Latest Progress on KDE Themes and KTechLab

• Week report 0

  Hello every one in the KDE planet and beyond, this is the progress weekly report on O². So The week surprisingly started Monday and after the initial chock and accompanying usual work day at KDAB, I decided to do a little bit of progress on O² style mock ups...

• Announcing KTechLab 0.50.0

  I’m happy to announce KTechLab release version 0.50.0. KTechLab is an IDE for microcontrollers and electronics. In this new release every user-visible functionality is the same as in previous releases, however, the codebase of KTechLab has been updated, so now it is a KF5/Qt5 application and it does not depend anymore on KDELibs4Support libraries. This release should compile and run on systems where KDELibs4Support libraries are not available. In its current state KTechLab’s codebase is ready for fixes and enhancements, as it only depends on modern libraries like KDE Frameworks 5 (KF5) and Qt5. As a side note, KF6 and Qt6 have been announced, and the first release of Qt6 has been scheduled to the end of 2020.

• KTechLab git master doesn't depend on deprecated Qt5/KF5 API anymore

  KTechLab git master doesn’t depend anymore on deprecated Qt5/KF5 APIs. Thank you for everybody who made this possible! Using only up-to-date APIs should help with long-term maintenance of KTechLab and probably it helps distributors of KTechLab, too.

Review: Garuda Linux 200817

One of the more recent additions to the DistroWatch database is Garuda Linux, an Arch-based distribution that offers several enticing features. By default Garuda is intended to be run on the Btr file system, which offers all sorts of attractive features such as multi-disk storage volumes and snapshots. Btrfs has been paired with Timeshift on Garuda and the system is reported to take automatic snapshots before each package upgrade, making the system much easier to recover. I especially like the idea of having automated filesystem snapshots on a rolling release distribution such as Arch. The openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling release has offered automatic snapshots of the system prior to upgrades for a while now and it is nice to see this feature catching on in other projects. The Garuda distribution ships with the Calamares system installer to make setting up the operating system easier. We are also given a desktop tool for managing drivers and Garuda's website mentions proprietary NVIDIA video drivers are optionally available. Rounding out some of the key features, Garuda ships with the Zen Linux kernel with the goal of providing better desktop performance.

Linux 5.9-rc6

• Linux 5.9-rc6

  Another week, another rc, and things look fairly normal: the diffstat
  looks fairly flat (implying small changes) and we don't have any
  unusual amount of activity.
  
  The one thing that does show up in the diffstat is the softscroll
  removal (both fbcon and vgacon), and there are people who want to save
  that, but we'll see if some maintainer steps up. I'm not willing to
  resurrect it in the broken form it was in, so I doubt that will happen
  in 5.9, but we'll see what happens.
  
  The other stats also look normal: about 60% of the patch is drivers
  (and yes, the softscroll is a noticeable part, but not overwhelmingly
  so - there's sound, gpu, mtd, i2c, usb etc). And the usual arch
  updates, along with some vm fixes (including the fix for the
  performance regression noted last rc) and perf tooling updates.
  
  We also have a (test regression (not the performance one) in the VM
  that we know about - the test that triggers this was admittedly buggy,
  but if the test was buggy it is quite possible that real uses are
  buggy too. We don't actually have any known case of any such real user
  breakage, but we do have a nice fix for the test regression that is
  very  much the RightThing(tm) to do in the long run, so that has been
  actively discussed.
  
  We know what the fix looks like, and a few initial patches have been
  floating around, but a final patch doesn't exist yet, and depending on
  how that goes this might be something that pushes out the final 5.9 by
  a week. We'll see.
  
  So there's still some development going on, but honestly, that VM case
  is a very odd corner case that normal users should never hit, so it
  should not keep anybody from testing this in the meantime.
  
  Holler if you see anything odd,
  
                    Linus
  

• Linux 5.9-rc6 Released With Soft Scrollback Removed, Performance Regression Fixed

  The sixth weekly release candidate to Linux 5.9 is now available with at least two notable changes in particular. Prominent in Linux 5.9-rc6 is the fix for the previously reported performance regression hitting 5.9. In case you missed it from the end of last week, see the article on controlling page lock unfairness as part of addressing the performance regression. That code is now in Linux 5.9-rc6 and the performance is back on track with Linux 5.8 while I will have out more benchmark numbers soon on the revised Linux 5.8 vs. 5.9 performance state.

• Kernel prepatch 5.9-rc6

  The 5.9-rc6 kernel prepatch is out.

today's leftovers

• Fair Code vs Open Source, Which Wins The Future?

  When developers release their software as open source, they are also giving a by-definition right to every company in the world to commercially use their software without having to obtain a license or share some profits with them. And this caused some problems in the open source world few years ago. For example, Amazon took the MongoDB source code (An open source database system), changed its name and then provided it as a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) on its AWS platform, and then charged people money to use it. MongoDB developers were angered since they literally got nothing back from Amazon although they are the original creators of 100% of the code. This adds some sustainability problems to open source projects, as anybody and any company can just take the code and then reuse it commercially without giving anything back to the original developers. The original developers may starve and the project may stop, and there would be no obligation by anyone to commercially pay them. Fair code initiative arose from this context; To prevent anyone from using the software commercially without contacting the original software authors first, making it under the umbrella of what’s known as source-available models.

• How to Convert a Project to REUSE Compatible License Statements?

  This blog post provides a step-by-step example about how the conversion of a project to REUSE compatible license statements is done in practice. For my setup, I have a readily configured kdesrc-build environment. First, I get out the most recent source code if the project I want to convert. For this tutorial, I use KTurtle, which is a nice and small application from KDE Education with just about 200 files.

• Best Python Data Science Libraries

• John Cook: Descartes and Toolz

  I was looking recently at the Python module toolz, a collection of convenience functions. A lot of these functions don’t do that much. They don’t save you much code, but they do make your code more readable by making it more declarative. You may not realize need them until you see them. For example, there is a function partitionby that breaks up a sequence at the points where a given function’s value changes. I’m pretty sure that function would have improved some code I’ve written recently, making it more declarative than procedural, but I can’t remember what that was. Although I can’t think of my previous example, I can think of a new one, and that is Descartes’ rule of signs.

• How big data forced the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence to evolve

  Interest in SETI can be used to bring the public into science as well. A recent collaboration between the SETI Institute and the open-source software project GNU Radio aims to give people the opportunity to learn about radio engineering, digital signal processing, and radio astronomy. By purchasing a dongle for around $25, members of the public can digitize analog radio signals and process signals on their computers.        

• Getting credit: Taking your place in a meritocracy

  Dealing with either of those incredibly frustrating situations without appearing petty is difficult. But getting credit for your ideas and work is critical in today's organizational environments, especially those that aspire to be well-functioning meritocracies. Promotions, bonuses, and other forms of recognition (such as the opportunity to lead the project you proposed) are all generally based on performance. If people don't know you contributed, you'll likely be continually overlooked.

• Battlefield 4 On Linux | Ubuntu 20.04 | Steam Play

  Battlefield 4 running through Steam Play on Linux.