The story of a poster or the making of Fii Liber Land

The task was forgotten, sitting untouched for months, when I was reminded about it (and perhaps assigned in the tracker): make a poster design for the Fii Liber project, to be put at Ceata's headquarters.

I got the "Fii Liber Land" concept right away in my head, but it was too complicated (so I thought) and I was not in the mood for drawing it, so postponed it for a while, over a week, during which I kept working on demotivational posters (more on that in a couple of weeks, the project is not ready to be announced), while trying to simplify the idea and do something easy, which I would be able to do in the blink of an eye and no effort.

Time passed and I was unable to come with a simplified form, so build my courage and went for the whole shebang: I could get away with the simple kite (the Fii Liber logo) on a blue sky and the clouds from the current website header along with a text like "Fii Liber. Noi suntem liberi! Tu?" ("Bee Free. We are free! You?") but that was less than optimal: the kite and the clouds do not match in their visual style (I made the kite logo on my usual style but when it came to the clouds I was "busy" and skipped the task) and... I wanted to make a point and I am not the person to step back from a controversy.

Fii Liber is queued for an infrastructure upgrade, will be migrated to Drupal 7, and with this it will receive a new theme, which I find boring, corporate-like and bad for our "normal users" audience (obviously, some people in the team disagree, so they want the change). The poster is supposed to show the friendly and informal image I envision for the project.

But I talked already too much, time for some pretty pictures! Here is the poster design I came with:

As you can see, it represents a happy land with hallmarks of life, technology and culture (as Ceata is an organisation promoting Free arts and technology) with a kite (the logo) flying freely over it. Of course, there are some stereotypes included, like Dracula's castle, a Modavian painted church or the Endless Column (do I need to also talk about sheep?)

Now the work is not done :) From my point of view it may be, but since the design is Free and a group has different visions, modifications may happen: the Ceata logo, which is not loved any more may get axed (in what I see as a mistake for growing the identity) and some text may get added at the bottom, where I intentionally didn't allow the space for.

As said, done, time to go forward, staying a bit more in the poster land... a bit of work is planned today on the demotivational side :)

First thing to do after a Firefox 4 install

1. go to View -> Toolbars
2. uncheck "Tabs on Top"
3. Profit!

Now Firefox is once again consistent with the rest of my desktop.

Proud to be European or Fx4 5M

5 million downloads in less than 24 hours and the adoption rate does not show any sign of slowing down, I guess it was a much awaited release. While we were asleep, NA closed the gap, from ~50% to ~75% but as usual they are trailing behind, let's count again at 10M which I guess it will be about tomorrow.

From my part, I exercised my BOFH powers and deployed it since yesterday at my [small business] workplace, but .ro is weak so far, less than, for example, 1/10 compared with .de (at ~1/4 of population size).

Firefox 4 taking over the world

Recorded a few minutes ago from http://glow.mozilla.org/, by now the counter is already at 849.233

Demotivational Posters with GIMP

Having a lot of unplanned free time time on my hands and bing in exceptionally good spirits and getting my hands of a few useful pictures, I decided it is the time (wow! almost a year passed!) to write yet another graphic tutorial, this time about creating a demotivational poster with GIMP.Something like this:

When uploading to Wikimedia Commons a few photos taken in the last weekend in Târgoviște, it was the perfect opportunity to remember how difficult is to pay attention when filling all the metadata and notice how plenty of apps on my GNOME desktop are able to upload to various proprietary services like flickr, Picasaweb or facebook, but none I know of will make it easy to upload to Wikimedia. Or there is one and I didn't do my searching homework well? Or it is deliberately so to keep the spam under control?

Update: as suggested in the comments, I tried commonist, a Scala/webstart app, which is not bad at all, not as desktop integrated as a real app would be, not as easy to launch and missing a few features, but it does 90% of the needed job... is probably the best option.

PS: yes, at the first look seeing the splash I wondered if I caught a virus or trojan...

Update: after using the tool for another upload, I think I have to adjust my rating: it does 75% of the job :)

The Thunderdome - A GNOME Wars Comic

Watching the FOSS blogosphere, is pretty much like news television before some elections: two sides throwing mud at each other, trying to win you on their side, but in the end, no matter who wins, you still be screwed. Really, as in politics the lesser of two evils is still evil, in GNOME the lesser of two retards is still retard.

And as in politics the people reaction is not to vote, also in software it can be not to upgrade. Honestly, I don't care what will happen in the Ubuntu camp, but I am pessimistic about the Fedora camp: even if the users revolt for, pulling a number completely out of my ass, only half of the regular downloads, the poisonous people won't get fired, they will talk their employer into the excuse as a normal trend of people moving to mobile device and will make it even worse.

RLUG meet, March 2011

Yesterday we had the March edition of the monthly LUG meet, held again in a room at the Polithnica University of Bucharest, with help from our friends at ROSEdu.

This time it was short, we had only 3 talks, each of them being "lightning" (mine was the longest, at around 12 minutes), so for the next time we need you as a speaker too. The event ended with some traditional pizzas and beers.

The talks covered:

• QR codes with Free software in Linux, by Nicu Buculei
• Linux From Scratch 6.8 by Ovidiu Constantin
• Scapy, python packet generating tool by Alex Juncu

The GNOME wars

There is so much noise on the web these days about the big flame: GNOME with the Shell versus Canonical with Unity, I find very amusing the naivety of many people not understanding its roots.

In fact is very simple: the Linux world is going to war, a war between Red Hat and Canonical and GNOME just happened to be the first big visible battle on this war... expect more like this to come while Canonical feels the need to grow and at some point start making some money and Red Hat feels its dominant position challenged more and more.

Who will win? Is still too early to tell.

F16 name proposal: Lock Up Your Daughter

The submissions are open for the Fedora 16 name proposals and there are cute drawings on Planet supporting some of them, so as immature as I am, I couldn't stop myself plugging my tablet and quickly drawing something (nothing fancy, just a quick scribble) for what I think is the best possible code name for F16:

I can already hear "huh?" from people not understanding this, so used the tablet a little more, scribbled some additional text and here is a full graphic:

The voices in my head are still "huh?", so I guess is the time for more words: after the huge fiasco Fedora 15 is going to be, we very likely will go downhill, towards extinction and the only way to survive will be to get the hackers back in power. If that will happen, expect them to take no prisoners.

Now only to find a link between "lovelock" and "lock up your daughter" and the proposal can be officially submitted...

Breaking News: Fedora 15 *Beta* leaked! Now with desktop icons!

The Alpha release of Fedora 15 is expected to hit the news on a few hours (the torrents are already up if you think it is a reason to hurry), which makes this leak even more sensational, as the Beta release is scheduled in about one month from now.

It was leaked from trusted sources the biggest feature that will hit the code in the meantime, based on user feedback, and the info is certain, it is proved by the screenshot below, taken from actually running code: icons will be returning to the GNOME 3.0 desktop.

The info is even juicier, not any icons will be provided but the default install of the Desktop (GNOME) Live CD will come with the set of icons which are more useful for any desktop user, shortcuts for downloading and installing proper desktops, like KDE, Xfce and LXDE and also for wiping the Linux partitions.

Unfortunately a large-scale user survey revealed most new potential users will choose the last option (returning to Windows), after the suicidal moves that happened inside the GNOME desktop with the migration from the 2.x to 3.x branch, this is why this option is the last in the list, with the hope a few will still remain as Linux users in general and Fedora users in particular.

An unconfirmed last-minute rumor tells until final the list may be completed until final release in May this year with another option, for downloading and installing Ubuntu with Unity, but it comes from a less trustworthy source, so keep it so far only as a rumor.

[p]review: Fedora 15 + GNOME 3.0, a skippable release

So now that the Alpha release for Fedora 15 has been declared gold, all the features are in, only polish and bug fixing are to be applied until final, is the time for previews are reviews, it was also the time for me to look at the new default desktop and understand what is coming. The executive summary of my review is: from a desktop point of view, this is a release to skip, and I am not talking about the Alpha, but about F15 altogether.

As you can see from the first look, the desktop is very bare, one single panel at the top, no icons, no files, no applets, no widgets, no nothing. And the panel and its widgets are dark, Windows and OS X style.

What I tested here is a very fresh version: GNOME 2.91.6 from Fedora 15 Alpha RC2:


Playing with the Desktop Live image, our default download there is very little to do other than getting a feel of the desktop, practically there is no app to use, which is a shame and a disservice to fedora... the ISO is 567MB for i686, respectively 568MB for x86_64, with plenty of room left available for a few useful goodies, that would make it an useful tool.


As with the apps is very little to talk about (at least we have in a beta of Firefox 4), let's move back to the desktop feel: for me not having a second panel with an open windows list so no quick application switch is possible turns into a huge productivity killer. No icons on the desktop means a big paradigm switch and very slow access to my files and to the general file system and no applets on the panel means little usefulness of my desktop - for example what good is Gnote now if I don't have access to my notes with 2 click any more?

And our friends from the Desktop Team succeeded to make it feel "Fedora" as little as they could, I am not talking now about the striped background that was pushed kindly asked for, I talk about a non-blue icon set in the file manager, not-blue window titles an widgets (funny, see how the scroll bar is still blue in Firefox but not in Nautilus?), the dark theme... all those break a tradition since before Fedora was Fedora, a decision made behind closed doors by a very small group of people.


I didn't need more than 5 minutes to understand this is not for me, the developers made GNOME 3.0 worse from my usability point of view than Xfce and even than LXDE, so the next step was to try the backup option, the classic panel was supposed to be available as a fallback option and providing a "classic" style of work. Unfortunately, the settings are now re-organized in an awkward control panel where is no option to switch modes.


Unable to find a switch, the first idea was to reboot, degrade the video settings, so hardware acceleration isn't available and the panel kicks in automatically. This was an opportunity to learn I can't reboot my PC, only shut it down or suspend... hello! this is a desktop, not a portable! And also learned I don't have handy access (where the panel applets are gone?) to safely umount the USB stick where I saved my screenshots.


So reboot and degrade the video mode.


And surprise! As I expected, the panel is not the classic feel promised to people complaining about a paradigm shift, but is a half-assed effort to provide... something. It is half shell and half panel.


There is a window list, there are some applets, you can put launchers on the panel, the desktop is empty, with no files or launchers, the colors are an uneven mix of light and dark, the window widgets are completely different... at least you can use Gnote and switch apps.


So not even the "classic" mode is not good for me, time to end the review, an opportunity to notice neither here I have easy access to safely umount the USB stick where I saved the screenshots, there are some applets available, but only very few.


Conclusions:

• for me, GNOME Shell as it will be available in Fedora 15 is not an option, my advice is if you can live with KDE, Xfce or LXDE instead, use one of those, they are better desktops. If not, do like me: stay with GNOME 2.32, it is a so better desktop compared with those other options;
• if you hope the Shell problems will be fixed in the couple of months until final, have a touch of reality: this is Alpha, is feature complete, only small bugfixes will get in forward, the problems outlined above are intentional decisions made from a flawed design, they won't be fixed this release cycle
• my faith with GNOME in Fedora is very low, the designers and developers refuse to listen, labelling all the non-enthusiastic feedback as "stop energy". Unity, the GNOME fork driven by Canonical does not look better either, so I can't think about a positive outcome, even if a massive user backslash will happen, the people in charge are so arrogant, they will not acknowledge their mistakes.

Romanian Fedora community at crossroads

By the official numbers there are 9 Fedora Ambassadors for Romania, this sounds like a healthy number but: some of them I know nothing about, from some didn't hear in more than a year, some are busy with life, some working exclusively on derivative distros, some left the country and some left the country with a paid job on a competing distro... Also, I am not an Ambassador, so not included in the list above. Yet.

We had our little Romanian Fedora community in Bucharest: two ambassadors (one contributing code and packaging, another focusing mostly on our own infrastructure) and me, having a hand in many things. We are joined at times by an Ambassador from a far-away city (he works mostly in localization) and another Ambassador from Bucharest disappointed enough by Fedora to become a CentOS refugee and contributor. Not big, but I can say we are friends and were able to to some things: organize release parties, represent Fedora at event and conferences, work with other organizations, maintain a website with news and user support (forum)... in a word be visible. All this while having a lot of fun.

What's our status now? Well... one of us left the country to work on a competing commercial distro, one will leave the country in a few days and will get probably swamped with work at a new job, one as I said before, moved completely to CentOS and the other was promoted and is also swamped with work. Soon the community in Bucharest will be left only on my shoulders, me who I also am quite disgruntled and wondering what to do for the future, with Fedora being less and less the distro and the community we all knew, loved and contributed to.

I am looking forward and those are the options I see:

• do nothing, continue by inertia and leave the things to evolve naturally. If there will be a genuine need, people will come and help "make it", if not, let it die by natural death, it was not needed;
• reborn, find somehow the needed energy (I am really empty by now) to raise awareness and recruit new contributors, inject new enthusiasm, make friends, get exciting things happen;
• give-up, acknowledge "they" destroyed Fedora, acknowledge my friends already left or are far away, I can't "make it happen" and go away, where the life will lead on.

So, not trying to be overly dramatic, what should I do? Why? I am sure other people from the community passed trough similar times and may be helpful to learn about their experience.

PS: this is not and invitation for other community distros to try to "recruit" me

A better home for our LUG videos

After enough troubles with video hosting services we decided to take our destiny in our own hands: we have the infrastructure, don't have to be held hostages.

So I imported (manually...) the archive in the new site, videos from December 2009 until today, a total of 51 recordings, summing 11.3 GB, all available freely in free formats (Ogg Theora) in the Media category of the ProLinux website (or under the video tag, if you fancy that).

Now it the time to assume my deserved blame: 3 months are missing from the archive - May 2010 when due to life happenings I simply forgot about editing and uploading the videos (sources are available, will do it at a later time), August 2010 when I misses the monthly meeting (was at a Metal festival, out of the city and unable to record) and November 2010, when again due to life happenings, I didn't record the meeting, even if I attended. Sorry.

And for the future I will take more care with encoding, not relying on external services will try not to strain our resources too much, compress more aggressively and save storage space and bandwidth for everyone. Of course after the Firefox 4 release (it that will ever happen :p ... it was delayed so much...) will investigate moving to WebM for video delivery.

Enjoy the viewing! (of course, all the content is in Romanian)

Feeds and aggregation

I wonder if the invention of a censorededited version of Planet Fedora is an invitation for the rest of us to open the content gates for everything on the "normal" planet.

Hmmm... should I start by posting a few Fedora-related photos (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and then see where it goes? My fingers are itching so bad...

PS: I have no intention to apply to the new aggregator (it seems you have to apply and be approved)

Video woes / February RLUG meet

I know people wait for me uploading the videos from the February RLUG meet and I am delaying more than usual but is not my fault!, all the blame is on crappy video hosting services, especially blip.tv.

When you upload video presentations from your Linux User Group you obviously want them in a Free format and playable out-of-the-box on a Linux box, so Flash-only is not a solution, YouTube is not a solution until they will have guaranteed WebM delivery (I upload there HD videos, they are still Flash-only)... the best solution seems to be blip.tv, but it fails the expectations very often.

I complained it in the past when the frustration was big enough, then it worked for a while and now again it does not work: quickly after the meet last Thursday I started editing and uploading and by Friday everything was up... but queued for Flash conversion, without what playback is almost impossible. In the past when the conversion failed, it failed after a few hours, this time they are stuck: waiting in the queue and nothing happening.

I did wait, one, two, three, four days... until it was enough and wrote a ticket to the support system, asking about the status (remember, the conversion was, and still is, queued, not failed, not successful, not anything). Of course my ticked was closed as solved with the following resolution:

Hey Nicu,

We're huge fans of free software and OGG in particular. We're very much looking forward to the day when a majority of Web video is encoded using free tools like OGG.

That said, unfortunately, blip doesn't offer any active support for .ogg or .ogv conversion to Flash. It works sometimes, but not always. We use ffmpeg and ffmpeg2ogg for conversion to an intermediary format, and from there to Flash. Unfortunately it's hit or miss.

Until we have a reliable OGG/OGV transcoding solution (and we're working on it) you're probably better off uploading MOV, WMV or FLV files as your "primary" format. You can still upload OGG/OGV files as an "alternate" format so that people using GNU/Linux can watch in that format if they choose.

blip.tv

Thanks for nothing! Sweet talk and no action - they didn't even look at the files, they are still "queued", it was a standard answer (and is true the Theora tools sucked always, that's why the format pretty much failed).

But enough with apologies, I have to deliver something, surely people are waiting... what can I do is to link directly to the OGG sources on blip.tv, people will be able to see them with a competent browser and blip.tv won't receive full page views and ads display... sorry, they let me with no choice.

So the February RLUG meet was again hosted by ROSEdu in the Universitatea Politehnica Bucuresti and we had a number of talks:

• Fotografie Remote cu Entangle by Nicu Buculei (lightning talk)
• Distractie cu MeMaker by Nicu Buculei (lightning talk)
• Linux pe un Tablet PC by Radu Zoran (lightning talk)
• Tune in .. on Linux ! by Cornel-Florentin Dimitriu

And, of course, there is a photo gallery from the event, hosted as usual on our Fedora local website.

Since I was lazy enough not to prepare formal slides, under the excuse my presentation were live demos, showing applications in use, I feel I needed to deliver more, so as they were short enough (remember, lightning talks), I also uploaded them on YouTube: Entangle, MeMaker.

I have no idea what to do with my videos next month, suggestion welcomed.

Mischief: how it's made

Now that Nihed published his own FOSDEM 2011 photos is a perfect opportunity for me to steal one of them and use it as a "making of" poster for my own stuff, how mischief is dealt and then shared.

ph34r teh 3v1l gr1n!
Thanks Nihed!

Bye Nokia, it was a fun journey

My current phone is a Nokia, my previous phone was a Nokia, in fact all my mobile phones so far were Nokias. My next phone will not be a Windows Phone. I think is the time to say goodbye, Nokia is not any more the company I trusted and willing to make business with.

There is a good part here, now I am pretty sure my next phone will be Linux powered and way more open. Thank you Nokia for driving me to Android, which most likely will be the OS of my future phone. And thank you Nokia for helping me to stop crave for a MeeGo device.

After FOSDEM 2011

I need revenge! Biertie stole my thunder and taking advantage of my rest after the travel back home he posted first the group photo from the FOSDEM finale. I must take revenge on him... maybe searching one embarrassing picture of him from the event? Let's try:

Or should I take revenge on the rest of the world, with a "behind the scene" picture from the event? Let's try that too, this was the world behind the desk of out booth:

But anyway, it ended, so we departed in (crocodile?) tears:

If you want more pictures showing the FOSDEM 2011 story, I have this full gallery with unedited photos (too many for my time, trying now to put on some with food and the city).

Keysigning madness

This is keysigning madness: everyone signs with everyone:

Crossdistro talk @FOSDEM

Three community leaders, representing from left to right Debian, Fedora and SUSE in a talk about disto collaboration:

OLPC + Fedora + FOSDEM

We have an OLPC at tge FOSDEM Fedora booth, so this shoot was pretty much obligatory:

Transnational Republic

Temporarily, the Fedora booth at FOSDEM is hosting an office for releasing identity cards for the citizens of the Transnational Republic

Of course I have to have mine too:

And now I am a transnational citizen.

Come to get your too :)

FOSDEM 2011 day 2

The second day of FOSDEM started, our awesome ambassadors are in positions doing their job, I am trying to sort and send some photos and plan for more posts covering the event... some of them will really, really disappoint people but... theey will make other people happy.

Survival guide for FOSDEM

To survive in Belgium you basically need two things: the first one is fries:

and the other one is trapist beer:

...oh wait, I think I got the order wrong! But important is that many survived...