Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #173

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-12-20

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #173 for the week December 13th – December 19th, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:

* Mark Shuttleworth: My new focus at Canonical
* Lucid Community Team Plans
* Michal Zajac (quintasan) Interview
* Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Notification
* Ubuntu Stats
* New update for the Ubuntu Israeli website
* Ubuntu Catalan: What a LoCo November
* James Westby: Ubuntu Distributed Development Overview
* Ubuntuforums: In a month
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu's Jono Bacon: Managing an Open Source Community
* Cloud-oriented netbook distro arrives in beta
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

* John Crawford
* Craig A. Eddy
* Dave Bush
* Amber Graner
* Liraz Siri
* And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly News, 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 LicenseAttribution 3.0 License

Michal Zajac (quintasan)

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-12-18
Desktop

Desktop

Screenshot

Screenshot

Micha? Zaj?c

Micha? Zaj?c

Age: 16
Location:Lubin, Poland
IRC Nick:Quintasan or Quintasan|Szel

How long have you used Linux and what was your first distro?
How long? Kind of hard to remember, maybe three years. My first distro was Ubuntu then very soon I switched to Kubuntu and after few months I found myself using Gentoo but I discovered it was a waste of time and I switched back to Kubuntu.

How long have you been using Ubuntu?
I would say I have been using Kubuntu for two years. I was curious how Linux works and after googling and visiting some sites I though Ubuntu would be a good choice but I didn’t like GNOME and Kubuntu was obvious choice for me back then.

When did you get involved with the MOTU team and how?
At first I used to translate apps but serious contributions started somewhere in the Jaunty cycle. My first “contribution” was importing upstream patch to fix issues with Qt 4.5 and KDE 4.1

What helped you learn packaging and how Ubuntu teams work?
Packaging? I have learned it The Hard Way, instead of reading the awesome wiki we have I started meddling with debian/ dir and poked guys on IRC each time when some Strange Error popped out ':)' . Guys on #kubuntu-devel and #ubuntu-motu were very helpful and I managed to grasp the basics of packaging, patching and whole review process within two hours.

What’s your favorite part of working with the MOTU?
Everything ':D' . But if I had to choose just one thing it would be when I users drop in to IRC channel and thank developers for their hard work (+100 to motivation ':)' .

Any advice for people wanting to help out MOTU?
Don’t be shy, join us on #ubuntu-motu and ask how you can help. We don’t bite and can provide you with assistance if you run into problems on your MOTU adventure ';)'

Are you involved with any local Linux/Ubuntu groups?
Ubuntu Polish LoCo, you can find me on our IRC channel (#ubuntu-pl)

What are you going to focus on in Lucid?
Of course working with Kubuntu Ninjas (sssh we don’t actually exist ':P' ) to bring you new and shiny KDE SC releases. I’m the new maintainer of Project Neon (nightly builds of KDE SC and Amarok) so I will also concentrate on that. I’d also like to tidy needs-packaging list a bit so we have a clear list on thing we really need to have in repositories.

What do you do in your other spare time?
So, I learn Japanese by myself since there are no courses here in Lubin or somewhere nearby. I also love skateboarding and watching anime. I’ve recently started learning C++ so I do it very often too.

[Discuss Micha? Zaj?c on the Forum]

Originally posted by Daniel Holbach here on December 18, 2009 at 2:05 pm

Call for comments on IRCC nominees

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-12-16

The following list of candidates applied for the three positions within the IRC Council:

Melissa Draper (elky) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MelissaDraper
Marek Spruell (nalioth) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarekSpruell
Steve Stalcup (vorian) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StephenStalcup
Kurt von Finck (mneptok) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KurtvonFinck
Juha Siltala (topyli) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JuhaSiltala
Michael Lustfield (MTecknology) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MTecknology
Nicolas Valcarcel (Nxvl) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nxvl
Nathan Handler (nhandler) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/nhandler
Terence Simpson (tsimpson) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TerenceSimpson and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TerenceSimpson/IRC

The incumbent IRCC has given input and we are now inviting comments on these applicants from the community. Please either send comments to this list, add them to an IRCC testimonial section on their wiki page or sent directly to the Community Council.

Please send in any comments by Friday, December 18th as we’d like to move forward with new council selection within the next week or so.

[Discuss the Call for comments on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-irc mailing list by Elizabeth Krumbach Tue Dec 15 15:14:36 GMT 2009

Transparency and keeping everybody on the same page

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-12-12

The project has grown so much that it’s harder and harder for everybody to follow what’s going on in each and every team and across the board. There’s a lot of different cases where this becomes obvious:

  • An announce sent to a team list might be missed by others who it might concern as well.
  • A conversation in a bug report might not get the exposure it actually deserves.
  • An announce didn’t hit the mailing list, but was in a couple of blog posts.
  • etc.

In the vast majority of cases there is no active secrecy going on, but more of an oversight that causes others to be out of the loop, which might result in duplicated work, wasted efforts and frustration.

To help to solve the problem a number of us sat down at UDS and tried to figure out common cases where slips like the ones above might happen and have happened and how to avoid them. The outcome of this is an updated

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeveloperCommunication

This page tries to help identify information that is worth announcing and documenting and how to best do that.

Please share the page with others that might benefit from it and please feel free to improve the page with more information to avoid misinformation and lack of information on the general team.

[Discuss Transparency and keeping everybody on the same page on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Daniel Holbach Fri Dec 11 11:58:22 GMT 2009

Lucid Alpha 1 released

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-12-12

I know where the bobcat hunts, oh yes,
When the air hangs dark and the city sleeps,
When it moves about with stealth of breath;
Its form a shadow to make you guess
If you see a cat or just nighttime creeps;
But a hunter could be there nearby
For I know where the bobcat lies!

— Jason Hogle

Welcome to Lucid Lynx Alpha 1, which will in time become Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Pre-releases of Lucid 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 1 is the first in a series of milestone CD images that will be
released throughout the Lucid 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 Lucid. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu)
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu Server for UEC and EC2)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/lucid/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu ARM)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/lucid/alpha-1/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/lucid/alpha-1/ (Xubuntu)

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

Alpha 1 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider
testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/alpha1 for
information on changes in Ubuntu.

This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a
list of known bugs (that you don’t need to report if you encounter), please
see:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/alpha1

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop
Lucid, have a look at the lucid-changes mailing list:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/lucid-changes

We also suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list
if you’re interested in following Ubuntu development. This is a
low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of
approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other
interesting events.

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

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

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

[Discuss Lucid Alpha 1 on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek Thu Dec 10 17:55:16 GMT 2009