Issue79

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WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 79 for the weeks February 17th - February 23rd, 2008. In this issue we cover...

UWN Translations

In This Issue

General Community News

Hardy Alpha 5 Released

Another Hardy Heron pre-release is available for testing. Alpha 5 is the fifth in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Hardy development cycle. Alpha 5 includes several new features that are ready for large-scale testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/hardy/alpha5 for information on changes in Ubuntu and https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HardyHeron/Alpha5/Kubuntu for changes in Kubuntu. Pre-releases of Hardy are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-February/000387.html

Ubuntu 8.10 Interpid Ibex

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-February/025136.html

5-a-Day

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/5-A-Day

Newly Approved LoCos

MarylandTeam - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarylandTeam/ApprovalApplication - In less than a year, the Ubuntu Maryland LoCo Team has gone from a small group of Ubuntu enthusiasts to a large number of active members with a wide variety of technical expertise. The Team has already hosted a number of events, including install fests and presentations, as well as regularly scheduled meetings in-person and on IRC. Events include:

Event

Date

Time

Location

[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarylandTeam/Events/Presentations/2007November21 Presentation: "Why Ubuntu?"]

November 21, 2007

7:00pm - 9:00 pm

Florence Bain Senior Center, Columbia, MD

[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarylandTeam/Events/ReleaseParties/Gutsy Gutsy Release Party]

October 19, 2007

7:00pm - 10:00pm

Red Robin, Columbia MD

[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarylandTeam/Events/SoftwareFreedomDay2007Software Freedom Day: Install Fest and Presentations]

September 15, 2007

10:00am - 5:00pm

Howard County Library - East Columbia Branch

[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarylandTeam/Events/InstallFests/2007July21 Install Fest]

July 21, 2007

10:00am - 3:00pm

Loyola College Center for Community Informatics

ColombianTeam - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ColombianTeam/ApprovalApplication - mention events they have been part of: presentations and CD distribution at Software Freedom Day and Flisol 2007. Interesting on-going projects like Ubuntu CDs at home, which will be for encouraging, helping produce, distribute and sell Ubuntu CDs locally in Colombia. 2008 plans include having a kiosk at FLISOL 2008 and all major 2008 IT events in Colombia.

IndianaTeam - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IndianaTeam/ApprovalApplication - mention that they've been working with LUGs to start an Indian LinuxFest this year. Been involved in several conferences: IU LinuxFest, ITEC, Ohio LinuxFest, K-12 Open Minds Conference. Actively encouraging the use of Ubuntu in Indiana School, especially with the inACCESS program, which was has spread Linux and open-source software through the school systems in Indiana. In fact, some of the IndianaTeam members work for schools, teaching in and supporting the program.

Newly Approved Members

Eddie Martinez - https://launchpad.net/~eddiemartinez - Launched the Ubuntu-Illinois CodeSprint. Helped represent Ubuntu with the LoCo at FlorishConf, a confrence for FL/OSS at a local university and working on Flourish 2008. Working on Christian Life College in Mt. Prospect, Illinois to 100% Ubuntu. Worked with Chicago, Ohio and Michigan LocCos to launch Tri Loco team.

Leandro Gómez - https://launchpad.net/~leogomez72 - Started the Nicaraguan Ubuntu LoCo Team, International coordinator of FLISOL 2008 - Latin America's biggest installfest; participated in the organization of +20 events in the last twelve months, including the SFD Nicaragua 2007 event and the Linux Tour, one of the biggest Linux events in Central America.

Eric Krieger - https://edge.launchpad.net/~grammatoncleric - Member of the New Mexico Team, project lead for Endorphin Power Company Ubuntu Install and Support is which dedicated to improving the lives of people, with special focus on the substance-dependent and homeless. Participated in the 2007 Software Freedom Day Team in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

Andrea Colangelo - https://edge.launchpad.net/~warp10 - Part of the the Italian LoCo Team. Involved in CD and sticker projects, Ubuntu-it Press Office (the team that writes press-releases and take care of contacts with media) and Ubuntu-it screencasts. Part ofItalian Developer Team involved in packaging and backporting software that the Italian community requests. Plans on becoming MOTU, continue focusing on Debian <--> Ubuntu cooperation.

Greg Grossmeier - https://edge.launchpad.net/~greg.grossmeier - Founder/Team Lead for the Michigan LoCo, helped setup the first packaging jam, part of the Bug Control team on LP

Nicolas Valcárcel - https://edge.launchpad.net/~nvalcarcel - member of the Peruvian LoCo team (and council). Has given talks about MOTU process, MOTU Development and how to get started. Has plans for 3 more talks for the next 2 months about ubuntu Developing. Also ran 2 sessions during Developer Week.

Craig A. Eddy - https://edge.launchpad.net/~tyche - Contributor to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter...

Review of Open Week

Easiest thing might be to check dholbach's posts on the planet and pick out some things. And link to the open week wiki and logs.

Interview with Nick Barcet, Ubuntu Server Product Manager

UWN: Who are you? What do you do at Canonical?

I'm Nick Barcet, an almost 40 years old geek that started programming on a TRS-80 quite a long time ago. I joined Canonical in September 2007 to fill the role of Ubuntu Server Product Manager. The role of a product manager is to be the interface between the technical team and the rest of the company. This implies

  • gathering the feedback and requests from our other department and their customers or partner,
  • putting in common word the technicalities of new implementation so that our sales and marketing team can understand them
  • proposing and participating in the definition of the product strategy and many other fun activities.

UWN: How long have you used Linux and what was your first distro? And how long have you been using Ubuntu?

I started with Linux with SuSE in 1998 as a hobby, which became handy when Novell bought SuSE while I was working there. I switched to Ubuntu end of 2005 on my Desktop and with Dapper on my servers (I had left Novell at that time).

UWN: Virtualization is in the news more and more nowadays. The Server Team has been focusing on KVM, and VMware has been in the commercial repository for almost a year, and OpenVZ was just added. How is the relationship with VMware progressing? What has been the reaction to JeOS? Are ISVs putting it to use? Is there any more planned collaboration?

We do have a great relationship with VMWare, which is progressing very well. As you have noticed, we also started working with Parallels (ex SWSoft) and they are providing OpenVZ in Universe, which is another great option to Ubuntu users. As each of these technologies are providing answers to different use cases, I think that we are starting to have a great virtualization story on Ubuntu Server Edition.

JeOS has generated a lot of attention and the number of Virtual Appliances built on it are growing every day. JeOS is updated to work also with KVM in version 8.04, and we've also improved the VMWare ESX support. This will certainly increase the momentum that we are already observing. We're confident that 8.04, will see numerous ISVs certify on it and bringing many more options, both virtualised or not, to Ubuntu users.

UWN: Are there plans to get involved with "cloud" computing, similar to how RHEL is directly available on Amazon's EC2 services?

Ubuntu Server Edition works very well on EC2 already and there are quite a few how-to published on the subject, pre-built images posted by the community [1] and even virtual appliances available, such Paul Dowman's "EC2 on Rails" [2]. As you know, Canonical's business model is to sell Technical Support, not to sell the "maintenance" as other distribution do. We're watching the RH/Amazon tie up and it is definitely an interesting way of delivering the server product to the market. As we only charge for support and not maintenance we would have to deliver it a different way but it is too soon to talk about specifics or any deals.

As a side note, there is currently quite a bit of confusion in what is support and maintenance. What I refer to as maintenance is the is the commitment Ubuntu has on providing security updates for the packages that are defined in seed whatever dependencies are necessary to make them work. More precisely our commitment is to provide free maintenance for Ubuntu products as follow:

  • Ubuntu Desktop, Kubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server: security updates and select bug fixes (18 months)
  • Ubuntu Desktop LTS: Security updates and select bug fixes (3 years)
  • Ubuntu Server LTS: Hardware compatibility updates (until next LTS), Security updates and select bug fixes (5 years)

As you see, this is quite different from support, where this only covers the activity to provide various types of answers to customer over the phone, web or email which Canonical offers for a fee.

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EC2 http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=116

[2] http://ec2onrails.rubyforge.org/

UWN: Many businesses use Active Directory or some form of LDAP extensively. How is the Windows AD integration coming along for Hardy and what are the future plans?

Thanks to the great work from Jerry Carter producing likewise-open, and of Rick Clark packaging it in Ubuntu, the package has been uploaded just before Feature Freeze. On Ubuntu desktop, it provides a graphical interface to integrate into AD, while on Ubuntu Server Edition a single command line will allow the joining. Once this is done, all authentications are seamlessly redirected to AD.

It looks good at fulfilling its promise of very easy integration into an AD domain, but it now needs some extensive testing before 8.04 is released. If you have access to an AD domain and can run a few tests with Hardy, now is the right time to do so and it is a great way to contribute to Ubuntu Server Edition.

UWN: Landscape is systems management tool provided by Canonical with a support contract. What does it do? Are there other applications provided at the commercial level?

Landscape is a systems management tool that provides grouped management, inventory, user management and monitoring of multiple servers in a centralized way. With Landscape it is possible to simultaneously request and installation, update or removal of a package on all or some of your managed at the same time. The same can be done for users. You also get a very clear summary of resources consumption on you servers over time with very smart graphs grouping the info for multiple servers. More information and screen shots are available on Canonical's web site [1].

Landscape is the only application we provide specifically for commercial support users right now. We intend to improve and expand it over time to become more even valuable to them as it is a compelling reason to use our support. These customers are also encouraged to use Launchpad and Bazaar if appropriate. I don't know if we will add more applications for commercial customers. We will where and when it make sense.

[1]http://www.canonical.com/projects/landscape

LoCo News

New in Hardy Heron

Launchpad News

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2008-February/003233.html

Ubuntu Forums News

Ubuntu Forums Interviews

Please read the following interviews, and accept our apologies for the delay reporting them to the UWN:

Tutorials Of The Week

Here are the tutorials that have been selected for the past few weeks:

In The Press

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2937357707.html

In The Blogosphere

http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20080218/NEWS/802180303/-1/COMMUNITIES

http://www.lockergnome.com/digged/2008/02/19/5-things-i-dont-like-about-ubuntu-710/

In Other News

Dell machines

Dell has increased the availability of their systems. Now you can purchase the same machines in Canada as in USA and for these areas a new machine is available: the Inspiron 1525 (which is available in a very handsome Espresso Brown Wink ;-) as well as several other beautiful colors).

The www.ubuntu.com/dell page will be kept up to date with links to relevant information as it becomes available.

DB2

http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ibm-db2-ubuntu-virtual-appliance

Zenbuntu

[http://zebuntu.com/ Zebuntu] - a new Xfce-based Ubuntu distribution with heavy Zeta influences. Bernd Korz explains the goals of Zebuntu in the [http://zebuntu.com/component/content/article/25-das-projekt/46-zebuntu-sagt-qguten-tagq.html project's announcement] (in German): "Our goal is to use BlueEyedOS to offer a new platform for our former Zeta customers. In the future, Zeta, BeOS, as well as any future Haiku applications, will run natively on Zebuntu. This also offers a distinct advantage for developers for these platforms; they can use Zebuntu to develop for their platforms while utilising the performance and versatility of Linux." In other words, run BeOS applications on Linux. http://osnews.com/story/19359/Zebuntu_Debuts

Meeting Summaries

Ubuntu Studio stuff from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamReports/February2008

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Community Spotlight

Florida Team Rocks the Florida Linux Show

The Florida LoCo Team joined together for the 1st Annual FLorida Linux Show. At our exhibit booth we had tremendous traffic, and provided support for both installation and application issues as they arose. It was refreshing to the team to see how many people were actively using ubuntu, and to listen to their experiences both positive and negative. The Florida LoCo team gained some new members and spent some time getting to know each other better in RL. See pics of Florida Loco Team Events http://florida.ubuntu-us.org/content/blogcategory/25/67/

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 (#) +/- # over last week
  • Critical (#) +/- # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (#) +/- # over last week
  • Unassigned (#) +/- # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (#) +/- # over last week

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

Infamous Bugs

Translation Stats

'Note: To stats for HARDY, not Gutsy'

  1. Language (#) +/- # over last week
  2. Language (#) +/- # over last week
  3. Language (#) +/- # over last week
  4. Language (#) +/- # over last week
  5. Language (#) +/- # over last week

Remaining string to translate in Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/

UWN #: A sneak peek

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:

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  • Isabelle Duchatelle
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Glossary of Terms

Feedback

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