Planet Wolves

This blog entry represents the views of me, myself and I, and does not represent the views of my employer (Canonical) or System 76. While I have decided to write a review of this specific machine, there are many vendors out there who ship Ubuntu on their machines and this review does not favor System76 over these other vendors. Heck, I am happy to review their machines too if they want.

Recently I got one of these new System 76 ultra-thin laptops, the Lemur:

System76 are well known in the Open Source community for shipping Ubuntu on their machines, being active community members and for helping LoCo teams with machines too. I have never owned a System76 box so I thought this was a good opportunity to give it a ride and share some feedback.

So first, the specs:

• Display: 14.0″ HD WXGA Super Clear Ultra-Bright LED backlit (1366 x 768)
• Graphics: Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics
• Audio Output: Intel High Definition Audio
• Networking: Gigabit LAN (10/100/1000), WiFi
• Wireless: 802.11 agn
• Expansion: Express Card 34 slot
• Ports: HDMI, VGA, 3 x USB 2.0, Headphone Jack, Microphone Jack, SD Reader
• Camera: Built-In 1.3 MP Webcam
• Security: Kensington® Lock
• Power Management: Suspend & Hibernate
• Battery: Lemur UltraThin Li-Polymer Battery Pack
• AC Adapter: includes one AC adapter
• Dimensions: 13.38″ x 9.09″ x 0.90″ (WxDxH)
• Weight: 3.5 lbs

The machine I got has an Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.3 GHz 800 MHz FSB 3 MB L2 (10 Watt), 4GB RAM (DDR3 1066 MHz 1 DIMM) and a 80 GB Intel X25-M Solid State Drive.

Now, in the interests of full disclosure: I don’t really do reviews, so this is going to be a quick run through the details, not a 150-picture unboxing and War And Peace epic of every minor detail of the machine. I just wanted to get my experience down as quickly as possible so I could share my feedback with others.

The Machine

OK, let’s zip through the summary:

The machine is a really sleek looking bit of kit. The first thing that struck me is how well designed it feels: it doesn’t feel like a randomly thrown together collection of components. It is thin and incredibly light, and has a very Apple-ish feel to it. It passed what I am calling the Lost Test: that is, when laid in bed at night watching Lost on Hulu with said laptop rested on your chest (for that IMAX effect), how many episodes can you get though before you feel like your heart is about to overheat and stop working. It’s lightness and lack of heat helped it pass with flying colors.

The screen looks great, doesn’t seem to smudge easily and is nice and bright. I like the fact it is a widescreen, something I miss with my current Thinkpad.

The keyboard is pretty much ok: it ain’t no Thinkpad keyboard, but of all the laptops I have owned and that are buried in my laptop graveyard, the Lemur’s keyboard feels better than most. The keys are wide enough and I love the fact that there is no Windows key, but instead an Ubuntu key. I want to see more of that, yes I do.

The trackpad is long and feels pretty good, and the buttons don’t look like buttons but instead areas on the trackpad near the bottom where you can push down: this makes it look really sleek. Unfortunately at first the buttons are a little hard to press, but I have noticed that they are getting easier, so I think they just need breaking in a little.

With the current configuration of processor and RAM, this thing is shit off a shovel fast. It zips along like no-ones business, and Ubuntu is up and running in a matter of seconds. While I didn’t test any hardcore 3D games on there, it runs Compiz great with the extra effects switched on.

Sounds works great, the speakers sound surprisingly good and the built-in webcam works well too. Finally, the battery life seems fine in terms of life, but not outstanding. Then again, I am used to my extra-long-life Thinkpad batteries.

My only real gripe believe it or not is the packaging the machine comes in: it visually looks cheap with a large generic “notebook” logo and doesn’t reflect the swishness of the machine encased inside it. I spoke to Carl Richell, founder of System76 about this and he has acknowledged it is an issue and they are keen to fix it: he said they really want every essence of the System76 experience to feel sleek. Good man.

The Default Install: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

It is just incredible driving back from picking up a computer from the UPS warehouse and knowing that it already has Ubuntu pre-installed. I have never bought a pre-installed Ubuntu computer before, so I was curious to see how it looked. I got it home, switched it on and it threw up the installer’s configuration settings: I entered my details and the system was ready to roll. I was left with pretty much a default installation of Ubuntu: there is not the horrible bundled collection of software you don’t want and ugly vendor wallpaper that you find if you buy a typical Windows pre-loaded machine. Good work System76 on shipping what I consider a great representation of Ubuntu.

Other than that, nothing much to say: everything just works as you would expect.

Running Lucid

Being part of the Ubuntu development team, I was keen to get Lucid on there. I used Update Manager to update to Lucid and installation was smooth. Once again everything works: any bugs that I have found have not been specific to this machine, but replicated on my other Lucid machine. What is really noticeable is boot speed on the SSD: it is bonkers fast.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think the Lemur is a beautiful machine, and combined with what I consider a beautiful Operating System, particularly with the new fit and finish of Lucid. When running the Lemur it really feels like great design in hardware and software meeting well. I would happily recommend this machine to others.

…that this part of my desktop could feel so sleek:

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, we are ready for you.

This week Dan’s podcast RatholeRadio hit it’s 21st episode and to be fair it seems to be going from strength to strength. It’s a really nice way to round off Sunday evening I’m not sure why but I don’t feel the ‘urgency’ that I sense when other podcasts do their ‘Live’ shows. Maybe its the smaller IRC audience but I think its more to do with the fact that Dan plays what he wants, while you could heckle him from the IRC channel “Dan I’m stabbing myself with a Biro” I doubt very much if he would change the playlist that he had set up for that particular shows performance.

This week I decided to listen on my main openSUSE box rather than my Ubuntu Dell mini the first problem I encountered was appalling sound level, level? there was no sound! Actually that was not strictly true I could hear a faint noise coming from the left headphone. I have two shuttle PC’s both of which have audio in/out on the front, now dear reader you would have thought ‘remove two jacks from top machine plug same into bottom machine’ right? Erm apparently not! The bottom machine has the two ports cunningly swapped! Arrrrgghh I am now deafened and sentenced to suffer from tinnitus for the next week or so as 50 billion decibels burst my not so young eardrums.

As per usual Dan started off with some demo music just to test out his sound systems and the icecast http://65.60.11.2:8216/live we all seem to enjoy this part heaps as its not included in the podcast so its sort of our little groups pre-show party so to speak.

Hold On To Your Structure by The Hoboscopes
This is a fun track, gypsy punk with a heavy accordion lead. This had us all jigging around like lunatics, I like the way Dan plays something lively to kick the show off, gypsy punk always seems to put a smile on my face I suppose the musicians take it seriously I just think its a sort of mickey take on main stream punk or is it a more palatable version? Thumbs up on this one.

These Days by Robin Grey
A guitar based semi folk type song nothing special in my opinion but was a pretty easy listening track so fitted in well with the ‘Sunday Evening’ theme that permeates throughout these reviews.  I would have thought Dan would have played a second lively song rather than hitting us with this mellow track? Over all it was a so so track gets a “Meh” on this one.

Loneliness Of The Shot Down Bomber by Paindonor
Now this is an interesting song a cool mellow techno start with a heavy violin influence slightly strange but pretty haunting. I’m not sure if you could “Get down and shake your bootee” to this one but ideal for chilling out to or maybe while driving to work. I really like the title of the song and you did sort of feel, I presume, the pain in the track. Thumbs up on this one.

Words Of Wisdom by George Carlin
This was one of those political ’message’ monologues Dan seems to favour I’m not a big fan of it myself I’m not sure how it fits into a music show although having said that music and political messages have been intertwined since time began. I suppose it was enjoyable if you’re into that sort of thing it sort of reminds me of those free concerts where you have to listen to Red Robbo after each song to justify getting in for free. Thumbs down on this one.

Sad Man by Dub Rebellion
A Ska, Dub, Reggae band Dan seems to think I’m a huge fan of reggae I like it but its not my sole interest. The cohesion of Ska and Reggea is defiantly right up my street I wonder what a Bob Marley song would have been like given a Ska makeover? I enjoyed this track even doing a few ‘skanking‘ moves which is perfectly acceptable in the privacy of your own home. Thumbs up on this one.

The first ever live Rathole Radio gig tickets go on sale
The first ever live Rathole Radio gig is happening in Liverpool on Friday April 30th at the Bad Format Social Club. It kicks things off nicely for the OggCamp10 weekend to follow. Dan is trying to promote Creative Commons artists and has some amazing acts playing live. There’ll be interactive message walls, many laughs and the bar is also very reasonably priced apparently. I have paid my measly £5.00 so maybe I’ll see you there?

Live Fast Lie Down by BeatSix
This was a fairly lively Rock ‘N’  Soul mix reasonably enjoyable but nothing to set my socks on fire to be honest. I had a quick read-up on their Jamendo profile where they state “Think, very early Duran, mid-era Echo and the Bunnymen, a touch of David Sylvian/Japan with a potent stabs of art-rock guitar stings over a chocolaty bass and drums groove”. which in my opinion translates as “I’m not too sure what we are?” it wasn’t a bad song just nothing special. Gets a “Meh”

Superhero by Lab7
We was back on track with this Electro Spanish group, the song does the classic quiet start building to a heavy typical electro beat, quick as a flash out came the glow sticks and we was pumping to the beat. Apparently they are “An alter ego of a normal someone who uses electronic music to express himself through a kidnapped mind” which is a little bit scary. I like this one a lot and would probably download it. This one gets a thumbs up.

Mr Weirdo by Fresh Body Shop
Dan then hit us with this indie group with a very good beat and guitar rhythm I tried to resist performing as a virtual drummer and made do with ‘foot tapping’ instead. The group hail from France and have a huge list of so called influences listed on their MySpace website I did like the first influence “My cat” which I thought was kinda funny but over all I liked the song so this one gets a thumbs up.

LIVE TRACK – Billy Bragg – “Waiting For The Great Leap Forward”
Within the first two or three chords I recognised this emotional song from my youth with that epic line which is the title of the song. Dan gave us what to date has been my favourite rendition of a song which he belted out with all the passion that Billy himself would have been proud of. I’ve always liked Billy Braggs stuff I wonder if Dan fancies having a crack at the Levi Stubbs cover Tears? Have a listen to some of Billy’s stuff he is a political musician but the words of his songs still have value today. Thumbs up on this one.

Weapons by Keep Cool Vibration
Billed as Reggae Live Dub Rastafari this would be the classic big band Bob Marley type presentation, yes you guessed it we was all doing that slow motion bottom thrusting dancing. Yet another good tune to take up the penultimate slot of the show, I did want to read a bit more about them but their profile on Jamedo is in French and Google translate usually gets French wrong or so I’m told. Some strong trumpet sections and pretty clear vocals all in all a pretty good song which would be well worth downloading in my opinion or at least have a listen on line. Thumbs up on this one.

The Horse & Cart by Kagnee
Yet another song from the catalogue of the band Dan was a member of, this one apparently is about Pamela Anderson who made a porn tape with her partner Tommy Lee Jones back in the days when I had hair. Now I do like some of the stuff on the album but this particular track turned me off  while it was probably a laugh making the song and it has some low level historical value, apparently Tommy Lee heard the song and sent a signed copy back to the band, I thought it was terrible just an excuse to say what a slapper she was. Thumbs down on this one.

With seven thumbs up it would seem this weeks show was better than I thought I had a feeling it was slightly down on the last two podcasts that I’d attended but I must be wrong? I obviously enjoyed myself more than I thought.

Today is International Women’s Day, and it provides an opportunity for the world to focus on women’s rights, and society’s attitudes towards women. International Women’s Day has been celebrated since the early 1900’s and has been a key milestone through many key events that have affected women’s rights and is now recognized as a national holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

When I first heard of International Women’s Day, I was unsure of how I can contribute to celebrating the day and raising awareness of women’s rights. On the website one approach it advises is:

The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother’s Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

I think this is wonderful opportunity inside our global communities to do exactly this: to not only celebrate the contributions of women in our projects, campaigns and passions, but to also talk about ways in which we can break down the barriers and attitudinal prejudices that some women still face, particularly in largely male dominated software communities. Today is a great day for equality: let’s all make the most of it.

As part of International Women’s Day, the Ubuntu Women team have been running a competition to gather a collection of stories that share how women discovered Ubuntu and their experiences of joining our community. I thought this was a wonderful initiative: it really speaks to strong experiences of how Ubuntu can enable women to join a collaborative community, and how technology can be a true enabler.

Of the many stories submitted, there were to be two winners: one picked by the community, and I was given the honor of picking the second. Thankyou to the Ubuntu Women team for involving me in the unveiling of the winners, and this morning I announced both winners, read out their stories, and also read out a third that I thought was excellent too. Congratulations to Elvira Martinez and Karen Y. Perez for winning, and to Jen Phillips for getting read out too.

The video from this morning is below:

Can’t see it? Click here!

With today being International Women’s Day, I just want to share a few quick words on the women in my life. I have the privilege of having some incredible women as part of my life. In my family there is my wife, my mum, auntie’s, cousins and other relatives, the many wonderful female friends both online and offline, and every day I have the pleasure of working with some truly remarkable women in the Open Source world, throughout the various communities I am part of. There has been much discussion, particularly in the Open Source community, about how we can encourage more women into our communities, and there has been some friction between different approaches. I don’t see today as a day in which those debates should flourish, but as a day in which we should celebrate the women in our lives who help us flourish. Everyone single one of us has women who contribute so much to our lives and empower us every day, and I am thankful for all the women who bring color to my life, and give me the strength and energy to be who I am.

At 10am PSt / 1pm EST / 8pm UTC/GMT on Monday I will be doing another live videocast, and this one is a really special one. That day, March 8th, is International Women’s Day and the Ubuntu Women team have been running a competition to gather a wonderful collection of stories about how women discovered Ubuntu. I have been given the honor of picking one of the two winners and the community has picked the other. The two winners will receive a fantastic collection of prizes.

I want to thank all of the awesome entries to the competition and thanks to the Ubuntu Women team for asking me to participate and share the winners. I look forward to see you all then!

Go and watch the live cast here.

• Sweet. The now show is back. Good times. #nowshow #radio4 #BBC #
• Lovely run up Lickey hill; http://favoriterun.com/294345 – 7:45mins/mile; 12.57 miles. Now to eat breakfast and visit/annoy @carolinegoodwin #
• Congratulations Rowan. You've slept well. Don't rush to get up; I don't mind. When you do wake, we'll eventually go and have Lots of fun. #
• My ankle seems worse this morning. Time to wear boots :-/ #
• Hockey good. Left ankle not so good. Feels f–ked and swelling. Boo. #
• Hockey time. #bromsgrove At least it's dry #
• I seem to be in a good mood today; a welcome change. Hockey tonight, Dead mech podcast to listen to, new ear phones and a sunny day. #
• I seem to be in a good mood today; a welcome change. Hockey tonight too #
• Interesting day. Hyper toddler. Poor patch. #
• Signed up to the #dyfienduro – #474 Perhaps I need to do some cycling now. Or not. #
• fixed http://www.whoateallthepies.tv – silly rinetd and so on. Perhaps I ought to do some /paying/ work today…. #
• It's probably a good thing i haven't got last.fm recording what I listen to on my iPhone. Guns and roses estranged would be top. #
• Surprise surprise galaxy chocolate is now the same price in @asda as poundland. £1 for 125g. Was £1.26 in asda. #
• Lovely sunny morning in bromsgrove – one of the rare times I miss farming. #

• Sweet. The now show is back. Good times. #nowshow #radio4 #BBC #
• Lovely run up Lickey hill; http://favoriterun.com/294345 – 7:45mins/mile; 12.57 miles. Now to eat breakfast and visit/annoy @carolinegoodwin #
• Congratulations Rowan. You've slept well. Don't rush to get up; I don't mind. When you do wake, we'll eventually go and have Lots of fun. #
• My ankle seems worse this morning. Time to wear boots :-/ #
• Hockey good. Left ankle not so good. Feels f–ked and swelling. Boo. #
• Hockey time. #bromsgrove At least it's dry #
• I seem to be in a good mood today; a welcome change. Hockey tonight, Dead mech podcast to listen to, new ear phones and a sunny day. #
• I seem to be in a good mood today; a welcome change. Hockey tonight too #
• Interesting day. Hyper toddler. Poor patch. #
• Signed up to the #dyfienduro – #474 Perhaps I need to do some cycling now. Or not. #
• fixed http://www.whoateallthepies.tv – silly rinetd and so on. Perhaps I ought to do some /paying/ work today…. #
• It's probably a good thing i haven't got last.fm recording what I listen to on my iPhone. Guns and roses estranged would be top. #
• Surprise surprise galaxy chocolate is now the same price in @asda as poundland. £1 for 125g. Was £1.26 in asda. #
• Lovely sunny morning in bromsgrove – one of the rare times I miss farming. #

Annoyingly the current version of the google-news-sitemap plugin for Wordpress (v1.4) doesn’t work with some silly XML namespace error reported by google.

See http://wordpress.org/support/topic/364929 and effectively the ‘patch’ on the Google Support forum thing which works fine (there are two bits of the plugin which need updating – whcih correlate to the two parts mentioned in the posting etc)

Bit annoyed that the fix is so easy – yet the plugin hasn’t been updated yet. Grr.

Changing to Wordpress is a good move for me but I did forget to sort out a few things such as my feeds. Now obviously I’m convinced there are hoards of open source community members hanging on my every word so now I will have to traipse round all the ‘Planets‘ that was kindly syndicating my posts and ask them to modify their setup.

Interestingly this has highlighted a service that Twitter etc can provide, I’m also sure there are individuals who have applied my feed their favourite RSS feed reader so all of these people will no longer get my life enhancing musings I shall have to tweet the new feed URL.

As many of you will be aware, this week Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week took part, and the week has been wonderful so far. There has been so much excitement and interest, and I have been tickled pink at just how many people have been telling me that the week has re-invigorated their interest or given them a new passion for writing fun and useful apps. Ubuntu is an awesome platform for making these apps, and it has been a real pleasure to see people getting so fired up about using it.

Before the week kicked off, I offered a fun little challenge called The Grand App Writing Challenge. With a week of rocking content ahead designed to help build a fun and thriving community who like to write apps that scratch their itches, I put forward the challenge for you good people to write some apps and see how far you get this week, and I will blog your progress at the end of the week. Well, while we still have a few sessions yet to go, it is Friday and I was keen to show off some progress!

With which, I present the wonderful submissions from some of our attendees this week!

HardwareMap

Chris Couzens wrote in and shared his project HardwareMap:

My program is called HardwareMap. It lists computers and services on the local network (Avahi) and hardware connected to your computer (HAL). When you click a device, it tells you properties of the device and lets you perform common actions for that device. For example, an ftp share has a button to open in Nautilus, a webcam has a button to open in Cheese and an inline preview of the webcam.

More Info

• See the Launchpad project
• See more screenshots
• See the PPA

Blogite

Andy Breiner writes in about Blogite

I created a python program called Blogite. It is suppose to be similar to Gwibber but for RSS feeds. It pulls in the RSS feeds, but I need a better way of displaying the feeds. I want to add categories so rss feeds can be easily separated and shown. It is still slightly rough around the edges. I also want to add pictures so it can show the picture right next to the post similar to Gwibber.

Fantastic! This looks like it has bags of potential!

More Info

• See the Launchpad project
• See more information
• No PPA yet, but in the works

Rename Them All

Owais Lone wrote in to share an application which can be described pretty easily:

A simple Batch Renamer; That’s it. Even having a screenshot of my app on jono@home would be something I’ll cheer about for a couple of months at least.

Consider it done, Owais.

Owais made great progress this week, so check out the project!

More Info

• See the Launchpad project
• See more screenshots
• See the PPA

sshsplit

Martin Eve writes in with his first app, in the form of sshsplit:

I recently saw your Great App Writing contest post and decided, over the weekend, to knock something up. This is my first effort at using Python, having previously had quite a lot of experience in C# and .NET. My program is called sshsplit. It multiplexes ssh dynamic tunnels. An example perhaps serves better. Normally you would: ssh -D 54321 remote-host – to get a tunnel on 127.0.0.1:54321 that goes through remote-host. However, if you are using a network-resource-intensive application (torrent clients for example), this single tunnel will not suffice for, say, 1000 concurrent connections. sshsplit launches several instances of the ssh dynamic tunnel and then load balances between them. If no arguments are passed, sshsplit launches the configuration GUI. Otherwise, for help, run: sshsplit -h. sshsplit can also be configured to use any binary you would like

Great work, Martin! It looks like you made fantastic progress!

More Info

• See the Launchpad project
• Anotherscreenshot
• See the PPA

Uninstaller for Adobe® AIR® 1.0.0

Bernard Opic writes in with his very first app too:

Uninstaller for Adobe AIR is an easy solution for uninstalling Adobe AIR applications. When installing an AIR application it is possible to first save the installation program file (. air). This file will then allow to install but also to uninstall the application, provided that the AIR engine is installed and functional. If you install an AIR application from its source without saving its installation program file, or if the AIR engine is not available, uninstalling an AIR application can be difficult on a GNU/Linux system because it requires the use of system commands via a shell. Thanks to Uninstaller for Adobe AIR it becomes very easy to uninstall an AIR application since it suffices to choose it from a list of installed applications and click on an Uninstall button. Uninstaller for Adobe AIR is a free software under GPL version 3 license, designed to compatible with the GNU/Linux Ubuntu distribution and with the GNOME and KDE window managers.

Great work, Bernard!

More Info

• See the homepage

Splatter

Anirudh writes in with another fun and useful app in the form of *Splatter:

I’m an (opportunistic ) student developer, and wanted a better way to collaborate on bugs and watch issues on some of my favorite projects. However I hated having to go through bugzilla’s overwhelmingly complex interface just to check up for new comments and changes. If I turned on email notification I’d be hit with a barrage of emails which I’m not too fond of. I felt it was time for things to change. So over the past one and a half weeks, I wrote Splatter – a gnome app to keep track of bugs. It evolved from a very simple concept of being a frontend to a bugtracker to becoming a tool for collaboration on tasks with fellow developers.

Great work, Anirudh!

More Info

• See more screenshots and homepage
• See the PPA

Ain’t Easy Project/Goal Manager

Andrew Sellers shares with us his work on Ain’t Easy:

For those of us currently deluged with work, stretching from one week to another, or simply those who work on many different things, tracking down when an event is happening in nigh impossible. Not just that, sometimes goals will simply get buried under a mass of other projects. It just ain’t easy to keep up with all of it. Some things aren’t fit for a calendar, while others just don’t work well with to-do lists. Finally sometimes you have to associate text or documents with an event, how are you going to do that? That’s where Ain’t Easy comes in. Straight from Alabama, this application will take as many goals or projects as you can throw at it, throw your links and text at it, it’ll just save it and let you launch it a simple double-click of the mouse.

I look forward to seeing more updates, Andrew!

More Info

• See more information
• Third party Debian package

The Results

In my original blog post I offered to send three of the projects an Ubuntu t-shirt. I was going to pick three fave projects, but I think all the submissions are great, so I going to send you all a t-shirt. Thanks all for taking part!

A user called Eric left a comment on my Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week and Python Snippets Day blog entry which I felt really needs highlighting:

Thank you and the entire Canonical team for putting the Opportunistic Developer Week together!

I’ve been stuck doing heavy, back end enterprise Java programming for the past few years. My interest in programming slowly fizzled out.

On a whim, I decided to check out quickly, acire and the learning materials your team put together. PyGTK erased all the bad taste in my mouth from the Swing applications I’ve coded. I haven’t had this much fun programming in a long time! Thanks so much!

This is exactly what I want us to do as community, to help unlock creativity in people’s minds and lower the barrier between idea and implementation. Thanks, Eric, you really put a smile on my face with that one.

Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week day 4 kicks off and we have some incredible events today:

• 5pm UTC – Hot rodding your app for translations support – David Planella
• 6pm UTC – Learning through examples with Acire and Python-Snippets – Jono Bacon
• 7pm UTC – Write Beautiful Code (and Maintain it Beautifully) – rockstar
• 8pm UTC – Speed your development with quickly.widgets – Rick Spencer
• 9pm UTC onwards – Snippets Party – Join us in #ubuntu-app-devel and create Python snippets to share with other people – see this page for details of how to get involved!

It is recommended that you enjoy the week in Lernid. You can find out more details of how to install Lernid right here. Don’t want to use Lernid? No worries, just pop over to #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat to join in the fun. Don’t forget that #ubuntu-app-devel is the place to ask questions about general development on Ubuntu.

Join the snippets party!

Today is a special day this week: in addition to providing some great content to help people get started writing apps on Ubuntu, we are also keen to continue growing our wonderful library of python-snippets which is viewed with a program I wrote called Acire. This library of snippets provides a range of examples that you can run, play with, modify and merge into your programs. So many of us learn by doing, and the more snippets we have the easier it is the learn from a diverse range of topics!

We have two events today I am keen to encourage you to join. First I will be delivering a session on the python snippets project:

• 6pm UTC – Learning through examples with Acire and Python-Snippets – Jono Bacon

In the session I will explain how the project came about, it’s current progress and where we are going. We will then have a fun snippets party a little later:

• 9pm UTC onwards – Snippets Party – Join us in #ubuntu-app-devel and create Python snippets to share with other people – see this page for details of how to get involved!

The snippets party is simple: just join #ubuntu-app-devel on freenode and join us to write a bunch of snippets and contribute them to python-snippets. Today we have 104 snippets already in the library: I would love to see us get that to over 150 today. Come and join us!

Contributing snippets is simple: just click here to find out more!

Sam made some changes to a SOAP service one customer has – and suddenly our automated tests kept failing. “WTF?” we thought.

We persistently got the same error (e.g. Fatal error: SOAP-ERROR: Encoding: object hasn’t ‘SortResults’ property in ….) yet the generated WSDL file (when viewed through a web browser etc) no longer has SortResults in it.

We checked :

• Proxy settings,
• Apache configuration (and restarted Apache)
• svn reverted files
• DNS and more.

Then it turned out the SoapClient PHP object caches the WSDL file by default in e.g. /tmp/wsdl-blahblahblah. (Where blahblahblah looks very much like an md5). And it doesn’t make much of an effort to check it’s validity. Obviously the documentation does state this, but it does seem like the wrong default behaviour to me.

Solution: Add something to the automated tests to delete /tmp/wsdl-*. OR pass into the SoapClient constructor an array of options like :

$client = new SoapClient('http://somewhere/blah.php?wsdl", array(cache_wsdl => WSDL_CACHE_NONE)

Time wasted: Too much.

I’ll write up Ignite week more fully after the Liverpool event on Thursday night, but as Ian Forrester has put up a video of my talk on Re-Inventing Money at Monday’s Manchester event I’m embedding it below: Thanks to Ian for filming the whole night - see the other talks at http://cubicgarden.blip.tv/

Manuel is at it again, with a second round of desktopcouch tips and tricks. He's building up quite a library of stuff over there. Now hopefully I can persuade him to link them from the desktopcouch documentation...

Having to plug my Android phone into my computer via USB so that I can copy new files onto it is a pain. So I thought to myself: it's got wifi, right? Can't I just run an ftp server on it?

And, lo, I discovered On Air. Cool Android app; it's got One Massive Button and that's it. The One Massive Button just turns on a file server and exports it over the network.

(Actually, I lied. There's also one tiny button which toggles the type of server between FTP, WebDav, and AppleTalk. So I set it to FTP, since that's easy to connect to from Nautilus -- Places > Connect to Server > FTP (with login). On Air displays the IP address of the phone, and a randomly generated 4-digit password.)

So, that's all I need; I can now browse my phone without plugging it into the computer.

Then I got to thinking. It'd be dead handy if that automatically got started up when I was (a) at home and (b) the phone was plugged into the mains (because I don't want it being a server while I'm wandering around my house, and the mains plug is near the computer). A bit more poking around led me to Locale, an Android app which lets you watch for certain conditions (like geographical location, charge state, and so on) and then take certain actions when the conditions are triggered. Seemed ideal. But Locale is $10, and the "am I in a certain place" trigger was another dollar, and "am I plugged in" was another dollar, and I thought: yeah, $12 isn't much, but I don't really need this, so maybe I'll do without.

And then @michaelwells pointedout on Twitter that the "Setting Profiles" app might help. So I took a look, and basically, it's Locale, but free. Nice.

So, install Setting Profiles, set up a "rule" with conditions "connected to my home wifi" and "charger is plugged in", and an "action" of "start On Air". Done.

I'm really quite pleased with tying those things together.

Minor complaints, because nothing is perfect (perfection is finality. finality is death. nothing is perfect. there are lumps in it)

1. I wish On Air had a "start up the server automatically" setting, thus obviating the need to press the One Big Button.
2. I wish On Air advertised its FTP server with Zeroconf. (Probably it doesn't need to for the author's Mac use case because AppleTalk servers already do that without Bonjour?)
3. Settings Profiles doesn't show up in my apps list! That's really quite weird. To start it I have to go back into the Market, choose Downloads, and then start it from there. I'd file a bug, but there doesn't seem to be any useful way of doing that. How am I meant to do this? Leave a comment on the app in the Market?

Settings Profiles (website)

On Air

Yesterday, as part of Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week, I did an IRC talk about writing a (basic) Rhythmbox plugin in Python.

You can see the talk, the slides, and the plugin at http://www.kryogenix.org/code/RBMicroBlog/.

The new style of Ubuntu is driven by the theme “Light”. We’ve developed a comprehensive set of visual guidelines and treatments that reflect that style, and are updating key assets like the logo accordingly. The new theme takes effect in 10.04 LTS and will define our look and feel for several years.

Ubuntu has seen a tremendous amount of growth and change since it was conceived in 2004. Back then it was a small project with strong ambitions and a handful of developers passionate about delivering a world class Linux Operating System that can compete on every level with Microsoft and Apple. We adopted a style based on the tagline “Linux for Human Beings”, and called it “Human”. Six years on we have made incredible progress. Ubuntu is a global phenomenon: we have carved out a pervasive culture of quality and design, thoughtful usability and great technology all fused together in a project that maintains the same commitment to community and collaborative development that we embraced back in 2004.

In 2009, a small team lead by Mark Shuttleworth, conducted a review of our key brand values and identity. Based on that work, a set of visual treatments were produced, and shared with key members of the Ubuntu Art community, spanning the core distributions, derivatives, and aligned efforts like the Forums. Representatives from Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Mythbuntu, SpreadUbuntu and more came to London and worked with the Canonical design team to refine the designs and work together. The results of that work are presented here.

This collection of community representatives worked with the design team and created some great work. Some examples:

In addition to this we also worked with our key governance boards: the Community Council, Technical Board, Forums Council, LoCo Council and others around this work to ensure that our community can use it to it’s best advantage.

Brand Values

The key values we believe are reflected in the Ubuntu project are:

• Precision. We ship high quality software, and we ship it exactly on schedule. Our Debian heritage means that the individual components of our platform are tightly defined and neatly arranged. There is no excess, no fat, and no waste in Ubuntu. We are a community that thrives on delivery.

• Reliability. We are building Ubuntu for serious use. Whether it is being deployed on the desktop or in the cloud, we care that Ubuntu is secure, reliable and predictable. We deliver updates to Ubuntu that are rigorously tested. When we make a mistake, we learn from it and put in place good processes to ensure that it does not happen again.

• Collaboration. Ubuntu is the result of collaborative work between thousands of people, and it is both the beneficiary and the public face of the collaborative work of tens of thousands of free software developers who build individual upstream components, or aggregate them in Debian. We go to great lengths to ensure that anybody, anywhere, who is passionate about Ubuntu and competent to participate, can do so. We enable virtual participation in our physical Ubuntu Developer Summits, we use mailing lists and IRC in preference to over-the-cubicle-wall communications, and we welcome contributions from both companies and individuals. Our governance bodies reflect the diversity of that participation, and leadership or permissions are based on proven merit, not corporate employment.

• Freedom. We strive to deliver the very best free software platform. Our highest mission is to accelerate the adoption and spread of free software, to make it the de facto standard way that people build and consume software. We celebrate the work of other groups committed to collaborative content development, and open content licensing. While we are pragmatic about this (we ship proprietary drivers when we believe they are a requirement to get free software working well on PC’s) we expressly do not include any proprietary applications in the default installation of Ubuntu. We want people to love and appreciate free software, and even though we work to make sure that Ubuntu is compatible with, certified with and iteroperable with popular proprietary software, we do so to facilitate the adoption of free alternatives to proprietary solutions.

While the branding has changed, the freedoms and rights have not: our global community will still maintain access to the resources needed to construct logos that use the branding. We will be providing the new font, images, colour specs, and a set of recommendations for creating branding for websites, t-shirts and the other needs of our community. As before we will protect the integrity of the Ubuntu brand with the Ubuntu Trademark Policy.

Light: Ubuntu is Lightware

The new style in Ubuntu is inspired by the idea of “Light”.

We’re drawn to Light because it denotes both warmth and clarity, and intrigued by the idea that “light” is a good value in software. Good software is “light” in the sense that it uses your resources efficiently, runs quickly, and can easily be reshaped as needed. Ubuntu represents a break with the bloatware of proprietary operating systems and an opportunity to delight to those who use computers for work and play. More and more of our communications are powered by light, and in future, our processing power will depend on our ability to work with light, too.

Visually, light is beautiful, light is ethereal, light brings clarity and comfort.

Historical perspective: From 2004-2010, the theme in Ubuntu was “Human”. Our tagline was “Linux for Human Beings” and we used a palette reflective of the full range of humanity. Our focus as a project was bringing Linux from the data center into the lives of our friends and global family.

Go and see the full details of the brand refresh here, with more images.

Yes its true, I’ve swapped from Joomla to WordPress. I had around a five year love affair with Joomla for my personal site but to be honest over the last couple of years its been ‘overkill’ for my requirements these days I just want to write something and post it, now I’m not saying you cant do that with Joomla its just that it cries out to be tinkered with, I had so many modules and components that was disabled the whole site was just bloat.

The professional way would have been to set this site as “Down for maintenance” while moving everything over but I’m not that bothered I’ll fix everything as I go along, for my part I’m over the moon I have a nice clean template that I’ve customised added some plugins and imported (hopefully) all my posts from the old Joomla site. I want to put back in place “Favourite Podcasts” and Favourite Blogs” plus the ‘Tabbed’ stuff I used to have if anyone wants to give me some help with that I’d appreciate it. So I’d best crack on and get my images up and fix all the broken post.

Just a quick note to let you all know that Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week day 3 kicks off in an hour!

Here is the order of events for today:

• 5pm UTC – Creating stunning interfaces with Cairo – Laszlo Pandy
• 6pm UTC – What’s new in Quickly 0.4 – Didier Roche
• 7pm UTC – Create games with PyGame – Rick Spencer
• 8pm UTC – SHOWCASE: Photobomb – Rick Spencer
• 9pm UTC onwards – Hacking party in #ubuntu-app-devel on freenode! Come and join us, work on your apps, ask questions and have fun in our community.

It is recommended that you enjoy the week in Lernid. You can find out more details of how to install Lernid right here. Don’t want to use Lernid? No worries, just pop over to #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat to join in the fun. Don’t forget that #ubuntu-app-devel is the place to ask questions about general development on Ubuntu.