Issue447


Contents

  1. In This Issue
  2. General Community News
    1. Ubuntu is about people
  3. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Ask Ubuntu Top 5 Questions this week
      1. Most Active Questions
      2. Top Voted New Questions
  4. LoCo News
    1. Supporting the UbuCon Summit
    2. Attending UbuCon Summit US in 01/2016
  5. LoCo Events
  6. The Planet
    1. Nicholas Skaggs: Google Code In: Week One Summary
    2. Lubuntu Blog: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
    3. Colin King: Firmware Test Suite, 15.12.00
    4. Daniel McGuire: The Ubuntu Firefox Startpage
    5. Martin Pitt: What’s new in autopkgtest: LXD, MaaS, apt pinning, and more
  7. Ubuntu Cloud News
    1. Canonical Cloud Chatter: December 2015
  8. Ubuntu Phone News
    1. Ubuntu Touch OTA-8.5 released
    2. Testing Ubuntu Apps As A Service
  9. Canonical News
  10. In The Press
    1. The First Person to Hack the iPhone Built a Self-Driving Car. In His Garage
  11. In The Blogosphere
    1. Convergence Is About Ubuntu Phones Turning into Desktops and Desktops into Phones
    2. How The Two Most Popular Laptops On Amazon Run With Ubuntu Linux
    3. Zero-Day GRUB2 Vulnerability Hits Linux Users, Patch Available for Ubuntu, RHEL
    4. Lessons from UbuCon: Canonical needs its own live events
    5. Watch: Pi-Cubes HVAC Automation System Runs on Raspberry Pi 2 and Ubuntu Snappy
  12. Featured Audio and Video
    1. Ubuntu Community Team Q&A - 15th December 2015
    2. Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S08E41 – Santa with Muscles - Ubuntu Podcast
  13. Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
  14. Upcoming Meetings and Events
  15. Updates and Security for 12.04, 14.04, 15.04 and 15.10
    1. Security Updates
    2. Ubuntu 12.04 Updates
    3. Ubuntu 14.04 Updates
    4. Ubuntu 15.04 Updates
    5. Ubuntu 15.10 Updates
  16. Subscribe
  17. Archives
  18. Additional Ubuntu News
  19. Conclusion
  20. Credits
  21. Glossary of Terms
  22. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  23. Feedback

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Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 447 for the week December 14 - 20, 2015. Our next issue will be a two week issue covering December 21 - January 3rd. Happy Holidays!

In This Issue

  • Ubuntu is about people
  • Ubuntu Stats

  • Supporting the UbuCon Summit

  • Attending UbuCon Summit US in 01/2016

  • LoCo Events

  • Nicholas Skaggs: Google Code In: Week One Summary
  • Lubuntu Blog: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
  • Colin King: Firmware Test Suite, 15.12.00

  • Daniel McGuire: The Ubuntu Firefox Startpage

  • Martin Pitt: What’s new in autopkgtest: LXD, MaaS, apt pinning, and more
  • Canonical Cloud Chatter: December 2015
  • Ubuntu Touch OTA-8.5 released
  • Testing Ubuntu Apps As A Service
  • Canonical News
  • In The Press
  • In The Blogosphere
  • Featured Audio and Video
  • Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
  • Upcoming Meetings and Events
  • Updates and Security for 12.04, 14.04, 15.04 and 15.10
  • And much more!

General Community News

Ubuntu is about people

David Planella writes a retrospective post about the history of collaboration with a view on past and now discontinued in-person Ubuntu Developer Summit events and the rise of community-organized UbuCon in their wake, writing: “while over the years we have learnt to work productively in a remote environment, the need to socialize is still there and as important as ever to reaffirm this bonding that keep us together.” He goes on to bring these topics together as he talks about the UbuCon Summit, “a super-UbuCon” with “some of the most influential members of the wider Ubuntu community, with first-class talks content, and with a space for discussions to help shape the future of particular areas of Ubuntu. It’s the evolution of an UbuCon.” His post concludes with some details about the upcoming UbuCon Summit in Pasadena, free registration information and more.

http://davidplanella.org/ubuntu-is-about-people/

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (121198) +145 over last week
  • Critical (291) -6 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (60478) +82 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: muru (http://askubuntu.com/users/158442/muru), Fabby (http://askubuntu.com/users/344926/fabby), zorbon.cz (http://askubuntu.com/users/35669/zorbon-cz), kos (http://askubuntu.com/users/380067/kos) and Justin (http://askubuntu.com/users/328221/justin)

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

LoCo News

Supporting the UbuCon Summit

Michael Hall reminds us that the UbuCon Summit is near, with the two dates being January 21 and 22. He tells us some of the highlights of the event, and that amongst the speakers will be Mark Shuttleworth as well as developers from Canonical and leaders from the Ubuntu community.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-community-team/2015-December/000961.html

Attending UbuCon Summit US in 01/2016

Sujeevan Vijayakumaran, head of the organisation team for UbuCon Europe, writes about how he’s looking forward to the upcoming UbuCon Summit in Pasadena, California.

https://svij.org/blog/2015/12/19/attending-ubucon-summit-us-in-012016/

LoCo Events

There are no LoCo events on the schedule for the next couple of weeks. Looking on to January and beyond? Visit the LoCo Team Portal to browse upcoming events around the world:

http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/

The Planet

Nicholas Skaggs: Google Code In: Week One Summary

Nicholas Skaggs summarizes the first week of Google Code In. He also shares some statistics about the amount of tasks completed, the number of students that did tasks for Ubuntu, and the number of Ubuntu mentors assigning tasks.

http://www.theorangenotebook.com/2015/12/google-code-in-week-one-summary.html

Lubuntu Blog: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Lubuntu’s artwork maven Rafael Laguna wishes us a Merry Christmas and rings in the New Year with another fantastic wallpaper, this time including the official Lubuntu mascot, Lenny!

http://lubuntu.me/merry-christmas-and-happy-new-year/

Colin King: Firmware Test Suite, 15.12.00

Colin King informs us that Canonical’s Hardware Enablement Team continue to enhance the Firmware Test Suite [FWTS] on a regular basis. He lists the changes in the latest release, 15.12.00, and thanks the community contributions which he says makes FWTS a better tool to support different architectures and systems.

http://smackerelofopinion.blogspot.com/2015/12/firmware-test-suite-151200.html

Daniel McGuire: The Ubuntu Firefox Startpage

Daniel McGuire quotes a Reddit post which complains about the default Ubuntu Firefox Startpage, saying that it isn’t useful or good looking. Daniel links to a bug report, shows us some existing alternatives, the structure and design features of which he will take into consideration when he starts working on some mockups of his own version of the Startpage.

https://danielseanmcguire.wordpress.com/2015/12/17/the-ubuntu-firefox-startpage/

Martin Pitt: What’s new in autopkgtest: LXD, MaaS, apt pinning, and more

Martin Pitt runs through the new features of the last two major autopkgtest releases, 3.18 and 3.19. His post looks at the new LXD virtualization backend, the MaaS setup script, using packages from -proposed, and the Unified testbed setup script.

http://www.piware.de/2015/12/whats-new-in-autopkgtest-lxd-maas-apt-pinning-and-more/

Ubuntu Cloud News

Canonical Cloud Chatter: December 2015

James Donner takes a look at what Canonical’s Cloud Marketing Team have been involved with recently. Amongst the activities that he refers to are a Big Data for Telcos eBook, testing Autopilot on VMware, and a short talk on testing charms. James’ post also includes a reminder of the next UbuCon Summit in January.

http://insights.ubuntu.com/2015/12/18/canonical-cloud-chatter/

Ubuntu Phone News

Ubuntu Touch OTA-8.5 released

Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak announces a ‘hotfix’ release of Ubuntu Touch which is codenamed OTA-8.5. He says that all users should receive the update within 24 hours of release, points us to the release notes, and thanks everyone who participated in the hotfix.

https://lists.launchpad.net/ubuntu-phone/msg17311.html

Testing Ubuntu Apps As A Service

Alan Pope describes in detail an experimental app tester called Marvin that he and Stuart Langridge made, for Ubuntu Click Packages, which emails you screenshots and logs of an app while running on a device that you may not own. He appeals to developers for feedback and suggestions for possible improvements, and links to the site where Marvin can be found.

http://popey.com/blog/2015/12/16/testing-ubuntu-apps-as-a-service/

Canonical News

In The Press

The First Person to Hack the iPhone Built a Self-Driving Car. In His Garage

Ashlee Vance of Bloomberg writes a piece about George Hotz, who gave a tour of the self-driving car he designed from his home in San Francisco. The operating system running in the car to display the automated driving technology and feeds from cameras and Lidar system is noted to be very clearly running Ubuntu with Unity.

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-george-hotz-self-driving-car/

In The Blogosphere

Convergence Is About Ubuntu Phones Turning into Desktops and Desktops into Phones

Silviu Stahie of Softpedia shares a perspective, fueled by the computing power of phones today, that looking forward phones and desktops will be interchangeable. He predicts: “In a couple more years, we will probably switch systems altogether; we'll be using our desktop computers for regular work, and at the end of the day, they turn into regular phones.”

http://news.softpedia.com/news/convergence-is-about-ubuntu-phones-turning-into-desktops-and-desktops-into-phones-497658.shtml

Michael Larabel of Phoronix writes a benchmarked comparison of the Toshiba Satellite C55-C5241 and the ASUS F555LA-AB31, the top two models on Amazon in the United States. He touches upon the default Windows installation, talks about the specifications and hardware along with the feel of each system. Concluding: “At the end of the day these are two fine, lower-end laptops that can play nicely with Linux if you are using a modern distribution such as Ubuntu 15.10.”

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amazon-2-laptops&num=1

Zero-Day GRUB2 Vulnerability Hits Linux Users, Patch Available for Ubuntu, RHEL

Marius Nestor of Softpedia reports on the recent zero-day GRUB2 vulnerability that all supported Ubuntu releases were patched for on December 15th. The vulnerability was caused by a bug in “upstream GRUB2 packages, which not correctly handled the backspace key when the bootloader was configured to use password-protected authentication, thus allowing a local attacker to bypass GRUB's password protection.” He concludes by providing a link to Hector Marco’s report on the vulnerability.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/zero-day-grub2-vulnerability-hits-linux-users-patch-available-for-ubuntu-rhel-497688.shtml

Lessons from UbuCon: Canonical needs its own live events

Swapnil Bhartiya writes for CIO in an article about the upcoming UbuCon Summit in Pasadena, California. He makes the case that Canonical shouldn’t just be working with community-driven events, but also “start organizing their own events along the lines of SUSECon, LinuxCon, Docker” where they invite their corporate partners.

http://www.cio.com/article/3016089/linux/lessons-from-ubucon-canonical-needs-its-own-live-events.html

Watch: Pi-Cubes HVAC Automation System Runs on Raspberry Pi 2 and Ubuntu Snappy

Marius Nestor from Softpedia shares more details and a video about the recently Kickstarted Pi-Cubes, explaining “Pi-Cubes is a modular, app-enabled HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) home automation system based on the Raspberry Pi and powered by Canonical's Snappy Ubuntu Core OS.” He talks about the Pi-Cubes SDK for developers and encourages interested parties to visit their official website for more information.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/watch-pi-cubes-hvac-automation-system-runs-on-raspberry-pi-2-and-ubuntu-snappy-497813.shtml

Ubuntu Community Team Q&A - 15th December 2015

Michael Hall and Alan Pope host the final Q&A session of 2015 on behalf of Canonical’s Community Team. After briefly talking about the upcoming UbuCon in Pasadena, Google Code In, and changes to scopes in Ubuntu 16.04 the team answer general questions which are put to them on IRC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z-zDgr0S6A

Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S08E41 – Santa with Muscles - Ubuntu Podcast

It’s Episode Forty-one of Season Eight of the Ubuntu Podcast! Alan Pope, Mark Johnson, Laura Cowen and Martin Wimpress and are connected and speaking to your brain.

In this week’s show…

We look at what’s been going on in the news:

  • Let’s Encrypt has entered public beta… (And if you’re interested, there’s an open source tool to monitor the expiration of certificates.)
  • Mozilla will stop developing and selling Firefox OS smartphones…
  • ownCloud have established a community project with Western Digital to bring self hosted cloud Storage to home users…

  • The Linux HomeFront project have a Linux and Open Source ‘Man of The Year 2015’ poll…

  • Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, has launched an Indiegogo crowd funding campaign against mass surveillance in the UK…
  • Mozilla Firefox 43.0 brings the long-anticipated integration of GTK+ 3…

We also take a look at what’s been going on in the Ubuntu community:

  • Ubuntu Online Search in Unity Dash switched off by default in 16.04…

  • Ubuntu Touch LibreOffice DocViewer has been finally released on Ubuntu Store…

  • Pebble watch support for Ubuntu Touch is coming…
  • Ubuntu Touch to Get FM Support for Aquaris E4.5 and E5 HD…

There are even events:

  • 10th Egham Raspberry Jam – Gamification – Sunday 17 January 2016, 14:00 to 17:00 (GMT) – Gartner, Surrey

  • SCaLE 14x – January 21-24, 2016 – Pasadena Convention Center, California (including UbuCon Summit – 21st to 22nd)

  • FOSDEM 2016 – 30 Jan 2016 to 31 Jan 2016 – Brussels, Belgium

  • LinuxConf AU 2016 – Geelong, Victoria, Australia in 2016, between 1st-5th February 2016 at Deakin University’s Waterfront Campus.

  • DevConf.cz 2016 – February 5th – 7th 2016 – Brno, Czech Republic

That’s all for this week, please send your comments and suggestions to: show@ubuntupodcast.org

http://ubuntupodcast.org/2015/12/17/s08e41-santa-with-muscles/

Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings

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 12.04, 14.04, 15.04 and 15.10

Security Updates

Ubuntu 12.04 Updates

End of Life - April 2017

Ubuntu 14.04 Updates

End of Life - April 2019

Ubuntu 15.04 Updates

End of Life - January 2016

Ubuntu 15.10 Updates

End of Life - July 2016

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:

  • Elizabeth K. Joseph
  • Simon Quigley
  • Paul White
  • Walter Lapchynski
  • 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.

Except where otherwise noted, this issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License CCL.png

UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue447 (last edited 2015-12-22 01:56:18 by lyz)