Issue204


Contents

  1. In This Issue
  2. General Community News
    1. The Open Source Community Responds to Dave Neary's GNOME Census Work Presentation at GUADEC
    2. Ubuntu Global Jam: Start Your Engines!
    3. Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha-3 coming next week
    4. 10.04.1 Release Schedule Update
    5. Fixing Ubuntu Software Center Descriptions
    6. New Kubuntu website is live!
    7. Ubuntu Font Beta: now with added Bold
    8. Ubuntu News Team – Needs You!!
  3. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Translation Stats Lucid
    3. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  4. LoCo News
    1. Monthly Reports
    2. LoCo Council meeting time change
    3. Ubuntistas, the magazine of the Greek LoCo
    4. Ubuntu Q&A community in Shapado - progress
    5. Ubuntu Hour in Bangalore
    6. Became members of Ubuntu Colombia
    7. Come to the Ubuntu side, we have badges
    8. Limerick Ubuntu hour a success
    9. Second San Francisco Ubuntu Hour
    10. Ubuntu China LoCo Team resigning and nomination meeting
  5. Launchpad News
    1. Meet Benji York
    2. Assigning bugs to someone else, or not
  6. The Planet
    1. Paul Hummer: Dear Ubuntu Community - Thank You
    2. Robbie Williamson: My Motivation for Doing Opensource
    3. Nigel Babu: Cleansweep Update!
    4. Canonical Design Team: This week in design – 30 July 2010
    5. Canonical Design Team: Design by enthusiasm
  7. In The Press
    1. Why Ubuntu Linux Is a Good Business Choice
  8. In The Blogosphere
    1. Ubuntu's two big advantages over Windows and Mac
    2. Get a Blazing-Fast Computer for Free
    3. Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04 now in German
    4. New Style Stickers for sale in Ubuntu store - perfect for covering netbooks with!
    5. Unity as of now - looking better than ever
    6. 9 Awesome lynx-themed wallpapers
  9. In Other News
    1. 10 reasons why your kids should be using Linux
    2. Canonical fluffs one-click Ubuntu cloud stack
    3. GNOME 3 not ready yet, release pushed back to 2011
    4. Using ALSA to Control Linux Audio
    5. Try Out Opera Mini In Ubuntu
    6. Latest ATI Video Driver Has Support for Ubuntu 10.04
    7. Ubuntu Server makes gains at SUSE Linux' expense
    8. Whitelisting Advances with New Bouncer App
    9. Dell to Continue to Sell Ubuntu Systems, Just Not on Its UK Website
    10. TurnKey Linux: GNU high school: teaching kids by contributing to open source
    11. Full Circle Magazine Issue 39 is available
    12. bzr-svn 1.0.3 announced
    13. bzr-git 0.5.2 announced
  10. Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
  11. Monthly Team Reports: July 2010
    1. Ubuntu Governance
      1. Americas Regional Membership Board
      2. Developer Membership Board
      3. EMEA Regional Membership Board
      4. Forum Council
      5. IRC Council
      6. LoCo Council
    2. Ubuntu Development Teams
      1. Reviewers Team
      2. Kubuntu Team
        1. Community
        2. Development
        3. Packaging
        4. Website
      3. Xubuntu Team
        1. Bug Triage
        2. Packaging, Development, & Testing
        3. Website & Marketing
        4. Artwork
        5. Community
        6. Documentation
    3. Ubuntu LoCo Teams
      1. Canadian Team
      2. Catalan Team
      3. French Team
      4. Ubuntu Ireland
      5. Ubuntu Israel
      6. Japanese Team
      7. Quebec Team
      8. South African Ubuntu team
      9. Ubuntu United Kingdom LoCo Team
        1. US Teams Project
        2. Ubuntu California
        3. Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team
        4. Iowa Team
        5. New York State Team
        6. Ubuntu North Carolina LoCo Team
        7. Ohio Team
    4. Additional Ubuntu Teams
      1. Ubuntu Beginners Team
      2. Ubuntu Classroom Team
      3. Ubuntu Women Team
  12. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Monday, 2 August 2010
      1. Security Team Catch-up
    2. Tuesday, 3 August 2010
      1. Asia - Oceania RMB Meeting
      2. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
      3. Developer Membership Board
      4. Desktop Team Meeting
      5. Kernel Team Meeting
      6. EMEA Membership Meeting
      7. Community Council Meeting
    3. Wednesday, 4 August 2010
      1. Weekly Ubuntu Foundations Team Meeting
      2. Jono Bacon @ Home
      3. Edubuntu Meeting
      4. QA Team
    4. Thursday, 5 August 2010
      1. Packaging Training: Fixing Small Bugs In Ubuntu
      2. Ayatana UX Team Meeting
      3. Ubuntu Translations Meeting
      4. Ubuntu News Team Meeting
    5. Friday, 6 August 2010
      1. Maverick Weekly Release Meeting
    6. Saturday, 7 August 2010
    7. Sunday, 8 August 2010
      1. Ubuntu Forums Unanswered Posts Team
  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. UWN Sneak Peek
  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-icon4.jpg

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 204 for the week July 25th - July 31st, 2010.

In This Issue

  • The Open Source Community Responds to Dave Neary's GNOME Census Work Presentation at GUADEC
  • Ubuntu Global Jam: Start Your Engines!
  • Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha-3 coming next week
  • 10.04.1 Release Schedule Update
  • Fixing Ubuntu Software Center Descriptions
  • New Kubuntu website is live!
  • Ubuntu Font Beta: now with added Bold
  • Ubuntu News Team – Needs You!!
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Monthly Reports

  • LoCo Council meeting time change

  • Ubuntistas, the magazine of the Greek LoCo

  • Ubuntu Q&A community in Shapado - progress

  • Ubuntu Hour in Bangalore
  • Became members of Ubuntu Colombia
  • Come to the Ubuntu side, we have badges
  • Limerick Ubuntu hour a success
  • Second San Francisco Ubuntu Hour

  • Ubuntu China LoCo Team resigning and nomination meeting

  • Launchpad News
  • Dear Ubuntu Community - Thank You
  • My Motivation for Doing Opensource
  • Cleansweep Update!
  • This week in design – 30 July 2010
  • Design by enthusiasm
  • In The Press
  • In The Blogosphere
  • 10 reasons why your kids should be using Linux
  • Canonical fluffs one-click Ubuntu cloud stack
  • GNOME 3 not ready yet, release pushed back to 2011
  • Using ALSA to Control Linux Audio
  • Try Out Opera Mini In Ubuntu
  • Latest ATI Video Driver Has Support for Ubuntu 10.04
  • Ubuntu Server makes gains at SUSE Linux' expense
  • bzr-svn 1.0.3 announced
  • bzr-git 0.5.2 announced
  • Whitelisting Advances with New Bouncer App
  • Dell to Continue to Sell Ubuntu Systems, Just Not on Its UK Website

  • TurnKey Linux: GNU high school: teaching kids by contributing to open source

  • Full Circle Magazine Issue 39 is available
  • Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
  • Monthly Team Reports: July 2010
  • Upcoming Meetings and Events
  • Updates and Security
  • UWN Sneak Peek
  • and much much more!

General Community News

The Open Source Community Responds to Dave Neary's GNOME Census Work Presentation at GUADEC

Dave Neary presented his GNOME Census work [1] at GUADEC on July 28th, 2010. Response to this presentation set ablaze the internet.

Greg DeKoenigsberg (former Red Hat Employee) blogged [2] in anger his reponse to seeing the census numbers presented by Neary at GUADEC. His response was about how Canonical doesn't contribute enough upstream to the GNOME project.

In response Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager blogged [3] to refute the claims that Greg DeKoenigsberg's made on his blog post. In the comments section of Jono's post you can find Dylan McCall's "sensible" comment [4] which Mark Shuttleworth refers later in his post.

Around this same time a rather "pithy" blog post [5] was posted by Jeffery Stedfast.

Mark Shuttleworth also weighed in and blogged in response to all the posts and accusations flying around the internet with his "Tribalism is the enemny within" post [6] in which he cites both Greg, Jono and Dylan's posts.

Then on Sunday August 1st, 2010, Greg DeKoenigsberg apologized for the earlier post he posted in anger in his "Old Wounds" blog post [7].

To follow this story and to get more information go to the links listed below:

[1] - GNOME Census - http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/07/28/gnome-census/

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/07/28/gnome-census/

[2] - Greg DeKoenigsberg Speaks - http://gregdekspeaks.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/red-hat-16-canonical-1/

[3] - Red Hat, Canonical and GNOME Contributions - http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/07/30/red-hat-canonical-and-gnome-contributions/

[4] - Dylan McCall's Comment - http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/07/30/red-hat-canonical-and-gnome-contributions/comment-page-1/#comments

[5] - Re: Red Hat, 16%. Canonical, 1%. - http://jeffreystedfast.blogspot.com/2010/07/re-red-hat-16-canonical-1.html

[6] - Tribalism is the enemy within - http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/439#comment-329657

[7] - Old Wounds - http://gregdekspeaks.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/old-wounds/

Ubuntu Global Jam: Start Your Engines!

Are you good folks aware of what is happening on 27th – 29th August 2010. But of course, it is the Ubuntu Global Jam!

In the last few cycles we have organized and run an event called the Ubuntu Global Jam.

The idea was simple: encourage our awesome global Ubuntu community to get together in the same room to work on bugs, translations, documentation, testing and more. And they did, all over the world, as can be seen here.

To make the event as simple and accessible as possible, we have picked five topic areas and we are encouraging you lovely people to organize an event with one or more of them:

  • Bugs – finding, triaging and fixing bugs.
  • Testing – testing the new release and reporting your feedback.
  • Upgrade – upgrading to Maverick from Lucid and reporting your upgrade experience.
  • Documentation – writing documentation about how to use Ubuntu and how to join the community.
  • Translations – translating Ubuntu and helping to make it available in everyone’s local language.
  • Packaging – packaging software for Ubuntu users to install with a clock.
  • Other – other types of contribution such as marketing and advocacy etc.

With six primary methods of getting involved, there is something for everyone in this rocking global event.

To find out more about Ubuntu Global Jam and how you can get involved go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=2901

Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha-3 coming next week

This is just a reminder that we are one week away from Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 3, and the following week is Feature Freeze (08/12) [1]. Those wanting their features included in this release will need to upload as soon as possible. Features landing after Feature Freeze will need to be approved by the release team before being accepted [2].

Original Posting to Ubuntu-Devel mailing list can be found at:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2010-July/031023.html

10.04.1 Release Schedule Update

The Ubuntu Release team, SRU team, and team tech leads had a meeting (July 20th, 2010) about the first lucid point release preparation.

This is the current list of targeted bugs:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+milestone/ubuntu-10.04.1

We'll most likely drop some more, but by and large 10.04.1 will be what is currently in -updates and -security, hopefully most of what is currently in -proposed, and a lot of what is on above milestone list.

Due to not having a full-time release manager (apologies from me on this), we need to push back the release date from the originally planned date of July 29th to August 12th. This will give use one more week to develop bug fixes, one week to test them in -proposed, and one week to roll and vet images.

Please note that this schedule change *DOES NOT AFFECT 10.10*...we are firmly committed to delivering Maverick Meerkat on 10.10.10. Wink ;)

Original Posting to the Ubuntu-Devel mailing list can be found at:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2010-July/031016.html

Fixing Ubuntu Software Center Descriptions

The Ubuntu Software Center is making some rocking progress, but as everyone’s favorite Dr Vish suggests, it is only a container for other content, and we need to fix and improve the descriptions of apps inside Ubuntu to make it easier for users.

This is a wonderful contribution to Ubuntu. Want to get involved? Simple, check out Vish’s awesome post.

For more information and links to the posts that are referenced go to:

http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=2909

New Kubuntu website is live!

The Kubuntu team have remodeled their abode, with astounding results.

Many thanks to Ofir Klinger of the Kubuntu website team for his hard work making this happen!

For more information as well as some screenshots and a link to the new site go to:

http://dohbuoy.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/new-kubuntu-website-is-live/

Ubuntu Font Beta: now with added Bold

Ivanka Majic announced that the Canonical Design Team has updated the Ubuntu Font Beta ppa - Bold has now been added.

http://design.canonical.com/?p=6571

Ubuntu News Team – Needs You!!

Do you want to be part of the Ubuntu News Team? Do you want to be part of a long standing and growing part of the Ubuntu Community? Looking for a place to contribute. Then the Ubuntu News Team is for you!

To find out more about how you can get involved and help the news team go to:

http://akgraner.com/?p=627

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (78289) +694 over last week
  • Critical (31) +2 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (37131) +174 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) (1) +1 over last week
  2. Spanish (10361) +1444 over last week
  3. Brazilian Portuguese (34603) +/-0 over last week
  4. French (38215) -15 over last week
  5. German (54270) -2 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

Monthly Reports

Monthly reports are a really good habit to get into for all of us! But for LoCo Teams it’s especially good. It will help you keep track of your events and possibly if you aren’t doing much highlight this to you as you’ll see events decreasing which isn’t a good sign of an active team.

What is a good idea is to appoint one person to do up the team report each month. Mail the team saying the report has been created and let people add any other snippets of information they may not have heard about. This is a great way to stimulate conversation but also means it’s not just down to one person to add content.

For more information and suggestions about monthly reports go to:

http://www.lczajkowski.com/?p=807

LoCo Council meeting time change

We had a clash in #ubuntu-meeting with another meeting so we've moved the LoCo Council meeting by one hour.

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

"Tuesday 3rd August 2010, 19:00 UTC"

Click the link below to see the time in your region.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=3&month=8&year=2010&hour=19&min=0&sec=0&p1=0

To see Alan Pope's original post to the LoCo contacts mailing list go to:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2010-July/004784.html

Ubuntistas, the magazine of the Greek LoCo

It's a (almost) bi-monthly, electronic only Ubuntu and FLOSS related magazine with great success! The magazine includes interviews, tutorials and news of high quality. The magazine is organized through our forums and it's totally community generated -both content and artwork-. We magazine is active for 2 years (8 issues). The content is in Greek so unfortunately non-greek speakers cannot enjoy it.

You can find all the issues at:

http://ubuntistas.ubuntu-gr.org/

The latest issue can be found at:

http://files.ubuntu-gr.org/ubuntistas/pdfs/Ubuntistas_Issue_8_March_April_2010.pdf

Ubuntu Q&A community in Shapado - progress

A few days ago I invited you to take a look at Shapado and its Ubuntu Q&A community.

It's picking up nicely: http://ubuntu.shapado.com/

If anyone in this list wants to be an admin my only requirement is that you are a current Ubuntu member.

Most users are English and Spanish for now. The site supports 4 languages (French, Portuguese, English and Spanish) with the next release supporting many more, including Russian, Macedonian, Dutch, Galician, German and Catalan.

Progress of translation can be seen here:

http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Shapado/stats

My personal experience using it has been great and I've learned quite a bit while exploring this new way of helping other Ubuntu users. My main focus is Spanish and English. I've asked my local team members to take a look at this but I don't expect much activity before school is back Big Grin :) Right now in summer most everyone I know here in Quebec is out catching some sun.

For more information the original post to the LoCo contacts mailing list can be found at:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2010-July/004783.html

Ubuntu Hour in Bangalore

Woo! After a while, the Ubuntu LoCo community is awakening in Bangalore again. I had announced a meet up on the mailing list a while back. I had my fingers crossed as to how many would turn up and how it would be. Most people assured me “if there are 2 people and the other person isn’t your imaginary friend, its a success!“

I’m glad to report that we ended up with 7 people coming in. It started out a bit slow with just me sitting alone in Cafe Coffee Day on Richmond Road. To be a little more noticeable I opened up the laptop and sat in such a way I could see everyone who walked in. Anyone who looked lost was definitely looking for the Ubuntu Hour (note to self: Sticker on laptop sounds like a good idea now).

To find out more information and to see the pictures from the event go to:

http://justanothertriager.wordpress.com/?p=231

Became members of Ubuntu Colombia

Ingeniero Forigua takes a moment to tell members in the Ubuntu Columbia team area how they can become members of the team.

  1. Apply to a mailing list
  2. Register in lauchpad
  3. By signing the CoC (Code of Conduct ubuntu): Conductivity code is a basic outline of how we should behave within the Ubuntu community.
  4. Introduce yourself in the discussion list, indicating clearly as he learned of the group Ubuntu-Co, which projects or activities you are interested in which will participate actively.
  5. Edit your personal page on the Wiki
  6. Finally Introduce yourself to the Ubuntu Colombia in a few days some moderator will approve

To find out more information on what Ingeniero suggests go to:

http://ingforigua.com/content/convirtiendonos-en-miembros-de-ubuntu-colombia

Come to the Ubuntu side, we have badges

Ddorda from the Ubuntu Israel LoCo Team posts pictures and a brief summary of what the team has been up too.

To see the pictures and for more information go to:

http://ddorda.useopensource.net/?p=1383

Limerick Ubuntu hour a success

Thanks to all those who came along it was great to meet new people here in Limerick who are users of Ubuntu but also want to get more people using it.

Seven of us turned up the Absolute Hotel in Limerick, I had a table got and had a few things that were on the table to let folks know I was there. I was really chuffed to see so many people turn up, a lot were end users like myself and others are using Ubuntu but also want to see it more visible in their workplace.

To find out more about the Limerich Ubuntu Hour go to:

http://www.lczajkowski.com/?p=815

Second San Francisco Ubuntu Hour

On Tuesday I hosted the second San Francisco Ubuntu Hour. We had four people in attendance (thanks for dropping by James, Grant and Michelle!).

It ended up being quite an evening for gadgets. As is typical, I brought along my mini9 and Grant showed up with his ever popular OLPC laptop.

To find out more information about this Ubuntu Hour as well as see the pictures from the event go to:

http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=3271

Ubuntu China LoCo Team resigning and nomination meeting

The Ubuntu China LoCo Team resigning and nomination, and talked a lot about the LoCo team’s future activities. Topics included the following from the team Meeting Minutes:

  1. What is Ubuntu LoCo contact? [happyaron]

  2. Vote for new LoCo contact, and the new contact decided is Eleanor Chen. (10 Pros, 0 Cons, 4 not voted)

  3. Discussed about Full Circle China team’s work.
  4. Made decisions about participating the Ubuntu Global Jam, and proposed for opening a classroom for teaching people who are interested in becoming an MOTU.
  5. All participants agree with organizing more community activities, but not get a conclusion on when is the best time for starting a Ubuntu user group at Beijing.

For more information go to:

http://blogs.gnome.org/happyaron/?p=218

Launchpad News

Meet Benji York

Matthew Revell interviews Benji York, Canonical’s Launchpad team. Matthew asks Benji the following questions and more:

  • What do you do on the Launchpad team?
  • Can we see something that you’ve worked on?
  • Where do you work?
  • What did you do before working at Canonical?

To find out the answer to these question and more go to:

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/2091

Assigning bugs to someone else, or not

Recently, we changed the way assigning bugs works on Launchpad. It used to be that anyone could assign anyone else to a bug. This was open to abuse as you can imagine. Bug 511269 was filed about the potential problems with this, and we recently changed Launchpad so that only bug supervisors can assign a bug to someone else.

You can still assign a bug to yourself, but this does keep you from assigning someone to a bug to draw their attention to said bug. In the end, this is a good thing, though, as people should only be assigned bugs who are going to be responsible for working on them.

Now there is one issue with this change. Projects that had not established a bug supervisor for the project will find their developers can no longer assign bugs to each other. The easy fix for this is to create a bug supervisor team for your project and have the people working on your bugs assigned to this team. We do realize this might be a bit heavy weight for some projects, so we’ve opened bug 603281 about this issue. A fix for this — only requiring bug supervisor permissions if bug supervisor is defined — should be appearing on Launchpad soon.

For information go to:

http://blog.launchpad.net/?p=1635

The Planet

Paul Hummer: Dear Ubuntu Community - Thank You

I plug my new gadgets in. They work out of the box. - http://theironlion.net/blog/2009/07/28/korg-nano-pad-jaunty/ http://theironlion.net/blog/2009/10/17/cricket-a600-ubuntu-karmic/

I want to install and play with a new piece of software. I don't have to search the net for that software. http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/

I want to write new code. I'm up and running pretty quickly. https://launchpad.net/quickly

I want to buy new music and put it on my music player. I can certainly do that. http://theironlion.net/blog/2010/03/23/nexus-one-rhythmbox-one-ubuntu-one-music-store/

I want to contribute back to my OS. Kind people help me do that. http://theironlion.net/blog/2010/02/09/my-first-package/

I just wanted to take a minute and say thank you to everyone that works on Ubuntu, from helping new users to writing code to testing code and filing bugs. You make me forget about my OS enough to get my work done. Thank you.

For more information go to:

http://theironlion.net/blog/2010/07/30/dear-ubuntu-community-thank-you/

Robbie Williamson: My Motivation for Doing Opensource

Robbie Williamson, Canonical Foundations Team Manager discusses what his motivation for doing Opensource is.

Here is some of what Robbie had to say:

The reason I like working in opensource is that I believe the fundamental core of it, is to give…that’s it. Giving feels good. I’ve donated my time and money to various charitable organizations, and while they are all good causes…helping people who needed…deep down, I do it because it makes me feel good (and I know I’m not alone).

To read the post in full go to:

http://undacuvabrutha.wordpress.com/?p=119

Nigel Babu: Cleansweep Update!

  • Total bugs with patches: 2283 (+20)
  • Reviewed patches: 378 (+31)
  • Bugs with ‘patch-needswork’: 90 (+2)
  • Bugs with ‘patch-forwarded-upstream’: 164 (+19)
  • Bugs with ‘patch-forwarded-debian’: 51 (+8)
  • Bugs with ‘indicator-application’: 42 (-2)
  • Bugs with ‘patch-accepted-upstream’: 50 (+2)
  • Bugs with ‘patch-accepted-debian’: 12 (-1)
  • Bugs with ‘patch-rejected-upstream’: 16 (0)
  • Bugs with ‘patch-rejected-debian’: 2 (+1)

http://justanothertriager.wordpress.com/?p=226

Canonical Design Team: This week in design – 30 July 2010

To find out what the Canonical Design team has been working on in the areas of - Desktop, Research, and Guidelines go to:

http://design.canonical.com/?p=6573

Canonical Design Team: Design by enthusiasm

Ivanka Majic answers the following question -

“I wonder if the ‘open for all’ in FOSS makes the design part suffer from ‘design by comitee’? What are your thoughts on this?” – Tor Løvskogen Bollingmo

For more information and to find out how she answered this question go to:

http://www.ivankamajic.com/?p=515

In The Press

Why Ubuntu Linux Is a Good Business Choice

Ken Hess, PC World discusses Ubuntu as a good business choice.

One of those choices is Ubuntu Linux, a greatly enhanced Debian-based Linux distribution that installs easily, has the familiar Windows look and feel, and operates well on older hardware (expensive upgrade not required). Linux fans tout the positive attributes, often at high decibel levels, of Ubuntu Linux, which is perhaps the world's most popular Linux distribution. But, is it business worthy?

To decide for yourself and to find out more information go to:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/201842/why_ubuntu_linux_is_a_good_business_choice.html?tk=hp_new

In The Blogosphere

Ubuntu's two big advantages over Windows and Mac

Jason Hiner with zdnet gives discusses two significant advantages that Ubuntu has over Windows 7 and Mac OS X. This came up last week because Apple displaced Oracle as the new world leader in security vulnerabilities, according to a report from Secunia.

  1. Comprehensive software updates
  2. Integrated app store To read the article in full and learn more about these advantages go to:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/ubuntus-two-big-advantages-over-windows-and-mac/37184

Get a Blazing-Fast Computer for Free

Farhad Manjoo discusses how Ubuntu can be used on older hardware - Well, I think they've done it. I made a second foray onto Ubuntu's shores a week ago, and so far, I like it quite a bit. The OS has progressed a great deal since I last checked in (in 2008 I installed version 8.04; now I'm running version 10.04). I found Ubuntu quick to install, speedy to do pretty much everything, and, thankfully, very easy to figure out. There were some rough edges; for instance, Ubuntu's designers ought to make some of its error messages more comprehensible to newbies. While installing Skype, I was informed that a "later version is available in a software channel. You are strongly advised to install the version from the software channel, since it is usually better supported." I'm pretty sure that could have been translated to, "Click 'Next' to install a newer version of Skype." For the most part, though, Ubuntu has broken free of technical mumbo jumbo, and if you've got a little bit of tech savvy, you'll have no problem dealing with it.

So Ubuntu is good. But why should you use it?

Farhad Manjoo continues with - "To me, it's the perfect way to give an aging Windows PC new life."

Want to learn more about this writers assessment of why Ubuntu 10.04 is great for older hardware go to:

http://www.slate.com/id/2261781

Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04 now in German

Get it while it’s hot!

P.S – Take a good look at the screenshots in the translated editions. Pretty good attention to detail, no? That’s how the Ubuntu Manual Team rolls.

http://humphreybc.wordpress.com/?p=980

New Style Stickers for sale in Ubuntu store - perfect for covering netbooks with!

Notebook and netbook users the world over can now flash their OS cred to the world with some ace new Ubuntu stickers added to the Ubuntu Store.

Two different packs are available - 3 sheets of the mixed stickers (left) will set you back a not-much-at-all £1.75/$2.77/€2.05 (exec. p&p/s&h).

A variety of sizes (yes, including Windows Key size!) are including ensuring there will always be a sticker that fits every occasion!

Also available are two ‘rubbery’ domed Ubuntu logo stickers (below) which are perfect for slapping over an ASUS/Acer/HP/etc manufacturer logo. A set of 2 stickers will set you £3/$4.75/€ 3.51 (exec. p&p/s&h).. Nab either set - or both! - @ http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?currency=USD&products_id=718

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/07/new-style-stickers-for-sale-in-ubuntu.html

Unity as of now - looking better than ever

To see the screenhots of how Unity is shaping up as well as links to more information about Unity go to:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/07/unity-as-of-now.html

9 Awesome lynx-themed wallpapers

Show your love for Ubuntu 10.04 with these awesome Lucid-inspired wallpapers by MadeInKobaia. - http://gnome-look.org/usermanager/search.php?username=MadeInKobaia&PHPSESSID=3105fad53e40d6beb1aa4ec4f6cad0d1

For more information and to see the screenshots of the wallpapers go to:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/07/awesome-lynx-themed-wallpapers.html

In Other News

10 reasons why your kids should be using Linux

Providing tech support for your children can be even more challenging than your IT day job. Jack Wallen discusses the following reasons why he thinks Linux is better suited for those young users.

  1. Viruses/malware
  2. Security
  3. Cost effectiveness
  4. Age-specific tools
  5. Netbooks
  6. Agile learners
  7. Staying in step
  8. Learning opportunities
  9. A lesson in community
  10. Content filtering

To find out more about why your kids should be using Linux go to:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=1691

Canonical fluffs one-click Ubuntu cloud stack

Gaven Clark with the Register reports - Canonical has revealed that it's working with open-source project Hadoop and NoSQL database providers to deepen the level of integration between these big-data technologies and the Linux distro's next planned release: Maverick Meerkat, aka Ubuntu 10.10, due in October.

Separately, sources close to Canonical have told The Reg that the company is in talks with Cassandra and CouchDB on NoSQL, and start-up PuppetLabs for data-center automation and provisioning.

Canonical also has an internal project underway codenamed Ensemble to manage dependencies, deployment, and provisioning of applications on Ubuntu clouds. Data center and application tooling will come in the follow-on Ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10 releases.

Canonical's end goal seems to be single-click deployment for a cloud from the Ubuntu command line, starting with specific applications.

For more information and to read the post in full go to:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/27/ubuntu_big_cloud_stack_integration/

GNOME 3 not ready yet, release pushed back to 2011

Ryan Paul with Ars Technical discusses delay in release for GNOME 3 - The developers behind the GNOME project have gathered in the Netherlands this week for the annual GUADEC conference. During a meeting that took place at the event, the GNOME release team made the difficult decision to delay the launch of GNOME 3, the next major version of the popular open source desktop environment.

The new version has been deemed unready for mass consumption and will need another round of refinements before it can achieve the level of maturity and robustness that is expected by the software's users. Although the news will likely disappoint some enthusiasts, it is consistent with the GNOME development community's conservative approach to release management and strong emphasis on predictability.

To learn more about this delayed release of GNOME 3 go to:

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/07/gnome-3-not-ready-yet-release-pushed-back-to-2011.ars

Using ALSA to Control Linux Audio

Carla Shroder discusses Using ALSA - Last week I wrote how to configure PulseAudio on Ubuntu so you could easily stop and start it when you wanted to, instead of being stuck with it being on all the time, or having to remove it just to get it out of your way. Today I'm going to show how to use ALSA, which has been the default Linux audio subsystem for many years. ALSA has its limitations, but it's perfectly fine for controlling both playback and recording volume.

To learn more about using ALSA to control Linux audio go to:

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/7134/1/

Try Out Opera Mini In Ubuntu

Anurag Upadhaya discusses how to run Opera Mini in Ubuntu - You must have seen plenty of ways to run Opera Mini in Windows XP or Windows 7 (yes, we are not talking about mobiles here). Want to experience the same thing on Ubuntu? The process to run it on Windows and Ubuntu is almost same with the same software application required for emulation, but still we will take you through the required steps.

To learn more go to:

http://www.blogsdna.com/11590/try-out-opera-mini-in-ubuntu.htm

Latest ATI Video Driver Has Support for Ubuntu 10.04

Marius Nestor, Linux Editor for Softpedia lets the world know about the latest ATI Video Drive that has support for Ubuntu 10.04 - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) proudly announced a few minutes ago, July 26th, another improved version of its ATI Catalyst Linux display driver, available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. ATI Catalyst 10.7 introduces final and stable support for the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) operating system, early support for the newly released openSUSE 11.3 distribution, and official support for the ATI Eyefinity technology. The software version was updated to 8.753.

Want to know more about this driver, go to:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Latest-ATI-Video-Driver-Has-Support-for-Ubuntu-10-04-149158.shtml

Ubuntu Server makes gains at SUSE Linux' expense

Bridget Botelho, Senior News Writer,SearchEnterpriseLinux.com, discusses the how Ubuntu Server is filling the gaps in the enterprise market.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is still the most widely used open source server operating system in data centers, but Ubuntu Server adoption is on the rise, and it could come at the expense of SUSE Linux.

That said, Canonical Ltd.’s Ubuntu Server market share is quite small compared with Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but the gap between SUSE and Ubuntu has shrunk over the past year, with Ubuntu deployments rising slightly and SUSE declining, according to TechTarget’s Data Center Decisions 2010 survey.

According to the survey of 1,049 IT managers, the most commonly used data center OSes are Windows Server 2003 (81%), Windows Server 2008 (52%) and 2008 R2 (45%), followed by RHEL (41%). SUSE Linux ranks below Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, HP-UX and iOS at 16%, while 14% of respondents said they use Ubuntu Linux.

To read the article in full and find out more information go to:

http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/2240020509/Ubuntu-Server-makes-gains-at-SUSE-Linux-expense

Whitelisting Advances with New Bouncer App

Sean Michael Kerner informs people that starting with Bouncer 6.0, the company is moving to a software appliance model powered by Ubuntu Linux.

Security vendor CoreTrace is updating its Bouncer whitelisting application this week, providing new insight and control into securing applications for enterprise use. The basic concept behind whitelisting is to only enable approved applications and deny access to those that aren't.

With the proliferation of applications and the growing strains on enterprise IT, it's not always possible to have all the necessary applications on a whitelist. That's where CoreTrace's new Bouncer 6.0 release is aiming to help.

Bouncer 6.0 includes a new cloud-based intelligence service that is being integrated to help administrators stay up-to-date on current application security risks and patches. The new Bouncer release will also help to enable enterprise compliance with software licensing by providing visibility into application usage.

Overall, what CoreTrace is aiming to do with its new release is help broaden the definition of what whitelisting applications are able to do as enterprises continue to secure their application usage.

To find out more information go to:

http://www.esecurityplanet.com/features/article.php/3895421/Whitelisting-Advances-with-New-Bouncer-App.htm

Dell to Continue to Sell Ubuntu Systems, Just Not on Its UK Website

By Lucian Parfeni, Web News Editor for Spoftpedia, dispells the myth that Dell isn't shipping laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed on them.

... while 'Dell no longer sells Ubuntu laptops' makes for a great headline, it’s not exactly true. In fact, Dell is expanding its offering with the first desktop system available for quite a while and has started shipping systems with Ubuntu 10.04. However, it has stopped selling Ubuntu machines in its UK online shop.

...Dell is still selling them over the phone. But they’re gone from the website and there doesn’t seem to be any plans to bring them back any time soon...

There are some good news coming from Dell though, the company has recently expanded its Ubuntu offering. It has now started selling its Studio XPS 7100 desktop pre-installed with Ubuntu, a more powerful machine than the Inspiron line it offered before. It also marks the first time Dell has offered Ubuntu 10.04 out of the box. Other systems come with Ubuntu 9.10 and even Ubuntu 9.04. Seeing as any of them can be easily upgraded to the latest version, it’s not much of an inconvenience for users. In conclusion, Dell is not dropping Ubuntu, at least not in the foreseeable future, but a clearer and more focused strategy from the OEM giant would be nice.

For more information go to:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Dell-to-Continue-to-Sell-Ubuntu-Systems-Just-Not-on-Its-UK-Website-149644.shtml

TurnKey Linux: GNU high school: teaching kids by contributing to open source

TurnKey, an Ubuntu based project, spotlight an inspiring relationship with Chelsea School, a high school in suburban Maryland that specializes in teaching students with language-based learning disabilities. Chelsea School is piloting an innovative program that teaches students about technology by engaging the open source community. Chelsea School has proven teaching students by contributing to open source can be a win-win for both education and the open source community.

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/gnu-high-school

Full Circle Magazine Issue 39 is available

  • Command and Conquer.
  • How-To : Program in Python – Part 13, Virtualize – Fedora 13, and Understand Virtual Memory.
  • Review – iRobot iPad.
  • Top 5 – Documentation Sites.

  • plus: MOTU Interview, Ubuntu Games, My Opinion, My Story, and now with all new LoCo and Translation Team interviews!

To get Full Circle Magazine Issue 39 go to:

http://fullcirclemagazine.org/2010/07/30/weve-got-issue-39-out-for-you/

bzr-svn 1.0.3 announced

Jelmer Vernooij announced on Friday July 30th, 2010, the release of the next version of bzr-svn, version 1.0.3. This release was overdue, and mostly contains bugfixes. I hope to follow this release up quickly with a 1.0.4 or 1.1.0 release.

To see the original announcement as well as the full list of changes since 1.0.2 go to:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar-announce/2010-July/000335.html

bzr-git 0.5.2 announced

Jelmer Vernooij announced on Friday July 30th, 2010 that bzr-git 0.5.2 was released.

To learn more about this release and the bug fixes contained go to:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar-announce/2010-July/000336.html

Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings

Monthly Team Reports: July 2010

Ubuntu Governance

Americas Regional Membership Board

Developer Membership Board

Developer Membership Board meeting, 2010-07-06 15:00 UTC

  • Chair: Colin Watson
  • Present: Cody Somerville, Emmet Hikory, Michael Bienia, Soren Hansen
  • Apologies: Stéphane Graber
  • Absent: Richard Johnson
  • Action review:
    • persia to publish the minutes for the DMB meeting 2010-05-25
      • Done towards end of meeting
    • cjwatson to create ubuntu-kernel-uploaders team owned by the DMB that will provide upload permissions to Ubuntu kernel packages
      • Done

    • cjwatson to create a zope packageset incorporating the Zope, Zope Community, and Python Packaging sections, and a schooltool packageset for the SchoolTool section

      • Done insofar as currently possible due to availability of packages in the archive; sent mail
    • Cody to write an e-mail to the list concerning the layout/format of the DMB meeting - membership first
      • Not done; will do that today or tomorrow

  • Robert Ancell (core developer) (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RobertAncell/CoreDevApplication)

    • Approved: 4 for, 0 against, 1 abstained.

  • Micah Gersten (Mozilla package set) (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/micahg/MozillaUploaderApp)

    • Approved: 5 for, 0 against, 0 abstained.

  • Chase Douglas (PPU) (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ChaseDouglas/DeveloperApplication-Firmware)

    • Chase applied for upload access to linux-firmware, linux-firmware-nonfree, and trace-cmd.
    • Approved: 4 for, 0 against, 0 abstained.

  • Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (PPU) (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mtrudel/PPUApplication)

    • Mathieu applied for upload access to network-manager, network-manager-applet, network-manager-pptp, network-manager-openvpn, network-manager-vpnc, network-manager-openconnect, and modemmanager.
    • Given that other commitments had left us inquorate by this point in the meeting anyway, we deferred Mathieu's application until next week in order for him to gather endorsements.

  • Gerfried Fuchs (MOTU) (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GerfriedFuchs)

    • Vote partially completed during the meeting, pending completion by e-mail.

EMEA Regional Membership Board

New July Members at the EMEA Meeting held on

Forum Council

Ubuntu Forums Council - July 2010

  1. LTSP Forums (suggestion) (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1513563) - For now we prefer if the Server Platform (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=339) section is used with a tag - LTSP. If / when traffic increases we can re-consider a subforum, but the impression is the traffic is low.

  2. Request for an Ubuntu Youth Forum - This request was considered, but declined. The best summary of the FC is "We are a support forum and the entirety of the forums should be suitable for all ages."
  3. Polls will be disabled in the support forums.

IRC Council

  • IRC Council meeting on 10 July 2010
    • Attendance: topyli, Pici, tsimpson, jussi (latter part of the meeting)
    • Topic: Review the Mentoring page for approval/rejection
      • Decided to accept the current draft
    • Topic: Burnout strategy for operators
      • Discussed possible policy options
      • Decided to amend the Operator Guidelines to encourage operators to take sufficient time off regularly. Operators should inform the team in advance when they are planning to take time off.
      • ACTION: jussi to draft amendment for guidelines. We will then work from that together.
      • ACTION: topyli to create vacation calendar for operators.
      • The amendment will be publicised and the calendar announced on the IRC Team mailing list. Pici will send the mail when everything is ready.
    • No new bugs. Bug #513915 - "IRC Clients join Ubuntu channels by default in Guadalinex" has been closed.
  • IRC Council meeting on 25 July 2010
    • Attendance: nhandler
    • Due to no items being on the agenda and not having quorum, this meeting did not happen.

LoCo Council

  • The idea of the LoCo Health check is an informal way to get teams chatting about issues they are facing any thoughts or issues they have, but also for the council to remind them on ways that teams can help themselves using the tools that are available to them.

  • We had a July LoCo Health Check on July 6th covering a range of topics such as using the LoCo Teams Best Practices and Guidelines,Hanging out in IRC Channel #ubuntu-locoteams this is also where you can contact Council members if you need us. Microblogging and using the #locoteams tag when you dent/tweet so people can follow your comments. Getting more people on the LoCo contacts Mailing list and spreading the word. Minutes (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/LoCoHealthCheck/20100706 )

  • We had a LoCo Council meeting on the 20th July where we reviewed applications from teams for Approval and Re Approval of their LoCo status.

    • * Ubuntu-RO - Nobody present for application - Council taking it to mailing list instead
    • * Ubuntu-US-MA - Not re-approved
    • * Ubuntu-IT - Re-approved
    • * Ubuntu-FR - Re-approved
    • * Ubuntu-GR - Re-approved
    • * Ubuntu-EG - Abstained
    • * Ubuntu-NL - Abstained

  • For those LoCo teams that were not re-approved, or for which the LoCo council could not reach agreement, the council agreed to work with the LoCo teams to help them get re-approved Full Log of Meeting (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/Agenda/20100720 )

  • Following up on emails/ queries from LoCo teams who have requested help and helping where possible.

Ubuntu Development Teams

Reviewers Team

  • Dholbach and Nigelb held a meeting to discuss reduced pace for patch review.
  • Patch review to be part of the Ubuntu Global Jam
  • 378 patches reviewed. 1905 patches remaining.
  • Patch day planned for August.

Kubuntu Team

Kubuntu team report for July, 2010

Community
  • Kubuntu Tutorials Day was on July 7th to teach how to help with Kubuntu and KDE
  • Kubuntu Council meeting held on July 26th to review progress of Maverick development and needed course corrections.

Development
  • As part of the Google Summer of Code, Harald Sitter (apachelogger) working on Ubuntu One KDE client. Its first sort-of alpha was announced on 11th July

  • Jonathan Thomas (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jonathan265) working on QApt, a new package manager backend and Muon, a GUI frontend for QApt, which will be hopefully the default package manager for Maverick+1. Current version is 0.3, the beta released is scheduled on 28th July.

  • Second alpha version of Maverick Meerkat released

  • Project Neon (a.k.a Amarok Nightly) was ressurected by Michał Zając (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MichalZajac) and Rohan Garg (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/shadeslayer) with help and (sometimes) useful comments of Harald Sitter (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HaraldSitter)!

Packaging

Website

Xubuntu Team

Xubuntu team report for July, 2010

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

Packaging, Development, & Testing
  • Uploaded new bugfix releases of Goffice (0.8.7) and Gnumeric (1.10.7) in Maverick Meerkat.
  • Synced xfce4-notifyd (Xfce Notification Daemon) into Maverick Meerkat from Debian to let it work again with the latest libnotify.

  • Released Maverick Meerkat Alpha2 on 2010-07-01. This is the second development release of what will become the next version of Xubuntu, 10.10. It is available for testing purposes at Tumbler (http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/maverick/alpha-2/).

  • New default applications selected since Maverick Meerkat Alpha 2: Parole (Xfce4 Media Player), Xfburn (Xfce4 CD/DVD burning tool) and xfce4-taskmanager (Xfce4 process manager). Feedback appreciated!

  • FFmpeg thumbnailer support added to (http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/xfce/2010-July/027372.html) (file thumbnail generator for the not-yet-released Xfce 4.8), thanks to the work of Lionel Le Folgoc (mr_pouit).

  • Development packages of Xfce 4.7.x (future 4.8) updated in Xubuntu developers' PPA (https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/ppa). Feel free to test them and report bugs on http://bugzilla.xfce.org to make Xfce 4.8 rock!

Website & Marketing
  • Gave a presentation at Ubuntu Developer Week. Xubuntu is alive and kicking hard!

  • Xubuntu needs a new Marketing Lead. Contact us per http://xubuntu.org/devel if interested

Artwork

Community
  • We are striving to get more users to blog about Xubuntu. We would like to keep word out of the changes being made, as well as new releases.
  • charlie-tca opened an account on indenti.ca to try and keep everyone updated about changes and needs of Xubuntu. Username is charlietca1.

Documentation

Ubuntu LoCo Teams

Canadian Team

Catalan Team

  • July 16th: LoCo irc meeting. Place to hold next release party: CTUG in Granollers (http://ctug.cat/).

  • July 16th: New sub-team created: Equip de Comunicació (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CatalanTeam/comunicacio) (Communications Team).

    • Its primary tasks: inform to a wider audience about upcoming events and increase the awareness of our LoCo Team.

  • July 30th: ALL the machines (204 desktops and about 15 laptops) run on Lucid at the IES Torre Vicens Secondary School (http://iestorrevicens.xtec.cat/) in Lleida. 3 years since we began using it we've made all the machines ubuntaires (some of them with dual start).

French Team

  • July 3rd : Premier Samedi du Libre (http://www.premier-samedi.org/) in Paris
    This is a multi-distribution small install fest where around 60 people use to come for help on configuring and installing Linux.

  • July 5th : weekly ubuntu-fr-webteam meeting

  • July 6th to 11th : RMLL (http://2010.rmll.info/spip.php?lang=en) in Bordeaux
    2010 Libre Software Meeting is a free (as a beer and as a speech) and non commercial conference with talks, workshops and round tables about Free Software and its uses. The LSM goal is to provide a place for exchange between Free Software developers, users and stakeholders. Ubuntu-fr was there on a booth and hold also a permanent install fest. We had a live feed via a webcam also on the install room.

  • July 12th : weekly ubuntu-fr-webteam meeting

  • July 15th to 18th : Festival des Vieilles Charrues (http://www.vieillescharrues.asso.fr/) in Carhaix
    The Vieilles Charrues invited us for the second time to hold a webcafe on Ubuntu for the festival-goers. We didn't put any restriction, neither on which website were accessible, neither on Ubuntu, as we wanted people to discover it. The only tweaks were password and history saving disabled and a custom homepage. We also had a live feed via a webcam. story (http://blog.yoboy.fr/post/2010/07/Ubuntu-fr-at-Les-Vieilles-Charrues), photos (http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=407788)

  • July 20th : French Team re-approval (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FrenchTeam/ApprovalApplication)
    We attended to the LoCoCouncil meeting to apply for our team re-approval, to keep our Official Team status. It was a good opportunity to make a check point of all our activities.

  • July 25th : The Parisien Free software user group use to have a outdoor party the last weekend of each summer month, which we attented.
  • July 26th : weekly ubuntu-fr-webteam meeting

Ubuntu Ireland

Ubuntu Israel

  • Almost done building our new site and forums, instead of the old ones that not under the LoCo's control.

  • Sent more than 50 Ubuntu CDs and almost 300 "Powered by Ubuntu" badges all over the country!
  • The stuff we sent made us to get 300 NIS of donations, which is about $90.

  • Our Wiki page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IsraeliTeam) is in repairing times, which means we're styling it and making sure we have all necessary pages (like reports, meetings, agenda...)

  • We got approved to have a booth on August Penguin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Penguin), the biggest FLOSS event of the year in Israel. fun!

  • 3 LoCo members had approved as Ubuntu Members! congratulations to Moshenahmias, alonswartz and Netshine (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/netshine?action=recall&rev=19)!

Japanese Team

Quebec Team

Ubuntu Quebec team report for January-July 2010

This is the first Ubuntu QC team report in quite some time. It highlights the past few months activities. June, July and August are typically slower months as Summer kicks in and everyone is out trying to get some sun but the Ubuntu QC community has been anything but dormant.

The Ubuntu Hour, held in February (http://www.fabianrodriguez.com/blog/2010/02/10/reminder-ubuntu-hour-this-thursday-feb-11th-in-montreal/) (Montreal GeekFest (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/attachment:IMG_0448.jpg))

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?uname=magicfab&isOwner=true&tags=Geekfest#), held in March (here's one in February (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/attachment:IMG_1510.jpg))

Here are highlights of recent activity:

  • In July, FabianRodriguez invited the locoteams and general Ubuntu community to start using Shapado.com for their language-specific Q&A

  • Also in July, FabianRodriguez proposed and got confirmation to offer an introductory informal course about free software and Linux at a local library (Mile End library, on Park Ave, Montreal. The goal is to experiment a new formula in creating local communities in neighborhoods near the library. Ubuntu books have been donated previously to this library.

  • A number of Ubuntu Hour events were held ((http://www.fabianrodriguez.com/blog/2010/02/10/reminder-ubuntu-hour-this-thursday-feb-11th-in-montreal/)), with low but great attendance. Ubuntu users from abroad know this event and actually plan their time in Montreal to meet us Smile :) Employees from the nearby Canonical office would bring hardware and Ubuntu gadgets to share impressions on.

  • In June the highlight was a victory in court for Savoir Faire Linux (a local company, also a Canonical training partner) who questioned the local government contracting methods which favored Microsoft. Many Ubuntu QC members followed this and participated in the effort. Details at:

  • In May a great event took place at a local IT school, SupInfo (http://www.supinfo.com/en/News0eaaf665-d9bf-4563-befb-ac97f8b035c2.aspx). Their students had attended the Global Jam which we organized previously and organized this by themselves with out assistance. FabianRodriguez presented there. The event was called "Libuntu" with its own branding and website: http://www.libuntu.com/ - Low attendance but a great collaboration to get huge space including free wifi and many volunteers, a good step towards organizing more formal events.

  • Also in may, Launchpad developers that were in Montreal invited the local community to meet them for drinks & chat

  • In April the Ubuntu Lucid party (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuebecTeam/LucidParty) - good attendance, and this time we got 4 parties across the province, an all-time record. Focus has been on de-centralizing the release parties, having flexible dates and encouraging local, smaller events

  • Also in April, there was bragging about Ubuntu business cards (http://www.fabianrodriguez.com/blog/2010/04/14/ubuntu-business-cards/) Smile :)

  • In March, we had a kiosk at the local GeekFest, very good attendance. MagicFab, IdleOne and Montreal Global Jam (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Cyphermox) manned the kiosk.

  • In January and February the highlghts were several discussions about local media and governement launching web sites that exclusively used non-free formats, including bugg Flash implementations. In one notable case (Tout.tv), the community hacked together a workaround in a few hours and a 400+ people Facebook group brought attention to absent Linux support from such sites. Details:

  • March 26th-28th the (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuebecTeam/GlobalJam10.03), many thanks to komputes and mailing list (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Cyphermox). Great attendance, bugwork and excellent presentations. We look forward to the next one!!!

  • Started using http://ietherpad.com for quick, realtime translations of information- this being a a multi-cultural province, we need to present information in English and French in a timely manner which is often a challenge. Etherpad makes it easy for *anyone* to organize and contribute short translations

  • Great activity in our (https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-quebec/): February: 272, March: 371, April: 240, May: 228 messages, June: 193 messages, July: 133 messages. Subjects included: problems with Flash, LPIC certifications, Antidote (an non-free dictionary / thesaurus for French, with excellent Ubuntu support), Dell, hardware for Home theaters (XBMC,etc), desktop applications support, events, and lots of troubleshooting.

  • Other LUGs are increasingly announcing their activities in our mailing list, which is a great signe of recognition - and provides good opportunities to go out of the "Ubuntu bubble"

South African Ubuntu team

Ubuntu United Kingdom LoCo Team

  • Les Pounder ran another Ubuntu installation helpdesk at Barcamp Blackpool - http://lespounder.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/barcamp-blackpool-2010/

  • Bruno Girin has been busy solving bugs in Shotwell and getting the F-Spot import feature ready for Maverick. Blog post to come soon.

  • The Ubuntu In Business event was held at the BrickHouse in London. About 100 people attended presentations and demonstrations focusing on the use of Ubuntu in the work environment. A great time was had by all, however the bar staff did question the competence of the Vancouver LoCo mixologists who invented the Ubuntini.

  • Two episodes of the Ubuntu UK Podcast were released.
  • Meetings held on irc on 7th and 21st July

  • We have started playing Profile Roulette (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ProfileRoulette)

  • Isabell Long was interviewed by Full Circle Magazine (issue 39, page 35)

US Teams Project
  • Published next in series of interviews and articles with approved state teams:

Ubuntu California

Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team

Iowa Team

New York State Team
  • Events
  • July 1 2010 7pm - 8pm: Ubuntu Hour at Borders Books near Eastview Mall
  • July 17 2010 12pm - 4pm: Linux Workshop co-sponsored with Interlock at Interlock Rochester Meetings
  • No mettings held

Ubuntu North Carolina LoCo Team

Ohio Team
  • Cincinnati Ubuntu Hour on July 1st
  • Akron Ubuntu Hour on July 2ed
  • Columbus Ubuntu Hour on July 14th
  • Cincinnati Ubuntu Hour on July 15th
  • Akron Ubuntu Hour on July 16th
  • Columbus Ubuntu Hour on July 28th
  • Cincinnati Ubuntu Hour on July 29th
  • Akron Ubuntu Hour on July 30th

Additional Ubuntu Teams

Ubuntu Beginners Team

  • Regular Monthly Meeting on July 13, 2010 (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam/Meetings/20100713)

    • Diego Turcios discussed his idea for a programming academy for the Development Focus Group: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DiegoTurcios/DevFG

    • Reviewed the list of mentees in need of mentors in an effort to get this list down to zero.
    • Mitch Towner (kermiac), the bug traiging machine, joined the Ubuntu Beginners Team. He is highly motivated, friendly , and ready to help when he can, and will be a great addition to the team.
  • Steve Woodruff (swoody) replaced Zach Kriesse (zkriesse) as the Wiki Focus Group leader.

Ubuntu Classroom Team

Ubuntu Women Team

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Monday, 2 August 2010

Security Team Catch-up

  • Start: 17:00 UTC
  • End: 17:30 UTC
  • Location: #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: Weekly Ubuntu Security Team catch-up meeting. Anyone is welcome to join if they want to watch, contribute, etc.

Tuesday, 3 August 2010

Asia - Oceania RMB Meeting

Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting

Developer Membership Board

  • Start: 14:00 UTC
  • End: 15:00 UTC
  • Location: #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Desktop Team Meeting

Kernel Team Meeting

  • Start: 17:00 UTC
  • End: 18:00 UTC
  • Location: #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

EMEA Membership Meeting

Community Council Meeting

Wednesday, 4 August 2010

Weekly Ubuntu Foundations Team Meeting

Jono Bacon @ Home

Edubuntu Meeting

QA Team

Thursday, 5 August 2010

Packaging Training: Fixing Small Bugs In Ubuntu

  • Start: 06:00 UTC
  • End: 07:00 UTC
  • Location: #ubuntu-classroom
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Ayatana UX Team Meeting

  • Start: 12:00 UTC
  • End: 12:30 UTC
  • Location: #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: Introductions, Review team charter, Organize first UX activity, Brainstorm future UX activities

Ubuntu Translations Meeting

Ubuntu News Team Meeting

  • Start: 23:00 UTC
  • End: 00:00 UTC
  • Location: #ubuntu-news
  • Agenda: TBD

Friday, 6 August 2010

Maverick Weekly Release Meeting

Saturday, 7 August 2010

Sunday, 8 August 2010

Ubuntu Forums Unanswered Posts Team

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

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

  • None Reported

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

  • None Reported

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

UWN Sneak Peek

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Conclusion

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See you next week!

Credits

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Amber Graner
  • Liraz Siri
  • Nathan Handler
  • Jonathan Carter
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  • 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

This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Weekly News Team. If you have a story idea or suggestions for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list at https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Ubuntu-news-team and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Ideas. If you'd like to contribute to a future issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, please feel free to edit the appropriate wiki page. If you have any technical support questions, please send them to ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com.

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UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue204 (last edited 2010-08-02 10:18:49 by e180078186)