Ubuntu Wiki

Open Week -- Introduction to Ubuntu One -- Stuart Langridge -- Mon, May 3

EDT -5

(12:01:38 PM) aquarius: Hi there! I'm Stuart Langridge, and I'm the technical architect for Ubuntu One.
(12:01:51 PM) aquarius: Over the next hour, I'm going to give an introduction to Ubuntu One.
(12:01:58 PM) aquarius: I suspect most of you have heard of Ubuntu One, and may have tried using it.
(12:02:08 PM) aquarius: By "it", here, I mean "Ubuntu One file sync".
(12:02:12 PM) aquarius: So during this talk I'll be talking about that, some of the other things that Ubuntu One gives you that you may not know about, and some indications of the future.
(12:02:38 PM) aquarius: Feel free to ask questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat at any point, and I'll stop regularly to answer them. Please write QUESTION at the beginning of your question so I can see it more easily!
(12:02:44 PM) aquarius: The Ubuntu One website (https://one.ubuntu.com) says that "Ubuntu One is the personal cloud service that simplifies your digital life."
(12:03:12 PM) aquarius: That's what we do -- we make it easier for you to live digitally.
(12:03:15 PM) aquarius: The first service we built is file sync, and that's the one that most people know about.
(12:03:27 PM) aquarius: If you're not using Ubuntu One at the moment, a brief description of file sync:
(12:03:34 PM) aquarius: if you sign up (Me Menu > Ubuntu One in Lucid), you'll get a folder, "Ubuntu One", in your home folder
(12:03:43 PM) aquarius: and the contents of that folder are synced up to Ubuntu One.
(12:03:52 PM) aquarius: They're also synced down to any other machines that you have, too.
(12:04:00 PM) aquarius: So if you've got your main computer and a laptop, you can put files in your Ubuntu One folder on the main computer and those files will appear on the laptop too.
(12:04:11 PM) aquarius: I, personally, use this for my music; I've got 8GB of mp3 files that I've ripped from CDs or bought from the Ubuntu One Music Store (of which more later!) and I put that music in my Ubuntu One folder.
(12:04:23 PM) aquarius: Now it's on my laptop *and* on the computer connected to my television in the lounge *and* on the computer connected to the monitor in my bedroom
(12:04:36 PM) aquarius: So my music is everywhere. I like that, because it means I can listen to Portishead upstairs without ever having to think about it!
(12:05:08 PM) aquarius: Your files are also available from other machines, too, through the web.
(12:05:11 PM) aquarius: If you sign in to the Ubuntu One website you can browse through all your files and download them, upload new ones, and so on.
(12:05:18 PM) aquarius: This is jolly useful if you're over at a friend's house, or you're at work.
(12:05:34 PM) aquarius: The website is a quick and easy way to get at files from Windows machines, for example, when you're at work (if you're not able to use Ubuntu there).
(12:05:45 PM) aquarius: This means that you can take advantage of automatic file backup just by having your application save things to the filesystem!
(12:05:54 PM) aquarius: Imagine that you want attachments that you receive by email to be stored online and backed up so you can get at them later.
(12:06:03 PM) aquarius: Most mail programs will already let you do this in some way. So, change the folder that these attachments are saved in to be an Ubuntu One folder and suddenly all your attachments are backed up online and available on every machine!
(12:06:06 PM) aquarius: For example, there is a Thunderbird attachment called "Attachment Extractor" (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/556)
(12:06:17 PM) aquarius: Install it, select "Automatically extract attachments on email receipt" in Tools > AttachmentExtractor settings > Auto-Extract, and set the "Save Path for Attachments" to /home/YOU/Ubuntu One/Mail Attachments, and that's all you need!
(12:06:46 PM) aquarius: OK, that's the basic description of the first Ubuntu One service, file sync, and I imagine many of you may have already known that bit.
(12:06:52 PM) aquarius: Now I'm going to talk over a few things that you might not know about.
(12:07:04 PM) aquarius: A really easy way to get a file to someone else is by publishing it with Ubuntu One.
(12:07:15 PM) aquarius: Pick any synced file and right-click on it; there'll be a "Publish via Ubuntu One" option on that right-click menu.
(12:07:31 PM) aquarius: Once you've done that, the menu item will change to "Copy Ubuntu One public URL". Choose that, and we'll put a publically available URL for that file on your clipboard.
(12:07:47 PM) aquarius: So publishing any file so that anyone can see it is just two clicks, and then paste the URL into your email or twitter message or document.
(12:08:12 PM) aquarius: It's a really simple way of sending files to people, or making them available for a presentation.
(12:08:20 PM) aquarius: If you just want a quick way of getting a picture or a presentation or whatever to someone, drop it into U1 and publish it.
(12:08:33 PM) aquarius: You can also publish files with the web site as well, if you're on another machine that isn't connected to Ubuntu One.
(12:08:49 PM) aquarius: Just log in to one.ubuntu.com, upload your file, then choose "Publish file" under "More".
(12:09:01 PM) aquarius: Then you''ll have a public URL for that file, looking like http://ubuntuone.com/p/1xI/, which you can give to anyone so they can see it.
(12:09:50 PM) aquarius: A second cool thing about file syncing is that you can now sync *any* folder to Ubuntu One.
(12:10:14 PM) aquarius: Choose any folder you want, right-click on it, and say "Synchronize on Ubuntu One".
(12:10:27 PM) aquarius: And then that folder will work just like your ordinary Ubuntu One folder; anything in it is synced up to U1 and down to your other computers too.
(12:10:40 PM) aquarius: This is really useful for some of your standard folders, like Documents, Music, or Pictures, but you can do it with any folder you want.
(12:10:58 PM) aquarius: I know some people have put their Desktop folder into Ubuntu One, so that all the little random things they download off the net are available to them from anywhere.
(12:11:14 PM) aquarius: Any questions so far about file syncing and publishing?
(12:11:34 PM) ClassBot: charlie-tca asked: The UbuntuOne interface seems to written entirely for Ubuntu only. When will users of other distros and dirivatives be able to use it?
(12:12:07 PM) aquarius: There's a Google Summer of Code project being done by Harald Sitter to integrate Ubuntu One into KDE
(12:12:33 PM) aquarius: and I know there's been some work done to make Ubuntu One available on other distributions as well
(12:13:07 PM) aquarius: The Ubuntu One software is fairly Gnome-specific at the moment, which is why we're really excited about the KDE work!
(12:13:55 PM) aquarius: It shouldn't be hard to use Ubuntu One on other Gnome-based distributions; if someone wants to do that we'd be more than happy to give pointers on any problems
(12:14:12 PM) ClassBot: imbrandon asked: is u1 licenced in such a way we can make clients for other OS's like OSX and W32 ? I'm working on porting the u1 music store to Debian now and was wondering about "all the u1 bits"
(12:14:28 PM) aquarius: Yes, it is. The client code is all open source.
(12:14:57 PM) aquarius: Some work has already happened on a Windows Ubuntu One file sync system -- that happened at Pycon in the US a few months ago
(12:15:12 PM) ClassBot: charlie-tca asked: Are there any plans to allow access through any other file managers besides Nautilus?
(12:15:28 PM) aquarius: It would certainly be possible to integrate Ubuntu One into other file managers
(12:15:42 PM) aquarius: This is likely to be a big part of Harald Sitter's work on the KDE port
(12:15:53 PM) zen is now known as Guest15134
(12:16:18 PM) aquarius: and if someone works on another file manager and hits problems, we'd be happy to offer suggestions
(12:16:31 PM) ClassBot: kklimonda_ asked: are you planning on letting 3rd party developers integrate their applications with the U1 web interface? for example if someone prepares "a better" note taking software that isn't compatible with a tomboy will he be able to hook it into web interface somehow?
(12:17:03 PM) aquarius: If you build a different note taker, then if you make it implement the Tomboy syncing API, it will work with Ubuntu One.
(12:17:21 PM) aquarius: The Tomdroid team, who make a notes app for Android phones, did exactly that, and Tomdroid works with Ubuntu One.
(12:17:43 PM) ClassBot: charlie-tca asked: Ubuntu worked under Xubuntu 9.10. Under Xubuntu 10.10, the changes made to Ubuntu prevent Xubuntu from syncing any longer.
(12:18:09 PM) aquarius: That would be usefully brought up in #ubuntuone, where our support people may be able to help work out what changed
(12:18:16 PM) ClassBot: kyubutsu asked: how secure is the cloud ?
(12:18:46 PM) aquarius: That's a small question with a large answer! We recommend that if you have files you particularly want to be secure, that you encrypt them before syncing.
(12:19:25 PM) aquarius: One thing that would be a very cool project for someone to work on would be to integrate Ubuntu One file syncing with Ubuntu's encrypted private folders.
(12:19:33 PM) ClassBot: svenmh asked: Might there be fuse access like sshfs?
(12:20:03 PM) aquarius: You don't need fuse to get at Ubuntu One synced files -- they're there directly on your filesystem
(12:20:25 PM) aquarius: We deliberately decided to not implement some sort of "virtual" filesystem: your files are right there on your disk all the time.
(12:20:39 PM) aquarius: If you've read any of the press attention or reviews of the new Ubuntu release, 10.04 LTS, you will no doubt have seen that you can now buy music!
(12:20:46 PM) aquarius: New in the Lucid release is the music store. If you have an Ubuntu One account then you can buy music from major labels.
(12:20:49 PM) aquarius: The music is first transferred to your cloud storage in Ubuntu One, and then down to each of your computers, just like synced files.
(12:20:59 PM) aquarius: So your music is available wherever you are.
(12:21:09 PM) aquarius: I introduced my mum to the music store this weekend and she simultaneously delighted and disappointed me by downloading a Five album.
(12:21:24 PM) aquarius: She likes it because she can buy music on the computer upstairs and it automatically appears on the machine downstairs which is connected to their television.
(12:21:33 PM) aquarius: So she bought an album on the desktop computer, listened to it through the television, and then transferred it to her mp3 player so she could also listen to it while walking.
(12:21:41 PM) aquarius: The music store is available in Rhythmbox, the Ubuntu music player.
(12:21:54 PM) aquarius: It's also available in Banshee, thanks to some great community work by directhex, and I'd love to talk to people who want to see the music store available in other players too, so if you know a developer (or are one!) then I can give some pointers there.
(12:22:06 PM) aquarius: We also donated 50% of our revenue from the music store to the charity SOS Lynx, which you can read about at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/music-store-lynx.
(12:22:26 PM) aquarius: Negotiating deals with record labels is a complicated business at times, which is why we have different "territories" within the Ubuntu One Music Store.
(12:22:28 PM) aquarius: The UK, the USA, and Germany have access to all the music that there is. The rest of the EU has some of it (from two of the four major labels), and the rest of the world has access to independent label music.
(12:22:31 PM) aquarius: You can read about the territories at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/FAQ#Music%20Store and we're planning to have some way that you can "vote" to have your country be a specific territory so that it gets access to all the major labels.
(12:22:59 PM) aquarius: I'll stop again here for questions.
(12:23:13 PM) ClassBot: qense asked: Early in the life of Ubuntu One I think there was some talk about the 'migrationless desktop' where you wouldn't have to migrate your settings from X via Y to Z just to get it in the right format because all data would be stored in CouchDB on an application-agnostic way. Is this still a goal of the project, or has it been forgotten a bit?
(12:23:31 PM) aquarius: It's still a goal -- I did a lot of thinking about this during the development cycle for 10.04 LTS.
(12:24:00 PM) aquarius: I'll talk in a bit about applications storing their data that way.
(12:24:14 PM) ClassBot: JR0cket asked: If you opt for the 50GB online storage, is there a way to control what is synced to your pc if you dont have room for 50GB of stuff on your laptop?
(12:24:56 PM) aquarius: Not quite. We're going to be working on that during the new development cycle for Ubuntu 10.10.
(12:25:17 PM) aquarius: It's possible right now if you're a command-line aficionado, but we want to make it possible for everyone.
(12:25:31 PM) ClassBot: mhall119|lernid asked: Are you going to make a game store, similar to Steam, so companies who make Linux games can sell them in an easy way?
(12:25:55 PM) aquarius: That idea's been discussed :)
(12:26:29 PM) aquarius: I don't want to talk too much about future plans because we have a huge list of things that we want to do, and we're still working on deciding what should happen in the next release.
(12:26:48 PM) aquarius: A good place to bring that up for discussion is at the Ubuntu Developer Summit next week in Brussels, if you can make it along!
(12:27:46 PM) ClassBot: mhall119|lernid asked: I know the server-side code for U1 is closed source, but is it available for people to make changes and submit patches?
(12:27:55 PM) aquarius: No, it's not available.
(12:28:10 PM) aquarius: OK, I shall carry on :)
(12:28:14 PM) aquarius: We've built a personal database for every user, which is called "desktopcouch".
(12:28:23 PM) aquarius: The advantage of applications that use this database is that the data is automatically synced to Ubuntu One.
(12:28:29 PM) aquarius: So if you use an Ubuntu One enabled application, all the data for that application will automatically be available on all your machines...
(12:28:31 PM) aquarius: ...without you having to do anything at all!
(12:28:41 PM) aquarius: This is what qense's question was about, earlier. :)
(12:28:58 PM) aquarius: Gwibber, for example, the Twitter/Identica/Facebook broadcast messages program, uses desktopcouch for this.
(12:29:10 PM) aquarius: And Quickly, the application authoring tool for Ubuntu, also uses desktopcouch quite heavily.
(12:29:21 PM) aquarius: We're working with application authors on both the Ubuntu desktop and the web to help them Ubuntu One enable their applications, so you, the users, will get all these benefits.
(12:29:51 PM) aquarius: A good example of this enabling is contacts synchronisation.
(12:29:58 PM) aquarius: In Evolution, the Ubuntu mail and contacts program, you can store all your friends work contacts.
(12:30:18 PM) aquarius: (er, friends *and* work contacts :))
(12:30:28 PM) aquarius: And because Evolution is Ubuntu One enabled, all those contacts are synchronized up to Ubuntu One.
(12:30:55 PM) aquarius: and then down to your other machines, so you've got your Evolution addressbook everywhere.
(12:31:00 PM) aquarius: This means that you can get at them through the web as well -- on one.ubuntu.com you can see all your contacts, and their phone numbers and addresses, which makes it really easy to get at someone's phone number when you're away from your desk.
(12:31:26 PM) aquarius: Built on top of that contacts synchronisation is another new Ubuntu One feature for Lucid: phone sync.
(12:31:39 PM) aquarius: This means that you can also synchronize your mobile phone's addressbook with Ubuntu One.
(12:31:57 PM) aquarius: So not only is your phone's addressbook backed up, but those people's details are available on your desktop and on the web too!
(12:32:08 PM) aquarius: No more having people write their phone number on your hand in nightclubs: just put it in your phone and sync, and it's there on the web too for when you want to email them from work on Monday morning!
(12:32:26 PM) aquarius: (You can use it for work contacts too, of course. :)
(12:32:37 PM) aquarius: iPhone users will find an Ubuntu One app in the App Store to do exactly this; Android users will also find such a thing, but Ubuntu One phone sync isn't limited to the latest smartphones. Almost every phone is supported.
(12:32:53 PM) aquarius: Just go to one.ubuntu.com and look in Contacts to find out how to set up your phone for syncing to Ubuntu One.
(12:33:51 PM) aquarius: Questions about contact and phone sync?
(12:34:01 PM) ClassBot: quappa1 asked: Is there a way to have an Ubuntu One enabled program and still use different settings on different computers?
(12:34:26 PM) aquarius: Every Ubuntu One enabled application can choose which data it wants to sync
(12:34:34 PM) aquarius: So that's really up to the application developers.
(12:35:10 PM) aquarius: We take care of making sure that any data that you or your app developers want to be available everywhere...is available everywhere.
(12:35:34 PM) aquarius: Deciding *which* data you want to have synced is for app authors to decide
(12:36:01 PM) aquarius: So if you'd like to see some settings synced, and some not, have a chat to the authors of the apps you use and ask them to Ubuntu One enable their apps!
(12:36:12 PM) ClassBot: mbudde asked: Do you have a link to list of supported phones?
(12:36:25 PM) aquarius: if you go to one.ubuntu.com/phones it'll show the big list of phones
(12:37:22 PM) aquarius: https://one.ubuntu.com/phones/ will help you sign up
(12:37:37 PM) ClassBot: funcrunch asked: Is there an easy way to import Google contacts into Ubuntu One?
(12:37:51 PM) aquarius: I'm not completely sure of the answer to this one :)
(12:38:07 PM) aquarius: Evolution supports Google contacts, and it's also Ubuntu One enabled
(12:38:19 PM) aquarius: but I'm not sure if anyone's tried combining the two yet
(12:38:30 PM) aquarius: I'd love to hear a report on how that goes if you do try it!
(12:39:09 PM) aquarius: Do please drop into #ubuntuone and let us know that it works; if it doesn't work, the people in there will be able to give you some pointers as to how to make it work, hopefully.
(12:39:24 PM) aquarius: rodrigo_ is the expert on this, so listen to him :-)
(12:39:36 PM) ClassBot: daengbo asked: Is application configuration for Ubuntu apps moving toward DesktopCouch and away from GConf?
(12:39:49 PM) aquarius: I don't think there's any overall policy either way
(12:40:02 PM) aquarius: using desktopcouch has some advantages for apps, as I've talked about
(12:40:15 PM) aquarius: one of the things we'd be interested in talking about is ways to closer integrate the two
(12:40:25 PM) aquarius: UDS is a good place for that sort of discussion!
(12:40:31 PM) ClassBot: sirmacik asked: How many space do we have for our files on Ubuntu One server?
(12:40:45 PM) aquarius: the basic account gives you 2GB of space
(12:41:12 PM) aquarius: If you upgrade to the premium plan, in addition to the other stuff you get, you also get 50GB of space.
(12:41:34 PM) aquarius: Ubuntu One knowing about your contacts makes lots of other things possible, too.
(12:41:36 PM) aquarius: One of the little-known features of Ubuntu One file syncing is sharing folders.
(12:41:41 PM) aquarius: You can give other people access to a folder of yours so that they can see or edit the files in there.
(12:41:52 PM) aquarius: This is a great way to collaborate on a project, or to distribute documents to a team.
(12:42:12 PM) aquarius: On any synced folder, right-click and say "Share on Ubuntu One".
(12:42:25 PM) aquarius: You can then choose the group of people from your contacts who you want to share this folder with (and add new contacts if you need to).
(12:42:48 PM) aquarius: It's a good way to send out a pile of files to some people without publishing them to a public address.
(12:43:24 PM) aquarius: It's also a good way for you to work together with people, because you can allow your friends and colleagues to edit the files in the shared folder.
(12:44:05 PM) aquarius: And it's a lot simpler than emailing around a huge document!
(12:44:06 PM) aquarius: Ubuntu One also handles syncing of Tomboy notes.
(12:44:16 PM) aquarius: Tomboy, if you don't use it, is an app for taking notes on your desktop.
(12:44:27 PM) aquarius: Some people use it for just making the occasional list; others run almost their whole lives out of a stack of Tomboy notes!
(12:44:46 PM) aquarius: Tomboy supports note synchronization with Ubuntu One, so your notes are backed up, and (like everything else) you can also get at your notes through the Ubuntu One website.
(12:45:09 PM) aquarius: (This is really handy when you made a shopping list on your desktop and then forgot to bring it to the shops!)
(12:45:18 PM) aquarius: Similarly to notes sync, Ubuntu One also syncs your Firefox bookmarks.
(12:45:25 PM) aquarius: So bookmarking a site on one machine means that it's bookmarked on all your other machines too!
(12:45:29 PM) aquarius: Your bookmarks will also be available through the web soon (we're still working on that one).
(12:45:43 PM) aquarius: You can find out more about all of the things that Ubuntu One offers from the website: the feature tour at https://one.ubuntu.com/features/ has a good overview of all the things we do
(12:46:08 PM) aquarius: and there are FAQs and tutorials available from there as well which will talk you through how to make the best of each of the things that Ubuntu One gives you.
(12:46:25 PM) aquarius: I'll stop again for questions here.
(12:46:33 PM) ClassBot: quappa1 asked: How are conflicts resolved in Ubuntu One? E.g. editing the same file from different computers.
(12:47:19 PM) aquarius: At the moment, if you do that sort of editing, you'll get two copies of the file, one called file.u1conflict, so that you don't lose anything.
(12:47:52 PM) aquarius: One of the things that we plan to work on is offering more help with fixing a file conflict.
(12:48:09 PM) aquarius: But conflicts are actually quite rare, we've found, which is nice. :)
(12:48:53 PM) aquarius: quappa1 and JanC__ have mentioned that having different application versions on different machines makes syncing settings more difficult
(12:48:55 PM) aquarius: I completely agree :)
(12:49:13 PM) aquarius: This is one of the reasons that we're not pushing very hard for automatic syncing of settings between machines.
(12:49:26 PM) aquarius: It's a harder problem than it appears to be at first, and we want to get it right
(12:49:41 PM) aquarius: Grabbing me at UDS for a chat would be great if you want to talk about this :)
(12:49:51 PM) ClassBot: mhall119|lernid asked: On the same note, how does it handle conflicts in Notes or Contacts?
(12:50:20 PM) aquarius: Notes conflicts are handled in Tomboy when syncing; you're offered a number of ways of handling the issue
(12:50:43 PM) aquarius: Evolution also handles contact conflicts, and U1 Phone Sync handles them too.
(12:50:57 PM) ClassBot: imbrandon asked: can you choose what bits are syncd by default, eg i want file sycying of my music, but not notes or bookmarks
(12:51:41 PM) aquarius: Yes. If you click Ubuntu One under the Me Menu, you'll see under Services that you can choose what you want synced and what you don't.
(12:51:58 PM) ClassBot: quappa1 asked: Oh, cool. Then the same question about conflicts for settings in desktopcouch. What about them?
(12:52:26 PM) aquarius: CouchDB, the underlying technology for desktopcouch, keeps both versions of conflicted things.
(12:52:50 PM) aquarius: Application authors can then use the CouchDB conflict technology to deal with them in the most appropriate way for that application.
(12:53:01 PM) aquarius: Since the app authors know the most about the data in their app!
(12:53:14 PM) ClassBot: daengbo asked: How are music purchases handled when your 2GB quota has been reached?
(12:53:35 PM) aquarius: Music purchases can still be made if you've reached your quota
(12:53:58 PM) aquarius: But you won't be able to sync any further non-purchased-music files until you upgrade to the better plan.
(12:54:16 PM) aquarius: <kai_> Is it possible to sync the rhythmbox library (playlists, valuations etc.) between two computers? Which folder do I have to sync for this settings?
(12:54:23 PM) aquarius: It's not yet possible.
(12:54:30 PM) aquarius: I'd really, really, really, really, really like that, though :)
(12:54:45 PM) aquarius: If someone would like to do it, I'd love to explain how I think it should work.
(12:55:14 PM) aquarius: You can't do it by syncing folders, because Rhythmbox stores both playlists and other data in its folder, and you don't want to sync the other data.
(12:55:36 PM) aquarius: So the best way to do it would be to write a Rhythmbox plugin that syncs playlists into desktopcouch
(12:56:03 PM) aquarius: and then you could also have a Banshee plugin that does it, so you could share playlists between different media players, if you decided to change from one to the other!
(12:56:26 PM) aquarius: OK, I've got five minutes left.
(12:56:32 PM) aquarius: Thanks very much for listening! Hopefully you now know more about all the things that Ubuntu One can help you with.
(12:56:35 PM) aquarius: We're always keen to hear more suggestions for things that you'd like Ubuntu One to do, so please come and talk to me or any of the team; we hang out in #ubuntuone, the support channel, and on the ubuntuone-users mailing list.
(12:56:52 PM) aquarius: Any further questions before I hand over to the next session?
(12:57:46 PM) ClassBot: kyubutsu asked: cant you just delete data from the cloud to make space for , say , new music ?
(12:57:53 PM) aquarius: You could do that, yep.
(12:58:44 PM) aquarius: <Chopsticks> Will the new Ubuntu music store be adding music? If so, is there a way to contact them to request an album?
(12:59:30 PM) aquarius: There's a Help link in the music store, which can give you some guidance on asking that sort of question, and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne has some support options and FAQs about the music store as well
(12:59:44 PM) ClassBot: kai_ asked: For playlist syncing I need to write that plugin which completely saves playlists in desktopcouch and thats it?
(12:59:54 PM) aquarius: yep. png me afte the session.
(12:59:57 PM) aquarius: OK, thanks all!
(01:00:12 PM) aquarius: I'll hand over to the Social From The Start team for the next session!