Three years ago the motive took hold of me to start sharing with other people updated software that I was spending time building on my computers. Having been using Ubuntu-based Linux as my main computer operating system for two and a half years at that point it felt like time for an expansion of these software building efforts, in terms of putting the work into the public domain.
Back in September 2018 the idea of using Ubuntu Launchpad for such work became of interest to me, and I actually did sign up for an account then. But I did not actually start using that account until my very first upload almost a year later. That was three years ago, specifically on 18 August 2019.
In case you don’t know about it, Launchpad is a rather excellent public service provided by Canonical, the company who publishes the free and open source Ubuntu operating system (an OS “distribution” running on the Linux “kernel” or system core). Anyone interested, and also willing to learn a few technical tricks about the process, can upload software builds to Launchpad for many others to then easily download and install on their own systems.
A strong motive to start leveraging my software building efforts by using the Launchpad service led to my first upload, which was of a program called Métamorphose created by Ianaré Sévi. It is an excellent file renaming tool with a very wide range of user configurable options and rules, allowing it to be used for complex renaming operations on even very large batches of files.
For a sometimes computer technician such as myself Métamorphose is a must have in the virtual toolbox. Yet there was a major bug when running the most recent known version with newer Ubuntu operating systems. As the creator of Métamorphose no longer had time to maintain the software I took it on to figure out a fix for the bug, which was also based on earlier investigation of that bug by someone else.
After applying my patch to fix the bug the program worked well for me on my own computers. The desire to share this fixed and working version is what then led to me creating my first ever “PPA” or Personal Package Archive on the Launchpad service, specifically for this program Métamorphose.
Jumping forward three years and wow, what a massive amount of time and effort I’ve ended up putting into the software builds available at now dozens of my own PPAs! Little did I know back in August 2019 that my initial upload of Métamorphose would lead to such a large amount of work on my part.
Earlier this month, August 2022, my total personal uploads to Launchpad surpassed the 20,000 mark. That means over 20,000 uploads of software builds based on the “recipes” personally tested by me on my own computers, with those recipes being known as “packaging” in the computer field.
To “package” software is to describe in precise detail the computer commands to carry out that will build or compile the program in question. Most people don’t want (and/or don’t know how) to do that, preferring just to download and install, which is where a service such as Launchpad makes it really easy.
Consider that a bicycle is made of many distinct components manufactured in many different places by different parties, and that all of those components aren’t generally much use on their own. However, once all of those parts are assembled correctly the bicycle created becomes very useful indeed. But most people would struggle to put together the bicycle from just the parts.
Similarly, computer software is usually comprised of a number of different components or modules. Often many, many such parts with large programs. All of which is not very useful to most people until it is built into the final “package” that can be easily downloaded and installed with a few clicks.
This process of building or packaging software is something I’ve done on and off since my early years, when I learned a little computer programming and then wanted to share the results with friends. To share the results is much easier when the program is compiled or packaged into the final form. Then it can easily be run with a simple typed command or mouse click, rather than having to load up the code in a special “development environment” to run it.
Over the past three years the initial motive to do a few uploads of new software packages grew and grew into the project that is now known as SavOS. In the beginning I had no idea that it would develop into something this big, as I mainly just wanted to share a few new and fixed builds of certain software with anyone “out there” who might find such to be useful.
However, in the very organic and unplanned process of doing more and more uploads of more and more software the vision of creating a better computer operating system then started to become clear to me. Thus, SavOS was born. The name “SavOS” is simply formed with the first three letters of my surname, combined with OS for operating system.
There is good precedent for such a name in the free and open source software (or FOSS) movement. Given that the name Linux is the first four letters of the first name of the creator, Linus Torvalds, along with “x” as an allusion to UNIX. With UNIX being the family of commercial operating systems for which GNU (“GNU’s not UNIX”) software plus Linux kernel gives a free alternative.
Also, Debian upon which Ubuntu is very directly based is comprised of two three letter names: Deb and Ian. Debra being the then girlfriend (later wife) of Ian Murdock at the time that he founded the Debian project in 1993. This history about both Linux and Debian aside, the SavOS name has a positive phonetic connotation that a couple of users have pointed out to me: Save Us!
Indeed. Save us from the apparently endless efforts of corporations to control us all, and save us from the proprietary limitations of corporate software, that wastes vast amounts of human time and energy and vast amounts of finite natural resources. All of which could certainly be put to far, far better uses!
So another milestone this month of August 2022 is that there are now around 20,000 active users of one or more of the PPAs that put together comprise the SavOS project. This is based on download statistics of one key package that is required by many of the other software programs at my PPAs (see the FFmpeg PPA, which is the most popular PPA of mine, for more details on the statistics).
That’s a couple of good notable milestones this month after three years of effort on the PPAs and SavOS project: 20,000 uploads and also 20,000 users! A pleasing synchronicity with the numbers, as does sometimes happen in life.
To give an idea of the significant amount of effort that I’ve put into this project since August 2019, my best estimate is that it’s at least 3,000 hours of work at this stage. As an average over three years it has been my literal half-time job!
This is about 20 hours per week of work in other words, or about 1,000 hours per year. Some weeks I put in more hours than that, some weeks less, but that’s a good and realistic estimate of my actual total time and effort that has gone into this SavOS project with all the many PPAs that are now available.
Having summarised above the amount of work it’s taken for the project to get to this point, now a brief request to the user base of my PPAs: if you are using any software that I am publishing and are financially able to donate some funds to support my work then please do so. It will help to keep the project alive, by helping to keep me alive (in terms of me eating and paying my bills).
In the past two years since I first put up links for donations on my Launchpad site there have now been 50 unique people who have directly contributed to the project (thank you all very much, no matter what amount you have given it has all helped me to survive!). Out of now 20,000 users these 50 donors equate to only about 0.25% of the total user base, to give some perspective.
A few people have generously contributed to support the project multiple times (big thanks!). Also, slightly more than half of the total amount of funds donated has come from just the top three donors (especially big thanks!). You can see the thanks on my main Launchpad site relative these top three donors.
This post here is a first step towards more regular communication on my part about the SavOS project, which will certainly help to bring more visibility and also more support. It’s time for me to let people get to know me and also this work better, which is very important for the longer term continuation of the project. This means I will definitely be putting more time into writing about it from here onward. Look out for more, coming soon!
Savoury Tech 