KDE Blogs 

Thank you Chris for your work on this live-CD. MCNLive! rocks Chris ... can you put my face on PlanetKDE?

I watched Star Wars Reveletions and here my impression: the pictures and the graphics are amazing ... too bad the story and the actors weren't at the rendez-vous ... but it enabled me to kill 45 minutes of a boring day ... so it wasn't so bad in the end :)

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

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

I am not always the optimistic kind, but "today was a good day". A lot of code was added to ksvg2 and kdom that I can feel content with. It is never a good feeling to leave code lying there that you know is hacky. So yes, lots of refactoring of views, parts, zoom and pan etc. Then also some fixes for clipping, which seems always tricky. Read More

Well, I decide to give blogging a go ;-) There are so many interesting things going on right now (qt4, kdom stuff) that this may be the best time to start. Hopefully this way we ksvg devs can also improve the external communication, since we unfortunately did not give many updates in a while, while lots of coding did take place. Hopefully we can start by updating svg.kde.org a bit :)

Well, I put an offer on a house today... rather nervous. I expect a counter-offer tomorrow; hopefully by Monday I should know.. In KDE3.5, you will be able to set Konsole's tab text color via the tab menu. I'm thinking about adding the ability to change the color via an ESC code. I'm not sure if I should mimic the ESC[0;#m and/or create a new code say ESC[0;RRGGBBy. It is rather easy to code. Read More

Hey, ruurd, I was going to post this as a comment, but blogger's login crap was giving me problems. Anyway, I have several data aware KDE widgets in DataKiosk I hope to introduce into KDElibs with KDE4. They include some widgets that DataKiosk shares with KDEPIM and some that are entirely new to KDE including one that mimics the MS Access Relation Combo. They are written to be generic enough to use for any QSql driver. Read More

finally, on thursday i've written the last of the 4-day written final exam series. from now on i've a lot more sparetime... i've 5 weeks until the oral part of the exams beginns. however there shouldn't be very much to learn. i'll use the resulting sparetime for continuing diskothek development and maybe with aids (porting, ... ) for kde4 Read More

Those who have been subject to my rants on this topic before are no doubt familiar with my views, but as they've mostly been on IRC and not particularly structured, and there's been some prompting in the KDE community in the last couple of days, so here goes. The "sexualization" of women in our community really has to stop. I really get sick of seeing every time a female contributor comes around, or everytime there's an article on the Dot that refers to our female contributors that it's just a matter of time before some jackass decides that it's the right forum to ask if they're single or make other comments that are just there because they're female. Contributors are important Contributors are important. We need them. We don't need male contributors or female contributors, we need contributors period. Despite their deficit in numbers, some of the most important members of our community are female. And who cares what gender they are, really? They're important contributors, and we as a community need to insure that we're not treating one segment of our community differently just based on their gender. The KDE social landscape In a normalized social environment -- one that's fairly well mixed between males and females -- this isn't much of an issue. In such an environment flirting and such things are a fairly normal, such is afterall our nature. We are sexual beings. However there are a few ways that KDE diverges from this. First, the majority of people in the KDE community are male. This in and of itself is not a problem. Some of the thought on the social foundations of engineering and sciences being largely male driven in western society is in fact interesting, but out of scope for the moment. However, this is coupled with a significant subset of our community being less than great with their social skills. Specifically, a lot of the members of our community simply haven't really interacted all that much in usual social settings with members of the opposite sex and quite frankly haven't got a clue how to go about such. The result of this tends to be anywhere from overt sexual objectification to accidental inappropriateness. At some point we may see things start to level out -- see, that's the interesting bit. If we aren't asses about this stuff, and we treat contributors more or less equally independant of gender, that will actually help things get closer to a balance with time and then we don't have to actively compensate for our present social dispositions. It's all fun and games until somebody loses a contributor And to be clear, while some of the lighter bits of this may seem amusing to some of folks the first go around -- like, I mean, being told you're cute in the right context isn't the worst thing in the world -- it does get old, mostly because of the baggage that comes with it. The problem is that often along with that comes an objectification that obscures what the person is actually part of the community for. Sure, having people think you're cute might be fun, but not if it's getting in the way of being taken seriously (or too seriously as can sometimes be the case) when trying to actually do something important. And I have known people who have actually left the community over this. Let's be pragmatic For those male members of our community that feel the need to try to pick up women via the Dot, well, I hate to break it to you but statistics are not on your side. Here's a little secret -- there are women all around. Many of them are even single. And if you can come up with something a little more subtle than saying as if they weren't there, "She's cute. Is she single?" they'll actually talk to you. No, really. This happens all the time. I've devised a step-by-step plan that may help some of you and I presume is easier to implement than Theobroma's scheming: Read More