Planet Ubuntu

Alan Pope: Application Selection in the Default Install

2009-11-20T23:05:42+00:00

The following video was recorded at the Ubuntu Lucid Developer Summit in November 2009. It’s a recording of a one hour session in which the set of applications delivered on the Ubuntu CD is discussed. This has caused some controversy amongst the community, and we are keen to get this video online as soon as possible so people can see what points were raised and decisions made. Enjoy.
Application Selection in the Default Install

Martin Pitt: Nicer Launchpad upstream releases with lp-project-upload

pitti — 2009-11-20T23:05:23+00:00

A while ago I introduced a script lp-project-upload to automate tarball release uploads to Launchpad.

Many people asked for further features, two of which I added now: First, it automatically invokes gpg to create a tarball signature (unless one is already present), and second it invokes an editor to specify changelog and release notes (just keep the files empty if you don’t need them).

Uploaded to lucid’s ubuntu-dev-tools, enjoy!

Justin Dugger: Don't let the MSRP fool you

2009-11-20T18:27:45+00:00

I ordered up a Nokia N900 the other day, and I have to say the preorder market for it is strange. Or perhaps, I don't participate in preorders often enough to know that this is common.

The price listed in the Nokia Store and press releases is around 650USD. But the retailers seem to be undergoing a reverse auction. Newegg undercuts Amazon by 30 dollars, resulting in a wave of cancellations at Amazon and new orders at Newegg. Then Amazon cuts the price further. Then Amazon is the first to post an 50 dollar manufacturer rebate earned by activating the Ovi Store (app store), and others rapidly follow suit. Obviously some people will game the system and preorder with every retailer and cancel all but the cheapest when shipping time comes.

At this point the price is around 200 dollars away from the MSRP; the amazon link above is currently listing at 479USD. It makes me wonder how big their markup was, or if they're taking a loss accidentally (or intentionally). Either way I have to say this recession has been great on my pocketbook.

I think when it arrives I'll use the winter break to make a location aware app for customer loyalty cards, as I'm tired of carrying around a billion bar codes in my wallet. Maybe I should bug a friend of mine with Android to show me how that one works.

Alan Pope: 3rd Batch of Videos From UDS

2009-11-20T17:41:11+00:00

Wednesday 18th November 2009 UDS Plenary Session

Interview with David Mandella – Ubuntu Mobile Team Lead

Interview with Robbie Williamson – Ubuntu Foundations Team Lead

Interview with Marjo Mercado – Ubuntu QA Team Lead

Seif Lotfy: How do I deal with information? — A non-tech Zeitgeist background

Seif Lotfy — 2009-11-20T17:31:03+00:00

Ketil W Aanson wrote an AWESOME post about use cases of Zeitgeist from a non techie point of view

PLEASE READ

Cody A.W. Somerville: Ubuflu

2009-11-20T17:14:11+00:00

I’ve unfortunately been stuck in bed the last two days due to the flu. Luckily I’m feeling much better today thanks to lots of dayquil and OJ.

Julian Andres Klode: Back to the 90s Bye PC, welcome back thin clients

Julian Andres Klode — 2009-11-20T16:56:54+00:00

In the ’90s, you had a large machine and several thin clients accessing it by using X11 via network. In 2010, you will have large datacenters providing applications to and storing the data of millions of users. As you might have guessed, I am talking about Google Chrome OS.

It seems that the PC era is slowly coming to an end, with devices being increasingly connected ‘to the cloud’ and people being always online; and storing their data on Google’s servers. We do emails online using Google Mail, we do navigation online using Google Maps, we edit and view our documents using Google Docs, our newspaper is Google News; and when we want entertainment we open the browser and type youtube.com into the URL bar. Even if we were formatting the hard disk and reinstalling the system, most people wouldn’t even notice; because all there data is stored online.

There is also the question of freedom. Free software is not very widespread in the SaaS world. You also lose the control over your data. But RMS can tell you more about it.

So it seems that 2010, Google is the new mainframe and netbooks and smartphones are the new terminals. Whether this is good or not cannot be said. The question you have to ask yourself is whether you can trust Google to keep your data secure or not. I trust them enough to host all of my emails, the RSS feeds I read, my searches.

Posted in General

Sebastian Kügler: I’m a real developer …

2009-11-20T16:13:40+00:00

… not just a marketing guy. :-) During the Qt Developer Days in Munich, I took the Qt certification exam (actually as one of the first people to take it). It was my birthday, so they let me pass:

Also, right now I’m in Reykjavik, Iceland for the KDAB company meeting and 10 year anniversary. Preliminary conclusions: Watch out for roastbeef, it tastes like whale, riding on a horse feels like riding a square-wheeled bicycle (but slightly more scary) and having infinite amounts of energy under your rearside makes for interesting and relaxing uses and given a large-ish island with tectonic and seismic activity, you’ll find the capital at the most likely spot for an earthquake.

Pramod Dematagoda: Hello world! (And planet)

2009-11-20T15:37:10+00:00

My first ever blog post, so with that, I am now a part of the blogosphere. Here’s to my survival.

Paul Hummer: My Launchpad Development Workflow Warts : HALP!

2009-11-20T05:11:35+00:00

A few times during UDS, we've talked about setting up a Launchpad development environment. I think it'd be great if the community really got involved in making Launchpad better, and I don't think I'm alone on the Launchpad team thinking that. However, setting up the development environment is kinda scary. Among other things, the script that sets up a Launchpad development environment (rocketfuel-setup), deletes all postgres databases to set up its own, edits yours /etc/hosts and your apache configs, and adds some PPAs that may interfere with your system packages (although it's been a while since it did that to me.)

To combat this, and allow me to fart around on my system on the weekends without breaking my environment, I do all my development in chroot environment. This means Launchpad can eat my system, and my system can't eat my Launchpad. I've been working this way for almost 8 months now, and have found it to be much better than sharing spaces.

The one thing that I have had a problem with is the relationship between my desktop and the chroot. I figured that maybe I'd reach out to the community and see if they can recommend a path for putting some Compound W for some development warts I have.

When I start up my computer to work on Launchpad, I open two terminals and a gvim. Both terminals become chroot terminals by my typing schroot which then promptly get navigated to have my current branch's tree as the working directory. This means that these terminals are now utterly useless for anything but work in the chroot, which can be good for focus, but if I need to do anything else, I have to open another terminal to do it. Having lots of terminal windows open is generally a bad thing for focus as well.

Also, I run lots of Windmill tests. Windmill needs a browser, which needs an X display. I've been using Xnest -ac :1 &!; metacity &! outside of the chroot, and then setting export DISPLAY=:1 in my chroot in order to get X forwarded over. This is really sub-optimal, since it's a lot of crap to set up to run Windmill (which in and of itself is a lot of other crap to set up).

I would love nothing more than to modify rocketfuel-setup to be created in a chroot if I could find an easy way to work outside the chroot and just forward certain commands over to the chroot. I'm sure some server sysadmin has a great method for doing this. If you have a solution, a bribe can be arranged. If you're at UDS right now, even better.

Joe Barker: An Interview With nixternal

Joe — 2009-11-19T23:26:46+00:00

The next interview in the series comes from somebody who I’ve never really spoken to personally (well…until now), but who I’ve heard a lot of people talking about/referring to. To me, this shows the extraordinary amount of work that he’s put into Ubuntu/Kubuntu. Some of you have probably heard of him for something more recent…which I won’t spoil – so I give you nixternal’s interview:

1. Tell as much as you’re willing about your “real life” like name, age, gender, location, family, religion, profession, education, hobbies, etc.

My name is Rich Johnson, aka nixternal. a/s/l would be 35, male, Chicago, IL, USA. I have a 13 year old daughter. I am some sort of software developer by trade. I have a few degrees, of which only the most minor one is in Computer Science. My other degrees are all business related with an emphasis in management and marketing. For fun, when I am not hacking on Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian, or KDE, I like to cycle. I am an aspiring Lance Armstrong, or as my dad calls me, “Blimp Armstrong”. You know, since I am a bit bigger than Lance.

2. When and how did you become interested in computers? in Linux? in Ubuntu?

I became interested in computers around 1980, right after we moved to Chicago from southwestern Michigan. I started with all the most common ones that those who are older might remember. TRS-80, Commodore Vic 20 and 64, Apple IIe, 286, 386…you get the point there. I became interested in Linux while in the Navy either at the end of 1993 or the beginning of 1994. It was one of the first Pentium computers, can’t remember the speed really. It was a Packard Bell Multimedia something or other. I got it home and neither the sound or the modem worked. After researching the Internet very slowly, I came across Slackware GNU/Linux. The next day at work I decided to go ahead and download all of the floppy images. From there my love of Linux started and I started contributing any way I could. I would say around 2005 I finally switched over to Kubuntu after hearing all of the hooplah of Ubuntu. I had been a user and contributor to KDE since the beginning almost, so that is why I chose Kubuntu. The community is what drew me in, and finally during the Dapper release I started contributing to the project.

3. When did you become involved in the forums (or the Ubuntu community)? What’s your role there?

I have never been a big forums person for one reason or the other, so my contributions there are definitely very very small. In Ubuntu I got involved in 2005. Currently I am a MOTU and Core Developer, with about 95% of my contributions being Kubuntu/KDE packages. I am also a member of the Ubuntu Community Council, MOTU Council, and the America’s Regional Membership board. I am also one of the community leaders in the Ubuntu Documentation Project where myself and Jonathan Jesse run the Kubuntu documentation currently. The great majority of the work I do in the community is pretty much developer oriented, however I also help with community stuff whenever I can. On the community side I founded and still lead to this day the Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team.
4. Are you an Ubuntu member? If so, how do you contribute? If not, do you plan on becoming one?

Yes I am a member. Most of my contributions are developer oriented as a part of the MOTU and Core Developer teams.

5. What distros do you regularly use? What software? What’s your favorite application? Your least favorite?

Kubuntu and Debian are the 2 distros that I use the most. I also have openSUSE, Fedora, Arch, Slackware, Ubuntu, and Edubuntu installed on various machines in my little hacker space. My most favorite application is a tough one. I am a huge fan of Yakuake, Kate, KDevelop, Amarok, Kile, Konqueror, and some others. Least favorite would probably be Firefox or OpenOffice.

6. What’s your fondest memory from the forums, or from Ubuntu overall? What’s your worst?

Fondest memory from the forums is many. Every problem I have ran across has pretty much been solved with the help of the forums. I am a GNOME dummy, so when breaking my Ubuntu box the forums have been a tremendous help. My fondest memory from Ubuntu is without a doubt participating in the Ubuntu Developer Summit last year. It was awesome finally getting to meet the people I have annoyed for the past 3 or so years. I don’t have a worst memory of the forums at all. My worst in Ubuntu would be helping to convince the switch to KDE 4.0 so darn early. Sorry for that one

7. What luck have you had introducing new computer users to Ubuntu?

When I was taking my computer science college classes I was very successful with getting people to switch. Most of the crowd I associate with in Chicago already use one flavor of Linux or the other. I got my brother to switch, but that wasn’t to hard to do, he had no other choice. Since switching him he does not call or bother me with fixing his computer. Now if only the others would take note, as I am tired of fixing Windows screw ups by them all.

8. What would you like to see happen with Linux in the future? with Ubuntu?

I would definitely love to see the whole “year of the Linux desktop” thing stop. I would love to see less fanboys and more active contributors. I would love to see Linux succeed, don’t get me wrong, but there is still a while to go before then. Those “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” commercials work here in the US. I think that once Linux gets at least 2% of the desktop market we can start to hope to become number 2 by going after Mac. In Ubuntu, I would love to see the hooplah of bug number one go away. Bug number one is Microsoft, and we haven’t even handled Mac yet. But most of all, I would love to see more contributors. The Linux community is so easy to get involved in, whereas it isn’t as easy to be a part of something as large. I don’t know anyone who is fixing Microsoft or Mac bugs just because they can.

9. If there was one thing you could tell all new Ubuntu users, what would it be?

Patience young grasshopper. Windows and Mac have spoiled users, and quite a few new users come to Ubuntu expecting the same exact experience. There are still spots in Linux and Ubuntu that are not on par with Windows or Mac. Having patience and definitely an open mind will make your experience better. Don’t be afraid to break it. Unlike the others, when you break Ubuntu or Linux, you can usually fix it up, and know that the forums and IRC have plenty of people who are willing to help you fix it. Also, if you have a problem when you first start with someone, remember that someone is only one and doesn’t represent the entire community. I hate to say this, but remember that 99.9% of the people who are helping you are volunteers. The reason I hate to say that is because I feel a lot of people use the volunteer excuse as a reason not to do something. Jeesh, I just realized that was more than one, sorry.

Jonathan Riddell: KDE Licensing Policy Changes

2009-11-19T22:01:32+00:00

Today I updated the KDE Licensing Policy with a couple of changes following requests from folks. Most notably Creative Commons is now allowed. This is only for standalone media files (such as an image for a splash screen) and not for anything which might want to be mixed with GPL material such as icons. "Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported" is the version allowed. The other change is requiring BSD licencing for CMake modules, which brings the policy into line with existing practice.

Matthew Helmke: UDS Accents

2009-11-19T21:08:23+00:00

I had one of my European colleagues say to me last night that he feels like he has picked up many aspects of the American accent while here in Dallas. I have spent a large amount of time with my British, Irish, Australian and other European friends and it seems I have picked up a few of their vocal mannerisms and accent quirks. That’s kind of how community works, isn’t it? We each give to and take from one another, ending up with a conglomeration that is mutually comprehensible and beneficial.

Share and Enjoy:

Alan Pope: Second Batch of UDS Videos and Interviews

2009-11-19T20:43:11+00:00

Here’s a second lot of videos from the Ubuntu Developer Summit. Enjoy.

We’re also syndicating these on the Ubuntu Miro Community, so big thanks to our friends at Miro for providing this service.

As always you can get them on our Ubuntu Developers Blip.tv channel, and our Ubuntu Developers YouTube channel.

Plenary 17th November 2009

Ubuntu Appliances Defined

Daily Builds Work in Lucid

Interview with Pete Graner

Interview with Mark Shuttleworth

Interview with Jono Bacon

Interview with Rick Spencer

Jonathan Riddell: How are you? Kubuntu in Dallas

2009-11-19T19:06:10+00:00

The Ubuntu Developer Summit is happening this week in Dallas. The theme of the discussions is LTS and what it will take to have a release in six months which can be supported for three years hence. We've been having sessions on packaging, development, bugs policy, translations and more. You can find the schedule and how to take part in sessions on the summit website, there are icecast streams for all the rooms. The Kubuntu specs are on this wiki page still works in progress of course. It's going to be great to have a KDE 4 release suitable for LTS, just six months to do it!

Some of the Kubuntu Team take to the ice rink

Alan Pope: Lucid Ubuntu Developer Summit Videos

2009-11-19T17:48:27+00:00

The Ubuntu Developer Summits have always been very open and participatory events, but this year we’re going a step further than previous years. On top of the audio streams, gobby documents, separate IRC channels, blueprints and wiki pages we also have many sessions videoed. The guys here are working hard to get the videos edited and online. Some have already been uploaded, with others soon to follow.

The videos are available in both Ogg Video format and flash, so we can reach a wide and diverse audience of interested parties.

I’ve linked to some of them below. If you’re reading this blog post in some kind of rss reader or aggregator, you might need to click through to my blog to see them, or alternatively just go directly to the Ubuntu Developers Blip.tv Channel where you can view and download the videos. Also below are direct links to the Ogg Video files for the impatient and flash-avoiders.

We also have an RSS Feed for the Ubuntu Developers Blip.tv Channel.

For fans of YouTube, the videos will show up in the Ubuntu Developers channel.

Morning Plenary 16th November 2009

Afternoon Plenary 16th November 2009

LoCo Council

Encourage Team Roadmaps

Distributed Development in Lucid

Byobu Window Management

Audio Hardware Enablement

More to follow!

Ted Gould: Kinda like Fedora

2009-11-19T17:44:00+00:00

I admit it, I'm a little jealous of the Fedora feature of being able to install signed packages without a password prompt. I set out to get close on Ubuntu. The way that you edit the PolicyKit practices towards package install is to edit the file /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/. If you look at the action for "Install packages" you can change <allow_active>auth_admin_keep</allow_active> to <allow_active>yes</allow_active>. Then software center works as expected.

Martin Owens: Ubuntu Ice Skating

2009-11-19T17:06:13+00:00

Here at UDS we do various fun activities after the sessions have ended. People have been great for getting these events organised.

So on Tuesday we went to the local Galleria to ice skating. People, if you want to do something dangerous, don’t go shooting, go ice skating. At least 4 people were injured in some way, I sprained by ankle and shin and have been hobbling around like an Igor all week, grantbowman got himself a concussion and I forget what ailed other people.

Photo Gallery

Steven Harms: Fedora 12 default package install policy

2009-11-19T15:50:27+00:00

Just a quick note, if you don’t like Fedora 12’s policy, you probably don’t understand how systems today currently work.

This is much more secure, and you are able to disable it. If you are using systems in public, then there is much more you need to disable such as removable media automounting etc, and would not use default settings anyway.

The current way of throwing blanket root access out for any system change is inherently less secure, their change aims to only allow signed package and that 1 specific action to occur.

Yes you could make a collision, but if you can’t trust your package sources, you can’t trust your system as a whole, so the entire idea is moot.

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Efrain Valles: LoCo Contact Change: Wisconsin LoCo Team

effiejayx — 2009-11-19T15:39:11+00:00

There is a new LoCo Team Contact in the Wisconsin US-team. Anthony Hook is taking over from Trevor Mosey and Uberushaximus. Anthony mentions of his motivations towards the team:

I hope that we will be able to get some regular activity in our LoCo and make it worthwhile for our 87 members (According to our Launchpad Page).

On behalf of the LoCo Council, a warm welcome to Anthony and all the best to ubuntu-us-wi.

Christopher Denter: PyMT (Multi-Touch with Python)

dennda — 2009-11-19T12:02:53+00:00

For those of you who don’t know it, if something provides Multi-Touch input methods, it means that you (and potentially an almost arbitrary number of other people) can interact with the same device using as many of your fingers as you like.

This technique is relatively new to most of us and I have been blown away when I first saw a video of someone interacting with a so-called Multi-Touch table:

(If you’re reading this posting via a planet or feed reader, please click this posting’s title to see the videos on my blog directly.)

In case you like the python programming language, you might be as excited as I was to know that there’s actually a library that allows you to write multi-touch software yourself. This library is PyMT. It’s based on top of OpenGL and allows you to deal with multi-touch input events in a nicely abstracted way. PyMT is cross-platform, open-source and actively developed. It comes with many examples, a mouse simulator (in case you don’t have such a table) and (in the development branch) support for the new touchpads found in recent macbooks as well as other types of hardware (HP touchsmart, etc.). Here’s an old demo video that shows what PyMT is capable of already:

I was so impressed by what is possible that I started diving into the matter quite some time ago. I’m even building my own table at the moment. The thesis I’m currently working on also relies on PyMT. If you got an appetite, feel free to join us in #pymt on irc.freenode.net or the mailing lists.

In order to show you how easy it can be, here’s a quick demo I just wrote.

If you are interested in building your own hardware (yes, you can), let me suggest you take a look at the excellent NUI community. They have software, forums and even a book available for free for you to learn and explore.

Seif Lotfy: A brief preview of Zeitgeist Framework 0.3

Seif Lotfy — 2009-11-19T11:18:23+00:00

Zeitgeist framework 0.3 not the GNOME Activity Journal

Something that might be as a shock to some other devs is that we decided not to store annotations and bookmarks within Zeitgeist. This should be done in Tracker. Zeitgeist answers only WHEN AND HOW DATA WAS ACESSED! We store a journal of how some metadata looked like at the event but nothing compared to Tracker since we don’t store our metadata . We will be working very closely with Tracker from now on since 0.7 has been for a GNOME 2.30. Congrats to the Tracker Devs.

Zeitgeist 0.3 will be a development preview for the 0.9 and 1.0 version that we intend to propose for GNOME inclusion. We won’t be breaking APIs from now on unless its curcial.

Features:

Journal of all the user activities that allows you to ask for a subjournal of any timeperiod for mimetypes, applications, subjects(docs/websites/…), events(opened, closed, focused modied and saved)
Most Used mimetypes, applications, subjects(docs/websites/…), event types(opened, closed, focused modied and saved) in any timeperiod.
Payloads can be stored to to each event. Just like in git and bzr where users add a note to each commit. It should be aloud to add payloads to each event, e.g: the reason the document was changed that way.
Provide Overall Focus Lifetime of applications and documents within any timeperiod.
(IMPLEMENTED BUT MISSING DBUS BINDINGS) Get most focused to docs/apps from docs/apps and vice verse within any timeperiods.
(IMPLEMENTED BUT MISSING DBUS BINDINGS) Subcribe to events from the Journal.

With have a good API to support these features and I would like to suggest applications dumping their history into Zeitgeist if possible instead of maintaining their own history.
For a technical overview of the improvements over 0.2:

stable codebase
very clean modular architecture that allows easy improvements and maintanance
open for new relevancy algortihms
better performance and more memory effcient
clean and structured DBus API. no more weird hashes and structs
less logging from our side since now extension for apps exists like Markus’s amazing firefox plugin that send events to zeitgeist.

We are undergoing some last bug fixes and cleanups. A release will be out soon.

Seif Lotfy: Zeitgeist Hackfest Feedback

Seif Lotfy — 2009-11-19T11:17:35+00:00

After a VERY VERY VERY INTENSIVE week at the Zeitgeist hackfest we are finally back. Thank you TIS, Canonical and GNOME for making it happen. It was the first time key figures of the Zeitgeist Project (Zeitgeist framework and GNOME Activity Journal) to meet up to discuss/implement and plan together. The amount of stuff we got done is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond what we thought we could do, given our experience of only working online together. We were provided whiteboards and we made real use of them as you can see in the following pictures. TIS did a great organizing rooms, food and accomidation. Everything went very very smoothly.

The Journal team mainly consisted of Federico, Natan, Sebastian Faubel, Clemens Buss, Throsten Prante and Ketil W Aansen. The first day was spent them discussing which scope of use cases can be solved by the Journal UI and if it makes sense to actually enrich the Journal with all features of Zeitgeist or not. The Journal has been improved a lot and details as well as performance were improved. Federico and Natan will be blogging about this soon. A release is closer than u think.

The Engine team consisted of Mikkel Kamstrup, Markus Korn, Siegfried Gevatter, Alex Gabriel, Ivan Frade (thanks to Nokia) and me. Our first day was all about violating all the white-boards wit hour specs and algorithms. Ivan helped us define the scope/borders and intersections of Zeitgeist and Tracker. I will also get to this point in another blog post soonish.

The ”Zeitgeist Resonance” implementation, a result of one month of Launchpad and Google Wave discussions, was used as a template for the development. It will be the base of all future Zeitgeist versions for the foreseeable future. It provides better scaling, easier maintenance and a very very improved API. Ivan helped finish integrating the Nepomuk and Tracker ontologies as well as develop the first app that uses Zeitgeist and Tracker simultaneously. Our Dataproviders will be extended to push into Tracker. There is still much to blog about but I think I will cut them down into several blogposts.

Daniel T Chen: How not to configure default settings for sound applications

Dan — 2009-11-19T07:01:36+00:00

You're absolutely right, Martin: recordmydesktop did the wrong thing and screwed your sound experience in Ubuntu. Fortunately, it's really straightforward to fix:

--- recordmydesktop-0.3.8.1.orig/src/rmd_types.h
+++ recordmydesktop-0.3.8.1/src/rmd_types.h
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
#ifdef HAVE_LIBASOUND
#include

- #define DEFAULT_AUDIO_DEVICE "hw:0,0"
+ #define DEFAULT_AUDIO_DEVICE "default"
#else
#include
#include

Maia Kozheva: UI Rant: Computer Janitor

2009-11-19T05:59:18+00:00

I won’t deny that the Ubuntu repository has plenty of software with badly designed UIs. Not much of it, however, makes it into main, and I’m even more puzzled to see something like this in the default installation — developed by Canonical, no less.

Look at it. Look at it.

UIs like this usually come from applications whose developers wrote them to scratch their own itches. Their purpose and the purpose of their controls are obvious to the developers, not much to Joe Average, Jr.

The description for this application, the Computer Janitor, suggests that its purpose is to “bring the system to a state close to being freshly installed”. Based on that, I assumed its purpose was to delete all packages except for the default install and revert system settings to the defaults as well. I was wrong — it does something different. In fact, I still have no idea what exactly it does.

The only hints at its function are the fact that the list entries in the Unused window are package names. Otherwise, it seems to be designed as cryptically as possible. You can probably guess that it’s designed to remove unneeded packages, but where is it stated? And what’s supposed to go into the other two list views? When there’s an empty list, a good UI usually gives me a hint what’s supposed to appear there. Here, I’m left without a clue.

Now, on to minor nitpicks:

No window icon, even though there is a taskbar one.
There is a “File” menu, even though there is nothing to suggest that this application works with files. The only menu item in it is, of course, “Exit”. In fact, the menu is so small that it could easily be moved into buttons in the window itself.
The “Optimize” list view is for some reason narrower than the other two.
It suggests me to remove (I guess) libsane-epson-perfection-1670, which is a package with binary firmware for my scanner that I installed manually. It’s not on apt-get autoremove — what is it doing here?
The spacing between widgets doesn’t comply to the GNOME HIG — there is no spacing between the list views and the edge of the window at all.

In short, we have an application whose UI is designed “for hackers” rather than for the general user (which is itself puzzling — “hackers” will just use command-line apt instead of a GUI utility like this). It would be no harm done if it was just lying somewhere quietly in universe, but what is this doing in the default install?

Martin Owens: RecordMyDesktop Cheesed Sound

2009-11-19T04:59:01+00:00

On karmic the package called gtk-recordmydesktop is the perfect way to record your desktop and even record yourself, below I show a test with cheese running.

But the problem I have is that sound is so difficult to set up… well it’s not hard once you know what to do, you replace the word ‘DEFAULT’ with the word ‘pulse’ and then hand off control of input volume and mixing to the standard audio mixer settings.

I’m going to see about making sure that this issue is fixed in future so that gtk-recordmydesktop works from the second it’s installed.

Brian Burger: First Winter Storm

2009-11-19T03:03:06+00:00

Victoria Airport weather as of about forty minutes ago:

METAR CYYJ 190200Z 15028G36KT 3SM -RA BR FEW008 FEW016 OVC030 07/05
A2969 RMK SF1SC2SC6 SLP055

See that “15028G36KT”? That’s wind, lots of it. 28 knots is 50km/h, sustained wind speed, with gusts up to 38 knots, 70km/h!

Victoria Harbour – right down in the city proper, about 25km south of the airport – isn’t quite as bad, but still lots of wind:

METAR CYWH 190200Z 15018G28KT 12SM -SHRA FEW010 SCT025 OVC050 08/01
A2969 RMK CF1CU2SC5 SLP055=

18G28 – the harbour’s gust speed only just matchs the sustained wind speed for the airport!

We’ve had a constant stream of weather warnings for the last 24hrs, but it took until this afternoon for the wind to really start hammering us.

Nobody makes a proper METAR-widget for Wordpress. Lots of weather plugins, but there don’t seem to be any to show proper raw METARs. Perhaps when I get my PHP skillz back up to speed I’ll attempt one, using the US NOAA/FAA API.

And the otherwise-awesome Gnome panel weather applet has had its location listings gutted recently, so I can’t get both the local airport and local harbour on my panels like I used to… hopefully this regression gets fixed for Ubuntu 10.04!

Now, though, I think I’m going to make something warm and alcoholic to drink, check my flashlights, and hope the power stays on…

Matt Zimmerman: Ubuntu Developer Summit: 10.04 (Lucid)

Matt Zimmerman — 2009-11-18T23:40:47+00:00

This week, I’m in Dallas, Texas working at the Ubuntu Developer Summit. Hundreds of Ubuntu developers and other community members are gathered to discuss the future of the project, particularly the 10.04 release. Developers are engaged in technical discussions about how to implement new features for the release next April.

Obviously, a week is not enough time to decide, design and plan half a year of work, but we try to fit as much as possible into the week, because it is such a rare opportunity for us to work together face to face. In order to make the best use of our time, there is a very full schedule of sessions, and we do a great deal of advance preparation.

There is a persistent rumor that UDS is where we decide what to do in the next cycle, but this isn’t quite accurate. UDS is where we primarily figure out how to do what needs to be done. Naturally, UDS is a sea of ideas, thanks to all of the creative thinking which happens among attendees, and we do dream up and decide to do new things there. However, most of this is determined well before we all board airplanes to travel to UDS.

Brainstorm is constantly collecting and ranking suggestions from Ubuntu users. Ubuntu development teams hold public meetings on IRC where they discuss ideas and plans. Canonical stakeholders submit requirements for their needs. All of this information is aggregated, sorted, evaluated and prioritized, largely by the heroic engineering managers at Canonical, who then develop the core of the agenda for UDS. Additional sessions are then added as they come up during the week, when there is space.

At this particular UDS, I am moderating the server track, where we’re hashing out the details of our projects for Ubuntu Server Edition 10.04. Being a UDS track moderator makes for a very busy week, with back-to-back sessions all day for five days straight. It’s only Wednesday, and I’m feeling a bit fried already, having been away from home for over two weeks.

In each session, there is a discussion between the developers working on the project, the other UDS attendees who are interested in it, and any random folk who listen in on the audio stream and add questions or comments via IRC. The participants take notes using Gobby and then publish them in the Ubuntu wiki, where they are developed into specification documents tracked in Launchpad.

Those specifications are further broken down into work items, which we can use to maintain a burn down chart. Rick Spencer, our desktop engineering manager, gave a presentation this afternoon about how that process will work. The burn down chart will give us a tool for establishing whether we are on track to complete our work, or if we are under or over committed, and make adjustments to our plans as needed.

I have a sense of tremendous momentum going into this release cycle, which will culminate in our third LTS (long-term support) release of Ubuntu.

Laura Czajkowski: UDS on ICE

2009-11-18T21:08:49+00:00

ALOHA, Anyone at UDS intersted in going ice skating, we’re heading to the Galleria for the 8-10pm open session. Be in the lobby at 6:30pm and we’re going to get the subway which is across from the hotel.

It’s on in the Galleria Dallas so if folks want to do some shopping or perhaps grab some food.

Efrain Valles: And then there was a podcast: Spanish speaking LoCo team podcast

effiejayx — 2009-11-18T20:10:11+00:00

The Spanish-speaking Local Community Teams are pleased to present the fruit of a joint effort, a podcast of Ubuntu in Spanish. We are starting this idea and all suggestions are welcomed.

http://people.ubuntu.com/~effie-jayx/ubounpodcaste01t01.ogg

We have much to do yet. need to establish services, proper Wwb syndication and finds ways to make it sustainable in terms of workload. This podcast is expected to go every two weeks and have invited and throughout Latin America. if you want to participate, visit https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LocosHispanos/Podcast

There was an idea, There was a podcast … ubounpodcast!

P.S. Shall provide an mp3 link laters

Michael Lustfield: 64bit Java / Flash Deathroll

2009-11-18T16:31:30+00:00

I think Linux users can safely agree that Flash and Java make web usage into a battle ground. Many of us choose to blame the issue on the distribution we use. When we favor our distribution too much we'll point fingers at Sun or Adobe. If we use the FOSS versions we'll point fingers at the respective maintainers.

The sad truth is that I'm writing this not really knowing where the blame lies. However, I'm not sure that it even matters. I don't care whose fault it is, I just want it to work.

How can we fix this plaguing problem? For starters, I think we need to get back to our roots. Rather than rely on the repositories, lets roll back to pulling the vanilla packages. For me, this worked like absolute perfection.

Note that I'm using 64bit and this is where most issues are. Following this with 32bit is nearly the exact same except for the obvious changes.

To get 'vanilla' 64bit java:
Download 64bit java from http://www.java.com/. I would suggest not grabbing the rpm version.
## As Root
# Remove old java
aptitude purge sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin
# Create the directory
mkdir -p /opt/java/66
# Move the downloaded package to the new directory
mv ~/jre-6u17-linux-x64.bin /opt/java/64
# Make the file executable
chmod +x ~/jre-6u17-linux-x64.bin
# Execute the binary file / Unpacks java
/opt/java/64/jre-6u17-linux-x64.bin
Do you agree to the above license terms? [yes or no] yes
# Install the java option
update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/opt/java/64/jre1.6.0_17/bin/java" 1
# Set the Java option
update-alternatives --set java /opt/java/64/jre1.6.0_17/bin/java

## As User
# Crate the plugins directory if it doesn't exist
mkdir ~/.mozilla/plugins
# Force the creation of a symbolic link to the installed java
ln -sf /opt/java/64/jre1.6.0_17/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so ~/.mozilla/plugins/

You can find more detailed steps here: http://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/java

Now you need to get flash working:
Download the latest flash player from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_64bit.html
## As root
# Remove old flash
aptitude purge flashplugin-nonfree flashplugin-installer
rm -f /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/*flash*
rm -f ~/.mozilla/plugins/*flash*
rm -f /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/*flash*
rm -f /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/*flash*
rm -rfd /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper

## As User
# Unpack flash
tar zxf libflashplayer-10.0.32.18.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
# Create plugins directory if it doesn't exist
mkdir ~/.mozilla/plugins
# Move flash to plugins directory
mv libflashplayer.so ~/.mozilla/plugins/

Now to test that it works....
Test Java: http://java.com/en/download/installed.jsp
Test Flash: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome
Test Flash Note: Ignore the "Adobe Shockwave Player"

NOW! What does this mean? It sure doesn't prove that Adobe or Sun are against Linux. I really don't think we suspected Sun of that. It could possibly prove that our distributions aren't keeping up on these issues. Considering the vast number of distributions with the issue, I don't think that's really the case either. I would point fingers at those that maintain the packages but I know some of them personally and I can guarantee flash/java are important to them.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us with a whole massive list of suspects. Each and every package installed on a system could be causing part of the problem. GTK+ update caused many issues and I can see that being part of the existing issue. However, I doubt it's the only reason.

Thousands of bugs have been created in the issue queues among the bug trackers for many distributions as well as many different packages.

I have no doubt the issue will be resolved at some point. Adobe and Sun have proven to be taking an active role in this support. It's just up to us to track down and destroy the remainder of issues. Our big up side is that the companies aren't against our success. As opposed to multimedia companies because of that dang DRM crap that they worship...

Benjamin Mako Hill: Antifeatures

2009-11-18T15:48:27+00:00

In preparation for LCA, I'm going to be giving my new Antifeatures talk a few times to smaller local audiences.

The first is going to be today in Boston (apologies for the late notice!) at Northeastern University at 11:45 and it's being hosted by the ACM chapter there.

The second one will be at my alma mater Hampshire College in Amherst this Friday. A draft flier (ignore the unpluralized "antifeatue") is below.

Ubuntu NGO Team: Qimo 4 kids – NGO Interview 5

czajkowski — 2009-11-18T15:43:30+00:00

After a short hiatus I’m back with the NGO interviews. This time I spoke with Michael and Michelle Hall of Qimo 4 kids.

LC: Can you tell me about your organisation?

MH: QuinnCo is a very small not for profit located in Central Florida. In fact, it’s just the two of us, Michelle and I, operating out of our house and garage. We take in second hand computers, fix them up if they aren’t working, then put Ubuntu or Qimo on them and give them out to kids and families in need. We given out approx. 50 computers this year.

LC: What is the mission of your organisation?

MH: We believe that every child, regardless of physical, mental or financial abilities, deserves the same access to technology and education. A child with a computer has a much better chance of success in school, and knowledge of computers is a requirement for almost any job these days. Our mission is to provide a computer for those children in our community who wouldn’t otherwise have access to one.

LC: So what made you get involved in this?

MH : When our son Quinn was 4, he was already showing an interest in our computers. I had an old tower that I wasn’t using, so I installed Ubuntu on it for him along with some OSS games, and he took to it like a fish to water, teaching himself how to do things I never showed him. Because of that, I bought another computer from a yard sale, set it up the same way, and gave it to his daycare facility. About 3 months later, I had one of the kids from his class run up to me out of the blue and thank me for their computer. Talking about it to Michelle that night, she convinced me that we should start up a charity to do this on a larger scale, and QuinnCo was born.

LC : Can you give us a few examples of what you have done? Have some pictures you can share? (Dholbach likes pictures )

MH: We recently held a community build day, where we had members of the Ubuntu Florida LoCo and several local LUGs come out to a local children’s home to help fix up our backlog of broken computers. We had as many kids there as adults, learning how to fix up computers and installing Ubuntu and Qimo on them. Pictures of the event can be found on our website:

QIZMO 4 KIDS

LC: Perhaps you can explain to use the issues you’ve come up against?

MH : Our initial problem was two-fold. First we needed an operating system that was easy for very young kids, most of whom would not be reading yet, to navigate and learn to use on their own. There were educational distros like Edubuntu already available, but their interfaces required navigating menus, and being able to read.

Second, all of our donated computers at that point were Pentium 3’s or older, with less than 256 MB of memory. We needed an operating system that would be responsive enough on this older hardware, so that the kids wouldn’t get impatient waiting on their games to load.

Xubuntu met the second half of our needs, it ran quite well on the hardware that we had. But we still needed an easy to use interface. Luckily, being open source meant
that I could change that. So I took an Xubuntu LiveCD, and following instructions on the Ubuntu Wiki, created Qimo: http://www.qimo4kids.com

LC: What are the challenges you’ve faced within this project?

MH: Our biggest task has been managing inventory. We get lots of computers in, most are missing parts of have bad parts. We also get a lot of boxes of parts. We need a good way of tracking what equipment we have. However, most of those kinds of applications are implemented as web-based server solutions. Well we’re not that big, we don’t have an internal server for these purposes, so to use them we would have to install and run a webserver on one of our laptops. For organizations as small as ours, desktop solutions are easier to get setup and use.

LC: What kind of solution did you come up with to make this all happen?

MH: Aside from donated computers, we use Ubuntu Server to host our websites www.quinncoincorporated and www.growingupfree.org I use Ubuntu on my personal laptop, which is the one I used to make Qimo, and Michelle has it on her netbook. We use them when giving presentations on QuinnCo and Qimo, but for the most part they are for personal use.

LC: Do you use any proprietary software now ?

MH: We were given a tablet PC, which is running Windows XP. It is very useful for taking hand-written notes while away from home. It was heavily used to track
things during our children’s home build day. I don’t know of any good tablet note-taking applications for Linux, so I haven’t tried installing it on there.

LC: What would you like to see improved in Ubuntu resources like documentation?

MH: We desperately need some good new-user documentation we can give out with our donations. I have been including the PDF version of the Ubuntu Pocket Guide, but an intro/tour type documentation would help us.

LC: So what is your experience of this good or bad , have you picked up any nice tips?

MH: Explaining to the people we’re donating computers too that they don’t have Windows on them. How to create a custom distro!

LC: What would you suggest to our readers that are interested in an initiative like yours?

MH: Just do it. There is no barrier to entry, you probably have or know somebody who has an old computer that isn’t being used. You probably also know a family, school or daycare that can’t afford to buy computers. It takes literally an hour of your time, at most, and will have a life-long impact on those you donate too.

LC: How can interested readers help your organisation?

MH: If you’re in central Florida, send us an email and we’ll let you know when we are holding build events. If you have Pentium 4 or newer computers, we will arrange to pick them up from you.

If you’re not in central Florida, visit http://www.growingupfree.org/wiki/index.php/Orgs_By_Location and find one that is near you. If there isn’t one near you, then get one started! Again, the barrier to entry is non-existant.

LC: Finally, any good or funny stories, best lessons that you would like to tell to the world.

MH: Don’t worry about starting small. As soon as people hear about what you are doing, they will want to help. We went from having 3 computers to having almost 30 in about 2 week’s time. We put out a call for volunteers to help us fix them, and our last event had 75 people come out. Start with a single
computer, and go from there.

Thank you for taking part, it’s been very interesting!

http://www.lczajkowski.com/2009/11/18/qimo-4-kids-ngo-interview/

Craig A. Eddy: PulseAudio Revisited

tycheent — 2009-11-18T15:34:43+00:00

Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10) has come out now, and I’m still getting 70 hits a week on my original article concerning PulseAudio. The situation has changed radically, and so that people will get correct information concerning it, I felt it necessary to revise my previous findings.

PulseAudio can no longer be killed off in favor of Alsa. Karmic Koala has so tied up and dumbed down the situation that killing off PulseAudio will kill off ALL sound. Not only that, but there is no way to cause the system sounds (window open/close, button press, etc) to work right. An additional factor is that you are apt to have a heart attack when changing from one user to another due to the HIGH volume level of the alert sound for the new login screen. The only way I’ve found to fix this is to kill off ALL system sounds.

I will say this in favor of PulseAudio, the sound has improved some. Only some. It’s now recognizing my sound card to a certain degree. It even acknowledges that it is capable of 5.1 sound. Now for the down side. What it pumps out is still, overall monaural sound. In addition, to get it to even recognize the abilities of my sound card I ended up going to 2 or 3 places, including downloading and installing the PulseAudio Device chooser. And it’s still relying on Alsa to provide the information. In other words, PulseAudio is simply another layer on top of what’s already there, and making use of what’s already there, without adding significant benefit for being there.

In short, though the situation has improved somewhat, it’s still not good – not acceptable. This leaves me in a dilemma. Do I accept this dumbed down, Windows-ized version of a release that is supposed to “just work” (and I can’t tell you what it “just works” like in a family friendly blog), or do I start looking for alternatives? Were I to seek another distribution, then I wouldn’t be honest with myself or others by continuing to advocate Ubuntu. And there is my dilemma. I’m a member of the Arizona LoCo, an Ubuntu community member, and editor of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, an editor of the Fridge, an administrator for 3 news lists (primarily to kill off spam as requested by the software operating the lists), as well as member of and sometime contributor to a number of other projects. If I stop using Ubuntu because of problems, and stop advocating Ubuntu because of it, then in all honesty I would feel that I should withdraw from all of them. That’s something I’d rather not do, as it would leave people – friends – somewhat in the lurch.

One of the things that Linux is supposed to be about is choice: the ability to choose what one wants to do and what one wants to use. PulseAudio may be good for combining sound input for output over a network, but I don’t do that. I don’t feel compelled to subject others to the type and style of music that I happen to enjoy. I don’t feel that it’s my place to make music listening choices for other people as my particular whim takes me. Even within an individual family, people have differing musical interests. Why should I subject them to mine, all over the apartment, simply because I want to listen to something but am not at my computer. No, that kind of thinking makes no sense. They have the right to choose for themselves, too.

Yet the developers and MOTUs (Masters of the Universe) have determined that I MUST have this additional layer, whether I want or need it, or not. And that it will be dumbed down to the point of being unable to be configured to MY needs and wants. Worse still is the fact that it’s applied without my choice, and removes my ability to choose whether or not to use it. This is unacceptable.

Now, before a bunch of developers and MOTUs decide to flame me (as has been done before when I voiced my opinion), I will make something plain that they should understand. THIS IS MY CHOICE TO MAKE! I put up with the abuse before. But not again. I will not accept abusive comments to this blog – they will be moderated out. If you cannot accept that it is my choice to make – if you are so dictatorial that you insist the my choice is invalid – then you have failed to read and understand what I have said, and failed to comprehend my feelings. Therefore, telling me that I’m wrong and PulseAudio is the best thing since sliced bread, or any other such drivel, will be removed from the comments to this blog. If you have a valid work-around to the problem, then create a patch and pass it up to the repositories. I’ve tried too many work-arounds that didn’t work to be bothered with trying any more. Nor will I listen to any more “oh, it’ll get better”. You’ve had at least 3 releases to make it better, with no significant improvement, and (in fact) some regression.

So, here is the choice I’m faced with. Either PulseAudio will improve to the point where I can make my own choices (including being able to choose whether or not to apply it), or I will have to look for another distribution. If I end up choosing to go with another distribution, then I will (due to my own conscience) feel compelled to remove myself from the Ubuntu community in all aspects.

I have no problem with making such a choice. I will feel no angst over choosing another distribution. I will feel some sense of loss over leaving friends that I have made over the course of my involvement with Ubuntu. But, at 64 years of age, I’ve had to leave friends and even family before. I’ve learned how to deal with that. I will feel that I’m letting some of them down, due to the type of involvement I have with various aspects of the Ubuntu community. But that isn’t enough to affect the basic choice: will I be dictated to in my choices, or will I have the freedom to make my own decisions?

So, I offer you the developers and MOTUs of Ubuntu and those involved with PulseAudio an opportunity. Clean this mess up and restore that freedom. Don’t talk about it. Actions speak louder than words. Just do it. I’ll wait for a little while (not forever) to see what develops. But there is a deadline. If this continues into the next release (Ubuntu 10.04), then I will find somewhere else to go. I won’t blame you. I’ll just leave. You will have made your choices, and I will make mine.

(Signed)

Craig A. Eddy

Tyche on IRC and elsewhere on the Internet.

Posted in Omnibus Tagged: Choice Linux Omnibus Personal

Laura Czajkowski: Qimo 4 kids – NGO Interview

2009-11-18T15:34:37+00:00

After a short hiatus I’m back with the NGO interviews. This time I spoke with Michael and Michelle Hall of Qimo 4 kids.

LC: Can you tell me about your organisation?

MH: QuinnCo is a very small not for profit located in Central Florida. In fact, it’s just the two of us, Michelle and I, operating out of our house and garage. We take in second hand computers, fix them up if they aren’t working, then put Ubuntu or Qimo on them and give them out to kids and families in need. We given out approx. 50 computers this year.

LC: What is the mission of your organisation?

MH: We believe that every child, regardless of physical, mental or financial abilities, deserves the same access to technology and education. A child with a computer has a much better chance of success in school, and knowledge of computers is a requirement for almost any job these days. Our mission is to provide a computer for those children in our community who wouldn’t otherwise have access to one.

LC: So what made you get involved in this?

MH : When our son Quinn was 4, he was already showing an interest in our computers. I had an old tower that I wasn’t using, so I installed Ubuntu on it for him along with some OSS games, and he took to it like a fish to water, teaching himself how to do things I never showed him. Because of that, I bought another computer from a yard sale, set it up the same way, and gave it to his daycare facility. About 3 months later, I had one of the kids from his class run up to me out of the blue and thank me for their computer. Talking about it to Michelle that night, she convinced me that we should start up a charity to do this on a larger scale, and QuinnCo was born.

LC : Can you give us a few examples of what you have done? Have some pictures you can share? (Dholbach likes pictures )

MH: We recently held a community build day, where we had members of the Ubuntu Florida LoCo and several local LUGs come out to a local children’s home to help fix up our backlog of broken computers. We had as many kids there as adults, learning how to fix up computers and installing Ubuntu and Qimo on them. Pictures of the event can be found on our website:

QIZMO 4 KIDS

LC: Perhaps you can explain to use the issues you’ve come up against?

MH : Our initial problem was two-fold. First we needed an operating system that was easy for very young kids, most of whom would not be reading yet, to navigate and learn to use on their own. There were educational distros like Edubuntu already available, but their interfaces required navigating menus, and being able to read.

Second, all of our donated computers at that point were Pentium 3’s or older, with less than 256 MB of memory. We needed an operating system that would be responsive enough on this older hardware, so that the kids wouldn’t get impatient waiting on their games to load.

Xubuntu met the second half of our needs, it ran quite well on the hardware that we had. But we still needed an easy to use interface. Luckily, being open source meant
that I could change that. So I took an Xubuntu LiveCD, and following instructions on the Ubuntu Wiki, created Qimo: http://www.qimo4kids.com

LC: What are the challenges you’ve faced within this project?

MH: Our biggest task has been managing inventory. We get lots of computers in, most are missing parts of have bad parts. We also get a lot of boxes of parts. We need a good way of tracking what equipment we have. However, most of those kinds of applications are implemented as web-based server solutions. Well we’re not that big, we don’t have an internal server for these purposes, so to use them we would have to install and run a webserver on one of our laptops. For organizations as small as ours, desktop solutions are easier to get setup and use.

LC: What kind of solution did you come up with to make this all happen?

MH: Aside from donated computers, we use Ubuntu Server to host our websites www.quinncoincorporated and www.growingupfree.org I use Ubuntu on my personal laptop, which is the one I used to make Qimo, and Michelle has it on her netbook. We use them when giving presentations on QuinnCo and Qimo, but for the most part they are for personal use.

LC: Do you use any proprietary software now ?

MH: We were given a tablet PC, which is running Windows XP. It is very useful for taking hand-written notes while away from home. It was heavily used to track
things during our children’s home build day. I don’t know of any good tablet note-taking applications for Linux, so I haven’t tried installing it on there.

LC: What would you like to see improved in Ubuntu resources like documentation?

MH: We desperately need some good new-user documentation we can give out with our donations. I have been including the PDF version of the Ubuntu Pocket Guide, but an intro/tour type documentation would help us.

LC: So what is your experience of this good or bad , have you picked up any nice tips?

MH: Explaining to the people we’re donating computers too that they don’t have Windows on them. How to create a custom distro!

LC: What would you suggest to our readers that are interested in an initiative like yours?

MH: Just do it. There is no barrier to entry, you probably have or know somebody who has an old computer that isn’t being used. You probably also know a family, school or daycare that can’t afford to buy computers. It takes literally an hour of your time, at most, and will have a life-long impact on those you donate too.

LC: How can interested readers help your organisation?

MH: If you’re in central Florida, send us an email and we’ll let you know when we are holding build events. If you have Pentium 4 or newer computers, we will arrange to pick them up from you.

If you’re not in central Florida, visit http://www.growingupfree.org/wiki/index.php/Orgs_By_Location and find one that is near you. If there isn’t one near you, then get one started! Again, the barrier to entry is non-existant.

LC: Finally, any good or funny stories, best lessons that you would like to tell to the world.

MH: Don’t worry about starting small. As soon as people hear about what you are doing, they will want to help. We went from having 3 computers to having almost 30 in about 2 week’s time. We put out a call for volunteers to help us fix them, and our last event had 75 people come out. Start with a single
computer, and go from there.

Thank you for taking part, it’s been very interesting!

Andres Rodriguez: UDS Ubuntu Cluster Stack

roaksoax — 2009-11-18T15:01:31+00:00

Today we had the Ubuntu Cluster Stack session at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Dallas, Texas. We made a few decisions regarding the future goals of the ubuntu-ha team summarized as follows:

Failover Cluster Stack: We decided to continue to fully support redhat-cluster-suite, as well as openais /corosync and pacemaker. However, we will also track Heartbeat 3.0 since LinBit has decided to step up and continue to maintain Heartbeat 3.0 for an undetermined period of time (No new features though, see post here). This way, those who still don’t want to upgrade to pacemaker/openais, will have the opportunity to upgrade to Heartbeat 3.0 + Pacemaker.

Load Balacing: We decided to experiment with keepalived and ipvsadm because of the simplicity and speed of keepalived. This also led us to provide bonding that works out of the Box.

Actions:

The first step will be document simple installation/configuration of the different clustering tools to help with any possible transition/testing. This includes: Pacemaker-Corosync/Openais, Pacemaker-Heartbeat 3.0, RHCS, Keepalived/ipvsadm.
Be more active in upstream, since lots of Ubuntu users are asking for help in upstream channels (#linux-cluster, #linux-ha). Also, work with Debian on getting Pacemaker/corosync working as best as possible (To set as default cluster stack in the future).
And, off course, update packages to latest upstream release as possible, and do this in collaboration with Debian.

Once we finish these actions, we’ll continue with some of other objectives we would like to achieve. If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to post.

Guy Van Sanden: Misconceptions

2009-11-18T13:45:39+00:00

I blogged about putting my sons in a catholic school earlier today (http://nocturn.vsbnet.be/content/defeated).

They funny thing is that I received a response:

"So, to solve your issue with how racism was handled at your previous school, you go to a fairly monolithic catholic school. Certainly theologically monolithic, and I'm guessing largely racially monolithic as well. That move sounds racist to me... eliminate all other diversities around your child."

I hit me that the commenter is assuming that there was racism against other kids, and that I'm protecting my son by removing him from that situation.
The thing is that he is the one with a partially ethnic background (half Turkish, half Belgian) and the racism was directed towards him and talking to the principals didn't yield much useful responses (with one telling me that racism is just an opinion and people have the right to have that opinion).

So, clarifying something, I'm putting my kids in a catholic school with a diverse population to protect them against racism directed at them because it proved a solution for friends who's kids with ethnic backgrounds did well there (after trying school after school, just like us).

It now strikes me that the comment is quite funny because the poster went from assumptions that are not correct.

Maia Kozheva: xchat-gnome User List

2009-11-18T13:25:16+00:00

I may be a minority regarding this choice, but I’ve always preferred xchat-gnome to plain xchat as my IRC client. Its minimalist interface fits well with my GNOME desktop, and the preferences dialogue is much cleaner than in regular xchat.

The only annoyance is the user list, which upstream insists on hiding behind a button despite all pleas to provide an option to show it in its own panel. Finally, I wrote a patch adding that option about a year ago, and today I fixed a bug with UI freeze in it.

I’ll try to get it into Lucid, but in case the core devs decide not to sponsor it, I’ve made a PPA for Karmic with the patched version.

Daniel T Chen: Flailing against the light, or why bad things happen to good users

Dan — 2009-11-18T12:40:52+00:00

Seriously, Craig, I'm a bit disappointed that you didn't stop to ask members of this perceived conspiracy how to disable PulseAudio before flaming away, but as you say, it is most definitely your "right" to flame away. And, as Jordan mentioned in your blog post's comments, it was (and is) hardly MOTU's decision to tie PulseAudio more tightly into the GNOME desktop. That decision was upstream GNOME's. Not Ubuntu's. Not Fedora's. Not openSUSE's. Not Gentoo's. Not Debian's. Not Mandriva's.

In other words, it would take a non-trivial amount of work to remove the PulseAudio dependency from GNOME, and then Ubuntu would get to carry the delta *and* respond to defect reports.

Let's put this in perspective: there are two people working on audio in Ubuntu. One of them is employed by Canonical, and he isn't 100% time on audio. The other one cares enough to trawl through vitriol and drivel to respond to requests, demands, rants, and apathy -- on his lunch breaks and spare time -- to unbreak a resounding mess. If it's insufficiently clear, you're preaching to the choir, and your ultimatum is pathetically misdirected.

Now let's be constructive:

Firstly, PulseAudio *can* be made to go away in Karmic. I've written about it before, but I guess the naysayers are too busy flailing about how much PA sucks. Some caveats with the approach given: you'll need to use one of alsamixer, amixer (both command line tools shipped by default in the alsa-utils package), alsamixer-gui, aumix, and so on. You'll lose live per-application (per-stream) migration. You'll lose per-application volumes. And you'll lose other things, but they're hardly consequential enough to list here.

Secondly, the loss of system sounds is not a PulseAudio issue. It's a window manager issue. There's even a defect report about it.

Thirdly, PulseAudio *has* to use ALSA. PulseAudio is not a replacement for ALSA and never will be, because one of ALSA's primary functions is enable hardware. It's a sound driver. PulseAudio is not a sound driver; it's a program that uses sound drivers. If you're expecting PulseAudio to replace ALSA, go ahead and throw that idea out the window.

Fourthly, where are your defect reports for PulseAudio and ALSA in Karmic?

Lastly, no one is forcing you to upgrade to the latest Ubuntu hotness. Some people still use Dapper; others, Hardy. A great many people don't use Ubuntu at all. If you don't enjoy Ubuntu's direction, why not attend the Lucid developer summit and work with people there to resolve some issues?

Guy Van Sanden: Defeated

2009-11-18T08:30:18+00:00

Yesterday, I made a very mixed decision of enrolling my two sons in a katholic school. I hope this will be a good school for them and I really think it will be.

But today, I can't shake this feeling of defeat. It's his 4th school and he's only 5, we always kept the catholic schools from the list of options because I strongly feel that religion in schools violates our freedom of religion. But too many things went wrong in these public schools and there were several racist incidents which weren't dealt with in any meaningful way.

So, we caved and enrolled him in a school were several of our friends have their children with ethnic backgrounds and they are doing good there.

So, monday, it starts again. I have good hopes but the feeling of defeat will remain I guess.