Andrea Grandi

Using more than one computer, often it would be useful to have a way to synchronize settings among multiple computers. For example you change the desktop wallpaper on your office PC and you want to find the same wallpaper when you go back home on your personal PC or on your laptop. Language settings, online accounts, privacy settings ecc... are only few examples of settings you could want to have synchronized.

Ubuntu One already gives you 5 Gb space for free and it's available for everyone activating it. It's a perfect place for storing a shared folder with all those settings. Of course not a simple folder, a special one. Applications use settings taken from usual ~/.appName and a daemon takes care of synchronizing data once you're connected to Internet. Just like Ubuntu One does with your documents.

How do I choose which settings to synchronize? First of all you have to activate an Ubuntu One account, if you don't have already done it, then you just have to choose the settings you want using this tool available in Ubuntu System Settings

What? A mockup?! Isn't this tool available yet??!! Exactly This tool is not available yet, but I think it would be an interesting feature to talk about for the next (not precise, I mean 12.10) Ubuntu release. What do you think about?

Even this time Pistoia Linux User Group decided to join the international event "Ubuntu Global Jam" organizing it in collaboration with Ubuntu-it Community. The international event will be on March 2nd, 3rd and 4th and we have decided for March 3rd (saturday) from 15:00 CET to 19:00 CET. This event will be organized in a room made available by Circolo ARCI Bonelle. We'll have a room capable of about 100 people and a smaller one with 4 PC and a big table for people who want to bring their own laptop. Wifi internet connection will be available for everyone.

The event will be introduced by a talk made by Paolo Sammicheli of the Ubuntu-it Community and then we will divide in some smaller groups that will dedicate to different tasks. One will be coordinated by Paolo Sammicheli and will be dedicated to testing and bug triaging. Another group will do some translations from english to italian and will collaborate directly with italian translation team talking with them on a dedicated IRC channel. The last group will be leaded by a very good Unity rockstar..... (suspance)...... Marco Trevisan! People collaborating directly with him will try to help fixing some bugs or at least they will learn how to get started to bug fixing (probably we will pick a bitesize bug and we will fix it together).

We've created an event on Facebook and invited all our friends to attend. We really hope that many people will partecipate to this opportunity to make the next Ubuntu version more... "precise"!

If you try to install Nokia QtSDK on Ubuntu using the Nokia installer (that provides a newer version than the one distributed in Ubuntu Software Center) you could get an error like this:

(Qt_SDK_Lin32_offline_v1_1_3_en.run:3126): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

to fix it, you need to run the installer with a specific parameter:

andrea@centurion:~/Downloads/Qt$ ./Qt_SDK_Lin32_offline_v1_1_4_en.run -style cleanlooks

and everything should work!

I've been a Flickr pro user for 4 years, but the pro account costs 24,95$/year and I was looking for something cheaper. Anyway I was thinking that after all, even if I don't renew my account, I can always access to all my pictures.... wrong! If you don't renew your pro Flickr account you can only access to the low resolution version of your own pictures. That's not acceptable for me, so I decided to download all my pictures and upload them somewhere else. Here comes the second disappointment: there is no automatic way to download all your pictures.

I simply had no time to write an application by myself, so I started searching on Google to see if there was something available to do this simple task. At the beginning I only found abandoned tools (closed source, the API was expired ecc...), paid tools, Windows only tools ecc... but finally I found this post http://hivelogic.com/articles/backing-up-flickr/

There is a Python script that automatically downloads all your Flickr pictures getting the highest resolution available, you can download the script from here https://github.com/dan/hivelogic-flickrtouchr

The usage is very simple

mkdir FlickrBackupFolder
python flickrtouchr.py FlickrBackupFolder

A browser's window will be opened and you'll be prompted for authorization. After that, all you pictures will be downloaded.

Tomorrow Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) will be released officially and I decided to test the RC (release candidate) version on my desktop PC. Being involved in Unity-2D development I used only that desktop environment on my development virtual machine so I didn't have much time to test Unity (3D version).

I must admit that there have been a lot of improvements from 11.04 (Natty Narval) release, but also a lot of bugs and regressions have been introduced. I've noted all the problems I found in every day use and as soon as possible I'll also submit proper bug report on Launchpad for each of them. In the mean time you can give a look to the following list.

Bugs and regressions

Notifications broken: on Ubuntu Natty when an application wants to notify of a new message it popups an icon from the Launcher, then displays a small blue triangle in the top-left corner of the screen. Oneiric doesn’t have the small blue triangle anymore. In this way, if the user is looking away when he gets a notification, he can miss it for hours. There’s no way to know that there is a notify without manually going with mouse to the left and making the launcher to appear.

Launcher visibility: on Ubuntu Natty when the user moves the mouse in the top-left corner the Launcher is shown. Oneiric doesn’t show Launcher if you move the mouse in the top-left corner. You can’t use the top 30-40 pixels (the height of the panel).

Notify area icons: often in Oneiric when you click an icon in the notify area (for example the volume icon, the network manager icon ecc...) the popup is shown and suddenly hidden. You have to click a second time to view it.

Notify icon - Empathy: in Oneiric you cannot open Empathy from the notify area. If you click on “Chat” Empathy is open and visible on the Launcher but not on the screen. You have to move to mouse to the launcher then click on it to view the application window.

Empathy: “Automatically connect on startup” doesn’t work. If you enable this option in Empathy it doesn’t start anyway when the system start.

Launcher doesn’t work as expected: sometimes when you move the mouse on the left, Launcher is not shown. You can try it many times and it still doesn’t appear. I’ve to SUPER+D a couple of times (to show/hide Desktop) to show view it. Even the opposite problem happens: sometime you cannot hide the Launcher.

Boot failing: every time I boot Oneiric the first boot fails. I cannot know what happens because nothing is shown on video. I press CTRL+ALT+CANC, the system reboot and then boot normally.

Showing Skype: on Natty you just need to double-click on Skype icon in the notify bar to show it, now you need to click once on the icon, choose “Activate” from menu and you show it. Why the need to complicate an easy thing?

Webcam problems with Skype: with Natty I could use my webcam with Skype without any problem. Now I can still use it but if I activate the view of myself during a videcall, the video completly locks and it doesn’t work anymore. Skype is always the same version, so probably there is a problem with the new driver used.

Window manager: sometimes moving an application window doesn’t work. You drag a window around the screen then suddenly the window stop moving and the mouse icon starts vibrating. You have to release and click again to move the window and stop mouse icon vibrating.

Conclusion

Even this morning I didn't wake up early because I still felt sick (I already know this sore throath won't abandon me untile I go back home).

I had a light breakfast at 10:30 and then I finishes uploading some pictures and published articles on my blog I already had written before.

While waiting to attend a session, I found Mark Shuttleworth around and I congratulated with him for the effort he is putting into Ubuntu. Without a similar distribution, I'm pretty sure that Linux would not be so popular today.

We had lunch at 13:00 as usual and after that I attended a couple of presentation. The first one on Eucalyptus, then "Cooking Recipes" for Ubuntu and another one dedicated to Wine. The Wine session was so funny! They had a little problem with video projector and all the images appeared with a blur effect so that you could think to be drunk

After these sessions I had to go back to my room since I didn't feel very well, but I was able to attend "Unity's relations and dependancies on GNOME" thanks to audio streaming, IRC for asking questions and etherpad to take notes.

I attended also "desktop-dx-o-unity-a11y" where there was a discussion about the state of Unity and what can be improved before Oneiric release. Lot of work has to be done yet, in particular about accessibility.

Last session of this day, a Q+A with Mark Shuttleworth. The session was very interesting! He replied to all questions coming from the public and from IRC.

This day at UDS started a bit late for me, since i woke up pretty sick (damn air conditioned!!!). I did not follow any conferences in the morning. I relly wanted to follow the Wayland one, but when I arrived the room was already full and it was almost impossible to enter, so I decided not to enter.

I attended "What's wrong with UDS and how we can fix it" session before having lunch. We discussed the possibility to improve all the session in general, for example giving them a proper order so that a team can first discuss some API interface, then another team can discuss how to design them.

We had another wonderful and tasty lunch, even if I didn't eat so much, but food was very good anyway.

During the afternoon I followed an interesting track: "Recommend music based on current song playing or on users media library". We discussed the possibilities to implement a music suggestion service, based on user's tastes.

I spent the rest of theconference time writing these blog posts and uploading pictures.

After the sessions we had the Linaro Showcase: lot of demo running on Linaro and ARM processors. I was really impressed by a robot with Kinect that was able to follow people recognizing their faces. During the showcase there was a very nice dinner.

After dinner I went out with my friend Manrique Lopez who is here in Budapest for another conference, so we decided to meet for a good beer.

Before coming back to the hotel me, Marco Trevisan and Andrea Azzarone had a nice talk with Jorge Castro. He really make us feel part of the Ubuntu family!

My day started at 7:30 with a very nice breakfast! I was alone with just another guy this morning, in a very big breakbast room.

After it I grabbed my badge to avoid queue later and went back to my room to wake up Marco Trevisan (he was still sleeping ).

The keynote was opened by Jono Bacon (the Ubuntu Community manager), followed by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. The most interesting (and tweeted) part of the keynote was "how to prounounce Oneiric" (Oeniric will be the next Ubuntu release).

The keynote finished with a bit late, so all the other tracks were shifted forward. I followed "Unity 2D Oneiric Improvements", it was interesting because there were some Nokia/Qt guys and they looked very interested in helping the Unity 2D team and collaborating with them.

Now following "Shaping a strategy for Ubuntu user assistance", I just had the possibility my involvement into helping people that require Ubuntu assistance.

The lunch has been very tasty, I had the possibility to eat some local recipes, not bad at all.

After lunch we had a short session on Qt. The version 4.8 is going to be released in a couple of months, while 5.0 is announced to be released in 1 year from now: it will be almost code-compatible with 4.x, it will have an improved support for Qt Quick and QML.

As last track of the day I decided to follow "Personal Cloud". Not a perfect track, since the person who should have been here was only talking with us using Skype and it was more difficoult to hear what he said.

At the end of this day there was the "Meet & Greet" party, sponsored by Freescale and Openstack. They offered a dinner and we had some good music after it.

I left from Firenze with my friend Marco Trevisan, to go to Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest. We changed flight in Rome where we met also Andrea Azzarone. Unluckly Alitalia losts Marco's baggage, so he's still waiting for it.

We arrived at the hotel at 20:00 more or less where we met other people of the community. There are lot of italians at UDS. Most work for Canonical, other were sponsored by.

I met Marianna Raffaele (one of the UDS organizer... yeah, she's italian too!), I had to explain her a little problem I had with my booking (nothing bad) and she managed to help me. She also gave me a very nice guitar plettre with Ubuntu logo. Thank you Marianna for this!

We went out with Jorge Castro to drink some beers (he offered me one, thanks Jorge!!!) and we met lot of other Ubuntu people. A really amazing start!

Few days ago I received an email from Jorge O. Castro of the Ubuntu Community, announcing me that my request of sponsorization for Ubuntu Developer Summit has been accepted. I have never attended an UDS before, so I must admit I feel a bit disoriented at the moment and maybe I'm missing some important informations, but at least I'm a good test for the situation of a community member approaching it for the first time. Since I would like to actively help the organization of the Summit, I started looking for the right place to do it. I've a good experience about events organization and during these years I helped, for example, in the organization of Maemo Summit and MeeGo Conference, so I'd like to share my experience with the Ubuntu Community too.

USD Website

The Ubuntu Developer Summit website is http://uds.ubuntu.com/. It looks nice at first view, but it's missing a lot of important informations and it contains some errors. The Travel section, for example should be named "Travel and Accomodation" and should contains not only information about the main hotel where the Summit will take place, but also useful informations about cheap hotels/hostels for Community people who are not sponsored. The Tracks section is still empty. Is it possible that when less than 1 month is missing, official tracks are not available yet? I don't mean categories, I mean tracks inside them. The Schedule is still empty too. Clicking any track take to a page containing an error: I would like to submit this bug, but where? Even worse, clicking on Schedule takes the visitor to a different website and there is no ways to navigate back (except clicking the back button on browser).

Forum

I wasn't able to find any section in the official Ubuntu forum where to talk about Ubuntu Developer Summit. I think it would be useful to have a dedicated section to talk about UDS or about generic Ubuntu related events. It would be useful for people to be able to meet/know each other before attending. I was lucky to meet Marco Trevisan, from the Ubuntu Italian Community, so we will travel together (thanks to a Twitter message I sent!).

IRC

The #ubuntu-uds channel on FreeNode is not much populated and a couple of times I visited it nobody wrote anything. We should keep at least 2-3 people, in turns, always available to answer any question about UDS, it would be easier for people to find the informations they look for.

Wiki

It would be nice to have a page on the wiki to organize better the event. We could write a list of tasks to do and each Community member could pick one and help with it. In this way we could divide the jobs. I know there is a lot to do when we organize these kind of events and the help of the Community is something we cannot risk to miss.

Media

We should give some informations to people who will attend UDS to be sure they will use proper tags when they will publish pictures, tweets, blog entries ecc... Do we have a tag to use on Flickr? What is the right tag to use on Twitter? What keywords should we use when we will blog about the Summit? All these informations are important if we want to be sure other people will find our posts in an easy way.

Mailing List

Ubuntu has a lot of mailing lists, but it looks like none dedicated to events discussion. There is one called ubuntu-events-planners but nobody is using it since months ago. We should use a mailing list to discuss about events organization and/or create a dedicated one for UDS.