news 28 Posted August 16, 2009 Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #155 for the week August 9th - August 15th, 2009. In this issue we cover: Karmic Alpha 4 released, New Ubuntu Members, Developer News, Reporting Ubuntu Community Problems: Jono Bacon, Ubuntu US Teams, UbuCon Atlanta 2009, Brazilian Council & New Brazilian Ubuntu Members, Zim & the art of wiki development, Ubuntu Server Tips - Help Wanted, Ubuntu Community Learning Project, Ubuntu Podcast #32, 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 Alpha 4 released * New Ubuntu Members * Developer News * Reporting Ubuntu Community Problems: Jono Bacon * Ubuntu Stats * Ubuntu US Teams * UbuCon Atlanta 2009 * Brazilian Council & New Brazilian Ubuntu Members * Zim & the art of wiki development * Ubuntu Server Tips - Help Wanted * Ubuntu Community Learning Project * In the Press & Blogosphere * Ubuntu Podcast #32 * Upcoming Meetings & Events * Updates & Security == General Community News == === Karmic Alpha 4 released === Welcome to Karmic Koala Alpha 4, which will in time become Ubuntu 9.10. Pre-releases of Karmic are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs. Alpha 4 is the fourth in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Karmic development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Karmic. You can download it here: * Ubuntu: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/alpha-4/ * Ubuntu Server UEC: http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/alpha-4/ * Kubuntu: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-4/ * Xubuntu: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-4/ * Ubuntu Studio: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/karmic/alpha-4 * Mythbuntu: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-4/ Alpha 4 also includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha4 for information on changes in Ubuntu. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-August/000603.html === New Ubuntu Members: Americas Membership Board === The following new Ubuntu Members were approved at the August 12th Americas Membership Board meeting: Carlos Donizete Froes: Carlos is one of the main administrators of the Ubuntu Games project (www.ubuntugames.org) and also an active member of the Brazil LoCo Team. Part of his work with Ubuntu Games was developing the IUG (Installer Ubuntu Games) which makes it very easy for users to install a multitude of games available for Ubuntu. He plans to begin the process of getting the games from Ubuntu Games into the official Ubuntu repositories. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Coringao Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~coringao Cody Russell: Cody is a Canonical employee working on the Desktop Experience Team where he has worked on notify-osd and also xsplash, the new X-based boot splash. In addition to his work directly with Canonical, Cody has been a long time contributor to GNOME and gtk+. Especially note-worthy is his contribution to fix a 7 year old gtk bug; GNOME bug 56070. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CodyRussell Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~bratsche Marc Tardif: Marc is one of the hard working individuals that spends much of his time testing Ubuntu releases. Specifically Marc has been instrumental in developing Checkbox which is an automated testing platform. He is also an active member in the Montreal Ubuntu Community team helping plan 300+ person release parties and other great events. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarcTardif Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~cr3 Ursula Junque: Ursula is another Canonical employee who puts in an amazing amount of work in the wider Ubuntu community outside of her normal working hours. Much of her work revolves around the Brazilian Community team where she helps maintain the Brazilian translation wiki. She is also active in supporting the Brazilian team's event planning including giving presentations about Launchpad and how to use it to make Ubuntu better. Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UrsulaJunque Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~ursinha Please join the Americas Board in welcoming these great new Ubuntu Members! https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-August/000666.html === Developer News === * We are very happy to have Julien Lavergne (gilir) join the MOTU team. His great work in Ubuntu and great passion for collaborating with Debian made the decision very easy. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-August/028721.html * Yulia Novozhilova was recommended for upload privileges for `netbeans` (and related packages). We're very happy to have somebody new being very active with Java-related packages! * Andy Whitcroft was recommended for upload privileges for the Kernel. His great work clearly spoke for himself. === Reporting Ubuntu Community Problems: Jono Bacon === Jono has been busy lately on how we report problems and issues in the Ubuntu Community. He has been talking with many people inside the Ubuntu community, at the Community Leadership Summit, and with our Community Council and Technical Board about how to flesh out a better, more effective, and more visible process. While it is a work in progress, the idea is simple: we want to have a place in which our community can report a problem with a community processes or infrastructure and ensure the relevant group or governance body can be assigned to tend to the issue, discuss it as part of their regular meetings and otherwise have it on their radar. The way this will work is that problems are reported as bugs in the ubuntu-community project and preferably assigned directly to the right group, otherwise, other people can assign the bug to the right group. What is important here is that we clearly define what kind of problems should be assigned where. We will then work with our governance bodies to ensure that as part of their work they review these bugs and help to resolve them. Jono would like to encourage our governance bodies to build these bugs into their work. The process would look like this: Step 1: Chose the right place to report the problem We first need to ensure the right team in the Ubuntu project know about your problem: * If your problem relates to general community governance or the Community Council then note down communitycouncil * If your problem relates to technical policies or the Technical Board then note down techboard * For all other issues you don’t need to note anything down. Make a note of the team name, we will use in just a moment Step 2: Report the problem You can now provide us with some details of the problem. This involves three simple steps: * Middle click (or press both mouse buttons together) on this link. * You will be first asked for a Summary. Here type in a short and descriptive single-line summary of the problem. * You are next asked if your problem already exists in the system and a list of possible existing problems will be shown. You can click the arrows to show more details about each problem. * If one of the problems describes your problem, click the Yes this is the bug I’m trying to report button. * If the problem you are reporting is not in the system click the No, I need to report a new bug button. * On next page do the following: * Type in some details about the problem in the Further Information box. Try to be as detailed in your description as possible. * Click the Extra Options link and in the Assign to box write in the team name you wrote down above. If you didn’t write down a team, or you don’t know it, don’t worry, just leave this box blank. * Finally click the Submit bug report button. When your problem has been filed, you will receive an email with a link to the problem in Launchpad, and you can view that link to see the latest details about the problem. Jono has documented this process here and also created two other documents which will help us improve it: * Best Practice - much of what I am hoping we can achieve is building best practice around how we handle reported community problems. As an example, in some cases we will want to develop a spec or solution out of problems to help move it forward. Note down areas of best practice on this page. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingCommunityProblems/BestPractice * Feedback - opinions and ideas on the process and what does and does not work can be added on this page. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingCommunityProblems/Feedback Jono would like to review this process at UDS to see how well it works. http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/08/12/reporting-ubuntu-community-problems/ == Ubuntu Stats == === Bug Stats === * Open (60697) +609 over last week * Critical (28) +1 over last week * Unconfirmed (28316) +350 over last week * Unassigned (52346) +558 over last week * All bugs ever reported (303196) +1977 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 (12430) -40 over last week * French (39502) -70 over last week * Brazilian Portuguese (48553) -30 over last week * Swedish (53810) -4 over last week * English (United Kingdom) (53861) -1868 over last week Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/ === Translation Stats Karmic === * Spanish (21042) -1178 over last week * French (58483) +575 over last week * Swedish (68157) -80 over last week * Brazilian Portuguese (72112) +176 over last week * English (Uk) (80569) -898 over last week Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/ === Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week === * Every time you need to right click on desktop and click on clean up by name - http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/21057/ * Most keyboards ship with Windows keys - http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/21004/ * Ubuntu torrents should have web seeds - http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/20985/ * Enable File Roller to use all encryption methods supported by 7z - http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/21047/ * User desktops are often a mess - http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/21015/ 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 == === Ubuntu US Teams === Pleia2 has been working with the US Teams project. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/USTeams This is the mentoring team for all the the US teams and this year they reorganized the project and elected a new board and mentors. Liz has been working with Dan Trevino to launch the new US Teams Planet http://planet.ubuntu-us.org/ for aggregating the news feeds for teams in the US (it’s been a great way to see what other teams are up to!). John Crawford also helped to launch a new version of our website. http://ubuntu-us.org/ Pliea2, Dan Trevino, and John Crawford are the board members for the reorganized US Teams Project. The latest team news? We’re now publishing articles on our new website! There is a lot of LoCo documentation out there, but it can sometimes be tricky to find really useful stuff. Having identified the vital resources, our articles have the following purpose: * Identify the documentation that we reference most for US Teams, write short articles highlighting where to find this documentation so it puts it on the radar of more people, and contributing back to the main documentation as we can * Come up with new ideas, write articles about it, contribute back to the main documentation * US News – approvals, sharing successful new ideas * US-specific tips about running a LoCo in this country The next US Team meeting is scheduled for August 26th 2009 – 10pm EDT, 9pm CDT, 8pm MDT, 7pm PDT in #ubuntu-us – join us then to discuss the project, or drop by #ubuntu-us any time to get help with your US-based LoCo, share experiences, request a mentor or just shoot the breeze with other folks in the US who participate in LoCo teams. http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=1806 === UbuCon Atlanta 2009 === The first UbuCon Atlanta (Ubuntu conference) will take place during the Atlanta Linux Fest. This is a chance to bring together the Ubuntu community for a day of all things Ubuntu. We are calling all LoCo teams and ubuntu community members to come together and share your knowledge and excitement for forwarding the Ubuntu project. * Note what you would be interested in talking about under the BoF sessions. Post the topic with the lead of UbuCon - Topic. http://atlantalinuxfest.org/node/add/suggested-bof Ready for Ubuntu 9.10? - Want to know if your hardware will work with the upcoming release of Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10? Members of the Ubuntu kernel team will be on hand with custom built USB sticks that will boot and run a test suite. This will not touch the hard disk and will let users know what of the new kernel/hardware features will work on their machine. Bring your machine and help improve Ubuntu 9.10! Live Hack Session - Interested in learning how to hack drivers? The Ubuntu kernel team will be running a live hack session to show you how! Using a USB dongle that is a thermometer and a "shell" driver, users will walked through writing the drivers, compiling it, and running it. http://atlantalinuxfest.org/ubuconatlanta2009 === Brazilian Council and new Brazilian Ubuntu Members === Recent changes in the previous Ubuntu Brazilian Council, through an election that had three chosen candidates: * André Gondim: http://launchpad.net/~andregondim * Fábio Nogueira: http://launchpad.net/~deb-user-ba * Laudeci Oliveira – Pretto: http://launchpad.net/~laudeci Fábio Nogueira was re-elected to the post. In this process, every candidate listed his plans if elected, and the election consisted of three phases. In each phase, Brazilian official members voted, selecting one Council member per round. The first elected was André Gondim, followed by Fábio Ogueira and then Laudeci Oliveira. Very soon the council intends to publish their ideas and what’s next to come. New Members The Brazilian Community is happy to announce its two newest Ubuntu Members: * Carlos “Coringão” Donizete: https://edge.launchpad.net/~coringao * Ursula Junque, a.k.a. Ursinha: https://edge.launchpad.net/~ursinha Coringao is the owner of Ubuntu Games, he’s very active and helpful in Ubuntu Games and development of IUG (Instalador do Ubuntu Games). Ursinha is an active member, helping with community support and the maintenance of Translations’s wiki. She is really helpful with new users at #ubuntu-br. The Brazilian Council is proud of you both. http://en.andregondim.eti.br/?p=111 == Launchpad News == === Zim and the art of wiki development === Zim is a desktop wiki that uses both Launchpad and Bazaar. Matthew Revell asked Jaap Karssenberg, its founder and main developer, about the project. Matthew: How does Zim compare with something like Tomboy? Jaap: I really don’t know as I never used Tomboy for an extensive amount of time — it wasn’t around yet when I first started with Zim. From interface design I get the feeling Tomboy is designed as a replacement for sticky notes while Zim was designed as a replacement for an outliner. I think Zim is more tailored towards structuring notes. But Tomboy is moving fast as it has seemingly more developers and of course it gets traction from being included in Gnome. Matthew: Do you think desktop wikis will eventually take over from larger applications, such as OpenOffice.org Writer, now that we’re increasingly producing documents for distribution online rather than via paper? Jaap: I don’t think so, both serve different purposes. Wikis are very useful for storing information and building a knowledge base. Websites to some point have the same use cases, so a program like Zim can be used to build a website (in fact the Zim website itself is maintained in Zim). Office applications on the other hand are used when the focus is on layout and presentation of the data (e.g. writer and presenter) or do specialized calculations (e.g. calc). In my own workflow, I use Zim to collect notes about all my ongoing projects and this changes from day to day. When I need to produce a document these notes are the raw material, but I use an office application to produce a polished document. When such a document is finished it is published and does not change anymore. Matthew: One of the great advantages of web-based wikis is collaboration. Does Zim have any features to enable collaboration? Jaap: Zim has plugins to use version control like Bazaar or Subversion on the wiki data. My take on collaboration is that it can be done for a wiki the same way it can be done for code. Obviously you would need some better graphical interfaces for non-programmers to use it, but why not. This features doubles as backup mechanism and as synchronization. I especially like Bazaar for this due to it’s decentralized nature which fits a document concept real well. Matthew: Are you looking for contributors? Jaap: Always. Now it is just me on two nights a week and one or two irregular patch submitters. But we do have a lot of translators contributing already and someone working on windows packages, which is very good. Still I feel the project is to much driven by a single developer. Matthew: Why did you choose Launchpad and Bazaar? Jaap: Bazaar was a logical choice as I was an avid Arch user before subversion and other modern version control systems arrived on the scene. In the past I hosted projects on Sourceforge because I didn’t have my own hosting and needed centralized CVS etc. After some frustration I moved to Gnu Arch for version control and started hosting myself. But I started using Launchpad to allow translators to contribute and gradually discovered more useful features. I still have my own hosting contract for the website and put the bazaar branches there, but Launchpad is useful for contributors of other branches, translations and the bug Share this post Link to post
