Ubuntu Wiki

Platform Track

The top priority for the Ubuntu platform in 8.04, since it is a long-term support (LTS) release, is providing a solid and reliable basis for users and for the various Ubuntu products built on top of the common platform (desktop, server, mobile). Much effort will of course go into fixing bugs in the latter part of the cycle, but we have also decided upon a number of feature development projects which amount to comprehensive fixes for top issues affecting many Ubuntu users. These include a number of improvements to the robustness of both initial installations and upgrades, addition of conflict resolution when upgrading GRUB boot loader configuration to prevent user customisations being silently lost, adding support for preserving an existing /home directory while installing Ubuntu, and fixing a number of bugs in how the virtual console system is configured.

It is important that the size of the Ubuntu platform remain under control, both so that we can ship a rich and featureful basic system and to ensure that space is available for innovative projects from other teams. We will start to use LZMA compression for a number of large packages, and will be looking into adjusting the way we split up localisation packages. Work will begin during this cycle on a new integrated set of fonts for Far Eastern languages, which when complete will provide us with more complete and standards-compliant fonts as well as reducing the amount of redundancy between them.

We undertook usability reviews of some important components of the platform, and have worked out feasible plans to significantly improve sore points throughout the Ubuntu installation experience. Upstream development work on NetworkManager taking place during this cycle is likely to improve our end-user network facilities substantially, including improved support for dial-up users; we also have a simpler fallback plan in case that work is delayed.

The platform team is responsible for packaging and integration of many important upstream components, and always tries to anticipate significant changes coming from their development communities. GNOME 2.22 is of course fundamental to the Ubuntu desktop, and includes a complete rewrite of the virtual filesystem layer (GVFS) along with a rewritten version of GDM. Firefox 3.0 is currently in beta and likely to land part-way through this cycle, affecting other components such as Yelp that embed its HTML rendering engine. OpenOffice 2.3.1 will be released shortly, while 2.4 will be released before Ubuntu 8.04 but probably too late for inclusion (although preview packages will be available separately). GCC 4.3 and Glibc 2.7 are under consideration, while on the X front we will be focusing on hunting down a variety of driver stability problems as well as switching to X's new built-in hardware autodetection system where possible.

Desktop Track

Ubuntu has always had a distinctive look which has been slowly evolved since our first release from the dark brown we had in 4.10 to the orange and brown mixture we have today. Discussions were held throughout the week on the best way to keep the distinctive look while doing something fresh and different at the same time. We decided to use the natural rhythm of our release cycles between LTS releases to evolve artwork themes, so that each LTS would be the culmination of the artwork developed through the releases preceeding it.

This distinction also includes our use of desktop effects on supported hardware, which have already received praise for being subtle and unobtrusive. 8.04 will receive various improvements and tweaks in this regard, especially for the discoverability of the various key bindings and facilities the window manager offers.

Other usability improvements planned for 8.04 include work on the installer; the tools that users use to install and remove software as well update their system; and a new "About This Computer" dialog that helps to answer common support questions and provide information for bug reports.

Development will begin on a unified face browser screen that will allow users to login, switch users, unlock a locked session as well as decide whether to shutdown or reboot the machine after logging out. This will be a project spanning multiple releases, with some parts potentially being ready for 8.04 if stable enough for deployment in an LTS release.

8.04 will see use in Ubuntu of the PulseAudio sound server, smoothing the experience of dealing with multiple applications that wish to use the sound card, and will see the first integration work of the PolicyKit framework for authenticating privileged actions. We also look forward in this cycle to other distributions picking up our work on Apport, the automated problem report filing system, and Restricted Manager which will be undergoing redevelopment to increase its flexibility and usefulness.

Kubuntu 8.04 will be brought up to date with the features available in its GNOME-based cousin; while at the same time, KDE 4 will be available as an option after installation for those that wish to experiment with the new release before it is sufficient stable to be the default option.

Server Track

This was the first UDS for the newly created Ubuntu Server Team. The sessions were very well attended and the input provided was extremely beneficial. We focused not only on 8.04, but also longer term projects that we might not complete in one development cycle.

Windows integration was one key feature discussed. The main objective is to make the transition easier for Window shops that would like to try Ubuntu Server. Jerry Carter, Samba Release Manager and Centera employee, showed us an interesting product based on a modified winbind that will allow us to easily join an AD domain.

Using OpenLDAP 2.4 was discussed. This version will allow Ubuntu to link against GnuTLS instead of OpenSSL. This has been an issue, since it is our stance that OpenSSL is not GPL compatible. We will be focusing on the LDAP client side initially, but plan many improvements to OpenLDAP server in Ubuntu in the future.

We discussed virtualisation, both as a guest and host. Making Ubuntu Server the best virtualisation platform will be one of or focuses for 8.04.

Security was featured in several sessions. We discussed methods to increase the security of Ubuntu in general, including AppArmor, a hardened toolchain, SELinux, and simple firewall integration. We are dedicated to maintaining Ubuntu's reputation of good security and will be making some of the proposed changes over the next few release cycles.

Community Track

The community track at the UDS provided discussion in a number of areas. These are each summarised below.

Ubuntu Forums Content Certification discussed the options available to us to identify good content on the forums and mark it as content that is reliable, free of errors and recommended for use. This discussion was aimed to resolve the problem of people blindly pasting 'sudo' commands into a terminal to achieve something. This is a topic the Forums Council are discussing too. Many different perspectives were shared at the UDS, and it is a tough problem with my facets, such as how you certify content, whether that content should move somewhere else, and issues of modifying and maintaining that content. At the end of the sessions, the problem was still unresolved and requires more discussion.

A session about embedding screencast support into Ubuntu happened, but I am unsure of any outcome to that discussion. The idea was suggesting that videos could be streamed from a server directly into Yelp online documentation on the system, making it much easier to find screencasts. This raised issues of translations, and a wider community would need to translate subtitle files.

There were a number of discussions about general team processes - processes that apply to all teams, such as team reporting, and how we encourage teams to engage in these processes. Much of this discussion was about making resources readily available, ensuring teams communicate well together and report progress.

MOTU processes and governance was a hot topic at the UDS, particularly given the increased focus on MOTU over the coming year to encourage more developers. The discussion focused on improving the packaging guide, ensuring the sponsorship queue is tended to and other improvements.

• One direct outcome of the session is that the Packaging Forum is more actively tended to, it has stickies with useful information and is more up-to-date.

• The idea of tracking MOTU decisions in a better way was discussed and will be discussed some more on the mailing list.

• the Packaging Guide was reviewed and resulted in lots of action items for DanielHolbach, some results of the discussions live in the structure of PackagingGuide/Maintenance already

• reviewing the MOTU processes we identified the SponsorshipProcess as the biggest bottleneck, especially the divergence between using bugs and using REVU is something that will be worked on. Improvements of ppaput (of the ubuntu-dev-tools package) were discussed as possible solution.

• Lots of ideas for Packaging sessions came up, small problems were discussed in the hallways and some directly fixed (gripes about REVU, etc)
• Participation of MOTUs through VOIP was great and very active.

The ubuntu-wine team was the subject of much discussion, and we are looking forward to Scott Richie working to make wine support in Ubuntu better.

In one of the round-table sessions, the subject of burnout was raised and how to avoid it. It seems there is no formalised solution to the problem, but instead that the community looks out for themselves; this is why it is particularly important to ensure communities remain personal, and direct friendships are very present.

Another round-table session discussed how we ensure Ubuntu remains a fun project to be involved in, and much of this is about not bogging contributors down with too much process related requirements. Luckily, the Ubuntu community, for its scale, is fairly limited in bureaucracy, but it is something we all need to be aware of.

Kernel Track

For the first time, the Ubuntu Kernel team got its own track for the Boston UDS. The focus was on making the kernel development decision-making process more open.

The key decision was to go with 2.6.24 as the target kernel version for Hardy. The reasons for this were - Hardy is LTS, so it helps to stay as close to upstream as possible; 2.6.24 has many components integrated (new MMC stack, sound drivers, etc.) that would require to be back-ported if we decided to go with 2.6.23; 2.6.24 should be released by February going by previous release schedules, so there should be enough time to stabilize.

For Hardy, there will be a predictable schedule for kernel uploads (and for updates too?). Along with daily builds using PPA, this should alleviate some of the complaints about turn-around time for getting a bugfix into the kernel. This will also allow our partners to update their out-of-tree modules (due to ABI breakages) on a predictable schedule.

QA Track

The newly formed Ubuntu QA team ran a distinct track of QA discussions for the first time at the Boston UDS, focusing on ways to enhance the general quality of the 8.04 LTS release.

A set of quality metrics will be used to track the status of Ubuntu through the release cycle. Automated testing of packages, installation, upgrade and application functionality will give an early indication of problems and enhanced bug statistics will assist the triage teams and developers to manage the steady stream of bug reports from our growing user base. The ISO test tracker will be extended to track tests of individual packages, one-off testing projects and user-submitted suggestions and will incorporate an up-to-the-minute status overview of the release status, known as the development weather report.

Old bugs also need to be kept an eye on to confirm that they are in fact fixed and ensure that they don't slip back in. This will be covered by the fixed-bug-verification project where we incorporate testing of major known bugs from the past in the testing of new ISO images and installs.

To make sure these measures are appropriately timed for the release, the QA team drew up a schedule that will parallel the Hardy Release Schedule but with specific areas of focus for the QA team. For example, right now we are working on triaging bugs regarding Gutsy and identifying bugs that are candidates for a Stable Release Update but soon we will shift our focus to the development version.

See the QA team wiki page for contact information and the latest updates:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam

Mobile Track

The Mobile track had an unexpected large attendance with several people from different projects joining the Core, Mobile Business Unit and Intel representatives which speaks for the large audience and interest on the subject. Our focus was to look at the point where the UME project is and prepare the plans to advance it into a full release alongside 8.04.

It was decided that the UME will have a simple but very consistent set of features, looking towards the simplicity needed for the so called "digital parent", approaching the paradigm of being task oriented and not application oriented.

This can be resumed in a few simple topics:

• The UME should be a task-oriented system. Those basic tasks are:
  • Browse the web.
  • Communicate (Chat, IM)
  • Produce and consume media (video, music)
• All the components have to integrate themselves seamlessly in a way that the process should be transparent to the user.
• All the applications have to share the same database.
• The system as a whole has to be "themeable" and all it's components have to be able to follow the theme.
• The UME components have to be able to recognize and manipulate the files by themselves. The user should not have to use a file manager.
• An application can only enter the UME if it follows a set of criteria to be described in a Design Guide.

Apart the definition above, several other topics were discussed and resulted in the respective specs like:

• Application acceptance criteria.
• Automated tests
• Backup and synchronization.
• Development environment.
• Development process.
• Input methods and internationalization.
• LSB compliance.
• Media support.
• Performance.
• Emulation.
• Software updates.