fidzu : Ubuntu

UbuconLA is happy to announce that Canonical and the Ubuntu Community will be sponsors in this version 2014.

Also, the Ubuntu Community will be present in the event with members from Spain, India, Uruguay, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, giving talks and workshops… the perfect place to learn a lot about Linux, Ubuntu ,Community, all in this amazing event.

You can find more information about the UbuconLA in the official site and wikipage

19 Apr 2014 5:57pm GMT

Today, tweaking the Bootstrap_Walker class used by Melany for another project, I discovered an interesting issue with the title attribute.

Melany allows you to prepend a menu item with an icon coming from the Glyphicon set included in Twitter Bootstrap in a very easy way: just put the glyphicon name in the menu item's title attribute field and let the Melany do the rest. See an example in the following image:

How to prepend icons to menu items

So, what's the problem? Well, if you try to define a true title attribute, it won't work, because the Bootstrap_Walker handles this attribute as if it were an icon. Let me do an example. If you want to set the title attribute to "This link opens in a new tab", the resulting markup is:

<a href="[menu_item_url]"><span class="glyphicon This link opens in a new tab"></span>&nbsp;[navigation_label]</a>

Of course, you wanted something like this:

<a href="[menu_item_url]" title="This link opens in a new tab">[navigation_label]</a>

I solved this issue with a simple check to see if the word glyphicon is in the title attribute, so you can now use this real attribute without problems. The fix is already in the 1.1.0-dev version, but will soon be released in the 1.0.5 series too.

I hope this has not caused you too many hassles.

Oh, do you know Melany 1.1.0 Alpha2 has been released? Check it out!

19 Apr 2014 5:31pm GMT

19 Apr 2014 2:04pm GMT

Hi,

Two days ago, the entire world has celebrated the release of Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS and the other official flavours of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu GNOME Team has received many Emails and Posts on our Social Media Channels about the very same question/issue.

"Why the system information is showing Ubuntu 13.10 instead of Ubuntu 14.04″?!

Same question is being asked daily even before the final release of Ubuntu GNOME 14.04.

Ubuntu GNOME Team is asking everyone to please read the release notes of Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS before downloading or upgrading to Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS.

This is actually a must-do step with any new release/version of any Operating System/Software in the world and to be more specific here, it is a must-do step every time Ubuntu and its official flavours announce a new release every 6 months.

Why reading the release notes is very important?
The answer is very simple: because the release notes will explain everything about the new release and above all, show the known issues for every new release that all users must be aware of before anything else.

Sorry for the inconvenience
Ubuntu GNOME Team would like to apologize if we caused any kind of confusion and/or headache to the users of Ubuntu GNOME. Our Developers are working on the known issues, specially this problem:

System Details shows Ubuntu 13.10 instead of 14.04

A Workaround
Meanwhile, you can check and verify which release/version of Ubuntu GNOME you're using by following these steps:

How can I find the version of Ubuntu that is installed?

Thank you!
As always, thank you for choosing and using Ubuntu GNOME and thanks for reading this very important note. Please keep that in mind with each and every release, you do need to read the release notes. This will save your time and save the trouble for you and for everyone else.

Enjoy and have fun with Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS

Ali/amjjawad
On behalf of Ubuntu GNOME Team

19 Apr 2014 12:18pm GMT

We had the Trusty Tahr Release Party today at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), Dhaka. It was the official Ubuntu 12.04 release party of Ubuntu Bangladesh LoCo team in cooperation with "ULAB Computer Programming Club". This time, we did it within two days of … Continue reading →

19 Apr 2014 9:56am GMT

I gave a talk this year at PyCon 2014, about one of my favorite subjects: Hy. Many of my regular readers will have no doubt explored Hy's thriving GitHub org, played with try-hy, or even installed it locally by pip installing it. I was lucky enough to be able to attend PyCon on behalf of Sunlight, with a solid contingint of my colleagues. We put together a writeup on the Sunlight blog if anyone was interested in our favorite talks.

Tons of really amazing questions, and such an amazingly warm reception from so many of my peers throughout this year's PyCon. Thank you so much to everyone that attended the talk. As always, you should Fork Hy on GitHub, follow @hylang on the twitters, and send in any bugs you find!

Hopefully I'll be able to put my talk up in blog-post form soon, but until then feel free to look over the slides or just watch the talk.

An extra shout-out to @akaptur for hacking on Hy during the sprints, and giving the exception system quite the workthrough. Thanks, Allison!

19 Apr 2014 12:13am GMT

For some time I've been wanting to run ubuntu-desktop and others, remotely, in containers, using spice. Historically vnc has been the best way to do remote desktops, but spice should provide a far better experience. Unfortunately, Xspice has always failed for me, most recently segfaulting on startup. But fortunately, this is fixed in git, and I'm told a new release may be coming soon. While waiting for the new release (0.12.7?), I pushed a package based on git HEAD to ppa:serge-hallyn/virt.

You can create a container to test this with as follows:

lxc-create -t download -n desk1 -- -d ubuntu -r trusty -a amd64
lxc-start -n desk1 -d
lxc-attach -n desk1

Then inside that container shell,

add-apt-repository ppa:serge-hallyn/virt
apt-get update
apt-get install xserver-xspice ubuntu-desktop

ubuntu-desktop can take awhile to install. You can simply install fvwm and xterm if you want a quicker test. Once that's all one, copy the xspice configuration file into your home directory, uncompress it, set the SpiceDisableTicketing option (or configure a password), and use the config file to configure an Xorg session:

cp /usr/share/doc/xserver-xspice/spiceqxl.xorg.conf.example.gz /root
cd /root
gunzip spiceqxl.xorg.conf.example.gz
cat >> spiceqxl.xorg.conf.example.gz << EOF
Option "SpiceDisableTicketing" "1"
EOF
/usr/bin/Xorg -config /root/spiceqxl.xorg.conf.example :2 &

Now fire up unity, xterm, or fvwm:

DISPLAY=:2 unity

Now connect using either spicy or spicec,

spicec -h  -p 5900

Of course if the container is on a remote host, you'll want to set up some ssh port forwards to enable that, but if needed then that's a subject for another post.

18 Apr 2014 8:12pm GMT

A little radiation goes a long way.

Your microwave can be used for more than reheating coffee.

It is far more versatile a device, for instance, you can make these fat-free potato chips ("crisps" for you British gentlepeople) in one with very little effort.

• Ingredients

• 1 potato,
• sea salt, to taste
• any other seasoning or spice that you'd like to flavour the chips with.

• Needed Equipment

• Microwave

• Useful Equipment

• a mandoline -brilliant thing to have, even a sub-$20 will do
• a silicon sheet -for a non-stick surface in the microwave, I recommend the brand "Silpat"

1. Directions

2. Thinly cut the potato into even, 2-3 millimeter slices.Here, a mandoline is incredibly useful (even perhaps ideal or necessary).
3. Rinse the excess starch off the potato slices and shake/pat/spin off the excess water.
4. Place the slices onto a non-stick microwave-safe (no metals!) sheet, without overlap.
5. Microwave on high power for 2 minutes. This'll remove a lot of the water in the potato and you'll begin to see them browning.
6. Flip the slices and microwave for another minute. Keep an eye on them while they're in there to prevent burning.
7. Remove any nicely browned chips.
8. For any not fully done, zap on high in 10 second intervals until they too are browned.
9. Season with salt, to your tastes, and/or any other thing really.
10. Enjoy, guilt-free. :)

18 Apr 2014 8:00pm GMT

PLUMgrid , the leader in Virtual Network Infrastructure (VNI), today announced that PLUMgrid VNI 3.0 has achieved certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform . The certification ensures that PLUMgrid VNI 3.0 has been integrated, tested and certified for use with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.
PLUMgrid VNI 3.0 is a secure virtual networking product for large-scale OpenStack clouds. Built using PLUMgrid Platform and IO Visor™ technology , it provides an easy and simple solution to build cloud infrastructure at scale and offer secure, multi-tenant network services to OpenStack cloud users. Based on a highly automated workflow, PLUMgrid VNI 3.0 enables applications and users to deploy private Virtual Domains™ in seconds without changing the physical network fabric.

Source:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/plumgrid-virtual-network-infrastructure-achieves-certification-for-red-hat-enterprise-linux-openstack-platform-2014-04-14

18 Apr 2014 7:18pm GMT

IBM says that now is great time for KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) technology as a result of key contributions from its large developer community.
The KVM hypervisor is an open source virtualization technology and, increasingly, it is becoming an important tool in any Linux user's handbook, especially in light of OpenStack.
KVM is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V) and consisting of a loadable kernel module (kvm.ko) that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor-specific module (kvm-intel.ko) or (kvm-amd.ko).
IBM says that hypervisors have had to better manage compute, network, and storage resources - and that this need that has been fulfilled by KVM.

Source:

http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/ibm-now-is-the-time-for-kvm/240167057

18 Apr 2014 7:17pm GMT

This article is cross-posted on Docker's blog as well.

For me, Docker is just that sort of game changing, hyper-innovative technology, that, at its core, somehow seems straightforward, beautiful, and obvious.

Linux containers, repositories of popular base images, snapshots using modern copy-on-write filesystem features. Brilliant, yet so simple. Docker.io for the win!

Fast forward to today -- April 18, 2014 -- and the combination of Docker and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS has raised the bar, introducing a new echelon of usability and convenience, and coupled with the trust and track record of enterprise grade Long Term Support from Canonical and the Ubuntu community.

Docker is now officially in Ubuntu. That makes Ubuntu 14.04 LTS the first enterprise grade Linux distribution to ship with Docker natively packaged, continuously tested, and instantly installable. Millions of Ubuntu servers are now never more than three commands away from launching or managing Linux container sandboxes, thanks to Docker.

sudo apt-get install docker.io
sudo docker.io pull ubuntu
sudo docker.io run -i -t ubuntu /bin/bash

18 Apr 2014 7:11pm GMT

Most expert users know how powerful the command line is on their Ubuntu system, but one of the common criticisms of it is that the commands themselves are hard to discover and remember the exact syntax for. To help a little bit with this I've created a small patch to the Ubuntu Terminal which adds entries into the HUD so that they can be searched by how people might think of the feature. Hopefully this will provide a way to introduce people to the command line, and provide experienced users with some commands that they might have not known about on their Ubuntu Phone. Let's look at one of the commands I added:

UnityActions.Action {
  text: i18n.tr("Networking Status")
  keywords: i18n.tr("Wireless;Ethernet;Access Points")
  onTriggered: ksession.sendText("\x03\nnm-tool\n")
}

This command quite simply prints out the status of the networking on the device. But some folks probably don't think of it as networking, they just want to search for the wireless status. By using the HUD keywords feature we're able to add a list of other possible search strings for the command. Now someone can type wireless status into the HUD and figure out the command that they need. This is a powerful way to discover new functionality. Plus (and this is really important) these can all be translated into their local language.

It is tradition in my family to spend this weekend looking for brightly colored eggs that have been hidden. If you update your terminal application I hope you'll be able to enjoy the same tradition this weekend.

18 Apr 2014 5:46pm GMT

So at last it's here. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

And I have to say 'Thank you' for pushing this out.

I am running Trusty Tahr for a long time now, while it was still in development on my workstation. And it's one of the best releases so far.

Even during development only some glitches were encountered, but were easily workarounded, and this is actually pretty amazing.

When you followed Ubuntu for some years now (and to some extend also invovled in pushing software to it), you know that this wasn't always the case.

We had a couple of really serious hickups, but this release was very handsome. I think Canonicals push towards automated QA and the upload pocket behaviour change were the right things to do.

Thanks Guys, for delivering this amazing release. You really can celebrate and drink a lot of booze and have a good meal (well, now that Jono is the definitive Ubuntu Smoker King, he could serve some delicious pulled pork or whatever he is able to smoke ;))

Again, thank you, you all know who you are. You guys are amazing. Rock On!

18 Apr 2014 3:13pm GMT

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
-To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch

These aren't purely my thoughts. I'm sure I read something somewhere that sparked them, but I don't have a link or citation, so I'm just being honest that I am not the source of all that I have written here, although I am using my words. Oh, and great book.

I've been thinking about this. I love the idea and I will always strive to learn about and understand other's perspectives. But, I feel inadequate, like if I am to be honest, I really cannot do this. Not completely, anyway.

No matter how hard we try, we will each still see things with some skewing from your own perspective. We can never really know what it's like to be that other person.

When you hear, see, or experience other people's lives you may try to put yourself in their shoes and consider how you would deal with life as it has been dealt to them. That is noble.

However, it is impossible for us to actually do so. We hear, see, and experience things differently and our history and emotional, spiritual, mental, and intellectual makeup and status affect that. We each create our own reality based on our experiences filtered through all those layers of what we call self.

You can live with someone your/their whole life but that doesn't mean you really understand their perspective. You may know intimate details or have a pretty good idea of what the other person is likely to think or do in certain situations based on past responses and patterns of behavior, but that is not really the same thing.

No matter how much we think we do, we are unable to climb fully into the mind and perspective of someone else. We are all made up of our perceptions, experiences of success and failures, societal programming, genders, and more. Humans are complex

To fully grasp another person's perspective in its purest form we would have to wipe clear all of who we are and then copy over to ourselves who the other person is. It is not possible to eliminate our biases this way.

I'm starting to think that we can never really climb inside someone else's skin, but we can hope to acquire a better understanding. The attempt is worth the effort, even if it can never be complete. We can learn to walk beside someone else. We can attempt to see things from their perspective. In doing so, we each hope we gave and gained something from it, drawing each of us a little bit closer to the other.

18 Apr 2014 1:26pm GMT

Yesterday I started work on an app that I personally want to use. I don't have a car, so I use services like Metro Bus, Metro Rail, Car2Go, and BikeShare around DC all the time. It's annoying to go to each different web page or app to get the information that I want, so I decided to write an app that combines it all for me in one place.

After asking around, I settled on a best practice for Ubuntu map apps, and I was pointed to this excellent code as a basis:
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~yohanboniface/osmtouch/trunk/view/head:/OSMTouch.qml

It was so easy and fun once I got started, that I decided to show the world. So, here we go.

I started with a "Simple UI" project. Then I deleted the default column that it started with, and I set the title of the Page to an empty string. While I was at it, I changed the height and width to be more like a phone's dimensions to make testing a little easier. So my starter code for an emply Window looks like this:

 import QtQuick 2.0  
 import Ubuntu.Components 0.1  
 import "components"  
 MainView {  
   objectName: "mainView"  
   applicationName: "com.ubuntu.developer.rick-rickspencer3.MapExample"  
   width: units.gu(40)  
   height: units.gu(60)  
   Page  
   {  
     title: i18n.tr("")  
   }  
 }  

So what's missing now is a map. First I need to import the parts of Qt where I get location and map information, so I add these imports:

 import QtPositioning 5.2  
 import QtLocation 5.0  

Then I can use the Map tag to add a Map to the MainView. I do four things in the Map to make it show up. First, I tell it to fill it's parent (normal for any component). Then I set it's center property. I choose to do this using a coordinate. Note that you can't make a coordinate in a declarative way, you have to construct it like below. The center property tells the map the latitude and longitude to be centered on. Then I choose the zoom level, which determines the scale of the map. Finally, I need to specify the plug in. For various reasons, I choose to use the Open Street Maps plugin, though feel free to experiment with others. So, a basic funcitonal map looks like this:

   Page  
   {  
     title: i18n.tr("")  
     Map  
     {  
       anchors.fill: parent  
       center: QtPositioning.coordinate(38.87, -77.045)  
       zoomLevel: 13  
       plugin: Plugin { name: "osm"}  
     }  
    }  

When I run it, I get a lot of functionality for free. On the desktop I can drag the map, and when I run the app on my phone or tablet, I can pinch to zoom in or out. All that functionality comes for free. Of course, you are free to add mapping controls as desired, but I find that map works well out of the box, at least on a device that supports pinch and zoom.

Typically, a map displays little pinpoints. These are often referred to as Points of Interest, or more typically "POI". It's delightfully easy to populate your map with POI using our old friend XmlListModel. First, you will need some XML that has location information. For this exmaple, I am going to use the Bike Share feed for Washington, DC. It's easy to get and to parse, so it makes a nice example. You can see the feed here:
https://www.capitalbikeshare.com/data/stations/bikeStations.xml

So let's use it to set up our XmlListModel. First, of course, we need to import the XmlListModel functionality.

 import QtQuick.XmlListModel 2.0  

Next, we'll make the list model, and use the query and Roles functionality to set up the model with the latitude and longitude of each POI inside the model. This is *exactly* like using the XmlListModel for a typical list view. Very cool.

   XmlListModel  
   {  
     id: bikeStationModel  
     source: "https://www.capitalbikeshare.com/data/stations/bikeStations.xml"  
     query: "/stations/station"  
     XmlRole { name: "lat"; query: "lat/string()"; isKey: true }  
     XmlRole { name: "lng"; query: "long/string()"; isKey: true }  
   }  

Now that I have my list model set up, it's time to display them on the Map. We don't do that with a ListView, but rather wtih a MapItemView. This works exactly the same as a ListView, except it displays items on a map instead of in a list. Just like a ListView I need a delegate that will translate use data from the each item in the XmlListModel to create a UI element. In this case, it's a MapQuickItem instead of a ListItem (or similar). A MapQuickItem needs to know 4 things.

1. The model where it will get the data. In this case, it's my XmlListModel, but it could be a javascript list or other model as well.
2. A latitude and longitude for the POI, which I set up as roles in the XmlListModel.
3. An offset for whatever I am using for POI so that it is positioned properly. In this case I have made a little pushpin image out of the bikeshare logo (I know it's bad I'll make a better one later :) ). The offset is set by anchorPoint, so I make the anchorPoint the bottom and center of of the pushpin.
4. Something to use for the POI. In this case, I choose to use an image. Note that it is important to use grid units, or the POI may appear too small on some devices, and too large on others. Grid Units make them "just right" on all devices, and ensure that users can click them on any device.

So, here is my MapItemView that goes *inside* the Map tag. It's a MapItemView for the map, after all.

       MapItemView  
       {  
         model: bikeStationModel  
         delegate: MapQuickItem  
         {  
          id: poiItem  
          coordinate: QtPositioning.coordinate(lat,lng)  
          anchorPoint.x: poiImage.width * 0.5  
          anchorPoint.y: poiImage.height  
          sourceItem: Image  
          {  
            id: poiImage  
            width: units.gu(2)  
            height: units.gu(2)  
            source: "bike_poi.png"  
          }  
         }  
       }  

Now when I run the app, the POI are displayed. As you would expect, when the user moves the Map, the MapItemView automatically displays the correct POI. It's really that easy.

If you want to add interactivity, that's easy, you can simply add a MouseArea to the Image and then use things like Ubuntu.Components.Popups to popup additional information about the POI.


This sample code is here: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~rick-rickspencer3/+junk/MapExample/view/head:/MapExample.qml

18 Apr 2014 1:10pm GMT

Kubuntu 14.04 LTS was released yesterday along with the all new KDE SC 4.13. Browsing around the internet this morning the feedback feels really good. Here's some of my favourite quotes.

spiros spiros on Google+

Thank you for this great release

César J. Pinto on Google+

My God… I'm very surprise with kubuntu… it feels more fast than unity and gnome. wow…. I just…. i have no words to describe my happiness

@srikrishnaholla on Twitter

Downloading #kubuntu 14.04 LTS. Man, I've missed #kde !

@gholmer on Twitter

Get it while it's hot! Newest Ubuntu with the king of desktop environments, KDE! #kubuntu http://www.kubuntu.org

@apachelogger on Twitter [OK he's not entirely neutral]

This is the best release so far! Such awesome, so #Kubuntu 14.04 LTS! http://goo.gl/jQFdZJ #bestreleaseever

@jotakinhan on Twitter

Using #kubuntu again after using other distros for long time and its great!

@LowEndGeek on Twitter

Re-visiting #kde on #kubuntu 14.04 Working much better than regular #ubuntu

One of the first reviews was on Tux Arena:

"It is a beautiful release and it will definitely be here to stay for quite some time"

And in my inbox:

From: Robert Kovacs

Subject: Excellent Release Kubuntu 14.04

Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:15:33 -0400

Thanks for all the hard work!. Kudos to the Kubuntu team. Just installed Kubuntu 14.04 and everything is working fine. Was using Kubuntu 12.04.3, which was also a great release.

Cheers!.
Bob Kovacs (USA)

18 Apr 2014 11:50am GMT