Issue277
WORK IN PROGRESS
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 277 for the week July 30 - August 5, 2012.
In This Issue
General Community News
Ubuntu Developer Summit Sponsorship Now Open
Jono Bacon announces the opening of sponsorship for the next Ubuntu Developer Summit, taking place 29th Oct -- 1st Nov at Bella Centre, Copenhagen, Denmark and shares details for how community members can apply for sponsorship.
Bacon writes: “At the heart of a great UDS is a diverse group of attendees who can bring their experience and expertise to the discussions. You don’t have to be technical, or be a programmer or packager to attend -- UDS is open to everyone (including non-Ubuntu folks) and free to attend. We encourage everyone with an interest in Ubuntu to attend.”
http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/08/01/ubuntu-developer-summit-sponsorship-now-open-4/
The announcement of Copenhagen, Denmark as the next UDS location was also covered throughout the blogosphere:
Copenhagen, Denmark To Hold Next, Shorter, Ubuntu Developer Summit - http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/copenhagen-denmark-to-hold-next-shorter-ubuntu-developer-summit
Next Ubuntu Developer Summit to be held in Copenhagen - http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Next-Ubuntu-Developer-Summit-to-be-held-in-Copenhagen-1658467.html
Top 10 Ubuntu app downloads for July 2012
The top app downloads for the past month are in, and bring with them few surprises. For paid applications, popular indie games such as Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Bastion take spots one through three, respectively. Nine out of the ten commercial applications are games, with the only exception being Fluendo DVD Player. Command and Conquer, Full Circle Magazine #61, and IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition lead the pack of free apps.
http://developer.ubuntu.com/2012/08/top-10-ubuntu-app-downloads-for-july-2012/
Welcome new members
Results from the Membership Board meeting (2 August 2012):
Bilal Shahid (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BilalShahid | https://launchpad.net/~s9iper1)
Adolfo Jayme (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fitoschido | https://launchpad.net/~fitoschido)
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2012-August/001607.html
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 Precise
- 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 12.04 "Precise Pangolin", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/ and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations
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/
Ask Ubuntu Top 5 Questions this week
Ask (and answer!) your own questions at http://askubuntu.com
LoCo News
Event Report – Ubuntu 12.04 Release Party
Shrini of Indian Linux Users’ Group brings report about Ubuntu 12.04 event and release party which was held at MIT Anna University, Chennai, India along with the Ubuntu Tamil team.
Photos from the event here: https://picasaweb.google.com/102002010785949271518/UbuntuReleaseParty2012
Full blog post: http://ilugc.in/content/event-report-ubuntu-12-04-release-party/
Ubuntu Village @ FOSSCON Sat August 11th
Ubuntu Pennsylvania will be running an “Ubuntu Village” at the upcoming FOSSCON on August 11th and encourages everyone to bring their own laptops since the Ubuntu Village is an all day installfest during the conference. Registrations are available at the following link: https://www.wepay.com/events/fosscon-2012
Besides invitation for attendees, Ubuntu Village calls up for volunteers.
http://ubuntupennsylvania.org/?p=132
Ubuntu Cloud News
Juju Java Cluster – Part 1-3
Robert Ayeres in his series of blog posts Juju Java Cluster gives a detailed demonstration:
- How to deploy Juju cluster with a sample Grails application
- How to add Memcached service to cluster
- About Tomcat configuration options that are available including JMX monitoring
- About session monitoring
http://voices.canonical.com/robert.ayres/2012/08/01/juju-java-cluster-part-1/
http://voices.canonical.com/robert.ayres/2012/08/01/juju-java-cluster-part-2/
http://voices.canonical.com/robert.ayres/2012/08/03/juju-java-cluster-part-3/
Jorge Castro: juju deploying CentOS clouds
Jorge Castro shares information how Francisco Souza at globo.com made Juju to work on CentOS, which Souza details in this blog post: http://f.souza.cc/2012/07/using-juju-to-orchestrate-centos-based.html
Castro summarized juju client availability with the following: “Right now for juju we have clients for RPM-based distributions like Fedora, OpenSUSE, and CentOS (thanks to Brandon Holtsclaw).”
http://www.jorgecastro.org/2012/08/01/juju-deploying-centos-clouds/
The Planet
Ricardo Salveti: Pre-built images for XBMC (Ubuntu 12.04 based) with hw acceleration finally available at Linaro
Ricardo Salveti shares information about pre-built Ubuntu 12.04 based images for XMBC and their integration with Linaro components and LEB. Current state of pre-built images can be found at the following link: http://snapshots.linaro.org/precise/pre-built/ti-panda-x11-base/
Ubuntu TV Weekly Update #4
Jim, senior software engineer on the Ubuntu TV project, shares current status of Ubuntu TV project including: Unity 3D transition state, lenses and scopes, Ubuntu TV Test card and much more.
http://www.doadjustyourset.com/2012/07/30/ubuntu-tv-weekly-update-4
Jorge Castro: OnAir Video Online if You Missed It
The video from the Alpha 2 Ubuntu OnAir Hangout is now online. The video features several developers and community members, and covers questions asked by the community on topics such as Project Sputnik, secure boot, and the upcoming web apps feature in Ubuntu 12.10.
http://www.jorgecastro.org/2012/07/30/onair-video-online-if-you-missed-it
Didier Roche: Time for a Quickly reboot?
Despite Quickly’s great success during the Ubuntu app showdown, Roche would like that they “step back, look around and restate the project’s goals to build an even brighter future for Quickly.” Roche therefore announces Quickly reboot project.
http://blog.didrocks.fr/post/Time-for-a-Quickly-reboot
Jorge Castro: Ubuntu Forums Needs Single Sign On, again
Jorge Castro calls up for a volunteer who is experienced with PHP, Single sign on (SSO) and vBulletin (VB) to work on a SSO integration with v.Bulletin 4.x.
http://www.jorgecastro.org/2012/07/31/ubuntu-forums-needs-single-sign-on-again/
Nicholas Skaggs: A video walkthrough of ISO Testing
Nicholas Skaggs posted a screencast tutorial on how to perform ISO Testing to help ensure quality daily ISO images. The testing takes place inside of a virtual machine, and only takes about twenty minutes.
http://www.theorangenotebook.com/2012/07/a-video-walkthrough-of-iso-testing.html
Dustin Kirkland: Introducing overlayroot -- overlayfs + dmcrypt!
Dustin Kirkland shares details about “a new binary package called overlayroot, which is part of the cloud-initramfs-tools source package and project.” By implementing “two awesome Linux kernel technologies,” overlayfs and dmcrypt Kirkland shares details about the new package and a history of how it came to be developed.
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2012/08/introducing-overlayroot-overlayfs.html
Charlene Tessier: Achieve Personal Unity – 12.04 Customiztion Guide
Charlene Tessier announces the availability of the “Achieve Personal Unity - 12.04 Customization Guide” which is meant in particular for users “who have been using Ubuntu for a while and now feel up to the challenge to tinker with it further.”
http://frenchfortunecookie.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/achieve-personal-unity-12-04-customiztion-guide/
Lubuntu Blog: Box icon theme
The new Lubuntu Box icon theme is almost ready, and has now been merged into the repositories. If you’re using Lubuntu an update will be available soon that will change the icons to the new ones.
http://lubuntublog.blogspot.com/2012/08/box-icon-theme.html
Jono Bacon: Ubuntu Accomplishments:Building Maturity
Jono Bacon shares his thoughts around Ubuntu Accomplishment and goals for that application: quality, visibitliy and growth. “With this goals, Bacon and his Ubuntu Accomplishments team want to take Ubuntu Accomplishments from a casual code-base that generally works to a professional rock-solid predictable well tested system that assures great experience for users.” Bacon also calls up for volunteers to join the project. For making it easier for volunteers to catch up with what Ubuntu Accomplishment team is doing, Bacon announces the schedule for new live video sessions.
http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/08/03/ubuntu-accomplishments-building-maturity/
Nicholas Skaggs: Quality Perceptions Survey
Nicolas Skaggs shares his thoughts about Ubuntu’s quality and has written a survey to collect information about quality perceptions in the community. Skaggs states “I have my own thoughts about the impact to the ubuntu project this testing has had, and I will continue to share my thoughts to point out the progress we make in this regard. But now, I want your input. I have created a survey to understand the community perspective on how we as a Ubuntu project are doing on quality.”
http://www.theorangenotebook.com/2012/08/quality-perceptions-survey.html
Paolo Sammicheli: Ubuntu Opportunistic Programming @Europython: The slides
Paolo Sammicheli shares materials about Ubuntu Opportunistic Programming from his lecture at the Europython where he was one of the speakers.
http://xdatap1.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/ubuntu-opportunistic-programming-europython-the-slides/
Canonical News
Ubuntu Server 12.04: IAAS we can! Ubuntu Cloud infrastructure
In another webinar from Canonical, they invite participates to “join Mark Baker and Nick Barcet form the Ubuntu Server and Cloud teams to learn about OpenStack in Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS - and how you can use it to deliver the infrastructure and services you need.” The webinar will be held on August 9th - (16.00- 19.00, UK time, 11am Eastern time).
In The Press
Road test: Self-driving car heads into city
“Scientists at the Free Berlin University have been conducting research on one of the worlds first prototypes that can independently maneuver through heavy city traffic.” While watching the video you can see that Ubuntu 12.04 is used as a GPS system.
In The Blogosphere
What Is Ubuntu's Target Audience?
Swapnil Bhartiya of Muktware summarises recent open discussion about with Ubuntu’s target audience. Bhartiya also pointed out what can be done under Ubuntu through the following topics:
- Can We Define The PC/Desktop Market?
- Beyond The Desktop
- Coming Back To PC
- 3rd Party Apps
- Ubuntu Takes Care Of 95% Of My Computing
- Hardware Support Under Ubuntu
http://www.muktware.com/4053/what-ubuntus-target-audience
Like Lubuntu? Help Pick Wallpapers for its Next Release
Joey Sneddon of OMG!Ubuntu! invites Lubuntu fans to vote for Lubuntu’s next release wallpapers. Sneddons states: “From 29 community-sourced images, users can vote for the five they would most like to see made available in Lubuntu by default. Voting closes on August 20th.”
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/08/like-lubuntu-help-pick-wallpapers-for-its-next-release
Ubuntu 12.10 Continues Strong On The PandaBoard ES
Michael Larabel of Phoronix shares benchmark results which are “build upon the results from earlier PandaBoard ES benchmarking on Phoronix to show the performance of Ubuntu 11.10, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, the earlier Ubuntu 12.10 benchmarks from the beginning of June, and then Ubuntu 12.10 benchmarks using a development build from the end of July.”
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu1210_pandaes_strong&num=1
Faster Zombies!
Valve Team shares FPS testing results involving:
Hardware
- Intel Core i7 3930k
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
- 32 GB RAM
Software
- Windows 7 Service Pack 1 64-bit
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit
Testing also involved OpenGL and Direct3D on which was the accent of testing i.e. there were tested OpenGL and Direct3D versions of a game Left 4 Dead 2. According to tests OpenGL version of a game is 44,4 FPS faster than Direct3D version.
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/
Ubuntu For Android Gets A Video Demo, Looks Awesome
Stephen Schenck of PocketNow writes about Ubuntu for Android about which people already heard from Canonical back in February this year. Schenck also shares a Portuguese version of Ubuntu For Android Demo Video which was presented at the Fórum Internacional Software Livre in Brazil two weeks ago.
http://pocketnow.com/2012/08/02/ubuntu-for-android-gets-a-video-demo-looks-awesome/
How One Teacher Built a Computer Lab for Free
Elizabeth of iFixit shares a story about Robert Litt a sixth grade teacher who struggled how to fill underfunded school classroom with computers with no budge. Following a donation of computers, Litt shares how he learned about Linux, worked with a local Linux Users group and a non-profit who helped him grow his computer lab.
http://ifixit.org/3001/how-one-teacher-built-a-computer-lab-for-free/
In Other News
Android SDK Installer for Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)
Adnan Hodzic of OMG!Ubuntu! writes about his project Android SDK Installer for Linux where he explains what is this project for, and also calls up for contributors to help him finish it. Project is available at the following link: https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/android-sdk-installer
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/android-sdk-installer-for-linux-debianubuntu
Red Hat and Canonical ‘traitors’ to open source for working with Microsoft
Jon Gold of Network World US writes about recent Theo de Raadt’s rant where he attacked Red Hat and Canonical for their secure boot solutions. Gold also mentions Stallman’s and Torvalds’ thoughts considering secure boot which are known for quite some time.
Mid-2012: Arch Linux vs. Slackware vs. Ubuntu vs. Fedora
Michael Larabel of Phoronix brings Slackware vs.Ubuntu vs. Fedora comparison. This is not just basic distro comparison but “rather a larger Linux distribution performance comparison.” In this article Larabel shows benchmark results from “from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, CentOS 6.2, Fedora 17, Slackware 14.0 Beta, and Arch Linux.”
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=arch_2012_linuxdistros&num=1
Other Articles of Interest
Richard M Stallman: Steam Is Good For GNU/Linux - http://www.muktware.com/4042/richard-m-stallman-steam-good-gnulinux
Stallman Calls Valve Games on Linux 'Unethical' - http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/stallman-calls-valve-games-on-linux-unethical
OpenStack: Allegation of 'abusive' conversation under investigation- http://www.itworld.com/cloud-computing/287805/openstack-allegation-abusive-conversation-under-investigation
Debian Project News - July 30th, 2012 - http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2012/15/
Linux Desktops Dominate at Black Hat - http://www.internetnews.com/blog/skerner/linux-desktops-dominate-at-black-hat.html
Study: During Hard Times, FOSS Has Tremendously Helped Small Businesses - http://ostatic.com/blog/study-during-hard-times-foss-has-tremendously-helped-small-businesses
Featured Podcasts
Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S05E12 – The Portland Sketch Book
“Mark Johnson and Tony Whitmore are joined by guest presenters Alan Bell and Andy Piper in Studio A for the twelfth episode of Season Five of the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo Team!”
Topics include:
- Making a Raspberry Pi case out of Lego, seeing the Reduced Shakespeare Company, fondling one’s slab and going to the Olympic Opening Ceremony.
- Andy’s experiences at OSCON
Their competition to win an EcoPC
- Interview Jonathan Nadeau from the Accessible Computing Foundation
- Victoria Pritchard and Robin Catling dust off another audio recording of an episode of ‘Tomorrow’s Technology Today’ from the Herbert Maxwell Fosdyke Curmudgeon Memorial Sound Archive.
- And Ubuntu related news in the bit-about-Ubuntu
http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/2012/08/01/s05e12-the-portland-sketch-book/
Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
Kernel Team - July 31, 2012 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/Meeting#Tues.2C_31_July_2012
QA Team - August 1, 2012 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/Meetings/20120801
Desktop Team - July 31, 2012 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Meeting/2012-07-31
Security Team - July 30, 2012 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/Security/20120730
Upcoming Meetings and Events
For upcoming meetings and events please visit the calendars at fridge.ubuntu.com: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/calendars/
Updates and Security for 8.04, 10.04, 11.04, 11.10 and 12.04
Security Updates
Ubuntu 8.04 Updates
Ubuntu 10.04 Updates
Ubuntu 11.04 Updates
Ubuntu 11.10 Updates
Ubuntu 12.04 Updates
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