Ubuntu Summit 2023

I am currently attending the Ubuntu Summit 2023 in Riga, Latvia. This is the first time I have deliberately attended an Ubuntu event. Back in 2013, I accidentally walked through what I believe was the last Ubuntu Developers Summit in Copenhagen, when I was showing some friends around Bella Sky in Copenhagen.

This time I was asked by Erich Eickmeyer if I would like to join him as a member of the Ubuntu Studio team. It has been fantastic to meet him and Eylul Dogruel from the Ubuntu Studio team. It was also fantastic to meet or see in person other members of the Linux Audio community, and other Ubuntu and Canonical people that have helped me with my Ubuntu contributions along the way.

Here are the talks I attended and meetings I had related to Ubuntu Studio:

50 things you did not know you could do with Ardour , Dr Robin Gareus (Ardour, Linux Audio)

Making a standalone effects pedal system based on embed Linux, Filipe Coelho

Live Mixing with PipeWire and Ardour/Harrison Mixbus, Erich Eickmeyer (Ubuntu / Ubuntu Studio)

Art and ownership – the confusing problem of owning a visual idea, Eylul Dogruel (Ubuntu Studio)

Ubuntu Flavour Sync meeting, Aaron Prisk (Canonical), Ana Sereijo (Canonical), Daniel Bungert (Canonical), Mr Mauro Gaspari (Canonical), Michael Hudson-Doyle (Canonical), Oliver Smith (Canonical), Mr Tim Holmes-Mitra (Canonical)

I believe talks will be uploaded onto You Tube at some point, so look out for them!

Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS Released — News – Ubuntu Studio

The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu Studio 20.04, code-named “Focal Fossa”. This marks Ubuntu Studio’s 27th release. This release is a Long-Term Support release and as such, it is supported for 3 years (until April 2023). 11 more words

via Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS Released — News – Ubuntu Studio

Locked In

It has now been 2 weeks working from home. Normally I like working from home when I need to concentrate on writing a report. But with the rest of the family around it is a bit chaotic, and I need to keep pushing Alexander to do some homework instead of sitting on the playstaion all day. It is the way he keeps in contact with his friends though.

Luckily, before the virus hit I found a great Trumpet and Woodwind store in Copenhagen called I.K.Gottfried and took my old Getzen 300 silver-plated trumpet to have some maintenance. Unfortunately, the leadpipe was showing signs of corrosion and they were worried it would not survive an ultrasonic clean. So I bought a second-hand Yamaha YTR-2330 lacquered trumpet whilst their technician took a closer look at the Getzen. Apart from a few spazmodic attempts in the basement over the years, I have not seriously played the trumpet for nearly 20 years. At first I could not play for any longer than about 5 minutes, and only in the middle register. But now after playing daily for 2 weeks, my lips are improving. I can play for half and hour or more, and my range is nearly back to what it used to be, although some days I stuggle in the lower register. It has been great getting back to one of my old loves. It is so soothing playing music when everything outside of the house is a crazy mess!

At first when the lock-in started, I was looking forward to the start of the AFL season and watching my beloved Bombers. I did manage to watch a slightly delayed streaming of them winning the first game of the season (without spectators). Unfortunately, the AFL season was put on hold after this, and there is no live sport (of interest to me) that I can watch anymore.

Every now and then, I also do a little work on my Gammon One-Name Study. I am still cross-checking names between my indexes and the ROAK Family Group. I am also entering the faux marriage certificates that I received from the Barnstaple Marriage Challenge into a new tree to see if I get any matches with other trees, or can extract a family of two out of it.

For Debian, I sponsored an upload of a new version of Parlatype, and the brand new Libre Office extension for it. If you ever need to transcibe some speech to text, take a look at Parlatype.

Before the coronavirus hit all public events around the world, I had booked flights to Ireland to see Crowded Hose in the summer. This weekend I went onto the Neil Finn website to see if there was any news about concerts being cancelled. Unfortunatley, the first few dates on their upcoming tour have been cancelled. Whilst there I noticed that Neil Finn was broadcasting daily shows on his Fangradio to give some joy in these strange days. I am really enjoying listening to the backlog that he uploaded over the last week. It is great to hear this music legend playing some of his fantastic songs, sometimes alone, and sometimes with his sons. He also does some great covers including some Beatles songs. I am listening to “Fall At Your Feet” as I type this.

This week I will hopefully have time to take part in the Beta Testing for the next release of Ubuntu Studio. If you want to take part too, there are instructions on the ISO QA Tracker website where you can also download the images.

Quarantined

So the coronavirus has shut Denmark down for two weeks. With no sport on the telly either, I have decided to get back to some of my hobbies.

Yesterday, I fixed a bug with Hexter in Debian that prevented the application from opening due to a problem with the desktop file. This morning I synced it to Ubuntu. Hexter is an open source synthesizer that models the DX7.

Today I have been working on my Gammon Onename Study. I have finished cross-checking against my indexes for James GAMMON in the ROAK Family Group. This family originates in North Devon just like mine. I just copied this latest information over to the ROAK page on the website. The next step will be to look at James’ older brother John.

But I might brave the grey weather outside and go for a walk to stretch my legs first!

Installing Ubuntu Studio alongside Windows 10

I recently installed Ubuntu Studio 17.10 Artful Aardvark on a spare USB disk for my son. His computer had Windows 10, but there was no space inside the case for an extra internal disk. I selected the option during the install process to boot Ubuntu Studio with the Windows Boot Manager. But unfortunately, after the installation completed the computer would only ever boot into Windows – there was no Grub menu.

There was plenty of information online about this problem. As usual with these type of problems, some of the information seemed trust worthy, and some not! I thought I would record here what worked for me, in case I ever get stuck again.

It turned out that I had to go into Windows and use the command  line to point the Windows Boot Manager at the right EFI file.

As I didn’t trust the advice at first, I ran the command with the Windows “help” option (which I had forgotten after not using Windows for many years) to find out what the command did:

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /?

This showed me the command to investigate what the current setting was:

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /enum

Windows Boot Manager

——————–

identifier {bootmgr}

device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2

path \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi

description Windows Boot Manager

locale da-DK

inherit {globalsettings}

default {current}

resumeobject {9c35ad51-1f6a-11e7-aeb5-f52aab87eca4}

displayorder {current}

toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}

timeout 30

Windows Boot Loader

——————-

identifier {current}

device partition=C:

path \Windows\system32\winload.efi

description Windows 10

locale da-DK

inherit {bootloadersettings}

recoverysequence {9c35ad53-1f6a-11e7-aeb5-f52aab87eca4}

recoveryenabled Yes

isolatedcontext Yes

allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075

osdevice partition=C:

systemroot \Windows

resumeobject {9c35ad51-1f6a-11e7-aeb5-f52aab87eca4}

nx OptIn

bootmenupolicy Standard

I could then see that Windows Boot Manager was still loading the old EFI file (bootmgfw.efi). This gave me the confidence to run the magic command found on the internet to point Windows Boot Manager at the right EFI file:

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi

After a brief panic that maybe that the installer had not installed the EFI file with that exact name, or that it had not installed Grub at all, and that I was about to brick my son’s computer (and never here the end of it), I rebooted.

Voila! Grub appeared, and I could boot into both Windows and Ubuntu Studio. Now all I have to do is buy a USB MIDI/Audio interface so we can hook up the computer to his electronic drum kit, and my old Roland keyboard.

Ubuntu Studio 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) Released

We are happy to announce the release of our latest version, Ubuntu Studio 17.10 Artful Aardvark! As a regular version, it will be supported for 9 months. Since it’s just out, you may experience some issues, so you might want to wait a bit before upgrading. Please see the release notes for a complete list…

via Ubuntu Studio 17.10 Released — News – Ubuntu Studio

My FOSS activities for August & September 2017

I am writing this from my hotel room in Bologna, Italy before going out for a pizza. After a successful Factory Acceptance Test today, I might also allow myself to celebrate with a beer. But anyway, here is what I have been up to in the FLOSS world for the last month and a bit.

Debian

• Uploaded gramps (4.2.6) to stretch-backports & jessie-backports-sloppy.
• Started working on the latest release of node-tmp. It needs further work due to new documentation being included etc.
• Started working on packaging the latest goocanvas-2.0 package. Everything is ready except for producing some autopkgtests.
• Moved node-coffeeify experimental to unstable.
• Updated the Multimedia Blends Tasks with all the latest ITPs etc.
• Reviewed doris for Antonio Valentino, and sponsored it for him.
• Reviewed pyresample for Antonio Valentino, and sponsored it for him.
• Reviewed a new parlatype package for Gabor Karsay, and sponsored it for him.

Ubuntu

• Successfully did my first merge using git-ubuntu for the Qjackctl package. Thanks to Nish for patiently answering my questions, reviewing my work, and sponsoring the upload.
• Refreshed the gramps backport request to 4.2.6. Still no willing sponsor.
• Tested Len’s rewrite of ubuntustudio-controls, adding a CPU governor option in particular. There are a couple of minor things to tidy up, but we have probably missed the chance to get it finalised for Artful.
• Tested the First Beta release of Ubuntu Studio 17.10 Artful and wrote the release notes. Also drafted my first release announcement on the Ubunti Studio website which Eylul reviewed and published.
• Refreshed the ubuntustudio-meta package and requested sponsorship. This was done by Steve Langasek. Thanks Steve.
• Tested the Final Beta release of Ubuntu Studio 17.10 Artful and wrote the release notes.
• Started working on a new Carla package, starting from where Víctor Cuadrado Juan left it (ITP in Debian).

My March 2017 Activities

March was a busy month, so this monthly report is a little late. I worked two weekends, and I was planning my Easter holiday, so there wasn’t a lot of spare time.

Debian

•  Updated Dominate to the latest version and uploaded to experimental (due to the Debian Stretch release freeze).
• Uploaded the latest version of abcmidi (also to experimental).
• Pinged the bugs for reverse dependencies of pygoocanvas and goocanvas with a view to getting them removed from the archive during the Buster cycle.
• Asked for help on the Ubuntu Studio developers and users mailing lists to test the coming Ubuntu Studio 17.04 release ISO, because I would be away on holiday for most of it.

Ubuntu

• Worked on ubuntustudio-controls, reverting it back to an earlier revision that Len said was working fine. Unfortunately, when I built and installed it from my ppa, it crashed. Eventually found my mistake with the bzr reversion, fixed it and prepared an upload ready for sponsorship. Submitted a Freeze Exception bug in the hope that the Release Team would accept it even though we had missed the Final Beta.
• Put a new power supply in an old computer that was kaput, and got it working again. Set up Ubuntu Server 16.04 on it so that I could get a bit more experience with running a server. It won’t last very long, because it is a 32 bit machine, and Ubuntu will probably drop support for that architecture eventually. I used two small spare drives to set up RAID 1 & LVM (so that I can add more space to it later). I set up some Samba shares, so that my wife will be able to get at them from her Windows machine. For music streaming, I set up Emby Server. I wold be great to see this packaged for Debian. I uploaded all of my photos and music for Emby to serve around the home (and remotely as well). Set up Obnam to back up the server to an external USB stick (temporarily until I set up something remote). Set LetsEncrypt with the wonderful Certbot program.
• Did the Release Notes for Ubuntu Studio 17.04 Final Beta. As I was in Brussels for two days, I was not able to do any ISO testing myself.

Other

• Measured up the new model railway layout and documented it in xtrkcad.
• Started learning Ansible some more by setting up ssh on all my machines so that I could access them with Ansible and manipulate them using a playbook.
• Went to the Open Source Days conference just down the road in Copenhagen. Saw some good presentations. Of interest for my previous work in the Debian GIS Team, was a presentation from the Danish Municipalities on how they run projects using Open Source. I noted how their use of Proj 4 and OSGeo. I was also pleased to see a presentation from Ximin Luo on Reproducible Builds, and introduced myself briefly after his talk (during the break).
• Started looking at creating a Django website to store and publish my One Name Study sources (indexes).  Started by creating a library to list some of my recently read Journals. I will eventually need to import all the others I have listed in a cvs spreadsheet that was originally exported from the commercial (Windows only) Custodian software.

Plan status from last month & update for next month

Debian

For the Debian Stretch release:

• Keep an eye on the Release Critical bugs list, and see if I can help fix any. – In Progress

Generally:

• Package all the latest upstream versions of my Debian packages, and upload them to Experimental to keep them out of the way of the Stretch release. – In Progress
• Begin working again on all the new stuff I want packaged in Debian.

Ubuntu

• Start working on an Ubuntu Studio package tracker website so that we can keep an eye on the status of the packages we are interested in. – Started
• Start testing & bug triaging Ubuntu Studio packages. – In progress
• Test Len’s work on ubuntustudio-controls – Done
• Do the Ubuntu Studio Zesty 17.04 Final Beta release. – Done
• Sort out the Blueprints for the coming Ubuntu Studio 17.10 release cycle.

Other

• Give JMRI a good try out and look at what it would take to package it. – In progress
• Also look at OpenPLC for simulating the relay logic of real railway interlockings (i.e. a little bit of the day job at home involving free software – fun!). – In progress

Ubuntu Studio 17.04 Released

We are happy to announce the release of our latest version, Ubuntu Studio 17.04 Zesty Zapus! As a regular version, it will be supported for 9 months. Since it’s just out, you may experience some issues, so you might want to wait a bit before upgrading. Please see the release notes for a complete list…

via Ubuntu Studio 17.04 Released — News – Ubuntu Studio

My Monthly Update for January 2017

It has been a quiet start to the year due to work keeping me very busy. Most of my spare time (when not sitting shattered on the sofa) was spent resurrecting my old website from backups. My son had plenty of visitors coming to visit as well, which prompted me to restart work on my model railway in the basement. Last year I received a whole heap of track, and also a tunnel formation from a friend at work. I managed to finish the supporting structure for the tunnel, and connect one end of it to the existing track layout. The next step (which will be a bit harder) is to connect the other end of the tunnel into the existing layout. The basement is one of the favourite things for me to keep my son and his friends occupied when there is a visit. The railway and music studio are very popular with the little guests.

Debian

• Packaged latest Gramps 4.2.5 release for Debian so that it will be part of the Stretch release.
• Package latest abcmidi release so it too would be part of Stretch. The upstream author had changed his website, so it took a while to locate a tarball.
• Tested my latest patches to convert Cree.py to Qt5, but found another Qt4 – Qt5 change to take into account (SIGNAL function). I ran out of time to fully investigate that one, before Creepy was booted out of testing again. I am seriously considering the removal of Cree.py from Debian, as the upstream maintainer does not seem very active any more, and I am a little tired of being upstream for a project that I don’t actually use myself. It was only because it was a reverse dependency of osm-gps-map that I originally got involved.
• Started preparing a Gramps 5.2.5 backport for Jessie, but found that the tests I enabled in unstable were failing in the Jessie build. I need to investigate this further.

Ubuntu

• Announced the Ubuntu Studio 16.02.2 point release date on the Ubuntu Studio mailing lists asking for testers. The date subsequently got put back to February the 9th.
• Upgraded my Ubuntu Studio machine from Wily to Xenial.

Other

• Resurrected my old Drupal Gammon One Name Study website. I used Drupal VM to get the site going again, before transferring it to the new webhost. It was originally a Drupal 7 site, and I did not have the required versions of Ansible & Vagrant on my Ubuntu Xenial machine, so the process was quite involved. I will blog about that separately, as it may be a useful lesson for others. As part of that, I started on a backport of vagrant, but found a bug which I need to follow up on.
• Also managed to extract my old WordPress blog posts from the same machine that had the failed Drupal instance, and import them into this blog. I also learnt some stuff in that process that I will blog about at some point.

Plan status from last month & update for next month

Debian

Before the 5th February 2017 Debian Stretch hard freeze I hope to:

• Convert Cree.py from QT4 to QT5 to allow it to re-enter Stretch. – Failed

For the Debian Stretch release:

• Keep an eye on the Release Critical bugs list, and see if I can help fix any.

Generally:

• Finish the Gramps 5.2.5 backport for Jessie.
• Package all the latest upstream versions of my Debian packages, and upload them to Experimental to keep them out of the way of the Stretch release.
• Begin working again on all the new stuff I want packaged in Debian.

Ubuntu

• Finish the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme, ubuntustudio-default-settings transition including an update to the ubuntustudio-meta packages. – Still to do (actually started today)
• Reapply to become a Contributing Developer. – Still to do
• Start working on an Ubuntu Studio package tracker website so that we can keep an eye on the status of the packages we are interested in. – Started
• Start testing & bug triaging Ubuntu Studio packages. – Still to do
• Test Len’s work on ubuntustudio-controls – Still to do

Other

• Try and resurrect my old Gammon one-name study Drupal website from a backup and push it to the new GoONS Website project. – Done
  
• Give JMRI a good try out and look at what it would take to package it. – In progress
• Also look at OpenPLC for simulating the relay logic of real railway interlockings (i.e. a little bit of the day job at home involving free software – fun!).