Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #158

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-09-06

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #158 for the week August 30th – Septenber 5th, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:

* Karmic Koala Alpha 5 released
* New Ubuntu TechBoard 2009
* Jono Bacon: Three Years at Canonical
* Canonical Adds Advanced Ubuntu Service & Support
* Ubuntu Stats
* LoCo News: Global Jam, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Sweden & Massachusetts
* Karmic gets another cloud tool: Tahoe-LAFS
* Ubuntu Developer Week Summaries
* Help fill in the Ubuntu IRC channels
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu Podcast Quickie #11
* Ubuntu-UK Podcast: The Android Invasion
* 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
* 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 5 released

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-09-04

Welcome to Karmic Koala Alpha 5, 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 5 is the fifth 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-5/ (Ubuntu)
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/alpha-5/ (Ubuntu Server for UEC and EC2)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/karmic/alpha-5/ (Ubuntu ARM)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-5/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-5/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-5/ (Mythbuntu)

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

Alpha 5 includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale testing. 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/karmic/alpha5

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 5 on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek on Thu Sep 3 17:24:42 BST 2009

TechBoard 2009

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-09-01

Thank you to everyone who voted in the Tech Board election, which came to a result last night. We had 84 votes from 130 eligible voters. The new Tech Board in reverse alphabetical surname order is:

  • Matt Zimmerman
  • Mark Shuttleworth
  • Scott James Remnant
  • Martin Pitt
  • Kees Cook

Detailed results are available at:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/cgi-perl/civs/results.pl?id=E_e09bf9bea196cfff

Thanks also to Mario and Evan, who made it a far more interesting race, and to the rest of the new Board for their willingness to lead in this capacity.

[Discuss the New Tech Board on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Mark Shuttleworth on Tue Sep 1 16:02:31 BST 2009

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #157

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-08-30

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #157 for the week August 23rd – August 29th, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:

* Karmic: Feature Freeze in place – Alpha 5 freeze ahead
* Ubuntu Stats
* LoCo News: Pennsylvania, Arizona, Mexico, & Georgia
* Launchpad: Wear your badge with pride
* Launchpad: New guides to translating your project
* Ubuntu Forums news: Tutorial of the Week & Marking Threads as Solved
* Planet news from: Daniel, Ryan, Jorge, Laura, and Alan
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu at Parliament of Zimbabwe
* Full Circle Magazine #28
* Ubuntu UK podcast – Slipback
* August 2009 Team Reports
* 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
* Sayak Banerjee
* Isabelle Duchatelle
* Liraz Siri
* Nathan Handler
* 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

Feature Freeze in place; Alpha 5 freeze ahead

By boredandblogging | Published: 2009-08-27

The Feature Freeze is now in effect for Karmic. The focus from here until release is on fixing bugs and polishing.

If you believe that a new package, a new upstream version of a package, or a new feature is needed for the release and will not introduce more problems than it fixes, please follow the Freeze Exception Process by filing bugs and subscribing ubuntu-release or motu-release as appropriate, or by contacting a designated delegate.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreezeExceptionProcess

Please also make sure that specs assigned to you for Karmic are updated to their current status (which should be at least Beta Available if not Deferred, or unless granted a freeze exception).

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/

Our next testing milestone, Karmic Alpha 5, is scheduled for next Thursday, September 3. Karmic Alpha 5 will again use a “soft freeze” for main. This means that developers are asked to refrain from uploading packages between Tuesday and Thursday which don’t bring us closer to releasing the alpha, so that these days can be used for settling the archive and fixing any remaining showstoppers.

The list of bugs targeted for alpha-5 can be found at:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+bugs?field.milestone=12713

Per the policy described at <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RCBugTargetting>, this list is used for tracking bugs that are blockers for the alpha 5 milestone – so as you can see, the list is currently quite short. If you know of other bugs that should be considered blockers, please nominate them for release and set the milestone target for those bugs. If you have questions about whether a bug should be considered a blocker, please contact a member of the release team.

And of course, please also consider helping with the bugs already listed there if you have the time.

Beyond that short list of bugs that are blockers for Alpha 5, we have those bugs that are listed as release-critical for Karmic as a whole:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+bugs

If you aren’t among the small group of people who have milestoned bugs assigned to you, please consider helping with those release-targeted bugs, using your best judgement with regard to the alpha freeze when uploading
fixes.

Please also help us to get the archive in a consistent state again for the alpha, as described on <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/PackageArchive#Consistency>.

Finally, if you know of new features in Karmic that you think should be highlighted for Alpha 5, let me or another member of the release team know so that they can be added to the technical overview at <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicKoala/TechnicalOverview>.

[Discuss Feature Freeze and the upcoming Alpha 5 on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek on Thu Aug 27 02:07:43 BST 2009