Xubuntu at FreeGeek Chicago

November 23, 2015 — —

The Xubuntu team hears stories about how it is used in organizations all over the world. In this “Xubuntu at..” series of interviews, we seek to interview organizations who wish to share their stories. If your organization is using Xubuntu and you want to share what you’re doing with us please contact Elizabeth K. Joseph at lyz@ubuntu.com to discuss details about your organization.

Several months ago we learned from Evelyn Lopez at FreeGeek Chicago that they’d been deploying Xubuntu on computers they sell through their efforts to recycle used computers and parts to provide functional computers, education, internet access and job skills training to those who want them. Evelyn took some time out of her schedule to talk to us about the work that FreeGeek Chicago does and some of the tools they use around Xubuntu and flavors being used.

Can you tell us a bit about your role at FreeGeek Chicago and work that FreeGeek Chicago does?

I’m currently the Communications Coordinator at FreeGeek Chicago. My job is to manage FreeGeek’s social networks, create content and occasionally serve as photographer for their events and volunteer days. Our organization, FreeGeek Chicago has a mission to reduce e-waste and to properly recycle computer electronics. The general public and our volunteers donate their old electronics with the intention of recycle and/or re-purpose. Our volunteers seek, test and build new computers out of the working parts donated which in turn are sold to customers with the Linux system at a reduced price. Through volunteering our volunteers learn current computer building skills and open source software.

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What influenced your decision to use Open Source Software at FreeGeek Chicago?

In order to use the FreeGeek name we must adhere by certain articles, one of them being using exclusively open source software. We as an organization firmly believe in the use of open source software as a main alternative to the high prices of proprietary software. Also, we understand the positive aspects of giving the user access to modify [the software] as it can lead to a better function and understanding of the software.

What made you select Xubuntu for your deployments?

At the time we chose Xubuntu for a variety of reasons. First of all we believed that this platform best suited the needs of our organization. We also thought that it was the most compatible with the computers that were being donated to us. Lastly, we believed that it was an easier platform to teach our volunteers. At this time we currently use two different systems distros (Ubuntu and Kubuntu).

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Can you tell us a bit about your Xubuntu setup?

We try to keep it as simple as we can since our computers will be going out to the sales floor or to donation. Currently, we install LibreOffice, Krita, Inkscape, VLC Player, Firefox, Chromium, GIMP among others. Installs are done by our volunteers as part of their hands-on learning education. They load the operating system from our network and use the command line to install the rest of the programs. After it is installed our Q&A team certifies the installation and the computer goes to our sales floor.

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Is there anything else you wish to share with us about FreeGeek Chicago?

FreeGeek Chicago is a community organization that refurbishes used computers and parts to provide functional computers to volunteers and the general public. We provide education in practical computing, hands-on job skills training, and an outlet for community service, recycle non-reusable materials in an ethical, safe, and environmentally responsible manner.

Building the Xubuntu documentation package locally

October 31, 2015 — —

The Xubuntu documentation, shipped with every release of Xubuntu, is in fact a package that can be built locally, on your computer.

By default, Xubuntu does not come with the tools required to build the documentation package, so there is the need to prepare your system to be able to do it, by installing the required prerequisite packages. To do this, run the following command:

sudo apt-get build-dep xubuntu-docs

Additionally, if you are running a release earlier than 15.10, you will need to install the package fop manually, because it’s not yet a dependency of the package in your release. To do this, simply run:

sudo apt-get install fop

Once that’s done, all you have to do is to get the latest main branch and build the package. Again in a terminal window, run the following commands, one at a time:

bzr branch lp:xubuntu-docs
cd xubuntu-docs
make (running this command will take some time as it builds both HTML and PDF versions of the documentation in various languages)
exo-open --launch WebBrowser build/index.html

Now that you have the source on your system, you have the ability to edit it and ultimately, suggest improvements to the documentation. If you have any doubts about how you can contribute, just have a read on how you can assist with the Xubuntu documentation, here.

16.04 Package Testing

October 27, 2015 — —

It is early for a post on the website from the Quality Assurance team, but we’re just about to start testing a release that will be supported for more than the regular 9 months…

General testing outlook for Xenial

During the next 26 weeks, we are going to be concentrating on the applications that we have in Xubuntu. This is a change from the last couple of cycles, where the emphasis has been more on the ISOs than the applications.

We will still be testing the ISOs, but mostly only during the milestones we are participating in. At the moment, these milestones are Alpha 2, and both Betas.

A quote from Sean Davis, the technical lead, from one of the recent Xubuntu meetings sums up what Xenial will be about:

From a development perspective, we’re targeting bug fixes to make 16.04 super stable. Don’t expect a lot of new features, so testing done at all parts of the cycle will be incredibly relevant.

Package tracker

If you visit our section of the Package Tracker you will see that we have 3 sections:

  • Priority. These packages will be called for testing by the QA team many times during the cycle as usual. In addition you might see calls directly from developers to test a version of an application or package prior to bug fixes landing.
  • Mandatory. These will also see many calls for testing, though likely less so than the Priority group. Again, calls could come from either the QA team or directly from developers.
  • Run-once/optional. These are scheduled to be called for testing only once during the cycle. If bug fixes are needed, we will additionally ask testers to check that the bug fixes actually fix the bugs and do not cause regressions.

From time to time we will disable applications or packages from testing when we know a fix is due to land in the near future. This has two benefits: First, testers do not need to test applications that are known to have issues. Second, a pause in the testing allows the developers to have some time to look at the issues and prepare fixes.

When something has been disabled we will list it on the Disabled Tests list of our QA trello site.

Why should I test?

You could be the one person who gains enough momentum to report that thing which annoys you and possibly other people – and gain their unworded thanks.

As much as Xubuntu Team would love to be able to test every scenario for you – the simple truth is we can’t. That’s why we all need you.

How do I know what to test?

There are several ways you can help. We will cover some of the most common ways below.

Running Wily (15.10) without PPAs

If you have installed or upgraded to 15.10 Wily Werewolf, you can help to ensure that the next release gets as much testing as possible. Practically, you are already testing for the community – you just don’t realise it.

Found a bug? Don’t ignore it – report it, it is in this scenario as simple as opening a terminal and running ubuntu-bug packagename and letting the reporting get taken care off for you. All we ask in addition to that is you adding a specific tag to your report xubuntu-exp.

Running Wily (15.10) with PPAs

If you wish, you can add the development PPAs to 15.10. If you do that, we would also advise installing ppa-purge to help remove the PPAs cleanly. This is the situation closely mimicking our developers’ workflow. You can test the newest version of applications or packages this way.

Reporting bugs with PPAs becomes a little harder to accomplish…

Running Xenial with or without PPAs

If you’ve upgraded or clean installed Xenial, then running that at this stage with PPAs shouldn’t be any braver than without. The bug reporting process is the same in Xenial as in Wily.

What do you want me to look for?

Obviously all those things that people would normally refer to as bugs need to be reported. For example, crashes when using an application. In addition, during the LTS cycle, the developers are particularly keen for you to be looking for non-critical bugs as well. For instance:

  • Missing icons
  • Inconsistent functionality
  • Usability bugs (see a specific example of a usability bug for Catfish)

These things will not only improve us as downstream Xubuntu but also the upstreams of Xfce and Ubuntu.

You have convinced me – what should I do now?

There are a few things you can do to make it easier for you to pass on and receive information.

More detailed information on what is discussed above and more can be found on the current QA contribution page.

Xubuntu 15.10 released!

October 22, 2015 — , —

The Xubuntu team is pleased to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 15.10!

The release is available for download by torrents and direct downloads from http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/.

As the main server will be very busy in the first days after the release, we recommend using the Torrents wherever possible.

For support with the release, navigate to Help & Support for a complete list of methods to get help.

Highlights and Known Issues

Highlights

The 15.10 release has the following highlights:

  • Xfce4 Panel Switch for backup and restoration of panels. Included are 5 preset panel layouts.
  • LibreOffice Calc and Writer are now included. These applications replace Gnumeric and Abiword respectively.
  • A new theme for LibreOffice, libreoffice-style-elementary is also included and is default for Wily Werewolf.
  • Greybird accessibility icons for window manager.

Known Issues

gmusicbrowser is known to crash on close (Bug 1401609)

For a complete changelog between Xubuntu 15.04 and 15.10, including a list of new package versions, please refer to the Release Notes.

Thanks

Thanks go to all involved in getting Wily Werewolf from week 1 to week 26, not least those who tested for us during the milestones. In purely alphabetical order they are: akxwi-dave, bluesabre, dkessel, flexiondotorg, flocculant, irihapeti, jeremy9856, jjfrv8, mexchip, paulw2u, petter-c, phillw, skellat and slickymaster. In addition there were people who tested the daily images for us.

Printable and shareable Xubuntu flyers

September 28, 2015 —

During the Wily Werewolf development cycle, the Xubuntu Marketing team has completed work on flyers that can now be printed by anyone wishing to promote Xubuntu at conferences, global jams, release parties and other events.

Flyers can be printed at home or with any typical printing service. A successful trial run of 25 US letter-sized flyers was completed in August by our marketing lead:

xubuntu_flyers_printed

They’re available for download here:

A4 (web)A4 (print)US letter (web)US letter (print)

Licensed CC-BY-SA, you are welcome to freely remix, transform, and build upon the material under the terms of that license. Source (SVG files, editable in Inkscape) are available in the Xubuntu marketing code repository.

Please note that while you are free to make your own version, we encourage you to contribute back to the official flyer so we can improve it for everybody! If you want to get involved with the next revision of the flyer, join #xubuntu-devel on Freenode or the Xubuntu Development mailing list and let us know your thoughts!

If you are interested in translating the flyer, be in touch with us as well; we will help you with potential issues with the layouting and more and can promote the translated version on the website.

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