Fading Memories

Because I cannot figure out what button to click in this dialog:

ETA: I feel doubly dumb now. I accidentally burned debian twice, because when I wanted to burn the kubuntu cd for the kids' computer, I clicked on the kubuntu iso image in k3b's file manager, and it popped up the burn image dialog -- and somehow had remembered that last time I had burned the debian image (for the server, though I doubt k3b knew that). Result: 2 debian cd's, no kubuntu cd.

Only the KDE Summer of Code admins still have a huge task before them -- making the final selection for KDE of the summer of code projects. The mentors have been reading hundreds of proposals, scoring them, debating them -- the KDE sub-projects have had their debates, and now it's the time for the students to wait with bated breath. Will they get a slot and spend their summer productively, having fun with their favourite project? Or are they going to help their local burger joint out?

I thought it would be nice to look back at the previous summers of code, make a list of KOffice projects, note whether their projects were a success, and whether the students are still around.

Read more ...

Of people issuing "security" patches. Last week a couple of Linux distributions were suckered into updating lcms with a patch coming from a certain Andrea Barsiani. Because of an alleged security risk... Well, this patch completely and utterly broke lcms. And right at the time when we were tagging KOffice RC1, so people who run up-to-date distros started reporting crashes in Krita. We nearly got a heart attack thinking it was our code...

To quote Marti Maria, the lcms maintainer:

The short history is, a guy called Adrea Barisani, claiming to represent some obscure security company called oCERT, was providing a patch to fix a "vulnerability" they found.

At the end, the oCERT company was just Andrea Barsiani who setup ocert in 2008 to get google sponsoring.

The whole internet is now filled with hype about this "vulnerability", and in truth this "patch" breaks littlecms functionality, and probably opens some back door, so, please:

DON'T USE PATCHES FROM UNTRUSTED SOURCES.

I guess you were told something similar in school right? :-)

The problem, if any, is restricted to a very specific architecture (x86, no DEP, crafted profile).

With this patch lcms does not work at all. Please upgrade to 1.18 and let's forgot all this nasty stuff.

So, if you're packaging lcms for your distro, please upgrade to 1.18. And, please, if you patch lcms, make sure it's an official patch, from a trusted source. Like, Marti Maria...

Update: Kubuntu has a fix, and Marc Deslauriers has identified the possible culprit from the security patch. This patch was also in on 1.18b1, but removed in 1.18b2.

This week, at work, we released the 1.0 stable version of the Hyves Desktop, with source available (for almost everything but the photo uploader and editor plugin, more's the pity), and also the iPhone app, a java phone app and a firefox toolbar. It's nice to work for a company that actually ships!

KOffice 2.0 RC1 got tagged. There's a nasty file handling bug in Krita that we haven't been able to pin down, so we might need another RC, though. Or it might be an lcms issue. But getting here has been an enormous relief. KOffice 2.0 won't replace KOffice 1.6 or OpenOffice as a stable workhorse, but it is a release that really allows us to build on.

Update: : yes, it is an lcms issue -- 1.17 got a security patch last week which broke Krita. 1.18 is fine.

And then there's KDE 4.2.2 -- I'm using it with Qt 4.5, and it's pretty stable, except for some KRunner quirkiness, where urls get autocompleted but without hits, so pressing enter does nothing and I have to press end, then enter, and sometimes nothing gets executed although there are hits, especially with urls that are in the history.

I still haven't made use of them, but Irina has a nice article showing how she is using activities to structure her work.

This year I won't be able to attend the Libre Graphics Meeting, but I still wanted to bring the LGM fundraiser to your attention. The LGM is the gather for everyone who is interested in graphics, art and free software. There are developers, designers, artists, there is fonts, 3d, 2d, color and movies. It's a unique conference, this year held in Montreal.

I'm puzzled... Why is the KWin desktop grid (which I discovered yesterday) so much more convenient and pleasant to use than Apple's Spaces? It could be the difference in screen resolution -- my Mac is 1920xsomething, my Thinkpad 1024x768, it could be that the whole virtual desktop thing is better implemented in KWin... But I really am not sure what it is that makes me shun spaces because it sucks and actively enjoy KWin's desktop grid...

I thought it'd be a tolerably good idea to celebrate boxing day with installing OpenSUSE 11.1. After all, given that this laptop is a Thinkpad X61t with built-in tablet, installing a new version of any distribution tends to be interesting.

And indeed, I ran into two glitches: at first, OpenSUSE 11.1 refused to install my chosen grub configuration. Putting grub on the mbr fixed that, but it was quite a bit of a bother since my laptop didn't boot except from the external cd drive. But it was also my own fault for accidentally pressing the wrong key in the dialog that asked me whether I wanted to revisit my grub options or install anyway.

The tablet was a bit harder to get working, although the fix is simple and detailed in this bug report -- simply use ttyS4 instead of ttyS0, which used to be the right port to use for a tablet pc. And you know what? The touch screen of this laptop works, too, now! Only I have to use a nail, not my fingers. I think it's time to send Danny Kukawka cookies :-).

Now everything is fine, and rotating the screen with krandrtray very, very nearly works perfectly: only the wacom input devices aren't told about the rotation yet.

If I get that configured correctly, I'll be totally happy. Sound works, wireless network works (but it's still more convenient to use ifup instead of network manager, but the 11.0 bug where I'd have to restart the wireless network after booting to get it working is fixed. KDE looks great and feel very stable and I'm already recompiling KOffice.

Next: give it a try on the kids' laptops.

Update:

Of course, don't forget to manually change the device names from Mouse[x] to stylus and eraser in your xorg.conf: otherwise Krita won't work. And the following script, copied & bug-fixed from Thinkwiki makes the rotation work just fine:

  #!/bin/sh

output="(normal left inverted right)" #LVDS
 # if [ "$XROT_OUTPUT" ]
 # then     
 #         output=$XROT_OUTPUT;
 # fi
devices="stylus cursor eraser"

geomnbr=0
xrandr=normal
wacom=normal
if [ "$1" == "-" ] || [ "$1" == "+" ] || ! [ "$1" ];
then    
        operator="$1";
        [ "$1" ] || operator='+';
        case `xrandr --verbose | grep "$output" | sed "s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* [^ ]* ([^(]*) \([a-z]*\).*/\1/"` in
                normal)         geom=0;;
                left)          geom=1;;
                inverted)       geom=2;;
                right)          geom=3;;
        esac
        let geom=${geom}${operator}1+4
        let geom=${geom}%4      
else    
        geom="$1"
fi
case $geom in
        1)      wacom=2; xrandr=left ;;
        2)      wacom=3; xrandr=inverted ;;
        3)      wacom=1; xrandr=right ;;
        *)      wacom=0; xrandr=normal ;;
esac

echo "xrandr to $xrandr, xsetwacom to $wacom" >&2

if xrandr -o "$xrandr"; then
        for d in $devices
        do      
                xsetwacom set "$d" Rotate "$wacom"
        done
fi

if [ "`xsetwacom get stylus Mode`" == '1' ]; then
        for d in $devices
        do      
                xsetwacom set $d CoreEvent "off"
                xsetwacom set $d Mode "off"
        done
        { sleep 1;
        for d in $devices
        do      
                xsetwacom set $d Mode "on"
                xsetwacom set $d CoreEvent "on"
        done; } &
fi

My changes are to actually use the $d from the $devices and to add the eraser...

It used to be that there was only Sourceforge and DIY hosting for free software projects. Sourceforge was easy to setup, but incredibly slow. Nowadays it's still incredibly slow, and their download pages are stuffed with advertisements like a Christmas turkey. And DIY hosting is a chore, what with maintaining all the necessities and niceties for an open source project: forum, wiki, source revision system, bugtracker, blog aggregator, news pages, tutorials, downloads.

Nowadays there are more and more options available: Savannah, Berlios, Github, Gitorious, Google Code...

But, for a little, Qt-only experimental project of my own, is there one that has all the necessities:

• Project hosted under it's own domain name, like mycoolproject.org
• wiki
• forum
• bugtracker (bugzilla or mantis, not trac!)
• static html
• blog aggregator
• doesn't need to be free, but shouldn't cost more than about ten euros a month

Or does this list (especially requirement #1) mean I have to go the DIY route after all? Answers on a postcard please, since I haven't been able to find one that suits me in all respects. Right now I'm leaning towards google code + gitorious, but that doesn't give me my domain name.

A fairly routine update -- I admit I did a zypper dup and pressed "Yes" before noticing I was also getting a new kernel today. Well, that new kernel has broken resuming after suspension. My trusty thinkpad could suspend and resume perfectly until now, but no more...