Entries by Mark Kretschmann

Hello goodpeople,

this is a quickreminder for all kdefriendly bug triagers and otherfolks. Ok, I'll stop with the strangetalk now...




We are going to have a Phonon Bugday on the 8th of November, which is really quite soon, if you think about it. Phonon is a very central component of KDE and Qt, but like all software it does contain a number of bugs. It doesn't have to stay this way though

Come join us at our Bugday. Developers, triagers, normal users - you can all be helpful. I'm pretty much convinced that many of Phonon's issues are fairly low hanging fruits that could be fixed rather easily, if we all help out a bit. Also, Phonon's new maintainer Martin Sandsmark is pretty awesome, and I'm confident that with him at the helm we will be able to make a real difference.


Join us!


PS: The event is not actually happening in Buğday, but rather on irc.freenode.net, channel #phonon. Bringing Kebab is totally fine though.

Do you like Amarok? If so, we have some good news for you:

The Amarok project has joined the Software Freedom Conservancy. This move allows donors to give tax-deductible donations, and it increases the transparency in the spending of Amarok's funds. This greatly helps us to be more efficient, and focus on what we really do best: Creating kick-ass software. At the same time, we stay fully committed to the KDE project! Amarok is, and will always stay, a fully committed project under the KDE umbrella. We have coordinated this move with the KDE e.V. board, who approves of our endeavors.

If you want to help us making Amarok even better, head over to our official announcement, and support our fund drive

Our development speed is faster than ever before, and we are highly motivated to deliver you the best music player possible. The upcoming Amarok 2.2.1 release will bring our users features that many of you have been waiting for, and we constantly aim to improve our quality too. I guarantee you that with my (hopefully) good name.

Thanks for supporting us in advance.


Mark Kretschmann,
Amarok project founder and developer.

Here's a little teaser article, showing off some of the work we're doing for the upcoming Amarok 2.2.1. As some of you may know (or maybe not), we have decided to turn the 2.2 "Sunjammer" series into a longer lasting series, similar to the 1.4.x "Fast Forward" cycle. This means, we're not branching to 2.3 immediately, but instead we will make new releases about every six weeks, each including a number of new features and bug fixes.

This style of working was partly made possible by our migration to the Git version control system. I can only say, for us the migration was fully worth it. Our development speed has skyrocketed, as we are now able to develop new features in different branches, test them safely, and then merge them into our master branch. Also, the number of third-party contributions has increased dramatically, thanks to Git and Gitorious. You can find our Git repository online here:

http://gitorious.org/amarok


These are some of the improvements in 2.2.1 so far:

Optional support for KNotify.

New toolbar with nicer looks (you will also be able to select a "slim" version for small screens).

"Jump To" feature for quick playlist navigation.

Better Podcast support.

Enhanced playlist inline editor.

Full screen mode toggle, allowing to show Amarok without window decorations.

Much improved collection scanner (see Jeff's blog).

Many many (many) bug fixes.

Words are one thing. We want screenshots! So here goes - please remember, it's a preview snapshot:

Click to show full size

Have you tried it yet? I'm running the Chromium "Daily Builds" on Kubuntu 9.10. At first, not very long ago, I was quite skeptical about Chromium. It looked unfamiliar, it seemed to lack features. Then, about a week ago, I gave it another try. And boy, has it improved!

To give you some back story on my personal history of browser usage, I'm a die hard Opera fan. I've been using Opera since about 10 years, and nothing ever came close to its performance, usability, and elegance. In fact Opera used to be the last remaining non-free software that I used on a daily basis. While I'm a huge supporter of Free Software, I didn't feel bad about using it, as it was just so damn good. Still, I would have preferred a good free alternative, but nothing else did it for me (including Firefox).

Now, what makes Chromium so great? Let me just list a few things that I love about it:

Incredibly fast.

Based on WebKit, which is based on KDE's KHTML. Proves how great KDE technology is.

Rapid development process, fully transparent, using Git for version control.

Ingenious multi-process system. Forget about memory leaks, plugins crashing the whole browser, etc.

Simple user interface. Doesn't overwhelm me with obscure options.

Free Software (not just as in beer).

Where there is light, there is also shadow, and there is one thing about Chromium that I find a bit sad: Why did they not use Qt from the beginning? Qt would have provided a perfect foundation for a cross-platform application. Google probably had its reasons for doing it differently (I assume it's simply time-to-market, they made a pure Windows version first), but that's still one aspect that they could have done better. Anyway, Chromium's GUI is rather simplistic, so the choice of toolkit doesn't make a very big difference to the user.

Here's a little class that we developed for Amarok, and I thought it might be interesting for some of you as well (maybe KDElibs?). What it does is the following:

Assume that you have a list of pointers to objects (they must be QObject subclasses). Sometimes such lists are used to cache pointers in multiple places, but the objects they contain (as pointers) might be destroyed at some point. In Amarok we had this problem with QAction: Many classes stored lists of pointers to actions, but sometimes actions were destroyed (e.g. on track change), and the lists got out of sync. You could probably see this as a design flaw, but we came up with a simple solution:

SmartPointerList is a QList for pointers which automatically removes a pointer when the object it refererences is destroyed. A simple idea (by myself), implemented with help from Ian Monroe and Max Howell (of Amarok/FileLight/DragonPlayer/Last.fm fame). In our case, it solved many ugly crashes that were pretty hard to debug.


If you feel the class could be useful to you, have a look here:

http://gitorious.org/amarok/amarok/blobs/master/src/SmartPointerList.h
http://gitorious.org/amarok/amarok/blobs/master/src/SmartPointerList.cpp


Enjoy

Many users have been asking us lately for updated builds of Amarok 2.1 for Windows. Here's some good news for you folks!

Thanks to our tireless KDE-Windows crew (Patrick Spendrin and others) you can now get nightly builds for Windows right here:


http://mafia-server.net/amarok-nightly


Apparently these builds are pretty solid. Quoting a user from our forum:

"Wow the nightly build version is way different. After using it for some days I can say that it seems to be much more stable than 2.0.1. Good job."


So, give it a try

(Image kindly provided by Nick Schenker)


On April 1st and 2nd (no joke there) a delegation from Amarok visited OpenExpo in Berne (Switzerland), together with our FOSS homies from KDE and Kubuntu. The photo above shows me (left) and Sven Krohlas in action, that is, drinking beer and having cake.

Apart from that we also had the chance to talk to many Amarok users, and demonstrated a preview of the upcoming 2.1 release, on Sven's 20 years old laptop - the thing operates on love and glue strip mostly. (hint: wanna help our project a bit? Donate a new lappy to Sven!)

Many users expressed their sincere happiness about Amarok and about meetings its devs, which of course made us very happy. It's always a rewarding feeling to see that one's work is appreciated. Others offered mostly fair and balanced criticism, which we took seriously and promised to remedy in upcoming releases (2.1 is going to fix a lot of those already).

Other highlights included:

Alexandra Leisse making good on her promise to wear a skirt on the second day.

The Free Beer (a beer with FOSS recipe) which I'm drinking in the above pic.

Catering is always decent at OpenExpo, although they've been a bit skimpy with the yummy Asian stuff this year.

What didn't sit so well with me:

KDE people (Myriam in this case) having to give out GNOME Ubuntu CDs, as Canonical again managed to forget about the Kubuntu CDs. Next time I might use them as frisbees or so. GNOME fails to show up at many expos these days, but through the backdoor (Ubuntu) they spread their software anyway. Not OK in my book.

All in all, the event was decent and we had a lot of fun (as always my patience was stretched thin, but people are used to that by now;) Thanks to everyone who participated, thanks to our users and friends, and especially to Nick, with whom I had a good conversation afterward.


PS:

In 2003, a crack developer squad was sent to prison by a military court for a hack they didn't commit. They promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Amarok Underground HQ. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as coders of fortune.

If you have a problem, if no-one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the AMAROK-TEAM!

(Image copyright by Wade Olson)


Ahoy maties,

in an earlier blog article I had explained how to install Amarok from SVN in your HOME directory. This guide was overall quite successful, but recently David Faure pointed out an error in setting $KDEDIR (thanks David!).

The old article recommended setting $KDEDIR in .bashrc, which could lead to odd side effects, like Amarok not finding its plugins, or crashing on exit. So I have now updated the article with a better method, which fixes these issues.

Additionally, Amarok 2.1-SVN now has some new build dependencies (like taglib-extras), which are detailed in our current README, but not in the old article. Fortunately Stephan Jau wrote this HOWTO article, which also describes these new additions. It's mostly aimed at Kubuntu users, but it should also be helpful for users of other distributions.


PS:
Yes, the image above is the new splash screen in 2.1. Hooray for Wade, his artwork is killer!

PPS:
Stay tuned for 2.1-beta1 really soon now - the ChangeLog approaches epic proportions

Just wanted to let you guys know about a small patch I just made, that in my opinion really improves usability in Amarok 2.1:

It is now possible to configure Phonon (the KDE sound system that Amarok 2 uses) directly from Amarok


Here's a screenshot, illustrating the whole thing:



Enjoy, and stay tuned for Amarok 2.1


PS: Thanks to Pino Toscano for giving technical advice.

(Image copyright by denis_m)

Hey all,

so this is of course a very controversial topic, as music is art, and as with all things art: Tastes differ. Still, as a long time music player developer, I get to hear a lot of music (basically all day), and I also happen to take music quite seriously. However, I should note that I am myself not a musician.

Anyway, since I might be somewhat knowledgeable in this field, and as I have been asked to write about this, I will write about my personal music taste. Some recommendations on what I find "good" music

My music taste can be coarsely split into three broad categories:

1) Progressive rock
2) Electronica
3) Classical music

As a teenager, when I first started to listen to music seriously, one my first loves has been Queen (rock music), and Mike Oldfield (complex symphonic rock). I should note one aspect of my music taste that might be a bit special: I do not tend to neglect or dislike artists that I have once loved (hey, the same is true for relationships!). I rarely say "OK, I might have liked this band 10 years ago, but now I just find them a joke!". Instead, I tend to stick to the artists I liked. E.g. I am still a big fan of Queen and Mike Oldfield today.

So the first of my beloved music categories would be progressive rock, also called symphonic rock, because of its similarities in structure with classical music. To this day, I love this genre. Here are a few listening tips:

Mike Oldfield
Oldfield is probably my favorite musician and composer overall. I know most of his works, named an application in honor of him ("Amarok"), and I admire this man. I personally believe him to be one the greatest musical geniuses of our time (a modern Bach, so to speak).

Mike Oldfield covers a wide range of musical genres, from progressive rock to classical, to pop. He's a virtuoso guitar player, but also a multi-instrumentalist (plays something like 15 instruments by himself).

I can only strongly recommend to check out his music. And don't just stop at one album - his musical range is too wide to judge him by one album alone.

Genesis
One of the founders of progressive rock, this band started out with Peter Gabriel as their singer, a part which was later on taken over by Phil Collins (also a drummer). This is a band that has been active for bloody ages (like from the late 60s or so), and is still semi-active today (nowadays just 3 people though). They are a must listen for every fan of the genre.

Porcupine Tree
Although they don't like to be stuck into this genre (they find it old fashioned), this band represents a modern form of progressive rock, with masterful composition and extremely good musicianship. The mastermind behind the band is front man Steve Wilson, who also happens to run many other musical side projects.

PS: One Amarok developer, Nikolaj Hald Nielsen, is a major fan of this band. If you are interested in them, talk to him sometime

Some more bands of this genre that I highly appreciate are:

Marillion, IQ, Fish, Magenta (Welsh band), Pendragon.


So I've just realized that this blog has already become quite long (personally I hate reading long blogs - thanks ADHD!), so I've decided to split it up, and to write articles about the other important genres another time. But I can already tell you so much: Electronica (electronic music) has become very important to me, and is currently probably the genre I listen to most often.


So long, and thanks for reading

As I had blogged a while ago, a number of Amarok teamsters are quite active on Twitter. I've personally been a big fan of Twitter (and still am), but lately a nice FOSS alternative has surfaced, named Identi.ca. Similar to Twitter, Identi.ca is a micro-blogging service, appealing to people like me who just love love to talk a lot.

So anyway, recently there has been a shift in our community to move from Twitter to Identi.ca. I did just the same, and you can now follow my updates here:

http://identi.ca/markey



PS: There are a few things that still bug me about Identi.ca currently. Among them the fact that the default page shows me submissions of random people I don't know (nor want to know), instead of my home page. Another one being that the site insists on cutting off my chin in the avatar picture. Just for the record: I do have a chin, even with a tiny beard attached to it, as other photos can prove

(image copyright by Wade Olson)


Anyone else noticed the extreme amount of hate & trolling against KDE lately, and especially against KDE 4? I have a special message for you trolls:

You're fucking idiots.


For your consideration:


1) they ignore you

2) they laugh at you

3) they fight you

4) YOU WIN.


(we're at stage 3 now)

Yes, this is actually edible! My partner Myriam made these special cookies for me, as a gift for our successful Amarok 2.0 release.

Rest assured, I will enjoy the cookies very much. I know they taste delicious



I'd like to wish all of our users, our Amarok squad, and the KDE team a happy holiday season!

After our recent release of Amarok 2.0, the first round of reviews from major Internet sites has hit the tubes. It is interesting to note that while we got slightly mixed reviews from our users, the majority of professional reviewers had mostly positive things to say about our baby.

I'm not surprised at all by this outcome - I've been long enough in the software business to know the rules. Again I would like to emphasize that we take every criticism very seriously, as long as it is constructive. And we have a very firm vision of Amarok. Everyone who has met me either on the Net or in person knows that I'm a man of strong visions in which I firmly believe, and that I'm not easily influenced by others to change my views.


Enough of the banter! Let's get to the meat:

Ryan Paul of Ars Technica posted an extremely well written and in-depth review:

Hands-on: Amarok 2 rocks the house

Jeremy LaCroix wrote a balanced and fair review for Linux.com:

Amarok gets a facelift

Kevin Purdy of Lifehacker has written a short but sweet review:

Amarok 2 Released, Windows and Mac Versions in Beta

Austin Modine of The Register reviewed Amarok 2:

Native-Linux music player Amarok gets major overhaul

That's all for now. If you discover any more noteworthy reviews, please post them in the comments section. I might eventually write a follow-up to this article, or simply caress my (planet sized) ego by enjoying the reviews.


Mark Kretschmann

Heya,

it does not happen very often that I blog about advertisements for companies. This one is an exception. I'm feeling good about it, since this company I'm blogging about could actually prove useful to the KDE/FOSS community.

The company I'd like to introduce to you is Linux Lancers. Let me sum up in a nutshell what they offer:

1) For the job seeker: A place to find freelance and permanent FOSS jobs (and free advice).

2) For the company: A place to find competent FOSS programmers.


Freelancing is an attractive job opportunity for many contributors in the Software Libre scene. Myself I have done several freelance jobs, and nowadays I am glad that opportunities are emerging that bring us Free Software experts closer to the companies seeking our knowledge.



Disclaimer:

I do not have any financial interests in this company. I'm posting this purely because I believe that the company offers a service that could be useful for our community, plus I'm friends with the company owner and I enjoy seeing his baby succeed.