Lend a helping hand to a Zeitgeist developer in need

By Benjamin Humphrey, Published May 26, 2010

Seif Lotfy is a fun-loving Zeitgeist and Elementary hacker at large who is a bit low on funds, like most people. Unfortunately he’s *so* poor that he can’t even afford a laptop to work on Zeitgeist after his broke, and is instead stuck with his Atom netbook.

Here’s his story:


After my laptop (Dell XPS 1330) broke at GCDS. I came back to Germany and bought me a little nettop (I got 100 Euro discount on it) since it was the only thing i was able to afford. I used it with my 22 inch screen and even took both of them with me to the OpenSuSE Conf. Right before the Zeitgeist hackfest I added a little extra and switched my nettop with a notebook.

So all the Zeitgeist development on my side since after GCDS was done on a Atom 1.66 GHz processor, and let me tell you its a PITA.

I don't want to sound whiny but it is slow. GNOME Shell takes forever to compile. To open the applications menu for the first time in Shell takes 10 seconds here and 17 for the Recent Documents. Other things took me around 30 €“ 90 minutes compile such as evolution and nautilus. It is becoming a bottleneck for development.


Help a bruva out and donate something to this good cause, so we can all continue to enjoy awesome new Zeitgeist features such as:
  • Zeitgeist integration with Evolution: Show me what files i used during a meeting. Which contacts I interacted with most.
  • Zeitgeist integration with Unity: I already have a python implementation of the UI using Zeitgeist and intend to support the DX team with the Vala implementation.
  • Zeitgeist integration with Nautilus: Add the Recently Accessed as well as Commonly Accessed in the sidebar.
  • Zeitgeist integration with Shell: Basically finish the implementation of http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/tag/gnome-shell/
  • More stuff€¦
You can kindly donate by using the PayPal link on his site.
Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

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  • Anonymous

    man some (more like most) of the comments on his site are a bunch of f*cking dicks, some of them are telling him to just get another job and another guy saying “I paid for myself during college. So can you.”. with people like that you have to wonder why this guy still develops for the project.

    anyhow i like the idea of zeitgeist and want to see it used in nautilus and gnome shell so im donating $10 (im unemployed and usually don’t donate anymore to a project whose program isn’t stable yet).

    • Anonymous

      I’m pleased our readership is nicer! :)

      • carlf

        Are they? I got called paranoidcarlf by a person the other day. I’d view that as a personal attack.

        • Anonymous

          I saw that. With exceptions of course.

        • Anonymous

          I saw that. With exceptions of course.

        • Anonymous

          With exceptions of course.

    • bonz

      yah, they wan’t him to move to gnome infrastructure.. didn’t gnome team reject zeitgeist? (correct me if am wrong)

      i would love to donate, but i am just poor boy from a 3rd world country :-)

      • http://www.manishsinha.net Manish Sinha

        Doesn’t matter if GNOME rejected zeitgeist. They keep on doing such things. That should not hamper the guy’s enthusiasm.

        I like GNOME just because it’s simple, but I am not happy the way developers think. If Usability glitches are features in their eyes, then zeitgeist is a spyware in their eyes.

      • Anonymous

        zeitgeist got rejected by gnome? then whats the point of gnome 3.0? it’ll have no new features

      • http://brettalton.com Brett Alton

        Just do a search for Zeitgeist and GNOME and you’ll see it did not get rejected. In fact, it is part of the core changes to GNOME 3.0…

    • Waldir Leôncio

      I’m no developer (which means I might be saying BS here), but I think in a perfect world software developers would have a high-end machine to compile and a low-end one to run their babies. That way, they can work on a reliable machine and at the same time make sure their software is lean enough to run even on slower PCs.

  • Anonymous

    If you can’t donate try to spread the word, in the hope that someone else will, or they’ll tell someone else. This is an awesome project.

  • MyName

    Do you have any other way than paypal? I cant use them because they want me to send in my physical address before being able to transfer money, and Im not going to do that. Screw them.

    But I would like to contribute. Zeitgeist rocks.

  • http://seilo.geekyogre.com Seif Lotfy

    Guys… Thanks a lot for helping out… I am grateful for your support and so is the Zeitgeist team… Pretty soon we will introduce you to a new set of AWESOME features… It is the least I can do for people who support our idea and thank you for standing for innovation in GNOME :)
    Cheers
    Seif

    • http://twitter.com/Sephiroth_VII Sephiroth_VII

      You’re only interested in a notebook, right? I a have a triple-core desktop I don’t really use anymore…

      • http://www.manishsinha.net Manish Sinha

        Or you can gift him a build farm :P

        • http://twitter.com/Sephiroth_VII Sephiroth_VII

          Well, if he wants it, it’s his :p

          • http://seilo.geekyogre.com Seif Lotfy

            Very kind of you… But unless you are in Germany it will cost you alot… :)
            And a notebook is much more handy. But again i might find use for it :P
            Contact me on irc.freenode.net #zeitgeist … you will find me there and I can tell you what we can do with it :)

          • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

            I smell the birth of SkyNet… ;)

          • Johan

            Well, hey, and extra buildmachine can’t hurt, right? :)

  • pt

    he looks so different to the image you posted to the one on his site
    http://seilo.geekyogre.com/about-2/

  • Waldir Leôncio

    Ok, I’ve just had a meeting with Mr. Piggy Bank and we’ll be glad to give you a hand, brotha!

    Let’s go, guys! He’s only a couple hundred Euros short now! Go, Seif! :)

  • Gentoo Utilisateur

    Just optimize your software, make it modular, smaller and faster. Ten years ago we’d been able to compile GNOME and KDE, too. On much worse hardware! There’s no need for faster computers. They are already fast enough. The problem is the software, not the hardware. The culprit for slowness used to be hardware-relevant, but nowadays it really shouldn’t.

    • Anonymous

      True. You can probably blame Microsoft and the big giants for that.

  • Johan

    I’ll throw €10 at you when I get home from work. It’s worth it. If 100 people do the same you have your laptop Seif. I wish you well, and look forward to more Zeitgeist news coming out.

  • No name

    He has 832 dollars now! I think he can get that monster laptop tomorrow. :)

  • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

    If it takes 10 seconds to open up the *applications menu* in a netbook — well, at least now you know you have a problem with gnome-shell somewhere, right? 1.66 Ghz is _not_ that bad…

  • http://www.FreezingMoon.org/ Dread Knight

    Zeitgeist is one of the best thing happening with Gnome 3.0 right now (etc) and it would be a shame to be able to help but not do it.

    It’s amazing how awesome stuff is made by poor unemployed people and it’s free for everyone who wishes to make use of it.

  • carlf

    When I was in college I had student loans, other gov loans, work study. I’ll just say that my nephew graduates from high school May 28th, starts his summer college classes this June and his major is computer science. His loans etc… cover the cost of the computer he needs. He also works after class and will be doing the same in college. I would think that European countries would have something close to what the United States does.

  • http://olympusdigitalpen.blogspot.com/ dr. watson

    Seif’s story is exactly why Open Source will always fall behind close source platforms such as Windows and Mac – lack of money. I make a good living as a Windows application developer, but in the six months I worked on Open Source projects – my pay checks stopped coming due to lack of funding / donations. We live in a world where the economic cycle is key to survival. The exchange of money for goods and services keep the process going. If you don’t agree with me than ask yourself if you wouldn’t mind doing your job without a paycheck.

    People love the idea of keeping Ubuntu open and I don’t mind it either, but put a price tag on the damn thing even if it’s only $50 and watch how much better the product becomes. Start encouraging closed source paid applications and watch how much better the software becomes. Nature of the beast.