Issue150

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Contents

Contents

  1. UWN Translations
  2. In This Issue
  3. General Community News
    1. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Desktop Edition reaches end-of-life
    2. Community Council: Nominations
    3. MOTU Council
    4. Call for testing: KVM in Jaunty proposed
  4. Ubuntu Stats
    1. Bug Stats
    2. Translation Stats Jaunty
    3. Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week
  5. LoCo News
    1. Ubuntu LoCo Systems admin lessons: Massachusetts LoCo
  6. Launchpad News
    1. git-imports
  7. Ubuntu Forums News
    1. Tutorial of the Week
    2. Ubuntu Community Interviews
  8. The Planet
    1. The Ubuntu Museum
    2. Karmic Wallpapers
  9. In The Press
    1. Ubuntu's maker: Chrome OS 'no slam dunk' just because Google announces it
    2. Koala will be 'a definitive shift' for Ubuntu Linux
    3. Ubuntu’s Jono Bacon: Open Source Code Priority Should Begin at Security, then Quality, then Performance
    4. Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu
    5. Jono Bacon on the Value of Good Communities
    6. Smoother Transitions to Ubuntu With Virtual Machines and Wubi
    7. What to expect from the next version of Ubuntu
  10. In The Blogosphere
    1. Is Google Stealing Ubuntu’s Thunder?
    2. Mono Now Safe?
    3. Stop piling on Mono already
    4. KDE 4.3 RC1 in Kubuntu 9.04 - Overview & Screenshots
    5. Ubuntu Sets Example by Defying Mono Threats
    6. Dell is sticking with Ubuntu
    7. How Chrome OS Will Help Ubuntu
  11. In Other News
    1. Ubuntu Podcast #30
    2. Ubuntu User Magazine
  12. Meeting Summaries
    1. Ubuntu Server Team Meeting: July 7th
  13. Upcoming Meetings and Events
    1. Sunday, July 12, 2009
    2. Monday, July 13, 2009
    3. Tuesday, July 14, 2009
      1. Asia Oceania Membership Board Meeting
      2. Technical Board Meeting
      3. Server Team Meeting
      4. Desktop Team Meeting
      5. Kernel Team Meeting
      6. Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting
    4. Wednesday, July 15, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Learning Team Meeting
      2. Foundation Team Meeting
      3. QA Team Meeting
      4. Ubuntu-ie LoCo IRC Meeting
      5. Ubuntu-us-pa LoCo Team Meeting
    5. Thursday, July 16, 2009
      1. Ubuntu Java Meeting
      2. Ubuntu Translations Meeting
      3. Global Jam Meeting
      4. Packaging Training: Mono packaging: quick, easy, and awesome (directhex)
      5. Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting
    6. Friday, July 17, 2009
      1. Karmic Weekly Release Meeting
    7. Saturday, July 18, 2009
  14. Community Spotlight
  15. Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04
    1. Security Updates
    2. Ubuntu 6.06 Updates
    3. Ubuntu 8.04 Updates
    4. Ubuntu 8.10 Updates
    5. Ubuntu 9.04 Updates
  16. UWN #: A sneak peek
  17. Archives and RSS Feed
  18. Additional Ubuntu News
  19. Conclusion
  20. Credits
  21. Glossary of Terms
  22. Ubuntu - Get Involved
  23. Feedback

newspaper-icon3.jpg 

WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #150 for the week July 5th - July 11th, 2009. In this issue we cover ...

UWN Translations

  • Note to translators and our readers: We are trying a new way of linking to our translations pages. Please follow the link below for the information you need.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Translations

In This Issue

General Community News

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Desktop Edition reaches end-of-life

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Desktop will reach end of life on Tuesday, July 14, 2009. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for the Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Desktop. Server Edition will continue to receive maintenance updates through June 2011. The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is via Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Instructions and caveats for the upgrade may be found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardyUpgrades. For further Ubuntu support, including commercial support options, see http://www.ubuntu.com/support. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2009-July/000123.html

Community Council: Nominations

In order to get the Community Council from four to eight members again, we are going to have an election in a few weeks. All Ubuntu members are eligible to vote.

I will announce the details of the election soon. What we want from you now is nominations.

If you know somebody in the Ubuntu community, who

  • has been an Ubuntu member for a while
  • is dedicated to the project
  • is well-respected and known for balanced views and good leadership
  • has a good overview over various aspects of the project
  • is organised and has some organisation talent

(or you know that this all applies to you), please send an email to daniel.holbach at ubuntu dot com with the subject “[CC Nomination]” until July 17th, 12:00 UTC. If you can confirm that the person is willing to stand for election, please do so. http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=443

MOTU Council

Call for testing: KVM in Jaunty proposed

There is a package in jaunty-proposed[1] that needs to be pushed to jaunty-updates before the Hardy and Intrepid backports can take place. In order to promote the package to jaunty-updates, Dustin Kirkland need users to verify that the new package fixes the four bugs that he thinks it fixes, and does not cause regressions.

  1. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kvm

http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/07/call-for-testing-kvm-in-jaunty-proposed.html

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (58976) +246 over last week
  • Critical (26) +1 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (27544) -28 over last week
  • Unassigned (50840) +204 over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (294270) +1346 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 Jaunty

  • Spanish (12849) -39 over last week
  • French (40151) +9 over last week
  • Brazilian Portuguese (50085) -1451 over last week
  • English (United Kingdom) (55813) -2727 over last week
  • Swedish (57006) +239 over last week

Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/

Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week

Ubuntu Brainstorm is a community site geared toward letting you add your ideas for Ubuntu. You can submit your own idea, or vote for or against another idea. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

LoCo News

Ubuntu LoCo Systems admin lessons: Massachusetts LoCo

This has been some time in coming but DoctorMo has announce that the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo will be running an event every Wednesday 7pm-9pm(Local time) at the South End Technology Center with the aim to teach budding new Ubuntu systems administrators how to best administrate an Ubuntu Server and Desktop network. Event Link: http://www.ubuntu-massachusetts.com/events/4/

The lessons are free and are student driven, with teachers on hand to guide, answer questions and start off each section. Each student is expected to learn in their own time and pick up each section as they past the previous and prior requirements are existing Ubuntu Desktop experience and familiarity with computers. The lessons do not provide certification or any other official qualification, but will be heavily practical.

This will be in addition to the existing successful Learn Ubuntu Desktop sessions we do on Tuesday evenings but aimed at students who want to go further into the field of systems administration. Computer support and other queries will not be dealt with and people needing Ubuntu help should continue to come on Tuesdays. http://www.ubuntu-massachusetts.com/events/1/

http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/ubuntu-loco-systems-admin-lessons-in-massachusetts/

Launchpad News

git-imports

As you might have heard already, Launchpad can now import code from Git repositories. You can then create Bazaar branches of those Git repos.

For example:

bzr branch lp:git

Thanks to Jelmer for bzr-git (https://launchpad.net/bzr-git) and Michael & Paul for tying it into our rock-solid import system.

http://blog.launchpad.net/bazaar/git-imports

Ubuntu Forums News

Tutorial of the Week

tinivole (http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=490875, a moderator on the forums) has put together all the instructions to solve problems when using NViDIA video cards of the 8400 series and up. He is actively supporting his tutorial and many people have given input. Debugging steps are suggested if all does not go as per the book, as well as reverting the changes and going back to the ubuntu supported drivers.

The tutorial, HowTo: NViDIA 185.18 Drivers in Ubuntu, is located here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1125400

Enjoy and see you soon!

Ubuntu Community Interviews

This week, please meet with panickedthumb (http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=1132), who joined the forums in October, 2004 and has been a moderator since November, same year. He started with Ubuntu when the distribution did not have a name, yet, and has never looked back. He also started and co-admins the Virginia Ubuntu LoCo team. Travis is very fun to work with and hosts part of the forums memory. Well done, PT!

http://matthewhelmke.net/2009/07/08/an-interview-with-travis-newman/

The Planet

The Ubuntu Museum

Earlier, Steve Langasek reminded us that Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) reaches its end of support on the desktop next week (July 14, 2009). So, it's time for a little nostalgia!

As the maintainer of Ubuntu's KVM package, Dustin Kirkland has spend quite a bit of his time regression testing the virtualization stack (kvm, qemu, libvirt, virt-manager, etc). In doing so, he has constructed a massive archive of virtual machine images.

About 6 months ago, Jamie Strandboge and Dustin kicked around the idea of creating a series of "Linux museums", honoring our heritage by providing download-able virtual appliance images that could run under KVM. Jamie is currently working on something like this for Debian's releases.

Dustin is pleased to introduce his contribution...The Ubuntu Museum! Here: http://people.ubuntu.com/%7Ekirkland/Museum/

  • screenshots (png) of each Ubuntu desktop release
  • screencasts (mpeg) of each Ubuntu boot and shutdown sequence
  • virtual machine images (bzip2, qcow2) of each retired Ubuntu desktop release

The virtual machine images are:

  • default i386 desktop installations
  • with all packages updated to their final resting state
  • the username and password are both "ubuntu"

Obviously, these releases are completely unsupported and the images are provided for entertainment and educational purposes only!

Since Dustin started using Ubuntu with the Breezy release, he found it quite educational to play around with Warty and Hoary--a bit of Ubuntu history he was missing. It was interesting to see the evolution of the artwork and color schemes. He found some strange satisfaction hitting a few old, memorable bugs and then thinking "boy am I glad we fixed that!" It is also pretty cool to see how much we've improved startup and shutdown times.

Dustin recently attended an excellent presentation by Colin Watson on the history of the Debian and Ubuntu installers. Colin made the point that it's important to know where we've been, when we're trying to figure out where we're going.

Hopefully some of you will enjoy this trip down memory lane and perhaps learn something too!

http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/07/ubuntu-museum.html

Karmic Wallpapers

Ubuntu would like to include a beautiful set of images for our users to choose from in our next release. In order to accomplish this we have set up a wiki page to explain things and guidelines for inclusion. In addition we've started a flickr group to attract current flickr users and encourage new contributors to step up and take the plunge. If you have amazing photos which you would like to share with the world, please add them to the list!

http://kwwii.blogspot.com/2009/07/karmic-wallpapers.html

In The Press

Ubuntu's maker: Chrome OS 'no slam dunk' just because Google announces it

Ubuntu's maker, Canonical Ltd., is defiant that it can maintain its edge in the desktop Linux space despite Google Inc.'s upcoming Chrome operating system. Google may possess brand recognition and engineering resources that dwarf the 200-employee, reported $30-million-yearly-revenue Canonical, but Chrome OS's ascent "is no slam dunk just because you make an announcement," says Gerry Carr, marketing manager for Canonical. Carr told Computerworld today that building a user-friendly operating system is "harder than putting a new feature on a search engine."

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135365/Ubuntu_s_maker_Chrome_OS_no_slam_dunk_just_because_Google_announces_it?source=rss_opsys

Koala will be 'a definitive shift' for Ubuntu Linux

Linux Format Magazine did an interview of Mark Shuttleworth in which he answers questions about Karmic Koala and beyond. The questions are listed below, with Mark's answers at the link.

  • Do you have big goals for the next 10 releases? You're dictator for life – is it really life, or like the British penal system where you get off after six years?
  • The GNU Hurd?
  • We're looking forward to Koala. You've said that 'boot will be beautiful' – care to explain more?
  • Are you thinking of Plymouth or something else entirely?
  • One of the most talked about things so far is the retention of 'no brown'. Are you thinking greens?
  • Presumably, you're not going back to the controversial semi-naked people approach?

  • We talked to Steve McIntyre recently (Debian's Project Leader) and he says he has a great relationship with the guys at Canonical. Do you think there's more work to do to streamline the flow from upstream?

  • Elsewhere upstream, Greg Kroah-Hartman gave an interesting speech at the Kernel Summit 2008. He said there were 100 kernel patches in the last three years from Canonical, putting you in 79th position…

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/koala-will-be-a-definitive-shift-for-ubuntu-linux-613835

Ubuntu’s Jono Bacon: Open Source Code Priority Should Begin at Security, then Quality, then Performance

http://blog.coverity.com/posts/voices-of-scan-community/ubuntus-jono-bacon-open-source-code-priority-should-begin-at-security-then-quality-then-performance

Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu

http://education.zdnet.com/?p=2770

Jono Bacon on the Value of Good Communities

http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/07/jono-bacon-on-the-value-of-goo.html

Smoother Transitions to Ubuntu With Virtual Machines and Wubi

http://www.linuxloop.com/2009/07/09/smoother-transitions-to-ubuntu-with-virtual-machines-and-wubi/

What to expect from the next version of Ubuntu

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/what-to-expect-from-the-next-version-of-ubuntu-614458

In The Blogosphere

Is Google Stealing Ubuntu’s Thunder?

Joe Panettieri of Works With U looks at the new competition along with the old competition to Ubuntu. Already facing Google Android and Intel Moblin, along with the competition from Red Hat and Novell and, of course, Windows 7 coming out in October, 2009, now Google is announcing Chrome OS for netbooks. So far, it would appear that Dell is sticking with Ubuntu for netbooks, notebooks and PCs. Read more of his comments at: http://www.workswithu.com/2009/07/08/is-google-stealing-ubuntus-thunder/

Mono Now Safe?

Patrick Regan of Works With U, after his disclaimer of not being a lawyer, takes on the thorny question of Mono. Microsoft’s Community Promise only applies to implementations that fully comply with the given specification before releasing. ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Windows.Forms, and others are not covered under the Community Promise. In response to this, the Mono project is going to split their code up into two different pieces. One that is just the implementation of the two specifications covered by today’s announcement, and another with all the uncovered technologies. Most of the C#/Mono projects that are included in Ubuntu and others do not use the higher technologies that are not covered by the Community Promise. This means that packages like Tomboy are most likely safe from legal threats. Read the whole article at: http://www.workswithu.com/2009/07/07/mono-now-safe/

Stop piling on Mono already

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Cyber Cynic for ComputerWorld, would like people to "get a grip". It only makes sense to him that open-source developers should work on projects that help with Windows/Linux interoperability. His position is that if people feel that programs like Tomboy and Banshee shouldn't be written with Mono, then they should re-write the code in some other language/framework. See the rest of his comments at: http://blogs.computerworld.com/stop_piling_on_mono_already

KDE 4.3 RC1 in Kubuntu 9.04 - Overview & Screenshots

Craciun Dan, writing for TuxArena, presents screenshots and comments on the new KDE 4.3 RC1 as installed in Kubuntu 9.04. He's not particularly happy with the new look of Plasma (now called Air). According to the announcement[1] on the KDE official website, this release got many Plasma improvements, several game updates, PolicyKit integration, and several other changes or improvements.

  1. http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.3-rc1.php

http://tuxarena.blogspot.com/2009/07/kde-43-rc1-in-kubuntu-904-overview.html

Ubuntu Sets Example by Defying Mono Threats

Christopher Tozzi, of Works With U, takes a stand with the Ubuntu Technical Board that Ubuntu should continue making use of Mono and Mono-developed applications like Tomboy and F-Spot. It is his contention that, since no legal action has been taken against developers, distributions or end users, that we shouldn't be paniced by just the possible threat of such action. He also feels that Ubuntu is leading the way by taking such a stand in favour of innovation and the advancement of free software. http://www.workswithu.com/2009/07/06/ubuntu-sets-example-by-defying-mono-threats/

Dell is sticking with Ubuntu

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Cyber Cynic for ComputerWorld, went looking to find out whether the rumors about Dell and Desktop Linux offerings were true. He feels that the rumors started when people noticed that Dell's Desktop PC offerings no longer listed Linux as an option. After contacting Anne Camden, a Dell spokesperson, he found that they are transitioning to a current generation of desktop models, and that the page should be updated soon. See all his comments at: http://blogs.computerworld.com/dell_is_sticking_with_ubuntu

How Chrome OS Will Help Ubuntu

Christopher Tozzi, of Works With U, feels that Google Chrome OS will follow the same path that other netbook Linux offerings have taken: that confirmed Windows users will be upset that their favorite programs won't run on it. However, due to Google's prominent visual position in the world, the fact that they're offering something OTHER than a Microsoft OS will show people that there really are other operating systems than just Microsoft and Apple. Read what he has to say at: http://www.workswithu.com/2009/07/10/how-chrome-os-will-help-ubuntu/

In Other News

Ubuntu Podcast #30

http://ubuntupodcast.net/2009/07/04/ubuntu-podcast-episode-30/

Ubuntu User Magazine

Ken Hess has just taken a look at Ubuntu User, the new magazine from the same people who publish Linux Pro Magazine. Issued 4 4times a year for a $40 US subscription price (or $15.99 individual issue price), this magazine focuses on Ubuntu with articles by Marcel Gagne and Jono Bacon, a Q&A section by Ubuntu Forum guy Mike Basinger, a New Features section and in-depth interviews. Read more at: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4501.html#

Meeting Summaries

Ubuntu Server Team Meeting: July 7th

Here are the minutes of the meeting. They can also be found online with the irc logs here.

  • ubuntu-tips: nijaba added more rules to the server tips wiki page. The main rules are that tips should not be any longer than 2 lines of 80 characters and they should be relevant to packages in main.
  • Merges: kirkland reminded that Debian Import Freeze was in effect and that the goal was to get all of the outstanding merges done by Feature Freeze on August 27. Working on merges is one great way to gain experience in order to become a MOTU.
  • Drbd: ivoks reported that he had been working on a new package for Ubuntu that used dkms. The package is currently available from the Ubuntu HA PPA and is waiting to be pushed in Karmic. The Debian maintainers have also shown interest in using a DKMS-enabled package.

  • Cluster stack: RoAkSoAx and ivoks worked on updating the cluster stack in the ubuntu-ha team. pacemaker, openais and corosync have been fixed and some of them are available from the Ubuntu HA PPA.

  • Php 5.3: zul and ajmitch have been looking at getting php 5.3 in karmic. 5.3 has been uploaded to experimental to get more testing there. The big difference with the current version in karmic (5.2) is that the suhosin patch has not been ported to 5.3 yet. The security team doesn’t feel comfortable with shipping php without the suhosin patch enabled.

It was decided to push 5.3 into a PPA to get wider testing from the Ubuntu community. Once the suhosin patch is ported to 5.3 and enabled in the build 5.3 can be uploaded to karmic.

An ubuntu-php-team should also be created to handle the maintenance of the php PPA. There have also been some requests for backported versions of php. A PPA and -backports are options to handle this use case.

  • Agree on next meeting date and time: Next meeting will be on Tuesday, July 14th at 15:00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting.

http://ubuntuserver.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/server-team-20090707-meeting-minutes/

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Sunday, July 12, 2009

  • None listed as of publication

Monday, July 13, 2009

  • None listed as of publication

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Asia Oceania Membership Board Meeting

Technical Board Meeting

  • Start: 14:00 UTC
  • End: 15:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Server Team Meeting

Desktop Team Meeting

Kernel Team Meeting

  • Start: 17:00 UTC
  • End: 18:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: Not listed as of publication

Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Ubuntu Learning Team Meeting

Foundation Team Meeting

  • Start: 16:00 UTC
  • End: 17:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

QA Team Meeting

Ubuntu-ie LoCo IRC Meeting

  • Start: 20:00 UTC
  • End: 21:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-ie
  • Agenda: None listed as of publicaation

Ubuntu-us-pa LoCo Team Meeting

  • Start: 20:30 EDT
  • End: 21:30 EDT
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-us-pa
  • Agenda: None as of publication

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Ubuntu Java Meeting

  • Start: 14:00 UTC
  • End: 15:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Ubuntu Translations Meeting

Global Jam Meeting

  • Start: 18:00 UTC
  • End: 19:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Packaging Training: Mono packaging: quick, easy, and awesome (directhex)

Ubuntu Mobile Team Meeting

  • Start: 21:00 UTC
  • End: 22:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: None listed as of publication

Friday, July 17, 2009

Karmic Weekly Release Meeting

Saturday, July 18, 2009

  • None listed as of publication

Community Spotlight

Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

  • None Reported

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

Ubuntu 8.10 Updates

Ubuntu 9.04 Updates

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:

  • John Crawford
  • Craig A. Eddy
  • Dave Bush
  • Nathan Handler
  • Liraz Siri
  • And many others

Glossary of Terms

Ubuntu - Get Involved

The Ubuntu community consists of individuals and teams, working on different aspects of the distribution, giving advice and technical support, and helping to promote Ubuntu to a wider audience. No contribution is too small, and anyone can help. It's your chance to get in on all the community fun associated with developing and promoting Ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate

Feedback

This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Weekly News Team. If you have a story idea or suggestions for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list at https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Ubuntu-news-team and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Ideas. 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 them to ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com.

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