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Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #181 for the week February 14th - February 20th, 2010. 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.

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In This Issue

General Community News

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

• Open (#) +/- # over last week
• Critical (#) +/- # over last week
• Unconfirmed (#) +/- # 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 Karmic

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 9.10 "Karmic Koala", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/

Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week

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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

New in Karmic Koala

Launchpad News

Meet Jelmer Vernooij

Jelmer Vernooij recently joined the Launchpad team at Canonical, and Matthew Revell caught up with him to give him the usual Meet the developers interview. Matthew asked Jelmer what he will be doing with the Launchpad team, where he works, how he got into free software, and more. Follow this link to read the following interview between Matthew and Jelmer: http://blog.launchpad.net/meet-the-devs/meet-jelmer-vernooij

Sikuli — scripting your use of GUIs

The Sikuli project recently switched to using Launchpad, and Matthew Revell asked Tsung-Hsiang Chang to tell us more about the project. From the interview we learn that the current release of Sikuli is called Sikuli Script, which focuses on only automation using screenshots of GUI widgets. We have another project called Sikuli Search, which queries a search engine using screenshots instead of keywords. Although Sikuli Script is supposed to be able to “search” buttons or text on the screen, it isn’t good at scraping or analyzing information from screenshots yet. Follow this link to learn more about Sikuli: http://blog.launchpad.net/projects/sikuli

Ubuntu Forums News

In The Press

Ubuntu 10.04's Nouveau Stack Gets Ready

Phoronix's Michael Larabel states that one of the slated features for Ubuntu 10.04 early on in its development cycle was support for the Nouveau graphics driver on NVIDIA hardware since it's much better than the xf86-video-nv driver mess and has a much brighter future, which is especially important with 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" being a Long-Term Support (LTS) release. This was prior to Nouveau going mainline with Linux 2.6.33, but Ubuntu Lucid is running with the Linux 2.6.32 kernel so as a result Nouveau's DRM was back-ported. Canonical's Bryce Harrington describes this Nouveau stack as being "nearly ready" for Lucid and is requesting a final test among those interested in the open-source NVIDIA graphics hardware support. If you are interested in testing out Ubuntu 10.04's Nouveau stack you can do so by following this call [1] for testing thread and checking out the Nouveau evaluation Wiki page. [2]

• [1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2010-February/030231.html

  [2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Testing/NouveauEvaluation

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzk3OQ

EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs Ubuntu Netbook Benchmarks

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reminds us that last month he published benchmarks of EXT4 comparing this file-system's performance when it was first marked stable in the mainline kernel and then where it is at now in the Linux kernel while testing every major release in between. This article was followed up by a Btrfs versus EXT4 comparison using the Linux 2.6.33 kernel to see how the two most talked about Linux file-systems are battling it out with the latest kernel. After those Linux file-system benchmarks were published, he received a request from Canonical to look at the EXT3 performance too. With that said, we have done just that and have published EXT3, EXT4, and Btrfs benchmarks from Ubuntu 9.10 and a Ubuntu 10.04 development snapshot from an Intel Atom netbook. Under Ubuntu 9.10, the Intel Atom N270 netbook did the best with Btrfs and its numbers even improved with Ubuntu 10.04, but the EXT4 file-system had a much stronger boost that led it to a first place finish. The performance between EXT3 and EXT4 was close at unpacking the Linux kernel linux-2.6.32.tar.bz2 file, but Btrfs was a bit slower. More Linux file-system tests are on the way! http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_netbook_fs&num=1

Ubuntu One Music Store Pushed In Rhythmbox

Michael Larabel of Phoronix tells us that one of the features that was talked about and proposed a few months back was a music store for Ubuntu where one could easily purchase music and somewhat fits in with Canonical's plans for the Ubuntu Software Store. Plans were laid out for an Ubuntu One Music Store and the first packages to support this in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS are now available. The Lucid specifications for the Ubuntu One Music Store on the Ubuntu Wiki mention "The Lucid music store project aims to deliver the ability to purchase music from within a desktop music player. Look for more on Canonical's Ubuntu One Music Store as the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS release approaches in April. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzk5Ng

The Linux Box to Market Ubuntu OS in the U.S.

eWeek's Darryl K. Taft reports that the Linux Box has announced a partnership with Canonical whereby it will market the Ubuntu Linux operating system in the United States. As a Canonical Silver Solution Provider Partner, The Linux Box will sell, install and support customized Ubuntu-based solutions to organizations running Linux systems. It will also provide businesses with large-scale migration deployment support and training services for cloud computing infrastructures and enterprise desktop alternatives. "Combining forces with The Linux Box enables many more U.S. businesses in every industry to embrace Ubuntu as their end-to-end open-source data center solution," said Steve George, director of corporate services at Canonical, in a statement. "We look forward to Ubuntu being The Linux Box's best-of-breed open-source solution." http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/The-Linux-Box-to-Market-Ubuntu-OS-in-the-US-568799/?kc=rss&utm_source=fee

Ubuntu Optimizes its OS for ARM CPUs

Ryan Whitwam of Maximum PC believes that an ARM-based netbook running Ubuntu could be in your future with the newest version of Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Much like Windows, the popular Linux distro did not previously have support for ARM processors. With the anticipated flood of ARM packing “smartbooks” expected to materialize, the Ubuntu devs got to work rewriting Ubuntu. According to Ubuntu’s Jamie Bennet, the problem was that Ubuntu Netbook Edition required 3D graphics drivers that didn’t exist for ARM chips. They got around this by employing 2D Enlightenment Foundation Libraries to fake a 3D interface. We’re hearing that you won’t be able to tell the difference in the interface. That’s a big win for smartbooks and Ubuntu. This may be the space that Ubuntu specifically, and Linux in general, can succeed in. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/ubuntu_optimizes_its_os_arm_cpus

In The Blogosphere

Are smartbooks and Linux meant for each other?

http://soltesza.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/are-smartbooks-and-linux-meant-for-each-other/

Five Best Netbook Operating Systems

http://lifehacker.com/5471394/five-best-netbook-operating-systems?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+lifehacker/full+(Lifehacker)

5 New Things about Windows 8 and Ubuntu 10.04

http://linuxtree.blogspot.com/2010/02/5-new-things-about-windows-8-and-ubuntu.html

Canonical Launches Ubuntu Single Sign On

http://www.workswithu.com/2010/02/18/canonical-launches-ubuntu-single-sign-on/

Lubuntu: Not Just for Lusers

http://www.workswithu.com/2010/02/16/lubuntu-not-just-for-lusers/

In Other News

Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 gets ported onto Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1

Engadget's Darren Murph comments that not even a fortnight after we saw Android 2.0.1 slapped onto Sony Ericsson's all-but-forgotten Xperia X1, along comes a port that makes the other look like child's play. A dedicated coder over at XDA Developers has managed to stuff Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 onto an X1, and while the functionality is limited, the amount of fun to be had is restrained only by your imagination. Go on and peek that source link[1] to join the discussion.

• [1] http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=631437

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/17/ubuntu-hardy-heron-8-04-gets-ported-onto-sony-ericssons-xperia/

Ubuntu torrents are now IPv6 enabled

Since february third, the official Ubuntu torrents found on releases.ubuntu.com include an IPv6-enabled tracker in the announce list. This means that we are one step further in getting Ubuntu downloadable over IPv6.

Clients connected only via IPv6 (which are unfortunatly rare, but still) can download the torrent from the IPv6 enabled releases.ubuntu.com and start downloading the iso via IPv6. There are a few (fast connected) IPv6 enabled seeders around, so downloading should work great.

Stats over the last two weeks show reasonable usage, although we expect more and more users switching to IPv6.

All we need now, is an IPv6 address for www.ubuntu.com.

For more information about IPv6, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipv6

Meeting Summaries: <MONTH> <YEAR>

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Community Spotlight

Updates and Security for 6.06, 8.04, 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

Ubuntu 8.10 Updates

Ubuntu 9.04 Updates

Ubuntu 9.10 Updates

UWN #: A sneak peek

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Conclusion

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See you next week!

Credits

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Glossary of Terms

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