A few years ago Novell conducted an online public survey to determine which MS-Windows only need to be ported on Linux desktop. Graphics apps did tops most wanted Linux app list on the survey. However, Linux comes with the sheer numbers of open source software projects produced by the community. You may overwhelmed by the choices available under Linux and not know where to begin.

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My yesterdays presentation about KOffice Version 2 at the Linuxtag was received overhelming good.

The presentation started with me introducing koffice and telling what's my role within that project. The question what KOffice is was probably answered best with the picture of one of our sprints. Based upon my previous experience with the Linuxtag it was clear that I had to address the technial aspects of KOffice. Our Qt+KDE base, our portability (Windows, OSX, Unix, Haiku, x86 and ARM) and our frameworks (most notable our ODF library, kotext, flake and the textshape as concrete sample).

Then I went on with the interoperability topic. First by providing an introduction about OpenDocument/ODF and the MSOffice filters (2000/2003 binary vs 2007/2010 XML) and then by showing how we solved interoperability between them in KOffice as visualized in the following diagram.

What the diagram shows is the way a MSOffice document takes in KOffice. First the MSOffice filter reads the MSOffice document and translates it into a OpenDocument. Then the OpenDocument is passed on to the KOffice application and then read and finally displayed by the application.

The KOffice applications and libraries are implementing support for OpenDoument and OpenDocument only. That means that any other format, including the MSOffice file formats, is not implemented in the application and libraries themself like the OpenDocument format. That in turn means that other filters either needs to access the applications API direct (not recommed) or they need to output OpenDocument to pass it on to the application (recommed). That, the recommed way, is what the MSOffice import filters are doing. They are reading MSOffice documents and are translating them to OpenDocument to pass the produced OpenDocument on to the application.

This results in a network-effect. Any work done on other filters like those for the MSOffice file format, does also indirectly improve the OpenDocument implementation in KOffice. This is the case cause the filters are producing OpenDocument and are testing our OpenDocument implementation and are then either verifying that things are working as expected or are showing bugs that need to be fixed.

Another positive effect of that design is that we got a clear separation between MSOffice related code and our applications and libraries. The MSOffice related code can focus on transformation between two formats and does not need to provide logic to manipulate documents. The applications and libraries in turn don't need to know anything about other formats or even that there exist other formats. They only care about OpenDocument and OpenDocument only.

Yet there is one more positive thing coming out of this. The MSOffice related code is in itself a rather interesting standalone solution. I am sure that the translation between those both de facto standards is an interesting topic even outside of the KOffice or Linux universes. The code does in fact document the differences between the both ISO standards, a nice read for a raining day.

Later, that is after my presentation, I had a few nice talks with KOffice users, potential new users and potential new developers. Then we hang out a bit at the KDE booth till we left for the social event. Eating, drinking, dancing and after amazing 3 hours sleep in a row I had to catch the train to move on to the KOffice sprint 2010 which takes place this weekend.

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There are two Tokyo Linux User Group events in June -- a technical meeting followed by a nomikai on Saturday June 11th (that's tomorrow), and then a separate nomikai on Friday June 25th. So, if you are into FOSS and want to meet some developers from the international community in Tokyo then come on by.

For the last couple of years we've been holding these Linux (and OpenSolaris) meetings at the Sun office in Yoga, which is just outside Tokyo. Just recently, though, Sun became Oracle in Japan, and we'll probably be moving the meeting location for the events to the Oracle building in Aoyama, which is where we held BarCamp recently. There is much more room in the Aoyama facility, and the location is better for the majority of the community as well. I'm not sure when we'll make this change, so watch for updated details in the next month or so. For now, though, we are at Yoga.

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A few images from the Tokyo Linux User Group last night ?

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Some shots from the Tokyo Linux User Group meeting earlier this evening ?

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Generally, all Linux distributions needs a scheduled reboot once to stay up to date with important kernel security updates. RHN (or other distro vendors) provides Linux kernel security updates. You can apply kernel updates using yum command or apt-get command line options. After each upgrade you need to reboot the server. Ksplice service allows you to skip reboot step and apply hotfixes to kernel without rebooting the server. In this post, I will cover a quick installation of Ksplice for RHEL 5.x and try to find out if service is worth every penny.

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There was an interesting Tokyo Linux User Group Meeting yesterday. We did an Open Space meeting (info here, here, here) to have a free-flowing discussion about the community and what we want to do this year. I took notes from the conversation, and I'll post them to the list in a day or so (subscribe here). Basically, we kicked around ideas for technical presentations and how we can structure meetings to enable more types of talks. Also, we want to grow the group, so we'd like to reach out to other communities in Tokyo (and around the world, actually) to see if we can enable some new connections. That's the part I'm most interested in, and that'll be my focus as the group's new vice president (we did a little election today, thanks, guys!). I'm really excited about this. I've been participating in TLUG for a few years now, and I want to do a lot more to help the community grow. I missed the nomikai after the meeting because I was up pretty much the entire night before, but I'll make the next one for sure. Here are some images from the meeting:

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The Tokyo Linux UG will have a technical meeting & nomikai on Saturday November 14th. Stop by.

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Securing your Linux server is important to protect your data, intellectual property, and time, from the hands of crackers (hackers). The system administrator is responsible for security Linux box. In this first part of a Linux server security series, I will provide 20 hardening tips for default installation of Linux system.

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BBC's blogger Rory Cellan-Jones took Ubuntu Karmic Koala for 24 hours test drive and predicated that - "... Ubuntu will remain a very niche product - but it's Google's Android which could bring open-source to the mass consumer market...".

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Some shots from the Tokyo Linux User Group 15th Anniversary Event last night in Akihabara.

My Tokyo Linux User Group archive.

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The Tokyo Linux User Group will be celebrating 15 years of Linux in Tokyo in a couple of weeks. I`ll be there. If you want to go, see the info here. I have been participating in TLUG for over two years now, and I have learned a great deal -- not only about Linux but also about the FOSS community in Tokyo. And, actually, the Linux community in Tokyo is international, so you are always meeting people from not only here but from all over the place. In any given meeting, you could easily have conversations with guys from a dozen countries. Really interesting group. Friendly. Open. Technical. Diverse.

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Some images from the Tokyo Linux User Group (TLUG). Really good technical meeting on Saturday and nomikai later at night. About 50 people came by to hear Zev Blut on using the shell effectively, Alberto Tomita on the upcoming Japan Linux Symposium, and Matthew (Karamoon) on Hackerspaces.

All of my TLUG photos here on Flickr.

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One big risk with git is forgetting which branch you're working in. Several people solve that by putting the git branch in their shell prompt. But often they do that by calling `git branch` and parsing its output, which is quite slow, especially in big repositories (we strace'd it, and it really opens and reads a lot of files).

At GCDS, together with Aurélien Gateau et Sébastien Renard, we came up with
this light-weight implementation (http://web.davidfaure.fr/scripts/git_branch_in_zsh_prompt).

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Hearing that kubuntu jaunty was out, I upgraded two machines today.
My wife's machine, so she can finally use KDE 4.2, and my own desktop machine. On her machine, NVidia card, no problem at all.
On my machine, ATI Radeon X1300, after the upgrade, X would always just show some red dots on the top of the screen, and then the machine would hang (no keyboard, no ssh, nothing except reboot).
I tried every possible driver in xorg.conf, no difference. So this isn't a driver problem, but an Xorg problem.
Other people on #kubuntu (e.g. "chx") reported the same issue.

So... I recompiled the xorg packages from intrepid (i.e. X.org 1.5.2) so that they can be used on jaunty. Long and painful, but it solved the problem. Proof that the problem is really X.org 1.6.0.

In case anyone is interested: http://www.davidfaure.fr/2009/xorg_debs.tar.bz2

Quick instructions: download, unpack, then
sudo dpkg -r xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-input-all
sudo dpkg -i *.deb.

If you see apt-get -f install removing a bunch of video drivers, that's fine; I didn't recompile them all, only a few.

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