Purism and Georges Basile Stavracas Neto on GNOME, GTK
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Community Story: Building a Librem 5 app with Rust and GTK
Could you introduce yourself and share how you got involved with GNOME development?
I’m Bilal Elmoussaoui, I co-maintain GNOME Clocks and Sound Recorder and develop GNOME applications. I’m a long-time Linux user. I originally studied civil engineering and I’ve been learning to code for some time now, mostly writing web applications. I started contributing to GNOME projects while honing my Python skills.
You are now a maintainer of several GNOME apps.
Yes, I’ve started contributing to applications I use daily like FeedReader and Lollypop. The more I contribute, the more I learn about software development and the ecosystem. After a few years I found myself contributing to several GNOME applications, wherever I could make the user experience better for free software.
Could you tell us about your recently released Read It Later app?
Read It Later is a Wallabag client, which is a link saving service that you can host yourself. It includes all the basic features you would expect like managing and viewing articles. It also comes with easy-reader and dark modes in a beautiful and convergent design which adapts perfectly to desktop and mobile screens.
What technology did you use to create Read It Later?
I used to write applications with Python/Vala and GTK until late this summer when I got “The Rust programming language” book. It just sat on my desk for a while but I finally decided to pick something small to work on and made a simple Rust and GTK application template. The moment I opened my first GTK window with Rust I was hooked. The Rust GTK bindings have evolved a lot and we now have libhandy Rust bindings for adaptive widgets. Now I always pick Rust as a programming language, Meson as a build system and Flatpak to distribute my applications.
How did you discover libhandy and are you a mobile Linux enthusiast?
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Georges Basile Stavracas Neto: Welcome 2020
I’m continuously failing to keep up with the Friends of GNOME donors. I really have to empty this queue as soon as possible.
I’m really unhappy with the political situation of my country, Brazil. A halfwitted, fascism flirting populist was democratically elected. The public institutions were dominated by their inapt followers. Rich are getting richier, poor are getting poorer, inequality is skyrocketing, and despite all of that, a massive number of citizens seems to be applauding this madness, regardless if they’re profiting or not with this situation. I’m not comfortable with the idea of living here. I’m also not comfortable with the idea of leaving family behind. It seems this trend is spreading all around the world, so where else could I go anyway?
I’ve also stopped training martial arts. I got involved with Aikido when I was 14. I was a vulnerable, not intellectually emancipated teenager that needed emotional crutches to carry on. For years, Aikido was part of my identity, and I would ignore blatant problems that surrounded it for the sake of keeping the narrative. Feeling like a virtuous warrior was good, after all. Over time, and with the maturity that came with it, the toxicity of it took a toll on me. Quitting it was traumatic. I still feel a big void.
Quitting martial arts meant I stopped exercising. Turns out, the lack of physical activities, together with an awful political climate, and the stress of being an open source maintainer, is an express highway to depression. When I wrote “On Being a Free Software Maintainer“, I was already going downhill. Things got progressively worse until around GUADEC. Fortunately, the support from the GNOME community, my wife, family, and friends, were strong enough to allow me break this downward spiral.
I do not know what would have happened without this support. To my family, wife, friends, and the GNOME community: thank you all so much for being here when I most needed.
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