease of inserting pictures, etc and am looking for something similar in Kubuntu/KDE.  I tried a program that was called KBlogger but couldn’t figure out how to connect to my wordpress blogs and there was no help manual for it.

So my question is:  “What is the best offline blog writing app in KDE/Kubuntu?”

 

Thanks,

Jonathan

      

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Ahh glorious mailing list reminder day... it's the first of the month again! And it's also high time everyone took a deep breath heading into the holiday season and read through the Code of Conduct.

Here it is in shortest form for your reading pleasure:

• Be considerate.
• Be respectful.
• Be collaborative.
• When you disagree, consult others.
• When you are unsure, ask for help.
• Step down considerately.

And as a special treat this month I'm also throwing in the Flickr community guidelines.

What to do

• Do play nice.
• Do upload content that you have created.
• Do moderate your content.
• Do link back to Flickr when you post your Flickr content elsewhere.
• Do enjoy Flickr!

What not to do

• Don’t upload anything that isn't yours.
• Don’t forget the children.
• Don’t show nudity in your buddy icon.
• Don’t upload content that is illegal or prohibited.
• Don’t vent your frustrations, rant, or bore the brains out of other members.
• Don’t be creepy. You know the guy. Don't be that guy.
• Don’t use your account to host web graphics like logos and banners.
• Don’t use Flickr for commercial purposes.

And there we have it kids. Please remember to click through and read the full Code of Conduct. It takes less than a few minutes. I think you'll find it applies to a lot of things in life beyond the world of Ubuntu.  

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on friday, the great fta uploaded xulrunner-1.9.1 and firefox-3.1 to the ubuntu universe archive (jaunty). It took the weekend to get archive admin attention, but now it seems like it will show up on your mirror quite soon (hugs to all involved here).

Similar to what we did for firefox 3.0 in gutsy, we allow you to install this package next to your “production” firefox 3.0 install. This is done, by creating a copy of your existing firefox-3.0 profile the first time you start firefox-3.1. So don’t be scared to test this, just because you fear to bust your profile. Once 3.1 is final we will present you with a choice again where you can decide which profile to use in future.

A few more words on bugs:
If you have pending firefox-3.0 bugs that you feel would be important to get fixed for 3.1, please add the firefox-3.1 target to your bug and state which package version you are using.

From now on we will update the firefox-3.1 and xulrunner-1.9.1 package quite frequently, so if you file bugs, remember to check if they still apply if you receive an update.

Also to make bug triaging more easily, I would like to remind everyone that mozilla packages have a normalized bug description format ... which will allow us to swiftly forward your bugs to upstream on your behalf.

Enjoy!

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So far I can say that Fedora is lagging behind Ubuntu and OpenSUSE. Points of fun:

• AVC Denial messages on a ton of stuff I do
• No CCSM package
• ‘yum search rpmbuild’ does not tell me what package to actually install rpmbuild with
• No terminator package

They really need to ditch YUM and go with zypper.

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Just for a second, put yourself in the shoes of an average PC user. You use the software that came with your computer, plus perhaps some others that you downloaded, bought in a box or ‘borrowed’ from a friend. You’ve heard some good things about something called “open source”, but you haven’t the foggiest clue of where to get it or what applications to try. You aren’t a technical person, have limited time and even less patience. Ultimately, you’re looking for something that ‘just works’ and is either free (of cost) or clearly better than what you’re using now. Why make the effort otherwise? Honestly, you’d rather be down at the pub watching the cricket with your mates.

How would free software advocates best woo such a person into their camp? They aren’t going to immediately repartition their hard drive and use GNU/Linux exclusively. They would more likely be willing to try some free software on their existing OS, provided that the barrier was sufficiently low. If you’re lucky, that toe-dip will lead to deeper immersion in the world of FOSS, and hopefully also into some appreciation of the philosophy beyond the practical.

If this person has a knowledgeable friend or pays attention to certain information sources, they might get some ideas on what software to use. Applications like Firefox and OpenOffice.org are fairly popular choices these days, but what about less publicised treasures like the GIMP or ClamWin? Sure, there are Web sites that let you search for FOSS equivalents to proprietary applications, but these still require some effort:

1. Search for the application you want.
2. Go to the Web site for that application.
3. Find the download page and pull it down.
4. Run the installer.
5. To uninstall, use Windows’ Add/Remove Programs.

These steps need to be performed for each application you wish to install, so can become tiresome very quickly.

How could we simplify this process? What I propose is a software management application. Let’s for the sake of brevity call it FOSS Pack, named after the closest analogue I can think of, Google Pack. The process is intended to be as simple as possible for the end user:

1. The user downloads a single application (FOSS Pack) and installs it.
2. When they launch FOSS Pack, they can select from a menu of categorised FOSS applications to install, similar to how a GUI package manager front-end works on (GNU/)Linux.
3. The user selects the applications they want, and then they are downloaded and installed in batch.
4. Uninstallation should be as simple as installation, all within FOSS Pack.

Here’s the killer feature: FOSS Pack should be able to scan the user’s system for proprietary applications. These are identified based on an internal list, which also contains information on FOSS alternatives to those applications. Those alternatives are presented for easy download and install.

FOSS Pack contains descriptions of each application, so the user doesn’t have to visit another Web site to understand what they do (although a hyperlink should be provided as well). The option should exist to be able to select only from applications that have Linux versions, as a means of facilitating an OS transition. FOSS pack should also be able to automatically check for updates at regular intervals, and offer to install them when available.

I’m not expecting any of this to be as clean as a real package management system. FOSS Pack will likely have to execute the external installers. Perhaps in the future the applications authors could co-operate with FOSS Pack maintainers to deliver a more seamless experience.

It looks to me that a lot of the pieces to create FOSS Pack are already there, and as is often the case in the FOSS world all that’s required is to tie them together in an appropriate way.

LotD: 30 Things That Are the Same In Microsoft Word and in OpenOffice.org Writer

©2008 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

.

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After the conference at the Faculty of Sciences, it was planned to give a phone call interview for Radio Sfax. But as I missed the train, I was able to be present at the studio. Radio Sfax is a governmental radio based in Sfax, the economic capital of Tunisia.

I asked Hela Ouesleti, who organized the first Ubuntu event in Sfax two weeks ago, to come with me. I was pleased to see people welcoming us with very good manners saying : "Congratulations, you are young and so active".

I met Houda Bel Hadj Kacem face to face for the first time. She is the person who prepare and present the « TIC magazine » at Radio Sfax. We talked several times by the past and she had interviewed me to talk about the Tunisian blogsphere and FOSS.

I wanted Hela to come with me as she is very active in her college and in the national "Youth Science" association (Association Jeune Science de Tunisie). She is a good member of the Ubuntu community.

Time for live ! Houda first talked about the event at the Faculty of Sciences and then asked me the famous question « what is ubuntu ?». I tried to answer in the most significant and easiest words. A short talk about piracy in our country followed then we talked about how and why such events are organized. It was to Hela to answer as an event organiser. At the end, Houda asked me about how I feel when I give conferences to student and teachers while I am myself "a student". It was a funny but hard to answer question. I think I just replied : "It's great".

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At the Ontario Linux Fest I had the wonderful opportunity of having lunch with Jeremy. It was after his keynote talk. I had lots of questions, which he very generously tolerated as we ate our beet sandwiches. We chatted about the future of data and ownership and various things and he recommended Van Jacobson's Google Tech Talk: The Future of the Internet. The video is just over an hour long and I haven't taken the chance to watch until today. (I've been recovering from the flu this weekend and decided this video was like watching Q in his lab coming up with the gadgets. There were fewer explosions, but I probably learned more.)

Here are a few of my favourite points (hopefully they're enough to entice you to spend an hour watching, or at least listening to, this talk)... The talk starts out with a great history of communications (including why we started with four-digit phone numbers)... and then it got more interesting...

• People don't want to have conversations. They just want their Web pages. They hand in a URL and they want to get something back. That's not a conversation. It's the computer equivalent of, "does anybody have the time?" 
• Our current model doesn't stop the spam. The content is garbage, but it came from my mail server, so it must be a good conversation. Things are currently blind to the data.
• Change your point of view to focus on the data. Not where the data lives, because it doesn't have to live anywhere. Data is named. When you want a chunk of data, you present its name to the network, and it doesn't matter what kind of networking technology you've got, use them all, it's asking does anybody know where we are? Pass this data out to the network and hope that somebody can give you a reply.
• And then he read my mind because what he was describing sounds like caching... but it's not. The effect is very much the same. In caching you say, oh the data lives there, but I've got a copy of it here. In my model the data doesn't live anywhere. Whereever it is, that's great. I can authenticate it and I know whether or not I can trust it.... I'm not moving it from it's one true location to somewhere else...it doesn't have one true location.
• Integrity and trust are properties of the data, not of the way that you obtain it.
• So this is, by contrast to the Microsoft Authenticode model, where you download this update from Microsoft, then there's a little window that comes up and says, "Do you trust Microsoft?" And the answer is "NO!" and I kept clicking "no" and my machine never got updated. [The audience and I both laughed at this.] I don't! Their model is "Do you trust their delivery mechanism?" They're basically asserting loading this update won't cause financial harm to Microsoft. Great, but that's not what I want. I want my machine to work. I want to know what you're going to do to my machine. I want to know something about the data and the operations you're going to take, but they can't tell me that. So I want properties of the data where I don't have to trust remote agents, that the data itself lets me figure out what it means and who sent it and how it's connected to the world.

This last point reminds me of Laura's recent request to have system updates a little bit more system-aware. (It also reminds me of the first time a friend of mine told me to download some form of BSD from the Intarwebs and I clicked "sure" because it had blowfish and then promptly FREAKEDOUT because the download screen seemed to be taking over my computer and further more I was supposed to just trust a whole operating system that just existed somewhere on the internet?! That's CRAZYTALK.) So go watch the video and then go read Laura's blog post. Do I have any solutions to entice you back here? Um, nope! Just some brain fodder. So away you go! It's not as exciting as the new Bond movie, but it is something you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home.

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This bottle was found in Mika's biosafety level 2 laboratory.

To address any confusion, isoamyl alcohol is not drinking alcohol and this bottle was bought for use in a scientific lab from a scientific lab supply company. Explanations are welcome.

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The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #119 for the week of November 23rd - November 29th, 2008 is now available.

In this Issue:

* Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase II
* Archive of Interviews
* New MOTU: Onkar Shinde
* Ubuntu Stats
* Ubuntu Tamil Team
* Ubuntu Tunisia Team
* Ubuntu-NL release party
* Launchpad 2.1.11 and Open ID support
* RSS feeds for Ubuntu forums
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu Podcast #13
* Full Circle Magazine #19
* Community Interview of Nicolas Scerpella
* Hardening the Linux Desktop
* Coming Soon: Ubuntu Pocket Guide & Reference
* 50 amazing Ubuntu time-saving tips
* 50 of the best looking Gnome/Ubuntu desktop themes
* Team Meeting summaries
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security

And much, much more!

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

* Nick Ali
* John Crawford
* Craig A. Eddy
* Arlan Vennefron
* Kenny McHenry
* Dave Bush
* Liraz Siri
* And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly News, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 LicenseCreative Commons License

      

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Something struck me yesterday, while Firefox 3 was throwing a hissy fit. Is there some kind of correlation between the amount of money invested in a project or product and instability? I know this sounds like a bit of a negative question, and I don’t mean to rag on the Firefox folks, but it seems that as more money has been pouring into Mozilla Towers, the quality has been compromised. At first I thought this was just on Linux, but it seems to be on Windows too.

This is by no means an issue specific to Mozilla though - look at Microsoft with Vista. They filled the worlds largest boot full of money and poured it into the Vista machine and…bang! Instability. The more I think about it, the more examples occur to me.

Is it money directly? Or is it really that more money means more staff employed and instead the quality failure is due to management and coordination problems? Maybe it is more users that causes the problems - more users means more needs and requirements which maybe cloud the QA process? Alternatively, do the quality problems really exist, or are our expectations higher than they were? Do we expect more of our two examples, Firefox and Vista, than we did many moons ago?

I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this folks. I wonder what hints we can uncover.

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I’m reading a book that I just picked up called unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters by David Kinnaman. It is an analysis of exhaustive research by the Barna Group and details what people outside of the Christian faith think about it and its adherents and why.

The book is fascinating, not so much because I found the results surprising, although some Christians may, but because of how honest people were in responding to the questions. That gives me some hope that perhaps those at whom the criticism is directed may be able to hear it and do something about it. As a member of the group being critiqued, I both agree with almost all of the criticisms and I think massive change is needed.

In general, the research shows that Christianity is perceived like this:

1. Hypocritical, that Christians try to portray themselves as morally superior, with a polished image that is inaccurate, and that churches convey an image that they exist only for virtuous and pure people.
2. Too focused on getting converts, and not actually caring about people or loving people as they are. Instead, people feel treated only like targets for conversion and (often rightly) question Christians’ motives in interaction with them.
3. Antihomosexual, bigoted and fixated on “curing” homosexuals while also leveraging political solutions against them.
4. Sheltered, old-fashioned, and out of touch with reality, preferring simplistic solutions and answers to a genuinely complex reality.
5. Too political, overly motivated by a political agenda that puts personal beliefs and preferences above valuing others, preferring to represent issues and fight over them instead of engaging in dialogue and working with others to find workable and acceptable solutions to real problems.
6. Judgmental, not honest about attitudes and perspectives about others, and it is doubted whether Christians really love people as we say we do, at least those who disagree with us.

There it is. And you know what? I agree.

Reading through the research, these opinions did not arise in a vacuum. They were not caused by media portrayals. Almost everyone questioned had experience with Christian friends or acquaintances. Most had spent at least one month regularly attending a church. Almost all who expressed a negative opinion said that they did so because of one or more personal bad experiences with Christian behavior or attitudes. Only a small percentage had anything other than a neutral opinion of standard Christian doctrine. Hmm.

I am encouraged by reading that the majority of Christians under the age of about 30 also agreed. This could bode well for some needed changes in behavior and attitudes.

What I would like to see is a Christianity populated by people who are kind, gentle, loving, compassionate, consistent in their words and actions, honest, friendly, and who place a greater importance on serving others than on political action designed to fight against the world. That is also the main thrust of the book, which is mainly intended for a Christian audience, to look for ways in which the overall Christian community is poorly representing what it believes and recommend ways to change, so that behavior lines up more directly with stated doctrine. Here’s hoping the book finds a wide audience.

Share and Enjoy:



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It's holiday time and I though I'd revise the Ubuntu bread recipe.

I originally posted the recipe for Ubuntu bread on the Ubuntuforums cookbook thread in 2005. I was pleased when the recipe made its way into the official Ubuntu book.

Since then, I have experimented and learned a few new things about breads. I think the original recipe needs to be a little easier to make.

I have updated the recipe and improved upon the technique. The original recipe calls for a stiff dough that results in a very nice shape, but it is requires a lot of work to make and to shape. It also requires a little experimentation to obtain optimal cooking temperature and time. If you cook it too fast, you end up with a burned crust and an uncooked inside. If you cook it too slowly, you end up with a dry bread.

This dough is wetter and results in a dough that doesn't hold its shape as well, but it results in a dough that is much easier to handle and cook. I prefer the taste, too. It's chewier.

This dough is made without any kneading. So anybody can make it with ease. No special kitchen equipment is needed.

You may also make and shape the dough on one day and put it into the refrigerator. You can keep it there for up to three days before you bake it. Delaying the rising like this will improve the flavor of the bread and prolong the shelf life of the finished product. This may sound more complicated, but it is actually a lot easier to do. You can do most of the work right now and put it in the fridge until about three hours before you want to eat the bread.

 

Please make some and share it with others!

 

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon of yeast

1 cup of warm water.

2 eggs

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 teaspoons salt (I use sea salt)

4 cups unbleached flour (I use Canadian all-purpose flour which contains high quality protein. U.S. all-purpose flour has less protein, so perhaps U.S. residents should use a mixture of all-purpose and bread flour)

Optional: 2 teaspoons of honey

 

Method:

Put the yeast into the warm water. Mix slightly and let it sit while you gather the other ingredients. Crack one egg into a bowl. Whisk it together. Remove about two tablespoons of it to a small bowl. Cover the small bowl and store it in the refrigerator. This will be used to brush the bread after it has risen, before it is baked and creates the shiny crust.

Crack the other egg into the bowl and add all the other ingredients. Mix with a spoon until everything is incorporated. It will resemble a shaggy ball of dough that falls apart. Wet your hands so that the dough doesn't stick and squeeze the dough together as if making a snowball. Press your fingers into the center of the ball and fold the dough over itself. You want to spread the dry dough around the wet dough so that it all becomes uniform. This step should take about one minute. It's fine if you do it for longer, but there is no need to. Any dry spots will disappear during the stretching-and-folding.

Let the rough ball of dough rest in a covered bowl in a warm area for 45 minutes. For example, with the oven heat off, the oven light should provide a little bit of warmth to keep the temperature high enough to stimulate the yeast activity.

After 45 minutes, dust the surface of your counter with a little flour and plop the ball of dough onto it. With lightly floured hands, press your fingers into the center of the dough to flatten it out. Don't roll it out since this will remove the gas bubbles. Just use your fingertips. Look for dry spots. Press down on a dry spot to gently massage it down into the counter top. Don't fuss over it, just break it up a little. It will go away.

Pull the dough into a rectangle. Stretch the bottom third of the rectangle down and then up and over the middle part. Stretch the top part up and then down and over the middle. Rotate the dough and repeat the same maneuver. This stretch-and-fold gently develops the gluten which will give your bread a fluffy, chewy texture.

Tuck the sides of the dough underneath to form a ball and put the dough back in the warm place to rise for another 45 minutes. Do a total of three stretch-and-folds with a 45 minute rising period in between (so do two more after the one you just did) and massage out any dry spots. After the third stretch-and-fold, the dough should be soft and fluffy with no more dry spots. It's ready to shape into the Ubuntu circle. Tuck it into a ball and let it sit for 5 minutes.

Roll the dough out into a long piece and cut it into three equal parts. Rub a small drop of oil on each piece to make the dough a little sticky and easy to roll out. Roll each piece out until it's less than 1 inch thick (about 36 inches or 90 cm long).

Dust each rope with flour as you finish rolling it out so that it doesn't stick to the counter. It's a lot easier to braid dusted dough. Braid the three ropes together.

Cut a few centimeters from each end to provide a perfectly shaped braid on both ends. Rub a drop of water on the three tips of one end. Connect the tips from the other end to the humid tips. Try your best to maintain a nice braid. Place the braid onto an oiled cookie sheet and adjust it's shape to be perfectly circular. Stretch out the center to increase the size of the hole in the middle. Take the two end pieces that you cut off and roll them into one long rope; you can wet your hands and squeeze to get them to stick together.

Cut into three ropes and taper one end on each. Roll up each one like a swirl. Place on top of the circle to complete the Ubuntu pattern - use one of them to cover up the spot where the two ends were joined (heh heh).

Alternatively, make a Kubuntu shape. Create three balls with the cut off dough. Flatten the balls into disks. Flatten the edge of the disks more than the middle. Use a kitchen tool to make a cut in the center of the dough. Rotate the disk and make another cut across the first. Make two more cuts. Flip the disk inside-out and free up the points of the gears. Do the same with the other two balls.

Cover with plastic wrap. If you want to make the bread on the same day, let it rise for an hour. If you want to bake the bread another day put it in the fridge immediately - you can delay it like this for up to three days. It will rise a bit for the first few hours in the fridge. 90 minutes before you will want to bake the bread, take it out of the fridge and put it in a warm place.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Mix a tablespoon of water with the beaten egg you put aside. Just before putting the bread into the oven, use a brush to coat the dough with the egg mixture. Then bake for 35 minutes (30 to 40 minutes). I suggest you cook it on two cookie sheets doubled up (or use a silicone mat) since the oil and sugar will burn fairly quickly.

Let it cool for at least 45 minutes before eating. Resist the temptation to eat it sooner! The bread has not finished baking as a lot of chemical reactions are still happening and the flavor is not at its best until its cooled.

 

Photos:

Shaggy ball of dough:

Stretch and fold:

 

 

The finished dough is very smooth.

 

Cut the ends off and use them to make the ornaments.

 

Ubuntu swirls:

 

Or Kubuntu gears:

 

Made for sharing!

 

 

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The FSSoft, the open-source club at the Faculty of Sciences, Sfax, Tunisia organized a seminary about open source software last Wednesday. I have been invited to give a conference about Ubuntu.

The seminary started with a word from the Vice Dean, Professor Maher Mnif. After that, I started the conference about Ubuntu with some definitions for the FOSS, Linux and Ubuntu. Then, I tried to explain and demonstrate how Ubuntu can be the perfect operating system for our daily use of the computer. Mr Mehdi Ellouz, a linux-certified engineer presented the Linux operating system and LPI certification.

I liked very much the interest that attendees showed at the conference. Ahemd Chaouachi, from the FSSoft confirmed that 130 students and 11 teachers signed the presence list. Attendees were definitively more then that number.

I also liked the level of the questions asked after the presentation. It was clearly indicating that people were very interested in Ubuntu. Questions were about very different subjects going from the Ubuntu philosophy to packaging.

An install party was organized at the end. 12 computers and 10 installations. Two Acer laptops showed some issues. Rihab proposed to follow with them later as we were already out of time when errors showed up.

It was a very nice event. It was very well organized by FSSoft.

I have a unique but huge regret, the Tunisian team management committee refused to provide Cds from the LoCo Pack. It was because of the lack of communication between FSSoft and the LoCo. Results : No Cds. To do the install party, FSSoft burned some copies and I brought some others.

Inspite of this issue, it was a very nice event. Some people from two other colleges in Sfax came to ask me about how to do a similar event at their respective colleges. It's exactly what FSSoft did at ISIMS two weeks ago. It's spreading very fast in Sfax !

Photos are not that clear... I hope I'll have some others later this week.





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I’m getting increasingly annoyed by the state of some aspects of hardware support in Linux.

My laptop (old Dell Latitude D610, Intel-based with ATI graphics) used to suspend/resume correctly with Linux 2.6.24 (ie, > 95% success rate). Later changes made the success rate drop significantly, and added a problem with kacpid taking 100% CPU because of an interrupt storm. And now, with 2.6.28-rc6, it’s completely broken. (partially documented in bug 11563, but I admit I gave up on this bug, because I’m going to change my laptop soon).

My desktop used to wake-on-lan correctly with 2.6.24 (but required some hacks, because it wouldn’t wake up if the NIC was DOWNed before shutdown), but changes in the r8169 driver broke it. (documented in bug 9512).

As a result, I’m forced to run old kernel versions on the two systems I have at home. I can understand that those issues aren’t considered high priority (not everybody use WoL), but the fact that in both cases, they are regressions, worries me a bit.

How many things are routinely broken during each kernel release cycle? Hardware support is difficult, of course, but are we really doing everything we could to make it suck less? Some things I really would like to see:

• Distro packages for development kernel versions. For Debian, there’s this repository, but it doesn’t always contain the latest kernel versions. Maybe that’s something that should be moved to a kernel.org umbrella and generalized to all distributions, to provide beta-testers with easy-to-install packages. git bisect isn’t that user-friendly.
• Funding for driver developers to buy specific hardware. Many drivers cover a wide range of chips/cards, and developers often only have on a small subset of them, making it difficult to debug issues specific to one chip.
• Better/updated bugzilla on kernel.org. Many bug logs are totally confusing, and cover different issues. They could maybe benefit from new or specifically developed bugzilla features (and more bug triagers, of course).

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Community communications are essential. So are community news. A source of news (both technical and general public) is great when you want to keep in touch with the Ubuntu world, without having to digg around in IRC logs, mailing lists, external blog posts, forum posts,…Ok, So what do we have right now?

•  The Ubuntu Fridge. Great source of various news for the general public, non-technical audience. Unfortunately, it has a bad visibility and it is not read much (based on this small poll (30 answers, 37% not aware of the Fridge, 55% not reading it, 7% reading once in a while), the fact that it is only linked from ubuntu.com,and the number of reference to the fridge I’m seeing)
• Planet Ubuntu. Source of very various things, mainly technical. Solid pieces of technical Ubuntu news are rare, and the nature of the planet needs one to read it regularly, since history after 4 days is lost.
• Ubuntu team external news (I’m not talking about intra-team news) are quite non-existent. If some exists, their visibility is so bad that I’m not aware of them. The QA and Server team have set up a news blog, but only aggregaged to the technical Planet.

The situation is not optimal. Okay, now what’s the point? I mean, for us developers and regular contributors, all is ok, we don’t see the need of more news. Yes, for people heavily involved, there is not really a need for news. But for occasional contributors, people that spend only a few hours per week due to work and others duties, the time is precious. The need has already be made known on the ubuntu-devel ML. A good source of news for the general public should also not be neglected. It would make a better visibility for teams needs (e.g. QA call for testing, 5-a-day,…), it would avoid damaging rumors (Ubuntu killing harddrive, black theme going to be default, …), it would give feedback to users expressing their wishes on Ubuntu Brainstorm, …

In my opinion, how community news could be optimally organized:

• The Ubuntu Fridge gets a much broader visibility with an inter-community-websites navigation, which is really needed for the Ubuntu websites on the overall. The Fridge get a subsection for each Ubuntu Team, so that general-public news of Ubuntu teams can be published without having the team to host their own blog/other source of news.Optionally the Fridge get renammed to something less confusing, e.g. news.ubuntu.com. This setup is clearly focused on the general public and potential contributors audience.
• A similar setup is created, but for technical news : a blog where only technical news are posted, and with subcategories for each Ubuntu teams to let them post their news. This setup is clearly focused on the developers, power users and experienced contributers audience.

And no question of merging these two sources of news.

What’s your opinion? Thoughts?

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Termino el día de ayer el Ubucon Colombia 2008, contamos con alrededor de 200 asistentes los cuales disfrutaron de varias conferencias y talleres durante todo el día, se regalaron CD's de Ubuntu 8.04 y 8.10 además de algunos esferos Ubuntu y memorias USB con Ubuntu preinstalado.

Contamos con un aula con 38 computadores con Ubuntu 8.10 donde se llevaron a cabo todos los talleres, desde las 9am que se abrió al publico no daban a basto, todo completamente lleno aprendiendo del uso y manejo del OS. y la instalación y manejo básico de el muy famoso joomla.

Por el lado de las conferencias, muy bueno, solo estuve de a ratos en algunas, muy buena la de Maria del Pilar que hablo sobre el Software Libre en la educación y al finalizar una conferencia no programada por un corresponsal Dokeos. Solo se presento un pequeño debate en la conferencia de de Servicios corporativos libres vs. privativos, al parecer contábamos con algunos seguidores , empleados y fanboys de MS.

En resumen YO esperaba un poco mas de afluencia de publico, pues contábamos con 408 preinscritos, mas sin embargo hay reconozco que estuvo lloviendo por ratos desde las horas de la mañana hasta que termino el evento a las 6:16 pm, lo cual da pereza de levantarse a muchos con ese estado del clima y además un sábado de descanso para muchos muchos.

Este ha sido un gran evento organizado por la comunidad de Ubuntu Colombia, que viéndolo de manera global fue muy pero muy bueno y esperamos que con cada evento valla mejorando.

Agradezco a todos los que asistieron, participaron y aprendieron un poco del Software Libre, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Colombia y OpenTechnical


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<!---->

Article submitted by Justin Hamade. Guess what? We still need you to submit good articles about software you like!

Always wondering if your debian server needs an update? Apticron is a simple script that will email you when new versions of any package installed are available. This is very helpful for security related issues. The e-mail shows what has changed in the new version, obtained using apt-listchanges. It also tells you the repository where it comes from (ie. etch-security) and the urgency of the release (ie. high).

The configuration files are located in

• /etc/apticron/apticron.conf
• /etc/apt/listchanges.conf
• /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20listchanges

By default emails are sent to root. If you want root emails sent to yourself you can add your email to root in /etc/aliases and run newaliases.

apticron will run daily and let you know each day if there is any packages that require updating. Here is an example of one of its e-mails:

apticron report [Sun, 08 Jun 2008 06:48:58 -0700] ======================================================================== apticron has detected that some packages need upgrading on: myserver.mydomain.com [ 192.168.1.1 ] The following packages are currently pending an upgrade: linux-image-2.6.18-6-686 2.6.18.dfsg.1-18etch5 linux-image-2.6-686 2.6.18+6etch3 ======================================================================== Package Details: Reading changelogs... --- Changes for linux-latest-2.6 (linux-image-2.6-686) --- linux-latest-2.6 (6etch3) stable-security; urgency=high * Update to 2.6.18-6. -- dann frazier Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:47:16 -0700 linux-latest-2.6 (6etch2) stable-security; urgency=high * The arm build of 6etch1 is missing from 4.0r1. Since the latest security update of linux-2.6 (2.6.18.dfsg.1-13etch1) requires this new ABI, and an updated linux-latest-2.6 facilitates the migration to the new ABI. Closes: #438617 — dann frazier Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:01:18 -0600 linux-latest-2.6 (6etch1) stable; urgency=high * Update to 2.6.18-5. — dann frazier Thu, 24 May 2007 17:05:09 -0600 ======================================================================== You can perform the upgrade by issuing the command: aptitude dist-upgrade as root on luxor.mcrt.ca It is recommended that you simulate the upgrade first to confirm that the actions that would be taken are reasonable. The upgrade may be simulated by issuing the command: aptitude -s -y dist-upgrade – apticron

cron-apt is a similar tool that can perform any action apt-get and aptitude can do. For example, it can automatically perform an upgrade when new packages available. However this is not recommend and can be a security risk.

apticron has been available in Debian since (at least) Etch and in Ubuntu since Dapper.

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A while back, I found that someone was copying all of my posts to their own ad-laden site with no linkbacks. I put up some license terms at the time saying quoting and translating with linkbacks were fine, and aggregators are fine, but copying the whole thing without a linkback isn't cool. Well, I'm in the middle of writing a paper for school including a large chunk on licensing, and as I was looking for information on the GPL/CC anti-DRM clause incompatibilities, I realized there was a Creative Commons license I could use to get across what I actually wanted. If you look at the bottom of the page, you'll now see a CC-BY-NC-SA icon (ironically, the same license under which that site was relicensing without permission...though they were kind of breaking the NC part). If you click that link you'll get the official version, but essentially:

• BY: Attribution (give me a linkback)
• NC: Non-Commercial (don't copy it for the ad revenue)
• SA: Share-Alike (derivatives, such as by quoting or translating, are fine with me)

I did make an exception for photos with people in them, though. Since I'd prefer, for privacy's sake, that photos of my family & friends not be spread all over the place (I really don't think my mom wants to become an internet meme), those are staying under plain ol' copyright.

From http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com

--
#288971 (openoffice.org), #215663 (gcalctool), #289242 (cheese), #124663 (vpnc), #269294 (linux)
Do 5 a day - every day! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/5-A-Day

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The New York Team has local coordinators hosting Meet Up events this week. On Thursday, December 4th, 7:00 pm EST Rochester area members are gathering at Barnes and Noble @ RIT (Bldg 100) in their community room. On Saturday, December 6, 1:00 pm EST, New City area members are gathering at Potato Repulic.

Our next general IRC meeting will be our last for the year and will be Thursday, December 11th, at 7:00 pm. We will decide a few leadership positions along with other business. Our general IRC meeting schedule will be reviewed before January 2009 and I will blog about our schedule once it has been decided.

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Been doing the thanksgiving thing, didn’t have time to catch up on things yet, but I am very happy with all the cool stuff going on this last bit:

• OpenSUSE 11.1 RC1 released - Excited for this release - they removed the EULA I was complaing about
• Updated ‘Prey’ Demo for linux released - gaming on Linux is something I want to see grow
• Steam Client for Linux libraries might have been found
• Hardware decoding using Nvidia - this is awesome for media center pc’s. If only ATI / AMD could get it together like Nvidia

I installed Fedora 10, this new boot thing doesn’t show up on any of my systems (Mine are all currently Nvidia and Intel chipsets), so that was not a big feature for me. I do like their default system fonts much more, a lot easier to read. USB Creator worked great, I installed from a usb key. Package manager is definitely not as good as OpenSUSE or Ubuntu, much harder to use and find good packages, but it’s sufficient. And you can see boot messages by hitting escape, which Usplash doesn’t do in Ubuntu.

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I’ve read in Jono’s blog that the development of GNOME Shell (which in turn may become a component of GNOME 3.0) has already started and wanted to try it out (and contribute :)). As this process wasn’t as trivial as I’d have liked (although I had awesome assistance from Colin Walters, Owen Taylor and some other people in #gnome-shell@irc.gnome.org), I’ve decided to write down the instructions on how to build it so that others have it easier.

Initial build of GNOME Shell

1. Download gnome-shell-build-setup.sh (wget http://svn.gnome.org/svn/gnome-shell/trunk/tools/build/gnome-shell-build-setup.sh) and run it (bash gnome-shell-build-setup.sh). This will download jhbuild into ~/Source and build it (the executables will end up in ~/bin).

2. Install the necessary build dependencies for gnome-shell (and its bundled dependencies): sudo apt-get install build-essential automake gnome-common flex bison curl git-core subversion gtk-doc-tools mesa-common-dev xulrunner-1.9-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libffi-dev libgconf2-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev python2.5-dev.

3. Download and build gnome-shell (and its bundled dependencies) by running ~/bin/jhbuild build. All files are placed into ~/gnome-shell.

Running it

1. Run ~/bin/jhbuild shell to enter a subshell, and then follow the remaining steps inside it.

2. Go into the appropriate directory, with: cd ~/gnome-shell/source/gnome-shell/scripts.

3. Start gnome-shell, either inside a window by using Xephyr: ./start-in-Xephyr (you’ll need to have xserver-xephyr installed for this to work, or replacing gnome-panel and metacity in your “real” desktop: ./start-replace.

Updating it

Execute ~/bin/jhbuild build –force –clean. The two arguments, “–force” and “–clean”, are used to rebuild everything, even if it didn’t change. You can usually omit them, but in some cases not doing this may lead to GNOME Shell failing to start.

You can also rebuild only a certain element (with this I mean either gnome-shell or one of its bundled dependencies, namely clutter, gjs, gobject-introspection, gir-repository or metacity-clutter) by using ~/bin/jhbuild buildone <name> –clean.

Problem: My computer hangs if I run it

Like the new Compiz version in Intrepid, gnome-shell uses GL_EXT_texture_to_pixmap, which is broken for some old Intel cards and causes the computer to hang if start-replace is used. You can easily disable this, though, by setting the GNOME_SHELL_DISABLE_TFP environment variable (the name of this variable may change in the future).

So, just run “export GNOME_SHELL_DISABLE_TFP=1” before you run start-replace as described in section “Running it” (or add that line to ~/.bashrc, but then remember to remove it again once the driver issue is fixed). With this, gnome-shell should be able to run so that you can try it out, but don’t expect its performance to be perfect (here I have serious issues with redrawing).

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in English

I decided to create a finnish advent calendar (ie. countdown to Christmas) in my blog this year starting from tomorrow, the 1st advent. I’ll be publishing some new material every morning (06:00 EET) for you to enjoy and help you to count the days of Advent. I haven’t planned it all exaclty yet but I have some ideas so come back tomorrow to see what’s new.

To see the rest you need to come back daily or grab the RSS feed (calendar only or all posts) in your feed aggregator. You’ll find all calendar posts in the Advent calendar category. Feel free to comment the posts!

Only this first post will be posted to Planet Ubuntu and Planet Fnoss..

Suomeksi

Päätin laittaa blogiini pystyyn jonkinlaisen adventtikalenterin (lue: joulukalenteri) jonka avulla voi laskeskella näitä joulun odotuksen päiviä. Ensimmäinen luukku aukeaa huomenna, ensimmäisenä adventtina, kuudelta aamulla.

Ihan tarkkaan en vielä kaikkea ole suunnitellut mitä kalenteriin tulee enkä sitä tietenkään paljastaisi vaikka olisinkin. Tämän kalenterin hyvä puoli on että luukkujen sisällöstä voi (ja suositellaankin!) helposti antaa palautetta ja jopa toiveita siitä, mitä toivoisi jäljellä olevista luukuista löytävän.

Päästäksesi aukomaan luukkuja laita RSS-syöte (pelkkä kalenteri tai kaikki kirjoitukset) seurantaan tai laita sivun osoite mieleen ja tule heti huomenna aamulla vilkaisemaan mitä uutta on tarjolla. Kaikki kalenterin luukut löydät ‘Advent calendar‘ -kategoriasta.

Vain tämä ensimmäinen viesti ilmestyy Vapaasuomen blogeissa.

Tags: photo, planet-fnoss, planet-ubuntu, planet-vapaasuomi, suomeksi


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Hey my fellow lazy webbers! I am looking at getting a new mouse that is elegant, sleek, and super mobile. Right now there are 3 models that fit this category that I like pretty well:

1. Logitech VX Nano
2. Logitech V550 Nano
3. Logitech V450 Nano

What I like about these 3 is that they have the super small USB dongle that doesn’t stick out much from the side of my laptop, therefore allowing me to keep it plugged in at all times, even while transporting it. I know that with the VX Nano, the middle mouse button click doesn’t work like typical middle mouse buttons. Instead of doing what I am used to, it changes the type of scrolling action. Click it down and you have typical wheel scroll with the little clicking action. Click it down again and you have that super smooth non-clicking action scroll, which is by far my favorite and the reason I have been using Microsoft rodents for the past couple of years.

My question is do the V550 and V450 do the same with the middle mouse button for you owners out there? If you have any of these rodents, please tell me which one you have and if you like it or not. Right now I can pick up the V450 at the local Circuit City for $35 USD. $45 for the VX and I think around $50 for the V550 (maybe cheaper).

I have found a how-to page for the VX and getting all of the buttons to work, even in KDE. Do any of you use one these rodents in KDE/Kubuntu as well?

EDIT: I picked up the VX Nano and I am using it now. All I can simply state about this rodent is WOW!!! I paid $45 at Tiger Direct for it, definitely worth every penny I paid for it. Simply amazing. Thanks to everyone who left a comment pushing the VX Nano and the VX line. You all totally rock!

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#ubuntu-classroom has been pretty quiet since Ubuntu Open Week earlier this month, so we’ve gone ahead and made plans for a team meeting next week, details have been posted to the fridge and I sent out an announcement this evening:

• Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-classroom
• Time: 2008-12-03 01:00 UTC (So that’s Tuesday evening for those of us in the States)
• Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Classroom/MeetingAgenda2008Dec3

While we’re interested in getting more folks to handle the administrative tasks on the project, we’re primarily focusing this meeting on two points:

• How to recruit instructors
• Teaming up with the Beginners Team Education Focus Group

The latter has resulted from several conversations I’ve been having over the past few weeks with PrivateVoid who has poured hours of work into the Education Focus Group. Discussions started out primarily being about hosting their IRC sessions in #ubuntu-classroom, but have since developed into a lot of fantastic ideas he’s developing for the EFG that may be adopted or jointly developed with Classroom.

So far it’s shaping up to be a very productive meeting. Hope to see you there!

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