Xubuntu Blog

A while ago, there was a little disagreement in the Xubuntu developer community. Since it did not look like the dispute was going to be resolved on the developer mailinglist, an online meeting was held led by Canonical’s Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon.

That meeting led to several decisions, the most important one being that Cody Somerville was appointed as Xubuntu’s project leader and assigned to create a strategy for Xubuntu, so that everybody knows where Xubuntu stands and what its goals are.

Well, Cody set to the task and, after gathering feedback at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, came up with the first draft of what is to be the Xubuntu Strategy Document.

This being a first draft, everybody is invited to send feedback to Cody’s email address cody-somerville@ubuntu.com.

My first impression was that Cody did a great job on this one: Xubuntu has a bright future ahead under his lead

Brian J. Tarricone posted the following message to the Xfce mailinglist:

As some of you already know, I’m in the process of applying to Google’s
Summer of Code as a mentoring organisation. Xfce applied in 2006, but
wasn’t accepted. I don’t really know why, but hopefully this year we
can do a bit better. To that end, I’ve created a few pages on our wiki,
and people have been working on them for the past couple weeks:

http://wiki.xfce.org/gsoc-2008-ideas
http://wiki.xfce.org/gsoc-2008-mentors
http://wiki.xfce.org/gsoc-2008-students

Now, we won’t know if we’ve been accepted into the program until March
17th. However, I’d like to generate some interest for our participation
in the program; in particular, I’d like to get some names on that
’students’ wiki page.

So, if you don’t mind, if you have a blog, or some other means of
publishing to a group of people (via means other than spam, of course),
could you please do a little advertising for us? Just point out that
we’re applying to the program, we’re looking for student participants,
and give a link to our wiki page (the main ‘ideas’ page).

Thanks!

He also posted the following on his blog:

While we haven’t been accepted into the program yet, we (Xfce) are applying to participate in the 2008 Google Summer of Code as a mentoring organisation. Please see our wiki page for more information, and add your name to the students list if you’d like to work on one of the projects. Feel free to add to the project ideas list as well.

If you’d like to act as a mentor, you still have a few more days before I submit the application. Add your name to the mentors list and email me to let me know.

The message is simple: if you’re a student that likes Xfce and would like to earn some money improving it over the summer, be sure to add your name to the list so Google can see there are students willing to participate, hopefully being a reason for approving Xfce.

If you own a personal website, a blog, or happen to know a student passionate about Xfce: spread the word! This is an excellent opportunity to improve upon our favourite desktop environment, so make sure Xfce can grab it!

Rahul Sundaram has announced the release of a new Fedora spin with - you guessed it - Xfce!

Hello Friends,

I am pleased to announce the immediate release of a brand new and sparkling, Fedora 8 Xfce Spin. Fedora Xfce Spin is a bootable Fedora Live CD image available for x86 and x86_64 architecture. It can be optionally installed to hard disk or converted into boot USB images and is ideal for Xfce fans and for users running Fedora on relatively low resource systems. As a additional bonus, this release rolls in updates for Fedora 8 released till yesterday (2008/02/12).

Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment available in Fedora. Designed for productivity, it loads and executes applications fast, while conserving system resources. More information at http://xfce.org

Nicu has posted some screenshots, and it looks as if this spin-off is really focusing on being light-weight and minimalistic. Some Xubuntu users might want to give this a try - being based on Fedora might prevent the speed decrease Xubuntu has by being based on Ubuntu.

In any case, seeing another big distribution providing an Xfce version is always good news, so it will be interesting to read some reviews. Have you tried it? If so, how did you like it?

Windows is not really friendly towards other operating systems - when you installed it while another operating system is already installed, it will replace the bootloader with its own, without including any reference to that other operating system - preventing you from booting it. This is why it is often recommended to install Xubuntu after Windows. Sometimes, however, installed Windows afterwards is unavoidable. Restoring Xubuntu’s bootloader (GRUB) can be a pain.

Luckily, David Mooney comes to the rescue: in a post to the xubuntu-users mailinglist, he explains how to restore GRUB:

If for some odd reason you missed having the Windows operating system and you decided to install it on another partition, you will notice your GRUB is missing afterwords. This usually happens and is a huge headache for those trying to get their GRUB back. Here’s what you need to do to get it back:

Put your bootable Ubuntu/Xubuntu install disk in the CD drive and run it. Instead of installing anything, click on the menu to open the terminal application.

In terminal mode, type the following:

sudo grub
find /boot/grub/stage1
root (x,y)
setup (x)
quit
sudo shutdown “now” -r

The resulting “find” command will display something like (hd0,1). In this example, you would then type root (hd0,1) and then setup (hd0) in the above area. These numbers might be different; that’s why I included the “find” command so that folks who might have their Ubuntu partitions located either in front or behind their Windows installation or on a completely separate internal/external hard drive so that you will get the appropriate/correct setup numbers.

Ok, now you got your GRUB-on, but what about that darn GRUB menu? It’s not displaying what you want it to display? Well, let just see here…

Upon reboot, select “Recovery Mode”, usuaully the second option down on the GRUB menu. This will allow you to boot into the root. Once you’re in the terminal mode, type:

editor /boot/grub/menu.lst

Well, the rest is pretty much self explanatory. There should be enough comments in the menu.lst to direct you to what you can and cannot do to your GRUB menu.lst.

I usually put the Windows option at the top of the menu so that others (none-Linux users) who use my computer can find it easily if they have to do a reboot. Your Windows installation will have a different root than your Ubuntu/Xubuntu, but it’s usually automatically placed by GRUB once it’s set up again (like the above). I also recommend removing the timeout option as this is sometimes annoying. Have fun!

-David

P.S.- If you have a question, I’ll be happy to answer to the best of my ability.

Thanks David!

Ryan Paul reports that Andrea Cimitan, developer of GTK theme engine Murrine, has added support for transparent widgets. Yep. This means that themes using this engine can now be partly transparent.

If you want to see what it looks like, go and see Cimi’s blogpost. Yes, it does look beautiful.

The Murrine engine is used by Xubuntu since 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”, for the MurrinaStormCloud theme. This probably means that, in future versions, Xubuntu, too, can enjoy transparency. “But what if your computer does not support it?”, I hear you asking. Well, no worries there:

The translucency effects obviously require a compositing window manager, but the theme engine is designed so that the widgets will simply be rendered without transparency when no compositing window manager is present.

And if that wasn’t enough, in a last note, Cimi points out:

And yes, it is FAST!

I can’t wait

It all started with an article on the Washington Post blog on a new software “toolkit” by the Motion Picture Association of America. According to the article, the MPAA was urging some of the nation’s largest universities to deploy custom software designed to pinpoint students who may be using the schools’ networks to illegally download pirated movies.

One word in a paragraph in that article raised some eyebrows in #xubuntu-devel (an IRC channel) though:

First, an explanation of what the toolkit is and how it works. The University Toolkit is essentially an operating system (xubuntu) that you can boot up from a CD-ROM.

Wait. Xubuntu? The screenshots showed the Xubuntu boot screen. Furthermore, apparently the MPAA had modified some of the source code without providing it anywhere, even though most software in Xubuntu requires that programs of which the source has been modified and which are distributed also provide access to those modified sources. If this was not complied to, it is considered a violation of copyright law. Additionally, since Canonical owns the trademarks for Xubuntu the inclusion of Xubuntu’s logo would also have been a trademark violation, since it could harm the reputation of Xubuntu.

Anyway, the article got submitted to Digg.com with a description of the suspicions, where it received a lot of votes and made the front page, which is a guarantee that it’ll be viewed by a lot of people. Apparently Mathew Garret, an Ubuntu developer, noticed it too (I don’t know whether it was because of the Digg link, but he noticed) and contacted the MPAA. Upon not receiving a reply, he contacted their Internet Service Provider with a takedown request. And even though he did not receive a meaningful reply, there you have it: the University Toolkit’s homepage no longer provides a download link! (Though according to the MPAA, they removed the link themselves without the ISP being involved)

That, in turn, got picked up by news site Slashdot (tags: haha, gnu, pwned, mafiaa, tasteyourownmedicine - don’t you love them ) which again got picked up by several other sites - and again on the frontpage of Digg.

And with that, the circle is closed: Xubuntu continues to do its thing and look pretty and the MPAA can continue suing people without misusing open source code. Justice has prevailed!

Or not? The MPAA is planning on fixing the license violations and then make the software available again. However, would they also solve the trademark violations? We shall see…

As mentioned on Xubuntu.org, the Xubuntu development team is in a great need for testers of the latest version of Xubuntu, 7.10 (the Gutsy Gibbon). Being the good Xubuntu citizen that I am, I intend to spread this message you any potential testers (you) so the Xubuntu team is not flooded with bug reports after the final version is released.

Bugs, if any, are most likely to be small bugs anyway, so if you intend to upgrade to Gutsy once it is released, it might be a better idea to do so now in order to improve the quality of your favourite Linux distribution.

Convinced? Go and download the latest build, burn it onto a CD and install it (or try running it into a virtual machine if you don’t want to take a risk) and report your bugs on Launchpad!

The Xubuntu developers are counting on you

Today the xubuntu-devel mailinglist received this message from Mario Limonciello from Mythbuntu:

Hi guys,

I’m leading the Mythbuntu effort, and for our next alpha we are
switching over to Xfce for our base. We were previously doing an
openbox/feh/idesk method, but Xfce is much prettier.

So in our migration over, there were a few items that I wanted to iron
out the proper way to do things.

(…)

This is great news, not only for Mythbuntu users (which now get to enjoy the finesse of Xfce), but also for Xubuntu because, as Jani Monoses put it:

it’s nice to see getting more users, testers and devs for
xubuntu even if indirectly

Mythbuntu seems to be a good citizen, which means Xubuntu will be even more polished:

The Mythbuntu team works closely with all of the relevant package maintainers in Ubuntu to make sure that our changes, customizations, and enhancements are included within Ubuntu for other users, teams, and projects to take advantage of. Also, all scripts used for our build process are GPL licensed and available to anyone interested on our launchpad bzr branch at https://code.launchpad.net/~ mythbuntu/mythbuntu/mythbuntu

What is Mythbuntu you ask? Well, according to their website:

Mythbuntu is an Ubuntu derivative focused upon setting up a standalone MythTV system similar to Knoppmyth or Mythdora. At the time, it is not a Canonical sanctioned project because of the licensing on several of the MythTV dependencies. Mainly, it can be seen as a preconfigured Ubuntu install for mythtv usage. All unnecessary applications such as OpenOffice, Evolution, and a full Gnome desktop are not installed for a Mythbuntu installation. At any time, a user may choose to install ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, or xubuntu-desktop and add a full desktop onto their installation.

Then of course you also need to know what MythTV is. Well, Wikipedia answers that question:

MythTV is a Linux application that turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or Home Theater Personal Computer. MythTV is free software licensed under the GPL. It can be considered as an alternative to Windows Media Center, although MythTV predates Windows Media Center.

Congrats Mythbuntu community, and welcome to the team!

DesktopLinux.com published the results of their yearly enquiry on Linux on the desktop. (Admittedly, I’m a bit late, but I was on holiday.) There were some remarkable things among the results - de enquiry was taken by twice as much people compared to last year, SUSE grown a lot, Fedora shrunk a lot - but according to me, most remarkable were the results concern the use of desktop environments. And then I don’t even mean the fact that Gnome - for the first time - was ahead of KDE.
No, what struck me most was, obviously, that Xfce was users by 8 percent of those who filled in the enquiry. Now, nobody will deny that, since version 4.4 was released, the number of users of Xfce grew, but 8 percent is a number to take into account (almost one in ten!). And when you then realize that 20% (one out of five!) uses neither Gnome nor KDE, it doesn’t seem too weird to wonder whether there is room for another, third big desktop environment. Heck, it’s already remarkable Xfce isn’t mentioned among “Others”!

Of course, as Xfce added more features its speed deteriorated a bit, and for some this will have been reason to switch to even lighter DE’s like Fluxbox or IceWM (can you even call those DE’s?). On the other hand, Xfce still is a lot faster than Gnome and KDE, and old computers of today are more powerful than old computers of a couple of years ago And the combination of features and speed (even on less old computers) is a very attractive one for some.

Of course, KDE’s new version, version 4, will attract many new users towards KDE, but I suspect that most of those people will come from the Gnome world (making KDE nr. 1 again). The difference between the two will decrease again, and if Xfce’s user base keeps growing, the three will be quite even indeed.

However, at the moment Xfce has far less developers as Gnome and KDE have, which can slow down growth quite a lot. That’s why, among Xubuntu’s developer, there is currently a discussion ongoing about whether Xubuntu should ship with more Gnome software. The reason for this is that, currently, Xubuntu ships with a few programs of less quality, with Xfburn, the CD-burning software, being the worst of all. In fact: if no alternative software can be found, probably no burning software will be shipped at all! Shipping Gnome software would raise Xubuntu’s quality feature-wise, and also brings the certainty that they are still in development and will continue to improve.

Unfortunately, there are also a few downsides to shipping Gnome applications. Some people are afraid that Xubuntu’s identify will be lost, that Xubuntu will just become “Ubuntu with another desktop environment”. Others fear that Xubuntu’s speed will deteriorate enormously.

Altogether, it comes down to the question of what is more important: speed or features? And this raises the question on Xubuntu’s target. For example, Ubuntu aims at being user-friendly, Edubuntu on use in classrooms, etc. Do we want a lightning-fast distribution, or a distro with a good balance between user-friendlyness and customizability? A question that should not be answered by the developers, but by the users of Xubuntu. You.

This article was previously published in Dutch on Digiplace.nl.

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