The Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS-P)

Precise Pangolin Sign borrowed from tipforlinux.com

I attended the Ubuntu Developer Summit last week in Orlando Florida.  While its my second UDS, the first I attended more as a guest, an outside observer who used Ubuntu and was developing an open source application.  Luck has it that UDS was held in Orlando one more time and with this UDS a chance to finally get involved.

Now a co-worker and I both decided to go and at first we figured we'd drive down and back every day.  The theory was its 10 dollars cheaper than the cheapest hotel and we'd get to sleep in our own beds.  By Wednesday that was out the window and we stayed at the hotel next door (60 dollars cheaper a night and right next door).

Day 1

The opening keynote went well, Jono stood up and talked for a bit about UDS and then Mark came up and talked about Ubuntu and someone from Linaro (sorry it was a week ago and I forget his name) talked about Linaro's progress.  Mark dropped the plans for 2014, Ubuntu on everything (phone's, tablets, TV's, computers, etc).  The most amazing thing about this plan isn't that its Ubuntu running on each of those devices, but his second image had Ubuntu running on a phone driving the other devices.  Kind of what Motorola has faked in my phone where I plug into a monitor and suddenly my dual core 1GHZ, 1GB of RAM cell phone is a desktop PC.

Morning Sessions

I first attended the Community Round Table. Jono, or whoever thought it up, had a great plan to hold round tables every morning. I didn't get to attend all of them, but they set the stage for the rest of the day. In this first round table, several community sessions were added to the weekly scheduled based on items from the round table. Next up was the Software Center Roadmap. I barely remember a thing, I need to write these closer to the actual event next time.

Afternoon Session

In the afternoon, I went to Unity Desktop Integration and Ubuntu and Tablets. Ubuntu and Tablets was the most interesting. The discussion became very detail driven. The kernel needs to be smaller, faster, less of memory hog, less of a power hog. Several topics brought up Android as our Java Desktop Linux cousin. There was some discussion of the user interface that unity had to change. Talk of tile menus vs the current layout. My hope is that with 2 years we can do something better than duplicate the tile system of android and ios. Unity to me, seems like it would work. The top menu bar would need to be something else, like a button driven menu ala android (I know I'm already picking apart the others). I didn't get to point out my webdesign thought for the desktop. Think css zen garden. Ubuntu would detect the screen size and apply the "css" style for the desktop size. The background and actions would all stay the same, only thier presentation would change. If you plugged into a bigger monitor, new layout specific for that screen size.

Afterwards

We stayed for the evening social event, I met up with a couple of people and then began the long drive home.

This is the end of part 1. Part 2 coming up soon ....