They are looking for new blood to help author and edit the manual for 12.04 to be released around the time of 12.04.1 (July 19th). However we’re trying to figure out why we don’t have more contributors and what may be holding people back.

So my question to you is:-

“If you have considered contributing to Ubuntu Manual, but haven’t, what’s stopped you?”

Some reasons might include:-

• Lack of time
• Lack of motivation
• Lack of skill
• Difficult to use tools

Or something we’re missing. We’d really like to know in case it’s something we can fix. If you’re interested in contributing, please do let us know, and we can help you get involved.

                          

In Unity 5.10 – What’s new and a call for testing Nicholas (balloons on IRC [don't ask]) details some of the changes in the latest release, and also explains how community members can get involved in testing. If you’ve got some time over the weekend between fun with friends & family and eating chocolate, we’d love for you to get involved.

Testing Unity is super easy, and to show how you just how easy it is I made a little YouTube video about Unity Testing which shows how to test and also briefly how to file bugs.

We’d appreciate the help!

                          

Here’s an example of what’s changed. My current 12.04 system is a fairly clean install with most of my data having been synced down using Ubuntu One or Dropbox file sync tools. As I’ve not opened many files on this machine yet, Zeitgeist doesn’t know about them.

Here’s the initial view of the Unity Files Lens when I press [Super]+F:-

Searching for my curriculum vitae (cv) results in only one hit which is a friends’ CV I downloaded from my email a little while back. My own CV is buried somewhere in a folder and I have no idea where it is, neither does Zeitgeist.

Here’s what it looks like when we test the new version of the Unity Files Lens.

Great! Now it shows the original results from Zeitgeist and any other files that match. It’s a simple change, but most welcome, and in need of testing!

If you’re on Ubuntu 12.04 please consider installing and testing this lens from this PPA:-

https://launchpad.net/~unity-team/+archive/lenses-testing

To install:-

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:unity-team/lenses-testing
sudo apt-get update

Then get the great new stuff with either:-

sudo apt-get install unity-lens-files

or:-

sudo apt-get upgrade

Then logout and back in or reboot to restart Unity.

If you discover any bugs, file them here:-

https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-lens-files

Make sure you mention that you’re using the new PPA if you do!

                          

I was up for this idea and said I’d be happy to argue on either side of any debate, playing devils advocate if necessary. As it turned out Tony suggested we talk about Unity and Mark wanted to take the ‘against’ stance so that left me with the ‘pro’ stance. Works for me. So here’s the prepared text that I read out on the show. It’s a bit long but I managed to rattle it off in just under 4 minutes – the allotted time.

Edit: This does read a bit like a giant advert for Ubuntu, I appreciate that. I did originally have some content in here addressing some specific Unity issues, and comparisons with other desktops, but cut them due to the time constraints.

With well over 20 million users worldwide, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux desktop. In the 8 years since its first conception the number of Linux users has grown and Ubuntu has been at the head of that growth curve. All kinds of people use Ubuntu from artists, bee-keepers and clerics to dentists, engineers and farmers. People use Ubuntu for lots different reasons. For many it’s an alternative to tried and untrusted Windows, or the cheaper and more open option to Apple. People come for the experience and stay for the free software.

Ever since Ubuntu started, Canonical has been instrumental in shepherding the distribution through the creation of 16 releases of Ubuntu. Canonical has played a major part in the community, providing support, development resources, security updates, sponsorship and help to Ubuntu users and developers around the world.

20 Million users is great but it’s not a massive dent in the global desktop market. Most conservative estimates suggest Linux as a whole has no more than one percent of that segment, probably significantly less. Mark Shuttleworth has repeatedly articulated that he wants to take a chunk of that market, and wants to do it by having desireable products which are better than the competition, not just an also-ran or low-quality alternative-to the main players.

In the early days it was common to manually edit your xorg configuration in a console & you’d sometimes download and compile applications and their dependencies yourself, and even build your own kernel. And there was no way of knowing whether a PC or peripheral would work until you went out and bought one, or you knew someone in your Linux User Group who already had one.

Some people, people like us, enjoy all that, most people however don’t. Most “normal” people want to use a computer as a tool, and no matter how much geeks protest, and cajole them into learning more about the underlying infrastructure, they just won’t want or need to. These days they want to communicate, create, consume and be entertained.

Running “configure, make, make install” isn’t a feature for them, it’s a chore.

Over the years since Warty was released many of the problems associated with running a linux desktop have been removed or mitigated. We now have software which automatically gets network and video drivers for you and automatic codec detection and download, automated crash reporting, and a display system which bring up a GUI without asking you arcane questions about horizontal refresh rates first. We have automatic printer and scanner detection for a huge range of consumer devices, and support for installing all kinds of proprietary products people actually use. For the most part, for most people on most setups, Ubuntu “Just Works”. That’s a massive ‘win’ for everyone involved.

So it’s game over right, we won?

Well, no. We need Ubuntu to be on devices that people buy in bricks and mortar shops and online. We need to be pre-installed on any shape and size of device, right out of the factory, if we’re going to stand any chance of appealing to customers. And before we can appeal to customers, we need to appeal to the device manufacturers. They have to want to put our software on their hardware. They won’t want to sell a sub-standard, partly-working solution. They want it to work and to look great.

I believe Unity is the user interface to get us to that goal. Unity was designed with the user in mind and with consideration for mainstream hardware vendors. I believe that Unity can be pre-installed on millions of new computers and shipped to those ‘normal’ people where they can use it to do all the low-tech stuff they need it for, as well as the high performance creative and consumptive tasks that great swathes of users want too.

It’s beautiful, easy to use, expandable, and more importantly, it’s Free Software.

                          

I wanted to migrate from the install on my old Mesh PC to a new clean install on the Zoostorm. I could have just yanked the disk out of the Mesh and put it in the Zoostorm, but I did it slightly differently. I’m typing it up here for my own notes but also to find out how other people do it, and to get any tips.

So the goal was to have a clean install of Ubuntu Precise (which will become 12.04 LTS in April) and keep all my existing files and folders intact. I wanted to keep all my home files but didn’t want to keep the applications I had built up over several install/upgrades on that machine. Time for a fresh start.

The old Mesh has a single 120GB SSD and the Zoostorm has a 1TB Hard disk and I added a 120GB SSD to that too. My idea was to do a clean install on the Zoostorm SSD, and use the 1TB hard disk for my /home directory. That way I get the super zippy performance of an SSD for loading apps, but the slow(er) hard disk for loading my files. I’m happy with this tradeoff in speed/capacity.

Here’s the steps I went through.

• Clean install of Ubuntu Precise on the Zoostorm with / and swap on SSD, /home on HDD. Use a hostname of ‘zoo’ so as not to conflict on the network with the hostname ‘wopr’ used by the Mesh PC
• Boot into new installation and make sure everything works
• Boot Mesh PC but don’t login, so none of my personal files are open/changing
• Use rsync on the new install to copy files from Mesh to Zoostorm over the network

$ cd /home
$ rsync -avz -e ssh wopr:/home/alan .

• Shutdown the old Mesh PC
• Edit /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname to change host from ‘zoo’ to ‘wopr’
• Reboot the Zoostorm PC to ‘Bring the WOPR on-line’ as they say

I think that’s about it. I now have all my personal stuff, work, config on the new computer, and can consider things to do with the old one. I think I might install GameOS on it until Valve get around to porting Steam (and all the games) to Linux.

Things to consider:-

• I could probably have sped this up a bit by taking the disk out of the Mesh PC and putting it in the Zoostorm, then partition up the 1TB disk and move my /home directory over to it, edit fstab, remount /home and logout/in. That seemed like more effort in my mind, so I went for the approach above
• I now have a whole load of packages I need to install because my Zoostorm is a clean installation. So the first thing I did was to get the basic things I need. I will apt-get any missing bits as and when I need them. I have a decent connection so it doesn’t bother me that I’m missing critical stuff at the moment.
• Copying only /home means I may have missed out some stuff in other places like /usr/local, /root and /etc. I have full backups of my old machine, so I am not to worried about missing stuff here or there, I can get them if I really need to

Hope that’s useful to someone, and if you have any comments, do let me know.