Steam On Linux Ticks Lower For October 2020 - Phoronix

Valve has published their latest Steam Survey results. For October 2020 the Linux gaming marketshare pulled back or at least not keeping up with the pace of Steam's growing user-base.

Bugzilla integration for KDE Project API

The KDE Bugzilla handles a lot of projects and they often match with the repo name, but not always. For instance we have ancient products and components at Bugzilla, as projects have a lifecycle from playground into Release Service, or Frameworks, sometimes with a change of name. So you may end up searching Bugzilla quite awhile for the correct product and component to be able to confirm or create bug reports against an application. Let's have a look at KPeople, and see why the situation is complicated. You find two products in KDE Bugzilla: kpeople (the repository's name) and on the other hand Frameworks have the scheme of a "frameworks-" prefix: frameworks-kpeople. From the data displayed even I as a developer am unable to tell which is the correct product to add new bug reports. Both have bug reports this year that got fixed and the number of bug reports is too low to get a clear picture of which to choose.

This is not only a problem of KDE; it is a general problem in different communities that it is hard for newcomers to find the correct place to search and add new bug reports.

That's why Debian added the bug report information for every package. This should help users to search the upstream bug reports or create new ones (Bug-Submit and Bug-Database): https://wiki.debian.org/UpstreamMetadata#Fields

ansible 2.10.x and Fedora/EPEL – Kevin's musings

As some of you all may know, there were some big changes around how ansible upstream is distributed and maintained with the 2.10.x release(es). I thought I would recap for everyone who was not aware of these changes, then share my plans for the Fedora/EPEL ansible packages. Everyone is going to end up in a better place after this settles out, so there’s no need to panic.

ansible has some good problems with their community: They are very popular, very easy to work on and very widely used. This means there’s a flood of people always submitting bug reports, pull requests, fixes, enhancements, and all manner of things. In the old ansible setup before 2.10, this resulted in bottlenecks. The core ansible maintainers couldn’t review, merge and handle all the incoming flow of things. There were a bunch of things that were tried to help this (ansibot marking up issues and PR’s), making modules git submodules of ansible, making more people ‘community maintainers’ with merge and other powers over some modules, etc. Even with these measures however, that hits another problem: ansible only releases every N months. If you have fixed some big bug in your module, users aren’t going to get that fix very quickly at all.

Intro to IBM Cloud Satellite - YouTube

Debian NEW Queue, Rust packaging | Ganneff’s Little Blog

So for some reason I got myself motivated again to deal with some packages in Debians NEW Queue. We had 420 source packages waiting for some kind of processing when I started, now we are down to something around 10. (Silly, people keep uploading stuff…)

That’s not entirely my own work, others from the team have been active too, but for those few days I went through a lot of stuff waiting. And must say it still feels mostly like it did when I somehow stopped doing much in NEW.

Except - well, I feel that maintainers are much better in preparing their packages, especially that dreaded task of getting the copyright file written seems to be one that is handled much better. Now, thats not supported by any real numbers, just a feeling, but a good one, I think.

[...]

One of the possible solutions for the feature package problem would be something that another set of packages could also make good use of, I think. The introduction of a new archive or component, meant only for packages that are needed to build something, but where users are discouraged from ever using them.

What?

Well, take golang as an example. While we have a load of golang-something packages in Debian, and they are used for building applications written in go - none of those golang-something are meant to be installed by users. If you use the language and develop in it, the go get way is the one you are expected to use.

So having an archive (or maybe component like main or contrib) that, by default, won’t be activated for users, but only for things like buildds or archive rebuilds, will make one problem (hated metadata bloat) be evaluated wildly different.

Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 655

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 655 for the week of October 25 – 31, 2020.

Ubuntu Membership Boards Call for Nominations

As you may know, Ubuntu Membership is a recognition of a significant and sustained contribution to Ubuntu and the Ubuntu community. To this end, the Community Council recruits from our current member community for the valuable role of reviewing and evaluating the contributions of potential members to bring them on board or assist with having them achieve this goal.

Our board members have now expired, and we are looking to restaff our 12:00 and 20:00 UTC Membership Boards with seven new members for each board.

Bringing Artificial Intelligence Projects From Idea To Production - The Python Podcast

Artificial intelligence applications can provide dramatic benefits to a business, but only if you can bring them from idea to production. Henrik Landgren was behind the original efforts at Spotify to leverage data for new product features, and in his current role he works on an AI system to evaluate new businesses to invest in. In this episode he shares advice on how to identify opportunities for leveraging AI to improve your business, the capabilities necessary to enable aa successful project, and some of the pitfalls to watch out for. If you are curious about how to get started with AI, or what to consider as you build a project, then this is definitely worth a listen.

Noodlings 22 | On the Edge – CubicleNate's Techpad

Computers are a tool, it’s a wrench or hammer, maybe more like a drill as it is a kind of power tool. It is there to serve you in whatever the task is. Whether it is organizing and storing information, one of the core functions of computers; entertainment, home security or designing and building something to improve your “foxhole”, it is a tool. Computers can just be fun to tinker around with too. It’s for people who like to mess around with computers and learn how they work as well. It’s for all types. Linux along with the free and open source applications on top of it just happens to be the best solution for me.

Would open source software be the best and most ideal solution? Of course it would, but that is just not the case much of the time. What I do believe is best is that the core and base layers of the operating system are free and open. Having projects like KDE Plasma, Gnome and Xfce which are completely open source Desktop Environments is the key. Should you need some proprietary applications to run on top of it, sure, it is less ideal but much preferred to the whole stack being closed and proprietary.

I run Fusion 360 on my machine as well as FreeCAD, I support the FreeCAD project but I still have some trouble with it. I do think it is getting better but for the time being Fusion 360 is my go-to CAD application because of what it can do so effortlessly. Does that make my system, as a whole compromised? I don’t believe so. Would running only free and open source software be better? Absolutely but that is not where things are today and rather than get upset, I would rather get projects done.

Consider this, if your living was dependent on designing and building widgets and you needed to collaborate with other designers, what would be the best tool for the job? I can’t say for certain what your case may be, but if I were working on a project and collaborating with a team, as a small business owner, Fusion 360 has those tools baked into it. If it reduces the time-to-market enough to offset the costs, it is worth it. If it shortens the development time enough to offset the cost of software, than it is indeed worth it.

On the contrary, if you have developed a method for product life-cycle management while using FreeCAD, and you are able to do all that is required, to include the machining process, just as well. Than go with that application. The bottom line is, you MUST use the tool that works best for you and you shouldn’t receive grief by anybody for it.

Personal computers should be just that, personal, use what is best for you. Should someone choose something different or go down a different path to get to their ultimate solution, even if it is a winding path, that personal discovery is extremely valuable. The best ideas will surface and suppressing the journey is of no benefit to anyone.

Give people space to discover and grow at their own pace. Allow them to figure out their world, show them kindness and grace as they learn and ask questions. Technology is but one vehicle to make our world a better place, positive and supportive attitudes are another. Stop and ask yourself why you do the things you do and have that honest conversation with yourself.