I knew there was a Gobby server in Ubuntu but didn’t know it was this easy to setup. I quickly found out about Gobby-Infinote (Gobby using the new Infinote protocol) and Infinoted (server). It was really nice to be able to go to the #infinote channel on Freenode and ask questions one-on-one to the actual developpers and validate my tests! Thank you!

From Gobby’s website:

Gobby is a free collaborative editor supporting multiple documents in one session and a multi-user chat. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-like platforms.

I performed my tests on an Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit desktop.

1. On all client systems, install the gobby-infinote package
2. Then on the server system, install the infinoted package
3. Once the server is installed, either:

• If you trust your local network and don’t want any security, launch the server using:

  infinoted --security-policy=no-tls

  or

• If you’d rather have encryption, TLS is available. Use:

  infinoted --create-key --create-certificate -k key.pem  -c cert.pem

The keys creation is automatic, and you can launch the server just using:

infinoted -k key.pem  -c cert.pem

You can also specify such options in ~/.config/infinoted.conf as noted on Infinoted’s wiki (which I plan to update with some of my notes). I am not sure yet what’s best to start the server automatically at system’s startup, I am told upstart should handle this. I’ll probably file a bug or investigate that further later.

Of course your server system can be a desktop, and you can run Gobby from that same system. Once installed clients should go to Accessories > Internet > Gobby Collaborative Editor (0.5).

You will also need to install avahi-daemon so the Infinote Gobby server availability is advertised through your local network and it’s shown among possible choices in your Gobby clients.

If you have setup TLS and you double click one of the available servers that use it, you will be presented a warning as you have a self-signed certificate:

The “other” Gobby in Ubuntu is a previous, stable version (package: gobby). Its server companion, sobby, is not the focus of current development efforts.

The main differences I found are:

• Optional TLS encryption
• Undo ability (which required rewriting the sync protocol)
• Interface improvements
• Ability to delete files
• Folder hierarchy creation now possible
• Graceful recovery & offer to save when the server “disappears” or when someone deletes a file
• Zeroconf support – so the server “advertises” itself on a LAN, no more IP/port info needed

The current client version in Karmic is 0.4.92 but 0.4.93 is already in Lucid and 0.4.94 is looing up.

Find out more here:

• Infinoted
• Gobby 0.4.93 announcement last December
• The Infinote protocol

Rogers Canada really sucks. It’s really a pitty they were the first to introduce Android devices in Canada. Fortunately now other companies also offer them. I hope Rogers never sells Android devices anymore to anyone.

I just found out 85% of online users agree with me. Now I feel like I am part of a big dysfunctional family.

I am doing my best so 100% of possible Rogers customers (and others too) all know their rates, customer service and technical service suck to no end.

I am so fed up with them I won’t bother explaining why they suck. The above links should provide ample accurate, complete historical data.

Of course there’s a dedicated Rogers Sucks Facebook group.

Enfin presque tous. Ça prends Windows ou Mac. Pardon ?

Les utilisateurs d’Ubuntu se sont rapidement rendu compte que le site n’affichait qu’un carré noir à la place des vidéos. Sur la FAQ de tou.tv, aucune mention de Linux. Rien! Sur la liste de discussion d’Ubuntu Québec, groupe d’utilisateurs de cette distribution Linux, les esprits se sont vite enflammés. C’est que ce n’est pas la première fois que Radio-Canada commet cette bévue. Et non, on n’est plus “seulement 1% d’utilisateurs d’ordinateurs”.

Le format Flash choisit n’est pas l’idéal pour les utilisateurs Linux. L’idéal serait une solution basée sur des formats libres. Le format Flash est une forme de contrôle des drois numériques (les DRM pour ses sigles en anglais), mais bon, on se compte presque chanceux que la technologie Silverlight de Microsoft ait été abandonnée. Une multitudes de web-télé privées et publiques fonctionnent en Flash sous Linux, il suffisait donc de tester et s’assurer que ça fonctionnerait.

Non, l’équipe technique vit apparemment sous une roche depuis plusieurs années. Même leurs réponses “cannées” aux incidents techniques signalés par des membres d’Ubuntu Québec et par FACIL n’ont pas changé. Et l’Ombudsman de Radio-Canada, lui, réponds que ce n’est pas ses affaires les choix techniques de celle-ci. C’est quand même nos taxes non ?

UPDATE: ATTENTION – CE CORRECTIF N’EST PLUS NÉCESSAIRE, LE SITE TOU.TV AYANT ÉTÉ CORRIGÉ SUITE À LA PRESSION EXERCÉE PAR NOTRE GROUPE. MERCI!

Bref, j’ai suggéré la création d’un groupe Facebook, ce qui a été fait assez rapidement (merci à Martin Bureau). 24h et presque 300 membres plus tard, Patrick St-Onge a trouvé le petit bout de code qui a provoquée cette tempête. Une ligne qui était en commentaire.

Je vous épargne les détails. Je suis encore un peu étourdi par cette trouvaille!

Comment on peut expliquer ça en 2010 ? C’est si insignifiant qu’ils pourront dire que c’est un simple oubli.

Je savais qu’avec GreaseMonkey on pourrait enlever ledit commentaire, j’ai donc immédiatement invité quiconque lirait le commentaire de Patrick dans le groupe à venir me rejoindre sur le canal de chat IRC de FACIL. Deux personnes ont répondu, ggrz et VanBrooken (de par leur surnom sur IRC). Pour faire une histoire courte, heureusement, ggrz a fourni le script (le mien étant trop pourri ) et VanBrooken et moi l’avons testé. Il y a certainement mieux comme solution mais pour l’instant celle-ci semble “faire la job”. On a constaté par exemple qu’il manque les barres pour choisir la qualité… Étant donné que l’auteur original l’a publié en “public domain”, nous pouvons en faire ce que nous en voulons.

La solution

Vous devez avoir:

• Firefox
• GreaseMonkey

J’ai testé avec FF 3.5.7 et Greasemonkey 0.8.20091209.4. Comme j’ai indiqué plus haut deux autres personnes (l’auteur et une autre) ont confirmé que ça fonctionnait.

UPDATE: ATTENTION – CE CORRECTIF N’EST PLUS NÉCESSAIRE, LE SITE TOU.TV AYANT ÉTÉ CORRIGÉ SUITE À LA PRESSION EXERCÉE PAR NOTRE GROUPE. MERCI!

Une fois GreaseMonkey installé, après redémarrer Firefox:

1) Ouvrez le site tou.tv
2) Allez sur Tools > Grease Monkey > New user Script
3) Remplissez les champs comme suit:

Name: toutv-linux
Namespace: http://www.toutv.com/greasemonkey
Description: Script pour visionner toutv sous LInux
Includes: http://tou.tv/* (ceci devrait déjà être là si vous avez ouvert tou.tv)
Excludes: (laisser ce champ vide)

4) Cliquez OK
5) Allez sur Tools > Grease Monkey > Manage User Scripts. Le script (vide pour l’instant) devrait y être. Choisissez-le (un click)
6) Cliquez Edit (en bas, à gauche)
7) Si on vous demande pour un éditeur de texte, entrez /usr/bin/gedit
Ajoutez à la fin du document présenté ceci:


(function() {

window.addEventListener(“load”, function(e) {
var player = document.getElementById(“playerDiv”);
if(player) {
var content = player.innerHTML;
content = content.replace(“flashvars=\”", “flashvars=\”releaseURL=” + unsafeWindow.toutv.getRelease() + “&”);
player.innerHTML = content;
}
}, false);
})();

C’est aussi disponible ici et ici. Attention aux sauts de ligne! Chaque ligne termine par un “;”.

9) Sauvegardez le document
10) Re-chargez la page tou.tv, naviguez les émissions
11) Enjoy

Attention étant donné que le site est tout récent il est possible que les délais habituels vous empêchent de visionner le contenu. Soyez patients!

Merci encore à Patrick St-Onge et aux deux anonymes qui ont répondu à mon invitation sur IRC: ggrz qui a fournit le script final en GreaseMonkey et VanBrooken qui a testé et confirmé la solution. Merci aussi aux presque 300 personnes qui se sont jointes au groupe Facebook et qui ont contribué à sa visibilité.

UPDATE: ATTENTION – CE CORRECTIF N’EST PLUS NÉCESSAIRE, LE SITE TOU.TV AYANT ÉTÉ CORRIGÉ SUITE À LA PRESSION EXERCÉE PAR NOTRE GROUPE. MERCI!

Maintenant qu’on sait que ça fonctionne avec du Flash, il faut bien continuer et exiger que ça soit disponible en format libre, ça sera un autre combat. FACIL en discutera à son prochain conseil d’administration, il est important de devenir membre ou de faire un don si cette cause vous tient à coeur. FACIL est une association à but non lucratif qui fait la promotion de l’informatique libre au Québec. FACIL organise ou participe à plusieurs autres activités au sujet des logiciels libres et des standards ouverts.

Pour ceux qui pensent que je suis extrémiste ou dans une minorité de Fanboy (deux noms auxquels j’ai eu droit dans cette histoire), je vous laisse quelques mots clés pour vous informer: DRM, Ogg Theora, HTML5, YouTube.

I guess now Elvira is up next for membership approval

I’d also want to welcome the following members who were approved yesterday at the same time:

• José Ernesto Dávila (León, Nicaragua)
• Jesse N. Richardson (Iowa, USA)
• Sergio Meneses (Cúcuta, Colombia)
• Victor Vargas (Chile)
• Cristian Baraona (Chile)
• Jamal Fanaian (Florida, USA)

I am particularly proud of the steady progress the Colombian team is making into encouraging its members to apply for Ubuntu membership. Go Sergio! Felicitaciones!

The meeting log is always interesting to review for aspiring members.

Those of you wondering how to help Haiti relief efforts with your knowledge and time (or money) can take a look at the following projects:

• Haiti OpenStreeMap response – this blog post illustrates nicely how open & free data is helping
• Sahana Free and Open Source Disaster Management System – name says it all, this is hardly a new project. Check out the wiki and join the IRC channel. Yes, they use Launchpad.
• Telecom sans Frontières – perhaps offer to volunteer there or make a donation
• SMS donations are very easy to do – and surprisingly effective it seems
• Last but not least check your local civil emergency authorities. In Quebec province anyone can join a local database of volunteers ready to offer their time & expertise to help, on site, or from Quebec, when such requirement is deemed appropriate.

Remember there are many ways you can help in the above projects & efforts, without necessarily limiting that to money or physical presence.

Wiki cleanup, documentation, translation, or even just advertising any of the above projects in your social networks may go a long way.

Have a nice weekend!

The Ubuntu Users Day will also be held in Spanish! Diego and his team invited me to host a session and I gladly accepted to host the same I will be doing in English. My deepest appreciation to Pablo Rubianes who started this initiative for the Spanish Ubuntu users.

I’ll be teaching / chatting / taking questions about how to best choose your hardware so it works with Ubuntu. It’s on January 23rd, save the date!

“Support” includes of course going through help requests we get over the phone or via Landscape, escalating bugs and working with developers to deliver fixes for our customers (and to Ubuntu public updates), but also helping other colleagues within Canonical (a benefit for all staff), review and write technical documentation, help with training, playing with some awesome hardware I can’t quite blog about and more… including coming to UDS and raise our issues while catching up with what’s going on in the Ubuntu galaxy.

We’re extremely lucky we are at freedom to chose how and where we participate in UDS. I personally consider it to be 50% social, 50% technical. There are some obvious places where it’s easy to jump in (such as Tools for better X.org bug triaging and diagnosis), because they are closely related to our troubleshooting process and how we approach problems. Others are not as easy to spot. Going together to a shooting range sure beats many bonding exercises I’ve attended before. You learn a thing or two about the great community folks and about your colleagues in-between shots As a side note, I have to say although I don’t particularly understand the reason fire arms exist, this is one of those things I wanted to try.

Another interesting, unique experience is meeting our actual customers at support! You know who you are! It’s a bit crazy and it feels like it’s the Academy Awards – an expression Jono used this morning much to our enjoyment – and we’ve won a prize consisting of meeting face-to-face. I also see quite a bit of Québécois here which I am very proud of, as I am a Colombian living in Québec for 20 years now. And of course sabdfl is still very much part of UDS, not only for the obvious reasons but because you’ll actually see him busy at his keyboard and getting into many sessions giving his opinion and participating in lively discussions.

My first day at UDS started with the plenary, where Jono presented the seven tracks UDS follows, giving the opportunity to all ~300 participants to know the differents team leads and what their people do. Mark Shuttleworth also spoke about Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and how those three letters make it special in its very own way. We all have a lot of work ahead. I liked it a lot when Jono said this event consisted of one-hour chunks and we needed to make the most of every single one of those chunks. And stealing everyones’ hearts or something to that effect!

Then started the actual meat of this event. Here are the sessions and activities I was part of today:

• Ubuntu Foundations team roundtable, where I learned a bit more about services and their management
• Meeting with a few customers and gathering their goals and objectives for the week
• Catching up on all the free, open source community fun & positive gossip
• Sharing mneptok’s hilarious and irreverent jokes
• How to Run a Good Session, Software Center Roadmap and Opportunistic Programmer plenaries
• Server usability papercuts
• Requirements for Update and Upgrade Experiences
• Landscape for Lucid

Back to back, it’s lots of talking, listening, agreeing and disagreeing, documenting, chatting, introductions, translating and catching up to do. It’s also useful to keep up with regular email. All incredibly useful & productive, if a bit intense. I tried to leave a trail of it on my micro-blogging backyard like others at http://identi.ca/tag/uds.

The day ended at the firing range as I mentioned before, followed by some relaxing time at the lobby and watching some TV while preparing this post. I hear we’ll have interesting visitors tomorrow, can’t wait! Until then, I can’t repeat enough – Thank You Canonical !

Yesterday my pre-UDS day kicked off at the Festival del Tamal that was happening right across our hotel. From Wikipedia,

“The terms Chicano and Chicana (also spelled Xicana) were originally used by, and in reference to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. The term began to be widely used during the Chicano Movement mainly amongst Mexican Americans, especially in the movement’s peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The self-identify term Chicano is still of popular usage today. [1]“

I initially thought “mhh Latinos… there must be food”. I knew tamales where a key component of Latin American food but I’ve never ever seen so many people lined up to get their piece of it! There must have been a few thousand people and I truly felt I was in Mejico, not in the U.S. as I typically imagine them and see them in the news. But as we cruised the venue I also noticed a lot of stands and kiosks offering help & services for landing immigrants, and NGOs of all types and origins. We felt the strange contrast of a huge happy family reunion and people struggling to just make it- while keeping a huge smile.

Going into my third year at Canonical in a few days, I still feel the same excitement and anticipation about spending a whole week (and then a bit more) having 100% one-to-one bandwidth with many of the essential individuals that are the driving force behind our favorite operating system – and freedom culture evangelization tool. After a few tamales and being immersed in this huge latino crowd I couldn’t help but see some parallels between the Chicano social liberation struggle and the Free Software movement.

I even got a TShirt from this nice gentleman who kindly explained to me why there was a Chicano Activist Convention a few months ago right here in Tejaztlán. They have these student groups called Mechas who meet regularly and discuss and further issues they face daily (and have for a few decades now). “Wow,” I thought to myself..”this is kinda like our LoCo teams and Bug#1!”. Except on a very different social (and technical) scale, of course. Here, meet the Mecha of Tejaztlán group.

Aztlán, by the way, “is the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica. “Aztec” is the Nahuatl word for “people from Aztlan.”[2].  So you can see a bit of where the Tejaztlán word came from.

He looked at me with a “where the hell have you been” face, but was nice anyways, as my Latino looks couldn’t get him through the notion I was completely ignorant of the Chicano movement to the extent I still thought yesterday it meant “any Mexican in the US” when in fact it means a lot more. I remembered how patient and welcoming we must be to every person that is new to Ubuntu and I felt welcome to further my knowledge and fix their Bug #1.

Going back to the hotel I thought I’d wear the Tshirt on my first day at UDS, if only to honor this land that welcomes us, and in a way, knows what we are up to this week. I am hoping to meet members of the Ubuntu Texas Team and perhaps they’ll help me better understand their very own ecosystem, and if I was wrong in any of my first impressions at my pre-UDS kickoff day, it wouldn’t be my first time. I love being in that position, and having the ensuing discussions, specially when they revolve about Freedom.

Oh, and if you have any Apple hardware, please know I will be nice to you anyways, I don’t hate Apple or you – buy me a beer and we can have that discussion too

And I won’t be the only one

All details can be found on the Quebec Team Ubuntu Global Jam page.

Where:

École de technologie supérieure (http://www.etsmtl.ca/)
1100 rue Notre-Dame Ouest
Salles/Rooms A-1300 & A-1238

When:

Friday Oct 2- Sunday Oct. 4 (check the Quebec Team Ubuntu Global Jam page for full schedule info)

See you there!

Putting a full working Ubuntu install on a USB key and linking to an existing home directory may be the closest to an actual full-upgrade: it doesn’t touch your hard disk (so no need to reverse any changes). Well, mostly. For example if you use Firefox, a new version will upgrade extensions, etc.

One of my colleagues, Shang Wu, has put together a little script to automate this setup, and a basic document on how to install Ubuntu on a stick to test Karmic as I described, see: Testing Ubuntu Beta Releases off a USB stick. Please do read the code before executing it in one of your systems

If anyone has comments or suggestions for this script or if you have better recipes to let existing Ubuntu users test/try future releases, I’d like to hear about it.