The 13.04 “Raring Ringtail” release of Ubuntu falls at the mid-point between the 12.04 and 14.04 LTS (long-term support) releases. This is the time in a development cycle when the balance starts to tip from innovation toward consolidation, when conversations form around what pieces need to be in place today to ensure a solid “checkmate” two releases down the road.
With that context in mind, it’s no surprise that Ubuntu Foundations–the central core behind the many faces of Ubuntu–plays a starring role in this release, both in sessions here at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Copenhagen, and in the upcoming 6 months of development work. Look for sessions on release roles and responsibilities, release planning including Edubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, and Kubuntu, archive maintenance and improvements to archive admin tools, reverting package regressions and immutable archive snapshots, cross-compilation, user access to UEFI setup and plans for secure boot, xz compression for packages, image creation tools for Flavors, auto-generated apparmor profiles, PowerPC bootloaders, OAuth for Python 3, “prototype” archives for new hardware, Android ROMs, user experience in distro upgrades, build daemon resources, boot time on ARM, and installation tools on ARM. Also training sessions on the error (crash) tracker, Python 3 porting, and how to contribute to upstart.
On the Cloud front, the big topics continue to center around OpenStack (integrating Grizzly, QA, packaging improvements), Juju (the Charm Store, Charm developer tools, contributor onramps, application servers like Ruby on Rails/Django, development process), and Ubuntu Cloud images (testing and roundtable). While the broader Ubuntu Server discussions range over Xen, LXC, libvert, QEMU, Ceph, MySQL, Nginx, Node.js, and MongoDB, Query2, bigdata filesystem support, and Power architecture virtualization.
The Client side is a harmonic chorus, with sessions on Ubuntu TV, mobile devices and installing Ubuntu on a Nexus 7, plus multiple sessions on Ubuntu as a gaming platform. Also look for the usual sorts of nuts and bolts that go into building a beautiful client experience, like accessibility, battery life, connectivity, config sync, choice of file managers, and consistent typography.
Don’t miss the Design Theatre on Wednesday, where all are welcome to participate and learn about design thinking, solving real-world design problems for apps submitted by the audience.
I can’t wait for tomorrow!
Allison Randal 
Hy Allison!
I rather wish you Ubuntu devs were about to integrate more sensible things into Ubuntu and its infrastructure around. Why is there still no dependency czar although a blueprint on Launchpad suggests so? Why are there about 100.000 open bugs (all the time)? Why was the auto-close feature not yet implemented into Launchpad. A colleague of mine already addressed the matter with Curtis Hovey in November 2012. What about security? Why would you not implement audit procedures as a part of the ISO testing process by default…?
However… I realize you addressed UEFI and you released a quite stable 12.04 which makes me remember good old hardy days. Further I read “AppArmor” in you post (not often enough however) which feels great! I also salute you for your efforts regarding OpenStack. Since I work for an ISP myself I think such technologies will be the future. So you’re on a better track with that than with unnecessary things like… something with U****.
@Mathias The answer to pretty much all questions in the form of “Why hasn’t X or Y been done in Ubuntu?” is “Because no one’s done it yet.” The reality is, a Linux distribution is tens of thousands of packages consisting of hundreds of millions of lines of code, and we (both volunteer and paid Ubuntu developers) just don’t get to everything we’d like to do. But that someone to do that something you want could be you. Dive in! 🙂
I don’t understand your comment on security, Ubuntu has an ace security team constantly auditing packages, applying security fixes, and tracking security alerts.
It bothers my Spock-ian brain when people take a statement like “I don’t like chocolate ice cream.” as giving them the right to declare “Chocolate ice cream is a universally terrible food, no one likes it.” It’s just not logical. I’m totally cool with someone not liking Unity: it doesn’t suit your sense of taste or style of working or whatever. So, use something else. I highly recommend GNOME3 or KDE for an alternative modern interface. Or, if you prefer something more “classic” Linux, Mint is doing a good job of preserving that style. I even regularly support one user who prefers FVWM on Ubuntu. Diversity is celebrated in Linux.
I was a Mac user starting in 1984, and have long held Apple’s work as the “gold standard” of OS design, even after I switched to Linux for my primary desktop. But Unity today beats Mac OS X, no contest, and only continues to improve. Please show good sportsmanship and respect the work of other teams improving Linux, even if they’re doing it in a different way or with different results than you personally would choose.
Hello Allison,
first of all – sorry for the late reply. Regarding your explanation to »Why hasn’t X or Y been done in Ubuntu?« I agree with you in general. Nonetheless the blueprint existed and no one who could have acted upon it did so. Unfortunately even though working with Cody and Charlie (not in Xubuntu project anymore) I never was that high level to initiate such things. In that light the »do it and it’ll be done« paradigm does not always apply. By the way that is one thing lots of people criticized about Canonicals recent course of action. I still remember that time in 2012/2013 when a lot of people left the project not due to laziness but because they were unable to do the things they wanted to do.
Oh and I did not do a bad comment on Ubuntu security! I said good things about AppArmor and Canonicals EFI course of action. However I think there should be a change in bug handling on LP. That’s all.
Finally a statement to Unity. I knew it would trigger something with/in you – and indeed it did. I’m always very astonished on the one hand and amused on the other hand when it comes to this debate. Please let me get this straight: I don’t give a damn about the ice cream flavors other people like since I have a taste on my own (Xfce in my case). Nothingness I wouldn’t 1) run around and convert people into something or 2) even worse spend so much resources on something (not so important) like that while there is much more important stuff to do. That is my opinion. I hope you’re enough of a sportsman to leave it that way without being sad, please. :-]