TheBlindCow

FreeSoftware to the fullest!

Month: April 2012

Explore applications with Muon Discover

27 April 2012 / / 15 Comments

As some of you know, I’m working for Blue Systems, during the recent months it’s been on improving some bits of muon and developing a new front-end that we’ve called Muon Discover.

The idea is simple. Haven’t you ever found a tool that was perfect for your need but you only found it after some time stumbling upon it on the net? When considering to install an application, don’t you wonder sometimes if it’s really worth it? Or if it’s actually what you’re looking for.

We are trying to address these areas in this new front-end we called Muon Discover. There you’ll be able to search applications, to navigate through categories and top5 lists and figure out what they are meant for by seeing the screenshots and reviews.

Furthermore, Muon Discover will let you manage the different sources of software you have and manage the applications you’ve already installed in the past but you don’t want anymore.

Here you can see a video that shows a bit what it does.

If anybody is interested, you can try it from our cyber-stuff PPA.

And last but not least, thanks to Jonathan Thomas, Muon maintainer who was really open to new ideas in all this process!

As always, I’m welcome to feedback. Please give us feedback, we need to know what it feels like to use it with your hands! 🙂

You’re welcome to KDevelop!

27 April 2012 / / 15 Comments

Sometimes it’s hard to get started using a tool, some people call it white page syndrome, in KDevelop we had the gray page syndrome:

kdevelop the gray

I guess you see what I mean.

To solve this problem we discussed many times about creating some way to Kickstart a KDevelop session properly, this is what I came up with. It’s nothing very different from what others do, but it’s ours, so that makes it immensely awesome. I guess you’ll understand about it easy by putting a video, looking forward to your feedback!

KAlgebra on Android

24 April 2012 / / 10 Comments

Since I started blogging I’ve talked many times about KAlgebra. Usually it’s not to display it’s awesome features but to discuss its portability. I’ve always considered that it’s important for KDE not to lock down its applications to a platform. That’s why I’ve put my efforts into ensuring KAlgebra will work properly on different platforms so far, like the N9 and Plasma Active.

— TL;DR: you can jump to the video 🙂 —

I think we’ve done a great job so far. It hasn’t been easy and we are not there yet, but I think that being able to do things like this is an awesome opportunity for projects like KDE Edu where we want to target the widest audience possible.

Android offers this, a widespread audience where we will be able to put our things. That’s why I put my interest in it, anyway.

Regarding the actual implementation, it’s far from perfect. It’s using KAlgebra Mobile, which has different backends. I created a new one that doesn’t require any components present. QtQuick components are lacking for Android at the moment, so I came up with this UI that besides not being properly integrated it works good enough and keeps me from frustration. Things are looking good on that regard, apparently I’m not the only one needing those, so I hope we’ll get some proper UX eventually.

A lot is left to be done still: Integration with the system, integration in the Market, etc. Ideas welcome.

Oh, and last but not least, big thank you for Marijn Kruisselbrink who put up with my questions and opened the path by adapting kdelibs.

And now, the video.

Almost forgot, if anybody wants to try it, you can download the installer here. Remember, it eats easter bunnies.

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