Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 254

By pleia2 | Published: 2012-02-28

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #254 for the week February 20 – 26, 2012, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Elizabeth Krumbach
  • Benjamin Kerensa
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Interview with Balloons

By ubuntu-news-team | Published: 2012-02-24

I came across Balloons in the #ubuntu-community-team a few months ago when seeking some advice on a forum matter. Balloons is a “new” member of the Canonical Community Team working as the QA Community Coordinator. I asked if he would be willing to do an interview, he said yes and here we are now…

1. Tell as much as you’re willing about your “real life” like name, age, gender, location, family, religion, profession, education, hobbies, etc.

My real life sometimes does exist off of the pc. My name is Nicholas Skaggs, and I’m a transplant to the sunny state of Florida in the US. The weather lets me enjoy my outdoor hobbies like biking, sailing, hiking, etc. I have the wonderful privilege of working for Canonical on the community team, as the QA community coordinator. It’s been wonderful getting to work with different folks across the community that I had not worked with previously.

2. When and how did you become interested in computers? in Linux? in Ubuntu?

I still remember destroying and rebuilding my family’s first pc back in the day. I had used computers (remember the Macintosh era in the US schools systems during the 80′s?) before, but having one inside your house is different story. I broke and subsequently was forced to “fix” my family pc many times. My father wasn’t so keen on me doing such things I’d imagine, but I enjoyed learning. Pretty easy to bork your system when your running windows 95 and think the internet is AOL. Say hello 1995!

My first linux experience pre-dated ubuntu; it was in College and I had the privilege of installing some version of linux for a friend — I’m still struggling to remember which version it was. I’m fairly sure it was a Suse Linux boxset with something like 5 cd’s or so. I remember the install taking forever, and when we finally finished it (SO SO many cd’s), we had forgotten the password to the account we created. Whoops. No idea how to recover, and so I never saw the desktop or used the system. I think my friend my have simply reinstalled it or switched back to windows.

Fast-forward another year or two and I discovered open source software. I was becoming increasingly annoyed at the bloatware, adware, etc of software for windows; and indeed windows itself. I never cared for netscape, but that was old news by now and I was using Phoenix/Firebird which would go on to become Firefox. Removing IE became more of a chore as windows versions increased, so i stayed on windows 98 rather than move to XP. Then I discovered an open source replacement for windows media player ( media player classic) and outlook express (thunderbird), and started using tools like nlite to remove almost everything from a custom windows 2000 iso. I can’t say which day it happened, but at some point it clicked that since I’m running all these open source pieces of software I could simply run an open source operating system (you mean there is such a thing?!). It was a wonderful revelation.

I started trying out some distros, landing on SimplyMepis 3.3 as one of the first that stayed around for awhile. Coming from windows, I couldn’t appreciate the elegance of less is more so to speak, and my first experience in gnome was meh (I remember thinking I can’t right-click ANYTHING!). One day I discovered the Hoary Hedgehog, and even though it ran gnome, heh, I loved it. Since then I’ve tried fvwm, fluxbox, lxde, xfce, kde, e16/e17 and enjoyed all of them immensely. Other distros I liked outside of ubuntu is puppylinux and arch — if you want to really get your hands dirty and learn some things, compiling and running source based packages is one way to do it :-) . I used puppylinux on a livecd for an old laptop that otherwise couldn’t run anything, this later got migrated to a ubuntu-minimal install with things like fluxbox, fvwm, etc. Ubuntu has been on my main machine non-stop since Hoary. I must say reminiscing this was quite fun. Just look at the visual history here :-)

3. When did you become involved in the forums (or the Ubuntu community)? What’s your role there?

I was a lurker on the forums for a over a year before joining. Looks like my username (guitara, feel free to say hello!) was registered April 18th, 2006 — man time flies. It was an important part of my learning about linux and ubuntu. I got great help on the forums and enjoyed helping others as well.

4. Are you an Ubuntu member? If so, how do you contribute? If not, do you plan on becoming one?

I am not currently a ubuntu member. I do plan on becoming one, and hope to one day wear that badge proudly.

5. What distros do you regularly use? What software? What’s your favorite application? Your least favorite?

I use only ubuntu at the moment. Pretty much every device I own runs it — it’s practically a requirement before I’ll purchase some hardware. I have had a longstanding requirement that I must be root on hardware I own, and if applicable, then I would prefer to run ubuntu on it :-) I dual-boot my android phone and chromebook, both allowing me to have root, running OSS, and by extension I can run ubuntu on them.

Favorite Apps? So 7 years later I’m still enjoying thunderbird and firefox (chromium is in here now too). I actually really like gedit and between that and geany I’m all set for coding / editing. My favorite software by a mile however is gnome-terminal. Try running a different OS for awhile — the command line is my best friend and I’m literally handicapped without it. I don’t really dislike any software on linux, as long as I can get the source for it.

6. What’s your fondest memory from the forums, or from Ubuntu overall? What’s your worst?

No answer given.

7. What luck have you had introducing new computer users to Ubuntu?

I have many techy friends, and in general spreading ubuntu love is really easy. If possible, I used it on my desktop at work, and I’m happy to say at my last workplace I was able to convince the entire development team to switch to and use only linux. Many of them chose ubuntu :-) Nowadays I get to work in my natural ubuntu environment and I’m thrilled.

8. What would you like to see happen with Linux in the future? with Ubuntu?

Open source is an idea that is as strong as ever. I see good things in the future; there are kids growing up using a diversity of platforms, being exposed to software, development, ideas, etc. The flow of information is powerful and the internet helped increase the flow. It’s hard to say what social norms may look like in 20 years, but ubuntu will be there to run the devices that we’ll be using :-) .

9. If there was one thing you could tell all new Ubuntu users, what would it be?

Freedom is a powerful thing; be thankful and don’t waste it! Get involved with the community in ubuntu and you will find a like-minded group who wants to bring linux and open source to people. At the end of the day, people matter; ubuntu is community.

Originally Posted here on 2012-02-24

Juju Charm Contest – Help bring Free Software into the cloud

By nhandler | Published: 2012-02-23

I’m proud to announce the first ever Juju Charm Contest! Right now we have 51 services that you can easily deploy via juju on EC2, OpenStack, and bare metal. However there is so much Free Software out there that can run in the cloud, and we’d like to see what creative ways you can help other people deploy them. We’ll be offering three prizes, a $300 Amazon Gift Card for the winner and 2 $100 Amazon gift cards for the 2 runner’s up.

So what can you charm? As you can see from the list of what we have so far it really is anything that can run on the cloud. We’ve had contributions for simple LAMP services like Thinkup; to things like ownCloud, which lets you run your own cloud services on your own terms. We also have complex services like Hadoop and CloudFoundry and even some fun services like game servers for Minecraft and Steam games. All of these things will be fully deployable in 12.04 with just a few commands, and we’d like to see as many services be that easy to run right out of the box, so if you’re passionate about something and want to charm it up, dive in! We have a list of things we think people might like, but anything that can run on the cloud will be welcome!

We’ve got some resources to help you out:

  • Here’s the workflow for submitting you Charm when you’re ready.
  • #juju on Freenode IRC is full of experts waiting to help you.
  • Our mailing list.
  • We’re holding a live webinar where we will go deep into charming and answering your questions.

The contest will start this Monday, 27 February, and will run for 4 weeks, the deadline being 23 March. After 4 weeks the 3 judges will review all the submitted Charms and pick the winners. We have the complete set of rules here. Even if you don’t win one of the top 3 prizes if your Charm passes review and gets shipped in the store we’ll hook you up with a juju shirt and Ubuntu travel mug for your contribution.

Good luck!

Originally posted by Jorge Castro here on February 23rd, 2012

Ubuntu 12.04 Development Update

By dholbach | Published: 2012-02-23

Development Update

Nine weeks until release and one thing is clear already: 12.04 will be a kick-arse release. Thanks everyone for your hard work on it! Still there’s a few things which still need to get done. Today User Interface Freeze and Beta Freeze will kick in, next week we will do a test rebuild of the whole archive and Beta 1 will get out next week as well.

This week has seen a number of interesting changes: users of SandyBridge systems will have rejoiced to hear that RC6 was enabled by default. Unity 5.4.0 landed with many bug fixes and bringing us the HUD.

Letting Ubuntu developers speak for themselves
Kees Cook found CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures entries) dating back to 1903.

Martin Pitt wrote a script to identify causes for power drain, be sure to check it out.

Calum Pringle updated us on the new Sound theme for 12.04.

Jeremy Bicha updated us on transmission 2.50.

Ricardo Salveti was interviewed about Ubuntu TV running on ARM hardware on Demo Friday at Linaro Connect.

Events

Ubuntu Global Jam
Next week we will celebrate the Ubuntu Global Jam. On the weekend of 2nd-4th March LoCo teams around the globe will come together and make Ubuntu better together. If you and your Ubuntu friends want to join in, check out the the video to find out how to set up an event. Currently we have events in these countries: Myanmar, Australia, Czech Republic, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, Mexico, Canada, USA and Brazil. Go and add yours today.

FixIt Fridays!
From this week onwards we are going to hold FixIt Fridays every week until release. Check out the spotlight section below for more info.

Things which need to get done

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed:

  • Also did John Lea from the Ubuntu Design team talk to us and mentioned that there are bugs up for grabs, where the design has been decided on and the implementation might need YOUR help. If you want to help improve Ubuntu’s UI, have a look at these!

First timers!

We had a number of folks getting their first uploads into Ubuntu again! Julian Edwards and David Callé both got some new packages into Ubuntu. Glenn Aaldering requested a sync. Keep up the good work everyone!

Natalia Bidart received upload rights for the Ubuntu One packages! Well done!

Spotlight: FixIt Fridays!

Right now it’s quite easy to see that a single fix which gets into Ubuntu benefits millions of users. Also with the next release being an LTS there will be many many more users.

If you always felt like you should give back to Ubuntu one day, if you play around with source code now and then or just liked the idea of getting involved in Ubuntu somehow, now is the perfect time.

First of all: we are slowly approaching Beta 1 of Ubuntu 12.04, so there are still around 9 weeks left until  release. Also is the release getting more and more stable, so upgrading now is not totally reasonable any more.

Secondly: the Ubuntu developers are coming together in #ubuntu-motu on Freenode every Friday to hang out with you, answer all your questions and help you get started with Ubuntu Development.

What you need to do? Easy:

  1. Check out the first few articles of the Ubuntu Packaging Guide.
  2. Join #ubuntu-motu on Freenode. (You can use webchat, if you don’t have an IRC client installed)
  3. Find a few simple bugs, ask your questions and make Ubuntu better!

Don’t be shy, give the docs a try, let us know what you think, ask your questions, join us – we are going to have a great time, every Friday until release!

Spotlight: Ubuntu Kernel Team

We had a chat with the Ubuntu Kernel Release Manager for Canonical, Leann Ogasawara.

What is your team working on this cycle?
With Ubuntu 12.04 being an LTS release, our primary focus has been on stability.  As such, we chose to ship with a v3.2 based kernel and will continue to rebase to the latest v3.2.y stable kernels as they become available.  Along with this we have also been conducting an extensive
kernel config review to ensure options have been enabled/disabled in accordance to our standard policy, any exceptions have been documented, and any changes have been incorporated to bring consistency across all architectures and flavors. We’ve also been looking to provide an improved Power Management story and have dedicated a few resources to investigate, isolate, and implement some power saving strategies.

A portion of the team has also been focused on helping maintain kernels for previous Ubuntu releases.  They have streamlined the SRU process into a 3 week cadence with a strong focus on elimination of regressions through enforcement of a strict QA and bug verification policy and
process.

What is your development process like compared to other teams? I hear your team uses Git?
We do use a different version control system, ie git, when compared to what many other teams use, ie bzr.  However, our overlying processes and procedures are relatively the same compared to other teams.  We openly communicate our plans or raise topics of interest via the mailing lists, discuss and submit patches for features or bug fixes, use launchpad to monitor incoming defects/requests, and perform routine uploads to the archive to provide the latest improvements during the development cycle. I would think most other teams have a very similar process and procedure.

What kind of improvements will we see in 12.04 when it comes to the Kernel?
One big improvement we hope to see is in regards to Power Management. We’re currently prototyping some patches for Sandy Bridge users which could equate an improved power usage of 40%-60%.  We set up a wiki page with more information.

An improved set of jack detection patches from the upstream v3.3 kernel has also been backported.  This lays the foundation for improvements such as successfully having different volumes for headphones and speakers and also having media keys control both headphone volume when headphones are plugged in and speakers when they are not.

Another big change is the consolidation of the generic and server flavors in an effort to help minimize the maintenance burden over the life of this LTS release.  We also saw the emergence of an armhf supported flavor.

The Ubuntu 12.04 kernel also carries the latest overlayfs updates.  Any users which were previous consumers of aufs have been encouraged to migrate over to overlayfs.  We have yet to hear of any complaints of overlayfs not satisfying the requirements/needs which were previously met by aufs.

The above are just a few highlights of the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 kernel. As always, there are also numerous bug fixes and support for new hardware.

Can community members contribute to the Kernel Team? How do they get started?
Any support or participation from the community is always welcome.  It’s best to first determine where someone would want to help out.  If someone is not even sure where they would like to lend their support, we can always provide suggestions.  Some examples include testing of the
latest -proposed kernels for regressions, triaging bugs, and submitting patches.  Feel free to get in contact with us either on IRC (FreeNode #ubuntu-kernel) or through our Ubuntu kernel-team mailing list. We’ll be happy to help anyone get started.

Has your team had any other notable developments? Changes in roles or new members?
We have had a few Canonical employees hired on to help with the Ubuntu kernel.  For example, Joe Salisbury is our new dedicated Defect Analyst for the kernel.  We also reacquired the very talented Colin King who has been spear heading the investigation into Power Management improvements. We have also been receiving some brilliant triaging work from Julian Wiedmann.  None of us have ever met Julian, but he has been doing some fantastic work with a lot of our kernel bugs.

What is your number one goal this cycle?
I think it goes without saying that because Ubuntu 12.04 will be an LTS release, our number one goal is stability.  If we’re able to deliver some extra improvements such as power savings, that’s an added bonus.

Ubuntu Kernel Team at UDS-M in Brussels

Ubuntu Kernel Team at UDS-M in Brussels

Get Involved

  1. Read the Introduction to Ubuntu Development. It’s a short article which will help you understand how Ubuntu is put together, how the infrastructure is used and how we interact with other projects.
  2. Follow the instructions in the Getting Set Up article. A few simple commands, a registration at Launchpad and you should have all the tools you need, and you’re ready to go.
  3. Check out our instructions for how to fix a bug in Ubuntu, they come with small examples that make it easier to visualise what exactly you need to do.

Find something to work on

Pick a bitesize bug. These are the bugs we think should be easy to fix. Another option is to help out in one of our initiatives.

In addition to that there are loads more opportunities over at Harvest.

Getting in touch

There are many different ways to contact Ubuntu developers and get your questions answered.

Interview with Gema Gomez-Solano

By pleia2 | Published: 2012-02-23

Elizabeth Krumbach: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Gema Gomez-Solano: I love good software and computers. When I was at high school, and I watched the film Sneakers, I decided to become a Computer Engineer. I admired those computer wizards who could do almost anything with a keyboard. I really wanted to be part of a group that could do cool things with technology, no matter how complicated.

I studied Computer Engineering in Barcelona, Spain; a Master equivalent degree at the Catalonia Polytechnic University. After finishing university, I was hired by a security company in Barcelona to do security audits and assessments.

In 2004, given my security background, I was offered a role in London as a Test Engineer at Symbian within the security team. This was my first time working at an English company, and in an international environment. We had teams in the UK and India, and later in China. Testing an operating system was one of the most complex and enlightening experiences of my career. I grew as a tester and as a QA engineer during the first years there. The security team moved to Cambridge and I decided to stay in London doing integration testing within the kernel team.

Then, in 2007, Symbian decided they wanted to build a strong System Test team, and offered me the Technology Architect position for that team. We built a technically strong test team who changed the quality of the OS visibly and for good. It felt great to see that project develop after all the battles that we had to fight to make it happen.

Then Nokia took over Symbian, and announced it was going to become open-source. After spending 9 months helping the team to integrate in the new organisation, I decided to take some time off to rethink my career to find the next challenge. I had seen the team grow and establish itself as a smoothly running testing team, so my job there felt done and I was eager to find a new project that I could help develop and build.

As my next challenge I took up an opportunity to join VMware in London. I did API testing for almost a year with them but it didn’t really feel like the challenge I had been seeking. So I kept trying to find what I was looking for, and that’s how I came across Canonical and the Ubuntu project. It was an operating system; it was in need of testing if it was to become the predominant OS. And, most importantly, it was a chance to collaborate with a great community from around the globe. This opportunity got my attention instantly, and, when I was offered the QA Engineer position, I didn’t hesitate.

Five months and one UDS down the line, it still feels good and lots of things are starting to happen within the Canonical Platform QA team and within the community in terms of QA. I enjoy seeing how my work has a direct impact on a system used by millions worldwide. I would like to see Ubuntu become the operating system everyone uses and that comes with every computer that is sold. Most importantly, I personally would like to see the QA work that we are doing for Ubuntu become a de facto standard in terms of quality assurance and good testing practices.

EK: How and when did you first get involved with open-source?

GG: The first time I thought about open-source as a way of making software was when I was told Symbian was becoming opensource. We had to think about how to make our code available to everyone, as well as keeping the continuous integration and testing of the code going. That was the first time I really thought about the concept of open-source, and realised how powerful the idea is.

My partner has been a developer of an open-source project, Dragonfly BSD, for some time now. I have seen him work on that project, and interact with its community, for years. He tried to convince me to do testing for them – but I was so busy with my day-to-day work that I never had enough quality time to dedicate to that.

So my first real taste of opensource, and being part of a community, has been with Canonical and the Ubuntu Project. I am learning to work with the community and to bounce ideas back and forth until they become work items and get implemented. Initially, the QA list felt somewhat lifeless, and the community was a bit stuck on what it was doing. Not much collaboration was going on so we split some of the tasks our team was doing this cycle, and made them available to the community. We’ve raised the awareness of testing, and plenty of community members have started to collaborate with us, and a lot of discussions are going on at the moment regarding the future of QA in Ubuntu. All geared towards taking the quality of Ubuntu to the next level.

I have also started talking to the Mozilla QA team regarding a test case management tool (Case Conductor) they are creating that we would like to use for Ubuntu as well. They are keen on collaborating, and would like to gather requirements from us so that the tool is fit for purpose for Ubuntu, too. We will soon be involved in beta-testing and other collaboration with the Mozilla team on this tool. So inter-community collaboration is something I am exploring at the moment.

EK: What is your role within the Ubuntu Project?

GG: I started working for the Platform QA team at Canonical back in August, and I have been watching the project during the final stages of Oneiric Ocelot as well as learning more about Linux and the community.

I wrote a high level strategy of what I think needs to happen in the coming 2 years for our quality levels to rise significantly. The plan was well received at the management team, and we got a green light to start implementing it. I have since moved to be the technical lead of the Platform QA team. We are currently working on putting the right tools in place so that developers can act on the important defects as soon as they are found. The Daily ISO testing is already following this principle, and its quality is improving noticeably as we speak. We are keeping track of the defects we find as part of our testing efforts, and of the defects we didn’t find but are found later in the development cycle, so that we can improve the testing of future releases. Our overall aim is to build a solid automated testing suite as soon as we have the basics in place.

We changed the format of the meeting to make it more QA focussed, splitting it from the Bug Control meeting. Now both groups have different times to meet and discuss their issues and progress, and we have a set of tasks that community members are contributing to, with the aim of improving the quality of Ubuntu. I am driving and coordinating this effort at the moment, but this is not going to be my focus going forward since there will be a QA Community Coordinator with whom my team will collaborate closely and I will be just one more community contributor. The QA Platform team will be helping shape the testing effort and trying to make every little effort a worthwhile contribution to the whole. Historically, there has been little leadership in the QA front, and we are trying to bring good practices from the industry to the open-source community to improve the situation.

EK: Do you have any suggestions for others who are looking to get involved with Ubuntu and opensource in general?

GG: I think open-source is an unstoppable force that is driven by a huge worldwide community. I’d say the first step is to figure out what you want to do with your free time, then choose a project that you’d like to contribute to and see if they are in need of any of your skills; odds are they are. If you are a developer but do not want to write code in your free time, you might enjoy reviewing code or betatesting a product to find problems, or triaging some bugs. Maybe you are good at languages and want to contribute by translating the software.

Or if you enjoy breaking software, and would like to do quality assurance and testing of a particular product, and you are prepared to join a very dynamic and challenging environment, I’d like to see an email from you on our ubuntu-qa@lists.ubuntu.com list (it’s open to anyone: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-qa ). We are in the process of gathering as much help as we can get. The tasks that are being worked on at the moment at the community level for Precise are available on the wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/TasksPrecise

The QA Team for Ubuntu has a weekly gathering. Feel free to attend our weekly meeting and ask questions so that you get to know the team and what each one of us is doing. It takes place every Wednesday at 17:00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting on freenode. We are thrilled to see new people show up and contribute. The agenda for the meetings, and details and logs of past meetings, are available here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/Meetings

Originally posted by Elizabeth Krumbach in Full Circle Magazine Issue #57 on January 27, 2012