The Future of Ubuntu CE and a little explanation...

[mhancoc7]

Update: I am going to reimbursed for my laptop!! It may take a little while to see the money, but at least I will get reimbursed. I apologize for my absence from the forums. I have been very busy doing tons of freelance work and also developing my site, TheJesusTV.com. I am going to suspend work on the Ubuntu CE project temporarily, but indefinitely. I have struggled with this decision for quite a while. The project is not dead, but I need some time to work on some other projects. I hope you all will understand this decision. Please keep me in your prayers.

God Bless, Jereme

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Hi all,
I know that many of you are chomping at the bit to find out about the next release of Ubuntu CE. First let me say thank you for all of your enthusiasm. I never expected Ubuntu CE gain such a community.

I know things have been very slow with Ubuntu CE and I do apologize for that. I wanted to post a little explanation of why things are moving so slow and to layout the plan for the next release.

Ok, so here is what has slowed things down. Ubuntu CE has many contributors without which Ubuntu CE could not exist. However, at the core Ubuntu CE is a one person "operation". I do not mean to diminish the efforts and contributions of the many Team members and forum members who have contributed. I just want people to understand the the website, distro, and all of the custom packages (dansguardian gui, esword installer, etc) are all built on my laptop. Which brings me to a bizarre situationi that started back in September.

Back in September I was taking out the trash. Our building has a room on the first floor for disposing of our trash. Occasionally people will throw away old computers. In fact a few years ago I found one their and installed Ubuntu on it and gave it to a friend who was in need of a laptop. It was truly a "trash to treasure" moment. So when I spotted a broken laptop I was stoked. The only thing that I was able to salvage was the 30gb hard drive from the wreckage. So, I put the hard drive into an extra enclosure that I had and plugged it in to my laptop to see if it was functioning. It worked perfectly. My plan was to format it and use it for extra storage. Before I formatted it I decided to see what was on the hard drive. That is where I made a mistake.

Well, I guess it wasn't a mistake because I am glad that I was able to help in the upcoming investigation. My bad I am getting ahead of myself. So, the hard drive had some teenage kids homework and such. I ran across some "adult" material. The only problem is that I started noticing that there were some odd things like tons of info on school shootings and terrorism. Then I found the worst thing that I have ever seen. It was a cache of child pornography. I immediately pulled the usb cord out of my laptop and tried to figure out what to do.

Now, I have two young boys of my own. I sat up almost all night worrying about my kids, the kids in the pictures and just completely disgusted at the whole thing. I decided that I had to inform the authorities. The next day I called and several detectives came to investigate. I was glad to be helpful, but I did not know that I was going to end up losing my laptop over it.

The detectives asked me tons of questions and took my statement. Then they dropped the bombshell. Since my laptop had been connected to the hard drive via usb cable they had to confiscate my laptop so they could verify that the images and such originated from the hard drive and not my laptop. I assumed they were just going to take my hard drive, but they took my whole laptop. They said that I would get it back in a matter of a few weeks. Boy were they wrong! They did allow me to make a full backup of the hard drive, so I would not lose all of my data.

So, now I am working off a much older/slower laptop that simply will not run Vmware or Virtualbox at a speed suitable for testing. It locks up before it ever gets started. The detective in charge of the investigation recently called to let me know that I should have my laptop back by the end of March.

I apologize for not explaining this sooner, but I was hoping that I would get my laptop back sooner and I could move on with things. I wished I had the resources to just go out and buy a new laptop, but that simply is not an option right now.

So, the plan for the next release of Ubuntu CE is this. I will focus on building on Hardy. There will not be a Gutsy release. At this point it only makes sense to skip Gutsy. I will also be focusing on the Dansguardian GUI. I will probably discontinue work on the esword installer and ies4linux installer as these complicate the build process quite a bit and I believe that the Parental Controls is the most important area to focus on at this point. I also may switch over to a DVD release instead of keeping things down to a 700mb disc. This would also make the build time faster.

Please let me know what you think.

God Bless, Jereme