nixternal

As a member of both the Ubuntu Documentation Project and the KDE Documentation Project, one thing is clear, our current state of system help isn’t the greatest. An initiative that the GNOME project has looked at taking on (for the greater part of the past 3 years) is called Project Mallard. There are some things in this project that I like and dislike, however one thing is clear, they understand the inefficiency of their current system and know it needs to be fixed. KDE is realizing this same exact thing and know we need to fix it, but figuring out how to do so correctly, isn’t the easiest thing.

One thing that GNOME, KDE, and others have worked hard to do is collaborate with Freedesktop.org specifications on many levels. Maybe it is time we look at continuing this excellence, but this time add documentation to the menu. How many of you GNOME users love using Amarok or another KDE application, but hate the fact that KHelpCenter is installed just so you can view the help documentation? Granted a lot of this has been fixed by just recommending KHelpCenter in the packages, but this doesn’t fix the issue, because now you have a .docbook file to read, and guess what, Yelp isn’t going to open it cleanly for you, or at least the last time I looked at Yelp it didn’t. Or you have KDE and want to open up the .xml file with KHelpCenter, but it just doesn’t work correctly. I think if we were to unify documentation we could move toward the goal of world domination

Would working closely together help fix our issues, would this be a good thing? What would be the “best” way to move forward?

What a groovy week, no matter how busy it was! Yesterday I found out that among 3 other people, I am now an official member of the KDE e.V.. Thanks everyone for the support and the votes, as well as a congratulations to Gary Greene, Paul Adams, and Alexis Menard. I am honored to be a part of the wonderful KDE community and look forward to many, many, years of working together to make KDE the best!

On top of this news, I found out this morning that I have been approved as an Ubuntu Core Developer. This means that I now get to upload to the Main repositories, hopefully providing our current Kubuntu core developers a little relieve during the Intrepid cycle and in the future. I took the long and lazy route to core developer by taking my sweet arse time and just enjoying everyone in the community and enjoying the work that I have done. I look forward to the many, many, years of Kubuntu development.

With this news, I have to give a big thank you to Jonathan Riddell, Sarah Hobbs, Scott Kitterman, Lydia Pintscher, Celeste Lyn Paul, Anne-Marie Mahfouf, Wendy Van Craen, Tom Albers, Rafael Fernández López, Guillermo Antonio Amaral Bastidas, and the entire KDE and Ubuntu communities, THANK YOU!

Hey everyone, I accidentally told a couple of people showing up for the meeting scheduled for June 5, 2008 at 01:00 UTC that it was tomorrow. I was wrong and I apologize. The meeting is in 1 hour and 20 minutes, so make sure you show up. I will try and ping you all on IRC in the next few minutes.

#ubuntu-meeting at 01:00 UTC June 5th, 2008

That is 6PM in California, 7PM in the mountains, 8PM in Chicago, 9PM in New York, 10PM somewhere out in the Atlantic, 11PM somewhere further in the Atlantic, 1….bah, you get the idea

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.

No, not a masquerade party, but a Tasque’rade party! After hanging out with Jorge Castro and Joe Brockmeier last weekend at Penguicon, I was beat up with Gnome quite a bit. Being the groovy KDE dude that I am, I hung around and listened to their Gnome speak, and even sat in on Joe’s openSUSE talk. During Joe’s talk he introduced a great application called Tasque for the Gnome desktop. After showing some interest in this application, Jorge asked me to package Tasque for all of you. Well since Jorge fed me a lot of beer last weekend, I went ahead and did just that. As of right now, I built 2 packages, one for Hardy of course and the other for Gutsy.

If you are using Hardy and want to give Tasque a look over, then add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tasque-packagers/ubuntu hardy main

If you are using Gutsy, then add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tasque-packagers/ubuntu gutsy main

EDIT: I have had 2 people now tell me that Tasque gives an error that has something to do with evolution-sharp missing. I don’t have that issue, so if you can narrow it down, I would appreciate it. I am the furthest thing from a Gnome dev imaginable. Thanks!

Wow, what a day! Jorge Castro did a smashing job getting the OpenWeek setup this time around. I was totally impressed and intrigued with today’s talks and watched everyone of them. The participants were amazing! I saw some of the most thought out questions, comments, and ideas today that totally blew me away.

I gave the Kubuntu Development talk today that had the greatest participation I have ever had in my previous OpenWeek talks. Great questions and interaction by everyone present! Thanks for making today such a success and I hope you all continue checking the talks out this entire week. On Wednesday, April 30 at 20:00 UTC, I will give an introduction to KDE 4 and its future and on Friday, May 2 at 21:00 UTC, I will give a talk about the Ubuntu Documentation Project. If you are interested in either talk, I sure hope you show up! For those of you who have been wondering how to contribute, I urge you to really check out the Documentation talk, as it is one of the easier ways for you to get involved.

Once again, a huge thanks and a hug to Jorge as well as a big thanks and hugs to Jono Bacon, Lars Wirzenius, Brian Murray, Pedro Villavicencio, Leann Ogasawara, and James Westby…You all did a smashing job!

Tomorrow there are even more great talks lined up, so make sure you check out the schedule and get involved! Thanks again everyone for making OUR community rock!