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First Impression: KDE Connect
by Scott Sullivan 23 Jan '16

23 Jan '16

I've recently started settling into my newest laptop that has become my daily driver. When I do this I tend to install the latest Fedora and see what a fresh experience reveals. Fedora 23 see a lot of new KDE developments. Especially work done after very constructive criticism in comparison to Gnome 3. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=gnome-week-editorial But, unrelated to the above, is a branch off in to the world of mulit-device computing, an area that I find fascinating. What is KDE Connect? ===================== KDE Connect is a project that aims to communicate all your devices. For example, with KDE Connect you can receive your phone notifications on your computer, or just use your phone as a remote control for your desktop. To achieve this, KDE Connect implements a secure communication protocol over the network, and allows any developer to create plugins on top of it. From: https://community.kde.org/KDEConnect Getting KDE Setup ================= Under Fedora 23, finding this feature was rather easy. It kind of stands out in the KDE systems settings interface. [1]:http://revident.net/images/KDE-Connect-01-systems-settings.png [2]:http://revident.net/images/KDE-Connect-02-systems-settings.png Next I installed the KDE Connect app on my Android phone. This is where I hit my first rub. I couldn't get the two devices to see each other on the network. The Devs are at least helpful here, with trouble shooting information right on the Community website which the link to from the systems settings interface. The Fedora Packagers are great here as well, as a service definition for Firewalld is ready to go. The command line to enable a server is convoluted. But the GUI is slick and easy. [5]:http://revident.net/images/KDE-Connect-05-firewall.png After the ports were open, and a quick pairing procedure I was up and running. [3]:http://revident.net/images/KDE-Connect-03-systems-settings.png Experience So Far ================= File Navigation --------------- I've tried bluetooth in the past and I've all sort of timeouts. USB would stop working if the screen locked. With KDE Connect doing it's access over the network, in comparison it is very slick. Desktop Notifications --------------------- My Phone was on another table. I hear the new SMS bing, and there, in the notifications center of KDE is the message. I didn't have to walk over to who it was and the first bit of the message. Battery Life ------------ Again, good to be able to see this at a glance. [4]:http://revident.net/images/KDE-Connect-04-taskbar-icon.png Remote Input ------------ I can use the touch screen of the phone as a remote mouse. Works surprisingly well. This sentence was written from the phone while behind my deskchair, into Thunderbird on the laptop. Media Controls -------------- A quick test with Amarok showed that the basics work. Not sure what it will take to get it working with your media player of choice. Summary ======= A nice addition with some real conveniences. It's nice to see KDE Community Devs pushing boundaries where other desktops have yet to tread. -- Scott Sullivan

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Emails from a JIRA Service Desk
by Myles Braithwaite 23 Jan '16

23 Jan '16

A subscriber to the <talk(a)gtalug.org> email was being used to forward support tickets to a JIRA instances (you might have received an email from "Service Desk" or "Advanced Service Desk". If I don't receive an email from this message the problem should be fixed. Please don't turn this into the Salem witch trials as it looks to be an honest mistake. Have an awesome day, and happy open-sourcing :-).

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Is the TD-8616 DSL modem a good choice?
by Chris F.A. Johnson 20 Jan '16

20 Jan '16

How does this DSL modem compare with others? <http://www.tplink.ca/en/products/details/cat-15_TD-8616.html> Any problems using it with Linux? -- Chris F.A. Johnson, <http://cfajohnson.com>

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Vim talk slides posted
by Giles Orr 18 Jan '16

18 Jan '16

http://www.gilesorr.com/vim/vimjourney/ I added a section on "Programmer Fonts" and using TTF fonts in XTerm since so many people preferred terminals over the GUI version of the editor. I realize that most people use more "advanced" terminal emulators, but for the old school among you ... -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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Share your ~/.vimrc file (was Vim talk slides posted)
by Myles Braithwaite 16 Jan '16

16 Jan '16

I'm really interested in other people's setup so could we start a thread of people sharing their ~/.vimrc file. Here is mine: <https://github.com/myles/dotfiles/blob/master/vimrc>. And if you are interested in the vim plugins I use: <https://github.com/myles/dotfiles/blob/master/vimrc.bundles>.

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Can the Internet exist without Linux? | ZDNet
by James Knott 14 Jan '16

14 Jan '16

http://www.zdnet.com/article/can-the-internet-exist-without-linux/

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Music Broadcast Server?
by Stephen 13 Jan '16

13 Jan '16

I currently use Mediatomb as a server and have Panasonic UPnP players. They are mainly Bluray players but do more, including play .flac files. But they each connect separately and play their own streams independently. What I would like to do is have each unit play the same music stream. It would be like having multiple radios in my home set to the same station. Is there a Linux solution for this? Cheers -- Stephen

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Raspberry Pi Meetup tomorrow
by Alex Volkov 13 Jan '16

13 Jan '16

Hello everyone, As I mentioned during the meeting there's gonna be a regularly-scheduled Raspberry Pi meetup on Thursday, January 14 at Seneca@York -- Center for Development of Open Technology. (in TEL building) Here are the details -- http://www.meetup.com/Raspberry-Pi/events/227941349/ I'm gonna talk about my experiences setting up OpenCV for raspberry pi -- https://github.com/avolkov/rpi-opencv Sample program (Automatic dorman) that uses Pi Camera & OpenCV -- https://github.com/avolkov/my-first-automatic-door-man And if I'm not gonna forget I'll bring soil moisture sensor like this -- https://twitter.com/ModMyPi/status/679705213578665984 Alex.

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Announcements from Last Night's Meeting
by Myles Braithwaite 13 Jan '16

13 Jan '16

David C.B. won the JetBrains Question ## Jobs * Debian Administrator with MySQL and AWS experience contact Stephen Perry, and IT Recruiter at TAL Group, though their email <perry(a)talgroup.net>. ## Upcoming Events * 21 January at 8pm - xvzf: Storytelling night for Toronto tech workers <http://xvzf.io/>. * 28 May at 12pm - There is a Raspberry Pi Meetup at Toronto Reference Library with three introductory talks on getting started, programming, and connecting devices to the Raspberry Pi and a number of Raspberry Pi demonstrations <http://meetu.ps/2RLRXz>/

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On the Ownership of Product Data and the Future of Product Development
by Howard Gibson 12 Jan '16

12 Jan '16

http://www.engineering.com/PLMERP/ArticleID/11241/A-Perfect-Storm-for-PLM-O… This article is focused on PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) and something I have not heard of before called PIP (Product Innovation Platforms). Articles on these websites degenerate into a weird alphabet soup. There is a very interesting point here, near and dear to the Free Software community... 1. Create a cool new thing using proprietary software 2. The creator of the proprietary software changes the license agreement is some critical way you cannot manage. 3. Oops! You have no access to your data! -- Howard Gibson hgibson(a)eol.ca howard.gibson(a)teledyneoptech.com jhowardgibson(a)gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson

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