Ubuntu Lumina Remix

Ubuntu with Lumina Desktop

Kai

Ubuntu Lumina Needs Help

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Currently, Ubuntu Lumina has no further feature additions, it’s all bug fixes from here-on-out. That doesn’t mean we are in no need of help. Ubuntu Lumina has two testers, one mirror for full ISO files, and another mirror for ISO torrents, not to forget one person to occasionally help with social media management. Only one person develops for the project full time, me. I am the one alone working on every single ISO release, the one sending notifications to the mirrors, behind the branding, behind the blog posts, behind the packaging, and the one preparing to do research and development for the Raspberry Pi, Pine64, and even Rockpro64 (after a new tester sent an email this week). While I, as the egotistical developer I am, know I can handle it, it is still a lot of effort to do this.

I am not asking for everything to be done for me, but rather someone to catch my errors better than I can alone. I am human it seems and right as I thought I built and sent off the last development ISO for Ubuntu Lumina, and preparing to fix a bug that causes issue in the remix as I whole, I get a message of a new error.

Thanks to Vincent for sending me this on the BigDaddyLinux Telegram group

This error is going to take a lot more work to deal with, and while I can do it alone, I reasonably don’t want to do it alone. There isn’t a lot I need in team members, people to help build applications, test images and ISO’s, help package software and keep things at least mildly up to date, and also make sure that any errors are well documented both privately and publicly. While a writer for the blog will also be nice, this blog is more on “when it happens, it happens”. Especially since 20.10 is preparing release, and 21.04 and 21.10 are both a little close for comfort, every last inch of help I can get will make this project better built and better maintained.

If you are interested in joining, there are several ways to do so. Direct message Ubuntu Lumina on Twitter @UbuntuLumina, direct message me @KaiLikesLinux, email the Ubuntu Lumina project email ubuntulumina@kaix.live, or email me directly at kai.lyons@kaix.live. I am excited to see who will join. Have a wonderful day!

Ubuntu Lumina Remix ARM – Plans

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A huge part of the project I wanted to implement was direct ARM support. This being because ARM has a massive future and following. As we all know, x86 and amd64 are not great and supporting them is something we do only because more users have access to x86 or amd64. Like Ubuntu proper did with i386 and other 32 bit implementations, Ubuntu Lumina sees a higher market for our distribution in the ARM world with Pine64 and Raspberry Pi.

There are no official partnership plans for Ubuntu Lumina on ARM, we want the hero’s of Pine64 and maybe even Raspberry Pi Foundation to work with us. Since the complete arsenal for our ARM testing is a Pi3b+ and a Pi4, we are low on hardware, and having the two biggest open-source ARM hardware makers on our side would be a dream.

Partnering with ARM is one thing, building ARM is another. As far as we understand, there are no official building methods with our current ISO builder. This means one of two things.

A – We have to build our own custom ARM img builder
B – We modify our current ISO builder to build ARM img’s

Neither of these are ideal, but until we find a suitable option to build ARM directly there are currently no other options. Of course if you have an application to share, post the GitHub/GitLab link to it, for security we will block any other links. Please make sure it also has an open-source license, any are fine but we prefer the Apache license, any GPL license, MIT, and BSD licenses.

Supporting ARM officially will be difficult, but luckily we do have a solid base we will use. This being the Ubuntu server image for RPi, but this does hold a lot of software we will need to purge. We will look into talking to Martin Wimpress, Canonical employee behind Ubuntu proper and lead of Ubuntu MATE who has the Desktopify side project. While the project does have a lot of tools and information for us to borrow, it still holds the fact that it is NOT an img, and as far as we know only runs in live-session, which is not ideal for building install mediums.

The biggest things with the build is that if possible, we want to integrate it with our current ISO builder, making it easier to build and ship both the ISO and the ARM image.

Other general information is that it is possible to continue (as best as possible) Ubuntu 32 bit support, although being a small margin of users, it falls in line with us building small systems for older machines. While there is no official decision on our end to support 32 bit or other architectures at this time, Ubuntu Lumina Remix wants to support people and not let good hardware go to waste.

If you want more information, to help us by any means get our project higher off the ground and one day no longer be only a remix, any help is welcome. Emotional support has really kept this one-man-plan floating and releasing. We however will be looking for people more knowledgeable with ARM, can test ARM, or even help build or test Ubuntu Lumina. More information will be coming out in a future time on how to help the project fully, but if you wish, email us at ubuntulumina@kaix.live, as we want as much help as possible with the massive dreams of the project! These are all volunteer positions, and the project is not financially capable of paying contributors, just wanted that to be clear for various legal reasons.

Developer 5 ISO Plans

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The 4th Developer ISO has just come out with the Calamares installer working! The plans for fifth developer ISO are to include an animated Plymouth theme.

The Plymouth image!

Ubuntu Lumina Remix will be seeing this and possible other fixes. We are still looking into LightDM bugs among possible alternatives.

What to expect from the full release of Ubuntu Lumina

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We have made a lot of “wants” list, and now those wants are coming closer. So what are we doing for the huge release of the full edition of Ubuntu Lumina Remix 20.04?

Well what we are doing for the first release is mostly to include the default environment – while yes the custom one will be implemented for either 20.10 or 21.04, we want the fork to be the greatest it can be. Right now that means a ton of theming and fine-tuning. Not a huge deal but the project wants a good look if it will be custom. Makes sense? So expect the use of the default PPA, ppa:ubuntulumina/lumina-desktop if you want to give it a try on your current install.

The 20.04 release also plans very few custom themes or apps in general. This is mostly to get the finest of fine-tuning done, and also give an LTS feel as this is an LTS release. That basically means we include very little, but very little does include a custom terminal choice (in the form of Terminator), plus slight modifications of other aspects (like removing UXterm and Xterm).

We are currently working on the finalization of developer edition 3. This edition is more aiming to be usable, but the known bugs are not planned to be fixed (as they will require modifications to the PPA package, so dev edition 4 will include it). After dev edition 4, we plan to put the last fine-tuning in, which is simply just the wallpaper, and maybe other possible slight tweaks.

We hope to get the full edition out by June, which we will then start putting the focus on the polish for 20.10, instead of a stable system! We will also be purely working with our core mirror Aranym, meaning there will be no Mediafire or OSDN downloads – as we have done in the past. The main reason for this is the simplicity and ease of use on the website. If we decide to get other mirrors on the website – we will do so on a separate page.

Ubuntu Lumina – Website Updating

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We have officially added the blog to Ubuntu Lumina’s website. We will be posting general content and release notes. This will include developer ISO’s, contests, and other things done by the project. Please be a little kind, while decent with WordPress – I am not an expert and will make mistakes.