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WORK IN PROGRESS
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #161 for the week September 20th - September 26th, 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
Mark Shuttleworth: Don't give up the Linux Desktop
There are some people who do not believe that the Linux desktop will ever be a major force in the global IT market. Mark Shuttleworth isn't one of them.
Speaking at the LinuxCon conference late Wednesday, the Canonical founder pitched his approach for expanding Linux to provide a better user experience and broadening its appeal. The approach involves having a degree of cadence and coordination between projects and distributions, as well as improving quality and design.
"We definitely shouldn't give up the desktop," Shuttleworth said. "This is one of the most exciting years for the desktop in living memory."
The Intel-led Moblin effort and Google's mobile Linux initiatives with Android and ChromeOS have generated considerable interest in Linux. Canonical-backed Ubuntu, for its part, has a Moblin-based netbook remix. While the interest is there, Shuttleworth noted that some key areas need to be improved about the way Linux is developed and presented to users.
From a user-experience perspective, for instance, he said that Linux's design has been lacking. To that end, Shuttleworth noted that Ubuntu has its own user-experience team that conducts testing with regular people to see how they use software. But Shuttleworth would like to see the user-experience effort extend beyond Ubuntu. During his keynote, he extended an invitation to any open source application to submit their software for testing by user-experience experts. The sessions would be recorded for posterity, and the developer would not be able to interact with the user.
Shuttleworth noted that there traditionally has been some tension in software development between user interface (UI) people and developers, which is a big problem. "If we can't figure out how to bring these two communities together in a powerful way, I don't think we'll achieve the dream," Shuttleworth said. "If we can't make design cool in free software we won't take first prize."
Another issue facing Linux distributions is the absence of any large-scale coordination between many of the underlying open source applications when it comes to releases. In Shuttleworth's view, distributions do not actually compete with each other based on which version of an application they are shipping.
"Every time we create friction and differences between distros on that basis, we're just making life harder for users, and making it harder for upstreams," he said.
The problem for upstream projects has to do with maintenance for multiple versions. If different distributions are using different versions of a particular project, it compounds the number of versions that an upstream project could need to fix and maintain. Shuttleworth's suggestion is to build some kind of consensus among projects around major versions that come out at regular, predictable intervals.
"This doesn't lead to a world where there is no innovation and there is no differentiation," he said. "It just leads to a world where at a developer level you can actually have more effective collaboration."
Ubuntu's collaboration with the Debian Linux distribution is also something that Shuttleworth is keen on continuing to improve. Ubuntu is based in part on code derived from Debian. Shuttleworth noted that most of the core developers in Ubuntu started out as Debian developers.
While Ubuntu's relationship with Debian has not always been perfect, Shuttleworth said that it's better to focus on what can be done to move Linux forward. In his view, the tone of the conversations is up to the leadership of each project.
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3840826
New Ubuntu Develoeprs
These three fine men joined the MOTU team:
Marc Deslauriers works in the Ubuntu Security team and has done a lot of amazing work in a short time. Keep it up!
Fabrice Coutadeur has been working on lots and lots of packages already and helped to clear up lots of obscure build failures, also is he interested in video editing.
Michael Terry has done great work in Canonical's OEM team but also in getting rsyslog ready for Karmic and doing lots of merges. His main objective is getting deja-dup into main.
Ubuntu Stats
Bug Stats
- Open (#) +/- # over last week
- Critical (#) +/- # over last week
- Unconfirmed (#) +/- # over last week
- Unassigned (#) +/- # over last week
- All bugs ever reported (#) +/- # 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
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
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Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/
Translation Stats Karmic
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
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Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/
# NEEDS UPDATING. # #=== 5-a-day bug stats === # #==== Top 5 contributors for the past 7 days ==== # # * person (#) # * person (#) # * person (#) # * person (#) # * person (#) # #==== Top 5 teams for the past 7 days ==== # # * team (#) # * team (#) # * team (#) # * team (#) # * team (#) # #5-A-Day stats. http://qa.ubuntu.com/reports/five-a-day/
Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
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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 Israeli Ubuntu LoCo website
http://ddorda.useopensource.net/new-israeli-ubuntu-loco-website
Ubuntu Florida: Preparing for the Global Jam!
This past Tuesday evening, at the Florida team meeting we all discussed a couple of key areas that we have planned to attack during the Global Jam. So here they are in a Nutshell: We are planning to do some serious Florida Team Wiki overhauls and streamlining headed up by Chaynie. We are also planning to do a Presentation Jam so that we can generate some usable presentations that we plan on sharing up on Spread Ubuntu. We plan on trying to coordinate things to work with each other both in IRC @ #ubuntu-us-fl and in person if at all possible. As a team we have agreed that these goals are very important areas for us to concentrate on and are looking forward to the Challenge.
http://linuxsouls.com/wordpress/?p=157
New in Karmic Koala
Launchpad News
Ubuntu Forums News
Tutorial of the Week
This tutorial from kaivalagi (http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=494551) is for conky users and will help you pull Google Calendar events in conky, respecting local date and time with different customizations. All packages are in a PPA, with versions from Hardy up to Karmic. Please make sure that in addition to this "Conky Google Calendar Python Script" tutorial you have a look at "Conky Weather Forecast Python Script" form the same author (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5452132).
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=837385
Enjoy!
The Planet
Kenneth Wimer: Ubuntu Karmic Desktop
September 24th was a big day for the Karmic desktop. Lots of pieces came together like switching icon themes, colour changes in the UI, a new dark theme for GDM, a new default background and, 19 photos chosen from the flickr group we started earlier this year. The results of the flickr submissions is simply amazing. 639 members submitted 2001 photos. Selecting the images to include in Karmic was a big task, and if there were more free space on the disk, I would add more. Anyone and everyone who took part in this deserves a big round of applause, and perhaps a beer from me.
http://kwwii.blogspot.com/2009/09/ubuntu-karmic-desktop.html
Collin Pruitt: Ubuntu Global Jam
Ubuntu Global Jam is a event, organized by individual people or LoCo teams for their area, held on October 2-4th of every year. Individuals of the community come together and collaboratively contribute to Ubuntu in their own way. Bug triaging is just one, there are many topics that you could handle. Many great things often get accomplished at the Bug Jam event. The Wiki page for more information is here: wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam
http://scalar.cluenet.org/hellow/2009/09/26/ubuntu-global-jam/
Neil Jagdish Patel: Ubuntu Netbook Remix Karmic
As Karmic hit beta freeze this week, and the artwork began to freeze, I thought it would be a good time to introduce the latest version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR). As you can probably tell, the largest change from the previous version is a new design and layout. This is thanks to the awesome work of the design team. In addition to the new UI, there has been a fair amount of work in the architecture of the various UNR components. Apart from the users, the largest beneficiaries of this are the launcher and window-picker-applet. Screenshots at the link.
http://njpatel.blogspot.com/2009/09/ubuntu-netbook-remix-karmic.html
In The Press
Dell and Ubuntu sign up to Intel’s Moblin OS
Dell and Ubuntu have publicly embraced Moblin, Intel’s Linux OS designed for mobile devices. The announcements came at IDF in San Francisco, the day after Intel showcased its new version of Moblin for mobile internet devices. Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project, joined Intel software VP Renee James on stage to introduce the “Ubuntu Moblin Remix”, a new Ubuntu distribution based on the Moblin core. “Moblin keeps on getting more exciting as a project with new applications and improved user experiences,” he declared. John Thode, Dell's vice president of small screen devices, announced that as of today the Mini 10v netbook – already offered with a standard Ubuntu distribution - would also be available with Ubuntu Moblin Remix preinstalled.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/351844/dell-and-ubuntu-sign-up-to-intel-s-moblin-os
Ubuntu 9.10's New Wallpapers and More
On October 1st, they will unveil Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Beta and we bet everybody is wondering if Canonical will actually change the user interface (read: skin it) with a breathtaking one. The truth is that we have no idea if they will come with that professional-looking theme everyone was expecting since Jaunty, or they will just offer enough possibilities for users to create their own personalized desktops. What we know at this moment is that there is a very nice splash screen that greets users before the login screen and/or desktop appears, and, starting with today's daily build, Ubuntu 9.10 has 9 wallpapers with planets and stars. Another interesting item that was added today is the new Usplash theme, with Mat Tomaszewski's new logos. That's not all... with the newly released GNOME 2.28.0 desktop environment, users now have access to a lot of themes, wallpapers and icons with a single mouse click. See screenshots and what other features Softpedia reported, visit the link.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ubuntu-9-10-039-s-New-Wallpapers-and-More-122551.shtml
Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix Is Looking Great
This year when the Moblin V2 user-interface was finally unveiled it put us in awe with its sleek, intuitive design that was driven by Clutter. How has Canonical responded to Intel and Moblin V2? Well, there is Ubuntu Moblin Netbook Remix that just debuted to deliver the best of Ubuntu and Moblin, but the traditional Ubuntu Netbook Remix has also picked up several improvements for its 9.10 release. New artwork, including new login and boot screens, were committed to Ubuntu Karmic Koala this week and the other distributions within the Ubuntu family, Netbook Remix included. Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix is using the Clutter 1.0 tool-kit with its launcher to provide nice animations similar to Moblin V2. The window picker applet found in Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix has also picked up new icons and other improvements. One underlying improvement that will really help those Intel Atom netbook users with Ubuntu 9.10 / Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix is the updated Intel Linux graphics stack. Screenshots are available at the link below.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_910_netbook&num=1
In The Blogosphere
Canonical/Ubuntu CEO Mark Shuttleworth Visits Dell
Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu, sat for a video interview with Dell Cloud Computing Evangelist Barton George. In it, Shuttleworth takes a “service pack” shot at Windows 7 and covers numerous questions about Canonical’s business and cloud strategy. The video covers such topics as: Dell and Ubuntu Moblin Remix; Shuttleworth’s Linuxcon keynote; release schedules; cloud-related goals for Ubuntu 9.10; perspectives on Windows 7 and Canonical’s march toward profitability. See the video at the link below.
http://www.workswithu.com/2009/09/25/canonicalubuntu-ceo-mark-shuttleworth-visits-dell/
Ubuntu 10.04(Lucid Lynx) Release Schedule
Ubuntu team is already planning for 10.04 LTS, which will see the light of day in April 2010. Codename Lucid Lynx, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will be released Next year on April 29th. The Ubuntu 10.04 Release schedule is:
- December 3rd, 2009 – Alpha 1 release
- January 7th, 2010 – Alpha 2 release
- February 4th, 2010 – Alpha 3 release
- March 4th, 2010 – Beta1 release
- April 1st, 2010 – Beta2 release
- April 15th, 2010 – Release Candidate
- April 29th, 2010 – Final release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
See the releases wiki page for more detailed information: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidReleaseSchedule
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ubuntu-10-04lucid-lynx-release-schedule.html
In Other News
Ubuntu User Magazine
Do you know Rikki Kite? No? Well, she is one of the epic rockstars behind Ubuntu User, a magazine devoted to Ubuntu, and the incredible community that surrounds it. Ubuntu User is the first print magazine created for Ubuntu users and the current issue includes:
- Our exclusive interview with Mark Shuttleworth
- My community column
- Audio expert Dave Philips’ description for setting up an Ubuntu recording studio
- Forum diva Mike Basinger’s answers to Ubuntu users’ questions
There are also nuggets of goodness about Eucalyptus, graphics tools Krita & Karbon, Scribus, Ikiwiki, Mnemosyne and Anki, Conduit and more. Finally, stuck firmly to the side of the mag is a DVD including the Ubuntu Live CD, Kubuntu Live CD, Xubuntu Live CD, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Easy Peasy 1.1.
Subscribe here: http://www.ubuntu-user.com/Subscribe-Now
http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/09/25/ubuntu-user/
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
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Glossary of Terms
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