Ubuntu 12.04 : IRC Workshops

All the IRC Workshops for Ubuntu 12.04 has been planned already, along with spiffy ads to spread around.

After much discussion,it has been decided to “focus” the IRC workshops. Instead of one long week it will be clubbed to just three days for each “week” but make the days longer to hit more time zones. So they will be from Tuesday to Thursday.

Open Week will be likely going to move to 30 minute sessions by default (though it can be adjusted), which will mean instructors will have to be more prepared ahead of time. So, less typing wasting time, more time pasting in prepared material and answering user questions.

 No change for the Global Jam

Schedule:
Ubuntu 12.04 : Developer Week                     31Jan - 2 Feb

Ubuntu 12.04 : Global Jam                               2 - 4 Mar
Ubuntu 12.04 : App Developer Week             17- 19 April
Ubuntu 12.04 : Open Week                             1-3 May

Ubuntu 12.04 : Developer Week

Ubuntu 12.04 : Global Jam

Ubuntu 12.04 : App Developer Week

Ubuntu 12.04 : Open Week

Ubuntu One dropping CouchDB sync

Today it was announced that Ubuntu One will be dropping support for CouchDB sync.

John Rowland Lenton in mailing list said

"From the first days of Ubuntu One, before we were even in Ubuntu, we'vehad a structured data storage sync service based around CouchDB.

 For the last three years we have worked with the company behind CouchDB to make it scale in the particular ways we need it to scale in our server environment. Our situation is rather unique, and we were unable to resolve some of the issues we came across. We were thus unable to make CouchDB scale up to the millions of users and databases we have in our datacentres, and furthermore we were unable to make it scale down to be a reasonable load on small client machines.

 Because of this, we are turning off most of our CouchDB-related efforts. The contacts, notes and playlists databases will continue to exist on our servers to support the related services, but direct external access to the underlying databases will be shut off. Any other databases will be deleted from our servers entirely. 

For these same three years we have created and maintained desktopcouch, which is a desktop service (and related library) to access CouchDB more conveniently. Because we are no longer going to pursue CouchDB, we will no longer be developing desktopcouch; in fact, if anybody wants to take over, we'll be happy to work with you to make that official. For the upcoming 12.04 the Ubuntu One packages will not depend on desktopcouch nor couchdb in any way, and we'd recommend the distribution seriously consider whether they want to continue having the package in main, especially if no maintainer shows up.

 Because we still believe there is a lot of value to our users in the service we wanted to offer based on CouchDB, we're building something new, based on what we've learned. It's very small, merely a layer of abstraction and the definition of an API that will allow us and others to build what is needed ontop of existing tools. We're calling it U1DB for now, until it comes of age. If you're interested and techincally inclined you can follow our progress on lp:u1db; unfortunately our timing and resources are such that we can only promise the reference python implementation will be ready in time for 12.04, and thus 12.04 will ship without Ubuntu One having a solid story around synchronizing arbitrary structured data."

12.04 Ubuntu Developer Summit Proceedings

From 31st Oct 2011 – 4th Nov 2011 the Ubuntu Developer Summit took place in Orlando, Florida, USA. Attracting 800attendees from 42 different countries, this mix of Canonical employees, volunteers, upstreams, vendors, and partners engaged in 420 sessions across 9 tracks.

These sessions were used to discuss, design, and plan the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS edition that will be released in April 2012. This post provides a summary of many of the outcomes and decisions finalized at the event.

The Keynote

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical and Ubuntu and head of Product Strategy at Canonical, provided the opening keynote, first talking about where have been focusing on Ubuntu:

• Engaging and embracing developers is important (for Free Software) to bring applications to the Ubuntu platform.
• developer.ubuntu.com makes it easy for developers and ISVs to target the Ubuntu platform and it’s large number if users by providing tools, a quick start guide, documentation and a software distribution mechanism through the Apps Portal and the updated Software Center client software.
• Ubuntu One is the leading Client Services platform and the now available Windows client attracts more users to the Ubuntu platform.
• User Testing is an important driver for Ubuntu to improve usability and make Ubuntu look and feel great (LightDM, AppSwitcher, Music Lens and monospace were called out specifically).
• OpenStack became the cloud infrastructure of choice in Ubuntu and administrators can expect a tight integration into the Ubuntu Desktop.
• Ubuntu is set to become the preferred cloud platform, as best guest but also as best host.
• ARM gains more traction in traditional PC areas, e.g. Data Centers and Ubuntu contributes to the enablement of ARM.
• LTS releases are now supported for a period of 5 years, which caters more to the needs of Corporate Customers.
• Services in the Cloud will become more important and Ubuntu’s wider cloud offering and specifically JuJudefines Cloud Services as so called Charms, which distill expertise into reusable units.
• The demand of Corporate Users is rising and Ubuntu will deliver a reference Corporate Desktop for these large scale deployments.
• Power Users will be a focus for the upcoming release, where the same amount of effort that was spent on the general usability of the Ubuntu Desktop will be geared towards the needs of Power Users.

Mark then moved on introduce what he referred toas The Ubuntu Vision:

• The Ubuntu mission of Linux for Human Beings cannot end at the Desktop but needs to take into account the devices that will be used by Human Beings in the years to come.
• Ubuntu will power tablets, phones, TVs and smart screens from the car to the office kitchen by LTS 14.04.
• Unity will be the coherent user interface for all these devices.
• Ubuntu powered personal computing platforms will connect seamlessly to Desktop, Server and Cloud.
• Ubuntu’s personal Cloud – Ubuntu One – will deliver, share and synchronize data and content between Ubuntu powered devices and other devices that are supported by Ubuntu One.

See the video of the keynote.

New [Precise] linux kernel version (3.2.0-1.1) Has been Uploaded

A new Precise linux kernel has been uploaded. Now the version has been changed to 3.2. This is the first kernel upload based on the 3.2 kernel.

Highlights of this upload include:

•  rebase to v3.2-rc2
•  Consolidated amd64 server flavour into generic
•  armhf — enable armhf and create the first flavours
•  Enable CONFIG_EXT2_FS=m
•  Build in CONFIG_SATA_AHCI=y
•  Built-in xen-netfront and xen-blkfront
•  Support for additional ALPS touchpads
•  Updated seccomp patch set

The full changelog can be found at:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/3.2.0-1.1

Firefox 8 Officially Released

Firefox 8 Officially Released


Firefox 8 might have been ‘out in the wild’ for a few days, but today marks itsofficial release.


Ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10 will automatically upgrade to Firefox 8 at some point in the coming days – no PPAs or downloads necessary.

What’s new?

Firefox 8, which aside from nudging the open-source browser a step closer to the version number of Internet Explorer (and trying to keep pace with Google Chrome’s), includes a handful of new features and notable changes: -

• Twitter search engine installed by default
• Third-party add-ons are disabled by default
• A new ‘add-on selection dialog’ allows to verify add-ons on upgrading
• Tabs can be loaded ‘on demand’, improving start-up times
• HTML5 context menu support, improved memory management, and various stability fixes also feature.
• Download

Ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10 users do not need to download or add any PPAs in order to get the update: just keep an eye on update manager over the next day or so to upgrade.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and 10.10 users can install/upgrade to Firefox 8 by adding theMozilla Stable Release PPA to their Software Sources. (Note that at the time of writing these builds are pending publication, so will be available very shortly.)

ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable