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Having been working on Gwenview for six years, I finally came up with the decision that it was time to move on. It has been a tough decision, but I realize I don't have enough free time to manage such a project by myself anymore. If you want to know more, have a look at the message I posted to the mailing list. Read More

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

A recent story on the Dot sparked a conversation about which branch KDE application developers should be developing against (3.5 or 4.0). My usual stance on what developers "should" be doing is that they should do whatever they like. Most of us are hobbyists, so go ahead and scratch that itch. Trying to tell volunteers what they "should" be doing is at best futile and at worst, insulting. Read More

The screenshot below seems boring, but it is not. It means something nice and will start a useability discussion. The topic is 'files in files'. How should the gui deal with files in files? Well, so far, KDE does a sloppy job of dealing with them. Different file types have different kio_slaves and some have none. Read More

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: Some updates to Princess Diana's last 24 hours alive: the night she died, the American secret service was eavesdropping her telephone conversations. (What's funny is that the source article says this happened "without the approval of the British security services"... Remember, the night she died she was partying in Paris, which is neither part of the US nor of the UK last time I checked). the driver of her Mercedes, Henri Paul, (who also died in the crash) had a second job (I bet without having told her): he was in the pay of the French secret service. his 14 (!) bank accounts had a combined balance of +100.000 £ (that's roughly +150.000 €, or +200.000 $US) in between them.Funny coincidences, huh? The UK government used human Guinea pigs for chemical weaponry experiments, for more than 30 years. While initial tests of Sarin's effects on the human skin were conducted with German prisoners of war, up into the 80s the 'research' was conducted on British soldiers. One of the known crime sites was the Porton Down military base. There are hundreds of known victims who suffered health damage from these Mengele-like experiments. Their current diseases include memory loss, flashbacks and lethargy. I'm no longer surprised about the way these people are 'defending Western freedom' in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Just don't claim I agree with you.

On Thursday the download edition of openSUSE 10.2 was announced (screenshots). The interest seems to be high but from what I read users experienced a good download speed thanks to FTP mirrors being prepopulated the week before, some strong initial Torrent seeders and usage of Metalink. This week also the debuginfo repository will be filled and the Live-DVD will be uploaded. Development in Factory has also started again but syncing of the Factory tree has been disabled until above mentioned are also on the mirrors. Read More

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

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. Expect some improvements and changes in klik in the next few months as a result from the discussions that took place there. Read More

Today KPhotoAlbum entered message freeze, and is now ready to be translated. The release will happen Dec 31th 2006. To bring a bit of attention to the great work the translators do, I've started a small prize drawing contest which those who have made a complete translation of KPA participating. The prize is $100. Read More

Since the OpenDocumentFormat (ODF) became a real ISO spec back in May, a lot of things have happened and continue to happen. The industry is really recognizing this open standard and many are already supporting it, where a large section even make ODF mandatory. I expected pick up to be slower, given how Office has such a huge majority of the market. If I look at how slow pick up of Linux on the desktop is (slowly but steady growth over quite some years) its very refreshing to see people recognize ODF as the better format so massively. In the last months I've seen ODF adoption in Malaysia, India, Brazil, the French Parliament [FR|DE], in Finland, The Spanish region of Extremadura, the Belgium Government and soon the Swiss. With some grass roots conversion happening in Holland as well (Dutch)! Read More