UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue37

Contents

In This Issue
Ubuntu 7.04 Released
7.04 Press Coverage
General Community News
1. Ubuntu Open Week
LoCo News
In The Press
In The Blogosphere
Meetings and Events
Updates and security for 6.06 and 6.10
Bug Stats
Archives and RSS Feed
Additional Ubuntu News
Conclusion
Credits
RSS
Feedback

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #37 for the week April 15th - April 21st, 2007. In this issue we cover the release of Ubuntu 7.04 and related press coverage, a week long series of events to introduce the diverse Ubuntu community, and a friendly competition where individuals and LoCos can win money and prizes.

UWN Translations

Deutsch - http://www.kubuntu-de.org/kubuntu-weekly-news/2007/kwn-37-15-21-april-2007
Español - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue37/Es
Français - http://ubuntu-fr.org/lettre/lhu37.html
Italiano - http://wiki.ubuntu-it.org/NewsletterItaliana
Português - Start one! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue37/Pt
Português do Brasil - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue37/PtBR
Svenska - http://ubuntu-se.org/Wiki/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue37

In This Issue

Ubuntu 7.04 released and related press coverage
The Funky Feisty Competition
Ubuntu Open Week
Bolivian LoCo co-hosting a Latin American install fest.

Ubuntu 7.04 Released

With much fanfare in the press and blogosphere, the new version of Ubuntu, 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" was released April 19th.

This new release includes many new features like the Windows migration assistant, easy installation of multimedia codecs, and networking improvements. More features and other changes are documented at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/704tour. The release notes can be found at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/704. Want to update? Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading.

Of course, not just Ubuntu 7.04 was released. Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu and Ubuntu Server Edition were also released. The Kubuntu 7.04 release notes can be read at http://kubuntu.org/announcements/7.04-release.php, Edubuntu's at http://www.edubuntu.org/news/7.04-release, Xubuntu's at http://www.xubuntu.org/feisty_release. Ubuntu Server Edition's release notes can be found at http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntuserver704.

7.04 Press Coverage

As with all Ubuntu releases, the initial press coverage has been strong.

Zdnet reports the release of 7.04 with much fanfare. It talks about features, the ensuing server slowdown due to heavy traffic, Ubuntu's foray into the server market share, and possible Dell consideration of Ubuntu. Read more at http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9593_22-6177641.html. You can read InformationWeek's take at http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199102409.

Ubuntu 7.04's advanced server support did not go unnoticed at Linuxinsider, which discusses how the server and desktop editions are different. Read more at http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/56993.html.

The press has also been covering 7.04's inclusion of KVM and paravirt-ops, designed to help run VMware. You can read more at http://news.com.com/Ubuntus+feisty+spin+on+virtualization/2100-7344_3-6176175.html, http://www.cmswire.com/cms/open-source-cms/feisty-fawn-leaps-into-virtualized-reality-001206.php and http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;621564227;fp;4194304;fpid;1

One area of Ubuntu that has traditionally been seen as weak is the server support. With 7.04, major press coverage of the Ubuntu Server Edition has started, with Search Enterprise Linux interviewing Jane Silber, Canonical director of operation at http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1251602,00.html and OpenSPF trumpted support for SPF in Postfix at http://www.openspf.org/News/2007-04-19.

Several news outlets noticed the amazing strain Ubuntu resources took as the release happened, with the replacement of the main Ubuntu website with a placeholder. Edward N. Albro of PCworld commented on it at http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/004166.html, as did The Register at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/19/ubuntu_website_down/

The press has also covered Sun's inclusion of a full Java stack and related tools 7.04. It is the first time so many of Sun's tools have been integrated into a distribution, making the Java technology extremely accessible to Linux developers. While the stack resides in multiverse for 7.04, they are expected to move to the main repository once Java becomes fully open source. You can read more about it at http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/19/HNsunubuntuties_1.html, http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/newss/6380/1/, and http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3672751.

General Community News

Ubuntu Open Week

Ever wanted to know how Ubuntu is related to Canonical? Or what exactly the MOTUs do and how they do it? Canonical, is holding a series of workshops, in IRC, where you can find out the answers to all these questions and much more. There is a week long menu of events that cover topics from packaging applications, LoCo teams, Ubuntu Women, an introduction to Launchpad, and a Q&A with Mark Shuttleworth. For more information: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek

LoCo News

The Funky Feisty Competition

Take a picture of yourself or your group (LoCo team, LUG, family, class or any other group) celebrating the release of Feisty in an interesting way. Be inventive! How about a picture of you in front of a famous landmark? Use your imagination - the most interesting pictures win! First prize wins $500USD, signed 7.04 CD by Mark Shuttleworth, an Ubuntu t-shirt, and the Ubuntu book and the runner-up wins $250USD, Ubuntu t-shirt, and the Ubuntu book. The deadline for submissions is May 19th. More details at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TheFunkyFeistyCompetition

Argentina Local Community Team

The Argentina LoCo es participating in FLISOL (Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre) on Saturday 28th of April in Buenos Aires. Anyone is welcome to come, and we'd love to meet any ubunteros who happen to be close by. For more information visit: http://www.installfest.info/FLISOL2007/Argentina/CapitalFederal

Bolivian Local Community Team

The recently started BolivianTeam is co-hosting this year's FLISOL Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre (latin american free software install fest) at the city of Cochabamba. This year the BolivianTeam will be installing and configuring Ubuntu's latest release Feisty Fawn. There will be also some talks about Free Software and Linux.

Ohio Local Community Team

For the release of Feisty, the Ohio LoCo had their party in Columbus on April 21st. Brady Merriweather recorded the event and has posted a video of the party on YouTube. To see the video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMk_opMcWJk

In The Press

Stephen Shankland, for CNET, talks about the virtualization technologies that will be part of Feisty: paravirt-ops, a layer that lets Ubuntu work with VMware; and KVM, which lets Linux host other operating systems. Ubuntu is taking a different path from other well known distributions who are using Xen. Xen requires a separate kernel, while the other technologies can use an ordinary Ubuntu kernel. Read the full article: http://news.com.com/Ubuntus+feisty+spin+on+virtualization/2100-7344_3-6176175.html?tag=nefd.top
Neal Krawetz, at ExtremeTech, has an extensive overview of Ubuntu. He discusses the different parts of the filesystem, along with a tutorial of what processes are and what can be done to them. Memory usage, network throughput, boot scripts, and schedulers like cron are also covered. Read the full article: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2114115,00.asp
Andreas Proschofsky, at the Austrian derStandard, interviews Mark Shuttleworth. Many topics are covered including how Mark thinks Ubuntu is on the cutting edge with the integration of Apport. Mark believes that even though Ubuntu lacks applications to provide large deployments through centralized management, like SUSE does with YAST and Zenworks, it is not an obstacle to adopting Ubuntu. He mentions that Ubuntu is making inroads in large companies, like Google developers using it on their desktops, and Lufthansa pilots using it on their laptops. On the commercial side, 70% of Canonical's business is from servers and 60% is from North America. Read the full interview: http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=2845484
Sean Michael Kerner, at internetnews.com, writes that Sun and Canonical consider the inclusion of Java technologies like the NetBeans IDE, Glassfish Java Application Server, Java SE and Java DB 10.2, an important milestone. "We see the Ubuntu developer community as a key constituency for a lot of the higher level Sun platform technology," says Ian Murdock, chief operating platforms officer at Sun, and founder of Debian. While the Sun tools are in the multiverse repository, Mark Shuttleworth expects them to move to the main repository when Java is fully open source. Read the full article: http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3672751
"La Repubblica" one of the most popular Italian newspaper wrote an article in its on-line version announcing the release of Feisty. In the article, the ease of installation, the migration tool and the absence of costs to use Ubuntu are highlighted. The author explains that Ubuntu could exploit the recently announced delay in next Mac OS X release and also mentions the fact that Dell has been asked to switch back to Windows XP by some user segments. Here is the full article (in italian) http://www.repubblica.it/2005/i/sezioni/scienza_e_tecnologia/software/linux-cerbiatto/linux-cerbiatto.html
Canonical has joined the Gnome Foundation's advisory board. The board allows members to communicate with and help the overall direction of Gnome. Jane Sibler, Canonical's director of operations, will represent Ubuntu on the board. Dave Neary, former chairman of the GNOME Foundation, says "Since launching the Ubuntu distribution, Canonical has been a great proponent of the GNOME desktop and community partner. The changes which Ubuntu has brought to the project have made the free software user experience better for all GNOME users." Read the full article: http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/canonicaljoins.html

In The Blogosphere

Abhishek, at Desicritics.org, says that users should look at Ubuntu since XP will be retired soon so it does'nt cannibalize the sales of Vista. He mentions all the usual support venues like the wiki, forums, and IRC. Abhishek also points out the active India LoCo. Read more: http://desicritics.org/2007/04/16/001741.php
Eric Brown at his personal blog writes about the great experience he had with installing and using Xubuntu on his old Dell laptop when compared to using MS Vista. He gushes over features like easy software install, great community that helps with any problems, rock hard stability, and ease of use while using minimal resources. He concludes with claiming that he has become a convert. Read more at http://ericbrownpm.com/2007/04/17/rediscovering-linux-via-ubuntu/
Joe Barr, at Linux.com, describes how to use the StartUp Manager (SUM) to change bootloader and splash screen settings in Ubuntu. SUM provides an easy-to-use GUI that lets allows advanced users to make their Ubuntu installations unique. Read more at: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/04/10/1830249
Allison Randal, at O'Reilly, witnesses an act of grassroots Ubuntu evangelism when a Starbucks customer asks the manager for help with his Feisty upgrade. Read more at: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/ubuntu_word_on.html
Brian Proffit, the managing editor at Linux Today, comments about the big stories of the week including the release of Feisty Fawn. He says the Ubuntu sites received a large spike in traffic which caused them slow down. Either this shows how popular Ubuntu has become or the servers need some work. Read more: http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2007-04-20-018-26-OP-SW
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, at ZDNet, says "I don't want to overhype anything but I can say with all honesty that Ubuntu 7.04 is by far the best and easiest version of Linux that I've used." Adrian does think the descriptions of available updates is too detailed for the average user. But still, "Ubuntu represents a huge step in the right direction for Linux and offers PC owners a simple (and safe) way to experiment with Linux." Read more: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=367

Meetings and Events

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Technical Board Meeting

Start: 20:00
End: 22:00
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TechnicalBoardAgenda

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Edubuntu Meeting

Start: 20:00
End: 22:00
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: https://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuMeetingAgenda

Thursday, April 26, 2007

MOTU Meeting

Start: 20:00
End: 21:00
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Meetings

Ubuntu Development Team Meeting

Start: 21:00
End: 23:00
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting

Updates and security for 6.06 and 6.10

Bug Stats

Open (28130) +626 # over last week
Critical (18) +1 # over last week
Unconfirmed (13745) +375 # over last week
Unassigned (20880) +839 # over last week
All bugs ever reported (95642) +2050 # 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

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:

http://www.ubuntu.com/news

and

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/

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
Nick Ali
Gabriele Monti
Corey Burger
And many others

RSS

You can suscribe to the UWN feed at: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/uwn/feed

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. If you have any technical support questions, please send then ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com.