Ubuntu MATE Remix sprint

Earlier this week popey and I met up for a one day development sprint to try and make some headway with Ubuntu MATE Remix. We did manage to make a good deal of progress. So, what did we achieve?

Achievements unlocked

• Development is now hosted on Launchpad - http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-mate/
• The Ubuntu MATE Remix .iso images are now built using seeds and germinate. While this is currently only possible using a meta package in our PPA, this technique is consistent with the official Ubuntu flavour builds.
• Fixed the Ambiance and Radiance themes to work with MATE 1.8.1.
• The Ubuntu MATE Remix package selection is pretty much complete and offers a “pure” MATE desktop environment on top of Ubuntu. The testing .iso images do not include anything of Unity, indicators or Compiz by default. Wide hardware support, including VirtualBox, has been integrated.
• The application selections are mostly consistent with the default applications that shipped in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
• Created this super-amazing website. Yes, it needs work and will be improved in due course.

Locked levels

These are the main issues we need to work on:

• Get LightDM to auto login to the LiveCD session.
• Fork the livecd-rootfs, merge the Ubuntu MATE Remix modifications, build a revised package in our PPA and modify the .iso image builder accordingly.
• Release .iso images for testing.
• Ubuntu MATE Remix Plymouth boot themes and Ubiquity slides.
• Coordinate merging the Ubuntu MATE Remix seeds, tasks and livecd-rootfs changes upstream.
• Testing, lots of testing. In particular hardware and printer compatibility.

Is there anything you can help with or want to be involved in? If so please get in touch.