Apr 30, 2009

Imagine Ubuntu 9.10

The image is from 60-most-execellent-ubuntu-wallpapers


Imagine this:
As you click the power button on your computer, a beautiful bootscreen appears on the screen in front of you. You could sit there and watch the boot animation all day, but within seconds the shiny, seamless and flicker-free boot presents you with an intriguing, interactive and animated login promt. As the desktop panels appear you hear the new light, clean and smooth login sound. A transparent notification bubble appears, with a wireless icon and the text “Connected to Yoyodyne”, as your notebook successfully connects to the wireless network.

Yes, this is Ubuntu 9.10 and the features that provided the experience was:
Plymouth
Faster boot
Login experience (Face browser)
Notifications

If you’re wondering why I mentioned new system sounds, let me just eradicate any expectations you might have. Nothing has been proposed by Canonical, but I will do everything I can to submit a new set. Hopefully something that will be very high quality and just as memorable as it is different this time.

There's a long list of features that didn't make it into 9.04 which is currently planed for 9.10. Join the discussion about features in Koala on the Ubuntuforums.org in the thread Interesting features in Koala?

Apr 28, 2009

Mark Shuttleworth Q+A

Today Mark Shuttleworth did a two hours Q+A session, at the Ubuntu Open Week. As usual, he touched many different areas - Lots of good questions and lots of good answers. Grab the log here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/openweekJaunty/AskMark

Apr 27, 2009

Job offers at Canonical

Someone told me that Canonical just passed 300+ employees (No sources to confirm that) and they are still hiring! In a blogpost Oxford Archaeology wrote:

I used to look a lot at the job offers on Ubuntu.com, as many times the job offers from a company tell a lot about the direction the company is going. It uses to be very interesting, as you can see how much effort is put into launchpad, Ubuntu mobile, or sometimes even learn about new projects before they get announced (in fact I even found my current job there, as companies proposing jobs related to Ubuntu are allowed to advertise there).

However, I was a bit saddened that a very large part of these jobs were non-technical or not really benefiting the community: business development, sales consultant, system administrators for Canonical's servers, launchpad developer, support, ... it was fueling the idea that some other communities criticized in the past that Canonical was only packaging and selling other people's work, without creating much added value. I am a pretty strong opponent of launchpad and landscape closed-sourceness myself...

So, I was really thrilled to see that Canonical was now hiring a "Desktop Architect - Network experience" person, and a "Desktop Architect – Sound Experience" person. Add this to the few offers from October which sadly are still there (Gnome developper, OpenGL developper), and it seems to me that Canonical finally decided to pass the second gear.

I was a bit afraid to see Canonical go in so many directions (Ubuntu mobile, ARM support, Ubuntu netbook remix, ubuntu server) - so I must say I am very happy to see that Canonical is still committed to providing the best Desktop experience, ever ;)

I wouldn't go as far as saying that it is related to Ayatana, but who knows... Really looking forward to what will come out of all this now! A working network manager, anyone? ;)


+1 The future looks bright for desktop Linux.

If you know someone who has the skills for any of the available jobs at Canonical, please do encourage them to apply.
http://webapps.ubuntu.com/employment/

Ubuntu Live! 9.04

This Saturday I attended the Danish LoCo teams Ubuntu 9.04 release party. People from the Danish forum, IRC, mailinglists and various other places attended. As always, there were many different sessions. To name a few: What is good support, What’s new in 9.04, What is UbuntuDanmark, Translations, and so on.
But, there’s were two sessions that I found particularly interesting; Bug triaging and Clever remote control of computers.

Søren Hansen, who works for Canonical as a visualization specialist on the Ubuntu server team, was asked to talk about Bug Triaging. Søren held a very enlightening talk. I never actually meet Søren before (though we only live 5 minutes walk from each other). He was very friendly and accommodating, and I really enjoyed his talk very much. Of course, I would have loved to hear him talk about his work for Canonical.
BTW, if you've watch his UDS interview or his hackergotchi this might be shocking news to you - Søren has cut off his ponytail!!

Anyway, back on a more serious track again. Mads Chr. Olesen talked about remote controlling computers in various ways. He mentioned VNC (Virtual Network Computing), SSH and MultiADM. Since I had no knowledge on this topic I also found this session very enlightening. MultiADM is Mads’s own project for managing and updating installations of various systems. Currently supported is Debian-based/Ubuntu systems, Typo3 (CMS) and Wordpress. The first release just made it to Launchpad this weekend!

The group photo includs a big cardboard Tux:

(Photo by Martin Jensen)
If this isn't scary enough, click here for a larger image.

Apr 23, 2009

GnomeShell and Complex Design Ideas

You've probably already heard about GnomeShell, which redefines user interactions with the GNOME desktop. The project is still in early stages of development. The plan is to have it be an optional feature in GNOME 2.28, and to replace the existing components for GNOME 3.0.

On the designer playground site you can find a list of descriptions of design ideas with links to the mockups or write-ups. If you're into usability, GUI design or just curious, surf by the http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/DesignerPlayground

On the site you'll find images, write-ups, videos and even an interactive mockup.

The image below is a mockup made by Máirín Duffy for the Navigating Applications Menu

Ubuntu 9.04 Released!


Today Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) Desktop and Server editions and Ubuntu Netbook Remix was releashed, continuing Ubuntu tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. Ubuntu 9.04 will be supported for 18 months on both desktops and servers. Users requiring a longer support lifetime may choose to continue using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS rather than upgrading to or installing 9.04

I thought it would be a good idea to share the .torrent links from here, so you can download the latest image without affecting the main site or any of the mirrors. Please be a good citizen and seed at least 1:1.

ubuntu-9.04-alternate-amd64.iso
ubuntu-9.04-alternate-i386.iso
ubuntu-9.04-desktop-amd64.iso
ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso
ubuntu-9.04-server-amd64.iso
ubuntu-9.04-server-i386.iso

If you find a bug in Jaunty, please read the recommended procedure for filing bugs correctly before you submit a bugreport.

Torrent source: http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2009/04/23/ubuntu-904-jaunty-released-torrents-available-here/

Ayatana

I've heard Mark Shuttleworth mention the Ayatana project before, and today Jono Bacon wrote and introduction on his blog. Jono wrote:

I just wanted to let you all know about an interesting project kicking off in the form of Ayatana.

Ayatana is the term that refers to the collection of user interface, design and interaction projects started by Canonical. Ayatana’s goal is to build a set of well researched and defined projects to help extend, improve and refine the Open Source desktop. More specifically, the focus of Ayatana is to improve the perception and presentation of information in the desktop, hence the name of the project; the Buddhist term for a “sense base” or “sense sphere.

I am really excited about this. When I first read The Design Of Everyday Things by Don Norman, he makes it clear in example after example that perception is a key consideration in great design. One of his examples is the thermostat. How many have you have walked into a cold house and turned the thermostat straight up to 10? Of course, cranking it up doesn’t do a jot to heat the house any quicker, but the perception of the interface and the expectations around similar devices suggests it will. There are countless examples of this kind of perception in devices, interfaces and across the desktop. I am excited that the project is starting out with this approach.

What I find exciting about Ayatana is that it is really putting design at a top level. Over the years we have seen collaboration in our community really evolve: at one time it was heavily programming led, but now we see contributions across a wealth of diverse skill types: translations, documentation, advocacy etc. Ayatana is going to be an interesting vessel in which design plays a real role accompanying these other skill sets.

The Ayatana community are keen to encourage contributors to get involved in the design, hacking, translations, documentation, and other areas. Canonical has also invested a team of developers who are actively contributing to the project. This team includes rock stars such as Mirco Muller, Ted Gould, Cody Russell, Bo Thorsen, Aurelien Gateau and Neil Patel. In addition to this a team of designers will be contributing to the project including some familiar faces such as Matthew Paul Thomas, Martin Albisetti, Ken Wimer and David Siegel as well as some new faces such as Ivanka Majic and Mat Tomaszewski.

Currently Ayatana comprises of the following Open Source projects:

* notify-osd - a set of guidelines for organising user interactions with notifications and dialog windows
* indicator-applet - an improved message indicator and its underlying indicators framework

The first point of contact for getting involved is the Ayatana mailing list here and the archives are available here. To kick things off the team have organised their very first Ayatana IRC meeting on the 5th May at 17.00 UTC. The meeting takes place in #ayatana on irc.freenode.net. The agenda for the meeting will be fleshed out in more detail on the mailing list.


Sounds fantastic!

Soruce: http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/04/22/ayatana/

Apr 22, 2009

Introducing AlternativeTo

AlternativeTo is a new approach to finding good software. Tell AlternativeTo what application you want to replace and it will give you suggestions on great alternatives! Instead of listing thousands of more or less crappy applications in a category, AlternativeTo make each application into a category. Think of it like forever evolving blog posts about good alternatives to the software that you're not satisfied with. And the "blog posts" are generated by you through suggestions, comments and votes.

http://alternativeto.net/

Of course this is nothing more than a alternative for LinuxAppFinder.com

What Do You Do After A Fresh Install?

With only one day until the release of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), I guess it's time ask the traditional question - What Do You Do After A Fresh Install?

Every six months the answers vary just a little. Here's my list for Jaunty in no particular order:


- Enable automatic GDM login
- Change the theme to Dust
- Disable audio preview in Nautilus
- Enable backspace in Firefox
- Set downloads to "Close it when all downloads is finished" in Firefox
- Import Firefox bookmarks
- Enable Multiverse Repositories
- Install ubuntu-restricted-extras
- Install Gstreamer Extra Plugins
- Install applications I use --> Advanced CCSM, Ubuntu Tweak, Wine, Skype and Word 2007

If you have any other things that you do after installing a fresh copy of Ubuntu that you would like to share, then please leave a comment!

Two new ways to search Google

Although Google also is marked by the economic crisis, the company follows the long-standing tradition of bringing new ideas and continuing to issue new experimental products. This week introduces two new ways to use Google's search engine - Similar Images and Google News Timeline.



Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/hard-at-play-in-google-labs-with.html

Apr 21, 2009

Introducing Arista Transcoder

(Jaunty only)
Arista Transcoder is an easy to use multimedia transcoder for the GNOME Desktop. Arista focuses on being easy to use by making the complex task of encoding for various devices simple. Pick your input, pick your target device, choose a file to save to and go.


The 0.8 release is the first public release and includes a to-do of items that will be completed for the 1.0 final release. All development will happen on Launchpad, which provides bug tracking, distributed version control, milestone / roadmap planning and tracking, a forum and translation utilities.

Features:

* Presets for iPod, computer, DVD player, PSP, and more
* Live preview to see encoded quality
* Automatically discover available DVD drives and media
* Rip straight from DVD media easily (requires libdvdcss)
* Simple terminal client for scripting

Jaunty is the first release that supports everything needed to run Arista (GTK+ 2.16, latest GStreamer libraries, etc.). Make sure you have all the GStreamer plugins installed (including those in Multiverse!)

The author Daniel G. Taylor is looking for any feedback and/or help others can provide.

More info here: http://programmer-art.org/projects/arista-transcoder

Banshee as the default mediaplayer?

Jo Shields posts about his intention to propose switching Rhythmbox for Banshee in Karmic Koala. He's not the first to suggest it, but he is in the right place to make the proposal for this release. In his post he makes some good points like saving a significant amount of space (6.1 MiB)! Let’s see how the proposal will play in Barcelona at UDS.

Read his post here: http://www.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/74/

Apr 20, 2009

...getubuntu/download

Matthew Nuzum from Canonical posted this message titled "If you could change the download tabs..." on the Ubuntu-website mailinglist.

So, I did some thinking and created a mockup of the download site. I really think the current site is very messy, so I made some changes to make it look more inviting (Like making the mirror selection automatic).

The current site looks like this:
click to view in full size
click the image to view in full size!


Here's my version:
click to view in full size
click the image to view in full size!


Follow the discussion on: lists.canonical.com/archives/ubuntu-website/2009-April/date.html

Apr 18, 2009

MythTV 0.22 Will Rock You!

This might be old news to you, but I've totally missed it. MythTV 0.22 Will Rock You!

This is not an actual screenshot from MythTv 0.22
This is not an actual screenshot from MythTv 0.22


I think it's been almost two years since I tried MythTv, and my experience wasn't exactly pleasant. Patrick Wagstrom (that wrote the post in the link above) highlights many of the points, I would bring up myself.
The one thing that is bugging me most about MythTv is certainly the lack of bling (which is still an issue today). Back then all the manual configurations would also make me give up halfway through the installation.
Today, I dualboot Ubuntu / Vista and run MS MediaCenter which fits my basic needs. Actually, the first open-source project I ever got involved with was MediaPortal, which only runs on top of Windows.

I'm still waiting for a slick and user-friendly Linux replacement, and I really really hope the near future will bring that. On this blog you might have read about Elisa . I am an Elisa lover! It just works, has very frequent releases and is super slick. Elisa has currently no TV support, but it is planed for later releases. Though this might still be far away, I'm really looking forward to this feature landing.

Back on the topic of this blog post. The news Patrick Wagstrom posted has made me reconsider MythTv and now I will have to take the next release for a test drive. The biggest change in the 0.22 release of MythTV will probably be the new MythUI library with all new capabilities.

Read more here:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythUIDemoTheme
http://patrick.wagstrom.net/weblog/2008/12/11/why-mythtv-022-will-rock-you/
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.22

Apr 17, 2009

DropBox


As an Ubuntu user I rarely speak of the proprietary software I use. Not because it's a secret or because I find it embarrassing, I just don't want to start yet another discussion on the topic of open-source vs. proprietary software.

I'm using the fantastic DropBox, which is proprietary software - but still free. If you've never heard about DropBox check out this screencast at: http://www.getdropbox.com/screencast#screencast

After using Dropbox for almost a year, I must say it's great. Everything is very userfriendly (which sometimes can be hard to find on Linux) and the web interface for Dropbox is great. I highly recommend giving it a try.

I've heard that ifolder could do something similar, but I haven't yet had the time to check that out.

Steven Harms recently wrote a blogpost about DropBox

Apr 16, 2009

Jaunty available from ShipIt


There's only one week left until the final release of Ubuntu 9.04 and, if you are anxious to get your hands on some nice CDs with the new Ubuntu operating system, then you should pre-order them right now from Ubuntu's ShipIt service, free of charge (a free account or an OpenID is required). They have started taking the orders a few minutes ago, so hurry up!

Also, if you want to count the days until Ubuntu 9.04 is released – which will happen on April 23rd – you can get a nice javascript to post on your website. If you've been following this blog, you will know that, besides the fantastic banners Thorsten Wilms created, you can also find the banner I created at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/countdown

Although many of you have downloaded the Beta release of Jaunty Jackalope, later tonight the Release Candidate will be available for download. Of course you won't notice many changes compared to the Beta version, because most of them are internal, like bugfixes, improvements, security and software updates.

Apr 15, 2009

GNOME PackageKit Updates

Remember Richard Hughes blog about a new experimental update viewer in GNOME PackageKit. Richard has been doing some tinkering around the edges to make things work better, hopefully without getting in the way. This is shown quite nicely from the following UI from the new update viewer.


And, thanks to Daniel Nicoletti, PackageKit now understands media requests, so the backends can request the user do something with physical media. This is still using the non-blocking logic we’ve always been using, so if we’re using multiple disks then the content has to be copied off each one in turn before the transaction, rather then installing direct from the media. Trust me, it’s better this way.

We're Linux!

Earlier this year the Linux Foundation launched a competition for budding writers, film makers and just general Linux enthusiasts to make their own grassroots advertisement to compete with Apple's highly-successful 'I'm a Mac' series of adverts. We looked at the contest finalists earlier, but now the winner has been announced.

Here it is:

Apr 14, 2009

Running Ubuntu, literally

The core developer Dustin Kirkland made a very unusual blogpost today. Not about the geeky developer stuff as you might imagine, but let's just say when Dustin Kirkland says "I'm running Ubuntu", he literally is!



You can read all about how Dustin ran the "Race for the Roses" Half Marathon in Portland on April 5 in an Ubuntu Jaunty t-shirt - His way of promoting what's shaping up to be a fantastic release ;-)

Source: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/04/running-ubuntu-literally.html

Jono Bacon Videocast


Tomorrow (Wed 15th April) at 11am Pacific Jono Bacon will be doing his first real live video cast here discussing various topics including Ubuntu, the Jaunty release, Art Of Community and the Community Leadership Summit.

Jono will also be fielding your community questions in the video cast: you can ask them in the chat channel that is on that page.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon

Apr 12, 2009

Notification Disappointment in Ubuntu Jaunty

glyph.twistedmatrix.com has a very interesting review of the new notification system in Jaunty. Everyone loves the bling, but it's not all love

Read it here...

Source: http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2009/04/notification-disappointment-in-ubuntu.html

Ubuntu Wallpaper Photo Pack



You might remember Kenneth Wimer published some background guidelines for Jaunty back in February. This was a great move because of the lack of organized effort in the artwork. I know that Canonical will be publishing more artwork guidelines within the next cycle, which I'm looking forward to and which I really think will help shape the look and feel of Ubuntu.
This is all fine and dandy, however I don't agree with all the guidelines published back in February. In the .PDF it says:

Design:
- Abstract imagery
- No strong logo usage (recommended)
- No other recognizable/readable text
- No mascots preferred (prove me wrong)
- Avoid parallel lines due to moire problems when scaling
- Be aware of how shapes relate within the whole desktop layout with panels, icons on the desktop, etc.
- No photography, unless heavily edited, stylized. No pictures of recognizable people/places/popular items


I would say that with both Hardy and Intrepid the way mascots was included in the artwork was truly art and worked out fantastic.
As for no strong logo usage I do agree, but I remember seeing some beautiful 3D Ubuntu logo images that worked very well as wallpaper.

Anyway... The last one is the one I actually want to talk about; "No photography, unless heavily edited, stylized. No pictures of recognizable people/places/popular items". I would love to see this included in Ubuntu. I've actually been using some of the Vista photos on my Intrepid desktop (don't tell anyone!) and loved the absence of abstract brown imagery. That's why I've created the "Ubuntu Wallpaper Photo Pack"

In my Easter holiday, I've taken some pictures that I would use as desktop wallpaper on my new Samsung SyncMaster 2343NW 23" (2048x1152 px). I decided to make a small collection which others might also enjoy.
The pack is titled "Ubuntu Wallpaper Photo Pack" and I've included ten photos (of varying quality).

The photos was taken with a PENTAX K10D camera and haven't been edited or manipulated in any way. Some photos are a little blurry, but I think they all make good (some even great) desktop backgrounds. I should mention that the images are mostly flowers and plants (no landscapes or similar included - yet).

You can download the files here (22 MB):
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/175241/wanted/Ubuntu_wallpaper_photo_pack.tar.gz

Creative Commons License
Ubuntu wallpaper photo pack is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Apr 8, 2009

"We're Linux" Contest Finalists Announced

Monday evening, the Linux Foundation's Amanda McPherson revealed the identities of the lucky finalists in the "We're Linux" video competition . The contest, launched in January, received over 90 submissions from Penguinistas worldwide. Finalists were determined based on community voting and input from a panel of open source and media personalities.

The winner and two runners-up will be announced tomorrow at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. The overall winner will be traveling, courtesy of the Linux Foundation, to Tokyo, Japan in October to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium (which is co-located with the Linux Kernel Summit this year).

The contest was spawned from the idea that other software companies were paying millions of dollars to celebrities for endorsements, while Linux was promoted and shared by enthusiastic, passionate, actual users. Contestants were given a simple directive: tell the Linux Foundation what Linux is for you, why you use it, and why you'd encourage others to do the same. Humor and professional production quality weren't required -- it just had to be genuine.

McPherson says the winners will be announced the evening (Pacific time) of April 8th. The video entries (both finalists and the wider contestant pool) are available for your viewing pleasure at the Linux Foundation's video portal site.

Below is the video "The future is open" which is one of the five contest finalist videos. I don't like the fact that the video below compares Linux to Windows (instead of an anonymous OS), but besides that I think it's really good.


View the five finalists here...

Compiz 0.9.x

On April 07 Sam Spilsbury wrote about Compiz 0.9.x (formerly ‘compiz++’) on his blog. It sounds like there's big plans for 0.9.x.

Compiz 0.9.x started in december when onestone announced his core rewrite on the mailing list. It had features like pluggable output backends, written in c++ (and a few nice interfaces that came with it) and other misc bits and pieces. It was designed mostly in mind to overcome a lot of the design problems we were having, like plugin-plugins and a ridiculous amound of code to manage lists. In Janurary, some developers started to toy around with it and at the beginning of this February, we announced that compiz++ would become the base for the 0.9.x series and the 0.9.x series would features some major reworks. We’ve all been quite busy during that time - so we’ve done whatever possible to push the branch forwards.

Where are we now?

Currently, we are in the process of porting plugins to the 0.9.x branch. If you’ve observing cgit you might see ‘compiz++’ branches pop up in various plugins. This is where all the work is being done. Currently (off the top of my head) we’ve ported quite a number of plugins (about 1/3 of them), with significant ones being scale, switcher, text, mousepoll, wall, expo. There has been some other work than porting plugins of course - we’ve had to change quite a few things in core to make things work. Some of the bigger stuff that has happened recently though is that onestone made significant changes to the buildsystem - you probably know that we are using CMake instead of autotools now, so building compiz is quite different. Some of the new features include a nice color and progress bar for building core and plugins - no more random make output nobody can read. It also allows for more flexible building of plugins - there is a sample CMakeLists.txt that you can drop into a dir and it will generate the files needed to build all the plugins in that dir for example. BCOP has now also been merged into core, so the options system is unified. Not really a user thing, but significant nonetheless.

Where to from here?

Well, the bad news is that we still have a significant amount of work to do if we want the 0.9.x branch to be usable for anybody. Big plugins still haven’t been ported - such as cube and it’s addons, group/tab, wobbly, animation, elements etc. Most of the big plugins will be completely rewritten anyways (as animation is). We still have some big plans for 0.9.x, those include:

* Doing something about gnome-shell. GNOME-Shell is a tricky issue for us because it integrates the window manager with the panel (or at least loads the panel as a plugin to the window manager). This basically means that if you launch compiz in future GNOME versions, you lose your panel. KDE sort of has a similar issue, in that the desktop is tied in with the panel, but that makes sense anyways because there aren’t really any other desktop shells that are designed to replace the default desktop (other than SpringDesk of course, but that is on hold ATM and would probably have a panel of it’s own). I already made a post to the GNOME-desktop-devel about this, but they have told me that tight integration is needed between the panel and the window manger so that the ‘overview’ mode can be done correctly (which I disagree with, you could just have shell expose it’s drawing handle and register functions in the WM (or it’s plugins) that would do the overlay mode for you). Unfortunately, their view on this is that ‘people want it to Just Work (TM) and don’t really care about other window managers’, hence locking out compiz from GNOME. Yeah, inter-project co-operation. It sucks. We basically have two options - fork / rewrite shell and maintain it for compiz (and allow it to be compatible with it’s own set of extensions), which we can’t do with the amount of developers we have or convince the GNOME folks to turn shell into a lib that can easily be used with other WM’s.
* Options rework: Our options system has been quite inflexible for a long time and we are denying more and more requests because we can’t configure such with our current settings infrastructure. The options rework would probably allow things like:
- Lists in lists
- ‘Suboptions’, ie depending on what another option is, another few options can appear related to that option. This would be particularly useful with elements and animation, where you can only configure the entire effect and not on a per-entry basis (without having to look up option names and syntax etc).
- A pluggable CCSM ‘hints’ system where plugins that require more complex configuration would store the option in a string, but the option would have hint = foo, and the CCSM plugin would allow you to configure that in a more sensible way than editing a string. Think mousegestures editor, multiple color selector for wallpaper, etc.
* Merge NOMAD. Self explanitory, but the NOMAD branch should probably be merged
* MPX Support. Self explanitory
* Input Redirection: We’ll make a big push along with the KWin, Compiz, and Mutter guys, we really need this.

So that will probably give you an outlook on how things are going to go for the 0.9.x branch. Although you’ll need to be patient. All of the developers have really demanding Real Lives (TM) at this time and don’t have as much time as they used to to work on compiz. 0.9 might be ready within the next two months, or the next six months depending on how things go. We’ll keep you informed.

EDIT: By the way, note that these ideas are mostly tentative - depending on a number of factors they may or may not happen. GNOME-Shell is an especially tricky issue and it would be wise for us to see what happens with it.

Source: http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/

Apr 6, 2009

More artwork

I have a lot of projects I'm working on these days.

- Releaseparty poster:


Grab the .SVG source file here:http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/175241/poster/Jaunty%20release%20poster.svg

- CD label:
See below or here...

- A wallpaper / background: (won't be spending more time on this)
In the style of Jaunty, but with a twist (or should I say a wave).

Folded Paperboard Boxes
I thought it would be fun to have some gift boxes for cd's at the release party. You would have to print the file on very thick paper and glue the ends together (I really don't want to make 100 of these - what a pain). Not done yet, but here's a preview.


New theme for Fridge:
Abandoned project - couldn't find the time. The mockup I uploaded is based on my Ubuntu Wanted layout and this.
Mockup here...

Apr 4, 2009

Jaunty CD label artwork

Okay, so this really didn't take me more than five minutes. I've edit one of my 8.04 CD labels to match Jaunty (edited text and changed background). I didn't take the time to create a vector version so I hope the resolution works out fine.

I realise now that I've only posted the 8.04 dvd cover artwork and not the labels on this blog (the labels can be found on the ubuntuforum)



Grab the large image here...

I didn't create this one, but it very practical :-)

Grab it here...

Apr 2, 2009

Planning for GNOME 2.28 and 3.0


With GNOME 2.26 having been released a few weeks back, the GNOME development community is slowly beginning to ramp up work on the next release, which will be known as GNOME 2.28. The release schedule for GNOME 2.28 is out, along with a tentative schedule for GNOME 3.0! GNOME 3.0 will take off where GNOME 2.30 would have been, and will come with some significant improvements to compete in the age of KDE 4.

First though, with the GNOME 2.28 release schedule, its first unstable release (v2.27.1) will be out later this month on the 29th. For the next few months will be several more development releases in the GNOME 2.27 series and also minor bug-fix releases in the 2.26 series. Come this September, GNOME 2.28.0 is planned for release on the 23rd. Among many other features and changes to come, GNOME 2.28 will complete the migration from Mozilla/XulRunner to WebKit for its web rendering engine.

A month after the release of GNOME 2.28 will be the first GNOME 2.30 (3.0) development build and that will continue on in the usual GNOME development fashion until March of 2010. GTK 3.0 and Glib 3.0 are scheduled for release on the 22nd of February in 2010 while GNOME 3.0 is scheduled to be out on the 31st of March. In other words, we are just shy of being one year out from GNOME 3.0!

Landing in late August during the GNOME 2.28 development cycle will be the gnome-shell beta release. Throughout the GNOME 3.0 development cycle, various libraries will be stripped away such as libgnomeui, libglade, etc. The feature freeze for GNOME 3.0 will go into effect in late January.

The release schedule for GNOME 2.28 and GNOME 3.0 can be found on their GNOME Live web-site. Additionally, new details regarding GNOME 3.0 were also published today. From the revamping of the GNOME user desktop experience to streamlining of the platform to the promotion of the GNOME desktop, those details can be read about in detail here.

Source: www.phoronix.com

Mark Shuttleworth Interview

The Ubuntu Podcast Episode #24 features an interview with Mark Shuttleworth. Like I've mentioned earlier, I always love to hear Mark talk, so these 50 minutes is just pure awesomeness.

http://ubuntupodcast.net/2009/04/02/ubuntu-podcast-episode-24-mark-shuttleworth/

Linux Foundation To Take Over Moblin Project

I just came across this and I must say, this is the most interesting news I've read today.

In a rather interesting move, the Linux Foundation will now be the company behind Moblin. The Moblin project was started by Intel back in 2007 and has been used to push Linux onto their Atom processors, but it now appears they are handing the duties off to the Linux Foundation.

This Linux distribution designed for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and netbooks will now be supported by the Linux Foundation.

Now with the Linux Foundation taking control of Moblin, perhaps we will see this Fedora-based Linux distribution appearing on more non-Intel hardware like the VIA Nano or NVIDIA's ION platform. How the Linux Foundation deals with the Intel Poulsbo driver will also be interesting since right now it's a bloody mess and is a blob.

The press release announcing the Linux Foundation hosting the Moblin project can be found at LinuxFoundation.org.

Source: www.phoronix.com

Apr 1, 2009

How To Multi-Touch

Multi-touch became trendy after iphone came up with it. We are seeing many new laptops with multi-touch. At hardware level, there is nothing special that you need, to make multi-touch work.

The Ubuntu Snippets blog posts a configuration file, along with the copy-and-paste terminal commands needed to install and activate it, that give Linux users a rough approximation of some pretty great Multi-touch features: two-finger vertical and horizontal scrolling, two- and three-finger tapping for middle- and right-clicks, respectively. Notably missing are the rotation features (we think) and the pinch and expand powers for zooming out and in.

Grab it here...

Source: Ubuntu-snippets.blogspot.com/

Linux April fools 2009

If your looking for a good laugh, you should check out Stefano Forenza latest blogpost Linux April fools 2009

Lots of really funny stuff :-)

Source: http://www.stefanoforenza.com/linux-april-fools-2009/

Linux Foundation says it's time to ditch Microsoft's FAT

The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit vendor-neutral organization that coordinates development of the Linux kernel, has responded to the recent news that Microsoft and TomTom have settled their patent dispute. Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin wrote a blog entry on Tuesday commenting on the outcome of the conflict.

He contends that Microsoft, which has recently been expressing an affinity for openness and encouraging critics to give it the benefit of the doubt, has demonstrated that it can't be trusted and is not willing to support truly open technologies. He also suggests that product makers should consider the possibility of rejecting Microsoft's legacy FAT filesystem and should instead adopt an unencumbered open source alternative.

Read the whole story here...

Source: Ars Technica