Issue18

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 18 for the week of Oct , 8 - 14 2006. In this issue we cover KDE turning 10, Matt Zimmerman telling all, new Edgy apps and much more.

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

In This Issue

  • Behind Ubuntu: Matt Zimmerman
  • The Free Desktop turns 10 - KDE celebrates
  • Topics sought for next development summit
  • Edgy Changes
  • In the Press
  • Security and other 6.06 updates
  • Bug Stats

General Community News

Behind Ubuntu: Matt Zimmerman

Behind Ubuntu sat down with the ever-so-popular Matt Zimmerman recently, for a quick one-on-one conversation. The interview goes over Matt's involvement with the Ubuntu community, Open Source, as well as his personal life. A good read no doubt, so if you are interested in reading the interview, head on over to http://behindubuntu.org/interviews/MattZimmerman and get your fix.

The Free Desktop Turns 10

The free desktop is 10 years old this week as KDE celebrated its 10th birthday on Saturday the 14th. In honour of the momentous anniversary your hard working Kubuntu developers all stayed at home to fix bugs in time for the Edgy release candidate. But in a warehouse somewhere in outer Bavaria the finest free software developers got together to party at the 10 years of Linux Desktop rave.

One of the keynote speakers was the Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon who announced that Mark Shuttleworth was now the first Patron of KDE. This prestigious title shows an ongoing financial and social commitment to KDE. Thanks to Mark for signing up to this new scheme.

KDE e.V. supporting members scheme, http://ev.kde.org/supporting-members.php Mark Shuttleworth Becomes the First Patron of KDE, http://dot.kde.org/1160932072/ KDE Celebrates 10 Years of the Free Desktop, http://dot.kde.org/1160834616/

At the party Jono won a German book on Qt 4. Since he does not speak German, he is giving the book away to the person who will write the best Qt 4 application.

http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=783

Topics for next development summit sought

Kicking off the next development cycle, Matt Zimmerman announced a call for topics for discussion at the next development summit, to be held in early November at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. The topics being discussed will be for the next version of Ubuntu, due out in April 2007. You can read more at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2006-October/000207.html.

Changes In Edgy

This week brought us a whole host of new applications, including new Firefox and Open Office, as well as lots of general polish for the upcoming release.

Two of the largest apps in Ubuntu got updated this week. Ian Jackson uploaded the new firefox 1.99+2.0rc2, bring the latest release candidate of Firefox 2.0 while Mattias Klose uploaded openoffice.org 2.0.4, the latest stable version of Open Office.

Stephan Hermann delivered the new version of wine this week, 0.9.22, which brought the usual list of bugs fixes and other improvements. You can read more at http://winehq.org/?announce=1.126.

In the Zope world, Mattias Klose brought us a whole host of new Zope plugins, including zope-statusmessages 2.0.1, zope-pluginregistry 1.1.1, zope-plonelanguagetool 1.4, zope-plonetranslations 2.6.0, zope-plonepas 2.1, zope-plonetestcase 0.8.4, zope-ploneerrorreporting 1.0, zope-passwordresettool 0.4.1, zope-pas 1.4, zope-kupu 1.3.8, zope-groupuserfolder 3.54, zope-externaleditor 0.9.2, zope-extendedpathindex 2.4, zope-cmfplone 2.5.1, zope-cmfformcontroller 2.0.5, zope-cmfplacefulworkflow 1.0.2, zope-cmfdynamicviewfti 2.1, zope-cmf1.6 1.6.2, zope-atrbw 1.5, zope-atcontenttypes 1.1.3 and zope-archetypes 1.4.1. Lastly, zope 2.9.5 was also uploaded by Mattias.

In server land, there were a few new packages that came around this week. Bloggers will be happy to know that wordpress 2.0.4 is now available. You can read more a http://wordpress.org/development/2006/07/wordpress-204/. Also in serverland is the new mysql 5.0.24a, synced from Debian.

Ubuntu

The world of Telepathy never stops producing new packages to upload. This week they included Daniel Holbach's contribution of libgalago 0.5.2, galago-daemon 0.5.1 and gaim-galago 0.5.1. Riccardo Setti got into the action with telepathy-gabble 0.3.10, telepathy-butterfly 0.1.2, telepathy-python 0.13.3 and telepathy-stream-engine 0.3.7. The biggest new package for Telepathy was meta-telepathy, a meta package for all these disparate packages. Daniel Holbach uploaded 1 and 2 this week. Not quite Telepathy but almost was the syncing of gaim-hotkeys 0.2.0 from Debian.

Artwork in Ubuntu underwent a major change, with the change back to the 6.06 artwork, from the earlier default in Edgy. All this came in edgy-gdm-themes 0.5, edgy-session-splashes 0.3 and edgy-wallpapers 0.5, all uploaded by Daniel Holbach. edgy-wallpapers 0.6 came later, with the removal of a few redundant wallpapers and edgy-gdm-themes 0.6, which added a place for the pam messages. The one piece of the new Edgy stuff that remained were the new sounds.

In other artwork notes, Daniel Holbach uploaded human-theme 0.2, which split out the cursors into human-cursors-theme 0.2, also uploaded this week. human-cursors-theme 0.3 fixed the package so it actually installed. human-icon-theme 0.5 also hit, with some minor work on "vacuuming defs" from the various SVGs. human-icon-theme 0.6 hit later in the week, reducing the size of the netstatus icon. Separate packages for the community artwork also landed, with tropic-look 0.1, peace-look 0.1 and blubuntu-look 0.1.

Kubuntu

The Kubuntu world got its hands on the latest release of the KDE, version 3.5.5 this week, and it has already been added in time for the Release Candidate. This latest release is yet another maintenance release, however there are some notable enhancements as well. Some of the new enhancements include, but are not limited to: Kopete version 0.12.3, support for sudo in kdesu, speed improvements with KHTML, CUPS 1.2 support, and improvements in the number of translations available. A more detailed list of improvements since the KDE 3.5.4 release can be found at http://www.kde.org/announcements/changelogs/changelog3_5_4to3_5_5.php.

Qt 4.2 made its way into Kubuntu recently as well. This latest release of Qt includes numerous amounts of improvements, performance optimizations, and feature additions. Some of these include: enhanced widget styleability, more UI control; new, advanced 2D canvas; tighter integration with the GNOME desktop environment, which will improve the interoperability between KDE and GNOME. More information about the Qt 4.2 release can be found at http://www.trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2006-10-03.5613949127.

Xubuntu

In Xubuntu, the new background image landed in xubuntu-default-settings 0.20, courtesy of Gauvain Pocentek. Xubuntu-meta also got two updates by Jani Monoses, to include avahi-daemon, the linux-printing.org-ppds, util-linux-locales and gcacltool-gtk to the xubuntu-desktop. Later in the week Colin Watson again updated the Xubuntu-meta seeds, this time to remove the -live target, as that is now handled by tasksel.

Other Xubuntu packages included xfwm4 4.3.99.1svn+r23334, a new SVN snapshot of the Xubuntu window manager and system-config-printer 0.7.32, the Red Hat/Fedora tool that Xubuntu uses for controlling their printers. python-cups 1.9.13 was also uploaded, as it was needed for system-config-printer.

Edubuntu

Mirroring the xubuntu changes, edubuntu-meta got updated with avahi-daemon, libgl1-mesa-glx, linuxprinting.org-ppds and onboard added to edubuntu-desktop. There was also an updated edubuntu-artwork 0.1.0 which updated the splash screen.

In The Press

The Daily Cup of Tech takes a look at the involved and lengthy Ubuntu installation process. You can read it all at http://www.dailycupoftech.com/?page_id=47

This week brings two book reviews. The first is of the Apress book, Beginning Ubuntu Linux. The review notes several times that the this book is for new Ubuntu and Linux users and overall gives the book a very favourable review. You can read more at http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/book_review_beginning_ubuntu

The second review is of the Official Ubuntu Book. This time by ArsGeek, again giving high reviews and noting the book is very useful for new Ubuntu and Linux users. In their words:

"So should you go out and buy this book? If you’re a Linux/Ubuntu expert then you can probably forgo it. Anyone else who’s interested in Ubuntu either as a primary operating system, or as a means to learn a lot more about Linux should pick this up. It’s a great reference and has everything you’ll need from install to working productively in one easy place. It also comes with the Ubuntu 6.06 LTS DVD, saving the new user from trying to download and burn a copy – a time saver in the least."

You can read more at http://www.arsgeek.com/?p=625

(Time for another full disclosure. The Chief Editor of the Ubuntu Weekly News, Corey Burger, is one of the primary authors of the Official Ubuntu Book.)

Newsforge reported that Nexenta, an open source operating system, is combining the Open Solaris kernel with GNU utilities and Ubuntu in its alpha 5 release.

Technewsworld has an article on Ubuntu, where Ubuntu is reported to be similar to the Mac OS X of Linux according to IT-Harvest Chief Research Analyst Richard Stiennon, who also "...downplayed Ubuntu's support for Sun hardware, [saying] it would take a bigger player, such as HP... or Dell... to propel Ubuntu further into the business world, where it potentially could function as leverage against incumbent Red Hat."

Meetings and other similar events

During the week of October 9th through the 15th, the following meetings occurred:

During the week of October 16th through the 22nd, the following meetings occurred:

  • Community Council

  • LoCo

  • Edubuntu

All meetings take place in #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net. To check on time and dates for upcoming meetings, please review the calendar at http://fridge.ubuntu.com/event

On October 11, 2006 and October 18, 2006, the Ubuntu Bug Squad hosted yet another Bug Day. The next Bug Day is scheduled for October 25, 2006. Bug Days are all day events, so make sure you are in #ubuntu-bugs on irc.freenode.net, and receive your hugs!

Upcoming Events

The following meetings are scheduled for the week of October 23rd through the 29th:

  • Accessibility Team - October 23, 2006 from 19:00 to 21:00 UTC
  • Edubuntu - October 25, 2006 from 20:00 to 22:00 UTC
  • Ubuntu Bug Day - October 25, 2006 from 00:00 to 23:59 UTC

Meetings take place in #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net

If you are in the Chicago land area (Chicago, Illinois USA), on October 28, 2006, from 11:00am to 8:00pm CST, sign-up and stop by. Information can be found at http://chi.ubuntu-us.org. Hope to see you there!

Elinks is a feature-rich text mode web browser. It can render both frames and tables and is highly customizable.

Ever got a broken X and didn't know what to do next? Elinks is easy enough for an average user to browse ubuntuforums.org without having X running to find answers and recover from such problems.

Try it out: sudo apt-get install elinks

Learn more about it: http://elinks.or.cz/

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

  • ktorrent 2.0.3-0ubuntu4~dapper1
  • gnomebaker 0.6.0-0ubuntu2~dapper1
  • proftpd 1.3.0-9~dapper1
  • phpgroupware 0.9.16.011-2~dapper1
  • git-core 1.4.1-1~dapper1
  • apt-cacher 1.5.3~dapper1
  • alsa-lib 1.0.10-2ubuntu4.1
  • brasero 0.4.4-0ubuntu1~dapper1
  • apt-mirror 0.4.4-4ubuntu1~dapper1
  • hal 0.5.7-1ubuntu18.1
  • cupsys 1.2.2-0ubuntu0.6.06.1
  • language-pack* 1:6.06+20060926~prop1
    • KDE language packs
    • GNOME language packs

Bug Stats

  • Open (16572) - 428 extra open bugs since UWN #17
  • Critical (17) - 1 extra critical bug since UWN #17
  • Unconfirmed (8401) - 195 extra unconfirmed bugs since UWN #17
  • Unassigned (11974) - 418 extra unassigned bugs since UWN #17
  • All bugs ever reported (60133) - 1,340 new bugs since UWN #17

Check out the bug statistics: [WWW] http://people.ubuntu-in.org/~carthik/bugstats/

Infamous Bugs

How to Help Kill A Bug that Annoys you.

There are times when an application does not work as expected. In some cases this is a bug. Report them, this makes your software better.

When to find bugs

The best time to find a bug is early in the programs lifecycle as it is being prepared for the next release, not right at the start but the first snapshot that is taken of the development cycle. You should look at the critical applications in your distro that you use and check they work during the beta cycles. This allows developers iron out the issues before the next release. With the exception of the LTS software we don't expect to see problems resolved after a release is issued, unless it is a security issue. (More information here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TimeBasedReleases )

How to report them

The report should be done as soon as the program terminates incorrectly.

What you need to report.

Information about what you as the user were doing or trying to do before the error occurred. What the expected behaviour was, what the actual behaviour of the program was. What error messages if any occurred, all of them is a good starting point.

To report bugs on Ubuntu, get an account on http://launchpad.net, find the package in the version of ubuntu you have and share the information you have. It is better to report half correctly and let someone else come along and confirm it.

Your first step in this location is to check that the bug has not been reported already. If it has then confirm it for your platform and so on.

Comments can be added after the initial edit, in fact you may be asked for more detail after you report.

Have a look at a few bugs on launchpad to get a feeling for what is usual.

What _Not_ to do

You should not simply report that "Program X is broken", this is not a fault report, it is in fact a "faulty bug report", which means that it is useless. It lacks the essential ingredient, appropriate information.

Additional Ubuntu News

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

As always you can find more news and announcements at:

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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:

  • Corey Burger
  • John Little
  • Paul O'Malley
  • Melissa Draper
  • "towsonu2003"
  • Richard Johnson
  • anyone else that contributes
  • And many others

Feedback

This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Marketing Team. Please feel free to contact us regarding any concerns or suggestions by either sending an email to ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com or by using any of the other methods on the Ubuntu Marketing Team Contact Information Page.

UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue18 (last edited 2008-08-06 17:01:29 by localhost)