Yesterday, I uploaded command-not-found 0.2.38-1 (based on version 0.2.38ubuntu4) to Debian unstable, using the “3.0 (quilt)” source format. All steps worked perfectly, including stuff like cowbuilder, lintian, debdiff, dput and the processing on ftp-master. Next steps are reverting my machine from Ubuntu 9.10 to my Debian unstable system and uploading new versions of gnome-main-menu, python-apt (0.7.93, not finished yet) and some other packages. In other news, the development of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx just started. For the first time in Ubuntu’s history, the development will be based on the testing tree of Debian and not on the unstable tree. This is done in order to increase the stability of the distribution, as this release is going to be a long term supported release. Ubuntu will freeze in February, one month before the freeze of Debian Squeeze. This should give us enough room to collaborate, especially on bugfixes. This also means that I will freeze my packages in February, so they will have the same version in Squeeze and Lucid (applying the earliest freeze to both distributions; exceptions where needed). ... Read more 》

Overall, having time-based freezes is a good idea. But the chosen cycle is problematic, especially if one considers Ubuntu’s LTS release cycles. The problem is that if Debian releases a new version at approximately the same time as Ubuntu, there will not be much synchronization and Ubuntu will have newer program versions. Consider the releases of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (April 2008) and Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (February 2009). Whereas Ubuntu 8.04 provides GNOME 2.22 including a new Nautilus, Debian provides GNOME 2.22 with nautilus 2.20. Ubuntu’s release made at about the same time (Ubuntu 9.04) already included GNOME 2.26. ... Read more 》

As I promised, I released python-apt 0.7.91 today. This version provides a new API, with real classes in apt_pkg, new names which conform to PEP 8 conventions, and it supports new language features such as the ‘with’ statement. Old code should still continue to work, if it does not and it is using only public interfaces, report a bug against python-apt or send an email. I can not guarantee that all the names will be kept like they are at the moment (it’s a pre-release), but there should not be many more changes needed. The series will hit Ubuntu Karmic later this month, and the final 0.8.0 release is going to be shipped in the final Karmic release. ... Read more 》

Today, I was testing Canonical’s new Ubuntu One service. Ubuntu One is a service for syncing and sharing files online, with 2GB storage for free. I installed the Ubuntu One client on Ubuntu 9.04 and it’s cool. Ubuntu One creates a directory named Ubuntu One in your home directory. Within this directory, there are two subdirectories. The first one is “My Files” and the second one is named “Shared With Me”. When you place files in the “My Files” directory, the Ubuntu One client gets notified (using inotify) about the change and begins uploading the file to the Ubuntu one server. ... Read more 》

Much happened since the last time I wrote about debimg. The project is now registered on Alioth and has a mailing list. On the code side, there have also been several changes. First of all, the repository module has been merged into the master branch. This was the first step towards the creation of the image building, which happened today by introducing the ‘image’ module. The code should be treated as Beta quality, but the project as a whole is Alpha, because the application utilizing debimg.core is still missing. As always, I hereby encourage to try out debimg, have a look at the examples, and help to develop it. ... Read more 》

After I tried OpenSolaris 2008.11, I also tried Fedora 10 and Ubuntu 8.10, each for almost one day. Creation of bootable USB stick: For both distributions, I created a bootable USB stick because it is faster to install from USB than from CD/DVD. The creation was easy in both cases. Fedora ships a shell script and Ubuntu a graphical program for this task. Both very equally easy to use. **Booting from USB: **Both distributions booted perfectly from USB. But there was a big difference in boot speed: Fedora 10 booted in about the same time Ubuntu needed to find the USB stick. ... Read more 》

I worked a bit with some Gentoo systems the last days and it was no fun. The whole compiling thing is no fun. In fact, it is a danger for the environment. If every computer in the world run Gentoo, power consumption would increase dramatically. There would also be no netbooks, as they are almost unusable for running Gentoo on it, compiling software. The path chosen by binary distributions like Debian is much better. Packages are compiled centrally and users download and install these pre-compiled packages. But it is also much less flexible in terms of which functionality is supported. We, as package maintainers, have to decide which functionality is likely to be used by the users. In Contrast, Gentoo has USE flags, which allows the user to enable the specific functionality he/she wants. ... Read more 》

As promised, i have built a few development snapshots of the swfdec git branch for hardy. They are available in my PPA. To use it, add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list and install swfdec-mozilla0.7. deb <a href="http://ppa.launchpad.net/juliank/ubuntu">http://ppa.launchpad.net/juliank/ubuntu</a> <span>hardy</span> main Please note that these packages are experimental and are only for experienced users.

After the trouble with swfdec and gstreamer, I found out the source of the issue (the fluendo mp3 plugin, see below), and can now use swfdec with gstreamer. Warning: Do not use the mp3 plugin from fluendo.com swfdec does not always work with the binary mp3 plugin from fluendo.com, at least not in Ubuntu 8.04 64bit. It works with the version shipped in Ubuntu (gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3) and with the mad plugin in gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly. An example is http://youtube.com/watch?v=CSp7jsV7oG0 ... Read more 》

I created a version of swfdec 0.6.6 using mad and ffmpeg instead of gstreamer, because with gstreamer it failed to play multiple videos on youtube.com. The release is available in my PPA at: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/juliank/ubuntu hardy main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/juliank/ubuntu hardy main I will also provide some builds of the development branch (0.7.1) soon. **Update:**Maybe it was not clear, but the videos crashed the browser. It also didn’t really work in totem and I’m still looking for the source of the problem. I have every available gstreamer plugin package installed. Try it yourself, http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=CSp7jsV7oG0. It works with gnash, but gnash does not work with wordpress stats page. ... Read more 》