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KDE GUI

Adopt a KDE Geek 228

Posted by michael from the only-32-cents-per-day dept.
sultanoslack writes "In an effort to bring together KDE hackers that are students, unemployed or by other means lacking in hardware and capital with users in that have spare goodies, Adopt-a-Geek has been launched. More details are available on how to help out. Been wondering what you can do to help out? Here's your chance!"
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Adopt a KDE Geek

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  • Do I get a framed picture of my geek? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Harald Paulsen ( 621759 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @05:42AM (#5166340) Homepage
    Do I get some pictures I can put in my wallet, and a certificate telling me where he lives, where he goes to school etc. Then I could flash his picture whenever people tell me how they have adopted some poor kid in the 3rd world.

    Aaaaw, look at that.. not-so-cute geek!

  • It's a nice idea, but aren't there better places to donate, like poorly funded school? The Geeks in question already have some skills and computers available, so how abotu we try and do the same for those who have neither?

    • Re:Better place sto donate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @06:23AM (#5166455) Homepage Journal
      Donate to the opensource programmers today and children of tomorrow won't have to throw their educational dollars away on constant computer upgrades and expensive commercial programs. I've been an out-of-work programmer and it's great to spend some of that free time giving back to the community but it's hard when you can't pay rent let alone buy the hardware you need to test so and so feature against. Now that I'm working I'm certainly not rich but I try to give a little here and there towards projects I like.

      • Donate to the opensource programmers today and children of tomorrow won't have to throw their educational dollars away on constant computer upgrades and expensive commercial programs.

        It's a nice idea but, as you say:

        I've been an out-of-work programmer and it's great to spend some of that free time giving back to the community but it's hard when you can't pay rent let alone buy the hardware you need to test so and so feature against.

        Which is surely a good summary of the problem with the open source model. It relies on someone paying the programmers for the love of open source. Now there may be enough university departments and software manual publishers to feed the likes of Larry Wall, which is great, but I can't see this model ever scaling to the point where it 'employs' anything like the number of people currently working on commercial coding projects. You need some way to collect the money, on the basis of what work is the most useful. And the conventional way to do this is called a company in a free market.

        Cf science, which started off as a hobby of the upper classes, was then patronised by the upper classes, and is now mainly funded either by business or the public sector.

        I like KDE. It helps me to earn a living. I already pay for it, in the sense that I buy boxed distros. I wouldn't be averse to paying more, so that some of the money went to the people doing the coding. But I doubt if my French accountant would let me pay the programmers in hardware...

        • Which is surely a good summary of the problem with the open source model.

          The first problem with the open source "model" is that there isn't one, at least not in the sense of a standard, documented business model, or even any realistic idea about how "all" software could be produced by it. In other words, there are a thousand open source models, and none of them are really complete. That means you have to define precisely what you mean by "open source model" before you criticize it, else you're just attacking a strawman, and one whose details are known only to you.

          I can't see this model ever scaling to the point where it 'employs' anything like the number of people currently working on commercial coding projects.

          Aside from the question of what model you mean, exactly, why would you expect open source to 'employ' that many people? More on that below.

          You need some way to collect the money, on the basis of what work is the most useful. And the conventional way to do this is called a company in a free market.

          The problem with these statements is that you're assuming your conclusion. How? You're thinking only about the world of off-the-shelf packaged software as the way in which software is developed. In fact, only a small fraction of the world's software is developed that way. The vast majority of the software that is written is in-house, custom software. And the majority of software developers are employed in writing this sort of application.

          Here's a more realistic view (in my opinion, at least): There will always be certain categories of software that will be produced primarily in the for-profit-software-company style. Some people, particularly those who run or work for for-profit-software-companies would like *all* software to be developed that way, but there's a great deal of software that can never be written that way, because there's just no market for it; it's too application-specific. Finally, there's a goodly chunk of software that can benefit tremendously from an ("an", not "the") open souce approach. Most of this software falls into the category of "infrastructure" -- operating systems and their components, development tools and libraries, basic office and business applications, etc.

          Now, all of this software, from all categories, is needed. People want it, and they're willing to "pay" for it. Some of this "paying" is in the form of donated labor, equipment, etc., some of it is in the form of a P.O., and there are other forms as well. A fundamental rule of economics: Where there is adeqate demand, a supplier will step forward. People want the software, ergo, it will get written, one way or another. And only programmers can write it. And programmers must eat. Therefore, programmers will get paid for writing software, one way or another.

          It *is* possible that open source software will reduce the number of programmers employed in writing software, but if it does it will be because of the greater efficiencies provided by open source. All of those programmers hacking out in-house, custom apps will have this massive base of tools and almost-right applications that they can use, so they can do the job in less time, with less effort, less people and at less cost to their employer, freeing up that capital to be employed elsewhere.

          And that, my friend, is unarguably a *good* thing. Sure, it may mean that the world needs fewer programmers, but that's also a good thing, since it frees up all of those smart people to apply their effort and intellect to other, more valuable tasks. The only way that all of this could be bad would be if it got us into a situation where the software we needed could not be produced, maintained or supported, and economics would not seem to permit such a situation to exist.

          • The first problem with the open source "model" is that there isn't one

            I agree with the sentence, but maybe not with the thought behind it. The multiplicity of OSS models does a lot of people's heads in. At least with the commercial model it is very simple (you may be being ripped off, but at least you can put that into your spreadsheet)...

            It is possible that open source software will reduce the number of programmers employed in writing software.

            That isn't my concern, if I have a 'concern' on this matter. My projection into the future goes more like this:

            You can start a project on your s/h PC in your dorm, and, if it's a great idea, it may get a lot of interest. When it gets too big for one dorm room, you can network. But if you want to produce a piece of software with the breadth of, say, Windows XP, the 'doing it for love or donated equipment' model just won't do it.

            IMHO, the current state of Linux/GNU (or whatever it is I have on my Redhat CD) illustrates this fairly well. The kernel is state of the art. And a lot of big companies are putting a lot of $$$ into keeping it that way, because, on a purely commercial basis, it is cheaper to do this than to keep developing and supporting bespoke OSs, especially for minority platforms. Some of the geeky applications are pretty whizzy too, because they catch the imagination of the dorm-room developers.

            On the other hand, the less 'sexy' bits are often pretty bad. I use Redhat in French, except that half the applications still come up in American English. In linguistic terms, Windows runs away with the ball. Why? Because translating page after page of someone else's text prompts is not what sets your average geek's imagination on fire. Then there are drivers. Or not. I bought a Polaroid digital camera over a year ago, plugs and plays with Windows, still waiting for it to work with a standard Linux distro. The last 2 versions of RH claimed to support it: v8 has a driver, but only via the USB port, which is funny since that model never had a USB connector. What's the problem here? Producing drivers for umpteem million products is grunt work, and unless some geek somewhere happens to have my camera,it just ain't going to happen.

            And the lack of development on the non-sexy bits of Linux/GNU is, IMHO, one of the main obstacles to its widespread adoption on the desktop. So I don't think we are looking at less programmers, I just think that the OSS/Commercial split is reaching dynamic equilibrium, and that the balance will not shift further towards OSS unless or until we find a sane way of financing the dull bits of infrastructure development.

            • At least with the commercial model it is very simple

              Only if you don't read EULAs, and don't think about the future.

              In linguistic terms, Windows runs away with the ball. Why? Because translating page after page of someone else's text prompts is not what sets your average geek's imagination on fire.

              This is a relatively simple problem. Non-programmers can do it, and we're just now starting to see projects recruiting non-technical people in a serious way.

              I'm also not at all sure that Windows does, in fact, "run away with the ball" here. Sure, the apps from Microsoft are very widely internationalized, but what about third party applications? I'm sure that the packages you find on the shelves in France are in French, but the majority of Windows software as a whole is not.

              Just out of curiosity, have you tried Mandrake? Given that they're a French company, they may do a better job of supporting your preferred language.

              That said, I'll certainly agree that there's a level of professional polish that is lacking in OSS projects, and will always be lacking as long as it's strictly a hobbiest thing. But it isn't just a hobbiest thing anymore, and all it takes is for a bunch of, say, French companies to decide they want to use a particular software and to spend a few thousand euros each (often cheaper than licensing a commercial version) to fix it up. This makes sense for exactly the same reason that it makes sense for IBM to enhance Linux rather than put that money into AIX. We haven't seen a lot of it, but that's because this whole OSS thing is very new and not widely understood, yet. It's coming, though.

              Then there are drivers. Or not.

              Do you think Microsoft writes those drivers? The state of this situation is exactly the opposite of what you're saying. Writing rogue drivers is a lot of geeky fun, particularly since it generally requires reverse engineering the protocol. However, it is very difficult and time-consuming, so we should really be amazed that Linux supports as much hardware as it does. The thing MS has going for it in regard to drivers is that the manufacturers of hardware write the Windows drivers themselves. As Linux becomes more widespread, we're beginning to see hardware manufacturers who chose to support Linux themselves, and it's reasonable to expect that trend to accelerate.

              The downside is that many of the manufacturers will keep their drivers closed. In my experience, Linux has fewer drivers, but they're often higher-quality, and almost always more flexible, because of the openness.

              And the lack of development on the non-sexy bits of Linux/GNU is, IMHO, one of the main obstacles to its widespread adoption on the desktop.

              On the home desktop, sure. On the business desktop, the main barrier is the Office lock-in. Once companies can get past that, the cost of polishing up the rough edges that annoy them is pretty small, and there is a business model for doing that development. The really big win for the corporate world, however, is the ability to *customize* that doesn't exist with most closed software. The IT industry really hasn't caught on to that yet, but they will.

              • Only if you don't read EULAs, and don't think about the future.

                I have no fears on that score. Like any extorsion racket, it is in MS's interests not to kill off their victims (or hurt them so much that they decide to fight back), so, whatever the EULA might allow in a /.er's paranoid mind, it just ain't gonna happen. (And my business is 99% Linux anyway, so I don't care too much if I'm wrong on this...)

                Most software isn't internationalised

                But if, as you more or less say yourself, the MS apps are, and the products I can buy in the country where I live are, who cares whether I could buy a Czech version of some obscure program in a supermarket in Equador?

                Do you think MS writes those drivers?

                No, I'll give you that one, wrong discussion...

                Mandrake

                It might be better in language terms, but the version I tried was extremely bad in many other ways. I'm going back a couple of years here. SUSE was better than RH language-wise, and, in general, I liked it a lot, but I just got fed up with having to fix every program I wanted to run because none of the files were in the normal (ie RH) place.

                Office lock-in

                Glad you mentioned that, because office software is another really bad thing with Linux. Star Office/Open Office are great office suites for people who don't need an office suite. I get to try MS Office users on Star Office in my cybercafe most days, and they all end up wanting to chew their arms off, and that is before we mention 'features' like locking the entire system up big time if you try to save a file directly onto a floppy disc (this bug has been around for at least a year, survived from SO 5.2 to OO 1, and also happens on a laptop with a different distro). Thing is, geeks are not usually Office power users...

                • so, whatever the EULA might allow in a /.er's paranoid mind, it just ain't gonna happen

                  Given that some competition is arising, I'm sure you're right. Given complete domination, however, I have no doubt that MS would come up with stuff that would amaze even the most paranoid.

                  But if, as you more or less say yourself, the MS apps are, and the products I can buy in the country where I live are, who cares whether I could buy a Czech version of some obscure program in a supermarket in Equador?

                  My point was that this is a problem that corrects itself as the software becomes more widely used. By the time Linux has grown to a, say, 5% market share of desktops worldwide, internationalization will be far better than it was when Windows achieved that same penetration. Why? Because anyone who wants to can do it, and more and more people are wanting to.

                  With respect to RedHat/Mandrake/SuSe and internationalization, honestly I just have to plead ignorance. I don't use any of the above (I like Debian, 'cause I don't like reinstalling), and, frankly, my first language is English and that's what I use. I do know that I can switch KDE to Spanish and everything in KDE changes.

                  Glad you mentioned that, because office software is another really bad thing with Linux.

                  It's weak. OpenOffice is getting there pretty rapidly, although I wonder sometimes if the half-open nature isn't slowing it down. However, you're comparing a decade's worth of work by Microsoft's very large Office team to what has been done in the two to three years since people got interested in building an office suite for Linux. And, for that matter, there are areas in which the OSS offerings are vastly superior to MS Office. Automatic document generation, for example, is supremely easy using OpenOffice.

                  Also, I think you overestimate the problems users have with OpenOffice. I recently put it on my brother-in-law's computer (he's completely non-technical, and computer stuff is pretty hard for him) and he and his family have had no problems with it at all. That's the Windows version, of course, but it's essentially the same. His daughter saves documents to floppy to take to school all the time. I can see how MS Office users would be driven insane by the StarOffice 5.0 take-over-the-desktop approach, but have you tried it again with a newer version?

                  BTW, I just tested, and on my Debian system with OOo 1.0.2, I can save to floppies with no problem. Tried both FAT and EXT2 file systems, too.

    • Re:Better place sto donate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Proc6 ( 518858 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @07:11AM (#5166589)
      Dear Troll,

      I hate when some bleeding heart socialist steps in and says money could be better spent "on the needy" in cases like this. Almost everyone reading slashdot has some kind of discretionary income. For some it's $5 a month, for other's its $500 a day. Either way, part of enjoying life is spending what you have (cash, time, knowledge) you things you enjoy. Are there other people out there who "need" things. Yes. Does that mean we should give every spare dollar to them? No.

      Unless you live in a grass hut you made with your own 2 hands, dress in recycled fig leaves, give back to the land more than you consume, and produce more food personally than you consume, shut the hell up. If someone wants to spend money on the development of open source software, they should have that right without being accosted by some hippocrite. Now take the PC you used to post on Slashdot offline, sell it on Ebay, and give the money to the "needy".


      Love, Proc6

      • Excuse me, but how was I accosting anyone? There are two groups in need in here - the unemployed programmers and the school children. I personally think that if you're giving away an old computer, it would be better off going to a school. You disagree. Fine. Maybe you're right, maybe not, but why do you see me having a different opinion to you as a threat?

        I never advocated coming along and taking your PC away from you or forcing you to give money to some people and not to others. You're free to do with it as you will. People have the right to spend money on developing open source software. I never said otherwise.

        Neither did I say you had to give away every dollar/pound/euro/whatever you own. If you read the article, you will see that this is about old PCs you have and are no longer using. My post was in the context of someone who is already giving something way. I was not debating how much to give, but rather where was in most need. Surely that's an important question to ask when donating to people? And keeping a single computer for my own personal use is not hypocrisy.
    • If that poorly funded school would use KDE/Linux instead of Windows and would stop forcing its students to buy/pirate Office and Windows this would helt the students and their budget much more.

  • A little more information (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27, 2003 @05:45AM (#5166346)

    From the Relevant Page [kde.org]:

    KDE developers put their computers through a lot of work. Building KDE on my modern desktop (1.4 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM) takes 6-8 hours. Many developers are working on systems which cannot fully build KDE in under 24 hours, and many KDE developers do so several times a week. Profiling and debugging tools for optimizing code are very processor and memory intensive. Hardware often is a bottleneck to KDE developers' productivity.

    So keep this in mind before you ask why they're requesting this. Thanks :).

    • Why? (Score:2)

      by hughk ( 248126 )
      Must you build the whole thinmg for debugging? Is it not possible to build and debug KDE at the component or subsystem level rather than to always try to go for the whole thing?

      Probably the single largest thing I have needed when working on debugging/building large systems was enough diskspace. Processor power and memory were usually not a major problem because although we would be running the entire system, only part would be in debug at any one time. The rest would be instrumented, but that is all.

      It seems like someone should be looking very hard at the engineering aspects if this is really a bottleneck.

      • How much of the system you have to build from scratch depends a *lot* on the quality of change control processes you're using and the amount of the code that's being actively worked on and modified at any given time. It's really critical for developers and testers to be able to work on something that looks very much like the environment the real user will have, and sometimes that means a lot of recompile-from-scratch-on-a-clean-box.

        Disk space is a situation that's improved radically since the days when I was coding, and price/size has been on a deep faster-than-Moore's-law dive for a few years now. A 120-GB disk costs about US$120-200 these days, and the trip from 2GB->6GB->20GB->120GB only took about 3-4 years, but it rapidly crossed the boundaries of "how big is the biggest system I'm working on now with everything and the kitchen sink (except my MP3s) thrown in".

        Also, one reason disk drive was always a critical resource was that corporate IT departments often forgot the difference between computers and systems - developers and testers often need large numbers of systems, but that doesn't have to cost a lot of money because one computer with a removable-disk-enclosure and a stack of 20 disks in $10 plastic drawers really costs a _lot_ less than a stack of 20 computers, and the IT department and/or the developer can keep a set of clean images available to duplicate more checkpointed-from-user's-perspective systems for testing on.

    • If KDE is slick on a crap PC then it's going to run like a dream on a 1.4 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM
      (or have a div(0) if someones put a bad timing loop in there!).

      Also....

      "Building KDE on my modern desktop (1.4 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM) takes 6-8 hours. Many developers are working on systems which cannot fully build KDE in under 24 hours"

      What?
      1: get the pre-compiled header patched version of GCC
      2: Do you always build the whole tree every time? A kernel compile takes 30mins or so my PC, but if I change a module is takes 1min because everything else is build already and I don't make clean/mrproper.

      • Do you always build the whole tree every time?
        They might, it depends on what they change to require the build. They're called dependencies and are specified in makefiles, they define which part of the source tree is dependent upon what other parts.

        Almost all of the tree will be dependent on the core libs, so if something fundamental changes in one of them the whole tree needs to be rebuilt to take this into account - even if it's only a one-line change. If something in a higher-level library changes significantly - an entire function is reimplemented, or something - only a few things will have to be rebuilt, as the make program is smart enough to rebuild only those parts of the tree that depend upon the changed part.

        So, core KDE developers need monster PCs as they're work has a fundamental impact upon the entire project; app hackers do just as well on less cutting-edge equipment as they shouldn't really need to build everything - that's what binary distributions are for.

        -Mark

        • Re:A little more information (Score:5, Informative)

          by oliverthered ( 187439 ) <{moc.liamtoh} {ta} {derehtrevilo}> on Monday January 27, 2003 @06:45AM (#5166525) Journal
          ? you may have to relink I suppose or are the core API's/interfaces getting changed on an ad-hoc bases?

          I can compile core.c and is turns into core.o
          I can compile fish.c that depends on core.h compiles to fish.o
          I link fish.o that depends on core.o

          If I change core.h (an API change) then I must recompile fish.c
          If I chnage core.c then I only need to relink fish.o against core.o

          If i use dynamic libraries then I don't need to relink atall.

          Changes to core.h should be in the form of, 'Right lads, were changing the API, get you design and documentation heads on'

          • Oh I forgot (Score:2, Informative)

            by oliverthered ( 187439 )
            I'm all for supporting hard up developers, I was once one my self.
            If anyone lives in the Newbury/Reading/Basingstoke area (UK) and could really do with some extra kit, I've probably got some spare bits floatings around (256MB ram a couple of HDD's, boxed Mandrake 8.0) drop me a mail and I'll see what I can do.
          • As someone who regularly compiles KDE from sources for Solaris where I work, it isn't quite this simple. When running the configure script there is an option, --enable-final, which causes the build process to create a single .cpp file that includes all of the other .cpp files in a library. This has two advantages over compiling all of the .cpp files separately. 1. The total compile time is shorter, and 2. the compiler can better optimize the code through inlining.

            What is even more time consuming seems to be linking. For some reason libtool takes forever before it starts the actual link process.

            Granted, not using --enable-final will speed up the patches, but compiling is still a long and demanding process.

            As for debugging, with all the shared libraries, gdb will easily consume 200MB of RAM just to load symbols. God forbid that you link with something like Electric Fence and try and start up a process. A couple of years ago I used this to debug a problem with konsole crashing and starting one konsole session with EF consumed something like 200MB. Loading the resulting core file in GDB took forever since the machine only had 512MB of RAM.

            It takes a lot more horsepower to debug and profile code than it takes to run the final code.

            -Aaron
      • 2a: You apparently never tried to compile a larger C++ project. GCC needs considerably more time to compile C++ code than C. In general, the GNU toolchain has worse support for C++ as compared to C (yes, C++ is more complicated than C, but I don't think it's _that_ much). Precompiled headers will hopefully help here.

        2b:No wonder remaking kernel after changing one module is so fast. Usually nothing except the module itself depends on it, so nothing else needs to be rebuilt. But if somebody commits a change to some of the kdelibs header files, many files have to be rebuilt.

        1a: Most people probably don't want even to patch and compile even their GCC. It's just one more thing to take care of.

        1b: Moreover, GCC is not the only bottleneck. The linker (not ld.so, but ld, the one creating binaries) is pretty slow as well. Or you could try debugging some KDE app (with debug info compiled in) in GDB - THAT will teach you what 'slow' really means (and maybe you'll even suddenly find KDE's performance quite acceptable).
      • Unfortunately the pre-compiled GCC version requires some heavy modifications of the sources - you can only have one pre-compiled header per file! This makes it pretty useless right now. To make use of it you had to bundle all headers into a single file. This, however, would slow down compilations for GCC versions without pre-compiled header support. So the situation is not trivial...

    • Re:A little more information (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Chris Canfield ( 548473 ) <slashdot@chrisca n f i e l d.net> on Monday January 27, 2003 @06:26AM (#5166467) Homepage
      KDE developers put their computers through a lot of work. Building KDE on my modern desktop (1.4 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM) takes 6-8 hours. Many developers are working on systems which cannot fully build KDE in under 24 hours, and many KDE developers do so several times a week. Profiling and debugging tools for optimizing code are very processor and memory intensive. Hardware often is a bottleneck to KDE developers' productivity.

      Thinking back to the useless hours being wasted trying to crack the X-Box encryption, how much of this compiling could be distributed? Obviously it wouldn't accelerate live debugging or optimizing tools, but what if there were networks of computers who people volunteered to standby and remotely download, build, and upload code, and a linker on the initiating machine to reassemble globals, etc?

      I know nothing about distributed compiling, which probably means that either A: I should go back to college (very likely) or B: compiling doesn't break down nicely into chunks.

      If it is possible, a network of volunteer Open Source compilers would probably build in a significantly faster time than many of the aformentioned older systems can, assuming no major bandwidth bottlenecks, and would probably find a rather large home of OSS and Free Software supporters who don't have the time to code as much as they would like to. Such a structure would probably support the compiling of any large linux project, such as X, or Gnome, or... err... Well, Kde, X or Gnome. Any of these projects would be worthwile.

      Someone with more experience, please stand up! If it were possible, many people would become that much more involved, and the community would prosper. Could you imagine teams of people competing to help out the KDE developers as much as they do the seti@home project?

      • It does indeed parallise very well. The trouble is that over the internet, bandwidth is probably going to be your problem.

        Imagine a server that could compile kde in 1 second. But on a dialup it takes you 12 hours to get it there and another few hours to get the results back. :)

        • It's true that my disk drive bus is a lot faster than my LAN, which is a lot faster than my DSL or especially my modem. But in a university student environment, either for students in dorms or campus computer centers, there's often a fast LAN and a lot of spare horsepower much of the day that might be harnessed effectively. There's a big security assumption there (:-), and also it's much more useful if the students are all running Unix of some sort rather than Windows, but it can be a good deal.

          Also, there's the question of where the data lives - do the master copies live on your PC, or on a server, and how do you check it in or out? It may actually be just about as fast in a parallel environment, where people are getting the data from fast LANs.

          • Check out distcc, which does distributed c compiling.

            At my uni you have an NFS drive. So I can ssh into any machine in the uni and my files appear to be on it.
            One quick and dirty way to do this would be simply to compile each directory on a seperate machine. Most large programs have lots of sub componants so you can compile each part seperately.
            Use distcc for more complex cases - plus it is probably easier to use.
            From distcc.samba.org:

            "distcc is nearly linearly scalable for small numbers of machines: Building Linux 2.4.19 on a single 1700MHz Pentium IV machine with distcc 0.15 takes 6 minutes, 45 seconds. Using distcc across three such machines on a 100Mbps switch takes only 2 minutes, 30 seconds: 2.6x faster. "

            I took a quick look at the instructions. It really is dead easy to setup. I think I'll do it :)

      • I guess a lot of us would let a geek log in on our system(s) and compile there as a niced process. The boxes are running anyway...

        The geek can then get the compiled code for testing.

        Would that help you guys?
    • Building KDE on my modern desktop (1.4 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM) takes 6-8 hours. Many developers are working on systems which cannot fully build KDE in under 24 hours

      Given that most source files don't get changed every build, the major problem is going to be disk space. We need to donate some of those old 10 Gig disks that are too small for our MP3 (sorry, Ogg) collections now.

      Oh, and we should give them all a pointer to Compiler Cache [samba.org] while we're at it.

      Must install that on my own system, it look sweeeeet.
    • Also the upcoming gcc-3.4 [gnu.org] will support (at last) Precompiled Headers [gnu.org] which will speed up compilation of big apps.
    • KDE developers put their computers through a lot of work.

      Perhaps they should consider using ccache [samba.org] to avoid recompiling unchanged sources and distcc [samba.org] to make use of the almost-inevitable collection of low-powered machines every developer seems to have?

    • KDE developers put their computers through a lot of work. Building KDE on my modern desktop (1.4 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM) takes 6-8 hours. Many developers are working on systems which cannot fully build KDE in under 24 hours, and many KDE developers do so several times a week. Profiling and debugging tools for optimizing code are very processor and memory intensive. Hardware often is a bottleneck to KDE developers' productivity.

      What doesn't make sense is that hardware is so cheap these days and yet some of these developers are using old crap. Why? Are they really that dirt poor? Seriously! We're talking about like ~$50 Athlon xp 1700, ~$50 motherboard, ~$80 512 MB RAM. Lets say $200 with shipping. Is there anyone who can't afford that kinda upgrade even if they have to save a couple months? $200 is a drop in the hat even with a $30k/year income. It seems these guys either have no concept of managing their personal finance or else they're purposely living in poverty / self-pity. I would hope it's simply the former, because KDE is a really excellent project and its developers deserve a lot more than they give themselves credit for.

      Just a thought: Try consulting on the side.. A handful of consistent clients is enough to support a reasonable lifestyle.
      • If you actually read the article, it mentions many of these developers are students. Speaking as a student, I can understand their reluctance to forgo food, shelter, and books for computing horsepower.
    • It's really nice to know that many of the developers are still using slow, wimpy computers instead of the latest supersonic barnburners, because that says they'll resist bloatware and their products might work on my old desktop PC (not the really old one running TWM, just the 233MHz one). As a longtime user of corporate-IT-department laptops, I appreciate this for work use as well as for home, since the laptops are typically far more limited, and they're expensive enough they're usually a couple years old even beyond the laptop limitations. It would be nice if we could give the folks at Microsoft a bunch of old computers for all their developers and make sure they use them too :-)

      Having said that, though, that doesn't mean that the machine you run your compiler on needs to be the same machine you install and test the end product on (and in fact it's really nice if it's not, because that forces you to make cross-compiling for production systems work well.) Running the compiler on a newer, somewhat faster CPU and adding a big disk drive helps a lot, and motherboards at Fry's seem to be running about $99 for ~1.7MHz Athlons these days. Of course, it's awfully tempting if you've got a new motherboard to install it on your desktop (even if you're not a gamer...)

  • If only.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If only somone had adopted me 2 years ago when I was dialing out to a shell from a TRS80 for internet access and coding purposes.. Ever use 'ed'? Ever use it every day for 6 months? There are many more geeks out there in need of help than just the KDE team. That 50mb IDE drive you are using as a doorstop could revolutionise somone's work. Find somone in need and help them out!

    -MadCamel [EnergyMech IRC Bot - www.energymech.net]

  • My geek... (Score:5, Funny)

    by LucidityZero ( 602202 ) <sometimesitsalexNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday January 27, 2003 @05:46AM (#5166349) Homepage
    My geek can program in C/C++, Java, Perl AND LISP.

    And he's captain of the chess club!

    I'm so proud of my adopted geek! :D

    • Re:My geek... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Daleks ( 226923 )
      My adopted geek can kick your adopted geek's ass! Well, actually, I doubt either of them could kick anyones ass, but mine does play a mean game of Scorched Earth [classicgaming.com].

      • Re:My geek... (Score:2, Funny)

        by Asprin ( 545477 )

        Umm.... how long are they supposed to sleep?

        You see, I adopted my geek and brought him home (his name's Mike!) and put him in a jar by the computer so, you know, he could program when I wasn't using the computer and he could help my wife with her email quesions and so on.

        Anyway, this morning I went to change the paper and feed him (pepperoni pizza - yum!) and he's *not* *moving*. I prodded him with a Playstation controller and even offered him a game of Moria, but he won't budge.

        Should I try calling tech support?
        Do I need to put air holes in the jar?
        Does anyone know CPR?

        Oh well, back to dot.kde.org!

  • Go for it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JohnFluxx ( 413620 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @05:46AM (#5166350)
    I think it's cool.

    I remember when was I younger I had to stop coding for almost year when my power supply blew and I couldn't afford another one...

    It put me behind my classmates (the good ones that is) - a year of knowledge is quite a lot :)

    • I agree. If not for people that have helped me out along the way I'd probably have been a janitor and the world would be short several fairly cool bits of software and even hardware.

      Seriously, if you run opensource software and aren't giving back code of your own, documentation, or something worthwhile then the least you could do is donate $10 or a mobo or something to one of the projects you use. Not having to spend $500 for your software should be worth that $10. :)

  • And the developers' old hardware goes where? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Snover ( 469130 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @05:51AM (#5166369) Homepage
    I would certainly consider giving it a good home here. I'm not discriminate. You can give me an 8086 and I'll be happy. All that copper will be good to keep away the evil mind-controlling radio waves.

  • All very good i'm sure (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Suchetha ( 609968 ) <suchetha@@@gmail...com> on Monday January 27, 2003 @05:55AM (#5166377) Homepage Journal
    But if you *really* want to help out.. why not get in touch with some of the organisations that rebuild old computers to ship them to developing countries (with Linux as the running OS)..

    i belive techsoup.org [techsoup.org] has a list of organisations near you

    Suchetha

    • Re:All very good i'm sure (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I agree. Only in US do things like these happen. Don't people have better things to do? There are organizations like Big Brothers/Sisters foundations that provide mentoring to kids.
    • If you *really* want to help out...why not join the peacecorps and due a tour of Africa?

      People could go on and on about more "worthy" causes. Let the KDE people request some help without trying to guilt others into donating to a different cause.

  • Is that kind of like "Hire a Hermit?" (Score:3, Funny)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @05:55AM (#5166380) Journal
    I mean... pretty much the same, partly - live a secluded life, usually very eccentric, scare away "normal people."

    But Hermits can't hack out bulletproof code... hmm...

    FYI: back in the old-old days, Castle owners found it "fashionable*" to gave a hermit or two living on their property to... do whatever hermits do. There ARE professional hermits.

    * I can't think of another word - I mean, besides peer pressure, why else would you get a hermit? At least your geek would write you some CS homework code for some pizza (I would assume)

  • TV Commericals (Score:5, Funny)

    by johnraphone ( 624518 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @05:55AM (#5166381) Homepage
    How long till we see the commericals? I know thier coming.... For only a stick of memory a day, you too can help a KDE geek!

  • From the comments on the KDE page: (Score:3, Funny)

    by captainclever ( 568610 ) <rj&audioscrobbler,com> on Monday January 27, 2003 @05:56AM (#5166382) Homepage
    Warning, warning about to get slashdotted
    by Yocihc on Monday 27/Jan/2003, @11:45

    SLASHDOT crowd coming!!

    lol :)

  • Wow. (Score:2)

    by Gyan ( 6853 )

    Geeks and a family. Go figure.

  • I am active kde hacker who needs some equipment (Score:3, Funny)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @06:05AM (#5166410) Journal
    I did a full "hello World" application using kdevelop with 2 full buttons for "print" and "Exit".

    I feel I need to upgrade to a better system to expand my programming knowledge and help society and Kde in general. I am in desperate need of newer hardware and software since my low end athlon +1800MP with a half a gig of ram just doesn't cut it. A sun workstation 2000 [sun.com]with 2 gigs of ram as well as the Enterpise edition of Forte for java, Borland Jbuilder Enterprise Edition, as well as the full version of Kylix is what will really help me for my quest to help man kind. To help me write great software for you a nice scalable server [sun.com] to help beta test my high end client/server apps would also rock.

    PS, I also wouldn't need oops I mean mind a dual XEON 3ghz with the Enterprise edition of Visual Studio.NET and Adobe Photoshop to port some of my great free software to Windows that I am sure I oops I mean none of you can live without. But I can live with just the 2 sun's.

    Thanks guys I appreciate your help in this since I can't afford any of these nice toys oops I mean tools. Will you please adopt me.

  • Know how to ask... (Score:5, Informative)

    by e8johan ( 605347 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @06:07AM (#5166416) Homepage Journal
    If you know how to ask you can quite easily get ahold of most hardware (except HDDs) from technology companies. As long as you can live with 1-2 years old hardware and some DIY to set things up, you can get most for free.
    • I'm skeptical. Where? How? Why would they want to give ME hardware?

      Either way, the demands of the Adopt-a-geek program ask for computers way better than my own (heh...)

      • I have a friend who works as a computer builder (he builds computers according to customers specs). His employer evaluates lots of fun hardware before choosing a supplyer and stuff gets left over. Also, spare parts may go old (1-2 years). These parts (evaluate + spare parts) is what I pick up from time to time. The company saves money by not having to pay for destruction and I get cool hardware.

        If you google around a bit, I think that there are quite a few sites concerning this subject. I rember reading a HOWTO about it once.

  • It's indeed not a bad idea to help developers out like this, but seriously why only KDE? Not that I hate KDE, but seriously don't use KDE at all (and before you could ask, I don't use GNOME either).

    I'm hoping to see something like adopt an open source developer.
    • Probably because the guy who started this is a KDE hacker, and thus has the closest links with other KDE developers :)

      > I'm hoping to see something like adopt an open source developer.

      start it then :)

  • this is lame (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you want hardware, go work at K0mart or mcdonalds for a few weeks, a new cpu motherboard and case isnt THAT expensive... but yes, it WILL require you to get off of your fat lazy ass, so i suppose that might be a bit too much to ask then..

  • Possible alternative donation options (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nemus ( 639101 ) <astarchman@hotmail.com> on Monday January 27, 2003 @06:17AM (#5166439) Journal
    For those of us without spare hardware lying around, here are some (possibly) acceptible alternatives:

    A Case of Bawls - $29.99 [thinkgeek.com]
    Caffeniated Soap - $6.99-$14.99 [thinkgeek.com]
    Caffeine Candy Sampler, v3.0 - $19.99 [thinkgeek.com]

    And various other assorted goods and sundries.

    Now, some people make think this is a joke post, but its not. Even if its not hardware, I think anyone who uses KDE should feel compelled to donate something. As someone who does a lot of Volunteer work for local charities, it always feels good when someone recognizes all the hard work you've put into a job. And since alot of these guys can't really spend alot of money on luxury items, I say give em something to make a geek's day a lil brighter.

  • We need this! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by falonaj ( 615782 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @06:18AM (#5166441) Homepage

    The idea might seems quite funny to at first glance, but it actually makes sense.

    I am involved in KDE (maintainership of one of the web sites), and I know of cases where lack of hardware has indeed prevented people from working on very interesting projects. It is not only about the speed of compilation, it is also about disc space. This is especially true for projects dealing with Gnome interoperability, as this sometimes requires to compile _two_ huge desktops from source.

    Of course, lack of hardware will not stop things forever - other geeks or some distribution will step in eventually - but it has slowed down interoperability effords.

  • Adversity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by realnowhereman ( 263389 ) <andyparkins@@@gmail...com> on Monday January 27, 2003 @06:24AM (#5166456)
    During my formative years as a geek I (as I'm sure many of you did) had to make do with whatever was available. Although being pampered and showered with cool gear would have been nice, my lack of up-to-the-minute equipment did not damage me - in fact, I would go as far as saying that my abilities to fix equipment in the middle of a field come directly from those early days and put me and my skills in demand today.

    The reason the requirements for Windows keep increasing and increasing, every release requiring the most modern hardware is because the developers all have modern hardware and don't see it as a problem to make full use of it. (Games are even more of a culprit here, but that's a little more forgiveable)

    Whatever hardware the developers have is what the hardware requirements will be in the end; if that is a gameboy and a piece of string then so much the better for the project.
    • "e reason the requirements for Windows keep increasing and increasing, every release requiring the most modern hardware is because the developers all have modern hardware and don't see it as a problem to make full use of it."

      I disagree. I'm running Windows XP Professional and IIS 5.1 (development webserver and it runs my own website, small few hits) on a dual Pentium II Xeon 450 with 768MB RAM and it's quite responsive. This isn't exactly new hardware and I have no compliants. Well, except that I would like to have faster hardware to run InDesign and Illustrator and rendering from AfterEffects. Other than that...

  • How to help? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > Been wondering what you can do to help out?
    > Here's your chance!"

    Actually, I'm a die-hard GNOME user (I tried KDE but I found it toyish, lame, and frankly, suckish). I'm wondering what I can do to help SABOTAGE the KDE project. Please give me advice on how I might engage in such activities.

    • If you want to sabotage KDE, then I suggest doing lots of postings to public forums like the following:

      "Actually, I'm a die-hard KDE user (I tried GNOME but I found it toyish, lame, and frankly, suckish). I'm wondering what I can do to help SABOTAGE the GNOME project. Please give me advice on how I might engage in such activities."

      Posts of that sort will reflect poorly on the people you advocate for and damage their reputation. But perhaps that's what you have in mind.

  • Jeez I don't know, is it house trained ? Will I have to have it neutered ?

    Remember, a geek is for life, it's a big decision...

  • Why send hardware? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'd be more than willing to really ADOPT a geek. In the sense that the geek moves to my place and I pay for his food and living. I've got lots of hardware here that I just might need one day and dont want to give away, but I wouldnt mind if some geek used it. Besides, I could always use a little help while coding and I sometimes feel lonely, so I'll have someone to cuddle. Geeks are just adorable - kinda like having a cat to play with. Only geeks play with a ball of ethernet cable, not a ball of yarn.

    Plus I heard that fat geeks are really warm - could save some on the heating bill.
  • but for the ones who don't like kde that much and would rather support gnome, there is always The GNOME Foundation [gnome.org]
  • Like when the Linux companies gave some to open source programmers.

  • Adopt a Geek (Score:3, Funny)

    by MissMoneypenny ( 589641 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @10:01AM (#5167243)
    mmmmmm I already did that; he's 26-years old and also known as 'boyfriend'. I must say, they don't cost much these geeks and they do come with extra features - though I don't know if that also goes for a KDE geek ;-)
    -
    MissMp

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