Issue130

Contents

Contents

  1. UWN Translations
  2. In This Issue
  3. General Community News
    1. Ubuntu 9.10 - Karmic Koala: Mark Shuttleworth
    2. Announcing the Karmic Koala UDS
    3. Jaunty feature freeze in effect - Alpha 5 freeze ahead
    4. Kubuntu 8.04.2 released
    5. New Ubuntu Members - Americas Board
    6. A Call for US LoCo Team Mentors
    7. Next Ubuntu Hug Day
    8. Soon: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter in Spanish
  4. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Translation Stats Jaunty
    3. Translation Stats Intrepid
    4. 5-a-day bug stats
      1. Top 5 contributors for the past 7 days
      2. Top 5 teams for the past 7 days
    5. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  5. LoCo News
    1. Ubuntu Michigan's Global Bug Jam
    2. Global Bug Jam - South Africa
    3. Global Bug Jam Chicago
    4. Global Bug Jam - Berlin
    5. Global Bug Jam - Florida
  6. New in Jaunty Jackalope: Mark Shuttleworth
    1. New Notification
  7. Launchpad News
    1. Meet Martin Albisetti
    2. AJAX in Launchpad
  8. In The Press
    1. Mark Shuttleworth interview - We are our own worst enemy
    2. Ubuntu 9.04 will not ship with Linux 2.6.29 Kernel
    3. Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala will eat tasty eucalytus
    4. Linux, nComputing and overheated classrooms
  9. In The Blogosphere
    1. Does Ubuntu have the "Guts" to beat Apple
    2. Exploring Ubuntu 9.04
    3. Google Android - Pushing Ubuntu off of Netbooks?
    4. First Look: Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope
    5. HP to certify Ubuntu Server Edition for ProLiant servers
    6. Is Ubuntu Jaunty quick enough to beat Windows 7?
  10. In Other News
    1. Canonical's April 2009 Surprise - More than Ubuntu 9.04
    2. Barcelona - Canonical discusses Ubuntu Mobile Internet Devices
  11. Meeting Summaries
    1. Technical Board Meeting
    2. QA Team Meeting
    3. US Teams Meeting
  12. Just for Fun
  13. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Monday, February 23, 2009
      1. LoCo Council Meeting
    2. Tuesday, February 24, 2009
      1. Technical Board Meeting
      2. Server Team Meeting
      3. Desktop Team Meeting
      4. Kernel Team Meeting
    3. Wednesday, February 25, 2009
      1. Foundation Team Meeting
      2. QA Team Meeting
    4. Thursday, February 26, 2009
      1. Jaunty Alpha 5
      2. Ubuntu Bug Day
      3. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
      4. Ubuntu Java Meeting
      5. MC Meeting
    5. Friday, February 27, 2009
      1. REVU Day
      2. Jaunty Weekly Release Meeting
    6. Saturday, February 28, 2009
      1. LoCo Team Meeting
  14. 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
  15. Archives and RSS Feed
  16. Additional Ubuntu News
  17. Conclusion
  18. Credits
  19. Glossary of Terms
  20. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  21. Feedback

newspaper-icon.jpg

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #130 for the week February 15th - February 21st, 2009. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu 9.10 - Karmic Koala, Announcing the Karmic Koala UDS, Jaunty feature freeze - Alpha 5 freeze ahead, Kubuntu 8.04.2 released, New Ubuntu Members - Americas Board, A Call for US LoCo Team Mentors, Next Ubuntu Hug Day, Soon: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter in Spanish, Global Bug Jams - Michigan-South Africa-Chicago-Berlin-Florida, New Notifications for Jaunty, Meet Martin Albisetti, AJAX in Launchpad, Canonical's April Surprise - More than Ubuntu 9.04, Barcelona - Canonical discusses Ubuntu Mobile Internet Devices, Meeting Summaries - Technical Board-QA Team-US Teams, Just for Fun, 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

  • Ubuntu 9.10 - Karmic Koala
  • Announcing the Karmic Koala UDS
  • Jaunty feature freeze - Alpha 5 freeze ahead
  • Kubuntu 8.04.2 released
  • New Ubuntu Members - Americas Board
  • A Call for US LoCo Team Mentors

  • Next Ubuntu Hug Day
  • Soon: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter in Spanish
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Global Bug Jams - Michigan, South Africa, Chicago, Berlin, and Florida
  • New Notifications for Jaunty
  • Meet Martin Albisetti
  • AJAX in Launchpad
  • In the Press & Blogosphere

  • Canonical's April Surprise - More than Ubuntu 9.04
  • Barcelona - Canonical discusses Ubuntu Mobile Internet Devices
  • Meeting Summaries - Technical Board, QA Team, and US Teams Project
  • Just for Fun
  • Upcoming Meetings & Events

  • Updates & Security

General Community News

Ubuntu 9.10 - Karmic Koala: Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth has announce the code name for Ubuntu 9.10 will be Karmic Koala. Here is an overview of what is in the planning for this new, "Cuddly Bear" version of Ubuntu.

Server: A good Koala knows how to see the wood for the trees, even when her head is in the clouds. Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of cloud computing by embracing the API's of Amazon EC2, and making it easy for anybody to setup their own cloud using entirely open tools. We're currently in beta with official Ubuntu base AMI's for use on Amazon EC2. During the Karmic cycle we want to make it easy to deploy applications into the cloud, with ready-to-run appliances or by quickly assembling a custom image. Ubuntu-vmbuilder makes it easy to create a custom AMI today, but a portfolio of standard image profiles will allow easier collaboration between people doing similar things on EC2. Wouldn't it be apt for Ubuntu to make the Amazon jungle as easy to navigate as, say, APT?

What if you want to build an EC2-style cloud of your own? Of all the trees in the wood, a Koala's favorite leaf is Eucalyptus. The Eucalyptus project, from UCSB, enables you to create an EC2-style cloud in your own data center, on your own hardware. It's no coincidence that Eucalyptus has just been uploaded to universe and will be part of Jaunty - during the Karmic cycle we expect to make those clouds dance, with dynamically growing and shrinking resource allocations depending on your needs. A savvy Koala knows that the best way to conserve energy is to go to sleep, and these days even servers can suspend and resume, so imagine if we could make it possible to build a cloud computing facility that drops its energy use virtually to zero by napping in the midday heat, and waking up when there's work to be done. No need to drink at the energy fountain when there's nothing going on. If we get all of this right, our Koala will help take the edge off the bear market. Let me invite you to join the server team at UDS in Barcelona, when they'll be defining the exact set of features to ship in October.

First impressions count. We're eagerly following the development of kernel mode setting, which promises a smooth and flicker free startup. We'll consider options like Red Hat's Plymouth, for graphical boot on all the cards that support it. We made a splash years ago with Usplash, but it's time to move to something newer and shinier. So the good news is, boot will be beautiful. The bad news is, you won't have long to appreciate it! It only takes 35 days to make a whole Koala, so we think it should be possible to bring up a stylish desktop much faster. The goal for Jaunty on a netbook is 25 seconds, so let's see how much faster we can get you all the way to a Koala desktop. We're also hoping to deliver a new login experience that complements the graphical boot, and works well for small groups as well as very large installations.

For those of you who can relate to Mini Me, or already have a Dell Mini, the Ubuntu Netbook Edition will be updated to include all the latest technology from Moblin, and tuned to work even better on screens that are vertically challenged. With millions of Linux netbooks out there, we have been learning and adapting usability to make the Koala cuddlier than ever. We also want to ensure that the Netbook Remix installs easily and works brilliantly on all the latest netbook hardware, so consider this a call for testing Ubuntu 9.04. The desktop will have a designer's fingerprints all over it - we're now beginning the serious push to a new look. Brown has served us well but the Koala is considering other options.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-February/000536.html

Announcing the Karmic Koala UDS

Hot on the heels of the announcement of the Karmic Koala, Jono is tickled pink to announce the details of the next Ubuntu Developer Summit taking place at Palau de Congressos de Catalunya in Barcelona in Spain from Mon 25th May - Fri 29th May. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDSKarmic

The Ubuntu Developer Summit one of the most important events in the Ubuntu calendar and at it we discuss, debate and design the next version of Ubuntu. We bring together the entire Canonical development team and sponsor a large number of community members across the wide range of areas in which people contribute to Ubuntu. This includes packaging, translations, documentation, testing, LoCo teams and more. UDS is an incredible experience, filled with smart and enthusiastic people, fast paced and exhausting, but incredibly gratifying to be part of the process that builds the next Ubuntu.

For every UDS, Canonical sponsors a number of community members to attend the event. We are looking for those who want to bring some real insight and expertise in their area of Ubuntu, be it development or community governance. If you feel you could offer this but can’t afford to cover your expenses of attending, you should apply for sponsorship. To request sponsorship:

  • Go to summit.ubuntu.com and log in with OpenID. When you have logged in, click the Request Sponsorship link. http://summit.ubuntu.com/

  • On the first page, add your location and use the About yourself box to tell us why you should be sponsored and tell us about your work on Ubuntu - here you should tell us your vital stats - tell us your 5-A-Day numbers, your work on the sponsorship queue, what you have uploaded, which teams you are in, your LoCo involvement, documentation you have written, any translation work and other work that you have been involved in. When you have done this, click the Next button.

  • On the final page, answer the questions and then click Finish to finish your sponsorship request.

Everyone should get their sponsorship requests in by Wed 4th March 2009 to be considered. Good luck!

http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/02/19/announcing-the-karmic-koala-ubuntu-developer-summit/

Jaunty feature freeze in effect - Alpha 5 freeze ahead

  • The Feature Freeze is now in effect for Jaunty. The focus from here until release is on fixing bugs and polishing. If you believe that a new package, a new upstream version of a package, or a new feature is needed for the release and will not introduce more problems than it fixes, please follow the Freeze Exception Process by filing bugs and subscribing ubuntu-release or motu-release as appropriate, or by contacting a designated delegate. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-February/000533.html

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreezeExceptionProcess

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-February/000534.html

Kubuntu 8.04.2 released

The Kubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Kubuntu 8.04.2, the second and final maintenance update to Kubuntu's 8.04 release. This release includes updated desktop, and alternate installation CDs for the i386 and amd64 architectures. In all, over 200 updates have been integrated, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates, and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Kubuntu 8.04. To download Kubuntu 8.04.2 visit: http://www.kubuntu.org/getkubuntu More information at the link.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kubuntu-users/2009-February/039118.html

New Ubuntu Members - Americas Board

The following is to report on the Membership meeting held by the Membership Board of Americas. The board noted the great amount of support for the applicants from great people in the community. We are pleased to present the new members of the Ubuntu Project.

Dave Bush(myrtlebeach) - Dave is an LPI level 1 certified on his way to UCP certification, and he currently work as a Infrastructure Engineer at the Myrtle Beach office of a network security company based in Atlanta, GA. He is an active participant in the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. He currently takes care of The Blogosphere, In Other News. He had previously worked with the Security and Updates listings. He is a member of the Ubuntu South Carolina Team (US team). Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~myrtlebeachbums Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DaveBush2

Kenny McHenry(kennymc0) - Kenny recently graduated in DeVry University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Electronics Engineering Technology at the end of October 2008. His significant participation in Ubuntu is through his Arizona LoCo team work, and his contributions to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter team. He has helped the Arizona Team organize release parties and other events, and he has also contributed to the teams website. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~kennymc0 Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kennymc0

Michael Lustfield(MTecknology) - Michael is the current LoCo team Contact for Ubuntu South Dakota LoCo Team. He is working hard on promoting the team and has even set up a website. His contributions are also noticeable in the LoCo-Drupal project. He is a very active bug squasher. Michael had applied for membership a couple of months ago, and he was told to try again in the future. His contributions to Ubuntu have surpassed the expectations of the Council. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~MTecknology Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MTecknology

Chris Crisafulli(itnet7) - Chris is the LoCo team contact for the Florida Team. He is currently very active in participating in events across the state and the country. He belongs to other LUGs and SIGs where he actively promotes Ubuntu. He is also working on bugs and he is encouraging Bug Jams, and other events in his region. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~itnet7 Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/itnet7

The Membership Board of Americas bids welcome, and congratulations to these great community contributors. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-February/000415.html

A Call for US LoCo Team Mentors

The US Teams Project is officially opening a call for mentor applications! Mentors are people who are interested in helping other LoCo Teams in need of a kick start. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoteams Remember that time when your team was having a hard time getting started? Well, many teams today in the US are going through those same growing pains, and could use your help and advice -- all in the spirit of Ubuntu!

Requirements:

US Teams resources:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us/2009-February/000397.html

Next Ubuntu Hug Day

Here is the information for the next Ubuntu BugDay:

Remember, you can't contribute if you don't participate. Get involved and help squash those pesky bugs! https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-February/000416.html

Soon: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter in Spanish

As you may know the last month there was no UWN in Spanish, but Andres Rodriguez has announced that it will be back soon. Well… It will be back for this week. If anyone wants to collaborate in the translation efforts into spanish, and are willing to commit to it, please contact him ASAP. He’ll be setting up some wiki pages. Contact Andres at the link by leaving a comment.

http://roaksoax.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/soon-ubuntu-weekly-newsletter-in-spanish/

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (47186) -204 over last week
  • Critical (22) -2 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (18780) -420 over last week
  • Unassigned (39588) -227 over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (252176) +1993 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 Jaunty

  • Spanish (19100) -1590 over last week
  • French (55460) -4090 over last week
  • Brazilian Portuguese (64949) -2318 over last week
  • Swedish (73807) -3815 over last week
  • English (Uk) (79569) -571 over last week

Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/

Translation Stats Intrepid

  • Spanish (15881) +94 over last week
  • French (61391) +94 over last week
  • Swedish (72656) +94 over last week
  • Brazilian Portuguese (74364) -488 over last week
  • English (UK) (81134) +94 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

  • hew (123)
  • charlie-tca (48)
  • crimsun (41)
  • dantrevino (38)
  • dholbach (31)

Top 5 teams for the past 7 days

  • ubuntu-au (123)
  • ubuntu-us-florida (52)
  • dcteam (41)
  • ubuntu-berlin (40)
  • ubuntu-de-locoteam (36)

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

Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week

  • OpenOffice 3.0 takes really too much time to start-up.

  • Native Firefox on Ubuntu is even slower than on Wine
  • Universal document reader
  • People forget to empty their trash and get problems with space
  • Ubuntu Developer Network

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 another idea. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

LoCo News

Ubuntu Michigan's Global Bug Jam

The Michigan team had to travel through blizzard conditions to get to their Bug Jam. They had a slight hitch with the wireless at the library where the event took place, but a quick hook up of a hub and cables saved the day. Everyone put a lot of good effort into doing some quality triage work. They asked lots of good questions, and judging from the stats at the end of the event, they did a great job. Pictures at the link below. http://blog.grossmeier.net/2009/02/21/michigans-global-bug-jam-report/

Another great report from the Michigan Global Bug Jam went like this:

  • A guy walked by our conference room and popped his head in, “Hey, is this a Linux User’s Group?”
  • Me, “Yeah, pretty much.”
  • Guy notices I am running Ubuntu, “Is this specific to Ubuntu?”
  • “Yep, we’re the Michigan Local Community Team for Ubuntu.”
  • “Oh, cool!”
  • “Yeah, we doing a Bug Jam right now.”
  • “Good deal”
  • Guy walks away to go be with his kids.
  • A little later he walks back by the conference room with his wife and kids and says “Hey kids, those people in there are who make Ubuntu better. They’re working on the new release, 9.04.” http://blog.grossmeier.net/2009/02/21/first-bug-jam-reward-of-the-day/

Global Bug Jam - South Africa

The event was held in Johannesburg, and although there were only 4 team members they had an awesome time. With 71 bugs, you will be pleased to know that the ZA team was 5th on the list! Special kudos to Robyn (rpenhall), as a first time launchpad user (and even non Linux user!). She registered a LP account on the morning of the event, and despite not knowing Linux or Ubuntu at all, did an amazing job. It really just shows that anyone, doesn't matter what kind of experience you have, is able to join in, and make a difference.

Global Bug Jam Chicago

The Ubuntu Chicago Global Bug Jam was held Feb. 20th, 2009. It was a great day for all, with people still showing up at 8:15 PM. There are pics at the link below, and more here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nixternal/sets/72157614128315299/

http://blog.nixternal.com/2009.02.20/ubuntu-chicago-global-bug-jam-kicks-off/

Global Bug Jam - Berlin

Berlin had a great Global Bug Jam and was termed Rockin by some who attended. Lots of bugs got terminated by the group. Pictures at the link.

http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=368

Global Bug Jam - Florida

The Ubuntu Florida Global Bug Jam was held Feb. 21st 2009, at Brikolodge in beautiful Miami. In addition to triaging and closing over 150 bugs, they seized the opportunity to add new people to the Florida LoCo, and BugSquad teams. The best part is that they were able to guide several new people into contributing back to Ubuntu.

As is typical of the Florida group, they wound down the day by meeting at a local brewery for fun and frolic.

Many thanks to itnet7, thelupine, chuckr, reya276, ryanparrish, erictee, zbrown, dantreivno, and David for helping to make Florida's first official Bug Jam a huge success. Thanks to thelupine for hacking together a nice internet connection sharing script that came in handy. And special thank to Rod and the Florida Linux Show for sponsoring our event.

http://www.ubuntu-fl.org/news/1-ubuntu/131-global-bug-jam-miami-2009

New in Jaunty Jackalope: Mark Shuttleworth

New Notification

Thanks to the concerted efforts of Martin Pitt, Sebastien Bacher and several others, notify-osd and several related components landed in Jaunty last week. Notify-OSD handles both application notifications and keyboard special keys like brightness and volume.

MPT has posted an overview of the conceptual framework for “attention management” at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotificationDesignGuidelines, which puts ephemeral notification into context as just one of several distinct tools that applications can use when they don’t have the focus but need to make users aware of something. That’s a draft, and when it’s at 1.0 we’ll move it to a new site which will host design patterns on Canonical.com.

There is also a detailed specification for our implementation of the notification display agent, notify-osd, which can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD and which defines not only the expected behaviour of notify-osd but also all of the consequential updates we need to make across the packages in main an universe to ensure that those applications use notification and other techniques consistently.

There are at least 35 apps that need tweaking, and there may well be others! If you find an app that isn’t using notifications elegantly, please add it to the notification design guidelines page, and if you file a bug on the package, please tag it “notifications” so we can track these issues in a single consistent way.

Together with notify-osd, we’ve uploaded a new panel indicator which is used to provide a way to respond to messaging events, such as email and IRC pings. If someone IM’s you, then you should see an ephemeral notification, and the messaging indicator will give you a way to respond immediately. Same for email. Pidgin and Evolution are the primary focuses of the work, over time we’ll broaden that to the full complement of IM and email apps in the archive - patches welcome.

There will be rough patches. Apps which don’t comply with the FreeDesktop.org spec and send actions on notifications even when the display agent says it does not support them, will have their notifications translated into alerts. Thanks very much to all involved! And thanks to David Barth, Mirco Muller and Ted Gould who lead the development of notify-osd and the related messaging indicator. There is a screen shot at the link.

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/265

Launchpad News

Meet Martin Albisetti

Matthew: What do you do on the Launchpad team?

Martin: I’m in charge of the user interface, making sure that new (and existing!) features and pages are easy to use and slick. I have been on board for about six months, so I haven’t managed to fully sink my teeth into everything yet, but we’re getting there, and the next few months will be an amazing succession of roll outs of AJAX enhancements everywhere, which should improve the overall experience dramatically.

Matthew: Can we see something in Launchpad that you’ve worked on?

Martin: Well, if you use Launchpad for a few minutes, you will inevitably encouter pages that have gone through me before landing. I don’t get to actually do much coding, although I have recently done a few improvements to the Launchpad home page, and gave shape to the in-line text editing that’s already in the wild (although it was a team work effort with Mark).

Matthew: Where do you work?

Martin: From my office in sunny Buenos Aires.

Matthew: What can you see from your office window?

Martin: A nice garden with very green grass, flowers and palm trees.

Matthew: What did you do before working at Canonical?

Martin: I have a web development company (Pentacorp), so I’ve been doing almost everything related to web development (php, mysql, design, server admin) for the past 6 or 7 years. The web fascinates me.

Matthew: How did you get into free software?

Martin: Free software just had better tools for web development, and was a much nicer and saner enviroment to work in, so I started moving over until one day I woke up with no proprietary software on my laptop.

Matthew: What’s more important? Principle or pragmatism?

Martin: Oh, you and your hard questions… I’m inclined towards pragmatism, I like to get things done more than I like being right!

Matthew: Do you/have you contribute(d) to any free software projects?

Martin: I have, it’s almost impossible not to once you start using it. I’ve done some work on Bazaar, I’ve been co-maintaining Loggerhead for 8 or 9 months, done some bzr-gtk, and have spread around patches on dozen of projects out there. You have to love the “scratch your own itches” properties of free software.

Matthew: Tell us something really cool about Launchpad that not enough people know about.

Martin: Launchpad developers really care deeply about users and user experience, I was amazed as to how much when I joined Canonical. Also, merge proposals for code branches. They’re like the best thing ever.

Matthew: Is Argentine steak really the best in the world?

Martin: Yes, and probably in the known universe.

Matthew: Okay, Kiko’s special question! You’re at your computer, you reach for your wallet: what are you most likely to be doing?

Martin: Moving it to my front pocket, my leg gets numb if I sit down for too long with my wallet in my back pocket.

http://blog.launchpad.net/meet-the-devs/meet-martin-albisetti

AJAX in Launchpad

After a few months of working on all the infrastructure changes needed to start deploying AJAX on Launchpad, the team is now ready to start developing the mockups they’ve been working on for the past few months with the User Experience team. http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/239

To make sure the team coordinated the work of 35 distributed developers, and really got the ball rolling, 10 team members gathered for a sprint in Berlin. These 10 team members went into full ninja-hacking mode for a week, while included defining standards and best practices as we went along. The outcome of the sprint was been amazing (it’s actually still going on!), and the team is well prepared to roll out all kinds of AJAX goodies, like “in-line status editing”, “multi-line editing” and “person pickers” in the next few months. It’s going to be awesome!

The team also decided on YUI3 as their javascript library, and while it is still not a final version, they are very happy with the decision, as it has allowed them to do some really cutting edge work, while maintaining clean and re-usable code. http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/3/

http://blog.launchpad.net/coming-features/ajax-in-launchpad

In The Press

Mark Shuttleworth interview - We are our own worst enemy

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth thinks that Linux needs to get more beautiful. His company Canonical works on that task. In an interview with Golem.de Shuttleworth talks about MacOS X as a role model and problems of the Linux desktop. Many see Netbooks as a chance for Linux. So does Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. In an interview with Golem.de he also talks about the ongoing criticism on Canonical and Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 9.04 will not ship with Linux 2.6.29 Kernel

Despite the wishes of many people, Ubuntu 9.04 will not ship with the 2.6.29 kernel. Canonical's Tim Gardner had said on the kernel team's list, "Jaunty will absolutely, positively, and without a doubt, release with a 2.6.28 kernel." The 2.6.29 kernel is introducing mainline support for Btrfs, Intel kernel mode-setting support, and various other new features, but right now it's at -rc4 stage. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzA1OA

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala will eat tasty eucalytus

With Jaunty Jackalope's release fast approaching, Mark Shuttleworth is already looking beyond to the next release, Karmic Koala Ubuntu 9.10. Enhanced support for cloud computing is slated for the server edition by creating a set of standard Ubuntu server Amazon Machine Image (AMI) profiles that will provide a starting point for creating specialized images. Another is to integrate support for Eucalyptus, an open source framework, developed by UCSB, for implementing a self-hosted elastic computing cluster. With the desktop, he's looking for faster startup, and a flicker-free startup screen. The netbook remix will be integrating features from Intel's Moblin platform for Atom-based devices. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/02/ubuntu-910-is-named-karmic-koala-will-eat-tasty-eucalyptus.ars

Linux, nComputing and overheated classrooms

Greensburg, Ind., Community School District decided to test nComputing - a system that shares one computer's processing power across a whole slew of thin clients - with respect to how it stood up to regular "fat" clients. Along with the cost savings due to less power consumption, they noticed that the classrooms were cooler. The thin clients, being solid state and using passive cooling, were cooler and quieter. For the test they turned to Ubuntu due to it's focus on education. Past problems with integration with Active Directory have since been corrected, and they found a way to run both Windows and Linux clients off the same server. http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/02/linux_ncomputin.html

In The Blogosphere

Does Ubuntu have the "Guts" to beat Apple

The author of "Buntfu Bits" examines Ubuntu and Apple's Mac OS X licensing techniques, and what each has done with the software as a result. His conclusion is that Apple may have made a mistake in licensing the way it did, as it prevented the type of growth that Ubuntu has enjoyed. It is his opinion that the days of having to pay for much of the software that 90% of the population would use has gone the same way as having to pay for long distance phone service. http://www.buntfu.com/news,page,59,topic_id,content_pages

Exploring Ubuntu 9.04

Emmett Dulaney takes a look at Jaunty Jackalope and some of its advantages. Realizing that it has not reached Beta, much less Release Candidate status, he warns that some things are still missing. Ext4, the successor to ext3 file system, is available in the 2.6.28 kernel, but has not yet been made available in gparted. Despite this, his opinion is that, "if you've never used this distribution in your environment before and are contemplating doing so, you'll find that 9.04 is as good an implementation as you can select." http://certcities.com/editorial/columns/story.asp?EditorialsID=352

Google Android - Pushing Ubuntu off of Netbooks?

Joe Panettieri sees the possibilities of Google Android as being in competition with Ubuntu. Android has already somewhat undermined Canonical's MID effort. Now it appears to represent a threat to Ubuntu's netbook efforts. He appears to see this as a good thing, as, "There’s nothing better than healthy, heated competition to drive innovation." http://www.workswithu.com/2009/02/17/google-android-pushing-ubuntu-off-netbooks/

First Look: Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

The author of this post for WorksWithU is conscious of the fact that Ubuntu 9.04 is still in an alpha state. But despite this and a few rough spots along the way, he was impressed. One of the rough spots is the 1.6 X.Org server. Graphics card venders are still coming to grips with it, as shown by a driver from NVidia causing the system to hang when it was enabled. However, The new Linux kernel 2.6.28 showed a significant increase in speed in booting up. Overall, he feels that if some of the small problems can be ironed out, Jaunty Jackalope looks to be another must-have upgrade. http://www.workswithu.com/2009/02/17/first-look-ubuntu-904-jaunty-jackalope/

HP to certify Ubuntu Server Edition for ProLiant servers

Joe Panettieri explains that Ubuntu certification for the HP ProLiant servers means that HP will list Ubuntu server edition as a supported operating system. Efforts to get Ubuntu server edition recognized have been slow, despite IBM's server team announcing the virtual Ubuntu desktop effort. He sees Ubuntu's greatest growth in the desktop, however the Ubuntu server edition on ProLiant hardware shouldn't be overlooked. He feels that it's a sign of things to come. http://www.workswithu.com/2009/02/16/hewlett-packard-to-certify-ubuntu-server-edition-for-proliant-servers/

Is Ubuntu Jaunty quick enough to beat Windows 7?

Alastair Otter demonstrates that timing is important. In this case it's the time to boot up an operating system. The contenders are Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope and Windows 7. Alastair comments that Microsoft may have the lead in speed on netbooks, already. Likewise, it seems to be ahead of Ubuntu on a dual-core 2.53GHz desktop. Both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 appear to be trying to reach an optimal time of about 15 seconds. http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=4160

In Other News

Canonical's April 2009 Surprise - More than Ubuntu 9.04

When Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) arrives in April 2009, Canonical plans to introduce a separate surprise as well — a new version of Landscape. Never heard of Landscape? That will change in April 2009. Here’s why. For Ubuntu to succeed on a range of corporate and mobile devices, it needs to be easily managed. Landscape is a SaaS platform and remote management tool that Canonical plans to more aggressively promote in 2009. Joe Panettieri traded email with Ken Drachnik, Canonical’s Business Manager for Landscape, to get a feel for where Landscape is heading. You can read a summary of their discussion at the link.

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/02/19/canonicals-saas-landscape-upgrade-managing-ubuntu-from-afar/

Barcelona - Canonical discusses Ubuntu Mobile Internet Devices

During the GSMA Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Canonical was working behind the scenes — evangelizing Ubuntu-based Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) to new and existing customers. The big question: Will Canonical line up more Ubuntu MID partners, or will MIDs (highly mobile WiFi devices) remain overshadowed by the netbook craze? Canonical didn't exhibit at the conference, but the company held meetings behind the scenes, taking a close look at Moorestown. “We are definitely keen to do a Moorestown-based MID device,” notes Canonical Marketing Manager Gerry Carr. “Of course we need a customer to ask us to do it first but we work very closely with Intel on these initiatives and have been working towards Moorestown for some time.”

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/02/17/mobile-world-congress-canonical-discusses-ubuntu-mobile-internet-devices/

Meeting Summaries

Technical Board Meeting

Members present: Colin Watson (acting chair), Mark Shuttleworth, Matt Zimmerman, Scott James Remnant

  • Patent policy
    • Assigned to Jono, but no progress to report yet. Still on the radar because it blocks another TB ruling (ffmpeg).
  • Policy for per-package upload permissions
    • Emmet Hikory sent a proposal to the Technical Board mailing list, which was discussed and largely agreed with a few generalizations (remove language making it specific to small sets of packages and small numbers of developers, and remove text about the lack of an existing maintenance team). The Board will deal with final polishing and ratify the proposal out of band.
  • cdrtools
    • Mark gave an update on the cdrtools inclusion situation. Joerg Schilling has declined to grant a specific permission on his CDDL code, and in the absence of that (or in the absence of a broader discussion between CDDL and GPL stakeholders to resolve the licence incompatibility), Eben Moglen of SFLC informs us that we cannot ship cdrtools. For the time being, the matter is closed.
  • Kernel firmware licensing
    • The Technical Board was approached with concerns about unclear licensing on specific firmware components shipped in Ubuntu. The kernel team has investigated this and has cleared everything except the DVB firmware, which is still a work in progress. This is on track for 9.04. In future, Pete Graner will review licenses on all new firmware. This does not represent a change in firmware licensing policy, but rather simply ensuring that Ubuntu has the legal right to redistribute each item of firmware.
  • Kernel team upload privileges
    • Pete Graner asked the Technical Board to consider restricted upload privileges to kernel packages for Stefan Bader, who is responsible for kernel maintenance in stable releases. The Board approved Stefan's application and welcomed him to the development team.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamReports/February2009

QA Team Meeting

  • New Testing Day: The QA team is preparing a new testing day, this time focused on new features that are appearing in next Ubuntu release. The testing day is scheduled for next Monday, February 23rd. The testing day wiki is already available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/UbuntuTestingDay/20090223

  • UbuntuBugDay highlights: Last Thursday we had the new bugs without a package hug day. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20090212 There was a good participation from the community. The QA team would like to thank the community and specially mangilimic who did a lot of work during that hug day and mrkanister for creating the page. Some discussions went on to decide the topic for the Ubuntu Bug Day on February 26th, and finally it was decided that the next bug day will be about bugs filed with apport where the retrace failed.

  • Call for testing: Checkbox PPA: A new PPA for Checkbox has been published at https://launchpad.net/~checkbox-dev/+archive/ppa. It includes some new features as the suspend/resume script. Please, use the PPA and report back any bugs.

  • Launchpad Greasemonkey - pre-filled descriptions: Brian Murray wrote a Greasemonkey script that pre-fills the bug description. A screen shot is available at http://people.ubuntu.com/~brian/greasemonkey/prefilled-description.png. It was written for the OEM team, but it is going to checked in the bzr tree of launchpad-gm-scripts, just in case is useful for other teams.

http://blog.qa.ubuntu.com/node/32

US Teams Meeting

Proceedings:

  • Discussed need for LoCo teams to get on Ubuntu Planet (following up with Jono)

  • Website and planet situation
    • Zelut will give the board access once we figure out how the Canonical Sysadmins go about transferring
  • Launchpad
    • Added board members as admins
    • Added approved teams who hadn't been previously added
  • Forums
    • Learned that we can contact ubuntu-geek if we need any changes made to mods on forums
  • Discussed deployment of Drupal and other infrastructures for LoCos, determined working with upstream (general LoCo community) is optimal

    • Would be nice if Drupal help documents existed to help LoCos get started

  • We should encourage teams to get involved with TeamReports: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamReports

  • Mentors
    • Repeated requirements of Mentors to be in approved team and to have signed the CoC
    • What do mentors do?
      • Get assigned tasks
      • Officially assigned to/work with teams
    • Jon created a Mentors page where folks can sign up: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/USTeams/Mentors

    • We want to do a community push to encourage folks to step up as mentors
    • What can people who aren't part of approved teams do, since they can't be mentors?
      • Can be on mailing list, forums and IRC channel and help out
      • Focus on their own team getting approved to be an example for others
      • Approved team qualification is so we have folks who are familiar with the approval process and how to have successful events

Conclusion: Our resources are coming together nicely. Major things right now are getting back in control of our website & planet and getting Mentors for the team. We'll be hosting our first Mentor approval meeting on Mar 5, 8pm EST.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/USTeams/Meetings/Minutes/2009-02-18

Just for Fun

With the announcement this week by Mark of the new code name(Karmic Koala) for version 9.10, it generated a lot of discussion about the naming process. With the 9.10 version decided there is already speculation about the 10.04 versions code name. One community member has set up a site that randomly generates version names starting with the letter "L". Visit the link to have some fun, who knows maybe the 10.04 versions code name will magically appear. http://www.thomasberends.com/1004/

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Monday, February 23, 2009

LoCo Council Meeting

  • Start: 20:00 UTC
  • End: 21:00 UTC
  • Location: None listed as of publication
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Technical Board Meeting

  • Start: 15:00 UTC
  • End: 16:00 UTC
  • Location: #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Server Team Meeting

Desktop 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, February 25, 2009

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, February 26, 2009

Jaunty Alpha 5

Ubuntu Bug Day

  • Location: #ubuntu-bugs

Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting

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

Ubuntu Java Meeting

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

MC Meeting

  • Start: 17:00 UTC
  • End: 18:00 UTC
  • Location: None listed as of publication
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Friday, February 27, 2009

REVU Day

Jaunty Weekly Release Meeting

  • Start: 15:00 UTC
  • End: 16:00 UTC
  • Location: #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: Non listed as of publication

Saturday, February 28, 2009

LoCo Team Meeting

  • Start: 17:00 UTC
  • End: 18:00 UTC
  • Location: #ubuntu-locoteams
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

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

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
  • Kenny McHenry

  • Liraz Siri
  • And many others

Glossary of Terms

  1. GSMA - Groupe Speciale Mobile Association.
  2. MID - Mobile Internet Device.
  3. OEM - Original Equipment Manufacturer.
  4. PPA - Personal Project Archive.
  5. QA - Quality Assurance.
  6. SaaS - Software as a Service.

Ubuntu - Get Involved

The Ubuntu community consists of individuals and teams, working on different aspects of the distribution, giving advice and technical support, and helping to promote Ubuntu to a wider audience. No contribution is too small, and anyone can help. It's your chance to get in on all the community fun associated with developing and promoting Ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate

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.

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License CCL.png Creative Commons License 3.0 BY SA

UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue130 (last edited 2009-03-01 21:23:10 by ip68-0-181-84)