I haven't exactly been keeping this blog up to date with information about and from UDS. There's simply way too much going on here for me to cover it all. I'm not going to write a long summary today either, but I've listed some links below. If you want to know more about the discussions, check the Gobby documents which contains the actual notes from the sessions.
I’m at the Ubuntu Developers’ Summit (UDS) in Dallas. If you don't already know what UDS is, please read Alan Popes blogpost which describes it rather well here...
Every day I read, write and listen to English, and yet I rarely speak it. This trip to UDS in Dallas has been really challenging for both my tongue and my English vocabulary.
I've been meeting some very nice three dimensional people with full-sized human bodies and their hackergotchis sitting on top. Today I attended four sessions besides the joint ones in the Grand Ballroom. I'll try to describe some sessions below.
UDS name badges
Opening Plenary
The day kicked off with Jono Bacon, who made an introduction in the Grand Ballroom at 9:00 am. Besides a lot of practical details, Jono told us to eat healthy food, get enough sleep and be awesome! He pointed out that it is important that we stay on topic and that we get the most out of the one hour we're given in each session. Mark Shuttleworth also spoke briefly about Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
Desktop round table
At this session we talked about what's important to focus on in this LTS release. Should the choice of applications remain the same to give users a feel of consistency, when moving from one release to another - or should we simply ship the best application for the job to deliver the best desktop experience. Banshee vs. Rhythmbox was brought up as an example.
Although this case was only a thought experiment, I should add that it is not likely that Lucid will be shipped with Banshee. Rick Spencer, the desktop team leader, also brought up the controversial idea of removing the GIMP in favor of a video editor, but he wanted to save the juicy details for the Wednesday session Application selection in the default install.
Boot preformance Scott James Remnant talked for two hours about the plans for further improvements and about how to achieve it. He started the session by giving a short introduction to how to read boot-charts – mainly because people often get it wrong. To sum it up shortly, there are two graphs, the CPU graphs is how hard the CPU is working, the second is the disk being used. On the CPU blue is the CPU working hard, idle is generally bad. Disk utilization, we want the disk to be used as hard as possible for as short a time as possible; red is bad.
Even though we haven't seen much improvement in Karmic, all the under the hood work done in Karmic will shine though in Lucid. Scott talked about having budgets for each section of the boot. If all the teams all hit their budgets, the goal is achieved. He then gave a list of specific tasks to work on for each team to meet the goal. This was a very interesting session indeed.
Short joint sessions
After lunch we all meet back in the Grand Ballroom where Jono talked shortly about how to run a good session. He had created some pretty slides and remembered to recharge his laptop.
MPT explained the future plans for the Software Center. Throughout the week there will be some Software Center sessions, so I won't go into details here. I'm really looking forward to seeing the application mature.
Didier Roche (didrocks) and Rick Spencer did a demonstration of Quickly by writing a small application, building it, testing it and uploading it to a PPA in like five minutes. A fantastic usability improvement if you're writing applications on Linux. The videos aren’t up yet, but there are previous screen-casts showing it off.
Boot experience work
This session focused on the technical how to of the boot experience. Here Scott James Remnant again did much of the talking (along with Collin) and demonstrated his Plymouth dancing monkey animation. The plan for Lucid is to introduce Plymouth, although the details on how everything will fit together isn't entirely clear to me yet. Mat Tomaszewski had a list of technical issues that he wanted to discuss solutions for. Like; Removing the semi hidden and currently flickering mouse cursor and the fade in/out during startup and shutdown, etc..
The Ubuntu Developers Summit will be next week (Nov 16 - Nov 20) in Dallas, TX USA.
All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go, and hopefully I will be writing blogposts from UDS throughout the week - I'm sure many others will too. After UDS, I plan to write an updated version of What can we expect from 10.04 - Lucid Lynx?.
Even if you're not joining the party, there's still ways to participate. Check out the UDS wiki Page for more info in participating remotely.
Internet Relay Chat
Overall discussion, including plenary: #ubuntu-devel-summit on freenode.
Discussion Channels - The tracks are shuffled around different rooms, so the irc channels are /per room/, not per track. Here are the channels, which corresponds to the room of the session in the schedule.
lame -m s /tmp/mystream.wav -o "/tmp/uds_room3.mp3"
for scheduling you can use cron to start mplayer and pkill to stop the recording.
Gobby
gobby.ubuntu.com
Gobby is being used at UDS to collaborate on the specifications that are being written and to facilitate remote participation.
To take part, please install Gobby (available in universe) and tell it to connect to gobby.ubuntu.com. You will be presented with a list of documents being edited. During any session or meeting, and particularly at the end of one, please do make a local backup of your documents. WARNING: There is a new gobby in karmic, gobby-infinote, we will NOT be using this at UDS since we need for people on older releases to participate. Ensure you are using the "gobby" package.
Videos
We will be recording certain sessions and all the plenary sessions at UDS. You can follow along with the videos as we post them on the Ubuntu community on Miro. If you want to automatically receive updates when videos are available we recommend that you Miro and click on the miro links at the site to subscribe to the video feeds. These videos will be in Ogg Theora format and is the recommended method for watching UDS videos.
Micro-blogging
Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to send brief text updates of 140 characters or less. It is a great way to inform the Ubuntu community of discussions and news that happen during UDS. Many Ubuntu users get there news from UDS from microblogging sources. During UDS-Mountainview, Identi.ca saw more traffic during UDS than during the night of the U.S. Presidential elections.
Microblogging is not a replacement for gobby or IRC, which have important uses during an UDS event. It should be used as a tool to communicate with other people at UDS and the wider Ubuntu user community.
Suggested ways to use microblogging at UDS:
Announce session topics at the beginning of the session.
Ask for feedback from the community during the session discussion.
Dent/tweet important discussion points during the sessions.
Dent/tweet any news worthy items during UDS (Kernel version, encrypted swap by default, etc...).
To plan social events and gatherings during UDS.
Identi.ca
We encourage people at UDS to create an account on Identi.ca, an open source micro-blogging platform if they don't already have an account. If you have a Twitter account you can link it your Identi.ca account and posts you make to Identi.ca will automatically forwarded to Twitter.
If you don't wish to create an identi.ca account, each track has a generic account that people can use to post. These accounts will also announce each session as it begins. Passwords for these account will be listed at the UDS venue.
@udscommunity
@udskernel
@udsqa
@udsfoundations
@udsmobile
@udsdesktop
@udsserver
In identi.ca, please use the !ubuntu and !UDS groups in your message, which already have many followers. These automatically post to the hashtags #ubuntu and #uds, if you want to follow and are not interested in sending.
Gwibber
Gwibber is an open source microblogging client for GNOME developed with Python and GTK. It supports Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, and RSS. Gwibber is available in universe in Ubuntu 9.04+.
After collecting some feedback, the GNOME Release Team has finally decided on the release date for GNOME 3.0: It will be September 2010.
To take a look again at the GNOME 3 plan that was released in April 2009: Click here.
This may come as a disappointment to those that have been very much looking forward to major improvements on the GNOME desktop, but a six-month set-back won't be too bad if it will lead to a better quality release (especially after judging the initial KDE 4.0 release). Additionally, Canonical for instance was not planning on shipping GNOME 3.0 until Ubuntu 10.10 due to Ubuntu 10.04 being their Long-Term Support release and not wanting to ship a potentially buggy desktop, so many desktop Linux users would not even have encountered the 3.0 release until October of 2010.
On the Gnome devel-announce-list, Vincent Untz wrote:
GNOME 3.0 will be released in September 2010, and in the meantime, we
will release GNOME 2.30 in March 2010, continuing our long-standing
tradition of six-months releases.
Thanks to the input from the community, we were able to draw a clear
picture of where we stand today and where we will be next March. As
mentioned in the GNOME 3.0 planning document [1], the release date for
3.0 was not set in stone: while we're using a strict schedule that
allows us to release GNOME every six months, GNOME is above all using
quality-based release engineering. That's why our community wants GNOME
3.0 to be fully working for users and why we believe September is more
appropriate.
Note that this release date for 3.0 doesn't mean that 2.30 will be less
stable than usual. On the contrary, this will help us integrate the
changes that are ready for 2.30, while leaving the parts that are still
rough on the edges outside of GNOME, as used daily by our users, until
after 2.30 is out. This will solidify both our 2.30 and 3.0 releases.
The idea of doing GNOME 3.0 was first seriously discussed in 2008,
before focus areas were defined in 2009, alongside a plan to reach
3.0. Those focus areas include revamping the user experience,
streamlining the platform and improving the promotion of GNOME. Compared
to GNOME 3.0, GNOME 2.30 will see the iterative improvements and bug
fixes that people have now come to expect from our 2.x branch, in
addition to some preliminary work needed for GNOME 3.0.
The GNOME 3.0 planning document was answered by the community with a
tremendous amount of work, with various teams taking the opportunity to
set their own goals for 3.0. Such goals range from modernizing part of
our stack to proposing new UI models for our desktop: those broad
changes show our ambition to always offer the best to developers and
users, and this make our path to GNOME 3.0 most exciting!
Let's make 2010 a fantastic year for GNOME!
Vincent
[1] http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero/Plan
A wise decision and I'm sure the Gnome 3 release will be fantastic ones it arrives.
If you want to test the developer preview of Gnome-Shell, you can easily install it in Karmic Koala via Synaptic.
This beautiful artwork by Armin Ronacher, have been brought back to life by Dylan McCall (the workhorse behind the new Ubiquity slideshow). In case you don't know, "Dawn of Ubuntu" is a desktop background that has been around since Feisty Fawn. It exists in various remixes, which makes it perfect for a really elegant day / night transition, that reflects the outside world.
Dylan McCall announced his little project as early as May 2008, but about a week ago, he picked up the project again. This time with the hope of bringing "Dawn of Ubuntu" back to Ubuntu.
On the ubuntu-artwork mailinglist he wrote:
Hi,
A while ago, I made a slideshow wallpaper out of Dawn of Ubuntu and its
various remixes. It crossfades between them throughout the day. The
result is a really elegant day / night transition that reflects the
outside world.
I finally got around to making a Debian package for the thing (since
people had trouble installing it themselves), and I uploaded it to my
PPA. No need to add the PPA to install the package, since there probably
won't be any super exciting updates. (Just browse through its files and
grab the appropriate .deb).
Unless I'm really mixed up, I believe there has been discussion about
bringing back Dawn of Ubuntu since the licensing stuff has been cleaned
up; it's simply cc-by-3.0 now. Perhaps this package - or something like
it - would be a stylish way to do so.
Enjoy :)
(And feedback is always appreciated)
Dylan McCall
On the mailinglist, the idea of changing images regard to the climate was also brought up.
I've always felt that "Dawn of Ubuntu" captures some of that African spirit that surrounds Ubuntu. I know there's millions of beautiful wallpapers out there and I'm sure my feelings for this one is purely sentimental.
After a year and a half of development and two release candidates, MythTV 0.22 final is now available. Version 0.22 of MythTV, this popular free software project to watch and record television from your computer, brings a lot of new stuff, including a major overhaul of the Qt-based MythTV user-interface and its new MythUI library with all new capabilities. The MythTV project also announced today a competition for designing new themes for MythTV with some nice prizes.
First Prize: A Hauppauge HD-PVR ($249 Value), A Schedules Direct T-Shirt, a free year of Schedules Direct service, and the inclusion of the theme into MythTV to ship with MythTV 0.23 (Due out approximately March 2010).
Second Prize: A Hauppauge HVR-2200/2250 ($149 Value, model will depend on location of winner), a Schedules Direct T-shirt, and a free year of Schedules Direct service.
Third Prize: A Hauppauge HVR-1200/1250 ($69 Value, model will depend on location of winner), A Schedules Direct T-Shirt, and a free year of Schedules Direct service.
I've been working on a Danish leaflet/flyer/brochure for the Danish release party, and it has now reached the stage where they are being printed. As I mentioned in my previous post, I've used the Ubuntu Leaflet as base, and changed the colors to fit Karmic. I also created a very simpel poster. Finally I've managed to upload both to SpeadUbuntu and my Behance portfolio.
At Ubuntu Live! 9.10 / Karmic Release Party, members of the Danish Ubuntu community will have 250 brochures to give away, along with a huge pile of Ubuntu CD's provided by Canonical. Let's hope this will help spread the word.
As I also mentioned in an earlier post the Danish Ubuntu community will be doing something a little different with this release. This time we want to try to reach out to people who have never heard of Ubuntu before. Although the event always is open to the public, it's mostly people from the Danish forum, IRC, mailinglists and Linux community that attend.
On Saturday 14th November 2009, we’ll set up a handful of delicious laptops in the shopping mall Bruuns Galleri in Aarhus. By each table, one or two people from our group will demonstrate and talk about Ubuntu. We'll hand out free CDs and the brochure to those who might be interested. The telecommunications company Telenor will, thanks to Anders Pedersen, be providing us with Huawei E230 USB modems and broadband connectivity - awesome! Afterwards there will be something more relaxed, community minded and probability more geeky as usual.
The Danish TV station TV 2 has been using Microsoft's Media player to display its content on Sputnik for a long time. This has caused several problems, especially for those not using Windows or Internet Explorer.
It has been decided to switch to another system, and here the choice fell on Microsoft's Silverlight as a replacement for Flash. The Danish news website Version2 have asked TV 2 why they chose as they did.
The most obvious reason was that the whole infrastructure behind Sputnik was already based on Microsoft Media Video format, which Silverlight can use directly. If they had chosen to use something else like Flash, almost everything would need to be rewritten.
Silverlight has integrated DRM technology and copy protection which is a request from several of the content providers.
Linux users left in the cold.
Although everything is now working on TV 2 Sputnik for both Mac and Firefox users who have the Silverlight plugin installed, Linux users are still left out in the cold.
Open source Moonlight project is an attempt to create a Silverlight clone for Linux platform and developed in collaboration between Novell and Microsoft.
I must admit that I have not tested the player with Moonlight. I am quite sure that our DRM-protected content will not work
says Magnus Rask Detlif. He adds that the new player is still in beta, and therefore may be minor errors.
I would have liked that a huge website like TV 2 would have chosen a more open solution. A setback for Linux as a desktop platform, but a win for TV 2 and Microsoft.
The Register has an article reporting that early adopters are having a tough time with Karmic Koala. The article says that Ubuntu 9.10 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Linux distro. (read more here...)
This brings us back to the testing debate again. Reporting bugs is the only way for developers to know about the bugs you experience and to fix them and make Ubuntu the best Operating System it can be. It is absolutely crucial that we have enough user to test the entire system on various hardware, and that these users provide the developers with good bug-reports. But Ubuntu doesn't lack users, in fact Ubuntu has never been more popular. So, what happened with Karmic?
As João Pinto pointed out, whether Karmic Koala is a good or bad release, it is all a matter of expectations. João also belives this was an accounted risked, part of the preparation for a much important goal which is 10.04 LTS. Martin Pitt posted the following on the ubuntu-devel-discuss:
Well, the bug tracker is full of regression and other reports. Karmic indeed was meant from the start as a "crack dump" release, with lotsand lots of new technology going into it. So in a way, it was the Fedora of Ubuntu releases so far. Perhaps we should have announced that more clearly...At least we now have a full cycle ahead of us to do bug fixing. :) "Unlike the usual blame game this was a much simpler and probably more realistic answer.
What has been your experience if you've moved to Karmic?
The first official testing release of the beloved XBMC 9.11 is now available.
The official announcment writes:
Today we are pleased to announce the first official testing release of 9.11, Codename: Camelot. It’s been quite a while since Babylon, so we’re very excited to begin the release cycle and work towards a new release.Please keep in mind that this is an early alpha build, and it should be treated as such. While it’s not likely to burn your house down or eat your pets, it’s likely that testers will run into a few bugs. If this happens, please search TRAC to see if someone else has already reported it. If not, you may submit a QUALITY bug report. Keep in mind that the reason for releasing alphas/betas is so that we can get a better feel for what bugs are out there. If you don’t report them, we can’t fix them. We are also still working hard to clean up the settings. Many useless ones have been removed, but there’s still quite a bit of rearranging to do.
There are a lot of new features in this release, far too many to list here, but the highlights are:
DirectX has replaced OpenGL for Windows
Numerous skinning engine updates which allow for use of some fancy new skins
Many improvements to the video player which allow for much smoother playback
Switch to Core Audio on OSX
Many VDPAU improvements under linux
Many platform-specific customizations
Much Much more. We will be showcasing the new features here on xbmc.org as the final release approaches.
Download
If you like living on the edge and would like to try the alpha, head over to our download page. You will always find the most current official builds there. AppleTV users may update via launcher’s downloads.
The Ubuntu SVN PPA build and XBMC Live will be uploaded soon!
The Mozilla community has now release Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 for download. This beta version of the next version of Firefox is built on the Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering engine, containing many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users. The Mozilla community appreciates your feedback and assistance in testing this preview of the next version of Firefox. Your beta software will update itself periodically, and eventually will be updated to the final release itself.
This first revision of the Beta of Firefox 3.6 / Gecko 1.9.2 introduces several new features:
Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
At this time most Add-ons have not yet been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta. If you wish to help test your Add-ons, please also download and install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter – your favorite Add-on author will appreciate it!
While we have an incredible bunch of people in the Ubuntu community, at Canonical and upstream that fixes bugs, we are always looking for good people to hunt down these bugs and report them. Reporting bugs is the only way for developers to know about the bugs you experience and to fix them and make Ubuntu the best Operating System it can be. But it is absolutely crucial that we have enough user to test the entire system on various hardware, and that these users provide the developers with good bug-reports.
From the Windows 7 download site, Microsoft can see that 8 million users download the Windows 7 BETA release!Microsoft also has these telemetry data that they get. Whenever anyone installs the Windows 7 BETA, they will automatically enroll into the customer feedback program. In the RC release and the final release it's an opt in program, but back in the BETA the deal was; "Hey, you're BETA testing this thing, we want the feedback - you have to provide us with this information!".
From the data collected by the customer feedback program, Microsoft was able to see that the testing pool wasn't 8 million, as the download site indicated, but instead 15 million people! So, this means 7 million people obtained the BETA or RC release of Windows 7 from elsewhere (Bittorrent, etc.).
I have no idea how many people tested the Karmic Koala alpha/beta/RC, but I'm sure the number is "slightly" smaller. It is impossible to calculate how many people is using Ubuntu. Ubuntu, and Linux in general, is getting a lot of spotlight from the press lately, which helps bring new users to Linux every day. More user means more software testers.
It seems to me that the average judgment in the Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu 9.10 reviews, says it's a close race and the score is roughly even. Some like Windows 7 better and some like Ubuntu 9.10 better. Basically, I don't freaking care. I couldn't care less about a boot race when I know that Karmic Koala is merely a stepping stone. You could of course argue that every release is, but Windows 8 isn't due until early 2012.
Six months from now, Microsoft will still be shipping their new flagship, while Ubuntu will be releasing Ubuntu 10.04 - the Lucid Lynx. At this point, Windows 7 will be fighting the fastest, most solid and most beautiful version of Ubuntu ever.
I'm happy to announce that I've now joined the newly created Shimmer Project. Pasi Lallinaho (knome) founded the project to make everything Open Source beautiful. We will not be tied with any particular project even if we work with them. You could think us of as freelancers of the Free Software world with the exception that we don’t ask for any money but only work for the projects and things we have passion for. The Shimmer team will try to contribute to various fields of FOSS projects, including artwork, GUI design, usability, desktop integration, et cetera.
...The reasoning behind setting up a separate group rose from my and Steves disappointment in the somewhat cold and dismissing acts of the DX (Desktop Experience) team, which lead us to do more and more work to fix things that we hadn't broken. We feel really bad that Canonical is making design decisions with only GNOME in scope and don't want to handle with fixing (in our opinion) their design flaws. Yet another thing that clearly became a burden too big is the Canonical half-yearly release schedule. With our new project we will be free of any other than our own schedules...
Our IRC channel is #shimmer on freenode. All of you are welcome to join us. Besides Pasi Lallinaho, the team consists of Steve Dodier, James Schriver, Simon Steinbeiß and myself. A hardcore team and I'm honored to have been invited to join them.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what this project will bring to the Free Software world.
http://shimmerproject.org/
Call me ignorant, but there's a lot of things below the surface of Linux, which I know absolutely nothing about. I'm wondering why distributions, or at least the large ones, haven't standardize packaging. Can you tell me?
What I do know
Linux package formats are the different file formats used to package software for various Linux distributions.
A software package refers to computer software packaged in an archive format to be installed by a package management system or a self-sufficient installer.
Linux distributions are normally segmented into packages. Each package contains a specific application or service.
from Wikipedia
Whether it is Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS, Gentoo we need different packages for each distribution. And because different distributions needs different packages and formats, there's a lot of lost effort. Many people are duplicating the packaging effort, when we could be so much more efficient.
The current state of packaging is a setback for the distributions, the developers and the users.
You could of course argue that this situation is not a problem for the experienced Linux users — they might
choose to install directly from source code or at least make decisions about the best way of installing the software themselves. However, for a newcomer in the GNU/Linux world, this situation is pretty confusing.
What I don't understand
I agree that diversity is good, but the waisted effort in this format war just seems insane. If just some of the largest distributions would get together and standardize on one of the current formats, like .Deb or .RPM. But, really, it doesn't matter - just choose one and everyone just use it!
Are we stuck because developers can’t agree on which format is the superior one? Would it be possible to start over, in a joint effort to create a new format with all the capabilities?
I know Linux Standard Base have tried to solve these challenges, but at the moment LSB just looks like a stranded whale. If every distribution could utilize the same packages - that would be amazing!
I can of course understand that the transition from one format to another would require a huge amount of work, but I think it would be worth it in the end.
Today is the day of the Karmic Koala - also known as Ubuntu 9.10.
Can can with success use .torrent files for downloading the final version of Ubuntu 9.10. This way you can download the latest image without affecting the main server or any of the mirrors.
You can also use zsync to save your bandwidth and time while you download the final version of the karmic koala.
zsync is a file transfer program similar to rsync. zsync is optimized for distribution of files across Internet, with one file on a server to be distributed to thousands of down loaders.
zsync -i yourexisting.iso http://final.iso.zsync
If you haven't got zsync installed, just type:
sudo apt-get install zsync
Happy downloading and congrats to everyone that has contributed to the Karmic Koala release, including everybody in GNOME, KDE, Xorg, Ubuntu and Canonical!.
As with every release of Ubuntu (..., Hardy, Intrepid, Jaunty, Karmic), there's a wiki page for incoming artwork submissions and concepts (themes, icons, etc.). On the wiki you can post your artwork submissions and concepts for the Ubuntu release planned for April, 2010, nicknamed Lucid Lynx. The first submission has already been made to the Lucid Lynx artwork wiki.
During the Karmic cycle, you could submit background and wallpaper suggestions both on the wiki and on Flickr. This was the first time Flickr was used as a supplement to the wiki. It was a huge success with over 2000 submissions! With the restriction of disk space, only 19 of the fabulous wallpapers made it onto the final Ubuntu 9.10 CD. If your favourite isn’t on the CD it will be made available as a separate package!
For Lucid Lynx no wallpapers can be submited on the wiki to avoid having submissions in two separate places. You must join the Flickr Ubuntu Artwork group if you would like to offer Wallpapers for Ubuntu.
Because there's shortcomings to both using the wiki or Flickr, there has been thoughts about creating a special site for artwork submissions. The discussion also brought up the question of how to make it easier for people to select wallpapers directly from the pool.
The White House website has now moved over to an Open Source platform to make the system more robust and more secure - and more open. The President's website is now using Red Hat Linux as operating system and the classic combination of Apache web server and MySQL database. The system also uses the Apache Solr search engine and the JavaScript library jQuery. The PHP-based Drupal has been chosen as the CMS.
The White House website has not changed its appearance - all the changes has happened below the surface. The switch to Open Source is not just about technology. In an interview with the Huffington Post it is implied that the administration also wants to send a message of openness and transparency by switching to Open Source.
What do we know?
Well, not very much at the moment, but that will all change next month. In November, Ubuntu developers from around the world will gather to help shape and scope the next release of Ubuntu at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Dallas. At UDS it will be decided what the developers will be working on over the next six months, and as a result, what we'll be seeing in the next versions of Ubuntu. However, until UDS arrives let’s see what we can predict at this time.
LTS release
Ubuntu 10.04 will be Ubuntu’s third long-term support (LTS) release, coming, as promised, two years after 8.04, the last LTS release. With security updates available for five years for servers and three years for desktops. The enhanced stability and longer lifecycle of LTS releases make them appealing to hardware makers and organizations that are rolling out large Ubuntu deployments. With the increased focus on stability, this also means that there won’t be a long list of new features.
No new interface
If you’re waiting for Gnome 3 to arrive, don’t hold your breath – at least not as default. Ubuntu 10.04 will use Gnome 2.x as its desktop environment, with the focus to shift to Gnome 3.0 thereafter. This means the user interface won’t look very different from previous releases. It is of course to be expected that Gnome 3 will have a lot of rough edges at its birth, which again doesn’t make it ideal in a LST release. The Gnome shell will be available for installation though, should you want to take it for a test drive. Overall, a wise decision.
The upcoming Gnome 3 that is to be released early 2010, can already be tested in an early stage in Ubuntu 9.10. If you want to test the Gnome Shell, install the package "gnome-shell", open a terminal and enter the command "gnome-shell --replace&".
Gnome Shell
Artwork
With Ubuntu 9.10 things has started to look really good. Michael Forrest, the Canonical Design Team GUI prototyping guy, explains on his blog that we must remember that this is work in progress and I’m sure they won’t let us down. Michael writes: “There is a lot of work to do on a million other aspects of Ubuntu so I hope people won't get fixated on things like the default desktop too much - these are matters of taste and there are no correct answers - you have to trust that we have a long-term vision and that decisions are made to move things in a certain direction. We don't think you'll be disappointed when things really start to come through over the next few releases.”
Faster
Boot speed has been a hot topic for a long time now and Ubuntu has come a long way in the last few releases. For Ubuntu 10.04 the target boot speed is 10 seconds! The reference platform for this target is a Dell Mini 9 netbook with a slow CPU and fast SSD that makes it an excellent "middle of the road" machine. Some people's machines will be slower, some will be faster.
There’s also a plan to improve the speed on the installation process. Currently when installing packages in Ubuntu the download is a separate step from the unpack/configure. Ubuntu will be able to install package faster by doing downloads and installs in parallel. While downloading the cpu and disk are mostly idle. While installing the network is idle. Doing them in parallel is a good way to utilize both systems.
Under the hood Ubuntu 10.04 will also be switching to using a swap file, instead of a separate partition. This will allow on-the-fly resizing.
Boot experience
In Ubuntu 9.10 the boot experience went through intensive surgery and came out with a much improved look and feel. We will be seeing more improvements in this area in 10.04.
On shutdown will we have the option to install updates. This feature was planned for 9.10, but deferred.
A graphical OS selector is planned for switching (rebooting) between two or more operative systems. The preferred version of the graphical OS selector will have easily recognizable logos for the installed OSs. This will require a lot of work and might not actually land in 10.04.
Ubuntu Software Center
One of the biggest features that were introduced in 9.10 was the Software Centre. With a simple design it can be used to install and remove software packages and to add repositories for finding, installing and managing new applications. In Ubuntu 10.04 the Software Center will expanded its features and will replace Synaptic, Software Sources, Gdebi and (if appropriate) Update Manager.
Mark Shuttleworth's announcement
Attendees at Atlanta Linux Fest's breakout session Ubuntucon were among the first to hear the Lucid Lynx announcement straight from Mark Shuttleworth himself.
What does it all mean
All over Ubuntu 10.04 is looking to be an amazing release!
I've been working on a Danish leaflet/flyer/brochure for the Danish release party. I've used the Ubuntu Leaflet as base, and changed the colors to fit Karmic.
For the Karmic Koala release party we (the Danish Ubuntu community) will be doing something a little different. This time we want to try to reach out to people who have never heard of Ubuntu before. On Saturday 14th November 2009, we’ll set up a handful of delicious laptops in the shopping mall Bruuns Galleri in Aarhus. By each table, one or two people from our group will demonstrate and talk about Ubuntu. We'll hand out free CDs and a Danish version of the Ubuntu leaflet for those who might be interested. Afterwards we'll do something more relaxed, community minded and probability more geeky in cooperation with Østjyllands Linux-usergroup øjlug.
The text for the Danish leaflet has been translated, edited and written by members from the Danish community. To do this in the most effective way we created a wiki page for easy management. I'm planning to add this brochure to SpreadUbuntu. Here's a preview of the Danish version (still only a draft):
It seems hardly a surprise that Apple, in connection with Microsoft's launch of Windows 7, has sent a new "Get a Mac" advertising on the street, making a mockery of the new operating system. Microsoft claims that Windows 7 will be better than Vista, a claim that Apple in their advertising does not think is particularly reassuring. Video is titled "Broken Promises" and it briefly shows how the PC through the years have made the same promise at each release of a new version of Windows, claiming that now everything is so much better. Why should Windows 7 be different?
Johnny Lee talks about yet another awesome way to interact with your computer.
As of June 2008, Nintendo has sold nearly 30 million Wii game consoles. This significantly exceeds the number of Tablet PCs in use today according to even the most generous estimates of Tablet PC sales. This makes the Wii Remote one of the most common computer input devices in the world. Johnny Lee's projects are an effort to explore and demonstrate applications that the millions of Wii Remotes in world readily support. Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. You don't actually need the Wii console. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space.
Thanks to Johnny Chung Lee, Carnegie Mellon University for this enlightenment. For more information and software visit: http://johnnylee.net/
It looks like IBM isn't much of a friend of Microsoft's anymore. Today IBM announced an extension of its Microsoft-Free PC effort together with Canonical Ubuntu Linux. This is the same thing that was announced a few weeks back for Africa, and now it's available in the US. The big push is that IBM claims it will cost up to $2,000 for a business to move to Windows 7. They argue that moving to Linux is cheaper. The IBM/Canonical offer is an interesting one and the timing against Windows 7 is a brilliant stroke of marketing. Read the article here: http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/10/ibm-and-ubuntu-roll-linux-for.html
I just came across a very interesting 10/GUI concept video. On the frontpage of their website it says:
Over a quarter-century ago, Xerox introduced the modern graphical user interface paradigm we today take for granted. That it has endured is a testament to the genius of its design. But the industry is now at a crossroads: New technologies promise higher-bandwidth interaction, but have yet to find a truly viable implementation. 10/GUI aims to bridge this gap by rethinking the desktop to leverage technology in an intuitive and powerful way.
