BBQ Cambridge 2017 - post 2

We were all up until about 0100 House full of folk talking about all sorts, a game of Mao. Garden full of people clustered round the barbeque or sitting chatting - I had a long chat about Debian, what it means and how it's often an easier world to deal with and move in than the world of work, office politics or whatever - being here is being at home.

BBQ Cambridge 2017 - post 3

OMGWTFBBQ Cambridge 2017

Funny this - I only blog when I'm in Cambridge I'm sure there's a blog back in the day from a BBQ a good few years ago. This is almost deja vu - a room full of Debian types - the crazy family - Thinkpads on a lot of laps and lots of chat around the room.

Let's send patches to debian-policy (rst file is your friend

As I posted before, now debian-policy package uses Sphinx. It means, you can edit and send patches for Debian Policy easier than ever. Get source (install devscripts package and exec 'debcheck debian-policy')  and dig into policy directory. There are several rst files for each chapter.

Artful Aardvark (to be 17.10) feature freeze

While this email comes a bit late, if you've been watching your calendars, you know that Artful has been in Feature Freeze since yesterday.

Ideally you will all now be focusing on bug fixing and not on getting new features into the release.

As is the custom, packages that have been uploaded to artful-proposed prior to the feature freeze deadline, but have gotten stuck there, remain candidates for fixing between now and release.

Ubuntu 17.10 Enters The Feature Freeze

Ubuntu 17.10, the Artful Aardvark, has crossed into the feature freeze this week.

Ubuntu developers are now to be focused on fixing bugs rather than on introducing new features for 17.10, which will be officially released at the middle of October.

There still though is the possibility of feature freeze exceptions to be granted as well as those packages currently residing in artful-proposed are still able to land. Confirmation of the Artful feature freeze was posted today to the mailing list.

Debian debates software for proprietary services

Distributions like Debian have a clear policy on the software they ship; as a general rule, only free software can be considered for inclusion. How that policy should be applied to software that interacts with proprietary systems is not entirely clear, though. A recent discussion on a package that interfaces with a proprietary network service seems unlikely to lead to any changes in policy, but it does highlight a fault line within the Debian community.

Back in February, Jonas Smedegaard filed a bug against the "certspotter" package, complaining that the package's description advertises the proprietary SSLMate service. On August 4, the maintainer of that package, Faidon Liambotis, got around to answering the bug, saying that the description is helpful for users searching for the package and will not be removed. At that point, Smedegaard took the discussion to the debian-project mailing list in an attempt to rally the Debian developer community against the offending package description.

Install Numix Theme And Icons in Ubuntu/Linux Mint

Violet Comeback theme Gives A Nice Dark Look To Ubuntu

Violet-comeback theme is the GTK2/GTK3 counterpart to the Qt5/KDE color scheme "Violet Comeback". It was mainly designed to make GTK applications match with KDE Violet color scheme, but it is also compatible with Gnome, Unity, Xfce, Cinnamon, Mate and so on. As creator mentioned this theme is based on Numix and generated with oomox. Since this theme is in active development some issues exist in the GTK3 version: there are no borders at all on some windows and no shadow, which make the look a bit too flat. The windows cannot be handled properly. If you find any other bug in the theme then report it and hopefully it will get fixed.

Exploring snappy package manager. Why it is awesome and how to get started.

Ubuntu 16.04.3 Point Release, A Short Review & Upgrade Howto

Ubuntu Xenial Point Release 3, or 16.04.3, has been released at 03 August 2017. Here's some review, download links, and how to upgrade from 16.04 or 14.04.

No strategic change for Canonical, says Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth doesn't intend to make any "significant change" to Canonical's executive direction and strategy now that he has resumed his position as CEO.

The founder of Canonical, behind the open source operating system Ubuntu, retook his former post as head of the company in July, replacing the long-serving Jane Silber, who took over for him in 2010 when he transitioned to a more product-focused role.

"She had a good stint, which was extended several times, and so now it's my turn back at the helm," Shuttleworth told IT Pro in an interview last week. However, he made it clear that he was not planning on making any major changes to the company's business model.

"She and I have worked closely throughout her tenure," he said. "It doesn't really represent a very significant change in executive direction, because she and I were always pretty closely aligned on how we wanted things to work."

Ubuntu System Cleaner ‘Stacer’ Has Binned Electron

The popular utility, which is best described as a cross between CCleaner for Ubuntu and a regular system monitor, has been rewritten in C++ for its latest release.

Yup, the Ubuntu cleaner app has binned Electron — news that will please many of you, I’m sure!

The rewrite also means the app now uses fewer resources when running, and is, overall, more responsive too.

New Features: Ubuntu 17.10 Will Ship With Indicator Applets And New Ubuntu Dock

Ubuntu Desktop team is busy making the final transition to GNOME Shell and polishing the end user experience. To bring the best of both worlds, the team has added a new Ubuntu Dock and support for Indicator Applets. Ubuntu 17.10 will also come with the trash shortcut on the desktop. Ubuntu 17.10, codenamed Artful Aardvark, will finally arrive on October 19, 2017.

Materialistic Gorgeous Cabbage - Ubuntu Podcast

Canonical Distribution of Kubernetes: Development Summary- August 24

Plasma 5.10.5 and Frameworks 5.37 updates now in backports PPA for Zesty 17.04

The final 5.10.5 bugfix update of the Plasma 5.10 series is now available for users of Kubuntu Zesty Zapus 17.04 to install via our backports PPA.

Meet the Laptops & Desktop PCs Being Sold with Ubuntu Budgie

UK-based computer outfit Nimbusoft is gearing up to sell two laptops and an all-in-one desktop PC pre-loaded with the aforementioned nimble, GNOME-based Ubuntu spin.

Product pages for these “Ubuntu Budgie Edition” devices are live over on the Nimbusoft website, although neither the company or the Ubuntu Budgie project itself has made an announcement about the partnership.

SnapRoute Integrates its FlexSwitch with Canonical’s Ubuntu

SnapRoute and Canonical joined forces to create an integrated software stack for white-box switch deployments. They’re combining SnapRoute’s FlexSwitch and Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system for cloud environments.

The FlexSwitch+Ubuntu stack is certified on multiple white-box switches including the Facebook Wedge 100, according to the partners.

Ubuntu 17.10 Shifts To Linux 4.12, Linux 4.13 Still In Testing

The Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark has finally moved past the Linux 4.11 kernel and now has a 4.12-based kernel in its main archive.

Canonical announces further enterprise Kubernetes support options

Canonical continues to push forward with its Kubernetes container DevOps management plans. In its latest move, Ubuntu Linux's parent company announced two consulting packages for enterprise Kubernetes deployments. In addition, it's offering expanded enterprise support with partners. This will include Galactic Fog's serverless infrastructure, Rancher's container management workflow, and Weaveworks' Weave Cloud.

This comes as Canonical prepares for an initial public offering (IPO). These moves are both to gain new cloud and container customers and to show that Canonical is laser-focused on the enterprise market. Earlier, Canonical had tried, and failed, to dominate the Linux desktop and become a smartphone leader.