The first day of the Ubuntu Developer Summit began with roundtable sessions which focused on high-level planning for Hardy Heron, the next major release of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. I attended the Hardy Heron desktop roundtable to get the inside scoop about the future of Ubuntu on the desktop.

The primary goal for the Hardy development cycle is to make existing features more usable and robust rather than adding a lot of new functionality. This differs significantly from the Gutsy Gibbon development cycle which focused on delivering highly experimental features—like compositing by default—that improved the user experience at the expense of robustness in certain documented areas. Stability and resilience are important for Hardy Heron because it is a long-term support release and will be supported on the desktop for three years.

The guts of Heron

The Compiz window manager, which adds sophisticated visual effects to the Ubuntu user interface, will be a big target for usability improvements. Keyboard bindings and session management were noted as two areas where Compiz still needs some work. The potential for better integrating Compiz effects with the Ubuntu look and feel was also briefly discussed.

PolicyKit integration is also another topic that is considered highly relevant for Hardy Heron. PolicyKit is a new framework for secure privilege elevation. When programs currently need to perform operations that require permissions higher than those of a regular user, privileges for the entire program must be elevated—typically with a graphical sudo utility. PolicyKit will instead require developers to isolate functionality that requires higher privileges in individual non-graphical utilities and services that will be accessed by programs through a D-Bus interface. This will also permit administrators to establish more nuanced controls over which users can perform certain tasks and the contexts in which those tasks are permitted. PolicyKit will still use password prompts like gksudo, so the switch to PolicyKit will not significantly change the way that users are accustomed to interacting with Ubuntu. PolicyKit is being developed by Red Hat and will be used with HAL in Fedora 8.

Improving Tracker integration is another important goal for Hardy Heron. Tracker is an indexing and search tool that is included by default in Ubuntu 7.10. The search tools that come with Tracker are currently very weak and will need a lot of refinement. Another goal is to find a way to replace inotify, the kernel-level file monitoring component used by Tracker. Developers have expressed concerns that inotify is too resource- and i/o-intensive. Developers also hope to use Tracker for system-wide search functionality, replacing the antiquated updatedb mechanism. Several contributors have also suggested various ways that Ubuntu can better use Tracker's advanced metadata storage capabilities. For instance, Robert Carr is working on developing a userspace filesystem with FUSE that will integrate with Tracker and make it possible for users to access their files by using tags, eliminating the need to descend through complex directory structures.

Odds and ends

A complete visual refresh is also planned, including a completely new icon theme that will use more SVG and integrate better with the Tango icons used by GNOME and other upstream projects. Another topic that was very briefly discussed was the possibility of creating a GTK theme that takes advantage of compositing functionality, something that probably won't happen within the Hardy development cycle. The visual refresh plans are extensive, and were discussed in greater detail during the Hardy theming spec session.

A few other usability issues were discussed as well, like finding more practical ways of enabling users to install content that can't legally be distributed in certain countries. The new codec installation tools in Ubuntu 7.10 have improved the situation considerably, but there are still holes.

Most of the goals for Hardy Heron look very promising and feasible. Shifting away from the emphasis on new features in order to improve reliability is a good way to shore up some of the biggest gaps so that the long-term support release is very strong. As major hardware vendors begin to consider joining Dell in offering Linux preinstallation, the availability of a robust release with three years of support will make Ubuntu much more tempting for these companies.