Fedora 14 - KDE Plasma Desktop one

Wow,
another half year of our lives, another autumn out there, winter knocking on the doors, quite melancholy time, sickness all around - but don't worry, be open (and happy) - new Fedora is out! With Plasma lighting up your desktop. Yes, we released KDE version again, first time branded as Plasma Desktop one.



I'm sorry - our spin page does not reflect this change as we were unable to get website team to act (ticket sitting there for two months, last ping one week ago by Rex...) but now I have websites access and I promise to fix it asap. Even some pre-historic relict like "K Desktop Environment".



So what's new in our world? We ship 4.5.2 backed up by Qt 4.7.0 (wow, it was risky, we nearly missed release date here ;-) But thanks to all people who made this possible - Kevin Kofler, Rex Dieter, Than Ngo, Lukas Tinkl, Thomas Janssen and others (users, early testers...). This time I really liked Desktop Validation tests led by Adam Williamson - thank you!



Well, it's all - go to our download page! Do not try to use main "Get Fedora" as our spin is unfortunately hidden to your eyes - if you don't like it - report to websites team :(

PS: I'm preparing a few Fedora/Red Hat branded USB sticks with live version for LinuxAlt - biggest (and best) open source event here in Czech republic. So anyone interested in - just try to catch there and use magic password to get one ;-)

FUDCon 2010 EMEA

Ok, I'm back with another blog post from another conference, from another time and another dimension (or maybe parallel universe? maybe I'm dead?). FUDCon is always a nice opportunity to meet known faces. And I think it's really great if you are able to map IRC nick to real person. It makes communication much more easier.

As probably everyone knows - we were in Zurich, Switzerland. Nice city and nice country, taking the best from Europe (no borders check for example) and still living on their own out of Brussels control. And merging FUDCon with FrOSCamp was a just brilliant idea! I met my OpenSUSE friends, KDE & Amarok people again...



System configuration
It's not a funny but it's true - I had to travel around the world to meet people from one project/one company to find the right people there (or ideas). I gave my talk about the current state of system configuration tools, what we have, what we are working on and what we'd like to do. And of course called for ideas. It's what we miss. Input from other people, from community. Also I gave a quick overview of my another involvement in Fedora - the newly established WebKit SIG and KDE (the Plasma rebranding stuff).

Fedora Mobility
This was a great Barcamp session held by Peter Robinson, the man who did a lot to support smaller devices in Fedora. I'd like to blog about this session separately - really important stuff for me. As I'm fan of mobile devices, Plasma has now Netbook UI, MeeGo and I'm the founder member of Openmobility group (Czech and Slovak open mobility community group).

The party
Wait, it was le-gen-da-ry one. No comment. No sleep ;-)

The trip
We have visited three interested places - Bodensee on the road to Zurich and Rhine falls on the trip back + Rapperswil (not Rapersville :D) - a nice city near the lake. Of course Zurich is a nice city, with Marcela, we tried to find some typical Swiss kitchen restaurant but it was nearly impossible (we found one but we had to wait too long to be serviced, so we left before). Finally typical British pub saved our souls from starvation.



Summary
I really enjoyed FUDCon this year but I miss something. If I compare NA and EMEA FUDCons, I have to say - it's really sad we don't have one big event for all devels on the same place. And to have some smaller events for users and people who really need to meet for specific regions (but FAD should work for them). And save some money to bring developers to NA.

On the other hand - thank you guys, I really like you all ;-) And big thanks to orgs!

Akademy and me (and you)

Yes, I'm going too - I've just printed down all information we'll probably need, e-tickets (flight, bus), luggage prepared, secondary battery for my N900 charged... And today later in the evening, the trip for me and Lukas Tvrdy (Krita star developer) begins.



I'd like to meet a lot of people, especially Ryan Rix - a Fedora fellow. So all people interested in Fedora and our Fedora technologies (Polkit-qt for example), feel free to stop me (this year probably the only guy wearing the red fedora hat :((()! I'm looking forward to see you again!

World Environment Day at Red Hat Czech office - a KDE logo

Red Hat is trying very hard on the field of green computing - for example power management efforts and of course on green environment too. So on 5th June we are joining World Environment Day. I'm usually not very green guy - but I try to behave nice to my environment (and not only planet Earth but people all around). I don't have a car, we have great public transportation system here in Brno and it's quite cheap. I try not to buy a lot of potential waste etc..

But now we have this week full of green activities and one is making pictures from old bottle's tops. And as there are a lot of KDE supporters and users in the office - we tried KDE logo ;-) Yes, it's a terribly undersampled - lack of white tops but it's our KDE logo! Step away from your LCD and you'll see it!



PS: all tops are going to be recycled (and probably taken by car to some place accepting this waste, so... :D)!
PS2: thanks to all KDE people here for testing, running their production systems with kde-unstable repo enabled by default, it eats kittens! Thanks Marcela, Dan and others!

Dissents (just a quick reply)

This is not a blog post but more likely just a quick reply to Seth Vidal's blog as it's not possible to comment it.

Indeed - rules are needed on our highways - as drivers don't care about each other (that's just sad). So we have (better have to have) rules - but what would you say to speeding limit 5 mph (as cars are dangerous, killing people), only blue cars are allowed, drivers has to be provendrivers (as we can't trust normal drivers). That's nonsense, isn't it? Policies should not be just for creating policies.

Sorry - I've never considered myself as dissent, I'm trying to help Fedora project as much as I can (and not only because it's my job in Red Hat but I really want to do, I want to be part of one of best open source community), maybe I didn't create Fedora but that doesn't mean I should be quiet (in Czech - drzet hubu a krok). I'm not blaming anyone (and of course thanks for people who started Fedora, who are actively contributors, users, everyone) - but all, please care about others in community or we'll die. And, yes I understand reasons for some policies and rules we already have but...

I was born to be open (and now to be wild (dissent) :D).