I am happy looking forward to the third “Ubuntu Global Jam” taking place from 2nd to 4th of October 2009. “We”, meaning “Ubuntu Berlin“, Daniel Holbach, Benjamin Drung and me, already managed to prepare the local Jam session as far as possible:

1. We found a place with power supply and network uplink: the c-base, where Ubuntu Berlin became some kind of resident.
2. We decided to schedule our Global Jam for Saturday, the 3rd of October, from 11 am to 7 pm, which should allow people with different personal schedules to join us at least for some hours.
3. We added our Global Jam to the official team list.
4. We set up a core team with responsibilities for different aspects of the Jam. Daniel Holbach and Benjamin Drung will care for bug triaging, bug squatting and packaging while I’ll work on and present translation and documentation.
5. We announced our Global Jam participation and invited more people to join us on several mailing lists (from Ubuntu Berlin lists over local Berlin Linux lists to c-base lists).
6. We started to announce our invitation on different twitter feeds, our facebook group, identi.ca and some blogs. One of them you are currently reading
7. Last but not least I dropped some lines on the Ikhaya-suggest-an-article box, one of the most read German Ubuntu ressources.
8. We will continue inviting people on personal basis as there are a bunch of people able to support us and just need a small friendly push…

I admit I am curious about this years participation and impact. And you? What are your hints for setting up a Global Jam session? Or do you need any more advices? Let me know. I am curious. Really.

Installation

But as it is different, it is somehow attractive and therefore let’s give it a try. Building “circular application menu” is quite easy. You just have to install some libraries, subversion and essential build stuff, check out the current repository and compile it. Huh? Try this:

$ sudo aptitude install subversion build-essential \
libgnome-desktop-dev libgnome-menu-dev
$ svn checkout \
http://circular-application-menu.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ \
circular-application-menu
$ cd circular-application-menu
$ make

Running

If no severe error occurred, you are already able to run “circular application menu” it via ‘./circular-application-menu’ now. Ignore error messages on the console as long as it comes up. Strange feeling to use it, isn’t it? I haven’t decided, if I really like it or not, until now.

If you like you can now install it to the system via make install, though I am fine with running it from the build directory, which I moved to “~/opt/circular/”. As it is pre-alpha-something, I just don’t want the code be mixed up with my distribution binaries.

Customizing

If you want to go one step further, install the Avant Window Navigator (“$ sudo aptitude install avant-window-navigator”), the OS X style application panel, which just moved from Google Code to Launchpad (points taken!) and add an icon for circular menu to it by doing a right-click=>settings=>Launchers=>Add. Now you can start all normal applications by calling Circular Menues from the AvantGo launcher. Definitely an eye catcher:

(click to enlarge)

Pitfalls

There are, of course, a couple of pitfalls. For instance, when running circular application menu on top of a dark or even black application, you cannot see it’s borders:

Also, you currently don’t have the possibility to customize the launcher at all.

Nevertheless: circular application menu for Gnome is a nice desktop gimmick. I am sure, it will be packaged soon (will I?) and go to the community repositories of most GNU/Linux distributions.

Fortunately there is a promising Apache2 port for this: mod-xsendfile. As I had to compile this serveral times and did not find it in Debian unstable or Ubuntu I made it my first packaging attempt (after having attended the first German Packaging Jam held by Daniel Holbach – thank you!).

If you like, you can test the module for hardy by enabling my ppa archive:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/damokles/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/damokles/ubuntu hardy main

and “aptitude install libapache2-mod-xsendfile” afterwards. See the website for reference. I will also upload this to my ppa for stable releases within the next days.

There is a launchpad bug I created for this. Feel free to test the module and the package and add comments there or directly here. Sadfully this package is to late to be integrated into hardy, so maybe the Intrepid Ibex (what a name…) will be a good milestone.

On 6th of February between 19:00 and 21:00 you’ll have the possibility to attend a workshop with Ubuntu developer and Canonical employee Daniel Holbach who explains the essential steps towards Ubuntu packaging and answers development related questions. The workshop takes place at the Linux friendly “Newthinking store” (thank you, guys!), Tuchholskystraße 48, 10115 Berlin, and will be, of course, free of charge.

Feel free to bring your notebook along in order to be able to check if Daniel is right about what he tells you If you don’t feel like carrying it around – you don’t have to. Just join us for a fine evening!

More information:

• Who is Ubuntu Berlin user group?
• What is a Packaging Jam?
• Daniel Holbach’s blog
• newthinking store