Search Results: "Mike Gabriel"

16 February 2024

Mike Gabriel: Debian Edu 12 - Call for Testing

This is a call for testing of Debian Edu based on Debian bookworm. With the Debian 12.5 point release all required packages have landed in the Debian Edu ISO images that allow you to install a Debian Edu system based on Debian 12. ISO Image Downloads You can find the Blueray Disc ISO image (use for main server installation) at: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/amd64/iso-bd/debian-ed... For standalone workstation installations or installations on an already up-and-running Debian Edu site, please use the netinst ISO image: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/amd64/iso-cd/debian-ed... Quick Start HowTo For testing Debian Edu 12, set up e.g. LXD or libVirt and install (at least) three virtual machines. In your virtualization software prepare an internal network where the VMs can reach one another without needing access to your local network. The three VMs: Happy testing! Further Readings Overall installation profile concept of Debian Edu:
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BeforeGettingStarted Debian Edu 12 manual:
https://jenkins.debian.net/userContent/debian-edu-doc/ Debian Edu 12 status page:
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Bookworm

28 March 2023

Mike Gabriel: UbuntuTouch Focal OTA-1 has been released

Yesterday, the UBports core developer team released Ubuntu Touch Focal OTA-1 (In fact, Raoul, Marius and I were in a conference call when Marius froze and said: the PR team already posted the release blog post; the post is out, but we haven't released yet... ahhhh... panic... Shall I?, Marius said, and we said: GO!!! This is why the release occurred in public five hours ahead of schedule. OMG.) For all the details, please study:
https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/ubuntu-touch-ota-1-focal-re... Credits Thanks to all the developers, other contributors and funding providers that helped to reach this massive milestone. I dare to drop some names here at the risk of forgetting others (I put them in alphanumerical order): Alan, Alfred, Brian, Christoffer, Daniel, Eline, Florian, Guido, Jami, Jonathan, Kugi, Lionel, Maciek, Mardy, Marius, Mike, Nigel, Nikita, Raoul, Ratchanan, Robert, Sergey. I have been involved in the development and release process over the past four years and I feel honoured to work with so many fine and genuine people on such a unique project. It is a pleasure to work with you guys!!! Also a big thanks to the UBports Foundation and its BoD for being the umbrella organisation of all Ubuntu Touch related initiatives. Consumer-Ready Ubuntu Touch is one of the very few Open Source projects that brings fourth a 100% FLOSS phone operating system. After using Ubuntu Touch myself for several months now, I can confirm that it is a consumer grade OS that can be used by non-tech people as a daily driver for mobile communications and connectivity. Go for it and try it out.

5 February 2023

Mike Gabriel: Call for translations: Lomiri / Ubuntu Touch 20.04

Prologue For over a year now, Fre(i)e Software GmbH (my company) is involved in Ubuntu Touch development. The development effort currently is handled by a mix of paid and voluntary developers/contributors under the umbrella of the UBports Foundation. We are approaching the official first release of Ubuntu Touch 20.04 with rapid pace. And, if you are a non-Englisch native speaker, we'd like to ask you for help... Read below. light+love
Mike (aka sunweaver at debian.org, Mastodon, IRC, etc.) Internationalization (i18n) of Ubuntu Touch 20.04 The UBports team has moved most of the translation workflows for localizing Ubuntu Touch over to Hosted Weblate: To contribute to the UBports projects you need to register here: The localization platform of all UBports / Lomiri components is sponsored by Hosted Weblate via their free hosting plan for Libre and Open Source Projects. Many thanks for providing this service. Translating Lomiri The translation components in the Lomiri project have already been set up and are ready for being updated by translators. Please expect some translation template changes for all those components to occur in the near future, but this should not hinder you from starting translation work right away. Translating Lomiri will bring the best i18n experience to Ubuntu Touch 20.04 end users for the core libraries and the pre-installed (so called) Core Apps. Translating Ubuntu Touch Apps For App Developers (apps that are not among the Core Apps) we will now offer a translation slot under the UBports project on hosted.weblate.org: If you are actively maintaining an Ubuntu Touch app, please ask for a translation component slot on hosted.weblate.org and we will set up your app's translation workflow for and with you. Using the translation service at Hosted Weblate is not a must for app developers, it's rather a service we offer to ease i18n work on Ubuntu Touch apps. Who to contact? To get translations for your app set up on Hosted Weblate, please get in touch with us on https://t.me/ubports, please highlight @sunweaver (Mike Gabriel), @BetaBreak (Raoul Kramer), @cibersheep and @Danfro with your request.

20 October 2022

Mike Gabriel: Ubuntu Touch development - Wanna sponsor ARM64 CPU power for CI build infrastructure?

What is Ubuntu Touch? (And what does sunweaver have to do with it?) With Ubuntu Touch, the UBports Foundation offers a truly unique mobile experience - a viable alternative to Android and iOS. The UBports community provides a free and open-source GNU/Linux-based mobile operating system. One that can be installed and used today. Currently, there is an intensive effort going on lifting Ubuntu Touch from its current Ubuntu 16.04 base up to an Ubuntu 20.04 base. (And very soon after that to an Ubuntu 22.04 base...). With the Ubuntu Touch 20.04 base the progress bar is already at (I'd say) 89%, but we recently got hit by a drawback. I am currently involved in the Ubuntu Touch core development team at UBports and on medium short notice our current ARM64 server sponsor has announced to decommission our ARM64 build server that currently powers all the ARM64 and armhf CI builds. Call for Hardware Sponsoring So, the UBports core development team is currently desperately looking for a sponsor (or a few sponsors) who can provide us with (datacenter-hosted) ARM-based CPU power. It is important, that also 32-bit ARM builds are possible with the hardware provided. For testing, I recently ordered a HoneyComb LX2 (by SolidRun) as a possible solution (multi-node in the end), but the board arrived in a non-usable state, it seems. So this also didn't work out as easy as expected. As the former provider/sponsor is about to pull the plug, this call for help is kind of urgent. Please get in touch if you can help us out or know people who can. Thanks!!!
Mike (sunweaver at debian.org, libera.chat, OFTC, Telegram, matrix.org, etc.)

23 December 2021

Mike Gabriel: MATE 1.26 has finally landed in Debian testing

For those, who haven't realized, yet: MATE 1.26 has now been uploaded to Debian and should be available in Debian testing to all happy testers. During December, me and the whole family, we had been infected with Covid-19. All of us have recovered well, by now. In fact, I was very happy about a proper fever which I haven't had in years. (Fever is a well-known form of cancer prevention / prophylaxis). Drinking a lot (of warm water!), not eating for five days, and additionally following some health practices from the natural healing context supported the recovery process really well. The MATE 1.26 DEB package preparations had been done while sitting in bed with my hot water bottle in the back and a pot of honeyed thyme tea next to me on the window sill. Things were getting too boring while being sick, so the monotonous wrapping up of +/- 40 desktop environment DEB packages was a welcome change then (and not too complex for the reduced brain activity of mine, either). Hope, that MATE 1.26 in Debian works well for many Debian users. I also plan to bring MATE 1.26 to bullseye-backports soon (second half of January, probably). light+love
Mike (aka sunweaver at debian.org)

25 November 2021

Mike Gabriel: Touching Firefox on Linux

More as a reminder to myself, but possibly also helpful to other people who want to use Firefox on a tablet running Debian... Without the below adjustment, finger gestures in Firefox running on a tablet result in image moving, text highlighting, etc. (operations related to copy+paste). Not the intuitively expected behaviour... If you use e.g. GNOME on Wayland for your tablet and want to enable touch functionalities in Firefox, then switch the whole browser to native Wayland rendering. This line in ~/.profile seems to help:
export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
If you use a desktop environment running on top of X.Org, then make sure you have added the following line to ~/.profile:
export MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1
Logout/login again and Firefox should be scrollable with 2-finger movements up and down, zooming in and out also works then. light+love
Mike (aka sunweaver at debian.org)

19 November 2021

Mike Gabriel: Improbability of a million, lintian thinks...

An interesting mindset overcome by reality... Also, lintian does not differentiate between between 100.000 and 1.000.000.
W: ayatana-indicator-display: improbable-bug-number-in-closes 1000143
N: 
N:   The most recent changelog closes a low-numbered bug number. While this is distantly possible, it's more likely a typo or
N:   a placeholder value that mistakenly wasn't filled in.
N: 
N:   Visibility: warning
N:   Show-Always: no
N:   Check: debian/changelog
N: 
N:
\_( )_/ light+love
Mike

4 November 2021

Mike Gabriel: Call for Translations: Ayatana Indicators 0.9.x Release Series

We (Robert Tari, the UBports developers team, myself) are very close to releasing Ayatana Indicators 0.9.x. The work on Ayatana Indicators is currently nearly completed funded by the UBports Foundation and over the past half year, many many changes, improvements and clean-ups have been added to the code. Ayatana Indicators 0.9.x will be the first release series to be in the development tree of Ubuntu Touch 20.04 (which is currently under very heavy development). Ayatana Indicators 0.9.x will also be used in various other desktop environments available in upcoming Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, such as Ubuntu MATE, Xubuntu, (optionally in) Ubuntu Budgie (please correct my wording, if you know better), (send me a note, if I forgot your desktop env), etc. So, to all Ubuntu Touch, Ubuntu MATE, Xubuntu, etc. users. If you not already are a translator of Ayatana Indicators and you are good in English and fluent in at least one other language, please consider helping out with translating or improving translations of Ayatana Indicators. The translation work needs to be done on Hosted Weblate [1], please sign up for an account (if you haven't done so, yet) and chime in. Thanks so much for your contributions! light+love
Mike https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/ayatana-indicators/

18 September 2021

Mike Gabriel: X2Go, Remmina and X2GoKdrive

In this blog post, I will cover a few related but also different topics around X2Go - the GNU/Linux based remote computing framework. Introduction and Catch Up For those, who haven't come across X2Go, so far... With X2Go [0] you can log into remote GNU/Linux machines graphically and launch headless desktop environments, seamless/published applications or access an already running desktop session (on a local Xserver or running as a headless X2Go desktop session) via X2Go's session shadowing / mirroring feature. Graphical backend: NXv3 For several years, there was only one graphical backend available in X2Go, the NXv3 software. In NXv3, you have a headless or nested (it can do both) Xserver that has some remote magic built-in and is able to transfer the Xserver's graphical data to a remote client (NX proxy). Over the wire, the NX protocol allows for data compression (JPEG, PNG, etc.) and combines it with bitmap caching, so that the overall result is a fast and responsive desktop experience even on low latency and low bandwidth connections. This especially applies to X desktop environments that use many native X protocol operations for drawing windows and widget onto the screen. The more bitmaps involved (e.g. in applications with client-side rendering of window controls and such), the worse the quality of a session experience. The current main maintainer of NVv3 (aka nx-libs [1]) is Ulrich Sibiller. Uli has my and the X2Go community's full appreciation, admiration and gratitude for all the work he does on nx-libs, constantly improving NXv3 without breaking compatibility with legacy use cases (yes, FreeNX is still alive, by the way). NEW: Alternative Graphical Backend: X2Go Kdrive Over the past 1.5 years, Oleksandr Shneyder (Alex), co-founder of X2Go, has been working on a re-implementation of an alternative, less X11-dependent graphical backend. The underlying Xserver technology is the kdrive part of the X.org server project. People on GNU/Linux might have used kdrive technology already: The Xephyr nested Xserver uses the kdrive implementation. The idea of the X2Go Kdrive [2] implementation in X2Go is providing a headless Xserver on the X2Go Server side for running X11 based desktop sessions inside while using an X11-agnostic data protocol for sending the graphical desktop data to the client-side for rendering. Whereas, with NXv3 technology, you need a local Xserver on the client side, with X2Go Kdrive you only need a client app(lication) that can draw bitmaps into some sort of framebuffer, such as a client-side X11 Xserver, a client-side Wayland compositor or (hold your breath) an HTMLv5 canvas in a web browser. X2Go Kdrive Client Implementations During first half of this year, I tested and DEB-packaged Alex's X2Go HTMLv5 client code [3] and it has been available for testing in the X2Go nightly builds archive for a while now. Of course, the native X2Go Client application has X2Go Kdrive support for a while, too, but it requires a Qt5 application in the background, the x2gokdriveclient (which is still only available in X2Go nightly builds or from X2Go Git [4]). X2Go and Remmina As currently posted by the Remmina community [5], one of my employees has been working on finalizing an already existing draft of mine for the last couple of months: Remmina Plugin X2Go. This project has been contracted by BAUR-ITCS UG (haftungsbeschr nkt) already a while back and has been financed via X2Go funding from one of their customers. Unfortunately, I never got around really to finalizing the project. Apologies for this. Daniel Teichmann, who has been in the company for a while now, but just recently switched to an employment model with considerably more work hours per week, now picked up this project two months ago and achieved awesome things on the way. Daniel Teichmann and Antenore Gatta (Remmina core developer, aka tmow) have been cooperating intensely on this, recently, with the objective of getting the X2Go plugin code merged into Remmina asap. We are pretty close to the first touchdown (i.e. code merge) of this endeavour. Thanks to Antenore for his support on this. This is much appreciated. Remmina Plugin X2Go - Current Challenges The X2Go Plugin for Remmina implementation uses Python X2Go (PyHoca-CLI) under the bonnet and basically does a system call to pyhoca-cli according to the session settings configured in the Remmina session profile UI. When using NXv3 based sessions, the session window appears on the client-side Xserver and immediately gets caught by Remmina and embedded into the Remmina frame (via Xembed protocol) where its remote sessions are supposed to appear. (Thanks that GtkSocket is still around in GTK-3). The knowing GTK-3 experts among you may have noticed: GtkSocket is obsolete and has been removed from GTK-4. Also, GtkSocket support is only available in GTK-3 when using its X11 rendering backend. For the X2Go Kdrive implementation, we tested a similar approach (embedding the x2gokdriveclient Qt5 window via Xembed/GtkSocket), but it seems that GtkSocket and Qt5 applications don't work well together and we did not succeed in embedding the Qt5 window of the x2gokdriveclient application into Remmina, so far. Also, this would be a work-around for the bigger problem: We want, long-term, provide X2Go Kdrive support in Remmina, not only for Remmina running with GTK-3/X11, but also when Remmina is used natively on top of Wayland. So, the more sustainable approach for showing an X2Go Kdrive based X2Go session in Remmina would be a GTK-3/4 or a Glib-2.0 + Cairo based rendering client provided as a shared library. This then could be used by Remmina for drawing the session bitmaps into the Remmina session frame. This would require a port of the x2gokdriveclient Qt code into a non-Qt implementation. However, we are running out of funding to make this happen at the moment. More Funding Needed for this Journey As you might guess, such a project as proposed is a project that some people do in their spare time, others do it for a living. I'd love to continue this project and have Daniel Teichmann continue his work on this, so that Remmina might soon be able to provide native X2Go Kdrive Client support. If people read this and are interested in supporting such a project, please get in touch [6]. Thanks so much! light+love
Mike (aka sunweaver) [0] https://wiki.x2go.org/
[1] https://github.com/ArcticaProject/nx-libs
[2] https://code.x2go.org/gitweb?p=x2gokdrive.git;a=tree
[3] https://code.x2go.org/gitweb?p=x2gohtmlclient.git;a=tree
[4] https://code.x2go.org/gitweb?p=x2gokdriveclient.git;a=tree
[5] https://remmina.org/x2go/
[6] https://das-netzwerkteam.de/

15 August 2021

Mike Gabriel: Chromium Policies Managed under Linux

For a customer project, I recently needed to take a closer look at best strategies of deploying Chromium settings to thrillions of client machines in a corporate network. Unfortunately, the information on how to deploy site-wide Chromium browser policies are a little scattered over the internet and the intertwining of Chromium preferences and Chromium policies required deeper introspection. Here, I'd like to provide the result of that research, namely a list of references that has been studied before setting up Chromium policies for the customer's proof-of-concept. Difference between Preferences and Policies Chromium can be controlled via preferences (mainly user preferences) and administratively rolled-out policy files. The difference between preferences and policies are explained here:
https://www.chromium.org/administrators/configuring-other-preferences The site-admin (or distro package maintainer) can pre-configure the user's Chromium experience via a master preferences file (/etc/chromium/master_preferences). This master preferences file is the template for the user's preferences file and gets copied over into the Chromium user profile folder on first browser start. Note: By studying the recent Chromium code it was found out that /etc/chromium/master_preferences is the legacy filename of the initial preferences file. The new filename is /etc/chromium/initial_preferences. We will continue with master_preferences here as most Linux distributions still provide the initial preferences via this file. Whereas the new filename is already supported by Chromium in openSUSE/SLES, it is not yet support by Chromium in Debian/Ubuntu. (See Debian bug #992178). Difference of 'managed' and 'recommended' Policies The difference between 'managed' and 'recommended' Chromium policies is explained here:
https://www.chromium.org/administrators/configuring-other-preferences Quoting from above URL (last visited 2021/08): Policies that should be editable by the user are called "recommended policies" and offer a better alternative than the master_preferences file. Their contents can be changed and are respected as long as the user has not modified the value of that preference themselves. So, policies of type 'managed' override user preferences (and also lock them in the Chromium settings UI). Those 'managed' policies are good for enforcing browser settings. They can be blended in also for existing browser user profiles. Policies ('managed' and 'recommended') even get blended it at browser run-time when modified. Use case: e.g. for rolling out browser security settings that are required for enforcing a site-policy-compliant browser user configuration. Policies of type 'recommended' have an impact on setting defaults of the Chromium browser. They apply to already existing browser profiles, if the user hasn't tweaked with the to-be-recommended settings, yet. Also, they get applied at browser run-time. However, if the user has already fiddled with such a to-be-recommended setting via the Chromium settings UI, the user choice takes precedence over the recommended policy. Use case: Policies of type 'recommended' are good for long-term adjustments to browser configuration options. Esp. if users don't touch their browser settings much, 'recommended' policies are a good approach for fine-tuning site-wide browser settings on user machines. CAVEAT: While researching on this topic, two problematic observations were made:
  1. All setting parameters put into the master preferences file (/etc/chromium/master_preferences) can't be superceded by 'recommended' Chromium policies. Pre-configured preferences are handled as if the user has already tinkered with those preferences in Chromium's settings UI. It also was discovered, that distributors tend to overload /etc/chromium/master_preferences with their best practice browser settings. Everything that is not required on first browser start should be provided as 'recommended' policies, already in the distribution packages for Chromium .
  2. There does not seem to be an elegant way to override the package maintainer's choice of options in /etc/chromium/master_preferences file via some file drop-in replacement. (See Debian bug #992179). So, deploying Chromium involves post-install config file tinkering by hand, by script or by config management tools. There is space for improvement here.
Managing Chromium Policy with Files Chromium supports 'managed' policies and 'recommended' policies. Policies get deployed as JSON files. For Linux, this is explained here:
https://www.chromium.org/administrators/linux-quick-start Note, that for Chromium, the policy files have to be placed into /etc/chromium. The example on the above web page shows where to place them for Google Chrome. Good 'How to Get Started' Documentation for Chromium Policy Setups This overview page provides a good get-started-documentation on how to provision Chromium via policies:
https://www.chromium.org/administrators/configuring-policy-for-extensions First-Run Preferences It seems, not every setting can be tweaked via a Chromium policy. Esp. the first-run preferences are affected by this:
https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/first-run-customiza... So, for tweaking the first-run settings, one needs to adjust /etc/chromium/master_prefences (which is suboptimal, again see Debian bug #992179 for a detailed explanation on why this is suboptimal). The required adjustments to master_preferences can be achieved with the jq command line tool, here is one example:
# Tweak chromium's /etc/chromium/master_preferences file.
# First change: drop everything that can be provisioned via Chromium Policies.
# Rest of the changes: Adjust preferences for new users to our needs for all
# parameters that cannot be provisioned via Chromium Policies.
cat /etc/chromium/master_preferences   \
    jq 'del(.browser.show_home_button, .browser.check_default_browser, .homepage)'  
    jq '.first_run_tabs=[ "https://first-run.example.com/", "https://your-admin-faq.example.com" ]'  
    jq '.default_apps="noinstall"'  
    jq '.credentials_enable_service=false   .credentials_enable_autosignin=false'  
    jq '.search.suggest_enabled=false'  
    jq '.distribution.import_bookmarks=false   .distribution.verbose_logging=false   .distribution.skip_first_run_ui=true'  
    jq '.distribution.create_all_shortcuts=true   .distribution.suppress_first_run_default_browser_prompt=true'  
    cat > /etc/chromium/master_preferences.adapted
if [ -n "/etc/chromium/master_preferences.adapted" ]; then
        mv /etc/chromium/master_preferences.adapted /etc/chromium/master_preferences
else
        echo "WARNING (chromium tweaks): The file /etc/chromium/master_preferences.adapted was empty after tweaking."
        echo "                           Leaving /etc/chromium/master_preferences untouched."
fi
The list of available (first-run and other) initial preferences can be found in Chromium's pref_names.cc code file:
https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/main/chrome/common/pref_names.cc List of Available Chromium Policies The list of available Chromium policies used to be maintained in the Chromium wiki: https://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3 However, that page these days redirects to the Google Chrome Enterprise documentation:
https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/ Each policy variable has its own documentation page there. Please note the "Supported Features" section for each policy item. There, you can see, if the policy supports being placed into "recommended" and/or "managed". This is an example /etc/chromium/policies/managed/50_browser-security.json file (note that all kinds of filenames are allowed, even files without .json suffix):
 
  "HideWebStoreIcon": true,
  "DefaultBrowserSettingEnabled": false,
  "AlternateErrorPagesEnabled": false,
  "AutofillAddressEnabled": false,
  "AutofillCreditCardEnabled": false,
  "NetworkPredictionOptions": 2,
  "SafeBrowsingProtectionLevel": 0,
  "PaymentMethodQueryEnabled": false,
  "BrowserSignin": false,
 
And this is an example /etc/chromium/policies/recommended/50_homepage.json file:
 
  "ShowHomeButton": true,
  "WelcomePageOnOSUpgradeEnabled": false,
  "HomepageLocation": "https://www.example.com"
 
And for defining a custom search provider, I use /etc/chromium/policies/recommended/60_searchprovider.json (here, I recommend not using DuckDuckGo as DefaultSearchProviderName, but some custom name; unfortunately, I did not find a policy parameter that simply selects an already existing search provider name as the default :-( ):
 
  "DefaultSearchProviderEnabled": true,
  "DefaultSearchProviderName": "DuckDuckGo used by Example.com",
  "DefaultSearchProviderIconURL": "https://duckduckgo.com/favicon.ico",
  "DefaultSearchProviderEncodings": ["UTF-8"],
  "DefaultSearchProviderSearchURL": "https://duckduckgo.com/?q= searchTerms ",
  "DefaultSearchProviderSuggestURL": "https://duckduckgo.com/ac/?q= searchTerms &type=list",
  "DefaultSearchProviderNewTabURL": "https://duckduckgo.com/chrome_newtab"
 
The Essence and Recommendations On first startup, Chromium copies /etc/chromium/master_preferences to $HOME/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences. It does this only if the Chromium user profile has'nt been created, yet. So, settings put into master_preferences by the distro and the site or device admin are one-time-shot preferences (new user logs into a device, preferences get applied on first start of Chromium). Chromium policy files, however, get continuously applied at browser runtime. Chromium watches its policy files and you can observe Chromium settings change when policy files get modified. So, for continuously provisioning site-wide settings that mostly always trickle into the user's browser configuration, Chromium policies should definitely be preferred over master_preferences and this should be the approach to take. When using Chromium policies, one needs to take into account that settings in /etc/chromium/master_preferences seem to have precedence over 'recommended' policies. So, settings that you want to deploy as recommended policies must be removed from /etc/chromium/master_preferences. Essentially, these are the recommendations extracted from all the above research and information for deploying Chromium on enterprise scale:
  1. Everything that's required at first-run should go into /etc/chromium/master_preferences.
  2. Everything that's not required at first-run should be removed from /etc/chromium/master_preferences.
  3. Everything that's deployable as a Chromium policy should be deployed as a policy (as you can influence existing browser sessions with that, also long-term)
  4. Chromium policy files should be split up into several files. Chromium parses those files in alpha-numerical order. If policies occur more than once, the last policy being parsed takes precedence.
Feedback If you have any feedback or input on this post, I'd be happy to hear it. Please get in touch via the various channels where I am known as sunweaver (OFTC and libera.chat IRC, [matrix], Mastodon, E-Mail at debian.org, etc.). Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks! light+love
Mike Gabriel (aka sunweaver)

20 June 2021

Mike Gabriel: BBB Packaging for Debian, a short Heads-Up

Over the past days, I have received tons of positive feedback on my previous blog post about forming the Debian BBB Packaging Team [1]. Feedback arrived via mail, IRC, [matrix] and Mastodon. Awesome. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, folks... Therefore, here comes a short ... Heads-Up on the current Ongoings ... around packaging BigBlueButton for Debian: Credits light+love
Mike Gabriel

[1] https://sunweavers.net/blog/node/133
[2] https://bigbluebutton.org/event-page/
[3] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kpYJxYFVuWhB84bB73kmAQoGIS59ari1_hn2...

11 June 2021

Mike Gabriel: New: The Debian BBB Packaging Team (and: Kurento Media Server goes Debian)

Today, Fre(i)e Software GmbH has been contracted for packaging Kurento Media Server for Debian. This packaging project will be funded by GUUG e.V. (the German Unix User Group e.V.). A big thanks to the people from GUUG e.V. for making this packaging project possible. About Kurento Media Server Kurento is an open source software project providing a platform suitable for creating modular applications with advanced real-time communication capabilities. For knowing more about Kurento, please visit the Kurento project website: https://www.kurento.org. Kurento is part of FIWARE. For further information on the relationship of FIWARE and Kurento check the Kurento FIWARE Catalog Entry. Kurento is also part of the NUBOMEDIA research initiative. Kurento Media Server is a WebRTC-compatible server that processes audio and video streams, doing composable pipeline-based processing of media. About BigBlueButton As some of you may know, Kurento Media Server is one of the core components of the BigBlueButton software, an ,,Open Source Virtual Classroom Software''. The context of the KMS funding is - after several other steps - getting the complete software component stack of BigBlueButton (aka BBB) into Debian some day, so that we can provide BBB as native Debian packages. On Debian. (Currently, one needs to use an always already a bit outdated version of Ubuntu). Due to this greater context, I just created the Debian BBB Packaging Team on salsa.debian.org. Outlook and Appreciation The current project (uploading Kurento Media Server to Debian) will very likely be extended to one year of package maintenance for all Kurento Media Server components in Debian. Extending this maintenance funding to a second year, has also been discussed, and seems a possible option. Probably most Debian Developer colleagues will agree with me when I say that Debian packaging is not a one-time shot until the first uploads of software packages have landed and settled. Debian package maintenance is a long term responsibility and requires long term commitment. I am very glad, that the people at GUUG e.V are on the same page with me (with us) regarding this. This is much and dearly appreciated. Thank you!!! What else? Well, we have also talked about another BigBlueButton component that is not yet in Debian: FreeSwitch. But more of that, when time has come. How to Join the Debian BBB Packaging Team? Please ping me via IRC (sunweaver on OFTC IRC) or [matrix] (@sunweaver:matrix.org). How to Support the Debian BBB Packaging Team? If you, your organization, your company, your municipality, your university, etc. feels like supporting the effort of packaging BigBlueButton for Debian, please get in touch with: mike.gabriel@freiesoftware.gmbh And yes, the company homepage is not online, yet, but it is in the makings... light+love
Mike (aka sunweaver)

Mike Gabriel: Linux on Acer Spin 3

Recently, I bought an Acer Spin 3 Convertible Notebook for the company and provided it to Robert Tari for his daily work on Ayatana Indicators (which currently is funded by the UBports Foundation via my company Fre(i)e Software GmbH). Some days ago Robert reported back about a sleepless night he spent with that machine... He got stuck with a tricky issue regarding the installation of Manjaro GNU/Linux on that machine, that could be -- at the end -- resolved by a not so well documented trick. Before anyone else spends another sleepless night on this, we thought we'd better share Robert's solution. So, the below applies to the Acer Spin 3 series (and probably to other Spin models, perhaps even some other Acer laptops): Acer Spin 3 Pre-Inst Cheat Codes Before you even plug in the USB install media:
  1. Go to UEFI settings (i.e. BIOS for us elderly people) [F2]
  2. Security -> Set Supervisor Password [Enabled]
  3. Enter the password you'll use
  4. Boot -> Secure Boot -> [Disabled] (you can't disable it without a set supervisor password)
  5. Exit -> Exit Saving Changes
  6. Restart and go to UEFI settings again [F2]
  7. Main -> [Now press CTRL + S] -> VMD Controller -> [Disabled]
  8. Exit -> Exit Saving Changes
  9. Now plug in the install USB and restart
Esp. the disabling of the VMD Controller is essential. Otherwise, GRUB won't find any partition nor EFI registered boot items after the installation and drops into the EFI recovery shell. Robert hasn't tested the Wacom pen that comes with the device, nor the fingerprint reader, yet. Everything else works out-of-the-box. light+love
Mike Gabriel (aka sunweaver)

7 June 2021

Mike Gabriel: UBports: Packaging of Lomiri Operating Environment for Debian (part 05)

Before and during FOSDEM 2020, I agreed with the people (developers, supporters, managers) of the UBports Foundation to package the Unity8 Operating Environment for Debian. Since 27th Feb 2020, Unity8 has now become Lomiri. Recent Uploads to Debian related to Lomiri (Feb - May 2021) Over the past 4 months I attended 14 of the weekly scheduled UBports development sync sessions and worked on the following bits and pieces regarding Lomiri in Debian: The largest amount of work (and time) went into getting lomiri-ui-toolkit ready for upload. That code component is a absolutely massive beast and dearly intertwined with Qt5 (and unit tests fail with every new warning a new Qt5.x introduces). This bit of work I couldn't do alone (see below in "Credits" section). The next projects / packages ahead are some smaller packages (content-hub, gmenuharness, etc.) before we will finally come to lomiri (i.e. main bit of the Lomiri Operating Environment) itself. Credits Many big thanks go to everyone on the UBports project, but especially to Ratchanan Srirattanamet who lived inside of lomiri-ui-toolkit for more than two weeks, it seemed. Also, thanks to Florian Leeber for being my point of contact for topics regarding my cooperation with the UBports Foundation. Packaging Status The current packaging status of Lomiri related packages in Debian can be viewed at:
https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=team%2Bubports%40tracker.debia... light+love
Mike Gabriel (aka sunweaver)

25 May 2021

Mike Gabriel: Bye bye, Freenode!

This is a very short notice that I am not available via Freenode anymore. You can now reach me and the projects I am involved in (#x2go, #arctica, #ayatana-indicators) via the libera.chat IRC network. Of course, I am also available and hanging out on OFTC IRC for all Debian related topics. For details on the reasoning, I noticed that I am fully aligned with Antoine Beaupr 's statements in his recent blog post on the same matter [1]. A recommended read. light+love
Mike [1] https://anarc.at/blog/2021-05-24-leaving-freenode/

22 May 2021

Mike Gabriel: Upcoming brainstorming discussion about Debian for the Enterprise

Recently, Raphael Hertzog published ideas [1] about how to make Debian more attractive for big enterprises. One missing key stone here is the possibility to sign up for an enterprise support subscription scheme. Another question tackles how to provide such a support scheme within Debian, without disturbing the current flow of how Debian is developed these days. And, there are likely more questions to asks, riddles to solve, and hurdles to overcome. We want to discuss this topic, brainstorm on it, collect new ideas and also hear your concerns on a public channel. Over the past weeks there already have been mail exchanges off-list. We want to reboot this privately started discussion now in public (as that's where it belongs) starting +/- at the end of the coming week via the currently quite inactive Debian mailing list 'debian-enterprise' [2]. Please join the discussion (and the mailing list) [3] if interested in this topic. light & love
Mike (aka sunweaver) [1] https://raphaelhertzog.com/2021/03/30/challenging-times-for-freexian-1/
(also read parts 2-4)
[2] debian-enterprise@lists.debian.org
[3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-enterprise

15 January 2021

Mike Gabriel: UBports: Packaging of Lomiri Operating Environment for Debian (part 04)

Before and during FOSDEM 2020, I agreed with the people (developers, supporters, managers) of the UBports Foundation to package the Unity8 Operating Environment for Debian. Since 27th Feb 2020, Unity8 has now become Lomiri. Things got delayed a little recently as my main developer contact on the upstream side was on sick leave for a while. Fortunately, he has now fully recovered and work is getting back on track. Recent Uploads to Debian related to Lomiri Over the past 3 months I worked on the following bits and pieces regarding Lomiri in Debian: The next projects / packages ahead are lomiri-ui-toolkit, integrating changes required for Lomiri into Ayatana Indicators and then moving on with several other, smaller packages. Credits Many big thanks go to Marius and Dalton for their work on the UBports project and being always available for questions, feedback, etc. Thanks to Florian Leeber for being my point of contact for topcis regarding my cooperation with the UBports Foundation.

17 November 2020

Raphaël Hertzog: Freexian s report about Debian Long Term Support, October 2020

A Debian LTS logo Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In October, 221.50 work hours have been dispatched among 13 paid contributors. Their reports are available: Evolution of the situation October was a regular LTS month with a LTS team meeting done via video chat thus there s no log to be shared. After more than five years of contributing to LTS (and ELTS), Mike Gabriel announced that he founded a new company called Frei(e) Software GmbH and thus would leave us to concentrate on this new endeavor. Best of luck with that, Mike! So, once again, this is a good moment to remind that we are constantly looking for new contributors. Please contact Holger if you are interested! The security tracker currently lists 42 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 39 packages needing an update. Thanks to our sponsors Sponsors that joined recently are in bold.

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5 November 2020

Mike Gabriel: Welcome, Fre(i)e Software GmbH

Last week I received the official notice: There is now a German company named "Fre(i)e Software GmbH" registered with the German Trade Register. Founding a New Company Over the past months I have put my energy into founding a new company. As a freelancing IT consultant I started facing the limitation of other companies having strict policies that forbid the cooperation with one person businesses (Personengesellschaften). Thus, the requirement for setting up a GmbH business came onto my agenda. I will move some of my business activities into this new company, starting next year. Policy Ideas The "Fre(i)e Software GmbH" will be a platform to facilitate the growth and spreading of Free Software on this planet. Here are some first ideas for company policies: This is all pretty fresh. I'll be happy about hearing your feedback, ideas and worries. If you are interested in joining the company, please let me know. If you are interested in supporting a company with such values, please also let me know. light+love
Mike Gabriel (aka sunweaver)

29 September 2020

Mike Gabriel: UBports: Packaging of Lomiri Operating Environment for Debian (part 03)

Before and during FOSDEM 2020, I agreed with the people (developers, supporters, managers) of the UBports Foundation to package the Unity8 Operating Environment for Debian. Since 27th Feb 2020, Unity8 has now become Lomiri. Recent Uploads to Debian related to Lomiri Over the past 4 months I worked on the following bits and pieces regarding Lomiri in Debian: The next two big projects / packages ahead are lomiri-ui-toolkit and qtmir. Credits Many big thanks go to Marius and Dalton for their work on the UBports project and being always available for questions, feedback, etc. Thanks to Ratchanan Srirattanamet for providing some of his time for debugging some non-thread safe unit tests (currently unsure, what package we actually looked at...). Thanks for Florian Leeber for being my point of contact for topcis regarding my cooperation with the UBports Foundation. Previous Posts about my Debian UBports Team Efforts

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