GSoC is on

GSoC is on

With GSoC related things ramping up, i would like to announce once again that i am open to mentoring students this year. I am willing to begin talking to students to help them find their way around GSoC and Fedora in order to get proposals in.

I have a couple of ideas, but most importantly, my favourite projects to mentor are ideas that come completely from the student. So if you're interested in doing GSoC this summer, you are a student entering, currently in, or just leaving an institute of higher education, and are eligible, get in touch with me. You can find me via my Fedora Wiki profile page. Just use the email address there or join the IRC channel. I will not reply via comments on this post.

I'm willing to hear all ideas, so don't be afraid to submit them. If you don't know yet what you want to do, send me an email anyways, and we can talk over the possibilities. So bring it on.

In the end, i may not be your mentor, but we'll do the best to find you a mentor for your proposal.

#fedora-gsoc is online

#fedora-gsoc is online

Given my penchant for IRC, i've set up #fedora-gsoc for the google summer of code activity for Fedora and JBoss. This is going to be a point of contact to get help, ask questions, discuss fine ways to cook and eat bacon (beef bacon if you're muslim, fake bacon if you're not a meat eater), and propogate silly memes until December 21, 2012, when the Fedora Project becomes nothing more than a source for new memes. In the meantime, if you like IRC and want to participate in GSoC in any ways this summer, this is the place to be.

EDIT: If you're an org admin or mentor, contact me, i'll add you to the autovoice list. Everyone with the voice mode is in a position to answer questions.

If you're a student or just looking to have some questions answered, look to the guys and gals with voice.

Linux Potty Training Moment

Linux Potty Training Moment

If it hasn't been coined yet, there has to be some sort of term for it. I'm going to stick with the Linux Potty Training Moment. I definitely had on of those today.

Before i left the states last December, i set up an old box of mine with Fedora 12, and set it up for my family to use when the inevitable happens, the Windows machine breaks and no one can fix it anymore. Today my little brother asked me how he could get a java game going on the machine. Since the only way i know how to do it is via the command line, i started walking him through it, almost by default. Then it hit me. This is his first time using the command line. He's 10 years old. I'm sitting 6000 km away, and i'm walking him through the process. Over XMPP. This is Linux potty training, he's learning it the same way i learnt it.

In retrospect, i probably shouldn't have told him about sudo on day one.

Puppetmanaged.org and Load

Puppetmanaged.org and Load

I'm barely back from Fosdem and i'm already planning for the next event. Bert Desmet has asked me to submit a paper for Linux Open Administration Days. Since "Handwerpen" is just a hop, skip and a swallows flight away from the Netherlands, i said yes. I submitted the following abstract for presentation. I plan on talking about Puppetmanaged.org.

Abstract

Puppet is a batteries-not-included tool for configuration management.
In order to implement it in your infrastructure, it requires the use
of pre developed modules that can enable all kinds of functionality.
Puppetmanaged.org is an upstream community of KISS oriented modules
that enable you to migrate from most any other structure with a
minimal amount of effort. It also enables the installation of multiple
working environments for the purpose of running a development and
integration testing laboratory inside your domain. This presentation
will cover Puppetmanaged.org, some of the more useful modules offered
and as a practical example how we customize it to our needs within the
DBG at the UMC Utrecht.

Android is the New Windows too

Android is the New Windows too

We're on a roll with bad Android posts it seems. Today i got an update to an Android application, which will not be named to protect the innocent and stupid, that asked to put shortcuts on my desktop. Me not likey.

Android is the Ubuntu of the Mobile Linux market

Android is the Ubuntu of the Mobile Linux market

Open Source has been compared to living in a house where contractors can stop by any time and change anything they want at their whim. Granted, it won't charge you a dime, but you might find out one day that your living room and bathroom have been swapped. When it comes to Fedora systems, it's not too bad because i have a good grasp of what's going on, and i can prepare myself for it.

I can't say the same about the Android. Yesterday i updated the ROM on my phone from Cyanogen 4.2.13.1 to 4.2.14. To my not so pleasant surprise, all my alarms were disabled, and it's a very lucky thing that i happened to wake up at just the right time. I can't necessarily blame Google, HTC nor Vodafone for this, because i'm not running their "Enterprise" version of Android, but it's the haphazard way that Android works really gets me. Furthermore, the alarm clock program was working perfectly on the phone up until now, and suddenly Google feels the need to replace it with a media center like application that not only ignores the saved alarms i have but also ignores the lock command and is accessible even if my phone is supposed to be locked. For a Linux based phone, it defies all expectations of a Unix like system.

So haphazard updates that break the system, a chutzpah that enables marketing to think it's Linux, even if it's nothing like it, and a market that enables both closed and proprietary source on the device easily really sounds like another well known Linux distribution that we love to hate. Maybe it's not the most perfect analogy though, i don't know any of any Google employee who's been to outerspace yet. I'm still waiting on the Google Rocket Ship Beta.