Issue388


Contents

  1. In This Issue
  2. General Community News
    1. Final Freeze for Ubuntu 14.10 (utopic) in effect
  3. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Ask Ubuntu Top 5 Questions this week
      1. Most Active Questions
      2. Top Voted New Questions
  4. Ubuntu Cloud News
  5. The Planet
    1. Randall Ross: Why Smart Phones Aren't - Reason #2 & Reason #3
    2. Joe Liau: Documenting the Death of the Dumb Telephone – Part 1: Unnecessary & Part 2: Balderdash
    3. Michael Hall: Unity 8 Desktop
    4. Kubuntu: KDE Applications and Development Platform 4.14.2
    5. Jonathan Riddell: Ubuntu's Linux Scheduler or Why Baloo Might be Slowing Your System in 14.04
    6. Randall Ross: Writing About Ubuntu? Own Your Own Content
    7. Mythbuntu: Actions required by Nov 1st due to Schedules Direct change
    8. Nicholas Skaggs: Final testing for Utopic
    9. Ronnie Tucker: Canonical Details Plans for Unity 8 Integration in Ubuntu Desktop
    10. Jussi Kekkonen: Notes about Dell XPS 13 developer edition and Kubuntu
    11. Randall Ross: Ubuntu Contributors' Guide
  6. Canonical News
    1. BootStack FAQs
    2. Designing machine view
    3. How to customize and brand your scope
  7. In The Blogosphere
    1. Unity 8 Desktop Still Planned In Time For Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
    2. HP Makes Real-Time Processing Real With Help From TI
    3. The Ubuntu release cycle and what it means for aging hardware
    4. Ubuntu Touch Fully Forks Its Email Client
  8. Other Articles of Interest
  9. Featured Audio and Video
    1. Ubuntu Community Team Q&A: 14th October 2014
    2. Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S07E29 – The One with the Baby on the Bus
  10. Monthly Team Reports: September 2014
  11. Upcoming Meetings and Events
  12. Updates and Security for 10.04, 12.04 and 14.04
    1. Security Updates
    2. Ubuntu 10.04 Updates
    3. Ubuntu 12.04 Updates
    4. Ubuntu 14.04 Updates
  13. Subscribe
  14. Archives
  15. Additional Ubuntu News
  16. Conclusion
  17. Credits
  18. Glossary of Terms
  19. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  20. Feedback

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Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 388 for the week October 13 - 19, 2014.

In This Issue

  • Final Freeze for Ubuntu 14.10 (utopic) in effect
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Ubuntu Cloud News

  • Randall Ross: Why Smart Phones Aren't - Reason #2 & Reason #3

  • Joe Liau: Documenting the Death of the Dumb Telephone – Part 1: Unnecessary & Part 2: Balderdash

  • Michael Hall: Unity 8 Desktop
  • Kubuntu: KDE Applications and Development Platform 4.14.2
  • Jonathan Riddell: Ubuntu's Linux Scheduler or Why Baloo Might be Slowing Your System in 14.04
  • Randall Ross: Writing About Ubuntu? Own Your Own Content
  • Mythbuntu: Actions required by Nov 1st due to Schedules Direct change
  • Nicholas Skaggs: Final testing for Utopic
  • Ronnie Tucker: Canonical Details Plans for Unity 8 Integration in Ubuntu Desktop
  • Jussi Kekkonen: Notes about Dell XPS 13 developer edition and Kubuntu
  • Randall Ross: Ubuntu Contributors' Guide

  • BootStack FAQs

  • Designing machine view
  • How to customize and brand your scope
  • In The Blogosphere
  • Other Articles of Interest
  • Featured Audio and Video
  • Monthly Team Reports: September 2014
  • Upcoming Meetings and Events
  • Updates and Security for 10.04, 12.04 and 14.04
  • And much more!

General Community News

Final Freeze for Ubuntu 14.10 (utopic) in effect

Adam Conrad, on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team, writes a late announcement that Utopic’s Final Freeze is in effect. He shares the only reasons for which further uploads will be permitted and hopes that "everyone gets on board with testing images" which will he says, may have to be respun before the final release.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2014-October/001115.html

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (115103) +239 over last week
  • Critical (224) +5 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (57517) +36 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: David Foerster (http://askubuntu.com/users/175814/david-foerster), Seth (http://askubuntu.com/users/44179/seth), Florian Diesch (http://askubuntu.com/users/2369/florian-diesch), heemayl (http://askubuntu.com/users/216503/heemayl) and D4nC00per (http://askubuntu.com/users/62364/d4nc00per)

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

Ubuntu Cloud News

The Planet

Randall Ross: Why Smart Phones Aren't - Reason #2 & Reason #3

Randall Ross continues his posts explaining his concerns with the use of the term “smartphone”. Randall reflects that despite the technology’s capabilities, users are asking each other “Where are you?” on the train and ignoring the fact that “silence is golden” while at the movies.

http://randall.executiv.es/dumbphones02

http://randall.executiv.es/dumbphones03

Joe Liau: Documenting the Death of the Dumb Telephone – Part 1: Unnecessary & Part 2: Balderdash

Joe Liau begins a series of posts where he discusses his concern of how the smartphone is seldom used to make actual phone calls and how it provides an excess of useless information through texting and email.

http://blog.josephliau.com/documenting-the-death-of-the-dumb-telephone-part-1-unnecessary/

http://blog.josephliau.com/documenting-the-death-of-the-dumb-telephone-part-2-balderdash/

Michael Hall: Unity 8 Desktop

Michael Hall's blog features a guest post from Will Cooke of Canonical who writes about plans to get Unity 8 into the desktop release. He compares Unity 8 to Unity 7, informing us about what is new, and advises that a preview is available by downloading the daily Ubuntu Desktop Next live image.

http://mhall119.com/2014/10/unity-8-desktop/

Kubuntu: KDE Applications and Development Platform 4.14.2

The Kubuntu Team announces the release of KDE SC 4.14.2. They advise for which Kubuntu versions the release is available and from where the packages can be downloaded.

http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-applications-and-development-platform-4142

Also check out Scarlett Clark’s follow-up post: http://scarlettgatelyclark.com/2014/kubuntu-kde-4-14-2-release-ready-in-ppa/

Jonathan Riddell: Ubuntu's Linux Scheduler or Why Baloo Might be Slowing Your System in 14.04

Jonathan Riddell shares the Kubuntu team's experiences of trying to solve a problem of a user's system that was running slow due to Baloo, the new indexer from KDE. He says changes to Unity were made as it was having problems with the CFQ scheduler. Jonathan concludes: "...it would be nice if the expectation was on Unity to get fixed rather than on Kubuntu to deal with the bureaucracy to workaround their workarounds."

https://blogs.kde.org/2014/10/15/ubuntus-linux-scheduler-or-why-baloo-might-be-slowing-your-system-1404

Randall Ross: Writing About Ubuntu? Own Your Own Content

Randall Ross is sad to note that these days a lot of people rarely post on The Planet instead choosing Google+. He quotes part of Google's license, and says "Friends, it's really not that difficult to host a blog and to use a more respectful service."

http://randall.executiv.es/minus

Mythbuntu: Actions required by Nov 1st due to Schedules Direct change

Thomas Mashos reproduces an announcement that affects users using the Schedules Direct service to get guide data. Thomas says "Users that have enabled the MythTV Updates repo and are on a current version of MythTV and a supported version of Ubuntu will receive the fix for this via regular updates." The enabling of the MythTV Updates repo is something the Mythbuntu team have always recommended.

http://www.mythbuntu.org/home/news/actionsrequiredbynov1stduetoschedulesdirectchange

Nicholas Skaggs: Final testing for Utopic

Nicholas Skaggs writes that the final Utopic images are available and ready for testing. He says that help is need to records both positive and negative results on the ISO Tracker, and links to help pages and contact details.

http://www.theorangenotebook.com/2014/10/final-testing-for-utopic.html

Ronnie Tucker: Canonical Details Plans for Unity 8 Integration in Ubuntu Desktop

Ronnie Tucker draws from and links to a Softpedia article that shows that the Ubuntu Desktop flavor hasn't been the developer's focus for some time. He concludes his post by saying "Not all users know that the desktop environment that is now on Ubuntu Touch will also power the desktop version in the future, and that future is not very far ahead. In fact, it’s a lot closer than users imagine.

http://fullcirclemagazine.org/2014/10/17/canonical-details-plans-for-unity-8-integration-in-ubuntu-desktop/

Jussi Kekkonen: Notes about Dell XPS 13 developer edition and Kubuntu

Jussi Kekkonen writes about his experiences installing Kubuntu 14.04 on a new Dell XPS13. He mentions problems with problems with the touch screen but says "Everything else works like a charm out of the box in Kubuntu 14.04, except cooling."

http://www.tm-travolta.net/post/notes-about-dell-xps-13-developer-edition-and-kubuntu

Randall Ross: Ubuntu Contributors' Guide

Randall Ross, with the help of a flow chart, provides a simple guide to contributing to Ubuntu.

http://randall.executiv.es/ubuntu-contributors-guide

Canonical News

BootStack FAQs

Canonical answers nine Frequently Asked Questions around BootStack and OpenStack including "Which hosting companies can I use?", and "Why BootStack? What is new?"

https://insights.ubuntu.com/2014/10/13/bootstack-faqs/

Designing machine view

Luca Paulina writes that 'Machine View' for Juju was launched a few weeks ago and shares with us some of the challenges that were faced in the process of creating it. Luca illustrates his post with several screenshots and says "We hope that machine view will really help Juju users by increasing the level of control and flexibility they have over their cloud infrastructure."

http://design.canonical.com/2014/10/designing-machine-view/

How to customize and brand your scope

David Callé says that scopes come with very flexible customization and that they can be made to look like a generic RSS reader, a music library or a store front. David shows how the SoundCloud scope was created by providing illustrations, and links to a tutorial.

http://developer.ubuntu.com/2014/10/scopes-customization-branding/

In The Blogosphere

Unity 8 Desktop Still Planned In Time For Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Michael Larabel of Phoronix reflects "While much of Canonical's recent focus has been about reading Unity 8 for mobile devices, their plan is still to ship Unity 8 by default on the Ubuntu Linux desktop ahead of its next LTS release." He briefly outlines the plans for each Ubuntu release and links to Will Cooke's blog post where the plans are discussed in detail.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTgxNDM

HP Makes Real-Time Processing Real With Help From TI

Sanjay Bhal of Texas Instruments informs us that Hewlett-Packard (HP) hit a milestone by becoming the first major vendor to add a 64-bit ARM server to their portfolio and that the 32-bit version includes an integrated DSP chip from Texas Instruments. Sanjay describes some of the technical features of the machine and says "...TI and HP have worked in collaboration with Canonical to enable a software environment that is powered by Ubuntu."

http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324293

The Ubuntu release cycle and what it means for aging hardware

Jack Wallen of TechRepublic look at Ubuntu's version numbers and support for 32-bit systems. Jack assures his readers that both 32 and 64-bit systems are currently supported including Ubuntu 14.10 which will be ready very soon.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-ubuntu-release-cycle-and-what-it-means-for-aging-hardware/

Ubuntu Touch Fully Forks Its Email Client

Michael Larabel of Phoronix writes that up to now the Ubuntu Touch email client has been based on the Trojita application but the Ubuntu Touch developers have stopped upstreaming their changes to Trojita and are now maintaining their own long-term fork called Dekko. Michael says that the reason for the changes is to create something that is tightly integrated into Ubuntu.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgxNDc

Ubuntu Community Team Q&A: 14th October 2014

Michael Hall, Nick Skaggs and Alan Pope participate in another regular weekly update by Ubuntu's Community Team. The team make several announcements and answer questions put to them on IRC.

http://youtu.be/ClVm7wOjtUY

Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S07E29 – The One with the Baby on the Bus

Join Laura Cowen, Tony Whitmore and Alan Pope in Studio L for Season Seven, Episode Twenty-Nine of the Ubuntu Podcast!

In this week’s show:-

  • We take a look at what’s been happening in the news:
    • Open Source is full of horrible people
    • All your books are belong to Adobe
    • NVidia pick Wayland… and Mir?
    • Microsoft CEO reinforces sexist messages
    • Chromebook ponders dropping support for Linux ext filesystems
    • Protect your privacy online with anonabox
    • Google discover a POODLE
    • Google announce new Android version, and new devices to run it
    • Gaming news happened!
  • We take a look at what’s been happening in the community:
    • Get involved with the IRC Council
    • Unity 8 plans revealed
    • Discuss other distros on the Ubuntu forums

We’ll be back next week, when we’ll be talking about diversity at events like OggCamp and looking over your feedback.

http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/2014/10/16/s07e29-the-one-with-the-baby-on-the-bus/

Monthly Team Reports: September 2014

See here for the team report for September 2014: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamReports/September2014

If your team is not producing monthly reports, see this page to get your team started: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BuildingCommunity/TeamReporting

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 and 14.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 10.04 Updates

End of Life - April 2015 (Server)

Ubuntu 12.04 Updates

End of Life - April 2017

Ubuntu 14.04 Updates

End of Life - April 2019

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:

  • Paul White
  • Elizabeth K. Joseph
  • John Mahoney
  • 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/

Or get involved with the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter team! We always need summary writers and editors, if you're interested, learn more at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Join

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/Issue388 (last edited 2014-10-21 00:01:06 by lyz)