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!

Wow. Time sure goes quickly. It has been a few weeks since my last blog post but there certainly hasn’t been a lack of things to blog about, just been super busy!

First off, I’m pretty proud to report that I’ve been able to fix a rather unfortunate regression in Xubuntu where when users logged in they’d sometimes (ie. it was an intermittent issue) just see a blue (or some other colour) screen and their mouse - nothing else would happen. This was being caused by a race condition resulting in a deadlock due to architectural issues in libxcb (which should be fixed completely hopefully for Intrepid). It was an interesting adventure and certainly was a tricky bug to figure out (lots of time spent in gdb, lots of research, lots of diagnostic tests, and lots of theorizing).  It turned out that gnome-screensaver was sending a dbus message after it started but the Xfce4 xinitrc script didn’t run dbus-launch until later. When a program attempts to send a dbus message and no session bus is available, libdbus will automatically start one. This resulted in two dbus-launch processes being started and it aggravated libxcb into deadlocking when the second instance of dbus attempted to open the bilateral communication socket with X. I was able to fix the issue by making sure dbus-launch occurred before gnome-screensaver. Big thanks to Bryce Harrington and Scott Remnant for answering my questions  and their attempts to help. Naturally, kudos to Google for being such a good little search engine. And yes, this fix has made it into the point release.

Another tricky bug was figured out by Lionel Le Folgoc. A regression was introduced when the gdm settings shipped in xubuntu-default-settings was synced with Ubuntu’s. This resulted in the proper xinitrc (/etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc) *not* being executed. This is the source of the screensaver not starting and about five other bugs. I’ve uploaded a fix to Intrepid as well as an SRU (it is currently awaiting approval to -proposed) for Hardy. Lionel also did a whole truck load of SRUs to fix missing translations in packages due to our migration to universe. Thanks Lionel!

So, we were able to get the first alpha out the door for Intrepid. As you probably could guess, an important part of that process is testing. Currently there isn’t anyone in particular leading up the testing efforts for Xubuntu. If you’ve got some experience under your belt, I welcome you to approach him and we can discuss how you can be a big help to Xubuntu by leading our testing efforts for Intrepid.

Speaking of Intrepid, I’ve been thinking and also bouncing around ideas with Jozmak (the fellow you probably know as the Xubuntu artwork guy. great guy!). I think I speak for Jozmak when I say it would neat if we were able to start building a Xubuntu artwork community. Nothlit (who you’ve probably associated with Mythbuntu before) seems to be moving in just that direction (thanks Nothlit!!): He has created some mockups which you can view here: http://core.joejaxx.net/~nothlit/xubuntu/ - I think they’re looking pretty sweet and I’m looking forward to seeing a SVG. What do you guys think? Any art folk out there who would be interested in getting some art stuff going for Xubuntu? If there is anything I can do to help to facilitate the growth of such a group, let me know

Oh, Xubuntu Strategy Document you say? hehe. We had our final community meetings which went exceedingly well. I was very excited to have several members of the Xfce4 development team present who gave lots of helpful input. It also allowed for us to have an awesome discussion on how to work more effectively with each other which is always a mutual net gain.  So, didn’t I target an earlier date to release the final version of the strategy document? Indeed I did and I assure you the wait is almost over! Keep watching this space.

So, before I jet I’d like to thank a few more folks (like usual).  Radomir Dopieralski for his awesome support work in #xubuntu and help in testing several SRUs. Charlie Kravetz for getting the end of the month team report together. Jim Campbell (naturally) for getting the Xubuntu team meetings going again. Steve Langasek for being such an awesome release manager to work with. Last but not least, everyone else who has helped contribute to making Xubuntu such an awesome, rockin’ distro

As I’m sure I’ve already mentioned either on my blog or in my video interview on Youtube (which makes me look weird due to some ratio/pixel issue, hehe), the Ubuntu Developer Summit is and has been an excellent opportunity for myself and the Xubuntu project. Wheres the proof in the pudding? Well, I’m here to show you! It has been half a dozen weeks or so since the hugely successful Xubuntu community meeting led by the community manager Jono. At that meeting, it was decided that I would be tasked with developing a strategy document which participants agreed would enable Xubuntu to overcome some of the difficulties the project had begun to encounter from its ever enduring growth. After yesterday’s Xubuntu strategy session at UDS, where I was able to get feedback from other developers and colleagues, I’m happy to present to the community at large the first public draft of the Xubuntu strategy document. I encourage *everyone* to take a read and send your feedback, comments, suggestions, concerns, etc. etc. to my e-mail inbox: cody-somerville@ubuntu.com

So, when is the next big Xubuntu community meeting to finalize and find consensus? I’ll be announcing the date and time on either Monday or Tuesday of this upcoming week. Please keep your eyes posted!

Xubuntu rocks!! Be sure to join us on IRC in #xubuntu and #xubuntu-devel - woot woot!

Over the last year, I’ve seen the number of users in the Xubuntu community and the number of those who contribute regularly increase substantially. It is both exciting and encouraging!

For example, the Xubuntu documentation team has been working on bringing the documentation for Xubuntu up to speed. A year ago we had to ship the dapper documentation with edgy because there simply wasn’t enough man power and Feisty only got branding changes. Today, patches are submitted on a regular basis by a variety of people! A big thanks to Jim Campbell and Freddy Martinez (Both members of the Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team I believe) for leading up the Xubuntu documentation efforts and to Matthew East and Richard Johnson for helping them get on their feet running.

In the artwork department, I have to give a round of applause to Jmak for his awesome work on the Xubuntu artwork for this release. Our new usplash is really rather snazzy - check it out, along with the other artwork, here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Artwork/Gutsy/Incoming

Development wise the project is maturing. Here too we’ve seen more people get involved - both by contributing by packaging/bug triage/iso testing and by contributing in development discussion. If the trend continues, I think we’ll see the Xubuntu development process become as mature as our counterpart’s in a few releases. A big thanks to Jani Monoses and Lionel Le Folgoc (who, I might add, has been a machine); A special thanks to Jim Campbell, again, for doing such an awesome job with the Xubuntu ISO testing team; I’m sorry to see Gauvain Pocentek move on to other projects - he’ll be missed. Finally, Kudos to all the budding interest from other developers who I think will become invaluable contributors during the next release.

Aligned with the goal of broadening the horizons of the Xubuntu project and it’s community, we’re going to start maturing and developing our marketing and advocacy efforts. We were hoping to get more work done on this during this release but we’ve still made strides - hefty ones at that. I can remember a time when we didn’t do releases notes or announcements for tribes/releases and our name was missing within the community. I think we’re starting to give Xubuntu the credibility mandated by being an official, supported derivative of Ubuntu. This is good news for those looking to see the Xubuntu market grow.

I, like a number of other people, are excited. I know excitement can be contagious so, come, get involved today.