Dropbox in Kubuntu Raring

Upgrades to the release candidate today went swimmingly. I tested on both this laptop, using the 64-bit release, and on my netbook for the 32. Everything is gorgeous. KDE 4.10 is like butter.

However, dropbox stopped working. A quick google later, and by using the code from the GetDropbox site, and instructions on setting up auto-start from Richard's (Nixternal) blog, I once more have a working dropbox, on both test boxes. I use it often to share docs between my computers, and the occasional file with the public.

Quoting from https://www.dropbox.com/install?os=lnx :

The Dropbox daemon works fine on all 32-bit and 64-bit Linux servers. To install, run the following command in your Linux terminal.
32-bit:
cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86" | tar xzf -
64-bit:
cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf - 

Next, run the Dropbox daemon from the newly created .dropbox-dist folder.
cd .dropbox-dist
~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

 What you need from Nixternal's blog is the section Configure Dropbox to run at start-up. It would be great to have kfilebox again, but until we do, this is pretty easy.

Promote Lamarckian evolution through GSoC

A short TED talk by neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran inspired me to blog one more time about our upcoming Google Summer of Code project. Whether you are thinking of applying, are preparing to mentor, or are part of a team with some project ideas, give a listen (it's only 7:44 minutes) about how we are literally built to teach and learn from one another. http://www.ted.com/talks/vs_ramachandran_the_neurons_that_shaped_civilization.html?quote=628

What caught my ear was his comparison of Darwinian evolution, which is very slow, with Larmarckian evolution, which can leap ahead, exactly as our culture does. The students who struggle in GSoC, are the ones out of touch with the team, and with their mentors. Sometimes it is the students who withdraw contact when they're in trouble, and sometimes mentors are the ones who are not staying in touch. Either way, the team can notice what is happening, and in a friendly, helpful way, draw the two back into contact.

Success happens when we communicate, because that's how learning happens. Students, when you encounter difficulty, please remember to get into the IRC channel, and if no one answers, write an email. Don't wait a day; don't wait an hour. The summer rushes by and you need all the time so that you can relax and do good work.

Mentors, please experiment with your student at the beginning of your bonding time, what forms of communication work the best for the two of you, or three of you if you have a mentor team. Google hangouts or other voice chats work, as long as someone writes an email summing up the understanding of the road ahead. IRC is important for the team, and students can get a bouncer account by asking the KDE sysadmins once their developer accounts are in place.

Stay in touch! As Vilayanur Ramachandran says,

There is no real independent self, aloof from other human beings, inspecting the world, inspecting other people. You are, in fact, connected not just via Facebook and Internet, you’re actually quite literally connected by your neurons.

So work with your brain, and stay connected.

Progress? It depends on your perspective

I had a disturbing discussion with a family member recently. There were no arguments over facts; we agree on the facts underlaying our discussion. Yet I was shocked at how discouraged he was by the state of the world, and the prospects for progress. No matter what examples I raised, he had more examples which convince him that we're moving backwards. Neither of us managed to convince the other to change their mind. That part wasn't unusual! But I'm unused to encountering this negative view of the universe. I live in the US, and I know that our politics is full of fail!

In the FOSS community, I rarely come across this depressed perspective. In fact, quite the opposite. So I've been thinking about why this is. Perhaps it is because we are involved in changing the world! After all, we aren't just building and distributing free software; we're showing the world that freedom and friendship work. We constantly demonstrate that we can cooperate; with team members, with up and downstreams, with for-profit companies and with non-profit groups, with government and educational groups, and on and on.

We promote freedom, we promote equality, we promote quality. We constantly develop new friendships, we pay attention to our users, and those users help us help them by filing bug reports, cooperating with quality initiatives, by testing, by donating money. We learn to promote our projects, learn to give talks, speeches and reports, learn to build websites, write documentation, learn to communicate in multiple venues, and even learn to recognize bad behavior by friends and team members, or maybe even burnout in our own lives. And of course, we learn what to do in those tough situations, along with dealing with bugs in our software, crochety hardware and processes, or outdated techniques.

I've been reading a book about increasing brain fitness, (bad title warning): Make Your Brain Smarter, by Sandra Bond Chapman which might shed some light. In the section about innovation and creativity, she says you:

incite innovation ... when you: ... broaden and revamp your perspectives... by reading different types of books, exposing yourself to different types of people.... Dismantle old linkages of information to allow new thoughts to brew, ponder free-flowing ideas, consciously ... convert ideas into deliberate change [and] reflect and learn from mistakes -- quickly. [p. 115]

This is what I see in Linuxchix, in the KDE and Kubuntu teams I work in, and on the lists, forums, planets, and in IRC. I hear new perspectives, hear about books, hear from new people, and different people, see new ideas, and old ideas blown up, and see how immediate feedback improves quality fast. Every day!

I think these experiences explain the difference between hope and despair between my family member and me. Not only do I see many groups in my country and around the world who are making a difference, I'm part of a great movement which is improving the world. Whether or not this is the "year of the linux desktop," we are making great software, software which we use, software we are proud to share with the world. We're not only having fun doing it; we're part of how you make the world a better place.

PS: We're getting smarter and healthier as we do so, I hope. By the way, I'm encouraging my family member to get involved in our projects. Here's hoping.

Intentional community

This blog is generally seen in the planets for Ubuntu, KDE, and Linuxchix. These are all FOSS intentional communities, by which I mean that the founders and members form a community to in which they can create. I found Linuxchix first (thanks, Megan!), and I loved how welcomed I was, although I was still at the time using Windows. How many linux channels welcome an mIRC user? The longer I hung out there, the more I learned, and the more I was impressed by all the different work the community members were doing out in the greater FOSS world. I also loved that it was women and men working together to make FOSS a better place for women.

When I ended up using Kubuntu (after trying Mandrake and then Gentoo, and GNOME/Ubuntu), some of the Ubuntu Women members welcomed me onto Freenode. When I found that that freenode was where the Amarok team hung out as well, I added the server to my Konversation server list. Members of both of those teams made me welcome, taught me some of the Freenode quirks, and I learned a bit more about how Linux is made. Lots of teams, loads of projects, each with their own culture and ways of working. Because Ubuntu and KDE both have a Code of Conduct, I felt somewhat safe, although I had heard lots of horror stories about linux channels on freenode and elsewhere. After experiencing some quite frightening attacks in the Linuxchix channels, I learned how resilient a community can be, and how creative security can be -- even fun.

So, codes of conduct. In the wake of the recent controversy following PyCon, one of my friends said that they imply that all men are assholes. This surprised me. Linuxchix has two rules: Be polite. Be helpful. All people are expected to follow them; I see the rules as intentional community. We want polite and helpful resources, so those are the rules for everyone. The Ubuntu CoC has grown a bit through the years, but is still phrased positively: http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/conduct. I prefer the old shorter one, but both are focused on creating a helpful, respectful community.

I like the KDE CoC a lot. Once I found it, I felt much better about becoming involved. It reminded me very much of the simple Linuxchix rules.

This Code of Conduct presents a summary of the shared values and “common sense” thinking in our community. The basic social ingredients that hold our project together include:

• Be considerate 

• Be respectful 

• Be collaborative 

• Be pragmatic 

• Support others in the community 

• Get support from others in the community -- quoted from http://www.kde.org/code-of-conduct/ 

In my opinion, there is nothing in any of these codes or rules that blames men, or is negative. They paint a picture of a place where we want to work, and hang out with friends afterwards. I'm an older woman as the name of this blog implies, and I don't want to pretend to be a guy to collaborate without hassle. I want to be myself, and be welcomed for the skills and passion I bring. I also want more women and other minorities to feel welcome. A boy's club is not welcoming, and linux has that reputation. Too often well deserved.

So I ask each of my readers, what do you want? Is your behavior creating what you want? This is not aimed at men, by the way. All of us create our culture together, intentionally or not. I hope we will more consciously make our community the most pleasant, welcoming and creative in all of FOSS.

[Note on PyCon: The entire controversy has left me feeling sick. Congratulations are in order to the conference staff and leadership, who conducted themselves well. Yet they now have this mess connected to their fine conference, rather than good memories. There are no winners here, from what I can see. Since I didn't attend, and am not part of that community, no comments on PyCon itself or the controversy will be published here.]

Testing, another way to help your favorite FOSS project

I've done some testing before, but this time I want to document it here, so I can come back later and remind myself of some of the critical steps, and so others new to testing can get the confidence to start contributing in this way as well. I'm mainly using Kubuntu as an example here, but applications and desktops need testing as well. If you are using a non-Debian distribution, the commands I use will not work. Consult your documentation for equivalents.

I'm lucky in that I have some extra computers I can use as testing machines. But when I didn't, I used virtual machines, and those aren't too difficult to set up. However, I'll discuss that another time.

In general, please read the /topic in your development IRC channel, then ask about testing, or join the testing channel if there is one. Often you'll be given bug numbers to test for a specific package -- please be sure to comment completely in the actual bug report, not just give feedback in the channel. Be sure to ask what information is necessary. ISO testing is another place where folks are needed; again, your devel channel /topic should give you some good information. And don't forget to join and read the relevant lists as well; no one can be in IRC all the time.

Right now, some packages need testing in the next Kubuntu distribution release. I prefer using the command line for things like this, because 1. in the console, upgrades happen "under" the desktop, so config files are updated cleanly, and 2. it is much faster. So first, the upgrade. Instructions to do this in the GUI: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RaringUpgrades/Kubuntu

If your computer is already on, log out of your session. At the login screen, rather than typing in your password, hit Control + Alt + F2. Then log into first your computer with your username and password, then

sudo update-manager -d

This updates all your repositories to the development release. Next, the start the actual upgrade:

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

You'll have to OK a few things, so it's not entirely unattended. After the packages are all downloaded, the upgrade still takes quite awhile. Sometimes I start this at night, and just check on things in the morning.

Next, you'll need to install the package, or build the application from a tarball, or source. Depending on your distro tools, this might vary a bit.

Building from source

For Amarok, Myriam has a great blog post about how to build from git: http://blogs.fsfe.org/myriam/2009/09/26/compiling-amarok-from-git-locally-full-summary/, so I won't cover that. If you doing a local build of a different package, the steps will be similar. Consult the documentation for details. This blog post is kept updated, and deals with lots of different distributions.

Install from a PPA

To install a package from a PPA, in Debian-based distros, there is an easy way to add it (addrepo in Debian):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:

This will download and register the public key, as well as adding the repository. Then you can simply install the package via the command line or using the GUI tools you prefer.

Build from a tarball

To get the tarball, cd to the directory where you want to unpack it, then wget the file. As as example, here's how I built phonon 4.4.4 from the tarball:

cd ~/kde/src/
wget http://download.kde.org/download.php?url=stable/phonon/4.4.4/src/phonon-4.4.4.tar.bz2
tar xf phonon-4.4.4.tar.bz2
cd phonon-4.4.4 && mkdir build && cd build && cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull $HOME/kde/src/phonon-4.4.4
sudo make install

I'm not sure that building phonon in my home folder was a good idea, but since I build Amarok locally, I've gotten into the habit of doing that.

So now you have your package or packages, and can do the tests, and report your results. Have fun!

The Disgrace of the United States

Ten years ago tonight, my country, my beloved USA, became the Bad Guys. We became the attackers. Sad to say, this is not commonly admitted, any more than we admit that we admit that we invaded Canada in 1812, and were thrown out, or that we stole what is now the US Southwest from Mexico, and then called the treaty the Gadsden Purchase, or that we created, in part, the situations in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq that are now still burdening us and the world. We like to think well of ourselves, as do all people. There is no excuse for teaching lies to kids in history books, though.

There were heroes then; many people opposed the war, voted against the war, marched against the war, and many then paid for their patriotism. The lucky ones were just booed, the more unfortunate lost their jobs. There are many now who still are out telling the truth, and bringing more facts out into the light. Along with the Bush administration, the American press let us down ten years ago with their unquestioning acceptance of the administration lies. And now that same press continues to call upon those guilty of this horrible war, the architects and shills, to give their assessment of the situation now! Unbelievable. And it isn't just Fox "News" either. These "neo-cons" should pay a price for lying to the country, leading to untold thousands upon thousands of deaths and injuries, and beggaring both the US economy and the entire nation of Iraq.

History is based upon the facts, not the white-washing that is currently being attempted. We invaded Iraq for no good reasons, our occupation wrecked the country, and we left in disgrace. Lying about the past will never change the truth. The US lost the War of 1812, and we were the aggressors in the Spanish-American War, the Mexican-American War, the Second Iraq War, and many others. I love my country, and I have to tell the truth.

And now back to free software.

Adventures in git

It has been a bit painful to learn to build from source, but I can do it both from git and from tarballs now. (Painful for me, and I'm sure even more painful for the patient devels who have helped me through my beginner mistakes. Thank you Amarok and KDE Multimedia devs, especially Harald and Myriam.)

Tonight, I was working with the developer of the wonderful little CLI application Rippit trying to get it to work on my system again. He gave me a patch to the tarball which cleared up one error, but then there was another, and GAH. Then I noticed that he used git, DUH, which I know how to clone from and then build. For instance, in this case, it was

mkdir rippit && cd rippit
git clone git://git.fedorahosted.org/rippit.git
cd rippit && mkdir build && cd build && cmake cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull $HOME/rippit/rippit

sudo make install

From the error message, Trever could tell that I wasn't using the proper branch. So:

cd src

then, rather than ls to list all the branches, 

git branch -a 

git checkout remotes/origin/0.1 (I found this method on Stackoverflow. Thanks superlogical for your answer.)

From there, delete the build folder, and do the rest of the process as before. I love stringing together the commands with && which make it so much easier for me to copy/paste or use the up-arrow in Yakuake. I want to make it easy to rebuild so that testing can be quick.

Finally, a working Rippit again! Thanks again, Trever. You rock! KDE devels are the best.