Emilio Pozuelo Monfort: New Maintainer

About one year and a half after my first package was uploaded to Debian, I decided to apply to become a Debian Developer last month. It didn’t happen inmediately because in order to apply you are asked whether you have read the foundation documents, the policy, the developers reference… and I didn’t want to cheat! So I took the time to read all of them, and then applied on November 1st!

Loïc Minier advocated me (thanks!) and now I’m waiting to be asigned an AM. I hope not to loose interest in the meantime

Categories: Computers | Linux | nix | Planet Ubuntu | Ubuntu

Sayak Banerjee: Bug #23471: Study time crashes with SIGSEGV

Bug #23471: Study time crashes with SIGSEGV


Summary:
With Ubuntu and other distros, study time crashes with SIGSEGV in __pebkac_category_main()

ProblemType: Crash
Architecture: x86_64
DistroRelease: All
ExecutablePath: /usr/share/birdbrain
Package: birdbrain 2.3.4
ProcAttrCurrent: unconfined
ProcCmdline: birdbrain --study-now
ProcEnviron:
LANGUAGE=English
PATH=/

sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
Signal: 11
SourcePackage: birdbrain

To Reproduce:
1. Install any FOSS on your computer.
2. Take admission at a college that provides 24x7 internet.
3. Join some FOSS related forums and subscribe to numerous blogs.
4. Keep your course book open in front of you


Expected Result:
You should look into the book atleast once while you surf.


What Happens Actually:
The book remains untouched for the whole day. This can cause a D in the concerned subject.


Patches (optional):

• burn-down-modem.diff

Attachments (optional):

• report-card.txt
  

Categories: Computers | Linux | nix | Planet Ubuntu | Ubuntu

Mark Van den Borre: East Germany: better bike lanes than Brussels area

This summer, I bought a Flevobike Greenmachine recumbent bike. Marvelous piece of technology. First long distance ride: 450 km to CCC, mostly in former East Germany.

For the last few days, I've been experimenting with commuting to work by bike. Here's a short comparison of the biking experience between (ex-)GDR and the wider Brussels area (higher score == better experience):

bike lane present: GDR 1 - Brussels area 0
bike lane ends in obstacle (tree, pedestrian lane, other): GDR 1- Brussels area 0
cars parked in bike lanes: GDR 1 - Brussels area 0
cars in bike zone at traffic lights: GDR 1 - Brussels area 0
"tuxracer" potholes and bumps: GDR 1 - Brussels area 0
bored youngster in front waving (fake?) gun at you: GDR 1 - Brussels area 0
absolutely unneeded traffic lights: GDR 1 - Brussels area 0
friendly people smiling at recumbent: GDR 1 - Brussels area 1

Overall rating: GDR 8 - Brussels 1

Still, an enjoyable experience, and faster than you think. Leuven-Brussels, door to door, less than an hour for a geek without any real training.

Categories: Computers | Linux | nix | Planet Ubuntu | Ubuntu

Mark Van den Borre: Flemish educators infected by Ubuntu virus!


Enthousiasm is viral. Few visitors or exhibitors at the VLOD education fair last week in Gent, Belgium were able to avoid the ubuntu-be.org volunteers, our booth and our Ubuntu enthousiasm.

Four days, thousands of visitors, hundreds of conversations and Ubuntu install sets later. Ubuntu has a meaning and a face now to many teachers, school IT coordinators and their bosses.

We know a lot more now about Ubuntu use at schools in Flanders. Some serious use, some skinny dipping. Definitely enough for a few spectacular success stories... in a few weeks, or by someone else.

Annelies Bollen, François and Xavier Cauwe, Ismaël Demiddel, Guy Duportail from linux-service.be, Jan Fabry, Jens Timmerman, Dieter Vanderfaillie, Richard Weidemann. They transmitted the Ubuntu virus to you at VLOD. If you ever meet one of them, buy them a drink. Hm, François Cauwe and Guy Duportail might be really thirsty after their gargantuan efforts. A bottle might be more appropriate for them...

Categories: Computers | Linux | nix | Planet Ubuntu | Ubuntu

Jono Bacon: Announcing The Ubuntu Hall Of Fame

“May the HOF be with you” - Obi-Wan Kenobi

A few months back I met in London with Daniel Holbach, Graham Binns and James Westby for a short sprint. I had flown Daniel over for the purposes of a face-to-face catch-up and to record some MOTU videos for the Ubuntu Developer Channel. It was a productive few days, and in our many meetings we sowed the seeds for an idea which I am proud to announce today.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, one of the most important aspects of community management is in breaking down workflow and understanding how to improve it. We have done this in a number of areas in the Ubuntu world with bugs, patches, LoCo Teams, events and key parts of the wider community picture. When we launch any initiative we pay close attention to the growth and impact of that initiative on the community and this often gives us an insight into the rock stars in our community - the contributors who do lots of good, measurable, referencable work.

When I meet with the horsemen, we regularly talk about these rockstars in our community. On every call we get jazzed about their contributions to Ubuntu. Although we knew about many areas of contribution - people who are rocking on 5-A-Day, new MOTU and core-dev developers, people who are doing great work in the forums etc, our approach was somewhat incomplete. Although we horsemen focus on these rockstars and none of this information is private, the figures and statistics that show off this good work is spread across different places. In addition to this, we were concious that we are always only seeing part of the picture - what about rockstars in translations, upstream bug triage, the sponsorship queue, Launchpad contributors etc? Every time someone rocks a part of our community, they should be recognised.

This raised another issue - some people can be measured as rockstars - we can count their contributions in the community, but some people span a range of different kinds of contribution, many of which can’t be measured statistically. We wanted these people to be recognised as well and write a more personal showcase of their efforts. With these driving considerations, it was now time to be inspired by Guitar Hero. I know, I know, that may seem a little odd, but stay with me…

There are many fascinating communities out there outside of Free Software, and gaming comunities offer many insights. One such example is Guitar Hero - the online collaborative play aspect of Guitar Hero an interesting part of how they have built a faithful following of players. Where this really piqued my interest was in how high scores play such an encouraging role to members of that community. Players really put in the time to practise and get their scores up and enjoy the sense of peer respect that results from this in the Guitar Hero fishbowl. Interestingly, when we launched 5-A-Day, complete with the contributor and team rankings, we also picked up on a strong sense of pride by participants in their scores. We have also seen similar results from pride over karma in Launchpad. Our community is built on pride and respect, and I was keen to explore how we could centralise this.

While in the meeting room, I grabbed a pen and started fleshing out a design. Daniel, James and I then set to refining the functional and visual design and I took a snap of my penmanship:

After a number of follow-up calls, a functional specification and some testing we are now proud to announce the Ubuntu Hall Of Fame:

Many thanks to Stuart Langridge for producing the design, Daniel Holbach for plumbing in the data from Launchpad and Kenneth Wimer for producing the snazzy Rockstar button.

Let me explain a few elements of the Hall Of Fame. Firstly, as you can see, the Hall Of Fame includes a number of boxes that look like this:

Each box contains the statistical data about the topic for the box, but it also contains a simple single-line description detailing what the data shows. To find more data that is related, there is a More… link - click that to drill into more stats. The final point to note is the (i) symbol in the top-right of each box - this links to a page that outlines how to get involved in that part of our community.

Another key feature of the Hall Of Fame is the Featured Contributor. Here we will be showcasing contributors across the community that are doing excellent work. Here we will write a little blurb about what they have done, their achievements and their personality. Importantly, we have added a feature in which you can click the Thank button and the Hall Of Fame will look up your Launchpad account and add your profile picture to the article to show that you would like to thank that contributor. This was an important feature - we wanted to make it as easy as possible to show featured contributors that you appreciate their work. Now it is just one click away! Oh, and for you RSS lovers, there is a feed for Featured Contributors available with the big orange RSS icon. When thinking about who we would showcase for the first Featured Contributor, one of the first names that sprung to mind was Nick Ali, an excellent contributor and friend to everyone. Go and check out the Featured Contributor article about him.

My hope is that the Hall Of Fame will quickly become a showcase in which the wider community is proud to be featured on, either as a Featured Contributor or inside one of the many boxes. We have many ideas about how we can expand and improve on the site to foster this sense of pride, but we are keen to hear from you all with your ideas about additional features that you would love to see, and importantly, what additional HOFBoxes (those boxes with stats) that you would like to see. Which areas of the community should we be showcasing, and how would you measure them?

Categories: Computers | Linux | nix | Planet Ubuntu | Ubuntu

Ubuntu UK Podcast: S01E18 - Slowly But Surely

Laura Cowen, Alan Pope, Dave Walker and Tony Whitmore present the eighteenth Ubuntu Podcast from the UK Local Community Support Team.

In a rather belated episode we have:-

• We discuss our experience of upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10 - the Intrepid Ibex.
• We review Ubuntu Kung Fu, a book by Keir Thomas, and we give away a copy in our competition - which due to the late arrival of this podcast will be extended until 3rd December.
• The news.
• We discuss what we do to our systems after installing Ubuntu, and briefly discuss Automatix and Ultimatix.
• Finally we have your feedback.

Comments and suggestions are welcomed to: podcast@ubuntu-uk.org
Up to 30 seconds of voicemail can be left at +44 (0) 845 508 1986
Follow our twitter feed http://twitter.com/uupc
Follow us on Identi.ca http://identi.ca/uupc
Discuss this episode in the Forums

Laura Cowen, Alan Pope, Dave Walker and Tony Whitmore present the eighteenth Ubuntu Podcast from the UK Local Community Support Team. In a rather belated episode we have:- We discuss our experience of upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10 - the Intrepid Ibex. We review Ubuntu Kung Fu, a book by Keir Thomas, and we give away a copy in our competition - which due to the late arrival of this podcast will be extended until 3rd December. The news. We discuss what we do to our systems after installing Ubuntu, and briefly discuss Automatix and Ultimatix. Finally we have your feedback. Comments and suggestions are welcomed to: podcast@ubuntu-uk.org Up to 30 seconds of voicemail can be left at +44 (0) 845 508 1986 Follow our twitter feed http://twitter.com/uupc Follow us on Identi.ca http://identi.ca/uupc Discuss this episode in the Forums

Categories: Computers | Linux | nix | Planet Ubuntu | Ubuntu

Mackenzie Morgan: Tis Better to Dup Than to Convolute

Let's talk about bug reporting.

There's something which occurs very often in bug reports by people who mean well. They find a bug, and to avoid making extra work for triagers, they check for a duplicate first. While that's very thoughtful of them, it often ends up getting in the way. So, let's talk about when you should file a duplicate, and when you should not. This is mostly in regard to hardware bugs, since that's where I see this happening the most. Hardware varies so widely, that this becomes a bit of a problem.

Let's say you install Intrepid and discover that no sound is coming out of your sound card. So, you look on Launchpad and find a bug conveniently titled "No sound in Intrepid." "Perfect!" you think and join in. Seeing a workaround suggested with no response from the reporter, you think you'll be helpful and answer the question for the triager…

Stop right there.

Now, consider the following:

1. Do you have the exact same hardware?
2. Are you sure you have the exact same bug?

If, after reading all of the information provided on the bug, you can answer "YES!" to both of those questions, look for what we're calling the "Me Too" feature. At the moment, it's the phrase "This bug doesn't affect me" followed by a "Change" link just under where the bug's Importance is listed. Click "Change" and mark that you are affected. It is not necessary (or recommended) to post a comment saying that you are affected. This just clutters the bug reports.

If your answer is "maybe" or "no," file your own bug. If your answer is "I don't know how to answer those questions," read on.

How do you see if you have the exact same hardware? In the case of sound, video, and networking hardware, check the lspci -nv output. The first line of each section tells you what basic model of that hardware you have. The next line lists the subsystem information, or SSID. The SSID has to do with how the hardware was integrated into the motherboard. It is far from unusual for bugs to be introduced at this level. If yours match and are the same revision, you probably have the same hardware. If there is any discrepancy, file your own bug. For webcams, fingerprint readers, and other things that use the USB interface, check the ID listed by lsusb If it seems you have the same hardware, use the Me Too feature and read on.

Double check exactly what the original reporter is experiencing. Read the full version and any responses they've already given. The title is not enough. If you're not seeing the same behavior, assume it's a different bug.

If it turns out to be one bug that affects multiple pieces of hardware we can always mark them as a duplicate later. That's not a problem. That's part of triaging.

But if it turns out that there are 15 different issues being reported in one bug, that is a problem. If we have 2 people saying something fixes it, and one saying it makes it worse, and a few others say they don't have that exact symptom but rather something somewhat different and the fix didn't work for them…that makes the bug very convoluted. We then try to read through the bug and see what's going on, and it's full of conflicting information. How are we supposed to debug then? We have no solid answers.

Something I see in sound bugs a lot is that one person will file a "No Sound" bug or a "Crackly sounds" bug. Everyone with that symptom jumps on that bug, but they don't belong there. There are multiple possible root causes, and many of them are hitting different ones. But they present themselves the same to the user. What we, as triagers, want to see is that these bugs are filed independently. If, after some debugging, we find that a few have the same root cause, we can mark them as duplicates easily. Finding the 1 root cause to 5 separate issues masquerading as one, though? That's not possible, because really there are 5 root causes and thus 5 bugs. Continuing to pretend they are all one bug just clutters the bug report, making it hard to read and hard to understand.

And that is why I say, "'Tis Better to Dup Than to Convolute."

Categories: Computers | Linux | nix | Planet Ubuntu | Ubuntu

Paul Hummer: Danger's Law

"With shallow users, everything is a bug."

Categories: Computers | Linux | nix | Planet Ubuntu | Ubuntu

Michael Vogt: Translating package descriptions



Categories: Computers | Linux | nix | Planet Ubuntu | Ubuntu

Jonathan Jesse: Trying to configure PPTP VPN Access in Kubuntu 8.10



Categories: Computers | Linux | nix | Planet Ubuntu | Ubuntu