Daniel Holbach (aka dholbach), one of the lead developers working in the Ubuntu Desktop team, has been speaking to BehindUbuntu.
Now, when you meet Daniel at conferences, you can compete with other people to see who knows most about him.
I’ve got my own notes here, written on my arm:
I’m sure we’ll be the best of friends!
The folks over at Behind Ubuntu present an interview with Reinhard Tartler (aka siretart) and all round nice person. Reinhard is perhaps best known for his work on REVU (“review”).
REVU is the automated system that universe maintainers (MOTU) use for sanity-checking new packages. Before allowing new software to be uploaded into the real archive, REVU provides an upload facility that behaves in a similar way. REVU emulates an Ubuntu upload, much like an aircraft simulator gives pilots a safe way to test out new maneuvers, in safety.
With a proposed package now inside REVU, individual files making up the package are split out, each file being available for viewing simply by clicking in a web-browser. Along side, a status report about the quality of a proposed package is generated. Debian programs Lintian and Linda are automatically run against the source code; these two checkers are tasked with finding simple syntax errors, or policy issues—such as attempting to store executable files in an incorrect location on the filesystem or hard-disk.
Masters Of The Universe are responsible for reviewing each other suggested updates. Once REVU has assembled all the information in a single location on the system, feedback and comments are given by other MOTUs to improve, or help work-around, any areas of concern that were flagged up in the package. Finally, an option to vote allows new MOTU-produced packages to make it through the door once packages collect two positive votes from other uploaders.
Peer-review, as used throughout Open Source and Free Software, is a great system and makes for the creation of high-quality packaged software. REVU makes that peer-review for Ubuntu even easier. Many thanks to Reinhard for sparing time for his interview!
More4 News, a Channel4 associate, interviewed Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth recently. The video of the interview is available at the online news story. Mark talks about philanthropy and technology in the interview, and we get to know that he loves the geek culture :)
When you’ve made £400m before your 30th birthday -you’d probably want to spend the rest of your days living the highlife.
But not Mark Shuttleworth who made his fortune when he sold off his internet security company four years ago.
Since then, he has given half of it to charity and bought a £13m pound ticket to space station.
Now he’s working hard to create a free software - which he hopes will rival Microsoft. He has given a rare interview to More 4 News.
Update: Jonathan Riddell tells us: The direct link to the video is mms://longurl… (right-click, copy) which can be downloaded using mimms from universe, then played with the w32codecs and mplayer. …If it doesn’t work out of the box :-)
Xubuntu core developer Jani Monoses (‘janimo’ on IRC) gets the A-list celebrity treatment and joins Ubuntu’s Walk of Fame over at Behind Ubuntu.
Xubuntu is designed for lower-specification or older machines and can install on machines with only 64MB of RAM. It manages this amazing feat by switching out the traditional full-scale KDE and GNOME desktops and replacing them with a slim-line interface based on XFCE. A huge number of packages have had to be tweaking to make Xubuntu possible and Jani’s time and effort to a tribute to what is possible.
What we’re all wondering is: What’s the name of Jani’s mouse in the photo and how did Jani pursuade the mouse to stay still long enough to pose for the Xubuntu logo photo-shoot?
Our friends at the UK’s premier third-rate IT blog, The Register, have a new interview up with Benevolent Dictator Mark Shuttleworth branding him a “millionaire cosmonaut and self-funded Linux guru” and talking about taking Ubuntu to the mainstream.
Mark reveals that Canonical is using about $10m/year on building and promoting Ubuntu, all currently coming from Mark’s personal wallet. We thought we’d also take the Google Trends link that measures the number of searches on a particular topic and compare Ubuntu to Red Hat, Suse and even Microsoft’s Vista. We think you’ll enjoy the results!
Our strategy with Ubuntu is very much to allow local, regional groups to customize it and produce something that is strong locally. In the case of Impi there’s a strong commercial imperative there, and that is related to the need for a local company which can provide services and support at a layer above what we would typically provide globally with Ubuntu. So that’s almost an orthogonal investment to the overall picture of Canonical with Ubuntu; Canonical’s role is to create a global ecosystem and to make that ecosystem self-sustaining by keeping the cost of production as low as possible and keeping the results, the product, effectively as general as possible. Whereas in the case of Impi there’s a very specific opportunity in South Africa, which required a vehicle dedicated to it. It is not part of the broader Canonical work.
Behind Ubuntu speaks with Daniel Silverstone, Ubuntu and Launchpad hacker, about his life in and out of the Ubuntu spotlight, and finds out some of this plans for development during the Edgy cycle!
I’ll be back on the Launchpad team working on various features for Launchpad to make the developers of Ubuntu have an even better time of it. We have Personal Package Archives in the pipeline — those will allow people to have their own small apt-get/synaptic compatible archives served by, and built by, Launchpad. And we have many and various other things to work on, including the much vaunted derivative distributions support. Life will be exciting for distro developers in the dapper+1 cycle. With a shortened development cycle the extra tools we can provide for them will be all the more important.
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At the 4th annual Linux Desktop Summit in San Diego yesterday, Jane Silber, the chief operating officer of Canonical, sat down to talk to Computerworld’s Eric Lai about how the upcoming June release of Ubuntu 6.06 might appeal to corporate users, too.
Everyone’s asking about Jane — now we have some answers, straight from the source. As the COO of Canonical and head of business development, Jane plays a crucial role in the breathtaking growth of the Ubuntu juggernaut!
In a lengthy interview at the Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego, Computer World ask about the upcoming Ubuntu 6.06 LTS release and business strategy. Meanwhile, the BehindUbuntu team quiz Jane about Canonical’s inner workings, and what she enjoys most about working on the project.
Bonus Newsflash! BehindUbuntu has teamed up with some of the Ubuntu localisation teams to bring you great interviews in as many languages as possible! If you would like to help with translations please email the team.
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Have you ever wondered who the people behind Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu are and what they do? Or what they are like? Behind Ubuntu is a new series of interviews with those involved in bringing you Ubuntu. The first interview is with Jonathan Riddell from the Kubuntu Team.
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