This is something that I have been toying with as an idea - creating my own distribution, based on the Ubuntu core, but making sure some basics that continue to go ignored are covered. In this quest, I have been led down an interesting road of discovery. Here are some of the tools that I think might be helpful, should you decide to take this path.
For those not familiar, “Launchpad is a free software hosting and development website. We make it easy to collaborate across multiple projects.” More information about Launchpad is here: Collaboration, project management and code hosting for free software https://launchpad.net/+about
One thing I like about services such as these, is that I often find interesting (and usable) projects. Let’s see what Ubuntu based projects are hosted on Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/projects/?text=ubuntu
The following are just some of the ones that were more interesting to follow-up later:
The reactions to the screenshots of the prototypes of EnvyNG 1.1.x were positive however some users (see the comments to my previous posts and this blog post ) led me into thinking that it’s time for me to change EnvyNG’s icon and logo.
I won’t draw a new icon and logo myself though. I wouldn’t define myself as skilled with the GIMP or Inkscape therefore I need your help:
Requirements for the icons and logos:
One of the reasons free operating systems are so great is because of their bug reporting features. Ubuntu is no exception. Like most other GNU/Linux operating systems, Ubuntu allows users to file bug reports using its bug reporting site, Launchpad. In the free software world, each user becomes a potential beta tester and gets the chance to contribute to the community without ever coding or writing documentation. Unfortunately, Launchpad’s bug reporting tool often scares away users who have no idea what a ticket, project, or distribution is.
Is Linux on the enterprise desktop finally ready for prime time? IBM apparently thinks so as it prepares to deliver its next versions of Lotus Notes enterprise collaboration software and Lotus Symphony office productivity applications for the first time with full support for Ubuntu Linux 7.10 sometime in the second half of this year.
In an announcement this week at the Lotusphere 2008 conference in Orlando, IBM said that it will provide full support for Ubuntu Linux with Lotus Notes 8.5 and Lotus Symphony using its Open Collaboration Client software, which is based on open standards.
I’m absolutely thrilled to see this chart of untriaged bugs in Inkscape since the project moved to Launchpad.
As you can see, the Inkscape community has been busy triaging and closing bugs, radically reducing the “new and unknown” bug count and giving the developers a tighter, more focused idea of where the important issues are that need to be addressed.
Here is the changelog of Envy’s new release:
* Changed: backported xparse and xorgconfig from Envy's unstable branch so as to
switch to the guidance backend
* Changed: backported improvements to Shutilities from Envy's unstable branch
* Changed: the latest release of the ATI driver is automatically installer for
ATI FireGL cards
* Added: objects.restorexorg()
* Fixed: Bug #179746 xorg.conf couldn't be modified because of a bug in xparse
* Fixed: nvidia-settings is no longer installed for the legacy driver because of
Ubuntu's Bug #156730
As you can see, this new release should solve a few problems and includes some backported parts of Envy’s next major release (0.9.10). Unfortunately the package “nvidia-settings” can no longer be installed because of Ubuntu’s Bug #156730. This problem affects only nvidia-glx-legacy (driver 7xxx) while the other two flavours of the driver are not affected since they already include “nvidia-settings” and therefore don’t need “nvidia-settings” to be installed. If you use the legacy driver, please use Ubuntu’s “Screens and Graphics” application (in the “System/Administration” menu) if you need to set up your screen resolution (or multiple screens).
Ubuntu Look is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache!
