Issue54

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #54 for the week August 19th - August 25th, 2007. In this issue we cover Canonical's new store opening, the announcement of UDS-Boston, Gutsy Gibbon's latest alpha release, Launchpad's new features, and much much more.

UWN Translations

In This Issue

  • Canonical Store Opened!
  • Ubuntu Developer Summit Boston
  • Ubuntu Certified Professional mailing list goes OFFICIAL!
  • Gutsy Gibbon - Tribe 5 Released
  • Launchpad team releases version 1.1.8
  • In The Press and In the Blogosphere
  • Translation stats
  • Bug Stats

General Community News

Canonical Store Opened!

The Canonical Merchandise Store has just opened, and now you have a place to buy Ubuntu clothing, accessories, stickers, CD/DVDs, and professional support and training. Do yourself a favor and drop by for a closer look at the new swag being offer. https://shop.canonical.com/

Ubuntu Developer Summit Boston

The Ubuntu Developer Summit is a week long event in which a large number of Ubuntu contributors get together into the same venue to design, discuss and flesh out the next version of Ubuntu. This includes the entire Ubuntu team that works for Canonical, a number of Ubuntu contributors that we sponsor and a large number of contributors who attend themselves. The next UDS is scheduled for Sunday 28th October to Friday 2nd November 2007 and will be held at The Hilton at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1095

Ubuntu Certified Professional mailing list goes OFFICIAL!

The mailing list of Ubuntu Certified Professional has became official: * ubuntu-training-community: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-training-community, open for community members to get involved with the ubuntu training projects * ubuntu-training-support: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-training-support Q&A assistance on training courses * #ubuntu-training IRC Channel on freenode network

New MOTU: Áron Sisak

The MOTU team has a new member Áron Sisak, who put a lot of effort into the Desktop Team. We're glad to have him around. Go Áron!

New in Gutsy Gibbon

Gutsy Gibbon - Tribe 5 Released

The Ubuntu developers are hurrying to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 5 is the fifth alpha release of Ubuntu 7.10, and this alpha release brings a host of excellent new features. As usual, this tribe brings you the latest and greatest GNOME (the first public beta of what will soon become 2.20), with a lot of bug fixes compared to Tribe 4. New Features for Firefox: Ubufox ships two new, hot Ubuntu Firefox features - Apt-Enabled Plugin Finder Wizard and Extension Manager integration. Note: This is still an alpha release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released in October 2007. If you upgrade from feisty, please make sure that you have update-manager 0.59.23 from feisty-updates installed. Then run "update-manager -d". https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GutsyGibbon/Tribe5

Loco Team News

Team Contacts Need to Join loco-contacts Mailing List

All Loco team contacts should be subscribed to the loco-contacts mailing list. If the team contact for your Loco changes, the new person should join the list. Recently, it has been used to keep the Loco leaders informed about the hosting changes and the new options available for web hosting. Since all the appropriate contacts are not on the list, the information is not properly filtering through the community. Also, check the archives to see if you have missed anything: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/.

Launchpad News

This week the Launchpad team released version 1.1.8 of Launchpad. There's a lot in this release to excite the Ubuntu community!

  • The Personal Package Archives beta will soon be available to all members of the Launchpad Beta Testers team who have signed the Ubuntu Code of Conduct.
  • You can now see your individual translation import queue at

    https://translations.launchpad.net/people/+me/+imports

  • If you host code branches with Launchpad, you can now specify which branch, if any, you intend to merge the code into.
  • The bug tracker's email interface now lets you set a bug's tag.
  • Also in the bug tracker, bug notification email headers now state which milestone the bug is targeted to.
  • Work is under way to enable you to file bugs against packages in Canonical's commercial repository.

Other highlights include a new "Deactivate your account" option, Trac bug statuses are correctly interpreted and the bug filing page has been overhauled.

One important note: searching in bug comments has been temporarily suspended, as it was causing timeouts. As soon as the problem is fixed, bug comment searching will return!

Find out more about Launchpad 1.1.8 in our release notes: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2007-August/001998.html

In The Press

  • Copowi, the world's first ISP to guarantee network neutrality - How much would you pay for an Internet connection from an ISP that guarantees a neutral network, bills itself as a "social enterprise" instead of a traditional business, and sends free Ubuntu CDs to every new customer? Copowi's main pitch is a fully neutral network, which it defines as one that provides "equal access to all web sites and online services." The idea is that usage will be unrestricted and traffic will not be shaped, throttled, or prioritized. According to Matafonov, the major telecommunications companies want to "privatize the Internet" because greater control leads to greater profits. The eventual outcome could become something more like cable television than like the open Internet we know now, and Copowi strongly supports SavetheInternet.com's campaign to preserve an open 'Net. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/Meet-Copowi-the-worlds-first-ISP-to-guarantee-network-neutrality.ars

  • Ubuntu maker enters BBC iPlayer dispute - Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, has backed demands by the Open Source Consortium (OSC) for a platform-independent BBC iPlayer. "It is shocking that the BBC, which has for so long advocated open access to information, has abandoned the approach for iPlayer," said a Canonical spokesman, Chris Kenyon. "To link the ability to download content from the BBC, a publicly funded body, to the use of one operating system is anti-competitive and at odds with the BBC charter. "Locking access to BBC iPlayer content to phones and internet tablets running Windows is short sighted and bad for fee-payers. Platform neutral means that we need a solution that supports Linux and Apple's OSX."http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2197159/ubuntu-maker-backs-osc-iplayer

  • Ubuntu founder advises South Africa on IT strategy - Speaking in a keynote address at the Govtech conference in Cape Town this morning, Mark Shuttleworth discussed strategies that government should take on in developing IT locally. "Our goal should always be sustainable economic growth," he emphasized, saying that technology was an easy area of economic growth in which to ensure sustainability. In crafting its own strategy, South Africa should play to its own strengths and should not just copy other strategies that have worked in different economic circumstances. On the issue of strengths and weaknesses, he made reference to the importance of differentiating between software producers and software consumers. Within South Africa there was very little in the way of software production and much more software consumption, he said, adding that South African policy and strategy should focus on promoting the software consumer. http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1682

  • Canonical downplays Ubuntu hacks - Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux, has said that compromises of most of its local community servers last week did not reflect on the distribution's security or enterprise-readiness. The company said such criticisms were wide off the mark, since the affected servers were running old versions of Ubuntu, as well as a number of insecure web applications. Canonical was at pains to point out that the servers did not host down loadable software, but mainly news pages, blogs and localized documentation. The problem came down to the fact that responsibility for the security of the machines didn't clearly belong to either Canonical or the communities using the servers. The systems were all located outside Canonical's own data center. http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;875615627;fp;2;fpid;1

In The Blogosphere

  • Ubuntu Leads Linux Desktop Survey - Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols shares the results of the Desktop Linux.com poll of 38,500 readers of their site in their annual desktop Linux survey. I am not surprised by Ubuntu gaining the top spot but SUSE running a close second is a surprise, at least to me. A lot of us run Ubuntu Linux here at Zenoss and we hope to soon have support for both Debian and Ubuntu for Zenoss Core. http://blog.zenoss.com/2007/08/22/ubuntu-leads-linux-desktop/

Meetings and Events

Monday, August 27, 2007

Screencast Team Meeting

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Ubuntu Server Team Meeting

Technical Board Meeting

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Edubuntu Meeting

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 (31952) +214 # over last week
  • Critical (19) -1 # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (15816) +49 # over last week
  • Unassigned (23906) +148 # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (115913) +1039 # 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

  1. Spanish (20818) -2388 # over last week
  2. French (39629) -325 # over last week
  3. Swedish (54520) -227 # over last week
  4. English-UK (58974) -2205 # over last week
  5. German (64038) -468 # over last week

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

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Additional Ubuntu News

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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
  • John Crawford
  • Nick Ali
  • Dawid van Wyngaard
  • And many others

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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/Issue54 (last edited 2008-08-06 16:59:51 by localhost)