Brno - First impressions!

I just arrived in Brno 2 days ago (17.02.2013) and I think this is a good opportunity to share what I found here.

Public transportation:
Differently from Brazil, it really works here, at least the lines I've trying to use until now.
There is a really easy connection between city center and the Red Hat office. It's something about 20 minutes inside a tram, but usually you can find a seat to sit and the frequency of the trams is something really impressive, 5 minutes between one and another, during the "work hour" (until 19:00). After this the frequency is decreased a bit, something about 10 minutes between each tram and it is decreasing until the midnight, when you can get a tram each hour. The price is really cheap, mainly if you can buy a 3 months ticket (actually, I still don't bought this one, need to take a picture and bla bla bla). But it is really better and cheaper than in Brazil.

Food:
It's good, but it's heavy.
Actually I just have had 2 dinners and 1 lunch, all of them eating pork (usually with potatoes). The food is also cheaper than in Brazil. Yesterday, with Bruno Gonçalves and Rui Matos, we ate some ribs in a typical (?) Czech restaurant. All meals here, at least in the dinner, can serve easily a couple (at least if you're a brazilian and are not so big/fat than me). A weird stuff here is that, before the lunch, they usually serve soup. Makes sense, the weather contributes with this, but it is a bit unusual in my country. :-)

Beer:
Okay, here is the place!

Office:
Actually I just did a quick visit to the Red Hat office and the office looks really nice. Good chairs, big monitors (yay!), good computers. There are some snacks in the office, I think it is public (if not, sorry, I just ate someone's snack) :-).
Looks like will be really easy to fell "in home".

People:
Actually I just met Rui Matos, Bruno Gonçalves, Christian Schaller, Florian, the HR people and another Red Hat guys (this list was being increased while i was writing the post)  that I really don't remember the name (sorry about that) for a lunch. They look nice and friendly! :-)
Hope I can meet the rest of the team soon :-)

Services:
I've already moved to a flat (thanks Bruno Gonçalves for this), bought a Czech mobile number, asked for internet, opened a bank account  ... fortunately to do all this stuff I found English speakers in: the phone store, real agency and, for internet, Foreigners (brno.foreigners.cz) took care about this (thanks Liduska!)

Language:
Yeah, there are some restaurants (the most part, maybe?) where they don't speak English. And Czech, ah, this language is a kind of different than everything I heard before. It'll be really hard to learn but let's do the things go.

Weather:
Cold, really cold!

Yeah, summarizing, looks like I'm going to live in a really nice and cold place :-)

Changes

2012: Some things have a happy ending.

- Bye bye UNICAMP: I'm glad for the 5,5 years we had together, for the GSoCs and mainly for the friendships you have provided me. Was a really nice period in my life but I'm happy so far it's done.
- Bye bye FIT: I really had the opportunity to work with great guys and I learnt a lot about "How are the processes in a great company". Unfortunately, I was not FITting in the company philosophy anymore but I really wish the best, for all employees :) Special thanks to IBM guys: Breno Leitão, Leonardo Rangel, Leonardo Garcia and Rafael Lorandi.
- Bye bye Campinas: Since 2007 Campinas has been my home and I have lucky for live and go along with friends in the most part of this 5,5 years. Guys, you were, you are, you always will be the definition of awesomeness
- 8 years dating: Sometimes we need to make a decision ... :)

Althought I don't have doubts that 2012 is the year with more significant changes I've ever had in my whole life ... 2013 is also promising ...

2013: New ways to follow:
- Marriage: After 8 years dating, Eliane and I are married, finally! I have no doubts Eliane is the person I want with me. Hope we can be happy in this new step of our life! :)
- GNOME Foundation: Special thanks to Zeeshan Ali and Christophe Fergeau for a positive (or not negative) vouch and mainly for the opportunity in the Google Summer of Code. I hope I can help (at least some parts of) GNOME as part of my new work.
- Red Hat: Special thanks to Zeeshan Ali (yeah, again, Zeeshan rocks!) for the indication and Christian Schaller for the opportunity. I have no words to describe how happy I am for enjoy a company where the values are so close than mine,  that did my bootstrap in the Free Software world (was the first Linux Distribution I have tried), that has a plenty of contributions in the most significants Open Source projects! Ah! I'll try to do my best in the Desktop Team. :)
- Czech Republic: I'll move to Brno as soon I can get my VISA (probably in February/2013). Didn't have been there, but looks like a nice (and cold) place to live. Eliane is really happy about live in a not so warm place and my only wish is: Don't meet Gregor Samsa family and friends. :-)

That's all folks, I wish all the best and have a happy new year!

Satisfaction!

After a long time trying to find a way to feel good doing what I've been paid to do, finally it's clear on my mind. I don't mind about work with free/non-free software. What moves my motivation is another thing: I only want to do something useful, useful for me, useful for people ... in a large scale. Unfortunately, I didn't have this possibility in any place I've worked for.

Okay, it's time to search for something better ... :)

Libosinfo 0.2.0

All the work I did during this summer, as a GSoC student, in libosinfo was released yesterday. Yay!

Here is the announcement done by Zeeshan Ali (Khattak):

"Libosinfo 0.2.0 is out!

Introducing a new set of APIs to enable application developers to easily create

unattended/automated installation scripts for various operating systems.

Currently only Fedora and Microsoft Windows are supported. Also provided is a

commandline tool, 'osinfo-install-script' to easily create such scripts without

having to write any code.

Other changes since 0.1.2:

- Fix build against mingw64 toolchain.

- API for getting product logo URLs.

- Fix architecture for a Windows 2008 media.

- Remove bogus minimum storage information for Fedora.

- Add varirables for system and local database paths in pkg-config."

Moreover, I've been working on libosinfo to add AvatarInfo (current task) and improve the replacement that will be done in Gnome Boxes.

See ya!

Pencils Down!

Google Summer of Code is over and is time to stop, look back, and discuss a bit about what I've been implementing.

Our original idea was port boxes to use Install Scripts API, included in libosinfo (Daniel Berrange, Zeeshan Ali and I have been working on this, that probably will can be used in the next libosinfo release) and add support for another distributions (OpenSuSE, Debian, Ubuntu,etc ...). The second part was not completed, unfortunately, but will be finished after the Google Summer of Code period, because the first part was a bit more long than expected.

The first part of the project, the port itself, was finished and covers:
- small fixes in libosinfo
- add support to libosinfo to generate the script in a file
- add suport to osinfo-install-script tool to use the previous one
- add a new entity, called osinfo_install_config_param used to get which are the parameters that can be set in an install script
- add support to generate an install script for Fedora (desktop profile)
- add support to generate an install script for Windws (it covers: win2k, win2k3, win2k3r2, winxp, winvista, win7)
- remove boxes installation scripts and use libosinfo API

IIUC, my patches are going to the upstream ASAP, but until it occurs,  you can see what I'm implementing in my Gitorious (https://gitorious.org/gsoc2012)

Sincerely, was a big pleasure to me could integrate the GNOME team and I hope we can keep  working together.

See ya, people!

GUADEC!

GUADEC didn't was my first international conference, but, certainly, was the funniest one!
Was a great pleasure to meet with some guys that helped me a lot in non-GSoC related projects as: Lennart Poettering, Alon Levy and Christophe Fergeau. And, of course, to meet with some guys that are helping me in GSoC as: Zeeshan Ali, Marc-Andre and Christophe Fergeau (Again? Yeah, he is awesome!)
I've no words to describe how awesome was know some students that I prefer don't name them for fear of forgetting someone. I'll miss you all! :)

In the near future I'll write another blog post (less emotive, this time :)), talking about what I've considered the positive/negative points of GUADEC, IMHO.

Thanks for the time we spent together, the talks, the gossips, the beers!
Thanks GNOME Foundation! Thanks Local Team! Thanks Google! :)

libosinfo: fedora support, for desktop profiles, for unattended installations

Finally these patches were rewritten and sent to virt-tools ML.
It was tested with lastest boxes (including one patch of mine) and works properly.

Let's work on Windows stuffs now, see you in a few days!

Best Regards,