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Project watcher update (part 2)

Updates, part two.

  • Crystal Space – In January 2007, Crystal Space finally, after 10 years (sic!) of development, has reached 1.0 release. One of the most popular and important projects related to open source gaming space has a stable release! It’s a big step forward, and I consider it as a symbol. Many of the things that happened after this release could of course happened before CS 1.0, but the magical barrier, that means “you can rely on this release” is important. CS is now in 1.2 stage, with many game projects using it, and it’s joining with Blender in effort to create a new game, more on this later. CS is healthy and stays important part of currently rising open source game world. Read changelog to get an idea on where CS is in terms of new features.
  • Yake – this project spent the last 1,5 year in the shadow, but surprisingly it’s alive! They have skipped 0.5 release, and went straight forward to 0.6 released on April 2007 to public and 0.7 being ready in it’s branch. On the other hand, the wiki is down for some time, it’s hard to find any changelogs. Most of the communication happens through forums, and there’s not much going on yet. I’d say that probably Yake is waiting for it’s “1.0” to get momentum and attention. Pity, cause it seems to be the cleanest API for game writing and it bases on OGRE, so you get all the beauty of OGRE updates and Yake updates with each release.
  • Speaking of OGRE 3D – In mid 2005, OGRE got it “1.0” and it took a year to get next stabel release – 1.2. It happened on May 2006, and was followed by 1.4 in March 2007. I’m not a game dev, just an observer, but OGRE seems to be the biggest project around. With professional games like Ankh or Pacific Storm it was tested in battle, huge wiki, strong and ultra-active community, and huge amount of projects using it, it’s just a pleasure watching it’s growth. It seems that this project is getting attention beside of the Open Source/Linux walls and may be one of the best ambassadors beside of Firefox, Open Office, Thunderbird or Blender that we have.
  • Blender – another success story. Since last Project Watcher, Blender upgraded itself from 2.40 to 2.45. It’s simply impossible to list all the new features between those two. Just read the release notes: 2.41, 2.42, 2.43, 2.44, 2.45.
    By the way. I love how they present themself to the community. Their release notes are the best I’ve ever seen (even a total newbie can *see* what’s going on), they have huge amount of community related websites, great video tutorials, and extremely interesting UI. It has rather high learning curve, but it’s very intuitive once you get it and feels very fast.
  • GIMP – This project reminds me Mozilla Suite it many ways. It has great potential, but UI blocks it from being a success. It took them a way too much time to release 2.4, but it’s very nice and mature. The only problem that stays is the UI, which is impractical and hard to learn. Fortunately they guys know what keeps them down. MMIWorks, a company specialized in UI design, is tracking the work on the new UI. What’s interesting here is that Gimp team tends to use the community and they keep their progress in open. Read the Wiki, and the blog. I may be wrong but it seems to be the first “big” open source project that goes through major UI redesign to match the world standards and it happens in open. It’s very interesting to watch how this works.
  • Elephant’s Dream – The movie is ready now. You can download it and watch, it’s beautiful, but too “artistic” in screenplay for me. I’d like something “easier” to attract wider attention. They probably can read my mind, cause they already started project “Pitch” – another open source movie made in the model of “Hack’a’ton” (well, half year of it). It’s going to be cute, pink and funny. During each movie they testing quality of Blender and influencing it’s development. Oh, it’s perfect model of development 馃檪 You’ve got open source movies, better 3d software, and models from the movie will be used in the open source game (Crystal Space + Blender). Tadam 馃檪

Enough for today. The gaming/modeling stage is very healthy and all the projects are progressing (with Yake a bit behind) 馃檪 I should add Irrlicht and Inkscape to the group, and I’ll write more about it once I get through the current state of whole Project Watcher list and start adding new members.

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Mandriva 2008 Live UX

Ok. I put my hands on Mandriva 2008.

I must say honestly, I never liked Mandriva (Mandrake) too much. In the times when I was working for MaxWeber, I tried to use it as my main distro for some time and I felt like in a candy shop, with all those plastic colors, plus the overall experience was pretty “old-fashion-linux-like” in terms of feeling that I’m using a combination of pieces glued together. It’s my old and well known accusion against KDE. (Gnome was a bit better, especially in Ubuntu edition)

I hope that the past did not influence my review, thus I decided it’s better to inform readers about it, to stay fair.

I focused during this test course on the things that are specific to Mandriva distribution plus the overall experience during 10-20 minutes test. It’s not sufficient to put any general statements about the quality and (same as with OpenSUSE 10.3 UX review) I’d like people to give it a try before judging. I did not install Mandriva 2008, and this may influence the experience I have had, altough most of the things I focused on are unrelated to what could have change in the installed system. (that statement bases on my knowledge about Linux and installation processes).
The first thing you see after booting from the CD is a nice, blueish theme. It’s still a bit too candy like, but I feel ok with that, and I’m sure many people will really find it attractive.
A little glitch with grub is that you see a (themed) menu but with only one option to choose and 10 delay before auto starting it. Most people won’t notice, and you can’t say it’s a bug, but what for? I can guess that it’s made to allow some people in corner cases modify the launch options, but once more the sin of Linux Distributions is presented. Majority experiences options made for minority.

Boot screen is just like a modern boot theme in Linux distros. I find it less attractive than suse’s one, but that’s probably because I spent so much time with designers and they raped my aesthetics, so in result I love when things are very small. suse’s progress bar is smaller. 馃槈

The first thing that I found different to most live cd’s is that you have to make some choices before seeing the deskop. You’re choosing languages, time zone, time format, 3d special effects (metisse, compiz fusion or nothing).

I can understand the reason for which they did it. Especially the 3d part makes you aware of what the desktop will be like. There is a clear description of each choice, so even a novice user will understand the consequences of his choice. User who’s already aware of what he’s doing (experienced linux user testing mandriva) will like this idea. I like it. It makes it possible for me to choose in 3 steps how I want the desktop to looks like.

Continue reading “Mandriva 2008 Live UX”
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UX of OpenSUSE 10.3

Today, I tried OpenSUSE 10.3. Installation went fine, although it was at least partially because I installed various OpenSUSE many times before. The installation process is definitely too long but I don’t have off hat ideas on how to make it shorter.

The initial feeling after login is… fresh. It feels fresh. I like the wallpaper, sound theme. The start menu is as always extremely cool and usable. Those three aspects make OpenSUSE first experience really nice. My gf spent about 10 minutes and had absolutely no problem to find herself in the new environment. She knew it’s different from Windows, but she liked they way how different it is.

The first unpleasant experience came after updating system with suse system update. Sound card went down. After some debugging it came out that all devices in /dev/snd were in group audio, and I was not a member of this group (nor any other system user was). I just added it to /etc/group, but that’s totally a blocker that makes the system useless. Imagine Joe Average on my place with his first, brave try of this Linux thing, when he can hear cute login sound on the first time, then he clicks on “update” icon to update his system and then, after reboot – no more sound Joe!

Second unpleasant experience came few minutes later during short user-testing session on my gf. She really liked the wallpaper set, she found the start menu very nice and intuitive, she clicked through apps/docs/places, read right column, wowed over search menu, but then said “It seems there’s not too many apps here” – user used to Windows like start menu with zillion apps feels a bit “empty”. She did not find the “Other apps” icon, but this may be due to the nature of this experiment with me standing over her head.

But the problem appeared when I pointed her this button. She clicked on it, and it took over 30 seconds for the new menu to appear. The new menu is a window, almost full-screen with huge amount of apps in a flat layout. That’s different to Windows, but nothing “bad”. Until she started reading the descriptions. “DMA channels”, “OpenGL”, “PCI”, “Partitions”, “SCSI”, “Samba status”, “Processor”, “X Server”… thank you! Stop!

Who the hell came with this idea? Let me guess… no one. No one actually took care to do this very freakin simple user action flow – login, click on Computer, click on Other Apps, read the first line, compare it with what the user expects to see. Hello!?

Clicking on “Home folder” icon on the desktop to see a window with “bin”, “public_html” directories and one file named “nautilus-debug-log.txt” is also something that should be considered as a suicide.

That’s it for now. OpenSUSE looks really good, it makes great first impression, more familiar for Windows users than Ubuntu, it has way more complicated installation process and lacks the LiveCD+Installer idea from Ubuntu which is so obvious once you get used to it.

Anyway, it’s really frustrating that with each and every linux distro I launch, it takes up to 3 minutes to find a first UX bug. Always. And I’m not talking about super-duper-heavy-LFS like distros. I’m talking about Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, OpenSUSE…

We overcame huge limitations of X system, we developed eye candy to the extend never seen before, we have very, very secure systems, we have huge variety of distributions that create healthy ecosystem of competing solutions and ideas. We developed the best ever seen system of application management and installation, we made it all. Few years ago the blockers for Linux adoption were technical. Sound cards didn’t work. Monitor resolution was badly autodetected. Printer was unavailable. CDROM was not detected. Today, we overcame ALL of those. Virtually ALL! Last three or four hardware pieces I bought were much better recognized by my Ubuntu than Windows! Including USB headphones which are recognized as USB hotplugged sound card! No problem for Ubuntu! Huge problem with Windows.

But in the end, it’s depressing that we still fail to provide the UX without very visible, simple to avoid, flaws. In Ubuntu, you have great chance to see something like “/dev/sda2” on the very first desktop you open after logging in. In SUSE you hit “nautilus-debug-log.txt” in your virgin home folder and “DMA Channels” as an example of “other apps”.

I know that users will learn this. After one day, such problems disappear and new patterns are memorized, I know that people with motivation (and the motivation is easily raised by the blue screen of death) will switch and will be happy in the end. But all those “mistakes” looks like ignorance. Like if no one did actually install his own distro on an empty drive and SEE how it works. For 5 minutes. To make those 5 minutes perfect.

Tomorrow I’m going to try Fedora 8.

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The Witcher

Yesterday, I spent few hours in EMPIK shop next to my place, waiting for a premiere of The Witcher – new PC game that bases on excellent books by polish fantasy author – Andrzej Sapkowski.

First of all, please, don’t be fooled by “fantasy” part. It’s not about faeries, it’s about very brutal world, very realistic action, very interesting moral dilemmas, and amazing action. Sapkowski is one of the most popular polish writers, unfortunately not translated to English yet 馃檨 (First tome of legends, not sage, is translated to English – Last Wish. The quality is good, maybe not as Aviary.pl work, but English language has no such great localization team…)

Now, the polish team of developers created a game – The Witcher. The game is excellent. I bought it yesterday and my flat mate too, and many of my friends did… I did track the progress of the game creating process for last 2 years and I must say that I never heard of such devotion and perfection during game creation. The reviews of the game are great, so it seems that they made it.

If the game will be such a huge success, it’ll be both, thanks to the great world and story created by Sapkowski and thanks to the amazing skills of the game creators. It’ll be the very first game ever created by Polish team that will make the international success. I encourage you all, if you have some free time, to order the game, and try it on your own.

I’m sure you’ll fall in love 馃檪

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Zmiany

Jedn膮 z atrakcyjniejszych form sp臋dzania czasu we wtorkowe, wrze艣niowe popo艂udnie mo偶e zmienianie 艣wiata… nie?

Discussing Mozilla EuropeNo to w艂asnie to robimy 馃檪 Pascal, Pike, Peter, Tristan i ja siedzimy sobie w ma艂ej salce konferencyjnej w centrum pary偶a i podejmujemy Naprawde Wa偶ne Decyzje.

NWD s膮 niezb臋dne, bo dzieje si臋 Naprawde Wiele. Z reczy, kt贸re ju偶 wyciekaj膮, mamy MailCo. B臋dzie wok贸艂 tego du偶o szumu, a Mozilla Europe w natrualny spos贸b zyska艂a nowego partnera. B臋dziemy reprezentowa膰 interesy MailCo w Europie. B臋dziemy te偶 znacznie bardziej aktywni, b臋dzie nas wi臋cej, zar贸wno w dziedzinie zasob贸w ludzkich jak i “visibility”. MoEu obiera dwa kierunki – chcemy by膰 lepiej s艂yszani w Mozilli Foundation, Mozilli Corporation i MailCo. Z drugiej strony, chcemy mocniej zaakcentowa膰 obecno艣膰 Mozilli w Europie.

Adopcja produkt贸w Mozilli w Europie post臋puje w 艣wietnym tempie, jednak nie koresponduje to ze 艣wiadomo艣ci膮 istnienia Mozilli jako organizacji i ludzi, to widoczne jest znacznie bardziej w Stanach Zjednoczonych, Japonii czy Chinach. Chcemy to zmieni膰.

Mozilla Europe chce by膰 bardziej widoczna jako organizacja, a nie wy艂膮cznie poprzez produkt. Ma艂o kto wie o ogromnym projekcie Mozillowym jakim jest Joost. Ma艂o kto wie o AllPeers. Disruptive Innovations, OpenWengo… To wszystko dzieje si臋 w Europie, a w najbli偶szym czasie b臋dzie si臋 dzia艂o jeszcze wi臋cej… Dania jest ciekawym krajem 馃槈

Mamy du偶o do zrobienia. Mozilla jest projektem o niesamowitym potencjale, kt贸ry wykracza bardzo daleko poza punkt w kt贸rym jeste艣my dzisiaj. My艣l臋, 偶e kiedy艣 b臋dziemy m贸wi膰 o Firefoksie jako o pierwszym wielkim sukcesie ogromnego projektu. Mozilla Europe jest jego witaln膮 cz臋艣ci膮.

Trzyletnia kadencja obecnego zarz膮du Mozilli Europe dobiega ko艅ca. Nied艂ugo czekaj膮 nas wybory, zmiany w statucie… i inne… 馃槈 Trzymajcie kciuki!

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main mozilla tech

Mozilla Europe reignites

As some of you may know, Mozilla Europe BoD have a Plan to rule the world. We don’t push it in hurry, as we all know that rather sooner than later you all will understand that it’s actally good for you and the mankind as a whole.

Our current roadmap is to get more power after next elections in most European countries and slowly get people aware that our intelligence, brilliant ideas, and by far most importantly – incredible handsomeness – makes us the natural solution to all problems of the modern Europe.

Of course we’re not going to lay on our huge sofas and drink wine waiting for combined human intelligence (extelligence) to mature enough to see this obvious truth. We need to act.

The logic is simple. The blocker of our Ultimate Goal is human knowledge, maturity and awareness what’s good for you. We need to push this in the only right direction.

In order to achieve this goal we decided to meet together on 17th-18th of September and update our plan. We need to speak lauder (since we have perfect, radio-ready voices). We need to do more (since everything we do is good). We need to be more visible (since we’re amazingly handsome).

It happened, that the group of perfect, hot, well build half-gods met together as a European Mozilla affiliate and we feel responsible for the future of the Mozilla project. So the side effect of taking control over the world (for it’s own luck) will be good for Mozilla project itself.

We want you all, our community, developers, users, non-users, readers, and other kinds of BoD fans to raise your hands now, and share your thoughts, feelings, wishes and the words of thankfulness in the Wiki article.

Look at my beautiful eyes, reader. I’m speaking to you. It’s really important. What you will write there will really influence the future of Mozilla Europe (and the mankind).

Or course this is a great news for Paris and France as a whole. This lucky country that has Mozilla Europe HQ (this can compete only with Disneyland) will host all Board of Directors members together which will cumulate the amount of handsomeness, vibrant intelligence and energy that once created Captain Planet, and for 2 days will take the crown of the World from London, where the GFX Ninja keeps filling the void after Victoria and David Beckham.

For more official info, look at Pike’s blog (he’s smarter, but I’m younger ;)).

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main tech

ISO says NO to fast track for OOXML!

According to nooxml website, it’s getting very likely that OOXML will not go the fast track 馃檪

Crossing fingers 馃檪

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Will companies start exploiting linux packaging systems?

Today I was working on some yet_to_be_announced project for a KnownCompany.

I was also updating my flash player basing on the latest releases from Adobe, and realized that this company, and many others will have to exploit packaging model of modern distributions in order to achieve what they want.

See. Modern, user-oriented linux distros like OpenSuSe, Fedora, Ubuntu, are preparing set of packages for the release, and then “half-freezing”. When I use Ubuntu 7.04, I use a set of software that was ready by April 2007. There are two exceptions – security patches, and community contributed backports of the newer packages , but for the latter, I have to manually select that I want to get them.

It means that being a company, that wants to upgrade users browser, mail client, game, or office package, I should claim聽 that it’s a security release. It’s not an issue right now, since linux is not popular enough to be on most product managers radar, and the releases happen pretty often (half a year in case of Ubuntu), but as Linux will become more popular, I’m more than sure that it will start to happen. All companies I was working for would like their latest versions to be deployed for all users soon after the release. Not half year later. Also, what about users who will not upgrade?

Look at the browsers. Browser X ver 3.5 has been released on Sep 2010. The Ubuntu (by the time used by 35%聽 of end users on Earth!) release 10.10 uploads it and uses in their release. Users are happy, confetti is everywhere and We Are The Champions can be heard in the background. Win-Win.

Then, the vendor of Browser X prepares release 4.0, and they’re ready on Apr 2011. Unfortunately聽 the release cycle of Ubuntu says that Ubuntu is already freezed and will not use ver 4.0 in Ubuntu 11.04. So this release is delivered to the users with Ubuntu 11.10, 6 months after original release!

At this point, many can say “Yea, Mark is calling for synchronizing releases”, but that’s not a solution. What if 11.04 is so great, that people don’t want to migrate to 11.10? If it’s a LTS and majority will want to stick to it for a loong time? (see XP-Vista migration rates) or if it’s simply not good for some reason, and journalists advice to stick to 11.04 and wait for 12.04?

I think that the only proper solution is a vendor controlled backporting highway. A process that would allow a vendor (or vendor licensed volunteers) to backport apps (usually the more front-end user oriented ones) and deliver them with the updates to all users of a release.聽 Otherwise, vendors will start pretending that such a release is fixing some Scary and Serious Security Vulnerabilities聽 that might kill your cat or grandpa.

Business is business… :/

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Mozilla dev days – Paris 2007

Paris Mozilla DeveloperDaysWe’re sitting at Club Confair, on Mozilla Dev Day – Paris 2007. Yesterday, the trip was extremely exhausting. Staszek and myself, we had a flight at 12:45, and I hit the airport at 12:32… but yes, they did wait for me… Actually, waiting for me is something airport does way more often than they should, and when I’m in the middle of the race to get to the airport before the plane actually run engines, I’m sure it’ll work out, but later, when I think about such cases, I’m more and more surprised that it actually worked out… 100 people waiting for my cab to get through jams… I feel bad about it 馃檨

Fortunately, I got a nice sleep after initial dinner, and right now, we’re in the middle of the XUL Tools pow-wow led by Mike Shaver while few minutes ago Neil Deakin presented what is going to be XUL widgets for Mozilla 2.0…

It’ll be day full of Mozilla 馃檪

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Flock rules over Opera in keeping their promises!

All right dudes. Remember Jon S. von Tetzchner, Opera’s CEO, who promised to swim the ocean if Opera 8 will get over 1 million downloads within first four days? The community achieved the goal, Jon failed. Pity.

So Mike Dosik, Flock’s Engineering Manager, promised to shave his head if we’ll get Feature Complete stage on schedule. Flockers did the goal. Mike kept his promise!

From the other news, I’m working on Flock 0.8 I18n right now (for Flock 0.8.2 release) and devs are shaping up Flock 0.9, while QA team makes sure that Flock 0.8 will be out in a few weeks. You can test Flock almost-0.8 at any time 馃檪 We’re hunting for bugs, so help us! (buglist from yesterday).

Keep on Rockin’ in the Flock World