Issue196

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=== Request For Help Preparing ClassBot For Translations ===

A few weeks ago, I was approached by some people from the Ubuntu Classroom-ES about having a Spanish version of Class``Bot to help out with their Open Week. Thanks to some help with translations, I was able to create Clase``Bot. The problem is, due to the way that the translations were done, if I make a change to the Class``Bot code, it will have to be manually applied to Clase``Bot. Ideally, I would like to have Class``Bot setup to use Launchpad to allow people to translate it. The problem is that I have no experience using Gettext or with using Launchpad for translations. Class``Bot is also a Perl script, so that also makes it a bit more challenging to find examples. If there is someone who has a bit more experience in this area, please get in contact with Nathan Handler.

To get read the post in full or to get in touch with Nathan please go to:

http://nhandler.wordpress.com/2010/06/05/request-for-help-preparing-classbot-for-translations/

=== Operation Cleansweep Launched! ===

At UDS-M in Brussels, Jono had announced Operation Cleansweep. Nigel announced as of June 4th, 2010 that Operation Cleansweep has launched. Nigel notes that Operation Cleansweep team has been able to subscribe to all the bugs with patches (minus the blacklisted packages).

As of June 4th, 2010, there was 1952 bugs with patches to be cleared by the project and around 80 to 90 patches being added every month. Operation Cleansweep has set an initial daily target of 15 bugs per day. Nigel tells others they can participate in Operation Cleansweep. He notes people can help by reviewing the patches, talking people into reviewing patches, and even putting up the meter on your website.

To learn more about Operation Cleansweep, and how you can participate please go to:

http://justanothertriager.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/operation-cleansweep-launched/
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=== Request For Help Preparing ClassBot For Translations ===

A few weeks ago, I was approached by some people from the Ubuntu Classroom-ES about having a Spanish version of Class``Bot to help out with their Open Week. Thanks to some help with translations, I was able to create Clase``Bot. The problem is, due to the way that the translations were done, if I make a change to the Class``Bot code, it will have to be manually applied to Clase``Bot. Ideally, I would like to have Class``Bot setup to use Launchpad to allow people to translate it. The problem is that I have no experience using Gettext or with using Launchpad for translations. Class``Bot is also a Perl script, so that also makes it a bit more challenging to find examples. If there is someone who has a bit more experience in this area, please get in contact with Nathan Handler.

To get read the post in full or to get in touch with Nathan please go to:

http://nhandler.wordpress.com/2010/06/05/request-for-help-preparing-classbot-for-translations/
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== Launchpad News ==

=== Jono Bacon: Why Launchpad Rocks: Working With Code Is Dead Simple ===

Jono Bacon continues his series on Why Launchpad Rocks. In this article he talks about Working With Code is Dead Simple.

This article is part of a series of articles about why I feel Launchpad is a great home for your Open Source project. I am writing these articles not as an employee of Canonical, but instead as a happy Launchpad user who gets agitated that not enough people know how cool Launchpad is.

Jono has the following to say the simplicity of working with code in Launchpad:

''One of the things I love about Launchpad is that getting, hacking, sharing, merging in code is dead simple. Much of this is because of it’s tight integration with the Bazaar version control system. Together it provides akid-in-candy-shop level of awesome if you like to run and hack on code.

One of the things I love about Bazaar is that it is focused on simplicity, and having used CVS and Subversion in the past, and a little bit of git recently, I find Bazaar by far the most naturally connected with my workflow. The reason for this is that I don’t want to care about version control. I am not interested in it, I don’t want to learn it, I don’t plan on sending it a Christmas card; I merely want to learn enough to get code from somewhere, upload it somewhere and rock with it. Bazaar is well suited to my needs because it’s simplicity means that it doesn’t feel like a pain to use.''

To read the this article in full and to find out why Jono says "Working With Code Is Dead Simple" go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/01/why-launchpad-rocks-working-with-code-is-dead-simple/

=== Jono Bacon: Why Launchpad Rocks: Reviewing Contributions Is Simple ===

Jono Bacon continues his series on Why Launchpad Rocks. In this article he talks about Reviewing Contributions Is Simple.

This article is part of a series of articles about why I feel Launchpad is a great home for your Open Source project. I am writing these articles not as an employee of Canonical, but instead as a happy Launchpad user who gets agitated that not enough people know how cool Launchpad is.
Jono has the following to say the simplicity of working with code in Launchpad:

''Open Source is fundamentally driven by gifts. People contribute translations, documentation, artwork, code and more. Many of these gifts are made available in the form of patches; fragments of content that can be applied to other chunks of content to apply new features, resolve issues or add value in other ways. Patches are wonderful contributions. their authors take the time to care about a problem and invest their expertise and time in producing a solution that everyone can share and benefit from. As such, we should treat these patches with the due care and attention that they deserve.

Something we found in Ubuntu was that we were getting so many patches submitted that many were being lost in the mix and were not getting reviewed and applied if appropriate. This goes against the grain of a gift – we should always review these gifts with a strong sense of care and timeliness. The situation was not driven by carelessness or malice, but instead a lack of visibility on these available patches for a given project.''

To read the this article in full and to find out why Jono says "Reviewing Contributions Is Simple" go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/01/why-launchpad-rocks-reviewing-contributions-is-simple/
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=== Nigel Babu: Operation Cleansweep Launched! ===

At UDS-M in Brussels, Jono had announced Operation Cleansweep. Nigel announced as of June 4th, 2010 that Operation Cleansweep has launched. Nigel notes that Operation Cleansweep team has been able to subscribe to all the bugs with patches (minus the blacklisted packages).

As of June 4th, 2010, there was 1952 bugs with patches to be cleared by the project and around 80 to 90 patches being added every month. Operation Cleansweep has set an initial daily target of 15 bugs per day. Nigel tells others they can participate in Operation Cleansweep. He notes people can help by reviewing the patches, talking people into reviewing patches, and even putting up the meter on your website.

To learn more about Operation Cleansweep, and how you can participate please go to:

http://justanothertriager.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/operation-cleansweep-launched/
Line 312: Line 345:
=== Jono Bacon: Why Launchpad Rocks: Working With Code Is Dead Simple ===

Jono Bacon continues his series on Why Launchpad Rocks. In this article he talks about Working With Code is Dead Simple.

This article is part of a series of articles about why I feel Launchpad is a great home for your Open Source project. I am writing these articles not as an employee of Canonical, but instead as a happy Launchpad user who gets agitated that not enough people know how cool Launchpad is.

Jono has the following to say the simplicity of working with code in Launchpad:

''One of the things I love about Launchpad is that getting, hacking, sharing, merging in code is dead simple. Much of this is because of it’s tight integration with the Bazaar version control system. Together it provides akid-in-candy-shop level of awesome if you like to run and hack on code.

One of the things I love about Bazaar is that it is focused on simplicity, and having used CVS and Subversion in the past, and a little bit of git recently, I find Bazaar by far the most naturally connected with my workflow. The reason for this is that I don’t want to care about version control. I am not interested in it, I don’t want to learn it, I don’t plan on sending it a Christmas card; I merely want to learn enough to get code from somewhere, upload it somewhere and rock with it. Bazaar is well suited to my needs because it’s simplicity means that it doesn’t feel like a pain to use.''

To read the this article in full and to find out why Jono says "Working With Code Is Dead Simple" go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/01/why-launchpad-rocks-working-with-code-is-dead-simple/

=== Jono Bacon: Why Launchpad Rocks: Reviewing Contributions Is Simple ===

Jono Bacon continues his series on Why Launchpad Rocks. In this article he talks about Reviewing Contributions Is Simple.

This article is part of a series of articles about why I feel Launchpad is a great home for your Open Source project. I am writing these articles not as an employee of Canonical, but instead as a happy Launchpad user who gets agitated that not enough people know how cool Launchpad is.
Jono has the following to say the simplicity of working with code in Launchpad:

''Open Source is fundamentally driven by gifts. People contribute translations, documentation, artwork, code and more. Many of these gifts are made available in the form of patches; fragments of content that can be applied to other chunks of content to apply new features, resolve issues or add value in other ways. Patches are wonderful contributions. their authors take the time to care about a problem and invest their expertise and time in producing a solution that everyone can share and benefit from. As such, we should treat these patches with the due care and attention that they deserve.

Something we found in Ubuntu was that we were getting so many patches submitted that many were being lost in the mix and were not getting reviewed and applied if appropriate. This goes against the grain of a gift – we should always review these gifts with a strong sense of care and timeliness. The situation was not driven by carelessness or malice, but instead a lack of visibility on these available patches for a given project.''

To read the this article in full and to find out why Jono says "Reviewing Contributions Is Simple" go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/01/why-launchpad-rocks-reviewing-contributions-is-simple/
=== Jono Bacon: Severed Fifth II ===

For those Severed Fifth fans, a new web-site has been launched, and writing for the second album is nearly complete. The recording sessions for the second album will be streamed live. Keep an eye out for the new Severed Fifth Twitter page. "go and follow it to keep up to date with the latest".

For more information on the new Severed Fifth album go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/04/severed-fifth-ii/

=== Jono Bacon: Project Maintainers Required ===

Jono Bacon talks about several projects he would like to hand over to new maintainers. Information about these projects, and overall vision and ideas are shared in this post. The projets are, Acire (created to produce a solid library of Python Snippets to make it easier for new developers to get started with the platform), Python Snippets (he is calling for a team of reviewers), and Py``Junior (a project designed to make it easier for kids to write programs).

For more information on becoming a maintainer go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/04/project-maintainers-required/
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=== Ubuntu Accessibility Team ===

Michael Maclean, from the Ubuntu UK Lo``Co team talks about getting involved with the Ubuntu Accessibility Team. Michael notes that he has recently become involved, at the suggestion of Penelope Stowe who is an instrumental part at resurrecting the Ubuntu Accessibility Team. He notes that Penelope arranged an Accessibility session at UDS-M that "seems to have gone quite well" Micheal points out that,''The main focus for the team right now is getting organised, and to this end we're aiming to create a set of personas, which are representations of hypothetical users with various accessibility requirements which developers and testers can keep in mind when working on the next Ubuntu release. These personas are going to be developed by a survey which will be dispatched to a host of groups who may have accessibility requirements to get an idea of what the main factors that affect their experience with Ubuntu are, so we can get an idea of the main areas to improve. Hopefully then the work which will take place as a result of these can be sent upstream to the original projects.''

To read this post in full and find out more about the Ubuntu Accessibility Team go to:

http://mgdm.net/weblog/ubuntu-accessibility-team
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=== Ubuntu Accessibility Team ===

Michael Maclean, from the Ubuntu UK Lo``Co team talks about getting involved with the Ubuntu Accessibility Team. Michael notes that he has recently become involved, at the suggestion of Penelope Stowe who is an instrumental part at resurrecting the Ubuntu Accessibility Team. He notes that Penelope arranged an Accessibility session at UDS-M that "seems to have gone quite well" Micheal points out that,''The main focus for the team right now is getting organised, and to this end we're aiming to create a set of personas, which are representations of hypothetical users with various accessibility requirements which developers and testers can keep in mind when working on the next Ubuntu release. These personas are going to be developed by a survey which will be dispatched to a host of groups who may have accessibility requirements to get an idea of what the main factors that affect their experience with Ubuntu are, so we can get an idea of the main areas to improve. Hopefully then the work which will take place as a result of these can be sent upstream to the original projects.''

To read this post in full and find out more about the Ubuntu Accessibility Team go to:

http://mgdm.net/weblog/ubuntu-accessibility-team
Line 396: Line 413:
=== New Doctor Who game works via Wine ===

As part of this years Doctor Who series the BBC are launching a set of 4 free fully interactive downloadable adventure games (referred to as 'episodes') for UK viewers (and those who like proxies). The first 'episode', City of the Daleks, was made available a few hours ago on the BBC site - but can Linux users play it? Thankfully everyones favourite ''not-a-windows-emulator'' 'Wine' comes to the rescue.

To find out more about how you can play the new Doctor Who game using Wine go to:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/city-of-daleks-wine-linux.html
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=== Towards Linaro 10.11 ===

Jamie Bennett, the Linaro Release Manager for Canonical, looks toward Linaro 10.11 in this article.

Linaro is an initiative undertaken by ARM, Canonical and partners with the task of improving the state of the whole Linux on ARM ecosphere. It brings together the vast talents of the open source community and ARM’s wealth of experience in the electronics industry to work on key and game-changing projects. It will work in the various upstreams where possible and provide engineering, technical and guidance support for a wide and diverse set of problem area’s. Linaro will not just help other projects, there will also be a clear set of deliverables which will culminate Linaro’s efforts into regular 6 monthly engineering releases, starting this November.

To find out some history, Ubuntu’s Linux on ARM initiative, Release Objectives, and more go to:

http://www.linuxuk.org/2010/06/towards-linaro-10-11/

=== Ubuntu Systems Management update ===

We released a new version of Landscape our management service for Ubuntu last week. There’s a slew of new features including server templates, simple upgrades and enterprise authentication support. Whether you’re managing a few systems or as many as Google the new features make system administration simpler!

Landscape’s objective is to make managing and monitoring hundreds of Ubuntu systems as easy as looking after one. Whether you’re managing some Ubuntu desktops, or looking after a Web server farm Landscape lowers the complexity of administering those systems: no-one wants to apply patches to hundreds of machines manually! For IT managers this means that Landscape makes system administrators more effective and efficient. Landscape also ensures that deployed Ubuntu systems are secure with maintenance patches and upgrades.

Landscape is provided as a software service so every six months Canonical releases a new version that is available to all subscribers. There’s also an on-site version available to customers that have security policies or regulations that prevent them using a SaaS management platform.

To find out more about Landscape go to:

http://slgeorge.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/ubuntu-systems-management-update/

To read the recent press release coverages go to:

http://slgeorge.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/landscape-release-press-coverage/

=== SouthEast Linux Fest Announces Full Speaker List ===

The organizers of the Southeast Linux Fest released their full speaker list. The list includes many FOSS community members, but let's take a look at who from the Ubuntu Community will be speaking at SELF month.

 * Jono Bacon (keynote)

 * Daniel Chen

 * Pete Graner

 * Amber Graner

 * David Mandala

 * Mackenzie Morgan

There will also be an Ubu``Con on June 11, and June 13, 2010. In addition to Jono Bacon, Pete Graner, and David Mandala, Jeremy Foshee and Rick Spencer will also be taking part in the Ubu``Con.

To find out more about the Southeast Linux Fest go to:

http://linuxpr.com/releases/12125.html
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=== Towards Linaro 10.11 ===

Jamie Bennett, the Linaro Release Manager for Canonical, looks toward Linaro 10.11 in this article.

Linaro is an initiative undertaken by ARM, Canonical and partners with the task of improving the state of the whole Linux on ARM ecosphere. It brings together the vast talents of the open source community and ARM’s wealth of experience in the electronics industry to work on key and game-changing projects. It will work in the various upstreams where possible and provide engineering, technical and guidance support for a wide and diverse set of problem area’s. Linaro will not just help other projects, there will also be a clear set of deliverables which will culminate Linaro’s efforts into regular 6 monthly engineering releases, starting this November.

To find out some history, Ubuntu’s Linux on ARM initiative, Release Objectives, and more go to:

http://www.linuxuk.org/2010/06/towards-linaro-10-11/

=== New Doctor Who game works via Wine ===

As part of this years Doctor Who series the BBC are launching a set of 4 free fully interactive downloadable adventure games (referred to as 'episodes') for UK viewers (and those who like proxies). The first 'episode', City of the Daleks, was made available a few hours ago on the BBC site - but can Linux users play it? Thankfully everyones favourite ''not-a-windows-emulator'' 'Wine' comes to the rescue.

To find out more about how you can play the new Doctor Who game using Wine go to:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/city-of-daleks-wine-linux.html

=== Ubuntu Systems Management update ===

We released a new version of Landscape our management service for Ubuntu last week. There’s a slew of new features including server templates, simple upgrades and enterprise authentication support. Whether you’re managing a few systems or as many as Google the new features make system administration simpler!

Landscape’s objective is to make managing and monitoring hundreds of Ubuntu systems as easy as looking after one. Whether you’re managing some Ubuntu desktops, or looking after a Web server farm Landscape lowers the complexity of administering those systems: no-one wants to apply patches to hundreds of machines manually! For IT managers this means that Landscape makes system administrators more effective and efficient. Landscape also ensures that deployed Ubuntu systems are secure with maintenance patches and upgrades.

Landscape is provided as a software service so every six months Canonical releases a new version that is available to all subscribers. There’s also an on-site version available to customers that have security policies or regulations that prevent them using a SaaS management platform.

To find out more about Landscape go to:

http://slgeorge.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/ubuntu-systems-management-update/

to read the recent press release coverages go to:

http://slgeorge.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/landscape-release-press-coverage/

=== Severed Fifth II ===

For those Severed Fifth fans, a new web-site has been launched, and writing for the second album is nearly complete. The recording sessions for the second album will be streamed live. Keep an eye out for the new Severed Fifth Twitter page. "go and follow it to keep up to date with the latest".

For more information on the new Severed Fifth album go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/04/severed-fifth-ii/

=== Project Maintainers Required ===

Jono Bacon talks about several projects he would like to hand over to new maintainers. Information about these projects, and overall vision and ideas are shared in this post. The projets are, Acire (created to produce a solid library of Python Snippets to make it easier for new developers to get started with the platform), Python Snippets (he is calling for a team of reviewers), and Py``Junior (a project designed to make it easier for kids to write programs).

For more information on becoming a maintainer go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/04/project-maintainers-required/
Line 467: Line 490:

=== SouthEast Linux Fest Announces Full Speaker List ===

The organizers of the Southeast Linux Fest released their full speaker list. The list includes many FOSS community members, but let's take a look at who from the Ubuntu Community will be speaking at SELF month.

 * Jono Bacon (keynote)

 * Daniel Chen

 * Pete Graner

 * Amber Graner

 * David Mandala

 * Mackenzie Morgan

There will also be an Ubu``Con on June 11, and June 13, 2010. In addition to Jono Bacon, Pete Graner, and David Mandala, Jeremy Foshee and Rick Spencer will also be taking part in the Ubu``Con.

To find out more about the Southeast Linux Fest go to:

http://linuxpr.com/releases/12125.html

Contents

Contents

  1. In This Issue
  2. General Community News
    1. Maverick Alpha 1 released
    2. Kubuntu: Maverick Alpha 1 Released
    3. Postponing Ubuntu User Days
    4. Call for Testing: Hardy Firefox Users (or willing to install Hardy in a VM)
    5. Request For Help Preparing ClassBot For Translations
    6. Operation Cleansweep Launched!
    7. Linaro: Accelerating Linux on ARM
  3. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Translation Stats Lucid
    3. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  4. LoCo News
    1. LoCo Teams Best Practices and Guidelines
    2. Help translating the LoCo Teams Best Practices and Guidelines
    3. The LoCo Directory wants to speak your language
  5. Ubuntu Development Team Meetings Minutes
  6. Launchpad News
    1. Jono Bacon: Why Launchpad Rocks: Working With Code Is Dead Simple
    2. Jono Bacon: Why Launchpad Rocks: Reviewing Contributions Is Simple
  7. The Planet
    1. Daniel Holbach's blog: NGO Team during Maverick
    2. Danny Piccirillo: Free culture projects need a ubiquitous funding system
    3. Colin Watson: Hacking on grub2
    4. Jono Bacon: Severed Fifth II
    5. Jono Bacon: Project Maintainers Required
  8. In The Press
    1. Ubuntu LTS 10.04, a Linux OS at its Best
  9. In The Blogosphere
    1. Ubuntu Accessibility Team
    2. Add More Apps to the Ubuntu Messaging Menu
    3. Toolbar Editor Now in Nautilus-Elementary PPA
    4. New Doctor Who game works via Wine
  10. In Other News
    1. Towards Linaro 10.11
    2. Ubuntu Systems Management update
    3. SouthEast Linux Fest Announces Full Speaker List
    4. VMware User Conference – Phoenix
    5. TurnKey Hub: a new simplified cloud deployment service
  11. Featured Podcasts
    1. At Home With Jono Bacon: Weekly Videocast Summary
  12. Monthly Team Reports: May 2010
    1. Ubuntu Governance
      1. Ubuntu Developer Membership Board
        1. Developer Membership Board Meeting, 2010-05-11
        2. Action Review
        3. Administrative Matters
        4. Sylvestre Ledru PPU Application
        5. Luke Faraone MOTU Application
        6. Christian Mangold MOTU Application
        7. Scott Moser PPU Application
        8. Rodney Dawes PPU Application
        9. Chad Miller PPU Application
        10. Jamie Bennett Contributing Developer Application
        11. Select a Chair for the next meeting
      2. IRC Council
      3. LoCo Council
      4. Technical Board
    2. Ubuntu Development Teams
      1. Reviewers Team
      2. Xubuntu Team
        1. Bug Triage
        2. Packaging, Development, & Testing
        3. Website & Marketing
        4. Documentation
    3. Ubuntu LoCo Teams
      1. Asturian Team
      2. Catalan Team
      3. Czech Team
      4. French Team
      5. Ubuntu Ireland
      6. Ubuntu Israel
      7. Ubuntu Colombia
      8. Romanian Team
      9. South African Ubuntu team
      10. Ubuntu Tunisian LoCo Team
      11. Ubuntu United Kingdom LoCo Team
        1. Group Contribution
        2. Individual Contribution
      12. United States Teams
      13. US Teams Project
        1. Ubuntu California
        2. Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team
        3. Iowa Team
        4. Ubuntu North Carolina LoCo Team
      14. Ubuntu Venezuela Team
    4. Additional Ubuntu Teams
      1. Ubuntu Beginners Team
      2. Ubuntu Women
  13. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Monday, June 7, 2010
      1. Developer Mentoring Reception
      2. Security Team Catch-up
    2. Tuesday, June 8, 2010
      1. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
      2. Developer Membership Board
      3. Ubuntu Bugsquad Monthly Meeting
      4. Desktop Team Meeting
      5. Kernel Team Meeting
      6. Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting
    3. Wednesday, June 9, 2010
      1. Weekly Ubuntu Foundation Team Meeting
      2. QA Team Meeting
      3. Jono Bacon @ Home Videocast : Various Topics and Q+A
      4. Edubuntu Meeting
    4. Thursday, June 10, 2010
      1. Ubuntu Women Project Meeting
      2. Ayatana UX Team Meeting
      3. Ubuntu Java Meeting
    5. Friday, June 11, 2010
      1. Maverick Weekly Release Meeting
    6. Saturday, June 12, 2010
      1. DC LoCo Team BugJam
      2. DC LoCo IRC meeting
    7. Sunday, June 13, 2010
      1. Ubuntu Forums Unanswered Posts Team Meeting
  14. Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 9.04, 9.10, and 10.04
    1. Security Updates
    2. Ubuntu 6.06 Updates
    3. Ubuntu 8.04 Updates
    4. Ubuntu 9.04 Updates
    5. Ubuntu 9.10 Updates
    6. Ubuntu 10.04 Updates
  15. UWN Translations
  16. Subscribe
  17. Archives and RSS Feed
  18. Additional Ubuntu News
  19. Conclusion
  20. Credits
  21. Glossary of Terms
  22. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  23. Feedback

newspaper-icon3.jpg

WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 196 for the week of May 30th - June 5th, 2010. In this issue we cover ...

In This Issue

General Community News

Maverick Alpha 1 released

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

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

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/maverick/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu)

http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/maverick/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu Server for UEC and EC2)

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/maverick/alpha-1/ (Kubuntu)

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/maverick/alpha-1/ (Xubuntu)

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/maverick/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu Studio)

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

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

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

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/maverick/alpha1

If you're interested in following the changes as we further develop Maverick, have a look at the maverick-changes mailing list:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/maverick-changes

We also suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list if you're interested in following Ubuntu development. This is a low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other interesting events.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

To see the original Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 1 announcement please go to:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2010-June/000721.html

Kubuntu: Maverick Alpha 1 Released

The first alpha release of Kubuntu Maverick has been released. This alpha contains the recently announced Amarok 2.3.1 and KDE SC 4.5 beta.

For more information on Kubuntu Maverick Alpha 1 Release go to:

http://www.kubuntu.org/news/maverick-alpha1

Postponing Ubuntu User Days

With the second Ubuntu User Day being less than a week away, and in going over our final checklist, it has come to our attention it would be a better event, both in attendance and in the choice of session if we were to postpone this event.

While we understand that you may have scheduled time on the June 5th, 2010, to facilitate a session or participate by attending we want the experience of both session leaders and participants to be the best possible.

Keeping in mind we want to present the best possible learning opportunity, we have made the decision to postpone this event until July 10, 2010.

It is our, the User Days Planners, sincere hope that this will not be an inconvenience to you or any helpers with your session.

Thank you so much for you understanding! We are looking forward to another great second Ubuntu User Day (but a few weeks later and with more planning, promotion, participants, and more awesome session leaders like yourselves).

The original announcement can be found at:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-classroom/2010-June/000192.html

Call for Testing: Hardy Firefox Users (or willing to install Hardy in a VM)

Background: Firefox 3.0 and xulrunner 1.9 are now unsupported by Mozilla. Rather than backporting security fixes to these now, we are moving to a support model where we will be introducing major new upstream versions in stable releases. The reason for this is the support periods from Mozilla are gradually becoming shorter, and it will be more and more difficult for us to maintain our current support model in the future.

What we are going to do: We are going to release Firefox 3.6.4 as a minor update to the 3.6 series in Lucid. This will also be rolled out to Hardy, Jaunty and Karmic (along with xulrunner 1.9.2.4). The update for Lucid is quite trivial, but the update in Hardy, Jaunty and Karmic is not quite as simple.

Before releasing these updates to the public, we need testing in Firefox, the extensions in the archive and distributions upgrades after those updates. We have published all these packages in a PPA and we will track test results before moving anything to the archive.

How you can help: We need people running *Hardy* (Jaunty and Karmic will see a similar call for testing in the following days) in bare metal or a virtual machine. If you are willing to help, the instructions can be found at the link below:

http://ubuntutesting.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/call-for-testing-firefox/

Request For Help Preparing ClassBot For Translations

A few weeks ago, I was approached by some people from the Ubuntu Classroom-ES about having a Spanish version of ClassBot to help out with their Open Week. Thanks to some help with translations, I was able to create ClaseBot. The problem is, due to the way that the translations were done, if I make a change to the ClassBot code, it will have to be manually applied to ClaseBot. Ideally, I would like to have ClassBot setup to use Launchpad to allow people to translate it. The problem is that I have no experience using Gettext or with using Launchpad for translations. ClassBot is also a Perl script, so that also makes it a bit more challenging to find examples. If there is someone who has a bit more experience in this area, please get in contact with Nathan Handler.

To get read the post in full or to get in touch with Nathan please go to:

http://nhandler.wordpress.com/2010/06/05/request-for-help-preparing-classbot-for-translations/

Operation Cleansweep Launched!

At UDS-M in Brussels, Jono had announced Operation Cleansweep. Nigel announced as of June 4th, 2010 that Operation Cleansweep has launched. Nigel notes that Operation Cleansweep team has been able to subscribe to all the bugs with patches (minus the blacklisted packages).

As of June 4th, 2010, there was 1952 bugs with patches to be cleared by the project and around 80 to 90 patches being added every month. Operation Cleansweep has set an initial daily target of 15 bugs per day. Nigel tells others they can participate in Operation Cleansweep. He notes people can help by reviewing the patches, talking people into reviewing patches, and even putting up the meter on your website.

To learn more about Operation Cleansweep, and how you can participate please go to:

http://justanothertriager.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/operation-cleansweep-launched/

Linaro: Accelerating Linux on ARM

At our last UDS in Belgium it was notable how many people were interested in the ARM architecture. There have always been sessions at UDS about lightweight environments for the consumer electronics and embedded community, but this felt tangibly different. I saw questions being asked about ARM in server and cloud tracks, for example, and in desktop tracks. That’s new.

So I’m very excited at today’s announcement of Linaro, an initiative by the ARM partner ecosystem including Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and TI, to accelerate and unify the field of Linux on ARM. That is going to make it much easier for developers to target ARM generally, and build solutions that can work with the amazing diversity of ARM hardware that exists today.

The ARM platform has historically been superspecialized and hence fragmented – multiple different ARM-based CPU’s from multiple different ARM silicon partners all behaved differently enough that one needed to develop different software for each of them. Boot loaders, toolchains, kernels, drivers and middleware are all fragmented today, and of course there’s additional fragmentation associated with Android vs mainline on ARM, but Linaro will go a long way towards cleaning this up and making it possible to deliver a consistent platform experience across all of the major ARM hardware providers.

Having played with a prototype ARM netbook, I was amazed at how cool it felt. Even though it was just a prototype it was super-thin, and ran completely cool. It felt like a radical leap forward for the state of the art in netbooks. So I’m a fan of fanless computing, and can’t wait to get one off the shelf.

For product developers, the big benefit from Linaro will be reduced time to market and increased choice of hardware. If you can develop your software for “linux on ARM”, rather than a specific CPU, you can choose the right hardware for your project later in the development cycle, and reduce the time required for enablement of that hardware. Consumer electronics product development cycles should drop significantly as a result. That means that all of us get better gadgets, sooner, and great software can spread faster through the ecosystem.

To read the announcement of Linaro and to read Mark Shuttleworth's article in full go to:

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/427

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (77015) +184 over last week
  • Critical (31) +1 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (36821) +268 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 Lucid

  1. English (United Kingdom) (634) -76 over last week
  2. Spanish (10554) -47 over last week
  3. Brazilian Portuguese (35398) -283 over last week
  4. French (39486) +/-0 over last week
  5. German (54716) +/-0 over last week

Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/

Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week

Ubuntu Brainstorm is a community site geared toward letting you add your ideas for Ubuntu. You can submit your own idea, or vote for or against another idea. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

LoCo News

LoCo Teams Best Practices and Guidelines

Laura Czajkowski, of the Ubuntu LoCo Council writes about Ubuntu LoCo teams best practices and guidelines on her blog. Those are guidelines and practices are broken down into 3 areas which include:

  1. MONTHLY TASKS
  2. Monthly meeting – publish mins to mailing list/forums and update wiki.
    • Set a chair for 2-3 months and rotate it
    • Someone to publish mins to mailing list/forums and mailing list (share out the roles)
    • Update/create a monthly report
    • One person to create the report and add content to it. Mail the list and ask for input in case folks had organised or participated in events within the OSS/Ubuntu community.
    • Meet ups – face to face , publish you had these events, link these to the report
    • Take pictures!
    • Blog about them
    • For larger events publish a report after the event to the loco contacts mailing list
    • Add All of the events to the LoCo Directory!

  3. CYCLE BASED GOALS
    • Release Party
    • Global Jam
  4. LONG TERM GOALS
    • Create a a mentoring program on the below areas and train people in those areas
    • Help get existing members of the community into positions in the LoCo where they can do the most good

    • Help new ( and novice ) members find members to provide some level of help to ensure the new member can contribute in a useful way
    • Encourage and mentor for Ubuntu Membership
    • Try to create contact with the LoCos around you, in order to find any potential cross-action

Some other best practices that based on both Laura's blog and the LoCo Council wiki pages included delegating team roles. These roles include:

  • Chair of meetings
  • Web Admin
  • Mailing list admin
  • IRC Ops

To read more about the Ubuntu LoCo teams best practice and guidelines please go to:

http://www.lczajkowski.com/2010/05/30/loco-teams-best-practices-and-guidelines/ and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/LoCoTeamsBestPracticesandGuidelines

Help translating the LoCo Teams Best Practices and Guidelines

We've got some more content that would be very interesting for LoCos to have translated. Check this out:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/LoCoTeamsBestPracticesandGuidelines

The LoCo Council developed a series of best practices and guidelines to help all LoCos to be more successful, and it would be awesome to have it in YOUR language to allow everyone contribute making your LoCo rock even harder.

Here's how you can help:

  • Add your language and a link to the page where you want to put the translation to the table on top of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/LoCoTeamsBestPracticesandGuidelines I've added some few languages already for your convenience, and some folks have even already started translating!

  • I recommend creating a subpage named after the two-letter or threee-letter code for your language (e.g. LoCoTeamsBestPracticesandGuidelines/de for German). You'll find a list of codes here [1].
  • Copy the content of the page in English to your new page
  • Translate!
  • Save your translation and you're done Smile :) Check out the Spanish or Italian translations for an example:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/LoCoTeamsBestPracticesandGuidelines/es https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/LoCoTeamsBestPracticesandGuidelines/it

[1] http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php

For more information on translating the LoCo Teams Best Practice and Guidelines go to:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2010-June/004535.html

The LoCo Directory wants to speak your language

The LoCo Directory hackers have asked for some more help in getting the directory translated and thus more usable for your LoCo.

You can contribute to it the usual way by going to:

https://translations.launchpad.net/loco-directory

And leaving your suggestions or translations. We've got 7 languages which are nearly completed, and it would really be awesome if also Catalan, Finnish, French, Czech, Asturian, Serbian, Bengali, Greek, Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian, English (United Kingdom), Dutch, Swedish, Galician, Hebrew, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Vietnamese, Irish, Thai, Arabic, Tamil, Turkish, Welsh, Portuguese, Slovak, Polish, Persian, Danish, Belarusian, and more! would get some translation love.

The LoCo Directory has continuous releases, although there are generally not big string changes, so remember to check it out and translate new strings from time to time.

For more information on translating the LoCo directory please go to:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2010-June/004534.html

Ubuntu Development Team Meetings Minutes

Launchpad News

Jono Bacon: Why Launchpad Rocks: Working With Code Is Dead Simple

Jono Bacon continues his series on Why Launchpad Rocks. In this article he talks about Working With Code is Dead Simple.

This article is part of a series of articles about why I feel Launchpad is a great home for your Open Source project. I am writing these articles not as an employee of Canonical, but instead as a happy Launchpad user who gets agitated that not enough people know how cool Launchpad is.

Jono has the following to say the simplicity of working with code in Launchpad:

One of the things I love about Launchpad is that getting, hacking, sharing, merging in code is dead simple. Much of this is because of it’s tight integration with the Bazaar version control system. Together it provides akid-in-candy-shop level of awesome if you like to run and hack on code.

One of the things I love about Bazaar is that it is focused on simplicity, and having used CVS and Subversion in the past, and a little bit of git recently, I find Bazaar by far the most naturally connected with my workflow. The reason for this is that I don’t want to care about version control. I am not interested in it, I don’t want to learn it, I don’t plan on sending it a Christmas card; I merely want to learn enough to get code from somewhere, upload it somewhere and rock with it. Bazaar is well suited to my needs because it’s simplicity means that it doesn’t feel like a pain to use.

To read the this article in full and to find out why Jono says "Working With Code Is Dead Simple" go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/01/why-launchpad-rocks-working-with-code-is-dead-simple/

Jono Bacon: Why Launchpad Rocks: Reviewing Contributions Is Simple

Jono Bacon continues his series on Why Launchpad Rocks. In this article he talks about Reviewing Contributions Is Simple.

This article is part of a series of articles about why I feel Launchpad is a great home for your Open Source project. I am writing these articles not as an employee of Canonical, but instead as a happy Launchpad user who gets agitated that not enough people know how cool Launchpad is. Jono has the following to say the simplicity of working with code in Launchpad:

Open Source is fundamentally driven by gifts. People contribute translations, documentation, artwork, code and more. Many of these gifts are made available in the form of patches; fragments of content that can be applied to other chunks of content to apply new features, resolve issues or add value in other ways. Patches are wonderful contributions. their authors take the time to care about a problem and invest their expertise and time in producing a solution that everyone can share and benefit from. As such, we should treat these patches with the due care and attention that they deserve.

Something we found in Ubuntu was that we were getting so many patches submitted that many were being lost in the mix and were not getting reviewed and applied if appropriate. This goes against the grain of a gift – we should always review these gifts with a strong sense of care and timeliness. The situation was not driven by carelessness or malice, but instead a lack of visibility on these available patches for a given project.

To read the this article in full and to find out why Jono says "Reviewing Contributions Is Simple" go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/01/why-launchpad-rocks-reviewing-contributions-is-simple/

The Planet

Daniel Holbach's blog: NGO Team during Maverick

Daniel Holbach discusses the NGO Team plans for the Maverick cycle in this blog post. Daniel states, " I’m very happy with the plans of the Ubuntu NGO team this cycle."

The following list is what Daniel states that the NGO Team wants to accomplish:

  • have more regular meetings – once a month
  • get an overview of NGO-related blueprints in maverick (http://hexmode.openweblog.com/538142.html)

  • come up with specific questions for interviews
  • work on stats/feedback from the interviews – find out what works very well for NGO – tools they’ve built on their own
  • put together spec and blog, post to mailing list announcing Manifestand create branch to make it easier for others to contribute
  • document set-up and install for common applications for NGOs
  • create Facebook group
  • investigate if there’s “NGO Planet websites” somewhere
  • find list of groups of websites and list of organisations
  • See if NGOs would consider document their work – best practices

If you’re interested in stuff that non-profits, NGOs and charities do, in Ubuntu and making the world a better place. Join the team and the mailing list and contribute!

For more information on the NGO Team and to see the Blueprint for the Maverick cycle please go to:

http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=686

Danny Piccirillo: Free culture projects need a ubiquitous funding system

The free culture and free software movements have made a lot of great progress but still strugle to prove economically viable in the mainstream. The Software Freedom Conservancy exists as a fiscal sponsor for free software projects, bascially helping projects get the protections of a corporation, without having to form one. The Conservancy is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, so member projects can receive tax-deductible donations. In order to prove viable in the mainstream, the ifrastructure of this system would need to scale, plus add more features. Perhaps inviting non-free culture projects to participate on a limited basis, could help pique insterest. If there were such a system, free culture projects would be able to expand and prove viable on a much larger scale.

http://blog.thesilentnumber.me/2010/06/free-culture-projects-need-ubiquitous.html

Colin Watson: Hacking on grub2

In this article, Colin Watson addresses the state of the Grub2 package. Various people observed in a long thread on debian-devel that the grub2 package was in a bit of a mess in terms of its release-critical bug count. Along with fixing these issues, making 'grub-mkconfig' a bit more robust (in the event that the root filesystem isn't one that GRUB understands) and writing more documentation are on the list. Quoted from the article: "If you'd like to help, contact me, especially if there's something particular that isn't being handled that you think you could work on."

To see the remaining RC issues, contact Colin Watson, as well as read the article in full go to:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~cjwatson/blosxom/2010/06/04#2010-06-04-hacking-on-grub2

Jono Bacon: Severed Fifth II

For those Severed Fifth fans, a new web-site has been launched, and writing for the second album is nearly complete. The recording sessions for the second album will be streamed live. Keep an eye out for the new Severed Fifth Twitter page. "go and follow it to keep up to date with the latest".

For more information on the new Severed Fifth album go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/04/severed-fifth-ii/

Jono Bacon: Project Maintainers Required

Jono Bacon talks about several projects he would like to hand over to new maintainers. Information about these projects, and overall vision and ideas are shared in this post. The projets are, Acire (created to produce a solid library of Python Snippets to make it easier for new developers to get started with the platform), Python Snippets (he is calling for a team of reviewers), and PyJunior (a project designed to make it easier for kids to write programs).

For more information on becoming a maintainer go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/04/project-maintainers-required/

In The Press

Ubuntu LTS 10.04, a Linux OS at its Best

Juliet Kemp, ServerWatch, writes about her experience with Ubuntu 10.04. In this article she walks readers through installing the Ubuntu 10.04 Server as well as her first impressions if the Ubuntu 10.04 Server.

Juliet had this to say about the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server - It's convenient to have a server install that's entirely separate from the desktop install, and while it may not be as visually slick as the desktop version, that's not really what you want on a server. The install was straightforward; I really liked the package collections; and everything was functional on first bootup. Five years of support is good, and all the software installed was fairly up-to-date (within a couple of release points, which is reasonable given the testing cycle needed for a long-term release). Ubuntu provides security updates regularly, so any security improvements in more recent releases should be rolled out to your servers quickly.

One problem I found was that the documentation available online is a bit shaky. In some cases, it still refers to earlier releases, which isn't very reassuring. However, Ubuntu is obviously making an effort with its documentation, and it's easier to find information than it is with some other distros.

Overall, Lucid Lynx is an impressive offering and definitely something I'd be happy to use for my own servers. More console-driven system management tools and better documentation, would make it an even better option.

To read the article in full and about Juliet's experience installing and using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server go to:

http://www.serverwatch.com/sreviews/article.php/3885826/article.htm

In The Blogosphere

Ubuntu Accessibility Team

Michael Maclean, from the Ubuntu UK LoCo team talks about getting involved with the Ubuntu Accessibility Team. Michael notes that he has recently become involved, at the suggestion of Penelope Stowe who is an instrumental part at resurrecting the Ubuntu Accessibility Team. He notes that Penelope arranged an Accessibility session at UDS-M that "seems to have gone quite well" Micheal points out that,The main focus for the team right now is getting organised, and to this end we're aiming to create a set of personas, which are representations of hypothetical users with various accessibility requirements which developers and testers can keep in mind when working on the next Ubuntu release. These personas are going to be developed by a survey which will be dispatched to a host of groups who may have accessibility requirements to get an idea of what the main factors that affect their experience with Ubuntu are, so we can get an idea of the main areas to improve. Hopefully then the work which will take place as a result of these can be sent upstream to the original projects.

To read this post in full and find out more about the Ubuntu Accessibility Team go to:

http://mgdm.net/weblog/ubuntu-accessibility-team

Add More Apps to the Ubuntu Messaging Menu

A top 5 run-down of some new apps that can be added to the Ubuntu Messaging Menu.

  1. a Gmail-notifier.
  2. Liferea can alert you about RSS feeds.
  3. Zimdicator is a simple messaging menu indicator for use with the open source Zimbra Collaboration Suite.
  4. You can add Thunderbird to the messaging menu with a quick-and-easy dirty hack.
  5. CloudSN is a multi-service notification applet for Google Reader, Hotmail & More.

The full article as well as installation instructions and screenshots are available at:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/05/add-more-apps-to-ubuntu-messaging-menu.html

Toolbar Editor Now in Nautilus-Elementary PPA

Nautilus-Elementary have added a toolbar editor in an update to their simplified-spin of the titular file browser. A few weeks ago the folks at OMG!Ubuntu linked to a 10 year old bug reporting that was still open that called forNautilus developers to add toolbar customization. Looks as though toolbar customization as been added and is available now.

To view the screen shots and get instructions on how you can install the PPA go to:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/toolbar-editor-now-in-nautilus.html

New Doctor Who game works via Wine

As part of this years Doctor Who series the BBC are launching a set of 4 free fully interactive downloadable adventure games (referred to as 'episodes') for UK viewers (and those who like proxies). The first 'episode', City of the Daleks, was made available a few hours ago on the BBC site - but can Linux users play it? Thankfully everyones favourite not-a-windows-emulator 'Wine' comes to the rescue.

To find out more about how you can play the new Doctor Who game using Wine go to:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/city-of-daleks-wine-linux.html

In Other News

Towards Linaro 10.11

Jamie Bennett, the Linaro Release Manager for Canonical, looks toward Linaro 10.11 in this article.

Linaro is an initiative undertaken by ARM, Canonical and partners with the task of improving the state of the whole Linux on ARM ecosphere. It brings together the vast talents of the open source community and ARM’s wealth of experience in the electronics industry to work on key and game-changing projects. It will work in the various upstreams where possible and provide engineering, technical and guidance support for a wide and diverse set of problem area’s. Linaro will not just help other projects, there will also be a clear set of deliverables which will culminate Linaro’s efforts into regular 6 monthly engineering releases, starting this November.

To find out some history, Ubuntu’s Linux on ARM initiative, Release Objectives, and more go to:

http://www.linuxuk.org/2010/06/towards-linaro-10-11/

Ubuntu Systems Management update

We released a new version of Landscape our management service for Ubuntu last week. There’s a slew of new features including server templates, simple upgrades and enterprise authentication support. Whether you’re managing a few systems or as many as Google the new features make system administration simpler!

Landscape’s objective is to make managing and monitoring hundreds of Ubuntu systems as easy as looking after one. Whether you’re managing some Ubuntu desktops, or looking after a Web server farm Landscape lowers the complexity of administering those systems: no-one wants to apply patches to hundreds of machines manually! For IT managers this means that Landscape makes system administrators more effective and efficient. Landscape also ensures that deployed Ubuntu systems are secure with maintenance patches and upgrades.

Landscape is provided as a software service so every six months Canonical releases a new version that is available to all subscribers. There’s also an on-site version available to customers that have security policies or regulations that prevent them using a SaaS management platform.

To find out more about Landscape go to:

http://slgeorge.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/ubuntu-systems-management-update/

To read the recent press release coverages go to:

http://slgeorge.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/landscape-release-press-coverage/

SouthEast Linux Fest Announces Full Speaker List

The organizers of the Southeast Linux Fest released their full speaker list. The list includes many FOSS community members, but let's take a look at who from the Ubuntu Community will be speaking at SELF month.

  • Jono Bacon (keynote)
  • Daniel Chen
  • Pete Graner
  • Amber Graner
  • David Mandala
  • Mackenzie Morgan

There will also be an UbuCon on June 11, and June 13, 2010. In addition to Jono Bacon, Pete Graner, and David Mandala, Jeremy Foshee and Rick Spencer will also be taking part in the UbuCon.

To find out more about the Southeast Linux Fest go to:

http://linuxpr.com/releases/12125.html

VMware User Conference – Phoenix

Matthew Helmke notes that he will be speaking at the VMware User conference in Phoenix. Matthew will be speaking at the at the invitation of the Phoenix Area VMware User Group on June 8th, 2010. The Phoenix Area VMware User Group will be giving away 300 copies of VMware Cookbook. If you are interested in spending a day with people who use VMware and/or you want to learn more about this virtualization platform, Matthew notes that this will be a great opportunity to do so.

To find out more information in the conference and others who are speaking as well go to:

http://matthewhelmke.net/2010/06/04/vmware-user-conference-phoenix/

TurnKey Hub: a new simplified cloud deployment service

TurnKey Linux just launched a private beta of the TurnKey Hub, a service that makes it easy to launch and manage the open source project's Ubuntu-based virtual appliances in the Amazon EC2 cloud.

To learn more, try the demo and sign up for an invite:

https://hub.turnkeylinux.org/

According to the developers, support for additional cloud platforms, as well as automatic backup and migration functionality is in the works:

"Imagine being able to develop your site on a locally running appliance (e.g., running in VirtualBox or VMWare). Then, when you're ready you can automatically migrate your appliance, with all your customizations to a cloud hosting provider of your choice."

At Home With Jono Bacon: Weekly Videocast Summary

At Home with Jono Bacon videocast from June 2nd, 2010 covered the following areas:

  • HOWTO: Upgrading To Maverick
  • HOWTO: Filing Bugs
  • Community Team Plans for Maverick
  • Q+A

To see the recorded video cast of this session please go to:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon

More about these At Home with Jono Bacon UStream casts go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/06/01/at-home-with-jono-bacon/

Monthly Team Reports: May 2010

Ubuntu Governance

Ubuntu Developer Membership Board

Developer Membership Board Meeting, 2010-05-11

Chair: Richard Johnson

Present: Cody Sommerville, Soren Hansen, Richard Johnson, Michael Bienia, Colin Watson, Emmet Hikory

Apologies: Stéphane Graber

Action Review
  • Completed:
    • persia to update https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopers/TeamDelegation to reflect DMB's responsibilities in process.

    • cjwatson to schedule session at UDS for DMB meeting
    • persia to follow up with TheMuso re: abogani's application.

    • strgraber, soren: Vote on Rogrigo's application for PPU permissions for libubuntuone, rhythmbox-ubuntuone-music-store, ubuntuone-client, and tomboy
  • Carried Over to next meeting:
    • cjwatson to create ubuntu-kernel-uploaders team owned by the DMB that will provide upload permissions to Ubuntu kernel packages.

Administrative Matters
  • Consider changing order of application process
    • Cody to send email to the list to review

Sylvestre Ledru PPU Application

Luke Faraone MOTU Application
  • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LukeFaraone/MOTUApp

  • Luke is a Debian Maintainer and has enjoyed handling sponsorship as well as syncing RC bugs from Debian. One abstained from voting, while 4 others voted in favor. Welcome!

Christian Mangold MOTU Application

Scott Moser PPU Application

Rodney Dawes PPU Application

Chad Miller PPU Application
  • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ChadMiller/DeveloperApplication

  • Chad has been bothering Ken with regards to desktopcouch. Unfortunately Chad didn't have anyone leave a comment or testimony on his application, and because of that 2 voted in favor, 1 not in favor, and 2 abstained, therefor denying his application at this time. It was recommended for him to get those testimonies and come back as soon as possible.

Jamie Bennett Contributing Developer Application

Select a Chair for the next meeting
  • Emmet Hikory will chair the 25th May meeting

IRC Council

  • Ubuntu IRC Council meeting, May 8th 2010

    • No items on agenda, no formal meeting
    • Discussed meeting frequency, decided to move discussion to IRC Team mailing list
    • Action: topyli to send mail
  • Ubuntu IRC Council Meeting 2010-05-30

    • Attendance: nhandler, jussi, tsimpson, topyli, czajkowski, itnet7
    • Discussed with members of the LoCo Council requring the Logging bot in all LoCo IRC channels.

      • The LoCo Council brought up this topic as a possible way to resolve problems with the Code of Conduct not being followed in LoCo channels.

      • czajkowski and itnet7 agreed to send out an initial email to the loco-contacts mailing list to get some feedback from the LoCos.

      • tsimpson suggested creating a Launchpad poll once some initial discussion has taken place on the mailing list in order to get a better feel for how many people are for/against this change.
      • nhandler and itnet7 will work on preparing a pros/cons wiki page to help the councils reach a decision at a later meeting.
      • This issue will be discussed again once feedback from the LoCos is received.

    • Reviewed the Guadalinex issue: https://bugs.launchpad.net/guadalinex/+bug/513915

      • The Guadalinex Edu task is Fix Released, but the Guadalinex task is still open.
      • tsimpson volunteered to comment on the bug to get a status update about what needs to be done for the Guadalinex task.
    • Discussed the idea of an #ubuntu-lts channel
      • topyli agreed to send an email about the -lts channel to the mailing list to summarize the IRC Council's views on the issue.
      • The IRC Council will discuss this issue again at a future meeting after more discussion has taken place on the mailing list.
    • Logs for this meeting are available at: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2010/05/30/%23ubuntu-meeting.html#t19:00

LoCo Council

Ubuntu-UY was up for first. Their website has been re-branded with the the new Ubuntu branding, and they have been very active. Their Approval Application was dynamite and easily reflected their recent events as well as their hopes for the near future. Congratulations to the Uruguay Team! We really appreciate your hard work and look forward to what your team will achieve for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu-MX has done some extremely great things for the community. Their Podcast is doing really well, and they are beginning to recover from some huge hurdles (quarantined areas to help contain N1H1 for example). The LoCo Council felt unanimously that Ubuntu-MX should take a little time to get themselves back on track, asking them re-apply in September. LoCo Council members volunteered to help guide them through the re-approval process, and answer any questions they have while preparing.

Technical Board

  • Meeting of the TB, 2010-06-01
    • Chair: Keybuk
    • Present: kees, mdz, pitti, sabdfl
    • Review of Actions
      • Keybuk had sent draft mail to TB about sparc and ia64 ports, no objections were received, so the board carried and keybuk will send the mail
    • Chromium standing FFe
      • The board discussed a standing Feature Freeze Exception for Chromium, however since the package has not yet had any SRUs, it was decided that this should be deferred until a reasonable (Kees suggested 3) number had been completed. Martin Pitt will re-raise this once he feels it has proven it's worth an exception.
    • Community Bugs
      • The board resolved that the issue of ubuntu-drivers many roles should be a medium-priority bug, and should be fed back to the Launchpad team as part of the usual process
    • Chair for next meeting: cjwatson
  • Meeting of the TB, 2010-05-18
    • Chair: sabdfl
    • Present: cjwatson, kees, keybuk, mdz, pitti, sabdfl
    • Review of Actions
      • On Reinhard's patent question: pitti got a reply from Amanda [Canonical legal] and replied to Reinhard and tb@
      • cjwatson has sync'd MoM
      • pitti has switched Soyuz' sync-source.py
    • 10.10.10
      • The Board continued their discussion on the proposed release date for Maverick Meerkat. Concern was expressed about releasing on a Sunday: it was agreed that the release would need to be prepared by the previous Friday. Various stakeholders (webmaster, marketing) will be ready for the release on the Sunday, but the bulk of the work should wrap during the previous work week and only a skeleton team need be in place over the weekend, barring a release crisis.
      • The updated release schedule, with 10.10.10 has been published, and should now be considered canonical Smile :-)

    • Releases to 12.04
      • The Board discussed Robbie's data on the factors affecting actual development time during releases. It's now clear that April releases get reduced developer time, due to the number of Western holidays during the cycle. As a result, we would like to release the October release a little earlier than we have in the past.
      • The Board voted and approved a proposal to ask Jorge Castro to engage with the GNOME release team, to see if they have similar dynamics in their cycle, and are amenable to aligning in this way. In addition, we asked Jorge to explore the possibility of publishing a schedule of release dates for 10.10 till 12.04, now. That would allow us to fix the dates of conferences, sprints and other events further in advance.
      • The Board also discussed avoiding the final week of the month for releases, but the idea did not carry and no consensus emerged.
    • Sparc and IA64 Status
      • Keybuk pointed the Board at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArchitectureStatus which lists architectures and gives an indication of their degree of support in Ubuntu.

      • The Board approved that Keybuk publicise that page, together with the statement that SPARC and IA64 are declining in levels of usage and maintenance to the point where they are candidates for decommissioning. In the case of SPARC, the issues are severe, with kernel and toolchain causing problems to the point of SPARC being unusable. In the case of IA64, there was some discussion of benefits to the team of having IA64 builds, and a recognition of the fact that kernel and toolchain are in better shape. Nevertheless, the decision was taken that unless a substantial community effort rallies around IA64, it should also be decommissioned, and Keybuk will frame the mail that way.
    • Derivative hosting requests
      • Persia asked if the TB needed to be involved in questions about new derivatives, and the decision was that yes, if the request involved hosting or modifications to key infrastructure and build services, then requests should be addressed by the TB.
    • The chair for the next TB will be Keybuk.
  • Technical Board meeting, 2010-05-04
    • Attendees: Martin Pitt (chair), Kees Cook, Matt Zimmerman, Colin Watson, Mark Shuttleworth
    • Guests: Jonathan Riddell, Scott Kitterman, Emmet Hikory
    • Action review
      • Riddell and ScottK to sort next steps of KDE Updates process
        • Outstanding, but there was progress this week
      • cjwatson to write up 2010-03-09 meeting minutes
        • Outstanding
      • cjwatson to drive libfaac issue to conclusion
        • Outstanding
    • Scan the mailing list archive for anything we missed
      • That was done, added to agenda below
    • Request for Kubuntu Unseeded Packages Team
      • Would be best to create an explicit list of packages as a seed, based on the "reverse dependency" criterion
      • Once this list is done, DMB can implement
    • Scope of Canonical's acquired ffmpeg patent licenses for derivatives
      • This is believed to be strictly an OEM business, and not apply to Ubuntu in general
      • [ACTION] Martin to confirm with Canonical's legal department and follow up
    • Default sync source for Maverick
    • Chair for next meeting: Mark Shuttleworth

Ubuntu Development Teams

Reviewers Team

Xubuntu Team

Xubuntu team report for May, 2010

Bug Triage
  • Many bugs have been triaged and fixed this month.

Packaging, Development, & Testing
  • We tested and released Xubuntu 10.04, also know as Lucid Lynx.
  • We participated in UDS Maverick Meerkat.
  • In cooperation with Debian packaged and synced Xfce 4.6.2 for Maverick.

Website & Marketing

Documentation

Ubuntu LoCo Teams

Asturian Team

Catalan Team

  • May 1st: LoCo irc meeting. Preparations for Lucid release party.

  • May 3rd: New LoCo T-shrits (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rcarreras/4571747446/).

  • May 15th: Released press note for Lucid Lynx release party in València.
  • May 16th: LoCo irc meeting. Lucid Lynx release party conferences.

  • May 17th: Ubuntu.cat badges for install party.
  • May 22nd: Lucid Lynx release party (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CatalanTeam/LucidLynx) at Octubre building in the center of València with conferences, workshops and install party.

  • May 23rd: Ubuntu Unconference at Octubre building in the center of València.
  • May 27th: 10 four-years-old PCs made Lucid at IES Torre Vicens Secondary School (http://iestorrevicens.xtec.cat/) in Lleida.

Czech Team

French Team

Ubuntu Ireland

Ubuntu Israel

Ubuntu Colombia

Romanian Team

South African Ubuntu team

Last months team report was delayed to include all our release parties.

Ubuntu Tunisian LoCo Team

Ubuntu United Kingdom LoCo Team

Group Contribution
  • (http://oggcamp.org/) Held in Liverpool.

  • Ubuntu Developer Summit attended by AlanPope, AlanBell, DaveWalker, GordAllott

Individual Contribution
  • AlanBell presented on Free Software at the Redbridge School IT technicians forum and gave out 30 Lucid CDs

  • MattDaubney presented on Improving Community Support at Oggcamp

  • AlanPope presented his Ubuntu Geekbox and talked about Mumbuntu at Oggcamp

United States Teams

US Teams Project

Ubuntu California

Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team
  • Chicago Team Monthly IRC Meeting 2010-05-03
  • Began to discuss organizing a Geeknic or bike ride

Iowa Team

Ubuntu North Carolina LoCo Team

Ubuntu Venezuela Team

Additional Ubuntu Teams

Ubuntu Beginners Team

  • Bodsda raised opinion that the Beginners FAQ page requires attention and an update.
  • Discussed replacing Votebot with ubottu.
    • All members present were largely in favour of Votebot's deprecation.
    • Council are to vote on Votebot's removal from the main channels.
  • BT Council proposed a new draft for the membership requirements (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Paultag/UBTCriteria) process to the rest of the team.

    • Discussions to continue on the Mailing List and Wiki.
  • ZachK_ announced that the Summer of Documentation is just around the corner, and requested for any members to help out.
  • cjohnston discussed an opportunity for the BT to help out in redesigning the Ubuntu Community page on the Ubuntu site. http://www.ubuntu.com/community

    • Any member interested in helping, are to email, or PM cjohnston.

Ubuntu Women

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Monday, June 7, 2010

Developer Mentoring Reception

Security Team Catch-up

  • Start: 17:00 UTC
  • End: 17:30 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net
  • Agenda: nothing formal, just a weekly catch-up. Weekly Ubuntu Security Team catch-up meeting. Anyone is welcome to join if they want to watch, contribute, etc.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting

Developer Membership Board

  • Start: 14:00 UTC
  • End: 15:00 UTC
  • Location: Not listed as of publication
  • Agenda: None given at time 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 on irc.freenode.net
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Weekly Ubuntu Foundation Team Meeting

QA Team Meeting

Jono Bacon @ Home Videocast : Various Topics and Q+A

Edubuntu Meeting

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Ubuntu Women Project Meeting

Ayatana UX Team Meeting

  • Start: 12:00 UTC
  • End: 12:30 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net
  • Agenda: * Introductions * Review team charter * Organize first UX activity * Brainstorm future UX activities

Ubuntu Java Meeting

  • Start: 14:00 UTC
  • End: 15:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net
  • Agenda: none listed as of publication

Friday, June 11, 2010

Maverick Weekly Release Meeting

  • Start: 15:00 UTC
  • End: 16:30 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net
  • Agenda: none listed as of publication

Saturday, June 12, 2010

DC LoCo Team BugJam

  • Start: 20:00 UTC
  • End: 22:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-us-dc on irc.freenode.net
  • Agenda: none listed as of publication

DC LoCo IRC meeting

  • Start: 22:00 UTC
  • End: 23:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-us-dc on irc.freenode.net
  • Agenda: none listed as of publication

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Ubuntu Forums Unanswered Posts Team Meeting

Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 9.04, 9.10, and 10.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

Ubuntu 9.04 Updates

Ubuntu 9.10 Updates

Ubuntu 10.04 Updates

UWN Translations

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UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue196 (last edited 2010-06-07 11:33:41 by user80)