Cody Somerville

      
Excitingly, Xubuntu 9.04 is almost here - only a short few weeks until the release and it seems like we’re already getting some great press for Xubuntu. Today I saw one article from iTWire titled “The best looking Linux is nearly here - and it’s not Ubuntu” which praises Xubuntu for its look and feel. Kudos to Pasi Lallinaho who is responsible for bringing us this cycle’s artwork.

So Woot Woot! Be sure to download Xubuntu 9.04 when it comes out!

Am I missing something with this whole exciting cloud metaphor? It sounds like something we invented awhile ago that I personally like to call the Internet.

What *is* interesting, IMHO, is the advancements being made in the area of autonomic and elastic computing. Furthermore, the idea of utility computing is a fascinating one to me.

What got me looking into “cloud computing”? I saw Robert Collins discussing it in #bzr the other day and using Amazon’s EC2 services to run bazaar’s test suite (which I understand to be a very comprehensive).

I used to play and develop on muds back in the day and I’m wondering if EC2 is a viable solution to host such a text based game. I’ll have to look into it and maybe use it as an excuse to try EC2 out myself

“After more than two years of development, Xfce 4.6.0 has just been released! Xfce 4.6 features a new configuration backend, a new settings manager, a brand new session manager and sound mixer as well as several huge improvements of its core components.”

Xfce 4.6 is definitely rocking and I’m very happy with it! There are a number of significant improvements and enhancements that make the Xfce desktop a real pleasure to use.

A lot of folks have been asking if Xfce 4.6 will be in Jaunty. I’m happy to say that it already is (or release candidate 1 anyhow, the actual 4.6.0 should hit the archive soon) and I’m really looking forward to spending the next few short months until the relase of Jaunty to try and polish Xubuntu 9.04 as much as possible. Alas, work is keeping me extremly busy but excitingly Xubuntu has been incredibly lucky to welcome a number of new contributors this release cycle that are reallly making a difference.

A few groups of people I’d like to shout out kudos to include the Xfce Development Team, the Debian Xfce Team, members of the Xubuntu team and my fellow Xubuntu contributors.

I’m ready to rocky and roll for Jaunty with Xfce 4.6. Are you?

Xfce 4.6 Release Candidate 1 is now in the Jaunty archive! I just upgraded to Jaunty (Hardy -> Intrepid -> Jaunty) the other day and am really digging the new version of Xfce4!

One of my favourite new features is the ability to hide certain notification icons in the notification tray.

If you click the little arrow button, it’ll expand to show everything.

The properties dialogue looks very sharp IMHO:

Another big change is the settings stuff. Gone is MCS and here is xfconfd! They’ve also revamped the GUI for the settings:

W00T! More screenshots soon!

Big thanks to Lionel Le Folgoc, Jerome Guelfucc, Michael Casadevall, and the Debian Xfce team!

JoeP wrote…My problem with the whole story was the news reporters. I can understand the lady not knowing what Ubuntu is, and that it even has Open Office already installed. I just got the feeling that the reporters were trying to cast Ubuntu in a bad light, or as a sub par offering from Dell. Maybe I am too thin skinned, but I felt the reporting was very bad. But that being said now most people (who are not FOSS users) that see the story will see Ubuntu/Linux as something trying to rip off Windows, and the people who do use it as a bunch of hateful/mean spirited immature people.

JoeP: The original story and follow-up blog post was very positive for Ubuntu in my opinion. The premise was that “Someone got an operating system they didn’t expect from Dell but in the end everything turned out well: the school said that their courses will work with any operating system and Verizon said they would send out a technician to help her.”. The bottom line: Ubuntu worked just fine, she just needed some help and hey… this looks pretty cool and its free!!

However now they followed up with how mean people were in response to a story that wasn’t even really about Ubuntu. Do you think those folk at the News Station or who heard about Ubuntu via this news story are going to want to try Ubuntu now? They’re going to think that they won’t be able to get help because they’ll be called “stupid”, “lazy”, and other mean names!!! People who made rude, mean comments have done a horrible disservice to Ubuntu and Linux at large! Those people are the true “Windows Robots”.

I’m sure most of us have heard about the girl who dropped out of college because she had trouble using Ubuntu. All I have to say is that I’m incredibly disappointed to hear about the reaction of some folks. Sending hate mail, personally attacking the young lady, etc. etc. isn’t very Ubuntu like at all nor very productive.

So very disappointed… : - (

Thanks to Mario Limonciello for fixing the Xfce4 & GKD issue. It turns out that xfce4-session starts gnome-keyring-daemon when “Launch gnome services” is enabled. The problem is that a pam module also tries to start gnome-keyring-daemon now (and correctly). By patching xfce4-session to no longer start gnome-keyring-daemon, the issue is resolved.

Hello Folks,

Just a quick note to those testing the development version of Xubuntu and other flavours/derivitives that make use of Xfce4. It appears that the new version of gnome-keyring breaks the desktop and prevents you from getting to your desktop. The current fix for those of you using the development version is to simply downgrade to the previous version for gnome-keyring, libgnome-keyring0, libgp11-0, and libpam-gnome-keyring until we get this fixed.

Cheers!

At the Xubuntu Meeting held this past Saturday, the few of us who attended (all, except for myself, for their first time) the Ubuntu Developer Summit shared our experiences:

<cody-somerville> Unfortunately I didn't get to participate in the all the great sessions as much as
     I would have liked on a count of being sick most of UDS, a close friend dying while I was
     down in San Francisco :(, and being busy with OEM Services stuff. However, from the
     sessions I did participate in and the time I was able to spend with the folks from the Xubuntu
     community, I'd say overall it was a very productive get together.
<cody-somerville> We discussed a number of important issues, built friendships, got a better
     understanding for how each other work (specifically with regards to Xfce4, thanks to
     Jannis and Pasi for making the long trip), and fleshed out some ideas for Jaunty
<cody-somerville> Among our accomplishments at UDS, we: fleshed out a first draft roadmap
     for Jaunty, discussed artwork for Jaunty, discussed how to grow the Xubuntu community,
     and plans for xfce 4.6 in Jaunty
<cody-somerville> The jist of our discussions are documented in gobby documents at gobby.ubuntu.com
     I'm hoping to turn them into specs (or get people to volunteer to turn them into specs)
-------------------
<knome> I think it was really great to meet the guys at UDS and we definitely were  productive. Also
     it was nice to get in touch with the Ubuntu community in general to make some connections with
     other artists and teams which might be able to help us.
<knome> Even if Cody wasn't available all times, we got work done and things
     going forward - and fast.
-------------------
<JPohlmann> So, first of all it was great meeting (almost) everybody and being able to discuss face-to-face.
     I think after the docs session, we have a rough idea in mind on how this collaboration could work at
     least. I'm really hoping that we can form a joint team for that.
<JPohlmann> One thing that clearly needs more discussion is *how* we want the documentation to be
     written and with which technologies.
<JPohlmann> We also discussed the main complaints in Xubuntu and how to solve them for jaunty, like
     disappearing panels, non-fd.o-compliant menu, samba/network browsing in Thunar etc.
<JPohlmann> I think NCommander started to backport Xfce 4.4.3 to intrepid
<JPohlmann> And the idea to port the user switcher applet to the xfce panel came up. Not sure who's
     going to work on that though 
<JPohlmann> I guess that's it.
-------------------
NCommander was unavailable

The rest of the meeting minutes follow:

• Charlie Kravetz joined the Xubuntu Team as the Xubuntu QA Lead. Charlie will head up our QA, bug triage, and image candidate testing efforts.
• Charlie Kravetz accepted the action to send reminders to the mailing list about upcoming test days; improving the test cases on the wiki; and working with the Ubuntu QA team to resolve some minor issues with the QA ISO Tracker website.
• It was agreed that having a list of people on the wiki who we know can perform certain tests (ie. amd64) would be a good idea. Charlie Kravetz, by default, accepted this action item.
• Jerome announced a new release of xfce4-screenshooter plugin was upcoming.
• Jim Campbell accepted the action of scheduling a meeting to discuss documentation efforts for Jaunty.
• General consensus was reached on the proposed Jaunty roadmap. Cody Somerville accepted the action of sending out an e-mail detailing the roadmap to the mailing list.
• A meeting schedule heuristic was agreed on and Jim accepted the task of drafting the actual schedule:

  <cody-somerville> I propose an official meeting monthly
<cody-somerville> but I encourage sub-teams to get together as often as they'd like
<cody-somerville> and I definitely encourage spontaneous meetings in #xubuntu-devel when ever people fancy 
-------------------
<j1mc> We'll move them to Sundays and see how things work.  I'll try to avoid major holiday weekends.