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Out with the old, in with the new (??)

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Note: this article contains anime-style AI generated illustrations. If that bothers you… feel free to stop reading (although you might miss out… or not?).

Leave of absence?
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Soo… the last post here was approximately four (or was it five?) years ago. What the heck happened?

Translations available for KDE unstable packages

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 23:10:14 +0200

As many readers of this blog are aware, openSUSE has been offering packages of git snapshots from KDE since quite a while. They are quite useful for those wiling to test, report bugs, and / or hack on the code, but also for those who want to see what’s brewing in KDE land (without touching their existing systems). However, a major drawback for non English speakers was the lack of translations.

Setting up OwnTracks Recorder and OAuth2 with nginx, oauth2-proxy and podman

Sun, 01 Aug 2021 00:30:28 +0200

One thing I always wanted to do when going on holiday is to track where I go, the places I’ve been, and see how much I’ve travelled around. This is true in particular when going to places where I walk around a lot (Japan stays at the top of the list, also for other reasons that are not related to this post). Something like viewing a map showing where you were, and where did you go, with optional export to KML or GPX to import into other programs like Marble.

New server: away from Kolab

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 23:47:42 +0000

Yesterday I finally flipped the switch on the MX record and moved to a new server (still aptly named after another character from アキハバラ電脳組). The machine was found through Hetzner’s server auctions and has quite a good configuration for the price paid:

Intel Xeon CPU E31245 @ 3.30GHz
16G ECC RAM (ECC was the deciding factor)
LSI Hardware RAID 1 with two 3x2T disks

Now, since the old server has been chugging along since 2011, the 5 eurocent question is why did you move at all? It turns out there were a pretty good number of reasons (to me, at least).

Hack of the day: extracting comments from Nicovideo

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 23:07:42 +0000

Header image credit: 1840151sudarshan (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)

A while ago I posted a way to download 実況動画 from Nicovideo. One of my acquaintances publishes videos there, and he wanted to collect the various comments to reply in a follow up video (what the Nico users call the コメント返し). When the comments are more than just a few, it’s hard to find where they refer to without watching them on Nicovideo itself, and its UI is suboptimal. Ideally one would check comments ordered by their position in the video. There are existing programs but their user interface is utterly confusing at best. This called for something simpler, and that’s what I tried to do.

Hack of the day: downloading VOICEROID実況 from Nicovideo

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 23:15:48 +0000

実況? Is it something edible?
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In recent times, I’ve been watching a lot of VOICEROID実況 (じっきょう, jikkyou, literally “commentary”) videos from the rather famous (in Japan) video service ニコニコ動画, better known as “Nicovideo”. In this case, the commentary actually refers to games: they’re basically a Japanese version of the Let’s Play videos that are all around other places like YouTube.

Danbooru Client 0.6.1 released

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 20:43:48 +0000

A new version of Danbooru Client is now available!

What is Danbooru Client?
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Danbooru Client is an application to access Danbooru-based image boards (Wikipedia definition).

It offers a convenient, KF5 and Qt5-based GUI coupled with a QML image view to browse, view, and download images hosted in two of the most famous Danbooru boards (konachan.com and yande.re).

Killing the redundancy with automation

Sun, 18 Dec 2016 11:51:57 +0000

In the past three weeks, the openSUSE community KDE team has been pretty busy to package the latest release of Applications from KDE, 16.12. It was a pretty large task, due to the number of programs involved, and the fact that several monolithic projects were split (in particular KDE PIM). This post goes through what we did, and how we improved our packaging workflow.

Some prerequisites
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In openSUSE speak, packages are developed in “projects”, which are separate repositories maintained on the OBS. Projects whose packages will end up in the distro, that is where they are being developed to land in the distribution, are called devel projects. The KDE team uses a number of these to package and test:

Testing the untestable

Sun, 27 Nov 2016 09:27:13 +0000

Admit it: how many times you have seen “software from this branch is completely untested, use it at your own risk” when you checked the latest code from any FOSS project? I bet you have, many times. For any reasonably modern project, this is not entirely true: Continuous Integration and automated testing are a huge help in ensuring that the code builds and at least does what it is supposed to do. KDE is no exception to this, thanks to build.kde.org and a growing number of unit tests.

The heroes we deserve

Sat, 29 Oct 2016 16:43:23 +0000

You may be aware that openSUSE Leap 42.2 is now in the release candidate stage, and there’s a lot of activity aimed at squashing those pesky bugs before they hit the final release. One particular bug proved to be quite tough to fix, and it was only solved thanks to the “heroes” mentioned in the title. This is the history of the bug.

The report
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October 6th, 2016 - A bug iss reported against Plasma reporting a hard freeze of Plasma when using the Noveau driver, but not with the closed NVIDIA blob. Although the effect is deleterious to Plasma and not other desktop environments, there is evidence that the issue is in the driver itself, but there’s only partial indications, and no conclusive proof.

Two in one

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 14:11:01 +0000

As you may know (unless you’ve been living in Alpha Centauri for the past century) the openSUSE community KDE team publishes LiveCD images for those willing to test the latest state of KDE software from the git master branches without having to break machines, causing a zombie apocalypse and so on. This post highlights the most recent developments in the area.

Up to now, we had 3 different media, depending on the base distribution (stable Leap, ever-rolling Tumbleweed) and whether you wanted to go with the safe road (X11 session) or the dangerous path (Wayland):

Danbooru Client 0.6.0 released

Sun, 01 May 2016 14:59:16 +0000

A new version of Danbooru Client is now available!

What is Danbooru Client?
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Danbooru Client is an application to access Danbooru-based image boards (Wikipedia definition).

It offers a convenient, KF5 and Qt5-based GUI coupled with a QML image view to browse, view, and download images hosted in two of the most famous Danbooru boards (konachan.com and yande.re).

Of gases, Qt, and Wayland

Sat, 27 Feb 2016 16:13:11 +0000

Ever since the launch of Argon and Krypton, the openSUSE community KDE team didn’t really stand still: a number of changes (and potentially nice additions) have been brewing this week. This post recapitulates the most important one.

I’d like the most recent Qt, please
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As pre-announced by a G+ post, the openSUSE repositories bringing KDE software directly from KDE git (KDE:Unstable:Frameworks and KDE:Unstable:Applications) have switched their Qt libraries from Qt 5.5 to the recently released Qt 5.6. This move was made possible by the heroic work of Christophe “krop” Giboudeaux, who was able to beat QWebEngine into submission and make it build in the OBS.

Where are my noble gases? I need MORE noble gases!

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 21:03:25 +0000

As KDE software (be it the Frameworks libraries, the Plasma 5 workspace, or the Applications) develops during a normal release cycle, a lot of things happen. New and exciting features emerge, bugs get fixed, and the software becomes better and more useful than it was before. Thanks to code review and continuous integration, the code quality of KDE software has also tremendously improved. Given how things are improving, it is tempting to follow development as it happens. Sounds exciting?

HOWTO: Configure 389-ds LDAP server on openSUSE Tumbleweed

Sat, 23 Jan 2016 21:28:41 +0000

Recently I’ve been setting up LDAP authentication on CentOS servers to give a shared authentication method to all the compute nodes I use for my day job. I use 389-DS as it’s in my opinion much better to administer and configure than openLDAP (plus, it has very good documentation). As I have a self built NAS at home (with openSUSE Tumbleweed), I thought it’d be nice to use LDAP for all the web applications I run there. This post shows how to set up 389 Directory Server on openSUSE Tumbleweed, including the administration console.

Danbooru Client 0.5.0 released

Tue, 08 Dec 2015 00:20:05 +0000

A new version of Danbooru Client is now available!

What is Danbooru Client?
#

Danbooru Client is an application to access Danbooru-based image boards (Wikipedia definition).

It offers a convenient, KF5 and Qt5-based GUI coupled with a QML image view to browse, view, and download images hosted in two of the most famous Danbooru boards (konachan.com and yande.re).

Tip: opening and closing ports needed by a systemd service

Sun, 18 Oct 2015 16:54:25 +0000

Recently I’ve been testing out murmur, http://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page server component, on my CentOS 7 server. Murmur requires specific ports being open to operate, and when using it I would open them manually, and close them after the session had been completed.

I found it pretty tedious: I wanted to wrap it into a single call to the service, so I could enable my user (via sudoers) to be able to start and stop the service without worrying about elevating permissions to start and stop the firewall. After reading a bit systemd’s documentation I found about ExecStartPre and ExecStopPost that would work perfectly for the job.

KDE PIM changes in openSUSE Tumbleweed

Sat, 17 Jan 2015 09:45:00 +0000

Short version: the KDE PIM in openSUSE Tumbleweed is moving from 4.14.x to the KF5 based version. More details below.

Some history
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As you may know, up to now the default PIM suite for Plasma 5 in openSUSE Tumbleweed was the KDE PIM 4.14, based on kdelibs 4.x. While upstream KDE has offered a KF5-based version since Applications 15.08, it has been originally marked as a technology preview, so we (the openSUSE community KDE team) thought it would be more prudent to stick with the 4.14 version (but offer the KF5 based PIM as an option for the daring).

Policy-based routing for single IPs using EdgeOS

Fri, 02 Jan 2015 20:11:40 +0000

I’ve found myself in a situation where my ISP, notorious for having problems with certain online services (not to mention putting everyone under a permanent NAT) started misbehaving with Sony’s Playstation Network: I was getting timeouts of all sorts with no reason (and reading online you see all sorts of attempts from people to work around the issue). When using my phone as hotspot, everything worked, as I went through my mobile operator’s network.

Unlocking KWallet with PAM

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 09:02:06 +0000

Requests to unlock KWallet automatically on login (assuming the wallet password and user password are the same), like gnome-keyring can do, have been going on for years: in fact, bug reports requesting this feature are quite old. Recently, thanks to the efforts of Alex Fiestas, a PAM module, which interfaces KWallet to the system authentication methods, has been developed. In parallel, the necessary glue code has been also added to the various parts of the KDE workspace so that it could make use of it.

An expedition in the QML realm

Sat, 04 Jan 2014 08:03:18 +0000

Among the different widgets I use on my desktop, there is a small one which tells me my current public IP address. The reason I’m having it is due to the fact that my own ISP uses a NAT for almost all its customers (don’t ask - long story) and so I need to keep tabs on my current IP, because it may have been blacklisted, and so on.

Up to now I was using this plasmoid written in Python, but the code had several issues and used its own way of getting the public IP. However, I knew Plasma has already a way to give you your IP, that is the _geolocation _DataEngine. I thought of adjusting the current widget to use this engine, but then I thought “What if I make one in QML?”.

Accessing Casio EX-WORD 電子辞書 from Linux

Wed, 01 May 2013 19:33:17 +0000

I’m a (happy!) owner of a Casio EX-WORD Dataplus 5 XD-A4700, a Japanese electronic dictionary. Recently I looked into updating the Japanese-English dictionary (currently the Shogakukan PROGRESSIVE dictionary) installed, because it’s not good enough: too often when looking up odd sentences (like the ones in Fate/Extra CCC) I do not find any matches.

EDICT is adequate, and while I can use it on my phone and tablet, I like the fact that the EX-WORD has a physical keyboard along with the stylus, and a very nice kanji handwriting recognition. After a bit of looking, I found the 5th Edition of the New Kenkyusha dictionary, offered as microSD card, to be what I needed (but a bit pricey, 10,500 yen on Amazon, and that’s heavily discounted!).

Another story of a patch, or of bugs, investigation, and fixing

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 21:14:07 +0000

As others, bigger members in the KDE community say, “nobody will do it for you, and therefore they will”. The patch from the title comes from such a story.

Let’s give some background first: I’m really a heavy activity user, especially when working. My home PC has about five activities, my work one 3, and I managed to compartimentalize the various “topics” that each activity does pretty well.

After an update a couple of weeks ago from the latest code from KDE git, I started noticing weird behavior. Activities would not start when stopped, and there was no way of getting an application on a single activity. As I had set up KWin rules, that made things even worse.

PyKDE4: Queries with Nepomuk

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:27:42 +0000

In one of my previous blog posts I dealt with tagging files and resources with Nepomuk. But Nepomuk is not only about storing metadata, it is also about retrieving and _interrogating _data. Normally, this would mean querying the metadata database directly, using queries written in SPARQL. But this is not intuitive, can be inefficient (if you do things the wrong way) and error prone (oops, I messed up a parameter!).

Access multiple Google Calendars from KOrganizer

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 10:06:29 +0000

Recently, a question came up on the KDE Community Forums regarding the use of multiple Google Calendars with KOrganizer. The preferred access up to now has been with googledata Akonadi resource, however that doesn’t support more than one calendar, and (at least from my unscientific observation) seems to be rather unmaintained these days.

Luckily, not all’s lost. Akonadi recently gained the opportunity of accessing CalDAV resources, and Google Calendar also offers a CalDAV interface, hence this is possible.

This post will briefly describe how (thanks go to PIMster krop, which casually mentioned the possibility on IRC and prompted me to investigate).

Taking video snapshots quickly: KDE VLC Snapper

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 12:40:26 +0000

Some of the oldest readers of this blog are well aware of a certain hobby of mine. Over the years I’ve always wanted to write more about that, including the stuff I’m viewing nowadays, but I found a hassle to collect snapshots from videos / DVDs, selecting them, and so on.

Recently I learnt that VLC has some rather complete Python bindings, and I thought, why not make the process automated? Yesterday I had some free time on my hands and a quick session of hacking brought some results already.

Improvements to the Git hooks

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:59:04 +0000

As you may already know, recently the KDE sysadmins completely overhauled the commit hooks used with the Git infrastructure. Written in Python, they have already brought significant improvements to the current workflows. These hooks include keywords that when specified trigger particular actions: the most used are to CC specific email addresses (CCMAIL), to CC bug reports (CCBUG) or to close bug reports (BUG).

With the adoption of Review Board to facilitate code reviews, there were also requests for a REVIEW keyword that could close the review requests without asking the submitters to do so manually (which is slow and not always effective). Since the hooks for Git were written in Python, I thought I could give a hand there.

What's cooking at the KDE Community Forums?

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 11:56:51 +0000

In the past weeks and days, the KDE Community Forums staff has been working to bring new features to improve even more the user experience. A few months ago, the staff was discussing the idea of finding a way to guide users to the most appropriate forum to post their questions or discussions. Now, thanks also to the return in service of one of our admins (welcome back, sayakb!) the feature is now being implemented, as the screenshots below will show.

The world of KIO metadata - checking the HTTP response from a server

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:42:46 +0000

Recently, I investigated how to perform some checks on web addresses using KIO for Danbooru Client. My old code was synchronous, so it blocked the application while checking, thus causing all sort of troubles (UI freezing, etc.). Therefore, making the switch to KIO was the best solution. However, I had one problem: how could I check the HTTP response?

I knew already that the various ioslaves can store metadata, consisting of key-value pairs which are specific on the slave used. Normally you can get the whole map by accessing the metaData function of the job you have used, in the slot connected from the result signal. For some reason, however, in PyKDE4 calling metaData() triggers an assert in SIP, which ends in a crash (at least in my application; I stil need to debug further). KIO jobs have also the queryMetaData function, which returns the value of the key you have queried. Unfortunately, there was no way I could find the name.

Danbooru Client 0.5 is out

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 08:54:54 +0000

Sometimes answering apparently harmless questions on instant messaging can have unexpected results. In particular, I was telling about Danbooru Client to someone and a question popped up “Why don’t you support pages?”. It seemed a nice idea, so I branched off the code (yay for git!) and started working on it.

Well, it took me more than a month to get this thing done… I didn’t spend every day coding, but it was a challenge. Glad it’s over now, which means that Danbooru Client 0.5 is finally available. Grab it at the usual place on kde-apps.org.

After a hiatus, Klassrooms continue!

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:25:34 +0000

Do you like KDE? Did you ever find yourself in a position of wanting to help, but you didn’t know what to do, or who to talk to? Do you feel you could use help to get started?

Today, the KDE Community Forums would like to provide the opportunity to answer those questions by annoucing the continuation of the tutorial courses known as Klassrooms.

What are Klassrooms?
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Klassrooms are tutorial “lessons” held in a specific area of the forum. Held by one or more “mentors”, they are focused in guiding people through helping KDE by tackling a particular problem. Examples of such problems include:

KDE Marketing Sprint - Day 2(?)

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:26:28 +0000

Well, there wasn’t a Day 1 for me (I got to the hotel too late to follow the first day of the meeting), so that is why I’m starting on day 2. To start, I need to say that I had never been to a sprint before: I am already accustomed to meeting for real someone from online, but for all the attendants, they had been just names or nicks on IRC. That means I was a bit nervous.

danbooru2Nepomuk - a Nepomuk tagger for Danbooru images

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:25:00 +0000

If you dabble with anime and related things like I do, you may have heard about imageboards. A known variant, which powers sites such as moe.imouto (some links may be NSFW) or Konachan, is Danbooru, a Ruby on Rails application. One of the characteristics of this software is that images stored there can be tagged to be identified as precisely as possible: common tags are for example the magazine where the image was taken from, the characters depicted, and so on.

Interesting plasmoid: Drop2Tag

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:06:59 +0000

While browsing around kde-look.org, I’ve stumbled upon a nice little Plasma scripted widget, and I’m publishing this to have it get more exposure.

A good part of the KDE community knows at least little about Nepomuk, and its ability to attach semantic tags to your files - basically words that describe the file, be it an image, a text document, or anything you’d like. For example, you could tag all the photos from your vacation with the name of the place you’ve been. After that, you can recall tagged files by accessing the nepomuksearch://hasTag:TAG_NAME url in Dolphin or Konqueror (there are more advanced uses, but I won’t cover them here), where TAG_NAME is your tag.

Scripting languages and KDE

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:23:26 +0000

Up to now, the main language in which KDE applications are developed is C++. This is a perfectly valid choice: however, at least for users that don’t have a computing background (I include myself in the list: I do science) C++ can be a rather steep requirement (although Hans, fellow staff member at the KDE Community forums, is doing a nice job in explaining his learning experience).

Scripted language bindings (that have a lower barrier of entry) for KDE exist: on top of my memory I can list Python, Ruby, and C# (and I’ve probably missed a few). Despite that, the only official non-C++ programs that are in KDE’s SVN currently, including only what’s in the official modules, are system-config-printer-kde and printer-applet, which are written in PyKDE. This is quite striking to me, because the language bindings allow full access to the API in kdelibs, and thus allow the creation of applications with (theoretically) less effort on part of the writer. Yet, such applications, despite the bindings being rather mature, are lacking.

KDE Community Forums present the new KDE Brainstorm

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 21:40:17 +0000

The KDE Brainstorm, where users can post and vote for feature requests for KDE, is the most visited area of the KDE Community Forums. In an effort to improve the experience of both users and developers, the KDE Community Forums staff is proud to present a brand new version of the KDE Brainstorm.

The new interface resembles the IdeaTorrent sites, but it is still powered by the forum software (phpBB), a clear example of the flexibility of the platform. Posting new ideas, voting, commenting and filtering the lists is now extremely easy and requires just a few mouse clicks.

The next iteration of the Plasma FAQ - call for help

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:18:35 +0000

A few may know that I more or less maintain the Plasma FAQ page on KDE’s UserBase. Given the rapid advance of Plasma between KDE versions, each time a new version is out a new FAQ needs to be made, as the content rapidly becomes obsolete. For 4.3, unfortunately, I’m not sure I’ll be able to put a new version up in time for the 4.3 release.

The reason is mostly practical: it takes a bit of work to collect and add information, and currently my free time is limited due to a rather heavy workload and some other commitments. As UserBase is a wiki, I thought I could ask the KDE community at large if I could get some help in having a new version ready before release.

New, refactored System Settings

Fri, 01 May 2009 07:53:14 +0000

A rather big change has gone into KDE’s SVN recently: Ben Cooksley (bcooksley) and Mathias Soeken (msoeken) have committed a complete rework of System Settings.

Compared to the previous implementation, System Settings now has two operational modes, one being the current icon-based view since KDE 4 (and also seen in Kubuntu prior to KDE 4), and a second view, named “Classic”, which reimplements the old KControl look and feel. The latter change is probably very welcome to anyone who found System Settings less useful than the old KControl. The current view used can be changed in the configuration options. In addition, upon hovering an icon or module that show if there are any sub-modules associated.

Gene search applet: suggestions and code review needed

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:33:09 +0000

In the past months I’ve always wanted to write a small Plasma applet to aid me in some boring tasks as a bioinformatician. One example (for the non-scientific crowd out there) is when I find a specific gene out of my analysis work which I want to take a look at. I am often lazy, so instead of firing up the browser to look at the online resources, I wanted to write something which could access said resources programmatically.

KDE Brainstorm: after the launch

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 09:55:48 +0000

Now that the KDE Brainstorm has been launched, it’s time to take a look at the results so far. Currently, the forum hosts 160 threads, approximately one for each idea, and 441 posts. Not bad for the first two days of operation. At the same time, the staff has been working hard to make sure only appropriate ideas (not bug reports, not duplicates…) are on the forum. People have also begun voting, although slowly: it’s understandable, given the fact that there are so many threads in so little time.

KDE Brainstorm is live!

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:02:59 +0000

It’s finally there: KDE Brainstorm has been launched today! Like this, it will be possible to propose features and have them voted by the community, and then submit the most voted requests to the developers. Every feature request is screened prior to posting, so duplicates, spam and flames are unlikely to occur. There is no guarantee that the voted upon features will be implemented, but as opposed to individual postings, this approach reduces the noise a lot, and allows a better communication between the “two worlds” (users and developers).

I love poison

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:56:33 +0000

No, it’s not_ _a teen-like “I hate my life, I’m going to die tomorrow” post. I’m actually referring to the comments of a person nicknamed “I Love” that are popping up in almost all blogs that are linked to PlanetKDE which deal with Plasma or KDE4 adoption. The name “I Love” contrasts with an attitude that is unconstructive and rather trollish. This wouldn’t be such a big problem, if not for the fact that posts from said individual have had a rather negative effect: for example Aaron was forced to turn comment moderation on on his blog, Jos’ entry on the new Plasma in the upcoming KDE 4.3 was the theatre of a flame-fest in the comments, and now I’ve seen poisonous comments also on Nookie’s and Socceroos’ blogs.

Bilbo Blogger

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:58:07 +0000

Mtux, of choqok fame, along with another person, has written Bilbo Blogger, a blogging utility for Blogger or any blog that supports Blogger1.0, MetaWeblog, and MovableType APIs (EDIT: also GData). It is based on the KDE4 libraries and it includes a WYSIWYG editor, an HTML editor, and a Post Preview function that can even fetch your blog’s CSS to render the entry and see how it looks.

It’s not released yet, but for the daring, you can actually try and compile it. You need to check out and install the blogging library (BlboKBlog) first:

Science and KDE: kile

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 20:49:20 +0000

During the course of my research work, I may obtain results that are worthy of publication in scientific journals. Since my master’s thesis I’ve been using LaTeX as my writing platform, mainly because I can concentrate on content rather than presentation (I find it useful also for writing non-scientific stuff as well). Also, I can handle bibliography (essential for a scientific publication) very well without using expensive proprietary applications (such as Endnote).

In my early days I used kLyX first, then LyX, but I found the platform to be too limited for my tastes, and also LaTeX errors were difficult to diagnose. I needed a proper editor, and that’s when I heard of kile, a KDE front-end for LaTeX. Kile is currently at version 2.0.2 and is a KDE 3 application. However, in KDE SVN work is ongoing to produce a KDE4 version (2.1) and that’s what I’ll look at in this entry.

Science and KDE: rkward

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:55:53 +0000

I try to use FOSS extensively for my scientific work. In fact, when possible, I use only FOSS tools. Among these there is the R programming language. It’s a Free implementation of the S-plus language, and it’s mainly aimed at statistics and mathematics. As the people who read my scientific posts know, I don’t like R much. But sometimes it’s the only alternative.

Well, what does R have to do with KDE? With this post I’d like to start a series (hopefully) of articles that deals with KDE programs used for scientific purposes. In this particular entry, I’ll focus on rkward, a GUI front-end for R.

Fishing for ideas

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:16:27 +0000

I have been thinking of doing another Kourse at the KDE Forums, similar to the one that has produced three nice screencasts.

My idea would be to show very brief and focused screencasts, a sort of “how do I…”. I have a few ideas, but I’d like to ask the KDE community at large. I’m mostly interested in showing single features (short videos), preferably of the “eye-opener” kind.

If you have any suggestions, leave a comment.

"The Answer"

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:08:49 +0000

Yes, I know I’m a bit late to the party (unfortunately today was one of the busiest days ever where I work), but I thought I’d join the other members of the KDE community, because KDE 4.2 has been released today.

Take a look at the visual guide, or see if your distribution has already packages for you. For your enquiries, the KDE Forums are at your disposal.

Hello Planet KDE

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:22:38 +0000

If everything has gone correctly, my blog should be on PlanetKDE now. That means it’s time for an introduction for those readers. My name is Luca Beltrame, I’m a biotechnologist doing bioinformatics in the life sciences areas, and I’m a Free Software user/enthusiast since many years.

I’ve been using KDE since 1.0 or so (if memory serves me well), but only recently, with the 4.x line of development, I’ve been trying to actually contribute a bit back to the project. Since I’m just a Python learner at the moment (I use Python a lot where I work, but it’s just text manipulation), I thought there were other areas I could contribute to. Currently, I maintain the Plasma FAQ, and I’ve been working together with Simon Edwards for some Python Plasma tutorials.

New Plasma with Python tutorials

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:09:36 +0000

I just finished writing a new Python tutorial on KDE’s Techbase. This one deals with writing DataEngines in Python (a complement to Simon Edwards’s own Using DataEngines).

Let me know what you think. As it’s a wiki, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Python Plasma tutorials on KDE Techbase

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:02:42 +0000

As Simon Edwards already noted, thanks to me and him (mostly him, I have to say) starting to work on Plasma tutorials at the same time, now KDE’s Techbase has a nice set of Python Plasma tutorials. They cover creation of applets and connection to DataEngines (see the Plasma page on Techbase for more information). I plan on starting a tutorial on writing Plasma DataEngines on Thursday, if time permits.

For anyone wanting to try these out: you need KDE 4.2 (currently RC 1), PyKDE4 and kdebase compiled with Python support (not the case of openSUSE at the moment).

More Plasma screencasts

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:03:19 +0000

Students from Kourse 2 fengshaun and Primoz have prepared two nice screencasts, dealing with the Zooming User Interface (ZUI) and desktop settings respectively. Without further ado, here they are:

Zooming User Interface by fengshaun

[blip.tv ?posts_id=1648944&dest=-1]

Desktop settings by Primoz

[blip.tv ?posts_id=1646835&dest=-1]

As usual, both Free and non-Free versions are available. The students are also at work on subtitled versions, without the Notes plasmoid. I’ll be sure to post them once they’re done. Don’t forget to share these!

Kourse 2 - First finished screencast

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:33:53 +0000

As some people already know, I’m mentoring a group of students on KDE Forum to create Plasma screencasts (from the upcoming KDE 4.2 version). After several adjustments back and forth, the first one (made by kourse student Primoz), showing off the various desktop settings, is complete. This version uses the Notes plasmoid to keep track of annotation, but we’re also evaluating subtitle-based versions. In the mean time, enjoy! (and spread the word). If you prefer a Free format rather than the proprietary Flash, you can download the ogg video version.

Why Plasma is the best thing since sliced bread

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:22:29 +0000

Today I was adjusting a bit the layouts of the Activities (as defined in Plasma) to better suit my workflows. To do so I was using the brand new Activity Bar which is present in KDE 4.2. It’s very neat, but takes up space on the desktop, and while it’s not a big deal on my main PC (1280x1024 resolution), it is an issue on my recently-resuscitated EeePC (1024x600).

It was then that it occured to me that such applets are, in Plasma-speak, PopupApplets, which means they adjust their behavior depending if they are in a panel or “free”. Also, I knew that Plasma had panel auto-hiding. 5 seconds later, I had a solution that fit my tastes, as this screenshot shows:

Alternatives to Kubuntu for the Eee PC?

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:07:36 +0000

Currently I have Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) installed on my Eee PC. Version 8.10, the Intrepid Ibex, is due on October 30th. However, I will not install it. The reason is that Kubuntu developers intentionally disabled the zoom function, and I have three activities on this machine. How come I’m supposed to use them? Also, space is pretty tight so install a build environment just to remove one patch seems overkill. So, I’m moving away from it. Do you know any recent, EeePC and KDE friendly distro?

New PC, at last

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:24:35 +0000

All right, it didn’t quite turn out as I had expected. This post wasn’t “soon"as I predicted originally. The reason? The fact that the video card I bought died after three days of usage, and getting a replacement took a while. Finally though, I have a functional system. It’s a Core 2 Duo CPU (7200) with 2 Gb of RAM and an ATI Radeon 3870 HD video card.

I installed Linux on it, of course, but instead of Kubuntu I gave openSUSE a try. It’s quite polished, although I had to go through some hoops to enable font hinting, especially in Firefox (not that I use that browser a lot, but I still need it for some things). I’ll be keeping Kubuntu on the Eee, as there’s a larger community for customization.

Plasma ZUI video

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:37:23 +0000

I’ve put together a small video that shows what you can do with zooming in and out with Plasma’s Zooming User Interface (ZUI). Enjoy. (note: the version on Youtube has also annotations that explain better what is going on)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhODrJkoidA[/youtube]

If you can, please spread the link to the video. We need more correct information out there.

Spread the word!

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:47:08 +0000

Those of you that follow my Linux-related posts know that I work (along with others) on a FAQ trying to explain some magic behind KDE 4.x’s Plasma. Now, especially since on the Internet, there is the need to spread correct information (most of the naysayers are not quite informed).

So, if you want to help KDE, please spread the word on the Plasma FAQ! If people have questions on Plasma, just direct them to

Annoying fork talks

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:51:50 +0000

Now even the (once respected) Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is jumping on the bandwagon of Plasma haters. With a rather uninformed and rant-ish entry that just advocates a fork, like some other people said on the kde-devel mailinglist a week or two ago.

The entry is rather dismissive of everything in KDE 4 save Plasma (and a mention on Dolphin’s single click icon), and also gets some facts and links wrong (yes, the Plasma web site is outdated, but since the developers are busy coding, someone else should step up and help). I wanted to point out a link to the Plasma FAQ, but apparently I can’t (I assume it’s because of my ISP, as usual).

Eee PC interest

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:05:56 +0000

Since my work schedule is bordering on the hectic, I was thinking on buying something to get me more organized. Rather than a PDA, I’ve been rather interested in the Asus Eee PC: small form factor, SSDs and Linux preinstalled are definitely pluses. It’s too bad that at least in Italy Asus sells only the 512M RAM version (when there are more powerful options available elsewhere).

I’d like to get impressions on the Asus Eee, before considering a purchase (€ 300 are still a lot): did you try it? How was it? And if not Eee, are there other interesting alternatives?

Be free.

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:39:34 +0000

The word is official: KDE 4.0.0 has been released. Make sure to check out the Dot story, or the nicely done visual guide. And if you’re new to Plasma, have a look at the FAQ as well.

Congratulations to all the KDE developers, translators, and coordinators for pushing forward our favorite desktop environment. Rock on!

KDE 4.0.0 tagging

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:46:10 +0000

Today is the tagging day for KDE 4.0.0. I think it speaks for itself. I have checked out the 4.0 branch and I’m going to use it in a full session real soon (so far I used nested X sessions with Xephyr). Aaron Seigo has a nice writeup on the release, some of the memes floating around and the future of KDE 4.

QSql vs DB-API?

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:58:40 +0000

I’ve recently begun trying to create GUIs for my Python applications with PyQt, and I can say I’m absolutely loving the toolkit, relatively easy to use and featureful. As I’m trying to create a GUI for some module I wrote that deals with databases (using MySQLdb), I also learnt that Qt has a series of classes for dealing with databases, mainly QSql.

My question, directed to whoever has experience with QSql and the Python DB-API, is: what are the advantages of one approach to the other? I’m leaning towards DB-API because like that I can create modules which work also in command line applications.

Plasma FAQ

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:57:50 +0000

I’ve started working on a FAQ related to Plasma, in order to ease the transition for the early adopters of Plasma when KDE 4.0 is released. That, coupled with another idea I had (offering video tutorials of operations) should make the gap smaller.

Currently the FAQ is a work in progress (still a lot of TODOs, I hope to have a look after Friday as I’m really busy now) and resides in KDE’s TechBase until a more suitable solution is found. If you think you can help, feel free to contribute!

Opinion on the KDE Krush day

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 18:15:53 +0000

Yesterday I spent some of my free time to help with the KDE 4.0 Krush Day. Unfortunately, I did a lot less than what I was supposed to do, mainly because at some point the home directory ran out of space (I forgot to remove qt-copy object files), then I inadvertently removed some of the directories and I had to re-sync with SVN.

Nevertheless, it was interesting and nice to be able to contribute even if you don’t speak C++. I reported a crash in Gwenview, and some problems regarding the use of authentication with IO-slaves. I also confirmed a few other issues some others raised.

KDE 4.0 bug squashing day!

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:14:29 +0000

Aseigo announced it a few days ago: on Saturday, on the Freenode IRC network, #kde4-krush channel, there will be a day-long session to triage and squash bugs in order to improve the overall quality of KDE 4.0. I will try to be there, so that I can give out my (little) contribution as non-coder. I’ll be sure to report later.

New sport, Plasma bashing

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:10:30 +0000

First of all let me make some disclaimers :

This is **not **a Plasma bashing post (so that aseigo won’t commit suicide, should he ever read this);
I’m not a KDE developer, just someone who tries out SVN and reads mailing lists;
UPDATE: These statements aren’t meant to bash the collective group of the KDE developers, just to outline a bad “mood” in my opinion.

As you may know, KDE 4.0 Beta 3 was released a while ago. With it came the usual number of criticisms, some sensible, a lot of others not. Most of the latter fell into the category of “it’s an alpha, not a beta” and “Plasma sucks”. Well, one can ignore most of them since they rarely provide anything constructive.

My experience with KDE4, part 2

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:51:40 +0000

I obviously did not want to stop with a single compile of KDE4, therefore I’m updating more or less randomly my build off the SVN to check what has been changing.

The first and most important change since my last post was the addition of the K-menu in the taskbar: Kickoff was moved from playground (where it resided) to kdebase. Also, kate now works perfectly, and is already usable as a full-blown text editor.

My KDE4 impression

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:18:58 +0000

Since Beta 3 was announced a short time ago, I thought I would try testing KDE4 on my computer. Here I’m reporting on my first impressions and I’ll try to provide constructive feedback as much as possible: the developers are being already (and unjustly, in my opinion) bashed enough.

Script to make captures of movie files

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:44:46 +0000

The other day I was thinking about how to make screencaps for the anime I watch. Windows users often use Media Player Classic, which can create a video contact sheet (i.e., a series of captures) out of a movie file. I had two problems with this:

The biggest is that it runs on Windows, and I don’t use Windows;
The frames needed to be manually cropped every time, which was slow.

Gutsy Gibbon Beta

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:11:58 +0000

After some thought, I’ve joined the fray and installed the beta version of Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) on one of my computers. It hasn’t too recent hardware (AMD Thunderbird 2100+, 512 Mb RAM and a motherboard with a Nforce 2 chipset), and it is my test system for distributions.

It ran Feisty Fawn, so I tried to use the upgrader tool, which crashed when removing unsupported packages. Oh well, it was a beta, so nothing to worry about (the only worry was that it didn’t output anything at all). I then tried dist-upgrading and again the process failed due to file ownership conflicts: I solved that with some fiddling, but again nothing to worry about too much.

Linux on dennogumi.org

Out with the old, in with the new (??)

Leave of absence? #

Translations available for KDE unstable packages

Setting up OwnTracks Recorder and OAuth2 with nginx, oauth2-proxy and podman

New server: away from Kolab

Hack of the day: extracting comments from Nicovideo

Hack of the day: downloading VOICEROID実況 from Nicovideo

実況? Is it something edible? #

Danbooru Client 0.6.1 released

What is Danbooru Client? #

Killing the redundancy with automation

Some prerequisites #

Testing the untestable

The heroes we deserve

The report #

Two in one

Danbooru Client 0.6.0 released

What is Danbooru Client? #

Of gases, Qt, and Wayland

I’d like the most recent Qt, please #

Where are my noble gases? I need MORE noble gases!

HOWTO: Configure 389-ds LDAP server on openSUSE Tumbleweed

Danbooru Client 0.5.0 released

What is Danbooru Client? #

Tip: opening and closing ports needed by a systemd service

KDE PIM changes in openSUSE Tumbleweed

Some history #

Policy-based routing for single IPs using EdgeOS

Unlocking KWallet with PAM

An expedition in the QML realm

Accessing Casio EX-WORD 電子辞書 from Linux

Another story of a patch, or of bugs, investigation, and fixing

PyKDE4: Queries with Nepomuk

Access multiple Google Calendars from KOrganizer

Taking video snapshots quickly: KDE VLC Snapper

Improvements to the Git hooks

What's cooking at the KDE Community Forums?

The world of KIO metadata - checking the HTTP response from a server

Danbooru Client 0.5 is out

After a hiatus, Klassrooms continue!

What are Klassrooms? #

KDE Marketing Sprint - Day 2(?)

danbooru2Nepomuk - a Nepomuk tagger for Danbooru images

Interesting plasmoid: Drop2Tag

Scripting languages and KDE

KDE Community Forums present the new KDE Brainstorm

The next iteration of the Plasma FAQ - call for help

New, refactored System Settings

Gene search applet: suggestions and code review needed

KDE Brainstorm: after the launch

KDE Brainstorm is live!

I love poison

Bilbo Blogger

Science and KDE: kile

Science and KDE: rkward

Fishing for ideas

"The Answer"

Hello Planet KDE

New Plasma with Python tutorials

Python Plasma tutorials on KDE Techbase

More Plasma screencasts

Kourse 2 - First finished screencast

Why Plasma is the best thing since sliced bread

Alternatives to Kubuntu for the Eee PC?

New PC, at last

Plasma ZUI video

Spread the word!

Annoying fork talks

Eee PC interest

Be free.

KDE 4.0.0 tagging

QSql vs DB-API?

Plasma FAQ

Opinion on the KDE Krush day

KDE 4.0 bug squashing day!

New sport, Plasma bashing

My experience with KDE4, part 2

My KDE4 impression

Script to make captures of movie files

Leave of absence?
#

実況? Is it something edible?
#

What is Danbooru Client?
#

Some prerequisites
#

The report
#

What is Danbooru Client?
#

I’d like the most recent Qt, please
#

What is Danbooru Client?
#

Some history
#

What are Klassrooms?
#