KDE Blogs 

For reasons I haven't worked out, Ubuntu needs a specific tool to write its ISO CD images onto a USB disk. This is fine if you're on an Ubuntu distro or on Windows where we have usb-creator available to install, but is a problem for users of other distros. If an openSUSE user who has no CD drive wants to try out Ubuntu (to steal all our great ideas no doubt) they're a bit stuck. So I learnt how to build RPMs and secrets of the openSUSE build service and put Ubuntu USB Creator into an openSUSE archive. Unfortunately although I patched it to run fine the end result doesn't boot and gets stuck at the syslinux startup credit. So more work to be done there I'm afraid. Read More

I've been working on a new library for the last couple of weeks that provides a Qt style API for libpcap. For those who aren't familiar with it, libpcap is the library used for capturing raw packets used by tools like tcpdump and wireshark. The pcap library has been around for years, and is built in C rather than C++. The API is pretty simple, but it's not one that can be trivially integrated into a gui application. The aim of the library I've been working on is to make using packet capture in Qt programs a simple matter of using a QObject and connecting to its slots. Read More

KDE and Gnome together again - the Desktop Summit this year will take place in Berlin, Germany, from August 6 to 12, 2011. It will be one of the biggest and most interesting Free Software conferences in 2011, and Berlin is also always worth a visit. You have seen the announcement, and the web site at http://desktopsummit.org, but you might be asking yourself how you can register, where to submit your talk, and how you can help with the preparations. Read on. Read More

Here are the slides to my conf.kde.in talk Kubuntu: Friendly Computing. They're more images though so they don't make much sense without me talking. India is a lovely country with lovely people. Food is excellent of course. Bengaluru is a busy city with crazy traffic (still preferable to Paris of course). Only downside is the mosquitoes and lack of bandwidth. Read More

Having a fabulous time at conf.kde.in in Bengaluru. I've just given a tutorial on writing a programme in PyKDE, then releasing it to the wide world, then packaging it and releasing it for Kubuntu. Here are the slides as requested by my lovely audience. Read More

ODF support on phones and tablets is not good right now. Work is being done to improve this by the Calligra project, but WebODF can provide a solution too. To prove this, I built a small wrapper application that gives Android the ability to read ODF files. This application is available in the WebODF repository and I've also put the installable application online. Read More

I'm feeling very lucky today. Why? Because in a few hours I'll be getting on a plane to Bengaluru, India and attending conf.kde.in. Pradeepto has been asking me for years to look outside the cosy confines of the US-Europe Axis of KDE, and thanks to my role in the openSUSE Boosters team, this has finally become possible. Read More

Heated discussions are going on in the KDE community in the aftermath of the announcement of Nokia's platform strategy change. Rationality often goes out of the window when people feel such a change goes against their personal values or beliefs. In the past days, I worked on an analysis of the impact of the changes on KDAB, Qt and the Free Software communities we work with, especially KDE. KDAB is rooted deeply in the KDE community, and many of our developers work with Qt and KDE for years now. We are sharing the same worries and hopes, so the results may be interesting for others as well. This post is about Qt, KDE, Free Software, politics, devices, markets, strategies - it does not get much better than that. Read on. Read More

In my previous blog I talked about converting ODF files to PDF files with WebODF. This is a functionality that is generally useful, but is also one that lets OfficeShots compare WebODFs ODF rendering to that of other office suites. Read More

It is quite common that one wants to send ODF files to people that lack the software to display ODF. One workaround is to convert the ODF to PDF. Most office suites that support ODF can export to PDF. To compare how different office suites do this conversion one can use the website OfficeShots. This website offers the ability to perform this conversion in many office suites at once and to compare the results. Read More