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Ubuntu Insights: How Bosch Rexroth is innovating the PLC market

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Last year I introduced a new concept called App Logic Controller or ALC. You basically run an app store on a PLC type of device and as such any industrial protocol, edge analytics, cloud or other industrial integration is an app away. Developers can make industrial solutions in days if not hours via open source tools, and customers can get them running in minutes. Anybody will be able to sell their industrial solution as an app. Brands can run their own industrial app store. We have shown on MWC how this will revolutionise something as trivial as an elevator that now starts generating new revenues, save lives and can catch intruders.

We are seeing how companies like Kunbus are using the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 to create ALCs like the Revolution Pi as well as UniPi with their Neutron on top of a Raspberry Pi 3. Industrial solutions at unseen price levels!

At Embedded World earlier this year in Nuremberg we showed for the first time the Bosch Rexroth ALC at the Ubuntu stand. So if you want all the industrial reliability of a PLC but the easiness and speed of an ALC, this is what you can find.

Rexroth is out-innovating the PLC market because ALCs can be integrated into the Cloud as shown with our Salesforce IoT Cloud demo on MWC, voice enabled via Alexa, and controlled by a long list of industrial edge solutions like Cloudplugs, Azeti, Cumulocity and many others in minutes. Distributed Control Systems can be substituted by App Enabled IoT Gateways like Dell’s IoT Edge Gateways 5000 and 3000, Industrial and fast innovation can now be combined.

“How ALCs disrupt the PLC market?” was a theoretical question in October 2016. In March 2017 it is fast becoming industrial reality! Ubuntu, Software Defining Every Thing…


Ubuntu Insights: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, rather than Phone and convergence

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This is a post by Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Ubuntu and Canonical

We are wrapping up an excellent quarter and an excellent year for the company, with performance in many teams and products that we can be proud of. As we head into the new fiscal year, it’s appropriate to reassess each of our initiatives. I’m writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

I’d like to emphasise our ongoing passion for, investment in, and commitment to, the Ubuntu desktop that millions rely on. We will continue to produce the most usable open source desktop in the world, to maintain the existing LTS releases, to work with our commercial partners to distribute that desktop, to support our corporate customers who rely on it, and to delight the millions of IoT and cloud developers who innovate on top of it.

We care that Ubuntu is widely useful to people who use Linux every day, for personal or commercial projects. That’s why we maintain a wide range of Ubuntu flavours from both Canonical and the Ubuntu community, and why we have invested in the Ubuntu Phone.

I took the view that, if convergence was the future and we could deliver it as free software, that would be widely appreciated both in the free software community and in the technology industry, where there is substantial frustration with the existing, closed, alternatives available to manufacturers. I was wrong on both counts.
In the community, our efforts were seen fragmentation not innovation. And industry has not rallied to the possibility, instead taking a ‘better the devil you know’ approach to those form factors, or investing in home-grown platforms. What the Unity8 team has delivered so far is beautiful, usable and solid, but I respect that markets, and community, ultimately decide which products grow and which disappear.

The cloud and IoT story for Ubuntu is excellent and continues to improve. You all probably know that most public cloud workloads, and most private Linux cloud infrastructures, depend on Ubuntu. You might also know that most of the IoT work in auto, robotics, networking, and machine learning is also on Ubuntu, with Canonical providing commercial services on many of those initiatives. The number and size of commercial engagements around Ubuntu on cloud and IoT has grown materially and consistently.

This has been, personally, a very difficult decision, because of the force of my conviction in the convergence future, and my personal engagement with the people and the product, both of which are amazing. We feel like a family, but this choice is shaped by commercial constraints, and those two are hard to reconcile.

The choice, ultimately, is to invest in the areas which are contributing to the growth of the company. Those are Ubuntu itself, for desktops, servers and VMs, our cloud infrastructure products (OpenStack and Kubernetes) our cloud operations capabilities (MAAS, LXD, Juju, BootStack), and our IoT story in snaps and Ubuntu Core. All of those have communities, customers, revenue and growth, the ingredients for a great and independent company, with scale and momentum. This is the time for us to ensure, across the board, that we have the fitness and rigour for that path.

Benjamin Kerensa: Ubuntu Mobile and Desktop Success Zooms Out of Reach

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Bat Signal... No Ubuntu Call for Contributors!I had predicted long ago that Unity and Ubuntu Mobile would fail and fail it has, mostly because Shuttleworth ignored signals that were there from the community and industry for years and continued to dump a fortune into a fight that could not be won.

While Shuttleworth has made it clear that mobile is not in Canonical’s future, he also has not been clear about the future of the desktop other than to signal the move back to Gnome. So I’m going to drop another prediction out there and say that I believe Canonical will entirely abandon the Ubuntu Desktop in the coming years because, like mobile, has almost no chance of sustainable profits. So far as a desktop OS, it has not been able to compete proprietary operating systems like Windows and OSX. The simple fact is game and app developers are not flocking to Ubuntu to port over major apps and games from OSX which continues to leave a major gap in the Ubuntu Desktop that forces even the most die-hard Linux enthusiasts to dual-boot or have separate hardware with a competing OS on it.

I definitely wish this were not the reality and wish, rather than doing this expensive moonshot on mobile, that Canonical had invested that money into bringing mainstream apps and games to the desktop. That said, the future for the cloud and server space continues to be very bright for Canonical and is the bread and butter of the company. That is great news because where the desktop and mobile has failed, there continues to be great success and progress and that is key to the survival of Canonical and the Ubuntu Project.

Ultimately, I think the endgame for Canonical will be to focus on what it does best, which is enterprise server and cloud area and leave the desktop to community contributors and slowly reducing headcount of staff working on the desktop.
I still hope that Canonical will prove me wrong on desktop and finds some way to attract mainstream developers because we really do need a consumer viable Linux desktop and nobody has been able to achieve that yet so for now Ubuntu Mobile and Desktop have Zoomed out of reach of consumer and commercial viability.

Costales: El fin de Unity, el móvil y la convergencia. Intentando ver el bosque y no el árbol

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Mark Shuttleworth publicaba la noticia del año:

"... we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS".

WOW. Defenestrar a Unity no es tarea fácil. Es la piedra angular que gobierna el escritorio, móvil y tablet, su estandarte, su diferenciación y la meta de titánicos esfuerzos de desarrollo durante 7 años... Ahí queda eso.

El breve post de Mark es difícil de digerir y deja en el aire temas importantes que Canonical deberá aclarar a corto plazo.

Aún así, veo la noticia como positiva... "¿positiva?". Sí, positiva... Digamos que me gusta ser optimista... :/

Primero porque a parte de Unity, en la noticia recalcan que Ubuntu ha encontrado dos nichos de mercado muy importantes: el IoT y la nube.
Si los consigue dominar le darán muchísima estabilidad y beneficios, lo cual le permitirá afrontar muchos retos a futuro. Sólo por esto, sin duda, es el camino a seguir y donde focalizar los esfuerzos.


Unity permitió a Ubuntu dos cosas muy importantes:
  • Diferenciarse visualmente.
  • Controlar el desarrollo de la interface.
Antes de aparecer Unity yo estaba sorprendido de por qué Ubuntu publicaba una versión 10.04 LTS cuyo botón de apagado en el panel de GNOME 2 desaparecía por arte de magia. ¿Cómo diantres podía yo recomendar Ubuntu a nadie si en cada sesión sólo se podía apagar el sistema entrando a la consola como root?
Unity proporcionó control total sobre el desarrollo de la interface permitiendo solventar este tipo de bugs. ¡Así que personalmente fue muy bienvenido!
Pero muchos usuarios abandonaron la distribución debido a su falta de personalización.

Unity apuntaba muy alto, mucho más alto de lo que creíamos en su primera release. Tal vez demasiado alto.
Se acopló como un guante a la interface táctil. Ha sido el único entorno de escritorio que fue homogéneo y coherente tanto en escritorio, móvil y tablet.

Con su abandono, Ubuntu pierde la diferenciación y control, pero 'gana' varias cosas:
  • El móvil estaba herido de muerte. El mercado dictaminó que prefiere el monopolio de Android y no está preparado para permitir madurar otras opciones. Y malgastar recursos en algo decadente no es lógico.
  • Unity 8 no acaba de estabilizar en escritorio. Excesivamente dependiente de drivers y hacer casar mir con demasiadas cosas.
  • Ubuntu seguirá focalizado y con energía en el escritorio.
  • Se reinvertirán esfuerzos en GNOME.
A nivel personal, en estos 2 últimos años jamás he visto en el software libre una comunidad más comprometida y vibrante que la de Ubuntu Phone. He invertido muchísimas horas en aplicaciones como uWriter y uNav, pero no me arrepiento en lo más mínimo, pues me permitieron conocer y compartir momentos inolvidables con muchísima gente que de otra manera no hubiera sido posible.
uNav canibalizó horas de otros proyectos, pero es porque tuvo un hype incomparable y ha sido fruto de muchísimas alegrías, como estar preinstalado por defecto :))

El sabor general es agridulce y en especial por la incertidumbre de qué pasará a corto plazo.

Jono Bacon: Canonical Refocus

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I wrote this on G+, but it seemed appropriate to share it here too:

So, today Canonical decided to refocus their business and move away from convergence and devices. This means that the Ubuntu desktop will move back to GNOME.

I have seen various responses to this news. Some sad that it is the end of an era, and a non-zero amount of “we told you so” smugness.

While Unity didn’t pan out, and there were many good steps and missteps along the way, I am proud that Canonical tried to innovate. Innovation is tough and fraught with risk. The Linux desktop has always been a tough nut to crack, and one filled with an army of voices, but I am proud Canonical gave it a shot even if it didn’t succeed it’s ultimate goals. That spirit of experimentation is at the epicenter of open source, and I hope everyone involved here takes a good look at how they contributed to and exacerbated this innovation. I know I have looked inwards at this.

Much as some critics may deny, everyone I know who worked on Unity and Mir, across engineering, product, community, design, translations, QA, and beyond did so with big hearts and open minds. I just hope we see that talent and passion continue to thrive and we continue to see Ubuntu as a powerful driver for the Linux desktop. I am excited to see how this work manifests in GNOME, which has been doing some awesome work in recent years.

And, Mark, Jane, I know this will have been a tough decision to come to, and this will be a tough day for the different teams affected. Hang in there: Ubuntu has had such a profound impact on open source and while the future path may be a little different, I am certain it will be fruitful.

The post Canonical Refocus appeared first on Jono Bacon.

Dustin Kirkland: ThankHN: A Thank-You Note to the HackerNews Community, from Ubuntu

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A huge THANK YOU to the entire HackerNews community, from the Ubuntu community!  Holy smokes...wow...you are an amazing bunch!  Your feedback in the thread, "Ask HN: What do you want to see in Ubuntu 17.10?" is almost unbelievable!

We're truly humbled by your response.

I penned this thread, somewhat on a whim, from the Terminal 2 lounge at London Heathrow last Friday morning before flying home to Austin, Texas.  I clicked "submit", closed my laptop, and boarded an 11-hour flight, wondering if I'd be apologizing to my boss and colleagues later in the day, for such a cowboy approach to Product Management...

When finally I signed onto the in-flight WiFi some 2 hours later, I saw this post at the coveted top position of HackerNews page 1, with a whopping 181 comments (1.5 comments per minute) in the first two hours.  Impressively, it was only 6am on the US west coast by that point, so SFO/PDX/SEA weren't even awake yet.  I was blown away!

This thread is now among the most discussed thread ever in the history of HackerNews, with some 1115 comments and counting at the time of this blog post.

 2530 comments   3125 points     2016-06-24      UK votes to leave EU    dmmalam
2215 comments 1817 points 2016-11-09 Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S. introvertmac
1448 comments 1330 points 2016-05-31 Moving Forward on Basic Income dwaxe
1322 comments 1280 points 2016-10-18 Shame on Y Combinator MattBearman
1215 comments 1905 points 2015-06-26 Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules imd23
1214 comments 1630 points 2016-12-05 Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week dang
1121 comments 1876 points 2016-01-27 Request For Research: Basic Income mattkrisiloff
*1115 comments 1333 points 2017-03-31 Ask HN: What do you want to see in Ubuntu 17.10? dustinkirkland
1090 comments 1493 points 2016-10-20 All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware impish19
1088 comments 2699 points 2017-03-07 CIA malware and hacking tools randomname2
1058 comments 1188 points 2014-03-16 Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit dkasper
1055 comments 2589 points 2017-02-28 Ask HN: Is S3 down? iamdeedubs
1046 comments 2123 points 2016-09-27 Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video] tilt
1030 comments 1558 points 2017-01-31 Welcome, ACLU katm
1013 comments 4107 points 2017-02-19 Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber grey-area
1008 comments 1990 points 2014-04-10 Drop Dropbox PhilipA

Rest assured that I have read every single one, and many of my colleagues has followed closely along as well.

In fact, to read and process this thread, I first attempted to print it out -- but cancelled the job before it fully buffered, when I realized that it's 105 pages long!  Here's the PDF (1.6MB), if you're curious, or want to page through it on your e-reader.

So instead, I wrote the following Python script, using the HackerNews REST API, to download the thread from Google Firebase into a JSON document, and import into MongoDB, for item-by-item processing.  Actually, this script will work against any HackerNews thread, and it recursively grabs nested comments.  Next time you're asked to write a recursive function on a white board for a Google interview, hopefully you've remember this code!  :-)

$ cat ~/bin/hackernews.py
#!/usr/bin/python3

import json
import requests
import sys

#https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/14002821.json?print=pretty

def get_json_from_url(item):
url = "https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/%s.json" % item
data = json.loads(requests.get(url=url).text)
#print(json.dumps(data, indent=4, sort_keys=True))
if "kids" in data and len(data["kids"]) > 0:
for k in data["kids"]:
data[k] = json.loads(get_json_from_url(k))
return json.dumps(data)


data = json.loads(get_json_from_url(sys.argv[1]))
print(json.dumps(data, indent=4, sort_keys=False))

It takes 5+ minutes to run, so you can just download a snapshot of the JSON blob from here (768KB), or if you prefer to run it yourself...

$ hackernews.py 14002821 | tee 14002821.json

First some raw statistics...

  • 1109 total comments
  • 713 unique users contributed a comment
  • 211 users contributed more than 1 comment
    • 42 comments/replies contributed by dustinkirkland (that's me)
    • 12 by vetinari
    • 11 by JdeBP
    • 9 by simosx and jnw2
  • 438 top level comments
    • 671 nested/replies
  • 415 properly formatted uses of "Headline:"
    • Thank you!  That was super useful in my processing of these!
  • 519 mentions of Desktop
  • 174 mentions of Server
  • 69 + 64 mentions of Snaps and Core
I'll try to summarize a few of my key interpretations of the trends, having now processed the entire discussion.  Sincere apologies in advance if I've (a) misinterpreted a theme, (b) skipped your favorite them, or (c) conflated concepts.  If any of these are the case, well, please post your feedback in the HackerNews thread associated with this post :-)

First, grouped below are some of the Desktop themes, with some fuzzy, approximate "weighting" by the number of pertinent discussions/mentions/vehemence.
  • Drop MIR/Unity for Wayland/Gnome (351 weight)
    • Release/GA Unity 8 (15 weight)
    • Easily, the most heavily requested, major change in this thread was for Ubuntu to drop MIR/Unity in favor of Wayland/Gnome.  And that's exactly what Mark Shuttleworth announced in an Ubuntu Insights post here today.  There were a healthy handful of Unity 8 fans, calling for its GA, and more than a few HackerNews comments lamenting the end of Unity in this thread.
  • Improve HiDPI, 4K, display scaling, multi-monitor (217 weight)
    • For the first time in a long time, I feel like a laggard in the technology space!  I own a dozen or so digital displays but not a single 4K or HiDPI monitor.  So while I can't yet directly relate, the HackerNews community is keen to see better support for multiple, high resolution monitors and world class display scaling.  And I suspect you're just a short year or so ahead of much of the rest of the world.
  • Make track pad, touch gestures great (129 weight)
    • There's certainly an opportunity to improve the track pad and touch gestures in the Ubuntu Desktop "more Apple-like".
  • Improve Bluetooth, WiFi, Wireless, Network Manager (97 weight)
    • This item captures some broad, general requests to make Bluetooth and Wireless more reliable in Ubuntu.  It's a little tough to capture an exact work item, but the relevant teams at Canonical have received the feedback.
  • Better mouse settings, more options, scroll acceleration (89 weight)
    • Similar to the touch/track pad request, there was a collection of similar feedback suggesting better mouse settings out-of-the-box, and more fine grained options. 
  • Better NVIDIA, GPU support (87 weight)
    • NVIDIA GPUs are extensively used in both Ubuntu Desktops and Servers, and the feedback here was largely around better driver availability, more reliable upgrades, CUDA package access.  For my part, I'm personally engaged with the high end GPU team at NVIDIA and we're actively working on a couple of initiatives to improve GPU support in Ubuntu (both Desktop and Server).
  • Clean up Network Manager, easier VPN (71 weight)
    • There were several requests around both Network Manager, and a couple of excellent suggestions with respect to easier VPN configuration and connection.  Given the recent legislation in the USA, I for one am fully supportive of helping Ubuntu users do more than ever before to protect their security and privacy, and that may entail better VPN support.
  • Easily customize, relocate the Unity launcher (53 weight)
    • This thread made it abundantly clear that it's important to people to be able to move, hide, resize, and customize their launcher (Unity or Gnome).  I can certainly relate, as I personally prefer my launcher at the bottom of the screen.
  • Add night mode, redshift, f.lux (42 weight)
    • This request is one of the real gems of this whole exercise!  This seems like a nice, little, bite-sized feature, that we may be able include with minimal additional effort.  Great find.
  • Make WINE and Windows apps work better (10 weight)
    • If Microsoft can make Ubuntu on Windows work so well, why can't Canonical make Windows on Ubuntu work?  :-)  If it were only so easy...  For starters, the Windows Subsystem for Linux "simply" needs to implement a bunch of Linux syscalls, whose source is entirely available.  So there's that :-)  Anyway, this one is really going too be a tough one for us to move the needle on...
  • Better accessibility for disabled users, children (9 weight)
    • As a parent, and as a friend of many Ubuntu users with special needs, this is definitely a worthy cause.  We'll continue to try and push the envelop on accessibility in the Linux desktop.
  • LDAP/ActiveDirectory integration out of the box (7 weight)
    • This is actually a regular request of Canonical's corporate Ubuntu Desktop customers.  We're generally able to meet the needs of our enterprise customers around LDAP and ActiveDirectory authentication.  We'll look at what else we can do natively in the distro to improve this.
  • Add support for voice commands (5 weight)
    • Excellent suggestion.  We've grown so accustomed to "Okay Google...", "Alexa...", "Siri..." How long until we can, "Hey you, Ubuntu..." :-)
Grouped below are some themes, requests, and suggestions that generally apply to Ubuntu as an OS, or specifically as a cloud or server OS.
  • Better, easier, safer, faster, rolling upgrades (153 weight)
    • The ability to upgrade from one release of Ubuntu to the next has long been one of our most important features.  A variety of requests have identified a few ways that we should endeavor to improve: snapshots and rollbacks, A/B image based updates, delta diffs, easier with fewer questions, super safe rolling updates to new releases.  Several readers suggested killing off the non-LTS releases of Ubuntu and only releasing once a year, or every 2 years (which is the LTS status quo).  We're working on a number of these, with much of that effort focused on Ubuntu Core.  You'll see some major advances around this by Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
  • Official hardware that just-works, Nexus-of-Ubuntu (130 weight)
    • This is perhaps my personal favorite suggestion of this entire thread -- for us to declare a "Nexus-of-each-Ubuntu-release", much like Google does for each major Android release.  Hypothetically, this would be an easily accessible, available, affordable hardware platform, perhaps designed in conjunction with an OEM, to work perfectly with Ubuntu out of the box.  That's a new concept.  We do have the Ubuntu Hardware Certification Programme, where we clearly list all hardware that's tested and known to work well with Ubuntu.  And we do work with major manufacturers on some fantastic desktops and laptops -- the Dell XPS and System76 both immediately come to mind.  But this suggestion is a step beyond that.  I'm set to speak to a few trusted partners about this idea in the coming weeks.
  • Lighter, smaller, more minimal (113 weight)
    • Add x-y-z-favorite-package to default install (105 weight)
    • For every Ubuntu user that wants to remove stuff from Ubuntu, to make it smaller/faster/lighter/secure, I'll show you another user who wants to add something else to the default install :-)  This is a tricky one, and one that I'm always keen to keep an eye on.  We try very had to strike a delicate balance between minimal-but-usable.  When we have to err, we tend (usually, but not always) on the side of usability.  That's just the Ubuntu way.  That said, we're always evaluating our Ubuntu Server, Cloud, Container, and Docker images to insure that we minimize (or at least justify) any bloat.  We'll certainly take another hard look at the default package sets at both 17.10 and 18.04.  Thanks for bringing this up and we'll absolutely keep it in mind!
  • More QA, testing, stability, general polish (99 weight)
    • The word "polish" is used a total of 24 times, with readers generally asking for more QA, more testing, more stability, and more "polish" to the Ubuntu experience.  This is a tough one to quantify.  That said, we have a strong commitment to quality, and CI/CD (continuous integration, continuous development) testing at Canonical.  As your Product Manager, I'll do my part to ensure that we invest more resources into Ubuntu quality.
  • Fix /boot space, clean up old kernels (92 weight)
    • Ouch.  This is such an ugly, nasty problem.  It personally pissed me off so much, in 2010, that I created a script, "purge-old-kernels".  And it personally pissed me off again so much in 2014, that I jammed it into the Byobu package (which I also authored and maintain), for the sole reason to get it into Ubuntu.  That being said, that's the wrong approach.  I've spoken with Leann Ogasawara, the amazing manager and team lead for the Ubuntu kernel team, and she's committed to getting this problem solved once and for all in Ubuntu 17.10 -- and ideally getting those fixes backported to older releases of Ubuntu.
  • ZFS supported as a root filesystem (84 weight)
    • This was one of the more surprising requests I found here, and another real gem.  I know that we have quite a few ZFS fans in the Ubuntu community (of which, I'm certainly one) -- but I had no idea so many people want to see ZFS as a root filesystem option.  It makes sense to me -- integrity checking, compression, copy-on-write snapshots, clones.  In fact, we have some skunkworks engineering investigating the possibility.  Stay tuned...
  • Improve power management, battery usage (73 weight)
    • Longer batteries for laptops, lower energy bills for servers -- an important request.  We'll need to work closer with our hardware OEM/ODM partners to ensure that we're leveraging their latest and greatest energy conservation features, and work with upstream to ensure those changes are integrated into the Linux kernel and Gnome.
  • Security hardening, grsecurity (72 weight)
    • More security!  There were several requests for "extra security hardening" as an option, and the grsecurity kernel patch set.  So the grsecurity Linux kernel is a heavily modified, patched Linux kernel that adds a ton of additional security checks and features at the lowest level of the OS.  But the patch set is huge -- and it's not upstream in the Linux kernel.  It also only applies against the last LTS release of Ubuntu.  It would be difficult, though not necessarily impossible, to offer the grsecurity supported in the Ubuntu archive.  As for "extra security hardening", Canonical is working with IBM on a number of security certification initiatives, around FIPS, CIS Benchmarks, and DISA STIG documentation.  You'll see these becoming available throughout 2017.
  • Dump Systemd (69 weight)
    • Fun.  All the people fighting for Wayland/Gnome, and here's a vocal minority pitching a variety of other init systems besides Systemd :-)  So frankly, there's not much we can do about this one at this point.  We created, and developed, and maintained Upstart over the course of a decade -- but for various reasons, Red Hat, SUSE, Debian, and most of the rest of the Linux community chose Systemd.  We fought the good fight, but ultimately, we lost graciously, and migrated Ubuntu to Systemd.
  • Root disk encryption, ext4 encryption, more crypto (47 weight)
    • The very first feature of Ubuntu, that I created when I started working for Canonical in 2008, was the Home Directory Encryption feature introduced in late 2008, so yes -- this feature has been near and dear to my heart!  But as one of the co-authors and co-maintainers of eCryptfs, we're putting our support behind EXT4 Encryption for the future of per-file encryption in Ubuntu.  Our good friends at Google (hi Mike, Ted, and co!) have created something super modern, efficient, and secure with EXT4 Encryption, and we hope to get there in Ubuntu over the next two releases.  Root disk encryption is still important, even more now than ever before, and I do hope we can do a bit better to make root disk encryption easier to enable in the Desktop installer.
  • Fix suspend/resume (24 weight)
    • These were a somewhat general set of bugs or issues around suspend/resume not working as well as it should.  If these are a closely grouped set of corner cases (e.g. multiple displays, particular hardware), then we should be able to shake these out with better QA, bug triage, and upstream fixes.  That said, I remember when suspend/resume never worked at all in Linux, so pardon me while I'm a little nostalgic about how far we've come :-)  Okay...now, yes, you're right.  We should do better.
  • New server installer (19 weight)
    • Well aren't you in for a surprise :-)  Message me at @dustinkirkland on Twitter if you want a sneak preview of something pretty darn cool...  Code word: #subiquity
  • Improve swap space management (12 weight)
    • Another pet peeve of mine -- I feel you!  So I filed this blueprint in 2009, and I'm delighted to say that as of this month (8 years later), Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) will use swap files, rather than swap partitions, by default.  Now, there's a bit more to do -- we should make these a bit more dynamic, tune the swappiness sysctl, etc.  But this is a huge step in the right direction!
  • Reproducible builds (7 weight)
    • Ensuring that builds are reproducible is essential for the security and the integrity of our distribution.  We've been working with Debian upstream on this over the last few years, and will continue to do so.
Ladies and gentlemen, again, a most sincere "thank you", from the Ubuntu community to the HackerNews community.  We value openness -- open source code, open design, open feedback -- and this last week has been a real celebration of that openness for us.  We appreciate the work and effort you put into your comments, and we hope to continue our dialog throughout our future together, and most importantly, that Ubuntu continues to serve your needs and occasionally even exceed your expectations ;-)

Cheers,
:-Dustin

Ubuntu Insights: From ROS prototype to production on Ubuntu Core

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This is a guest post by Kyle Fazzari, Software Engineer. If you would like to contribute a guest post, please contact ubuntu-devices@canonical.com

My background is pretty heavily littered with robotics. A natural side effect of this is that I’ve published numerous posts discussing snaps, Ubuntu Core, and different robotics frameworks (ROS and MOOS specifically). But my robotics experience was professional, which meant I didn’t really have a reason (or money, these things can be expensive) to buy any robotic systems personally. As a result, most of my posts have been pretty high level. Well today, that changes. Today, I have this.

What you see here is a Turtlebot 2. Well, not really. What you see here is the iClebo Kobuki, which is the base of the Turtlebot 2. The barebones version of the Turtlebot 2 is the Kobuki plus some mounting hardware that goes on top. You can save some significant money if you can do without the mounting hardware: skip the kit, and buy the Kobuki itself.

Anyway, the Turtlebot 2 is the go-to robotic platform for people learning ROS. Not just because there’s no time needed for researching components and writing the necessary software to build your own, but because this is what the ROS community has standardized around. It already has numerous ROS packages written for it, as well as its own set of excellent tutorials on the ROS wiki.

This situation makes it the perfect guinea pig for the ROS blog series I’ve been itching to write: taking your ROS prototype to production with snaps and Ubuntu Core. This series will cover the following topics:

  • ROS production: our prototype [2/5] Creating an example prototype using classic Ubuntu and ROS Kinetic.
  • ROS production: our prototype as a snap [3/5] Packaging that prototype as a snap.
  • ROS production: obtaining confined access to the Turtlebot [4/5] Creation of a gadget snap to allow explicit access to the Turtlebot.
  • ROS production: create an Ubuntu Core image preinstalled with our snap [5/5] Creation of an image that is ready for the factory.

In this first post, I want to discuss why Ubuntu Core is such a good fit for production robotics. Note that this is also a video series, feel free to watch the video version of this post.

ROS is great for research and development. Getting started is as simple as installing a few packages from the ROS archive, creating a workspace, and diving in. This is all I ever did in the past. When it was time to try my changes out on the real robotic system, I’d SSH into it, fetch my changes from git, and run the source on the robot. This is great for prototyping, but what happens when you’re ready to ship something?

Going to production opens up a host of new concerns. You have to ask yourself a number of questions, such as:

1. What is my factory process?
2. How is the base OS updated so as to remain secure?
3. How do I update the robotic software I have on top?
4. How is the device recovered if an update goes wrong?

Let’s take a look at each of these questions in turn.

1. What is your factory process?

In other words: how do you initially deploy Ubuntu, ROS, and your special sauce on a device you’re about to ship? By hand? That doesn’t scale and is error prone. Seed a custom Ubuntu distro with everything? That would actually work, but it’s not easy to maintain. I know some ROS users use Chef or another automation tool for this, but there’s a serious learning curve there. With Ubuntu Core, you’ll end up with a single flashable image that includes the operating system as well as your ROS system, all ready to go. I’ll show you how in this series.

2. How is the base OS updated so as to remain secure?

Perhaps with your complex Chef setup you’ve also enabled automatic security updates. Good thinking, but there are other issues with this (see question 4).

With Ubuntu Core, assuming you use one of the reference devices (this includes just generic amd64) and don’t need to mess with the kernel, the kernel and core snaps are maintained by Canonical for the lifetime of the LTS. They’ll automatically update out of the box, too.

3. How do I update the robotic software I have on top?

A question to be answered first is: How is your software packaged? Is it, even? Are you still running it from source? Do you have it on the ROS build farm? What if it isn’t public? Perhaps you use bloom and then build debs locally, but then you need to maintain your own archive infrastructure. None of these are fun solutions, nor do they lead to an easy upgrade process.

If you package your ROS system as a snap, it includes all its dependencies (including its greater ROS dependencies). If your factory process included placing a snap on the robotic system, then it will automatically update. All you need to do is release the update in the store, and all the deployed devices with automatically update themselves.

4. How is the device recovered if an update goes wrong?

My wife had this happen recently. She brought her laptop to me with a screen showing the grub prompt, unable to boot. After some poking, it turns out that “somehow” (she denies any knowledge of how this may have happened) the computer was forcibly powered off while the kernel was being updated (an automatic security update, no less). I manually told grub to boot the previous kernel, reinstalled the new one, and all was right with the world. But that would have been a lot harder if her laptop was actually a headless, production robot in my warehouse that I didn’t even know ran Linux.

Ubuntu Core is based entirely upon snaps, which are really just squashfs images containing software and their dependencies. This allows them to have some neat properties, one of which is that the upgrade process is as simple as downloading the new image, unmounting the old one, and mounting the new one into place (this is all done automatically, behind the scenes). Another one is that the old snap, once unmounted, is actually kept around, in case something goes wrong with the new snap. If a problem is detected, either by automated health checks, your own health checks within the snap, or in the case of a kernel, a panic, the snap will be reverted to the old one automatically. The atomic nature of snaps also means that either an installation succeeded or failed, there’s no intermediate state like what happened above to my wife’s laptop. If power is pulled in the middle of an update, snapd will remember that it was updating next time it boots, and finish the update.

I hope I’ve given some good justification on why Ubuntu Core is a good fit for production robotics. The next post in this series will be all classic Ubuntu and ROS, discussing a basic prototype with the Turtlebot that we’ll use as an example throughout the rest of the series as we work toward production.

Original blog source here.

Ubuntu Insights: 10 snaps written in March

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It’s that time of the month! We’ve put together a selection of top ten snaps written in March ranging from snapping an electron app through to a simple screen recorder!

To recap for those that may not know, snaps are a new way for developers to package their apps, bringing with it many advantages over the more traditional package formats such as .deb, .rpm, and others. They are secure, isolated and allow apps to be rolled back should an issue occur. Snaps really are the future of Linux application packaging. Check out the top ten snaps below!

 

1. Kubernetes A great suite of Kubernetes tools and components are now available as snaps:

Kubectl: A command line interface for running commands against Kubernetes clusters.

Kubelet: The primary “node agent” that runs on each node. The kubelet works in terms of a PodSpec.

Kube-proxy: The Kubernetes network proxy runs on each node.

Kube-scheduler: A command line interface for running commands against Kubernetes clusters.

Kube-controller-manager

Kube-api-server

2. Deepin-music A deepin-music snap application used to play music – with brilliant and tweakful UI Deepin-UI based. For those users who like to use the Deepin-UI, this snap provides a way for them to use the app on Ubuntu platform and other platforms.
3. Simplescreenrecorder A simple screen recorder snap used to record the computer screen. It has hotkeys that you can use to start and stop recording the computer screen.
4. Snappy-discover Zeroconf is used to discover devices advertising a ssh service with and additional txt-record that identifies the OS as Ubuntu Core.
5. Ubuntu Make Ubuntu Make provides a set of functionality to set-up, maintain and personalize your developer environment easily.
6. Quagga-tool A free software which manages TCP/IP based routing protocols.It supports BGP4, BGP4+, OSPFv2, OSPFv3, IS-IS, RIPv1, RIPv2, RIPng and PIM as well as the IPv6 versions of these.
7. Openfortivpn Client for PPP+SSL VPN tunnel services openfortivpn is a client for PPP+SSL VPN tunnel services. It spawns a pppd process and operates the communication between the gateway and this process.
8. Gopkg Daemon that runs gopkg.in
9. Git-repo Repo is a tool built on top of Git. Repo helps manage many Git repositories, does the uploads to revision control systems, and automates parts of the development workflow. Repo is not meant to replace Git, only to make it easier to work with Git.
10. Electron-quick-start A minimal Electron application: good for new snappers to learn how to snap electron apps!

Happy snapping! You can learn more about snaps and snapcraft here.


Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S10E05 – Supreme Luxuriant Gun - Ubuntu Podcast

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We discuss Microsoft shutting down CodePlex, banks being denied access to iPhone NFC chips, Google Open Source, the UK Home Secretary not understanding encryption, Android overtaking Windows and Mastodon the new decentralised social network you can’t join.

This show was recorded prior to Mark Shuttleworth’s announcement about Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, rather than Phone and convergence. We’ll be discussing this news in a future episode of the Ubuntu Podcast.

It’s Season Ten Episode Five of the Ubuntu Podcast! Alan Pope, Mark Johnson, Martin Wimpress and Stuart Langridge are connected and speaking to your brain.

In this week’s show:

That’s all for this week! If there’s a topic you’d like us to discuss, or you have any feedback on previous shows, please send your comments and suggestions to show@ubuntupodcast.org or Tweet us or Comment on our Facebook page or comment on our Google+ page or comment on our sub-Reddit.

Jorge Castro: Here's a pic from Ubuntu Down Under

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While archiving a bunch of documents I found this pic of all of us from Ubuntu Down Under, thought I would share it!

Stuart Langridge: Making Gnome Shell feel like Unity

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I like the way the Ubuntu Unity desktop works. However, a while ago I switched over to Gnome Shell to see what it was like, and it seemed good so I stuck around. But I’ve added a few extensions to it so it feels a bit more like the parts of the Unity experience that I liked. In light of the news from Canonical that they’ll be shipping the Gnome desktop in the next LTS in 2018, and in light of much hand-wringing from people who like Unity as much as I do about how they don’t want to lose the desktop they prefer, I thought I’d write down what I did, so others can try it too.

Gnome shell, customised to look like the Unity desktop

As you can see, that looks like Unity. It feels like Unity too.

The main bit of customisation here is extensions. From the Gnome shell extensions web app, install Better Volume Indicator, Dash to Dock, No Topleft Hot Corner, and TopIcons Plus. That gives you the Launcher on the left, indicators in the top right, and a volume indicator that you can roll the mouse wheel on. Choose a theme; I use the stock Gnome theme, “Adwaita”, but I turned it to “dark mode” (in “Tweak Tool”, turn on “Global Dark Theme”), and set icons to “Ubuntu-mono-dark” in the same place.

Most of the stuff you’re familiar with in Unity actually carries through to Gnome Shell pretty much unchanged — they’re actually very similar, especially with the excellent Dash to Dock extension! One neat trick is that the window spread and the search have been combined; if you hit the Super key (the “Windows” key), it opens up the window spread and lets you search, so the normal way of launching an app by name (hit Super, type the name, hit Enter) is completely unchanged. Similarly, you can launch apps from the Launcher on the left with Super+1 or Super+2 and so on, just like Unity.

There are a whole bunch of other extensions to customise bits of how Gnome Shell works; if there are some that make it more like a Unity feature you like and I haven’t listed, I’d be happy to hear about them. Meanwhile, I’ve still got the feel I like, on the desktop I’ll be using. Hooray for that.

Adam Stokes: Repeatable spell deployments with conjure-up

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Repeatable spell deployments with conjure-up

In our upcoming 2.2 release conjure-up will now automatically write out a custom bundle that incorporates your deployment and any configuration changes that were made in order to ease the burden of customized repeatable deployments.

Deployment and Customization

First, as of this writing, you'll need to install conjure-up from our beta channel in order to pickup this new feature:

sudo snap install conjure-up --classic --beta  

For this example, we'll walk through a simple Kubernetes deployment and making a small application configuration change.

Repeatable spell deployments with conjure-up

Next, you'll select the cloud you wish to deploy to and if necessary the bootstrap process will begin. Once that is complete the Application List screen will appear and this is where we'll make a the adjustment.

Navigate your keyboard arrow keys over to the kubernetes-master [Configure] button and press enter. You will then be presented with the ability to change a few configuration options. For this exercise we are going to install the Docker bits from upstream and not from the Ubuntu archive.

Repeatable spell deployments with conjure-up

Once that's done, tab over to APPLY CHANGES button and proceed.

Now at this point the bundle has been written and we can finish up the installation by answering the questions at the Additional Application Tasks. I'm not going to go into that section but jump to the end where the summary screen has been displayed to you and you've exited out of conjure-up.

Creating the repeatable spell deployment

This next part requires copying both the kubernetes-core spell and the bundle that was written to your own custom spell directory. To do that we'll need to look in our cache directory located at ~/.cache/conjure-up. Running a tree on that directory shows us the following:

$ tree ~/.cache/conjure-up
.cache/conjure-up
├── conjure-up.log
├── kubernetes-core
│   ├── metadata.yaml
│   ├── readme.md
│   ├── steps
│   │   ├── 00_deploy-done
│   │   ├── 00_pre-deploy
│   │   ├── lxd-profile.yaml
│   │   ├── step-01_get-kubectl
│   │   ├── step-01_get-kubectl.yaml
│   │   ├── step-02_cluster-info
│   │   └── step-02_cluster-info.yaml
│   └── tests
│       ├── deploy
│       └── verify
└── kubernetes-core-deployed-2017-04-07-20:26:25.yaml

What you see here is the kubernetes-core spell that we just deployed via conjure-up along with a file named kubernetes-core-deployed-2017-04-07-20:26:25.yaml which is the bundle that was written out during our customization section.

Viewing this particular bundle file we can see that our customization's were applied in addition to the rest of the required bundle needed for conjure-up to deploy.

machines:  
  '0':
    series: xenial
  '1':
    series: xenial
  '2':
    series: xenial
  '3':
    series: xenial
relations:  
- - kubernetes-master:certificates
  - easyrsa:client
- - kubernetes-worker:certificates
  - easyrsa:client
- - etcd:certificates
  - easyrsa:client
- - kubernetes-master:etcd
  - etcd:db
- - kubernetes-master:kube-api-endpoint
  - kubernetes-worker:kube-api-endpoint
- - kubernetes-master:cluster-dns
  - kubernetes-worker:kube-dns
series: xenial  
services:  
  easyrsa:
    charm: cs:~containers/easyrsa-7
    num_units: 1
    to:
    - '0'
  etcd:
    charm: cs:~containers/etcd-24
    num_units: 1
    to:
    - '1'
  kubernetes-master:
    charm: cs:~containers/kubernetes-master-12
    num_units: 1
    options:
      install_from_upstream: true  # <- Look here I'm new!
    to:
    - '2'
  kubernetes-worker:
    charm: cs:~containers/kubernetes-worker-14
    num_units: 1
    to:
    - '3'

What happens here is conjure-up first downloads the bundle from the CharmStore and is then reconstructed with our custom configuration changes and spits out a new compatible bundle that can be used within a conjure-up spell.

In order to get your new spell in working order there are just a couple of steps to perform:

Copy the cached spell to somewhere of your choosing, we'll stick with $HOME/kubernetes-core

cp -a ~/.cache/conjure-up/kubernetes-core ~/kubernetes-core  

Next, copy the newly created bundle and place it within the recently copied spell directory while also making sure to change the filename to bundle.yaml.

cp ~/.cache/conjure-up/kubernetes-core-deployed-2017-04-07-20\:26\:25.yaml ~/kubernetes-core/bundle.yaml  

And that's it!

You can test that your deployment reflects the changes you made by simply re-running conjure-up against that spell directory:

$ conjure-up ~/kubernetes-core

This should prove very useful for teams who wish to document and version control spells for use in automated deployments or perhaps a teaching tool that is customized for your lab environment. Couple this feature with the ability to further customize headless deployments and you've just become the coolest kid at the party.

Meerkat: About the “Mir hate-fest”

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If you’ve been following the news, you’ll probably know about Ubuntu dropping Unity. I would say this is probably a surprise to many of us, due to the many years of efforts they have invested in Unity 8, and it being so close to completion.

It was speculated that, since Unity 8 is now dropped, Mir would also be dropped. However, it looks like it will still be developed, but not necessarily for desktop usage.

But speaking of that post, I found it quite unfortunate how Mark talked about “Mir-hating”, simplifying it to seem like it was irrational hatred with very little rational grounds:

“It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance”

“[…] now I think many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream”

“The very same muppets would write about how terrible it was that IOS/Android had no competition and then how terrible it was that Canonical was investing in (free software!) compositing and convergence”

Now, in all fairness, I haven’t been involved enough in the community to know much about the so-called “Mir hate-fest”. It is very possible that I haven’t seen the irrational tribal-like hatred he was talking about. However, the “hatred” I have seen would be spread into 2 categories (mainly):

  1. People (like me) who were worried about Mir splitting up the linux desktop, basically forcing any linux user who cares about graphical performance to be under Canonical’s control.
  2. People worrying about architectural problems in the codebase (or other code-related issues).

Both of these, IMO, are quite valid concerns, and should be allowed to be voiced, without being disregarded as “irrational hate”.

I’ll admit, my original post on this topic was pretty strong (and admittedly not very well articulated either). However, I believe that it’s important, especially in a free software community, to be able to voice our opinions about projects and decisions. In software circles that tend to stifle open discussion (I’ve seen this especially in various proprietary software communities), it is honestly a terrible atmosphere (at least IMO), and the community tends to suffer as a whole (due to companies feeling that they have power over their users, and feel that they can do anything they want, in hopes of gaining more profit).

In Mark’s defense, I agree that it is very important to stay respectful and constructive, and I apologize for the tone in my first post. I haven’t seen many other rude comments towards Mir, but as I said, I could be wrong. Having a lot of rude comments towards your software is very difficult for those behind the project to handle, and usually doesn’t amount to anywhere constructive anyways.

But I think that saying something along the lines of “anyone who disagrees that Mir is a good project is an idiot” (“I agree, it’s a very fast, clean and powerful graphics composition engine, and smart people love it for that.”, alongside the quotes I mentioned above) is very counterproductive to maintaining a good free software ecosystem.

My bottom line for this post is: I believe it’s vital to allow healthy discussion for projects within the free software community, but in a respectful and constructive manner, and I believe this point is especially important for large projects used by many people (such as ubuntu, the linux kernel, etc.).


Ubuntu Insights: The Smartest Industry 4.0 Crane

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Lots of big name industrial players are launching IoT platforms and are hopeful that their big data analytics, open APIs, and other features will catapult them to be the leader of industry 4.0. If you don’t have an OT background, you aren’t relevant. I tend to disagree.

We don’t need yet another CloudFoundry, Hadoop, Time Series solution with an API to make Industry 4.0 real. What we need is to focus on what are the real problems customers have and use ground breaking technologies to solve those in completely new ways. To get to those real problems and groundbreaking technology solutions, the industrial space needs to copy dotcom thinking. Why not crowdsource real problems? Do competitions for startups to come and show their groundbreaking solutions. Launch app stores on industrial equipment to allow each customer to completely customise their industrial equipment.

What is the biggest problem for large industrial building machinery?

Most of the industrial building machinery is expensive for what it does! A crane can lift heavy objects, a digger can dig a hole, both need a person the whole day to sit on it. Even if you only need to dig holes for 3 hours. Why hasn’t the industry looked at the latest robot arms for inspiration? Inexpensive robot arms like the Dobot or the Franka can be easily remotely thought what to do and via interchangeable extensions can be used for a lot of different use cases. Why not make an industrial autonomous or remotely controlled machine with interchangeable tools? You have an arm to lift. Another arm to dig. Another arm to 3D print concrete walls. An open platform for third-parties to design other interchangeable tools.

A person could work remotely and control one or ideally multiple types of machinery. Just like a drone pilot. The machinery would learn new things and over time be more autonomous or even completely autonomous. Initially, you would enhance the human. You could even have an “Uber for Remote Machinery Pilots” in which you hire by the minute or per job a remote expert.

An app store to allow all types of new use cases to be sold, years after you got the machine. A market for extensions like cameras, lasers and more to allow new use cases. An industrial building machine should be a platform, not a single purpose device. Additionally, it should be offered as a service, not as a purchase. You pay by the minute, just like in the cloud. If you use an extension from a third-party they get paid by the minute as well.

Since this industrial building machine also has a software defined radio, an app can convert the crane into a mobile base station hence all workers get good mobile coverage. Another app can setup a low powered WAN or WiFi hub and allow all the smaller tools that are being used to communicate with the machine. The industrial building machine can be like a local mini cloud that does not only process data of what it is working on but also from all the smaller tools that are being used.

Augmented reality connected worker helmets can connect to the machine and jointly make man and machine more effective and efficient. An IoT edge platform can run on the machine and communicate with the global IoT cloud to get updated work orders.

So yes we will need a global industrial IoT cloud but it is like building the roof and trying to fit the foundations and walls underneath. Companies buy and use machines because they need to get work done faster. Focus on making them smart first. The global IoT cloud is not that useful unless you can connect it to the smartest industrial machinery in the world.

Daniel Pocock: If Alan Turing was born today, would he be a Muslim?

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Alan Turing's name and his work are well known to anybody with a theoretical grounding in computer science. Turing developed his theories well before anybody invented file sharing, overclocking or mass surveillance. In fact, Turing was largely working in the absence of any computers at all: the transistor was only invented in 1947 and the microchip, the critical innovation that has made computing both affordable and portable, only came in 1960, four years after Turing's death. To this day, the Turing Test remains a well known challenge in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The most prestigious prize in computing, the A.M. Turing Award from the ACM, equivalent to the Nobel Prize in other fields of endeavour, is named in Turing's honour. (This year's award is another British scientist, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web).


Potentially far more people know of Alan Turing for his groundbreaking work at Bletchley Park and the impact it had on cracking the Nazi's Enigma machines during World War 2, giving the allies an advantage against Hitler.

While in his lifetime, Turing exposed the secret communications of the Nazis, in his death, he exposed something manifestly repugnant about his own society. Turing's challenges with his sexuality (or Britain's challenge with it) are just as well documented as his greatest scientific achievements. The 2014 movie The Imitation Game tells Turing's story, bringing together the themes from his professional and personal life.

Had Turing chosen to flee British persecution by going abroad, he would be a refugee in the same sense as any person who crossed the seas to reach Europe today to avoid persecution elsewhere.

Please prove me wrong

In March, I blogged about the problem of racism that plagues Britain today. While some may have felt the tone of the blog was quite strong, I was in no way pleased to find my position affirmed by the events that occurred in the two days after the blog appeared.

Two days and two more human beings (both immigrants and both refugees) subjected to abhorrent and unnecessary acts of abuse in Great Britain. Both cases appear to be fuelled directly by the evil that has been oozing out of number 10 Downing Street since they decided to have a referendum on "Brexit".

What stands out about these latest crimes is not that they occurred (this type of thing has been going on for months now) but certain contrasts between their circumstances and to a lesser extent, the fact they occurred immediately after Theresa May formalized Britain's departure from the EU. One of the victims was almost beaten to death by a street gang, while the other was abused by men wearing uniforms. One was only a child, while the other is a mature adult who has been in the UK almost three decades, completely assimilated into British life, working and paying taxes. Both were doing nothing out of the ordinary at the time the abuse occurred: one had engaged in a conversation at a bus stop, the other was on a routine visit to a Government office. There is no evidence that either of them had done anything to provoke or invite the abhorrent treatment meted out to them by the followers of Theresa May and Nigel Farage.

The first victim, on 30 March, was Stojan Jankovic, a refugee from Yugoslavia who has been in the UK for 26 years. He had a routine meeting at an immigration department office where he was ambushed, thrown in the back of a van and sent to rot in a prison cell by Theresa May's gestapo. On Friday, 31 March, it was Reker Ahmed, a 17 year old Kurdish-Iranian beaten to the brink of death by a crowd in south London.

One of the more remarkable facts to emerge about these two cases is that while Stojan Jankovic was basically locked up for no reason at all, the street thugs who the police apprehended for the assault on Ahmed were kept in a cell for less than 48 hours and released again on bail. While the harmless and innocent Jankovic was eventually released after a massive public outcry, he spent more time locked up than that gang of violent criminals who beat Reker Ahmed.

In other words, Theresa May and Nigel Farage's Britain has more concern for the liberty of violent criminals than somebody like Jankovic who has been working and paying taxes in the UK since before any of those street thugs were born.

A deeper insight into Turing's fate

With gay marriage having been legal in the UK for a number of years now, the rainbow flag flying at the Tate and Sir Elton John achieving a knighthood, it becomes difficult for people to relate to the world in which Turing and many other victims were collectively classified by their sexuality, systematically persecuted by the state and ultimately died far sooner than they should have. (Turing was only 41 when he died).

In fact, the cruel and brutal forces that ripped Turing apart (and countless other victims too) haven't dissipated at all, they have simply shifted their target. The slanderous comments insinuating that immigrants "steal" jobs or that Islam is about terrorism are eerily reminiscent of suggestions that gay men abduct young boys or work as Soviet spies. None of these lies has any basis in fact, but repeat them often enough in certain types of newspaper and these ideas spread like weeds.

In an ironic twist, Turing's groundbreaking work at Bletchley Park was founded on the contributions of Polish mathematicians, their own country having been the first casualty to Hitler, they were also both immigrants and refugees in Britain. Today, under the Theresa May/Nigel Farage leadership, Polish citizens have been subjected to regular vilification by the media and some have even been killed in the street.

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. When you compare these two pieces of propaganda: a 1963 article in the Sunday Mirror advising people "How to spot a possible homo" and a UK Government billboard encouraging people to be on the lookout for people who look different, could you imagine the same type of small-minded and power-hungry tyrants crafting them, singling out a minority so as to keep the public's attention in the wrong place?


Many people have noticed that these latest UK Government posters portray foreigners, Muslims and basically anybody who is not white using a range of characteristics found in anti-semetic propaganda from the Third Reich:

Do the people who create such propaganda appear to have any concern whatsoever for the people they hurt? How would Alan Turing have felt when he encountered propaganda like that from the Sunday Mirror? Do posters like these encourage us to judge people by their gifts in science, the arts or sporting prowess or do they encourage us to lump them all together based on their physical appearance?

It is a basic expectation of scientific methodology that when you repeat the same experiment, you should get the same result. What type of experiment are Theresa May and Nigel Farage conducting and what type of result would you expect?

Playing ping-pong with children

If anybody has any doubt that this evil comes from the top, take a moment to contemplate the 3,000 children who were baited with the promise of resettlement from the Calais "jungle" camp into the UK under the Dubs amendment.

When French authorities closed the "jungle" in 2016, the children were lured out of the camp and left with nowhere to go as Theresa May and French authorities played ping-pong with them. Given that the UK parliament had already agreed they should be accepted, was there any reason for Theresa May to dig her heels in and make these children suffer? Or was she just trying to prove her credentials as somebody who can bastardize migrants just the way Nigel Farage would do it?

How do British politicians really view migrants?

Parliamentarian Keith Vaz, former chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee (responsible for security, crime, prostitution and similar things) was exposed with young men from eastern Europe, encouraging them to take drugs before he ordered them "Take your shirt off. I'm going to attack you.". How many British MP's see foreigners this way? Next time you are groped at an airport security checkpoint, remember it was people like Keith Vaz and his committee who oversee those abuses, writing among other things that "The wider introduction of full-body scanners is a welcome development". No need to "take your shirt off" when these machines can look through it as easily as they can look through your children's underwear.

According to the World Health Organization, HIV/AIDS kills as many people as the September 11 attacks every single day. Keith Vaz apparently had no concern for the possibility he might spread this disease any further: the media reported he doesn't use any protection in his extra-marital relationships.

While Britain's new management continue to round up foreigners like Stojan Jankovic who have done nothing wrong, they chose not to prosecute Keith Vaz for his antics with drugs and prostitution.

Who is Britain's next Alan Turing?

Britain's next Alan Turing may not be a homosexual. He or she may have been a child turned away by Theresa May's spat with the French at Calais, a migrant bundled into a deportation van by the gestapo (who are just following orders) or perhaps somebody of Muslim appearance who is set upon by thugs in the street who have been energized by Nigel Farage. If you still have any uncertainty about what Brexit really means, this is it. A country that denies itself the opportunity to be great by subjecting itself to be ruled under the "divide and conquer" mantra of the colonial era.

Throughout the centuries, Britain has produced some of the most brilliant scientists of their time. Newton, Darwin and Hawking are just some of those who are even more prominent than Turing, household names around the world. One can only wonder what the history books will have to say about Theresa May and Nigel Farage however.

Next time you see a British policeman accosting a Muslim, whether it is at an airport, in a shopping centre, keeping Manchester United souvenirs or simply taking a photograph, spare a thought for Alan Turing and the era when homosexuals were their target of choice.


Kubuntu General News: Kubuntu 17.04 Release Candidate – call for testers

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Today the Kubuntu team is happy to announce that Kubuntu Zesty Zapus (17.04) RC is released . With this release candidate, you can see and test what we are preparing for 17.04, which we will be releasing April 13, 2017.

NOTE: This is a release candidate. Kubuntu pre-releases are NOT recommended for:

* Regular users who are not aware of pre-release issues
* Anyone who needs a stable system
* Anyone uncomfortable running a possibly frequently broken system
* Anyone in a production environment with data or work-flows that need to be reliable

Getting Kubuntu 17.04 RC:
* Upgrade from 16.10: run `do-release-upgrade -d` from a command line.
* Download a bootable image (ISO) and put it onto a DVD or USB Drive : http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/daily-live/20170408/

Please see Release Notes for more details, where to download, and known problems. We welcome help to fix those final issues; please join the Kubuntu-Devel mail list[1], just hop into #kubuntu-devel on freenode to connect with us or use the Ubuntu tracker [2]

1. Kubuntu-devel mail list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-devel

2. Official Ubuntu tracker: http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/

The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 504

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Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #504 for the weeks of March 27 – April 9, 2017, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Simon Quigley
  • Chris Guiver
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Ubuntu Insights: FAQs: Ensuring the ongoing security compliance of Ubuntu

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Canonical recently announced that the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Long Term Support) period will end on Friday, April 28, 2017.

Following the end-of-life of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Canonical is offering Ubuntu 12.04 ESM (Extended Security Maintenance), which provides important security fixes for the kernel and the most essential user space packages in Ubuntu 12.04. Below are several frequently asked questions about what happens when the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS period ends.

If you have any more questions we encourage customers to reach out via Twitter @ubuntu or @dustinkirkland

What CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) will receive patches?

Ubuntu 12.04 ESM is focused on fixing high and critical CVEs. Low and medium updates typically have a mitigation path.

Which hardware platforms are supported under Ubuntu 12.04 ESM?

Currently, we are maintaining the Ubuntu Cloud/Server 64-bit AMD/Intel binaries. We will extend support for other platforms in future updates.

Do all levels of Ubuntu Advantage have access to Ubuntu 12.04 ESM?

Yes. Ubuntu 12.04 ESM is available for UA Virtual Guest, UA Standard and UA Advanced customers. Ubuntu 12.04 ESM is also available to UA Essential customers with a quantity of 100 systems or more. For more information on levels please visit buy.ubuntu.com. If you are a qualifying UA customer, you can request your credentials and have your system ready to receive updates without downtime or gaps.

How can we ensure the security of our Ubuntu 12.04 systems after April 28th?

Sign up to Ubuntu Advantage now, and you will benefit from UA services immediately without having a gap in service when Ubuntu 12.04 goes end-of-life on April, 28th. Ubuntu Advantage is available at buy.ubuntu.com, and or for AWS users, you can purchase Ubuntu Advantage Standard or Advanced through the AWS Marketplace.

How long will Ubuntu 12.04 ESM be maintained?

Ubuntu 12.04 ESM updates will be provided for at least 2 years.

Is it possible to purchase Ubuntu 12.04 ESM months down the road when needed, with or without backdating the cost, or does it need to be in place in advance?

You can purchase UA support any time. It does not need to be in place in advance, although we strongly recommend you eliminate the gap between when Ubuntu 12.04 ESM is enabled on your system(s), to avoid exposing your systems to security vulnerabilities. Ubuntu Advantage is priced year-over-year so there is no backdating.

Any plans to offer Ubuntu 12.04 ESM a la carte without the other features of Advantage?

Yes, in quantities of 1,000 machines or above, at $50/node/year. Contact Canonical Sales.

We’re mirroring the repository on our internal Landscape Server. Is there a guide on how to get Ubuntu 12.04 ESM if using Landscape?

ESM is just a regular Ubuntu archive, but authenticated and served over HTTPS. Archive mirroring is already available in Landscape, and is the only supported mechanism for mirroring the ESM archive.

What will the 12.04 LTS support situation look like from April 29th onward? Will we be able to raise functionality tickets with Canonical or are you ending actual support and providing only security patches?

The support window for Ubuntu 12.04 closes on April 28, 2017. The support team will not be able to fix bugs or build fixed packages once the 12.04 LTS archive is closed.

Will Ubuntu 12.04 ESM include patching my-favorite-package (e.g. PHP5.3)?

Canonical’s Ubuntu Security Team are committed to providing fixes for HIGH and CRITICAL CVEs against all server packages in the Ubuntu Main archive. This is essentially a continuation of the same security updates that Ubuntu 12.04 Server users have always received.

Will source code for Ubuntu 12.04 ESM patches be made available? If so, will that be publicly available on Launchpad or only through Ubuntu 12.04 ESM?

Both the binary updates and source code will be available to Ubuntu 12.04 ESM users. We will honour any and all licenses associated with the open source code in Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Insights: Snap support lands in Fedora 24, 25 & 26

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As part as our mission to get snaps running everywhere, we are pleased to announce that support for snaps has now officially landed in Fedora, starting with Fedora 24 and up.

Big thanks to Neal Gompa who has been instrumental in landing snapd packages in the Fedora archive!

Install your first snap on Fedora

1) Install the snapd package

$ sudo dnf install snapd

After that, everything is set up to get you started with snaps.

Note for Fedora 24 users: once the snapd package is successfully installed you have to enable the systemd unit which takes care of snapd’s main communication socket:
$ sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket

2) Install a snap!

There are a lot of snaps available to install and you can browse our monthly highlights using this tag, but let’s start with a simple “hello-world”:

$ sudo snap install hello-world
hello-world 6.3 from 'canonical' installed
$ hello-world
Hello World!

When installing a snap for the first time, the “core” snap (which provides base libraries for snaps) is installed as well.

Now, let’s check where hello-world is running from:

$ which hello-world
/var/lib/snapd/snap/bin/hello-world

Success, it’s a snap indeed!

Why use snaps?

Among other things, snaps make packaging, distribution and updates really easy for developers and automated for users. Which means you will get the latest version of your installed apps directly from upstream, on release day, or even daily if upstream has integrated snap publication into their CI process.

As an example, here is LibreOffice running from the snap (5.3.2.2), next to the one available in a fully upgraded Fedora 25 (5.2.6.2).

Get involved

Snaps rely on an AppArmor backend to ensure their confinement from the rest of the system. Since Fedora doesn’t ship with AppArmor, snaps will run unconfined. Nevertheless, the snapd team is welcoming contributions to a SELinux backend! If you are interested in contributing in this area, get in touch on forum.snapcraft.io.

Next steps

To browse all the available stable snaps in the store, you can visit uappexplorer, use the “snap find” command or install the “snapweb” snap and visit https://localhost:4201 for a local store interface.

If you want to snap your software and publish it, you can have a quickstart at tutorials.ubuntu.com and dive-in further with the snapcraft documentation.

Daniel Pocock: What is the risk of using proprietary software for people who prefer not to?

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Jonas Öberg has recently blogged about Using Proprietary Software for Freedom. He argues that it can be acceptable to use proprietary software to further free and open source software ambitions if that is indeed the purpose. Jonas' blog suggests that each time proprietary software is used, the relative risk and reward should be considered and there may be situations where the reward is big enough and the risk low enough that proprietary software can be used.

A question of leadership

Many of the free software users and developers I've spoken to express frustration about how difficult it is to communicate to their family and friends about the risks of proprietary software. A typical example is explaining to family members why you would never install Skype.

Imagine a doctor who gives a talk to school children about the dangers of smoking and is then spotted having a fag at the bus stop. After a month, if you ask the children what they remember about that doctor, is it more likely to be what he said or what he did?

When contemplating Jonas' words, it is important to consider this leadership factor as a significant risk every time proprietary software or services are used. Getting busted with just one piece of proprietary software undermines your own credibility and posture now and well into the future.

Research has shown that when communicating with people, what they see and how you communicate is ninety three percent of the impression you make. What you actually say to them is only seven percent. When giving a talk at a conference or a demo to a client, or communicating with family members in our everyday lives, using a proprietary application or a product or service that is obviously proprietary like an iPhone or Facebook will have far more impact than the words you say.

It is not only a question of what you are seen doing in public: somebody who lives happily and comfortably without using proprietary software sounds a lot more credible than somebody who tries to explain freedom without living it.

The many faces of proprietary software

One of the first things to consider is that even for those developers who have a completely free operating system, there may well be some proprietary code lurking in their BIOS or other parts of their hardware. Their mobile phone, their car, their oven and even their alarm clock are all likely to contain some proprietary code too. The risks associated with these technologies may well be quite minimal, at least until that alarm clock becomes part of the Internet of Things and can be hacked by the bored teenager next door. Accessing most web sites these days inevitably involves some interaction with proprietary software, even if it is not running on your own computer.

There is no need to give up

Some people may consider this state of affairs and simply give up, using whatever appears to be the easiest solution for each problem at hand without thinking too much about whether it is proprietary or not.

I don't think Jonas' blog intended to sanction this level of complacency. Every time you come across a piece of software, it is worth considering whether a free alternative exists and whether the software is really needed at all.

An orderly migration to free software

In our professional context, most software developers come across proprietary software every day in the networks operated by our employers and their clients. Sometimes we have the opportunity to influence the future of these systems. There are many cases where telling the client to go cold-turkey on their proprietary software would simply lead to the client choosing to get advice from somebody else. The free software engineer who looks at the situation strategically may find that it is possible to continue using the proprietary software as part of a staged migration, gradually helping the user to reduce their exposure over a period of months or even a few years. This may be one of the scenarios where Jonas is sanctioning the use of proprietary software.

On a technical level, it may be possible to show the client that we are concerned about the dangers but that we also want to ensure the continuity of their business. We may propose a solution that involves sandboxing the proprietary software in a virtual machine or a DMZ to prevent it from compromising other systems or "calling home" to the vendor.

As well as technical concerns about a sudden migration, promoters of free software frequently encounter political issues as well. For example, the IT manager in a company may be five years from retirement and is not concerned about his employer's long term ability to extricate itself from a web of Microsoft licenses after he or she has the freedom to go fishing every day. The free software professional may need to invest significant time winning the trust of senior management before he is able to work around a belligerant IT manager like this.

No deal is better than a bad deal

People in the UK have probably encountered the expression "No deal is better than a bad deal" many times already in the last few weeks. Please excuse me for borrowing it. If there is no free software alternative to a particular piece of proprietary software, maybe it is better to simply do without it. Facebook is a great example of this principle: life without social media is great and rather than trying to find or create a free alternative, why not just do something in the real world, like riding motorcycles, reading books or getting a cat or dog?

Burning bridges behind you

For those who are keen to be the visionaries and leaders in a world where free software is the dominant paradigm, would you really feel satisfied if you got there on the back of proprietary solutions? Or are you concerned that taking such shortcuts is only going to put that vision further out of reach?

Each time you solve a problem with free software, whether it is small or large, in your personal life or in your business, the process you went through strengthens you to solve bigger problems the same way. Each time you solve a problem using a proprietary solution, not only do you miss out on that process of discovery but you also risk conditioning yourself to be dependent in future.

For those who hope to build a successful startup company or be part of one, how would you feel if you reach your goal and then the rug is pulled out underneath you when a proprietary software vendor or cloud service you depend on changes the rules?

Personally, in my own life, I prefer to avoid and weed out proprietary solutions wherever I can and force myself to either make free solutions work or do without them. Using proprietary software and services is living your life like a rat in a maze, where the oligarchs in Silicon Valley can move the walls around as they see fit.

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