Fabrizio Balliano

Great steps have been made with the easy codec installation but there are still some troubles with 2 specific media types:

• MIDI files
• DVD (crypted or encrypted)

To play MIDI files you’ve to manually install timidity and play them in the command line or with some (not so beautiful) players, totem (the default media player for Ubuntu and Gnome) has no support for MIDI (I know it’s a Gstreamer fault).

To play DVD you’ve to install some exotic libraries and launch some scripts in the command line… anyway totem still will have troubles with some DVDs and it won’t read DVD menu.

These 2 problems are alive since years, I think it’s really time to fix them!

Following the ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list I heard about the “only-ubiquity” boot option for the Ubuntu live cd, it’s really cool, it will start a minimal X session (avoiding the complete live environment overhead) and starting only ubiquity to install Ubuntu to the hard disk, amazing.

This feature seems to be still in a beta stage but it seems functional to me.

As a developer of some Ubuntu derivatives this option could make me avoid the remastering of alternate cd to create an automated installation cd, making things much easier.

Now I’m looking for preseeding ubiquity and my quest will be definitively over, live and automatic installation system (also for low ram system) all in one cd, more info will follow.

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose virtualbox-ose-source
sudo m-a prepare
sudo m-a auto-install virtualbox-ose

Officially I’m on Holiday in these days and I don’t like writing about new released ’cause everyone already does that but… I couldn’t wait for the gutsy beta just because I’m going to install it on my workstation for everyday usage :)

So… the official announce is not out yet anyway:
release notes: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/gutsybeta
download: http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/gutsy/

I’m already downloading :)

Enabling compiz by default is one of the goals of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) release, but following a thread on the ubuntu-devel mailing list it seems that the final decision was not taken yet.

I agree with all the points of view, compiz has some major problems and dependencies.

Just an overview on the main graphic cards:

• Intel: open source drivers, compiz runs smoothly AFAIK, it could be enabled by default.
• ATI: open source drivers have some performance issue, proprietary drivers do not support AIGLX and anyway compiz has some bugs with these cards (I’ve one of those inside my laptop) thus I don’t think enabling compiz by default it’s a good choice now.
• Nvidia: open source drivers do not support 3D (I’m not talking about nouveau ’cause they are still too experimental), proprietary drivers are really good but they’re not bundled with Ubuntu thus compiz can’t be enabled by default.

I’m sorry but I can’t find a way compiz could be enabled by default… I think the right decision is to disable it until all graphic cards would be supported and bugs would be solved. I also think that, if this feature is so important for Ubuntu, Canonical should hire some programmers and sponsor the compiz development.

I took a few minutes to release the new beta, there were some interesting changes that need to be tested by users so here you have :)

Changes since beta1:

* GUI:
* The question about which desktop environment will be used to manually
customize the ISO was removed, this is now autodetected by the backend
* Fix for bug 116018 (–nofork option for adept)
* A question about removing win32 files was added
* “others” option was added to the desktop choice to allow a better
usage with Ubuntu derivatives

* Backend:
* Package manager and console applications run inside the livecd are now
autodetected
* uck-remaster-remove-win32-files script was added
* Support for Xubuntu/XFCE was enhanced

Download:
http://tinyurl.com/2cvzkj

1. speed: try using Google spreadsheet, it’s simply impossible. On Windows it works smoothly.
2. integration: try having to change your proxy settings times a day… FireFox can’t read proxy info from GNOME settings
3. UI: Save/Open dialogs are not the native GTK ones
4. crashes: hey where’s my firefox? it’s gone, without telling me anything… and this happens 3-4 times a day

I think Gnome FireFox needs more attention, anyway I’m waiting for Epiphany/WebKit and for a more Epiphany extensions.

Many blogs talked about that in the latest 2 days, while a was taking a break, but I can’t stop myself for writing a headline about this news from ars technica.

I hope that this unification idea will go on and complete successfully, it should happen for many other projects, I also hope that this will be taken as an example of the right direction for companies that want to work with open projects (ok Apple is not a saint…)

It’s been a long time since the previous release, we worked on many things but only a few of them are visible to the end user. An highlight of the new release:

• most of the back-end was rewritten to achieve better flexibility for power users (and every task was separated in a single script)
• support for alternate CD
• all logging was rewritten to be more human
• many other small things under the hood

Hey, in the package you’ll see the new icon and logo :) absolutely amazing I think :)

So now go download and test, we really need to fine tune things to build the most rocking ubuntu remastering framework! Again I hope that in the near future we could join reconstructor team to work together.

The complete changelog:

* remaster-live-cd script was renamed uck-remaster
* A script for every part of the remastering process was created:
uck-remaster-unpack-iso, uck-remaster-unpack-rootfs, uck-remaster-unpack-initrd,
uck-remaster-chroot-rootfs, uck-remaster-pack-rootfs, uck-remaster-pack-initrd,
uck-remaster-pack-iso, uck-remaster-clean
* Support for alternate cd remastering was added:
* uck-remaster-unpack-initrd and uck-remaster-pack-initrd automatically
detect if you’re remastering a desktop or alternate cd and read/put files
in the right places
* uck-remaster-prepare-alternate script was added to allow you create the
directory you need to put extra packages in the alternate iso
* uck-remaster-finalize-alternate script was added to regenerate the packages
indexes and re-sign the release with your GPG key
* REMASTER_HOME is the new default variable every single script can receive as
parameter, the variable contains the directory where all part of the remaster
will be stored (default is ~/tmp)
* Log/error messages got more consinstancy
* Unuseful error messages were removed to gain readability of the log file
* uck-remaster-pack-iso now supports PPC, x86_64, ia64

Ubuntu trademark is clear, and the iloveubuntu.com website (intentionally not linked) is violating it, hope Canonical will make that great joke stop.

UPDATE: this post would be a provocation, ’cause you know I’m a bit sceptic about free software and trademarks. I also know about ie7.com and many others, same story here and there. :)