Planet

We thought we’d try something different this time. An easier way for us to keep an eye on numbers, the event is still very much free, and while you don’t need the ticket to enter the event it’s more a case of keeping an eye on numbers as the venue is slightly smaller than the previous venue.

So please sign up using the following LINK, it gives a list of people attending also who’ve signed up so another way to see who’s coming along for you meet up with!

Thanks folks

Last year we offered people the chance t do the LPI exams thanks to Howe Systems, it had a great uptake and once again they have very kindly offered to run them again during the day at OSSBarcamp.

Howe Systems are pleased to announce the availability of LPI exams at the forthcoming OSSBarcamp. These will be
offered at a 50% saving of £ 75 (invoiced through LinuxIT, England).

Prior registration is necessary as demand for exams could be high. To register and secure a place contact howesystem as they will be looking after this and do need to know who will be attending.

Howe systems will hold an LPIC-1 Exam Cram for candidates on the day if there is sufficient interest. This will take place prior to the exams and will cost €70.

When I started using Ubuntu back in Gutsy(7.10) we looked like this.

And now we look like this.

We are getting a nice new logo too and our own font (in 10.10 for the font) so we are quickly becoming hugely competitive. On looks and hardware support alone we are up there with Apple and Microsoft but we have some cool stuff too. Ubuntu One is the thing that sets us apart. We can share our files across all our computers or share with friends, sync up notes and contacts and we will all be able to buy music soon(although you can do that with iTunes too but still its nice).
For developers since Gutsy we are after getting a lot easier with Quickly, Quickly-widgets and Desktop Couch.
One thing I have to say is ill miss the brown (ish) it was our signature for a long time and I hope that people dont knock it too much we could have had a worse colour(#3ACDA9)
So we can all be happy with the progress we are after making and congrats to everyone who made it happen.

One word….awesome. I think out of the two desktop looks they put up, my desktop is going to be the white one. I like the orange/purple/white colours a lot more than brown/orange/grey. I think the sound and networking icons look a little Mac ish but still I like it. I just hope that the icon set gets a big update a lot because it seems a little weird at the moment.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand

I was looking at some of the comments on Seif’s blog post and I thought that something needs to be addressed.

1. C is an awesome language and its very very fast but its not the easiest to learn.
2. Python and Ruby are easy to learn but not fast.

Some people suggested moving all the work that Zeitgeist have done so far (and its a lot at this stage) and port it to Vala or C. It would be not only lots of work but why bother, we are going into a new era of computing, one that the languages dont exactly matter because computers are getting faster. Python doesnt need to be the fastest it just needs to be nice to program in. C will be the fastest language for a long time because its the most mature, its older then me (which isnt saying much, a lot of languages are older than me) but outside of college work or maybe helping out with bugs I dont plan on using C because its not programmer friendly. (I might use Vala when it matures but that wont be for a year or two)

We will get more developers if we advertise that all programmers are welcome here. In the repo we have almost every language in use today. If your a Mac developer we have Objective-C, if your a Windows developer we have C# and VB.Net, if your a web developer you can use JavaScript with Gnome-Shell, if you dont know how to program yet then we have lots of Python tutorials around for opportunistic developer week. So go out and have fun

Ok I was on a break for a while I still was testing lucid out and filing bugs but I was trying to ignore email and trying not to go onto IRC. So I was gone for a few weeks and ill start to get back to getting busy again. Im still busy with college too but ill be a lot more available again so more blogging, QA and maybe I might do a little more triaging if I have time. Ill try to do some more Ubuntu Irish translations work too because I havent been giving it enough attention.
So I cant wait to get back to it.

I was on #ubuntu-motu today and a person asked if there was a policy for removing programs from the archive. They wanted to know if we could remove a program that hasnt had a release in years and the functionality is included in other programs so its completely superseded. This got me thinking maybe we should do some checking what programs are not being used or maintained that need to be scrubbed from the archive.
The main reason why this is a good thing is that if its in the software center and its a very bad program it reflects badly on the OS in general if new users install it. Just a thought
Maybe its something MOTU can look into for lucid+1.

Woah! That’s a lot of K’s in the title! But it’s all in the name of getting your calender talking to your desktop so it’s for a good kause (sorry!)

There’s this great package in KDE that has a really cool name called Akonadi (pronounced Ahh-Kon-ahh-dee if you want to impress your friends!). But more than just a cool name it does cool things – particularly in the realm of syncing data on your desktop with a remote server. Ooo yeah, including Google’s servers. Akonadi is one of the ‘pillars’ of the KDE platform and here’s how you can use that pillar to prop up your schedules and calendaring with KOrganizer-Google integration. It’s easy on Kubuntu Karmic!

– Install the Google data package for Akonadi
sudo apt-get install akonadi-kde-resource-googledata
– Ensure the Akonadi Tray Utility is running by performing the following steps
– Search for Akonadi in the search box of the Kickoff Launcher (KDE’s “Start” menu). Click the Akonadi Tray Utility that is found
– Go to the tray on the bottom right of your beautiful KDE desktop and click the small arrow, if necessary, to to expand all the tray icons
– You should see an icon for Akonadi. Right click on it and select ‘Start Akonadi’
– This should start the Akonadi server. You can verify this by right clicking the icon again and checking to see that there is now a ‘Stop Akonadi’ option
– Right click on the Akonadi icon yet again and select ‘Configure’
– Under the Akonadi Resources configuration, click Add and elect to add a Google Calendar Data Resource
– Enter your login details for your google account
– Next it’s off to Kontact. Go to the Calendar in Kontact
– There should be a small Calendar pane on the bottom right to set up calendar resources. Click the Plus sign to add an “Akonadi (Provides access to calendars stored in Akonadi calendar folders)”
– In the resulting popup, choose the google resource in the list and ensure that Events is ticked to the right of it. (I didn’t try to get Todos or Journals working because I don’t use them)
– Hey presto! All your calendar details should now be pulled into KOrganizers calendar! Hurrah!!!

Just to note, at time of writing I found that I had to search and find the Akonadi Tray Utility on restarting the computer. Once it’s in the System Tray elect to start Akonadi as we did above and you’re back in the game! If you find a solution to this minor inconvenience on restarting your machine then please post below!

Thanks to Christian Mangold for this article which served as a great reference.

We’re back again! Site has had a bit of a tidy up thanks to James Larkin for his work, not sure how I’d manage without him.  Also this year sadly Jaime Hemmett won’t be around as she’s moved back to Australia. Without her last year I’d never have been able to run OSSBarcamp.  When I told her about my idea she jumped on board so will miss her this year.

We have a date, a date you don’t want to miss. Saturday 17th April 2010.  We have a new venue this time, but I would like to take this opportunity to thank DIT and Deirdre Lawless for their help in running the previous events. Without them we’d never have gotten off our feet. Equally without our past sponsors of Echolibre and Open Source Solutions Centre we’d not have gotten ourselves off the ground.

Saturday 17th April event will be held  at the  IBM  offices  located in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. We hope to run this event a bit more laid back then previous events, with more ad hoc talks, more lightening sessions, and people volunteering on the day! Also we shall be running the LPI exams again on the day.

Any ideas on how to help or get involved, suggestions on how to run the day, feel free to EMAIL ME

I love the new icons but one thing struck me. Have a look at this picture

Everything else monochrome and nice but the map blue and the clock purple and the house red. Great icons though