ken’s blog

We need a hug!

Tomorrow (April 2, 2009) is the next Ubuntu Hug Day, focusing on xorg-server and xserver-xorg-video-intel bugs.  Jaunty is really shaping up to be a great Ubuntu release, but there are still some intel driver related bugs we really want to squash.

If you have a little time to help out, your hug can help improve Jaunty.  Here are some stats going into this week’s hug day:

* 49 New bugs need a hug.
* 103 Incomplete bugs need a status check.
* 81 Confirmed bugs need a review.
* 16 Bugs with patches that need to be reviewed.

Remember, every hug counts!

It’s a journey

No, not Journey the hit band from the 80s… wow that takes me back to damn near (or not that near) the beginning of my journey!

I have spent a wonderful 3 years working at rPath, which ended in January. Having made some great friends at rPath, of which I am thankful, and having had some great experiences too. I will miss my rPath family, but will surely stay in touch. Tomorrow I start the next leg of my journey, with Canonical. I will be a Desktop Integration Engineer, working on the desktop team to integrate the fine work being done by the Desktop Experience team into Ubuntu. This is a very exciting opportunity for me, I have really been doing this for the past 4 years working on Foresight Linux. Taking cool stuff people have been working on and integrating it into a distro for broader consumption.

Over the years working on Foresight I have formed some great relationships with our Ubuntu brothers which has lead me to join their team. Joining the Ubuntu Desktop team will change my day job yes, but it won’t change my role or participation in the other work I do outside of that day job. I will still be maintaining Foresight Linux, the GNOME Developers Kit, PackageKit, and whatever other upstream projects I can cause trouble with.

Submission deadline for 2.5

Now that we have all had a few days to digest this, lets get down to business. I have created a wiki page outlining the process and listing the objectives for 2.5 in a table of FITS issues.

Road map

Please look over it, if you have other objectives you would like to add, please file issues assigning the fix version to 2.5. That will make them show up in the table on the wiki page. I am setting a deadline of Wednesday, Nov 19 1200 UTC. To find the time in UTC, run ‘date -u’.

Please get your submissions in! We will quickly review the submissions and update the issues to reflect fix version. I want to start the planning stages pretty quickly after the deadline, gathering requirements and designing the solutions. Please include as much detail as possible in the issues, and please review the issues we already have adding comments. The more information the better.

Announcing Foresight 2.0 with GNOME 2.22

Foresight Linux 2.0 has been released, featuring GNOME 2.22. Available for download from rBuilder for both x86 and x86_64 architectures.

Foresight Linux is a Linux distribution for your desktop that features a rolling release schedule that always keeps your desktop up to date. Foresight includes innovative applications that make using your computer easy, including Banshee for music management, F-Spot for photo management, as well as vibrant user and developer community.

New in Foresight 2.0:

The Foresight 2.0 features a new tar-based installer, that should install in less than 10 minutes, including formatting a 200 GB hard drive. Foresight is also developing new editions including KDE and XFCE in addition to GNOME available for x86 and x86_64 processors. Foresight is proud to be the first distribution to ship with:

• PackageKit to help users update their system and add and remove software
• Syslinux, a new bootloader to replace GRUB.
• GNOME-Do: GNOME Do allows you to quickly search for many items present in your GNOME desktop environment (applications, Evolution contacts, Firefox bookmarks, files, artists and albums in Rhythmbox, Pidgin buddies, etc.) and perform commonly used actions on those items (Run, Open, Email, Chat, Play, etc.).

Users should also find it much easier to use binary video card drivers from Nvidia and ATI than in Foresight 1.x. Transmission is also included as the default Bittorrent application.

For more information, please visit http://www.foresightlinux.org/

Because your desktop should be cool.

Updated:

Shuttle chooses Foresight for their new KPC

Awesome news… Shuttle released a press release today:

Shuttle Teams with Foresight Linux on $199 KPC
City of Industry, CA., MArch 4, 2008

Shuttle today announced that the newly launched $199 KPC will feature the Foresight Linux operating system. With an intuitive interface and user focused design, Foresight does away with the need for users to be familiar with Linux.

A host of the latest software is packaged with the operating system, giving users convenient and enjoyable access to music, photos, videos, documents, and the Internet. Even keeping up-to-date with the latest features and fixes is a simple process with the user friendly update button.

Foresight uses the revolutionary Conary® Package Manager developed by rPath and distributed as Open Source software under the terms of the Common Public License. With the Conary® Package Manager, the system updates only the specific files in packages which need to be updated so updating takes little time and bandwidth.

Shuttle’s KPC includes many software packages already installed, including the OpenOffice.org® office suite, the Firefox® web browser, the Pidgin instant messenger, the Banshee music player, the Totem movie player, the F-Spot photo organizer, and Compiz for 3D desktop effects. For more details visit: http://us.shuttle.com/kpc

I am fortunate enough to have received one of these little boxes already, and I am pretty impressed. Great value for the $199 price tag. And of course it is linux friendly, Foresight worked perfectly out of the box. All the way from sound, compiz, to suspend/hibernate, all just worked. In fact, this was a pre-release box they sent and it already had Foresight pre-loaded! So exciting, everyone go buy one

More information at Shuttle’s KPC website.

FOSDEM 2008

February will be a busy month, first SCALE in Los Angeles and later in the month FOSDEM 2008 in Brussels. There are a couple of *don’t miss* talks on the packaging track at FOSDEM this year:

• Conary Packaging: Simply Powerful by Michael K Johnson
• PackageKit by Richard Hughes

I am also very excited to get the opportunity to hang out with some of the long time Foresight contributors, Antonio Meireles (doniphon), Mark__T and hopefully some others from Europe (pscott I am looking at you!).

I am hoping to do a lightening talk on the GNOME Developer Kit in the GNOME Dev room.

PackageKit now included in Foresight

I am very excited to report that we have decided PackageKit is ready for wider spread use. Foresight users will all get PackageKit with their next update, and hopefully all future updates will be performed with PackageKit.

I have been extremely pleased with the progress of PackageKit, I really think it is the right solution and other distros should consider including it in the future. Richard Hughes and the other developers have really done a great job with it. For more information on PackageKit, check out the project site.

PackageKit in Foresight

PackageKit is still young, not quite complete, and the API is still in the works. However…. It has amazing potential and I am sure it will really rock. As of now, the conary backend is about 80% complete and needs testing. I would love to have some folks try it out and report bugs. If the bug seems to be related to conary, please specify the backend-conary component in bugzilla.

Current operations that are supported include:

• refresh-cache
• seach-name
• search-details
• get-updates
• update-system
• install
• remove
• get-depends
• get-description

To get it:

sudo conary update PackageKit gnome-packagekit

PackageKit updates, now with groups

PackageKit now has support for filtering by groups, based on the menu. None of the backends actually do anything with them yet, but here is a quick screenshot of what the UI looks like.

PackageKit, now with groups

PackageKit now has support for filtering by groups, based on the menu. None of the backends actually do anything with them yet, but here is a quick screenshot of what the UI looks like.