Ubuntu 11.10 Development update

By dholbach | Published: 2011-09-08

Ubuntu Development Update

The Ubuntu 11.10 release is getting nearer and nearer. It’s time to start organising your local release party! Only five weeks left until release!

So what’s still left to do in these five weeks? Obviously a few bugs still have to be fixed, but the gates are slowly closing: next week the kernel and the documentation text will be frozen and the week afterwards Beta 2 will be released. If you haven’t tried Oneiric yet: test Oneiric and file bugs. This is an excellent way to help out and make sure that 11.10 is in tip-top shape.

So what are all the developers doing if they’re not triaging bugs and fixing them?

Still we have a bunch of packages that are NBS (Not Built from Source). Here’s the current TODO list – it’s looking better already, but still needs a bit of work. For those of you who have a weakness for graphs, here’s the number of packages that failed to build which was brought down considerably in the last weeks.

Another task we could need some help with is: bugs with debdiffs. These are bugs that have patches attached, but were (unfortunately) ignored at some stage or rejected and need some brushing up because we have a more recent version of the package in the Ubuntu archive already. In any case it’s a good idea to check them out, see if the issue is still present and propose an updated fix if possible.

There’s still a number of bugs on the radar for Beta 2, but most of them are assigned already, so we’re well on track. If you’re interested in any other aspect of Ubuntu Oneiric, I’d refer you to the oneiric-changes mailing list and the big picture specification status overview instead.

Events

Ubuntu Global Jam happened last week and I’m delighted to say that 39 events around the globe participated and lots of local Ubuntu people had loads of fun. Here’s a break-down of the countries with jams:

  • Africa: Egypt, Tunisia, South Africa.
  • Australia
  • Europe: Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain.
  • North America: Canada, Mexico, USA.
  • South America: Chile, Colombia, Venezuela.

Isn’t that awesome?
Ubuntu Release Parties

There’s another opportunity for teams around the globe to get together and celebrate Ubuntu goodness! The Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10 release will get out on 13th October. Why don’t have a release party? Here’s how to organise it and here’s how to register it. There’s just 10 listed right now: add your country or city to it now!

Things that still need to get done

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed:

First timers!

The world is a great place where people step up and help build great things with Open Source: here’s a few new heroes, who joined the Ubuntu world since last week: Marco Gallotta, Florian Brandes, Jon Arnold, Thorsteinn A. Malmjursson, Patrik Nilsson, Tristan Schmelcher, Xerxes Rånby, Kyle Williams, Wido, Shih-Yuan Lee, Robie Basak, David Bensimon, Alexander Burger. 13 new people in a week! Holy cow!

Highlight: Ubuntu App Developer Week

Ubuntu App Developer Week

Ubuntu App Developer Week is happening this week, so if you’re into developing great new apps for users, be prepared to meet other excited app people and learn what’s new and what’s hot. Here a quick summary of what happened Monday to Wednesday already. Links go to the logs of those sessions.

Monday (David’s excellent summary):

  1. Making Ubuntu a Target for App Developers – Jonathan Lange
  2. Introducing Bazaar Explorer: Version Control for your Apps – Jonathan Riddell
  3. Your App & Launchpad best practices– Jason DeRose
  4. Getting Started With Python: a Hello World App – Alan Bell
These session logs are all worth a read and should tell you who to get in touch with about planning your next app adventure.
So what’s happening today and tomorrow you ask? Here we go:
Today:
  • 16:00 UTC: Creating an App Developer Website: developer.ubuntu.com – John Oxton, David Planella
  • 17:00 UTC: Rapid App Development with Quickly – Michael Terry
  • 18:00 UTC: Developing with Freeform Design Surfaces: GooCanvas and PyGame – Rick Spencer
  • 19:00 UTC: Making your app appear in the Indicators – Ted Gould
  • 20:00 UTC: Will it Blend? Python Libraries for Desktop Integration – Marcelo Hashimoto
Tomorrow:
  • 16:00 UTC: Getting A Grip on Your Apps: Multitouch on GTK apps using Libgrip – Jussi Pakkanen
  • 17:00 UTC: Creating a Google Docs Lens – Neil Patel
  • 18:00 UTC: Practical Ubuntu One Files Integration – Michael Terry
  • 19:00 UTC: Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The Business Side – John Pugh
  • 20:00 UTC: Writing an App with Go – Gustavo Niemeyer

Awesome, isn’t it? Make sure you join in on the fun.

Get Involved

  1. Read the Introduction to Ubuntu Development. It’s a short article which will help you understand how Ubuntu is put together, how the infrastructure is used and how we interact with other projects.
  2. Follow the instructions in the Getting Set Up article. A few simple commands, a registration at Launchpad and you should have all the tools you need, and you’re ready to go.
  3. Check out our instructions for how to fix a bug in Ubuntu, they come with small examples that make it easier to visualise what exactly you need to do.

Find something to work on

Pick a bitesize bug. These are the bugs we think should be easy to fix. Another option is to help out in one of our initiatives.

In addition to that there are loads more opportunities over at Harvest.

Getting in touch

There are many different ways to contact Ubuntu developers and get your questions answered.

  • Be interactive and reach us most immediately: talk to us in #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net.
  • Follow mailing lists and get involved in the discussions: ubuntu-devel-announce (announce only, low traffic), ubuntu-devel (high-level discussions), ubuntu-devel-discuss (fairly general developer discussions).
  • Stay up to date and follow the ubuntudev account on Facebook, Identi.ca or Twitter.

Today Starts The Ubuntu Women Month of Making

By pleia2 | Published: 2011-09-07

Hello everyone! Today begins the Ubuntu Women Month of Making! What’s that? It’s a competition that will showcase women’s fantastic projects that are about the wonderful world of Ubuntu. It’s in honor of Ada Lovelace Day, October 7 — a day to celebrate women in science, technology, engineering, and math.

These projects don’t have to have been made specifically for this and can have been created any time this year. They can be anything as long as you created it and there’s a tie-in to Ubuntu.

To enter, write about what you have done (with pictures) and email your entry to: competition at ubuntu-women.org We’ll then share your entry on the Ubuntu Women team blog.

The deadline is Ada Lovelace Day, October 7, but you can enter at any time!

For more information, please see the competition page: http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/Events/Competitions/AdaLovelace

We’re all really looking forward to seeing what you’ve created!

Originally sent to the ubuntu-women mailing list by Jessica Ledbetter on Wed Sep 7 16:54:40 UTC 2011

Technical Board is looking for nominations

By dholbach | Published: 2011-09-06

The term length of five of the six members of the Technical Board will end on 1st October. Elected members will stay on the board for two years.

The nomination period runs from now until 1500 UTC on 13th September 2011. After a quick deliberation period the election will be announced. All Ubuntu developers are eligible to vote. Voting will run for two weeks.

The Technical Board is the custodian of technical architecture, engineering processes and technology strategy in Ubuntu. We like to make sure it represents the best combination of experience and innovation from all of the Ubuntu development teams.

If you would like to put yourself forward for nomination, or would like to nominate a member of the Ubuntu Developer community who you think would make a fine member of the board, please mail Daniel Holbach about it privately.

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 231

By akgraner | Published: 2011-09-06

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #231 for the week August 28 – September 4th, 2011, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:
  • Elizabeth Krumbach
  • Philip Ballew
  • Amber Graner
  • Nigel Babu
  • Penelope Stowe
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1 (Oneiric Ocelot) Released.

By pleia2 | Published: 2011-09-01

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1.

Codenamed “Oneiric Ocelot”, 11.10 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

This release introduces a new set images called Ubuntu Core. These include a minimal software and are can be used as the basis for customized Ubuntu distributions and products.

The DVD images have been slimmed down to 1.5GB, retaining a complete set of language packs, for faster downloading and use on USB drives.

With Ubuntu 11.10, we also welcome a new Ubuntu family member, Lubuntu! Lubuntu, together with Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Mythbuntu, and Ubuntu Studio also reached Beta 1 status today.

Ubuntu Changes

Some of the new features now available are:

DVD images have been revised into extended desktop images with additional language support and a few extra applications, and thereby reduced to a more manageable size of around 1.5 GB.

“Lenses” (formerly “Places”) now integrate multiple sources and advanced filtering like ratings, range, categories.

Thunderbird is included as default email client including menu and launcher integration.

Déjà Dup is included as the default backup tool, making it easy to create backups and upload them to Ubuntu One.

The new gwibber landed in Oneiric bringing improved performance and a new interface using the most recent GNOME technologies.

GNOME got updated to current unstable version (3.1.5) on its way to GNOME 3.2

LightDM now uses the new Unity greeter by default.

The indicators have been visually refreshed, including a refactoring of the session indicator and a new power indicator.

The Ubuntu Software Center adds new “top rated” views to the main category page and all subcategory pages, it allows you to edit or delete your own reviews, and has had a significant speedup for standalone deb file installation.

And we continue to improve the underlying infrastructure:

Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1 enables support for installing 32-bit library and application packages on 64-bit systems

Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1 has a new kernel based on v3.0.3.

GNU toolchain has transitioned to be based off of gcc 4.6 for i386, amd64, and ARM omap3/omap4 architectures.

Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ for details.

Ubuntu Server

Ubuntu Server now includes Orchestra, a collection of the best free software services for provisioning, deploying, hosting, managing, and orchestrating enterprise data center infrastructure services.

Ensemble is now available as well, it is a critical part of Ubuntu Server designed to handle service deployment and orchestration for both cloud and bare metal.

OpenStack has been updated to the latest Diablo-4 development release.

Ubuntu Core

Ubuntu Core is a new minimal rootfs for use in the creation of custom images. Developers will be able to use Ubuntu Core as the basis for their application demonstrations, constrained environment deployments, device support packages, and other goals.

Kubuntu

Kubuntu 11.10 Beta 1 sports the latest KDE software including KDE 4.7 Plasma Workspaces and Applications.

Along with KDE 4.7, 11.10 also introduces the new KDEPIM suite, which includes the new Kmail 2.

The new Amarok 2.4.3 music player has several improvements to make it easier to use.

Kubuntu has switched to providing the Muon Software Center and Muon Package manager by default.

Please see https://wiki.kubuntu.org/OneiricOcelot/Beta1/Kubuntu for details.

Xubuntu

Xubuntu has changed several default applications: Pastebinit is now included to make it easier to share information. Leafpad is now the default text editor. gThumb has been added to assist with digital

The onscreen keyboard, Onboard, is now included in the default Xubuntu menus, under Accessories. For those who require an onscreen keyboard, this will be much easier to access using only a mouse or touchpad.

Edubuntu

Oneiric Ocelot Beta 1 is the first release of Edubuntu to feature a fully translated installer. LTSP Live has been re-written and is now fully translatable and network-manager aware.

This beta also offers a refreshed look and feel with a new wallpaper and login screen.

For more details on what has changed in Edubuntu 11.10, please refer to http://www.edubuntu.org.

Mythbuntu

Mythbuntu Oneiric Ocelot Beta 1 has transitioned over to the quicker lightdm desktop manager and brings updated builds of MythTV.

Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/oneiric/beta for more details on the above products.

About Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, and servers, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional technical support is available from Canonical Limited and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit http://www.ubuntu.com/support .

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate.

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions really help us to improve this and future releases of Ubuntu. Instructions can be found at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs.

To Get Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1

To upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1 from Ubuntu 11.04, follow these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OneiricUpgrades

Or, download Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1 images from a location near you:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/download (Ubuntu and Ubuntu Server)

In addition, they can be found at the following links:

The final version of Ubuntu 11.10 is expected to be released on October 13 2011.

More Information

You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this beta release on our website, IRC channel and wiki.

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume announcement list at:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Kate Stewart on Thu Sep 1 21:29:32 UTC 2011