Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #32 for the week March 11th - 18th, 2007. In this issue we cover Ubuntu's new Website redesign, Breezy Badger's end of the road and Ubuntu's involvement in the year's Google Summer of Code. Feisty is also going into Beta, so everyone can feel the excitement in the air.
Translations: Español Français
In This Issue
- New Ubuntu Website
- Feisty Fawn (7.04) Beta Freeze
- Bye bye Breezy!
- Ubuntu in Google's 2007 Summer of Code
- New ISO Testing Team
- Ubuntu-PH in First Conference FOSS in eGovernance
- Ubuntu-be.org spreads Ubuntu Love
General Community News
New Ubuntu.com look unveiled
The website team at Canonical have been hard at work on a new look for the Ubuntu website and this week, that new look was unveiled. Based on Drupal, the old website was based on a customized MoinMoin engine, the new website also sports a shiny new theme. Matthew Nuzum, Ubuntu.com webmaster, said the Drupal theme is already ready to download and themes for other CMS and Wikis would be made available soon. You can see the new look at http://www.ubuntu.com and read Matthew's email at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2007-March/001196.html
Bye bye Breezy!
0n October 13th, 2005, Breezy Badger (5.10), the third Ubuntu release was announced. On Friday April 13th 2007, it will reach its end-of-life and at that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 5.10.
Breezy Landmarks:
Edubuntu was first implemented - http://www.edubuntu.org/
- Ubuntu for servers
- OEM installer support
- Graphical startup process with progress bar (USplash)
- Add/remove menu
If you are still running Breezy, it is recommended to upgrade to Dapper Drake (6.06 LTS, Long Term Support release). From Dapper, you can then upgrade to Edgy Eft (6.10, current stable release). Read the full announcement here:https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2007-March/000099.html
So, bye bye, Breezy, and welcome Feisty!
Forum Council Notes, March 13th, 2007
The following points were covered:
- The Jail will not be viewable by Forum Members. Members will be able to see their own posts in the event a post is jailed. Matthew is going to revise the Current Forum Guidelines.
- The Council is searching for a new Team Leader for the Hardware team. The leader will be decided at the Next FC meeting.
- Ubuntu Forums will support an ISO testing team within the forums, and promote ISO testing.
- Ubuntu Forums staff hiring process will not change. Matthew will put pen to paper and write out the process and send it to the other FC members for approval.
- Ubuntu Forums will no longer honor a members request to delete their account. Members who add multiple accounts will be handled in the following manner. First duplicate account, the member will receive an infraction. Second duplicate account, the member will be banned.
- Ubuntu Forums will have a forum for Desktop-Effects. Finally a place for all those “Beryl broke my compooter” threads.
- Next meeting will be held on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007, 20:00 UTC
You can read the full log of the meeting here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/ForumCouncil/2007March13/Logs and notes from Vorian, the FC secretary, on the forum thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=383549
Ubuntu participates in Google's 2007 Summer of Code
Slightly older news, but Ubuntu has been accepted as a mentoring organization in the 2007 Google Summer of Code, a program to help students with a summer job while working on various Open Source projects. Some ideas are beginning to be collected at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GoogleSoC2007 and you can read the announcement, including how to participate at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2007-March/000260.html
Ubuntu-Women Training Session for GNOME Bug Day
The GNOME Bugsquad will have a Bug Day from Wednesday, March 21, 16:00 UTC to March 22, 05:00 UTC in #bugs on irc.gnome.org.
In order to encourage more ubuntu-women to get involved in the upcoming GNOME Bug Day, ubuntu-women is hosting a little session on how to start triaging for GNOME in #ubuntu-women on March 20th starting at 21:00 UTC. Everyone welcome to join!
Read the full emails from Susana on Ubuntu-Women mailing list here (you will also find relevant links to the GNOME Bug Day events):
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2007-March/000680.html
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2007-March/000681.html
Ubuntuforums thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2316719
New ISO Testing Team
In the past, the Distro Team, formed by ubuntu-core-devs, tested all the ISOs, in all the supported architectures, with a lot of testing cases, as you can see here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/Matrix But there is a big problem with that: the developers can't focus in fixing bugs, as they would do if they shouldn't have to test the ISOs. To improve this situation, we would like to make a Community effort, and form a Community Team which would test the ISOs, letting the devs concentrate in fixing bugs, and improving Ubuntu! We are going to start with the Ubuntu and Kubuntu Live CDs in x86 architectures. If you can help us out, just mail us to iso.testing@gmail.com (instructions in: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=383067).
LoCo News
Ubuntu-PH participates in First Conference FOSS in eGovernance
The FOSS fiesta in eGovernance was held at EDSA Shangri-La last March 7-8, 2007. With the active participation of the Ubuntu-ph team on the said event, with Yolyne Medina, Zak B. Elep and Juan Carlos Torres taking charge of the Ubuntu-PH table.
Ubuntu-be.org spreads Ubuntu love at VLOD education conference
Flemish education conference, the Ubuntu-be.org volunteers spread their Edubuntu enthusiasm around the directors and ict-responsibles of all Belgium schools. The VLOD-conference is the biggest education conference in Flanders which about 8000 people, mainly decisionmakers attend. People were interested to discover this system everybody was talking about.Ubuntu-be.org showed them the possibilities and advantages of 'free software', and gave them a demo of thin clients.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BelgianTeam/VLOD_2007/Report
New in Feisty Fawn
Feisty Fawn (7.04) Beta Freeze
According to Tollef Fog Heen on the Ubuntu developers announcement list, the freeze for uploads has taken effect in order to anticipate the beta release of Feisty. The freeze took effect on Thursday and means that "During the freeze, all uploads to main [repository] must be approved by a member of the release team." Any changes that need to be taken into effect should go to the release team as soon as possible. These are exciting times for the whole Ubuntu community as it means the Feisty Fawn in very close to release.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2007-March/000262.html
Feisty translations now open!
Launchpad team have imported existing translations both from Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) and directly from upstream projects. Each language remains untranslated on the Feisty translations overview page. There are some problems converting from Open Office language pack format to the .po format used by Launchpad. This means that Open Office isn’t yet available to translate.
http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/817
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/feisty/+translations
In The Press
iDart (Intelligent Dispensing of Antiretroviral Treatment) is a Java GPL application used by antiretroviral (ARV) pharmacies to treat over 8500 HIV patients. Cell-Life has created an iDart-in-a-box solution running Ubuntu where the iDart database can be backed up securely over the cellular network, making it useful in areas where there is no Internet connectivity. Read the full article: http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1407
Mercian Labels, a UK security label printer, is in the process of migrating from Microsoft to Ubuntu and other open source technologies. Because of the lack of case studies for small companies to use open source, Mercian is blogging their transition at http://www.selfadhesivelabels.com/blog. Read the full article: http://www.prbuzz.com/mercian-labels-blogs-case-study-1268.html.
Ed Moltzen blogs about Mark Shuttleworth's post, which discusses issues and solutions arising from widespread interest of pre-installed Linux in Dell's IdeaStorm. Read the post: http://www.crn.com/software/198000735
Canonical announced its Partner Programme to stimulate awareness and adoption of open source platforms. This will help partners that use Ubuntu as part of their solutions and help Canonical build relationships with vendors. Read the full article: http://www.ubuntu.com/news/Global-Partner-Program
OS News has a glowing review of Feisty. The article states Ubuntu has a found a good middle ground between hard core Linux users and new users coming from Windows and OS X. Read the full article: http://www.osnews.com/story.php/17505/Ubuntu-Feisty-Fawn-Desktop-Linux-Matured/
Frank Koehntopp posts about installing Ubuntu on 16 computers at a primary school in Germany. Read the full post: http://www.gadgetguy.de/2007/03/12/primary-school-goes-ubuntu/
Meetings and Events
Monday, March 19, 2007
Kernel Team Meeting
- Start: 15:00
- End: 16:00
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Community Council Meeting
- Start: 18:00
- End: 20:00
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Edubuntu Meeting
- Start: 12:00
- End: 14:00
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Ubuntu Development Team Meeting
- Start: 16:00
- End: 18:00
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Sunday, March 25th, 2007
Ubuntu-Women Meeting
- Start : 11:00 UTC
- End : 12:00 UTC
- Location : IRC channel #ubuntu-women
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
MOTU Meeting
- Start: 08:00
- End: 10:00
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Technical Board Meeting
- Start: 20:00
- End: 22:00
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Edubuntu Meeting
- Start: 20:00
- End: 22:00
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Xubuntu Meeting
- Start: 22:00
- End: 23:59
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Ubuntu Development Team Meeting
- Start: 21:00
- End: 23:00
- Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Ubuntu Conference in Croatia
- Start: 00:00
- End: 23:59
- Location: Zagreb, Croatia
For more info: http://www.ubuntu-hr.org/konferencija/index.en.php
Community Spotlight
Team of the Week: Mozilla Team
The Mozilla Team is focused on raising the quality of the Mozilla Foundation's application in Ubuntu. The Mozilla Team takes into account the many packages that interact with Mozilla products, such as Flash, Java, and extensions. The Mozilla Team is strongly committed to upstream and relations. By analyzing crash reports, the Mozilla Team has found several master crash cases which are in progress. The Mozilla Team can be found at #ubuntu-mozillateam on irc.freenode.net.
Updates and security for 6.06 and 6.10
Security Updates
USN-432-2: GnuPG2, GPGME vulnerability - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/432-2
USN-436-1: KTorrent vulnerabilities - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/436-1
USN-435-1: Xine vulnerability - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/435-1
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates
vmware-player-kernel-2.6.15 2.6.15.10-11 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/dapper-changes/2007-March/012376.html
xine-lib 1.1.1+ubuntu2-7.6 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/dapper-changes/2007-March/012373.html
ktorrent 1.2-0ubuntu5.1 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/dapper-changes/2007-March/012378.html
gpgme1.0 1.1.0-1ubuntu0.1 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/dapper-changes/2007-March/012379.html
Ubuntu 6.10 Updates
cacti 0.8.6h-3ubuntu0.1 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edgy-changes/2007-March/008248.html
xine-lib 1.1.2+repacked1-0ubuntu3.4 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edgy-changes/2007-March/008249.html
ktorrent 2.0.3+dfsg1-0ubuntu1.1 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edgy-changes/2007-March/008250.html
gnupg2 1.9.21-0ubuntu5.3 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edgy-changes/2007-March/008251.html
gpgme1.0 1.1.2-2ubuntu0.1 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edgy-changes/2007-March/008252.html
update-manager 0.45.2 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edgy-changes/2007-March/008253.html
mldonkey 2.8.1-1ubuntu0.1~proposed1 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edgy-changes/2007-March/008254.html
bluefish 1.0.6-1ubuntu0.1~proposed1 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edgy-changes/2007-March/008255.html
mod-mono 1.1.17-3edgy1~proposed1 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edgy-changes/2007-March/008256.html
Bug Stats
- Open (24292) +444 # over last week
- Critical (17) +0 # over last week
- Unconfirmed (11896) +206 # over last week
- Unassigned (17925) +395 # over last week
- All bugs ever reported (83170) +1566 # over last week
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 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue32?action=diff&rev=35 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:
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Conclusion
Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.
See you next week!
Credits
The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:
- Martin Albisetti
- Rj Ian S. Sevilla
- Isabelle Duchatelle
- Freddy Martinez
- Corey Burger
- 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.