The network bug is still active and on my mind. It even lives in a Firefox bookmark folder for active Launchpad bugs.
I've been in touch with the person who appears to be most responsible for the patch that disables the interface in gnome-network-admin. Unfortunately he has been too busy to attend to this situation but I'm going to keep following up with him though.
However, I consider user's experience as one of the top priorities for Ubuntu Studio. As such, the inability to configure an internet connection, especially for those on wifi or without routers, should be viewed as a major regression in my opinion.
Therefore, I am considering switching gnome-network-admin to network-manager which should give access to network interface configuration and also bring Ubuntu Studio closer in line to what Ubuntu desktop are doing as well.
This is not a definitive decision at this point, but I would consider a flawed solution better than a broken solution at this point. However imperfect the situation may be, we simply need to find the most optimal solution to improve usability.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Binomial Belonging...And Other Short Stories!
A quick update on a matter of import or two.
Ubuntu Membership
For over a month I had been preparing my application* for Ubuntu Membership. Two days ago I attended the membership hearing and was accepted. Yay!
Several people whose suggestions and opinions I value had prompted me to seek membership. But I also have another motive, as a Ubuntu Member I can get this blog syndicated to Planet Ubuntu.
I'm not into posting at Planet Ubuntu for the money, fame, or companionship. No, no, no, it's not about me. I'm looking to reach a wider audience to educate them about Ubuntu Studio. Additionally, this wider audience probably isn't already being informed about Ubuntu Studio. If we were playing Scrabble this would be a triple word score and I would have used two X's and one Z!
Hopefully by next weekend I will have finished the requisite machinations and my first post to Planet Ubuntu will occur. Or maybe not, perhaps flesh eating bacteria or ruthless aliens might get me first (I'm not worried about zombies; head shots)!
The Fridge Interview
I have a scheduled interview with The Fridge.
This is a Big Deal, and in a rare twist, I'm at a loss of words to describe this. Well, not really, a few words are available:
Dumbfounded.
Nervousness.
Unworthy.
Antidisestablishmentarianism.
Well, the last word really is not applicable to The Fridge interview, but that word is almost always available to me when I'm wordsmithing.
But seriously, some crazy things have been happening lately to me in regards to Ubuntu Studio, which some may describe as serendipitous, and this is just another typifying occurrence.
Nonetheless, I believe questions should be emailed to me third week of July. Given my nature of loquaciousness and verbosity I hope there aren't many questions. Just kidding; bring 'em on!
Hopefully we can transcend the typical interview paradigm into a shout out for Ubuntu Studio and get some new people interested into helping.
Art(work)
For several months I had considered making an "I Use Ubuntu Studio" button so people can add them to their blogs and web pages. I felt this was a great way for people to express their passion for Ubuntu Studio. And it is free advertising.
Huh? You don't really know what kind of button I am talking about? Oh, well, it looks like this:
An email came through the ubuntustudio-users mail list asking about this which galvanized me into action. So I made several. The work involved was minimal really, maybe around three hours for the lot.
And the time spent researching ('cause I've used Inkscape three times now!) the mechanics vs. actually doing the work was almost at unity. So, my larger point at this moment is the Inkscape is superlatively powerful and silly easy.
The real weak link is me because I'm not a graphics artist type guy. While I have a modicum of creativity with audio and real instruments, the same cannot be said with art and design. So I'm rather open to suggestions or ideas since the ultimate goal is to create some design work for Ubuntu Studio.
Et Al.
Ubuntu Studio Maverick is rolling around pretty good as we have some good improvements coming soon. I would like to post about it pretty soon time permitting.
One particular to mention, as a teaser to the next post, is JACK and Pulse Audio's behavior in Maverick. Remember, one of the goals of Maverick was to improve how they work together.
My intention is to write the next post within the week, perhaps it can be sooner if my attention is not diverted by other issues, like uninstallable binaries and ISO builds that don't actually, erm, build.
Until next time.
* Maco commented that he liked my icons that I used. Heh.
Ubuntu Membership
For over a month I had been preparing my application* for Ubuntu Membership. Two days ago I attended the membership hearing and was accepted. Yay!
Several people whose suggestions and opinions I value had prompted me to seek membership. But I also have another motive, as a Ubuntu Member I can get this blog syndicated to Planet Ubuntu.
I'm not into posting at Planet Ubuntu for the money, fame, or companionship. No, no, no, it's not about me. I'm looking to reach a wider audience to educate them about Ubuntu Studio. Additionally, this wider audience probably isn't already being informed about Ubuntu Studio. If we were playing Scrabble this would be a triple word score and I would have used two X's and one Z!
Hopefully by next weekend I will have finished the requisite machinations and my first post to Planet Ubuntu will occur. Or maybe not, perhaps flesh eating bacteria or ruthless aliens might get me first (I'm not worried about zombies; head shots)!
The Fridge Interview
I have a scheduled interview with The Fridge.
This is a Big Deal, and in a rare twist, I'm at a loss of words to describe this. Well, not really, a few words are available:
Dumbfounded.
Nervousness.
Unworthy.
Antidisestablishmentarianism.
Well, the last word really is not applicable to The Fridge interview, but that word is almost always available to me when I'm wordsmithing.
But seriously, some crazy things have been happening lately to me in regards to Ubuntu Studio, which some may describe as serendipitous, and this is just another typifying occurrence.
Nonetheless, I believe questions should be emailed to me third week of July. Given my nature of loquaciousness and verbosity I hope there aren't many questions. Just kidding; bring 'em on!
Hopefully we can transcend the typical interview paradigm into a shout out for Ubuntu Studio and get some new people interested into helping.
Art(work)
For several months I had considered making an "I Use Ubuntu Studio" button so people can add them to their blogs and web pages. I felt this was a great way for people to express their passion for Ubuntu Studio. And it is free advertising.
Huh? You don't really know what kind of button I am talking about? Oh, well, it looks like this:
An email came through the ubuntustudio-users mail list asking about this which galvanized me into action. So I made several. The work involved was minimal really, maybe around three hours for the lot.
And the time spent researching ('cause I've used Inkscape three times now!) the mechanics vs. actually doing the work was almost at unity. So, my larger point at this moment is the Inkscape is superlatively powerful and silly easy.
The real weak link is me because I'm not a graphics artist type guy. While I have a modicum of creativity with audio and real instruments, the same cannot be said with art and design. So I'm rather open to suggestions or ideas since the ultimate goal is to create some design work for Ubuntu Studio.
Et Al.
Ubuntu Studio Maverick is rolling around pretty good as we have some good improvements coming soon. I would like to post about it pretty soon time permitting.
One particular to mention, as a teaser to the next post, is JACK and Pulse Audio's behavior in Maverick. Remember, one of the goals of Maverick was to improve how they work together.
My intention is to write the next post within the week, perhaps it can be sooner if my attention is not diverted by other issues, like uninstallable binaries and ISO builds that don't actually, erm, build.
Until next time.
* Maco commented that he liked my icons that I used. Heh.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
15 Seconds of Fame...14...13...12...
I had been wanting to donate and email the Linux Outlaws for some time and so with a confluence of influences I finally did.
While it's more like six seconds of fame, my email and donation are mentioned in Linux Outlaws Episode 153.
Incidentally, this started a nice dialogue with Dan beginning with me asking him for suggestion on how we could improve Ubuntu Studio.*
After he shared his thoughts about Ubuntu Studio I also mentioned that I mislead him slightly by mentioning that I was "working with the Ubuntu Studio developers" which is not untrue, just not thoroughly complete. I really don't want to wield that title like an Object of Power, rather I view myself as a servant to the Ubuntu Studio users and their needs.
Notwithstanding, Dan mentioned a possibility of an interview which would be a nice change to ask for people to help with testing and documentation creation.
Additionally, I told Dan about my wirblewind RPM music and asked if he would consider it for Rathole Radio. This would be second great event for me.
The first was being interviewed by the Open Source Musicians Podcast. Having music written and performed by me featured on a podcast would be a close second!
Even if he doesn't choose something I've already done (and mind you, the RPM stuff is a little rough), I keep writing music so perhaps something later on.
Either way about my music, I just hope to keep communication open with the Linux Outlaws (as they're both fab blokes) and hopefully plug Ubuntu Studio from time to time.
* This question really applies to ANY Ubuntu Studio user. This is a serious statement: If anyone has a suggestion for improving Ubuntu Studio then please email me at scottalavenderin@gmail.com
While it's more like six seconds of fame, my email and donation are mentioned in Linux Outlaws Episode 153.
Incidentally, this started a nice dialogue with Dan beginning with me asking him for suggestion on how we could improve Ubuntu Studio.*
After he shared his thoughts about Ubuntu Studio I also mentioned that I mislead him slightly by mentioning that I was "working with the Ubuntu Studio developers" which is not untrue, just not thoroughly complete. I really don't want to wield that title like an Object of Power, rather I view myself as a servant to the Ubuntu Studio users and their needs.
Notwithstanding, Dan mentioned a possibility of an interview which would be a nice change to ask for people to help with testing and documentation creation.
Additionally, I told Dan about my wirblewind RPM music and asked if he would consider it for Rathole Radio. This would be second great event for me.
The first was being interviewed by the Open Source Musicians Podcast. Having music written and performed by me featured on a podcast would be a close second!
Even if he doesn't choose something I've already done (and mind you, the RPM stuff is a little rough), I keep writing music so perhaps something later on.
Either way about my music, I just hope to keep communication open with the Linux Outlaws (as they're both fab blokes) and hopefully plug Ubuntu Studio from time to time.
* This question really applies to ANY Ubuntu Studio user. This is a serious statement: If anyone has a suggestion for improving Ubuntu Studio then please email me at scottalavenderin@gmail.com
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Advocacy
Just a quick note to mention some of my advocacy projects. Well, given my loquacious nature it probably will not be "quick", but it shall be oil free.
When Words are Not Enough
While I am free with my verbal advocacy to friends and colleagues at work I have felt that I needed to take it to the next step. I was clear that I had several people interested in Ubuntu, and specifically Ubuntu Studio in many cases, but it was clear that I had not sealed the deal. However, to be honest I had already assisted two people into Ubuntu but it had been so long ago I don't usually consider them.
I am an hour's drive north of Houston, which has a rather vibrant Loco. However, most meetings tend to be on the south side of Houston. This makes it rather impractical for me to attend meetings.
Therefore I had been considering trying to create a Montgomery/Conroe Loco (MoCo LoCo). This group might even attract several of the Houston members that live on the north side.
With the confluence of events I felt it was time to do a presentation.
I Give You Ubuntu Studio
After a month of false starts I set a date that most of the interesting people agreed would be good and began preparations.
However, I did fail to aggressively remind people of the scheduled meeting.
With eldest son and daughter in tow I set up for the meeting (using one of the big conference rooms and project at work) at the appointed day and hour and waiting for people to arrive. I was disappointed.
Counting the pizza delivery two individuals showed up. Luckily the other person was Mark whom I felt was the most interested.
We all ate lots of pizza and enjoyed what I felt was a pretty good presentation. Considering the amount of questions that I was asked afterward I felt it was well received as well.
The video is hosted with Vimeo and can be found here. The video is quite long (over an hour) and I fear I misspoke a few times. However I still feel it is a good introduction to recording with JACK, Hydrogen, Ardour, LV2, and Rakarrack.
I'll add a like to the Open Office Impress slide show in this blog later.
Resonance Cascade
Several people felt quite guilty on Monday morning. More, however, were even more intrigued by my description of the presentation.
Three out of the five at work asked me if I would do it again so that they could attend. I agreed to a future, if currently unspecified, date.
This will give me time to moderate my presentation syllabus slightly and make it more refined, concise, and effective hopefully.
When Words are Not Enough
While I am free with my verbal advocacy to friends and colleagues at work I have felt that I needed to take it to the next step. I was clear that I had several people interested in Ubuntu, and specifically Ubuntu Studio in many cases, but it was clear that I had not sealed the deal. However, to be honest I had already assisted two people into Ubuntu but it had been so long ago I don't usually consider them.
I am an hour's drive north of Houston, which has a rather vibrant Loco. However, most meetings tend to be on the south side of Houston. This makes it rather impractical for me to attend meetings.
Therefore I had been considering trying to create a Montgomery/Conroe Loco (MoCo LoCo). This group might even attract several of the Houston members that live on the north side.
With the confluence of events I felt it was time to do a presentation.
I Give You Ubuntu Studio
After a month of false starts I set a date that most of the interesting people agreed would be good and began preparations.
However, I did fail to aggressively remind people of the scheduled meeting.
With eldest son and daughter in tow I set up for the meeting (using one of the big conference rooms and project at work) at the appointed day and hour and waiting for people to arrive. I was disappointed.
Counting the pizza delivery two individuals showed up. Luckily the other person was Mark whom I felt was the most interested.
We all ate lots of pizza and enjoyed what I felt was a pretty good presentation. Considering the amount of questions that I was asked afterward I felt it was well received as well.
The video is hosted with Vimeo and can be found here. The video is quite long (over an hour) and I fear I misspoke a few times. However I still feel it is a good introduction to recording with JACK, Hydrogen, Ardour, LV2, and Rakarrack.
I'll add a like to the Open Office Impress slide show in this blog later.
Resonance Cascade
Several people felt quite guilty on Monday morning. More, however, were even more intrigued by my description of the presentation.
Three out of the five at work asked me if I would do it again so that they could attend. I agreed to a future, if currently unspecified, date.
This will give me time to moderate my presentation syllabus slightly and make it more refined, concise, and effective hopefully.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Bug Updates
Periodically I like to review the existing bug reports for Ubuntu Studio and related applications and see if any can be addressed. Maintaining the quality of Ubuntu Studio is an important consideration for me and addressing issues that degrade usability is a large constitute of this.
This should be the first of many 'Bug Updates' posts in which I describe the bug and how they were fixed, with a smile on my face and parsing 'yes' as affirmative in your ardour.rc file.
qjackctl
Two bugs will be discussed about qjackctl, one significant and the other annoying. The annoying one will be discussed first.
This annoying bug manifests as a missing close button on all child windows in qjackctl. All the additional windows that can be opened in qjackctl, e.g. connections, messages, patchbay, can only be closed by clicking on the button in qjackctl that opened them. You can read more about it at Bug #447793.
The second, and more significant in my opinion, is a bug that prevent qjackctl from recognizing renamed tracks in Ardour.
Typically, I like to rename my Ardour tracks using pertinent names (e.g. rhythm1, solo1, bass, drums), however qjackctl would not recognize them. Even if the Refresh button was clicked. The only way for qjackctl to recognize them was to restart qjackctl, which is arguably not a very elegant solution. You can read more about it at Bug #490436.
Both of these bugs have been addressed by upstream and within Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Studio 10.10 Maverick Meerkat will contain qjackctl-0.3.6 which contains bug fixes.
Additionally, I have built qjackctl-0.3.6 for 10.04 Lucid Lynx in my PPA.
Ardour
Ardour also had a significant bug "recently". I believe the bug has possibly existed throughout the entire Ardour 2.8.x series but has only been filed in Ubuntu lately.
This bug renders the track mute button disabled. The immediate fix is to right click on the mute button and select the which of the various mute options you want to enable, but any new track will also be originally disabled.
Editing the ~/.ardour2/ardour.rc file will fix any new tracks in existing projects and tracks for all new projects.
You can read more about it at Bug #584786.
A patch was applied to ardour-2.8.7 (also a new upstream version) and is included in Ubuntu Studio 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.
However, I have not placed this into my Lucid PPA yet because upstream has resolved the issue and released Ardour 2.8.8.
I will contact Adrian Knoth shortly to ask if he can get ardour-2.8.8 into Debian so we can sync if for Ubuntu. Not only is Mr. Knoth a member of the Debian Multimedia Team but he has also been very helpful in the past to get Ardour built and into Debian. Hats off to Mr. Knoth.
Disabled Network Interface
Sometime back, Ubuntu Studio choose to abandon network-manager because it induces additional and appreciable latency when recording audio. A less dynamic solution was found in gnome-network-admin.
However, it was not recognized originally that the user interface had been disabled in gnome-network-admin preventing users from actively configuring their network connections.
You can read more about it at Bug #570828.
Sadly, this bug has not been resolved as of this post. Someone has been contacted about removing the patch that disables the user interface but action has not been taken yet.
Our goal is to have this bug resolved in time for 10.04.01 and 10.10 Maverick.
This should be the first of many 'Bug Updates' posts in which I describe the bug and how they were fixed, with a smile on my face and parsing 'yes' as affirmative in your ardour.rc file.
qjackctl
Two bugs will be discussed about qjackctl, one significant and the other annoying. The annoying one will be discussed first.
This annoying bug manifests as a missing close button on all child windows in qjackctl. All the additional windows that can be opened in qjackctl, e.g. connections, messages, patchbay, can only be closed by clicking on the button in qjackctl that opened them. You can read more about it at Bug #447793.
The second, and more significant in my opinion, is a bug that prevent qjackctl from recognizing renamed tracks in Ardour.
Typically, I like to rename my Ardour tracks using pertinent names (e.g. rhythm1, solo1, bass, drums), however qjackctl would not recognize them. Even if the Refresh button was clicked. The only way for qjackctl to recognize them was to restart qjackctl, which is arguably not a very elegant solution. You can read more about it at Bug #490436.
Both of these bugs have been addressed by upstream and within Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Studio 10.10 Maverick Meerkat will contain qjackctl-0.3.6 which contains bug fixes.
Additionally, I have built qjackctl-0.3.6 for 10.04 Lucid Lynx in my PPA.
Ardour
Ardour also had a significant bug "recently". I believe the bug has possibly existed throughout the entire Ardour 2.8.x series but has only been filed in Ubuntu lately.
This bug renders the track mute button disabled. The immediate fix is to right click on the mute button and select the which of the various mute options you want to enable, but any new track will also be originally disabled.
Editing the ~/.ardour2/ardour.rc file will fix any new tracks in existing projects and tracks for all new projects.
You can read more about it at Bug #584786.
A patch was applied to ardour-2.8.7 (also a new upstream version) and is included in Ubuntu Studio 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.
However, I have not placed this into my Lucid PPA yet because upstream has resolved the issue and released Ardour 2.8.8.
I will contact Adrian Knoth shortly to ask if he can get ardour-2.8.8 into Debian so we can sync if for Ubuntu. Not only is Mr. Knoth a member of the Debian Multimedia Team but he has also been very helpful in the past to get Ardour built and into Debian. Hats off to Mr. Knoth.
Disabled Network Interface
Sometime back, Ubuntu Studio choose to abandon network-manager because it induces additional and appreciable latency when recording audio. A less dynamic solution was found in gnome-network-admin.
However, it was not recognized originally that the user interface had been disabled in gnome-network-admin preventing users from actively configuring their network connections.
You can read more about it at Bug #570828.
Sadly, this bug has not been resolved as of this post. Someone has been contacted about removing the patch that disables the user interface but action has not been taken yet.
Our goal is to have this bug resolved in time for 10.04.01 and 10.10 Maverick.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Almost, But Not Quite, Entirely Unlike Tea
Tales of belonging, public speaking, and discourse. And not a Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser in sight.
Ubuntu Membership
I've begun my application for Ubuntu Membership on my wiki.ubuntu.com personal wiki page.
Other than the status it provides I'm not sure that I will see much benefit, but I've been encouraged by a few key individuals to complete this and therefore I shall. When good guidance is proffered I am not one to question it.
However, I am reminded that there is one definitive benefit from membership that I do desire; syndication on Planet Ubuntu. It is this medium that I expect to leverage and bring Ubuntu Studio more to the fore of mass consciousness. Oh, aye!
But given my personality I feel compelled that my application not only demonstrate, but also embody, the concept of thoroughness. And although I probably have enough done and probably should start the process proper, I feel I still need to develop a few more aspects of my application.
Since other tasks are being juggled concurrently I would expect completion by this weekend. Then I can request testimonials, and finally, formally apply to one of the regional boards.
I think there may be some difficulty getting some of the boards to evaluate any application, much less my own. The America's Board has applications pending from December of 2009. The Middle East Board has recently announced a June 1st meeting, which may be too soon. However, the Asia Board appears to have one every month.
I'll shoot for the Middle East Board meeting if I can meet a few milestones in the next two days, otherwise I'll wait for the next Asia Board meeting.
Either way I'll be happy to have the application ready and can move onto other activities requiring my attention.
Open Source Musician's Interview
The other interesting thing to mention is my interview on the Open Source Musician Podcast.
Dan and Steve are super nice guys and really deserve credit for creating a bit of an grass roots groundswell around open source and musicians. Their IRC channel (#opensourcemusicians on Freenode) always seems to have activity and usually has some interesting things going on.
Anyway, Ricardo (rlameiro) set the whole thing in motion and it was supposed to be me and stochastic. Stochastic, however, missed the interview and I did it alone.
I had listened to several episodes before so I basically knew what to expect. As I said before, Dan (who I think has a voice made for radio) and Steve are easy going guys so it was a relaxed event and I think it came out pretty good.
You can download and listen to the interview here.
My main box had a Hardy install (my main recording partition) and various Lucid Beta installs since we were in the middle of testing Lucid, therefore I used my laptop with a vanilla Karmic install to record the interview. I ended up rather disappointed with how I sound; I recorded it using a rather inexpensive microphone headset, Pulse Audio, and Skype, the result was my voice sounded very tinny and had a discernible buzz.
But overall I was very happy with the interview and look forward to doing another one with them when I have something worthwhile to tell them again.
Communication
A hallmark I would like to develop is consistent communication with the users, which encourages reciprocative discourse or actions.
A simple post, email, or news item should help to keep the community informed, building a sense of trust and commitment. A 21th century Fireside Chat with FDR, if you will allow the comparison.
In this format, communication probably will not take the form of long, laborious missives. Rather, it will likely be short and to the point.
Examples might include:
And hopefully, an informed and educated community results in an active and involved community.
Ubuntu Membership
I've begun my application for Ubuntu Membership on my wiki.ubuntu.com personal wiki page.
Other than the status it provides I'm not sure that I will see much benefit, but I've been encouraged by a few key individuals to complete this and therefore I shall. When good guidance is proffered I am not one to question it.
However, I am reminded that there is one definitive benefit from membership that I do desire; syndication on Planet Ubuntu. It is this medium that I expect to leverage and bring Ubuntu Studio more to the fore of mass consciousness. Oh, aye!
But given my personality I feel compelled that my application not only demonstrate, but also embody, the concept of thoroughness. And although I probably have enough done and probably should start the process proper, I feel I still need to develop a few more aspects of my application.
Since other tasks are being juggled concurrently I would expect completion by this weekend. Then I can request testimonials, and finally, formally apply to one of the regional boards.
I think there may be some difficulty getting some of the boards to evaluate any application, much less my own. The America's Board has applications pending from December of 2009. The Middle East Board has recently announced a June 1st meeting, which may be too soon. However, the Asia Board appears to have one every month.
I'll shoot for the Middle East Board meeting if I can meet a few milestones in the next two days, otherwise I'll wait for the next Asia Board meeting.
Either way I'll be happy to have the application ready and can move onto other activities requiring my attention.
Open Source Musician's Interview
The other interesting thing to mention is my interview on the Open Source Musician Podcast.
Dan and Steve are super nice guys and really deserve credit for creating a bit of an grass roots groundswell around open source and musicians. Their IRC channel (#opensourcemusicians on Freenode) always seems to have activity and usually has some interesting things going on.
Anyway, Ricardo (rlameiro) set the whole thing in motion and it was supposed to be me and stochastic. Stochastic, however, missed the interview and I did it alone.
I had listened to several episodes before so I basically knew what to expect. As I said before, Dan (who I think has a voice made for radio) and Steve are easy going guys so it was a relaxed event and I think it came out pretty good.
You can download and listen to the interview here.
My main box had a Hardy install (my main recording partition) and various Lucid Beta installs since we were in the middle of testing Lucid, therefore I used my laptop with a vanilla Karmic install to record the interview. I ended up rather disappointed with how I sound; I recorded it using a rather inexpensive microphone headset, Pulse Audio, and Skype, the result was my voice sounded very tinny and had a discernible buzz.
But overall I was very happy with the interview and look forward to doing another one with them when I have something worthwhile to tell them again.
Communication
A hallmark I would like to develop is consistent communication with the users, which encourages reciprocative discourse or actions.
A simple post, email, or news item should help to keep the community informed, building a sense of trust and commitment. A 21th century Fireside Chat with FDR, if you will allow the comparison.
In this format, communication probably will not take the form of long, laborious missives. Rather, it will likely be short and to the point.
Examples might include:
- informing users of project direction and goals
- soliciting user suggestions opinions
- updating users of project goal accomplishment
- reminding users of upcoming milestones
- and requesting user testing
And hopefully, an informed and educated community results in an active and involved community.
Friday, May 14, 2010
The Best Laid Schemes o' Mice an' Men
I've been queried about my views of Ubuntu Studio's future; therefore, I will expound some of their intricacies now. All while serendipitously keeping your window button firmly planted on the right side of your window and in the correct order.
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
Intrinsically I tend to gravitate towards order and structure. It's not a neurosis, I can function within chaos (and sometimes it is fun to do so), but I typically prefer not to do so.
Mainly it's that I'm an objective or goal oriented person and as such I find that I accomplish them more effectively with order, structure, and a plan. Generally speaking, the trip is enjoyable but I derive a greater sense of reward from the accomplishment of Something Getting Done (huh, we've seen that before, haven't we?).
Also, as the kid who read the cereal box because I couldn't dully, sedentarily, and illiterately eat my breakfast cereal, I often ponder over topics of interest in an almost obsessive manner. I'm not omniscient, I just have a hard time stopping my brain from devoting CPU cycles sometimes.
These are the qualities I feel I bring to Ubuntu Studio. And hopefully an enthusiastically and passionately fresh perspective as well.
Everyday People
The most immediate goal I would like to approach would be to clearly define Ubuntu Studio's audience. Some would argue that Ubuntu Studio has always had a definitive audience from it's inception. Others argue otherwise, as they are wont to do.
I wasn't involved during those times so I cannot support either side. But I would posit that in either case, both Ubuntu Studio and it's audience have evolved since Ubuntu Studio's genesis. It would interesting to see if they have diverged and are incongruent now.
During this cycle (Maverick Meerkat) I am hoping to obtain qualitative and pervasive information about our audience and their needs. My initial suggestion is to create an online survey, but I'm hoping we can develop other methods to supplement this approach.
The first tangible benefit of this process should be to determine how effective or successful we are in meeting our audience's needs. Obviously, when we have a more concise and thorough definition of their needs then we are in a better position to address them.
Sing a Simple Song
Another tangible benefit, although not for our audience, is possibly reducing scope. Now, before all two of this blog's follower email me with nasty comments and disreputable questioning of my parentage, I want to clarify my position.
Ubuntu Studio has taken a scattered and broad approach to application inclusion and fulfilling audience needs. While I will not critique Ubuntu Studio as "bloated", I would suggest it demonstrates symptoms of limited "application creep".
I suspect that the attempts to fulfill user's needs have historically been based less on evaluating data and more on gut feelings or good intentions. It is also possible that applications were included simply because of a "because it's available and we can" mentality.
The analyzing, inquisitive reader might have shrewd questions materialize in their heads, such as:
That bit of poetry aside, addressing the first question; reducing Ubuntu Studio's scope minimizes the workload and responsibilities of the developers.
You might have noticed that I deftly answered the second question as well in one quick, sharp witted but cleanly spoken stroke!
Additionally, it should be pointed out that removing unnecessary applications also reduces the size of the ISO that is downloaded. This curious phenomenon benefits not only Canonical's server bandwidth but also the hapless users who have a slow internet connection.
Lastly, I would point out that the last bullet point is in fact a statement, not a question, and I retort, "Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating."
Hopefully I have deflected any possible hostile or aggressive emails by demonstrating the possibly substantial and appreciable benefits from evaluating the current application scope in contrast with defined user's needs.
Admittedly, I do not expect to find large tracts of applications that will qualify for scope reduction and furthermore, staunch resistance is expected to removing those that might be considered. Granted, the potential also exists that we find solid justification for every package we currently have, which would be equally accepted.
It's a Family Affair
Refinements in our package development and maintenance would be something else I would like to improve by leveraging our relationship with Debian.
For the uninitiated, Ubuntu is based on Debian and many Ubuntu packages are derived directly from the Debian archives. At the beginning of each Ubuntu release cycle packages not in the Ubuntu archives are automatically synced from the Debian archives.
Additionally (and more specifically), I would be remiss to not mention that the Debian Multimedia Team provides many audio specific packages to Ubuntu Studio via the previously mentioned syncing methodology. Many thanks to the Debian Multimedia Team, without whom Ubuntu Studio would probably be a pale shadow of what it currently is.
Also of import, Debian seems to have a very robust and active program for adding new packages to their archives in comparison with Ubuntu.
Therefore, I would like to see new multimedia packages (e.g. LV2 packages) make their way into Ubuntu Studio via Debian and the Debian Multimedia Team if possible. Given our lack of dedicated packagers and the Debian Multimedia Team's fastidiousness (non-derogatory), this becomes a no-brainer. Their quality and throughput is magnitudes beyond what we can accomplish given an identical time scale.
While one of Debian's strengths lies in it's packaging, in a symbiotic twist, Ubuntu's stregnth lies in it's quantity of users. This manifests itself, amongst other ways, as filed bug reports and patches submitted. Therefore, we should be attempting to push bug fixing patches back to Debian where applicable rather than only patch them in the Ubuntu repositories. Sometimes it is not applicable as Ubuntu is different than Debian and sometimes packages require specific moderations.
Reducing the delta between the Debian and Ubuntu packages will allow for auto-syncing at the beginning of each release. Therefore, pushing patches back to Debian will not only help keep Debian and Ubuntu's package archives up to date but it will also reduce the workload on the Ubuntu Studio developers.
I believe there is great potential for both groups to mutually benefit from a closer working relationship and I hope we can explore it.
I Want To Take You Higher
Lastly I want to mention the possibility of developing new audiences.
This is not to imply that we would abandon our current audience; that would be silly given that I have discussed trying to definitively understand their needs and address them. This has already been misunderstood so I want to say it clearly:
New audiences potentially could provide Ubuntu Studio with a substantial quantity of new users who could also go on to report bugs, help the development team or even develop their own audio centric applications.
Each of these new users, especially if it breaks out of the Ubuntu/Linux circle, could possibly engage in advocacy in a manner and effectiveness that has been yet seen.
This isn't a decision to pursue new audiences, rather, it's a decision to explore the possibility of developing new audiences. Possible audiences need to be identified, their needs understood and our abilities to fulfill their needs evaluated before any decisions should be made.
I would expect that at the end of Maverick we might have begun to identify new audiences and their needs and might require a year (or more) to make a definitive decision, develop a plan, and begin to implement that plan.
It will possibly be a lot of work to successfully engage and support a new audience but the returns could be equally as rewarding.
In Time
Other items exist to be pursued that that not only require fewer literary tracts for explanation but also are not governed by or fit into a desirable timetable. Some may be deferred due to interest or availability of resources, but hopefully these will all be addressed, just some sooner than others. These include (in no particular order):
LV2 - packaging the LV2 effects, plugins, and generators started last cycle and continues to be an active goal right now thanks to quadrispro
JACK2/Pulse Audio - developing functional integration between JACK2 and Pulse Audio via dbus is another active project headed up by TheMuso
network manager - a common and familiar problem that finally received a bug report and is now being addressed, thanks to Ricardo (rlameiro) for filing the bug
update website - something that has been long overdue, we have a general direction and now hopefully progress will be made thanks to detrate. I have high hopes that this accomplishment will have an expansive and dynamic effect with users
fill team positions - as all team positions are effectively empty, this is something that desperately needs to be addressed and i am hopeful that within the next month significant progress can be made, especially for the tech lead position
ubuntustudio-controls - updates are needed since JACK now handles rtprio and memlock in /etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf but Ricardo (rlameiro) would additionally like to explore a redesign which I would like to potentially leverage to include other activities that users routinely perform for setting up their boxes
Ubuntu Studio backports PPA - since the official backport team is pretty busy and our applications fill a niche need we might consider a backports PPA for our users, much like KDE maintains, to provide more immediate access to backported applications
documentation - more documentation is the obvious and immediate thought, but I would like to explore defining and possibly reorganizing the scopes of the wiki.ubuntu.com vs. help.ubuntu.com websites as they relate to Ubuntu Studio
decision documentation - who wants to repeat history? We should document reasons for certain decisions so that users understand why those decisions were made, plus we can keep knowledge continuity within the developer team even with member attrition.
testing procedures - I feel very, very strongly that if we want users to help us test Ubuntu Studio then we need to explicitly provide instructions explaining every step and expectation, therefore we need to develop clearly identified and documented testing procedures. If this is effected we will significantly lower the threshold for users that might help us. I am hoping that stochastic and I can work together to accomplish this, or at least start making appreciable progress, soon.
user communication - another topic about which I hold very, very passionate feelings. I want to develop effective, consistent, pervasive, and thorough communication with our users to help develop a vibrant, dynamic relationship with the developers. I believe a direct correlation will become evident between effective communication with users and their participation in development. And this is to everyone's benefit.
(You Caught Me) Smilin'
These are currently my immediate and foremost thoughts, more or less, about Ubuntu Studio and the its future. Nothing shocking perhaps, but hopefully they align with the "do one thing and do it well" ethos.
I feel this is an excitingly enviable juncture in Ubuntu Studio's development and I am fortunate to be part of a project with so much exceptional potential, where we are only limited by our own desires and commitment.
Of course, this potential that would not exists if not for giants elevating us. Hopefully all those who contribute to Ubuntu Studio's development will seize this opportunity and accomplish something worthy of having stood on their shoulders.
Lastly, please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions with me by commenting or emailing me directly at scottalavender@gmail.com.
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
Intrinsically I tend to gravitate towards order and structure. It's not a neurosis, I can function within chaos (and sometimes it is fun to do so), but I typically prefer not to do so.
Mainly it's that I'm an objective or goal oriented person and as such I find that I accomplish them more effectively with order, structure, and a plan. Generally speaking, the trip is enjoyable but I derive a greater sense of reward from the accomplishment of Something Getting Done (huh, we've seen that before, haven't we?).
Also, as the kid who read the cereal box because I couldn't dully, sedentarily, and illiterately eat my breakfast cereal, I often ponder over topics of interest in an almost obsessive manner. I'm not omniscient, I just have a hard time stopping my brain from devoting CPU cycles sometimes.
These are the qualities I feel I bring to Ubuntu Studio. And hopefully an enthusiastically and passionately fresh perspective as well.
Everyday People
The most immediate goal I would like to approach would be to clearly define Ubuntu Studio's audience. Some would argue that Ubuntu Studio has always had a definitive audience from it's inception. Others argue otherwise, as they are wont to do.
I wasn't involved during those times so I cannot support either side. But I would posit that in either case, both Ubuntu Studio and it's audience have evolved since Ubuntu Studio's genesis. It would interesting to see if they have diverged and are incongruent now.
During this cycle (Maverick Meerkat) I am hoping to obtain qualitative and pervasive information about our audience and their needs. My initial suggestion is to create an online survey, but I'm hoping we can develop other methods to supplement this approach.
The first tangible benefit of this process should be to determine how effective or successful we are in meeting our audience's needs. Obviously, when we have a more concise and thorough definition of their needs then we are in a better position to address them.
Sing a Simple Song
Another tangible benefit, although not for our audience, is possibly reducing scope. Now, before all two of this blog's follower email me with nasty comments and disreputable questioning of my parentage, I want to clarify my position.
Ubuntu Studio has taken a scattered and broad approach to application inclusion and fulfilling audience needs. While I will not critique Ubuntu Studio as "bloated", I would suggest it demonstrates symptoms of limited "application creep".
I suspect that the attempts to fulfill user's needs have historically been based less on evaluating data and more on gut feelings or good intentions. It is also possible that applications were included simply because of a "because it's available and we can" mentality.
The analyzing, inquisitive reader might have shrewd questions materialize in their heads, such as:
- Why is reducing scope a benefit?
- Oi, if the benefit isn't for the audience, then for whom is it a benefit?
- To be, or not to be: that is the question
That bit of poetry aside, addressing the first question; reducing Ubuntu Studio's scope minimizes the workload and responsibilities of the developers.
You might have noticed that I deftly answered the second question as well in one quick, sharp witted but cleanly spoken stroke!
Additionally, it should be pointed out that removing unnecessary applications also reduces the size of the ISO that is downloaded. This curious phenomenon benefits not only Canonical's server bandwidth but also the hapless users who have a slow internet connection.
Lastly, I would point out that the last bullet point is in fact a statement, not a question, and I retort, "Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating."
Hopefully I have deflected any possible hostile or aggressive emails by demonstrating the possibly substantial and appreciable benefits from evaluating the current application scope in contrast with defined user's needs.
Admittedly, I do not expect to find large tracts of applications that will qualify for scope reduction and furthermore, staunch resistance is expected to removing those that might be considered. Granted, the potential also exists that we find solid justification for every package we currently have, which would be equally accepted.
It's a Family Affair
Refinements in our package development and maintenance would be something else I would like to improve by leveraging our relationship with Debian.
For the uninitiated, Ubuntu is based on Debian and many Ubuntu packages are derived directly from the Debian archives. At the beginning of each Ubuntu release cycle packages not in the Ubuntu archives are automatically synced from the Debian archives.
Additionally (and more specifically), I would be remiss to not mention that the Debian Multimedia Team provides many audio specific packages to Ubuntu Studio via the previously mentioned syncing methodology. Many thanks to the Debian Multimedia Team, without whom Ubuntu Studio would probably be a pale shadow of what it currently is.
Also of import, Debian seems to have a very robust and active program for adding new packages to their archives in comparison with Ubuntu.
Therefore, I would like to see new multimedia packages (e.g. LV2 packages) make their way into Ubuntu Studio via Debian and the Debian Multimedia Team if possible. Given our lack of dedicated packagers and the Debian Multimedia Team's fastidiousness (non-derogatory), this becomes a no-brainer. Their quality and throughput is magnitudes beyond what we can accomplish given an identical time scale.
While one of Debian's strengths lies in it's packaging, in a symbiotic twist, Ubuntu's stregnth lies in it's quantity of users. This manifests itself, amongst other ways, as filed bug reports and patches submitted. Therefore, we should be attempting to push bug fixing patches back to Debian where applicable rather than only patch them in the Ubuntu repositories. Sometimes it is not applicable as Ubuntu is different than Debian and sometimes packages require specific moderations.
Reducing the delta between the Debian and Ubuntu packages will allow for auto-syncing at the beginning of each release. Therefore, pushing patches back to Debian will not only help keep Debian and Ubuntu's package archives up to date but it will also reduce the workload on the Ubuntu Studio developers.
I believe there is great potential for both groups to mutually benefit from a closer working relationship and I hope we can explore it.
I Want To Take You Higher
Lastly I want to mention the possibility of developing new audiences.
This is not to imply that we would abandon our current audience; that would be silly given that I have discussed trying to definitively understand their needs and address them. This has already been misunderstood so I want to say it clearly:
Engaging a new audience does not preclude continuing a commitment to an existing audience.
New audiences potentially could provide Ubuntu Studio with a substantial quantity of new users who could also go on to report bugs, help the development team or even develop their own audio centric applications.
Each of these new users, especially if it breaks out of the Ubuntu/Linux circle, could possibly engage in advocacy in a manner and effectiveness that has been yet seen.
This isn't a decision to pursue new audiences, rather, it's a decision to explore the possibility of developing new audiences. Possible audiences need to be identified, their needs understood and our abilities to fulfill their needs evaluated before any decisions should be made.
I would expect that at the end of Maverick we might have begun to identify new audiences and their needs and might require a year (or more) to make a definitive decision, develop a plan, and begin to implement that plan.
It will possibly be a lot of work to successfully engage and support a new audience but the returns could be equally as rewarding.
In Time
Other items exist to be pursued that that not only require fewer literary tracts for explanation but also are not governed by or fit into a desirable timetable. Some may be deferred due to interest or availability of resources, but hopefully these will all be addressed, just some sooner than others. These include (in no particular order):
LV2 - packaging the LV2 effects, plugins, and generators started last cycle and continues to be an active goal right now thanks to quadrispro
JACK2/Pulse Audio - developing functional integration between JACK2 and Pulse Audio via dbus is another active project headed up by TheMuso
network manager - a common and familiar problem that finally received a bug report and is now being addressed, thanks to Ricardo (rlameiro) for filing the bug
update website - something that has been long overdue, we have a general direction and now hopefully progress will be made thanks to detrate. I have high hopes that this accomplishment will have an expansive and dynamic effect with users
fill team positions - as all team positions are effectively empty, this is something that desperately needs to be addressed and i am hopeful that within the next month significant progress can be made, especially for the tech lead position
ubuntustudio-controls - updates are needed since JACK now handles rtprio and memlock in /etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf but Ricardo (rlameiro) would additionally like to explore a redesign which I would like to potentially leverage to include other activities that users routinely perform for setting up their boxes
Ubuntu Studio backports PPA - since the official backport team is pretty busy and our applications fill a niche need we might consider a backports PPA for our users, much like KDE maintains, to provide more immediate access to backported applications
documentation - more documentation is the obvious and immediate thought, but I would like to explore defining and possibly reorganizing the scopes of the wiki.ubuntu.com vs. help.ubuntu.com websites as they relate to Ubuntu Studio
decision documentation - who wants to repeat history? We should document reasons for certain decisions so that users understand why those decisions were made, plus we can keep knowledge continuity within the developer team even with member attrition.
testing procedures - I feel very, very strongly that if we want users to help us test Ubuntu Studio then we need to explicitly provide instructions explaining every step and expectation, therefore we need to develop clearly identified and documented testing procedures. If this is effected we will significantly lower the threshold for users that might help us. I am hoping that stochastic and I can work together to accomplish this, or at least start making appreciable progress, soon.
user communication - another topic about which I hold very, very passionate feelings. I want to develop effective, consistent, pervasive, and thorough communication with our users to help develop a vibrant, dynamic relationship with the developers. I believe a direct correlation will become evident between effective communication with users and their participation in development. And this is to everyone's benefit.
(You Caught Me) Smilin'
These are currently my immediate and foremost thoughts, more or less, about Ubuntu Studio and the its future. Nothing shocking perhaps, but hopefully they align with the "do one thing and do it well" ethos.
I feel this is an excitingly enviable juncture in Ubuntu Studio's development and I am fortunate to be part of a project with so much exceptional potential, where we are only limited by our own desires and commitment.
Of course, this potential that would not exists if not for giants elevating us. Hopefully all those who contribute to Ubuntu Studio's development will seize this opportunity and accomplish something worthy of having stood on their shoulders.
Lastly, please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions with me by commenting or emailing me directly at scottalavender@gmail.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)