Nodal Point - blog

Talking Screens

2010-01-20T15:42:00Z

We've just released updated Skype for Linux. Featuring screensharing and lots of nice fixes. Audio improvements I did were long awaited – now AGC works better and selecting separate devices for calling and notification sounds works as supposed to.

Check out the official blog post here.

New Skype for Linux

2009-08-28T03:58:00Z

Several hours ago with a warm fuzzy feeling I announced that we've finally released new Skype for Linux Beta.

We decided to call it "Betta than nufin". Don't think because we don't like it, we really do. But we're a sarcastic bunch and love a bit of the drama.

It's good new release bringing to wider audience some features that we have been using internally for quite a long time and got used to them, for you they will look like all new. Please, take a good look at them with your fresh eyes and tell us what you think.

We've opened several specific threads on the forum for you, if your feedback falls into one of these existing categories, please post it there. It will be easier for us to track new feedback when it's gathered together.

You can jump straight to these topics:

Enjoy the release!

Pardus 2009

2009-08-14T07:33:00Z

I want to congratulate my Turkish friends with Pardus 2009 release. This is the best KDE 4 integration work I've ever seen. And it runs smooth on my wife's ages old laptop, too!

Thank you very much, guys!

Linux musings

2009-05-10T11:50:00Z

My first Linux experience was with Slackware 2.0, back in 1997. Then I quickly switched back to Windows camp and been out of the loop for a couple of years. My next Linux OS was Gentoo. I spent about 2 years in portageland before moving on to more conventional distros. After about half a year with OpenSUSE and a complete package management disaster I switched to Arch Linux and been a happy archer ever since.

Recently I however grew unsatisfied with where Arch goes and how it works (underpatched, rather poor integration work), so I ventured to look at the available options. Finding out about Pardus Linux at ELC in San Francisco was a trigger. I installed and briefly played with it. It's a solid and well-done distribution, with a lot of custom (and often much more usable than default) tools, for example Network Manager, which is very very good. Actually, I'm writing this from my Pardus install with KDE4 and going to install it for my wife soon.

Alas, Pardus is a user-oriented distro, for developer it becomes a bit cumbersome with it's outdated "stable" packages and missing some necessary development packages by default. So I went on. Right now I'm playing with installing the LFS system by the book on another laptop. It is a tedious manual bootstrap procedure, which leads me back to thinking about Gentoo. Now just checking out what's new in portageland, I found out about Paludis package management system, and Exherbo Linux - a developer oriented distro, which uses it. Now I'm going to check it out, and probably something along these lines will get my vote for running on my new macbook.

While at it, I decided to try out the infamous 64-bits Linux, first to try for myself, how problematic it is nowadays and how to help make Skype run on it natively, and second, I just love building cross-gcc. Should be rather fun!

Skype for Linux updates

2009-01-23T16:32:00Z

It’s been a while since we last checked in to report on our progress with Skype for Linux, and I’m sorry to have kept you in the dark.

Here are some of the things we’ve been up to:

We’ve completely rewritten the audio library, and have spent considerable effort transforming the existing audio code into a form more suitable for Skype. We’ve also fixed some compatibility issues with Bluetooth headsets.
We’re also making substantial changes to the video library. We’re working to make it more stable and compatible with more webcams and X video modes.
There is work underway to adopt some of the user interface improvements from Skype 4.0 for Windows, like the active conversations tab. We’re also considering adding the full-screen default view found in Skype 4.0 for Windows. Of course, this is still under development, but our goal is to create an easier to use interface that requires fewer clicks to accomplish the most common tasks.
We’re also trying to be friendlier to more operating systems, in particular FreeBSD and OpenSolaris. While there is still no support for 64-bit Linux, we hope to add this during 2009.
We’ve expanded our Linux team by hiring more skilled Linux/Qt developers, and we have more Linux vacancies to fill during the first few months of this year.

Just to reassure you – Skype for Linux is definitely not dead. Stay tuned for more developments :)

Teeworlds madness

2009-01-22T22:15:00Z

Been playing teeworlds with my friends lately. What a mad game! I don't really like quake2 or other FPS multiplayer shooters because it's hard for me to navigate in 3D environment projected onto my 2D monitor surface. Here it's perfect however - 2D game world is well-suited and very attractive.

If you wanna join us for a friendly DM or CTF - ping me on skype.

Metta news

2009-01-10T15:02:00Z

Reading up Bryan Ford's PhD thesis. Looks like my ideas for a mobile OS are quite distilled in there. Nice that I found it before inventing it all myself :)

Metta is progressing nicely - migrating threads implementation is underway, and with added inspiration from Bryan's thesis pouring through my brain cells I plan to finish it quite soonish.

The Orb

2008-06-21T06:15:00Z

The Orb - мастера многослойного звука. Взять кучу сэмплов, замешать, обработать, растянуть, заскретчить и гранулировать так, что оригинал и не узнать - это их стиль.

В Таллинском Куму они отыграли очень бодрый и плотный сет, завели не только полный пьяный зал, но и трезвого меня.

А перед ними выступало открытие этого вечера - девушка-соло-аудио-видео-проект Planning to Rock. Очень органичное сочетание звука и видео меня заворожило. Рекомендую смотреть именно видеоряд со звуком.

The power of Qt

2007-11-09T07:03:00Z

For the (N+1)th time I'm praising Trolltechs and their divine wisdom.

While hacking on Skype support for Eee I ran across a feature request to make a small system tray applet to show current power management status of the Eee camera.

The words (Q)SystemTray(Icon) obviously led me to a Qt4 path - and thanks to geniuses at ASUStek Eee has Qt4.3.0 preinstalled in full glory. So 20 minutes later this little utility was born, all in Qt4, small, handy, good lookin'.

Skype 2.0 Beta for Linux: Great Social(ist) Revolution

2007-11-07T17:14:00Z

A great time is upon us. A time of change. A time of revolution.

In the past, we have struggled in a world of glass panes and fruits. Forbidden from seeing the world around us. Denied the possibility of showing who we are. But today, our eyes open. We are not afraid to see, and we are not afraid to show ourselves.

Indeed this is a time of excitement, but it’s also a time where we can share our happiness, our sadness, our anger and our love, for video has arrived to Skype for Linux.

This release is not just a revolution for us in Linux, but a revolution for the Skype world at large. No longer are we, the people of Linux - the workers of the world, prevented from socialising in the same way as our peers.

So join us in this revolution, join us by downloading Skype 2.0 Beta for Linux today.

Read on for less of my speech and more technical information about this release.

ps/ This post is courtesy of Andy, and today is 7th of November if you haven’t noticed yet.

pps/ Just a bit of known issues with video stuff:

Using uvc webcam driver with new Logitech cameras can cause a split video effect which does not recover until you restart video. [this is fixed in internal versions]
Using uvc webcam driver with ATi fglrx graphics card driver results in a memory leak and potential crash currently. [this is fixed in internal versions]
gspca webcam driver can crash sometimes during webcam initialisation (which can also happen during the call).
Using a display driver with only a single Xv port means you can only see video in one direction currently.
Using a display driver with no Xv support will not work at all.
ATi fglrx driver versions before 8.42.3 may crash your X server and lock up video during the call.
ATi fglrx driver version 8.42.3 may crash your X server and lock up video at the beginning of the call.

EeePC quicklook

2007-11-07T13:14:00Z

Quicklook is a series of small posts with first-view impressions on some things. I’m not going to post longish reviews but instead just several one line descriptions of what I noticed or stumbled upon. Sometimes with pictures.

Let’s get on.

Device looks slick and sturdy. Feels pleasanly heavyish but not heavy.

Boot up time is amazing - < 10 seconds from power on to working desktop. I had to make 3 tries to capture the eee logo screen.

Interface is nice, bright and appealing.

Keyboard has all the regular laptop keys. markings are english and chinese (looks funny, now i know how chinese keyboards look!)

Quite web oriented.

Has Skype 1.4.0.118 preinstalled.
Applications are divided into nice categories, which help finding (or losing) the proper ones.
Based on Xandros Desktop with ASUS modifications. Forked off of Debian Etch. i call it Xeeendros.
Sound quality is very good.
Camera is good even if only 0.3 Mpix. Webcam works in skype. The only tweak was to power it on: “echo 1 > /proc/acpi/asus/camera” (or enable in BIOS)
Has a mix of KDE and Gtk software preinstalled. Many of kdeedu apps are there. Default mail client is Thunderbird, but KMail can be installed from debian repos and runs fine. Akregator runs fine also :P
Device unfortunately misses bluetooth. A few solutions using USB or SD/MMC BT dongles are proposed, but would be better to have this integrated.
Available connectors: 3 USB, 1 SD/MMC, RJ-45 lan connector, D-Sub video output.
A nice helper application lets you set up output settings - to internal LCD only, to both internal and external and external only, and set resolution from autodetect up to 1280x1024.
WiFi interface is very nice, shows all available networks, AP signal strength, remembers network keys between reboots.
Battery lasts slightly over 3 hours - as specified.
MPlayer video playback is very smooth.
Touchpad became a bit stubborn after a few hours - I need to put my whole thumb on it to make it move. I personally would prefer clit - it’s nicer to use on such small device.
“Voice command” didn’t work in the office, probably because it was too noisy. at home it recognised the commands but didn’t run anything :(
Running startfull.sh from terminal window brings you into a full KDE session instead of iceWM-based AsusLauncher.
Since it’s basically Debian you can install millions of available programs with ease (but beware: some packages may break your system because of wrong dependancies, read eee wiki to know more), yet small 4Gb solid-state disk with only 1,5Gb free doesn’t leave much choice.

Conclusion.

wow factor: high
overall rating: 95% qoolies

DevDays aftermath

2007-10-17T21:46:00Z

Here I am sitting in super-nice small hotel in the center of Munich, taking a short rest after the DevDays before flying back to Tallinn.

It has been an insane two days, packed with meeting new people from all over the Earth and consuming knowledge Trolls have to offer. And they got quite a lot.

I've met in person a lot of Trolls and all I can say they are amazing people. It was extreme pleasure to see them on stage, talking with a real passion about the things they know and love - Qt, Qtopia and life in general.

There is tremendous amount of interest in Qt from a lot of developers from all areas - from microcomputers to space, from medicine to construction, from seismic research to business solutions. In my estimation there was about 500 people writing or maintaining Qt programs for a living. Somebody said there are not too many Qt applications out there. Well, they didn't bother to look. Maybe a TMR scanner in a medical facility nearby you runs Qt, how do you know?

Trolltech's commitment to developing Qt is so big, that I'm completely smashed and totally happy for choosing Qt for working on Skype for Linux. And more interesting things are only ahead.

I've also met my outstanding goal - to finally see some KDE developers I've known for long on the IRC but never managed to talk to in person. You guys are absolutely awesome.
While roaming around with a bottle of wine, I stumbled into Matthias Kretz sitting doing some Phonon debugging, so we sat together and shaped an API for VOIP and real-time audio applications in Phonon. With Torsten Rahn talked a bit about Marble and Google. This kind of meetings is really facilitating and I hope to have more chances to see them all more frequently in the near future.

My special "thank you" for inspiration to Aaron Seigo, the Man behind, above, below and in front of KDE. I even went to his talk two times in a row. Good job and have more working examples at hand!

DevDays ahoy

2007-10-14T12:15:00Z

Looks like there is literally A LOT of Qt and KDE people going to Munich and I'm already lost how am I going to see and talk to all of them in just two days, given that I'm pretty antisocial person (especially in autumn).

Probably I shall abandon sleep (mine and theirs) and go through these two days with lots of Red Bull, Red Eyes and popping blood vessels.

To all KDE and Qt folks I might virtually know (or not) - do not hesitate to come over and talk to me. While I'm myself too shy to talk to strangers usually, I'd be really glad if I could communicate a bit with everyone. (It's a real shame I didn't manage to go to aKademy this year! So consider DevDays a small replacement for it.)

Viva Trolls

2007-09-25T20:12:00Z

Worked yesterday and today on extremely nasty deadlock on D-BUS.

Even though I don't like D-BUS (and this I am saying lightly), I spent whole night testing this issue and came up with a test program that reproduced the case sensibly. Then I turned to Trolltech for help and Thiago was extremely helpful in diagnosing the problem and providing hints on proper solution. Thank you very much Thiago!

Also Trolls were so nice to send me a fresh Russian translation of their "C++ programming with Qt4" book by Jasmin Blanchette and Mark Summerfield. Thank you guys, I'll sure enjoy (proof)reading it :)

Progress! What? Progress!

2007-09-20T18:42:00Z

Today I sweeped the last pack of bugs on our way towards the golden 1.4 client. This includes several crashes when using public API and some audio fixes.

Tomorrow I expect to go through a list of not-so-critical-but-nevertheless-nice-to-have-fixed bugs and fix some just for fun.

It will take some time for testing and maybe a couple iterations of "fixing the fixes" before we put this 1.4 out, but gosh it's close!