LaserJock

I’ve been mentoring Google Summer of Code student Tomé Vardasca with his Bootloader Manager project. The goals are to have a easy-to-use and translated application to allow Ubuntu users to easily manage operating systems as well as bootloader settings and appearance. Tomé has now got a working app put together (see the screenshots below) but now we’d like to ask for your help. What Grub settings are most important for new users? What features would help you manage multi-boot installations?

So, it’s been two weeks since I started my “break” from things Ubuntu. So far it’s been very frustrating (“I wonder what’s going on in #ubuntu-motu?”) but also very helpful. I’ve been getting my PhD back on track, and will even be starting some research in ultrafast laser spectroscopy next month. I also managed to get the automatic sprinkler system for my house rebuilt. I still have a long ways to go though to get Ubuntu out my system, but I’m getting there. Who needs drugs when you’ve got a community like this?

Here are some things I’ve been doing (maybe some day I’ll write a 12-step method and put it on the Ubuntu wiki):

• using a RSS client (I’m really liking Google Reader) extensively. You have better control over what you read, can see everything at one place, and you can check it once or twice a day and just do it all in a chunk of time. Rather than spending hours wandering around the web looking at cool sites and mailing list archives, I now go through my daily “stack” in roughly 10-20 minutes. BTW, gmane RSS feeds are quite nice.
• using email instead of IRC. It’s not as fun for me personally, as I like the personal interaction of IRC, but being able to respond when I have free time or according to a schedule is much better time management than “real time”.
• writing smaller emails. One of the pitfalls for me is that I tend to be very wordy so an email can take me upwards of 30 minutes to write. I’m trying to get better at writing short, more IM like emails.
• getting a life. Nothing prevents Ubuntu-holism like having a healthy real life. It might sound trivial, but when the Ubuntu community is your best friend (and probably only friend) then you might have an issue. Take some time to go outside, spend a weekend doing something non-computer related.

Finally, I’d like to say that the response from the Ubuntu community has been really encouraging to me personally. Thanks for understanding. Also thank you to those people who have stepped up to “fill in” on the projects I’m unable to keep up with. And don’t worry, I’m not gone for good. In the words of the Governor of California, “I’ll be back.”

OK, so I was looking at the “cloud” on Technorati and I saw gOffice and iPhone were hot so I clicked on it. I saw lots of cool blog snippets talking about Apple putting the gOffice suite on the iPhone. I thought to myself, “Cool, Abiword on a cell phone, that’s pretty sweet.” Then I noticed they were talking about this goffice and not that goffice. Doh!

Since I’ve been working on gchemutils I have noticed that “our” goffice is kinda hard to find and ended up going to goffice.com by mistake a lot so I really shouldn’t have gotten duped. I must not have had enough water today.

Anyway, it’s one of those emotional roller-coaster, “Wahooo for FLOSS … oh wait a sec … blahhh” days.

P.S. Given that it was Apple I guess I should have known better.

It’s awesome to see Mark’s announcement of Gobuntu (or should that be Ubuntu Freedomware Remix?). I personally haven’t been that interested in a totally Free distro as there are often non-Free apps, drivers, or firmware that I like to use, but Gobuntu might actually get me more into a purist mood. I probably won’t try it on my laptop (Atheros wireless) but I’d love to see companies selling “Gobuntu Compatible” machines and might try it on my desktop machine.

Anyway, back to my main question. It must be the incredible aroma of software freedom in the air, but Gobuntu brought up thoughts of BitKeeper and Linux for some reason [1]. By that I mean, if Gobuntu developers will be using Launchpad and tools like Merge-o-Matic (closed source applications built by Canonical that are used for Ubuntu) to build Gobuntu, isn’t that sort of defeating the purpose? I’d love to hear Mark’s thoughts on this as I think it might come up a lot (it does already with Ubuntu) and I’m not sure what to think about it. On one hand I want to say “Who cares? As long as the end result is what you want why bother.” However, the “ends justify the means” pragmatic attitude has somewhat of a philosophical hollowness when the whole point of Gobuntu is that we can build a whole operating system built on free and open source software.

[1] You can get a brief overview of the story on the BitKeeper Wikipedia page

P.S. I’m also a little confused about the relationship between gNewSense and Gobuntu. I thought they were the same project but it seems not. Do we need both?

Joe and Christer, while I appreciate the concern for America’s future, I for one won’t be contributing any money to Michael Moore while he continues to make “documentaries” that end up more like political propaganda than a documentary [1] which should provide multiple viewpoints and objective look at the issue. In the words of Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post,

“Ladies and gentlemen, I think we can agree on two things: The American health-care system is busted and Michael Moore is not the guy to fix it.”

[1] “Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter, as in a book or film.”

Well, after much thought, discussion, and prayer I’ve decided that I need a bit of a break from Ubuntu development. I’ve been averaging something around 50 hrs a week in the community for well over a year now and given that I have a wife, a house, and a PhD to finish, I just got burned out. I’ve really enjoy all the work and I can’t even express how much I love this community, but I have other responsibilites that unfortunately I’ve been neglecting.

So, what exactly am I doing? Well, for the next month or so I plan to:

• get rid of IRC. IRC is one of the best communication tools in development, but it also is my #1 time waster. I also “gain” a lot of work by being on IRC because I hate to see people’s requests go unanswered.
• get rid of non-essential mailing lists. I’m getting too much email to sanely deal with it within a reasonable time.
• step away from some projects. Unfortunately there are way too many exciting and worth-while projects in Ubuntu and FLOSS in general. I easily get sucked into them.
• focus on the remaining projects. I want to do better at the projects I do keep and with the time I have available.
• get a real life, or rather renter the one I used to have.

So here’s where I need your help. I would love to have some people interested in taking over some things for me, at least for a while. Please contact me if your interested in:

• looking after the Ubuntu Packaging Guide as it hasn’t been updated much for some time.
• Behind MOTU interviews. I can post them, but I need people to actually get volunteers/victims and send the interviews.
• Edubuntu documentation. I’m maintaining the packaging but I don’t have time to write content. This is some really needed and exciting work.
• MOTU Science team needs some cleanup of it’s wiki page.
• Ubuntu TeX team could use some love, both forwarding bugs upstream and making sure we are in sync with Debian.

So, bottom line, I’m not gone but my involvement in some areas (pretty much everything but Edubuntu packaging/development) will be greatly reduced. If you are interested in any of the above projects or need to get in touch with me just email me at mantha at ubuntu.com . Sorry it has to be this way but Ubuntu is just too addictive