Issue549


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Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 549 for the week of October 7 - 13, 2018.

In this Issue

  • Cosmic Cuttlefish (18.10) Final Freeze
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Hot in Support
  • LoCo Events

  • Mir News: 12th of October 2018
  • Canonical News
  • In the Blogosphere
  • Featured Audio and Video
  • Meeting Reports
  • Upcoming Meetings and Events
  • Updates and Security for 14.04, 16.04, and 18.04
  • And much more!

General Community News

Cosmic Cuttlefish (18.10) Final Freeze

Adam Conrad, on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team, announces that Cosmic is now in the Final Freeze period. He gives the criteria for any further changes and requests testing as the Release Candidate images are spun up.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2018-October/001252.html

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open: 135489 (-237)
  • Critical: 405 (-1)
  • Unconfirmed: 65910 (+46)

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

Translations

  • Ukrainian: 87.06% (35336/955)
  • Spanish: 84.88% (41298/2454)
  • German: 83.77% (44304/35)
  • Bosnian: 79.96% (54709/154)
  • French: 79.44% (56131/5746)

Hot in Support

Ask Ubuntu Top 5 Questions

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

Ubuntu Forums Top 5 Threads

Find more support at: https://ubuntuforums.org/

LoCo Events

The following LoCo team events are currently scheduled in the next two weeks:

Looking beyond the next two weeks? Visit the LoCo Team Portal to browse upcoming events around the world: http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/

The Hub

Mir News: 12th of October 2018

Chris Halse Rogers (raof) reports that he has Mir running on an NVIDIA laptop. Though a work in progress, with a rework of the platform abstractions, the display is stable and the mesa-kms platform also gains support for YUV buffers. However, not ready yet to land on master.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/mir-news-12th-of-october-2018/8341

Canonical News

In the Blogosphere

What systemd Is Up To With The Latest Developments In 2018

Michael Larabel highlights Lennart Poettering's systemd update from September's All Systems Go! conference. Of note are additions to networking libraries, changes in Dbus-Broker, and discussion of the ongoing development activities, with an emphasis on Portable Services. Links are provided to the presentation and other video recordings.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=systemd-2018-Lennart

AMDGPU DC Display Code Ported To GCN 1.0 "Southern Islands"

Michael Larabel writes of the possibility of Display Code support for GCN 1.0 "Southern Islands" GPUs. He writes in respect to 13 patches from Mauro Rossi of the Android-x86 team that are awaiting AMD developer acceptance, to enable modern display features on the older series card. A link is provided to view the patches.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDGPU-DC-For-GCN-1.0

KDE Plasma 5.15 Desktop Environment Will Start Faster, Bring More Improvements

Marius Nestor gives a preview, provided by KDE developer Nate Graham, of the next major Plasma release. The updates include performance improvements, new features, better compatibility with GNOME apps, and a revamp of the Kickoff application launcher. Additionally, many changes are noted and screenshots are provided for KDE Applications 18.12 and KDE Frameworks 5.51 open-source software suites.

https://news.softpedia.com/news/kde-plasma-5-15-desktop-environment-will-start-faster-bring-more-improvements-523111.shtml

Canonical Releases Important Ubuntu Kernel Live Patch to Fix L1TF, SpectreRSB

Marius Nestor reports that Canonical has released a kernel live patch for all supported Ubuntu versions. Among the seven patches are fixes for the L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF) and SpectreRSB vulnerabilities, Spectre Variant 2 mitigations, as well as a use-after-free vulnerability, and a critical stack-based buffer overflow. Marius lists the kernel versions provided by Livepatch Service if last week’s kernel security update was not installed, providing instructions to verify that the livepatch was successfully loaded.

https://news.softpedia.com/news/canonical-releases-important-ubuntu-kernel-live-patch-to-fix-l1tf-spectrersb-523132.shtml

KDE Plasma 5.14 Desktop Environment Officially Released, Here's What's New

Marius Nestor reports on Plasma’s new features, added support, and enhancements. Leading a long list is resolutions in LibreOffice compatibility, added utilities in the System Monitor and several user interface improvements. More so, many improvements to Wayland support, through two new interfaces named XdgShell and XdgOutput, and new scale effects in the KWin window manager. All this and many bug fixes too. Marius gives screenshots of the new presentations as well as a link to the release announcement.

https://news.softpedia.com/news/kde-plasma-5-14-desktop-environment-officially-released-here-s-what-s-new-523131.shtml

GNOME Plans to Retire Application Menus from the GNOME 3.32 Desktop Environment

Marius Nestor tells us that the GNOME Project has announced plans to retire the applications menus in GNOME 3.32 due for release 13th March 2019. Despite best efforts from the team, the menus added in GNOME 3.0 seemed to be misunderstood or just forgotten by users. Screenshots are provided showing the expected look, plus a link to the announcement for more details.

https://news.softpedia.com/news/gnome-plans-to-retire-application-menus-from-the-gnome-3-32-desktop-environment-523167.shtml

GNOME's Nautilus Gets Better Google Drive Support, Warns About Security Risks

Marius Nestor reports on the Nautilus 3.30.2 release improvements and fixes. This release improves support of Google Drive, addresses various crashes, fixes the triple mouse click gesture in the path bar, and fixes opening of the location bar. A change is a warning, when certain libraries are disabled on unsupported CPUs, for potential security risks. The update will be available as part of the GNOME 3.30.2 point release, or compile now from source, which is linked to.

https://news.softpedia.com/news/gnome-s-nautilus-gets-better-google-drive-support-warns-about-security-risks-523226.shtml

Ubuntu Touch OTA-5 Is Out for Ubuntu Phones with New Morph Browser, Improvements

Marius Nestor informs us on UBports' release of OTA-5, a rebase of OTA-4, that brings new features, improvements, and a more stable experience. In addition is support for KDE's Kirigami 2 QtQuick controls, new wallpapers, ring tones, and notification tones. Marius tells us how to update from older releases.

https://news.softpedia.com/news/ubuntu-touch-ota-5-is-out-for-ubuntu-phones-with-new-morph-browser-improvements-523228.shtml

LibreOffice Lands More Qt5 Integration Improvements, LXQt Support

Michael Larabel writes of the recent code merges. In the build fixes are better Qt5 clipboard support, better integration with Qt5-based desktops, and now recognition of the LXQt desktop environment. The changes will be a part of the LibreOffice 6.2 release due out in early 2019 and a link is provided to the complete changelog.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LibreOffice-More-Qt5-LXQt

Ubuntu Podcast: S11E31 – Thirty-One Dates in Thirty-One Days

“This week Ubuntu Podcast debuts on Spotify and re-embraces Mastodon. We’ve been unboxing the GPD Pocket 2 and building a Clockwork Pi. We discuss Plex releasing as a Snap, Microsoft joining the OIN, Minecraft open-sourcing some libraries, Google axing Google+, Etcher (allegedly) not honouring privacy settings, plus we also round up community news and events.”

http://ubuntupodcast.org/2018/10/12/s11e31-thirty-one-dates-in-thirty-one-days/

Meeting Reports

Upcoming Meetings and Events

  • Security Team: Mon, October 15, 4:30pm – 5:30pm
  • Desktop Team: Tue, October 16, 3:30pm – 4:30pm
  • Kernel Team: Tue, October 16, 5pm – 6pm
  • Ubuntu Membership Board: Wed, October 17, 12pm – 1pm
  • Ubuntu Foundations: Thu, October 18, 3pm – 4pm
  • Community Council: Thu, October 18, 5pm – 6pm

For more details and farther dates please visit: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/calendars/

Updates and Security for 14.04, 16.04, and 18.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 14.04 Updates

End of Life: April 2019

Ubuntu 16.04 Updates

End of Life: April 2021

Ubuntu 18.04 Updates

End of Life: April 2023

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Archive

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Further News

As always you can find more Ubuntu news and announcements at:

Conclusion

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See you next week!

Credits

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Glossary of Terms

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UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue549 (last edited 2018-10-15 19:21:25 by bashing-om)