Tag Archives: Google Hangouts

Linux

Luminosity of Free Software, Episode 9

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Today I will be recording the 9th episode of “Luminosity” and it will be a short episode, in part because of time constraints I’m facing today but also because I’d like to experiment with the setup of the show to see if it can fit into a 30 minute form and how the viewing audience finds that.

So .. there will be only one topic this week plus the usual Q&A session:

  • Mer: A (not so) new (mobile Linux) hope. The project and the community, a history and an update. We will look at what the Mer project provides and who uses it, visit the community structure and introduce the brand new build service that rolled out to replace the MeeGo build service that is being closed down.
  • Q&A: Ask me anything, and I might answer it .. history shows the likelihood of that is actually pretty high.
See you there on Google+ Hangouts at 20:00 UTC. Chat and questions can be found on irc.freenode.net in #luminosity.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

Linux

Valorie Zimmerman: Adventures in the CLI: fixing sound using apt logs

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Plunging back into community involvement this week meant installing mumble, a free messaging system. The virtual UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit) Canonical is hosting at short notice this week (today and tomorrow, actually) is being conducted on Google Hangouts. While these can be cool, they limit participation to ten, and to those who have GooglePlus logins. So the Kubuntu devels wanted to try mumble instead for our meeting(s).

I usually use apt-get to upgrade and install packages, just because it is faster and easier. Alt-F12 to get nifty drop-down bash session, up-arrow to get to commonly used commands, and viola, done! However, this time apt-get installed most of GNOME along with mumble, such as evolution, plus gnucash and other stuff! Once all this was installed, I had no sound of any sort; from speakers, in flash, through earphones. Sadness.

I began working through the sound troubleshooting guide, but none of it worked, and didn’t seem to apply anyway. When I asked in #kubuntu-devel about the mumble install, Scott Kitterman asked the right questions, and told me that his list of dependencies was small, as was the list of recommended packages, and how to find the complete list:

$ cd /var/log/apt/
$ ls 
$ cat history.log

This gets you a wonderfully detailed list of all packages dealt with by apt. I started by removing the obviously un-needed packages, including mumble itself. The list was so huge that I didn’t get far, however, ScottK had suggested removing slpd and roaraudio. After reading the man page for apt, I got a bit more clever about getting more stuff in one fell swoop:

sudo apt-get purge gnome-mahjong*

for instance, gets the libs and -dbg packages too. Once I went back and purged roar* — I got the offending libs, and had sound again!
By coincidence (I think) I had a problem in flash in Firefox at the same time. So Youtube videos were silent and about 100 times too fast. Once sound came back, I noticed that I had sound in Youtube in Chromium, and everything was the correct speed as well. Flash still seems broken in FF, but that now seems unrelated.
By the way, when I re-installed mumble using Muon, everything worked well. Although I haven’t tested it yet, I expect it to work as advertised. 

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

Linux

Joel Pickett: UDS-1303, Day One

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Now UDS-1303 Tuesday is through, I’d like to recap on a couple of the sessions I watched on Google+ Hangouts.

Rolling Release discussion (+1 maintenance beyond April)

Interesting discussion which included some of the System76 folks that basically said that the Ubuntu release schedule works fine for their clients. They ship the latest LTS, 12.04, and the current stable release, 12.10. They pointed out that each release of Ubuntu has been a clear improvement over the previous release (phew!), and were looking forward to the upcoming Raring Ringtail. Very compelling to hear straight from the OEM vendors – they have been shipping Ubuntu for the past fifteen (yes, that’s 15!) releases.

Rick Spencer outlined the idea to keep LTS releases and focus on daily quality with monthly pulses. I think this is an interesting concept in relation where Ubuntu is as a platform. If this idea had been discussed around the days that I started as an Ubuntu user (Intrepid Ibex era), the daily quality was just not there. It was more of a sentiment to encourage users not to use the development build until the later alpha snapshots, or even beta releases.

These days I’ve been using the Quantal and Raring dailies with minimal disruption, essentially my desktop and laptops feel like a normal (release) install. It’s just that updates are much more frequent and I’m using the latest available version of the software.

Loco discussion (LoCo community – what’s next?)

Another interesting discussion was the concept of approved and unapproved LoCo teams. I’m a member of the Australian LoCo, which is currently approved. As Jono stated in the session, I think there’s less of a need for approved LoCo teams now. The main benefit of being an approved LoCo is that, historically, LoCos would be sent CD’s/DVD’s, stickers and other Ubuntu merchandise around releases and conferences. This isn’t particularly sustainable to send a pack to all approved LoCos each release, and arguably more people are using other media like USBs to install Ubuntu.

The other concern was the labelling and divide of LoCo teams. It should be noted that being an unapproved team doesn’t make you any less important than an approved LoCo. At the end of the day, LoCos will be recognised for the work that they do, supported by Planet Ubuntu blog posts, pictures of events (release parties, conference talks, Ubuntu Hours, Ubuntu Global Jam sessions) and team reports.

Thoughts on the first online UDS

On the whole, I think it went quite fine. I think if the LTS release structure is continued, I think a physical week-long UDS would be appropriate at least once through the LTS cycle. It’s also a positive bonus that everything is logged and the sessions are available once the session ends for people that have missed the session. These short UDS place a focus on detailed discussion, though if anything is missed, we’ll be able to revisit it again at the next UDS in a few months or on ubuntu-devel.

It would have been nice for Mark Shuttleworth to comment …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

Linux

Joel Pickett: UDS-1303 Summaries and Lightning Talks

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“Steam”, “Ubuntu TV”, “Ubuntu Phone”, “Ubuntu Tablet”, “Ubuntu for Android”.

12 months ago these keywords were merely ideas, possibilities that were seemingly unclear. Skip forward to today and we have a totally different perspective. Steam is on Ubuntu. Developer previews have been released for the phone and tablet. Unity is mature on the desktop. Fast, functional, easy-to-use and visually appealing.

With the increased use of Google+ Hangouts, ala Ubuntu OnAir, I think it’s certainly worth trying to use the technology to host more frequent sprints and community-wide discussion.

Unfortunately, for the dubbed UDS-1303, the sessions are being held between 1am-7am local time. In effect, I’ll be able to participate (read: watch) the summaries and lightning talk sessions.

Hopefully the next UDS-(1305?) will be scattered along different time zones.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

Linux

The Luminosity of Free Software, episode 4

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It’s that time of the week again already! Yes, the Luminosity of Free Software episode 4 will be broadcast live tomorrow at 20:00 UTC via Google+ Hangouts, and you’re all invited.

As I get more familiar with the way Hangouts are structured, things are becoming smoother. This week, rather than inviting everyone directly to the Hangout, everyone will follow along on the live video stream that gets automatically placed in my G+ updates stream. You can ask questions and post comments there just as in the chat, and I will be monitoring those in the videocast. This should be simpler and a more equal an experience for everyone.

Tomorrow night I will be covering the following topics:

  • Does open development matter? Wherein we explore the thought experiment: “What if the entire world used and ran Free software, but all the development was done behind closed doors?” It’s an interesting question with no simple answers. As Free software continues to expand its influence, and with more companies trying out the mix of open source and closed development, it will become a more and more pressing question over time.
  • LXDE‘s new file manager. What could I find interesting about that? Join us and find out tomorrow!
  • Linux desktop infrastructure fragmentation: lightdm, maliit, systemd, dconf .. when did we stop collaborating on these kinds of things, and how can we get it back on track? My answer is perhaps not what you’d expect …
  • Question Period: you ask, I ponder; you provide feedback, I share it with the audience.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

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hanging out

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Yesterday I mused on Google+:

I used to do a “seigo on kde” live video cast back in the day (“straight from his bedroom, heeeeeeere’s aaron!” 😉 with viewer interaction, and they were a lot of fun and pretty well attended.

Years have passed, and I’m considering starting up again using Google+ Hangout, though with a slightly broader scope to encompass the bigger world of things that make up the Free software user experience landscape. It’ll retain a KDE perspective, but not be limited exclusively to “things KDE makes”.

The response was quite good .. and so I’ve decided to go ahead with it. I’ll be hosting the first Hangout tonight (!) at 18:00 UTC. Why the short notice? This will be something of a dry run to get the feel for “on air” Hangouts, both in terms of the production bits and the audience management. If all goes well tonight with the technical details, I”ll make this a weekly thing with a regular schedule posted and a proper announcement a day in advance to remind all you wonderful peoples.

Tonight’s agenda will look like this:

  • Introduction: why the hell am I doing this?
  • Four dot Ten: A preview of why the upcoming 4.10 releases of KDE‘s Platform, Workspaces and Applications are interesting and exciting
  • Onwards to Five: Reflections of the plans for Frameworks 5 and Plasma Workspaces 2 as revealed in the last week across various people’s blogs
  • Open source groupware: More public tenders for open source groupware are appearing, but are they “for real” .. and Kolab 3.
  • The Meditation Chamber: this is where the audience will be invited to join in the conversation with (topical) topics of interest and questions to share. We’ll ruminate on it together while avoiding it becoming a vapid chamber of echoes. Or so I hope 🙂 So if you are able to show up, come with ideas for us to discuss! Compelling topics that deserve a more complete examination may even become the topic of future shows …

The intro will be 2-3 minutes, the next 3 sections will each be under 5 minutes and the Meditation Chamber will be open ended. That’s the plan, we’ll see how reality pans out.

The resulting video will be posted online (one of the spiffy features of Google Hangouts) immediately after completion, and if all goes well I’ll set up a permanent schedule and we’ll see how far this takes us.

p.s. This is distinct from KDE Teatime in that it won’t be a bunch of nice KDE people talking to each other about $STUFF but a quick set of informative (or so I hope 😉 bits of news and reflections followed by viewer interaction. I enjoy watching KDE Teatime, and hope it continues entertaining me and its other viewers. 🙂
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE