Recently the debate about KDE4 has reemerged with a lot of people complaining heavily - either their pet feature is not yet (re-)implemented, or they don’t agree with some fringe design decision, or something else is not exactly the way they like it. I could understand people had mixed feelings about 4.0, but now it’s getting out of hand in my opinion, while 4.1 won’t match KDE 3.5 in every possible respect, the improvements during the six months since 4.0 release are incredible - very promising prospects for 4.2 and I don’t even dare think about 4.3 - oohwee.

I’ve been running KDE 4.0 on my ancient Pentium III Compaq bricktop, since before it was released, and recently upgraded to 4.1 beta. I’ve also just played my first songs with Amarok2 on it, had a look at K3b and KOffice2, things are rapidly approaching a usable level. But this doesn’t really count as migration, as I rarely use this bricktop, and almost never do anything remotely productive on it.

I’ll definitely complete migration to KDE 4.1.x for my workstation when openSUSE 11.1 is released in December this year - at the very latest. Being a huge fan of KDE3 I’ll surely miss it, but there’s no use in clinging to the past - for the good of KDE and the free software desktop in general, it’s getting time to move on.

So far I’ve begun a slow, gradual migration of my workstation, from within safe and familiar KDE3 - moving to KDE4 components one step at a time.

I’m using KDE4.1 beta KWin with effects enabled (yes, in KDE3. seli made this very easy to do). I could never get along with Compiz for more than a few minutes at the time, but now I’ve used kde4-kwin for more than a week, virtually without a single issue. While it doesn’t have as many or as extravagant effects as Comiz, it does have the useful ones (scale windows, desktop-grid and such) and also wobbly windows and some pretty switchers.

I’ve also begun using a number of the great KDE4 applications as defaults for their respective jobs - using Okular for PDFs, KDE4 Gwenview for image viewing, using LoKalize for translations, Dragon Player for video, KTorrent, Marble, KDE Games… steadily adding more KDE4 apps to the bunch. Of course I’m using Oxygen icon theme for YaST2 and Firefox

I’m lovin’ it…

Jeg har lavet en 80×15-knap, som man kan bruge på blogs og hjemmesider, hvis man vil hjælpe med at promovere planet.opensource.dk.

Dygtige kunstnere, som kan fremstille noget bedre, skal endelig ikke holde sig tilbage

openSUSE 11.0 will be released this Thursday (June 19). As I’m writing this my laptop is updating from rc1 to the gold master, as I happened to come across a mirror that had the 11.0 repositories accessible a bit prematurely. So I guess it’s time to write a little about 11.0. It’s a rather monumental release, but I’ll try to give a brief overview of what everyone should know about the new version.

Media layout
The non-live 1-cd was dropped. What remains is the DVD with KDE 4.0, KDE 3.5, Xfce, text/server installation, FVWM2, GNOME, etc. The DVD includes translations, Adobe Flash, Sun Java and some other proprietary packages.

Installable LiveCDs with KDE 4.0 and GNOME are also available. These are 100% free software, with the exception of wlan firmwarez. Only English and German language available, other languages can be installed manually later of course.

Installation
The (DVD) installation was made much prettier, faster and shorter/simpler.

One controversial decision was to use the same password for the normal user account and the root account by default. If you don’t want this behaviour look out for the checkbox.

Despite being simplified the openSUSE (DVD) installer is still more powerful and customizable than the installers of most comparable distros. Allowing users to add and remove software, do very advanced partitioning etc. The liveCD installer is a little less powerful.

Package management
Huge improvements in this area. Package managment with YaST2 or zypper is literally 10-15 times faster than on 10.3.

But that’s not all. YaST2 was ported to Qt4 and the software management module has been polished a lot. It’s now also possible to access the repository management from within the software management module.

Zypper saw a ton of improvements, including new features like support for local and http RPMs, but most notably the new ‘zypper dup’ feature - which performs an online dist-upgrade, meaning you’ll be able to upgrade openSUSE 11.0 to 11.1 without downloading media.

openSUSE updater was ported to KDE4, and now supports using packagekit as a backend as well as libzypp.

KDE

KDE 3.5.9
The familiar and stable KDE3.5 is available on the DVD and via network installation. Not much has happened here since 10.3 - but it does sport some exciting new features like KNetworkManager 0.7, now supporting static IP setup, using multiple interfaces at once and more.

KDE 4.0.4
The impressive openSUSE KDE team have worked hard to make KDE 4.0 as usable as possible. Among other things they have added support for moving applets in the panel and desktop icons work better compared with vanilla KDE 4.0. The controversial toolbox/cashew can be hidden with a non-gui option.

It includes KDEPIM 4.1 beta (KMail, KNode, Akregator, KOrganizer etc.). These beta packages will be updated to final as quickly as possible.

By default it uses the Aya plasma theme. If you want the official KDE default black theme it’s just a couple of clicks away.

My involvement
Apart from beta testing, mailling list and IRC participation etc. I’ve also been involved in a few other ways.

Jan, Ib, Martin and myself made sure openSUSE was 100% translated to Danish for the 3rd time running. Unfortunately rumours abound that a mistake has been made between the release candidate and the gold master meaning that the installation slideshow will appear untranslated

The Oxygen icon theme that I put together for YaST2 is now a part of the distro, and is even used by default in KDE4.0 installations.

opensuse-xgl-settings, the Kommander script that I used to maintain will not be updated for 11.0 - at least not by me. AIGLX will be enabled by default on openSUSE 11.0 and KDE4 KWin effects as well as improvements in KControl regarding window manager selection makes the script obsolete from my point of view.

No rose without thorns
While openSUSE 11.0 is definitely an impressive release, there are a number of potential issues. No release is ever perfect, and with much new stuff comes the risk of new problems.

Most people should know by now that KDE 4.0 is only suitable for early adopters, fanboyz and forgiving users, but I’ll repeat it once again. While the openSUSE KDE team have done very impressive work, they’re not magicians. Demanding users should opt for KDE 3.5. Other strategies worth considering are:

• Installing KDE3 and KDE4 in parallel which mostly works seamlessly
• Upgrading to KDE 4.1 which will become available via the openSUSE Build Service when it’s released in late July - the betas are already available for the adventurous.
• Wait for openSUSE 11.1 which is planned for December 2008 already, and will come with 4.1.x

While KNetworkManager has interesting new features as mentioned above it seems to cause some problems for quite a lot of people, myself included (bcm4306 card). If you can’t get it to behave you can consider using YaST2 for your configuration or nm-applet.

Firefox 3 beta is included. It should be pretty stable, but many extensions are not yet available. Firefox 3 final should be available via official online update very shortly after 11.0 release.

The ath5k driver is used for Atheros cards. It’s still immature, if you have problems with it, consider blacklisting it and installing the legally questionable blobby madwifi packages provided by the community.

That’s it from me. Remember to have a lot of fun with openSUSE 11.0!

Peter Czar Larsen affyrede for et par dage siden en gevaldig bredside mod SSLUG. Jeg vil kommentere på et par af hans pointer. Kommentarerne er mine egne, de afspejler ikke nødvendigvis SSLUGs officielle holdning.

> At SSLUG har en tendens til at forklare hvordan Linux ikke stinker så meget ved at fortælle at Windows sutter røv,
> det er en for mig en meget negativ og dybt uinteressant holdning til verden. Jeg har set den tendens til mange
> SSLUG Generalforsamlinger.

Jeg ved ikke præcis hvad der henvises til ifht. generalforsamlingerne. Hvis der henvises til adfærd hos bestyrelsen over en bred kam, kan jeg simpelthen ikke genkende Peter Larsens billede overhovedet. Hvis der henvises til hvad enkelte menige medlemmer siger under “Eventuelt”, kan jeg ikke se det har nogen særlig relevans ifht. en generel kritik af SSLUG.

> I følge www.linuxdag.dk, som DKUUG, SSLUG og KLID står bag

Linuxdag er et initiativ fra en klike af personer, heriblandt er ganske vist et bestyrelsesmedlem og en bestyrelsessuppleant fra SSLUG. Men arrangementet havde (og har i skrivende stund) endnu ikke fået det blå stempel fra SSLUGs bestyrelse. Man kan forstå at Peter Larsen bliver forvirret, når Linuxdag-arrangørerne for tidligt og uden at have fået bestyrelsens endelige tilladelse bruger SSLUGs navn. Den slags må vi stramme op på fremover.

> Linux - et open source alternativ til for eksempel WIndows Vista eller Apple OS X”
> Spændende. Nu er andre Unixvarianter så også for skud?

Jeg kan med min bedste vilje ikke finde noget negativt om hverken Microsoft Windows eller Apple Mac OSX i det citat. Der er blot tale om at man nævner nogle kendte operativsystemer, for at beskrive hvad Linux sådan cirka er for noget.

Dog kan jeg tilføje, at min personlige holdning er, at SSLUG er en Linux-forening, ikke en Unix-forening. At Mac OSX tilfældigvis er et Unix-system, gør ikke automatisk det eller Apple til vores “venner”. OSX er vores næststørste konkurrent, og jeg ville ikke være ked af det hvis nogle af brugerne skiftede til Linux. (Hvor længe bliver Apple i øvrigt ved med at supporte OSX på PPC-maskiner? Der må snart være en masse PPC-hardware fra Apple der kommer til at mangle et vedligeholdt og tidssvarende operativsystem).

Inden nogen får noget galt i halsen må jeg hellere tilføje at jeg mener at vi har så stort interessefællesskab med *BSD og OpenSolaris at jeg ikke anser dem for konkurrenter på samme måde.

> Leder man mere rundt på siden så finder man [Link til udkast til en pressemeddelelse]

Jeg er sådan set fuldstændigt enig med Peter Larsens kritik af “pressemeddelelsen”, blot er der nogle væsentlige forhold han ikke nævnte (forhåbentlig fordi han ikke var bekendt med dem, da han skrev). “Pressemeddelelsen” var et udkast, den var ikke sendt til pressen, den var endnu ikke forelagt bestyrelsen, og den ville aldrig være kommet i nærheden af at blive godkendt af SSLUGs bestyrelse .

Jeg har i noget tid gået og sparet sammen til et nyt indlæg om KDE-oversættelserne, så da Anders Lund i dag har blogget om emnet, er jeg faret i blækhuset. Det glæder mig, at Anders Lund synes, at det er rart at bruge oversættelserne, han påpeger imidlertid også, at der er en del slåfejl. Jeg vil ikke benægte at kvaliteten langt fra er, hvad KDE fortjener.

Sagen er imidlertid den at KDE er et enormt oversættelsesprojekt med mere end 115.000 tekststrenge alene i brugerfladerne - dokumentationen kommer oveni. Oversættelsesarbejdet er næsten altid blevet udført af en enkelt person med sporadiske bidrag. I mange år var det Erik Kjær Pedersen - I de sidste fem måneder har det været mig. Ikke alene skal jeg vedligeholde oversættelserne, men der er også et efterslæb efter næsten et halvt års inaktivitet, som gjorde at KDE4.0.0 blev udgivet uden danske oversættelser.

Derfor er kvalitetssikring en umulighed. Jeg er nødt til at forsøge at oversætte så meget som muligt så hurtigt som muligt. Selv hvis jeg havde tid til korrekturlæsning, ville det ikke hjælpe meget at gøre det selv, da man oftest overser sine egne fejl. Det er min forhåbning at kvaliteten senere kan hæves, når efterslæbet er endeligt indhentet. Jeg fokuserer i øvrigt ret ensidigt på KDE4.x, da der ikke er de store fremtidsperspektiver i KDE3.5.

Du kan hjælpe på flere forskellige måder.

Rapportér fejl. Skriv en e-mail til mschlander [at] opensuse.org eller kontakt “cb400f” via IRC i #dansk-gruppen på Freenode-netværket. Man kan altid finde e-mail-adresse til KDE-oversættere af hvert enkelt program på denne måde: Hjælp -> Om [program] -> Oversættelse

Fejl i KDE3.5 vil kun blive rettet hvis de har væsentlige forståelsesmæssige konsekvenser, men der er betydelig risiko for at de går igen i KDE4.x, så det betaler sig at rapportere dem alligevel.

Hjælp med korrekturlæsning. Alle oversættelserne jeg laver sendes til dansk-gruppens mailingliste hvor enhver kan tilmelde sig og give feedback.

Hjælp med at oversætte. Det er vigtigt, spændende og overkommeligt arbejde. Jeg vurderer at omtrent følgende kvalifikationer er nødvendige:

• Du æælsker KDE
• Du er habil til engelsk
• Du er habil til dansk
• Du er villig til at bruge et par timer eller mere i gennemsnit pr. uge over en længere periode

Det kan også være at du bare gerne vil stå for oversættelsen af et enkelt program, som du er ekspert i og som betyder meget for dig.

Kontakt mig via mail eller IRC som anført ovenfor.

So, you don’t think bittorrent download is fast enough for the openSUSE 11.0 betas? This is a very common complaint. On the other hand you wish to help take some of the load off the mirrors, and you like the protection that bittorrent offers from corrupted downloads.

I’m here to tell you, that in this case you can pretty much have your cake and eat it too. Here’s how:
(I’m using KTorrent, the workflow should be similar with other clients such as Azureus):

1a) Download your desired iso via http/ftp.

1b) Download deltaiso and apply it to your iso for the previous development release.

2) Get the corresponding torrent, but stop it immediately (right click -> Stop).

3) Move your complete iso to the folder created in step 2), overwriting what’s there. If you have applied a deltaiso you need to make sure that new iso is named exactly as the iso in the torrent.

4) Right click the stopped torrent, and select “Check Data Integrity” from the context menu.

This will check that your http download/applydeltaiso was successful. If the download/applydeltaiso was corrupt, you should only have to re-download the corrupt parts, meaning you won’t have to do another full download.

5) When the integrity check is finished you start the torrent (right click -> Start), and it’ll start seeding away.

You have now achieved the following, in a few simple steps.
* Fast initial download via http/ftp
* Verification that the download/applydeltaiso is not corrupt
* Helping openSUSE and mirrors by making bittorrent download faster for others
* Better karma

The relationship between openSUSE and Novell is pretty difficult to describe. Ideally openSUSE should be viewed 100% as a community project, where the people employed by Novell, who do the lion’s share of the work, are also seen as members of the openSUSE community on the same level as volunteer contributors. This works out pretty well, and keeps improving further. The volunteers and the Novell employees working on openSUSE generally get along great and in a very productive way.

But sometimes you wonder if the parts of Novell that are _not_ involved with openSUSE is friend or enemy. Every now and then they do something that really hurts us. It happens so often that the IRC community has come up with a name for the phenomenon - Novell Entropy Department (NED). The following examples spring to mind:

• Novell threatening to drop KDE from enterprise products a few years ago. This was extremely harmful to openSUSE’s credibility with KDE users, and still causes confusion to this day about where openSUSE stands on the matter of desktop environments. Remember that SUSE has and had a very KDE dominated user base.
• Forcing ZMD+friends onto SUSE Linux 10.1 while being completely immature. The harm that this did to openSUSE’s reputation simply cannot be exaggerated, and recovery is still far from complete.
• The Microsoft deal. While I think most criticism of the deal is without real substance, there can be no doubt that all the bad publicity has done tremendous harm to openSUSE. At least the situation could have been handled with more sensitivity towards the free software community - including Novell’s own employees.
• Novell marketing people such as Ted Haeger[1] and Justin Steinman repeatedly saying openSUSE is just “bleeding edge for geeks and enthusiasts” and Justin Steinman even stating very publicly that Ubuntu was the best choice for Dell/consumers.

The latest such surreal incident happened yesterday. Suddenly the Novell login page, which is among other things used by tens of thousands of openSUSE contributors to access bugzilla, had gotten a completely useless Adobe Flash animation. It doesn’t matter if you’re a free software zealot or a pragmatic techie - useless Adobe Flash animations causing huge CPU load when you’re trying to enter bugzilla is going to piss you off. After a storm of protests the Flash animation was quickly removed, but it makes you wonder how this can happen in the first place. Even for a company that likes to position itself as “mixed source”.

In all fairness Novell do a lot of good in the free software community. Employing hundreds of developers, GPL’ing YaST2, opening up SUSE development for the outside world, sponsoring Akademy, Guadec, being corporate patrons of KDE etc. One of the latest good things that Novell did was hiring Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier as a community manager for openSUSE. Part of his job is communicating feedback from the community to Novell - it is an important task indeed.

[1] UPDATE: In trying to get my point across I did Ted Haeger some injustice. I knew full well that Ted Haeger is no longer with Novell. And actually I’m only aware of him “dissing” openSUSE on one occasion - and him and Erin did apologize for it on the following episode of Novell Open Audio, after having the error of their ways pointed out to them.

Der har været problemer med e-mail-adressen til kontakt til planet.opensource.dk. Det vides ikke præcis hvor længe det har stået på, men har du skrevet til planetmestrene i de senere uger og har enten intet svar fået, eller fået fejlmeddelelser, bør du skrive igen.

Man kan i øvrigt uformelt kontakte planetmestrene via IRC i #planet.opensource.dk på Freenode-netværket. Vil man være sikker på svar bør e-mail benyttes.

Two weeks ago I announced that I had selected a bunch of Oxygen icons to replace the Tango icons used in YaST2 by default on openSUSE 10.3, and thus make YaST2 look better and integrate better with KDE4.x.

I must have struck a nerve, because a lot of things started happening fast.

Someone took similar steps to have Oxygen artwork in SaX2 (SuSE advanced X11 configuration).

Marco [daemon] Michna decided to write a themeselector module for YaST2 during Novell Hackweek II, which was last week.

Martin Lasarsch packaged version 0.1 of yast2-theme-oxygen, to work nicely with the themeselector.

Gpant started working on his own theme and in the process creating some great icons, which also fit nicely in my theme.

Today I announce version 0.2 of yast2-theme-oxygen. It’s now more polished, it’s available as an easy and clean to install RPM, using 1-click install, you can now easily switch between the Tango theme and Oxygen using the themeselector module. It’s more enjoyable all around.

Thanks a lot to all involved.

openSUSE 10.3 uses Tango icons by default in the YaST2 setup tool. A poorly maintained Crystal theme is also available. Neither solution is really acceptable for me, especially not since migration to KDE4.x.x is slowly starting. So I’ve done something that I’ve been contemplating for a while - that is making a selection of Oxygen icons as a replacement for the Tango icons. It’s called yast2-theme-openSUSE-oxygen.

It’s still pretty rough, in true KDE 4.0 fashion I released it real early. If it turns out that other people are interested, I’ll probably polish it, and enhance it as more Oxygen icons become available, and perhaps also package it as an RPM.

Big thumbs up to the Oxygen artists, I’ve spent some hours staring at their icons in the last couple of days and I’m still very impressed.

UPDATE: As expected it turns out that I hadn’t considered quite a few things in the initial release. Here’s an Oxygen-theme for SaX2 that someone made to fill at least one of the gaps.