Tag Archives: Linux

KDE Manifesto Released

The KDE project has released its Manifesto. Since this is my desktop of choice, I thought I should mention it. It is very good:

The KDE Manifesto
We are a community of technologists, designers, writers and advocates who work to ensure freedom for all people through our software.
Because of this work we have come to value:
Open Governance to ensure engagement in our leadership and decision processes;
Free Software to ensure the result of our work is available to all people;
Inclusivity to ensure that people of all origins are welcome to join us and participate;
Innovation to ensure that new ideas constantly emerge to better serve people;
Common Ownership to ensure that we stay united;
End-User Focus to ensure our work is useful to all people.
That is, in pursuit of our goal, we have found these items essential to define and stay true to ourselves.

The reason things like this matter is that free software is about a lot more than just selling a bunch of software and having an IPO to get rich. It is about our values and empowering people to use software to make their lives better.

Penguicon 2012 – April 27-29, Dearborn, MI

I thought I would share my own impressions of Penguicon 2012, which was held at the Dearborn Hyatt in Dearborn, Michigan, USA, on April 27-29, 2012. This is a rather unusual event, combining as it does both a Science Fiction convention and a Linux Fest. There are many examples of each of these, of course, on their own, but this is the only one I know of that combines both in one event. I have been going to this event for a number of years, and I have been a speaker for the last 4 years. So this is an event that means something to me. In what follows, I will mention what I did at Penguicon, but of course no other person would have followed this precise path. Every time slot probably had a dozen alternatives for what you could do, but that is part of the charm of these big conventions and conferences; you know you are at a good one when you feel that you are constantly having to choose between two good alternatives. My own choices leaned more towards the Linux/Technology side of things, even though I am a Science Fiction fan (hence my domain name), but I did manage to take in a few SF panels as well. The Guests of Honor this year included John Scalzi, perhaps best known as the author of The Old Man’s War, who was the SF Author GOH, and Jim Gettys, famous for diagnosing the problem of buffer bloat, who was the Tech GOH.

The con starts on Friday afternoon, so I took off work early and got there in time to hear my friend Ryan Kather give a talk on JuJu Charms. I didn’t know a lot about this technology, other than seeing a lot of posts by Jorge Castro that mentioned his work, but it was nice to get a simple, clear overview. And what I learned was that they are basically scripts for installing and standing up software platforms in the cloud. since my new job involves some of that it may come in useful. Then I gave my own talk, on Linux Directory Structure. It was well-received, and the room was fairly full, so I felt good about that. And the thing I liked best was that by giving my talk right at the beginning I could then relax and enjoy the rest of the con. Following my talk I joined the Ubuntu Michigan LoCo Release Party for 12.04, which had just been released the day before. Then it was time for dinner, and  joined a group of people that included James Hice, Craig Maloney, JoDee Baker, and Rick Harding, among others. I had known the others before this but it was my first time meeting Rick Harding, who is a developer for Canonical and as I recall works on Launchpad. Rick and Craig also do a podcast together called the LoCoCast (http://www.lococast.net). And that concluded my Friday at Penguicon.

Saturday was a full day of activity, and my day started with a talk by Bruce Schneier called Security and Trust. It was based on his latest book, Liars and Outliers, which I bought for my Nook but haven’t gotten to yet (I’m still working on Peter Diamandis’ book Abundance). Bruce talked about the balance between the trust we show every day in various social institutions and the way that trust can be abused. Bruce did a small amount of Game Theory in his analysis, but in short trust can only be abused if there is trust to begin with, and too much abuse and we all stop trusting. So there is a natural balance. After his talk I got my copy of Schneier on Security signed. Then I hit the Dealer’s Room and picked up a few Steampunk books. This gave way to a session on the Beagle Board, led by Jason Kridner. The Beagle Board is a great platform for hobbyists to experiment with, and runs Linux. Then I went to a panel on Libraries and Librarians in the Information Age, with Janea Schimmel and Jeff Beeler. I then attended the Heinlein panel, led by Eric Raymond and Jim Gettys, which ended up being an hour of geeks talking tech all over the place, with occasional nods back to Heinlein.

I then attend JoDee Baker’s talk on Citizen Science, which talked about some of the ways each of us can contribute to science even if we are not trained scientists. Of course, JoDee teaches Physics, so she in fact is a trained scientist, and I would guess from her talk a pretty good teacher ass well. I know I enjoyed her presentation. Then Craig Maloney did a presentation on the recently released Ubuntu 12.04 that focused on the changes that had occurred and where it was at the 12.04 mark. 12.04 being a Long-Term Support release, the focus was naturally on stability and performance, rather than introducing new features, and I decided during Craig’s talk that I would install it on one of my machines and give it a workout.

After all of this Saturday activity I needed sustenance, and Catherine Devlin and I went to the food court at the mall across the street and found some decent looking Middle Eastern food. For those who don’t live in this area, there is a very large Arabic and Middle Eastern community in Southeast Michigan, and the heart of it is in Dearborn, where the con was held. Catherine is well-known in the Python community, and is someone I run into at pretty much every Linux event I attend. She most recently ran a workshop at Indiana LinuxFest called Python for Women (and Their Friends) which I think I mentioned in my report from ILF. After dinner, I went back for a talk on IPv6 Software, by Michael Mol.  And by that time it had been a long day, so I went home.

Sunday began with a talk on Sustainable Engineering in Developing Economies by Kristy Currier. One of the key problems addressed was obtaining drinkable water, which is the key problem for many people in the world. The ideal technologies are ones that are inexpensive and can be maintained easily on the spot, and Kristy showed us some of that. Then I went to a panel called The Past Through Digital Audio, put on by members of the Science Fiction Oral History Association. We heard recorded talks and interviews with Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Lester Del Rey, and others. SFOHA is doing two things it would appear, the first being to digitize audio recordings made on tape many years ago, and the second being to go to conventions currently and add to their wealth of material. This sounded exciting, so I have joined the group, and plan to do some digitizing since I have done some of that already and have it all set up right now anyway. I think this is something that SF fans should be helping.

I then joined a BOF session on Raspberry Pi, which was somewhat subdued because no one there actually had one yet. Then it was off to hear Ruth Suehle speak on The Pop Culture Guide to Open Source. Ruth made the point that open software and open culture are very related. I first heard Ruth speak at Ohio LinuxFest last September, so I knew she would give a good talk, and I was not disappointed. I got to chat briefly with her and Spot Callaway of the Fedora project. Then I went to hear Michael Mol one last time on IPv6 For the Home. For anyone who is interested, Michael pointed out that you can get IPv6 connections right now through Hurricane Electric (http://www.he.net), but what may be even more interesting is that they offer training materials and free certification for being an IPv6 expert. Well worth checking out. I ended my Penguicon 2012 experience with the closing ceremonies, where I learned that my friend Chris Krieger seems to be getting more involved with Penguicon. He has run the LAN room the last few years, but it looks like he is stepping up even more. Chris is a talented Linux and Security guy who has presented at my LUG, the Washtenaw Linux Users Group, for the last couple of years and just gave us a proposal to do it again this coming September.

So, I hope some of you may have found this interesting. If you are in the area of Southeast Michigan this is an event well worth taking in. It happens each year around the end of April or beginning of May, and I am already looking forward to 2013

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Supporting Free Software – The “M” Word

And by that I mean Money.

As I mentioned previously, when we talk about Free Software, the emphasis ought to be on freedom, not on price. The fact that so much Free Software is also free of purchase is great. It offers people who cannot afford expensive proprietary software a chance to use comparable software that can improve their lives, their businesses, and their societies. But at the same time it does require some money to produce the software. While there are cases where the financial support comes from interested companies who may assign their staff as developers or provide server space (and companies like Red Hat and IBM provide a lot of support this way), there are also a lot of smaller projects that need help. And some activities that are important are not supported by corporations at all, but instead must rely on individuals to provide this support. I would never suggest you stop feeding your kids to do this, but the reality is that most users of Free Software in the US and Europe (for example) could easily afford to make some contributions. And I want to suggest some ways you can do this.

To begin with, most of the Free Software projects have a Web page. And if you go to the Web page you will probably see something like a PayPal button to make a donation. My rule of thumb is that is I use the software a lot I ought to support it financially. I have always felt this way, going back to the days of “shareware”. Shareware used to be “try before you buy” software produced generally by independent developers who let you use the software free of charge but asked you to register and pay for it if you liked it. While undoubtedly some number of people simply used the software and ignored the obligation to pay for it, it was clear to me (and many others) that if the developers could not get paid for their trouble they would stop making useful software. Now that I am firmly in the Free Software camp, I feel the same way: if we don’t make sure our developers are supported, they will go do other things. They also need to eat, they also have families, they need to pay their bills.

I will give a few examples from my own experience just to illustrate how easy it is to do this if you are sensitive to the issue. I realize this may look like I am trying to make myself look good, but I don’t think I am any better than anyone else, I just don’t have anyone else’s examples handy right now. The first example is a project called Miro, which produces software to download videos from the Internet and play them. I subscribe to a lot of video podcasts, as well as a few YouTube channels, and this is how I do it. And I use this software every day, so it is a good candidate for support. About a year ago they were looking to sign up people in a fund-raising drive called “Adopt a line of code”, for which you would pay $4 per month through PayPal. It looked good to me, so I signed up. After all, I get far more than $4 per month of benefit from this software and have come to rely on it every day.

I also am a KDE user on all of my computers. A few months back I saw a post from one of the developers, Sebastian Trueg, that he needed to raise money to support himself so he could continue his work on KDE. Unlike some of the developers, he had no corporate paycheck supporting his KDE work. Well, I use KDE every day, I rely on it, and I clicked the PayPal button for a donation (My memory is gave him $10, not a huge amount, but I hope that among all of the KDE users he raised enough money to keep working.)

My particular distro of choice is Kubuntu, and again I use it every day. I don’t think Canonical really needs my donations to keep going, but they base their work on Debian, so when I saw a fundraising drive to write and publish the Debian System Administrator’s Handbook, I pledged a small amount (again, I think it was $10 or so. For me, $10 is the amount I can casually donate without worrying about paying my own bills.)

Another form of support you can give is by joining some of the Non-Profit charitable organizations that support Free Software. There are a number of them, but I will note a few. First is the Free Software Foundation. This was set up by Richard Stallman, and is the one organization on my list that is directly focused on defending our software freedoms. This is the group that promotes the GPL license. Because my own freedom is very important to me, I am proud to say that I am a member. This is a little more expensive than my donations above, at $10 per month, but I’m glad to do it. Another group that you can support through a membership is The Linux Foundation. This group pays the salary of Linus Torvalds (and just announced that they are supporting Greg Kroah-Hartman), so if the Linux Kernel is your thing this would be a good thing to join. Individual memberships are $99 per year. Next I want to mention the Linux Fund. They raise money through what are called “Affinity Cards”, i.e. credit cards with a logo of your favorite group. you many have seen these before to support sports teams or universities, but you can support Free Software. And despite that name “Linux Fund” they also support BSD, which is Free Software by any definition. All you need to do is sign up for a credit card through them and a small part of your purchases goes to support the project you choose.

The two last ones I would like to mention are umbrella support organizations. The first one is the Software Freedom Conservancy. This is a non-profit group headed by Bradley Kuhn that helps a lot of projects. Essentially, they provide the legal structure to enable smaller projects to raise money while the SFC handles the administrative overhead. Bradley was formerly at the Free Software Foundation, and is still the most active person in defending the GPL, so this is a name you may well have heard before. But at SFC he is directly helping all of these projects. Current member projects include Amarok, Git, Samba, and Wine. I’m guessing at least a few of those projects produce software you use, so you can help them out with a donation. The other one I would like to mention is Software in the Public Interest, which has Bdale Garbee as president. As you might expect from that connection, the Debian project is one of the FOSS projects supported, but Arch linux, Drupal, and LibreOffice are among the others they support. Again, by contributing to a group like this you can give valuable support to Free Software.

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Supporting Free Software – Documentation

In my day job I am a Project Manager, and one of the things I constantly try to get is good documentation. I hope I have even produced a little of it myself. But there is no topic on which I get more resistance than on creating good documentation. No one ever has time to create it, but somehow they find the resources to pay the price when they don’t have it. If getting good documentation is hard in the corporate world, how about in the Free Software world? It is equally difficult. I can’t tell you how many times I have tried to access the Help system for one of my KDE applications only to get an error that says there is no Help material available. You really feel sometimes like you are being told “We wrote it, now you figure out what to do with it.” And part of the reason is that we don’t always think about it properly (in my opinion).

I would start by distinguishing between two kinds of documentation: technical, and end-user. Technical documentation, as the name implies, is the sort of thing that the developers could provide if they chose to do so. This could get to the very deepest level of code documentation, but even if it lives at a somewhat higher level, it is not end-user documentation. And the question of whether it even exists remains. Developers like developing, but they generally don’t like documenting. And in Free Software many of these people are volunteers.

But the topic of end-user documentation takes us in a different direction, and one where people with the right skills can be very helpful. It can also be little frustrating. I recall one experience I had where I offered to help create end-user documentation for an application. When I asked to see what they had, the response was “We don’t have anything, that is what we want you to do.” Now i like to think I am a good writer, and I know I have been praised at work for the documentation I have written, but any writer needs something to start with. At work, I can make the technical people sit down with me, answer my questions, and so on. And you really need something like that to do good documentation. Good technical documentation can get you started, but to do good end-user documentation you will need to have some kind of access to the developers. And if the folks on the project you want to help don’t understand this, you need to explain it to them. They may want someone to come along and just magically make something happen without anyone else on the project being involved, but that is just not feasible. Good documentation is a group effort, really.

In writing for the end-user, you need to be able to think a little differently. End-users are, by-and-large, not technical. There can be exceptions to this rule, but this is a good starting place for writing the most useful documentation. And the best way to do this by thinking of “stories”. The Agile community tends to do a good job of this in terms of software development, but you need to carry this into documentation as well. You could write a book on this topic, and I don’t have that kind of space here so I will be somewhat more brief. Stories in this context means picturing a typical user of some kind, and imagining how they might try to use the software. Who is this person? Be specific – give this person a name, an age, a sex, a background. The better you do this the better able you will be to get into this person’s skin and see things the way they do. Then look at some questions they might have.

  1. Why would I want to use this software?
  2. What do I hope to accomplish here?
  3. Would I use this infrequently, or daily?
  4. Would I use this alone, or with other software?

And that is just a few of the questions you might want to ask at the beginning. By answering them, you set a direction for what you want to do. And if you can begin here and you can write out answers that end-users can make sense of, you can make an invaluable contribution to Free Software.

One last note is about translating documentation. Free software is in international in scope, and often the people who need it most also need it in their own language. If you can translate the documentation that is also a much-needed contribution. Many projects are looking for help with this aspect of the documentation. Just offer to help.

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Supporting Free Software – Bug Hunting

In a previous post I mentioned that Free Software should more properly be considered “Community-Supported” software, and I said I would come back to discuss just what that means.

There are lots of ways for someone to support Free Software, but one of the most important is by submitting bugs to the developers. Remember that these fine people are creating wonderful software with minimal budgets, and that means they cannot possibly test their software under all possible conditions. Many of us (myself included) build our own computers out of parts we mix and match, everyone installs their own custom blend of software, etc. Under the circumstances, you have to expect that we will stumble over problems that no one knew about. And the only way they can get fixed and the software improved for everyone is by filing bugs. This is how the developers get informed about the problems, and is step one to fixing them.

The first place to look for filing bugs is with your distro. The major distros tend to have online bug-tracking mechanisms of some kind, and they will have specific directions on how to file a bug. They may decide that it should go upstream (i.e. the bug is in a package that they included but don’t directly support), but it is really never wrong to start with the distro. If you want to read more about this, a good place to start is at LinuxCareeer.com. Note how they start off their discussion:

Linux distributions and Open Source software in general are, before anything, community efforts. Every distribution lists somewhere on its’ website ways to contribute and help to the effort. And it’s quite an effort too, which programmers provide for free, working in their spare time. One recurrent theme on each of those “how to contribute” documents is “Submit bugs when found” although the exact wording may differ.

This site give more specific instructions for Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Debian, and openSUSE. But if you use some other distro, just go to the site of the distro and you will be certain to find how they do it. Or Google for the name of the distro and the phrase “filing bugs” and you will probably get there right away.

Now, aside from the specific mechanics of submitting a bug for your distro, there are some general things that are important to any good bug report, and you should learn to look for these:

  • Did anything just change? Did you just add a new video card. for instance? If you change to a different video card, does that affect the problem? Did you just install new software? Did you just update something? Can you roll back the change and try again? Knowing the answers to these questions can be very important in determining where the problem lies.
  • What were you doing when the problem occurred? Is it reproducible, i.e. if you do the same things again do you get the exact same problem? Again, a very important piece of information for tracking down the bug.
  • Do you have any log data to add to the report? Get to know where this data lives, and how to access it. For instance, dmesg is a great source of information. Just including this file in your bug report can be useful, but even better is finding out how to pull out the relevant details first.
  • Check to see if this bug has already been submitted. If so, you may be able to add on to the report as an additional case of the bug. Even better, if you learned how to get good information, you can improve the original bug report to the point where the developers can actually work on it. When you look at how bugs are submitted, a large number of them cannot be worked on because there is no useful information. Learn to make yours useful. Also, you may discover that the bug has already been fixed, and all you need to do is update your software. That is pretty good, right?

Here is an example of one problem I had. The software package in question was Miro, which downloads and plays videos from the Web, which for me is mostly video podcasts. And I use it every day, so this problem mattered to me. I had just upgraded my Distro to the newest version, and suddenly Miro would not play any of my videos. I checked and I could play them in other software, but I wanted Miro to work for me again. I also checked on another computer with the same Distro version, and had the exact same problem. So I filed a bug in two places, one with the distro, the other with Miro itself. I got a reply from a developer on the Miro project within hours, and he said that he had tried that exact Distro version and had no problems. So there was probably some combination of software that I tended to use that did something unexpected. He asked me to grab a log file from Miro, and send it to him. I did so, and again he wrote back promptly pointing out a couple of lines in the log file, and saying that it looked like I was missing a critical package. I checked, and it looked like this package was on my system, but I removed it, reinstalled it, and then Miro worked properly again. I think this counts as a very good outcome.

When you create good bug reports, you help yourself and you help others. And that is a big part of what it means to have Community-Supported Software.

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Ohio LinuxFest Registration is Open for Business!

The premier Linux event in the Mid-West USA will run Sept. 9 through Sept. 11 in Columbus, Ohio, and registration is now open to all. Keynoters include Cathy Malmrose, Bradley Kuhn, and Jon ‘maddog’ Hall. There is an extensive Medical track focusing on the use of Open Source in various aspects of medicine, training from the Ohio LinuxFest Institute, and a great slate of presentations. Register now and reserve your place.

As always, we have a “Enthusiast” category for those short on funds. If you pre-register at the Web site, you can join us free of charge. Walk-ins will be charged a small fee.

Indiana LinuxFest

We have a new arrival on the scene for Linux and FOSS fans. It is Indiana LinuxFest, and it is running from 3/25 through 3/27/11 in Indianapolis. The Web site with more details is at http://www.indianalinux.org/cms/. This looks like a nice addition and it comes at a time when we are coming out of our winter hibernation. I will probably be going, and I may even do a presentation there. So get your hotel room and make your plans.

New Slide Show created

It has been a while since I posted here, but I just finished a new slide show, called “Help, My Computer Is Sluggish!”. I have added it to the Slide Show section, where you can download the ODP file or just run the presentation in your Web browser.

Ohio LinuxFest Registration and Contest Deadline Extended

Registration for the 2010 Ohio LinuxFest has been extended through September 8th, and the registration contest has also been extended until the 1,000th registration has been reached.
One lucky registrant will win an upgrade to the Supporter Pass, or a Professional Pass registration for Ohio LinuxFest 2011 worth $350, at the choice of the winner. Sign up today and have a chance to win!
Online registration also qualifies attendees for door prizes and giveaways the day of the conference.
As always, the main schedule takes place on Saturday. The schedule kicks off with a keynote from GNOME Foundation Executive Director Stormy Peters, followed by five tracks of talks from open source and Linux experts like Taurus Balog, Amber Graner, Catherine Devlin, Dru Lavigne, Paul Frields, and Jon ‘maddog’ Hall. This year’s OLF also features a special medical track for those interested in the use of free and open source software in medicine.
The final keynote will be a real treat for Linux and open source enthusiasts interested in free media. Christopher “Monty” Montgomery of Xiph.org will be talking about next generation open source media formats.
Once again the Ohio LinuxFest is free to all, but space is limited. for $65 that includes lunch and an OLF t-shirt. For those who want to attend Friday’s OLF University sessions, a professional pass is also available for $350.
The Ohio LinuxFest is a grassroots conference for the open source community that started in 2003 as an inter-LUG meeting and has grown steadily since to become the Midwest’s largest open source event. It’s an annual event for Linux and open source enthusiasts to gather, share information, and socialize.

Ohio LinuxFest is coming!

I just want to make sure everyone knows that Ohio LinuxFest is not that far off. It runs 9/10-12, with some great speakers such as Jon “maddog” Hall, Stormy Peters of the Gnome Project, and “Monty” Montgomery, creater of ogg and founder of Xiph.org, plus many other great speakers.

This year the theme is “How Will Free Change the World”, and in the wake of the SCOracle lawsuit I think the idea of free software is more important than ever.

Another very timely focus this year is on the use of free software in the medical field. You may now be aware of just how much of the Health Care Reform is focused on IT, and we want to make sure that free software gets every chance to be a part of it. So there is a full track of medical-oriented talks looking at how free software is impacting the practice of medicine. You won’t want to miss it.

You can register for the conference here, and book a hotel room here. But don’t delay, because it is filling up fast!