Ara Pulido

Yesterday was a great day in the UF sprint and we got a lot of stuff done. I will summarize the interesting bits.

Ubuntu Friendly Website

As I said on the previous post, we still needed a way to visualize what components are working and which are not (to a certain level). To achieve that we have created a new “details” page, once you click on “more” on the configuration page.

That page will give you two pieces of information. First, it will show the complete list of components that were reported for that configuration:

On that list you will see the core components on the top (the ones we use to distinguish a configuration from another one) and a list of the rest of components found in all the units that were reported.

The second piece of information are the results that were reported per component:

On this view you will see the number of people that reported that a particular component was working and a percentage. We will have some colour code for the percentage, to have a quick visual view of it.

The “Related Bugs” tab is just a way of saying that this view could be extended in the future, but currently this is out of the scope for this release.

Checkbox

On the client side we also made some important progress. We finished mapping tests to components, so we can know which components are failing and which ones are passing.

We just merged our changes into checkbox trunk and we hope to have it uploaded to Oneiric early next week.

This week, myself and other 4 members of the Ubuntu Friendly Squad are working together, face to face, to try to have a working prototype of the Ubuntu Friendly programme as a whole. I will be blogging about it during the week to share the progress with the rest of the team.

Ubuntu Friendly Website

The main focus for Monday was to get an idea of how the Ubuntu Friendly site would look like. We think that the most difficult thing to solve is having right the idea of different configurations. As a lot of people pointed out while we were presenting the programme, a model name can contain many different hardware, and work much better or worse depending on those components.

We want to find a compromise between having a UI that’s easy to understand, and having it as complete as possible. For the Ubuntu homepage this is what we came up with:

Every different configuration will be in a different line, with some details of the components that are part of it. If the user wants to know more details about a particular component, hovering over it will do the trick.

You will be able to filter by release, rating or number of results to get you to the results that you are looking for. Once one of these systems is clicked on, the details page will appear that will look like this:

For that particular configuration we will be showing the full details of the hardware, the number of results and their rating it got in the different releases. Also, a box will show similar systems. For this cycle the similar systems will be other configurations of the same model.

There is still one thing that we need to work on for the details page. We need a way to say if a particular component is working or not. But hey! we still have the rest of the week to figure it out.

Checkbox

Another focus for today was to have a complete whitelist that include all the components that we have agreed as part of the UF scope. We added tests for components that were on the list, and removed unrelevant tests.

We are putting our progress in a public branch at Launchpad (https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-friendly-control/checkbox/uf_sprint/). We are hoping to merge to trunk and to have a new version in Oneiric by Thursday, but in the mean time you can check the new whitelist using directly that branch.

While working on the whitelist we discovered a very nasty bug in Checkbox. If you deselect some tests when starting running checkbox, start testing, then close checkbox, and start it again, the whitelist won’t be used anymore, your previous selection will be used instead. This bug affects the Ubuntu Friendly experience, so we will have it fixed before release.

There seems to be a little bit of confusion about what the Ubuntu Friendly programme is and what it is not. People tend to think that Ubuntu Friendly is a certification programme and, because of this, they obviously don’t understand the idea behind core and extra components.

Let’s try to clarify things a bit with a small FAQ:

Is Ubuntu Friendly a certification programme?

No. Ubuntu Friendly is not a certification programme. UF is a community driven hardware validation programme. Its goal is to have a list of systems that people have tested with a particular release of Ubuntu and an associated rating, based on the results of their testing.

Let’s say is the next generation HardwareSupport wiki pages (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport/Machines/Laptops), but with a better structure, as the tests will be written upfront, and the process to get a rating for a system will be the same for every system.

What does it mean that a system is Ubuntu Friendly?

Nothing, as there is not such concept. Ubuntu Friendly is just the name of the programme and yes, it was chosen because of the concept of a system being Ubuntu friendly (working fine with Ubuntu), but there won’t be a classification of systems that gained the Ubuntu Friendly status or not.

Instead of that, any system tested with the testing tools that we provide will make it to the Ubuntu Friendly list, with a rating associated with it. The rating will be between 0 and 5, that will give the user of the Ubuntu Friendly list an overview of how well a system works with Ubuntu and how many people have tested it.

Will this substitute the Ubuntu Certification Programme?

No. Ubuntu Friendly is not a certification programme and it won’t substitute the current Ubuntu Certification Programme. The UCP is a commercial certification programme, run by Canonical, and it will be still available for commercial partners. Opposite to the Ubuntu Friendly programme, the UCP is a go/no-go decision. A system is certified with Ubuntu or it is not, there are no ratings. To be certified with Ubuntu the system must pass all the tests specified in the UCP coverage list.

Yesterday we had our first meeting to start nailing down the Ubuntu Friendly programme. It was a great meeting, with lots of participation from both Canonical and non Canonical people.

Meeting logs and summary are available at the wiki.

One of the things that was agreed was the final separation of core and extra components.  The final list looks like (the tick represents a core component):

This list is the final list for Ubuntu 11.10 and was mainly based on a survey we conducted within the Ubuntu Friendly community.

We will improve coverage and might modify core components for future releases based on the feedback we get in the first Ubuntu Friendly release.

This year, the Desktop Summit happens in Berlin and although I am not that much involved with the desktop that I was previously it is a great opportunity as it happens locally

I will be attending Saturday, Sunday and, thanks to my employer, Canonical, Monday as well, using one of the conference day paid leave that we have as part of the employee benefits. I will also be attending the parties, of course!

Really looking forward to this weekend and to seeing again some friends who are coming to the summit as well.