Issue196

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Contents

Contents

  1. In This Issue
  2. General Community News
    1. Maverick Alpha 1 released
    2. Postponing Ubuntu User Days
    3. Call for Testing: Hardy Firefox Users (or willing to install Hardy in a VM)
    4. 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. The Planet
    1. Daniel Holbach's blog: NGO Team during Maverick
    2. Jono Bacon: Why Launchpad Rocks: Working With Code Is Dead Simple
    3. Jono Bacon: Why Launchpad Rocks: Reviewing Contributions Is Simple
  7. In The Press
  8. In The Blogosphere
  9. In Other News
    1. VMware User Conference – Phoenix
    2. Towards Linaro 10.11
    3. New Doctor Who game works via Wine
    4. Ubuntu Systems Management update
    5. Landscape release press coverage
    6. Severed Fifth II
    7. Project Maintainers Required
    8. TurnKey Hub: a new simplified cloud deployment service
  10. Featured Podcasts
    1. At Home With Jono Bacon: Weekly Videocast Summary
  11. Monthly Team Reports: <MONTH> <YEAR>
  12. 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
  13. 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
  14. UWN Translations
  15. Subscribe
  16. Archives and RSS Feed
  17. Additional Ubuntu News
  18. Conclusion
  19. Credits
  20. Glossary of Terms
  21. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  22. Feedback

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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

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/

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

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

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/

In The Press

In The Blogosphere

In Other News

VMware User Conference – Phoenix

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

Towards Linaro 10.11

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

New Doctor Who game works via Wine

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

Ubuntu Systems Management update

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

Landscape release press coverage

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

Severed Fifth II

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

Project Maintainers Required

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

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

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

Monthly Team Reports: <MONTH> <YEAR>

REMINDER: Monthly reports are due for this issue.

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

  • Note to translators and our readers please follow the link below for the information you need.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Translations

Subscribe

Get your copy of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter delivered each week to you via email at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-news

Archives and RSS Feed

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

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

Additional Ubuntu News

As always you can find more news and announcements at:

and

Conclusion

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

See you next week!

Credits

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Amber Graner
  • Your Name Here
  • Liraz Siri
  • And many others

Glossary of Terms

Other acronyms can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/glossary

Ubuntu - Get Involved

The Ubuntu community consists of individuals and teams, working on different aspects of the distribution, giving advice and technical support, and helping to promote Ubuntu to a wider audience. No contribution is too small, and anyone can help. It's your chance to get in on all the community fun associated with developing and promoting Ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate

Feedback

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