Interview on Linux Unplugged podcast

A few days ago Jupiter Broadcasting’s Chris Fisher approached me about doing an interview for his Linux Unplugged podcast, so I said sure! I talked about the Usability & Productivity initiative, Kubuntu and KDE Neon, my history at Apple, and sustainable funding models for open-source development.

Awesomely enough, it turns out that their systems all run Kubuntu 18.04, and Chris calls it “the best distro we’ve ever used in production.” Now that’s what I like to hear! It’s exactly what the Usability & Productivity initiative is all about: making KDE software a lean, mean, productivity machine for creators and professionals.

You can listen to the show here: https://linuxunplugged.com/268. My segment starts at about the 25 minute mark.

Bugs.kde.org improvements

I’d like to share some welcome changes that we’ve recently made to https://bugs.kde.org, KDE’s venerable bug tracker. Improving our bug submission process was one of the ideas I submitted to KDE’s 2017 goal setting initiative, and while it wasn’t formally chosen the way the Usability & Productivity goal was, people seemed to think that it was worthwhile to do anyway. The overall task tracking this effort is https://phabricator.kde.org/T6832.

I’m pleased to report the following improvements:

First of all, we changed the names of some statuses:

  • UNCONFIRMED -> REPORTED. We observed that users got frustrated when bugs were in the UNCONFIRMED status after months or even years of being open, and would leave comments such as “Why isn’t this confirmed!? X number of people are experiencing it!” Hopefully REPORTED will inspire less frustration.
  • WONTFIX -> INTENTIONAL. We observed that the phrase “won’t fix” was rubbing people the wrong way because it was implying that we acknowledged there was a bug, but we just didn’t feel like fixing it, for unknown reasons. In reality, this was meant to communicate “the software is designed this way on purpose.” Hopefully INTENTIONAL will communicate this better.
  • INVALID -> NOT A BUG. “INVALID” felt a bit harsh and judgmental. What we wanted to communicate was that the bug was not appropriate to have been reported on the bug tracker because it was a support request, complaint, or something else that isn’t an actionable for fixing. “NOT A BUG” should do a better job of communicating that it’s, well, not a bug. 🙂

We also added a template to the text field you get when you file a new bug:

This should guide people down the path of filing better, more actionable bugs.

Speaking of filing better, more actionable bugs, we also changed the Bug Reporting Instructions link on the top of the page to point to https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Bug_Reporting.

Finally, we re-worked the attachment UI to no longer recommend attaching patches to bug reports (because they tend to get missed). Instead, it directs people to submit their patch using Phabricator:.

Hopefully these little improvements will lead to better bugs, fewer hurt feelings, and more patches. We’re already seeing a very good response from the new template in particular, and I’ve noticed that new bugs are being written following the template with Steps To Reproduce and version numbers. Awesome! This makes it easier for bug triagers and increases the likelihood that bugs will actually get fixed.

I’d like to offer a big shout-out to Andrew Crouthamel, who made all of this happen. Great job, Andrew!

This week in Usability & Productivity, part 37

Here’s your latest Usability & Productivity report–and we’ve got all kinds of goodies to share!

New Features

Bugfixes

UI Polish & Improvement

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

This week in Usability & Productivity, part 36

Greetings, KDE-loving humans! This week’s Usability & Productivity is a heavy one in terms of importance. We scored awesome fixes and improvements through the KDE software stack for subjects as varied as Libinput mouse and touchpad device handling, Task Manager icon sorting for LibreOffice, and a snazzy new unified mailbox in KMail. Have a look:

New Features

  • KMail can now display a unified inbox (Daniel Vrátil, KDE Applications 18.12.0):

Bugfixes

UI Polish & Improvement

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

This week in Usability & Productivity, part 35

For this week’s Usability & Productivity report, we’ve got oodles of goodies, including some new features, a whole bunch of visual improvements related thumbnail previews in Dolphin, the open/save panels, and desktop icons (i.e. Folder View), icon improvements throughout KDE apps when using a High DPI screen, and lots of other miscellaneous goodies! We haven’t forgotten about Samba, and another very important fix landed. There are more in the works, too. Have a look:

New Features

Bugfixes

UI Polish & Improvement

Impressive stuff, huh? Just look at KDE’s momentum these days: improvements throughout the stack every week. We’re on a mission to make KDE Plasma and apps the pre-eminent desktop computing environment, and we’d like you help! Be a part of something big. Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Akademy 2018 talk: Konquering the World

I had the pleasure of attending Akademy this year–my first time. Not only that, the organizers were actually crazy enough to let me give a talk! In it, I discuss my view of how we can systematically improve the competitiveness and reach of KDE Plasma and KDE apps, and what you can do to be a part of this effort. This master plan is what guides my KDE work. I talk about how the Usability & Productivity initiative fits into the plan, but the plan itself is much more ambitious. If you’ve ever wondered whether there’s a method to my madness… here it is!

If you’re interested, the Akademy organizers have posted a video of it:

If you feel like this effort is worthwhile and that my leadership of it is important, consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

This week in Usability & Productivity, part 34

Amazing how time flies. We’re already on week 34 for KDE’s Usability & Productivity reports!

First I want to specially highlight some critically important fixes for Samba shares that landed this week:

I’m very happy to report that more Samba improvements are on the way too, including a critical fix for an issue that causes silent data loss when using a non-KDE app that performs atomic saves (such as LibreOffice or Blender) to save modified files that are located on a Samba share originally accessed from Dolphin.

My sense is that that poor samba sharing support is a strategic issue causing pain to many of our users and preventing others from using our software. I’d like to verify this theory, so if these fixes benefit you or you’ve experienced more pain points with Samba beyond what’s already fixed or planned, please share in the comments.

New Features

Bugfixes

UI Polish & Improvement

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

This week in Usability & Productivity, part 33

Time for your weekly dose of Usability & Productivity! It’s another big one, and there’s a ton of stuff winding through the review pipeline that didn’t quite make the cut this week. So tune in next week too–but for the moment, check out all these neat improvements:

New Features

Bugfixes

UI Polish & Improvement

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

This week in Usability & Productivity, part 32

I’m back from Akademy, and I can’t wait to share some of the cool stuff that happened there over the past week. I’m going to post the video of my talk as soon as it’s up. But first, I know what you’re all really waiting for: this week’s Usability & Productivity update. Though we were all quite busy, somehow everyone managed to accomplish an enormous amount of work, too!

In particular there has been a momentous amount of improvement to Kate and the code that underpins it: the Syntax Highlighting and KTextEditor frameworks. These frameworks are used to provide text editor views to the Kate, KWrite, KDevelop, and Kile apps, so any improvements to them are felt very widely within the universe of KDE apps. I want to recognize the efforts of Christoph Cullmann, Dominik Haumann, KÃ¥re SÃ¥rs, and Sven Brauch for their stunning amount of work. While I was working on this post Tuesday night, there was a time when I was literally (not figuratively, I mean literally literally) unable to document the improvements as fast as they would show up in my email inbox. These guys deserve the community’s respect for the stunning quantity of work they performed in an astonishingly small amount of time. Let’s give ’em all a round of applause.

But that’s not all! Take a look at the full list, which includes many, many more nice improvements:

New Features

Bugfixes

UI Polish & Improvement

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

This week in Usability & Productivity, part 31

This week we’re all at Akademy–KDE’s yearly gathering of developers, designers, system administrators, and users. I’m giving a presentation later today about how we can make KDE Software irresistible!

As such, it as a bit of a lighter week for the Usability & Productivity initiative, what with all the preparation and conference-going, but we still managed to get quite a bit done. And all the in-person interactions are setting the stage for many more good things to come.

Bugfixes

UI Polish & Improvement

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.