Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 220

By nhandler | Published: 2011-06-13

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #220 for the week of June 6 – June 13, 2011, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

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

  • Nathan Handler
  • Elizabeth Krumbach
  • Liraz Siri
  • Robert Wall
  • Mike Holstein
  • Nigel Babu
  • Jens Leineweber
  • 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

Unity Community Contributor plans for 11.10

By jcastro | Published: 2011-06-07

For 11.04 we made an effort to make Unity easy to contribute to so that anyone who wanted to participate could help out and help drive the development of Unity forward.

During UDS in Budapest, Hungary, we had a session on how we’re going to improve this program. As luck would have it this was a video’ed session, and what you’ll read in this post is a result of that session and some other feedback from people.

The first adjustment we’re going to make is add what we’re calling “backlog” bugs. These are bugs that the design team has completed, are approved, but just need to be implemented. What’s great about these bugs is that they’re (mostly) design improvements made as a result of user testing or little bits of design that directly improve using Unity, basically, it’s a hit list of things that we can do early in the cycle that would really help the overall Unity experience.

So what do these bugs look like? Here’s the full list, and here’s a sampling of what this sort of bug looks like.

  • 676453 Launcher – Add ‘installing’ animation for when app is installed via drag & drop
  • 767075 Launcher – when the user reveals the Launcher by moving the pointer to the left side of the screen, the Launcher should unfold at exactly the point entered
  • 616866 Installation of apps by dragging them to the launcher
  • 750375 Dash – Cursor navigation allows the user to keep scrolling down indefinitely
  • 723866 Dash file Lens – Rename “Favourite Folders” category header to “Folders”
  • 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

These bugs are a bit more than bitesized, in fact, we’ve started a team, ~unity-community-hackers for people who want to step up from bitesize bugs and tackle larger feature implementations. The team is open and gets assigned bugs that you can work on.

Don’t worry, we still have Bitesize bugs, however at this point in the cycle we’re going to concentrate on feature development, you’ll see me ramp up bitesize bugs as we move out of the Alpha stage. When I return next week we’ll get started on the new contributors that have joined in and do a weekly play-by-play of Unity development!

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:

  • #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!

 

Cool Projects That Need Your Help

By pleia2 | Published: 2011-06-03

I just wanted to highlight a few awesome projects going on that are looking for help and could provide a rocking place to get involved for coders, testers, translators, docs writers and more. Of course there are many other projects that need help, but I just wanted to highlight these few near and dear to me.

Lernid

The result of Jono writing code, and then someone else re-writing it so it actually works.

Lernid is a tool I wrote a while to provide a simple, integrated interface for joining our many different online events. In it it supports presentation slides, viewing web pages, tuition event schedules and more.

John S. Gruber is now maintaining Lernid, and his focus is on stability and getting the bug list in shape and bugs fixed. Again, this is a Python application, and if you are a Python developer, I am sure John would value the help. See the Launchpad Project, grab the code and rock on it. Be sure to join #lernid on freenode.

Ubuntu Tweak


Tweak ’till Hammersmith.

As I have blogged about recently, the author of Ubuntu Tweak has been keen to join the recently formed Ubuntu Power Users community and has identified the follow key areas of focus for the new 0.6 series of releases for the app:

  • Safety – building in support to backup and undo changes so users can easily roll back config settings if they don’t work for them.
  • Pluggability – support installing and loading plug-ins from $HOME/.local/ubuntu-tweak/plugins and separate “Application/Source Center” as a plug-in (Install from PPA, package name: ubuntu-tweak-community-plugins) – this will tend to the current concerns about installing untrusted PPAs inside the app.
  • Janitor – the previous “Package Cleaner” will be renamed to “Janitor”, to instead the “Computer Janitor”, it will support plug-in too.

If you are interested in getting involved and writing some code (in Python), see this guide, If you want to test and report bugs, see this guide. If you are interested in writing plug-ins for Ubuntu Tweak, see this guide.

Ubuntu LoCo Team Portal


Kind of like Second Life, but in the real world.

You know it as loco.ubuntu.com, and I have talked recently about some goals for improving it to better serve the growing LoCo Team community. To summarize the goals:

  • provide a central point in which you can find out about all the incredible work going on in the community.
  • encourage best practice and skills acquisition across different LoCo teams.
  • encourage and inspire teams to participate by seeing the great work and ideas from other teams.

To find out how to get involved, first read this guide. It is also recommended that you join this mailing list and feel free to ask questions in #ubuntu-website on freenode.

There are a number of people actively involved and working on the site, and it is a fun project to be a part of and key piece in helping us to grow and inspire LoCo teams for a growing generation of Ubuntu community members.

Originally posted here by Jono Bacon on Friday June 3rd, 2011.

Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 1 Released

By akgraner | Published: 2011-06-02

“Ocelot, ocelot, where are you now?
Won’t you come out to play?” – phish

Our Oneiric Ocelot (Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 1) is poking its young head out
of the den, and looking for some developers and testers to play with.

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 1 is the first in a series of milestone CD images that will be
released throughout the Oneiric development cycle. The Alpha images
are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer
bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Oneiric. You can
download them here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/oneiric/alpha-1/
(Ubuntu Desktop, Server, ARM)

Additional images are also available at:

http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/oneiric/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu
Server Cloud and EC2)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/oneiric/alpha-1/
(Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/oneiric/alpha-1/
(Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/oneiric/alpha-1/
(Edubuntu)

Alpha 1 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
1 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

Originally posted to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Kate Stewart on Thu Jun 2 19:44:01 UTC 2011

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) End of Life

By pleia2 | Published: 2011-06-02

“Time brings all things to pass.” – Aeschylus

Ubuntu announced its 6.06 Server release 5 years ago, on June 1, 2006. For the LTS Server releases, Ubuntu committed to ongoing security and critical fixes for a period of 5 years. The maintenance period has now ended for Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Server.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS was a major milestone for the Ubuntu project, being the first long-term release. Its retirement evokes memories of Ubuntu as a younger project, and reminds us of all that we’ve accomplished together in the five years since we released the “Dapper Drake”.

Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen!

Upgrade instructions for users of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Server is via Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server. Instructions and caveats for the upgrade may be found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardyUpgrades. For further Ubuntu support, including commercial support options, see http://www.ubuntu.com/support.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server continues to be actively supported with security updates and select high-impact bug fixes. All announcements of official security updates for Ubuntu releases are sent to the ubuntu-security-announce mailing list, information about which may be found at https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-security-announce.

About Ubuntu

Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users in homes, schools, businesses and governments around the world. Ubuntu is Open Source software, costs nothing to download, and users are free to customise or alter their software in order to meet their needs.

Originally posted to the Ubuntu Announce mailing list by Matt Zimmerman on Wed Jun 1 20:12:04 UTC 2011