Planet Ubuntu

Richard Johnson: Qemu, Qemu-KVM, VirtualBox, play nice!

nixternal — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:39:54 +0000

Last night I was working on getting some screenshots of Kubuntu for the Karmic to Lucid upgrade documentation. I typically use Qemu for all of my virtualization needs because: a) it is convenient, b) it is fast, and c) both a and b. One thing I was noticing last night in Qemu was the default wallpaper for KDE SC 4.4 wasn’t blue, but more of a light and ugly brown color. Not Ubuntu brown, or should I say the old Ubuntu brown. What I found a bit weird with this is when I used KSnapShot to take a screenshot, the preview image in KSnapShot showed the correct color of the wallpaper, however when I opened it in Gwenview on my local machine and not in the Qemu guest, the wallpaper was brown and not blue. This drove me nuts, and it still does, because I can’t find any information on such a case. I know I can’t be the only one experiencing this?

Anyways, with the issues I was having, today I decided to go ahead and throw VirtualBox on my machine for screenshots. After getting it installed, rebooting, and doing what you have to, I went to fire up VirtualBox and was presented with the following error message when trying to start a guest OS:

Failed to start the virtual machine Kubuntu

VirtualBox can’t operate in VMX root mode. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot (VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE).

First off…Really? That is the error you are presenting to the user? VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE – oh this really makes me know what the problem is, this should be easy. Did you see what I did there? Yes, I presented you with sarcasm. VirtualBox developers, do me a favor, make your error messages a bit more user friendly. Simply telling the user to “disable extension” and then “recompile kernel” is about as insane of an option for what I consider an awesome end product. FYI people, you don’t need to recompile your kernel, unless of course you compiled your kernel with the KVM module and can’t do anything about it, but I would guess for 99.9% of you, this isn’t the case. And another thing, put that VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE garbage under the Details drop down, hide that damn thing.

OK, with that off my chest, easy fix. Fire up your terminal and fire off the following:

Ubuntu or Ubuntu based distro, or distro using Upstart:

sudo stop qemu-kvm

For a non-Ubuntu based distro or distro not using Upstart:

sudo service qemu-kvm stop

And if all else fails:

sudo /etc/init.d/qemu-kvm stop

Now you can fire up VirtualBox and rock-and-roll. If you need to use Qemu again before rebooting or shutting your system down, instead of issuing stop to the examples above, use start instead. This is only a temporary work around. If you reboot your machine after stopping qemu-kvm, when your system starts back up, you will need to stop it again in order to use VirtualBox.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming consisting of Global Jams, Kubuntu isn’t Ubuntu, To many Chefs, Marrying a coffee pot, and OMG THE BUTTONS ARE ON THE LEFT!

Matt Zimmerman: Optimizing my social network

Matt Zimmerman — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:28:31 +0000

I’ve been working to better organize my online social network so as to make it more useful to me and to the people I know.

I use each social networking tool in a different way, and tailor the content and my connections accordingly. I don’t connect with all of the same people everywhere. I am particularly annoyed by social networks which abuse the word “friend” to mean something wholly different than it means in the rest of society. If I’m not someone’s “friend” on a certain website, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like them. It just means that the information I exchange with them fits better somewhere else.

Here is the arrangement I’ve ended up with:

If you just want to hear bits and pieces about what I’m up to, you can follow me on identi.ca, Twitter or FriendFeed. My identi.ca and Twitter feeds have the same content, though I check @-replies on identi.ca more often.
If you’re interested in the topics I write about in more detail, you can subscribe to my blog.
If you want to follow what I’m reading online, you can subscribe to my Google Reader feed.
If (and only if) we’ve worked together (i.e. we have worked cooperatively on a project, team, problem, workshop, class, etc.), then I’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn. LinkedIn also syndicates my blog and Twitter.
If you know me “in real life” and want to share your Facebook content with me, you can connect with me on Facebook. I try to limit this to a manageable number of connections, and will periodically drop connections where the content is not of much interest to me so that my feed remains useful. Don’t take it personally (see the start of this post). Virtually everything I post on my Facebook account is just syndicated from other public sources above anyway. I no longer publish any personal content to Facebook due to their bizarre policies around this.

Rubén Romero: March 2010 activities in Oslo and beyond…

huayra — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:28:22 +0000

y tu?

Si estás en Quito no te lo pierdas!

I will be participating in the Barcamp Quito 2010 as a videodesconferencista (a desconstructive lecturer? – I even have a page!!??) through my webcam this weekend.

Ubuntu Global Jam in Oslo - Humla @ Hausmania

Then the Norwegian LoCo team in cooperation with Linuxbrigaden and Oslo Linux User Group will be holding the first Ubuntu Global Jam in Oslo!

I added the event and the venue to the loco directory, uploaded our marketing material to SpreadUbuntu and announced the event to the list. We will be having 3 tracks: Translation, Testing and Marketing/PR. The program can be seen here.

The idea is also to finish the planning for the Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 Oslo Release Party under the Jam. See our planning page here. Among other we have confirmed Håkon Wium Lie as a speech holder (yes, he is an Ubuntu user. Besides hes is one of the masterminds of the Web working in the CSS standard since before its standardization as being the CTO of Opera Software.)

Harald Sitter: Kubuntu is not Ubuntu

apachelogger — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:03:34 +0000

This post is supposed to make it clear why Kubuntu is what it is. Writing this down is necessary because people constantly get the wrong picture.

Entities

Let me start to explain the relationships of entities around Ubuntu.

First and foremost there is the Ubuntu project, it is this large monster that includes Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu and some other stuff. One could think of the Ubuntu project as an umbrella spanning across most (semi-)official activities surrounding Ubuntu. Packaging KDE software would be such an activity, so even as Kubuntu developer you are contributor to Ubuntu at large.

This relation is even publicly visible.

At Kubuntu we have a special membership status for people who have proved themselves valuable contributors to Kubuntu. With such a membership you get an @kubuntu.org email address and some other cool things. It might not be all that apparent, but this membership reflects the relationship between Kubuntu and Ubuntu. Once someone becomes Kubuntu member they also become Ubuntu member (technically speaking are Kubuntu members a subset of Ubuntu members). This is because a Kubuntu contributor is in the end also a contributor to Ubuntu (the project, not the distribution necessarily).

Now we know that Ubuntu is one big entity that consists of other entities (like Kubuntu), but at the same time Ubuntu is also the name of the GNOME featuring desktop distribution produced by Ubuntu the project.

Up until now I was talking about Ubuntu as a project, and simply put, this project is community driven. Sure, Kubuntu and Ubuntu have people working on them full time, but there are hundreds or possibly thousands of others, spending their spare time on contributing to Ubuntu. And here the whole thing gets a bit tricky to understand.

Kubuntu is by 5/1 controlled by the community, Ubuntu (the desktop distribution) is not. You might wonder how I ended up with 5/1. Well, the Kubuntu Council (pretty much in all cases the highest authority within Kubuntu) consists of 6 members, of which 5 are not working for Canonical.

Canonical, yet another entity. Canonical is a company trying to make money with Ubuntu products. Canonical is also the company that makes Ubuntu, the project, possible. Of course we easily forget about this, but without Canonical there were no *buntu websites, no launchpad, in consequence of that there would be no build daemon, no daily CD builds of consistent manner… in general there probably would not even be the computational infrastructure to run all those things. So just the infrastructural expenses (including maintenance etc.) must be of a quite considerable amount. Now I was not completely honest with you. Canonical is not only trying to make money with Ubuntu products, in fact Canonical is driving development of most of these products (to a certain degree at the very least).

So the Ubuntu project is driven by the community AND Canonical. Some parts more by the community, and others more by Canonical. As it usually works, this means that the community can focus on the fun parts while Canonical fills the gaps of the other work that needs to be done in a distribution creating project. And this is a good thing for the better part. Most of these free contributors are doing it because it is fun or because they want to achieve a personal target (say, make a system that boots within 2 seconds), but usually not all work of the distribution creation process is fun. I suppose it goes without saying that less people would contribute if they had to spend a substantial amount of their time on rather complex and boring stuff. Yet someone needs to do it, why not someone who gets paid for it?

Of course that is a much simplified picture, but the point I am trying to make is that there is a symbiosis of the activities within the Ubuntu project.

Power and responsibility

"With great power must also come great responsibility!" is it written in the first Spider-Man story. Very true words those are, in the context of Ubuntu too. Those who have the power to stir development, must also be responsible if the direction was wrong. And I would even go as far as saying that those that are responsible must deserve the power to stir development.

What does this mean for the Ubuntu project?

Canonical chose GNOME as their preferred desktop and Debian as their preferred distribution, so they made a new distribution based on those 2 existing software stacks. Canonical sells support contracts, in fact Canonical tries to only live off those and some associated activities within or around the Ubuntu universe. So to their customers and partners they are ultimately responsible for when something goes wrong in the product. So lets assume the product is Ubuntu, the distribution, and the wrongness is that GNOME is completely broken. The customer will not go complain to the community, even though they are to a certain degree contributing to the product. The customer will go complain to the one they got a contract with, which would then be Canonical. So Canonical is responsible and thus must at least have as much power to avoid situations where they would loose substantial amount of money due to problems in the product. What I am trying to say is not that Canonical does or must have absolute control over Ubuntu, the distribution or the project, but the amount of control that is necessary to secure their business and in consequence secure the future of Ubuntu as a whole.

The picture for Kubuntu is different. Kubuntu originated in a community effort to bring the KDE desktop on the Ubuntu base stack. Canonical decided to use GNOME for their desktop and some community members decided to create another version with KDE as the desktop. Canonical apparently thought of this as a good idea and incorporated Kubuntu into the Ubuntu project, thus providing infrastructure for package building and hosting and website hosting and CD building… But they only had little interest of exploiting the business potential that comes with a KDE featuring desktop based on Ubuntu, though there certainly was some potential and so they decided to take on a bit of responsibility. Namely employing one of Kubuntu’s founding fathers full time. The community however continued to be driving in just about any aspect, and so the community also had most power over the course of development, simply because they were responsible for the product and the development of the product.

Kubuntu is not Ubuntu

This statement might seem incredibly obvious, and yet once in a while someone does not exactly understand on how many levels this applies.
Sure, on a technical level Kubuntu is not Ubuntu because it uses KDE, then again it uses the Ubuntu base stack… But more important than that are some other applications of the above statement. Kubuntu is not a large project like the Ubuntu project, it is part of the Ubuntu project and thus must obey its rules and regulations to some degree. This for example means that we cannot just stick some random non-free software on our CDs. It also means that Kubuntu is not the brand Canonical chose, but Ubuntu is, that is why the project is called Ubuntu and the distribution is called Ubuntu and associated products are somehow related to Ubuntu, possibly even reusing the brand (e.g. Ubuntu One).
Another important difference is that most changes in Kubuntu do not come from Canonical. They either originate in KDE or within the Kubuntu development community (and of that also only 2 people work for Canonical … go figure). One of the most interesting examples of wrong assumptions in this category, affecting me, was that apparently the Mozilla Firefox installer, that is available in Kubuntu 9.10 and later, was created by Canonical. At least various reviews claimed so, well, indeed it was me who created it, and I am not employee of Canonical, nor does Canonical own the code.
In general one might say that stuff going on in Kubuntu mostly does not have anything to do with Canonical, and if it does, then it is still approved or tolerated by the community.

Taking up on my above statement that those that have power must be responsible and those responsible must have power I’d like to make the following clear: the Kubuntu community has the most power and the most responsibility. Holding Canonical responsible for issues in Kubuntu, of which there are many, as within any software project, is just wrong. Because even if there was wrong doing on their part, the community still did not do anything about it.

Implications

Aforementioned statement also implies some things. First and foremost is that Kubuntu doesn’t need to receive the same attention from Canonical as Ubuntu, the distribution, gets. There is no particular point to it either. Not from Kubuntu’s perspective and neither from Canonical’s.

From a business point of view, Canonical would have to invest enough resources to make Kubuntu a viable business opportunity, that then directly competes with their other system, Ubuntu, which is the main brand carrier though. So that would be a bit of a problem, since from a perception point of view, Kubuntu is a different brand than Ubuntu (even though it might be associated, one way or another). Of course this is not exactly good for either brand because they then end up sharing volume of public attention instead of specifically trying to direct it at one particular brand.
At the same time this would mean that Canonical becomes more responsible (and thus needs more power, see above). So ultimately this would make Kubuntu less of a community effort and more of a Canonical one (to about the same degree as it is now with Ubuntu one can suppose). This then would lead to Kubuntu becoming much more derived from upstream KDE, because obviously a company would want to distinguish their product by all means from its competitors, and that involves heavy branding, special features etc.

Conclusion

So since Canonical does currently not exploit all business potential coming from Kubuntu, the community will probably be responsible for quite some time to come.

This ultimately means that the community will apply the rules and judgment of which they think it is the best available. Since the community is mostly consisting of people contributing in their spare time human time resource is rather limited and thus one must choose the battles carefully. In consequence this means that some things simply cannot be done. Like say Ubuntu One integration, of course it would be nice to have, but currently there are much more important things to work on. Same goes for porting Software Center. Finally it also means that the community gets to decide how much branding gets committed, and currently the opinion is to stick with KDE’s. Not only is their artwork of incredibly high quality, but also are they the biggest contributors to the Kubuntu desktop, so they deserve most credit.

On that last note I would also like to note that Kubuntu’s target was to make the best KDE distribution, not the best Ubuntu flavor, thus deriving from KDE’s artwork and color scheme would not only be in conflict with the fact that Kubuntu’s color palette is almost identical, but also with what Kubuntu is trying to achieve.

In short: Kubuntu is not Ubuntu. Occasionally blogs and news stories and bug reports assume Canonical is responsible for things they are not. In general, me and the other Kubuntu developers are responsible for Kubuntu, please keep this in mind when moaning or praising us.

Thank you.

Daniel Holbach: Upgrade Jams – made easy!

Daniel Holbach — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:00:56 +0000

We’re all gearing up towards Ubuntu Global Jam and I LIKE IT! More and more teams are signing up in the LoCo Directory. Once you managed to find a venue, tell a few friends, you’re basically all set. the Jams page has all the information you need.

One thing I’d like to point out specifically is Upgrade Jams. They’re probably the most straight-forward way to help out. Just upgrade, test and report what you find. With Lucid becoming 10.04 we have another LTS that is going to be supported for for 3 years on the Desktop and 5 on the Server, so we’ll have a lot of people upgrading and installing it, so we want to make sure it’s all in tip-top shape. The upgrade process is part of the experience.

I love to say this: straight-forward just got easier. One problem you’ll have with an upgrade jam is that you need lots of bandwidth. If you don’t have that you might want to set up a proxy or mirror or cache or something. The easiest I could find is squid-deb-proxy (a new feature, by Michael Vogt, in Lucid).

Basically on the server (or cache machine) you run:
$ sudo apt-get install squid-deb-proxy

And on the client (where you do the upgrade) you run:
$ sudo apt-get install squid-deb-proxy-client

Done.

As this feature is not in karmic yet, I backported it:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dholbach/ppa $ sudo apt-get update

and install squid-deb-proxy or squid-deb-proxy-client.

I found it too hard to backport for hardy (which we support upgrades to →lucid too), so for a hardy upgrade you will have to set up the proxy information in “System → Preferences → Network Proxy” manually.

This is going to be awesome!

The Fridge: Announcing the Ubuntu.com Website Localization Project

nhandler — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:13:54 +0000

It is my pleasure to announce a new project to better the Ubuntu.com website experience, specifically for users who prefer a language other than English. The new project, called Website Localization will put a short (4-5 word) message on any www.Ubuntu.com <http://www.ubuntu.com/> web page directing users to more resources in their preferred language.

This project has two main parts to it. The first part of the Website Localization project is the technical aspect of the project. It is the goal of the project to create a script that will pull out of a users web browser their preferred language. After obtaining this information, the script will cross reference this language against a list of languages that have approved resources offered, and then display a short link to their languages landing page.

The second part of this project is creating landing pages for as many resources as possible. This part of the project will be done by LoCos and the i18n team. The landing pages will be on the wiki, and will be ever changing to direct users to the best information that we can give them.

Currently, the goal is to have the project completed and implemented by the end of May. I would also like to have a working demo of the project by April 19th so that we have plenty of time to fix any problems that arise prior to the final implementation of this project.

I can’t do all of this myself, so I am going to need help from the Ubuntu community. At this point, I need some assistance with the technical side of the project. I need a few people to create the script that will detect the users preferred language, and then show them a link to the landing page in their language. If you have the skills needed to help out with this Website Localization project, please send me an email with your name, launchpad account, a little bit of information about the experience you have and your general ability (time zone, and anything else that may help me out). My goal is to get a group of a few people to work on the technical aspect of this project and have a meeting in the next few weeks to discuss the project in a little more detail, and determine the best way to make this happen.

[Discuss the Ubuntu.com Website Localization Project on the Forum]

Originally sent to the loco-contacts mailing list by Chris Johnston on Wed Mar 17 19:32:43 GMT 2010

Jorge Castro: Marriage, Coffee, and Free Software

jcastro — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:32:10 +0000

So I’m getting married and when that happens people go to the internet and buy you things they think you need to live your life. As it ends up I got one of these:

As it ends up it’s a coffee thing, but it’s pretty much proprietary. Only certain brewers make “K-cups” and they’re a bit more expensive than normal coffee. The K cup thing is patented, so I am pretty sure a normal person can’t just make K cups without paying someone money.

Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew about this travesty. They’re fricking delicious by the way.

Tagged: coffee

Rubén Romero: Ubuntu Ísland: Newcomer to the LoCo Party!

huayra — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:20:28 +0000

This was real last Monday!

Last week I went on a vacation to Iceland. Fantastic country full of fantastic and beautiful people!

In advance I bloged on it and sent a couple of emails to Local Linux User Groups and so I managed to get to three meetings with some enthusiasts. The conclusion is basically this post.

The team has officially been initiated today. I am SO looking forward to them becoming an official team!

Here is a link to the email announcing the creation of the team if you want to read more.

Alan Pope: Buttons, Design, Pilates and Z80 Programming

popey — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:03:27 +0000

On Monday some of the Ubuntu UK Podcast team got together once more to record an episode. Sadly Laura and Ciemon couldn’t be there, but were represented by a fluffy Tux and Firefox. We asked Ivanka Majic (Canonical Design Team Lead) to come on the show and discuss all matters ‘Design’ with us and she very kindly took time out of her evening to talk to us at length about what she does at Canonical and the changes we are seeing.

We had a set of questions we wanted to ask her, about the new buttons, the proposed design changes in Ubuntu 10.04 more generally what she did for Canonical. We also put out the call to our listeners via Identica and Twitter to get more questions, and we had plenty. With a full set of questions and a very open guest we ended up with a rather longer interview than we usually feature. We are concious that many of our listeners don’t like very lengthy podcasts, so we try to keep the duration at least under an hour. With this one we made an exception and went over 80 minutes, but I think it was wise to do that.

Ivanka talked at length about her background, the team she has at Canonical and the work they are doing. I don’t think any of us on the show realised how significant a workload the Canonical design team have, and how limited the resources are. Whilst many disagree with the approach, the colours, position or other design details, there are of course reasons for these decisions, and Ivanka did her best to detail the process by which those decisions came about. Ivanka was very open and honest in the interview with us, speaking frankly about where there could be improvements in the way the team operates.

For anyone interested in Ubuntu and more especially the thought processes behind some of the work you’re seeing emerging from the design team, I’d recommend having a listen to what Ivanka has to say. You can hear the full interview in “Behind The Screen” – Season 3 Episode 3 of the Ubuntu Podcast made by members of the UK LoCo team.

– MP3 (81MB download)

– OGG (40MB download)

Thanks again to Ivanka for taking the time to talk to us.

Martin Owens: LeAnn Rimes likes Debian?

doctormo — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:48:28 +0000

The human brain has to decode a lot of information and sometimes it just gets things wrong, especially when it comes to language. Songs are a big example, mishearing lyrics is a huge internet meme that’s worth exploring for a good laugh.

What I found amusing was what I keep on hearing in LeAnn Rimes’ “Right Kind of Wrong”:

I should try to run, but I just can’t seem to.
Every time I run, your the one I run to.
Can’t do without… what you do to me…
I don’t care if I’m into Debian!

Of course I think it’s suppose to be “I don’t care if I’m in too deep, yeah!” but the way it’s sung makes it sound like she’s into Debian and doesn’t care. Anything to get FOSS out there into the media I guess.

Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S03E03 – Behind The Screen

Ubuntu UK Podcast — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:45:05 +0000

Alan Pope, Dave Walker, Tony Whitmore and fluffy Tux & Firefox present episode three of season three of the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo Team.

Subscribe:-

	Hi-Fi	Lo-Fi
Ogg
Mp3

In this week’s show:-

What we’ve been doing this week including piloting a canal boat whilst under the influence of wifi, configuring an Ortek remote control and playing with MythTV.
We review and discuss the Cool-er ebook reader.
We interview Ivanka Majic about her role as Design Team Lead, her team at Canonical, Z80 assembler, and something about buttons.
In the News this week:-
We announce some upcoming events:-
- June 11th, 12th & 13th – South East Linux Fest
- 1st – 2nd May, Liverpool, UK – OggCamp 10 sponsored by Linux Format (Media Partner), The Open Learning Centre, The Linux Emporium, Viglen, Bitfolk and OpsView,
- July 19th – 24th – Europython, Birmingham, UK. europython.eu

Command line love. In Ciemon’s absence Josh Holland contributed the following:-

Bash stores your most recent commands as a command history. Most people are aware of being able to press the up and down arrow keys and Ctrl-R to scan through this history, but there are a couple of other ways to use it too.

You can type !cp and bash will repeat the last command that started with cp. As a special case, you can use !! to repeat the last command and !-n to go back n lines. You can also use ^string1^string2^ to repeat the last command with string1 replaced by string2.

The ~~Ecosphere~~ Bit about Ubuntu has discussion of..

And finally we cover your emails, tweets and dents and voicemail since our last show

Comments and suggestions are welcomed to: podcast@ubuntu-uk.org
Join us on IRC in #ubuntu-uk-podcast on Freenode
Leave a voicemail via phone on +44 (0) 203 298 1600, sip: podcast@sip.ubuntu-uk.org or skype: ubuntuukpodcast
Follow our twitter feed http://twitter.com/uupc
Follow us on Identi.ca http://identi.ca/uupc
Find our Facebook Fan Page
Discuss this episode in the Forums

Alan Pope, Dave Walker, Tony Whitmore and fluffy Tux Firefox present episode three of season three of the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo Team. Subscribe:- Hi-Fi Lo-Fi Ogg Mp3 In this week's show:- What we've been doing this week including piloting a canal boat whilst under the influence of wifi, configuring an Ortek remote control and playing with MythTV. We review and discuss the Cool-er ebook reader. We interview Ivanka Majic about her role as Design Team Lead, her team at Canonical, Z80 assembler, and something about buttons. In the News this week:- Magnatune pays Rhythmbox (and Canonical) Amazon pays Microsoft (for Linux [allegedly]) get_iplayer dropped by author Novell to be asset-stripped Streetview covering 95% of UK We announce some upcoming events:- June 11th, 12th 13th - South East Linux Fest 1st - 2nd May, Liverpool, UK - OggCamp 10 sponsored by Linux Format (Media Partner), The Open Learning Centre, The Linux Emporium, Viglen, Bitfolk and OpsView, July 19th - 24th - Europython, Birmingham, UK. europython.eu Command line love. In Ciemon's absence Josh Holland contributed the following:- Bash stores your most recent commands as a command history. Most people are aware of being able to press the up and down arrow keys and Ctrl-R to scan through this history, but there are a couple of other ways to use it too. You can type !cp and bash will repeat the last command that started with cp. As a special case, you can use !! to repeat the last command and !-n to go back n lines. You can also use ^string1^string2^ to repeat the last command with string1 replaced by string2. The Ecosphere Bit about Ubuntu has discussion of.. Jane Silber discusses Ubuntu with The Register Dave details how to change button location in Lucid A detailed analysis of the new Lucid theme Webcam software for Linux Phoronix compares desktop footprints And finally we cover your emails, tweets and dents and voicemail since our last show Comments and suggestions are welcomed to: podcast@ubuntu-uk.org Join us on IRC in #ubuntu-uk-podcast on Freenode Leave a voicemail via phone on +44 (0) 203 298 1600, sip: podcast@sip.ubuntu-uk.org or skype: ubuntuukpodcast Follow our twitter feed http://twitter.com/uupc Follow us on Identi.ca http://identi.ca/uupc Find our Facebook Fan Page Discuss this episode in the Forums

Siegfried Gevatter: Sudoku solving with Python and SAT

RainCT — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:53:20 +0000

At Logic class last week we saw how to solve a Sudoku using SAT and for fun I decided to actually try this out using Python. It turned out to be pretty trivial to implement and I thought I’d share the experience.

First of all let’s see how the Sudoku problem was described at class: we have a table with 9 rows and 9 columns;

1. Each field [i, j] (where i=1..9 and j=1..9) has at least one value (between 1 and 9).
2. Each field [i, j] (where i=1..9 and j=1..9) doesn’t have more than one value.
3. There isn’t any repeated value in any row, column or 3×3 group.
4. Some of the fields have a predefined value.

Now to implement this in code, first of all I needed a Python module implementing SAT solving. A quick search in Debian’s repositories gave me python-logilab-constraint, which I’ve found to be quite nice to use, even though it could definitely take some speed improvements.

Conditions 1 and 2 aren’t a problem at all, as logilab.constraint can be used quite naturally [0]. We just define a variable for each field (eg., x11 to x99, where the first number is the row and the second number is the column) and the domain in which they operate (integer value from 1 to 9):

values = range(1, 10) # [1..9]
variables = ["x%d%d" % (i, j) for j in values for i in values]
domains = {}

for variable in variables:
	domains[variable] = fd.FiniteDomain(values)

The 4th rule is also straightforward, we just need to hardcode the values. If we have a bidimensional list sudoku containing the initial numbers and None in all empty fields, we add each of them as a constraint:

constraints = []
for i, row in enumerate(sudoku):
	for j, field in enumerate(row):
		if field is None:
			continue
		variable = "x%d%d" % (i+1, j+1)
		constraints.append(fd.make_expression((variable,),
			"%s == %d" % (variable, field)))

Now only rule 3 remains; here we basically have to set up three more groups of constraints: one for rows, one for columns and one for the 3×3 groups. My initial implementation checked each row/column/group at once; for example, for the first row «x11 != x12 != x13 != … != x19», for the first column «x11 != x21 != … != x91», etc. However, this proved to be extremely slow, and after checking the «Performance considerations» section of Logilab Constraint’s documentation I split up the row and column conditions [1] to lots of smaller conditions, as in: «x11 != x12», «x11 != x13», «x11 != x14», etc. I also moved the constraints for the initial numbers to the top (I had them at the end of the constraints list before), as they are the simplest ones. With those changes resolution time changed from several minutes to some tenths of a second.

And this is it. After all constraints have been added, we just need to run the solver:

repository = Repository(variables, domains, constraints)
solutions = Solver().solve(repository)

The complete code is available via Bazaar at lp:~rainct/+junk/sudoku-sat. Being completely new to the logilab.constraints module, or implementing any such stuff at all, it took me around half an hour to write this, which shows how SAT makes such sort of problems really straightforward.

[0] Using logilab.constraint it’s possible to assign arbitrary Python data to variables (here we just give each an integer, but variables could also take tuples or whatever else). When this problem was presented at class using pure propositional logic it was a bit more cumbersome, as we couldn’t just say “there’s a variable x11 with domain [1..9]“. For instance, rule 1 was «(p111 | p112 | p113 | … | p119) and (p121 | … | p129) …», where “p111″ would be True if field [1,1] is supposed to contain a one, “p112″ is True if it’s supposed to contain a two, etc.
[1] I didn’t bother also splitting up he 3×3 group constraints since the other two changes already gave me enough of a speedup; changing that may squeeze a few msecs more out of it.
P.S.: If you’d like a more formal explanation of this, a search on Google found this paper: A SAT-based Sudoku Solver.

You no longer have an excuse not to look at Python Snippets!

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© Siegfried-Angel Gevatter Pujals, 2010. | Permalink | License | Post tags: logics, python

Chris Johnston: Announcing the Ubuntu.com Website Localization Project

Chris Johnston — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:23:17 +0000

It is my pleasure to announce a new project to better the Ubuntu.com website experience, specifically for users who prefer a language other than English. The new project, called Website Localization will put a short (4-5 word) message on any www.Ubuntu.com web page directing users to more resources in their preferred language.

Jorge Castro: The Great Gwibber Bugkill II

jcastro — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:09:56 +0000

The first one was great, so we’re bringing it back tomorrow. This time we’ve got Pedro helping us out, and he’s got a nice target list of bugs we’re going to concentrate on. Basically grab a bug, try to resolve it or replicate it, mark it accordingly, and move on. Refer to the triage guide for more info, or feel free to ask on #ubuntu-bugs on freenode.

We could also use people banging on gwibber in general. Feel free to fire up testdrive and bang on it, file bugs, break stuff, post your emo mood on facebook, flame someone on Twitter, or whatever.

Here’s some inspiration from Pantera.

Paolo Sammicheli: University of Siena continues migrating to Ubuntu

Paolo Sammicheli — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:47:36 +0000

The university of Siena (www.unisi.it), which is known to be operating since 1240, decided to migrate to Free Software in February 2009. Their decision was motivated by economical and technical aspect and also for fight illegal copies. (more infos, unfortunately just in Italian). The migration was committed to an internal technical group named GNUnisi. They developed an Ubuntu derivate choosing the programs which would fit their needs and started to migrate offices, classes and laboratories. The work went quite smooth during this year and this week they announced the migration of the public reading room “chiesa della rosa”.

This migration is very interesting because, thanks to a project with the municipality of Siena and the Tuscany Region, it will be open also after dinner time, allowing the local Linux User Group and all student’s organization to organize nightly workshops and meetings. Ubuntu-it Weekly Newsletter talked about it last Monday and I would like to share with you this great news in the hope that more universities will start to migrate to Free Software soon.

Jorge Castro: 21 teams are in ….

jcastro — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:32:34 +0000

As of right now 21 Local teams have committed to the Global Jam next weekend. Check out the event page on the LoCo directory to sign up your team! Surely we can bring in more teams. You can try some positive motivation, or some competitive motivation, like so: “Where are you Ohio? It’s on. Michigan is once again on top.” Let’s see what paultag has to say about that!

As always, we’re idling in #ubuntu-locoteams on freenode if you need help planning the last minute details.

Tagged: jam, loco, ubuntu

Amber Graner: One of those days! Ever been there?

Just Me, Amber! (akgraner@gmail.com) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:23:49 +0000

Have you ever had one of *THOSE* days? You know, one that just seems to go on and on and on and..... well you get the idea. That's my day er um week.

I like to write about the good stuff, or if I do write about the not so pleasant, annoying, or just bad stuff I try to find the silver lining or a least throw in some humor. Not sure if anyone saw how my evening went on Friday in my Parking-spot Predicament Post on my Family: Graner Style Page but that's a good start on seeing the what I mean by my "week".

I did a clean install of Lucid on my Dell 1330 last week. I have to tell you I am loving it. I had one issue with my mouse hanging - I could move the mouse see the cursor but clicking on anything did nothing, so I would have to reboot. Any who pgraner heard my not so pleasant remarks about how this was happening over 20 times a day since I installed Lucid, and asked me, "What are you talking about? Why are doing that [rebooting]?" So I showed him. He mentioned it to his team because they had heard of this error but had not been able to reproduce it. I could a gizillion times a day - I guess I am just talented like that (scarcasim). Andy Whitcroft was kind enough to ping me on IRC and asked me about it. He asked me to boot the computer in "i915.powersave=0" mode and see what happens. I did and guess what. I didn't have that issue anymore!

I even learned how to file a bug. Since I did not have the nice little thingy that shows up in the panel that told me I had a crash report I couldn't use "apport" to collect what I needed. (and it seems that everytime I do use apport to file a bug it tells me I can't because some package somewhere is not up to date even if I just updated minutes before) Andy asked me to file a bug about my issue. It pained me to say I don't know how to file a bug any other way. So Andy, Tim Gardner, and Jeremy Foshee all gave me pointers on how to file the bug. So I went to bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+filebug. The link that Tim had given me took me to the tutorial on how to file a bug on the ubuntu.com site. However it is a good place to start if you are new to filing bugs like me - :-)

Once I filed the bug and it was given a bug report number I could then go back to a terminal window (yeah yeah yeah - I am learning to use the command line but the cool thing is you don't have to to file bugs, but I don't know much about all that as I don't file bugs much and everytime I do it's a bit painful - most of the time) Any way - back to my bug. So once I had a bug report/bug number I could bring up a term window and using the command line I could the use - apport-collect . Once I ran this it collected the information for that bug, it asked me a bunch of questions and bam - I was able to include other infomation that Andy and those folks could use to fix the problem. I was so excited that I learned how to do that without asking pgraner for help. I did however notice two things in the questions boxes one of the questions was "Can you reproduce this bug?" or something like that and the answers were "yes" and "no". Well it was no when I was was booting in the i915.powersave=0 mode, but yes if I set it back the way it was. hmm I wanted a "maybe" box with an area to write that into :-). Also when asked how often was this happening it listed "once a day" and there was no "several times a day" option. Could have used that option as well. However, it was a pretty enjoyable experience filing a bug. I might have to do some more of that. Considering tomorrow is a bug day for gwibber and I love gwibber I might just have to help out tomorrow :-) (More on that later)

You would think all would be right with the world now woudn't you? Computer is hanging any more and I now know how to file a bug, I'm running Lucid and what could be better :-/ well I am so glad you asked!

I got up this morning only to find my harddrive on my Dell 1330 died. I don't mean it was hanging, I don't mean the data was borked, I mean will not even boot, won't even mount a liveUSB stick. Notta, nothing, nowhow - :-( It was one of those mornings where I wanted to just say, "I quit!" I was not a happy camper at all. Luckily I still have my MacBook Air and it has Lucid on it. I just needed to get to my backed up info on the server. It was still a but painful and I am still missing a couple days worth of stuff since the last time I backed up was about 4 days ago. *sigh* - but all in all not too bad. So I will just backup my stuff at night before I go to bed and hopefully this won't happen ever again. :-)

Not sure I have a silver lining to all this except, I have learned to laugh with my daughter (parking spot post) in times of stress, I learned to file a bug, and I am getting pretty good at ssh'ing into the server to find my stuff, as well as installing a computer and putting it back to the way I like relatively quickly.

My TODO list is now screaming my name, but I'll get to that in a few. I feel much better now :-) more later...

Nick Ali: Ubuntu Global Jam Time!

boredandblogging — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:42:23 +0000

The Ubuntu Global Jam is coming up soon. Its a great event for LoCos to get involved in. LoCos can use it recruit new members, bond, and most importantly: have fun. The template for setting up such an event should be relatively painless: pick a date, find a free location with wifi (coffeeshops, library), and advertise like crazy.

Advertising is key. Post every couple of days to the mailing lists (the LoCo list, LUGs, other open source user groups around you), post it on your Facebook wall, put it on the your LoCo Facebook page and create a Facebook event for it, post it to your LoCo forums, post it on the LoCo Directory, tweet/dent and then retweet/redent about it regularly. If there are LUG meetings (or any other open source group meetings like Python, PHP, Drupal, etc) between now and the date of your Jam, show up and pitch it to them in person. And of course, blog!

The wiki has great documentation on how to run jams.

I thought we should look at what Ubuntu Global Jams look like:

And if you do your Ubuntu Global Jam right, it will deteriorate rather quickly (hopefully):

Any questions?

David Planella: Ubuntu Global Jam: time is ticking

David — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:39:51 +0000

Ok, the countdown has started for the Ubuntu Global Jam. It’s less than 10 days until Ubuntu teams around the globe show off some community power and join the fest to make our favourite OS even more awesome.

For the late-comers:

WHAT: Ubuntu Global Jam
WHEN: Weekend of the 26th to 28th of March 2010
WHERE: Everywhere around the world! Check out your nearest LoCo

There are plenty of activities to choose this time (Bugs, Testing, Upgrade, Documentation, Translations, Packaging). Be creative!

And do remember to add your event to the LoCo Directory as well.

If you’ve never run a jam, do join us on IRC in #ubuntu-locoteams and ask questions, or even better, check out Jono’s videocast and the easy steps on how to organize and run one. We’ve also been running some training sessions on IRC you might find interesting.

As Rafael nicely put it, the Catalan team will be rocking it again this time round, with Translations, Testing, Upgrading and surely with improvisation

By the way, how many of you are going to be running translation jams? Has anyone got any tips or experiences to share? We’d like to hear them!

Charles Profitt: Announcing: Ubuntu Educators

Charles Profitt — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:00:19 +0000

The Ubuntu Educators team is focused on producing open courseware related to Ubuntu and other FOSS applications. The team is currently using Moodle to both develop and publish courses. The courses will be published as CC-BY-SA and be free to take and available for download as well. The goal is to develop materials that are similar to those in the Open Course Library Project or MIT OpenCourseware Project but focused on helping users learn to use Ubuntu and FOSS applications as well as courses that can assist IT professionals support FOSS in their environment.

The Ubuntu Educators will work under the Ubuntu Learning umbrella with two other teams. One of the other teams is focused on the mechanics of actually teaching the courses in-person or using IRC and the other team is concerned with producing materials for courses. If you would like to know more about the Umbrella group you can visit its wiki page.

If you are interested in joining the team and assisting with course development please visit the teams LaunchPad page, wiki page or the Ubuntu Educators Ning site. The team also has an email list interested folks can join.

Ubuntu QA blog: Announcing the Next Ubuntu Bug Day! - March 18th 2010

pedro — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:56:46 +0000

Fellow Ubuntu Triagers!

This week's Bug Day target is *drum roll please* Gwibber!
* 15 New bugs need a hug
* 67 Incomplete bugs need a status check
* 5 Confirmed bugs need a review

Bookmark it, add it to your calendars, turn over those egg-timers!
* Thursday 18th March 2010
* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20100318

Are you looking for a way to start giving some love back to your
adorable Ubuntu Project?
Did you ever wonder what Triage is? Want to learn about that?
This is a perfect time!, Everybody can help in a Bug Day!
open your IRC Client and go to #ubuntu-bugs (FreeNode)
the BugSquad will be happy to help you to start contributing!

Wanna be famous? Is easy! remember to use 5-A-day so if you do a good
work your name could be listed at the top 5-A-Day Contributors in the
Ubuntu Hall of Fame page!

We are always looking for new tasks or ideas for the Bug Days, if you have one
add it to the Planning page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/Planning

If you're new to all this, head to
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs

Duane Hinnen: Lucid here I come…eventually

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:34:46 +0000

Around this time in the development cycle I can no longer resist the temptation to upgrade. I wanted to share quickly with you all what I ran into in case you find yourself in the same situation. The upgrade went smooth. It was on reboot that it hit a snag. Lets just say I got a good long look at the new pretty purple boot up screen with the nice new Ubuntu logo. The boot stopped at trying to mount /media/usb. Fortunately i was able to boot into the older kernel it had left for me. After doing some research I found the policy of mountall was changed recently to wait for all local filesystems present in /etc/fstab on boot. Unfortunately this causes entries like the one in my /etc/fstab to leave the system boot hanging forever.

Here was my entry that caused Lucid to hang on boot.
/dev/sdc1 /media/usb vfat defaults 0 0

Adding a ‘nobootwait’ option fixes the problem.
/dev/sdc1 /media/usb vfat defaults,nobootwait 0 0

For additional details see bug 510415.

Dustin Kirkland: Server Bug Zapping: eucalyptus and euca2ools

Dustin Kirkland (noreply@blogger.com) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:14:13 +0000

So far, the KVM and Samba bug zapping weeks have been a success!

Next week, we will be focusing on Eucalyptus, Euca2ools, and UEC in general. In fact, Mathias Gug, Scott Moser, and I will be on-site at Eucalyptus Systems in Santa Barbara, California. We're going to spend the whole week working on UEC, ensuring that the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Cloud offering is the best damn Linux hosted Cloud Computing platform in the industry.

Call For Participation

If you have any vested interest in the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, please give us hand next week!

Take a look at the open bugs against:

Help us reproduce those, or let us know if they're fixed. Come hang out in #ubuntu-server next week.

:-Dustin

Thierry Carrez: Server papercuts beta1 round finished !

Thierry Carrez — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:03:24 +0000

Quick status update on the Server papercuts effort ! We just finished the first round of fixes, targeted to Lucid beta 1 milestone. We had 14 targets: we fixed 10 bugs, invalidated 2 of them and postponed the last two to the beta2 milestone. Thanks to everyone that participated so far !

For beta2 we currently have 7 papercut bugs targeted, that need to be fixed before Beta2Freeze on April 1st. We could have more in the list (ideally between 10 and 14), but we don’t have enough nominations ! Please don’t hesitate to submit new candidates, otherwise I’ll just consider that there is no usability issues anymore in any of the Ubuntu Server packages ! Quick reminder on the procedure:

If the papercut isn’t already filed as an Ubuntu bug in Launchpad, file a bug against the affected Ubuntu package
Look up the bug you want to nominate as a Server papercut, then click on “Also affects project”
Click “Choose another project” and type in “server-papercuts”, click “Continue”
Click on “Add to Bug report”

Dax Solomon Umaming: My Lucid Experience

Dax Solomon Umaming — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:18:30 +0000

Lucid Lynx is scheduled to be released next month, but that didn’t stop me from upgrading (clean install). This is a nice opportunity for me to test it out, as well as contribute by reporting any bugs I might stumble upon.

The default theme is refreshingly minimalistic – my wife commented it’s very inviting. There’s also a noticeable performance improvement as compared to Karmic Koala (note: I’m using a netbook here!). Applications responds quicker and the system boots and shuts down faster. As a plus, all my hardware works flawlessly.

Fixed Karmic bugs on MSI Wind

All the headaches I’ve experienced on Karmic has also been fixed on Lucid. To name a few:

The Live CD/USB runs on my netbook.
Webcam also works.
Ctrl+F6 to enable/disable webcam also works.
USB Ports also works without sacrificing the webcam.
GNOME Power Manager flickering issues has been fixed
Hibernation, Standby, and Lock Screen also works.

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

And of course, there will always be features I don’t want.

Minimize, Maximize, Close buttons position – what’s up with that?
Two clicks to access Empathy, incoming chat messages, and even Transmission from the Indicator Applet. There’s an existing workaround though to place the icons on the Notification Area, but you wouldn’t have access to the volume control.

And then, there’s a few non-Ubuntu hiccups I’ve encountered

Medibuntu’s ffmpeg nonfree libraries doesn’t work on Lucid – we have to manually copy the libraries until after they’ve updated the packages.
SmartBro’s ZTE MF627 3G USB stick doesn’t work – it installs ok, but it just won’t connect.

I took my sweet time reviewing my list… and comparing to Karmic – I’m very much satisfied with the next release. Keep it up Ubuntu Devs, you deserve a pat on your back!

Robert Collins: LCA 2010 videos are showing up

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:08:14 +0000

Not all the videos are there yet, but they are starting to show up . Yay. See http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/linux.conf.au/2010/index.html or your local LA mirror.

Og Maciel: Django Developer Kit Appliance: First Steps

OgMaciel — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:15:41 +0000

I’ll make it quick so I can go back to watching TV:

Announcing my first attempt at a generic Django Developer Kit, a CentOS (powered by rPath’s conary) based software appliance with all you’d need to run a Django project.

Django Developer Kit Appliance

The current images are built on the development stage, which means it includes the very latest Django 1.2 code line straight from the subversion repository. Currently, the following packages make up the base appliance:

django
django-ajax-selects
django-authority
django-cache-memcached
django-contact-form
django-db-postgres
django-filter
django-notification
django-pagination
django-piston
django-profile
django-sorting
django-tagging
django-threadedcomments
file
gettext
httpd
less
mod_python
mod_ssl
mod_wsgi
mx
openssh-clients
openssh-server
openssl
PIL
postgresql-server
psycopg2
python-ctypes
python-markdown
python-memcached
python-urlgrabber
PyYAML
scgi
sendmail
south
sqlite
sudo
tar
vim-enhanced

I’m still working out the kinks and have decided to not include openssl by default until I have a generic way of generating a certificate for the appliance. I will also be adding tools such as git, mercurial, etc so that people can use the appliance as a testing lab/environment for their own projects.

Once you’ve either installed the appliance or launched on EC2 or ESX, make sure to visit your appliance’s htts://IP:8003 address to configure the administrative interface (log in as admin with password as your password). Then click the Updates plugin to get updates as I will be making changes between now and the time I publish this post.

Download it today!

Chris Johnston: Ubuntu Classroom is looking for instructors

Chris Johnston — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:59:24 +0000

The Ubuntu Classroom Team prides itself in providing high quality educational sessions in the Ubuntu Classroom channel on freenode. Currently are schedule is quite empty, so we are looking to fill it up.

Some potential topics:
* Bug Triaging
* Fixing Bugs
* Programming
* Using Applications
* Packaging
* Translating
* …
* …

If you have something that you specialize in, or are particularly interested in teaching about, please contact a member of the Classroom Management Team to setup a session.

Laura Czajkowski: Beannachtaí Lá Fhéile Pádraigh oraibh

Laura Czajkowski — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:46:25 +0000

Beannachtaí Lá Fhéile Pádraigh oraibh – Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to you all

With so many people taking part in tomorrows celebrations and everyone feeling a little more Irish than usual I thought I’d wish you all a great day and Happy St. Patrick’s Day from us all over here in Ireland!

Beannachtaí Lá Fhéile Pádraigh oraibh

Benjamin Drung: Ubuntu Core Developer

overbenny — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:27:29 +0000

I have been a MOTU for 181 days (a half year). Today I became Ubuntu Core Developer. Now I can upload and sponsor packages in the main archive.

Benjamin Drung: I’m a MOTU now

overbenny — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:14:59 +0000

After being 138 days (nearly five month) a Ubuntu Contributor I became a MOTU. Thanks to all people who have helped me, especially Daniel Holbach.

Jono Bacon: Ubuntu Global Jam: Time To Rock The House

jono — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:18:13 +0000

As many of you wonderful people of the Internet should be intimately aware of, the Ubuntu Global Jam takes place from the 26th – 28th March 2010. That is only a few weeks away, and while we have some great events already set up, we need more!

I just wanted to highlight how simple it is to put together an event. I explained much of this in my recent live videocast today:

Can’t see it? Watch it here!

I was keen to summarize much of the key points here though so this post can be linked to so we can spread some best practice around how easy it is to put together an event.

Ubuntu Global Jam events are simple events designed to get Ubuntu users and contributors in the same room to work together and contribute to Ubuntu. This can happen through any means: testing, documentation writing, working on a LoCo team, development or whatever else. The key focus here is on getting people together and having fun with Ubuntu.

Let’s look at how to put together an event.

Step 1: Pick a date

The Ubuntu Global Jam takes place on three days:

Fri 26th March 2010
Sat 27th March 2010
Sun 28th March 2010

The first step is to pick a date for the event to happen. There is no fixed time of how long a jam should be it: it could be a few hours or a few days: it does not need to take place on all days. Just pick the times that work well for you.

Step 2: Pick a venue

The next step is to pick a place to hold your event. One of the misconceptions about global jam events is that they need to be big, professional, full-on events. Not at all! Many are simple, low-key events that are pretty much like most LUG meetings: a group of Open Source fans getting together to have fun and work on Ubuntu together.

When choosing a place I recommend you ensure the following are available as a bare minimum:

Enough seating for ten or so people.
An freely available Internet connection.
Optional but preferable is access to refreshments (e.g. in a coffee shop).

A few great options for venues are:

Coffee shops
Bars
University/school buildings
Restaurants
Homes
If it is a nice day, what about a picnic at a park?

Importantly, you often don’t need to inform the venue that you are going. Just choose a venue (e.g. a coffee shop) and just show up like any other day.

Step 3: Add your event

The next step is to add your event to the list of events that are going as part of the Ubuntu Global Jam.

We are in the process of moving over to our dedicated LoCo teams LoCo directory but as we are in a transitional period, we are also asking LoCo teams to list their events on the old wiki page too. As such, to add your events just follow these instructions:

The LoCo Directory

To add an event to the LoCo directory you will need to be a member of your LoCo team in Launchpad.

Go to http://loco.ubuntu.com and in the top right on the page, log in.
Click the Venues link.
Check to see if the venue you are holding your event at is in the list. If not, click the Add new venue link and add the venue to the system.
Click here to straight to the page to add a new event. On that page, click on the team that the event will be happening as part of and then fill in the form. Be sure to select Global Jam in the Related Global Event drop-down box.

The Wiki Page

Simply go to this page and add your event to it.

Step 4: Build some buzz!

Now is the time to spread the word about your event and encourage people to come along! Here are some ideas:

Be sure to tweet/dent, and post on Facebook about the event. When you add the event to the LoCo directory you will have a link to point people at (e.g. my event’s link is this) – send multiple messages to remind people of the event and keep it upfront in their minds.
Blog it – particularly if your blog appears on one of the planets.
Post to your LoCo’s mailing list – let them know about the event, when it is and where it is.
Post to local LUG mailing lists – let your local LUGs know: many people may want to come along and join the event!
Put up fliers – fliers in libraries, computer shops, universities and at the venue itself are great ways to get people to join you.
Website buttons – why not create some website buttons so attendees can put them on their website and link to your event page in the LoCo directory.

And that’s it! If you have any questions, here are a few useful resources:

Mailing List – this is where the LoCo community discuss general LoCo related topics. In most cases cases teams have mailing lists too.
#ubuntu-locoteams on Freenode – this is an online discussion channel where you can ask questions and socialize with other LoCo community members.

I look forward to seeing you good folks organizing your events and having a great time!

Jono Bacon: Unleashing The Ubuntu LoCo Directory

jono — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:55:57 +0000

One of the most wonderful sub-communities in the Ubuntu world are our LoCo Teams; the global span of Ubuntu advocacy groups that are out there every day helping to spread the word about Ubuntu. These wonderful people are on the front-lines helping people to get started with Ubuntu and providing a fantastic place to meet, greet and have fun with other Ubuntu users and contributors.

In terms of resources for this community, we have the following key components:

Wiki Pages – these wiki pages include best practise and details about how to join the community.
Teams List – this is the big list of teams, complete with contact details and online resources.
Mailing List – this is where the LoCo community discuss general LoCo related topics. In most cases cases teams have mailing lists too.
#ubuntu-locoteams on Freenode – this is an online discussion channel where you can ask questions and socialize with other LoCo community members.

One component we have been keen to fix is the listing of LoCo teams and associated resources and events. We have discussed this over a few UDSs and I am pleased to show off some work that has been going into making our LoCo portal really effective. Thanks to the wonderful LoCo Directory hackers who have been feverishly working away on this project. You can go and play with it at http://loco.ubuntu.com.

The LoCo directory looks like this:

Right now it has the following key features:

Teams – a list of all the LoCo teams in the community.
Venues – a list of venues used by LoCo teams (useful so you don’t need to repeatedly enter new venue information each time you organize and event and also good for sharing good venues with other LoCo team members).
Events – events can be saved to the system and associated with LoCo teams as well as global events such as the Ubuntu Global Jam.

If you click on the Teams link you can see the list of LoCo teams:

This is the full list of teams. Teams that have a humanity colored Ubuntu circle of friends next to them are Approved teams, otherwise it is colored gray and indicates the team is not yet approved. Already this makes finding teams much nicer for new Ubuntu members: just point them at http://loco.ubuntu.com/teams/

When you click on a team you see more information about the team and their resources/events. As an example, here is my local team Ubuntu California:

The team information page shows some key details such as the owner, admins, when the team is next up for re-approval and also links to a series of resources such as websites, IRC channels, forums etc. The page also rather nicely shows their logo.

Not only this, but the page also shows a list of events that have been organized by the team. In the screenshot above there are two events (they are a little squashed, that is a bug). Clicking on an event shows the details for that specific event. As an example, here are the details for the Ubuntu Global Jam event that I have organized in a few weeks time:

When you view an event you can see when it is, what it happens, the location, a map reference and a description. There is also an area where you can RSVP for an event to confirm your attendance or non-attendance: this is a great way of determining how many people are likely to show up to your event.

The way the LoCo directory works is to suck as much information out of Launchpad where possible about teams and then it builds in some of the other features (such as events) into the LoCo directory. This avoids duplication of data and uses Launchpad for key features such as access control and owner/admin information.

Great work, LoCo directory hackers!

Thierry Carrez: Samba bugzapping: the results !

Thierry Carrez — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:17:59 +0000

Last week we held a bugzapping session about Samba (see previous post), with interesting results. Samba has a lot of bugs opened for a server package, but that rarely translates into real bugs that you can fix. That’s why the triaging effort on the first day, combined with the Bug Day, was essential.

We went from 170 open bugs to less than 100 ! We fixed 3 bugs in the upload the next day. Most of the remaining bugs are thought to be already fixed in Lucid and need some confirmation from the reporter.

All in all I think Samba is in good shape for Lucid and would like to thank everyone that participated to the effort, in particular Philip Muškovac, Pedro Villavicencio and Chuck Short, you all rock !

Rafael Carreras: Ubuntu Global Jam in Barcelona

Rafael Carreras — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:01:59 +0000

March 27th, the Ubuntu Catalan community celebrates Ubuntu Global Jam at the UPC Campus Nord in Barcelona.

In order to arrive: Campus Nord de l’UPC de Barcelona, building C6 room E101 (access for passage between buildings D6 and C6).

It is a perfect opportunity for learn and help the Ubuntu project.

We will carry on with these activities:

Speech about translations by David Planella and Translation Marathon.
Testing Jam: test first Lucid beta in any possible way in order to find functionality bugs, translation bugs or whatever. Could create a virtual machine with the last ISO if you don’t want to install on your daily computer and test it on VirtualBox.
Upgrade Jam: upgrading to Lucid session from Karmic and Hardy.

By the way, there’s a new event page system on loco.ubuntu.com and this Jam is included.

You can do that too

Never run a Jam in your town? Why not try to start one, even if few people can attend? You can find support in a variety of places, including irc sessions. Most of them have already been done, but you can read the whole sessions online.

Nigel Babu: 1801 Bugs

nigelbabu — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:44:40 +0000

As of writing this post, there are 1801 bugs with patches attached in Launchpad that are not Fix Released or Fix Committed and do not have branches linked. This tells me 2 things: (1) There are some amazing contributors out there coming up with patches. (2) We have not been clearing up the backlog of bugs with patches attached.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to change this situation by reviewing some of the bugs with patches attached. Well, we need help and everyone are welcome, especially people working towards being an Ubuntu Developer (like me). Patch review needs your help. Right now, we’re focussing on all the bugs that have ubuntu-reviewers team subscribed. This helps us get any potential patch in Lucid.

If you want to help, check out the Code Reviews wiki. When stuck, pop by on #ubuntu-motu channel and mention you’re working on patch review and are stuck, I’m sure someone would be around to help you out.

PS: Hello Planet Ubuntu, my first post after being an Ubuntu Member.

Filed under: Bug Squad, MOTU, ubuntu-planet

Chuck Short: Even more Server Dailies

zulcss — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:40:20 +0000

With beta1 quickly creeping up on us. I have been adding even more upstream projects to the Server Dailies PPA. Now we have libvirt available straight from the projects git archive. It can be found at the following url. Before beta2 is released we hope to have the following projects included: postgresql puppet couchdb [...]

Matthew Helmke: Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice

matthew — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:28:14 +0000

The most basic definition of open government is the idea that people have the right to access the documents and proceedings of government. Being able to closely examine decisions, policies, and procedures is foundational to having the ability to make intelligent and informed decisions as a citizen, especially in a democracy where an informed electorate is vital if good choices are to be made by voters when selecting leaders or holding them accountable.

The Open Government movement is not officially organized as a group or party, rather it is a growing collection of concerned citizens who want to help create better government by increasing citizens’ access to information. It has been heavily influenced by the open source software movement and has similar aims: increased collaboration through making options available to any interested party willing to read and study, increased transparency by making source materials freely available for anyone to peruse and examine, and increased participation by eliminating closed systems wherever possible. While this idea was broadcast most widely in the campaign and early days of Barack Obama’s presidency, this is not a one-sided political issue as much as it is an Enlightenment era system of belief, enshrined in the United States’ Declaration of Independence and Constitution, now being updated for the digital era which is filled with technologies which could make those ideals more easily fulfilled.

Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice is a collection of 34 essays written by a wide variety of people who are interested in both promoting the philosophy of open government and in suggesting practical ways to implement procedures that will assist in applying that philosophy. The range of topics covered is diverse and interesting. Included are thoughts about governmental uses of information technology that currently limit openness and specific recommendations for remedying the problems, creating a wider variety of methods for people to access government data and increasing access across society, enabling greater innovation among those not directly connected to government such as through the creation of specific APIs so that outside research may be more easily accomplished using government collected data (paid for with public funds via taxes and therefore publicly owned data). We have essays that consider new and effective ways for current government officials to communicate more easily and directly with the people who elected them, discussions of how increased openness in government could decrease the influence of monied interests in governmental policy and could replace that with a greater influence by and for the electorate. There are clear and logical presentations on topics like why using open standards for data storage matters, especially with regards to publicly owned data as collected and used by governments, as well as some great arguments for the use of open source software to make government more efficient, transparent, and flexible in a rapidly changing world.

I greatly appreciate that this book exists. I would love for a copy to end up in the hands of every member of the government as well as any interested person planning to run for an office. These are policies that would greatly benefit the original intent of the founders of the United States (of which I am a citizen and where the book was written) and would be useful in any nation willing to carefully read and consider the ideas being proffered.

If this topic is of any interest to you, and I argue that it should be, this book would benefit you in your thinking. Go find a copy and read it.

Disclosures: I was given my copy of Open Government free by O’Reilly as a review copy, I also write for O’Reilly.

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Daniel Holbach: Lucid’s Ubuntu Global Jam in Berlin!

Daniel Holbach — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:22:12 +0000

I’m very happy the Berlin team is going to participate in Lucid’s Ubuntu Global Jam.

We’ll meet on Saturday 27th March at 12:00 in Berlin’s c-base and have a great time working on all the things that make Ubuntu great, so if you like to hang out, test Ubuntu, ugprade Ubuntu, translate Ubuntu, document Ubuntu, hack on Ubuntu, triage Ubuntu bugs or do anything else, we definitely want you there. Also if you are working on Debian, join us so we can learn to cooperate better and learn from each other.

This is all about having a good time, so head to the LoCo Directory entry, login and tell us that you’re coming.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam

Martin Owens: Learning Group

doctormo — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:08:48 +0000

We had a great meeting today to discuss the way forward for the Ubuntu Learning Project and we manage to reconcile a number of directions by making the generic and vague learning group into an umbrella social group for a number of different, but still heavily interacting, projects.

After the agreement to split up and autonomise the leadership of each project, we’d been working hard at changing all the wiki pages and launchpad pages to reflect this new organisation.

So what does this mean for course writing? Well course writing is now it’s own project, the “Ubuntu Learning Materials” project, which has a singular focus ont he construction on course material for teaching Ubuntu and related subjects. It’s not that concerned with how to publish the works, and will make do with published sets of pdf files and loose repositories. The development though will be very strong, with strict licenses for collaboration and a strong use of existing development tools to make sure writers are able to peer review, edit and writer without having their work lost in some custom media management site.

The other two projects under the umbrella is the Ubuntu Educators, who’s focus is on traditional education establishments and providing Ubuntu materials to them in a format they can consume (i.e. moodle). And the Ubuntu Learning/Classrooms project which is focused on taking materials and publishing and hosting classes for community consumption. Very much like what happens with developer/user weeks.

These separations should allow each project’s leadership to make good choices for the direction and goals of the project without having to be constantly tripping up over other considerations. The umbrella group though is still an important way to have all educational projects within Ubuntu talk to each other.

Thoughts?