Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 2 Released

By pleia2 | Published: 2011-07-07

Welcome to Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 2, which will in time become Ubuntu 11.10.

Pre-releases of Oneiric Ocelot are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 2 is the second in a series of milestone images that will be released throughout the Oneiric development cycle.

New packages showing up for the first time include:

  • Linux Kernel 3.0-rc5
  • gcc 4.6.1 compiler
  • Firefox 5.0
  • Thunderbird 5.0
  • A Mesa 7.11 snapshot.

You can download Alpha 2 images here:

Additional images are also available at:

Alpha 2 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a more detailed description of the changes in the Alpha 2 release and the known bugs (which can save you the effort of reporting a duplicate bug, or help you find proven workarounds), please see:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop Oneiric, we suggest that you subscribe initially to the ubuntu-devel-announce list. This is a low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other interesting events.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

Enjoy,

Kate Stewart, on behalf of the Ubuntu release team.

Originally posted to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Kate Stewart on Thu Jul 7 15:54:54 UTC 2011

Ubuntu 11.10 Development update

By dholbach | Published: 2011-07-07

Ubuntu Development Update

Let’s have a look at the release schedule together: It’s Alpha 2 week! So watch the release team’s blog and get ready to test second alpha of what will turn into the Oneiric Ocelot. A lot of great stuff landed, see the kernel team update, desktop team update, and server team update as a snapshot of current ongoing works.

As always: the status overview should give you a very detailed look on how each feature is progressing.

There’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed, particularly packages that fail to build.

In the last weeks I pointed out bugs that were solved since the last report. I think this was a boring idea. Instead of bugs let’s celebrate people! Since last week we have three people who got their first uploads accepted into Ubuntu: Pavol Klačanský, Marco Trevisan, Daniel Polehn. Good work everyone, keep it up!

And there’s events coming up! I announced it a few days ago: Ubuntu Developer Week (July 11th-15th) is just around the corner. A week full of IRC sessions dedicated to better explain what kind of work goes into Ubuntu and how to be part of it. Awesome! Also the planning of Ubuntu Global Jam just started.

New Contributor

This week I talked to Sebastian Carneiro from Argentina, here’s what he has to say:

Sebastian CarneiroFor me it is great. Being totally new to contributing in open source projects I am able to do that thanks to the help of reviewers and developers. Everyone has been very helpful and understanding and I am learning a lot.
I can’t easily think of something that could make things easier for me, at least so far. I think that in my area of interest, which is Development, there is a great deal of technical knowledge that has to be absorbed for someone new to Ubuntu, but there is a lot of good sources for that knowledge either in wikis, training logs, and specially, developers that are willing to teach beginners like me, and allow for new people to grow.

I find the quality of the work being done in Ubuntu, and the collaborative environment very inspiring. You can see that in the care that is taken in every project, source code, package, in the discussions in mailing lists, on-line trainings. I find that absolutely exciting and even a pleasure to be involved in such a great group of people.

I am a 35 years old developer and Informatics Licensee from Argentina.
I started programming and using computing in general at the age of 12. My day job is in a Development Center at Citi, I participate in Analysis, Design and Programming for regional systems based in Java and Midrange servers like IBM iSeries. I also worked as an Administrator in a Data Center for a Small manufacturing company for 7 years.-

My involvement with Linux started 6 years ago, my first distribution was Slackware. Also used Redhat, Suse and Debian. Around 3 years ago, I started using Ubuntu, and I like very much that it was easier to use than other distributions. Also, being a technical user, I liked very much the great work that was being done in this distribution, that I note looking at scripts, in the documentation, the tools that allow me to configure things very easily, and facilitate me to investigate the inner workings for the system and applications (which I liked very much).-

Unfortunately, in previous years, I wasn’t able to dedicate myself to contributing, but this year, a took that as something that I have to do. So, I started to look at the excellent wikis, IRC training logs (some of which were hosted by you, and I enjoyed them a lot!) , and bugs in Launchpad, and a few weeks ago I configure my development machine, and started to contribute to fix bugs in packaging, as I go learning from different sources, and discover what an rewarding experience it is! It feels great for me to contribute and being helped in so many ways by the Ubuntu community. I love developing systems, and for me this great ambiance couldn’t be better. I only hope to being able to grow myself technically to help the community in a greater way.

You and other members that help me daily are great examples to be follow!

So, I hope my responses are useful. Is great for someone really shy like my to feel a part of this community.

Thanks for noticing me!

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.

  • Be interactive and reach us most immediately: talk to us in #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net.
  • Follow mailing lists and get involved in the discussions: ubuntu-devel-announce (announce only, low traffic), ubuntu-devel (high-level discussions), ubuntu-devel-discuss (fairly general developer discussions).
  • Stay up to date and follow the ubuntudev account on Facebook, Identi.ca or Twitter.

Unity Progress Report – Irish Edition

By jcastro | Published: 2011-07-06

This is the Unity weekly report for 6 July. The last week the team spent some time hacking on Unity in Dublin, Ireland, which included a quick meet and greet with the local team. The main things that happened this week were mostly plumbing and GTK3 porting, which is now complete. Other than compiz modal dialogs there’s no new crazy bling this week, just boring foundationy bling and a bunch of hacking:

Unity Contributor Activity This Week

  • Oliver Sauder has fixed the application spread to only show applications on the current workspace.
  • Alexander Fougner made his first contribution to Unity by changing “Keep In Launcher” to “Keep in launcher”. Hey, it’s all about the little things.
  • Marco Biscaro has made yet another fix where clicking on an icon when spread now correctly cancels the spread. Thanks Marco.
  • Oier Mees made his very first Unity contribution (yaay!) Oier fixed the Dash search box, such that clicking inside it removes the search hint. I love attention to details.
  • Manuel Nicetto has committed yet another fix for quicklists. The fix improves keyboard navigation and resolves focus issues.
  • Andrea Azzarone also resolved issues with autohide for the launcher. The fix also helps tooltips become more robust and always end up showing on the screen

Other branches for incoming fixes are in the review queue. Thanks to all the contributors who’ve spent time making Unity better. Want to dive in? Check out the big list below and dive in!

Things going on in Oneiric

There’s plenty of stuff happening on the rest of the desktop as well. Here’s the Unity related bits, a nice bonus this week is pure Qt apps will transparently become indicators without need for whitelisting (Skype and Mumble):

  • New Unity snapshot with new Nux/Unity (and gtk3 indicator support).
    • Compiz patch was needed with the new unity dialogs
    • But this brings a lot of issues with compiz current configuration handling system (Can’t add new plugin, even when existing plugins depends on a new one, making everything segfault). Need to prioritize the gsettings backend and remove those limitations in libcompizconfig itself.
  • New Unity-2d release with some metacity patches and a lot of bug fixes.
    • Unity 2d is now at 80% accessible. Some patches post alpha2 in Qt will help removing the latest gotchas. Very active work with upstream to get that done as soon as possible.
    • Note that the half implement unity-like modal dialogs showing in metacity due to the metacity theme used in compiz will be removed (no resource for implementing the full design).
    • Still using gtk2 indicators, but good progress (merge request today in trunk) to use the unity-panel service and so, get rid of it.
  • Qt has now the sni-qt support (seeded by default, will be there after alpha2): transparent indicator fallback support. This mean no more systray for popular Qt apps like mumble, skype, it will all just work out of the box.
  • Incoming dconf support in QML (and not Qt). Will be used by unity 2d first.
  • Discussion with upstream with zeitgeist first indexing to not have blank unity places. Still need to determine if this should be integrated (as it is today) with the activity log manager managing blacklists as well, if so, if it should be added to gnome-control-center and such or just run on first login. Needs design team to be back from holidays to discuss that. Add items to alpha3.

You can check out the rest of the progress on the desktop from the desktop team’s report for the week.

The Big List

Here’s a list of targeted bugs that the design team has picked out as a result of user testing and feedback that would make Unity nicer to use. Here’s the full list if you want to dig in.

  • 727902 Launcher icon highlighting should not switch off as soon the cursor moves after the app spread appears
  • 676453 Launcher – Add ‘installing’ animation for when app is installed via drag & drop
  • 616866 Installation of apps by dragging them to the launcher
  • 750375 Dash – Cursor navigation allows the user to keep scrolling down indefinitely
  • 765715 Launcher – When a app icon de-couples from the Launcher a small shadow should appear on the bottom and right sides of the icon
  • 767272 Top bar menus – there should be a very quick and subtle fade out/in effect when a user shifts from one menu to another or closes a menu

How to Get Involved

1. Get the Code

Follow the Step by Step Instructions and Wiki Page. This will get the code from Launchpad, set up your development environment, and getting you used to the Launchpad workflow.

2. Pick a Bug

Here’s the full list, or you can just join the team and watch them roll in and pick what you’d like.

3. Fix your bug and then get your code into Unity

Don’t worry we won’t leave you hanging, you can get a-hold of a Unity developer through many different ways:

  • Join the ~unity-community-hackers team and start digging in.
  • We now have a Weekly Meeting at 1800UTC on #ayatana on Freenode IRC if you feel like hanging with us and getting organized and ask questions
  • #ayatana on freenode IRC during European and American workdays. Or you can post to the mailing list if you have a question.
  • We also have weekly IRC Q+A for any developer who wants to dive in and ask a Unity developer. 7pm-8pm UTC (That’s 2pm EST) every Friday!

 

New Forum Council Members

By pleia2 | Published: 2011-07-05

Due to current and upcoming vacancies on the Ubuntu Forum Council, we (the FC) were in need of 3 new members to make the correct number of members.

Previously, the FC was chosen from the staff team by the current FC, and then put forward to the CC to vote on whether or not to approve said members. Recently, the forums and the forum council have been undergoing various changes to allow forum members to be approved as Ubuntu Members by the FC, and ultimately, have the FC elected from these Ubuntu Forums Members. This process still has some kinks to iron out, and is the primary task that this FC will be tackling throughout the term, in order to get a solid process in place before this term is up.

I would therefore like to welcome s-fox, Artificial Intelligence and Iowan to the FC. I’m sure they’ll do a fantastic job and look forward to the obligatory cake that each new FC member has to buy for the others 😉

Originally posted here by Joe Barker on 5 July 2011

Get ready for Ubuntu Developer Week

By dholbach | Published: 2011-07-04

Ubuntu Developer Week

Get ready for Ubuntu Developer Week from Monday, 11th July to Friday, 15th July. We will have one full week of online IRC sessions which will introduce you to Ubuntu Development and hacking on Ubuntu-related projects. Sometimes these sessions will take the form of Q&A sessions, sometimes of presentations and sometimes hands-on workshops.

Here’s the links for the impatient:

A lot of developers readily agreed to give sessions, so we have a wide variety of sessions this time around:

  • Packaging-related: Intro to Ubuntu development, specific packaging sessions: Mono, Python, Java, collaboration with Debian, fixing ARM build failures.
  • Project demos: Desktop Team Q&A, hacking on Launchpad, dotdee, Upstart, nux, hacking on compiz, hacking on Ubuntu websites, Lubuntu development, project lightning talks.
  • QA-related sessions: working with apport-reported bugs, debugging the kernel, intro to LAVA, how to triage bugs.
  • hacking sessions: porting to gobject introspection, making use of Launchpad translations, app creation with QML, writing Ensemble formulas.

As you can see: there will be something for everybody and we will have a great time.

If the times should be bad for you, don’t worry – there will be logs of the sessions made available afterwards. It’s only one week left to go, so please do us a favour and tell your friends! If you always wanted to learn something new, meet great people and start helping interesting projects, now is the perfect time: UDW is for you!