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Monday, 01 January 2007 |
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(This news is in English only).
Eventually trying to get some fresh air on my way to qual exam and hoping that this will be my last big life-career-barrier, I tried to have a broad look at what is going on around in F/OSS world. There was nothing special or new by means of context or new ideas, however this will be an opportunity to drive a project which will be of benefit for both asia-pacific countries and European F/OSS community/sector: FP7 includes a call which focuses on this aspect. A cite from the ICT Workprogramme 2007 says,
Open Source Software with particular focus on Asia, ACP and Latin America. To promote interoperability and the emergence of global open standards and practices. The objective will be to concentrate on OSS-based tools, services or applications of high potential for societal impact and wide diffusion of ICTs and to address in particular issues such as security, dependability, quality of service, maintainability and affordability.
That deserves a focus upon as F/OSS is becoming a dominant actor in in Malaysia (check my talk about Pardus in Kuala Lumpur), India (check IOSN also), Caribbeans, Peru, Venezuela etc. We'll see what we can do here, please drop me a note if you are interested in giving a proposal for this call.
I've not heard anything from NGO in a box project for quite some time, but it looks like they have proceeded well, offering boxed sets which will help NGOs set up their Linux/FOSS based infrastructure without hassle.
Say it a coincidence or not, I've found myself getting interested in web-based "operating systems", and at the same time, Frantic Industries has made a review about 10 online OS's. This is becoming more addictive after Umut has shown me his 2nd generation Claros, which now is a full communication suite with mailing suite, calendar, chat, note taker, fully based on Java and AJAX technologies. Claros Chat is already one of the web based Google connectivity applications around, I strongly urge you to check. In our OPEN TC project, we have decided to benefit from Claros 2.0 webmail system (sorry, no screenshots yet) to build a message exchange infrastructure on a Xen based system fully exploiting Trusted Platform Module (TPM) infrastructure.
PS: Last but not least, Battlestar Galactica series is becoming my best choice after According to Jim. BSG was shown the first time in 80's on Turkish TV, and by far the most interesting SCI-FI series that time. It's interesting to see a more in-depth, fascinating and attractive version after 20 years.
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BIG DAY: Pardus 2007 is out! |
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Monday, 18 December 2006 |
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Download here!
What's New in Pardus 2007 ?
Multilingual installer
// It is possible to install Pardus in Turkish, English, Spanish, German or Dutch. It is now much easier to install Pardus 2007, thanks to renewed YALI and Kaptain Desktop...
Smaller packages, faster updates
// Thanks to the improvements to the Pardus package manager PiSi, applications use less space on disk and download over internet much faster...
Package manager
// The intuitive and cute graphics interface of PiSi makes update and installation of software much easier.....
Fast start-up
// The new init system developed using the Pardus configurarion framework ÇOMAR makes the start-up much faster compared to other operating systems....
New and up-to-date applications
// More than 640 packages are installed with the CD, and more than 1000 available over the internet. Since Pardus 1.0 more than 770 packages were added to the repo ....
Others
// More than 1600 bug fixes since Pardus 1.0, USB start-up, new network-manager, new icons in Tulliana icon set, ...
And what remains the same
Pardus, with with internet tools, office suite, multimedia (picture, music, video, etc) players, games and numerous applications to satisfy all the needs of desktop users, all squezed in a single CD...
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2 submissions accepted for HCI International 2007 |
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Sunday, 17 December 2006 |
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It was quite a busy week for me. After having a successful workshop in Bologna about open source software usability, I was informed by Sandra Frings that our paper entitled "An analysis of involvement of HCI experts in distributed software development: Practical issues" was accepted to HCI International 2007. It was a paper written by Sandra, me and Damiano. Probably among us, Damiano will be presenting the paper in Beijing, China in July. Glad to hear from the reviewers that the paper shows an "interesting and timely study; a good contribution with clear focus and objectives".
Moreover, another paper written by me and my PhD advisor is also accepted to the same organization, under the title "Out of Box Experience Issues of Free and Open Source Software", with a note from the reviewer: "An interesting paper covering an active area of research, addressing a subject at the core of the conference." I'll be presenting this paper, and organizers have reminded that the full paper should be finished until February 26. Looks like January and February will be a nightmare for me.
And the last, but not least, I'll be also attending the Free Software World Conference to be held in Badajoz, Spain. The agenda is not fixed yet, so stay tuned. |
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Wednesday, 06 December 2006 |
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I'll be in CINECA, Bologna, Italy between 13-16 December to hold a workshop about F/OSS Usability. This workshop has an aim of understanding how F/OSS usabiilty works in practice by giving real world examples about F/OSS in digital media, schools, public institutions and development environments.
The workshop will be held in December 15th, starting from 15:00. The final programme is here for your pleasure. Please register before coming, so we can prepare a nice badge for you! |
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Friday, 01 December 2006 |
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We are step by step approaching the Pardus final release. Now, the release candidate version of Pardus 2007 for both installation CD and Live CD is on Pardus FTP servers.
You can immediately start downloading Pardus 2007 RC from the following addresses:
Installation CD: ftp://ftp.pardus.org.tr/pub/pardus/kurulan/2007-RC
Live CD: ftp://ftp.pardus.org.tr/pub/pardus/calisan/2007-RC
After downloading the files, do not forget to check the checksums, and write the CD'sin in DAO (disk at once) mode, with at most 16X speed.
Changes in this release
- Smaller packages, faster updates, thanks to PISI, Pardus package manager
- Pardus graphical package manager is now more intuitive and smarty than ever
- Faster boot times with YALI and COMAR, the configuration manager.
- Firefox 2.0 is now included with Pardus
- More than 400 bugs fixed, compared to the beta release "ATA".
- New language support: Full Spanish support
- Other enhancements: Ability to boot from USB sticks, support for Turkish, English Spanish, German and Dutch, new Tulliana icon sets
New versions of Pardus tools
- A fresh tool: Disk manager 1.0
- PiSi 1.1_rc9
- Yalı 1.1_rc1
- Tasma 1.0.12
- Package Manager 1.1_rc5
- Service Manager 1.1.4
- Network Manager 1.5
- Comar 1.10
- Mudur 1.9
New package versions
- Kernel 2.6.18.4
- Firefox 2.0
- Wine 0.9.26
- Smb4k 0.7.5
- Frozen Bubble 2.1.0
- microcode-ctl 1.15
- wpa_supplicant 0.5.6
- foo2zjs 0.0_20061126,
- sabishape 2.2
- Freetype2 20061127
- kaffeine 0.8.3
- Gwenview 1.4.1
- Avidemux 2.3.0
- exiv2 0.12
- suhosin 0.9.15
- Man Pages 2.42
- mpfr 2.2.1
- Koffice 1.6.1
- pycairo 1.2.2
- Cups 1.2.7
- Gnupg 2.0.1
- Ndiswrapper 1.30
Known bugs
- Backspace and caps lock button doesn't work in real console [during login].
- Kernel has problems with VCDs, Kaffeine crashes while playing VCD, Workaround : use Mplayer.
- GTK applications have ugly fonts, Workaround: in Tasma/View and Themes/Fonts deactivate and activate "Force 96 DPI" again, then click Apply.
For the whole list of changes, see http://www.pardus-wiki.org/index.php/Pardus_2007:Release
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Pardus 2007 beta2 is out! |
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Saturday, 25 November 2006 |
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Pardus 2007 beta2 is out for downloading and testing. We believe that
this is the best, most stable, most innovative Pardus Linux distribution
out there. We codenamed the last beta after the great Turkish
short-story writer Sait Faik Abasıyanık, who was born this very week
hundred years ago. Sait Faik is the author of seagulls, drunks, dory,
fishermen, narrow streets, İstanbul and idleness.
What's New in Pardus 2007
- Multilingual installer: It is possible to install Pardus in Turkish,
English, German or Dutch...
- Smaller packages, faster updates: Thanks to the improvements to the
Pardus package manager PiSi, applications use less space on disk and
download over internet much faster...
- Package manager: The intuitive and cute graphics interface of PiSi
makes update and installation of software much easier.....
- Fast start-up: The new init system developed using the Pardus
configurarion framework ÇOMAR makes the start-up much faster compared to
other operating systems....
- Others: More than 200 bug fixes since the previous beta "ATA", USB
start-up, new icons in Tulliana icon set, ...
And what remains the same
- Pardus, comes with internet tools, office suite, multimedia (picture,
music, video, etc) players, games and numerous applications to satisfy
all the needs of desktop users, all squezed in a single CD...
Please download Pardus 2007 beta 2 here,:
ftp://ftp.pardus.org.tr/pub/pardus/kurulan/2007-Beta2/
And, as usual, send your bug reports to Pardus Bugzilla for a more
tasteful, useful, bug-free Pardus.
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Wednesday, 08 November 2006 |
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Our poll entitled "which office software do you use?" has ended. Results have shown that more than 50% (51.9%) use OpenOffice.org (174 votes), and 40% use MS Office, with 134 votes. Then comes KOffice, StarOffice and Abiword, with a total of 8%. Note that my visitors are mainly Linux users, so the results can be a _bit_ biased ;-).
However, for the people who hasn't used OpenOffice.org before: I strongly suggest that you download and install a copy from OpenOffice.org (Turkish | English) web site. Being an OpenOffice.org veteran for 6 years from the beginning of the project, and as the Turkish marketing team lead and localization lead, I am proud to be a part of this community. Just install and try for free - you won't regret!
Hey - there seems to appear another poll, just have a look on the right. |
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Saturday, 04 November 2006 |
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I'll be in Helsinki, Finland between 20-24 November for IST 2006 event. Within the event, we'll have a tOSSad booth where we'll share our experiences, reports, findings and experiment results with the rest of the world.
Our stand number is 8E. Come get to see what tOSSad partners have achieved up to now :) |
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F/OSS Usability Workshop to be held in Bologna, Italy |
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Tuesday, 31 October 2006 |
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Theme: Empowering F/OSS applications with a usability focus: designing for a successful project
Are you involved in a F/OSS project? Are you having problems involving usability processes in your product or service? Do you want a user-oriented application, but do not know how? Do you have significant outcomes of an experiment, observation or a use-case? This 1-day workshop bundled with seminars, panels and poster sessions will serve as a learning basis for both F/OSS developers and usability specialists.
This workshop has 3 main goals. The participants will
- have an understanding of the current relationship between F/OSS and usability, together with problems, barriers and actions taken.
- understand how F/OSS and usability will cooperate across the organization or a project.
- have the ability to integrate their refreshed usability skills and the project they are involved.
We welcome anyone interested in design of F/OSS products and involving usability in F/OSS: developers, usability experts, user interface designers and end-users. Participation is free of charge
Date: 15 December, 2006
Place: Blue Room, CINECA (Bologna, Italy)
Important dates:
1 December 2006: Last day for applications
3 December 2006: Notification of acceptance
4 December 2006: Fixing the workshop program
15 December 2006: Workshop
Workshop page: http://www.tossad.org/tossad/events/f_oss_usability_workshop
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Sunday, 08 October 2006 |
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Pardus has a brand new init system written from scratch called Mudur. Mudur benefits from Python and dramatically decreases the boot time of Pardus to around 20-30 seconds. Now OSnews and Newsforge links to the article "Speeding up Linux: One step further with Pardus". There are different comments to this story, but it has definitely drawn attention of other Linux developers. |
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Monday, 02 October 2006 |
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I've uploaded some photos to Flickr. This service is what you can expect from a Web 2.0 platform with an Ajax backend. Especially I liked the slick and straightforward interaction design of photo tag gallery. |
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