December 2010
15 posts
2 tags
Unity Status Report for 14 December
Another week, another set of bitesize bugs! But first off we’d like to welcome Matthew Rasmus to the growing list of new Unity Contributors. Matthew has been working on Bug 686182: “Unity launchers run multiple copies of program if clicked multiple times before the program loads”
I’ve been wanting to contribute to Ubuntu in some way ever since I started using it a year...
4 tags
Application Menu making it's way to Firefox
Chris Coulson has been working on adding Application Menu support to Firefox for 11.04. Here’s the initial cut:
The reason you still see the old menu inside the window is that for testing developers will have both running so they can compare them side to side.
You can find the code to the extension here: https://launchpad.net/globalmenu-extension
Hackers and testers are welcome, but...
3 tags
Puppet cost me my other best friend.
Now it’s not deja vu. This happened to me before. My other best friend is now also moving to California this month to work for a large company who is deploying tons of Puppet. It’s a tremendous opportunity for him, just like the last guy.
Best of luck to him, it’s always good to see projects like Puppet flourish and for Ken to have an opportunity like this. So as a goodbye/good luck...
2 tags
A nice autohide fix for the Unity launcher
Jason Smith sends this along:
So there was a seemingly simple bug, the launcher would autohide when the quicklist was open.This was due to the fact that the launcher was entirely unaware of when a quicklist was open.
So I layed out a design to follow in the bug report, essentially I left a stubbed class that someone could implement.
As it ends up Jamal Fanaian has returned for his 2nd...
3 tags
Unity Coding Style Guide
Just in case people aren’t aware here’s the coding style guide, freshly updated with C++ bits.
2 tags
New gtkmm team on Launchpad
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Krzysztof Klimonda we now have a team in Launchpad for gtkmm folks.
https://launchpad.net/~gnomemm
If you’re interested in helping maintain the gtkmm stack in Ubuntu then please join this team. We could really use a hand as keeping finding people to help with this stack on a regular basis has been a problem for us.
While setting up the...
Unity Bitesize Bug Report for 7 December
As I mentioned last week we’ve started a campaign for helping people get started on fixing bitesize bugs in Unity. Jono blogged about this as well. As it turns up, we’ve got our first bitesize contributor today!
Jamal Fanaian has fixed Bug #683241: Recycle bin icon is empty when there are items in the bin. Jamal is a developer working on Flickr. He passes along “I love Ubuntu...
4 tags
Getting Started working on Unity
Now that Alpha 1 is out the door the different bits are starting to come together. We’ve got the compiz-based Unity in people’s hands, now it’s time to start the feature work and testing.
The Desktop Experience team is building the base; but there are plenty of other parts that need to be done. Keep in mind that these parts are just as important and a critical piece of the...
2 tags
Ancient Turtles, do not mess with them.
And I don’t mean the cute little Logo turtle. Check out Archelon. (The smaller one on the bottom left is a less-interesting Elasmosaurus).
In case you can’t figure it out, here’s another image for scale:
November 2010
14 posts
2 tags
Upstream related videos from UDS
Along with the last set, here are more videos from UDS that might be interesting to upstream projects:
Thunderbird on Ubuntu
Launchpad and Upstreams
OpenStack Packaging
Thunderbird in Message Indicator
Ubuntu One Integration with Shotwell
Transition to Firefox 4 in Natty - I posted this one already but you can never have enough Firefox!
3 tags
Last set of UDS Videos uploaded
The last set of videos from UDS have been posted! This includes my favorite part of UDS, the Lightning Talks. Remember we kick people off after five minutes so they’re kind of high stress. Apparently my crutch word is “ummm”. Aurelien did a Qt Creator demo, but also make sure you see Ryan Paul’s Qt demo, I talk about askubuntu.com with Robert Cartaino, Colin Watson does one...
2 tags
Getting patch contribution back into shape.
Jono’s blogged about what we’re doing to keep the sponsorship queue healthy.
It can be a real bummer when contributions are ignored so I am glad we’re taking a more proactive stance on the problem and setting aside time for people to do it. You can find out more about the Sponsorship Process here.
Another important element to accepting gifts is Operation Cleansweep....
1 tag
Make it really easy to fix bugs on Ubuntu
Jono Lange has some ideas on how to make bugs easier to fix in Ubuntu.
Right now, when you run the script on your Ubuntu desktop, your cursor becomes a cross-hair. When you click on an application, start-hacking will tell you the source package that the application belongs to and where you can get the source (both Ubuntu source and latest upstream if available.)
There are tons of places we...
3 tags
QA tracking for Unity
Thanks to the hard work of Brian Murray we now have a section for Unity on http://status.qa.ubuntu.com
And here it is for the package level:
You’ll notice the “bitesize” section, more on this next week
1 tag
My quick boxee box impressions
There’s plenty of reviews out there on the new Boxee Box, here are my highlights:
The UI is too slow, the thumbnails take forever to refresh (it’s as if they’re not cached?)
It has played every thing I’ve thrown at it, it doesn’t break a sweat with 1080p at all (and all this over powerline ethernet!)
They updated the UI and kind of buried your local content behind...
2 tags
Inside the Banshee Awesome Factory
Thanks to PiTiVi I was able to take the webm files from GUADEC and put together a video of Gabriel’s Banshee talk.
Those of you wondering how to make Banshee extensions (Stuart!) will want to pay attention around the 5 minute mark, where he goes into an example on how easy it is to make an extension.
So, go forth and make great extensions!
Why should I ever bother filing another bug?
Here’s a person upset about how bugs are handled in Fedora.
Here’s a person upset about how bugs are handled in Ubuntu.
Things I’ve learned here:
People have no idea (or care) where the problem comes from, they don’t care if it’s “upstream” or “distro”, they just want their software to work, and they don’t care who fixes it.
...
1 tag
Smart Playlists ftw.
As I mentioned in my last screencast; I prefer to have Banshee doing all my hard work for me. A great way to do this is via smart playlists. The problem is that they are very powerful and if you’re not overly clever off the top of your head you might feel stuck.
Luckily there are some handy smart playlists already included! In Banshee do Media -> New Smart Playlist
Go ahead and...
2 tags
Things I didn't know about Ubuntu, part 78.
Steve Beattie points out that Jockey has a text interface as well; for those moments when you’re staring at a console.
To think I would fire up elinks to get the driver after navigating the nvidia site and then scp over an old Xorg.conf.
How I use Banshee
I have a friend who is trying out Banshee and had some questions on how to use it effectively. So I came up with this:
