Qole Needs A Job

They say it isn't what you know, but who you know that gets you a good job. Well, I know a great bunch of people in the mobile Linux world, and I'm hoping that you can help me find a great job. I've been helping out in the community since 2007, learning a lot about Linux and Maemo, and meeting some amazing people along the way. Now the economic downturn has given me an opportunity to try something new and exciting, and I want to take this chance to dive into the mobile Linux world as my career. If you want to know more about me or think you can help, please read the rest of this post, visit my LinkedIn page, e-mail me or PM me through my account at talk.maemo.org.

Things have been slowing down at my current job for a while now. As things have slowed down, I've been yearning for more of a challenge at work, but my volunteer work with various Maemo projects and the maemo.org community,  as well as my family life with a precocious preschooler has kept me busy enough.

But now I find myself part of a wave of lay-offs that has jolted me into a sharp awareness of my need to get into an interesting career. And one of the most interesting parts of my life for the last few years has been my work in and around the Maemo community. My hope is that I can turn my interesting hobby into a great career.

During my years with Maemo, I've become a very capable Linux hacker, shell script writer, Debian packager, and recently, a Python programmer. Through my day job, I have also become a decent PHP programmer and an expert SQL query writer. And in the last few weeks, I've decided to start teaching myself C++ and Qt, so I can participate fully in MeeGo when it bursts onto the scene and changes the mobile world.

The "other side" of me is my love of writing and communication. I'm a good technical writer and editor, and I'm good with helping people and technical support. My technical support ability is aided by my troubleshooting and diagnostic skills. It is important to me to document my discoveries and techniques so that others can learn and grow, too.

My two terms on the maemo.org community council taught me some important things, too. I came away from that experience more tactful, more diplomatic, and with a much deeper understanding of the complex problems facing Nokia as it moves into the open source world.

I'm smart, I'm a fast learner, and I love new challenges. I have EU citizenship, and I don't mind moving if the job is interesting.

Can you help me?

N900 Easy Debian, After PR 1.2

Executive Summary: There's a new version of Easy Debian in Extras-testing that has a much better method for getting the keyboard working in LXDE after the PR 1.2 firmware update changed things.

The recent PR 1.2 firmware update fixed many bugs and added many features, but it also "broke" a trick that Easy Debian folks had been using to get keyboard focus back after returning to LXDE from another app.

A little background: Maemo 5's window manager, Matchbox 2, is very strict about the keyboard focus rules, far, far stricter than any other window managers. They did this for power management reasons. Some people have called this a bug, but others argue that this is the most correct way to do it, and it is the fault of sloppy applications.

Whoever is to blame, there are quite a few apps out there that don't work properly with the N900's window manager. Unfortunately, the Xephyr nested X server that Easy Debian uses to run LXDE inside Maemo is one of those apps. Finding a way to get keyboard focus for Xephyr was one of the first hurdles facing the Easy Debian project when porting to Maemo 5.

The original breakthrough happened when qobi wrote a little "fixer app" that "fixed" non-compliant windows when given a window ID as a parameter. This method gave initial keyboard focus to LXDE when starting up.

Someone discovered a much more elegant workaround, however. All you needed to do was press the power button and then clear the menu by pressing the screen outside the menu, and the current window would receive keyboard focus. This became the standard method for returning to Easy Debian's LXDE after using another app, such as receiving a phone call or taking a picture.

When the long-anticipated PR 1.2 firmware update came, Easy Debian users were dismayed to discover that they couldn't use the power button to get their keyboard back in LXDE. Even worse, that trick made it impossible for the user to hit Ctrl-backspace to get back to the dashboard. The only ways to "break out" of this keyboardless LXDE were to either log out or to open the camera. Not a good situation.

After some hacking, we have managed to get things working again. It isn't as neat as the power button workaround, but it is nearly as good. Now, the same LXDE icon that opens LXDE in the first place also returns you to LXDE with keyboard focus. So you only need to put the Easy Debian LXDE icon (the red diamond with the "d" in it) on your desktop and press it whenever you want Easy Debian LXDE.

If you want this new version (and if you use Easy Debian LXDE, and you have PR 1.2, then yes, you want it), enable the Extras-testing repository and get the update. Please be aware that any other apps that offer updates after you enable Extras-testing may not be ready to be installed, since they may not comply with the community's QA standards.

If you have any questions about Easy Debian, they're probably answered in the the Easy Debian wiki page, but if not, go to the talk thread and ask your question there.