Richard A. Johnson

It is finally official, this Sunday, October 4, 2009 from 12:00pm until 8:45pm, members of the Ubuntu community will be meeting at the Schaumburg Library, which is of course located at the southwest corner of Roselle and Schaumburg roads in Schaumburg, IL.

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If you are planning on attending, please join us in #ubuntu-chicago on IRC (Freenode network), Send a message to our mailing list, or leave a comment in this post.

This event will be for everyone! Whether you are interesting in trying out Ubuntu, are just now learning how to use Ubuntu or Linux, or are a seasoned hacker, we would like you to join us. We will be giving overviews of the various tasks carried out in the development and maintenance of Ubuntu covering everything from totally beginner tasks all the way up to tasks for seasoned hackers. Notable members of the Ubuntu community that will be present include Jim Campbell, Nathan Handler, and others. Seeing as there are 2 Canonical employees in the Chicagoland area, who knows, they may even show up!

If you have any questions, please comment here, the mailing list, or IRC. Thanks, and I can’t wait to see you all!

NOTE: The event will be at the Schaumburg Library and not at Pumping Station One. The Schaumburg Library won out in a vote due to everything happening so quickly. We appologize to the PSOne folks and look forward to sharing space and working together in the future!

I have been reading quite a few blog post comments these days just to get a feel for what people think about Kubuntu, KDE, and the other KDE distros. The comment I see the most is something along the lines of “Kubuntu’s KDE is garbage while distro x’s KDE rocks!” And then there is my favorite comment, which I made as a joke one day and was forever placed in the grasps of hell for it, “Kubuntu is the blue-headed step child of Ubuntu.” Today, while reading the comments and the post of Fabio A. Locati (flocati), he brought up a valid point about the lack of publicity for Kubuntu. Instantly the fanbois of the various distros come out of the shadows on the attack. Fabio thinks it could possibly be bad for the image of Kubuntu regarding the lack of publicity, and I have to agree a bit with him. I don’t so much think it hurts the image as much as it doesn’t help create or build an image for Kubuntu.

Kubuntu’s KDE is garbage while distro x’s KDE rocks! One thing I would like the users to know is that there is a good chance that Kubuntu and distro x share patches. Quite a few of the KDE based distros have a small developer community, which makes it tough to create and operate a full-fledged flagship like Ubuntu. Because of this we tend to share patches, we tend to communicate a little with each other (this could be better of course). Typically when people make this argument, they never list examples of why we suck compared to them. And when they do list examples most have nothing to do with KDE or Kubuntu.

Kubuntu is the blue-headed step child of Ubuntu. If you look at most of the KDE distros around here, the same thing could be said about them. With the release of KDE 4.0, we scared quite a few distros, and a few of us distros immediately jumped on that KDE 4.0 bandwagon. Whether or not it was good or bad, it is the past and there is nothing we can do about it, except continue making KDE rock harder with every release. Many people complain that Canonical doesn’t support Kubuntu like they do with Ubuntu. If you are just saying Ubuntu, then you are right, because Canonical is sponsoring all kinds of crazy projects for Ubuntu, which by the way isn’t GNOME for you users. Canonical is doing some amazing server work, mobile devices, services, and more. In terms of ‘paid developers’ I think the GNOME and KDE side is close to being even. To be honest, I can’t even think of one person who is a GNOME only developer. I know at least 2 KDE only developers (right now?). A majority of the work that goes into making Kubuntu is actually completed by Canonical employees, or people many of you consider paid Ubuntu developers. One thing Kubuntu doesn’t have that Ubuntu does, or the GNOME side of Ubuntu that is, is a large developer or contributor community. If I think about it, I think the same goes with other distros as well. If you look at their developers on the KDE side, there aren’t a lot when compared to the GNOME side. This is what makes the legend of the blue-headed step child nothing more than a myth at best.

With all of that garbled mess said, the point I would love to try to make is this. Why don’t we, the KDE community and downstream or distro developers, try to work together a bit. We have pretty much the same goals. Make our distro rock and make KDE number one! Wouldn’t be easier if we worked together a bit to at least make KDE number one, and while we are at it, we can share ideas to make our distro rock. Now I know we also want to make our distros stand out from one another, and we can continue doing that, but lets do it without hurting one another. We chose to use KDE as our environment because we love it and we want others to love it as well. By some of us saying you suck and we rock, you aren’t doing your distro any justice and you aren’t doing the other distro any justice either. There are people that will take what you said at face value and laugh it off and not use your distro because they see the elitism in your comment, and then there are others that will believe it and use your distro, only to find out it isn’t for them, and the next thing you know they are blogging about Linux sucks or KDE sucks.

And on a side note, concerning Kubuntu, another comment I see is “Kubuntu is so far behind Ubuntu.” How is this so? What can you do in Ubuntu that you can’t do in Kubuntu? Seeing as I use both Ubuntu and Kubuntu, there is nothing I can’t do on one that I can do on the other. I know bluetooth sucks, so you don’t have to bring that one up, it is being worked on somewhere, and of course if you would like to work on it you are free to do so

These days I seem to be getting busier and busier, however where I am getting busier and busier is not all in the same spot. I have the various projects I work in (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, KDE), consulting type stuff, my new cycling life, and various others. For the past few months I have been trying to get things done, and it just doesn’t seem to work for me. I have tried tool after tool, and none of them are my cup of tea at this point. The ones I have tried are:

• Tomboy
• todo.sh
• Tracks
• Remember The Milk
• Basket (there is a KDE 4 version coming which is kind of nice)
• and various others…

Which one do you use and why? Do you use an online one like Evernote or such? Tiddlywiki or derivative (if so, how do you sync it all up among multiple machines easily?). Right now, when I am sitting at my desk, my whiteboard is my favorite way to keeping track of things, however I am not always at my desk. I have a bunch of machines, all running Linux of course with most running KDE (GNOME and Xmonad are the others). I have a Blackberry Curve that I use a lot as well. Any pointers? Thanks!

I did this a long time ago when I first learned of the vrms package, which stands for Virtual Richard M. Stallman. What it does is it looks through the install packages on your system and tests to see if they are in fact free software or not. If they aren’t, well Richard lets you know and lists them out for you. I ran it just a few minutes ago, and like the others I have seen thus far, I had a bunch of garbage for ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards, of which neither I use. So I promptly removed those as well as unrar and linux-restricted-modules. I don’t use, let alone have use, for these packages, so I think I made Richard a bit happier. Here is what my output currently looks like:

<<< nixternal@ShakaDoobie :: ~ :: 11:15.03 Thu Sep 10 2009
>>> [1004] vrms
            Non-free packages installed on ShakaDoobie
 
opera                     The Opera Web Browser
sun-java6-bin             Sun Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 (architecture
sun-java6-jdk             Sun Java(TM) Development Kit (JDK) 6
sun-java6-jre             Sun Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 (architecture
sun-java6-plugin          The Java(TM) Plug-in, Java SE 6
 
             Contrib packages installed on ShakaDoobie
 
flashplugin-installer     Adobe Flash Player plugin installer
flashplugin-nonfree       Adobe Flash Player plugin installer (transitional pack
ttf-mscorefonts-installer Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts
 
  5 non-free packages, 0.3% of 1854 installed packages.
  3 contrib packages, 0.2% of 1854 installed packages.

So, for Richard’s sake, let me explain my flaws. I have Opera installed because…Well I really have no clue, but since they released a Qt4 based version, I had to give it a try. It isn’t to shabby, but I get varrying results with it. I do think it is a really great browser, and do at times test web sites I am working on with it. The Java stuff, well I did, and still do at times, work on Java code, plus for everything Java I do, it works, whereas Icedtea doesn’t. Flash, I cannot live without my YouTube and other video sites that require Flash. The MS Fonts, well I think that is installed with the kubuntu-restricted-extras package, and really don’t have a use for them at all. Though it does make looking at some sites better than if I didn’t have them installed.

Of course I could use the free alternatives, and I do. However I need stuff that “works for me™”. I used to be a free software nut and still am to an extent, however I realize that right now our free software alternatives aren’t yet where they need to be, and in the mean time I will use stuff that works.

Hey there you Chicagoans! It is that time where we gather our little Mafia of Linux hackers and brand new users and jam out. We were just discussing this on IRC and had a few ideas that I would like to run past the rest of you, and maybe get some input from you as well. One thing we have learned over the past 4 years is that it is tough running any type of event in Chicago on a Friday or Sunday, unless of course there is free beer available. And even in some cases, the free beer didn’t even help out. Another thing we realized is that when we do an event, we typically pick a 4 to 6 hour time frame, which works well for some cases. Now for the Global Bug Jam last year, or this year, can’t remember but I do remember it was snowing, we hacked all day long and into the night and people loved it. We even got Nathan Handler out of his hacker shell to come hang out for a bit. We are thinking maybe we should do the same. Run it one day, most likely Saturday, and run it all day long. This way here we can get people in and out at different times, hoping to accommodate as many people as possible.

So with that said, we are looking for a venue, in which I hope my homeskillet Kevin hooks us up with some space, as he does have the bomb office space. It would rock if we could get a sponsor or two to maybe cater a bit of food or snacks and some drinks, preferably of the caffenated variety, though some beer wouldn’t hurt. We think maybe a 10am to 6pm or later deal would be cool. Maybe a Noon to whenever we leave type deal. What kind of ideas would you have about the event?

As for what we would like to do, if we could get enough people, the options are endless. There will be a core developer, some MOTU members, documentation team members, bug triagers, new users, old user, young people, old people…You get the idea. With this type of group we could do some packaging how-to, bug triaging, documentation stuff, general Ubuntu/Linux use, and then some. Though seeing as it is getting close to the freeze point for Karmic, it would be nice to fix some bugs, do some hacking. The real idea is just to get everyone to hang out and be geeks for an entire day. If you just want to show up to see how silly Jim Campbell really looks in real life, that is cool, though be warned, he is a rockstar!

Let us know what you think. Respond in the comments, talk to us on IRC in #ubuntu-chicago on Freenode, send an email to our mailing list (ubuntu dash us dash chicago at lists period ubuntu period com). Thanks!