Issue183

Contents

Contents

  1. UWN Translations
  2. In This Issue
  3. General Community News
    1. Mark Shuttleworth: "Light" the new look of Ubuntu
    2. Announcing the 10.10 Ubuntu Developer Summit
    3. UI Freeze in place for Lucid
    4. Developer Membership Board meeting
    5. International Women's Day Vote
  4. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Translation Stats Karmic
    3. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  5. Launchpad News
    1. Getting Patches Upstream
  6. The Planet
    1. Jono Bacon: The Grand App Writing Challenge Submissions!
    2. Dustin Kirkland: Server Bug Zapping results
    3. Chris Johnston: Ubuntu Classroom Team presents "ClassBot"
  7. In The Press
    1. Canonical CEO Elucidates on Lucid Lynx Linux Server
    2. Hands-on: Ubuntu goes social, gains Me Menu in 10.04 alpha 3
    3. Ubuntu 10.10 To Be Released on 28th of October
    4. Interviews: Matt Asay Answers Your Questions About Ubuntu and Canonical
    5. Ubuntu 10.04 To Support iPhone/iPod Touch?
    6. Ubuntu dumps the brown, introduces new theme and branding
    7. Ubuntu Lucid Makes Scanning Simple
  8. In The Blogosphere
    1. 17 Featured Applications in Ubuntu 10.04 Software Center - But are they wise Choices?
    2. Ubuntu has new themes – but what is up with those window buttons?
    3. Lubuntu Gets a New Look
    4. Ubuntu Gets New Themes, Logo, Boot Screen, Identity and So Much More!
  9. Meeting Summaries: February 2010
    1. Ubuntu Governance
      1. Developer Membership Board
      2. IRC Council
      3. LoCo Council
      4. Technical Board
    2. Ubuntu Development Teams
      1. Xubuntu Team
        1. Packaging, Development, & Testing
        2. Documentation
    3. Ubuntu LoCo Teams
      1. Cameroonian Team
      2. Catalan Team
      3. Colombian Team
      4. Danish Team
      5. Honduras Team
      6. Irish Team
      7. Japanese Team
      8. Philippine Team
      9. Russian Team
        1. Translations
        2. Kuban Team
      10. Tunisian Team
        1. California Team
        2. Chicago Team
        3. District of Columbia Team
        4. Florida Team
        5. North Carolina Team
    4. Ubuntu Beginners Team
    5. Ubuntu Classroom Team
  10. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Monday, March 8, 2010
      1. Security Team Catch-up
    2. Tuesday, March 9, 2010
      1. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
      2. Technical Board Meeting
      3. Ubuntu Bugsquad Monthly Meeting
      4. Desktop Team Meeting
      5. Kernel Team Meeting
      6. Global Jam Meeting
    3. Wednesday, March 10, 2010
      1. Server Team Meeting
      2. Foundation Team Meeting
      3. QA Team Meeting
      4. Edubuntu Meeting
      5. How to Run a Jam
    4. Thursday, March 11, 2010
      1. How to run a Translation Jam
      2. Ubuntu Java Meeting
    5. Friday, March 12, 2010
      1. How to run a Packaging Jam
      2. Lucid Weekly Release Meeting
    6. Saturday, March 13, 2010
      1. Ubuntu IRC Council Meeting
      2. BugJam
      3. DC Loco IRC meeting
    7. Sunday, March 14, 2010
  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. Subscribe
  13. Archives and RSS Feed
  14. Additional Ubuntu News
  15. Conclusion
  16. Credits
  17. Glossary of Terms
  18. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  19. Feedback

newspaper-icon3.jpg

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #183 for the week February 28 - March 6th, 2010. In this issue we cover: Mark Shuttleworth: "Light" the new look of Ubuntu, Announcing the 10.10 Ubuntu Developer Summit, UI Freeze in place for Lucid, Developer Membership Board meeting, International Women's Day Vote, Getting Patches Upstream, The Grand App Writing Challenge Submissions, Server Bug Zapping results, Ubuntu Classroom Team presents "ClassBot", February 2010 Team Reports, 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

  • Mark Shuttleworth: "Light" the new look of Ubuntu
  • Announcing the 10.10 Ubuntu Developer Summit
  • UI Freeze in place for Lucid
  • Developer Membership Board meeting
  • International Women's Day Vote
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Getting Patches Upstream
  • The Grand App Writing Challenge Submissions!
  • Server Bug Zapping results

  • Ubuntu Classroom Team presents "ClassBot"

  • In the Press & Blogosphere

  • February 2010 Team Reports

  • Upcoming Meetings & Events

  • Updates & Security

General Community News

Mark Shuttleworth: "Light" the new look of Ubuntu

Jono Bacon, Alan Pope, and many others have written, yesterday we published a new visual story and style for Ubuntu. The core design work was lead by Marcus Haslam, Otto Greenslade and Dominic Edmunds, who are the three visual artists leading our efforts in the Canonical Design team. Once we had the base ideas in place we invited some anchor members of the Ubuntu Art community to a design sprint, to test that the concept had the legs to work with the full range of forums, websites, derivatives and other pieces of this huge and wonderful project. And apparently, it does! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand

Embracing both Ubuntu and Canonical

One of the real challenges for us has been to find a branding and design strategy which spans the spectrum of audiences, forums and dialogues that we cover. With Ubuntu, it’s my specific dream to find a constructive blend of commercial and community interests, not only for Canonical but for other companies. That has made our design and branding work difficult – the distinctive look of Ubuntu lent itself well to pure community messaging, but it was hard to do a brochure for Canonical data center services for Ubuntu on servers. We have not only Ubuntu, but also Kubuntu and an important range of derivatives that all have a role in our ecosystem.

So we spent a lot of time trying to distill the requirements down into a set of three dimensions.

  • Community <---> Commercial

  • Consumer <---> Enterprise

  • End-user <---> Engineer

We found a set of ideas which each represent those spectrums, and which work together.

For example, we identified a palette which includes both a fresh, lively Orange, and a rich, mature Aubergine, which work together. The use of Aubergine indicates Commercial involvement of one form or another, while Orange is a signal of community engagement. The Forums will use the Orange elements more strongly, and a formal product brochure, with descriptions of supporting services, would use more of the Aubergine.

On the consumer/enterprise spectrum, we took inspiration from the aerospace industry, and identified a texture of closely spaced dots. When you see more of that, it means we’re signalling that the story is more about the enterprise, less of that, and it’s more about the consumer. Of course, there are cross-overs, for example when we are talking about the corporate desktop, where we’ll use that closely space dot texture as a boundary area, or separator. We also identified shades of Aubergine that are more consumer, or more enterprise – the darker shades mapping to a stronger emphasis on enterprise work.

And on the end-user / engineer spectrum, we took inspiration from graph paper and engineering blue prints. When you see widely spaced patterns of dots, or outline images and figures, that’s signalling that the content is more engineering-oriented than end-user oriented.

And finally, we found a number of themes which enhanced and echoed those ideas. We use a warm gray supporting colour to give shape to pages and documents, and we built on the dots and circles to create a whole style for figures, illustrations and pictograms.

The beauty of this is that we can now publish content that spans the full range, and we generally know when we start the design process what sorts of visual cues we want to be signalling. Instead of having these different mental domains fight with one another, we can now convey quite subtle collaboration between community and corporate, or work which is aimed at engineers and developers from enterprises as opposed to developers working with consumers. Time will tell how it shapes up, but for now I’m celebrating the milestone and the efforts of the team that pulled it together. There’s something there for everyone who wants to participate in the great hubbub of Ubuntuness that is our shared experience of free software.

We have commissioned a new font to be developed both for the logo’s of Ubuntu and Canonical, and for use in the interface. The font will be called Ubuntu, and will be a modern humanist font that is optimised for screen legibility. It will be published under an open font license, and considered part of the trade dress of Ubuntu, which will limit its relevance for software interfaces outside of Ubuntu but leave it free for use across the web and in printed documents.

It’s been an exciting process, but I have the sense that we are just getting started. The language will get richer, we will find new things that we want to communicate, and new treatments and visual themes that resonate well with these starting points. We’ll find new ways to integrate this on the web, and on the desktop (look out for the two new themes, Radiance and Ambiance). I hope we’ll see the language being used to good effect across everything we do, both commercial and community oriented. There’s a range of expression here that should be useful to artists across the spectrum. Let me know how it works for you.

Screenshots of possible Ubuntu branding for different uses can be found at the link below. You can also check out Jono Bacon's blog on this topic which covers different areas of the work product here: http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/03/03/refreshing-the-ubuntu-brand/

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/308

Announcing the 10.10 Ubuntu Developer Summit

Announcing the details of the next Ubuntu Developer Summit taking place at Dolce La Hulpe Hotel and Resort in Brussels, Belgium from the 10 – 14 May 2010.

The Ubuntu Developer Summit one of the most important events in the Ubuntu calendar and at it we discuss, debate and design the next version of Ubuntu. We bring together the entire Canonical development team and sponsor a large number of community members across the wide range of areas in which people contribute to Ubuntu. This includes packaging, translations, documentation, testing, LoCo teams and more. UDS is an incredible experience, filled with smart and enthusiastic people, fast paced and exhausting, but incredibly gratifying to be part of the process that builds the next Ubuntu.

It is important to note that UDS is not a conference. It is absolutely a participatory discussion-based summit in which we work together as a team to define what our next release will look like. If you are planning on attending or planning on applying for sponsorship, you should be prepared to participate in the sessions actively.

For every UDS, Canonical sponsors a number of community members to attend the event. We are looking for those who want to bring some real insight and expertise in their area of Ubuntu, be it development or community governance. If you feel you could offer this but can’t afford to cover your expenses of attending, you should apply for sponsorship.

Luckily, requesting your sponsorship is pretty simple, and we a simple system to handle sponsorship requests. To apply for sponsorship, just follow these simple steps:

  • Go to http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-m/ and log in with OpenID. When you have logged in, click the Request Sponsorship link.

  • On the first page, add your location and use the About yourself box to tell us why you should be sponsored and tell us about your work on Ubuntu – here you should tell us your vital stats – tell us your any 5-A-Day numbers, any work on the sponsorship queue, what you have uploaded, which teams you are in, your LoCo involvement, documentation you have written, any translation work and other work that you have been involved in. When you have done this, click the Next button.

  • On the final page, answer the questions and then click Finish to finish your sponsorship request.

More details on requesting sponsorship are here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS-M/Sponsorship

PLEASE NOTE: we have a re-direction bug at the end of this process that affects some people. Don’t worry though, your application is still saved to the system. We are currently in the process of fixing this bug.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2010-March/000684.html

UI Freeze in place for Lucid

Effective today, we are officially under the User Interface Freeze for Lucid: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserInterfaceFreeze

In order to help ensure our documentation is accurate for the release, please notify the documentation team of any further changes to artwork, text strings, or UI designs that will be made between now and the release, and please make such changes only where necessary.

Also, as part of the ongoing process of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArchiveReorganisation, we're happy to report that the ubuntu-release and motu-release teams have now been merged. Welcome to all our new release team members! When submitting freeze exception requests (either for the UI Freeze or for the Feature Freeze), please subscribe the ubuntu-release team only, regardless of whether the package is in universe or in main. Otherwise, the requirements for submitting freeze exceptions remain the same, and as always are documented at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreezeExceptionProcess

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2010-March/000685.html

Developer Membership Board meeting

New Contributing Developer: Scott Howard

Scott has been active in g-p-m, Science packages, and many miscellaneous fixes. He was approved unanimously for Contributing Developer.

New Core Developer: Didier Roche

Didier has extended his work on Desktop packages into several flavors and deep build dependencies, and was approved was approved unanimously for Core Developer.

The Ubuntu Developers Team and the Ubuntu Community extends a warm welcome to these two new member developers!

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2010-March/000683.html

International Women's Day Vote

In January some of the Ubuntu Women members launched a competition to gather stories about women and girls discovering Ubuntu. The aim of the competition was to counteract the invisibility of women and girls in the community and demonstrate that their path is really no different than any other. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2010-January/002406.html

Entries for this competition closed last week, and the voting has now opened on the 15 wonderful entries received. Everyone can have their say in which are their favourite stories; so please take a moment to read these tales of discovery and cast your votes. http://elkbuntu.net/ubuntuwomen/

The Community Manager, Jono Bacon, will announce the most popular story winner and draw a random winner on March 8th, 2010 to celebrate International Women’s Day, 2010. http://internationalwomensday.org/

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1990

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (77454) +428 # over last week
  • Critical (27) +1 # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (38755) −209 # 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. English (United Kingdom) (7874) −8360 # over last week
  2. Spanish (10400) −4 # over last week
  3. French (40178) −23 # over last week
  4. Brazilian Portuguese (40304) −264 # over last week
  5. Swedish (65063) Not listed 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/

Launchpad News

Getting Patches Upstream

We heard from Ubuntu maintainers and upstream developers that it was too easy to lose track of patches in bugs filed on Launchpad — or, put another way, that Launchpad wasn’t doing enough to bring patches to developers’ attention.

According to the Launchpad Upstream Improvements Spec that came out of a recent UDS: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Specs/LaunchpadUpstreamImprovements

  • Upstreams frequently complain that it is difficult for them to find Ubuntu patches. patches.ubuntu.com is a diff between Ubuntu and Debian, so it’s not really useful to some upstreams. We want an upstream patch report that shows patches in packages and their age, so we can act on them. …

To help solve this problem, we’ve added two new features to Launchpad.

  1. The upstream report now shows bugs carrying patches.
  2. A new “patch report” is available wherever bugs are available.

We’re hoping that these features, combined with the recently-landed patch notification improvements and bug heat, will make it easier to find the patches worth immediate attention.

These patch reports are new in Launchpad 10.02. About a month after they go live, we’re going to look at the stats on how people have been using them, and we’re going to survey some upstreams and Ubuntu maintainers to see what they feel can be improved. Please also file bug reports as you use these new features, of course (if you feel like going the extra mile, tag your bug report with the patch-tracking tag — it’ll save us some time).

Finally, please feel free to help improve the features yourself! The bug links below will lead you to the branches on which these changes were made, so you can see what the code looks like. The Launchpad development wiki is the place to start for hacking on Launchpad. References:

More information and screenshots at the link below.

http://blog.launchpad.net/bug-tracking/getting-patches-upstream

The Planet

Jono Bacon: The Grand App Writing Challenge Submissions!

As many of you will be aware, this week Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week took part, and the week has been wonderful so far. There has been so much excitement and interest, and I have been tickled pink at just how many people have been telling me that the week has re-invigorated their interest or given them a new passion for writing fun and useful apps. Ubuntu is an awesome platform for making these apps, and it has been a real pleasure to see people getting so fired up about using it.

Before the week kicked off, I offered a fun little challenge called The Grand App Writing Challenge. With a week of rocking content ahead designed to help build a fun and thriving community who like to write apps that scratch their itches, I put forward the challenge for you good people to write some apps and see how far you get this week, and I will blog your progress at the end of the week. Well, while we still have a few sessions yet to go, it is Friday and I was keen to show off some progress!

  • Chris Couzens: HardwareMap

  • Andy Breiner: Blogite
  • Owais Lone: Rename it All
  • Martin Eve: sshsplit
  • Bernard Opic: Uninstaller for Adobe® AIR® 1.0.0
  • Anirudh: Splatter
  • Andrew Sellers: Ain't Easy

The Results: In my original blog post I offered to send three of the projects an Ubuntu t-shirt. I was going to pick three fave projects, but I think all the submissions are great, so I going to send you all a t-shirt. Thanks all for taking part! For links to each project and screenshots, visit the link below.

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/03/06/the-grand-app-writing-challenge-submissions/

Dustin Kirkland: Server Bug Zapping results

Big thanks to those who participated in this week's Ubuntu Server Bug Zapping effort on Ubuntu's KVM! During the course of this week, we reduce the total number of open bugs against the qemu-kvm package in Ubuntu from 48 on Monday to 24 today. That's 24 bugs closed, slicing our open bug list in half!

Torsten Spindler was an all-star, helping triage, reproduce, and confirm fixes for quite a number of bugs, and thanks to Brian Thomason for the documentation patch. Also, thanks to Anthony Liguori (QEMU's maintainer) for meeting me at Opal Divine's and helping triage a bunch of the remaining open bugs.

I didn't get to spend quite as much time on this effort this week as I hoped, so I libvirt didn't get the love it deserves yet. I'll plan on working on libvirt in one of the next few weeks.

As for next week, stay tuned to Thierry Carrez' blog, as he's going to announce the next Bug Zapping target. http://fnords.wordpress.com/

http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2010/03/server-bug-zapping-kvm-in-retrospective.html

Chris Johnston: Ubuntu Classroom Team presents "ClassBot"

It is with pleasure that I am introducing you to a wonderful new tool for the Ubuntu Classroom. ClassBot, written by Nathan Handler which will automate many of the tasks that need to happen in #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat on irc.freenode.net. Many hours were spent by Nathan writing the code and testing ClassBot. He also wants me to mention that I wrote the specs for ClassBot and did most of the bug testing. ClassBot has already handled the 48 Hours of Ubuntu Manual Learning event and is currently taking care of Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week.

If you are an instructor, or would like to be, and want to test out ClassBot, you can contact Nathan or myself and we can set you up with a demonstration session. Also, don’t forget to check out the Using ClassBot wiki page.

http://chrisjohnston.org/2010/ubuntu-classroom-presents-classbot

In The Press

Canonical CEO Elucidates on Lucid Lynx Linux Server

Server Watch's Sean Michael Kerner notes that Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind the Ubuntu Linux project, has a new CEO this week. Jane Silber, the former chief operating officer of the company, has now officially taken the reins from Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth and is already talking up what's ahead for the popular Linux distribution. While a lot is happening at Canonical, Silber does not see the change in CEO as marking a dramatic shift in Ubuntu's direction. "So far, it has been a pretty smooth transition," Silber told InternetNews.com. "Over the last three months, Mark Shuttleworth and I have continued to do many of the things that we've done together, and I've additionally started to pick up more of his responsibilities as he has transitioned to focus more on some of the product design and strategy areas." Follow the link to read more of Kerner's talk with Jane Silber.

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3868581/Canonical-CEO-Elucidates-on-Lucid-Lynx--Linux-Server.htm

Hands-on: Ubuntu goes social, gains Me Menu in 10.04 alpha 3

Ryan Paul of ARS Technica tells us that Canonical is planning to overhaul the desktop panel and integrate social networking features in Ubuntu 10.04, codenamed Lucid Lynx. One of the key components of this effort is the Me Menu, which shipped in the Lucid alpha 3 last week. The Me Menu, which Canonical unveiled in December, provides a unified interface for managing your presence on instant messaging and social networking services. A text box that is embedded in the menu allows users to publish status messages to all of their accounts. The Me Menu expands on the concept of Ubuntu's existing presence menu, which was included in the panel session applet in Ubuntu 9.04. Like the original presence menu, the new Me Menu is designed to work with GNOME's Empathy instant messaging client. When you post a status message in the menu, it will be propagated to all of your Empathy accounts. The social networking functionality in the new Me Menu is powered by Gwibber, an open source microblogging client.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2010/03/hands-on-ubuntu-goes-social-gains-me-menu-in-1004-alpha-3.ars

Ubuntu 10.10 To Be Released on 28th of October

Phoronix's Michael Larabel states that while Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will not even be released until the end of April, Ubuntu 10.10 (with a codename yet to be announced) already has its release schedule available. Ubuntu 10.10 is scheduled to be released to the world officially on the 28th of October. Prior to this year's release of Ubuntu 10.10 that is six months after the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (the "Lucid Lynx") will be four alpha releases, a beta, and then a release candidate. The details for the Ubuntu 10.10 release schedule can be found on the Ubuntu Wiki. [1]

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

Interviews: Matt Asay Answers Your Questions About Ubuntu and Canonical

Slashdot solicited questions from their readers for new Canonical COO Matt Asay. Asay has responded back to the questions posted, such as Enderandrew's question "You often praise proprietary, closed-source products on your blog (especially products from Apple and IBM). What is your stance on mixing proprietary and open products?" Asay had this to say in response, "Ubuntu is about choice. While we believe that an operating system is best developed with the source code openly available, that does not mean that the applications running on it need to be restricted to only those using the same development method. Our own users tell us, in large numbers, that they would like to see apps become available from the likes of Adobe and the games developers. On server the case is even more apparent where there are excellent proprietary applications that we would love to make available to Ubuntu users and we work to do that." Click the link to see all the questions posed to Asay and his responses.

http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/10/03/02/186206/Matt-Asay-Answers-Your-Questions-About-Ubuntu-and-Canonical

Ubuntu 10.04 To Support iPhone/iPod Touch?

Thom Holwerda of OS News thinks that it is a welcome surprise for those of us waiting for Ubuntu 10.04, the Lucid Lynx. Several users are reporting that their iPod Touches and iPhones (including the 3GS) work in alpha 3 - without tweaking, without jailbreaking, without patching - with Nautilus and Rythmbox. Several users have reported that upon installing the third alpha release of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, their iPod Touches and iPhones are recognised by the operating system. You can browse your iPhone/iPod with the file manager, and Rythmbox can work with them as well. Hopefully, everything will work by the time the new Ubuntu release is out, and hopefully, other distributions adopt this functionality as well.

http://www.osnews.com/story/22942/Ubuntu_10_04_To_Support_iPhone_iPod_Touch_

Ubuntu dumps the brown, introduces new theme and branding

ARS Technica's Ryan Paul reports that Canonical has revealed the style of the new default theme that will be used in Ubuntu 10.04, the next major version of the popular Linux distribution. In a significant departure from tradition, Ubuntu is shedding its signature brown color scheme and is adopting a new look with a palette that includes orange and an aubergine shade of purple. Ubuntu's distinctive brown look dates back to the very first version of the distribution, which was released in 2004. Although the style has evolved considerably since then and new colors like orange gradually gained a foothold in the desktop palette, brown has been the dominant color of Ubuntu's default themes for the past five years. Although Ubuntu has made great strides in the area of usability, it has still lagged behind other distros like openSUSE in the quality of its theming and visual style. The new theme is a nice improvement that will move Ubuntu forward and make the desktop more visually appealing.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/03/ubuntu-dumps-the-brown-introduces-new-theme.ars

Ubuntu Lucid Makes Scanning Simple

Starry Hope's Jim tells us that Canonical is aiming to make the task of scanning documents super simple with version 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Canonical developer Robert Ancell is working on Simple Scan, a great little program that does exactly what it claims – it makes scanning documents simple! Simple Scan is now the default scanning software in Lucid. Simple Scan offers only the most basic of controls. It lets you choose the type of document you are scanning (photo or text), lets you do basic cropping, then lets you save the scan as a file, email your scans via Evolution or just print. It also handles multi-page documents, allowing you to save them as a PDF file or as a series of JPG images. That’s about all there is to it – it’s simple!

http://www.starryhope.com/linux/ubuntu/2010/ubuntu-lucid-makes-scanning-simple/

In The Blogosphere

17 Featured Applications in Ubuntu 10.04 Software Center - But are they wise Choices?

The OMG!Ubuntu folks ask folks which applications readers wanted to be "featured applications in the Ubuntu 10.04 Software Center. Here are 17 the selections they had listed on March 03, 2010.

  • Arista Transcoder
  • Audacity
  • Blender
  • Cheese
  • Chromium B.S.U.
  • Deja Dup
  • Firewall Config
  • Frozen-Bubble
  • GTG!
  • GIMP
  • GNOME Do

  • HomeBank

  • Liferea
  • Moovida
  • Pingus
  • Stellarium

While they admit, "nothing is set in stone yet so this list is subject to change, but for now it shows a great and varied selection of the best applications available in the Ubuntu repos."

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/03/17-featured-applications-in-ubuntu-1004.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+d0od+%28Omg!+Ubuntu!%29

Ubuntu has new themes – but what is up with those window buttons?

The folks on the Element Developers Blog had a few observations about the new theme. They were excited of the new makeup and even noted that your desktop won't favor a "muddy beach" now and expressed that "Ubuntu is slick". Included in the article screens shots of the new theme as well. However, the author does have one complaint - the window button arrangement. The author does go on to say that, "I am going to play an advocate of the pros of this design of Ubuntu’s window button placement through a short real world office usability scenario." Then lists those 5 scenarios. In the conclusion it is noted that, "Sometimes something untraditional, especially in regard to interfaces can increase usability and make things generally easier." The article was updated on 3/04 with, "Canonical/Ubuntu say the button placement will now be on the right hand side as it traditionally was, thus sort of negating this blog post. However I still find this left hand side arrangement very interesting and beneficial to netbook or laptop users."

http://elementmypc.com/blog/?p=15

Lubuntu Gets a New Look

Christopher Tozzi, workswithU has been looking at Lubuntu, a lightweight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. Tozzi noted that since February 16, 2010, "the operating system has undergone major changes that merit a revisit of its features." He speculates that Lubuntu may replace Xubuntu. Tozzi approves of the new aesthetics and provides screen shots to highlight the new look and content of Lubuntu. Tozzi also points out the Lubuntu now uses NetworkManager instead of wicd, Chrome instead of Firefox, as well as a special interface for netbooks. Tozzi states, "I really like what I see, and am starting to regret not having a computer old enough to justify switching to this still-unofficial Ubuntu variant."

http://www.workswithu.com/2010/03/04/lubuntu-gets-a-new-look/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WorksWithU+%28Works+With+U%29

Ubuntu Gets New Themes, Logo, Boot Screen, Identity and So Much More!

A little over a week ago the OMG!Ubuntu folks let readers know to be on the lookout for an announcement concerning the re-branding of Ubuntu and on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 the announcement was indeed made public. OMG!Ubuntu noted that "even we didn't expect it to be quite as big as this!" In this article they discuss the team that brought you this new look. There are view of the new typeface and logo as well as screen shots of the two new themes as well as the boot screen. OMG!Ubuntu also shows the new look of the official website. At the end of this article it ends with a poll asking readers they like or loathe the new look.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/03/ubuntu-gets-new-themes-logo-more.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+d0od+%28Omg!+Ubuntu!%29

Meeting Summaries: February 2010

Ubuntu Governance

Developer Membership Board

  • Developer Membership Board meeting, 2010-02-02
    • Chair: Colin Watson
    • Present: Emmet Hikory, Michael Bienia, Soren Hansen, Stéphane Graber
    • Absent: Cody Somerville, Richard Johnson
    • First meeting of new board following election
    • Action review

      • [ACTION] persia to ask CC to make DMB an admin of ~universe-contributors, as part of the DMB/MC merge (carried over; but in the meantime TB members can act on changes)

    • motu-release team currently does not have any administrators (Scott Kitterman)
      • Dealt with by setting ubuntu-release as administrator, pending a full team merge
    • MOTU direction (ScottK, cjwatson)
      • initial drafting complete, subject to approval by DMB and TB

      • [ACTION] ScottK to start discussion on future of MOTU Council among its constituency (MOTU)

      • DMB is presently hearing MOTU applications, although there seems to be some confusion about this

        • [ACTION] cjwatson to confirm MOTU process with TB

      • current draft approved unanimously, aside from pending motu-council sections
      • will continue with TB

    • Approval of the application process for new applications (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeveloperMembershipBoard/ApplicationProcess)

      • approved unanimously

    • Per-package uploader: Martin-Éric Racine (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MartinEricRacine) for xserver-xorg-video-geode

      • Martin-Éric has done fine work on this in the past, and is already a member of MOTU; approved unanimously. Welcome!

    • Ubuntu Contributing Developer: Dmitrijs Ledkovs (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DmitrijsLedkovs)

      • Dmitrijs has been working on xiphos and sword, and was approved unanimously for universe-contributors. Welcome!

    • MOTU and per-package-uploader: Elliot Murphy (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ElliotMurphy/DeveloperApplication)

      • See previous thread on motu-council (https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2010-January/002370.html)

      • We separated Elliot's application into a few parts:
        • MOTU
          • Of five members present, two voted in favour, with three abstentions (citing a desire for more sponsored uploads)

          • [ACTION] cjwatson to gather votes from absent members by e-mail

        • ubuntuone-client, ubuntuone-storage-protocol, erlang, couchdb, desktopcouch, python-configglue, rabbitmq-server: approved unanimously
        • evolution-couchdb, couchdb-glib: denied on the basis that the person directly maintaining these should apply instead; Elliot intends to do packaging work on these and will reapply
        • libubuntuone: not yet in the archive; deferred

IRC Council

* IRC Council Meeting 2010-02-13

  • The official policy on #ubuntuforums
    • The IRCC has access, access list has been cleaned up.

  • Revisit #ubuntu-ops policies including 'no idling' & +v

    • Allow mailing list discussion to continue until next meeting.
    • Create wiki page documenting the suggestions and their pros/cons.
  • Agreed to close the incactive #ubuntu-helpteam channel
  • Decided on ban removal policy: operators can remove bans set by others.
    • Mail to be sent to mailing list, and relevant wiki pages will be updated.
  • Discussion on general attitude on -ops will be started on mailing list.
  • Discussed request to add #ubuntu-women to core channels.
    • IRCC to discuss what makes a core channel a core channel and we will revisit this next meeting

LoCo Council

During the Lucid Release cycle, the LoCo Council has been tasked with identifying Approved LoCo teams which were approved close to, or over 2 years ago, and are due for re-approval. Each of the LoCo Council Members have been assigned LoCo's to contact for Re-Approval, and have made some real progress identifying 26 Teams. 10 of the teams have been contacted, and 1 Team has been re-approved. The LoCo Council has 2 official meetings left, but have been discussing the possibility of adding a couple of special meetings in order to meet the LoCo Council's aggressive schedule.

The Local Council met on the February 16th. There were three teams that attended this meeting: Ubuntu Belgian LoCo (up for Re-Approval), Ubuntu Quebec LoCo (up for Approval), and the Ubuntu Mexico LoCo (Up for Approval). All of the teams have doens some really incredible work for Ubuntu and our Community. Please see the minutes (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lo``CoCouncilAgenda/20100216 ) for further details.

Technical Board

  • Technical Board meeting, 2010-02-09
    • Attendees: Martin Pitt (chair), Kees Cook, Mark Shuttleworth, Colin Watson
    • Guests: Emmet Hikory, Daniel Holbach

    • Review https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Specs/LucidMOTU

      • Acknowledged; unclear part is the membership approval, which is the next item
    • Approvals for new MOTUs
      • There was a very long discussion about whether the DMB or the MC should handle applications for new MOTUs
      • There is a certain tension between MOTU self-governance, and having done the DMB elections under the announcement of unifying the approval process of core-devs, MOTUs and per-package uploaders
      • The MC is currently in the process of redefining its goals and reconstituting
      • The TB unanimously took the following decision:
        • Hearing and approvals for MOTU will now be exclusively done by the DMB, with the option of delegating it to the MC upon request by MC or DMB, and approval by TB in the future.
    • Prior actions: deferred until next meeting, due to timeout
      • [ACTION] kees to follow up with Debian TC on units policy
      • [ACTION] cjwatson to follow up with mythbuntu-dev to get ubuntu-core-dev added

      • [ACTION] ScottK to update Kubuntu/UpdatesPolicy based on Kubuntu upstream feedback (cf. http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Minor_Point_Release_Policy/Draft)

      • [ACTION] sabdfl to propose to CC that the TB is a CC delegate, and clarify his role
    • Chair for next meeting: Scott James Remnant
  • Technical Board meeting, 2010-02-23
    • Attendees: Kees Cook (chair), Martin Pitt, Colin Watson, Matt Zimmerman
    • Guests: Iain Lane, Emmet Hikory, Jonathan Riddell, Chow Loong Jin, Jo Shields, Jussi Schultink, Scott Moser, Daniel Holbach, Jonathan Carter, Benjamin Rubin
    • Action Review has a few remaining items:
      • [ACTION] receive Debian TC response to Units Policy (bdale, kees)
      • [ACTION] receive upstream KDE approval of updates policy (Riddell)
      • [ACTION] propose to CC that the TB is a CC delegate, and clarify sabdfl's role (sabdfl)
    • Have delegated teams become responsible for security of their package-sets (Kees Cook)
      • proposal needs review of language, discussion with teams
      • [ACTION] kees to bring up proposal in email, go from there
    • Package set for CLI/Mono packages (Iain Lane)

      • https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/technical-board/2010-February/000094.html

      • Approved: creation of CLI/Mono team with sebner directhex raof hyperair laney, pending TB agreement on delegated package list (via email)
        • 3 for, 0 against, 0 abstained.
      • Approved: CLI/Mono team membership is delegated to DMB
        • 4 for, 0 against, 0 abstained.
      • Approved: packageset extension of CLI/Mono team done via TB e-mail confirmation
        • 3 for, 0 against, 0 abstained.
    • Ubuntu IRC Council Access level in #ubuntu-devel (Jussi Schultink)
      • None against: implement IRC Council Access on IRC
        • 2 for, 0 against, 2 abstained.

    • Review https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEC/Images/RefreshPolicy (Scott Moser)

      • Approved, 4 for, 0 against, 0 abstained.
    • Ran out of time, had to defer:
      • Edubuntu Developers Delegation
      • Archive reorganisation (and sponsorship items)
      • community bugs
    • Chair for next meeting: Scott James Remnant

Ubuntu Development Teams

Xubuntu Team

Xubuntu team report for February, 2010

This has been our best month ever.

Packaging, Development, & Testing
  • Testing of the new LTS, Lucid Lynx, is continuing on schedule. We have entered the Feature Freeze for Lucid. From this point forward, emphasis should be on testing, bug fixing and polishing the new LTS.
  • Testing discovered a couple of high importance bugs. One would have prevented all upgrades from the previous LTS to using update-manager. Another was an issue with the new Plymouth and NVidia video card incompatibility.
  • Bug-triage team has triaged over 200 bugs this last month. Many bugs were resolved during this process.

Documentation

  • Jim has begun work on Xubuntu docs, ported off of Ubuntu docs. The bzr branch is located here (https://code.launchpad.net/~jwcampbell/xubuntu-docs/lucid-experimental), and will be merged to the current Xubuntu doc branch once stable. Conservatively, this will be ready within the next two weeks.

  • Once that is done, Jim will need help from Pasi to work on the CSS theming and the landing page.

Ubuntu LoCo Teams

Cameroonian Team

Catalan Team

  • February 1st: LoCo irc meeting. General organization aspects.

  • February 2nd: new web calendar (http://www.ubuntu.cat/calendar) for the LoCo.

  • February 3rd: first Ubuntu Hour in Caldes de Montbui, near Barcelona.

  • February 11th: two speeches (Free Software and Ubuntu) at the Escola del Treball de Barcelona for the Informatics students.

  • February 16th: LoCo irc meeting. Discussion about presencial meetings a month after release parties.

  • February 19th: arranged a speech about Ubuntu in Sabadell in April.
  • February 19th: Call of Papers for Lucid Lynx release party in València.

Colombian Team

Danish Team

Honduras Team

Presentations

Irish Team

Japanese Team

Philippine Team

Russian Team

Translations

Kuban Team
  • We are distributing Ubuntu 9.10 and 8.04.4 LTS as well as repositories for Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS.

  • We had continued preparations for the project (http://kub-ubuntu.beneficium.ru/forum/index.php?board=21.0) of typical automated information management system for business (SMB) based on Ubuntu LTS distributions.

Tunisian Team

California Team

Chicago Team

* Held the first of our new regular series of monthly IRC meetings. Minutes (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ChicagoTeam/Meetings/Minutes/2010-02-01)

District of Columbia Team

Florida Team
  • February 1, 15, and 22 Ubuntu Hours were held in Orlando.

  • Feburary 16 Florida Team's SpaceCoast Linux & OSS Meetup Group met with Melbourne (FL) Linux Group for their Programming SIG.

  • February 25 Floridat Team's SpaceCoast Linux & OSS Meetup Group met with the Brevard Users Group teach their Linux SIG.

  • First ever Tampa Ubuntu Hour was also held this month.
  • Florida Team is preparing for the Loco Council Meeting for Re-Approval on March 16th.
  • mhall119 taught 4 classes on python in #ubuntu-classroom
  • cjohnston began working with nhandler on the classbot for #ubuntu-classroom
  • cjohnston began developing the Website Localization project for the ubuntu.com website
  • Team Meetings were held in #ubuntu-us-fl on February 9th and 23rd.

  • The LoCo Directory has had a bunch of enhancements and is beginning to really get used by the community. http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/

Topics Discussed during our team meetings this month:

  • Ubuntu Global Jam - dantrevino
  • Looking for instructors to teach classes in #ubuntu-classroom - cjohnston
  • IRC for New Users - dantrevino
  • Anchor House Build Day - mhall119
  • Lucid Release Parties - maxolasersquad, - dantrevino

North Carolina Team

Ubuntu Beginners Team

* Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting 2010-02-02 (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam/Meetings/20100202)

  • Charles Profitt (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/cprofitt) discussed his plans for the Security Focus Group for the next year. He wants to:

    • Clean up and add security pages to the wiki
    • Develop courses that will contribute to the UCLP on security related topics
  • Discuss how agenda items should be brought up for discussion on the mailing list at least 1 week prior to the meeting
  • Decide to bring up topic of moving major decision making from IRC meetings to Launchpad votes on the mailing list

  • Ákos Veres (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Akos) joined the Ubuntu Beginners Team. He has been a very competent and well mannered padawan, and he will be a great asset to the team.

Ubuntu Classroom Team

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Monday, March 8, 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, March 9, 2010

Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting

Technical Board Meeting

  • Start: 15:00 UTC
  • End: 16:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Ubuntu Bugsquad Monthly Meeting

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

Global Jam Meeting

  • Start: 20:00 UTC
  • End: 21:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Server Team Meeting

Foundation Team Meeting

  • Start: 16:00 UTC
  • End: 17:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

QA Team Meeting

Edubuntu Meeting

How to Run a Jam

  • Start: 21:00 UTC
  • End: 22:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-locoteams
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Thursday, March 11, 2010

How to run a Translation Jam

  • Start: 09:00 UTC
  • End: 10:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-locoteams
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Ubuntu Java Meeting

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

Friday, March 12, 2010

How to run a Packaging Jam

  • Start: 09:00 UTC
  • End: 10:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-locoteams
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Lucid Weekly Release Meeting

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Ubuntu IRC Council Meeting

BugJam

  • Start: 21:00 UTC
  • End: 23:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-us-dc and IRC channel #ubuntu-bugs
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

DC Loco IRC meeting

  • Start: 23:00 UTC
  • End: 24:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-us-dc
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Sunday, March 14, 2010

  • 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

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