Rafał Cieślak's questions

I guess we all are very excited about Ubuntu Edge, and hope for the best that the 32 millions will be reached.

I would love to track the progress, but loading and refreshing the fundraiser site is distracting and not really handy.

I am interested in different ways of tracking the money/precentage.

I thought a screenlet desktop widget might be useful here, but I am unsure how to achieve this.

An indicator displaying current % would be ideal, but I guess that requires some more work.

Maybe a simple script that displays a notification whenever a full million is reached could be easy to prepare?

I noticed a peculiar behavior of my Ubuntu 13.04 (although possibly it's also present in previous versions): when my system freezes completely (I do not ask for troubleshooting this) so that even X does not respond to Ctrl+Alt+FX keys, the CapsLock toggle diode on my keyboard blinks (with frequency of ~1Hz), although the system is completely unresponsive.

• What is the cause of this phenomena? Is it caused by some internal kernel mechanisms? Is this specific to Ubuntu (is it caused some custom Ubuntu additional software)? Does it has anything to do with HAL?
• What is the purpose of it?
• Can I customize this behavior on Ubuntu?

This is tricky. I would like to install Ubuntu on a machine that is intended to work as server, and for some reason I do not have an option to connect a screen to it.

I expect this may be similar to remote installation. However, there is currently no OS on that machine, so I will have to set up everything from scratch.

On the other hand, I do have a physical access to that machine. Therefore I can get it to boot from a CD/USB. But that's not enough.

Is there a way to do such installation remotely? Is there a version of Ubuntu image that comes with a SSH server preinstalled, and starts it once booted, so that I can boot the machine with such image, connect to it via SSH and process the installation from a different computer?

If not, what other options do I have?

IRC channels are one of the most significant parts of Ubuntu community infrastructure. However, all Ubuntu channels I've ever met are hosted on irc.freenode.net. What's the point of irc.ubuntu.com? I've seen some users claiming they can be found there... But is that server used at all?

I have written a tiny application for Ubuntu, and it works great. I am interested in cross-compiling it for Windows.

I have installed mingw32 from repository, and it compiles simple files very well. However, the app I want to compile for Windows uses some UNIX specific mechanism - for example it makes use of the sys/socket.h file, and the mingw compiler claims it can't find it.

One solution is to install Cygwin on a Windows machine, and try compiling the application from there, using Cygwin executables. Unfortunately, I don't have access to any Windows machine, as I don't own a copy that system. It would be perfect if I somehow could use Cygwin (with it's libraries and headers) on my Ubuntu to compile an .exe file.

There is no package with it in the repositories. Can anyone give me some on how to use Cygwin on Ubuntu?

As it has been decided, Ubuntu Precise 12.04 will feature Rhythmbox as the default music player. I am aware, that it does not mean that I will not be able to use Banshee, nevertheless I would like to switch to it.

I have been a Rhythmbox fan for a long time, but after the switch to Banshee in Natty I decided to give it a try and completely migrated to it. However, I am not very happy with it, it lags for me a lot and has some other issues.

I would like to export all Banshee data to Rhythmbox. That includes:

• Music library
• Playlists
• Preferably playcounts and ratings
• Radio stations
• Cover pictures

What should I do to move all this data to Rhythmbox, get it to work as the default music player, and smoothly switch completely to it?

Using the Sound Settings window (last tab) I can adjust all applications' audio volume, independently from others. Can I in a similar way adjust their stereo panning?

What exactly I would like to do, is to play music with Banshee or YouTube through the REAR speakers only (I have 5.1 speakers) and my game's sounds through FRONT speakers.

Is that achievable?

The new cool page created by Ubuntu-adverts team http://www.thisisthecountdown.com/ displays a nice counter, and an Ubuntu logo followed by a short motto. It seems, however, that it's not counting down to the Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot release. So what's the time zero, and what is expected to happen when the counter reaches zero?

This cool feature was first told to be included in 10.10. According to this answer, they were postponed to 11.04, but it turned out they have not appeared there. Now we are after feature freeze for 11.10, and still there is no sign of them. So what's up with them?

I haven't heard a word about them for a long time. Is this idea abandoned? Note it was initially the reason for moving the window-ops buttons to the left corner. Or maybe they are under heavy development and soon will be included in 12.04?

I really love the interface at http://pad.ubuntu.com . It seems to be a great notepad when you want to do notes with other people.

However, the main page says 'Ubuntu Developer Summit'. Does it mean it's meant to be used exclusively for UDS? If not, can I use it with my friends, would it be awkward?

Quite often I find myself on edge.launchpad.net instead of the 'usual' launchpad. It looks exactly the same as traditional launchpad, so I wonder if there is any difference. This happens usually when I go to launchpad by clicking a link on a third party website. Somehow people prefer to link to the edge subdomain of launchpad, or at least I have such impression.

So what exactly is the edge.launchpad.net? And why some people prefer it than the usual launchpad.net?

Looking for information I was always redirected to https://help.launchpad.net/LaunchpadReleases and https://help.launchpad.net/BetaTesting , but I didn't find there anything about edge. I guess it may be something like a testing environment, if yes, than how does it differ from staging.launchpad.net and qastaging.launchpad.net?

According to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppReviews the Application Review Process is good both for upstream software developers and Ubuntu packagers. The point seems to be that the upstream developers have the advantage of getting their apps into the Software Center sooner and easier, while they help the Ubuntu package managers by preparing their application for packaging.

This seems to be a great deal. The instruction on wiki states that a developer fulfills some steps listed there, including uploading the application to a PPA, and requests review, and after some time it is reviewed, and accepted & included to Ubuntu repositories, or not accepted at all.

Although this looks like a simple, fair way to quickly add an application to the Software Center, I think I am missing something. I have noticed, that while there are some requests pending, there is no (or barely any) activity there. Everything seems as if it was frozen about 5-6 months ago, and it smells a bit abandoned.

Did I understand anything wrong, and everything is okay (maybe for example they are being reviewed only at the UDS?), or did something change? Could anyone explain me clearly, how exactly this process of reviews (and inclusion in repositories) works?

Some time ago there was available an official Ubuntu derivative named Gobuntu that was using free software only. I think I have not noticed when it was abandoned... Why is it no longer continued?

When I press the X button in Banshee's title bar, it hides, but the music continues playing. However, from time to time I need to quit Banshee completely. How can I do that? (pressing "close" from the menu bar doesn't help)

I know I could go for running killall banshee but that's not an elegant solution. Any other ideas? Is it even possible?

EDIT: After first few answers I noticed I must underline, I do not want to stop the music playback, I do not want to hide Banshee's window. What I want is to quit Banshee totally, in order f.e. to start JACK audio server (and for example restart Banshee).

I listen to music using Rhythmbox. Meanwhile I browse web with Firefox. When a page is loading, I switch tabs or I scroll up-down a site (and sometimes randomly), terrible "cracks" are audible, and I am extremely irritated by them, as they totally mess up the music. Any solutions, or tips how to troubleshoot these sound artifacts?

The Adobe Flash Player has a quite restrictive EULA but it is not presented to the user when he installs it. Isn't the user obliged to accept it, before using it? Maybe some users would refuse using it, if they knew the rules they accept by installing the Flash Player? (I think same problem applies to many software from partner repository, restricted drivers and proprietary or non-free software.)

As a former Windows user I was used to accepting EULA's and other licenses when installing any piece of software, or when installing the whole OS. On Ubuntu it happens extremely rarely (I've met it only once). Is it correct? Ubuntu and most of it's software is under some free-to-use-and-modify license like GNU GPL or something similar, but shouldn't the license be presented to the user?

When my package gets build by launchpad using a recipe, it ignores the ./debian/changelog file I provide, and it generates a useless one like following:

harmonyseq (0.14~natty1) maverick; urgency=low

  * Auto build.
 -- Rafal Cieslak <[email protected]>   Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:56:57 +0000

It would be much better if launchpad stored the list of changes I prepared in the changelog file, rather than just putting "Auto build" there.

How do I force launchpad to use the list of changes from my changelog file, when building packages from a recipe?

The launchpad's beta feature allows to create ubuntu packages using recipes. I got them to work, and I am now able to use them for packaging my project.

However, I have little trouble with the ./debian/changelog file. I need to fill it in with a distribution name ([package name] ([version]) [distribution]; [urgency]). Let's say I put "maverick" there. Then I request a build using the recipe. I choose to build it both for maverick and natty. As the result, the natty package in tha PPA will have it's "distribution" field set to "maverick", which looks invalid (actually, it seems only the changelog will have this incorrect information, but I got aware of that fact, when the notification e-mail I got stated my package was released for natty, but it also said: "Distribution: maverick").

It this OK? I am not even sure whether it is incorrect, but if it is, then how do I use the recipe, to build a package for many ubuntu series, using one changelog file?

I need to write a manual to the software I made. If it possible to use gettext when writing a manual, or other documents?