Issue30

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 30 for the weeks January 28th - Febuary 28th, 2007. We're sorry for the delay in releasing this edition, some of our main editors are not able to help out temporarily. We will be releasing this issue with the updates on February, and start working on issue #31 to make it weekly again. Thank you for your patience!

Translations: Español, Français

In This Issue

  • New Team: Ubuntu Scribes
  • Feisty Fawn Herd5 Released
  • No Composite by default in Feisty
  • Weekly Quiz Update
  • Changes in Feisty
  • Upcoming meetings and events
  • 6.06 & 6.10 updates and security notices

  • Bug Stats

General Community News

KDE 3.5.6 Released

KDE 3.5.6 has been released and new features, bug fixes and translations. Packages are available for Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) and have been uploaded to Feisty.

http://kubuntu.org/announcements/kde-356.php http://dot.kde.org/

Feisty Fawn Herd5 Release

The third alpha Herd5 for Feisty has been released. Featuring a new advanced partitioning tool, it is still in development. Please do not install on production machines. Final Feisty release is scheduled for April 2007. More on Feisty Herd5, screenshots and and download links at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/herd5

Ubuntu Forums hits 2 million posts and gets upgraded

A few days ago ubuntuforums.org went past an amazing 2 million posts. Due to an increasing user base on the forums, after a rocky week Canonical has sent a RAM upgrade to the forums and should now be smoother then ever. Big thank you to all the forum sysadmins who do an amazing job!

Scribes Team Looks to Help Community with Meetings

The Scribes team had a great first meeting. The team discussed many ideas to help the community to improve the meeting process. Chris Oattes also shared his progress on a bot to help making summaries of IRC meetings easier. The team was interested in learning about how the community goes about their meeting process for various teams. You can email ubuntu-scirbes@cjo20.net and let them know. The next team meeting is scheduled for February 15th at 8pm UTC in #ubuntu-scribes. You can find out more at ScribesTeam on wiki.

Calls for Ubuntu Book Feisty Update

Official Ubuntu Book recipes will be updated for Feisty. Interested in contributing ? First check the OfficialUbuntuBookRecipes Wiki page for already available recipes. Ready to write a new one ? Please mail your freshly cooked recipe to Corey at corey.burger AT gmail AT com. If it makes it into the new edition, you will get a free signed copy of the book.

The deadline for submitting your work is Wednesday, 14th February, 2007.

Recommendations, terms and conditions here: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/737

Ubucon, February 16, 2007

The second UbuCon, an Ubuntu user and developer meeting will be held at Google's New York City offices on February 16, 2007. The event will be part an installfest, part a user group meeting, and part an un-conference (schedule will be decided on the day of the conference). You have to register (registration is free) to access the building. For more informations, please read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TheUbucon.

No Composite Installed by Default

According to Matt Zimmerman, "Ubuntu 7.04 will preserve the status quo with respect to proprietary video drivers. As in previous releases, these drivers will be provided for the convenience of users who choose to use them, but they will not be activated by default." This decision was made at a Technical Board meeting which decided Compiz and Beryl were not stable enough to be shipped. Once again, the discussion on the mailing list says "However, some of the relevant software necessary to implement this proposal is not yet considered mature enough to deploy in the default Ubuntu configuration." Therefore, composite will not enabled by default in Feisty but the Technical Board has made in clear that they believe this technology will be implemented in the near future.

New Members

The Community Council recently voted to grant membership to eight contributors to the Ubuntu world. Congratulations to Sri Ramadoss Mahalingam, Dan Buch, Toby Smithe, Tom Marble, Carlos Perello Marin, Lionel Porcheron, Freddy Martinez, and Guy Van Sanden. Keep up the good work!

LoCo News

Georgia LoCo Team Meeting

The new Georgia LoCo is now holding regular meetings in #ubuntu-georgia on FreeNode network at 15-19 UTC (1-5pm EST) on Sundays. Please feel free to drop in to get help, help out, or just to chat. You can find more information about the Georgia LoCo on our wiki at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/GeorgiaUSTeam

This Week's Quiz

This Week, the Quiz had 4 champions! We've never had such a thriller. mc44, tsmithe, ryanakca and coNP all finished the game with the same score, and not even a final round decided which of them would carry off the prize. We decided to declare them all champions, and let chance decide who would carry off the prize in a two-by-two rock-paper-scissors contest. Even then, in the second round, ryanakca and coNP both hit rock bottom three times in a row! (pun intended) coNP's final draw of paper won him 3 Ubuntu, and 1 each Kubuntu and Xubuntu laptop stickers.

Quizmaster

AlexandreVassalotti

Champions

mc44, tsmithe, ryanakca and coNP

Sponsor

JendaVancura

Prize

5 laptop stickers

Upcoming for next week:

Sponsor

mc44

Prize

Ubuntu 6.10 DVD edition

More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuTrivia

To participate in the quiz, join #ubuntu-trivia on irc.freenode.net on Friday and/or Saturday UTC-nights - the topic will usually tell you when the next quiz is scheduled.

For more info on prizes, donating, quizzes and giving quizzes see the above link.

Changes In Feisty

Twisted Words is a low level chat client. It was updated to version 0.3 to fully support XMPP and fixed bugs.


Twisted Names is a DNS protocol implementation with client and server. The update release helped fixed a few bugs with TCP connections.


Diggler is a set of URL manipulation utilities for the Seamonkey and Firefox's location bar. The latest changes include documentation inculsion, changes to its file directory and support for Firefox > 1.5


The latest package for gedit-plugins has been uploaded to universe. Gedit-plugins is a set of plugins for the Gedit text editor. The latest changes have bug fixes associated with the terminal and many translations. Some languages that are included are French, England, Polish and Dutch.


Bzr-GTK is a GTK+ front end for the Bazaar revision control system. The latest release contains more work on the SmartServer, improvements to dealing with branches via http (more robust range handling, keepalive) and an extension to the help system to be able to deal with topics that are not commands.


Pyqonsole is an X Window terminator emulator written in Python.  The latest package was a minor update to the new python policy and closes a few bug report.


Tepache is a code sketcher for Python that uses pygtk and glade. Version 1.1-1 is the initial release of Tepache, so keep your eye on this package, it should have more features as its development progresses.


Twisted Lore is a documentation generator with built in support for HTML and LaTeX. The update brings Twisted Lore to werison 0.3.0. This update comes with a new upstream version, updated dependencies and more. 


Qpsmtpd is a flexible SMTP dameon that is useful for network-level spam detection. The update added logging to the program, better plugins support, and other minor fixes.


Postfix has been updated to version 2.3.7-1.  This is a maintenance update to version 2.3.3-1 that was shipped with Edgy Eft.  The updates to Feisty include a number of fixes to the Postfix implementation of the Milter protocol that is new in Postfix 2.3.  


Feisty includes a number of changes to provide SPF (Sender Policy Framework) checking with Postfix.  SPF is the most deployed e-mail domain forgery protection technology today and was codified by the IETF in RFC 4408.  See http://www.openspf.org/ for more information.  Feisty will be the first Linux distribution to include everything needed to do RFC 4408 compliant SPF checking.  The Python SPF library has been updated to the latest release (python-spf 2.0.3).  A companion Postfix policy server (python-policyd-spf) is also included for a pure Python approach.  There is also a new Perl SPF library (libmail-spf-perl) with a companion Postfix policy server (postfix-policyd-spf-perl).  


Sarg is a Squid Analysis Report Generator that allow you to view "where" your users are going to on the Internet. Sarg generate reports in html, with many fields, like: users, IP Addresses, bytes, sites and times. Latest fixes repairs segmentation faults and alters Sarg's run path.

SciPy is an open source library of scientific tools for Python. SciPy includes modules for graphics and plotting, optimization, integration, genetic algorithms, ODE solvers, and much more. The newest versions makes the build independent of the python version, changes dependencies, and includes builds for multiple architectures. 


Cyphesis-C++ is a game server from the WorldForge project. Multiple users/clients can connect to it to play roleplaying games online. The uploaded packages include a game server, a client control system, and game data. Updates include build dependencies errors, and rebuilding the package to depend on python 2.5.


Pax-utilso is a tool that is a security focused ELF file checker. It can check ELF binary files and running processes for issues that might be relevant when using ELF binaries along with PaX. The latest changes make Pax-utils modifies the package to no longer need a patch.


poEdit is cross-platform gettext catalogs editor. It is built with wxWidgets toolkit and can run on any platform supported by it . It aims to provide more convenient approach to editing catalogs than launching vi and editing the file by hand. Latest changes are bug fixes that fix file loading, a shortcut bug on OS X, and file referencing. 


PloneCollectorNG is a Plone/Archetypes based bugtracking system and framework. The latest update changes dependencies to fix bugs.


Postgresql 7.4 is an object-relational SQL database. The release contains a variety of fixes, including a security fix.


Eikazo is a graphical frontend for SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) designed for mass-scanning, especially with scanners equipped with and ADF (Automatic Document Feeder). Eikazo's main goal is to be as fast as possible. The 0.5 release is the first release of Eikazo.

Launchpad News

The first Launchpad Users Meeting is at 17:00 UTC on Wednesday 7 March, in #launchpad on irc.freenode.net. It's your chance to ask questions of Launchpad developers and give your feedback. Add your questions to the meeting agenda at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaunchpadUserMeeting/2007-03-07

The new Launchpad 1.0 beta is in full swing and the team is looking for members of the Ubuntu community to join in. The main change in Launchpad 1.0 is a brand new interface, which is both easier to use and looks superb. Being in the beta team is hassle-free: just carry on using Launchpad as normal and, if you find something wrong in the new interface, report a bug.

Sign up at https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-beta-testers/

If you use Launchpad regularly, you may have noticed that your karma dropped at the end of January. A bug in Launchpad's karma code led to everyone's karma increasing, sometimes by large amounts, from October 2006. Following the reduction, everyone's karma is now a true reflection of their work in Launchpad.

Finally, Launchpad has also welcomed some new upstream projects. Zope3, SchoolTool and Silva CMS have started the move to Launchpad's bug tracker.

As always, the Launchpad team would love to hear from you in the launchpad-users mailing list. You can join at https://lists.canonical.com/mailman/listinfo/launchpad-users

Ubuntu - Brazilian Software of the Year (2006)

Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary) won the title of Brazilian Software of the Year (2006) from the most prestigeous non-technical computer magazine in Brazil, called Info Exame (124,000 issues sold monthly). The original link in portuguese: http://info.abril.com.br/premioinfo/2006/.

Meetings and Events

2006-01-30 Ubuntu Technical Board

  • Timo Aaltonen, Adrien Cunin and Luke Yelavich were approved as new UbuntuDevelopers

  • The MotuProcessesSpec proposal was discussed, and several revisions were agreed, which Daniel Holbach agreed to document. The revised proposal will then be reviewed by the full Technical Board via email for approval.

  • The HelpAndSupportAccess specification was discussed, and the fundamentals approved. The page layout will require some revision, but the technical change of replacing the Help submenu with a help page should improve clarity and allow for more flexible navigation

  • We briefly discussed the question of whether reportbug should remain in main, be moved to universe along with dpkg-dev-el or be moved to universe by eliminating the dependency. It was decided to proceed with the discussion via email with the rest of the Board due to the late hour and length of the meeting.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Ubuntu Development Team Meeting

  • Start: 21:00 Etc/GMT
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting

Argentina LoCo Team Meeting

  • Start: 20:00 America/Buenos Aires
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-ar

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Colorado LoCo Team IRC Meeting

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Georgia LoCo Team Meeting

Monday, March 05, 2007

Kernel Team Meeting

Scribes Team Meeting

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Mozilla Team Meeting

MOTU meeting

New York LoCo Team Meeting

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Edubuntu Meeting

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Ubuntu Development Team Meeting

  • Start: 16:00 Etc/GMT
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting

Updates and security for 6.06 and 6.10

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

Ubuntu 6.10 Updates

Bug Stats

Compared period: Jan, 28th 2007 - Feb 28th 2007

  • Open (23137) + 1900 over last month
  • Critical (17) - 4 over last month
  • Unconfirmed (11398) + 719 over last month
  • Unassigned (17061) + 1024 over last month
  • All bugs ever reported (79159) + 5999 over last month

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

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

Archives and RSS Feed

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

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

Additional Ubuntu News

As always you can find more news and announcements at:

and

Conclusion

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

See you next week!

Credits

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Jonathan Riddell
  • Cody A.W. Somerville
  • Martin Albisetti
  • Isabelle Duchatelle
  • Freddy Martinez
  • RJ Marsan
  • Mariano Mara
  • And many others

Feedback

This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Marketing Team. Please feel free to contact us regarding any concerns or suggestions by either sending an email to ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com or by using any of the other methods on the Ubuntu Marketing Team Contact Information Page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam). If you'd like to contribute to a future issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, please feel free to edit the appropriate wiki page.

UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue30 (last edited 2008-08-06 17:00:14 by localhost)