KDE Slimbook 2 Review
Posted on Thu, Jun 7, 2018
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
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KDE Slimbook 2 Review The kind folks at Slimbook recently sent me the latest generation of their ultrabook-style laptop line for review, the KDE Slimbook 2. You can hear my thoughts on the latest episode of the Ubuntu Podcast, released on June 7th 2018.
Slimbook are a small laptop vendor based in Spain. All the laptops ship with KDE Neon as the default operating system. In addition to their hardware, they also contribute to and facilitate local Free Software events in their area.
[Read More]New Ubuntu Community Hub Launched
Posted on Tue, Oct 3, 2017
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
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A while back I proposed that we replace the old static Ubuntu Community site, which looked a bit like this, with something a little more dynamic.
So today we are replacing the static site with an instance of discourse, which looks a bit like this
You can go back and read that blog post for the full rationale but essentially it boils down to two aims:
We want to improve community communication We want to smooth the onboarding process for new contributors.
[Read More]Ubuntu Community Hub Proposal
Posted on Tue, Aug 8, 2017
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
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Status Quo For over four years now, the Ubuntu Community Portal has been the ‘welcome mat’ for new people seeking to get involved in Ubuntu. In that time the site had seen some valuable but minor incremental changes; no major updates have occurred recently. I’d like us to fix this. We can also use this as an opportunity to improve our whole onboarding process.
I’ve spent a chunk of time recently chatting with active members of the Ubuntu Community about the community itself.
[Read More]Ubuntu Artful Desktop July Shakedown
Posted on Mon, Jul 17, 2017
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
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Ubuntu Artful Desktop July Shakedown We’re mid-way through the Ubuntu Artful development cycle, with the 17.10 release rapidly approaching on the horizon. Now is a great time to start exercising the new GNOME goodness that’s landed on our recent daily images! Please download the ISO, test it out on your own hardware, and file bugs where appropriate.
If you’re lucky enough to find any new bugs, please tag them with ‘julyshakedown’, so we can easily find them from this testing session.
[Read More]Building Apps for Linux without Linux
Posted on Wed, May 17, 2017
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
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It’s now super easy to build Linux software packages on your Windows laptop. No VM required, no need for remote Linux hosts.
I spend a lot of my day talking to developers about their Linux software packaging woes. Many of them are using Linux desktops as their primary development platform. Some aren’t, and that’s their (or their employers) choice. For those developers who run Windows and want to target Linux for their applications, things just got a bit easier.
[Read More]OpenSpades Snap - pew pew
Posted on Mon, May 1, 2017
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
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OpenSpades is a super-fun “Open-Source Voxel First Person Shooter”. I’ve been playing it for a while both on my GameOS desktop and under WINE on Linux. For whatever reason the upstream OpenSpades on github project had no Linux builds available for download, and I was lazy so I used WINE, which worked just fine.
This weekend though I decided to fix that. So I made a snap of it and pushed it to the store.
[Read More]April Snapcraft Docs Day
Posted on Wed, Apr 26, 2017
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
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Continuing Snapcraft Docs Days In March we had our first Snapcraft Docs Day on the last Friday of the month. It was fun and successful so we’re doing it again this Friday, 28th April 2017. Join us in #snapcraft on Rocket Chat and on the snapcraft forums
Flavour of the month This month’s theme is ‘Flavours’, specifically Ubuntu Flavours. We’ve worked hard to make the experience of using snapcraft to build snaps as easy as possible.
[Read More]Switching from WordPress to Nikola
Posted on Tue, Apr 18, 2017
(Last modified on Thu, Dec 17, 2020)
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Goodbye WordPress! For a long while my personal blog has been running WordPress. Every so often I’ve looked at other options but never really been motivated to change it, because everything worked, and it was not too much effort to manage.
Then I got ‘hacked’. :(
I host my blog on a Bitfolk VPS. I had no idea my server had been compromised until I got a notification on Boxing Day from the lovely Bitfolk people.
[Read More]My Ubuntu 16.04 GNOME Setup
Posted on Sat, Apr 15, 2017
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
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My Ubuntu 16.04 GNOME Setup This is a post for friends who saw my desktop screenshot and anyone else who likes Unity and is looking at alternatives. A big thanks to Stuart Langridge and Joey Sneddon whose linked posts inspired some of this.
The recent news that upcoming versions of Ubuntu will use GNOME as the default desktop rather than Unity, made me take another look at the GNOME desktop
[Read More]Dell XPS 13 9360 Review
Posted on Thu, Apr 13, 2017
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
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Dell XPS 13 9360 Review On the ‘Tasty Different Cow’ (don’t ask) episode of the Ubuntu Podcast - we reviewed the latest Dell XPS 13 9360 Laptop shipping with Ubuntu.
Dell kindly sent us the review unit for a couple of weeks, and while we talked all about it on the podcast, I thought I’d jot some notes down here in case I missed anything or it’s not clear in the audio version.
[Read More]Snapcraft Docs Day
Posted on Tue, Mar 28, 2017
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
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Announcing Snapcraft Docs Day Snap is a simple archive format for big things.
Snapcraft is a delightful tool for automatically building and publishing software for any Linux system or device. Our documentation and tutorials are great for getting started with snapcraft. We can always improve these though, so this Friday, will be our first Snapcraft Docs Day.
When: Friday, 31st March 2017, all day Where: #snapcraft on Rocket Chat Who: Developers & documentation experts of all levels Why we’re doing this The goal is to ensure our documentation and tutorials are useful and accurate.
[Read More]Troubleshooting as a Choose Your Own Adventure
Posted on Sun, Oct 11, 2015
(Last modified on Wed, Apr 14, 2021)
| Alan Pope
READ MAP We have a lot of documentation and help in the Ubuntu project, and much of it is quite hostile to new users. We have IRC channels, mailing lists, dense & out of date wiki pages, lengthy and hard to consume forum posts & lengthy out of date tutorial videos. We also have some more modern tools such as AskUbuntu and Discourse.
Most are good for asking one specific question, but most aren’t well suited to guiding a user through a specific problem diagnosis.
[Read More]Migrating to a New Desktop PC
Posted on Mon, Jan 2, 2012
(Last modified on Thu, Dec 24, 2020)
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A little while ago I bought a Zoostorm PC from Ebuyer. It’s a farily basic (but powerful) i7 based system with 8GB RAM and a 1TB hard disk. This is to replace my older (but still fully working) Mesh PC. The newer one is more power efficient, quieter, a lot faster, and all Intel inside - the previous desktop was nVidia based.
I wanted to migrate from the install on my old Mesh PC to a new clean install on the Zoostorm.
[Read More]Python 2d Physics Libraries
Posted on Sun, Jan 1, 2012
(Last modified on Thu, Dec 24, 2020)
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I’ve been playing with the python-elements but it seems like the project is dead.
The upstream website has gone and the packages has had no updates for some time. I’d like to create a simple demo/game along the lines of some of the mini games you find in WarioWare on the Nintendo Wii. The Python Elements (and box2d) libraries seem to fit the bill but I don’t want to code using something that is going to disappear.
[Read More]HP ProLiant MicroServer Fun with Ubuntu
Posted on Thu, Dec 30, 2010
(Last modified on Thu, Dec 24, 2020)
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I recently took delivery of a new HP ProLiant MicroServer which I wanted to use for various small/home office server type tasks. It’s a cracking little server, ideal for small offices and home users who want a small, low-power server. With only one fan in the case it’s fairly quiet with most noise coming from the hard disk supplied, and any more you put in it.
The reason I got it was because HP are currently giving £100 cash-back (until end of January 2011) on the ProLiant MicroServer.
[Read More]My Ubuntu Webcam Setup
Posted on Mon, Dec 20, 2010
(Last modified on Sat, Mar 4, 2023)
| Alan Pope
For a few years I’ve owned a variety of webcams which I’ve used under Debian and Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop computers. As many others do, I’ve used them with the likes of Skype & Ekiga for video calls and camstream & guvcview for just capturing images. More often than not though, my webcam is pointing out into the garden, taking images and uploading them to my website. I frequently get asked how I set this up, so rather than explain lots of times, I figured I’d blog it.
[Read More]Ubuntu Spotted on Doctor Who Set
Posted on Sat, Jan 2, 2010
(Last modified on Wed, Oct 25, 2023)
| Alan Pope
After watching the two Doctor Who Christmas episodes I thought I’d watch the ‘behind the scenes’ programme ‘Doctor Who Confidential’. During one segment where they discuss the set used in the Christmas episode I spotted a bunch of machines with what look like Ubuntu boot screens on them. If you’re in the UK (or have access to Freesat in Europe) you can see it on BBC HD at 16:55 on 3rd January, or on BBC Three at 04:10 on 5th January.
[Read More]Some wierd bloke spoke to me on the train
Posted on Thu, Jul 20, 2006
(Last modified on Fri, Jan 22, 2021)
| Alan Pope
That would be me.
I’ve started speaking to strangers more. Here’s what’s happened so far.
A couple of weeks ago I spoke to a guy standing on the concourse at London Waterloo station. He was standing with an electrically powered bike. When I approached him and asked what it was, how it worked and so on, he seemed somewhat taken aback. After telling me all about the bike and his adventures on it we moved on to talk about Brookwood Cemetary and the special train that used to take the dead and mourners there from London.
[Read More]Beer-o'clock and sadness..
Posted on Wed, May 3, 2006
(Last modified on Fri, Jan 22, 2021)
| Alan Pope
In my minor quest to visit as many of the UK Linux User Groups as I can, tonight is beer with Lonix - London Linux User Group.
I’ve visited a few LUGs now, including one LUG in the USA, and it never ceases to amaze me how much LUGs differ.
It’s the characters that make up the LUG that heavily influence them of course. Some LUGs have people who are passionate about open source, others are ardent fans of the “bring a box” meet, where others are just big on curry and booze.
[Read More]Being a parent
Posted on Sun, Apr 30, 2006
(Last modified on Thu, Dec 24, 2020)
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Sophie is over 2 and a half years old now. It’s amazing the speed at which she’s grown up. We have full conversations where I quiz her about her day and she describes how she’s feeling, what toys she’s been playing with, and makes some self-projected stuff up about pink teddy.
When she was younger we disovered she was a bit of a “sucky” baby. Not in a “YOU SUCK!” kind of way, but well, she seemed better with a dummy (pacifier).
[Read More]