Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #99

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 99 for the weeks July 6th – July 12th, 2008 is now available. In this issue we cover: special 100th issue of the UWN next week, Intrepid Alpha 2 released, MOTU news and videos, new Universe contributor, summary of UDS discussions, new Kubuntu website, Ubuntu Venezuela 2 year anniversary, Launchpod episode #7, Tutorial of the week, Technical Update, Ubuntu in US retailers, and much, much more!

  • Special 100th Issue of the UWN Next Week
  • Intrepid Alpha 2 Released
  • New MOTU
  • New Universe Contributor
  • MOTU Videos – “This is how I fix a bug”
  • Summary of UDS Discussions
  • New Kubuntu Website
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Ubuntu-Venezuela Celebrates 2nd Anniversary
  • Launchpod Episode #7
  • Ubuntu Forums Tutorial
  • Technical Update
  • In the Press & Blogosphere
  • Canonical & Valusoft bring Ubuntu Support to US Retailer
  • Upcoming Meetings & Events
  • Updates & Security

Special 100th Issue of the UWN Coming Next Week

Don't miss the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter next week as we celebrate our 100th issue with the Ubuntu community. There will be interviews with community members, a retrospect, and insights from past and present UWN staffers. You definitely won't want to miss this issue, so make sure your RSS feed is up to date, your email subscription is current, or the wiki bookmarked for a very special anniversary issue of the UWN!

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!

Ubuntu Intrepid Alpha 2 Released

Pre-releases of Intrepid 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 2 is the second in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Intrepid 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 Intrepid. You can download it here:

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

Alpha 2 includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha2 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/intrepid/alpha2

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

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.

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

Summary of UDS-Intrepid Discussions

It has been a month since Ubuntu Developer Summit Intrepid Ibex was held in Prague, Czech Republic. The track leads have collated all their reports from the UDS discussions and Jorge Castro has made a summary of them, available here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS-Intrepid/Report/Summary. This report is a combination of reports and specs:

The reports are meant to be a bird’s eye view of what’s to come in Ubuntu 8.10. Like all best-laid plans, these are subject to adjustment and/or changes, but should be general enough to give you a good idea of what’s being worked on.

Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS Released

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS, the first maintenance update to Ubuntu’s 8.04 LTS release.

In all, over 200 updates have been integrated, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

To Get Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS
To download Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS, or obtain CDs, visit: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download.

Beginning with this maintenance release, users of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS will be offered an automatic upgrade to 8.04 via Update Manager. As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge. For further information about upgrading, see http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading.

We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues. They are available at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/804.

About Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS
This is the first maintenance release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which continues to be supported with maintenance updates and security fixes until April 2011 on desktops and April 2013 on servers.

Since its release, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has seen widespread use in a variety of desktop and server deployments, and received a great deal of feedback from users. The Ubuntu team has focused their efforts on resolving issues reported by people deploying Ubuntu out in the real world, including:

  • Firefox has been upgraded to the final 3.0 release from Mozilla, correcting a number of issues discovered during their beta test. (#237690)
  • The Samba client allows LANMAN authentication again, correcting problems connecting to some NAS and older Windows servers (#209520).
  • Various problems with the FUSE interface to GNOME’s new virtual file system have been fixed, correcting certain problems accessing network file shares (#211205, #212789).
  • The behaviour of the timezone map in the live CD installer has been improved, making it simpler to understand and use (#203423).
  • The “Hardware Drivers” application no longer reports the proprietary nVidia driver as being enabled when it isn’t installed (#216650).
  • The Transmission menu item is now called “Transmission BitTorrent Client” to clearly explain its purpose (#184238).

While we have fixed a number of audio-related issues, including a scheduler problem that caused audio stuttering under load (#188226), other audio playback problems may still exist, because so far we have been unable to verify a targeted fix that does not cause regressions for other users. We will continue to investigate this, and would welcome people with problems to provide feedback on Luke Yelavich’s test packages. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/191027 for details.

Updated images have also been released for members of the Ubuntu family which do not carry the LTS (Long-Term Support) label, namely Kubuntu, the Kubuntu KDE4 remix, Gobuntu, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu Studio, with images for Mythbuntu to follow soon. These additional images are provided to the community in response to USN-612-1, a major security vulnerability identified earlier in the Ubuntu OpenSSL packages, to ensure that secure installation images are available to all users in the Ubuntu family. For more information about this security vulnerability, please see: http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-612-1

See http://www.ubuntu.com/usn for a full list of Ubuntu security updates. As of 2008-07-02, all updates affecting packages on the CD have been applied.

A summary of notable updates is available here. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu for specific information about a particular bug number.

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #98

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 98 for the weeks June 29nd – July 5th, 2008 is now available.

In this Issue:
* Ubuntu 8.04.1 released
* Intrepid Alpha 2 due out Thursday
* Ubuntu Brainstorm
* Two new Ubuntu Teams
* Kubuntu Intrepid news
* Ubuntu Stats & Bugs
* Ubuntu Nicaragua
* Launchpad News
* Ubuntu Forums news
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu-UK podcast #9
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

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!