Betterment of Ubuntu Ecosystem

I wanted to make this post so that I can make it clear where I stand on the various processes, cycles and work done by Ubuntu and Canonical.

From what I have seen till date, I believe that the people using Ubuntu can be classified into this set of three distinct people

1. Developer base (people who are knee deep into development process)
2. Pro-user base (Ubuntu users who know stuff but are not in any way contributing to Ubuntu)
3. New userbase

Just to make things clear I am in the transition between pro-user base to the developer base. And I have been with all these sets of people to know the best about how people are and how their mentality is. So, when I offer suggestions, I not only mean them as my personal ones, but I speak as the self-appointed representative of the Pro-user base and the New Userbase.

Grievances of New User Base

First, let me represent the New User base. Their main problem is lack of information and the overwhelming nature of the information. I have personally met more than 10 people in my college who are fascinated by something other than MS that could make them look geeky (partly because of my promotion). And I have successfully converted around 10 people into Ubuntu users. I have installed LTS, gave them Ubuntu restricted extras and told them that this is the software center and use it to do anything.

I have experimented with the newbie section a lot. For the ones who I have installed Ubuntu, almost all of them quit the next day. Except for a few brave hearts. And there is a good reason for that. I will be telling the reason in another post.


http://aveemashfaq.blogspot.in/2014/12/my-experience-on-kde-and-takeaways.html

 My room mates use Ubuntu (as a result of me) on a regular basis. They use the stock system with the stock theme and stock everything. The reason why they stick along is that, I am their room mate. I am always there to help them out with any error message that they get. I mean even the basic of things. For example, my friend broke his system because he was doing a software update and the software updater was taking it's time in unpacking the data. The progress bar was not moving and he thought that his Linux has gone wrong. So, he shutdown his laptop. Then, I guess, I did a dpkg --configure -a and he is now not only happy, but very fascinated that I used one command and it coughed out all the problems. He wants to learn to use terminal. Yeah, the same person who did not click the details to see what was being unpacked now wants to learn this mysterious terminal commands.

I know that the new users are scared the hell out of getting into uncharted waters without any assurances of help. Hence, they abandon using Linux (mostly as I have seen).

On this, I wanted to add a note.

Solution to the New User Base

I believe that we need a centralized archive of information. And that information that is known to them. It was during the time of writing this article that I have remembered seeing an Ubuntu help. So, I explored it and found it in a good state. But the thing is that, since in other OSes the help is not useful, we naturally assume that this would be rubbish as well. so, no one cares. Remind them that you can use this help. Have a first boot up opening video. Something like this. Ofcourse with a lot of other information as well. For reference, watch what gnome did. Their intro video.

The written instructions do not usually be much helpful as videos. That is because the in the videos, they can actually see that he has a similar issue and they relate to it. Whereas in the writing, you have to read a lot, you do not post screenshots for every step and it is not soothing. Remember people panicking and shutting down their PC just because they felt that the software updater is not working fine.

Then, they will slowly grow up into Pro-users and we can lure them into contributing.

Problems of Pro-users

This is a great chunk of the user base. They are the ones who know, participate in google plus, askubuntu etc. We (I mean Pro-users) know the basics of Ubuntu, how it is working and what services are etc. We know how to add a PPA, how to edit a system file (example /etc/default/grub), all the software. And there are a lot of us. And the interesting thing about us is that most of us are interested contributing to Ubuntu at some level. But the reason is that we are alien to the development processes. We simply run in tangents to the development process by bugging all the g+ forums and writing on askubuntu.com until someone in the development team picks it up and implements it.

I shall admit that after a month or so of being in the community team and browsing through all the pages, I can only claim to know 50% of what Ubuntu is. I mean that I know there is Ubuntu on air, Ubuntu flavours, Mailing lists, Ubuntu clouud, QA team etc. But I am not sure whether I know all about what I need to know about Ubuntu. I want to help the people of Ubuntu with Project UbuntuNewbie. Daniel Holbach said to me Good. Get some like minded people and make the scripts and produce the videos. I showed him the mockup of website. He said, Yeah I like the direction that you are heading in development of the website. But the question is, I will design. But how will I be able to edit the community website. I don't want to create another website with these instructions ( I mean I don't want to make ubuntunewbie.com) because several attempts have been made and are also being made. My complete moaning is here.

http://aveemashfaq.blogspot.in/2014/11/bridging-gaps-in-ubuntu-user-base.html

So, we lack a general direction of heading.

Solution to the Pro-Users

Make an app. We have been past the years of mailing lists and separate accounts for every other activity. We are living in the world of integration and convergence giving the end users have a lot of simplicity. Today, to contribute to Ubuntu, you have no commonplace to be. For example, I am a pro-user wanting to come into Ubuntu development. I want to experiment all the ways possible and choose the best one that suits me. I am willing to learn whatever it takes to work in the position I look out to myself to be in (trust me there are people who want to learn whatever it takes to be in that position).

Firstly he does not know what ways there are to contribute in Ubuntu. The community website is not properly designed. My side of the argument is here.

http://aveemashfaq.blogspot.in/2014/11/my-design-ubuntu-community-website.html

Then, he has to create multiple accounts and use multiple sites to get into helping the community. For example, he would get into the google plus community when he wants to help out. Then get into askubuntu.com (which is stackexchange), setup launchpad account for contributing translations and I have recently discovered that Kubuntu team using something else blah blah blah. My point is clear.

Then the tutorials are not so clear. Documentation is boring. And the new environment looks scary. Trust me it is scary. Try doing a task which you have no knowledge of sitting beside an expert. For instance, try changing your car piston rings. You will know what I mean. Here is my experience with KDE.

http://aveemashfaq.blogspot.in/2014/12/my-experience-on-kde-and-takeaways.html

And then setup an IRC and whatever is required and all.

Instead, why can't we create a small app that can integrate all of these functions. An IRC client running in the background. Instead of the mailing lists, get the topic lists. In which the main content would be there. When a person clicks on the space after the line, he can add a comment which would have spacing. Something like giving a tab space after programmers create a loop. People can show their interest with a promote or demote system like in askubuntu. Hot trending topics will be displayed. And we could also have the launchpad Ubuntu projects linked or matched somehow. So, the latest needs for the projects can be posted so that someone can jump in. Like, I am making a video. I will be asking for helpers in general as well as specialists in animation creation. There will be a creative team which will be publishing articles so that people are hooked up (I mean a substitute for newsletter). Then there could also be that askubuntu.com is linked to it so that the questions are answered here. An integrated interface. And the most active person will be getting karma and bounty and all. And since I have been listening to the mailing list, I suggest you can select the top 10 karma people every year and send them some Ubuntu merchandise or whatever.

My aim for inviting the users is

1. Make them aware of how to contribute (We do not have the exhaustive list of how to contribute. Even the website is a bit out of shape. Make an app)
2. Make small tutorial videos for them to know how to do like the one given above.
3. Create a bounty system to lure them and make them stick to the ecosystem.
4. Integrate all of them into one place (one app).
5. Finally, bring all the flavours together. More helping hands, more number of people, more inter-disciplinary work and faster development of the platform (the app and the resources behind it).

Finally, the developer base

We know that the developer base is more of an alien environment for me. But from the past experience that I have gathered, let me tell you the problems of the developer base. The basic problem with the developer base is the lack of co-ordination and support to the new ones. Let me make the issues clear point by point.

It seems that the idea of linux concept that you do whatever you want to do without asking anyone is the main issue. Let me narrate this as a story. A person decides to write a piece of software (assume that gtk on mir is written by one person) all by himself. Another piece of software is written by another guy (say suru icon theme is written by another one). The problem is that firstly, suru icon theme will get more praises in the non-developer base and a lot of accolades. The other guy who did the gtk on mir will be getting a lot of questions telling him that his gtk is broken or some feature is not implemented. A thousand mails, then he will have to do all the bug fixing and then in the UOS, a lot of negative comments on how you should not be getting a new server or you should be integrating with wayland etc. The best example of this is the debian guys on systemd.

Now, the second issue is that a person decides to maintain his own software. So, he is a part of the testing squad. He does a lot of testing, he is anxious and tries his hardest to break the software, get the bug fixes done in time. What does he get? He is just another guy. No one cares for him, no much effort is recognized. The best part of recognition is that he will be mentioned as bug fixer. yay. But the fellow who came up with the plan of having a scope and has written say those 5 scopes of unity 7 will have more fame because he is the writer of something.

Let us also assume that a person is very actively involved in the development of Kubuntu. I guess it has smaller userbase than ubuntu. Now, they do not have the fame to match the Ubuntu guys and they do things differently. We all know that Ubuntu has a trouble finding contributors. I can only imagine how hard it could be to get somebody into the development of allied flavours.

None of this issue is much of a problem. But, all of them together are impactful in demoralizing the developer. Then comes the fact that most of the developers are overloaded with work. It makes no sense that developers do the task of small things forcefully (I mean a person has written juju charms and he is good at writing them. Instead of making an effort to test every case of it's working, it is simpler to teach people how to use juju charm. They will generate the test cases by themselves). So, we need a proper governance team to ensure that efficient participation is taking place within the development process and that the developers are not demoralized. They can also perform the additional task of distributing the work and guiding people, motivating them etc.

Solution to the developers

Get a development app so that everyone is measured on the same scale. Even developers need motivation. AND being the top developer is the biggest motivation. Get a management of resources team so that more efficient work can take place. Trust me on this, they can make work far much happier to the developers than it is. And far more efficient and also very motivating.

Complaints with the current set of line of action

FIrst of all is the transparency paradox. I know that this is the first UOS I have attended. But, the biggest problem with them is that the transparency paradox. I have seen that in the verge of making it transparent for people to participate, they are having hangouts session stored on the internet. You are idiots to do that. No one wants to listen to an hour of hangouts in which half the time, you are typing something or half the other time, you are saying the word "um". WE are in the age of talk shows and all kinds of refined media. We are bored and confused(pro-users) as to why the hell they have these things. I know that this is the place  where I have come in. But I cannot fail to forget that I have played some other videos during my time in the ubuntu google plus community, waited for the 1st minute where you were asking questions am i online, wait let me set this up, and then moved forward to the middle of the conversation and then some things spoken on tangents and using high level words. Let me make this clear to you. It is supposed to show transparency. Not show people that the developers know a lot of technical terms. And not cutting off the first bit does not help. Instead, if you have a consolidated and concise video report of what has been happening along with a Q&A session where people who have registered questions over weeks have been answered, that would be lesser transparent and more successful. The only reason why you have people getting into development after stumbling into UOS is that because there is no better way. The community website is crap (no offence meant) and for the lack of other ways, the only way people actually get into Ubuntu teams is from the UOS. That does not mean that UOS is the best practice. It is still deeply flawed and is not meeting the the requires standards.

Now, coming to the second biggest complaint. Your attitude that when you want to contribute, just grab a chair and start contributing. That is one of the stupidest things to do. Get some mentors. Guide them through the various steps of the development process. Put some points for good mentorship as well in the app (that i have just proposed). Let them discover their interests in those things. When you know all of something, then it is easy for you. But when you know nothing, you would be stuck even at small things which are universally accepted as easy. For example, when I was a child, I always wondered that when you turn the key to start your car, does the key get stuck in the start position or does it spring back (as it actually comes back when left). Pretty dumb huh. But true. We need good mentorship as well. I mean as of now, we need mentors to create a batch of mentors so that the newly formed mentors, i.e newbies who have become mentors can help out to let the cycle going.

All your argument and rambling. It is a community. We need to have a conversation thread instead of mailing list with a voting up feature. So that the others know about the hot topics and the most supported conversations so that soemone else if interested can get things done. Like Project Ubuntu Newbie. I have seen that the days following it, I have had almost 20 to 30 messages about showing support, commenting and improving it. Then it just died out (because it happened during a weekend and the people who ignored the mail in the weekend got new ideas and this became history). I whole heartedly wish that someone would say, "OK. Lets make Ubuntu Newbie. I will ask whether people like your ideas. Then, I can design the website on the mockups you have made (because I have never done a website editing) and you can make the videos."

PS: I had exams till now and have not followed the conversation that happened on #ubuntu-on-air as of the time of posting. I will be watching all of those soon.

My experience on KDE and the takeaways

I have been using Linux for about a year and a half now. I started with Linux Mint 14. Exactly when it was released, I installed Cinnamon. Then, I drifted to gnome and then to Unity. I have been using Unity since 13.04 (actually I decided to give unity a try as soon as 13.04 was launched) and since then sticked to it.

The reason why I wanted to give KDE a shot was because KDE5 was launched. I took the preview image. Then I thought, how different KDE4 could be. Here are my views.

First of all, you have a very good looking polished and a very eye candy desktop. The mouse pointer is the highlight of them all. I simply love the bouncy animation and the flipping of the pointer and the shape of the mouse. The animations that I have tried out were fantastic.

Takeaway: I actually installed Kubuntu as replacement for Ubuntu just because of the eye candy.

Then comes the interface. The Super key not assigned to the menu. I am afraid to point out that no matter how many arguments that you make, Super key is traditionally attached to the Launcher and that is it. No more arguments. If you decide one day that, no I am going to change this, you will be abandoned because you are doing a non-productive task. A key combination is not going to work (because it is too complicated). The absence of the key might put off the user to use mouse everytime he wants to access start menu. I know that there are ways to reassign Super key to launcher. But the point is that, you don't say that "This is the latest laptop to come to the market. Do you want to have a HDD in this, because I thought you might carry your old HDD with you so that your files are backed up".

Takeaway: There should be a minimum set of features and checklists in doing a particular task. They should be satisfied or you will be loosing your User Base.

The theming system was better than what we have for Unity. I know that unity has tweak tool which applies the theme etc. But the presence of an inbuilt theming system with one click install is awesome. Although it did not work for me, I can only applaud at your sensible choices. I guess the theme looked outdated but we should realize that we are actually speaking about the time when the replacement is being launched. So, no worries.

Takeaway: Something other linux DEs should learn (I mean unity and gnome) is that get a few things as standard. Even Xubuntu has a theming service. Why not unity. Please get a click to add PPA system. Make everything accesible even in GUI (I mean traditionally all the modifications are done in CLI. Get a GUI substitute as well).

Now to the bad bits. No universal proxy. I know we are a small set of people who live in proxified networks (because of colleges) but please do not ignore us. It is irritating to add and remove proxy all the time. I know about the third party app, But gnome and unity and Cinnamon have Proxy options inbuilt.

The absolute reason for me to turn back to Ubuntu is the shear number of buttons in each program. I know I might sound like a coward but it is true. For an experienced user, it is OK because he knows what he is doing. But for a novice, seeing those many options simply means, I am more noob than I thought I was. Please so not scare us to death. Make things simple. I know you have as I have seen in the developer preview.

But, this was not meant as a review of KDE4. It was meant to be a platform to put my points forth that what in general can attract newbies and what can repel them.

My design of Ubuntu community website

I have been involved in this project UbuntuNewbie after the UOS-1411. My involvement in the Ubuntu Online Summit was I had an opinion that the Ubuntu community can be divided into developers and End-users. There was too large a gap between them. The original discussion can be followed here. However, after that I seemed to have gained a bit of traction and have been attracting the attention of some developers who are taking my side in the list of reforms that I have proposed. There has been a lot of discussion on my ideas in the otherwise serene Ubuntu-community-team mailing list.

 The biggest and the most proud moment was when Daniel Holbach, an Ubuntu developer has created for me a work item in the Ubuntu launchpad blueprints. It was a welcoming surprise. The link to this is

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-1411-transparency-and-participation

So now, here is the mockup that I present in front of you.

 

 First things first, the colour scheme of the side bar has to be changed to include some pale and non-catchy colours as many of you would notice. But then, this is a picture of the concept. Bear with the color scheme of the side bar for now. I am sure that it will not be like this in the revamped website. There is an extra slot in the side bar that is empty where "help" should go.

Now, to the actual part of the discussion. Since we are living in the modern world where time is moving so fast, we simply do not have the time to read pages (atleast the end-users do not have time to read, I don't care if the developers prefer more text because they are already a part of this community and this is meant to attract newbies). Hence following the trend of minimalism. Less text, simple videos, easy to use side bar which is intentionally made similar to Unity.

If you scroll down the page (which is not possible because it is a mock up image and not a html), the wiki part would come into focus. Notice the background colour of that icon in the side bar is the background color of the topic under discussion. So, it is the least confusing. 

A suggestion would be the addition of some mechanism to highlight the topic selected in the side bar (which is not visible here but should be there. I just did not implement it). This suggestion is debatable because we have already got a colour co-ordination system. Hence the non-inclusion in the mock up.

Every topic of discussion would have it's own video i.e the wiki topic, if you scroll down to it will have the same layout as introduction to Ubuntu community with an introductory video ( it might carry a different theme) with some text in the side telling briefly what this is about.

And the last empty slot would be for help. Of course this might be considered as a template and the final website may have more buttons in it. But, let us go through the initial discussion of the template so that we can discuss the particulars.

For people who were waiting for the video in the mock up, here it is.

Contributing in Project UbuntuNewbie

Dear developers and normal users,

You must be aware of a recent Project that I have endeavoured to bridge the gaps between developers and users. A project was launched. You can follow this on

https://plus.google.com/104023546235902969368/

https://launchpad.net/bridging-gaps

I am glad to announce the completion of my first video. I have published it under my own account rather than UbuntuNewbie because I did not want to impose the video onto people. Hence, I am open to comments. Once I get some opinions on that from you, I will make it official by posting it with the UbuntuNewbie profile on YouTube.

Until then, here is a full set of instructions for how you can contribute to the project.

For people who use Launchpad

I guess that all the developers are more comfortable using Launchpad more than google plus. Hence, I have divided the workload accordingly. This part of the contribution requires that you have an idea of all the sub-sections of Ubuntu like Ubuntu-on-air, Ubuntu QA, Ubuntu community council etc. And this is known mostly to the developers. Hence you can do that. Go to the bridging-gaps launchpad page and to the list of blueprints. There is a exhaustive-list-dev where all the ways you can contribute to Ubuntu and all the facilities are listed.The list is incomplete. So, please put all the ways you can contribute in the work items. An example item going into the list would be Ubuntu Classroom. Or Contributing ideas in Launchpad. (which I realized just now during the chat). That is the reason why I need your input on that because i don't know all the things to do with ubuntu.

Then there are individual items which need a few pre-requisites. These are listed in the individual blue prints. For example, get into translations blueprint. There in the work item, you can find out that there is a work item called "configuring a foreign keyboard". But, you also have to go into Launchpad for giving the actual contributions. So, a new work item would be "intro to launchpad". Get even the most silly things you can ever think of. Because they are silly because you know them. And we don't. I found that Rodney Dawes told me that we could show the mail sent in the mailing list via a link. Me being an avid user of the internet did not know this. Hence my point.

I have already tried telling you before and it was here, here and here. But never mind, it is never too late.

 For normal users

This is for people who do not use Launchpad. New topics, videos and scripts will be posted on the UbuntuNewbie community. Please comment or better, make new scripts, topics etc and post it or google+ in either Ubuntu Community or simply tag them to me at +Aveem Ashfaq or +UbuntuNewbie or videos or mail me at aveemashfaq@gmail.com I will be posting requirements on the websites. So, make sure you follow +UbuntuNewbie  I just hope people would be enthusiastic about this.

Updates on Project "UbuntuNewbie"

I would like to start off by thanking people for showing their interest in the project. I really appreciate the point of people showing enthusiasm towards this. I need some positive energy to work on this and the response I have got is positive. But frankly speaking, I am a bit heart broken that I have posted the scripts and got no comments whatsoever. I have deliberately chosen a half-baked script so that people might start a thread of discussion or give some input so that I know who are with me. But, if the word is not spread, then spread it. Or else I just have to soldier on by myself. Maybe, time will tell about everything. Until then, my part of the story of what I have been doing.

Before I begin, I would like to say that people have a lot of misconceptions about my project and my motives. Please make sure that you read the link below that ends with "110.html". That should clear things up. I will be making a new blog post on "How to contribute to this project" soon. Until then, read the below paragraphs to find out why I have not made the posts already.

I have been hung up on the developer side of the project. There is this Ubuntu community team which I have got into and I have been pushing my plans into the community team. Let me give you a testament of what has been going on.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-community-team/2014-November/000082.html

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-community-team/2014-November/000108.html

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-community-team/2014-November/000110.html

This is in no way the only effort that I have made. I have been in the recent community team Q&A session. A more comprehensive effort of what I have done is recorded in the community team mailing archive. You can follow the conversations here.

So, the outcome of my interaction with the developers is as follows. Daniel Holbach is supporting me and likes the idea behind the project. He is pushing it into the minds of the developers which is a good news. Former community team manager Jono Bacon also made a comment telling that the general direction of heading of the proposal is good, Though he also remarked that this discussion is often being side-tracked. There is a Scott Kitterman and a Svetlana Belkin currently in favour of my idea being implemented. No idea or any clue about the others. David Planella is still in the process of giving it a thought and is mostly going to agree with me on that.

As you might have read those mails in the post above, I have explained to the Ubuntu community team in the most clear way that is humanly possible that this project will be undertook by me. They just had to put a small amount of input in filling out some survey form like things(Launchpad work items). I will be making a blog post about how anyone can contribute. But long things short, I explained to them in the mailing lists on exactly what they have to do. The point is that everyone including the developers and the users alike are giving likes to the project. But, everyone is reluctant to make any contributions which are useful.

It is not like I cannot be doing this on my own. I am perfectly capable of making videos on my own and publishing them in my name. It is just going to take a bit longer. But the point is you don't have to start with the manufacturing of petrol when you want to race a car. It would be easier if petrol was supplied and the race driver had to bother only about the race.

One more thing which is incredibly funny is that in the Q&A session that was going on, when I asked about the project, I got a message back in IRC saying, please give me the links to it. From Daniel Holbach (dholbach) which was strange considering he and David Planella were the ones who told me that I could do and encouraged me to do that in the first place.

But I did get a valid point from Daniel Holbach. He and the others were working overtime in the Ubuntu Online Summit and got tired. They had their weekend when all this development was taking place. So, no one replied or has been active in that aspect. So, I am going to make an effort to put these things into place once again and pray to God that atleast this time people could spare their time and listen to me.

Putting these things aside, the reason why there has been no developments in the project UbuntuNewbie are the following

1. I was giving it sometime with the half-baked scripts expecting to see an inbox flooded with messages about comments made on my document.
2. I was waiting for the developers to have an opinion on my project. But it seems that they are not aware.
3. I was waiting for some developer to go in a fill up a form sort of thing (to be precise, creating a work item in Launchpad) so that I could realize that this is a part of Ubuntu and I could maybe learn for myself and work on it.
4. I was waiting for an Ubuntu user to tell me that +Aveem Ashfaq, I just wanted to tell you that I made a music which might be helpful to your project.
5. And I was really waiting for UbuntuOnAir session to happen to officially know what the developers thought about my idea.

Anyways, this is a true hand on heart account of events that have taken place. I was also offered a place in the LinuxPadawan project which is also awesome. LinuxPadawan has goals similar to mine but in a way, it is better. They want to help people fix their linux systems and introduce people to all kinds of stuff that has to do with linux. Please check their page. It is better than how I described them.

Bridging gaps in the Ubuntu user base

From what I have seen going on the ubuntu community, I can divide the user base into two categories.

1. Developers
   
2. novice users
   

and the fact is that there exists a too stark contrast between the tools used by the developers from the tools used by the novice users. Hence the users who are willing to contribute to Ubuntu have to scale the big barrier of new tools and information to get into the category of developers. This task is not so easy. I recently conducted a survey on Ubuntu google plus community asking how many people are interested in development and how many know how to develop ubuntu. These are the results.

The survey is available at

https://plus.google.com/100197312857811231151/posts/isosX3xjvMu

The reason behind this is that the novice users are not aware of the existence of websites and tools. Even if they know how to do that, they are scared of the prospectus of entering the alienating environment. Furthermore, this fear is magnified by the prompts and the description provided in the website. For example, if a user wants to provide a translation and he mustered up the courage to do that, he is directed to launchpad project where the welcoming message is that you can contribute to the translation if you have good knowledge of the language. This makes him fear that the post is open only for language professors.

The people who voted "I want to do but it is not my cup of tea" are those type of people who think that Ubuntu is all about coding and I have to learn to use GTK and kernel and all of these to start contributing.

The people who voted "I am an enthusiastic novice, so no clue" are typically those people who think that one should be hired by Ubuntu to do some modification. Or there is a mysterious group of people whose identity remains undisclosed who are monitoring our progress and pick the worthy amongst us and offer us work to do ( I am just joking, but it is partially true). They expect that when a survey turns up or a simple theming or wallpaper making challenge turns up, it is surely put up on the Ubuntu google plus community. But, I know for a fact that there is no team which makes sure that every new development is posted on G+. It is people out of enthusiasm who do that.

People do not know that there exists a website called qa.ubuntu.com or atleast half the people do not know the existence of askubuntu.com. The fact is that people are ignorant and frightful of contributing something terrible which might end up being released and they being blamed for it. People make all kinds of assumptions unless they are cleared off. And one thing that developers do not realize is that the novice users have the attention span of an housefly. And this is the generation of videos.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a whole documentation.

- Aveem Ashfaq (That's me)

People do not know about all of this and they will not make an effort to spend hours finding out everything so that they could start contributing.

So, here is what I am proposing to do. First of all, create an official YouTube channel which would explain the basics of Ubuntu, how the team is structured, how can one contribute, how to report bugs, how to do translations, what websites are available, what is IRC and explain the fact that developers hangout in IRC rather than  g+ or facebook etc.


Some video that looks like this.

I know that this is a video not at all related to this subject. But try to understand my point. The series of videos should outline things without necessarily spoon feeding the information. And it should be something like this rather than a screencast because screencast is too technical and boring.

And of course, since I spoke to David Planella and Daniel Holbach, we have come to a conclusion that modifying the websites might not be a good idea. So, instead, I propose that a new extension website is created. Something like newbie.ubuntu.com where you can create and place all this stuff. So, a website to make them confident enough. And then, they can soldier on and do things by themselves.

And one more change would be to edit the firefox start page and make the links below the search more visible and focused. And add newbie.ubuntu.com to the set of links.

If you are angry of the fact that people who can't read a man page by themselves will be the worst of contributors, you might want to re-think. Because most of the new ones come from Windows, they know that a lot of things can be done in windows. The proof that they have seen it in someone's laptop and the fact that Windows is the widest used OS in the world is a reason why they have complete faith in it. On the other hand, they keep on speculating whether things can actually take place in Ubuntu. There is no point in taking a massive quest to find out whether a thing happens in Ubuntu or not if the outcome would be "no". Hence their reluctance. We have to show that things happen and the outcome is sweet. Then, people will start doing "hijra" for Ubuntu.. 

A newbie's guide to install Ubuntu

Hi  guys. I wanted to create a post about how to install ubuntu alongside windows. this tutorial is for those who want to have a basic guide to everything you need to know when you install ubuntu. Every option is explained. I hope that this video will help you

My life on Ubuntu 14.04

It seems to be a good time to live life with the new ubuntu 14.04. Ofcourse the startup time has increased, especially with the time taken after the login to show the desktop. But it has been a very painless installation. It is rock solid and reliable.

Previously on the Saucy and raring, it was like when the LAN was not connected, I would first check the network, the proxy settings, do ifconfig eth0 up, do netstat and reboot and then see whether the router was turned on. But now, with no crashes except for the ones that I have deliberately made, it seems that it is rock solid. The inclusion of additional drivers for direct installation is a breeze. I have so far converted two windows users into full time linux users. The only problem being I have to setup their computers for use. That would be quite difficult because of the drivers I have to install and setup for them. But now, it is a breeze. Apart from that there was another problem. It was with the refreshing of file lists for apt. Prviously, the file list would not refresh if any repos were added. This caused a lot of problems for the novice users when they said to me that there were no changes as they changed the repos. i would type sudo apt-get update in terminal and they would frighten. But now, it is no such trouble.

Apart from that there are a few things i would love all the ubuntu users to do. Firstly I suggest they remove the webbrowser-app. This is the new addition from the ubuntu touch team made to the distro. The reason why I say so is that lets admit no one uses that web browser. if that is removed, it means that then the web app integration is also removed as dependency and you can see a hell lot of difference in the startup time of apps, dash and login. Apart from that I have removed all the scopes except for home and all lenses except applications and files. this makes it even faster. Next comes the compiz plugins and then comes theming. Apart from that, I would suggest kingsoft office and steam. It seems to v\be a very good time to be using Ubuntu 14.04. After all the tahr can be trusted.

Kingsoft office in ubuntu 13.10 64-bit

Kingsoft office WPS for Linux first came to my notice when I was watching the review of Ubuntu Kylin. It looked very similar to MS-office. So, I gave it a try and here is my report of how it feels.
          First things first, the installation is not so easy. I went to the official website and could not find a 64-bit compatible version. I downloaded the .deb file for 32-bit and installed it via software center hoping that the software center would resolve any dependencies. After it was installed, searching in dash for 'word' did not find the kingsoft suite for me. After I found the writer, I clicked it and surprise it would not open. I guessed that 32-bit libraries were absent and instead of googling around, i simply installed skype which was a 32-bit package. The Skype installed the 32-bit libraries for me and so now, when I open the suite, it would present itself in front of me.
          Secondly, I would warn the hardcore anti-MS league that it does not support .odt .ods or any open-source format. I tried opening an .odt with it but in vain. I guess that Kingsoft needs to know that .odt exists. It is funny because even MS-Office 2013 supports .ods etc.
          Now, to the actual review. The office suite sports a look similar to the modern UI of MS-Office.

 There is an option of changing it to the traditional look. I certainly felt that Kingsoft suite looked better than MS-Office 13. It is quite ironic that a Chinese company could beat a multi-billion dollar company by not only mimicking the product but making it look better than the actual product. The website says though that this product is still in testing stage but well done sir for your valiant efforts. Of course there are drawbacks with this product. Firstly that there are not many templates available for making any document but this is true even with Libreoffice to some extent. MS-fonts are not all present in the suite but it is because they are protected by some laws. These drawbacks are only reflected when we compare it with MS-office. Comparing it with Libreoffice I would say that Kingsoft is at par with the opensource major in terms of features. Hats off to Kingsoft for making such a good solution available to linux.
          I think that if Kingsoft also recognizes the opensource formats and include them in their suite as well as make a 64-bit version available, then there could be a mass adoption among Linux users.

my opinion on todays trusty tahr build

most of ubuntu users are pretty much awaiting the launch of ubuntu 14.04 also called trusty tahr. so i thought why not report the progress the ubuntu team is making in building the tahr.

i downloaded the daily build today and gave it a try. booting was fairly quick. actually it was faster than ubuntu 13.10 in my laptop. of course my ubuntu 13.10 installation has software installed and but still it felt faster than 13.10. no issues whatsoever with the build for me. yes, i am using an i3 laptop with intel hd as my only gpu. so there is almost no scope of any problem at all with intel providing the latest drivers to keep their linux customers happy. but still if i am correct there are no issues with any graphics cards after 13.10(i could be wrong). so folks if you have any other graphics card, don't ask me because i don't have the hardware to test.

coming to the review, ubuntu seems to be rock solid in this stage. no crash or system warning. it looks pretty much like ubuntu 13.10. the strange thing is that in system details, it shows that it is ubuntu 13.10. the wallpapers are also the same. the icon theme is the same. i was really expecting that ubuntu would adopt the ubuntu touch icon theme for tahr. since the true convergence and unity 8 is postponed, so is the convergence of the icon theme, i suppose.

there is a new web browser. probably the browser from ubuntu touch. it is simple and neat. the barebones of this browser is a trouble for me. i have a proxified internet service and the browser would not work under proxy. guess what there is no settings option anywhere. and it truly is optimized for touch screen interface. not at all comfortable and the absence of indication of tabs is just frustrating. more clicks means more headache. thank god ubuntu has also provided with the firefox browser. i think that ubuntu developers should realize that should not experiment with major ui changes in an lts version. an lts version is what every user in the world would upgrade to and so, any changes should be delayed for the next release. else, ubuntu should provide a community release which faithful ubuntu users would test and comment.

i did have a problem with proxified networks in ubuntu a lot. when i installed fedora, empathy would work under a proxy for google accounts. but empathy never worked for me in ubuntu. this has continued into tahr. please do correct it ubuntu developers.

interesting addition is the presence of hibernation in ubuntu. hibernation is back in ubuntu. i myself do not prefer hibernation because ubuntu boots quickly and i do have the time to spare and i also have the patience to save my work. but still ubuntu is now at par with the rivals.

i have also noticed that the top command shows cpu usage is lower but the ram usage was noticeably higher than that of ubuntu 13.10. i think that people have bigger rams but smaller processors. for example intel atom notebook today comes with 2gb ram which is good but processor is poor. so, to optimize it even for the smallest of hardware, they must have did that. positive move i should say.

it comes with the newer builds of libre office which look the same to me. the rest is the same. nothing new. you can expect ubuntu 14.04 to be rock solid stable version of the ubuntu we are used to with the addition of a ubuntu touch browser that is not helpful at all.

i wish that ubuntu provides attention to supporting proxy in some applications as universities tend to have proxified networks and that is where students are usually obliged to have ubuntu for programming.

i also wish that ubuntu has a cool startup animation as shown in the examples directory. today's animation is already outdated and even ubuntu gnome, kubuntu and all others have made some lively animations.

i wish that ubuntu updates software center to have an option of sorting results by mostly downloaded and it would be the default way of sorting applications.

i wish the ubuntu developers all the very best to make this release successful

A flaming hot laptop

i was bored with looking at my laptop looking stock. My friends have some alienware laptops. of course there is a white sony, an acer, macbook which look cool.  i too wanted to have something that could turn everybodys head. mostly i wanted something that the alienware people would turn around to see. i had a black fujitsu lh531 laptop. it is not so bad looking. it has some silver lining and the logo is chrome. but still not good enough to convince me that my laptop is in the same league as alienware. so here is what i did.

firstly i tried on making design with a pencil. the graphite looks awesome on black laptops. everyone really admired it. it gives a mean stance to the laptop. but within a week of usage, it slowly got rubbed off or spread to the surroundings. time to use the eraser. but then i got some paint thinner and wiped it and it was gone in a stroke.

to get a more permanent application, i tried out nail polish. since i had no experience with nail polish, i did not realize the fact that nail polish is semitransparent. that is when i painted red nail polish on the black laptop, it just looked darker black. i wanted something that made my laptop look more conspicuous.

now comes the conspicuity tape. i first thought of spray painting but was more frightened that things may go irreversibly wrong. so i sticked to the paln of conspicuity tape. look at the how it looks now.

 

i know it is not such a good job. but i will refine the artwork slowly. drop in any comments on how it looks.