Notes from GNOME Asia Summit 2019

It’s been my sixth GNOME Asia Summit that I attend. My first time was in Beijing, at Beihang University. Then every year I help to organize and collaborate with local organizer. I only skipped not attending when it was in Chongqing.

After last year, me and Sammy Fung become Leader/Co-Leader of Asia Committee. Asia Committee is not formal department or suborganization in GNOME Foundation. It contained few people who active at promoting GNOME in Asia. Mostly from people who become local organizer and people who always attend in several years. And personally I knew and meet them in few conference. Probably I will ask board to make this Asia Committee to become formal one.

This conference held in Gresik City, East Java. This city is supporting city for Surabaya (capital of East Java province). It’s small city with growing community right now. One of community is Gresik Dev who become local organizer. FOSS generaly and GNOME in specialy is not recognized by common people. This point of view that lead me to ask Gresik Dev to promoting FOSS and GNOME. Local organizer contain Gresik Dev Community and student from UISI and UMG (both of them the most popural university in Gresik).

This conference, I helping local organizer as steering committee (consultant). One of my reason to proactive in this event is I was born in this city near four decades ago. Probably they see me as dictator because I wanna make this conference as good as possible with limited resource.

I’m driving my car to go to Gresik City. It’s near 800 km from Bogor (city which I live). I arrived on Wednesday afternoon. In Thursday I helping to pickup few speaker from airport. One of my duty is to manage transportation for foreigner from airport to hotel, hotel to venue, vice versa. Since also me that know most of foreigner speaker. So on Friday my duty is become driver and introduce several speaker to each other.

Friday is workshop day, mostly I spent my time to chit chat with all speaker that already arrive and introduce to each other, also make sure tomorrow everything is going well. In this day, I know theres few newcomers that also become speaker. Mostly they got nervous because first time experience. So little bit lack on preparing and predicting the audience. At night we have welcome party and I have long talk with Gaurav and Andre Klapper.

Saturday is first day of conference. I see many participant that not familiar with GNOME but they willing to join this conference. Also I realized that long time bonded friends who often going to GNOME Asia Summit is me, Bin Li and Andre Klapper. English is become little bit problem because this not native language. But the master of ceremony is doing their job amazingly. The person who in charge of slide and projector need to use GNOME and Linux more often. 🙂

Goodiebag and it’s content. Photos taken by Neil

This first day, me and several friends who able to understand Pegon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegon_script) planning to have BoF to make this characters working in GNOME/Linux. You can join at https://gitlab.com/aksaranusantara.

Sunday, I meet best friends from Tatalogam Company who become one of sponsor, also they have keynote. I also have keynote at the end of event. Also we have nice dramatic and funny closing. Many doorprize given to participant. I see many participant enjoy the conference and have selfie/wefie at photo’s booth for uploading to their instagram. It’s also good for marketing.

Anyway, big applause  to desaign team who manage everything that need design/art. And good job for local organizer. Thank you to all speaker that spent time joining this conference and share your knowledge. Thank you to all participant for attending and help promoting GNOME. Big thanks to GNOME Foundation who sponsored my travel!

From closing this conference, it’s meaning I’m become Leader of Asia Committee because Sammy Fung stepdown for personal matters. Any one willing to help me?

See you at Next GNOME Asia Summit 2020!

GNOME Friends

 

GPD Pocket with openSUSE Tumbleweed

I’ve been curious and interested with GPD Pocket since last year, when first time it announced (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gpd-pocket-7-0-umpc-laptop-ubuntu-or-win-10-os#/).

I bought this tiny machine 3 weeks ago on aliexpress. Shipping take only a day, but custom clearance takes almost two weeks.

First impression about this laptop was cute and good built quality.

Tiny

GNOME yang Jelek atau Akhlak Kalian yang Buruk?

GNOME 3.28 beberapa waktu lalu baru rilis, cukup memancing banyak komentar. Tanggal 26 April kemarin, Ubuntu 18.04 meluncur dengan menyertakan GNOME 3.28 sebagai Desktop Environment baku. Unity sudah tidak dipergunakan lagi, mungkin tim Ubuntu sudah lelah.

Berawal dari move on-nya si Ubuntu, banyak penggemarnya kecewa, dan merasa GNOME itu jelek, tanpa bisa menunjukkan kejelekannya. Mari kita mundur beberapa waktu lalu.

 

Awal muncul GNOME 3, saya termasuk orang yang tidak suka, antar mukanya aneh. Lebih nyaman dan sederhana GNOME 2. Saya yang saat itu masuk di tim pengembang BlankOn, bersama rekan-rekan membedah kejelekannya sehingga muncullah bibit-bibit pemberontakan dengan dimulainya BlankOn Panel yang berujung pada Manokwari.

Manokwari sendiri perlu dibuat karena kedepannya, semua pustaka GNOME 2 akan ditinggalkan dan beralih ke GNOME 3. Tapi saya dan teman-teman tidak siap untuk sepenuhnya menggunakan GNOME 3 karena beberapa kejelekannya.

2014, saat GNOME Asia di Beijing, saya ngomong sendiri bahwa GNOME jelek ke pimpinan desainer UI/UX, Allan Day, dan berujunglah diskusi panjang. Saya pasti kalah sama mereka dalam hal penjelasan, saya cupunya minta ampun. Tapi saya menang dengan menceritakan bahwa GNOME 3 membutuhkan sumber daya komputer cukup besar (misal RAM 1 GB) di mana masyarakat Indonesia tidak banyak yang bisa memenuhinya. Sedangkan Manokwari, bisa bekerja (waktu itu) pada RAM 256 MB. Toh Manokwari masih menggunakan pustaka GNOME.

Sekitar 2011, Ubuntu merilis Unity, banyak yang komplain dan gak nyaman. Pindah ke KDE juga takut gengsinya turun lantara KDE di masa itu (sampai masa kini sih) mirip MS Windows dan banyak kutu (sekarang udah jauh mendingan).

Kita terbiasa ngedumel dan menjelek-jelekkan tanpa bisa menunjukkan apa yang bisa dilakukan untuk memperbagus hal tersebut. Mental kita lebih banyak sebagai pencela dari pada penebar “Rahmatan Lil Alamin”.

Saya dulu, mantab pindah ke GNOME 3.x saat memiliki layar dengan resolusi di atas FHD (3K) dan layar sentuh. Banyak perabotan GNOME bisa berfungsi dengan baik, seperti:

• di Yoga 3 Pro, di layar ada logo jendela, saat disentuh, akan bisa menampilkan Activities. Pada DE lain tidak bisa
• di layar sentuh, on screen keyboard sangat mudah tampil saat kita merasa memerlukannya (atau pada tablet mode). Tentunya hal ini tidak terjadi jika komputer kalian masih konvensional.

Jadi, sebelum mencela GNOME, lebih baik kopdar, ngopi-ngopi dulu dengan teman-teman komunitas GNOME. Saya traktir!

Catatan: saya belum nemu orang komplain dengan DE-nya Endless OS. Kalau komplain terkait tidak bisa booting dan sampai mencela saya tidak beretika sih ada.

Membangun GNOME Recipes dan Menjalankan dengan Antar Muka Indonesia

Tulisan ini masih sedikit melanjutkan pengalaman GNOME Recipes Hackfest 2018, namun sedikit ditambahkan atas pesanan Pak Andika (Koordinator Penerjemahan GNOME) terkait bagaimana cara menguji aplikasi dengan antar muka bahasa Indonesia (dengan file .po yang sudah kita terjemahkan).

Mari kita mulai!