Issue39

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #39 for the week April 29th - May 5th, 2007. In this issue we cover the new Mobile and Embedded Initiative, Launchpad's new mentoring framework, and LoCos involved in conferences and installfests.

UWN Translations

In This Issue

  • Ubuntu launches Mobile and Embedded Initiative
  • Launchpad's new mentoring framework

  • Nicaraguan LoCo Team at FLISOL

  • Ubuntu Education Summit in Sevilla Concluded

General Community News

Ubuntu launches Mobile and Embedded Initiative

Ubuntu and Intel will be working together on the new Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project. Intel has recently announced a new low-power processor and chipset for mobile Internet devices. The project will be aimed at meeting the technical challenges of the new Intel architecture. Planning for the project will be done at the Ubuntu Developer Summit and the first edition will be available with Gutsy Gibbon in October. Read more: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2007-May/000289.html

Ubuntu Education Summit in Sevilla Concluded

The first Ubuntu Education Summit in Sevilla, prior to the Ubuntu Development Summit has concluded. One of the big highlights was Oliver Grawert, lead Edubuntu dev, getting Edubuntu on the Intel Classmate PC. You can read more on Jonathan Carter's blog at http://jonathancarter.co.za/ubuntu-education-summit-wrap-up or on the wiki page at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UES-Sevilla.

LoCo News

The Nicaraguan LoCo Team participated in the biggest free software/open source event in Latin America, FLISOL, the Latin American Free Software Installfest 2007, that was held on April 28 simultaneously in 17 countries and 160 cities in Latin America. The University of Managua in León (UdeM) announced plans to migrate over 400 computers from Windows to Ubuntu with the help of the Nicaraguan LoCo Team. Datatex, one of the three biggest PC vendors in Nicaragua is exploring the possibility of selling computers with pre-installed Ubuntu, with the Ubuntu-ni Team providing training and local support. For more details: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2007-May/001308.html

The Pacific Northwest team hosted a booth at Linuxfest Northwest in Bellingham, Washington, USA on April 28th and 29th. Ubuntu garnered much interest as the team handed out over 150 feisty CDs the first hour and over 450 Dapper/Feisty Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and Xubuntu CDs over the duration of the two day event. For more details: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PNWTeam/projects/lfnw2007

Karim Fayez announced the launch of the Egyptian LoCo team. While details (and mailing lists) are still in works, you can read more and follow the news at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EgyptTeam.

The Bangladesh LoCo team has recently been approved.

Development News

The stable release update procedure (SRU) has changed slightly as announced by Martin Pitt. Mostly the changes are to do with the naming of the updates, as ~proposed1 is no longer required. You can read more at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/SRU.

DaD, a replacement for the Merge 'o Matic, or MoM, has been announced, to help the MOTUs with merges from Debian. You can see DaD at work at http://adrishost.homeip.net/DaD/merges/ or read more at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2007-May/023596.html

Launchpad News

Mentoring - a new feature to help train new community members - is the big news from the Launchpad team this week. Launchpad's new mentoring framework gives you the tools to:

  • Offer to mentor people who want to fix a bug or implement a blueprint.
  • Provide a list of items that are relevant to your project and for which mentorship is available.
  • Provide a list of items that would be a good starting point for someone who wants to join one of your teams.
  • See what mentorship offers individuals are currently making.

Mentorship requires no admin as it's entirely based on commitments made by individual team members. It's also available even if you use a bug tracker other than Launchpad. You can find out more at: https://help.launchpad.net/MentoringManagement

The Launchpad team has also made three code release recently. Highlights include:

  • Launchpad 1.0 is now out of beta.
  • Bug tracker: bug comments are now included in searches and you can mark bugs as duplicates via the email interface.
  • Code hosting: external branches are now mirrored every six hours.
  • Translations: a bug that reset the "needs review" flag has been fixed.
  • Answer Tracker: you can now easily see all support requests made in languages for which your project has no support contacts.

As ever, we'd love to have you in the Launchpad Beta Testers team. Sign up today at https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-beta-testers/+members.

Read more in the full release notes: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2007-May/001392.html.

In The Press

  • Canonical and Dell have announced a partnership to offer Ubuntu 7.04 preinstalled on select desktops and notebooks. Mark Shuttleworth is excited by the extraordinary number of requests made by Ubuntu users on the Dell IdeaStorm and a large corporation like Dell responding to those needs. Mark talks about how Canonical and Dell have been eyeing each other for some time and the results of the IdeaStorm showed critical mass had been reached to take the next step. Responding to why the Linux community acted so quickly to IdeaStorm, Mark says that while Linux users are vocal and want to be recognized, there is a commercial appeal for users to have Linux pre-installed so they can side-step the process of installing and configuring computers themselves. Read the full article: http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/05/01/13147.aspx

  • Mark Joseph Edwards at Windows IT Pro enjoys the ease of upgrading his Kubuntu install to 7.04. Mark talks about the process of upgrading using the Adept Manager which took him an hour, mostly waiting for the packages to be installed. He mentions that Ubuntu has had the equivalent of Vista's User Access Control with 'sudo' for some time and how support costs can be minimized if a user learns how to search or ask questions online. Read the full article: http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/ArticleID/95957/95957.html?Ad=1

  • Todd Bishop, at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, writes about the increasing popularity of Ubuntu and Dell's announcement to preinstall it on machines. Todd talks to Paul Bartell, an eighth-grader who is a member of the PWN Team. Paul became interested in trying Ubuntu when he saw a friend's dad using it. Rob Helm, Directions on Microsoft research director, says he has run Ubuntu for a year on his home computer. Rod believes major open source applications are mature enough to be Windows alternatives and that he uses OpenOffice at home for word processing and spreadsheets. Read the full article: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/314124_dellfolo03.html

  • News.com.com is reporting about Canonical's partnership with Zimbra, the open source company that produces a calendar and email server. The deal was spurred due to customer demand according to Zimbra Chief Executive Satish Dharmaraj. The deal calls for Zimbra to release their server software in Ubuntu packaging (.deb), along with Red Hat and SUSE's rpm, making installation on Ubuntu easy. The articles also quotes Shuttleworth as having a preference for small open source companies to partner with, due to their innovative tendencies and knowledge working with open source software, unlike big software companies such as Oracle. Read the full article: http://news.com.com/Zimbra+to+offer+Ubuntu+Linux+support/2100-7344_3-6181361.html

  • Ben DuPont, at Network Computing, talks about how companies can purchase support from Red Hat, Novell, and Canonical. In his tests, Ben found "companies without hard-core Linux pros can get out from under high mandatory support fees by adopting Ubuntu." Though there are also many third-party consultants who can support distributions on a per-incident basis which can keep costs down, companies with critical systems or needing strong ISV support should stay with Canonical and similar competitors. Ben states that "not only has Ubuntu raised the bar in terms of usability and cleanness in a desktop system, it's also contributed a lot to the open-source community, which benefits everyone." Read the full article: http://www.networkcomputing.com/article/printFullArticle.jhtml?articleID=197009107

  • Peter Galli, in eWeek, says that Dell will not include Wine in its preinstalled computers. Mark Shuttleworth is quoted as saying "while Linux is an alternative to Windows, it is not cheap Windows. Linux has its own strengths, and users should want it because of those strengths and not because it's a cheap copy of Windows." Asked if Dell should offer dual-boot computers running Ubuntu and Windows, Mark says it is not possible because of existing contractual agreements. Mark also says the Dell partnership was initiated by Dell, and that Canonical would provide software support while Dell would make sure there are no hardware compatibility issues. While Microsoft claims its application community is stronger when compared to Linux, Mark points out that "in many cases there is a bigger portfolio of high-quality free software applications than of proprietary ones." Companies like Google, SalesForce, and FaceBook would not have been possible without OSS like Linux and Apache. Read the full article: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2125848,00.asp

  • Sean Michael Kerner, at internetnews.com, wonders if Linux has arrived on the desktop for the mainstream consumer and why. While other distributions like Mandriva, Red Hat, and TurboLinux have all been available in the retail store, "Ubuntu, on the other hand, is known for giving away free CDs of its Linux distribution to anyone that will take it." Ubuntu has pushed marketing and PR, even "[Mark] Shuttleworth will speak with anyone who will listen and is likely one of the most engaged and quoted Linux leaders in the marketplace today. Contrast that with Novell/SUSE. You'd be hard pressed to even name the current leader of their Linux efforts." Read the full article: http://www.internetnews.com/reporters_notebook/article.php/3675801

  • James R. Hood, at ConsumerAffairs.com, asks if Ubuntu is too good to be true. James says Ubuntu "is fast, lean and responsive, like a sleek jungle cat prowling through the South Africa outback." To test Ubuntu, James installs 7.04 on a recently purchased computer and an old machine. On the new computer, Ubuntu is much more responsive compared to XP. The older machine, which would not boot properly because of limited RAM and available hard drive space, works well running Ubuntu. James says "this is not just a good thing, it's a very good thing, for the environment, for cash-strapped families and down-at-the-heels organizations." Read the full article: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/05/ubuntu_review.html

In The Blogosphere

  • Mike Wojciechowski, at taberis.livejournal.com, talks about installing Ubuntu 7.04. He discusses some of the history of open source software and Linux. Mike thinks "software installation in Ubuntu is a breeze" compared to finding and installing third-party applications for Windows and Mac OS. The installation process is pleasant since "you have a fully-functioning desktop during the install, allowing for web browsing and the like while you wait." Read more at: http://taberis.livejournal.com/265705.html

  • Andrew Kantor, at DriveBy Software, thinks "Linux is an incredibly powerful operating system" and has "a huge base of developers who are coming up with new features, new software, and better ways to do things." Andrew believes that Windows has no comparable feature to Kubuntu's Adept and Windows/Mac users would enjoy his favorite Linux feature, multiple desktops, but the plethora of available applications can be intimidating for new users. He feels that Linux is a viable desktop option if a user wants "freedom from just about any virus, and the potential to tinker to your heart's content." Read more at: http://vierranet.blogspot.com/2007/05/dont-be-afraid-linux-isnt-just-for.html

Meetings and Events

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Ubuntu Developer Summit

Monday, May 7, 2007

Ubuntu Developer Summit

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Ubuntu Developer Summit

Technical Board Meeting

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Ubuntu Developer Summit

Edubuntu Meeting

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Ubuntu Developer Summit

Ubuntu Development Team Meeting

  • Start: 20:00
  • End: 22:00
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting

Friday, May 11, 2007

Ubuntu Developer Summit

Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, and 7.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

Ubuntu 6.10 Updates

Ubuntu 7.04 Updates

Bug Stats

  • Open (29887) +981 # over last week
  • Critical (23) +1 # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (14915) +826 # over last week
  • Unassigned (22488) +938 # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (99149) +1854 # 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:

and

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
  • And many others

RSS

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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.

UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue39 (last edited 2008-08-06 17:00:14 by localhost)