software

Like many in development-oriented roles, I’m frequently running long-executing tasks on my workstation, while I get on with a sword fight, or making a cup of coffee. More seriously, I do often leave a software build, or packaging script running, while I context-switch to answer support requests, proof-read a blog post, or prepare for a meeting. Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded when that long-runner finishes, otherwise I might forget it’s sat there, all lonely in another workspace somewhere on my computer. [Read More]

I currently run Ubuntu 20.10 on my main desktop PC. GNOME Shell is the default desktop, and while it’s great, one very useful feature is the ability to supplement or alter the default behaviour with extensions and other add-ons. Ubuntu ships with a couple of extensions by default, but I’ve added a few on top, and this blog post details what they are and how to get them, in no particular order… [Read More]

As you may or may not be aware, I work for Canonical on Snapcraft and Ubuntu. I use Ubuntu as my daily driver, and spend a lot of time maintaining snap packages, and listening to developers and users talk about software packaging, publishing, delivery and use. Over time I’ve collected a bunch of virtual notes in my head. Much of it has been turned into documentation, but often the information is rather spread out. [Read More]

Some years ago I switched my blog from Wordpress to Nikola. I wrote a blog post about the move, but within a year or so, I’d pretty much stopped blogging completely. More recently I discovered Hugo, and used it for a couple of other sites I own. popeyspades is a simple blog to promote a game server I was running at the time. Make A Linux App is a single-serving site that seeks to promote app development for Linux and discourage the proliferation of Linux distributions. [Read More]

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 We have IRC channels, mailing lists, dense & out of date wiki pages, lengthy and hard to consume forum posts & lengthy out of date tutorial videos.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]