Hi all, I just thought I'd share some updates with what has been going on.
As many of you know, I was recently elected to the Ubuntu Community Council. This is going to be a huge benefit to Ubuntu Studio and other flavors as we now have someone on the council that comes at it with flavors, and specifically Ubuntu Studio, in mind.
Also, during the previous cycle, somehow I got the attention of the people behind the Kubuntu Focus project, which is the laptop with the Kubuntu brand on it. You can check it out at kfocus.org. It is one powerhouse of a machine! That said, they have reached-out to me and hired me to do their packaging for the machine-specific repositories that ship with the laptop for things such as power management and other optimizations, and to keep their "curated software" maintained in a backports repository of sorts since they stick with the LTS release. For now, it is a temporary, part-time position.
Additionally, part of that is keeping the Ubuntu Studio backports repository updated so that we're not duplicating effort. We really want to merge the synergies of the two projects. They want to be able to benefit from the work we've been doing with Studio via the Ubuntu Studio installer and add that as an official "expert solution" for multimedia types. So, this is a win-win because this merges the synergies of Ubuntu Studio with a hardware provider. I won't be paid to work on Ubuntu Studio *specifically* but it fits with the goals of the project for me to keep working on it.
Another major part of my job will be managing the user experience, and making it a great out-of-the-box Linux experience. That is coming along, and we're even developing a welcome app, which I helped design, with the working name "Center of Focus" that we hope to upstream into both Ubuntu Studio and Kubuntu since it will be easily configurable.
A future idea which we have discussed would be having Ubuntu Studio (22.04) installed by default on request. Like I said, this is one powerhouse of a machine, so it fits perfectly in our goals for Ubuntu Studio to be the best out-of-the-box content creation platform.
I just wanted to let you all know what was going on. I'm really excited about this opportunity, and I encourage you to check out kfocus.org to see this beautiful machine!
That said, since it has become my day job, it is now my focus (no pun intended). I'm not leaving Ubuntu Studio, but I want to make you aware of my time commitment. As part of this, I'm reserving evenings and weekends for time with my family. I have no problem answering questions via IRC/Matrix, but if I don't respond on the weekends, just know that this is why.
Thanks for all you are doing! -- Erich Eickmeyer Project Leader Ubuntu Studio Council Member Ubuntu Community Council -- ubuntu-studio-devel mailing list ubuntu-studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
