Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #104 for the week August 10th - August 16th, 2008. In this issue we cover: Intrepid Alpha-4 released, New UWN translation team, Global Bug Jam: Retrospective, MOTU School sessions for developer week wanted, MOTU News, North Carolina Mental Health Proposals: Open Source VistA Only, Open Sesame: Entering the Realm of Open Source Technology, and much, much more!
UWN Translations
- Note to translators and our readers: We are trying a new way of linking to our translations pages. Please follow the link below for the information you need.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Translations
In This Issue
- Intrepid Alpha-4 released
- New UWN translation team
- Global Bug Jam: Retrospective
- MOTU school sessions for developer week wanted
- MOTU interview
- Ubuntu stats
- Launchpad news
In the Press & Blogosphere
- In Other News
Upcoming Meetings & Events
Updates & Security
- And much, much more!
General Community News
"Intrepid Ibex" Alpha-4 released
Alpha 4 is the fourth in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Intrepid development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Intrepid.
Pre-releases of Intrepid are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs. You can download it here:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/intrepid/alpha-4/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-4/ (Ubuntu Education Edition)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-4/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-4/ (Xubuntu)
For other information on testing, bugs, and bug reporting, refer to the link below.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-August/000470.html
New translation team for the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter
The translation work of the UWN (Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter) is hard and sometimes frustrating work, it is never the less very important for the local communities who like to read the news in their own native language. From this necessity, emerged the UUTT (United UWN Translators Team).
It's goal is to unite the translation teams from around the world and help them with translating the weekly newsletter, adding their own content and news elements, and to help them aquire tools for better support and integration of their translations.
Experience has shown that 1 to 1 translations of the UWN are not very useful and it has been recommenced to pick out the interesting topics from the UWN, translate them and mix them with local news. Now we need the local users to found teams for their language! The new local translation teams will be organized as sub-teams of the UUTT.
If you are interested in helping you can contact us on Launchpad https://launchpad.net/~UUTT or use the mailing list: ubuntu-news-translations@lists.ubuntu.com
Global Bug Jam: Retrospective
Global Bug Jam had people from twelve nations and 20+ locations meeting for the event and a big hand to all who organized and participated last weekend. WOW! 846 bugs! That’s a lot of bugs, especially when you consider that lots of newcomers attended the bug jam events. Everybody thoroughly enjoyed fixing bugs and making new friends. To check out the Global Bug Jam Stories visit this link: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GlobalBugJam/Stories You should also visit http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=167 to get Daniel's thoughts on why we need to have more of these events.
MOTU News
MOTU School sessions for Ubuntu Developer Week wanted
In preparing for another Ubuntu Developer Week, James Westby is asking for volunteers to present MOTU School sessions. A list of possible sessions exists [1], and he suggests a couple that either he will do or he would like to see done. Those interested in presenting on one of the topics should add their name to the list [2], or contact dholbach or James to discuss it.
[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/School/Requests
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek/Prep
http://jameswestby.net/weblog/ubuntu/00-developer-week-school.html
New MOTU
Nicolas Valcárcel (also known as nxvl) has joined the MOTU team. He has done great work in the Server team, is the star of a Spanish packaging video and is involved in various places in the MOTU team.
MOTU Interview of Emanuele Gentili(emgent)
Emanuel started with Linux in 1999, and moved to Ubuntu in April 2005. His first work with the MOTU team was in 2007, with the Ubuntu Security Team. Prior to that, he had been working in Gentoo and Aurox development. Some of the resources he's used to learn to become an MOTU were the DebianMaintainer guide, Ubuntu packaging guide, the Ubuntu School logs and the Debian Policy. He is now working on Rapache, a GUI for configuring and managing apache2, which is available in the Intrepid Universe. http://behindmotu.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/emanuele-gentili-emgent/
Ubuntu Stats
Bug Stats
- Open (46615) -145 # over last week
- Critical (25) -1 # over last week
- Unconfirmed (21770) -496 # over last week
- Unassigned (38102) +480 # over last week
- All bugs ever reported (203199) +3073 # over last week
As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad
Translation Stats Hardy
- Spanish (11935) -23 # over last week
- English-UK (31198) -1030 # over last week
- French (39042) -109 # over last week
- Brazilian Portuguese (50104) -9 # over last week
- Swedish (52880) +/-0 # over last week
Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/
5-a-day bug stats
Top 5 contributors for the past 7 days
- dholbach (86)
- hew (84)
- bdrung (76)
- nick.ellery (59)
- chrisccoulson (59)
Top 5 teams for the past 7 days
- ubuntu-berlin (152)
- ubuntu-michigan (91)
- ubuntu-de-locoteam (86)
- clububuntu (47)
- ubuntu-us-or (40)
Global Bug Jam stats
Top 5 teams for the past 7 days
- club-ubuntu.org-GBJ08 (124)
- hugday-20080814 (14)
- seaq (14)
- GBJ-Aug08-India (11)
- global-august-08-pdx (6)
5 A Day and Global Bug Jam stats provided by Daniel Holbach. See http://daniel.holba.ch/5-a-day-stats/
Launchpad News
Joey Stanford has reported that changes have been made to the Launchpad Legal page [1].
The Launchpad Logo, previously unlicensed, is now licensed as “Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales”. “No Derivative” was chosen to preserve our branding integrity.
The Launchpad Help wiki documentation and the Launchpad News blog, previously unlicensed, are now licensed as “Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales”.
This was done to assist users and commercial entities to be able to use/remix/display the logo and material. Please see the legal page for more information.
[1] https://help.launchpad.net/Legal
http://news.launchpad.net/general/legal-page-updates
In The Press
Ubuntu netbook - Chin Wong took an Acer Aspire One netbook and turned it into a full featured laptop that happened to be small. By replacing the existing operating system with Ubuntu 8.04, the Aspire One was capable of running office applications, editing digital photos, surfing the Web and watching videos. That's not to say that it was easy, as he explains in the article. http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=business6_aug12_2008
Why Ubuntu just might succeed - Matt Asay reassesses a previous article he'd written, and explains why Ubuntu may succeed at making Linux more relevant to a wider audience than just the desktop. His analysis focuses on the tools that Canonical uses: community fervor, marketing and the array of partners and enterprise traction. In brief, it's getting the word out to the right people at the right time that makes the difference. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10013233-16.html?part=rss&subj=TheOpenRoad
Mark Shuttleworth's evolving Ubuntu desktop war - Matt Asay had a chance to talk to Mark Shuttleworth about the direction in which Ubuntu is going. What he found out is that "cloud computing" is more than just desktop or servers. It's the combination of them, and what can be done with them. So, where Shuttleworth wants the desktop to be more appealing to users than Mac, he also wants to infiltrate the server side with exceptional network services. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10017426-16.html
Shuttleworth and Ubuntu keep moving on up - Sam Varghese notes that Ubuntu has become quite popular with enthusiasts, and is now starting to move in on the enterprise market. Promoted originally by word-of-mouth, public relations releases and interviews, Mark Shuttleworth has now started working with Dell and IBM to incorporate Ubuntu in their offerings. This popularity has been aided by the FOSS community that supports the growth of Linux at the expense of Windows. http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20049/1090/1/2/
In The Blogosphere
Canonical's Smartest Move of 2008 - While the cancellation of Ubuntu Live was a disappointment to many of us, blogger Joe Panettieri thinks that it was Canonical's smartest move this year. Instead of catering to those of us who are already fans of Ubuntu, Canonical instead focused on showing the benefits of choosing Ubuntu to other Linux users at LinuxWorld Expo. Canonical spent all of LinuxWorld Expo talking about its business strategy and ISV support. Although foot traffic at LinuxWorld Expo seemed light, Canonical’s booth was standing-room-only even as the show wrapped up on August 7. http://www.workswithu.com/2008/08/10/canonicals-smartest-move-of-2008/
Canonical To VARs: 11% of U.S. Businesses Use Ubuntu Linux - For more than a year, Canonical has been piecing together a global channel of partners, distributors and solutions providers. Today Canonical's partner program remains in its infancy, but they hope to change that by bolstering Ubuntu Server Edition's support among ISV's. There are a constantly increasing number of products built and certified to run on Ubuntu. This includes products like Alfreco, IBM Lotus Notes, Ingres, SugarCRM, VMware ESX Server, Zimbra, and many more! http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/08/10/canonical-to-vars-11-of-us-businesses-use-ubuntu-linux/
Ubuntu Really is Linux for Humans! - Periodically since the late 90’s, the author of the blog Lounge Daddy Chronicles, has sampled various Linux distributions. He wanted to like Linux but when compared to Windows, the effort in installing programs tainted the experience. Upon the recommendation of a friend, Ubuntu was the latest distribution to grace his hard drive. He cites ease of use, simple program installation, and excellent support as the reasons he has stuck with Ubuntu. Deciding to keep Linux as a part of his home network, he states: “Ubuntu offers a simplicity and a speed that Vista just cannot match”. http://loungedaddy.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/ubuntu-really-is-linux-for-humans/
Linking Bugs As Part Of Your 5-A-Day - Jono Bacon is enthused by the amount of work that has been done through 5-A-Day. The recent changes to Launchpad allow bug trackers to go even further than they did before, by linking launchpad reports involving upstream bugs to the upstream bug reports. This helps both local bug fixers and the upstream providers, and the method is simple. See his article for more information and a link to how to create the links. http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=1241
In Other News
North Carolina Mental Health Proposals: Open Source VistA Only
A brief post to LinuxMedNews by Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS, reports that "North Carolina’s Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services Division has issued a request for proposals to vendors to install a commercially supported, open-source version of the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA". They intend to first install it in 3 hospitals and 3 clinics, but eventually expand it to 12 facilities. They hope to start the first 6 in the next 3 years. The actual article is in Modern Healthcare [1], and requires registration to view it.
[1] http://modernhealthcare.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080812/REG/356587229
http://linuxmednews.com/1218595138/index_html
Open Sesame: Entering the Realm of Open Source Technology
Selena Chavis reports For The Record, that the push for electronic health records in healthcare organizations and physician practices has people looking at open source software for a practical solution. VistA, originally created by the Veterans Administration as Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture and in use for 2 decades, is such a solution. Both commercial software-as-service and open source versions are available, including WorldVistA, which is the only open source version to be approved by Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT). Implementing a proprietary version of VistA for a 300 bed hospital would cost from $18 - $30 million, while choosing an open source solution like WorldVistA would only cost $3.25 - $4 million. A potential savings of up to $26.75 million! http://fortherecordmag.com/archives/ftr_080408p14.shtml
Change Wallpapers, Mega Ultra GUI.
DoctorMO has posted information on the Ubuntu Forums that will be of interest to people running Gnome who like to change their wallpapers. The package consists of a GUI and crontab python libs. This will put a menu entry in your System > Preferences folder for configuration. The system's debs can be downloaded from his Personal Package Archive [1], or from the forum.
[1] https://launchpad.net/~doctormo/+archive
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=888746
Computers offered free to students
Free IT Athens and the Clark County School District, in Georgia, are working together to furnish free computers to students. In an effort to get computers into the hands of those who need them but don't have access to them, Free IT Athens is refurbishing old computers and installing Linux and open source software. With 130 already done, they intend to do 600 this fall and another 1,200 next year. http://onlineathens.com/stories/080908/news_2008080900419.shtml
Comcast Gives Cold-Shoulder To Non-Profit School Running Linux
In Lake City, Florida, the new Generation private non-profit school moved from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux in their computer lab. But when the internet went down, and the owner of the school, Mrs. Gorman, called Comcast, the tech didn't want to help her because the computers were running Linux. Their claim was that they only support Windows, Mac OSX, and UNIX. It took telling the tech that Comcast was discriminating against a customer based on their choice of operating system to even get him to supply a case number. http://crashsystems.net/2008/08/comcast-wont-support-linux/
Upcoming Meetings and Events
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Community Council Meeting
- Start: 11:00 UTC
- End: 13:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Ubuntu Server Team Meeting
- Start: 15:00 UTC
- End: 16:00 UTC
- Location: #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
QA Team Meeting
- Start: 17:00 UTC
- End: 18:00 UTC
- Location: #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
Platform Team Meeting
- Start: 20:00 UTC
- End: 21:00 UTC
- Location: #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
- Start: 12:00 UTC
- End: 13:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
Ubuntu Desktop Team Meeting
- Start: 13:00 UTC
- End: 14:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
Ubuntu Java Team Meeting
- Start: 14:00 UTC
- End: 15:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
Friday, August 22, 2007
Ubuntu MOTU Meeting
- Start: 12:00 UTC
- End: 13:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
Saturday, August 23, 2007
Xubuntu Community Meeting
- Start: 13:00 UTC
- End: 15:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Updates and Security for 6.06, 7.04, 7.10, and 8.04
Security Updates
- None Reported
Ubuntu 6.06 Updates
python-dns 2.3.0-5ubuntu1.2 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/dapper-changes/2008-August/012741.html
Ubuntu 7.04 Updates
python-dns 2.3.0-5.1ubuntu2.2 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/feisty-changes/2008-August/008988.html
tmsnc 0.3.2-1ubuntu0.7.04 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/feisty-changes/2008-August/008989.html
Ubuntu 7.10 Updates
python-dns 2.3.1-1ubuntu0.2 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/gutsy-changes/2008-August/010293.html
tmsnc 0.3.2-1ubuntu0.7.10.1 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/gutsy-changes/2008-August/010294.html
Ubuntu 8.04 Updates
app-install-data-commercial 9.2 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/hardy-changes/2008-August/011946.html
linux 2.6.24-20.39 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/hardy-changes/2008-August/011947.html
linux 2.6.24-21.40 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/hardy-changes/2008-August/011948.html
python-dns 2.3.1-2ubuntu0.2 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/hardy-changes/2008-August/011949.html
linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24 2.6.24-21.30 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/hardy-changes/2008-August/011950.html
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.24 2.6.24.14-21.47 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/hardy-changes/2008-August/011952.html
linux-backports-modules-2.6.24 2.6.24-21.24 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/hardy-changes/2008-August/011951.html
linux-meta 2.6.24.21.23 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/hardy-changes/2008-August/011953.html
tmsnc 0.3.2-1ubuntu0.8.04.1 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/hardy-changes/2008-August/011954.html
linux-backports-modules-2.6.24 2.6.24-21.2 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/hardy-changes/2008-August/011955.html
Archives and RSS Feed
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Additional Ubuntu News
As always you can find more news and announcements at:
and
Conclusion
Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.
See you next week!
Credits
The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:
- Nick Ali
- John Crawford
- Craig A. Eddy
- Dave Bush
- Arlan Vennefron
- And many others
Glossary of Terms
- GUI - Graphical User interface
- MD - Medical Doctor
- MS - Master of Science degree
- VAR - Value Added Retailer
Feedback
This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Weekly News Team. If you have a story idea or suggestions for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list at https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Ubuntu-news-team and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Ideas. If you'd like to contribute to a future issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, please feel free to edit the appropriate wiki page. If you have any technical support questions, please send them to ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com.