A Conservative Techie

This is a response to the “Has GNOME finally killed off KDE in the Ubuntu Interface.”

Are things really not looking good for KDE in the Ubuntu community? I would argue no they are looking fine. I am amazed at the amount of discussion is happening in regards to the decision not to make KDE4 a Long Term Support release. In fact there was already discussion on Slashdot referencing this change.

I’m amazed everyone has assumed that Kubuntu is dead, KDE is dead, or Ubuntu doesn’t care about KDE all because of this recent change in policy. I have argued previously the decision to change from a LTS release to a regular release was not communicated clearly, but is a good thing for Kubuntu.

I still believe that. Making KDE4 the default for Hardy is a good thing, in fact I think it shows even more the Ubuntu community is behind KDE. I’m looking forward to releasing the hordes of Kubuntu users on KDE4 to stress test and create new bugs and even new fixes for these bugs. KDE is alive and has a great community. In fact I think at times the Kubuntu portion of the Ubuntu community is stronger as there is only one paid developer and yet we release as good a product as Ubuntu with more paid developers.

Anyways, I’m looking forward to KDE4 and Kubuntu 8.04 to showcase how strong the Kubuntu community is.

In a wonderful email from Scott Remnant to the Kubuntu-Devel mailing list there are some great questions addressed about what exactly is happening with Kubuntu 8.04.

The decision was made by the company that provides the LTS, which is Canonical and not the community.

The Technical Board was not formally involved[0] in the decision whether
or not to release Kubuntu 8.04 as an LTS.  “LTS” is a commercial support
commitment provided by Canonical Ltd, who shoulder the financial and
administrative burden of doing so; as such, it is entirely their
decision as to whether or not they provide that support for a particular
release.

And here are some questions that were asked:

Will KDE 4 be stable enough to support for the term of the release?
I’ve not seen anybody who believes that this would be the case; a
long-term supported release would have to be based on the stable KDE 3.5
series.  This gives us the second question:

Will a bug in KDE 3.5 receive upstream attention in March 2011?
In order for Canonical to make a commercial commitment to their
customers, who have signed contracts and terms of service with them,
they need to be sure that they can honour the terms of their agreements.
The KDE upstream position appears clear, KDE 4 is the focus of
developer attention; KDE 3.5 will be supported as long as KDE 4 isn’t
suitable for support.
Given the attention being paid to KDE 4, it is difficult to believe
that this will not be the preferred release in three years time.  Thus
it is difficult to guarantee that upstream will still support the
current stable series for the timescale required.

Is the development community able to sufficiently test the new release?
Again, in order for the commercial commitment to be made, Canonical
has to believe that the development community (which includes its own
staff) are able to provide sufficient testing of both the new release
and upgrades between older releases and the newer one.
This judgement is both based on the number of active testers for the
previous release according to the ISO test tracker, and the relative
popularity of the available packages/seeds.
The number of Kubuntu developers testing releases and recording their
results is right now at an all-time low, this makes it difficult to
guarantee sufficient test coverage of installs and most importantly
upgrades.
Likewise the current download interest is entirely directed towards
KDE 4 packages and CD images.

Thanks again Scott for posting this email, it provides some great answers as to the direction of things.

There has been a lot of discussion in regards to what exactly going on with the next version of Kubuntu 8.04, the Hardy Heron.  I am a little disappointed to find out the 8.04 will not be a long term release for Kubuntu due to the nature of KDE4 being released.

I think this is a mistake, I think it only distances Kubuntu even further from Ubuntu and moves it further into the step-child role that so many people claim it already has.  I understand the fact we only have one paid full time developer.  (Something Mark once said would be resolved but now looks like that will never happen.)  I also know Jonathan Riddell is doing a great job and is already probably spending more working on Kubuntu then is probably healthy.  However I think it is a mistake to have been made by Canonical.

Everyone says it was a decision made by the technical board, the leadership of the Ubuntu Community, but I’m trying to find where that decision was made.  I’ve read the meeting logs that are posted on the wiki and see no reference to the change that was made on any of the discussions that are posted.  This would leave to point this once again to a decision made by Canonical and not by the community or the technical board.  Apparently this decision was made sometime between Jonathan’s recent announcement and UDS-Boston.

I want to state that I really enjoy Kubuntu/Ubuntu, the community and the leadership behind it, but have not the openness behind this discussion that most other decisions are made.  Is it because it is not there, or is it because this was not an open decision?  I will continue to work with Ubuntu/Kubuntu for Kubuntu adoption and with the Official Ubuntu Book, Ubuntu Documentation, Ubuntu QA, and all other teams and projects I have volunteered for.

The next Long Term Supported Version of Kubuntu will probably be closer to 2010 if there is ever another LTS version.  This is way to long to wait for a business or any other enterprise to wait to get on board the greatest desktop environment and have the stability they need. 

The 18-month support of 8.04 on the Kubuntu side will also lead to some confusion over support and also over people adopting Kubuntu 8.04.  This is already seen in the blogsphere based on reaction to the announcement.

I hope Kubuntu 8.04 will be a great rocking release and am looking forward to supporting it the best I can.

Just saw a post from Mark that DVD Playback is now shipping on Dell Ubuntu machines.  That is very exciting news.  Hopefully it will ease the adoption of Ubuntu into the mainstream.

From Mark’s post

Multimedia and DVD are often cited as the biggest things missing from the typical consumer’s expectations of a “fully working system”. Ideally, we could deliver a great multimedia experience in a free software stack but the US patent landscape makes that impossible, so for the moment this requires proprietary software.  My hope is that the content industry will realise that DRM and playback restrictions are harmful to their own interests, and that EMI’s decision to sell MP3’s leads to a broader movement away from restrictive technologies.

For more information on Dell computers with Linux, visit their website

After successfully installing and using the most recent version of Kubuntu (7.10), I was running into some serious problems which was adverserly affecting the way I worked so I decided to reload my laptop.  And this is where the problem started.

I know that I can copy my ./.kde folder to make sure I have a “backup” of everything, but every time this happens something seems to go wrong, way wrong….  I copied back my /home/ directory including the .kde and had my bookmarks, files, and settings, however I did not have my mail configured correctly or even the mail messages.

So I tried in import of the backup folder into KMail and had half of my emails.  What did I do wrong?  Nothing that I can think of.  This is the recommended way to make sure you have all of your mail files, but seems very silly to me.  I can create a .PST file in Outlook or Outlook Express and save this information as it moves between computers.  I have been successful with this over the years maintaining conversations and emails from friends I no longer talk to.  This is not the case with KMail.  I have tried to copy and import my folders several times and lose email each time I do this.  Can someone please come up with a better way of doing this?

I’m thinking about making the switch from my current account to using GMail full time.  Any thoughts on doing this?

A little delayed post here due to traveling to Austrialia for work, but at UDS-Boston, the Ubuntu Developers Summit, I spent a lot of time with the Ubuntu Server Team. One of things we discussed was the different Lifecyle Management Tools that are open source. I highlighted one in an earlier post, Net Director and then the Ubuntu guys spoke about a project they have called Landscape and I wanted to drop a couple of notes in regards to the presentation they made.  (The more I write, the more I realize it is like comparing apples to oranges)

Landscape is a tool created by Canonical to help manage Ubuntu devices in a Small Business. Landscape helps a system admin monitor and admin his/her Ubuntu systems by installing an agent, which is open sourced in case that matters, and that agent then “phones home” reporting information such as package status, what is stored in HAL, and user management information. Landscape reports this information back to a central server managed by Canonical which one can access via a web page to get information about their systems.

Landscape has 4 areas of focus: Package Management, Monitoring, User Management, and Hardware Inventory. I would like to focus on each area and then how Altiris competes with them. Currently Altiris does not support Ubuntu at all, something I would love to see change.

By using Landscape, one can track the different packages and the relationships of those packages. This also allows for a central apt repository that you can download and install the packages from. This is allows one to manage which packages are on the central apt server and then deploy them from the central apt server limiting the bandwidth out to the Internet. When one goes to install software from Altiris, they do it through a software delivery job and the use of package servers thus controlling bandwidth. However you have to download the packages first from a source (such as an apt repository) and then distribute.  If some how Altiris could work with an apt-mirror or something similar it would be awesome.

The Hardware Inventory focus of Landscape will grab anything that is reported by HAL.  Altiris will inventory the same information.  However where Altiris really shines is the reporting more on that later.

The monitoring section of Landscape is just monitoring services that are available.  Basic monitoring Altiris can do as well.

User Management is a poor man’s LDAP in Landscape and currently does not integrate with any real directory service.  I can read the users that I have on each machine but not control how they are setup.

The real focus or wish I have from the little I have seen Landscape is the lack of real reporting.  Altiris dumps all of its data into a SQL database (Microsoft SQL), but at least it is into a database  I can then run reports off of.  This lack in Landscape is a real weakness. 

Say I want to know how many computers have 2 Gigs of RAM in it?  I can pull this information easily out of Altiris, but can’t do this in Landscape.  From Landscape, I can look at each computer, but I can’t create reports of all of my computers.  I hope this comes in future updates to Landscape… Another part of this reporting that Altiris wins in is through the use of collections and policies based on these collections. 

From what I’ve seen in Landscape it looks very promising to help someone in an SMB manage their Ubuntu machines, but really how does it scale for the Enterprise?  Seems like there is a lot of work to be done to get it more enterprise ready.

One of the things I have recently learned is how hard it is to get into a doctor’s office when you travel as much as I do.  I average 2.5 weeks out of 4 that I am on the road, which makes it hard to squeeze doctor visits in.  Also I have a flexible schedule which changes, so I make an appointment weeks in advance and then often times have to reschedule it.

Let me give you an example, I have recently learned I have a food allergy and also have dealt with pericodits (inflamation of the heart lining) which both have required doctors visits, and also unfortantely ER visits but that is a different story.  So made sometime with my primary physician and then was sent to a cardiologist, the cardiologist needed some test ran, which he could run “next week.”  However next week I wwas out of the office so needed to schedule it that day which was successfull.  However for my allergist I am currently waiting to see him and have something scheduled the week of the 18th of January.  Will I be in town?  No clue…..

What I would love is the ability to schedule appointments when I was available, not neccesarily when the doctor’s office scheduled me.  So I would be able to see a “Free/Busy” schedule and then make my appointment when I was able to attend the appointment and also reschedule the appointment if needed without having to call and wait on hold forever.  Of course this scheduling would work only when the doctor’s office wasn’t open and the doctor was available.

This would be even better if I could somehow link it to my personal calendar and then see when I would be out of the office/on the road versus when the doctor was busy.

Can you imagine how much simpler this would make our life?   Let’s not just limit it to Doctor’s visits, I want to be able to schedule everything.  When is the lady who cuts my hair available?  Just check the schedule and book everything there.  Need to schedule a babysitter?  Why just check his/her schedule and book things there.

OF course there would have to be some way to handle double bookings, but let the office or person resolve the problem.  Now if someone could just implement this for me….

If you are looking for an Altiris class to help you obtain your Altiris Certified Engineer, I am teaching a bootcamp class the week of December 17th in Grand Rapids, Michigan for my company, ITS.  If you are interested in taking the class please visit here for the course information, including how to sign up.

The class is high paced, but will help you prepare to take both the Deployment Foundations certification exam and also the Notification System Foundations exam, thus making you an Altiris Certified Engineer.