Ubuntu Wiki

=== Friday 2nd May 2007 - Jorge Castro General Questions and Answers

=== jcastro changed the topic of #ubuntu-classroom to: Ubuntu Open Week | Information and Logs: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek | How to ask questions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek/Rules | Ask questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat, prefaced with "QUESTION:" |See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek/JoiningIn to filter out channel noise | "Ubuntu Q+A" - Jorge Castro

[18:00] <jcastro> Hi everyone, welcome to Ubuntu Q+A!

[18:00] <jcastro> A quick introduction, my name is Jorge Castro and I work @ Canonical on the Ubuntu Community team with Jono Bacon and Daniel Holbach. Our collective job is to help the community rock. We do this in various ways, such as organizing things like this OpenWeek and working on processes to grow the Ubuntu community.

[18:00] <jcastro> We had a last-minute schedule change (sorry!) which left this time slot open, so I am going to open it up to general Ubuntu Q+A for this hour.

[18:00] <jcastro> Some caveats: I'm not a developer in the sense of "I hack on code" so I will probably not be able to answer deep technical questions. But I can at least point you in the right direction. If you want to ask questions about how things work Ubuntu in general then I can probably answer those.

[18:00] <jcastro> Please ask questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat, prefixed with "QUESTION:"

and we'll begin!

[18:02] <jcastro> < james_w> QUESTION: what's your favourite part of your job? What's your least favourite?

[18:03] <jcastro> Favorite is working with people from around the world who are passionate about Ubuntu

[18:03] <jcastro> I don't really have a least favorite part, I'm an ubuntu addict so it's all good.

[18:03] <jcastro> < musashi> QUESTION: hardy is great. thanks to all. i am curious though if there is any discussion about an add on cd like edubuntu has.

[18:04] <jcastro> Since Ubuntu ships on one CD there's often not enough room for a bunch more software

[18:04] <jcastro> There are the DVD images which have more stuff on them

[18:04] <jcastro> Things like add-on CDs for more things are possible, I will note it down and bring it up @ UDS

[18:05] <jcastro> < artir> QUESTION: Any plans to give keynotes by ubuntu core members(Steve Jobs style :p)?

[18:05] <jcastro> We have an event called Ubuntu Live: http://en.oreilly.com/ubuntu2008/public/content/home

[18:05] <jcastro> This is where glossy keynote-style presentations are given

[18:05] <jcastro> < qense> QUESTION: What is the role of Canoncial withing the Ubuntu wordl/community? What does it exactly do?

[18:06] <jcastro> Canonical sponsors Ubuntu and sells accompanying support and services

[18:06] <jcastro> It sponsors events like the Ubuntu Developer Summit, FOSSCamp, and employs people to work on Ubuntu.

[18:07] <jcastro> Since Ubuntu is a community project Jono, Daniel, and I are tasked with keeping that relationship healthy and continue to make it grow.

[18:07] <jcastro> < qense> QUESTION: How does a daily day look like for you? Do you go to office or work at home?

[18:07] <jcastro> Most of us work from home.

[18:08] <jcastro> For me I start work @ 9am, check mail and irc messages and work on my task list.

[18:08] <jcastro> Like most things in Ubuntu, most work is done via irc and mailing lists.

[18:08] <jcastro> < musashi> QUESTION: early in the hardy cycle, i saw discussions about a highly updated look (black and orange theme). The mockups i saw looked really nice. what happened to that idea? are there discussions about glossing things up in the future?

[18:09] <jcastro> Ken talked about this in more detail in his session on art: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/openweekhardy/Artwork

[18:09] <jcastro> < michaelramm> QUESTION: What kind of tasks do you have?

[18:10] <jcastro> for me I focus on external developer relations, which means I communicate with upstream projects and help our relationship with them

[18:10] <jcastro> this usually revolves around bug workflow

[18:10] <jcastro> So for example if you find a bug in Evolution and it's an upstream bug, my job is to help make sure that upstream knows there's a problem

[18:11] <jcastro> We use launchpad's linking ability to connect launchpad bugs to upstream

bugs, so that both the distro and the upstream developers are aware of the bugs

[18:11] <jcastro> and that patches flow from Ubuntu developers to upstreams

[18:11] <jcastro> I use this launchpad page: https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+upstreamreport

[18:11] <jcastro> The more green on that page in the last few columns, the better.

[18:12] <jcastro> < Lardarse> QUESTION: How many people who work at Canonical are involved with Ubuntu, and what percentage is that of the people that work there?

[18:12] <jcastro> I am unsure on the percentage, but Canonical has been growing recently

[18:12] <jcastro> < michaelramm> QUESTION: Follow UP: What about dholbach and jono areas of responsibility?

[18:13] <jcastro> dholbach primarily works with MOTU, which are our maintainers of the universe section of Ubuntu

[18:13] <jcastro> For example he recently rewrote large portions of the packaging guide to make it easier for new people to understand.

[18:14] <jcastro> And he runs MOTU Q+A IRC sessions on a regular basis, came up with 5-a-day, and generally looks for ways to grow the development community inside Ubuntu.

[18:15] <jcastro> Jono leads the team and generally covers the rest of the Ubuntu community, such as Local Teams

[18:15] <jcastro> < uvok> QUESTION: where can the reweritten packaging guide be found? at wiki.ubuntu.com?

[18:15] <jcastro> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide

[18:16] <jcastro> < pimanx> QUESTION: What do you see as the main problem regarding the growth of the Ubuntu community? Let's say we got five times as big - couldn't size become a real problem to the community? And how do we address that problem?

[18:16] <jcastro> Good question!

[18:16] <jcastro> Scaling can be really hard sometimes, so we are finding ways to deal with the explosive growth

[18:16] <jcastro> one example is that in the past to become an Ubuntu member you had to come to a community council meeting to be approved.

[18:17] <jcastro> That proved to be difficult because with so many volunteers the CC was swamped in these multi-hour meetings, so now we've created regional councils

[18:17] <jcastro> so that should become much smoother

[18:17] <jcastro> Another area where scaling becomes a problem is bugs

[18:18] <jcastro> As we get more users many of them report bugs

[18:18] <jcastro> A good number of these can be triaged or marked as duplicate

[18:18] <jcastro> This is why he have Hug Days and started 5-a-day to help people get involved with the growing number of bugs.

[18:18] <jcastro> Note that I mean "bug" as in "someone reported something to launchpad", not necessarily a software defect.

[18:19] <jcastro> Getting involved with triaging is an excellent low-barrier way to help out,

so if you want to get involved you should check out #ubuntu-bugs and their mailing list

[18:19] <jcastro> < pimanx> Question: The regional council sounds like a fine idea, but one of the consequences of that will be further distance between top ubuntu and bottom ubuntu, and thus have an impact the willingness to contribute and the sense of 'ubuntu - my project' ?

[18:20] <jcastro> Everything in the community process is transparent and done in the public, like everything else, so I don't see "distance" being a problem

[18:20] <jcastro> Ubuntu membership has always been granted according to contribution, and that won't change

[18:22] <jcastro> *waiting for more questions*

[18:22] <jcastro> < evarlast[jrwren]> QUESTION: As a poweruser & developer, I feel like Ubuntu is "done" in comparison to other distributions and the windows and mac alternatives. What areas will future ubuntu be inovating in?

[18:23] <jcastro> As with all software, I wouldn't consider Ubuntu "done" at all, there is always new stuff that people want and new hardware

[18:24] <jcastro> Like Ted mentioned in his talk yesterday https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/openweekhardy/DesktopFuture there are plenty of areas where we can innovate

[18:25] <jcastro> Especially as driver support gets better there is plenty of work to be done.

[18:25] <jcastro> But if you're happy with Ubuntu how it is now you can stick to Hardy for 3 years.

[18:25] <jcastro> < mybunche> QUESTION: Do think the Ubuntu forums do/can serves as an entry to the community world? If so, do you keep an eye on what's going in there so it can help?

[18:25] <jcastro> I read the forums daily (user number 74!)

[18:26] <jcastro> But they can be overwhelming at times due to the amount of traffic on there.

[18:26] <jcastro> Most developers don't have time to read the forums, so we have forum community people (such as Mike Basinger) who attend our development summits and keep us informed of what's going on in the forums

[18:27] <jcastro> There is definately lot of community work that can be done in the forums

[18:27] <jcastro> such as answering posts that have no response and general help.

[18:28] <jcastro> Plus the forums have a nice cultural twist of funny threads that help break up the monotony of discussing linux all day.

[18:28] <jcastro> In think in general information has been flowing from the forums to developers much better than it used to

[18:29] <jcastro> A good deal of "Hey I have an idea" type information is now available via brainstorm

[18:29] <jcastro> http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com

[18:30] <jcastro> In the past there would be tons of threads in the forums about ideas and it was difficult to sort through them all

[18:30] <jcastro> now we have an excellent tool to measure what users would like to see in Ubuntu

[18:30] <jcastro> < qense> QUESTION: Who reviews the ideas at brainstorm and what are the requirements to be a accepted?

[18:30] <jcastro> The ideas from brainstorm are voted by the community.

[18:30] <jcastro> For this UDS we'll be looking at the most popular ideas and discussing them.

[18:31] <jcastro> Since brainstorm is new we really haven't ever taken in this kind of input, so stay tuned into what happens @ UDS

[18:32] <jcastro> To tie into the forums question this UDS we have 23meg (mgunes) attending UDS and he will be posting updates about UDS to the forums.

[18:33] <jcastro> < artir> QUESTION: Why dont you add restricted codecs/wfi drivers etc... in a oficial supported ubuntu, leaving current ubuntu as Gobuntu?

[18:34] <jcastro> restricted drivers are on the CD already

[18:34] <jcastro> When you install Ubuntu you get a little popup if your hardware requires closed drivers, you click on it and follow the directions.

[18:35] <jcastro> As far as installing them _by default_, it was a concious decision to inform the user and have them elect to install the driver.

[18:35] <jcastro> But yes, they are on the CD (nvidia, ati, etc.)

[18:36] <jcastro> < hardywireless> QUESTION : why does hardy on loading desktop with desktop effects on and nvidia drivers black out for some seconds? is this due to the image loading, should it be given more proirity on loading ?

[18:36] <jcastro> I am unsure what you're seeing, but generally the entire boot process can be smoothed out

[18:36] <jcastro> currently you get mode switches and all this scary stuff that happens

[18:37] <jcastro> there has been work in the upstream kernel and intel driver to make the mode switching go away but it will take some time to sort that out.

[18:37] <jcastro> I am unsure to as how nvidia will support that functionality

[18:37] <jcastro> < artir> QUESTION: After the booting bar, you have a few secs of a brown screen and then the desktop appears. Any plans on changing this?

[18:38] <jcastro> Login time is something that we will be looking at during UDS

[18:39] <jcastro> For example I tend to add a bunch of panel applets to my desktop which makes login in longer

[18:39] <jcastro> But tied into the question above, there are many improvements that could be made to the entire booting/login in process, and yes, they're on the radar to fix.

[18:40] <jcastro> < rick_h_> Question: when will Ubuntu properties become openid "consumers"?

[18:40] <jcastro> Missed that one, sorry rick_h_ \

[18:41] <jcastro> Launchpad now offers openid and there is work in progress to move Ubuntu web stuff to openid. See here: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/9/

[18:42] <jcastro> < hardywireless> QUESTION: wireless and the ralink drivers seem to be buggy, they fall back to 1bps , and have almost no range ,

[18:42] <jcastro> you need to manually fix them , is this being worked on?

[18:43] <jcastro> I would have to read the bug, I am not familiar with ralink drivers

[18:43] <jcastro> the best place to ask that would be on the ubuntu users mailing list.

[18:43] <jcastro> < artir> QUESTION: Why was Ubuntu 8.04 LTS released with so much bugs instead of waiting to solve them?

[18:43] <jcastro> I guess that depends on how well 8.04 is working for you

[18:44] <jcastro> A good number of bugs are unfortunately due to hardware support

[18:44] <jcastro> So for example, my roomates laptop with a broadcom wireless card will probably always be problematic.

[18:45] <jcastro> The other big one I have noticed people having a problem on is Flash sound

[18:45] <jcastro> If you were using the Hardy beta then remove libflashsupport.

[18:46] <jcastro> libflashsupport gets you sound but there were problems with it's stability (It tended to crash Firefox when you went to YouTube)

[18:47] <jcastro> Unfortunately there's not much we can do to fix Flash problems.

[18:47] <jcastro> The other problem I see people facing is having to suspend pulse with skype.

[18:47] <jcastro> So you have to launch skype with "pasuspender skype" for it to work

[18:48] <jcastro> As with Flash, there's nothing we can really do to fix it, if you're depending on Skype then the best thing to do is ask them for better Linux support.

[18:48] <jcastro> < Landon> QUESTION: what's with the changes to all the removable media? Instead of them being at /dev/dvd or /dev/cdrom, they're now at /dev/dvd1 or /dev/cdrom1, which seems to break a few of the autoplay features

[18:49] <jcastro> I don't know enough about all our HAL stuff to answer this question, that one is better posted to a mailing list, sorry.

[18:50] <jcastro> < hardywireless> QUESTION: a funny thing happens with printing on firefox, when you zoom in to the page, making the fonts look bigger , you cant get the site to be printed and text is missing, unless you know this , you would never have a clue as where to find this error... I hope that every bug found on Hardy , finds it way to the forums, so we

[18:50] <jcastro> can read howto fix this, ...hardy bugs found and s olutions..page...:)

[18:50] <jcastro> Firefox 3.0 RC and final will be pushed out to hardy when they are released

[18:50] <jcastro> the best thing to do in this case is to search launchpad to see if it has been reported

[18:51] <jcastro> 10 minutes left, so I guess 2 or three more questions!

[18:52] <jcastro> < michaelramm> QUESTION: I am catching wind that the new pata (ide subsystem) in the kernel has switched to naming ide drives to sd instead of hd; so what was /dev/hda3 is now /dev/sda3. Any truth to that?

[18:52] <jcastro> That change was made a few releases ago

[18:53] <jcastro> All my stuff shows up as sd*

[18:53] <jcastro> That change was made in the upstream kernel

[18:53] <jcastro> < artir> QUESTION:In what year do you personally think ubuntu will really go mainstream?

[18:54] <jcastro> We'll see, I don't like to make predictions because I'm always wrong, but to me the important thing is continued growth

[18:54] <jcastro> < mybunche> QUESTION: Do you know if there is any progress on getting a standard on linux install files? I think it's one of the things the Linux Foundation is working on.

[18:54] <jcastro> I have no idea about this, but I am pretty happy with add/remove programs and apt.

[18:55] <jcastro> < hardywireless> QUESTION: what would you like to see next in ubuntu? whats your wish for it ?

[18:55] <jcastro> I think I have the same list as most people

[18:55] <jcastro> a) Hardware support

[18:55] <jcastro> b) More applications

[18:55] <jcastro> c) Ease of use

[18:56] <jcastro> ok time for one more question!

[18:57] <jcastro> < mybunche> QUESTION: Apart form Dell, are there anymore OEM's in the pipeline?

[18:57] <jcastro> I don't know, but the list is always growing.

[18:57] <jcastro> I know system76 laptops are popular with ubuntu users

[18:58] <jcastro> Ok, that's it for me

[18:58] <jcastro> thanks everyone for showing up and asking questions!