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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in Planet Ubuntu's InsaneJournal:

    Tuesday, April 12th, 2016
    8:56 pm
    Xubuntu: My media manager: The cloud

    http://xubuntu.org/news/my-media-manager-cloud/

    Xubuntu 16.04 LTS will be the first Xubuntu release without a default media manager. To help those without a favorite one, weve put up this series where some of the Xubuntu team members talk about their favorite media managers. Later in the series we discuss some cloud services and other media manager options in the Ubuntu repositories. Enjoy!

    In addition to the more traditional media managers which manage local collections, more and more people use cloud based streaming services. In this article, we talk about the cloud services and players used by the Xubuntu team.

    Google Play Music

    Google Play Music is available widely in the world, coverage areas including most of the Americas, Europe, Australia and more. You can use Google Play Music for free, but paid subscription options are available. Their song catalogue covers 35 million songs.

    David: I mainly listen to music locally, CDs and vinyls. At work I usually use Google Play Music. Apart from their huge catalogue, theres also the possibility of uploading up to 50000 songs, using the Google Play Music Manager API.

    Elizabeth: I also listen to a lot of music locally, typically MP3s Ive bought or created from CDs. However, I also have a monthly subscription to Google Play Music for the latest music I dont feel compelled to buy directly. Im using the web-based player in Google Chrome on Xubuntu, but it also seamlessly integrates with all my Android devices (including my watch!) via the Android apps.

    Pandora

    Pandora is available in Australia, New Zealand and the United States only. Their song catalogue is between one and two million songs.

    The easiest way to use Pandora on Xubuntu is the web interface at pandora.com. For those seeking tighter or geekier (read: more fun) integration with the desktop, there are unofficial GTK+ and terminal clients available. The GTK+ client, Pithos, includes sound indicator and notification support. The terminal client, pianobar, allows station management and playback, as well as keybinding support. Both clients are available in the Ubuntu repositories.

    Sean: I stream all of my music. I have a small music library from when I was younger, but became bored with my own lack of variety. While I occasionally use Spotify, I almost always stream Pandora, switching between the web interface, Android application, and the Pithos GTK+ client. If Ive got music playing, its coming from one of my 50+ Pandora stations.

    Spotify

    Spotify is available widely in the world, coverage areas including most of the Americas, Europe and Australia. You can use Spotify for free, but paid subscription options are available. Their song catalogue covers about 30 million songs.

    Currently, the easiest way to use Spotify on Xubuntu is the web interface at play.spotify.com. Playing and browsing works well with the web interface, but if you want desktop integration (sound indicator and notifications), you will have to install the desktop client. The desktop client isnt available from the Ubuntu repositories directly, but Spotify offers their own repository and instructions on setting the desktop app up at the Spotify website. Please note: The desktop client is unsupported by Spotify. Since its closed source, it is also unsupported by the Xubuntu team. That said, our experience says it works well for most of the people and is totally worth trying if you want to use Spotify with desktop integration.

    Pasi: While I mostly listen to music locally, I occasionally use Spotify to listen to new music that I want to try before I buy. For this purpose the web interface is more than good enough  the collection is also large enough to find most of the things Im looking for.

    7:56 pm
    Ubuntu Insights: Ubuntu OpenStack growth confirmed by latest OpenStack User Survey

    http://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/04/12/ubuntu-openstack-growth-confirmed-by-latest-openstack-user-survey/

    The most recent OpenStack user survey has gone live. In it we see tremendous growth for Ubuntu OpenStack in production clouds. Were super excited about the support the community continues to show for Ubuntu. Here at Canonical we get to work with the worlds largest production OpenStack clouds, from telco to big data and pure IaaS clouds, Ubuntu OpenStack is everywhere. For that, we are thankful to the incredible open source community.

    Ubuntu OpenStack continues to dominate the majority of deployments with 55% of production OpenStack clouds. The last survey showed Ubuntu OpenStack at 33% of production clouds  thats almost 67% growth in an area where Ubuntu was already the market leader! These numbers are a huge testament to the community support Ubuntu OpenStack receives every day. We couldnt be more proud of how the open source and OpenStack community have made the Ubuntu family part of their own.

    SQUARE

    Up 2% from the previous survey, 36% of users are now installing unmodified OpenStack packages from the distribution vendor. I imagine for Ubuntu OpenStack clouds that number is even larger. Thats because Ubuntu users know they have the latest, most stable version of OpenStack already available to them. Theres no lag in package releases, and theres confidence in the community and Canonical to support them. It also helps standardize the cloud deployments, driving better economics, which brings us to another great point.

    Juju, our application modeling and deployment tool, is also picking up traction as an OpenStack installer. OpenStack installations can be tricky, they can be complex; but with Juju, they become easier with an almost building blocks like approach.

    Since the last user survey, Juju has increased its market share as a deployment/management tool by 50%. Thats validation and momentum in the right direction of building OpenStack clouds. Jujus best practices and application intelligence are built into each application you build. Repeatable, standard results build cloud economics that work. If you havent tried installing OpenStack with Juju, you should check it out.

    Learn more about Ubuntu OpenStack and our Autopilot installer

    3:30 pm
    Jono Bacon: Upcoming Speaking at Interop and Abstractions

    http://www.jonobacon.org/2016/04/12/upcoming-speaking/

    http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=6864

    I just wanted to share a couple of upcoming speaking engagements going on:

    • Interop in Las Vegas  5th May 2016  I will be participating in the keynote panel at Interop this year. The panel is called How Open-Source Changes the IT Equation and I am looking forward to participating with Colin McNamara, Greg Ferro, and Sean Roberts.
    • Abstractions in Pittsburgh  18-20 Aug 2016  I will be delivering one of the headlining talks at Abstractions. This looks like an exciting new conference and my first time in Pittsburgh. Looking forward to getting out there!

    Some more speaking gigs are in the works. More details soon.

    6:18 pm
    Thomas Ward: Ubuntu Xenial: NGINX and PHP7.0

    http://dark-net.net/?p=125

    Hello again! NGINX 1.9.14 is now available in Ubuntu Xenial. Theres quite a few things we should make known to everyone who uses nginx in Ubuntu, with php5-fpm currently!

    HTTP/2 is now enabled

    Yes, HTTP/2 is now enabled for nginx-core, nginx-full, and nginx-extras in Ubuntu Xenial. Add http2 to your SSL listener line in your server blocks, and HTTP/2 will be enabled for that port and site.

    For HTTP/2 on non-Xenial Ubuntu releases, you can use the Mainline PPA for Wily and later. Anything before Wily does not have full HTTP/2 support, and very likely will not be usable to get HTTP/2 working as intended.

    Ubuntu Xenial ships php7.0-fpm, and not php5-fpm, and this will break existing site configurations

    The Ubuntu Xenial packages for nginx have already been updated for this change, pointing to php7.0-fpm instead of php5-fpm.

    However, users who have existing site configurations will not benefit from these changes. They must manually apply the changes.

    Effectively, this is what a default setup uses to interface with the default php5-fpm setup on Ubuntu versions before Xenial, passing all PHP processing to the php5-fpm backend. This is from the default configuration file, but its still similar for all PHP passing:

        location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
    
        # With php5-cgi alone:
        #fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        # With php5-fpm:
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
    }

    In Ubuntu Xenial, the TCP listener for php7.0-cgi will be unchanged, however for php7.0-fpm, it will be necessary to update the configuration to look like this for existing site configurations:

        location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
    
        # With php7.0-cgi alone:
        #fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        # With php7.0-fpm:
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php7.0-fpm.sock;
    }

    This will prevent HTTP 502 Bad Gateway errors, and will use the updated php7.0-fpm instead of the php5-fpm packages.

    (If for some reason you still want to have php5-fpm under Xenial, you will not be able to get support from Ubuntu for this; you will need to use a PPA. I explain this on a different post on my blog.)

    Sunday, April 10th, 2016
    6:31 pm
    Joe Liau: Removal of a Letter

    http://blog.josephliau.com/removal-of-a-letter/

    http://blog.josephliau.com/?p=1179

    scrabuntu
    Removal of a Letter  A subject that caught my eye, and challenged me to create a whole post that lacks one letter of the Roman Alphabet.

    There are some letters that carry embedded problems. We can see a company that makes use of one of these letters to a degree that has degraded that letter. We can see people who have used that letter only to promote themselves and remove themselves from the greater purpose. We have a letter that need not have a centre place among the Ubuntu culture. So, what happens when we remove that letter from our language completely? How would that look? How would we act?

    The Old and New Testaments talk about two contenders who use the letter as a personal pronoun. One truly deserves the use and power of that letter, but the other uses the letter arrogantly and to serve only the self. Maybe we, too, often act as the latter.

    However, that need not be the status quo. We are not alone. We are many and can act together. All that we do can be for the whole rather than just for ourselves. The way that we talk often affects the way that we act. Our thoughts affect how we act. When our heads understand, then our eyes and ears can start to understand as well. The power change can now start.

    The number one spot on our agendas holds great power. We can choose what deserves that spot, and our language can help us do that. So, once we remove that letterremove that pronounwe start to act as a group rather than a lone person. Suddenly the focus goes to us rather than me.

    Can we truly remove a letter from our speech? Externally, that may not be easy or useful, and somewhat overzealous. But, we can change our thoughts and at least drop that pronoun down to a lower place. Let us humble ourselves before the greater good. Let us ask not what you can do for me, but what we can do for each other. When we drop that letter, then we have Ubuntu.

    9:35 pm
    Jono Bacon: Community Leadership Summit 2016

    http://www.jonobacon.org/2016/04/10/community-leadership-summit-2016/

    http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=6855

    On 14th  15th May 2016 in Austin, Texas the Community Leadership Summit 2016 will be taking place. For the 8th year now, community leaders and managers from a range of different industries, professions, and backgrounds will meet together to share ideas and best practice. See our incredible registered attendee list that is shaping up for this years event.

    This year we also have many incredible keynotes that will cover topics such as building developer communities, tackling imposter syndrome, gamification, governance, and more. Of course CLS will incorporate the popular unconference format where the audience determine the sessions in the schedule.

    We are also delighted to host the FLOSS Community Metrics event as part of CLS this year too!

    The event is entirely free and everyone is welcome! CLS takes place the weekend before OSCON in the same venue in Austin. Be sure to go and register to join us and we hope to see you in Austin in May!

    Many thanks to OReilly, Autodesk, and the Linux Foundation for their sponsorship of the event!

    Monday, April 11th, 2016
    9:19 pm
    Stephen Kelly: How do you use Grantlee?

    https://steveire.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/how-do-you-use-grantlee/

    http://steveire.wordpress.com/?p=1459

    Grantlee has been out in the wild for quite some years now. Development stagnated for a while as I was concentrating on other things, but Im updating it now to prepare for a new release.

    Im giving a talk about it in just over a week (the first since 2009), and Im wondering how people are using it these days. The last time I really investigated this was 6 years ago.

    Im really interested in knowing about other users of Grantlee and other use-cases where it fits. Here are some of the places Im already aware of Grantlee in use:

    Many areas of KDE PIM use Grantlee for rendering content such as addressbook entries and rss feeds along with some gui editors for creating a new look. The qgitx tool also uses it for rendering commits in the view with a simple template.

    qgit-grantlee

    It is also used in the Cutelyst web framework for generating html, templated emails and any other use-cases users of that framework have.

    There is also rather advanced Grantlee integration available in KDevelop for new class generation, using the same principles I blogged about some years ago.

    It is also used by the subsurface application for creating dive summaries and reports. Skrooge also uses it for report generation.

    It is used in Oyranos buildsystem, seemingly to generate some of the code compiled into the application.

    Also on the subject of generating things, it seems to be used in TexturePacker, a tool for game developers to create efficient assets for their games. Grantlee enables one of the core selling points of that software, enabling it to work with any game engine.

    Others have contacted me about using Grantlee to generate documentation, or to generate unit tests to feed to another DSL. Thats not too far from how kitemmodels uses it to generate test cases for proxy model crashes.

    Do you know of any other users or use-cases for Grantlee? Let us know in the comments!


    Tuesday, April 12th, 2016
    12:55 am
    The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 461

    http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2016/04/12/ubuntu-weekly-newsletter-issue-461/


    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #461 for the week April 4  10, 2016, and the full version is available here.

    In this issue we cover:

    The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

    • Elizabeth K. Joseph
    • Simon Quigley
    • Leonard Viator
    • Daniel Beck
    • And many others

    If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

    Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

    Saturday, April 9th, 2016
    3:43 am
    Serge Hallyn: Docker in LXD

    https://s3hh.wordpress.com/2016/04/09/docker-in-lxd/

    http://s3hh.wordpress.com/?p=506

    Since the very early days of upstream Linux containers  around 2006  weve been distinguishing between application and system containers. (The definition of application containers has changed a bit, and their use case has changed a *lot*, but the general gist remains the same).

    A few years ago I would get regular  daily!  queries by lots of people asking what I thought of Docker. Some asked because, as one of the early people involved in kernel container functionality, Id be interested. Others did so because I had been working with http://linuxcontainers.org/lxc, a particular container administration suite, and thought Id feel competitive. However, as weve said for a long time, Docker is a great tool for application containers and application container purposes. From a LXC/LXD perspective, were looking at different use cases. One of those is hosting containers in which to run Docker:)

    And, in Ubuntu 16.04, you can easily do so. (The Docker patches to enable this are on their way upstream.) To run Docker inside a container, the container must have a few properties. These are conferred by the docker profile. The docker profile does not include a network interface, so youll want to create a container with both the default and docker profiles:

    lxc launch ubuntu-daily:xenial docker1 -p default -p docker

    Now, enter the container and install the docker.io package:

    lxc exec docker1  apt update
    lxc exec docker1  apt install docker.io
    lxc exec docker1  docker pull ubuntu
    lxc exec docker1  docker run -it ubuntu bash

    et voila, a docker container is running inside your lxd container. By itself this may seem like a novelty. However, when you start deploying the lxd hosts with openstack nova-lxd plugin or juju-lxd, the possibilities are endless.


    Sunday, April 10th, 2016
    7:00 am
    David Tomaschik: Ham Fisted Legislators

    https://systemoverlord.com/2016/04/10/ham-fisted-legislators.html

    Theres fortunately been a lot of media coverage of a typically ham-fisted attempt to legislate technology:

    For once, its not just been technology blogs: Fortune, Reuters, and USA Today are among those covering the legislative failure.

    The fact that one of the cosponsors is one of my own Senators (Dianne Feinstein) makes this all the more painful for me. She claims to be a Democrat, but her legislative agenda has shown her to be more of right-wing police-state NSA-apologist than a California liberal. Im sure its no coincidence that her husband has significant holdings in military complex corporations that benefit from her anti-American police-state tactics.

    I should mention at this point that, in case it hasnt been obvious, Im not a lawyer. I had to consult a dictionary for some of the words in this bill (notwithstanding is a word that seems to only be used in legislation, and is very important here), but I think my interpretation of their intent is different from many of the blogs, based on the following language:

    Nothing in this Act may be construed to authorize any government officer to require or prohibit any specific design or operating system to be adopted by any covered entity.

    Now while the current text does seem to require a backdoor in any cryptography, I dont think that was the intent. I think the intent was only to require the provider to turn over plaintext if they were capable of doing so under the current design. Unfortunately, it doesnt seem they wrote it that way, as is typical when legislators who dont know what theyre doing, dont understand technology, and dont get input try to legislate technology.

    I completely agree that we need legislation regarding encryption and searches, but I take a little bit of a different spin from Senator Feinstein. We should have federal legislation prohibiting lower levels from requiring backdoors, as is being tried in California. Law-abiding citizens shouldnt have their security weakened (and theres a general consensus among cryptographers that its impossible to create backdoors in cryptography without weakening the general security of the system) because of the fearmongering tactics of law enforcement.

    Yes, if a service has access to plaintext and is served with a valid 4th ammendment warrant (not a NSL or a kangaroo court FISA order), I believe they should provide the plaintext. Weve seen what happens with secret warrants and warrantless searches: both with the NSA scandal, but also with Hoover and McCarthy, the Stasi in Germany, and other over-powerful police services. The founders of this country were clearly aware of the risk when they stated:

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

    Weakening American-made crypto only weakens America. Bad guys will still have access to crypto without backdoors from other countries or from before any legislation, so any legislation to weaken cryptography will only serve to enable unconstitutional mass surveillance, weaken Americans rights, all without improving national security one iota.

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