Issue342


Contents

  1. In This Issue
  2. General Community News
    1. IRC Council Call for Nominations
    2. Welcome New Members and Developers
  3. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Ask Ubuntu Top 5 Questions this week
      1. Most Active Questions
      2. Top Voted New Questions
  4. LoCo News
    1. Saucy Party in Flix, Catalonia
  5. The Planet
    1. Benjamin Kerensa: Ubuntu User Advocacy
    2. Jani Monoses: My first Ubuntu phone app
    3. Canonical Design Team: Planning a cathedral at the bazaar
    4. Adnane Belmadiaf: Ubuntu Touch User-Agent
    5. Ubuntu App Developer Blog: New API docs added
    6. Benjamin Kerensa: Ubuntu Foundation
    7. Charles Profitt: Canonical and the Cease and Desist Letter
    8. Mark Shuttleworth: Mistakes made and addressed
  6. Canonical News
    1. Ubuntu OIL announced for broadest set of cloud infrastructure options
    2. Trademarks, community and criticism
  7. In The Press
    1. Ubuntu nails colours to the CloudFoundry mast with OpenStack PaaS
    2. Ubuntu's Saucy Salamander is a Slick but Spiritless Upgrade
  8. In The Blogosphere
    1. Meet "A Raspberry Pi Build Cluster for Ubuntu", Indiegogo campaign aimed at "bootable SD card image"
    2. Linux OS on the rise: Steam Hardware Survey
    3. Ubuntu Touch Toolbars Made More Discoverable
    4. Linux Desktop In The Enterprise: Ubuntu Vs. Windows
    5. Ubuntu Touch Browser Finally Given Unique User Agent String
    6. 5 of the Best Paid Apps in Ubuntu Software Center
    7. Ubuntu is back with Saucy Salamander!
  9. Other Articles of Interest
  10. Featured Audio and Video
    1. Ubuntu Ohio - Burning Circle: Burning Circle Episode 138
    2. Canonical Keynote - Building Business Value Through Interoperability
    3. Ubuntu Design Clinic - November 6, 2013
    4. Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S06E37 – The Dark Ubuntu
  11. Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
  12. Upcoming Meetings and Events
  13. Updates and Security for 10.04, 12.04, 12.10, 13.04 and 13.10
    1. Security Updates
    2. Ubuntu 10.04 Updates
    3. Ubuntu 12.04 Updates
    4. Ubuntu 12.10 Updates
    5. Ubuntu 13.04 Updates
    6. Ubuntu 13.10 Updates
  14. Subscribe
  15. Archives
  16. Additional Ubuntu News
  17. Conclusion
  18. Credits
  19. Glossary of Terms
  20. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  21. Feedback

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Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 342 for the week November 4 - 10, 2013

In This Issue

  • IRC Council Call for Nominations
  • Welcome New Members and Developers
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Saucy Party in Flix, Catalonia
  • Benjamin Kerensa: Ubuntu User Advocacy
  • Jani Monoses: My first Ubuntu phone app
  • Canonical Design Team: Planning a cathedral at the bazaar
  • Adnane Belmadiaf: Ubuntu Touch User-Agent
  • Ubuntu App Developer Blog: New API docs added
  • Benjamin Kerensa: Ubuntu Foundation
  • Charles Profitt: Canonical and the Cease and Desist Letter
  • Mark Shuttleworth: Mistakes made and addressed
  • Canonical News
  • In The Press
  • In The Blogosphere
  • Other Articles of Interest
  • Featured Audio and Video
  • Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
  • Upcoming Meetings and Events
  • Updates and Security for 10.04, 12.04, 12.10, 13.04 and 13.10
  • And much more!

General Community News

IRC Council Call for Nominations

Alan Bell, on behalf of the IRC council, advises that their two-year term is up at the end of December 2013 and tells us about the appointment process for new IRC council members. Alan appeals for nominations amongst Ubuntu members and confirms that if there should be more applicants than positions, a vote will be take place in December.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-irc/2013-November/001623.html

Welcome New Members and Developers

At the November 7, 2013 2200UTC Membership meeting we welcomed 1 new Member to official Ubuntu Membership!

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2013-November/001898.html

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (107583) -388 over last week
  • Critical (122) -10 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (53329) +173 over last week

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

Ask Ubuntu Top 5 Questions this week

Most Active Questions

Top Voted New Questions

People Contributing the best questions and answers this week: Radu Rădeanu (http://askubuntu.com/users/147044/radu-rdeanu), rajagenupula (http://askubuntu.com/users/33833/rajagenupula), glenn jackman (http://askubuntu.com/users/10127/glenn-jackman), Pieter (http://askubuntu.com/users/164891/pieter) and Luis Alvarado (http://askubuntu.com/users/7035/luis-alvarado)

Ask (and answer!) your own questions at http://askubuntu.com

LoCo News

Saucy Party in Flix, Catalonia

Rafael Carreras writes "Last Saturday Catalan LoCo Team did its Ubuntu Saucy Salamander 13.10 Party at the Enric Grau Fontseré School in Flix, Catalonia with some 40 people who attended to the different speeches and installs." Rafael also shows us some photographs of the event.

http://blogs.fsfe.org/rcarreras/?p=151

The Planet

Benjamin Kerensa: Ubuntu User Advocacy

Benjamin Kerensa makes a proposal to start a discussion on having a User Advisory Team in Ubuntu to make User Advocacy a priority on the desktop. Benjamin continues to explain the purpose of User Advocacy and states that feedback from users on their desktop experience and feedback on features should be measured and analyzed. There is a poll on the site asking, “Should User Advocacy be made a priority?”

http://benjaminkerensa.com/2013/11/04/ubuntu-user-advocacy

Jani Monoses: My first Ubuntu phone app

Jani Monoses describes his experience of writing a simple memory game for small children, a clone of the GCompris railway activity which is about watching cartoon trains composed of a locomotive and a small number of wagons scroll on the screen and then trying to reconstruct them from memory. Jani describes the process of building and deploying the app and adds "I made a minor bugfix release of the game yesterday (0.1.2) but I am not sure how to upgrade to it on the device. Still lots of things to learn about and fix on Ubuntu for phones :)"

http://janimo.blogspot.com/2013/11/my-first-ubuntu-phone-app.html

Canonical Design Team: Planning a cathedral at the bazaar

Peter Mahnke of the Canonical Design Team says “So I am stretching the metaphor a bit, but I think it [Planning a cathedral at the bazaar] accurately explains my experience of the recent cloud sprint in San Francisco and informs us that some people are coordinating releases, some are planning the next six month cycle and some are trying to design for the next year or more. Peter finishes by saying "We shake hands with friends and colleagues that we will only talk to online for a few months and head home to get building."

http://design.canonical.com/2013/11/planning-a-cathedral-at-the-bazaar/

Adnane Belmadiaf: Ubuntu Touch User-Agent

Adnane Belmadiaf writes that Ubuntu Touch v1.0 now ships its own QtWebKit-based browser which will be replaced by Oxide, a Chromium-powered webview, by the release of 14.04 and that there has been a lot of discussions around the user-agent. Adnane illustrates how the browser will identify depending on whether a phone or tablet is being used and concludes "So if you are doing UA sniffing it's really better to look for "Mobile" rather than looking the OS identifier."

http://daker.me/2013/11/ubuntu-touch-user-agent.html

Ubuntu App Developer Blog: New API docs added

Michael Hall writes when Ubuntu 13.10 was released a new API documentation website on the Ubuntu Developer Portal went live and that it will slowly replace the previous static docs which came in a variety of formats. Michael shows us a screenshot of the site and tell us about the content found there.

http://developer.ubuntu.com/2013/11/new-api-docs-added/

Benjamin Kerensa: Ubuntu Foundation

Benjamin Kerensa writes "The more and more I see stellar Ubuntu contributors say Goodbye to Ubuntu the more I think there is a growing need for the Ubuntu Community to have a foundation much like WordPress, Python and any other number of open source projects." Benjamin goes on to say why he thinks a foundation is important and adds that without such a foundation, Ubuntu will be more about making a profit or meeting the expectations of users Canonical is so desperately trying to woo...Windows and Mac users.

http://benjaminkerensa.com/2013/11/09/ubuntu-foundation

Charles Profitt: Canonical and the Cease and Desist Letter

Charles Profitt writes "Recently Canonical sent a cease and desist letter to Micah Lee and he responded by having a lawyer respond and compromised by taking down the logo and adding a disclaimer to his site." Charles says that he does not wish to take sides about who was right or who was wrong, and he provides some examples of the ‘flame posts’ in this argument that he feels are out of line and inappropriate.

http://ftbeowulf.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/canonical-and-the-cease-and-desist-letter/

Mark Shuttleworth: Mistakes made and addressed

Mark Shuttleworth writes "Occasionally we make mistakes. When we do it’s appropriate to apologise, address them, and take steps to ensure they don’t happen again." In a lengthy post Mark makes references to tea parties, trademarks, correspondence templates and the label “open source tea party” to refer to the vocal non-technical critics of work that Canonical does. Mark concludes "Please accept my apologies if you have been a vocal non-technical critic of Canonical’s software and felt offended by the label."

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1299

Canonical News

Ubuntu OIL announced for broadest set of cloud infrastructure options

Canonical have written "at the OpenStack Design Summit in Hong Kong, we announced the Ubuntu OpenStack Interoperability Lab (Ubuntu OIL). The programme will test and validate the interoperability of hardware and software in a purpose-built lab, giving Ubuntu OpenStack users the reassurance and flexibility of choice." The announcement goes on to list the many significant partners on-board, such as Dell, EMC, Emulex, Fusion-io, HP, IBM, Inktank/Ceph, Intel, LSi, Open Compute, SeaMicro, and VMware. Involvement in the lab is through the Canonical Partner Programme.

http://insights.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-oil-announced-for-broadest-set-of-cloud-infrastructure-options/

Trademarks, community and criticism

Steve George, Vice President of Operations for Canonical, responded to concerns about a cease and desist letter being sent to Micah Flee for the site fixubuntu.com. Steve affirms that the matter has been settled by application of a disclaimer of non-endorsement on the site and that Ubuntu embraces open and diverse discourse.

http://blog.canonical.com/2013/11/08/trademarks-community-and-criticism/

In The Press

Ubuntu nails colours to the CloudFoundry mast with OpenStack PaaS

Phil Muncaster of The Register writes that Canonical has announced two major new projects with Pivotal designed to bring Platform as a Service capabilities to all OpenStack implementations. Phil says "with Ubuntu’s colours now nailed firmly to the Pivotal/Open Foundry mast, all the momentum in the OpenStack space would certainly seem to be with this platform, rather than Solum."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/05/ubuntu_canonical_pivotal_cloudfoundry/

Ubuntu's Saucy Salamander is a Slick but Spiritless Upgrade

Jack M. Germain of LinuxInsider writes that Ubuntu 13.10 does not deliver much "wow" and serves mostly as a tune-up version before the release of the next LTS. Jack takes a look at the desktop appearance, the installation, Smart Scopes, included software, and he concludes "if you want a solid distro and can work with Unity or GNOME 3 variations, Saucy Salamander might just be worth your while until its replacement arrives."

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/79365.html

In The Blogosphere

Meet "A Raspberry Pi Build Cluster for Ubuntu", Indiegogo campaign aimed at "bootable SD card image"

razvi of iloveubuntu informs us of an interesting project, "A Raspberry Pi Build Cluster for Ubuntu" and the Indiegogo campaign managed by third-party developer Alan Bell. razvi says the project is aimed at attracting funds for purchasing and building a cluster of Raspberry Pi machines, in order to compile all the source code for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 13.10, and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Alan tells us more in the short embedded video.

http://iloveubuntu.net/meet-raspberry-pi-build-cluster-ubuntu-indiegogo-campaign-aimed-bootable-sd-card-image

Linux OS on the rise: Steam Hardware Survey

Muktware reports that according to the Steam Hardware Survey from Valve, there has been a considerable increase in number of Linux-compatible games on Steam for Linux. A breakdown of operating systems shows that Ubuntu 13.04 64-bit is in the lead; a link is provided to the complete survey.

http://www.muktware.com/2013/11/linux-os-rise-ubuntu-13-10-launch-steam-hardware-survey/15462

Ubuntu Touch Toolbars Made More Discoverable

Joey-Elijah Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! tells us that finding and accessing application toolbars on Ubuntu Touch has been made easier in recent builds as toolbars are now shown by default for a short period when opening an app or changing view. Joey-Elijah explains that Ubuntu Touch prefers to give more screen space to content than other OSes, and describes how the change makes navigating 'back' through an app much quicker.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/11/ubuntu-touch-toolbar-design-change

Linux Desktop In The Enterprise: Ubuntu Vs. Windows

Joseph Granneman of Network Computing writes "Now, with shrinking technology budgets and rising Microsoft licensing fees, it's time for IT to seriously consider desktop Linux deployment as an alternative to Windows." Joseph makes reference to Windows XP having just five months of support remaining and its users having to change to something new. He says legacy Windows applications can be accessed through Citrix or RDP clients. He concludes that Ubuntu Linux has matured into a viable alternative to proprietary operating systems, adding that next year may finally be the “year of the Linux desktop.”

http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-networking-management/linux-desktop-in-the-enterprise-ubuntu-v/240163564

Ubuntu Touch Browser Finally Given Unique User Agent String

Joey-Elijah Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! writes that the Ubuntu Touch web browser finally has its own, unique User Agent string of “Ubuntu”. Joey-Elijah says although many websites will ignore the identifier, the experience of viewing the web with Ubuntu Touch will become much nicer in the future.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/11/ubuntu-touch-browser-finally-given-unique-user-agent-string

5 of the Best Paid Apps in Ubuntu Software Center

Jun Auza of TechSource writes that Ubuntu does pretty much what any other desktop can do, including watching movies and playing games. Auza says with the growing demand for Ubuntu, developers are coming up with interesting software. Auza lists five apps now, available from the Ubuntu Software Center, that he considers are worth paying for: Machinarium, Braid, Steelstorm, Oil Rush, and Stormcloud.

http://www.junauza.com/2013/11/best-paid-apps-in-ubuntu-software-center.html

Ubuntu is back with Saucy Salamander!

Dedoimedo writes that Ubuntu has had two underwhelming releases since Pangolin but decided to give Ubuntu another spin and notes that Ubuntu 13.10 boots with a familiar desktop interface, the Dash and search quality have been improved, and resource usage has gone down. Dedoimedo illustrates the article with a number of screenshots to demonstrate his experience and concludes "Only a few tiny niggles here and there, but nothing major. Massive. 9.8/10. Unexpected. Welcome back, Ubuntu, you haZ been missed. Anyhow, Saucy Salamander is a wicked good distro, you should definitely give it a try."

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubuntu-salamander.html

Ubuntu Ohio - Burning Circle: Burning Circle Episode 138

This weeks episode talks about voting, Ubuntu members, and amongst other issues, the Ubuntu Ohio verification application.

http://ohio.ubuntu-us.org/node/174

Canonical Keynote - Building Business Value Through Interoperability

Mark Shuttleworth’s delivers his keynote at the OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong on November 5th, 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IAIJ7WkvD0

Ubuntu Design Clinic - November 6, 2013

Alan Pope introduces the latest Ubuntu Design Clinic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHs0bYWcq-E

Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S06E37 – The Dark Ubuntu

"Alan Pope, Mark Johnson, Tony Whitmore, and Laura Cowen are back in Studio A for the thirty-seventh episode of Season Six of the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo Team!"

In this week’s show:-

  • We take a look at what’s been happening in the news.
  • We catch up with what’s been happening in the Ubuntu community.
  • And we mention an event.

http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/2013/11/07/s06e37-the-dark-ubuntu/ & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZfD_hCi74w

Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings

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 10.04, 12.04, 12.10, 13.04 and 13.10

Security Updates

Ubuntu 10.04 Updates

End of Life - April 2015 (Server)

Ubuntu 12.04 Updates

End of Life - April 2017

Ubuntu 12.10 Updates

End of Life - April 2014

Ubuntu 13.04 Updates

End of Life - January 2014

Ubuntu 13.10 Updates

End of Life - July 2014

Subscribe

Get your copy of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter delivered each week to you via email at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-news

Archives

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

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:

  • Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph
  • Paul White
  • Charles Profitt
  • Jim Connett
  • 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://community.ubuntu.com/contribute/

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 check http://community.ubuntu.com/help-information/ for more information on where to get help.

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UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue342 (last edited 2013-11-12 02:28:08 by lyz)