Kasperian Moving Parts

kinda like Batman, but with a wife and 3 kids

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Category: Open Source

Goodbye, for now at least, Linux Desktop

I’ve been an Open Source developer and hacker for a loooooong, long time. It has become far more than a part of what I do. It has become part of who I am. At first, it was mostly about the freedom to run what I want, where I want, how I want. Desktop Linux has always been exciting to me for that reason. But then it grew beyond that and enabled me to contribute back. Open Source allowed me to teach myself new programming languages. It allowed me to make friends literally all over the world. It became the thing that I enjoyed doing most, technically, especially since my daytime jobs didn’t let me do the kind of programming and Read more…


The Palm Is Dead. Long Live The Palm!

I believe I am one of the last few die-hard nutjobs on the face of this earth who still use (and “use” here is a highly subjective word meaning that I have a bunch of Palm devices lying around, am currently the only semi-active (and “semi-active” means that I get probably a good 2 hours of KPilot hacking in per year =:( ) KPilot developer, and occasionally even turn some of them on) Palm PDA devices. I have successfully resisted the siren call of the iPhone for the last 2+(?) years–partly because there is no functional synchronization solution between my Linux desktop and it, partly because it’s pretty bloody expensive, partly because Cingular has atrociously high data plans compared to Read more…


KDE 4.2 is flat out going to rock

That’s my prediction. Of course, the truth of the matter is that KDE 4.2 (trunk) flat out rocks today. Seriously. I have never been more excited about the Linux desktop than I am right now. And this, 2+ months out from our actual KDE 4.2 release. I’ve been running OpenSUSE 11 for a couple of months now, and thanks to the awesome nightly/weekly KDE 4.2/trunk packages, I’m thoroughly enjoying pretty-darned-bleeding-edge 4.2/trunk packages, but with half the carbs, and I am loving what I’m seeing! Recent KMail improvements are awesome. Plasma is getting more and more bullet-proof and gorgeous by the week. Kwin just keeps getting more and more stable and purty. Kdevelop4 and Kate are getting some SERIOUSLY cool enhancements Read more…


OpenSUSE 10.3 > Kubuntu Hardy -> Fedora 9 -> Mandriva 2008.1 -> OpenSUSE 11

I got bored with my Ubuntu Hardy install last week and decided to have a look at what some of the other guys are up to these days. Mind you, there wasn’t anything horribly wrong with my Ubuntu host. I still ♥ apt; IMHO, there’s still nothing faster (although the new package management in OpenSUSE 11 comes darned close!). But anyway, it was an interesting trek across the newest distros and while I was looking to end up with something other than SUSE (again, nothing wrong with it at all–I just like change), I am totally impressed with OpenSUSE 11 and am going to feel satisfied sticking with it for a decently long while, knowing that I’ve shopped around as Read more…


Review Board and KDE!

Ooh, just saw this excerpt from Aaron: in other news, Matt Rogers has set up a review board installation which i want to start using to streamline the patch review process in plasma. Matt has set up a group for Kopete already, i’ve noticed, too. if all goes well, we’ll find a permanent home for it and maybe even start getting other kde projects using it =) Awesome! I can tell you from experience that Review Board is one seriously cool tool. Having been the initiator of the code review process at Rite Aid, I would have loved to have had it as an available option, but was stuck using cvs diff, a2ps, reams of paper each week, and large Read more…


This just in: Keychain rocks

Seriously, Keychain, where have you been all my life?


… and friends were made

I had absolutely the most amazing time at this year’s Google Summer of Code Mentor’s Summit. I’m sure I’ll sound like quite the gushing fan-boy, but so be it. I’ve been involved in the KDE project for the last couple of years. I can thank Adriaan deGroot fully for getting me hooked, and also for being a great mentor and friend throughout. Until this last weekend, I had not actually met any other KDE geek in the flesh. Living in the United States as I do, I’ve met many a GNOME zealot and developer, but nary a KDE kindred spirit. And so, I am still coming down off of the “high” of getting to spend this last weekend with both Read more…


What Microsoft Meant Was…

In an effort to catch up reading through the last 2 months of eWeek magazines that I have stacked on my dresser yet never find time to pick up, I read through the May 28 issue this morning and found this very insightful statement by Jason Brooks. The article is called “Free software shines on” and can also be found here… When Microsoft representatives state that everyone must play by the same rules, as they often have during recent months, what the company means is that the business and technological realities under which they’ve built their empire shouldn’t be allowed to change (emphasis mine). Very true. Very insightful. Nice job as usual, Jason. Of course, I (and all Open Source Read more…


OS X + NFS+ OpenOffice = SUCK

Repeat after me: I will never, ever, ever, ever, never, ever, never, never, ever, ever, ever, never, ever, never buy a proprietary (read: non Open Source) computer ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever again, no matter how attractive the packaging is. I don’t know what from the bowels of hell itself possessed me to buy a Powerbook, but it was quite possibly one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.  It has been nothing but trouble from the day I got it (though it was a nice little mental exercise and challenge for a while in getting Linux to run on it). I have given up on it for my own personal use. I’m back to using my work laptop Read more…


Hello, I am an Open Source Developer

Zack Rusin‘s blog post from a week ago really resonated deep within me on a couple of points. His post, titled “Disappointing”, was written in response to some negative feedback he got from some mis-guided souls who were commenting on one of his earlier posts about some very impressive Qt graphics results he’d shown. While blog-commenters behaving badly is not something new, certainly, nor is one (very) talented Open Source developer having to set said folks straight, that’s not what caught my eye. I was truly impressed with the benchmarking results that Zack reported with Qt, compared to some of the other toolkits, but that’s not what caught my eye either. What jumped out at me most was his definition Read more…