WORK IN PROGRESS

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter - Issue #7

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter - Issue #7 for the week of July, 15 - 21 2006

You can always find this and other Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issues at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter

In This Issue

• Edgy Eft Knot 1 Release
• Community Council Meeting
• The Classroom
• Ubuntu Magazine
• Canonical Commercial Repositories
• Opera 9 For Ubuntu

General Community News

Edgy Eft Knot-1 Released

Edgy Eft Knot-1, which will emerge as Ubuntu 6.10 when complete was released on July 20, 2006. Knot-1 is the first in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Edgy development cycle, as images that are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD-build or installer bugs, while representing very current snapshots of Edgy. you can download it here for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu respectively:

• [http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/edgy/knot-1/ Ubuntu Edgy Eft Knot-1]

• [http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/edgy/knot-1/ Kubuntu Edgy Eft Knot-1]

• [http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/edgy/knot-1/ Edubuntu Edgy Eft Knot-1]

• [http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/edgy/knot-1/ Xubuntu Edgy Eft Knot-1]

The primary changes from Dapper have been the re-mergin of changes from Debian. Common to all variants, we have upgraded the kernel to 2.6.17. In Ubuntu, gnome has been updated to 2.15.4 and GTK+ to 2.10.

Notable Kubuntu changes are listed on http://wiki.kubuntu.org/Testing/Kubuntu/Edgy/Knot1

This is quite and early set of images, so you can expect some bugs. Amonth them are the following (so you don't need to bother reporting these if you encounter them):

• Installing to LVM volumes is broken and will fail
• When shutting down the live CD, the prompt asking you to press enter to confirm that you have removed the CD reads from the wrong terminal. It is at that point safe to press the reset or power button.

Interested in following changes, have a look at the edgy-changes list: http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

The testing area of the wiki suggests various tests that can be performed on Knot CD releases to try to catch bugs far enough before the final release that they can be fixed: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing

Bug reports should goto Malone: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bugs

You can read the full report in it's entirety at the following: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2006-July/000164.html

Community Council Meeting

July 11, 2006

• IRC network discussion continues
• Local Community Teams Made Official

  • ColoradoTeam - JoeyStanford

  • KurdishTeam - ErdalRonahi

  • ChicagoTeam - RichJohnson

• Ubuntu Membership Approvals

  • JoeyStanford

  • HenrikOmma

  • MaxenceDunnewind

The Classroom

The NewUserNetwork announces it's latest project [:Classroom:The Classroom]. The Classroom will create an educational atmosphere in an IRC channel in the hopes of teaching new users the basics, as well as the advanced tasks involved with using and maintaining their Ubuntu system. Classes will be held in #ubuntu-classroom on the scheduled dates. People interested in instructing can join #ubuntu-nun for further information or check out the NewUserNetwork wiki page.

The Ubuntu Magazine

The [:UbuntuMagazine:Ubuntu Magazine], a new project of the [:MarketingTeam:Ubuntu Marketing Team] held a meeting on July 17, 2006. The meeting included topics of a wiki redesign, project charter, magazine name, as well as some offtopic information concerning future contest possibilities. For more information concerning the meeting, please check out the [:UbuntuMagazine/Meetings/2006-07-17:Meeting Minutes].

Canonical Commercial Repositories

Canonical announced on July 6^th, 2006 the creation and implementation of the Commercial Repositories. This is a favorite amoung many in the community. To enable the repositories, add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu dapper-commercial main

Opera 9 for Ubuntu

With the announcement of the new Canonical Commercial Repositories came the news that Opera 9 was the first application available to the Ubuntu Community. For more information regarding this story, please check out the [http://www.ubuntu.com/news/opera9 news release].

Interviews

INSERT INTERVIEWS HERE

Security Updates

Ubuntu

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

New Apps In Edgy

Don't forget quick installation notes, enable extra repository, package name, use g-a-i where possible, etc...

Kubuntu

Meeting July 17, 2006

The Kubuntu Team got together for yet another very eventful meeting. With topics ranging from the Kubuntu releases page, to future artwork and it's status, even some KDE Firefox in the future, and who could ever forget all the agenda topics Hobbsee posted!!! It was a great meeting and a lot got done. [:nixternal:Rich Johnson] became a Kubuntu Member as well during this meeting, so congratulations Rich and welcome aboard!!! The team is currently working on setting up the next meeting. For more information on the meeting, including agenda items, check out the [:KKubuntu/Meetings/2006-07-17:Meeting Minutes].

Kubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

New Apps In Edgy

Don't forget quick installation notes, enable extra repository, package name, use g-a-i where possible, etc...

Edubuntu

Edubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

New Apps In Edgy

Don't forget quick installation notes, enable extra repository, package name, use g-a-i where possible, etc...

Xubuntu

Xubuntu 6.06 Updates

New Apps In Edgy

Don't forget quick installation notes, enable extra repository, package name, use g-a-i where possible, etc...

Bug Stats

New Bugs: # BR Closed Bugs: #

Infamous Bugs

In The Press

Features/Tips Of The Week

Changing the Default Action of your Shutdown Button

Tip provided by Jojoman

This is currently not implamented in the GUI of gnome-power-manager, but will be soon (see [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/49214 bug #49214]). The current default option of the shutdown button is to display the "Exit" menu. Some users would just like their computer to shutdown. The following steps show how to set the action of the shutdown button.

1. Press ALT+F2 (run menu)

2. Type: gconf-editor

3. Find the Key: /apps/gnome-power-manager/action_button_power

4. Change the value to one of these: "suspend", "hibernate", "interactive", "shutdown" or "nothing"

Forward & Back MS Intellimouse Buttons

Tip provided by Steven Harms

Did you know that your "forward" and "back" mouse buttons on Microsoft Intellimice can work in Dapper with the following small changes to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file? The following changes need to be completed in order for this to work. Remember to restart X when completed:

First step:

cd /etc/X11
sudo gedit xorg.conf

Second step: Use gedit's search and find "Configured Mouse" and replace the section with:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Configured Mouse"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "CorePointer"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option      "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
        Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
        Option      "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7"
EndSection

Third step: Save and restart your X server (crtl-alt-backspace)

RSI Prevention - Typing Breaks

Tip provided by John Stowers

Do you know that Ubuntu ships with an included RSI prevention application?. Taking regular breaks from typing helps prevent RSI and other repetitive keyboard use injuries. To enable a typing break reminder perform the following steps;

First step: Open the keyboard preferences application from the "System", "Preferences" menu.

Second step: Select the typing break tab, and place a tick beside "Lock screen to enforce typing break". You may also place a tick beside "Allow postponing of breaks" if you wish to be able to ignore the occasional break reminder.

Third step: A new bar like icon will appear in the notification area. To monitor how long before your next break simply hover the mouse over the new icon.

Application of the Week

Unison

Application provided by ["JorgeJuan"]

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

Unison is an application to synchronize files between machines. It is very efficient because it uses the rsync algorithm and detects it if you rename or move files around. There is a gtk interface as well in unison-gtk, and there is also a MS-Windows version!

I just cannot live without it. I use to have all my important documents in a single folder in my work computer (it is about 800MB). I sync everything with my home computer and laptop whenever I start or stop working. Due to the use of rsync, synchronization takes only a few seconds over a DSL connection and is also very efficient even over a 56k modem line.

rsync alone is very good for synchronizing in one direction (like a backup) but it can be very risky to do two-ways synchronization when you can have files deleted on one sido and the other at the same time. Unison takes care of this gracefully and tells you when files have been modified on both sides, so you can select the appropriate version, although this is not a common situation for me. With text files it can also do diffs and merges.

Unison is not officially supported by Ubuntu (it is in Universe). Ubuntu really lacks a synchronization utitily (may be there is one I do not know). Unison could be a good choice, although the interface can be improved as well as some behaviour, for example: some options can only be set by edditing the configuration files and it do not keep partially transferred files or directories, which is very annoying when transferring a new large file or directory for hours and you need to interrupt the process.

All in all, it is a great tool, not in active development, but in active use by the author of the program as stated in its web page.

Additional News Resources

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:

• Matt Galvin
• Jerome Gotangco
• Jonathan Riddell
• Rich Johnson
• anyone else that contributes
• And many others

Feedback

This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Documentation Team. Please feel free to contact us regarding any concerns or suggestions by either sending an email to ubuntu-doc@lists.ubuntu.com or by using any of the other methods on the [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/Contact Ubuntu Documentation Team Contact Information Page].