More from SABDFL on Notifications

On his blog today, Mark mentions more about the changes to notifications coming up in Jaunty Jackalope.  As many have mentioned, this past UDS was all about notifications and how Canonical/Ubuntu is working to implement these in the next release.

There is a nice video as well on his blog that was also shown at UDS as a conceptualisation of what they are working on.

The coolest part about the work on notifications is there will be no slider, button to close, not X or antyhing.

The other nice part is them not piling up when you are away may miss them.  I often leave my laptop running as I get called away into a meeting or take a conference call and hate comming back to a stack of notifications on what happened while I was away.

I am looking forward to the changes that are comming down and am also glad that Canonical is looking to implment them in both KDE and GNOME.

UDS Jaunty Day 3

Day 3 of UDS Jaunty started out with spending most of the morning in the Server Room (Asgard) and the opening session was the server roundtable discussion.  The beauty of the roundtable format is that whatever needs to be discussed can be even if there isn’t a session schedule specifically to deal with it.

The next session was dealing with Ubuntu’s Cloud Strategy.  This session involved discussion with the Man himself, SABDFL (Mark Shuttleworth).  Cloud Computing is an important focus of 9.04 as there will be supported Amazon EC2 images of Ubuntu Server.  Also SADFL stated there should be 5 commands in 5 Ubuntu Server to help setup a local cloud:

1. Create a master management node
2. Create a group management node
3. Register the group with the Master
4. Create a node
5. Register the node with a group

This will help anyone setup a local cloud within their own LAN or datacenter.

Another very interesting session in the morning was dealing with VMBuilder and ISO/USB Support (spec can be found here).  Soren has done a bang up job with VM Builder (used to be Ubuntu VMBuilder but it is being used for building a lot more then just Ubuntu VMs and the goal is to be able to create ISOs and also support USB drives.

On the way to lunch and looking for Riddell, Seele, and Tonio, I found them having a discussion in the Desktop room who were discussion what was going on with Notifications in 9.04 and how the changes the Desktop Experience team is changing Ubuntu.  This discussion revolved on what was going to happen with Kubuntu, especially in the light of aseigo’s post.  Is Kubuntu more of a KDE distro or a support Canonical distro.  Very good discussion with SABDFL in regards to where and what he thinks Kubuntu should be.  Hopefully some good news/announcements will come out of that discussion.

After lunch I attended a discussion called “Online Services Integration.”  Which was about what the Online Services Team is working on.  I actually have no clue in regards to what this was all about.  I think the team is working on something like Dropbox or Windows Mesh or Mobile Me for Mac.  So there would be a folder in Nautlius that someone could store files on it which would replicate to Canonical servers???? Actually no idea what is going on with this.  But it seems like a duplication of efforts??  Good luck with whatever this means and is.

This was day 3 of UDS for me…

Jonathan

UDS Jaunty Day 2

Had another great day at UDS Jaunty.  Started with a plenary session in regards to MOTU and how it works, including a discussion on problems and how to improve the process (if it needed it).  THen we moved into the different development track discussions.

Spent sometime talking about the Installer process in Jaunty and how things are going to improve.  One thing that is now on my to do list is to get the OEM documentation changed and updated for Jaunty as it is currently out of date on the Ubuntu side and doesn’t exist on the Kubuntu side of things. 

Then later on in the day we had a discussion on what the Desktop Experience team is working on for Jaunty and Jaunty +1.

The last session I remember was the Kubuntu documentation discussion that Rich Johnson already blogged about.

Well it’s way late agai, or at least feels that way, see you all tomorrow at UDS or at #ubuntu-summit

Jonathan

Big Push for KDE Documentation

My buddy Rich Johnson (nixernal) already blogged about Kubuntu Documentation for Jaunty (spec can be found here).  One of things we are focusing on for this release is KDE 4 documentation that is upstream for us.

If you are interested in helping out at with KDE docs, join us on freenode @ #kde-docs.  Even if all you can do is send a text file to myself or Rich Johnson (nixternal@ubuntu.com) and we will put it into docbook format.

Thanks for the help,

 

Jonathan

UDS Jaunty — Day 1

Others have already beaten me to the punch with an overview of Day 1, but here are my thoughts on the subject.

The hotel is really nice, nice breakfast, nice bar, and great beds.  Slept really well.

Got up way to early due to being three time zones behind my normal schedule, but that is not as bad as some of the people that I’ve met.

The biggest difference between this UDS and UDS – Boston, the last one I was at, is how much better organized the whole event seems to me.  The discussion events are lead by “team leads” who keep the discussion on topic and more importantly are “assigning” people to certain topics.  An example of this was in the Kubuntu Gap Analysis section, somone would mention something and then get assigned to implement that topic.  This adds some level of responsibility as the person assigned it is now on the wiki page.

The other cool part was the launchpad plenary which talked about open sourcing launchpad and all it involved.  Still do not understand why some people are upset that soyouz is not going to be open sourced, maybe someone can explain that to me?

Also it was cool seeing how many netbooks were being used.  I used my Dell 910 the entire time and don’t regret it.  The one thing is I wish I had some form of cover for the netbook so I didn’t have to carry my large laptop backpack that was mostly empty.

See you all at UDS tomorrow and join us in #ubuntu-summit on freenode

Coming to UDS Mountain View

Got the official word yesterday that I will be coming to UDS Mountain View to help work on Ubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope.

So what do I think needs improvement in 9.04?  Thanks for asking here’s my list:

1.  Continue Improvement on documentation, especially on the Kubuntu side of things.  For 8.10 I know I didn’t spend as much time working on the docs as I  should have.  Hopefully we can get things done better in 9.04

2.  Enterprise deployment and management tools, along with documentation.  I know the server team has done some work on ageaus and I also know there was a lot of work done on ebox as well.  I think one thing that needs to done is more work on how to deploy, manage, update for large enterprises Ubuntu.

3.  Training:  I will be meeting with the training team as well to help work with the training program.

 

Looking forward to UDS Mountain View and meeting old friends in person again.

Jonathan

Thoughts on the Jaunty Jackalope

Mark has posted the codename of the next Ubuntu release, 9.04 along with some of the goals the distro team is going to focus on.

One of these goals is blurring the line between web applications and the desktop.  I hope we don’t move to far in blurring these lines.  I am not looking for an application that can only function connected to the web or some application that loose features when not connected to the web.  There are way to many places that I don’t have web access.  Often as a consultant when I bring my laptop onsite I’m not allowed on the corporate network or even on a guest network (if they even have one) and do not want to loose the ability to use that application.

Is this goal some how designed to combat what Google is doing with Google Gears or Microsoft is doing w/ Live Mesh or is it jumping on a bandwagon? 

One of those applications for Linux/Windows is Dropbox, however it only works in Ubuntu and with Nautlius.  Are we going to have the same problems with these new web apps in 9.04?  That is they only work in Ubuntu and not in Kubuntu, further the often repeated story that Canonical only cares about Ubuntu and not Kubuntu.

 

When will one of the goals be enterprise support and adoption?  Will one of these releases ever focus on ease of use for deployment, configuration and management of hundreds of Ubuntu machines?  Hopefully some place we can discuss this, maybe at the next UDS?  Hopefully I’ll see you there

UDS In December — UDS Mountain View Again

It’s nice to be able to plan ahead for something like UDS.  Jono recently announced the next developers conference for Ubuntu the week of Monday the 8th of December.

The last UDS Mountain View I was just starting a new job, my current job,  and didn’t have any vacation time or the ability to take time off.  The last summit, UDS Prague I missed due to my wife’s pregnancy and the fact it was so close to her due date.

Now I’m looking forward to attending and have already marked my calendar.