Re: [Feature Request] [RoF] Ubuntu Desktop - Inclusion of mdadm for RAID

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Jeffrey Lane wrote on 22/04/2020 3:46 pm:
>…
> I can confirm that Ubiquity in Focal does not provide any means to
> create a software RAID setup.
> 
> Moreover, while it at least has some LVM ability, it does not provide
> the ability to create an LVM setup across multiple disks.
>…

In June-July 2012, I designed how Ubiquity could present RAID and
arbitrary LVMs. Unfortunately no-one has had time to implement either of
those features yet.

RAID:


LVM:


> Unfortunately, this is not going to happen for Focal it's WAY too late
> to make feature requests, that should have been done early on in the
> cycle.
> Renzo  could you please file a bug against 'ubiquity' requesting this
> support be added into the desktop installer?
>…

Lack of RAID has been reported as a bug several times.


And there are a few relevant bug reports for LVM.





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Re: First boot animation can't be muted

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Hello Simon

Simon Guilliams wrote on 02/06/2019 3:31 pm:
>…
> I am working full time in a _silent_ openspace. I was installing
> ubuntu and luckily I knew in advance that the animation would pop up
> with sound that you can't mute.
>…
> The animation is great... but really, the animation sound should at
> least be mute-able! The volume keys on the keyboard are ignored and I
> feel this is actually a bug. The animation is not skippable either.
>…
> What do you think about it?
> Is this ok for a bug report?
>…

I suggest two separate bug reports — one about the volume keys, and one
about the animation not being skippable. Those two issues would probably
be fixed by separate code changes, by different people, at different times.

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Re: A problem with licenses

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Hello Tommi

Tommi Höynälänmaa wrote on 05/06/18 13:38:
> 
> I have published some software under GNU GPL and LGPL. However, when I
> open the Debian packages with Ubuntu Software Installation (18.04) the
> application claims that the software is proprietary. How can I fix this?
>…

Please report a bug on gnome-software:


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Re: Software installation on modern Ubuntu

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Colin Law wrote on 26/08/17 18:21:
>…
> OK, I see where you are coming from. It never occurred to me that
> anyone wanting to install libgtk2.0-dev, or similar, would want to use
> a GUI. I assumed everyone used apt for that.  Obviously I am wrong.
>…

Fonts are a clear example of packages that aren’t applications, but that
are much more pleasant to install with a GUI, since it can show you what
they look like.

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Re: Software installation on modern Ubuntu

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Nrbrtx wrote on 24/08/17 01:33:
>…
> As far I can understand here were two methods of software
> installation:
> 1. apt (apt-get), dpkg, aptitude - for advanced users
> 2. synaptic and Ubuntu software-center - for newbies.

Synaptic is fine for what it is, but it is not even close to being “for
newbies”. It doesn’t show the real name of any app (unless the name
happens to be mentioned in the description), it doesn’t show reviews or
recommendations, it doesn’t show screenshots until you click a “Get
Screenshot” button each time, and it prominently displays propellerhead
jargon like “multiverse”, “Mark All Upgrades”, and “Get Changelog”.

> Nowadays gnome-software and mate-welcome were added to the newbies'
> list. But they have very small lists of software.
> Ubuntu software-center was great, but its development was dropped.
> 
> What we have as result?
> 
> There is only one mature and functional software manager. It is named
> *Synaptic*. But ... it works very strange. I talk about Ubuntu 16.04.3
> LTS (!) here. I do not know why you migrated apt-xapian-index to
> Python3. This migration is incomplete and buggy (see bug 1612948

apt-xapian-index was ported to Python 3 because it was one of the tasks
necessary for porting Unity to Python 3.


It was also one of the tasks necessary for porting Ubuntu Software
Center to Python 3. Unfortunately other parts of that project were not
completed.

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Re: Mirror sites should be only available via HTTPS

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Erdos Pal wrote on 05/01/17 06:29:
>
> Hello,
>  
> is there a policy (or in planning) that the Mirror sites for Ubuntu
> related softwares should be only available via HTTPS?
> 
> It is 2017 and there is Let's Encrypt.
>…

I reported this in 2014, and mentioned the Let’s Encrypt possibility in
2016. 

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Re: Ubuntu should warn the user if he tries to shutdown or suspend during installation of updates / upgrades

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

sdfjsfjaei...@yahoo.de wrote on 21/07/16 12:36:
>…
> As the title says, I think Ubuntu should warn the user if he/she tries
> to shutdown or suspend during installation of updates / upgrades.
>…

This is “Software installation or update doesn't block session exit”
.

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Re: The Simple Things in Life

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

John Moser wrote on 19/07/16 22:48:
>…
> I've been repeatedly distressed and confused by this hidden boot
> process.  I've sat and waited at blank screens and splashes that give
> no feedback, wondering if the kernel is hanging at initializing a
> driver, trying to find network, or making decisions about a disk.
> There is no standard flow which can be disrupted with a new, non-error
> status message curtly explaining that something is happening and all
> is well; there is a standard flow in which the machine displays a
> blank, meaningless state for a fixed amount of time, and deviation in
> that time by any more than a few tenths of a second gives the
> immediate, gut-wrenching feeling that the system has hanged during
> boot and is terminally broken in some mysterious and
> completely-unknown manner.

You can press Esc to see the startup messages so far. But that works
only for people who know about it. And if your PC won’t start up,
showing *all* the text is a poor way of communicating what’s stuck. It
doesn’t tell someone what to say, for example, when phoning their techie
friend/relative for help. “The screen’s gone black and it’s full of
writing.”

> What Ubuntu needs most is a simple, non-buried toggle option to show
> the boot process--including displaying the bootloader, displaying the
> kernel load messages, and listing which services are loading and
> already-loaded during the graphical boot.

The current graphical startup, and showing all the startup messages, are
two extremes of communication. A setting to choose between those
extremes wouldn’t stop them from being extremes.

When displaying progress of a task, a good rule of thumb is: it should
look different at least every few seconds, but text shouldn’t change
faster than people can read it.

The looping startup animation fails the first part of the rule, because
it looks identical now to how it did ~4 seconds ago and ~4 seconds
before that.

And showing all the startup messages would fail the second part of the
rule, because usually they’re too fast for most people to read. (Not to
mention that most of those messages are not written with end users in mind.)

Ubuntu does a decent job of this when checking a disk during startup.
It’s something that will make the startup take much longer than usual,
so steadily-changing text appears together with the usual graphics.

This technique could be extended to the rest of the startup. Instead of
the dots, show a determinate progress bar (that is, one that fills up).
In addition, *if* the progress bar hasn’t moved at all in the past ~5
seconds, show the most recent startup message below it.

>   Ubuntu's best current
> feature is the Recovery boot mode, aside from not having a setting to
> make this the standard boot mode sans the recovery prompt.

I expect most people would rate a Web browser or a file manager as a
better feature than a Recovery boot mode.

>…
> Even Android displays a count of system assemblies AOT cached during
> boots after update so as to convey to the user that something is
> indeed happening.

A roughly equivalent bug for Ubuntu Touch is “hook into system-image
updates to precompile policy prior to reboot”
.

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Re: Caffeine enabled by defect on Ubuntu 16.04

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Martinx - ジェームズ wrote on 23/02/16 06:47:
> ...
> 
> On 22 February 2016 at 07:20, Matthew Paul Thomas
>> 
>> Ramon Marquez wrote on 16/02/16 19:42:
>>> 
>>> Caffeine is a package very important cause inhibits the screen 
>>> for playing videos on the web browsers. Actually is offered on 
>>> the main repository of Ubuntu 16.04 but disabled by default. I 
>>> think that Caffeine It should be enabled by default.
>> 
>> Fortunately, there is a much less bureaucratic and more reliable 
>> solution: the Web browser itself can tell Ubuntu to inhibit the 
>> screensaver.
> 
> This is also, very interesting! Seems to be a good solution, and 
> maybe more reliable...
> 
> However, it also seems odd to tell everysingle program out there, 
> to make a change, while Ubuntu can do this just once, in one
> place, for everything. Right?
> 
> ...

Ubuntu doesn’t have enough information to do this without instruction
from apps.

For example, a game’s menu screen, or a DVD’s menu screen, might
include a video looping in the background. If you leave either of
those screens for long enough, the screensaver should still activate,
because the video is not something the user will actively be watching.
(Especially if you fell asleep while watching the DVD, before it
returned to the menu screen.) Ubuntu can’t know this, because it
doesn’t know the purpose of the video. Only the app does.

Now, those kinds of video are the minority. So maybe it would have
made sense for the video frameworks to have the opposite default —
saying to apps, “I’ll inhibit the screensaver while playing, unless
you tell me otherwise”. But they didn’t, so app developers have to
remember more often. But at least that is far, far more reliable than
the Caffeine approach of expecting the user to remember to turn it on
and off (and be awake to turn it off) every time.

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Re: Caffeine enabled by defect on Ubuntu 16.04

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Ramon Marquez wrote on 16/02/16 19:42:
> 
> Caffeine is a package very important cause inhibits the screen for 
> playing videos on the web browsers. Actually is offered on the
> main repository of Ubuntu 16.04 but disabled by default. I think
> that Caffeine It should be enabled by default.
> 
> ...

Fortunately, there is a much less bureaucratic and more reliable
solution: the Web browser itself can tell Ubuntu to inhibit the
screensaver.

This was implemented, for example, in VLC in 2013.


And in Firefox in 2014.


If it isn’t working for you with a particular Web browser playing a
particular type of video, please report a bug for that Web browser,
with exact steps to reproduce the problem.

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Re: Disabling deb-src by default

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Usama Akkad wrote on 28/01/16 08:38:
> 
> Source packages are enabled by default. I've commented the deb-src 
> line from my sources.list file and that saved the update servers
> 16 hit (out of 87) when doing apt-get update One of the package for
> the sources of the universe repository was 7 MB.
> 
> ...

"Default sources.list file has source packages enabled by default"


Maybe someone will fix this bug before its tenth birthday.

I've catalogued other ways to speed up software updates.


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Re: Proposal: Move Default Application Settings

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Lars Kumbier wrote on 20/01/16 08:42:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> currently, the settings for the "Default Application" are located 
> in "System Settings > Information > Default Applications", same as 
> the "Removal Media" settings.
> 
> I would not have guessed to find any settings behind a page called 
> "Information" at all when Unity was introduced and I believe, that 
> new users are struggling with that missing logic as well.

I guess by "Information" you mean "Details". (At least, that's what it
is in English in 14.04 and 15.10.)

Either way, though, yes, that panel is a junk drawer and System
Settings would be better off without it.

"Overview" would be more coherent as a standalone "About This
Computer" window. 

And "Legal Notice" would be more relevant as a dialog accessed from an
unobtrusive "ℹ" or similar button in the corner of the Dash itself.

> I propose to change the location of the "Default Application" 
> settings and the "Removal Media" settings to something more 
> suitable. The "Default Applications" setting would be better
> suited in the "Applications & Updates" page at first glance.

It's "Software & Updates", and I doubt many people would expect to
find default app settings there. That panel is about where Ubuntu
Software Center, Software Updater etc look for software and how they
behave.

Instead, I suggest combining "Default Applications" and "Removable
Media" into a single panel labelled "Apps & Devices" or similar.

> However, since both settings are bound to the user account, maybe
> a new page / icon in the "Personal" section of the system settings 
> would be better suited.
> 
> ...

"Personal" is not the same as "bound to the user account". For
example, accessibility settings and (currently) backups are bound to
the user account, but they are in "System". The categorization is
about how users think of the settings, not about whether they happen
to be user-account-specific.

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Re: Feature request: "Restart to ..." option

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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No one wrote on 02/11/15 12:09:
> ...
> 
> This feature would parse the entries in /boot/grub/grub.cfg, and
> list them in a menu called "Restart to...", next to Shutdown,
> Restart, Suspend, etc. So you could for example choose "Restart to
> Ubuntu 14.04 LTS" or whatever. After rebooting, the GRUB menu would
> be skipped and the chosen option would be loaded directly.

I designed something similar a couple of years ago.



I optimized for dual-booting, including only a button for restarting
into one other system. But if there are three or more systems, it
could be a combo button, with a menu listing the other options.

Ubuntu Light -- not the Ubuntu Light font, not the Ubuntu Light
themes, but the 2010-vintage Ubuntu Light "instant-on" environment --
included a "Restart Into Windows" button in its launcher.

So code exists to do this, somewhere.

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Re: Getting ubuntu iso securely

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Rune Schjellerup Philosof wrote on 11/09/15 07:48:
> 
> I am puzzled by the absence of a secure method of downloading the 
> ubuntu iso images. www.ubuntu.com is not served over https and 
> neither is releases.ubuntu.com.

I reported this as a bug in May. 

> None of the mirrors are using https.

This is a hard problem, because the mirrors are provided by
volunteers.  Requiring them to use
HTTPS would be an extra burden.

> I know that there are md5sum files and they are gpg signed as well.
> And if you search for it you might find 
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VerifyIsoHowto. But on 
> www.ubuntu.com there are no instructions reminding you to verify 
> the download.

Others in this thread have discussed various ways to make the md5sums
more prominent. But there are multiple problems with this approach.

No matter what we did, some people wouldn't see them or understand the
point. So they wouldn't protect everyone like HTTPS would.

Even if you did see and understand, you're probably on Windows, and if
you are, checking an md5sum requires downloading extra software.

Regardless of platform, the software usually runs on the command line,
which is off-putting.

Some graphical md5sum utilities are available, but most of them seem
to be downloadable only over HTTP, defeating the point. (If you're
willing+able to fake an Ubuntu download, you're willing+able to fake
an md5sum checker download too.)

Even if you find and learn the necessary software, then (as Ralf
Maldorf pointed out) the process is bizarrely complicated.

We could automate all this with a small Ubuntu-branded
downloader+checker (as suggested by Ryein Goddard), which was itself
downloaded over HTTPS. but that would require non-trivial
multi-platform software development. For example, the downloader would
need to deal with proxy servers.

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Re: HPLIP and HP Laserjet 1018

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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William Della Noce wrote on 11/07/15 11:49:
> ...
> 
> Since the clean installation of Ubuntu 14.04 x64 I've found issues 
> printing on a HP Laserjet 1018.
> 
> The problem is when I send a document to the printer Ubuntu says
> that the printing was done with no problem but the printer doesn't
> printed anything at all. The printer is plugged to the computer
> through an USB port.
> 
> ...

Problems like this are best reported as bugs.

The symptoms you've described seem similar to "HP laserjet 1018 no
longer works" .

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Re: Suggestions for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hi Leandro

Leandro Andrade Faria wrote on 18/06/15 16:52:
> 
> ...
> 
> I'm a Ubuntu user, former Ubuntu user actually, and I'm not a 
> developer. But I believe that some good suggestions might come from
> anyone, despite the ability to develop them.

That's true, but it's also true that ideas are cheap. If you look
through the bug tracker you will see that some of these have been
proposed and declined already. They would be more persuasive if there
was code or even a prototype to demonstrate them.

> It would be very nice and give users more freedom to customize 
> their Ubuntu desktops if:
> 
> 1 - Unity could allow the programs bar to me moved to all corners 
> (left - where it already is, right, bottom and top)

For example, this is "Movement of Unity launcher"
.

> 2 - Unity could allow users to change their theme collors without 
> changing the theme itself (we would be free to use Orange - witch 
> is standard, or green, grey, white, silver, purple, brown and all 
> the other collors)
> 
> 3 - Unity could allow users to change their folders' collors 
> disregarding the chosen theme collor. It could be na independent 
> choice.
> 
> ...

And this is "Make so the user can select color for folder icon"
.

Cheers
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Re: [suggestion] Need a bar or wheel download for "additional drivers" in "software & updates"

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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De Zan Chrsitophe wrote on 17/06/15 18:09:
> 
> Good morning. There have months (years ?) when I go "software &
> updates"->additional drivers, I see only the sentence "no
> proprietary drivers are in use"...so I quite.
> 
> First time this day, after a hazard wait, I see choice of drivers. 
> I understand than the phrase "Drivers search available..." is not
> just a phrase but an indication of work.
> 
> I think than it need a bar or wheel download for indicate than the 
> system search drivers.
> 
> ...

You are quite right, there should be a progress bar or spinner. I have
reported this bug for you. 

Cheers
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Re: Account Management / Shared Secret Generator

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Michael Titke wrote on 14/06/15 15:28:
> 
> On 14/06/2015 14:55, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>> ...
>> 
>> None of this is to put you off, I'm just sketching a map of the 
>> terrain. If all you want to do is integrate your generator with
>> what Ubuntu has right now, you could port it from Scheme to a
>> language we ship, and add a new dialog to Seahorse ... but few
>> people would notice. If you have a more substantial goal -- to
>> noticeably improve the quality of Ubuntu users' Internet
>> passwords, say -- the first thing I'd tackle would be the device
>> syncing problem. That could help people who are using KeePass
>> right now, as well as influencing the architecture of any parts
>> of the problem you work on later.
>> 
>> ...
> 
> First of all porting the algorithm is not enough because it 
> constitutes some kind of black box test of your deterministic 
> implementation of /random/. Second it's easier to port things to 
> Scheme with Parallel Objects (just try it with Racket for now)
> than to bump my mind down to C level et al. Third: I'm just
> throwing the seeds here ...

I'm not a programmer, and I'm sure Scheme is just lovely, but I can
see that you're getting a seed from /dev/urandom and mapping it into a
string of random characters. Doing that in C might be nerve-wracking
(since it's security-sensitive code), but I doubt more than a few
hours work.

> If it isn't enough to communicate the idea to the open source
> world then probably it's not worth changing one dozen toolkits, 
> applications etc.

Open source is not magic. In open source just as in closed source,
ideas are cheap, code is expensive, organization is priceless. As I
outlined, improving the quality of Ubuntu users' passwords would
require a lot of organization. That doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

> This time there even is a reference implementation but what about
> your users: IMHO open source means to open a text file to change
> the behavior of a program (which resembles the descriptions of LISP
> machines) whereas others think it as "managing" a community to do
> the work o to not provide easy to compile source packages etc.

Open source is a license to redistribute, not a license to configure
or a license to direct other people's work.

> The next step isn't GTK, GNUstep - but it should be something where
> is system startup boils down to a maximum of 500 lines of System
> Scheme.

That depends on your objective. Do you want to provide a password
generator that a non-trivial number of Ubuntu users will use? Or do
you want to write an OS in Scheme? Both are fascinating objectives,
but only one of them is relevant to this mailing list.

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Re: Account Management / Shared Secret Generator

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Michael Titke wrote on 11/06/15 15:42:
> 
> I propose to include my Internet account password creation scheme 
> into the current account / password / keychain management systems 
> on Ubuntu.

That would be excellent!

> Whenever you would like to do something very very important you 
> probably will need a new password for subscribing to a mailing 
> list, creating another online account and else. After some
> password you start to develop a scheme on how to easily create new
> passwords but it remains daunting. The password storage and
> retrieval is already done by Firefox, Thunderbird, Key Chain and
> Account Managers but the password creation is still left to the
> user who - as a matter of fact - only needs to memorize his master
> password.
> 
> To fill the gap I have written a small command line utility in 
> Guile Scheme which serves my needs. For those interested I
> attached the program. But I would like to see this feature
> incorporated into the existing solutions in the open source world.

Think of the funnel that people need to go through, to benefit from a
password generator. Broadly, they need to do four things:

1. Notice that the generator exists.

Probably 90%+ of the time that people choose a new password they are
concentrating on a Web page. So to be noticeable, you'll need to embed
a button directly into the "Choose password:" field on that page. So
you'll need a browser extension. (The extension should look for
s that contain at least two  fields; the
penultimate one will be a "Choose password" field. There may need to
be a maintained list of popular sites that flout this heuristic.)

That leaves native apps. To make your generator noticeable in those,
you'll need to provide it as part of the password field control in
toolkits for app developers to use. Here you have three problems to
tackle: language, toolkits, and adoption. Language: Writing in Scheme
is of little benefit as long as Guile doesn't ship by default.
Toolkits: Ubuntu suffers from toolkit proliferation, in that we ship
apps with password fields in GTK (e.g. file-roller's "Compress"
dialog), XUL (Firefox and Thunderbird), VCL (LibreOffice's "File" >
"Properties" > "Security" > "Protect"), and soon QML (Ubuntu Touch
apps). The more toolkits you cover, the more work it will be, but the
more often people will be able to recognize and use the feature.
Adoption: Persuading app developers to adopt the toolkit feature once
it is implemented and shipping. More difficult for cross-platform apps.

2. Be interested enough to use it.

3. Be confident that they'll be able to use the password later.

These are interface design problems. The generator needs to be not
just easy to use, but satisfying to use (look up the research on the
psychological effects of password strength meters), and reassuring in
letting you know how you'll access the password later. Compare the
competition -- some designs are much better than others.





4. Actually be able to use the password later.

Here you defer to other apps. But it doesn't matter how great your
password generator is, people probably won't use it if they can't then
log in to the same service on their Windows/Mac PC, iPhone, Android
phone, or even Ubuntu phone. So to be reliable, the system needs to be
not just multi-app, but multi-platform, and automatic in syncing
passwords between devices. And I'm not aware of an open-source system
that meets those three requirements. Ubuntu's "Passwords & Keys"
(Seahorse) from Gnome is multi-app but single-platform. KeePass is
multi-app and multi-platform, but syncing is tediously manual. And
Firefox Sync is multi-platform-ish (no longer on iOS) and automatic --
but it's single-app, in that (as far as I can tell) it works only for
passwords inside Firefox.

None of this is to put you off, I'm just sketching a map of the terrain.
If all you want to do is integrate your generator with what Ubuntu has
right now, you could port it from Scheme to a language we ship, and
add a new dialog to Seahorse ... but few people would notice. If you
have a more substantial goal -- to noticeably improve the quality of
Ubuntu users' Internet passwords, say -- the first thing I'd tackle
would be the device syncing problem. That could help people who are
using KeePass right now, as well as influencing the architecture of any
parts of the problem you work on later.

Cheers
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h

Re: Window Controls on the Right Side

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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john.r.mo...@gmail.com wrote on 14/05/15 04:06:
> 
> On 05/01/2015 10:52 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> 
> ...
>> There have been dozens of desktop computer OS manufacturers less 
>> successful than Apple -- for example, Acorn, Be, Commodore, 
>> Google, IBM, Sun, and every company that has ever released an OS 
>> based on Gnome or KDE. "Broadly marketed" is assuming the 
>> question -- the
> 
> For decades? Standing side-by-side with Dell in Best Buy and 
> CompUSA? With their own stores?  All over the news, pervasive 
> throughout culture?

You are assuming exactly the same question again. That they were less
successful is precisely why they weren't broadly marketed for decades.
And that has pretty much nothing to do with window controls.

> ...
> 
>>> Back in 10.04, Ubuntu tried moving the controls to the left. 
>>> This met with huge resistance, largely in the form of 
>>> complaining, whining, and people putting the controls back 
>>> where they belong.
>> 
>> That is similarly assuming the question. The only reason you 
>> think "the controls ... belong" on the right is that around
>> 1993, someone at
> 
> I have given the ergonomic definition.

Which makes several unfounded assumptions. Most notably, that more
users of Ubuntu -- which was originally focused on notebooks, and has
always been preinstalled most often on notebooks -- use mice (where
rotating to the right may indeed be easier) rather than touchpads,
trackballs, and pointing sticks combined (where extending a bent
pointing finger to the left is probably easier). And that window state
changes are more frequent and/or hurried than other functions that
could occupy the same area.

>> In both Windows and OS X, putting the controls all on one side 
>> (a) increases the risk that you'll close a window when you mean 
>> to minimize or maximize it,
> 
> The argument is about putting all the controls on the left instead 
> of the right.  In that context, you risk closing the window when 
> you operate the locally-integrated menu.

You are still assuming that "all the controls" belong on one side at
all. I was demonstrating that that assumption, too, is unfounded.

>> (b) makes centered titles look imbalanced in the title bar,
> 
> No different if all controls are on the left; and, generally, the 
> least-important thing anyone could say on the topic.

Again, you are wrongly assuming that "all controls are on" one side or
the other.

>> and (c) causes ugliness when a window doesn't have maximize 
>> and/or close functions, because you end up with buttons that are 
>> either permanently insensitive (as in Windows and OS X) or 
>> inconsistently-placed (as in Ubuntu).
> 
> This is not solved by moving buttons around.

Yes it is, if there is one subtle extra rule: an unminimizable window
can't be maximizable either. Then if you have minimize and close at
opposite ends, and maximize next to minimize, all the possible
combinations of those three controls avoid all three problems I described.

> ...
>> 
>> Apart from the Fitts's-Law-derived conclusions that the easiest 
>> pixels to hit are (a) the one you're at right now and (b) the 
>> four corners, I'm not aware of any research on this. Do you know 
>> of any?
> 
> Hold your right arm out straight in front of you, with the fingers 
> extended in line with the forearm.
> 
> Now, tilt your wrist thirty degrees to the right.  That's easy, 
> yes? It's a wide range of motion.

Again, you're assuming that most Ubuntu users use mice.

> ...
> 
>>> A year later, in 11.04, Ubuntu released the Global Menu. Three 
>>> days before 15.04, Ubuntu reversed a decision to disable the 
>>> Global Menu by default, after preening themselves with talk 
>>> about the new Locally Integrated Menus--i.e. pre-11.04, 
>>> non-Apple menus.
>> 
>> As far as I know, there was no "decision" to disable global
>> menus by default in 15.04, it was just a mistake.
> 
> They accidentally set bug #1412297 as "Fix Released" as well.

As is clear from the bug report, it was supposed to be Kylin-only.

>> Locally Integrated Menus are a red herring: they don't solve the 
>> primary problem of menus being invisible by default.
> 
> Long ago, I went on some long rant about multiple mouse clicks 
> required to access a visible window's menus when using global 
> menus. Nobody believed me.

Maybe it was something to do with it being a rant.

> You suggest the intellectually disjoint argument that every 
> window's menu sho

Re: Window Controls on the Right Side

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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John Moser wrote on 30/04/15 03:23:
> 
> ...
> 
> First and foremost, the biggest red flag you'll ever find in the UI
> design sphere is "Apple blahblahblah".  This statement comes out of
> people who have no clue what they're talking about, so make an 
> appeal to authority--typically the authority of the 
> least-successful product produced by the least-successful desktop 
> computer OS manufacturer.
> 
> Folks seem to forget that Apple's OSX is the only broadly-marketed,
> consumer-targeted alternative to Microsoft Windows, and is
> completely trounced by them;

There have been dozens of desktop computer OS manufacturers less
successful than Apple -- for example, Acorn, Be, Commodore, Google,
IBM, Sun, and every company that has ever released an OS based on
Gnome or KDE. "Broadly marketed" is assuming the question -- the
reason many of the systems are no longer marketed is that they were
unsuccessful. Success or failure of an OS is not so much a red flag as
a red herring: generally, Windows has demonstrated that good design is
not necessary for success, while OS X has demonstrated that it is not
sufficient.

> Back in 10.04, Ubuntu tried moving the controls to the left.  This 
> met with huge resistance, largely in the form of complaining, 
> whining, and people putting the controls back where they belong.

That is similarly assuming the question. The only reason you think "the
controls ... belong" on the right is that around 1993, someone at
Microsoft decided to add a close button alongside the minimize and
maximize buttons on the right of windows in Windows. This change showed
up in Encarta 95 on Windows 3 (flouting the standard of where the
controls "belonged" on Windows, rabble rabble!), and then in Windows
95 and later. From then until OS X in 2001, Windows was pretty much
alone in having all its visible window controls on one side of the
title bar. For example, Mac OS 7~9, AmigaOS, BeOS, and twm all split
the controls across left and right.

In both Windows and OS X, putting the controls all on one side (a)
increases the risk that you'll close a window when you mean to minimize
or maximize it, (b) makes centered titles look imbalanced in the title
bar, and (c) causes ugliness when a window doesn't have maximize and/or
close functions, because you end up with buttons that are either
permanently insensitive (as in Windows and OS X) or
inconsistently-placed (as in Ubuntu). These problems could be avoided
by splitting them across left and right, as Canonical's then-head of
design suggested: "Personally, I would have the max and min on the
left and close on the right."


If we *were* going to put them all on one side, the right would be a
bit easier, for Windows refugees to migrate to, than the left would.
That's a valid reason that is obscured by talk of where they "belong".

> ...
> 
> I said most people are right-handed, and that the easiest way to 
> tilt your wrist or move your arm was out and away.  The top-right 
> of your screen is the easiest area of the screen to access--go 
> ahead, try it. Those of us with civil rights in Elbonia will find 
> I'm completely correct; lefties will find confusion, followed by 
> the realization that they're using the wrong hand.

Apart from the Fitts's-Law-derived conclusions that the easiest pixels
to hit are (a) the one you're at right now and (b) the four corners,
I'm not aware of any research on this. Do you know of any?

> A year later, in 11.04, Ubuntu released the Global Menu.  Three 
> days before 15.04, Ubuntu reversed a decision to disable the
> Global Menu by default, after preening themselves with talk about
> the new Locally Integrated Menus--i.e. pre-11.04, non-Apple menus.

As far as I know, there was no "decision" to disable global menus by
default in 15.04, it was just a mistake. Locally Integrated Menus are a
red herring: they don't solve the primary problem of menus being
invisible by default. Last month's SRU introducing the
com.canonical.Unity always-show-menus setting is a first step toward
solving it, but long-term, having a setting for something like that
would demonstrate indecision.

> ...
> 
> First, if the window is maximized, the menu is obviously in the 
> same place on the screen.  If not, you have multiple windows, and 
> it takes *two* *mouse* *clicks* to click a menu.

That isn't correct. It takes 1 + n clicks, where n = the probability
that the menu item you want is for a window different from the focused
one. So, probably about 1.1 clicks on average, varying depending on
the kind of work you're doing.

> With LIMs (you know, *normal* menus), you just click File on the 
> window; with Global Menus, you have to click the window, then go 
> back and click File at the top.

That isn't correct either. Locally Integrated Menus are not "normal
menus"; menus in the title bar are unlike Windows, OS X, or any ot

Re: [FEATURE REQUEST] able users to choose audio output

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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Hello Erik

Erik Chendo Tegon wrote on 14/03/15 18:39:
> ...
> 
> Able users to choose audio output. For exemple: i have a "headset"
> and a "speakers" I would like to change my headset to speakers
> with the software (or only for headset, or only for speakers or
> both)
> 
> ...

What do you mean by "change my headset to speakers"?

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Re: mail binary from mailutils package 1:2.99.98-1.4 doesn't expand aliases

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Tom H wrote on 30/01/15 13:17:
> ...
> 
> There's already a bug so filing another report isn't really
> useful.

Sorry, I had looked at the bug list, but didn't notice that one was
the bug Jean-François was talking about.

> It looks like this bug is [1] and it's unclear whether it's a
> feature or a bug that mailutils' mail doesn't use aliases declared
> in "~/.mailrc".
> 
> A workaround seems to be to use bsd-mailx's mail.
> 
> [1]
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mailutils/+bug/1222181

The next step is to see whether the bug occurs in upstream mailutils.


If so, report a bug there
,
then record in Launchpad that you've done it.


If not, then it's a bug specific to the Ubuntu packaging. The next
step might be to see if it also occurs in Debian mailutils.

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Re: mail binary from mailutils package 1:2.99.98-1.4 doesn't expand aliases

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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jfprev...@bluewin.ch wrote on 21/01/15 23:17:
> ...
> 
> This bug has been filed in 2004 in the debian bugtracker, but 
> apparently closed by the maintainer as he couldn't reproduce it. I 
> confirm that on my Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64bits, the aliases declared
> in my home folder's .mailrc are not expanding. For example, if I 
> declared a line "alias jfp j.f.prev...@free.fr" then when using
> the "mail jfp" comFor example, when declaring a "alias jfp 
> j.f.prev...@free.fr" statement in my .mailrc file then when
> calling "mail -s TEST jfp" then the mail is sent with
> jfp@localmachinename (localmachinename being my linux system's
> local host name) which is not correct and should not be. Please
> (re)open a bug for this case until it gets *really* fixed.
> 
> ...

Bugs are best reported by someone who is willing and able to reproduce
them.

I suggest you get a Launchpad account, 
then report the bug yourself. You can do this starting from a
terminal, by entering "ubuntu-bug mailutils" (without quotes).

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Re: Updater can't update kernel due to disk space

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Chris Knutson wrote on 14/01/15 15:34:
> 
> Clearing out old kernel versions manually to be able to upgrade
> the kernel version is something the end user should never have to
> do. Clearing out old kernel version from /boot should be better
> managed by the software updater to intelligently manage historic
> kernel versions based on available disk space on the partition.

"software-updater refuses to upgrade, needs a button to clean /boot"


"Please consider enabling
Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies by default"


Mateusz Stachowski wrote on 15/01/15 20:21:
> ...
> 
> The 'apt-get autoremove' doesn't work for me. I only get the extra 
> images remove the generic and headers are still there and I need
> to remove them manually.
> 
> ...

"Kernel updates are being marked as manually installed"


"'Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies' does not work"


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Re: Feedback and Bug App

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hi Alexander

Alexander Langanke wrote on 12/12/14 22:22:
> ...
> 
> I recently installed the Windows 10 technical preview on my
> windows machine and have played around with OS X Betas in the past
> and really liked the feedback apps they both have and the insider
> hub that windows 10 recently recieved.
> 
> Why don't we build something similar for Ubuntu? We have apport as
> a bug info collecting tool with no real GUI and no feedback tool 
> whatsoever (that I am aware of). The Ubuntu Test Cases could get
> some more stagetime as well.
> 
> ...

I designed a "Contributor Console" for Ubuntu on PC a couple of years
ago. 

Michael Spencer started implementing it, but it hasn't been touched
for a while.  I'd be
delighted to see it finished and published in the Ubuntu archives.

> Do plans for something like this exist? If not, and you deem this
> a not useless/obsolete idea, what would be the preferred way to
> start? A native App or a web app that integrates the relevant
> launchpad sites or perhaps a scope?

Adapting the app to work on Ubuntu Touch would be tricky, because it
would need access to several things (such as the list of other running
apps, surfaces opened by those apps, and input to those surfaces) that
Ubuntu Touch does not allow. The OS would need to grant an exception
for this app. I expect that would be much easier if it was a native
app than a Web app.

On the other hand, that Ubuntu Touch apps are implemented in only
(ahem) three toolkits -- QML, HTML, or the Dash toolkit -- would allow
features that would work much more often than on Ubuntu for PC. For
example, you could triple-tap on a text label in any app to report a
bug about, or improve the translation of, that particular string.

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Re: ubuntu : 14.10 : blender : requesting an update

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Mayuresh Kathe wrote on 16/11/14 06:01:
> 
> who may i write to regarding updating the package for blender
> under ubuntu 14.10? the one in the repository is at version 2.70a,
> and the one released is 2.72b.
> 
> ...

You can report a bug like this about the Blender package on Launchpad.


Since Ubuntu 14.10 has already been released, it's unlikely that
Blender will be updated unless the released version has a security
vulnerability or severe regression.


Cheers
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Re: Default japanese font for Ubuntu 14.04 is wrong

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hello Jitsumo

jits...@gmail.com wrote on 13/10/14 11:30:
> 
> ...
> 
> i have the following problem in ubuntu 14.04, and I am hesitating
> to post a bug repport, but it's maybe better to ask you before.
> 
> ...
> 
> I asked to some japanese to confirm me, and they agree with me
> that some kanjis are weird in the best case, or completly wrong.
> 
> ...

Please do report bugs on individual characters that are wrong.


Canonical is currently looking at getting bugs fixed in the font, so
now is an excellent time to report any problems.

If you want to be sure that it is a problem with the Ubuntu font,
rather than a fallback font, you can use this command at a terminal:

pango-view  --font="Ubuntu 48" --markup \
- --text='test text here'

Change "48" to whichever size you want to test.

Thanks
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Re: Ubuntu Software Center future

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Tim Heckman wrote on 28/09/14 23:32:
> 
> On Sun, Sep 28, 2014 at 4:11 AM, David Raphaël
>  wrote:
>> 
>> However, I am a bit concerned about package management and I
>> think that Ubuntu should develop (or improve) its own package
>> management system in order for the distribution to be more
>> administrators friendly.
> 
> I'm sorry, but you can't cite an improvement in the GUI as being
> more administrator friendly. As an administrator of a sizeable
> Ubuntu fleet, dpkg/apt does everything I need it to. It's quick,
> it's reliable, and I've never had it break my system unless I had
> already done something stupid... Tried and tested with minimal
> magic.

Right. If you're an administrator who does need a graphical interface
(for installation profiles and repositories, for example), try Landscape.

> There are plenty of people I know who administer Ubuntu systems are
> actually turned-off by the desktop-centric vision. So be careful.
> 
> I'm basing my assertion that Ubuntu is desktop-centric based on 
> previous decisions that shipped.

On any given day, the front page of Ubuntu's Web site is more likely
to highlight server/cloud features (Juju, Openstack, Landscape) than
desktop ones.

> ...
> 
> If it's not broke, don't fix it.
> 
> I think they are more than welcome to add a UI around either
> dpkg/apt, but they should not develop their own package management
> system. To put it bluntly, it would be a stupid decision.
> 
> ...

In 1999, dpkg/apt was amazing. By today's standards, it is broken.
Maintainer scripts can do anything, which means there is no reliable
undo function, no sandboxing, no user-only installation, and the
package system can be corrupted merely by disconnecting the power
during an update. When an error does occur, apt returns only localized
error messages, effectively preventing any higher-level tool from
presenting tailored troubleshooting options. The entire apt package
list is stored on the client, which makes checking for updates slow,
and wouldn't scale to hundreds of thousands of apps. And every package
in the world is required to have a unique name, which doesn't scale
even to tens of thousands of apps.

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Re: Dropdown menu problem.

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hi Joshua

Joshua Katz wrote on 19/08/14 21:57:
> 
> Hey I'm new to this mailing list and I am not sure if this is the 
> correct place to ask this but I was wondering if there where plans 
> to implement Bruce Tognazzini's dropdown menu fix into the Unity 
> menu system. The fix is detailed here: 
> http://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown
>
>...
> 
Well spotted! This mechanism was introduced in GTK menus around May
2000, and it worked in every version of Ubuntu until 13.10.


It was broken upstream in July 2013, and will need to be fixed there.


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Re: Pre-upgrade warnings and advice?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Neal McBurnett wrote on 02/06/14 20:49:
> ...
> 
> Is there anything in the official upgrade tools to remind users 
> about use of ppas, non-repo packages, unofficial desktops or other 
> potentially problematic bits of software like unofficial programs 
> which "tweak" UI settings and the like?
> 
> I recall some warning about some such packages at upgrade time,
> but I forget when it happens, what it includes, and what advice it 
> gives.

The alert appears after the release notes, and before the new packages
are downloaded. It has primary text "Third party sources disabled",
and secondary text "Some third party entries in your sources.list were
disabled. You can re-enable them after the upgrade with the
'software-properties' tool or your package manager." It has one
button, "Close".

There are several problems with this. Is it really necessary for the
sources to be disabled? Does that mean software from those channels
will be removed too? If so, which software is involved? And if not, if
a security update is issued in that third-party source later on, am I
just out of luck? Why is there no button for cancelling the upgrade at
this point? And if I cancel the upgrade after this point, do the
sources remain disabled, and if so, why?

Even if the function is unchanged, the presentation could be improved
in many ways. Why am I exposed to the filename "sources.list", when I
probably added the channel through Software Sources without seeing
that filename? What is an "entry", and what does it mean for it to be
"disabled"? Which ones were disabled, exactly? Why is a graphical tool
referred to by its command-line name? Why is it using Ascii
apostrophes instead of quote marks? And what is a "package manager"?

> It would seem most convenient to have a safe, stand-alone 
> application that would just look for such software and give good 
> advice on what might not work, where folks might go or look for 
> upgrade paths supported by PPA developers or other organizations, 
> etc.  It would help a lot if it didn't spew out too much 
> information, e.g. by combining warnings for a set of packages into 
> an overall warning about a particular desktop or suite of related 
> packages with similar upgrade issues.
> 
> ...

Why would it be most convenient for it to be a standalone application?
That would mean that most people upgrading wouldn't see it and
therefore wouldn't benefit from it. And if it was intended for use
outside the upgrade process, that's what Software Sources is for. It's
already a Windows-Vista-like awkwardness that Software Sources is a
standalone app instead of a System Settings panel.

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Re: User-friendly HRTF

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Tiago Matono wrote on 20/05/14 21:16:
> 
> Hi. So today I tried the openal HRTF. It works wonderfully! All my 
> games and movies play with awesome 3d sound through my headphones.
> To activate it I simply ran "echo "hrtf = true" >> ~/.alsoftrc " in
> the terminal as explained here: 
> http://www.bitoutsidethebox.com/shabda/hrtf-info/
> 
> Why is this so easy-to-implement function not included somewhere
> in ubuntu through a simple checkbox?

Probably because no-one has yet had the combination of interest,
ability, and time to do it.

If you're trying to recruit someone to do it, I suggest being more
specific about what it would achieve. Even the Wikipedia article is
heavy on jargon and rightly says "[example needed]".

> Can this be implemented? Maybe a simple checkbox under "sound
> settings" that would only appear and be activateable when
> headphones are connected. I think this is an awesome and easy to
> implement feature.
> 
> ...

Settings are useful only as much as people can make an informed
decision about them. So before we could design a checkbox like that,
we would need to answer the question: Who would want HRTF turned off,
and why? Or to put it another way, why not just have it turned on for
everyone?

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Re: apt and pdiff files

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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staticd wrote on 02/03/14 04:50:
> 
> Is this and EWONTFIX or a EBUSY? it will be nice if responses to 
> queries clearly distinguish between the two. ;)
> 
> ...

"I'd like us to do pdiffs, but there's a bit of a shortage of
implementation time" seems pretty clear to me.

Anyway, here's the relevant bug report. 

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Re: Ignoring privacy sabotages Ubuntu's best chance for success

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Benjamin Kerensa wrote on 25/02/14 20:35:
> 
> On 2/24/14, 3:08 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: ...
>> 
>> Ubuntu has extensive designs for privacy settings on both PC and 
>> phone. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityAndPrivacySettings> As 
>> with everything else in Ubuntu, there's always more to do than
>> we have time for.
> 
> Except the fact that it requires opt-out to sending queries to 
> Canonical and then on to third parties. And that there are still 
> scopes/lenses enabled by default that do not use SSL which leaks
> user queries.

Both of those are problems, but neither is an "exception" to what I said.

>> Protracted but non-specific comparisons to DuckDuckGo aren't that
>>  useful. Most useful would be for you to implement privacy
>> features yourself, or find new contributors to do so. But at a
>> minimum, you could be more specific about improvements you'd like
>> to see.
> 
> You're suggesting that individuals are going to be able to submit 
> patches to improve privacy and that those patches would even be 
> acknowledged?

All patches should be acknowledged, but no, that's not what I said.

> Please explain then why a member of the Ubuntu Tech Committees
> patch has sat without review for two years. 
> https://code.launchpad.net/~kees/libunity/remote-search-none
> 
> ...

I have no idea. Seems like a good change to me.

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Re: Ignoring privacy sabotages Ubuntu's best chance for success

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Gerry A. wrote on 25/02/14 17:29:
> 
> I have two "specific improvements" I would like to see in Ubuntu. 
> Thanks for mentioning this.
> 
> #1 is the ability for users to uninstall elements that send their
> data onto the internet as it relates to Dash searches. 11.10
> appears to allow users the ability to uninstall scopes. But there
> is no way to uninstall the capability for Dash searches to be
> transmitted onto the internet. Users are left with a "Switch" in
> the System Settings to control this behavior. I would like to see a
> more permanent way to disable the possibility of data leaks.

You can uninstall those components in Ubuntu Software Center. It's not
nearly as easy as flipping the switch in System Settings, but that's
why the switch exists.

> A way for admins to uninstall the capability of the Dash to send
> data onto the internet, irrespective of the switch. This would be
> a "specific improvement" I would like to see.

Admin control over settings would be useful -- not just for that
function, but many others too. I've sketched how that kind of admin
control might be presented
, but that design works
only for individual existing accounts. The next step would be a design
for setting defaults for new accounts, and for changing multiple
existing accounts at once.

> #2 is for improved awareness (and hopefully control) of what 
> applications are accessing the internet. A way for users to more 
> easily be aware of what apps are accessing the internet and what
> data they are transmitting. It would be nice to be able to log this
> kind of info. Currently, if the firewall is set to allow outgoing
> on a machine then anything can transmit out on an open port. My
> guess is AppArmor could be used to setup some sort of mechanism for
> users to gain better awareness of applications' internet access
> behavior. Something that integrates with the Unity shell would be
> ideal.
> 
> ...

Most of that would be achieved by the "Network activity" indicator.


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Re: Ignoring privacy sabotages Ubuntu's best chance for success

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Gerry A. wrote on 21/02/14 16:45:
> 
> Ubuntu desktop and phone are great designs but contain a fatal 
> flaw: a failure to foster & utilize what would be one of its 
> strongest assets for gaining market share--Privacy.
> 
> ...

Ubuntu has extensive designs for privacy settings on both PC and phone.
 As with
everything else in Ubuntu, there's always more to do than we have time
for.

Protracted but non-specific comparisons to DuckDuckGo aren't that
useful. Most useful would be for you to implement privacy features
yourself, or find new contributors to do so. But at a minimum, you
could be more specific about improvements you'd like to see.

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Re: Bug handling in Ubuntu

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Olе Streicher wrote on 21/10/13 16:24:
> ...
> 
> When I find a bug specific to Ubuntu, and I do a search for whether
> it is known, I always find lots of old bugs that seem to be never
> read by anyone; just the submitter (and mybe some others that got
> the same problem). Sometimes even a patch exists, or a certain bug
> is fixed in a recent Ubuntu release but the bug still remains
> open.
> 
> Two examples:
> 
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-session/+bug/138194 dated from
> 2007, still open without any hint that someone is working on it

There's also no hint that it occurs in any version of Ubuntu later
than 11.10! If there was, it would be more interesting to a potential
bug-fixer.

> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sqlite3/+bug/876661 
> Trivial to fix; a patch was proposed after a year, but was
> (probably?) ignored. Fixed somehow, but the bug is still open.

A Debian bug report was mentioned in the comments, but not linked to
the Ubuntu report (using "Also affects distribution"). If it had been,
Launchpad would have noticed and displayed that it was fixed in Debian.

> etc. This is quite annoying and also makes the Ubuntu bug database 
> worthless. On Debian, my experience for bug report is quite
> opposite BTW.

Ubuntu has a vastly greater ratio of users to developers than Debian,
so it also has a much greater ratio of bug reporters to developers.

> So I do not understand: it is worth to report a bug? Who is
> looking for them? What is the use of the bug database?
> 
> ...

The same as the purpose of any bug database: to help finite developers
make best use of their time.

The more QA volunteers are able to garden bug reports -- attaching
relevant files, marking duplicates, setting Importance, marking old
reports as Incomplete if they're not reproducible in the latest
version, and so on -- the better use developers can make of their time.


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Re: Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Matt B. wrote on 03/07/13 15:00:
> ...
> 
> I too am concerned about a lot of "are you sure" dialogs. I think 
> people are just looking for a way to learn/know what apps are 
> connecting to the internet (and why). Like I described how VLC
> asks to connect for downloading album art/info and tells you why it
> would be connecting to the internet. Once the user responds to this
> dialogue there are no more dialogues--ever. The App asks for
> permission to connect to the internet for a specific purpose. If
> the user says No, it would be up to the user to go into settings
> and reset this. The user should not be presented this prompt each
> time the App starts/runs.

With the Ubuntu Touch model, the prompt is shown once ever, not once
each time the app runs. (You shouldn't need to know whether an app is
not "running" anyway.)

However, an app accessing the Internet is not currently on the list of
things that the OS would prompt about. It could be, but I'm not
confident it would be useful. Such a large proportion of apps use the
Internet, that nefarious traffic would often be hidden alongside
legitimate traffic.

> ...
> 
> So I think the most useful OS service is to somehow *give users 
> awareness of App internet connection behavior* so users CAN learn 
> that they need to make a settings adjustment IN THE APP or simply 
> uninstall the App and look for one that isn't so promiscuous with
> the internet. This I think is the privacy/security function of the
> OS that is so important--providing some means of "finding out"
> which Apps are connecting to the internet, which informs the user
> and allows him/her to decide whether to adjust settings in the App
> or uninstall it.
> 
> ...

This is part of the reason I designed the network activity indicator.


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Re: Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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J Fernyhough wrote on 24/06/13 13:28:
> 
> On 24 June 2013 13:13, Marc Deslauriers wrote:
>> 
>> On 13-06-24 08:07 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>>> 
>>> J Fernyhough wrote on 22/06/13 16:06:
>>> 
>>>> On 22 June 2013 15:12, Matthew Paul Thomas
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Ubuntu, an app will request a privilege during runtime.
>>>>> For example, a game might have a "find my friends who
>>>>> already play this game" function, that accesses your
>>>>> contacts. The game would work just fine if you don't use
>>>>> this function. But if you do use it, Ubuntu would then --
>>>>> and only then -- ask you if you want to grant the app
>>>>> access to your contacts.
>>>> ...
>>>> 
>>>> This is excellent! One quick feature request: a "remember
>>>> this choice" checkbox. ;)
>>> 
>>> I don't understand. Why would Ubuntu forget the choice
>>> otherwise?
>> 
>> Because granting a permission may depend on the context?
>> 
>> For example, I may want to allow a photo application to use my
>> GPS to tag a picture when I'm in some public place, but not when
>> I take a picture when I'm at home.

A photo app that triggered an OS prompt to grant access to your
location, after every photo you took, would quickly become intolerable.

More viable would be a setting to use your location unless you are
within X distance of an editable list of locations.

And that setting would likely be more findable -- and would therefore
protect more people -- in the photo app itself, rather than in System
Settings. It would certainly be explained more clearly, because the
photo app would know what it is using the location data for, while the
OS would not. For example, you might want the app to record the
location of every photo for your own reference, but strip it out when
posting the photo online, whether that happened moments or weeks later.

This illustrates my general understanding of the purpose of the
permissions feature. It is primarily for protecting against
overzealous app developers. It is not workable for trying to control
an app's use of data once the app does have access. That can be done
more practically, and more understandably, inside the app itself.

>> Granting a permission shouldn't mean I grant it forever, unless
>> I decide it should be forever...having both "Just this once" and 
>> "Always" buttons satisfies my use case.
>> 
>> Marc.

I don't see how those two buttons would satisfy that use case. If you
didn't want to be prompted after every photo you took, each day you
would tap "Always" after taking your first photo away from home, and
then ... what? Have a separate app that detects when you're returning
home, and reminds you to go into System Settings for your nightly
revocation of location access to the photo app? Sooner or later you'd
forget.

> Exactly this.
> 
> Though having buttons would result in four choices: Yes, No,
> Always, Never. Having buttons and a checkbox would be three: Yes,
> No, Remember. I think the SuperUser apps on Android might be a
> good example of how a single request might look? It could get a
> little more complicated if the app requests several permissions at
> once, though.
> 
> ...

When requesting access to an online account, the dialog would already
contain up to four controls: a menu if you had multiple accounts of
the selected type, then buttons for "Allow", "Add Another...", and
"Don't Allow".

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Re: Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Dylan McCall wrote on 22/06/13 17:19:
> 
> On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 7:12 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas
>> 
>> In the next couple of weeks I will design the UI for apps to
>> request privileges on Ubuntu Touch.
> 
> Yay!

I've now published it, though the UI text still needs a little work.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AccountPrivileges#Phone> ("Other app access"
is a dull title.)

> ...
>> 
>> On Ubuntu, an app will request a privilege during runtime. For 
>> example, a game might have a "find my friends who already play
>> this game" function, that accesses your contacts. The game would
>> work just fine if you don't use this function. But if you do use
>> it, Ubuntu would then -- and only then -- ask you if you want to
>> grant the app access to your contacts.
> 
> I agree this is a good model. Still, I worry about the possibility
> of having a lot of "are you sure" dialogs in a nicely integrated 
> application.

That's a reasonable concern. But I haven't thought of a case where an
app would needfully request more than one or two privileges at a time.
Have you?

> For the act of adding an online account, I think that should be as 
> simple as choosing an online account from the system Online
> Accounts dialog. The interface will need to clearly communicate
> that in choosing an account you are granting "Foo app" permission
> to use it, but I don't think there's a reason to have anything else
> on top.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the system Online Accounts dialog".

If you mean a dialog that appears mid-screen with the application
still visible in the background, then absolutely. I've charted the
flow. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OnlineAccounts#phone-access>

If you mean the full "Online Accounts" screen of System Settings, then
that would have some visual consistency between listing accounts
prompted (when an app wants access) vs. unprompted (when browsing
System Settings). However, it would hide the context of the app behind
a full-screen Settings screen. And filtering the list to hide
irrelevant accounts, then adding UI to explain why only a subset of
accounts are being shown, would reduce the visual consistency almost
beyond recognition anyway.

> Similar deal with documents or contacts: there are some odd cases 
> where apps don't want to use the system's Contacts dialog, but I
> think in most cases they should be able to trigger that dialog, and
> have access to specific (selected) contacts granted implicitly.
> MacOS X seems to be doing that nowadays, and Plash (which was an
> intriguing idea that didn't seem to get anywhere) had that sort of
> thing happening for file choosers:
> http://plash.beasts.org/powerbox.html.

It hadn't even occurred to me that an app might want access to a
single contact! I was thinking of the sort of apps that go through all
your contacts, looking for other people who have already registered
with the app. Thanks for raising this.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AccountPrivileges?action=diff&rev2=12&rev1=11>

> The other bit I wonder about is how this might affect something
> like the "Recent Files" list in an application. Do you think that
> sort of thing would work cleanly, or should we be thinking about a 
> replacement? (Or do people even use that?).

I guess the list of recent items would have to be inside the "content
picker"
<https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/client-1305-content-mgmt-picking>
and nowhere else. An app couldn't provide its own UI for recent items
that were created in other apps, though it could for items it created
itself. That's what PC apps do anyway.

> One thing that drives me mad with Android's approach is lots of
> apps ask for permanent access to your contacts for a single thing
> that they do, once, ever, but then iOS has driven me mad working in
> the other direction, so I'm really excited to see what you have in
> mind :)
> 
> ...

Right. I've mentioned this in the spec: "an app might need a privilege
only for an uncommon function that you personally will never use".

Cheers
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Re: Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Daniel Hollocher wrote on 22/06/13 16:31:
> ...
> 
>> This is poor design. Of all the time you spend with an app, the 
>> moment you're about to install it is the moment when you know
>> the least about it. So it's the moment when you're least able to
>> make informed decisions about granting those privileges.
> ...
> 
>> On Ubuntu, an app will request a privilege during runtime.
> 
> What I see you saying is that by the time I've just begun to use
> the app, I will have a better sense of what the app does, and
> therefor know what privileges to grant.

Not necessarily "just begun". For example, you might have been playing
a game for minutes or hours before you encounter the "Tweet this high
score" button.

> But that isn't the case for me.  Once I've started the app, I'm
> still trying to figure out what it does (even a simple game).  So I
> would just allow all privileges given that I don't know how to make
> a better decision and I at least want to make sure that the app
> works.  I think in general, once I have decided to start installing
> an app, I've also decided that I trust the app.

I'm not interested in encouraging people to decide that they trust an
app before they've even figured out what it does. Criminy.

> So, here is an alternative: before installation.  Have the needed 
> permissions displayed on the installation page, along side the
> ratings and forum discussions and app description.  That way, if
> there is some permission that doesn't make sense, I can go straight
> to the comments section to see any discussion about it. (and make
> permissions something I can search against, that way I can filter
> away unwanted permission takers).

That isn't an alternative; it's the Android model I described in the
first place.

> ...
> 
> PS - I think there is a wider issue of incorrectly assuming that 
> giving users finer grained control over privacy will grant greater 
> privacy.  For some users, it has the opposite affect: it
> overwhelms them with difficult questions, leading to "yes to all"
> types of behavior.

I agree. Prompting before install would effectively require a "Yes to
all" response, which would in turn encourage app developers to request
privileges they don't need.

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Re: Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Benjamin Kerensa wrote on 23/06/13 08:41:
> 
> On Jun 22, 2013 7:16 AM, "Matthew Paul Thomas"  ...
> 
>> Ubuntu is an operating system, not a person. Neither you nor I 
>> get to decide priorities for Canonical engineers. But anyone is 
>> welcome to implement privacy features and propose them for 
>> inclusion in Ubuntu.
> 
> Canonical Engineers have pretty much ignored the proposal of even 
> one member of the Ubuntu Tech Board in regards to user privacy.
> 
> What makes you believe if Canonical ignores a former security team 
> member/current tech board member and the EFF that they will give 
> anyone else's proposal the time of day?

You're being pretty vague, but my best guess is that you're referring
to the default setting for online search in the Dash.

Every week I talk on Mumble with some of my colleagues. When I get
halfway through typing "mumble" in the Dash, the Amazon results are
ubuntu-calendar all over again. You don't need to lecture me about
what the default setting should be.

That's why I specifically referred to features, not settings, and
implementing them, not just proposing them.

> The sad thing is the community does nearly as much work to produce 
> Ubuntu but has almost no say in its direction or features.
> 
> ...

I reject both the premise that Canonical is not part of "the
community", and the premise that the EFF is. If the EFF spent even
half as much time contributing to Ubuntu as they've pretended to, we'd
all be better off.

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Re: Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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J Fernyhough wrote on 22/06/13 16:06:
> 
> On 22 June 2013 15:12, Matthew Paul Thomas 
> wrote:
>> 
>> On Ubuntu, an app will request a privilege during runtime. For 
>> example, a game might have a "find my friends who already play
>> this game" function, that accesses your contacts. The game would
>> work just fine if you don't use this function. But if you do use
>> it, Ubuntu would then -- and only then -- ask you if you want to
>> grant the app access to your contacts.
> ...
> 
> This is excellent! One quick feature request: a "remember this
> choice" checkbox. ;)

I don't understand. Why would Ubuntu forget the choice otherwise?

> Are there any plans to also collect app permissions into one
> place, for example a "privacy centre" that shows which apps have
> which permissions?
> 
> ...

I hadn't thought about that, but that's a good idea. I've already done
a screen for listing which apps have access to your location.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityAndPrivacySettings#location> Lists
for other privileges could go alongside.

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Re: Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Matt B. wrote on 18/06/13 14:26:
> ...
> 
> Can the upcoming Ubuntu-Touch incorporate some of the 
> cynaogenmod-like Privacy features into Ubuntu Touch? 
> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/06/how-cyanogenmods-founder-is-giving-android-users-their-privacy-back/
> 
In the next couple of weeks I will design the UI for apps to request
privileges on Ubuntu Touch.

When installing an app, Android shows you a list of privileges the app
will require -- accessing your contacts, accessing your current
location, and so on. If you decline, the app doesn't install.

This is poor design. Of all the time you spend with an app, the moment
you're about to install it is the moment when you know the least about
it. So it's the moment when you're least able to make informed
decisions about granting those privileges. And if an app developer can
assume that consent will be uninformed, they're more likely to abuse
that consent.

Cyanogenmod is working around that, by letting you reduce an app's
privileges after installation. But that requires you to notice, and
care, and remember, and know how to change it -- four difficult things.

On Ubuntu, an app will request a privilege during runtime. For
example, a game might have a "find my friends who already play this
game" function, that accesses your contacts. The game would work just
fine if you don't use this function. But if you do use it, Ubuntu
would then -- and only then -- ask you if you want to grant the app
access to your contacts.

An app could still ask for a privilege immediately when you launch it.
But you'd be much less likely to allow it, in that case, than in
response to an obviously related command. And if a privilege wasn't
obviously essential to an app, but the app installed *and then*
refused to work without that privilege, it would be ridiculed and
downrated.

With our current plan for online accounts, the privacy will go even
further: an app won't even know *whether* you have a particular kind
of account unless you grant access to that app.

> I'd also like to see the ability of Ubuntu Desktop to be able to 
> control what apps can and cannot connect to the internet etc.

If anyone would like to implement this, I designed firewall settings a
couple of years ago. 

> Unfortunately all Ubuntu seems to be working on is features that 
> create privacy concerns (like the scopes sending search requests to
> Canonical servers).
> 
> ...

Ubuntu is an operating system, not a person. Neither you nor I get to
decide priorities for Canonical engineers. But anyone is welcome to
implement privacy features and propose them for inclusion in Ubuntu.

I have designed fine-grained settings for the home screen search on
the phone, including whether it accesses the Internet at all.
 I
would be delighted to see equivalent settings implemented for the PC too.

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Re: Source packages appropriate by default?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Benjamin Kerensa wrote on 20/05/13 18:02:
> 
> On May 20, 2013 8:10 AM, "Daniel J Blueman" > 
>> For all the general users I install Ubuntu for (including
>> servers), it's an utter waste of bandwidth for everyone,
>> particularly when automatically checking once a day. This is
>> amplified eg in schools without transparent webcaches etc.
>> 
>> Anyone get the same feeling that we should have source packages
>> an opt-in?
> 
> I think in most parts of the world 4MB is trivial overhead for a
> user. Although perhaps we should consider it since some developing
> nations have limited bandwidth?
> 
> ...

With every extra kilobyte required to check for updates, the check
will complete measurably less often. Maybe the notebook lid will be
closed, maybe the connection will time out, or maybe the computer will
be shut down altogether.

(Measurably, but not measuredly: we aren't collecting stats on this.
See  for examples of how even
tiny changes in download times affect Web site success rates.)

When update checks are completed less often, updates are installed
later after they are issued.

So, unnecessary downloads when checking for updates is a security issue.




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Re: Ubuntu Manpage Repository need some love

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Ma Xiaojun wrote on 29/03/13 17:38:
> 
> Man pages for QQ, RR is still not available, despite the fact that
> they are listed.
> 
> ...



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Re: How is app information in Ubuntu Software Center maintained?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Ma Xiaojun wrote on 14/03/13 18:28:
> 
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 7:24 PM, Matthew Paul Thomas
>  wrote:
>> 
>> As Sergey said, and as hinted at 
>> <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter#bugs>, problems with
>> search results are either the fault of the individual package, or
>> the app-install-data-ubuntu package.
> 
> The link is useful! However, I don't want to wait forever for bug
> fixings in app-install-data-ubuntu, for example the synaptic entry
> duplicate bug. Can I take action?
> 
> ...

Yes, the same way you would fix any other bug in Ubuntu.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToFix>

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Re: How is app information in Ubuntu Software Center maintained?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Ma Xiaojun wrote on 09/03/13 07:12:
> ...
> 
> For example, Fcitx is an input method framework that I probably
> use "sudo apt-get install fcitx" to install it. However, in Ubuntu
> Software Center, "fcitx-data" package, a dependency of "fcitx"
> packages is advertised as "Fcitx" app. 
> https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/search/?q=fcitx
> 
> Another example is that Hangul engine of IBus (ibus-hangul) is 
> advertised as "IBus Hangul Preferences" 
> https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/ibus-hangul/
> 
> ...

As Sergey said, and as hinted at
, problems with search
results are either the fault of the individual package, or the
app-install-data-ubuntu package.

Ideally the app-install-data-ubuntu package would be unnecessary, with
Launchpad publishing the correct application metadata for each
package. 

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Re: kexec and Grub

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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John Moser wrote on 10/02/13 23:52:
> ...
>> 
>> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StartupSettings
> 
> I wish I could un-see that second one.  I'm completely baffled as
> to what "startup software" is (I'd imagine that would be the
> bootloader, kernel, systemd, all systemd/init scripts, and in
> Ubuntu's case X11 as well, along with everything in /bin and /sbin
> and /lib according to how Unix systems are lain out--everything
> required for system start-up belongs there, while everything not
> required for system start-up goes into /usr/)

Yes.  But the button's
existence shouldn't be blocked on implementing repair of everything in
the world. So long as no promises are made, fixing 10% of startup
problems is better than fixing 0%. Filesystem location is irrelevant.

> tbh repair systems are a good idea, but they belong in their own 
> place.

If settings exist, people trying to fix problems are going to go into
the settings UI anyway. A better place to offer automated repair of
those settings and related software is unlikely.

> Don't care for "Here is a dialog to configure X system aspect.
> Also if your system is broken you can fix this part from here."
> Where is the "Troubleshoot my system" dialog?
> 
> ...

Since neither the startup-specific one, nor the installation-specific
one  have been implemented yet, I don't know why
you'd expect a more general one to exist!

Ubuntu is a brittle system: when anything goes wrong, it's bad at
helping people recover. Someone who isn't a front-end developer, but
wants to help with that problem in general, might start by setting up
an automated system to fuzz-test config files.

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Re: Hi and Thanks.

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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cole...@lavabit.com wrote on 03/12/12 23:26:
> ...
> 
> I like Ubuntu so much and the philosophy/open source ideas behind
> it I wanted to contribute to help Ubuntu. So if my experiences or
> feedback can help inform or improve ubuntu in any way, I'm happy to
> contribute and take part in the discussions. I'm really excited
> that the developers let users take part in discussions :)
> 
> ...

There are many ways to contribute to Ubuntu, described on the Ubuntu
wiki. 

Cheers
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Re: Crashes from Unity/Xorg continues with 12.10

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Thomas Novin wrote on 23/10/12 19:23:
> ...
>>> 
 On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Timo Aaltonen
> ...
> On 23.10.2012 09:36, Thomas Novin wrote:
>> 
>> However, after logging in, I didn't get any notification
>> that my system had crashed and question about submitting.
>> I then read here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ErrorTracker
>> and changed under Privacy > Diagnostics, Send error
>> reports to Canonical. This has no effect though, after
>> logging out and then in again I get no question about
>> submitting my crash.

This might have been because update-notifier failed to launch at
login. (For hysterical reasons, the code that checks for reportable
errors after login lives in update-notifier.)

>> Now I entered this setting again and the option was
>> unchecked! It seems that checking that option doesn't
>> stick.

That is a bug in the Privacy settings panel, which will be fixed soon.


>> Please advice, how should I handle/report my crashing
>> Xorg/Unity..
> 
> File a bug with 'apport-bug
> /var/crash/_usr_bin_Xorg.0.crash'.
> ...
> 
> IMHO, the automatic bug reporting should really be made easier
> without all those prompts and selections. In Android/Windows there
> is just one question, do you want to submit it, yes/no? That should
> be enough. So this + activated per default on all admin-accounts =
> more submitted bug reports = more stable Ubuntu-releases in the
> long run.
> 
> ...

In Ubuntu, error reporting is a single button click, just like on
Android and Windows.

This is a developer mailing list. When Timo suggested using apport-bug
to report a bug instead, he was suggesting an alternative for
developer use because the normal error reporting wasn't working for you.

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Re: could you add this feature or discuss it at 13.04 Developer Summit?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Nicolas Michel wrote on 17/10/12 07:23:
> 
> I think what Brian wants (correct me if not) is an application 
> level firewall. On Windows most antivirus do it : you get a popup 
> when an application try to access something you didn't already 
> allowed to. I think what should be done is an AppArmor graphical 
> frontend (with notifications).

If anyone would like to implement that, here's a design I prepared
earlier. 

However, Brian specifically mentioned "the logging features of the
application-firewall", not just the firewall itself.

> ...
> 
> But honestly, Linux is not Windows Brian. Every application is 
> open-source (except if you installed a propriatary app from the 
> net). It means from a security point of view that everyone can
> read the source code (it he has the skill)  and see what the
> application do exactly.

As Ma pointed out, this is less true as USC sells more proprietary
applications. Even if it was true, though, I expect it would be much
easier to figure out what a program is doing network-wise by running
something like wireshark, than by reading the source code for the
application and all its dependencies.

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Re: The place of the Ubuntu Software Center regarding Steam, Desura and others

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Nicolas Michel wrote on 21/08/12 22:52:
> ...
> 
> So I thought the best I would want as a user is to search for 
> everything I want to install on my desktop from the Ubuntu Software
> Center. Although I'm not aware of the future plans for the 
> application I think it would be really amazing to have a plugin 
> system on the Ubuntu Software Center to plug external content 
> database to its search engine so we could see the content
> available from Desura, Steam AND Play on Linux (and maybe others).
> These plugins should work (and keep updated their databases) even
> without these applications installed. So the user should be asked
> to install it to be able to install that game or that software.

This would be useful for software developers, too: imagine being able
to access all of Cpan from the "Developer Tools" > "Perl" subcategory,
PyPI from the "Python" subcategory, or RubyGems.org from the "Ruby"
subcategory.

> ...
> 
> Secondly to offer what guys that are coming to our platform are 
> searching for: freedom. You may think it's ironic since we are 
> talking about closed-source softwares but it is not. I'm talking
> of freedom as in freedom of choice. Regarding this topic I think
> the Ubuntu Software Center should really tag clearly what is 
> open-source, closed-source, free of charge and not.

USC already does this. We could perhaps do it more prominently
, and we could definitely be more
specific about the open-source licenses being used.


> It should also really well highlight who is providing the software:
> Ubuntu, Steam, Desura, others?

We have work to do on this, though each application already links to
the publisher's Web site.

> So we'll have the choice: if I'm searching for the "video" keyword 
> and I want to use only open-source softwares provided by
> Canonical, I should be able to click on a filter to only see it.
> 
> ...

You can already filter on software provided by Canonical, but that's
not the same as filtering on open-source software.


Cheers
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Re: Controlling menubar title on Ubuntu 11.10?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hi Nikos

Nikos Chantziaras wrote on 18/03/12 22:11:
> 
> On 14/03/12 18:07, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: ...
>> I wrote an application that, at startup, prompts the user for a 
>> file (using a standard "open file" dialog). Ubuntu 11.10 takes 
>> the title of that dialog ("Choose the file you wish to play")
>> and uses it for the rest of the application's session. This is
>> wrong of course. The menu bar should display the application's
>> name.
>> 
>> Is there a way I can control the title of the menu bar?
> 
> ... So I guess it's not possible then.  This is really a
> shortcoming in Ubuntu and doesn't look very well thought out.  But
> I'll have to live with it.

This is straightforwardly a bug in Unity.

I suggest reporting it, and attaching a minimal example application to
the bug report. 

Thanks
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Re: Potential UI bug: wrong type of dialog upon hibernation notice

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Abhishek Bhatnagar wrote on 01/04/12 01:09:
> ...
> 
> As per my attachment, when battery on laptop is critically low, I
> get a dialog informing me that hibernation is imminent, and then 
> gives me two options: "Cancel" and "OK". They both do the same 
> thing -> make the dialog go away. Clearly an "OK" would suffice,
> as "Cancel" does not make sense in context.
> 
> I'm almost sure this happened because someone ended up using the 
> wrong type of dialog, but it probably should be mended.
> 
> Should this be filed as a bug?
> 
> ...

This is "Battery warning popup buttons dont make sense"
.

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Re: Privacy,history and search options

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Petko wrote on 19/02/12 11:10:
> 
> I like to keep it brief so here it goes :
> 
> 1. The privacy compartment of the System settings withholds
> settings that rather correlate with the word "History" in browsers
> (that's not the main argument , but my view on things as a user) .
> As I write I saw that there is a separate History tab (and
> apparently there are other options in the compartment) , so my
> suggestion is to rename "Privacy" to "History&Privacy" , because
> now few people would relate what that compartment withholds and
> that makes it less usable .


Yes, logging file and application use is analogous to browser history.
But people are much less familiar with it, so just calling it
"History" wouldn't explain enough.


condenses the history items from three tabs into one, and better
explains why it's a privacy issue.

> 2. Add indexing options (2) in the "Files" tab : a) Index these
> locations (a separate field as the one excluding locations to
> index) b) Recheck indexed locations (a button)
> 
> ...


That's conflating logging with indexing. It might be true that the
files you don't want showing up in "Recent Files" are always (or
nearly always) the same files you don't want returned in search
results, but it would be helpful to think of examples and
counterexamples first.

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Re: can we find a solution to bug #820895 (show Process Name in log files) (imaginative solution/description presented)?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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HSO wrote on 08/02/12 09:02:
> 
> 2012/2/7, Jordon Bedwell :
>> 
>> Stop throwing around privacy like there is some big security flaw
>> in Linux, there are tools that do what everyone wants, it seems
>> to me that nobody is willing to even look or everybody is fed
>> baby food, what is the point of being on Linux if you aren't
>> going to use the terminal for what it's there for?  Try searching
>> for once.


The vast majority of Linux users never use the terminal, and long may
that continue. Tools are useful only to the extent that people can
work out how use them.

> All you talk about it's planed - some of programed some of in
> progress. Look at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Networking


As I said when I linked to that page, none of it is in progress in the
moment. But if anyone would like to volunteer, please get in touch.

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Re: can we find a solution to bug #820895 (show Process Name in log files) (imaginative solution/description presented)?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Robbie Williamson wrote on 29/01/12 21:39:
> 
> On 01/26/2012 11:12 PM, nick rundy wrote: ...
>> 
>> Just to be clear, I'm not asking that an application-firewall
>> (as Jason Todd was speaking of) be created to solve this problem.
>> I'm totally fine with a solution that doesn't involve a firewall.
>> It's just that an application firewall allows me to solve this
>> problem when I use Windows, so it is the only base of reference I
>> have to speak to.


I designed an application-based firewall interface to be part of
Ubuntu's networking settings, but no-one has volunteered to implement
it yet. 

> Sounds like nethogs can solve the problem of knowing which
> processes are currently sucking down bandwidth.  As for your
> indicator idea, I think a simple GUI front-end to nethogs would be
> the first step.


indicator-multiload can graph overall network traffic in the menu bar.

> The application could reside with other system apps, and simply be
> fired up when a user wants this information.  An indicator would
> mean nethogs running all the time in the background, unnecessarily 
> consuming resources, imho.  Anyone up for guifying nethogs? :-)
> 
> ...


It's even easier than that. System Monitor graphs overall CPU, memory,
and network use in its "Resources" tab. And it tabulates CPU and
memory use, but *not* network use, per process in its "Processes" tab.
So all that's missing is a column for network use in that table.

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Re: project ideas ubuntu

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hello Gaurav

Gaurav Saxena wrote on 25/09/11 18:08:
> 
> hello all i want to do a my fina; year projrct on ubuntu.. please
> help me with some ideas realted to ubuntu on which i can work...

These mailing lists are for current Ubuntu developers. They are not
really suited for beginners.

I suggest instead contacting a team related to what you are interested
in. 

When you do, mention what subject you are studying, and what kind of
project it is.

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Re: Upgrade to 11.10 claims to remove vlc

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Sebastian Geiger wrote on 02/08/11 17:18:
>
> I just upgraded to 11.10. On the upgrade summary I was told that the
> upgrade would later remove the Vlc package as one of 21 packages that
> were about to be removed after the upgrade. Just now the upgrade has
> run through and vlc was not among the packages to be removed anymore.
> Im currious why the upgrade process was telling me that vlc was going
> to be removed and then didnt remove it after the upgrade finished.
>...

I had a similar problem: the 11.04 upgrade said that it would remove
openoffice.org-math without installing libreoffice-math, but then did
install libreoffice-math after all. 

This kind of bug is hard to reproduce, because reinstalling takes a long
time. But if you have some time for testing, you might try this:

 so to reproduce all you need to do is to run apt-clone restore
/var/log/dist-upgrade/apt-clone_system_state.tar.gz
/some/destination/that/will/become/a/chroot
 then chroot to that destination and run the upgrade
 I admit its a bit time consuiming, but it should allow exact
reproducion of the issue

Cheers
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Re: Fwd: Re: Eventually drop the top-panel?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Kai Mast wrote on 27/06/11 22:50:
>...
> On 27.06.2011 11:39, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>>
>>> This would mean that we could drop all the "maximize to panel" and
>>> globalmenu-patches.
>>
>> I don't know what you mean by "maximize to panel". As for the global
>> menu, patches for that are heading upstream for Firefox, Thunderbird,
>> and LibreOffice 3.4.
>
> I don't mean the global menu but the way the maximized window and the
> top-panel get merged. Imo this is a sign that the top-panel has no use
> anymore..

I don't understand that logic at all.

>>>  Functionality like the sound menu could also be
>>>  included into the jumplist of the dash...
>>>...
>> That would mean things like the time, volume, and battery status
>> would be invisible much of the time, and would take up much of the
>> launcher when they were visible. It would be the worst of both
>> worlds.
>
> With sound menu I meant the way you can control you music player via 
> indicators. It would be way more straightforward if one could control
> the music player via a jumplist (=right-click-menu).

It would be much less straightforward, for three reasons. First, the
launcher is visible much less often than the launcher is. Second, even
when it is visible, launcher items are sometimes folded off the bottom
of the launcher, while nothing like that ever happens to the sound menu.
And third, a quicklist is accessible only if the music player is running
or is one of your favorites, whereas the sound menu is accessible all
the time.

> Well, you're right some indicators are still needed like the battery
> or network indicator, but this doesn't justify a whole top panel in my
> opinion.

That's possibly true. Phone OSes typically use a whole top panel just
for indicators, but they have much less width to work with.

But it's also irrelevant, because in Ubuntu the menu bar is not used
just for indicators, it is also used for window menus. That would be a
good thing even if there were no indicator menus at all.

>  We could move the indicator area into the dash

That would be even worse than moving it into the launcher.

> or even better
> use something like the once proposed wingpanel: 
> http://cdn.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/sipzz.jpg

The wingpanel is mostly a false economy. It relies on you having
something useful to do with the left ~70% -- but not the right ~30% --
of the top row of the screen, which is unlikely.

> My problem with the current situation is that a lot of functionality
> is duplicated. Empathy for example indicates new messages on the dash
> and also in the messaging-indicator...
>...

As far as I know, Empathy does not indicate new messages anywhere in the
Dash. It is true that it uses both the launcher and the messaging menu,
and that this is duplication. But the messaging menu aggregates new
messages from multiple applications, and it's not at all obvious how
this could be done in the launcher. Either new Empathy messages would be
shown only in a launcher item that *wasn't* the Empathy one, which would
be bizarre; or they would be shown in both the Empathy launcher item and
the aggregated launcher item, making the duplication much more jarring
than it is with the messaging menu.

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Re: Eventually drop the top-panel?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Kai Mast wrote on 25/06/11 12:35:
>
> Hey Guys,
>
> I was wondering with adding functionality to the dash like indicating
> progress or a message counters, are there plans to drop the indicator
> menu and with it the whole top panel?

No.

> This would mean that we could drop all the "maximize to panel" and
> globalmenu-patches.

I don't know what you mean by "maximize to panel". As for the global
menu, patches for that are heading upstream for Firefox, Thunderbird,
and LibreOffice 3.4.

> Functionality like the sound menu could also be
> included into the jumplist of the dash...
>...

That would mean things like the time, volume, and battery status would
be invisible much of the time, and would take up much of the launcher
when they were visible. It would be the worst of both worlds.

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Re: Unity, consistency and password-protected web pages

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Dylan McCall wrote on 28/03/11 04:32:
>...
> Something I've noticed lately has me a little concerned. I am hoping
> you folks can put my fears at ease! When I look at bug reports for
> Unity, I often encounter links to what I assume are design documents
> internal to Canonical. Here is one of those bug reports:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/729009
> (I realise this one was filed recently on an issue noticed after
> implementation, but let's view it as an example).
> The description points at an image:
> https://chinstrap.canonical.com/~sabdfl/11_04/desktop_and_netbook/dash/Dash_desktop/unity_desktop_dashboard_23_02_11_stages_fixed_01.png
>...
> This specific bug report looks like it could be a bitesize bug; a nice
> first bug fix for somebody. However, because the bug description is
> effectively inaccessible to any but those with access to
> chinstrap.canonical.com, it has to be fixed by a Canonical employee.
> (It rings a bell that the bug report could only have been filed by a
> Canonical employee, too).

Mark has responded to your general point. As for that specific example,
though, I did not know the image existed at the time I reported the bug.

The bug description was changed later.

Cheers
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Re: Location of installed files

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Gregor Shapiro wrote on 10/01/11 16:21:
>
> The Ubuntu Software manager does not tell users where to find the files
> that are installed using that service
>...

Anyone is welcome to implement a "Properties" window for USC to present
detailed information like that.


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Re: Feature suggestions: optionally placing home folder into separate partition during ubuntu install

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Daniel Hollocher wrote on 05/11/10 15:20:
>
>>>> That is a common misconception. Reinstalling Ubuntu on the same
>>>> partition doesn't lose the user's data either.
>>>>
>>>> A problem that is both real and more interesting, is working out why
>>>> so many people have that misconception, and how we can correct it.
>...
> I imagine you would have to make it part of the gui of whatever
> installer supports it if you wanted more people to use the feature.
> Otherwise, it is a bit too complicated to communicate to people.
>...

That's a good point.

Up till now, to get this effect, you had to use the advanced
partitioning step, choose to use the existing root partition, but choose
not to format it. That was pretty obscure.

Today Evan Dandrea, the installer maintainer, has been working on making
in-place reinstallation one of the basic installation options.

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Re: Feature suggestions: optionally placing home folder into separate partition during ubuntu install

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Daniel Gross wrote on 28/10/10 01:01:
>...
> It would be great if a tool existed that supports moving the home
> folder from the "boot" partition to a "data" partition. Ideally, the
> tool would support creating a data partition by resizing the boot
> partition, as well as recommending a minimum size for the data
> partition based on the size of the home folder.
> 
> Ideally, i think, such a setup could already be suggested during the
> Ubuntu installation process. Perhaps, under an "advanced setup" heading
> -- removing the need to move the home partition. 
> 
> The main benefit for such a setup, is that it allows reinstalling
> Ubuntu without loosing the users data, which would be safely sitting
> in a separate data partition. 
>...

That is a common misconception. Reinstalling Ubuntu on the same
partition doesn't lose the user's data either.

A problem that is both real and more interesting, is working out why so
many people have that misconception, and how we can correct it.

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Re: Where can I find more docs/help on upstart?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Paul Smith wrote on 04/09/10 20:46:
>
> Esp. how it interacts with Ubuntu/Debian packaging.
>...
> So far my Google/etc. searching for admin-level details of upstart
> hasn't netted me very much.
>...

Have you found <http://upstart.ubuntu.com/wiki/>?

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Re: Thoughts about software-properties

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Mohammed Amine IL Idrissi wrote on 04/08/10 17:45:
>
> Sorry for the tiny images. Here they are:
> * update-manager "Repositories" tab: http://imgur.com/zXZyH.png

I think most people, looking at this interface for the first time, would
ask: "What does it mean by 'distribution'?"

It also seems messy to have the same operation (selecting/deselecting)
on very similar items (Ubuntu archives, and other archives) handled at
separate levels (outside a listbox vs. inside).

> * update-manager "Automatic updates" tab: http://imgur.com/d59C4.png

What is the reason for distinguishing "distribution updates" from "other
updates"?

> * software-center "Provided by Ubuntu" pane: http://imgur.com/c3EZr.png

Are you suggesting that those checkboxes would be shown all the time?
(Also, "Provided by Ubuntu" and "Commercial software" are mutually
exclusive.)

> * software-center PPA/authenticated source pane: http://imgur.com/kqugQ.png

I don't understand what this is showing. Perhaps you could fill in a few
more of the details or a bit more of the context?

>...
> On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Matthew Paul Thomas  <mailto:m...@canonical.com>> wrote:
>...
>> Splitting it into two is an intriguing idea. It looks like the main
>> awkward point would be the download server setting -- that's the thing
>> that's most obviously shared between installations and updates.
>...

I notice that none of your wireframes show where the download server
setting would go. :-)

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Re: Thoughts about software-properties

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hi Mohammed

Mohammed Amine IL Idrissi wrote on 03/08/10 10:51:
>...
> Software-properties is one of the few applications that still relies on
> gksu. I was about to convert it to aptdaemon/policykit,

Excellent!

> when I thought
> of this: "Why don't we just separate software-properties into both
> update-manager and software-center?"

Software Sources is something I've been meaning to redesign eventually,
but I was putting it off because it wasn't as important as Ubuntu
Software Center or Update Manager.

Splitting it into two is an intriguing idea. It looks like the main
awkward point would be the download server setting -- that's the thing
that's most obviously shared between installations and updates.

> So I began to create the following mockups:
>  * update-manager: clicking on the "Settings..." button should open up
> a dialog that contains two tabs: "Repositories"
> (http://yfrog.com/jvupdatemanagerrepositorip) and "Automatic Updates"
> (http://yfrog.com/jbupdatemanagerautomaticup). Note that I mostly
> borrowed the design from
> here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareUpdateHandling#settings
>  * software-center: Clicking on the "Provided by Ubuntu" pane should
> show (beside what's in place now) five checkboxes representing main,
> universe, restricted, multiverse, and commercial software
> (http://yfrog.com/c9softwarecenterprovidedbp). And clicking on an
> authorized repository (such as a PPA) will show that the source is
> authorized (http://yfrog.com/jbsoftwarecenterauthentifp).
>...

Unfortunately, all except the last of those wireframes is tiny, so I
can't read them. Could you upload larger versions?

Thanks
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Re: Integrate "Apt-linker" into all Ubuntu Browsers

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Joao Pinto wrote on 15/07/10 12:43:
>
> Hello,
> per https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter#apturl there will be no way
> to automatically launch an install operation without going through the
> software information screen, is my interpretation correct ?
>...

Yes, the same as with apturl currently.

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Re: Integrate "Apt-linker" into all Ubuntu Browsers

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Ryan Oram wrote on 16/07/10 01:37:
>
> Matthew Paul Thomas wrote on Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:59:28 +0100:
>>
>> A Greasemonkey script would work only for people already using Ubuntu
>> (and using a browser that allows Greasemonkey scripts). It wouldn't
>> do anything to make an apt: URL understandable for people who aren't
>> using Ubuntu. Nor would it help CMSes such as WordPress that mangle
>> apt: links
> 
> Yes, but it would remove the need for users to manually enter in
> "apt-get install" commands given to them on blogs and forums.

The solution I described already solves that problem.

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Re: Integrate "Apt-linker" into all Ubuntu Browsers

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Ryan Oram wrote on 12/07/10 19:28:
>...
> AptURL needs exposure and needs to become familiar to users. That
> would be the goal of integration the Apt-Linker Greasemonkey script.
> Instead of AptURLs being isolated to certain repository websites and
> official forums, they would be everywhere Ubuntu users would seek help
> and guidance. In doing so, it would remove one of the last reason
> reasons in Ubuntu to use a command-line.
>...

A Greasemonkey script would work only for people already using Ubuntu
(and using a browser that allows Greasemonkey scripts). It wouldn't do
anything to make an apt: URL understandable for people who aren't using
Ubuntu. Nor would it help CMSes such as WordPress that mangle apt: links.

To get around this, we have apt.ubuntu.com and Ubuntu Software Center's
"Edit" > "Copy Web Link" command. Unfortunately, it currently works only
for Firefox, and doesn't yet give useful promotion to people not using
Ubuntu. It would be great if someone could contribute the visual design,
JavaScript etc necessary to make it work well.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AptUrlRedirector>

And in Ubuntu 10.10, apt: links will open in Ubuntu Software Center,
rather than in a minimalist apturl window. This will be much more
informative and obvious about what's going on.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter#apturl>

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Re: notify-osd upgrade

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Damián Nohales wrote on 05/07/10 17:28:
> 
> Hi, I was reading in blogs and I have noticed of a notify-osd patch and 
> a notify-osd GUI configuration program in Launchpad repositories, the 
> repositories are the following:
> 
> ppa:leolik/leolik
> ppa:amandeepgrewal/notifyosdconfig
> 
> I use that and works excellent, allow to configure a lot of GNOME 
> notifications aspects (color, stroke, opacity, size, position, etc), I 
> found it really useful.
> 
> Are there possibilities to include this package and patch by default in 
> a close future?
>...

No. There's no reason the appearance of notification bubbles should be
more prominently configurable than the appearance of tooltips, for example.

Now, currently the appearance of tooltips is determined by the theme,
but the appearance of notification bubbles is not. I'd be interested in
seeing code that made the appearance controllable by the theme.

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Re: need some guidance on a project

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hi Pranay

Sorry for the late reply.

pranay agarwal wrote on 30/06/10 18:07:
> 
> hi,  whenever i shutdown or restart the system when i am downloading
> any package from synaptic package manager, the system does not show me
> any warnings that some download is in progress, so i intend to add
> this feature in ubuntu. Can someone please guide me as to how should i
> proceed about it?
> Thanks.

Over the next couple of Ubuntu releases, we're migrating from Synaptic
to Ubuntu Software Center and Update Manager. However, they currently
have this same problem as Synaptic.

Ubuntu Software Center uses aptdaemon for package installation, and
Update Manager from Maverick onwards will use aptdaemon too. So to fix
this problem in both programs, you could change aptdaemon so that any
package operation (1) inhibits session exit and (2) inhibits shutdown.

Here's the aptdaemon code:
https://code.launchpad.net/aptdaemon

Here's the reference for how to inhibit session exit:
http://people.gnome.org/~mccann/gnome-session/docs/gnome-session.html#org.gnome.SessionManager.Inhibit

Inhibiting shutdown can be done with an Upstart script. The
unattended-upgrades package contains a script doing the same thing:
https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/maverick/unattended-upgrades/maverick
http://upstart.ubuntu.com/getting-started.html

Thanks for getting involved!

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Re: Better 3+ monitor support

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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John Fano wrote on 13/05/10 22:18:
>...
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=884161
> 
> The poster has been helping people since 8.04 setup 3+ monitors while
> still running Compiz.  Unfortunately if you keep reading to the end
> you see that it's no longer possible without some hacking from 8.10 to
> 9.10 and the very last post shows that it's just broken with 10.04
> (there is a bug report).   So I am curious if there is anything in the
> works to address easy setup with 3+ monitors while keeping Compiz so
> we don't lose the docks and other things that depend on an accelerated
> desktop?  The Monitors app does a great job with 2 monitors, so it
> would be great to have that work with more than 2.
>...

One of my lower-priority projects is to organize a redesign of the
Monitors settings so that it deals better with more than two displays.

It would be fantastic if someone could start this redesign work
themselves. :-) Producing a solid interface design makes it much easier
to find interested programmers.

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Re: Ubuntu needs a new development model

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Ryan Oram wrote on 05/05/10 23:44:
> 
> Ubuntu needs a change in direction. I propose that Ubuntu adopt a
> development model where only the core operating system, userland, core
> libraries, and desktop environment are frozen every 6 months. The
> applications would then be freely updated to the newest versions at
> all times. Package maintenance and support for the end-user
> applications would be provided by the developers themselves.
>...

We're making a small step towards this in Maverick, with the ability for
application developers to submit packages for an Ubuntu version after
that version has been released.
<https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-maverick-opportunistic-apps-stable-release>

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Re: Removal of notification area

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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V for Vortex wrote on 10/06/10 15:55:
>...
> Matthew Paul Thomas  wrote:
>>
>> Once it is removed, it will not be possible to re-add the notification
>> area applet (or any other applet) to the Unity panel.
>
> Will it be possible to replace the Unity panel then? ]:}

Sure, you can install gnome-panel instead. But if you wanted that, then
why did you choose UNE or Ubuntu Light in the first place?

> To be serious, I don't like this kind of forcing one's own view of
> usability onto the users.

Ubuntu developers also "force their own view" of which kernel, which
bootloader, which init system, which windowing system, and which
packaging system Ubuntu users should use as well. How dare they.

>   GNU/Linux is all about free customization.
> Give the user your preferred applications, but let him choose what
> he/she wants to use.
>...

As I've said before, any sentence of the form "Linux is about " is a fallacy. That is doubly true for "GNU/Linux is about ".

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Re: Removal of notification area

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Davyd McColl wrote on 23/04/10 15:02:
>...
> 1) Already we have the case of apps which don't "play nicely" with the
> user notification applet such as Pidgin and Skype (both probably out of
> portability concerns). Now, personally, I don't want to use 2 different
> IM clients (home, Linux; work, Windows), so cross-platform for me, and
> some others, is a win. It's also a nice way to make people comfortable
> when they cross over from another platform to Ubuntu. In other words, I
> don't want to use Empathy -- and I don't see why I should *have* to.
> Now we're adding another mechanism to make development for
> cross-platform apps more difficult? I expect some fall-out here, and
> the user is the one who will get the bad end of it, when devs don't get
> around to or can't be bothered to support this "no notification area"
> concept.

Yes, this will be a test of our API design, documentation, and
evangelism skills. Some cross-platform applications, such as Dropbox and
Transmission, have already switched.

> 2) Whilst I like the floating click-through notification concept, it
> doesn't help for being able to tell, after being away from the desktop,
> when, for example, I've missed an IM. I really hope no-one expects that
> the user should have to scan all open applications for updates in lieu
> of a "systray".

No. That kind of notification can be achieved by the window requesting
attention.

>...
> 3) I've had a look at the spec at
> http://design.canonical.com/2010/04/notification-area/ for the "menu"
> concept, and I have to ask: what, apart from the fact that moving the
> mouse will open another app's menu (which may actually confuse new
> users who don't expect that) is the difference between this concept and
> the current notification area with clickable icons? It doesn't seem all
> that abstracted to me...

The main difference is that every item will behave like a menu, whereas
in the notification area items could do anything they liked.

> Point (3) brings me to wanting to support the idea of a notification
> area bridge, since the spec just currently creates more work for
> application developers who already have a notification area icon in
> place -- and more effort for people who have abstracted notification
> icons for cross-platform development.

I don't understand how that would work. Let's say your application has a
notification area icon that opens a simple menu on left click, a complex
menu on right click, and a window on double-click. (Quite a few
notification area items on Windows work like this.) How would the bridge
handle them?

>...
> Also, I can see how the notification area applet will probably never
> die, but the users who still want it will have to install it on top of
> the default installation to handle all the apps which haven't moved
> over to align themselves with Ubuntuism.

Once it is removed, it will not be possible to re-add the notification
area applet (or any other applet) to the Unity panel.

>...
> On a side note, the Win7 handling of notification icons is great here:
> you see what you want; icons which have something to say appear for a
> short while and are hidden again and choosing what to see is a simple
> drag-n-drop operation -- quite well done from the company we all love
> to hate, to be honest.
>...

I think I explained pretty well what's wrong with the Windows 7 system.

Cheers
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Re: Ubuntu Help Center

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hi Brian

Brian Vidal Castillo wrote on 22/12/09 03:29:
>...
> I want to start a new project related to the way help and support is
> given to the final users.
> We know that a lot of tools and ways are available to get the right
> answer, but none of these are really out-of-the-box.

Previously: <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpfulHelp#Web%20integration>

> For example, the faster way to get help is from IRC channels, but it
> needs a *decent* IRC client installed, like X-Chat.

IRC does not scale, as a way of getting help, even to the small
proportion of Ubuntu users who currently know about it. (There are 1324
people in #ubuntu as I write this.) For any given person joining a busy
IRC channel, *most* of the things they see will not be relevant to their
problem. That's fine if you're already familiar with how IRC works, but
if you don't, it's bizarre.

If IRC was embedded into the standard help viewer, most people also
would not understand the difference between official support and some
random troll telling them to sudo rm -r *.

> Also, Yelp depends on gecko even when webkit is faster .

Apparently the only thing holding it up is accessibility.
<http://blogs.gnome.org/shaunm/2009/06/17/yelp-2271/comment-page-1/#comment-198>

> The main idea is to replace completely Yelp with a unified and faster
> Help system with an integrated IRC client, a Live Support panel. It
> will support man pages, docbooks, html manuals, xml-based manuals and
> the new Mallard pages.
>
> Also, it will give a 'tunnel' to access screencasts as
> 'demostrations'.

The ability to embed screencasts would be very cool. It almost certainly
doesn't require replacing Yelp, though.

>...
> A few mockups (done in Balsamiq Mockups)
> Gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/dael99/HelpCenter?feat=directlink
>...

Remember that a help viewer needs to be compact enough to fit
*alongside* whatever you're wanting help with.

There are many ways in which you could improve the existing help system.
One would be devising a method by which help pages can show conditional
help depending on what environment you're running (e.g. Ubuntu vs.
Ubuntu Netbook Edition). Another would be implementing a mechanism for
help pages to have a "Show Me" button, that highlights the relevant item
in the interface. Another would be to clean up the poor use of icons,
ruled lines, and italics in the help page style sheet. Another would be
to improve the search (for example, from an application's help pages,
the search should return results just about that application).

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Re: No Cyber Cafe Software for Ubuntu yet...

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Onkar Shinde wrote on 23/12/09 09:19:
> 
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 3:09 AM, omar ar 
> wrote:
>> 
>> Why not the ubuntu developer develope the cyber cafe software that
>> works with ubuntu server and clients. There is no any cyber cafe
>> software for ubuntu yet. and make it open source perhaps. It will
>> make easier for anybody who wants to open a cyber cafe business.
> 
> Just saying cyber cafe software doesn't say much. What kind of
> functionality are you looking for. Perhaps it is already available in
> different packages.
>...

A client applet that locks the screen whenever the computer is not in
use; shows time elapsed, and charges so far, whenever it is in use; and
completely resets the environment when the customer has finished.

An editable schedule of charges for amount of time spent on the computer
(including things like overnight specials and loyalty programs), and for
extras such as printing and CD-Rs.

A dashboard showing a geographically-correct map of computers in the
cybercafe; whether each one is free, in use, in use but idle, or
unresponsive; and for each one in use, how long it has been used and
what charges have accrued. The ability to add extra charges to a
computer manually, or to reset its time if something went wrong.

Integration with the printing system, so that when someone prints
something they get charged automatically.

As a bonus, the ability to check what's happening on the screen of each
computer to ensure that it won't be disturbing other customers.

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Re: Idea: Dyslexia screen tinter

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Neil Munro wrote on 02/11/09 19:37:
>...
> What I propose is a centralised dedicated accessibility tool that
> enables the user to slide colour values up and down to change both
> background and text colour, with an example block of text that changes
> as they edit the values. It should also remain consistent between
> themes, if a new theme is loaded it should either apply the
> accessibility elements or if it can't, print a warning that informs
> the user that the theme they wish to use can't support their needs.

A one-stop-shop for accessibility features would be good for multiple
reasons. If you'd like to specify one, I suggest following the feature
specification process. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureSpecifications>
Now, at the start of a new release cycle, is the ideal time to do that.
 But pay particular attention to step 5, "Gather a community around your
specification", because features don't implement themselves. :-)

One delicate issue with color tinting in particular is that the
science behind it is apparently rather contentious.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotopic_sensitivity_syndrome> I have no
reason to doubt that it has helped your friends, and we don't require
scientific rigor for introduction of other features in Ubuntu -- but at
the same time, it would reflect poorly on us if we were implicitly
promoting placebos.

> They new software store is one such application that might be
> problematic and can't be fixed by editing the colour values in the
> theme manager. It has a blue background in the main window that does
> not change from theme to theme, those with trouble reading black on
> pastel blue might find using software store a nightmare. However
> moving it to black on white might make it harder for those who can't
> read black on white.
>...

The reason I specified a color there is that I wanted to emphasize your
location in the "Get Free Software" section (blue) as opposed to the
"Installed Software" section (white). Maybe there is a more
theme-sensitive way we can do that.

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Re: configuration utility for compiz

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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yurik 81 wrote on 30/10/09 00:28:
> 
> I as many users want to try different compiz effects (e.g. 3D
> desktop). Why wouldn't include configuration utility for this in
> Ubuntu distribution? I prefer to use compizconfig-settings-manager,
> but it may be something else.

compizconfig-settings-manager is included, in the Universe repository.

If you mean "why isn't it shipped by default", that's because CD space
is limited, and twiddling window manager settings is far down the list
of interesting things to provide software for.

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Re: Bug in Ubuntu One - where and how to report it

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Ioannis Vranos wrote on 31/10/09 12:56:
>...
> I have created a free account in Ubuntu one, and I am having only one
> PC, a laptop. However it prompts me again and again, to add the machine,
> as if it is a different machine, and now two machines are listed in
> "Computers on your account".
>...
> Where an I fill a bug report for it?
>...

<https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntuone>

Cheers
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Re: Idea: Dyslexia screen tinter

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hi Neil

Neil Munro wrote on 02/11/09 01:53:
>...
> Many of my friends or people I have met have dyslexia and struggle to
> read information on screen, however recent studies have shown
> overlaying colour over text or changing both the text colour and it's
> background colour can make it significantly easier to read for some
> individuals.
> 
> Software solutions exist for Windows, I've submitted a bug report on
> launchpad that has been confirmed by someone else, but nothing has
> been done with it since it was placed in the hands of the a11y team,
> it's something i feel strongly about and was wondering if I should
> take a more involved approach in getting this issue addressed.
>...

You can already change the colors of text fields and other elements in
Ubuntu: "System" > "Preferences" > "Appearance" > "Theme" > "Customize"
> "Colors" > "Input boxes".

Not all programs obey these settings; you could help by reporting bugs
on the individual programs.

You might reasonably argue that this setting should be easier to find,
but the same is unfortunately true for every other accessibility setting
in Ubuntu.

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Re: Ubuntu Domain Server

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Dotan Cohen wrote on 24/10/09 13:25:
>...
> Why not have a GUI program that performs brain surgery? That rebuilds
> Ford smallblocks? That gives legal advice? Some jobs require a
> professional, and making them "accessible" does nobody any good.

The software that brain surgeons use is highly graphical.
<http://www.5min.com/Video/114223642>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpGGL2pb2nc>
If it was text-only, it would be much less effective, and brain surgeons
would therefore be less trustworthy, not more. It is not the difficulty
of the software they use that leads you to trust brain surgeons,
mechanics, or lawyers; it is their training, experience, and support staff.

You are trying to make server administrators trustworthy by making
server software artificially difficult to use. This strategy would work
only if the server software market was uncompetitive, because it is a
strategy that severely retards the usefulness of the software. A
graphical interface could do a much better job of presenting and
manipulating things like directory information trees, network topology,
and resource use over time, than a text-only presentation ever will.

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Re: Icons in Place and System

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Markus Hitter wrote on 13/10/09 22:03:
>...
> To me it looks unfinished because the space for the icons is kept,  
> even with no icons shown. With Icons off, the menu entries shouls
> shrink accordingly.
>...

Agreed. With the default setting where items with icons are exceptions,
the left edge of the icon for an item that has one should line up with
the left edge of the text for an item that doesn't. Perhaps someone
could fix that as a papercut for Lucid.

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Re: Icons in Place and System

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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coz DS wrote on 12/10/09 17:05:
>
> Hey all,
>   I am running ubuntu 9.10 right now fresh install... I noticed  no
> icons under System menu and a few missing from Places menu in Gnome.

There are fewer icons in menus generally. Places and System are just two
examples.

> I brought this up in irc  and was told it was an upstream decision
> because "it looked cluttered". I hope that was a joke!

No, it isn't.

>i don't know if that is an accurate reason for the decision
> ...however let me point out that  many people with vision deficiencies
> may not be able to distinguish items in the menus by text alone!
>   Many will need the colours and shapes of the icons...even if not
> seen clearly..to recognize which item listed in the menu is the one
> they want.

After more than a decade of trying in Gnome, it is still just as
impossible as it always was for every menu item to have a distinct and
meaningful icon. So if difficulty of finding menu items without icons is
really an accessibility problem (and I haven't seen any evidence that it
is), we need to solve that problem in a way that does not involve icons.

>   I suppose the argument that.."if they know where the items are with
> icons...the positions have not changed..so therefore...."
> I hope that isn't the reasoning:)
>...

No, it isn't.

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Re: External storage ejection notifications

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hi Davyd

Davyd McColl wrote on 03/07/09 06:54:
>
> With the spanky new Jaunty notifications in place for commonplace items such
> as IM messages, I have found it rather disappointing that we've actually
> *lost* the "safe to remove media" notifications that I came to love and wait
> patiently for under prior versions of Ubuntu.
>
> In the place of a rather spiffy-looking balloon-type notification, Nautilus
> now gives me a dialog which, for all intents and purposes, looks very
> unfinished: the message that it tries to display isn't even a complete
> sentence (so I'm assuming that the rest of it would be there if the dialog
> were bigger?).
>...
> What are the dev plans for said removable storage notifications? Is this
> something which is going to be addressed as soon as a consensus is reached
> about how to address it? Is this something which is already addressed in
> Karmic? Or is this something which is just going to be left in a state of
> less polish than prior releases?

The Notify OSD specification includes a description of exactly how
safe-to-disconnect messages should be displayed.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD#gnome-disk-utility>

If Karmic is not following that specification, please report a bug
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-disk-utility> with
steps to reproduce, and give the bug report the "notifications" tag.

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Re: Intuitive Scollbar Concept

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Danny Piccirillo wrote on 27/06/09 04:37:
> 
> I've mentioned this before, but i think this would be an incredible addition
> to GNOME 3.0
> Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PnXY4wjuH8
> LP: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/253546
> GTK feature request: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=530413
> Python script:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=110623&action=view
> 
> What do you guys think?
>...

It needs user testing. Without that, we have no idea whether it's
"intuitive" or not.

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Re: Provide a GUI option in the installer to enable popcon

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Vincenzo Ciancia wrote on 25/06/09 12:55:
>...
> Perhaps an advice in the default firefox starting page would be good,
> something like "Looking for packages on the web? Look in the
> repositories first!" with a short explanation and a link to proper
> documentation.
>...

Interesting idea. I've added it to the wiki page.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppCenter?action=diff&rev2=76&rev1=75>

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Re: Provide a GUI option in the installer to enable popcon

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Andrew Sayers wrote on 23/06/09 17:55:
>...
>   The "submit statistical information" page in "System >
>   Administration > Software Sources > Statistics" should be
>   presented during the installation process.  The box should
>   be checked by default in pre-RC versions of Ubuntu, and
>   unchecked in stable versions.
> 
> This would enable or disable the Ubuntu Popularity Contest 
> (popcon.ubuntu.com), which is currently installed but disabled by
> default.

We're constantly trying to make the Ubuntu installation process simpler.
And explaining the Popularity Contest in an understandable way, in the
installer which is completely out of context, would be quite difficult.

As part of the AppCenter design work, I hope to make the popcon option
more prominent in context.

>...
> If just 1% of Ubuntu users tick the box, that gives us enough data to 
> improve Ubuntu by justifying our decisions with evidence.
>...

The absolute size of a sample is more important, statistically, than its
relative size. In other words, 1136581 popcon submissions is a large
enough sample regardless of how many Ubuntu users there are in total.
What is more important now is reducing bias -- bias towards current
users against potential users, towards users who fiddle with settings
against users who don't, and so on.

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Re: Remove F-Spot from the LiveCD

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Sense Hofstede wrote on 22/06/09 15:26:
>...
> Including more Mono applications would justify placing Mono on the
> LiveCD, but we should ask ourselves what's more important: supporting
> Mono applications on the LiveCD or offering proper localisation
> support on the LiveCD.

"Supporting Mono applications on the live CD" is not important.
Including F-Spot on the live CD is important.
Including Banshee on the live CD is also important.

If you want to propose a change to what's included on the CD, you need
to make that proposal precise. For example: "We should remove
application X and instead ship language packs Y and Z, because more
potential Ubuntu users are deterred by the lack of those language packs
than are attracted to it by the presence of X." Preferably backed up by
measurements of how much space the various packages take up, and how
many people are fluent in those languages but not in English.

The greater the scope of a change, the more difficult it would be to get
people to agree with it. For example, "We should replace Tomboy with
GNote, and replace F-Spot with Solang, and cancel our plan to replace
Rhythmbox with Banshee, and instead ship language packs A, B, C, D, and
E" is complicated and therefore less likely to be approved (even if
Solang was a mature application).

This is not special-casing Mono; a similar situation applies to
xulrunner, which takes up a chunk of space on the CD where WebKit could
theoretically perform the same roles.

> The problem that the boot menu seems to falsely promise full
> multi-language support is a critical one.
>...

I agree, but you're most likely to help fix it if you change the way
you're going about it.

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Re: Remove F-Spot from the LiveCD

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Sense Hofstede wrote on 22/06/09 13:41:
>...
> In one sentence: I think F-Spot should be removed from the LiveCD
> because it's useless on the CD and takes up space that could be used
> much better.
>...

You still haven't given any explanation of why you think F-Spot is
"useless on the CD". The only thing you've said about that is:
|
| F-Spot isn't exactly the epitome of supreme look & feel and is useless
| on the LiveCD since there are no photos to use it with.

But nor are there are any e-mail messages to use Evolution with, or IM
contacts to use Empathy or Pidgin with, or music tracks to use Rhythmbox
or Banshee with. For all those applications you need to set them up
after installing them. Why should F-Spot be treated dfferently?

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Re: Browser chat (was Re: about empathy as the default IM application)

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Danny Piccirillo wrote on 17/06/09 21:13:
>...
> What would Midori need to replace Firefox? It has plugin support, so
> let's forget about the number of actual plugins (similar to Empathy
> vs Pidgin, it would be unreasonable to expect that gap to close before
> we make a change), since the major ones seem to have been ported. What
> does Firefox have that Midori doesn't which keeps it from being the
> default browser in Ubuntu?

My personal opinion only:
1.  An obvious and/or well-marketed name.
2.  An obvious and/or well-marketed name. (Seriously.)
3.  An icon that features a blue globe.
4.  Integrated search that is easy to find and actually works.
5.  A toolbar that is compact and attractive by default.
6.  A bookmarks interface that is understandable by default.
7.  An English translation. (Midori uses the non-existent words
"Tabbar", "Navigationbar", and "Userstyles", among others.)
8.  Well-presented graphs showing how much faster it is than Firefox.
9.  A private browsing mode that actually works.
10. Print preview.
11~20. Equivalents, either built in or as easily-installable extensions,
to the ten most popular Firefox extensions.

It is possible that some of these items have been addressed since the
version of Midori available in Ubuntu 9.04. But at the same time, the
list of requirements to displace Firefox 3.5 would naturally be steeper
than the list of requirements to replace Firefox 3.0.

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Re: Few notes on filing "papercut" bugs

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Mat Tomaszewski wrote on 12/06/09 12:07:
>...
> The response so far has been overwhelming and we are already finding
> it difficult to filter out bugs that indeed are "papercuts" from the
> ones that aren't. On that note, I think we need a clearer definition
> of which bugs do qualify as papercuts.
>
> Please do file as papercuts:
>
> - bugs that are system-wide (Nautilus, Gnome panel, etc), rather than
> app-specific (F-Spot, OOo, Terminal, etc.)
>...

I suggest judging bugs by how many people they are likely to affect,
regardless of whether they're in a particular application or not. A bug
that affects 50% of people using Banshee is probably more important to
fix than a bug that affects 5% of people using gnome-panel's brightness
applet.

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Re: Reproducible w3m bug

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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(``-_-´´) -- BUGabundo wrote on 08/06/09 20:58:
>...
> Should package that are in Universe and unmaintained[1] show that in
> Launchpad and _suggest_ the user to upstream them? I understand that
> _not_ all user will know/want to do that, but at least it would allow
> more experienced bug filling users to be more alerted to this
> problems.
>...

Yes, and that should be true for almost all Ubuntu bug reports, not just
those about Universe packages. <http://launchpad.net/bugs/182830>

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Re: shameful censoring of mono opposition

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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This thread is an example of why some Ubuntu developers don't bother to
read this mailing list.

Vincenzo Ciancia wrote on 09/06/09 18:23:
>...
> Ubuntu is a centralised entity. No external person can control e.g.
> why we have a custom search in the home page of firefox by default.

Depends what you mean by "we". You are welcome to create a derivative OS
that has a different default.

> People who can't tell the difference will keep using a "different"
> google, but there is not even way to get some discussion around this
>...

That's incorrect: There was a discussion on this exact issue, led by
Canonical's COO, at UDS Jaunty. There's probably even a video of it at
<http://video.ubuntu.com/uds/jaunty/Desktop/>.

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Re: Raising issues (games etc)

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Alex Cockell wrote on 01/05/09 18:09:
>...
> Sorry for being really dense, but would "filing a bug" be your term for
> what I would know as "raising an incident ticket"?
>...

Probably not. If you are looking for help fixing or working around a
problem with Ubuntu, for free or for pay, there are a several support
sources available. <http://www.ubuntu.com/support>

Reporting a bug is for directly helping developers to improve the
software. To report a bug you should be able to clearly describe how to
reproduce the problem, and you should be willing and able to answer
technical questions about the computer where the problem occurs
(including testing to see if it occurs with newer versions of the same
program).

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Notify OSD to be discussed at UDS Karmic

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Since there were complaints about insufficient notice last time ... :-)

At UDS Karmic this month, there will be a session for discussing
improvements to the Notify OSD notification server.
<https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/dx-karmic-notify-osd>

Topics for discussion will include:
*   experimenting with better positioning for the notification bubbles
*   improving the appearance and behavior (making composited bubbles
more obviously unclickable, and non-composited bubbles classier)
*   implementing the duration rules, so that notifications with longer
text are shown for longer
*   better handling of long backlogs of notifications
*   investigating whether we can use non-critical priorities for
anything useful
*   helping to get the FreeDesktop.org notifications specification to
1.0
*   a Qt implementation
*   investigating a "do-not-disturb" mode
*   accessibility, e.g. sound theme compliance and maybe alt text for
icons
*   media key confirmation bubbles (Play, Pause, Previous, Next)
*   suppressing bubbles when any window is full-screen
*   a test suite for the rendering layer.

If you want to take part in the discussion, keep an eye on the schedule
<http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-karmic/> to find out when the session will
be. If you can't attend (either physically or virtually) but have
suggestions you'd like considered, please add them to the Notify OSD
comments page. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD/Comments>

Thanks
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Matthew Paul Thomas
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Re: Jaunty's update notifications

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Oli Warner wrote on 23/04/09 10:32:
>...
> I'm running very much a non-standard install these days. I've tinkered
> with things. I say that because I want to make sure what I'm seeing
> (as a user) is by design and not by some random compound of mistakes.
> So please put me right if I'm describing something that isn't true of
> a fresh install.
> 
>- Apt is still scheduled to update at ~8am every day.

Daily, yes (I don't know the exact time).

>- Update Manager will open if it has standard updates 7 days old or
>security updates 2 days old

No, it's more about when you last installed updates than about the age
of the uninstalled updates.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD#Update%20Manager> defines the exact
behavior.

>- This is done (and I paraquote) to tidy up the Notification Area

Correct.

> So firstly there's the "random window" usability argument. New users,
> especially those who have migrated from an infected Windows computer
> suffering pop-up hell tend to be incredibly wary of things that just
> appear. If I arrive at my PC (with the aim of doing something
> specific) I'd probably ignore the update screen. I might not even know
> what it is and close it. Having it just spring up is setting a
> dangerous precedent for annoy-ware and might result people turning off
> the automatic updates to live an easier life.

<https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-February/027568.html>

> That paired with the time delay might lead to occasions where
> everybody has worked really hard to get a security update out and it
> isn't applied for days.

There is no time delay for presenting security updates.

>...
> What is the default update procedure? Would a fresh install of Ubuntu
> install security updates without confirmation as soon as it gets them?

No.

> If not, why on earth not?

That's something we need to discuss further. There are benefits to
installing security updates automatically, but there are also costs,
especially with updates to programs such as Firefox that malfunction if
you are running them while they are being updated.

>...
> What I'm suggesting is we go all-out to ensure people know there are
> updates and they know what to do. Think an animated, spinning version
> of the update notification, balloon pop-ups explaining why installing
> the updates is a good idea and if they close that balloon, leave the
> icon in the notification area, spawning fresh balloons at increased
> frequency.
> 
> You could argue that it's equally annoying as just spawning the update
> window and I'd probably agree, but I think it's that important to make sure
> users do their updates.
>...

I don't understand why you think that would be better than opening the
updates window.

Cheers
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Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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