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Ubuntu Open Week - Introduction to Xubuntu - Xubuntu Team - Mon, Apr 27th, 2009

UTC -4

(05:01:04 PM) Riddell: Intro to Xubuntu coming up shortly, presumably with your friend and mine, cody-somerville
(05:01:14 PM) cody-somerville: Thanks Riddell.
(05:01:16 PM) knome: (and no talking about hot tubs)
(05:01:20 PM) cody-somerville: :)
(05:01:54 PM) cody-somerville: Welcome everyone to the session we've titled "Intro to Xubuntu".
(05:01:58 PM) knome: Feel free to ask any questions at any time on #ubuntu-classroom-chat
(05:02:01 PM) eagles0513875 left the room.
(05:02:13 PM) ***JPohlmann says hello
(05:02:18 PM) cody-somerville: I'm here today with some very special people from the Xubuntu team to talk to you about the Xubuntu project.
(05:02:56 PM) mode (-o maco ) by maco
(05:03:33 PM) cody-somerville: I'm going to chat a little bit and then I'm going to hand it off to the other folks with me so they have a chance to speak to you about the part of the Xubuntu project they're most passionate about.
(05:04:29 PM) cody-somerville: We just released Xubuntu 9.04 last week which I'm happy to say is definitely our best release yet.
(05:04:49 PM) cody-somerville: Xubuntu 9.04 includes the latest major release of the Xfce desktop environment 4.6
(05:05:31 PM) cody-somerville: Lots of great improvements in 4.6 thanks to the hard work of the Xfce development team
(05:06:04 PM) cody-somerville: If you're interesting in taking a tour of some of these great new features, I encourage you to drop by http://www.xfce.org/about/tour
(05:07:08 PM) cody-somerville: Other notable improvements with 9.04 include: samba browsing, support for access remote network shares, a new user session switcher applet, and some really fantastic artwork.
(05:07:43 PM) GaBo: .info
(05:07:44 PM) cody-somerville: You can read more about the Xubuntu 9.04 release at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/JauntyJackalope/Final
(05:07:56 PM) cody-somerville: So, what do we have on the go for Karmic?
(05:08:19 PM) cody-somerville: Xubuntu has been getting a lot of attention with the netbook folks.
(05:08:21 PM) hollman left the room (quit: "Saliendo").
(05:09:49 PM) cody-somerville: We want to continue to make Xubuntu a great operating system to run on your netbooks so we're going to get serious about examining what makes up Xubuntu. We're going to try and skim away some of those excess libs, we're going to re-evaluate the stack of applications we offer on the desktop such as the image viewer, and we're going to be looking at processes running by default.
(05:10:33 PM) cody-somerville: We're also going to be working with upstream developers to improve the login experience by making it zippier and quicker than ever.
(05:11:10 PM) sirdiego: <3
(05:12:05 PM) cody-somerville: Another area we're going to focus on in improving offline documentation - improving not only content but also localization
(05:12:10 PM) charlie-tca: <SiDi> QUESTION: What about Xfce's session opening ? it's quite slow at the moment
(05:12:30 PM) cody-somerville: This is a known issue. There appears to be a regression which we hope resolve shortly.
(05:13:39 PM) cody-somerville: Finally, For Karmic, I believe we should continue to be the best looking flavour of Ubuntu ;]. We'll be updating our usplash theme, tweaking our icon theme, and possibly using a new custom gtk theme which is in the works.
(05:14:21 PM) MadGab: great :D!
(05:14:55 PM) cody-somerville: I encourage everyone to get involved and help make this all possible.
(05:15:09 PM) cody-somerville: UDS is coming up very quickly and I look forward to seeing you there or working with you remotely.
(05:15:14 PM) cody-somerville: Xubuntu is a great project to get involved in.
(05:15:20 PM) daskreech: cody-somerville: usplash still exists for Koala?
(05:15:29 PM) cody-somerville: daskreech, Thats yet to be decided.
(05:15:34 PM) charlie-tca: <sirdiego> QUESTION: I used xubuntu a long time ago, is gdm still the one? are there plans to change to, maybe slim, in xubuntu?
(05:16:51 PM) cody-somerville: sirdiego, There may be some changes in karmic. Unfortunately, I don't have much details on this yet.
(05:17:31 PM) sirdiego: i think for xubuntu it'll be nice to have a fast dm
(05:17:45 PM) cody-somerville: I agree :)
(05:18:37 PM) JPohlmann: Being fast is not everything. Slim lacks important usability features and AFAIR it can only be controlled via keyboard shortcuts. gdm is much better at that.
(05:19:32 PM) cody-somerville: <T0m4rn0ld> QUESTION: Did you read todays Distrowatch Weekly? Any comments?
(05:19:42 PM) cody-somerville: I have briefly read the article.
(05:20:37 PM) cody-somerville: Debian Xfce definitely has been able to develop a very light weight desktop
(05:20:51 PM) JManGt_ is now known as JManGt
(05:22:14 PM) cody-somerville: However, I feel Xubuntu offers a desktop that enables a wider audience of users to be productive
(05:23:07 PM) cody-somerville: The other thing to keep in mind is that Xubuntu 9.04 comes with a much newer kernel and includes numerous booting speed improvements, while Debian does not.
(05:24:27 PM) cody-somerville: As I said, we'll be looking to improve in the area of performance and memory usage for Jaunty
(05:24:36 PM) knome: for Karmic.
(05:24:42 PM) cody-somerville: Right, thanks knome :)
(05:24:44 PM) daskreech: +1
(05:25:26 PM) cody-somerville: Anyhow, I'd now like to pass the floor to knome
(05:25:37 PM) knome: ok, so let's get forward
(05:25:48 PM) cody-somerville: knome is going to chat with us about how we can help share Xubuntu with others and get involved in marketing and artwork and all that good stuff
(05:26:32 PM) knome: in they jaunty and partly in intrepid cycle already, we have given xubuntu and it's branding a huge facelift.
(05:27:02 PM) knome: just by looking http://xubuntu.org/ you can totally say it's not something antiqueish.
(05:27:31 PM) cody-somerville: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/JauntyJackalope/Final?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=main-screenshot.png <-- screenshot of desktop
(05:27:41 PM) cody-somerville: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/JauntyJackalope/Final?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=jaunty-gdm.png <-- screenshot of gdm login screen
(05:27:47 PM) knome: and the looks, branding, and how we shout out things to people *matter* a lot on how to get people using or trying xubuntu
(05:28:13 PM) knome: on the links cody-somerville pasted you can see the artwork for xubuntu jaunty
(05:28:26 PM) knome: that artwork has gotten very much positive feedback and i'm really glad about it
(05:28:32 PM) knome: however, we do need more people.
(05:29:10 PM) knome: we ran out of time pushing a new gtk theme and a new usplash theme into jaunty.
(05:29:43 PM) knome: what we need is people telling about xubuntu for other people
(05:30:03 PM) knome: and to tell our developer community what the users really want
(05:30:04 PM) charlie-tca: <daskreech> QUESTION: Xubuntu seems likea good base for Schools have you looked at working with the Edubuntu project?
(05:30:19 PM) knome: cody-somerville, ^ ?
(05:30:55 PM) cody-somerville: daskreech, We have indeed. I imagine once Edubuntu gets on its feet again, we'll continue discussions with them.
(05:31:10 PM) cody-somerville: I'm also happy to report that Xubuntu is indeed already used in a number of schools around the globe.
(05:31:38 PM) knome: So, back to marketing.
(05:31:45 PM) knome: What do we have in mind for Karmic?
(05:32:08 PM) knome: first of all, we are determined to be the best looking *buntu again.
(05:32:29 PM) knome: that means we will refresh and rethink our artwork completely
(05:33:02 PM) knome: new gtk theme, new gdm theme, new wallpaper, new usplash, maybe a new icon set, ... whatever you can imagine
(05:33:06 PM) knome: and we need people for that
(05:33:50 PM) knome: to get that work done, i need help. :)
(05:34:01 PM) knome: just join #xubuntu-devel and ask about marketing.
(05:34:13 PM) knome: there is *lots* of low hanging fruit in the marketing team
(05:34:31 PM) knome: there is *lots* of things you can do and it only takes at most an hour of your week
(05:34:49 PM) knome: and what's most important
(05:35:22 PM) knome: there is *lots* of people who haven't heard of xubuntu or the amazing lightness and features of xfce
(05:35:40 PM) knome: or who think it's only for old computers or sucky monitors.
(05:35:49 PM) knome: it's not. it's for everybody.
(05:36:37 PM) knome: if you'd like to hear more from xubuntu marketing and artwork, join our session on thursday where i speak about artwork quality assurance as well OR join our irc channel #xubuntu-devel which is always warm and welcoming.
(05:36:51 PM) knome: i'll pass it to JPohlmann now, thanks for listening.
(05:37:06 PM) JPohlmann: Hey everybody
(05:37:15 PM) basajaun: hi
(05:37:49 PM) JPohlmann: I'm one of the Xfce developers and I'll be talking a bit about the 4.6 release which is part of Jaunty but I'll also discuss some of its problems and what we're planning to do in 4.8.
(05:37:58 PM) charlie-tca: basajaun: #ubuntu-classroom-chat for questions and comments
(05:38:20 PM) JPohlmann: So, we released 4.6 at the end of February after almost two years of development.
(05:38:44 PM) JPohlmann: That's a pretty long release cycle and as you might guess, 4.6 brings a lot of new features and revamped components.
(05:39:16 PM) JPohlmann: I don't know how many of you are familiar with earlier releases of Xfce but these are probably the most important changes in 4.6:
(05:39:51 PM) JPohlmann: First of all, 4.6 introduces a new configuration system called xfconf. It sounds similar to gconf and indeed it is, it's just a lot simpler in its design.
(05:40:07 PM) JPohlmann: I won't bore you with the details here (D-Bus etc.)
(05:40:26 PM) JPohlmann: However, changing the config system had a lot of implications for the rest of Xfce.
(05:40:55 PM) JPohlmann: We have improved most of our settings dialogs.
(05:41:24 PM) JPohlmann: They follow the same design guidelines now and some have been simplified a lot.
(05:41:36 PM) JPohlmann: For instance we've removed confusing things such as keyboard shortcut themes.
(05:42:18 PM) JPohlmann: But not just the settings dialogs have been improved. A lot of our applications now look much cleaner and are more usable.
(05:42:51 PM) JPohlmann: These are the appfinder, the mixer, the panel for instance.
(05:43:16 PM) JPohlmann: We also improved the standards compliance in 4.6 with libxfce4menu which is an implementation of the XDG menu specification.
(05:43:33 PM) JPohlmann: And, last but not least, session management has been improved a lot.
(05:43:46 PM) JPohlmann: For instance, you'll hardly lose your panels nowadays.
(05:43:55 PM) JPohlmann: They'll be restarted by the session maanger on crashes.
(05:44:17 PM) JPohlmann: 4.6 also has a few problems though, which most of you will directly notice.
(05:44:38 PM) JPohlmann: First of all, we had this long release cycle which means that you all had to wait for improvements for quite a while.
(05:45:10 PM) JPohlmann: QUESTION: Is XFCE a good forum for someone to learn/relearn C/C++?  Does XFCE need more devs?
(05:45:36 PM) JPohlmann: We're only six active core developers at Xfce, so we definitely need more hackers!
(05:45:59 PM) JPohlmann: Xfce is entirely written in C, so if you want to learn C and GUI programming with GTK+, it's definitely a good chance to get started.
(05:46:22 PM) JPohlmann: Ok, more problems of 4.6: menu editing support is missing. We have a few very young components such as libxfce4menu and xfce4-settings.
(05:46:38 PM) JPohlmann: And no samba shares for instance.
(05:46:43 PM) JPohlmann: (Xubuntu has that though ;))
(05:46:57 PM) JPohlmann: So in 4.8 we'll try to fix those things.
(05:47:01 PM) basajaun: and no usb support
(05:47:12 PM) JPohlmann: What exactly do you mean?
(05:47:20 PM) JPohlmann: We'll hopefully be able to release 4.8 within one year.
(05:47:30 PM) ***cody-somerville hopes for six months. :P
(05:47:36 PM) JPohlmann: We also have a number of nice features in the pipes:
(05:48:08 PM) JPohlmann: I'm currently working on migrating Thunar, our file manager, to GIO/GVfs which means it'll have native (optional) support for handling Samba, SFTP, FTP etc. in the future.
(05:48:09 PM) basajaun: up to now any ntfs usb stick or drive was automatically mounted not so now
(05:48:34 PM) cody-somerville: <tmurase> QUESTION: Is the xfce project considering moving to a time-based release model (e.g. ubuntu)?
(05:48:36 PM) charlie-tca: <tmurase> QUESTION: Is the xfce project considering moving to a time-based release model (e.g. ubuntu)?
(05:48:49 PM) JayFo: jinx
(05:48:58 PM) JPohlmann: We'd like to but we suck pretty bad at being predictable ;)
(05:49:05 PM) JPohlmann: We'll try our best.
(05:49:07 PM) basajaun: lool
(05:49:31 PM) JPohlmann: Ok, more for 4.8: libxfce4menu will have menu editing support. I'm cooperating with one of the Alacarte authors on that one.
(05:50:02 PM) JPohlmann: The panel is being rewritten at the moment and will feature nice (and long missing) features like creating launchers via drag and drop.
(05:51:19 PM) JPohlmann: That's just a few things though. We're currently slowing down a bit because we're moving our development from SVN to Git and stuff like that.
(05:51:39 PM) JPohlmann: As soon as that's sorted out there will probably be more features that we're going to work on.
(05:52:13 PM) cody-somerville: w00t
(05:52:16 PM) cody-somerville: Thanks JPohlmann :)
(05:52:23 PM) cody-somerville: 4.8 sounds like its going to be a blast
(05:52:32 PM) JPohlmann: I'll let charlie-tca handle Q&A from here ;)
(05:52:46 PM) JPohlmann: Stay tuned for new features via blog.xfce.org!
(05:53:08 PM) cody-somerville: We're going to wrap up now with some final Q&A.
(05:53:11 PM) NCommander: Hey all
(05:53:15 PM) cody-somerville: oh!
(05:53:16 PM) cody-somerville: Lucky us
(05:53:33 PM) cody-somerville: NCommander is going to share with us some news and info about Xubuntu Ports
(05:53:51 PM) NCommander: as well as information on Debian-Xubuntu collaboration :-)
(05:53:52 PM) cody-somerville: Ever wondered about running Xubuntu on your playstation 3?
(05:54:04 PM) cody-somerville: NCommander is going to answer those questions
(05:54:05 PM) cody-somerville: :)
(05:54:09 PM) NCommander: Thank you cody-somerville
(05:54:31 PM) kklimonda_ is now known as kklimonda
(05:54:38 PM) NCommander: New with 9.04 is the ability to directly run Xubuntu on your PowerMac/PowerBook, or PowerPC based iBook, as well as some IBM PowerPC desktops
(05:55:20 PM) NCommander: This also includes the Sony PlayStation 3, a platform that Xubuntu is well suited for with its lower memory requirements, and lower processor requirements
(05:56:11 PM) NCommander: For normal PowerPC based Desktops, normal LIveCDs and alternate CDs are available, as is an installation manual. Once installed, Xubuntu/powerpc is pretty much the same as Xubuntu/i386 or Xubuntu/amd64
(05:56:36 PM) NCommander: For the PlayStation 3, alternate CDs are available, which, once installed provides the same Xubuntu experience across all architectures.
(05:56:57 PM) NCommander: For general PowerPC port discussion, I recommend visiting #ubuntu-powerpc, and for PS3 discussion, visiting #ubuntu-ps3
(05:57:24 PM) NCommander: Which brings us to our final topic, collaboration between Debian and Xubuntu
(05:58:02 PM) NCommander: We enjoy a good working relationship with the Debian pkg-xfce group, with several of the Xubuntu Developers holding commit rights to pkg-xfce, and we pull from their SVN branches
(05:58:57 PM) NCommander: As well as merge many of our bug fixing patches into their uploads; the upshot is that both Debian-Xfce and Xubuntu benefit by having more eyes review our work, and reducing our deltas from Debian (with the added bonus that many Xfce packages can simply be synced)
(06:00:08 PM) NCommander: This collaboration allowed pkg-xfce to test their 4.6 packages in a production environment (since Xubuntu based off their SVN repo for 4.6), and helped both distributions improve greatly
(06:00:17 PM) NCommander: Any questions?
(06:00:48 PM) charlie-tca: Where do I download xubuntu for the ps3?
(06:00:57 PM) NCommander: AH, good question
(06:01:24 PM) NCommander: Its available on http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/ports/ (which is running slow at the moment)
(06:01:28 PM) knome: We'll continue with the Q&A part in #ubuntu-classroom-chat and #xubuntu and #xubuntu-devel, if you still have something to ask.
(06:01:36 PM) charlie-tca: A big thanks to cody-somerville, knome, JPohlmann, NCommander for a great presentation!
(06:01:37 PM) jcastro: thanks everyone!
(06:01:42 PM) knome: thanks jcastro! :)
(06:01:44 PM) thegrieve: thanks all
(06:01:44 PM) NCommander: Torrents also available here: http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/
(06:01:46 PM) NCommander: :P-)