UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue77

Contents

In This Issue
General Community News
1. MOTU Release Team election
New in Hardy Heron
1. Clutch BitTorrent WebUI Packaged
In The Press
In The Blogosphere
Upcoming Meetings and Events
1. Wednesday, February 13, 2008
  1. Education Team Meeting
Feature of the week
1. Firefox 3 for Gutsy
Updates and Security for 6.06, 6.10, 7.04, and 7.10
Bug Stats
Translation Stats
Archives and RSS Feed
Additional Ubuntu News
Conclusion
Credits
Glossary of Terms
Feedback

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 77 for the weeks February 3rd - February 9th, 2008. In this issue we cover MOTU Elections, Clutch BitTorrent WebUI, Parallels in the Ubuntu partner repository, Firefox 3 in 7.10, and much, much more.

UWN Translations

На Русском- http://ubunturu.blogspot.com/2008/02/ubuntu-77.html
Deutsch - Start one! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/IssueXX/De
Español - http://doc.ubuntu-es.org/NSU/Edicion_Actual
Français - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue77/Fr
Italiano - http://wiki.ubuntu-it.org/NewsletterItaliana
Português - Start one! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/IssueXX/Pt
Português do Brasil - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue77/PtBr

In This Issue

MOTU Release Team Election
Clutch BitTorrent WebUI Package
In The Press & Blogosphere
Upcoming Meetings & Events
Firefox 3 for 7.10
Updates & Security
Bug & Translation Stats

General Community News

MOTU Release Team election

The MOTU UVF team has a new name, the MOTU Release team. This team deals with all "Freeze Exceptions" after the "Feature Freeze" for the Universe and Multiverse repos. There are five nominees for the available positions and the election polls are now open. You can visit the links to vote for or against the nominees. After the polls close, the team should be up and running in about a week.

A special thanks to all the nominees for there interest in this team. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-February/025022.html

New in Hardy Heron

Clutch BitTorrent WebUI Packaged

John Dong of the MOTU-P2P team has packaged Clutch, a web-based BitTorrent client that uses a Transmission engine. Clutch features an attractive interactive AJAX-powered interface (along with a basic HTML fall-back) that makes it a compelling alternative to traditional BitTorrent clients. Unlike the TorrentFlux client which uses the BitTornado engine, Clutch uses the up-to-date lightweight Transmission engine. For the user, this means faster performance, lower memory and CPU overhead, support for modern encryption, port mapping, and peer exchange resulting in a more efficient torrent downloading. For more info and some screen shots, see http://lifehacker.com/346634/remote-control-your-bittorrent-downloads-with-clutch

All Hardy testers are invited to give the package a try and give feedback. If you experience any problems or have any suggestions about how to make the installation easier, please file a bug at http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/clutch/+filebug

In The Press

Parallels Workstation for Linux allows users to easily run multiple operating systems side-by-side on a single computer without rebooting. The deal with Parallels, Inc. makes the desktop virtualization product more readily available to Ubuntu users - residing in a drop down menu on the operating system. "We have always been committed to providing Ubuntu users with choice," said Randy Linnell, consumer services manager, Canonical. "Parallels is excellent virtualization technology which many users have requested. Being able to come to a commercial arrangement to make it available is great for Ubuntu users and the project itself. Trial versions of the Parallels Workstation for Linux software are available through the Add/Remove function in Ubuntu and keys for permanent use can be purchased directly through shop.canonical.com or at www.parallels.com. http://www.ubuntu.com/news/parallels-for-ubuntu
Canonical adds Parallels to Ubuntu partner repository - The Ubuntu distribution now includes the Parallels virtualization software in the partner repository. The popularity of Ubuntu puts the distribution in a position of high visibility with commercial software vendors who want to bring their applications to the Linux platform. Canonical offers the opt-in "partner" repository in Ubuntu to provide users with easy access to proprietary and closed-source software. Parallels will be included as a free trial that can be unlocked and transformed into a full version by purchasing a key through Canonical's store. http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/02/06/canonical-adds-parallels-to-ubuntu-partner-repository
System Administration: Ubuntu's Upstart event-based init daemon - Because the traditional System V init daemon (SysVinit) does not deal well with modern hardware, including hotplug devices, USB hard and flash drives, and network-mounted filesystems, Ubuntu replaced it with the Upstart init daemon. The Upstart init daemon is event-based and runs specified programs when something on the system changes. Upstart can start and stop services upon receiving information that something on the system has changed. Such a change is called an event. It can also start and stop services when the system is brought up, when the system is shut down, or when a job changes state.
- The Upstart system is made of five packages, all of which are installed by default:
  - upstart: provides the Upstart init daemon and initctl utility.
  - upstart-logd: provides the logd daemon and the job definition file for the logd service.
  - upstart-compat-sysv: provides job definition files for the rc tasks as well as the reboot, runlevel, shutdown, and telinit utilities that provide compatibility with SysVinit.
  - startup-tasks: provides job definition files for system startup tasks.
  - system-services provides job definition files for tty services.

Visit the link to learn more about Upstart: http://www.linux.com/feature/125977

Debian made this developer unhappy - It's normal to build up a mental picture of a person based on what you know about them, especially if you plan to meet that person. One look at Matthew Garrett and you start wondering: is this the guy who caused such a big furore in the FOSS community in September 2006 when he made plain his reasons for leaving the Debian GNU/Linux project after four years as a developer? Anyone who followed that episode, would have put down Garrett as a troublemaker, arrogant and somewhat prone to narcissism. The reality could not be more different. At 28, Garrett is a little over average height but his height is accentuated by his slimness. He has been working on laptop and power management support in Linux for the past four or five years and getting increasingly involved in power management functionality. Unlike many FOSS people, he is unfailingly polite - it's difficult to imagine him spewing flames on a mailing list though he admits he has. While working with Canonical, Matthew mostly worked on the integration of hardware support for mobile devices. Matthew worked on things to do with the Ubuntu mobile project, which aims to produce a Linux distribution that is optimized for the new Intel Menlow platform that will be coming out shortly. The Menlow platform is based on the Silverthorne processor, and these devices will be similar to the Nokia internet tablet, but with significantly enhanced performance. Read more of the interview with Matthew by clicking on the link: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/16528/1148/1/0/
The Dayton Daily News Says: If you're broke and need a decent computer, Ubuntu Linux may be for you - You've looked at the newest Dell XPS, maybe a spiffy HP Pavillion. You've surfed over to Apple's Web store to drool over the powerful, stylish machines of Steve Jobs. But there's a problem: You're broke. You just don't have — or shouldn't be spending— the $600 to more than $2,000 you'd have to pay for one of those new digital hot rods. There's still hope if you have the do-it-yourself daring to combine the free, open-source operating system Ubuntu with an inexpensive used personal computer. Linux, is a community-developed operating system, and Ubuntu is one of the most popular among folks seeking computing power for home and office tasks such as word processing, Web browsing and working with spreadsheets. http://www.daytondailynews.com/l/content/oh/story/living/tech/2008/02/07/ddn020808lifeubuntu.html
Moving my mother over to Linux - To save money, Michael Reed cobbled together a computer for his mother out of cast-offs left over from his own upgrades. She doesn't need a cutting-edge computer because she's not a power user, but she does need a reliable machine to run a few basic applications and to access the Internet. Michael moved his mother from Windows to Ubuntu, and the experience was a surprisingly smooth one. The challenge was to not only build a working system, but also to maintain consistency with her old system. This meant migrating her data across, finding comparable equivalents for all of her Windows applications, and adjusting the desktop layout to one that was similar to that of Windows. So, is Ubuntu ready for this type of installation? Yes, provided they have someone with some Linux expertise at hand to help them. http://www.linux.com/feature/125799

In The Blogosphere

Virtualization in Linux: A Review of Four Software Choices - This week Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, announced a partnership with Parallels, maker of the Virtualization products Parallels Workstation and Parallels Desktop for Mac. Consequently, the Parallels Workstation virtualization software is now available to download and install in Ubuntu, completely supported by Canonical, and done entirely through the Add/Remove programs interface. This article compares four virtualization products available for Ubuntu: the free, open source x86 emulator Qemu; the closed-but-free versions of VirtualBox and VMware-Server, and the commercial Parallels Workstation. Of these applications, VMware and VirtualBox definitely come out the clear winners. For individual use, where the ability to run a single Windows desktop inside of Linux is all that is needed, VirtualBox turns out to be this authors preference. It's much smaller than VMware, which comes packed with extra features that aren't necessary for the end-user. http://www.techthrob.com/tech/linux_virtualization.php

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Education Team Meeting

Start: 13:00 UTC
End: 14:00 UTC
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: No agenda listed as of the publication

Feature of the week

Firefox 3 for Gutsy

Firefox-3.0 - As featured in Hardy Heron's latest alpha, the Beta 3 preview of Firefox 3.0 is now available in the 7.10 backports repository. It is found under the "firefox-3.0" package name and can be installed side-by-side with the Firefox 2 default with Gutsy. Firefox 3 will import and upgrade your Firefox 2 profile upon first launch, but it will not modify your existing profile, so feel free to try it out hassle-free. Keep in mind that Firefox 3 is still a beta, the packaging is still in a transitioning phase, and not everything works perfectly. Please file bugs against this package in gutsy-backports, not in Ubuntu!

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

Bug Stats

Open (39920) -213 # over last week
Critical (21) +4 # over last week
Unconfirmed (20352) -245 # over last week
Unassigned (30393) -185 # over last week
All bugs ever reported (150888) +1490 # 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 (12406) -8 # over last week
French (37728) +/-0 # over last week
Swedish (49176) +/-0 # over last week
English-UK (24947) -20 # over last week
German (66054) -258 # 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:

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
John Crawford
Craig A. Eddy
Ruben - Hubuntu
And many others

Glossary of Terms

MOTU UVF - Masters Of The Universe, Universe Freeze
P2P - Peer To Peer

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.