Issue52

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WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 52 for the week August 5th - August 11th, 2007. In this issue we cover ...

UWN Translations

In This Issue

General Community News

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2007-August/000324.html (tribe 4 released) - don't need frozen info

Ubuntu Live Conference on Flickr

For those of us who couldn't attend the Ubuntu Live Conference in Portland, OR, we were left wondering what we really missed. Did everyone have as much fun as they said, were there really meeting rooms full of Ubuntu users with their laptops fired up while listening to the keynote address, and did Mark Shuttleworth really don a mutilcolored jump suit and hang on an inflated bag? Follow the link to see all these and more. You won't be sorry, but you'll probably want to start making plans to attend Ubuntu Live 2008. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ubuntulive07/

LoCo News

US Loco Teams Project Has New Forum Page

On August 6, 2007 the US Loco Teams Project got it's own forum page in the US Loco Teams section of the Ubuntu Forums. This new forum is intended to help get information and news to the existing state loco teams. It will also give the project exposure in the forums, a vast resource of potential members for the teams. The first posting is a sticky that explains how to join or start a US State Loco. Please keep you eye on this new resource for the US Teams Project, as we plan to post use it to its potential. http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=284

US Must Work Hard to Keep Momentum

It's no secret that the recent Digg article was a huge boast to the US Loco Teams Project. But the work is far from over, and we must all concentrate our efforts order to meet our goals. We still need new teams in the following states: Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, North Dakota and West Virginia. Therefore, the US Teams Project is calling on the Ubuntu Community to lend a hand in helping us reach our goal. If you are an alumnus from a college in one of these states, if you have relatives or friends living in one of these states, or maybe you have business associations with people living in one of these states. Whatever your connection, send them an email, or better yet, pick up the phone and make direct contact. Ubuntu advocacy is the heart of the Ubuntu Community, and the US Teams Project is advocacy at its best. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/USTeams/TeamList

Community Hosted Servers Compromised

This last week, 5 of the 8 servers that are loco hosted but Canonical sponsored, had to be shut down due to reports that they were actively attacking other machines. These servers were found to have a variety of problems including, but not limited to, missing security patches, FTP (not sftp, without SSL) was being used to access the machines, and no upgrades past breezy due to problems with the network cards and later kernels. Loco teams will be given a choice to: a. migrated to the Canonical data center. or b. stay on the hosted/outsourced servers. Each option has its good and bad points. Jono Bacon has therefore called for a meeting to discuss these issues. The meeting will be in IRC #ubuntu-locoteams on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 at 2:00PM UTC.

New in Gutsy Gibbon

Launchpad News

Launchpad Users Meeting 16.00 UTC 15th August 2007, #launchpad. Join the Launchpad team in #launchpad to discuss what's coming up in the next version of Launchpad and to ask your questions, make your suggestions or air your complaints!

Agenda at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaunchpadUserMeeting/2007-08-15

In The Press

  • Shuttleworth: Microsoft Fracturing the Open-Source Community - Microsoft has succeeded in fracturing the Linux and open-source community with the patent indemnity agreements it has entered into with several prominent vendors. It's strategy is to drive a wedge into the open source community and unsettle the marketplace. Also at issue is the fact that Microsoft has not disclosed the 235 patent claims it says are being violated by Linux and other open source software. "That's extortion and we should call it what it is," he said. "To say, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did, that there is undisclosed balance sheet liability, that's just extortion and we should refuse to get drawn into that game. On the other side, if Microsoft is concerned about its intellectual property, there is no one in the free software community that wants to violate anyone's IP. Disclose the patents and we'll fix the code. Alternatively, move on." http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2167193,00.asp

  • Telco Dumps Red Hat for Ubuntu - Australian mobile service provider has replaced its Red Hat enterprise distribution with Ubuntu Linux, claims no downtime in eight months. Locatrix founder and CEO, Mark White, said the company did a lot of early development on Solaris but wanted to move to rack-mounted Intel servers, which initially ran Red Hat Linux. White said the reasons for moving from the pay-for Red Hat to the zero-cost Ubuntu was not so much about the price, as Locatrix still runs a bit of Red Hat for front-end workloads, but was more about Ubuntu's ability to install new software seamlessly.http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135545-c,linux/article.html

  • Lenovo laptops now with Linux - Lenovo Group, the world's No 3 PC maker, has said it would start selling laptop computers preloaded with Linux software from Novell Inc instead of Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system. The laptops are slated to go on sale in the fourth quarter of this year and will be sold to Lenovo's business customers as well as to consumers. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, who runs privately held Canonical In. which sells service contracts to maintain Ubuntu software, said in an interview last month that he expects Dell to expand its Linux PC program. He also said that he is in negotiations with other large PC makers that want to introduce models preloaded with Ubuntu. http://infotech.indiatimes.com/Lenovo_laptops_now_with_Linux/articleshow/2261753.cms

  • Sun Microsystems Enters Commercial Silicon Market With World's Fastest Commodity Microprocessor - Sun Microsystems, Inc., today announced the world's fastest commodity microprocessor, the UltraSPARC(R) T2, as the cornerstone of its merchant portfolio of microelectronics. Available for sale separate from Sun's own systems, this new processor is the industry's first volume processor with eight cores and eight threads per core. Formerly known as the "Niagara 2" project, the UltraSPARC T2's world-record performance raises the bar on commodity processors while boasting the industry's highest energy efficiency per thread. With each thread capable of running its own operating system, the chip delivers a whopping 64-way system on a single chip. Sun will provide the UltraSPARC T2 processor design to the free and open source community via the GPL license.http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/AQTU13607082007-1.htm

  • Linux for Consumers in the U.K. France, and Germany - It's official: Dell announced that consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany can order an Inspiron 6400 notebook or an Inspiron 530N desktop with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed. Since we began offering Ubuntu in the United States back in May, it's no secret that we've received many requests from customers all over the world to offer Linux there. This represents another step in broadening that offering. Similar to what we've done in the United States, we will configure and install open source drivers for hardware, when possible for these new products. http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/08/07/23816.aspx

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3693511

  • The Linux Action Show! Episode 56 - We cover our favorite new features in KDE4’s latest beta, we debunk CIO magazines eight reasons to NOT use Linux in the Enterprise, IBM announces a savings of $250 million big ones, we go over the results of 3D gaming with the new completely fair scheduler - which is completely awesome, and we share our coverage of the Ubuntu Live conference. http://www.linuxactionshow.com/?p=134 (podcast that has some stuff from Ubuntu Live)

In The Blogosphere

  • Dell hails 2008 as the year of the corporate Linux desktop - The advent of desktop virtualisation will provide the missing link for Linux to shine on the corporate desktop, Dell chief technology officer Kevin Kettler predicted in a keynote speech at the Linuxworld conference in San Francisco. - http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2196193/dell-hails-2008-corporate-linux

Meetings and Events

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Ubuntu Server Team Meeting

Technical Board Meeting

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Edubuntu Meeting

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Ubuntu Development Team Meeting

  • Start: 20:00 UTC
  • End: 22:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
  • Agenda: No agenda set as of this publication

Community Spotlight

Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, and 7.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

Ubuntu 6.10 Updates

Ubuntu 7.04 Updates

Bug Stats

  • Open (31355) +65 # over last week
  • Critical (18) -1 # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (15639) +137 # over last week
  • Unassigned (23492) +63 # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (113612) +1067 # 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

  1. Spanish (23686) -271 # over last week
  2. French (38777) +15 # over last week
  3. Swedish (54562) +156 # over last week
  4. English-UK (60347) +142 # over last week
  5. German (63255) +209 # over last week

Remaining string to translate in Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy/

UWN #: A sneak peek

What is it?

This week's closeup is the icon for a common application. Please submit your guesses at <linktoforums>.

attachment:whatisit.jpg

Last week's closeup was a Pentium 200 w/ MMX tech (SL23W/2.8V). We have no absolute winner, but the three closest were:

  • DraK
  • scorpion-kde
  • esters

Archives and RSS Feed

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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:

  • Nick Ali
  • Dawid van Wyngaard
  • John Crawford
  • And many others

RSS

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Feedback

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