Bubulle's weblog

Bug #1000000 in Launchpad

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:20:00 +0200

Way before Debian, Launchpad bug tracking system just reached 1 million bugs reported with one "bug" reported against Edubuntu basically mentioning it should invade schools.

What to say about this?

Hard without being harsh towards my friends working in the Ubuntu "world", indeed. Still, I really think that here, too much noise kills signal and the LP BTS is often hardly usable.

I counted up to 217 bugs reported against samba4 (which is, after all, not so widely used yet) just because it apparently has upgrading issues between pre 12.04 versions of Ubuntu and Oneiric. It indeed seems that some automated bug reporting is now active and whenever a user encouters an upgrade issue with a package, a bug is being reported. I guess this is somehow an opt-in system (I hope so..:-)) but the default is very clearly using it.

This feature is apparently what caused the recent bump in number of bugs reported in LP, making them even less useful, particularly to Debian package maintainers. I'm sure there are tools to help dealing with that and I was already answered that work is in progress to change this (and use a dedicated website for such reports or something like this). But, still, that seems to be the scary side of popularity...the very same popularity that is slowly but constantly hiding the work we're doing in Debian to indirectly make Ubuntu popular.

(moving to more general concerns)

I know that things are not all black or all white, but it always saddens me to feel that slowly....but, again, constantly, more and more people tend to forget that Debian is behind Ubuntu, is the ground on which it is built and Ubuntu wouldn't exist without it. When doing work, a human need is to get reward for it...and we are getting less of it...slowly, but constantly.

Don't take me wrong. I have many friends working directly for Ubuntu. Some paid by Canonical for this. Some really involved up to "top level" (yes, including the very very top level even if I killed him once). I don't want to throw offense on them. I don't even know if they can do something about what I'm expressing below. I would just have them (and others) know.

Let's take an example. I recently activated a few languages in D-I (Burmese, Tibetan, Uyghur). I'm happy with that, this is something I'm doing for 8 years now. But all these new translators were indeed only interested in one thing : "have Ubuntu translated in their language". No offense intended, but they didn't really care about *Debian* being translated in their language. I think that some didn't even know what Debian is.

In the same field, I am more and more "fighting" to keep the level of translation completeness in Debian (see my regular spa^W reports). In some way, I still succeed, but the price to pay is more and more and more personal investment and work. That's still working for the strong set of languages we support. That works much less for most others. When someone "disappears" (or just switches to some other priorities), it's more and more difficult to find someone else popping up.

And, for the "strong set", something else is happening : work duplication. There are "strong" French, German, Italian, whatever, l10n teams in Debian.....and there are similar teams for Ubuntu. And, mostly, those do not really work together.

And sometimes, this is kinda discouraging. So, seeing the explosion happening on what is, whatever we think or write, the "other side", is not somethnig that can make one entirely happy. And this is why I won't celebrate Launchpad's millionth bug report.

Particularly when I see that millionth bug report not even ack'ing that this Edubuntu marvel is based on the grounds set by some pionneers many years ago in a few schools in Norway (hello, Petter and others).

Yeah, sometimes sad. To balance this, let's release wheezy and have millions of people benefit from it without even knowing.

tar taf

Wed, 16 May 2012 05:09:00 +0200

Hey, thanks, Peter for the hint!

Never heard of that option until you blogged about it. So, now I'm also ready to "tar taf", "tar xaf", "tar caf"..:-). Harder for me than you because I was used to "tar tfz" or "tar tfj"..:-)

And I suspect that "tar taf" is prone to typos...we'll see.

Trip to Nicaragua post-Debconf

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:04:00 +0200

This year, the annual Debian conference will be held in Managua, Nicaragua. And I'll be lucky enough to spend two weeks visiting the country after Debconf, along with Elisabeth.

Yes, I'll arrive in Nicarague on July 2nd, spend nearly the entire Debcamp, then Debconf, then we'll spend 16 days around the western part of Nicaragua, trying to discover the magic of this country.

So, this post is about sharing our plans with my readers. Of course, I do not know the country so we may have made mistakes and bad choices. We'll see.

Immediately after Debconf, Elisabeth will join in Managua. She'll be landing on July 15th. We'll then spend a night in an hotel near the airport and immediately leave the day after for Matagalpa, in North Nicaragua. We rented a car for the entire trip indeed, and will be on our own on wild Nicaragua roads..:-)

We'll spend two nights in Matagalpa. We plan to visit some coffee or cigar plants, probably have a trip to Lake Apanas and Jinotega.

Then, we'll have a short road trip to Esteli where we spend again two nights. We'll be visiting a coffee growing place (beneficio seco de café). A full day visit is planned at Miraflor natural reserve to enjoy te beauties of hundreds orchids and some local natural marvels.

The next move will be to Leon, where we'll spend 4 nights, visiting a cigar factory (tabacaleras de puros?) on the way, as well as San Jacinto, a place with hydrothermal sources and "Hervideros" (geysers).

Four nights in Leon leaves plenty of time for several activities *and* enjoying the colonial city. We'll have a full day at Juan Venado Island reserve with boat trip from Las Penitas (on a fisherman's boat from what the travel agency mentioned), then another full day climbing on the Cerro Negro volcano. Indeed, I was originally considering climbing the Momotombo, but our travel agency warned about the high difficulty. I would have loved that myself but maybe not the two of us...and this is a trip for both of us! So, we played the safe option..:-)

After these 4 nights in Leon, we'll move to Granada for 3 nights, through Leon Viejo (the former site of Leon).

From Granada, one day will there be used for a visit in the Masaya National Park and see the beauties of Masaya volcano (this is indeed something that could be done for Debconf day trip, IMHO, as it doesn't seem that far from Managua). Another day will be spent to Las Isletas on lake Nicaragua and others visiting the colonial city of Granada. Or, of course, whatever things we don't even known about now..:-)

Then we'll move to what I personnally consider the peak of the trip: 3 nights on Ometepe island on lake Nicaragua. Just check Wikipedia to see why Ometepe is, in my opinion, THE place to go in Nicaragua. Here, I'll have my volcano..:-). Indeed, Elizabeth "authorized" me to book a local guide and then climb Concepcion Volcan, if the weather allows for it. 1600m height, that doesn' seem to be a big issue....except when starting from a little bit above sea level and are climbing a volcano that looks like s postcard volcano : nearly a perfect cone shape.

So, let's cross fingers for having good weather that day. I promise myself I'll record the GPS track of that one and, even if I'll probably be walking most of the climbing (except if I have a very trained guide...), I'll add it to my run tracks!

We might also be going to climb Ometepe's other volcano (Maderas) the day after so that Elizabeth also enjoys these beauties. There also seems to be great places around Maderas such as San Ramon Cascade, Finca el Porvenir, etc.

Then, at the end of all this, it will be time to come back to Managua in the final day and fly back to Paris in the early morning of July 31st.

All over, I'll be in Nicaragua from July 2nd until July 31st! Full month away, yay! Hurrah for the crazy number of holidays those lazy French people have..:-)

During this trip, we might find it interesting some local geeks (not too many as Elizabeth is not that deeply interested in beersigning!) and share a few nice things in local places which are only known by locals.

In case you're interested, out (very clever) travel agency is named Nicaragua Adventures and they're definitely worth contacting if you want to travel around .ni, particularly if we prefer booking things in advance as we do. They speak Spanish (of course!), English and French. They're very responsive to e-mail as well.

2012 update 22 for Debian Installer localization

Sat, 12 May 2012 11:07:00 +0200

Slovenian is now fully complete. 23rd language to reach full 100%
Danish, Basque and Punjabi complete level 1
Vietnamese and Traditional Chinese complete level 3
Progress for Traditional Chinese, Basque, Vietnamese in level 2

Status for D-I level 1 (core D-I files):

48 languages 100%: ar ast be bg bn bs ca cs da de el eo es et eu fa fr gu he hi id it ja kk km kn ko lo mr nb nl pa pl pt pt_BR ru si sk sl sr sv te th tr uk vi zh_CN zh_TW
1 languages 99%: ta
3 languages 97%: fi ga hu
4 languages 95%: dz is mk ro
1 language 92%: ml
others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 2 (packages that have localized material that may appear during default installs, such as iso-codes, tasksel, etc.):

30 languages 100%: ast be bg ca cs da de eo es fa fr gu he id is it ja kk km nl pl pt ru si sk sl sv tr uk zh_CN
6 languages 99%: eu hr nb th vi zh_TW
3 languages 98%: dz pt_BR ro
1 language 97%: ta
2 languages 95%: el fi
2 languages 94%: ar gl
7 languages 92%: bn bs hu ko mr ne sr
5 languages 91%: ga ka lt mk te
others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 3 (packages that have localized material that may appear during non-default installs, such as win32-loader)

38 languages 100%: ast be bg bs ca cs da de el eo es fa fi fr ga gl he hr id is it ja kk km nb nl pl pt ru sk sl sr sv th tr vi zh_CN zh_TW
2 languages 98%: hu uk
others are 90% or below

Full 100% completeness (hall of fame) for 23 languages: Asturian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, German, Esperanto, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Khmer, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese

2012 update 21 for Debian Installer localization

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 05:02:00 +0200

Hebrew completes level 1
Marathi completes level 1
Lao completes level 1
Slovenian back from hell and completes level 1..:-)
More progress for Hungarian

Status for D-I level 1 (core D-I files):

45 languages 100%: ar ast be bg bn bs ca cs de el eo es et fa fr gu he hi id it ja kk km kn ko lo mr nb nl pl pt pt_BR ru si sk sl sr sv te th tr uk vi zh_CN zh_TW
2 languages 99%: da ta
4 languages 97%: eu fi ga hu
4 languages 95%: dz is mk ro
1 language 92%: ml
1 language 91%: pa
others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 2 (packages that have localized material that may appear during default installs, such as iso-codes, tasksel, etc.):

29 languages 100%: ast be bg ca cs da de eo es fa fr gu he id is it ja kk km nl pl pt ru si sk sv tr uk zh_CN
3 languages 99%: nb sl th
5 languages 98%: dz eu hr pt_BR ro
1 language 97%: ta
2 language 96%: vi zh_TW
2 langauges 95%: el fi
2 languages 94%: ar gl
6 languages 92%: bn bs hu ko ne sr
6 languages 91%: ga ka lt mk mr te
others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 3 (packages that have localized material that may appear during non-default installs, such as win32-loader)

35 languages 100%: ast be bg bs ca cs da de el eo es fa fi fr ga gl he hr id is it ja kk km nb nl pl pt ru sk sr sv th tr zh_CN
2 languages 98%: hu uk
others are 90% or below

Full 100% completeness (hall of fame) for 22 languages: Asturian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, German, Esperanto, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Khmer, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese