* Launchpad site referenced in this article: https://launchpad.net/~savoury1
Wow, looking at the date it is just over a year since the last post on this blog! The intention was to keep a somewhat steady flow of articles here, however, doing the work of bringing the same upgrades that I run on my own systems to all users of Ubuntu-based operating systems somehow became the priority.
Thus, only a few articles appeared and then nothing new for a year. It’s a matter of just making time for it (as with anything) and so I’ll endeavour to keep more writing going as well, it does help to balance the very technical hours. A commitment of at least quarter-time work (well over 500 hours now) over the past 13 months has resulted in what I will now describe here.
Over the past year or so a process unfolded of building an enhanced Ubuntu-based (and thus Debian-based, being the direct “parent” of Ubuntu) operating system for all who want that. “Enhanced” meaning many upgrades, backports, and newer packages and software than the default repositories for whichever “series” (ie. version, with Xenial, Bionic, and Focal being the three newest LTS “series”). This process of backporting and upgrading so many packages for older (and even new) Ubuntu-based systems was not a “planned” event, it simply became clear to me earlier this year that this is what I’d clearly undertaken to do.
The result is now a collection of Launchpad PPAs (Personal Package Archives) that provides quite comprehensive upgrade opportunities for those wanting such. Some of the key software applications that are available back to Xenial-era systems at my PPAs include: digiKam 7.1.0, GIMP 2.10.20, FFmpeg 4.3.1, VLC 3.0.11.1, and the recently added Blender 2.90 (and Blender 2.91 Alpha).
For the security conscious, GnuPG 2.2.23 is also available, as well as SSL 1.1.1g and various other related software. Then there are a number of themed PPAs, such as backports (various), encryption, graphics, multimedia, plus numerous build-related and development related supporting PPAs (which are required for builds of software found at many of the other PPAs).
It is a work-in-progress like any computer project, with newer upgrades and completion of some still unfinished areas of backporting yet to be done. However, there is a certain stability to the current set of packages and if the steady inflow of technical support requests and also bug reports (mainly missing dependencies for certain upgrades, in one or other of my PPAs) is anything to go by then there are certainly people “out there” who are already using and benefiting from this pretty comprehensive set of software upgrades that I’m providing for Ubuntu-based systems.
It “feels good” quite literally to be actually doing something helpful for other folk. After decades of supporting proprietary operating systems the switch to free software is proving very beneficial to my health altogether, amongst other things! The stress involved in constantly trying to undo the locks, limitations, and dumbing-down of modern proprietary operating systems was simply a waste of life. And the more the years progressed, the more most of my time with proprietary operating systems seemed to be about undoing all that locked-down dumbing-down of what could otherwise perhaps be useful software.
The total and utter contrast with free software is that I’m free to explore it as far as I want to go, free to contribute as much as I want to contribute without fear of violating the endless legal machinations of some evil big-tech corporation. And then people actually enjoy and appreciate the contributions too! What a “win-win” situation indeed. Having run “freed” computer operating systems for several years now there is no going back to the massively restricted, unpleasantness of corporate proprietary OSes.
Over 95% of my computer time is now in the enhanced Ubuntu environment that I’ve worked on this past year or so. Thus, less than 1 day in 20 of my computer time is with that awful, proprietary junk (and that 1 day in 20 is almost entirely relative paid work, I do need to eat and so far free software income is not covering that). Thank goodness! It actually does feel good to be writing this in LibreOffice Writer, and using Pale Moon (best web browser ever on the planet) to post to this little blog. All running in a rock-solid OS, which I’m now choosing to maintain a good portion of over this past year.
Some statistics can be fun: in the past year I’ve published almost 2,500 unique software packages on Launchpad. It’s 2,494 to be precise, according to the number of lines in my change-dir.lst file that allows me to “ccd” to any package that I’ve worked on.
On my own Xenial-era systems (Linux Mint 18.1 Serena is the basis, with the solid and fast GTK2 desktop) there are now about 1,700 discrete packages from my PPAs based on a quick “head count” in the /var/cache/apt/archives folder. Those Xenial-era systems are what I’ve built every single piece of software on before uploading, to make sure it works, is good and all is well. They are rock-solid systems, without question the most reliable OSes that I’ve ever used yet. There’s something to be said for that.
Next article will give some detail about the build processes that I use, including a custom wrapper script (“pbuilder-all”) that I created a year back and have improved a few times since. It makes the whole build process very simple and quick. A GitHub project for the build script and assorted build configuration files that I use will also be appearing in line with the next article. Hopefully (note to self: must make the time!) within the next week.
Savoury Tech 