Scarlett Gately Moore

Tag: Debian

  • Kubuntu: Week 4, Feature Freeze and what comes next.

    First I would like to give a big congratulations to KDE for a superb KDE 6 mega release 🙂 While we couldn’t go with 6 on our upcoming LTS release, I do recommend KDE neon if you want to give it a try! I want to say it again, I firmly stand by the Kubuntu Council in the decision to stay with the rock solid Plasma 5 for the 24.04 LTS release. The timing was just to close to feature freeze and the last time we went with the shiny new stuff on an LTS release, it was a nightmare ( KDE 4 anyone? ). So without further ado, my weekly wrap-up.

    Kubuntu:

    Continuing efforts from last week Kubuntu: Week 3 wrap up, Contest! KDE snaps, Debian uploads. , it has been another wild and crazy week getting everything in before feature freeze yesterday. We will still be uploading the upcoming Plasma 5.27.11 as it is a bug fix release 🙂 and right now it is all about the finding and fixing bugs! Aside from many uploads my accomplishments this week are:

    • Kept a close eye on Excuses and fixed tests as needed. Seems riscv64 tests were turned off by default which broke several of our builds.
    • I did a complete revamp of our seed / kubuntu-desktop meta package! I have ensured we are following KDE packaging recommendations. Unfortunately, we cannot ship maliit-keyboard as we get hit by LP 2039721 which makes for an unpleasant experience.
    • I did some more work on our custom plasma-welcome which now just needs some branding, which leads to a friendly reminder the contest is still open! https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-graphic-design-contest/
    • Bug triage! Oh so many bugs! From back when I worked on Kubuntu 10 years ago and plasma5 was new.. I am triaging and reducing this list to more recent bugs ( which is a much smaller list ). This reaffirms our decision to go with a rock solid stable Plasma5 for this LTS release.
    • I spent some time debugging kio-gdrive which no longer works ( It works in Jammy ) so I am tracking down what is broken. I thought it was 2FA but my non 2FA doesn’t work either, it just repeatedly throws up the google auth dialog. So this is still a WIP. It was suggested to me to disable online accounts all together, but I would prefer to give users the full experience.
    • Fixed our ISO builds. We are still not quite ready for testers as we have some Calamares fixes in the pipeline. Be on the lookout for a call for testers soon 🙂
    • Wrote a script to update our ( Kubuntu ) packageset to cover all the new packages accumulated over the years and remove packages that are defunct / removed.

    What comes next? Testing, testing, testing! Bug fixes and of course our re-branding. My focus is on bug triage right now. I am also working on new projects in launchpad to easily track our bugs as right now they are all over the place and hard to track down.

    Snaps:

    I have started the MRs to fix our latest 23.08.5 snaps, I hope to get these finished in the next week or so. I have also been speaking to a prospective student with some GSOC ideas that I really like and will mentor, hopefully we are not too late.

    Happy with my work? My continued employment depends on you! Please consider a donation http://kubuntu.org/donate

    Thank you!

  • Kubuntu: Week 3 wrap up, Contest! KDE snaps, Debian uploads.

    Kubuntu: Week 3 wrap up, Contest! KDE snaps, Debian uploads.

    Witch Wells AZ Sunset
    Witch Wells AZ Sunset

    It has been a very busy 3 weeks here in Kubuntu!

    Kubuntu 22.04.4 LTS has been released and can be downloaded from here: https://kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/

    Work done for the upcoming 24.04 LTS release:

    • Frameworks 5.115 is in proposed waiting for the Qt transition to complete.
    • Debian merges for Plasma 5.27.10 are done, and I have confirmed there will be another bugfix release on March 6th.
    • Applications 23.08.5 is being worked on right now.
    • Added support for riscv64 hardware.
    • Bug triaging and several fixes!
    • I am working on Kubuntu branded Plasma-Welcome, Orca support and much more!
    • Aaron and the Kfocus team has been doing some amazing work getting Calamares perfected for release! Thank you!
    • Rick has been working hard on revamping kubuntu.org, stay tuned! Thank you!
    • I have added several more apparmor profiles for packages affected by https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kgeotag/+bug/2046844
    • I have aligned our meta package to adhere to https://community.kde.org/Distributions/Packaging_Recommendations and will continue to apply the rest of the fixes suggested there. Thanks for the tip Nate!

    We have a branding contest! Please do enter, there are some exciting prizes https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-graphic-design-contest/

    Debian:

    I have uploaded to NEW the following packages:

    • kde-inotify-survey
    • plank-player
    • aura-browser

    I am currently working on:

    • alligator
    • xwaylandvideobridge

    KDE Snaps:

    KDE applications 23.08.5 have been uploaded to Candidate channel, testing help welcome. https://snapcraft.io/search?q=KDE I have also working on bug fixes, time allowing.

    My continued employment depends on you, please consider a donation! https://kubuntu.org/donate/

    Thank you for stopping by!

    ~Scarlett

  • KDE: Snaps, KDEneon, Debian and my future.

    First I want to thank KDE for this wonderful write up on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kde_akademy-2023-over-a-million-reasons-why-activity-7139965489153208320-PNem?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop It made my heart explode with happiness as I prepped for my interview on Monday. I didn’t get the job ( Just the usual “we were very impressed with your experience, but we went with another candidate” ). I think the cosmos is determined for me to hold out for the ‘project’ even though it is only part time work, it is work and if I have learned nothing else this year, I have learned how to live on a very tight budget! It turns out many of the things we think we need, we don’t. So with hard work of Kevin Ottens ( Thank you!!!! ), this should be finalized after the first of the year. This plan also allows me time for KDEneon and Debian work. I am happy with it and look forward to the coming year and the exciting things to come.

    My holiday plans are to help the Debian KDE team with the KF6 packaging, On-going KDEneon efforts, and continue to make sure the snaps Qt6 transition is a painless as possible. I will also be working on the qt6 kde-neon extension.

    In closing, despite my terrible luck with job-hunting, I am in an amazing community and I am truly grateful to each and every one of you. It has been a great year and I have added many new things to my skillset and I look forward to many more next year.

    As usual, it is that time of month where I have not raised enough to pay my internet bill ( phone company taking an extra 200.00 didn’t help ) If you can spare any change ( any amount helps! ) please consider a donation https://gofund.me/b74e4c6f Thank you!

    I hope everyone has a wonderful <insert your holiday here> !!!!!

    ~ Scarlett

  • KDE: KDE Snaps 23.08.4, PIM! KDE neon, Debian

    KDE: KDE Snaps 23.08.4, PIM! KDE neon, Debian

    KDE PIM Kaddressbook snap
    KDE PIM Kaddressbook snap

    KDE Snaps:

    This weeks big accomplishment is KDE PIM snaps! I have successfully added akonadi as a service via an akonadi content snap and running it as a service. Kaddressbook is our first PIM snap with this setup and it works flawlessly! It is available in the snap store. I have a pile of MRs awaiting approvals, so keep your eye out for the rest of PIM in the next day.

    KDE Applications 23.08.4 has been released and available in the snap store.

    Krita 5.2.2 has been released.

    I have created a new kde-qt6 snap as the qt-framework snap has not been updated and the maintainer is unreachable. It is in edge and I will be rebuilding our kf6 snap with this one.

    I am debugging an issue with the latest Labplot release.

    KDE neon:

    This week I helped with frameworks release 5.113 and KDE applications 23.08.4.

    I also worked on the ongoing Unstable turning red into green builds as the porting to qt6 continues.

    Debian:

    With my on going learning packaging for all the programming languages, Rust packaging: I started on Rustic https://github.com/rustic-rs/rustic unfortunately, it was a bit of wasted time as it depends on a feature of tracing-subcriber that depends on matchers which has a grave bug, so it remains disabled.

    Personal:

    I do have an interview tomorrow! And it looks like the ‘project’ may go through after the new year. So things are looking up, unfortunately I must still ask, if you have any spare change please consider a donation. The phone company decided to take an extra $200.00 I didn’t have to spare and while I resolved it, they refused a refund, but gave me a credit to next months bill, which doesn’t help me now. Thank you for your consideration.

    https://gofund.me/b74e4c6f

  • KDE neon and snaps, Debian Weekly report.

    While the winter sets in, I have been mostly busy following up on job leads and applying to anything and everything. Something has to stick… I am trying! Even out of industry.

    Debian:

    This weeks main focus was getting involved and familiar with Debian rust-packaging. It is really quite different from other teams! I was successful and the MR is https://salsa.debian.org/rust-team/debcargo-conf/-/merge_requests/566 if anyone on the rust team can take a gander, I will upload when merged. I will get a few more under my belt next week now that I understand the process.

    KDE neon:

    Unfortunately, I did not have much time for neon, but I did get some red builds fixed and started uploading the new signing key for mauikit* applications.

    KDE snaps:

    A big thank you to Josh and Albert for merging all my MR’s and I have finished 23.08.3 releases to stable.

    I released a new Krita 5.2.1 with some runtime fixes, please update.

    Still no source of income so I must ask, if you have any spare change, please consider a donation.

    Thank you, Scarlett

    https://gofund.me/b74e4c6f

  • A Season to be Thankful, Thank You!

    A Season to be Thankful, Thank You!

    Here in the US, we celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow. I am thankful to be a part of such an amazing community. I have raised enough to manage another month and I can continue my job search in less dire circumstances. I am truly grateful to each and every one of you. While my focus will remain on my job hunt, I will be back next week at reduced hours to maintain my work. I have to alter my priorities to keep my hours reduced enough to focus on my job search so I will be contributing as follows:

    • I will ramp up my Debian work to increase my skillset here, as it is an important skill and one that I am seeking employment in. I will be increasing the areas of expertise in packaging different languages, security updates and help the KDE team with the Qt6 transition.
    • I will continue to help where I can with KDE neon, because well, I love KDE neon and our team. If time allows, I would like to help with moving forward with Harald’s initial work to transition us to use Gitlab infrastructure. It will be a big move from Jenkins.
    • Snaps: I will only support our Qt5 snaps at this point. That entails possibly one more release and I will maintain / fix bugs on these. Snaps have been a huge chunk of my time ( 191 snaps! plus content packs, extensions, updates, fixes, solving confinement issues ). I simply cannot do it all over again with Qt6. Unless of course someone wants to fund my work. Then I will reconsider.
    • I am also going to expand my knowledge in the containerized world with Flatpaks and refresher on Appimages to flesh out my resume.

    Again, thank you all ever so much for your support. Though, this didn’t end up being my year, I am confident I will find my place in this career path in the near future.

    I could still use some funds to make land and car payment or at least partial. We purchased from friends so they won’t take away my wheels or home, I just feel bad I haven’t been able to make payments in awhile. Thanks for your consideration.

    https://gofund.me/f9f0fb53

  • Farewell for now, again.

    I write this with a heavy heart. Exactly one year ago I lost my beloved job. That was all me, I had a terrible run of bad luck with COVID and I never caught up. In the last year, I have taken on several new projects to re-create a new image for myself and to make up for the previous year, and I believe I worked very hard in doing so. Unfortunately, my seemingly good interviews have not ended in a job. One potential job I did not put as much effort into as I should have because I put all my cards into a project that didn’t quite turn out as expected. I do hope it still goes through for the KDE community as a whole, because well it is really cool, but it isn’t the job I thought. I have been relying purely on donations for survival and it simply isn’t enough. I am faced once again with no internet to even do my open source work ( Snaps, KDE neon, Debian and everything that links to those ). I simply can’t put the burden of my stubbornness on my family any longer. Bills are long over due, we have learned to live without many things, but the stress of essential bills, living expenses going unpaid is simply too much. I do thank each and every one of you that has contributed to my fundraisers. It means the world to me that people do care. It just isn’t enough. So with the sunset of Witch Wells, I am sun setting my software career for now and will be looking for something, anything local just to pay some bills, calm our nerves and hopefully find some happiness again. I am tired, broke, stressed out and burned out. I will be back when I can breathe again with my finances.

    If you can spare some changes to help with gas, propane, internet I would be so ever grateful.

    So long for now.

    ~ Scarlett

    https://gofund.me/1346869d

  • KDE: Big fixes for Snaps! Debian and KDE neon updates.

    KDE Snap Marble

    A big thank you goes to my parents this week for contributing to my survival fund. With that I was able to make a big push on fixing some outstanding issues on some of our snaps.

    • Marble! Now shows all maps and finds its plugins properly.
    • Neochat: A significant fix regarding libsecret in which left users with endless loading screen because it could not authenticate. Bug https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=473003 This actually affected any app in KDE that uses libsecret… KDE desktops do not ship with gnome-keyring, so this is why sometimes installing it would fix the issue ( if the portals were installed and working correctly AND XDG variables were set correctly). In most cases it works out of the box. In some cases, you must install gnome-keychain via apt and reinstall neochat to setup a new account and it will then prompt to save to keyring. If you are a KDE desktop user and wish to use Kwallet you can sudo snap connect neochat:password-manager-service :password-manager-service , my next order of business is to set up kwallet as a service inside the snaps. Should funding allow.

    KDE neon:

    No major blowups this week. Worked out issues with kmail-account-wizard thanks to David R! This is now in the hands of upstream ( porting not complete )

    Worked on more orange -> green packaging fixes.

    Debian:

    Fixed bug https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1054713 in squashfuse

    Thanks for stopping by. Please help fund my efforts!

    Donate

    https://gofund.me/b8b69e54

  • KDE: KDEneon Plasma Release, Unstable BOOM, Snaps, and Debian

    KDE: KDEneon Plasma Release, Unstable BOOM, Snaps, and Debian

    Yang the cat bird
    Yang the cat bird

    While Yang our cat tries to lure in unsuspecting birds on the bird feeder, I have been busy working on many things. First things first though, a big thank you to all that donated to my Internet bill. I was able to continue my work without interruption.

    KDE neon:

    A busy week in KDE neon as https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.27.9/ was released! We have it ready to update in User edition or if you would like to download the new ISO you can find it here: https://neon.kde.org/download I highly advise the User Edition as Unstable is volatile right now with Qt6 transition and ABI breakage. Which leads me to the next busy work for the week. Plasma 6 exploded breaking unstable desktops all over, including mine! A library changed and it was not backward compatible, so we had to rebuild the Qt6 $world to get Plasma and PIM functional again. I am happy to report it is all fixed now, but I cannot stress enough, if you don’t want to chance broken things, please use the User Edition! I also continued the orange -> green build effort in making sure all our runtime dependencies are up to date. This fixes odd UI bugs and developers have all the build dependencies needed to build their applications.

    KDE Snaps:

    Several more 23.08.2 snaps have arrived in the snap store including the new to snaps Kamoso!

    KDE snap Kamoso
    KDE snap Kamoso

    I have an auto-connect request to the snap-store policy folks, but until it is approved please snap connect kamoso:camera :camera I have a pile of new MR’s in for non release service applications and some fixes for issues found while testing. While this new workflow does take a bit longer waiting for approvals I like it much better as I am developing closer relationships with the application developers.

    I have made significant progress on the Kf6 ( Qt6 based ) content snap. I am about 90% complete. While this doesn’t mean much for users yet, it will when KDE applications release their qt6 ports starting the next major release cycle. I will be ready!

    The last bit for snap work is I have almost completed my akonadi service snap. This will connect to all KDE PIM snaps so they share data. Akonadi is the background database that ties all the PIM applications together.

    Debian:

    This week I have worked on updates for several golang packages including charmbracelet/lipgloss charmbracelet/bubbles, and muesli-termenv. unfortunately I am stuck golang-github-aymanbagabas-go-osc52. The work is done in salsa but the maintainer has not uploaded. I have shot an email to the maintainer. I have also begun mentoring my first potential future DD! I reviewed his python-scienceplots and python-art which should land in Debian soon.

    Thanks for stopping by! As usual, if you can please spare some change, consider a donation. All proceeds go to surviving another day to work on cool things to land on your desktop!

    https://gofund.me/b8b69e54

    Donate
  • KDE: Debian: Hopefully a short goodbye for now.

    KDE: Debian: Hopefully a short goodbye for now.

    KDE Mascot
    KDE Mascot

    I have been working around the clock and over the weekend trying to get the transition for snapcraft files in their respective repos. What does this mean for users? Faster releases for Snaps and closer collaboration between snapcrafters and application developers so bugs get resolved much quicker.

    Unfortunately, I have 2 days to finish before my internet gets cut off. I did not make enough to pay the bill. Seeing as this is the first time in a year, I am absolutely, positively grateful for all of you and your support over the past year. I know my work is appreciated! I will never be homeless or starve due to my wonderful local community, but the Internet bill is not something we can barter or trade labor for.

    I have caught up on my Debian obligations ( so no MIA needed! )

    KDE neon is in good hands with Jonathan and Carlos.

    So for now, farewell ( I assure you I will be back! )

    https://gofund.me/b8b69e54