Fabian Rodriguez

Don’t miss it! À ne pas manquer!

This year I was able to bring two simultaneaous events together, in different locations.

Cette année j’ai pu programmer 2 événements différents, ça se passe demain, à deux endroits différents .

Les détails à / All details at: http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2011/Canada/Montreal

See you there! À demain!

Don't miss it! À ne pas manquer! This year I was able to bring two simultaneaous events together, in different locations. Cette année j'ai pu programmer 2 événements différents, ça se passe demain, à deux endroits différents :). Les détails à / All details at: http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2011/Canada/Montreal See you there! À demain!

If you’re in Haiti or know anyone near Grand-Goave please let me know, I am here for a week and I’ll be training a few teachers on a new lab we’re putting together thanks to a donation via Micro Recyc Coopération.

The training will focus on free software and its origins / advantages, using LibreOffice, the GNU/Linux desktop and installing Debian, Ubuntu and Trisquel. Oh, and making CAT5e cables The goal is to have two full training days next week, Monday and Tuesday. Training is free and open to the public, but you need to contact me or add yourself to the wiki (see next paragraph).

I am also seeking help to work on the Ubuntu Haiti wiki. If you know any organizations using Ubuntu in Haiti, this would be a good time to add them there. I am susbcribed to it so I’ll get any updates as they happen.

Although my current Internet access is spotty, I can be reached by email, check my contact page.

If you're in Haiti or know anyone near Grand-Goave please let me know, I am here for a week and I'll be training a few teachers on a new lab we're putting together thanks to a donation via Micro Recyc Coopération. The training will focus on free software and its origins / advantages, using LibreOffice, ...

This just in:

The Internet, January 25, 2011 – The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project.Not only does it ship a number of new and original features, LibreOffice 3.3 is also a significant achievement for a number of reasons:

1. the developer community has been able to build their own and independent process, and get up and running in a very short time (with respect to the size of the code base and the project’s strong ambitions);
2. thanks to the high number of new contributors having been attracted into the project, the source code is quickly undergoing a major clean-up to provide a better foundation for future development of LibreOffice;
3. the Windows installer, which is going to impact the largest and most diverse user base, has been integrated into a single build containing all language versions, thus reducing the size for download sites from 75 to 11GB, making it easier for us to deploy new versions more rapidly and lowering the carbon footprint of the entire infrastructure.

The full announcement is available here.

There are important release notes regarding this version of LibreOffice.

A complete list of new features and fixes included in LibreOffice (with screenshots) is also available.

Getting involved in LibreOffice

Most importantly, the LibreOffice project needs all the help it can get. If you want to join a vibrant, active community around a very visible and dynamic project, there are plenty of ways to do so.

If you or someone you know has some time and resources to dedicate to this important part of Ubuntu and of every libre desktop, come by sometime to the #libreoffice IRC channel and we’ll take care of you

Getting help for LibreOffice

I joined the LibreOffice project a few weeks ago and I must say this is a very exciting day ! I am mostly involved in marketing and documentation, but I’m also proposing the following two resources to become official support and self-help channels:

• http://libreoffice.shapado.com – a questions & answers community driven by reputation and voting
• http://www.libreofficeforum.org – forums dedicated to language specific versions of LibreOffice (I monitor the French & Spanish forums there)

The LibreOffice project has a dedicated page listing all available online help resources.

I believe having additional self-help and support communities that complement the exiting OpenOffice.org existing ones is important, as the LibreOffice code-base will inevitably diverge more and more, and as we have more version-specific issues and bugs that can’t be treated equally. Furthermore, having language-specific communities and tools that can be used in your own language is also an important way to advocate LibreOffice in any part of the world – without depending on English-only tools.

Installing LibreOffice in Ubuntu

If you haven’t tried LibreOffice in Ubuntu yet, this would be a good time

If you are using Ubuntu do not download the .deb files for manual installation, there is a PPA repository that has been available for a few weeks now. Follow these instructions to install LibreOffice from the PPA so you get automatic updates. If you are running Ubuntu 11.04 LIbreOffice is already part of the standard packages, just search for libreoffice in your favorite package manager. Keep in mind the PPA shows version 3.3 rc4 as of this writing (which is bit-for-bit identical to the released 3.3), however a 3.3-numbered release should be available shortly.

The following is needed and works for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 10.10. Keep in mind a PPA is always considered a third-party application and unfit for production purposes (as far as official commercial support goes), however LibreOffice is becoming part of Ubuntu officially in the next release, due in April 2011, so the PPA will get a lot of attention and care. Make sure you test this and perhaps wait a few weeks if you intend to use this in 10.04 LTS or 10.10 in any significant way.

Here are the steps, then to install LibreOffice in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or Ubuntu 10.10:
Start a terminal window and issue these commands (you’ll be asked for your password):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libreoffice

To complete the integration to Ubuntu (Gnome) or Kubuntu (KDE), you will also need to either

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome

or

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde

… accordingly.

Filing a bug for LIbreOffice in Ubuntu is easy, I have documented the process here.

Additional language modules, help files and extensions are also available if you search for libreoffice in your package manager.

This just in: The Internet, January 25, 2011 – The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. ...

It just took a few minutes. Considering the massive amount of time Wikipedia saves me every day explaining technical terms and providing historical references to many projects and products I work with, it’s time and money well spent. You can only resist Jimmy Wales for so long

It just took a few minutes. Considering the massive amount of time Wikipedia saves me every day explaining technical terms and providing historical references to many projects and products I work with, it's time and money well spent. You can only resist Jimmy Wales for so long :)

When you upgrade to Ubuntu after release, or when one of your friends, family or colleagues installs it for the first time, I trust they will like many of the new features or just appreciate finding everything they need in their new Ubuntu installation. I also trust in some cases they will encounter some of the known issues which at this point (1 week before release) may not be fixed and may not make it but we need to know about. Imagine when someone mentions an issue and you can say “Yeah, I know about it.” and “I reported that bug” / “It’s in the release notes” / “We’re working on it” … “This morning’s updates fixes it” !!!

Don’t miss this opportunity !!!

Ok, this is not as exciting as getting your fingerprint reader to work or customizing window close/maximize buttons positions…

If you consider using Ubuntu 10.10 when it releases (or already do), upgrading to it, or suggesting anyone around you doing so, this would be a good time to read the Maverick Technical Overview Making new (or existing, upgrading) Ubuntu users happier also means knowing about its issues before hand, and deciding if you stick to 10.04 LTS, wait a bit longer before upgrading, or else. How else can you help improve such knowledge ?

As many may know, most of Canonical workforce is distributed, but we often get together in sprints where we attack a specific subject. During this week at the Montreal Canonical office we’re having a special event around the upcoming Ubuntu 10.10 release. We’re literally sprinting until Friday, on a very busy week during which we’ll wrap-up all the information we have from weeks of testing, bug reporting/triaging, support issues reported by customers, escalated issues, knowledgebase solutions, and more.

Lots of fun! Specially when Boris is around

For our sprint this week in the Montreal support office, my team is focusing on desktop issues within the following areas, among others:

* Networking (wifi, drivers, sharing, printing..)
* Boot / install / post-install issues (upstart, GRUB*, casper..)
* Video (multi-head, setup, legacy drivers..)

Other teams are focusing on server, cloud, and more. It’s interesting Desktop and “other” areas intersect in what most would generally call “corporate” use of Ubuntu – mass deployments, OEM issues, etc. So we’ve also learned to never underestimate even the tiniest Desktop papercuts

You can see some of the issues and bugs we consider worth knowing before hand in this Delicious bookmarks feed. If you’re interested in contributing to this list, consider using Delicious and tagging with “maverick” and “bug”. We’ve also chosen some more tags representing tasks around them, for example “relnotes” for those issues already in the release notes and “norelnotes” for those without an entry, but which we consider would benefit from being there. Most importantly, please consider filing a bug against the Ubuntu Release Notes project if you feel something should be there to help evaluating going to Ubuntu 10.10.

You will instantly become a better person, I promise.

Back to what we’re doing this week, this is a bit different than most sprints in that we’re not specifically targeting finding a solution for most issues, but rather workarounds or maybe just even making a small note land in the Maverick Technical Overview (which will later become the Release Notes). Given our workflow, we’re also reporting bugs as we go, but I view that mostly as a labor of documenting existing problems, not necessarily advancing their resolution directly – at least not during this week.

So if you have a particular pet peeve that is not in our release notes or Delicious feed, please let me know, I am always interested and curious to share such information.

When you upgrade to Ubuntu after release, or when one of your friends, family or colleagues installs it for the first time, I trust they will like many of the new features or just appreciate finding everything they need in their new Ubuntu installation. I also trust in some cases they will encounter some ...