Issue146

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WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 146 for the week June 8th - June 14th, 2009. 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

MOTU Council

  • Please give Stephen Stalcup a warm welcome to the team, where he's continue to work on KDE packages and sponsoring.
  • We're very pleased to welcome a new member to the MOTU team: Nick Ellery. Nick has been working a lot on merging changes from Debian and lowering the delta between Debian and Ubuntu.
  • Stéphane Graber wants to expand his activities a bit and work some more on server packages and Edubuntu and applied for Core Dev. The MC recommends Stéphane.

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (57357) -221 over last week
  • Critical (19) +1 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (26734) +191 over last week
  • Unassigned (49494) -135 over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (288007) +1406 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 Jaunty

  • Spanish (13590) -436 over last week
  • French (42699) -125 over last week
  • Brazilian Portuguese (53405) -58 over last week
  • Swedish (54417) +/-0 over last week
  • English (United Kingdom) (59006) +/-0 over last week

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

Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week

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

New in Jaunty Jackalope

Launchpad News

Ubuntu Forums News

In The Press

Ubuntu aims for ten second boot time

ARS Technica's Ryan Paul notes that the growing adoption of the Linux operating system on netbook devices has compelled Linux distributors to focus on improving startup performance. Ubuntu 9.04, which was released last month, is one distribution where these improvements are particularly noticeable. In a presentation at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona, developer Scott James Remnant noted that boot time decreased from 65 seconds in version 8.10 to only 25 seconds in 9.04. This is already a substantial improvement, but he believes that there is still room for more aggressive optimization. Canonical will continue pushing the limits of boot performance during the upcoming development cycle for Ubuntu 9.10, which is codenamed Karmic Koala. According to Remnant, the company aims to achieve a ten-second boot time next year for Ubuntu 10.04, the release that will follow after Karmic. This emphasis on boot performance will make Ubuntu a more competitive option for hardware makers who are seeking a fast and lean distribution to preinstall on netbook devices. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/06/ubuntu-aims-for-ten-second-boot-time.ars

Upgrading Ubuntu 8.04 to 9.04

The Linux Loop tells us that around the time Ubuntu 8.10 was released, their hard drive died and they figured that, as long as they were reinstalling anyway, they should try upgrading to 8.10. Unfortunately, They experienced a couple of problems with 8.10 and so they reverted to 8.04. Recently they have been encountering situations where the packages in the repositories were too outdated so rather than continually patching these outdated packages, they decided to upgrade to 9.04. The only thing they had to reconfigure was my fingerprint reader, and that leads to their one complaint about the upgrade process. From beginning the first upgrade to finishing the second the process took six hours, but it would have been a lot faster if the upgrade tool hadn’t kept asking questions in the middle of the upgrade. Whenever the installer runs into a configuration file that has been modified, it pauses the upgrade and asks if you want to replace it. In the Linux Loop's opinion the option to set a default behavior should be given at the beginning or you should have the option to deal with all the issues at the end to help speed up the upgrade process. http://www.linuxloop.com/news/2009/06/07/upgrading-ubuntu-804-to-904/

Testing Out ATI Kernel Mode-Setting On Ubuntu

Michael Larabel of Phoronix tells us that the kernel mode-setting for Intel graphics hardware can already be found in the mainline Linux kernel and will be included by default in the release of Ubuntu 9.10 later this year. While Intel's kernel mode-setting support has been maturing in a steadfast manner, this support has not been moving along quite as fast for ATI and NVIDIA hardware. It is possible we will see ATI/AMD kernel mode-setting along with the necessary memory management support enter the Linux 2.6.31 kernel and potentially see this feature appear in Ubuntu 9.10 as an end-user option, but currently this support is still deemed under development. For those with ATI Radeon hardware looking to test out kernel mode-setting, there is now a Launchpad PPA and a LiveCD available for testing out these mode-setting capabilities atop Ubuntu. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_ati_kms&num=1

GRUB2 To Be Used By Default In Ubuntu 9.10

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports that starting with Ubuntu 9.10, and beginning with daily CD builds starting June 9th, GRUB2 will be the default boot-loader on new Ubuntu installations. GRUB2 will bring internationalization support, support for newer systems, and many other improvements considering this GNU boot-loader has been in development for a number of years. This change was announced today on the Ubuntu development list after discussions took place recently at the Ubuntu Developer Summit. More on Ubuntu's GRUB2 implementation can be found via their kernel team Wiki. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzMxMg

Explaining Ubuntu's 10 Second Boot Time

Phoronix's Michael Larabel tells us that two weeks ago he reported that Plymouth would not be making its way to Ubuntu with the next 9.10 release as was once planned. Instead Canonical is putting their focus on improving the boot time so that there is less rationale for spending time on making a fashionable boot experience. With Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Canonical is looking to achieve a ten second or less boot when using the Dell Mini 9 or similar devices. With Ubuntu 9.10, they hope to be on their way to accomplishing this goal. Canonical's Scott James Remnant has now outlined more on their plans for the Ubuntu boot performance targets with Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04 LTS. The main areas that developers will be working on is speeding up the X Server start-up process and improving initramfs. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzMxMw

Ubuntu One Beta Finally Kicks Off

Martin Kaba of Kabatology reports that Ubuntu One Beta, the Dropbox type of service by Canonical has finally kicked off, but not for all. When his invitation arrived he quickly moved on to test it. Kaba states, "it is very intuitive, yes, but damn slow and often breaks - - that certainly why it’s still a beta." To install, just read through the Installation Instructions. After that, get connected and start syncing. A right-click on the Ubuntu One icon menu, gives you the options to disconnect, report a problem, open a folder, or go to web. Kaba also reminds everyone that if they are amongst the few selected to test Ubuntu One, Don’t forget to report any problems! http://www.kabatology.com/06/09/ubuntu-one-beta-finally-kicks-off/

Ubuntu 9.04 vs. Fedora 11 Performance

Michael Larabel of Phoronix notes that Fedora 11 was released earlier this week so they have set out to see how its desktop performance compares to that of Ubuntu 9.04, which was released back in April. In a number of the benchmarks the results were close, but in a few areas there are some major performance differences. In particular, with the test profiles that stress the system disk, Fedora 11 generally did much better -- in part due to the EXT4 file-system and newer Linux kernel. Fedora also did much better with the database tests like SQLite and PostgreSQL. Ubuntu 9.04 though had done a better job with the Apache Benchmark and C-Ray. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=fedora11_ubuntu904_perf&num=1

Ubuntu 9.04: New Intel Graphics Drivers

Linux Pro's Kristian Kissling tells us that there is hope for Ubuntu users with Intel graphics. As it appears, the current 2D drivers solve most of the recent graphics problems with Intel chips, according to Ubuntu developer Bryce Harrington in a developer mailing list. A nuisance to owners of Ubuntu 9.04 and Intel graphics chips has been the problems with the graphics drivers. Even though Intel manages its drivers in an exemplary open source way, 2D and 3D acceleration has fairly much dragged so far. The reason is an unhappy pairing of the current Kernel 2.6.28's Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) with Intel's new UXA acceleration architecture that replaces EXA and the newly added Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) in the Kernel. The solution should come in the form of the Intel 2.7.99.1 driver. Harrington mentions that Jaunty users have the advantage of the Kernel 2.6.30 installation to resolve the issue. Harrington suggests activating the UXA module in the xorg.conf file, but not KMS, which is deactivated by default. http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/online/news/ubuntu_9_04_new_intel_graphics_drivers

Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 Released

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports that Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" Alpha 2 is now available. This second testing release for the forthcoming Ubuntu 9.10 doesn't bring too much in the way of exciting features or major changes since the release of Alpha 1. There is, however, GRUB2 as the default boot-loader. There are also some updated X.Org bits, the Linux 2.6.30 kernel, the latest GNOME 2.27.x packages, and other updated packages pulled in from Debian. Unlike the first alpha release, a desktop LiveCD build of Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 is also available. Updates to Kubuntu and Xubuntu are also available at this time. The Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 release announcement can be read on their development announcement list. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzMyMw

In The Blogosphere

Sandisk collaborates to improve Ubuntu netbook SSD performance

http://www.ubuntu.com/news/sandisk-ssd-netbooks

GRUB 2 now default for Ubuntu 9.10

http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/GRUB_2_now_default_for_Ubuntu_9_10_Karmic_Koala

Dell's new inexpensive Linux notebook

http://blogs.computerworld.com/dells_new_inexpensive_linux_notebook

Trouble Brews With Ubuntu Users Mailing List

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/06/10/trouble-brews-with-ubuntu-users-mailing-list/

Memo to Canonical: Don’t Repeat IBM’s Mistakes

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/06/10/memo-to-canonical-dont-repeat-ibms-mistakes/

Fair is Fair - Ubuntu Netbook Remix

http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10012930o-2000498448b,00.htm

Review: Ubuntu 9.04 on my ASUS Eee PC 901

http://blog.hydrasystemsllc.com/2009/06/11/review-ubuntu-904-on-my-asus-eee-pc-901/

In Other News

Meeting Summaries

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Community Spotlight

Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

Ubuntu 8.10 Updates

Ubuntu 9.04 Updates

UWN #: A sneak peek

Archives and RSS Feed

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Additional Ubuntu News

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Conclusion

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

See you next week!

Credits

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

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Glossary of Terms

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