Ubuntu’s Bleeding Edge is a new blog about the action, intrigue and occasional romance of the Ubuntu development branch, for everyone who thinks Release Day parties are only meant to celebrate the start of a new release cycle. It’s an easy way to keep up-to-date about the goings-on of Maverick Meerkat… particularly if the idea of running an ever-changing, alpha-quality operating system scares the bejesus out of you.

The story so far…

• Welcome to Ubuntu’s Bleeding Edge — an introduction and kickoff
• Previously on Maverick… — the first upload summary, documenting the first month of Maverick
• It’s June already… and Alpha 1 Beckons — second upload summary
• A couple of goofy asides about the boredom of freeze week and relief via the first alpha release (both include video for hilarity’s sake)
• Before the floodgates opened — summary of uploads during Alpha 1′s freeze

It’s a nice way to tackle a problem in bite-sized chunks, have a ready excuse to write regularly, and recall how much I used to enjoy those six month roller-coaster release cycles. It sure helps to have an enjoyable subject that I know pretty well, too!

Check it out, and subscribe to the feed if you’re keen to keep up with the ups and downs of Maverick.

Update: My latest devel branch update covers the removal of aptitude from the default desktop install and the switch to building for i686, both of which have become minor controversies.

WordPress 2.7 is an awesome release. The revision of the admin backend, despite being so soon after the changes in 2.5, is fantastic… particularly for “real users”. I enjoyed putting forward my blunt perspective on the issue while Matt and Jane were in the crowd at WordCamp Australia. Developers and contributors don’t hear “you’re doing the right thing” and “thank you” often enough.

So, thank you WordPress hackers for another great release! (And thanks to Donncha for already working on the big merge for WordPress MU 2.7… I’m really looking forward to deploying it on GNOME Blogs.)

Plus, make sure you check out the in-yo-face download counter.

"Wordpress 2.7 is shit-hot" by Halans

Definitely great to see Cheese (of which I am quite the fan) so prominently featured in the release notes and on the front page. Rock on, Daniel!

Amazingly, something even more exciting in the GNOME galaxy has just concluded… the (by all reports) über-successful GTK+ Hackfest.

Congratulations to all involved… The future looks bright — burning magnesium bright!

Hearty congratulations to our friends in the KDE community, who shipped KDE 4.0 today!

It’s a hard slog for any software development team to wrangle a major release such as this, but if our experience since shipping GNOME 2.0 is anything to go by, the KDE team’s efforts on this release will pay off handsomely in the future.

Now we get to wait and see what the KDE team do with this great opportunity!