Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Kubuntu beta; please test!

Kubuntu 16.10 beta has been published. It is possible that it will be re-spun, but we have our beta images ready for testing now.

Please go to http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/milestones/367/builds, login, click on the CD icon and download the image. I prefer zsync, which I download via the commandline:

~$ cd /media/valorie/ISOs (or whereever you store your images)
~$ zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/daily-live/20160921/yakkety-desktop-i386.iso.zsync

UPDATE: the beta images have now been published officially. Rather than the daily image above, please download or torrent the beta, or just upgrade. We still need bug reports and your test results on the qatracker, above.

Thanks for your work testing so far!

The other methods of downloading work as well, including wget or just downloading in your browser.

I tested usb-creator-kde which has sometimes now worked, but it worked like a champ once the images were downloaded. Simply choose the proper ISO and device to write to, and create the live image.

Once I figured out how to get my little Dell travel laptop to let me boot from USB (delete key as it is booting; quickly hit f12, legacy boot, then finally I could actually choose to boot from USB). Secure boot and UEFI make this more difficult these days.

I found no problems in the live session, including logging into wireless, so I went ahead and started firefox, logged into http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker, chose my test, and reported my results. We need more folks to install on various equipment, including VMs.

When you run into bugs, try to report them via "apport", which means using ubuntu-bug packagename in the commandline. Once apport has logged into launchpad and downloaded the relevant error messages, you can give some details like a short description of the bug, and can get the number. Please report the bug numbers on the qa site in your test report.

Thanks so much for helping us make Kubuntu friendly and high-quality.

Monday, September 19, 2016

Kubuntu needs some K/Ubuntu Developer help this week

Our packaging team has been working very hard, however, we have a lack of active Kubuntu Developers involved right now. So we're asking for Devels with a bit of extra time and some experience with KDE packages to look at our Frameworks, Plasma and Applications packaging in our staging PPAs and sign off and upload them to the Ubuntu Archive.

If you have the time and permissions, please stop by #kubuntu-devel in IRC or Telegram and give us a shove across the beta timeline!

Friday, September 9, 2016

Happy 20 Years, KDE

Just got this email as a KDE e.V. supporter, from Lydia Pintscher, e.V. President, and thought I would share:
We are celebrating 20 years of KDE. The actual anniversary is on 14th of October but we are starting the celebrations now already at QtCon. We have put together several things that might be of interest to you:
* A book: "20 Years of KDE: Past, Present and Future" is a collection of short essays by present and past contributors to KDE including KDE's founder Matthias Ettrich. They give insights into the history of KDE and the motivation of its contributors. A paperback version is available for ordering and a PDF can be downloaded for free. You can find out more about it at https://20years.kde.org/book.
* A timeline: This timeline gives an overview of the past 20 years of KDE and highlights the most important events in the history of KDE. You can find it at http://timeline.kde.org.
* Anniversary celebrations: We are doing dinners and parties in several parts of the world. Signup and planning is happening at https://community.kde.org/Promo/Events/Parties/KDE_20_Anniversary. (Seattle party-planning is underway) 
You can find coverage from QtCon at https://dot.kde.org and we are collecting pictures from the conference at https://community.kde.org/Akademy/2016/Photos Thank you for your support over the years that made so much possible. I hope you'll be with us for the next 20.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Kubuntu Alive and Thriving at KDE Akademy

Having come a quarter away around the world in part to meet up with my Kubuntu colleagues, it was surprising to hear that some people thought (at a KDE meeting?) that Kubuntu is dead.

Not a chance. We're having elections right now for some Kubuntu Council positions that end this year. We have four candidates for three positions, which seems very healthy to me. By the way, if you are a Kubuntu Member and have not gotten your ballot, please contact Aaron Honeycutt, since the vote closes on the 12th of September.

We ended up meeting for more than 4 hours plus lunch yesterday, the first day of BoF meetings. Then Phil had to leave, which still seems sad, as we all miss his gentle, kind wisdom and humor.

During the meeting, we accomplished a great deal, mostly cleaning out the Trello. We now have
one and only one board, which has been mostly evaluated card by card, commented, and tagged. We hope that this will make it much easier to find a task to work on when you have a bit of spare time. If you have a login to Trello, but need inviting to the board, please check with someone in #kubuntu-devel Freenode IRC. Feel free to create cards when needed, and assign yourself and someone else to it. Many of the items on our Wishlist contain things we really do want, but do not have the time or skills to do. So pitch in as you can.

One of the wonderful parts of Akademy is not just that teams get to meet up face to face, but that *many* teams are in the same place. So when we had a question for Harald or Jon, we could pop next door and ask it. When Jon or Devaja got a Dot story mostly ready, I could just bring it up on my travel laptop for a last look for typos etc. and publish. And when I remembered a problem that was in one of our Kubuntu Trello cards that said "contact X about this" when I saw X in the crowd, I could introduce him to our devel who could work with him on getting the newest Kolab packaged and out to our users more quickly. Things like this can happen only at meetings like Akademy.

For those who don't know, Akademy is usually two days of talks, followed by some days of "BoF" sessions. BoF stands for Birds of a Feather and means short meetings and even sprints for each team that schedules one (or more). And alongside Akademy the members of the e.V. gather for their annual  meeting (AGM), which this year was on Thursday.

This year was different because we co-located Akademy with Qtcon, hosted by KDAB, Qt, VideoLAN and the FSFE. While a lot larger and thus more intense, I found it exciting. The service at the bcc at first seemed very posh, but by the end of the three days of meeting felt *essential*. There was coffee, tea and juices along with food or snacks all day. I tried to sit down to lunch with someone I didn't know every day, which was a great experience! Some of the folks had no experience with free software previously; merely using Qt as part of their job. One fellow even asked me, How is all of this organized? My reply: Organized? It is barely controlled chaos! There was a general laugh around the table, because it is so true. I love it!

Thanks again to the Ubuntu Community for sending me here to Berlin to attend this wonderful set of meetings. Kubuntu survives and thrives.