Issue117

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WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #117 for the week November 9th - November 15th, 2008. In this issue we cover ...

UWN Translations

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https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Translations

In This Issue

General Community News

New Theme for help.ubuntu.com

The Official Ubuntu Documentation site has recently been updated with a new theme. The site links have also been updated to include the Ubuntu Community Documentation site, and all the currently supported versions of Ubuntu, including the newest 8.10 Intrepid release. The new theme, and changes to the site, should make future updates easier to accomplish. Stop by and check it out here: https://help.ubuntu.com/

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2008-November/012127.html

Dell Mini 9 update testing

In a posting to the Ubuntu-qa mailing list, Chris Gregan, the QA Manager of OEM Services, Canonical USA, asked for owners of the Dell Mini 9 to help out with a new project. The OEM Services group is setting up a repo to handle updates for the Mini 9 and other netbook devices, and is looking for testers to help out. In response to questions concerning who can help, Steve Beattie responded[1] with an outline of how testing is done, and the type of people needed, as well as a reference to the Open Week presentation he gave[2] which further outlines the process.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-qa/2008-November/000334.html

Ubuntu Community Interviews: Nathan Grubb

In today’s installment, Matthew Helmke highlights one of the communities younger forum members. Nathan Grubb (nathangrubb) is also a comparatively new Linux user, having joined the fun just over a year ago. He has a blog that you are invited to check out: http://nathangrubby.wordpress.com/ Nathan has been active in Linux for a little over a year, and has been using computers since he was about 7. Read the details and see some screenshots at the link. http://matthewhelmke.net/wordpress/2008/11/13/an-interview-with-nathan-grubb/

Alpha 1 freeze ahead

The expected release date of Jaunty Alpha 1 is next Thursday, November 20th. The first milestone is happening before the spec process this time due to the coming end of year holidays, and a late UDS(December). The team will continue to use a "soft freeze" for main for the Jaunty Alpha milestones. This means that developers are asked to refrain from uploading packages between Tuesday and Thursday which don't bring us closer to releasing the alpha. These days can then be used for settling the archive and fixing any remaining showstoppers. More details, and links to all the Jaunty information sites are located at the link. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-November/000511.html

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (48461)+257 over last week
  • Critical (19) +/-0 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (19904)-263 over last week
  • Unassigned (40273)+261 over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (230693)+1986 over last week

As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

Infamous Bugs

Translation Stats Intrepid

  • Spanish (19388)-587 over last week
  • French (61935)-124 over last week
  • Swedish (76724)-386 over last week
  • English (UK) (81455)+2 over last week
  • Brazilian Portuguese (82684)-2658 over last week

Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/

5-a-day bug stats

Top 5 contributors for the past 7 days

  • crimsun (627)
  • chrisccoulson (70)
  • charlie-tca (52)
  • angusthefuzz (48)
  • harrisony (30)

Top 5 teams for the past 7 days

  • dcteam (629)
  • ubuntu-au (48)
  • ubuntu-us-ohio (48)
  • ubuntu-cl (34)
  • ubuntu-berlin (25)

5-A-Day stats provided by Daniel Holbach. See http://daniel.holba.ch/5-a-day-stats/

LoCo News

Tamil Team

Ubuntu Tamil Team had its Intrepid Release Event on Nov 09 at Erode. Erode IT Association had made complete arrangements for the event. Myself and Padmanathan from Ubuntu Tamil Team took part and conducted event.

It was a day long event with the participants introduced hands on to Ubuntu, starting from Ubuntu Installation, Setting Tamil Features, Listening to Songs, Playing Videos, Repository and package Management, GNU/ Linux File Structure etc.,

Participants took part with great interest. We made use of Cutomised Tamil Version of Ubuntu for the event which received great response from the participants. Special Thanks to members of Erode IT Association - Raja, Balu, Srinivasan, Manohar, Mutharasu for organising this event in such a short span of time, immediately after we called for hosting such an event outside Chennai, the Capital of TamilNadu.

Erode IT association has announced a Ubuntu Competition for participants to keep the momemtum going! This has paved way for more events, the details of which will be furnished soon Smile :-)

Heart felt thanks for Erode IT Association for Organising this event. Blog with few snaps taken at event: http://amachu.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/intrepid-release-event-erode/

Ubuntu Peru gives Ubuntu presentation

Ubuntu Peru recently was invited to San Marcos University to give a talk about Ubuntu. UNMSM's Fluid Mechanics Faculty is in the process of migrating to Ubuntu, so it was nature for them to inlist the team to help prepare them for the transition. You can find pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/xander21c/UNMSMFacultaDeMecanicaDeFluidos# and more details at the link. http://xander21c.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/unmsm-migrating-to-ubuntu/

New in Intrepid Ibex

Launchpad News

Lauchpad plugin for Eclipse

Guillermo Gonzalez, the man behind the bzr-eclipse plugin, has recently been working with the Launchpad API to produce an Eclipse plugin that integrates with Launchpad. The user visible plugin allows the user to search the branches of a project. Basically it’s a view with a search field. This will become part of bzr-eclipse, as an extension, to allow searching for branches, and branching into a new project directly from one of the results. The heart of it is the launchpadlib plugin, which abstracts common features needed by others plugins that need to interact with launchpad. Currently it provides authentication, and access to projects and bugs. Read Guillermo's full list of details at the link. http://news.launchpad.net/api/launchpad-plugin-for-eclipse-using-the-launchpad-api

Launchpod: Episode #12

In this episode of Launchpod, Matthew Revell and Joey Stanford discuss:

  • The Launchpad team met in London at the end of October. Joey and Matthew speak to Launchpad developers as they took part in an optimization session.
  • Matthew talks to Gary Poster, who recently joined the Launchpad team, about his new role and what he did previously.

Download the ogg file: http://www.archive.org/download/LaunchpodEpisode12/launchpod-e12-20081113.ogg

Podcast feed: http://news.launchpad.net/category/podcast/feed

http://news.launchpad.net/podcast/launchpod-episode-12

Launchpad offline November 12th

Launchpad will be offline for up to two hours from 22:00 UTC on Wednesday, November 19th. This downtime is for the roll out of the latest version of Launchpad, 2.1.11.

  • Offline: 22:00 UTC November 19th, 2008
  • Online(Tentative): 23:59 UTC November 19th, 2008

Launchpad thanks everyone for their patients while they roll out their newest version.

http://news.launchpad.net/notifications/launchpad-offline-19th-november-2200-utc

2 new Launchpad interviews

Paul Hummer, the man known as "rockstar" helped to integrate Bazaar into Launchpad. Basically, anything under code.launchpad.net has his hand in it. Also, much of the layout for Launchpad 2.0 was work he did. He is currently working on making the import system better, and exposing much of Launchpad’s merge proposal functionality through the API. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~rockstar Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaulHummer

Ursula Junque works as a QA Engineer. Each day she watches the "OOPS's" you sometimes see when using Launchpad. She then tries to find out what the problem is. Sometimes she opens a bug report, and then tries to get people to fix it. She also works on assuring that Launchpad versions will be well tested before they are released. She loves doing python scripts to enable her work. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~ursinha

Ubuntu Forums News

In The Press

  • Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth opens up on mobility and design - Ryan Paul at ars technica gives is an overview of Ubuntu Open Week. As many know and may have participated in, Ubuntu Open Week was November 3-7. Open Week is a series of discussions and tutorials on IRC dealing with anything Ubuntu from packaging to bug reporting to virtualization. One of the highlights of Open Week was a two hour Q&A session with Mark Shuttleworth. One of the topics discussed was the Canonical relationship with Dell. The association with Dell is viewed as a big success, “They know it takes a lot of work to do something like Linux well and they work very hard at it, so we appreciate the partnership". Shuttleworth also touched on the enormous opportunity for Linux in the market of mobile devices. In addition, Shuttleworth addressed critics who state that Canonical has little involvement in kernel development by stating that Canonical’s focus is in making a difference in free software. This commitment can be seen by nearly half of Canonical's staff being involved in full-time work on Launchpad, the collaborative web-based development platform which will be completely open source by the end of 2009. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081109-ubuntu-open-week-mark-shuttleworth-speaks.html

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212002356&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_AL

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10097468-92.html?part=rss&subj=news (include link to the Canonical news release on this: http://www.ubuntu.com/news/arm-linux)

In The Blogosphere

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_ati_mesa&num=1

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/learn-ubuntu-with-hackett-and-bankwell-20081112/

http://jldugger.livejournal.com/22373.html

http://www.workswithu.com/2008/11/10/ubuntu-server-edition-810-nice-but-who-uses-it/

In Other News

Ultimate Edition 2.0 has been released

***** if this is going to be included, need to figure out how its different from Ubuntu...and if its something we want to promote, we don't people to blame us if its going to cause problems ****

**** This ubuntu with themes, applications, etc. pre-loaded. I used to run Ultimate a couple of versions ago. Lots of useless stuff, but it sure does look nice. It would take more than I can do to evaluate this before we publish. I can try to evaluate fully before 118. In my esitmation it's harmless--avenn****

Ultimate Edition of 2.0 has been created based on Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. Ultimate 2.0 comes in three flavors: 32 bit, 64 bit, and a Gamer’s edition (x86 based). The 64 bit edition is recommended if you have the hardware. Ultimate Edition is Ubuntu preloaded with themes, wallpapers, icon sets, gdm login screens, and games. In fact Compiz Fusion will work right off the Ultimate Edition 2.0 live DVD. Check it out! http://ultimateedition.info/ultimate-edition-20-has-been-released/

Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.2 released: Source Editor!

The latest version of Ubuntu Tweak has been released and now includes an graphical interface in which a user can edit sources.list. Ubuntu Tweak is an application which allows easy configurations of the Ubuntu desktop and system. In addition to editing sources.list, anyone can submit sources which will be open and available for others. Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.2 also includes updates to several bugs within the application. http://ubuntu-tweak.com/2008/11/14/ubuntu-tweak-042-released-source-editor.html

Ubuntero gets inked: Ubuntu Style

One South African Ubuntu fan, Denham Coote, took a big step into showing his commitment to the ubuntu concept by getting an Ubuntu circle of friends tattoo. The Fridge caught up with him to find out what inspired him to do this. Denham says that apart from being a great design, he really loves what it stands for, the ideals of the Ubuntu/Linux/open source community. The ideas of sharing, caring, acceptance, diversity, giving back, acknowledgement, and working towards a greater good. ubuntu.com sums it up wonderfully - ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are.’ You can learn more about Denham at his blog: http://www.denhamcoote.com/about or by reading the Fridge interview here. http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1734

Meeting Summaries

LoCo Council Meeting: November 10th

A summary of the minutes for the LoCo Council Meeting is as follows:

  • Encouraging the LoCos to submit Team Reports: Team Reports are a chance for different groups to share what they are working on with the community at large. Approved LoCos are required to do Team Reports, and it would be great to know what LoCos from all parts of the world are doing to promote and support Ubuntu. Unfortunately, most LoCos do not bother filling out the Team Reports. In October, only 11 of 60+ approved LoCos bothered to provide any information. It's not realistic to expect every LoCo to submit information every month, but we all know more than 11 LoCos have awesome projects going on they can share with the rest of the community. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamReports

    To promote the LoCos that are taking the time to fill out the Team Reports, their submissions will be published in the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Fridge, and Planet. This will not only encourage more LoCos to report their activities, but will also provide all LoCos with ideas of what they can do to advocate for Ubuntu.

  • South Africa LoCo Review: The South African Team was up for their yearly review this month. During the IRC meeting, Morgan Collett stated the review prompted a leadership change. A smooth transition was made to benefit the LoCo. Jonathan Carter and Morgan are now leading the team. The yearly review gives LoCos a chance to take stock of how a LoCo is doing, what can be improved, and make plans for the future. The LoCo Council is here to make sure LoCos have the resources and help they need to support their regions. Congrats to the South African Team on a successful review, and good luck in the future! http://ubuntu-za.org/

http://boredandblogging.com/2008/11/11/ubuntu-loco-council-meeting-minutes-10-november-2008/

Edubuntu Meeting Minutes

On Wednesday, November 5th, at 18:00 UTC the Edubuntu community had a development meeting. Here are the minutes for those who are interested and/or missed the meeting.

  • Introduction of the Sugar environment: Sugar is the educational platform/user interface originally developed for One Laptop Per Child, and now operating as a separate upstream project under the governance of Sugar Labs. The Ubuntu Sugar Team (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SugarTeam) is working on packages for Sugar.

  • Should Edubuntu have a strategy document: Edubuntu is currently in somewhat of a state of organizational and developmental flux. Edubuntu has become an addon to Ubuntu (rather than a derived full OS), LTSP has moved to the Ubuntu Alternate CD, and the Edubuntu lead developer has moved to the Ubuntu Mobile team. Consequently, LaserJock proposed that creation of an Edubuntu Strategy Document.

  • Naming/Branding ("Edubuntu", "Ubuntu in Education", "Ubuntu Education Edition"): As Edubuntu as a project and product have evolved, various branding and marketing initiatives have led to a somewhat unclear and confusing state for the naming and branding of Edubuntu CDs. After some discussion there was agreement that the community should try to work with Canonical to drop "Ubuntu Education Edition", clarify "Edubuntu" as the community, project, and product it has traditionaly been known as, and use "Ubuntu in Education"
  • Drop Alternate CD LTSP installation and instead use GUI from Ubuntu Desktop: There was a brief discussion around a proposal added to the agenda to remove LTSP from the Ubuntu Alternate CD, and instead have a GUI installer that would install LTSP on any existing Ubuntu Desktop. ogra and stgraber explained that it was technically not feasible to do.
  • Should Edubuntu produce a demo LiveCD: Since Edubuntu is used as an addon CD there is no live CD available for people to demo it. It was fairly quickly decided that a separate, Ubuntu-based, live CD would be too much maintainence. Additionally, there is not enough space on a single CD to include all of Edubuntu. Creating live USB images was suggested as a possibility. ogra suggested that perhaps Edubuntu could create documentation for creating an image based on the umpc images.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-November/026845.html

Server Team Meeting Minutes

Minutes from the November 11th Server Team meeting.

  • Server FAQ: sommer started to update questions on the ServerFaq page. Questions that need to be updated are marked. Action: mathiaz will add a section about updated this section to the Roadmap, and kirkland will review the RAID related questions. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ServerFaq

  • Get rid of old libdb versions: Work will be started to get rid of old libdb version during the Hardy release cycle. The list of packages needing a review needs to be updated in the Roadmap. Action: zul to update the list of packages depending on libdb
  • Add augeas lenses: nxvl reported that lenses have been written during the last cycle. Upstream is still active. The state of lenses are tracked on a wiki page. He plans to write more lenses during this release cycle. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuCentralizedServiceAdministrator/Augeas

  • Update ServerGuide for Jaunty: sommer started to gather ideas about the updates to make to the Ubuntu ServerGuide for Jaunty. All the ideas will be tracked in a specification. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JauntyServerGuide

  • Merges and init script: mathiaz reminded everyone that the archive is open and merging is the main focus of the developers for now. kirkland added that checking if init scripts have a status action is welcome. If not adding one would be appreciated - steps to do so are outline on the InitScriptsStatusActions wiki page. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InitScriptStatusActions

  • Ubuntu Server survey: nijaba reminded everyone that the Ubuntu Server survey will close next Friday, November the 14th. So far 6777 responses have been gathered (4105 full responses, 2672 responses not completely filled out). http://survey.ubuntu.com/

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-November/026851.html

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Americas Membership Meeting

Community Council Meeting

Server Team Meeting

Kernel Team Meeting

  • Start: 17:00 UTC
  • End: 18:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

QA Team Meeting

Platform Team Meeting

  • Start: 22:00 UTC
  • End: 23:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting

  • Start: 12:00 UTC
  • End: 13:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Desktop Team Meeting

Ubuntu Java Meeting

  • Start: 14:00 UTC
  • End: 15:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Friday, November 21, 2008

Tunisian LoCo Team IRC Meeting

  • Start: 20:00 UTC
  • End: 22:00 UTC
  • Location: #ubuntu-tn in IRC
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Community Spotlight

Updates and Security for 6.06, 7.10, 8.04, and 8.10

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

  • None Reported

Ubuntu 7.10 Updates

  • None Reported

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

Ubuntu 8.10 Updates

UWN #: A sneak peek

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Conclusion

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