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In this post, I’ll try to provide an overview of the results of the work we’ve done during the Workspace sprint in Pineda de Mar, Catalunya, Spain. The sprint is still going on, unfortunately I had to leave early to attend a friend’s wedding. ...

Activities central: One focus that we have been working on in Plasma quite extensively is organising your documents, contacts, applications, files and other digital assets into Activities. Activities provide a contextual way of organising your devices. Activities usually enclose these resources into personal context which might include locations, contacts, documents and any other resource we’re able to express in terms of semantics. (So pretty much all. :)) ...

Over the last fourteen months, discontent with Unity and the GNOME 3 series of releases have sent GNOME users galloping in all directions in their search for alternatives. Xfce and Linux Mint's Cinnamon and Mate in particular have benefited from this search. However, one alternative that users have not considered to any extent is KDE. Considering the years in which GNOME and KDE were considered the main desktop environments for Linux, this trend is surprising at first.

This year’s latest generation of smartphones will be equipped with new, more powerful mobile processors that rival the power of most laptops. So it almost seems fitting that Clamcase, the company that makes iPad keyboard docks, is making the laptop-like peripheral that’s completely powered by a smartphone.

The Clambook is essentially a Macbook Air styled thin-as-hell laptop--minus all the guts. It’s equipped with a 16:9 display, 3D Cinema Sound system, track pad, and a full keyboard with Android specific keys.

Google Inc. GOOG -1.82% said it filed an antitrust complaint Thursday in Europe arguing that Microsoft Corp. MSFT -2.13% and Nokia Corp. are using proxy companies to brandish patents and hurt the prospects of Google's Android mobile-phone software to the advantage of Microsoft's technology. Google also plans to share its complaint about patent "trolls" with U.S. competition regulators. The Internet-search giant alleges that Microsoft and Nokia have entered into agreements that enable entities such as Canada-based Mosaid Technologies Inc. to legally enforce their patent rights and share the resulting revenue.

On a vast scale, that's broadly what CERN's Large Hadron Collider does -- smashing particles together at a whisker short of the speed of light in order to minutely document the results. Running the supercooled magnets and four gigantic detection arrays -- each of which weighs in at tens of thousands of tons -- in place around the nearly 17-mile-long underground tunnel is, unsurprisingly, a fiendishly complex task.

According to Ehm, CERN began using open source message broker ActiveMQ as a way to transport data between the 85,000 machines and more than 2 million total endpoints at the facility in 2005.

Just read another "forget desktop Linux" piece by a writer trying to cover Free software on a sight ostensibly doing the same. This is exactly the sort of thing I wrote about in a recent blog entry, and it's sad to see it continue.

First off, "world domination" is not the only metric, nor the most useful one in every case. We have tens of millions of users around the world and I'm sure they'd appreciate it if we didn't forget them. I am one of them, and I know I certainly feel that way. You may be as well.

There's another aspect to that article: it suggests concentrating on mobile. Now .. where have I heard that before? Oh, right: everyone saying the desktop is dead, long live the web, we should focus all our efforts there.

Pondering the "big questions" is all well and good, but it matters little if words are the only results. To have an effect, the ideas need to be translated into action and Free software did that in a big way. While GNU Hurd may not have gotten very far, the Linux kernel certainly did as did thousands of other Free software projects big and small.

For the new folks joining KFN, here's the history behind me trying to get Linux -- any Linux -- to run on this goofy tablet. Finally!

At long last...behold!

Video

First attempt, described at Ubuntu Forums

A post chronicling some experimentation with UEFI (on ThinkPads, but relevant as the Samsung is UEFI)

Initial, if incomplete, success at getting Ubuntu to boot

My rant about Microsoft "accidentally" sending me a 1099, claiming I owed taxes on the tablet

Balsam's build of Plasma Active Two, running but mostly non-functional

First actual useful install, KFN post created with Kubuntu Active

While helping to edit last week’s Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, I came across an article written by Tony Bradley of PC World entitled “Why Linux on the Desktop Is Dead”. In it he cited his “30 days with Ubuntu Linux” test as proof that Linux on the desktop is not, and will not be a credible option for users.

I don’t often use this blog to take exception to things I read (otherwise it’s probably all I’d ever do), but in this case, I felt that I had to respond.

LINUX, the free operating system that brought professional-grade computing to the lowly PC, has come a long way since doing something as simple as switching off meant performing secret handshakes or offering arcane prayers to the computer gods (eg, “computername ~ # shutdown -h now”). Today, practically all Linux distributions (some 450 are in circulation) hide their stark command lines behind prettified user-interfaces such as Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment or Xfce which mimic the desktop metaphor familiar to a billion Windows users. Should it ever be necessary, shutting down a Linux machine gracefully nowadays involves no more than a few clicks of a mouse.

Note: Very typical praise to crush blog. Ends with very negative conclusion. Many good rebuttal comments in the feedback though.

One of the many areas where Google is far ahead of Microsoft is mapping, with Google Maps by far the dominant map service on the Internet. Microsoft is employing an under-the-radar approach to fighting back, lending big support and big dollars to the open source map project OpenStreetMap. It looks as if the tactic is starting to pay off.

March 7, 2011. Today KDE released updates for its Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. These updates are the first in a series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.8 series. 4.8.1 updates bring many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the latest edition in the 4.8 series and are recommended updates for everyone running 4.8.0 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. KDE’s software is already translated into more than 55 languages, with more to come. The March updates contain many performance improvements and bugfixes for applications using the Nepomuk semantic framework.

Ever since the Unity desktop first came to Ubuntu, I've been critical of it and found myself completely disinterested in it. Some aspects of this discontent may have stemmed from my refusal to try something new. But certainly Unity had some rough edges in the beginning. In short, Unity was a neat idea that needed more time to develop.

Our mission with Ubuntu is to deliver, in the cleanest, most economical and most reliable form, all the goodness that engineers love about free software to the widest possible audience (including engineers ). We’ve known for a long time that free software is beautiful on the inside – efficient, accurate, flexible, modifiable. For the past three years, we’ve been leading the push to make free software beautiful on the outside too – easy to use, visually pleasing and exciting. That started with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and is coming to fruition in 12.04 LTS, now in beta.

Today's announcement of the beta release for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is sure to dominate the Linux news headlines, but the coming of Precise Pangolin means more than a snazzy new desktop. Okay, not really, I was just trying to be dramatic. It's really a snazzy new desktop. But that's the whole point--one that many detractors of Canonical, Ubuntu, and Unity seem to consistently miss in their quest to smack Mark Shuttleworth and crew around.

Even the most hardcore Linux fan would admit that their favorite OS has not captured more than a very small market share on personal computers. And that would include us here at Pingdom: all of our engineers and 50% of or our developers are, in fact, running Linux.

Ubuntu has enjoyed great success, and more recently Mint, as well. But Linux desktop OS doesn’t seem to be able to break free and climb above the low single digits in market share.

But that may be changing if the latest numbers are anything to go by.

With an eye on reducing ongoing software costs, the Veterans Affairs Department said it is exploring alternatives to Microsoft Corp.’s longstanding Office Suite productivity software that has dominated federal desktops for two decades. The VA currently owns and operates the 2003, 2007 and 2010 versions of Office, which include Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and which are being used by more than 300,000 VA employees. Use of the integrated software suite has provided for interoperability between the VA’s many units.

One thing that was never really great in Plasma Active was the interaction with power and lock capabilities. We had a power button widget in the panel despite all devices having a power button. The lock screen looked pretty, but it only did locking. A new QML UI for the log out dialog was provided but it never felt quite right to me, though it looks so much nicer on Plasma Desktop compared to what we had previously. (This is a nice example of how the different Plasma workspaces help each other improve.)

Ever since Kubuntu lost its funding from Canonical, people have been talking about the decline of KDE. Is the concern real?

Is KDE dying? This question, or variants of it, have been asked with increasing frequency in the two weeks since Jonathan Riddell announced that, after the next release, Canonical would no longer pay him for his work on Kubuntu, the KDE version of Ubuntu. But is the question valid? Or simply unsupported panic?

A question about Spark that we're hearing fairly often is how the economics behind it will work. This question has come in a few different forms such as requests to explain the price point we settled on or how much of the proceeds will go where. I thought since it has come up a few times instead of answering it in blog comments repeatedly I'd answer it here in a proper blog entry.