news 28 Posted November 30, 2008 Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #119 for the week November 23rd - November 29th, 2008. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase II, Archive of Interviews, New MOTU: Onkar Shinde, Ubuntu Tamil Team, Ubuntu Tunisia Team, Ubuntu-NL release party, Launchpad 2.1.11 and Open ID Support, RSS feeds for Ubuntu Forums, Ubuntu Podcast #13, Full Circle Magazine #19, Community Interview of Nicolas Scerpella, Hardening the Linux Desktop, Coming Soon: Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference, 50 amazing Ubunt time-saving tips, 50 of the best looking Gnome/Ubuntu desktop themes, Team meeting summaries, and much, 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 Free Culture Showcase II * Archive of Interviews * New MOTU: Onkar Shinde * Ubuntu Stats * Ubuntu Tamil Team * Ubuntu Tunisia Team * Ubuntu-NL release party * Launchpad 2.1.11 and Open ID support * RSS feeds for Ubuntu forums * In the Press & Blogosphere * Ubuntu Podcast #13 * Full Circle Magazine #19 * Community Interview of Nicolas Scerpella * Hardening the Linux Desktop * Coming Soon: Ubuntu Pocket Guide & Reference * 50 amazing Ubuntu time-saving tips * 50 of the best looking Gnome/Ubuntu desktop themes * Team Meeting summaries * Upcoming Meetings & Events * Updates & Security === Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase II === Jono Bacon has announced the Second Free Culture Showcase, your opportunity to show off your creativity in Jaunty Jackalope. The winning entries will be available in the Examples/ folder in the home directory of shipped CDs and download images of the Ubuntu 9.04 release. Entering the showcase is simple: * Your submission must be one of the following: * Audio Entries - no larger than 1MB in size - made available in Ogg Vorbis format. * Video Entries - no larger than 2.5MB in size - made available in Ogg Theora format. * Photo/Graphic Entries - no larger than 0.5MB in size - made available in PNG or JPG formats. * All entries must be licensed and distributable under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license. * Upload your submission somewhere online (there are lots of free hosting solutions available such as archive.org). Do not email any of the organizers or judges with your submissions. * Add your entry to one of the submission tables at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase. * When the deadline for submissions closes, our panel of judges will pick a shortlist, and the Community Council will then pick the final winners from the shortlist. The deadline is February 6, 2009. http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=1427 === Archive of Interviews === Daniel Holbach has started an archive of Developer Interviews[1] in order to showcase all the exciting things that people in the community have been, or are involved in. At this point, it is a "work in progress" but he would like to have more interviews of Ubuntu Members added to it. Daniel is also thinking of adding a box with the latest interviews to the Hall of Fame.[2] Drop by either link to learn more about some of the great people in our community. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Interviews [2] http://hall-of-fame.ubuntu.com/ http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=282 === New MOTU: Onkar Shinde === We're very pleased to announce that Onkar Shinde (slytherin) joined the MOTU team. His outstanding work in the area of Java packaging and maintenance made our choice easy. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~onkarshinde Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OnkarShinde == Ubuntu Stats == === Bug Stats === * Open (48498)+42 over last week * Critical (18)-1 over last week * Unconfirmed (19578)-97 over last week * Unassigned (40346)+47 over last week * All bugs ever reported (234122)+1884 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 Intrepid === * Spanish (18543)-364 over last week * French (61913)-21 over last week * Swedish (75422)-1110 over last week * English (UK) (81459) +/-0 over last week * Brazilian Portuguese (81715)-792 over last week Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/ === 5-a-day bug stats === ==== Top 5 contributors for the past 7 days ==== * crimsun (747) * chrisccoulson (81) * alessandro-ghersi (55) * hew (45) * jibel (41) ==== Top 5 teams for the past 7 days ==== * dcteam (749) * ubuntu-cl (135) * ubuntu-berlin (54) * ubuntu-de-locoteam (52) * ubuntu-au (45) 5-A-Day stats provided by Daniel Holbach. See http://daniel.holba.ch/5-a-day-stats/ == LoCo News == === Ubuntu Tamil Team === Tiruppur, Nov 22nd. The Textile Town of TamilNadu, India - Tiruppur[1] witnessed the Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex release in a demonstration given by its IT Association - TITA[2]. Members of Tiruppur IT Association demonstrated Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, and its various features including Tamil Language support, Multimedia Capabilities, Office Suites, Package Management techniques, Wine, etc. The Ubuntu Tamil Team proposed, that a one day Monthly Training program on Ubuntu, be organized for people who purchase computers through the Association Members. This should motivate people to switch over to Free Software with confidence. Sri Ramadoss and Siva from the Ubuntu Tamil Team conducted the event. The secoond day of the event explored the Ubuntu Server capabilities for the TITA members. More demand were made on the Server segment. It was a memorable event, and the team wishes to thank the Tiruppur IT Association for providing the team with this opportunity. Special thanks also to Mr. Ravichadran, President of IT association, Mr. Babu, Mr. Thiyagu, Mr. Senthil, and others for their backing and helping with this event. Photos soon at: http://amachu.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/tiruppur-intrepid-lauch/ [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirupur [2] http://tita.in === Tunisia Team === The Tunisian Team held an install party and conference on November 15th at the Multimedia and Computer Science Institute of Sfax, Tunisia. Held in conjunction with the local cell of the Tunisian Association Young and Sciences, they started the day with a booth of about 10 laptops powered by Ubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Ubuntu Muslim Edition. They distributed about 40 CDs, burned iso images, and did some USB installations. The team also made 2 presentations, one to introduce FOSS and Ubuntu, and the other to talk about UbuntuStudio. http://rafiiik.blogspot.com/2008/11/ubuntu-install-party-et-confrences.html === Ubuntu-Netherlands release party === The Netherlands Team held a release party in Groningen, and it was quite successful according to Herman Bos. The team had about 50 people stay through the whole program. Herman felt that the size of the party was good, and that a good time was had by all in attendance. Two talks were given during the party, too. http://dev.osso.nl/herman/blog/2008/11/27/report-ubuntu-releaseparty-groningen/ (in English) http://prikbord.ubuntu-nl.org/blog/2008/11/27/verslag-releaseparty-groningen-door-laacque/ (in Dutch) == Launchpad News == === Launchpad 2.1.11 and Open ID support === Launchpad 2.1.11 has just been released, and includes two major features. First, OpenID, that lets you access many different websites, such as SourceForge, Blogger, LiveJournal and thousands of others,just got better. Second is the ability to contact other Launchpad users when their email address is hidden. By using the new "Contact this user/team" link you can email up to three users/teams per day. For more information on this, go to the Launchpad "Contacting People" page. https://help.launchpad.net/YourAccount/ContactingPeople http://news.launchpad.net/releases/launchpad-2111-openid-support-and-now-easier-to-contact-other-people == Ubuntu Forums News == === RSS Feeds for Ubuntuforums === bapoumba has a solution for those looking for RSS feeds of the Ubuntuforums. The dedicated page for the feeds was lost in the last big upgrade of the Ubuntuforums software. It may come back, but in the meantime here is a work-around. By clicking on a sub-forum thread in the Ubuntuforums front page and looking at the address bar, you will see a number at the very end. This is the forum-id number. So, for example, the URL for Absolute Beginner's Talk (ABT) would be http://ubuntuforums.org/external.php?forumids=326. The one for the complete forums RSS would be http://ubuntuforums.org/external.php. http://bapoumba.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/rss-feeds-for-ubuntuforums/ == In The Press == * Local hero: Stefan Lesicnik on Linux and Ubuntu - South African web site Tectonic interviewed Stefan Lesicnik on various aspects of how he got involved with Linux and Ubuntu. Stefan points out that Ubuntu contributing developers, are contributors to Ubuntu that do so on a more technical level. Ubuntu contributors typically handle more complicated tasks such as merging new packages from Debian, debugging software, or packaging software from scratch. Stefan has been working with the security team, and part of his responsibilities will be to merge security fixes from vendors or the community, into supported versions of Ubuntu. Stefan was this week confirmed as an Ubuntu contributing developer. http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3692 * Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris vs. FreeBSD Benchmarks - Over the past few weeks Phoronix has been providing several in-depth articles looking at the performance of Ubuntu Linux. They first compared Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10 benchmarks, then Mac OS X 10.5 vs. Ubuntu 8.10 benchmarks, and in this article they compared the 64-bit performance of Ubuntu 8.10 against the latest test releases of OpenSolaris 2008.11 and FreeBSD 7.1. The tests included LAME MP3 encoding, 7-Zip Compression, Gzip compression, GnuPG, BYTE Unix Benchmark, Tandem XML, Bork File Encryption, Java SciMark, Bonnie++, OpenSSL, and Sunflow Rendering System. The Phoronix Test Suite, which is Phoronix's advanced GPLv3 testing software that is compatible with Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris, and Mac OS X platforms, powered all of these tests. In the end if simply counting which operating system was in first place most frequently, it would be Ubuntu. Ubuntu 8.10 x86_64 was in first place eight times, OpenSolaris 2008.11 RC2 was in first place seven times, and FreeBSD 7.1 Beta 2 AMD64 was in first just three tests. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=os_threeway_2008&num=8 * Fedora 10 vs. Ubuntu 8.10 Benchmarks - With the Fedora 10 release earlier this week, Phoronix performed benchmarks comparing the performance of Ubuntu 8.10, and Fedora 10. In their testing they used both the 32-bit and 64-bit builds of each distribution, and then ran a series of automated tests through their Phoronix Test Suite. After testing both the x86 and x86_64 editions, performances were nearly identical. In fact, the results were so close that it was hard to call a winner. There were a few slight deviations in tests like the timed Gzip compression and BYTE Unix Benchmark, but nothing conclusive on the hardware configuration Phoronix used, or the real-world tests conducted. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_810_vs_fedora_10&num=6 * First Jaunty Jackalope (Ubuntu 9.04) alpha hops into view - Ubuntu developers have announced the availability of Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 1, the first pre-release version. Ubuntu 9.04, codenamed Jaunty Jackalope, is scheduled for official release in April. In addition to the ongoing long-term usability enhancement efforts, Canonical and the Ubuntu development community, are focusing on several specific technical goals for 9.04. Some of these improvements include performance, boot time, and integrating web services more tightly with the desktop. Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 1 is available for download from the Ubuntu web site, although only the server CD image and the text-based "alternate" CD image were built for the alpha release. The next major alpha release is scheduled for December 18th, shortly after the Ubuntu Developers Summit(UDS). The final Debian package import freeze for 9.04 will be on Christmas day. Additional pre-releases will follow until the final release arrives on April 23rd. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081124-first-jaunty-jackalope-ubuntu-9-04-alpha-hops-into-view.html == In The Blogosphere == * When Ubuntu Breaks, Who’s to Blame? - Blogger Christopher Tozzi tells us that as a regular participant in support threads on ubuntuforums.org, he's exposed frequently to people who might be fairly characterized as ‘dissatisfied customers’ of the Ubuntu experience. Something doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to—no out-of-the-box wireless or dual-monitor support are two of the most popular complaints—and these new users condemn Ubuntu and Linux in their entirety as a result. But are these charges justified, and how should Ubuntu respond? Canonical has to assume responsibility for shortcomings in software beyond its control. Microsoft and Apple may not have to answer for the problems of third-party applications, but if Ubuntu really aspires to become a Linux for the masses, its developers and community members need to understand the point-of-view of ordinary users and stop placing blame elsewhere, even when it does rightly lie elsewhere. Accepting blame for someone else’s faults is neither pleasant nor fair. But it’s a reality that Ubuntu has to accept if it truly aspires to bring desktop Linux to the masses. http://www.workswithu.com/2008/11/22/when-ubuntu-breaks-whos-to-blame/ * More Ubuntu Kung Fu - Keir Thomas, author of the new book Ubuntu Kung Fu, stopped by lifehacker to share some of the best material from his book. Tips in this article include how to optimize startup for faster boot times, running boot-time scripts in parallel, building a read-ahead profile personalized to your computer, and trimming the gnome startup programs. Keir also explains network time protocol, getting more data onto CD-R discs through over-burning, and installing all the multimedia playback codecs you’ll ever need. You'll learn how to get better dvd movie playback, create zip files using maximum compression, and how to get a high-quality (and free) command-line word processor with Microsoft word. Top it all off by learning how to add drop shadows to screenshots, stop the cursor from blinking, how to play MP3/OGG files at the command line, and adding RAR file compression support to Ubuntu. http://lifehacker.com/5098369/more-ubuntu-kung-fu * Xavier School Deploys 600 Ubuntu Linux Desktops - Joe Panettieri of WorksWithU reports that Xavier School in San Juan, Philippines has deployed more than 600 Ubuntu desktops. The switch from Windows was brought about due to a budget issue based on Microsoft's base licenses and subscription licenses. Ubuntu was chosen because of its ease of use as a desktop, and because of the availability of Edubuntu. http://www.workswithu.com/2008/11/25/xavier-school-deploys-600-ubuntu-linux-desktops/ == In Other News == === Ubuntu Podcast #13 === Josh Chase and Nick Ali from the Georgia US LoCo released episode #13. Some topics covered: * Release of Jaunty Alpha 1 * Ubuntu US shop is open for business * Ubuntu Hall of Fame * New theme on help.ubuntu.com * Lots of LoCos had 8.10 release parties * Linux Identity magazine covering Ubuntu 8.10 * Ubuntu onto the ARM architecture * Aaron Seigo, a KDE developer, has a podcast on UStream http://ubuntupodcast.net/2008/11/25/ubuntu-podcast-episode-13/ === Full Circle Magazine: Issue #19 === Full Circle - the independent magazine for the Ubuntu Linux community are proud to announce the release of our nineteenth issue. This month: * Command and Conquer - Lost and Found. * How-To : Program in C - Part 3, Make a WiFi Access Point, Using GIMP - Part 8, and Create Mobile Multimedia. * My Story - Ubuntu John * Book Review - Beginning Ubuntu Linux 3rd Ed. * MOTU Interview - Emilio Monfort * Top 5 - Virtualization Tools * NEW FEATURE! Ubuntu Games - Open Arena Get it while it's hot! http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-19/ https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-marketing/2008-November/003462.html === Community Interview of Nicolas Scerpella === Matthew Helmke interviewed Nicolas Valcárcel Scerpella for the Ubuntu Community Interviews. From an early start with computers at the age of 4, Nicolas has gone on to become a Security Engineer in the OEM Solutions Group for Canonical. A part of the Peruvian LoCo team council and MOTU, he is focusing on bringing more people into packaging. He would like to see more hardware manufacturers writing drivers for Linux and more proprietary software migrating to Linux. http://matthewhelmke.net/wordpress/2008/11/26/an-interview-with-nicolas-valcarcel/ === Hardening the Linux Desktop === Jeffrey Orloff has developed a 2 hour tutorial posted on the developerWorks section of IBM.com. The tutorial covers: protection from malware attacks, firewall configuration, system backup, updates, and password protecting the bootloader. Registration is required to access this information. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/edu/l-dw-linux-harden-desktop-i.html === Coming soon: Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference === Due to be released in mid-January, the Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference is a succinct, yet comprehensive guide allowing readers to understand core competencies without wading through volumes. Available from Amazon or a free PDF version will be also be available. http://www.ubuntukungfu.org/blog/2008/11/coming-soon-ubuntu-pocket-guide-and-reference/ === 50 amazing Ubuntu time-saving tips === techradar.com brings us 50 hints on how to speed up your Ubuntu 8.10 installation. With 50 tips most everyone should be able to find something to improve their installation. Click the link and have a look to see how you can improve your installation! http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/50-amazing-ubuntu-time-saving-tips-482714 === 50 of the Best Looking Linux Gnome/Ubuntu Themes === Some people never change their theme or wallpaper, while others are constantly tinkering with the look of their desktops. The folks at TechieSouls.com have put together what they believe are the 50 best looking Gnome/Ubuntu themes. It's like a one stop shop for making your desktop eye appealing. http://www.techiesouls.com/2008/11/27/collection-of-50-best-looking-linux-gnomeubuntu-themes-to-download/ == Meeting Summaries == === Community Council === * CC Meeting 08-11-18: * Quick update on Ubuntero being inappropriate for female contributors: the decision is to get rid of the term Ubuntero and generalize the CoC. https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad-registry/+bug/272826 * The Asia Oceania board asked for an expansion of their team of 2-4 members. They will send nominations to the CC and a poll will be set up. * Quick update on the TB situation: Mark is waiting for more nominations to have a run-off election. * Quick update on the IRC Council situation: nominations have reached the TB. Daniel will chase missing voters of the CC. === Documentation Team === * help website updated to include 8.10 documentation https://help.ubuntu.com * New theme introduced throughout help website and help wiki. https://help.ubuntu.com & https://help.ubuntu.com/community * Presentation given during the OpenWeek by Dougie Richardson * Improvements made to help wiki guide. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WikiGuide * Discussion of reworking the mentoring program. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2008-November/012209.html === MOTU Council === * Andrew Starr-Bochicchio became a contributing developer * Michael Casadevall became a MOTU * MC Meeting 2008-11-12 * Open Applications: * UUC: Charlie Smotherman, Stefan Lesicnik * MOTU: Stéphane Graber, David Futcher, Stefan Ebner, Nathan Handler * Core-Dev: Dustin Kirkland * Discussion of possible procedure for per-package upload request administration No conclusion was sought or obtained. * Discussion of techniques to better trigger MC members to start voting when an application is complete. The proposal under review is to ask that endorsements for a given applicant be included on wiki pages prior to the application being sent Share this post Link to post
