text:
Employed IFA - HNW CLIENTS PROVIDED - NEW!
- Recruiter
- Verridian Recruitment
- Location
- Braintree
- Salary
- 35000.0000
- Posted
- 02 Feb 2017
- Closes
- 02 Mar 2017
- Sector
- Banking, Finance & Insurance
- Contract Type
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full Time
Employed Independent Financial Adviser
£35,000 - £50k Basic + pension + bonuses + Professional clients
Our Client has a unique business model providing tailored financial advice products and services to clients in the medical sector and their success has been recognised through prestigious awards and significant growth.
We are interested in hearing from top performing qualified financial advisors/IFA's or Wealth Managers who are looking to progress their careers and deal with professional clients. This is a wonderful opportunity for a successful and established advisor to grow their business with the full support of clients provided, process and systems, research and paraplanning support all in place.
The Company offer an excellent package including an excellent basic salary, and an uncapped bonus scheme encouraging you to build up your funds under management.
To apply for this role, you must have:
- the legal right to work in the UK
- a demonstratable proven track record of consistent success within your current role
- full Diploma in fnancial planning
- evidence of commitment to previous employers
If you have a good knowledge of FSA regulations, a flexible approach and a determined attitude please forward your CV. ref RH5.


text:
August 2010 Wallpaper
Here are some wallpapers from the August 2010 mag with Johnny Layton and Yaje Popson.
Johnny Layton / Frontside Air / Photo: Burnett
Right click on your resolution and click 'Save Image As..." to download the wallpaper.
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Yaje Popson / Switch Back Tail / Photo: Zack Malfa Kowalski
Right click on your resolution and click 'Save Image As..." to download wallpaper.
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SOTY Party 2016The 2016 SOTY party was a major rager! Thanks to Monster and everybody that came out, watched the vids or read the mag in '16. Skateboarding is the best shit ever.
Emerica's "Made Chapter 2" Premiere PhotosEmerica hosted the premiere of the long awaited Made chapter 2 last night at the Vista theatre in Los Angeles. Check out the photos here.
Yaje Popson and Darius King on BrixtonBrixton welcomes their newest union members Yaje Popson and Darius King with this rad vid.
Yaje Popson's "Dany" PartYaje skates to the beat of his own drum, and the rhythm is sublime. Great video part filmed in the concrete jungle of NYC. Enjoy...
Burnout: BeantownLast stop for the Vans demo demolishers and Chima, Matt B, Dan Lu and the boys go out with a bang!

subset: commoncrawl


text: Director Tanaz Eshaghian's Love Iranian-American Style provides a dryly funny, self-reflexive, first-person account of the documentarian's struggles with the prospects of dating and marriage, as she hits the age of 25. As an Iranian-Jewish-American who lives with her single mother, Eshagian has traditionally restricted her dating patterns to Caucasian men, but the pivotal birthday arrives and sends her mother into a panic; she thus avows to set Tanaz up in a traditional arranged marriage with an Iranian groom. Tanaz agrees - barely - and thus embarks on a series of dates with prospective candidates for the "big M." Her technique consists of setting the suitors up in one-on-one, on-camera interviews, in which she asks them, point blank, to espouse their feelings about dating and marriage, leading to a series of brutally honest and occasionally hilarious confessions. Eshagian also unearths old boyfriends and films them expostulating on why they broke up with her. On another level, the film sees the director plunging, headfirst, into a cultural abyss as she attempts to define herself via ethnic identity - and finds herself being torn, sharply, between the Iranian ideal of a fixed, long term union and the distinctly American tendencies to play the field and test the waters before committing.


text:
The Kingsbury Tales
By (author) Ouyang Yu
Format: Paperback
Normal Price: $24.95
Your Price: $22.46 AUD, inc. GST
Shipping: $7.95 per order
You Save: $2.50! (10% off normal price)
Plus...earn $1.12 in Boomerang Bucks
Availability: Available to Backorder, No Due Date for Supply
Kingsbury Tales by Ouyang Yu
Book DescriptionKingsbury, Victoria is where poet Ouyang Yu has been based since he came from the People's Republic of China in 1991. It was here where he first came into contact and conflict with a very different culture and multiculture. Set primarily in Australia, spiralling out of the Melbourne suburb of Kingsbury, and China with its 5000-year history, the slippage of identity is explored, and how societies invest or alter identity, is constantly under examination.The Kingsbury Tales explores and depicts poetic characters in a similar way that Geoffrey Chaucer did many hundreds years ago in The Canterbury Tales. Ouyang Yu's The Kingsbury Tales are the poems of a traveller, an exile, a displaced poet, and a poet of two homes. The tension between these factors drives the poetry of this book.
Buy Kingsbury Tales book by Ouyang Yu from Australia's Online Bookstore, Boomerang Books.
Book DetailsISBN: 9781876040826
(235mm x 175mm x 8mm)
Pages: 80
Imprint: Brandl & Schlesinger Pty Ltd
Publisher: Brandl & Schlesinger Pty Ltd
Publish Date: 1-Jul-2008
Country of Publication: Australia
Books By Author Ouyang Yu
Loose, Paperback (August 2011)
Loose takes place around the turn of this century, partly in Australia and partly in China and its provinces, where Ouyang Yu's brother Ouyang Ming, a famed Falun Gong practitioner who was tortured to death, enters the story.
English Class, Paperback (September 2010)
Gives us a vividly remembered China that has changed beyond recognition and a protagonist whose life is equally full of twists and turns.
On the Smell of an Oily Rag, Paperback (February 2008)» View all books by Ouyang Yu
On the Smell of an Oily Rag gives an insight like no other into how English-language and Chinese-language cultures collide, contrast and illuminate each other. It's about what is lost in translation and what can be gained by it.
» Have you read this book? We'd like to know what you think about it - write a review about Kingsbury Tales book by Ouyang Yu and you'll earn 50c in Boomerang Bucks loyalty dollars (you must be a member - it's free to sign up!)
Author Biography - Ouyang Yu
Ouyang Yu graduated from La Trobe University with a doctoral degree in Australian literature and has had 32 Chinese and English books published in the field of fiction, poetry, literary translation and literary criticism. His first novel in English, The Eastern Slope Chronicle (Brandl & Schlesinger) was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Awards and won the SA Festival Award for Innovation in Writing. Ouyang Yu is professor of Australian literature and director of Australian Studies Centre in the English Department, School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Wuhan University, China, and lives between Melbourne and China.
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text:
Enfield is located in Hartford county and has a population of .
The average in-state tuition for full time undergraduate students in forensic accounting schools in Enfield during the 2009 - 2010 school year was $4,608.00. The average tuition was $5,171.00 for non-residents studying in Connecticut.
The cost, on average, for books and supplies needed for forensic accounting schools in Enfield is $797.00. Students have a choice of five forensic accounting colleges in Enfield to attend. Forensic Accounting programs in Enfield reportedly graduated 143 students in the 2008 - 2009 school year.
|Average Salary
|Number Employed in City
|Accountants and Auditors


text:
cowboy filmnoun [ C ]uk /ˈkaʊ.bɔɪ ˌfɪlm/ us /ˈkaʊ.bɔɪ ˌfɪlm/ UK US cowboy movie
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
(Definition of "cowboy film" from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)
Get a quick, free translation!
Create and share your own word lists and quizzes for free!
More meanings of "cowboy film"
Word of the Day
can't hear yourself think
If you cannot hear yourself think, you cannot give your attention to anything because there is so much noise.


text:
- Description
DetailsWith the new ODF number plate holder, you can finally position your numberplate in a stylish way over the rear wheel despite tidied-up tail. This way you won't have to modify the well-known, but not necessarily suitable Ice-bracket. The bracket is made of high-quality brushed stainless steel and available for Piaggio, Minarelli, CPI, Aprilia and Peugeot engines.
- Additional Information
Name Number plate holder ODF, rear wheel central, Aprilia Di-Tech (till 07/2003) Aprilia, VA-steel Item No. ODF-723 Brand ODF-Opticparts DF Fairing Material Metal Composition Miscellaneous
- Reviews
- Fits to (5)
Your product goes with the following manufacturers and their models:
SR 50cc Di-Tech (before 07/2003) - Aprilia Engine, SR 50cc Funmaster LC (after 2000) - Aprilia Engine, SR 50cc R Factory i.e. LC (after '05) Aprilia Engine, SR 50cc Racing LC (after 2000) - Aprilia Engine, SR 50cc Sport LC (after 2000) - Aprilia Engine


text:
Is Wan Yang Foot-Reflexology Centre incorrect or missing key business information? Update your Hotfrog listing today.
Contact details
Are these details correct?
Hotfrog Singapore provides information regarding Wan Yang Foot-Reflexology Centre in Singapore. Wan Yang Foot-Reflexology Centre is located at 50 East Coast Rd #02-64, Singapore 428769 and provides Personal Care services. Contact them on 6344 2472.
Is Wan Yang Foot-Reflexology Centre in 50 East Coast Rd #02-64, Singapore 428769 your business? Claim your listing and attract more leads by adding more content, photos and other business details.
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text:
calicab dares Everyone to
superglue toilet seat thumbtack....thing....
More about superglue toilet seat thumbtack....thing....
Got a roommate? Living with your girl or boy? Live at home?
Superglue some thumbtacks, pointy side up of course to the toilet seat in the middle of the night - or while partying...whatever.
I don't know if you wanna hide the camera in the bathroom because that's kinda....gross. But hey, if you're into that sort of thing, more power to ya.
Anyways, figure something out. :)
Comments on superglue toilet seat thumbtack....thing....
How come I suspect mischief in my house??????
82 months ago
that pic.....yeah...shes my kinda lady.....the kind that when im bore with her, i can make her into a winter coat...O_o....
lol...this dare I AM NOT DOING!!! lol
82 months ago
Popular Miscellaneous Dares
Wedgie_lover dares Everyone to
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text:
Who can you go to to get them done on someone (if they agree)
Who can you go to to get them done on someone (if they agree)
A gp?
I would say its like checking anything else in a blood test
I work in pathology and I used to do them at work for docs and parole.
The patient needed a referral from a doctor, psych or parole.
Pharmacies sell them
Best to go for bloods as urine can be faked, diluted etc. chain of custody samples are best. A GP can do it as others have said. Is it for adult or child?
Thanks guys
Pregnant for the first-time?
Not sure where to start? We can help!
Our Insider Programs for pregnancy first-timers will lead you step-by-step through the 14 Pregnancy Must Dos!


text:
Discussion in 'Canadian Trip Planning & Community Board' started by Wazzo, Apr 21, 2006.
Is there anyway for Canadians to get the Disney Credit Card? Or something of the like???
No, sorry. We've tried everything.
Ask Scratch - she loves to answer this question
No you need a US address and US social security number. It's a Chase Bank card.
Log in or Sign up to hide this advert.
Maybe someone smart will come out with a Canadian version!!
CAA/Disney or something....
I've given up!
what if u have the social security number and a US address but no US bank account?....
Try it!
I have the SS and the US Bank Account but was missing the US Addy!
Good Luck!
Separate names with a comma.


text:
Managing Product Development
Edited by Toshihiro Nishiguchi
Format: Hardback
Normal Price: $247.95
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Availability: Available to Backorder, No Due Date for Supply
Managing Product Development by Toshihiro Nishiguchi
Book DescriptionThis book brings together the work of leading international researchers in the field of product innovation and development. Competitive success between firms nearly always depends on what new products they can develop and bring to market. Some contributors examine broad issues related to the impact of information technology and the role that social factors play in the successful development of products; they also describe the ways that Japanese firms develop products internationally. Others explore product development in the automobile, biotechnology, photolithographic, and textile machinery industries. The book thus provides a powerful guide to successful product development for firms in diverse industries.
Buy Managing Product Development book by Toshihiro Nishiguchi from Australia's Online Bookstore, Boomerang Books.
Book DetailsISBN: 9780195074383
(243mm x 162mm x 23mm)
Pages: 320
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Publish Date: 20-Feb-1997
Country of Publication: United States
Books By Author Toshihiro Nishiguchi
Knowledge Emergence, Hardback (February 2001)
This book brings together the research of a number of researchers in the field of knoledge ceation and imparts a sense of order to that field.
Knowledge Creation, Hardback (May 2000)
The creation and management of knowledge has become a central concern to business and management, both as a source of value and as an opportunity to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. This new book brings together leading thinkers in the area of knowledge and innovation management in a state of the art collection of studies in this field.
Strategic Industrial Sourcing, Hardback (February 1994)» View all books by Toshihiro Nishiguchi
Explores the historical evolution of subcontracting in Japan and analyzes its current practice, outlining a new mode of contractual relations based on the principles of problem-solving collaborative manufacturing. This system strives towards continuous improvements in quality and cost reduction.
» Have you read this book? We'd like to know what you think about it - write a review about Managing Product Development book by Toshihiro Nishiguchi and you'll earn 50c in Boomerang Bucks loyalty dollars (you must be a member - it's free to sign up!)
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Phone: 1300 36 33 32 (9am-5pm Mon-Fri AEST) - International: +61 2 9960 7998 - Online Form
Address: Boomerang Books, 878 Military Road, Mosman Junction, NSW, 2088
© 2003-2017. All Rights Reserved. Eclipse Commerce Pty Ltd - ACN: 122 110 687 - ABN: 49 122 110 687
For every $20 you spend on books, you will receive $1 in Boomerang Bucks loyalty dollars. You can use your Boomerang Bucks as a credit towards a future purchase from Boomerang Books. Note that you must be a Member (free to sign up) and that conditions do apply.


text:
Reading mode: Light Dark
Now reading: Minolta DiMAGE 5 Review
Minolta DiMAGE 5 Review
Published Sep 23, 2001 | Phil Askey
1 Introduction
|2 Next
We first heard of the two new Minolta DiMAGE 5 and 7 digital cameras at PMA on 11th February this year (although there had been leaked information earlier). Both cameras are based on the same functionality, body and 7x optical zoom lens, the DiMAGE 5 has a 3.3 megapixel CCD and 32 - 250 mm equiv. focal length range, the DiMAGE 7 a 5.2 megapixel CCD with a 28 - 200 mm equiv. focal length range.
Much of this operational / design part of this review is simply reproduced from the DiMAGE 7 review because the two cameras (in this respect) are virtually identical.
DiMAGE 5 compared to DiMAGE 7
Here's a quick breakdown of the DIFFERENCES between the DiMAGE 5 and 7 (you'll find full specifications for the DiMAGE 5 on the next page):
Tags: review, konica-minolta
- 10 Menus
- 11 Timings & Sizes
- 12 Features
- 13 Photographic tests
- 14 Photographic tests
- 15 Compared to...
- 16 Compared to...
- 17 Conclusion
- 18 Samples
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text:
Suggest reasons why populations of different countries vary in their attitudes towards climate change. (10 marks)
- Created by: podbkie10
- Created on: 17-10-14 07:05
First 583 words of the document:
Kieran Podbury
St Benedicts
Suggest reasons why populations of
different countries vary in their attitudes
towards climate change. (10 marks)
The graph tells us that the people of Brazil, India and China who are BRIC countries (deemed to be at
a similar stage of newly advanced economic development) believe that climate change and how we
respond to it are amongst the biggest issues today, while the USA, Germany and the UK (all HICs)
believe it is less of an issue. The reason that BRICS are more worried about climate change is because
of the fact that if affects them more on a local level like smog in the east of China. Pollution has been
tied to "cancer villages" and reduced life expectancy. Smog even closed down the major northern
city of Harbin in the east of China in October. 52% of the Chinese populations are concerned about
climate change. MEDC's on the other hand are not of yet directly being affected local level problems
so they feel that there isn't any need to worry.
The graph outlining the commitment levels of the population is similar to the concern levels. The
population of BRIC countries agrees more with the statement "I am personally making a significant
effort to reduce climate change through how I live today". They are more committed to changing the
way they live because they are the ones being affected the most, for example 32% of Indians are
committed to change this may be due the water crisis in the country today caused by high levels of
pollution in the Ganges, the Yamuna and Mithi Rivers. MEDCs on the other are far less committed only
25% of the US populations are committed to change. I believe this is not only because the population
isn't currently experiencing local scale disruption due to climate change but because of the national
governments attitude towards climate change. The USA ratified to the Kyoto protocol because they
rely on consumerism. The people of the US aren't as committed because their lives would have to
adapt far more than people living in BRICs for example. This is because the US is so commercial, they
rely heavily on foreign imports.
The last aspect of the survey was how optimistic people were about the possibilities of climate
change being stopped. Unaspiringly MEDCs have a far lower percentage of the population believing
it can be sopped (both UK and Germany 9%). I think this is because MEDCs are so reluctant to change,
as it will greatly affect the way they live their life. So if they resign to the fact that climate change is
going to happen and whatever anyone does it cannot be stopped it is almost sanctioning and
accepting their behavior.
In conclusion the survey tells us that the population of MEDCs believe that climate change simply
cannot be stopped and therefore on a local level countries should be using adaptation techniques
although 74% of the population of the UK believe it isn't a problem and no action should be
undertaken. The population of BRIC countries believes that adaptation on the local scale is the way
forward, and they are concerned, committed and optimistic about climate change. The attitude of
BRICs Is far healthier.
No comments have yet been made


text:
iPhone apps
Are We Alone - Make Contact with Science
Having Are We Alone withdrawal? Hey, put the show on your iPhone or iPad! Just download this app and instantly catch the latest episode of our science radio program. Hear about the biggest ideas in the universe, and feast your ears on other way….. Read more
iPhone Screenshots
Video Reviews
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Customer reviews
Rated 3/5 based on 3 customer reviews.
0/5 stars
Are We Alone
Jim Grefig write:
5/5 stars
I, for one, enjoy it.
The Aro So write:
5/5 stars
Love it!!
Cargle69 write:
Be the first question this app.
Users Community
The information may be outdated. For actual information go to iTunes
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Great art needs you! Are We There Yet?, the latest project from artists Ken Goldberg and Gil Gershoni, examines the history and future of questioning. Questions are coming in from around the world.… [more..]
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A fun game to play on a journey. This game will help pass the time while giving you fun facts and things to spot. Just set your start location and destination on the map and away you go. [more..]
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Introducing the all new 'Are we nearly there yet?' application.Do you know someone who gets bored on long journeys, this app new contains 300+ jokes, 300+ factoids, a tic tac toe game, stop… [more..]
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Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet?App includes: - 4 sound buttons to play the classic annoying game perfect for long drives. Set the volume of the sound with your… [more..]
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text:
Online 6 months ago
Rent budget
Preferred stay length
Move date
24 year old Dentist moving to Sydney from Scotland in August.
I am generally a clean and tidy flatmate and enjoy socialising with a beer or two at the weekend.
I enjoy playing and watching sport and maintain a fairly active lifestyle.
Contact via email is best.
Fraser is also interested in Teaming-Up and starting a new share house.


text:
Historic Prospect Garden in on Princeton's Campus/A Gorgeous Floral Display
Flowers in Prospect Gardens
Prospect Gardens
This summer, when searching for a picnic spot my husband and I found a beautiful garden tucked away in the center of the Princeton University Campus in New Jersey . If you are not looking you will miss it but if you see it you will never forget it. Better known as Prospect Gardens the garden was built behind the most historic architecture on the campus, Prospect House. The first person to own the the land Prospect House was built on was Col. George Morgan. He had a farmhouse buiilt and called it Prospect because of the beautiful view from his home. It was the mid18th century.Later the farmhouse was purchased by John Potter, a wealthy merchant from Charleston SC. He commissioned the American architect John Notman to build a beautiful Italianate Victorian Mansion in place of the farmhouse in1849.
Prospect House is the only building that was not originally built for the University. In 1878 Robert L. and Alexander Stuart of New York bought the mansion and deeded it to then the College of New Jersey. Later the college name was changed to Princeton University.
Soon it became the home for the president's of the University and was often used as a walk through by campus students. Then president of the university, Woodrow Wilson, built an iron fence around the 5 acres of grounds to keep the students from walking across the land. President Wilson's wife Ellen designed the walkway to appear in the shape of the school shield when seen from above. It was then 1904.
Plants in the garden range from the simple to the exotic. They are changed seasonally through funding of an anonymous donor. In 1968 the president's resident was moved and the home was converted to a dining hall.
There are other secret gardens throughout the beautiful sprawling campus but Prospect is the most famous. The beauty of the campus is seen in all it's splendor in all seasons be it the schools architecture,. Ivy covered walls, magnolia trees, sculptures or gardens.
Today the area in and around Prospect House can also be used for all kinds of events, including weddings, bar mitzvah..
Prospect House
More by this Author
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Planting in the Shade can be a daunting task. Here are a few tips for easy plants that can survive without full sun. I will tell you how to add color and beautiful folliage.
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My surprise experience with the birth of our twins. What the pregnancy was like, why no one knew we were having twins, the delivery and after.
Comments 4 comments
WOW! I loved the walk. Thanks. So, many butterfly pads too! All the pictures have fantastic clarity. I was also mesmerized by the statue in the 4th pic down. Is that 'Pan?' Or, maybe it is just late.
I'll be back for another walk.
Absolutely beautiful garden pics. There is nothing better than a walk in the park, especially where there is a breathtaking garden. Thanks for sharing this! Voted


text:
Find out what the New Financial Year 2015-16 has in store for your life. Register now to get a FREE consultation from our astrologers on how to have a HAPPIER 2015-16 by solving your Career, Finance, Love life, Marriage or Property related issues.
Col. Ajay`s year ahead 2017 report and analysis makes the world a better place to live in for yourself and prepares you well for the future.
This well crafted yearly report includes the basic trends of career, health, finance, travel, etc. It can make the world a better place to live in for yourself.


text:
This is your resource to discuss support topics with your peers, and learn from each other.
Okay so my confusion comes in two parts
1. Releasing an app on both Playbook and BB10
I have an app I've created in AIR that, without modification, can run on Playbook and BB10 as long as I compile two different versions on the two SDK's
When creating the final .bar files I can't sign both of them
I can sign 1 of them but when trying to sign the other it throws an error over how it's already signed this application.
They are in fact the same application but just compiled with different sdk's so that they will run.
How are you supposed to have a single store listing that will have both BB10 and Playbook versions?
2. qt application rejected for "not launching"
I ported a qt application over to bb10 using the qtcompiler in the native sdk. It was compiled and signed with the gold release of the native sdk and it runs in the latest simulator.
The app was however rejected for 'not successfully launching'
But it works...
To the only tools available to me it works...
How can I possibly fix this problem if I can't reproduce it?
If anyone can help me that would be great, this has been killing me
For #1, right now you'd need to change the version number between the two applications. In the near future we'll be removing this signing restriction.
For #2 I recommend requesting more details from the testing team. You can reply to their message to ask which version they were testing on. We have simulators available for a few different versions of BlackBerry 10 now.


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Planet KDE
kdenlive, audacity and lessons in audio sync
During the last foss-gbg meeting I tried filming the entire event. The idea is to produce videos of each talk and publish them on YouTube. Since I'm lazy, I simply put up a camera on a tripod and recorder the whole event, some 3h and 16 minutes and a few seconds. A few seconds that would cause me quite some pain, it turns out.
All started with me realizing that I can hear the humming sound of the AC system in the video. No problem, simply use ffmpeg to separate the audio from the video and use the noise reduction filter in Audacity. However, when putting it all together I recognized a sound sync drift (after 6h+ of rendering videos, that is).
ffprobe told me that the video is 03:16:07.58 long, while the extracted audio is 03:16:04.03. This means that the video of the last speaker drifts more than 3s – unwatchable. So, googling for a solution, I realized that I will have to try to stretch the audio to the same duration as the video. Audacity has a tempo effect to do this, but I could not get the UI to accept my very small adjustment in tempo (or my insane number of seconds in the clip). Instead, I had to turn to ffmpeg and the atempo filter.ffmpeg -i filtered.ac3 -filter:a "atempo=0.9996983236995207" -vn slower.ac3
This resulted in an audio clip of the correct length. (By the way, the factor is the difference in length of the audio and video).
Back to kdenlive – I imported the video clip, put it on the time line, separated the audio and video (just a right click away), ungrouped them, removed the audio, added the filtered, slowed down audio, grouped it with the video and everything seems nice. I about 1h43 I will know when the first clip has been properly rendered :-)
Plasma tricks: different App Menu for different Activities
But what if you don't like to pin apps in the task manager, but want a menu with different apps for each Activity? Now I will explain how to get the result in the video below: (direct link in case it's not shown: https://streamable.com/eqdxr)
- Copy the app launchers you want from /usr/share/applications/ or ~/.local/share/applications/ to somewhere in your home or manually write them
- Right click on them > Activities > Link to the Activities you want to show them
- On your panel add a Folder View plasmoid and set it as follow:
(Location > Show files linked to the current activity)
(Filter > Show Files Matching and select ONLY application/x-desktop)
Now play with other options like icon, title, view etc as you want. The wallpapers are available on my profile on KDE Store as part of the "Plasma Activities series" and so you can download them directly from Plasma's get new wallpapers dialog.
I hope you find this useful, ciao!
Tracking KDE Frameworks and Qt
The KDE-FreeBSD team bumped Qt to 5.7.1 and KDE Frameworks to 5.31.0 in official ports last week, so we're fairly up-to-date in that department. On FreeBSD, we still fully support Qt4 next to Qt5, so some of the delay in getting this stuff in is due to some shuffling of install locations. In particular, we've added qt-chooser in this round of updates, so that qmake is qmake — and no longer qmake-qt4 or some other suffixed binary. We use qt-chooser to switch out one or the other. Checking that this doesn't break anything else — or at least making sure that everything still compiles — is what took the most time this round of updates.
So we're edging closer to getting Plasma 5 Desktop; TCBerner intends to import it together with all the KDE Frameworks-based KDE Applications. That makes it a grand shuffling of ports — and that again takes lots of time.
I'm about to embark on an examination of kcheckpass — we still have two of them, even, one kdelibs4-based and one kf5-based — because the Plasma maintainers would like to clean up the code, and have asked distro's to double-check what actually gets used on each platform. (And kcheckpass is tricksy, like the time in 2003 or so I locked out all the sysadmins at the university by updating the KDE packages, but forgot to setuid it ..)
Anyway, the usual applies: Plasma 5 and KDE Applications are fine to use on FreeBSD, from the area51 repository, and official ports just keep getting closer, bit-by-bit.
New and improved Inqlude web site
During last year's Summer of Code I had the honor of mentoring Nanduni Indeewaree Nimalsiri. She worked on Inqlude, the comprehensive archive of third party Qt libraries, improving the tooling to create a better structured web site with additional features such as categorization by topic. She did an excellent job with it and all of her code ended up on the master branch. But we hadn't yet made the switch to change the default layout of the web site to fully take advantage of all her work. As part of SUSE's 15th Hack Week, which is taking place this week, I took some time to change that, put up some finishing touches, and switch the Inqlude web site to the new layout. So here we are. I proudly present the new improved home page of Inqlude.
All libraries have additional meta data now to group them by a number of curated topics. You can see the topics in the navigation bar on the left and use them to navigate Inqlude by categories. The listing shows more information on first view, such as the supported platforms, to make it easier to find libraries according to your criteria without having to navigate between different pages. The presentation in general is cleaner now, and some usability testing has shown that the page works better now than before. In addition to the visible changes, Nanduni has also done quite a bit of improvements under the hood, including better automated testing. I'm proud of what we have achieved there.
It always has been a privilege for me to act as mentor as part of Google's Summer of Code or other programs. This is one of the most rewarding parts of working in free software communities, to see how new people learn and grow, especially if they decide to stay involved after the program has ended and become valuable members of the community for the long term. Being able to help with that I feel is one of the most satisfying investments of your time in the community.
Building the latest greatest for Android AArch64 (with Vulkan teaser)
Let's say you got a 64-bit ARM device running Android. For instance, the Tegra X1-based NVIDIA Shield TV. Now, let's say you are also interested in the latest greatest content from the dev branch, for example to try out some upcoming Vulkan enablers from here and here, and want to see all this running on the big screen with Android TV. How do we get Qt, or at least the basic modules like QtGui, QtQuick, etc. up and running on there?
Our test device.
In this little guide we are going to build qtbase for Android targeting AArch64 and will deploy some examples to the Android TV device. To make it more interesting, we will do this from Windows.Pre-requisites
The Qt documentation and wiki pages document the process fairly well. One thing to note is that a sufficient MinGW toolchain is easily obtainable by installing the official 32-bit MinGW package from Qt 5.8. Visual Studio is not sufficient as of today.
Once MinGW, Perl, git, Java, Ant, the Android SDK, and the 32-bit Android NDK are installed, open a Qt MinGW command prompt and set some environment variables:set PATH=c:\android\tools;c:\android\platform-tools; c:\android\android-ndk-r13b;c:\android\qtbase\bin; C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_121\bin; c:\android\ant\bin;%PATH% set ANDROID_API_VERSION=android-24 set ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=c:\android set ANDROID_BUILD_TOOLS_REVISION=25.0.2
Adapt the paths as necessary. Here we assume that the Android SDK is in c:\android, the NDK in android-ndk-r13b, qtbase/dev is checked out to c:\android\qtbase, etc.
The Shield TV has Android 7.0 and the API level is 24. This is great for trying out Vulkan in particular since the level 24 NDK comes with the Vulkan headers, unlike level 23.Build qtbase
Now the fun part: configure. Note that architecture.configure -developer-build -release -platform win32-g++ -xplatform android-g++ -android-arch arm64-v8a -android-ndk c:/android/android-ndk-r13b -android-sdk c:/android -android-ndk-host windows -android-ndk-platform android-24 -android-toolchain-version 4.9 -opensource -confirm-license -nomake tests -nomake examples -v
Once this succeeds, check the output to see if the necessary features (Vulkan in this case) are enabled.
Then build with mingw32-make -j8 or similar.Deploying
To get androiddeployqt, check out the qttools repo, go to src/androiddeployqt and do qmake and mingw32-make. The result is a host (x86) build of the tool in qtbase/bin.
For general information on androiddeployqt usage, check the documentation.
Here we will also rely on Ant. This means that Ant must either be in the PATH, as shown above, or the location must be provided to androiddeployqt via the –ant parameter.
Now, Qt 5.8.0 and earlier have a small issue with AArch64 Android deployments. Therefore, grab the patch from Gerrit and apply on top of your qtbase tree if it is not there already. (it may or may not have made its way to the dev branch via merges yet)
After this one can simply go to a Qt application, for instance qtbase/examples/opengl/qopenglwidget and do:qmake mingw32-make install INSTALL_ROOT=bld androiddeployqt --output bld adb install -r bld/bin/QtApp-debug.apk Launching
Now that a Qt application is installed, let's launch it.
Except that it does not show up in the Android TV launcher.
One easy workaround could be to adb shell and do something like the following:am start -n org.qtproject.example.qopenglwidget/org.qtproject.qt5.android.bindings.QtActivity
Then again, it would be nice to get something like this:
Therefore, let's edit bld/AndroidManifest.xml:<intent-filter> <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/> <!--<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER"/>--> <category android:name="android.intent.category.LEANBACK_LAUNCHER" /> </intent-filter>
and reinstall by running ant debug install. Changing the category name does the trick.
Note that rerunning androiddeployqt overwrites the manifest file. A more reusable alternative would be to make a copy of the template, change it, and use ANDROID_PACKAGE_SOURCE_DIR.The result
Widget applications, including OpenGL, run fairly well:
Or something more exciting:
No, really. That clear to green is actually done via Vulkan.
And finally, the hellovulkantexture example using QVulkanWindow! (yeah, colors are a bit bad on these photos)
adb logcat is your friend, as usual. Let's get some proof that our textured quad is indeed drawn via Vulkan:qt.vulkan: Vulkan init (libvulkan.so) vulkan : searching for layers in '/data/app/org.qtproject.example.hellovulkantexture-2/lib/arm64' ... qt.vulkan: Supported Vulkan instance layers: QVector() qt.vulkan: Supported Vulkan instance extensions: QVector(QVulkanExtension("VK_KHR_surface" 25), QVulkanExtension("VK_KHR_android_surface" 6), QVulkanExtension("VK_EXT_debug_report" 2)) qt.vulkan: Enabling Vulkan instance layers: () qt.vulkan: Enabling Vulkan instance extensions: ("VK_EXT_debug_report", "VK_KHR_surface", "VK_KHR_android_surface") qt.vulkan: QVulkanWindow init qt.vulkan: 1 physical devices qt.vulkan: Physical device [0]: name 'NVIDIA Tegra X1' version 361.0.0 qt.vulkan: Using physical device [0] qt.vulkan: queue family 0: flags=0xf count=16 qt.vulkan: Supported device layers: QVector() qt.vulkan: Enabling device layers: QVector() qt.vulkan: Supported device extensions: QVector(QVulkanExtension("VK_KHR_swapchain" 68), QVulkanExtension("VK_KHR_sampler_mirror_clamp_to_edge" 1), QVulkanExtension("VK_NV_dedicated_allocation" 1), QVulkanExtension("VK_NV_glsl_shader" 1)) qt.vulkan: Enabling device extensions: QVector(VK_KHR_swapchain) qt.vulkan: memtype 0: flags=0x1 qt.vulkan: memtype 1: flags=0x1 qt.vulkan: memtype 2: flags=0x7 qt.vulkan: memtype 3: flags=0xb qt.vulkan: Picked memtype 2 for host visible memory qt.vulkan: Picked memtype 0 for device local memory initResources uniform buffer offset alignment is 256 qt.vulkan: Creating new swap chain of 2 buffers, size 1920x1080 qt.vulkan: Actual swap chain buffer count: 2 qt.vulkan: Allocating 8847360 bytes for depth-stencil initSwapChainResources ...
Should you need validation layers, follow the instructions from the Android Vulkan docs and rebuild and redeploy the package after copying the libVkLayer* to the right location.
That's all for now. Have fun experimenting. The basic Vulkan enablers, including QVulkanWindow are currently scheduled for Qt 5.10, with support for Windows, Linux/X11, and Android. (the list may grow later on)
The post Building the latest greatest for Android AArch64 (with Vulkan teaser) appeared first on Qt Blog.
foss-north 2017
After much preparation, the tickets for foss-north 2017 is available at foss-north.se – grab them while they are hot!
The call for papers is still open (do you want to talk – register!) so we do not have a final schedule, but you will find our confirmed speakers on the web site as we grow the list. Right now, we know that have the pleasure to introduce:
- Lydia Pintscher, the product manager of Wikidata, Wikimedia's knowledge base, as well as the president of KDE e.V.
- Lennart Poettering, from Red Hat known for systemd, PulseAudio, Avahi and more.
- Jos Poortvliet, with a background from SUSE and KDE, he now heads marketing at Nextcloud.
The conference covering both software and hardware from the technical perspective. The event is held on April 26 in central Gothenburg located between Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm with an international airport.
This is a great excuse to visit a really nice part of Sweden while attending a nice conference – welcome!
Kubuntu 17.04 Beta 1 released for testers
Today the Kubuntu team is happy to announce that Kubuntu Zesty Zapus (17.04) Beta 1 is released . With this Beta 1 pre-release, you can see and test what we are preparing for 17.04, which we will be releasing in April.
NOTE: This is Beta 1 Release. Kubuntu Beta Releases are NOT recommended for:
* Regular users who are not aware of pre-release issues
* Anyone who needs a stable system
* Anyone uncomfortable running a possibly frequently broken system
* Anyone in a production environment with data or work-flows that need to be reliable
Getting Kubuntu 17.04 Beta 1:
* Upgrade from 16.10: run `do-release-upgrade -d` from a command line.
* Download a bootable image (ISO) and put it onto a DVD or USB Drive : http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/zesty/beta-1/
Release notes: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZestyZapus/Beta1/Kubuntu
Telegram desktop client for flatpak #2
Some time ago I posted a blog post about how I packed telegram desktop client for flatpak. I've been updating it since then in some reasonable intervals as I don't have time to update it more often and mostly because the telegram client's build system breaks my build quite oftenly. Recently I discovered that someone managed to patch telegram to use system Qt libraries instead of building own patched Qt and building linking it statically. After some time I managed to adjust those patches and make them work with my build which allows me to use Qt from KDE runtimes. Here are new instructions how to get this work:
Add KDE runtimes repository and install runtimes
$ flatpak remote-add kde --from https://distribute.kde.org/kderuntime.flatpakrepo
$ flatpak install kde org.kde.Platform
And then you can install and run the telegram desktop client:
$ wget https://jgrulich.fedorapeople.org/telegram/keys/telegram.gpg
$ flatpak remote-add --gpg-import=telegram.gpg telegram-desktop https://jgrulich.fedorapeople.org/telegram/repo/
$ flatpak install telegram-desktop org.telegram.TelegramDesktopDevel
$ flatpak run org.telegram.TelegramDesktopDevel
Or install it from bundle
$ wget https://jgrulich.fedorapeople.org/telegram/telegram.flatpak
$ flatpak install --bundle telegram.flatpak
The reason I did the hard work to build it with Qt from KDE runtimes is that now you can use telegram with portals support if you run it with "-platform flatpak" parameter. Unfortunately this only makes openURI portal to work as telegram has some internal hacks or whatever to use gtk filedialog so for that reason I still allow to access user's home directory. There is also a bug if you use telegram under KDE where it tries to use QSystemTrayIcon instead of libappindicator and unfortunately telegram's system tray icon (the one using QSystemTrayIcon) works only with Qt 5.6.2 and in KDE runtimes we have Qt 5.7.1. The system tray icon is visible, but its context menu doesn't work so if you want to have fully working system tray icon you have to use "–env=XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=gnome" flatpak parameter to force it to use libappindicator.
And that's it. Sorry you had telegram broken for couple of days while I was fighting with it, but hopefully it will work perfectly now.
Qt 5.9 Alpha Released
I am happy to inform you that Qt 5.9 Alpha has been released today.
Qt 5.9 Alpha is an important milestone on our way to the final Qt 5.9.0 release, which is targeted to be released by the end of May 2017.
The Alpha release is available only as source packages. Binary installers will be available via the online installer in conjunction with the Beta release as well as development snapshots during the coming weeks.
To learn about the features in Qt 5.9, please read the Qt 5.9 new features page. For more detailed overview of some Qt 5.9 key features, check the Qt Roadmap for 2017 blog post.
If you want to try Qt 5.9, please download the Qt 5.9 Alpha source packages from your Qt Account or from download.qt.io.
Please remember to give us feedback by writing to the mailing lists and reporting bugs.
The post Qt 5.9 Alpha Released appeared first on Qt Blog.
C++ in Russia, again
Yesterday during our team meeting Eike told me that I'm a mobile C++ conference nowadays. While it sounds funny, it is true that I've been a bit more active than usual.C++ in Moscow
Now I'm in the beautiful Moscow thanks to Sergey Platonov who invited me to speak at C++ Russia again this year. While I haven't been pining for the winter in Russia, I did miss the city.
Read more...
Qt Quick WebGL Streaming
WebGL Streaming is optimized for Qt Quick and allows you to run remote Qt Quick applications in a browser.
I'm working on a platform plugin to run remote applications in your browser, using OpenGL command streaming.
When the remote application runs using this new platform plugin, the application will create a lightweight web server. When a user connects to the application, a web socket connection is opened between the server and the client, using QWebSocketServer.
The application running on a remote computer will serialize all GL calls to binary data and sends it using the web socket connection.
The local browser will send the event (mouse, touch or keyboard) to the remote application, so user interaction is allowed. Even multi-touch support! (up to 6 fingers):
And some Qt Quick demos running in the browser:
The "calqlatr" example:
"clocks" example:
"emitters" (particles) example:
"samegame" example:
Desktop browsers are also supported:
It allows multiple connections to the same application.
New windows are shown in a different canvas in the browser.
To improve the performance, I'm also working to support web sockets compression. To be able to use the permessage-deflate extension. It's actually working but needs more testing.
This feature is going to be introduced in Qt 5.10 as appears in the 2017 roadmap.
The post Qt Quick WebGL Streaming appeared first on Qt Blog.
Making Movies with QML
One of the interesting things about working with Qt is seeing all the unexpected ways our users use the APIs we create. Last year I got a bug report requesting an API to set a custom frame rate for QML animations when using QQuickRenderControl. The reason was that the user was using QQuickRenderControl as an engine to render video output from Qt Quick, and if your target was say 24 frames per second, the animations were not smooth because of how the default animation driver behaves. So inspired by this use case I decided to take a stab at creating such an example myself.
This may not be the most professional looking User Interface, but what it does is still pretty neat. The objective is to feed it an animated QML scene and it should output an image file for each frame of the animation. These images can then be converted into a video or animated image using an external tool. The challenge is that Qt Quick is a UI tool, not a movie generator.
The naive approach to this would be to create a QQuickWindow, set the window size to the output target size, and then grab the frame by calling QQuickWindow::grabWindow() each time the frameSwapped() signal is emitted. There are a couple of issues with this approach though. First is that the video would need to render in realtime. If you wanted to render an animation that was 5 minutes long, it would take 5 minutes because it would just be like recording your application for 5 minutes. The second issue is that under the best case scenario you would be rendering video at the refresh rate of your monitor. This would even require a reasonably powerful machine, because the QQuickWindow::grabWindow() call involves a glReadPixels call which is quite expensive. It is also problematic if you need to render at a different frame rate than your monitor refresh (which is what the user that inspired me was complaining about). So here is how I addressed both of these issues.QQuickRenderControl
QQuickRenderControl is a magical class that lets you do all kinds of crazy things with Qt Quick content. For our purposes we will use it to render Qt Quick content to an offscreen surface as fast as we can. Rather than creating an on-screen QQuickWindow, we can create a dummy QQuickWindow and via render control we can render content to an QOpenGLFramebufferObject instead.// Setup Format QSurfaceFormat format; format.setDepthBufferSize(16); format.setStencilBufferSize(8); // Setup OpenGL Context m_context = new QOpenGLContext; m_context->setFormat(format); m_context->create(); // Setup dummy Surface (to create FBO with) m_offscreenSurface = new QOffscreenSurface; m_offscreenSurface->setFormat(m_context->format()); m_offscreenSurface->create(); // Setup Render Control and dummy window m_renderControl = new QQuickRenderControl(this); m_quickWindow = new QQuickWindow(m_renderControl); // Setup QML Engine m_qmlEngine = new QQmlEngine; if (!m_qmlEngine->incubationController()) m_qmlEngine->setIncubationController(m_quickWindow->incubationController()); // Finish it all off m_context->makeCurrent(m_offscreenSurface); m_renderControl->initialize(m_context);
The above gets QQuickRenderControl setup, then when the size is know and you can actually create the QOpenGLFramebuffer object and tell the dummy QQuickWindow thats where it will be rendering.void MovieRenderer::createFbo() { m_fbo = new QOpenGLFramebufferObject(m_size * m_dpr, QOpenGLFramebufferObject::CombinedDepthStencil); m_quickWindow->setRenderTarget(m_fbo); }
And once that is done it's just a matter of loading up the QML content and rendering it. Unlike with QQuickWindow, QQuickRenderControl allows you to control when the steps of the rendering process occurs. In our case we want to render as fast as possible so this is what our rendering setup looks like:void MovieRenderer::renderNext() { // Polish, synchronize and render the next frame (into our fbo). m_renderControl->polishItems(); m_renderControl->sync(); m_renderControl->render(); m_context->functions()->glFlush(); m_currentFrame++; // Grab the contents of the FBO here ... if (m_currentFrame < m_frames) { // Schedule the next update QEvent *updateRequest = new QEvent(QEvent::UpdateRequest); QCoreApplication::postEvent(this, updateRequest); } else { //Finished cleanup(); } } bool MovieRenderer::event(QEvent *event) { if (event->type() == QEvent::UpdateRequest) { renderNext(); return true; } return QObject::event(event); }
The above sets up an event driven loop that will render as fast as possible while still handling events between frames, which is needed for progressing animations with Qt Quick.Custom QAnimationDriver
The second issue we need to address is that the animation behavior is wrong. To remedy this we need a custom QAnimationDriver that enables us to advance animations at our own frame rate. The default behavior is to try and advance the animation's in steps as close as possible to the refresh rate of the monitor your application is running on. Since we never present the content we render to the screen that behavior doesn't make sense for us. Instead we can install our own QAnimationDriver which can be manually advanced each frame we generate based on a pre-determined frame rate. Here is the whole implementation of my custom Animation driver:class AnimationDriver : public QAnimationDriver { public: AnimationDriver(int msPerStep) : m_step(msPerStep) , m_elapsed(0) {} void advance() override { m_elapsed += m_step; advanceAnimation(); } qint64 elapsed() const override { return m_elapsed; } private: int m_step; qint64 m_elapsed; };
Now to use this you just need to install the new QAnimationDriver. When you call QAnimationDriver::install() it will replace the current one, so Qt Quick will then behave like we need it to. When we start the movie renderer we also install the custom AnimationDriver:m_frames = m_duration / 1000 * m_fps; m_animationDriver = new AnimationDriver(1000 / m_fps); m_animationDriver->install(); // Start the renderer renderNext();
And finally since we control the render loop, we need to manually advance the animation driver. So before the end of the renderNext() method make sure to call:m_animationDriver->advance();
And that is it. Now we can render as fast as possible, and our animation engine will step perfectly for the frame rate we are generate frames for. It is important to remember that you must process events after calling advance() on your animations though, because these are handled through the Qt Event and Signal and Slots system. If you don't do this, then you will generate the same frame many times.Results
Once you run the MovieRenderer you end up with a folder full of images representing each frame. To prepare video files from the generated output I used ffmpeg:ffmpeg -r 24 -f image2 -s 1280x720 -i output_%d.jpg -vcodec libx264 -crf 25 -pix_fmt yuv420p hello_world_24.mp4
In the above command it will generate a 720p video at 24 fps from a series of files called output_*.jpg. It would also be possible to create an example that either called this tool for you via QProcess, or even included an encoder library to generate the video directly. I went for the simplest approach using only what Qt had built-in for this example. Here are a few example movies I generated:
This first video is rendered at 60 FPS and the second is at 24 FPS. Notice how they animate at the same speed but one is smoother than the other. This is the intended behavior in action.
Well thats all I have to show, the rest is up to you. I've published the code for the QML Movie Renderer here so go check it out now! I hope this example inspires you as well to make other cool projects, and I look forward to seeing what new unexpected ways you'll be using Qt in the future.
The post Making Movies with QML appeared first on Qt Blog.
QStringView Diaries: Advances in QStringLiteral
This is the first in a series of blog posts on QStringView, the std::u16string_view equivalent for Qt. You can read about QStringView in my original post to the Qt development mailing-list, follow its status by tracking the "qstringview" topic on Gerrit and learn about string views in general in Marshall Clow's CppCon 2015 talk, aptly […]
The post QStringView Diaries: Advances in QStringLiteral appeared first on KDAB.
Plasma in a Snap?
…why not!
Shortly before FOSDEM, Aleix Pol asked if I had ever put Plasma in a Snap. While I was a bit perplexed by the notion itself, I also found this a rather interesting idea.
So, the past couple of weeks I spent a bit of time here and there on trying to see if it is possible.
It is!
But let's start in the beginning. Snap is one of the Linux bundle formats that are currently very much en-vogue. Basically, whatever is necessary to run an application is put into a self-contained archive from which the application then gets run. The motivation is to isolate application building and delivery from the operating system building and delivery. Or in short, you do not depend on your Linux distribution to provide a package, as long as the distribution can run the middleware for the specific bundle format you can get a bundle from the source author and it will run. As an added bonus these bundles usually also get confined. That means that whatever is inside can't access system files or other programs unless permission for this was given in some form or fashion.
Putting Plasma, KDE's award-winning desktop workspace, in a snap is interesting for all the same reasons it is interesting for applications. Distributing binary builds would be less of a hassle, testing is more accessible and confinement in various ways can lessen the impact of security issues in the confined software.
With the snap format specifically Plasma has two challenges:
- The snapped software is mounted in a changing path that is different from the installation directory.
- Confining Plasma is a bit tricky because of how many actors are involved in a Plasma session and some of them needing far-reaching access to system services.
As it turns out problem 1, in particular, is biting Plasma fairly hard. Not exactly a great surprise, after all, relocating (i.e. changing paths of) an installed Plasma isn't exactly something we've done in the past. In fact, it goes further than that as ultimately Plasma's dependencies need to be relocatable as well, which for example Xwayland is not.
But let's talk about the snapping itself first. For the purposes of this proof of concept, I simply recycled KDE neon's deb builds. Snapcraft, the build tool for snaps, has built-in support for installing debs into a snap, so that is a great timesaver to get things off the ground as it were. Additionally, I used the Plasma Wayland stack instead of the X11 stack. Confinement makes lots more sense with Wayland compared to X11.Relocatability
Relocatability is a tricky topic. A lot of times one compiles fixed paths into the binary because it is easy to do and it is somewhat secure. Notably, depending on the specific environment at the time of invocation one could be tricked into executing a malicious binary in $PATH instead of the desired one. Explicitly specifying the path is a well-understood safeguard against this sort of problem. Unfortunately, it also means that you cannot move your installed tree anywhere but where it was installed. The relocatable and safe solution is slightly more involved in terms of code as you need to resolve what you want to invoke relative from your location, it being more code and also not exactly trivial to get right is why often times one opts to simply hard-compile paths. This is a problem in terms of packing things into a relocatable snap though. I had to apply a whole bunch of hacks to either resolve binaries from PATH or resolve their location relative. None of these are particularly useful patches but here ya go.Session
Once all relocatability issues were out of the way I finally had an actual Plasma session. Weeeh!Confinement
Confining Plasma as a whole is fairly straightforward, albeit a bit of a drag since it's basically a matter of figuring out what is or isn't required to make things fly. A lot of logouts and logins is what it takes. Fortunately, snaps have a built-in mechanism to expose DBus session services offered by them. A full blown Plasma session has an enormous amount of services it offers on DBus, from the general purpose notification service to the special interest Plasma Activity service. Being able to expose them efficiently is a great help in tweaking confinement.
Not everything is about DBus though! Sometimes a snap needs to talk with a system service, and obviously, a workspace as powerful as Plasma would need to talk to a bunch of them. Doing advanced access control needs to be done in snapd (the thing that manages installed snaps). Snapd's interfaces control what is and is not allowed for a snap. To get Plasma to start and work with confinement a bunch of holes need to be poked in the confinement that are outside the scope of existing interface. KWin, in particular, is taking the role of a fairly central service in the Plasma Wayland world, so it needs far-reaching access so it can do its job. Unfortunately, interfaces currently can only be built with snapd's source tree itself. I made an example interface which covers most of the relevant core services but unless you build a snapd this won't be particularly easy to trySummary
All in all, Plasma is easily bundled up once one gets relocatability problems out of the way. And thanks to the confinement control snap and snapd offer, it is also perfectly possible to restrict the workspace through confinement.
I did not at all touch on integration issues however. Running the workspace from a confined bundle is all nice and dandy but not very useful since Plasma won't have any applications it can launch as they either live on the system or in other snaps. A confined Plasma would know about neither right now.
There is also the lingering question of whether confining like this makes sense at all. Putting all of Plasma into the same snap means this one snap will need lots of permissions and interaction with the host system. At the same time it also means that keeping confinement profiles up to date would be a continuous feat as there are so many things offered and used by this one snap.
One day perhaps we'll see this in production quality. Certainly not today
Plasma 5.9.2, Applications 16.12.2 and Frameworks 5.31.0 available in Chakra
This announcement is also available in Spanish and Taiwanese Mandarin.
The latest updates for KDE's Plasma, Applications and Frameworks series are now available to all Chakra users.
Included with this update, is an update of the ncurses, readline and gnutls related group of packages, as well as many other important updates in our core repository. Be aware that during this update, your screen might turn black. If that is the case and it does not automatically restore after some time, then please switch to tty3 with Ctrl+Alt+F3 and then switch back to the Plasma session with Ctrl+Alt+F7. If that does not work, please give enough time for the upgrade to complete before shutting down. You can check your cpu usage using 'top' after logging in within tty3. You can reboot within tty3 using 'shutdown --reboot'.
The Plasma 5.9.2 release provides additional bugfixes to the many new features and changes that were introduced in 5.9.0 aimed at enhancing users' experience:
Applications 16.12.2 include more than 20 recorded bugfixes and improvements to 'kdepim, dolphin, kate, kdenlive, ktouch, okular, among others.'.
Frameworks 5.31.0 include python bindings to many modules in addition to the usual bugfixes and improvements.
Other notable package upgrades and changes:
alsa-utils 1.1.3
bash 4.4.005
binutils 2.27
dhcpcd 6.11.5
dnsutils 9.11.1
ffmpeg 2.8.11
gawk 4.1.4
gdb 7.12
gnutls 3.5.8: If you have local or CCR packages that require it, they might need a rebuild
gstreamer 1.10.3
gutenprint 5.2.12
hunspell 1.6.0
jack 0.125.0
kdelibs 4.14.29
make 4.2.1
mariadb 10.1.21
mplayer 37916
ncurses 6.0+20170204: If you have local or CCR packages that require it, they might need a rebuild
php 7.0.15
postgresql 9.6.1
python2 2.7.13
readline 7.0.001: If you have local or CCR packages that require it, they might need a rebuild
samba 4.5.3
sqlite3 3.16.0
texinfo 6.3
util-linux 2.29
vim 8.0.0142
wpa_supplicant 2.6
fcitx-qt 5 1.1.0
libreoffice 5.2.5
nano 2.7.4
wireshark 2.2.4
qemu 2.8.0
screen 4.5.0
filezilla 3.24.0
thunderbird-kde 45.7.1
wine 2.2
It should be safe to answer yes to any replacement question by Pacman. If in doubt or if you face another issue in relation to this update, please ask or report it on the related forum section.
Most of our mirrors take 12-24h to synchronize, after which it should be safe to upgrade. To be sure, please use the mirror status page to check that your mirror synchronized with our main server after this announcement.
OpenStack Summit Boston: Vote for Presentations
This time I have submitted a proposal together with WDLabs:
- Next Generation Hardware for Software Defined Storage - Software Defined Storage like Ceph has changed the storage market dramatically in the last few years. While software has changed, storage hardware stayed basically the same: commodity servers connected to JBODs utilizing SAS/SATA devices. The next step must be a revolution in the hardware too. At the Austin summit the Ceph community presented a 4 PB Ceph cluster comprised of WDLabs Converged Microservers. Each Microserver is built by starting with an HGST HE8 HDD platform and adding an ARM and DDR running Linux on the drives itself. WDLabs provided access to early production devices for key customers such as Deutsche Telekom for adoption and feedback. This talk will provide insight into our findings running a Ceph cluster on this platform as a storage provider to OpenStack.
As the last times I highly recommend to search also for "Ceph" or what ever topic your are interested in. You find the voting page here with all proposals and abstracts. I'm looking forward to see if and which of these talks will be selected.
Three new FOSS umbrella organisations in Europe
Last year, three new umbrella organisations for free and open-source software (and hardware) projects emerged in Europe. Their aim is to cater to the needs of the community by providing a legal entity for projects to join, leaving the projects free to focus on technical and community tasks. These organisations (Public Software CIC, [The Commons Conservancy], and the Center for the Cultivation of Technology) will take on the overhead of actually running a legal entity themselves.
Among other services, they offer to handle donations, accounting, grants, legal compliance, or even complex governance for the projects that join them. In my opinion (and, seemingly, theirs) such services are useful to these kinds of projects; some of the options that these three organisations bring to the table are quite interesting and inventive.The problem¶
As a FOSS or OSHW project grows, it is likely to reach a point where it requires a legal entity for better operation – whether to gather donations, pay for development, handle finances, organise events, increase license predictability and flexibility by consolidating rights, help with better governance, or for other reasons. For example, when a project starts to hold assets – domain names, trade marks, or even just receives money through donations – that should not be the responsibility of one single person, but should, instead, be handled by a legal entity that aligns with the project's goals. A better idea is to have an entity to take over this tedious, but needed, overhead from the project and let the contributors simply carry on with their work.
So far, the options available to a project are either to establish its own organisation or to join an existing organisation, neither of which may fit well for the project. The existing organisations are either specialised in a specific technology or one of the few technology-neutral umbrella organisations in the US, such as Software in the Public Interest, the Apache Software Foundation, or the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC). If there is already a technology-specific organisation (e.g. GNOME Foundation, KDE e.V., Plone Foundation) that fits a project's needs, that may well make a good match.
The problem with setting up a separate organisation is that it takes ongoing time and effort that would much better be spent on the project's actual goals. This goes double and quadruple for running it and meeting with the annual official obligations – filling out tax forms, proper reporting, making sure everything is in line with internal rules as well as laws, and so on. To make matters worse, failure to do so might result in personal liability for the project leaders that can easily reach thousands or tens of thousands of euros or US dollars.
Cross-border donations are tricky to handle, can be expensive if a currency change is needed, and are rarely tax-deductible. If a project has most of its community in Europe, it would make sense to use a European legal entity.
What is common between all three new European organisations is that none demand a specific outbound license for the projects they manage (as opposed to the Apache Software Foundation, for example), as long as it falls under one of the generally accepted free and open licenses. The organisations must also have internal rules that bind them to act in the public interest (which is the closest approximation to FOSS you can get when it comes to government authorities). Where they differ is the set of services they offer and how much governance oversight they provide.Public Software CIC¶
Public Software CIC incorporated in February 2016 as a UK-based Community Interest Company. It is a fiduciary sponsor and administrative service provider for free and open source projects – what it calls public software – in Europe.
While it is not for profit, a Community Interest Company (CIC) is not a charity organisation; the other two new organisations are charities. In the opinion of Public Software's founders, the tax-deductibility that comes with a charitable status does not deliver benefits that outweigh the limitations such a status brings for smaller projects. Tax recovery on cross-border charitable donations is hard and expensive even where it is possible. Another typical issue with charities is that even when for-profit activities (e.g. selling T-shirts) are allowed, these are throttled by law and require more complex accounting – this situation holds true both for most European charities and for US 501(c)(3) charitable organisations.
Because Public Software CIC is not a charity, it is allowed to trade and has to pay taxes if it has a profit at the end of its tax year. But as Simon Phipps, one of the two directors, explained at a panel at QtCon / FSFE Summit in September 2016, it does not plan to have any profits in the first place, so that is a non-issue.
While a UK CIC is not a charity and can trade freely, by law it still has to strictly act for public benefit and, for this reason, its assets and any trading surplus are locked. This means that assets (e.g. trade marks, money) coming into the CIC are not allowed to be spent or used otherwise than in the interests of the public community declared at incorporation. For Public Software, this means the publicly open communities using and/or developing free and open-source software (i.e. public software). Compliance with the public interest for a CIC also involves approval and monitoring by the Commissioner for Community Interest Companies, who is a UK government official.
The core services Public Software CIC provides to its member projects are:
- accounting, including invoicing and purchasing
- tax compliance and reporting
- meeting legal compliance
- legal, technical, and governance advice
These are covered by the base fee – 10% of project's income. This percentage seems to have become the norm (e.g. SFC charges the same). Public Software will also offer additional services (e.g. registering and holding a trade mark or domain name), but for these there will be additional fees to cover costs.
On the panel at QtCon, Phipps mentioned that it would also handle grants, including coordinating and reminding its member projects of deadlines to meet. But it would not write reports for the grants nor would it give loans against future payments from grants. Because many (especially EU) grants only pay out after the sponsored project comes to fruition, a new project that is seeking these grants should take this restriction into consideration.
Public Software CIC already hosts a project called Travel Spirit as a member and has a few projects waiting in the pipeline. While its focus is mainly on newly starting projects, it remains open to any project that would prefer a CIC. At QtCon, Phipps said that he feels it would be the best fit for smaller-scale projects that need help with setting up governance and other internal project rules. My personal (and potentially seriously wrong) prediction is that Public Software CIC would be a great fit for newly-established projects where a complex mishmash of stake holders would have to be coordinated – for example public-private collaborations.
A distinct feature of Public Software CIC is that it distinguishes between different intangible assets/rights and has different rules for them. The basic premise for all asset types is that no other single organisation should own anything from the member project; Public Software is not interested in being a "front" for corporate open source. But then the differences begin. Public Software CIC is perfectly happy and fit to hold trade marks, domain names, and such for its member projects (in fact, if a project holds a trade mark, Public Software would require a transfer). But on the other hand, it holds a firm belief that copyright should not be aggregated by default and that every developer should hold the rights to their own contribution if they are willing.
Apart from FOSS, the Public Software CIC is also open to open-source hardware or any free-culture projects joining. The ownership constraint might in practice prove troublesome for hardware projects, though.
Public Software CIC does not want to actively police license/copyright enforcement, but would try to assist a member project if it became necessary, as far as funds allowed. In fact when a project signs the memorandum of understanding to join the Public Software CIC, the responsibility for copyright enforcement explicitly stays with the project and is not transferred to the CIC. On the other hand, it would, of course, protect the other assets that it holds for a project (e.g. trade marks).
If a project wants to leave at some point, all the assets that the CIC held for it have to go to another asset-locked organisation approved by the UK's Commissioner of CICs. That could include another UK CIC or charity, or an equivalent entity elsewhere such as a US 501(c)(3).
If all goes wrong with the CIC – due to a huge judgment against one of its member projects or any other reason – the CIC would be wound down and all the remaining member projects would be spun out into other asset-locked organisation(s). Any remaining assets would be transferred to the FSFE, which is also a backer of the CIC.[The Commons Conservancy]¶
[The Commons Conservancy] (TCC) incorporated in October 2016 and is an Amsterdam-based Stichting, which is a foundation under Dutch law. TCC was set up by a group of technology veterans from the FOSS, e-science, internet-community, and digital-heritage fields. Its design and philosophy reflects lessons learned in over two decades of supporting FOSS efforts of all sizes in the realm of networking and information technology. It is supported by a number of experienced organisations such as NLnet Foundation (a grant-making organisation set up in the 1980s by pioneers of the European internet) and GÉANT (the European association of national education and research networks).
As TCC's chairman Michiel Leenaars pointed out in the QtCon panel, the main goal behind TCC is to create a no-cost, legally sound mechanism to share responsibility for intangible assets among developers and organisations, to provide flexible fund-raising capabilities, and to ensure that the projects that join it will forever remain free and open. For that purpose it has invented some rather ingenious methods.
TCC concentrates on a limited list of services it offers, but wants to perfect those. It also aims at being lightweight and modular. As such, the basic services it offers are:
- assurance that the intangible assets will forever remain free and open
- governance rules with sane defaults (and optional additions)
- status to receive charitable donations (to an account at a different organisation)
TCC requires from its member projects only that their governance and decision-making processes are open and verifiable, and that they act in the public benefit. For the rest, it allows the member projects much freedom and offers modules and templates for governance and legal documents solely as an option. The organisation strongly believes that decisions regarding assets and money should lie with the project, relieving the pressure and dependency on individuals. It promotes best practices but tries to keep out of the project's decisions as much as possible.
TCC does not require that it hold intangible assets (e.g. copyrights, trade marks, patents, design rights) of projects, but still encourages that the projects transfer them to TCC if they want to make use of the more advanced governance modules. The organisation even allows the project to release binaries under a proprietary license, if needed, but under the strict condition that a full copy of the source code must forever remain FOSS.
Two of the advanced modules allow for frictionless sharing of intangible assets between member projects regardless whether the outbound licenses of these projects are compatible or not. The "Asset Sharing DRACC"] (TCC calls its documents "Directives and Regulatory Archive of [The Commons Conservancy]" or DRACC) enables developers to dedicate their contributions to several (or all) member projects at the same time. The "Programme Forking DRACC" enables easy sharing of assets between projects when a project forks, even though the forks might have different goals and/or outbound licenses.
As further example, the "Hibernation of assets DRACC" solves another common issue – namely how to ensure a project can flourish even after the initial mastermind behind it is gone. There are countless projects out there that stagnated because their main developer lost interest, moved on, or even died. In this module there are special rules in place to handle a project that has fallen dormant and how the community can revive a project afterwards to simply continue the development. There are more such optional rule sets available for projects to adopt; including rules how to leave TCC and join a different organisation.
This flexibility is furthered by the fact that by design TCC does not tie the project to any money-related services. To minimise risks, [The Commons Conservancy] does not handle money at all – its statutes literally even forbid it to open a bank account. Instead, it is setting up agreements with established charitable entities that are specialised in handling funds. The easiest option would be to simply use one of these charities to handle the project's financial back-end (e.g. GÉANT has opted for NLnet Foundation), but projects are free to use any other financial back-end if they so desire.
Not only is the service TCC offers compatible with other services, it is also free as in beer, so using TCC's services in parallel with some other organisation to handle the project's finances does not increase a project's costs.
TCC is able to handle projects that receive grants, but will not manage grants itself. There are plans to set up a separate legal entity to handle grants and other activities such as support contracts, but nothing is set in stone yet. For at least a subset of projects it would also be possible to apply for loans in anticipation of post-paid (e.g. EU) grants through NLnet.
A project may easily leave TCC whenever it wants, but there are checks and balances set in place to ensure that the project remains free and open even if it spins out to a new legal entity. An example is that a spun out (or "Graduated" as it is called in TCC) project leaves a snapshot of itself with TCC as a backup. Should the new entity fail, the hibernated snapshot can then be revived by the community.
TCC is not limited to software – it is very much open to hosting also open hardware and other "commons" efforts such as open educational resources.
TCC does not plan to be involved in legal proceedings – whether filing or defending lawsuits. Nor is it an interesting target, simply because it does not take in or manage any money. If anything goes wrong with a member project, the plan is to isolate that project into a separate legal entity and keep a (licensed) clone of the assets in order to continue development afterwards if possible.
Given the background of some of the founders of TCC (with deep roots in the beginnings of the internet itself), and the memorandum of understanding with GÉANT and NREN, it is not surprising that some of the first projects to join are linked to research and core network systems (e.g. eduVPN and FileSender). Its offering seems to be an interesting framework for already existing projects that want to ensure they will remain free and open forever; especially if they have or anticipate a wider community of interconnected projects that would benefit from the flexibility that TCC offers.The Center for the Cultivation of Technology¶
The Center for the Cultivation of Technology (CCT) also incorporated in October 2016, as a German gGmbH, which is a non-profit limited-liability corporation. Further, the CCT is fully owned by the Renewable Freedom Foundation.
This is an interesting set-up, as it is effectively a company that has to act in public interest and can handle tax-deductible donations. It is also able to deal with for-profit/commercial work, as long as the profit is reinvested into its activities that are in public benefit. Regarding any activities that are not in the public interest, CCT would have to pay taxes. Of course, activities in the public interest have to represent the lion's share in CCT.
Its owner, the Renewable Freedom Foundation, in turn is a German Stiftung (i.e. foundation) whose mission is to "protect and preserve civil liberties, especially in the digital landscape" and has already helped fund projects such as Tor, GNUnet, and La Quadrature du Net.
While a UK CIC and a German gGmbH are both limited-liability corporations that have to act in the public interest, they have somewhat different legal and tax obligations and each has its own specifics. CCT's purpose is "the research and development of free and open technologies". For the sake of public authorities it defines "free and open technologies" as developments with results that are made transparent and that, including design and construction plans, source code, and documentation, are made available free and without licensing costs to the general public. Applying this definition, the CCT is inclusive of open-source hardware and potentially other technological fields.
Similar to the TCC, the CCT aims to be as lightweight by default as possible. The biggest difference, though, is that the Center for the Cultivation of Technology is first and foremost about handling money – as such its services are:
- accounting and budgeting
- financial, tax and donor reporting
- setting up and managing of donations (including crowd-funding)
- grant management and reporting
- managing contracts, employment and merchandise
The business model is similar to that of PS CIC in that, for basic services, CCT will be taking 10% from incoming donations and that more costly tasks would have to be paid separately. There are plans to eventually offer some services for free, which would be covered by grants that CCT would apply for itself. In effect, it wants to take over the whole administrative and financial overhead from the project in order to allow the projects to concentrate on writing code and managing themselves.
Further still, the CCT has taken upon itself automation, as much as possible, both through processes and software. If viable FOSS solutions are missing, it would write them itself and release the software under a FOSS license for the benefit of other FOSS legal entities as well.
As Stephan Urbach, its CEO, mentioned on the panel at QtCon, the CCT is not just able to handle grants for projects, but is also willing to take over reporting for them. Anyone who has ever partaken in an EU (or other) grant probably agrees that reporting is often the most painful part of the grant process. The raw data for the reports would, of course, still have to be provided by the project itself. But the CCT would then take care of relevant logistics, administration, and writing of the grant reports. The company is even considering offering loans for some grants, as soon as enough projects join to make the operations sustainable.
In addition, the Center for the Cultivation of Technology has a co-working office in Berlin, where member projects are welcome to work if they need office space. The CCT is also willing to facilitate in-person meetings or hackathons. Like the other two organisations, it has access to a network of experts and potential mentors, which it could resort to if one of its projects needed such advice.
Regarding whether it should hold copyright or not, the Center for the Cultivation of Technology is flexible, but at the very beginning it would primarily offer holding other intangible assets, such as domain names and trade marks. That being said, at least in the early phase of its existence, holding and managing copyright is not the top priority. Therefore the CCT has for now deferred the decision regarding its position on license enforcement and potential lawsuit strategy. Accounting, budgeting, and handling administrative tasks, as well as automation of them all, are clearly where its strengths lie and this is where it initially wants to pour most effort into.
Upon a dissolution of the company, its assets would fall to Renewable Freedom Foundation.
Since the founders of CCT have deep roots in anonymity and privacy solutions such as Tor, I imagine that from those corners the first wave of projects will join. As for the second wave, it seems to me that CCT would be a great choice for projects that want to offload as much of financial overhead as possible, especially if they plan to apply for grants and would like help with applying and reporting.Conclusion¶
2016 may not have been the year of the Linux desktop, but it surely is the year of FOSS umbrella organisations. It is an odd coincidence that at the same time three so different organisations have popped up in Europe – initially oblivious of each other – to provide much-needed services to FOSS projects.
Not only are FOSS projects spoiled for choice regarding such service providers in Europe, now, but it is refreshing to see that these organisations get along so well from the start. For example, Simon Phipps is also an adviser at CCT and I help with both CCT and TCC.
In fact, I would not be surprised to see, instead of bitter competition, greater collaboration between them, allowing each to specialise in what it does best and allowing the projects to mix-and-match services between them. For example, I can see how a project might want to pick TCC to handle its intangible assets, and at the same time use CCT to handle its finances. All three organisation have also stated that, should a project contact them that they feel would be better handled by one of the others, they would refer it to that organisation instead.
Since at least the legal and governance documents for CCT and TCC will be available on-line under a free license (CC0-1.0 and CC-By-4.0 respectively), cross-pollination of ideas and even setting up of new organisations would hereby be made easier. It may be early days for these three umbrella organisations, but I am quite optimistic about their usefulness and that they will fill in the gaps left open by the older US siblings and single-project organisations.
Update: TCC's DRACC are already publicly available on-line.
If a project comes to the conclusion that it might need a legal entity, now is a great time to think about it. At FOSDEM 2017 there was another panel with CCT, TCC, PS CIC, and SFC where further questions and comments were asked.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, I am working closely with two of the organisations – as the General Counsel of the Center for the Cultivation of Technology, and as co-author of the legal and governance documents (the DRACC) of [The Commons Conservancy]. This article does not constitute the official position of either of the two organisations nor any other I might be affiliated with.
Note: This article first appeared in LWN on 1 February 2017. This here is a slightly modified and updated version of it.
hook out → coming soon: extremely exciting stuff regarding the FLA 2.0
foss-gbg on Wednesday
If you happen to be in Gothenburg on Wednesday you are most welcome to visit foss-gbg. It is a free event (you still have to register so that we can arrange some light food) starting at 17.00.
The topics are Yocto Linux on FPGA-based hardware, risk and license management in open source projects and a product release by the local start-up Zifra (an encryptable SD-card).
More information and free tickets are available at the foss-gbg site.
KStars 2.7.4 for Windows is released!
This release brings in many bugs fixes, enhancements for limited-resources devices, and improvements, especially to KStars premier astrophotography tool: Ekos. Windows users would be glad to learn that they can now use offline astrometry solver in Windows, thanks to the efforts of the ANSVR Local Astrometry.net solver. The ANSVR mimics the astrometry.net online server on your local computer; thus the internet not required for any astrometry queries.
After installing the ANSVR server and downloading the appropriate index files for your setup, you can simply change the API URL to use the ANSVR server as illustrated below:
In Ekos align module, keep the solver type to Online so it would use the local ANSVR server for all astrometry queries. Then you can use the align module as you would normally do. This release also features the Ekos Polar Alignment Assistant tool, a very easy to use spot-on tool to polar align your mount.
Clear skies!
Editing files as root
For years I have told people to not start Kate as root to edit files. The normal response I got was "but I have to edit this file". The problem with starting GUI applications as root is that X11 is extremely insecure and it's considerable easy for another application to attack this.
An application like Kate depends on libraries such as Qt. Qt itself disallows running as an setuid-app:
Qt is not an appropriate solution for setuid programs due to its large attack surface.
If Qt is not an appropriate solution for command line arguments running as root, it's also not an appropriate solution for running GUI applications. And Qt is just one of the dependencies of graphical applications. There is obviously also xcb, Xlib, OpenGL, xkbcommon, etc. etc.
So how can another application attack an application running as root? A year ago I implemented a simple proof of concept attack against Dolphin. The attack is waiting for dolphin getting started as root. As soon as it starts, it uses the XTest extension to fake input, enable the embedded konsole window and type into it.
This is just one example. The elephant in the room is string handling, though. Every X11 window has many window properties and every process can write to it. We just have to accept that string handling is complex and can easily trigger a crash.
Luckily there is no need for editing a file to run the editor as root. There is a neat tool called sudoedit. That does the magic of starting the editor as the user and takes care of storing the file as root when you save.
Today I pushed a change for Kate and KWrite which does no longer allow to be run as root. Instead it educates the user about how to do the same with sudoedit.
Now I understand that this will break the workflow for some users. But with a minor adjustment to your workflow you get the same. In fact it will be better, because the Kate you start is able to pick up your configured styling. And it will also work on Wayland. And most importantly it will be secure.
I am also aware that if you run an application which is malicious you are already owned. I think that we should protect nevertheless.


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Current Planetary Positions
Astrology widget which displays the current positions of the planets in the zodiac signs.
Current Planetary Positions is a WordPress plugin that adds a widget which displays the positions of the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Chiron in the zodiac signs. From left to right, the columns display the planet's name, the degree of zodiac sign, zodiac sign symbol, zodiac sign text, the minute of degree, the second of degree, and retrograde motion (when indicated). If there appears an 'R' in the last column, then that planet is in apparent retrograde motion. The sun and moon are never retrograde. Please note: astrologers refer to all 11 of these celestial bodies as "planets" for the sake of convenience.
Current Planetary Positions uses the Swiss Ephemeris to get the longitude of the planets/celestial bodies.
For more info, see the documentation.
Get the plugin free at WordPress.org. Support is also available, there.
Fork it on GitHub.