news 28 Posted March 8, 2009 Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #132 for the week March 1st - March 7th, 2009. In this issue we cover: Karmic Koala release schedule, QA Team: Next testing day, Hug Day: March 12th, Americas Board: New Ubuntu Members, LoCo Directory Moves Forward, Ubuntu Tunisia: Migration Project, Ubuntu in the Cloud, Community Interview: Michael Godawski, Simplifying Forums Categories, Mark a thread as Solved, mail Stack Improvements in Ubuntu 9.04, Ubuntu Encrypted home with 2 factor authentication, Ubuntu Drupal: Planet Module, Introducing Tarmac, TurnKey: 12 new Ubuntu-based server appliances released, Technical Board Meeting, Server Team Meeting Minutes: March 3rd, 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 == * Karmic Koala release schedule * QA Team: Next testing day * Hug Day: March 12th * Americas Board: New Ubuntu Members * Ubuntu Stats * LoCo Directory Moves Forward * Ubuntu Tunisia: Migration Project * Ubuntu in the Cloud * Inside the Launchpad Foundations Sprint * Ubuntu Forums News * The Planet * In the Press & Blogosphere * TurnKey: 12 new Ubuntu-based service applications * Technical Board Meeting * Server Team Meeting Minutes: March 3rd * Upcoming Meetings & Events * Updates & Security == General Community News == === Karmic Koala release schedule === The release schedule for Karmic is now available: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicReleaseSchedule * You can expect to see the first Karmic milestone in mid-May. * A cease of automatic syncs from Debian towards the end of June. * Feature freeze in late August. For details of the Karmic Ubuntu Developer Summit, please go to http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-March/000543.html === QA Team: Next testing day === The QA Team is having a testing day on Monday, March 9, 2009, for the *buntu desktop of your choice. Details can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/UbuntuTestingDay/20090309. The goals on the day will be to test the installer and applications on the CD as well as those you download from repositories and use regularly. Go to #ubuntu-testing on the freenode network to find out more and get involved. http://blog.qa.ubuntu.com/node/35 === Hug Day: March 12th === March 12, 2009 is the next Bugday. * Target: samba * Page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20090312 * IRC: #ubuntu-bugs * Infos: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs/ https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-March/000433.html === Americas Board: New Ubuntu Members === The approval results from Friday's Americas Membership meeting are as follows: Charlie Kravetz(charlie-tca): Charlie is from Idaho, USA and has been using Ubuntu since 5.04. He is the Quality Assurance lead for Xubuntu, a role which involves a considerable amount of bug triage and testing. As such, he is an active member of ubuntu-bugsquad and bug-control. He also spends a considerable amount of time in the #xubuntu channel helping users. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~charlie-tca Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CharlieKravetz Martin Owens(doctormo): Martin operates the approved Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo team and lead the Ubuntu Case Badges initiative in 2007 and recently worked with ZaReason to launch another run of badges. Currently he is involved in bringing local Community centers into a Learn to Teach, Teach to learn project, where FOSS and Ubuntu are taught to students who are then encouraged to teach others. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~doctormo Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MartinOwens Nick Fox(nickj-fox): Nick has been using Ubuntu since 6.04 and working on the Mythbuntu project since the 7.04 development cycle. He is currently a Mythbuntu core dev, and has helped to support, improve upon, and generate new code in an effort to make the user experience better and management of the MythTV and Ubuntu based systems easier. He also makes a continuing effort to support the community in ways to help promote bringing new users into the Ubuntu community. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~nickj-fox Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NickFox Thomas G. Mashos(tgm4883): Thomas is a Mythbuntu developer and been using Ubuntu since Edgy. He actively supports users in the #ubuntu-mythtv support channel. Currently much of his effort is focused on working with Mythbuntu on getting MythTV related things packaged and into the repos, or at least a PPA. He also runs development version of Mythbuntu and spends time fixing bugs as he encounters them. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~tgm4883 Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ThomasMashos Matthew Lye(lyematt): Matthew has been using Ubuntu since mid 2007, and works on developing Ubuntu images for large scale education environments. He is an active member of the Ubuntu Forums Beginners Team Education and IRC help groups, preparing tutorials and teaching materials for the Beginners Team to use to help new users understand Ubuntu and preform complex tasks. Currently he is focused on helping new users and Ubuntu for education environments, and eventually hopes to contribute in improving the user experience of Ubuntu starting with bug work. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~lyematt Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Vantrax John Baab(rhpot1991): John hails from Pennsylvania, USA and has been using Ubuntu as his primary OS since 2004. He has spent the past two years as an active member of the Mythbuntu development team, he works upstream and is the maintainer of MythExport in the Ubuntu repos. He intends to continue his work with Mythbuntu and MythExport and has recently joined the Pennsylvania LoCo team. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~rhpot1991 Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/rhpot1991 Andrew Rufkahr(st33med): Andrew has been an active contributor to the Ubuntu Forums Beginners Team for about two and a half years. He regularly helps users both on the forums and in IRC, and has developed and hosted several Python courses through the Beginners Team Education Focus group. His future plans involve hosting more courses and getting involved more heavily in Python-related development within Ubuntu. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~ajr1991 Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/st33med The Americas Board is very happy to welcome all these fantastic new Ubuntu Members to the project! https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-March/000435.html == Ubuntu Stats == === Bug Stats === * Open (47855) +297 over last week * Critical (21) +1 over last week * Unconfirmed (19270) +76 over last week * Unassigned (40220) +228 over last week * All bugs ever reported (256359) +2032 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 Jaunty === * Spanish (19265) -717 over last week * French (56320) +13 over last week * Brazilian Portuguese (64590) +8 over last week * Swedish (68153) -3832 over last week * English (Uk) (82415) -1393 over last week Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/ === Translation Stats Intrepid === * Spanish (15881) +/-0 over last week * French (61243) +/-0 over last week * Swedish (72647) -9 over last week * Brazilian Portuguese (73976) +/-0 over last week * English (UK) (81134) +/-0 over last week Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/ === Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week === * Not enough feedback to brainstorm * init.d showing it's age. Complex layers of shell script, with no standards. * Automatic backup before upgrading to new release * Not all problems are valid * There is no list of new packages that are waiting for acceptance 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 == === LoCo Directory Moves Forward === In a brief posting, Jono Bacon shows off screen shots of the new LoCo directory. The idea was to take the information from the LoCo Team List, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeamList, and gather it in a database that was easier to read and access. This is still a work in progress, but the design is coming along well. Thanks to Rich Johnson for doing the developing work, and efrain for importing the data shown in the screen shots. http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/03/02/loco-directory-moves-forward/ === Ubuntu Tunisia: Migration Project - National Engineering School of Sfax (ENIS) === The project was launched under the initiative taken by the ENIS to migrate its computing equipment to a free solutions. Our LoCo was contacted by the ENIS administration to contribute to this project by providing presentations on Ubuntu and free software and support them for migration. This migration was carried out in two phases. A first phase in December 2008, code name ENIS Event 8.12, and a second phase in January 2009, code name ENIS Event 9.01. The initial planning of the first phase was scheduled over two days (December 20th and 21th, 2008): a conferences day and another for assistance to the migration. Members of the ubuntu-tn LoCo provided various presentations to students, teachers and ENIS technical staff (around 80 people). These presentations focused on the presentation of Ubuntu, the switching to OpenOffice.org, the Ubuntu administration, programming, virtualization, security and Ubuntu server for TPE/PME. Each presentation was followed by a discussion between ubuntu-tn LoCo members and the audience in the amphitheater. Pictures of the event at the links. * French Summary: http://nizaurs.blogspot.com/2009/03/projet-de-migration-ecole-nationale.html * English Summery: http://nizaurs.blogspot.com/2009/03/migration-project-national-engineering.html https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-March/000434.html == New in Jaunty Jackalope == === Ubuntu in the Cloud === Eucalyptus (Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems) was placed in Jaunty before the feature freeze. This means that a cloud infrastructure will be able to be built upon Ubuntu Server. In addition, some Java related components have been added: 1. Apache Axis2 is a Web services engine. Both SOAP and REST style web-service are supported with binary data being exchanged via MTOM. 1. The WS-Security specification is provided by the rampart package, the Apache web services security engine. In addition, some virtualization related components were also updated, such as kvm, libvirt 0.6.0, cirt-manager 0.6.1, and opennebula. http://ubuntuserver.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/february-in-the-archive-a-view-from-the-ubuntu-server-team/ == Launchpad News == === Inside the Launchpad Foundations Sprint === The Launchpad Foundations team, and some Canonical engineers have been meeting in Montreal to prepare for the release of the Launchpad code. Part of this process is to separate out the parts that are not specific to Launchpad, and place them in a new framework called LAZR. These will be libraries that can be reused in other projects. The down side is that a lot of these libraries have dependencies to Launchpad that need to be removed. The up side is that when they get done, these libraries will be able to be used in any project that uses Zope interfaces to describe its data objects. http://blog.launchpad.net/api/inside-the-launchpad-foundations-sprint == Ubuntu Forums News == === Community Interview: Michael Godawski === Please meet Michael Godawski, http://matthewhelmke.net/2009/02/26/an-interview-with-michaelgodawski/ from Germany. He was born in Poland and studies History of Art and Sociology. Michael is the perfect example of a non-geeky member, consistently helpful with new users, always patient and kind. Like many others, his first computer encounter was with an Atari 2600. He is now a member of the Beginners Team and Unanswered Posts Team and writes tutorials you can find on his website: http://ubunturesources.ub.ohost.de Enjoy! === Simplifying Forums Categories === Over the last month, several changes have been made to rearrange the forums categories. In particular, the Other OS Talk section was merged back with the general support sub-forums, and links to the major Linux distributions or other OS support forums provided. Hopefully, we will be able to send back traffic to the other Linux projects, as Ubuntu Forums has a fast growth (current on-line user record is 35,611) and are pushing our hosting servers walls. A new [other_os] prefix has been added to help identify and search specific thread topics. === Mark a thread as Solved === We used to have a specific plug-in to add "Solved" in the thread title when needed. This plug-in (along with the "Thanks" feature) gave troubles with the database and had to be disabled. Tags can be used instead, as they are shown next to the thread title, in a different color. == The Planet == === Mail Stack Improvements in Ubuntu 9.04 === Up until the Ubuntu-server 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) release, sysadmins needed to manually set up all parts of a mail server; IMAP, POP, SMTP, SASL authentication, and TLS/SSL support for all of the services before any other custom configuration could begin. Working toward a more perfect installation process, the Ubuntu Server team has come to the conclusion that there needed to be an integrated mail stack with a safe default set up. The new Dovecot-Postfix install will enable the default install of a working e-mail server out of the box. Not all mail configuration problems are solved with the default install, as set up for antispam and antivirus countermeasures must be setup separately. http://blog.init.hr/?p=3 === Ubuntu Encrypted home with 2 factor authentication === There are ways to keep your encrypted home folder safe, defeating the casual hack of using a LiveCD to access the average setup. The methods of securing this data are discussed as to limiting physical access to the pass-phrase file through removable media, by using two-factor authentication. Then you just need to ensure that you protect that device! Pop it out, if you're leaving your system alone, and keep that device on your person. You can read Dustin's advice on encrypted directories by using the links below. * Jaunty encrypted home directories: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/02/jaunty-encrypted-home-directories.html * How eCryptfs Works: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/02/how-encrypted-home-ecryptfs-works.html * Mounting Encrypted Home using a LiveCD: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/03/mounting-your-encrypted-home-from.html http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/03/ubuntu-encrypted-home-with-2-factor.html === Ubuntu Drupal Team: Planet module === Introducing the Drupal Planet module, which allows Drupal users to add specific feeds instead creating a whole new site, the Drupal Planet module places feeds under the /planet directory. Users have the ability to add as many feeds as desired, where the feeds are updated automatically using cron. This makes feed aggregation possible now by using a single module. http://profarius.com/content/planet-module-drupal === Introducing Tarmac === Announcing the release of Tarmac, the robotic landing bot for Launchpad. The idea is simple. You have a development focus branch that constantly needs to have branches landed on it, but you're too busy writing your own code to manually land them in trunk. Tarmac takes the difficulty out of this by checking your development focus branch for approved merge proposals, and merging them automatically. This first release is just a little more than "the simplest thing that could possibly work." Feature requests and patches are most certainly welcome. http://theironlion.net/blog/2009/03/04/introducing-tarmac-launchpad-branch-lander/ == In The Press == === Has Ubuntu hit a plateau? === Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet wonders, has Ubuntu hit a plateau? After he downloaded the alpha 5 release of the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04, what surprised him was he felt that there was very little for him to get excited about. In fact, even the just announced 9.10 release which is over six months away, has nothing that really gets his blood moving. Adrian states, "Don’t get me wrong, I like Ubuntu. Of all the Linux distros that I’ve tried, it’s the one that seems to show the most promise of being able to go mainstream. It’s fast, reliable and secure." He goes on to question the need for the six month release schedule because in his opinion, these releases are feeling more and more like service packs than evolutionary steps forward. http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3669&tag=nl.e589 === Ubuntu's "plateau" = Good news for education === Christopher Dawson of ZDNet responds to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes' article summarized above. Dawson wants to know why it's such a bad thing that the six month release schedule has turned into more of a service pack. "What this means is that Ubuntu has reached an incredible state of maturity and schools can now use it without fear of obsolescence in 6 months. It also means that incremental updates are easily applied without significant disruption to labs or servers, while allowing users to take advantage of new features." While the geek in him is always looking for something new, improved, and uber-cool, the IT admin. in him just wants something that works well and consistently. http://education.zdnet.com/?p=2207 === Linux Desktop heads for the clouds === Matt Asay of Cnet News thinks that while evangelists of Linux distributions built for personal computers point to Netbooks as an indication of renewed life in their chances to compete for consumers, new data suggests that this may be a fool's hope. Instead, such advocates would do well to follow the leads of Canonical and Red Hat, as they respectively extend the desktop with cloud services, and deliver desktop functionality from the cloud. Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth told Asay last year that his Ubuntu desktop strategy would increasingly include cloud services. Recently, Canonical started to deliver on this vision. The point isn't to replicate the Windows desktop. The point is to completely change the way desktops are delivered, and their services used. Anyone still worried about Linux on Netbooks is fighting the wrong battle. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10189098-16.html === Ubuntu vs Windows: Memory and a backup solution === Martin compares Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu RAM usage; backs up the whole machine with Acronis; and finds some things Ubuntu does well, and others that he can't seem to get working. At startup, Windows 7 for x64 had a memory footprint of 1.24GB, with the Windows Vista for x64 memory having a memory footprint of 1.34GB. On the same machine, Ubuntu 8.10 had a memory footprint of 349 MB of RAM. In other words, a whole gigabyte less than Vista. Heller goes on to discuss using Acronis to back it up, and what features work well for him in Ubuntu. http://weblog.infoworld.com/stratdev/archives/2009/03/ubuntu_vs_windo.html === Acer Aspire One with Moblin 2, Ubuntu 8.10 === Jordan Spencer Cunningham of OSnews reviews Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) on his Acer Aspire One. Jordan found that startup is basically as fast as Windows XP, and Windows 7. Everything seems to work out of the box except for the wireless, camera, and microphone. The overall system works flawlessly, and seemingly as fast as Windows 7, even in full-graphics mode. He did have some problems with unplugging or plugging the AC power causing the system’s power manager to halt. Overall, he gives the Ubuntu 8.10 system on the Acer Aspire One a 7/10. Aside from some very minor bugs, it is a very netbooker-friendly system. If the wireless was included naturally in the distribution without having to do any serious tweaking, Ubuntu would be as ready, if not more so than Windows 7 to be a netbook system. http://www.osnews.com/story/21070/Review_Acer_Aspire_One_with_Moblin_2_Ubuntu_8_10_Windows/page4/ == In The Blogosphere == === Taking Ubuntu 9.04 Out For A Spin === Wanting to get a taste of what to expect come April, Jeremy LaCroix of IT News Today takes a look at the upcoming version of Ubuntu, code named “Jaunty Jackalope.” After running into a few bugs on a daily build of Jaunty, LaCroix switched to Jaunty Alpha 5 for the install. Once the installation was complete, he was presented with the GDM log in screen, which was sporting a brand new theme, that he thinks looks awesome. LaCroix notes the new notification system, but the best thing he noticed about Ubuntu 9.04 so far, is how fast it is. "The developers weren’t lying when they talked about speed, this thing is FAST." Even though he installed it on an older machine, he says you wouldn’t notice it because even with an older processor, Jaunty is probably the most responsive version he has ever used. http://www.itnewstoday.com/?p=215 === My Experiences With Ubuntu 9.04 So Far === Blogger Jerremy LaCroix from IT News Today gives us a preview of Kubunutu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. He makes sure that everyone knows before hand that this it is still in development, so a full review would not be fair or accurate. He will write a full review of the release once it comes out in April. He didn't say anything about the installation process, because he didn't see much change in it. He did comment on how stable and fast jaunty is, even though it's still in development. He continues by saying that "it's very abnormal to have this much stability in the operating system at this point in its development." He was happy that there was a new network manager, so that there was one less legacy KDE3 application being used. He is having difficulty connecting to a network, but contributes this to the release still being in development. We are also informed of KPackageKit which is the new package manager that KDE4 is using. Adept is also installed by default, so you can pick which one you want to use. He describes the KDE4 install as "yet another vanilla KDE 4 installation." This is because the theme is still the same, and even the desktop is still the same as previous releases. In conclusion he says that the speed increase alone is enough to warrant upgrading to 9.04. http://www.itnewstoday.com/?p=198 === Hive Five: Best Home Server Software === Blogger Jason Fitzpatrick from Life Hacker goes over what people voted as the top 5 pieces of software that people use to power their home servers. In the top 5 were: FreeNas, Ubuntu Server Edition, Apache, Debian, and Windows Home Server. He talks about the capabilities of all 5 of these pieces of software, and what benefits that they give to the user. For Ubuntu Server Edition, he covered the ease of use of it. He liked the automated LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) installation. This is because it's much easier to install the core components of a server this way, than to have to configure each component on your own. He then tells us about the abundance of applications that make integration with the rest of your home network easier. He says that "Ubuntu is more than powerful and capable enough to handle all your media streaming, remote back up, and file serving needs." http://lifehacker.com/5162026/best-home-server-software === Memo to Mark Shuttleworth: Don’t Settle for Ubuntu Linux Desktops === Joe Panettieri of Works With U wants to let Mark Shuttleworth know where he believes Ubuntu should be concentrating its efforts. He strongly agrees with continuing to push Ubuntu Server Edition, and not relying on just Ubuntu Desktop Edition. This is because he believes that companies that only have one "cash cow" die. He doesn't like the logic behind pulling back from the server market, and pushing harder in the Desktop market. He points out that a lesson is to be learned from Windows NT, and when it first came out for the server market. In conclusion he says that the server efforts shouldn't slow down, they should be accelerated, while holding ground in the Desktop market. http://www.workswithu.com/2009/03/03/memo-to-mark-shuttleworth-dont-settle-for-ubuntu-linux-desktops/ === Ubuntu Directory Service: Canonical Calls for Help === Joe Panettieri of WorksWithU reports that Canonical is developing a Directory Services strategy that could help Ubuntu Server Edition compete, and integrate more effectively with Microsoft, Windows Server and Active Directory. In addition to a relationship with Likewise Software, Canonical is seeking external experts to help accelerate some Directory Services efforts. According to Nick Barcet, Canonical’s Ubuntu Server product manager, “OpenLDAP is our LDAP implementation of choice in Ubuntu Server Edition. Around it we are putting together the base configuration and tools that we need to offer a better “out of the box” experience. In 8.10 we implemented a method for schema update to be automatically replicated to multiple OpenLDAP instances in the network. 9.04 should implement the basis of certificate management as well as a saner default DIT.” Barcet concedes Canonical is juggling multiple priorities at the moment — which means a full-blown directory service isn’t a top priority at the company. However, while this is not the top priority, it is something they are very conscious about, and progress is only limited by the resources they have. If some readers would have some spare time to help in that direction, they would be more than welcome. http://www.workswithu.com/2009/03/05/ubuntu-directory-service-canonical-calls-for-help/ == In Other News == === TurnKey: 12 new Ubuntu-based server appliances released === To those unfamiliar with TurnKey Linux, it's an easy way to get a pre-integrated Ubuntu system up and running on your server or VM (VMware, VirtualBox, Xen, KVM) of choice, and in just a couple of minutes. The project recently announced its most exciting and ambitious batch of releases yet. The 2009.02 release, based on Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS, features extensive improvements to usability, security and stability: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/news Since its last appearance in the UWN, the project has added 9 new appliances to its family, which now includes LAMP stack, Ruby on Rails, MediaWiki, Joomla, Drupal, LAPP stack, Django stack, MySQL, PostgreSQL, TurnKey Core (102MB) and Bootstrap (67MB): http://www.turnkeylinux.org/appliances According to the project's developers "next up are appliances for Apache Tomcat, Wordpress, Moodle, Movable Type and phpBB." The project has only gotten this far thanks to the warm reception it received from the Ubuntu community when they were just starting out. Thanks to everyone who tried the appliances, gave them feedback, and got involved!" https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-March/000428.html == Meeting Summaries == === Technical Board Meeting === Attendees: Matt Zimmerman (chair), Mark Shuttleworth, Colin Watson, and Scott James Remnant * Should technical-board ( -at -) lists.ubuntu.com be public? * Technical-board ( -at -) serves two purposes: 1. a contact address to reach the TB (and only the TB) Share this post Link to post
