KDE Tip for SLED10

Team Mobile
In Nuremberg, Novell has a sub-team within SUSE called “Team Mobile.” Team Mobile deals with solving laptop issues that hold back Linux desktop adoption for mobile users, as well as dealing with PDA issues.

Erin Quill and I interviewed Holger Macht and Timo Hoenig about what they put into SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, and what they hope to get done before the next release of openSUSE. The interview will be up on Novell Open Audio within a week or two (after production editing is done, and perhaps we get a couple other SUSE interviews out).

The KDE trick
Team Mobile told us about a cool feature that is likely not documented. In KDE on SLED10, when you mouse over the Kpowersave screen resolution applet’s icon, you can use the mouse wheel to increase or decrease the screen brightness. (You may need to add the applet to the KDE interface on SLED10.)

Not a big deal? Well, according to Holger, dimming your LCD panel can extend the charge life of a laptop battery by about 40%, so it’s the biggest battery hog over which we have some control. In both GNOME and KDE, SLED10 uses some smart algorithms to dim or brighten the screen according to whether on battery or AC power. But sometimes when you need to briefly brighten the screen while on batterery, this gives a quick way to bring the brightness up and back down.

So that’s kind of a cool feature. For those who thought SLED10 introduced innovations only on GNOME, you won’t find this one there. Team Mobile probably won’t have it for GNOME until openSUSE hits v.10.2.

It Takes Two to Samba

One of Jeremy Allison’s wildman troopers on Samba is Lars Mueller, based here in Nuremberg where Erin Quill and I are visiting this week. Lars immediately won Erin and I over with his enormous enthusiasm for his work on Samba and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. We plan to post his extremely articulate interview on Novell Open Audio about integrating the Linux desktop with Active Directory. It’s very cool stuff that will go on line in a week or two.

But for now, let’s take a look at peer-to-peer sharing between Linux and Windows clients.

Peer-to-peer Samba in Userland
In Jeremy Allison’s talk with Novell Open Audio, Jeremy mentioned some easier-to-use peer-to-peer sharing user tools that he had worked on..

In the SLED10 desktop file management interfaces, like Nautilus, you can right-click a folder and share it.

Being enabled through Samba, this makes it easy for a user to share a folder on a Linux machine with other Linux clients, Windows clients and of course Macs. The dialog is simple, and looks like this.

Of course, many of us do not want our users to be doing this all over our network. And because Windows has long since proved that easy file sharing can be exploited by viruses, this feature that is turned off by default.

To make the feature work, you go into YaST and start the Windows Domain Membership tool.

The tool has an option to allow your end users to use this feature, and of course allows you to restrict by groups who can share a folder.

And, since so many people ask me whether this will become available on other distro’s: Yes, this too has been contributed upstream to the Samba mainline.

Anyway, remember that the main point of this is that end users don’t need to know their root account, nor do they have to edit a text file of restart Samba or anything like that. And that’s a good thing when it comes to moving desktop Linux into the vast hordes of more general users that lie beyond today’s more self-reliant techies.

Post from Nuremberg

This is my first time back to the SUSE office in Nuremberg since the first time I came out about two years ago. It’s great being back.

Sonja Krause-Harder, a developer evangelist for openSUSE, did a spectacular job coordinating a huge number of interviews for Novell Open Audio. Erin and I have been talking pretty much non-stop since noon yesterday, and we don’t finish until noon tomorrow.

So far we have the following subjects and people recorded and ready for editing:

• Multiplehardware platforms and SUSE Linux with Bodo Bauer and Ihno Krumreich
• An AutoBuild overview with Rudi Oertel and Michael Schroeder
• Quality Assurance testing details with Oliver Ries and Christian Hueller
• Integrating SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop with Active Directory, as told to us by Lars Mueller
• KDE development at SUSE with Stephan Kulow and Adrian Schroeter
• The SWAMP project (Workflow Administration and Management Platform) with Thomas Schmidt

We still have three more interviews lined up today, and two more tomorrow morning.

Today, while having a quick meal with our friend Roman Drachtmueller (SUSE security architect), Erin briefly complained about his brain being full. We though he was just joking and had a brief laugh. But when his head suddenly exploded, pieces scattering all over the little Turkish lunchroom in which we were sitting, we realized how serious he actually was. After collecting the largest pieces in a box and profusely apologizing to the establishment’s owners, we quickly shuffled back to the office. Roman seemed uncertain of me as he explained that although most Germans speak English relatively well, they do not, in fact, have a king, which is why they all look at me so strangely every time I request someone where I might find all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.

Okay, maybe that last bit was just to see who is paying attention.

Podcasts I Like

I have frequently extolled the boys at LugRadio as a major inspiration behind Novell Open Audio. But Novell Open Audio was also inspired by several other podcasts. So, while I continue to give due credit to the boys at LugRadio who demonstrate that talk about Linux can be made fun and interesting, sometimes even informative, AND in celebration of a fantastic LugRadio Live, the grassroots community event spawned from the loins of the LugRadio podcast, I present my list of favorite podcasts, which mostly deal in scientific discovery and worldviews.

• Skepticality
  Skepticality deals/dealt in taking the rational view of claims of the paranormal. Sadly, Derek and Swoopy have been gone so long that we’re all wondering whether they will return. I’ll note that I was listening to them before some guy at Apple (with a name like “Steven Hobbes” or something like that) spotlighted them at MacWorld.
• Point of Inquiry
  Fortunately for the world, Point of Inquiry has stepped in where Skepticality left off. Moreover, they have taken the rationalist perspective to new podcast heights. It has become my favorite podcast–even over LugRadio. However, I do wish that they would offer a separate channel donation-appeals-free for members of the Center for Inquiry. An interesting fact is that Host DJ Grothe has implied that he is a political conservative, which I point out mostly because many people believe that being a secular humanist equates to being a liberal.
• Discovery News
  I have an ongoing gripe with how the Discovery Channel (and its various other syndicates) uses cheap gimicks to boost ratings. They frequently pander to paranormalism. But the Discovery News podcast is par excellence. It offers short, timely and well edited segments on the various goings on in science.
• Science Friday
  Ira Flatow’s weekly Talk of the Nation show on National Public Radio is generally top notch. For the podcast release, they wisely chose to break up the show into discrete segments so that you can better manage the listening. I donate through my local NPR station KUER.
• Science News
  Scientific American, the magazine to which I subscribe and read as much as my other fancies allow me, also puts out a terrific podcast. It needs little added description.

That’s it for now.

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On second thought, no it’s not…

Begin Tangental Rant

I still encounter a lot of people who don’t quite get the podcast idea. They seem to be the same sorts who haven’t quite gotten what the big deal is about TiVo (or for purist, MythTV). “Audio on demand” is a spectacular innovation, but not for the reasons that we too often hear from people who are trying to convince others to pay for their assistance at using this “rapidly growing new medium.” (I mean, barf! Overblowing statistics about the vast number of potential listeners is so stupid that it’s not worth explaining to the leeches who approach me with their “innovative new services.”) Like almost everyone who understands the medium, the thing I love about podcasts is that there is finally content out there that interests me. So if you don’t like these podcasts, or you vehemently disagree with them, please understand that it’s okay for us to disagree on some of what we choose to listen to. At least on my side. Yours?

/End Tangental Rant

Paris Novell User’s Group

Last night, Erin and I presented to a group of various people from the Paris Linux Users Group and the Paris Novell Users Group. [Note to self: Try to schedule events in Paris before Bastille Day or after the French summer holidays.]

Jimmy Pierre, the fearless leader for NUI France helped us to organize the event, and the Novell office in Paris provided facilities. After the event, Jimmy and his lovely wife took us to a nice brasserie for dinner. (Alas, it turns out that a brasserie has nothing to do with brazieres! Go figure.)

Favorite things about presenting in France? The French always have an excellent sense of humor. Especially when it comes to my poor ability to speak French and my American accent. (I’m not sure what this means, but I’m sure it’s a charming way of saying “nice try”: “Votre français est sympathiquement ‘correct’ !” –Jean-Claude Tavera.) Oh, and Champagne and aperatifs after the presentation!

Today, we hang out in the Paris office doing some work abd speaking to colleagues. Then, on to LugRadio Live.

Novell Open Audio goes to Nuremberg

Erin Quill and I are bound for the beautiful city of Nuremberg next week. We will be doing a series of interviews with various SUSE Linux engineers from Monday through Friday. If any of our Novell Open Audio listeners have suggestions on who we should talk to, please post a comment on my personal blog page for this post.

This is part of our grand tour, including the Paris Novell users group, LugRadio Live, and the SUSE Linux office in Nuremberg.

Note for Belgium- & Netherlands-based Listeners: Erin and I have been totally unsuccessful at lining up a users group meeting in or around Amsterdam or Brussels. If you have one coming up on July 26th or 27th, email me as soon as possible. We may be able to make it. [thaeger AT novell]

A Girl Named Spike

I’ll be quite happy to see the statistical spike fall off my blog hit statistics on Monday evening. One extreme day managed to flatline everything I have posted since. Perspective will soon be restored.

The Man who is Killing Linux

I finally found him.

This man, an Intel employee living somewhere around Portland, Oregon, joined us for dinner one evening during GUADEC.

I think I need not impress upon my readers exactly why and how he is single-handedly killing Linux.

___
[for those who don't get the joke]

Comments Re-opened

My apologies to everyone who has been frustrated by the “login required” for comments. I finally found the obscure setting and turned it off.

So, please comment, comment, comment.

By the way, I’m on vacation until July 17. I’ll try to moderate and approve during that time, but there will be little Internet access where I’m going.

J’aime La France (mais je parle le francias tres mal)

(Sans assistance de Babelfish)

Mes amis francais, je vais a la France pour le 20 de julie avec Erin Quill, et nous allons presenter a la chapter de Novell Users International de Paris. Plus information est ici.

Et, oui. Ca c’est tout la francais que je peut parler, et je sais que ca n’est pas tres bon.

Desktop Linux Defined: SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10

“SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is a very capable, industrial strength desktop which is ready to take on basic desktop chores in the corporate environment, and for the price you simply cannot go wrong. Superb hardware support, ease of installation and configuration, mass deployment and profile management tools, business class applications, cutting edge visual technology, and rock solid performance make this distribution a no-brainer for business desktops around the globe.

Two thumbs up to Novell for redefining the way I look at the desktop operating system. “

read more | digg story

Macros and Bacon

Pursuant to my last two posts, in order of earliest to latest:

Excel Macros:
The reply back from Michael Meeks about the first file submission response to my “Excel macros” post was, as expected, genuine and appreciative. One Robin Small of Fresno, California, submitted a .xls file used for tabletop gaming. Meeks’ enthusiastic reply:

“This is a great test ‑ we found a new ‘Like’ operator that we are (apparently) missing‑ which is cool; exactly the type of thing we’re looking to find & fix.”

But before saying that, he made sure to redirect the credit I had paid him to where it was actually due.

“My Virtues? It’s all Noel’s work [Noel Power] you know :‑)”

See? Gracious. And, following Michael’s fine example: Noel, I apologize for attributing your achievments to Michael. Please forgive my error.

Banshee, Hold the Bacon:
Unfortunately we must now head on over to the opposite end of the spectrum. What’s the opposite of “gracious,” anyway? How about, “Surly and ham-handed?” That about hits it on the head.

Of course, you can probably see that this is building toward Bacon’s unfortunate reply to my courageous public disclosure about how I had deceived him for a longer period of time than use in the immediate joke at hand would require. [If I ever contruct another sentence like that again, shoot me.] I even went so far as to admonish the entire world for hating him. There really ought to be some kind of medal. But alas, there is nothing of the sort, as his reply demonstrates. It reads:

“In addition to such crimes against reason, he denies his part in the grand-bacon-conspiracy (to which he has worked with Messrs Bockovich, Cooper and Nocera), and has also participated in the act of senselessly launching non-descript chunks of fruit at salad dodging GUADEC participants with orange hair. Is there no limit to the depths this man will stoop to?”

First of all, Brother Jono, I believe that the grammatically correct question is, “Is there no limit to the depths to which this man will stoop?” [ready...aim...] Secondly, what with your immediate readiness to hurl barbarous invective at the solitary person on this planet who does not actually hate you, well, it’s little wonder that everyone (except me) hates you. [fire!]

I suppose now that I have to get Aaron Bocktoverfest to testify for me.

Everyone Hates Jono Bacon

Except me.

But it could be construed that I hate Jono Bacon. See, it went kind of like this. When Jono complained that the mighty Aaron Bockover had committed code to Banshee specifically to disallow music feeds containing the letters “jono,” I mused aloud, “I wonder who could have put him up to that?” To which Jono replied with a narrowing glare, “You bastard.” I was quite satisified with my deceptive coup, figuring that it would sort itself out in due time.

Now, I find that Jono is still under the impression that I was part of some vast cabal who put Aaron up to his crime. So I’m here to set the record straight: I did not put Aaron Bockover up to his deed of inspiredly brilliant subterfuge.

Unlike the rest of you people, I do not hate Jono Bacon.

[This debate continues.]

OpenOffice.org and Excel VBA Macros

[Note to All Readers: I no longer work at Novell, so I have stopped taking submissions for Excel VBA macros to test. Thanks to all those who provided the OOo team with macros to try. --Ted (05May08)]

[Mac Users concerned about VBA Macros: Help us keep improving VBA macro support in Calc. See below about sending us your macro-laden XLS files. Thanks, Ted (10Aug06)]

You have to love a guy like Michael Meeks. Widely renowned for his bare-bones blog style, Michael is also the foremost contributor to OpenOffice.org outside of the maintainers at Sun .

One of Michael’s latest areas of endeavor is getting Microsoft Excel VBA macros to execute in OpenOffice Calc.

This screenshot shows a fairly geeky example of a hypocycloid generator. The generator uses a VBA macro, shown lower left, to generate source values from the positions of three interactive sliders on the left near where it says “Parameters.” The data is dumped into the table at the far right. Another macro chews up the data and spits out the hypocycloid graphic. Still more macros allow you to click through some pre-set values, generate random values, and so on.

The point, however, is not what the example macros shown here do. The point is that they are Excel macros correctly doing work in Calc.

Want to contribute? When I talked with Michael at GUADEC, he said that he doesn’t have enough real world Excel macros to test against.

So if you have a good example, send it my way and I’ll send it to Michael in his secret OpenOffice.org laboratory.

I’m thaeger at that novell dot com place.

[21AUG06: Update Posted.]

It’s not “Xgl”…it’s “Desktop Effects”

A while ago, my good friend Guy Lunardi, also SLED10 product manager, corrected me about the artist formerly known as Xgl. telling me that in SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, the user interfaces all say “Desktop Effects.”

Hmmm…it turns out that the name did indeed change in SLED10. I think it’s a sound decision on the SLED10 team’s part. While many of us in the Linux community have been avidly following Xgl since it’s re-emergence in January of 2006, the term “Xgl” doesn’t provide newcomers any clue as to what it does. It’s not a descriptive name. Certainly “Desktop Effects” is better. It isn’t perfect, but it’s probably good enough.

I have found that many Xgl-knowledgeable people are having trouble setting up Desktop Effects because they try to do the same setup as they used on early SLED10 betas and on SUSE Linux 10.1 (or Ubuntu, or Gentoo, or…) Ironic that people are messing up because they’re too experienced, methinks. They go about it the hard way.

Novell has made setting up Desktop Effects a no-brainer in SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. Now you go to the Control Center through the Main Menu, and select the Desktop Effects icon (as shown on this blog post above; notice that it pays tribute to the Xgl underneath the covers).

Once in, the interfaces show you whether your card is supported, and allow you to get driver updates if you need them. My IBM ThinkPad T42p has an ATI card, as you identified here in the screenshot. So the first cool thing the setup facilitates is that it helps you know whether you can use Xgl. Sorry. I mean, Desktop Effects. I’m still adjusting.
A click of a button starts the Software Updater. The updater then shows the package updates you need. Proprietary ATI and Nvidia drivers are provided through our partnership agreements and the previously announced SUSE Linux Driver Update Process [link to NOA episode]. By registering your system with Novell Customer Center, the partners’ repositories will be on line and ready to go. (You can also add the repositories manually if you know the URI for their repository.)

When the update finishes, you get prompted to “Start SaX2″ to configure the newly-installed adapter. Sax2 is the SUSE Linux graphical utility for configuring your X server, One of the cool things I have found about this step is that SaX2 configures my ATI card completely in the background. SaX2 never shows up. (Come to think of it, we should probably change the “Start SaX2″ label on that button, since the name “SaX2″ has the same cryptic techno-jargon problem as “Xgl.” I’ll file it as a bug in bugzilla.)

On my ThinkPad, I clicked the “Start SaX2″ button and waited for a moment. The button changed to say “Enable Desktop Effects.”

A final click prompts you to log out. When you log back in, it’s bells-and-whistles-a-go-go. If you notice the tabs listed, this is also where a user can customize Desktop Effects. (Although many more options are available in the gconf-editor.)
(This whole process is described more directly on the Novell wiki Install Fest section.)

I still feel like the number of clicks could be reduced, and maybe the interface could have a visual indicator to show at which step you are in the process. But overall, the streamlining is much improved. It’s as easy as one would expect on desktop that is supposed to provide a more polished experience than a regular desktop user could.

Can you Digg it?