I just wrote a blog post about my recent test of Python IDEs and observations about them.
Until now I have been using GNU Emacs instead of a fully-fledged IDE and was quite happy with it. But one IDE in particular changed my mind.
If you are looking for an IDE you might want to read the blog post (oh, and you vim and GNU Emacs users out there might want too).
I have just uploaded a file containing information on a proposed project, FreeAlternatives.
To give you a short primer, the project is about creating a database containing information on FreeSoftware packages which can replace proprietary software. The proposal contains information on how the database could be built, kept up-to-date and extended by the community instead of a small group and still contain valid and approved data.
The proposal is written in plain-text and can be downloaded from here.
Discussion should take place on discussion__at__fsfeurope.org, but you are also welcome to leave your comments here or drop me an email at sp__at__fsfe.org.
It has been a while since I last wrote a blog entry and I now finally found some time again to do so.
As some of you might (or might not) know I’ve been on a trip to Dublin with my school class last week. What we did there was basically having some fun and enjoying the Irish culture and of course the city itself.
I had a great time there and a few things are worth noting.
The first thing I’d like to note is the fact that when I went to the surfing station in my hostel I immediatly noticed that it was running GNU/Linux, some kind of kiosk software and Mozilla Firefox. That was pretty much the first impression I got from Dublin on a technical point of view – very impressive.
There’s another thing I really need to blog about. As reinhard suggested to me before I left Austria I contacted the IFSO while I was in Dublin and also met up with a few people.
We had a great evening in a bar which seems to be quite famous (and indeed is quite nice aswell) called Messrs Maguire.
The most important thing though is that I had a great time that evening. I really enjoyed the talks we had and I’ve really been given a warm welcome and of course once again noticed the well-known Irish hospitality.
I can really suggest everyone spending a few days in Dublin to contact these guys and try to arrange a meeting as it has been a great experience to me.
I’d not only like to thank everyone who was there but especially Glenn Strong who seems to have arranged everything that evening.
Another thing I’m somehow proud of is that I’m now owner of an IFSO t-shirt. 😉
If anyone who has been there is reading this and you plans to visit Austria sometime, don’t forget to give me a shout about it, as I told you. I would probably be able to either meet with you personally or arrange something.
So, the short version: Thanks guys for a great evening which was real fun and the nice, interesting talks we had. That evening was the best one I’ve had in Dublin, honestly.
I just finished setting up my fellowship cryptocard for ssh authentication.
Here I want to let you know what seems to have changed since Georg Greve gave an update on that topic the last time.
Debian knows about gpg2. gpg2 (and gpg-agent) can be installed on Debian testing and unstable as ‘gnupg2‘ and ‘gnupg-agent‘ in version 1.9.20 (There is also a version for stable but I doubt that one is recent enough, that would be gnupg2 version 1.9.15). Both are working fine with the card.
gpg2 however tries to find the pcsc-wrapper program in /usr/lib/gnupg. The program is installed to /usr/lib/gnupg2 though – a symlink fixes that problem.
There seems to be one problem though. Once the agent is running gpg2 cannot access the card anymore at all and gpg1 cannot use it for signing anymore, gpg –card-status seems to work though.
The latter one is quite straight-forward: gpg1 cannot use gpg-agent, it’s still a feature of gpg2.
The other thing worries me though: gpg2 should know how to use the agent to gather information on the card that’s being used by the agent right now.
I’ll check if I can find any bug reports or possibly a fixed bug related to this tomorrow. If I don’t succeed in doing that I guess I’ll have to fix the ‘bug’ myself.
However, I’ll keep you updated.
A while ago I came up with the idea of doing a multi-national conference here.
‘Here’ means southern Austria which would probably be a good place to do such a conference. Both the Italian and Slovenian borders are just a few minutes of driving away from here making this place a perfect location for something like a multi-national conference. As Stefano Mafulli does also have contact to the Croatian community they should be asked whether they want to contribute aswell – and I would gladly appreciate that.
The idea behind it is well known to regional organisations. There are quite a few events involving all three countries so why shouldn’t there be something like a free software conference involving free software people from all three countries?
On the third Austrian fellowship meeting last week in Vienna I presented this idea to both Karin Kosina and Reinhard Mueller and both seemed to like it and asked me to inform the Italian team about it.
So I sent an email to Stefano Mafulli and after talking to him I realized that the idea seems to be quite good.
This shouldn’t be a ‘normal’ meeting like the local fellowship meetings but is rather meant to be something ‘bigger’. I can even imagine having a full-blown conference including workshops and seminars.
The most important reason for doing this conference is bringing together the ‘neighbours’ (geographically), have them meet up, discuss and maybe even start new projects together – we are one fellowship and all interested in one topic in particular, aren’t we?
If the first conference is a success I can also imagine doing follow-up conferences in the other countries involved.
There is nothing like a ‘big plan’ for doing an event like this one yet, but it should be discussed on discussion@fsfeurope.org to get to know who is intersted in such an event and what those people can contribute (this includes constructive critism).
I hope I didn’t forget anything and am waiting for your contribution.
*UPDATE*
With full blown I’m more referring to having workshops and seminars. This imho does already make sense with about 20 people participating. Just to avoid misunderstandings.