Richard A. Johnson

So, as you probably already know, since it is quiet in Orlando, I am not at UDS. Because of that, I am tuning in remotely. Thanks to Harald for the Amarok script that is working amazingly right now. Thus far, here is my little summary of what I have witnessed today:

• Mark announced Unity by default, in turn uniting a bunch of pissed off people on Twitter. Psst! gnome-desktop-environment will still be there
• The live video feed of Mark looked black and white, except Ubuntu was aubergine
• Gobby (gobby-0.5 is the package you want to use by the way, or kobby as it actually works with this UDS) can’t make up its mind on if it wants to be up or down
• Kubuntu is thinking about going with the stable Kontact/KMail, stable being version 3.5.10, until KMail2 is alive and well
• Scott brought up default browsers, in turn causing every Kubuntu developer to bring out some fangs and claws
• Oh and concerning the live video feed, it is true about the camera adding 5 or more pounds, but I also learned it also removes 5 or more hairs on your head at the same time

Working remotely, I also realized something else, and this concerns the plenaries. Remotely, these would be best at the end of the day, as then I would only have to worry about the lunch break as a disruption for remote participation. Instead of 2 hours of disruption, there would only be an hour. Also, I remember the plenaries after lunch while being at UDS physically. At times, they were hard to stay awake for after having a belly full of food. I think having them the last hour of the day as the closer would be good, as it brings everyone to the same location at that time.

Also, playing the UDS live audio streams along with Severed Fifth is quite amusing.

Day 4, not as busy for me, but still a very productive day nonetheless. The two main tracks I covered on day 4 were community and Kubuntu.

Community

A lot more round table discussion took place. There seems to be a common theme this week when it comes to community, and it is LoCo teams. We talked about how we could improve the interaction between the LoCo teams and how we could also improve our ways of attracting new contributors. There are more community sessions setup for the final day, so we shall see how that turns out.

Kubuntu

Ahh, Kubuntu, one of my favorite subjects. On day 4 we discussed package management as well as what packages we will place in Jaunty for Kubuntu. Package management wise, it seems there was a consensus on switching from Adept to KPackageKit. We do understand there is a lot of work that still needs to be completed with KPackageKit, and the Kubuntu ninjas will do their best to get it up to speed. If something was to happen, and we were unable to deliver on KPackageKit, then we have Adept to fall back to. My question I just thought of is this, “If we use Adept as a fallback, shouldn’t we still try to fix it as well?” Wouldn’t it make sense to continue working on Adept side-by-side with KPackageKit, just in case we do not finish KPackageKit in time? I think so.

The next session for Kubuntu was to discuss what packages we will have in the Kubuntu Jaunty release. As it stands, we will of course follow the KDE 4.2 track. It looks like we will try shedding any remaining KDE 3 dependencies from the CD installation. With that said, Konversation will not be shipped by default, but will be available for installation via the repositories. Somewhere out there, there is a package for a KDE 4 version of K3b, so Anthony (tonio) will work on getting it all ready for Jaunty.

Later on, I will link everyone to the updated specifications, or blueprints, so they can see the Jaunty roadmap for Kubuntu. I will also locate specs concerning the community, and if I can’t, I will either wikify the Gobby sessions or I will just make stuff up

After day 4 was winding down, we decided to…well…..party. One thing I learned last night was that Jorge really loves Metallica, even their flops! It made for some really funny discussions on the world of metal. Believe it or not, Jono wasn’t there to try and save the metal night.