What's cooking in Ubuntu

   1 [04:01] <ClassBot> Logs for this session will be available at http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2011/01/30/%23ubuntu-classroom.html following the conclusion of the session.
   2 [04:05] <jcastro> ok
   3 [04:05] <jcastro> we'll run this one unmoderated and less formal
   4 [04:05] <jcastro> so we can go deeper into discussions and Q+A without worrying about the bot
   5 [04:05] <jcastro> I'm Jorge Castro and I'll be your host!
   6 [04:05] <jcastro> So for this session basically I'd like to answer your questions about what's going on around Ubuntu for 11.04
   7 [04:06] <jcastro> so we can really have this session be whatever you guys want to ask questions about
   8 [04:06] <jcastro> wether it's new features coming in 11.04
   9 [04:06] <jcastro> or specific questions about the distro in general
  10 [04:07] <Sashin> So, what are the plans in regard to the software centre changes, have we seen them all (ratings and reviews) or is there more to come? (interface changes, new icon, features etc)
  11 [04:07] <mhall119> is there any chance of the server-side of Ubuntu One being opened?
  12 [04:07] <jcastro> ok so let's start off with the software center
  13 [04:07] <jcastro> In case you didn't know, they uploaded a new USC this week that let's people rate and review software
  14 [04:08] <jcastro> you can rate things from 1-5 stars, and leave comments
  15 [04:08] <jcastro> I asked mvo (one of the developers) if this was going to be backported to 10.10
  16 [04:08] <jcastro> and he tells me that they're still looking at doing that, depending on how complicated it is to backport what they need
  17 [04:09] <jcastro> as far as the look and feel and icon and all that, 24 March is the userinterface and beta freeze
  18 [04:09] <jcastro> so I expect any changes would have to land by then. I am not sure what the design team is cooking up for USC though
  19 [04:09] <jcastro> (I wonder if the yellow color for the comments is on purpose for example)
  20 [04:10] <jcastro> mhall119: No change in that policy as far as I know
  21 [04:10] <mhall119> is there an Ubuntu One webservice API?
  22 [04:10] <jcastro> you're in luck
  23 [04:10] <mhall119> or any way to integrate webapps with a user's U1 data
  24 [04:10] <jcastro> "soon" is what they tell me
  25 [04:11] <mhall119> yay!
  26 [04:11]  * jcastro searches for a sec
  27 [04:12] <jcastro> can't find anything
  28 [04:12] <jcastro> but last I heard there will be a full API and SDK and all that jazz
  29 [04:12] <mhall119> it's okay, I know where to find you for updates
  30 [04:12] <mhall119> I also know where to find U1 devs
  31 [04:13] <jcastro> so another thing coming for 11.04 will be the 2.6.38 kernel
  32 [04:13] <jcastro> which is starting to land in natty itself right now
  33 [04:13] <jcastro> this does include the "200 line magic patch" thing everyone was talking about
  34 [04:14] <Habeouscorpus> wow, that alone makes it worth the upgrade
  35 [04:14] <jcastro> there are also 2 new programs in the default install
  36 [04:14] <jcastro> the first one is the switch from openoffice.org to LibreOffice
  37 [04:14] <jcastro> which has already been uploaded this past week
  38 === abhijain is now known as abhishek
  39 [04:14] <jcastro> and the second is that Banshee is now the default music player
  40 [04:15] <jcastro> (feel free to jump in with any questions at any time)
  41 [04:15] <Habeouscorpus> does libre office still support all that open office does?
  42 [04:15] <jcastro> yep
  43 [04:15] <jcastro> and more
  44 [04:15] <Sashin> Anything else apart from unity planned as a part of the Ayatana initiative landing in Natty?
  45 [04:16] <jcastro> in fact libreoffice derives from "go-ooo", which was a patchset of improvements to openoffice
  46 [04:16] <gpc> What does the future hold for the "classic desktop" in Ubuntu?
  47 [04:16] <jcastro> so for ubuntu users it's just a continuation of improvements from the past
  48 [04:16] <jcastro> Sashin: good question
  49 [04:16] <jcastro> suport for the global menu in Firefox and Thunderbird will land
  50 [04:17] <jcastro> as far as the classic desktop
  51 [04:17] <jcastro> I suspect it won't be going anywhere for a while
  52 [04:18] <sebsebseb> Why is Banshee default?
  53 [04:18] <Pendulum> so it should still be an option when Unity 2D starts to really be pushed (which I'm under the impression will happen in O-cycle)
  54 [04:18] <jcastro> Sashin: as far as the rest of ayatana, this cycle is mostly maintenance, so instead of improvements to them we'll see more work being done on apps, etc.
  55 [04:18] <Sashin> Any planned changed to the installer ubiquity?
  56 [04:18] <gpc> jcastro: I would hope until at least 12.04
  57 [04:18] <Sashin> ah I see
  58 [04:19] <jcastro> Banshee by default mostly because of it's healthy improvement upstream
  59 [04:19] <sebsebseb> yeah Unity 2D probably the default fallback option for 11.10?
  60 [04:19] <jcastro> I have more detail on why Banshee here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/10911/why-is-banshee-becoming-the-default/10963#10963
  61 [04:20] <jcastro> Sashin: on the installer front mostly all bug fixing
  62 [04:20] <jcastro> 10.10 was the big one featurewise for the installer
  63 === abhijain is now known as ajain
  64 [04:20] <jcastro> in 10.10 they made it so it installed in the background while you answered the questions
  65 [04:20] <jcastro> which really makes for a fast install
  66 [04:21] <jcastro> I suspect our decision to use Unity 2D in the future as a fallback will depend on how long GNOME 2.x is maintained upstream
  67 [04:21] <jcastro> but as with anything, we make those decisions at UDS, and it's much to early to determine something like that
  68 [04:21] <jcastro> especially when Unity 2D isn't finished yet, and GNOME 2.x is very mature code that's been rocking for us for going on 6 years.
  69 [04:21] <Sashin> Isn't unity going to be a shell over gnome 3?
  70 [04:22] <jcastro> yes
  71 [04:22] <sebsebseb> Maybe the encrypted home should be in an advanced option or something?  I remember people in #ubuntu with issues after re installs or whatever it was, because they had used encryption
  72 [04:22] <jcastro> yeah, that'd be a nice wishlist bug
  73 [04:22] <sebsebseb> was that at me?
  74 [04:22] <jcastro> yes
  75 [04:22] <sebsebseb> ok :)
  76 [04:22] <jcastro> on the server side there are some cool improvements
  77 [04:22] <jcastro> this release will mark the debut of cobbler in ubuntu
  78 [04:22] <sebsebseb> What's cobbler?
  79 [04:23] <jcastro> cobbler is a deployment server from the guys at Red Hat
  80 [04:23] <jcastro> basically you have a server
  81 [04:23] <jcastro> and you tell it "I want ubuntu desktop 10.10, server 10.04, and these other isos"
  82 [04:23] <jcastro> it then imports them
  83 [04:23] <jcastro> and then you just start net booting machines and installing it
  84 [04:24] <jcastro> it's like an out of the box PXE installer with management features
  85 [04:24] <jcastro> http://www.ubuntu-user.com/Online/Blogs/Amber-Graner-You-in-Ubuntu/Chuck-Short-Discusses-Cobbler-On-Ubuntu
  86 [04:24] <jcastro> http://zulcss.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/using-cobbler-on-ubuntu/
  87 [04:24] <gpc> ohh, that sounds nice
  88 [04:24] <sebsebseb> oh ok so cobbler for more than one distro?  So they can be installed eaiser on a server?
  89 [04:24] <jcastro> https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/
  90 [04:24] <jcastro> basically, most sysadmins set up their own kickstart server anyway
  91 [04:25] <jcastro> this one just comes out of the box
  92 [04:25] <jcastro> something else in the tasksel, like we do for LAMP, DNS, etc.
  93 [04:25] <jcastro> you just check the box and voila!
  94 [04:26] <jcastro> hmm, let's see what else
  95 [04:26] <LeGambitteur> what about the web browser ? will Minefield be ready ?
  96 [04:26] <jcastro> yep, it'll be firefox 4
  97 [04:26] <jcastro> which is already in natty
  98 [04:26] <jcastro> (with the global menu as I said earlier)
  99 [04:26] <jcastro> oh, here's one
 100 [04:26] <jcastro> we finally fixed the resizing of windows
 101 [04:27] <jcastro> so instead of that stupid 1 pixel target, you'll be able to basically grab any part of the "shadow" around a window to resize it
 102 [04:27] <jcastro> and on top of that there will be a little grippie on the bottom right corner of every window
 103 [04:27] <jcastro> (it's about time we fixed that bug, it was horrible)
 104 [04:27] <sebsebseb> Unity 2D probably by default for well versions of Ubuntu after 11.04 right?  Gnome 2 is on the verge of dieing after all.  Also I think I read that for Ubuntu to do Gnome 3,  would need to do the whole thing so no Gnome 2 fall back option. Which is planned for 11.10?
 105 [04:28] <jcastro> like I said before it's much to early to tell
 106 [04:28] <jcastro> at this point in the cycle all we're thinking about is 11.04
 107 [04:28] <jcastro> it's not until UDS where we start to think about 11.10
 108 [04:28] <jcastro> so, ask me in May. :)
 109 === abhijain is now known as abhijain1
 110 [04:29] <Pendulum> sebsebseb: if you have a strong opinion either way, you might want to consider attending UDS either in person or remotely :)
 111 === abhijain1 is now known as ajain
 112 === ajain is now known as aajain
 113 [04:29] <Sashin> Gnome shell will still be in the repos?
 114 [04:29] <jcastro> we had to move gnome shell to a PPA
 115 [04:29] <jcastro> for a number of reasons
 116 [04:29] <sebsebseb> Pendulum: I did attend some sessions for not the last UDS, but the one before, remotely
 117 [04:29] <jcastro> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2011-January/002740.html
 118 [04:30] <jcastro> here's the full summary
 119 [04:30] <jcastro> but basically, since we're using GNOME 2.x as the fallback
 120 === aajain is now known as abhijain1
 121 [04:30] <jcastro> we can't ship parts of GNOME 3 on the disc
 122 [04:30] <jcastro> so we're moving -shell and other parts onto a PPA
 123 [04:30] <sebsebseb> jcastro: yeah bingo, that's the one I read
 124 [04:31] <jcastro> that will let anyone work on -shell for ubuntu, since they don't have to have permissions to do that in the archive
 125 === abhijain1 is now known as ajain
 126 [04:31] <sebsebseb> yep and the PPA can be updated after the 11.04 release as well and all that
 127 [04:31] <jcastro> and this way too they don't have to worry about freezes, etc. in the distro
 128 [04:31] <jcastro> so they'll be able to keep putting in fresh snapshots in the PPA while the rest of the distro freezes
 129 [04:31] <Sashin> makes sense
 130 [04:31] <jcastro> if we kept it in the archive by the time we released it would be old
 131 [04:31] <jcastro> anyone is more than welcome to join that team
 132 [04:32] <jcastro> it has ricotz and some of the other people who have been running gnome 3 ppa's
 133 [04:32] <jcastro> https://launchpad.net/~gnome3-team
 134 [04:32] <sebsebseb> yes it will be interesting to see how distros deal with Gnome 3 :)
 135 [04:32] <Sashin> ohh, I have that installed but it doesn't have the new interface...
 136 [04:32] <jcastro> it's just the way that the archive is organized it makes more sense to kick fast moving projects out of the distro and then bring it back in
 137 [04:32] <Sashin> still has the old gnome 3.
 138 [04:32] <jcastro> right
 139 [04:33] <sebsebseb> I think the way Ubuntu are doing it for 11.04 makes sense though,  even though I wasn't that sure when I first read it was going to a ppa
 140 [04:33] <jcastro> we have feature freeze coming up in about a month
 141 [04:33] <jcastro> if -shell was in the archive then effectively whatever -shell was in the archive at that time would be what we would release
 142 [04:33] <jcastro> this way you can just run natty + the ppa and run the freshest shell
 143 [04:34] <jcastro> hmm, lets see, what else
 144 === abhijain is now known as abhijain1
 145 [04:34] <Sashin> Is there any more desktop integration with internet planned?
 146 [04:34] <sebsebseb> jcastro: yeah and maybe a bit easier then doing it the current Gnome 3 site way, but at the moment, I haven't tried either,  for the later Gnome Shell's
 147 [04:34] <jcastro> oh, dunno if you guys saw but network manager is now a proper indicator
 148 [04:34] <Sashin> (like gwibber ubuntu one, etc)
 149 [04:34] <jcastro> so no more old icons in the "tray"
 150 === abhijain1 is now known as xyz
 151 [04:35] <Sashin> that'll make things alot smoother.
 152 [04:35] <jcastro> oh, let me see if ken's around for gwibber
 153 [04:35] <gpc> cyphermox has been working hard on n-m
 154 === xyz is now known as abhijain
 155 === abhijain is now known as akash
 156 [04:36] <stefano-palazzo_> This may be a bit technical. Will this 200-line kernel patch business be disabled by default on the server?
 157 [04:36] <days_of_ruin> Must you change your name constantly?
 158 [04:36] <jcastro> stefano-palazzo_: we don't ship the patch, we ship what's in 2.6.38, which iirc has whatever linus approved
 159 [04:36] <jcastro> I don't expect it will suck on servers
 160 [04:36] <gpc> !nickspam > akash
 161 [04:36] <ubot2> akash, please see my private message
 162 [04:37] <Sashin> it would be cool if we could right click a picture and upload it to flickr or tinypic or something...
 163 [04:37] <jcastro> ken tells me that the improvements for gwibber this cycle are error handling and stability, and not much else.
 164 [04:37] <ikt> a lot of people think the changes to the desktop are massive, and that a lot of people will have to re-learn how to use the desktop, are there any plans for tutorials or guides or something similar built into ubuntu?
 165 === akash is now known as ajain
 166 === ajain is now known as abhijain
 167 [04:37] <Omega> This was from a while ago, but is still important, Ubuntu used to ship go-ooo, so the switch to Libreoffice is not that radical.
 168 [04:37] <jcastro> sure
 169 [04:37] <gpc> abhijain: please stop that
 170 [04:38] <sebsebseb> ikt: I guess the offical support pages for Ubuntu will get re done for 11.04 or parts of them
 171 [04:38] <jcastro> that's part of the reason we have things like feature and UI freeze, to give teams a chance to update documentation
 172 [04:39] <sebsebseb> Lubuntu still won't be an offical  one in 11.04?
 173 [04:39] <jcastro> I'm not sure what the lubuntu progress is lately
 174 [04:39] <jcastro> maybe asking on their project mailing list
 175 [04:40] <ikt> but I mean going further than standard documentation, like the possibility of having video guides or at worst maybe a youtube channel showing some of the newer features etc (can you tell I'm not a fan of reading :X)
 176 [04:40] <sebsebseb> Why isn't it offical already? I have tried it a few times, its quite good really as an Ubuntu based distro.
 177 [04:40] <jcastro> I don't know why it's not official
 178 [04:40] <jcastro> yeah, I'm sure people will make plenty of videos, etc.
 179 [04:41] <jcastro> I'll be making some myself
 180 [04:41] <ikt> :>
 181 [04:41] <ikt> on youtube or ?
 182 [04:42] <sebsebseb> ikt: yeah reading can be quite time consuming, but reading is a good way to find out things :)
 183 [04:42] <jcastro> yeah, we always post videos on the ubuntu developer channel
 184 [04:42] <jcastro> http://www.youtube.com/user/ubuntudevelopers
 185 [04:42] <sebsebseb> videos and audiocasts may be more fun though
 186 [04:42] <ikt> yeah :D
 187 [04:42] <Omega> If videos are made, do not forget to transcribe them.
 188 [04:43] <sebsebseb> Yeah and Jono has his ustream for people who want to ask questions about Ubuntu and such
 189 [04:43] <Pendulum> Omega: +1
 190 [04:43] <jcastro> right
 191 [04:43] <ikt> sebsebseb, yeah I read a lot, but honestly I just prefer watching videos and seeing how things are done
 192 [04:44] <sebsebseb> http://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon
 193 [04:44] <jcastro> 15 minutes left, what other questions?
 194 [04:44] <sebsebseb> ikt: he likes showing Unity at the moment it seems, for example
 195 [04:44] <gpc> What is your favorite food?
 196 [04:45] <Sashin> Any work being done on empathy or evolution?
 197 [04:45] <gpc> :-P
 198 [04:45] <jcastro> tacos
 199 [04:45] <gpc> haha
 200 [04:45] <stefano-palazzo_> How do you see Unity being used in large scale deployments, big companies and that?
 201 [04:45] <jcastro> evo and empathy we depend on upstream to do that work
 202 [04:45] <jcastro> we just ship it, though we keep in contact with the guys @ collabora for improvements to empathy, etc.
 203 [04:46] <jcastro> stefano-palazzo_: I don't suspect most large companies would deploy a non-LTS release
 204 [04:46] <jcastro> however when the next LTS is ready for them then Unity will have gone through a bunch of iteration
 205 [04:46] <jcastro> by then it will be pretty metal
 206 [04:48] <jcastro> anything else?
 207 [04:48] <jcastro> no one's asked about btrfs yet!
 208 [04:48] <sebsebseb> uhmm sure
 209 [04:48] <sebsebseb> ,but
 210 [04:48] <sebsebseb> that won't be 11.04 by default I guess
 211 [04:48] <Sashin> What are its advantages over ext4?
 212 [04:48] <sebsebseb> maybe 11.10 though or at least as an option?
 213 [04:49] <sebsebseb> Sashin: snapshots
 214 [04:49] <sebsebseb> so can restore the system to an earlier state or something, if a problem, but I don't know much about btrfs right now at all
 215 [04:49] <jcastro> it's in 11.04 now as an option
 216 [04:49] <stefano-palazzo_> What are the limitations of an install on btrfs going to be on release day?
 217 [04:49] <gpc> how stable is it?
 218 [04:49] <jcastro> but it'll take some time for things like being able to snapshot back after an apt-get install, etc.
 219 [04:49] <sebsebseb> jcastro: oh yeah it was in 10.10 as an option as well if I remember correctly
 220 [04:49] <jcastro> gpc: I won't be using it. :)
 221 [04:50] <jcastro> sebsebseb: yeah but you couldn't boot into it
 222 [04:50] <jcastro> you had to make /boot ext2/3/4
 223 [04:50] <gpc> jcastro: neither will I in that case :)
 224 [04:50] <sebsebseb> unless a seperate boot partition or whatever
 225 [04:50] <jcastro> now the support is there in grub2 and the installer
 226 [04:50] <jcastro> so you'll be able to install it with just pure btrfs if you want
 227 [04:50] <jcastro> but to me it won't really be useful until it's integrated with dpkg and all that
 228 [04:51] <sebsebseb> Ext4 will be good enough for many of us, for quite a while yet I guess
 229 [04:51] <jcastro> imagine being able to say "you know what, I liked 12.04 better than 12.10"
 230 [04:51] <jcastro> and then just roll back
 231 [04:51] <ClassBot> There are 10 minutes remaining in the current session.
 232 [04:51] <gpc> I like the idea of rollback
 233 [04:51] <sebsebseb> jcastro: well yeah, but the snapshots will take up quite a lot of space or?
 234 [04:51] <jcastro> but it'll be there if people want to play with it
 235 [04:51] <gpc> but it has to be absolutely stable and not wipe all my data
 236 [04:51] <jcastro> not really, that's the best part
 237 [04:51] <jcastro> snapshots are very cheap
 238 [04:51] <sebsebseb> gpc: you and others may get more lonely in #ubuntu when btrfs becomes default :D
 239 [04:52] <jcastro> actually, I found a good video on btrfs, one sec
 240 [04:52] <sebsebseb> gpc: since most problems, can be fixed by a rollback I guess
 241 [04:52] <gpc> sebsebseb: I long for the day we can close #ubuntu or maybe just keep it open as a chat channel and not a support channel .
 242 [04:52] <sebsebseb> that there will be then I mean
 243 [04:53] <jcastro> gpc: I've wanted that closed since 2004. :)
 244 [04:53] <jcastro> http://video.linux.com/video/1608
 245 [04:53] <gpc> haha
 246 [04:53] <jcastro> here you go, this is a good video for btrfs
 247 [04:53] <sebsebseb> jcastro: yeah heh heh I guess
 248 [04:53] <jcastro> from the main upstream guy. :)
 249 [04:54] <sebsebseb> what about ZFS?  maybe that will come properly later on as well? :D
 250 [04:54] <jcastro> that'll catch you up on btrfs in like 45 minutes
 251 [04:54] <Omega> support for ZFS already landed in grub
 252 [04:54] <sebsebseb> Omega: well yeah I read something about that
 253 [04:54] <sebsebseb> ,but I did say more properly above :D
 254 [04:54] <ikt> is there an ubuntu dev website coming along? a la this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT5fUcMUfYg <- ~6:45 in
 255 [04:54] <jcastro> I'm keeping ext4 for a while.
 256 [04:54] <jcastro> http://developer.ubuntu.com/
 257 [04:55] <Omega> I've always been fond of reiserfs myself.
 258 [04:55] <jcastro> this is coming together
 259 [04:55] <ikt> ^_^
 260 [04:55] <jcastro> it'll be following the same release as the distro, so the website will be ready for 11.04
 261 [04:55] <sebsebseb> Omega: Why?
 262 [04:55] <ikt> that's awesome :D
 263 [04:55] <Omega> sebsebseb: I've never had problems with it, except yesterday :(
 264 [04:56] <sebsebseb> oh, and what problem yesterday?
 265 [04:56] <ClassBot> There are 5 minutes remaining in the current session.
 266 [04:56] <Omega> We can talk about it later, it's kind of off-topic for here
 267 [04:56] <jcastro> ok awesome, well it's midnight here, and we're about out of time
 268 [04:56] <sebsebseb> Omega: true
 269 [04:56] <jcastro> thanks so much everyone for joining in
 270 [04:56] <Omega> Thank you jcastro.
 271 [04:56] <jcastro> you can always keep abreast of changes going in 11.04 by following this list
 272 [04:56] <stefano-palazzo_> jcastro, this has been awesome, thanks a lot
 273 [04:56] <LeGambitteur> thanks to you all guys
 274 [04:56] <jcastro> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/natty-changes/
 275 [04:57] <Omega> Thank you for everyone who gave sessions.
 276 [04:57] <gpc> thank you jcastro
 277 [04:57] <Omega> to*
 278 [04:57] <jcastro> and this forum: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=394
 279 [04:57] <sebsebseb> Longer user days, the better in a way, I guess
 280 [04:57] <pleia2> thanks jcastro :)
 281 [04:57] <ikt> ty jcastro and to all the teachers :>
 282 [04:57] <LeGambitteur> till the end sebsebseb
 283 [04:57] <gpc> thank you pleia2 nhandler Pendulum nigelb and everybody else :)
 284 [04:57] <jcastro> and if you have any questions about ubuntu in general feel free to ask us on http://askubuntu.com/
 285 [04:57] <gpc> thank you ClassBot
 286 [04:57] <jcastro> (though we stick to stable releases on ask ubuntu)
 287 [04:57] <gpc> :)
 288 [04:58] <jcastro> cheers, and goodnight everyone!

UserDays/01302011/What's cooking in Ubuntu (last edited 2011-01-30 05:04:21 by ptr)