As you can imagine many Ubuntu Community members are waiting in excitement for the announcement tomorrow surrounding the Ubuntu Tablet but the fact that HTC.com currently has a countdown with the exact time as the Ubuntu.com countdown appears to be just wild coincidence.

If you look at htc.com’s source code you will see they commented their countdown and listed it as the “m7 countdown” which is the codename for a handset they have been developing.

I do however hope tomorrow some new hardware is announced and if that is the case I think hardware will likely come from a lesser known OEM to start with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Unlikely to see HTC Ubuntu Tablet appeared first on Benjamin Kerensa dot Com.

I have no inside information at all, and the following should be taken with a HUGE pinch of salt … but with a countdown ending Feb 19th on Ubuntu.com hinting at a Tablet announcement, and also HTC’s Feb 19th announcement countdown one has to wonder a little bit. And now even more when HTC posted the picture below to Instagram as a teaser with what looks like it has some tablet sized devices on the bottom row under covers … make your own judgement call, how cool would that be. I for one will be eagerly waiting tomorrow to find out :)

Image Source: Instagram

Ubuntu One is a service that I have come to rely on. Initially a personal user, I use it for my wedding photography too these days. I promise I’m not getting a kick back for writing this, I’m just writing about a service that I use and appreciate! If you’ve not heard of Ubuntu One before, it’s a service that copies your files to the cloud, and then keeps them synchronised with different computers and across operating systems. Here’s how I use Ubuntu One:

1. Storing and sharing. I make the images from pre-wedding photo sessions available to clients to download via an Ubuntu One link. Right click the zip file containing the images, click Ubuntu One, then click publish. Then e-mail them the link. Job done.
2. Selection list and template contract. When I update my selection list or template contract it’s important that I use the most recent version consistently. The automatic synchronisation means I always have the latest version available no matter which device I’m working on.
3. Other bits and bobs. The various versions of my logo I’ve needed, the occasional spreadsheet, graphics for my printed DVDs and so on. Again, edit on one machine, available on all of them.
4. Mobile integration. I can select folders from my Ubuntu One store to have synchronised on my Android devices. I use an Android tablet to showcase my photographs with prospective clients. I can update the folders on my main PC and have the images magically appear on the tablet. Ubuntu One also uploads photographs taken on my Android smartphone automatically, an easy way to make a backup.
5. Music. I like listening to music as I edit photographs and the Ubuntu One Music Store makes it easy to get hold of new tracks.

If, due to some freak occurrence, I am away from my computer, laptop, phone or any other device that is actually mine, I can still get access to my files through the web interface. Also, the terms and conditions are friendly and pretty easy to read. And you get 5GB storage space for free. Yes, there are other similar services, such as Dropbox. But Ubuntu One came with my operating system and hasn’t yet given me a reason to look elsewhere!

Pin It

Hello, World!

There are details coming out soon with regards to GSoC:2013, so all this is without any official hat of any sort on.

However, I had an idea, and I was wondering if there were people interested in mentoring it.

For a long time, I’ve wanted a Debian android application — one that will use API calls to fetch PTS info, BTS info, and intercept bug URLs to display Debian related information on the native interface.

It’d also be neat to set a profile (e.g. my emails) and get notifications when things happen that I care about.

Anyone know how to code for android and interested in GSoC?

Dell announced today an updated XPS 13, preloaded with Ubuntu, which has a full high-definition 1080p display. It will be available for sale in the USA  and Canada, but as part of this update Dell will also be making it available in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

 

As we reported in November, the Dell XPS 13 is a high-end ultramobile laptop, offering developers a complete client-to-cloud experience. It is the result of Dell’s bold Sputnik initiative which embraced the community and received terrific response from developers around the world.  With Ubuntu 12.04 LTS preloaded, the machine is perfect for developers and anyone who wants high speed, brilliant graphics and smart design.

If you’re keen to get your hands on a new Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition with Ubuntu pre-loaded, check-out our web page for more details and links:

  http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/dell/dellxps

We’ll post more links allowing you to buy in additional countries as soon as we can.

KDE Project:

• DCOP

Oriental and other input methods have long been fiddly in Kubuntu. I'm very pleased to see that ace Kubuntu ninja Michal Zajac has fixed the language packs to set up the input methods correctly when installing a language that needs it.

The paper cuts team will be meeting tomorrow (Tuesday 19th February 2013) in #ubuntu-meeting on Freenode at 1900 UTC. See here for a translation of that time into your favourite timezone.

This is a great opportunity for anyone who's been interested in getting involved with Ubuntu development, but for whatever reason hasn't gotten round to it, to dip their toes in. The paper cuts project covers many areas of Ubuntu development, from bug triaging to bug fixing, from packaging out patches to packaging our tools. We work other teams whenever our work takes us onto theirs, and we work with upstreams to fix the bugs in their packages that Ubuntu ships. Our tasks are small and relatively simple, perfect for new contributors who don't wan't to get in over their heads too soon.

If you've got anything you'd like to discuss, then head over to the wiki page for the meeting and add it to the agenda. Once you've done that you should head over to the paper cuts mailing list and give us a heads up that you've done it so we can have a quick chat about it before the meeting - the more we discuss before the meeting, the more time we'll have in the meeting to talk about other things.

Come along tomorrow night and hang about in the chatroom. You don't even have to say anything if you don't want to. Just lurk and get a feel for how we do things. I'll be online afterwards so if you want to follow up on anything that came up in the meeting, or just ask me anything at all about the project, then just ping 'notgary' on Freenode (that's me btw :)).

Hoping to see some new faces (well usernames) there tomorrow.

KDE Project:

• DCOP

Aaron's grumpy discussion of how Unity doesn't currently use Qt on the desktop made it to Slashdot got this nice comment in the /. discussion:

'I have been using Kubuntu -- the semi-official KDE Ubuntu -- for years. I like it, it's stable, and the interface with least surprise. It does what I want, when I want, and it doesn't try to "integrate" things that do not need to be, or should not be, integrated.'

Except we're an entirely official flavour, just like Ubuntu Desktop :)

This week's episode recaps preparations for Ubuntu Global Jam for the Raring cycle and brings a replay of "Agriculture USA" from the United States Department of Agriculture relative to rural broadband deployment in Ohio and beyond.

Download here (MP3) (ogg) (FLAC), or subscribe to the podcast (MP3) to have episodes delivered to your media player. We suggest subscribing by way of a service like gpodder.net.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.

As Mobile World Congress approaches (February 25-28) it is anticipated there will be a number of announcements made in regards to cell phones and other mobile technologies. In the case of SoC manufactures, the major players have already shown their cards as the market awaits further details on how they will execute delivery.

Possible 2013 Chromebook suitors include the following.

• Intel (Haswell Architecture)
• nVidia Tegra 4
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 600/800
• Samsung “big.Little” Exynos 5 (8 cores)

There is much speculation all of the above vendors are preparing Chromebooks and speculation (Chrome OS code hints) Google is currently testing a game changing Tegra 4 nVidia Chromebook. Here is a rundown of the SoC specs as they are known today.

• 4-core Cortex-A15 processor running at 1.9 GHz
• Fifth/companion Cortex-A15 core running at 700 or 800 MHz
• Manufactured as a 28nm HPL (28nm low power with high-k + metal gates)
• Supports for LP-DDR3 dual-channel memory
• GeForce GPU with 72 custom cores
• LTE capability with optional Icera i500 chipset
• Support for UHD like 2560×1700 screen resolution

From a user experience perspective one can safely say it is a much improved Tegra 3; 2.6 faster web browsing and six times the GPU horsepower.

Get Your Chromebook Game On

Tegra 4 is a good fit for Chromebook as more than anyone nVidia has the talent and experience to bring advanced game play to the table.

Project Shield

As evidence of this, nVidia’s Project SHIELD is a Tegra 4 Android “Jellybean” device with a multi-touch screen which permits gamers to access and play an extensive catalog of Android games. There are many Project SHIELD optimized games already available through Tegrazone with more under development. nVidia is reaching out to the gaming community and offering to assist developers in optimizing their products for this platform. For the Chromebook ecosystem, the next topic is important.

nVidia GRID

Although not specific to Tegra 4, GRID holds the promise of a fantastic cloud gaming experience which fits hand and glove with Chromebook. Add a UHD like user experience to the excitement of game play and that becomes compelling. In addition, the door remains open for the cloud delivery of game optimizations for Tegra 4 much like Riptide GP was optimized for Tegra 3.

Last and certainly not least is the development occurring in the Ouya gaming community which is targeted to Tegra.

Wrap Up

In all likely hood the new Nexus Chromebook(s) will be announced during Google IO which is scheduled for May 15-17. Tegra 4 availability is targeted for Q2 so with any luck we should see products by early to mid summer.

Stay tuned.

The post Google Teases nVidia Chromebook appeared first on j-Baer.

The clipboard management is something really important for me at the time of using an Operative System. Diodon is an excellent clipboard manager that is integrated with Ubuntu and its Unity interface. To install it we just need to use the PPA available from their Launchpad site (since the next …

La gestión de portapapeles es algo para mi muy importante a la hora de usar un Sistema Operativo. Diodon es un excelente gestor de portapapeles que se integra muy bien con Ubuntu y su interfaz Unity. Para instalarlo solo debemos hacer uso del PPA disponible en el sitio de Launchpad …

Oops.
A few months ago, we (that is: Jono and I, the greatest sysadmin team the world have ever known) moved various things around on various servers. And in the course of this action, we completely forgot to put the Shot of Jaq website somewhere. So shotofjaq.org currently is down.
As I say, oops.
Anyway, we haven’t lost the audio (we’re not that bad), so I trawled archive.org for all the episode descriptions and threw them together into a brief listing of all the SoJ episodes with download links. You can therefore see Shot of Jaq again at http://www.kryogenix.org/shotofjaq.html.
Sorry about that, all. We’re rubbish. Let this be a lesson to you.

Full Circle Side-Pod Episode Thirteen: That’s How it Feels To Be Wrong

In this episode, Ubuntu Phone and TV.

File Sizes:

• OGG 45.5Mb
• mp3 52.1Mb

Running Time: 1 hour 21 mins 56 sec

Feeds for both MP3 and OGG:

RSS feed, MP3: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed

RSS feed, OGG: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed/atom

The podcast is in MP3 and OGG formats. You can either play the podcast in-browser if you have Flash and/or Java, or you can download the podcast with the link underneath the player. Show notes after the jump.

Your Hosts:

• Robin Catling (blog at http://catlingmindswipe.blogspot.com/, @robincatling on Twitter)
  Culture-vultures can also go to Everything Express at http://everythingexpress.wordpress.com/
• Ed Hewitt (blog at http://www.edhewitt.co.uk/, @edhewitt on Twitter)
• Dave Wilkins (blog at http://davidalexanderwilkins.blogspot.co.uk/ and on twitter @DavidAWilkins)
• Alan Pope (blog at http://popey.com/blog/, twitter @popey), (Popey) on Google+

Additional audio by Victoria Pritchard

Show Notes

01:52 | WELCOME and INTRO

04:52 | SINCE LAST TIME

• Dave has been blogging
• Ed got a Galaxy Nexus 4
• Alan has been on Kickstarter in place of the shopping channels, the latest delivery being the Digisparc.
• Robin rashly took on the Full Circle Magazine Audio Edition (coming soon)

14:46 | Catch-up with UDS and 13.04 Mid-Cycle Sprint with Alan, and we discuss rolling releases.

22:43 | Ubuntu Phone – the gloves are off!
In a video released over the New Year, Mark Shuttleworth demos the new Ubuntu Phone operating system.

In a glossy, well produced (if slightly long 8mins 37secs), Canonical founder and CTO Mark Shuttleworth talks us through Ubuntu Phone, An Industry Proposition, a product he hopes will challenge iOS, Android and now Tizen in the mobile market.

Some of the key features:

• Ubuntu distilled from TV and desktop
• ‘Welcome screen’ not lock screen
• One-handed operation using all four screen edges
• Full swipe gesture control
• Bottom edge for show/hide buttons
• Show Unity Dash any time using left swipe
• Go to previous app using right swipe
• Full customisation of home screen
• Ubuntu Software Centre for mobile apps
• UbuntuOne cloud storage built in.
• Native Apps built in QT framework

Ed’s links:

• Microsoft paying developers to port apps over to Windows Phone
• The Rise and Fall of Palm
• Gmail drop support for Exchange Active Sync
• Blackberry Z10 Review
• Windows Phone 8 Review
• Ubuntu Phone to have issues
• Latest Smartphone Market
• What the hell happen to Ubuntu’s only chance of success
• Blackberry 10 has apps people actually want! – No terminal app in sight!

1.07:10 | Ubuntu TV: 

1.19:37 | FEEDBACK: How to get in touch with us

1.20:11 | WRAP and OUTRO

Comments: on this page, using the comment form, OR; Send us a comment to podcast@fullcirclemagazine.org.
You can also send us a comment by recording an audio clip of no more than 30 seconds and sending it to the same address.
Comments and audio may be edited for length. Please remember this is a family-friendly show.

Please note: this podcast is provided with absolutely no warranty whatsoever; neither the producers nor Full Circle Magazine accept any responsibility or liability for content or interaction which readers and listeners may enter into using external links gleaned from this forum or podcast series.

Creative Commons Music Tracks
* Opening: ‘Knights of the darkness’ by Zero Project
* Main theme: ‘CCMixter’ by Code
* Incidental: ‘Funkorama‘ by Kevin MacLeod
* Incidental: ‘Techno-dog’ by Unknown, original recording royalty free under Creative Commons v2
* Opening dramatic dialog by Dave Wilkins and Robin Catling, from 2001: A Space Odyssey
* Opening dramatic monolog by Dave Wilkins, ‘Saruman.’

There are many users of so-called Chrubuntu which have Ubuntu 12.04 running on their Samsung ARM Chromebooks. And I do not support them with any updates so they wonder how to upgrade to 13.04 release. So I decided to spend some time and help with it.

For this I installed Chrubuntu 12.04 on SD card (not on internal as I have own installation of Ubuntu there) and I will go though upgrade to 13.04 and document all steps here.

First thing: if your Chrubuntu installation fails on fetching 4.7MB of “ubuntu-1204-binak.bz2″ file then you probably started script with “sh” instead of “bash”. Abort process and run it with “bash” — it really needs it.

But ok, you got your Chromebook booted to Ubuntu desktop (running Unity 2D). Remember: your password is “user”. Open terminal (Ctrl+LAlt+t), get root and edit APT sources so they will point to “raring” instead of “precise”. Now refresh APT data and run distro upgrade (I used “apt-get dist-upgrade”).

There may be some issues during upgrade. I had to run “apt-get -f install” and it removed some packages including “unity” and “ubuntu-desktop”. To get them back I needed “apt-get install ubuntu-desktop gnome-control-center nautilus nautilus-share nautilus-sendto eog unity libgnome-desktop-3.4 gnome-settings-daemon” command.

Next step is adding ARM Chromebook hackers PPA: “sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromebook-ppa” and again updating APT cache.

Now it is time to install Ubuntu kernel and tools: “apt-get install cgpt vboot-kernel-utils linux-image-chromebook”. During installation you will get “Warning: root device does not exist” message during creation of initrd image. Just ignore that and then remove “flash-kernel” package.

Time to sign kernel. Create file with kernel command line. I suggest “console=tty1 printk.time=1 quiet nosplash rootwait root=/dev/mmcblk1p7 rw rootfstype=ext4″ but you can adapt it as you want. Sign kernel: “vbutil_kernel –pack /tmp/kernel-to-boot-ubuntu –keyblock /usr/share/vboot/devkeys/kernel.keyblock –version 1 –signprivate /usr/share/vboot/devkeys/kernel_data_key.vbprivk –config CMDLINE_FILE –vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-5-chromebook –arch arm”. And do not forget to write it to SD: “dd if=/tmp/kernel-to-boot-ubuntu of=/dev/mmcblk1p1 bs=4M”.

Time to reboot to 13.04. Less kernel messages on console then before but blue screen instead of Unity desktop ;( Good that “Ctrl-LAlt-1″ switches us to text console.

Login as “user” (password is “user” as I mentioned earlier), gain root and install “chromium-mali-drivers” package. Now “restart lightdm” and check how X11 looks this time. Still blue? Switch back to text console then.

Now it is time to enable “universe” part of repository (I though that it is enabled by default). Edit “/etc/apt/sources.list” file and uncomment proper lines. Now we can install “armsoc” X11 display driver. Here you can curse at me — package in repository lacks Exynos5 part of xorg.conf ;(

But this does not change situation — still no Unity. At this moment I can recommend XFCE instead. Install “xubuntu-desktop” (181MB of disk space needed).

Ok, time to switch default session to Xubuntu one. Edit “/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf” and set “user-session” to “xubuntu”. Save and “restart lightdm”. Now you should land in XFCE session.

Are icons broken? If yes then you probably need to complete distribution upgrade. I had 725 packages to process… Once it done — restart X11 session.

So now I have working XFCE desktop with latest kernel. OpenGLES is not working but I have to check why.

Was it hard?

Related content:

1. How to install Ubuntu 13.04 on Chromebook
2. Used Chromebook for few days
3. Unity? Thanks, but no
4. How to cross compile ARM kernel under Ubuntu 10.10
5. I did not finished with Chromebook

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
How to update Chrubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu 13.04 was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.

Python trademark at risk in Europe: The python foundation need your help!

There is a company in the UK that is trying to trademark the use of the term "Python" for all software, services, servers... pretty much anything having to do with a computer.

In my not so humble opinion this is rather ridiculous. Python is the programming language originally created by Guido van Rossum and now maintained by a large community. Not some currently not-existing product by a british company.

According to our London counsel, some of the best pieces of evidence we can submit to the European trademark office are official letters from well-known companies "using PYTHON branded software in various member states of the EU" so that we can "obtain independent witness statements from them attesting to the trade origin significance of the PYTHON mark in connection with the software and related goods/services." We also need evidence of use throughout the EU.

So it's incredibly easy for any company using Python to help out and you should feel ashamed for yourself if you don't do it. At Booking.com we use python quite a bit (internal django apps, yum, mockbuild, mailman, func and a host of scripts for example) so I just sent our letter to the PSF. Hope it helps!

The answer is no, is definitely not the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, as we all know that answer is 42. The answer no is for the following:

Is this the year of the Linux desktop?

This was the title of a post recently on someone’s blog that’s been picked up many times by different Linux news outlets. I woke up 3 days in a row with that stupid post in my reader. I’m tired of it 10 years ago, and I am still tired of it today. Here is why I feel that answer is no, and of course you are more than welcome to disagree.

I have a couple of newer, fairly powerful desktop/laptop machines. I typically run Kubuntu 12.10 on both of these machines, but I have tried various other distributions as well. I have tried Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSUSE, Mint, and a handful of others. The one thing they all have in common with Windows Vista? They are slow. Intel i7 or i5, 3rd generation, with no less than 8GB of RAM, and one has a SSD, and they are still slow. Slow compared to Windows 8. Windows 8 might be the donkey’s ass when it comes to a desktop operating system, but I’ll be damned, it is faster than any Linux desktop distribution out there today. It is even faster than one of the distributions running XFCE or LXDE.

I don’t get this the least bit, what happened to the good ol’ days where Linux was the fastest thing to hit the desktop? Have we decided to scrub performance for silly cartoonist styling and bling? Is it the many desktop search daemons? Does it have to do with the poor battery performance? What is it? Why does Windows 8 boot up faster for me? Why does Windows 8 run better for me? None of the pieces of my systems use binary blobs, they are all Intel rigs. Speaking of poor battery performance, I love getting 2.5 hours with Linux (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Fedora tested here) where Windows 8 gets over 4 hours. What the hell is abusing that other 1.5 hours my battery can hold? Powertop puts blame on eth0, WiFi, and other things you need running, but damn, 1.5 hours!

On a more positive note, but still not causing a switch in answer to that oh so famous, yet supremely stupid question, applications for Linux are starting to build. With Microsoft announcing their stupid rules for Office 2013 (no, it isn’t coming to Linux, so quit drooling) where you can only install Office on 1 machine and 1 machine only, LibreOffice is looking like a better option these days. Now there is Steam, so those of you who were itching to play games on Linux, have at it! I have Spotify running natively and it is quite nice. And, as a developer, nothing comes close to beating Linux on the desktop. As a developer, I don’t mean one of those that drinks Starbucks all day, waxes their mustache, wears jeans 10 sizes to small, and code in Ruby. I mean one that writes code for compiling, or writing scripts and applications for servers and cloud crap in Python, or just saying the hell with it and copying and pasting in PHP.

That is my rant for the day, and the end to some sarcasm. So quit trying to get visitors with stupid posts that have the same answer as they did 20 years ago and have no chance of changing anytime soon.

PS: NO, this does not apply to OMG Ubuntu!

The Answer Is No is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.

In no particular order, here are my 4 picks for the DPL thunderdome:

• algernon
• gregoa
• rra
• KiBi

I hope they all run. Really.

As a brief followup to my recent post about ssh-import-id now supporting Github in addition to Launchpad, I should also mention that I've also added a new feature for removing keys that were previously imported.

Here's an example, importing kirkland's public keys from Launchpad.

kirkland@x220:~$ ssh-import-id lp:kirkland
2013-02-15 14:53:46,092 INFO Authorized key ['4096', 'd3:dd:e4:72:25:18:f3:ea:93:10:1a:5b:9f:bc:ef:5e', 'kirkland@x220', '(RSA)']
2013-02-15 14:53:46,101 INFO Authorized key ['2048', '69:57:f9:b6:11:73:48:ae:11:10:b5:18:26:7c:15:9d', 'kirkland@mac', '(RSA)']
2013-02-15 14:53:46,102 INFO Authorized [2] SSH keys

And now let's remove those keys...

kirkland@x220:~$ ssh-import-id -r lp:kirkland
2013-02-15 14:53:49,528 INFO Removed labeled key ['4096', 'd3:dd:e4:72:25:18:f3:ea:93:10:1a:5b:9f:bc:ef:5e', 'kirkland@x220', '(RSA)']
2013-02-15 14:53:49,532 INFO Removed labeled key ['2048', '69:57:f9:b6:11:73:48:ae:11:10:b5:18:26:7c:15:9d', 'kirkland@mac', '(RSA)']
2013-02-15 14:53:49,532 INFO Removed [2] SSH keys

Neat!

So the way this works is that ssh-import-id now adds a comment to the end of each line it adds to your ~/.authorized_keys file, "tagging" the keys that it adds.  When removing keys, it simply looks for keys tagged accordingly.

Enjoy!

:-Dustin