TimburyDotOrg

Spotify is a streaming music service that previously was only available to Windows and Mac users. Spotify offered a way for music lovers to enjoy their favorite tunes on their computers and gad…

One of the great things about Linux is how easy it is to customize. Now unfortunately if you don’t know what you’re doing and sometimes even if you do know what you’re doing, you can get into tr…

Two popular Linux distributions recently released new developmental versions on the road to their finals. One is early in its cycle and the other is about to cross the finish line. more>>

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Many Linux projects use Debian Linux as their code base for developing their distributions. Perhaps as many as 120 distributions are based on Debian and some include SimplyMepis, sidux, KNOPPIX…

Readers of my previous posts will know about the bad luck I’ve had when it comes to getting the screen setup on Linux, particularly with Ubuntu Linux. It’s a particularly annoying problem when t…

Apple’s iPad was hardly the first tablet to appear on the scene, but it is unquestionably responsible for the recent spike in tablet development. Now it looks as if Ubuntu — the Linux dist…

Ubuntu 10.04 is just around the corner, and it’s shaping up to be one of the most eagerly awaited (and controversial) releases in the distro’s history. What new goodies are included? How does it tap into the ever-expanding world of social networking? A…

Julian Lavergne from France posted ways to get involved into lubuntu on the mailing list of the project and I am reposting his suggestions here.
This is a quick summarize for people wanted to help on Lubuntu. In general, all tasks will be documented on the Subteams pages:

Packages and Code: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/SubTeams/CodingAndPackagingSubTeam
Artwork : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/SubTeams/ArtworkSubTeam
Doc [...]

Image by irene gr via Flickr

Everyone has their share of Karmic Koala stories (well, not everyone, but most people). Since I had four home machines on different distributions and versions, and since I had moved to Thailand where bandwidth is somewhat limited, I decided to standardize on Ubuntu 9.10 x86 and use an apt cache to help ease the bandwidth burden for mirrors and the country.

My re-installations weren’t without problems. Here are the ones I personally ran into. No hearsay here … say. Ahem.

• Flashing text and no X after installation, but only on one of the four. All four have i945 chips.
• Samba (and network in general) discovery isn’t working correctly.
• Avahi doesn’t work due to .local domain on the ISP’s part, and disabling the check is no longer an option in /etc/default/avahi-daemon (which doesn’t exist now). It’s possible, but it’s hard-coded into the start-up script, meaning that any updates will kill my change. 
• One machine that tracked the beta had a completely broken GStreamer until re-installation.
• Amazingly long Firefox freezes. I’m talking about over a minute. I’ve tried turned off safe browsing but that didn’t change the behavior.
• Brasero problems (of course!). Known bugs for eight months or so regarding DVD writes.
• Totem YouTube plug-in gives DBus errors.
• Totem Video Disk plug-in doesn’t work since it uses Brasero.

None of these are show-stoppers for me, but they are certainly annoyances. One of these is hardware related. The others are just half-sharpened pencils.

Image by -= Treviño =- via Flickr

After writing my post about the default applications in Ubuntu last night, I had some thoughts which Fieldyweb might agree with:

What they should do, is redesign that, take ALL the apps out of Ubuntu, other than ff add adobe flash and as many codecs, 3g ethernet and wifi drivers as they can get away with, then redesign the app store, so if you want printing, you install it from there, if you want evolution, gimp whatever you install it from there.

My opinion is that the universe and multiverse repositories contain too much software for Ubuntu to QA properly. The number of bug reports during alpha and beta is so large that many of them aren’t triaged until long after release. The release bugs aren’t triaged until the next version is just around the corner. Invalid is the natural response in that situation.

Ubuntu is a foundation-run project, but the software reflects on Canonical, which sells support. The Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life needs to take the lead here and move the MOTUs out of the official Ubuntu repositories and into Launchpad, Canonical’s code hosting and buid server. Making optional software available in individual PPAs, will mean that Ubuntu becomes responsible for much less and can concentrate on making the applications in main, especially default applications. Canonical can work toward its stated goal of creating a worthy competitor to OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and Windows 7.

What would the process of moving towards more streamlined look like? First, there would be no more mass import from Debian Unstable. Ubuntu would be responsible for the basic application and drivers necessary to run the various projects. MOTUs should be encouraged to move as quickly as possible to PPAs. AptURL should have the prohibition on PPAs removed for Launchpad.net. Finally, the Software Center needs to be reworked into a front-end for Launchpad PPAs. Backports will be responsible only for core applications (and likely only for LTS releases).

In the end, MOTUs and their PPAs would be obviously responsible for third-party package bugs which are now blamed on Ubuntu. Ubuntu development would more closely model its rivals (OS X and Windows), concentrating on the core OS and leaving the extra applications to interested parties. Users would still get one-click installation of software. Users would also stop bitching about having to upgrade in order get the newest software. The default Ubuntu install would just work.

There are some problems with this approach:

1. Making sure users understand how to get PPA software and that the process is easy. This is solved using AptURL and one-click adding of PPAs and keys.
2. Enforcing a packaging method in PPAs which limits or eliminates dependency conflicts. This is solved by having the software center only search for MOTU PPAs, where MOTUs are responsible for limited numbers of packages. Python bindings for Coherence (uPnP) are handled by one MOTU and Python programs which use that binding are assigned to other MOTUs.
3. Ubuntu will definitely get some backlash for supporting fewer applications. Hopefully, this problem is mitigated by the improved quality of the core OS.

Thoughts?