Richard A. Johnson

It seems the popular question these past two days are, “Are there any KDE 4.1 Beta 1 packages yet?”

The answer is, soon! I am working on building the packages now and will hopefully have them all complete within the next couple of days. There are a lot of changes that need to be done to the packages for the 4.1 Betas, so I am taking my time making sure to catch all of them before releasing the packages to the world.

A little patience is all I ask and as soon as they are complete, I will blog about them here and also keep checking Kubuntu.org for a release announcement. Thanks!

I wanted to let all of the Planet KDE and Planet Ubuntu readers know just how awesome our communities are. 24 hours ago I wrote a blog post titled, “KDE 4.1 documentation needs your help,” and we received and overwhelming response. On a typical day, #kde-docs on IRC has about 5 people idling most of the time. Right now there are 19 people, of which 75% of them are working on documentation right now. Simply awesome! We have been up to around 25 people earlier, but still this is the most action I have seen in that channel in the past 3 years.

I want to give a quick thanks to the following people on IRC who jumped in and started working:

• Anne-Marie Mahfouf
• David Edmundson
• Faemir
• frewsxcv
• gaurav
• hdevalence
• Jonathan Jesse
• Karthik Periagaram
• katastrophe
• NigelS
• Roshan (ubunturos)
• Stephanie Whiting
• and others I may have missed…

THANK YOU!

Jumping in and contributing to a free software project is so easy these days. Proof are those who jumped in yesterday and today and started cranking out documentation work without ever having worked on such a thing in the past.

If you are looking to help out KDE any ways possible, documentation is about the easiest thing there is. Just have a good grasp of the English language (we have proof readers, or you can be a proof reader), and have just a bit of interest in writing. You can update current documentation, add new documentation, proof read, and more. If you are interested, #kde-docs on Freenode IRC is where we are at. Do not worry if you don’t know DocBook/XML, it would be awesome if you did, but myself and others who work with DocBook/XML have no problems taking any formatted document you have and either converting into DocBook/XML or copy and pasting into a file.

Thanks again everyone and keep on making KDE rock!

Wow what a day! I woke up this morning to an email from Allen Winter letting us know that he would like to implement a documentation freeze on June 3, 2008. That is like 2 weeks away! There is still a lot of documentation work to be done and very few of us to spread around. This is where you come in!

• Can you read and write English?
• Can you write technical documentation using DocBook/XML?
• Do you have KDE 4.1 running on one of your machines? (either a recent alpha release or a trunk checkout will do…it would be nice if you were running a 4.1 or trunk release)
• Can you do 200 push ups?

Wait a second!?!? 200 push ups? Don’t know how that one got in there. Anyways, we NEED PEOPLE OF ALL SKILL SETS, who can read and write English fairly well, to help us get out as much documentation as possible for the 4.1 release, due out on my birthday, July 29th! If you are familiar with writing documentation and know your way around DocBook/XML, man do we have a lot of work for you If you can read and write English but aren’t up on your DocBook skills, we can use you as well, and will have plenty for you to do.

There is plenty to be done and this is a perfect opportunity for you to get involved with KDE development. If you are interested, please get on IRC and join us in #kde-docs on Freenode. I (nixternal) will be around pretty much all day to help out as well as a few others will be in there to help out as well. So if you are ready to jump into something head first, hey, come and see us

Thanks everyone!

OK, so the scenario is this…You are a new Linux user or want to try Linux, but would like to know more before hand. You hear about a local Linux Users Group and prior to going to one of their events, you sit back for a moment and try to envision what it would be like.

Tell me, what is that you envision?

Now that you have envisioned it, how would you really like the LUG to look, feel, and run?

The reason I am asking, is that the LUG in which I am the Vice President of is currently in the restructuring phase. I would like to get some ideas on how to make LUG meetings not only better, but make then accessible to every type of person that shows up.

So, if you have any suggestions, just add them to the comments. Thanks!

Right now I am working with the members of the Ubuntu Chicago LoCo team on creating a solid proposal for developing “Ubuntu Development Courses” that members of the Chicago community will lead. Right now we are looking for those that are in the Chicago land are that may be interested in such events. As it stands, I have come up with a basic, college-like, course layout.

Ubuntu Development 101 – Familiarization of Ubuntu development tools
This session will provide the attendees with a breakdown and brief run-through of the tools involved with Ubuntu development. These tools would include: Launchpad, mailing lists, IRC, development applications and scripts, and more.

Ubuntu Development 102 – Bug Triage
This session will provide the attendees with the knowledge necessary to help triage Ubuntu bugs. Attendees will learn the basics as well as some of the advanced topics with triaging bugs on Launchpad.

Ubuntu Development 103 – Packaging I
This session will provide the attendees with the knowledge necessary to build their very own package. Topics covered will include development applications, scripts, setting up development environments, creating the package, and more.

Ubuntu Development 104 – Packaging II
This session will provide the attendees with the knowledge necessary to merge, sync, and request merges/syncs for Debian packages into Ubuntu’s latest development cycle. Topics covered will include those mentioned as well as proper utilizing of certain development scripts as well as how to properly fill out a request, create a debdiff, and more.

Ubuntu Development 105 – Packaging III
This session will provide the attendees with the knowledge necessary to work with Debian on patches, request backports properly, how to do Stable Release Update requests, and anything else not covered by Packaging I or II.

Obviously none of this is set in stone at this time, as we are working on getting an infrastructure in place. One thing I would like to do, is keep these away from local LUG meetings as to not a) disturb the meeting process, or b) have our session disturbed due to socializing. We are currently looking for an ideal venue for this that will a) be easy to access, b) be free, c) have a projector, and d) have Internet. There are many places in the Chicago land area that fits this bill, so now we are just looking for the best place.

We figure that each event would take anywhere between 4 to 6 hours per session and may possibly be separated into mini-sessions. If we get this off the ground and have enough interest, we could keep it going and turn it into its own little BuntuCamp (BarCamp style) just for Ubuntu!

The reasoning behind this is not only teach interested individuals Ubuntu development, but also provide them the tools necessary to properly advocate the use of Ubuntu and its partner projects. I think once our members understand as many of the aspects involved with the development of Ubuntu, they will be able to better portray to future users the importance of Ubuntu and free software. Also, you get to learn Ubuntu hacking, what could be more fun?

If you are interested in such an event, I urge you to track the Ubuntu Chicago mailing list and let us know. If other LoCo teams are interested, feel free to contact me at nixternal – kubuntu – org.