A couple weeks ago we announced the initiative to drive up our autopilot (that is, automated) tests for our ubuntu touch core apps. The core apps are being made with the ubuntu sdk, and thus share the same language (QML) and toolkit (ubuntusdk).

With this in mind I wanted to provide an emulator, which in autopilot speak, is a utility class for writing autopilot tests that use the ubuntu SDK. The goal is to help accelerate the process for getting the testcases written, as well as standardizing best practices for testing common features. At the moment the emulator contains useful functions like tab switching, selecting from popovers, opening and closing the toolbar and clicking toolbar buttons. Please, take a look and utilize the emulator when your contributing new tests for the ubuntu touch applications. For the moment, the emulator can be found here:

lp:~nskaggs/+junk/ubuntusdk_autopilot_emulator

The future home is hopefully in the SDK itself, but for now consider that branch your source for emulator goodness. Now, a quick FAQ.

Is it ready for use?
Yes, it's ready and tested on several core apps now including clock, calendar, terminal, and file manager. That said if you find an issue, simply contact me or propose an improvement!

How do I use it?
Inside your autopilot test subfolder, add an emulators folder if it's not already present. Next, branch my source above -- it will add ubuntusdk.py to the folder. Simply incorporate it into your __init__.py or testcase itself and call the utility functions with ubuntusdk.*. For an example check out the ubuntu-terminal-app and the merge request from today. It shows adding autopilot tests to an empty branch. In addition, the emulator (albeit an earlier version) was used in the tutorial on the ubuntu app developer portal.

Will it be updated?
Yes! Expect refinements and tweaks as we go along. Hopefully a true "stable and complete" version will appear in the not too distant feature when the emulator itself has a proper home. In the meantime, use it and as more complex tests are added, expect to update the emulator in the source branch your working in.

Go forth and write tests!

With all the latest news about PRISM and the United States government violating citizen’s 4th amendment rights, I figured I would throw in a blog post about it. However, I’m not going to add anything really new about how to subvert the warantless government spying. Instead, I figured I would throw in an historical perspective on how some avoid being spied on.

The One-time Pad

In order to understand this post, we first need to understand the One-time Pad, or OTP for short. The OTP is a mathematically unbreakable encryption algorithm, which uses a unique and different random key for every message sent. The OTP must be the same length as the message being sent, or longer. The plaintext is then XOR’d with the OTP to create the ciphertext. The recipient on the other end has a copy of the OTP, which is used to XOR the ciphertext, and get back to the original plaintext. The system is extremely elegant, but it’s not without its flaws.

First, the OTP must be communicated securely with the recipient. One argument against the OTP is if you can communicate your key securely, then why not just communicate the message in that manner? That’s a fine question, except it misses one critical point: more than one OTP can be communicated at first meeting. The recipient might have 20 or 50 OTPs in their possession, knowing the order in which they are used.

Second, if the same OTP key is used for two or more messages, and those messages are intercepted, they can be used to derive the private key! It is exceptionally critical that every message be encrypted with its own unique and random OTP. This is not trivial.

One major advantage of the OTP is the lack of incriminating evidence. OTPs have been found on rice paper, bars of soap, microfilm, or hidden in plain sight, such as using words from a book or a crossword puzzle. One the key has been used, it can be destroyed with minimal effort. Compared to destroying data on a computer, which is much more difficult, than say, burning the rice paper, or shuffling a deck of cards.

Field Agents

Enter spies and field agents. Suppose a government wishes to communicate with a field agent in a remote country. The message they wish to send is “ATTACK AT DAWN”. How do you get this message delivered to your agent securely and anonymously? More importantly, how can your field agent intercept the message without raising suspicion, or without any incriminating evidence against them?

This turns out to be a difficult problem to solve. If you meet at a specific location at a specific time, how do you communicate it without raising suspicion? Maybe you mail a package or envelope to your agent, but then how do you know it won’t be intercepted and examined? Many totalitarian states, such as North Korea, examine all inbound and outbound mail.

Numbers Stations

Enter radio. First, in developed countries, just about everyone owns a radio. You can purchase them just about everywhere, and carrying one around, or having one in your room, is not incriminating enough to convict you as a spy. Second, your field agent already has a set of OTPs on hand. So, transmitting the encrypted message over the air isn’t a problem for interception.

So, roughly around the time of World War 2, governments started communicating with field agents on the radio. Now, this can neither be confirmed, nor denied, but numbers stations have been on the air for decades. Numbers stations are illegal transmissions, usually on the edges of short wave bands. Typically, this is referred to as “pirate radio”, and governments are very effective at finding them. Most of these numbers stations have very rigid schedules; so rigid, you could set your watch to them. If they are not transmitted by government agencies, they would be shut down fast. Given the length they’ve been on the air, the sheer number of them, and their rigid schedules, tells us that government agencies are the best bet for the source of the transmission.

So, what does a numbers station sound like? Typically, most of them have some sort of “header” transmission, before getting into the “body” of the encrypted text. This header could be a series of digits repeated over and over, a musical melody, a sequence of tones, or nothing. Then the body is delivered. Typically, it’s given in sets of 5 numbers, which is common in cryptography circles. Something like “51237 65500 81734″, etc. The transmissions are usually short, roughly 3-5 minutes in length. Some transmissions will end with a “footer”, like “000 000″ or “end transmission” for the agent to identify the transmission is over. There is never any sort of station identification. They are one-way anonymous transmissions. Almost always, the voice reading the numbers is computer generated. They can be transmitted in many different languages: Spanish, English, German, Chinese, etc. And if that’s not enough, some are verbally spoken, some in Morse code, some digital.

Want to hear what one sounds like? Here is a transmission from the “Lincolnshire Poacher” (Wikipedia page, found in the article). Some numbers stations have been given names by their enthusiasts, who listen and record them frequently. In this case, named after an English folk-song, because it is played as the header to every transmission. However, the station didn’t exist in England. Rather, it was stationed in Cyprus.

Don’t think that sounds eerie enough? There is a German numbers station called the “Swedish Rhapsody”, where it starts by ringing church bells for the header. Then, a female child voice reads the numbers. You swear this could be something out of a horror movie.

Not all stations stay on the air either. Many disappear over time, some quickly, some after many years. The Licolnshire Poacher numbers station was on the air for about 20 years, before it went silent. Numbers stations also don’t always have rigid schedules. Some will just appear seemingly out of nowhere, and never come back online. And because these are on shortwave bands, they can travel hundreds and thousands of miles, so your field agent could literally be anywhere in the world. So long as he has his radio with him, a decent antenna, and a clear sky overhead, he’ll pick it up.

The NSA

So, where does that bring us? Well, with the NSA spying us, numbers stations sound like an attractive alternative to phone and email conversations. Now, as already mentioned, numbers stations are illegal, especially in the United States. So, it doesn’t seem like an attractive alternative, even if they are still on the air.

However, the OTP can be an effective and practical way to send messages securely. I mentioned almost a year ago, of a way to create a USB hard drive with a OTP on the drive. Both the sender and the recipient have an exact copy of the drive, along with a software utility necessary for encrypting and decrypting the data, as well as destroying the bits used for the OTP. Once the bits on the drives are all used up, the sender and the recipient meet to rebuild the OTP on the drive.

It’s true, with any new role there is that whole influx of tasks that need to be done Simple things like email set up,calendar, getting access to accounts, and when you think you’ve got all your access sorted out, you get told about another system. It’s been a busy few days here at the 10gen office in NYC, I’ve here to get to meet the rest of the team, get to know people and plan where I’m going to be and who to see over the coming months.

The week is full of events happening, from Open House, to MongoNYC to Office Hours, MongoDB Masters in the house and make your own ice cream sandwiches, which is great as I get to meet everyone, but I’m also learning about the new tools that will help me do my job.

With every new tool you also need a new login which you don’t notice till you go and login, so far the nicest tool I’ve gotten to use this week is Jira, now I’ve used RT for the last number of years in Ubuntu community so I’m used to a ticketing system. In previous roles we’ve had our own inhouse ticket tracker for bugs and issues but I’ve not come across Jira till this week.

On first impressions it seems rather nifty, I love their dashboard it’s slightly easier to navigate and find the information you need without performing the sun dance to the gods of searches on RT in order to find the information you need. One of the other features I like in it is the fact that you can mange boards within the projects so a useful way to organise ones workload. I like being able to file a ticket, track it and resolve it, I find it’s far easier to keep on top of tasks here than in email at times. So pretty happy with this new tool!

Now a tool I’ll be using myself in order to keep up to date is Nitro tasks. It’s simple to use, you can add tags, priority, end date and notes to it. Bonus also is the fact it syncs up to my ubuntu one account so it’s backed up I’m a visual kind of person, and I like lists so while I may jot down notes  while in meetings, they get copied over here to nitro and priorities are added to it. While I’m working on the task I can update it with any information needed. It’s a useful tool and  if you like lists I recommend it.

The only thing I’ve not gotten my head around this week is using a web client for my email not loving that so far as I prefer a desktop client so now my mail will go into Thunderbird once I’ve the folders and filters  and labels – set up server side so it’ll all come in and then I can work out what’s what.

It’s a very busy week but it’s nice to see even when people are busy they are taking time out to meet their community who come into visit today for the Office Hours.  I’m hoping to run these in London when I get back and possibly over in Dublin at some stage in the near future.  I’ll keep you all posted.

Hot on the heels of our first cadence week, I wanted to take the opportunity to collect feedback about the tools we as a community utilize. Specifically the QATracker which we heavily rely on for managing our work, testcases and results. From the wiki, "The QATracker is the master repository for all our our testing within ubuntu QA. It holds our testcases, records our results, and helps coordinate our testing events."

This is a link to a brief survey asking a few simple questions about how you've used the tool. All your responses are anonymous, but I will publish the aggregate question information and share it with the community once completed. The goal is to help ensure the tool is meeting our needs and is being utilized.

I'll leave the survey up until June 24th. My hope is to encourage more folks to help test as well as make it more enjoyable for those already taking part. I want to ensure our tools and processes continue to evolve, strengthen and become more robust for everyone as we continue on our mission. Part of that is making sure the tools we use are enjoyable!

Thanks in advance everyone!

As a bonus, Pasi, aka knome, has put together some mockups on how we might be able to switch what the results page looks like. This is perhaps the most utilized page of the site, so without further ado, here's a mockup of some changes proposed to make it more usable:

Old Site
New Site Mockup

Starting today, I’m an Ubuntu Member.

I could have stopped this post in the first sentence, but it’s worth writing some other things here, starting by saying a huge thanks! to those people who supported me and allowed me to arrive here. As I said elsewhere, that’s only one step: I’ll go further.

I want to become an Ubuntu Developer, but that’s a long-term target. If you want to give me a suggestion, use the comment form below or send me an e-mail, it will be very appreciated. This one will be my first post on the Planet Ubuntu, so I hope someone will take some time to read it and answer.

Until now I’ve been involved mostly in the Italian LoCo Team, but I want to look around and contribute to the wider community. That might sound obvious, given that I requested the membership. I think that I could help and learn a lot by starting developing something, although my skills don’t allow this right now. That’s why I want you to give me a suggestion on where to start from.

Let’s end this post now. If you want to know more about me, read the About Page and my personal page on the Ubuntu Wiki.

Last year, I applied for academic, tenure track, jobs at several communication departments, information schools, and in HCI-focused computer science programs with a tradition of hiring social scientists.

Being “on the market” — as it is called — is both scary and time consuming. Like me, many candidates have never been on the market before. Candidates are asked to produce documents in genres — e.g., cover letters, research statements, teaching statements, diversity statements — that most candidates have never written, read, or even heard of.

Candidates often rely on their supervisors for advice. I did so and my advisors were extremely helpful. The reality, however, is that although candidates’ advisors may sit on hiring committees, most have not been on candidates’ side of job market themselves for years or even decades.

The Internet is full of websites, like the academic jobs wiki, Academia StackExchange, and the Chronicle of Higher Education forums for people on the market. Confused and insecure candidates ask questions of the form, “Does blank matter?” and the answer is usually, “Doing/having blank may help/hurt, but it is only one factor of many.” The result is that candidates worry about everything. Then they worry about what they should be worrying about, but are not.

The most helpful thing, for me, was to read and synthesize the material submitted by recent successful job market candidates. For example, Michael Bernstein — a friend from MIT, now at Stanford — published his research and teaching statements on his website and I found both useful as I prepared mine. That said, I was surprised by how little material like this I could find on the web. For example, I could not find any examples of recent job market cover letters from successful candidates in fields close to mine.

So to help fill this gap, I am publishing all of my job market material. I’ve posted both the PDFs of the material I submitted as well as the LaTeX templates I used to generate the documents in my packet. My packet included:

• Research Statement (TeX) — A description of my research to date and my current trajectory. Following a convention I have seen others follow, I “cited” my own work (but only my work) to form a a curated bibliography of my own publications and working papers.
• Teaching Statement (TeX) — A two-page description of my approach to teaching, a list of my teaching experience, and a description of sample courses.
• Diversity Statement (TeX) — A description of how I think about diversity and how I have, and will, engage with it in my teaching and research.
• Cover Letter (TeX) — Each application I sent had a customized cover letter. I wrote mine on MIT letter head. Since each letter is different, I have published the letter I sent to the department that I took the job in (UW Communication). Because my new department did not request research and teaching statements, the cover letter includes material taken from both. For departments that requested separate statements, I limited myself to a shorter (1.5 pages) version of the letter with a similar structure.
• Writing Samples — I included three or four of my papers to every job I applied to. The selection of articles changed a bit depending on the department but I included at least one single-authored paper in each packet.
• Letters of Recommendation — Because I didn’t write these and haven’t seen them, I can’t share them. I requested letters from my four committee members: Eric von Hippel, Yochai Benkler, Mitch Resnick, and Tom Malone.
• Curriculum Vitae (TeX) — I have tried to keep my CV up-to-date during graduate school. I keep my CV in git and have a little CGI script automatically rebuild the published version whenever an update is committed.

I hope people going “on the market” will find these materials useful. Obviously, you should not copy or reuse the text of any of my material. It is your application, after all. That said, please do help yourself to the formatting and structure.

Finally, I would encourage anyone who builds on my material to republish their own material to help other candidates. If you do, I’d appreciate a link back or comment on this blog post so that my readers can find your improvements.

• Video recording
• Pad
• Status Board
• Juju.u.c Meeting Site

Charm Tools

• Similar to last week, no real big changes, Marco will hit these after he’s done with testing.
• We need to update the review queue charm schools, the website queue fixed the “time to first response”, but the CLI tool is behind. Mims to bust it out.

Ben’s charm-tools feedback. Just some ideas:

• It would be nice for charm create to work more like dh_make
• It should ask for the license to use, and populate the copyright file
• It would be nice for it read the DEBFULLNAME and DEBEMAIL and s/DEB/CHARM/ environment settings or even .bzr information to determine authorship
• Category should be asked during the charm create
• It should initialize the branch and accept --git or --subversion
• It should ask for standard requires, i.e. allow --requires-db mysql or --requires-http varnish or prompt
• It should ask for what it provides, i.e. --provides http
• It should offer the option of a --peer for peer relationships
• For the relationship hook, it would be great to have commented examples based on the --requires-X

Charm Helpers

• MPs coming in, progress looks great.
• Wedgewood handling incoming work, activity happening, Marco will roll up a summary of work for next week.
• Thanks Matthew for driving this!

Testing

Minor work:

• charmtester updates to make it more flexible. This is the one that reports to jenkins on qa.ubuntu.com
• juju test plugin, new features requested by the gui team
  • Can now run in an existing bootstrapped environment
  • You can now specify a config file in the test directory with options for the tests you want to run. There’s an example yaml template if you run juju-test -h if you wanna check it out, will be published EOD 2013-06-19

Major work:

• First release of the testing harness (lp:amulet) ready (ppa being prepped for folks to use). \o/
  • Wait command, just like jitsu watch
  • Deployer command, describe an environment setting by running a bunch of manual commands, and then uses Kapil, Adam, Matthew, & Co lp:juju-deployer tool to stand up an environment in a test. “Whoa”.
    • We’re using it to test openstack deployments and it’s designed to set up complex environments that are repeatable.

Docs

• Translating old charm author docs to the new format.
  • DONE AS OF MONDAY. \o/ \o/ \o/
  • Just need to finish up the testing, and validation (just a port over of old docs to the new format, content still needs to be confirmed).
  • idea - have the new docs deployed as a sub off the apache2 charm. Have the charm do a cron to update from the bzr branch every 12 hours (need feedback).
  • Redirects are ready, for when docs go live
  • New doc branch @ lp:~charmers/juju-core/docs
  • any docs problems - file a bug!

Charm Updates from the Store

• http://jujucharms.com/recently-changed
• Jorge talking to MariaDB see if someone is interested in adding Maria Support to the MySQL charm, any help here appreciated, if you’re using MariaDB and Ubuntu we could use a hand here!

Misc

• Merge proposal workflow.

Events

• OSCON - In progress, no issues.

FRAMEWORK UPDATES

• Rails - almost ready to begin
• node.js - in progress.
• Django and friends - in progress, no thanks to our messed up merge proposals. :)

Blockers

• Backports of juju-core to 12.04!!
  • Dependencies on go compiler, core team aware of it, trying to resolve.
  • charm tools and helpers backports blocking on this too.

Goals from last week

• Mims: 0mq and storm
• mims preping for Stanford talk
• Do your docs videos!

Goals for this week

• Mims to sync with Dave on juju-core pre-install hooks.
• Mims: 0mq and storm
• Mims preping for Stanford talk
• Everyone: When you touch a charm, rate it, categorize it, see if you can give it an icon.
• Do your docs videos!
• People who did not do docs/videos this week and need to be embarrassed
  • Jorge Castro
  • Antonio Rosales
  • Mark Mims
  • Marco Ceppi
• arosales: get docs to a charm’ed up deployed stage
• utlemming: on vacation
• jorge: video and doc page
• marco: vacation
• mims: Storm and 0mq, talk prep
• nick: 4 videos

Tuesday this week saw the 10gen office in New York host an Open House to celebrate its move into it’s new home here. Having never really been to an open house before for an office wasn’t sure what to expect.  There was a lot of buzz about the place, people were excited to show off their place and also welcome their community in to meet them for some nibbles, chat and even a game of table tennis.

 

Never underestimate the opening of ones doors to your community, showing them where you work, and meeting the people who they may work with on a mailing list, or on a project together.  It makes them feel part of your community and removes the us and them feeling.  When people can chat informally over nibbles and drinks friendships occur your community feels more satisfied and involved in the process.

There was an amazing energetic atmosphere in the office, a real party vibe, given the amount of balloons all over the place you got the feeling there was a party going on!

For me the open house was a chance to mingle, meet people in office and also meet the community, hear how enthusiastic they are about the project, how they are involved the ideas they have flowing about and how they want to get more involved.  It was a chance for me to put the names to the faces of people I will be working with and also a chance for them to get to know me as I will be based out of the London office.

I look forward to meeting more people on my travels over the coming months in EMEA, attending and running office hours, where people can come along to the office, meet the developers and get involved in MongoDB. We will hopefully be running more events in the coming months so keep tuned!

Open Source Bridge 2013, an open source conference produced by Stumptown Syndicate, kicked off today for its 5th annual event in Portland, Oregon.  I spent the entire day and part of the evening networking with attendees and catching some of the amazing sessions and here is my report.

Keynote

James Vasile opened this year’s Open Source Bridge with the first keynote of the week and he chose a serious topic: how we are living in an age of surveillance and that we need to create solutions to protect free speech.  Vasile referenced recent events like the Edward Snowden’s leak of the National Security Agency’s PRISM program and Internet Censorship in the Middle East.

Vasile talked fondly of the importance of open tools on the internet and technologies like encryption and pointed out that policy makers will not bring change.

Sessions of Interest

The first session of the day I attended was “Taming Your Inner Cowboy Coder – A Simple And Sane DevOps Workflow” a talk given by Greg Lund-Chaix and Evan Heidtmann. The talk discussed the tools and best practices for devops while working in development and production environments.

Next up was “DIY Electric Vehicles” a talk given by Ben Kero who works at Mozilla. Kero had informative slides and a even more informative talk as he shared his expertise in a hobby he has picked up: building DIY Electric Vehicles. Kero decribed the possibilities of making electric-powered bikes and cars and the anatomy of such vehicles and the basics of how to get started.

The final talk of the day I got to attend another talk by Ben Kero who gave a highlight of Firefox OS and a short history of the mobile technology that led up to Firefox OS. The talk was packed with great slides and useful information and Kero stayed after to answer questions of people who were interesting in making apps or even porting Firefox OS.

I look forward to day two of Open Source Bridge tomorrow and the 5th Year Anniversary Party this Thursday at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. If you happen to be attending Open Source Bridge this week, don’t forget to nominate a hard-working open source contributor for the Open Source Citizenship Award (which will be given out on Thursday), consider a donation to the nice folks at Stumptown Syndicate, and be sure to come to the Firefox OS Hackday tomorrow night!

 

 

 

This week I am pleased to announce two Q&A sessions to get all your juicy Ubuntu-related questions answered:

• Wed 19th June – taking place an hour earlier this week at 6pm UTC will be my usual weekly Q&A session where you are welcome to bring any and all questions! Be sure to join me, it is always a lot of fun.
• Thu 20th June – taking place at 7pm UTC and kicking off the first in a series of 1-on-1 interviews that I am going to do, I will be interviewing Martin Albisetti who is a member of the team making application submissions for Ubuntu on desktops, phones, tablets, and TVs easier than ever. Martin’s team is building the server that will recieve submissions as click packages and review them before they go out to users. Martin is also an active member of the community and a member of the Community Council. I will be asking Martin some questions about his work and then we will open it up for you folks to ask questions too.

You can access both of these sessions on Ubuntu On Air.

Ubuntu Ohio held a business meeting on Tuesday, June 18, 2013. A few items were considered but due to a low turnout final actions were not necessarily taken. One item, finding a deputy to sign the Ohio Linux Fest table contract on behalf of the Leader, has been bound over to the mailing list for further consideration by the community at large.

The log of the meeting with slides interleaved can be found on the Ubuntu Wiki Infrastructure at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OhioTeam/IRC20130618 and the team can be found online at http://loco.ubuntu.com/teams/ubuntu-us-ohio/. Voicemail can be left for the LoCo Leader via SIP call at sip:1580@sip.sdf.org.

I don’t consider myself a programmer but a sort of power user, I’m in love with the cli linux interface and everytime I can automatizate repetive tasks I do it. That’s how I ended writting 60~ scripts (most of them for fun, others for sysadmin work), while doing it I noticed a pattern, I used to cheat and copy some part of other scripts to finish faster so I started to write functions and put them in a lib file. After a while it has been increasing and I thought it would be a good idea to share it and see if it can be useful to someone else, so here it is.

• sh/lib

If you can improve current functions or add new ones your contribution is welcome (just branch and push back), beware that current code may hurt your eyes, you’ve been warned. Have fun n_n/

Previously, my (this) domain used Google Analytics to keep track of visitor (all of your) statistics and data, but I recently transitioned to a free & open source solution: Piwik –in which I control all the data.

Piwik: The Leading Self-Hosted, Decentralized, Open Source Web Analytics Platform

While not as pretty as the Google solution, it certainly makes up for it with an abundance of features –a lot of which I am still familiarizing myself with– a list of which you can find on their site.

Hailing itself as the “leading self-hosted, decentralized, open source web analytics platform”, Piwik was conceived as an open web analytics platform (and an alternative to Google Analytics), priding itself on being open source and privacy centric.

Installation

Once I downloaded, extracted and scp-ied to my server the set-up was relatively simple.

wget http://builds.piwik.org/latest.zip

unzip latest.zip && cd latest/piwik

scp -r <directory/of/piwik> <username> @re.mote.ip.address:"</remote/directory/for/piwik/"

Deployment was essentially the same as spinning up a WordPress instance (configuring an SQL database, and following the provided setup wizard) which they must be aware of as they have a “5 minute installation” also.

Juju Charm?

I’m not that great a web wizard, but if any of you Juju folks read this, Piwik might be a viable charm, no? Given WordPress is one I assume it is possible to do.

Anyway, you can find more info on their site: piwik.org

The post Switching to Open Source Analytics appeared first on Sam Hewitt | Blog.

We are working on a powerful vision with Ubuntu; to build a convergent Operating System that runs on phones, tablets, desktops, and TVs. A core part of this vision is that this is a platform and ecosystem that you can influence, improve, and be a part of, significantly more-so than our competitors.

One consistent piece of feedback we have seen from carriers and handset manufacturers is a a greater desire for platform competition and participation on helping to shape and define the ecosystem. A key goal for Ubuntu is to satisfy these needs.

Today we launched the the Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group (CAG) which includes Deutsche Telekom, Everything Everywhere, Telecom Italia, Korea Telecom, LG UPlus, Portugal Telecom, and SK Telecom as founding members. Wide industry participation in the group will help us to prioritize the delivery of new Ubuntu features, and grow an ecosystem of software, services and devices that meets that need.

The CAG provides regular meetings that take place regularly and typically include a briefing by Canonical or a partner company, followed by feedback from carriers. Members can bring domain specialists to calls for each relevant topic covered. Topics planned for discussion in the CAG forum include:

• Differentiation for OEMs and operators.
• Developer ecosystems and application portability.
• HTML5 standards, performance and compatibility.
• Marketplaces for apps, content and services.
• Revenue share models for publishers, operators, and OEMs.
• Payment mechanisms and standards.
• Platform fragmentation.
• Consumer and enterprise market segments and positioning.

CAG members can also launch Ubuntu devices before non-members in local markets. The first two launch partners will be selected from within the group, with the next wave following six months later; non-members will face a substantial wait to gain access to the platform. Members will have early knowledge of silicon, as well as OEM and ODM partners involved in the Ubuntu mobile initiative.

The Carrier Advisory Group is chaired independently of Canonical by David Wood, who has 25 years’ experience in the mobile industry, including leadership roles at Psion, Symbian and Accenture. He has wide experience with collaborative advisory groups, and twice served on the board of directors of the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).

David has this to say about the CAG:

“The mobile industry still needs an independent platform that enables innovation and differentiation. That platform is Ubuntu. The Carrier Advisory Group will have the opportunity to influence the Ubuntu roadmap, and take full advantage of the potential this emerging platform.”

If you are a carrier interested in helping shape Ubuntu’s mobile strategy and being part of the CAG, click here.

Last week we held the first meeting of the new Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group, which helps us figure out how best to shape Ubuntu to meet the needs of the mobile industry.

It was very exciting!

We mapped out our approach to the key question I’ve been asked by every carrier we’ve met so far: how can we accommodate differentiation, without fragmenting the platform for developers? We described the range of diversity we think we can support initially, received some initial feedback from carriers participating immediately, and I’m looking forward to the distilled feedback we’ll get on the topic in the next call.

CAG members get a period of exclusivity in their markets. We’ll close the CAG to new members shortly.  We don’t need a very large group; just a few clear-thinking and thoughtful partners who have experience introducing new platforms. And with this initial group of members, we are all set to get really good insight for a really great launch next year.

Next week I’ll be in Shanghai for the GSMA’s Mobile Asia Expo, and looking forward to a round of in-person meetings with our advisory group. Mostly we’ll be meeting by telephone and video conference, given the very global nature of the CAG, but there are a few events which attract critical mass of attendees in the industry where we’ll arrange a CAG face-to-face as well.

Thanks to everyone who is participating in the project – Ubuntu’s touch experience is really coming along in leaps and bounds. I love hearing about the new devices to which it’s been ported, or new apps getting started. This is the frontier for personal computing, and we want free software leading the way. You all make that possible.

Meeting Minutes

IRC Log of the meeting.

Meeting minutes.

Agenda

20130618 Meeting Agenda

ARM Status

Q/master: lp1176977 (“XFS instability on armhf under load”) – passed all xfs
tests (tested both on arm and x86), but there’s still one patch missing (and
waiting to enter linux-next for 3.11).
*/highbank: lp1182637(“cpu_offlining fails to run on ARM”) – indeed, it was a
firmware issue: updating the node to the last available firmware, made cpu
hotplugging work – lp1185669 (“CPU cores offline and can’t be brought back up on
ARM Server card”) is probably a dup.
R/master: lp1171582(“hvc0 getty causes random hangs”), seems like i can detect
the presence of a jtag console (DBGAUTHSTATUS NSNE bit) and thus attach or not
the xen console to it, i’ll give it a try.

Release Metrics and Incoming Bugs

Release metrics and incoming bug data can be reviewed at the following link:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kt-meeting.txt

Milestone Targeted Work Items

		apw		client-1303-power-consumption-testing		1 work item
				foundations-1305-arm64-bringup		1 work item
		ogasawara		foundations-1305-kernel		1 work item
				mobile-power-management		1 work item
		sforshee		foundations-1303-phablet-kernel-maintenance		1 work item
		smb		servercloud-s-virtstack		1 work item

Status: Saucy Development Kernel

Our Saucy unstable branch has been rebased to the latest v3.10-rc6
upstream kernel. We unfortunately have still not uploaded yet. We are
still awaiting fixups for a few DKMS packages. We hope to upload by EOW
or early next week. In the mean time we have gone ahead and rebased our
Saucy master branch to the recent v3.9.6 upstream stable kernel and
uploaded.
For our phablet kernels we have been investigating some kernel size
constraints and the modules which we have enabled and built in.
Important upcoming dates:
Thurs June 27 – Alpha 1 (opt in)

Status: CVE’s

== 2013-06-18 (7 days) ==
Currently we have 62 CVEs on our radar, with 3 CVEs added and 2 CVEs retired in the last week.
See the CVE matrix for the current list:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/ALL-linux.html

  Overall the backlog has increased slightly this week:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/status/cve-metrics.txt

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/CVE-linux.txt

Status: Stable, Security, and Bugfix Kernel Updates – Raring/Quantal/Precise/Lucid/Hardy

Status for the main kernels, until today (Jun. 18):

• Lucid – Beginning prep;
• Precise – Beginning prep;
• Quantal – Beginning prep;
• Raring – Beginning prep;
  Current opened tracking bugs details:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kernel-sru-workflow.html

  For SRUs, SRU report is a good source of information:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/sru-report.html

  Future stable cadence cycles:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseInterlock

Open Discussion or Questions? Raise your hand to be recognized

No open discussions.

To those who own a PengPod1000, feels free to try KB1OIQ - Andy's Ham Radio Linux on your device.

KB1OIQ - Andy's Ham Radio Linux is a custom operating system based on Ubuntu. It's target is for amateur radio usage. For more info, visit http://sourceforge.net/projects/kb1oiq-andysham/

Direct link download for PengPod100 image, http://sourceforge.net/projects/kb1oiq-andysham/files/pengpod_image_4GiB.dd.gz/download

The included amateur radio software is shown

• aa-analyzer.pl - command line program used with RigExpert AA-xxx analyzers
• chirp          - used to program frequencies into HTs (chirpw)
• cqrlog         - a full featured QSO logging program
• cwwav          - command line program to convert text files to CW wav or mp3
• earthtrack     - used with predict and xplanet to display satellites
• flamp          - NBEMS program for Amateur Multicast Protocol (AMP)
• fldigi         - digital modes such as PSK31 (NBEMS)
• flmsg          - companion to fldigi, a simple forms management editor for standard message formats (NBEMS)
• fllog          - to provide a common log across networked computers
• flrig          - rig control
• flwkey         - modem program for the K1EL Winkeyer series
• flwrap         - companion to fldigi, file encapsulation / compression
• Fl Moxgen      - Moxon Rectangle antenna design program
• gerbv          - view Gerber files
• glfer          - QRSS (slow CW) or DFCW (Dual Frequency CW) modes
• gpredict       - satellite tracking
• gqrx           - software defined radio receiver
• grig           - rig control software
• gspiceui       - GUI interface for spice
• gwave          - analog waveform viewer (e.g. spice output)
• hamlib         - radio control library
• ibp            - HF beacons
• net            - a net control logging program by W1HKJ
• owx            - Open Wouxun, command line programs for Wouxun HTs
• pcb            - interactive printed circuit board editor
• predict        - predict orbits of satellites (used with earthtrack)
• qrq            - CW callsign practice
• qsstv          - SSTV (slow scan TV)
• qtel           - Echolink client
• soundmodem     - user mode driver for packet radio (useful with xastir)
• splat          - command line HF propagation prediction
• sunclock       - track day/night line on Earth
• svxlink        - Echolink server
• TQSL           - used with ARRL Logbook of the World
• TQSL Cert      - used with ARRL Logbook of the World
• voacapl        - VOACAP for Linux - propagation prediction
• wsjt           - weak signal communication
• wspr           - weak signal communication
• xastir         - APRS mapping
• xcwcp          - CW code practice
• xdx            - DX cluster TCP/IP client
• xlog           - simpler QSO logging program
• xnec2c         - antenna modeling software
• xplanet        - used by earthtrack and predict to track satellites
• xwxapt         - display APT images from weather satellites

When seeking for help, it helps if you ask the right questions and know how to communicate about your problem. When helping others, it is at least as important to ask the right questions, know how to communicate with people who need help and ultimately, answer the right questions. In this article, I mostly cover IRC support since that’s the method I know the best, but the following tips should be appropriate for any support method at least after some adapting.

For starters, the Ubuntu IRC channels are Ubuntu Code of Conduct -compliant. This serves as a good base along with the Ubuntu IRC channel guidelines for both those who assist and those who are assisted. In addition, there are several things that are good to acknowledge when helping. Some of these are direct implications of the guidelines, some are unwritten rules.

The knowledge level

When a user has asked a question and you’ve triaged out the issue, one of the first things to figure out is their level of knowledge. While users usually have some kind of experience with computers, they might be completely new to Linux. Another thing to keep in mind are that even if a user was familiar with Linux or computing in general, they might not be familiar with the interiors of Xubuntu, and might need or want a more thorough explanation for a detail.

To be helpful, it’s important to make sure they understand what you’re telling them to do and why – always adjust the level of detail and explanation based on the knowledge level of the user. Normally it isn’t needed to specifically ask for users’ experience level, but it never hurts to check if they have understood what you have explained so far.

The never ending debate: command line or GUI

One of the charasteristics of Linux support in general is that a high percentage of solutions are presented as series of command line commands.

Obviously, the biggest advantage of the command line method is it’s speed. “Run this, and it’s fixed.” In many cases this works well, especially if the support question is about something that needs to be only once. Other advantages are the ease of copying and providing them on the web (compared to a set of images that explain how to achieve the same goal via GUI) and the only slight possibility that the command line arguments would be different depending on application or library versions. In addition, command line often provides important output when you need to debug.

On the contrary, there are a few disadvantages and pitfalls you should remember when helping people out.

First of all, many people you are helping are not naturally comfortable with the command line. If you don’t want to understand the commands, you’re not going to learn anything. However, doing the same thing with GUI will likely create connections and visual hints which might be useful for understanding Linux and ultimately, coping with future problems.

While we power users are willing to use the command line for pretty much any task, there is no reason to force other, less technically oriented people to use the command line, especially as we have the GUI alternatives! In my opinion, this is one of the features contributing to one of the points in the Xubuntu mission statement – ease of use.

Deadlocks, deadlocks…

Sometimes there are barriers that are too big; however, with help from the Ubuntu community and developers we can surpass some of these and start working on the rest to be able to surpass them someday.

The Xubuntu channels are English only but now and then we have people joining who do not wish to or can’t speak English. Fortunately, the Ubuntu community has many active local communities. In their IRC channels they are helping people in their native language and Xubuntu support is included as well.

When you don’t know the answer or there isn’t a solution available, acknowledge the fact but also make sure the person seeking for help understands the situation as well. If you think there’s a bug involved and one isn’t filed, ask the user to file one and offer to help filing it. While the problem persists, filing a bug is the first step towards the solution.

If you don’t know the area well enough, step down (or don’t even start!). In the worst case, bad advice can only make the situation worse. Sometimes the best advice is to tell to ask elsewhere or wait for other people able to help. Also take into consideration that while you might know better than somebody else, it can be confusing and even harmful if several people suggest different ways to resolve a problem. In the majority of these cases, stepping down is the best thing you can do – at least until your colleague is out of ideas.

Be respectful

Whatever the situation, the most important thing to keep in mind is being respectful towards others. It is phrased out in various ways in the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, the Ubuntu IRC channel guidelines, in this article and in numerous of other places.

If you ever feel you’re getting frustrated for any reason, take a breath and ask yourself if you can carry on calmly enough to be helpful. If you don’t think you can, step down. When you see other people get frustrated or burnt out, remind them to take a break if they need it – be it five minutes or a week. There are always other people and support methods available.

And finally…

I hope this article can shed some more light into what giving support is and in what state of mind you should do it. It’s definitely not an easy task and while it can sometimes require quite a bunch of patience, but it’s something we need to do in order to keep up a healthy user community. Ultimately, it can help us improving our product by fixing things that weren’t obvious to us but our users.

Support is an often underrated area of contribution where too many people do not ever get nearly as much recognition for their work. Thus I want to thank everybody who is doing Xubuntu support. Thank you! Keep on doing the good work and remember to take breaks when you need it!

This article is part of the article series Communication in the community.

During the recent week there has been a lot of amount of work put in the Numix-uTouch style icons. You can read more about theme here:

http://mechoslav.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/numix-ubuntu-touch-style-version-2-has-just-been-released/

So we are very happy to present you that you can install this icon pack on your desktop right now.
You can install it using the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:numix-icon-theme-dev/utouch && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install numix-utouch-icon-theme

Then apply it with the following command:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme “Numix-uTouch”

And here is how it looks:

CAUTION: This is in active state of development so changes will enter on daily basis.
Known big issues:

• Breaks Unity’s inidcators icons
• Doesn’t play well with theme with dark toolbars (like Ambiance for example)

To get the most out of it we recommend using it with Gnome-Shell with the and with with “Numix” preset applied

On our little Ubuntu Podcast we like to interview people. We’ve interviewed over 100 people in the last 5½ years and are always looking for more people to talk to about the interesting stuff they’re doing. If you’re working on something that our ~6000 listeners might want to hear then please do get in touch via any of the methods listed on our podcast site.

We don’t limit ourselves to Ubuntu subject matter only. In the past we’ve interviewed people from ZorinOS, Crunchbang, Fedora, Centos and KDE. We also talk to people who aren’t necessarily part of the “Free Software Community” (whatever that is) such as game & web developers, freedom advocates and event organisers.

Basically we like talking to interesting people. However we don’t have our fingers on the pulse of everything cool and interesting (no matter how much we try) and we’re always looking for new people to talk to. So let us know if you would like us to talk about you and your stuff, we don’t bite.

Bread, most people eat copious amounts of it but few bake it themselves. It may seem to be a daunting task –all that preparation and kneading– but this recipe requires very little effort (I’d wager the least of any bread recipe that I’ve come across) and should yield delicious bread every time.

No-Knead Bread Recipe

Prep Time: 5 minutes – wait time: 12-20 hours – Cooking Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon yeast
• 1 1/4 teaspoon salt (kosher, if you have it)
• 1 1/2 cup cool water
• cornmeal, semolina or wheat bran –for coating
• olive oil or melted butter

Equipment:

• 1 deep enamelled cast-iron or glass pot, with lid

Directions for dough:

1. Combine the flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl.
2. Add the water.
3. Using your hands mix it together into a dough (about a minute or two).
4. Cover with a sheet of plastic wrap and let it ferment somewhere (at room temperature) for 12-20 hours.

After 12+ hours your dough should resemble this –full of bubbles and have those stringy protein-y strands– and be only slightly tacky.

That particular dough was fermenting for ~14 hours

The long ferment time develops –in place of kneading– the gluten in the flour which is crucial to a bread’s structure.

Carefully remove the dough from the bowl onto a clean work surface, with as minimal manipulation of the dough as possible.

Preheat an oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit, with your pot inside.

Pinch and fold the dough into it’s centre a couple times to make a nice ball-shape* and coat liberally with the semolina, bran or cornmeal (I used the foremost in this instance).

Where these folds meet is where we’ll get that nice split in the top crust of the bread.

When the oven-pot system is preheated, carefully place the dough inside with the side opposite the folds face-up.

Bake for 30 minutes with the lid on.

After the 30 minutes, remove the lid and drizzle the loaf with oil or butter (if you’re using either) and then continue to bake for 15 minutes without the lid.

When finished baking your loaf should have a nice crust, dark from all the caramelization.

Cutting it open reveals plenty of air pockets (where those bubbles used to be) and beautiful crumb structure.

This recipe was adapted from Mark Bittman, New York Times (who in turn adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery) and is one I really enjoy because of how simple (and delicious) it is.

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The post No Knead Bread Recipe appeared first on Sam Hewitt | Blog.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #321 for the week June 10 – 16, 2013, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Ubuntu Stats
• UbuConLA 2013
• Ubuntu Forums – We’re going social
• What Is Going on With Juju? June 12 Edition
• Matt Fischer: Being a MOTU
• Martin Pitt: Ubuntu Saucy translations are now open
• Dmitrijs Ledkovs: Now, less cryptic – Cryptsetup changes in Saucy
• Jonathan Riddell: nice e-mail
• Stephen M. Webb: Unity Maintenance for Ubuntu “Saucy Salamander”
• Stephen M. Webb: Ubuntu Desktop Convergence
• Jono Bacon: The Ubuntu App Developer Cookbook Announced
• Howard Chan: Multiple DEs for Ubuntu Studio (part 1)
• The Fridge: Certificates For Ubuntu Members
• Charles Profitt: Testing: On To Saucy Salamader!
• Top 10 Ubuntu App Downloads for May
• Taking the ‘fun’ out of OpenStack
• System76 Jumps on the Haswell Bandwagon with Two New Ubuntu Laptops
• Ubuntu up and running on Android min PCs with RK3188 chips
• In The Blogosphere
• Other Articles of Interest
• Featured Audio and Video
• Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security for 10.04, 12.04, 12.10 and 13.04
• And much more!

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph
• Paul White
• Tiago Carrondo
• Jim Connett
• Matt Rudge
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Before I start blogging about the progress of GNOME Music, I would like to announce my happiness (as well as the whole gnome music team) that we now have 3 students sponsored to hack on GNOME Music. Eslam Mostafa (SoC), Shivani Podar (OWP) and Sai Suman Prayaga (SoC) all three of them deserved they internships, showing dedication and patching like crazy before SoC, keeping Vadim, Guillaume and me very busy.

Also I would like to welcome Arnel Borja and Fabiano Fidêncio to the team with their immense contributions, and ofcourse the allmighty Giovanni Campagna (who hacks everything in GNOME by now)

The last couple of weeks have been very hectic here, nevertheless we triumphed over phase of one of developing GNOME Music:

• Set basic infrastructure
• Implement Grilo Querying
• Implement Albums View
• Implement Songs View
• Implement Artist View
• Implement Playback support
• Clean up and port to Glade

Now phase 2 is shaping up nicely:

• Implement Playlist View
• Implement Selection functionality on all views
• Implement Repeat/Shuffle
• Implement Actions
• Clean up

So if you are interested in joining us with the development please feel free to hang out with us on #gnome-music on irc.gnome.org

Currently its only usable via JHbuild. Anyhow for more info like code and bugzilla check out https://live.gnome.org/Music

Here are some screenshots for tempting

 

This weekend was the sixth of the monthly screenings of ”Doctor Who” at the BFI. I was again lucky enough to get a ticket and joined a group of fellow podcasters and, on this occasion, writer of Full Circle, Andrew Smith to watch the story chosen to represent the Colin Baker era of the show. The choice of The Two Doctors was a surprise, as it is not a very representative story. It features a lot of overseas filming and features Patrick Troughton and Fraser Hines returning to their roles as the Doctor and Jamie respectively.

There are great performances from most of the cast. I was particularly impressed with John Stratton as Shockeye. Troughton’s performance as the Doctor is taken over by Androgum DNA is gorgeously gluttonous. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant portray the relationship between the Doctor and Peri with more depth than expected.

Andrew had pointed out before the screening that Peri never actually sees a Sontaran in the story. I had that in mind when I was watching it and soon realised that the Sontarans might as well not be there at all. The motivation of Group Marshal Stike seems to be entirely to return to his battle fleet in time for the next big push, something he could have accomplished with much less effort by planning his route more carefully in the first place.

The director, Peter Moffatt, seems to acknowledge the pointlessness of the Sontarans to the story by denying them a big reveal shot. He even cuts away at the moment Varl removes his helmet to reveal the potato-shaped head beneath. They’re just… there. With no explanation as to why Chessene needs them, or vice versa. At one point the invasion force are both reduced to fetching and carrying for their Androgum allies.

A brief half-time discussion on Colin’s famous multi-coloured costume was enhanced by having it there. As a bonus we also got to see Tom Baker’s shirt and waistcoat from “The Leisure Hive”.

Unfortunately, neither Colin nor Nicola were able to attend the screening due to professional commitments. Nicola sent a sweet message that was read out at the start of the screening, but the event felt lower key than all the others as a result of their absence.  The discussion panel was made up of Mike Kelt, visual effects designer, Eric Saward, script editor, Tony Selby, who played Sabalom Glitz in three stories, and Fraser Hines. (One gets the impression that the story was chosen mostly to allow Fraser to be part of the panel, which he was unable to do for the Troughton screening.)

Still, it was a fun way to spend a Saturday and we recorded another special episode of The Doctor Who Podcast afterwards, which will be available soon from their Facebook page. (Our review of May’s BFI screening is still available.)

Pin It

Filming Fast & Furious 7…

Note: The car is what we call a Combi in Peru, which is a form of public transportation. While I didn’t create the FF7 original pic, it is mock to peruvian combi drivers because those are one of the most reckless drivers in the world.

Last month I started my series of interviews called “People behind Canonical Quality”, but I haven’t posted anything yet since I’m too busy for exams. So today, let’s do the first one!

First on is Gema Golez-Solano, nicknamed gema on IRC. She normally does automated testing, making sure that every daily image (and I mean every single one of them) works best in every aspects and spot out bugs.

1. Can you give us a brief introduction of yourself?

I was born in Spain but I have lived in the UK for almost 10 years now.
I went to University back in the day in Barcelona and studied Computer
Engineering, then I was programming for a brief while in a company and
realized that what I did very well was not creating things but breaking
them.

2. What do you think makes QA interesting?

The creative thinking involved in ensuring software doesn’t break badly
is what attracts me the most. Using software and figuring out which
parts of it are weak and how to break it is very rewarding for me.
Seeing those problems fixed later makes my day, it makes me feel the
time was worth spending and I am saving users from feeling frustrated
(like I do when I get a new phone or a new gadget for which I paid a lot
of money and something is broken, which happens too often).

3. What sort of QA do you do within Canonical?

I am trying to make sure Ubuntu works nicely as a system. We do system
testing: think of as many ways as you can of Ubuntu installed or
installing for any use case, my job is to make sure Ubuntu shines in
every situation (we are trying, but the possibilities are endless). We
care about how much power it consumes, how much memory it needs to run,
how fast it is, whether it actually does what it is supposed to do and
whether it fails gracefully when it should. And my team focuses on
automating these test cases, running them every day and reporting
results along with any problems we find.

4. Why did you join Canonical?

I liked the idea of making Ubuntu and Linux in general easy to use for
non-computer savvy people, for example my family. I had too many
experiences with unusable linux installations in the past and I found
the idea of making it easy to use very appealing and challenging. I
thought test automation would help in the process and I was offered the
opportunity of joining so I took it.

5. What do you think of Ubuntu’s QA Community?

I like to think of my team as part of that Community, even though we
don’t interact that much on daily basis due to tight deadlines. When I
started with Canonical the QA Community was struggling to cope and we
were a very young QA community, not quite pulling all in the same
direction. A lot has changed since, Nick joined and started to shape the
future together with the contributors. Now there is a vibrant group of
people that are driving this testing and are  interested in automating
the easy stuff to use their brains to test the more challenging cases
and I am loving it. We can never test in every piece of hardware there
is out there in the lab, nor we can verify manually every corner case,
so I think the Ubuntu QA Community is a key piece of Ubuntu’s QA
success. Let’s keep growing it

6. What is the most interesting thing you have ever done within Canonical?

I created a test analysis that never got implemented[1], it was the
first thing I did when I joined. I enjoyed very much doing it and people
liked it, but it never got implemented because we needed to have test
tools and reporting capabilities, infrastructure we lacked back then. A
lot has happened since and now we are almost at a point when I can go
back to it and start implementing, I haven’t given it up yet, maybe you
guys can help me choose the interesting cases from there, based on your
experience?

7. What advice will you give to people joining the Ubuntu QA Community?

I’d like to encourage people to script the repetitive parts of testing
and give us those scripts to run in the lab, or set up a cron to run
those automatically daily on your machines, or both. That way you can
spend time testing what really matters and thinking about the different
use cases that are important to the users. Do something new every day,
think out of the box.

If we are talking about QA, I’d say you need to have a very strong QA
oriented mindset and high attention to details. Be a perfectionist and
capable of developing test cases, develop a record of delivering to a
very high standard what you commit to. Whatever you do, you need to put
your heart and your mind into it. I’d recommend to find something you do
very well, become a point of contact for that and be active on the
community. If you are good and enjoy what you are doing, in all
likelihood you’ll be pinged by someone in Canonical when an opportunity
that requires your skill set comes up. Other than that, you can keep an
eye on our job site in case something that matches your skills appears[2].

I guess my main hobby is learning. I am learning to play the piano and I
love spending hours trying to get the notes and dynamics right, not sure
my neighbors are so fond of this when trying to watch TV, though. I like
maths and economics and I am studying a second degree during weekends
and holidays, which I enjoy very much. I like to keep up with technology
in coursera[3] and other such sites. I also love traveling and science
fiction movies.
[1]
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/AutomatedTesting?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Test+analysis+and+specification+for+Ubiquity.pdf
[2] http://www.canonical.com/about-canonical/careers
[3] https://www.coursera.org

Next week you will enjoy another interview with a guy you are familiar with:) But for now, thank you gema!!!

This is the fourth in a series of posts highlighting the work being done on the Ubuntu Touch Core Apps.  I’ve been slacking a bit lately, and haven’t been publishing these as often as I had originally planned.  But now it’s time to get back on track, and what better way than with the visually appealing Weather App!

When you’re done with this one, be sure to go back and read about the Clock, Calendar and Calculator apps.

Weather Features

The weather app shows you the current weather conditions and temperate right away, followed by a forecast of the following week.  It also lets you add more than one location, so you can keep track of the weather where you are now, where you’re going next week, or where your family and friends are.

Settings

 Newly added to the Weather app is the a settings dialog.  For now, it lets you switch temperature units, which is nice for those of us living in handful of countries that still haven’t converted to the metric system.

Visual Designs

The Weather app is one of the 4 Core Apps that will be getting the Suru visual design, a unique look for Ubuntu Touch’s “ritual” apps.  We have already been given the new look for Clock and Calculator, and we hope to receive the designs and assets for Weather in the next few weeks.

Release Schedule

The Weather app was far enough along in terms of functionality that retro-actively labeled our month-1 milestone (May) as the alpha release.  Now the developers are working on the addition of settings and location management, along with a long list of Autopilot tests, and are on pace to deliver a beta release in July (month-3) and a final release in August (month-4).

This week's extremely brief regular episode reminds Ubuntu Ohio members of the business meeting on Tuesday, June 18th. There are slides and an agenda available for members to download and review prior to the meeting at 2330 UTC in the Ubuntu Ohio IRC channel #ubuntu-us-oh on freenode.

Download here (MP3) (ogg) (FLAC) (Speex), or subscribe to the podcast (MP3) to have episodes delivered to your media player. We suggest subscribing by way of a service like gpodder.net.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.

Last month I tossed out the idea that Ubuntu as a project needs to fight to preserve our watercooler. The past 2 weeks have been a blur of progress and hard work by a bunch of people, and I’d like to start posting regular reports on what we’re working on.

The first step was deploying Discourse. But we didn’t want a one off deployment. We wanted to do this in a repeatable way. A modern way that allows us to scale and grow that gives us the ability to keep up with upstream’s blistering pace. And besides, if we’re going to make this easy to deploy, we should of course share that devops expertise with the community, so here it is.

• Here is the Juju Charm for Discourse with instructions if you’re interested in your own.
• Discourse/Juju charm operational lessons learned - these are our deployment notes.
• and how to contribute code
• All deployed on performant instances on HP Cloud, powered by OpenStack.
• And here’s a great video from the Discourse guys on how to run it on a single server.

If you really want to play I recommend following the video instructions from the Discourse guys, and then I want you to try the Juju charm – you will then realize why I just can’t shut up about Juju; automate all of that devops goodness so you don’t have to do it by hand every single time. We got the site up and running, with Marco doing regular reports of the maintenance windows.

Next up was to make it pretty. Enter Nathan Osman, one of my favorite get-things-done hackers in our community. He did most of the work and we even got some pointers from the design team.

Not bad!

So how can you help us kick the tires on Discourse? Well, you can start by using the site!

ubuntu-discourse.org

• tell a friend.
• Log in via your Ubuntu SSO. Or Google, or Yahoo or make a local one.
• You can integrate Discourse comments into your WordPress blog - This plugin is exciting, it allows bloggers to integrate directly with the forum for a nice integrated effect. The comments get posted on Discourse instead, and then the highest liked ones get synced BACK to your blog.
• Start posting interesting content! If it’s something you were going to blog or send to the list, consider posting it here. The nice thing is is that Discourse supports HTML, Markdown, and BBCode, so posting isn’t difficult.
• Give us feedback so we can improve things.

And a special shoutout to the upstream developers for participating in our test and steering us in the right direction.

So there it is, let’s see where this goes!

The Ubuntu community is a core part of what makes us what we are, and right at the center of that are our Ubuntu Members. Ubuntu Members provide *significant and sustained* contributions over a wide range of areas such as packaging, documentation, programming, translations, advocacy, support, and more. We always want to do our best to recognize and appreciate our many members in the Ubuntu family, across these many different teams and our flavors.

I am pleased to announce a new benefit for new Ubuntu Members. When you become approved as an official Ubuntu Member, you will be mailed a printed certificate signed by Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project to recognize your membership. We hope you put it up on your wall where you contribute to Ubuntu and bring freedom and openness to technology.

A few notes:

• The certificates are rather nice. Designed by the design team and printed on nice stock, they are a nice representation of your membership.
• We will only send you one certificate; you don’t get a new one when you renew your membership.
• Due to the fact that we currently have **769** active Ubuntu members, we don’t have the time or resources to send every existing member a certificate automatically (just getting all those addresses would be enough of a challenge!). If however you fill in the form below to request one, we will honor it.
• If you have any questions or queries with these certificates, please contact michelle@canonical.com who can help.

How To Get Your Certificate

Please only request a certificate if you are an existing Ubuntu Member, otherwise your request will be rejected. If you are not sure if you are a member or not, please check your profile page on Launchpad to see if you are member of the ubuntumembers group.

To get one simply fill in this form.

We hope to send out certificates within 14 days, but we are currently waiting on getting them signed by Mark, so it may take a little longer initially.

Thanks!

Contributed by Jono Bacon

Here in the lovely country of Bulgaria we have a saying – “Majstor Trichko Znae Vsichko”, which literally translates as “Workman Trichko knows everything”, which means nothing, so here have the semantic translation – “Don’t be a jack of all trades, but master of none”.
So, straight to the point now – I’ve been in the applications design business for Average Blokes for a while now and the most important thing I’ve learned is actually a rather simple thing – You can’t please everybody and adding customisation options isn’t always a solution.
You see, if you are designing (or if you can code too – creating) open source application you can’t avoid community impact on your app and the better it is, the more cherished the impact would be. However beauty of the open source community is that it’s really diverse and it has more kinds of folks that the light itself. I won’t bother bulleting all kinds I can think of, because that would require going to the store and buying a second keyboard, simply because the current one will fall part from typing. So, you have all those types of blokes in the community and the most interesting one (if you are making an app) are what I’ve (albeit cheekily) named – jittebugs. It’s not because they cause any kind of panic, it’s because for quite a while I’ve had Wham’s “Wake me up before you go go” stuck in my head on repeat mode and the lyrics are full with the word jitterbug, so you see – I had to name something after that word.
But who are those jitterbugs? Well, to put it simply they are the folks that come up with ideas and suggestions for your application.
You will get all kinds of suggestions – silly ones, wonky ones, ace ones, brilliants ones, etc … and you have to go through each of them and expression your opinion. Usually when an idea is a good one you add it to your To-Do list andthank the jitterbug fellah. The real fun, however starts when an idea is a bad one and you have to explain that to the bloke who proposed it, which very much regrettably is much more common than the other salutes and perks scenario.
Sadly a bunch of the users simply have no idea what is actually the right thing – for example you can get bug reports about “Maximise button is missing” despite that the app has certain amount of options in it’s interface and maximising it would only create whitespace. Or one about “Toolbar is missing modes” – when the user want to be able to tweak the toolbar – text below icons, icons only, text beside icons, etc … which will only break the look and feel of your application. Or … nah, I really don’t think it’s necessary to type more examples.
For our community is incredibly diverse and more colourful than a rainbow there will always be chaps that want customisation options and implementing those options those options will break your app, and you don’t want to make a broken app, do you? So, when you see such request politely explain to the jitterbug why exactly it’s a bad idea. Don’t go prepeared for full fledged verbal war, don’t just shoot “No. That’s not gonna be implemented.” as an answer, type a nice and polite answer with the reasons which render that useless for implementation.
Lastly, never ever assume the users are bloody idiots that have no idea what they want and what’s the right thing to do, however if you see a suggestion that doesn’t make sense, don’t be afraid to say grounded no, because that might somehow make this guy feel bad. There are times when declining is the right thing to do and if you don’t and proceed with implementing a feature that won’t improve your application or will make it worse it means you have to really learn how to say “No” when needed.

I recently purchased a new wireless router for home use; the ASUS RT-N66U. The router it replaced was a D=Link DIR-655. I have wanted a simultaneous dual-band router for several years, but until recently had not found one that worked as well as the single-band DIR-655. What finally pushed me over the edge on the ASUS was the need for ‘parental controls’ that included the ability to turn off Internet access for specific devices based on time. The ASUS RT-AC66U and the RT-N66U both had this feature. I decided to save $40 and go with the N version of the router since I do not own any AC devices.

The router makes use of a web interface for initial setup and making settings changes so there is no need for Windows. As an Ubuntu user I am always happy to see manufacturers that do not rely on special Windows only software for managing their devices. In this case there is one piece of software that is Windows only; the firmware recovery utility. Careful reading on the web indicates that the software does nothing more than setup a TFTP server for firmware recovery.

I am very pleased with the performance improvement of the router. I used Wifi Analyzer on my Nexus 7 to capture the signal strength comparison. For reference the green colored graph is the DIR-655 and the purple is the ASUS RT-N66U.

With previous attempts to replace the DIR-655 I had problems such as wireless dropouts and lockups. The worse of the bunch was the Buffalo WZR-HP-G450H, but the Linksys line also failed. I can report that I am currently very happy with the ASUS RT-N66U.

I found myself in need of a USB wireless adapter again, but wanted to get an N 300 adapter instead of an N150 adapter. I still wanted it to work as well as the Medialink USB adapter I previously reviewed. I decided to purchase the TP-Link TL-WN822N. The reviews on Amazon.com indicated this was an Atheros chipset, but the one I received was a Raylink. Apparently, there are three versions of this device and only version 1 and version 2 use Atheros.

The TL-WN822N was automatically detected on Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04 and 13.10 (development release). I was disappointed though since it never achieved speeds above 150Mb/s. Though it never went below 150Mb/s so there is a chance that the speed is not being accurately updated.

The device does have two antennas and it should have greater range than the Medialink, but I have not put that to the test yet. I will write an update in the near future after the devices have been in used for a while.

The TL-WN822N is using a different chipset and driver, so I will have to research why the device is not achieving higher speeds.

rt2800usb – Medialink
Device 003: ID 148f:3070 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT2870/RT3070 Wireless Adapter
150 Mb/s

TP-Link TL-WN822N
Device 002: ID 0bda:8178 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8192CU 802.11n WLAN Adapter
150Mb/s

My wireless router, the ASUS RT-N66U, is capable of supporting the speed so I will have to do some research as to why it is either not reaching or showing higher speeds.

It’s been a long time since I have posted in Planet Ubuntu (due to exams). Since I’m back, I think I would want to share something. For today, I want to tell you about Ubuntu Studio’s plans and progresses on multiple desktop environments (DEs).

One of Ubuntu Studio’s good advantages is that we developers and users can use whatever desktop environment we want from the Ubuntu repositories, since what we are providing is a multimedia creation experience, not providing a single, discrete DE-based environment. For example, if an audio user likes Unity over Xfce (Ubuntu Studio’s default DE) he can install it using Synaptic or apt-get and use it within several minutes. Users can also choose from LXDE, KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, GNOME 3 and others.

Sometime ago a audio producer joined the Ubuntu Studio community and complained that since Ubuntu Studio does not use Unity, he doesn’t want to use it. This made me and Kaj Ailomaa having to reply long (in my case, VERY long) comments. We were thinking: desktop environments shouldn’t be the deciding factor that one will (or won’t) use our operating system. Henceforth, we came up with the idea of enabling users to choose multiple desktop environments.

Len Ovenwerks, our desktop menu master, is doing a great job into enabling our XDG menu to fit into every single DE (albeit, he seems to be having trouble with MATE). The menu especially works well in Xfce, KDE and LXDE. We are also trying to make our own desktop metas, with me responsible for KDE (as a Kubuntu member), Kaj for Unity (which seemed to be in high demand on G+), Maik Adamietz on GNOME 3, and volunteer lukefromdc for Cinnamon.

Our plan is to make an extension in ubiquity where users can choose whatever DE they want to use. Our live ISO will still include Xfce as the default desktop (and probably we will install it along with the user’s DE of choice alongside so there’s a backup solution), but we will give the users a convenient choice for using KDE or Unity.

This is still WIP of course. We hope to get some or most of it done by 13.10 Feature Freeze so we can test it in Beta 1. Fix the reported bugs, re-test in Beta 2, and 13.10 shall be good enough.

I will continue to keep on updating you guys as our work goes on, but before then, it’s time to celebrate Father’s day.

 

Sorry i had to re-post, the poll didn’t work then planet ubuntu didn’t work

Since my last post i’ve got a lot more done towards this project.  I’ve made a crowdfunding account so i can get sponsored. I’ve got a shortlist of cases, the poll is here. I also have a PSU and sleeving is on it’s way. If you have advice or want more frequent updates, either use the comments here, my email ( noskcaj@ubuntu.com ) or http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic=54532

The Cases:

Case 1: CMStorm Enforcer

I had a previous build in this case, my main worry is it’s side panel won’t work with the ubuntu logo. The case is steel with a hard plastic front

Case 2: Lian-li case

I had attempted cleaning up this case already but had no reason to. As you can see i’ve partially pulled it apart. This case is fully alluminium

Case 3: Generic case with Handle

This case has a giant handle and no existing windows. It’s steel with top and front panels made from hard plastic.

<noscript><a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/7179411">Take Our Poll</a></noscript>

Want to donate? use http://www.gofundme.com/39uhgg

If you reblog this, do not dissable comments. i would rather take the hate and get some actual help rather than nothing.

Recently, I ate at the somewhat famous London vegetarian restaurant Indian Veg Bhelpoori House in Islington (often referred to simply as “Indian Veg”).

I couldn’t help but imagine that the restaurant had hired Emanuel Bronner as their interior decorator.

If all goes well, a new release of dput-ng will hit the archive this week (depending on when I can find time to close the last 2 bigger bugs) - anyone interested in getting a new feature into dput-ng should email me (or file a `reportbug` bug at dput-ng)

Small list of changes so far:

  * Add per-host loading of command files by partially parsing command

    line arguments.

  * Add disallowed_distributions.

  * Add codename groupping support.

  * Add codename groups to vital targets, limit security uploads to the right servers (Closes: #708575).

  * Implement dcut commands for Deb-o-Matic.

  * Add an —override and a —unset option to dput which overrules any

    profile key. This is an experimental option.

  * Be more precise about our configuration file inheritance in dput(5).

  * Fix “dcut: manpage and —help talk about -U and —upload” by replacing those parts in the text by the ‘upload’ command (Closes: #699812)

  * Make the login name determination more portable (Closes: #709831)

  * Fix “Allow to give out dm permissions without using local keyring” by

  * documenting the —force option in the man page (Closes: #711057)

  * Allow uploads to mentors to target every distribution

  * Add a space in —debug’s help message.

  * Fixed a typo (DEBNAME → DEBFULLNAME) in the dcut(1) manpage.

Thanks, y’all!

Since my last post i’ve got a lot more done towards this project.  I’ve made a crowdfunding account so i can get sponsored. I’ve got a shortlist of cases, the poll is here. I also have a PSU and sleeving is on it’s way. If you have advice or want more frequent updates, either use the comments here, my email ( noskcaj@ubuntu.com ) or http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic=54532

The Cases:

Case 1: CMStorm Enforcer

I had a previous build in this case, my main worry is it’s side panel won’t work with the ubuntu logo. The case is steel with a hard plastic front

Case 2: Lian-li case

I had attempted cleaning up this case already but had no reason to. As you can see i’ve partially pulled it apart. This case is fully alluminium

Case 3: Generic case with Handle

This case has a giant handle and no existing windows. It’s steel with top and front panels made from hard plastic.

To vote use this link: http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic=54532

If you reblog this, do not dissable comments. i would rather take the hate and get some actual help rather than nothing.

Following up on the discussion opened up by Colin Watson on ubuntu-devel and further discussions at vUDS, we’ve created a public mailing list to continue exploring and coordinating all the work around the new packaging format and changes needed to the surrounding systems.

You can sign up joining this Launchpad team: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-appstore-developers

Since we didn’t want to block on having everything cleaned up, some documents thrown in the mailing list may not be publicly visible. Apologies in advance while we slowly move them over to be accessible by everyone. We’ve decided to take a pragmatic approach here instead of blocking until everything was perfect so the discussions could all happen in public.

Relaxation.  Simply put, I am really bad at it.  My wife, Kim, a veritable expert, has come to understand that, while she can, I can't sit still.  For better or worse, I cannot lay on a beach, sip a cerveza, and watch the waves splash at my feet for hours.  10 minutes, tops.  You'd find me instead going for a run in the sand or kayaking or testing the limits of my SCUBA dive table.  Oh, and I can't take naps.  I stay up late and wake up early.  I spend my nights and weekends seeking adventure, practicing any one of my countless hobbies.  Or picking up a new one.


So here I am on my first-ever 5-week sabbatical, wide awake late tonight at the spectacular Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.  Kimi, Cami, and I are on an ambitious, month-long, 5,000+ mile road trip from Austin, Texas to Banff, Alberta, Canada, visiting nearly every National Park in between.  Most of our accommodations are far more modest than this chalet -- we're usually in motels, cabins, or cottages.  In any case, this place is incredible.  Truly awe-inspiring, and very much befitting of the entire experience of grandeur which is Glacier and Waterton National Parks.


But this is only one night's stop of 30 amazing days with my loving wife and beautiful daughter.  30 days, covering over a dozen national parks, monuments, and forests.


And with that, I am most poignantly reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson's sage advice, that, "Life's a journey, not a destination."

And speaking of, this brings me back to said sabbatical...

July 8th, 2013 marks my first day back at Canonical, after a 19 month hiatus for "An Unexpected Journey", and I couldn't be more excited about it!

I spent the last year-and-a-half on an intriguing, educational, enlightening journey with a fast-growing, fun startup, called Gazzang.  Presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I took a chance and joined a venture-funded startup, based in my hometown of Austin, Texas, and built on top of an open source project, eCryptfs, that I have co-authored and co-maintained.

I joined the team very early, as the Chief Architect, and was eventually promoted to Chief Technical Officer.  It was an incredibly difficult decision to leave a job I loved at Canonical, but the nature of the opportunity at Gazzang was just too unique to pass up.

Introducing this team to many of the engineering processes we have long practiced within Ubuntu (time-based release cycles, bzr, Launchpad, IRC, Google+ hangouts, etc.), we drastically improved our engineering effectiveness and efficiency.  We took Gazzang's first product -- zNcrypt: an encrypted filesystem utilizing eCryptfs (and eventually dm-crypt) -- to the enterprise with encryption for Cloud and Big Data.  We also designed and implemented, from scratch, a purely software (and thus, cloud-ready), innovative key management system, called zTrustee, that is now rivaling the best hardware security modules (HSMs) in the business.  As CTO, I wrote thousands of lines of code, architected multiple products, assisted scores of sales calls as a sales engineer, spoke at a number of conferences, assisted our CEO with investor pitches, and provided detailed strategic and product advice to our leadership team.

Gazzang was a special journey, and I'll maintain many of the relationships I forged there for a lifetime.




I am quite proud of the team and products that we built, I will continue to support Gazzang in an advisory capacity, as a Technical Advisor, and a shareholder.  Austin has a very healthy startup scene, and I feel quite fortunate to have finally participated actively in it.  With this experience, I have earned an MBA-compatible understanding of venture funded startups that, otherwise, might have cost 3 years and $60K+ of graduate school.

Of all of the hats I wore at Gazzang, I think the role where I felt most alive, where I thrived at my fullest, was in the product innovation and strategy capacity.  And so I'm absolutely thrilled to re-join Canonical on the product strategy team, and help extend Ubuntu's industry leadership and creativity across both existing and new expressions of Cloud platforms.
In 1932, Waterton-Glacier became the world's first jointly administered national park.  This international endeavor reminds me how much I have missed the global nature of the work we do within Ubuntu.  The elegance in engineering of this Price of Wales Hotel and the Glacier Lodge rekindles appreciation of the precision and quality of Ubuntu.  And the scale of the glacial magnificence here recalls the size of the challenge before Ubuntu and the long term effect of persistence, perseverance, and precision.

I am grateful to Mark and all of Canonical for giving me this chance once again.  And I'm looking forward to extending Ubuntu's tradition of excellence as platform and guest in cloud computing!

Please excuse me, as I struggle to relax for another 3 weeks...


:-Dustin