Kurt
Sep 16, 2020
Please welcome Kurt Kremitzki, @thekurtwk Biosystems engineer, @Debian developer, #FreeCAD developer & sysadmin this week on @imakefoss
Interview: https://t.co/A06bN9btUe
@imakefoss is a Twitter rotation curation account. Wanna be a curator? Please get in touch. https://t.co/lcFaYNnbaP
Sep 16, 2020
Hello everyone! I’ll introduce myself more fully this evening, but for now, I wanted to say that today is a very fortunate day to join you all as a FreeCAD dev based on this news: https://t.co/tTGyG7xhEn
- Kurt Kremitzki
Sep 16, 2020
@thekurtwk @debian Hello everyone! I’ll introduce myself more fully later this evening, but for now, I wanted to say that today is a very fortunate day to join you all as a FreeCAD dev based on this news: https://t.co/tTGyG7xhEn
- Kurt Kremitzki
Sep 17, 2020
Good morning everyone! Today I want to share the story of how I first discovered but then abandoned FOSS. Most people understand the idea of an ‘onramp" for newcomers, but I think there’s another important structure we need, something like “frog ladders.”
- Kurt Kremitzki https://t.co/6BgVwQP71K
Sep 17, 2020
Pic: ‘Newt on the frog ladder" by wallygrom, licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0. A frog ladder is something that helps small animals who fall in a pool to survive and swim another day. Similarly, some people could be on the FOSS bandwagon, but ran into trouble and never came back.
Sep 17, 2020
For me, I was just a kid when my friend gave me a couple CDs that said ‘Red Hat 9" and said, “This is Linux, you should try it.” I managed to get it dual booting on the family computer, but I couldn’t get the winmodem to work, so every time I had to search for information, …
Sep 17, 2020
that meant rebooting into Windows, waiting for my dialup connection to establish, finding what I needed, taking notes by hand, and then rebooting to Linux. I was too young to drive somewhere for help, for example, and I was surrounded by corn fields, not computer scientists.
Sep 17, 2020
It was disheartening, and when I heard ‘Red Hat Linux" was “no more”, replaced by “Red Hat Enterprise Linux”, I didn’t understand that Red Hat ≠ Linux, and decided to end my experiment. It wasn’t until almost ten years later that I discovered Ubuntu.
Sep 17, 2020
It’s interesting because Ubuntu itself was started basically as a frog ladder! Debian was, and is, too hard to install for beginners, and I don’t think that’s a point of pride. So, to end my story, I wanted to say thanks to Ubuntu and @Canonical, because even as …
Sep 17, 2020
@Canonical I am a Debian Developer, yet I am very glad for the existence of Ubuntu, as a venue for pushing things forward technically for the Debian-family, and for being the people out there making these so-called ‘frog ladders". You too, @linuxmint !
Sep 17, 2020
Over the next week I will be tweeting about several @FreeCADNews and @debian related topics, but so many of them in the end come down to community. CAD in particular is too tough, even for the most prolific programmer. It will take a FOSS community of practice..
- Kurt Kremitzki
Sep 17, 2020
@FreeCADNews @debian since for example, I focus on relatively under-the-hood stuff, I hardly have time to make beautiful models like this one, but sharing them and a bit of praise is easy enough! https://t.co/1XTI7kVdUI
Sep 17, 2020
@FreeCADNews @debian Speaking of prolific programmers, there’s a fairly new developer in the FreeCAD scene who has been making great progress on some of the toughest problems. If you want to accelerate FreeCAD development, chipping in to Realthunder’s Patreon is a great way! https://t.co/MFrQ4wSvMR
Sep 17, 2020
@FreeCADNews @debian There’s several other ways to help out the project financially, covered in our wiki: https://t.co/UXnnFY2Xgw
However, there are lots of other ways to help too! https://t.co/KyUki9WVTi
Sep 17, 2020
@Canonical @linuxmint Oops, @Linux_Mint :)
Sep 18, 2020
Good morning everyone! It’s the end of the work week for me, so it’s almost FOSS weekend warrior time.
Tonight, I’ll be giving a visual intro and tour of FreeCAD for people with no CAD background. I’ve been remiss to not introduce it already!
- Kurt Kremitzki
Sep 18, 2020
Another topic I want to touch on soon: the idea that Debian has especially outdated packages. The truth is both Debian Stable and Ubuntu LTS spring from the same source, but have releases offset by about a year. So why the old packages then? Generally, packagers needing help!
Sep 19, 2020
Howdy from Texas! Too ambitious yesterday, I needed some rest instead. But I’m already at it today!
I wait for compilation a lot, so I multi-task. Today: updating FreeCAD Homebrew package, Debian Netgen packaging bug, and KDE PIM dev.
- Kurt Kremitzki
Sep 19, 2020
There’s been a remarkable flurry of activity these past few days as a result of Fusion 360 announcing severe limitations to free accounts starting October 1st. If you aren’t already following our Twitter account, I highly recommend it for eye candy alone! https://t.co/9OgxlQcs6x
Sep 19, 2020
Of course, such impressive pictures can also make CAD seem daunting, and, to be honest, we have a long way to go in terms of being beginner friendly. But still, CAD can be useful for more everyday household tasks, like 3D printing… what do they call these? ‘Toy bricks"? https://t.co/A5YkI4H7uI
Sep 19, 2020
FreeCAD’s strength & weakness is that it’s so incredibly multi-purpose. This screenshot from looo on the forums is a great example. A spreadsheet defines the parameters for a 3D model. That model generates technical drawings you can print out and hand off. A pic shows the result. https://t.co/pnApeyH0Rq
Sep 19, 2020
What’s really neat, as in these pics from FreeCAD Master ppemawm, is that you can reverse that process. Find a picture of something real, reverse engineer it, and make it. https://t.co/ytPH2cXspd
Sep 19, 2020
Once your object is a model in FreeCAD, you can do more engineering than just the reverse kind. Finite element analysis, for example! In short, it means taking complicated equations & shapes & breaking em up into tiny mesh pieces with many small equations. https://t.co/mEom74isU4
Sep 19, 2020
Many liberties were taken with the previous description. :)
Bottom line is, FreeCAD is general-purpose 3D modeler; possibilities & future potential are huge. I especially like experiments with @openstreetmap data integration.
Here’s Berlin’s Alexanderplatz imported from OSM. https://t.co/dTE6grGCdm
Sep 19, 2020
@openstreetmap Speaking of integration, @FreeCADNews and @kicad_pcb go together like peanut butter and sandwiches 😉. KiCAD is an electronic design tool.
Not only can FreeCAD serve as a 3D viewer for KiCAD models, you can do thermal (or multiphysics with CFD) analysis, and PCB milling! https://t.co/1PS0eVFoJ2
Sep 20, 2020
As a @debian and @FreeCADNews dev, I have lots of ideas for videos and media content to explain technical concepts and to try to reach new contributors.
However, I don’t have the media skills to do things that well, but I’d still like to support the FOSS ecosystem overall…
Sep 20, 2020
@debian @FreeCADNews Wouldn’t it be great if there was a marketplace of skilled FOSS creators I could hire to help? For example, if there was a @kdenlive expert who could turn my raw footage into YouTube gold, I could also help them by troubleshooting, pinpointing, & upstreaming bugs they run into.
Sep 20, 2020
@debian @FreeCADNews @kdenlive Same way with @Krita_Painting artists and so forth! I was just thinking I wanted to commission some art for my social media and new YouTube channel, and wished there was an easy way to pay for FOSS.
- Kurt Kremitzki
Sep 20, 2020
I can try! Though it’s 1) not so easy because Debian is an ‘accretion", 2) depends on what your particular goals are. E.g., if you don’t need to get something into Debian, just into a .deb, .rpm, etc., your best bet is probably https://t.co/oKOkSzTk4N
Sep 20, 2020
There’s been so much great Twitter activity around @FreeCADNews these past few days, here’s a few I wanted to share with you all!
- Kurt Kremitzki
Sep 20, 2020
@FreeCADNews One of the coolest things about it, of course, is seeing what happens when ‘FreeCAD meets the real world": https://t.co/5s9VBfTHxG
Sep 20, 2020
@FreeCADNews @bitacovir gives a nice intro to FreeCAD here too: https://t.co/dTVxBdblHa
Sep 20, 2020
@FreeCADNews @bitacovir Here’s another ‘FreeCAD meets real world", with an intake manifold: https://t.co/jIS7ltMjbP
Sep 22, 2020
Good morning everyone! The topic for today’s tweets:
Everything a Debian Developer Wishes You’d Know About Debian
- Debian is not a giant living in the hillside, it’s mashup of only about 1000 individuals, plus various teams, methods, and tools.
- Kurt Kremitzki
Sep 23, 2020
- As a result, even if you ‘wanted to get started with Debian development", there isn’t one thing I could tell you to do. But! An easy place to get started is the Debian Package Tracker for a package you care about. Reference: the Linux kernel. https://t.co/qH090hOgAT
Sep 23, 2020
- On the right side of the page there you’ll see the bugs. Almost 3000 issues being tracked for the kernel. Some are invalid, some haven’t been validated. Bottom line is, there’s lots of bug wrangling work in Debian, and some doesn’t even need package building. Just… the BTS!
Sep 23, 2020
- Debian’s Bug Tracking System has a web interface, which, generously & optimistically, Could Be Improved. Did I mention it’s controlled by email? Command-line tools like
reportbugexist, but you can also just write & interfact with bugs by email. https://t.co/14WUBOMkkq
Sep 23, 2020
- Fixing bugs often requires building packages. There are tools on tools wrapped around tools to build packages. Not all workflows work depending on packaging teams/individuals [see 1), also 😓] but I will squeeze in the shortest best advice I can in the next tweet(s)!
Sep 23, 2020
5a) Make sure you have ‘the right" deb-src entries in your /etc/apt/sources.list file uncommented. b) sudo apt build-dep foo. see a) if it complains. c) apt source -b foo downloads the original source & Debian packaging tarballs and builds them. If it succeeds, proceed to
Sep 23, 2020
5d) Do an ls and clear out all the files dumped in your working dir except the orig and debian tarballs. tar xf those two; put the debian dir in the source dir, make your changes to debian dir stuff, rebuild with dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc. You might have to do more, see 1)
Sep 23, 2020
- When installing Debian on a new system, in practice you probably want the non-free live images which include firmware: https://t.co/elOqA16aQu
Afterward, sudo apt install vrms for a Virtual Richard M. Stallman to tell you which packages to maybe sudo apt remove.
Sep 23, 2020
- Debian has a reputation for old packages, but Debian Stable and Ubuntu LTS are both, roughly speaking, cut from where devs upload, Debian Unstable (Sid), every two years. When Debian Bullseye (11) comes out next (odd) year, it’ll have newer packages than Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. But!
Sep 23, 2020
- Some packages are just old. Check the Package Tracker [see 2)] There should be automation to notify a new package is available. Is there a bug filed about a new package? Some software is just a lot of work to package, like Qt & KDE. Maybe the maintainer or team needs help!
Sep 23, 2020
- Some packages just aren’t new enough! For that, there’s Debian Backports. For example, a Linux kernel from backports enables the newest hardware support on a Debian Stable system. Your favorite package’s not in backports? Check the Package Tracker. https://t.co/B271aH71PO
Sep 23, 2020
- There’s more interesting technical work around Debian than packaging.
Examples: you can search all 130 GiB of source code in Debian here: https://t.co/gYArq3Mm0o
The Ultimate Debian Database (unofficial mirror) is a public PostgreSQL knowledge trove https://t.co/Jr14QkSX6L
Sep 23, 2020
- Debian is 27 years old. It’s massive, tough to move, but that means where it goes is significant. Changes propagate to other distros like Ubuntu, Mint, or Kali. So even though it can be hard as a newcomer, the effort is worth it, so I hope you try! You can make a difference.
Sep 23, 2020
It feels like @FreeCADNews has had quite a flurry of activity lately after the Fusion 360 announcement. But it’s good to have a measure of just how much activity. I just found one!
Here’s a graph of the # of stars on FreeCAD’s GitHub repo. Look at that slope!
- Kurt Kremitzki https://t.co/RgqQvyAYTO
Sep 23, 2020
@FreeCADNews Just wanted to take this chance to also thank @digitalocean who started supporting us with hosting this year, you’re part of making it happen for us and many other FOSS projects. Thanks!
- Kurt Kremitzki
Sep 23, 2020
@FreeCADNews @bitacovir Another one! FreeCAD master ppemawm in the forums with a new Part Design modeling guide https://t.co/strF2zkVss https://t.co/VucVUP4PV7
Sep 23, 2020
It’s been fun sharing my week with you all! My time with @imakefoss is at an end. If you’re interested in @FreeCADNews, @debian, fighting games on Linux, or a long tail of other random topics, I invite you to follow me on my personal account, @thekurtwk.
- Kurt Kremitzki
Sep 23, 2020
@FreeCADNews @debian @thekurtwk Up next will be @e8johan of @fossnorth !