I have posted part two of the Haskell based calculator project.

Enjoy, subscribe, send me ideas.

Over the past few days I have been analysing various issues and also doing some background research, so I have been collecting some rather large sets of data to process.   Normally I filter, re-format and process the data using a bunch of simple tools such as awk, tr, cut, sort, uniq and grep to get the data into some form where it can be plotted using gnuplot. 

The UNIX philosophy of piping together a bunch of tools to produce the final output normally works fine, however, graphing the data with gnuplot always ends up with me digging around in the online gnuplot documentation or reading old gnuplot files to remind myself exactly how to plot the data just the way I want.   This is fine for occasions where I gather lots of identical logs and want to compare results from multiple tests, the investment in time to automate this with gnuplot is well worth the hassle.   However, some times I just have a handful of samples and want to plot a graph and then quickly re-jig the data and perhaps calculate some statistical information such a trend lines.  In this case, I fall back to shoving the samples into LibreOffice Calc and slamming out some quick graphs.

This makes me choke a bit.  Using LibreOffice Calc starts to make me feel like I'm an accountant rather than a software engineer.  However, once I have swallowed my pride I have come to the conclusion that one has to be pragmatic and use the right tool for the job.  To turn around small amounts of data quickly, LibreOffice Calc does seem to be quite useful.   For processing huge datasets and automated graph plotting, gnuplot does the trick (as long as I can remember how to use it).   I am a command line junkie and really don't like using GUI based power tools, but there does seem to be a place where I can mix the two quite happily.

The idea really is that Ubuntu’s rolling release (alpha/betas) shouldn’t become a seperate product from Ubuntu’s LTS industry targets. Instead if we think about the platform as a whole, we should be able to put together both LTS and RR versions of Ubuntu into a single package. It would then be possible to do some really interesting things, like using one ubuntu install to repair or analyse the other.

I’d also like to see most applications removed from universe since it’s pretty obvious that the Debian model for packages is failing and we need to rethink how we deal with applications. The best model would be to be decisive and scrap apps from universe and move them to their own PPAs or a dedicated app-store model where FOSS apps might even be able to earn some money as they would finally be in a similar position to the propritary Canonical apps.

I understand these ideas are bold, but I wanted to give my thoughts on how best to close the loose ends. What are you solutions? colmment below.

This year marked the 3rd Southern California Linux Expo I’ve attended, and once again it didn’t disappoint. The first year I gave a talk at the Ubucon and helped with the booth over the weekend, last year I gave a talk at Ubucon, one at the conference itself and then ran the Ubuntu booth, an exhausting combination that I swore I wouldn’t repeat. This year I scaled back to just a talk at Ubucon and providing some of the materials for the Ubuntu booth.

Ubucon this year was run by Richard Gaskin of Fourth World Systems. I was contacted a couple months ago and signed up to do an Ubuntu in the Cloud talk (slides here) where I covered some of the options for running Ubuntu “in the cloud” and introduced folks to DevStack as an easy mechanism for trying out and beginning to learn about OpenStack. Unfortunately I was struggling my way through a nasty cold all weekend so it wasn’t the optimal situation for giving a talk, but the audience was great.

Due to my cold, I ended up just camping out at Ubucon all day instead of exploring other tracks and was witness to a full day of standing room only sessions. Talks included David Rodriguez on using Ubuntu in an continuous integration enterprise environment, Aviv Meraro on hardware compatibility, Philip Ballew on finding help in Ubuntu and Richard Gaskin talking about the soon to be open sourced Live Code language and development environment. The day wrapped up with a presentation by Jono Bacon of the Ubuntu Phone.

Friday night a few of us headed down to the expo hall to begin setting up the Ubuntu booth, after which I grabbed some take-out from the hotel deli and headed up to my room to get some rest.

Saturday was the first full day of the expo hall and SCaLE proper talks. I’m really happy with how the booth came out this year, and System76 was kind enough to offer some systems for us to run as demo machines. The Ubuntu logo + California candy dishes got a number of laughs, kudos to Eric P. Scott for his cleverness there.

The team also lucked out in having Nathan Haines join the booth volunteers, along with his phone running Ubuntu! It was a great opportunity for visitors to the booth to finally get hands on with the phone, that’s also how I had my chance.

In all, a great weekend for Ubuntu at SCaLE! Huge thanks to all the booth volunteers who kept things staffed all weekend.

Google Pixel: The Perfect Linux Laptop?

When I ordered the Chromebook Pixel, I was confident I would not like it. $1299 for a laptop that is only a browser? For $1299 I can get a full Retina Pro running OSX, Windows 8, better battery life, more storage, more ram etc. The following post is the story of how my perspective changed, and how I use this machine as a power user / developer.

The Competition

The first though most people have with the Pixel is, why not a Macbook Retina 13 refurb, or the Samsung Chromebook.

FeaturePixelMacbook Retina 13Samsung Chromebook Screen2560x1700 12.85”2560x1600 13.3”1366x768 11.6” QualityIPSIPSTN TouchYesNoNo Local Storage32GB128GB16GB Cloud Storage1TB5GB100GB Processori5 1.8GHzi5 2.5GHzExynos 5 1.7GHz Ram4GB8GB2GB Battery Life5 hours7 hours6.3 hours Price$1299$1499$250 What Sets the Pixel Apart?

What the table above doesn’t account for are the qualitative features which make all of the difference. The build quality is fantastic, and the Pixel feels very tough. The Aluminum used in the Pixel feels stronger and more durable than the Macbook, and feels like it is less prone to denting. The screen is extremely bright, and even when plugged in I only use it at 70% brightness, and when on the go I turn it down to nearly minimum. Even with the brightness set so low, it is easier on the eyes and more readable than the TN panels common in most laptops.

The keyboard feels subjectively better than the Macbook Pro. It is an absolute joy to type on, and the touchpad is also flawless. Plugging in adapters to the Mini-Displayport “just works” with external monitors, and having a browser open with GTalk etc while a terminal on the other is great.

Chrome OS itself really gets out of your way. Out of the box I only installed the secure shell app, and I was able to do 50% of the Linux development I wanted to. No tweaking, driver downloading etc, out of the box I had a very fast browser, multi-monitor support, retina level text, music and cloud file storage.

The next question to answer was how do I do heavier development? Chrome actually has a great remote desktop feature built in, so I was able to connect to my much more powerful Ubuntu workstation, and run Eclipse there. It worked well over my local network, although there are even better solutions if you don’t enjoy the slight latency for screen refreshes and window dragging.

Enter Crouton

Crouton provides a way to install Ubuntu and run it without rebooting from Chrome OS. This means if I run Crouton and simply press CTRL-ALT-Refresh I am instantly in my XFCE full Ubuntu 12.04.2 environment, and I can run any X86 programs I desire. I was able to use SSH XForwarding to also connect to my desktop, and it was also fast and fluid. I was able to load vim, git, gcc etc, however I actually like just using regular Chrome OS and a SSH session where possible, so I can switch between locations with ease. You can download Crouton from Github.

Battery Life

Most reviews highlight that battery life is less than four hours, but skip over how low you can set the brightness on this laptop. 60% brightness on the Pixel is brighter than a lot of laptops at 100%, and the screen is extremely clear and readible. I was able to get 6 hours of battery life without issue, and this will improve as Chrome OS seamlessly updates itself.

Unscalable?

CNet wrote up a headline grabbing blurb, so I wanted to clarify screen scaling. As the owner of a Macbook Pro Retina 13, I never use screen scaling. The performance is horrible, frames are dropped, and it doesn’t make sense for developers. We generally work in text, so using the native resolutions and adjusting font sizes means we can manage the scaling easily. Sure, window borders etc are not resized, but in all of the applications I use, my biggest windows are full of text. Even if I do Windows development, I have C# / XAML windows open nearly fullscreen in VS. Scaling on Retina is, from my humble perspective, for those who don’t understand they can just decrease their font size and have great performance and readiblity.

Operating System

What is the most fascinating part of the Pixel is that I absolutely love Chrome OS. A few downsides of OS X you don’t find clearly articulated:

• OS X got in my way a lot
• Spinning beachballs
• Safari rendering huge white blocks
• Memory usage - you really do need 8GB to load iTunes, iPhotos and Safari
• Had to install Ubuntu to get a full ‘real’ stack
• Every time I had to install gcc-42 from brew dupes and have multiple compilers
• Compiling ruby with rvm sometimes compiled with LLVM, sometimes didn’t, depending on the day and release
• Everything costs more. Want to live the iLife? Many albums priced at $4.99 elsewhere can be > $15 on iTunes
• The filesystem ‘feels’ slower, especially in rails. When I ran rake etc, these commands all took noticibly longer than my Ubuntu installs
• 128GB is actually too small if you don’t live in the cloud, and was a constant battle

Conclusion

The Pixel is a winner for Linux power users. We get a Linux based OS out of the box that auto updates, is secure, requires no tweaking, and just lets us get to work. We can easily switch to full Ubuntu, and back with just simple keystrokes. SSH support is fantastic, and works with tmux etc (unlike so many SSH emulators on the Windows 8 store). The built in applications make photo editing, listening to music, youtube, gmail, and even games just a click away. If I had to purchase it again, I would order the LTE model as I intend to take this everywhere with me.

Yesterday I uploaded a video which is part one of a series covering parsing in Haskell in the form of a project to build a calculator.

In the future we’ll also look at making parse trees and perhaps interpreting a simple imperative language too. Excitement!

A couple years ago, I wrote about how you can create a graphical representation of your OpenPGP Web of Trust. It’s funny how I’ve been keeping mine up-to-date for these past couple years as I attend keysigning parties, without really thinking about what it looks like. Well, I recently returned from the SCaLE 11x conference, which had a PGP keysigning party. So, I’ve been keeping the graph up-to-date as new signatures would come in. Then it hit me: am I graphing ONLY the signatures on my key, or all the signatures in my public keyring, or something somewhere in between? It seemed to be the latter, so I decided to do something about it.

The following script assumes you have the signing-party, graphviz and imagemagick packages installed. It grabs only the signatures on your OpenPGP key, downloads any keys that have signed your key that you may not have downloaded, places them in their own public keyring, then uses that information to graph your Web of Trust. Here’s the script:

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#!/bin/bash
# Replace $KEY with your own KEYID
KEY="22EEE0488086060F"
echo "Getting initial list of signatures..."
gpg --with-colons --fast-list-mode --list-sigs $KEY | awk -F ':' '$1 ~ /sig|rev/ {print $5}' | sort -u > ${KEY}.ids
echo "Refreshing your keyring..."
gpg --recv-keys $(cat ${KEY}.ids) > /dev/null 2>&1
echo "Creating public keyring..."
gpg --export $(cat ${KEY}.ids) > ${KEY}.gpg
echo "Creating dot file..."
gpg --keyring ./${KEY}.gpg --no-default-keyring --list-sigs | sig2dot > ${KEY}.dot 2> ${KEY}.err
echo "Creating PostScript document..."
neato -Tps ${KEY}.dot > ${KEY}.ps
echo "Creating graphic..."
convert ${KEY}.ps ${KEY}.gif
echo "Finished."

It may take some time to download and refresh your keyring, and it may take some time generating the .dot file. Don’t be surprised if it takes 5-10 minutes, or so. However, when it finishes, you should end up with something like what is below (it’s obvious when you’ve attended keysigning parties by the clusters of strength in your web):

Click for a larger version

There will be Linaro Connect Asia next week. Which means: I am going to Hong Kong today. 21-22 hours trip like usual. This time through Helsinki ;)

But recently I started to count and got quite long list of Linaro events I attended so far:

• 2010.05 UDS/M – Brussels, Belgium
• 2010.07 Ubuntu/Linaro sprint in Prague, Czech Republic
• 2010.10 UDS/N – Orlando, FL, USA
• 2011.01 Ubuntu/Linaro sprint in Dallas, TX, USA
• 2011.05 LC + UDS/O – Budapest, Hungary
• 2011.07 Ubuntu/Linaro sprint in Dublin, Ireland
• 2011.10 LC + UDS/P – Orlando, FL, USA
• 2012.02 LC – Redwood City, CA, USA
• 2012.05 LC – Hong Kong, China
• 2012.11 LC + UDS/R – Copenhagen, Denmark

The “Linaro Connect” name is quite young and I do not remember which event got this name first. There will be three of them this year: Asia, Europe, US. But when and where? Do not ask me cause so far it was not announced yet.

So if any of my readers will be in Hong Kong next week — please say hi. And there will be Chromebook hacking session on Tuesday at 15:00 in Fountain 1 room (but please check schedule/ask me if not changed).

Related content:

1. Trips in 2011
2. Events in 2012 which I will attend

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
I am going to Hong Kong was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

“Steam”, “Ubuntu TV”, “Ubuntu Phone”, “Ubuntu Tablet”, “Ubuntu for Android”.

12 months ago these keywords were merely ideas, possibilities that were seemingly unclear. Skip forward to today and we have a totally different perspective. Steam is on Ubuntu. Developer previews have been released for the phone and tablet. Unity is mature on the desktop. Fast, functional, easy-to-use and visually appealing.

With the increased use of Google+ Hangouts, ala Ubuntu OnAir, I think it’s certainly worth trying to use the technology to host more frequent sprints and community-wide discussion.

Unfortunately, for the dubbed UDS-1303, the sessions are being held between 1am-7am local time. In effect, I’ll be able to participate (read: watch) the summaries and lightning talk sessions.

Hopefully the next UDS-(1305?) will be scattered along different time zones.

I've just read through Rick Spencer's argument for rolling releases in the Ubuntu Devel mailing list but I'm frankly less convinced than I was before.

Let's get one thing clear: The VP of Ubuntu Engineering at Canonical, Rick Spencer writes a mean proposal. Honestly. I deal with more than a fair amount of marketing copy-writing and I can tell you it's a great pitch. It's completely decided in its stance and it uses emotive and empowering power-words like converge, velocity and agility. You'll find nothing but the finest propaganda here.

Anyway, here's my interpretation — a paraquote, if you will — of Rick's whole argument:

We spend too much time supporting old, haggered software that no users actually want, and not enough on shiny new things.

We frustrate people by being up to six months behind the curve, we end up rushing new features and integrations because of the arbitrary time limit and we already rock at getting things right first time with Daily Quality... so why not move to a rolling release?

It's better for users, maintainers and the rest of us if we all just use one codebase for everything (including phones and all that). That will give us the time to improve things at a faster and more stable rate.

Again, that is just my interpretation. You can read the full post and make your own. I have some reservations based on what the post suggests to be true and some of the "remedies" for those problems also seem to carry risks and downsides. Here are my key problems with a rolling system:

Newer is not always better.

The biggest elephant in the room. Newer can mean fixes and features but it often means new bugs, freshly lapsing documentation and a new wave of angry users when their things just stop working.

A culture of constant-updates may also rely on waiting for the next upstream version instead of getting stuck in and fixing otherwise low hanging fruit.

Users can already upgrade any parts they want.

The relevant teams make sure that the latest graphics packages and wifi drivers are available and backported and for everything else PPAs have revolutionised the upgrade system.

If you want the latest version of PHP, Chrome or KDE, you just install a PPA and you accept the risk. If it doesn't work you can just ppa-purge it out of the system and you're back to solid, stable ground.

Rolling means a constantly moving target.

Developers don't know what they're building for. Users barely know what they're running on. Triagers need to work five times as hard to track down which version of which software a bug is coming from. What happens to bugs after the new release comes out? How on earth do you plan a multi-month project (eg: migrating Upstart to Systemd) when you have no way to freeze and force everything else to fit around you?

And what about the "stable ABI" we've been honking on about to app developers and ISVs?

It's hard enough for open-source developers to keep up but now you've got a bunch of closed source stuff sailing on this ship. This is only possible because we promised we'd remain a solid platform and be respectful with system changes.

The successful marketing of this feature (along with other things coming into alignment) mean gaming on Linux is right in the process of taking off. And you want to shoot it down with ABI instability? Awesome. Call off the year of the Linux Desktop!

The argument that ISVs only care about LTS is the funniest thing I've read all day. ISVs are paid to care about what their customers whine about. Take gamers as a market example. If developers don't support Ubuntu-NG, most of their market has just evaporated. You can't think about Ubuntu as a B2B software platform. The future is going to be full of B2C and I2C sales and if you can't support the developers, they're not going to support your platform.

Converge is a lie. There is no convergence yet.

Ubuntu Touch is possibly the least unified Ubuntu in the family. Different kernel. Different display server. Different interface. Different interface toolkit. Different application API. You can't jolly on about being from the same codebase when it's completely different stuff.

I'm sure this will change in the future but until desktop Unity runs on QML, offering similar API hooks to applications, I'm not even going to entertain the idea that there's convergence. It's a nice hopeful word but it has no relation to Ubuntu at the moment.

Daily Quality is good enough? Release quality still isn't good enough!

I deal with Joe the average user on a daily basis. They've downloaded Ubuntu and it doesn't work. Or they've upgraded and their sound doesn't work. Or they can't get a graphical environment. Or the wifi doesn't work. This is the staple of question on Ask Ubuntu. We'll get a few hundred of these every week without fail.

Joe still occasionally has a really bad time with Ubuntu because Joe wasn't there when Ubuntu was in its 6-month development phase. Joe could have downloaded the testing ISO or upgraded but they didn't so when the big upgrade finally happened on release day, they ran into a hardware-specific bug in the Kernel or X.

A rolling release is going to create a few thousand Joes every upgrade and will turn Ask Ubuntu and Launchpad into cesspits of poorly updated bug reports. Thanks.

We urgently need to look at improving how users handle their own hardware issues because the current models are unhelpful to developers and painful for both the users and the support team. Building new tools to automatically fix issues should be the focus.

So, back to your question, why now?

Ubuntu has proven itself. I don't agree with everything that's happened technically or in the community to date but the Ubuntu ecosystem appears to be the healthiest it has ever been. It isn't there yet and it needs to keep improving but why would you want to knock out the foundations at this point?

I might be completely wrong and rolling might work but we lose nothing if we stick with the 6-month cadence... What is the risk of switching to rolling? Embarrassment? Losing users? Collapsing the community? *Is any of that really worth it?*

Within the Ubuntu realm there have been some dramatic changes that have erupted at the end of February 2013. The first shift was that the Ubuntu Developer Summit has shifted to an electronic-only format with the first one in the new style set to launch within a week of announcement. The second shift was the announcement that rolling releases are under formal consideration with that release paradigm change being under consideration at the hastily-announced event.

Where is the Ubuntu realm going? If you have the answer to that, you are among a select few. For the various flavors such as Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Lubuntu this is perhaps a systemic shock as the main flavor is now making fairly radical changes that may or may not fit with the goals of the flavor projects. The main line of Ubuntu is seeking convergence where it dominates the desktop, the tablet, and the phone. Rolling releases will presumably be needed to keep up with the fast-paced phone realm.

This is a bit of a change. Is the desktop where the future of computing is headed? Is the desktop going away in favor of pocket computers that somewhere inside still have a tiny amount of circuitry that results in them being called "phones"? That much is uncertain. The gamble being made by Canonical as it adds yet another mobile operating system to an already crowded space is that that is where things are headed. As noted by Anna Leach on The Register earlier in February, total planet-wide sales of cellular phones declined 1.7% last year. Half of all cellular phones on the planet sold in 2012 were made by one of the following three manufacturers/design bureaus: Apple, Samsung, Nokia.

Right now there is a bit of a rupture as to where Ubuntu and its flavors are progressing. That is unfortunate. There remains quite a bit of uncertainty in the market and no clear breakthrough leads yet that are truly destroying one segment of the market for another. The desktop is not dead and the cell phone seems mature/stagnant in terms of innovation at the moment.

Between the UDS changes and the rolling releases proposal, we are effectively rolling the dice. As a user of Xubuntu on a BeagleBoard-xM, I have to watch the development of the rolling release proposal very carefully to see if I am not left behind as Personal Package Archives (PPAs) do not build for ARM architecture routinely. My board is already considered unsupported but I would still like some flavor of Ubuntu, preferably Xubuntu, to still be able to boot on it. Indicators currently are not pointing towards that but towards a major drive now to get Ubuntu Phone ready and live as soon as possible.

Let us all hope that this roll of the dice is the right one.

Paradigm Shifting Without A Clutch by Stephen Michael Kellat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at http://archive.org/details/NoClutch.

Finally, one of the longest RT tickets in history has been fixed, the Ubuntu Forums have finally been upgraded to vBulletin 4. Many thanks to the Forums Council, the CC, the Canonical IS team, and an untold number of people who helped make this happen. I feel like we have reached the end of the internet. Of course now, this also means that there will be a new vBulletin tomorrow and we get to start all over. Yay.

One particularly horrible pain point we had was OpenID integration. We needed help with this, and I had a hard time finding someone who could help us out. I was desperate, and put out a call for help.

And in rode Kyle A. Baker, on his pale PHP horse. And busted out the plugin. Done. I asked Kyle how he could be so awesome, so he passed this along to me.

My contributions have ranged from simple how-to blog posts, automated scripts, bug reporting, implementing new features for existing applications, debugging and fixing web cam support in GSPCA for the Microsoft vx-1000 web cam (which are now included in the Kernel by default since back in 2010), the vBulletin 4 OpenID plug-in and many other odds and ends.

Usually my preferred Linux environment is Ubuntu +1 (aka alpha/beta/pre-release), watching the changes that roll in and watching Ubuntu evolve in general. I love the direction that Linux is moving in and hope more people will continue to step forward and volunteer their time towards developing a quality community experience. I’m always interested in helping out on open source projects that benefit everyone, so if you’re looking for volunteers just ping me. Following me on Twitter at @kyleabaker. FOSS for the win!

Without Kyle we’d be in a sad state, so I’d like to thank him for his work, and that goes for everyone involved in cracking this nut, it was a tough one. Beers on me.

Also I bet James Troup that he’d never get the forums upgraded by the “next UDS”. I thought I was going to win, especially with UDS now being a month earlier, but alas, he won with 2 days to spare. Not bad Obama … not bad.

Global Jam

This weekend, March 1st – March 3rd, the Ubuntu Community is holding our twice-annual Global Jam. So far this cycle we have announced and released the Ubuntu Touch shell for phones and tablets, and what better place to show it off than with your local community! Instructions of installing Ubuntu Touch on several devices can be found here.

If your team is already planning a Global Jam event, and you can bring a device capable of showing off Ubuntu Touch, be sure to let everybody know by putting it into your event’s details. If your team doesn’t have an event scheduled yet, then you should go and make one! Anybody can register a Global Jam event, and it doesn’t need anything more than you and a friend at a local cafe or park.

LoCo Team Jams

Here are the LoCo Teams that currently plan on showing of Ubuntu Touch at their Global Jam event.

Catalan LoCo Team on 2013-03-02 10:00:00 UTC

Learning about Ubuntu mirrors, virtual machines on Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview on phones and Catalan translations

Ubuntu Indonesian Team on 2013-03-02 01:00:00 UTC

Demo Experience with Ubuntu 12.10
Using Ubuntu tablet

Arizona LoCo Team on 2013-03-02 17:00:00 UTC

The Ubuntu Global Jam is an incredible opportunity for the Ubuntu community to unite together around the weekend of 1st – 3rd March 2013 to work together to improve Ubuntu. we should have working ubuntu tablets and phones to show off.
Everyone is able to contribute to the Jam, and everyone is welcome and encouraged to get involved. Curious about how to make a real difference to Ubuntu? This is a great chance to make that difference.
The Ubuntu Global Jam incorporates events that have been organised over the world to get Ubuntu contributors and fans together to have a great time and improve Ubuntu. Each event has one or more of our themes:

Ubuntu Vancouver LoCo on 2013-03-02 13:00:00 UTC

The Ubuntu Vancouver Local Community will be jamming on marketing, documentation and other priority tasks. We’ll have the Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Tablet on display. We’ll also take some time to enjoy Jam!

Ubuntu Colombia on 2013-03-02 19:00:00 UTC

Evento en G+: https://plus.google.com/events/c769asqdbp1qmnpe6rs4klhn0sc
Evento en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/212012785606964/
Aprovechando que Canonical, empresa que desarrolla y mantiene Ubuntu, libero [1] el pasado jueves 22 de febrero su versión para celulares Android (Dispositivos Nexus unicamente), en @HackBo junto a Ubuntu Colombia, queremos hacer un Hackaton que intente derivar una nueva ROM de Ubuntu Touch, para algún otro tipo de celular que no sea Nexus. El porqué del Hackaton, se desprende por la dificultada del procedimiento y en algunos casos la inviabilidad de tener drivers apropiados o incompatibles con los diversos celulares que hay en el mercado.
Actualmente en @Hackbo ya tenemos dos dispositivos Nexus funcionando, y servirán como norte de lo que se quiere, pero el objetivo principal sera tenerlo en un nuevo dispositivo, por ejemplo un Motorola Atrix, S3, Sony, tablet chino, etc. Entonces:
Objetivos:
> Entender procesos como root, instalación de recovery, instalación de ROMs, creación de backups, herramientas de Android, fastboot, etc
> Personalizar el código fuente de Canonical para un dispositivo determinado
> Resolver problemas de compilación para cada dispositivo y entornos determinados Hacer pruebas de la ROM personaliza da y determinar problemas de drivers
> Búsqueda y solucion a problemas de drivers
> Compilación final de una nueva ROM
> Documentación del procedimiento
Requerimientos:
> Maquina Linux preferiblemente, o si no una maquina virtual con Ubuntu 12.04.2 o superior
> Tener un celular o tablet el cual se este dispuesto a:
-Perder la garantía
-Posiblemente pero en un % muy muy pequeño, brikearlo
> Descargar ANTES del evento las fuentes necesarias:
- apt-get install phablet-tools
- Determinar el VENDOR deacuerdo a su celular, a partir de este enlace: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Devices#vendor=;
- Si NO aparece su VENDOR, entonces hacer: phablet-dev-bootstrap micelular (~16 GB)
- Si SI aparece: phablet-dev-bootstrap -v MIVENDOR micelular
- Mas detalles en el enlace [2] (Es el procedimiento a grandes rasgos que seguiremos, pero la idea es entender bien esto en el Hackaton, entonces solo se requiere pre-descargar las fuentes)
> Portátil, en lo preferible bueno si es posible
> Cables USB para cada dispositivo
> Opcional: investigar como rootear su dispositivo he instalarle recovery
Organiza:
@Hackbo y Ubuntu Colombia.
[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Install#Instructions_for_flashing_a_phone_or_tablet_device_with_Ubuntu
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Porting

Ubuntu-Michigan on 2013-03-01 05:00:00 UTC

For the entire weekend of March 1st through March 3rd, we’ll be jamming
online, primarily in our IRC channel (#ubuntu-us-mi on Freenode).
Participation is simple:

1) Log into IRC (there’s a client available on http://loco.ubuntu.com/teams/ubuntu-michigan under Resources if you don’t already have one handy) and join #ubuntu-us-mi

2) Say “I’m jamming” (or use some variation thereof. Examples include: “we be jammin’”, “I like toast and jam”, “Jam on it”; something with the word “jam” in it will suffice.)

3) Find something to work on and announce it to the channel. Perhaps you’d like to answer questions on http://askubuntu.com? Great! Want to test out 13.04 on your machine? Awesome.

4) OPTIONAL: If you’d like to join a Google Hangout and hang out with folks, we’ll post instructions in channel.

Some ideas for jam topics:

1) With the recent announcements about Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Tablet, consider using this Jam as an opportunity to try them out. Bring your hardware and show others, even (and especially) people who have never
seen Ubuntu on these form factors.

2) Consider doing some testing. Ubuntu always benefits from the extra energy the community invests in making sure Ubuntu is as solid and bug-free as possible.

3) Simply have fun! Jams don’t have to be “all work and no play”. Some teams just get together to build community and strengthen friendships. A stronger local community makes Ubuntu better!

When I read the news about Canonical’s decision to change the way Ubuntu Developer Summit (original announcement here) I was totally astonished. I expected this change will cause a lot of buzz within the community, especially given the fact that all recent Canonical decisions are considered very controversial. This surprises me heavily, as I can spot a big number of problems that this decision may cause, as well as problems with the way this decision itself was handled. Jono Bacon’s article explaining the decision did not satisfy me either. It explains the general reasoning behind this idea, but it does not clarify everything.

UDS is a part of long-term Ubuntu tradition. Every six months the developers from all over the world would meet in order to plan development for the upcoming release, brainstorm ideas, discuss problems and collaborate in many ways to ensure that next Ubuntu is going to rock. But the event is not (was not?) just about planning. It was a chance for the community to actually meet, to get to know each other, to tighten the bonds within community. I believe this is crucial for being deeply engaged within the community, and for ensuring the relations within community, as well as it’s structure and organisation are well and sound (and isn’t it important to have friends within the community?). We all know that a big number of Canonical employees are working remotely, and I feel that this may be one of the key facts which contributed to the decision of converting UDS into an online meeting. Apparently some folks at Canonical realized that people do not need to meet in order to be productive. Moreover, a very important part of UDS was outside the sessions – people would discuss brilliant ideas during the dinner, some would seek for aid for their team by looking for interested folks, others would flash their mobile device with the help of experienced ones, and finally, some people would teach each other a lot. It is clear that none of these will happen in case of an online UDS.

From what I understood, the idea is to make UDS available to everyone, so that all contributors, regardless of where they live in and how far are they willing to travel, could participate to the sessions. I can, however, see some significant inconsistency here. The first fact is the choice of Google Hangouts for sessions. I agree this is a great handy tool for video conferences, and I use it myself a lot, but it cannot be assumed that everyone is perfectly fine with G+ policy; there indeed are people who do their best to avoid any Google products. We are told that IRC sessions will be provided for these who can’t join videos, but that doesn’t do much sense, because it does not differ at all from remote participation in summits which were real meetings (people who were unable to travel to UDS could use IRC to contact with session participants, the IRC log was displayed live in the room so that everyone could interact with the discussion even if they were miles away – I have participated this way during UDS-Q, and the experience was actually quite satisfying, even though I couldn’t see the faces of people I was speaking with).

I also have to express my doubts about session organisation. While some UDS sessions were indeed held by less than 10 people, many other would grab interest of more (e.g the ones from Community track), resulting in more than 50 developers in the room + at least 20 on the IRC, with at least 30-40 of them participating actively in the discussion. Now, if the point is to let everyone participate, then it means we aim for even more participants. Now please imagine 80-100 people in a single G+ hangout. Even a number like 30 seems bizarre! Either this will end as a huge mess, or only some people will be voiced (which, again, breaks the idea of opening UDS to everyone).

I have also concerns about the way it is said to be organised. The event is going to be two-days long, and it will take place between 4pm to 10pm UTC. Obviously, that means that a big part of the word will be sleeping then, and the other be at work etc. And that, once more, is aganist the principle of opening UDS to everyone. I don’t see any reason why this can’t be a 24h event, with sessions spread more or less evenly, so that those living in Australia can participate too. I also believe that some teams might want to schedule meetings on times that suit their people best, why limit them to few hours, if this is going to be an online event?

The length of the event is also interesting. Two days. Two days of few-hour long discussion. Compare that to traditional 5-day long UDS with sessions from 9am to 6pm. Add the fact that online UDS will take place two times more frequently, and the conclusion is that we’ll need to be 10 times more efficient to discuss all that is needed. Will this be enough time? Luckily, event length can be fine-tuned if needed. Some speculate this may be related to Ubuntu switching to rolling release model.

One of the main problems with how was decision handled is that it was 1) a surprise 2) immediately effective. I opened up Planet Ubuntu on Wednesday and learned that the UDS is next week. A lot of time to prepare discussion topic, isn’t it? At the time of writing this, there is not a single blueprint registered for this UDS. I might go on explaining why this was a terrible idea to announce it this late, but I believe you get the idea. Please also note that Canonical has never notified before about such idea. Until the announcement, everything seemed that the next UDS will take place as usually – this time in Oakland, and I expect there may be people who have already reserved their time. I feel that such crucial decisions need to come with some kind of transitional period.

With all respect to Canonical and their right to manage the money they own (UDS is a really expensive event, every time I try to imagine the amount of money that had to be involved in Copenhagen, my mind suffers stack overflows), I am very skeptical about this decision, both because of the reasons I explained, and because of some that I’d rather not share publicly. Time will tell how it will affect planning, development and community. I hope the lack of such meetings won’t have a major impact.

And please keep in mind that regardless of what changes are done to the way we organize our work, Ubuntu community will always make sure your favorite OS is the best possible! :-)

Filed under: Ubuntu

We’re back! That’s us: Alan Pope, Mark Johnson, Tony Whitmore, Laura Cowen, and (not forgetting) The Podcats. We’re here in Studio A for the first episode of Season (Series) Six of the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo Team!

In this week’s show:-

• We take a look at what’s been happening in the News:
  • Why we should stop using open source licences…
  • Ubuntu: Now on phones and tablets…
  • Challenge to Python trademark application…
  • Opera browser switches to WebKit…
• We catch up with what’s happening in the Community:
  • A new Totem (Movie Player) UI was proposed but has since disappeared from the Web…
  • Ubuntu Developer Summits will now be every 3 months and virtual…
  • Daily builds and updates to phablet-tools…
• And we mention some events:
  • Hack ‘n’ talk – Google Campus, London, UK – 9th March
  • Open Source Junction – Open Source Hardware meets Open Source Software – Trinity College, Oxford, UK – 14th-15th March
  • North East Linux Fest – Harvard University, US – 16th-17th March

Please send your comments and suggestions to: podcast@ubuntu-uk.org
Join us on IRC in #ubuntu-uk-podcast on Freenode
Leave a voicemail via phone: +44 (0) 203 298 1600, sip: podcast@sip.ubuntu-uk.org and skype: ubuntuukpodcast
Follow our twitter feed http://twitter.com/uupc
Find our Facebook Fan Page
Follow us on Google Plus
Leave us some segment ideas on the Etherpad

                          

The ubuntforums are currently being updated, so we’re going down for a few hours. DON’T PANIC 

We anticipate anything up to 10 hours downtime, though we hope to be back a lot sooner. The moderation team will be available during the day here to provide updates. You can access other support options here

You may know one of the most used resources for support in the Ubuntu Community is AskUbuntu.com. But there is a big problem with the system: it is only in English. So many people end up wondering where can they get support in their local language, as their English level is not that good, or do not even understand it, or maybe they want to get support on their language. They go to their Local Community teams, and maybe Launchpad, but we all feel this is not enough.

In an effort to give a solution to this problem, which we discussed last UDS during the Leadership Summit, I got assigned the work item to investigate and work on localizing the Question and Answer (Q&A) systems. As I mentioned before, we are using Ask Ubuntu! as the current Q&A system, and is only available on English, and if anyone asks a question in other language it gets translated. But we want to have a system that can be used in various languages for people to get support in their native language, with no hesitations. This will be a way to improve the quality of the support given at the moment, and also get to a broader scope when we are talking about outreach. Ubuntu is available in many different languages, so why not also offer support in those languages?

So this is where you come in. I have been investigating on various Q&A systems, but would like to hear from all of your suggestions on which systems can be used for this specific project. That is why I have created the QandALocalization wiki page for you to add all your ideas on the project. We really need your help on this issue, as I would like to have many systems to compare, and finally decide on which one we should be using, so I do not regret about choosing the wrong system.

I would like to mention some requirements for the systems, remember they should have most of them (if not all!):

• Free and Open Source Software
• Easily translatable, even better if it can be done with Launchpad
• Integration with Single Sign-On systems, as we would use the Ubuntu SSO for logins
• Points or trophies system
• Obviously, a nice design that looks professional, and can be tweaked to get an Ubuntu theme
• It would be great if it is already translated in some languages</li

If the system you are thinking of meets those requirements, it is certainly something we are looking forward to analyze. In the future we will need the help from developers, translators and designers, so we can create a platform that can be stable and fulfills all of our requirements. I will also make sure to provide constant updates on how the project is going. I am really excited to start this, and expect a great outcome from it.

If you have any suggestions or want to chat about the project, you can go to the #ubuntu-q+a channel on irc.freenode.net (click here to join using webchat) and ping me (JoseeAntonioR), or you can also send me an email to joseeantonior AT ubuntu DOT com, I will be happy to answer all your enquiries and listen to all of your feedback.

After some consideration of both recent and historical decisions by Canonical in regards to the Ubuntu project and distribution, the lack of any noticeable dissension by the community leadership, I’ll be deleting my Launchpad account, along with all memberships to Ubuntu groups, this Saturday, March 2nd. The date represents the six year anniversary of my creating the account, so it seems somehow appropriate to delete it on this day. Additionally, this will give me a few days to [hopefully] make sure that I’m out of my commitments cleanly and things are turned over to the new Ubuntu Maryland contact properly. If you know of something that is needed to do before this date, please contact me.

Ron Swift is planning to have a local bug jam event this Saturday. Please RSVP to him if you are interested in participating.

Have you planned your Jam event for this March 1, 2, 3? There's still time.

Here's the link to register. It only takes a moment.
http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/add/?global_event_id=2221

You can register an in-person event or an online event. If you're Jamming online, why not try a Hangout as a good way to prepare for the upcoming UDS?

Thanks and let's get Jamming!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NHMUChmqJxE#t=3...

Within the Ubuntu realm there have been some dramatic changes that have erupted at the end of February 2013. The first shift was that the Ubuntu Developer Summit has shifted to an electronic-only format with the first one in the new style set to launch within a week of announcement. The second shift was the announcement that rolling releases are under formal consideration with that release paradigm change being under consideration at the hastily-announced event.

Where is the Ubuntu realm going? If you have the answer to that, you are among a select few. For the various flavors such as Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Lubuntu this is perhaps a systemic shock as the main flavor is now making fairly radical changes that may or may not fit with the goals of the flavor projects. The main line of Ubuntu is seeking convergence where it dominates the desktop, the tablet, and the phone. Rolling releases will presumably be needed to keep up with the fast-paced phone realm.

This is a bit of a change. Is the desktop where the future of computing is headed? Is the desktop going away in favor of pocket computers that somewhere inside still have a tiny amount of circuitry that results in them being called "phones"? That much is uncertain. The gamble being made by Canonical as it adds yet another mobile operating system to an already crowded space is that that is where things are headed. As noted by Anna Leach on The Register earlier in February, total planet-wide sales of cellular phones declined 1.7% last year. Half of all cellular phones on the planet sold in 2012 were made by one of the following three manufacturers/design bureaus: Apple, Samsung, Nokia.

Right now there is a bit of a rupture as to where Ubuntu and its flavors are progressing. That is unfortunate. There remains quite a bit of uncertainty in the market and no clear breakthrough leads yet that are truly destroying one segment of the market for another. The desktop is not dead and the cell phone seems mature/stagnant in terms of innovation at the moment.

Between the UDS changes and the rolling releases proposal, we are effectively rolling the dice. As a user of Xubuntu on a BeagleBoard-xM, I have to watch the development of the rolling release proposal very carefully to see if I am not left behind as Personal Package Archives (PPAs) do not build for ARM architecture routinely. My board is already considered unsupported but I would still like some flavor of Ubuntu, preferably Xubuntu, to still be able to boot on it. Indicators currently are not pointing towards that but towards a major drive now to get Ubuntu Phone ready and live as soon as possible.

Let us all hope that this roll of the dice is the right one.

Paradigm Shifting Without A Clutch by Stephen Michael Kellat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at http://archive.org/details/NoClutch.