Blog of an Ubuntu Community Member and FOSS developer

One thing I love about Linux is the ability to try new applications. After all the open source community is very active and new applications are being created all the time. The command-line makes it easy to add and remove Personal Package Archives. However their is a tool which will let you add, remove, search, manage Personal Package Archives(PPA) and more from a GUI. I will talk about it below.
First the basics. You can easily add a PPA from the command-line with the following commands.

add-apt-repository ppa:

For exaple in three easy commands I can install the application CLI Companion:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:byobu/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install byobu

Because of my endless tinkering and checking out the latest software our FOSS developers have created I ended up with quite a large collection of Personal Package Archives(PPA). Some of which I no longer used.

At first I was unsure how to get rid of these. Today I did a little research and wanted to share with you what I found. This includes a cool new application called Y PPA Manager. Whether it is the command-line or a fancy GUI app we will have you cleaning up your collection of Personal Package Archives in no time.

From the terminal you can use a very similar command that you used to add the PPA.

sudo apt-add-repository –remove ppa:

Then run the following to download the package lists from the repositories and “update” them to get information on the newest versions of packages and their dependencies. It will do this for all repositories and PPAs

sudo apt-get update

Saved The Best For Last

I came across a project which had a lot of positive reviews and made many top 10 application lists. The features definetly peeked my interest. The application is Y PPA Manager. Y PPA Manager is a tool which simplifies this process of managing Personal Package Archives (PPA). It allows adding, deleting and purging PPAs easily. You can also search and install PPAs from Launchpad repositories by entering the name of an application. I gave it a spin today and I have to say so far I like it. You can install Y PPA Manager with the following commands,

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/y-ppa-manager

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install y-ppa-manager

The main interface is quite self explanatory. You can Add a new PPA from the Add button and delete added sources from the Remove button. To get a list of your packages, use the “List Packages”. The Advanced options allows backing up, restoring and purging PPAs.

What makes this application really useful is its PPA search ability. This allows you to easily find a Launchpad PPA, click on Search all Launchpad PPAs and enter an application name. You can also enable the Deep Search option for a more advanced search.

Whichever option you choose your PPPA list will now be much more manageable.

At UDS Stuart Langridge gave a talk during one of the afternoon plenaries called “Building Apllications With Ubuntu One”. I was particularly anxious to hear this talk. I had been enticed by my friends on the Ubuntu One team with hints and teasers. See I had been asking a couple days before about finding all the different current API’s for Ubuntu One. Stuart’s talk was all about how Ubuntu One is working to make these API’s simple and consistent, as well as documenting them in a way that encourages developers to let Ubuntu One do all the heavy lifting.

I knew what Stuart was talking about when he spoke of some of the potential Ubuntu One has to help application developers. I created an application leveraging these technologies and was well aware of the time these API’s can save an application developer. In a couple afternoons I was able to create an application that has the ability to sync all your config settings, and a list of installed applications with all your computers on your Ubuntu One account.

Here is the new web page that lists all the Ubuntu One API’s. This page still has some work to be done to it, but I am anxious to get the word out and start getting all those clever developers in the community thinking about how their next application could take advantage of the heavy lifting Ubuntu One can offer. After making your clever app please list it here so other folks interested in making similar applications can benefit, learn, and share with each other.

I am always looking for ways that Ubuntu users, who do not know Python, C, or some other programming language, can contribute to Ubuntu. As Ubuntu grows in popularity this is going to be a growing segment of users. I think a very important part of the Ubuntu experience is the community. The friendships, the comradery , the sense of pride and ownership that comes from helping to make Ubuntu what it is. I want everyone, regardless of technical skill to have the same opportunity to have this rewarding experience. So when I came along this opportunity I couldn’t wait to share it with you all.

Browsing through the Software Center you may have noticed there are applications that are lacking screenshots. The screenshots are a nice feature of the Software Center and a real bummer when you are on the fence about downloading an app and their is no screenshot to help you in your decision. The good news is there is a way to help get these screenshots added.

How to add screenshots to the Software Center

Browse through the Software Center or the online repository of screenshots at screenshots.ubuntu.com. When you find a missing screenshot you would like to fix, either open or install the application and proceed to take a screenshot per the guidelines below.

* Screenshots are published under the terms of the packaged software itself.
* Your screenshots must be in PNG format.
* Due to legal reasons screenshots for non-free packages aren’t accecpted.
* Images larger than 800×600 pixels will automatically be reduced to that size (retaining the aspect ratio of course). So if you like to control the exact result of what you upload then make sure your image size is no larger than that.
* Your screenshot should contain a typical scene when working with it. When snapshotting a browser load the debian.org home page. A screenshot of a graphics program should have a drawing loaded. Of a game please make a screenshot while you are playing and not of the start screen.
* You need not artificially switch off your window decorations.
* Please set your language to english so that everybody understands it. If you don’t use english by default please start your application from a shell using after setting “export LANG=C”.
* Please only take a screenshot of the respective application and not of your whole desktop (unless the screenshot is meant for a window manager).
* Please use non-interlaced PNG images.

The default application in Ubuntu for taking screenshots is found by going to Applications > Accessories > Take Screenshot. In Kubuntu you press print screen and this will bring up the ksnapshot window.

Submit Screenshots
Once taken submit your screenshots.

At UDS-N one project that has been near and dear to my heart for many years made its UDS debut, the Beginners Team. Sure the Beginners Team has been around and mentioned before, but not nearly to the level we saw at UDS-N. This made me immensely happy as the Beginners Team has been working hard for many years to be a positive asset to the Ubuntu community and contribute in a meaningful way. All those years of experience and lessons learned recently have been coming together and the team is really starting to hit its stride.

The Beginners Team has grown from a small wonderful group of forum contributors to a multi faceted team with members across many disciplines. Our most recent milestone in that evolution started about a year ago. The team realized we needed to review and evaluate all our processes to make sure they were keeping pace with our quickly growing team. We noticed the community was starting to take an increased interest in the Beginners Team and we wanted to make sure we were ready to handle the increasing number of users, and teams, who were looking to the Beginners Team as a way to get started in the community.

It has been a little over a year since the current Beginners Team Council was elected. We affectionately refer to it as Council II. This came about because it was the second major restructuring of the team. The first shift was from a team that solely was focused on helping beginners on the forums to a team that was organized around helping beginners in many different parts of the community. To organize around the various parts of the community the team formed Focus Groups. Their was a Launchpad Focus Group, a Wiki Focus Group, a Development Focus Group, an IRC Focus Group, and an Education Focus Group. As the Beginners Team was realizing, helping beginners in the Ubuntu Community had a lot to do with not just answering support questions, but directing people into getting involved with the community. The newly formed Focus Groups and mentoring program were designed to do just that. This structure worked well for a couple years but as we grew it started to become apparent some changes were needed. As Jono would say ‘we were not scaling well’. A lot of our processes were implicit, which worked well when we were small but it was starting to hold the team back. We also thought we could better align our Focus Groups with the community. This is where Council II comes into our story. Over that summer the team had stalled on some major issues because no agreements could be made under the current one member one vote system. Tired of the gridlock several of the Beginners Team Members got together and wrote up a proposal. This proposal suggested the team elect a council of five members tasked with administrating the team and getting us over the hurdles that were in front of us. Circulated among the members it was widely agreed that this was what was needed to see the team through to a brighter future.

I must say with a huge smile on my face I think that brighter future is here. Though we still have a lot of work ahead of us UDS-N told me that all the teams hard work is starting to pay off. I received many comments about the improvements in the Team and talked with many community members who are interested in working with the Beginners Team. The Beginners Team has introduced many people to the community over the years, and I am very proud of that. But, we could reach so many more. I believe having a great Community On Boarding experience is something that can make a huge difference in what type of a contributor someone becomes. With the help of the community and our members, this cycle we hope to introduce more people then ever before to our great community.

Ubuntu One is a great program/service with many uses, some obvious some not so obvious. Here are a few creative uses for Ubuntu One that some people have come up with.

Create Your Own Browser Start Page
You can create a custom Start Page for all your computers using the Ubuntu One publish feature that makes files accessible through a public URL. You can create a page with your bookmarks, RSS feeds, or whatever HTML-fu you can pull off. To do this, create the HTML file and put it in your Ubuntu One folder or a UDF (User Designated Folder). Then right-click on the file and select ‘Publish via Ubuntu One’. After that right-click and select ‘Copy Public URL’. You can do this through Nautilus or from the WebUI, the latter being a little quicker. From there it is only a matter of dropping the URL in your favorite browsers preferences.

Do not wait until you get Home to Download that Torrent
Download a torrent to your computer while you are away. You will want to set up your torrent client to monitor a folder. In Transmission it is Edit > Preferences > Torrents ‘Automatically add torrents from…’. Then you will set that folder to sync with Ubuntu One. Ubuntu One can sync any folder in the users $HOME by r-clicking on the folder and selecting ‘Syncronize with Ubuntu One’. Then when you are away from home you just need to add the torrent to the folder using the WebUI. So whilst out and about you can add the torrent link to the latest Ubuntu server and have the .iso of the latest release ready to burn when you get home.

Monitor your Desktop
Keep track of your computer while you are away. Want to see the progress of a task you left running or catch unauthorized users? Set up a cronjob to take a picture of your desktop every so often and save it in your Ubuntu One Folder or other UDF(User Designated Folder). I used the program scrot in this example. I found it the easiest to set up for a cron job. If you do not already have it a quick search for ‘scrot’ in the Ubuntu Software Center will take care of that (or sudo apt-get install scrot in a Terminal). With Scrot installed, open a terminal window and enter ‘sudo crontab -e’ without the quotes. An editor will open and you will add a line that looks similar to this:

01 04 * * * env DISPLAY=:0 /usr/bin/scrot ~/Ubuntu\ One/screen\%F-\%T.png

This example saves a picture in the users Ubuntu One directory in a folder named screenshots. The 5 numbers at the beginning are in the following format:

minute(0-59), hour(0-23, 0 = midnight), day(1-31), month(1-12), weekday(0-6, 0 = Sunday)

So my example takes a picture of the desktop at 4:01. Since I didn’t specify a month or day it will execute everyday.
Another example:
15 14 1 * *
This will run at 2:15pm on the first of every month.
Save your changes and your new crontab will be installed. Exiting without saving will leave your crontab untouched.

I hope you find these examples useful and/or sparked your interest enough to start thinking about what you can do with Ubuntu One. A man that sounded like he knew what he was talking about once told me ” intelligence is not what you know, but what you do with what you do know”.

If you come up with something cool, I would love to hear about it.