Issue73

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Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 73 for the week January 6th - January 12th, 2008. In this issue:

UWN Translations

In This Issue

General Community News

Hardy Alpha 3 Released

Alpha 3 is the third in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Hardy development cycle. Alpha 3 includes several new features that are ready for large-scale testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/hardy/alpha3 for information on changes in Ubuntu and https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HardyHeron/Alpha3/Kubuntu for changes in Kubuntu. See: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-January/000367.html

Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop Course - IT's HERE!!

OK folks the long awaited Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop Course is ready, waiting and all yours for the taking! Thanks to all the community members who slogged over writing, reviewing, editing, proof reading and fixing the layout. This is just the beginning of the project which we hope will live and evolve with each new Ubuntu release. Yours to develop, enhance and branch off to your heart's content! There are 10 lessons in total with the last lesson covering Partitioning and Booting optional. The course is modular - 2 days if all lessons are covered however, topics and lessons can be selected as required. There are 2 versions of the course: an Instructor Guide, and a student guide. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-training-support/2007-December/000077.html

Be Free with KDE 4.0

The KDE 4 series has begun with the release of 4.0. It is the start of something amazing. Packages are available for 7.10 (Gutsy) and our development Hardy version. They install to /usr/lib/kde4 and can be installed alongside your existing KDE 3. If you want to test KDE 4 without installing packages: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/gutsy/kde4/. Follow the link below for the instructions on how to install the latest and greatest KDE 4.0 http://kubuntu.org/announcements/kde-4.0.php

New Member

Jussi Schultink is a contributor of packages for ubuntu universe, Launchpad Beta Tester, Launchpad Beta Testers, and Ubuntu IRC operator team. He is also active in the Ubuntu Studio Project, and Cinelerra, a audio/video authoring tool. https://edge.launchpad.net/~jussi01

New MOTU

  • After rocking work in the MOTU team, with a particular preference for GNOME- and gstreamer-related packages, [https://launchpad.net/~pochu Emilio Pozuelo Monfort] was deemed a great addition to the MOTU team. Warm welcome to the team!

  • We have another Italian MOTU to announce. [https://launchpad.net/~micheleangrisano Michele Angrisano] put a lot of work into merges and Universe fixes and just joined the team!

  • [http://launchpad.net/~shermann Stephan Hermann] put a lot of work into his MOTU comeback. After lots of Security work and other Universe uploads he is back in the team.

MOTU Council Election

In yesterday's Community Council meeting the new process for the election of Team Council members was agreed on. It's documented on the https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityCouncil/Delegation page. Andrew Mitchell and Daniel T. Chen both have left the MOTU Council, both had been on the council from the very beginning and their work and experience shaped the MOTU Council of today. The Council is looking for two new members. If you are a MOTU and you think you have what it takes to:

  • approve new MOTU members
  • resolve conflict in the team
  • help to shape new and better ways of working together
  • help to keep a friendly and productive atmosphere in the team

mail a member of the Moto Council at https://launchpad.net/~motu-council/+members and let them know. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-January/024927.html

Hug Day - 16 January 2008

The second hug day of the new year, on Wednesday, January 16th, will be targeting on OpenOffice.org. There are currently about 300 New bug reports regarding OpenOffice.org and we will be focusing on reducing that number. We'll do this by following up with reporters, documenting test cases, confirming bug reports and tagging bugs based on their sub-component. The event will be held in #ubuntu-bugs on Freenode. The list of targeted bugs and tasks is posted at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20080116. Our goal is to deal with all of the bugs on that list. So on 16 January 2008, in all timezones, we'll be meeting in #ubuntu-bugs on irc.freenode.net for another Ubuntu Hug Day. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2008-January/134271.html

Launchpad News

Help Design the New Launchpad Logo!

Announcing the Launchpad Logo Community Design Contest.

Using Launchpad Feeds in Wordpress

Matthew Revell gives us an in depth how to on adding Launchpad feeds to your Word Press Blog. Visit the link below to find out how to add this great feature to your blog and help keep the world informed of all the great Launchpad News. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2008-January/002971.html

Ubuntu Forums News & Interviews

Ubuntu Forums Interview

popch is a Swiss government IT department head with more than 30 years of programming and computer experience. Being a volunteer for a local housing cooperative, is also a valuable, helpful and knowledgeable community member. Read more here: http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/an-interview-with-popch/

Tutorial of the Week

The tutorial of the week for Jan. 7, 2008 is PmDematagoda's explanation of the Magic SysRq keys -- and how to use them to recover your system, if it becomes unresponsive. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=617349

Learn about the key sequences, and how to safely use them, in the tutorial.

In The Blogosphere

  • Two Years of Ubuntu - Koplowicz.com is amazed at how polished and user-friendly it is. It doesn’t come out of the box with a lot of the software, but it’s super easy to install whatever is wanted. It even passed the Mother Test - his mother used his Kubuntu laptop for a month while her desktop was broken, and she was fine with it. A few months ago he upgraded from Ubuntu to Kubuntu because he prefered KDE. Kubuntu is often characterized as “the most popular desktop manager running on the most popular linux distro.” But according to Distrowatch.com, Kubuntu is not the most popular KDE distro. He's been really happy with the Ubuntu community so he stuck with Kubuntu through Edgy Eft, Feisty Fawn, and Gutsy Gibbon. Kubuntu isn’t the most popular distro, but Ubuntu is, and it’s nice being part of the popular crowd. http://koplowicz.com/?p=462

  • KDE4 with Ubuntu Gutsy (first impressions) - nethazard writes that his first impressions of the released KDE4 were positive. Taking into account that I tried all release candidates in Live CD, the quality of this released version is actually usable and comfortable. The libraries might be stable release quality, but the applications are still a bit rough on the edges. The kmenu changed a lot. It feels very Vista-ish (which i dislike) but you get used to it very easily. The search is fast and the navigation is not that cumbersome as the Vista menu. There are a lot of animations he didn’t expected on KDE4, and it looks very promising. He recommends you to set Dolphin as your default file manager. On these release, the panel is still not that customizable, but at least it displays correctly the system tray, clock and virtual desktops. While there are some missing features, there are lots of features he hasn't discovered yet and there’s still a lot of polishing to do on it, but its beautiful, fun and safe to use. http://blog.nethazard.net/2008/01/11/kde4-with-ubuntu-gutsy-first-impressions/

http://www.venturecake.com/why-ubuntu-804-needs-better-marketing/

In Other News

  • Driver-Free Car Runs Ubuntu Linux - At CES, Michael Larabel has spotted a very interesting car: the driver-less Carnegie Mellon vehicle. And it runs Ubuntu!! Sponsors include Google, NetApp, and Intel, and this car won this year's DARPA challenge. "This automated vehicle uses a dozen Intel Core 2 processors, but at the bottom of the software stack is Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper Drake" Linux. Ubuntu 6.06 was chosen for being an LTS (Long Term Support) release. Perhaps next year's vehicle will be running Ubuntu 8.04?" http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjI3NA

Meetings and Events

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Edubuntu meeting

  • Start: 12:00 UTC
  • End: 14:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: No agenda listed as of the publication

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Desktop Team Development Meeting

  • Start: 14:00 UTC
  • End: 15:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting

  • Agenda: Beyond the normal reporting by each team member, additional agenda items will be listed on the [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Meeting Meeting wikipage].

Friday, January 18, 2008

MOTU Meeting

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Chicago Ubuntu LoCo Meeting

  • Start: 13:00 US/Central
  • End: 15:00 US/Central

  • Location: 2nd floor, Institute of Design, 125 N, LaSalle St. Chicago, Illinois

  • Agenda: The meeting is in conjunction with the Chicago GNU/Linux Users Group.

Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, 7.04, and 7.10

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

Ubuntu 6.10 Updates

Ubuntu 7.04 Updates

Ubuntu 7.10 Updates

Bug Stats

  • Open (38966) +190 # over last week
  • Critical (18) -1 # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (19902) +82 # over last week
  • Unassigned (29386) +267 # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (144859) +1410 # 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 (12476) -113 # over last week
  2. French (37728) +/-0 # over last week
  3. Swedish (49184) +/-0 # over last week
  4. English-UK (26764) -783 # over last week
  5. German (66656) +/-0 # over last week

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

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:

and

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
  • Isabelle Duchatelle
  • Craig A. Eddy
  • John Crawford
  • Your Name Here
  • And many others

Glossary of Terms

  • CES - Consumer Electronics Show

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.