Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter - Issue 10
Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter - Issue 10 for the week of August, 13 - 19 2006
You can always find this and other Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issues at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter
In This Issue
- Ubuntu wins Golden Penguin
Ubuntu at LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco
- Security updates
- Ubuntu 6.06 LTS updates
- Edgy new and updated apps
- Summer of Code update
- Weekly Developer meeting notes
- Launchpad news and updates
- Bug Stats
- In the Press
- Feature of the Week: GNOME Deskbar applet
General Community News
Ubuntu wins the Golden Penguin Award
As reported in the Fridge, Ubuntu won the Golden Penguin Award at LinuxWorld Expo 2006, playing against the Novell OpenAudio team. The Ubuntu team, consisting of volunteers Jorge Castro, Corey Burger and Canonical's Malcolm Yates, led the scoring from the very beginning and despite the Novell team's strong showing the the 3rd round, Ubuntu finished ahead. Congrats to all the players. See more at the Fridge: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/508
LinuxWorld Expo a great success
LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco recently finished, and both the Ubuntu community and Canonical had a strong showing. Both booths were very busy, with many people discussing how they used Ubuntu or thanking us for making Ubuntu. The .org pavilion booth, run by the Ubuntu California team, was busy demonstrating Ubuntu 6.06 and all the great Ubuntu books currently out, while the Canonical booth focused on working business-to-business relationships.
At the GNOME booth, Ubuntu and GNOME community members Jorge Castro and Corey Burger helped the GNOME Foundation spread the message about how great GNOME was, which included showcasing the many great features coming both in GNOME 2.16 (due in Edgy) and beyond. Anecdotal evidence suggests an overwhelming number of visitors to the GNOME booth ran Ubuntu.
Security Updates
USN-337-1 imagemagick vulnerability http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-337-1 USN 336-1 binutils vulnerablity http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-336-1 USN 335-1 heartbeat vulnerability http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-335-1 USN 334-1 krb5 vulnerability http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-334-1
More information and a full listing can be found at http://www.ubuntu.com/security
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates
There were no updates to 6.06 this week.
New Apps In Edgy
Glade 3 was uploaded this week. A description from the GNOME Journal "The GUI designer tool that has been building your GTK+ applications for years is back with a completely new generation of homegrown Free software. Supporting all the widgets in the GTK+ 2.8 family, gnomeui widgets, the GNOME canvas widget, and a whole new feature set; this new tool is sure to raise a few eyebrows."
Other notable packages included:
- sun java 1.5.0-08 - small upgrade to the Sun Java package
openoffice.org-starter-guide 1.0.0 -- a new package of a OpenOffice.org guide
- xubuntu-at-speech 0.1 - new package, speech part of the accessiblity support for Xubuntu
- xubuntu-at-mag 0.1 - new package, screen magnifier part of the accessiblity support for Xubuntu
- agave 0.4 - colour schemer for GNOME
- gshare 0.92 - a new package included easy user-level file sharing
Ubuntu Summer of Code update
This week we profile Peter Moberg, who is currently working on two tools for Ubuntu as part of SoC.
His first tool, called Panel Switcher, is designed to make switching panel layouts, even quite complicated ones, very easy. Implemented in Python and pyGTK, you can find more information at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PanelSwitcher .
Session Backup, his other tool, allows a user to save and restore multiple GNOME sessions. As it stores the data in a zipped file, it also allows users to migrate that information to other computers. Also implemented in Python and pyGTK, you can find more information about Session Backup at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SessionBackup .
Weekly developer meeting
In the most recent developer meeting - 17 August at 23:00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting - the developers planned the list of topics to be discussed at next week's Development Sprint in Wiesbaden, Germany.
A number of features were reported as implemented or complete, including:
- the speakup kernel module
- boot-message-logging
- kubuntu-accessibility
- Firefox 2.0 beta merge.
The desktop team is keeping very busy with bug triaging and fixing - and could use your help!
Launchpad News
This week's full Launchpad news is at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2006-August/000536.html
Highlights include:
Details of the staging server at https://staging.ubuntu.com/
- An answer to "Can I use Launchpad (Malone) to track bugs for my software project?" (it's "yes", by the way).
- Launchpad is now 100% hosted in Bazaar's native format, with over 600 branches registered.
- Each distribution or upstream product now has a listing of its top contributors, both general and per-activity.
- Edgy translations should be open on Monday.
- 30% speed improvement in the package publishing process.
- Preparations under way for a move to per-application domains and a secret new page layout.
To stay up to date, join the launchpad-users mailing list:
We'd be honored to have you with us.
Bug Stats
- Open (14220)
- Unconfirmed (7608)
- Unassigned (9491)
- All bugs ever reported (50805)
As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs
Infamous Bugs - Bug #56125
More: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/56125
Osnews covers Bug #1
OSnews recently covered Bug #1, the "Microsoft has a majority marketshare" one. You can read more information at http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=15554
In The Press
Ubuntu and Other Distros Rolled Out to American Students
"Students in Indiana are using new Linux desktops under a state grant program to roll out low-cost workstations to schools. More than 22,000 kids have been Linuxed up under the programme which is being run by the Indiana Department of Education. Mike Huffman, special assistant for technology told CRN that Linux workstations were rolled out for 22,000 students over the last year under the Affordable Classroom Computers for Every Secondary Student (ACCESS) programme. The plan is to expand that even further with Novell SUSE, Red Hat and Ubuntu installations. Currently, 24 high schools are using Linux and the plan is to increase that to 80."
Read more at http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33756
Feature Of The Week - GNOME Deskbar
Deskbar allows you to embed an incredibly powerful search interface in a GNOME panel. Search across multiple search engines, enter an email address to send email, jump straight to a web page by entering the URL, or open files and folders by entering the path. There really are too many features to list. To see them all, and what's in store for future versions, visit Raphael Slinckx's blog at: http://raphael.slinckx.net/deskbar/
To add the Deskbar applet to your desktop just right click on an existing GNOME panel, select Add to Panel, and select it from the applets listed in the Accessories section.
Additional News Resources
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:
- Matthew Revell
- John Little
- Christian Reis
- Henrik Omma
- Corey Burger
- Melissa Draper
- anyone else that contributes
- And many others
Feedback
This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Marketing Team. Please feel free to contact us regarding any concerns or suggestions by either sending an email to ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com or by using any of the other methods on the Ubuntu Marketing Team Contact Information Page.