[dot] aKademy Interview: developers from Kalyxo project

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1093794087/

From: aKademy Team <akademy-team at kde.org>
Dept: where-we-are-linking-worlds
Date: Sunday 29/Aug/2004, @17:41

aKademy Interview: developers from Kalyxo project
=================================================

   At aKademy [http://conference2004.kde.org] a talk
[http://conference2004.kde.org/cfp-userconf/kevin.ottens.peter.rockai-kalyxo.linkingworlds.php]
about Kalyxo [http://www.kalyxo.org/] was given by Kévin Ottens and
Peter Rockai. Curious what this effort was all about we got in touch
with the Kévin and Peter and they explained it all ..



     Please introduce yourself and what's your role in KDE project

     Kévin Ottens: My name is Kévin Ottens (known as ervin on irc). I'm
working mostly around the ioslaves in KDE (lately the new trash:/ and
filesystems:/ ioslaves)  I also made some bugfixing and improvements to
Konqueror and worked  on fuse-kio which is now hosted on
freedesktop.org.
 [http://freedesktop.org/Software/CTD]
     Peter Rockai: My name is Peter Rockai (known as mornfall on IRC), I
work on Kapture which is an APT fronted for KDE. I have lightly touched
kwin in the past (and plan to revisit it soon)  Other KDE related
activities are fixing bugs from time to time or implement small features
 here and there as I see fit

     At aKademy you guys did a talk about a project called Kalyxo. What
is this project all about?

     Kévin Ottens:  The primary focus is on creating and bringing
innovative technology to the desktop user.  [To make the desktop
experience smooth for the user, we are working on integration  projects
as an important part of our mission.] We focus on several areas, from
desktop integration (among various toolkits and environments  like GTK
and Qt) to system integration, where KDE integrates seamlessly with
hardware and  other lower level features of the system.

     How do you envision this system and desktop integration ?

     Peter Rockai: In the ideal case, the user would not need to worry
about having GTK and Qt applications on his desktop. The big part of
this is the KIO-fuse bridge, which enables usage KDE
network-transparency  in non-KDE applications. If implemented properly
within the system (we are working on it), it should be possible to edit
images with gimp over ftp without any hurdles (just like you can edit
text with Kate now). Same for OpenOffice.org and other 3rd party
applications.

     Kévin Ottens: We're working on the common look and feel too, and
that's why we package the qt-gtk-engine
[http://www.kalyxo.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/GtkQtEngine]  for the Debian
users. But the real challenge is in the system integration, so that
things  work seamlessly from the user point of view.

     The future filesystems:/ ioslave is a part of this plan it will
replace the old  devices:/ ioslave and go even further. We will
introduce a way to do more guessing for  devices on supported platforms.
This way KDE will still be portable which is a big plus of the project.
but we can provide extra functionality on specific platforms like Linux.

     Since we will package some specific hotplug scripts for Kalyxo,
we'll ensure that this  integration will work even better for Debian.

     Peter Rockai: On another front of system integration, we are trying
to close the gap between the underlying  system and it's UNIX-inherited
configuration system and the modern user interface KDE provides. This
part of effort is really specific to Debian based systems, as we need
intimate knowledge of the underlying system to be able to fullfill all
the criteria users expect in such software.

     So Kalyxo is sort of subproject and not another distribution?

     Peter Rockai: Well, there are several aspects to Kalyxo. Currently,
we are mostly focusing on the  augmentation of the existing system, yes.
But for the future, we plan to spin off a new  platform project, which
should be tightly based on current, preexisting Debian technology  and
infrastructure.

     Kévin Ottens: I would say it comes from two facts. First we're KDE
developers so we contribute to it.  Second the structure of the Debian
project itself. As soon as you work with Debian, you're  like a subpart
of the project. But that does not mean we won't provides CD of course.



     Is there any software or packages for people to try?

     Peter Rockai: Yes, currently Kalyxo team is maintaining several KDE
applications, some of them already in  Debian Unstable, rest in Kalyxo
archive.  You can find details on the archive location  on our homepage
http://www.kalyxo.org [http://www.kalyxo.org]. As for examples, there is
 aKregator [http://akregator.sourceforge.net/], the RSS  feed
aggregator, maintained by Pierre Habouzit in Debian Unstable.

     Any Debian user can already start to use KDebconf
[http://www.kalyxo.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/KDebConf] (the KDE Debconf
frontend)  which has been developed by Kalyxo and is now provided by
official Debian packages. Mario Bensi is currently working on improving
it's user interface and visual appeal  so we expect to have a new
release of it ready for integrating into Debian soon.

     Then, there is amaroK, the new media player  you may have heard
about, which is currently in unstable branch of the Kalyxo archive.

     Another technology you hear about much lately is NX and Kalyxo did
not miss this either,  we now provide the FreeNX
[http://www.kalyxo.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/NoMachineNX] server in our
repository.

     Recently Pedro Jurado Maqueda joined us and maintaining Kiosktool
and KGeography. He is very interested by educational packages recently,
which is a good thing for  sharing with a project like Skolelinux
[http://www.skolelinux.org/portal/index_html].  We're looking forward to
cooperate with the  Skolelinux crew in the future.

     Finally we also have some more experimental packages for inhouse
projects like Kapture.
 [http://www.kalyxo.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/Kapture]
     Are you paid to work on Kalyxo?

     Kévin Ottens: As far as I know, nobody is currently paid to work on
this project.

     It is said that you guys are a reaction to UserLinux
[http://www.userlinux.com], the effort which  Bruce Perens started. Is
this true and if so can you tell me why?

     Kévin Ottens: Yes, UserLinux is part of our history. We're the
children of the early KDE-Debian effort (hence the name of our mailing
list). With UserLinux we expected to be able to work on a well
integrated platform... Unfortunately Bruce Perens chose to support only
Gnome. Since then some people left this effort very disappointed.

     It was the dark age of the Kalyxo project... and now we have this
new cute name and new plans!

     Peter Rockai: I have to agree with Kevin on this. The exclusion of
KDE from UserLinux was pretty unfortunate event, at first. But then, we
think it led to rise of Kalyxo, which we deem a good end to the whole
UserLinux and KDE story.

     If the Kalyxo project tries to be Debian compatible then why not
join the Debian  project?
 [http://www.debian.org/]
     Kévin Ottens: In some way we're already joining the Debian project.
As I said when you work with the Debian project you're a subpart of it.
But not fully joining it allows us to be a bridge between the KDE and
the Debian projects hence our slogan "linking the worlds".

     Peter Rockai: Another good point in refraining from being fully
absorbed by Debian is the very high entry barrier for new contributors.
It often takes months before your first contribution gets accepted into
Debian and then usually even longer to become an official Debian
Developer.

     We are trying to raise a more friendly and more open community in
Kalyxo, to help newbies contribute more efficiently and with more
satisfactory results. By effectively "holding their hands" while they
create first packages, we let them learn by example, instead of forcing
them to read loads of technical documentation upfront. Our packaging
team will then check and upload the packages into Debian. We do not
require that all our contributors are Debian Developers, but we still
encourage everyone to become one.

     It is rumored there is a some kind of LiveCD ... if so where is
this available?

     Peter Rockai: At one point, yes, there was a Kalyxo LiveCD, based
on credativ's [http://www.credativ.de/] distribution, made by Andreas
Mueller. The iso images are currently not available though, because of
intermittent server problems and server migration. We will make them
available again at some point, but they are currently outdated and need
more work.

     What have you guys been working on at aKademy? Anything cooking?

     Kévin Ottens: KDebconf got really more attention during aKademy
thanks to Mario Bensi, he really made a great job on it.

     For me, aKademy has been a great opportunity to discuss the system
integration area with people here... Since some of them work on other
distributions than Debian it's interesting to improve the current
situation and keeping the portability as well. In most case, that mean
that our design will be flexible enough to evolve and support new
technologies. Who knows which facilities the Linux kernel will offer us
in this area in a year?

     Peter Rockai: Yes, we met lots of people from different projects,
made new acquaintances and of course had lots of fun hacking and talking
with other developers. We also gave a talk about Kalyxo at the user
conference. We got some positive feedback on this and a very interesting
offer from a Spanish Debian-based distribution called Tuxum
[http://www.tuxum.com/], with which we hope to establish close
cooperation soon. During the hacking week, we spoke with few Skolelinux
developers, and they support our goals and are open for cooperation. We
hope to utilize much of these new contacts to good of all the involved
projects.

     What does the Kalyxo project need most now?

     Kévin Ottens: Just like most free software projects...
contributors! We want you! =) Since we work on several areas we have
three kind of tasks to offer :

 Packaging new KDE related software for Debian unstable, since we want
that all the packages made by the Kalyxo project will enter Sid. It's a
strong point of our policy, and we'll try to give advice and train you
if necessary. Developing the missing KDE tools for Debian. We already
mentioned KDebconf and Kapture, which would need more contributors of
course. We're planning to work on system configuration tools too, we've
some plans and early design discussed... But this is a task that will
require more developers. System configuration means parsing, which means
lot of work.  And soon, we expect to work on our Kalyxo platform and CD.
We'll snapshot a subset of Debian to provide it on a time based release
schedule. But those snapshots will need to be maintained for bugfixes
and security, we'll surely need help for this.