The Developer Summit is rolling along on it’s second day and much fun has been had. Here are some pictures of the enjoyment:
Kristian Lyngstol, Robert Carr and Vincent Untz in the hallway at UDS Boston.
Matthew Paul Thomas tests the usability of Launchpad with Andreas Nilsson in his portable lab.
TV with the monday’s schedule of UDS Boston 2007
Jono explores his inner rock demon at UDS Boston 2007.
If you have any images of the event, throw them up on Flickr tagged with UDS.
The Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) for 8.04 (Hardy Heron), currently underway in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has just finished the first day.
Like previous summits, this UDS starts the first day with an intro talk and then breaks into seperate sessions, usually in tracks such as Server, Mobile, Edubuntu, etc. For a look at what was discussed today, see the day’s schedule.
Every subsequent summit gets bigger and bigger, making it harder for people to get to all the sessions they want or need to and also far too many to talk about here, but here are a few highlights from some of the sessions:
Gobuntu
Gobuntu is the completely free derivative of Ubuntu. Announced last this year and first shipped with 7.10, there is still a lot of work to do. Recent commenters have noticed that Gobuntu ships default Firefox, which includes completely non-free icons. For 8.04, this will be replaced by Epiphany. Firmware is another key issue, with both in and out of kernel firmware is considered non-free. For the out of kernel firmware, it needs to moved to the restricted component and for the in-kernel firmware, this is bit more difficult and will require a seperate kernel, something that should be fixed by the time 8.04 releases. Lastly, the issue of certain multimedia packages might need to moved to restricted from main, although this issue requires more discussion. The gobuntu-hardy spec is now in Drafting.
Telling users about LoCo teams and other local resources
One of the key problems new users face is finding existing local resources, such as their LoCo team. The best place to tell users about these resources is shortly after install. As such, the installer Ubiquity will need to be modified to tell users about where to find these resources, as well as possibly modifying Pidgin to open to the default LoCo IRC channel, not #ubuntu. The identifying-users-and-local-groups is still in discussion, although a session has not been scheduled for tomorrow.
Hardy artwork
There were two discussions of the artwork in Hardy today, one covering the theme and the other about the icons. For the theme, a final idea has not yet been laid down, but the discussion steered toward unifying the Mobile and Desktop themes, keeping the orange elements with less gloss. For the icons, the need to keep the Tango guidelines (although not the icon theme) as well as the need for a palette. The relevent specs, hardy-theme and hardy-icon-them are both currently still in discussion although neither has a session scheduled for tomorrow.
NetworkManager for dialup devices
A great many devices still use the dialup technology of PPP these says, including many cel-based modems such as Edge or HSDPA and ASDL modems using PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE). Thankfully, the next version of NetworkManger, 0.7, will support PPP, although it is not clear exactly how many of these devices will be supported, due to the enormous number of configuration options and different devices in existance around the world. It was further stated that Ubuntu already supports as many ISDN and WinModems as is possible. The dial-up-suport spec is now in the Drafting stage.
Interacting better with upstream
It is critical that Ubuntu has good relationships with our upstream application developers, all the way from the larger projects such as GNOME or KDE down to the very smallest of developers. Generating a set of conventions on how to talk with upstream was the major goal here, including such suggestions as praising publicly, criticizing in private, working with both our direct upstream of Debian and the original application author. The modelling-better-upstream-connections is still in discussion, although another session in not scheduled for tomorrow.
Quote of the Day: John (Maddog) Hall
Stop trying to solve social issues with technical solutions, as it is often more expensive and ultimately not useful.
If you are at UDS and did not see your spec covered, feel free to email the author, Corey Burger with a short summary to be included in the day’s writeup.
And of course, if you want to help out with UDS, all the sessions are broadcast via SIP and the notes are edited on Gobby, a collaborative editor. For more information, see the previous Fridge article on participating in UDS. See you tomorrow!
The Ubuntu based MythTV distribution, Mythubuntu 7.10, released on Monday 22nd October 2007, and in less then a week tracked hit it’s 20,000th download.
What is Mythbuntu?
Mythbuntu is an Ubuntu derivative focused upon setting up a standalone MythTV system similar to Knoppmyth or Mythdora. You can install it either as a stand alone Frontend, Backend, or combination machines. It is also easy to convert any Ed/K/Ubuntu machine into a Mythbuntu machine via the mythbuntu meta packages.
For further information go to the Mythbuntu website and if you want to try it out, check out the downloads page.
FOSSCamp, an unconference designed to help upstream and distro developers together to communicate, wrapped up Sunday afternoon in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hosted by Canonical at the Hotel@MIT, FOSScamp had two days of Birds of a Feather (BoFs) and hallway conversations about many topics, including KDE 4, PackageKit, OpenLDAP, Chandler, and much much more.
Like any unconference, FOSSCamp was self organizing, with the schedule laid out empty on a board for the attendees to fill as they see fit. By the end of the day, the schedule board is usually a riot of colour and styles, including stuff hastily scribbled out and written over.
Co-hosts for the event, Canonical’s Jorge Castro and Jono Bacon ( External Developer Relations and Community Manager respectively) both expressed pleasure at the large turnout, noting they “were very happy that many important connections between Free and Open Source developers were being made” and further noted that FOSScamp also helped inter-distro relations, with representatives from Red Hat (like Colin Walters), Novell, Foresight and other distros in attendance. Matt Zimmerman, CTO of Ubuntu, loved how “upstream developers were keen to work closer with Ubuntu and other distributions”.
Many upstream projects, such as Chandler, also took the opportunity to meet distro people, including packagers and developers. Describing the discussions he had had as “very informative”, Bear, a developer with Chandler went on to say that he had “come look for ways to get Chandler into distributions and enjoyed the warm reception he had received in that goal.”
Jerry Carter of SAMBA said “The interesting thing about types of events like FOSSCamp is that you show up with the natural selfish ambition to get everyone involved in what you are doing and end up not only finding out what they are doing but that you start thinking, ‘I want to work on their stuff’”
Ryan Paul of Ars Technica was on hand to cover the event (he is also staying for the Ubuntu Development Summit, as he mentions in his story. He has filed two addition stories, first covering Mark Shuttleworth’s comments about Free Software producing “brilliant flashes of innovation and Mirco Müller’s GTK with OpenGL.
Overall, FOSSCamp was a great success. Look here for an announcement of the next FOSSCamp and the next great opportunity for the friendships and relationships made at this conference to come about.
The next Ubuntu Developers Summit to plan Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is currently being held at the Hotel@MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts and you can participate. Check out the many ways:
VOIP
All the sessions are being broadcast over a VOIP connection, so fire up Ekiga or your favourite SIP client, get a login and join the discussion.
Collaborative editing with Gobby
All the specs while they are being talked about are being edited in Gobby, a collaborative editor. If you want to join in, grab the gobby package via your favourite package manager and join gobby.ubuntu.com.
IRC
As per usual, those who are at UDS tend to be on IRC, in the #uds-boston channel on the Freenode network.
Show up
Of course, if you can make it to Cambridge (the US one, not the UK one) , come by. Registration is free and the sessions are open to all. Just remember, we need your contribution, as this isn’t an event for spectators.
Update: Icecast streams
The IceCast streams have now been fixed and can be found under the room listing on the schedule pages.
If you want more information and a rehashing of all this information, check out the UDS-Boston Participate wiki page.