New and Growing LoCos

With Ubuntu 8.10 out the door, LoCos all over the world have been celebrating the release. We catch up with the relatively new Zimbabwean team and the fast growing Iranian team, who both hosted release parties earlier this month.

Ubuntu Zimbabwe

On 1 November, the Zimbabwean Team held its first ever release party. People came from as far as 300km to attend the event. The IT manager of parliament, who is also a member of the LoCo, was present as well. Neil Coetzer says:

“The month of November left us with a great sense of achievement and satisfaction. In light of the political tension, violence and collapsed economy in our country, it was refreshing to see that Zimbabweans still have an active interest in Ubuntu and open source in general.”

Chatting Braaing

Ubuntu Iran

The Iranian Team have shown good growth with their launch parties, roughly doubling their attendance figures every launch party since the 7.04 release. Mehdi Hassanpour says:

“The Iranian Team started their public work with Ubuntu 6.10 release and soon became a big mature Open Source promoter team in the area and now with more than 3000 users in forums and ~80 posts per day is a very fast growing comunity.”

Cake Photo Event Poster

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #118

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #118 for the week of November 16th- November 22nd, 2008 is now available.

In This Issue:

*Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 1 released
*The Ubuntu Hall of Fame
*Ubuntu for the Holidays
*New Community Developers
*Ubuntu-Iranian Team Release Party
*Ubuntu-Colombia to Host First UbuCon
*Ubuntu-Zimbabwe host 1st release party
*Ubuntu Presentation: Ubuntu Peruvian Lo“Co
*Ubuntu Irish Team release party
*Launchpad offline November 24th
*Meet Barry Warsaw
*OpenID from your Launchpad profile
*Launchpad t-shirts
*In The Press
*Ubuntu UK Podcast
*Ubuntu Podcast #12
*Linux Identity Magazine Covers Ubuntu 8.10
*On Distributions, Kubuntu, and KDE

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

*Nick Ali
*John Crawford
*Craig A. Eddy
*Kenny McHenry
*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 License 3.0 BY SA

Ubuntu Hall of Fame

Jono Bacon has announced the creation of the Ubuntu Hall of Fame. It is an effort to recognize contributors that make the Ubuntu community a success.

With such a large community working on 5-A-Days, LoCos, translations, upstream bug triage, the sponsorship queue, Launchpad, forums, and many other projects, some contributors can be recognized by specific hard numbers, some may contribute in a range of projects that cannot be measured statistically. The Hall of Fame will highlight both types of work.

A number of boxes appear on the Hall of Fame:

Each box contains data for a specific topic, a description detailing what the data shows, ways to find more related data, and a link to a page that outlines how to get involved in that part of the community.

Another part of the Hall Of Fame is the Featured Contributor. Contributors doing excellent work around the community will be highlighted. Here, a little blurb will cover what they have done, their achievements and their personality. To show your appreciation for a contributors work, it is possible to “Thank” them. By clicking on a Thank button, the Hall Of Fame will look up your Launchpad account and add your profile picture to the blurb. This makes it easy to show featured contributors that you appreciate their work!

When thinking about who we would showcase for the first Featured Contributor, one of the first names that sprung to mind was Nick Ali, an excellent contributor and friend to everyone. Go and check out the Featured Contributor article about him.

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #117

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #117 for the week of November 9th- November 15th, 2008 is now available.

In this Issue:

* New Theme for help.ubuntu.com
* Dell Mini 9 update testing
* Ubuntu Community Interview: Nathan Grubb
* Jaunty Alpha 1 freeze ahead
* Ubuntu Stats
* Tamil Team Release Party
* Ubuntu Peru gives Ubuntu presentation
* Launchpad plugin for Eclipse
* Launchpod: Episode #12
* Launchpad offline November 19th
* 2 new Launchpad interviews
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.2 released
* Ubuntuero gets inked: Ubuntu Style
* LoCo Council Meeting: November 10th
* Edubuntu Meeting Minutes
* Server Team Meeting Minutes
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

* Nick Ali
* John Crawford
* Craig Eddy
* Kenny McHenry
* Arlan Vennefron
* 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 License

Ubuntero Gets Inked – Ubuntu Style

One South African Ubuntu fan, Denham Coote, took a big step into showing his commitment to the ubuntu concept by getting an Ubuntu circle of friends tattoo. The Fridge caught up with him to find out what inspired him to do this.

Tattoo Pic

Fridge: Is the tattoo real?

Denham: Sure is.

Fridge: Getting that tattoo is a big commitment. What does the Ubuntu logo mean to you?

Denham: Well, apart from being a great design, I really love what it stands for. The ideals of the Ubuntu/Linux/open source community. The ideas of sharing, caring, acceptance, diversity, giving back, acknowledgement, working towards a greater good, etc. ubuntu.com sums it up wonderfully – ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’

Fridge: When did you make the final decision to do this? Was it a difficult decision? How long did you think about it?

Denham: I’ve often wondered and toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo, but have always found reason not to. It’s permanent. It should have meaning, etc. Last Wednesday I was out with my mate Kay (the tattoo artist) discussing the general idea. The next day, after thinking about it a little, I realised that these are values that can (and should) apply anytime, all the time. Regardless of what OS I run, regardless of whether or not Ubuntu Linux exists. That said, yes, I run Ubuntu!

Fridge: Do you know of others you have inspired to do the same? What has the general feedback been from your friends and family?

Denham: No one else so far. It’s interesting in that non-geeks simply see it as a cool design. Geeks will either shake their head and call me mad, or will think it’s really cool. So far the only negative feedback has been from the 12 year old commenters on Digg who get off on showing their ignorance 🙂

Fridge: Have your parents seen it? What did they say?

I showed my dad right after. I grew up in a household where tattoos were a big no-no. After explaining the meaning, he seems to have accepted it, even offering to help clean it up (when it was still very fresh).