Are you also one of those who find setting up multiple displays in KDE workspace is not as good as it could be. The part that handles this is called Kephal, which provides KDE apps with a unified interface to various display configuration backends. On GNU/Linux this means XRandR and if is not available it uses Qt’s QDesktopWidget as a read-only fallback. Currently Kephal doesn’t support all the latest and greatest features available in XRandR and the graphical configuration tool, available in System Settings, is also not so nice to use. More streamlined integration into KDE workspace would also be nice.

And here is where Google Summer of Code comes in. This year I’ve been selected as one of the 50 students who will be working hard on improving various KDE parts. And as you guessed it, I’ll be working on improving Kephal. The main direction I envisioned is that Kephal should become smarter so that it would be able to configure most of the display related settings on its own, in a way a user would expect. This way the need for user intervention would be reduced to a minimum, and only if there is a special configuration needed, user would open the tool to adjust settings (accessible for example from Devices notification widget, in a similar way as actions for storage media). These settings would be saved and then later loaded as needed automatically, depending on the detected display combinations, or maybe even depending on location/activity other KDE services provide. Details about everything will be decided next week when I’ll have my first meeting with my mentor Will "bille" Stephenson,

At this point I also have to thank Gustavo Pichorin Boiko, who was helping me put my GSoC proposal into shape.

BTW, if you have any comments about multi-display support (what you miss, what you don’t like, any nice ideas about improvements) you’re welcome to add them to this blog post.

In addition to packaging KDE SC 4.4.2 for the just released Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 1, the hard-working Mandriva KDE Team, lead by Nicolas Lécureuil (neoclust), have also prepared packages for current stable version of the distribution. To get the latest version of your favourite desktop and applications first add the packages repository by issuing this command from Konsole (as root user of course):

If you’re using a 64-bit edition:
urpmi.addmedia KDE-4.4 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.4.2/Mandriva/2010.0/x86_64

If you’re using a 32-bit edition:
urpmi.addmedia KDE-4.4 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.4.2/Mandriva/2010.0/i586

If possible use KDE mirror that is closest to your location. In case you already have a repository for an older KDE SC 4.4 release, you can just edit the URL from Mandriva Control Center. After the repository is configured use the following command to automatically update all repositories, select all updates and perform a test update:

urpmi --auto-update --test

If all goes well the updated packages should get downloaded and you should get a message that the installation of updates is possible. Now run the previous command again. this time without the "–test" switch, wait a few minutes and the latest and greatest of KDE software should be installed. Don’t forget to logout and login and all will be ready. Enjoy!

Just a reminder to everyone from KDE Community (or others interested in or work), who will be around Ljubljana, Slovenia on February 9. Encouraged by the big success of the KDE party last year, and a lot of exciting new features in KDE SC 4.3 and 4.4, we’ve decided to organize another KDE release party this year. It will start at 18:00 local time and you’ll be able to hear about some of the cool new developments that have happend in the KDE land since the last party. So don’t miss this get-together and put this party on your calendars. If you are comming, please add yourself on the list on the KDE SC 4.4 Release parties Wiki and/or party page on Facebook. Invite your friends too. Don’t worry if you are not around Ljubljana on that day and time, we’ll most probably have a live streaming video during presentations (check this blog, or previously mentioned wiki/Facebook page, later for more info). In case you are even further away from Ljubljana (or don’t understand Slovenian) there are 26 other parties in 15 different countries around the world. Get ready to party!

In the beginning of February Mandriva announced the creation of Mandriva Linux Assembly with aim of improving communication between users, contributors and Mandriva company. All to make Mandriva Linux distribution even better than it already is. I candidated as a representative of translators, although I also try to help as much as I can with testing development versions. Well a few days ago the results of the vote came in and after some shuffling of positions, to better represent different parts of community, I became a Cooker Chef, representing translators. Thanks to all who voted for me and thanks to Fabrice Facorat for transferring his spot to me. I’ll try my very best to do my job well. If any of you have any problem with translating and localising Mandriva Linux or have an idea for improving the process, do not hesitate to get in contact with us. You can find us on translation forum or mailing list.

Since this is my first blog post on Planet Mandriva, let me also say “Hi!” and introduce myself. I’m a 28 years old Free Software enthusiast from Bohinjska Bistrica, Slovenia. As far as Mandriva Linux goes… I’ve started using Mandrake with version 7.0, sometime around the year 2000. I began contributing to Mandriva Linux in 2003 by testing beta versions and reporting bugs. A few years later I also started helping translate it into Slovenian language and in 2008 I became the Slovenian translations coordinator. I’ve also tried to learn some packaging but didn’t have much time yet, maybe sometime later Besides this, I also contribute to two more Free Software projects: Thousand Parsec (a framework for creating space-empire-building 4X strategy games) and KDE. Additionally, I’m an active member of Linux Users Group of Slovenia (LUGOS).

Enough about me. Now let’s get back to making Mandriva Linux the best translated and localised distribution available.

Everyone, at least in the free software world, probably knows by now that KDE 4.2 has been released yesterday. It was released just a few moments after the release party started in Kiberpipa/Cyberpipe multimedia centre here in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Just in case you still don’t know about KDE 4.2 release, you should definitely read KDE 4.2 release announcement and take a look at the excellent visual guide to new features in KDE 4.2. You’ll see that the solid new foundations laid out with KDE 4.0 are really showing through now and the work invested into them is starting to pay off heavily. At this fast rate of development it is hard to imagine what KDE 4.3 will bring us. And it’s only 6 months away.

The party in Kiberpipa was also a similar success. Everything was not perfect, though. Computers that would be used for workshops didn’t have KDE 4 installed on them, but this got solved quickly and after the presentations ended all was ready for participants with most interest into KDE 4. Hopefully some of them become contributors in the future. Oh, talking about attendance… When the idea about the party started to grow inside my head, I was expecting about 20 people coming to the party. Well I was pleasantly surprised in the end. Somewhere between 40 and 50 people joined the party. Maybe the number was exactly 42 Well in the following photo you can see some of us who were partying late into the night:

The presentations were recorded. When videos become available I’ll let you know. The slides will also be published together with videos. In the meantime you can read presentation notes about What’s New in KDE 4.2 and Plasma, which were taken by Jure Čuhalev, one of the participants on the party. Thanks to all who came to the party and thanks to all helping to organise it. Who knows, maybe we meet again in six months. Best wishes to all the KDE 4.2 release parties that are still coming. We’re up to 22 party locations now. Also twice as much as I expected when I started pushing for parties. And if there is no party near you, join people partying on KDE Forum.

Update 1: Photos from the party are available in Kiberpipa’s KDE 4.2 Release Party Gallery

Update 2: Videos from the party are available: Video 1 (Youtube), Video 2 (Youtube).

Tags: kde, kde4, kde42, desktop, free software, prosto programje, open source, odprta koda, slovenia, slovenija, linux, lugos, cyberpipe, kiberpipa

Who would have thought that my enquiring about the probability of releasing KDE 4.2 on January 27, as scheduled, would lead to 12 registered KDE 4.2 release parties all around the world. It all started just so we could determine the best date for one short KDE 4.2 presentation in Kiberpipa/Cyberpipe, here in Slovenia. With encouragement from KDE Promo team this evolved into a call for organisation of KDE 4.2 release parties and now… well, everyone knows about the parties now.

Regarding the Slovenian party, the one short presentation expanded into a nice event with four presentations (about KDE 4.2, Plasma, Amarok 2 and, D-Bus), three workshops (creating a Plasma theme, creating a Plasma widget, and helping with translation), and after that some free socialising with some snacks and drinks. We tried to get Mr. Lancelot (Ivan Čukić) from Serbia as our guest speaker, but unfortunately there was not enough time to get the visa. Next time we sure have to start getting papers in order earlier.

What follow is the announcement of the party in Slovenian.

Zabava ob izidu KDE 4.2

Kdaj: 27. januarja 2009
Kje: Kiberpipa, Kersnikova 6, Ljubljana - zemljevid

27. januarja bo izšel KDE 4.2, ki je končno primeren tudi za širše občinstvo in ne le za razvijalce in preizkusne uporabnike. KDE 4.2 predstavlja pomemben mejnik v razvoju KDE in skupnost KDE bo pripravila vrsto prireditev in zabav ob izidu te nove različice.

Tudi v Sloveniji bomo organizirali prireditev ob izidu KDE 4.2, in sicer v torek 27. januarja ob 18:00 v okviru Pipinih odprtih terminov.

Program

• 18:00 - Predstavitev KDE 4(.2) (Andrej Vernekar)
• 18:30 - Plasma (Jure Repinc)
• 19:00 - Amarok 2 (Andraž Sraka)
• 19:15 - Adijo, DCOP; zdravo, D-Bus! (Gašper Fele-Žorž)
• 19:30 - Delavnice
  • Izdelava teme za Plazmo (Jure Repinc)
  • Izdelava gradnika za Plazmo (Ambrož Bizjak)
  • Kako pomagati s prevajanjem (Andrej Vernekar)
• 20:30 - Pogostitev/druženje/pijača/zabava

Če nameravate obiskate katero izmed delavnic, se je nanjo potrebno prijaviti na tej strani.

Update 1: Photos from the party are available in Kiberpipa’s KDE 4.2 Release Party Gallery

Update 2: Videos from the party are available: Video 1 (Youtube), Video 2 (Youtube).

Tags: kde, kde4, kde42, desktop, free software, prosto programje, open source, odprta koda, slovenia, slovenija, linux, lugos, cyberpipe, kiberpipa

There’s less than one month left until the beginning of this year’s Akademy conference in Sint-Katelijne-Waver, Belgium. Just a few moments ago I’ve finally arranged everything for the trip. The room at youth hostel Domein Roosendael is paid for and the plane ticket is registered. One more time I have to thank Linux Users Group of Slovenia (Lugos), who are paying for the flight. This will be my second time to Akademy and this time I’m staying for the whole week. The only thing left now is to decide which talks from the two parallel tracks I will be attending. Looking forward to meet cool KDE contributors!

Tags: kde, desktop, akademy, akademy 2008, free software, open source, belgium, linux, lugos

A new version of one of the most user-friendly distributions of free and open source operating system Linux has just been released. Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring (or 2008.1 if you wish) packs quite a lot of goodies. It brings official full support for the highly popular ASUS Eee PC laptop, has easier synchronisation with various mobile devices, a new parental control utility, Elisa multimedia centre is there, so is Codeina for easy multimedia codecs installation. They have also switched to PulseAudio sound server, updated software to latest versions (yes even KDE 4.0.3 is available) and given the distribution a fresh new look. Go download it from here (or via BitTorrent) and while downloading be sure to check out a visual guide to what’s new in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring.

As with previous releases I also did my fair share of beta testing and bug reporting this time. In addition this is also the first release where I have been the coordinator of Slovenian translation team. We did a great job and almost everything is translated. The only thing left are initscript messages (which are hidden most of the time).

Even during beta testing this release proved to be of very high quality. Looks like after some hiccups a year or two ago Mandriva have put their act together and the quality of releases is increasing every year now. They are also doing a great job with improving their relationship and interaction with community. If they continue in this direction they can soon be back at the top, although it will be hard since unfortunately there is not so much hype surrounding Mandriva as there is around some other very popular Linux distribution.

Tags: mandriva, linux, distributions, eee pc, eeepc, free software, open source, operating systems

I’ve been to Maribor last Thursday where the 1st Day of Open Source event was organised at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. This was my first time visiting Maribor and my first impression was that it is a very nice, clean and lively city.

At the event itself you could attend various interesting talks about Linux and Open Source Software in general. I even had the honor to be the very first speaker. I presented FLOSS, it’s history, licensing and after that talked a bit about Lugos, the Linux User Group of Slovenia. Too bad I missed the talks at the end of the day but I had to catch the last train back to Ljubljana.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the number of attendance. A quick count showed that there were constantly at least 150 people in the room. By comparison, the day before this event Microsoft organised a similar event, where there were only 30-50 people. Despite Microsoft having better promotion and they even tried to bribe students by some expensive prizes.

Anyways, hats off to Oto Brglez jr. and the Students Group. They did an excellent job organizing the event and I sure look forward to the 2nd Day of Open Source.

Tags: open source, free software, floss, linux, lugos, maribor, slovenia

Great news for all fans of turn-based 4X strategy games set in space. We (well mainly Tim Ansell with help from Nathan Partlan) at Thousand Parsec project have released a new version of the free and open source wxPython based client for playing Thousand Parsec games. There is a lot of new features, the client looks better and it is easier to use. Translation of the client is now possible and I have already translated it into Slovenian language. Remember, translation is a great way to easily help the project. Of course a lot of bugs have been fixed and the new version should work much better on Mac OS X. Be sure to read the full announcement for version 0.3.0 to see the entire changelog and download links. This is also the very first time we provide our own package repositories (currently only for Ubunutu and Debian Linux). We will try to set up repositories for other Linux distributions in the future. I already started to work on packages for Mandriva Linux. Maybe they will even be included in Mandriva 2008 Spring. Now let’s get playing and let’s see who will be the one to conquer the universe.

Tags: games, gaming, game, 4x games, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, wxpython, python, wxwidgets, free software, open source

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been very busy. Like many other people all around the world I’ve also been working hard to make the first release of KDE 4 series as good as possible. About three hours ago KDE 4.0.0 has finally been tagged and is now getting ready to be officially released on January 11th.

In addition to occasional bug fix here and there I’ve mostly been testing and reporting bugs. But by far the largest part of my contribution to this release is translation into Slovenian language. Our team managed to get 63% of KDE 4.0.0 translated into Slovenian. Not bad at all for our small country and small team. We currently hold 23rd place on the list of top translation teams.

I’ve been using pre-4.0.0 KDE as my main desktop ever since our KDE Education metting in Pariz in the beginning of December. During this past month it was improving very fast and was usable just fine. Sure there were a few features and settings missing (and still are in the final version), but nothing that big. There are also some rough edges and a few bugs left, either known or still hidding, but that can be expected for a release with so many changes all around. There is already a lot to like about this new series of KDE 4 and what I like the most in KDE 4.0 is the new gorgeous artwork (icons, widget style, sounds), the idea behind Plasma desktop shell and the cool new applications (like Okular, Gwenview, new games, new educational applications). And with such a solid foundation in place we can expect a lot more cool stuff in the future.

While you are waiting for your favourite distribution to provide packages of KDE 4.0.0 and before you go writing a review about it, be sure to read these two blog posts: talking bluntly, KDE 4.0 Review Reminders and this podcast: The Linux Linux Tech Show - Episode 226. And remember, KDE 4.0.0 is not for everyone. It is for those who like cool new technology and who like living on the bleeding edge. It is also for you if you are an active user of software and not just a passive user. Now is a great time to help change the history and help make the dream become true. In any case KDE 3.5 is still here and it is still an excellent desktop environment and no one will force you to start using KDE 4.0. It’s all your choice.

Tags: kde, kde4, desktop, translation, slovenia, free software, open source, linux

Alternative operating systems like Linux and Mac OS are getting more and more popular these days. That’s why cross platform technologies and programming are also increasingly popular and important. One of such technologies is a C++ GUI programming library and framework called Qt. Today I’ve just finished reading a book about it, The Book of Qt 4 – The Art of Building Qt Applications. This is my short review of it.

The author of the book is Daniel Molkentin, who is one of the main developers at the KDE project. KDE is an entire desktop environment based on Qt. On more than 400 pages Daniel did a great job of presenting basic concepts and components behind Qt 4. Compared to another Qt book I’ve got, C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4, the introduction to Qt in this book is more smooth and friendlier to readers who are just starting to learn Qt. Examples are simpler and there is a separate example for every topic. So you don’t need to complete something from the beginning of the book to try another thing from the end. It is also nice that there are step by step instructions on how to use Qt’s graphical tool to design the main application window and dialogs. With 48 and 44 pages two of the longest chapters describe model/view programming using Interview framework and Qt’s powerful painting system called Arthur. Like the rest of the chapters these two are also presented in a way that doesn’t overload the reader with too much information. For complete list of topics covered check out the table of contents.

At the end I can say that this is a great book for anyone getting started with Qt 4 programming. By learning Qt 4 you will be able to reach more users, program faster and enjoy more while doing it. Not to mention you will be ready to start developing for KDE 4, which will be released in a few months and is destined to be one of the most exciting desktop environments ever.

Tags: trolltech, qt, programming, development, c++, gui, toolkits, frameworks, cross platform, multi platform, software, linux, mac, windows, kde

I just got an e-mail with some great news. It looks like I am among the lucky ones who are selected to receive a grant under the Qtopia Greenphone Innovation Grant program. This means that I will soon get a full Greenphone mobile phone SDK, with the phone itself, connector cables and development tools. Greenphone is one of those mobile phones of the new generation which are based on an open platform. Another well known example from the new generation is OpenMoko. Apple iPhone on the other hand still belongs to the old closed platform generation.

And why will I get Greenphone? Well it looks like judges from Trolltech found my proposal for a new mobile phone application interesting. In this rather short time (submission deadline is October 31) I will try to create a free and open source mobile phone client for playing turn-based 4X space strategy games which are based on servers and the protocol of Thousand Parsec project. A C++ library for the protocol is already available and I hope I’ll be able to reuse it as much as possible. If all goes well most of the work will involve the user interface and use of the C++ protocol library. The work will also be of use with my other project, which is to create a game client for KDE 4 desktop, which heavily uses Qt toolkit and framework, which is very similar to Qtopia used on the mobile phone and other mobile devices.

Can’t wait until postman brings me the package. In the meantime I should start reading more about Qtopia development. I also need to come up with a name for the game and the way a user would interact with it. Any suggestions are welcome.

Tags: greenphone, qtopia, trolltech, mobiles, mobile phones, gsm, mobile devices, programming, linux, 4x, games

During the breakfast I’ve heard the news that there could have been a terrorist attack at the Glasgow airport. Someone crashed into terminals or something like that. As far as I know nobody got hurt and there were only flights canceled for the day.

Today the most interesting talks started with Tudor Groza, who presented concept of semantic desktop and how it is coming into KDE. We found out that the next version of Mandriva Linux should already integrate some parts of it. Later on Olaf and Gunnar Schmidt had a very interesting talk about accessibility, something that is too often overlooked when developing software. Accessibility is also one of the hot topics in governments, so it is very important that KDE provides the best experience for people with disabilities. The next talk on the programme was from Jim Zemlin of Linux Foundation, who told us what the organisation does and into which direction Linux is going. During his talk we got the good news that the internet id finally working. In the following talk Sander Koning provided us with some tips on writing documentation so that it is useful to the users. It’s harder than it looks at first. Towards the end of the day Claire Lotion revealed to us that there is a lot of money available from European Union which can be used for research in informatics and computer related fields. KDE already has some projects which would be good candidates to apply for this money, but currently there is no framework in place at KDE to better utilise the available resources. Claire has started the work to improve the situation.

At the end of the contributors conference there was the 3rd aKademy Award Ceremony. Award for the best application went into the hands of Sebastian Trueg for K3b. Danny Allen received award for his great work on weekly KDE Commit Digest. Congrats to both!

Tags: kde, akademy, akademy 2007, community, conference, meeting, desktop, free software, open source, glasgow, scotland

At around 5:30 I was woken by a sea gull (or something like that) which was banging on our window. I couldn’t go back to sleep so I waited until breakfast, waited some more and then headed to the conference, which started at 9 o’clock.

I’ve been in the Room 1 for the entire day, listening to 2 keynotes and 10 other talks. Let me mention just some of them, the ones which were the most interesting to me. At the Threadweaver talk I found out what this library actually is, where and how it is useful and that it shouldn’t be that hard to use. Definitely something to take a closer look at when I get home. After lunch (where I met Mike from Edinburgh and Matt from Philadelphia) Mark Shuttleworth from Canonical (Ubuntu) presented 13 suggestions to make Linux even better and more widely used. People agreed on most of the stuff, like the importance of the first impression. However, some were not convinced that 6-months release cycle would be beneficial to KDE. It was also nice to see that he recognizes the valuable work translators do. Later in the day Zack Rusin presented a talk about computer graphics and introduced a tool/framework called Quasar, which should make graphical effects easier to create. Another thing to check out later. Aaron Seigo also talked about how important beautiful graphics are for enjoyable experience when using a computer. But the effects must be natural and subtle. At the end, we listened to a talk by Patrick Harvie, who is a member of the Scottish parliament. It was very refreshing to see that there are politicians who actually understand the true meaning of the word free in Free Software and know about the many benefits of Free Software for society.

All in all it was a great first day at aKademy. The only thing we missed a lot was the working wireless internet connection.

Tags: kde, akademy, akademy 2007, community, conference, meeting, desktop, free software, open source, glasgow, scotland