Issue166

Contents

Contents

  1. UWN Translations
  2. In This Issue
  3. General Community News
    1. Ubuntu 9.10 released
    2. Ubuntu Open Week
    3. Ubuntu One Blog: File sync status update
    4. Canonical Blog: Landscape 1.4 Adds UEC Support
    5. Asia Oceania Membership Board - 27 Oct 09
    6. New MOTU
  4. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Translation Stats Karmic
    3. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  5. LoCo News
    1. Ubuntu-AZ: ABLEconf
    2. Karmic Koala in Karma Dublin
    3. Ubuntu Tamil Team Event at Salem, India
    4. Ubuntu El Salvador
    5. Linuxday 2009
  6. Launchpad News
    1. Meet Francis Lacoste
    2. Accessing Git, Subversion and Mercurial from Bazaar
    3. Commenting on questions
  7. The Planet
    1. Jono Bacon: 1000 reasons to be excited
    2. Jamie Strandoge: Koala Pumpkin
    3. Miguel Ruiz: Release time
    4. Michael Lustfield: Creating Your Own Bazaar Server
    5. Amber Graner: Meet Platform Team Managers - Marjo Mercado and Matt Zimmerman
  8. In The Press
    1. Running Ubuntu 9.10 With Older PC Hardware
    2. Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" Officially Released
    3. Ubuntu 9.10 'Karmic Koala' released, could decide your OS fate
    4. Ubuntu Linux 9.10 'Karmic Koala' Starts Its Climb
    5. Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (Karmic Koala)
  9. In The Blogosphere
    1. Mark Shuttleworth: 10 Thoughts On Ubuntu 9.10
    2. Top things to do after installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
    3. My Thoughts on Ubuntu 9.10
    4. Centrify: Ubuntu Server Edition 9.10 Meets Active Directory
    5. Ubuntu 9.10: confidence riding high at Canonical
    6. Ubuntu 9.10: Linux for business
    7. Ubuntu 9.10 is the Appetizer; Ubuntu 10.04 is the Meal
    8. Yes, Ubuntu can absolutely be the default Windows alternative
    9. ZaReason Bolsters Ubuntu 9.10 Branding
  10. In Other News
    1. Full Circle Magazine #30
    2. Ubuntu Rescue Remix
  11. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Monday, November 02, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Open Week
      2. Security Team Catch-up
    2. Tuesday, November 03, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
      2. Technical Board Meeting
      3. Ubuntu Open Week
      4. Server Team Meeting
      5. Desktop Team Meeting
      6. Kernel Team Meeting
      7. LoCo Teams Meeting
      8. EMEA Membership Meeting
      9. Community Council Meeting
    3. Wednesday, November 04, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting
      2. Cameroonian LoCoTeam monthly IRC meeting
      3. Ubuntu Open Week
      4. Foundation Team Meeting
      5. QA Team Meeting
    4. Thursday, November 05, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Java Meeting
      2. Ubuntu Open Week
      3. Ubuntu Translations Meeting
    5. Friday, November 06, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Open Week
    6. Saturday, November 07, 2009
    7. Sunday, November 08, 2009
  12. Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10
    1. Security Updates
    2. Ubuntu 6.06 Updates
    3. Ubuntu 8.04 Updates
    4. Ubuntu 8.10 Updates
    5. Ubuntu 9.04 Updates
    6. Ubuntu 9.10 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 #166 for the week October 25th - October 31st, 2009. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu 9.10 released, Ubuntu Open Week, Ubuntu One Blog: File sync status update, Canonical Blog: Landscape 1.4 Adds UEC Support, Asia Oceania Membership Board - 27 Oct 09, New MOTU, Ubuntu LoCo News, Meet Francis Lacoste, Accessing Git, Subversion and Mercurial from Bazaar, Commenting on questions, The Planet, Full Circle Magazine #30, Ubuntu Rescue Remix, 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 released
  • Ubuntu Open Week
  • Ubuntu One Blog: File sync status update
  • Canonical Blog: Landscape 1.4 Adds UEC Support
  • Asia Oceania Membership Board - 27 Oct 09
  • New MOTU
  • Ubuntu Stats

  • Ubuntu LoCo News: AZ, Dublin, Tamil, El Salvador, & Italy

  • Meet Francis Lacoste
  • Accessing Git, Subversion and Mercurial from Bazaar
  • Commenting on questions

  • The Planet: Jono Bacon, Jamie Strandoge, Miguel Ruiz, & Amber Graner

  • In the Press & Blogosphere

  • Full Circle Magazine #30
  • Ubuntu Rescue Remix

  • Upcoming Meetings & Events

  • Updates & Security

General Community News

Ubuntu 9.10 released

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop and Server editions, Ubuntu 9.10 Server for Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) and Amazon's EC2, and Ubuntu Netbook Remix, continuing Ubuntu's tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. Read more about the features of Ubuntu 9.10 in the following press releases:

Ubuntu 9.10 will be supported for 18 months on both desktops and servers. Users requiring a longer support lifetime on the server may choose to continue using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, with security support until 2013, rather than upgrading to 9.10.

Thanks to the efforts of the global translation community, Ubuntu is available in 25 languages. For a list of supported languages and detailed translation statistics for these and other languages, see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/ReleaseLanguages/9.10

Ubuntu 9.10 includes the first official release of Ubuntu Server images for UEC and for Amazon's EC2, giving you everything you need for rapid deployment of Ubuntu instances in a cloud computing environment. UEC images, and information on running Ubuntu 9.10 on EC2, are available at: http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/9.10/release

Ubuntu 9.10 is also the basis for new 9.10 releases of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Mythbuntu:

Users of Ubuntu 9.04 will be offered an automatic upgrade to 9.10 via Update Manager. For further information about upgrading, see: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2009-October/000127.html

Ubuntu Open Week

Ubuntu Open Week takes place from the 2nd – 6th November 2009. Open Week is a week of free live online tuition and Q+A sessions that are provided on a range of topics by many of the movers and shakers in out community. If you are interested in getting involved in the Ubuntu community, this is an incredible opportunity to learn many of the skills involved, meet many of our contributors and just have a great time!

The way the sessions work is pretty simple, and everything is explained here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek/JoiningIn You simply join two discussion channels, one in which you watch the session leader deliver a session and the other to ask questions in. This year we even have a web based interface to the sessions, so it is easier than ever to get involved! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek/JoiningIn

This is an fantastic opportunity to welcome new members to our incredible community, and I would like to encourage everyone to spread the word about Ubuntu Open Week so that the opportunity is open to as many people as possible: do go and blog, tweet, dent and otherwise spread the word!

http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/10/13/next-ubuntu-open-week-announced/

Ubuntu One Blog: File sync status update

A few Ubuntu One users have reported a bug (#462828) in the desktop client software that could cause files to become unavailable in some circumstances. As a temporary measure, we have updated our server to display a “Capabilities Mismatch” error to prevent files from becoming unavailable to users. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-client/+bug/462828

A client software update will be released very soon in the update channel. Manually running Update Manager will update your client to work with the server and fix the root cause. Throughout this period, all files are still available from the Ubuntu One website. http://one.ubuntu.com/files

Contact syncing and tomboy syncing services have not been affected by this issue.

UPDATE: A new client is available now for beta PPA users running 9.04 and 9.10. More updates coming soon. https://launchpad.net/~ubuntuone/+archive/beta

UPDATE: The updated Ubuntu One client software is now available to those running Ubuntu 9.10 and not using the beta PPA. Please run Update Manager to install the new software.

http://voices.canonical.com/ubuntuone/?p=129

Canonical Blog: Landscape 1.4 Adds UEC Support

Cloud management dominates the theme for Landscape 1.4 with new features that allow you to manage your private Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) as easily as you manage your instances on Amazon EC2. Also released are new features that help system administrators be more efficient including time based package updates and role based access. These new features will be available this week on both the Hosted and Dedicated Server Editions of Landscape.

Cloud Computing: UEC Support

Building upon our support for Amazon’s EC2 Cloud, users can now start, stop and manage their private Ubuntu instances on their UEC from within Landscape. Users simply enter their credentials directly through Landscape to start, stop and manage an instance. We’ve designed Landscape to work directly with both Amazon and Eucalyptus console pages so you can manage your instances without having to use any other tools. Landscape securely stores your security credentials making is easy to spin up new instances on UEC or EC2 at anytime. Once the instances are initiated, they all display on the same page allowing you manage all your physical, virtual and Cloud instances in one place.

New Timed Package Updates

Users can now schedule package updates, system reboots and shutdowns in the future with minute increments. This gives System Administrators the flexibility to schedule activities for systems to occur during planned maintenance windows or low use periods to minimise the impact on the network. Now that we have developed the time / scheduling function, look for us to add this to other areas of Landscape where it it makes sense, like scheduling scripts in the future.

Administrator Roles

As Landscape is deployed in larger enterprises the need to delegate and limit access to systems has become a key need. Now, in addition to having a master admin who can manage all systems within a Landscape account, you can delegate access to systems to other administrators. This builds on our tags function (which allows you to tag computers performing the same function and update them with a single command) to allocate full access to systems by admin. Typically this means system admins in different areas can be given full access to their local systems, but not to those in another area or country. Like tags, assigning systems to other administrators is completely flexible so you can use what ever criteria you need.

The Landscape 1.4 client is available today and is included with Ubuntu 9.10 server edition. Details are at www.canonical.com/landscape

Ken Drachnik, Landscape Manager

http://blog.canonical.com/?p=276

Asia Oceania Membership Board - 27 Oct 09

Aron Xu, of the Ubuntu Chinese LoCo Team is a new Ubuntu Member following the Asia Oceania Membership Board meeting on 27 Oct 09. Aron Xu has been contributing to Simplified Chinese Translations & is now an active member of Ubuntu Translations Coordinator Team. More about Aron Xu and his contributions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AronXu

Zhengpeng Hou, the Chinese LoCo Team Contact, as new member of Asia Oceania membership board as Board member of Asia Oceania Membership Board. We thank Community Council for approving his inclusion. More about Zhengpeng Hou at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZhengPengHou

The Asia Oceania Board and the Ubuntu Community welcome these newest Ubuntu Members! The next meeting of the Asia Oceania Board is scheduled on 10 Nov 2009 at 10.00 UTC.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-October/000738.html

New MOTU

Jonathan lives in Cape Town, South Africa and his IRC nick is highvoltage. He has been using Ubuntu since Warty 4.10. Working with MOTU since 2005, Jonathan enjoys the open and sharing attitude of the team. You can learn more about Jonathan at this link: http://behindmotu.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/jonathan-carter-highvoltage/ Congratulations to Jonathan on becoming a MOTU.

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

Translation Stats Karmic

  1. Spanish (14671) −207 # over last week
  2. Brazilian Portuguese (49151) −517 # over last week
  3. French (50724) −116 # over last week
  4. Swedish (68583) +2 # over last week
  5. English (United Kingdom) (78223) −2 # 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-AZ: ABLEconf

ABLEconf (Arizona Business and Liberty Experience conference) was held on Saturday, October 24, 2009. Once again at the University of Advancing Technology in Phoenix, the conference held more presentations than in its inaugural. Among those displaying their services was the Ubuntu-Arizona LoCo team.

We were a little disappointed with the conference at first, this year. Not because my table was bracketed by Red Hat on one side and Fedora on the other. No, it just seemed that there were very few people attending the conference. All morning long, we only had a handful of people approach the tables.

However, by noon, the whole area around the vendors’ tables seemed to sprout people by the handfuls and in bunches. Then it hit me. Everyone had been at the morning presentations. That’s why we hadn’t seen them. About 90 people filled the space as PLUG (Phoenix Linux Users Group) leader Hans started up the raffle for prizes. Sponsors had donated a number of prizes to be given out – everything from books to a USB pen (literally) drive, to a child’s penguin costume, to various food items. Excitement ran high as Hans had tickets selected and numbers called off, and good natured teasing erupted from all over.

The presentations were well received. Certainly discussions at our table were enlightening both for the people who came to ask questions and for me. If the questions raised at my table are any indication then people are starting to think of more than just “what’s in it for me.” They are beginning to ask about how Linux behaves and what is available, as well as differences between distributions.

The talks with the Red Hat representatives was just as enlightening. We discussed problems we’d had with various elements of our distributions – everything from window managers and sound and graphics to problems raised by others and how we strove to solve them. It was interesting to find that we all shared similar problems and solutions. Unlike commercial software vendors, there was no competition between us, or at least only good natured competition.

All in all, a great event for the LoCo and Ubuntu!

http://tycheent.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/ubuntu-was-able/

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 Tamil Team Event at Salem, India

A day of demonstration was conducted for the General Public at Salem, TamilNadu, India on Oct 11, 2009. Sri Ramadoss & Kanagaraj from Ubuntu Tamil Team took part in the event and demonstrated the public on various features of Ubuntu. A customized version of Ubuntu was used for this purpose. The event was organized by Visual Media, Sangamamlive.com of Salem. More than fifty participants from across the district of Salem took part in the Event.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-October/000737.html

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/

Linuxday 2009

Saturday 24th October, the Linux User Groups of Italy celebrated the ninth Linuxday, an event promoted by the Italian Linux Society, and organized by the Italians LUGs across 123 cities. Ubuntu-it speakers attended some of these events, promoting Ubuntu and how to participate in the community. Paolo Sammicheli was one of the Ubuntu-it speakers, and there is a video at the link below of his slideshow.

http://xdatap1.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/linuxday-2009/

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 code base 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 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

The Planet

Jono Bacon: 1000 reasons to be excited

Jono was on a mission, and it looks like he was successful. On release day, IRC channel #ubuntu-release-party got a total of 1000 people in channel. w00t! and congrats to all those who joined the channel and had a great time.

http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/10/29/1000-reasons-to-be-excited/

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

Amber Graner: Meet Platform Team Managers - Marjo Mercado and Matt Zimmerman

In this interview, we meet Marjo Mercado, Ubuntu QA Team Manager and the newest member of the Canonical Platform team. And in the final interview in my Where Karmic's Karma Comes From series, we meet Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu CTO and chair of the Ubuntu Technical Board. Matt brings each team together with his tireless efforts to ensure quality, professionalism, and polish to each release.

http://amber.redvoodoo.org/2009/10/you-in-ubuntu-meet-platform-team_27.html

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

Mark Shuttleworth: 10 Thoughts On Ubuntu 9.10

Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical CEO, gave a phone briefing to members of the IT media on 26 Oct about the Ubuntu 9.10. In this article, Joe Panettieri, of workswithU, gives us the Top 10 highlights from the call he had the opportunity to participate in. Highlights include:

  1. The User Experience
  2. Competition with Microsoft, Windows 7

  3. On the NetbookMarket

  4. On Oracle's Buyout of Sun (and MySQL)

  5. On Canonical's March Toward Profits
  6. Simple Commercial Software Installs
  7. Closed Source ISVs - Still a Challenge
  8. But there is ISV Progress
  9. Amazon As A Cloud Standard
  10. Server Hardware Relationships

Whether you are interested in the desktop, server, or the cloud strategy Joe's elaboration on Mark Shuttleworth's key points are well worth the read. http://www.workswithu.com/2009/10/26/mark-shuttleworth-10-thoughts-on-ubuntu-910/

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

Steven J. Vaughan-Nicols, Computerworld Blogger, notes that with the release of Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala, that Ubuntu means business, with a growing emphasis on the server market. Steven, points out that there is no doubt that Ubuntu 9.10 is a great desktop distro, but it is clear that Canonical is serious about having (making) the Ubuntu 9.10 Server known in the enterprise market. Steven, points to a conversation he recently had with Steve George, Canonical, Dir. of Support and Services, that "Canonical saw it's Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) compatible UEC (Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud) as being perhaps Ubuntu 9.10's most important feature" No matter where you want to run your server Ubuntu has something for you. Wanna look into the the future of Enterprise Servers - Look into Ubuntu 9.10 (and beyond) Server Edition and see what solutions Canonical can offer you through the Ubuntu Server and cloud computing. Steven does a great job explaining it and provides links to help the reader figure out what is best. So take a look and see what giant step Ubuntu is taking for the business model. http://blogs.computerworld.com/14999/ubuntu_9_10_linux_for_business

Ubuntu 9.10 is the Appetizer; Ubuntu 10.04 is the Meal

Joe Panettieri, of Works With U, isn't ready to say that Ubuntu 9.10 is the "default alternative to Windows." It's his opinion that Ubuntu 10.04, being a Long Term Support (LTS) release will be the one that counts, especially on servers and in the cloud. He is hearing that "Canonical’s server and partner teams already have their eyes on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), a Long Term Support (LTS) release expected in April 2010." But time will tell, as corporate deployments of Ubuntu result in revenue flowing to Canonical. See his review at the link.

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

Christopher Dawson, writing on ZDNet's News and Blogs section, talks about all the places that Ubuntu is advancing and Windows is not: for example, the mobile and ARM platforms and the cloud. He acknowledges that many feel that Windows 7 is the best Windows yet, but the reason is because of the competition generated by Ubuntu and others in the FLOSS community. And competition is the word, as Ubuntu is available on MID, netbook, kiosk, phone, virtualization and smartbook. See his comments at the link.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=26606

ZaReason Bolsters Ubuntu 9.10 Branding

Joe Panettieri, of Works With U, notes that ZaReason is offering a stick of Ubuntu case badges with purchase of a new computer between October 29 and November 5. ZaReason already puts the logo on keyboards and case badges on netbooks, notebooks, laptops and servers. Now, they're going beyond that, at least temporarily. The reason? Brand recognition. His comments can be seen at the link.

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/10/29/zareason-bolsters-ubuntu-910-branding/

In Other News

Full Circle Magazine #30

Full Circle - the independent magazine for the Ubuntu Linux community are proud to announce the release of their thirtieth issue.

This month:

  • Command and Conquer

  • How-To : Program in Python - Part 4, Applications for Bookworms, Installing OpenOffice.org Base.

  • My Story - The Doctor Is In, Recording Porgy & Bess, Ubuntu Reincarnates Pensioners Laptop

  • My Opinion - Acer Aspire One Distros
  • Review - Sony PRS-505 Ebook Reader
  • MOTU Interview - Thierry Carrez.
  • Top 5 - Writing Applications.
  • Ubuntu Women, Ubuntu Games and all the usual goodness!

Get it while it's hot: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-30

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-October/000742.html

Ubuntu Rescue Remix

Ubuntu Rescue Remix is a toolkit of open source command line interface (CLI) programs to perform data recovery. Presented in .iso format and updated to Ubuntu 9.10, it can be burned to CD or even installed on a USB using USB Startup Disk Creator. For those who don't want to use CLI, it can also be added to the repositories. A list of the tools, broken down by type, can be seen at http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/Software . Feel free to view the entire article, which includes the MD5SUMS.

http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/node/195

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Monday, November 02, 2009

Ubuntu Open Week

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

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

Server Team Meeting

Desktop Team Meeting

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

Community Council Meeting

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting

Cameroonian LoCoTeam monthly IRC meeting

Ubuntu Open Week

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, 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

Ubuntu Translations Meeting

Friday, November 06, 2009

Ubuntu Open Week

Saturday, November 07, 2009

  • None listed as of publication

Sunday, November 08, 2009

  • None listed as of publication

Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

  • Nothing posted as of publication

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

Ubuntu 8.10 Updates

Ubuntu 9.04 Updates

Ubuntu 9.10 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
  • Amber Graner
  • And many others

Glossary of Terms

  1. API - Application Programming Interface.
  2. FOSS - Free Open Source Software.
  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. MOTU - Master Of The Universe - Developers responsible for the Universe and Multiverse repositories. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU

  5. IRC - Internet Relay Chat.
  6. ISV - Independent Software Vendors.

  7. PPA - Personal Package Archive - http://help.launchpad.net/PPA

  8. Q&A - Question And Answer.

  9. QA - Quality Assurance.

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/Issue166 (last edited 2009-11-01 23:32:00 by ip24-251-211-20)