Ubuntu Open Week

Taking place from Mon 23rd Apr - Sat 28th Apr on IRC.

If you are in a session, please read the rules guidelines

Welcome to the Ubuntu Open Week!

Ubuntu is a freely available, simple to use Linux desktop and server. The Ubuntu project has developed a strong reputation for technical excellence and a commitment to the free software community, and we are always keen to grow and extend our community where possible. Ubuntu does not distinguish between different Enterprise and Open versions - we have one single version of Ubuntu, and this version is and will always be entirely free. Ubuntu is used by over 8 million people and has a worldwide community of volunteers who contribute in many different areas such as packaging, documentation, art, translations, testing, marketing and more.

Find out more about the Ubuntu desktop or server and download them.

Road test our community

In just two years, Ubuntu has become the most popular Linux distribution in the world with millions of users and a spot regularly at the top of Distrowatch. Ever wondered what all the fuss is about? How we've achieved such a great feat in such a short space of time? Here's where you can find out.

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, is holding a series of online workshops where you can:

• learn about the Ubuntu landscape
• talk to some of the key developers from the Ubuntu project
• find out about the Community and its relationship with Canonical

• participate in an open Q&A with Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu

• much more...

The Timetable

We have organised a week long menu of events that touch many different areas of the Ubuntu community. If you are interested in being a part of the project, there is sure to be a session for you.

The following events are scheduled, and all times are in UTC time. To calculate UTC times for your own timezone, you can use this tool.

Joining a session

Use your IRC client (such as xchat, irssi or mIRC) to connect to the Freenode IRC network at irc.freenode.net. You can do this manually by typing:

 /server irc.freenode.net 

Then join #ubuntu-classroom for the time and date of the session you want to attend. You can manually join the channel by typing:

 /join #ubuntu-classroom 

You should also join #ubuntu-classroom-chat which is the general discussion channel for the session. Questions should be posted there. You should prefix your questions with "QUESTION:" to make them easier to spot.

Most sessions last for around an hour. Contact jono on IRC if you have any problems.

Session Rules

Please follow the following rules while being in the session. This will ensure that the class runs effectively:

• Do NOT talk while the host is providing the tutorial part of the session. Discussion about the session is in #ubuntu-classroom-chat.
• Ask your questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat when the Q+A part of the session is open. Prefix your questions with QUESTION (e.g. QUESTION: How do I do foo?)

Our Sessions

We have a number of sessions next week for all tastes and interests. Feel free to come to as few or as many sessions as you like. All of them are free and open to anyone:

• Ask Mark (Mark Shuttleworth) - In this session, you can ask Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth your questions about Ubuntu.

• Joining the Ubuntu Community (Jono Bacon) - In this session, Jono Bacon explains how to get involved in the Ubuntu community and become a member.

• Edubuntu (Oliver Grawert) - Edubuntu lead technical architect Oliver Grawert gets you involved in the education focused Edubuntu project.

• Kubuntu (Brandon Holtsclaw) - Brandon Holtsclaw provides an introductory session to show you how to get involved with the KDE driven Kubuntu project.

• LoCo Teams (Melissa Draper) - In these sessions Melissa Draper shows you how to get involved with LoCo teams; geographically local teams that help push, support, translate and promote Ubuntu. If you are interested in joining or running a team, these sessions are for you.

• MOTU (Daniel Holbach)) - Here Daniel Holbach guides you through some of the steps to show you how to get involved in packaging software that is available in Ubuntu's Universe repository.

• Packaging 101 (TBC) - A beginners guide to making packages for the Ubuntu project.

• Patching Packages (Martin Pitt) - In these sessions Martin discusses the different skills and processes involved in patching packages effectively.

• Community Q+A (Jono Bacon) - Ask your questions to Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager about everything and anything to do with the Ubuntu community.

• Translating with Launchpad (Carlos Perello and Danilo Segan) - Carlos Perello and Danilo Segan provide a solid introduction showing you how to translate applications in Ubuntu using the powerful Rosetta component in Launchpad.

• Ubuntu Desktop Team (Sebastien Bacher) - Here Sebastien Bacher guides you how to be a part of the team that ensures the desktop in Ubuntu is rock solid, featureful and stable.

• Launchpad Q+A (Christian Reis) - Christian Reis provides a solid introduction to Launchpad, a centralised system for managing software projects, bugs, translations and more.

Our Hosts

Each of the many sessions this week is being delivered by a team of

• Sebastien Bacher - Sebastien works on the Ubuntu Desktop Team and works to ensure the desktop in Ubuntu is reliable, feature packaged and fully integrated.

• Jono Bacon - Jono works at Canonical as the Ubuntu Community Manager and works to help optimise, scale and grow the worldwide Ubuntu community.

• Melissa Draper - Melissa runs the Australian LoCo team, and is one of a number of people who help develop and run the local community (LoCo) teams project.

• Matthew East - Matthew is the leader of the Ubuntu documentation team, and with the rest of the team works to produce high quality documentation on all aspects of Ubuntu.

• Daniel Holbach - Daniel works at Canonical as part of the distro team and works on GNOME support in Ubuntu as well as being the leader of the MOTU team. Daniel is hugely committed to Ubuntu and the community and has played a strong role in Ubuntu's success.

• Brandon Holtsclaw - Brandon is an active member of the Kubuntu project, and is also involved in the MOTU team. Brandon has a strong technical ability and a friendly and social approach to his work.

• Cody Somerville - Cody is an active member and developer of the Xubuntu project.

• Oliver Grawert - Oliver is the lead technical architect of the Edubuntu project; an Ubuntu derivative specifically aimed at education.

• Simon Law - Simon Law runs the Ubuntu Bug Squad and works to manage the hundreds of bugs that come in from users and developers. He is here to help make Ubuntu as rock solid as possible.

• Jeff Bailey - Jeff works for Canonical leading the commercial support team. In a prior life, he was the head of the Debian hurd-i386 port, and worked on porting the Debian Installer. Jeff currently hacks on Ubuntu hppa.

• Jordan Mantha - Jordan is a driving force in the MOTU team. Jordan is currently Ph.d Student and has a great FL/OSS track record.

• Jordi Mallach - Jordi works for Canonical on the Rosetta component of Launchpad. Rosetta has developed into a powerful framework for easily translating applications, and Jordi is an excellent teacher for translating more and more free software with Rosetta.

• Christian Reis - Christian is the co-lead of the Launchpad project with Steve Alexander.

• Mark Shuttleworth - Mark is the founder of the Ubuntu project and has worked to grow a strong development team in and around the project and legitimize Ubuntu as a world-class leading desktop and server.

• Martin Pitt - Martin works for the distro team and works on a number of different areas of Ubuntu.

Glossary

When moving to a new distribution it can sometimes be quite confusing to get your head around the jargon and terms that are part of that project. Here is a quick glossary of many of the terms that are being used this week:

• IRC - Internet Relay Chat. A means of talking to others online, and the medium used for the sessions this week.

• Canonical - The primary sponsor of the Ubuntu project, funding over 70 employees to work on the project and related technologies.

• Ubuntu - A freely available, easy to use Linux desktop and server.

• Kubuntu - A derivative of Ubuntu with the KDE desktop instead of GNOME.

• Xubuntu - A derivative of Ubuntu with the Xfce4 desktop instead of GNOME.

• Edubuntu - An education targeted derivative of Ubuntu.

• Launchpad - A central website for managing bugs, translations, new features, packages and much more. Pretty much all parts of the Ubuntu project use Launchpad.

• Malone - The bug tracking component inside Launchpad.

• Rosetta - An online tool that is part of Launchpad that allows anyone to help translate software into different languages.

• MOTU - In addition to the main Ubuntu package archive, we support the Universe package archive. This archive contains thousands of additional packages that can be installed on an Ubuntu system. The MOTU team (Masters Of The Universe) look after this archive and ensure that as many packages as possible are ready for use for our users.

• Ports - In the same way that the archive is split into main/universe to mean Canonical-supported versus Community-supported, some architectures are supported by community members. These are referred to as 'ports'.

• LoCo Teams - Geographically located teams that work to grow the Ubuntu community and advocate, translate and otherwise help Ubuntu.