Names, names, names ….. and (boo) Vampires !

New name for (not so) old stuff…
The “ubuntu-mobile” image was introduced very late in the release cycle; as we got closer to the release more eyeballs started to look at it.
It was pointed out more and more often that such a generic name is a bad idea for an image; one assumption is that people seem to expect “ubuntu-mobile” to be something for a phone rather than targeting mobile computers.
As many community members pointed out in umpcportal comments as well as in personal mails, ultra mobile PCs are a more precise term for the target architecture of the image.
So four days before release the decision was made to go with the new name “ubuntu-umpc” instead of using the generic “ubuntu-mobile”.
A lot of thanks go to the release managers and specifically to Colin Watson for doing such a change in the last minutes before release.
You can find the renamed image at the usual place on cdimage.ubuntu.com.
Note that only the image name itself could be changed at this point. The meta-package is still called “ubuntu-mobile” until jaunty development starts.
If you use the alternate CD or DVD and want to install the task you still need to look for the Mobile task. The “ubuntu-mobile-default-settings” package also keeps its name until it gets jaunty love.

Give Blood!
On a more exciting side-note the Canonical Mobile Team is hiring, we’re thirsty for fresh blood! Stay tuned for details and if you are interested, interesting and eager to become a blood donor feel free to contact me on IRC or via mail any time to channel your application to the right people.

The ubuntu-mobile beta images !

Well … not really, since the ubuntu-mobile images are not in the official release list yet, but i’m happy to announce that we:

a) have a *beta quality ubuntu-mobile image* up today
b) all images are officially built in the ubuntu infrastructure on cdimage.ubuntu.com now, which results in:
c) daily ubuntu-mobile images !!!

The known installer problems with the first shot image are fixed, the image is fully installable, recent problems with the browser not starting were solved as well and a good bunch of improvements went in over he last week.
To mention only a few:
* onscreen keyboard support in the locked screen dialog of gnome-screensaver by default
* making the onscreen keyboard for apps that require password input usable
* support for a few more touchscreens, a proper calibration tool for evtouch based touchscreens
* and a lot more …

Lots of thanks go to all the people sending feedback to the ubuntu-mobile@lists.ubuntu.com mailing list, to all the testers and to UMPCPortal for the nice review. In the end its your image, we only build it, so keep up the great feedback
If your fix wasnt in the current image it might show up in tomorrows (or the one the day after) build, so stay tuned, we try to weed out all bugs we can until final release.

There was some confusion about the naming i’d like to clearfy, we have a page with the naming history and how it evolved over the different releases up here.
Essentially the ubuntu-mobile image is aimed at UMPCs with 7-9 inch touchscreens (though the feedback showed that many many people with eeePCs and netbooks use it too) while the ubuntu-mid image is aimed at 4-7 inch MID devices with touchscreens.

The daily image for ubuntu-mobile can be found at:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mobile/intrepid/

The daily image for ubuntu-mid can be found at:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mid/intrepid/

If you want to discuss the work with us, feel free to drop by on IRC in the #ubuntu-mobile channel at irc.freenode.net, we appreciate any feedback, or even come and participate in the weekly IRC meeting where you can also get (or provide) info about the project status and the work the different team members did the last week. The meeting takes place every Thursday, an agenda for the coming week can be found under the Current Team Meeting link on this page.

Future views …

DD made easy:
Since many people report problems with using dd we have the usb-imagewriter project (a screenshots link is on the page) that will enter the jaunty jackalope (9.04) archive, it is a simple frontend to dd to make writing our images from an ubuntu desktop to a USB Key as easy as possible (we are discussing a windows port as well, windows programmers wanting to participate, please contact me). A package for intrepid can be found in my personal package archive here (if i get around to it next week i’ll roll a package for hardy as well).

A new calibration tool in jaunty:
I started work on a touchscreen calibration tool for jaunty (9.04), here are some mockups: