Skip to content

Pipitas 

Will Google pick klik2 for GSoC 2008?

Saturday, 15 March 2008
I've received 2 emails asking for more blogging and info about current klik2, especially since FOSDEM 2008. Unfortunately, I don't have much time these weeks for 'FOSS-work', due to pressing 'work-work' duties. Since about October, I'm entangled deeply (too deep, if you ask me) in a major project that leads me to spend 5-6 days a week in Frankfurt (250 km away from home), with 12-14 hours a day on a customer site. Now compute: how much time does that leave me on evenings (in the Hotel) and weekends (at home), given that one-way travel time Stuttgart <=> Frankfurt is about 3 hours, and daily travel time inside Frankfurt is about 30 minutes? Read More

FOSDEM 2008 'speaker interview' about klik2 published

Sunday, 3 February 2008
The FOSDEM 2008 organizers now have published their 'speakers interview' with probono and myself. If you are interested in some background about the current klik2 development, it may be serving as a good general introduction into the concepts.

klik2 development: Milestone 3 is ahead

Sunday, 3 February 2008
Due to too little testing, the Milestone 3 release announcement is postponed until Wednesday. It may actually happen even later, should I have no time to really do it on Wednesday evening, due to my work-work obligations. Read More

klik2 development: Milestone 2 reached

Sunday, 27 January 2008
This weekend it's time to announce it. Finally: klik2 development has reached our internal "Milestone 2". Remember klik? That project that aims to make Linux end-user software installation and usage more easy than on any other platform? "Grandma-proof", if you like? By making to 'install' an application as easy as copying a single file to a USB thumbdrive or to a different computer? By implementing application-level virtualization, encapsulating each end-user program into a single file, following the 1 application == 1 file principle? Read More

klik2 at FOSDEM 2008 -- klik2 now starts handling non-GUI/CLI applications

Sunday, 23 December 2007
Now that OpenOffice.org does make some splashes in the IT press for the sole achievement of having created a "portable" version that can run from an USB stick (on Windows only, that is) -- isn't it time for klik to get ready for gaining its own share of public fame sometime soon? That's because klik does not only turn OpenOffice.org, but many thousand Linux applications into "PortableApps". And does not need painstakingly recompiling portable binaries from modified source code, one by one. But will re-utilize the marvellous work and special knowledge of all the dedicated Debian, RPM and Slackware packaging heroes out there and repackage 95% of its supported klik bundles fully automatically, including dependency resolution... Read More

Systems exhibition: going to see x2go and CoreBoso

Wednesday, 24 October 2007
This afternoon it looks like I'll get to go tomorrow to the Systems fair in Munich. I've got various exhibitor booths to visit and see what new things they have on offer, and also one or two meetings arranged already. Read More

How To Easily Print Posters With KDEPrint [UPDATED]

Friday, 19 October 2007
What a coincidence today happened. In the morning I used KDEPrint's 'poster' frontend to create a "poor man's poster" in A1 size from 4 A3 printouts. In the afternoon, a lady mailed me, asking why her KDE print dialog on Solaris didn't show the poster dialog, while her husband's openSUSE KDE did show it. Read More

How to simulate a slow network with 'wanem'

Monday, 15 October 2007
Some of you may remember my blog post "How to simulate a slow network (after all, QT_FLUSH_PAINT=1 doesn't work with Qt3)" from nearly two years ago. After all, I'm still getting a private mail or two every half year inquiring about it. That blog post did describe in some detail how you can use a command like Read More

C'mon, Miguel... tell us this is not true!

Monday, 10 September 2007
Today I experienced two moments of bewilderment, the second one mixed with dismay. At first, when I googled for something unrelated, on one of the returns I saw a forum post where someone said "Icaza himself says that OOXML is superb". Well, first I was amazed, then I shrugged, and wrote it off as a troll, and continued with my other tasks. Two hours later I remembered again. Read More

Ever seen Compiz/Beryl/XGL/AIGLX combined with Xinerama?

Sunday, 9 September 2007
I've never [image:2980 align="left" size="preview" hspace=4 vspace=2 border=0 class="showonplanet"] seen Xinerama combined with Compiz/Beryl/XGL (or AIGLX) in action. This morning, when checking out a printing-related blog, I stumbled upon a little YouTube video showing exactly that. It does look amazing indeed. Read More

OpenPrinting/LinuxFoundation: "Hiring for Implementing PDF Printing Workflow"

Saturday, 8 September 2007
Here is a recent announcement from the OpenPrinting workgroup, hosted by the Linux Foundation. It didn't receive any widespread publication, AFAICS. But it deserves to:   OpenPrinting/LinuxFoundation: "We are Hiring Students/Interns for Implementing the PDF Printing Workflow" Posted by: Till Kamppeter Date: August 29, 2007 09:08AM Read More

klik2 Development: A First Screencast with First Results

Thursday, 30 August 2007
+++ klik development taken up some speed, progressing rather nicely now +++ stop +++ currently working on version 2 of klik client/runtime environment +++ stop +++ moved all development activities to Google-Code +++ stop +++ klik2 will no longer use shell/bash for the client runtime code, but python +++ stop +++ loopmount from klik1 (with all its limits and (f)ugliness) is gone -- fusemount is the new king +++ stop +++ klik1 did binary-patch away absolute paths embedded in its images -- klik2 will use completely unmodified .rpm and .deb and .tgz packages as ingredients +++ stop +++ klik1 expected to be run on a debian-etch-alike host linux system -- klik2 will run on any distro that complies to the lsb 3.(1?) specification +++ stop +++ klik1 mixed commandline with gui components (xdialog, kdialog, zenity) in one single bash script -- klik2 will sport a clean commandline interface and expose an API to write "native" gui frontends (Gtk, Qt, KDE, Tcl/Tk, PyKDE, PyQt, ncurses,... $whatever) +++ stop +++ klik1 was alpha, proof-of-concept, ugly, hack-ish... software, but worked (if the recipe maintainer found time to do his job) -- klik2 will become stable, polished, cleanly designed... and will work even better (and therefore attract more recipe maintainers, with more time too :-)  ) ++++ ++++ first screencast of current klik2 in action (proofing how cool, easy-to-use and 'grandma-safe' klik2 will be once it is ready) in a Google klik2 Video (58 seconds) ++++ Read More

It's 'Hardy Heron'... not 'Hungry Hungry Hippo'

Wednesday, 29 August 2007
So... the world is made to know already what Ubuntu 8.04 will be named: it's 'Hardy Heron'. This choice has a good and a bad side to it. First the good one: it made me dicionary-lookup the 'heron' word (and stealthily confirm the 'hardy' one, since I wasn't completely sure about its meaning any more). Read More

My Application of the Day: Kochizz for Apache2 Configuration

Wednesday, 29 August 2007
My Application of the Day: Kochizz for Apache2 Configuration My application discovery of the day (well of the yesterday, to be more precise), is Kochizz. Kochizz is a Qt4-based GUI tool to get to grips with the Apache2 configuration. Read More

No OOXML!

Wednesday, 29 August 2007
Y'all are aware of the current frenzied push by Microsoft to whip their OOXML file format (used for MS Office 2007, described on some 8.000 printed A4 pages) through the ISO 'fast track' standardization process to make it a 'standard'. Read More

'Progress' in Afghanistan...

Monday, 13 August 2007
It seems to be an undisputed fact, that Afghanistan in 2007 no longer exports much raw opium at all. "Good", you'll probably say. "That is because the Western troops now have chased the Taliban back into the mountains. The fight to bring democracy and Western culture to this backward country finally seems to show promising results." Read More

Wanted: volunteer to create VMWare images for klik development

Thursday, 9 August 2007
klik developers are looking for one or more volunteer(s) to create (and possibly maintain) VMWare images that can be used with VMWare player (and possibly other 'virtualized OS' players) for klik bundle development and testing. Read More

klik2 discussions inspire Alexander Larsson (Redhat/Gnome) to publish 'glick'

Tuesday, 7 August 2007
My last blog outlining some of the upcoming klik2 goodness has attracted some rather surprising readers -- and even seems to have inspired some to do their own brainwork and come up with ideas how to implement the base paradigm of "1 application == 1 file" even more elegantly, and with less dependencies. Read More

klik2 is coming closer -- check it out :-)

Saturday, 4 August 2007
I'll show you the current mount table of my openSUSE notebook: 02:25 lnx5000:~ > mount /dev/hda1 on / type ext3 (rw,acl,user_xattr) fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw) proc on /proc type proc (rw) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw) debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw) udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620,gid=5) /dev/hda6 on /home type ext3 (rw,acl,user_xattr) securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) /dev/hdc on /media/InfoStream7.5.00 type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,noatime,uid=1000,utf8) fusecram on /tmp/app/4/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fusecram on /tmp/app/5/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fuseiso on /tmp/app/6/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fusecram on /tmp/app/7/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fusecram on /tmp/app/8/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fusecram on /tmp/app/9/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fusecram on /tmp/app/10/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fusecram on /tmp/app/11/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fusecram on /tmp/app/12/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fusecram on /tmp/app/13/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fusecram on /tmp/app/14/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fuseiso on /tmp/app/15/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fusecram on /tmp/app/16/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fuseiso on /tmp/app/17/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fuseiso on /tmp/app/18/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fuseiso on /tmp/app/19/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fuseiso on /tmp/app/20/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) fuseiso on /tmp/app/21/mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kurt) Read More

Ghostscript 8.60 is out! It's merged with CUPS' ESP Ghostscript! It's cool! We want packages!

Friday, 3 August 2007
...or: Why has no consumer distro been providing updated packages for Ghostscript for more than a year? It's been more than a year that artofcode LLC and its lead developer, Raph Levien have revealed that bleeding egde Ghostscript will no longer be AFPL licensed, but will switch its Subversion-held development tree to the GPLv2 license. Read More

oKular without PDF support (for me)

Thursday, 2 August 2007
My freshly installed kde4-okular package (grabbed from the openSUSE build service repository, using the 'smart' package management tool) seems to be without PDF support. It doesn't even display PDFs for selection in the FileOpen dialog. Cheating the filter line, by entering *.pdf makes the files show up -- but open they don't ("unsupported format"). Read More

"In Iraq there are now more foreign mercenaries than regular troops. With a license to kill."

Wednesday, 6 June 2007
According to this commentary in the online version of The Independent, there are now more hired mercenaries in Iraq than there are regular US and UK troops. Of course, information about this practice is not officially released by any government: instead, the mercenaries are very often called "security contractors", "civilian operatives", or "reconstruction workers". The author of the commentary says: "Britain alone has 21,000 in the country, raking in $1.6bn a year." American mercenary companies such as Blackwater seem to take a big slice of that particular business cake too. They seem to hire men from around the globe to fill in their vacancies, including many from third world contries such as Colombia. I don't expect you to read the full article now. But keep in mind to make up for that leeway, next time you watch some TV news about a topic like "Again 3 US civilians reported to have been kidnapped and killed in Iraq"....

Questions about Beryl, Compiz, KDE4 and KDE 3.5.6

Wednesday, 11 April 2007
I'm sure I will be using KDE 3.5.6 for most of my personal Linux time over the next few months. And I'm evenly sure I want to follow the KDE4 developments (esp. regarding KDEPrint). But I'm also curious to have another look at Beryl and Compiz. (I'll certainly not be using it for any length of time -- last time I had a look, about a year ago, my head was dizzy from all the wobbly-ness of the windows moving, and the bottle-genie-ness of windows minimizing+maximizing; however, I'm looking for some cool 'demo-ware' to impress and make envy my collegues if I happen to give a scheduled presentation to them coming June...) Read More

Cool and Uncool

Tuesday, 10 April 2007
My Cool Discovery of Today: A few days ago a few little known Chinese friends of KDE must have translated the "Getting Started/Build/KDE4"-page on the TechBase wiki into Chinese ("zh_CN"; AFAIK, this is the "Simplified Chinese" as used on mainland China). My Uncool (but Confirmed) Apprehension of Today: On one system (not mine) where I tried it, Konqueror can't print nor print-preview the page correctly; while Firefox on the same system *can* (should I say: "...of course"?!) do it... So don't tell me "You don't have the Chinese fonts on that system -- they need to be installed". See also.... Read More

I'm now the proud owner of a semi-b0rken HP nx5000 notebook

Tuesday, 10 April 2007
So I now have a semi-working notebook for private Linux/KDE purposes again. May be able to build my own version (and follow the development of KDE(4)) again.... Paid 150.- EUR. Got it with a 120 GByte harddisk. It's a HP nx5000 model (same thing as 30 participants of aKademy 2005 [Ludwigsburg] may be familiar with). But it came with a specific, known kaputt-ness: Read More

My openSUSE-10.2 adventure starts...

Tuesday, 10 April 2007
The notebook mentioned in my last blog: yesterday it got an openSUSE-10.2 installation completed. What tempted me most in favor of openSUSE, was that I had read about their "build service", and that they offer regularly updated KDE4 snapshot RPMs from there, which possibly can save me lots of compile time while I familiarize myself again what's current with KDE developments. Read More

"No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch"

Sunday, 1 April 2007
Not an April Fool's day article. Appeared yesterday. In the British Guardian:   "No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch" Read More

sidux -- a new star in the Linux galaxy

Friday, 23 February 2007
Two days ago the first incarnation of sidux was released, code-named "Chaos". sidux is a desktop-oriented distribution. It comes as a Live CD based on the "unstable" branch of Debian, but is easily able to install onto harddisk from the running Live CD using a completely new graphical installer frontend. Read More

"Freesoftware Magazine" ditches PDF download version (and hides previous issues)

Wednesday, 7 February 2007
What a stupid idea! How shortsighted, to not consult with their readers beforehand! www.freesoftwaremagazine.com have announced that they will stop offering their publication as a PDF for download. Instead, they will go "online only".... Read More

Researching the state of PDF manipulation tools in the world of Free Software (2): PDFedit

Saturday, 27 January 2007
Yes, pinotree, PDFedit is one of the two applications I discovered a few weeks ago when I searched Google for PDF manipulation tools... :-) (I'm really curious if you'd know about the other one already -- but that's a few days away to blog about. Today is about PDFedit.) Read More

Researching the state of PDF manipulation tools in the world of Free Software (1)

Friday, 26 January 2007
Readers of my blog will know it already: Linux printing is geared to move towards PDF to make it its core spooling and job processing format. (This won't happen over night, and this won't make PostScript printing any harder, so don't worry). That was what the overall consensus was at last year's Linux Desktop Printing Summit in Atlanta, where developers from CUPS, Linuxprinting.org, FreeStandards.org, Freedesktop.org, OpenPrinting.org, OpenUsability.org, Ghostscript, Scribus, KDE, Gnome, Redhat, SUSE, Ricoh, Lanier, HP, Xerox, IBM, Mandriva, Debian, Mozilla and Sun sat together for 3 days, exchanged ideas and discussed how to move forward. Read More

Another piece of printing code that might be missing on KDE4...

Thursday, 25 January 2007
Over at the CUPS mailing lists/forums, an ongoing discussion thrashes out some changes that will affect the future of Linux desktop printing. One point is about the "Foomatic" drivers. This driver family is not "native" to CUPS -- Foomatic is a clever trick to plug Ghostscript as an add-on into the CUPS filtering system. So the question was, how could they blend into CUPS in a more harmoneous way? What could be done to not cause so many support calls for Easy Software Products complaining about Foomatic drivers, which they don't develop, and don't offer support for? (ESP is the company of Mike Sweet, the main CUPS author). Read More

"Decentralised Installation Systems"

Tuesday, 16 January 2007
Thomas Leonhard, author of Zero-Install, has written an excellent article about "Decentralised Installation Systems". I don't agree with every little detail of it, but it is definitely worth a read and worth some serious thoughts.

A Secret revealed: How to quick'n'dirty test for correct font embedding in print documents.

Tuesday, 16 January 2007
I decided to leak a far well-guarded secret. It is about quick'n'dirty-testing of font embedding in print files. Pay attention: I use kpdf as the KDEPrint "preview" application. By default, your system most likely uses kghostview. Read More

Bugzilla Cleanup ; KDE Printing Tips+Tricks ; KDEPrint in KDE4

Monday, 15 January 2007
It looks like one of the recurrent problems of people using KDEPrint's more advanced features is with "number-up" printing, combined with "print duplex when I have a simplex printer" (yes, you can turn the stack of paper round and feed it a second time through the printer; hope and pray it doesn't munch it). This then piles up like here: Read More

KDE bugzilla: bug #140006

Saturday, 13 January 2007
#140006: Yesterday I received an e-Mail from a user who asked to keep his name and affiliation confidential. He is involved in preparations for a rather large Windows --> Linux/KDE migration, involving several thousand workstations, most of them in a managed KIOSK environment. They'll not be ready before 12 months from now for the first serious rollout, but they are already testing with KDE 3.5.3. Once they are ready, he hopes to be able to use KDE 3.5.5 or 3.5.6 (should it ever happen). They'll *not* use KDE 4.0, even if it were released this autumn, and it will be at least 3 years before they'd ever consider to use any 4.0.x version. And here is what he said about KDEPrint: Read More

KDEPrint 'Junior Job': fix bug number 139882

Thursday, 11 January 2007
The last few days I ploughed through the KDEPrint bugs. This should serve the same purpose as outlined in my last blog entry: to make it more easy for the real coders to see the valid and important bugs (we're short of people who've enough time to work on KDEPrint code for KDE4). Read More

Want to help improve KDE? But you can't write code? Join the KDE Bugsquad!

Wednesday, 10 January 2007
Last weekend I took part in the "Konqueror Bugsquad Days". We had a few handful of KDE contributors taking part, AFAIK all of them non-C++/Qt coders. Knowing nearly nothing about HTML rendering, or JavaScript and what-not, I picked to sift through all bug reports that contained the string "print". Read More

klik://mailody

Monday, 25 December 2006
I've created a (quick'n'dirty) "klik recipe" for mailody 0.3 (using the SUSE 9.3 RPM made by Guru, to ensure maximum portability). Mailody embedded into one single file, mailody.cmg, with 430 kByte size, running on most current Linux systems; you can start the klik-ed mailody even from CD, or run it from a USB stick.... I tested the new bundle on a SUSE-10.0 and on a Debian Sid system, and it works for both. So chances are, that it works also on most other systems out there (Of course, they need the kdelibs and Qt installed)! So if you wanna run a quick'n'clean test of mailody, just visit the klik page for mailody and click on that blue round button with the klik://mailody -link.... Remember, you need the klik client installed to run klik .cmg files. This is a 30 second affair: just run "wget klik.atekon.de/client/install -O -|sh" and follow instructions. See also the klik User's FAQ for any questions you may have about klik.

klik service gaining new features (adding some more user friendliness)

Thursday, 21 December 2006
probono [image:2591 align="left" hspace=3 vspace=6 border=3 width=150] has added a few cool hacks to the klik server. One is that all package recipes which are auto-created from the Debian repositories and klik's "server side apt" do now display version numbers. So if you browse the klik recipe repository, you'll now see how much net load you'll get in a minute :-) Read More

"Opera widgets" are cool... (Or: klik bundle of Opera 9.1 weekly snapshot available)

Saturday, 16 December 2006
This evening I've created a new klik recipe, for Opera 9.1. It makes the klik client fetch from Opera's download site their current weekly snapshot of the upcoming 9.1 release and transform it into a typical "1 application == 1 file == 1 click to download+run" klik bundle. Read More

OpenOffice.org 2.1 released... But where can I get packages for SuSE 9.1? Or even for SUSE 10.0? *NOW*, I mean !!

Wednesday, 13 December 2006
Diary entry for Dec 12, 2006. OpenOffice.org version 2.1 has been released. 1st Question: Is there available, or will there be a suitable OOo 2.1 RPM package for my good ol' SuSE 9.1 box? 1st Answer: No, there is none, and most likely there will never be one. SuSE/Novell don't support that "old" system any longer. 1st Solution: Download probono's ready-made klik package from the klik website and use this. Works like a charm for me, on SuSE 9.1. 1st Consequences, (I): Makes me loudly shout "Cool!" and "Great..." and "Oh look! They've improved their PDF export here!" 1st Consequences, (II): My guttural noises poke my collegue's curiosity, who now starts to look on the web for native packages of his Linux test system. Read More

Princess Diana evesdropped by U.S. on night of death; UK gov used UK soldier Guinea pigs in ChemWar experiments

Monday, 11 December 2006
In recent months I acquired a habit of poking around from time to time on the Guardian/Observer website. Here is a collection of info atoms I picked up today: Read More

FBI can spy on you by remotely turning on your cellphone mic (even if it is powered down)

Sunday, 10 December 2006
Did you know that the FBI (and therefore, the CIA, and probably most police and secret service organisations around the world), have technology to remotely turn on your cell phone microphone to listen to you and all conversations around you? The technique even has a name: 'roving bug'. Read More

klik news: presentation at LSB packaging meeting; experiments with 'Plash'

Sunday, 10 December 2006
probono last week gave a presentation to the participants of the LSB packaging meeting, which took place in Berlin (hosted by SAP). His slides are available on the klik website. Read More

"How many Microsofties does it take to implement the OFF menu?"

Sunday, 26 November 2006
An interesting read: Joel Spolsky argues that too many choices lead to user unhappiness and looks at the Windows Vista "OFF" feature as an example. In a response on his own blog, former Microsoft programmer (now Google employee) Moishe Lettvin who worked on exactly that part of Vista for a year describes how the development process inside Microsoft worked for his group. Read More

"Samba Team Asks Novell to Reconsider"

Monday, 13 November 2006
Quote (incomplete): "For Novell to make this deal shows a profound disregard for the relationship that they have with the Free Software community. We are, in essence, their suppliers, and Novell should know that they have no right to make self serving deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community." For complete statement, visit http://news.samba.org/announcements/team_to_novell/. Read More

If Novell and Microsoft were in the car production and sales business....

Friday, 10 November 2006
Look at it this way for a moment: If I, as an end-user, bought a car from Ford, that does indeed contain technology infringing some patent owned by DaimlerChrysler -- would there by any likelyhood that Ford would sue me, the end-user? However, if I, as an end-user, buy a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, that *may* contain (well, it doesn't, and never will, as Novell strongly reassures me) software patented technology owned by Microsoft -- would there be any likelyhood that Microsoft would sue me, the end-user? Let's do a little thought experiment. Read More

Microsoft Director says "Joint or Separate - The Content Matters"

Friday, 10 November 2006
Jason Matusow, Microsoft's Senior Director for IP and Interoperability, emailed me to point to his blog entry. There he responded to my own one that hints to the fact that Novell calls a "joint letter to the Open Source Community from Novell and Microsoft" a document that Microsoft calls "An Open Letter to the Community from Novell". Read More

Groklaw + the Microsoft/Novell Non-Aggession Pact

Wednesday, 8 November 2006
Novell has published some more details about their recent business agreement(s) with Microsoft. This time it is about some financial details involved. (Looks like they are required by law to reveal these details to the SEC.) Read More

"How they stole the 2006 mid-term election" (Reading Recommendation #1)

Tuesday, 7 November 2006
Today's reading recommendation #1. Extracts: HOW THEY STOLE THE 2006 MID-TERM ELECTION by Greg Palast, for The Guardian (UK), Monday November 6, 2006 Here's how the 2006 mid-term election was stolen. Note the past tense. And I'm not kidding. And shoot me for saying this, but it won't be stolen by jerking with the touch-screen machines (though they'll do their nasty part). While progressives panic over the viral spread of suspect computer black boxes, the Karl Rove-bots have been tunneling into the vote vaults through entirely different means. For six years now, our investigations team, at first on assignment for BBC TV and the Guardian, has been digging into the nitty-gritty of the gaming of US elections. We've found that November 7, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy. Four and a half million votes have been shoplifted. Here's how they'll do it, in three easy steps: Theft #1: Registrations gone with the wind On January 1, 2006, while America slept off New Year's Eve hangovers, a new federal law crept out of the swamps that has devoured 1.9 million votes, overwhelmingly those of African-Americans and Hispanics. The vote-snatching statute is a cankerous codicil slipped into the 2002 Help America Vote Act — strategically timed to go into effect in this mid-term year. It requires every state to reject new would-be voters whose identity can't be verified against a state verification database. Sounds arcane and not too threatening. But look at the numbers and you won't feel so fine. About 24.3 million Americans attempt to register or re-register each year. The New York University Law School's Brennan Center told me that, under the new law, Republican Secretaries of State began the year by blocking about one in three new voters. How? To begin with, Mr. Bush's Social Security Administration has failed to verify 47% of registrants. After appeals and new attempts to register, US Elections Assistance Agency statistics indicate 1.9 million would-be voters will still find themselves barred from the ballot on Tuesday. [....]        ( ----> more) Read More

"Steal Back Your Vote" (Reading Recommendation #2)

Tuesday, 7 November 2006
Today's reading recommendation #2. Extracts: Steal Back Your Vote Published by Greg Palast November 6th, 2006 in his blog A lot of advice we're getting from our progressive friends is to take photos of your ballot and silly stuff like that. Well, that's all about how to complain after they steal it. I have a better idea: Win, don't whine. The regime's sneak attack via vote suppression [see, "How They Stole the Mid-Term Election"] will only net them about 4.5 million votes. You should be able to beat that blindfolded. As that will cost about 5% of the vote. That means you can't win with 51% of the vote anymore. So just get over it. If you can't get the 55% you need for regime change, then you're just a bunch of crybaby pussycats who don't deserve to take charge. #1: Vote Early, Vote Often Vote today — at early voting stations — so you can spend tomorrow bringing out others to vote. Also, if you're challenged, you've got another day to bring in more ID or scream bloody murder to your county elections board about your missing registration. #2: Gang Vote Arrive with five! Never go bowling, make love or vote alone. And volunteer at get-out-the-vote operations. It's worth it just for the stale donuts, cold coffee and hot democracy. #3: Tell Them to Take Their Provisional Ballot and... If they try to hand you a "provisional ballot," scream bloody murder. If there's a problem with your ID or registration, demand adjudication from a poll monitor, come back with proper ID, or demand appeal to the county supervisor of elections. But don't just walk away. If it's provisional or nothing, take it — then return for the count to defend it. [....]        ( ----> more) Read More

Current predicitons for U.S. elections

Tuesday, 7 November 2006
Current predictions for new U.S. Senate and Congress after tomorrow's (Tuesday) elections, based on some polls: Read More

"Julius Caesar had Gaul; Bush just has gall"

Sunday, 5 November 2006
Don't you love it if a Brit with a good command over the subtleties of the English language takes on his U.S. friends? Here is a hilarious piece (of satire?, of drawing historic analogies?) by Terry Jones in The Observer (UK): "In 59BC, Julius Caesar declared he was so shocked by the incursions of the dangerous Helvetii tribe into Gaul, and the suffering of the Gaulish peoples, that he had himself appointed 'protector of the Gauls'. By the time he'd finished protecting them, a million Gauls were dead, another million enslaved and Julius Caesar owned most of Gaul. Now I'm not suggesting there is any similarity between George W Bush's protection of the Iraqi people and Caesar's protection of the Gauls." "[Cesar] desperately needed a military victory to boost his standing in Rome and give him the necessary popular base to seize power." "George W Bush, on the other hand, [....] didn't need to boost his popularity, because the popular vote had nothing to do with his getting into power in the first place."   (full text here)

Hell Freezing Over?

Sunday, 5 November 2006
Yes, on first look it may appear so. No, not because Microsoft now pays lots of $$$ to Novell for 70,000 SLES support vouchers each year (making it the single biggest distributor of SUSE products). But because the NeoCon cabal seems to leave the sinking ship of the Bush Administration. Read More

Novell, Microsoft: Now which is it -- a "joint" letter signed by both of you guys, or one solely written by Novell?

Sunday, 5 November 2006
UPDATE: Meanwhile, the difference in the headings of the "Joint Letter to the Open Source Community" (described below) is gone. (Screenshots of original versions linked in the comment by RangerRick, below). Microsoft updated their respective webpage and now uses the same heading as Novell uses. Looks like this change is due to this blog entry :-) While we are still a good few days away from a daily need to seriously watch out for arial pork (so that they don't shit on our heads), nevertheless strange things are happening already. Just look at this headline: "Fox marries chicken; honeymoon to be spent in henhouse." Naah, just kidding... Read More

A shameful sellout of Linux to Microsoft by Novell? I tend to say "Yes"

Saturday, 4 November 2006
Meanwhile I read a bit more about the Microsoft <--> Novell cooperation deal. Hell, what an utterly shameful sell-out! In essence, Novell (and the guys leading it, Ron Hovespian & Co.) have defacto acknowledged that Linux violates Microsoft patents. They bought themselves (as a company) some exclusive "peaceful co-existence" (limited to 5 years from now) with the Evil Empire of Global Software Monopoly. Read More

Breaking News: Microsoft now loves Novell -- Reason To Be Concerned?

Friday, 3 November 2006
My head is dizzy from seeing all the current news about "Microsoft ♥♥♥♥s Novell". Had no time to carefully read all the stuff. What struck my eyes was this sentence: Read More

Tales from Google, The Big Labels, YouTube and all them poor, li''le artist souls....

Friday, 3 November 2006
Some interesting details from the Google/YouTube deal. I had already suspected some maneuverings along these lines, but preferred to not say anything. Now that others have gone public, lemme chime in..... Read More

"World now at the mercy of the sanity and honesty of the President of the United States"

Thursday, 19 October 2006
The 17th of this month was a historic day. The US President has now acquired un-controlled, despotic powers. Everybody can be declared "an unlawful enemy combatant". Everybody! US inhabitant or not. Innocent or not. Without ever seeing a judge or a court. Just because the President deems so. And if that happens, you'll be defenseless against torture. Because that's is now legal too. The bill has been rubber-stamped by the Congress, with only minimal opposition by some democrats. Read More

"The Internet Is Not A Big Truck -- It's A Series Of Tubes!"

Monday, 2 October 2006
You, the reader of this blog being an internet user: I have a question for you. Have you ever heard about the topic of "Net Neutrality"? If not, you may want to google for it... Read More

Bush Preparing For Nuclear Bombing Of Iran?

Tuesday, 26 September 2006
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Reagan administration treasure secretary, has written an article Why Bush Will Nuke Iran. It's scary. Read it. (Will it be possible to offset these plans? Who will block the Neocons' rampage?) Read More

USA plans to attack Iran from October 21st ?

Friday, 22 September 2006
Are the USA planning to attack Iran? According to news stories, the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships is prepared to head for Iran's western coast. The ships include the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship. Naval forces already received their formal PTDOs ('prepare to deploy orders') with a date set for being ready to go at October 1st: Read More

The Future Of Cybersex (== The Present Of All Media Outlets?)

Wednesday, 20 September 2006
My first thoughts were: "This is hilarious! Too hilarious to be true..." Here is what I read: "With the slimming feature, anyone can appear more slender -- instantly." Yes, that's right: it says "appear", not "become". So this is not a TV ad for slimming pills or other chemistry. This is marketing for modern digital photographic technology -- on the very homepage of a well-known company. Go to hp.com and read more: Read More

"Top 25 Censored Stories"

Monday, 18 September 2006
Have you ever heard about Project Censored? That project is "a media research group out of Sonoma State University" in California. And it's again that time of the year when it publishes its annual "Top 25 Censored Stories" (attaching the number "2007" to it, for whatever reason). Read More

Google to be eavesdropping on my notebook soon ... and other conspiracy theories

Tuesday, 5 September 2006
If more stuff like this emerges on the surface of news stories over the next few months, I'll be one of the next convert candidates to subscribe to some of the more "sensible" conspiration theories out there. One of them being, that the three (!) World Trade Center skyscrapers (WTC1 - 110 storeys, WTC2 - 110 storeys, WTC7 - 47 storeys) which came down in practically free-fall speed 5 years ago on 9/11, having turned 99% of their builtin concrete into very fine dust powder even long before hitting the ground... can't have been killed by a Kerosin fire alone (unless Allah changed some fundamental laws of Physics for that day),   but   rather   by   some   other,   frequently   operated   third   party   technology   ... as hinted to by some Ground Zero cleanup pictures as well. Read More

Printing labels with KDE (!)

Friday, 11 August 2006
Today Cristian blogged about a (good) article on Linux.com dealing with label printing on Linux. But despite all the good info contained in that piece, there is an extremely disappointing aspect to it: that article misses to even mention in passing the leading application for printing labels on Linux. It is a KDE application. Its name is kbarcode. Their homepage has some enlightinging screenshots. It comes with a good documentation. Why, oh, why is it that some of the most shining gems that were grown in the KDE ecosystem do not enjoy any good visibility in the wider software world? And what's even worse: why do some not even have any visibility in the somewhat "inbreed" Open Source / Free Software szene?? Read More

Ubuntu's "No Open Ports!" policy questioned by Avahi developer

Thursday, 27 July 2006
Thanks, Lennart! Very well written pleading. Avahi is not the only victim. Ubuntu's "no ports open!"-policy has (along with some other, similar decisions) also badly hurt CUPS, and considerably reduced out-of-the-box usability and comfort for users. Read More

How to publish certain facts... and keep them out of public awareness at the same time

Tuesday, 25 July 2006
Actually, I've now saved (as a web archive file) that Daily Mail news story mentioned in my previos blog entries. Just in case it "disappears" again. Or gets modified. From the beginning, it was already so well hidden even on the publishing website, that I was unable to find it by following a link from Daily Mail's portal page. Unless you knew and followed a direct link you'll never be aware of its existence. The story clearly isn't pushed by anyone, but rather played down. But see, we have a democracy, and whoever doubts that can easily be pointed to the fact that the incident indeed has been published. It was just that the electorate was not interested in it, and therefore we had to put other material on the front page..... Read More

Un-be-lie-va-ble. British transport of radioactive material destined for Iranian military confiscated in Bulgaria.

Monday, 24 July 2006
A British lorry transporting radioactive material has been confiscated in Bulgaria at the border to Rumania on Saturday. The radiating load contained lots of Caesium 137 and Americium-Beryllium which can be used to build a "dirty bomb". It arouse the suspicion of border guards only because its radiation level was 2000 times above the normal. The shipment was destined for and addressed to the Iranian Ministery of Defense (!). It seemed to have had an official export approval by British authorities ("Department of Trade and Industry"). Un-be-lie-va-ble. Read More

Wondering about that unbelievable news story....

Monday, 24 July 2006
Following the news story about the unsuccessfull British shipment (stopped in Bulgaria) of radioactive material to the Iranian military (useful also to build a "dirty bomb"), of course a lot of questions come to mind, such as: Read More

Recommendations to (K)Ubuntu Dapper users: How to restore an uncrippled CUPS [3: network printer discovery with SNMP]

Monday, 26 June 2006
[3] Enabling network printer auto-discovery (with new "snmp" backend of CUPS 1.2) My last two blog entries explained.... ...how Ubuntu users can restore the CUPS web interface to full functionality, and ...how Ubuntu user can re-enable the client-side printer browsing so they may automatically discover and use printers shared by CUPS servers on the network. This one will deal with restoring network printer auto-discovery goodness into their CUPS installation. Read More

Recommendations to (K)Ubuntu Dapper users: How to restore an uncrippled CUPS [2: client side printer browsing]

Saturday, 24 June 2006
[2] Restoring the client side CUPS printer browsing ability My last blog entry outlined how Ubuntu users can restore the CUPS web interface to full functionality. The next one will explain how they can setup network printer auto-discovery goodness into their CUPS installation, a feature that was artificially crippled by their distro's packagers. This one investigates the "printer browsing" settings presented by Ubuntu, and demonstrates how to set them back to a fully functional (and more secure) mode. [image:2120 align="right" size="preview" hspace=4 vspace=2 border=0 class="showonplanet"] Read More

Recommendations to (K)Ubuntu Dapper users: How to restore an uncrippled CUPS [1: web interface admin functions]

Friday, 23 June 2006
[1] Restoring the CUPS web interface admin functions (K)Ubuntu Dapper maintainers have crippled the CUPS 1.2 web interface. If you open http://localhost:631/ (link only works if you have CUPS up and running) you'll even get notified about it: Read More

Recommendations to (K)Ubuntu Dapper users: How to restore an uncrippled CUPS [0]

Sunday, 18 June 2006
In recent months I wrote various blog entries (no, they were rather "rants", and even tagged as such; [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]) dealing with Ubuntu's crippled CUPS 1.2 configuration. (I'm not complaining about the feedback -- but I was rather surprised how many emails on that topic I received; also how high a number of abusing messages by anonymous writers sought to annoy me. Seems (K)Ubuntu followers have a higher ratio of "fanboy" type users than most other distros... :-) ). Read More

AFPL Ghostscript 8.54 released -- and 8.54 is now GPL'd as well!

Thursday, 15 June 2006
Boy, did I nearly miss the news! Was it because of the soccer world championship? Anyway, the news rocks. I wonder why it was not picked up by any of the major news sites. (Heh... I'm sure they will now.) Read More

[UPDATE] How Dapper LTS Succeeded To Spoil CUPS Printing (Part Three -- Installed on Harddisk)

Tuesday, 6 June 2006
Update: Debian packager Adeodato Simo wrote a comment to my previous blog entry, establishing as a fact that the instructions in the README.Debian.gz file in fact where not added by "upstream Debian" (as someone in #kubuntu tried to suggest to me). Isaac Clarencia confirmed to me (also in IRC, in channel #nx), that Debian does not disable the CUPS web interface. He installed a CUPS 1.2.1 from "testing" and found it fully functional. Given these facts, I personally think it very misleading conduct by the Ubuntu packagers (I don't suspect intentional dishonesty), to add 2 paragraphs into the README.Debian.gz file that is signed by Debian packager Jeff Licquia without making obvious who added the modifications. Read More

How Dapper LTS Succeeded To Spoil CUPS Printing (Part Three -- Installed on Harddisk)

Tuesday, 6 June 2006
I installed Kubuntu Dapper now from the Live CD to the harddisk. The hardware is very "low end": Intel P IV 1.80 GHz, 256 MByte RAM, 20 GByte HD. But it should be good enough to check the printing capabilities of Dapper, and see how the packagers modified the CUPS setup away from how CUPS.org's defaults. After all, the complaints and calls for help I received must have a reason... Read More

NEXT: Testing CUPS 1.2.1 Preview Packages for Dapper

Tuesday, 6 June 2006
Since I also got pinged on IRC yesterday by one of the Ubuntu print software packagers; I'll continue tomorrow with investigating a newer package version. He told me he had built new CUPS 1.2.1 packages for testing, and I agreed to look closely at them and report back. I'll download those and continue my testing (and ranting) based on these packages. Read More

How Dapper LTS Succeeded To Spoil CUPS Printing (Part Two -- The Live CD)

Saturday, 3 June 2006
Kubuntu Dapper CD download finished now. Took long enough to complete.... I'm booting one of the spare machines here in the office, a very cheap desktop workstation (Intel P IV 1.80 GHz, 256 MByte RAM, 20 GByte HD) into a full KDE 3.5.2 desktop system right now... Read More

How Dapper LTS Succeeded To Spoil CUPS Printing (Part One -- The Prelude)

Friday, 2 June 2006
Yesterday (K)Ubuntu Dapper was released. The final version. I'm sure it is a great release, and most users will find it highly satisfactory for all their needs. However, this blog is not all huggin' 'n luvin' for Dapper. It is a rant. I want this to be a wake-up call. It will sound negative to most of you. So be it.... Read More

"Moving to PDF as a future print job spooling format" (linux.com)

Wednesday, 19 April 2006
Linux.com today published my article "Moving to PDF as a future print job spooling format". It's already generating some feedback.... Currently I'm writing down some more notes which may eventually crystalize into a series of articles. Each one will deal with one of the topics I outlined in my last blog entry. Not sure were I'll publish all of these; probably also here (I can't imagine there is a Linux-leaning news site out there that would run a series of boring printing articles over 4-6 weeks). Read More

SVS, a klik-alike application for the Windows OS?

Sunday, 16 April 2006
It looks like the general idea of klik has come to the MS Windows world now too. I mean the idea of klik (or of Apple's AppDirs, if you want) how to handle software programs: namely, as by and large self-contained units that bring along all their direct dependencies within one single entity; units that are easy to relocate to a USB stick or to a CD-RW medium without a need for any installation process; units that maintain the ability to instantly run from any different place they might be saved to. Read More

A first summary of topics discussed at OSDL Desktop Linux Printing Summit

Saturday, 15 April 2006
Exhausted, but happy about the work we've done I'm now back in Stuttgart. I have attended the 3 intensive days of discussions and work that were the Desktop Linux Printing Summit, jointly organized by OSDL (John Cherry) and Linuxprinting.org (Till Kamppeter). It was held in Atlanta, hosted by Lanier at their Education Center. The hosting was made possible by Uli Wehner. Uli is one of Lanier's senior support and testing engineers (responsible for Lanier's ever-growing business of non-Windows system printing); he is also quite active on the Linuxprinting.org user support forums. Read More

Help! KDEPrint on KDE-3.x will break with CUPS-1.2 (or with 1.3 at the latest)!

Monday, 3 April 2006
I'm suffering from another CUPS+KDE frustration right now. Today I learned that there are two bug reports in our bugzilla which I had missed to see before. They were submitted by Mike Sweet from CUPS. See yourself: #115891 and #124157. The first one was submitted last November, the other one a few days ago. Read More

Frustrations with Kubuntu Dapper Flight 6 and how it handles CUPS 1.2svn

Sunday, 2 April 2006
A few weeks ago, Jonathan had asked me on IRC in passing why kprinter and KDEPrint 3.5.1 didn't work with CUPS-1.2. My reply had been like "CUPS-1.2 hasn't even released an alpha or beta tarball -- w.t.h. does Ubuntu Dapper plan to include an SVN version of a piece of core software which has a yet unknown release date??" Of course, this is not Jonathan's personal field of work -- Kubuntu just inherits the CUPS version and setup which the Ubuntu main developers decided for. Read More

Playing with Opera9's "Widgets"

Saturday, 25 March 2006
I should have been doing some serious work during the last 30 minutes, but.... ...I came across this weekend's Opera9 build (no. 181) and decided to make a new klik (*) recipe for it. Read More

How to simulate a slow network (after all, QT_FLUSH_PAINT=1 doesn't work with Qt3)

Friday, 24 March 2006
I think it is time to reveal a nifty little tool that I like to simulate a slow network connection, even without a network. It is called "tc" (think "traffic control") and is present on every modern Linux system. It is part of the "iproute" or "iproute2" package. Read More

Xara releases sources for GPL'd Xara LX

Sunday, 19 March 2006
The vector graphics package Xara Xtreme so far was only available for Windows. Back in October, the Xara company announced the porting of its flagship product to Linux and Mac OS X. Not only that -- the complete source code should become available, and subject to the GPL license. But at the time they consoled hopes for an immediate release to a later date. Read More

iPod marketing (how someone else could have done it)

Wednesday, 15 March 2006
This is a hilariously good movie -- apparently from inside Microsoft. It outlines how MS would have marketed the iPod "the MS way". It is meant to be self-joking about the company's own marketeers; and indeed it is.:-) Read More

klik://amarok-svn-nightly is pulled and currently no longer available

Sunday, 5 March 2006
amarok is a really great piece of KDE software. Its ever increasing popularity also led it to be one of the favorite and most frequently klik-ed packages of users. The nightly builds from SVN were gaining really enthusiastic user comments. Read More

New klik Packages for Edutainment: kdeedu and gcompris

Thursday, 2 March 2006
Some of our recent additions to the klik recipe database are real little gems. No, I'm not talking about the various KOffice-1.5.0 Beta 1 bundles (which will soon be updated to give you an easy way to testdrive and bug triage Beta 2). Read More

klik://wesnoth-latest <-- now updated to 1.1.1

Wednesday, 8 February 2006
hmmm... not sure if I should really leak it. Because it is totally untested. I've currently only a remote connection from a Windows/PuTTy box to a SUSE Linux server with no FreeNX or NX server installed. So I couldn't test it. But I used isaac's Debian packages (not knowing if they are for Sarge or for Sid -- I'm assuming Sid) to update the klik://wesnoth-latest recipe. Previously it built a Wesnoth 1.0 klik image -- meaning it wasn't really "*-latest". Now it builds a 1.1.1 image -- it is really latest! :-) Read More

klik-ing KOffice-1.5.0 Beta (the most easy way to testdrive it)

Tuesday, 7 February 2006
I've been busy with the KOffice-1.5.0 Beta klik packages. Most of the initial b0rkenness is gone now: missing dependencies, differently named libraries on different distros, etc. Thanks to isaac (who built Debian Sarge compatible .debs (for Sarge as well as for Sid) and who tries to update them from time to time too), klik and Debian users have access to well done (yet unofficial) packages. Here is the list of klik links: Read More

Nice Marcel Gagne article on klik

Saturday, 17 December 2005
Marcel Gagne published a very nice, and well written article about klik. This piles onto the stack of recent klik publicity (canllaith has an extended piece in the current TUX magazine, which even made it into the major headline on the frontpage). I found only very few things I could nitpick about. Go read it, if you are not yet familiar with klik. Read More

klik: real-time feedback is re-enabled

Sunday, 11 December 2005
[image:1671 align="right" hspace=4 vspace=4 border=0 width="407" class="showonplanet"] The weekend has seen some more work on klik. probono has re-enabled the nice "give-us-some-feedback-after-first-run" feature. It means that a kdialog (or an Xdialog or zenity equivalent) will pop up after you run a klik recipe for the first time, asking you for some feedback. After you filled it in and clicked "OK", you'll immediately see it has gone live on the klik server if you visit the user feedback page. Read More

klik wins "Linux Format Hottest Pick" award

Saturday, 10 December 2005
We got notified from the Linux Format (a printed magazine sold in UK newspaper stands) that they give their Hottest Pick award to klik. -- Woooohoo! The January 06 edition carries a 1-page article about klik, which is a very nice read. (bfree bought the thingie at probono's request and made a scan available to us). Read More

Try klik://thunderbird15-tabbed (and vote for bug #117808)

Friday, 9 December 2005
One of my long standing feature requests now seems to come true: tabbed email processing. Not with Kontact or KMail, though. It is with Thunderbird. But it is not yet in the official release. It is just a patch, created by Thunderbird hacker Myk Melez. Two days ago he blogged about it. Read More

klik://troubleshooting

Sunday, 20 November 2005
Another two section for the klik User's FAQ done today. This time "Troubleshooting" and "Tipps + Tricks". Enjoy. Troubleshooting Read More

klik://basesystem

Saturday, 12 November 2005
Continuing with the klik User's FAQ today. This time: the sections dealing with "klik and the Base System", "klik and Package Management", "klik Application Wishlist" and "klik Recipe Maintainers". -- Today's local preview: Read More

klik://usage

Friday, 11 November 2005
klik User's FAQ continued. Today the "Usage" section: Usage Read More

klik://scope

Tuesday, 8 November 2005
klik User's FAQ work continued. Today "Scope" section. The IT and Linux press is slowly becoming aware of klik. They visit us in #klik, ask questions, write us e-mails, want interviews, request articles, publish articles themselves. Like the nice one that is currently on Linux.com (even picked up by OSnews). -- Today's local preview: Read More

klik User's FAQ: "Installation" and "File Format" chapters

Monday, 7 November 2005
Work on the klik User's FAQ continued. This morning I completed the "Installation" section. This evening followed the "File Format" one. The plan to add at least one new section each day during the next two weeks so far is met. It will be hard to stay on target, because lots of distractions are scheduled already, and multiple days where I'm not sure to be able to be online. -- Today's local preview: Read More

klik://amarok-svn-nightly

Monday, 7 November 2005
Bonus not-FAQ: Q: What is the cool klik-ification of the week?? A: Without even the slightest doubt, this would be klik://amarok-svn-nightly. There are input ingredients to the recipe: Eean provides these, Debian Sarge packages. He builds them every night from current amarok SVN. The resulting .cmg contains an embedded Xine engine. Dependencies are drawn into the .cmg from ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/ pool, via the magic of probono's server-side apt. For me this snapshot of amarok-1.4-SVN worked great even over an NX session (250 km distance). The amarok-svn-nightly.cmg file is about 9.1 MByte in size. The amarok playing NX server ran on SUSE-9.3, the local speakers were attached to a SUSE-8.2 box. Yes, the .debs build on Sarge resulted in a single .cmg file, working well on an alien distro. klik magic! However, the embedded Xine engine was not auto-discovered. I had to go through the settings to make it work. More testers still welcome. (Remember, you have to type "ian@monroe.nu" to start the download.) Read More

klik User's FAQ online now

Sunday, 6 November 2005
I'm working on getting the klik User's FAQ complete. The plan is to add at least one new section each day during the next two weeks. Today, I completed "Basics" and put it up together with probono's "Which are the supported operating systems?" -- So here is the local preview: Read More

Intel Push For Desktop Linux... In China, With 'The Farmer PC'

Saturday, 5 November 2005
Guess what I regard as the most important story around The Internet today? Right. It is the one that raises crucial questions about the future of the Linux desktop platform in general. A platform, which will be used as personal computing systems by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, within a few years. Read More

Kernel 2.6.14 with FUSE Support -- Big Bonus for klik

Saturday, 29 October 2005
Kernel 2.6.14, released 2 days ago, has an few important new feature, that will is welcomed by all klik developers with big expectation: FUSE support (Filesystem in User SpacE) Read More

klik recipe maintainers wanted

Monday, 24 October 2005
One other improvement was introduced by probono yesterday: the beginning of a recipe maintainer interface on the klik web server. klik started out to provide a means to install additional software packages into Linux system running from a Live CD (Knoppix, Kanotix). It is now extending its reach, to make its compelling ideas available to more users, on more distros, and also to developers. Read More

klik recipe: ingredient listing now saved inside the .cmg

Sunday, 23 October 2005
One of the improvements to klik that has taken substance over the weekend is this: each future .cmg created on the client side by executing the klik recipe for the bundle now includes "file.list". This enumerates the input files and their URL source that where used to cook up the final .cmg dish (hrmm..., maybe we should have named it "ingredients.list" to stay in tune with the recipe theme). This is in the interest of making it easier, even months after using a .cmg for the first time, to track where the files came from. It will also enable current and future klik recipe maintainers to get their job done more easily. Read More

klik server: delivery of "recipes", not of pre-build .cmgs

Sunday, 23 October 2005
This weekend saw some more progress in klik development. Before I write about the details involved, let me first re-iterate some very simple facts about how klik works. I think it is required, given some of the emails I received, and some of the questions asked in IRC. Read More

Wesnoth 1.0 has arrived and so has klik://wesnoth-latest

Tuesday, 4 October 2005
Yesterday in IRC (#kde-devel) this happened: Oct 03 17:13:28 <isaac> http://www.wesnoth.org/start/1.0/ Oct 03 17:13:32 <isaac> we have just got wesnoth 1.0 out :) Oct 03 17:13:59 <Narishma> is there a klik package ? Oct 03 17:14:06 <misty> what is wesnoth? Oct 03 17:14:18 <Narishma> misty: a strategy game Read More

probono starts blogging

Friday, 30 September 2005
A few days ago probono started blogging... and I didn't know or notice. Creative as he is, he called the thingie "klikblog"... ;-) If even I didn't know, how should the world at large? So let me quote in full his entry for today (hrmm... no, it was yesterday in our part of the world): "NewsForge asks to Send in the Skype clones, so here they are: Which do you like best, klik://skype, klik://gizmo, or klik://wengophone? Or do you prefer KDE’s klik://kphone? klik://kiax or klik://minisip maybe?" Read More

klik://ooo2 (Fastest testdrive of OpenOffice.org2 RC 1, ever)

Thursday, 29 September 2005
OpenOffice.org 2 has been announced as available in Release Candidate 1 shape. The SUSE-RPM is 126 MByte to download (if you include German language support). Happy installing... Oh, wait. If you install these, not only will your download time have to be accounted for, the action will also overwrite your current installation of OOo2. (OK, that might be a pretty safe bet. After all, it will replace a previous Alpha or Beta build of OOo, and likely will not do any harm.) But upon installation, it will expand to over 300+ Mbyte and 3000+ files in 300+ directories on your harddisk. And you will not be able to just copy the installed application from your office workstation to your notebook to your home computer to your Knoppix CD.... Read More

More klik E17 screenshots

Tuesday, 27 September 2005
The IT news site Golem.de has picked up the topic of klik now. It is very obvious that they actively tested klik themselves (although they do not write so), not just paraphrased other people's writings, and that they were mainly intrigued by the klik://enlightenment option. Proof: a series of 8 very nicely done screenshots. Read More

klik, Blogs.... and SUPERsuse!

Monday, 26 September 2005
probono has introduced a new feature on the klik comments website. It auto-creates a right-hand column with current quotes from Google search results: sites and Blogs linking back to the klik website. Read More

klik://enlightenment

Monday, 26 September 2005
This is a first little highlight of what klik is able to do. Previously, the autogenerated the klik://enlightenment package didn't really work, because usually your $DISPLAY is already occupied by KDE, yes? Enlightenment-17 being a window manager, it wanted the exclusive access to an X server display, but the :0 one was already the realm of the host's KDE. Yes, we could have gone for :1 -- but which user would have discovered it running there? Everyone would have thought it didn't work, and some would even have sent bug reports. (Hey, and if the above klik://enlightenment link didn't work for you, go back to my previous blog entries, or to the Dot story and read up on how to install the klik client.) Read More

KDEedu 3.5 from Subversion now klik-able... looking for testers

Sunday, 25 September 2005
I've now prepared 2 klik-able kdeedu packages. I compiled with "--enable-debug=full". One of the packages is stripped to save space and bandwidth. However, I recommend you to run the one with debug symbols included. This way a meaningful backtrace or konsole output is possible: Read More

klik-able package of KDEEdu module now for download

Sunday, 25 September 2005
The klik-enabled kdeedu-3.5 packages compiled from today's Subversion checkout are now up for download. (We do not offer yet a working klik://kdeedu link, though). They have passed some initial testing on SUSE-9.3 (with KDE-3.4.2), SUSE-10.0 and Kanotix 2005-03-DVD. They should be working fine on all KDE 3.4 systems. The package uses a $KDEHOME of $HOME/.kdeklik so it does not interfere with your standard $KDEHOME. It builds its own $KDESYCOCA, so startup needs some time. Let me know of any additional systems it works on (I am currently learning how to prepare this -- I need your feedback), as well as the exact error messages that pop up. Read More

klik tips+tricks: how to hack (or fix) a klik bundle

Saturday, 24 September 2005
Time to reveal a few more of the little tricks around klik... This time it is "How do I fix a klik AppDir bundle if it does not work the way I want it to work?" Read More

klik.atekon.de is found by DNS again

Friday, 23 September 2005
Huzzah! (would friend Aaron say), klik.atekon.de is again found by DNS. kliktestbox:~> nslookup klik.atekon.de Server: 195.20.224.234 Address: 195.20.224.234#53 Non-authoritative answer: Name: klik.atekon.de Address: 134.169.172.48 Read More

klik avalanche (2): more news from the klik front

Thursday, 22 September 2005
Boudewijn, the Krita maintainer has his first krita-latest.cmg on offer. It seems to be a resounding success to him, with the download number approaching 300 within the first 24 hours already, and some dozen feedback mails. He even found bugs (and fixed them too) which could not have been found without users actually starting to use the current Krita snapshot for real -- by kliking on the krita.cmg file. (Yes, we are also aware of some bugs which are due to the .cmg file -- missing libraries, missing symlinks; these will be fixed with the next krita.cmg). Boudewijn had success reports on Mandriva, SUSE 10, SuSE 9.3, Kanotix, Debian (with kde 3.4, so fairly adventurous debian users) -- but not all could actually import files. Since the package uses a compilation done on a KDE-3.4 system, there seem to be problems on running it on KDE-3.3 systems (So much for our own ABI backward compatibility, no? Uhmmm... or we better blame GCC for this, because it breaks the ABI of code compiled with each new minor version release). We will try and compile one of the next versions on a 3.3 system, and see if that helps (need to find or setup one first). Due to the success, Boudewijn is now a bit concerned, that the 2 Gig downloads caused by his krita.cmg may after all be giving his provider second thoughts. That's why we are looking into providing a klik://krita-latest shortcut via the klik server, that will fetch the copy of the krita bundle from another source than boud's server. Read More

klik avalanche (3): two new mailing lists -- klik@kde.org (users) + klik-devel@kde.org (developers)

Thursday, 22 September 2005
Not only has IRC channel #klik on Freenode.net seen quite some influx in recent days. We now also run two new mailing lists hosted by KDE, both related to klik. Dirk was so nice to create them on very short notice for us: Read More

klik avalanche (1): DNS problems -- use "IP 134.169.172.48 klik.atekon.de" in /etc/hosts

Wednesday, 21 September 2005
Seems like my Dot story on klik has kicked off a little avalanche.... One thing however that keeps it from growing right now is a DNS problem with the klik.atekon.de ISP provider. The klik server's IP address is 134.169.172.48. To work around the DNS problem, you should add the following entry to your /etc/hosts file: 134.169.172.48 klik.atekon.de This will help for installing the klik client scripts: Read More

"Don't install -- just klik'n'run!" -- a proposal for the benefit of KDE app snapshot testing

Friday, 16 September 2005
So my Dot article about klik is now online. It has had already 40 comments within 2 hours, mostly positive. It contains a concrete, workable proposal how to accelerate KDE development: accelerating it by bringing our non-technical/non-coding contributors more closely to the "bleeding edge" code. We can do this by handing out bleeding edge binaries of KDE application development snapshots to our non-techies... Read More

Hello, Fellow Planet SUSE Bloggers :)

Thursday, 15 September 2005
planetsuse.org is now syndicating my blog. Thanks James, for taking my feed to your part of our world. -- Hello, fellow planetSUSE bloggers :) Maybe it was this rather interesting bug that helped proof that I have somehow some relationship with the Green Geeko Distro. Read More

How Can Coders Give Access To Bleeding Edge Development Binaries To Help Their Non-Techie Contributors?

Wednesday, 14 September 2005
How can KDE developers find ways to make binary packages of bleeding-edge code directly available to be run by usability experts for early feedback? And if you are less interested in cooperating with usability people (like mornfall ;-P ), you may still ask yourself: How can KDE developers make their bleeding-edge packages available to beta-testers? How let translators see (in their actual, lively GUI context) the strings they work on? How to enable art designers to actually *run* a program they are contributing icons and other artwork for? How can these groups of non-technical KDE contributors (who are not typically compiling KDE every night from the latest checked-out sources) get a full preview of what will go out to our users on Release Day? How can this happen long before the final release, practically 5 minutes after the code was written and compiled, and long before there are official packages created by everyone's favorite distro? Read More

First FreeNX Wallpaper

Saturday, 3 September 2005
Another feedback re. my recent blog entry: there is now The First FreeNX Wallpaper available from KDE-Look. It is installable via the "Get Hot New Stuff". Looks pretty cool too (some non-Europeans say it is too Old-World-centric -- well, let them create stuff that suits their tastes better. The important point is that FreeNX can connect us all, no?)

How Well Do NX And FreeNX Work For You?

Saturday, 3 September 2005
It was only 10 minutes after my last blog entry appeared that one reader phoned me and objected: he thinks that the 280 msec latency he experiences from his currently Malaga/Spain-based notebook to his guest account on my NX server in Karlsruhe/Germany would be too much, and a data flow rate of 27 kBits/sec too sparse (he used a crappy and fairly saturated WLAN link to test this) to make users feel comfortable in using NX permanently, day-in and day-out over the network. He agreed NX was still performing very well, given the conditions he had to cope with, and that he could still be nearly as productive as he was used to from using his local machine. Read More

New Migration Opportunities For KDE Offered by Fast Single Application Mode of NX/FreeNX

Saturday, 3 September 2005
Some of you know already: since NoMachine released the 1.5.0 of their GPL'd Core NX Libraries, KDE applications run blazingly fast over remote internet links in "single window mode". Even modem connections work great. Previous versions hadn't yet built in X roundtrip suppression for single application windows, and you could enjoy the full speed of applications only when running them inside a complete KDE desktop environment. Read More

Meet in Linuxprinting booth, LWE San Francisco (Aug 8-11) ?

Monday, 25 July 2005
Woohoo! I'm going to the LinuxWorldExpo in San Francisco (Aug 8-11). I'll help run the Linuxprinting booth in the .org Pavilion. The flight is booked, hotel reserved -- thanks to the generous sponsorship of Ricoh Corporation, who are helping also our new KDEPrint maintainer Cristian Tibirna to be present at the event. Read More

NoMachine NX-1.5.0 is out (including sources of GPL-ed NX Core libs)

Saturday, 23 July 2005
NoMachine NX 1.5.0 is finally out! Including sources of the GPL'ed NX Core libraries. It also sports a new NX Server Manager interface (still Beta). Read More

Fundraising Appeal: Let 'Oischi' Attend European X Developer Meeting

Friday, 17 June 2005
The European X Developer Meeting has been kept quite low profile by its organizers. Maybe because it is meant to be primarily for developers. Maybe they are just too busy with organizing things -- after all, it was announced at very short notice. Yet there is a very attractive program of presentations and discussions which should give a glimpse of the future of the modern X Window System extensions to all interested developers: Read More

Friendly and collaborative competition

Tuesday, 24 May 2005
My last but one blog entry prompted several people to write me personal mails. I was away and offline for most of the weekend, so upon return I was glad to see a friendly personal note from Dave Neary who pointed me to his own blog on the matter, and also to Jeff Waugh's. Read More

Krita and OpenUsability

Monday, 23 May 2005
I was thrilled to read what Boudewijn has to say about new features in the upcoming Krita (released as part of the KOffice suite, 1.4.0). One thing he said is even better: "I’ve also toyed with the idea of asking the OpenUsability people for a review of Krita’s UI — the problem here is that we have some very clear ideas on what we want to change almost immediately after the release and that may impact the usefulness of a review." Read More

Woohoo -- Aaron is coding on nxc libs and a FreeNX Client!

Sunday, 22 May 2005
Aaron's got a better laptop. Hey, that isn't very spectacular in itself. But what thrills me, is that the first thing he has worked on with that new asset of his is......... (drum-drum-drum-druuuummmm!) .... FreeNX, or rather its client libary, nxc. Read More

KDE is leading the way, admit its competitors

Friday, 20 May 2005
Earlier today I came across an article that made me smile. A quote first: "Gnome will join OSC's Community Advisory Board and work with the OSC to promote the open source desktop."       (from the article) Another one: "...the (Gnome) Foundation will hope to raise the profile and acceptance of its interface as a standard for open-source systems throughout Europe. Gnome's rival KDE has a significant hold on Linux desktops in Europe, so the move also advances Gnome's chances of gaining market share."       (from the article) What does it mean? Well, to me it means three things, two for sure, and another one not-so-sure. The first sure thing is: KDE is leading the way for the Linux desktop adoption, which is expressed in the growing movement away from the MS monopoly. And you can see the recognition in the quotes above, as well as in various poll results and studies. Read More

What the Linux Desktop Needs -- or: Why an ISV shouldnt have to provide 16 different distro/version packages for his application

Tuesday, 17 May 2005
I have mentioned it before, and I will repeat it here again: any commercial software vendor pondering to sell his product or service on the Linux platform is horrified by the complications he has to deal with. As you might know, I am involved with FreeNX, the project to make remote GUI access fast. FreeNX is based on the core NX libraries and utilities which are developed by NoMachine.com (a commercial company), but released under the GPL. Now, releasing code under the GPL, and for free, doesn't sustain a commercial company. What NoMachine does for a living, is to compile their code and bundle it into an "NX Server" product, put some good propietary addons into the bag and sell the thing, while still releasing the core parts as GPL-source code. Their source code is an invaluable gift to the Free and Open Source Software communities -- but it requires an experienced user to compile, install and use. NoMachine's server products are easy to handle. FreeNX makes the source code gift from NoMachine usable for a broader user base. NX and FreeNX are pretty cool, because they can help you to gain remote access to your own company desktop while you are "on the road" or working from a home office -- and it works amazingly well even over a dial-up modem link. Or they can help to create and run a Linux (and Cross Platform) Application Server Farm for Thin and Fat Clients much more efficiently than by using traditional means like LTSP. NX and FreeNX provide the fastest remote GUI experience that is out there, and the most secure one (using SSH) over the internet.] But this is not an editorial about the technical merits and features of NX. I'd rather take it as example to hightlight another topic: the pains any ISV has to take upon himself if he decides to support the Linux OS with his products. Look that the download site of NoMachine.com, look closely on the list of NX Clients they offer (for free as in beer, I should say -- NoMachine only charge for their server licenses): Read More

Whooah -- KFlog is really nice!

Tuesday, 17 May 2005
Aaron's last blog entry was a real eye-opener to me. I didn't know KFlog before. I'll tell a friend of mine about it, who "has to" use Linux at work (and he likes it) but who uses MS Windows at home... guess why? He is a glider/sailplane pilot, and told me there is no feasible software on Linux to use for his hobby. The fact that "KFLog is the only flight analyser program available for Linux to be recognized by the FAI IGC" will surely help to convince him. (FAI is the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, and IGC its International Gliding Commission.) I wonder if KFlog could be useful for paragliding too? I'll find out, sometime.... Read More

Sys-Con, or how to gain fame and infame

Saturday, 14 May 2005
Aaron commented on the interview made by Free Software Magazin with the owner-boss of various IT websites, some of which had been the platform for a poisonous pro-SCO/anti-Groklaw propaganda campaign, culminating in personal attacks against Pamela Jones, the brain and heart behind Groklaw, orchestrated by one (now infamous) Maureen O'Gara. After senior editors of the "Linux World Magazine" threatened to resign over the scandal, O'Gara was ditched. I hadnt seen the interview Aaron mentioned. But I had read the "Letter to Our Readers", signed by Mark R. Hinkle (Editor-in-Chief), who also happens to be the COO of Win4Lin/NeTraverse. This piece prompted very mixed feeling during reading. It more sounds like marketing speak than anything else. It prays the prayer of "we are good, we do good, we do not harm anyone and we wish Pamela Jones all the best". I just couldnt take it for its face value. I rather felt annoyed by reading through it. Now Dee-Ann LeBlanc and James Turner, the two Senior Editors of Linux World Magazine have in fact resigned, refering to the interview Aaron also took issues with. (BTW, I'd not wonder if the links should soon be dangling, because their former bosses pullled their accounts.) I just wonder, if Sys-Con has any business connections with LinuxWorldExpo too? I'll look that up later. Just now, I dont want to know more details about that felt. I just feel too pissed off already... Read More

WebCore - KHTML - Firefox: Know your facts!

Friday, 13 May 2005
There is a big ballyhoo on Slashdot and many other newssites regarding a "KDE <--> Apple divorce", as well as "Firefox scolding the KDE Team". Let me summarize what happened. The story starts in 2003: Read More

Too loud to be really enjoyable for me

Wednesday, 11 May 2005
No, clee -- it is old news, very old in fact ;-) And the guy for sure didnt "invent" it. The equipment is too heavy to really carry on your back. It is noisy. And it stinks. I should know -- I actually tried it once. I didnt enjoy it much, though it momentary felt like a cool thing. But to each his own....I like it more without the engine. Just your muscles and the sun, baby. Read More

Psssst.... KDE konsole is more efficient than xterm

Saturday, 7 May 2005
Sometimes you learn surprising things while you drive a car. Last time this happened was on Thursday evening. SambaXP conference had ended in Goettingen, and I gave Tridge a lift to the Frankfurt Airport. For me it was only a very little detour on my way to Stuttgart. Tridge had a 30 hour journey back home to Australia in front of him (21 hrs of pure flight time). Read More

Addiction

Saturday, 16 April 2005
Canllaith seems to start liking to fly gliders. Hey, I can certainly understand that! This experience is sooo just incredible.... feel how the air is able to carry the weight of your wooden (or plastic) bird... hear the wind's always present noises change with the flight state, mixing with the excited beep-beep-beep of the vario, once the pilot has successfully centered his circles in the thermal... get surprised by the centrifugal forces pressing you into your seat in tight curves... Hmmm, and feel your stomach and guts all at once jumping close to your throat, just because the pilot decided to be a little mean to his only passenger and do a sudden nose-dive. Read More

More on HP's support for FOSS...

Sunday, 10 April 2005
My last blog entry regarding re. "HP supporting their printers and scanners with open source drivers" made 2 private mails come into my mailbox. They challenged me with the other product type mentioned in the LinuxToday feedback, namely notebooks. One of them said, that beyond printer drivers, HP did nothing to support OSS, and a well known big name company with a 3-letter name was much better behaving in that respect. What follows is a reproduction of my response to these mails (just HTML-ized and enhanced with inline-d hyperlinks). Read More

HP Uses Qt For Its FOSS Printing Software

Saturday, 9 April 2005
Late this afternoon, a talkback at LinuxToday annoyed so much that I had to respond. A PR story outlining that HP turns now to Linux as the OS for their new series of NAS devices (Network Attached Storage) prompted an extremely uninformed guy to headline his bickering. "HP -- Open Source Leech" and then go on: "...HP is again leeching on the opensource community. Hey HP, where are the drivers for your scanners, printers and all your laptops?" Read More

How to manage 1,635,315 files on a harddisk?

Friday, 8 April 2005
Today I counted: I have lots of files on my systems. 1,635,315 files on my main workstation (SUSE-9.1); 80 GBytes on one disk filled up by 50%. 1,493,166 files on my other workstation (SUSE-8.0); 20 GBytes on 4 disks filled up by 93%. 418,769 files on my company notebook (Win XP Prof); 40 GBytes on one disk filled up by 88%. OK, there probably is no better way for now than organize these files in a structure of directories, subdirectories, files and accessing them by "paths". But is it really the best way to present these data to me in the same hierarchical view as the file system stores them? Read More

3.4 brings Konqui into big danger! Save him!

Sunday, 27 February 2005
KDE developers: If you ever log off from your current KDE-3.4cvs session, think again! Couldn't you keep it running? For Konqui's sake? Because if you really log off, you'll bring Konqui into big danger. He is about to take a nap on a crescent moon. But the poor guy will be falling off the first moment his sleep will be deep enough! The reason: Konqui has a rest position that is completely unbalanced. He is starting to pass into napping mode high up there with not even the slightest natural equilibrium! Ever since I have this logout pic, I never dared to actually complete a logout – I always was forced to cancel it due to my deep concern for his enduring health. To make Konqui safe (and let me logout and sleep well again), the dangling leg and the dangling tail should hang down on different sides of the crescent, no? So anytime he could start loosing balance towards one side, a small lever-increasing, even sub-conscious movement of the limbs on the opposite side would easily restore equilibrance…. Take a look at any breed of cats of prey: all those who can climb and sleep in trees disollows its juniors to let hang down all dangling limbs on the same side of the bough! ;-P Cheers, Kurt P.S.: Oh, and please dont start explaining to me “Konqui is a Dragon, and dragons can fly! Read More

Upcoming KDE-3.4 is shining already

Saturday, 26 February 2005
It looks like the upcoming 3.4 release will have a gorgeous new default look and feel to it. Stephan Binner produced a "sneak preview" live CD with KDE-3.4RC1 called "Klax" (375 MByte size for the iso image), and OSDir now features an excellent series of updated screenshots. Read More

Too many NX session reconnections or: Why KDEPrint 'WhatsThis' will be extended, but not complete for 3.4

Friday, 28 January 2005
Bad network connectivity sucks. Sucks big time. Especially if you had set time aside to work on completing all missing KDEPrint WhatsThis items for the upcoming 3.4 release. Complete string freeze is now very close and I can't do it. At least not the complete thing as intended (bug 97577). (Hey, but some of it you can test already now if you compile CVS....) Let me tell you a little story. And let's pretend it happened to Yours Truly, even if it was someone else, at a completely different place.... My KDE-HEAD installation is on a remote server. I use the wonderful NX technology to access it and work with a fullscreen KDE 3.4-CVS desktop, as well as doing most job-related develoment work for a certain project. Starting Monday morning, I experience regular workflow interruptions. Every 2 to 4 minutes my sessions get detached. Network gone! For a very small moment (maybe only a few seconds) no connectivity to the internet. One year ago, being based on X11, these sessions and the work done within these remote sessions would have been gone forever. But nowadays, the new NX does a beautiful job: it resumes suspended sessions without a hitch, even if it takes a minute. (According to my logs, I had more than 400 disconnections and session restorations over the last 4 days). I did not loose a single bit of data of my work. But of course lots of time I lost, and quite some temper too. The temper has mostly to do with the dump sys and network admins of the place I work from. But Gian Filippo Pinzari, the lead developer of NX, is my hero now. It is wonderful what you created! The NX session reconnection feature has gone through a real hell of a durability test here. And it has passed it in grand style. Kudos to you! NX saved my day(s)... Our network admins didn't believe me at first. Supposedly, it was my "exotic software" (of course!) and my "borderline operating system" (what else?) which caused it. "No-one but you is complaining." So I created tcpdumps. I created network traces. I provided ethereal logs. I proofed to them, that for some reason the firewall sent a "FIN" package to initiate the hangup. For two days they resisted. Mails went forth and back. Phones rang. Personal appearances were made in each other's office. (Other users started to shyly complain too -- but these all don't need persistent sessions. They use HTTP. They click on a link, and the website comes to the browser and gets renedered. Very rarely they see a "Proxy not accessible!" error. They try again, and it works. For me it is different: I start an SSH- or NX-session, work for a minute or two, and poooof! -- session disconnected. Login again, re-attach the screen session (NX re-attaches automatically for me... ) ...and do what? Initially, continue to work. Later, try to troubleshoot the problem. The "admins" of course don't suffer this. Because their "C & C" gaming by-passes the firewall. (So much for having "outsourced" the complete network administration to another company, located in another country.) And they don't incur the disconnections. It took me 2 days of repeated complaints to convince one of them to try and start a large download to his own PC. (I gave him the URL of a special Knoppix ISO image, hehe!). After 4 minutes --- poooof! Download aborted. He starts to investigate. That was last night. They are still investigating now... I got a modem to connect to the internet. That lets me do at least part of my job: working remotely on a customer's big iron (16 GByte RAM) Solaris "test" machine, installing customized print software. The modem has its limits. And the limits will be hit soon: I approach the stage where I need to actually "print". Since I am not on-site, I intend to re-direct the test jobs (10s of thousands of pages of SAP-generated reports and lists) to my local printers. ((No, I won't print them all on paper. I'll interrupt the jobs after a few pages. And I'll "print to disk" and "print to PDF" to see if all my modifications -- inserting watermarks, changing paper supplies and input trays, etc -- would work for the customer, once the big test environment goes "life" next month.)) -- A modem connection surely isn't the way to test this efficiently. (I need ADSL. Can you hear me??). Time for another complain now. This time to their boss... So instead of completing... ...a) KDEPrint WhatsThis items, and ...b) a customer job due on Monday, ...I spent most of this week's work time (plus my own evenings) to convince dump, incompetent network admins about a connectivity problem that didnt let me do my work, and troubleshooting it and working around the issue in place of them. Grrrrh. Read More

How To Extend Open Source on more Desktops?

Friday, 10 December 2004
So, Aaron, you got very vocal about it.... You think the Open Source Desktop efforts are killed by porting these very same deskops' applications stack over to Windows, making a complete sweitch-over completely un-attractive. Read More

KDE on Windows -- Deadly to OpenSource in General?

Thursday, 9 December 2004
My friend Aaron fears Open Source on the Desktop gets killed. He's not afraid of Microsoft though. He thinks it's the "enemy within". Nah, not his words. I'll rephrase it: He thinks, the deadly danger comes from some little efforts going on in some corner of the KDE project to port some KDE applications to the MS Windows platform. Hmm.... again my words... OK, you better go and read his blog entry yourself. For now, let me say this: I always valued my friend Aaron's balanced way of reasoning in past "opinion battles" (oh, yeah -- those occur very frequently on KDE mailing lists). But this time I think he is very un-balanced, one-sided, black-and-white only, static in his thinking. Maybe more on that later. (Now first to finish this customer job -- cloning a CUPS master daemon from system space to run several copies in userspace, all with different security settings and custom options, on different non-privileged TCP/IP ports....) Read More

One 'Meta KIO Slave' to bind them all....

Sunday, 14 November 2004
"My precious...." It seems George Staikos' recent article for O'Reilly featuring KDE's KIO-Slaves stroke the right chord with many people. It has prompted some additional activities. First, it triggered me to blog/write down an old idea about how to increase the visibility of these powerfull tools to more users. (KIO-Slaves are are quite "old" to KDE. They are built into KDE already since a long time, but many regular KDE users are not aware of them, or their usefulness, or how to use them properly.) Next there came a thread on kfm-devel which discussed several ideas. Last, Dik Takken came up with a wonderful proposal. I think Dik's suggestion is much better than mine (which I do withdraw now). Hopefully it will be implemented in KDE 3.4 already, not only 4.0 ! Dik's suggestion is to create a folder like shown below, and make it the default Konqueror location. He liked to call it "Virtual Filesystem". I prefer (at least for now, while we discuss KIO Slaves) to call it a "Meta KIO Slave". Both do the same: they give users easy "clickable" access to a whole bunch of real KIO Slaves, without needing to know what the exact syntax is for typing the correct URL into the Konqueror (or FileOpen, SaveAs,... ) location bar line edit widgets. Here is one of Dik's illustrations of the idea: Dik's suggestion currently only is a mockup. There is no code yet. And there is no-one writing it either, yet. But the base idea is excellent. It can be expanded to a full-blown feature set that makes that dialog a "portal" site to all the powers of KDE KIO. Read on for more thoughts about this... The concept of "locations:/" is very clean. To make it fullfill its intended purpose, namely, Read More

How can we expose cool kio_slaves to more users' eyes?

Tuesday, 2 November 2004
KDE needs to find ways to expose the many different KIO Slaves and their usefulness to more users' eyes. How about this: separate the protocol part from the host/path in the various addressing fields/location bars. turn the protocol part into an (editable) drop down list of available items. If we want it more fancy, we could just make it a little drop-down to the left of the address/location bar, and depending on the selection, it auto-fills 'http://', 'ftp://' or whatever into the lineedit field. And vice-versa: whatever you type in the line-edit as the protocol-part gets selected in the drop-down. This way users will become quickly aware of many more kio_slave options and start to play with them and also use them... This could be used in Konqui's location bar as well as in File Open dialogs of various applications. Here's a quick'n'dirty mockup: Read More

kio_locate -- my little KDE gem of the week

Monday, 1 November 2004
My favourite little KDE gem of the week is kio_locate. Its maintainer, Armin has now added support for regular expressions and piping results through grep. This increases usefulness by at least a factor of 10... Ahhh -- you didn't know kio_locate at all up to now? Don't fear: until last Saturday not even distinguished KDE core hackers such as danimo did. After I showed it to him, he was sold. (In return, he promised to burn a CD with legal sound files for me to test the new amaroK with... danimo, I'm waiting.). Read More

FreeNX news from the development hotbed

Friday, 17 September 2004
In the last two weeks Fabian has made huge progress with FreeNX: he designed and implemented a new security model for FreeNX (with the help of some outstanding people who are now regularly joining debates in the #nx IRC channel on freenode). It doesn't use the nxssh binary any more (which made some Linux distro security auditors to be very suspicious), but instead uses the most recent "standard" OpenSSH package. So any newly discovered future SSH vulnerability doesnt need to be an "extra" NX concern -- fix SSH and you also fixed NX. We hope to have made the security experts (notably those from SUSE) happy with this and that the upcoming audits of FreeNX will soon be passed without need for much re-design. he made FreeNX behave well with various types of clients (KDE's initial knx client for NX and FreeNX sessions, as available from KDE-CVS in the kdenonbeta module -- compile instructions are here; the NoMachine commercial -- but free-as-in-beer -- NX clients of the 1.3.x as well as the various 1.4-snapshot releases). For the NoMachine 1.3.x NX Client he even succeeded to hack an "auto-resume" feature into the FreeNX server: the user restores any suspended session automatically upon re-connection (the 1.3.x clients dont normally support that feature, they always create a new session). he made FreeNX use server-specific SSH key authentication (for the special "nx" user who initiates each connection) as well as the general NoMachine key authentication (for the "nx" user), as well as supporting a passwordless, key-based SSH connection without the need for the "nx" user), as well as PAM-based authentication schemes. But the coolest thing last.... It was inspired by a Slashdot posting (yeah, sometimes you even find gems there!) from someone who wished he could use an "ssh -NX" instead of an "ssh -X" commandline. This is not exactly here yet. But what you *can* use now is one of these: nxtunnel username@remote.NX.host bash nxtunnel username@remote.NX.host xterm Read More

NX virtualisation (NX is not just about X traffic compression)

Friday, 17 September 2004
Brad is commenting about a research project that does "Internet Suspend / Resume" of user sessions: "...interesting idea - they basically envisage a thick-client model, running on a virtual machine (VMWare in their tests) which can suspend. The suspend state then gets shipped over a network connection to another machine where it can be “resumed Read More

"aKademy Edition" of Knoppix-3.6 including FreeNX is out...

Monday, 23 August 2004
... and the nice thing about it is that the final touches of the work has been done during the "Knoppix Remastering" tutorial at aKademy, held by Klaus Knopper himself. Read More

Free Food for Free Software developers

Monday, 23 August 2004
It was great to have the DevConf being fed by IBM sponsoring a "Free Lunch for Free Software developers". Actually, what the food voucher said was "Big Blue and Blue Angel happily invite you for a free lunch". If you dont know what "Blue Angel" is -- it is the translation of the name of the Bistro associated to Filmakademie... Read More

Fun over -- new fun starting...

Monday, 23 August 2004
Unfortunately I couldnt attend any of the talks at DevConf other than the fine opening keynote by Eirik Chamb-Eng (Trolltech). Too much work to do, too much of a cold having occupied the deep end of my throat. The cold makes my voice sound like I could have a lot of guys drifting towards me -- if I were a female. It also makes me sweat the hell out of my pores at night, preventing me from sleep most of the time, and getting me to arrive late at aKademy. The work was mainly related to prepare the tutorial rooms, get the HP notebooks in shape, and hand them out to developers in need. A lot of the work around the notebook installation was done by our local helper team, consisting mostly of the local CCC -- thanks and kudos to them! The notebooks are a loan from HP Germany for the duration of aKademy. Thanks HP -- it is great to see your support for this KDE conference having grown so immensely in the last 2 weeks. Read More