Thoughtful post from Aaron Seigo on the progress of KDE 4 over the last year, and the news that Linus made the switch to GNOME.

I don’t agree with everything Aaron says, but I think it’s well worth reading and thinking about. In particular, I think what Aaron says here is worth thinking about:

Nobody and no project is perfect. Mistakes will be made, sometimes even in the process of producing success. Punishing each other unreasonably for it is stupid, learning from it is smart. I know we’ve learned a lot from it and made various changes to improve. We’ve worked really hard with downstreams to help improve coordination; we’ve worked really hard on improving external communication; we’ve worked really hard on making the community robust against divisiveness; we’ve been working on how to improve the development process with things like “always Summer in trunk” (which has evolved into “always Autumn in trunk” such that we can more effectively chase innovation with less risk.

I’ve seen a lot of heat over the KDE discussions, both within openSUSE and outside. It’s not unreasonable to have strong opinions about your desktop — but as Aaron says “punishing each other unreasonably for it is stupid, learning from it is smart.” It’d be a good idea if we embrace this idea going into 2009 and focus more on learning, less on getting angry about decisions that we disagree with.

I’m looking forward to the 4.2 release, and I’m optimistic that it will be worth the wait.

As we get ready for the 11.1 release, I have been upgrading my machines to 11.1 so that I have the same desktop experience as all the people who will be installing openSUSE 11.1 — either as their first experience with openSUSE or their first experience with Linux in general.

One of the things I do with every new release I try out is to check various mail clients and see how (or if) they’ve improved.

Last time I tried Evolution with Novell’s Groupwise, I was less than happy with its performance and stopped using Evo after a short while.

I set up Evolution in 11.1 with my Groupwise account this time around, and I’ve got to say — so far, it’s really performing well. After the 11.1 dust settles, I hope I’ll have a bit more time to write up some more lengthy comments about Evolution, but if you haven’t tried Evolution in a while take it for a test drive in 11.1.

Reading this post by Max Spevack, I’m more convinced than ever that the openSUSE Project made the right call on KDE 3.5 inclusion in openSUSE 11.1:

John is still using Fedora 8 in part because he’s not a big fan of KDE 4 — an interesting data point. When I mentioned that Fedora 10 would include KDE 4.1 (addressing a lot of the stability problems that people have disliked in Fedora 9), he indicated that it wasn’t KDE 4.0 versus 4.1 that was the problem, but more that he simply preferred the general KDE 3 architecture. This is not the first time we’ve heard about loyal KDE users who prefer KDE 3 to KDE 4, but it’s an anecdote that I thought our KDE team might want to hear. I wonder if there is sufficient demand for the older KDE as to warrant a Fedora Spin that is essentially “Fedora 10 but with the latest KDE 3.x code instead of KDE 4.x code”. I use GNOME, so I don’t presume to make suggestions. I’m just trying to offer some reporting, and let the KDE experts make the decisions that they think are best.

A reminder, KDE 3.5x and KDE 4.1x will both be available on openSUSE media for openSUSE 11.1 — meaning the DVD images and DVDs produced for shows and so forth — but KDE 3.5 will be listed as one of the “extra” desktop environments, rather than as a primary DE in the installer.

If you want piping hot stable KDE 4 goodness, check out Stephan Binner’s openSUSE-based Live CDs for KDE 4.1.1. He’s whipped up some CDs that include the most recent stable KDE packages using upstream artwork instead of the openSUSE KDE artwork, so you can see if you prefer the stock KDE artwork or the openSUSE goodness.

Do I sound biased? Oops! What can I say? I love the openSUSE green….

If you’re running openSUSE 11.0 or 10.3 already and want the 4.1.1 packages, you can grab those as well. Check out the wiki and pick the right one-click installer for you. (Also linked off the official KDE 4.1.1 announcement.)

I installed Gwibber today (it’s a microblogging client, that handles Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook updates, Pownce, and some others) from Andrew Wafaa’s packages using one-click. Very nice! 

What I like most is that I can post directly to my Twitter and Identi.ca accounts simultaneously, and reply to comments on either service easily. It also grabs updates a regular interval (I use the default 15 minute refresh rate. Might set that higher to avoid distractions, though.)

If you’re getting geared up to participate in Hack Week III next week, I recommend getting Gwibber and doing a little microblogging about your progress — quick, easy, and simple. Make sure to mention #opensuse in your posts. (Hashtags are good!)

Major thanks to openSUSE superstar Andrew Wafaa for packaging Gwibber, Sandy Armstrong for giving Andrew an assist with the dependencies, and Ars writer Ryan Paul for writing it in the first place.

I’m mostly a Vim guy, but I have to use OpenOffice.org quite a lot for documents and presentations. Ross Brunson has a pointer to an awesome article on handy OpenOffice.org shortcuts that should come in handy for anyone who uses OO.org regularly. Nice to know that you can insert headings using Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2, etc.

Still waiting for the OO.org folks to implement Vi-like keybindings, but the keyboard shortcuts are the next best thing…

Techworld has an article up on KOffice 2.0 alpha 8, running on Windows. As most people already know, the KDE folks have been working to make sure that KDE 4 stuff runs on Windows and Mac OS X as well as Linux, *BSD, and assorted free software platforms.

In general, I think this is a good thing — I’ve long been on record supporting shipping some proprietary software on Linux if it means getting more people on Linux. Better to run a 98% FOSS desktop, in my opinion, than to be stuck with a completely proprietary system with a few pieces of free/open source software.

But I wonder, strategically, whether porting KDE apps to Windows and Mac OS X is going to lead to people switching, or if it’s going to lead to people not switching because they can get the FOSS apps on other platforms and have less motivation to switch.

On the one hand, I think so — it makes it much easier for people to switch if they can do it gradually. Get used to Firefox, KOffice or OpenOffice.org, and all the nifty programs from the KDE folks on top of Windows or Mac OS X, and it’s that much easier to switch a little down the road because a Linux environment with those apps is going to be much more familiar.

On the other hand, if you already have a set of nice FOSS apps running on an OS you’re familiar with, what’s the motivation to switch? I think it’s great that Firefox is garnering such a big slice of the browser market, for example, but I don’t know too many people who’ve switched from Windows to Linux because of FF.

I’d be curious to hear opinions either way. Is KDE 4 for Windows/OS X going to bring new users to Linux, or just boost the amount of FOSS used on those platforms?

If you’re interested in trying out the newest KDE, KDE 4.1 RC1 is out and we have packages available via one-click for openSUSE 11.0! You can also find one-click packages for 10.3 if you haven’t gotten around to upgrading yet.

I’m going to be whipping these packages onto one of my systems today to give 4.1 a test drive. If you’re a KDE user and want to help shake out bugs prior to 11.1 for the KDE 4.x series, you might want to give it a shot too. Share and enjoy!

What Linux desktop is most popular?  Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Slackware, or another distro?

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes that he thinks it’s Xandros. Yes, that’s an unexpected result, but he has a point — Xandros is the distro shipped on the Eee PC, and by SJVN’s count, they’ve pumped out about 1.1 million Eee PCs and are still going strong.

Now, by my count, that puts Xandros in about 4th place, but closing rapidly. Ubuntu, unfortunately, doesn’t track — or at least doesn’t release — their installs, but Mark Shuttleworth has been quoted a couple of times as saying that they have 6 million or 8 million users. But they don’t have hard numbers (that I know of) so if we’re conservative and reduce the quoted numbers by half, that still gives us about 3 million Ubuntu users — well ahead of Xandros.

Fedora’s most recent stats say they have about 2 million Fedora 8 users in six months, and our tracking says we have at least 1.5 million openSUSE users on various releases. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that 1.1 million users is impressive, but Xandros probably isn’t in 1st place. Yet.

However — I think the Eee PC’s runaway success shows that the UMPCs are going to be Linux’s path to the mainstream desktop, and we need to be thinking very heavily about that. (Note that we’re on several UMPC devices as well — like HP’s Mini-Note systems that actually have a usable keyboard…)

The new wave of UMPC devices and new mobile devices are a strong opportunity to put Linux in the hands of new users. The resource requirements mean that Linux is well-suited for these devices, and the fact that Linux can be heavily customized also means that Linux is a great choice for manufacturers looking to differentiate themselves from the competition in ways other than hardware and pricing.

But Xandros’ strong showing on UMPCs hasn’t put it in the lead just yet, at least not by my count. Stay tuned, this is going to be a very interesting year for Linux on the desktop…

openSUSE 11.0 is getting good reviews — and it’s not even released yet! We put out openSUSE 11.0 beta 2 last week, and it’s already being looked at by the press. Ryan Paul over at Ars Technica has some nice things to say about how openSUSE 11.0 is shaping up:

There are a lot of things to like in openSUSE 11 and it will make a good choice for many users—it is already shaping up to provide better PulseAudio integration and stronger desktop search capabilities than Ubuntu, for instance. OpenSUSE also has excellent support for KDE 4, which is why we have used it as our reference platform for KDE testing and reviews.

He also has several good screenshots for the more visual types.

I haven’t had a chance to bang on the beta much yet, but when I get home from CommunityOne Tuesday, it’s at the top of my list. I think it’s time that the ThinkPad move over to the beta full time.