Issue166
WORK IN PROGRESS
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #166 for the week October 25th - October 31st, 2009. In this issue we cover ...
UWN Translations
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In This Issue
General Community News
New MOTU
Jonathan Carter, South-African MOTU #2, joined the ranks of the MOTU team. Congratulations!
Ubuntu Stats
Bug Stats
- Open (70240) +2257 # over last week
- Critical (25) -4 # over last week
- Unconfirmed (35046) +2113 # over last week
- Unassigned (61297) +2045 # over last week
- All bugs ever reported (337001) +4604 # 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
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # 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
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
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
Unify system tray behavior (drop-down menus) - http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/22036/
The future Nautilus - http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/22153/
Multitouch and gestures on touchpads - http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/22050/
Notify for Daylight Saving Time - http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/22039/
Not everyone uses Evolution, integrate other email clients with Ubuntu One - http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/22144/
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
Karmic Koala in Karma Dublin
The Ubuntu-ie LoCo held their Karmic Koala release party on Saturday and had a massive turn out, They decided to go for a sit down lunch at Jimmy Chungs, an all you can eat Chinese buffet, and they definitely had their fill. After lunch they went to Karma, this was chosen by the LoCo team with a poll and list of places to go. It also had free wifi and opened up for the team when they got there. Pictures at the link below and also here: http://pix.ie/czajkowski/album/359447
http://www.lczajkowski.com/2009/11/01/karmic-koala-in-karma-dublin/
Ubuntu El Salvador
The Ubuntu El Salvador team met for the release of Karmic Koala. They even had their our koala mascot in attendance. Check out the artwork and picture at the link below.
http://decacross.org/blog/2009/10/welcome-karmic-koala/
New in Karmic Koala
Launchpad News
Meet Francis Lacoste
Francis Lacoste recently started on a six-month stint of running the Canonical Launchpad team. It seemed like a good time to find out a little more about him. The following are questions Fancis answered in his interview:
- How did you get into free software
- What's more important, principle or pragmatism
- Do you, or have you contributed to any free software projects
- Tell us something really cool about Launchpad the not enough people know about
- In the Principia Discordia, Malaclypse the Younger states that all things happen in fives. What five things are coming soon in Launchpad that you’re most excited about?
- Kiko’s special question! You’re at your computer, you reach for your wallet: what are you most likely to be doing?
Read the whole interview at the link below.
http://blog.launchpad.net/meet-the-devs/meet-francis-lacoste
Accessing Git, Subversion and Mercurial from Bazaar
bzr-svn, bzr-git and bzr-hg are plugins for bzr that make Subversion, Git and Mercurial branches first class citizens in the Bazaar world by allowing you to access them in the same way that you would access native Bazaar branches.
Bazaar has supported multiple file formats from its early days. Both its model and its implementation allow this:
- Revisions are not identified by the checksum of their layout on disk (as they are in systems like Git or Mercurial) but by a (pseudo-)random string. This means that copying data to a different file format does not affect the revision id.
- Repositories are accessed through a well defined interface. Other parts of the codebase are ignorant about the structure of the files on disk.
This has made it easy to introduce better and experimental repository formats without having to break old repositories or render them unusable for previous versions of Bazaar by forcing upgrades. Initially new formats were introduced at a very high pace (perhaps even a too high pace?), but fortunately this has slowed down nowadays: the last default format change before the 2.0 release was in 2007.
Having grown interested in Bazaar through Martin’s talk at Linux.Conf.Au 2005 and his blog posts I started looking into Bazaar in 2005. Since Samba (the main FOSS project I work on) had just switched to Subversion, I was interested in ways to interact with Subversion using Bazaar, in particular so I could do off-line commits. On the Bazaar wiki Aaron had suggested implementing the well defined interface for repository formats for other version control systems (such as Subversion) as well. This sounded very neat, so I decided to see how far I could get and looked into learning Python and becoming more familiar with the Bazaar API.
Now, four years later, 700 bug reports and about 4400 revisions later, we have released bzr-svn 1.0. The models of Subversion and Bazaar have significant differences, and bzr-svn has to take care of mapping between the semantics of both. Perhaps the best example of this is the fact that a Subversion repository is basically a versioned filesystem; there may be some directories that are commonly used as containers for branches or tags, but there are a lot of exceptions to this convention. In Bazaar on the other hand, a branch is a primary object.
In 2006 Rob and Aaron created a simple plugin for accessing local Git repositories in 2006 called bzr-git. Originally it was based on “stgit”, a tool which (among other things) exposed a Python wrapper around the git executables. Following a switch from Samba to Git I took over in 2008 and changed bzr-git to use a new native implementation of Git in Python, based on a project by James. bzr-git now supports accessing remote repositories, working trees and merging changes back into Git.
At the moment I am working on the bzr-hg plugin, again based on an initial proof of concept by Rob. Last month ago the first version (0.1) was released, providing sufficient support for cloning local and remote Mercurial repositories and accessing working trees. There are still some problems to work out — memory usage is excessive, commit and push do not yet work — but there should be a stable plugin in a few months.
http://blog.launchpad.net/bazaar/accessing-git-subversion-and-mercurial-from-bazaar
Commenting on questions
If you’re using edge, you can now just comment on a question in Launchpad. For all questions on Answers, the “Just Add a Comment” button is now always visible. Previously, you might have only seen “Add Answer” and “Add Information Request” (or others; the exact buttons vary), both of which add a comment and cause the question status to change. But often, for example, all you want to do is clarify an earlier comment, add some detail, or give a progress update. For that, “Just Add a Comment”.
It’s been put at the rightmost position of all the buttons because we think it should be the least used option. Normally it’s appropriate to use one of the other buttons to move the workflow forward.
The button will land in production with the 3.1.10 release next week.
http://blog.launchpad.net/cool-new-stuff/commenting-on-questions
Ubuntu Forums News
The Planet
Jamie Strandoge: Koala Pumpkin
Simple, but effective. Jamie's Happy Halloween carved pumpkin really looks koala(ish). Check out the pictures at the link.
http://penguindroppings.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/happy-halloween/
Miguel Ruiz: Release time
Thursday was an important day for the Ubuntu community: Karmic Koala was released. Yay! I want to say thanks to everyone involved on this cycle. We are improving at every release and our community is becoming stronger and bigger. In celebration, Pedro and I created a mini release party to celebrate the day. Welcome Lucid Lynx! Picture at the link below.
http://mruiz.openminds.cl/blog/index.php/2009/10/30/release-time/
Michael Lustfield: Creating Your Own Bazaar Server
By now we've all heard about the Bazaar (bzr) version control system. If you're a coder then you're well aware of what a version control system is and why it's helpful. If you code on Launchpad you're equally aware how incredibly awesome this system is.
Rather than discuss how incredible bazaar is, I'd like to explain how to set up a production level deployment for a bzr server. If you're curious what makes bazaar great, just try it out. You can use https://staging.launchpad.net/ to create branches for playing around.
To deploy a low level and basic setup you only need to run this command on your server: sudo aptitude install openssh-server bzr
That's really all there is to it. You can now push an existing code branch to your server using the following command: bzr push ssh+bzr://yourserver.com/~/branch
That's only a basic deployment. What I like doing is having branches where multiple people can work on the same branch. This first thing I do is create a directory that this whole thing will be based in. I like to do this on its own partition for obvious reasons. For me this always exists at /bazaar. I then use the following: Please visit the link below for the rest of the instructions necessary to complete your bazaar server.
http://profarius.com/content/creating-your-own-bazaar-server
In The Press
Running Ubuntu 9.10 With Older PC Hardware
Phoronix's Michael Larabel tells us that for the most part, Ubuntu 9.10 offers better performance over its predecessor, but in his testing there were a few performance drops in different areas. With that in mind he looked at how Ubuntu 9.10 is running with older PC hardware. Larabel determined that Ubuntu 9.10 offers a number of new features to Linux desktop and server users along with other core improvements to this incredibly popular Linux distribution. In a number of our tests today with an older ThinkPad notebook, Ubuntu 9.10 also provided the best performance when compared to earlier Ubuntu releases from the past 18 months. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_karmic_old&num=1
Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" Officially Released
Michael Larabel of Phoronix reports that just as planned, Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" has been officially released on October 29th. Additionally, 9.10 Karmic releases of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Mythbuntu, and Ubuntu Studio are also available. The Ubuntu 9.10 Server build also sports support for the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) and Amazon EC2 support. Furthermore, another flavor of Ubuntu 9.10 that is also available is Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix with its many improvements. The Ubuntu 9.10 release notes are available and there is also a graphical overview. Download Ubuntu 9.10 and the other members of the Karmic Koala family from Ubuntu.com. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY1MQ
Ubuntu 9.10 'Karmic Koala' released, could decide your OS fate
Engadget's Thomas Ricker says it's October 2009 which means something very special for Linux fans: a 9.10 release of Ubuntu. On October 29th we see the launch of "Karmic Koala" featuring a faster graphical boot sequence (no more scary text scrolls), a revamped audio framework that improves sound control across multiple applications, and a new Software Center that visually simplifies the Add/Remove Applications tool. These are just a few of the user-centric improvements meant to have a "transformative effect" on the OS experience and help bring "the world of open source closer to the user." It's available in desktop, server, and netbook editions now so get to it, before you know it you'll be updating to Lucid Lynx. http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala-launching-today-could-decide-your-fu/
Ubuntu Linux 9.10 'Karmic Koala' Starts Its Climb
Sean Michael Kerner of InternetNews.com recalls that in February, Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that Ubuntu 9.10 would be codenamed the "Karmic Koala". On October 29th, after months of development and buzz, the Karmic Koala was officially released into the wild. The first thing that new users are likely to notice about the Karmic release is the speedier boot process. "The boot process is now substantially faster in Karmic than it has been in any previous Ubuntu release," Shuttleworth said in a conference call with the media earlier this week. "We have a goal to get to a 10-second boot, and Karmic is a nice step in that direction." http://www.internetnews.com/software/article.php/3846141
Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (Karmic Koala)
Desktop Linux Reviews' Jim Lynch tells us that since the launch of Desktop Linux Reviews, he has covered a number of different remastered versions of Ubuntu Linux. But he hasn’t done a review of Ubuntu itself. He is happy to note that Ubuntu Linux has hit version 9.10 and has some nifty new features that make it worth reviewing here. Ubuntu Linux 9.10 is well worth upgrading to if you’re running an earlier version of Ubuntu. There’s some great new desktop features in this release as well as some new stuff that isn’t readily apparent on the surface. Lynch enthusiastically recommend Ubuntu Linux 9.10 for beginners as well as more experienced Linux users. It remains one of the best desktop Linux distributions around and it’s the basis for so many fun remasters. In Lynch's opinion, It’s definitely worth a download. http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/2009/10/26/ubuntu-linux-9-10-karmic-koala/
In The Blogosphere
Top things to do after installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
The Silent Number, Blogger, Danny Piccirillo, in this article talks about what to do after installing Ubuntu 9.10. Danny has painstakingly gone through and documented complete with screen shots of Basic Things, to Eye candy to Audio/Video Creation and Editing. Oh, but that is far from all. He gives advise on Multimedia Playback: Media Center, Video Feeds, Media Player. The fun doesn't stop there take a look at the section on Google Chrome, and Epiphany. If you like a little workout for your brain he even goes into gbrainy. Wanna know more about Gwibber and empathy? What about the PlayDeb options that are available? This article is a definite read for anyone who has just updated or freshly installed Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. There is something for novice Ubuntu User to the seasoned professional. Danny does a great job with detailing the instructions as mentioned above including some awesome screen shots. Wanna know what to do now - click the link and talk full advantage what Danny is sharing with Ubuntu Users. http://www.reddit.com/tb/9z2xk/
My Thoughts on Ubuntu 9.10
Ed Hewitt, Blogger, Gamer and Columnist, Ubuntu Games, for Full Circle Magazine takes a moment to share his thoughts on Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. Ed has been using Karmic since the Beta was released and now takes a moment to reflect on the newest addition to Ubuntu. Ed believes that Karmic is the best release to date! He attributes this components to making this happen: Ubuntu Hundred Paper Cuts Project, new look of the User Interface, and the Linux Kernel that shipped with 9.10. In his article Ed goes into much more detail about all 3 of these components. Ed also talks about some new features and applications with Karmic as well as the Firefox advancements. He concludes with praises for Ubuntu 9.10 and is looking forward to "further improvements and polish" http://edhewitt.co.uk/2009/10/29/my-thoughts-on-ubuntu-9-10/
Centrify: Ubuntu Server Edition 9.10 Meets Active Directory
Joe Panettieri, workswithU, discusses the significance of ISV's such as Centrify offering support of the Ubuntu Server. When Ubuntu 9.10 was launched on the 29th of October, Certify (maker of Microsoft Active Directory, related tools) vowed support of the Ubuntu Server Edition 9.10. Joe points out that though this may be a small step in gaining a "foothold" in the Windows Corporate networks it is still significant step. In this post Joe goes on to tell why this is important and what he would like to see other ISV (Independent Software Vendors) do in support of future Ubuntu Service Releases. Especially the next release (Ubuntu 10.4, Lucid Lynx, Server Edition) as it will be a Long Term Supported (LTS) Release. Though Joe is careful to state he hasn't tested Centrify he does show his excitement and support for ISV's willing to support the Ubuntu 9.10 and future Server Editions. http://www.workswithu.com/2009/10/29/centrify-ubuntu-server-edition-910-meets-active-directory/
Ubuntu 9.10: confidence riding high at Canonical
Sam Varghese, iTWire, discusses the confidence, assertiveness, and cleverness at Canonical, the Corporate sponsor of the Ubuntu Project. In this article Sam discusses the release of Karmic as "the best of all its releases". He also discusses the ShipIt announcement, in which Canonical COO, Jane Silber announced changes and scaling back of the program. Sam cites this is an indicator of Ubuntu being ready for "primetime". Sam also talks about the careful naming of each release and what the names say about the state and goals of each Ubuntu release. Sam reminds us not to forget about the marketing of Ubuntu through IBM or what effect Microsoft announcing the release of documentation of Outlook Personal Folders will do for Ubuntu. Sam discusses where the Ubuntu Project was in 2004 and where and why there is no place to go but up. Read about these things and more in this insightful iTWire story by Sam Varghese. http://www.itwire.com/content/view/28830/1090/
Ubuntu 9.10: Linux for business
http://blogs.computerworld.com/14999/ubuntu_9_10_linux_for_business
Mark Shuttleworth: 10 Thoughts On Ubuntu 9.10
http://www.workswithu.com/2009/10/26/mark-shuttleworth-10-thoughts-on-ubuntu-910/
Ubuntu 9.10 is the Appetizer; Ubuntu 10.04 is the Meal
http://www.workswithu.com/2009/10/28/ubuntu-910-is-the-appetizer-ubuntu-1004-is-the-meal/
Yes, Ubuntu can absolutely be the default Windows alternative
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=26606
ZaReason Bolsters Ubuntu 9.10 Branding
http://www.workswithu.com/2009/10/29/zareason-bolsters-ubuntu-910-branding/
In Other News
Meeting Summaries: <MONTH> <YEAR>
Upcoming Meetings and Events
Monday, November 02, 2009
Ubuntu Open Week
- Start: 15:00 UTC
- End: 22:00 UTC
- Location: IRC #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat
Security Team Catch-up
- Start: 18:00 UTC
- End: 18:30 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: nothing formal, just a weekly catch-up.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
- Start: 13:00 UTC
- End: 14:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Technical Board Meeting
- Start: 15:00 UTC
- End: 16:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
Ubuntu Open Week
- Start: 15:00 UTC
- End: 22:00 UTC
- Location: IRC #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat
Server Team Meeting
- Start: 16:00 UTC
- End: 17:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Desktop Team Meeting
- Start: 16:30 UTC
- End: 17:30 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-desktop
Kernel Team Meeting
- Start: 17:00 UTC
- End: 18:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
LoCo Teams Meeting
- Start: 18:00 UTC
- End: 19:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-locoteams
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
EMEA Membership Meeting
- Start: 21:00 UTC
- End: 22:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership/RegionalBoards/EMEA
Community Council Meeting
- Start: 22:00 UTC
- End: 24:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting
- Start: 00:00 UTC
- End: 01:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Cameroonian LoCoTeam monthly IRC meeting
- Start: 14:00 UTC
- End: 16:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-cm
Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CameroonianTeam/NextMeeting
Ubuntu Open Week
- Start: 15:00 UTC
- End: 22:00 UTC
- Location: IRC #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat
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
- Start: 17:00 UTC
- End: 18:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Ubuntu Java Meeting
- Start: 14:00 UTC
- End: 15:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
- Agenda: None listed as of publication
Ubuntu Open Week
- Start: 15:00 UTC
- End: 22:00 UTC
- Location: IRC #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat
Ubuntu Translations Meeting
- Start: 16:00 UTC
- End: 17:00 UTC
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TranslatingUbuntu/Events/Meetings
Friday, November 06, 2009
Ubuntu Open Week
- Start: 15:00 UTC
- End: 22:00 UTC
- Location: IRC #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat
Saturday, November 07, 2009
- None listed as of publication
Sunday, November 08, 2009
- None listed as of publication
Community Spotlight
Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10
Security Updates
Ubuntu 6.06 Updates
Ubuntu 8.04 Updates
Ubuntu 8.10 Updates
Ubuntu 9.04 Updates
Ubuntu 9.10 Updates
UWN #: A sneak peek
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Conclusion
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Glossary of Terms
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