2008 Google Summer of Code Highlights 101
andrewmin writes "SoC 2008 has begun, and with 175 organizations and 1125 students it looks better than ever before. Here's a quick run-down of a few programs that, if they are finished, will definitely be making their way onto your machine."
GRUB GUI? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GRUB GUI? (Score:5, Funny)
Must... resist... urge... to make... Windows BSOD.... joke... aaaaaaargh!
Re:GRUB GUI? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GRUB GUI? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:GRUB GUI? (Score:5, Funny)
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E17? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:E17? (Score:5, Funny)
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Moreover, it's a perfectly valid point to say that the developers should finish their software before worrying about porting it. The desire for cross-platform compatibility is good, but meaningless if your software is incomplete because of it.
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Re:E17? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and before I get that troll who says that this is the problem with open source, I would like to point out that the "hobby" development is not typical of open source software; most people who work on OSS get paid to do it (for example, by redhat, novell, mysql, sun, ibm, trolltech [now owned by nokia] etc.)
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Sometimes I wonder whether open-source software should also recieve public funds, though I have to admit I can't think of any good way that could possibly be arranged...
It happens already with some open-source software packages. Typically, when this is happening, it is because that software is also serving other purposes than being open-source (e.g. providing some key piece of software infrastructure that a government needs and which commercial providers don't offer yet). On the other hand, I'd hate for taxes to be the only way that OSS gets funded; if there's something I want doing a lot, I should be allowed to pay for it to be written. A mixed funding ecology (what we h
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Similair in this case, people who produce commercial software may complain that they should get some kind of fee because others copies their work w
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But I guess those kinds of ideas don't fit well with the communism hating americans of Slashdot
Re:E17? (Score:5, Funny)
It is this very attachment and craving that keeps you from attaining it.
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7 slots for DragonFlyBSD (Score:4, Informative)
DragonFly Projects
Enhance dma
* Max Lindner, mentored by Matthias Schmidt
* See EnhanceDmaGSoC for more information
Port DragonFly to the AMD64 architecture
* Jordan Gordeev, mentored by Thomas E. Spanjaard
* See AMD64GSoC for more information.
RFC3542 support
* Dashu Huang, mentored by Hasso Tepper
* The standard application program interface (API) for TCP/IP applications is the "sockets" interface. Although this API was developed for Unix in the early 1980s, it has also been implemented on DragonFly BSD with support for IPv6 applications. Today, to fit new demands, the API standard that support IPv6 applications has experience some changes from RFC2292 to RFC3542. However, the DragonFly BSD operating system now only support RFC2292, and it don't support RFC3542 advanced sockets API, to make it catch up the change, we need to make it support RFC3542. To make DragonFly BSD support RFC3542. My work will research the codes of current IPv6 stack in DragonFly BSD and understand how it works. At the same time, I should understand some related RFC, and how other BSD's such as FreeBSD, openBSD, merged RFC3542. Through this way, I can figure out which part of the old IPv6 stack should be improved. Finally,I will update the old IPv6 stack to make it support RFC3542.
Extend Multi-Processing (MP) support
* Robert Luciani, mentored by Simon Schubert
* Back in 2003 when DragonFly was born, the first subsystem to be implemented was the LWKT. The reduction in complexity achieved by using message passing (as opposed to a shared memory environment using locks) was undeniable. What was also "unlocked" though, was the potential for near linear performance scaling on multiple CPU systems. Unfortunately many kernel systems, such as the network stack, need to be modified to take advantage of this potential, since they are still encumbered by a legacy "Big Giant Lock". In this project I will remove the MP lock in important areas of the kernel that have a direct affect on the performance of popular programs such as PostgreSQL.
Proportional share userland scheduling algorithm
* Mayur Narayan Bhosle, mentored by Jeffrey Hsu
* Proportional share algorithms like lottery scheduling, Stride scheduling algorithm guarantee proportional share of resources like (CPU) to a processes as per their requirement stated specified during the start. The traditional schedulers achieve fairness or resource allocation by adjusting priority, but the effect is observed over a long term. But instead in case of proportional share schedulers we observe the fairness of allocation over a bounded period of time when we adjust the requirement of resources dynamically.
Anticipatory disk I/O scheduler
* Nirmal Thacker, mentored by Simon Schubert
* This project aims at developing an Anticipatory Disk I/O scheduler for DragonFlyBSD. An Anticipatory Disk I/O scheduler will ensure that an anticipation heuristic will nullify all possible deceptive idleness between consecutive disk accesses and at the same time try to maintain an overall good throughput. In the DragonFly BSD operating system it must also take into consideration the MP- safety factors.
LiveCD with a DragonFly-specific X desktop
* Louisa Luciani, mentored by Sascha Wildner
* In this project I will integrate more functionality into the nrelease build system. The build will generate a persistent liveCD with Dragonfly specific features. It will be customized for recovery, demonstr
Re:7 slots for DragonFlyBSD (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.ibeentoubuntu.com/2008/04/where-do-we-go-from-here-now-that-gnome.html [ibeentoubuntu.com]
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But, DFBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, GNU/Hurd, etc., all have SoC projects that go towards making the OS better. A good example would be the new tmpfs for NetBSD, which has now been ported to FreeBSD.
coral cache link (Score:3, Informative)
stop hating on mplayer (Score:5, Interesting)
I also dont understand the need for a frontend to aptitude, apt + front end is just as powerful, its only dependency resolution that hasn't been well implemented in other front ends.
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Gecko-mediaplayer (browser plugin) and gnome-mplayer (clean GTK GUI for mplayer that gecko-mediaplayer uses over dbus) really try and give the best browser plugin support for firefox on linux.
You can find out more about them here: http://dekorte.homeip.net/download/ [homeip.net]
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Mplayer does everything I need to do and quite a few things I dont need to do.
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mplayer seems very conservative about pre-buffering before starting playback and doesn't seem to change anything when I try to adjust the buffer size in preferences. It doesn't always respond directly to commands (like play, or seeking in a stream), which often sets it to more buffering (even when it already seemed to have loade
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Aptitude is a front end to apt, so technically your statement is correct. Basically the hierarchy goes: dpkg -> apt -> aptitude/apt-get/synaptic/dselect/etc.
Aptitude is already far more powerful than apt-get and dselect, and probably more powerful than synaptic (although I haven't used synaptic, so I couldn't say for certain). This project is intended to add a graphical interface, to compliment the curses an
definitely be making their way onto your machine (Score:4, Insightful)
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Me and GRUB have never gotten along, but maybe me and GRUB2 will...
Aside from that, that list is just a bunch of Gadgets/Widget/Nonsense... im not sure why the Editor/Poster just didnt do a write-up and link to http://code.google.com/soc/2008/ [google.com] or something a little more diverse and interesting.
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Hell i have 1 second time-out & hidden menu so i never see it anyway, grub doesn't need any nice interface as it shouldn't need to be seen other than when you have a problem in which case a nice UI just adds another thing to go wrong.
Re:definitely be making their way onto your machin (Score:5, Insightful)
Get GRUB2 production ready first... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe it's just me, but I'd really like the ability to boot from LVM and get proper EFI support (though not really an issue until EFI is in wide distribution for x86) without having to install an experimental package.
It's a bootloader, guys. Functional first, form later.
Re:Get GRUB2 production ready first... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many GRUB developers are working diligently toward a production ready version of GRUB 2. I am a new contributor to the GRUB project and the reason I chose this feature to implement is because it meshes with my areas of expertise and interest. Also, I feel that making GRUB 2 usable by everyone (let's face it, right now that means it has to be supported by Ubuntu) is a very important goal. In order for Ubuntu to adopt GRUB 2, it will have to not only be functionally complete, but they will want it to look nice too, as the rest of the OS will.
No argument that it will be great to have GRUB 2 production ready. I am looking forward to it, and I hope I can contribute to other features after I complete the graphical menu system.
Colin
An overlooked GRUB 2 GSoC project (Score:2)
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And there are LOTS of work in LOTS of projects which will be done, so only 21 things are way to little. Just look thru the official list instead.
http://code.google.com/soc/2008/ [google.com]
Re:definitely be making their way onto your machin (Score:1)
Server dying (Score:3, Informative)
-FST (anonymous to prevent karma whoring)
Waste of time... (Score:1, Informative)
The photo tagging stuff Re: gallery made me laugh, are google sponsoring weekend projects now?
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The photo tagging stuff Re: gallery made me laugh, are google sponsoring weekend projects now?
As the student who is working on this project, I understand that it may seem like something that could be hacked together in a few days, but I do think that there is quite a bit of work involved in doing it The Right Way. If the new set of features is to be integrated properly with the rest of the Gallery project, there are many design decisions and implementation details to consider, as well as extensive testing that must be done. If you are interested in tracking my progress, I will be keeping a develo [phinze.com]
Your personal favorites ? (Score:2)
- Provide a plug-in to Amarok that will allow users to discover and stream from remote UPnP shares. This plug-in will discover any UPnP MediaServer DCPs on the local network and display their collections as an Amarok collection.
- The plug-in will also provide the capability to control the current instance of Amarok from a remote UPnP ControlPoint. Since UPnP provides no authentication measures, users will be allowed to turn this feature off. Alternatively, an authe
Pidgin projects are cool (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Pidgin projects are cool (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pidgin projects are cool (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine support for all closed, legacy formats is a pretty low priority. Why prioritize reverse engineering and optimizing less used features of an intentionally obfuscated format championed by someone trying to prevent the type of interoperability that is Pidgin's goal? Isn't it better for them to optimize file transfer over XMMP or the video and voice capabilities? I mean, if you want to transfer files with other users, there are plenty of other protocols that do work and where the Pidgin team doesn't have to work so hard only to have it intentionally broken by Microsoft at a later date. It is an inefficient use of their resources compared to working on core features using open protocols where they don't have to put in all that extra effort to overcome MS's antics.
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I use Adium which is somewhat based on Pidgin and the slow MSN transfers do annoy me, but only because more or less everyone for some stupid reason use MSN. It works perfect with ICQ (and probably Jabber) and webcam and voip support for Jabber are so much cooler than fast file transfers over MSN.
With webcam and voip in Jabber there are very few reasons not to use Jabber, except noone else use it.
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Because people, you know, actually use MSN and other formats?
Yeap, and because they're using it today they'll be using tomorrow. And because they'll be using tomorrow they'll be using it the next day. In fact, they'll be using it for the rest of eternity. Particularly if M$ has any say in the matter.
Sometimes short term pain is worth it for long term gain.
---
Beware deceptive astroturfers [wikipedia.org].
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A devil's advocate might posit that putting effort into developing XMPP (taking pains to point out your spelling error "XMMP") is more of a waste than trying to track MSN's upgrades, because of the deployment size, but as someone who runs ejabberd in his basement...
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Funny; in my mind, interoperability also includes providing back compatibility for MSN, the "legacy" protocol which happens to be the most widely deployed instant messaging protocol.
While I've read widely differing statistics on IM market share, I haven't seen any put MSN as more than 25% of the worldwide market and significantly less for the US market. Pidgin does provide interoperability with MSN and even supports file transfers. What they don't do is waste a lot of time optimizing that minor feature, over and over again as Microsoft changes it again and again.
A devil's advocate might posit that putting effort into developing XMPP (taking pains to point out your spelling error "XMMP") is more of a waste than trying to track MSN's upgrades, because of the deployment size, but as someone who runs ejabberd in his basement... :)
Adding features to XMPP has to be done once and can be done based upon the spec. Adding the same feature for MSN has to b
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x264 and GSOC (Score:2)
After 6 months of improvement [multimedia.cx] resulting in two major visual optimizations and a 30% spee
Multithreading way more important. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Multithreading way more important. (Score:4, Informative)
Jingle in Pidgin (Score:2)
Cross-Platform? (Score:1, Interesting)
I, for one, don't care if KDE is available for Windows or Mac OS X. These OS already have their own GUI, why would we want to install something else?
The "choice is good" mantra doesn't apply. Windows should look and act like Windows, and Mac OS X should look and act like Mac OS X.
Next thing you know, we have idiots coding things without the OS built-in GUI and we
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For you this means Windows looks like Windows, and Mac looks like Mac. The running application may be written for KDE, but this doesn't matter anymore.
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For you this means Windows looks like Windows, and Mac looks like Mac. The running application may be written for KDE, but this doesn't matter anymore.
While I applaud the efforts to make these libraries/environments cross platform, I think your comment is a bit misleading. Anything written in these is still obviously a port. It is better than having to run under an X server, but still not exactly native for speed or features compared to software written with native toolkits. From what I've read, for example, KDE apps run on OS X to not automatically gain the features OS X offers to native applications, like universal spellchecking, grammar checking, and
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I agree that the core libs are a port, as there are a serious amount changes under the hood. Do you consider an application a port if no code changes occur and it builds and runs using the native widgets in an OS?
Recent versions of QT use the native widgets for Mac [1] without changes. There are always cases where an application taken from the Windows centric UI style (KDE, Win32) to OSX might need some extra code to make it look more OSXy, but QT at least tries
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I agree that the core libs are a port, as there are a serious amount changes under the hood. Do you consider an application a port if no code changes occur and it builds and runs using the native widgets in an OS?
I guess it doesn't matter much what I consider a port, but when users are accustomed to features working across all their applications on an OS, when they don't, well they throw that application into the same bin as OpenOffice and often look for better more "native" solutions; regardless of whether or not the application was originated on another OS.
Recent versions of QT use the native widgets for Mac [1] without changes. There are always cases where an application taken from the Windows centric UI style (KDE, Win32) to OSX might need some extra code to make it look more OSXy, but QT at least tries to give you a leg up.
Certainly they make an effort to make things closer to the experience with native applications, but they also try to reuse as much as possible, which often
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And nobody will care, if the programs do something they want.
Just look at the Windows version of iTunes for an example of a program that looks totally out of place, or at Excel for one that behaves completely differently to every other Microsoft program, even in terms of how it handles fundamental operat
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Dojo (Score:2, Informative)
Foreign names and transliteration ... OT (Score:1, Funny)
from the aptitude-gtk guy (Score:5, Informative)
If you've used both Synaptic and Aptitude, you should have seen some differences
The dependency resolution is one point, but it's not only that. The whole navigation in Aptitude is just much more efficient. Ever used Synaptic in a mixed-distribution install ? Say you want to install another version of a package and it has some different dependencies. Good luck navigating them in Synaptic. It's really not designed with that in mind.
You can see the full application here [milliways.fr] and my development blog here [milliways.fr]
I warmly welcome any input on my project!
at less than 2% (Score:5, Informative)
Captain obvious points out that highlighting even just one project for half of the participating orgs would be about 88 projects and would still represent less than 8%. There's also no guarantee that the student will be successful on their project. About one in five students failed last year, so nothing is guaranteed regardless.
My point? There is a LOT of cool stuff being worked on. Check the projects out for yourself at http://code.google.com/soc/2008/ [google.com]
They're all listed. Show your support, get involved, help them succeed if you really care.
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widgets in the screensaver? (Score:2)
I suppose having passive widgets that merely display information could be useful, but as TFA references using it to post to twitter and crap, I can't say it sounds particularly useful.
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Record Speech as Tomboy Notes (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Who decided that tomboy notes is a worthy front end?!?! Who uses tomboy notes? Couldn't we have something that would allow us to use speech to text in a way which is useful?
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1. Whether it's a Tomboy project or not is really irrelevant because the speech-to-text part will probably be a library, anyway.
2. Putting the functionality in a note-taking application is probably a good choice because the software doesn't need to do real-time conversion. You record the note, close it, allow the software to convert to speech while you're working on stuff, and when you come bac
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What a waste (Score:2, Interesting)
The rest of the crud the article mentioned? Wow... what a completely uninspiring and underwhelming list.
Oooh
Not that I have a problem with people working on its... its their time.
Pidgin (Score:1)
Oh my
and I think it's pretty accurate summary of the situation -
> Pidgin is an IM client designed and coded by programmers.
> Trillian is an IM client designed and coded by UI designers.
While ideally designers should design and programmers - code.
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It will save you time, as you won't have to think of new inane things to "tweet" about, and you will meet new people, as they come by to take you up on the "Free cake to first person to stop by" offer your account posted,
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Gaming Projects (Score:1)
As the article mentions Google ended up funding a number of Gaming projects. There are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects for a total of over 40 slots.
The following game projects have been accepted,