Tag Archives: Planet Ubuntu

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Ubuntu Ohio – Burning Circle: Burning Circle Episode 112

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This week’s episode talks about introspection and assessing where we stand in terms of participation. A rough transcript is included below.

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Welcome to the Burning Circle. For release on Monday, April 29th, this is episode 112.

Well, where do we start? We had the conference call aborted last week as nobody showed up. Yeah, the exercise proved successful for Erie Looking Productions to be ready for the event and to come online for it. Notwithstanding how low the friction level was for this, the event failed. This will be assessed. We do have the capability to try this again and it is merely a phone call away.

Yes, e-mails continue to happen and I do seem to send something out at least once per week. The current e-mail that has gone out is for members to check that they have in fact signed the Code of Conduct on Launchpad and to ensure they’re up to date. In response to that e-mail there have already been a couple membership deactivations in response.

Membership within this community gets interesting. We have many people who claim affiliation but quite a number of folks who are quite marginally attached. As a community, activity is hard to spur. When you look at it, how do you spur activity when people shut out the mailing list, don’t participate at the forums, may or may not listen to the podcast, may or may not be aware of the LoCo’s presence on social media, and more?

In terms of lurking, you at least have a passing notion of what is happening. You might see what the mailing list says or occasionally pop in on the IRC channel. What we have is a bit of anti-social membership where people declare geographic affiliation but do not want to be involved and do not want to be contacted at all. That’s not good for a community’s health.

Where are we going? I know there have been rumbles of discontent for a while. People have felt very disconnected from being able to participate in decision-making within the Ubuntu project. However I also note that a majority of people have not taken steps to become enfranchised to do so by gaining status as an Ubuntu Member let alone developer membership. I have voting rights on confirming the Community Council along with six other members of our community. That leaves 410 members of our community as of time of recording who

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Ubuntu is Many Communities

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Some people mis-read (or I mis-wrote) my previous blog as critisising Ubuntu for not caring about its community any more. That’s not what I wanted to say and it wouldn’t make any sense, Ubuntu is a large community, it can hardly stop caring about itself. Rather I was saying that Canonical has done some moves recently which show a lack of concern for the Ubuntu community. Numerous other blogs on Planet Ubuntu say the same thing today. Mark did too today by saying that Canonical is taking more of a lead in development because GNOME and KDE et al were failing to take over the world, an entirely sensible decision to make. So if you want to be able to take a strong part in contributing then Ubuntu Unity is not the best part of Ubuntu to go. That’s fine as there are many parts which are waiting for more people to help out, I recommend Kubuntu but there’s dozens of other flavours and sub-projects waiting with open arms.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

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Martin Owens: Ubuntu Membership

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Launchpad asked me if I wanted to continue to be an Ubuntu member. I thought about it, and have decided that I don’t. The one thing I’ll miss is being able to post to Planet Ubuntu. But I have to be honest, there isn’t an Ubuntu community any more. There’s a Canonical community, an ubuntu-users gaggle and maybe an enthusiasts posse. But no community that makes decisions, builds a consensus, advocates or educates. It’s dead now, it’s been that way for a while.

Hopefully this post will make it to the planet before my membership expiry stops it. I’ll still be working and using Ubuntu, launchpad, bzr, maybe even ubuntu phone and tv. I won’t stop championing Free Software, economic involvement and good design either. Important principles for me. In fact nothing about what I do, projects I work on will change. This is just a realisation moment that Ubuntu doesn’t have a peer community to be a member of.

Jono,

You were warned plenty. It’s not your fault. You had to deliver decisions against the best interests of the Ubuntu peer community and in favour of the Canonical community. Driving so hard towards product nirvana that peer relationships were driven into the ground. I’m sure you disagree that the community is dead, but eventually those scales will fall or the fake smile will stop. I don’t know what kind of Community you want, but it sure isn’t the peer community I signed up for.

Council,

Unless you can see a way forwards to rebuild this broken dream, disband. Focus your great skills on Debian. I’m sorry we couldn’t make it work, we were overpowered.

Developers,

Keep up the great technical work. If your working on Ubuntu, don’t let the death of the community disrupt you. Let it pass like the breaking of an ulcer and carry on with your important and excellent work. The lack of a community outside of your company is not an impediment or even a problem to making great software. Keep calm and code on.

I’ll be making apps and code, most likely targeting Ubuntu. App developers need not change their behaviour, being an app developer doesn’t make you part of the old peer community. Just devs making good apps that should target all distros. Release your code, don’t get locked in, earn your bread, keep up the good work.

Everyone else: Good Luck, Code Speed.

DoctorMO

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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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

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Andrea Grandi: UDS happening online only: pros and cons

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When last week Canonical announced the usual UDS was not going to happen I was a bit shocked and disappointed: starting from the next UDS (that is going to happen tomorrow!) the event will be online only and every 3 months. During these days I’ve been thinking a lot about this move and I will tell you what are the pros and cons, in my opinion, followed by some final thoughts.

Pros

Having 4 UDS every year, instead of 2, is surely a better thing. I’m a big fan of Scrum methodology, so I think that iterating more often is better than iterating less. If there are any mistakes you can correct them and iterating again before releasing the final product.

Potentially more people can partecipate to the event (even the opposite is true and I will explain why). People won’t need to move from home, travel, pay any expense etc… they just need a computer and a good Internet connection.

It’s cheaper for everyone: I can just imagine how expensive could be for Canonical to organize a similar event. Booking a big hotel, paying travel and expenses to near one houndred of community people. People who didn’t get any sponsorization had to pay all the travel expenses to attend the event.

Cons

Potentially less people can partecipate to the event. Yes, like I said before even this sentence is true and I will explain why. First of all, using Google+ there are at least three countries that will be cut out: China, Thailand and Vietnam. Google+ is not available in those countries.

Are you sure that special people will be able to follow the event? For example blind people won’t be able to chat or to ask question in the chat.

Only 10 people will be able to talk. In normal UDS sessions more people could raise the hand and ask a question or interact with the track leaders. Who will choose the 10 people with audio+video streaming rights?

We will completly miss the social aspect of the UDS. If you think this was only a secondary part, please go on. I felt more committed to work and collaborate with people I met in person than with someone I’ve never met before.

Announcing an event, even if online, just one week before it happens. Really? Some people had already taken vacation from work, booked flights etc… not counting many people that can’t take 2 days off from work just with 1 week notice period. It’s also almost impossible that community members have the time to schedule a blueprint and be able to discuss about a subject.

Final thoughts

From a cutting costs point of view I really can’t say anything. Organizing UDS was surely very expensive for Canonical and nobody can blame them if they decided to spend those money in a different way.

What really concerns me: is UDS still useful? My opinion is that at least since latest 2 or 3 UDS the presence of the Community was not so relevant, because I had the clear sensation that the …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Randall Ross: Jamming? We Need Your Photos!

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Are you Jamming this weekend? Take photos!

Post your Jam photos to your favourite photo sharing service (Pictag: ubuntu) and also to Planet Ubuntu. Show the world the wonderfully awesome project that is Ubuntu.

Thank you!

—

Someone famous once said that “If there are no photos, the event never happened.” Hint: Might be Jorge Castro.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Chris Wilson: A small request for bug triagers

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Anyone who is subscribed to Planet Ubuntu will undoubtedly know that I lead the One Hundred Paper Cuts project, a project to identify and fix the minor annoyances that trouble the users of Ubuntu’s core apps. One of the things we need in order to sustain our work is a constant stream of new bug reports to look at, approximately 50-100 per month if we’re to have enough to work on in the next cycle.

The Global Jam is coming up in just over a week, and if you decide to work on bug triaging then, or are just working on bug triaging in general, then it would be fantastic if you could forward any potential paper cuts to us. You can find out how to do that here.
But how to you know if a bug is possibly a paper cut? There are a few guidelines you can use to figure that out:
  • Is it in a graphical application distributed on the Ubuntu Desktop CD?
  • Is it reproducible?
  • Is the average likely to user encounter it on a regular basis?
  • Is it annoying?
  • Does it appear easy to fix?
If is satisfies all of these point, then send it out way. If you’re not sure, then send it anyway and we’ll deal with it. These are guidelines more than actual rules and in the end, it all comes down to common sense. If you want to know more, or have any questions, then you can contact the team on our Launchpad mailing list.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Ronnie Tucker: Full Circle Side-Pod Episode Thirteen: That’s How it Feels To Be Wrong

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RSS feed MP3

Full Circle Side-Pod Episode Thirteen: That’s How it Feels To Be Wrong

In this episode, Ubuntu Phone and TV.

File Sizes:

  • OGG 45.5Mb
  • mp3 52.1Mb

Running Time: 1 hour 21 mins 56 sec

Feeds for both MP3 and OGG:

RSS feed, MP3: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed

RSS feed OGG audio fileRSS feed, OGG: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed/atom

The podcast is in MP3 and OGG formats. You can either play the podcast in-browser if you have Flash and/or Java, or you can download the podcast with the link underneath the player. Show notes after the jump.

Your Hosts:

Additional audio by Victoria Pritchard

Show Notes

01:52 | WELCOME and INTRO

04:52 | SINCE LAST TIME

  • Dave has been blogging
  • Ed got a Galaxy Nexus 4
  • Alan has been on Kickstarter in place of the shopping channels, the latest delivery being the Digisparc.
  • Robin rashly took on the Full Circle Magazine Audio Edition (coming soon)

14:46 | Catch-up with UDS and 13.04 Mid-Cycle Sprint with Alan, and we discuss rolling releases.

22:43 | Ubuntu Phone – the gloves are off!
In a video released over the New Year, Mark Shuttleworth demos the new Ubuntu Phone operating system.

In a glossy, well produced (if slightly long 8mins 37secs), Canonical founder and CTO Mark Shuttleworth talks us through Ubuntu Phone, An Industry Proposition, a product he hopes will challenge iOS, Android and now Tizen in the mobile market.

Some of the key features:

  • Ubuntu distilled from TV and desktop
  • ‘Welcome screen’ not lock screen
  • One-handed operation using all four screen edges
  • Full swipe gesture control
  • Bottom edge for show/hide buttons
  • Show Unity Dash any time using left swipe
  • Go to previous app using right swipe
  • Full customisation of home screen
  • Ubuntu Software Centre for mobile apps
  • UbuntuOne cloud storage built in.
  • Native Apps built in QT framework

Ed’s links:

1.07:10 | Ubuntu TV: 

1.19:37 …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu