Issue172

Revision 40 as of 2009-12-13 17:29:13

Clear message

Contents

Contents

  1. UWN Translations
  2. In This Issue
  3. General Community News
    1. Lucid Alpha 1 released
    2. Call for nominations: Ubuntu Developer Membership Board
    3. EMEA Regional Membership Board seeking new member
    4. Edubuntu Council Elections
    5. Ubuntu Women Team - A call for leadership nominations
    6. Merging ubuntu-sru and motu-sru
    7. New Ubuntu Members: Americas Membership Board Meeting
  4. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Translation Stats Karmic
    3. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  5. LoCo News
    1. LoCo Directory
    2. Introducing The Ubuntu Hour
    3. Ubuntu Hour in Orlando, Florida
    4. Ubuntu Hour in Winston Salem, NC
  6. Launchpad News
    1. Read-only status notification
    2. Matthew Revell: Phone interviews about your Launchpad usage
    3. Inline dupe-finding: an exercise in pain reduction
  7. The Planet
    1. Jono Bacon: Lernid 0.3 Brings The Rock And Roll
    2. Daniel Holbach: Transparency and keeping everybody on the same page
    3. Charles Profitt: Ubuntu Educators Community
    4. Robert Ancell: Introducing Simple Scan
    5. Ubuntu One Blog: FLOSS Weekly 99 - Ubuntu One
  8. 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
  9. 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
  10. 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
  11. 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
  12. Archives and RSS Feed
  13. Additional Ubuntu News
  14. Conclusion
  15. Credits
  16. Glossary of Terms
  17. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  18. 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

Call for nominations: Ubuntu Developer Membership Board

Earlier this year, the Technical Board agreed to establish a Developer Membership Board (DMB) with responsibility for approving new Ubuntu developers and granting them the appropriate privileges in Launchpad.

Previously, this had been the responsibility of the Technical Board itself. For various reasons, it was prudent to separate this function into its own governance board, for example:

  • The Technical Board had been responsible for new core developer applications, while the MOTU Council was responsible for new MOTU applications. This was confusing for applicants, as the two groups evolved different processes, and doesn’t make as much sense in the context of the reorganization of developer privileges. The DMB will be a central governing body for all developers, regardless of which teams they contribute to.
  • The Technical Board would prefer to conduct all of its discussions in public, while DMB may have cause for private deliberation. This means that the TB mailing list can be public now.
  • The TB had difficulty keeping up with applications in addition to serving its other functions. In particular, TB meetings were difficult to keep on schedule.

Now that the DMB is formally established and active, we would like to hold an election to determine its membership. Until now, the members of the Technical Board have been standing in to fulfill the functions of the DMB.

Because the DMB comprises the functions previously served by the Technical Board and the MOTU Council, the current members of those teams are automatically nominated. Any members of the Technical Board or MOTU Council who *do not* wish to stand for election to the DMB will need to explicitly decline the nomination.

This is an open election, so anyone else may be nominated as well. Candidates should be well qualified to evaluate prospective Ubuntu developers and decide when to entrust them with developer privileges.

There will be a total of 7 seats on the board, chosen by Condorcet voting, similar to the Technical Board election earlier this year.

Nominations should be sent to: http://ubuntuforums.org/developer-membership-board@lists.ubuntu.com

http://mdzlog.alcor.net/2009/12/08/call-for-nominations-ubuntu-developer-membership-board/

EMEA Regional Membership Board seeking new member

The Ubuntu EMEA Regional Membership Board (EMEA RMB) is seeking an additional Ubuntu community member to join as a member of the board. More details about the RMB can be found at the following links:

The Regional Membership Boards are responsible for considering Ubuntu member applications and do this via a regular public meeting held on IRC. Ideally the candidate should reside in an timezone which is conductive to attending one hour online meetings which are typically held at around 20:00 UTC, and can commit to attending those meetings wherever possible.

The EMEA RMB will collate nominations and pass the list (in full) to the Community Council who will select one person from the list supplied. The plan looks like this:

  • Nominations open with this mail on 10th December 2009
  • Nominations close on 17th December 2009
  • EMEA RMB to collate nominees and pass to the Community Council by 24th December
  • Community Council to select from above pool and announce accordingly

If you are an Ubuntu member and are interested in joining the EMEA RMB, or know someone else who is an existing member and might be suitable, please drop an email to the board at the following address: ubuntu-membership-board-emea at lists.ubuntu.com

Note: This is a private mailing list so your mail will be held in moderation, and you may be notified of this via a reply. We will approve all nomination mails to the list.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-December/000799.html

Edubuntu Council Elections

Recently, it was announced[1] the Edubuntu Council nominations and elections. The nomination round has been completed and even though later than originally anticipated, the voting will soon commence. Six polls have been set up on Launchpad. Each poll has two choices, "yes" and "no". The poll starts at 01:00:00 UTC on 11th December 2009 and runs for 7 days. Any Edubuntu Member can vote.

Poll Links:

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us on the edubuntu-devel[2] mailing list.

[1] http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1940

[2] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-devel

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-December/000800.html

Ubuntu Women Team - A call for leadership nominations

The call for self nominations for the Ubuntu Women Project Leadership position is now open. These nominations will go before the Community Council (CC) as the 1st leader of the group will be appointed by the CC. This leader will be in place for 6 months then there will be a 6 month review by the team and it will be decided to extend the term or call for elections from the team at that point. If there are any members who you feel would be great for the leadership position encourage them to complete their wiki and add it to the list, there is some really great talent in the group and the more options the CC has means the more variety group will have. This is so cool. More information about that can be found in the Logs or the Notes.

Please follow the link below to learn more about this process.

http://amber.redvoodoo.org/2009/12/ubuntu-women-meeting-brief-summary-and.html

Merging ubuntu-sru and motu-sru

Attention Ubuntu developers! During the course of general archive re-organization, and a recent (short) discussion on ubuntu-devel@ [1] and on IRC, the SRU teams for main (ubuntu-sru) and universe (motu-sru) have now joined together in: ubuntu-sru

This now means that any member can review/approve/reject any SRU request. However, only the archive administrators amongst the team members can actually press the buttons to accept uploads, but that’s the smallest part of SRU review really.

The policy was already updated a while ago to uniquely apply to the entire archive: Stable Release Updates

In particular, you now should just subscribe “ubuntu-sru” to all SRU requests. “motu-sru” will still work, since ubuntu-sru is now the sole member of motu-sru, but its usage should be phased out.

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1952

New Ubuntu Members: Americas Membership Board Meeting

The following 10 contributors were accepted as Ubuntu Members at the December 7th, 2009 Americas Membership Board Meeting:

Arturo Hernandez

Arturo is an active member of the Ubuntu Mexico team. In his role with the team he is a member and administrator, helps coordinate events and encourages others to use Ubuntu and is now a supervisor on the Ubuntu México Podcast.

Jeremy Pallats

Jeremy is an Ubuntu contributor from Quebec, Canada. A majority of his contributions come from Ubuntu Forums and Ubuntu Beginners team, where he does IRC support and is the leader of the Wiki Focus Group which seeks to improve wiki documentation.

Chris Johnston

Chris resides in Florida, USA and started out writing about Ubuntu for his blog about a year ago. He is a member of the Florida LoCo Team, currently being mentored for contributions to the Bug Squad and Beginners Team and is a member of the Ubuntu Community Learning Project where he is currently helping to plan upcoming Ubuntu User Days.

John Pugh

John is a long time Linux user and an active Florida, USA LoCo team member who founded the Tampa Linux Meetup group. He has presented on Cloud Computing at multiple Linux events and is currently assisting in the porting of the Amahi Project to Ubuntu.

Diego Armando Forigua

Diego is an electrical engineer in Columbia where he is part of the Ubuntu Colombia Council working to spread Ubuntu throughout Colombia and Latin America. In addition to the council, he is an active member on the Colombian mailing list and in IRC and seeks to get further involved in Spanish translations.

Robbie Williamson

Robbie works as the manager of the Ubuntu Foundations and Security Teams within Canonical. He also assists in planning Ubuntu release features, the release schedule, triaging bugs (and even fixing them when time/skill permits!). In his little to no spare time he is active in the community and works on the cups-bjnp.

Rick Spencer

Rick has been using Ubuntu since Warty and has been the Engineering Manager for the desktop team since Jaunty. In addition to his core desktop work, he started the bughugger project (used to be bug-zapper) to create a desktop way to search for and sort bug tasks and started the now very popular Quickly project to help make it easy and fun to develop for Ubuntu.

Carlos Andrés Zambrano Barrera

Carlos is a contributor from Bogotá, Colombia who is active in the Columbian LoCo team, offering support in #ubuntu-co #ubuntu-uy and #ubuntu-es. He has participated in many translations in launchpad and in guides, also support in answers in Spanish and English. He is currenty am participating in a project called zoociedad for a free wireless network to help the community, an Ubuntu server is being used to offer these services.

Michelle Hall

Michelle is an active member of the Florida LoCo team who helps with event coordination and has spoken at several conferences, including the Southern California Linux Expo 7x, Florida Linux Shows, the Atlanta Linux Fest, and the Southeast Linux Fest. She currently contributes to a small, locally run charity founded with her husband that recycles computers and gives them to children who have special needs, or are at risk, and ship these computers with their own Ubuntu-based distribution, Qimo 4 Kids.

Johnathon Mlady

Johnathon has been a full-time ubuntu since 8.04. He's an active part of the Beginner's Team, offering guidance and support as he can, and is involved with the Development focus group of the Beginner's Team' He is also a member of the Ohio LoCo/NE Ohio ReLoCo, where he recently participated in a team BugJam and is currently in the process of setting up the 10.04 global bug jam event with the NEOhio Reloco at his alma mater, exposing the ACM club and those on the west side of Cleveland to Ubuntu.

Following this exciting and productive meeting, the Americas Board and the Ubuntu Community sends congratulations and a big welcome to these new members!

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-December/000797.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

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

LoCo Directory

After many hours of work by lots of nice people, we're happy to announce the Ubuntu LoCo Directory: http://loco.ubuntu.com

The LoCo Directory has been talked about for a long time now and we're happy to release a first functional release, which is 0.1.0. In this first release we simply want to keep team data up to date.

Make sure your LoCo Team is in http://launchpad.net/~locoteams and if you are approved in http://launchpad.net/~locoteams-approved - then you can, if you are an team admin or team owner of the team, edit your team data and we can slowly replace our LoCo Teams List: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeamList

There's a lot of things we still need to do and lots of ideas kicking around for version 0.2.0, which will let you put up Events data for your LoCo team.

If you want to help out:

Thanks a lot to everybody who worked on the code, made designs, helped fix stuff, had conversations about it, spec'd it out, filed bugs and translated it. You are all awesome! Go and try it out, edit your team data and file bugs.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2009-December/004036.html

Introducing The Ubuntu Hour

In the Community Event HowTo session, Canonical Global Support team member Fabian Rodriguez brought to our attention the idea of the Ubuntu Hour. What is The Ubuntu Hour? https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hour

The Ubuntu hour is based on a few simple principles:

  • You live or work near a place with Internet access where you can go for 1 hour every week or every other week
  • You wear something with the Ubuntu logo or have an Ubuntu sticker on your laptop (if you bring a laptop)
  • When/if you show up, you agree to the Ubuntu Code of Conduct
  • Anyone can start an Ubuntu Hour, anywhere, anytime

There are already Ubuntu Hours happening in

  • Montreal, QC, Canada
  • Longueuil, QC, Canada
  • Barcelona, Europe
  • Cleveland, Ohio
  • Tulsa, Oklahoma
  • Ottawa, ON, Canada
  • Dublin, Ireland

Interested in having an Ubuntu Hour near you? Just head over to the wiki, add your information, and let people know that you will be there. No set schedule – just an hour around Ubuntu. I think I might need a good cup of coffee in the near future, so I foresee an Ubuntu Hour cropping up in a town near me soon. Let's invade some coffee shops and spend an hour in great company, drinking great coffee, and enjoying a great operating system – Ubuntu!

http://www.ubuntu-user.com/Online/Blogs/Amber-Graner-You-in-Ubuntu/Ubuntu-Hour-Coffee-Company-Ubuntu-and-You

Ubuntu Hour in Orlando, Florida

When: Monday’s at 7:00 PM EST

Where: Barnes & Noble, Colonial Plaza Market Center, 2418 E. Colonial Dr. Orlando, FL 32803

Map directions here: http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=2418+E+Colonial+Drive+Orlando,+FL+32803&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=49.089956,114.169922&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=2418+E+Colonial+Dr,+Orlando,+Orange,+Florida+32803&t=h&z=17&iwloc=A

Who: You.. Seriously, anyone who is interested in coming is more than welcome!

We will be meeting every Monday at 7:00 PM in the Cafe area of the Barnes & Noble. Please come, spend some time with us, and bring a friend!

http://chrisjohnston.org/2009/ubuntu-hour-in-orlando-florida

Ubuntu Hour in Winston Salem, NC

Who: NC LoCo team but everyone who wants to attend is invited.

What: Ubuntu Hour

Where: Krankies Coffee, 211 East Third Street, Winston-Salem, NC

When: Saturday, December 12, 2009

Time: 11:00am-12:00pm EST

This will be the first Ubuntu Hour in NC - I am so excited and hope more people will start planning an hour with coffee and LoCo team members just to get together and talk about all things Ubuntu or just hang out because everyone has an interest in Ubuntu.

There will be a group of us from Western NC driving to Winston to support this event. How AWESOME that we are supporting each other in this really cool get together. It will be about a 2 hour drive but we are all looking forward to it. If you are in and about the Winston Salem, NC area and you want to join in on the fun please do.

See you there on Saturday! Thanks Mark for organizing the event. Daniel, Mike, and Jeremy thanks for agreeing to head to Winston with me for the event. Road Trip!!!

http://amber.redvoodoo.org/2009/12/ubuntu-hour-in-winston-salem-nc.html

Launchpad News

Read-only status notification

Launchpad’s web interface will be read-only from 22.00 UTC on Wednesday the 16th December 2009 for the release of Launchpad 3.1.12. During that time, other services including PPAs, code hosting and the email interface, will be offline.

  • Starts: 22.00 UTC 16th December
  • Expected back: 23.00 UTC 16th December

This is the final Launchpad code release of 2009! We’ll post the 2010 release calendar here in the next few days.

Follow Launchpad’s official status feed for full status information. http://identi.ca/launchpadstatus

http://blog.launchpad.net/notifications/read-only-22-00-23-00-utc-16th-december-2009

Matthew Revell: Phone interviews about your Launchpad usage

In the Canonical Launchpad team, we all use Launchpad every day. As you’d expect, we also have a lot of contact with people who use Launchpad, both for Ubuntu and other projects.

While personal experience of Launchpad and informal contact give us an insight into how some people use Launchpad and what developments we can introduce to help people do more, we want to cast the net wider.

That’s why, at last month’s Ubuntu Developer Summit in Dallas, I kicked off a new series of Launchpad user interviews.

The next set of interviews will be by phone, later this month, and I’d like to invite you to take part. It’ll take between 30 minutes and one hour and I’ll pay for the call Smile :) During the conversation, I’ll ask you some straightforward questions about how you use Launchpad.

Right now, I’m mostly looking for people who act as a bridge between Ubuntu and an upstream project. For example, you may work on an upstream project (whether or not it uses Launchpad isn’t important) and you occasionally check Launchpad to see what bugs Ubuntu users have filed against that project as it is packaged in Ubuntu. Or maybe you translate both for an upstream project and you work on translations for the project’s Ubuntu package.

That’s not a strict requirement, though: I’m interested in hearing from everyone who wants to talk about their Launchpad usage.

If you’re interested, send me an email (my first name dot my last name at canonical dot com) with a brief description of what you use Launchpad for and I’ll choose ten people for this initial set of phone interviews. Also, let me know your availability for a phone call.

http://blog.launchpad.net/general/phone-interviews-about-your-launchpad-usage

Inline dupe-finding: an exercise in pain reduction

For the last million years or so we’ve been working on a cool new feature for Launchpad Bugs: an inline, AJAXified, asynchronous dupe finder.

For quite some time now people have encountered timeouts or long response times when trying to file bugs, particularly when they enter a long bug summary or the project that they’re filing the bugs on has a lot of bugs through which Launchpad has to search in order to be able to find possible duplicates. The upshot was that whenever a timeout occurred people were unable to file a bug and would have to back up and start again. Needless to say, this was frustrating for all involved.

The new inline dupefinder, which you’ll now find on the “Report a bug” page of any project in Launchpad (when viewed on edge.launchpad.net) is designed to stop this from being a problem, or at least to reduce the problem to a more manageable level and stop it from getting in peoples’ way. It does this in two ways:

  1. The inline list of duplicates is much quicker to render than a full Launchpad page.
  2. If the search for duplicates times out for some reason you’ll still be able to file a bug.

Here’s the catch: we need your help. Launchpad’s development cycle this month is very short due to the approaching year-end holiday period, so we need to get as much testing done on this as possible. Check out the dupe finder, see if it works for you and, most importantly, report a bug if it doesn’t.

One last thing: at the time of writing, the inline dupe finder only works for projects (like Launchpad Bugs), not for packages or project groups. We’ll hopefully be enabling it for project groups today and with a bit of luck for packages, too. We started off with projects only because it’s the simplest implementation of the concept and it gives us a good base to test from.

http://blog.launchpad.net/cool-new-stuff/inline-dupe-finding

The Planet

Jono Bacon: Lernid 0.3 Brings The Rock And Roll

Today I kicked out a new release of Lernid – Lernid 0.3. This release packs in some juicy new features and bug fixes, and we are edging closer to Lernid 1.0 ready for our next major learning event: Ubuntu Developer Week.

This release brings the following new features:

  • Refined Interface
  • Schedule View
  • Local Event times
  • Notifications
  • Improved Browser Feature
  • Automatic Website Loading Triggered By Session Leaders
  • Translations Support

Thanks to David Planella, Lucian Adrian Grijincu, and Andrew Higginson for contributions to this release.

Also, Lernid is built using the Quickly framework, and if it were not for this awesome tool, I doubt I would have ever started hacking on Lernid. If you have ideas for cool desktop applications and have an affinity with Python, you should give it a whirl. More information about Quickly and links to the always wonderful Didier Roche’s tutorial is here. Getting Lernid

Lernid is still very much in development. This 0.3 release is still considered a pre-release and not final. This release is considered a more stable release in our scheme of pre-releases though. You can get it from my PPA. Simple issue the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonobacon sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install lernid

Right now Lernid 0.3 is still building, so there may be a delay until it is available to you. This will deliver each new release of Lernid directly to your desktop in Update Manager updates.

If you would like to play with the crack-of-the-day, the always awesome Nathan Handler has set up a daily builds PPA. You can add it with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lernid-devs/lernid-daily sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install lernid

http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/12/10/lernid-0-3-brings-the-rock-and-roll/

Daniel Holbach: 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

Charles Profitt: Ubuntu Educators Community

The world, at times, is a do-ocracy. Tonight I decided to create a Ning community for Ubuntu Educators. I wanted to create this community to give educators and those supporting educators a place to:

  • Share ideas about how to use FOSS in the classroom
  • Share success stories
  • Ask questions on how to develop curriculum using FOSS

In short have a resource that discusses pedagogy. While there is a great amount of information pertaining to the more technical side of using Ubuntu in the classroom I have not found any focus point that focuses on the classroom teacher.

The URL for the Ning site is: http://ubuntuedu.ning.com/

It will take some time to get the site properly decorated, but for now educators and interested members of the community can join and start discussions.

Robert Ancell: Introducing Simple Scan

One of the goals I want to achieve for Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) is to make scanning really easy. So I've been working on Simple Scan:

Please try it and report any problems you have here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/simple-scan

To install add the PPA and install the simple-scan package or build from source.

The GUI is a mess. This is the first functional release. The GUI is being redesigned for 0.8. The 0.7 release should contain all the functionality required for 1.0. https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/simple-scan/+bug/489528

Who is simple scan for? This application is designed for the 95% of users who just want to connect their scanner and quickly have the image/document in an appropriate format.

How does this relate to GNOME scan? Simple scan does not use the GNOME scan to get the scan data. This is because Ubuntu 10.04 is a Long Term Support release and bringing the whole GNOME scan stack into main is risky (it was previously proposed for 10.04 but was not found to be stable enough). There is an open bug to change to gnomescan when that is appropriate. https://bugs.launchpad.net/simple-scan/+bug/483669

http://bobthegnome.blogspot.com/2009/12/introducing-simple-scan.html

Ubuntu One Blog: FLOSS Weekly 99 - Ubuntu One

Stuart Langridge(sil) was a guest on FLOSS Weekly this week. Stuart told Leo Laporte and Jono Bacon all about the Ubuntu One features, our developer resources, and the plans for Lucid. If you missed TWiT Live, the show (episode 99) is available now. Great job Stuart and thanks TWiT.TV.

http://voices.canonical.com/ubuntuone/?p=155

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

In this article Christopher Tozzi, WorksWithU, discusses some of the major changes in the application stack in Ubuntu 10.04. What are some of those you ask? Not carrying GIMP or F-Spot in the default installation as it takes up a lot of room and arguably most users don't need. F-Spot being removed in the writers opinion is overdue in the writers view as it is written in mono and like GIMP suffers from poor naming. Other changes on the inclusion side include: video edition via PiTiVi and the Ubuntu One Music Store, and a yet to be determined application for backing up files. As the writer points out removing GIMP and F-Spot will make room for the inclusion of the applications for video editing, backup application and the music store. As we are still in the early stages for the final version of Ubuntu 10.04 the writer points out "There’s still plenty of time for Ubuntu developers to rethink or modify the changes discussed above."

If you are a GIMP or F-Spot lover or if Video Editing, backup applications, or the addition of a music store are of interest in Ubuntu 10.04 this article may give you some more insight on the how and why things are being done the way they are for Ubuntu 10.04.

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

100 More Papercuts for Ubuntu 10.04

Christopher Tozzi, WorksWithU, draws attention to t new round of papercuts which target a new round of usability bugs that have been targeted for Ubuntu 10.04. In this article he gives a link to all of them but highlights the following as the most notable ones:

  1. Inconsistent spelling of Filesystem vs. File System
  2. Name the home folder consistently
  3. More specific descriptions in Startup Programs manager
  4. Clean up the PDF printer dialogue
  5. Resizing windows with the mouse is hard
  6. Gnome panel applets move around arbitrarily

Tozzi points out that that the 100 papercuts campaign does a lot to help the Ubuntu experience for not only new users but also helping to resolve those pet peeves of longtime users as well. Tozzi also states that "Ubuntu has at least made an explicit commitment to the experience of the everyday user with this campaign, which is rare in the free-software world." To find out more detail on the top 5 papercuts and to read more about all the papercuts check out Tozzi's article, you may find one or 3 you can help with.

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

Trouble Free Karmic Koala

Ken Lebay, blogger for Cooking with Linux, describes the systems he is using to run Karmic on and goes into to detail on the fact that he is not having trouble with Karmic. He does mention some of the troubles he experienced with Jaunty but says that with Karmic things are running very smoothing. He is running a Dell XPS 420, an Acer Aspire One, then a Dell Optiplex 755. He says that "All of my previous issues fixed and no new ones have raised their ugly heads". He also states he should have 4th machine on Karmic (Ubuntu 9.10) soon and he is looking forward to that as well. If you are running any of these machines you may want to read this article in full.

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

Commercial Services for Bazaar

Christopher Tozzi, WorksWithU, in this article discusses the Canonical's deployment of a suite of commercial services for deploying and managing Bazaar, which a open source version control system. In this article Tozzi goes through the plan and his thoughts about this new revenue stream for Canonical. Tozzi discusses the details of 3 of the commercial services being offered with Bazaar. This includes:

  • Consultancy and Conversion Services
  • Training
  • Support

The plan is for Canonical to charge on a per-day and per-developer basis and make this options available for both open- and closed-source projects.

Tozzi talks about the other alternatives to Bazaar as well as the numerous features Bazaar offers. He also mentions some other projects using Bazaar such as Launchpad, GNU Mailman, Emacs, and MySQL. Tozzi also looks at the interesting point of that Canonical is emphasizing that "it is happy to work with closed-source coders as well as those in the open-source ecosystem." To read more about this very interesting endeavor just follow the link and read the article in depth.

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

Joe Panettieri, WorksWithU, talks about Dell giving more "real estate" to Ubuntu on the Dell US website. Panettieri says, "To Dell U.S.’s credit, the company has long offered visitors a specific URL (www.dell.com/ubuntu) for Ubuntu shoppers. Now, in a subtle but important step, Dell also is finally exposing Ubuntu to consumers who may not be familiar with Linux." Dell is now offering Ubuntu along side Windows options according to Panettieri who gives links to all the sites he is pointing out. He also states Dell still has some room for improvement on this front especially with the business laptopn page and consumer deskp and business desktop pages doesn't mention the Ubuntu Option. If you want to see what Dell is or isn't offering a qucik and easy way to find out is to check out the links in Panettieri article then search around the Dell site yourself.

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

Christoper Tozzi, WorksWithU, points out that he "came into the market for a new Ubuntu netbook" and that while he points out he had some fun with looking he was also meet with some frustrations. Tozzi in this article listed his requirements which included the following:

  • at least 2 gigabytes of memory
  • a built in webcam
  • a solid-state drive
  • something hat's not Windows-ideally Ubuntu-needs to be pre-installed

He found 3 major Vendors that were able to meet his needs they include:

  • Dell
  • ZaReason

  • System76

He states though that none were "exactly" what he was looking for. He hasn't made his purchase yet as he is still looking at options. Take a look at the article to see the why and the story behind each vendor on why that purchase hasn't been made and maybe you in the Ubuntu Community may have a suggestions he just hasn't seen yet.

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

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

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

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
  • Liraz Siri
  • And many others

Glossary of Terms

  1. HAL - Hardware Abstraction Layer
  2. LTS - Long Term Support. - Said of a release that will receive support for 3-years/5-years rather than the typical 18 months
  3. PPA - Personal Package Archive - http://help.launchpad.net/PPA

  4. SMB - Small, Medium sized Business
  5. SRU - Stable release updates. - http://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates

  6. UDS - Ubuntu Developer Summit.
  7. UTC - Coordinated Universal Time: UTC replaced GMT as the basis for the main reference time scale or civil time in various regions on January 1, 1972.

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