Re: Xenial startup disk creator and custom ISO

[Timo Jyrinki]

2016-05-06 21:42 GMT+03:00 Darren Landoll <darren.land...@gmail.com>:
> Are there any current issues with creating a custom Ubuntu Install CD
> (server install for my particular case) and using Startup Disk Creator in
> Ubuntu 16.04 to burn a custom *.iso file to a USB drive?
>
> It claims to finish successfully (does not take as long as I would expect),
> but does not result with a bootable USB drive.
>
> I create the *.iso based on instructions here:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallCDCustomization

The instructions might be out of date, it'd be nice to update the wiki
page with latest verified/new steps, if someone successfully finishes
the battle of getting it working.

I have successfully created bootable (both when using USB Creator and
simple Disks tool copy which equals to 'dd') live CD remix of 16.04
LTS, where I switched from mkisofs to genisofs [1].

-Timo

[1] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~timo-jyrinki/ubuntu-fi-remix/main/revision/31

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Re: qt5ct for Wily

[Timo Jyrinki]

2015-09-20 12:24 GMT+03:00 Ralf Mardorf :
> does somebody know a link that introduces how to build qt5 applications
> for Wily?

The closest might be http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/packagingqtstuff.html

> [weremouse@moonstudio qt5ct-0.17]$ qtchooser -qt=5 -run-tool=qmake 
> PREFIX=/usr/local

Just use export QT_SELECT=5 (or export QT_SELECT := 5 in debian/rules)
and run qmake normally.

> main.cpp:29:38: fatal error: qpa/qplatformthemeplugin.h: No such file or 
> directory

That's in qtbase5-private-dev since it's a private header that normal
apps should not be using.

> I wonder why the include paths are qt4.

Possibly since you were only specifying the Qt version to use for the
single tool, and the default fallback is Qt 4. That is, Qt 4
applications don't need to know about different Qt versions, but Qt 5
applications need to for example set that environment variable.

-Timo

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Re: Side-by-side installation of Qt5 and Qt4

[Timo Jyrinki]

Hi,

Yes, Qt4 and Qt5 are fully co-installable in Ubuntu 13.04 (and 12.04 LTS +
12.10 with the help of the PPA). You should install either qt4-default or
qt5-default package to select which tools are given you by default, ie.
when you type eg. qmake without any parameters. You can then switch between
the toolsets/libraries runtime with the QT_SELECT variable. This also
applies to packaging, so if you are doing a .deb package, you can either
add a build-dependency on qt5-default or qt4-default, or use export
QT_SELECT in debian/rules (and remember to have build dependency to
qtchooser in addition to other Qt dependencies). See 'man qtchooser' for
more information.

The only additional hindrance is, that upstream KDE hard-coded the Qt4
binary directory in PATH (see LP: #1176686 for more information), which
prepends even /usr/bin which has qtchooser et cetera. This temporary
measure to make sure they always get Qt4's qdbus will most certainly go
away later, but until then you need to check your PATH variable in your
development environment when using KDE.

-Timo



2013/5/14 The Spencers spencers1...@gmail.com

 Hello,

 I'm working on an application written using KDE 4.10 and Qt4.8. I'm mostly
 using KDE for the just UI, but since I am using Ubuntu and targeting Ubuntu
 (not KDE or Kubuntu) I am considering switching to Qt5 and the Ubuntu SDK
 once it becomes more stable and usable on the desktop, not just touch
 devices.

 Because of that, I'd like to try experimenting with Qt5 and the Ubuntu
 SDK. However, is it possible to install Qt5 in addition to Qt4 and the KDE
 development stuff? I assume it would be fine for running a pre-built
 application, and all the normal KDE apps and stuff would be fine, but will
 the combination work correctly when I try to build my KDE app? I'm asking
 this because I tried installing Unity Next after reading about it on
 omgubuntu.co.uk, and was unable to compile my KDE app due to it finding
 Qt5 instead of Qt4.

 While researching this, I came across a note on the canonical-qt5-edgers
 PPA [1] that said:

 1. Qt4 and Qt5 are co-installable with the migration to the new qtchooser
 tool. The previous Debian/Ubuntu approach relied on renaming binaries and
 using alternatives. When packaging against Qt5, set environment variable
 QT_SELECT=qt5 or include a package dependency to qt5-default in the
 packaging. See man qtchooser for more information.

 So if I set QT_SELECT to qt4 when I want to build my KDE app, and change
 it back to qt5 when tinkering with the Ubuntu SDK, will this be sufficent?

 [1] https://launchpad.net/~canonical-qt5-edgers/+archive/qt5-proper

 Thank you,
 Michael Spencer

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Re: This missing kernel headers on our latest stable release madness...

[Timo Jyrinki]

2013/2/22 Scott Ritchie scottritc...@ubuntu.com:
 I've been absolutely flooded with informal reports over a period of several
 months now of 12.10 being still broken with regards to proprietary drivers.

 Reports like this are typical, especially after the influx of steam users:
 Installed ubuntu + proprietary amd drivers, got no unity at 800x600 on next
 reboot and uninstalled.

 The proximate cause is a combination of
 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-updates/+bug/1068341
 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1070427

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe this bug report
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/jockey/+bug/1123107 could be
the one that has the fix for all the bugs. The fix is now in
precise-proposed, with quantal being In Progress. CC:ing Alberto who
has been working on the jockey/ubuntu-drivers-common/nvidia-common
updates.

-Timo

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Re: This missing kernel headers on our latest stable release madness...

[Timo Jyrinki]

2013/2/22 Scott Ritchie scottritc...@ubuntu.com:
 I'm not sure what the underlying fix should be, but it is making me question
 if there's some sort of larger process issue here because we've managed to
 drop this on the floor for so long.

A good question. It might be that the proprietary drivers haven't been
pushed in QA/Testing teams high enough, compared to how much users use
them and how jockey suggests installing them. The problem is furthered
by the history of non-Ubuntu bugs/problems with at least fglrx.

Right now there has been the case of AMD dropping support for HD
2000-4000 series in the newer drivers, and only the newer drivers
support newer kernels. I'm not sure what's the exact situation for
12.04.2 (or 12.10) - do they suggest an uninstallable fglrx driver for
HD 2000 - 4000 users or not. I think the Modaliases of the package's
control file is used, so the question is whether that is properly
stripped of the now unsupported series. If anyone wants to tinker...

-Timo

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Re: [Idea] PhoneGap support for Ubuntu

[Timo Jyrinki]

2012/11/6 James Haigh james.r.ha...@gmail.com:
 What? Could you please provide a link?

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1195 - look at the core of
Ubuntu and review it through a mobile lens. I think PhoneGap would
fit in the core by being essentially also a sort of build/packaging
tool, and having support for Ubuntu in more mobile world build tools
would be nice. Or if nothing else, at least in the 14.04 LTS context
PhoneGap could make sense if not yet during this cycle - but the work
could already begin IMHO.

 - and I really do hope Canonical get it out there before it goes the same
 way, or competitors get there first. I think Canonical should focus on
 Ubuntu for Android before revisiting the ambitions of Ubuntu Mobile.

I think the current plan sounds quite sensible, since improving eg.
memory footprint, battery life etc. will help also desktop users as
well as the potential Ubuntu for Android users.

-Timo

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Re: [Idea] PhoneGap support for Ubuntu

[Timo Jyrinki]

2012/11/6 Ma Xiaojun damage3...@gmail.com:
 This is inspired by the following post:
 https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2012-November/msg6.html

 Since Ubuntu is heading towards Tablets and mobile phones now.
 It would be very nice if we also join the PhoneGap camp.

This occurred to me is as well when the new mobility focus was
announced a few weeks ago. If you or someone has interest to tinker
with the code, go ahead and add Ubuntu support :) There are indeed
many platforms which try to do the same as PhoneGap, so pick your
choice and add Ubuntu in front of developers' eyes!

In the end I guess it will mostly matter when some of those projects
really start to have developer mass, ie. real applications get
published to app stores from within the framework. In that phase it'd
be cool if a single button push would make it available also in Ubuntu
software center, right? I don't know if some high profile apps already
are published solely via eg. PhoneGap. Wikipedia app by Wikimedia
foundation and BBC Olympics look to be interesting.

-Timo

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Re: How to install Precise without getting screwed?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2012/4/11 Dane Mutters dmutt...@gmail.com:
 There's somewhat more to it than that.  The major issue (among many other
 issues) is that the new GUIs don't do the things that used to be available
 on the old one (Gnome 2).  Example: I can't add a good system monitor to
 Gnome 3 because the old gnome-system-monitor applet (being an applet at all,
 apparently) is incompatible with Gnome 3.

Not sure about the system monitor applet case (I'm not using one), but
there is at least indicator-multiload now. For me, usually using
development versions and not sticking with LTS, losing the weather
information was unfortunate at the time. Currently I'm personally not
missing anything anymore (although weather info should be a default
feature), and the Unity in 12.04 feels more productive than GNOME 2
ever did. Mostly because of super + (shift + ) numbers, super + (shift
+) alt + arrows and the Dash search features, plus the screen space
(even though I've 1600x900 display). The search features for accessing
recent documents and apps is much nicer than browsing through the
menus, at least after getting used to it.

It did take learning time to become not annoyed with Unity, although
now if I'd start with 12.04 the situation would be more welcome,
because it's that much more stable and faster. I'm not that much
against change, so the biggest irritation for me was all the bugs
previously. Also the simple thing of showing quick help when keeping
Super pressed down helps a lot in learning how to use Unity more
powerfully. I can understand the pain people have gone through if
using Unity since 11.04 (I didn't start to use it back then). I was
annoyed with the lack of application menu for a long time, but finally
nowadays using the search feels natural and fast, plus navigating
menus manually on 10.04 LTS machines feels clunky. Super + A is also
available for an access to a list, but I'd prefer it'd be expanded
without an extra click.

Still, it's not for everyone of course, and is a big change as a
sudden switch kind of thing. I also hadn't even realized the missing
graphical way of doing desktop launchers, so I learned something from
this thread as well. Obviously I haven't used desktop launchers for
anything, since I prefer using terminal anyway for such use cases that
I could possibly do custom launchers. And I have a big .ssh/config,
yes :)

-Timo

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Re: Drop Gwibber from default install

[Timo Jyrinki]

2012/3/14 Rodney Dawes rodney.da...@canonical.com:
 Can you please clarify what you mean by laggy here? And are
 there bugs open for what you mean by your use of the term?

The smooth scroll bug covers it mostly, but some specifics might use
separate bug reports. At least the following come to mind right away:

- You can see the photos/images being drawn, and they flicker from
time to time when the scrolling stops.
- Keeping arrow down pressed feels laggy, both because of the low
update rate, lack of smooth scrolling and visible lag of drawing the
images.
- With mouse wheel scroll, the initial responsiveness feel snappier
than with keyboard, but the application may easily become unresponsive
for 2-10 seconds on my machine at least (Core 2 Duo 2.5GHz)
- When you send a message, the lag when pressing Send seems to be gone
in 3.3.91, although there is still no feedback of the actual sending
until it's fetched from the remote server (user needs to just trust
that it's being sent)

Some are performance issues, some are simply about additional code
needed for giving immediate visible feedback/animation/transition on
all actions user may do. But in principle the truly smooth scrolling
covers already fixing so many things, that after that the rest will be
comparatively minor UI enhancements to reduce the perceived lagginess.

I now filed bug #955747 [1] for the feedback wishlist item.

-Timo

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gwibber/+bug/955747

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Re: Drop Gwibber from default install

[Timo Jyrinki]

2012/3/12 Ken VanDine ken.vand...@canonical.com:
 For those that haven't tried the latest version, I really suggest
 getting 3.3.91 and taking that for a spin.  Most of the effort we've put
 into it recently have been quality, so no stunning changes but more
 reliability.  Duplicate detection and handling of the content.
 Scrolling and keyboard navigation has improved quite a bit, but we
 really need smooth scrolling.  I would say that would be at the top of
 the todo list.

Thanks for your efforts so far! I tried the 3.3.91 out. Sure it's the
good ol' laggy Gwibber, but at some point earlier it regressed in
usability for me so far that I stopped using it. Now it seems to be
back on track, and hopefully indeed the four bugs mentioned in the
original post will see themselves fixed at some point.

-Timo

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Re: MySQL's future in Debian and Ubuntu

[Timo Jyrinki]

2012/2/7 Clint Byrum cl...@ubuntu.com:
 So what should we, the Debian and Ubuntu MySQL maintainers and users,
 do about this?

This is really more for the heavy users to answer, but I haven't seen
any indication that MariaDB wouldn't be an LTS worthy replacement. It
has the majority of former MySQL core developers, corporate backing
and indeed an open development process. Essentially it could be
possible to say that it's more the new MySQL than LibreOffice is
the new OpenOffice.org? (given Apache/IBM backing for the old OOo,
but well at the same time ignoring that while Oracle has given up on
OOo, it's doing something with MySQL still).

Anyway, the pros sounds like outweighing cons, especially given the
problems in security support et cetera with MySQL.

But I hope you'll have a consensus within the Debian/Ubuntu
maintainers. For Ubuntu check up the possible memo notes from past
UDSes since this is not like it'd be a completely new topic.

-Timo

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Re: Proposal to delay release of Precise Pangolin

[Timo Jyrinki]

2011/10/19 Dustin Kirkland kirkl...@ubuntu.com:
 The 12.04.1 (the first of the dot releases) is scheduled for 23
 August 2012, which is about 4 months after the 12.04 release (26 April
 2012).  The dot release is, in fact, a bug-fix and
 hardware-enablement only release cycle.  Realistically, some
 enterprise server and corporate desktop users won't upgrade until that
 first dot release.

Actually since Update Manager only starts offering 10.04 LTS - 12.04
LTS around the .1 time frame, most of the LTS users won't upgrade
until then. I think that's great and precisely like it should be. Most
of the current 11.10 users will upgrade to 12.04 earlier, and already
get a lot more polished release than the usual half-yearly. Then the
LTS users should get a really smooth experience in August with the
additional fixes.

-Timo

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Re: Booting and login - why are users not logged in automatically?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2010/3/24 Evan eapa...@gmail.com:
 For security we definitely want users to enter their passwords by default.

 However, given this default you raise a good point that ureadahead
 should be optimized for this option, not for auto-login.

Note though that Ubuntu Netbook defaults to auto-login, and netbook
boot speed has been the primary goal with boot speed optimizations
AFAIK (although everyone benefits of course, a lot).

-Timo

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Re: String break in ubuntone-client without freeze exception

[Timo Jyrinki]

2010/3/15 Rodney Dawes rodney.da...@canonical.com:
 which there are translations, and doesn't really explain which
 strings you feel broke this freeze. Can you list them please, so
 we can determine which ones exactly you think broke the freeze?

 I'll leave you in the capable hands of Elliot if there are any
 ones that do violate the freeze.

It's not as this specific case would be a problem anymore since I
basically took care of the string freeze exception announcement, it's
mainly for the future and all other developers as well. Ubuntu
translators and documentation community have been battling with all
kind of package uploads after string freeze release by release, and I
simply took an opportunity to point out an example so that more
developers would become aware of what the UI freeze means for
translations and docs team, and basically the whole Ubuntu experience.

But just as a note, after 1.1.3 the following new or changed (some
ever so slightly) strings were added in 1.1.4, resulting in those
being untranslated for all languages (until teams catch up, if/when
they notice it) and documentation being potentially out of date:

The devices connected to with your personal cloud network are listed below
LOCAL MACHINE
Stop sharing on Ubuntu One...
Stop sharing this folder on Ubuntu One
Stop synchronizing this folder with Ubuntu One.
Synchronize this folder with Ubuntu One.
Copy Ubuntu One public URL
Copy the Ubuntu One public URL for this file to the clipboard.
Stop publishing via Ubuntu One
No longer share this file with everyone.
Publish via Ubuntu One
Make this file available to anyone.

1.1.3 was btw also released after the UI freeze, but that was close enough.

-Timo

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String break in ubuntone-client without freeze exception

[Timo Jyrinki]

Hi Rodney,

You recently uploaded a new version of ubuntuone-client source
package. Please note that Ubuntu has been in UserInterfaceFreeze since
March 4th, requiring freeze exception including a bug report and a
note to relevant mailing lists. See more information at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreezeExceptionProcess#UserInterfaceFreeze%20Exceptions
. I see that there has been an ongoing feature freeze exception, which
probably should have been user interface freeze exception at the same
time.

cc:ing ubuntu-devel-discuss just to remind everyone of how to handle
the user interface freeze exceptions. Let's just try to keep the
processes in mind, since they are there for a reason. The translators
and documentation people are mainly interested in getting a proper
notification on time to make sure documentation changes and new
translations for both UI and the docs are done as completely as
possible.

The new UI strings are available at
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/ubuntuone-client

-Timo

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Re: Including usb-modeswitch in default installation?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2010/2/25 Peteris Krisjanis pec...@gmail.com:
 By the way, reading all materials, I just thought - usb-modeswitch now
 has nice udev wrapper - why not ship it by default? Why it isn't in
 main? Is there any objections to this? Patents, legal issues (I can't
 think of any, but still)?

I think this is where come back to the beginning of this discussion :)
Ubuntu core developers would like to follow upstream, and it's
currently not yet clear enough what's the usptream direction (or what
upstream we are actually talking about). Josh from usb-modeswitch is
making the point that modem-modeswitch upstream has abandoned its
development already, and that (at least some) kernel developers would
like to see some of the things done in userspace like usb-modeswitch
is doing. So I guess a positive round of discussion on the
linux-hotplug mailing list Scott now pointed out would be what's
needed to get some backing up to what Josh is thinking, and then
Ubuntu could follow the direction most parties seem to agree with.

At least for Ubuntu 10.10, but also if the current situation is not
really wisely supportable from LTS point of view, freeze exception for
even 10.04 LTS. There is only very little time, though.

-Timo

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Re: Including usb-modeswitch in default installation?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2010/2/24 Peteris Krisjanis pec...@gmail.com:
 I fully agree with you Scott, however I am not sure which one of us
 should start discussion there. Would be nice for you Ubuntu guys to
 start pushing this idea, because you have some backing.

 Anyway, I'm subscribing to that list and if no one will volunteer, I
 will try to initialize discussion.

It looks to me Josh from usb-modeswitch has the technical capability
of explaining why usb-modeswitch is the way forward, and has also
implied that modem-modeswitch of udev has already been abandoned by
the upstream. Unfortunately he has just started his vacation (see the
usb-modeswitch forum), so there is not going to be immediate backup
from him. If you think you can express his ideas and references [1]
from his postings well enough, you can start the discussion on
linux-hotplug. Just try to be as polite as possible, since I don't
know what we are touching here :) But so far it seems that Red Hat's
Dan William has abandoned modem-modeswitch, and if also Josh's
argument about it cannot be solved correctly in kernel space only is
accepted, then usb-modeswitch is the natural way to go forward -
possibly by integrating it to udev.

[1] http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/bb/viewtopic.php?p=1906#1906

-Timo

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Re: Including usb-modeswitch in default installation?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2010/2/13 Timo Jyrinki timo.jyri...@gmail.com:
 I think the main interesting thing would be that what are the
 usb-modeswitch developers' motivations and could they with some help
 from the kernel guys be directed to contribute more to the kernel.

In addition to previous concerns in this thread addressed in
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2010-February/010691.html
, it seems the upstream is convinced that the usb-modeswitch is
needed, and kernel quirks are not either enough or the way to go:

http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/bb/viewtopic.php?t=322 (scroll down)

I think the udev package's modem-modeswitch point is anyway very
relevant, if it's obsolete and somewhat broken. It's currently
included in Ubuntu's udev package.

-Timo

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Re: Including usb-modeswitch in default installation?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2010/2/9 Timo Jyrinki timo.jyri...@gmail.com:
 If I read those correctly, they work neither with or without
 usb-modeswitch, hence adding it would not decrease any usability?

I poked around on IRC and summarized with my non-existent journalistic
skills the situation in my blog:
http://losca.blogspot.com/2010/02/ubuntu-1004-and-3g-modems-usb.html

I think the main interesting thing would be that what are the
usb-modeswitch developers' motivations and could they with some help
from the kernel guys be directed to contribute more to the kernel. Or
possibly a new group of people (or one person) who work between
usb-modeswitch and kernel people. And of course there is also the
question if solving the problem in userspace is actually a wise thing,
something that's debatable.

On a larger scale, I think it could be worth pondering what Ubuntu
could do in situations like this. I think this is one case where the
users understandably would accept any non-optimal technical solution
if it just seemingly works for them. But if we start having separate,
constantly SRU:d packages for 3G modem support, DKMS modules for eg.
DVB and video cam devices etc., is it something of a mess that Ubuntu
(or Canonical offering official support) doesn't want to wander to? On
the other hand, anything in the backport modules etc. doesn't reach
the average user other than via possible friends/forum visits.

In other words, self-updating hardware support is something that would
be nice for LTS at some point, since the only reason I sometimes
recommend non-LTS to random users is that it's more probable the newer
non-LTS version supports newer hardware.

-Timo

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Including usb-modeswitch in default installation?

[Timo Jyrinki]

Hi,

a) Is anyone aware of some earlier discussions on the topic wrt Ubuntu
and b) Would everyone agree that it would make a lot of sense?

3G broadband usage is incredibly popular nowadays at least around
here, and usb-modeswitch is a must have for a majority (?) of new 3G
modems these days. It's a very simple addition of udev rules, and
requires nothing else besides having it installed - the 3G modem will
show up in Network Manager.

Any objections or observations for a MIR (main inclusion request) of
usb-modeswitch and inclusion on the default installation of Ubuntu
10.04 LTS? Binary package size is 30kB + 10kB (data).

-Timo

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Re: Minutes from the Technical Board meeting, 2009-09-22

[Timo Jyrinki]

2009/9/22 Jordan Mantha laserj...@ubuntu.com:
   * Based on feedback all around, it was agreed that it is still early
     for sun-java6 to be dropped.  However, it was not yet clear if
     responsibility for the package should be changed.
   * ACTION: kees to drive sun-java6 email thread and get resolution on
     responsibility
 Would it help if ubuntu-restricted-extras was icedtea6-plugin |
 sun-java6-plugin instead of sun-java6-plugin | icedtea6-plugin ? I'm
 guessing a whole lot of sun-java6 installations are from people, like
 me, who just install ubuntu-restricted-extras and don't think about
 specifically what Java VM is on my machine.

Then again, what would be there restricted anymore? Maybe Java should
simply be removed from ubuntu-restricted-extras altogether, and
OpenJDK would be installed automatically (or automatically as needed,
similar to I guess the extra OpenOffice.org components)? At least when
it's seen suitable, ie. no big regressions.

And further about restricted-extras, is it truly that the MS-replacing
fonts from liberation and wine projects couldn't be installed by
default nowadays, getting rid of the MS ttf font installer also as it
would not be needed for majority of cases? Not that I'd have ever
installed it myself ever, but apparently some/many tend to install it.
But is it nowadays more of a habit than a real need?

After that restricted-extras would be simply limited to
patent-encumbered media formats and adobe's flash plugin, which I'd
prefer to offering so much possibly-(soon?-)not-really-relevant other
restricted stuff for the meta package installers.

-Timo

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Regression in getting fully translated Ubuntu installation - what to do for karmic?

[Timo Jyrinki]

Hi,

CC:ing ubuntu-translators just to get interested people on-board, no
need to continue CC:ing.

Please look at https://bugs.launchpad.net/language-selector/+bug/434173
- do you think I'm missing something, can the report be refined? The
new way of handling supporting translations, writing aids etc. moves
them from package dependencies to language-selector. However, it means
that new installations of Ubuntu do not get the full language support
at install time, even when connected to Internet. My previous guidance
for those reading an installation guide has been to enable Internet
connection before starting the installer to get eg. Finnish support.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/language-selector-karmic describes the user
should get a notification after installation. First of all, I tested
it and it seems non-functional at the moment (a bug on its own).
Secondly, I do strongly think it's not enough - for example 50% of the
users could easily not be interested at the one-time popup, forgetting
about it - but they will run into a bad Ubuntu experience once they
are in a situation of lacking a spell-checker for example, or reading
English documentation.

Also, it does not seem Ubuntu tools currently are very error-proof in
case of lacking an Internet connection - they will simply fail and no
new notifications (or guiding to connect to Internet) are given.

To match Ubuntu 9.04 functionality, I think Ubuntu installer should
call language-selector to install full language support at the
installation time, if the Internet connection is available. This would
result in a similar behavior to 9.04, with the pop-up being there to
hopefully help those who didn't enable the Internet connection (there
is no guidance for it when starting from the Live CD).

Besides am I correct or could you refine the bug report, I'm
interested in against which packages the bug should be filed? Is it a
a) bug against language-selector (to have some silent --fix-missing
to be used by the installer), b) bug against installer (launch
language-selector, silent or not), c) bug against update-manager (I
would like to have more than just one pop-up about installing full
support - for example, update-manager could completely automatically
download full support together with the first updates for a single
time), d) bug report against The Whole World (language-selector +
lang-pack-o-matic changes + ...) since the problem appeared in the
first place? If you know the answer or part of it, please go ahead and
refine the bug.

I'm also interested if these were thought about during creation of the
Karmic language-selector blueprint? The popup notification is not
enough IMHO, and it wasn't enough in 9.04 either. But especially as
the situation is now worse in 9.10 than it was in 9.04, can we bring
it to 9.04 level somehow? After that, we might think how to actually
make it Just Work for lucid (I'm thinking about guiding the user by
hand to connect to Internet etc).

-Timo

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Thanks to you all, 9.04 will be a great release in all languages

[Timo Jyrinki]

Hi,

This is just a small ”thank you” and also ”just look at that” kind of
post. The thing that should be looked at is:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TranslatingUbuntu/JauntyTranslationIssues

Virtually all I18N issues that were a) never fixed in eg. intrepid (or
earlier) b) found out as new (having existed also before) have been
fixed during jaunty. Developers have been extremely helpful in making
the ”Every computer user should be able to use their software in the
language of their choice” a reality. Also the general knowledge of
I18N issues and how to do it right has increased.

In addition to those mentioned on the page, there have been
improvements elsewhere as well. Debian package description
translations have now a working two-direction solution for merging
(proposing) translations between Debian and Ubuntu, and for the first
time anyway all the DDTP scripts are top-notch so that all description
translations from both Debian and Ubuntu are shown as they should be.
The short package descriptions shown in eg. gnome-app-install are also
fully translatable now for the first time, though also intrepid had
the possibility for majority of the data there (before that, nothing
was possible to translate regarding the short descriptions). These
affect a lot anyone considering installing a package, which now do not
necessarily see foreign language at all (of course it's useful if the
actual program is also localized after the installation ;)).

There are still places where more or better I18N would be needed. I
would guess some notifications might still be lacking I18N, or
translations are hard-coded. There are maybe a bit too many (not so
easy to solve) hacks where proper translations need manual
maintainer intervention. KDE (or Kubuntu, or Ubuntu build system) has
some obvious I18N problems in places. Hard drive check (and other boot
stuff, except live-cd boot menu) messages are untranslated. The
Live-CD simply cannot, ever, include all translations so for most
languages the live session is purely English except for the installer.
Rosetta, upstreams, Ubuntu-specific changes... well, has been
discussed forever and will need even more of that. Etc.

But still, the progress jaunty has made is truly awesome, since
basically everything that has perhaps bothered the casual Ubuntu
default installation user has been fixed. It's only that when you
approach perfectness, even the little flaws, in corners, show up
better. All in all Ubuntu 9.04 will be I think the most translated and
translatable free software desktop distribution there is.

-Timo

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Re: Reason for removing animation from Gnome login?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2009/3/25 Marius Gedminas mar...@pov.lt:
 I'm wondering why readahead doesn't load all those thousands of small
 files needed for desktop startup during boot, before I try to log in.
 I'm guessing that it just doesn't know the particular ones that I need -
 everyone's GNOME settings are different, applets are different,
 wallpapers are different, themes are different.

Right, but also it wouldn't help since simply seeking to one thousand
files with an average seek time of 15ms (seek + rotational latency)
would mean 15 seconds of pure seeking, not to say anything about
actually transferring data (or doing something about the data on the
cpu). And I'd like grub - desktop loaded to be eg. 10s.

Readahead is already doing good things, and it should be loading the
files it does in an order that reduces the seek time (it can fetch
things as they are ordered on the disk), but in the end the amount of
files and seeking should be anyway reduced AFAIK. But optimization
during 9.04 has concentrated on a lot of other subjects which prevent
fast boot anyway, so it's also a matter of the whole picture - if
there is anything halting the boot, it doesn't help if one part is
completely optimized.

-Timo

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Re: Reason for removing animation from Gnome login?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2009/3/23 Marius Gedminas mar...@pov.lt:
 Personally, for me the desktop startup is (or feels) I/O-bound, with the
 panel applets showing up one by one with agonizing pauses in between and
 the disk running at full throttle.

Yes, it is. In jaunty, the current warm start (everything in cache,
ie. login, logout and then login again) time is ca. 5 seconds, with
compiz, something that would be actually ok for a login time in
general instead of the current status.

And the I/O problem comes from the hundreds/thousands of small files
that are inefficiently read. The amount of transferred data is not
that much that it would take more than 2-4s to read on modern even
laptop hard drives, if the data would be sequentially available in a
one big chunk.

2009/3/23 Evan eapa...@gmail.com:
 My guess is that it's a bug in Compiz, coincidentally introduced in the same
 cycle as compiz-by-default. When I disable desktop effects (running
 intrepid) my login speeds up by a good 15 seconds. Does anybody else notice
 this?

This has been fixed in the newer libcompizconfig in jaunty.

-Timo

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Re: translating the categories in the totem BBC plugin or not?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2009/3/6 Sebastien Bacher seb...@ubuntu.com:
 The change add the list of categories to the translatable strings and I
 would gather some opinion on whether people think that's a good idea or
 not knowing that the media content available is in english.

I'd think it's enough that the actual titles are in English. To the
extent that there is also video content, people can enjoy sights and
sounds even if they do not understand the speech, and it's nice to
have categories in an understandable language for random surfing.

I cannot seem to be able to connect to the server at the moment, but
in the case there are no videos and won't be much in the future
either, I'd say it's also ok to remove the I18N of the categories from
the patch since usually there is not much enjoyment in audio-only in
foreign language. I seem to recall I was unable to find video content
something like half a year ago easily from there.

But in either case, because of the titles being in English, I don't
see much reason to worry about being mislead. Also like Adi just
wrote, it can be left for translator teams to decide, which means
keeping the L10n possibility.

-Timo

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Re: Go-OOO.org?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/12/30 Joe Terranova joeterran...@gmail.com:
 a) Open Office (and its derivatives I assume) is a bear to package.
 Transition packages between releases open up more points of failure.
 Will Go-Ooo.org last, or die in 2 months?

Is anyone btw familiar how much of go-oo.org is Novell's business
competition to Sun, since it was initiated (?) there and has active
developers hired by Novell, and how much is actual community? Ie. was
it Novell/SUSE first with the hopes (very realistic, given the
problems in approachability of Sun's project) that will grow into more
true community project, or was it go-oo.org community first adopted by
Novell for sponsoring? Anyway, Novell's involvement with go-oo.org is
quite largely hidden. Just interested in the history.

Also are there any more (wrt Sun's version) potential risks in the
code in go-oo.org codebase related to Microsoft-Novell deal and the
covenant not to sue which has been mentioned to be risky business
even though Microsoft states in their FAQ that OSP applies to GPL
software _but_ that they also state that it's up to interpretation of
GPL what it means, and of course their preferred interpretation would
be that GPL would not be entirely libre (more at
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/osp-gpl.html). The main
problem I guess is that it's covenant not to sue only for office
document specification implementations, but what happens if code from
OOo will get used somewhere else under the GPL, and it's using some
OSP-related patent but for some other purpose? And of course my
thought about primary MS aims is that they'd like to make open source
non-commercial even though any non-commercialism is against open
source / free software principles, by using patent licenses as the way
to cripple down open source software (first yes you can use but in
case of major commercial use hey you're using our patents).
Hopefully that won't ever succeed, though on the other hand it's
already succeeding to an extent with all the unfounded, broad claims
about Linux kernel etc.

-Timo

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Re: Ubuntu 8.10 significantly slower than previous versions

[Timo Jyrinki]

I wonder how this discussion is able to drift so much away from the
actual subject on both ubuntu-devel and ubuntu-devel-discuss. Many
people do not want to believe results or just point out one or two of
them are meaningless (like NVIDIA graphics performance with closed
drivers is not that interesting).

2008/11/6 mr [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 According to the recent benchmarking article by Phoronix, the previous two
 releases of Ubuntu are significantly slower than Feisty Fawn. In some cases
 this can be seen as up to 50% performance drop with certain desktop tasks.

Yep. I found three important points I list below, sound encoding
(video might be because of changed default parameters, dunno), SQLite,
compiling.

1. See eg. the page:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articleitem=ubuntu_bench_2008num=4
It takes about double time to encode mp3:s, ogg:s or flac:s In Ubuntu
8.04/8.10 vs. earlier. Fedora seems to have been affected by the
problem all the time:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articleitem=fedora_test_2008num=2

2. SQLite is over two times slower in Ubuntu 8.10 vs. earlier:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articleitem=ubuntu_bench_2008num=5

3. Compiling has been almost two times slower in Ubuntu than Fedora
after Ubuntu 7.04:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articleitem=fedora_test_2008num=2

The 1. and 3. is what I'd worry about. 1. in general and 3. because
Fedora is almost two times faster.

(from later in the thread)
 The default scheduler is optimised for general desktop usage, where you
 have a large number of simultaneously running applications, applets,
 etc. and each one needs to be responsive.

Please, everybody, do not take this as granted. Question it, test it,
feel it etc. With the default CFQ, I could not do about _anything_
when I did eg. svn update or Firefox churned through its enormous
databases on a laptop hard drive. After changing to elevator=deadline
these cases work _much_ smoother without visible regressions
elsewhere.

-Timo

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Re: OpenOffice 3 and Firefox 3.1 in Intrepid?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/9/5 Chris Cheney [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 released on Sept 8 which puts the final release around Oct 20. That
 doesn't leave enough time to make it even marginally stable, since that
 would be only 3 days before the Intrepid release candidate.

Note that there are also dependencies like openoffice.org-voikko which
would need upgrading to a new version too if OOo 3 would be put into
intrepid.

-Timo

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Re: Boot-time improvements

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/9/11 Krzysztof Lichota [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 As an author of Prefetch, I cannot agree that it would not fix seeks ;)
 Part of my implementation, not enabled by default as it is highly
 experimental, is ext3 defragmenter which puts all files for prefetch
 in one place on disk, so the requests to read them can be merged into
 big streaming reads.

I stand happily corrected :) Hopefully you will get some help in
testing the defragmenter and getting that part stable in time, too.
The hard part in the whole prefetch is probably it being kernel-based,
but the diff [1] seemed quite non-invasive, ie. only a few calls in
the existing kernel code and then some new calls.

[1] 
http://code.google.com/p/prefetch/source/browse/#svn/trunk/kernel-patches/2.6.22

-Timo

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Re: Boot-time improvements

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/9/12 Chris Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 the mailing list here. So, as a test, I timed my own system how long it
 takes to boot. From GRUB boot to login screen, it was 36.72 secs. And
 that is on a Celeron D with 512MB DDR RAM and booting from an old IDE
 hard drive. I'd imagine that a more recent dual core setup with more ram
 and a more recent sata hard drive would have better results. But my mere
 36 secs is certainly nothing to rant about.

One problem is that the dual core setups do not help that much because
the bottle-neck is in hard drives which haven't gotten speedier at all
in the last 15 years regarding seek times, and even transfer speeds
are relatively slowly increasing compared to other aspects. Especially
dual-core laptops are largely as slow to boot as desktop computers
from 2-5 years ago, because of the slower hard disks.

The other problem is that logging into GNOME often takes the same time
it takes from GRUB to GDM.

The aim would be IMHO something like 15-20s from GRUB to GNOME desktop
on a modern _laptop_ computer, with smooth transitions.

-Timo

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Re: Boot-time improvements

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/9/12 Oliver Grawert [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 You have 25-35 seconds from GRUB till desktop appearing (using autologin)?

 i have managed 22 already with a not to drastic set of modifications (19
 after grub [1] plus the three second grub timeout) with the ten seconds
 my BIOS takes that even stays below 35 for the complete boot process
 from hitting power button to see gdm.

That's not till desktop appearing (using autologin). People often
speak about different things when saying boot, but regardless of the
term used the interest here is when the desktop is usable after
powering up the computer. It can be measured by temporarily activating
auto-login in gdm setup to bypass gdm. It can even double that figure,
and it's the figure which we are interested in. One cannot do much
work with gdm.

Like I said, I'd say the aim should be around 15-20s ultimately on
modern (but non-SSD) laptops for GRUB-to-desktop, since we cannot
affect BIOS-to-GRUB at the moment. Though that cannot be reached
without fully using prefetch or having GNOME login optimized otherwise
very heavily.

 i think we still have to do our homework first and get the existing stuff 
 into a
 reasonable shape

I agree that every optimization counts, even if it's small (but a lot
of small fixes make for a bigger change).

-Timo

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Re: Boot-time improvements

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/9/10 Przemysław Kulczycki [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 Maybe we could achieve it using Prefetch?
 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Prefetch
 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutomaticBootAndApplicationPrefetchingSpec

Prefetch would be nice, and definitely would improve the user
experience. In the end, it would however not fix the problem with
seeking to thousands of different files / positions. The only way to
fix that problem is to go with sequential, big files, either by
precisely reordering stuff on the disk in an area that can be made
100% sequential, or by copying files to a cache of sort, being a
single sequential file which contains everything needed and is updated
when needed.

There are so many seeks done from GRUB to GNOME desktop that the other
methods can only bring the time closer to the time spend on doing just
the seeks, which is still probably 20s or more. Of course all good
methods are worth implementing, since eg. 25s from GRUB to desktop
would be of course an improvement...

-Timo
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Re: Boot-time improvements

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/9/9 Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 2. Remove the flashes and brown screens when starting Gnome

 Personally, my biggest annoyance as a user is the brown screen that
 flashes between GDM and when Gnome starts. It would be much nicer if gdm
 displayed the greeter for half a second longer, and when Gnome has the
 desktop wallpaper ready, it would do some nice GL transition to the
 actual desktop environment. Where there has to be transitions, it would
 be good to keep it as smooth as possible.

I think this is an excellent point that the GDM would show logging
in for as long as desktop wallpaper can be switched to.

 It seems that with the current process, it's close to as fast as it can
 be at the moment. Readahead avoids unnecessary disk seeks.

No, really, I think there is room for at least 5x improvement in disk
seeks. The disk usage is currently terrible, and it is what is is
because of the wish not to do too much optimization work so that
there is no risk of breaking any complex setup of programs. The
optimization of disk reads should be possible to do, but it would
require a large amount of careful planning and testing and modifying
different software, working together with the upstream. And some
things like reordering/copying needed files on the disk to eg. a big
sequential file just seems too ugly from technical point of view to
some people, even though there are simply no alternatives to bringing
the same kind of benefits.

The amount of information GNOME reads from disk is probably under
100MB, which modern hard drives read in one second. However, there are
thousands of seeks, and each hundred of those consumes another second
of seeks. The current login time from GDM to GNOME desktop is
something like 20-40s depending on the disk speed, while if you have
the information from disk already in memory (logout and login again),
it might be as low as 3s (excluding compiz which seems very slow).

There also often seems to be new bottle-necks when old ones are fixed,
eg. I'm unsure why intrepid GRUB-to-GDM seems so slow while earlier
GDM-to-GNOME was the most annoying. Also GNOME 2.24 would seem to have
(for me) something preventing the 3s startup I was seeing in hardy
times with all things cached, even when compiz is disabled.

 If something like Usplash continues to be used, I think it's important
 that it transitions well into the next phase. Not sure if that's even
 possible when using X.

There have been blueprints on the transitions before, so it's probably
very well known that it is wanted at some point. But it needs the new
features from kernel etc. to truly fulfill it. Fedora is indeed
thinking about the stuff already with their Fedora 10, from GRUB menu
to the GNOME/KDE desktop, and I hope they manage to do it well.

-Timo

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Re: Did we really release 8.04?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/7/11 Matthew Paul Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 That doesn't require a script. For example, bugs targeted to
 intrepid-alpha-2, sorted by number of duplicates:
 https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?orderby=-number_of_duplicatesfield.milestone%3Alist=1320

Cool, didn't know that! Added to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Stats.
Looks like that's also nowadays in the Advanced Search dialog of
Launchpad, which is great. There also
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?orderby=-message_count

-Timo

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Re: Did we really release 8.04?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/7/7 Bryce Harrington [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 I think the single most needed feature in Launchpad regarding this
 would be the possibility for voting, as done in bugzilla.

 I don't know if I necessarily agree with this.  Voting may feel good
 from a user perspective and certainly couldn't hurt, but we already have
 good ways of measuring user interest in particular bugs.

Right, it may be it's more about giving users a good feeling, but we
should probably be doing that, too... It does work for some projects
like Wine and OpenOffice.org as a measurement of a popularity of a
problem.

 For instance,
 Brian Murray captures bugs with many subscribers (which I link to from
 http://people.ubuntu.com/~bryce/Xorg/status_current.html).

I linked to Brian's directory from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Stats
now, since those kind of services are valuable if they are just easily
found.

 With voting, I would worry that we'd see all the usual problems with
 gaming voting systems.  Someone might file a stub bug Ubuntu crashes
 randomly with no details, post something like plz vote this bug if u
 want ubuntu to never crash again, and accumulate +10,000 votes to it.

Yes, it might not work, too :) My hope would be that those bugs would
be in a minority and going through eg. 50 most voted bugs would reveal
some important bugs that wouldn't have been revealed otherwise, since
the people hovering around that specific bug didn't know how to use
Launchpad to propose it for a milestone or contact QA.

Granted, getting sorted by comments could help in the same thing as
voting, but voting could decrease noise in the bug reports.

 I'm not sure if it is even possible to sort bugs by the amount of
 duplicates?
 Yes it is; in fact I have a script I'm going to make available soonish
 which lets you do this with milestoned bugs.

Great. That's another thing that should actually be part of Launchpad,
but a script would help too. At least a portion of developers / QA
team needs to know an easy way to sort by duplicates, comments and
subscribers, so that the bugs are noticed in time.

 We need more people doing this.

Yes, we need more triagers, and like you said earlier we would need
more developers. And I think all the guides about how to join QA /
BugSquad / MOTU etc. are on the right track about this, but still we
could/should attract even more people.

-Timo

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Re: Did we really release 8.04?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/7/7 Emmet Hikory [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
  While we all tend to be busy much of the time, perhaps there are ways
 that we can improve the view of bugs in need of attention, or
 otherwise help understand which bugs are likely to be perceived as
 painful to users at release time.

I think the single most needed feature in Launchpad regarding this
would be the possibility for voting, as done in bugzilla. There have
often been many very important bugs that no developer ever sees, and
it's a matter of a bit of luck if someone actually knows how to get
the bug proper attention. Some of those bugs are recognizable by the
month-after-month comments questioning if any developer sees it, but
the comments as such do nothing to raise the visibility of the bug as
such. Vote would do it, and also would get some quantitative measure
about if it's just a loud person or two or a really significant amount
of people.

I'm not sure if it is even possible to sort bugs by the amount of
duplicates? That's another measurement, though less certain since it
already requires some capable Launchpad user to have browsed through
the issue. Out of the ordinary users able to file a bug and use
Launchpad, only a few really are interested enough to do actual
triaging/searching/marking.

The current (core) developers are very largely busy enough without the
extra work of (really) going through all the hundreds of bug reports.
Bug triaging should help them, but there are not enough triagers
either, which also need special skills and privileges. Voting can be
done by everyone and would catch some possibly much-needed bugs to get
the attention they need (at least from the triagers). Of course some
of them will be false alarms (whyyy my fglrx is so broken), but not
too many I hope.

Another thing I'm not touching is how to convert the massive Ubuntu
user base into contributing developers :) That includes of course the
people who like to blog instead of filing bug reports / creating
patches.

-Timo

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Re: Banshee by default in Intrepid

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/6/9 Mackenzie Morgan [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 I was a Banshee user for about 9 months or so.  That ended a year ago.
 Unless it's changed,  Banshee only recognizes songs you have imported.  It
 does not monitor directories for new songs, and especially not recursively.

Yep, and for this very reason (and other similar big problems) I
cannot understand the choice of F-Spot either, except that there is
less competition for it (no Rhytmbox-like equal or better, and
stable choice). F-Spot and Banshee are both would be nice, but
basically quite far from being really usable unless the user starts to
use them from scratch and/or never uses any other programs to handle
photos or music. Which is kind of what free software should not be
about.

Additionally, just for it to be noted even though Banshee is not going
to be default anytime soon anyway, please do not even think of
replacing Rhythmbox with a player that does not have the Jamendo and
Magnatune integration it it. And same goes for the DAAP/DLAN/UPnP
features.

-Timo

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Re: i18n in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS - great work! ( current status)

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/4/20 (``-_-´´) -- Fernando [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
  I'll have to look for our bug number and report back, but as you can see, 
 this is a major showstopper, because any Portuguese Ubuntu User will be 
 presented with and English GUI of OOo.
  Is this a question of CD space?

Hi. Unfortunately the Internet connection _has_ to be enabled during
installation for complete language support to be enabled. There's no
space on the CDs for practically any (full) language support, so they
have to be downloaded. If the Internet connection is enabled during
installation, full support should get downloaded (and it works for me
and has worked in the past for all people, too). You with Portuguese
at least have some translations on the CD, most other languages do not
have any besides the installation program itself.

I have a long term wish that the fact that non-English people need the
Internet connection enabled would be recognized to the extent that
people would really be guided to click on the Network Manager icon (or
just presented with a dialog Please select your Internet connection
in the installer which would probably be better) to enable eg. WLAN
connection before the installation. Wired connections should
theoretically be automatically enabled, though.

I meant this generic problem with the larger issue with language
support I mentioned in the text you quoted.

Currently I'm just including it clearly in the Ubuntu Finland's
installation guide (http://wiki.ubuntu-fi.org/Asentaminen_8.04) that
the Internet connection should be enabled before starting the
installation.

The problem is not helped by the problems of Language Selector before
software sources are refreshed after installation, and even when they
are - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/language-selector/+bug/135752
(I just added notes regarding hardy installation without Internet
connection enabled).

Anyway, I'm very happy how well stuff generally works when the
Internet connection is available and enabled during installation.

-Timo
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Re: i18n in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS - great work! ( current status)

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/4/21 Martin Pitt [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
  In cases where that's not possible, I think the current approach of
  having the language selector install the missing pieces is better.

Yes, without any Internet connection available during install,
post-install should have enough guiding for the language selector
usage.

  Since a few days ago this should work even better:
...
  Testing and feedback heavily appreaciated!

I noted in my bug [1] that I just installed using a image containing
that new version, and didn't notice any notes at any point of time.
When should the note come up?

Also other feedback in that bug report, ie. language support
downloading for the default language is not suggested even when
Internet connection is available post-install and repositories
(manually) refreshed, if the installation was done without Internet
connection.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/language-selector/+bug/135752

-Timo

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Re: Unneeded System Tools menu

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/3/31, Matthew East [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
  A better solution in my opinion would be to move the
  Applications - System Tools submenu to a System - Tools submenu.

I agree that the current setup is very poor, for the reasons already presented.

If the System - Tools is unfeasible at this point, and if the System
Monitor is not wanted to put back under System menu (under a submenu
or as a separate item), it could fit in the Applications-Accessories
well enough. Print jobs tool is already there, which is a bit
similar...

That would leave only hwtest-gtk, which is strictly an admin tool
(asks for sudo rights) so it could maybe fit under the System menu. I
actually liked its place inside the HAL Device Manager when such
program was included, now I'm not sure where it should be...

By the hwtest-gtk is currently completely untranslated and
untranslatable:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hwtest/+bug/202447, which
adds to the need of it being not too visible unless the bug is fixed.

-Timo

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Re: What happened to IcedTea in Hardy?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/3/23, Thilo Six [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/icedtea-java7/+bug/203636

I don't think that answers the last question, since the current
openjdk-6-* packages do not include Java browser plugin. So is there a
specific openjdk-6 browser plugin coming, or is there something else
that should be used instead?

icedtea-gcjwebplugin seems to work, but it's at least funnily named
now. It is however at least suggested by openjdk-6-jre, though many
may miss it.

-Timo

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Remaining i18n/localization issues in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, please fix your packages and use non-English yourself

[Timo Jyrinki]

Hi, some i18n nagging from me again, yay!

First of all, I'd hope that developers that are non-native English
speakers or otherwise handle other languages fluently, would use that
language in their desktop environment eg. for the rest of hardy cycle
at least occasionally. Most non-developers use their own language
anyway, but I think a large percentage of developers tend to use
English because of their long computer usage background. Having
developers using non-English would contribute to testing i18n in
hardy, and help translation volunteers like me. Most translators are
not software developers, so they don't understand what's causing
problems, so developers should take care of proper i18n (translators
should also file more bugs though!).

If you see English in your default installation of Ubuntu in a
well-translated language, it's always a i18n bug in the package or
some translations being not fetched from Rosetta or not available at
all in Rosetta. Ubuntu-specific changes often render packages not
completely translated.

Packages below are the ones causing problems for people not using
English at the moment in hardy, to my knowledge. Please add if you
know more highly visible i18n problems.

- hwtest-gtk: not translatable in Rosetta, lacks .desktop entry's
Ubuntu tag for its translation too.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hwtest/+bug/202447

- firefox: menu entry translations lost since firefox 3.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/192333

- firefox: completely untranslated also otherwise, though on a
positive note ubufox translations are finally accepted in and no doubt
language support packages are being made for the final release.

- brasero: lacks Ubuntu tag in .desktop file preventing menu item
translation. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/brasero/+bug/200532

- gnome-control-center: patch not yet landed that makes the new
randr-1.2 resolution tool translatable - until it has, I'm not certain
if it fixes all the issues or only some. discussed on ubuntu-x mailing
list, I provided a patch that should be a good start at least (the
strings in .glade file still need additional tweaking to not add new
strings, though new strings can also be translated if the new version
of control-center is uploaded fast enough)

- network-manager-applet: does not use X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain like
also some others.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-applet/+bug/201328
(also solved if the both, duplicate menu items are removed...)

- transmission: not translatable in Rosetta, even though in main.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/rosetta/+bug/201334

- ubiquity: partitioning window still lacks i18n love.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/144741

- ubiquity: language support installation silently fails if no network
connection (should guide a person to enable network and maybe
otherwise increase information available).
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/81683

- example-content: Examples directory / link does not have a
translation solution. https://bugs.launchpad.net/baltix/+bug/45489

(in default installation in earlier Ubuntus, so relatively important
too for many people: - serpentine: lost .desktop translations.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/serpentine/+bug/200539)

- help  support main page is not translated. fix committed, thanks!

Anyway, thanks for contributions so far to make Ubuntu 8.04 the best
localized Ubuntu so far! Each release has been getting better, though
each release always seems to have its own problems, too.

-Timo

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Re: Reminders: 1. UI freeze == string freeze, notifications needed for translators. 2. please remember i18n.

[Timo Jyrinki]

2008/3/8, Scott Ritchie [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 Does string freeze include changes to package descriptions?

Not sure if I'm the correct person to answer this, but I'd say no.
Package description translations is not what Ubuntu translators do
every day, or at least Ubuntu doesn't offer a framework like Rosetta
to do those. I personally think package description translations
should mostly be done in Debian anyway.

-Timo

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Re: Deprecating slocate for desktop users?

[Timo Jyrinki]

Chris Jones kirjoitti:
 Speaking for myself, I regularly use slocate to find things that are
 outside my home directory (not that I use tracker for things that are in
 my home directory - I put them where they are, so I know where they are ;)

I also use slocate sometimes, and I don't use tracker myself at the
moment since I know where my files generally are.

But: if The GUI search tool nowadays is tracker, and any ordinary person
basically only searches for files inside the home directory (and if not,
they should go to Indexing Preferences to set additional directories for
tracker), and no-one uses slocate except for those who actually know it
beforehand, why include it by default and cause daily hard disk churn
for every Ubuntu user? Anyone who knows the slocate tool, and command
line in general, can apt-get install slocate at will.

And the slowdown is not just daily, ie. sometime at night, since
people don't generally have their computers on 24h/day. Basically it
happens every time the computer is started on a new day. cron.daily is
run, which includes running slocate on the whole hard disk even though
99%+ of the users probably never utilize the database generated by it.

So still, I argue that slocate should be _at least_ moved to
cron.weekly, with the additional steps I'd hope for too:

1. move to cron.monthly instead of cron.weekly
2. switch from slocate to mlocate
3. remove mlocate/slocate dependency from Ubuntu default desktop
installation (leave it on server installations)

-Timo

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Raising i18n awareness among developers

[Timo Jyrinki]

Hello,

I'd like to raise some internationalization issues Ubuntu has faced and
is facing currently. As a translator and user of Ubuntu in my native
language I've sometimes felt that it would be useful to have better
awareness of i18n issues among the developers in general. I hope this
will help people to remember that when doing any new stuff, keep i18n in
mind and tested.

I also hope this will help finding people to fix not just the bugs
(which are usually not _that_ bad) but the wider issues I describe
towards the end of this post. Maybe there'd even be some hired person(s)
specifically looking at these kind of issues in the future.

Contents of this post: History, Gutsy, Wider Issues

== History ==

As some history, we've, for example, had a bug in Rosetta preventing
complete translations at a release time until edgy [1], and several bugs
in each released version about non-complete i18n of applications and
various other aspects like installer. For example at least [2], [3],
[4], [5], [6] in Feisty (Feisty is better than any release before,
though!). Also Ubuntu documentation translation updates haven't yet been
done for Feisty, they were supposed to be done because there was so
little time to translate documentation for Feisty. Hopefully the
problems [7] can be resolved quickly (there's reportedly a problem with
generating the docs).

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/rosetta/+bug/102382
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/rosetta/+bug/106756
[3]
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-properties/+bug/103292
[4] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python-apt/+bug/103917
[5] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bluez-gnome/+bug/95796
[6] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/45741
[7] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-docs/+bug/123963

== Gutsy ==

Currently we have some problems with gutsy, besides the fact the
installer is not translatable yet at all which is being fixed. Hopefully
[8] too, which is also in Feisty. The installer currently doesn't
install support for any language besides English [9], plus both on the
live CD and in an installed Ubuntu Examples folder isn't translated
[10]. The new xdg-user-dirs currently also works suboptimally [11], of
which there's going to be further investigation indeed before the
release (thanks!), I hope that it will work in an optimal way in the
release.

I'm currently not seeing any actual applications that couldn't be
translated at all, besides problems with Rosetta lagging behind badly
and missing a feature to keep restricted manager translated at the
moment [12]. I do believe they'll be solved near/after the string freeze
and before release this time. For an example about a new Ubuntu program,
displayconfig-gtk seems very properly translatable though currently
translations have to be sent to the bzr repository until Rosetta catches up.

As a whole, gutsy is looking better than feisty again, which is great,
but there are big issues still left, read more below.

[8] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/103925
[9] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/131294
[10] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/example-content/+bug/45489
[11] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xdg-user-dirs/+bug/123435
[12] https://bugs.launchpad.net/rosetta/+bug/130138

== Wider Issues ==

I don't doubt the automatic language support downloading wouldn't be
fixed to some extent soon, but most probably not optimally. That brings
me to the bigger problem of the difficulty of having Ubuntu in one's
native language:

(0. the Win32 part of the live cd doesn't have translations)

1. When starting Ubuntu from the live CD, it starts in English unless
the user (let's suppose a newbie) strikes F2 in the boot menu

2. When the desktop shows, even if the person chose non-English
language, generally support for any other language is not on the CD
(more languages are needed to be dropped in each release), and besides
the installer which includes all translations most stuff is in English

3. In the installer, it's not indicated that the person should _really_
have network connection enabled for the language support to be
downloaded, plus even with the connection it's currently broken like
stated ([[9])

4. Before or after installation, if the user happens to find Language
Selector, and has the default language as one's native language (ie.
selected in the boot menu or in the installer if already installed), the
selector does not suggest installing support for the Default Language
selected if there was no network connection during installation [13]

[13] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/language-selector/+bug/135752

To fix the numbered problems, besides including instructions for 1. and
3. in our ubuntu-fi.org's installation guide [14] that hopefully some
Finnish people read before installing, I've done one blueprint [15] to
collect ideas and other blueprints.

The blueprint was briefly discussed