Issue43

Contents

  1. In This Issue
  2. General Community News
    1. Help Improve Usability!
    2. New Members approved
    3. Mark Shuttleworth Interviewed
    4. Sarah Hobbs Joins Ubuntu Core Team
    5. Dell and Ubuntu behind the scenes
    6. New Kubuntu Council
    7. New Dell support sub-forum on ubuntuforums.org
  3. LoCo News
    1. Swiss Team Approved
  4. Interview of the Week
  5. In The Press
  6. In The Blogosphere
  7. Meetings and Events
    1. Sunday, June 3, 2007
      1. Georgia US LoCo meeting
      2. Catalan LoCo meeting
    2. Monday, June 4, 2007
      1. Scribes Team Meeting
    3. Tuesday, June 5, 2007
      1. Technical Board Meeting
    4. Wednesday, June 6, 2007
      1. Edubuntu Meeting
    5. Thursday, June 7, 2007
      1. Gutsy Tribe CD 1 Release
      2. Ubuntu Development Team Meeting
    6. Saturday, June 9, 2007
      1. Ubuntu-Women Team Meeting
  8. Community Spotlight
    1. Spotlight on Ubuntu Installer for Windows
    2. The PowerPC Community still Rocks
  9. Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, and 7.04
    1. Security Updates
    2. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates
    3. Ubuntu 6.10 Updates
    4. Ubuntu 7.04 Updates
  10. Bug Stats
  11. Archives and RSS Feed
  12. Additional Ubuntu News
  13. Conclusion
  14. Credits
  15. RSS
  16. Feedback

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #43 for the week May 28th - June 2nd, 2007. In this issue we cover an interview with Mark Shuttleworth, newly approved Ubuntu Core Developer Sarah Hobbs, the new batch of Ubuntu Members, an interview with Daniel Holbach, and much much more.

UWN Translations

In This Issue

  • Help Improve Usability!
  • Newly approved Ubuntu Members
  • Mark Shuttleworth Interviewed
  • Sarah Hobbs is now Core
  • New Kubuntu Council

  • Swiss LoCo Team Approved

  • Interview with Daniel Holbach
  • Ubuntu Installer for Windows
  • PowerPC Community

General Community News

Help Improve Usability!

Paula Bach, a graduate student at Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, is "researching the role of usability expertise in Free/Libre/Open source Software (FLOSS) projects. This includes looking at how usability issues are handled. Responses from developers and usability engineers are essential, as well as from other contributors, including users and user/developers." A short 20 minute survey has been created to "understand how open source contributors approach usability in FLOSS projects." To read more, see https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2007-June/001064.html

To take the survey, go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=gAODMj1MTFDFfAxhbOUXcg%3d%3d

New Members approved

  • Ralph Janke

    • Ralph Janke is a bridge to Launchpad for the German Ubuntu community. He is an active member of the kubuntu-de.org, working mainly on translations of Kubuntu news. Ralph also translates the UWN to German and hopes to be a MOTU in the future. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Txwikinger

  • Michele Angrisano

    • Michele Angrisano is an active member of the Italian community who helps out new member support, translations, and documentation. While hoping to be a MOTU in the future, he has also starting fixing bugs in PHP 4. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MicheleAngrisano

  • Brian Murray

    • Brian Murray is Quality Assurance Engineer for Canonical who is responsible for managing the Ubuntu QA team, He keeps an eye for high profile bugs and creating systems for triaging and reporting bugs more efficiently. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BrianMurray

  • Efrain Valles

    • Efrain Valles helps run the Venezuelan Team and active in doing translation and documentation. He has given three talks geared towards building FOSS communities and organized a Feisty release party. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EfrainValles

  • Sam Cater

    • Sam Cater works actively answering questions about Ubuntu and applications on Launchpad and IRC. He has started the process of being a future MOTU by doing basic packaging and bug fixes. Sam is also part of Cubuntu, a command-line Ubuntu derivative. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/sacater

  • Rafael Sfair

    • Rafael Sfair helped start and organize the Ubuntu Brazilian Documentation team and is member of the Brazilian Portuguese Translator team. He has contributed several wiki pages devoted to explaining how to install scientific software. Rafael is also a document manager for the APTonCD project. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RafaelSfair

  • Alysson Neto

    • Alysson Neto is one of the administrators on Ubuntu Forum Brazil and has developed the backup and maintencance tools to keep the system running smoothly. Recently, he joined the Ubuntu Brazilian Documentation team, where he provides integration between the wiki and forum. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AlyssonNeto

  • Wesley Stessens

    • Wesley Stessens is a member of the Netherlands and Belgium Ubuntu teams. He is a moderator on the Dutch Ubuntu forums and webmaster for the Dutch Ubuntu website. Wesley translates the Ubuntu Security Notices to Dutch and is currently workin g on the upcoming Dutch Ubuntu Magazine. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WesleyStessens

  • Elizabeth Bevilacqua

    • Elizabeth Bevilacqua is a member of the Ubuntu-Women Project and the administrator of the its website, wiki, and contact for #ubuntu-women. She helped launch the Pennsylvania US LoCo team, has helped organize and participated in several of its events, and is responsible for its online resources. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Pleia2

  • Luigi de Guzman

    • Luigi de Guzman is a staff member of the Ubuntu Forums and a member of the NU LoCo. Along with helping on laptop testing, Luigi started the Fluxbox documentation on the community help site.. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Luigi_de_guzman

Mark Shuttleworth Interviewed

Phoronix has an extensive interview with Mark Shuttleworth. Mark addresses the criticism he received when he invited OpenSuSe developers to join Ubuntu after Microsoft and Novell announced their partnership. He erred in judgment of OpenSuSe instead of Novell management, since the OpenSuSe community was not involved during those talks. Work between Ubuntu and OpenSuSe has improved as Microsoft's real intentions have become more obvious.

Asked to compared the maturity of Linux if Windows is considered "middle aged," Mark says that Linux is like a dorky teenager with acne. While showing some rough spots, Linux has lots of flexibility that allows for innovative products, a reason why vendors are using it to build personal video recorders. Similarly, Ubuntu has earned such credibility as evidenced by the interaction of the community on Planet Ubuntu and the mailing lists.

Two of the important features for Ubuntu 7.04 are the Windows migration tool and the easy-to-install codecs. The migration tool has become very popular among users who want to run a dual-boot setup, Since countries vary in intellectual property issues, the framework allows for users, where it is perfectly legal, to install and use restricted drivers.

Read more of the interview at http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=732&num=1

Sarah Hobbs Joins Ubuntu Core Team

Sarah Hobbs has joined the Ubuntu Core Development Team. As a MOTU, Sarah maintains many KDE packages and is part of the Kubuntu Team and Ubuntu-QA team as well. She also has ops on many of the popular Ubuntu IRC channels and is part of the Ubuntu IRC team. Read more: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2007-June/023744.html

Dell and Ubuntu behind the scenes

Dell has produced a cool video with some of the people involved with getting Ubuntu ready for shipment. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjxVXKEJnM4

New Kubuntu Council

A Kubuntu meeting took place on IRC and half the Kubuntu Council were changed for new faces. The new members are: Kennth Wimer (kwwii), Richard Johnson (nixternal), Luka Renko (Lure) who will serve with three existing members: Jonathan Riddell (Riddell), Sarah Hobbs (Hobbsee) and Antony Mercatante (Tonio).

Many thanks to the retiring members, Tom Albers (toma), Achim Bohnet (allee) and Raphiel Pinson (raphink).

At the meeting two new Kubuntu Members (who are also Ubuntu Members) were accepted, Cyril Breuil (marseillai) and Stefan Skotte (_StefanS_). Cyril is well-known for his packaging contributions, while Stefan has gained fame by creating the new Kubuntu logout dialog. Congratulations to both of them, for achieving membership status.

Other items including widget style, a discussion with Konversation's upstream and a one click fix feature were discussed and summarised on the minutes.

Read more at https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/Meetings/Minutes/2007-05-31

New Dell support sub-forum on ubuntuforums.org

Got any technical support questions regarding Ubuntu on Dell computers? Want to discuss more general topics? Please visit: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=256. Welcome to the community!

LoCo News

Swiss Team Approved

The Swiss LoCo team provides support to members all official Swiss languages and collaborates in translations into German, French, and Italian. The team has thrown several release parties and install fests and has appeared in a local IT newspaper. Participating in several events such as Software Freedom Day and Journées du Libre, recently they provided demonstrations and answered questions at The Open Expo 2007 in Bern. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SwissTeam

Interview of the Week

This week we interview Daniel Holbach, one of the recently appointed Community Council members.

UWN Reporter: Since when have you been member of the Ubuntu community?

Daniel Holbach: I started using Ubuntu in the no-name-yet.com days and got heavily involved during Hoary (when I should have focused on my thesis instead). I became a MOTU on February 15th, 2005 and member a bit before that.

UWN: What do you think the next year will look like for Ubuntu?

D.H.: We'll see more teams, more people within the community, more people from other communites and groups who will work with us, lots of participation, lots of community action and of course Ubuntu will be better versatile than ever.

UWN: What do you think can be improved in the Ubuntu community?

D.H.: We can all try to make our teams more inviting, more open and make it as easy as possible to join in and get some work done. Also we need to make sure we share the knowledge we have and make it accessible to new contributors.

UWN: What are you most active in the community?

D.H.: I'm currently most active in the MOTU Mentoring program (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU) and in the Desktop Team (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam). We're looking for contributors - join in on the fun!

In The Press

  • Peter Griffin, at NZ Herald, writes how the New Zealand Ministry of Education needs to make a coordinated effort to move to open source software. Microsoft insisted the Ministry pay for licenses of Office on all Macintosh's, even though Office was installed on half the Apple machines. Peter thinks it is a good time to move to Linux since it has so become so user-friendly, that Dell has started selling PCs with Ubuntu 7.04. Edubuntu is listed as an option for New Zealand schools as well as using OpenOffice as the main productivity suite. Read the full article at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10442422

  • Linutop is a Xubuntu-based diskless computer for the purpose of surfing the web. Its small form factor (9.3 x 2.7 x 15cm) and low weight (280 grams) makes it ideal to use as an embedded PC, for public information displays, and point-of-sale terminals, Linutop includes Firefox, Gaim, and Abiword. For more information, see http://www.linutop.com

In The Blogosphere

  • Mike Kupfer, at Sun, writes about Mark Shuttleworth's visit to the Sun Menlo Park campus. Mike points out many difference between Sun and Ubuntu, like how Ubuntu releases follow the train model, where if a package is not ready, it is moved to the next release instead of delaying the current release. Launchpad is discussed as an effective way of managing third-party packages and how packages that might infringe on patents are only available through downloads. Read more at http://blogs.sun.com/kupfer/entry/what_i_learned_from_ubuntu

  • Ugur Akinci, at American Chronicle, says Dell's partnership with Canonical is perfect. He points out the benefits of Ubuntu: free, a good productivity suite in OpenOffice, no viruses, no system crashes, auto-updates, and "ever-growing collection of free, new and interesting software available for instant downloads through Synaptic." Ugur goes on to say "UBUNTU is a solution that makes sense and works very well for me." Read more at http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=28349

  • Ben, at ArsGeek, talks about the potential upside and issues that may come up with Dell's partnership with Canonical. While computers from Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed are cheaper than their Windows counterparts, many potential customers may not understand that some applications will not work in Ubuntu. For others who want to simply surf the web and check email, the $50 difference is enough to sway them towards Ubuntu. Children today are much more comfortable with technology, so frequent upgrades for more features may be a reasonable trade-off. Read more at http://www.arsgeek.com/?p=1819

  • Sal Cangeloso, at XYZ Computing, talks about installing Ubuntu 7.04 on a Fujitsu P7230 notebook, which has a single core 1.2GHz Intel processor, since Vista provided poor performance. Almost everything worked properly right after the installation, while some required tweaks found on the Ubuntu Forums. While not scientific, Sal's observed that the battery lasted considerably longer with Ubuntu compared to Vista. Read more at http://www.xyzcomputing.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1062

  • A blogger, at http://jyquentel.wordpress.com, writes his impressions of using Ubuntu 7.04 for two months. He is impressed with the speed, and lack of need to run anti-virus and anti-spyware software. But above all, the best feature about Ubuntu is its social nature which he believes "is a key strength of the distribution, the amount of pro bono work being done by an army of volunteers on the web." Read more at http://jyquentel.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/60-days-with-ubuntu

  • Wayne Beaton experiments with Ubuntu 6.10 and 7.04 on his brand new Dell Latitude D820. The installation of 6.10 and upgrade to 7.04 worked flawlessly along with various development tools. Wayne expected his biggest challenge to be moving two years worth of Outlook mail to Thunderbird, but the import functionality copied all his folders, messages, and addresses perfectly. Read more at http://wbeaton.blogspot.com/2007/05/my-own-ubuntu-experiment.html

  • Dr. Michael Dorausch, a chiropractor, discusses whether Ubuntu is ready for office use. He thinks its a great idea to install Ubuntu on machines that will be used by the staff to access the Internet because of the lack of virus attacks. With OpenOffice providing most of the productivity tools needed, and other OSS tools like Firefox, and Thunderbird or Evolution, Ubuntu works well for a traveling chiropractor. Read more at http://www.planetc1.com/cgi-bin/n/v.cgi?c=1&id=1180636878

  • Technocrat has a write-up of a newly purchased Dell E520N with Ubuntu 7.04 pre=installed. The desktop has a Core Duo 4300 processor with 1 gigabyte of RAM and 250 gigabyte hard drive, but no PS2 ports, parallel ports, or serial ports. Peripherals must use the USB ports. The first boot starts the installation process asking the user to select a languate, keyboard, time zone, a user name and password. Afterwards, networking worked without any configuration, as well as two networked printers. NVU and Opera installed quickly and flawlessly. Read more at http://technocrat.net/d/2007/6/1/20868

Meetings and Events

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Georgia US LoCo meeting

Catalan LoCo meeting

Monday, June 4, 2007

Scribes Team Meeting

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Technical Board Meeting

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Edubuntu Meeting

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Gutsy Tribe CD 1 Release

Ubuntu Development Team Meeting

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

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Ubuntu-Women Team Meeting

Community Spotlight

Spotlight on Ubuntu Installer for Windows

A specification has recently been approved for the next release, Gutsy Gibbon, involving a very cool feature which would allow Ubuntu to be installed directly from Windows. The main advantages that pop up pretty quickly are:

  • No disk resizing or partitioning required
  • No CD burning required, works on laptops without CD drives
  • Easy to remove Ubuntu from the system, restoring the system to its previous state
  • The bootloader is not replaced, an additional boot option is added to it
  • Ubuntu is installed/uninstalled as any other application, which is comfortable for the user

The specification is registered in Launchpad at: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/installer-for-windows and you can take a look at the wiki page for more information: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InstallerForWindows

The PowerPC Community still Rocks

After being announced in February that the PowerPC platform would no longer be officially supported, the community picked it up and continued to support it. A FAQ is being built, and pretty complete at the moment, located at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ. A very active sub-forum is also available: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=133

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 (30508) +58 # over last week
  • Critical (29) -4 # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (15350) +61 # over last week
  • Unassigned (22936) -19 # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (103899) +1052 # 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

RSS

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

Feedback

If you would like to submit an idea or story you think is worth appearing on the UWN, please send them to ubuntu-marketing-submissions@lists.ubuntu.com. 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/Issue43 (last edited 2008-08-06 17:01:17 by localhost)