Issue121

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Contents

Contents

  1. UWN Translations
  2. In This Issue
  3. General Community News
    1. Four Thousand People attend Ubuntu France Release Party
    2. Ubuntu Developer Summit Jaunty
    3. Hall of Fame: Alberto Milone
    4. MOTU
  4. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Infamous Bugs
    3. Translation Stats Intrepid
    4. 5-a-day bug stats
    5. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  5. Interview with (huats), Leader of the French Team
  6. LoCo News
    1. New York Team Asterisk Demonstration
  7. Software Freedom Day Nicaragua
  8. Launchpad News
    1. LaunchPad goes Open Source
    2. Launchpad Drupal modules
    3. Launchpad in Twitter and identi.ca
    4. Launchpad off line Dec. 17th
    5. Launchpad plugins for Drupal
    6. Launchpad on Twitter and identi.ca
  9. Ubuntu Forums News
  10. In The Press
  11. In The Blogosphere
  12. In Other News
    1. OpenSolaris tackles Ubuntu dominance
    2. OpenSolaris tackles Ubuntu dominance
  13. Meeting Summaries
  14. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Monday, December 15, 2008
      1. LoCo Council Meeting
    2. Tuesday, December 16, 2008
      1. Forum Council Meeting
      2. Community Council Meeting
      3. Server Team Meeting
      4. Kernel Team Meeting
    3. Wednesday, December 17, 2008
      1. Ubuntu-us-pa LoCo Team Meeting
      2. Foundation Team Meeting
      3. QA Team Meeting
    4. Thursday, December 18, 2008
      1. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
      2. Desktop Team Meeting
      3. Ubuntu Java Meeting
    5. Saturday, December 20, 2008
      1. South Dakota LoCo Team Meeting
  15. Community Spotlight
  16. Updates and Security for 6.06, 7.10, 8.04, and 8.10
    1. Security Updates
    2. Ubuntu 6.06 Updates
    3. Ubuntu 7.10 Updates
    4. Ubuntu 8.04 Updates
    5. Ubuntu 8.10 Updates
  17. UWN #: A sneak peek
  18. Archives and RSS Feed
  19. Additional Ubuntu News
  20. Conclusion
  21. Credits
  22. Glossary of Terms
  23. Feedback

newspaper-icon.jpg

WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #121 for the week December 7th - December 13th, 2008. In this issue we cover ...

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

General Community News

Four Thousand People attend Ubuntu France Release Party

Organized by ubuntu-party and the French LoCo team, the event took place in the "Cité des sciences et de l'industrie" in Paris, on November 29th and 30th. Last year the event drew almost 3,000, and with 4,000 certified attendees, this years event was another recording breaking event for the French LoCo team.

The event included 14 hours of conferences on various subjects. Some aimed our lovely distribution like "what is ubuntu?", "how to contribute to ubuntu?" and "what is the French community ubuntu-fr?". Other talks were aimed more toward global problematics like accessibility, dealing computer science and freedom, art and free culture, open formats... For the new users, there were 8 hours of initiation training: beginners (learning how to use ubuntu in a daily basis), and more advanced session (introduction to command line usage).

The event also included an installation fest where literally hundreds of machines had Ubuntu installed by volunteers, Mozilla had a dedicated room where they attracted lots of attention with their talks, an Ubuntu discovery area where team members demonstrated the Ubuntu OS to new users, and a bugjam where attendees could learn how to triage bugs.

Local radio station oxyradio, and the French national newspaper Liberation covered the event by providing interviews, and a full page write up about the happening. Congratulations to the French team for surpassing last years attendance mark and for host what could very well be the Ubuntu event of the year for LoCo teams. http://blog.didrocks.fr/index.php/post/Ubuntu-Party-Paris%3A-more-than-4-000-visitors!

Pictures here: http://www.ubuntu-party.org/retombees.php

Ubuntu Developer Summit Jaunty

The recent UDS conference has concluded, and many in the community are wondering just what happened, and what can we expect from Jaunty Jackalope. By following the links below, everyone can find out. The developers have provide enough videos to satisfy everyones curiousity about the summit, and what's happening in the "Ubuntu" future.

youtube videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/ubuntudevelopers

ogg downloads of interviews: http://videos.ubuntu.com/uds/jaunty/Interviews/

Pictures of from the event: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=udsjaunty&m=tags

Hall of Fame: Alberto Milone

Alberto Milone is best known for creating and maintaining envy, a tool to help people install nvidia drivers. It gained a huge popularity and soon afterwards he started working on screen-resolution-extra, which made it easy to set up dual-head displays.

A few releases ago, these tools found their way into Ubuntu itself, and Alberto dove head-first into making the integration of graphic drivers and display related features in Ubuntu rock. The first step was writing x-kit, which contains code to parse, edit, and write xorg.conf. Nowadays he is maintaining the nVidia driver within Ubuntu.

Facts about Alberto that are probably not widely known yet: he studied foreign language in college, and is passionate about food, especially Italian! In Ubuntu, he not only directly helped Ubuntu to move X drivers out of linux-restricted-modules into their own much simpler packages, but also helped with moderation work on the Ubuntu Forums. In addition to that, he is a big fan of T.S. Elliot.

Alberto Milone is definitely one of the work-horses in the Ubuntu community, he is friendly and very approachable - we're not only very happy, but very lucky he is part of our community.

http://hall-of-fame.ubuntu.com/?feature=alberto-milone

MOTU

David Futcher is a 15 year old living in Edinburgh, Scotland, and has used Ubuntu since the Dapper version. He is active in MOTU, Ubuland(a project to provide free web hosting to members of the Ubuntu community), the Ubuntu Forums, testing of Intrepid Ibex, and Launchpad BETA testing. David has done great work in MOTU, and we're very happy to announce his membership to the team. Launchpad: https://edge.launchpad.net/~bobbo Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DavidFutcher

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (47948) -317 # over last week
  • Critical (15) -1 # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (18479) -321 # over last week
  • Unassigned (39822) -327 # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (236667) +1211 # 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 (17283) -357 # over last week
  • French (61915) +/-0 # over last week
  • Swedish (72541) -1863 # over last week
  • Brazilian Portuguese (81309) -338 # over last week
  • English (UK) (81460) +/-0 # 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 (712)
  • jibel (289)
  • charlie-tca (80)
  • chrisccoulson (70)
  • andres-mujica (48)

Top 5 teams for the past 7 days

  • dcteam (712)
  • ubuntu-co (48)
  • ubuntu-berlin (45)
  • ubuntu-de-locoteam (37)
  • ubuntu-cl (34)

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

Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week

  • Create icons for "open with" applications in the context menu
  • kaffeine (and other video players) should remember last position
  • Add Yo Frankie! Game to Ubuntu repositories
  • Nautilus: Make it possible to change file permissions in FTP
  • Implement support for OpenCL API

Ubuntu Brainstorm is a community site geared toward letting you add your ideas for Ubuntu. You can submit your own idea, or vote for or against someone elses. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

Interview with (huats), Leader of the French Team

- Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do for a living?

My name is Christophe Sauthier, and my nick is huats in IRC. I am 31, I live in Toulouse (France), and I am in a relationship. I work for a french service company (makina corpus) that only works in the open source world. I am involved with ubuntu related training, assistance, and migration, but also some development in PHP (Drupal) and Python (Plone).

I am directly involved with Ubuntu as the leader of the French LoCo. My main other community role is coordinating the motu mentoring reception, which is geared at helping new comers in the Ubuntu development world. I also try to be active on a development level by helping on the packaging of some applications, mainly around the GNOME environment.

- How did you get involved with Linux and Ubuntu initially?

A long long time ago (something like 1996) I went to ask someone his opinion on a perl script I was doing (a cgi for a website in fact). He told me: "if you plan to develop a bit in Perl, you should use Linux. Here are some ways to install it...". That was my first contact with Linux. At that time, I mainly used Suse, and Debian. Then one day, I ran across something which was based on Debian but not named yet, but later became known as Ubuntu. That was in 2004, and since that day, Ubuntu has been the only distribution I have used.

- How did you get involved with the French LoCo?

I had been doing some french translations for some software (mainly in Gnome) for sometime, and one day I noticed a post on the French LoCo teams wiki that mentioned a bunch of projects that were about to be launched. One of them was the organization of interviews (and then translations) of some key members of the community. This project evolved later into various projects like BehindUbuntu.

- How did you come to lead the French LoCo?

After that first experience in the french Community, I decided to stay around, hanging in the IRC of various french channels, or looking from time to time at the forums. That is where I saw the campaign to sell tshirts for the LoCo. My first thought was 'I want one', and my second thought was 'I am sure I can help them to organize it'... After ordering mine, I contacted the guy who was leading the project, and there was so much work that my help was welcome... it turns out that Yann (the guy I contacted), was the leader of the LoCo, and after lots of talks he told me that some help was also needed on the website development area. He asked me to show some proof that I able to help by developping a module for the punbb (the forum we are using at the french LoCo). I took on more and more work in the French LoCo, and when the leader of the LoCo decided to step down, they asked me if I was willing to face the challenge of trying to build a new team, with new organization. This is how I become the leader of the French LoCo, and I have tried to build the team using the "Team Work" concept.

- What are the challenges of running a large LoCo? How does your LoCo communicate, and reach such a large area?

There are many challenges, but it is also thrilling. The first challenge is of course trying to work everything into one day. There are some many sollicitations that it is impossible to please everyone even though we wanted to try. So it ends up, that some people feel that we are just centered in some area, and that we don't care about the others. The fact is that it is usually a lack of manpower and/or time, and to show that, we are communicating more, and more using a report blog. The blog is part of the French planet so it can reach everyone. But we don't only limit ourself to the blog, since we are also trying to be as transparent as we can on every decisions. Every month or so, we have a public IRC meeting. We try to deal with every aspect of our community: talking about the past actions (since the last meeting), the current ongoing actions, and the short/medium term ones. There is also an amount of time dedicated to questions where anyone can initiate a new topic for discussion. I think that this transparency interests people, for instance at the last meeting, something like 60 people atteneded.

- How is the French LoCo organized? Is it centralized or decentralized?

It is a mix. Of course there are a bunch of guys at the core of the LoCo, but with the new team organization, the core has grown a bit. The aim of each one of the cores is to have the big picture of everything that is happening in the LoCo, or at least to maximize its knowledge. By doing it that way, if we have someone who steps down, it makes it easier to replaced them. Around the core, is a bigger circle of people, who are more involved in one, or two areas. This second circle can be seen as dedicated teams for one area. So to sum up: a core of less than 10 people, that leads some team activities that are quite independent of the others. Each team has a wide perimeter of action, even though we like to be aware of big decisions.

- Sometimes LoCos go through a slow period, where member participation or motivation may have decreased? How does the French LoCo battle that?

I think there has been a slow period like that in the French LoCo too. But I think its effect has been lowered by the change in the team organization that I mentioned earlier. It was noticeable during the period when the 'leaders' of the community were slowing down a bit, but there was not a big slowing down in our activities. This is indicative of a bigger community, that can sustain themselves for sometime without major dammage... As long as it doesn't last too much of course... Since then, the LoCo is again on a good track, and is very active. Good examples are the parties we had all over the country for Intrepid, and of course the Paris event with more than 4000 attendants over the weekend. Since we don't want to slow down again, we are launching some small projects that should help us to tackle some areas that we are interested in. That should help to keep our LoCo and the community growing. They are kind of the projects that made me want to get involved in the community, so you can clearly imagine that I am really attached to them. We feel that in this way we can offset a decrease, or slowdown in membership by adding some new areas of interest to get involved with.

- What are your short term and longer term plans for the LoCo?

I'd say to keep the current work we have just initiated: to complete the various teams (some are still a bit blur or are just gathering). For instance, there was not really a web development team, since we were just gathering some ressources when needed. Right now a bunch of very talented people are working to tackle the various aspects, but more importantly to do that on a long term basis, not just on demand. This is really necessary if we want to be able to always be innovative. So for the short term, it's finding a new skin for the whole pack of ubuntu-fr sites (www, documentation, forums and planet), to take advantages of our new www website (drupal), and give our editors the rights to many teams (the kubuntu or the edubuntu one). We hope to be able to do that in the next couple of months. For the longer term, we really want to continue our effort on spreading Ubuntu every where in France, which results in the organization of more parties all accross the country (surfing on the success of the whole intrepid campaign). We want to have some regular events, where people can gather in real life instead of just in IRC. That should help the new user to feel that they are part of the community. It might be some bug jams, some documentation jams (like a bug jam but to verify the current available documentation), or even some translation jams. Finally we will try to set up a real policy for the attendance of events by offering people the chance to meet with the team personally to ask question and get answers.

- One of the ideas that you have talked about with the LoCo Council is twinning. What is that? And have you put it into practice yet?

Many meannings can be giving to the twinning of LoCos. The one I really care about is the help that a big LoCo, like the french one, can provide to a smaller one. That help could be its experience, by helping to plan some large scale campaign, or even give donating some money to help them to start their event. This is something that we faced at the beginning with our team, and without the financial involvment of some French members we couldn't have done many of the things we have. Since the french LoCo has more power now, it might be a great thing to help the others to get a start. In fact it is quite close to some of the key concepts that lead to the creation of ubuntu-eu some years ago. Ubuntu-eu is a joint german effort to share hosting of their website. Since its inception, many more LoCos have found hosting there, which is clearly helpful for the newer teams. Back to the twinning process, we have started to work a bit on it, with the Tunesian LoCo, but we are not very far in the process because of a lack of time lately. I am very confident that we will work on that soon again.

- The Ubuntu French Team had a release party attended by 4,000 people. Can you describe the event? How did you plan the event? How long did it take?

This event that took place in Paris was a mixture of the various kind of parties that we can have: install, release, conference... That is why we simply call it an "Ubuntu Party." We are doing that every 6 months, on a weekend, about a month after each release. During the event, many people came to get an installation of Intrepid, or because they were facing a problem with their current ubuntu installation. We have also offered more than 14 hours of conferences, and also a bug jam... and even live radio during the whole weekend that was broadcasting from the event. The team has been planning the event since the end of the previous one(which was in early june), so it is almost the result of a 6 months work by the whole team. Some of us were working on the communication (with media, with the desired audience), some others on the materials needed for the event, or even planning the overall look and feel of the conference. We are currently doing the analysis of this event, which should help us to prepare the next one, in May 2009.

- What do you do for fun?

Besides my LoCo activities, I do some Ubuntu development. While I know it is still related to our community, this is clearly a separated activity from my point of view. But I also do quite a lot of sports: mainly basketball, but I also go hiking in the Pyrenees (some mountains which are very close to my home) sometimes. Beside that, I realy enjoy cooking for my friends. In fact I clearly see a common link in cooking for others, and doing some free software...

LoCo News

New York Team Asterisk Demonstration

The New York Team will be holding a demonstration of Asterisk PBXi (Private Branch Exchange, internet), at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, New York.

  • Address:
    • BARNES & NOBLE @ RIT Bookstore

    • 100 Park Point Drive
    • Rochester, NY 14623
    • (at the corner of John Street and Jefferson Road in Henrietta)
  • Date: January 8th, 2009
  • Time: 7pm until 9pm
  • Room: Upstairs group meeting room -- this room is a semi-private glass window room upstairs
  • Amenities: free wireless, cafe (food is allowed in the meeting room), a very nice computer book section and IT text books.

More information and a list of books on the subject can be seen at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NewYorkTeam/Events/20090108

Software Freedom Day Nicaragua

The making of SFD 2008 Nicaragua, The best event worldwide. See the excitement, the preparation, the event, and the head-banging concert at (spoken dialog is in Spanish):

Or download the Og Vorbis file, at:

Launchpad News

LaunchPad goes Open Source

Ask Rinchen for details

Launchpad Drupal modules

There are 2 new Drupal modules for Drupal 5.x:

  • openid-launchpad: delegate your Drupal site's user authentication to Launchpad
  • openid-teams: assign Drupal roles to logged-in users based on their membership of specific Launchpad teams.

These modules require the Launchpad modified version of the Drupal OpenID module. There is a help file for setting up these modulesf[1], and more information available[2] These modules allow you to set up the ammount of participation a team member has as reflected in Launchpad.

Launchpad in Twitter and identi.ca

Matthew Revell is experimenting with posting Launchpad news and status updates to Twitter[1] and identi.ca[2], and is interested in feedback from readers. Of course, these are not meant to be official information. For terms of use changes[3] or notifications[4].

Launchpad off line Dec. 17th

Launchpad will be offline Wednesday, December 17.

  • From 22:00 UTC.
  • Expect to be back up 23:00 UTC.

This is a scheduled outage to allow them to roll out the 2.1.12 release code. http://news.launchpad.net/notifications/offline-2200-2300-utc-17th-december-2008

Launchpad plugins for Drupal

http://news.launchpad.net/notifications/offline-2200-2300-utc-17th-december-2008

Launchpad on Twitter and identi.ca

http://news.launchpad.net/general/launchpad-now-on-twitter-and-identica

Ubuntu Forums News

In The Press

http://www.govhealthit.com/online/news/350715-1.html

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8284021470.html

http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10009946o-2000498448b,00.htm

In The Blogosphere

  • Is Linux ready for the average user? My wife thinks so - The author's wife was used to Windows machines, so it was with some fear and trembling that he purchased a Dell Mini 9 loaded with Ubuntu for her. After some setup, such as Japanese character input and other minor things like that, he turned her loose on it. In the 3 weeks she's been on it he's heard not a single complaint. His conclusion: if he can get his wife to use Linux without complaint, then it's ready for anybody. http://okiiliving.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-linux-ready-for-average-user-my-wife.html

  • System76 Launches Biometric Ubuntu Linux Laptop - Joe Panettieri, of WorksWithU, introduces the System76 Gazelle Ultra. This laptop not only is strongly branded around Ubuntu, but sports a bio-metric fingerprint reader for security. The specs include:

    • 13.3” LED Backlit Display (1280×800)
    • Brushed Aluminum Palm Rest
    • Latest Intel CPU’s
    • Intel X4500HD Graphics
    • Webcam
    • Fingerprint Reader
    • 4.4 lbs.

    http://www.workswithu.com/2008/12/12/system76-launches-biometric-ubuntu-linux-laptops/

  • Review: ZaReason Makes Desktop Linux A Breeze - Joe Panettieri, of WorksWithU, shows people with aging computers alternatives to new, expensive, high-end equipment. The ZaReason Breeze is a low-end machine meant for those who just want basic desktop productivity applications, Web 2.0 applications, email and instant messaging. Based on an Intel Atom processor, and for only about $300, it fills that niche quite adequately, but slows down with multiple multi-media applications running. http://www.workswithu.com/2008/12/12/review-zareason-makes-desktop-linux-a-breeze/

  • New Notifications for Jaunty - awalton introduces us to the new notifications work that has been going on. Based on information released at UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit), the upstream development of notifications has stalled, and Ubuntu and Canonical are doing some work to improve the situation. The direction that they are going in is to have the notifications just show what's happening on your machine, rather than having any actions button associated with them. Actions would, therefore, be moved to a panel applet. In a follow-up article called "Some notifications updates"[1], awalton goes on to explain some things that he got wrong in the original article, such as the legal conflict (just licensing issues) and the state of the code (bad, and just for demo).

    [1] http://blogs.gnome.org/awalton/2008/12/10/some-notifications-updates/ http://blogs.gnome.org/awalton/2008/12/10/new-notifications-for-jaunty/

In Other News

OpenSolaris tackles Ubuntu dominance

OpenSolaris tackles Ubuntu dominance

With the release of version 2008.11, OpenSolaris is addressing its lack of a broad selection of applications and hardware support. While emphasising Solaris-only features such as the ZFS file system, it also has new hardware features like support for suspend/resume, 3D graphics acceleration, support for SD cards and better audio hardware support. The new platform is available from the OpenSolaris website.[1]

Meeting Summaries

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Monday, December 15, 2008

LoCo Council Meeting

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Forum Council Meeting

  • Start: 01:00 UTC
  • End: 02:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

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, December 17, 2008

Ubuntu-us-pa LoCo Team Meeting

  • Start: 12:30 UTC
  • End: 13:30 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-us-pa
  • Agenda: None as of publication

Foundation Team Meeting

  • Start: 16:00 UTC
  • End: 17:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

QA Team Meeting

Thursday, December 18, 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

Saturday, December 20, 2008

South Dakota LoCo Team Meeting

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

Archives and RSS Feed

You can always find older Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter issues at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter

You can subscribe to the Ubuntu Weekly News via RSS at: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/uwn/feed

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
  • Your Name Here
  • And many others

Glossary of Terms

Feedback

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