Monday, December 5, 2011

News from the Front or 12.04 Post Alpha1 Status

Sing for me, my angel of music!
 I should note that Ubuntu Studio didn't officially publish and test the Alpha1 ISO image.  But that isn't to say there weren't some stuffs going on :)

What's Developing
Even without a published ISO image, pre-alpha1 did see some work.  We fix some issues including:
  • adding 'indicator-sound-gtk2' to the seeds the give the sound indicator visibility again
  • removed 'dssi-vst' from the seeds to allow the meta packages to build due to a multi-arch library dependency issue
  • work on defining scope and content for the new website
  • resolved a "libavcodec-extra-53 conflicts with libavcodec53" conflict
  • began testing on a -lowlatency kernel for the repositories
Two issues resolve were pretty significant blockers as it prevented installation and testing.

In Progress
Currently I'm trying to get input from graphic artists and designers.  By getting to understand what tasks graphic artists and designers want to accomplish, the applications used, and the work flow they use, Ubuntu Studio can provide much better support for them.  I've already reached out the Libre Graphics Magazine people, heathenx, and Richard Querin because I like and respect what these people do.

I would love to have more input though!  If you do any graphics tasks, please send poke me with some information about what you do, what you use to do it, and the generalized work flow for it.  I really want to provide better support for graphic artists and designers.

Work on the new website continues and probably will continue for several weeks.

Kernel testing continues.  Although I am reminded that I need to send Steve and email.

I have been working on a specification for new artwork for the Ubuntu Studio plymouth theme, lightdm theme, and desktop wallpaper.  A major goal of this is develop a coherant thematic presence across all these images and also to adjust the color tone for the new theme.  Which leads into...

Finally, the last of the current progress is making preparations for transitioning to the Xubuntu theme settings which should be the majority of the remaining transition to XFCE.  Additional changes will be made, so it will not be the exact default Xubuntu settings, but it shall be very close.

in posterum
Some aspects of the settings transition will probably continue for several weeks.  I imagine this will at least include the plymouth and lightdm greeter themes.

When kernel testing is at a certain milestone, we should be pushing the -lowlatency kernel package to REVU so that it may be reviewed for entry into the repository.  Hopefully we can get this into REVU before Alpha 3.

And we also will be beginning preparations for transitioning Ubuntu Studio to a liveDVD image but I expect this will not happen until after Alpha 2.


Exciting times building up to an awesome LTS release!