Due to the popularity of the Ubuntu App Showdown Workshops, I plan to start holding a weekly Q&A session for all Ubuntu app developers using the same format: A live Google+ Hangout with IRC chat.

The first of these will be Wednesday of this week, at 1700 UTC (6pm London, 1pm US Eastern, 10am US Pacific).  Because it will be an On-Air hangout, I won’t have a link until I start the session, but I will post it here on my blog before it starts.  For IRC, I plan on using the #ubuntu-on-air channel on Freenode, though again the exact details will be posted the day of the session.

So bring your questions about developing apps for Ubuntu, packaging an submitting them to the Software Center.  If I can’t answer your question myself, I’ll help you find someone who can.

We’re on day 2 of our apps sprint and made loads of progress. It has been a lot of fun to be in the midst of all this activity, so here goes just a quick list of things we worked on:

• A number of bugs were fixed in arb-lint, the tool we use to check apps. It learned where we expect files to be put in /opt and we added some examples how to fix some of the issues. Find still outstanding bugs here.
• Some smaller issues we found in the packaging were related to bugs in python-distutils-extra, which were fixed in the meantime, so we will try to backport it to precise.
• We noticed some funny problems with apport hooks in apps, so we investigated the issue and filed these two bugs.
• Allison set up a Trello board and many apps were reviewed. Thanks a lot to Bhavani Shankar, Allison Randal, Andrew Mitchell, Jonathan Carter and Paolo Rotolo.

What I liked most was how everybody who worked on some part of the apps story hung out together and cooperated on issues, so future generations of apps will have a much easier time.

Thanks a lot to Paolo Rotolo who joined the effort and just jumped in to fix issues in apps. Awesome!

Apps are super-important for Ubuntu. Many of us have blogged about this in a more general sense, but I want to provide an update of what has been happening behind the scenes in the last few weeks.

Before I start, I want to reach out to you to be part of the upcoming Apps Sprint. Join us on #ubuntu-arb on irc.freenode.net from Monday, 2nd July to Wednesday, 4th July to learn more about Ubuntu apps, get involved in reviewing them and bringing more progress to this effort.

Getting apps into Ubuntu hasn’t been easy up until now, due to a number of circumstances. The review process takes long, some of the steps involved are cumbersome and the review queue has been filling up. There are reasons for this and there is lots of room for improvement.

Technical requirements
As apps are part of a separate repository, the Technical Board requires us to make some very specific namespace distinctions between “regular packages” and apps. This means that apps install into /opt/ and files which can’t go there (.desktop files, lens specific bits, etc.) have to include the package name to avoid possible file name clashes.

This looks pretty straight-forward and you could just rename files and move things around as part of the packaging, but quite often this means you have to make changes in the code as well (think of file locations, translation files, data directories or file look-ups). For a larger app this results in quite a bit of engineering work to make all the changes and make sure they work as intended.

At this point I want to credit the App Review Board (ARB) for some work they have been doing. They could easily just have said: “Rejected: Your app doesn’t do it right.”, but instead they helped app authors to get their app working. This was time-consuming, but a learning experience for everyone involved.

The good news is: quickly, which is our recommended tool to produce apps, has templates where everybody worked hard to get the templates and the code up to scratch, so that writing code for the extras repository gets easier.

Another piece of good news is: pkgme has progressed nicely and can help with the initial packaging of apps (useful if you don’t use quickly).

I very recently started working on a tool called arb-lint, which automates certain parts of the app review. This will make it possible to collect the knowledge of app policies into it, so new ARB members or app review helpers can easily find out what’s wrong with an app and how to fix it. You could even run it on your own app and find out what needs to be improved.

To sum this up: everybody knows that packaging and policies is quite boring to app authors. They just want to focus on producing great quality apps, they’re not interested in tweaking their build-system to adhere to all the policies. Don’t worry – this is understood. There’s still work to be done, but the tools are all progressing nicely.

App submission
During the 18 months the App Review Board has existed, the submission process has changed a number of times. The tool which is now being used is called myApps and a lot of handy improvements have gone into it in the last weeks and months.

One current problem is that some app authors submit tarballs of their apps, others provide bzr branches, others submit their app in a PPA. While we know how to use all of these tools, it makes the review process fairly inconsistent. This is why we came up with a service called apps-brancher, which downloads the app’s code, sticks it into a bzr branch, attempts to package it if necessary and pushes it to Launchpad.

Staffing
The current ARB members are all volunteers and working hard on apps and other places in Ubuntu. Some weeks ago the Ubuntu App Review Contributors team was set up, so that more active helpers can easily join the effort.

Summary
It is true. There is quite a backlog of apps. Some of them might be reviewed and approved quickly, others will need quite a bit of engineering to get into Ubuntu. Some might not be suitable for the extras repository at all.

As you have read above, there are numerous improvements in the works and there are very likely lots of other things which might result in a nice speed-up. Your help will be appreciated here!

The Ubuntu Apps Sprint
All of the above is why we want to invite you to the Ubuntu Apps Sprint from Monday to Wednesday (2nd-4th July). Join us in #ubuntu-arb on irc.freenode.net to:

• Improve quickly.
• Improve the apps-brancher.
• Improve arb-lint.
• Improve pkgme.
• Review and improve apps and get the queue under control.
• Learn from each other, hatch new plans and make apps just rock in Ubuntu.

Quite a number of experts from the ARB, from the quickly and pkgme teams and lots of others will be around to answer your questions. We hope you will get involved and help us out.

Apps will make Ubuntu even more beautiful. It’s just great to get to see so much creativity first. Contributing here is totally worthwhile.

As you’ve probably heard already, Ubuntu is running an App Developer Showdown competition where contestants have three weeks to build an Ubuntu app from scratch.  The rules are simple: It has to be new code, it has to run on Ubuntu, and it has to be submitted to the Software Center.  The more you use Ubuntu’s tools, the better your chances of winning will be.  This week we ran a series of workshops introducing these tools and how they can be used.  It all seemed like so much fun, that I’ve decided to participate with my own submission!

Now 2 our of the 6 judges for this competition are my immediate co-workers, so let me just start off by saying that I will not be eligible for any of the prizes.  But it’s still a fun and interesting challenge, so I’m going to participate anyway.  But what is my entry going to be?  Well in my typical fashion of building tools for tools, I’ve decided to write a GUI wrapper on to of Quickly, using Quickly.

Before I started on any code, I first wanted to brainstorm some ideas about the interface itself.  For that I went back to my favorite mockup tool: Pencil.  I knew I wanted to cover all of Quickly’s functions, both for creating projects and working on them afterwards.  I also wanted something that would keep track of my projects, so I wouldn’t have to find where they are on my disk whenever I wanted to hack on them.

Now, I’ve never been a fan of GUI builders.  Even back when I was writing Java/Swing apps, and GUI builders were all the rage, I never used them.  I didn’t use one for Hello Unity, and I wasn’t planning on using Glade for this project either.  But after Jono’s fantastic workshop session about Glade, I decided to give it another chance.  I found that I was able to get a basic UI built and running in very little time.  I’m still struggling with some, and there’s a point where you need to switch from Glade to code, but all in all it has saved me a significant amount of time.

Quickly also saved me a large amount of time, both in creating the project and adding things too it.  Being able to add an Application Indicator to your app by just running “quickly add indicator” is amazing.  From there is was a simple matter to build a menu based on available Quickly commands and tie them in with callback functions.

But the part I like the best about this app so far, is that it’s useful even when you’re not using it.  Most of the time you spend developing a Quickly app is going to be in some other application, such as your code editor of choice, Glade or something.  Thanks to Unity’s HUD, and the fact that it’s smart enough to check Indicator menus in addition to the focused application’s menus, you can call your Quickly commands any time, simply by tapping ‘Alt’ and the command you want to run.  It’s like having Quickly integrated into all of your other tools.

And thanks to the developer tools available in Ubuntu, I was able to accomplish all of this in only a few hours of work.

Now it’s very, very far from being complete.  For instance, the “active” project is hard-coded to my quickly-gtk working directory, it can’t start a project yet, or support commands that take optional arguments or user input.  But in a short amount of time I was able to go from a mockup to a working layout and even some functional code.  It even packages successfully, something I found out quite by accident when I selected “Share” from the indicator menu and ended up with a package in my PPA.

Building an app in 4 hours then accidentally building a proper package and uploading it to a PPA, who’d have thought we’d ever make it that easy?  I hope you all are having as much fun and success in your showdown applications as I am.

Last week we introduced a new ‘Download for Ubuntu’ campaign for upstreams to use on their websites, letting their users know that the app is available in Ubuntu already.  We event generated a list of targeted upstreams we wanted to reach out to in order to spur the adoption of these buttons.  What we didn’t go into much detail about why upstreams should use them.  I hope to remedy that here.

It’s easy

Let’s just get that out of the way, this won’t take a significant amount of work on the part of an upstream.  It’s just a one time change to a website.  You don’t even need to change it every cycle, since the buttons point to the App Directory entry for the application itself, not any specific version of it.

It makes installing your app more appealing

The button isn’t just another way of getting your app, it also tells the user that it will install correctly, all of it’s dependencies are available and will be installed, everything is configured to work with their system, and they will get be getting updates and security fixes to it through a mechanism they already use and trust.  In short, it’s a promise of a good user experience (which I’ll admit we don’t always live up to, more on that below).  Telling 20 million users (and growing) that your app is safe and easy to install is surely worth a few pixels on your website.

It’s good social exposure for your app

By sending users to the App Directory, instead of just immediately installing, new users get to see what others are saying about your app through the ratings and reviews (which will be mostly positive, because your app is awesome right?)  of other Ubuntu users.  Not only does this tell your users that other people like your app, but it’s also telling them that they can add their own ratings and reviews, which will in turn boost your app’s standing.  More reviews leads to more users, which leads to more reviews, it’s a great positive feedback loop.

Users will be looking for it

Not right now, obviously, since we just started this campaign.  But as more upstreams adopt the new button, it’s going to be one of the first things Ubuntu users will be looking for on your website (for all the reasons mentioned above).  With a majority of website visitors leaving in less than a minute (according to a lazy Google search), the promise of a quick and easy install might just be the difference between a new user and a lost opportunity.

This campaign benefits everybody: end users, upstream developers and, yes, Ubuntu too.  So let’s improve these ties, together.  If you’re an upstream, you can copy/paste the following HTML snippet directly into your website (replacing {{pkgname}} with the name of your application’s package in Ubuntu).  If you want to reach out to an upstream developer, please add them to our list so we know who’s contacting them, and what the status is.

<a href="https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/{{pkgname}}/">
 <img src="http://developer.ubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/downloadonubuntubutton.png"  title="Download for Ubuntu" alt="Download for Ubuntu button" width="122" height="49" />
</a>

Now I know we can’t always give the best user experience possible (see, I told you I’d get to that).  Sometimes our packagin isn’t quite right, or the default configuration of your app is sub-optimal.  Our six month release cadence and package freezes mean that rapidly developing applications will often be out of date in our main repositories.  We’ve taken on a lot of work by distributing apps the way we do, and even though we’re a very large community, it’s still hard to get every package right.  Luckily, you’re not powerless here, if you spot problems with the way we distribute your app, or you need to get a newer version out to Ubuntu users, you can do something about that.

Package fixes

Even though our process locks applications to the version in the archives for that particular release of Ubuntu, we will still allow changes to the packaging itself.  So if we’ve done something wrong on our end that is giving your app a hard time, we’ll fix it and make that available to all of your Ubuntu users as a Stable Release Update.

Backport newer versions

A six-month release cycle means that every Ubuntu release has relatively up to date versions of applications, at least compared to distros that have a longer cadence.  But for rapidly developed applications, where new versions come out more frequently than that, this means their packages can become outdated quickly.  And with the five year lifetime of our LTS releases, most packages will get to be stale by the end.  That’s why we have a special repository just for backporting new versions of packages to stable releases of Ubuntu. And starting with 11.10, this repository is enabled by default.

In order to have your application backported to a stable release, it first has to be accepted into the current development release.  If your new version was in Debian’s unstable repository at the beginning of the development cycle, chances are it’s already there.  If it’s not in Debian you’ll need to submit your package to be included in the development release.  Once it’s there, you can request that it be backported to one more more stable Ubuntu releases.  You can use the requestbackport command line tool (from ubuntu-dev-tools package) to automate much of the process, or if you’re not running Ubuntu simply file a bug to start the request.

It’s no secret anymore, we want apps in Ubuntu.  Big app, small apps, shiny apps, cute apps,  apps that play a catchy tune while avian avengers explode porcine poachers.  You name it, we want it in Ubuntu.  And we need your help getting them.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not a programmer, there are plenty of programmers in the world, and they’re making all kinds of really cool apps that you want, that I want, that we all want.  But they’re not putting them in Ubuntu, and that’s why I need your help.

You see I’m just one person, and with David Planella we’ve got, well, two people.  Now, two people can find an awful lot of apps on the internet, that’s true.  Especially when that’s part of your job.  But even still that would hardly amount to a drop in the bucket of apps that have been made.  And we’re not happy with just a drop in the bucket, are you?

No, of course you’re not.  So right about now you’re probably thinking of a bunch of cool apps you’ve used or seen or read about recently (and if you weren’t before, you certainly are now, aren’t you).  And you may be wondering how you can help us get them into the Ubuntu Software Center.   Well wonder no more my friend, because we have a Trello board.

Not terribly impressive, I’ll admit, but it is terribly useful.  You see, David and I will be contacting each and every one of these app developers about submitting their apps to the Software Center, and moving the card from column to column as that conversation progresses.  And while we have a nice long “To Contact” list right now, it’s not going to stay that way without your help.

We’re opening up this board to anybody who wants to add new upstream apps for us to contact.  All you need to do is follow David’s instructions on this wiki page to get started.  It’s quick, mostly painless, and best of all you get to start telling us what to do (at least a little bit).

But wait! There’s more!  Didn’t I say we were just two people?  There’s no way we could contact all these upstreams on our own.  And hey, you’ve just signed up to join the Trello board (you did do that, right?), which means you can start contacting them too, and moving their cards, and make Ubuntu even better.  We’ve even created a reusable email template that you can use for that initial contact.

If you contact one of the app developers, make sure you move their card to the “Conversation Started” column, assign it to yourself, and add comments about who you contacted and any other relevant information.  This of course requires that you joined the board, which you definitely should do if you are going to be working on this.  And please note that is says “Started”, not “Finished”.  Once you contact the developer, keep that line of communication open and help them through the process of submitting their app.  If you get to a point where you can’t help them, let David or I know and we’ll be happy to pick it up.

I’ve rambled about this before and still feel strongly about the importance of apps in Ubuntu. We all need to put some work into this to make apps in Ubuntu truly rock. The good news is: you can help and you’re not alone!

The App Review Board has been hard at work, but they need help. So how does this work? If you have packaging experience and would like to help, you can join

• #ubuntu-arb on irc.freenode.net
• the app-review-board mailing list
• the ~ubuntu-app-review-contributors team

The ARB have documented their guidelines and responsibilities. These docs you might want to review before joining to truly see if this is for you.

So what has been happening lately? The ARB team and helpers have been busy reviewing their queue, helping app authors to get their packages ready and perfecting the documentation and tools.

I have put together the apps-brancher, a tool which downloads apps and pushes branches to Launchpad. If you check out the status update I sent to the mailing list earlier, you can see where things currently stand. The wiki page explains how to use it. The great thing about this tool is that it makes use of pkgme, so even if a submitted app does not contain any packaging, we might have a good chance that pkgme can do the job for us.

As you can see, these are very exciting times. We not only review apps and make Ubuntu shine with new gems, but also work on infrastructure and tools which will make the tasks easier for future generations.

We hope to see you on the IRC channel and mailing list and help making apps in Ubuntu truly rock!

Jono blogged about the importance of application developers to Ubuntu earlier and I wanted to echo some thoughts and add some of my own.

I have been in the Ubuntu Developer camp for most of Ubuntu’s life as a project, so the mindset of “App developers? Why don’t they just set up an open source project and get it packaged?” or “Apps? We have packages.” is what I have heard a couple of times already and is what I would probably have answered some years ago myself.

The power of the Open Source community and having open projects is immense. We all have seen it many times: a thought, a great idea, some dedicated contributors, good communication and a friendly community can achieve amazing things. This happens every single day.

We are well aware of how things work in the Open Source world and we have recently seen the success of our great work: millions of users, who have never dabbled in Open Source before, today enjoy Ubuntu (or other pieces of Free Software) and rely on it. We have managed to reach out to an entirely new demographic and continue to grow our user base.

With new demographics there are new expectations and new responsibilities. Consider my father for example. He follows what’s going on in the Ubuntu world, but will occasionally point out to me that an app he’s interested in buying does not exist for Ubuntu. The last I remember him talking about was a good language learning course.

With new form factors and devices running Ubuntu (you know, TVs, tablets, phones, watches, cars, coffee machines, hoverboards and the like), there are going to be thousands of useful helper tools out there which might not be available for Ubuntu yet. Add to that the growing number of content providers (magazines, books, maps, music, etc.) which users yet can’t easily get “for Ubuntu”.

This is the world we are looking at today and it becomes obvious that apps should be a first-class citizen in Ubuntu. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for making everyone who shows the slightest interest in working on Ubuntu itself an Ubuntu developer and member of our community, also because I feel that everyone who is part of this has a lot to gain, personally and for their particular project. It just shouldn’t be a strict requirement because it won’t scale.

A number of teams have been working very hard on making seamless apps in Ubuntu a reality and that’s just great to see. It’s a hard problem to solve because it involves so many different important pieces. Keep up the good work everyone!

At UDS I’m definitely going to (among other sessions, I’ll blog about later on) attend these sessions to see what we can do about making apps in Ubuntu more exciting and something that just works:

• Packaging Requirements for Apps in Ubuntu
• Review of the ARB process using MyApps
• MyApps submission experience and expectations for upstreams

Hope to see you there!

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of a significant milestone in the ongoing effort of making Ubuntu a target for app developers: the new Ubuntu App Developer site.

Developer.ubuntu.com should now be the central point of reference for any topics related to application development. From creation to publication: porting, sharing, contributing, finding information… a site that should grow organically to provide the tools, share the knowledge and act as the springboard to foster app proliferation and developer community growth in this exciting area.

Embracing the concept that for sustainable business development and wider adoption Ubuntu should provide the ability to purchase apps as well as to install open source software for free, the site has been developed with that exact idea in mind. In that regard, developer.ubuntu.com has been built upon the foundations of existing tools such as the Ubuntu Software Centre and My Apps to offer a unified and consistent journey for both open-source, non-commercial and commercial app authors.

A quick walk through the App Developer site

All sections of the site have been carefully designed upon research and user testing to provide a simple yet intuitive journey to app developers, from software creation to publication and distribution in the Ubuntu Software Centre. Here’s a quick guide:

• Get started – an introduction to the recommended tools and the workflow for Ubuntu app development, including a video to kickstart new developers in less than five minutes.
• Resources – a growing directory of resources to support app development in Ubuntu: reference documentation, guides, tutorials and more.
• Publish – a simple guide to app publication in the Ubuntu Software Centre, including an extensive FAQ on how to publish commercial applications.
• Community – the place to get involved, share and actively participate within a network of like-minded developers, including the app developer blog.
• My Apps – an online tool to enable app developers go straight from a finished app to the Software Centre, making publication a seamless process.

Big thanks

In this project I’ve had the privilege of working with the Web Design team, who essentially made the site happen. It’s been a fun ride, and they’ve produced a truly stunning result in a very tight schedule. To them, and to many Canonicalers and other members of the Ubuntu family go the thanks for making developer.ubuntu.com possible.

Next steps

This is just the beginning. For all its current awesomeness, we are aware that the site needs to pass the test of a wider audience, adapt to their needs, and grow. Expect more developer.ubuntu.com discussions at the next Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Florida, where any community member can participate and contribute to the discussion of the future plans for the site.

In the meantime, there are two easy ways in which you can already start participating:

• Tutorials – we’re in need of more tutorial content, and you can help other developers by having your tutorial featured on developer.ubuntu.com
• Bugs – help us test and improve the site by reporting any bugs that you might find

This is a very exciting and new territory for Ubuntu, and I’m thrilled to see all the progress we’re making in this area. This is going to be awesome.

Another edition of the Ubuntu App Developer Week and another amazing knowledge sharing fest around everything related to application development in Ubuntu. Brought to you by a range of the best experts in the field, here’s just a sample of the topics they talked about: App Developer Strategy, Bazaar, Bazaar Explorer, Launchpad, Python, Internationalization, Launchpad Translations, Unity, Unity 2D, Gedit Developer Plugins, the MyApps Portal, the App Review Board, the UbuntuSoftware Centre, Unity Mail, Launchpad Daily Builds, Ubuntu One APIs, Rapid App Development, Quickly, GooCanvas, PyGame, Unity Launcher, Vala, the App Developer Site, Indicators, Python Desktop Integration, Libgrip, Multitouch, Unity Lenses, Ubuntu One Files Integration, The Business Side of Apps, Go, Qt Quick… and more. Oh my!

And a pick of what they had to say:

We believe that to get Ubuntu from 20 million to 200 million users, we need more and better apps on Ubuntu
Jonathan Lange on making Ubuntu a target for app developers

Bazaar is the world’s finest revision control system
Jonathan Riddell on Bazaar

So you’ve got your stuff, wherever you are, whichever device you’re on
Stuart Langridge on Ubuntu One

Oneiric’s EOG and Evince will be gesture-enabled out of the box
Jussi Pakkanen on multitouch in Ubuntu 11.10

I control the upper right corner of your screen
Ted Gould on Indicators

If you happened to miss any of the sessions, you’ll find the logs for all of them on the Ubuntu App Developer Week page, and the summaries for each day on the links below:

• Day 1 Summary
• Day 2 Summary
• Day 3 Summary
• Day 4 Summary
• Day 5 Summary (this post)

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 5 Summary

The last day came with a surprise: an extra session for all of those who wanted to know more about Qt Quick and QML. Here are the summaries:

Getting A Grip on Your Apps: Multitouch on GTK apps using Libgrip

By Jussi Pakkanen

In his session, Jussi talked about one of the most interesting technologies where Ubuntu is leading the way in the open source world: multitouch. Walking the audience through the Grip Tutorial, he described how to add gesture support to existing applications based on GTK+ 3. He chose to focus on the higher layer of the uTouch stack, where he explained the concepts on which libgrip, the gesture library, is built upon, such as device types and subscriptions. After having explored in detail the code examples, he then revealed that in Oneiric Eye Of GNOME and Evince, Ubuntu’s default image viewer and default PDF reader, will be gesture-enabled.

Check out the session log.

Creating a Google Docs Lens

By Neil Patel

Neil introduced his session explaining the background behind Lenses: a re-architecture effort of the now superseded Places concept to make them more powerful, provide more features and make it easier to add features through a re-engineered API. Lenses create its own instance, add categories, filters and leave the searching to Scopes. The Lenses/Scopes pairs are purely requests for data, independent of the type of UI, and being provided by the libunity library, they can be written in any of the programming languages supported by GObject Introspection (Python, Javascript, C/C++, Vala, etc.). To illustrate all of this concepts, Neil devoted the rest of the session to a real example of creating a Lens for Google Docs.

Check out the session log.

Practical Ubuntu One Files Integration

By Michael Terry

Another hands-on session from Michael, with a real world example on how to supercharge apps with cloud support. Using his experience in integrating the Ubuntu One Files API to Deja Dup, the default backup application in Ubuntu, he went in detail through the code of a simple program to talk to a user’s personal Ubuntu One file storage area. We liked Michael’s session so much that it will very soon be featured as a tutorial on developer.ubuntu.com!

Check out the session log and Michael’s awesome notes.

Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The Business Side

By John Pugh

Ubuntu directly benefits from Canonical becoming a sustainable business to support its development, and that’s exactly what John talked about. Being responsible for business development in the Ubuntu Software Centre, he’s got a privileged  insight on how to make it happen. He started off explaining that the main goal is to present Ubuntu users with a large catalog of apps available for purchase, and then continued concentrating on how to submit paid applications to be published in the Software Centre. A simple 5-step process, the behind-the-scenes work can be summarized in: Canonical helps packaging the app, it hosts the app and provides the payment via pay.ubuntu.com, in a 80%/20% split. Other highlights include the facts that only non-DRM, non-licensed apps cannot be submitted right now, but there is ongoing work to implement license key support, and that MyApps, the online app submission portal, can take any nearly any content: apps with adverts, “free” online game clients and HTML5 apps.

Check out the session log.

Writing an App with Go

By Gustavo Niemeyer

Gustavo’s enthusiasm for Go, the new programming language created by Google shows every time you start a conversation with him on that topic. And it showed as well on this session, in which he created yet another “Hello world” application in a new language -you guessed-: Go. Along the way, he had time to describe all of the features of this new addition of the extensive family of programming languages: statically compiled with good reflection capabilities, structural typing, interfaces and more.

Check out the session log.

Qt Quick At A Pace

By Donald Carr

Closing the week on the last -and surprise- session, we had the luxury of having Donald, from the Nokia Qt team, the makers of Qt itself, to talk about Qt Quick. Using a clear and concise definition, Qt Quick is an umbrella term used to refer to QML and its associated tooling; QML being a declarative markup language with tight bindings to Javascript. A technology equally suited to mobile or to the desktop, QML enables developers to rapidly create animation-rich, pixmap-oriented UIs. Through the qtmediahub and Qt tutorial examples, he explored QML’s capabilities and offered good practices for succesfully developing QML-based projects.

Check out the session log.

Wrapping Up

Finally, if you’ve got any feedback on UADW, on how to make it better, things you enjoyed or things you believe should be improved, your comments will be very appreciated and useful to tailor this event to your needs.

Thanks a lot for participating. I hope you enjoyed it  as much as I did, and see you again in 6 months time for another week full with app development goodness!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 4 Summary

Last day of UADW! While we’re watching the final sessions, here’s what happened yesterday:

Creating an App Developer Website: developer.ubuntu.com

By John Oxton and David Planella

Creating the concept and implementing a site for app developers is no easy task. The Ubuntu App Developer site is meant to be a place for app authors to get started with development, to find the information they need and to be able to publish their apps in the Software Centre. John explained all the research and user testing that happened behind the scenes, highlighting the key findings, while David focused on the purpose of the site, where it fits in the overall developer strategy for Ubuntu and the plans for the future.

Check out the session log here.

Rapid App Development with Quickly

By Michael Terry

Fitting nicely topicwise with the questions about the default choice of tools for Ubuntu development on the previous session, Michael gave an overview of what Quickly is and how to use it. Going through the workflow of creating your first app with Quickly, he demonstrated all the key commands and explained in detail all the bits in between.

Check out the session log here.

Developing with Freeform Design Surfaces: GooCanvas and PyGame

By Rick Spencer

Rick started off the session explaining what GooCanvas and PyGame were good for: providing a 2D surface on which to construct interactive GUIs for users. Beginning with GooCanvas, he showed with a very simple example how to get started playing with 2D composing surfaces, adding images, text and doing other operations such as resizing and calculating coordinates to determine clicks. Next up was PyGame, for the same purpose, but better suited for apps with lots of animation updates without user input. He then wrapped up with three samples of simple games to study.

Check out the session log here.

Making your app appear in the Indicators

By Ted Gould

Ted Gould, the man who controls the upper right corner of our screen, talked all about indicators. The idea was to illustrate how to get the information that comes from applications and handle it to the indicators. First up was the messaging menu, a menu to handle human-to-human communication, next the application indicators, which alllow long-running apps to put statuses on the panel consistently, and finally the sound indicator, taking care of all related to sound. Each one of them explained with code examples. Nice!

Check out the session log here.

Will it Blend? Python Libraries for Desktop Integration

By Marcelo Hashimoto

Marcelo shared his experience acquired with Polly, a Twitter client he developed, on using Python and libraries to let apps provide better integration to the desktop. First explaining the concept of desktop integration, stressing the fact that it’s not only about visuals. The rest of the session was structured around 3 main areas: how to send notifications to the user, where to place files read or written by an app and what to use to store sensitive information. A very clear and solid session, also with example code for easy learning.

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 4

Check out the first-class lineup for the last day of UADW:

16.00 UTC – Getting A Grip on Your Apps: Multitouch on GTK apps using Libgrip

Multitouch is everywhere these days, and now on your desktop as well -brought to you by developers such as Jussi Pakkanen, who’ll guide through using libgrip to add  touch support to your GTK+ apps. Learn how to use this cool new library in your own software!

17:00 UTC – Creating a Google Docs Lens

Lenses are ways of presenting data coming from different sources in Unity. Neil Patel knows Lenses inside out and will present a practical example of how to create a Google Docs one. Don’t miss this session on how to put two cool technologies together!

18:00 UTC – Practical Ubuntu One Files Integration

Yet again the Deja-dup rockstar and UADW regular Michael Terry will be sharing his deep knowledge on developing apps. This time it’s about adding cloud support to applications: integrating with the Ubuntu One files API.

19:00 UTC – Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The Business Side

Closing the series of sessions around publishing apps in the Software Centre, we’ll have the luxury of having John Pugh, from the team that brings you commercial apps into the Software Centre and who’ll be talking about the business side of things.

20:00 UTC – Writing an App with Go

Go is the coolest kid around in the world of programming languages. Gustavo Niemeyer is very excited about it and will be showing you how to write an app using this language from Google. Be warned, his enthusiasm is contagious!

20:00 UTC – Qt Quick At A Pace

A last minute and very welcome addition to the schedule. In his session Donald Carr will introduce you to Qt Quick to create applications with Qt Creator and QML, the new declarative language that brings together designers and developers.

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 3 Summary

Time flies and we’re already halfway through UADW, but there is still much to come! Here’s yesterday report for your reading pleasure:

Unity Mail: Webmail Notification on Your Desktop

By Dmitry Shachnev

Starting off with a description of the features of Unity Mail, such as displaying webmail unread message count, notifications and mail subjects, we then learned more about how it was developed and the technologies that were used to create it. It’s written in Python, using GObject introspection (PyGI) and integrates with Ubuntu through the Unity, Notify and Indicate modules. After describing each one in more detail, Dmitry continued talking about how the app can be translated using Launchpad, and how he uses the Bazaar  source revision control system to work with code history. Wrapping up, he went through the plans for the future: more configuration options, marking all messages as read and the need for a new icon. Any takers?

Check out the session log here.

Launchpad Daily Builds and Rapid Feedback: Writing Recipe Builds

By Jelmer Vernooij

Assuming some previous knowledge on Debian packaging, in his session Jelmer walked the audience through a practical example of a basic recipe build for a small project: pydoctor. Drawing the cooking recipe analogy, package recipes are a description of the ingredients (source code branches) and how to put them together, ending up with a delicious Debian package for users to enjoy. Launchpad can build packages from recipes once or automatically on a daily basis provided the code has changed, conveniently placing the result in a PPA. In the last part of the session, he described in detail the contents of an existing recipe and added some notes on best practices when building from a recipe.

Check out the session log here.

Using the Ubuntu One APIs for Your Apps: An Overview

By Stuart Langridge

The idea bahind the Ubuntu One developer programme is to make it easy to add the cloud to your apps and make new apps for the cloud. With this opening line, Stuart delivered a talk about a high-level overview on the cool things you can do as an app developer adding Ubuntu One support. One aspect it data: for example building applications that work on the desktop, on mobile phones and on the web, securely sharing data among users. Another is music: streaming, streaming music and sharing playlists on the desktop, on mobile and from the web, all through a simple REST HTTP API. He also mentioned some examples of cloud enabled applications: Shutter and Deja-Dup, and many other interesting ways to use Ubuntu One to do exciting thigs with data. And you can get started already using the available documentation.

Check out the session log here.

Supercharging Your Apps with Unity Launcher Integration

By Jason Smith

In his talk, Jason first went through the terminology that covers the elements related to the Unity Launcher, and the bachground behind the Launcher API, implemented in the libunity library. Libunity can be used in many programming languages: Python, C, Vala and others supported by GObject Introspection. Going through what you can do with the Launcher (marking/unmarking apps as urgent, setting object counts, setting progress on objects and adding quicklist menu items to the object), he used Vala snippets to illustrate each feature with code.

Check out the session log here.

Hello Vala: An Introduction to the Vala Language

By Luca Bruno

Vala, a new programming language with C#-like syntax that compiles to C and targets the GObject type system: with a clear statement of what Vala is and what it can do, Luca, a contributor to the project introduced one by one the mostkey features of the language through his “Hello world” example: namespaces, types, classes, properties, keywords and more. As a highlight he mentioned Vala’s automatic memory management using reference counting, andits interoperability with other languages, most notably C, but it can also work with many others supported by GObject Introspection. Other cool featuresto note were also error handling on top of GError, support for async operations, closures and DBus client/server, on each of which he elaborated before finishing the session.

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 3

Another day, another awesome set of sessions coming up:

16.00 UTC – Creating an App Developer Website: developer.ubuntu.com

Ubuntu 11.10 will not only bring new features to the OS itself. In time for the release we’ll be launching the new Ubuntu App Developer site, a place for developers to find all the infromation and the resources they need to get started creating, submitting and publishing their apps in Ubuntu. John Oxton, David Planella and many other people have worked to make the next developer.ubuntu.com possible and will tell you all about it.

17:00 UTC – Rapid App Development with Quickly

Quickly is a wrapper that pulls together all the recommended tools and technologies to bring apps from creation and through their whole life cycle in Ubuntu. With an easy set of commands that hide all the complexity for your, it effectively enables developers to follow rapid development principles and worry only about writing code. Michael Terry, from the Quickly development team will be looking forward to guide you through the first steps with this awesome tool.

18:00 UTC – Developing with Freeform Design Surfaces: GooCanvas and PyGame

Have you ever wondered what freeform design surfaces, or canvases are? You probably have now. Well, lucky you then, because Rick Spencer will be here to tell you what they’re good for and how to get started with them

19:00 UTC – Making your app appear in the Indicators

In another session on how to integrate with the platform, Ted Gould, the man who knows most about them, will describe how to add indicator features  to your apps, both in terms of panel indicators and messaging menu support.

20:00 UTC – Will it Blend? Python Libraries for Desktop Integration

You certainly will want your app to have that familiar look and feel at home in the OS it’s running on, but you’ll also want it to use all the backend technologies to integrate even deeper and provide a great user experience. Well, fear not, for Marcelo Hashimoto is here to tell you exactly how to do that!

Looking forward to seeing you all there in a few hours!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 2 Summary

Another app developer day is over and we’re nearly halfway through the week. Here’s what happened yesterday:

Making Your App Speak Languages with Launchpad Translations

By David Planella

In this session we learned how to link up an app that already has internationalization support to Launchpad Translations, so that it is exposed to Launchpad’s extensive community of translators who’ll effectively make your app speak almost any language. From setting up code hosting for a seamless integration, to setting up the translations settings to tips and tricks for best practices, the presentation should give developers a good grasp of how to start getting their apps translated and ready to reach a wider audience.

Check out the session log here.

The Making of Unity 2D

By Florian Boucault

An interactive and popular session, in which Florian started describing the main goal behind the Unity 2D project: to run on platforms that do not provide accelerated OpenGL. It essentially is an implementation of the main Unity user interface using the Qt toolkit and the QML declarative language, while reusing the backend technologies from Unity. From there he went on describing the Unity 2D architecture and the release policy, pointing out to the Unity 2D daily PPA, for those testers who want to be on the bleeding edge., and wrapped up answering the questions from the audience.

Check out the session log here.

Making App Development Easy: Gedit Developer Plugins

By Curtis Hovey

Starting off with a description of Gedit plugins, their purpose and how to install them, Curtis delved into the general-purpose plugins and the developer plugins (click to install) plugins, explaining how to set them up and his recommended choice of plugins to convert Gedit in the perfect programming editor. The highlights included the GDP Bazaar integration plug in, which allows working with the bzr source revision control system and others (Subversion, Mercurial, Git), as well as the Source Code Browser plugin, a class and function browser based on Exuberant Ctags.

Check out the session log here.

Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The MyApps Portal

By Anthony Lenton

In another session devoted to the app developer strategy, Anthony told us all about the MyApps webapp developers can use to submit their applications to the Software Center. Available on https://myapps.developer.ubuntu.com, it started off as the need to automate the submission of commercial apps to the Software Centre, expanding to a full-blown online portal that can now tackle any type of submission. He then walked the audience through the 5-step process to send an app for review, including all the necessary metadata and payment details. Once an app has been submitted, it needs to be packaged (if it wasn’t already) and reviewed before being published. Hinting to Jonathan Lange’s session on day 1, Anthony explained that they are looking at providing an automated process for packaging, with the intention of removing the last big remaining manual process.

Check out the session log here.

Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The App Review Board

By Stéphane Graber

Complementing the previous session, Stéphane explained how libre+gratis apps can get into the Software Centre and what the App Review Board’s (ARB) role is in that process. He focused on how the Board reviews applications and how other types are distributed in Ubuntu. The types of apps reviewed by the ARB are small, lightweight apps, usually of the type created by Quickly (check out the sessions on Quickly on Thursday!). The next upcoming changes in the way this applications are reviewed will most probably include them being submitted through the MyApps online portal and them being made more secure by wrapping them in a container based on AppArmor or Arkose (or a combination of them).

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 3

Check out today’s rocking lineup:

16.00 UTC – Unity Mail: Webmail Notification on Your Desktop

We’re starting to see more and more apps that integrate with Unity. Unity Mail is a cool app that allows you to stay up to date with your web mail directly from your desktop. It supports any IMAP server, but right now it works best with Gmail, along with notifications, message counts, quicklists and more. Dmitry Shachnev will tell us about its features and how he put the application together.

17:00 UTC – Launchpad Daily Builds and Rapid Feedback: Writing Recipe Builds

Launchpad has many awesome features. This time around Jelmer Vernooij will be explaininghow to set up recipe builds for your project in Launchpad, so that users can get  the latest updates easily packaged on a daily basis, so that they can install them at a click of a button and can test them and make the feedback loop as short as possible.

18:00 UTC – Using the Ubuntu One APIs for Your Apps: An Overview

Ubuntu One is starting to be everywhere, and it even has its own developer programme. The Ubuntu One website already provides lots of information to developers, and to make it even more clear, Stuart Langridge will walk you through the available Ubuntu One APIs you can use to make your application cloud-ready.

19:00 UTC – Supercharging Your Apps with Unity Launcher Integration

One of the easiest and more visual ways for your apps to blend in with Unity is for it to integrate with the Launcher. Counts, progress indication, quicklists… are an elegant and simple wayto provide feedback to users. Jason Smith knows all about Launcher integration, and he’s really looking forward to share it with us!

20:00 UTC – Hello Vala: An Introduction to the Vala Language

Vala is a powerful programming language that allows modern programming techniques to be used to write applications that run on the GNOME runtime libraries, particularly GLib and GObject. Luca Bruno is part of the team that develops Vala itself, and will be introducing us to the first steps to get started with Vala with the universal “Hello world” app becoming “Hello Vala!”.

Looking forward to seeing you all there in a few hours!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 1 Summary

The first day of Ubuntu App Developer Week is over and we’re ramping up to day 2! A great start and lots of interest in the audience. Here is a small summary from yesterday’s schedule.

Making Ubuntu a Target for App Developers

By Jonathan Lange

Jono, who has recently started working on the Ubuntu developer programme after having been developing and defining the strategy on Launchpad for the last 5 years, started off explaining that to cross the chasm and to get our OS from 20 million to 200 million users, we need more and better apps on Ubuntu. There are some key aspects to this goal, coinciding with areas of ongoing work:

• A place – making some place that app developers can go to in order to learn how to develop for Ubuntu (developer.ubuntu.com)
• A definition – defining a platform for developers to target
• A channel – a smooth, short, safe path from developers to their users and back again (the Ubuntu Software Centre and MyApps)

After expanding on the subjects of automatic packaging and security, the conclusion is that with all of these pieces in place -Software Centre, developer portal, a defined platform, automagic packaging, safe mechanisms for distributing new apps & paying developers- then Ubuntu becomes something that developers can seriously start to target

Check out the session log here.

Introducing Bazaar Explorer: Version Control for your Apps

By Jonathan Riddell

“Bazaar is the world’s finest revision control system” – an awesome quote to start an equally awesome session. With this, and with the idea that Bazaar needs to be available to anyone, not only to those already comfortable with the command line, Jonathan Riddell provided a tour of the most feature-rich GUI for Bazaar. Illustrating the most common commands for everyday use and with plenty of pictures, he provided an excellent overview of how this powerful, cross-platform, graphical interface for bzr can make life much easier to app developers.

Check out the session log here.

Your App & Launchpad best practices

By Jason DeRose

Jason’s session on how to make the best use of Launchpad, the online collaboration and hosting suite for your projects, was structured around 3 central points: 1. Why should you host your project in Launchpad? To which his answer was: because PPAs, daily builds and lots of users; 2. How to set up your app to use Launchpad, where he guided participants through the process of creating a Launchpad project and offering some insights on best practices. Finally, on 3. Using Launchpad to engage developers he wrapped up with a series of recommendations and tips to ease and foster contributions to your project. More on the session log

Check out the session log here.

Getting Started With Python: a Hello World App

By Alan Bell

As a grand finale to the day, Alan delivered a beginner-friendly session on the basics of the Python programming language. Assuming no prior knowledge, he walked participants through the classical “Hello world” example in Python, which universally greets programming novices on the terminal with a friendly welcome message. Along the way, he explained in detail all the extra bits to make this simple application run and be useful as a kickstart to becoming a full-blown Python programmer.

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 2

More app development goodness for fun and profit: here’s today’s schedule.

16.00 UTC – Making Your App Speak Languages with Launchpad Translations

Did you know that along with code hosting, release management, bug tracking and support, you can also use Launchpad to get your app translated?. David Planella will explain you how to set up your app in Launchpad for translations and give you some advice on building a translator community around it.

17:00 UTC – The Making of Unity 2D

Unity needs to run on every type of desktop, from those with powerful 3D graphics processors to those only able to run in 2D. Unity 2D was born out of the need to provide a near identical experience as its 3D counterpart on systems which cannot rely on 3D graphical processing, such as ARM computers. Florian Boucault will talk about what Unity 2D is, how it was designed, and the technologies used to implement it.

18:00 UTC – Making App Development Easy: Gedit Developer Plugins

Gedit is Ubuntu’s lightweight yet powerful default text editor. Its flexible plugin architecture means that it can easily be extended to meet any need. Curtis Hovey will guide you through his Gedit Developer Plugins to help you convert a general-purpose editor into the perfect programming editor.

19:00 UTC – Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: the MyApps Portal

Canonical is taking app developers very seriously,and one of the important aspects of ensuring a smooth workflow for submitting and publishing applications into the Ubuntu Software Centre is providing the right set of tools. Anthony Lenton will tell you the story behind the MyApps tool and how app authors can use it to submit their apps.

20:00 UTC – Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The App Review Board

If you are an open source developer and want to publish your libre + gratis app into the Ubuntu Software Centre, the App Review Board (ARB) will take care of reviewing it, ensuring it is up to the Ubuntu standards and help you publishing it for all users to install. Stéphane Graber is a member of the ARB and will explain how the Board works and the steps to successfully submit an app for review.

Looking forward to seeing you all there in a few hours!

Kicking Off Ubuntu App Developer Week

The Ubuntu App Developer Week is starting today, so get ready for an awesome week full of exciting sessions and great speakers around the topic of application development in Ubuntu.

Here’s a taster of what’s in store today:

16:00 UTC  – Making Ubuntu a Target for App Developers

Jono Lange will open the week explaining the strategy for app development in Ubuntu, telling us more about the latest developments and what we’re going to see in the next future. Make sure you’ve got all your questions lined up, as it will be a really interesting subject and Jono will be more than happy to answer them!

17:00 UTC – Introducing Bazaar Explorer: Version Control for your Apps

Bazaar is a tool to track history of your code revisions and make it easy to distributed teams to collaborate developing code. But it’s not all about the command line. Jonathan Riddell will show you how to use the graphical tools to help you being more productive with Bazaar.

18:00 UTC – Your App & Launchpad best practices

If you’re using Launchpad, the suite of collaborative online tools to manage your project (and you should ) Jason DeRose will go through the best practices and all the tips and tricks to make sure you make the most of it for your project.

19:00 UTC – Getting Started With Python: a Hello World App

Do you want to write your first lines of code in Python and need some help? Then no worries, Alan Bell will be here to guide you through the easy journey of writing a simple “Hello world” application in this cool and powerful programming language.

Joining The Week

Getting involved is simple. You can connect using any IRC client or your browser. Simply go to:

• irc.freenode.net
• #ubuntu-classroom for the main session and #ubuntu-classroom-chat for the chatroom.

Ubuntu App Developer Week

I’m thrilled to announce the next edition of Ubuntu AppDeveloperWeek, from the 5th to 9th September 2011 at #ubuntu-classroom on IRC.

Ubuntu App Developer Week is a week of sessions aimed at enabling and inspiring developers to write applications that scratch their itches. Our goal is to give all attendees a taste of the wide variety of tools on the Ubuntu platform that can be used to create awesome applications, and to showcase some applications that have been created and explain how they were put together.

The Sessions

The whole week is packed with interesting subjects, aimed both at new and experienced developers. During the sessions you’ll get a solid overview on a broad range of the Free Software technologies that will enable you to create your applications in Ubuntu. At the same time, you’ll be able to chat and ask your questions directly to the true rockstars on those subjects.

Here are some of the highlights:

• The Ubuntu App Developer strategy
• Integrating applications with Ubuntu tech: Unity, AppIndicators, Ubuntu One…
• Enabling multitouch support in GTK applications
• Publishing your apps in the Ubuntu Software Center
• Getting started writing your first app with Python
• Rapid Application Development with Quickly
• Using the Bazaar revision control to track source code history
• Using Launchpad integration features to develop applications
• … Bazaar Explorer, Universal GRUB Recovery, Unity Lenses, Unity 2D, Gedit Developer Plugins, the App Review Board, developer.ubuntu.com, Unity Mail, Launchpad Daily Builds, Vala, GooCanvas and PyGame, Python Libraries for Desktop Integration, Internationalization… you name it. Learn more about the hottest topics and how to use the coolest technologies to write your applications, straight from the best experts in the Free Software world.
• Check out the complete schedule.

Joining The Week

Getting involved is simple. You can connect using any IRC client or your browser. Simply go to:

• irc.freenode.net
• #ubuntu-classroom for the main session and #ubuntu-classroom-chat for the chatroom.

Looking forward to seeing you all at App Developer Week!

Making Ubuntu a Choice for App Developers

We want to put Ubuntu on the app development map. We want to provide a top level experience through a platform that makes it easy for developers to create applications and distribute them to millions.

The Ubuntu Software Centre provided a solid foundation and a springboard to the proliferation of an ecosystem of resources and projects aligned to deliver this vision. Matthew Paul Thomas and Evan Dandrea already layed out the path at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando in 2010, and we’re seeing more and more news related to the work we’re doing while making this happen:

• Jono Lange moving from Launchpad to Developer Program Specialist. I’m particularly excited about this one, and looking forward to seeing Jono bring the same level of awesomeness delivered by Launchpad applied to making Ubuntu a rocking platform for app developers.
  
• The MyApps Portal being released. On this one I’d like to share an inspiring piece of feedback from Kiaran Ritchie at Big Fat Alien, the makers of BEEP, a game recently published in the Ubuntu Software Center:

Having gone through the process of distributing our game on the SC, I must say that Canonical has created a fantastic digital distribution toolset. BEEP was pushed through their web-based deployment toolset with no fuss at all. Deploying paid software in Ubuntu is now a no-brainer.

Next is developer.ubuntu.com, a place to present developers a clear journey that will guide them through the process of creating and publishing applications for Ubuntu. Along the way, they will find all the resources that will enable them to make the right design decisions and direct them to the information they need in a consistent manner. The site will also be the starting poing for building an app developer community.

You Can Help: Participate in The Ubuntu App Developer Survey

We’re at a point in the design of developer.ubuntu.com where we’d like to have some feedback to help us make and validate some of the decisions to provide the best user experience for developers. For this, we’ve prepared a short survey to get some input in the key areas we’re interested in.

So if you are intending to develop apps in the future, here’s your chance to contribute to making Ubuntu thrive in the world of apps: we’d really value your feedback by taking part in the Ubuntu App Developer Survey.

We would appreciate if you could complete the survey by Friday, 19th August 2011. Remember that this survey is not only aimed at existing or new Ubuntu developers, but also at people coming from other platforms, so it would be really helpful if you could share this link with anyone you know who might be developing in those other platforms.

Also feel free to get in touch if you’ve got any questions. Thanks!

We added Family Farm to the Software Center last week and I took a few hours (of non-work time!) to have a look at it. Summary is that it’s a fun simulation game for the whole family where your job is to build up your farm.

You start with a small farm and two workers, who carry out all the tasks on the farm. For each season there’s various things you need to accomplish from looking after the animals, clearing land, planting, fishing and harvesting. At the end of the season you sell all your produce and see if you’ve accomplished the goals that were set at the start.

You also have to keep the workers happy by feeding them and making your farm look pretty – all of which costs money. As you progress through the game the number of workers, size of your farm and number of goals you have to achieve increases.

This trailer is a good overview:

Hammerware have done a great job of making the game easy to pick-up and the stories element quickly draws you into trying to improve the farm! If you’re looking for a fun simulation game, or something that the whole family can enjoy together then check out Family Farm.

Family Farm is available through the Ubuntu Software Center, just follow this link. As the game uses 3D Ubuntu users should check if their video drivers are compatible and test first with the demo. If you buy it please review it for the developers in the Software Center, and leave a comment below I’d love to hear what you thought.