UBports: Packaging of Lomiri Operating Environment for Debian (part 04)Before and during FOSDEM 2020, I agreed with the people (developers, supporters, managers) of the UBports Foundation to package the Unity8 Operating Environment for Debian. Since 27th Feb 2020, Unity8 has now become Lomiri. Things got delayed a little recently as my main developer contact on the upstream side was on sick leave for a while. Fortunately, he has now fully recovered and work is getting back on track.
Welcome, Fre(i)e Software GmbHLast week I received the official notice: There is now a German company named "Fre(i)e Software GmbH" registered with the German Trade Register. Founding a New CompanyOver the past months I have put my energy into founding a new company. As a freelancing IT consultant I started facing the limitation of other companies having strict policies that forbid the cooperation with one person businesses (Personengesellschaften). Thus, the requirement for setting up a GmbH business came onto my agenda. I will move some of my business activities into this new company, starting next year. Policy IdeasThe "Fre(i)e Software GmbH" will be a platform to facilitate the growth and spreading of Free Software on this planet. Here are some first ideas for company policies:
UBports: Packaging of Lomiri Operating Environment for Debian (part 03)Before and during FOSDEM 2020, I agreed with the people (developers, supporters, managers) of the UBports Foundation to package the Unity8 Operating Environment for Debian. Since 27th Feb 2020, Unity8 has now become Lomiri. Recent Uploads to Debian related to LomiriOver the past 4 months I worked on the following bits and pieces regarding Lomiri in Debian:
My Work on Debian LTS (August 2020)In August 2020, I have worked on the Debian LTS project for 16 hours (of 8 hours planned, plus another 8 hours that I carried over from July). For ELTS, I have worked for another 8 hours (of 8 hours planned). LTS Work
ELTS Work
No Debian LTS Work in July 2020In July 2020, I was originally assigned 8h of work on Debian LTS as a paid contributor, but holiday season overwhelmed me and I did not do any LTS work, at all. The assigned hours from July I have taken with me into August 2020. light+love,
Ayatana Indicators / IDO - Menu Rendering Fixed with vanilla GTK-3+At DebConf 17 in Montreal, I gave a talk about Ayatana Indicators [1] and the project's goal to continue the — by then already dropped out of maintenance — Ubuntu Indicators in a separate upstream project, detached from Ubuntu and its Ubuntu'isms. StallingThe whole Ayatana Indicators project received a bit of a show stopper by the fact that the IDO (Indicator Display Object) rendering was not working in vanilla GTK-3 without a certain patch [2] that only Ubuntu has in their GTK-3 package. Addressing GTK developers upstream some years back (after GTK 3.22 had already gone into long term maintenance mode) and asking for a late patch acceptance did not work out (as already assumed). Ayatana Indicators stalled at a level of 90% actually working fine, but those nice and shiny special widgets, like the calendar widget, the audio volume slider widgets, switch widgets, etc. could not be rendered appropriately in GTK based desktop environments (e.g. via MATE Indicator Applet) on other distros than Ubuntu. I never really had the guts to sit down without a defined ending and find a patch / solution to this nasty problem. Ayatana Indicators stalled as a whole. I kept it alive and defended its code base against various GLib and what-not deprecations and kept it in Debian, but the software was actually partially broken / dysfunctional. Taking the Dog for a Walk and then It Became all Light+LoveSeveral days back, I received a mail from Robert Tari [3]. I was outside on a hike with our dog and thought, ah well, let's check emails...
My Work on Debian LTS (June 2020)In June 2020, I have worked on the Debian LTS project for 8 hours (of 8 hours planned). LTS Work
Other security related work for Debian
References
My Work on Debian LTS (May 2020)In May 2020, I have worked on the Debian LTS project for 14.5 hours (of 14.5 hours planned). LTS Work
Other security related work for Debian
Credits
Q: Remote Support Framework for the GNU/Linux Desktop?TL;DR; For those (admins) of you who run GNU/Linux on staff computers: How do you organize your graphical remote support in your company? Get in touch, share your expertise and experiences. Researching on FLOSS based Linux DesktopsWhen bringing GNU/Linux desktops to a generic folk of productive office users on a large scale, graphical remote support is a key feature when organizing helpdesk support teams' workflows. In a research project that I am currently involved in, we investigate the different available remote support technologies (VNC screen mirroring, ScreenCasts, etc.) and the available frameworks that allow one to provide a remote support infrastructure 100% on-premise. In this research project we intend to find FLOSS solutions for everything required for providing a large scale GNU/Linux desktop to end users, but we likely will have to recommend non-free solutions, if a FLOSS approach is not available for certain demands. Depending on the resulting costs, bringing forth a new software solution instead of dumping big money in subscription contracts for non-free software is seen as a possible alternative. As a member of the X2Go upstream team and maintainer of several remote desktop related tools and frameworks in Debian, I'd consider myself as sort of in-the-topic. The available (as FLOSS) underlying technologies for plumbing a remote support framework are pretty much clear (x11vnc, recent pipewire-related approaches in Wayland compositors, browser-based screencasting).
My Work on Debian LTS (April 2020)Due to sickness I was not able to complete my 8 hours of work on Debian LTS as planned. I only worked 1.5 hours this month, moving the remaining 6.5 hours over to May. LTS
Other security related work for Debian
|
Recent blog posts
Formalities |