Issue20

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 20 for the week of Oct 22 - 28, 2006. In this issue we cover Ubuntu 6.10, Firefox 2.0, topics chosen for Mountain View, last uploads to Edgy and much more.

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

In This Issue

  • Ubuntu 6.10 released
  • Firefox 2.0 released, 6.10 first to ship with it
  • Topics chosen for Mountain View
  • Last Edgy changes
  • Launchpad news
  • In the press
  • Security updates
  • Bug stats

General Community News

Ubuntu 6.10 released

It was with much fanfare that on the 26th of October, the new version of Ubuntu, 6.10 "Edgy Eft" was released.

This new release includes fresh features like the much-discussed Upstart init system, and for the less technical, the shiny new Gnome 2.16 and the new Firefox 2.0. More features and other changes are documented at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EdgyReleaseNotes

The release announcement can be found at http://www.ubuntu.com/news/610released. Want to update? Please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EdgyReleaseNotes#head-b07f8bdf28ae0444c03e1a61110c683c77e56cd0 for the recommended method via update-manager.

Firefox 2.0 released, 6.10 first to ship with it

As mentioned above, Firefox 2.0 has been released and is included in the latest version of Ubuntu, 6.10. Ubuntu 6.10 is the first distribution to ship with it, after negotiations with Mozilla that allowed Ubuntu to keep using the official name and logo.

Firefox 2.0 has a plethora of new features such as better tab management, session saving, in-line spell checking and much, much more. A full list can be seen at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/releasenotes/

Specs for Mountain View chosen

In advance of the meeting in Mountain View, Matt Zimmermann posted a call for topics. Well, those topics have been chosen. They range from the new techboard and Community Council to new accelerate and bullet proof X lots of loco teams and more. You can see the full list at https://features.launchpad.net/sprints/uds-mtv

Jono Bacon, Canonical's Community Manager has blogged about the various community related specs, including better organization of loco teams and more. Read more at http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=806

Ubuntu 5.04 reaches its end of life

Ubuntu 5.04, Ubuntu's 2nd release, has now reached its End of Life. This means the Canonical-provided security support has ended. You can read more about the Hoary EOL at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/2006-October/000418.html

Still running 5.04? No fear, there is an easy update path. There is a good doc for that at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BreezyUpgrade

Changes In Edgy

With the release of 6.10, so goes Edgy. Next week will bring you the first Feisty changes! But first, the last few uploads before release.

The last few artwork updates snuck in under the wire, uploaded by Daniel Holbach with human-icon-theme 0.7 (new icons and other tweaks), Oliver Grawert and edubuntu-artwork 0.1.0 (usplash update) and Tollef Fog Heen with usplash-theme-ubuntu 0.5 (centering 640x480 theme).

Matt Zimmermann uploaded the new Firefox 2.0, with a whole slew of new features. One noticeable change is that Ubuntu now ships the official logo, due to continuing work with Mozilla. This makes 6.10 the first distribution to ship the new Firefox 2.0.

Two last Java apps were uploaded by Mattias Klose. Users of Eclipse will be happy to see the 3.2.1 and the ever popular Azureus was updated to 2.5.0.0.

Not satisfied that Xubuntu had enough edgy code in it, Jani Monoses decided to update xfdesktop4 4.3.99.1svn+r23492, which apparently fixes up a bunch of issues.

Launchpad News

Christian Reis provided us with a nice, comprehensive Launchpad update.

This has been a great Launchpad rollout -- there are so many cool changes that I'm going to have a hard time summarizing the highlights; be sure to read the detailed changelog because it contains many interesting tidbits that won't make it here!

You can use Launchpad to track Specifications too

I'd like to start out by pointing out a Launchpad feature that users may not be as familiar with. Most people already know that Launchpad hosts a bug tracking system, and a web translation interface; did you know we also offer a complete specification management system?

The Launchpad spec tracker lets you track metadata related to a document: what product or distribution it's about, who is the drafter, who's going to implement it, and what the current status is. The document itself can live anywhere; for instance, an Ubuntu specification that talks about Accelerated X, is housed in Launchpad at:

The Launchpad page has a summary of the spec, a dependency graph and a breakout of the metadata. The actual specification text lives at:

Note that the specification text can be kept anywhere -- it's just a URL associated with the metadata. Any upstream product can register specifications and manage them through Launchpad. This system can be used to track any software-related text, ranging from implementation proposals (like the Python PEP process) to hardcore technical specifications.

Bazaar branching

James Henstridge delivers in this rollout a cool feature that I've always been wanting to announce: it's now possible to use launchpad.net URLs to check out software using bzr! To fetch the latest version of Bazaar itself, for instance, just issue:

This works for any product in Launchpad that has a bzr branch associated to it, including upstream SVN or CVS imports. So to fetch a Bazaar branch for Gaim, the instant messaging software:

Is that cool or what? James blogged about how this was done at:

I shouldn't tell you (but I will anyway) that these URLs will get even shorter and simpler Real Soon Now -- so stay tuned.

Bug Tracking Enhancements

On the Malone front, Bjorn landed a first change to the process of adding upstream bugwatches that will make a lot of users smile: you now register bug watches entering URLs instead of picking from a list of trackers and adding a bug id. This should make it a lot faster to register watches, and this is just a first step, because the next rollout will include more extensive bug forwarding improvements.

Brad fixed a long-standing bogosity in our subscription system: people implicitly subscribed (those that appear as Also Notified: in the subscriptions portlet) to duplicates are no longer implicitly subscribed to the main bug, and if you are receiving bugmail because of a duplicate subscription, you can unsubcribe anyway and Malone will just Do the Right Thing.

Other Improvements

Other work worth noting: for the first time we enabled build failure notifications for Soyuz, which means that uploaders now get emailed when packages they sent off fail to build. A Soyuz sprint was held out in Brazil and both cleanups and PPA work were furthered.

Matthew Thomas had an ingenious solution to the problem of those meta-characters in Rosetta to indicate whitespace (those dots and carriage return symbols), using images that conveniently behave as expected when cutting-and-pasting in the browser.

Guilherme Salgado implemented a feature that allows us to track why a person was first registered in Launchpad when it is done via an automatic process (such as a Rosetta translation import); this rationale is now recorded and displayed when visiting the person's page. Activating that page into a Launchpad account is now easier than ever, too.

The full set of Launchpad changes for this rollout is detailed at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2006-October/000747.html

Please register your Ubuntu Mirror!

Guilherme Salgado put a lot of hard work into getting the Launchpad mirror prober in shape, and this last rollout includes FTP support and some reliability enhancements, which were the last items necessary to allow us to start using the mirror management system in production.

If you are a mirror administrator, please help us out by registering your Ubuntu mirror in Launchpad:

The currently registered mirrors are at the following URLs:

Once registered, we'll include your mirror in our official listings, and it will be regularly probed for content and freshness. You'll also be automatically notified if something goes wrong with your mirror. With good listings, Ubuntu users will be properly directed to the nearest, fastest and most current mirror, improving accessibility throughout.

In The Press

The Ubuntu 6.10 was in the press a great deal this week, being released and all. Due to time constraints this week, next week will have a full accounting of all various blogs post and the usual.

The BBC interviewed Mark, with a title "Space tourist promotes open source", Mark talks about briding the digital divide, how Ubuntu can help do that, the Shuttleworth Foundation (which the article incorrectly says funds Ubuntu) and more. You can listen to the whole interview at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6080048.stm

Security Updates

USN 369-1 postgresql-8.1 vulnerabilities - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-369-1

USN 368-1 qt-x11-free vulnerability - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-368-1

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

There were no updates to 6.06 this week. Next week this section will be split to include 6.10, as it is now stable as well.

Bug Stats

# Open (17976) - 1041 extra bugs since UWN #19

# Critical (16) - 1 extra bug since UWN #19

# Unconfirmed (9259) - 647 extra bugs since UWN #19

# Unassigned (13236) - 905 extra bugs since UWN #19

# All bugs ever reported (62564) - 1591 extra bugs since UWN #19

As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs

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

Additional Ubuntu News

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

As always you can find more news and announcements at:

and

Conclusion

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. See you next week!

Credits

This weeks Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Corey Burger
  • Christian Reis
  • Mellisa Draper
  • Eldo Varghese
  • And many others

Feedback

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

UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue20 (last edited 2008-08-06 16:59:47 by localhost)