GIMP, Firefox, Marble, Gallium3D, BenNanoNote; a whole world beyond the mirror Andreas Posur Auflage 1 Version
08/2010 0.0008
Foreword 2 1. Starting our voyage 4 1.1 Open Office 5 1.2 Firefox 6 1.3 GIMP 7 1.4 Marble 8 1.5 Gallium3D 9 1.6 Ben NanoNote 10 1.7 Of cars and engines 11 1.8 The farer worlds and human's meetings 12 1.9 Of GNUs, short poems, suns and "libre" apples. 13 1.10 Recursive Acronyms and and their consequences 14 1.11 From WindowsAssistant to the full writeboard 15 1.12 Distributions and other weirdnesses inside a car 16 2. Overview of libre projects, their profits, and their makers 17 2.1 Diversity is good (or: Why there are 3 surfaces?) 18 2.2 KDE (Sorted by times of their development) 19 2.3 GNOME 20 2.4 XFCE/LXDE 21 2.5 WindowManager (Fluxbox, Openbox, ICEVM etc) 22 2.6 Hardwareproblems (and what are doing FOSSFolks about it?) 23 2.7 Receiving help (and posting the right questions to the right people) 24 2.8 A little FOSS projectknowledge (from first commit to Upstream) 25 2.9 Humanitarian FOSS (An optimal connection?) 26 2.10 Libre Culture and politics (A more difficult thing...)27 2.11 The 4 Waves of Free Culture Adoption 28 2.12 The year of the Linux Desktop (Proposal: Lifetime Vaporware Award) 2.13 Games and Pr0n0graphy under Linux as driver of innovation 30 2.14 Adobes manifestating nightmare 31 2.15 Fluiding of democracy with Liquid Democracy 32 2.16 Hackerspaces and Coworking (Meta) 33 3. Libre Culture and its "Products" 34 3.1 Liberty as a "musthave"feature 35
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GIMP, Firefox, Marble, Gallium3D, BenNanoNote余 a whole world beyond the mirror Andreas Posur Foreword This series of different terms was chosen in to be chronological. Most of you (dear readers) shouldn't be able to link the tiniest amount of this list together, (besides the chronological hint, which I gave before). Not only time is important here, other relations are important too. What exactly is this: The mirror, that guides us to worlds far away? Frankly said, everything what's hampering us of seeing the whole picture. A better world would be (in my humble opinion) the human horizon. Especially the often neglected field of computer soft足and hardware horizon is meant here. Our planet does know as a whole just one computer software: Windows: But that is so fundamentally wrong, because of the existence of not just personal computers (pc) as calculating and computing slaves, there are macs (got his name from a famous Scottish apple) and all the other things out there for Millions of households. Why I should explore anything?, I need my stuff only for working and if it does not it what it is supposed to do, I'll return it, and the company gets fire below their feet, if they're failing to fix the problem!. Why that strategy isn't that clever (even harmful) is, I'll come to those things later on. Most of Mankind will be struggeling to understand this very book, I didn't get it for years and I am still in the beginning of understanding. This book which has the title: Cathedral and the Bazaar...written by an Eric Raymond (Who again is this...?) "CATB" covers methods of devloping and deploying software, and exactly on shoulders of giants like him, are the lines written, which I want to provide to my readers. Additionally, problems that occur when discovering new worlds will be addressed to. With that feeling I do wish all "Discoverers a pleasant journey and many precious experiences on the side of that way..... (advantage: a Computer, to check everything out) Andreas Posur (Founder of the World Of Kyeldon Project)
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1. Start As this approach should be guiding and leading to a long journey, it is necessary doing that with stages. Because of this fact I am going to try to be as long as I can in "sight" of old known terrain of most readers. I am going to start with something, of which you perhaps have heard of: terms "Open Office" and Firefox. If there is a program for all offices worldwide, it is if you look at the pure numbers of installations the (commercial) OfficeSuite of the worldwide reknown company from Redmond(Washington). and when now people want to browse the internet, they will do it mostly from a platform called "Internet Explorer" and other products from the Microsoft Universe... If there's a program for all agencies throughout the whole world, it is because of the raw installation count of some "tienda de las imagenes" of a company not explicitly mentioned here (called like the brickstone), and when those people want to access the internet, they'll do so, most of the time with an application what is called like a typically african thing (What one can do with animals and large amounts of money). Are there kinds of hard working women/men out there, who do buy computers, but aren't hard working individuals or even ad/marketing agencies? And if true what does that have to do with me/my life? Everything starts again with the internet, this network what combines several important interwebs world wide (eg: nsn) together. That "net" acts very different from what people are trying to make of it, assuming wrong things based on false predicates. Also I am not an expert by any means, actually I am still learning (perhaps. forever), what the wonderful possibilities, but also the inherental dangers of world wide simutaneous communications may mean to us as societies. For now we are possessing an Officeapplication worth 500$/ 200£ 1800$/600£, a "View"the internet software for free, a Allround DTPGraphics solution for adagencies on totally strange Systems for more than 2000 € and last but not least the authoring of Internet pages here. If Money is no problem, everything is wonderful and man/woman may start feeling comfortable new software or her/his licensed Software. Now not that many folks have the financial ressources to spend a little "treasure on software licensing", and these people are using, was cracked than than made accessible for everyone, (illegal though) or sb is buying a software version of the functionality (still functioning), what is then crippled and limited...a bit sad, if Money can't raised to obtain a full time job offer, today it is required that, one intervenes for a (more or less depleting) full time employment which is to obtain. Those men will be thrown out of this process, it is called "Digital Gap". 4
What then to do? Well: A lot of Things, but read at first: There are "Surrogates"足Alternatives, Nobody does to have to buy the full price product. If no money can be taken to afford such software, it's really getting difficult. But even here one has man in the mean time a real (getting better all time) chance to Software and to its own right to education..... (what do you think, are we going to fuel our knowledge desire?) First of all our "Surrogate" to M.... O.... is called "Libre Office.org" and orignated from the Hamburg Ltd. "Star Division" which did sell out this company to the one which is named like "Stanford", those company whose name sounds like an university network. (To be sold then, to a company whose name sounds like "the seer".). Who played than a bad trick on it, gaving it further, (Finally a last "Fork" was made (together with the new found foundation). And here even the first word "LIBRE" has here a somewhat centralized meaning: This was a "fork" of the pre足existing openoffice.org Software architecture, and the OpenOffice.org Community which turned in to a "Libre Office Community". Responsible was herefor, that other deciders haven't been too comfortable with those world from which I want to report here. Reiterating Software Code to the process and get and peoples attention, to bugfix, extend, enhance... Why on Earth should sb do stuff like this? (Nodbody received money for doning it.). The more people fostering around the code, securing, hardening it, the more safe did the farther became. (Even more colourful and brilliant). Libre Office is in fact a M$ Office Alternative... good where are lying the main differences? This thing was built for running under the most exotic CORE platforms, but significantly slower (at first) and then when started slickier. They aimed within a funding campaign for 50.000 and they got them after four days. There are in fact another differences which one should simply point to. But I'll mention those only when decent terms have been explained. LibreOffice.org is in the comparison of a new office superstar (still) known by just 1 in 10 people. But now we're heading to a location where it looks different: The "Internetbrowsers" 5
The viewers for the worldwide net, everyone is calling Internetbrowser: For years battles were fought to determine who or what guides the "surfers" through the worldwide web, in 1995 the Supertanker won the race and began to each computer (PC) also its internetbrowser (IE...(mostly to molest the concurrent product)). But whith the last breath Netcscape Communications Inc. opened up the sourcecode of their browser and from that another success story arose (phoenix), which scattered (SoftwareWorld) in their selfresemblance wearing the code name phoenix, (Unfortunatly to change soon). I'm reporting the "skyrocketeer", which dumped all versions of the commercial viewing programs from Redmond in 2010. And is going to raise some steep competition with an internet viewer, which is called like a metal. Firefox <Phoenix < Mozilla < Netscape Communicator Many things were (about the FireFox) were reported, I'm hesitating here to tell again I want to only point the readers attention to a video here, (which was licensed to share), it is called: "REBEL CODE" Firefox is OPEN SOURCE as equipped with an important foundation in the background, which backs the backs of the volunteer developers. The next source for thier success and riseup is here also the integration of a search engine, whose discoverers named it after a such a huge giant number. Firefox is not only going to be polished by developers from the whole world, in fact companies are founded that push up Firefox with so called "Extentions" and then perhaps earn with that support for those extensions. One may notice now, that the innvoation speed is far nore high, than the colleagues around the Chief Executive Operator Steve Ballmer but also Steve Jobs. Now (in regular basis), at dev stage an open source projects infrastructure is showing up, and finally the last proprietary entrepreneur profits from those developments. And not only the ordinary enhancements are incredible. Technologies of other "products" from the same in house are usually very well integrated and speeding up development pace . appr. 30 Million (not bundled) Firefox downloads there are meanwhile and this seemed to be the very Beginning. The browser of the coloured company with the big number is now located in Germany in the third place surprisingly of the company the browsers with the ad agencies. That had surprised me. Well, where office applications are mostly monoculture, everything looks meanwhile very different. Our voyage starts now.... 6
GIMP.... (Der GIMP, die GIMP, das GIMP?) Well, slow here: where do we come across the word? Every time if we get to know for a "free" replacement of the (fotoladen)application of the "ad agency company" with the stone name. Of course they're using, mainly MACs), due to the seldomness of that events we're researching for a nice replacement without further costs. Lost found. Name: Paint.NET (available on all windows machines and a feature list like a commercial "image editing" (that discipline) program). Paint.NET is developped open source and performs not too bad. But what would you have done 5 years ago where there was no Paint.NET on the horizon? If you wanted to have some impressive features for images (hopefully free) ? Woodstock: There was only GIMP (free and libre) Well to get a loong story short: "GIMP" originally spoken: "the GIMP"! GIMP as very often in this book a more or less complicated acronym of names like General Image Manipulation Program/ and because of changing the license to GnuPublicLicense it is called now; GNU Image Manipulation Program. GNU...GNU? well, yes GNU is NOT Unix (Originally intended Software like Windows or MacOS) Then what is GIMP is able to do exactly? To tell the truth here, in the humble beginnings not that much, but this stuff quite stable and, consequently "different", because it came from the far grounds, where Software is made by everyone. In the beginning nobody exept some "very geeky/smart guys" could use and even develop it. Because of this it took some time until "Wilber", das GIMP Mascot got a little more known. Well, let's sum up here; in the past GIMP was hardly to use und one had to move to a difficult voyage in unknown areas....(wildwestcomparisons here are intentional). But how is it today? what has changed... Meanwhile software "galaxies" but software galaxies did enttangle themselves, means, that you can start immediately if wanted without leaving the own "home galaxy". GIMP is very likely going to be a "professional" program, which most people are often using, (the last persons, who want to use this program might be adagencies). There are now some books about this in "JoeReader" book stores. Alrighty then, our journey is still limited to our home galaxy but not for long... 7
Marble (why is this mentioned here?) Our company with the six coloured characters and the mathematicsspleen had meanwhile some things, which others would like to have too. Although this company has some great amount of money around the world to make it a little more colorful. For example: a globe, which can be used by everybody (to get a broader view of the world), additionally it does not cost anything. Because of having this company that amount of money, they can afford at times offering those products without costs. As some proverb say; not everything sparkles, shines and if (not exactly You, but other individuals) want to have data (of that globe) e.g for a nongovernmental organisation with information and onto include their website for others directy and letting participate in those data, then our colourful company denies it, prohitbits it, because of they had "high" development costs, but the organisation (which needs those data) has unfortunatly nothing to it. Because of this reason, was founded, what commonly develops a map for everyone, usable for 3rdparty developers, even for free for their purpose (third parties included here). This map grows rapidly with that funny name: OpenStreetMap. Well...no..., this is not (that) much to do with the name (of the Software) "Marble", but this is to happen soon. At this point of time, you simply cannot install Marble right away into you home base: but this is going to be made more easy soon.. For now one has to get used to marble, traveling to the another world and to a cultural shock as well. To get things straight: Marble is an OpenSource globe which is with help of coders worldwide & developers brought to life, and here a possible application is: an open "street map" ;). And lately "OpenRouteService" was added to our globe. More of that is possible to add certain different layers to it. Vegetation hin zur thermal situation of this world which surrounds us. Not only Marble is made mature within a broader group of professionally working developers, but as well as the GIMP and all the other representatives of their kind are going to be shaped by a community anywhere inside these Worlds far away. This software is also part of a software for education with in parts academic aspirations where very motivated people are to look about such programs and functions. Marble itself has now reached the first "birthday" and therfore is in the eyes of most PCUsers a fullblown Program, what a NONGuru could want to use then. Marble has because of this open development process the whole professional enthusiasm some very neat and hopefully soon integrated potential to show which might have a much bigger impact soon. Now we're leaving our home galaxy and cross unknown territories! 8
Gallium3D Well, here we are ... but WHERE might that be, and where should we head to? Here again some short background infos: Gallium is a piece of software which distributes functions and possibilities to other programs. Such thing is a "library" in technical terms Well, at least we know what basically a library is, and that Gallium3D would be something like that... but why the heck do we need that? Most of commonly developed (commercial) software programs have such things with them and MANY from them! But here everything is about a special library; which had been mentioned earlier. .... Gallium > Chemistry? says nothing to me,..... but hey; I know 3D, from computer games, cinema movies etc.... Yes exactly, this is totally the right direction for the solution. computer games (e.g: in 3D) are nowadays mostly under windows where they are developed most and are famous like (more or less) CocaCola. Movies have the same technology in them. Under MacOS it is some sort of worse regarding graphical support of the 3dgraphics card (e.g graphics processor). As an example exactly this graphics processor is an example for hardware, which isn't that optimal supported. Included, but where? In GNU, which had for that long time no "engine", and till the devs had made the conclusion to build an engine, which somebody could use. Exactly where development is open and many people are profiting from it, the underlaying buisiness model could evolve then., but making money out of it is more than difficult.. Therefore certain hardware will always be probably in the next forseeable future very badly supported and the free community had to find a way to write software, for which simply there were no commercial drivers. And some companies played hardball to be sure that no software would be there and not authorized. For the correct driving (remote) of two/threedimensional software, a whole new language had been created. BANG! Here comes the "Open Graphics Language" OpenGL and because of that only being the chassis, they needed like under windows a reduced set of instructions for saving time. Now one can easily point this alltogether in the right direction, that this language with the reduced set of instructions (which had been created for windows), of course not heading to the free worlds. There had to be an alternative. (Anything what worked). Result is exactly die that 2D/3D Graphics Library "Gallium3D" which is under heavy development right now could gains some "real" traction in the next future. This library is probably going to be included into all open systems. 9
The far grounds began to change: Embodied matter, was what was locked up before, expensive too, and teuer, seemed to open up as well: Ben NanoNote What's Ben? (Ben: hebrew for son, or arabic ibn...) Nope, that was nonsense here; běn It's chinese and means beginning. Beginning of what? Beginning of something, which came from the far grounds, and should be used within our little world too. In the beginning it was, that one could link to a tiny little laptop, but it was far more than that. The interior had beens served to connect computer networks with computer networks. (At least the software for this). NanoNote was developed further. Further to something, what isn't interesting to most people at all, but for a tiny group of specialists yes!, and those people are doing awesome stuff with our little odd "laptop". And here included a special warning: This "beginnning" device really was only the start of a bigger something, namely "copyleft/open hardware". As proposed earlier, I'll get back to this later on. Then what can this little thing do better than all the rest?, For now nothing, but its potential is impressive. Far grounds are getting more and more space and competing for the best of everyone, where everybody is profiting from everybody else, and actually everything is shared... There it is possible, simply to print out, what had been forgotten a while ago in the "DIY"shop. No matter if computer, cellphones, printers, cameras or similar, the far grounds are coming nearer very fast (exponentially fast). Communities (not really wealthy) are coming together and revolutionize our understanding of producer and consumer. Even with things, which were WAY to expensive, is that principle used. Who could have been imagined that, with that approach even cars could be designed? "For the world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air." (Taken from: J.R.R Tolkien: the lord of the rings III, return of the king, chapter: Many partings: Well, let's push further: the (provisorical) engine of the GNU... 10
Of cars and engines GNU is the "angedachte" operating system, what didn't want to be like it's older siblings. A little explanation here: the car is the operating system and the engine of it the corresponding operating system core. What's that why I have to know that? Well, with Windows: the 足 "Kernel" is working invisibly under the surface and with our special "OS" his elder sibling it wasn't that different. Name of the Predecessor was UNIX. That was derived from the name Multics and even Multics had ancestors. Well, let's go to UNIX and its engine "GNU" first. THE "GNU"足 hint: GNU's Not Unix, that's GNU written without acronyms, wasn't usable really, at least not it is like today. The engine "car" was missing. What should we do then? Best thing is: waiting. What for? for a young finnish cs student, builds one, because it needs something similar like the car GNU... This fine young finnish student started "just for fun" an engine, which the discoverer of GNU then could use finally, to be able to start his/her own concept. Name of the engine LINUX (originally FREAX) I don't know if our readers did hear the name linux, at least has that Microsoft heard and ihn (with that license) in connection with cancer. Similar to the open letter to Hobbyists "offene Brief , which circled around for some time. Therefore has community towards the far grounds and those people are of the opinion not to need Microsoft anymore. At first it was difficult, because linux not looking that good as it looks today, but this has changend dramatically now. And the thing that no one may steer or drive with an engine alone, especially drive comfortable, some interiors had to be established here to satisfy the higher expectations. Meanwhile there is not much where LINUX wasn't heard yet, more and more authorities begin to think about the car with the fast engine and some neat improvements incl. accessories to it. From a tiny zippo bag to SuperComputing (Quantum computing) Linux is used on most broad range of IT systems ever. A recent study says, that most Linux Kernel Developers are employed within companies and are getting paid the work on the Linux Kernel. The far grounds and the meetups of the people... 11
The far grounds and the meetups of the people... As I said before the far grounds came nearer and more and more people settled there. People are meeting at "mass events, like LinuxTag" (as booth presenter, communitymember but interested beginners too)... People are meeting metaproject Special happenings like the Gran Canaria or Berlin "Desktop Summit of KDE, GNOME (I referring to that later)"... People are meeting at special events like LibreGraphicsMeeting (das ausschließlich for development and their projects gedacht war....) People are meeting on so called "Sprints" where people have a predefined task, work on accordingly, to solve that in a very short amount of time. People are meeting on mailing lists (simliar EMail, but NON OffTopic), everyday and exchanging news. People are meeting on IRC (Almost every bigger project has such a channel) People are meeting on services like Twitter, Facebook etc... People are meeting wie dem GSOC [Google Summer of Code, YESS, that is the math nut company.] People are meeting in the interwebs at unbelievable locations, nope people are meeting in real life. The far grounds were rarely habitated, but the increase of the destined settlers, is getting more attention world wide. Even programs like (similar to the program, mit dem ein europäischer Kabelsender is laying for very long time lange under fierce competion) are going the audio video transport programs + zugehörige "Codecs" opened more and more and was getting distributed. Further are awards laid out, which a good project may win, das geht von Geld hin zu goods donations zur server hardware (that is used, for presenting projects in the world wide web). Often some are saying about people who leave their country behind, they'd be clever, a little socially hindered (Cliché, again) and would way to much think about their computers. The latter may be correct. Of the interior of the GNU car and its possibilities. 12
Of GNUs, poems, sun and "free" apples. GNU operating systems exactly as well as windows or even MacOS I did define so quasi also car, in reality everything's a little more complicated. As Unix is a special model series and GNU his younger brother a model of that series, the Operating System Solaris (made by the company named University Network, die now auch bought out herself by the latin sounding Firma out), is a rolemodel of Unix, exactly as an example AIX, HPUX, IRIX... etc. The "Sun" as Solaris has been also called, is exactly like Unix, der "Predecessor" of GNU ist ebenfalls der second Vorgänger des ganz fresh Illumos(Sonnne) Project. Which had been abundoned by the company with the latin sounding name (more or less). Where am now? Ah, well ... at the "poem"... This poem sounds like a japanese poem written in five strophes in a special form of rhyme. It was brought to life because an earlier project hasn't got the financial backing what everybody hoped for., compared to the, windows OS or this one with the apple logo. For years nobody recognized the previous project, the developers company had been sold worden, it had been offered throught alll serious and impossible "Teleshops" to naive and simple customers, who had absolutely no clue, what it was that they had bought without knowing better. To stick a little longer with the "car" metaphor: It used to be looong time ago einmal a model with a exquisit Roadholding and certain acceleration speed. The "free apples"... That OS of the company with the design gurus, whose sales arguments are referring to this, like the sort of scots apples mentioned before, changed their complete car model to provide it with a fast UnixEngine, which stood for much more stability, flexibility, as well as scaleability. Well, because of some who put great amout of value on the interiors, the engine was not that important and was relicensed libre under the leadership of the company itself, because of other developers to improve everything. Unfortunately this engine was for some of the developers not libre enough, There was way to little effort of that big company, because of this that promising project died too. But finally another project had decided to raise still the flag and to offer the engine other thrilled geeks for steady improvements. And this was only the tip of the iceberg for different operating systems respectively carmodels (brands). Let's look at the interior now, which is putting some high value in the car for most users.. (Oh No, before I think I have to say something to "recursive acronyms")
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Recursive Acronyms and their consequences: GNU, GNOME, KDE, GIMP, XFCE, HURD... In the far grounds some special kinds are of naming things and manners established, . Much to the suffering of some tourist, who actually was on a visiting tour. "recursive acronym"?... Yeah, ok, At first I'll have to tell, what's the meaning of "recursive". The funny people from the far grounds were in parts some real maths足freaks und did treat everyone exaclty like this. "recursive" simply means: it is "calling" itself. Example given: faculty within mathematics has been defined also recursively.
A recursion opposites a thing which, many of us got to know long before: the Iteration (called Count足Loop): Count from 1 to 20 in steps of two... During the recursion: Count足down von 20 herunter as long, until your result isn't negative any more (below zero). Towers of Hanoi too could be a good example for a recursion. The word what we want to say: it is calling itself, as long as a stop sign. "An acronym" ... even simpler: Some sort of abbreviation. Now we're able to decode the first bits of information: "GNU's Not Unix" = "GNU "GNU Network Object Model Environment" = GNOME "GNU (General) Image Manipulation Program" = GIMP" GNU "HIRD of Unix足Replacing Daemons" and HIRD stands for "HURD of Interfaces Representing Depth". "KDE Desktop Environment Software Compilation" = KDE SC "XForms Common Environment" = XFCE Some of these "elder" recursive acronyms are meanwhile obsolete now and didn't get any attention because of this they weren't surveyed not any more. But no rule without exception. Especially this one, which is referring to the organisation for supporting of "libre" Software, their members sometimes which are/were referred to as nerves killing trolls. Let's look at the interiors of those cars.... 14
The car and its interior: WindowHelper to full blown workplace Even here not everything works as expected, if somebody takes a car in der faraway worlds, to do certain things. Short break and return to our known solar system and its most famous computerbrand Windows; There it isn't necessary to ask for a special interior furnishing for our car, because there is only ONE standard model, which lets you steer your vehicle. Besides that will almost nobody wants to get to know the engine and be informed, what is possible damit alles tolles machen kann. Often is taken in this country simply SchemaF, without a thought to something different. But inside the faraway worlds, as said before, many things are working different, it is rather unusual there (falls mal etwas nicht am Auto gehen sollte, in eine Werkstatt zu fahren und zu sagen, man möge sich doch bitte about their problems kümmern, for they are paying these things. These practices are highly unusual there, the slogan: I can do it alone, else my mates or colleagues from the community are helping me. Main interior equipment alone differs from the fact, that one is free to choose completly varying interieurs for his vehicle, where at Windows is only Einheitsware accepted. That, what most people are able to imagine under windows, is nothing more than a simple desktop environment. Under GNU/Linux is is at the very moment: KDE SC, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE (Names were explained earlier) What then is GNOME exactly? Well, a desktop "surface" laden with opportunities, and a constistent user guidance is being developed in an open project. Same is meant here übrigens also for KDE SC, nur ist here der underlying framework much higher and mightier than GNOME. XFCE is also a desktop environment, but mainly thought for older and weaker computers. It's used with the same underlaying toolkit, as under GNOME. (Same toolset) LXDE: Is sort of new and for elder and/or weaker computers too. What are called "Windowhelpers" ...? A Windowhelper called "WindowManager" has the purpose to work different and reduced much more, as a complete desktop environment. There are much more "window managers" than full desktop environments, where particular examples may differ a whole lot from others. Now we've got all the desktop environments, we've got to say farewell to our former used analogy, und now we're going to look at special projects within free Software. 15
Distributions and other pecularities inside a car At first Namedropping: Slackware, Debian, (Open)SuSE, LFS, GENTOO, ARCH... Solangsam hat sich unsere AutomobilMetapher wirklich überlebt.. Brief statement. The Names above are the so called Linuxdistributions. What Linux then is, (the engine of the GNU ;), habe ich zumindest mal angerissen, what are now then those distributions? Um, yes!, A car skeleton without engine and interior equipment (as leather seats) still needs other things to be able to drive, an all such things are in so called Distributionen verteilt, for each model there are several kinds of distributions. For example a specialized programpackage distribution (for example medical environment) has some very different focus than set up of a "normal" distribution for end users. There are ones for all purposes, one might imagine, for science community, exactly, like this for the municipal administration, or even a teachers position at a school. There are several Linux distributions: Ubuntu, Debian, SuSE, RedHat, and much more. Meanwhile is Ubuntu the largest and reknown distribution with some 12M users. Who or what is Ubuntu?: Better who pulls the strings behind Ubuntu? Well, his name, who started the avalanche, called Mark Shuttleworth, he founded a securitycertificatefirm sold and made then a quite big amount of money, after this he visited ISS as a tourist (as first south african) and funded besides this the ITcompany Canonical, which would become the main donor to the UbuntuDistribution. Red Hat inc. was the first company to found a commercial Linux distribution of the same name and have its business model build around it. Over the years, they've released their commercial distribution as a Free Software community project called "Fedora" to focus on selling services instead. Fedora prospered into one of the major test beds for new Free Software technology and Red Hat still benefits by creating its SLAcovered enterprise distribution, RHEL, from its code base while Fedora remains Free Software. Free, fully compatible forks of the RHEL distribution itself exist, with CentOS being the most popular one. One of the oldest distribution is form Nuremberg and was branded: SuSE (Software und Systementwicklung). She is related to times, in which Linux Kernel (Motor) fitted onto a nanotech space memory, and got after some buyouts of hat sich diese a net working specialist (offices wolrld wide) and it began to open up some time before communityversion, make and spread some news around. OpenSuSE is called the communitydistribution is being viewed of them to much too much automation critically, but exactly praised him for that. Now our little journey is accelerating its pace and it's going into details, with the presentation of those libre projects and the persons behind "open" doors in the second chapter. 16
The libre/open projects, their profit, and their "makers". Well then, at first it is really important to distinguish between some things. F(L)OSS with that is "libre", open source | F(L)OSH with this Libre OpenSource Hardware is meant. Free Culture, with this the connection of all fractions is all about. The most significant projects faraway worlds are those, who are focusing on societies: Namely: Wikipedia (for storing a good fraction of mankinds knowledge). OpenStreetMap (as, Google, demands payments for third足party use of their content, I never saw such a pace of online GIS data online as OSM!) The GNU足Project aus such, as WITHOUT the founder, THAT MUCH wouldn't have had existed. Wikileaks/OpenLeaks ("WL" atm highly controversial, due to Afghanistan) but in fact they're onthe right place here, as they want to be a "Safe Harbor" for all Whistleblowers world wide. Ubuntu (because they are presenting a "simple", but powerful desktop to the masses, ranging from the poorest to the "filthy" rich ones). Debian (as Ubuntu and others wouldn't be there without Debian and their codex) GNOME (because a more/less barrierfree desktop could break down walls, if everything shines and does stuff right and always: that's simply wonderful) KDE (There was upon a time a simple desktop who did want to replace Unix足"CDE", but what KDE made out of this, my respect for that) XFCE/LXDE (for trying, (vlt. to re足animate/power up deprecated Hardware/Software again) OLPC (an education project that offers childs opportunities of interactive, networked learning) I could continue this for hours and listen projects, which did much for society or about to do that. coming next: Diversity as a great benefit or: (Why it has to have four different Desktops?)
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Diversity as a great benefit or (Why it has to have four different Desktops??) Why on earth is options of choice beneficial when choosing IT足equipment? Well, if a single Desktop would be sufficient, we wouldn't have others, but in fact there are different goals and ways to get there, e.g because of an older model that can't support, das nicht so simply a 3D graphics card of the newest generation, but what are you doing if a certain Desktop was bound to that. Isn't it that you guys are simply "re足inventing the wheel"? Yes, possibly, there ought to be people, who are liking to have the choice for several cars. (who simply aren't all models). Besides this it's only the tip of the iceberg here, with all other "Window Managers" and DEs we're close to 100 ... (but I can't go into details for now) SuperSportsCar = KDE Medium Class = GNOME Small Cars = XFCE No I don't think that this discrimination is fitting well for all times, I'm e.g. booting all the time the desktop which suits my tasks perfect, with best time and energy calculation here, or the choice reflects my situational mood. That may be also a fluxbox manager if I just wanted to look something up biefly. Competition is good and therefore are some big configurations, which have been made inside one system, transfered to another one, and does a very well job here. Distributions and their Desktops: (Why? explanation as follows:) Ubuntu (GNOME) OpenSuSE (KDE, GNOME) Mandriva (KDE) Fedora (GNOME) Debian (KDE, GNOME) etc... But meanwhile one might install den eigens preferred desktop out of many distributions (additionally to the predefined ones). Distribibutions are having mostly a "Main"足Desktop (where is worked most) and the additional then, often with less effort (Manpower). In nature most advantages have those, who have the best possibilties to adapt, and as adaption to different processes is being worked out at best with an open system, is FOSS a strong victor here. Commercial/Proprietary Software works best inside a locked足down capitalistism, without any disturbance. Alone the latest financial crisis in Europe has made clear, that many europeans should spend less money (Software even for software). KDE 18
1. KDE (In Chronology of their development) That, what really determines KDE, is an interlocked productive, enthusiastic, spread worldwide community of developers. Developers are there a "small" group witin the kdepantheon. There are things done, for which a potential applicant might apply a broad range of abilities; Vom Übersetzer of the interactive space map from Englischen to Kisuaheli, organizing projects meetings, to the finance controller, who is examining spendings/savngs of KDE e.V. KDE in numbers (As long as I can guess): Developers: several thousand (active) [there aren't 10.000 yet, but who knows...] . I'd say projects probably 500, without knowing much better (fast pace) and representations in 30 countries. What is the "magic" on the KDE Desktop? simply said, its configurability and stability simultanously which inspired floods of users, the most reknown and acknowledged version was 3.5.10... but only because why years ago the full version of 13 was worked on the very concept. What happened next? Then version 4 hit the world, broke with all user DesignGUI rules for Desktops and brought an uncounted mass of professional to tears, as long as all 4.0 version users understood this as stable. (Parole from KDE here was: Only interfaces are stable!). Frankly said: 4.0 4.X Many users understood it as a step in the wrong direction (some demanded KDE 3.5 back, there's even a fork under its name "Trinity") After a while not only stability improved, and most "must have features" returned, but meanwhile joeuser got explained the principle of PLASMAactivities. KDE further is THAT Desktop with most levers, switches and sliders, the (controversial) highest elegance, des (probably most energy waste (of the three)), and that with the most big Portfolio on education and officeprogrames. Main Projects: KDE Platform KDE EDU(cation) KDE GAMES KDE UTILS KDE Multimedia KDE Office KDE Documentation KDE Plasma KDE PIM KDE Usability KDE etc... (This List does not imply (haha) to be finished and has no order in it) KDE in the humble beginnings was a soly Linux/Unix (CDEReplacement) story, but developed further meanwhile to a player, who is able to play on the most different terrains. (LIN/WIN/MAC) but also (Netbooks, Mobile) and more... GNOME
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2. GNOME (The Chaser) GNOME (in early times: GNU Network Object Model Environment) today simply GNOME. GNOME, a world wide developercommunity too, which is nearly unparalleled. The project has devoted itself a little stronger to the HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) as the KDEproject did. I want to say: GNOME ist clean, focused and sympathizes with the operating system of the version des macintoshoscompany. (osxlike[but no copy!]) The GNOME projects too are speaking for themselves; (But those are completely unordered) GNOMEOffice (Abiword, GNUmeric) GNOMEMultimedia GNOMEGAMES GNOMEHIG GNOMEAccessibility GNOMEUtilities GNOMENetwork etc... GNOME is being viewed critically, as well as KDE, GNOME too made the change to 3.0 recently and this version is making some things VERY different. Additionally there are communities like Ubuntu, which want to feature a completly different Look & Feel for their Desktops, than many other distributors, who are working with GNOME. (Mono: or the "Angst" of (justified?) patent lawsuits KDE is GNOME's younger sister project of the FOSScommunity. At first the developer tools weren't libre (liberty), and to have a good answer to that the GNOME Project was founded. You could spread around the GNOME developer tools and everything turned out to be fine for a while. Then late after some long time, the market leader appeared and developed a platform with that multiple programming languages for a programming project were now possible. That on the other hand acknowledged several Open Source Hackers, and thus they created a "libre" replacement which (seemed obvious) was usable finally under GNU&|Linux. Unfortunately the market leader held furthermore patents on his invention and started to sue smaller companies (TomTom) and because of this, that much more and more GNOMEdevelopers but users too asked themselves: Can we use MONO without dangers?) Or are we then a case for the patent lawyers...? GNOME has some developers less KDE, but the numbers are improving. Meanwhile they're having a "paid" Website Administrator who's maintaining their project website. Conference GUADEC (GNOME USER AND DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE) hat developed itself in the last years to one of THE meetingpoints for GNOME Development where new ideas are presented. XFCE/LXDE 20
XFCE/LXDE XFCE has a smaller community of developers, and is in fact a little younger. It is using the same underlying toolset as GNOME does. Actually it was planned to implement XFCE/LXDE onto all desktops, in which a weaker processor powers the hardware. This had been implemented, but since then the installation on newer hardware isn't that rare any more, and the fan足community is growing steadily. At first XFCE wasn't a full blown Desktop Environment, and it was really slim at first and then it got some real weight. There aren't subprojects like XFCE足games. Perhaps XFCE is inside the big bunch of developers who are meeting in Berlin and later on. (GranCanariaDesktopSummit) now the Berlin Desktop Summit. LXDE is becoming that what XFCE once was... Meanwhile it is the weakest part of this , which I do know. Unfortunately the latter is still a somewhat early development stage and how might be actually speculated on the future, but the first impression as it is now a promise. LXDE there are meanwhile XFCE as Ubuntu 足 Version. (the latter not officeal) And: LXDE seems to have the more development pace. (I not know if this counts) Seemingly with the latter, ambitions to leave the PC as natural workplace, and to proove Smartphone mostly Smartphones . There aren't that many but There are two products: N900 and Nexus I. XFCE and LXDE (and their applications) are still limited to the weaker ressource machines, because no porting hasn't been done yet. Simply XFCE und LXDE used inside gerne for helping projects, da die Rechner dort mostly not european for replacing (Second Hand etc) A more personal note here: XFCE STILL have NO BLOG AGGREGATOR (say: Planet)! Even the much more young LXDE has got one... IN case that (no matter for which reasons) none is wanted here, no problem. The Window足Managers (Fluxbox, Openbox, ICEWM etc) 21
Window Manager (Fluxbox, Openbox, ICEWM) What is a WindowManager, why do I need one, and of course which one is the best? Nice try... but: There is NO best windowmanager. 1. A WindowManager ist according to Wikipedia a software, which is necessary for distribution, position, size etc of windows on a desktop... (Has got nothing to do with windows) 2. There are a plenty of windowmanagers: One of the most often used (without knowing many people: Metacity (sooner: Sawfish) and KWin)... But, do I have to know them? Hmm actually not, but hey why not? ;) Metacity as basic foundation of the GNOME Framework and is responsible for a "fast" window display. KWin is the selfdeveloped window manager for KDESC by KDE Team, what has got a plenty of configuration options. Compiz Fusion, which is responsible b.o for the rotating cube faces in Linux. The others: Most of them are very good too, you don't need to install a full blown desktop, to be able to work efficiently. Fluxbox (I am using this often) E17 [Enlightenment](styled and functional) Ion2 (suitable only for geeks/pros, ... tried it out, after 5 min I understood the basic concepts... very efficient, not a waste of ressources and is getting operated with the KEYBOARD only) FVWM (WindowManager for Unixnostalgics (but still very efficient too)) IceWM (functional too, minmalistisic and the "Easy Mode inside EEEPC") (Openbox, Matchbox... *box) Problaby very similar to Openbox, Fluxbox... Dvm (Dynamic Window Manager) Awesome (nextgen WindowManager) Windowmaker (Is a rather weird concept, under OpenSuSE Mix of GNOME/KDE) Ok, why the heck do I need it? (e.g as standalone...) This is dependent on your own personal preferences, I am using wms due to a special thing mainly: for efficiency! I very rarely have a surface, where I might do everything I want as fast as I want, like under a windowmanager and ressources also hadn't been compromised. With a slim wm my netbook is consuming less energy for lasting plus an hour usually. This is especially good for our environment, because I haven't to ask for more power (hierzulande meist aus der Steckdose), and can act more freely. All in all a fine thing. Hardware problems, (and what is to be done about it from a driver's view inside the FOSS community) 22
Hardware problems (and what is to be done about it from a driver's view inside the FOSS community) Most of us do know it. One seems to have to print out some web form soon, our neighbour has some problems with her printer and as (one has no such thing), many are going to a friend, who is using linux. That used to be a problem. Meanwhile something has changed. The more companies are participating within linux, the faster a driver for certain hardware is being developed (which is often included while booting). So KDESC DigiKam meanwhile supports the usual producers of Digitalkameras. Simultaneously there are also popping firms up, who are having a completely selfdeveloped hardware concepts inside their Rucksack. As an example: canadian company Traversaltech (who wanted their own interface / drivers of software and hardware which are libre). Hardware under Linux works meanhile more and morre as an OpenSource Project without having a company, without having much money in the back, look at Openpandora project. The Linux drivers Database is like always a rewarding help, you have for some distributions own databases and wikis. Besides, what is always working (but only for specialists:) Write the special driver with Open Source/Free Software for yourself. Here certainly interesting: Website: Kernel.org. Meanwhile there is a course to program you own drivers at Linuxfoundation. Additional to this there's a list with hardware information and drivers too. What is there as well, are many indepedent websiteswho are maintaining often a hwdatabase too, unfortunately they are very often out of date (sometimes way to much). Conclusion here:, That the whole drivers situation especially with Linux changed dramatically, and it is going to improve much more soon. Even Wikipedia isn't the worst place to ask for hardware in the FOSScommunity. Here I can recommend the article graphics and hardware in FOSS (English) as first stop. Actually those lines have the reason, to link to longlasting products, but because of having mentioned earlier Wikipedia, I may drag the readers attention from here to a special linux (not only) hardware site. (in parts a bit controversial:) Phoronix. There are articles for nearly every Linux hardware problem. To have everything finished here (no pun intended ;) ), I have to link here the site: tuxmachines.org, where each linux customer is ought to find superb linux hardware here with a granted software pool with software drivers for this hard were. Receiving Help (and pose the right questions to the right people) 23
2.7 Receiving Help (and pose the right questions to the right people) Or: What has this to do with Open Source Projects? In object oriented programming everything is an object, and one might theoretically say that, in FOSSScene everything is a project (almost true but not completely)... At first Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson came to the conclusion, the UNIX Documentation has to be reproducable. They invented the first man pages (man pages for manual pages). Most distributions contain of manpages for literally every Unix/Linux/OS command. (Meanwhile there is "nondeveloper documentation" in (X)HTML Form.) The ML (written out for NonGeeks = the mailinglist) Also a UNIX relic, that enjoys broader audience, and is being still used. What's the ML and what can I do with it? The ML is a collection of emails (which are getting collected by servers (for a certain topic)) which were sent by different users (who preregistered "themselves" on ML), with hopes of an early reply. There are "open" and "closed" MLs. Projects herefore are: ListServ, Sendmail, etc. Discussion Boards:Welll, It is not that easy with the boards, mostly they are helpful and are making sense, but in fact you have to obey some rules here. Example given (IMPORTANT!) Don't [DO NOT!] feed the Trolls. OK, I'll have to explain this here. Insults of all kinds were happening in those discussion boards all the time, then Netiquette came, and since then the boards just only allowed trolling. (Troll:Net culture) To troll means annoying, teasing somebody, drive him/her to insanity. Sometimes it appears to me that the whole WWW is filled with trolls, but there are often only "querulants and other weirdos". Of the smartness to pose the "right questions" to the "right people"... As an example: one got installed Linux, is a complete "greenhorn" and is posting to: http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=2. One is getting the correct answers, you'll have an audience for a long time, and one is getting the best hints/proposals. That would be a perfect start for a LinuxNewbie "... Now we're heading to the suboptimal case: One has also no clue about Linux, but a friend experienced Ubuntu before, who changed to "Aptosid{frmr: Sidux}", and this very friend (is exited about), wants to be part of it too. Not long then and (pretty fine, no commercial strategy behind) and this friend is looking forward to all those nice programs, He wants his pc as DVD Player Replacement, and now it is getting a little bit more difficult, but yes: There are boards, Let's go to the next board and asking, how is it with multimedia support and how you can do some special things with your hardware. BIG MISTAKE; AS in 100 percent of all cases completely getting NO fitting answers (some sort of correct)...."RTFM" as most answer by geeks, who avoid writing longer texts online (means: Read the fine Manual ....exactly (the man pages for developers ;)) And with those no leisure time user can or could do something with it or profit from. Aptosid is derived Debian and is mostly for expierenced users or professionals. Last but not least it has GNUPhilosophy! Some project knowledge in FOSS (from commit to Upstream) 24
What is actually an Open Source Project? Roughly said: Anything, what is built around Software/Hardware for being constructed (not only Hardware) and being distributed freely then. The infrastructure: Mostly important: How many people who are contributing actively, is it a rather small like a leisure time project or vast like e.g. the Linux足kernel?. In the beginning there was the code... well it is still well forged, but meanwhile everything is being developed decentral. Here are some very efficient "version control systems" which help you with those jobs, exmamines if documents are still valid, even more and more people are working on a version. The first introduction to a project you'll find mostly when cleaning out computer/program "bugs" 足> Bug Hunting. The first writing of an improvment of the software or the elimination of a bug (inside a version control system) is called "commit". Fork: (No, no dishes here). There are "official" ways of breaking a sourcecode into different pieces and break it and develop the parts then separately, to develop it (if the license grants that) into another direction. Forks are being made, if no commit was made over a long time, or those projects have no maintainer. (Maintainers are administrators and qa足specialists in one body, as they are proving, testing the code that was sent in. Downstream: Developments, which are mostly done, from which the code is merged from many distributions and is being bundled into them. If we're looking closely to Ubuntu, then Mark Shuttleworth's community is downstream. As the Ubuntu 足 project is based on Debian, are if developments are made in Debian, and those developments are being pushed to Ubuntu then it is downstream. Upstream: Developments, which are located in the projects cycle a bit more high above the forks and merges of Software are upstream. With our example e.g. is a development, which is made by Ubuntu people, to push it to Debian as even to GNOME, as the Ubuntu project is rooted on the GNOME libs base with an Unity Desktop Scheme for now. Open Source/Free Software projects are often complex things which consist of an amount of more special sub projects. Especially the open spirit of such projects is always a "rough" thing as, there are competely different views on things and ways to do something involved.
Humanitarian FOSS (an ideal connection?) 25
Humanitarian FOSS (An ideal connection?) (Though FOSS also means hardware projects... One should find a more fitting term here) Free Culture in development assistance. OLPC, Sahana, Ushahidi, CrisisCamp, Linux4Afrika etc... Foolishly said, actually a great thing, as not that much money has to be spent for purposes, which aren't representing the original development assistance targets. (e.g buying of license fees). But to the point that I am repeating myself here, the avalanche didn't launch yet and proprietary products (which are copied mostly illegally) are used most. OLPC and Sugar One Laptop per Child was/is the brainchild of M.I.T Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and is supposed to an education project for kids from 6 years from allover the world. The mass hype has vanished for now and people can work more effective. Sugar: The DesktopGUIUsability Suite of the OLPC has a new identity deploys the OLPC GUI (surface) now separately. Linux4Afrika A project from southern Germany from FreiOSS e.V. Thousands of older computers are being refurbished, installed with free software, maintained, Advice personnel is being brought to Germany by plane, is getting an instruction in usage, and after this everything is sent to Africa by ship. The L4A project meanwhile has a decent status and won two times the award of Unesco Millenium project. Ushahidi Founded in Kenya, by hackers during the "civil war". A platform for catastrophic help inside the world wide web. In English this name means: Witness, unfortunately mostly selfexplanatory. In Haiti had that website then its breaktrough. Questions, Who are you, how did you know that ... occurred... But even the USmilitary is fond of this project. "Your site saves lives" FAZ quote. Sahana Free and Open Source Disaster Management System. A platform, which analyzes a complete catastrophe and offers "lost people tracker" and "NGO register". services CrisisCommons: CrisisCommons have been founed because of the world wide CrisisCampls next to a US university. Those camps have spread over north america to the south and even to europe. At those meetings aidhackers set up programs for all possible and even impossible aspects of the Haiti catastrophe and those ones even could help during the Pakistan floods. Their webproject is meanwhile even a complete enrolled Help organization. Free Culture in Politics (A more "mixed" reception thing) 26
Free Culture in Politics (A more "mixed" reception thing) First of all some name dropping here; WIKIeaks, FreiFunk, The Pirate Bay, Net Neutrality and many things more... Why is free culture so much difficult for politicians? Simply said, because those people were accustomed to completeley different models of handling things, and they're (often) of the opinion, what once was true, has to be true in times ahead, because of this the attempt to simply impose real world rules to the web between the webs. Especially when they tried to install the "network blockings:" Argument here: I can't having deleted them, because another person isn't accepting this delete command, it is for the "sake" security of our childs, most people aren't computer wizards who can't bypass those blockings, the inhibition levels are getting raised... Well ok; A "potpurri" of arguments against the internet freedom at first. But: Nearly nobody of the people involved earlier did know anything about internet infrastructure: They would have to take a high amount of collateral damage: On some server were e.g. 1000 Sites hostd, and now a politician appears, who demands, anything under: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX had to be locked down asap to prevent higher damage, and because of not looking deep inside the packages, we had to lock down the whole server. (predicate:quixotic) Wikileaks (Or: How to change the world as an idealistic hacker) Wikileaks is a platform which has been built "fast" distribution of security holes in companies and other institutions. The Australian founder is an idealistic hacker, who set up a network of likeminded professionals, to offer whistleblowers worldwide who usually drag the whole hatred of the company/institution a safe opportunity to stand against, using original documents against media propaganda. Unfortunately the chasm between some weirdos who want to ruin their former employers to innocent victims and witnesses isn't really such big, and because of this some rocksolid, supersecure methods to proof documents correct online had been necessary. The Pirate Bay In fact only a web site with links, but the lucifer demon in terms of the content providers. Pirate Bay, YEEHESS it's true, had an overwhelming part of links to things, which neither partly legal nor fully legal waren. Evil persons said about 90% illegal... well... Most important here: every person should be profiting from knowledge of others; After an unpleasant session in court the founder was sentenced to pay several Millions € compensations, and the pirate bay is being cut from the internet again and again, but not for long. Meanwhile Flattr distributes the knowledge (globally) of works with an high amount of money and the founder is in his highest element, namely the "sharing for the greater good"... Net neutrality For Chaos Computer Club hackers a somewhat clear thing (mostly by definition) but for the politicians of the "older" generations who haven't the knowledge ressources and who have to "believe" experts, it is a different story. The 4 Waves of Free Culture spreading 27
The 4 Waves of Free Culture spreading "At first they ignore you", then they'll laugh at you, next they fight you, finally you win." The avalanche is about to begin. At first there were people (because everything was distributed with liberties in earlier days, couln't grasp the thought that those practices was past and began to produce libre copies, for tools of earlier times, especially for operating systems, then started distribute so programs that did in fact many things very efficient without restriction. Example here: Absolutely Richard Matthew Stallman, who did in fact bring the whole movement to life, MANY THANKS! The GNU project (which I've mentioned before has now then a spiritual leader and a very strong community hind him. Linux kernel without the folkys around RMS assumingly HURD wouln't have launched (but that's pure speculation). The avalanche starts to roll. Meanwhile many people have discovered the benefit of GNU, also Linux and are beginning to start, forming complete ready to go packages, to ease the use of installing free Software for the average user. ("I have to know it, ich was one of the SuSE (Professional?) 7.0 user would't have had got any further (which I've installed 7 times, before it worked out). As a distributor more than others Debian has spread the knowledge about free software (Yes, there is slackware too) under bei professionals today is it ubuntu, and possibly tomorrow ...? Distributors then started to not only write improved install足routines, but everything went that far, that one has started trying to enhance the desktop足experience, the calculating slaves in those computing facilities and were forced to better results themselves... The avalanche is doubling its speed. Simply because of this, many people now noticed, how efficient Free Culture can be started to have set up their own business. (mit IPO ROI), started to rely on that. Best example: The company Red Hat, which was founded from the remains of CyGNUs, and did start to fit up, HPC足Servers with linux and do to maintainance for them. (Of those people the Fedora community was built). The avalance is doubling its speed again. Now the free culture ecosystem takes effect, message: We're everywhere, and we're growing. LinuxFoundation, MeegoOS (as Joint Venture),... The year of the linux Desktop (proposed for Lifetime Vaporware Award) 28
The year of the linux desktop (Proposal: Lifetime Vaporware Award) One of the most known running gags when dealing with linux. "Next year is the year of the Linux desktop" HAHAHA! laughed heavily, all we're waiting for this since 10 years.... BUT: What is "The year of the linux desktop?" Is it when its market "share" inreases up to 10++ Prozent?, Is it when all adagencies Linux as front end with GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, Triple?, Is it if KDE is found on every PC/Mac (which was originally linux (with a superb quality))? Questions over questions. Besides, Linux holds for a longer time, market share from Top500 SuperComputer to the Mainframe. Im Webhosting area it also at position 1: 50%67%, then are coming Meego/Android to smartphones and even tablet PCs. Why? Look at last. Desktop for now as greatest obstacle, and it could take its time to widesread Desktop Linux adoption, but as long as, the Free Culture Szene earns the respect of development (emerging) countries. (smart swarms etc) Ubuntu to get mulltitouch (Ubuntu: Natty Narwhal). KDE is working on KDEPlasma for mobile [plasma = active], furthermore it wouldn't be lasting very long, until Krita is used on Tablet PCs (incl. WeTab). As I wrote a few pages before of the hardware for Linux and and I have mentioned the company Traversaltech, now I am able to add here, that this company started out the "OpenGraphics" project, what has dealt with high end GPU's and high level hardware etc. for the distribution of high level hardware which may run natively on Linux. The first boards have been testest not long ago. Gallium3D Project, which runs on top of mesa, could make here an impact too. For now OpenGL has nothing against Directx, but with native Hardware and the free float of ideas possibly anything can happen. Correct:, Linux is NOT Windows (and isn't about to please every "JoeUser"), but when the development circles are running like this, here is something about to change and granite hard business models will be transformed or even cracked. It is a little like with the big dragon. Computer gaming: JAHA, Windows is for sure really important, Linux is dozens of years behind those state of the art... Development of RARS, TORCS to SpeedDreams, whose cycles took in the past years, could, as long as brand new process cycles are reached, get a whole new drive for them... Games and Pornography under Linux as driver of innovation 29
Games and Pornography under Linux as driver of innovation I can't do any remark for the porn category, as LinuxNerds are beseen usually and mostly as sexual averts (Those people are making some big point of Linux innovation) Gaming situation under Linux: Sleeping. But for how long? To explain: looong ago there were some "freaks" sat together and did code in an act of efficiency of several nights a "Roguelike" and then distribute it worldwide through the world wide web. Today the situation has changed and we're standing right at the beginning of it: Now the "Bazaar" model has been mostly established, at least in free culture, projects have been founded (meanwhile) where 15+ people are sitting very often (the later a lot more) at community projects and do nourrish and flourrish them. Anybody of you (honored reader) heard of FLATTR? No then I am tring to give you a short explanation, of what is it, what it wants and why this could be some more or less important in the future. Flattr is on the one hand (almost a Free Culture Projekt too) focused around the thought, to get the proclaimed ackknowledgement (uncomplicated) to the net artists. The media branch and the (most of all German) BloggerCommunity did pursue everything as EarlyAdopters have been dissappointed in large scale. Why? Humm, yes it wasn't intended as a "traditional" media product but more for the FOSSScene, which was/is liked by many people who found them honourable, (but everything was a bit to incomfortable) and because of this perhaps they will be able to invest with doubled time in corresponding Projects, because of more projects time to spend. A member of the debian team has started a FlattrFOSS call and now his is given "credit" for his works by avid supporters. To say it differently: If there are soon (similar to LGM, a developers meeting, with gathering FreeCultureGames enthusiasts, everything will be more and more public getting other developers to help out there. As an example (looking at the last pages), I am going to clarify, where everything in free culture gaming. At the first beginnings there was RARS: Robot Autonomous Racing Simulation and had been set up to visualize the AI of robot vehicles in the real world through data in the RARS Simulation, and has been given some nice credit by science community. Then TORCS appeared (The Open Racing Car Simulator) a "fork", which looked and felt a lot more "human" than RARS, the steering of TORCS was a mere catastophy and its opponents (logically) simply brutal and harsh. (I didn't know about the scientific approach of TORCS first). SpeedDreams is THE FORK for TORCS, which could really rock and spread the news, inside the linux community. Goal is to have a highest level built RobotAI combined with some interesting multiplayer race sport simulation. Many thanks to the team! Adobes manifesting nightmare 30
Adobes manifesting nightmare GIMP vs PS... LOL ... PS ftw! GIMP Suxx big time (but, yes for how long ?) Here I have to explain a few words; Photoshop as flag ship of the company Adobe, many people will know them, there's almost no adagency, who hasn't installed it and they earn money with PS manipulations. Too easy! Even a large amount of hobbyist users has got PS installed, but unfortunately no valid license for it. Especially is this true for developing countries. What could then bring Adobe inc. to nightmares then? Not much yet. But wait and drink tea. Pantone is THE patent covered colour standard on which the entire palette of adobe (and other leading majors) and nearly nobody besides the big companies can afford it. Aber auch hier hat sich etwas getan (and it will change much more than now), namely the first OPEN COLOUR STANDARD had been created, in order to shatter Pantone dominance. Let's start small: left traditional(TM) and right: Free Culture Adobe Photoshop GIMP, Showfoto, Nathive Adobe Illustrator Inkscape, Karbon14 Adobe Indesign Scribus Adobe Lightroom Darktable, RawTherapee, RawStudio Adobe Album DigiKam, FSpot, Shotwell Adobe Audition Audacity Corel Painter Krita 3DStudio Max, Maya Blender Autodesk AutoCAD Arquimedes Besides this that list is waay longer.... There is still a huge gap between right and left, but for how long? PS as an example for an industry standard, GIMP will be compared to a long time still. But: If the developments are continuing further as they do it now, then everything could be really interesting. GIMP is going to get a new core (3.0 and later) and this one will pushing GIMP a lot faster much more close to Photoshop CS, as it might appeal to some Silicon Valley guys. Google bashing and conspiracies are circling, but the Google Summer of Code helps GIMP a whole lot too. Last LGM (2010) there was a talk how GIMP could look with a complete new core by Peter Sikking. To retrieve the recording, as OGG Theora, typically also FOSSComunity. I could write here a whole lot more, about libre graphics projects and their makers that much, that I'd sit tomorrow here night still and would be talking. At the moment I may recommend two things: graphicsplanet.org is the space, in which all Blog entries of LGProjekten are being collected. & The very FIRST LibreGraphicsmagazine! Can the pirate parties "liquify" democracy ? 31
Can the pirate parties "liquify" democracy ? "Liq... What?" never heard that. Liquid Feedback is some kind of direct feedback system of a democratic process inside a party. Important to say here that NO DECISIONS are to be found on that system, as long as an "opinion graph" is to be collected here. "Liquid Feedback" is based on the fact, that one initiative which has been placed, may NEVER rejected directly, instead the only option what's possible is "Anregungen". The Pirate Party was the first, who tried out the concept of the founders internally and now a broader party base should have the opportunity, to check out, who voted for whom. With that we're checking out the big problems of LQFB, where everything is visible for an unlimited amout of time for everybody, who voted how, and this is imho data privacy problem. (And the pirate parties especially are working this out the hard way). The first other parties appear interested, but a "public" proof of functionality is missing still. Also there has been a negative Image in the forefield, the party head (etc LVBerlin pushed then this system, without talking without everybody before). Then it was introduced at the big Pirate Party Day meeting Bingen 2010 accepted then and was said to set up with big effort, but a number of hesitations delayed the system start, but finally everything is going to work, and the initiatives may sent in now. LQFB has got some similarity with the "Brainstorm of several FOSS Projects", just that this approach is going much deeper, than the most other applications. Another speciality is the delegation of election offerings to third party people. Liquid Feedback had worked well in working state "run" inside LV Berlin, and I could get an image myself. Mostly left me stunned the direct feedback and opportunity of creativity of productive discussions while working with LQFB. Everybody who wishes an official opinion graph for a certain topic has to "out" him or herself before, or anybody, who starts an initiative, has to be registering before member of pirate party, but thanks to the founders there are "guest足accounts" in which one may look at the whole thing, without being endangered by the suspicion of manipulation. Most of all it will be everything a thing, how all "Pirates" will adopt this system, who stood strong against this system, just only looked to privacy + right to informational self足determination to the pirate party and avoided every Computer up to this time. Very interesting will be the question too余 how Joe足User is looking in fact at Liquid Feedback? The pirates have an international network behind themselves. Hackerspaces and Coworking 32
Hackerspaces and Coworking (Metalayer) The location an which both the male and female mundane Hacker meeting each other with a cosy atmosphere, is probably the "Hackerspace", best example here: "CBase" in Berlin. Who doesn't like it that "undergroundlike", and who has perhaps an appointment in a different city, for those folks are lucky because, the opportunity of visiting coworking location, to check in, and finally recept the customer which wanted to visit the contractor. The ubiqutous internet has changed many laws a lot of times, as an example, that work has to be made wether in a workplace or within a homeoffice, if this was granted to by your company. Meanwhile thanks to (u.a university (universal) networking it is possible to do such things from nearly every location wishable, although, that here comes a whole new model of "where I am doing my work, how I am supposed to do it, and when"? which is dragged into the spotlight, and about which one people have to intensively are being debated. As an example there is (haven't been there, but resonance is really good) the LinuxHotel in Essen, where in special atmosphere cutting edge projects are being discussed, and being relalized too. The ITlibrary many ITNerd/Crack would have it probably at home. Hackerspaces themselves are very different, kind of a livingcommunity where men/women are meeting with a bottle of Club Mate and a Pizza, at the good italian restaurant around the corner, sitting at harsh programming problems, or preparing a ITSecurity talk, where everybody is asked to take part in. (Most of the time somewhat louder than normal). Then there are some nice things like e.g GeekCruise (cruising with a ship on which IT plays a central role, and this not only at the bridge). Livingcommunities, in which everybody can only get access too if he/she can proof, himself/herself of a driven world "rescuer" with programming knowledge... Our freedoms were never in history that huge like this time, but here is also to be said, that most hackers would be dreaming in Indien and Bangladesh of Coworking and similar things. A list with the worlds most "cool" Hackerspaces is to be found under Hackerspaces TLD for organisations. A Coworking List is available too, to mention something really worth it here: Betahaus in Berlin/Hamburg/Cologne, simply because of, it was the first of its kind in Germany.
3. Chapter Free Culture and their "products" 33