The Ubuntu Ethos

Jono mentioned at UDS the Ubuntu Ethos and what Ubuntu means to him and posted on his blog them same “keynote.”  A part of this was his call for others to answer why they use and/or are involved with Ubuntu and I decided to share my thoughts.

To me it is friends and community.  A group of people to hang out with and more importantly a place that I can give back.  I am not a developer, I don’t even play one on TV.  But there is finally a place for me to give back to the software that I use.

When I first started using Linux, I think it was Slackware and then moved onto Debian I was always looking for an area to give back but I didn’t (don’t) know how to code, didn’t know (don’t really want to learn) how to package or any other “developer” related activies.  The Ubuntu community is the first community that has made me feel welcome.

Ubuntu has done a great job of allowing those who are involved outside of development to be contributors whether they are Loco Team members, Forum Admins, Wiki people or other roles.   I have never felt like a second class citizen of the community because I’m not a MOTU or Core-Dev or any other type of -dev.  And it should stay that way.

How do I give back?  The unglorious job of writing system documentation that people hardly ever look at.  But it has to be done.  It is also how I learned how to use Ubuntu and also how I have learned more about managing a Linux system then any other book/article/newsgroup/forum could have taught.  Try it yourself sometime, try to document something new to you and you will get a much understanding of the system.

So community is why I use and am involved in Ubuntu.  I have a lot of great friends that I would never had otherwise and I get to give back.

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

Offline blog writing utility for Kubuntu

I am looking for an application to write these blog entries offline on my Dell Mini.  I write a lot these entries on my work laptop, running Vista when I am not connected to the Internet.  An example would be this post while I am at my sister-in-laws who don’t have high speed Internet.  Another use case is when I am flying and have something I would like to write.

I use Windows Live Writer a lot and enjoying its simplicity, the ability to post to multiple blogs, ease of inserting pictures, etc and am looking for something similar in Kubuntu/KDE.  I tried a program that was called KBlogger but couldn’t figure out how to connect to my wordpress blogs and there was no help manual for it.

So my question is:  “What is the best offline blog writing app in KDE/Kubuntu?”

 

Thanks,

Jonathan