Issue95

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WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #95 for the week June 8th - June 14th, 2008.

UWN Translations

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In This Issue

General Community News

Help Needed for Global Bug Jam

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-June/025533.html

Brainstorm Plans

Three months after the launch it is time to do a small recap and lay out the plans for the next months. The project is now working towards a better feedback to your input. Starting this cycle, there should be some regular developer feedback on popular ideas. In the next months, the work will be focused on an easier classification of ideas in projects, so that it can be exploited by non-Ubuntu software developers. Also coming is an easy way for Brainstorm users to contact each other, tools for Ubuntu developers to spot and keep track of the interesting ideas, and in the long rung, the project is heading towards a neutral release, but don't expect it too soon. http://blog.qa.ubuntu.com/node/12

A selection of Intrepid blueprints from the Ubuntu Server Team

With the end of UDS, members of the Ubuntu Server Team are busy writing specifications (aka blueprints) about topics discussed during the summit. Specifications should be finalized by Thursday, June the 5th according to the Intrepid release schedule. Here is a non-exhaustive list of blueprints that are currently been written:

Remember, these are plans, there is no guarantee that they will make it into Intrepid Ibex. http://ubuntuserver.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/a-selection-of-intrepid-blueprints-from-the-ubuntu-server-team/

Intrepid Alpha 1 Release?

New Ubuntu Members

The EMEA Board

The EMEA membership board had their third meeting last tuesday. Three candidates have been welcomed aboard the Ubuntu ship.

Javier Garrido has been rocking hard in the Spanish LoCo team, being administrator of Ubuntu-es since February 2007.Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Meisok LP: https://launchpad.net/~meisok

László Torma has supported, written about and documented Ubuntu and doing great work for the Hungarian LoCo team. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Toros3 LP: https://launchpad.net/~toros.hu

Risto Kurppa has been doing great work in the Finnish team, supporting users and writing articles. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RistoHKurppa LP: https://launchpad.net/~risto.kurppa

The EMEA board is happy to welcome aboard these excellent members! Our next meeting will be on june 17, 18:00 UTC.

The AsiaOceania Board

The AsiaOceania Membership Council had its first Meeting on 10-June-08. The board approved 3 new Ubuntu members.

Russel John is the Team Contact of Ubuntu Bangladesh LoCo Team and has conducted and contributed to various events to spread Ubuntu. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Russell LP: https://launchpad.net/~russell.john

Mahayudin Susanto is from Indonesia. Notable contributions of Susanto are Translations and spreading Ubuntu to the East Java region of Indonesia. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Udienz LP: https://launchpad.net/~udienz

Muhammed Takdir is also from Indonesia. Notable contribution include the efforts made in taking Ubuntu/ Edubuntu to schools of a region called Sinjai. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MuhammadTakdir LP: https://launchpad.net/~muhammad-takdir

See June 10th, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership/RegionalBoards/AsiaOceania

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2008-June/000048.html

MOTU News

After some time away, Zhengpeng Hou has again found time to return to MOTU, continuing previous work in package maintenance, CJK support, KDE bugfixing, and helping with the sponsor queues. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-June/025535.html

MOTU Videos

The Ubuntu Developer Channel continues to get crammed with goodness, and it is a pleasure to announce another MOTU video - Packaging 101 Part 1 and Part 2. The video is presented by the esteemed Daniel Holbach, and is geared to teach you how to put together a package. This is a great first step to getting started becoming a MOTU.

You can catch up on all 22 videos on the Ubuntu Developers youtube site: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ubuntudevelopers&p=r

Gobuntu Future(Jono Bacon)

The Gobuntu development team would like to announce that after 8.04 release of Gobuntu, the project will aim to merge many of the Gobuntu changes into mainline Ubuntu, such as our "Free Software Only" installer option which only installs software considered free by the Free Software Foundation's definition of software freedom. The primary focus of the Ubuntu community, Canonical, and our derivative and downstream projects remains the success of free, Open Source software. It is hoped that by providing every Ubuntu user with the ability to install a completely free system, using the standard Ubuntu installer, we will move closer to a world of freedom, choice, and personal liberty with the hardware you own. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/gobuntu-devel/2008-June/000795.html

Kubuntu Tutorial Days

Kubuntu Tutorials Day is back. Join the Kubuntu team on IRC, #kubuntu-devel, for some great chats with Free Software’s finest developers. There are five months of development ahead for Intrepid, so this is the perfect way to learn how to get involved. Mark your calendar to attend any or all of the scheduled presentations. https://wiki.kubuntu.org/KubuntuTutorialsDay

  • 19:00 UTC - Getting Involved - Richard Johnson(nixternal)
  • 20:00 UTC - Usability - Celeste Lyn Paul(seele)
  • 21:00 UTC - Packaging & merging howto - Jonathan Riddell(Riddell)

  • 22:00 UTC - Plasma with Python - Michael Anderson(nosrednaekim)
  • 23:00 UTC - But triage - Ralph Janke(txwikinger)
  • 24:00 UTC - Kubuntu Q & A Session - The Kubuntu Team

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1520

Ubuntu Stats

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 Hardy

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

LoCo News

Great OpenFest Organized by Ubuntu Colombian Team

The last Saturday 7th of June, the Colombian Ubuntu LoCo Team organized, with the OpenSolaris Colombian Team, the first Free Software Festival on the University of San Buenaventura. We have InstallFest, conferences, demos and workshops when we explain and spread the new and cool advantages of Ubuntu Hardy Heron, the LoCo Teams organization and Community work. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ColombianTeam/Eventos/openfestusb2008

Technical Update

Mirco Muller, Ubuntu "bling" expert, has written in some responses to some Brainstorm ideas:

http://blog.qa.ubuntu.com/node/15

Launchpad News

Launchpad service interruptions: 17th, 18th and 19th June

Downtime details:

  • June 17th 22:00 UTC - June 18th 03:00 UTC: all of Launchpad will be offline.
  • June 18th 22.00 UTC - June 18th 00.00 UTC: code browse and pushing and pulling to code branches hosted on Launchpad will be unavailable.
  • June 19th 22.00 UTC - June 20th 03.00 UTC: uploading to, building and publishing in package archives - both distribution archives and PPAs - will be unavailable.

The downtime will be used to upgrade the servers that host Launchpad to the latest version of Ubuntu, 8.04 LTS Hardy Heron. This will result in an improved platform on which to develop new Launchpad services. Specifically, it will include Python 2.5 and PostgreSQL 8.3, along with updates to several libraries that Launchpad relies on. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2008-June/003820.html

Ubuntu Forums News

http://www.mikesplanet.net/2008/06/600000_users/, 600,000 register users, see if there is a better link

In The Press

  • Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva Performance Compared - Last week Phoronix released Phoronix Test Suite 1.0[1] and one of the article requests they received as a result was to do a side-by-side comparison between the popular desktop Linux distributions. Ask and you shall receive. Today they have up 28 test results from Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 9, and Mandriva 2008.1. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_3way_pts&num=1

[1] http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12427

  • Spawn of Ubuntu - A few new Ubuntu-based distributions have converted from other distributions to join the ever-growing Ubuntu family. Some of Ubuntu’s offspring have gone on to become multimedia moguls, foreign language speakers, Christians, Muslims, and security experts. Ubuntu has also produced some nifty new Desktop distributions as well. This article profiles three of those new rising stars in the Ubuntu Desktop fold: Linux Mint, Freespire, and gOS. http://www.linux-mag.com/id/6200

  • Ubuntu is early favorite in initial OpenLogic open source survey returns - Launched with fanfare a month and a half ago, OpenLogic Inc.'s Open Source Census[1], a survey of open source software adoption has scanned more than a thousand computers to date, but the tally is far short of the volume required to draw meaningful conclusions. Of those computers with open source software, the leading operating system was Ubuntu, which was detected collectively on 46% of all machines with open source software (Ubuntu's Gutsy Gibbon tallied 28% and Hardy Heron, 18%); followed by Debian, 14%; Novell SUSE Linux , 12%; others, 12%, and Gentoo, 6%. http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid39_gci1317353,00.html

[1]http://www.osscensus.org/

  • Open source snub in UK schools - THE OPEN SOURCE community was bitterly disappointed today after the UK appointed an unknown consultancy to run an historic programme of advocacy in schools. [A] sidelined bid by The Learning Machine, an open source schools specialist, was backed by Canonical, the organisation behind Ubuntu, the ground-breaking open source operating system. http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/06/12/open-source-snub-uk-schools

In The Blogosphere

  • MS Buys Codecs from MS ([M]ark [S]huttleworth buys [M]icro[S]oft codecs for Ubuntu) - This article, from Boycott Novell, attempts to show from an IRC discussion, that Mark Shuttleworth purchased the right to include Microsoft codecs in the Remix distribution for sub-notebook computers. http://boycottnovell.com/2008/06/07/ubuntu-remix-codecs/

  • making deals with M$ - In rebuttal to the allegations in the above article, and in a post to ubuntu-devel-discuss, Mark Shuttleworth responded, "There is (again) absolutely no truth to the rumour that Canonical has done a deal with Microsoft for access to codecs - either in return for money, or for some other quid-pro-quo." Read more of his response at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2008-June/004510.html

  • Technology Today: Linux — A new user’s review - Linux is an open source operating system that competes with Microsoft Windows and Apple’s OS X. My first experience with Linux left her with a bad taste in her mouth, but the distribution of Linux known as Ubuntu 7.10 (aka “Gutsy Gibbon”), the version prior to the current version of Ubuntu, has impressed her enough to convince her to completely switch her personal computer to Linux. It has been a fascinating adventure, and she's learned a lot about the inner workings of her computer. See what she considers the pros and cons at http://www.beckymckimmy.com/blog/2008/06/05/technology-today-linux-a-new-users-review/

  • Ubuntu 8.04 LTS still No. 1 for my laptop - After pretty much a full year of Debian (first Etch, mostly Lenny), also great but not as great as this new version of Ubuntu, so many things are working so well that Steven Rosenberg is reluctant to do anything but keep using this long-term support version of Ubuntu, which will have three years of updates and patches on the desktop. http://www.insidesocal.com/click/2008/06/ubuntu-804-lts-still-no-1-for.html

  • Tonight is Linux Night! - Christopher Dawson is running a Linux night with his computer club. His theme? Get Lucky on Friday the 13th with Linux! One of the major cost savings, aside from building the computer from parts, is the use of Linux instead of Windows. The computer that they are giving away is loaded with Ubuntu 8.04 and they’ll show the other attendees how to set up Ubuntu as a fine Internet system. they’re giving away Ubuntu Live CD’s so even those who don’t win the computer can give it a shot. http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1727

  • Adventures with open source apps on Linux - Part 2 - In this post Adrian Kingsley-Hughes covers the way to install multimedia support under Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). This is a "step-by-step" how-to meant to allow the newest Ubuntu user to add support for a lot of different multimedia file types, such as MP3, MPEG1, MPEG2, DivX and WMV and includes a method of providing support for commercial DVDs. http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2061

In Other News

Vienna failed to migrate to GNU/Linux: why?

Several governments and councils reported multi-year migration plans to GNU/Linux. Free software activists praised each one of them in their blogs and commentaries. However, a few months or years on, some of those plans crumbled. Vienna is one of them. A question here begs to be answered: why did it happen? The City of Vienna made several crucial mistakes. Tony Mobily outlines a number of things he sees as being examples of how not to go about migrating to Linux. See: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/vienna_failed_to_migrate_to_linux_why

Mark Shuttleworth on the future of Ubuntu

Here, Mark Shuttleworth talks to Glyn Moody about Ubuntu's new focus on the server side, why Ubuntu could switch from GNOME to KDE, and what happens to Ubuntu and its commercial arm, Canonical, if Shuttleworth were to fall out of a spaceship. http://lwn.net/Articles/284760/

How to build RepRap 1.0 "Darwin"

RepRap 1.0 "Darwin" is a rapid prototyping machine that is capable of making the majority of its own component parts. Instructions and all necessary data are available completely free under the GNU General Public Licence from this website to everyone. Requirements

  • A fairly modern computer
  • Decent graphics card (ATI / NVidia) 64MB+
  • Recommended at least 512MB of RAM
  • Serial port or USB <-> Serial converter

  • Ubuntu/Linux preferred, but OSX and Windows also work.

Find out how to do it at: http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/RepRapOneDarwin

Siemens gets serious about open source

Siemens’ outsourcing unit is snapping up some of South Africa’s brightest open source minds as it readies to offer large-scale open source services to clients. Siemens already has in place partnerships and agreements with Red Hat, Canonical and enterprise content management suite providers Alfresco. On the desktop, Honigwachs says that the unit plans to offer either Red Hat or Ubuntu. “The advantage of having both Red Hat desktops and servers is the ability to have a single management tool. But in government there is a preference for Ubuntu." http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2489

Interview with Linux-Magazine Italia

Vincenzo Ciaglia from Linux-Magazine Italia sent Mark Shuttleworth a few questions related to the release of 8.04 LTS. Since he was going to translate the conversation into Italian this week, he was happy for Mark to blog the English version in his blog. http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/148

Meeting Summaries

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Community Spotlight

Updates and Security for 6.06, 7.04, 7.10, and 8.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

Ubuntu 7.04 Updates

Ubuntu 7.10 Updates

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

UWN #: A sneak peek

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Conclusion

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