Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #160

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-09-20

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #160 for the week September 13th – September 19th, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:

* Karmic Alpha 6 released
* Mark Shuttleworth Announces via video Ubuntu 10.04: Lucid Lynx
* Countdown Banner Deadline
* UDS Update
* Ubuntu Screencasts: Reporting Bugs
* Ubuntu Stats
* LoCo News: Ubuntu Denmark, Sweden & New Hampshire
* Ubuntu Forums News: Tutorial of the week & Community Interview
* The Planet: Martin Pitt, Ubuntu Packaging & Martin Owens
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu-UK podcast: The Tribe of Gum
* Linux-ready mini pc powers up
* The Art of Community available for free download
* 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
* Isabelle Duchatelle
* Sayak Banerjee
* 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

Karmic Alpha 6 released

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-09-17

Welcome to Karmic Koala Alpha 6, 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 6 is the sixth 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:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/alpha-6/ (Ubuntu)
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/alpha-6/ (Ubuntu Server for UEC and EC2)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/karmic/alpha-6/ (Ubuntu ARM)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-6/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-6/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/karmic/alpha-6/ (UbuntuStudio)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-6/ (Mythbuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-6/ (Edubuntu)

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

Alpha 6 includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale testing. This is an early set of images so you should expect some bugs; in particular, there are a number of known issues related to recent boot performance changes that will be fixed between now and the Ubuntu 9.10 Beta. For a list of known bugs that you don’t need to report if you encounter, and that you might want to pay close attention to before upgrading, please see:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha6

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

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/karmic-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 Karmic Alpha 6 on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek on Thu Sep 17 22:20:03 BST 2009

Countdown Banner Deadline

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-09-15

You can make a highly visible contribution to Ubuntu 9.10 by helping to create the release countdown banner… but only if you get your submission in soon! By noon UTC on Sept 22nd you need to post your concept to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/KarmicCountdownBanners so that a banner can be chosen. You do not have to complete your banner by the 22nd but you do have to submit a design for review. Anyone is welcome to participate. Discussions will take place on the Ubuntu Web Presence team's mailing list and chat room at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website#Mailing%20List

[Discuss the Countdown Banner Deadline on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-news-team mailing list by Matthew Nuzum on Tue Sep 15 16:43:57 BST 2009

Launchpad Bug Filing Changes for Ubuntu

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-09-15

As a part of the Increase Apport Adoption specification we are going to kick off an experiment and redirect all of Ubuntu’s /+filebug links in Launchpad to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs. This change has been tested on staging.launchpad.net already and will be landing shortly on edge.launchpad.net (There will be a +filebug?no-redirect if you really really need it).

If you review the specification and the documentation bug reporters will be redirected to, you will notice that we spent a lot of time and energy on ensuring that we improve the quality of bugs when they are reported. The time many of us spend on triaging very incomplete bugs is not sustainable given the volume of bug reports. Having reporters use ubuntu-bug (apport more specifically) to report bugs will reduce many of these problems for us.

In order to make the transition for our users smoother, we’d like to ask you to help out with a few things:

  1. If you take care of a high-profile package, consider adding it to
    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage which is linked to from
    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs.

  2. Please consider writing an apport hook for the packages you take care of, if you need special information in bug reports – it’s REALLY easy: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport/DeveloperHowTo#Package%20Hooks
  3. If the area of Ubuntu that you take care of is better suited by symptom based bug reporting (“storage”, “boot”, “install”, “sound”, etc.), consider contributing to the apport-symptoms package – it too is REALLY easy: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport/DeveloperHowTo#Symptoms

By helping us receive higher quality bug reports, we will help to make Ubuntu even better!

[Discuss the Launchpad Bug Filing Changes for Ubuntu on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Brian Murray on Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 5:53 PM

UDS Update

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-09-15

I just wanted to provide everyone with a quick update on where we are with planning for the Ubuntu Developer Summit.

The twice-annual Ubuntu Developer Summit is the event in which we get together to design, discuss and plan the next version of Ubuntu. It is a critical event in the Ubuntu calendar not only for assessing what we would like put into the next release, but also getting many facets of our community together to bond, share ideas and thoughts and have some valuable face-time for a community so thoroughly distributed.

We are putting the organizational wheels in motion for the next UDS and while some details are still yet to be finalized, I didn’t want this to hold me back giving you an update on where we are. So, let’s cut to the chase:

* The next UDS will take place from Monday 16 Nov 2009 – Friday 20 Nov 2009 in a location that is yet to be confirmed but will certainly be in the USA.
* This will be the L release and while Mark has picked the name, it has not been announced yet. I will wait for him to get that juicy nugget of information out for you.
* Each year we (Canonical) provide travel and accommodation assistance for a limited number of community members. Again, I want to remind the many Ubuntu community rock-stars that we can only sponsor some community rock-stars due to limited resources. If you have a lot to offer the next UDS, go and find out details of how to apply here.
* Details as they emerge will appear on the UDS wiki pages

More details as I get ‘em!

[Discuss this UDS Update on the Forums]

Originally posted by Jono Bacon here on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 1:56 am