How to contribute to open-source projects
I was again surfing around the web that I ran across this great post on how to start contributing to an open-source project:
http://www.kegel.com/academy/opensource.html
Enjoy contributing 
Linux distribution meme
There is an on-going meme on Linux distributions which is quite interesting, and so, I will follow with the crowd.
1) Which was your Linux distribution story?
I went out shopping with my dad outside in a mall dedicated to computer hardware and software. As we were looking at different software (almost all were Windows-based), I saw a pack of CDs which had a label “Fedora Core 4″ with a cute penguin on it. So I bought it just to see what it is, it sounded like a new software to me! After a few days, I went out to buy a book on Linux to learn how to install it (at the time, I didn’t even know how to boot a computer from CD). I read that book and couldn’t figure out how to install Linux beside Windows, so I ended up frustrated and wiped out my computer altogether and installed Linux. Then I couldn’t use it :S So I ended up installing Windows again because my parents needed to use it. Then, a few months and years passed and I decided it was the time to make the switch. By that time I had learned about windows pretty well and thought Windows was not good enough. So I installed Fedora again and forced myself to stick with it. After a while I got familiar with it and put Windows aside completely. From then, I switched back and forth between Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora but Fedora was the one!
2) What is your preferred $your_distribution version?
I have always lived on the latest Fedora and my favorite is Fedora 10 (the latest). Although I go on rawhide for long periods of time too.
3) Write a short story (more like and anecdote) about your past distribution.
It’s great. I can always rely on people on IRC and forums to get help from and they are always helpful! And the fact that it’s always bleeding edge makes me proud.
Is it solid enough?
I finally started pursuing my long-awaited desire to learn KDE libraries. As a matter of fact, I learned Qt because I wanted to code for KDE. But hey, here I am, kind of doing it after 1 year. Anyhow, let’s get straight to the point, I wanted to talk about Solid a little bit. If you don’t know what Solid is, take a look at http://solid.kde.org. In a nutshell, it’s a library which let’s you interact with the hardware. For example, with Solid you can find out if the system has webcam or not, if it has storage drives, and if it does, what kind are they, and plus, if you find the right hardware, you can do ’stuff’ with it, like in case of storage drives, you can mount it and unmount it.
So, enough with the introduction. What I really want to talk about is how awesome Solid is. I will give you an example. Last night, I started reading the Solid documentation from techbase.kde.org and I looked at the tutorials. I started reading them at about 7pm and finished at around 8. As soon as I finished reading the tutorials I was able to write a simple app which looks and finds the memory stick that is attached to the computer. It was absolute mind-blowing for me! I never thought I could do that kind of stuff! But today, I sat down (literally for hours and hours) and wrote a backup app, and I called it KBackedUp. For the actual backing up, it uses a script (http://code.google.com/p/backed-up) as its backend, so it doesn’t do the actual backing up, but it doesn’t the rest.
In the mean time, I also learned about QProcess and KDEUI libraries (KXmlGuiWindow is plain awesome) which I might talk about later. But for now,
Happy holidays! 
Using Kopete as Google Talk
Packages you need to install:
qca-tls
You configure a Jabber account with the username as your full gmail username (including @gmail.com) and the password as your gmail password. Click on the ‘Connection’ tab and check all three options and put ‘talk.google.com’ as server with port number ‘5223′. Now click OK and you’re done 
Summary:
Setup account:
-Basic Setup
Jabber ID: john_smith@gmail.com
password:
-Connection
Use protocol encryption (SSL)
Allow plain-text password authentication
Override default server information
Server: talk.google.com
Port: 5223
Click Ok
Finished!
