UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue52

Contents

In This Issue
General Community News
1. Tribe 4 Released
2. Ubuntu Viral Videos
LoCo News
Launchpad News
In The Press
In The Blogosphere
Meetings and Events
Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, and 7.04
Bug Stats
Translation Stats
What is it?
Archives and RSS Feed
Additional Ubuntu News
Conclusion
Credits
RSS
Feedback

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 52 for the week August 5th - August 11th, 2007. In this issue we cover the release of Tribe 4, promoting Ubuntu through the use of viral videos, progress of the US LoCo Teams Project, security breaches in community hosted servers, and much much more.

UWN Translations

Deutsch - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue52/De
Español - Start one! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue52/Es
Français - http://ubuntu-fr.org/lettre/lhu52.html
Italiano - http://wiki.ubuntu-it.org/NewsletterItaliana
Português - Start one! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/IssueXX/Pt

In This Issue

Tribe 4 Released
Ubuntu Viral Videos
Community Hosted Servers Compromised
US LoCo Teams Project Forum
In The Press and In the Blogosphere
Translation stats
Bug Stats

General Community News

Tribe 4 Released

Tribe 4 is the fourth in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Gutsy development cycle. The Tribe images are known to be reasonably free of show-stopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Gutsy. Pre-releases of Gutsy are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/gutsy/tribe-4/ (Ubuntu desktop & Server)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/gutsy/tribe-4/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/gutsy/tribe-4/ (Edubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/gutsy/tribe-4/ (Xubuntu)
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2007-August/000324.html

Ubuntu Viral Videos

A proposal has been made to raise the brand awareness of Ubuntu by using the power of viral marketing. This is a campaign similar to the one used by Firefox called Firefox Flicks. Contributers would be able to submit short films advertising Ubuntu. These submissions would then be voted on by site visitors. The ideal campaign would be edgy, surprising, original, glamorous and emotional-and taps into popular culture. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/UbuntuViralVideos

See the Original email here: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-marketing/2007-August/002174.html

LoCo News

US LoCo Teams Project Has New Forum Page

On August 6, 2007 the US LoCo Teams Project got it's own forum page in the US Loco Teams section of the Ubuntu Forums. This new forum is intended to help get information and news to the existing state LoCo teams. It will also give the project exposure in the forums, a vast resource of potential members for the teams. The first posting is a sticky that explains how to join or start a US State LoCo. Please keep you eye on this new resource for the US Teams Project, as we plan to post use it to its potential. http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=284

US Must Work Hard to Keep Momentum

It's no secret that the recent Digg article was a huge boast to the US Loco Teams Project. But the work is far from over, and we must all concentrate our efforts order to meet our goals. We still need new teams in the following states: Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, North Dakota and West Virginia. Therefore, the US Teams Project is calling on the Ubuntu Community to lend a hand in helping us reach our goal. If you are an alumnus from a college in one of these states, if you have relatives or friends living in one of these states, or maybe you have business associations with people living in one of these states. Whatever your connection, send them an email, or better yet, pick up the phone and make direct contact. Ubuntu advocacy is the heart of the Ubuntu Community, and the US Teams Project is advocacy at its best. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/USTeams/TeamList

Community Hosted Servers Compromised

This last week, 5 of the 8 servers that are loco hosted but Canonical sponsored, had to be shut down due to reports that they were actively attacking other machines. These servers were found to have a variety of problems including, but not limited to, missing security patches, FTP (not sftp, without SSL) was being used to access the machines, and no upgrades past breezy due to problems with the network cards and later kernels. Loco teams will be given a choice to: a. migrate to the Canonical data center, or b. stay on the hosted/outsourced servers. Each option has its good and bad points. Jono Bacon has therefore called for a meeting to discuss these issues. The meeting will be in IRC #ubuntu-locoteams on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 at 2:00PM UTC.

Slashdot readers note: these machines were not hosted by Canonical and were running an old unsupported version of Ubuntu.

Launchpad News

Launchpad Users Meeting 16.00 UTC 15th August 2007, #launchpad. Join the Launchpad team in #launchpad to discuss what's coming up in the next version of Launchpad and to ask your questions, make your suggestions or air your complaints!

Agenda at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaunchpadUserMeeting/2007-08-15

In The Press

Shuttleworth: Microsoft Fracturing the Open-Source Community - Microsoft has succeeded in fracturing the Linux and open-source community with the patent indemnity agreements it has entered into with several prominent vendors. It's strategy is to drive a wedge into the open source community and unsettle the marketplace. Also at issue is the fact that Microsoft has not disclosed the 235 patent claims it says are being violated by Linux and other open source software. "That's extortion and we should call it what it is," he said. "To say, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did, that there is undisclosed balance sheet liability, that's just extortion and we should refuse to get drawn into that game. On the other side, if Microsoft is concerned about its intellectual property, there is no one in the free software community that wants to violate anyone's IP. Disclose the patents and we'll fix the code. Alternatively, move on." http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2167193,00.asp
Telco Dumps Red Hat for Ubuntu - Australian mobile service provider has replaced its Red Hat enterprise distribution with Ubuntu Linux, claims no downtime in eight months. Locatrix founder and CEO, Mark White, said the company did a lot of early development on Solaris but wanted to move to rack-mounted Intel servers, which initially ran Red Hat Linux. White said the reasons for moving from the pay-for Red Hat to the zero-cost Ubuntu was not so much about the price, as Locatrix still runs a bit of Red Hat for front-end workloads, but was more about Ubuntu's ability to install new software seamlessly.http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135545-c,linux/article.html
Lenovo laptops now with Linux - Lenovo Group, the world's No 3 PC maker, has said it would start selling laptop computers preloaded with Linux software from Novell Inc instead of Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system. The laptops are slated to go on sale in the fourth quarter of this year and will be sold to Lenovo's business customers as well as to consumers. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, who runs privately held Canonical In. which sells service contracts to maintain Ubuntu software, said in an interview last month that he expects Dell to expand its Linux PC program. He also said that he is in negotiations with other large PC makers that want to introduce models preloaded with Ubuntu. http://infotech.indiatimes.com/Lenovo_laptops_now_with_Linux/articleshow/2261753.cms
Sun Microsystems Enters Commercial Silicon Market With World's Fastest Commodity Microprocessor - Sun Microsystems, Inc., today announced the world's fastest commodity microprocessor, the UltraSPARC(R) T2, as the cornerstone of its merchant portfolio of microelectronics. Available for sale separate from Sun's own systems, this new processor is the industry's first volume processor with eight cores and eight threads per core. Formerly known as the "Niagara 2" project, the UltraSPARC T2's world-record performance raises the bar on commodity processors while boasting the industry's highest energy efficiency per thread. With each thread capable of running its own operating system, the chip delivers a whopping 64-way system on a single chip. Sun will provide the UltraSPARC T2 processor design to the free and open source community via the GPL license. http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/AQTU13607082007-1.htm
Linux for Consumers in the U.K. France, and Germany - It's official: Dell announced that consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany can order an Inspiron 6400 notebook or an Inspiron 530N desktop with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed. Since we began offering Ubuntu in the United States back in May, it's no secret that we've received many requests from customers all over the world to offer Linux there. This represents another step in broadening that offering. Similar to what we've done in the United States, we will configure and install open source drivers for hardware, when possible for these new products. http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/08/07/23816.aspx
Red Hat and its Fedora 8 Friends - Red Hat is represented by Fedora, its community project which this week released the first test version of Fedora 8. In a birds of a feather (BOF) session, Jack Aboutboul, community engineer for Fedora at Red Hat, discussed some of the highlights of Fedora 8, as well as some recent changes in how Fedora is run. The BOF session also had a raucous discussion among participants about Dell, Ubuntu and the leadership role of Fedora in the Linux community. In the Dell keynote at Linux World, company CTO Kevin Kettler demonstrated how easy it was to set up virtual machines on Ubuntu. Aboutboul noted that Ubuntu had made use of the "libvert" tool, which actually originated with Fedora. The fact that Ubuntu was chosen by Dell as its Linux desktop of choice for the consumer marketplace also didn't sit too well with Aboutboul. "Am I pissed off? No," Aboutboul said. "If you want your desktop Linux to look like Windows, Ubuntu is great. Otherwise use us, you'll have a better experience." http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3693511
The Linux Action Show! Episode 56 - We cover our favorite new features in KDE4’s latest beta, we debunk CIO magazines eight reasons to NOT use Linux in the Enterprise, IBM announces a savings of $250 million big ones, we go over the results of 3D gaming with the new completely fair scheduler - which is completely awesome, and we share our coverage of the Ubuntu Live conference. http://www.linuxactionshow.com/?p=134 (podcast that has some stuff from Ubuntu Live)

In The Blogosphere

Ubuntu Live Conference on Flickr - For those of us who couldn't attend the Ubuntu Live Conference in Portland, OR, we were left wondering what we really missed. Did everyone have as much fun as they said, were there really meeting rooms full of Ubuntu users with their laptops fired up while listening to the keynote address, and did Mark Shuttleworth really don a multicolored jump suit and hang on an inflated bag? Follow the link to see all these and more. You won't be sorry, but you'll probably want to start making plans to attend Ubuntu Live 2008. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ubuntulive07/
Aptitude vs Apt-Get (What Everyone Should Know) - This blog article by Aaron Toponce aka atoponce, is a very good read for everyone, newbie or seasoned veteran, about the differences between Aptitude and Apt-Get, and the tools associated with each. His conclusion: "Aptitude is just superior to apt-get in every way, shape, and form. Better dependency handling. Better curses application. Better options. ONE tool. Better standard formatting. The list goes on and on. I see constantly, on forums, IRC and email, the use of apt-get. We need to better educate our brethren and sisters about the proper use of tools, and show them the enlightened way of aptitude. I’ve been using aptitude since I first learned about it, ad will continue to do so the remainder of my Debian/Ubuntu days". http://www.pthree.org/2007/08/12/aptitude-vs-apt-get/
Dell hails 2008 as the year of the corporate Linux desktop - The advent of desktop virtualisation will provide the missing link for Linux to shine on the corporate desktop, Dell chief technology officer Kevin Kettler predicted in a keynote speech at the Linuxworld conference in San Francisco. - http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2196193/dell-hails-2008-corporate-linux

Meetings and Events

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Local Teams Meeting

Start: 14:00 UTC
End: 16:00 UTC
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-locoteams
Agenda: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2007-August/001510.html

Ubuntu Server Team Meeting

Start: 15:00 UTC
End: 16:00 UTC
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam/Meeting

Technical Board Meeting

Start: 19:00 UTC
End: 21:00 UTC
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TechnicalBoardAgenda

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Launchpad Users Meeting

Start: 16:00 UTC
End: When Over
Location: #launchpad
Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaunchpadUserMeeting/2007-08-15#preview

Edubuntu Meeting

Start: 20:00 UTC
End: 22:00 UTC
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: https://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuMeetingAgenda

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Ubuntu Development Team Meeting

Start: 20:00 UTC
End: 22:00 UTC
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: No agenda set as of this publication

Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, and 7.04

Bug Stats

Open (31355) +65 # over last week
Critical (18) -1 # over last week
Unconfirmed (15639) +137 # over last week
Unassigned (23492) +63 # over last week
All bugs ever reported (113612) +1067 # over last week

As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

Translation Stats

Spanish (23686) -271 # over last week
French (38777) +15 # over last week
Swedish (54562) +156 # over last week
English-UK (60347) +142 # over last week
German (63255) +209 # over last week

Remaining string to translate in Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy/

What is it?

This week's closeup is the icon for a common application. You will have until the next UWN release to guess what the item is on the Ubuntu Forums:

Last week's closeup was a Pentium 200 w/ MMX tech (SL23W/2.8V). We have no absolute winner, but the three closest were:

DraK
scorpion-kde
esters

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:

http://www.ubuntu.com/news

and

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/

Conclusion

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

See you next week!

Credits

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

Nick Ali
Dawid van Wyngaard
John Crawford
And many others

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.