Martin-Éric in a nutshell

• Born on year zero of time_t() in Québec and living in Finland since 1998.
• Language freak (native English and French, near-native Finnish, fluent in several more languages).
• Traveling freak. As my homepage says: "if you're doing something cool and live somewhere, where an unusual language is spoken, I definitely want to hear from you."
• Connector personality:
  • I facilitate the encounter of innovative people from different corners of the planet.
  • Those people often launch successful business relationships as a result of my facilitation.

Background

• Became an Ubuntero via Launchpad on 2006-09-18 (already on the Community Council agenda, ages ago).

• Team member of Sange Coop's [http://www.linux-tuki.fi/ Linux Tuki], which is the official Ubuntu support partner for Finland.

• Master of Ceremony and main organizer of Debian Day at Debconf 2005.
• Leader of the Linux-Aktivaatori team that handled Debconf 2005 press relations.
• Professional pedigree in Business Strategy, Key Account Management, Product Management:

  • [http://q-funk.iki.fi Martin-Éric Racine: Homepage]

• Co-founder of [http://www.linutop.com Linutop].

• Currently working as Business Development Manager at [http://www.artecgroup.com Artec Group OÜ], a thin client manufacturer and ASIC/FPGA design start-up.

• Actively involved in the AMD Geode Linux mailing list, where I ensure that the sometimes OLPC-specific code also works on more generic Geode hardware such as the [http://www.thincan.com ThinCan].

• Debian maintainer since 2003 (cups-pdf, cupsys, ispell-et, numlockx, planner, rus-ispell, upgrade-system, utf-migration-tool, xserver-xorg-video-amd):

  • [http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=q-funk%40iki.fi Debian Developer's Packages Overview]

  • [http://nm.debian.org/nmstatus.php?email=q-funk%40iki.fi Debian New Maintainer: Applicant Status]

• Ubuntu maintainer and user as well. I keep track of Launchpad bugs against my packages and merge back into Debian whenever possible.

Goals for Ubuntu

Primary goals

• Advocacy.
  • My laptop has an Ubuntu sticker that attracts a lot of attention and that provides a good opportunity to distribute CDs to interested people. I thus regularly end up handing out CDs and providing initial guidance to lay Ubuntu adopters. I do the same with corporate users wanting to offer versions of their software on Linux. I recommend that they chose Ubuntu as their supported distribution. It works.
• Eliminate the delta between Debian and Ubuntu releases for my own packages.
  • As I keep on noticing, most Ubuntu delta apply to Debian without affecting operation on a default Debian system and also often contribute something meaningful to the overall packaging quality. Thus, most of my current activities on Launchpad involve keeping track of bugs whose solution can be readily merged directly into my Debian packages.
  • One example of this has been the long-standing situation with CUPS-PDF:
    • Because Ubuntu uses a low-privilege user to run CUPS, CUPS-PDF could not write files to user directories using the 1.1.23 series. Various users reported this throughout the Hoary, Breezy and Dapper cycles. However, since the CUPS 1.2 series was released, a new method exists to control this: as keen Ubuntu users noticed, setting mode +s on the back-end binary fixes it. After ensuring that it would not break the Debian package, I gladly merged the fix in the postinst script for cups-pdf 2.4.1-2, right on time for the Edgy release.
• Crazy idea #1: the sponsor-sync queue.
  • Many developers prefer to work within the Ubuntu team, but want their work to benefit all Debian derivatives. They also clearly see the benefit of avoiding unnecessary delta between their Debian and Ubuntu versions of the same software. Ensuring this requires uploading straight into Debian and then requesting a sync to Ubuntu. However, uploading to Debian requires passing NM and becoming a DD, which many people find pointlessly tedious, especially when Ubuntu is their main playground. The idea: What if we had a dedicated team of reviewers with its own upload queue, similar to Debian Mentors and Ubuntu REVU, that strictly takes care of both sponsoring packages to Debian and then requesting the sync right after?

Secondary goals

Entreprise Linux

• Create, develop and implement marketing strategies that will make Ubuntu the new de-facto Entreprise Linux solution.
• Support startups interested in developing Ubuntu-based custom Debian distributions for their local market.
  • Already in contact with two Baltic startups who want to do this.

• Develop an [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EngineerCertification Ubuntu Debian Certified Engineer] (UDCE) training program.

  • Eliminate the corportate world's scepticism against Debian and Ubuntu.
  • Directly compete with Red Hat's RHCE as the #1 Linux certification.
  • Motivate ISV support of Debian and Ubuntu (e.g. Oracle, etc.).
• Develop an Ubuntu Debian program for ISV partners.
  • Motivate QA standards resulting from ISV participation in UDCE training program.
  • Emphasize additional training on how to package software for Debian and Ubuntu.

ALSA PowerMac issues

ALSA support on PowerMac mostly works on G4 or newer hardware, but is somewhat broken on OldWorld and G3 hardware:

• [https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/view.php?id=306 ALSA BTS: 0000306: Burgundy: compiles, but no sound comes out] (use Guest login to view)

Because this situation threatens to leave early PowerMac users in the dust, over what is a rather trivial issue to fix, I've been actively solliciting ALSA and PPC kernel developer help to permanently fix ALSA on all PPC subarchitectures, via repeated messages to the Debian PowerPC mailing list and via a series of bug reports on the ALSA Bug Tracker.

Ubuntu bounty

In order to stimulate developers willing to tackle this issue, I got MarkShuttleworth to offer a 500 USD bounty. Interested developers should contact Ubuntu's MattZimmerman for details on how to claim the bounty.

Current status of ALSA support on PowerMac

This table attempts to summarize the status of support for ALSA sound on PowerMac hardware.

Information gathering is still work in progress and done via the [http://wiki.debian.org/?PowerpcSoundcards Debian wiki], based on data provided by users in response to my posts on the Debian PowerPC mailing list.

NOTES

AWACS (601, 603, 604, 604e a.k.a. Old World)

• Beeping goes to both the internal speaker and the audio output, because the circuitry to mute the internal speaker is not detected by the driver. As such, getting beeps exclusively to the audio output requires disconnecting the cable going to the internal speaker.

Screamer (beige G3)

• CD playback requires selecting the CD source as recordable.
• Output jack doubles as speaker/headphones.
• Input jack doubles as line/microphone.

Burgundy (iMac G3)

As of kernel 2.6.13 (ALSA 1.0.9a):

• Most of the mutes don't work, or their state cannot be saved.
• Headphone detection induced auto-muting of the speakers doesn't work.
• Controls for the stereo speakers and for the headphones are reversed (wrong offset in the control matrix?).

Snapper

G5 desktop

As of kernel 2.6.12 (ALSA 1.0.9):

• The 3 outputs (line/headphones/speakers) work correctly, along with auto-detection of an insterted plug on the first two output.
• The digital input is not working yet.

G4 PowerBook alu post-february-2005 (PowerBook 5,6)

As of kernel 2.6.13 (ALSA 1.0.9a):

• Sound is dead when returning from a power suspend.
• Analog CD control is not available.

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