UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue90

Contents

In This Issue
General Community News
1. Ubuntu Brainstorm Growing
2. Newly Approved Members
Ubuntu Stats
1. Bug Stats
2. Translation Stats Hardy
LoCo News
1. Ubuntu Finland receives award from Finland's Minister of Communications
2. Ubuntu Featured on Italian National Television
Launchpad News
1. Your questions for the Launchpad podcast
Ubuntu Forums News
1. Ubuntu Forums Interviews
2. Tutorial of the Week
  1. Complete Guide to Installation in Ubuntu
In The Press
In The Blogosphere
In Other News
1. Ubuntu UK Podcast Episode 5: Everybody Come Aboard
Upcoming Meetings and Events
1. Wednesday, May 14, 2008
  1. Platform Team Meeting
  2. Server Team Meeting
2. Thursday, May 15, 2008
  1. Desktop Team Meeting
Updates and Security for 6.06, 7.04, 7.10, and 8.04
Archives and RSS Feed
Additional Ubuntu News
Conclusion
Credits
Feedback

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 90 for the weeks May 4th - May 10th, 2008. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu Brainstorm Growing, Ubuntu Finland receives award from Finland's Minister of Communications, Ubuntu Featured on Italian TV, submit questions for Launchpad podcast, Forums News and Interviews, Ubuntu UK Podcast Episode 5, and much more.

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

Ubuntu Brainstorm Keeps Growing
Newly Approved Member
Ubuntu Finland Receives Award from Government
Ubuntu Featured on Italian TV
Submit Questions for Launchpad Podcast
Ubuntu Stats
Ubuntu Forum News
In The Press and Blogosphere
In Other News
Upcoming Meetings & Events
Updates & Security

General Community News

Ubuntu Brainstorm Growing

In less than two weeks, the Ubuntu Developer Summit(UDS) will take place, and the best ideas out there will be reviewed! Meanwhile, we just upgraded Ubuntu Brainstorm:

Developer comments
Bookmarks
User infos and stats
New categories lists
Get rid of bug submissions

See the changes at http://blog.qa.ubuntu.com/node/7

Newly Approved Members

Stefan Ebner - Stefan has been working to bring in most of the universe package changes in Debian since the beginning of the year, and has been very active in the development community becoming the 21st most active developer in the Hardy cycle. He also participates in the German language support forums. https://launchpad.net/~sebner

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

Open (45372) +177 # over last week
Critical (31) -2 # over last week
Unconfirmed (22275) -89 # over last week
Unassigned (35905) +152 # over last week
All bugs ever reported (181511) +2815 # 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 Hardy

This is the top 5, not specific languages, so the languages might change week to week.

Spanish (15789)
French (44735)
English (United Kingdom) (55130)
Swedish (58371)
Brazilian Portuguese (68529)

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

LoCo News

Ubuntu Finland receives award from Finland's Minister of Communications

Ubuntu Finland[1] was awarded Finnish Linux User Group's 2008 award at the HP Linux Forum[2], in Helsinki, on 8th of May. The award was received by the team contact of Ubuntu Finland, Timo Jyrinki, and was given by the Finland's Minister of Communications, Suvi Lindén[3]. The award also included 2000€ in cash for Ubuntu Finland's usage.

Honorary mentions were given to Michael 'Monty' Widenius of MySQL fame, and linux.fi[4] for the general Linux-related portal and forums.

The press release (only in Finnish) is available at: http://www.flug.fi/tiedotteet/2008/tiedote-linuxtekija2008.pdf

Ubuntu Featured on Italian National Television

Ubuntu made an appearance on Italian national TV this week. Neapolis[1], a show which focuses on technology and the Internet, led its 8 May 2008 show with a feature about our favourite operating system, Ubuntu.

The show explained the meaning of Ubuntu and its key features: freedom, the six month release cycle, guaranteed security updates, a comprehensive software library, and great community support. Fabio Marzocca, of the Ubuntu-it local community team, made an appearance to explain the significance of the recent Long Term Support release, Ubuntu 8.04, and to describe the active Italian Ubuntu community. The clip also features shots of Ubuntu in action.

If you speak Italian, or just love watching videos featuring Ubuntu, you can listen to the show on the RAI website[2], or on YouTube[3]. Congrats to Fabio and the other Italian community members who helped bring this together.

Launchpad News

Your questions for the Launchpad podcast

On Wednesday 14th May, the Launchpad team records the first show in a brand new Launchpad podcast. Here's your chance to all your questions about Launchpad answered. Just add your questions to their wiki page at: https://help.launchpad.net/Podcast

If you have suggestions for a name for the podcast or some appropriately licensed music for the theme, email feedback@launchpad.net!

Ubuntu Forums News

Ubuntu Forums Interviews

This week, we'll have a glance at Wybiral's from the other side of the computer screen. A free-lance python programmer, he's one of the Programming Talk sub-forum regulars. He's got code in the repos, as he says, so you may be using some of his work. Please read the full interview here: http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/an-interview-with-wybiral/

Tutorial of the Week

Complete Guide to Installation in Ubuntu

For this week's tutorial pick, we step outside the Tutorials and Tips forum again, for something a little more timely and a lot more complex. This guide is a joint effort of forestpixie and starcraft.man on installing in Ubuntu.

It's a thread so huge it takes up four or five posts, just to cover every topic. Don't tackle this one on your lunch hour, because it will take that long just to work your way through the table of contents (yes, there is a table of contents -- it's that big).

In any case, it's a huge endeavor originally presented by starcraft.man and updated for Ubuntu 8.04 by forestpixie. Many thanks to both members, for creating and updating such an impressive guide.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=781352

In The Press

Ubuntu Open Week unites community and developers - What's the next best thing for Linux users who can't attend an open source community conference in person? Online workshops like last week's Ubuntu Open Week [1], where upwards of 300 participants per session showed up to learn more about the popular Linux distribution, the community, and its teams. Organizers presented more than 40 events in a dedicated IRC channel over the course of six days. Session leaders spoke to the group in the 3ubuntu-classroom, while a second channel was devoted to collecting questions from the group. This kept the learning channel free of chatter and allowed the speaker to proceed without interruption. http://www.linux.com/feature/134683
- [1] Session logs - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek
The heron has landed: a review of Ubuntu 8.04 - Ubuntu 8.04, codenamed Hardy Heron, spread its wings and flew out of the nest last month. This is the second Ubuntu release to offer long-term support, which means that critical updates will be available on the desktop for three years and on the server for five years. This review offers a look at:installation including Wubi, Transmission, Brasero, Tracker, PulseAudio, GNOME 2.22, Firefox 3, and Compiz. Conclusion: Ubuntu 7.10 set the standard for power and ease of use for Linux desktop distributions. Ubuntu 8.04 pushes that forward, but trips over its own feet because of the PulseAudio integration problems. The clear failure to improve some of the weak spots that were identified in the 7.10 Trackers mediocre search tool, also detracts from the value of this release. Despite these problems, Ubuntu 8.04 still offers a better and more polished desktop than its predecessor. http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/hardy-heron-review.ars/1
Meet The Hardy Heron: What's New in Ubuntu 8.04 - This newest version was developed under the codename "Hardy Heron." The previous version, 7.10 (once known by the code name of "Gutsy Gibbon") was a rock-solid release that launched in October 2007. Numerous incremental improvements have appeared since – with all the updates freely available and automatically installable. Ubuntu has continued to develop momentum as a reliable, fun to use operating system. http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2008/05/06/meet-the-hardy-heron-whats-new-in-ubuntu-804.html
Time to choose, Ubuntu fans: rage or reason? - His post last week about Ubuntu's embrace of the profit motive (exemplified in sponsor Canonical's release of a proprietary and non-free management tool) triggered a pretty remarkable flood of venom and invective in his direction. Jeff Gould goes on to defend his position concerning Ubuntu's offering the availability of some proprietary software to users. http://www.interopnews.com/news/time-to-choose-ubuntu-fans-rage-or-reason.html
Linux Shootout: 7 Desktop Distros Compared - In this roundup, 7 Linux distributions are compared: openSUSE 10.3, Ubuntu 8.04, PCLinuxOS 2007, Mandriva Linux One 2008, Fedora 8, SimplyMEPIS 7.0, and CentOS 5.1. Ubuntu installed with little or no trouble on all of the test machines, including a VirtualBox instance. One major new change: consoles that normally require administrative access can be launched by a conventional user to inspect settings, but need to be unlocked (with the root password) to make any changes. Power management in Linux seems to be perennially problematic, and in this respect, Ubuntu was no exception. "Wubi" -- a Windows installer for Ubuntu, one-ups the "Upgrade-from-Windows" featured in previous versions. This is easily the best way to try out Ubuntu provisionally. http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207200145&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=
Review: Hardy Heron converts an Ubuntu skeptic - Susan Linton has tried about every Ubuntu release, and had more than her share of issues. With the release of Ubuntu 8.04, she downloaded the i386 version to test. She did have some problems which are documented in the article, and has still not been completely won over by Ubuntu. However, her conclusion states: "I still think the "Ambassador of Linux" should be prettier upon first boot. I'm disappointed in the Ubuntu Nvidia driver handling, but happy that I can finally use my wireless connection in Ubuntu. The functional Migration Assistant, the available Help tool, and refined software stack earn Ubuntu points in helping new users adjust, while the new PolicyKit loses one for overcomplicating an already confusing concept. However, I found little to complain about with this release. In the end, my experience with 8.04 was much better than any version previously. I was actually fairly impressed, darnit." http://www.linux.com/feature/134672

In The Blogosphere

Moving to Ubuntu - Dhruva Sagar installed Ubuntu and now for the past week he has not looked at Windows Vista even once on his laptop. It’s not that he hasn’t worked on linux before, he has worked on several distros for experimenting and learning purposes in the past, but after having worked on Windows Vista for about a year, and then shifting to Ubuntu. It truly helped him see the incredibly huge difference for himself. "Ubuntu is simply miles ahead of Windows Vista (this is only a matter of personal belief), it is really cool and so swift, It’s almost as if it had upgraded my memory!!!" http://www.dhruvasagar.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/06/moving-to-ubuntu/
Ubuntu's OpenGL face browser will bring bling to GDM - The GNOME Display Manager, (GDM), is a component of the GNOME desktop environment that provides a graphical login prompt. It is often the first interactive part of the desktop that users experience after the computer finishes booting. GDM has changed little over the years. GNOME eye-candy expert Mirco Müller, who is employed by Canonical, is currently working on refining the login experience to make it aesthetically richer and more interactive. He is designing an animated face browser for the next generation GNOME display manager, which will be used in a future version of Ubuntu. Although the functional details and visual design haven't been finalized yet, the basic experience is documented in a specification at the Ubuntu wiki. http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/04/29/ubuntus-opengl-face-browser-will-bring-bling-to-gdm
Ubuntu Hardy Heron: Beyond the Hype and into the Dilemma - As the Ubuntu team would undoubtedly be the first to admit, some of the credit that Hardy Heron is receiving is not due to any action on its part beyond the wish to package the latest free software. When reviewers praise Ubuntu for the ability to display clocks for multiple timezones, for example, they really should be praising GNOME for its 2.22 release. Similarly, improved sound capability is due to the option to use PulseAudio rather than ALSA to manage sound, while improved integration of the browser into the desktop is due to the joint efforts of GNOME and Mozilla. However, just as defragging and anti-virus software never existed until they were first bundled with Windows, for many people, these enhancements never existed until bundled with Ubuntu. http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3744341

In Other News

Ubuntu UK Podcast Episode 5: Everybody Come Aboard

Ciemon Dunville, Alan Pope, Dave Walker and Tony Whitmore with Laura Cowen present the fifth episode of the Ubuntu UK Podcast.

Discussion:
- An interview with Pete Savage.
  - progbox.vid
- A chat with Phil Newborough.
  - Random Ubuntu Advocacy
  - Crunchbang Linux
- We rate our Hardy upgrade experiences.
- Following up with our CLI vs GUI discussion with Laura Cowen.
In the news:
- gNewSense release version 2.
- Adobe opening up the FLV specs.
- The UK’s Unix User Group has convinced the High Court to carry out a judicial review of the British Standard Institute’s decision to vote in favour of Microsoft’s controversial Office Open XML (OOXML) specification.
- 30th birthday of spam
- Sun in process of certifying Ubuntu.
Competition results!

The winner of the trivia competition is announced. We’ll send them a coupon for the Canonical Store to spend on whatever they want! We’ll have another competition in Episode 6.

And much more. http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/2008/05/07/s01e05-everybody-come-aboard/

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Platform Team Meeting

Start: 06:00 UTC
End: 07:00 UTC
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: Not Listed as of Publication

Server Team Meeting

Start: 21:00 UTC
End: 22:00
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam/Meeting

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Desktop Team Meeting

Start: 13:00 UTC
End: 14:00 UTC
Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Meeting

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

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:

http://www.ubuntu.com/news

and

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/

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
Isabelle Duchatelle
Craig Eddy
John Crawford
And many others

Feedback

If you would like to submit an idea or story you think is worth appearing on the UWN, please send them to ubuntu-marketing-submissions@lists.ubuntu.com. 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 ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com 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 ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com.