Archives de catégorie : Ubuntu Planet

Ubuntu, Ubuntu Planet, GNU/Linux

Free those YouTube videos

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Visit http://www.arrakis.es/~rggi3/youtube-dl/, read a bit (includes instructions for Windows users). Download the python script and also install ffmpeg2theora (See #2 at my Drupal Video Guide).

Then:

  1. Visit your favorite YouTube video
  2. Copy the URL to the clipboard
  3. In command line: 
    magicfab@suzy:~$ python youtube-dl.py http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcuF7S3r6gM
Retrieving video webpage... done.
Extracting video URL parameters... done.
Video data found at http://lax-v11.lax.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=PcuF7S3r6gM
Retrieving video data... 1897k of 1897k done.
Video data saved to PcuF7S3r6gM.flv
magicfab@suzy:~$
  4. Convert it (careful, those are TWO dashes before the optimize option): 
    magicfab@suzy:~$ ffmpeg2theora PcuF7S3r6gM.flv ––optimize
Input #0, flv, from 'PcuF7S3r6gM.flv':
  Duration: 00:00:47.3, bitrate: N/A
  Stream #0.0: Audio: mp3, 22050 Hz, mono
  Stream #0.1: Video: flv, yuv420p, 320x262, 25.00 fps(r)
  Resize: 320x262
      0:00:47.33 audio: 36kbps video: 305kbps
magicfab@suzy:~$
  5. An .ogg corresponding file will be created in your current directory.
  6. Profit ?

update: youtube-dl has been packaged since Edgy. Install it using the standard Synaptic package manager or through apt-get in command line, by searching for the youtube-dl package.

usage: youtube-dl [options] video_url
 
Ubuntu Planet, Ubuntu, Annonces, Conférences, Communautaire, GNU/Linux

Live from UDS Sevilla – Tapas, Guadalinex, Specs and Great People

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It’s 3:21 AM and the hotel lobby is dead quiet. Except for the occasional maintenance and reception staff steps, there’s hardly anything I hear.

I’m really happy to be here after a crazy week ! After a long plane trip from Montreal to Madrid, Etienne and I took the metro, then the AVE high speed train to Sevilla and finally arrived to kick start UDS with a talk at Ubucon. My talk in spanish about Canonical’s support services and how they relate to the community got good comments and went very well. Shouts to my colleagues in Montreal holding the fort!

It’s a great opportunity to meet many people I only know by their IRC nicknames 🙂 Unfortunately I am still unable to remember most names and I can just hope everyone remembers to have their badges on the right side ! Seriously, the friendly atmosphere, the fantastic location and the great people just make it impossible to feel anything but good.

Sevilla is not only home to an important history and architecture, and an amazing variety of bars and cafes, with excellent food – tapas anyone ? It’s also where Guadalinex rocks. It’s an Ubuntu-derived distribution that has been deployed to several hundred schools, totaling almost 400 thousand users! I had the opportunity to visit the Junta de Andalucía where the Centro de Gestión Avanzado de Centros TIC hosts a call center fielding technical support calls, remotely controls and monitors, but also provides hardware certification for all schools and educational organizations using Guadalinex. Oh, and hackers are officially part of the organization. During a presentation one slide specifically gave credit to student hackers for helping out with this massive deployment. Several local companies and freelancers, and also other coming from the Canary Islands partner with local governments to make all this possible. They are great local guides too 🙂

I am working on several specs at UDS, and my job as a support analyst is to attend and contribute to other’s work in easy X configuration tools, Ubuntu server tools, supported packages policy, and many others.

I was particularly both nervous and happy to attend the spec about Ubuntu Planet Editorial Policy. A few minutes after it started Mark Shuttleworth joined us and just as in other sessions it just felt as if he was « just another participant ». It’s nice to see many good things happening from a bad decision on my part when I disclosed information I shouldn’t have. Explaining all the bad consequences of such disclosures on a Planet site is really difficult, but there are many. I think the recent changes and this revised policy will help a lot the Ubuntu members that are Canonical employees (and of course those who are not) have guidelines to prevent futures mishaps.

Tonight we decided to stay close to the hotel, I went out with two colleagues for a good meal and nice walk. It still feels strange to be here and be surrounded by so many people that are working directly or indirectly on almost every piece of software I am using on my computer right now. I guess it’s time to go to bed now that the Bery/Compiz hackers have decided they would stop fine tuning features and building whatever code they were working on all night since I sat here 7 hours ago 🙂 Stay tuned for another update.

Here’s a few pictures I was able to upload tonight.

 
Ubuntu, Ubuntu Planet, Annonces, Conférences, GNU/Linux

Support goes to UDS-Sevilla

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Since I joined Canonical as a support analyst last November this is going to be my first Ubuntu Developer Summit as an « insider ». We’re going to Spain! I am all excited because this reminds me of Ubuntu Below Zero which took place in Montreal… 2 years ago! Etienne Goyer and I will be representing the brave souls from support, hopefully I’ll be useful in other areas than spanish translation 🙂

Here are a few specs we may be participating in:

I’d be interested in hearing any feedback anyone would have in terms of support for us to bring there and work on. We’ll be primarily attending to share our experience when providing support to actual customers, learn about and contribute to specs related to different aspects of support, and if time permits some other pet peeves 😉 Asterisk support is something I’d really love to contribute to, and Etienne’s rapidly improving packaging skills may help a lot in getting this further – he packaged SugarCRM and participated in the review process for VMWare server, Opera and DB2.

Check out the UDS-Sevilla Ubuntu Wiki for more (upcoming) details.

 
Ubuntu Planet, Ubuntu, Conférences, GNU/Linux

Colombian Team rocking at FLISOL 2007

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As you may have noticed, the Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre or Free/Open Source Software Latin-American Installfest is taking over the place this coming Saturday April 28th. Many people will be organizing and attending local events in Colombia.

I have been helping the Ubuntu Colombian LoCo Team becoming an official team (yes, from Montreal!) and I think it’s coming along nicely. There’s been very active discussions on the mailing list about the ethics vs. convenience of supporting and providing proprietary drivers support, different support issues, and of course… where to get Ubuntu labels and the obligatory voting to choose a logo!

Some Colombian Team members like Elkin Botero will be traveling quite a bit to talk about Ubuntu and spread some love, in fact the team will be present in 6 cities no less! Check the Colombian Team Flisol 2007 wiki page for all the details.

I wish all the participants across Latin America a good, friendly & productive day !

 
Ubuntu Planet, Ubuntu, GNU/Linux

Crash course on commercial and free Ubuntu support

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I am putting together information that will be included in the official Ubuntu Certified Professional training material, and I thought it would be interesting to make my initial draft available here. Most of this information is already public, while some of it is derived from existing references, such as the Ubuntu releases lifecycles. I like to call this a crash course about support options available for Ubuntu, so if anyone reading this feels there are things that are badly missing, just comment and I’ll gladly revise it – or dig it.

Commercial Support

Canonical Global Support Services are deployed to enable 24×7 support infrastructure. Support requests are handled through telephone and the web. Canonical offers three types of production support: Desktop, Server and Thin Client/Cluster Support.

Canonical Ltd. provides various levels of commercial support for packages in the “main” component, including the Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu releases. Support can also be obtained from a growing network of companies and partners that are listed in the Canonical Marketplace at :
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/commercial/marketplace

Free community support

A range of free support options are also available from the Ubuntu Community, including forums, IRC channels and mailing lists. The Ubuntu Local Community Teams provide multi-language community support. For more details please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/support

Support lifecycles for Ubuntu releases

Ubuntu desktop and server releases are issued every six months, providing versions including feature and security updates of all applications. Each Ubuntu release is supported and includes free security updates for at least 18 months on the desktop and server.

With the Long Term Support (LTS) version the support lifecycle is extended to three years on the desktop, and five years on the server. Ubuntu versioning is based on year and month of a specific release, ie, 7.04 is for the April 2007 release.

Note: Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is considered to be the same as Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS when updated.

Detailed release announcements are posted on the ubuntu-announce mailing list at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/

Updates policy and stable release updates

Once an Ubuntu release has been completed and published, updates for it are only released under certain circumstances, and must follow a special procedure. Most notably, security updates are backported and feature updates are not available until the next stable release.

Stable release updates (SRU) are automatically recommended to a very large number of users, and so it is critically important to treat them with great caution. Therefore, when updates are proposed, they must be accompanied by a strong rationale and present a low risk of regressions. This includes any community-proposed updates or bugs escalated from commercial support customers.

Free security updates are included for at least 18 months on the desktop and server. With the Long Term Support (LTS) version you get three years support on the desktop, and five years on the server. There is no extra fee for the LTS version, all Ubuntu editions are available on the same free terms. Upgrades to new versions of Ubuntu are also free of charge.

Ubuntu components

The Ubuntu software repository contains thousands of software packages organized into five components, on the basis of the level of support we can offer them, and whether or not they comply with our Free Software Philosophy. The components are called « main », « restricted », « universe », « multiverse » and commercial.

The standard Ubuntu installation is a subset of software available from the main and restricted components. You can install additional software using installation software such as Synaptic Package Manager or Aptitude. Other components are added by editing the /etc/apt/sources.list file. See « man sources.list » for more information on editing the sources.list file.

Supported packages

There are several CD and DVD versions of Ubuntu available. All versions are basically a selection of specific packages put together on the same media for convenience. Packages that are included are organized by groups called Seeds. There are seven primary seeds:

  1. Minimal
  2. Boot
  3. Standard
  4. Desktop
  5. Ship
  6. Live
  7. and Supported

The minimal, boot, standard, desktop, and either ship or live seeds go onto our CDs and the “Supported” packages are available from the FTP site. “Supported” in this context means any needed packages that other packages depend on but can’t fit on the CD/DVD.. Seeding a package pulls all of its dependencies into the appropriate part of the archive and ensures everything needed to build that package is at least placed in “Supported”.

You can view the current seeds and the current full list of packages for them at:
http://www.ubuntu.com/support