.

• Mark Shuttleworth comments on Windows 7:
  • “Shuttleworth believes a good version of Windows will end the current phony war between Windows and Linux in the high-growth netbook market and reignite the fight on features and capabilities.”
  • Will be interesting, since MS is aggressively pricing XP for the netbook, which they probably won’t do for Windows 7.
  • Because of aggressive pricing, Linux can almost be soon more expensive than XP on netbooks

• Ubuntu Mobile possibly moving to Qt since LGPL:
  • Ubuntu Mobile currently using the GNOME Mobile or (Hildon framework) which is optimized for small screens.
  • But Qt might be better for screen input
  • Qt license change to LGPL is also helping out
  • LGPL (Less GPL) is similar to GPL but it doesn’t impact derived works

• Ubuntu Usability Report by Bentley University:
  • small sample size, 6 people
  • confidence in Ubuntu 3.3 out of 5
  • no Windows or Apple score for comparison
  • biggest issue around wireless settings

• French Lawmakers pushing Ubuntu:
  • 18 months ago, French Assembly got 1,100 computers of its members and their assistants to running Ubuntu
  • save about 500K euros over 5 years
  • this could possibly help with jobs

• Ubuntu Developer News #1

• Ubuntu Developer Week:
  • first time sessions were in English, Finnish, French, German, Italian and Spanish
  • working with debian
  • learning GNOME and working with Kubuntu
  • lots about Launchpad
  • learning how to debug programs

We apologize for the video/audio synch issues during the interview. We’ll get that fixed in the future.

Show notes:

• Jaunty Alpha 3 Released
  • Nick’s experiences:
    • Some issues with laptop’s Intel video cards, which seems to be an upstream issue
    • having to use VESA
    • but booting definitely seems a lot of faster
    • trying out the ext4
    • widely talked about notifications feature, configurable under Preferences -> Pop up Notifications, crashed when hit the preview button

• Updated brainstorm site
  • if people don’t know what the site is, its where people can submit ideas of what they would like to see in Ubuntu
  • Kinda digg style, ideas can be voted up and down
  • developers can comment if things are being worked on or why something behaves the way it does
  • just because of the number of people submitting ideas, there are moderators
  • new version allows users to help moderators ideas already being worked on, already implemented,offensive ideas/comments, spam
  • brainstorm’s platform is also being used by the BBC
  • Part of development for this version was sponsored by people who own and work with the Stockholm airport.
    • They want to use it to figure out how to improve the airport
    • BBC uses it to get user feedback

• Aggressive Power-saving “bug” fixed
  • hard drive would get parked and loaded very quickly
  • could shorten the lives of hard drives quite a bit
  • debate whether it was Ubuntu’s fault, but it seemed to be an issue with Windows and OS X as well, or maybe the manufacturer
  • the fix is in the proposed repositories already for hardy, intrepid, and jaunty

• Ubuntu and college student
  • Madison, WI woman couldn’t do her online courses because she had Ubuntu installed on her Dell laptop that she ordered
  • Verizon installation CD for her Internet required Windows
  • Couldn’t install Word which was a requirement for her classes
  • She didn’t realize that Open Office could make Word compatible docs
  • College said they would would accept her work in whatever format she submitted it
  • General miseducation thinking a format has to be tied to a certain apps and companies like that
  • Good thing is everyone is trying to help her out, Dell, Verizon is gonna send someone to make sure she is hooked up with Internet, school saying they will take docs in whatever format
  • Maybe because of the press, but still.

• popcon differences between Ubuntu and Debian:
  • Popularity Contest collects stats at installation, during updates to figure out what people are installing, how often they are updating their system
  • Stats are only for one week, take with grain of salt
  • Firefox and IceWeasel stats
    • In Ubuntu, half of Ubuntu installations reporting include Firefox, only about 20% have used it in the last 30 days, and only 13% have upgraded it.
    • IceWeaser on Debian, of 46,276 installs, only 25,797 (46%) are recently used, and 11,207 (24%) recently upgraded.
    • Hard to figure out why people don’t upgrade when its so simple
  • GNOME
    • GNOME is installed on 85% of Ubuntu installations
    • 50% of Debian installations
  • Evolution
    • Ubuntu, Evolution appears on 88% of installations and has a recently-used rate of about 5%.
    • Debian, 50% of installations, but only a few percent have used it recently.
      • 16% have KMail installed, and 15% have Icedove
  • Proprietary drivers
    • Ubuntu installs the open Nvidia drivers, but 86% of machines had proprietary drivers
    • On debian, very few people have the proprietary Nvidia drivers
    • Obviously Ubuntu is for freedom haters!

• Pagico comes to Ubuntu
  • Pagico, helps organizing projects, keeps track of schedules, files, notes, and ToDo lists
  • “Now we’re more interested in supporting this fantastic desktop platform than ever, and this time we’re not going to let it fall behind.”
  • Ubuntu version is being released real soon:
    • “After months of developing for the Ubuntu systems, we’re very pleased to find out that it exceeded our expectations in terms of user experience and performance, compared to other platforms especially our preferred platform, Mac OS X. And in many important areas it’s well better than the Windows edition.”

• Ubuntu Developer Week – by the time you watch, it should be be over:
  • different packaging techniques
  • find out more about different development teams
  • Logs can be found on the wiki.

• Jorge Castro Interview:
  • External Developer Relations for Canonical
  • Upcoming Global Bug Jam ( 20 February to 22 February), just an excuse for LoCos to come together.
  • See the wiki for sessions how to run a Bug Jam.
  • Ubuntu and Social Networking, especially on identi.ca
  • and much more!

• Linux Format Magazine hands out some 2008 Best whatever whatever awards
  • 2008 Best Support Resource (beating Google)
  • 2008 Best Distro
  • KDE won for Best Software Project of the Year

• EXT4 in Ubuntu 9.04
  • next evolutionary step in filesystems
  • will be in 9.04, no way its default before 9.10
  • Phoronix’s tests show that EXT4 is a huge improvement for disk intensive actions, but perform a bit better for desktop users, so is it really worth it?
  • Why is EXT4 better than EXT3?
    • EXT4 is more scalable
    • more efficient through the use of Extents
    • supports larger disk capacities
    • can handle twice the number of sub-directories
    • and there is improved reliability via journal checksums
    • defragment on the fly
    • most important: performance hasn’t regressed!
  • Tim Gardner, who is on the kernel team noted that file creation and deletion is much faster on EXT4
    • Part of his work flow, delete a lot of kernel trees
    • Hard Drive: 98 Mbyte/sec, Supermicro dual quad core @ 2.40GHz
    • Ext3: removing 228K files could take aslong as 5 minutes, EXt4: Under 15 seconds
    • He also does a lot of builds, which creates lots of files:
      • Ext3 a build cycle for all i386/amd64 flavours typically took 40 minutes
      • Ext4 its now taking about 20 minutes.
    • Anecdotal, but you get the point
  • But this is all an interim step before we get btrfs (pronounced ‘butter’ – fs according to wikipedia)
    • btrfs features
      • Space-efficient packing of small files and indexed directories
      • no maximum number of files set at file system creation time
      • Writable snapshots and snapshots of snapshots
      • Subvolumes (separate internal filesystem roots)
      • Object-level mirroring and striping
      • Checksums on data and metadata (for strong integrity assurance)
      • Compression
      • builtin raid support
      • Online filesystem check and very fast offline filesystem check
      • Online defragmentation
      • Efficient incremental backup and file system mirroring
      • mode optimized for Solid-state drive (SSD)

• New ARM notebook coming out with Ubuntu:
  • Freescale, is putting together a chipset, so netbooks can be sold for under $200
  • Notebooks can be made with Ubuntu Netbook, Adobe Flash Lite, and 8 hours of battery power
  • Freescale found that younger users want always on devices and its a an area where Linux + good power management can help

• Interviewing Jorge Castro next Sunday
  • If your LoCo is going to be involved in the Global Bug Jam, or is thinking about it, there will be some help sessions on how to run bug jams on 1/30, 1/31, 2/13, 2/14 in #ubuntu-classroom
  • GBJ is 20 February to 22 February

• Various microphone and video software questions