Changes…

Right against the grain. I will no longer stay in Santiago de Chile for a job. Last Friday it was my last day at Movidreams S.A., sorry I could not say goodbye to everyone in person. These were fun three months, a lot went on in that time period and now I would like to openly thank Andres Valenzuela O., Fernando Flores B., Rene Toro Quezada, three of the most talented people I’ve ever met and worked with. You made every day a great day at the office. Of course big thanks to Humberto Lobos and Federico Saavedra, for the true oportunity to join Movidreams. Your knowledge and passion is awesome.

Now there are a couple months left in this crappy year (actually it’s not been that bad) so I’ll be traveling between Coquimbo and Vallenar very often. I need to visit Inacap for a couple reasons (sorry, not they aren’t going public at this time, heh), and also plan to meet with old friends to check if there is any job opportunity in the area. I would regret returning to Santiago right now, since I seem to be much more interested in finding a job somewhere else where life quality is better than Santiago’s. Money won’t be on the top of my list in the next 2-4 months.

Although I’ve been testing several Milestones and now the RC 2 is looking great, I will be switching to stable openSUSE 11.2 as soon as it’s out, which should be November 12th. At this point of time, KDE implementation seems to be much better than Gnome implementation. Kinda wished it was the inverse case, but that’s one of the Open Source features: you have choice. Let us wait ten more days =). I also hope to have my @opensuse.org alias once for all

That’s all one changes. Have a lot of fun!.

Encuentro Linux 2009. Awesome!

I just got back from Encuentro Linux 2009 (actually after spending one day in Coquimbo with my girlfriend, daughter, and mother). Let me say that I had the Linux time of my life, and hopefuly not the last one.

I had planed to travel on thursday, but could not get there until friday night. Yes, sh*t happens. I first met German Poo and Diego Escalante (of the Gnome Foundation), on my way for the internet password at the hotel. Both were gentle .

Then I stayed at the hotel room, checking my presentation’s last details for the next morning. Shared room with Joel Iturra, nice guy. Next morning woke up early so I could be ready to leave for the University. Stomach full with milk, cereal, bread, and sugar goodies! At the check out counter I met Fernando San Martin and Fernando Valdez. Thanks for the ride, great company.

10 AM and there were only 3 people in the room. Could believe it! since last night it was pure fun out there in the city. Forget about your notebooks folks We decided to wait a bit so we could have more people in, and then I guess about 20 came in. Not bad if you think about ther other 3 talks at the same time plus the Gnome Day event taking most of the interest. My 50+ openSUSE 11.1 DVDs were not enough…by chance I had a DVD copy of 11.2 RC to pass around. Internet connection rocked and the talk went down pretty well, not the best I’ve had but it was just fine since it was my first presentation at Encuentro Linux, the most important Linux event in the country. It was an honor to be there before a very participative crowd, all interested in SUSE Studio.

Later on I headed to the Gnome Day, mainly to discover the Gnome Community and the cool PyGTK and GObject talks…of course to finally meet (yes, in person!))with Pedro Villavicencio of Ubuntu. Man, what a pleasure! Also talked with Franco Catrin and many more and it is sad I cannot remember the names, sure I’d remember your faces if I saw you again though. Bought the obligatory Gnome polo shirt XD and then by the end of the day got a red Gnome cap after asking one question on the project. Hey! I was the one who wrote “G-(ME)” and “Gnome 3 for all” on the Gnome Wall

I now thank and congratulate once again everyone involved in the Encuentro Linux and Gnome Day 2009: Sven, Horst, Priscila, Fernando, Alejandro, Pedro, all the helpers, everyone! I hope to meet you again next year, and have that much of fun over and over.

Tree pictures of myself:

Encuentro Linux 2009: Yes, I am going!

Yes, I am going to Encuentro Linux 2009, and so does openSUSE!. This year the most important Linux event in Chile will be held in Valparaiso and Viña del Mar at the same time. I’ll be giving a presentation on SUSE Studio (if you didn’t already know ) on Saturday 24th, 10:00 – 11:10 AM. Of course I am taking all openSUSE 11.1 DVDs I have left, and will be a great oportunity to show on my notebook what’s coming for 11.2.

More information (in spanish only) here. See you there!.

Preparing myself for the openSUSE 11.2

If you have not already heard, the new openSUSE will be out by November 12th, if plans do not change. What’s so exciting about it? That is the second version of openSUSE I collaborate, in both translation and marketing.  And now, what is ahead?

• Oct 15th -> openSUSE RC1 (TOMORROW!).
• Oct 29th -> openSUSE RC2.
• Nov 12th ->openSUSE 11.2 RELEASE!!!

Also, if you didn’t know, KDE will be the default Desktop Environment for the 11.2 release.

openSUSE Ambassadors…numbers?

Alright. Just out of curiosity, I felt like finding out what the numbers show for South America compared to other regions in the Ambassadors Program of openSUSE.

As a reminder, the goals of the Ambassador Program are:

• Act as an evangelist for openSUSE to the public.
• Mentor new users and contributors.
• Support openSUSE at local events.
• Promote use of openSUSE and contributions to the openSUSE Project.
• Have a lot of fun!.

So, checking out the Ambassadors List, I got for South America:

• Brazil = 6.
• Chile = 3.
• Peru = 3.
• Argentina = 2.
• Colombia = 2.

Brazil is doing great here, doubling any other country’s Ambassadors number in the region. No doubt it’s not just users who are pushing Open Source out there but also their government and enterprises (example:Fisl), and I am glad openSUSE is a real choice for them. Compared to Europe, I believe statistical numbers are still OK for us since the truth is that openSUSE is just ranked in the top five of the most popular Linux flavours in Chile, maybe it’s the same in other South America countries. So, Ambassadors for Europe (some countries only):

• Germany = 8.
• Spain = 6.
• Austria = 4.
• Italy = 3.
• France = 2.

As for North America, we have got:

• USA = 15.
• Canada = 3.
• Mexico = 3.

I even did a “quick and dirt” chart with OpenOffice’s Calc so you can have a graphical idea of our numbers around the world:

For more information, please, visit the openSUSE Ambassadors section.

Have a lot of fun!.

See you at Encuentro Linux 2009

Yes, my talk over SUSE Studio got accepted for the 10th Encuentro Linux, which will be held in Valparaiso-Viña del Mar for this year(October 22-24). I’m damn happy about that.

What I plan to do is showing an overall (and hopefully deeper as well) view of the SUSE Studio Platform, how it works and how useful it is for building a given software appliance. Yes, it works for virtual appliances too but I have no experience at it . Of course I have a few openSUSE 11.1 DVDs to give away so no worries there.

So if you are around and feel like meeting us and discovering what Linux is about, don’t think it twice as there will be plenty of interesting talks covering topics such as Jails, Bacula, Contributing to Open Source, WebKitGTK+, Ubuntu behind the Scenes, Evolution of Linux Filesystems, Developing Gnome Applications, and much more! Remember, on Saturday it’s the Gnome Day

Need more information? check out here.

Clicks with touchpad trick (11.2 M6)

If you are running the openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 6 (Gnome 2.27.5, Kernel 2.6.31-rc6-3-default) and find out that clicks of touchpad do not work, then this might help you a bit.

First of all, go to the Control Center, and look up for the Mouse item. Then click on Touchpad (obviously not using your computer’s touchpad, heh) and mark the option Enable mouse clicks with touchpad. That’d work fine

I must thank my friend Pedro Villavicencio of Ubuntu for letting me know about this solution.

Wicd on openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 3

Alright. KDE4-NetworkManager does not work for my wireless card yet, so best bet at the moment is removing it and installing Wicd. After installing and configuring it to my needs I thought it’d be a good idea rebooting the system. Then it comes: I am asked for root permission in order to launch Wicd (maybe just the icon?) Anyway, one cool solution I found out at openSUSE’s Forums was:

• Start a terminal and login as root.
• Then type chkconfig wicd on.

There you go, no more root permission to start Wicd.

Eclipse 3.4 on openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 3 launch problem.

Let me start by saying that Eclipse 3.5 launches without a problem under the recently released openSUSE 11.2 M3. Then, why using an older version? The only current answer is that there is no Google Web Toolkit plug-in for Eclipse 3.5, so I am kind of forced  to use the 3.4 release.

I downloaded the Eclipse 3.4 from eclipse.org. Then, as I tried to launch it, I got to define the location for workspace and then a small and empty window. I thought it could be some missing gtk library or any problem with xulrunner. Checked both and made sure to be using the right versions. And then, after a few lines of chat at the Suse Freenode channel, I found out how to solve the problem. Adding the following line at the very end of the eclipse.ini file does it:

-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1/xulrunner

Thanks people at Suse’s Freenode Channel.

openSUSE Day (Chile). Awesome.

And the day came. After a six hours trip on bus, and a few minutes of sleep I got to Santiago de Chile. Francisco Toha picked me up so we headed to Universidad Andres Bello for the openSUSE Day. Huge building and plenty of room for everyone. The event started almost on time. I followed the first talk, a bit hoping to have a decent internet connection so I could show a live SUSE Studio test drive. OK, that didn’t happen. The internet traffic ratio was too slow like waiting 59 minutes to build an JeOS appliance was nuts so that was definitely the low aspect of the talk.
Again, huge thanks to Zonker for all the support. openSUSE 11.1 DVDs and stickers were cool and all loved it. Also big thanks everyone from  Geeko’s, specially Enrique Herrera, Jose Muñoz, and Francisco Toha. Statistic and evaluation have not been finished yet. Anyway, some pictures here: