Issue161

Contents

Contents

  1. UWN Translations
  2. In This Issue
  3. General Community News
    1. Ubuntu 9.10 beta approaching
    2. Ubuntu 9.10 beta freeze now in effect
    3. Sponsorship deadline for UDS-Lucid approaching
    4. Ubuntu Community Council Elections 2009
    5. New LoCo Council Member Sought
    6. New Ubuntu Members
      1. The Americas Board
    7. Ubuntu California is Approved LoCo
    8. Mark Shuttleworth: Don't give up the Linux Desktop
    9. New Ubuntu Developers
  4. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Translation Stats Jaunty
    3. Translation Stats Karmic
    4. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  5. LoCo News
    1. Ubuntu New Mexico team helps the Endorphine Power Company
    2. Ubuntu Pennsylvania: Philadelphia Software Freedom Day, Success!
    3. New Israeli Ubuntu LoCo website
    4. Ubuntu Florida: Preparing for the Global Jam!
  6. Launchpad News
    1. Launchpad Blog News
      1. Soyuz 3.0
      2. Launchpad Translations 3.0
      3. Talking about Launchpad’s new interface
      4. Launchpad 3.0 is here! New UI and more!
      5. Under the hood interview with Bjorn Tillenius
  7. Ubuntu Forums News
    1. Tutorial of the Week
  8. The Planet
    1. Kenneth Wimer: Ubuntu Karmic Desktop
    2. Collin Pruitt: Ubuntu Global Jam
    3. Neil Jagdish Patel: Ubuntu Netbook Remix Karmic
  9. In The Press
    1. Dell and Ubuntu sign up to Intel’s Moblin OS
    2. IBM launches Ubuntu-based distro in Africa
    3. Ubuntu 9.10 boot optimizations: 5 second startup with an SSD
    4. Ubuntu 9.10's New Wallpapers and More
    5. Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix Is Looking Great
  10. In The Blogosphere
    1. Canonical/Ubuntu CEO Mark Shuttleworth Visits Dell
    2. Will Ubuntu 9.10 work on your computer?
    3. Women and Ubuntu
    4. Thoughts on Ubuntu One
    5. Ubuntu 10.04(Lucid Lynx) Release Schedule
  11. In Other News
    1. Full Circle magazine #29
    2. Atlanta Linux Fest: Top 9 Ubuntu Highlights
    3. Ubuntu User Magazine
  12. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Monday, September 28, 2009
      1. Security Team Catch-up
      2. Ubuntu-NGOo IRC Meeting
    2. Tuesday, September 29, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
      2. Server Team Meeting
      3. Desktop Team Meeting
      4. Kernel Team Meeting
    3. Wednesday, September 30, 2009
      1. Foundation Team Meeting
      2. QA Team Meeting
    4. Thursday, October 01, 2009
      1. Karmic Beta
      2. Karmic DocumentationStringFreeze
      3. Packaging Training: Ubuntu Development Q&A (dholbach)
      4. Ubuntu Java Meeting
      5. Forums Council
    5. Friday, October 02, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Global Jam
      2. Karmic Weekly Release Meeting
      3. Edubuntu Meeting
    6. Saturday, October 03, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Global Jam
    7. Sunday, October 04, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Global Jam
  13. 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
  14. Archives and RSS Feed
  15. Additional Ubuntu News
  16. Conclusion
  17. Credits
  18. Glossary of Terms
  19. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  20. Feedback

newspaper-icon3.jpg

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #161 for the week September 20th - September 26th, 2009. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu 9.10 beta approaching, Ubuntu 9.10 beta freeze in effect, Sponsorship deadline for UDS-Lucid approaching, Ubuntu Community Council Elections 2009, New LoCo Council member sought, New Ubuntu members, Ubuntu California is approved LoCo, Mark Shuttleworth: Don't give up the Linux Desktop, New Ubuntu Developers, LoCo News: New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Israel, and Florida, Launchpad 3.0, The Planet: Kenneth Wimer, Collin Pruitt, and Neil Jagdish Patel, Full Circle Magazine, Atlanta LinuxFest: Top 9 Ubuntu Highlights, Ubuntu User Magazine, 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 beta approaching
  • Ubuntu 9.10 beta freeze in effect
  • Sponsorship deadline for UDS-Lucid approaching
  • Ubuntu Community Council Elections 2009
  • New LoCo Council member sought

  • New Ubuntu Members
  • Ubuntu California is now Approved LoCo

  • Mark Shuttleworth: Don't give up the Linux Desktop
  • New Ubuntu Developers
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • LoCo News: New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Israel, & Florida

  • Launchpad News
  • Ubuntu Forums Tutorial of the Week
  • The Planet: Kenneth Wimer, Collin Pruitt, & Neil Jagdish Patel

  • In the Press & Blogosphere

  • Full Circle Magazine #29
  • Atlanta LinuxFest: Top 9 Ubuntu Highlights

  • Ubuntu User Magazine
  • Upcoming Meetings & Events

  • Updates & Security

General Community News

Ubuntu 9.10 beta approaching

The Ubuntu 9.10 beta release is fast approaching, scheduled for October 1st (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicReleaseSchedule). Please refer to the milestone list in Launchpad for a list of outstanding items: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+bugs?field.milestone=12715

If you have bugs on this list, please fix them at the earliest possible opportunity, or (in consultation with other developers and the Ubuntu QA team) un-milestone them if they are not required for beta. If you have bugs you think should be on this list, talk with the Ubuntu QA team or the Ubuntu release team about having them milestoned.

Please also do not lose sight of the list of bugs affecting the release as a whole: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+bugs

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-September/000620.html

Ubuntu 9.10 beta freeze now in effect

The beta release of 9.10 is due October 1st, and we have entered beta freeze.

During the freeze, all uploads to main must be approved by a member of the release team [1], so if you have fixes which are important to get in, please do get in touch as soon as possible. Uploads to universe require a manual push through the queue, but are not subject to release management approval.

Issues which are important for the beta release will be tracked by the release team here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+bugs?field.milestone=12715

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-September/000621.html

Sponsorship deadline for UDS-Lucid approaching

Just a reminder that the deadline for applying for sponsorship to the Ubuntu Developer Summit is approaching. You have until September 28th to submit your application to: http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-l

Information on applying is here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS-L/Sponsorship

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-September/000622.html

Ubuntu Community Council Elections 2009

The 2009 Community Council is up for election, and all members of Ubuntu are entitled to vote. The nominees for this round are below, together with links to their wiki pages which document their interests, experience, skills and goals.

The Council is responsible for community governance. They are the ultimate arbiter of community disputes, and they nominate candidates for leadership in key positions across the entire project. In selecting your candidates, please consider their ability to act in an independent fashion and exercise good judgement of character, values and tone. We have an enormous community now that spans many different media, regions, technologies and interests. The CC cannot include a representative of every constituency, so members of the CC need to be able to represent the interests of many different groups.

We are electing 7 members. Our amazing candidates are:

Thank you for taking the time to participate in this election! The winning candidates will form the core of the CC for two years. We may have other votes to add candidates during that time if we need to expand the CC, but it’s likely that this will be the primary team for 2009-2011.

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1917

New LoCo Council Member Sought

A little while ago Nick Ali stepped down from the LoCo Council. We were of course very sad to see this happen, and would like to thank Nick for his great work on the Council. However, we are now down one person, and need to find a new member. I’m writing this mail to ask for volunteers to step forward and nominate themselves or another willing person for this position. There is only one position available, so if more than one person steps forward, there will be a vote to decide on the successful candidate.

The LoCo Council is defined on the wiki. We meet up once a month over IRC to go through items on the team agenda. This typically involves approving new LoCo teams, resolving issues within teams, approving LoCo team mailing list requests, and anything else that comes along.

The process by which a new member of the Council is selected is defined by the Community Council is outlined on the wiki. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityCouncil/Delegation

The first stage is for people to nominate themselves, or be nominated by someone else. We will confirm with each person whether they actually want to be put forward or not. We will give ~2 weeks for this process. Please pass this mail back to your own LoCo team so everyone is aware of the process. We welcome nominations from anywhere in the world, and from any LoCo team. Nominees do not need to be a LoCo Team Leader to be nominated for this post. We are however looking for people who are active in their LoCo Team.

Please send nominations to loco-council at lists.ubuntu.com which is a private mailing list only for the LoCo Council members.

The above mailing list is moderated, however all nomination mails will be approved before the end of the nomination period

If you’d like to ask any of the LoCo Council members questions privately then you contact us individually or use the above mailing list address. https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-lococouncil/+members

The nomination process starts now, and ends at 00:01 UTC on 7th October 2009.

Once this period is over the LoCo Council will collate the nominations and double check that each person nominated is still happy to stand. We will then pass this list to the CC as per the process.

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1918

New Ubuntu Members

The Americas Board

The following amazing contributors were approved during the meeting of the Americas Membership Board Meeting this evening.

Nasser Hasian

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/nhasian https://launchpad.net/~nhasian

Nasser is an active contributor to both the Ubuntu Beginners team, helping out new users in the Ubuntu Forums, IRC and Launchpad Answers and is involved in the Arizona LoCo team. He is also regarded as being a great contributor to work with and received several glowing testimonials from folks in the community regarding his work.

David E. Cruz

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DKcross https://launchpad.net/~dkcross

David is a stellar Ubuntu contributor from El Salvador. He is very active in the El Salvador LoCo, as well as lending a hand to several other LoCo teams in the region. He has done a number of presentations and training sessions on and with Ubuntu, has an extensive list of screencasts he's produced in his native language, Spanish, and is looking forward to a future where he gets involved in development.

Paul Hummer

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaulHummer https://launchpad.net/~rockstar

Paul works on the Launchpad Code Team. In this role he has made some significant contributions to the way Ubuntu developers will use bzr and Launchpad code hosting. He's also been involved with changes to the summit system for the next UDS and in the future is looking forward to getting into more Ubuntu development and exploring Ubuntu deployment projects for schools within the Colorado LoCo team.

We're excited to welcome these new Members, thank you for all your hard work!

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-September/000698.html

Ubuntu California is Approved LoCo

Tuesday the 22nd, the LoCo Council had a meeting where the California Team became recognized as an approved LoCo team! The California Team has been very active for a few years, when pleia2 spoke with team contact Neal Bussett following the meeting to ask why it took so long to apply, his response was a modest "Because we're overachievers and didn't feel we were really ready to be approved until this year." They did an excellent job with their approval application too, a shining example of what other teams should be striving for.

Well done California! Congratulations!

Want to find more about the approval process for your team? Check out this page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoGettingApproved

http://ubuntu-us.org/?q=node/14364

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 Developers

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!

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarcDeslauriers

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.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FabriceCoutadeur

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.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/mterry

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (63420) +515 # over last week
  • Critical (35) +5 # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (29740) +376 # over last week
  • Unassigned (54926) +540 # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (317464) +2771 # 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 (10997) -128 over last week
  • French (37168) -23 over last week
  • Brazilian Portuguese (47896) -66 over last week
  • Swedish (53400) +42 over last week
  • English (United Kingdom) (53419) -51 over last week

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

Translation Stats Karmic

  • Spanish (16220) -2037 over last week
  • French (61174) -82 over last week
  • Swedish (70160) -100 over last week
  • Brazilian Portuguese (70916) -3215 over last week
  • English (Uk) (86884) -1670 over last week

Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/

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 New Mexico team helps the Endorphine Power Company

It all began in October 2007, and the players are the New Mexico Loco Team and the Endorphine Power Company. The Endorphin Power Company, or EPC in short, is a non-profit organization “dedicated to improving the lives of people, with special focus on the substance-dependent and homeless, thus alleviating many of the challenges faced by current emergency medical systems. Additional purposes are the promotion of mental and physical health through exercise, energy consciousness and volunteerism.”

With little more than an idea to help others, the New Mexico team approached a local bank asking for donations of computing equipment to help local non-profit organization. Working as a true team, the New Mexico folks set up a page for the project in the Ubuntu wiki, defining milestones and getting organized through their mailing list.

Fast forward 2009: a functional Ubuntu network at EPC, wi-fi, a wealth of side-projects, ideas for other initiatives, regular updates on the project, negotiation of a support and training agreement, and the satisfaction of doing a good job while having fun and helping others.

This really is an example of what we are and what we can do as a community sharing the Ubuntu spirit. It is more than the operating system we use, promote and support. It is the ethos we share, what moves us to get involved and help other people in real-world projects to make the world a better place.

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1915

Ubuntu Pennsylvania: Philadelphia Software Freedom Day, Success!

Thanks to everyone who came out to our teams Software Freedom Day with the Philadelphia Area Computer Society in Willow Grove! Early in the day the team set up systems in the lobby for people coming in to check out. At noon the main presentation of the day was given by David Harding, on MythTV. Following the presentation they set up a table in the back of the main presentation room and gave out Ubuntu and Open Disc CDs, fliers about our team and info about some upcoming events.

http://ubuntupennsylvania.org/?p=52

New Israeli Ubuntu LoCo website

The Ubuntu-Israel Team has been without a real website for some time now. But recently Ddorda decided to do something about it. Using Drupal, he created a portal that has a Planet, Last messages from the Israeli LoCo forums (in the main page), News, Chat, and many translated pages from ubuntu.com. The new site is available (in Hebrew) at http://ubuntu-il.com/ .

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

Launchpad News

Launchpad Blog News

Soyuz 3.0

  • New Features
  • 3.0 UI

http://blog.launchpad.net/general/soyuz-3-0

Launchpad Translations 3.0

  • Improved UI and Navigation
  • Personal dashboard
  • Bazaar integration
  • Translations sharing

http://blog.launchpad.net/translations/launchpad-translations-3-0

Talking about Launchpad’s new interface

  • Talking about Launchpad's new interface with Martin Albisetti

http://blog.launchpad.net/general/talking-about-launchpads-new-interface

Launchpad 3.0 is here! New UI and more!

  • a new clearer web interface with in-line editing(Video)
  • personal translation dashboards: see what needs your attention
  • automatically updated diffs during code reviews
  • Launchpad now using Bazaar 2.0
  • Community contributions

http://blog.launchpad.net/releases/launchpad-3-0-is-here-new-ui-and-more

Under the hood interview with Bjorn Tillenius

Bjorn Tillenius recently took the role of Launchpad Technical Architect. That, and the release of Launchpad 3.0, seemed like a good opportunity to learn a bit more about his new role.

http://blog.launchpad.net/general/under-the-hood

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 pre-installed.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/351844/dell-and-ubuntu-sign-up-to-intel-s-moblin-os

IBM launches Ubuntu-based distro in Africa

IBM and Canonical are introducing an Ubuntu Linux-based distribution and related cloud services for netbooks and thin clients in Africa. According to IBM, netbook sales are strong in Africa, and it cites a study by AIB Research, stating that netbook sales are expected to quadruple from 35 million in 2009 to 139 million by 2013. The study also projected that Linux will outgrow Windows on netbooks by 2012. Stated Mark Shuttleworth, founder, Canonical, "Starting with Africa, we see that this smart client package can help realize our vision of eliminating barriers to computer access for emerging markets."

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8045255507.html

Ubuntu 9.10 boot optimizations: 5 second startup with an SSD

The latest Ubuntu 9.10 alpha release includes significant improvements to boot performance. Tests show that the popular Linux distribution can now boot in mere seconds on a computer with a solid state drive. Earlier this year, Canonical revealed plans to significantly optimize boot performance. It aims to deliver 10-second startups for the Ubuntu 10.04 release, which is due in 2010. In the latest Karmic alpha, the team has already taken some important steps toward achieving this goal. Their roadmap indicates that 25 seconds is the target for Karmic, and the reference device used to benchmark progress is the Dell Mini 9 netbook. Users with solid state drives will see a far more dramatic improvement in boot performance. Canonical external developer relations coordinator Jorge Castro (a former Ars Linux contributor) supplied us with a boot chart from his computer, which has an SSD and boots Karmic alpha 6 in only five seconds.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/09/ubuntu-910-alpha-6-released-boot-optimizations-arrive.ars

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/

Will Ubuntu 9.10 work on your computer?

It’s the question thousands of users will surely ask when Canonical debuts Ubuntu 9.10 in October: “Will Ubuntu 9.10 work on my PC?” Canonical has developed testing software to help you determine if your system will fully support the new Ubuntu. During the Atlanta Linux Fest held Sept. 19, Canonical and Ubuntu volunteers used a USB thumb drive — equipped with diagnostics software — to help attendees determine if Ubuntu 9.10 can fully run on their systems. Canonical is gathering all of the diagnostics test results to fix potential bugs and address as many potential user issues as possible. Also, the diagnostics software eliminates the potential pain of installing an operating system only to discover it doesn’t really work with your hardware. Kudos to Canonical for the pro-active testing approach.

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/09/23/will-ubuntu-910-work-on-your-pc/

Women and Ubuntu

Carla Schroder of Linux Today published an essay recently dealing with the low level of female participation in open-source projects. Although the article doesn’t deal with Ubuntu in particular, it nonetheless prompted some thoughts about the role of women in the world’s most popular Linux distribution. The near-absence of women from free-software development is not news. It’s been a clear problem for a long time, with a wide range of explanations and suggestions offered. Ubuntu has yet to suffer a major gender-relations issue of the order of, for example, the ConFusion fiasco in 2008.

The lack of participation by women in Ubuntu may simply reflect women’s under-representation within the free-software world in general. But given Ubuntu’s goal of becoming “Linux for human beings,” rather than merely another Linux for geeks, the project would do well to attract more females to its lists of developers and users. How to achieve that goal is a pretty complex question, and I’m not qualified to give a good answer. A blog post by Elizabeth Krumbach of Ubuntu Women offers some good suggestions: http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=1489

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/09/24/women-and-ubuntu/

Thoughts on Ubuntu One

Christopher Tozzi has spent the last few weeks testing Ubuntu One, Canonical’s file-storing and sharing service. For a service that remains in beta, Ubuntu One works exceptionally well. Its strongest points include: easy installation, and the service has worked great. Unfortunately, Ubuntu One also currently has some glaring problems, namely: only Ubuntu 9.04 and later are supported, no cross-platform support, and Ubuntu One code is not open source. Ubuntu One could go far, and maybe even provide Canonical with another much-needed revenue stream, or it could founder as a result of its lack of cross-platform support.

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/09/23/thoughts-on-ubuntu-one/

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

Full Circle magazine #29

Full Circle - the independent magazine for the Ubuntu Linux community are proud to announce the release of our twenty-ninth issue.

This month:

  • Command and Conquer
  • How-To : Program in Python - Part 3, LAMP Server - Part 2, Virtual Private Networking.
  • My Story - One Man's Journey, and Walk With Ubuntu.
  • Review - Kompozer.
  • MOTU Interview - Iulian Udrea.
  • Top 5 - Physics Games.
  • Ubuntu Games and all the usual goodness!

Get it while it's hot! http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-29/

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-September/000703.html

Atlanta Linux Fest: Top 9 Ubuntu Highlights

More than 600 people registered to attend Atlanta Linux Fest, which was held Sept. 19. Many of the standing-room-only sessions focused on Canonical and Ubuntu. Here are nine Ubuntu-oriented highlights from the event.

  1. New ISV's in 2010
  2. Moving between public and private clouds
  3. Rugged Ubuntu Devices
  4. More cellular devices coming
  5. Small Business server remix?
  6. Ubuntu Server GUI?
  7. Staffing Up
  8. Ubuntu 10.04 gets a name
  9. The Ubuntu 9.10 Compatibility test

Visit the link for more in depth information.

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/09/20/atlanta-linux-fest-top-9-ubuntu-highlights/

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/

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Monday, September 28, 2009

Security Team Catch-up

  • Start: 17:00 UTC
  • End: 17:30 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: nothing formal, just a weekly catch-up.

Ubuntu-NGOo IRC Meeting

  • Start: 17:00 UTC
  • End: 18:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-ngo
  • Agenda:

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Ubuntu Mobile Team 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

Wednesday, September 30, 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, October 01, 2009

Karmic Beta

Karmic DocumentationStringFreeze

Packaging Training: Ubuntu Development Q&A (dholbach)

Ubuntu Java Meeting

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

Forums Council

Friday, October 02, 2009

Ubuntu Global Jam

Karmic Weekly Release Meeting

Edubuntu Meeting

Saturday, October 03, 2009

Ubuntu Global Jam

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Ubuntu Global Jam

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
  • Isabelle Duchatelle
  • Liraz Siri
  • Sayak Banerjee
  • And many others

Glossary of Terms

  1. MOTU - Master Of The Universe - Developers responsible for the Universe and Multiverse repositories. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU

  2. UDS - Ubuntu Developer Summit.

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/Issue161 (last edited 2009-09-28 01:04:15 by ip68-231-150-152)