Ubuntu Q&A 6.10.2015.

Hello everyone.

This time I will write about the Q&A that happened on the 6th.October 2015. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.

20:00 What are their user names on twitter and irc?

Dholbachm,sturmflut,dpm,spij

21:06 Will Kubuntu exist after 15.10?

Yes.

21:45 Do you think patreon is the answer for the adblock for chrome browser, they have joined adblocks acceptable ads program?

They have no opinion. 

23:30 What do you do before the stream goes live?

You don't want to know. They prepare the announcements, they chase guests.

24:15 What year do you predict the postal service will have an Ubuntu snappy app?

Next year.

25:00 Is the unnamed US phone manufacturer still coming?

They can not say anything. They might invite the product management team on the Q & A.

25:50 Why haven't we got all the default scopes on BQ and Meizu on the store yet?

When they released the first phone they decided to give the phones some exclusive value. They are now having an initiative to open source some of those scopes.They open most of the scopes. There will probably always be some exclusive scopes in order to please the manufacturers.

28:00 How many Canonical developers work on Ubuntu phone?

At least 100+ people.

29:40 is it possible to suggest topics for UOS?

Yes

31:30 When the new Ubuntu installer comes, will it still support the small console output for troubleshooting purposes?

They don't remember seeing it. They won't take out the logging.

33:00 When do you expect to see Ubuntu pre-installed in stores for phones or desktop?

You can buy some laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed.

34:00 In your opinion what are the priorities that the application openfoodfacts should have?

Congratulations for being one of the winners. All judges added lots of comments with feedback. There is no settings dialogue.

36:50 What is the feedback from BQ and Meizu about their recent phones regarding sales and customer feedback? Are they happy about it?

Overwhelmingly positive. They don't know the numbers. For them return rates are the most important, and the return rates are very very low. So everyone is very happy with it. Canonical also helps them with customer support. They can't disclose any information, but more phones will come.

39:00 What can help speeding up Ubuntu convergence development?

One issue is that not all Ubuntu phones can run convergence.Another issue is that Unity8 on desktop is not yet stable enough for testing apps.

41:45 Is canonical going to be run over by Germans?

Germans love Ubuntu.

42:50 When Ubuntu personal gets released will the deb version with unity7 get a new theme just to keep visual consistency?

Probably.

43:30 On convergence, how does Ubuntu.layout and the new adaptive page layout fit together?

Ask someone from the SDK team on the IRC or the mailing list.

44:30 Do you perhaps have the information that when the convergence phone comes,will it be packaged with a dock? Also will it support VGA and DVI screens?

They don't have the information.They probably won't have DVI and VGA support.

47:00 Will Canonical put commercials on TV to get a bigger view from Ubuntu. Not many people in the UK have heard about Ubuntu, And I imagine it is the same in the USA. I feel like a lot of Ubuntu users are preaching to the choir when they are promoting Ubuntu.
Yes Canonical is trying to get awareness of Ubuntu. In the past there were commercials on billboards, commercials on airports. And they are working with partners that are pre-installing Ubuntu, like Dell and Lenovo. Commercials on TV are extremely expensive though.Right now they are trying to get the phone out there first.

49:40 Do you think it would be good for the phone industry to create something like a 'BIOS' standard so that we can install any OS on a phone the same

They completely agree with the question. They never understood why we can install any OS on a phone or a desktop while we can not do the same on a phone. They can do the same thing but the user is forced to use the one OS with which the device came with, if he goes to great lengths the user can maybe substitute it with another version of the same operating system.But I can't install Ubuntu on a random phone. Some devices are even locked down. It would be nice to have, and finally something like that is coming, ARM is making such a standard specification.But as long as the manufacturer modifies its OS, interests are colliding. Similar situations were also with PC's and laptops and there it was escalated to the regulatory agencies in order to force everybody to stop trying to build monopolies, maybe that is necessary for phones as well.

52:30 When will we have apps running in the background on the Ubuntu phone? way we can do it on the PC?

It is a big problem.It will have to be done eventually. It is very hard to do right.

This post might be the last post I am doing on this miniseries. Well, probably not the last, but I don't want to do it for every Q&A session from now on. I might do it again sometimes but that is it. One of the resons for this is that the viewership has dropped rapidly. The first post in this series had almost 2000 views in its first two weeks. The last post in this series before this one did barely even reach 200. A more important reason is that I want to reroute my time and effort to something else,still mostly Linux related stuff, like this for example:

http://thebluedrag.blogspot.hr/2015/11/should-i-make-my-own-distro.html

And here is the link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDk2M-lVwxM

Phew... I am not a journalist(I m an IT student), however I must give a heads up to all the professionall journalists, good journalism is indeed a hard job, keep your chin up :)

Should I make my own distro?

So, on January 2013, I tried to create my own anime oriented Linux distro, I was however a noob with just 2 years of Linux experience and no barely enough CLI knowledge to 'cd' and 'apt-get'. That what I made was nothing more than Ubuntu 12.04(or 12.10 was it?) and some preinstalled software like a mass renamer for anime episodes, vlc and some other software. And it was made with UCK and the help of similar tools.

UCK:

http://www.linuxvoice.com/build-your-own-linux-distro/

Now I am willing to maybe give it another go, just for funzies. And yeah, I did get some skills since then.

I don't want to give you an answer directly about what exactly my distro will be, because as you can see if you read it down furrther, I still have questions myself.

So let's talk about some of the ideas I have.

I will definitely again use the help of tools like UCK, except this time I will delve in much deeper. 

For my base I want to either use Ubuntu or Debian. I am kind of leaning more to Ubuntu, because Ubuntu does have sane defaults(and if we go the 'user friendly route' then definitely Ubuntu), plus if it ever succeeds and becomes my brak off success hobby project(yeah Linus I am looking at you :=P )it might become an official flavour in the long run(hey, a guy can dream right :P ?). 

If I pick Debian I will definitely use the netinstall image. Also I don't want to leave it unprotected, however I do not want to use the NSA backed SELinux, or the omnipresent AppArmor. I will try Tomoyo, because I do like the security trough obscurity concept.

If I pick Ubuntu I will also probably try any kind of minimal image, but I will also consider the Unity image except I will remove Unity from that image. I will do that If I want to have the GUI application software that comes by default with Unity (LO, the unity control center, network manager).

But what GUI will you use?

I am 95% sure that I wan't to have i3wm there somewhere. 

But what does i3wm bring to the usermean to the user, with heavy keyboard usage, ultra high on customisation and even less resource usage than LXDE. It will also mean debloating, although Ubuntu is definitely not bloated, it should just come closer to actual minimalism. A caveat however is that i3wm is not one of the most user friendly interfaces.

Ok, but what about that 'user friendly route'?

If I go that way I will very probably make 2 distros, one with i3 and another one with probably KDE,Unity or LXDE.

What file manager?

I still have no idea. I need to do research on that one. But if I don't find anything better then probably Dolphin. Nautilus activates too many background services and screws up i3wm while launching(by default at least, maybe I could even tame it). Pcmanfm however is too barebones in my opinion. I do want to have automounting and a working search index in the file manager, which Dolphin does have even if it is buggy on i3wm.

What web browser?

Probably not one of the mainstream ones. Maybe Otter browser?

Ok but what about the 'flavour' of the distro?

I am once again thinking about 2 routes:

"i3buntu"- basically a flavour of Ubuntu or Debian with i3wm, modified as I have described before.

"something something anime Linux"- The same like before except anime themed. Anime themed or related or useful software preinstalled. The "user friendly route" is actually a subroute of this route. I will probably also preinstall it with renpy based Visual novels. And maybe steam.

Sounds fun, so may I help?

Of course. Contact me here or on my email: bluedragonsoft@yahoo.com 

What I really do need help for is if you can do Debian packaging for some of my own software and some other tarballs. Because dependency hunting while packaging is something that reminds me of vomiting.

If you can't help with that but can help with something else you are still free to contact me

But isn't there already something like an 'Anime distro'?

Yes there is:

https://animesoft.wordpress.com/mangaka/

And it looks great. I reccomend you to try those before I finish my first alpha.

However I still want to try my idea for the following reasons:

-Mangaka is based of the LTS release of Ubuntu. Which is not bad in itself, but I want mine to be based of the curent release.

-Mangaka does not have a i3wm version

-I want to do it to further my own knowledge of Linux and for fun.

But I would consider mergin my i3wm version with them when I get something workable.

So what next?

My first order of business is to install the tools I want and need and then get my desired image.

My second order of business is to uninstall Unity (either 15.04 or 15.10 if the bug with AMD drivers gets fixed soon enough), install i3wm and test if the image works.
My third order of business if everything is successful is to reprioritise on what I as a person am doing to make enough space and time to work on this.

Just like Linux Torvalds suggested in one of his famous quotes, I plan to start small. This is a hobby project for me.

Ubuntu Community Q&A 29.09.2015

Hello everyone.

This time I will write about the Q&A that happened two weeks ago. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.

13:14 Who is the guest today?

Nobody.

13:34 What happened to the Meizu MX4?

It will probably come back. It was sold out.

15:37 What about making CChromium the default Ubuntu browser instead of Firefox?

It will not happen in 15.10. Perhaps in 16.04. If you have arguments then bring them out in the mailing list.We shall also talk about the Ubuntu browser or any other browser. It is good to have that discussion regularly.

19:30 Would Popey and Michael describe themselves as free software advocates, where is the line between transparency and convenience?

Popey is a pragmatic FSF advocate but he also does use proprietary software. He admits he is one but he is a bad one. Michael is kind of the same. He uses Linux exclusively and uses OSS whenever it is an option, but he is not an idealist, i.e. he uses Chrome instead of Firefox. However when he has the option even if it is a bit of an inconvenience he will still ose OSS

22:00 is the 25000 Ubuntu phones sold estimate correct?

They don't have the information. Probably a good estimate. It is better to look at the number of Ubuntu desktops. 5 Years ago that was 20000000 installations. Right now those numbers are not important for them as a company. They are currently building an enthusiast product. Right now they are only trying to break even in profit, and they are doing that. It is more important that the OEM's want to continue carry on making phones and that has happened with BQ so far.

27:35 what happened to popeys disco ball?

The room was redecorated. Now he has a lavalamp.

28:50 How do you guys feel about the 2 month OTA updates?

Compare it to Android and iOS, it is interesting how the mindset is different with Ubuntu. You can run rc-proposed if you want. The target is actually 6 weeks, not 2 months and they think that is alright. You are welcome to help fix some of the bugs.

35:00 Is there a place where we can suggest guests in the obvious apps and suggests guests for the Q&A ,who is doing the scheduling?

You can reach them on the mailing list and IRC.

35:50 is there going to be a cradle for the convergence phone, and why not when Android is kicing butt in this area?

They don't know. They don't know about the hardware specfics. Bq is very open source friendly and they are big on 3d printing,they might provide some 3d printable models.

37:00 As IPlayer works on the Ubuntu phone, does Netflix work?

No. They are missing DRM extensions.

38:00 Are popey and mhall watching the bad voltage live stream from germany?

Mhall won't. Popey might. They think it is a great show though.

39:26 Willy Werewolf is pretty close to launch now, can you give us a background as to the promotion by Canonical, and how to get involved with loco groups and will Mark Shuttleworth give us a keynote?

Find your closest loco team and just get involved. Planning events is probably one of the best ways to get involved and a lot of people will get involved. The best is to just make an event, no matter hoiw many people are interested into getting on the event.

41:31 Why not use the Ubuntu browser, are there any plans to support plugins within it?

No plans to support plugins yet. They are not yet at that point int the development.

42:00 When is the next UDS?

It depends if you mean the UOS or the in person developer sumit? The next online summit will be in the first week of november.

43:00 Since browsers are large and complex programs, and therefore it takes a lot of effort, would it not be better to delegate it to some organisation like Mozilla?

Yes. That is why the ubuntu browser is based off chromium. Chromium provides the engine, while Canonical provides the UI and everything else. That is why they were able to build the browser. There is nothing stopping anyone else to bring their browser to Ubuntu. There are other browser.

45:00 Are there any Telegram updates, the Telegram application is far behind the Android based application?

Upstream Telegram is super active and they are developing a new version of Telegram. 

46:00 What are Popey and Mike doing for movember?

Popey does not do movember.Mike only grows facial hair when he is lazy, because of his wife it won't happen.

47:00 Will Firefox come to Ubuntu phone?

Yes if someone ports it. Opendocument support will come though.

48:00 Is it possible to include pepper flash plugin-nonfree in Ubuntu restricted extras, it is important for Chromium, because most people ask me how to use it in Chromium?

The question is how it implements flash in the system. You should ask on the mailing list.

49:30 Do you know what the big picture mode in steam is, could the mobile UI be used on TV for greater viewing distance?

Yes, that is part of the big plan for unity8. That is why we have grid units. They are still keeping the TV in mind. Also TV will be part of convergence. But now the priority is the converged phone.

51:50 What are your twitter and Google+ user names?

Michael hall:mhall1119 on twitter, on Google+ Michael Hall119

Alan Pope:Popey everywhere.

52:45 What is your favourite app at the moment and what is on your wishlist?

Monster wars and Neverball. Wishlist: Whatsapp just so that people stop asking :P. Mhall would like a better facebook application.

54:05 If Jolla can make a tablet why can't Canonical?

Because Jolla paid for it. Canonical will revisit tablets next year. Canonical does not want to be a hardware company. They would be surprised if we will not have a tablet next year-

54:45 If you could buy the uber webcam but definitely work with ubuntu 100% of the time, which one would you suggest?

A logitech webcam, or whatever one is in your laptop. 

55:45 Is Popeys cat a girl or boy?

Boy.

56:06 Is anything being done about the memory management killing applications?

The main focus is to reduce the memory footprint. There is a state saver for applications. It is similar to android.

57:00 What kickstarter,indiegogo or patreon have you seen that really appeals to you?

Popey backed the scraps games. It is a game where you build cars and drive around, and Mycroft...

Michael hall has backed mycroft which is an open source AI appliance.

As usual the link to the video is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPFPmxy40ns

Ubuntu Q&A 22.09.2015

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.

Note:If you have any questions yourself, after reading this, please don't ask me, instead join the Q&A sessions which happen every Tuesday on 15:00(UTC) on http://ubuntuonair.com/

13:17 What is the release date for OnePlus2 with Ubuntu?
It is a community project, There is an announcement on the OnePlus forum. It is great to see such ports.

14:40 When developing for Ubuntu phone, can I test it on my desktop always?If I test my phone app on the desktop assuming that the phone app does not use any desktop specific hardware, and it does not work because the compenents are not in willy or are in older versions then are in older versions, instead of buckling the SDK because it should work, because testing on the desktop is not a target and if it works it is just lucky.
Their approach is to make the emulator a great tool, however you can always test it on the desktop. With convergence and unity8 on desktop this will become even better. The SDK guys are thinking about more advanced virtualization. The problem is that the desktop and target frameworks are not matching up. With convergence it should help. It remains an issue. Sensors however will just not be supported if you don't have the hardware. The API is there but there is no device to talk to.

16:35 Are there any updates on the convergent BQ phone?
Nothing official he can say yet, they do want to have it next year.

17:40 We have heard a lot about upcoming messaging frameworks and syncing frameworks, can you tell us what is to be expected, and when will they become available for developers?
That is a long term effort over the next year, they are building it on top of empathy and other existing building blocks. They are adding api's on that.

19:40 What is your daily driver phone?
The Meizu MX4, he prefers the nexus 4 though. He has also tried the BQ.

20:26 In the demos you see a small representation of the big screen on the small screen. Will that change by giving us a keyboard on the phone?
The question is what you do with the phones screen. It would be nice to have such a keyboard, there will be some kind of keyboard application.

21:31 Is there any possible hint of standard applications like whatsapp on Ubuntu?
It is a chicken and egg problem. Once they will be able to work with larger providers they will come. Textsecure is getting ready to launch on Ubuntu.

23:00 Is there any plans for in app payments?
They are working on it at this moment. They are using an interesting API that is almost ready to be released. It is a question of back-ends as well. QT has opensourced its purchasing stuff.

25:00 What is the biggest surprise and dissapointment in the years of phone development?
He is surprised at how fast it was until they made their first working prototypes. It was dissapointing how they did not release more mobile or tablet products last year.

28:40 There was something called Ubuntu brainstorm, but it was discontinued, anything as an alternative?
The best thing would probably be the mailing list. Ubuntu brainstomr was too much to maintain. Or the IRC would be good as well.

31:10 Are there any plans to upgrade the Android base?
There are. The devices will also have to switch. The only bits of Android they still use is the kernel version and device drivers.

33:10 Will you be able to use the phones in big picture mode?
They don't know yet. It will depend on what people will want.

34:00 How long is Ubuntu supported on Phones and how often is it updated,phone makers usually have bad software support?
The intention is to be supported for several years, certainly much better than Android, they are updating every 6 weeks for every device. Probably not as long as 5 years though.

35:26 What is your idea of a pure Ubuntu phone,without the Android bits?
The barrier is that the vendors have to implemnent drivers for native Linux. The vendors do not want to implement twice.

39:00 Any idea on the number of people purchasing the phones and how many developers are there?
There was almost a thousand developers only on the store. There are more outside the store. The number of users is somewhere in thethousands or more.

40:28 Will the convergence phone be able to run Inkscape?
Yes it will but probably not in the first generation.
Those applications will not have to be reworked, just properly installed and packaged.

41:37 What is the minimum limit for paid applications in the store, why is it not 99 cents?
The limit is 1.99. The limit is there because it is reasonable for processing ad making sure that everyone gets some money.

42:47 Is now the right time to crowdfound a Ubuntu tablet?
It is pretty soon, but they would like to see one. You may want to wait until they first get one commercial partner.

43:40 What are the plants to solve the chicken and egg problem?
To get a bigger market share and work with bigger partners. The approach so far was to purposefully target enthusiasts. It will happen with time.

45:25 I am using Ubuntu since march, will we be able to change the background on a phone?
Initially they wanted it but now they disabled it for UI consitency. Scopes might be able to help in here.

46:32 Androidhow, Why did they move from cyanogenmod to AOSP?(I am not sure I have heard that question correctly)
It probably had to do with the devices that they wanted to support back then. All the images come from AOSP now.

47:35 when using a TV as a display, will it always switch to desktop mode or can you choose the phone UI on the TV screen?
Right now not, but if the use case will be popular enough, why not.

48:20 was there work on running Android applications on Ubuntu?
It is pretty difficult to do well. They have a very different UI and lifecycle model. They do not want peopl to write Applications on Android and then making them run on Ubuntu trough a bad compatibility layer as a second rate platform. They wnat Ubuntu to be a primary platform with good native applications.
Also,see here:

54:07 Microsoft is working on convergence as well, any hope of being able to port ubuntu on their phones as well so the hardware convergence is already built in?
They are currently relying on hardware dupport from the Android implementations, so they don't know how that would work. It would be a lot of work. On WP boot loaders are locked.

55:00 Are we going to win the convergence race?
They have been talking about it for a long time and they are ready to realise it. Because of the design patterns it will hopefully work well.

56:00 Will the scopes be rotateable and will the nexus 5 be officially supported?
Scopes will be improved a lot soon. There is no plan to officially support the nexus 5. Now they have their own device partners.

57:21 Any new applications in the works that other phones can not do, other than scopes?Any killer app?
They don't think so. Good convergence is the killer app they are working on right now.

57:50 How is the intense work on the software side going with the efficient use of the hardware, battery drain is the point where other phones struggle right now?
They had battery issues in the past but now on the BQ phones they have better battery life now than the Android BQ phones have.

The video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qdnx1He5jA

Ubuntu Q&A 25.08.2015.

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This is the third post I am making inside of this series and this time I will write about the Q&A that happened last week. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.
Also due to circumstances, this time I was not able to find the exact time in the video wen the question was asked.

Note:If you have any questions yourself, after reading this, please don't ask me, instead join the Q&A sessions which happen every Tuesday on 15:00(UTC) on http://ubuntuonair.com/

Due to my other duties I will be unable to make a blog post for at least 2 weeks, so I will miss the next two Q&A's.

What was the problem with the delay of the recent OTA6?
We target about every 6 weeks but we are not strict on that, so if some important fixes pop up they will delay it.

Does canonical have a problem with integrating bountiesource into launchpad?
Launchpad development has become very active lately, git support and commit hooks were added, so you can propose your suggestion to launchpad developers.

Will unity8 support 4k resolutions?
Yes, all of the new elements are entirely scalable. Everything with grid units will work fine. Legacy apps however could be a problem.

Will Libre office be fully integrated into Ubuntu phone?
Yes and no, Libreoffice provides a small LibreOffice kit library, which will be used in the new LO viewer on Ubuntu phone. However the full LO suite will be supported in desktop mode.

Is LXD at a usable state for home users?
Certainly it is stable enough for home users who don't have anything mission critical, however there is no stable LTS release yet.

Will dekko support exchange?
Ask the Dekko developers, not soon, dekko is built on top of the trojita email app which is strongly imap based, they might however add pop 3 support. The better question is why does Exchange not support imap? 

What is happening with the software center,will the desktop and phone use the same service?
Eventually everything will be using the snappy store, except the deb desktop. The store is not going away

Will the phone be updated to 15.10?
Originally not, but lately there were signs that it might be updated.

Why is landcape the default orientation on large touchscreens?
Mostly because they want people to use both portrait and landscape.

How different is mir from wayland technically speaking?
Not very. Wayland is designed around a standard protocol. Mir was designed to not make you care about the protocol. It separates Mir from the interface. Both mir and Wayland use the same api for drivers.

When will the new thin line header land?
It has probably already landed.

Will another tablet be supported in the future?
As soon as an OEM comes along.

Is there any plan to integrate the stupendously hot charmander concept?
Someone from the community is doing it, there is a lot that would have to be reworked to implement it. He should work with the design team.
 
When reading the API documentation what does "obsolete member" mean?
It meanss that part is being deprecated. 

Will the convergence phone create a black-hole that will suck in my pet dog, called Rodney?
The convergence phone is a dog person.

There was something on Softpedia about switching to Android as base (idk the technical details) to support android apps. Is this being discussed at Canonical?
Look here:
http://thebluedrag.blogspot.com/2015/07/ubuntu-phoneandroid-app-support-is.html
We do not want to be Android copycats. Our goal is to make Ubuntu apps easy to write. The alternative is to become a second rate platform for Android applications and that is a secon rate Android platform. Plus has any platform that has Android application support ever been succesful enough to get a decent market share on the global worldwide market?(No it has not)

What feature in an app or the platform are you most looking forward to as we start converging?
Dekko on the desktop. All those applications on the desktop. He is also looking forward to content hub on the desktop.

Any secret innovations being worked on for the phone?
Pretty much everything is in the open.

When will we be able to package snaps from the SDK?
As soon as snaps become functional enough to replace click.

Is there a move to improve scopes i.e. to show content from youtube inside the scope?
Yes, they are working on it, it might even be in OTA6. They are working with gstreamer to get the videos into the scopes.

When will the Ubuntu SDK be repackaged into a snap so that we can develop from Ubuntu Personal?
Soon, it is one of the target apps.

With content hub and all that sandboxing, how does one make a file manager on Snappy/Click?
The file manager is an exception so the file manager and terminal are the exceptions outside the confinement.

The link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1N1ywLC7mM

Ubuntu Q&A 18.08.2015

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This is the third post I am making inside of this series and this time I will write about the Q&A that happened last week. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.
Also due to circumstances, this time I was not able to find the exact time in the video wen the question was asked.

Note:If you have any questions yourself, after reading this, please don't ask me, instead join the Q&A sessions which happen every Tuesday on 15:00(UTC) on http://ubuntuonair.com/

Is there a page for new developers who want to help with cloud/server and a list of issues they can work on?
Not, there is not a formal program for that yet, ping the ubuntu engineers for what you are interested in.

What are charms?
Sets of code that execute in clouds to coordinate services with each other

What do you think of Canonical's extensive use of google's services for storing potentially confidential business information, eg in google drive, when they are now a direct competitor with Android vs Ubuntu? If a viable LibreOffice online cloud alternative existed would you prefer Canonical to move to such a service?
The engineers said that they preferred online services, however he did admit there were some concerns with them. They have said that they have contractual arrangements with them and that there is no spying going on. They also mentioned that they do understand the concerns.

When is the expected release of the 'Convergent' Ubuntu Phone ? i.e. if not specific date - what month ?
This year

What is the safest way to install debs on Ubuntu Phone?
Create a chroot on the phone and chroot into that.

I have a raspberry pi 2, is there already something available to install something like Ubuntu Next and a media server like Kodi on it ?
It is kind of difficult. But it would be nice to have a Kodi only image.

Is there a planned optimisation of Ubuntu phone for the Nexus 5?
That is a community maintained port.

Will we be able to make phone calls and SMS from the terminal? A use case for this would be i.e. your phone is docked to a screen and keyboard, and you are already working on your keyboard in a terminal but noy you need to make a phone call.
This already works, we just need to find out how, you can find it in the source code for the dialer app, it is a niche use case, it would be cool though, especially with ascii art.

What is the status of the Dekko Email client? Is it being moved into the core? Also, what is the best way to get involved in helping with testing? My email is self hosted so the webapps are not of much help.
Jump into the irc and ask, there is a plan for dekko to become the default email client, it is mostly there.

So this time around there were not many questions. Anyways here is the link to the video. The questions will start only after 10-20 minutes.
Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEOcInVqFVU

Ubuntu Q&A 11.08.2015

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This is the third post I am making inside of this series and this time I will write about the Q&A that happened last week. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.

Note:If you have any questions yourself, after reading this, please don't ask me, instead join the Q&A sessions which happen every Tuesday on 15:00(UTC) on http://ubuntuonair.com/

15:00 When is ubuntu phone arriving in India?
Soon, BQ will launch there in about 2 weeks.

15:40 When ubuntu phone is supposed to be shipped worldwide, including the usa, that has limited bandwidth to choose from, how is it going to play with the duopoly of At&t and Verizon?
BQ will function in a way that it will not work with the fastest network, so it will be a bit limited. BQ is already shipping to many countries outside europe, You just have to make sure that your carrier supports 900mhz, 2100mhz and hspa+ mobile signals.

19:00 Is the Ubuntu phone still on road to full convergence where you hook up a keyboard or a mouse to it?
Yes, definitely, there were many demos, right now they have a walking desktop, major improvements will come in the next month.

21:05 If I bought David ice cream, would I get the content hub documentation sooner?
Yes, there are content hub tutorials being worked on, they will come quite soon, hopefully in a few weeks.

25:15 What is Canonicals plan to monetize Ubuntu on the desktop?
Canonical provides a lot of enterprise support, they also provide a lot of training and maintenance to paying customers. They also give custom engineering services and they get some money from affiliations.

35:00 with the way snappy separates the system and applications, is something like tripwire still important for file system integrity? 
With snappy you should be relatively certain that your file system has not been tampered with. Whatever you install on the phone, it should not be able to modify anything else on the phone(if you got it trough the official store).


38:00 How many supplies of ice cream do I need to get scopes in javascript officially supported?
The engineers have said that there is already a project like that with it's own ppa and clcik packages for it. However the project is still too young for official support, but hopeflly official support will come soon.

 40:00 Will we be able to install Ubuntu phone on non-Ubuntu phones?
There exists a porting guide. For some devices it was already done. It can be either easy or difficult depending on the device. But there are some very good ports out there( i.e for Nexus devices or the OPO).

44:40 Will snappy allow developers to just update  pre-determined parts of the package or will the users have to download everything again?
Snappy works in a way that special libraries and modules must be shipped in the package itself, a good tool to help with this is snapcraft,. It allows you to write very concise recipes. However there are still discussions going on about decoupling with the help of hashes, but it is not implemented yet.

47:30 There was recently a person that was unhappy that his published application in the software center was not released for 14.10 and 15.04 and that his emails were ignored for months, he is not the first to complain about this, I have been told that click and snappy will be the solution here, but snappy is not ready yet, and the deb based USC will be in 16.04 and supported for five years, if someone wants to sell software on the Ubuntu desktop what should he do until snappy is ready?
The problem with software shipped as .deb is that it needs a lot of care. Another problem is that it has root access during installation. For those and various other reasons, the queue in the USC was just piling up. Now the priorities have shifted to snappy. But there are still a number of ways to get your software into Ubuntu. One way is to put your software into the Debian archives, which has the added bonus that your software will be available for Debian as well. You can also contact employees from Canonical to get your software into Ubuntu. However those mentioned until now are only good for open source applications. A way that works for paid for applications is that you can sell and publish your .debs on your own or a third party website.
But snaps and click are just around the corner.

54:04 What do I do if I want to sell software on the ubuntu desktop? So the best approach ATM is 3rd party distribution, so through itch.io or the humble store?
Yes that is the best approach.

54:30 Recently MS has launched sway as an improvement over power point, will Linux developers make ther own alternative?
They would certainly love it. It is possible to generate html5 presentations. And there exists an Inkscape plugin for that as well as smaller applications for that.

Now I have finally catched up to the latest Q&A. Expect my next blog post about this the next week. :D
Remember, today is yet another session, so go ahead and ask your questions there.

The video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbiuM9pF5a4

Ubuntu Q&A 04.08.2015

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This is the third post I am making inside of this series and this time I will write about the Q&A that happened 2 weeks ago. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.

 

 15:25 Any news on the north American phone yet?

 They are still working on it. It is a priority. 

15:58 When can we download the Ubuntu personal ISO with an installer?

No plans yet. You can download an image onto a USB and boot from the USB already.

18:00 Will Ubuntu touch support snapshots?

Not out of the box yet. Maybe some day.

 

19:00 Will Ubuntu run windows applications without wine? 

No. Can Windows run Linux applications?

19:50 How is the power consumption when compared between Unity8 and Unity7?

Because mobiles are very resource restrained unity8 roughly needs less resources. They don't have exact data yet.

21:00 Will the deb based Ubuntu be discontinued once Ubuntu personal gets stable?

No it won't. Even snappy is built on top of the archives which are Debian based.

 

22:50 At whom is the deb based and at whom is the snappy based Ubuntu targeted at?

Ubuntu-personal is for people who need their os to be less versatile, average users

Ubuntu-deb is more customizable 

 

26:20 In which part of Ubuntu would you like people to be involved?

On the phone, localisation, testing(there is a page on the wiki), core applications, feedback... 

32:20 In Ubuntu snappy will there be anything such as libraries that you will need to build statically?

Yes, there will be because they will have to be self contained, meaning a lot of it will have to be statically linked. But also there will be less dependency hells, if any.

34:00 What are the new features of 15.10?

It will have updated packages. an updated Ubuntu make. And also hidpi support will be very improved

36:00 Can unity 8 and mir be used on the deb based ubuntu since on the phone it uses click?

Yes, there is already an installable session for mir and unity8.

36:45 what is the difference between unity8, next, touch?
Unity8 is the next desktop shell.

Ubuntu touch is the not to be used project name for the Ubuntu phone project(Call it ubuntu phone from now on).

Desktop next was an image preview where they tried to incorporate phone technologies on the desktop and it will soon be replaced by personal.

 

38:40 Gnome has been working on its own application sandbox, has there or will there be any collaboration?

Nothing has happened yet, they could have conversations with them, however their system is very different from Ubuntu's sandboxing.

 

 40:45 When will Ubuntu personal land on Ubuntu phones?
Somewhere around 16.04.

 

42:40 What do you think the landscape will look like for 3rd party application developers by 16.04? 

They feel that it will look great because there will be so many new things. They are looking for general developers that will develop code and documentation. They also said that they already have many developers that just want to participate. They also said they want to make even better documentation and that Ubuntu make will be remade, also the SDK will be further improved. Also they have stated that Canonical is looking for engineer managers that will focus on the developer experience.

44:50 Are workspaces planned for unity8?

They want to reach feature parity with unity7, however they don't know yet.

45:35 On the market there are some mhl cables that connect the meizu with external screens, will that land in Ubuntu, or is there any other way to connect the phone to a screen,is there a problem or a lack of developers to do that?

They are limited by the hardware. They were so far only testing the nexus 4 with such features, so they think there are possible hardware limitations. Wifi and bluetooth have just a terrible experience with that.

47:20 Since sdl2 is used so much for gaming, are there any plans to officially support sdl2 in the ubuntu sdk?

An SDL template already exists on github, and there are example applications. It is though very buggy. It is possible to include it in the SDK, but then they would need to import huge chunks of SDL.

49:25 Canonical seems to have gotten rid of Ubuntu1 just when it was most needed, are there any plans to allow phone or laptop syncing?

Ubuntu1 was really bad with syncing. There are already other syncing applications in the mobile store including Dropbox.

50:30 Is there any communication with KDE over the shashlik approach by running android applications on a real Linux, does Ubuntu consider this?

They don't even know about the technology. It is not on the roadmap yet. They do acknowledge that the Application ecosystem is vital, however they do not want to add it because they are sceptic on how the applications would integrate into the system. They also do not want to be Android copycats. Also by supporting Android applications they would demotivate people from making native Ubuntu applications.

Also look here:
http://thebluedrag.blogspot.com/2015/07/ubuntu-phoneandroid-app-support-is.html

53:35 Will Ubuntu 16.04 be the last Unity7 and deb based version?

No, because everything, including snappy is based on the Debian archives. Unity7 though will eventually be discontinued.

55:24 With all the talk about the phones, where do the tablets stand right now? I.e. the Nexus 10?

Tablets are the stepping stone in their convergence vision. As for the nexus 10, they are not happy with it's GPU.

56:30 Any hope of running snap applications on the deb system for 16.04, it would make it a lot easier for developers to target us?

Technically they could run because Snappy is a very improved Debian packaging system. And they do agree it is important for the developer experience. However Snappy is heavily reliant on sandboxing which just does not exist on the Debian based image.

58:00 Is it possible to switch between standard and personal ubuntu from the login screen, if not will it be possible one day?

No, you will have to dual boot. However you can have both unity8 and 7 installed on the same system at the same time already.

59:30 Should I distribute applications as snapps or debs?

It depends on your target audience. However they do consider the new application store much better than the old one.

1:00:40 Does convergence also mean backwards compatibility with the applications already running on the ubuntu desktop, or should they be repackaged for Ubuntu phone?
It must be repackaged. They are thinking about some compatibilities, but it will have to be repackaged.

Phew, this was a long one.

And here is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etWjZgLbDo0