Issue9

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter - Issue #9

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter - Issue #9 for the week of August 6 - 12, 2006.

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

In This Issue

  • The 6.06.1 point release
  • Welcoming Jono Bacon, the new Ubuntu community manager
  • The Ubuntu web universe
  • MOTU School
  • Ubuntu New User Mentors Classroom
  • Security updates
  • New apps in Edgy
  • Updates to 6.06 LTS
  • Summer of Code updates
  • Bug stats
  • Upcoming meetings
  • Feature of the week - Gcompris

Quote of the Week

  • Anonymous said... "I like the shiny design, I like the community forums, but most of all I like the fact my grandmother can install it."

The 6.06.1 point release

Colin Watson and the rest of the Ubuntu Development Team have prepared and released the Ubuntu 6.06.1 point release. This is a first of what is likely to be several security and update rollups that are going to be released during the 6.06 LTS life cycle. If you are already running 6.06, there is no need to download and install a new image, as your machine should have all available security updates and bugfixes already installed. Now is a good time to make certain you are getting security updates...

Welcoming Jono Bacon, the new Ubuntu community manager

With the exit of Jeff Waugh comes the entrance of Jono Bacon, recently hired by Canonical to be the Ubuntu community manager (prononuced koo-moon-ity man-ager, Swahili for "herder of felines"). While we here at UWN are not quite sure what he is going to be doing, we are pleased to have him aboard. He has impeccable credentials, working on such high-brow shows as LugRadio and such software as Jokosher, which has been in use for literally ages ;).

The Ubuntu web universe

Being as popular as it is, Ubuntu has spawned a number of community-run websites. We thought we would cover two of them this week: Ubuntu Video and the Ubuntu Counter.

Ubuntu Video

Ubuntu Video, run by John Little, collects and publishes videos about Ubuntu that can be used for purposes ranging from marketing to documentation. John and the Ubuntu marketing team have connected, so watch this space for future collaboration. For now, check out John's site at http://www.ubuntuvideo.com/

The Ubuntu Counter

The Ubuntu Counter, run by Melissa Draper, counts Ubuntu users, nothing more. With almost 7000 registered users, over 9000 machines, and one digg-ing behind them, the Ubuntu Counter Project is off to a strong start. Go get yourself counted at http://ubuntucounter.geekosophical.net/

MOTU School

Have you always wanted to learn about development in Ubuntu?

Now you can enter the world of packaging and development in Ubuntu with this IRC lecture on "Ubuntu packaging basics" presented by raging Ubuntu-aholic MOTU JordanMantha (LaserJock). It was held at August 10 01:00 UTC and again at August 11 17:00 UTC in #ubuntu-motu-school on irc.freenode.net.

Several people from the Ubuntu Forums showed up along with a few new faces from #ubuntu-motu -- there were even a couple MOTU cameo appearances! Jordan took the crowd through one of his own packages, plotdrop, by discussing details of packaging files and ending with a source package and shiny .deb built via pbuilder. Each session was well attended and took 2 hours to get through, but in the end everybody agreed that it was worth their time.

More information on this and other MOTU School sessions, please visit https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/School

Ubuntu New User Mentors Classroom

The Ubuntu New User Mentors will be presenting a class on Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 18:00 UTC. The class, Introduction to the Command Line Interface (CLI), will present new users with the basics of the command line on their Ubuntu systems. Everyone is welcome to attend. For more information on the Classroom visit https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Classroom

Security Updates

USN-333-1 libwmf vulnerability http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-333-1

New apps in Edgy

The ever busy Sebastian Bacher (described by GNOME hackers as sebuild, a play on jhbuild, which is used to build bleeding edge GNOME) and Daniel Holbach have finished uploading GNOME 2.15.91 otherwise known as GNOME 2.16 Beta 2, which is scheduled for release on September 6th.

Chuck Short has been busy packaging Xen for Ubuntu and has recently uploaded support for amd64.

Per usual, the MOTUs have been busy with other new versions and syncs from Debian.

Updates to 6.06 LTS

Aside from the 6.06.1 point release, there were no updates to 6.06 LTS this week.

Summer of Code updates

Ubuntu was awarded 22 projects as part of Google's Summer of Code. We covered two last week, but here is the lastest information about two more projects:

Consiel, a GNOME Launchpad front-end by Ploum: This application has reached version 0.1 and can now read bugs! More information can be found on his blog at http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?116-conseil-01-grand-canal

py-education/amenity, a testing/quizzing system for Edubuntu by Ryan Rousseau: Formerly pyq, this has expanded to be py-education, a set of educational applications for the GNOME desktop, much as KDE-edu is for KDE. There are currently two applications being worked on: Amenity, an activity management system, and Quizzical, a quiz management system. Both of these have had several releases. More information can be found at the py-education homepage: http://py-education.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Bug stats

Total Bugs: 14028 (an increase of 178 over last week)

As always, the Ubuntu Bug Squad needs help. If you want to help Ubuntu get the numbers down please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs

Every other Wednesday, the Ubuntu Bug Squad holds a "Hug-for-a-bug" Day. For more information please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay or #ubuntu-bugs

Upcoming meetings

Various groups and teams in the Ubuntu community hold meetings on a regular basis. These meetings are held in #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.org and are open to all. A complete schedule can also be found in that channel's topic or on the Fridge calendar. The following teams have scheduled meetings for the upcoming week:

  • Community Council - Monday, August 14, 2006 at 16:00 UTC.
  • Technical Board - Tuesday, August 15, 2006 at 20:00 UTC.
  • Ubuntu Development Team - Thursday, August 17, 2006 at 23:00 UTC.
  • Edubuntu Team - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 at 20:00 UTC.

Feature of the week - Gcompris

Gcompris, French slang for "I understand", is an educational and entertaining application in Edubuntu. With over 70 different activities to keep kids ages 2 to 10 entertained, Gcompris forms a major part of the fun bits of Edubuntu. Of course, it can also be installed on the other variants of Ubuntu: Simply install the package gcompris. More information can be found at the Gcompris website, http://gcompris.net/

The obligatory screenshots: http://gcompris.net/IMG/png/screenshot_selection.png

Additional News Resources

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

This weeks Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Corey Burger
  • Rich Johnson
  • Jordan Mantha
  • Eldo Varghese
  • Daniel Chen
  • And many others of the Ubuntu Documentation and Marketing teams

Feedback

This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Marketing Team. Have you seen something you think should be mentioned? Object to the content? Drop us an email at ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com or by using any of the other methods on the Ubuntu Marketing Team Page.

UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue9 (last edited 2008-08-06 16:59:41 by localhost)