Danimo's blog - FSLab

FrOSCon 2009: Call for Papers About to Close

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:20:00 +0200

The Call for Papers for this years' Free and Open Source Conference (FrOSCon) will close in three days. Hot topics are Cloud Computing, Open Hardware, Free Software and SaaS (Software as a Service) as well as mobile Gadgets (Netbooks, Phones, ...).

Traditionally, FrOSCon has always hosted a sub conference. After hosting the Python and PHP community, this years programming language du jour is Java. Does anyone feel like giving a Jambi talk?

Btw: Qt Software supports FrOSCon as a Gold Sponsor and both Qt Software and the KDE team will of course be present during the conference. Visit us from 22.- 23. August 2009 in the premises of the University of Applied Technology in St. Augustin near Bonn!

Why Current Linux-Preinstalls Pose Adoption Problems for Netbook Users

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:50:00 +0100

This christmas, Santa brought an Acer Aspire One (A110L) for my mother, a not so techy person. It even had a customized version of Linpus Linux on it featuring quite a pleasant, simple UI. It's supposed to be simple and useful. And at first glance, that's true: It comes with Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.

Unfortunately, there is also a downside. Why? Because it comes with Firefox, OpenOffice, etc... on Fedora Core 8, a quite old version of the Distribution. Firefox is on Version 2.0.0.14 and no official update is available, leaving A110 users with known security issues and a product which is officially abandoned by the vendor. Same holds true for OpenOffice.org 2.3, the current Version is 3.0.

The Update System does not use YUM, it has propritary system that downloads XML descriptions, packages and shell scripts from a Taiwanese, overworked Server, with no (visible) signature validation (*yikes*).¹⁾

So I wanted to install Skype, since that's what my family uses to do voice and video chatting. The built-in messanger also has no support for Jabber. So I wanted to install skype and PSI instead of the built-in messanger. Both turned out to require advanced Linux-Knowledge (installing RPMs manually in case of Skype) and some google searching (becoming root, add items into the menu). Some choices, like the choice of language can only be done via
the GUI initially. Later on, one needs to find a script that sets environment variables and reboot the system.

So where is the trouble? The extra step via Linpus. While it seems like the ideal OS (Startup time of about 4 seconds, easy launcher interface), it

Keeps the users from secure upgrades to decent versions. Even worse: It keeps the users from even customizing their Netbooks just a little bit. With the Windows XP variant, installing Skype is just a Download and a Mouse click away. That's why I find a lot of people moving on to XP right away or buying the XP version in the first place. The hypothesis that netbook users accept their devices just the way they are is a myth.

Keeps the average user from installing new Software (keep in mind the target audience!).

Woeks around the underlying distributions update infrastructure.

Not sure if Ubuntu's Netbook spins are the answers, but I will definitely give them a try on an external SSD medium.

¹⁾ I admit that this is not the central point here, but since I'm at 25c3 and Dan Kaminsky has just stressed how many update systems suck because they lack any kind of validation about the blob they are about to download and run as root, I felt like pointing it out.

PS: Dear Lazyweb: Does anyone have expiriences with other Netbook Vendors? I am under the impression that the Eee PC preinstallation suffers from similar problems.

On Icons and Labels

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:24:55 +0100

To be frank: I think that the Kubuntu's switch to "Text aside icons" (as discussed by Seele) was a mistake. The reasons for that are best explained by an example:

Here, only one of three actions are visible in the tool bar, rendering it pretty useless. But let's revisit what we had as the default in KDE 3 before we used "Text below icons":

Now, "Text below icons" is a bad idea, because it wastes vertical space, which we are already short of (Plasma panels, menu bar, window decoration). Given the emerging 16:9 ratio monitors, this sounds like a call for "Text aside icons", the new Kubuntu default:

During the quite vivid and productive discussions on Seele's blog, some people proposed to show the text only for special actions (mockup as posted there). This does not only allow to easily spot the most important of the actions (keep in mind that all actions in the toolbar should be kind of important, otherwise they shouldn't be there), but also eases hitting the actions tool button.

Actually, this idea has gone through my mind quite often and our friends over at the competition used this for ages, albeit for Evolution only. Instead of going for such a solution, KDE has struggled for years searching for the right defaults and discussed about screen resolutions.

The actual reason for this was mostly of technical nature: QToolBar couldn't change the tool button style property for specific actions in Qt 3.x, and the almighty XMLGUI layer used by KDE thus had no such option either. Instead, one everyone got to pick his poison (no description, or space wasting ones).

Attentive readers will have noticed my deliberate use of the past tense in the paragraphs above. This is because with Qt 4, it is possible to do just what I said was missing: Adding actions with an individual Qt::ToolBarStyle. So without further ado, here is my (code-backed) mockup:

The secret is to add those actions that should get a text aside the icon like this:

    ...
    QToolBar *bar = mw.addToolBar(QObject::tr("Actions"));
    bar->setIconSize(QSize(22, 22));

    QToolButton *tb = new QToolButton;
    tb->setDefaultAction(new QAction(QIcon(":/icons/mail-message-new.png"), 
                                     QObject::tr("New Message"), tb));
    tb->setToolButtonStyle(Qt::ToolButtonTextBesideIcon);
    bar->addWidget(tb);
    ...

This is officially documented behavior. Quoting the Qt docs on QToolBar::addWidget():

If you add a QToolButton with this method, the tools bar's Qt::ToolButtonStyle will not be respected.

Now it shouldn't be too hard to add suppport this idiom to XMLGUI, by adding a flag for "important" actions. That said, XMLGUI is a quite complicated and fragile matter. However, I will take a look at this soon to see if it can be implemented in a clean way without patching Qt.

PS: I think this is one example where less could actually be more in KDE. If we get this right, there is no need for choosing an icon label alignment at all.

KOVpn: A helpful little tool returns

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:22:31 +0200

Disclaimer: No KDE 4.1 hype here. This is for the real retro folks (aka KDE 3.x users).

KOVpn is a simple, yet helpful tool to connect to private networks using the OpenVPN software. It was nice, but needed some more improvements (indicated by its version number). Unfortunately, the last maintainer vanished along with the project page and the download files. However, I was able to get hold of the latest stable release via our University sysadmin (and KDE veteran!) Chris Neerfeld. Since OpenVPN is used in my uni to gain WiFi access, I moved the tool into a trac environment at our labs project hosting service.

With the help of another lab member, Jochen Wierum, I also managed to get out packages for OpenSUSE, Debian and Kubuntu via the (excellent!) OpenSUSE Build Service. Also, thanks to a fix Jochen contributed, the latest release also works on 64 bit distros.

So what now? This is a KDE 3 app, so its days are clearly counted. Yet it will hopefully help, since KDE 3.5 will probably be around for quite some time. Currently I am considering a Qt 4 port, if my time permits. But actually, it is really NetworkManager who should become smart enough to handle all kinds of OpenVPN setup, instead of the rather limited options it offers nowadays. Let's see what the future brings. In the meanwhile, enjoy KOVpn!

PS: Be warned The setup currently involves manual setup of OpenVPN, but using it afterwards is a real joy, compared to using the commandline or weired custom scripts

PPS: Dear Lazyweb: Do you know how work on NetworkManager is progressing wrt OpenVPN integration?

Berlin, Trolltech, FrOSCon, Akademy...

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:25:00 +0200

So I am back in Berlin writing my thesis at the Trolltech office here. Lately I've been pretty busy with exams, but now I can concentrate on my thesis, with the notable exception of two weekends: One is FrOSCon 2008, which I will attend on the 23. and 24. of August, but even before I will be in Belgium because...

BVG stellt Grundrecht auf Online-Vertraulichkeit fest

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:05:57 +0100

Es noch Hoffnung in Deutschland: Das Bundesverfassungsgericht. Hier macht man sich offensichtlich wirklich differenzierte Gedanken und schmettert die sogenannte Online-Durchsuchung ab. Zum Beispiel im Falle des entsprechenden Gesetzes in NRW, das heute vom BVG kassiert wurde:

Die NRW-Vorschrift, die dem Landes-Verfassungsschutz allgemein den "heimlichen Zugriff auf informationstechnische Systeme" erlaubte, verstoße auch gegen das Gebot der Verhältnismäßigkeit. (tagesschau.de)

Deswegen stellten die Richter jetzt ein Grundrecht auf Gewährleistung der Vertraulichkeit und Integrität informationstechnischer Systeme fest. Online-Durchsuchen sind zwar nicht unmöglich, aber die Hürden werden sehr, sehr hoch angelegt. Nun hoffen wir, dass diese eindeutige Entscheidung nicht wieder durch die Üblichen Verdächtigen systematisch untergraben wird.

(via lawblog)

Report: Release-Party in Bonn

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:49:24 +0100

Cocktail "KDE 4.0 Blue Lagoon"

Ingredients:

2cl Vodka
1-2cl Blue Curacao
2cl Cream
10cl Pinapple Juice
4cl Cream of Coconut
1-2 Ice Cubes

Howto:

Shake well. Decorate glass with a an orance slice. Before slicing the orange, cut and peel vertical stripes off the orange. This creates a nice gear look. Serve with a black straw.

For the non-alcoholic version, use blue curacao sirup and more juice instead of blue curacao and vodka. If you try a bit, you can create a color gradient with the coconut cream, which creates the lagoon effect.

To sum it up: it was an awesome party. We had a decently filled location, which surprised me because this particular party was announced less than one week in advance.

Starting at about 19:00 o'clock local time we saw a great show: Aaron giving an awesome keynote, Benjamin presenting KDE 4.0 apps on the Mac and Holger showing off KDE 4.0 on Windows in the typical understatement way of people from northern Germany . Thanks to Google for recording, Franz for organizing the streaming, and Dirk for getting a server capable of actually delivering the stream.

Keynote from the Bonn perspective: Aaaron rocking the show

To me that keynote (which we will hopefully soon be seeing on Youtube), was en par with the ones the Steve's of this IT world deliver, just a lot warmer and more honest. Yet Aaron managed to present the incredible achievement that is KDE 4.0 in an amazing way.

After the keynote finished, the attendees had time to test KDE 4.0 and discuss various issues. As a special plus for those attending our party, we offered a special "KDE 4.0 Blue Lagoon Cocktail", which was very well received. (recipe on the right, sorry for the crappy pic). Thanks go to Peter for organizing beer, Natascha for doing an excellent job as a bar tender, the Netzladen for hosting and to AurISP and PBR Systems for providing a projector for everyone to follow the keynote.

Oh, and Qt is (also) GPLv3 now. Yay!

KDE 4.0.0 - The Start of Something Amazing

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:54:29 +0100

So it's been done: KDE 4.0.0 has just been released. This is not only the end of a long development effort, involving a lot of new ideas and even more sweat and tears in getting a .0 release out. It also marks the beginning of a new age in free desktop computing, new ideas and new technologies, some of which are still emerging and will find their way in later KDE 4 releases.

I was especially impressed with the page of the KDE Games folks, which makes you want KDE 4.0.0 just for the sake of playing some of the games they wrote and polished. A special hats off goes to the new KBattleship maintainer. The new version rocks. In related news, make sure to check the page of the KDE Education project.

So what does the future hold for KDE 4? Obviously, there will be lots of plasma applets and a lot of ported and new applications. Developing for KDE already is and will continously become a lot easier, especially due to the advanced scripting capabilities. To keep the learning curve low, we will do a developer tutorial sprint on TechBase once the dust of the release announcement has settled. And the best thing is: You can make a difference. No matter if you like coding, translations, doing arts or do something we don't have a position for yet: Get involved and become a part of something amazing.

PS: If you want to celebrate the new release in parallel to the Mountain View event next friday and live in the Cologne/Bonn area, drop me a mail.

2007 & New Years Resolutions

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:28:36 +0100

Due to some rather strange pains in my back (probably muscle-related, I hope the doc will find out tomorrow), I am somewhat chained to my bed. With my action radius being limited significantly, I am doing what seems popular: I decided to give an update about my personal situation. To sum up 2007, it was a fairly nice but also stressful year, with a lot of changes in my private life, both positive and rather sad (which don't belong here, drop me a mail if you care).

It also saw the release of the english, slightly updated version of my book on Qt 4 and held an awesome study-related internship at the coolest toolkit-vendor ever. I hope this explains why I remained so silent on the blog and (even worse) on the KDE commit list. I kept active in the background however, keeping TechBase running along with Dominik and setting up other MediaWiki-based websites for KDE.

As for 2008, there is a lot of things I want to do. I won't bother you with all of them, just the very basic ones:

Finish studies (finally )

Get more involved in KDE development again

Enjoy real-life even more than last year*

So, to all my friends, readers and KDE-enthusiasts i wish

A happy new 2008!

*(well actually, that looks like bad resolution at first sight, since 1 and 2 conflict with 3, but after all it's all about the right balance, right?)

SOCKS-Proxy via SSH

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 13:18:27 +0100

Für eine Seminararbeit muss ich nicht nur häufig in die FH um Bücher auszuleihen, sondern auch, um Artikel aus online verfügbaren Zeitschriften oder wissenschaftlichen Publikationen einsehen zu können. Die Verlage betreiben spezielle Portale, die jedoch nur gegen ein nicht gerade geringes Endgeld benutzbar sind (ein einzelner Artikel aus der Fachzeitschriften wie Datenschutz und Datensicherheit kostet online zwischen 20 und 30 Euro).

Institute aus Forschung und Lehre, und so eben auch unsere FH, haben jedoch Abkommen mit den Verlagen und entsprechenden Drittverwertungsportalen, die die IP-Range der FH für kostenlosen Zugang freischalten (seit Neustem auch für die Paper der IEEE). Über das VPN der FH bekommt man zwar keine direkte FH-IP, aber der NAT-Router am Ende ist im FH-Netz, und somit ist das VPN aus Sicht der Portale Teil des FH-Netzes. Im Moment ist das VPN aber nur über WLAN, jedoch noch nicht per Internet erreichenbar. Was also, wenn man nicht ständig in die FH will, um Artikel aus einem solchen Magazin online zu lesen?

Die Lösung kommt per SSH. Es kennt einen "dynamic port forwarding"-Modus, bei dem SSH einen SOCKS 5-Proxy emuliert. Nach einem einfachen

ssh -D8080 euser2s@home.inf.fh-brs.de (Linux)

bzw.

putty -D8080 euser2s@home.inf.fh-brs.de (Windows)

steht der Tunnel und alles was zu tun bleibt, ist localhost:8080 als SOCKS 5-Proxy im Browser einzutragen. Da home.inf und andere Rechner eine FH-IP haben, kommt man so an alle für die gesamte FH freigeschalteten Web-Dienste und eben auch an das volle Angebot der Bibliothek.

(mit Dank an Stephan für den Tipp)

Qtopia Phone Edition on OpenMoko

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 22:03:18 +0200

When the news about Qtopia on the OpenMoko made its round in the news, I was eager to find out how it would be, especially because the only platform I had seen it on was the Greenphone. Thankfully my friend Lars lent me his Neo 1973 to help me getting an impression. It still had one of the first OpenMoko Firmware images installed and couldn't even do GSM. So I took it home and flashed it with the binary release from Qtopia.net. I booted it up and... wow, it asked for my PIN, logged into the network and I had GSM working. So after two days of using it, here is a list of cool stuff:

It's astonishingly usable without a stylus already (scrolling, dialing, etc), with exception of the querty keyboard (must-have #1)

The adoption to keyboardless handling is very good, e.g. games that need one have been removed, applications got adjusted (must-have #2)

Telephony just worked (not that obvious these days)

The graphics look really polished

and of course: the lock/unlock mechanism is really cool and a funny idea

So what did I notice? (Please bear in mind that this is the first public release of the OpenMoko-based firmware, so this is something that can be fixed)

Suspend doesn't seem to work properly yet (issues with the OpenMoko kernel?)

Without suspend, battery life is only about 6 hours

Some redraw errors in the unlock application

Speaker volume too silent, even when pushing everything to max

Now this is stuff that certainly can be fixed, and if there would be Marble available on Qtopia, too, that would even make for an awesome geo-location-based-services tool (Nokia seems to belive it's the future, and so do I). Awesome work, Brisbane trolls, and of course all the other devel trolls in Berlin, Munich and Oslo! I hope now that Qtopia is GPLed, Qtopia might become an interesting alternative to OpenMoko.

By the way: I was approached a few times by friends who asked me of the whole Qtopia on OpenMoko thing spoiled the OpenMoko development. Here is my view. The OpenMoko firmware is for those who like to have their X11 and all the crap running, Qtopia is for those who just want to have stuff working, without caring that its even Linux underneath. They don't need X11, the framebuffer is good enough and less complex to draw on (also, nobody keeps you from adding an X-Server to Qtopia or port Qtopia to Qt/X11. It's GPL, after all).

FSLab Vortrag zu VoIP mit Asterisk

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:58:57 +0200

Auch dieses Semester ist das Free Software Lab wieder aktiv. Los gehts mit einem Vortrag von Alex Bielmeier zum Thema Voice over IP mit Asterisk, der wohl bekanntesten Open Source Software-PBX (neudeutsch für Telefonanlage). Mehr Infos gibts unter im FSLab Wiki.

OMG, FrOSCon!

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:29:16 +0200

Do you know the feeling? For some reason, you need to detach from something you were involved in, and suddenly, after a while of not being deeply involved with it, you realize its just workling perfectly -- at an amazing pace. If you know that feeling, you can share what I feel when I think about this years FrOSCon.

Looking back at the past two months, Berlin has turned out to be a nice place to live, even though I hardly found time to explore the city yet. The downside is that I have to travel the republic, and that takes quite some time.

Thus the conference seems to be approaching at the speed of light: Only about 30 hours to go until the coolest Open Source and Free Software Conference under the sun (we expect great weather with sunshine in the afternoon at bearable 25°C on saturday) kicks off.

As previously announced KDE will be there, sharing a booth and a room with the Amarok and Kubuntu Germany guys.

In the room, we'll have a broad program to offer on Sunday.

13:00: Marble: more than a virtual Desktop Globe

14:00: Amarok :: Forming the Core 2

16:00: Kubuntu in Deutschland :: gestern, heute und morgen

In addition, we might add some BoFs, stay tuned! On Saturday, there is even a talk on KDE 4 by our beloveth board member and promo guy Sebastian Kügler, who will give you an update on the current status. Earlier the day, I'll be talking about a Qt-related Wikipedia Offline Reader written by students of our University.

An of course the present developers take their time to answer your question on the project and can help you to get inolved if you join us in our room!

PS: Make sure to be there to receive a personal surprise. All you need to do in addition is to bring in a USB stick.

Seltsames beim SSH-Portforwarding

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Wed, 02 May 2007 18:16:22 +0200

Zugriff auf den Fachbereichs-LDAP gibt es leider nur innerhalb des des FH-Netzes. Da ich im Moment für ein Projekt aber auch von ausserhalb Zugang benötige, wollte ich mir einen SSH-Portforward einrichten. Die Zeile


ssh -Nf  -L:1389:ldap.inf.fh-brs.de:389 dmolke2s@home.inf.fh-brs.de

sollte es eigentlich leisten: auf Port 1389 sollte nun der Zugang zum LDAP liegen. Doch bei jedem connect: Fehlanzeige:


bind: Address already in use

Das Kuriose: Egal wie ich Ports und Rechner variierte, die Fehlermeldung blieb die Gleiche.Die Ausgabe von lsof -i : blieb ebenfalls leer. Hatte ich mir also ein Rootkit eingehandelt? Die Lösung lag diesmal nicht in panischem googlen, sondern im besonnen Review der Ausgabe von SSH im Verbose-Modus (-v). Dabei fiel mir folgende Zeile ins Auge:


debug1: Local forwarding listening on 0.0.0.0 port 1389.

Moment mal: Auf alle Interfaces binden? Ich hatte die entsprechende Option doch gar nicht angegeben! Normalerweise bindet SSH den Forward nur auf das Loopback-Interface.

Doch was war geschehen? Der Übeltäter ist der subtil platzierte Doppelpunkt direkt hinter -L. Für SSH liest sich das nun wie


ssh -Nf  -L0.0.0.0:1389:ldap.inf.fh-brs.de:389 dmolke2s@home.inf.fh-brs.de

wobei der Parameter vor dem Doppelpunkt die Adresse des Interfaces angibt, an die SSH sich binden soll. 0.0.0.0 bedeutet unter Unix, sich an alle Interfaces zu binden. Somit entspricht dies dem Kommando


ssh -gNf  -L1389:ldap.inf.fh-brs.de:389 dmolke2s@home.inf.fh-brs.de

das übrigens ebenfalls fehlschlägt. Warum beides nicht funktioniert bleibt jedoch weiterhin ein Rätsel. Ich habe alle Interfaces bis auf Loopback und mein WLAN heruntergefahren und kann erfolgreich an beide einzelnd binden. Nur auf alle Interfaces zusammen zu binden klappt nicht. Hinweise willkommen...

Übrigens: Wer sich über Parameter N und f wundert: Sie sorgen dafür dass ssh keine Shell startet (N) und sich nach dem Login in den Hintergrund verabschiedet (f). Die beiden Parameter hatten keine Auswirkungen auf meine Experimente.

FrOSCon 2007: Call for Papers

nospam@example.com (Daniel Molkentin) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:48:17 +0100

Doesn't everyone love Open Source events? I do, and thus I am proud to announce the Call for Paper for FrOSCon, the best Open Source and Free Software event in the western Part of Germany.

For those who don't know: FrOSCon is a two-day conference on free software and open source, which takes place on the 25th and 26th of August at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, in St. Augustin near Bonn, Germany for the second time. Huge parts of the organisation are done by members of LUUSA and the FrOSCon e.V.

For KDE, I aready secured a developers room and I hope that more people will be able to attend then last year, when it was largely unknown because it was conducted for the first time. Yet I dare to claim that everyone who attended last year called it a great show, especially because the organizers carefully analyzed other open source and free software events such as FOSDEM or Linuxtag.

So I hope to welcome you in my home town St. Augustin in fall. Make sure to send a talk or subscribe for the KDE booth. St. Augustin is conviniently located rather close to the BeNeLux countries -- a good enough excuse to come over and see some old (and new!) faces again .