Juank Prada's Live Journal

I could not resist the temptation :)



name: Juan Camilo Prada
nick: juank_prada
IRC channels: #fedora-websites, #fedora, #fedora-admin
location: Bucaramanga, Colombia
Profesion: Story teller at the IT department / Coffee drinker/ Programmer when possible

So I'm back. I've returned from the almost dead (after a peritonitis which almost killed me) and now I'm trying KDE 4.3 from updates-testing repo in Fedora 11.

I'm speechless. Last time I tryed KDE was when it was on version 3.5.X and i didn't really liked it at all. I found it messy and i couldn't found my way on that desktop environment, so i stick to Gnome as it was more intuitive for me. Now after lots of improvements I have to say KDE 4 rocks!.

Even though I'm using testing-repo to fetch KDE 4.3 packages I found my desktop to be rock solid. No critical bugs and no annoying missconfigurations. The interface is awesome and the plasma widgets makes the desktop way more appealing.

So far I feel like home using KDE 4.3, and im only hoping to get multimedia keys work out of the box and to replace NetworkManager-gnome with a working version of plasma-NetworkManager.

BTW, congratulations to fedora's KDE SIG for their great job on getting KDE to Fedora. Keept up the good job guys!!.

There has been a lot of movement in the Fedora Websites team lately. Some new proposals for a new design for the planet has been posted on the mailing list and they have been brought to the meeting getting a lot of attention and feedback (great work Craig).

Once again its time to show some changes to the Fedora's main site (http://fedoraproject.org) that I've proposed and that are also a subject that still need some discussion before it gets mature enough to be a real change for the site. This time the changes focused more on the first page of the site in which are shown some options to download Fedora Desktop Live image either by Torrent or in a direct download method (HTTP). The idea was to promote only one single media that will hopefully fulfil all the user's need, so that is why the Desktop Live Media is the one proposed.



There is also a news and Spins column that I'm sure need a lot more work (and probably some RSS feeds to make the news more content rich).  Also the Get-Fedora section was changed to provide a more intuitive way for new users to download Fedora.



If you followed the last month discussions about get-fedora in the mailing list you will probably notice this proposal is fairly equal to the one proposed back then. The changes were made in the JavaScript and now no more fancy animations are there (i didnt like them that much). Also there is only options to the official Fedora installation media and all spins will be their own space (which will be spins.fedoraproject.org).

I know it still need some work specially to provide a more efficient-not-so-user-friendly way for all hackers/experts who just want a one click method to download any media they want (i have already seen people complaining about too many clicks to download the media eventhough its only 3 clicks which imho isnt that much)

Anyway, these are my proposals and as i said they need some work so i would like you people to give some feedback, propose new things, correct when you see fit, and cricise if thats the case so all the people involved with the Fedora Websites Team an I can work on this feature that may lead us to have a so much better website

Current working site is available at http://jprada.fedorapeople.org/out/en

I'm really excited about all the things that have been done this last week. And specially I'm really happy that I've been part of all that. Things are getting better for everyone and although there is still a lot to do in order to get things perfect, the facts of this week proves that progress is in motion.

Since I joined Fedora project and the Websites SIG, I noticed a lack of interest in the community for working on the main site, fedoraproject.org (yes, i know, you got your jobs, you got your personal projects, people contribute all they can, but still). I've been working as a freelancer web developer for a couple of years now and, even though I don't consider myself an expert (I'm really far from being one), my experience let me understand that websites that are not updated and that lack of some sex-appeal (come on.. i know there must be a website you really like and consider to be the best one on internet) are bound to fail and sooner or later (probably sooner than later), all users will stop visiting the site. So all this time as a community member i've kept saying that something should be done in order to prevent that to happen to fedoraproject.org.

Thanks to spevack, mmcgrathricky, Craig, and some other guys from the project (sorry if I don't mention you, I'm just not that good when it comes to remembering names), last Wednesday I attended at my first Websites meeting. Along with all these people we managed to settle some things. Although there are a lot more things that still need to be discussed, we definitely set some very important points on how the the team should work from now on, which is a great thing considering how things where done in the Websites SIG.

Now, people in the marketing list have seen some comments about new vision and new design ideas for the current fedoraproject.org site (Thanks craig, ricky, rahulsundaram for all your help on this), and all those comments are helping to build the idea of what the website should be. That is somehow the result of the meeting, and so far i can say things are progressing in a very interesting way. More and more people is getting involved with this 'Websites SIG rebirth' process,  and I'm surprised that since last Wednesday everytime i check my email i get some really good comments/suggestions on this, which makes me think the interest on the website is rising again.

Ath the end all i have to say is thanks to all the community involved in this, and lets give some love to the website as its the one that is representing the project on the internet so we should make it look good!.

Good news the one I received once i logged in my mugshot account!. Fedora 9 Beta is already available to download and of course I'm already int it!.

Im so excited about this release!, as i have had some troubles with fedora 8 and my laptop (nothing to worry about but still annoying bugs) and it seems fedora 9 fixes all those issues. Besides all new stuff included in beta release are worth to try!

In a few hours ill post my impressions about this release!


UPDATE:
Unfortunately i couldnt get the liveCD to work. It booted but when reaching GDM i get only a white square in the middle of the screen with no text or images.

I managed to log in with GDM only to find that gnome panels look exactly the same. Two white panels with no text, icons or applets. What is funny is that it seems to recognize that there are items to be selected an used, i could click on what was suppose to be the menu but so the menu was all white too.  I didnt get icons on my desktop either, so now im running in a virtual machine to see if things work now (apparently they do).