Issue69

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WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 69 for the week December 2nd - December 8th, 2007. In this issue we cover...

UWN Translations

In This Issue

General Community News

MPAA Forced To Take Down University Toolkit

Ubuntu developer Matthew Garrett has succeeded in getting the MPAA to remove their 'University Toolkit' after claims it violated the GNU GPL. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact the MPAA directly, Garrett eventually emailed the group's ISP and the violating software was taken down. On Oct. 24, MPAA sent a letter to the presidents of 25 universities that the association had identified as top locations for the downloading of pirated movies over online file-sharing networks. The MPAA's Toolkit software was designed to pinpoint students who may be using the University's networks to illegally download pirated movies. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/04/015229

Kubuntu Tutorials Day

On Thursday, December 13th, the Kubuntu developers are holding their first ever “Tutorials Day.” The Tutorials Day will contain talks, tutorials, and a Q&A session about the development of Kubuntu. With KDE4 only a month away, now is the time to get involved in becoming a Kubuntu developer. The Kubuntu developers have set up the IRC sessions below to get you started. The sessions begin at 15:00 UTC on IRC (#kubuntu-devel on Freenode) and will consist of six different topics.

  • 15:00: Packaging 101
  • 16:00: Kubuntu Bug Triage
  • 16:30: Branch your svn with bzr
  • 17:00: Get programming with PyKDE4
  • 18:00: Get your work into Kubuntu

  • 19:00: Kubuntu and KDE Q&A

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1257 kubuntu tutorials day

LoCo News

New in Gutsy Gibbon

Launchpad News

Ubuntu Forum News

UF interviews

bodhi.azaen has agreed to be our next forum interview in December. A father of 4 living in Montana, he heads the UF Beginner Team, writes documentation (How-Longs, eheh!), contributes to Fluxbuntu and is a moderator on the forums. He is also involved locally. He refurbishes donated hardware to give to the needy and teaches Linux in the local Adult Learning Center. Read more here: http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/08/an-interview-with-bodhizazen/

In The Press

  • First Linux book in Macedonian - The first private university – European University promoted the book Ubuntu Linux by the authors Sime Arsenovski and Gjorgji Kakashevski. The book aims at supporting the idea, development and use of open source software. This is the first book on Ubuntu Linux and on Linux in general, published in Macedonian language. This book is intended for the beginners, who are coming across Linux, but also for the ones that are shifting from Microsoft Windows to Linux. The book describes the method of use of the latest version of Ubuntu – 7.10, which is localized in Macedonian language. http://www.metamorphosis.org.mk/content/view/997/4/lang,en/ (Macedonian Ubuntu book)

  • Dethroning Ubuntu -- What Would It Take? - Many people are looking to Ubuntu to be something that it is not: A mass market ready operating system designed to work with the same level of compatibility as Microsoft Windows. Ubuntu has a long way to go before catching up to other closed source operating systems with regard to GUI usability. For any Linux distribution to become remotely successful in the "non-geeky" world, it will mean developers catering to people who never want to hear the words configure, tweak, alter or update ever again. Dethroning Ubuntu is less about doing it with the specific distribution and more about being realistic about what new Linux users actually need from the overall computing experience. Users simply want a cheaper alternative to Vista and OS X. Because this is where Ubuntu differs in vision, Ubuntu developers will continue to be a runaway hit with computer geeks, yet a total failure in the market place without some sort of realistic OEM-type intervention to get the distro onto standardized hardware. http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3714986

  • Ubuntu 7.10 on PS3: Installation guide and first impressions - Learn how to install Ubuntu Gutsy (as a second OS) on your PlayStation 3 gaming console. This article will give you step by step instructions for preparing and installing Gutsy on your PS3. The conclusions follows: Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon has greatly been improved for the PS3 hardware. It can now recognize all the components of your PS3 console, like the Blu-ray unit, the Gelic network card, USB and Bluetooth ports, and the sound system! Even if the installation part takes around 40 minutes (four times longer than on a regular PC), Ubuntu proved to be quite fast on the PS3 console. Visit the link for the instructions and screenshots. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ubuntu-7-10-on-PS3-73272.shtml

http://www.register-herald.com/business/local_story_335231832.html?keyword=secondarystory

In The Blogosphere

  • Linux Is About To Take Over The Low End Of PC's - Opinion -- Sometimes, several unrelated changes come to a head at the same time, with a result no one could have predicted. The PC market is at such a tipping point right now and the result will be millions of Linux-powered PCs in users' hands. Four trends: user-friendly Linux desktops, useful under-$500 laptops and desktops, near-universal broadband, and business-ready Internet office applications. Put them together and you have a revolution. For the last two decades, we've been buying expensive desktop operating systems on business PCs running from $1,000 to $2,000. On those systems, we've been putting pricey desktop-centric office suites like Microsoft Office. That's a lot of money, and the convergence of the above trends is about to knock it for a loop. In the next few quarters, low-end Linux-based PCs are going to quickly take over the bottom rung of computing. Then, as businesses continue to get comfortable with SAAS (software as a service) and open-source software, the price benefits will start leading them toward switching to the new Linux/SAAS office model. http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2414535067.html

  • Cheap Laptops Bad for Vista, Good for Linux - Opinion: As laptops get cheaper, Linux and Windows XP are both making better business sense than Vista. The good news for everyone is that you can get a good, solid laptop for under a grand these days. The bad news for Vista users is that many of those laptops, even though they're sold with Vista, have nothing like enough resources to run Vista decently. When you see a cheap laptop, you're seeing one that almost certainly has a gigabyte or less RAM and some kind of embedded graphics chip like an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with 8MB to 64MB dynamically allocated shared graphics memory. Here's the point, though: Home Basic offers nothing, zilch, that you can't already get with XP Home. It doesn't even give you Aero as an option. It's not a matter of "if," it's a matter of when we're going to see more Linux-powered laptops. Do the math. Vista doesn't work for today's laptop market. XP and Linux do. It's really that simple. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2222308,00.asp

  • Install and Basic Desktop Video - John Bradbury takes us on a video tour of his first experiences of Ubuntu. In this first of three videos, he shows: installation, updating, installing software, and pen drive recognition. His general impressions are very favorable and you can almost hear the surprise in his voice as things progress. Installation was straight forward and quick, taking only 12 mins. to install. Updates for the new install numbered 88 and John was impressed that he was getting not only system updates, but also software updates. After installing the updates he decided to try installing a piece of software. His impression after installing virtaulbox was that he could hardly believe how easy synaptic made it. His final trial for his new Ubuntu system was to see if it would recognize his pen drive, which it did without problem. After his first day of exploring Ubuntu, John was very favorable impression with the easy of use of Linux and Ubuntu. http://www.johnbradbury.com/ubuntu-video-first-impressions/

  • Ubuntu: Office Functionality - Day two of John Bradbury's video tour of Ubuntu, this one concentrates on the functionality of the Open Office software and file support. The first thing he does is to mount his pen drive and copy some document files made in Windows Office and test that they are compatibility with Open Office. All the documents John tried opened and allowed him to edit on command. He also tried to throw in a PDF file, a .vsd file and a .iso file. The PDF file opened write off, and the .iso file showed that he could write it to disc, something windows wouldn't do. The .vsd file was not compatible out of the box. According to John, native file support is vastly superior to Windows. John also tested flash support which had to added via a plug in, and printer support via plug and play. Another very satisfactory day with Ubuntu. http://www.johnbradbury.com/ubuntu-video-office-functionality/

http://www.johnbradbury.com/ubuntu-video-multimedia-support/

In Other News

Meetings and Events

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

New York LoCo Meeting

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Kubuntu Developers Meeting

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Kubuntu Developers Meeting

Forums Council Meeting

Friday, December 14, 2007

MOTU Q&A session

  • Start: 13:00 UTC
  • End: 14:00 UTC
  • Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-classroom
  • Agenda: No agenda listed as of the publication

Community Spotlight

Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, 7.04, and 7.10

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

Ubuntu 6.10 Updates

Ubuntu 7.04 Updates

Ubuntu 7.10 Updates

Bug Stats

  • Open (37996) +122 # over last week
  • Critical (20) +2 # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (19421) -708 # over last week
  • Unassigned (28575) -448 # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (139158) +1145 # 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 (28125) -904 # over last week
  2. French (40844) -4 # over last week
  3. Swedish (55305) +/-0 # over last week
  4. English-UK (46914) -87 # over last week
  5. German (67394) +/-0 # 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

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Additional Ubuntu News

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Conclusion

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

See you next week!

Credits

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

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  • Craig A. Eddy
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RSS

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Glossary of Terms

  • MPAA - Motion Picture Association of America
  • OEM - Original Equipment Manufacturer
  • SAAS - Software As A Service

Feedback

If you would like to submit an idea or story you think is worth appearing on the UWN, please send them to [email protected]. This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Marketing Team. Please feel free to contact us regarding any concerns or suggestions by either sending an email to [email protected] or by using any of the other methods on the Ubuntu Marketing Team Contact Information Page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam). 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 then [email protected].