Visa, finally got it
Tuesday next week is my last working day and I’ll be gone for three weeks, without laptop. If you have anything really urgent, talk to any members of my team, Michael or Ara, they know how to get in touch with me.
I’m very much looking forward to this one and happy to meet Mehdi of the LoCo team there! 
I’ll be back on 29th September.
We decided to run a test yesterday to see how you responded and whether there was interest. There are some great replies. Our favourite so far:
More can be found here: #iloveubuntubecause
Please post your own and raise awareness so we can get a broader response.
Have you got any other ideas for how we can bring this to the fore on our websites?
Happy Beta Release day one and all. If you’ve not yet upgraded surely now’s the time 
Happy Beta Release day one and all. If you’ve not yet upgraded surely now’s the time
I tried, I really did, and for what it’s worth Evolution I’m sorry. I really wanted to like you. I prefer your appearance in fact and that usually sways me – see the HTC Hero debacle of 2009 – but the fact remains that I can’t make you
1. Auto Filter my mail – I get A LOT of bug mail especially close to release and manually running them by pressing CTRL-A to select all and then CTRL-Y doesn’t feel very 21st Century to me.
2. Start new e-mails very quickly – you just seem to wait for ages when I press CTRL-N to create a new message
3. Search my mail folders – you say you’re doing it, but I know you’re not 
So after three days I have to copy back my Thunderbird settings and we’re back in familiar tabbed search territory. I feel like I’ve failed but I will be raising bugs and trying again next release …
Over almost three decades, the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) has produced a rich and varied literature. Although the focus of attention today is naturally on new work, older contributions that played a role in shaping the trajectory and character of the field have much to tell us. The contributors to HCI Remixed were asked to reflect on a single work at least ten years old that influenced their approach to HCI. The result is this collection of fifty-one short, engaging, and idiosyncratic essays, reflections on a range of works in a variety of forms that chart the emergence of a new field.If you're into HCI, learning from others, and discovering new sources of inspiration for your own work, this is simply a must-have book :-)
The Ubuntu kernel team has prepared a new proposed kernel for Lucid (2.6.32-25.43), containing a large number of fixes. This is a larger number of updates than we would usually push at one time, but processing of the upstream stable updates was delayed by a couple of security updates.
This kernel should fix a lot of issues, including this one that people have been asking about a lot.
You will get this automatically if you have updates from lucid-proposed enabled. Note that if it breaks you get to keep all the pieces, so don’t try this on production machines.
Please test against your favorite bugs in the changelog and provide feedback.
So, the default wallpaper…
Seeing so many screenshots of the Ubuntu desktop during the second to last release all sporting identical backdrops, made me wonder: wouldn’t it be amazing if all our users received (or evolved) subtly different wallpapers – not radically enough to dilute the intent but just enough to become an elegant addition to the OS and give a sense of personalisation.
Ideally they might not even notice at first but would become aware and pleasantly surprised by catching the differences out of the corner of their eye, double-taking the position of a particularly prominent graphic in relation to another, a subtle hue shift over the course of hours/days/weeks or wondering why their desktop image wasn’t the same as either their friend’s or someone who’s screenshot they’d just seen in a recent blog post.
If nothing else it would be a relatively inexpensive experiment that could offer the start of something new and would be a great celebration of the individuality and diversity of our user base.
With the advent of the new visual identity and my involvement therein, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to look into this idea in more detail. The Lucid wallpaper was specifically designed with this purpose in mind. It deliberately used little more than simple radial blurs layered to give an impression of light and depth – where the position of elements would not act negatively against the composition and that we imagined would be easy to animate and move programatically without causing rendering/artefacting issues across a wide range of screen sizes – it was always going to be a fine balancing act but worth it in our opinion.
There are a number of ways we could have done this. We decided to look at having a matching screensaver that would re-write the default wallpaper whenever the user woke their machine from sleep, this seemed like the easiest way to avoid unnecessary processor cycles or unexplained delays (possibly at startup/shutdown). This would also allow us to do a very clean crossover effect between desktop and screensaver where open windows, etc. would elegantly fade away and visa versa.
Sadly we have been unable to allocate the time to get this built internally. I discussed it in a session at the last UDS and there is an open blueprint relating to it. I am still one hundred percent behind pursuing this idea and am actively seeking people to help me make it a reality.
If you’d like to help please get in touch.
PostgreSQL 9.0 with a whole lot of new features and improvements is nearing completion. The first release candidate was just announced.
As with the beta versions, I uploaded RC1 to Debian experimental again. If you want to test/use them on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), you can get packages from my “PostgreSQL backports for stable Ubuntu releases” PPA. Please let me know if you need them for other releases.
Just for the records, both Debian 6.0 “Squeeze” and Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick Meerkat” will release and officially support 8.4 only, as 9.0 is too late for the feature freezes of both. Also, it will take quite some time to update all the packaged extensions to 9.0. As usual, 9.0 will be provided as official backports for both Debian and Ubuntu.
Happy testing!
This year, due to family commitments, I was unable to attend GUADEC. Although the reason why I couldn’t attend made me very happy, I also was sad by the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to attend one my favourites FOSS conferences.
Happily, and thanks to Flumotion, the videos are now available for download.
I have started downloading some of them and, of course, the first talk that I watched was the one given by my good friend, excellent hacker and accessibility advocate, Eitan Isaacson. In his talk, Eitan explains in a non technical way, why it is important to have accessibility in mind when designing any kind of products: from buildings to software. If you are a software designer or developer, I really recommend watching his talk. I am sure you will start thinking about accessibility when designing your next application.
It was with great sadness that I read earlier that my friend and colleague Ian Clatworthy passed away after his fight with cancer. Although I never knew Ian that well, whenever I did work and spend time with him I always found him to be a fun, light-hearted, and always pleasant person to be around.
Words escape me.
You will be missed, my friend. Rest, well.
I am grieved to say that my friend and colleague Ian Clatworthy died last night, after a long and horrible struggle with cancer. He and his wife Geri celebrated their 19th wedding anniversary yesterday before he passed away peacefully in his sleep, at home, with his family.
I’ve known Ian for eleven years and he has worked at Canonical since 2007. He made large contributions to Bazaar, including launching and driving the bzr-explorer project. Even though he had many technical and business achievements, the most remarkable and inspiring thing was what a thoroughly nice man he was. He was determined to change the world for the better, both in software and in how people relate to each other, and he accomplished both. He will be missed, and remembered.
- Martin
[edit: add picture]
Ian Clatworthy died 2010-08-31. Rest in Peace my dear friend Ian. You were too young to go. http://ianclatworthy.wordpress.com/about/
Release Meeting Bugs (6 bugs, 9 Blueprints)
Nothing to report… yet
much coming soonish
no change
Some armel udebs were accidentally removed from the archive over the weekend. As a result, it was easiest to just upload a 2.6.35-19.28 kernel to re-generate the missing udebs. There is no real change in code. Beta Freeze is in effect as the Maverick Beta release is this Thurs Sept 2nd. That means no kernel uploads without the approval of the release team until after the Beta release. Also, keep in mind that Kernel Freeze is Thurs Sept 16th, ie ~2weeks away. Remember after Kernel Freeze, we transition to our SRU policy in order to apply patches. We are above our Beta burn down chart’s trend line. I’ll be re-targetting beta work items to the final release milestone tomorrow. Looking ahead towards our final release, we need to start closing out all remaining open work items to ensure we stay below the overall burn down chart.
Lucid 2.6.32-24.42 has moved to updates just today. Uploaded 2.6.32-25.43 which contains the accumulated upstream stable releases until 2.6.32.21 but currently excludes the drm portions. We are in the process to collect those drm patches since the end of 2.6.33.y that look good for stable backports. Rebased uploads for Lucid-ec2 and Lucid-mvl-dove will follow shortly.
| Upd./Sec. | Proposed | TiP | Verified | Verified | ||||||
| Dapper: Kernel | 2.6.15-55.87 | |||||||||
| Hardy: Kernel | 2.6.24-28.77 | (pending) | ||||||||
| Jaunty: Kernel | 2.6.28-19.64 | |||||||||
| Karmic: Kernel | 2.6.31-22.63 | 2.6.31-22.64 | 7 | 0/ 4 | 0/ 4 | |||||
| = mvl-dove | 2.6.31-214.30 | 2.6.31-214.31 | 7 | 0/ 4 | 0/ 4 | |||||
| = fsl-imx51 | 2.6.31-112.28 | |||||||||
| = ec2 | 2.6.31-307.17 | 2.6.31-307.18 | 7 | 0/ 4 | 0/ 4 | |||||
| Lucid: Kernel | 2.6.32-24.42 | (pending) | ||||||||
| = LBM | 2.6.32-24.17 | (pending) | ||||||||
| = mvl-dove | 2.6.32-209.25 | |||||||||
| = fsl-imx51 | 2.6.31-608.19 | |||||||||
| = ti-omap | 2.6.33-502.10 | |||||||||
| = ec2 | 2.6.32-308.15 |
Incoming Bugs
368 Maverick Bugs (up 44)
958 Lucid Bugs (up 43)
Current regression stats (broken down by release):
Next week’s bug day will be focused on bugs in the Triaged state. We will work through getting them tagged with the appropriate subsystem and make sure that the ones that need to be looked at more closely are tagged appropriately. We will continue to have the Team Bug Day to address the Top 50 list as half days on Friday and Monday. Reviewers, please take a look at your needs-review lists and help us keep the process moving. Please also take ownership of your bugs as you work them so we can get them fixed or otherwise off the list. There are several subsystems owned by all that need to be reviewed for inclusion in our top 50 list.
I have not taken the time this week to work with the kernel bug triagers, but I hope to do so this coming week. I’ve been, and will need to continue, working on work items so that they are being closed out. There is much work being done, but some of them have required more than I was prepared for. The Triage Sumit will be on the 11th. I’m sending out e-mail on it today.
None.
We have some great news to share about Ubuntu One support for Android devices.
We recently released an Android version of the Ubuntu One Contacts sync application. This app will sync your phone address book with your Ubuntu One personal cloud to help keep your digital life together. An Ubuntu One account is required.
Ubuntu One Contacts is based on the existing Funambol application but we’ve made a few enhancements.
Ubuntu One Contacts is now available for free from the Android Market. Just search for “Ubuntu One” and install. Remember that we’ve temporarily removed the time limit on the mobile contacts sync trial so more people can experience this feature. After the Ubuntu 10.10 release on October 10, we will re-enable the 30-day time limit.
The hackers among you are also welcome to download the source code of our Android application and learn how it works.
Ubuntu One Mobile Contacts Sync now supports more Android devices. In fact, these are some of the most popular Android devices available. They include the following:
If you have one of these devices, sign up for Ubuntu One and try out Mobile Contacts Sync today.
Would you like to find out about how Ubuntu is being deployed in the cloud space? Would you like to see how KnowledgeTree uses Ubuntu for its SaaS offering? If so, please join KnowledgeTree and Canonical on Wednesday 8 September 2010 at 11 am Pacific (2 pm Eastern) for a joint webinar.
Enjoy an informative and thought provoking talk from Evan Person, Director of Product for KnowledgeTree and Renen Watermeyer, Director of Engineering for KnowledgeTree where they will discuss:
It struck me this morning that Canonical really needs to be different, because Ubuntu is different. Ubuntu is a user phenomenon, not necessarily an enterprise phenomenon. We have a great deal of enterprise adoption (tops in both development and deployment according to recent surveys), but that adoption came through individual developers choosing to use Ubuntu, and not through some heavy-handed corporate decision to do so.
In other words, we’re spreading like Apple. We should market in similar ways.
The old world depends upon case studies, press releases, and such. The new world feels more fluid to me: it’s Puppet Labs’ wiki that allows users to self-identify their Puppet adoption. It’s Twitter campaigns. It’s word of mouth, individual to individual.
Less broadcast. More conversation.
The people and community of Canonical/Ubuntu understand this, yet it feels like we’ve overlooked it in much of our marketing, preferring to ape yesterday’s best practices rather than formulating tomorrow’s. This needs to change.
I’m just one voice at Canonical, but this ideas resonates so strongly with me that I’m going to be raising my voice to promote individual stories as the centerpiece of our marketing, design, sales, etc. This feels like the right fuel to boost Ubuntu adoption tenfold.
What do you think? What would you do if you worked in Canonical’s marketing department?
Posted by Matt Asay.
At the end of last week I upgraded to Maverick and blew up my installation of Ubuntu – this happens every release when I say that I’m going to upgrade at Beta and then I get overly excited at Alpha, update early, do something stupid like update to 64-bit instead of 32 and then it all goes pear shaped.
So I thought this time I would document the experience of updating because as I do it I’m trying to switch to the default apps we ship in an effort to Dog Food this update. My mail is now being handled by Evolution instead of Thunderbird and and my chat by Empathy – I was already using this actually over the old default of Pidgin.
Evolution is doing well so far although the filtering seems a little delayed/ manual - in fact I should admit that my other reason for blogging this is to see whether anyone out there can help me. Empathy is also good but won’t show me my contacts when logged into IRC which is weird – again am assuming this is an early update bug.
Those downers aside the system is quick, dual screen switching seems quicker and the whole thing feels more stable. I also really like the updates to the messaging menu and sound menu.
Have you updated? What issues are you having? Can you explain the Evolution filtering logic to me? 
Max Kanat-Alexander’s new bugzilla-vcs extension (alpha) supports bzr, svn, hg, git, and cvs. Currently it supports linking bugs and commits, and displaying information about about commits in Bugzilla on the show_bug page.
In the first weeks when I started contributing to the Ubuntu community about six years ago, I was constantly amazed at a number of things:
– kind of)After a few months I helped out new contributors myself, answered questions and tried to give them a similar experience as I had. Learning to do something great by experiencing it first hand. The great thing is that a lot of contributors already went ahead and became involved in upstream projects and Debian.
I’m extremely grateful I’m in a position where I can do this as part of my job.
I’ve been working on a few things in the last time that will hopefully give even more people that sense of opportunity and that sense of achievement soon. Please note that all of the items below are just happening because of “a little help from my friends”, I couldn’t have possibly pulled this off all on my own.
There’s quite a lot of other things where I could be helpful too to keep the ball in the Ubuntu community rolling: as member of the Community Council I do bits of organisation here and there, within Canonical I often answer questions about Ubuntu development processes to new starters and development-unrelated teams, I helped organising the Ubuntu Global Jam, Ubuntu Developer Week and other events, thankfully found a team to take over the “Behind MOTU” interviews, helped with the organisation of Ubuntu’s participation in Google’s Summer of Code, that plus calls, heaps of mails, small and big arguments keep me quite busy.
I feel very privileged being in this position and hope I’m instrumental to the open source world at large. One thing’s for sure: I still immensely enjoy it.
Last update:
Thu Sep 2 16:31:07 2010
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