Issue172

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Contents

Contents

  1. UWN Translations
  2. In This Issue
  3. General Community News
    1. Lucid Alpha 1 released
    2. Transparency and keeping everybody on the same page
  4. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Infamous Bugs
    3. Translation Stats Karmic
    4. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  5. LoCo News
  6. New in Karmic Koala
  7. Launchpad News
  8. Ubuntu Forums News
  9. In The Press
    1. X.Org 7.5 Gets Pulled Into Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
    2. Dell Vostro V13 Offers Style, Substance and Low Price
    3. Canonical Launches Bazaar Commercial Support
    4. Ubuntu Lucid To Get Windows Aero Style Look Thanks To Enhanced GTK+
    5. Plymouth Gets Pulled Into Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
    6. Ubuntu 10.04 Is Off To A Poor Performance Start
    7. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" Alpha 1 Released
    8. Sharma: Ubuntu Misses A Trick
  10. In The Blogosphere
    1. Canonical’s Landscape Dedicated Server Strategy
    2. New Application Stack in Ubuntu 10.04
    3. 100 More Papercuts for Ubuntu 10.04
    4. Trouble Free Karmic Koala
    5. Commercial Services for Bazaar
    6. Dell Website Shows Ubuntu More Respect
    7. The Quest for an Ubuntu Netbook
  11. In Other News
  12. Meeting Summaries: <MONTH> <YEAR>
  13. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Monday, December 14, 2009
      1. Security Team Catch-up
    2. Tuesday, December 15, 2009
      1. Community Council Meeting
      2. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
      3. Technical Board Meeting
      4. Desktop Team Meeting
      5. Kernel Team Meeting
      6. EMEA Membership Board Meeting
      7. LoCo Council Meeting
      8. Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting
    3. Wednesday, December 16, 2009
      1. Server Team Meeting
      2. Foundation Team Meeting
      3. QA Team Meeting
    4. Thursday, December 17, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Java Meeting
    5. Friday, December 18, 2009
      1. Lucid Weekly Release Meeting
    6. Saturday, December 19, 2009
    7. Sunday, December 20, 2009
  14. Community Spotlight
  15. 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
  16. UWN #: A sneak peek
  17. Archives and RSS Feed
  18. Additional Ubuntu News
  19. Conclusion
  20. Credits
  21. Glossary of Terms
  22. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  23. Feedback

newspaper-icon3.jpg

WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #172 for the week December 6th - December 12th, 2009. In this issue we cover ...

UWN Translations

  • Note to translators and our readers: We are trying a new way of linking to our translations pages. Please follow the link below for the information you need.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Translations

In This Issue

General Community News

Lucid Alpha 1 released

Welcome to Lucid Lynx Alpha 1, which will in time become Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Pre-releases of Lucid are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 1 is the first in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Lucid development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Lucid. You can download it here:

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

Alpha 1 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/alpha1 for information on changes in Ubuntu.

This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a list of known bugs (that you don't need to report if you encounter), please see: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/alpha1

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-December/000651.html

Transparency and keeping everybody on the same page

From the Ubuntu Developers mailing list:

The project has grown so much that it's harder and harder for everybody to follow what's going on in each and every team and across the board. There's a lot of different cases where this becomes obvious:

  • An announce sent to a team list might be missed by others who it
    • might concern as well.
  • A conversation in a bug report might not get the exposure it
    • actually deserves.
  • An announce didn't hit the mailing list, but was in a couple of
    • blog posts.
  • etc

In the vast majority of cases there is no active secrecy going on, but more of an oversight that causes others to be out of the loop, which might result in duplicated work, wasted efforts and frustration.

To help to solve the problem a number of us sat down at UDS and tried to figure out common cases where slips like the ones above might happen, have happened, and how to avoid them. The outcome of this is an updated: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeveloperCommunication

This page tries to help identify information that is worth announcing and documenting and how to best do that. Please share the page with others that might benefit from it and please feel free to improve the page with more information to avoid misinformation and lack of information on the general team.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-December/000653.html

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (76454) +61 over last week
  • Critical (41) +8 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (39611) +121 over last week
  • Unassigned (67029) +73 over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (356337) +1821 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 Karmic

  1. Spanish (12303) -573 over last week
  2. Brazilian Portuguese (45538) -13 over last week
  3. French (45838) -132 over last week
  4. Swedish (66615) +2368 over last week
  5. English (United Kingdom) (71876) -40 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

New in Karmic Koala

Launchpad News

Ubuntu Forums News

In The Press

X.Org 7.5 Gets Pulled Into Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Phoronix's Michael Larabel alerts us that just in time for the Alpha 1 release of Ubuntu 10.04, X.Org 7.5 with X Server 1.7 has been pulled into the Lucid Lynx package repository. With this push of new X.Org 7.5 packages comes a number of other upstream X package updates along with rebuilds of the other non-updated drivers so that they will work against this latest stable X Server. This X.Org 7.5 pull though should really not come as any surprise since we have already talked extensively about the X stack for Ubuntu 10.04 along with the fact that Ubuntu Lucid is getting Nouveau kernel mode-setting support. Larabel further states that with Ubuntu 10.04 already boasting the Linux 2.6.32 kernel, X Server 1.7 / X.Org 7.5, and other core changes, you can expect to see the first Linux benchmarks of the Lucid Lynx this week at Phoronix. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzc3OA

Dell Vostro V13 Offers Style, Substance and Low Price

Small Business Computing's Andy Patrizio recalls when Dell launched the Vostro line of SMB computers two years ago, it basically took its existing consumer laptops and desktops, which were cheaper than the enterprise models, stripped out all the trialware and other unwanted software and released them under a new name. Now in generation two, the Vostro line is getting a little individualism. The new Vostro V13 line introduced today has the stylishness of Dell's pricey Adamo line with other features and extras that small and mid-sized businesses will appreciate. At 3.5 pounds, the V13 packs quite a bit into its skinny frame. It offers a 13.3-inch, 1366x768, anti-glare screen, Intel integrated graphics, 2GB of RAM, 250GB or 320GB hard drives, Bluetooth, 802.11g/n Wi-Fi and a built-in Webcam and microphone. The Vostro starts at $449 with the Celeron processor and Ubuntu Linux. http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/news/article.php/3851966

Canonical Launches Bazaar Commercial Support

Sean Michael Kerner of LinuxPlanet says that at the heart of every serious software development project is the use of some kind of version control code repository. For Ubuntu Linux, that version control system is its own Bazaar (bzr) system, which make it easier for the project to encourage and manage developer participation.Now thanks to a new effort from Ubuntu's commercial sponsor Canonical, Bazaar is now set to receive commercial support. Martin Pool, Bazaar's manager at Canonical, noted that getting familiar with the overall system can potentially be an issue, so Canonical will have a training service to help developers get up to speed. Pricing for Bazaar is based on the length of Canonical's engagement in providing support and migration, Pool said. "It is charged on a consulting fee basis -- depending on the number of days that will be required, the price varies," Pool said. http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6926/1/

Ubuntu Lucid To Get Windows Aero Style Look Thanks To Enhanced GTK+

OMG!Ubuntu! reports that Lucid may not be getting a new GTK theme but it will still be getting an entirely new look. Ubuntu’s Ayatana team (most famed for creating those awesome ‘new’ notification balloons that came in Jaunty) are currently testing a super-duper enhanced version of GTK+ that adds RGBA support (think Windows Aero) and client side window decoration. Only a few months ago OMG!Ubuntu! posted a laborious and complex solution for hacking RGBA support in Ubuntu, but thanks to the Ubuntu Ayatana Team it will arrive out-of-the-box in Ubuntu 10.04 and, if suitably tested, will be enabled by default. Let us all hope that this makes it into Lucid (very early in testing stage, has issues with nautilus) but should it be part of Lucid it will undoubtedly help to modernise the look and feel of Ubuntu aside from opening up a whole new realm of possibilities for theme makers and customizers. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/12/lucid-to-get-aero-style-rgba.html

Plymouth Gets Pulled Into Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Michael Larabel of Phoronix tells us that Plymouth is a Red Hat innovation that came around last year to provide a new, attractive boot graphical splash screen that went on to replace RHGB (Red Hat Graphical Boot) in Fedora 10. Over a year ago Larabel reported talk of Plymouth potentially replacing Ubuntu's USplash boot program. However, in May it was then decided that there would be no Plymouth for Ubuntu 9.10 as instead the developers wanted to just focus upon making Ubuntu Linux boot so fast that such a graphical splash screen would not even be needed. The Ubuntu development community and Canonical seemed to have changed their mind. Just uploaded to the Ubuntu Lucid repository for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is in fact Plymouth. Plymouth 0.8.0 ended up getting pulled into Lucid and its package is currently building. The package can be found on Launchpad. Don't expect to see a beautifully polished Ubuntu-ized splash screen just yet for Ubuntu 10.04, but you can begin rejoicing that USplash is finally being replaced by Plymouth. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzc5Mw

Ubuntu 10.04 Is Off To A Poor Performance Start

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports that December 10th marked the first alpha release of Ubuntu 10.04. While there is still a long journey ahead for this Long-Term Support release before it officially makes its debut in April, Larabel could not pass up the opportunity to provide some early benchmarks of the Lucid Lynx. So far Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" is running slower than Ubuntu 9.10. Of the benchmarks Larabel shared, there was only one performance improvement and that was with the x264 encoding application while in the others (that are largely disk related) there were all performance drops to note, some of which were caused by an EXT4 file-system change in this latest Linux kernel. At the end of the day though, Ubuntu Lucid has just been in development now for about a month and a half and there is much work to be done and many new packages to be merged prior to its release in April of 2010. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_1004_alpha1&num=1

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" Alpha 1 Released

Michael Larabel of Phoronix notes that just as planned, the first alpha release for Ubuntu 10.04 (the "Lucid Lynx") has arrived. Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 1 is running with the Linux 2.6.32 kernel, X Server 1.7, GNOME 2.29.3, KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta 1, and many other package upgrades since the release of Ubuntu 9.10 back in October. One item worth noting is that Ubuntu 10.04 has completely dropped support for HAL, which will speed up a few areas such as the boot process, but as Larabel's early Ubuntu 10.04 benchmarks show, there are some notable performance regressions. Ubuntu 10.04 is going to be a Canonical Long-Term Support (LTS) release, so be sure to give the Lucid Lynx a good testing if you are experimenting with any of the development releases. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzc5MQ

Sharma: Ubuntu Misses A Trick

Mayank Sharma of PC Plus says, "Ubuntu, you got us this far and then, just when it mattered, you blew it for all of us." Sharms notes that for the first time ever, the mainstream tech press mentioned an upcoming Linux release in a Windows preview article. And what did Ubuntu do to capitalise on this new-found exposure? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Coming on the heels of Windows 7’s release, Karmic Koala was built up as something to look at before making your desktop OS choice, along with Apple’s minor update to OS X, Snow Leopard. Why Ubuntu continues to ignore the benefits of marketing their ware to non-Linux users really baffles Sharma. But, he feels if they continue to do so, they’ll soon lose the momentum that has brought us all this far. http://pcplus.techradar.com/node/3147/

In The Blogosphere

Canonical’s Landscape Dedicated Server Strategy

Joe Panettieri points us to part two of WorksWithU’s podcast with Ken Drachnik, Landscape manager at Canonical. This discussion specifically covers Landscape Dedicated Server Edition — which runs on-premise and allows IT administrators to manage Ubuntu systems. Here’s a minute-by-minute list describing the conversation…

  • 0:00: Introduction
  • 0:32: Understanding Landscape Dedicated Server Edition vs. SaaS
  • 1:13: How enterprises run Landscape locally
  • 1:32: When and why did Canonical launch Landscape Dedicated Server?
  • 2:33: How does Landscape help to patch, audit, configure and maintain Ubuntu systems?
  • 3:38: Is Landscape mainly for enterprise or small business?
  • 4:30: Is Landscape for specific vertical markets?
  • 4:40: How long does it take to get Landscape Dedicated Server up and running?
  • 5:30: What type of training does Canonical offer for Landscape Dedicated Server?
  • 6:05: How is Landscape Dedicated Server priced?
  • 6:55: Where is Landscape Dedicated Server heading next?
  • 8:36: When do Landscape upgrades arrive?
  • 9:15: Online Links
  • 9:38: Conclusion

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/12/07/canonicals-landscape-dedicated-server-strategy/

New Application Stack in Ubuntu 10.04

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/12/04/new-application-stack-in-ubuntu-10-04/

100 More Papercuts for Ubuntu 10.04

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/12/04/100-more-papercuts-for-ubuntu-10-04/

Trouble Free Karmic Koala

http://www.cookingwithlinux.com/content/trouble-free-karmic-koala

Commercial Services for Bazaar

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/12/10/commercial-services-for-bazaar/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WorksWithU+%28Works+With+U%29

Dell Website Shows Ubuntu More Respect

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/12/10/dell-website-shows-ubuntu-more-respect/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WorksWithU+%28Works+With+U%29

The Quest for an Ubuntu Netbook

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/12/09/the-quest-for-an-ubuntu-netbook/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WorksWithU+%28Works+With+U%29

In Other News

Meeting Summaries: <MONTH> <YEAR>

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Monday, December 14, 2009

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, December 15, 2009

Community Council Meeting

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

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

EMEA Membership Board Meeting

  • Start: 19:00 UTC
  • End: 20:00 UTC
  • Location: None listed as of publication
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

LoCo Council Meeting

Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Server Team Meeting

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, December 17, 2009

Ubuntu Java Meeting

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

Friday, December 18, 2009

Lucid Weekly Release Meeting

Saturday, December 19, 2009

  • None listed as of publication

Sunday, December 20, 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

Archives and RSS Feed

You can always find older Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter issues at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter

You can subscribe to the Ubuntu Weekly News via RSS at: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/uwn/feed

Additional Ubuntu News

As always you can find more news and announcements at:

and

Conclusion

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

See you next week!

Credits

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

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

Glossary of Terms

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