Nov 13, 2006
This wont be a particuarly coherant post, More a collection of links that I dont want to lose, and that others might find interesting. Also some updates on the foo that I am working on.
One of the great things I like about free software is that there is always something exciting around the corner. Sometimes it just takes way to much procrastinating to find out about it. Here are a few things that I am looking forward to in the next 6 months;
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Xorg 7.2 with RandR - Should make managing multiple monitors painless.
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i810 Modesetting branch. Thanks intel for your rocking OSS drivers.
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Simple way to theme colours in GNOME.
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Some new GNOME infrastructure;
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Glade-3.1 (single window mode) - Rocks!
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Nemiver is awesome, and i'm using it daily.
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I want to play with pigment, I particuarly like the idea of having a built in animation framework, making it easy to create fluid user interfaces; like
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Photosynth (made by microsoft - credit where credit is due).
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Canola - WOW thats running on a 770!
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Aerith - Eeeww thats java (but hot)
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I have been running Tracker for a long time, and can recommend it to everyone. I would love to see this go into GNOME along with a bung of helper Gtk widgets to make tagging a first class citizen on the GNOME desktop.
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After the terribly shortsighted Beryl fork its good to see Compiz get a community website. I wish I had a dual screen graphics card to test all the multihead support stuff that DavidR has just added to compiz.
I have also been super busy of late. I have been working hard on Albatross, interfacing with flightgear ad JSBSim, and learning about Eigenstate assignement for controller design. It looks like my next task is to clean up the AVL stuff and start running some code through Matlab to test these theories.
Finally I am back working on Conduit, and it looks like its the right time for stuff to come together.
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Rewrote the TreeModel stuff to support adding things at run time which is important because....
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OpenSync just released 0.20 with better python bindings, so I can start to play with cellphones!
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I added service discovery of other conduit instances using avahi. This will eventually allow things to be synchronized with remote computers directly and transparently over the local network.
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Started to add ipod support. When an ipod is plugged in new datasinks should become available which will allow you to synchronize your ipod notes and contacts (and possibly photos thanks to GPixPod)
Anyway, thats all for now. Talk to you later or see you at linux.conf.au.
Oct 4, 2006
So I just upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu Edgy Beta 1. This is just a small list of my impressions so far;
More news to come...
Oct 2, 2006
This post is a little rant on the compiz fork (beryl) and on forks in general.
When I hear people say that "the fork is good because the two goals are different" I bow my head in shame. David R wants the same things as Quinn, a rocking WM/DE.
Its sad that now the fork has "started" there is no going back (in the short term) - the projects will onlycontinue to diverge. Compiz has just gained a whole bunch of features in cvs (pane plugin, multi-head architecture stuff, support for metacity themes) and David has started being more active on the mailing list. Quinn and co. bought this fork on too quickly, sucumbing to every request on the compiz.net forums, and adding poor quality code and hacks all over the show. I mean there has not even been an official compiz release yet!, why fork, how many years did it take to get a solid DE and people are impatient over compiz, a young project with no official release?
If Quinn and co. would have cooled their jets for another month or so then this for wouldnt have happened. If there is a difference in the projects goals it is that one (compiz) has a BDFL that has a grander vision and quality for the project, and that the other (beryl) doesnt. Its a free for all.
About the GNOME dependancies - its only gconf. Quinn wrote a plugin to replace gconf (csm) but it was done in such a hackish way that it wasnt clean. I wish they would have just improved the csm plugin to the quality that it could be accepted upstream and then this whole fork rubbish could have been avoided.
If you read Davids latest comments you will see that he is concerned that the current changes in beryl (and by extrapolation most future changes) will be done in such a (hackish?) way to make them incompatible with upstream compiz.
Many of the plugins in beryl touch the core and are no longer implemented in a plugin type way. David offered an invitation for suggestions on how to improve the core APIs so that these beryl features could be implemented as plugins in a nicer way but no-one has stepped up and made said suggestions.
I guess its just easier to fork than it is to talk to a person these days.....
In essence beryl will be take take take and no give
That makes me sad
Sep 25, 2006
So I finally got around to releasing Conduit 0.2.0, which, while having many limitations, is relatively useful and safe to use on a daily basis. I have been swaped by university work at the moment, as this is the last week, but I hope to be back developing again soon.
Other Things on the hack-agenda over the next few weeks (months)
Sep 11, 2006
I have been working really hard for the last month on getting the Conduit core to a v0.2.0 ready state.... However after talking to a few people I have decided to delay v0.2.0 by a week to give more time for testing, and to increase the usefullness of some of the included dataproviders (Flickr and Fspot in particular).
The rationale behind this is, however cool an Idea Conduit is, it is only as useful as the things it can be used to sync with. I want this release to make a big splash, so I want the ability to sync with included GNOME apps to work really well. This means focusing a lot of testing on the Tomboy and F-spot datasources, and the Flickr datasink.
I encourage users to check out the latest version from svn to help in testing. In the meantime, here is a screenshot of Conduit running happily on Edgy.
Aug 9, 2006
After a solid month of work I just release v0.1 of Conduit.
Conduit is a synchronization solution for GNOME which allows the user to take their emails, files, bookmarks, and any other type of personal information and synchronize that data with another computer, an online service, or even another electronic device.
This version is the first version which is actually usable so I thought I would release it to gather feedback, particuarly about the GUI, and how people interact with the application.
The next version will bring more bling including
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Treeview for datasources and sinks. They will be categorised into groups to more easily distinguish between them
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Threading cleanups so that sync's may be cancelled while in process
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Flickr datasource and sink
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Two way sync for backpackit.com and files
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Gmail dataprovider tidy ups
I am looking for help and interested developers. Check it out!
http://www.conduit-project.org/
Jul 30, 2006
I just stumbled across the unoficial epiphany extensions site. I would recommend all users of epiphany install at least the;
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Undo close tab extension
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Only one close button extension. This also auto-resizes the tab width!
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Middle click tab close extension. I have eliminated the scroll wheel from my life to combat RSI so with this (and the push scroll extension) I can operate epiphany using the middle mouse button.
See how attractive epiphany looks now?
May 11, 2006
Note to self: If you need to unstall simulink on ubuntu dapper then make sure you install libxft1
Apr 26, 2006
My responses to this well composed post of GNOME constructive criticism.
Interesting and well written post. I am also not a gnome expert, only a user and part time developer. Here are some suggestions regarding each of the points you made;
Firstly a few general comments.
Personally on Ubuntu Dapper Beta, Gnome is considerably faster than KDE in my experience, but this may just be a variation of the placebo effect!. Either way all the recent GNOME performance work has sped it up considerably since the version in Breezy!
Secondly I think a number of your points make the assumption that GNOME = Nautilus, or GNOME = Nautilus + Metacity. This is a common belief (or if indeed this is what you though) and incorrect. HOWEVER, this is why we must admit that proportionally a lot of polish must go into these two applications. I dont think that throwing features at Nautilus is the answer, it will also never be the GNOME answer, and I am thankful for it. But you do raise some good points, and ignoring any GNOME user is the wrong thing to do.
Now, point by point responses
Instant Messaging:
Check out the galago desktop presence framework. While still on the horizon I forsee some form of integration between the entire desktop, gaim, and this as the glue
Voice Over IP:
Check out ekiga. Maybe at some stage this may make it into core GNOME. Either way there is possiblity for integration with above.
File Sharing:
I could not agree more. Apparently nautilus (gnome-vfs) supports rendevous discovery of shares and the like but I dont think this is fully taken advantage of (or I havent seen it in GNOME 2.14). Perhaps something could be done with cherokee web server + WebDAV + automatic nautilus discovery + gnome-vfs WebDAV + places sidebar. Edit- This was done here, but i think the project died.
Secure Shell GUI:
This is already there. Check out Places -> Connect To Server -> SSH. I presume you can also enter sftp://user@server/path
More Command Line Tools:
While I understand the problem you want to solve; easier access to command line. I dont think shoving everything into the file browser is the right way to go about it. If GNOME can think of a better way to interact with the command line in a modern GUI environment then this is a step in the right direct. Putting the terminal into nautilus I dont think so much.
Menu Editing:
Ubuntu Dapper ships the alacarte menu editor. It has also been proposed for inclusion into GNOME 2.16. Its a step in the right direction.
Eye Candy:
Do NOT open this can of worms. Personally I think the GNOME has KDE beat when it comes to eye candy. The eyecandy discussion will never be resolved. Its all a matter of preference, I like toyota, you like mazda etc. At the framework GNOME can draw nice graphics using Cairo, and fun things are happening FOR EVERYONE IN THE LINUX COMMUNITY, GNOME AND KDE using compiz and XGL or AIGLX. You do have some points, there are features coming into GTK to be able to detect if a compositing manager is running, but if I want GNOME to keep looking prettier than KDE (joke) then stuff needs to go into GTK to make this easier!
Conclusion
I think that this is a very interesting time for GNOME. There is all this cool framework level stuff sitting there, simmering away, ready to be cooked into GNOME in some amazing ways. leaftag, galago, deskbar (and the buzz its generating), desktop search, performance improvements, compiz and XGL, and MUCH MORE.
Comments welcome
Apr 23, 2006
"Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small trivial project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision.
So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something half-way useful first, and then others will say "hey, that almost works for me", and they'll get involved in the project. "
Linus Torvalds