Ubuntu Netbook Remix Karmic

As Karmic hit beta freeze this week, and the artwork began to freeze, I thought it would be a good time to introduce the latest version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR):


As you can probably tell, the largest change from the previous version is a new design and layout. This is thanks to the awesome work of the design team. In addition to the new UI, there has been a fair amount of work in the architecture of the various UNR components. Apart from the users ( :) ), the largest beneficiaries of this are the launcher and window-picker-applet.

The launcher has been updated to use the latest version of Clutter, and benefits from the performance improvements that the Clutter 1.0 release carries. In addition to that, the launcher now has a framework for plugins, which allow extending the home screen and adding new categories on the left (and example is the Files & Folders category). There's not too much documentation at the moment, but I'll follow this post up in the coming weeks with some examples.

Window Picker Applet has had a major overhaul thanks to Jason Smith of Docky fame. In addition to making the code more sane, he's transformed the look and feel of the applet and fixed a bunch of annoying bugs. Coupled with the new Gtk and icon theme (Dust and Humanity), Jason's work makes the panel look much, much nicer than before:

In addition to these bits, there are a couple of things I'd like to highlight:

UNR Karmic contains both the excellent Messaging and Session Indicators. The message indicator allows you to quickly see how many unread emails/IM messages/Twitter replies you have. The session indicator allows you to easily set your IM presence and also lets you switch users (if you hardware supports it) and log out easily.



We've also got the very latest Notify OSD and the Ubuntu Software Store, for a nice and easy way to expand your netbook's usefulness :).



That's it for now, you can grab the latest UNR image from the daily builds here, and I've posted links to a few more screenshots below.

Android applications on UNR Jaunty - Part Deux

Mike uploaded a video of Android applications running natively on Jaunty UNR:



(didn't realize pgo cuts videos, click here to see it)

The applications are very responsive thanks to the accelerated Android drawing engine (and that means they aren't a burden on the CPU either).

The video shows the Android browser working like normal, which points to the next challenge in getting everything working great: piping the services and the filesystem on the host computer through to the Android runtime so apps can take advantage (and be more useful :).

If you have any questions or just want to bug Mike about getting his packaging finished, you can leave a comment on his blog post.

Update: Added link to video

Android Applications Running on Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Wow, it's been quite some time since I've last blogged. However, this drought isn't due to lack of awesome work or news, it's just that I'm pretty lazy :).

I'm working to remedy this with more frequent blogging about my work at Canonical, but I thought I'd start off with highlighting something which I think is really cool: Android applications running natively on Ubuntu Netbook Remix:



The work has been done by Michael Frey and his team in the OEM services group in Canonical. I think this is cool because I've seen a bunch of pictures and videos of Android running as the OS on a netbook, but it's the first time I've Android mixing with other apps on a Linux desktop. It means you can get the best of both worlds :).

If you want to see more pics, or want to find out how it was achieved, Mike's doing a series of posts about the work on his blog or you can follow him on twitter.

Hackfesting

As per usual, I'll start off by apologising about not writing enough blog posts and how I'll be better in the future. Although, this time there may actually be a chance of me sticking by my word as I've got a few posts lined up with talk about Ubuntu Netbook Remix, specifically the individual apps that make up the conversion of Gnome from desktop->netbook. There's been quite a few articles and reviews about UNR, but there seems to be some features that people have missed so I thought I'd be nice to get those code-paths tested out :-).

Currently I'm in Boston for the UI hackfest, which should be really cool and hopefully very fruitful. I'm here to pimp Awn and I guess Clutter too (although I doubt it needs pimping anymore :-). It will be nice to meet up and chat with other people who've worked on panels/docks/sidebars/applet server etc, and try and figure out how we can combine our work into something great for Gnome.

As you may have guessed, the planned hiatus from working on Awn didn't quite pan out. Actually, the very opposite happened and I've been busy rewriting Awn in a private branch to add all the features and fix all the bugs people having been asking for since the begining. To sum up the work, I'd say that the rewrite makes Awn a panel rather than a dock, and that's an important distinction. Some of the features that are beingworked on are not currently available in any other panel/dock and I hope will really push things forward in desktop experience.

You can follow the work on the rewrite in #awn on irc.freenode.net, it's not usable just yet as there's been a lot of breakage, but we're getting there and things have recently started to come together. I'll write a post detailing whats changed and the new features as soon as it's ready to be tested. It's funny,suddenly all my ideas for the desktop revolve around making Awn absolutely great :-).

Bits & Pieces

As usual, I'm leaving far too long between each blog post, but I thought I'd make a small update until I get a chance to write up everything that's been going on:

• Canonical - The first couple of months have been awesome! Lots of cool things are happening here, everyone's very busy and there are some really exiting projects which will hopefully be in public very soon.
• UDS Prague - I'll be attending UDS this year, so ping me if your attending and would like to discuss various bling on desktop/mobile environments! Extra points if you support Manchester United, and want to go watch the Champions League final on the wednesday that week :-).
• Awn - Not much happening at the moment from my side. Hopefully this will change in a couple of weeks, at which point I hope to finish the remainder of non-composite support in trunk, and make a beta release for 0.4
• Random Hacking - Since late last year, most of my spare hacking time has been spent on Awn, which is great, but it means some of my other ideas/projects got left behind. So, I've been trying to remedy this by picking up these projects and starting to work on them once again. The two I'm concentrating on at the moment are Nautilus and Affinity. I hope to get some code out soon, so stay tuned!

We don't discriminate baby

The awn-core team released Awn & Awn-Extras 0.2.6 couple of weeks ago!

These releases bring with them more stability, a lots of bugfixes, and some interesting new features which include Vala bindings, an updated UI for Awn Manager, new applets, more documentation and support for non-gnome desktop environments.

Desktop Agnostic

Mark Lees (malept) long-standing desktop-agnostic branch was finally merged into trunk. What it does is separate three 'desktop-specific' parts of Awn and provides multiple implementations of them, suiting your current desktop set-up:

• Configuration: Either a GConf (default) or GKeyFile settings backend.
• VFS: Three VFS backends, GnomeVFS (currently-default), ThunarVFS and GIO.
• Desktop File Reading: Either libgnome-desktop (default) or EggDesktop.

As you can see, by default Awn uses Gnome libs, however, it's now possible to compile it specifically for Xfce4 or just Glib/GIO.

This abstraction also spreads to the applets in Awn-extras, and most of them have been ported to the new style, with the goal of porting all of them by the next release.

Roadmap

Speaking of the next release, there have been some changes to the Awn versioning system & the roadmap. The new roadmap looks like this:

• 0.4 - Non-composited WM support; Better handling of multi-monitor setups; GtkTheme support; Awn-curves;
• 0.6 - Rewrite the launcher/task-manager, adding support for window grouping, window sorting, window-thumbnails-as-icons, easier plugin writing, and a more extensive DBus backend.
• 0.8 - Allow Awn to reside on any edge of the screen; TBD
  
• 1.0 - Multiple Awn panels; TBD

More details available here.

As you can see, the 'major-rewrite' of Awn has been split-up into sizeable chucks, which allows for more releases and allows us to introduce the new code a bit at a time.

Misc

If you need help installing Awn, are having problems, or just want to chat about development & features, please check out the forums, wiki or stop by #awn on irc.freenode.net, where there's always someone willing to help!

I'd also like to welcome Julien Lavergne, Mark Lee and Rodney Cryderman to the core team. They have done a lot (most) of the work for this release, and have kept the Awn boat floating.

Finally, once you've installed the Awn and feel like trying out something new, set /apps/avant-window-navigator/bar/bar_angle t0 -1, and see what happens (this is courtesy of ;-).

To continue the trend

today was my last day with OpenedHand. I'd just like to take this opportunity to say "thank you" to everyone at OH. I've had a great time working there, and learnt so much while working with people like Matthew/Emmanuele/Ross/Thomas on some of the coolest projects around.

Looking forward, I'm excited to say that on Monday I'll be starting at Canonical as a "User Interface and Applications Engineer for Mobile Internet Devices". I'll be doing the same type of work as before, with continuing work with creating/adapting Gtk & Clutter applications for mobile systems & touch-based UIs. The goal being to make sure that Ubuntu Mobile is as usable & pretty as any other mobile platform out there :-).