Plans for DebCamp17

Posted on 24 July 2017 by jonathan

In a few days, I’ll be attending DebCamp17 in Montréal, Canada. Here are a few things I plan to pay attention to:

  • Calamares: My main goal is to get Calamares in a great state for inclusion in the archives, along with sane default configuration for Debian (calamares-settings-debian) that can easily be adapted for derivatives. Calamares itself is already looking good and might make it into the archives before DebCamp even starts, but the settings package will still need some work.
  • Gnome Shell Extensions: During the stretch development cycle I made great progress in packaging some of the most popular shell extensions, but there are a few more that I’d like to get in for buster: apt-update-indicator, dash-to-panel (done), proxy-switcher, tilix-dropdown, tilix-shortcut
  • zram-tools: Fix a few remaining issues in zram-tools and get it packaged into the archive.
  • DebConf Committee: Since January, I’ve been a delegate on the DebConf committee, I’m hoping that we get some time to catch up in person before DebConf starts. We’ve been working on some issues together recently and so far we’ve been working together really well. We’re working on keeping DebConf organisation stable and improving community processes, and I hope that by the end of DebConf we’ll have some proposals that will prevent some re-occurring problems and also help mend old wounds from previous years.
  • ISO Image Writer: I plan to try out Jonathan Riddell’s iso image writer tool and check whether it works with the use cases I’m interested in (Debian install and live media, images created with Calamares, boots UEFI/BIOS on optical and usb media). If it does what I want I’ll probably package it too if Jonathan Riddell didn’t get to it yet.
  • Hashcheck: Kyle Robertze wrote a tool called Hashcheck for checking install media checksums from a live environment. If he gets a break during DebCamp from video team stuff, I’m hoping we can look at some improvements for it and also getting it packaged in Debian.
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AIMS Desktop 2017.1 is available!

Posted on 18 June 2017 by jonathan

Back at DebConf 15 in Germany, I gave a talk on on AIMS Desktop (which was then based on Ubuntu), and our intentions and rationale for wanting to move it over to being Debian based.

Today, alongside the Debian 9 release, we release AIMS Desktop 2017.1, the first AIMS Desktop released based on Debian. For Debian 10, we’d like to get the last remaining AIMS Desktop packages into Debian so that it could be a Debian pure blend.

Students trying out a release candidate at AIMS South Africa

It’s tailored to the needs of students, lecturers and researchers at the African Institute for Mathemetical Sciences, we’re releasing it to the public in the hope that it could be useful for other tertiary education users with an interest in maths and science software. If you run a mirror at your university, it would also be great if you could host a copy. we added an rsync location on the downloads page which you could use to keep it up to date.

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Debian 9 is available!

Posted on 18 June 2017 by jonathan

Congratulations to everyone who has played a part in the creation of Debian GNU/Linux 9.0! It’s a great release, I’ve installed the pre-release versions for friends, family and colleagues and so far the feedback has been very positive.

This release is dedicated to Ian Murdock, who founded the Debian project in 1993, and sadly passed away on 28 December 2015. On the Debian ISO files a dedication statement is available on /doc/dedication/dedication-9.0.txt

Here’s a copy of the dedication text:

Dedicated to Ian Murdock
------------------------

Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian project, passed away
on 28th December 2015 at his home in San Francisco. He was 42.

It is difficult to exaggerate Ian's contribution to Free
Software. He led the Debian Project from its inception in
1993 to 1996, wrote the Debian manifesto in January 1994 and
nurtured the fledgling project throughout his studies at
Purdue University.

Ian went on to be founding director of Linux International,
CTO of the Free Standards Group and later the Linux
Foundation, and leader of Project Indiana at Sun
Microsystems, which he described as "taking the lesson
that Linux has brought to the operating system and providing
that for Solaris".

Debian's success is testament to Ian's vision. He inspired
countless people around the world to contribute their own free
time and skills. More than 350 distributions are known to be
derived from Debian.

We therefore dedicate Debian 9 "stretch" to Ian.

-- The Debian Developers

During this development cycle, the amount of source packages in Debian grew from around 21 000 to around 25 000 packages, which means that there’s a whole bunch of new things Debian can make your computer do. If you find something new in this release that you like, post about it on your favourite social networks, using the hashtag #newinstretch – or look it up to see what others have discovered!

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GNOME Shell Extensions in Debian 9.0

Posted on 5 April 2017 by jonathan

About

GNOME 3 introduced an extensions framework that allows its users to extend the desktop shell by writing extensions using JavaScript and CSS. It works quite well and dozens of extensions have already been uploaded to the extensions site. Some of these solve some annoyances that users typically share with GNOME, while others add useful functionality.

During DebCamp last year, I started packaging some of these for Debian. That’s been going really well. Now that Ubuntu is finally dropping Unity in favour of GNOME, it helps to serve as a nudge to get this blog post out that’s been stuck in drafts. These extensions also make their way into Ubuntu and other Debian/Ubuntu derivatives.

Here are some extensions I’ve been packaging that’s already in the archive:

gnome-shell-extension-dashtodock

Provides a multitude of options for the shell dock. Not only really useful but also well maintained by upstream, see their website for more info. This is a great extension if you support previous Unity users, since you can set your panel to look and behave very similarly to Unity. I think the app launcher is slightly better in Gnome because apps are easier to discover.

gnome-shell-extension-hide-activities

Simple extension that hides the “Activities” button from the top left corner.

gnome-shell-extension-impatience

Speeds up shell animations. Animations can make the system more usable, but it can also be either distracting or cause some slight delays while waiting for the animation to complete. This gives you a sliding scale that lets you choose how much you’d like to speed it up.

gnome-shell-extension-move-clock

Simple extension that moves the clock from the center of the panel to the right.

gnome-shell-extension-refreshwifi

In gnome-shell, network manager doesn’t automatically refresh the list of available network, which can be quite annoying. Currently a user has to turn wifi off and back on in order to see a refreshed list. This has been fixed upstream and will be in the next version of GNOME. In the meantime, this extension fixes that.

Update: Refreshing wifi in the background has been fixed in Gnome 3.22.2, which is now in stretch. This extension will be removed from the archives.

gnome-shell-extension-remove-dropdown-arrows

Items in the top panel contain dropdown arrows, which are useful for new users who might not be aware that they expand into more entries. For more experience users, the arrows tend to result in extra clutter in the panel, this extension hides those arrows.

gnome-shell-extension-better-volume

This allows you to hover over the volume control indicator and scroll up and down to increase/decrease the volume. Probably another extension that should really just be integrated into gnome-shell by default.

gnome-shell-extension-hard-disk-led

Many new laptops either don’t have a hard disk L.E.D. anymore, or they hide it so that it’s not really all that visible. This extension shows you hard disk activity in your panel. There’s also work being done to make it report reads and writes separately. I’ll be looking at backporting that when it’s available.

gnome-shell-extension-disconnect-wifi

Allows you to disconnect from the current network without having to turn off wi-fi entirely.

gnome-shell-extension-pixelsaver

Title bars can be incredibly pixel-hungry, which isn’t great on small displays. This extension hides the title bar when a window is maximised, and adds control buttons for that window to the top panel.

gnome-shell-extension-system-monitor

gnome-shell-extension-trash

Displays a trash icon to the top panel when there are items in trash. From there you can view or delete the trash contents.

gnome-shell-extension-multi-monitors

This extension adds some tweaks for users of multiple monitors. It’s most useful feature is that you can have desktop overviews on both displays and easily move apps between them.

More extensions

Here are some more extensions packaged in Debian that others have packaged:

  • gnome-shell-extension-shortcuts – shows a keyboard shortcut overlay
  • gnome-shell-extension-show-ip – shows ip address in the notification area
  • gnome-shell-extension-autohidetopbar – hide the top panel
  • gnome-shell-extension-caffeine – prevents computer from suspending when enabled
  • gnome-shell-extension-mediaplayer – control mediaplayer from the system menu
  • gnome-shell-extension-redshift – change colour temperature to improve attention span and sleep paterns
  • gnome-shell-extension-suspend-button – adds suspend shortcut
  • gnome-shell-extension-taskbar – adds plenty of options for the top panel and optional bottom taskbar
  • ugnome-shell-extension-top-icons-plus – moves system tray icons from the bottom hidden menu to the top
  • gnome-shell-extension-weather – weather report in panel
  • gnome-shell-extensions-gpaste – clipbook manager
  • gnome-shell-extension-onboard – on screen keyboard manager

Didn’t make it this time

Both Debian and Ubuntu are in feature freeze right now, and the following didn’t make it in the archives in time, but should be in the following releases (they’re still installable via the extensions site in the meantime):

  • gnome-shell-extension-remove-round-corners – remove round corners on top panel
  • gnome-shell-extension-proxy-switcher – adds menu in system menu to quickly switch between proxy settings
  • gnome-shell-extension-apt-update-indicator – show apt status and available upgrades
  • gnome-shell-extension-uptime-indicator- indicator that displays uptime
  • gnome-shell-extension-dash-to-panel – great extension that combines the dock into the top panel
  • gnome-shell-extension-tilix-dropdown – shortcut configurator for tilix’s quake mode

Next steps

Consider auto-enable

Currently, when you install these debian packages, (most of) the extensions won’t be enabled by default. Users have to use the gnome-tweak-tool to enable them after installation. The rationale behind this is that a system administrator of a network of computers might only want to enable certain extensions for certain users. After some more consideration, I think such administrators will probably already have a system (like a configuration management system) in place to manage this. So, to make it easier for the typical user, I think it’s worth considering enabling these by default with installation. Feedback welcome :)

Debian team

The list of packaged extensions are growing fast, and it would be nice to have these team-maintained. It might be a good idea to start a team for this or use an existing team under the Debian gnome team namespace.

Packaging guide

I’ve packaged enough Gnome extensions to be aware of the typical gotchas and things that need fixing. They’re overall easy to package and a good place to start for someone who wants to get into packaging. I want to put together a good short guide on how to properly package gnome-shell extensions.

Anything else?

Any other extensions you’d like to see packaged? Let me know. Even better, package it yourself and help test my extension package guide (once it exists) so that we can improve that too.

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A few impressions of DebConf 16 in Cape Town

Posted on 8 November 2016 by jonathan
DebConf16 Group Photo

DebConf16 Group Photo by Jurie Senekal.

DebConf16

Firstly, thanks to everyone who came out and added their own uniqueness and expertise to the pool. The feedback received so far has been very positive and I feel that the few problems we did experience was dealt with very efficiently. Having a DebConf in your hometown is a great experience, consider a bid for hosting a DebConf in your city!

DebConf16 Open Festival (5 August)

The Open Festival (usually Debian Open Day) turned out pretty good. It was a collection of talks, a job fair, and some demos of what can be done with Debian. I particularly liked Hetzner’s stand. I got to show off some 20 year old+ Super Mario skills and they had some fun brain teasers as well. It’s really great to see a job stand that’s so interactive and I think many companies can learn from them.

The demo that probably drew the most attention was from my friend Georg who demoed some LulzBot Mini 3D Printers. They really seem to love Debian which is great!

DebConf (6 August to 12 August)

If I try to write up all my thoughts and feeling about DC16, I’ll never get this post finished. Instead, here as some tweets from DebConf that other have written:

 

 

 

 

Day Trip

We had 3 day trips:

Brought to you by

orga

DebConf16 Orga Team.

See you in Montréal!

DebConf17 dates:

  • DebCamp:  31 July to 4 August 2017
  • DebConf: 6 August to 12 August 2017
  • More details on the DebConf Wiki.

The DC17 sponsorship brochure contains a good deal of information, please share it with anyone who might be interested in sponsoring DebConf!

Media

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So, that was DebCamp16!

Posted on 2 July 2016 by jonathan
Picture: Adrian Frith

University of Cape Town, host location to DebConf 16. Picture: Adrian Frith

What an amazingly quick week that was

Our bid to host DebConf in Cape Town was accepted nearly 15 months ago. And before that, the bid itself was a big collective effort from our team. So it’s almost surreal that the first half of the two weeks of DebCamp/DebConf is now over.

Things have been going really well. The few problems we’ve had so far were too small to even mention. It’s a few degrees colder than it usually is this time of the year and there’s already snow on the mountains, so Cape Town is currently quite chilly.

Hacking by the fire at the sports club

Gathering some heat by the fire at the sports club while catching up to the world the day before it all started.

All Kinds of Quality Time

I really enjoyed working with the video team last year, but this year there was just 0 time for that. Working on the orga team means dealing with a constant torrent of small tasks, which is good in its own way because you get to deal with a wide variety of Debian people you might not usually get to interact with, but video team problems are more fun and interesting. Next year I hope to do a lot more video work again. If you’re at DebConf over the next week, I can highly recommend that you get involved!

Video team hacking away at problems

Video team members hacking away at problems late at night during DebCamp

The first time I met Debian folk was early in 2004. I worked at the Shuttleworth Foundation as “Open Source Technical Co-ordinator” at the time, and Mark Shuttleworth had them over for one of the early Ubuntu sprints in Canonical’s early days. I was so intimidated by them back then that I could hardly even manage to speak to them. I was already a big free software fan before working there, but little did I even dream to think that I would one day be involved in a project like Ubuntu or Debian. My manager back then encouraged me to go talk to them and get involved and become a Debian Developer and joked that I should become highvoltage@debian.org. I guess that was when the initial seeds got planted and since then I’ve met many great people all over the world who have even became friends during UDS, DebConf, BTS and other hackfests where Debianites hang out. It gave me a really nice warm feeling to have all these amazing, talented and really friendly people from all over coming together in this little corner of the world to work together on projects that I think are really important.

Finding a warm space to work in the Happy Feet hack lab

Finding a warm space to work in the Happy Feet hack lab

Oh the Chicken

Back at DebConf12, someone (I don’t remember the exact history) brought a rubber chicken to DebConf who was simply called “Pollito” (“chicken” in Spanish). Since then the chicken has grown into somewhat of a mascot for DebConf. Back in 2012 I already imagined that if we would ever host a DebConf, I’d make a little of picture book story about Pollito. Last year after DC15, when bringing Pollito over, I created a little story called “Pollito’s first trip to Africa“. I was recovering from flu while putting that together and didn’t spend much time on it, but it turned out to be somewhat of a hit. I was surprised to see it in the #debconf topic ever since I posted it :)

We gave a tour of the campus on the first and second days and it was quite time consuming and there was no way we could do it every day for the rest of DebCamp, so on the 2nd day I smacked together a new rush job called “Pollito’s Guide to DC16“. The idea was that newcommers could use it as a visual guide and rely on others who have been there for a while if they get stuck. I wish I had the time to make it a lot nicer, but I think the general idea is good and next year we can have a much nicer one that might not be quite as Pollito focused.

Pollito's Guide to DC16

Pollito’s Guide to DC16

Debian Maintainer

After all these years, I finally sat down and applied to become a Debian Maintainer, and the application was successful (approved yesterday \o/). Now just for the wait until my key is uploaded to the keyring. I haven’t yet had time to properly process this but I think once the DebConf dust settles and I had some time to recover, I will be ecstatic.

Some actual DebCampy work

Everywhere I go, I see people installing a bunch of GNOME extensions on their Debian GNOME desktops shortly after installation using http://extensions.gnome.org/ (I noticed this even at DebCamp!). A few months ago I thought that it’s really about time someone package up some of the really popular ones. So I started to put together some basic packaging for AIMS Desktop around a month ago. During the last few days of DebCamp, things were going well enough with the organisational tasks that I had some time to do some actual packaging work and improve these so that they’re ready for upload to the Debian archives. The little DebCamp time I had ended up being my very own little extension fest :)

I worked on the following packages which are ready for upload:

  • gnome-shell-extension-pixelsaver
  • gnome-shell-extension-move-clock
  • gnome-shell-extension-dashtodock
  • gnome-shell-extension-remove-dropdown-arrows

I worked on the following packages which still need minor work, might be able to get them in uploadable state by the end of DebConf:

  • gnome-shell-extension-trash-applet
  • gnome-shell-extension-topicons
  • gnome-shell-extension-taskbar
  • gnome-shell-extension-refresh-wifi
  • gnome-shell-extension-disconnect-wifi
  • gnome-shell-extension-hide-activities
  • gnome-shell-extension-impatience

The actual packaging of GNOME extensions is actually pretty trivial. It’s mostly source-only JavaScript with some CSS and translations and maybe some gsettings schemas and dialogs. Or at least, it would be pretty trivial, but many extensions are without licenses, contain embedded code (often JavaScript) from other projects, or have no usable form of upstream tarball, to name a few of the problems. So I’ve been contacting the upstream authors of these packages where there have been problems, and for the most part they’ve been friendly and pretty quick to address the problems.

So that’s it, for now.

I couldn’t possibly sum up the last week and everything that lead up to it in a single blog post. All I can really say is thank you for letting me be a part of this very special project!

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DebConf 16 Updates

Posted on 25 March 2016 by jonathan

debconf16-blogRegistration now open

DebConf 16 is taking place in Cape Town, South Africa. For more information read the registration opening announcement.

Quick summary

  • DebCamp: 2016-06-23 to 2016-07-01
  • DebConf: 2016-07-02 to 2016-07-09
  • Open Weekend is taking place during the cross-over from DebCamp to DebConf.
  • To sign up, go to https://debconf16.debconf.org/ for the latest information which includes an FAQ and direct sign-up link.
  • If you’re requesting sponsorship, you must be registered by 2016-04-10.

Call for talk proposals open

If you have a proposal for a session at DC16, please read the full call for proposals announcement.

Quick info

  • Events aren’t limited to talks or BoF sessions, we welcome submissions of tutorials, performances, art installations, debates, or any other format of event that you think would be beneficial to the Debian community.
  • Submit a talk at https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/new/
  • First batch of talks/events wil be announced during April, cut-off is on 1 May.

Video team

If you’re on the video team, or are planning to get involved then you might want to join the video team mailing list and #debconf-video IRC channel on oftc. Meetings are kicking off soon, if you’re planning to join an IRC meeting, you can mark your availability on Framadate.

Sponsoring DebConf 16

We have some great sponsors for DebConf 16 already, but sadly we don’t have any local sponsors yet. Sponsorship is open to all, but if you know of a South African company in particular who might be interested, then feel free to send them a copy of the DebConf 16 Sponsorship Brochure which contains all the options and how to get in touch with the sponsorship team.

Sponsoring DebConf has never been more accessible to South African companies so if you’d like to get your company name on the Debian map and get some great exposure, then this is the perfect opportunity!

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