Issue175

Contents

Contents

  1. UWN Translations
  2. In This Issue
  3. General Community News
    1. Edubuntu bug day on Tuesday, January 12th
    2. 2nd call for votes: Ubuntu Developer Membership Board Election
    3. Simplified Main Inclusion Request process
    4. New MOTU members
    5. Ubuntu Manual Project
    6. 2010: Your Year for Ubuntu Membership
  4. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Translation Stats Karmic
    3. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  5. LoCo News
    1. Ubuntu Florida team and the Youth Build Day
  6. Launchpad News
    1. Jonathan Lange: The Road Ahead
  7. The Planet
    1. Nathan Haines: Ubucon SCaLE8X Needs You!
    2. Johathan Jesse: Kubuntu Documentation Todo
    3. Jono Bacon: Acire: Delivering A World Of Python Snippets
    4. Martin Owens: Ubuntu Contributors to deviantArt
    5. Jono Bacon: Slashdot in Ubuntu Membership Shocker
    6. Jono Bacon: Lernid 0.4 Released
  8. In The Press
    1. Linux gives me confidence
    2. It's Now Easier Getting Packages In Ubuntu Main
    3. Netbook Speculation: Lenovo, Dell, HP and Linux
    4. Ubuntu Netbook Remix vs Moblin
  9. In The Blogosphere
    1. Buying a Dell Ubuntu Netbook
    2. Benchmarking Ubuntu’s lpia Build
    3. Review: Ubuntu on the Latitude 2100 Netbook
    4. Linux on Netbooks
  10. In Other News
    1. Community And Ubuntu Live Videocast
  11. Community Spotlight
    1. Team of the week
      1. Ubuntu Women project growing in Strength by Laura Czajkowski
  12. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Monday, January 11, 2010
      1. Security Team Catch-up
    2. Tuesday, January 12, 2010
      1. Ubuntu Community Learning Project Meeting
      2. Asia Oceania Membership Board Meeting
      3. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
      4. Technical Board Meeting
      5. Desktop Team Meeting
      6. Kernel Team Meeting
    3. Wednesday, January 13, 2010
      1. Server Team Meeting
      2. Cameroonian LoCoTeam monthly IRC meeting
      3. Foundation Team Meeting
      4. QA Team Meeting
      5. Edubuntu Meeting
      6. Ubuntu-ie IRC Meering
    4. Thursday, January 14, 2010
      1. Ubuntu Java Meeting
    5. Friday, January 15, 2010
      1. Lucid Weekly Release Meeting
    6. Saturday, January 16, 2010
    7. Sunday, January 17, 2010
      1. Ubuntu UK LoCo Team Meeting
  13. 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
  14. Archives and RSS Feed
  15. Additional Ubuntu News
  16. Conclusion
  17. Credits
  18. Glossary of Terms
  19. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  20. Feedback

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Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #175 for the week January 3rd - January 9th, 2010. In this issue we cover: Edubuntu bug day on Tuesday, January 12th, 2nd call for votes: Ubuntu Developer Membership Board Election, Simplified Main Inclusion Request process, New MOTU members, Ubuntu Manual Project, 2010: Your Year for Ubuntu Membership, Ubuntu Florida Team and the "Youth Build Day", Lanuchpad - Jonathan Lange: The Road Ahead, Community and Ubuntu Live Videocast, Ubuntu Women project growing in Strength, 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

  • Edubuntu bug day on Tuesday, January 12th
  • 2nd call for votes: Ubuntu Developer Membership Board Election
  • Simplified Main Inclusion Request process
  • New MOTU members
  • Ubuntu Manual Project
  • 2010: Your Year for Ubuntu Membership
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Ubuntu Florida Team and the "Youth Build Day"
  • Lanuchpad - Jonathan Lange: The Road Ahead
  • The Planet
  • In the Press & Blogosphere

  • Community and Ubuntu Live Videocast
  • Ubuntu Women project growing in Strength
  • Upcoming Meetings & Events

  • Updates & Security

General Community News

Edubuntu bug day on Tuesday, January 12th

The Edubuntu project will have its first bug day for the Lucid development cycle this Tuesday. It will be coordinated by Scott Balneaves, one of the Edubuntu council members. The event will take place all day in #edubuntu on irc.freenode.net. If you plan to attend, please look at: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/~edubuntu-bugs/+packagebugs

This is a great chance to get going on the bugs you would like to see fixed for Lucid.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-devel/2009-December/003220.html

2nd call for votes: Ubuntu Developer Membership Board Election

So far, only 64 out of 146 eligible voters have cast their vote. The poll will end 18 January 2010. All Ubuntu developers should have received a ballot by email. If you did not receive yours for some reason, please contact me and I will arrange for it. Matt Zimmerman: mdz@ubuntu.com

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2010-January/000661.html

Simplified Main Inclusion Request process

Hello Ubuntu developers, after some discussion in the MIR team and on ubuntu-devel@ [1], we simplified the Main Inclusion Request process to require much less bureaucracy.

What we really want is reporters to go through the checklist and discuss the violations of the MIR requirement standards in the bug report with the MIR team, not write lengthy wiki pages with boilerplate text (especially not for trivial packages like perl bindings).

Thus wiki page reports will not be used at all any more from now on. Instead, we will just use MIR bugs, and discuss the package problems there (as we already do) and reduce a MIR to the rationale and a confirmation

or

Martin Pitt has updated the new process documentation [2] and also ensured that the requirement checklist [3] is up to date.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2010-January/000662.html

New MOTU members

Charlie Smotherman is now a MOTU

Having been through a couple of developer applications already (Contributing Developer, upload rights for several packages), Charlie Smotherman was now made MOTU in the 2010-01-08 Meeting. Launchpad Page: https://edge.launchpad.net/~cjsmo , Wiki Page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CharlieSmotherman

Ilya Barygin is now a MOTU

Ilya's great work on merges, FTBFSes and other QA activities spoke for themselves and we're very happy with the new addition to the MOTU team as of the 2010-01-08 Meeting. Launchpad Page: https://launchpad.net/~randomaction , Wiki Page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IlyaBarygin

Please give both of these new MOTU Members a warm welcome to the team.

Ubuntu Manual Project

The Ubuntu Manual Project could use your help. The overview of this project is to compile a complete beginners manual for Ubuntu, featuring comprehensive guides, How Tos and information on anything you need to know after first installing Ubuntu. It is designed to be as user-friendly and easy to follow as possible, it should provide the first point of reference to any Ubuntu newcomer with lots of information in one easy to access PDF file. Plus, every six months there will be a new revision released to coincide with each new release of Ubuntu.

The manual is written and maintained by the Ubuntu Manual Team. https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual

To get more information on this team and find out how you can help, please visit their wiki page below.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual

2010: Your Year for Ubuntu Membership

Here is an interview with a very well know Ubuntu Community Member, Nathan Handler, by Amber Graner.

Ubuntu membership is not new! It's been around for several years now. This interview is to let those who are new to the Ubuntu Community as well as those who are already contributing know a little more Ubuntu Membership Process.

Maybe you have been thinking about becoming an Ubuntu Member? If so, 2010 can be your year. Let's find out how. I had the opportunity to interview Nathan Handler who lead a session on Ubuntu Membership during the last Ubuntu Open Week. Nathan is a member of the Ubuntu IRCC (Internet Relay Chat Council). Nathan is very versed in the community aspects as he is an active contributor in many areas. Nathan was also feature in the Ubuntu Hall of Fame. Let's get started!

Amber Graner: What is an Ubuntu Member?

Nathan Handler: Ubuntu Members are users who have made substantial and sustained contributions to Ubuntu. These contributions can be in the form of packaging, artwork, answering questions on the forum, participating in a LoCo, or in any way that benefits Ubuntu or the Ubuntu community. Members are entitled to certain privileges, such as an @ubuntu.com email address, the right to carry Ubuntu business cards, and the ability to confirm Ubuntu Community Council nominations.

AG: Why is or is it even important to become and Ubuntu Member?

NH: Ubuntu Membership itself is a lot less important than what it represents. People often set a goal of becoming an Ubuntu Member because they want one of the many benefits that goes along with it. Instead, people should set a goal of making substantial and sustained contributions to Ubuntu. By doing this, the focus shifts from working hard in order to get one of the Membership benefits to working hard in order to make Ubuntu a greater distribution and improve the community, which is a lot more important than being recognized as an Ubuntu Member.

AG: How do you become an Ubuntu Member?

NH: Once you feel your contributions have been substantial and sustained, you should prepare a wiki page detailing all of your contributions. It is also beneficial to ask people you have worked with to add testimonials to your wiki page. These testimonials will allow the governing body that reviews your application to see how well you interact with the community, as well as get a better feel for your contributions. There are several governing bodies in the Ubuntu community that are capable of granting Ubuntu Membership. Most people will acquire Membership from one of the three regional membership boards. However, depending on where you have contributed, you might also receive from the MOTU Council, Kubuntu Council, or Edubuntu Council. These different groups will review your wiki page, as well as any other pages that show your contributions (i.e. your launchpad profile, forum profile, etc). They will then ask you a few questions about your contributions and your plans for the future. Finally, they will vote to determine whether or not you will become an Ubuntu member.

AG: Is it only for Developers ie people who write the code?

NH: Membership is not only for developers. However, packaging and writing code for Ubuntu is one way to become an Ubuntu Member. Ubuntu Membership is granted for people who have contributed to Ubuntu in any form.

AG: Can you define sustained contribution?

NH: Sustained contribution means that submitting one substantial patch or writing one substantial tutorial will not be enough to acquire Ubuntu Membership. These contributions will need to be kept up for an extended period of time. Generally, sustained means at least six months, but it can be shorter than this in certain situations.

AG: How long does it take on average to become and Ubuntu Member?

NH: There is no set length of time that it takes to become an Ubuntu Member. It depends entirely on how much you contribute to Ubuntu and how well you interact with the rest of the community. However, to become an Ubuntu Member, your contributions must be substantial and sustained. It is rare for applications to be accepted from people contributing for less than 6 months. The best way to determine if your contributions have been substantial and sustained is to ask people in the community with whom you have worked.

AG: Thanks again Nathan! You rock!

Do you or someone you know fall into the category of sustained contributions? If so, get those wiki's ready and add your name to the membership meetings and let's add to the Ubuntu Membership Roles. I am so excited about seeing you in Ubuntu in 2010 Smile :-) ! Still have questions about how to become a member? Just leave a comment or shoot me an email: amber AT ubuntu-user DOT com.

http://www.ubuntu-user.com/Online/Blogs/Amber-Graner-You-in-Ubuntu/2010-Your-Year-for-Ubuntu-Membership

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (76635) -251 over last week
  • Critical (37) -3 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (39768) -271 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 (11468) -332 over last week
  2. French (44075) -26 over last week
  3. Brazilian Portuguese (45048) +9 over last week
  4. Swedish (66440) +22 over last week
  5. English (United Kingdom) (68590) +7 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 Florida team and the Youth Build Day

This week’s story takes us to the United States, in Florida, where a group of remarkable individuals have taken up the lofty goal of making the world a better place by way of Open Source. Let’s learn some more about our heroes.

Meet the Florida LoCo: a group of over 250 enthusiasts with a broad scope of interests, ranging from DJ’ing to System Administration, united by the Ubuntu spirit and a common master plan.

QuinnCo, a non-profit organisation located in Central Florida run by Michael and Michelle Hall, also members of the Florida LoCo. They take donated second-hand computers, fix them if necessary, put Ubuntu or Qimo (their own distro for children) on them and give them out to kids and families in need.

Last but not least, the other rock stars in this story: the members of local LUGs, in particular the Lakeland Linux Enthusiasts, and the children from the Florida Baptist Children’s Home themselves.

It was last summer in Florida, when Michael and Michelle started planning to run a Youth Build Day in a local children’s home. The idea was to have a computer build day, where they’d bring in disadvantaged youth and mentor them through building machines. QuinnCo, being known from their impressive work and regular collaboration with the Florida LoCo, made other members not to think twice and to quickly get on board.

After careful preparation, thoughtful organization, meetings, and several calls for participation the big day finally came: the Youth Build Day on the 15th of August. LoCo members were driving from one end of the state to the other to turn out and help, while several people from local meetup.com groups also came over. On top of that, there were about 30 of the kids from the children’s home helping, learning about computers and installing Ubuntu and Qimo on the machines they had fixed up.

Not only were they building computers for the kids, they were teaching them about computers, both hardware and software, and also about Linux and Open Source.

All in all, it was an incredible success: by the end of the day there had been about 75 participants, who managed to process 47 computers. Of those, about 40 were working and the rest had to be used for parts. Seven of them were placed at the children’s home itself and the rest were given out to local children and child-care facilities in the community.

Some of the most memorable experiences recollected from the participants were the great time they had meeting new Ubuntu people and the kids, how encouraging was to see how everyone was working together as a team and how the adults took the kids under wing, mentoring them through all of the stages of computer repair and installation.

This demonstrates the essence of the LoCo teams at the very heart of the Ubuntu community: individuals sharing the familiar “humanity to others” ideals and working together as a team to accomplish their goals. One can only be proud of being part of such a community.

Links

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1965

Launchpad News

Jonathan Lange: The Road Ahead

It’s my pleasure to introduce to you the single greatest Launchpad planning achievement for 2010: the roadmap. https://dev.launchpad.net/RoadMap

For the last few months we’ve been working on bridging the gap between the Ubuntu distribution and the upstreams that it’s made from: making it easier for patches, translations, and bug reports to flow between Ubuntu users, Ubuntu developers, and upstream developers. https://dev.launchpad.net/VersionFourDotO/Themes

We’ve been asking users what they want and trying really hard to listen to them. And, of course, since we’re Free Software now, all of our discussion, development and planning is out in the open.

Still, there are a lot of people who care a lot about Launchpad but don’t have time to follow our mailing list or dev wiki. In particular, Ubuntu contributors are generally way too busy making Ubuntu better to keep up with every thread there. If people who care about Launchpad can’t keep track of what we are doing, they can’t tell us how we can do it better, and they can’t cheer us on when we’re doing it right.

We needed something to keep everyone in the loop. But it needed to be something simple, since we don’t want to spend all of our time telling people what we are going to do instead of actually doing it.

At Kiko’s urgings (perhaps inspired by Jono Bacon’s roadmaps), we’ve prepared a roadmap for the next few months of Launchpad development, in which the highlights are:

  • Guiding developers to the most important (hottest) bugs
  • Getting patches attached to bugs into the code review system
  • Automatic imports into bzr from hg (we already do git)
  • Ubuntu packages built fresh each day from the latest code

And of course, there’s more on the roadmap.

We intend to keep the page up-to-date and to keep the URL constant. This means that any time you want to know what we’re planning, you can look at that page and know for sure.

Remember, it’s an expression of intent, and not an actual commitment. If we can figure out a way to better connect the world of open source software, we’ll change the roadmap in a heartbeat.

http://blog.launchpad.net/

The Planet

Nathan Haines: Ubucon SCaLE8X Needs You!

I'm proud to announce an Ubucon at SCaLE8X on Friday, February 19th, 2010. An Ubucon is an organized event for Ubuntu users that's halfway between an unconference and a convention. The main focus is for Ubuntu users to get together and meet others, share ideas, and improve their skills.

We want to line up speakers for several sessions. We're looking presentations on various topics that would be of interest to casual and beginning users. A presentation might be as simple as how to use Evolution to tie together your email, calendaring, and contacts, and how that integrates into the GNOME desktop. If it's something useful that you wish you'd have known as a beginning Ubuntu user then it's fair game.

If you have a topic you'd like to present, please email me your proposal at nhaines@ubuntu.com. Include your full name, a contact email, and a description of what your proposed talk would cover. Because we want to leave plenty of time for communication, you should plan to talk for 50 minutes, including any questions and answers portion of the talk. We'll have a projector and a computer available for slides in OpenDocument or PDF format. If you have any special requirements, please mention that in your proposal.

The deadline for submissions is Friday, January 15th, 2010. If you have any questions, please let me know. We'll notify selected speakers a week later, by Friday, January 22nd, 2010.

In addition, we'll have a round of lightning talks at the end of the day, so if you want to talk but can't do it for 50 minutes, or just want to get a taste of sharing with others, you'll have an opportunity to tell us all about something awesome.

http://nhaines.livejournal.com/52619.html

Johathan Jesse: Kubuntu Documentation Todo

In the previous release of Kubuntu the documentation was pretty terrible, awful in fact which is mostly my fault. I didn’t contribute much if anything to the last set, but that is besides the point. I wanted to provide a little update on the status of things. My buddy Richard, post a call for help and we had a lot of response.

For those interested in the current status of Kubuntu Documentation, visit the TODO page on the wiki: https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/Documentation/Lucid

http://jjesse.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/kubuntu-documentation-todo/

Jono Bacon: Acire: Delivering A World Of Python Snippets

A few weeks back I blogged about my new program Acire: a simple little tool that provides a library of Python examples called snippets that outline how to do specific taks. With each snippet you can browse the code, run it and otherwise learn how it works in order to help you get to grips with writing your own programs as quickly and easily as possible.

I wrote Acire to augment Quickly in lowering the bar for Opportunistic Programmers to get involved in writing applications. For more on opportunistic programmers see my article Unchaining the Opportunistic Programmer.

So core ethos in my mind behind Acire is to: Provide a regularly, automatically updating diverse range of Python examples, all available within Acire, which allows you to browse, view, run and learn from them.

We need your snippets in order to make this project work better for everyone. I am really keen to see snippets on pretty much everything and if you want to help, a great place to start is converting the Quickly snippets page over to real, runnable snippets for python-snippets. Let’s roll! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Quickly/Snippets

Instructions on installing Acire and how to add your snippets is available at the link below.

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/01/08/acire-delivering-a-world-of-python-snippets/

Martin Owens: Ubuntu Contributors to deviantArt

If any of you were having problems joining the new deviantArt group, I should have fixed the issues now. What I’ve done is made sure that everyone who joins is automatically approved as a Contributor. So you should be able to post art, favourites and blog entries to the group without asking or voting.

Lets try and attract typical and atypical people to join, anyone who is involved in art or design and uses or is interested in Ubuntu. I’d also like some volunteers who could go through searches for Ubuntu and start adding historical works to the favourites and galleries. I’d like the favourites to contain works made using Ubuntu, and the galleries to contain things that were made for Ubuntu (wallpapers, ui mockups, tans, fan art etc).

Go here to join: http://ubuntu-artists.deviantart.com/

http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/contributors-to-deviantart-problems-fixed/

Jono Bacon: Slashdot in Ubuntu Membership Shocker

For those of you who have read the recent Slashdot article announcing Ubuntu’s new membership programme, this is clearly a mistake. http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/01/06/1420209/Ubuntu-Memberships-Introduced

Ubuntu has had the concept of membership for many years, helping us to identify those who have made a significant and sustained contribution. This is nothing new and nothing is changing.

More information on Ubuntu Membership can be found here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/01/06/slashdot-in-ubuntu-membership-shocker/

Jono Bacon: Lernid 0.4 Released

I have just released Lernid 0.4 to the Lernid Releases PPA. This release incorporates the final features that I planned out for the first major release, and it is now onto bug fixing in preparation for our first full-scale event that can use Lernid – Ubuntu Developer Week.

To install and use Lernid to connect. Install it by following these instructions (on Karmic):

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

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/01/05/lernid-0-4-released-and-demo/

In The Press

Linux gives me confidence

Shane Shields (Locutus),Toolbox for IT blogger discusses the confidence he has in his Linux operation system, and states, "This something I never had with windows. Confidence in my operating system." He notes that in the middle of a remote upgrade of Ubuntu (Jaunty to Karmic) that the computer rebooted. He points out several reasons this could happen. The end user he was working with was a bit worried when the computer he was working with did not boot properly but Shields wasn't. Shields reassures them when, "They asked if I could save it and I replied "Of course, this is Linux". Shields notes, "Then and there I realised something. I had such confidence in the Linux operating system that even though I was not sure exactly how to save such a completely borked upgrade I was sure I could." He notes, "Even if I do something wrong with Linux. Yes I do things wrong every now and then Smile :) I have the confidence in Linux that I can reverse that mistake easily." so take a look at his poll at the end of the article and vote on which operating system gives you confidence.

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/locutus/linux-gives-me-confidence-36243

It's Now Easier Getting Packages In Ubuntu Main

Phoronix's Michael Larabel says that while it's not too difficult to get your own package within Ubuntu's universe repository, it's more difficult to get a Debian package promoted to be within Ubuntu main, or the main repository that is officially supported by Canonical. However, the Ubuntu development community has decided to make that process a bit easier by eliminating some of the hurdles imposed when a package is initially rejected from being pushed into the main repository. Clarifying main package concerns used to require writing lengthy Wiki page entries, but now it's much more concise, simpler, and should be easier on everyone involved in the process. The change regarding getting Debian packages into the main Ubuntu repository can be found in the announcement on ubuntu-devel-announce. The actual steps can be found on the Ubuntu Wiki via their inclusion requirements and inclusion process pages.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzg2MQ

Netbook Speculation: Lenovo, Dell, HP and Linux

The VAR Guy's Dave Courbanou notes that the Netbook, once considered a toy, now seems like the preferred device for many productivity-driven workhorse travelers. Even if you’re not a mobile workaholic, there’s something simplistically perfect about sofa-browsing while watching TV and catching up on some e-mail. With a small form factor, there comes caveats at the expense of size and portability, but recent moves by Lenovo and others show some promising trends — several of which involve Linux. While there are many netbooks to choose from, Dell is still shipping their Mini 10V’s with Ubuntu Linux, and that’s good news for the Linux world. Since netbook hardware can be hit-or-miss with big name Linux distros, it’s nice to see Dell officially supporting the product.

http://www.thevarguy.com/2010/01/06/netbook-speculation-lenovo-dell-hp-and-linux/

Ubuntu Netbook Remix vs Moblin

TuxRadar recognizes that over the last 12 months, netbook and mobile Linux has made massive advances in features and install base. This is primarily thanks to two netbook distributions - Moblin and Canonical's Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Canonical put a great deal of effort into developing Ubuntu Netbook Remix, pulling massive boot speed improvements, power management code and a new window manager into the standard Ubuntu distribution. It also makes good use of recent additions to Ubuntu, including the Ubuntu One cloud storage system and the Empathy instant messenger, which makes good use of the limited screen sizes on these devices. The best thing about UNR is the breadth of packages available. You can install anything that any other Ubuntu user can, which is a massive advantage if you look at the tiny selection available for Moblin. It's likely that Canonical will be able to forge stronger relationships with companies like Dell, which is already shipping a specific version of UNR on its Mini 9 platform. As Windows XP is phased out and the cost of bundling Windows 7 rises, manufacturers will be looking for a cheap and easily maintainable netbook OS, and UNR fits the bill admirably.

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/ubuntu-netbook-remix-vs-moblin

In The Blogosphere

Buying a Dell Ubuntu Netbook

Christopher Tozzi, WorksWithU, went on a search for a New Ubuntu Netbook. He was looking at 3 vendors - System76, Zareason, and Dell. In the end he decided to go with the Dell latitude 2100 netbook, but notes that this particular netbook was not initially on his list of choices, but thanks to readers it was brought to his attention. Tozzi states, "The decision was mostly an economic one. Dell simply proved to be the least expensive option for my configuration, particularly because I bought from its refurbished outlet, which offers discounts on lightly used pre-owned systems, but with the same warranty as on new machines." Tozzi also mentions in this article that Zareason and System76 prices on their netbooks are not outrageous and notes some good reasons one would consider buying from them as well.

http://www.workswithu.com/2010/01/04/buying-a-dell-ubuntu-netbook/

Benchmarking Ubuntu’s lpia Build

Christopher Tozzi, WorkWithU, goes through his thought process of deciding to use either the i386 or Ipia build of Ubuntu on his new Dell Latitude 2100 netbook. He states, that even though he knows that Canonical announced last November that they would discontinue the Ipia build after Ubuntu 9.10 he was going to determine which ether the i386 or the Ipia build would provide the best performance. Tozzi goes through the benchmarking he ran to help make the decision of sticking to the i386 build. Check the article to see how and why Tozzi came choose the i386 build.

http://www.workswithu.com/2010/01/05/benchmarking-ubuntus-lpia-build/

Review: Ubuntu on the Latitude 2100 Netbook

Christopher Tozzi, WorksWithU, reviews his new Dell Latitude 2100 netbook. Tozzi give a hardware overview letting readers know that the "... netbook came with a 6-cell battery, an Intel 945 graphics chipset, Intel 5100 wireless and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. It weighs in at just under 3 pounds, placing it a bit on the heavy side for netbooks (Dell’s Mini 10, by comparison, is closer to 2.5 pounds)." He goes on to to describe how the Ubuntu on the 2100 is working for him 2 weeks into usage. He notes, "The one software issue I’ve come up against is the webcam. It was detected by Ubuntu out-of-the-box, but when I installed Cheese for taking pictures and video, I found I could only record the latter if I reduced the camera resolution to around 320×240 pixels, instead of the maximum 1280×1024." He concludes, "In terms of overall performance, I am intensely happy with Ubuntu on this machine. To sum up, the Latitude 2100 is a great piece of hardware with near-flawless Ubuntu support. If only I could disable the wifi light so I don’t look extra foolish during my next research trip to the French military archives, I’d be well pleased indeed."

http://www.workswithu.com/2010/01/07/review-ubuntu-on-the-latitude-2100-netbook/

Linux on Netbooks

J.A. Watson, ZDNet UK, reviews with screen shots some of the most popular Netbook-centric Linux distributions. Watson in regard to Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix states, "I find this to be significantly more pleasant than the previous UNR releases, simply because they have removed the large "Places" column from the right side of the screen, which makes it look much less cluttered and confusing." In his review of Kubuntu 9.10 with the preliminary KDE Netbook Desktop he notes, "Next up is Kubuntu 9.10, with the preliminary KDE Netbook desktop, which is still very much under development. But I think it still provides a good look at the direction they are going, so I'm including it here." Last up in his review is Moblin 2.1 desktop, "Now, if this desktop looks nice to you, or makes sense to you, or looks like something you might want to use... well... more power to you. After numerous attempts, I still can't make heads or tails of it, and I find it to be not only confusing, but also virtually impossible to customize or even adjust in any significant way." Watson hopes that readers find this information "useful and the associated pictures enlightening.

http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10014719o-2000498448b,00.htm

In Other News

Community And Ubuntu Live Videocast

Jono has started up his "At Home With Jono Bacon" broadcast series. It is a series of videocasts about community growth and building, and sharing work and approaches with the communities that I am involved in, namely Ubuntu, Shot Of Jaq, and the Community Leadership Summit.

This show includes:

  • Talking about Lernid, my new e-learning tool and how it can be used by your communities.
  • My teams plans for the coming Ubuntu cycle.
  • New goings on in the Ubuntu LoCo World.

  • Tracking progress in community teams with Burndown charts.
  • Announcing the Community Leadership Summit 2010.

Those of you who tuned in last year to these shows will notice a significant improvement in quality as I have upgraded the studio, so do be sure to come along and check out the show.

You can watch from your web browser at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon

Community Spotlight

Team of the week

Ubuntu Women project growing in Strength by Laura Czajkowski

Since joining the group well over a year ago, and having become an active member, I’ve seen it grow both in numbers and in an unmeasurable way where we help newcomers join and get active within the larger Ubuntu community. Within such a community, we have vast and varying degrees of opinions on matters, but I think that can be said about most groups in Open Source? The project has ran pottering along in the past, it existed, some people knew about it, it had some activity. In the last few months, it seems to have consumed some a shot of the caffeine injection of life and now loads more people are helping where they can and jumping two feet into the project and taking on board tasks, asking for help, delegating and working together as a team.

During, UDS Lucid, we had 3 sessions. They were long thought provoking and in many ways I found them mentally draining. It was worth it. A plan came from it, we’ve had a good meeting after this on IRC, more discussion on the mailing list and now, now we’re getting closer to having a leader of the project. All of this is change, and change is good, I’m not saying the old way was bad nor did it not work. I’m stating it’s good to try new approaches to things and see if they make a difference, review them, and change where necessary.

We do look to encourage more female members of the community to join us, either via IRC, the mailing list or the Forums. The project is not IRC based, and I do worry at times, people think that’s the only way to take part in the team, and also this can be seen as a barrier to joining, if people don’t want to or like to use IRC. We need to remember the Ubuntu community is LARGE, spread across many countries and languages, for example, while I speak French, there is no way I’d be able to join a French channel, or I’d be lost. The same can be said about any English channel. With this in mind we’re actually working on a document at present to define the role of our IRC channel within the team.

Again, there are other areas of the team that people don’t know about, we have a great Resource page, helpful hits on IRC, but also the #ubuntu-women channel , Projects that we’re involved in and how you can get more involved. There are many of us involved in the project, Interviews have been written on some of us and I do know there are more to come, If you want to meet more of us, get to know us, and find someone in your area of interest see who is active in the team.

As I said, we’ve come a long way and there is lots more we want to do, and 2010 is going to be a fun packed year, so please encourage your team mates, you LoCo community team members to join us! I did get a giggle out of this, I for one could never be considered a poster child for anything, but Elky did up a great poster for the Ubuntu women project which is also on our resource page. Poster at the link below.

http://www.lczajkowski.com/2010/01/05/ubuntu-women-project-growing-in-strength/

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Monday, January 11, 2010

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, January 12, 2010

Ubuntu Community Learning Project Meeting

Asia Oceania Membership Board Meeting

Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting

Technical Board Meeting

  • Start: 15:00 UTC
  • End: 16:00 UTC
  • Location: #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: Not listed as of publication

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Server Team Meeting

Cameroonian LoCoTeam monthly IRC 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

Edubuntu Meeting

Ubuntu-ie IRC Meering

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Ubuntu Java Meeting

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

Friday, January 15, 2010

Lucid Weekly Release Meeting

Saturday, January 16, 2010

  • None listed as of publication

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Ubuntu UK LoCo Team Meeting

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

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

  • None Reported

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

Ubuntu 8.10 Updates

Ubuntu 9.04 Updates

Ubuntu 9.10 Updates

Archives and RSS Feed

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Additional Ubuntu News

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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
  • Amber Graner
  • Liraz Siri
  • And many others

Glossary of Terms

  1. FTBFS - Fails To Build From Source. - For example when building a package with debuild (http://qa.ubuntuwire.com/ftbfs/)

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

  3. 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.

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UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue175 (last edited 2010-01-10 22:37:13 by ip68-0-180-217)