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UDS Day 4: Community and Kubuntu

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.

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UDS Day 3: Community, MOTU, and Ponies

It is 2:30am and I am quite tired so I will make this short and quick.

Community

There was quite a bit of community work done these past few days, but today was the day I really enjoyed. We got to discuss how we can make the community not only better, but also how to make it more fluid and attract more people of all backgrounds in to contributing. We also got to communicated to the leaders of the community what some of the views that others have expressed in the future.

MOTU

Look forward to some nice changes in the near future that will make MOTU rock even harder.

Ponies

The three horsemen, Jono, Jorge, and Daniel wanted us to tear into them, let them know what the community perception of them were. I expressed concern from what I have heard from other developers in the past. It was a really great session and looksto get even better with tomorrow’s tracks.

OK, I ama going to bed now. As it stands, our alarm clock should be fixed so I wake up on time. Tomorrow I shall do a couple of interviews so I will keep you updated. Goognight!!

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UDS Day 2: Development, Archive Reorganization, Documentation, LoCo

Can anyone hear me? I can’t hear myself! I am exhausted and also just found out the source of my frozen funds. It seems the hotel here has been charging my debit card $120 over and over, therefor causing my bank to freeze my card, which means at this time, the money in my pocket is all I have right now, and foo on me for not grabbing extra cash prior to the trip, as my bank is only a “Chicago thing.”

Anyways, what a day! I was able to take part in multiple sessions which means I also missed quite a bit of other sessions I was interested in, and should have been in. The ones I really wanted to be a part of were the Kubuntu Installer specification as well as check out the future of LTSP in Ubuntu. So what did I get to see today?

Development

The morning started out with a great track on Ubuntu development. This track covered processes, reorganization, and issues. It seems the big thing were the issues during the discussions and everyone who was concerned raised their voices to be heard. I may not have agreed with some things, but I was very impressed by the professionalism and the well thought out plans and counter-plans. I hope I took a lot out of this session, and once I have all of the notes from this session and have had the time to process them, I guarantee I will blog more about this. Everyone taking part in this session, which was pretty much everyone, totally kicked arse!

Archive Reorganization

Somebody hold me! If you ever got the chance to watch the movie the Exorcist, you might remember the part with the head spinning. Well that was me for a while during this session. I hate the fact I accidentally missed the beginning of it as I was in another session. I came in half way through, and that was half way to total head decompression. I will definitely be studying the notes and the specifications in much further detail and going through it with a fine-tooth comb so I can totally, 100% gasp the process. Everyone who ran this track, you scare me :)

Documentation

So, the Kubuntu folks got together to discuss the current state of Kubuntu documentation. Needless to say, for our current environment, it sucks! Yes, if you go through the documentation attempting to receive help for your KDE 4.x system, you are out of luck unfortunately. One thing we noted, is that it isn’t all of our fault, our being Kubuntu, because the current state of upstream KDE documentation, well it is somewhat of a mess as well. I will accept some blame on that as I, fortunately for me, took a job this spring that has really absorbed a ton of my time in the Ubuntu and KDE communities. I know I am a big guy, but damn I just wish at times there was a bit more of me to go around. The beginning of this year, I was spot on. I wasn’t missing a beat, but because of my job, I feel I have dropped the ball on this. I will definitely start working closely, and I mean very closely, with KDE to get our documentation up to par. So be prepared to see some pimping coming from my blog posts in the future trying to get more help. This time around though, I will prepare myself better, as last time I did some documentation pimping, it bit me in the ass as I was overwhelmed by the amazing response.

LoCo Teams

YOU ROCK! Holy smokes, the French LoCo team had a party or conference, or whatever the hell you want to call it, but over 4,000 people showed up. If you think I typed that wrong, let me rephrase that:

FOUR THOUSAND PEOPLE!

After this, I have come to the conclusion…I suck! Talk about envious, I think everyone in this session about fell out.

Anyways, though that is hard to follow and beat, let me tell you what we talked about. How we can make our LoCo Teams even better. It seems the common theme was collaboration. We discussed things like a multi-track LoCo Open Week where each track would be in a different language, this way here we could avoid the language barriers and have a no-holds barred jam. I of course spoke up a couple of times, and was briefly put in my place by that funny guy Jono! Paybacks my son!

I haven’t taken a look at tomorrow’s tracks, but I am sure I will be insanely busy once again. Right now I am about as close to death as one could possibly imagine. So with that said, I am debating sleep or going back down stairs to watch Ubuntu Unplugged. That is, a bunch of geeks with instruments jamming out, but without power. Geeks without power, I do have to witness this! Until tomorrow everyone, have a great evening and keep on kicking ass!

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