Ubuntuforums nuts and bolts

The ubuntuforums have become the largest GNU/Linux forums worlwide. With the expanding community, the crew taking care of the forums and the forums categories and features have grown with time. It is easy for new people to get lost within such an active message board. We currently have 793,387 members and 65,554 active members (members who have posted at least once in the last month), 995,019 threads and 6,367,064 posts after a heavy Spring cleaning. Here is a little summary of the important links to keep at hand:

• The UF Code of Conduct, the link is located under the “Forum Help” menu, in the banner.
• The Staff crew. Names in black or green show specific sub-forums moderators (typically, moderators from LoCos sub-forums where English is not the main language, or specific projects moderators). Names in red are global UF moderators and dark red administrators. Global mods and admins are members of the Launchpad UF Staff Team.
• The Forums Council is composed of the 5 Forums administrators. Mike Basinger is also a Community Council member.
• The Resolution Center is here to help resolve moderation issues on the Forums. Only the Forum Council members are allowed to answer, to keep the discussion focused on resolving the issue. If no agreement is reached, it can be discussed during a Forum Council meeting (agenda here) after the item has been added. The meetings take place in #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net.
• The Forum Feedback and Help where topics regarding the forums themselves (questions or issues, bugs etc.) should be posted. One important sticky in this area is the Guide to Forums features that will help new comers to get started with the forums options and available features. Bugs can also be filed on Launchpad.
• Reporting a thread or a post sends a message in the “Reported Posts” area, only visible by global mods and admins. We usually get from 40 to 60 reported posts per 24h, each one of them is taken care of. Addressing the Reported Posts is at the Staff discretion. We have a set of codes among ourselves to inform others a report has been dealt with. In any case, discussion regarding the actions we deploy are frequent and we usually wait everyone has had a chance to see the report and add input before acting. Of course, taking care of spam does not fall under this umbrella and is usually immediate.

Ubuntuforums is a large house, we try to keep it pleasant and helpful. See you there!

The ubuntuforums are ::evil::

Thanks to Jacob and Matthew who were online at the right time:

Oh dear, do not we have better things to do ^^

Searching the Ubuntu Wiki

This may be old news, as I have been away for a while. I was very much pleased to see that searching the Ubuntu Wiki had so much improved. I’m back into pushing stuff to the UWN, and not familiar with the moin syntax. So I looked for some help pages on the wiki and got directed to an useful search page. The 3 first links I got after refining the search terms and options were what I was looking for. Good, very good!

The search page is here, there is a link top right, close by the user prefs one. The options are impressive. See an example below, no more excuses not to search the Wiki :)

If you want to learn about the moin syntax, everything you need is here:
HelpOnMoinCommand
HelpOnMoinWikiSyntax

All my thanks to whomever worked on it. Have fun!

Get Involved

Online OpenOffice User Survey 2009

From OpenOffice:

The new survey focuses on what our users do with the product and how satisfied they are using it. We need this data to improve the user interface of OpenOffice.org within project Renaissance.

The anonymous survey has 35 questions, it will only take minutes of your time.

Reference

Renaissance Project

New online user record on ubuntuforums

Wow, now that’s cool..

Cannot wait to see which numbers we can get by April..

No sound in stock xchat 2.8.4

I rarely go log into IRC channels, and had not done it after I got this laptop last summer. When I do (there will be an unbutuforums meeting I can attend in a few minutes), I use xchat. I know there is a whole set of IRC clients, but this is the first one I used, and it fits my very basic needs.

Surprisingly, there was no sound on this default fresh install (Ubuntu Hardy). I created a ~/.xchat2/sounds file which was missing and copied a .wav file from /usr/share/sounds, then enabled it from xchat preferences menu. All set!

Looking around, I found a xchat-gnome package that I will try soon.

In reply to “The Ubuntu Ethos’ by Jono Bacon

A few days ago, Jono came up with his thoughts on the Ubuntu community and the reasons why Ubuntu is important to him. And asked why it was for us.

Here, it was a very simple move, and I never looked back. I tested Ubuntu when it first came out because it was debian based, with a CoC and install process clearly making it user friendly. Not being computer savvy, Warty just looked it was made for me. Really. The ubuntu devs had me in mind when they worked on that distro. Woaw. As soon as I could, I contributed back helping people around the forums (first the French forum, then ubuntuforums) and translations. That’s it :)

RSS Feeds for Ubuntuforums

We used to have a custom dedicated page collecting the RSS links to sub-forums.
This page vanished with the last big forums software upgrade. You can directly subscribe if you use Firefox, but not all of us do.

A dedicated page may come back one day, but all custom work is a pain when upgrading. So, in the meantime, you can use this url for individual sub-forums (the forumids is ABT’s, you find it in the url of each sub-forum)
http://ubuntuforums.org/external.php?forumids=326

And this one for the whole gear:
http://ubuntuforums.org/external.php

Reference

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=982992

Gmail labs

With the new Gmail themes coming in, I got to visit my Gmail settings page, which I had not looked at in a long time. I then found an additional feature, the Gmail labs. I’m not sure for how long this has been running, maybe I am so very late about it :) In any case, I found one that I have a use for: “Mark as read” button. Saves me one click :evil:

Once you are using a lab feature, a little green icon appears in the navigation bar:

Enjoy!

Reference

Gmail answers about labs

Ubuntu Hardy heron on a Sony Vaio VGN-C2S_L

I bought this laptop about a month ago. The series was reaching the end of life, new models coming in, I got it for a very low price. My previous laptop was dying and I was looking for a smaller machine (this one is 13″3). Searching the internets did not show issues with Ubuntu, intel video, wireless and sound cards, so I spent the money.

• Only after starting the hardy Live CD did I stumble upon this bug. No boot at all, with this message:

  ACPI: EC: acpi_ec_wait timeout, status=0, expect_event=1
  ACPI: EC: read timeout, command=128

  The workaround is to boot the laptop on battery or disable the “quiet” argument to the kernel. The power cord can be plugged in after login into the session.

• CPU: Intel Core2 CPU T5500 @ 1.66GHz
• Video: Intel Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller, working out of the box, compiz enabled
• Network: Marvel 88E8036 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller + Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection, working out of the box
• sound: Intel 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller, working out of the box
• Not tested: Bluetooth, 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)
• No proprietary driver required
• Moving this laptop from one location to the other, with very different networks, is finally easy

Except the boot bug, which can be a stopper to many users, 2.6.24-19-generic runs fine.
All in all, I’m happy :)

Edit: the boot bug is now solved in Ubuntu Hardy.