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dimanche 27 septembre 2009

Ubuntu Efficace, 3ème édition

Ubuntu Efficace - Lionel Dricot Avec un peu de retard, j'ai le grand plaisir de vous annoncer la disponibilité de la troisième édition d'Ubuntu Efficace, édition consacrée à Ubuntu 9.04, après une version 5.10 et une version 6.06.

Cette édition a été actualisée grâce à l'excellent travail de Kiki Novak, par ailleurs auteur de Linux au petits oignons. Un grand merci à lui.

En résumé : toi y'en a acheter ça (ça y'en a être bien pour épater les meufs ou les mecs en boîte de nuit).

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mercredi 5 août 2009

The aristocratic desktop (part 3) : There's no tray icon in GNOME!

Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME !

Repeat after me one more time : there's no such thing as a "tray icon" in GNOME. GNOME has a notification area which has nothing to do with the Windows-ish obscenity called "systray", this little space where any application can put a little icon.

child tray

I mean, seriously, have you ever think about how completely stupid is the idea of a "tray icon"? Can you imagine how black magic it should be for a new computer user?

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samedi 7 mars 2009

Getting Things Gnome! 0.1 - "Just 5 minutes more"

GTG icon Bertrand and I are very proud to announce you the first release of Getting Thing Gnome!, a personal organizer and todo list manager for the GNOME desktop.

GTG allows you to add and edit tasks with nearly no fields at all. It support subtasks and tags that you can use the way you want. It aims for flexibility. Getting Things Gnome! goal is to adapt itself to your workflow, not the opposite. GTG also brings the concept of "workview", a display of tasks that can be done right now, right here.

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mercredi 4 février 2009

Upgrading an existing Ubuntu : the kill-your-desktop machine !

If you look in the mirror and see how was your computing world a few years ago, you would probably not believe it. Back in 2002, there was no Ubuntu, no OpenSuse, no Fedora and Mandriva was called Mandrake. Installing a Debian was a geekish thing that didn't detected anything automatically (not even the screen nor the mouse). Installing a printer was a matter of playing with the cups command line, Gnome was still 1.X (at least in Debian) and we didn't even thought about installing a webcam. In 2004 came Ubuntu and it's share of nude people. Connecting to a Wifi network required hours of command line knowledge and it was brown.

It's wonderful to see from how far we come and that, now, we can spend time to polish stuffs. And one big point that need polish is certainly the Ubuntu upgrade process.

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lundi 5 janvier 2009

The aristocratic desktop (part 2) : Home is Desktop

Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME!


After I installed Ubuntu for Marie, she quickly grasped a lot of things and I discovered that she was really bright. She quickly organized a lot of folders for all of her project, downloading a lot of file and putting them in a lot of place. On the opposite, Jean had a lot of difficulties to understand the file concept. Well, in fact, he understood the document concept he was not seeing where those documents were.

Bee
How can I make things easier ?

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dimanche 31 août 2008

The aristocratic desktop (part 1)

Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME!


The terrific world of computers

Geeks like me are used to compare operating systems and desktop environments, discussing the benefits of one over the others. But, most than often, we loose the big picture and forget about the users.

I mean : "the real-life users", those who cannot even grasp the basic concepts and who use a computer because they have no choice. Some geeks would say that "it's good for them to learn" but I really disagree. Everyday I see very bright people who need to have their emails printed out on hard paper so they can read them or who cannot understand the difference between the "minimize" and the "close" button on a window.

Falaise
It seems so hard

It is real : most users are simply lost in a terrific world where newspapers talk about "virus" and "hackers" all the time. They are even afraid to sit in front of their own computer ! If something popup on the screen, they panic and loose all common sense. "Do you want to save this file ? Yes or no ?" and they scream : "What do I do ? What do I have to do ? Please tell me ! I'm afraid that, if I click on the bad button, the computer will explode"[1].

Notes

[1] Then, they simply close the message using the little cross so the computer make the decision for them. By observing a normal user, you discover that 99% of the errors are simply not needed.

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mercredi 30 juillet 2008

Hardy is a hard time...

I'm tired of Hardy. Tired of the bugs, tired of this Operating System. Yes, for the first time, I really regret to use Ubuntu.

Network-manager need 10 times more Wifi power to detect a Wifi and asks you your WEP key again and again, at least, when it works. But it's not a real problem because, anyway, Firefox and Epiphany are crashing on nearly half of the pages you browse daily. And, as usual, Evolution is frozen and requires a kill. So, why would you want to use a network ?

Sound is shaggy so you fallback on VLC but, in Hardy, even VLC crashes and/or mess up your video. Want to cry and talk with someone ? Launch the Psi Jabber client and try to register a Jabber account. Just try. You believe you can only work ? At least if you don't need too much SMB shares on your desktop. Even using Nautilus is now impossible in spatial mode ! And I hope you don't have some disabilities.

Just before the Hardy release, I decided to change my good old Debian server for an Ubuntu one. In order to be 100% Ubuntu, you know. Sigh... Since I upgraded to Hardy, suphp isn't working anymore. I spent countless hours on it but, no matter what, it doesn't work. The exact same files work fine under Debian with exactly the same configuration. In Hardy, well, if you have mod_php, suphp will be ignored. It you don't, suphp will simply fail with an Error 500 and a log full of "SecurityException in Application.cpp:440: Handler not found in configuration, Caused by KeyNotFoundException in Configuration.cpp:234: Handler "application/x-httpd-php" not found, Premature end of script headers". In normal times, I would say that I'm missing something, that I did a mistake. But I do not trust my system anymore. Why spending tireless night only to discover that, oops, this is a bug in some package because it was patched for some reason ? All my work is stalled like it never was. I tried to report as many bug as I can but 99% are already reported and, honnestly, in Hardy it would be a full-time job to just report all the bugs I see everyday.

In the past years, I've converted countless people to Ubuntu. Nearly all of them are the most basic computer users you could imagine. I converted them because Windows was too complicated for them. They were all happy. All of them were completely astonished. Until they upgraded to Hardy.

Today, each time I see one of those people, they talk to me about their computer problem. I wish we could sometime talk about the weather :

- Hello, I have a problem on my comp...

Then, they see the sadness in my eyes. I don't move a finger but they understand immediatly. Slowly, like an old tired man, I reply :
- I know...

Just wait until october...


PS : I know that some answers will be "report the bugs". I did, but reporting doesn't solve. Some will say "send your patches". I did. Well, nearly nothing but I believe that all the people who don't contribute can also have a good Ubuntu experience. The goal is to have users. Last but not least; some will say that they don't experience all those bugs. I did. Some of my friends are even less lucky than me. Some have a few bugs only. But we all agree that we have ten times more problem than in Gutsy. I do not need to be convinced. I love Ubuntu and I will continue to love it because I'm sure that Hardy is an accident. Only an accident and that we, the community, will learn from this big mistake.

mardi 8 avril 2008

I'm not a virgin anymore/there's always a first time

Heron I've been in the Free Software community for years now. I wrote countless documentation, articles, I translated a lot of stuffs, I did a lot of beta testing/bug reporting/bug triaging, including for a secret project called "no-name-yet", wich later became... Ubuntu. Sometimes, I wrote a quick trivial patch or I play with the code of something. But now that you ask, I must admit that there's no non-trivial code I wrote in Ubuntu. I've no problem with that : a lot of developpers are so bright and talented that I can't really compete. I contribute with my own weaponry : promoting, writing books, doing conferences.

Anyway, better late than never. I'm proud to say that Hardy Heron will include an obscure but non-trival patch from me : you will be able to stop the background music in gweled (bug #90499). The five people in the world that play Gweled know that it's a huge improvement !

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jeudi 28 février 2008

Very simple video editing/DVD burning in Ubuntu

You have a IEEE1394 (Firewire) camera and you want to burn your birthday/wedding/funerals on a DVD. And maybe cut the scene where you look silly, dancing madly with a potato in your pants. It's Ok, Ubuntu can save your reputation...

Vous avez une caméra IEEE1394 (Firewire) and vous voulez graver un DVD vidéo de votre anniversaire/mariage/enterrement. Et peut-être en profiter pour couper la scène où vous dansez comme un fou avec une patate dans votre pantalon. Ubuntu peut sauver votre réputation...

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jeudi 24 mai 2007

Ubuntu Live ... without me

On March 15th, when I received a confirmation that I was selected to make a talk at Ubuntu Live, I was really happy. I would be able to share my experience and meet a lot of members of the community. Because I thought that "Users conference" means also the community. And I started immediately preliminary work on my conference.

Ubuntu Live

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