Issue209
WORK IN PROGRESS
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 209 for the week August 29th - September 4th, 2010.
In This Issue
General Community News
New Ubuntu Lucid Proposed Kernel
Steve Conklin, Canonical Kernel Engineer, announced on September 1, 2010 that a new Ubuntu Lucid proposed kernel was available. The Ubuntu kernel team has prepared a new proposed kernel for Lucid (2.6.32-25.43), containing a large number of fixes. This is a larger number of updates than we would usually push at one time, but processing of the upstream stable updates was delayed by a couple of security updates.
This kernel should fix a lot of issues, including this one that people have been asking about a lot. You will get this automatically if you have updates from lucid-proposed enabled. Note that if it breaks you get to keep all the pieces, so don’t try this on production machines. Please test against your favorite bugs in the changelog and provide feedback.
http://www.illruminations.com/post/1048745747/new-ubuntu-lucid-proposed-kernel
Welcome New Members
The approval results from the May 28th Asia-Oceanic Membership meeting are as follows:
Allan 'Wers' Caeg
https://launchpad.net/~allancaeg
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AllanCaeg
Wers is a member of the Philippine Open Source Network where he organises Ubuntu release parties and is part of the Gnome Asia Committee. He is currently focused on one sabfls pet projects; Ayatana-UX which works on improving Ubuntu's design direction.
Ryan 'nisshh' Macnish
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RyanMacnish
Nissh is an active member of a pile of teams; Ubuntu Manual, Ubuntu Developer Manual, BugSquad, and is part of the BugSquad Mentoring team. Rick Spencer is looking forward to his continued improvements to the Ubuntu Developers Manual and PyTask! We look forward to seeing what more Nissh has planned.
Welcome to all of our new members!
Ubuntu Stats
Bug Stats
- Open (#) +/- # over last week
- Critical (#) +/- # over last week
- Unconfirmed (#) +/- # 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
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
- Language (#) +/- # over last week
Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/
Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
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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 Team banners for Approved teams
Following on from my post last week regarding the up to date conference packs and the new banners for APPROVED teams, we have created a new wiki page we need the team contact to fill in. Again, a big thank you goes to Canonical for making this possible!
The wiki pages lists the teams at present who are approved at present, please do not add any more teams in there without consulting the LoCo Council. Team contacts need to update the wiki AND mail shipit with the relevant information on the wiki page. The banners are not ready as of yet but will be soon, and we need to have this information at hand when we have them in stock. Remember when updating the wiki to check if someone else is editing it to avoid wiki conflicts!
For more information go to:
http://www.lczajkowski.com/?p=898
Global Jam, Columbus Postgame
Ubuntu Global Jam - Nicaragua
http://josernestodavila.blogspot.com/2010/08/ubuntu-global-jam-nicaragua.html
Ubuntu (Berlin) Global Jam at c-base and Daniel
http://www.screenage.de/blog/?p=256
Montevideo’s Global Jam
http://pablorubianes.wordpress.com/?p=106
Ubuntu Global Jam in Rio de Janeiro
http://en.andregondim.eti.br/?p=179
Ubuntu Global Jam in Catalonia
http://blogs.fsfe.org/rcarreras/?p=102
Reporting from Ubuntu Global Jam Novosibirsk
http://lucidfox.org/posts/view/612
Ubuntu Global Jam Ireland a great success
http://www.lczajkowski.com/?p=884
Launchpad News
Ubuntu Forums News
The Planet
Ara Pulido: Testing your multitouch device
Maverick is coming with multitouch & gestures support!
OK, right, this is not news, a lot of people have been already been talking about it, inside the Ubuntu community, and also outside the community. I cannot express how excited I am about multitouch support and the possibilities it opens (phones?, tablets?, the-next-great-small-device?). But, first, we need to test it!
So, maybe, you have a multitouch device. OK, maybe you don’t. Maybe you just have a single touch device (a touchpad, a tablet). OK, maybe you don’t. Maybe you just have a mouse. In all those cases we need your help. Obviously, our main interest is in getting feedback from people with multitouch devices, but, we also need to see if regressions were introduced in the process.
To read the post in full and find out how you can help with testing go to:
http://ubuntutesting.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/testing-your-multitouch-device/
Jono Bacon: Incredible Stories Of Free Software and Open Source
Jono writes - In a continuation of that theme I am keen to talk about stories.
I have talked about stories quite a bit in my writings on community management (particularly so in my book The Art of Community). Stories are important entities in communities – they are vessels in which we share ideas, lessons we have learned, our experience and more. Many stories come laced with these underlining nuggets of wisdom that we then take aware and help us to refine and improve how we interface with the world and the people around us.
Stories though encompass another significant benefit: they allow us to inspire and encourage others via real-world practical examples of our ethos being put into practice.
Jono asks - What are the most inspiring and encouraging stories of Free Software and community that you have heard? Which story have made those little hairs on the back of your neck stand on end?
To read this post in full go to:
http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/08/30/incredible-stories-of-free-software-and-open-source/
Rick Spencer: Why I Have Nothing Interesting to Say
Inspired by Jono's post - On Visibility and Change - Rick Spencer, Director of Ubuntu Engineering, discusses Changes to Canonical Organizational Structure, his new role as Director of Ubuntu Engineering, being part of the community and transparency. Rick also discusses the partnership between Canonical and Ubuntu.
To read learn more about Rick and see what he's been up to go to:
http://theravingrick.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-i-have-nothing-interesting-to-say.html
Raphaël Hertzog: Understanding Membership Structures in Debian and Ubuntu
Debian and Ubuntu have a set of official membership roles that can be granted to regular contributors. Those roles come with rights that enable the contributors to do their work and to participate in the project governance (elections and other official decision-making processes). It’s also a way for the distributions to acknowledge the work done: most contributors are proud of the status they reached.
The membership structure plays an important role in the development of a distribution: it defines the kind of contributors that are welcome in the project, it sets expectations of the project towards its contributors and defines their rights. In the end, this shapes the project’s ability to recruit new contributors to keep the project alive and kicking. This article introduces the existing statuses in Debian and Ubuntu, and defines the — sometimes confusing — jargon associated with them.
For more information on these membership structures go to:
http://raphaelhertzog.com/?p=723
Daniel Holbach's: What I do
Daniel Holbach, Ubuntu Community Team, talks about what his thoughts about his job, Ubuntu and the community were 6 years ago when he started with Canonical, what all he has worked on, and what he continues to work on now.
A few of his observations back then were:
- how friendly, encouraging and motivating people were: in a very short time I made lots of friends, people who are always there for me and I’d always be there for (extended family – kind of)
- how much I learned in a very short period of time (a state of constant “a-ha! moments”)
- the incredibly strong sense of opportunity: “if I fix this bug, I not only fix it for myself, but for millions of users”
If you want to know more about Daniel go to:
http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=776
Dustin Kirkland: How My Work Benefits Free Software
Dustin Kirkland, Canonical Server Team, says - I'm personally offended when Canonical and Ubuntu are dogged about a perceived lack of contribution to the Free Software ecosystem.
So I'd like to talk about the work I have been doing at Canonical on Ubuntu, and how I believe it benefits Free Software in 7 important ways:
- Packaging
- Documentation
- Communication
- Conferences
- Upstream Contributions
- Being an Upstream
- Bringing Free Software to the Masses
To read Dustin's post in full and see what he has to say about these 7 areas go to:
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2010/08/how-work-i-do-benefits-free-software.html
In The Press
Canonical's X Gesture Extension Being Re-Evaluated
Earlier this month Canonical introduced its own multi-touch framework for Ubuntu that is set to premiere with Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" and it's called UTouch and is joined by their own gesture/touch language. That same day as announcing UTouch for Ubuntu that will support devices like the Apple Magic TrackPad and Dell XT2, Canonical proposed the X.Org Gesture Extension to the X.Org development community. While it's good to see Canonical making more contributions to upstream projects that it depends upon for Ubuntu Linux, the X.Org Gesture Extension is already being re-evaluated and may in fact not be needed.
For more information go to:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODU1MQ
Choose a Desktop Linux Distribution
Katherine Noyes, with ITWorld writes - With all the many reasons to use Linux today--particularly in a business setting--it's often a relatively easy decision to give Windows the boot. What can be more difficult, however, is deciding which of the hundreds of Linux distributions out there is best for you and your business.
Judging by popularity statistics, as tracked both by Distrowatch and in a recent study at LinuxTrends, Ubuntu is clearly the most popular distribution, or "distro." There's no denying that Ubuntu has many benefits for business users; at the same time, there are many, many other possibilities, each offering its own twist on Linux.
For more information go to:
http://www.itworld.com/open-source/118921/choose-a-desktop-linux-distribution?
StackApplet Displays Your Ubuntu Stack Exchange Reputation On The GNOME Panel
StackApplet is a simple GNOME Panel applet which checks your Stack Exchange reputation every X minutes and displays it on the panel. StackApplet works with any Stack Exchange website and in fact, it can display your reputation across multiple websites at once.
Besides displaying your reputation, StackApplet also notifies you when comments are posted to you.
For more information go to:
http://www.webupd8.org/2010/09/stackapplet-displays-your-ubuntu-stack.html
In The Blogosphere
Ubuntu One Blog: New Ubuntu One Android app and greater device support
We have some great news to share about Ubuntu One support for Android devices. Ubuntu One Contacts for Android
We recently released an Android version of the Ubuntu One Contacts sync application. This app will sync your phone address book with your Ubuntu One personal cloud to help keep your digital life together. An Ubuntu One account is required. Ubuntu One Contacts is based on the existing Funambol application but we’ve made a few enhancements.
For more information on Ubuntu One and Android apps go to:
http://voices.canonical.com/ubuntuone/?p=554
In Other News
Thinking different at Canonical
Matt Asay, Canonical COO, notes the following on his blog - Canonical really needs to be different, because Ubuntu is different. Ubuntu is a user phenomenon, not necessarily an enterprise phenomenon. We have a great deal of enterprise adoption (tops in both development and deployment according to recent surveys), but that adoption came through individual developers choosing to use Ubuntu, and not through some heavy-handed corporate decision to do so.
He also asks at the end of this post - What do you think? What would you do if you worked in Canonical’s marketing department?
For more information and to read the post in full go to:
http://voices.canonical.com/matt.asay/2010/08/31/thinking-different-at-canonical/
Building Apps for the Cloud: How KnowledgeTree Used Ubuntu for Rapid Development of Its SaaS Offering
Would you like to find out about how Ubuntu is being deployed in the cloud space? Would you like to see how KnowledgeTree uses Ubuntu for its SaaS offering? If so, please join KnowledgeTree and Canonical on Wednesday 8 September 2010 at 11 am Pacific (2 pm Eastern) for a joint webinar.
For more information about this webinar go to:
http://blog.canonical.com/?p=424
GUADEC 2010 Videos
Ara Pulida, of the Canonical QA Team, reviews and recommends viewing Videos from this years GUADEC.
With thanks to Flumotion, the videos are now available for download.
http://ubuntutesting.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/guadec-2010-videos/
Featured Podcasts
Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: Sharp Shooters
http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/?p=1484
Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
Ubuntu Desktop Team Meeting Minutes for August 31, 2010 -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Meeting/2010-08-31
Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting Minutes from August 31, 1010 -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MobileTeam/Meeting/2010/20100831
Ubuntu Server Team Meeting Minutes for August 31, 2010 -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/Server/20100831
Ubuntu Kernel Team Meeting Minutes for August 31, 2010 -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/Meeting/2010-08-31
Ubuntu Foundations Team Meeting Minutes for September 1st, 2010 -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/Meetings/2010/0901
Ubuntu Release Team Meeting Minutes for September 3rd, 2010 -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReleaseTeam/Meeting/2010-09-03
Monthly Team Reports: <MONTH> <YEAR>
Upcoming Meetings and Events
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Friday, 10 September 2010
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Sunday, 12 September 2010
Monday, 13 September 2010
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
Ubuntu 10.10 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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Glossary of Terms
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