Posted
over 12 years
ago
It's only one day left until the global KDE and GNOME communities meet at Berlin for the second desktop summit. Hundreds of free software contributors from all over the world, the core of the free desktop community is meeting at the
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Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the middle of the German capital from August 6th to 12th.It's those people who create the software, which millions and millions of users see, feel, and use every day, on the desktop and beyond, who make great technology accessible to everybody. Many of you participate in this effort, and by doing this with free software we are providing nothing less than one of the building blocks of free society. Getting all the creative minds, the people with passion for beautiful, elegant, powerful, amazing software, together at one event, that's remarkable, and I'm looking forward to what we'll breed at Berlin, what ideas, collaborations, what code will emerge.For me one of the most important parts of the desktop summit will be the general assembly of KDE e.V. Without KDE e.V. events like this wouldn't be possible. It provides the organizational foundation, which is necessary to run a community on the scale KDE has reached. The general assembly is the annual check point, where we report and reflect on the state of the organization, and decide about its future direction. As a member of the board it's my duty and my honor to report on what we have achieved.This year is a bit special as we'll have elections for two of the five board positions, and I'm running for my third term. While we have achieved a lot with KDE e.V. over the past years, we are still in a position, where we have the chance to achieve a lot more, for the KDE community, for free software, and, as already said, for a free society in general. To make some of this happen is one of the main goals I have for my third term. I need your support and your help for that, and I hope we can build an even stronger organization, where many of you join the effort of making the world a better place through our technology.The main part of the desktop summit of course is the conference. We have a great lineup of keynote speakers: Thomas Thwaite, Claire Rowloand, Dirk Hohndel, Stuart Javis, and Nick Richards.We have dozens of other presentations, which cover the whole spectrum of the free desktop, technology, community, from both, the KDE and GNOME communities, and related project. If you are interested in free software on the desktop and reaching beyond the desktop, there is no better place to be than Berlin next week. As a special highlight we have a panel about copyright assignment with Mark Shuttleworth, Michael Meeks, and Bradley Kuhn, moderated by Karen Sandler. This is going to be interesting. KDE has a clear position there with the fiduciary license agreement we created with the help of the FSFE, which preserves freedom, gives equal rights to contributors, and doesn't create any barrier of entry.The other big part of the desktop summit will be the workshops and BoF sessions, the less formal events, which take place towards end of the week. This is where people have time and opportunity to mingle, to collaborate, to exchange ideas, to discuss projects. I'm running an experiment there, the attempt to cover a full year of KDE sprints in one hour. We'll have a series of lightning talks giving an impression of what happened at the 21 sprints we had since Akademy a year ago. I'm also looking forward to discuss and finalize the recommended KDE git workflow we came up with at the sprint in Randa in June. Finally I also intend to move forward with the idea of a Qt library archive, which also originated at Randa, and which we discussed in more detail at the Qt contributors' summit.As always I'm also carrying the hat of my employer, SUSE. openSUSE is a great distribution to run both KDE and GNOME, and SUSE Studio, my main project at SUSE, also can be useful in the context of the desktop communities in various ways. If you are interested in any of that, would like to discuss it, or need help getting something done, don't hesitate to talk to me.Tomorrow I'll board a train and go to Berlin to dive into this special sphere of the free software community again. It's my ninth of the big annual events organized by KDE, be it Kastle, Akademy, or the Desktop Summit. I can't wait to meet all the old and new friends who make up this wonderful community.See you in Berlin. [Less]
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Posted
over 12 years
ago
Hello everyone!I am very pleased to announce the new issue (186) of openSUSE WeeklyNews in Greek.In this issue you will read about:* Volunteers needed!* GSOC reports* Ambassador Travel Funding* 100 Best Free and High Quality Linux Games* Some brief
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thoughts on Project HarmonyAs well as many interesting news about openSUSE and useful advice,which can make our lives easier.Enough said though... Read more at: http://own.opensuse.gr,http://el.opensuse.org/Weekly_news or www.os-el.grWe are always looking forward to receiving your comments as well assuggestions regarding things you would like to read about in our nextissue.The openSUSE Weekly News is being translated in the Greek languagefrom issue #150. You can read older translated issues here:http://el.opensuse.org/Κατηγορία:Weekly_news_issuesEnjoy it!Efstathios Agrapidis (efagra) [Less]
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Posted
over 12 years
ago
From Friday the 15th to Sunday the 17th of July Lizards and other FOSS enthusiasts were gathered at Katerini for the 1st Greek openSUSE Collaboration Summer weekend Camp.The whole event started at the Hotel pool where we all met before the actual
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beginning of the event . After everybody that was expected came, we started the talks.Fridays talks were more related to the openSUSE local community. Me and Efstathios Iosifidis presented Lokalize and gtranslator and show people how useful tool those are. Efstathios Agrapidis along with Stella Rouzi presented how you can help the community by translating the openSUSE weekly news.We took a dinner break from 19:30 to 20:30 and afterward we had a Translation contest. We originally had plans on letting people translating some wiki articles in a certain time but since we saw people's enthusiasm about Lokalize and gtranslator we decided to change it and give people .po files to translate. The contest should normally last one and a half hour total but everybody asked for more time to do more work, so we postponed Diomidis Anadiotis talk 'I am new to the community' and we had the contest last until midnight.You see we made the program lose so that we give people the opportunity to physically collaborate, we considered more important for the people to have fun working as a community than actually have a tight schedule and this actually worked perfect through the weekend. After all the hard work of the fisrt day we had our bathing-suits and went to the Hotel's pool party where we had tons of fun. We had beers, conversations about FOSS, late night pool games. The last of us actually left the party after 4:00. Once again it was proven that FOSS is tightly connected with fun.At Saturday we had an early wake around 8:30 for breakfast and around 10:15 we started with the announcement of the previous night's contest where Diomidis Anadiotis won the Geeko plush reward. The First presentation of the day was 'Using Yast - System management: easy, fast and with many options' where me and Efstatios Agrapidis presented how and why to use YaST more. The day continued with Theo Chatzimichos from the Gentoo community presenting Django and making a tutorial of how and why to use it. After that we had Stavros Kalapothas and Efstathios Hatzikiriakidis from The-Hackerspace presenting us 'Security and arduino: Multifactor authentication system (voice recognition and RFID technologies)' which was a four hour workshop with a short break.After the workshop, at around 15:00 we had long break where we had once once again great FOSS conversations among cold beer, water-gun fights, pool volley and other water sports... Some people though preferred to take a nap since last nights sleep was not enough for them.At around 17:30 we started again with 'Qt Signals And Slots' from Antonis Tsapaliokas from KDE and we continiued with another workshop from the people of The-Hackerspace titled 'Security and arduino: Wireless devices remote control (client - server control center)'. We had a dinner break and then continued with a 'Vim introduction' by Yannis Chatzimichos which was really interesting and showed us why Vim is better than other editors. After that we had the previous days scheduled talk from Diomidis Anidiotis titled 'I’m new in the community' where he talked about how a new people to a FOSS community feel entering a community. It was a great feedback for all and this lead us to the next and last planned converation for the day which was 'Collaborating inside a FOSS community', where all people expressed their opinion about how we should do that. Many valuable conclusions were made there. Of course once again we went to the pool-bar afterward and continued the conversation there.Friday was the last day and it started around 10:00 after breakfast with the Gnome community and Efstathios Iosifidis presenting 'Surviving with Gnome 3 in a KDE-world'. Efstathios Agrapidis took up the baton presenting 'I’m OBS-ing, are you OBS-ing too?'. Unfortunately we had some internet issues so instead of the OBS workshop, after the OBS presentation we had Theo Chatzimichos (after people asked for it) continuing the workshop on Django. After that came George Tsapaliokas presenting 'KDE Frameworks' and how to work with them. The day finished with a talk from Athanasios-Ilias Rousinopoulos titled 'openSUSE Medical project' where as the new project leader he talked to us about it and why we should all help this project.As you can see from the photos, the event was a success as it reached its goal providing education through presentations, workshops and discussions, all that through summer entertainment.Most important, all participants are impatiently looking forward to the next event! Soon We will have the videos of the workshops and talks available at YouTube, stay tuned...Special Thanks to Giorgos Tsapaliokas and Stella Rouzi for helping more from all of us on organizing the whole event. Also we really want to thank the people from Gentoo, KDE, The-Hackerspace and Yannis Chatzimichos for participating to the event with their valuable and really interesting presentations and workshops. [Less]
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Posted
over 12 years
ago
I've cooked with other people from #gnomefr channel a Google Map with the various useful addresses for Desktop Summit 2011.It is available here, you can also get KML file or import this map in your favorite software (for Android users, I suggest
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using Locus Free which can download offline OpenStreetMap data and merge our map on it, no roaming data needed !). [Less]
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Posted
over 12 years
ago
Getting ready to rock in Thessaloniki
Over the last few months the openSUSE ambassadors have continued to visit conferences around the world. Since our previous report beginning of May, several big events have happened and we’ll treat you on a report
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on some of those.
Already covered in blogs
Let’s start with a few quick links to reports which are already online and probably read by some of you. There is for example the huge splash Greece ambassadors made at Fosscomm 2011 which took place on May 7 and 8 in Greece. With 8 presentations as well as a similar number of lightning talks and a workshop on OBS openSUSE ruled the conference. The team co-hosted the GNOME community in their booth as well as the Enlightenment project and a few others, showing the open and collaborative spirit of openSUSE! Last but not least, they organized a late 11.4 release party which ended up having Red Hat, Ubuntu, Slackware, FreeBSD and many other visitors joining the party!
The Greek team also organized a summer camp from which you can see pictures in their facebook group. Rest assured we’ll make them work harder after they so clearly spend a lot of time drinking and hanging in the sun…
Relaxing Greeko's
Most interestingly, the Greek team went to the Xariseto.gr bazaar. In Thanasis’ words: Xariseto is a festival where people meet and donate their personal belongings which they don’t use any more. So as a Linux and openSUSE community we thought that participating in these kind of festivals is really interesting.
The result was people from 7 to 70 years old learning about openSUSE… The team also went to the EL/LAK conference in Thessaloniki.
And as was quite visible on planet openSUSE, we had a presence at LinuxTag in Berlin.
More reports
While not all openSUSE ambassadors have the time to send in event reports, we are always happy to read the ones we get. Below a few of them.
Chile, FLISoL
At the end of April, Ricardo Varas Santana attended the FLISoL event in Chile, which has about 1000 visitors. He gave a talk titled “openSUSE, Linux in Green and for all”, talking about what openSUSE is, how to get involved as well as what technologies we have. About 400 DVD’s were handed out as well!
USA
Orv Beach participated in the Southwest Computer Conference where he presented openSUSE to an eager crowd. He gave out Tuxes and Geeko’s as well as 160 DVD’s and flyers to the visitors, mostly members from Computer Clubs around the USA.
Not just hard work but also... party!
Taiwan
Max “Sakana” from Taiwan wrote us three reports in one. First of all, he as well as several other openSUSE ambassadors was at GNOME.Asia 2011, where the GNOME 3 LiveDVD’s (based on openSUSE) were handed out. Pictures can be found in the openSUSE flickr pool. But Max and the Taiwan team did more. Max teaches students openSUSE at the Ming Chi University of Technology, where openSUSE is quite popular. Moreover, there were two seminars at two different colleges, the Ling Tung University and the National Formosa University about SUSE Studio and Nagios with openSUSE. openSUSE DVD’s were handed out and according to Max, openSUSE did very well!
Great Britain
Stuart Tanner went to the RedRat Computer Market in Sheffield. He was the only linux person in the room and brought a large 42″ FullHD TV to demo it. He tried to lure amateur-photographers into Free Software, aweing them with ShowFoto, DigiKam and similar tools
Netherlands
Your humble writer has also done his small share the last months, showing up at a computer event in the Netherlands. A team of 4 manned a booth, held 2 presentations, handed out a few hundred DVD’s as well as posters and in general showed openSUSE rocks also in NL!
Action in Taiwan
more work
First of all, the above are just a few of the events we know about. For example, in Brazil, openSUSE was present on FISL, the Porto Alegre event with over 8000 visitors. We’re eagerly awaiting the event report! More events happened, more will come. But this is not the only thing openSUSE ambassadors do!
Take the incredible Baltasar Ortega who has been covering openSUSE and KDE technology in his blog for years! If you can read Spanish, be sure to bookmark his blog. He will point you to gems like the Studio Imagewriter or share wonderful tutorials like these. Max wrote an article about “openSUSE and Hadoop” the May edition of the Hongkong Chinese/Taiwanese Linux Pilot Magazine.
And did you notice our Greek team translates the awesome Weekly News in Greece?
Value
The work these ambassadors do for openSUSE is incredibly valuable and should not be under estimated. Christos Bountalis, working on fillup-ng in openSUSE, joined after meeting the Greek openSUSE ambassadors at an event, remarking in his interview, when asked why he joined openSUSE: I have found many nice and interesting people
And indeed. People are what makes the difference between a good and a great Free Software project. And our Ambassadors are often the first people outsiders see!
Thanks!
So we’d like to thank our ambassadors for their awesome work, and invite anyone to join their ranks!
You can also help in other ways. For example, if you are an openSUSE developer or follow development closely, add a glimpse of what is coming to the wiki. Or if you know a bit about openSUSE, add and improve our talking points! We also can always use artwork, help with writing and many other things. Feel free to contact the openSUSE marketing team on [email protected] and offer to help out! [Less]
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Posted
over 12 years
ago
I’ll be at the Desktop Summit and I’m looking forward to seeing you all there! Let’s all go out for a beer and talk design (and other stuff too, of course)! (;
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Posted
over 12 years
ago
While everybody is talking about going to some small event apparently occurring in Berlin next week (with random speakers), let me talk a bit about the RMLL 2011, which I attended a few weeks ago.
Close-up of the Strasbourg astronomical clock
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For those who don't know, the RMLL is one of the main free software-related events in France. It's moving to a new city every year, and this year it happened to be Strasbourg. Obviously, this was a good choice since everybody knew that it would involve great food :-)
At the end of the RMLL in 2010, Michael Scherer suggested to organize a new track about Communities, and we were crazy enough to give it a try, with the help of another Vincent, Vincent Kaltenbronn. We managed to get a rather good program: we wanted to have some international outreach on the first day (english talks, and an interesting talk about an initiative related to Africa), a day specific to the french world of Free Software on the second day, and then talks about various projects on the last day. And it all turned out pretty well, thanks to the speakers!
While we had many GNOME-friendly people at the event (Frédéric, Claude, Alexandre, Didier, Michael, etc.), we didn't really have a proper booth as most of us were busy either with the organization of the event itself, the chairing of a track, the preparation of talks or the participation to Radio RMLL. But we still had PromoDVDs to give away (thanks openSUSE!), and apparently, people were happy to take them :-) We still managed to have a meeting to discuss the future of the GNOME-FR organization, and the good news is that there is a plan. Frédéric also had a talk about how the GNOME project changed in time, where people actively participated in a discussion about current issues in the community, with the discussion ending well after the end of the talk.
Illuminations of the Strasbourg Cathedral
It was also great to see the openSUSE presence there, with Jean-Daniel Dodin organizing the openSUSE part of a booth shared with Fedora and Mageia, and Alexis Guéganno sharing his Alionet experience while talking about non-profit organizations.
As I apparently can't go to an event without delivering talks (I keep submitting tons of proposals...), I had three talks scheduled: a brief introduction to packaging, an overview of GObject Introspection and a status update on the AppStream project. The three talks were well-received, or at least that's what I like to think :-) And during the GObject Introspection talk, a GSoC student working on MELT suggested the use of MELT to help make sure introspection annotations are correct; I didn't have time to take a close look at that, but that does sound like a fun project.
Fireworks during Bastille Day
Since the event ended on Bastille Day, I was able to stay a few days in Strasbourg to enjoy the city. There's no shortage of good time there, and it was funny to meet every now and then other RMLL participants who also stayed the week-end. The various illuminations organized by the city for the summer were extremely cool, and I felt I really had to make sure there was no missing step in the stairs to the top of the Cathedral. Interestingly, there seems to be less steps when going down than when climbing!
Oh, and I should do that more often, but thanks to SUSE for letting me go and participate to this event (and even encouraging me to do so)! That's really a cool company :-) [Less]
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Posted
over 12 years
ago
Up earlyish, read stories to everyone while M. slept on
beautifully. Packed ourselves into the car, raining: to make us
feel at home, clearly. Admired the Blois bridge while eating
croissants, and drove south.
Lunch at Matha, and
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finally arrived at Massac, and the
Heathcote's fine holiday home, opened up, followed the
instructions in order: turn on water before water heater etc.
Explored house, unpacked, slugged a bit.
Back into Matha to navigate the hypermarket, and try
to learn a little French (and matching, obscure English words)
from toy shelves (packed with tat as everywhere). Surprised by
how many anglicised toys were present: "Hello Kitty", "G.I.
Joe" etc.
Home, made dinner & cleaned up while J. cooked;
fed babes, bathed them, put them to bed. Drank rosé
and planned trips with the wife.
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Posted
over 12 years
ago
One of the "paper cuts" developers have been having with developing their MonoTouch 4.0.x (and earlier) applications is that for some networking setups, the IP of the developer's workstation detected by MonoDevelop and given to the iPhone or iPad
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device for debugging purposes is not correct. This often happens if the WiFi is a different network than the network that the developer's machine is connected to (although there are other scenarios as well).
Since it does not seem to be widely known about, allow me to point out that current versions of MonoTouch allow developers to modify the IP that the runtime should connect to for debugging via the iOS Settings app found on any iPhone or iPad (or Simulator). You can see a screenshot of this per-App Settings page in the screenshot to the left. Each of these fields are editable, allowing you to override the defaults filled-in by MonoDevelop.
For our upcoming 4.1 release, Rolf Kvinge and I (but mostly Rolf) have been working on improving this. Rolf has modified the code to check the value of the IP provided in the per-App Settings and if it is set to nil or "automatic", the debugger falls back to checking for a file bundled with the app called MonoTouchDebugConfiguration.txt which can list any number of IP's to try and connect to, each one being on a separate line prefixed with "IP: ". For example:
IP: 10.0.1.31
IP: 192.168.1.31
IP: 204.11.102.79
The runtime will then attempt to connect to each of these IPs asynchronously until it establishes a connection to one of them (at which point it aborts the other waiting connections). This config file solution will hopefully help simplify things for developers a bit by allowing them to pre-configure which IPs to try for their local network configuration w/o having to manually override the iPhone debug settings on the device or simulator.
For Phase 2 of our plan for World Domination, Rolf is hard at work adding support to MonoDevelop and the runtime to allow for USB debugging which will obsolete the above functionality in future versions where the developer has a MonoDevelop which supports USB debugging. For developers stuck on an older MonoDevelop (like 2.4), the solution illustrated above requires no changes to MonoDevelop and so will be available for use. [Less]
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Posted
over 12 years
ago
I've just finish slides for my talk From GIT to your custom OS image which will be on Sunday 7 August 15:10 - 15:40 at Rm3038. I'll explain how GNOME 3 Live images were built and how you can easily do the same for your project.I'll also be on openSUSE booth and helping for Football event which is sponsored bySee you in Berlin !
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