Issue43

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WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #43 for the week May 28th - June 2nd, YEAR. In this issue we cover ...

UWN Translations

In This Issue

General Community News

New Teams and Member approved

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 judgement of OpenSuSe instead of Novell managment, 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 creditibility 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-intall 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 to ubuntu-core-dev. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2007-June/023744.html

dell working with ubuntu 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 Johnston (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 disucced and summarised on the minutes.

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

LoCo News

Interview of the Week

This week we interview Daniel Holbach, one of the recently appointed Community Council members, and a member of the Ubuntu Utah LoCo team.

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!

New in Gutsy Gibbon

Launchpad News

In The Press

http://www.linutop.com/ (sells PCs with Xubuntu)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10442422

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=732&num=1

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 noteback, 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 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

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

Community Spotlight

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/installer-for-windows

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ

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 (#) +/- # over last week
  • Critical (#) +/- # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (#) +/- # over last week
  • Unassigned (#) +/- # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (#) +/- # 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/

Infamous Bugs

UWN #: A sneak peek

Archives and RSS Feed

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

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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

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Feedback

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