We still have a lot to do

Just when you think we are beginning to win the battle, the enemy shows its weapons and get a step forward.

The Canary Islands Regional Gov. has made public a contract to buy MS Office licenses. They'll spend 3.3 mill €

We have improved a lot, but still have a lot more job ahead.

I'm moving out of the Canary Islands to Málaga for a migration project

I've been quiet lately....

I'm moving out the Canary Islands, where I've lived my entire life (except for one year I lived in the US). A friend of mine, Ramón Ramón (yes doubled Ramón), has called me to help him in a migration project to free software of La Axarquía, a group of municipalities close to Málaga, where Akademy 2005 took place, in Andalucía, Spain.

I will keep working in some of the projects I'm in right now in the Canaries, like trying to bring Akademy to these islands in 2009. I'm also going to be directly related with Grupo CPD as much as I can.

This is the first time such a migration project takes place in Spain. It is financed by Andalucía's regional Gov. and the company ITD was the one chosen to do it (they have contracted me as freelance) and Emergya, a free software company from Andalucía, is also involved.

My role will be to make the previous evaluation of each municipality and make the design of the migration project. That should take a year.

In Andalucía, GNOME rules, so it will be tough to introduce KDE, but now we have another warrior to try it. I leave a place where KDE is the most popular free desktop (Canary Islands) by a region where GNOME is, by far, the most popular.

Anyway, since Windows is the target...everything will be fine :)

This is a new milestone in my professional career so I'm excited about this new challenge. I hope we can do something that have impact in this region of Spain. We have the willing, the knowledge and the people to do it. If the politicians and the public workers of these municipalities want, we can make the difference moving from propietary to software libre.

What a nice project...isn't it? I feel lucky these days.

Kubuntu days...productive days

These last four or five days it have been Kubuntu days for me. For different reasons, I've have installed or upgraded Kubuntu in four PCs and used the Kubuntu Live CD to configure a graphic card of a computer with debian sarge installed.

Installing Kubuntu from scratch is a great sensation. It's fast and easy most of the times. My parents had at home a debian, then switched to Kubuntu Breezy and, during this weekend, I've changed their old PC by a newer one with Kubuntu Gutsy on it. They are happy because it was easy to configure the HP Laserjet 1018 (with breezy it was a nightmare for me). Everything works fine with no extra configurations. My mother not just use it, also promote it, which is something I've never expected. My father is getting into it, not 100% convinced yet

I also took a friend's PC and changed her old unupdated Kubuntu Dapper by a brand new Kubuntu Gutsy. After installation, everything worked fine, specially her usb-wifi stick, something she could not get working with the old distro.

I upgraded my office's PC from Kubuntu Feisty to Gutsy with the distribution upgrade tool. Everything worked fine except cups. I didn't have a backup copy of the configuration archive. Does anybody knows if it does one before changing cups by the new packet?

I also installed a Kubuntu in a quite old computer after adding some RAM memory (it has xubuntu). Now it has dual boot. It works quiet well although xubuntu works faster.

So, what is the point? It is that, for non technical users, as I am, Kubuntu have reached a point where I'm able to do with linux everything I used to be able to do in windows, install it, make partitions, configure a network, install apps, share printers and directories, configure wifi devices, create users, etc. very easily. In fact, I can do more things now that I could in windows.

We can improve a lot though, but it has been a confirmation of what I already knew (we all know). With linux I'm more productive, even in tedious actions like the ones I've done these days.

aKademy in the Canary Islands?

Sometimes it is hard or even impossible to achieve a goal no matter how hard you try. But sometimes things flow naturally and comes easier than you have ever expected. When I first told the people I work with that we should try to bring aKademy to the Canary Islands, everybody laughed at me. Few month later, some of them are even more excited with the idea of pushing hard to do it than myself.

We presented the idea to some people from the free software community here in the Canaries and they liked so we began to think about it was something we had to try. During aKademy 2007 I propose it to some of the e.V. members and they encouraged me to try it. So we are.

Now we are preparing a project to send to the e.V. to celebrate aKademy 2009 in Gran Canaria. We are working to compete with whatever candidate it shows up. Competition is good for everybody.

I hope we can finish our work soon and make a project we can be proud of. Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, sounds good for an aKademy, right?

Kubuntu...rescues another Windows. I need a special distro for this.

No matter how old I get, I can't get away from friends of mine calling me for help when their Windows have a problem. I have finally get to a point where they call me only when the fire is clearly visible, but still it is too often....

This week I had to do it again. I've became an expert:

• Save the data...that means the whole harddisk, since you never know for sure where Windows apps save the key data


• Check harddisk's integrity. It would be nice to have statistics about how often a harddisk breaks with windows installed compared with linux in the same enviroment.


• Pass an antivirus, maybe you just have to restore a couple of archives.


• Try to restore the windows installation (this doesn't work in 99% of the cases)


• Format the harddisk


• Install windows


• Install drivers


• Install apps


• Restore data


• Restore configurations


• Install eDonkey or similar (this is a special category even for corporative computers) :)

I used to do some of these operations with Knoppix, but lately I do them with Kubuntu. I would like to use a pendrive specially prepared for this. I have a Mandrake one (from aKademy 2007) but I prefer a Debian based one (I'm more used to it). Is there any?

Maybe next time I have to help somebody to restore the Windows, I convince myself to do it. It is such a pain.....

Plone...we meet again

I have a nice love story with Plone. It is like a close friend that becomes a lover in different stages of somebody's life.

I first discovered Plone back in 2003. It was a great love story, I use it as intranet since then and worked in a few projects based on it. But since the end of 2005 I haven't been able to work deeply with it, so I haven't been able to test the newest version (other people from Grupo CPD were in charge of projects related with Plone). I was willing to work with the new version, specially after I met Alan Runyan during Software Libre Conferences that took place in autumn in La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. During the last 3 o 4 weeks I've the chance to use it again for a project, this time for a web portal.

Plone has grown up but still keeps in the user layer that mixture of functionality and simplicity I used to love so much, and the power and complexity that have attracted technicians these past 10 years.

I love this wiki way of generating contents that Plone has added to the new version. I'm a wiki fan and Plone can satisfy people like me.

Plone is not just the first and only really robust CMS, useful for big scale projects, it is a really good CMS, useful for medium size projects too.

KDE 4, a motivation to keep fighting

I hear people talking about innovation everywhere. It is an easy concept to talk about but hard to put in practice. KDE community had the skills and the determination of doing something new back in 2005, when I first got in touch with the project, but that was not enough. We usually think that money is a key factor for innovation but history give us tons of examples of the opposite. This is one of them. Hardworking is a necessary one, but not sufficient.

To innovate we need freedom.

Now we are close to see the light. KDE 4 is almost out and I was wondering what does this milestone means for me.

We have put a lot of effort fighting against patents, propietary software, restrictive licenses, etc., not because we want to defeat our opponents but because we want to have freedom to innovate... and to have fun doing it. We deserve the chance of having something better, promoting that the people with the knowledge and the determination of going for something like KDE 5 (or whatever adventure they want) are able to try it, and maybe do it, just like KDE community has done in this case.

For me KDE4 means, overall, a motivation to keep fighting to make our way to the next stop easier, to gain more freedom to innovate much more than we've done so far...that has been a lot.

ReciclaRed, a software libre edu project in the Canary Islands

ReciclaRed finished last December. During a whole year 20 students have been working hard to install and configure 14 computer labs in some public schools placed in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Canary Islands, Spain, as part of a project financed with EU funds through the Canary Islands Employment Department of the Regional Government.

This project was assigned to FUNDESCAN, a well known local foundation. Grupo CPD, the company I work for, was the technological partner. For ReciclaRed, a director, some teachers and one administrative were employed.

Beside cabling and building up the network of every computer lab, the students recycled hundreds of computers donated by public administrations and private companies and configured them as thin clients, using software libre to do so.

Students also learned to install and configured distros like Debian, Kubuntu or CentOS. All thin client systems had KDE as the default desktop with KOffice and KDE-Edu apps installed, among others. Software like LTSP, XEN, Mediawiki, Joomla, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc were also used.

This project wouldn't be possible with propietary software and it has been a clear success story with local media coverage (check this article in spanish). Some wiki pages written by the students and teachers has been already published. The rest will be public soon (with free license).

We have linux on schools, so now what?

Teachers usually prepare their classes at home, so they need the same software there that it is installed at the school they work in, with the same version of any app. As they do with books, teachers need to make agreements on the software they install in computer labs. This is not just a pedagogical, but a technical and a management need. This is the first problem the have to face.

In Spain, due to political reasons, regional governments are in charge of the technical issues that deals with computers involved in education. So they select most (or all) of the apps you find in a computer lab of any public school. This is one of the reasons we have been so successful in promoting free software at schools. It is a political decision and teachers support it (although it takes time). But other countries do not have global solutions for this, since each school or teacher have independence for choosing the applications to work with at school. This is not an advantage from a managing or a supporting point of view (it doesn't have to be a disadvantage either if there is a good coordination).

Let's assume that this problem is solved.

Supporting the software and creating documentation around a single app is hard to do and takes time. To teach teachers and students to use the software chosen takes a while too, so it is impossible for edu projects to follow short release periods, as software libre distributions do. They soon get out of date, unsupported. So teachers and students end up having at home newer versions of the software they have at school. This is already a problem for those teachers that already have good skills using linux.

In addition, each distro have its own politic related with repositories and versions of packets they include and support in any release. Even if a single (or group) of schools follow it, still there is a problem with what people have at home.

One of the things that should be done by schools or regional govs. in order to reduce the impact of this problem is to create and maintain their own repository of packets to ensure they all use the same version of the same app they have at school. This is a good point for students also.

In my opinion, this repository should be distro independent, so teachers (or students) can install the distro they want (from the official distro repository, or from a installation CD), and add this edu repository, so they have the same version of any app. This can also include Windows versions of edu apps. This doesn't work at 100% but there are technical ways of getting close.

This is a better approach than preparing a complete edu distro and having to support the installation process, hardware drivers, desktop configs, etc.. Distros already take care of that and they do it well because they have the experience.

What makes the difference if you use KDE, and I think the best thing this can be done, is to be able to download and install from the edu repository the profile (configured with kiosk mode) you have in school (if you use KDE), with all the apps, so teachers have the same configs and apps in a semi-independent desktop.

By doing this, what people in charge of edu projects can do, is to put more effort on spreading their experience selecting and configuring the desktop (improving usability), on promoting a community around the software they install and on connecting that community directly with distro, desktop and apps communities, instead of putting so much effort on technical stuff related with live CD installation, hardware configurations, release periods etc. in uncontrolled environments. To deploy, update and maintain the software on computer labs and other dependencies in schools (controlled environments) is already a huge project that takes many resources.

This is not the politic big edu projects are following in general. They are promoting that people at home install the same complete distro they have at school, adding an unsustainable and non scalable effort to the technical people they have. That politic have to change if we want to give response to the increasing demand we gonna face during the following years. Specially, if computer stores begin to sell machines with linux preinstalled, so regular users won't have to install that whatever linux operative system they (or the store) choose anymore (probably different than the one they have at schools).

wiki, kile, kontact, RT...and voila!

Wikis, kontact, RT and kile are four of the basic tools I use everyday. Some of the guys I work with have been worried for a long time about integration of tools in one interface so they can work with them in a wiki way.

When I first heard about this I didn't think it was a great idea, but now I'm 100% convinced about the need of such a tool.

When people begin to use computers need clear and easy to use interfaces, where all the information is placed in text boxes with big names with one screen for each concept, like kontact does. Is the groupware way. Kontact is a great tool because integration between tools has always been a concern for the developers. Part of it success is because of that.

Wikis are terrific tools. They make the difference, specially when you are part of a big team. Bugtrackers are also useful in those cases. Is not only a tool for developers but for all kind of people. Workers are much more efficient when they can list the activities they have to accomplish ordered by priority. To coordinate teams is much easier when you can take a look to everybody's contributions in a wiki and list their assigned work.

Kile is a basic tool for me. It makes easy to use tags in LaTeX.

So, why not to take the best of each one of them in a single tool (or a single interface)? I want a tool like kile but not for writing LaTex but for writing in a wiki.

Let's say I'm writing a text that I want to send to somebody, so I select that text and introduce a tag (|body| my text|/body|). When I press save, the tool detects the tag and, since I haven't specified basic information to send the e-mail, it ask me, lets say, in a panel at the right side of the screen. Of course I could have defined it while writing the text with the tag |to|e-mail address|/to|, for example. The same can happen with names, phone numbers, etc.

All the information tagged can be found in the wiki page where I wrote it but, since the tool recognice the tags, specific information can be listed in a specific page automatically. So if I look for the name of a travel agency, for example, it shows me all the names (information tagged with |name|) associated to the information tagged with |company_type|. I also can decide which information associated with the tag |company_name| I want to be shown.

This works very well with bug reports. We integrated long time ago Twiki with RT by defining specific tags in the wiki that opens or close new bugs (tasks) in RT, all identified with diferent colours (red for open tasks, green for closed tags, etc). We cannot live now without it.

The calendar can work perfectly this way. I can define a meeting by writing in a wiki page something like this: |meeting|Talk about KDE|/meeting||hour|8:30|/hour||place|tenerife|/place|. Since it is hard to remember the tags(there would be tons of them), we need an kile like interface to list them all. There has to be a special wiki page where you can list all the meetings or list what you have to do today, ordered by priority, date or whatever. You can also assign tags to information that relates it to other information so you can list it all together in one wiki page. Wikis do this quiet well with a whole contribution, but it should be possible to do it with a single piece of information.

The point is be able to introduce different kind of information without switching from one interface or tool to another one. You have them all in one (from the user point of view).

This is a more natural approach than the one we use now. When you are in front of your computer, you begin to write a text, for example. Part of that text has to be sent as an e-mail (so you tag that part as |body|) where you have included a contact and a task (you tag both). Right now you have to copy the text and paste in a new e-mail (you open a mail client), then open the tracker and create one task, write the contact information in a specific tool (so you keep record of it) and attach it to the e-mail and then send it. Too many interfaces for basic actions, in my opinion.

Making such a tool attractive to beginners would be hard, I know. Anyway, I want something like this so I asked for it to the Three Wise Men.

Have you get the idea of what I want? Is it an impossible dream? Do you know a good approach to this idea?