[NTLUG:Discuss] Ubuntu Developer Summit for version 10.04

[Ted Gould]

On Tue, 2009-10-27 at 01:19 -0500, Ralph Green wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-10-26 at 23:11 -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-10-26 at 15:54 -0500, Ralph Green wrote:
> > > I want to learn about a
> > > couple of specific things about Ubuntu.  I also generally want to learn
> > > more and see if there is a good place for me to participate.  How useful
> > > are these summits, if you don't do as an active developer on some
> > > existing project?
> > >  Specifically, I want to learn more about how to customize and
> > > distribute versions of Ubuntu.
> > 
> > Generally going to learn isn't useful.  If you want to go to mold and
> > adapt those are good reasons to go.  Most of the discussions aren't at a
> > level where someone who isn't familiar would get much use out of them.
> > If you have made a couple of custom respins of Ubuntu, and have had
> > issues with doing so that you'd like to see fixed, UDS is a good place
> > to bring those issues forward and try to advance solutions.
> > 
>   I have made respins of Knoppix, Fedora, and Puppy, but I have not
> found a good guide to doing this for Ubuntu.  Do you know of one?  I
> would like to be able to deploy machines with the packages added that
> are needed for my customers.  Tonight, I found information on how to
> setup the packages I want.  I have not tried it yet, but I will soon.
> The part I have not found in how to have add-ons installed for users in
> Firefox.  At a minimum, I need NoScript, and User Agent Switcher.  A
> couple others would be nice.  With the Greasemonkey add-on and a few
> other packages(gnash, totem, and totem-mozilla), I can enable youtube,
> which people always ask about.  Jeff Rush has given me one lead on
> auto-installing add-ons, but I don't have the details worked out yet.

I haven't done any of that specifically.  But my guess would be that
you'll need to build packages for those extensions (assuming they aren't
packaged already) and go through the CD build process to build a new CD.
You could also create a meta-package (one that just refers to other
packages) and just install that afterwards, which may be easier.


> > Also to note, the various track leads are soliciting topics for sessions
> > now.  If you'd like to propose a session, now is a good time.
> > 
>   I'll think about this.  One thing I want to learn more about is
> virtualization.  I have used the vm-builder in Ubuntu.  It is a good
> start, and I can see other things being built that make it more useful.
> I don't have enough hardware that supports virtualization in KVM to make
> my own cloud yet.  I will soon, and that is what I want to learn about.
> I know you said these are not general purpose learning sessions.  I
> think I have used the underlying tools enough that I would gain from
> these sessions and maybe be able to contribute.

You should only need one machine that can run KVM to set up a basic UEC
cloud for playing with.  You'll need another machine for the scheduler,
but I'm pretty sure it doesn't need to be KVM compatible.  Of course, a
cloud of one machine isn't super interesting, but good for learning :)

> > > I also want to talk to someone about the
> > > crazy way update-notifier works now and find out what is planned.
> > 
> > I'd be happy to answer your questions on that. :)
> > 
>   I'll assume you will answer on the list here.  If you would rather
> talk about that off-list, just let me know.

Of course, no issues there.

>   The way update notification works in 9.04 is really annoying.  I know
> what they were trying to accomplish, but the solution is worse than the
> cure.  The single worst part is having Update Manager open up on the
> screen when it find updates.  This happens in the middle of
> presentations, or other things you are trying to use the computer for.
> I don't tend to work on the newest computers and Update Manager is not
> only distracting, but noticeably slows down the desktop until it
> finishes loading.

It, by design, should always start in the background and ask for
attention.  So if it is appearing above any window, that is a bug.

>  Now, you can turn off the auto launch of Update Manager, but that still
> leaves notifications that are too strong.  That big red arrow comes up.
> It makes it look like your system is in danger, even if the updates is
> something like the recent time zone updates.  I am about to start
> putting a cron job in to "pkill update-notifier" once an hour or more
> often.  One of the things I do is setting up machines for people who
> have very little computer experience.  I have kept the deployed machines
> at Ubuntu 8.10 so far.  I don't want to stay with an older version, but
> the way 9.04 works for notifying about updates is just not acceptable.
> Is it going to get better?

First, in general I would not recommend killing update-manager.  Things
like security updates should be acted upon promptly.  I think no matter
how much computer experience someone has, they should learn this on any
system they're nominally put in charge of.

I think that the solution you're probably looking for here is just to
set up autoinstall updates.  You can do that in software sources, you
shouldn't get any popups.  And as long as you don't enable things like
backports the system should remain stable.

Autoupdate isn't setup by default as many people feel uncomfortable with
the computer doing things without their permission.  Personally, I feel
like this is a misperception as it already turns of the screen for
you :)  But, that's the reason it's not enabled by default.

		--Ted