Category Archives: software

Gnome 3 first impression

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I’m finally able to write a first impression post about Gnome 3. As user I’m quite satisfied, I don’t look back the old interface, after around a month. I must admit, so far, I didn’t do fancy or heavy stuffs, but just some home usage, like reading email, websurfing, some light coding.

The new interface appear quite fancy and honestly smell like Mac OSX; sometimes I have the impression that I cannot use shortcuts for everything. After long usage, I also experiences huge memory leak, inthe scale of Gb, but I’m sure is a known bug and is due the jungest age of the whole product.

I like the new approach below the whole GUI, in particular:

  • the alt+tab is switching between all the application on any workspace, avoid you to find the application along the workspaces
  • the policy to remove empty workspaces, it helps to clean up the desktop and to have an additional workspace only when is really needed
  • the possibility to dimension an application to use only half of the screen (but in this case I don’t know how to use the shortcut, but the mouse)
  • the silent and integrated way the  notifications are shown for conversation and applications

I still haven’t understood

  • why the title bar of the applications that so huge! It use a relevant part of the screen
  • why the VOIP and instant messaging account are not connected automatically but I need to use empathy with the conseguence to have two application that do the same function and the chat windows are even not syncronized! – Probably a bug

Gnome 3 is a fundamental step for GNOME to follow the desktop and the usability evolution; the way people interact with interfaces is changing day by day, moreover now, towards new mobile and new pad devices.

I like it!

About these ads

I don’t

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I don’t give a shit if Microsoft bought Skype. Their business.

I don’t give a shit if everybody want to use alternative software. I’ve been trying it long time ago, without success.

Update 13/05/2011@11:35: thinking that GTalk is a better solution than Skype, is simply bullshit :)

I want Fedora 15. NOW!

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Today I woke up and I decided that was enough for Fedora 14. I upgrade straight to Fedora 15 rawhide.

Instead of reinstalling I just update with preupgrade. So far so good. Apart for a crash in the kernel during the boot, some errors in the configuration of the Xorg, kernel panic and random problem here and there, hammering, I finally managed to make it works.

Gnome 3 looks good.

I will write something about it soon.

Backup + Amazon S3 = Love

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It’s about one year ago that I started thinking a new way to manage, think and perform backups. After wasting money in hard drivers USB and useless network sharing devices, I decided to open a new account of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service).

If I have to describe in three worlds my first impressions, I would say: easy, cheap, clear.
Easy because you need 10 minutes to open a new account, cheap because to the rate are low for a personal home needs (you might spend a lot if you have to move lot of data, like 100/1000 Gb), clear because the documentation is well done and is also possible to have a prediction of how much you are going to spend per month.

I’ve been using it since April, I’ve also found a nice backup software that support as destination location Amazon, already installed and integrated in GNOME: Déja dup. I made a backup few time only, moving from 40 to 60 Gb and getting a bill around 0.35€.
From May I will schedule weekly jobs and I will give you an update of how much I’m going to spend.

With Déja dup is possible, using GNOME, to retrieve the version of that file based on the date.

Cerea Fair Report – Jan 2010

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Cerea is a small town, near Verona, characterized by a really huge exposition area, called AreaExpo, which counts a long series of events and expositions every year.

Before talking about the conference, I would like to talk a bit about the story of this event. Since I had the first contact and we got introduced to the possibility to have an active participation there, I was convinced on the importance of it. As Italian ambassadors we had to consider it as a key event.

Everything was possible thanks to Emanuele, friend and university mate, involved in some NPO of the area: LUGMan, Protezione civile, ARCO, etc. During MemoByte 2009, he introduced us to this fair and propose a huge Fedora participation.
I attended the Summer edition on August with Davide to have a look at the area and a better idea of the place. I was really impressed about it. Basically, the exposition area is divided into two parts: the exposition and the conference room with spots for 250 people.

The initial proposal and idea was to fill the conference room with talks during all the fair; I could say my best wish was to have Chitlesh Goorah speaking about Fedora FEL.

Unfortunately (and sadly) the Italian community didn’t answer very well (when I proposed it I got as answer only complains about the distance, the place, this and that…and so on…), so we (me and Emanuele) decided to do something lighter, less heavy (even for who organized) and with less resources required: a booth in the exposition area.

The (dream) team was composed by 5 people: Me, Alexjan, Marina, Davide and Lorenzo. The plans was to get there on Friday evening (I arrived on Saturday morning), stay there until Sunday evening. Due the impossibility to came back every night I arranged to sleep in an hostel near Cerea.

The exposition was really good, basically full of electronic, used stuff, radio amateurs, and various mixed booths. Indeed it was full of people; the organizations estimate around 10000 ~25000 people attended the event. We got also a really nice position, we were placed near the entrance, where all the people passed by after entering in the area.
A lot of people stop by and try the computers, ask questions and talk with us; statistically speaking most of them were above 40 years old, but I saw also some young people (not so many anyway).
The most common question people asked us were: “why not Ubuntu?” and “what are the differences?”; someone asked also “What is Linux?”. Next time I’ll bring a “fedora starter kit” with the most Frequently Asked Questions. :)

I really like the way we handle this event. My organization was a bit confused at the beginning because 1000Km distance are not handy but the team did and excellent job. In fact I cannot to say thanks to Stefano, who didn’t join us but did a fundamental job by helping me, like my right hand.
On my side, there are a lot of stuff that have to be improved, we manage successfully to get some CDs and DVDs (thanks to fedora) but due to some problems I couldn’t print the latest 4 foundation banner, we used the old Freedom, Voice and Infinity one.
Next time I want to design and try a new gadget concept. Instead of having CDs and DVDs I want to prepare and give a transparent plastic CD cover without a CD/DVD inside, but just information about:
• what is fedora
• how download and burn it
• how to join

Why this? Because, in Italy at least, most of the people who ask for CD/DVD don’t really need it, they need only the cover and the information printed on it.

Last but not least, this, for now, will be the last even I’ll organize in Italy. I’m now busy on FAmSCo stuffs and I still have to getting in and being more productive. Moreover the distance doesn’t help me, and I would like to see if the Italian community can walk without me.

I also decided to give my Ambassador polo, which is really big for me (I’ll get a new one two size less) to Alexjan. Like Max give to me for my involvement in Fedora, I’ll give to him because he is really doing good stuff for Fedora.
I have to congratulate with him and with all of the team, for the passion, the care and the effort they put on this event: I have to give my welcome to Marina, who will join our ambassador community.

In conclusion, this event was double worthy. Looking the relation with the outside world, we spot in a prolific (linux speaking) area and will give us opportunities to have at least two/three events per year. Looking internally we enhance our team, our relations, I believe having a face-to-face speaking was 10000 better than talking only via email and fortified your relation for present and future.

You can find additional photos from the event here.

Using Zimbra calendar with Evolution

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This article will try to explain how to configure Zimbra calendar in Evolution, I get most of the informations from a Jesse Keating’s article with Google Calendar instead of Zimbra.

Few releases ago Evolutions had a specific Zimbra connector which is not needed today (and is not maintained anymore), because Caldav support in both end-points is enough stable to be used, the problem is that is not clear how to use it.

Open your Zimbra account and move to Calendar tab:

  • right click on calendar then properties, you can see some information about the calendar
  • click on “Share…”, you can change the visibility of the calendar, just if you want to share it with others. For your access default settings don’t need any change.
  • On the bottom of the share window, you can find the addresses: ICS to access from Caldav or View to access via HTTP.

The ICS access is what we need: http://mailserver/home/user@domain/CalendarName/, depends on your configurations, sometimes you have to use http://mail.byte-code.com/dav/user@domain/CalendarName/ (with /dav instead of /home, you have to try with the browser). For my Byte-code colleague: use /dav/.

Now:

That’s all, it should be work fine.

I tested also meetings invitation from Zimbra to Evolution and vice-versa and works fine.

The only things that doesn’t work is then, from evolution to Zimbra is when you forward an appontment as ICalendar, Zimbra doesn’t recognize the format and don’t permit you to add to the calendar.

I hope I didn’t forget anything. Please feel free to report it in the comments.