Rex Dieter

Early christmas for me

2009-12-23T02:38:49Z

Early Christmas came for this year in the form of an iPod touch. So far so good. Just a bit of music, tv shows and free games so far. Oh. And Internet. Lots of internet.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

FUDCon Toronto, day 1 : Clint and his toys

2009-12-15T18:39:36Z

While Clint was recording/streaming audio from FUDCon Toronto 2009, I was running around observing, interviewing, and even doing the mst3k thing in a few talks.

In doing so, I took the chance to do a quick-n-dirty video interview. Here it is in all it's (mostly) raw and unedited glory,

For evil-doers, not able to grok ogg's, fear not, there's youtube for you.

in case you hadn't heard about... Sunjammer

2009-10-01T19:33:56Z

In case you hadn't heard, Amarok 2.2.0 (Sunjammer) is now officially in the wild. I won't bore you with details, other than to say... it's quite nice, and I digg it.

Fedora packages are prepared and queue'd for updates-testing now. and will hopefully find their way to a mirror near you very soon. In the meantime, if you just can't wait, I've put copies of the builds (amarok, taglib, taglib-extras) into the kde-redhat/testing repos too.

Enjoy your Sunjamming... or something like that.

Fedora 12 KDE spin not to be kde3-less after all

2009-09-25T20:32:15Z

Looks like we'll not be able to ship a Fedora 12 KDE live spin free of a kde3 runtime after all.

The reality is that the kde4 ports of both k3b and koffice aren't quite ready, and not recommended for use by either upstream. So, our plan is to revert to the tried-n-true k3b-1.0.x and koffice-1.6.x (as in Fedora 11).

Don't fret however, we'll continue to provide unofficial kde4 builds of k3b and koffice in the kde-redhat/unstable repos. Testing and feedback will continue, and with good confidence, we'll be able to include both of these in Fedora 13.

thanks dad

2009-09-25T15:24:07Z

Was parallel parking at work today, and when I got out, a nearby observer commented "wow, that was a tight fit, perfect. you must be a driving instructor".

I cracked a wide smile, thinking of how well my father tought me almost everything I know about driving, especially about good use of mirrors.

Thanks dad.

p.s. Well, Mr. Thelander in driver's ed class had a hand too, particularly about driving in slick/icy conditions. I'm not an ice-ace (self-proclaimed) for nothing. :)

admitting you have a problem

2009-09-25T03:35:47Z

Yes, I'm a bit hooked. I admit it. I just can't stop playing Race For the Galaxy. Please help me spread the love to other fedora users, by participating in the rftg fedora package review.

UPDATE: ~~moved the package review rpmfusion->fedora~~ Package review was rejected, due to non-redistributability of the included artwork. :( In the meantime, I'm planning on collaborating with the author, to distribute rpm source/binaries on his website.

kde service "Provides" for rpm packaging

2009-09-04T19:42:54Z

As a followup to my last blog about auto-installation of plasma dataengines, here's an incremental step in getting there, a straw-man implementation for generating kde service-related dependencies during rpm generation.

The latest version of what I'm working on is at:
http://rdieter.fedorapeople.org/rpms/kde4-service.prov

This is for the Provides side of things. A harder unsolved problem still is the Requires side, which currently requires perusing of code (or writing packagekit hooks or finding magical ponies). I'd much prefer if this sort of metadata was more easily available, say, also in service .desktop files, but I'm not picky.

Enjoy, discuss, frolic.

packagekit auto-installation of plasma dataengines, anyone?

2009-08-24T15:05:13Z

From a recent conversation on irc (log below), there's an opportunity for someone to help implement some packagekit hooks in libplasma. Anyone interested?

[08:58] <rdieter> was just digging into some rpm packaging for plasma applets, data engines... found it relatively easy to grok service .desktop files to determine data engine providers, but short of digging through applet code, not obvious to me to determine consumers of plasma data engines.

[08:58] <rdieter> Is there a way? if not, could/should there be? :)

[09:02] <notmart> rdieter: yeah, i think the only way is to look for dataEngine("foo"); calls in the code

[09:04] <rdieter> notmart: I was just holding out hope for an easier, ideally automated/codeable method to extract such dependencies

[09:06] <notmart> seems quite possible to automate it, just a couple of regexp..

[09:06] <rdieter> would folks be receptive to adding such dependency metadata to applet .desktop files (or something equivalent)?

[09:06] <rdieter> notmart: preferably automate'able on the installed files, not the source.

[09:07] <notmart> not sure if it's realistic to expect that all the old plasmoids will immediately compile properly the desktop file...

[09:07] * rdieter was thinking about writing rpm autogenerators for Requires/Provides plama applets/dataengines, ultimately

[09:07] <notmart> rdieter: oh :/

[09:42] <aseigo> rdieter: that could be done in libplasma i think

[09:43] <aseigo> rdieter: when an engine is requested, if it doesn't exist we could do a lookup using packagekit or whatever the kde wrapper for that is, and see if it's available there instead
[09:43] <rdieter> I like the sound of that.

[09:45] <aseigo> rdieter: should probably cache which engines have been looked up in the package db unless it becomes a cheap operation...

[09:46] <aseigo> rdieter: but the work should probably happen in ... *looks* hm.. DataEngineManager::loadEngine() .. maybe..

[09:46] <aseigo> hm.

[09:47] <aseigo> probaby that should still return NULL on failure immediately (since this process would need to be async, i think...

[09:47] <aseigo> so maybe a new method in DataEnigneManager that checks to see if the engine can be installed (and does so if possible?)

[09:47] <aseigo> and then use that in DataEngineConsumer (in kdelibs/plasma/private/dataengineconsumer_p.h)[09:48] <aseigo> sth like that anyways

[09:48] <aseigo> and if it is available ......

[09:49] <aseigo> then we'd probably need a special dataengine that can create dummy sources on request and then when the REAL engine is installed, request those sources in the new engine and become a "repeater" for it

[09:53] <rdieter> sounds evil enough, neat. I'll go poke around #fedora-*, see if I can find anyone interested in helping implement any of that

[09:55] * aseigo is happy to mentor :)

DevCycle FAD

2009-06-11T21:50:19Z

Quite a pleasure to be slammed into a conference room with many like-minded individuals... all united to the common goal to make things suck less.

After day one of brainstorming about all the ways fedora falls short of anything resembling an ideal, I felt more than a wee bit... down. The challenge here was to persevere to find commonalities, and the best path forward to find the light again. By day 3, I think the collective group did just that, hammering out some interesting proposals.

Now it's time to elicit even more community input and feedback. Together, we can all help to finish what was started here.

For giggles, can you guess who said each of the following? Sorry, I wasn't smart enough to record or remember enough to get a choice quote for everybody, but here's what I've got:

we all know you have the internet in your pocket...

please excuse me, I'm having a release moment

#$##! google, I can't use my #$#!!@# phone.

<girlish laughter>Yay! It's my spiffy new laptop!

There's a boot on my car!

(waving hands in a large arc...) I'm erecting my SOP (someone else's problem) shield

Your connections are all fine

koffice-2.0, fedora packages

2009-05-28T16:40:55Z

At long last, koffice-2.0.0 is released. Congratulations all around.

For fedora users interested in trying it out, current plans are to include koffice2 in Fedora 12, and unofficial packages are available from the kde-redhat project for Fedora 10/11 (currently in the unstable repo, as these replace the official/stable koffice1).

KAHN! err... NERO!

2009-05-12T19:49:40Z

During some juicy irc discussion earlier today, I had a need to check the access stats of our very own kde-redhat repos, and lo and behold there were ~30k unique ips monthly (since the beginning of 2009). Whoa. Who are all you crazy people? :) More importantly, fedora users, I'd like to hear from you why you are using our testing and unstable repos so much. Feedback here or on fedora-kde list most appreciated.

My own self-serving guesses are that folks just love helping us test out all the latest-and-greatest in fedora-kde land, but I'd still rather hear it from the horse's mouth.

p.s. At the risk of loosing my geek membership card, no, I have not yet seen the new Star Trek flick. Yet.

qt-4.5.1 happiness achieved

2009-04-24T14:33:10Z

Many thanks to all involved tracking down the qt/svg rendering regression I saw yesterday. Heros, every one. Funny how a one-line patch can make all the difference (now in qt-copy and our own fedora qt-4.5.2-2+ builds, by the way).

first try with, qt-4.5.1 + kde-4.2.2, not so happy here

2009-04-23T19:15:12Z

Saw qt-4.5.1 released, woo! went to try it out, not so woo. ):

Upgraded my once-happy qt-4.5.0/kde-4.2.2 box (using oxygen), lots of weird rendering present, including biggies like kickoff/lancelet/krunner drawing empty boxes/frames. screenshot:
http://rdieter.fedorapeople.org/qt451_oxygen_borkage-2.jpg
Seems the oxygen plasma theme is affected more than others I tried (including Aya, o3, which were mostly ok).

Oddly enough, the empty boxes persisted even after downgrading back to qt-4.5.0... need to further analyze my plasma*rc files before/after upgrade/downgrade.

Any ideas? Anyone else with good/bad experiences using qt-4.5.1 (esp against kde-4.2.2+)?

bestest bud of the week: Ben

2009-03-18T20:19:10Z

I thought I'd take the opportunity to fill my lack-of-recent blogs gap by giving a small shout-out to Ben, my bestest bud of the week.

Why? I'm glad you asked. MathStuf has been the kind of fedora/kde contributor dreams are made of (ok, overboard, but I'm on a roll). He's taken on many odd jobs and unsexy tasks. One great example being beating fedora's kdebindings packaging into shape, and now, how shapely it is. Seriously, that's dedication.

Many kudos and thanks to you, my friend.

and in a completely bogus attempt to garner blog comments, my runner-up this week is any and all plasma developers. hugs all around. you all deserve it.

kde-4.2.0, sesame2, qt-4.5

2009-02-16T16:00:46Z

I'm happy to relate that kde-4.2.0 has recently landed on fedora's stable update repositories. While happy, the fedora kde-sig isn't resting either, with continuing work to squash bugs and regressions.

For added fun over the weekend, I spun a new f10/kde42-based live image, based only on official fedora bits, available at the usual place:
http://rdieter.fedorapeople.org/torrents/

One item that still needs packaging work is soprano's sesame2 backend. Slow and painful, that is, rebuilding it from from source. Good news: We have a couple of contributors actively working on it. Bad news: They estimate it'll take another ~2 weeks of java packaging love to make it happen.

With the recent call to arms for testing qt-4.5 and kde-4.2.x, we're taking the plunge for fedora, see my post: "qt-4.5(rc), rawhide, and you":
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-February/msg00008.html

Communication, processes, and ponies

2009-02-01T20:58:40Z

Aaron, as usual, cuts through the crap.

First off... my apologies. Fedora didn't communicate plans and intentions clearly or loudly enough.

Fedora's mission and target audience is key: ... leading the advancement of free, open software.... While I've made light of the whole F9/KDE-4.0 thing in the past, It's still clear that "... if our efforts weren't publicized enough to land on your attention radar, I guess that's at least partially our fault."

I will also freely admit that the "process" by which we made the decision to ship as we did leaves a lot to be desired.

Fact is, there wasn't all that much process. We made the decision, and then worked our collective butts off to make it happen. Conspicuously absent was an analysis of the KDE-4.0 desktop experience, especially against previous KDE3 offerings... which seems to be a metric many folk use. Seems to be kind of "duh" thing to me now.

Sure, there was some short-term pain with the GA F9 release, but as planned and expected, the situation improved quickly over time with subsequent updates.

Live and learn.

Congratulations Kevin

2009-02-01T19:55:39Z

A belated congratulations to Kevin Kofler for being approved as a fedora sponsor. It's comforting and rewarding to know the KDE SIG is in such capable hands.

Be free with KDE 4.2

2009-01-27T21:46:18Z

Houston, the eagle has landed. Err, KDE 4.2 has. Exciting times.

Many thanks and kudos to all who contributed to making this happen!

In Fedora land, we continue to have experimental/test builds hosted at the http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/ project, as well as producing livecds, http://rdieter.fedorapeople.org/torrents/

Work is also ongoing to bring KDE 4.2 officially to Fedora. It will be included in the upcoming F11 Alpha release, and F9/F10 updates will follow shortly while we sort out a few remaining issue:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=kde42

f10-kde-4.1.96 (kde-4.2-rc) live image

2009-01-14T03:22:39Z

The freshest bits for your pleasure, all in an unofficial/unbranded kde-4.1.96 (kde-4.2-rc) live image (Based on Fedora 10).

http://rdieter.fedorapeople.org/torrents/

Share, seed, frolic, enjoy.

Lets test the h@!! out of KDE4.2...

2008-12-18T20:15:51Z

Couldn't have said it better myself,
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-December/msg03033.html

That said, I'll probably be spinning yet another live image real soon.

f10-kde-4.1.85 (kde-4.2-beta2) live image

2008-12-15T17:34:05Z

Alrighty, it's that time again, whipped up some fresh bits to create an unofficial/unbranded kde-4.1.85 (kde-4.2-beta2) live image (Based on Fedora 10).

http://rdieter.fedorapeople.org/torrents/

For giggles (and for better or worse), since things had grown a wee bit which required some trimming to stay cd-sized, I made this one is kde3-free. In practicle terms, that means I omitted kftpgrabber and k3b.

fedora-kde mailing list

2008-12-15T17:28:12Z

Finally got around to requesting use of a tiny piece of our excellent fedora-provided infrastructure. I'd like to announce the availability of the fedora-kde mailing list, for all things kde on fedora (or otherwise). Enjoy.

https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fedora-kde

f10-kde-4.1.80 live image

2008-12-10T18:57:03Z

As hinted-at and quasi-promised at Fedora Classroom, I spent some time over the past few days to create an unofficial/unbranded kde-4.1.80 live image (Based on Fedora 10) for public consumption.

http://rdieter.fedorapeople.org/torrents/

Disclaimer: This is intended for demonstration purposes only, and not for real use or installation, so please don't do that or ask me to help you do it.

Merry Christmas and Enjoy.

Fedora Classroom: KDE4 for KDE3 users

2008-12-04T17:53:25Z

Clint tickled a memory... Oh yeah! I (and Kevin Kofler, and any other fedora kde-sig'er who can spontaneously show) will hold a "KDE4 for KDE3 Users" irc classroom session this Saturday, 14:45 UTC. Be there or be square.

That's just a tentative title for the session, we'll likely be open to discuss all things KDE4. Topics off the top of my head right now will include:

KDE4 for KDE3 users: Help answer anything of the form: "In KDE3, I used to do XXX, how does KDE4 do XXX?"
An overview of KDE pillars: phonon, plasma, oxygen, solid, etc...
The future of KDE4. The future's so bright, gotta wear shades
Are the cubs finally gonna make the world series?
I want ponies, where are the ponies?

Want a another specific topic or issue addressed? Please drop a comment here, and we'll do our best to cover it.

akademy 2008, fedora report

2008-08-19T14:21:15Z

Enough stalling already. Found a few spare moments to provide a summary report on akademy 2008 and fedora.

First day was a blast, primarily because I had a chance to finally meet in person many other fedora/kde folk, including Than, Lukas, Chitlesh, so fedora was fairly well represented. Following a similar talk, mine was last, so I was a bit nervous about overlap.

Turned out my concerns were largely unfounded, but that didn't stop me from starting out a bit nervous. Fortunately for me, I can blather on about fedora with the best, so didn't have any trouble using up the time. I kept it a little short on purpose, as I wanted to ensure ample time at the end for questions and audience-inspired topics and discussion. Sadly, no one took the bait to discuss the Cubs' chances at the World Series.

You can peruse what I have so far at
http://rdieter.fedorapeople.org/akademy2008/
Should have some video of the talk soon too, stay tuned.

On day 2, I was focused on meeting people and enjoying the days' talks. Got to hang out with Bero and fedora folk.

Day 3 was filled with the KDE e.V. business. Long, but very productive. The evening was the highlight, as Chitlesh had been kind to extend an invitation to come to Brusells. Bero and I procrastinated enough at dinner to miss the train, so braved driving from Mechelen. Despite my having no directional sense or multilingual ability, we eventually found Chitlesh, and he did not disappoint. We started off with some fries, walked and did the tourist thing, pointing and taking pictures, and found our way to the Delirium cafe for a beverage. It was getting late, so Bero drove back to Mechelen, while I stayed in Brussels.

Chitlesh was merciless in subjecting me to quite a few more beers at his place, while continuing various discussions on fedora, life, and the universe. We eventually had to choose to continue talking or get at least some sleep. Sleep won. The following morning, my host was gracious enough to feed me and shepard me to the train station.

Before my flight home, I saw this at the Brussels airport,

which gave me a good chuckle, but didn't exactly inspire me to buy a soda.