Having a good time with KDE

I never thought I'd be having so much fun with KDE and FOSS Software as a whole. Its such a good way to learn things and contribute to something which is really beautiful.
In January, I was studying Qt because I found it very interesting, and its cross platform nature really made me to plan serious development.
Then I started to use KDE, which has a very intuitive interface for users. But here comes the real benefit – KDE is a Free Software, so anyone can contribute to the system and improve on it.
I found some minor changes which could enhance user experience, so downloaded the source code, compiled using the instructions on the KDE Techbase, without a single problem.


Then I improved a Timer applet, which did two things – Improved its usability, and improved my C++ skills a lot. The second point is something that people speaking about advantages of contributing to Free Software often forget.
As the software I worked on was part of a real life software which people use, I LEARNT A LOT, mostly from the existing code, and the developers who patiently answered my queries on mailing lists and IRC.
It was not like some college project which you make and only usable for your purposes, its something which thousands of people will use and appreciate.

And today, I commited a patch using my own SVN account, and the words which try to express my happiness – Proud to be a KDE developer, proud to be part of the FOSS movement.
And as KDE says – “Be Free” and “Never Look Back” 🙂

Regards

Improved applet FolderView configuration dialog

As reported in BUG: 186283 , the Filter page in the configuration of the Folder View applet behaved differently from user expectation. Some of the files were shown/not being shown when the opposite was expected. This was due to a peculiarity in the design methodology employed.

This SVN Revision does two things –

  1.  Make the user aware of the conditions required whenever the showing and hiding of icons was concerned
  2. Make it less likely for the user to make those mistakes by employing UI techniques.

Here is the screenshot of the new Filter page –

Filter page in Folder View

NIT Calicut – Day1

When Santosh Vattam told me that I'll be joining them at the FOSS meet at NIT Calicut, I was really very very happy. Staying in the hostel and doing stuff is a lot boring (relatively) than being among superb people. So, we (Santosh, Madhu, Krishna, and myself) set off from the Bangalore central railway station at 5 PM and reached Calicut at around 8 in the morning. On the way to the campus, we got a glimpse of the IIM, Calicut, it was nice. Then came the NIT Hosteels campus, where we stayed and got refreshed at the guest house, before getting 'redirected' to the International Hostel, where I'm typing this up. I must say the hospitality was very good. And by the way, I forgot to post about it, my account as a contributor has opened in FOSS, after I've got two patches accepted in KDE::Plasma. This has gave me lots of motivation, and so I'm now trying for this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC) . Lets see if I'll be able to make it.

KDE 4.x from svn built … learnt a lot

At last I got success in building KDE >4.2 from SVN trunk. Learnt a lot, and many confusions were cleared. The instructions at http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Build/Unstable_Version were very helpful. Had some problems because recently the Qt version used was upgraded to 4.5 RC, so i had to clear my build directories. And , lots of thanks to the #kde IRC channel, was very helpful, and again, to the wonderful documentation at the kde techbase. Trying to work on a minor bug in a plasmoid, but unsuccessful in running its svn version. Lets see what happens …

FOSS Meet At NIT-Calicut 2009

It was very good and exciting to be a part of FOSS Meet at NITC this year. As I've already logged the first day, I am posting about the subsequent happenings. The next day was Python and Django workshop. It was really good, I was sitting with people, trying out what Santosh, Madhu and Krishna were instructing, and then set out to help people who couldn't. The Django session was interrupted a bit due to some time problem, but resumed and was really successful. I got to know how powerful Django was, saves a lot of work. Then, came the day of Qt/KDE Workshop, the one I was getting quite nervous, because few days back I was told that I had to speak !! I was both excited and nervous, because It was going to be my first. That was really really nervous… But all went well, Pradeepto is really good at explaining things, and the way he explained Qt concepts was excellent. After that, I demonstrated how easy was it by using Qt Designer to design interfaces and implement general signal-slots. To my horror, the app stopped responding when I executed it, I turned around, and had a sigh of relief because people got it up and running, phew 🙂 It was nice, and I got good feedback. Thanks to all of you who helped me to get to the FOSS world. Its beautiful.

You can see some photos here. (Thanks to Krishna, Santosh for some of them)

My KDE 4.2 Experience

Hi, Till now I had significant time with the new KDE 4.2. It has been a great experience, most of the things which I wanted to change in KDE 4.1, like reducing the system tray icon size, changing the taskbar look to a better outlined one, are there in KDE 4.2 As for performance, it has been better, KWin used to crash everytime I logged in, even after a clean reinstall.That doesn't happen now, and many rendering problems are less frequent. The new widgets are very handy, like the Network Monitor and Filesystem Monitor, I was thinking of having something which'd display current filesystem status, but as I'm still studying Qt, wasn't able to try.

The concept of desktop activities is also good, though it requires some rendering fixes; I liked the ones implemented for the Plasmoids to adjust themselves on the Plasma workspace, maintaining some distance from the screen edge. And, contrary to the popular demand for hiding the cashew, I LIKE IT. And there is the Desktop Cube for KDE, its nice, but it'd be better if there was some kind of “unification” of Compiz, so that GNOME and KDE shared the same Effects and Compiz control panel. Last but not the least, I found the Lancelot lanucher quite impressive because it visually shows all drives and details in the “Computer” section. On a whole, the overall performance increase in KWin's performance is a good news. Thanks to the KDE developers for these (and others, which I haven't noticed till now) nice improvements. Hope I'll join you too someday (trying). Regards, Shantanu Tushar