Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

It was the turn of the millenium when I got my first computer fresh at university. Windows seemed uninteresting, it was impossible to work out how it worked or write programs for it. SuSE Linux 6.2 was much more interesting to try and opened a world of understanding how computers worked and wanting to code on them. These were the days of the .com boom and I went to big expos in London where they showered you with freebies and IBM competed with SuSE and Red Hat for the biggest stall. IBM said that Linux had made it on the server and now was going to take over the desktop so I realised that working with KDE would be a good idea. And as a novice coder it was very perfect for learning Qt and how open development worked and I loved the free software ideals. Going to the pre-Akademy conference (it was called Kastle then) in Nove Hrady was a great intro to the community in person and in some ways I learnt more about software development in a week there then my years at uni.

So clearly this was a good way to make a career. I dossed around for a year until the Quaker geek collective heard tale of an African Spaceman who was funding a new Linux distro called SSDS (Shuttleworth’s Super Secret Debian Startup) so I got into Debian packaging and made a point that KDE should be involved. Before long they came knocking and I went to the first Ubuntu conference in Australia. I spent about ten amazing years brining KDE to Ubuntu or bringing Ubuntu to KDE for what was already called Kubuntu (not my name choice), a successful community project I’m really proud of. At one point Nokia wanted to use it alongside Plasma Active to sell on a tablet thing along with phones, this could well have taken over the world but y’know, iPhone happened and Kubuntu never found a commercial use after that although it still gets used in big places like Google or the City of Munich or Weta digital (watch those Hobbit DVD extras). I loved being invited out to Nigeria or India to give talks and spread the world of open software. Looking back there’s probably a million business cases that would have been possible but I’m not the best at being a future visionary. Eventually Canonical decided to stop funding it which is fair enough.

But then Blue Systems came along, another nice guy with deep pockets wanting to help and we carried on. When Canonical decided to kill off lots of community projects we came up with the idea of moving directly into KDE to make KDE neon. It has always been crazy how open source communities like KDE are reliant on separate companies to take their software out to the world so we wanted to change that, and I like to think we succeeded. Using CI systems we could create a much more manageable setup. Still the system was never as resiliant as it should have been and several times KDE neon ended up shipping a duff update which will have been very painful for users. We had three people working full time on it at the start but before long it was just me and a volunteer and the quality suffered as a result.

Last winter I drove to the Blue Systems schoße for a routine conference and was organising people to give talks when the guy who pays us started off by saying he was dying and the company would be shutting down. Which was very sad but it makes sense to end it on a high. After years of having no business modal and not knowing what the aims of the company were, which caused several people to genuinely go mad, we finally had a business model of sorts with Valve paying us to make Plasma up to the standards needed to ship it as Desktop Scope on the Valve Steam Deck games console. Nate had been given advanced notice of the company shutting down and had already started another company, Tech Paladin, to take on the business. Shouldn’t this be run as a cooperative we wondered? No that was too complex he said. The next day I ended up at a funeral for some German accountants and when I came back there had been some more discussion and we watched a video about Igalia who make the other operating system for Valve. They are a cooperative socialist paradise and Nate said he’d look into doing that instead of the setup where he had full control and all the profit. It was clear there was to be no other discussion on the matter of our future.

A few weeks later we had an online meeting where I proposed a useful agenda but was ignored, instead Nate gave his updated plan for a business which was to give Dave a slice of the profit and otherwise he’d keep all the profit and all the control. So I gave my proposal I’d been working on for a company with equal ownership, equal profit, a management structure and workers rights. A couple weeks later we had anther video call but Nate called me first and told me I’d be excluded from it. No explanation was given beyond I had “made some comments and would not be happy”. If someone is telling you what your emotions that is when controlling behaviour starts to become abusive. And thus ended my 25 years with KDE.

And what of my colleagues? Surely they wouldn’t want a setup where they have no control over their professional life and all their profit goes to one person? Well dunno, they’ve stopped speaking to me. Nothing. Silence. Nil. Not so much as a “cheereo”, nor “sorry we chose the option were you got excluded” and certainly no explanation. From people who I have worked with for some twenty years in some cases that hurts. I don’t know why they stopped talking to me, I can only speculate and I don’t want to do that.

We never had workers rights at Blue Systems, we were all on self employment contracts. This will continue at Tech Paladin. It is illegal but unenforceable when done on an international setup. But employment rights are not a luxury you can chose to do without if you enjoy your job and want some more flexibility in your work day. They are fundamental and life altering rights that change people’s lives as I discovered when my adopted children were taken away from me. Nobody should be doing business with or taking money from Tech Paladin else be party to illegal workers rights abuses.

Then I started to get sad, being cut off from my life for the last 25 years was too much for me. All things come to an end and I’ve seen plenty people had to leave KDE because the money ran out or maybe they had a disagreement with someone in the project, but never a profiteering control struggle like this. I struggled to get out of bed on some days. I’ve given my life to KDE, I’ve seen it gone from a sure fire project to take over the world to being one open desktop project in a world of many to seeing the revival in recent years where we can honestly say we make some of the best software out there. I like to think I’ve been part of keeping it alive, progressing, relevant and at the forefront of commercial, government and community usage. It’s been an amazing ride full of opportunities and adventures the likes of which I’m sure my peers from my university course have never had.

But in the end I lost my friends, my colleagues, my job, my career and my family. What’s a spod who just tried to do the right thing for society to do? Dunno. For now, if you want me, you can find me surfing the endless wave whenever the sun sets over my digital nomad coliving paddleshack at the end of the world.

Sunset surfs at the digital nomad coliving paddleshack at the end of the world

Paddle UK SUP Open Water Coach Training

I did the Open Water Coach Training for Stand up Paddleboard. Here’s my notes for my own use and anyone else who wants them.

The terminology is a bit messy (which is the same for all paddling really). Partly this is because the environmental remits are necessarily a bit different for paddleboards which can be harder to control in windy or moving open or river water. For Leader it’s Inland Open Water (moderate lochs), Tidal (moderate award in slightly above sheltered water conditions) and Coastal (advanced award in moderate water) and White Water (grade 2(3)). For Coach it’s called Open Water (which means moderate Inland Open Water) there’s also Race Coach and White Water Coach.

I went out with Adam Burns who calls himself Adventure Coaching Scotland and also works for Paddle Scotland. He seems a happy chap and one of the few who can award SUP coach and leader qualifications in Scotland (maybe the only one as the Paddle Scotland website isn’t working when I ask it).

For equipment I wore a drysuit, I also wore a helmet but this doesn’t seem necessary on Open Water. I forgot to take a dry bag which is important. An ankle belt leash is also needed although I used my leader buoyancy aid quick release. As a leader I might also want to take a pump as well as usual leadership stuff.

We did a warm up paddle, as well as letting us warm up it let’s the coach see if we can handle the board on the water and it gets us to a nice sheltered place to chat about the day’s activities.

We discussed coaching frameworks TTPPWW (technical, tactical, physical, phycological, environmental, equipment). BBB (observation points: board, boat, blade).

Technical stuff – does pump work, right clothing,
Tactical – trim and stance
Physical – can do core rotation?
Phychological – Do they seem calm and controlled?
Environment – weather and water conditions, access options
Equipment – board from Lidl or super expensive board? Length and volume of board. Size and No of of fins. Paddle blade size.

Forward paddling – feather blade to push water under the board rather than j-stroke which won’t work because of the fin on the back. Short strokes

Foot positions – side by side, off set, centre line offset, one or both pointing to paddle side

I am much worse paddling on my left than my right so one task i can do is work out why

My paddle blade is large, most people use a smaller one for higher cadance strokes.

If observation of a paddler gives you nothing useful to discuss then change the conditions, e.g speed it up.

Standing position on a board can be foward for a straighter line, backwards for easier turn. Fancy jump or step back turns are possible. You can walk up and down the centre line with practice. Most people will instinctively stand with feet wide for balance but keeping them sholder width wide is usually better as it causes less rock.

To paddle across wind take a wider stance and paddle on downwind side.

Lesson plan frameworks are IDEAS (Introduction, demonstration, explanation, activity, summary) for new stuff and WASP (Watch, Analyse, Set Goals or Suggest, Practice) for improvements.

OpenUK Awards 2024

https://openuk.uk/openuk-september-2024-newsletter-1/

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7238138962253344769/

Our 5th annual Awards are open for nominations and our 2024 judges are waiting for your nominations! Hannah Foxwell, Jonathan Riddell, and Nicole Tandy will be selecting winners for 12 categories. ?

The OpenUK Awards 2024 are open for nominations until Sunday, September 15.. Our 5th Awards again celebrate the UK’s leadership and global collaboration in open technology!

Nominate now! https://openuk.uk/awards/openuk-awards-2024/

Up to 3 shortlisted nominees will be selected in each category by early October and each nominee will be given one place at the Oscars of Open Source, the black tie Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner for our 5th Awards held at the House of Lords on 28 November, thanks to the sponsorship of Lord Wei.

Plasma Pass 1.2.2

Plasma Pass is a Plasma applet for the Pass password manager

This release includes build fixes for Plasma 6, due to be released later this week.

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/plasma-pass/
Sha256: 2a726455084d7806fe78bc8aa6222a44f328b6063479f8b7afc3692e18c397ce
Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

Oxygen Icons 6 Released

Oxygen Icons is an icon theme for use with any XDG compliant app and desktop.

It is part of KDE Frameworks 6 but is now released independently to save on resources.

This 6.0.0 release requires to be built with extra-cmake-modules from KF 6 which is not yet released, distros may want to wait until next week before building it.

Distros which ship this version can drop the version released as part of KDE Frameworks 5.

sha256: 28ec182875dcc15d9278f45ced11026aa392476f1f454871b9e2c837008e5774

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/oxygen-icons/

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

KDSOAP WS-Discovery Client 0.4.0

This project is creating a WS-Discovery client library based on the KDSoap library.

The name is short for Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB Simple Object Access Protocol Web Services Addressing Discovery Client.

It is used by the SMB KIO worker from kio-extras.

kio-extras will have two releases as part of KDE’s 6th Megarelease, one for Qt 5 and one for Qt 6. Distros should build and ship both versions of kio-extras but the Qt5 build should use the internal static copy of kdsoap-ws-discovery-client so does not need to be built separately. The Qt 6 build of kio-extras does need this external build of kdsoap-ws-discovery-client. Distros will need an up to date copy of KDSoap library.

There are no changes compared to 0.3.0 but this one is released as stable ahead of KDE Gear 24.02.

SHA 256: 2cd247c013e75f410659bac372aff93d22d71c5a54c059e137b9444af8b3427a
URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/kdsoap-ws-discovery-client/
Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

Ruqola 2.1.0

Ruqola 2.1.0 is available for packaging.

Ruqola is a chat app for Rocket.chat. This release can build with Qt 5 and Frameworks 5. It can also build with Qt 6 and the soon to be released Frameworks 6.

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/ruqola/
SHA256: 65295cc39f24f046305bc73df4bcc6e561bd8b8b125537290ce5b5b62488fffd

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell jr@jriddell.org
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

Ruqola 2.1 Beta

Ruqola 2.1 Beta (2.0.81) is available for packaging and testing.

Ruqola is a chat app for Rocket.chat. This beta release will build with the current release candidate of KDE Frameworks 6 and KTextAddons allowing distros to start to move away from Qt 5.

URL: https://download.kde.org/unstable/ruqola/
SHA256: 2c4135c08acc31f846561b488aa24f1558d7533b502f9ba305be579d43f81b73

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell jr@jriddell.org
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

OpenUK’s 2024 New Year’s Honours List

It’s a pleasure to be on the OpenUK New Year’s Honours list for 2024. There’s some impressive names on there such as Richard Hughes of Packagekit and other projects at Red Hat, Colin Watson who was at Ubuntu with me and I see is now freelance, Mike McQuaid was previously of KDE but is now trying a startup with Mac packager Workbrew for Homebrew.

OpenUK run various activities for open tech in UK countries and KDE currently needs some more helpers for a stall at their State of Open Con in London on Feb 6 and 7 February, if you can help do get in touch.

KDE’s 6th releases will happen next month bringing with it the refresh of code and people that a new major version number can bring, I think KDE’s software in the coming year will continue to impress.

My life fell apart after some family loss last year so I’ve run away to the end of the world at Finesterre in Galicia in Spain for now, let me know if you’re in the area.

KTextAddons 1.5.3

KTextAddons is a library with Various text handling addons used by Ruqola and Kontact apps. It can be compiles for both Qt 5 and 6 and distros are advised to compile two builds for each until Ruqola is ported to Qt 6.

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/ktextaddons/

SHA256: 8a52db8abfa8a9d68d2d291fb0f8be20659fd7899987b4dcafdf2468db0917dc

Changelog

  • Drop unused KXmlGui dependency
  • Adapt to new KConfigGroup API
  • As we exclude emojis we need to remove it from list and not exclude it
  • Use proxymodel when exclude emoticons were updated
  • Allow to exclude some specific emoticons (Need for ruqola)
  • Exclude mock engine => it’s for test
  • Remove generate pri support (removed in kf6)

KDiagram 3.0.1

KDiagram 3.0.1 is an update to our charting libraries which fixes a bug in the cmake path configuration. It also updates translations and removes some unused Qt 5 code.

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/kdiagram/3.0.1/

sha256: 4659b0c2cd9db18143f5abd9c806091c3aab6abc1a956bbf82815ab3d3189c6d

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell jr@jriddell.org
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

XWayland Video Bridge 0.4

An updated stable release of XWayland Video Bridge is out now for packaging.

https://download.kde.org/stable/xwaylandvideobridge/

sha256 ea72ac7b2a67578e9994dcb0619602ead3097a46fb9336661da200e63927ebe6

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

Changes

  • Also skip the switcher
  • Do not start in an X11 session and opt out of session management

British Canoeing Surf Kayak Leader Assessment

I did my Surf Kayak Leader assessment with Paul Bramble in south west Wales and pleasingly I passed. I booked on not quite knowing what to expect, there wasn’t much pre course information and it was mostly because because the date was convenient. Turns out Wales is beautiful and has great surf beaches, the geography allows for some more access to the Atlantic waves and it feels like there’s more of a community down there than in Scotland where surf can be so sporadic.

I had not done any formal training as none seemed to be available, this discipline is such a niche you just have to take your changes when you get them. But in the past I’ve done uncertified safety days with folks in Scotland as well as SLSGB training and of course whitewater leading is very similar you just have to be aware of the differences.

For revision it’s worth reading the SLSGB Beach Environment Training Aid available online.

I had one other person being assessed and together we reviewed the nearby beaches and picked the best one where the forecast was good, the weather was fine, the tides known, the parking available.

We had three students who were all sea kayakers but had done occasional surf and interested in more which is just the sort of person needed for this. I lead with introductions, experience, abilities, motivation, moving kit around, safety protocols. There’s not much safety protocols available in surf kayaking, generally if there’s a problem then folks need to get into the beach which can be hand signal, waving paddle in the air or single whistle. Otherwise if a paddler thinks they might crash into another person then they should capsize. We checked all boats had buoyancy bags in them and I did a warm up.

Fellow candidate Fran accompanied the students onto the water at first while I watched from the beach. I had suggested staying in the white waves at first but the students didn’t seem to want that and were happy going behind the waves straight away which was fine but I guess clearer discipline there would be better.

I took photos (the most important role) and watched for any swimmers but everyone seemed able to roll fine as needed.

I did run a brief mini-coaching session talking about take off on the waves, it’s supposed to be a lead day without coaching but all days will include some chat about what we’re doing and how to improve.

I did a rescue from the beach of an unconscious paddler from behind the waves which is very hard work. I chose to jump in my kayak for this which is risky as you might not do a smooth launch but I did and it allowed me to bring him back some of the way dragging with my sling and carabiner before I jumped out my boat to drag him back in and up the beach.

I did a deep water rescue of a swimmer, this is very tricky with surf kayaks which tend to be low volume. I managed it with having the swimmer step over my boat into his then two of us hold the front of his boat down to stop water entering his boat from the back.

At one point a confusing scenario happened where a student had a dislocated shoulder and we brought them in, it wasn’t expected and we didn’t manage it very well but it was sprung on us without any warning, although I suppose that’s real life.

I failed to bring my first aid kit or phone onto the beach which was a mistake. I also had lost my watch which was poor leadership although I worked out my camera could tell the time and nobody else seemed to have a watch.

A lovely day’s paddling for sure.

KDiagram 3.0.0

KDiagram is two powerful libraries (KChart, KGantt) for creating business diagrams.

Version 3.0.0 is now available for packaging.

It moves KDiagram to use Qt 6. It is co-installable with previous Qt 5 versions and distros may want to package both alongside each other for app compatibility.

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/kdiagram/3.0.0/
SHA256: 6d5f53dfdd019018151c0193a01eed36df10111a92c7c06ed7d631535e943c21

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell jr@jriddell.org
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

KWeatherCore 0.8.0

KWeatherCore is a library to facilitate retrieval of weather information including forecasts and alerts.

0.8.0 is available for packaging now

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/kweathercore/0.8.0/
SHA256: 9bcac13daf98705e2f0d5b06b21a1a8694962078fce1bf620dbbc364873a0efeS
Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

This release moves the library to use Qt 6. It is not compatible with older Qt 5 versions of the library so should only be packaged when KWeather is released or in testing archives.

qqc2-breeze5-style 6 Alpha

qqc2-breeze5-style is a theme used by Plasma Mobile. This alpha release is a re-bundling of the Plasma/5.27 branch of qqc2-breeze-style. It is for use by distros shipping alpha releases of Plasma 6 so that Qt 5 apps continue to be themed appropriately.

URL: https://download.kde.org/unstable/qqc2-breeze5-style/

SHA256: 813f9da4861567e70d1eccf3a3a092d802ac9475a91070fb47fa
8766f3c1e310

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

Oxygen Icons 6 Alpha Released

Oxygen Icons is an icon theme for use with any XDG compliant app and desktop.

It is part of KDE Frameworks 6 but is now released independently to save on resources.

This is the first (and likely only) pre-release, versioned 5.245.0, and it will have a stable release alongside KDE Frameworks 6 in February.

Distros which ship this version can drop the version released as part of KDE Frameworks 5.

sha256: b082a1a9a6d06cdeee2863555951609e95dd499f133035d04719a16f8500497f

URL: https://download.kde.org/unstable/oxygen-icons/

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

KDSOAP WS-Discovery Client 0.3.0

This project is trying to create a WS-Discovery client library based on the KDSoap
library.

The name is short for Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB Simple Object Access Protocol Web Services Addressing Discovery Client

It is used by the SMB KIO worker from kio-extras.

kio-extras will have two releases as part of KDE’s 6th Megarelease, one for Qt 5 and one for Qt 6. Distros should build and ship both versions of kio-extras but the Qt5 build should use an internal static copy of kdsoap-ws-discovery-client so does not need to be built separately. The Qt 6 build of kio-extras does need this external build of kdsoap-ws-discovery-client. Distros will need an up to date copy of KDSoap library https://github.com/KDAB/KDSoap/tags.

SHA 256: 5007747f1ce607639bb63244f8894c03a15194c0a891b8d85e10d76dbdf79188
URL: https://download.kde.org/unstable/kdsoap-ws-discovery-client/
Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

XWayland Video Bridge 0.3

# XWayland Video Bridge (xwaylandvideobridge)

The first stable release of XWayland Video Bridge is out now for packaging.

https://download.kde.org/stable/xwaylandvideobridge/

sha256 f8da6e8fe0ec3bd5ea797af8aad8fe1daab36fc3c77e2d36bb7443832cdfcffa

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

# About

By design, X11 applications can’t access window or screen contents for wayland clients. This is fine in principle, but it breaks screen sharing in tools like Discord, MS Teams, Skype, etc and more.

This tool allows us to share specific windows to X11 clients, but within the control of the user at all times.

# How to use

xwaylandvideobridge should autostart on login. It will run in the background. Next time you try to share a window a prompt will appear.
The previously selected window should now be available for sharing. The title will always be “Wayland to X11 bridge” no matter what window is selected.

The system tray icon provides finer control.

# Use outside Plasma

This should work on any desktop that supports the Xdg desktop portals and Pipewire streaming and have a working system tray.

# Future

Ideally this should be more automatic, but this tool aims purely to serve as a stop-gap whilst we wait for these clients to get native wayland support and for the surrounding wayland protocols to be better. How much more it gets developed depends on feedback and how the surrounding ecosystem evolves.