Issue151

Contents

Contents

  1. UWN Translations
  2. In This Issue
  3. General Community News
    1. Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS Released
    2. Kubuntu Council
    3. Kubuntu Wiki
    4. Technical Board: Nominations
    5. Karmic Translations Are Now Open
    6. New Ubuntu Members
  4. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Translation Stats Jaunty
    3. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  5. LoCo News
    1. Ubuntu Zimbabwe
  6. New in Karmic Koala
    1. Empathy is now in Karmic
    2. AppArmor now available in Karmic: Testing Needed
  7. The Planet
    1. Jussi Schultink: Ubuntu IRC Council News
    2. Nick Barcet: OpenJDK 6 Certification for Ubuntu 9.04
  8. In The Press
    1. Canonical seeking desktop backgrounds for Ubuntu 9.10
    2. Do We Need a New Distro for Everything?
    3. How Does Ubuntu 9.04 Measure Up to Mac OS X?
    4. Netbook Performance: Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris
    5. OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva Benchmarks
    6. Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS Released
    7. Shuttleworth about GNOME 3.0 - What's good, what's missing, what needs work
    8. Ubuntu 9.04 Receives OpenJDK 6 Certification
    9. Ubuntu’s Karmic Koala Needs You!
  9. In The Blogosphere
    1. Embracing the “Meta Release Cycle”
    2. Mythbuntu and Mint Developers Pan Ubuntu for Strict Time-Release Policy
    3. Ubuntu 9.10 Preview: Kernel Mode Setting
  10. In Other News
    1. Ubuntu Podcast Quickie #9
    2. Ubuntu-based distro touted for power management
  11. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Sunday, July 19, 2009
    2. Monday, July 20, 2009
    3. Tuesday, July 21, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Learning Team Meeting
      2. Community Council Meeting
      3. Server Team Meeting
      4. Desktop Team Meeting
      5. Kernel Team Meeting
      6. LoCo Council Meeting
    4. Wednesday, July 22, 2009
      1. Foundation Team Meeting
      2. QA Team Meeting
    5. Thursday, July 23, 2009
      1. Karmic Alpha 3
      2. Packaging Training: Packaging Perl Modules (gwolf and jawnsy)
      3. Ubuntu Java Meeting
      4. MC Meeting
      5. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
    6. Friday, July 24, 2009
      1. Karmic Weekly Release Meeting
    7. Saturday, July 25, 2009
  12. Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04
    1. Security Updates
    2. Ubuntu 6.06 Updates
    3. Ubuntu 8.04 Updates
    4. Ubuntu 8.10 Updates
    5. Ubuntu 9.04 Updates
  13. Archives and RSS Feed
  14. Additional Ubuntu News
  15. Conclusion
  16. Credits
  17. Glossary of Terms
  18. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  19. Feedback

newspaper-icon3.jpg

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #151 for the week July 12th - July 18th, 2009. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu 8.04.3 released, Kubuntu Council, Kubuntu Wiki, Technical Board: Nominations, Karmic Translations are now Open, New Ubuntu Members, Ubuntu Zimbabwe, Empathy is now in Karmic, AppArmor now available in Karmic: Testing Needed, Ubuntu IRC Council News, OpenJDK 6 Certification for Ubuntu 9.04, Ubuntu Podcast Quickie #9, Ubuntu-based distro touted for power management, 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 8.04.3 released
  • Kubuntu Council
  • Kubuntu Wiki
  • Technical Board Nominations
  • Karmic Translations Now Open
  • New Ubuntu Members
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Ubuntu Zimbabwe
  • Empathy is now in Karmic

  • AppArmor now available in Karmic: Testing needed

  • Ubuntu IRC Council News
  • OpenJDK 6 Certification for Ubuntu 9.04

  • In the Press & Blogosphere

  • Ubuntu Podcast Quickie #9
  • Ubuntu-based distro touted for power management

  • Upcoming Meetings & Events

  • Updates & Security

General Community News

Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS Released

Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS has been released for the server, desktop, and alternate installation CDs for the i386 and amd64 architectures. Eighty updates have been integrated including security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Downloads or CDs are available[1], as are the release notes[2]. A complete list of post-release updates is also available[3].

  1. http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

  2. http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/804

  3. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardyReleaseNotes/ChangeSummary/8.04.3

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2009-July/000124.html

Kubuntu Council

Following a vote of Kubuntu Members we have three new Kubuntu Council members. Harald Sitter (hsitter, apachelogger), Roderick Greening (rgreening) and Jonathan Thomas (JonTheEchidna) will join the team, Celeste and Lydia in being able to vote on new members and occasional other decisions.

Thanks to Steve Stalcup for putting himself forward and making it a hard choice to vote on.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kubuntu-devel/2009-July/002999.html

Kubuntu Wiki

wiki.kubuntu.org is the Ubuntu wiki themed for Kubuntu users. This week it received a shiny new theme thanks to Ryan Kavanagh, bringing it up to date with the latest website artwork.

https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu

Technical Board: Nominations

The Ubuntu Technical Board intends to grow its membership from the current four seats to six. All but one of these seats (the recently elected Colin Watson) will be up for election for a period of two years.

All Ubuntu developers are eligible to vote.

The nomination period runs from now until 1400 UTC on 28th July 2009.

There will then follow a two week deliberation period, before the candidates are announced in the Technical Board meeting of 1400 UTC on 11th August 2009.

Voting will run for two weeks, and the winning candidates announced in the Technical Board meeting of 1400 UTC on 25th August 2009.

The Technical Board is the custodian of technical architecture, engineering processes and technology strategy in Ubuntu. We like to make sure it represents the best combination of experience and innovation from all of the Ubuntu development teams.

If you would like to put yourself forward for nomination, or would like to nominate a member of the Ubuntu Developer community who you think would make a fine member of the board, please send an e-mail to: technical-board at lists.ubuntu.com

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-July/000589.html

Karmic Translations Are Now Open

We are pleased to announce that Karmic is now open for translation.

You can now go to:

https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+translations

to start translating Ubuntu Karmic into your language.

This will be the first Ubuntu release to feature message sharing functionality, which will initially allow Jaunty and Karmic translations to be shared on a template and message basis. This will mean that you no longer need to translate the same strings in Jaunty and Karmic. Translate it in one, and your translation will automatically -read instantly- appear in the other.

This feature will progressively be enabled for all Ubuntu releases. Stay tuned for the announcement and more information from the Launchpad Translations team.

During the development cycle language pack updates will be released regularly twice per week (except for soft freezes for alpha or beta milestones). The generation of the first language pack has already started and it will be released in a few days - until then, the PPA language pack updates for Jaunty will be put on hold in order not to interfere with this process.

You are encouraged to test those translations in Karmic and report any problems you might find, either in the ubuntu-translators list or against the ubuntu-translations project in Launchpad.

Happy translating!

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-translators/2009-July/002617.html

New Ubuntu Members

The approval results from the July 15th Americas Membership meeting are as follows:

Steve Conklin: Steve works for Canonical as a Kernel engineer. Currently he is working on new hardware enablement and bringing netbooks running Ubuntu to market. He is also involved with the ubuntu-NGO team helping it get off the ground. His experience working with the Red Cross will come in handy with that work. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/sconklin Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~sconklin

Amber Granger: Amber has had one of the most memorable first impressions with the Ubuntu community when you started with a bang with her blog, Just Me, Amber. The blog was a way for her to share her experiences with joining, and becoming a very important part of, the Ubuntu community. She is currently helping plan the Atlanta Linux Fest and also an Ubuntu User Conference in 2010. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AmberGraner Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~akgraner

Martin-Éric Racine: Martin-Éric has been involved with Free Software for a number of years now. He spends much of his time working to maintain a number of packages for Debian which are included in the Main repository of Ubuntu. Due to this, he also spends a large amount of time ensuring that patches in Ubuntu are correctly forwarded upstream. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MartinEricRacine Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~q-funk

Jimmy Harris: Jimmy is a very active member of the Ubuntu-Florida Local Community team where he not only plans and runs Bug Jams and Packaging Jams but he also DJs at the conferences using Ubuntu Studio and Mixx. He is also a mentor for the Ubuntu US Local Community team project for the state of Alaska, the largest state in the Union. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/pak33m Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~pak33m

Please join me in welcoming these great new Ubuntu Members!

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (59023) +47 over last week
  • Critical (29) +3 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (27273) -271 over last week
  • Unassigned (50839) -1 over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (295943) +1673 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 (12797) -52 # over last week
  • French (39785) -366 # over last week
  • Brazilian Portuguese (49473) -612 # over last week
  • Swedish (54357) -2649 # over last week
  • English (United Kingdom) (55729) -84 # 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

Ubuntu Zimbabwe

The Ubuntu Zimbabwe LoCo Team is pleased to announce that it has been admitted as an Honorary Institutional Member of the Computer Society of Zimbabwe. (Membership No: 090025) It is our hope to work with the Computer Society of Zimbabwe in assisting with the technological development of the country (which has suffered a great deal as a result of the economic melt down) while promoting and using Ubuntu and open source solutions for the benefit of the country as a whole.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-July/000642.html

New in Karmic Koala

Empathy is now in Karmic

As of today, the seeds have been switched, and Empathy, the awesome Telepathy IM client with support for both audio and video chat, geo-location, Adium themes, and collaboration via Tubes, is now included in the Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala daily LiveCDs. Let's get testing!

http://blog.thesilentnumber.me/2009/07/empathy-is-now-in-karmic.html

AppArmor now available in Karmic: Testing Needed

After a lot of hard work by John Johansen and the Ubuntu kernel team, bug #375422 is well on its way to be fixed. More than just forward ported for Ubuntu, AppArmor has been reworked to use the updated kernel infrastructure for LSMs. As seen in #apparmor on Freenode a couple of days ago:

  • 11:24 < jjohansen> I am working to a point where I can try upstreaming again, base off of the security_path_XXX patches instead of the vfs patches

  • 11:24 < jjohansen> so the module is mostly self contained again

These patches are in the latest 9.10 kernel, and help testing AppArmor in Karmic is needed. To get started, verify you have at least 2.6.31-3.19-generic:

  • $ cat /proc/version_signature
  • Ubuntu 2.6.31-3.19-generic

AppArmor will be enabled by default for Karmic just like in previous Ubuntu releases, but it is off for now until a few kinks are worked out. To test it right away, you’ll need to reboot, adding ’security=apparmor’ to the kernel command line. Then fire up ‘aa-status’ to see if it is enabled. A fresh install of 9.10 as of today should look something like:

  • $ sudo aa-status
  • apparmor module is loaded.
  • 8 profiles are loaded.
  • 8 profiles are in enforce mode.
  • /usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script
  • /usr/share/gdm/guest-session/Xsession
  • /usr/sbin/tcpdump
  • /usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf
  • /sbin/dhclient3
  • /usr/sbin/cupsd
  • /sbin/dhclient-script
  • /usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action
  • 0 profiles are in complain mode.
  • 2 processes have profiles defined.
  • 2 processes are in enforce mode :
  • /sbin/dhclient3 (3271)
  • /usr/sbin/cupsd (2645)
  • 0 processes are in complain mode.
  • 0 processes are unconfined but have a profile defined.

Please throw all your crazy profiles at it as well as testing the packages with existing profiles, then file bugs:

  • For the kernel, add your comments (positive and negative) to bug #375422

  • AppArmor tools bugs should be filed with ‘ubuntu-bug apparmor’

  • Profile bugs should be filed against the individual source package with ‘ubuntu-bug <source package name>’. See DebuggingApparmor for details. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingApparmor

Thank you Ubuntu Kernel team and especially John for all the hard work.

http://penguindroppings.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/apparmor-now-available-in-karmic-testing-needed/

The Planet

Jussi Schultink: Ubuntu IRC Council News

Sometime ago Jussi was elected to the Ubuntu IRC council. This has been a big step for him, up from regular ubuntu operator and contributor, to a governance role. So now he feels it's time to start writing about what the IRC council is doing, and where and when things are happening.

First up he’d like to mention the next IRCC meeting, coming up on 2 August, at 07:00 UTC, in #ubuntu-meeting. You can find the agenda for the meeting at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IrcTeam/IrcCouncil/MeetingAgenda - if you have an agenda item, please feel free to add it there.

Second, he'd like to mention the blueprint for a new bantracker and IRC operator helper features that Benjamin (Pici) has kindly popped up on launchpad- you can find it here: https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/bantrackertwo

The IRCC would welcome as much community input for that as possible, so please, feel free to add suggestions and ideas to the mix.

For those of you who done know us, the IRCC consists of the following people: jussi01 , Pici, Pricey, elky and nalioth.

They look forward to seeing you all on Freenode/Ubuntu channels soon!

http://jussi01.com/?p=63

Nick Barcet: OpenJDK 6 Certification for Ubuntu 9.04

The Ubuntu Java development team is pleased to announce completed certification of OpenJDK 6 for Ubuntu 9.04, continuing Ubuntu's tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

After signing the Sun TCK agreement earlier this year, Java developers went to work with the certification process and received final certification from Sun in late May.

This certification means that the OpenJDK 6 package included with Ubuntu 9.04 now passes the rigorous testing of the Java SE Test Compatibility Kit (TCK) and is compatible with the Java(TM) SE 6 platform on the amd64 (x86_64) and i386 (ix86) architectures.

OpenJDK is a free and open source implementation of Sun's Java(TM) SE 6 platform. The Java TCK is a toolkit providing tools, tests, and documentation to help determine whether or not Java implementations meet compliance.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-July/000587.html

In The Press

Canonical seeking desktop backgrounds for Ubuntu 9.10

The H-Online tells us that Kenneth Wimer of the Canonical Design Team has announced that the team is seeking high quality desktop backgrounds from "anyone and everyone" for the upcoming Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" release. The team have created a Flickr photo group pool where users can submit or simply browse the proposed backgrounds. "Ubuntu would like to include a beautiful set of images for our users to choose from in our next release," said Wimer. More details about submission requirements can be found on the Background Guidelines Wiki and all images must be freely licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license. The final version of Karmic Koala is scheduled to be released on the 29th of October. http://www.h-online.com/open/Canonical-seeking-desktop-backgrounds-for-Ubuntu-9-10--/news/113773

Do We Need a New Distro for Everything?

The Linux Loop says that they're not saying we shouldn’t have hundreds of distros competing for our hard drive; in fact they think that sort of competition is quite healthy, but do we really need a new distro for everything? Apparently WattOS thinks so. Now in its third beta, WattOS is an Ubuntu-based distro aimed at having low power consumption. "I’ve already got a distro for saving power, though. It’s called the off button." In the Linux Loop's opinion it just doesn’t make sense to offer a new distribution for a small improvement on an existing distribution. "I’m sure the power-saving work WattOS is doing is great and it is certainly needed, since Linux is rather lacking in power management, but it would be far better as an application, not its own distribution." http://www.linuxloop.com/2009/07/15/do-we-need-a-new-distro-for-everything/

How Does Ubuntu 9.04 Measure Up to Mac OS X?

Linux Magazine's Nathan Willis says that bucking the historical trend of comparing desktop Linux with Windows, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth recently told journalist Bruce Byfield that he was looking to Mac OS X as the operating system to beat for future Ubuntu releases — particularly in the areas of usability and user experience. Over all, Ubuntu 9.04 averages a B+ in this comparison against Mac OS X usability. The areas in which Ubuntu comes up short OS X in this review are considerably smaller in scope — an unpredictable “suspend” here, a not-very-helpful help system there, some missing or difficult to use applications. But that does not mean that filling in all of the small gaps is easy work; in fact it may get more difficult. As Shuttleworth admits, it is not going to be an overnight story. A part of that challenge, he adds, is figuring out how Canonical can inspire both consistency and innovation in the broader open source community. Ubuntu has also recently launched a project to fix niggling usability issues, called One Hundred Paper Cuts. The project aims to improve the user experience by identifying one hundred issues which negatively impact the user’s experience, but which can be fixed relatively easily. It’s certainly a move in the right direction! http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7419/1.html

Netbook Performance: Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris

Phoronix's Michael Larabel notes that in the past when Phoronix has published OpenSolaris vs. Linux Kernel benchmarks and similar articles looking at the performance of Sun's OpenSolaris up against popular Linux distributions, they have looked at the performance on high-end AMD workstations, but they have never compared the OpenSolaris and Linux performance on netbooks. In this article Phoronix has compiled results comparing OpenSolaris 2009.06 and Ubuntu 9.04 on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook. While OpenSolaris 2009.06 started out performing much better than Ubuntu 9.04, due to the GPU tests being run, this was due to the bugged Intel graphics stack found in the Jaunty Jackalope. Once both Ubuntu and OpenSolaris were running with similar packages after the fallout from the invasive Intel Linux graphics work, we should see nearly identical results. Beyond these graphics tests, however, as a whole Ubuntu 9.04 performed much better than OpenSolaris 2009.06 on this Atom-based Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_atom_os&num=1

OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva Benchmarks

Michael Larabel of Phoronix says with it being a while since he last compared many Linux distributions when it comes to their measurable desktop performance, he decided to run a new round of tests atop four of the most popular Linux distributions: OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mandriva. To see where these Linux distributions are at, Larabel used their latest development releases and then performed all package updates as of 2009-07-15. Well, nothing too conclusive can be derived from just the fifteen benchmarks they have shared today, especially with a few of the tests not containing results for all four distributions. However, for the trends that can be gathered, OpenSuSE and Ubuntu were generally the fastest. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=distro_four_way&num=1

Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS Released

Phoronix's Michael Larabel says that for those of you still running Ubuntu 8.04 due to its Long-Term Support status rather than upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10 or Ubuntu 9.04, fire up your update manager as Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS is now available. Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS is the third maintenance update targeting the Hardy Heron and it includes security updates and fixes for high impact bugs. Approximately 80 updates have been incorporated into Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS that address issues within the installer, desktop, server, and general areas. Details on this update are available via the Canonical release announcement. Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is supported on the desktop until April of 2011 while it will be supported on servers until April of 2013. The next Ubuntu release with an extended support status will be next year with Ubuntu 10.4 LTS. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM4NQ

Shuttleworth about GNOME 3.0 - What's good, what's missing, what needs work

Andreas Proschofsky of derStandard had a chance to conduct an interview with Mark Shuttleworth, and they had an opportunity to discuss many things about Ubuntu including the new GNOME 3.0. When asked if GNOME 3.0 would make it into the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Shuttleworth said, "The heart of this question is: How do you deal with the situation where a distro makes a long term release and upstreams are on a different schedule. I think it's worth asking the question: Is it valuable for upstreams to have a long term release made? And no-one disagrees that this would be valuable, but when are you going to do that? Until now there's been no overarching force to say you do it now or then. I think, what we are about to see is the emergence of sort of a greater structure in the cadence of releases in the open source ecosystem." http://derstandard.at/fs/1246541995003/Interview-Shuttleworth-about-GNOME-30---Whats-good-whats-missing-what-needs-work

Ubuntu 9.04 Receives OpenJDK 6 Certification

Marius Nestor of Softpedia reports that Canonical, through Matthias Klose, announced on July 11th, 2009 that the Ubuntu Java development team had completed the certification of the OpenJDK 6 platform for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). This means that the OpenJDK 6 package included in Ubuntu 9.04 has passed the meticulous tests of the Java Standard Edition Test Compatibility Kit and that it is now fully compatible with the Java Standard Edition 6 platform, on both i386 and amd64 architectures. "The Ubuntu Java development team is pleased to announce completed certification of OpenJDK 6 for Ubuntu 9.04, continuing Ubuntu's tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. After signing the Sun TCK agreement earlier this year, Java developers went to work with the certification process and received final certification from Sun in late May," Matthias Klose said in the official announcement. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ubuntu-9-04-Receives-OpenJDK-6-Certification-116630.shtml

Ubuntu’s Karmic Koala Needs You!

Rami Taibah of The Linuxologist tells us that the Canonical Design team is currently running a contest for beautiful desktop wallpapers for its upcoming Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 scheduled to be released in October 2009. They have created a photo pool on Flickr where you can submit or just browse proposed backgrounds. "In our next release, the Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10), we would like to include a set of high quality desktop backgrounds. In order to accomplish this we call on anyone and everyone to submit images which are freely licensed CC-BY-SA and follow the guidelines for inclusion." So what are you waiting for? Grab your SLR and launch your GIMP! http://linuxologist.com/eye-candy/ubuntus-karmic-koala-needs-you/

In The Blogosphere

Embracing the “Meta Release Cycle”

In an interview with derstandard.at, Shuttleworth discussed ongoing efforts to coordinate Ubuntu releases more tightly with Debian’s development cycle, hoping that other distributions and upstream projects will follow suit. With the adoption of a “Meta Release Cycle,” he argued, the efforts of all free-software developers could be made more effective by allowing the latest versions of applications to travel downstream at the same speed. Some may see this move as an attempt by Ubuntu–which has long faced hostility from geeks who resent its success or focus on bringing normal people into the Linux fold–to domineer the Linux world. To a certain extent, this may be true. But a little benevolent domineering is exactly what the Linux community needs in order to move beyond the organizational mayhem that currently impedes its progress.

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/07/14/embracing-the-meta-release-cycle/

Mythbuntu and Mint Developers Pan Ubuntu for Strict Time-Release Policy

In an article on Techradar which looked at the upcoming Karmic Koala release of Ubuntu, Clement Lefebvre, the developer of Linux Mint, a popular Ubuntu derivative, and Mario Limonciello, the maintainer of the Ubuntu-sanctioned Mythbuntu media center distribution both took aim at what they saw as the chief weakness of Ubuntu.

"Of course," complained Lefebvre, "[focusing on consolidation instead of cutting-edge features] wouldn't make sense for Ubuntu unless we became an upstream component of their distribution. I'm really happy with what Ubuntu is doing, and if I were to change anything… it would be the commitment to a release schedule and the return of a 'release when ready' policy to guarantee a stronger level of quality against regressions."

"I would prefer that the release cycles were not strictly six months," said Limonciello. "Over the last few releases there have been a variety of bugs that weren't deemed to 'hold up' the release and could just be fixed in a Stable Release Update. I'm of the opinion if you have a fix for the bug that you know works, you shouldn't put off the fix just to meet a deadline for releasing a CD. It's better to include the fix sooner and give a better experience to the user out of the box."

http://blog.ibeentoubuntu.com/2009/07/mythbuntu-and-mint-developers-pans.html

Ubuntu 9.10 Preview: Kernel Mode Setting

Kernel mode setting will be enabled by default for Intel-based video cards on Ubuntu 9.10, set to be released in October. Christopher Tozzi recently played around with this new feature on a Karmic Koala live CD, and shares his results. Fast-user switching and access to the virtual console were quite zippy on his i810 video card running in the live environment. Kernel mode setting means the Linux kernel, instead of an X11 video driver, handles the task of configuring the graphics mode of the console. There’s no official word on when kernel mode setting will be enabled for video chipsets other than Intel, but Ubuntu developers are working on it for some nvidia and ATI devices. Don’t expect it in Karmic, though. Video available at the link.

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/07/15/ubuntu-910-preview-kernel-mode-setting/

In Other News

Ubuntu Podcast Quickie #9

In this episode:

  • 8.04.03 coming 16 July
  • Ubuntu 6.06 desktop support ending
  • Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase deadline approaching
  • updates on Spread Ubuntu

  • UbuCon Central America

  • 100 Paper Cuts Round 2

http://ubuntupodcast.net/2009/07/15/ubuntu-podcast-quickie-9/

Ubuntu-based distro touted for power management

Desktop Linux's Eric Brown reports that a group called PlanetWatt has released a Beta 3 version of a new lightweight, power-sipping distro based on Ubuntu. The low-power WattOS is built from scratch using the Ubuntu MinimalCD and Ubuntu 9.04, and uses the lightweight LXDE environment and OpenBox. WattOS is not intended to be the "smallest or fastest," says the project FAQ. Instead, the group is looking to create a balance between speed and power consumption on the one hand and features on the other. Designed to run on both low-power and older systems, the distro should run "quite pleasant and quick" on any computer with at least 600MHz and 256MB of RAM. Eventually, the group plans to offer a set of "WattPanel" tools for users that will let them "tweak the power consumption and processor performance of their system in an easy point and click fashion." WattOS Beta 3 is available now, including a Live CD version. http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3390383145.html

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Sunday, July 19, 2009

  • None listed as of publication

Monday, July 20, 2009

  • None listed as of publication

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Ubuntu Learning Team Meeting

Community Council Meeting

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

LoCo Council Meeting

Wednesday, July 22, 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, July 23, 2009

Karmic Alpha 3

Packaging Training: Packaging Perl Modules (gwolf and jawnsy)

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: 16:00 UTC
  • End: 17:00 UTC
  • Location: Not listed as of publication
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting

  • Start: 21:00 UTC
  • End: 22:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Friday, July 24, 2009

Karmic Weekly Release Meeting

Saturday, July 25, 2009

  • None listed as of publication

Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

  • None Reported

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

Ubuntu 8.10 Updates

Ubuntu 9.04 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:

  • John Crawford
  • Craig A. Eddy
  • Dave Bush
  • Sayak Banerjee
  • Your Name Here
  • Liraz Siri
  • And many others

Glossary of Terms

  1. GPU - Graphics Processing Unit.
  2. IRC - Internet Relay Chat.
  3. LTS - Long Term Support. - Said of a release that will receive support for 3-years/5-years rather than the typical 18 months.
  4. UTC - Coordinated Universal Time: UTC replaced GMT as the basis for the main reference time scale or civil time in various regions on January 1, 1972.
  5. TCK - Technology Compatibility Kit.

Other acronyms can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/glossary

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/Issue151 (last edited 2009-07-19 22:10:40 by ip24-255-61-232)