Flisol 2011
The Flisol (Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre or Free Software Installation Latin American Festival ) is the biggest Free Software diffusion event that is celebrated on 18 countries all over Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina simultaneously in more than 200 Cities.
The Idea of this Festival is spread the knowledge about Open Source in general and Linux in particular by installing it on the participants machines. I has been participating for the las 4 years by helping with talks, openSUSE DVDs, etc.
The FLISOL 2011 will be celebrated the next April 9. If you live in Latin America of will be in some of the countries that celebrates FLISOL, you can check where and at what time will be celebrated in the city that you will be. Always is good to hangout with other people that wants to get to know about openSUSE and the Open Source in General.
This Time I will be participating in Mexico City in about 3 different places with talks and giving away openSUSE DVDs and T-shirts. Sorry but all the links are in Spanish, Google translate is your friend 
Canonical's New Plan for Banshee
- Banshee's Amazon store will remain enabled, with Canonical taking a 75% cut of all affiliate revenue; 25% on Ubuntu will now go to the GNOME Foundation.
- The Ubuntu One store for Banshee will remain enabled by default, but now Canonical will donate 25% of its revenue to GNOME. They will now do the same for Rhythmbox.
ungethymGSoC idea 3: Store annotations within PDF
As I mentioned in my previous post I can't mentor GSoC students myself and therefore are looking for a developer to jump in for me.- Store annotations in the PDF file.
- If that is not enough apped support to modify the PDF (insert, delete pages etc.)
GSoC idea 2: Improved (more elegant) keygeneration in KMail/Kleopatra
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Application/component: KDEPIM/KMail and Kleopatra
Brief explanation:
Signing and encrypting emails is very old, however only a minority is using it. One reason might be, that it is not easy enough for regular users to use it. The importance for private and business users is still high. Private companies started to sell proprietary, secure e-mail services (e.g. in Germany DE-Mail and e-brief). There are good key creation, signing and other key management functions present in KDE software. The goal of this proposal is to make it easy and fast to work with signed and encrypted emails.
Expected results:
- Analyze and optimize the key creation, signing etc processes, make it dumb easy to create and use a key/signature. One way could be to add a button “Generate Key” (next to “Change”) in the KMail – Identity settings – Cryptographie; start the key creation wizard from Kleopatra and take the name and email address from that identity (at the moment you have to enter them manually). The user just has to enter the passphrase and is done. Offer a button “Save private key and revoke key on usb” or something like this and “send public key to server” / “Make key public”. Add the key creation (or import possibilities) into the identity / account creation wizard of KMail. Add the possibility to create revoke keys within the gui (when sending the key to the server, there is an information message yet.)
- Guide the user through the whole process of signing and encrypting/decrypting emails. Offer possibilities to learn about the topic in an easy and fast way (offline help, online help / wiki, videos, tutorials etc). Show how they use the keys, how they get their keys signed, how they sign other keys etc.
- Integrate other free/open services like CAcert.
It's X.org election time!
.Some community members have asked a (rather large) number of questions, I have consolidated the answers I received in this wiki page. So far only three candidates replied, so for me at least the top three candidates are clear - it's better to vote for persons that do have an opinion and voice it, than for persons who prefer to stay quiet
.So go to members.x.org and vote!
GSoC: Mentors wanted! - Elegant display settings for presentations
I recently mentored some students during the Google Code In project. Now the preparations for Google Summer of Code have begun. Unfortunately I am not a hacker, I am a promo guy and I can't mentor here. Nevertheless I have some ideas for GSoC and I hope to scratch somebodies itch so she or he will mentor that idea. Idea 1: (More elegant) Display settings for presentations
Application/component: Plasma
Brief explanation: The handling of multiple screens has continuously improved during the last releases. The handling of a stationary setting of two screens seems to be rather good. When it comes to presentation-mode with a projector I would be delighted to see even more elegance (simplicity).
Expected results: When doing presentations there is in general only one question to decide. The presentation mode:
- The same picture of both screens or
- The notes on the notebook, the presentation on the projector.
To 2: Autodetect the max. resolution of each of the two displays and set those different resolutions. The panel, all the widgets and all the open windows should stay on the notebook screen. The projector screen shows only the wallpaper. It does not matter if the projector “screen” is located above or on the right or wherever of the notebook screen.
It would be very useful to link that dialog to the keyboard shortcut (e.g. Fn+F7) or to start it automatically when a projector is attached. (At the moment I have to start krandrtray from krunner first or have the symbol in the taskbar all the time. I am not sure if a new users could work that out in a couple of seconds.)
Save the display/plasma settings (esp. widget positions etc.) to restore them when the projector is detached. (Perhaps that could be solved with activities.)
Extra points: It is possible to save the standard settings. In a second step different screen setting profiles could be saved and loaded (like in powerdevil). Presentation-mode 1 and 2 could be such profiles and a user could modify them (e.g. projector on top or right) if it is necessary.
So what do you think. Is that scratching your itch? Can you imagine how cool this would be to have? At least for me as a presenter that would really rock.
Bolton Linux is proud to announce our 7th convert joins the openSUSE community.
Streamline
Bolton Linux Hits 5 Sales
1 was sold at Sheffield Computer Market on the 6th February 2011, where a lot of Interest was generated.
1 was sold to my father which he has used to promote amongst his colleagues at work on Tuesday 8th February 2011.
You know its strange how both of his colleagues suffered computer failure at exactly the same time - coincidence or what without even testing openSUSE!!
2 were sold over the counter at Leeds Computer Market on Sunday 13th February 2011.
Today Tuesday 15th February 2011 we sold our first internet order via credit card payment, goods will be shipped out tomorrow and should be delivered to the customer on Thursday or Friday.
Banshee Supporting GNOME on Ubuntu
Background
The Banshee maintainers and community have been proud to support GNOME by sending 100% of our FOSS Amazon MP3 store's affiliate revenue to the Foundation. We're already on pace to contribute at the same level as a small company on the Advisory Board, $10,000 USD per year, and revenue is increasing every month.
Canonical's Proposals
After choosing Banshee as the next default player in Ubuntu, Canonical approached us, concerned with how our Amazon store would affect their Ubuntu One store. They proposed two options:
- Canonical disables the Amazon store by default (you could enable it in a few easy steps) but leaves the affiliate code alone (100% still to GNOME), or
- Canonical leaves the Amazon store enabled, but changes the affiliate code and takes a 75% cut.
Our Response
We are pleased that Canonical is willing to leave the affiliate code unaltered.
As maintainers of the Banshee project, we have opted unanimously to decline Canonical's revenue sharing proposal, so that our users who choose the Amazon store will continue supporting GNOME to the fullest extent. The GNOME Foundation's Board of Directors supports this decision.
The Banshee Maintainer Team
Aaron Bockover, Alexander Kojevnikov, Bertrand Lorentz, Gabriel Burt