Last call for ….

I haven’t posted anything in a while on this blog, and now I made the decision that this will not change: it is unlikely that this blog will be updated anytime soon. The reason is actually twofold:

Job

I’m working full time as an Open Source/Linux consultant these days – and after work I do not really have the time nor the energy to invest even more time into Open Source (besides the Fedora packaging).

Company’s Blog

I was successful in convincing enough people in our company to start a blog – and I blog there since then, so when I get home I usually already have blogged about whatever comes to my mind.

That means effectively that you will not receive any more new posts here. It hurts my heart and kills kittens, but you can remove the blogfeed. @planets where I might still be listed at: please remove this blog feed as well.

However, if you *do* want to keep up with my thoughts: credativ’s company blog is working quite nice these days. Btw., in case you don’t know, credativ is an Open Source/Linux company and the one behind the Open Source Support Center (OSSC) and the Open Source Support Card (yeah, “catchy” names, I know). They are focussed on Open Source support (Linux-Support, PostgreSQL-Support, etc.) and have offices in DE, UK, US, etc. So the general topics are pretty close to this blog. If you look close you will recognize my style: short italic introduction, eye catcher on the upper right side, special headline markings for Howtos and Short Tips, and so on. Also, the categories are quite the same, and it is actually available in German and English. Also, I am not the only person writing there – one very active PostgreSQL developer keeps blogging there, if I want it or not.

However – it is a company blog, so you will (!) find information regarding the company itself, or newest marketing things. You are warned!

So this is it: the last post. Thanks everyone for wonderful years full of blogging, discussions, news, Howtos and good tips. So long, and thanks for the fish!

Proof of concept: Google Gadgets on Plasma

KDE 4′s Plasma cannot only handle it’s own native widgets, but also foreign ones. The Plasma developers have shown that it is technically possible to load Google Gadgets natively within Plasma.

Plasma is KDE 4′s way to handle widgets – not only embedded on the desktop/wallpaper (like Superkaramba did within KDE 3), but also in panels and even in other plasma enabled applications like the coming Amarok. So Plasma widgets can be extremely useful and handy. And since the Plasma team didn’t want to exclude developers, the widgets can be written in C++, javascript and ruby (yet).

Plasma can not only use native widgets, but also Superkaramba plugins and Mac OS X dashboard widgets. Additionally, with the integration of WebKit into Plasma, HTML/CSS/JavaScript constructs can also be loaded as kind of a plugin.

Now this list was extended by a new set of widgets: the Google Gadgets. The following screenshot shows that Google Gadgets can be run on Plasma:

As the title says, this is a proof of concept right now: it shows that it can be done. Nothing less, but also nothing more. The next task is now to integrate it with the GUI and for example to fetch new Gadgets right from the Google page. Currently it looks like this is a candidate (nothing written in stone yet of course) for KDE 4.2. Maybe the technical capability will be available with KDE 4.1 already so that experienced – and brave – users can give it a first try.

In any way this proof of concept shows again that Plasma can host all kinds of things – so even if new things turn up in the future Plasma might be able to host them. Technically that shows that Plasma is ready for future developments for example in case a new competitor turns up in the widget area. From a user point of view this brings a large range of widgets to the users.

From an administrator/security point of view the fact that Plasma is the host makes it easier to keep an eye on the widgets: Plasma is part of KDE, and therefore it can be configured – and stripped down if necessary – with the help of Kiosk. So administrators can simply disable certain for example Google widgets for security reasons with a simple commando at runtime, just like they can do it every where else in KDE.

Thanks to the Plasma developers for providing me with the necessary infos and image. And thanks the guys at Google for doing much of this integration work! Some infos are also available at google groups.

KDE SOC projects published

The list of the Google Summer of Code projects for KDE was published. The list has several interesting entries to make the life for KDE users much easier.

The results for this year’s Google Summer of Code are out, and several KDE ideas were picked up.

Going through the list I found some items which immediately rouse my interest:

• Media Device Support in Amarok 2 with Collections – This will bring support for collections/playlists to different media devices.
• Amarok and UPnP – UPnP is used in today’s media streamers, and native support for it in Amarok would help integrating such media servers with KDE.
• Notes and Presenter View Support for KPresenter – All big proprietary solutions have such a presentation view and even OOo works at it. So developing one for KPResenter is just sensible to do.
• Easy monitor hot-plug support in KDE – The presentation view requires a second video output device, but to setup such is not easy on KDE – yet.
• Integrate Decibel into the KDE 4 environment – Decibel is so far in a basic shape, but not integrated with KDE atm: think of Plasma applets, KRunner support and similar “glue” to make communication on KDE possible everywhere.
• Jingle video and voice chat in Kopete. – I had great hopes for jingle, and for certain reasons I still think that it is essential to support it everywhere in the FLOSS world.
• KMail enhancements and porting to native Qt4 – KMail is one of the most important apps on the KDE desktop for many users. Therefore having a fully ported, well polished version of KMail is essential for a good user experience on KDE.
• Integration of the QtWebKit based KPart – It is helpful to switch between two engines without a big hassle to compare these or to use one engine when the other doesn’t work.
• Integration of WebKit SVG library with KHTML – Sharing code between KHTML and WebKit does make sense when it is productive and helps both. And that’s the aim of this project.
• StepGame: educational game based on Step – The Incredible Machine as a native KDE game would be awesome!

Of course this is just a small list of the accepted applications – and an accepted application doesn’t necessarily mean that the project will be a success. Additionally, this year the process around the applications and slots wasn’t perfect, but maybe the KDE e.V. can step up there to make the rejected projects possible nevertheless?
An idea would be to collect money through the KDE e.V. to sponsor other applicants, given that KDE finds their applications worth a try. I would be willing to donate some money for a stand-alone, KDE integrated browser based on WebKit, for general video input device support in Phonon or for a full featured Sonnet.

News wrap-up: Google and OIN, new btrfs versions, Qt and licences

Recently Google joined the Open Innovation Network. Also, Btrfs saw two new development versions these days, and Qt’s licence terms were modified to allow linking to other licences as well.

Google and the OIN

Some days ago Chris DiBona announced that Google became a Open Innovation Network licensee.
Just like Orcale (which became a licensee in March) Google now promises to not use their (maybe Linux related) software patents against any of the other licensees. In return they don’t have to fear the patents of the other licensees. I wonder if Google has so many patents in this area – I never read anything about Google patent portfolios.

Nevertheless, with Google the list of licensees just got another important name. But some names I’m still missing are Yahoo, SAP and Amazon. Microsoft won’t join anytime soon as long as they follow their ridiculous patent strategy.

New Btrfs releases

Chris Mason has just released the versions 0.6 and 0.7 of his file system Btrfs.
The 0.6 release introduces an improved way of deleting old snapshots and a function to defrag the file system to improve the performance. The defrag code unveiled a performance bug which led to the release of 0.7 which is now much faster:

Time to create 1 million files, 512 bytes each:
v0.4: 3m17s
v0.7: 2m32s

Time to run find . on the directory:
v0.4: 21.60s
v0.7: 3.27s

Nice numbers indeed. But of course Btrfs is still in an Alpha state, and first stable versions are not expected before next year.

Qt 4.3.1 was released with GPL extensions

Qt 4.3.1 was released recently. As usual for these minor releases the changelog of this version contains bug fixes and performance improvements but no new technical features, except for the new Intel Compiler 10 support.

However, in political terms one feature was added: beginning with Qt 4.3.1 Qt can now be used together with other licences due to GPL exceptions. The additional rights granted by Trolltech are pretty handy for any Open Source developer:

The right to use Open Source Licenses not compatible with the GNU
General Public License: You may link software (hereafter referred to as “Your Software”) against the Licensed Software and/or distribute binaries of Your Software linked against the Licensed Software

There is no need now to release your software under the GPL, you can also use another licence if you have to/want to.

Interesting in this regard is however also that the GPL 3 is not included. This is already a bit of a problem for the KDE project since the next versions of Samba will be released under the terms of the GPL 3 while KDE is – due to Qt – GPL 2 only. But there are rumours that the next Open Source Qt version might already be released under the GPL 2 and GPL 3.
I do wonder however if KDE could switch to GPL 3 – several hundred developers contributed over the year, making such switches difficult.

Google Desktop Search available for Linux

Google has just released the Google Desktop Search for Linux.

Google has released the Desktop Search for Linux. Packages are available in native formats (rpm and deb) for various distributions and there are even native package repositories available.

Here are two screenshots you might be interested in. The first one shows the fast search which pops up when you hit ctrl two times, the second one simply shows the system tray icon:

The feature list is nice, but could be better. For example, I’m missing Windows file formats as well as KMail mails or Akregator news. But I guess such things will be implemented over time.
What I miss however is an information if inotify is supported – the main advantage would be that after the first complete indexing Google would not need to update regularly but could rely on internal messaging services to discover if a file has been changed.

This release is an interesting move – I admit that I would have preferred Google Talk because we need free software there more than in the desktop search field were there are already plenty of tools available. Still, it is nice to see that Google really tries to push the Linux desktop by providing the Windows applications for Linux also.

As a side note I think the provided repositories also deserve attention: it looks like Linux starts providing the applications in native binaries instead of *.bin-files like Google Earth. I estimate that rpm files for Google earth can expected in the future as well, making it much easier installing these applications.
On the other hand I hope Google will now push standards which deal with easy installation of additional repositories. That is something the Linux desktop also really needs!