Weekly Newsletter #82

By boredandblogging | Published: 2008-03-16

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 82 for the weeks March 9th – March 15th, 2008 is now available. In this issue we cover the Ubuntu 8.04 beta freeze, Ubuntu Classroom team, the return of Ubuntustats.com, LoCo projects from the Jordanian, New Mexico, and UK teams, Ubuntu Studio at Sheffield University, and, as always, much, much more!

  • Ubuntu 8.04 Beta Freeze
  • Ubuntu Classroom
  • Ubuntustats.com Returns
  • FLOSS Introduction – The Jordanian Way
  • Endorphin Power Company Ubuntu Install and Support
  • Ubuntu UK Podcast
  • Ubuntu Forums News & Interviews
  • Tutorial of the Week
  • In The Press & Blogosphere
  • In Other News
  • Meetings & Events
  • Updates & Security
  • Bug & Translations

If you have a story idea for the Weekly News please submit it via email or on the wiki !

UWN is brought to you by the Marketing Team.

Ubuntu at LugRadio Live USA 2008

By boredandblogging | Published: 2008-03-10

LugRadio Live USA 2008 is taking place on the 12th and 13th April at The Metreon in San Francisco (101, 4th St., San Francisco, 94103), and there will be a strong Ubuntu presence and an opportunity to meet lots of other Ubuntu fans and some well known Ubuntu celebrities.

LugRadio Live USA 2008 is an event that provides a very different atmosphere to most computer conferences. The organisers specifically go out of their way to produce an event that is very social, fun and loose, with an incredibly inclusive, approachable atmosphere. Organised and run by the cult-hit podcast LugRadio, LugRadio Live USA 2008 brings over 35 speakers, 30+ exhibitors and lots of fun sessions, events, prizes and other attractions. In addition to this, a live recording of LugRadio will happen in front of the audience.

Ubuntu is well represented at LugRadio Live USA 2008. Jono Bacon, our community manager, is the co-founder of LugRadio and one of the organisers of the show, so he will be there, but there will also be Ben Collins, leader of the Ubuntu kernel team, Matthew Garret, power management and kernel legend, and Belinda Lopez and Emma Jane Hogbin from Ubuntu Women. In addition to this, Nathan Haines and Neal Bussett from the Ubuntu California LoCo team will be there running a booth and showing off Ubuntu. Jorge Castro, who works for Jono at Canonical, will also be there. We are keen to invite as many Ubuntu users along for a big meet and greet. LugRadio Live USA 2008 is a great opportunity to meet other Ubuntu users and developers.

In addition to Ubuntu speakers and exhibitors the event also includes these speakers:

  • Miguel de Icaza (Mono / Novell / Co-Founder Of GNOME)
  • Ian Murdoch (OpenSolaris / Founder Of Debian)
  • Robert Love (GNOME / Google)
  • Aza Raskin (Mozilla / Humanized)
  • Benjamin Mako Hill (Ubuntu / Debian / FSF)
  • John Buckman (Magnatune)
  • Val Henson (Kernel / VAH consulting)
  • Christopher Blizzard (Mozilla / GNOME)
  • Mike Linksvayer (Creative Commons)
  • David Schleef (GStreamer)
  • Matthew Garrett (Power Management / Kernel)
  • Danese Cooper (Intel / OSI)
  • Aaron Bockover (Banshee / Novell)
  • Liana Holmberg (Second Life / Linden Lab)
  • Emma Jane Hogbin (Hick Tech)
  • Joe Zonker Brockmeier (OpenSuSE / Novell)
  • Kristen Accardi (Kernel)
  • Joe Born (Neuros)
  • Selena Deckelmann
  • Stewart Smith (MySQL)
  • Dan Kegal (Wine)
  • Ben Collins (Ubuntu / Kernel)
  • Jason Kridner (Texas Instruments)
  • Jeremy Allison (Samba / Google)
  • Christian Hammond (VMWare)
  • Ian McKeller (Songbird)
  • Alison Randall (Parrot / Perl / OSCON)
  • David Huffman (LVM)
  • Brian Will (Pigeon)
  • Belinda Lopez (Ubuntu)
  • Ilan Rabanovich (SoCal Linux Expo)
  • Eddy Mulyono (Packaging)
  • Matthew Walster (Demo Scene)

Exhibitors confirmed at present include Ubuntu, Google, Dice, GNOME, PostgreSQL, O’Reilly, OpenSuSE, Linden Labs, Magnatune, Neuros, Sun, Texas Instruments, South California Linux Expo, Komputers 4 R Kids, San Francisco LUG, BytesFree.org, Ontario Linux Fest, Frets on Fire, OpenNMS, One Course Source, Haiku, Hyperic, BitRock, OpenStreetMap, The Digital Tipping Point and FreeBSD.

Because LugRadio Live USA 2008 is organised by and run for the community, the price is incredibly low – $10 for the full weekend. That is two days worth of fun and games. It is recommended that you pre-register your ticket here, although tickets are available on the door. For more details, see the LugRadio Live USA 2008 Website.

If you are going, spread the word, and lets have a great Ubuntu presence at LugRadio Live USA 2008!

Weekly Newsletter #81

By boredandblogging | Published: 2008-03-09

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 81 for the weeks March 2nd – March 8th, 2008 is now available. In this issue we cover the release of Hardy Alpha 6, interesting Brainstorm stats, interview with Server developer Mathias Gug, and, as always, much, much more!

  • Hardy Alpha 6 Available
  • Brainstorm Stats
  • Interview with Mathias Gug, Server Developer
  • Full Circle Podcast – episode #01
  • In The Blogosphere
  • In Other News
  • Upcoming Meetings & Events
  • Updates & Security
  • Bug Stats & Translations

If you have a story idea for the Weekly News please submit it via email or on the wiki !

UWN is brought to you by the Marketing Team.

Ubuntu Desktop Training

By boredandblogging | Published: 2008-03-04

The next meeting for the Ubuntu Desktop Training team is taking place this Thursday 6th March at 16:00 UTC on #ubuntu-training (@ freenode.net).

If you are interested in getting involved, this Thursday’s meeting will be a perfect opportunity as there will be a tutorial by Torsten Spindler on how to contribute using blueprint in Launchpad. More details about the meeting and project can be found on their wiki page>.

Ubuntu Brainstorm Update

By boredandblogging | Published: 2008-03-03

Four amazing days have passed since the launch of brainstorm.ubuntu.com, and all we can say is Whoah! A couple of numbers:

  • 10,000 registered users
  • 2700 ideas (in comparison, Dell Ideastorm has 9000 ideas)

And the numbers keep growing! We had not expected such a success.

But this huge success has its consequences. As many users have pointed out, there are many duplicates, some spam, and the current ordering of ideas (most votes first) in the main page is not optimized for new ideas. Some quirks and bugs have also been found, thanks to your input on Brainstorm!

Quality over quantity is the goal. The objective of Brainstorm is simple: every idea posted on Brainstorm gets its share of attention. This allows the best ideas to be presented at the next Ubuntu Developer Summit. Some of the more pressing issues were dealt with this week.

For this, we created several new ideas lists:

  • Most popular today
  • Most popular this week
  • Most popular this months

In these lists, the ideas are classified by a ratio of votes/(time since creation). With such a scheme, very new popular ideas will have a chance to stand out amongst the older ones. Random ordering, a feature requested by some, has also been included. Implemented ideas and ideas being worked on can now be browsed. Links to category listing have been added.

Two new roles have been created: the Ubuntu Developer role, and the Moderator role. A developer will be able to add a comment beneath an idea description and update idea status, while a moderator will be able to handle duplicate reports, and delete offensive or spam posts.

Lots of smaller fixes or features have also been implemented (see full list of changes below), but Brainstorm is not finished yet. A lot of new features/fixes remains to be done, and we are actively looking at your input on Brainstorm.

Stay tuned!

The Ubuntu QA Team

Bug fixes:

  • Fixed 403 error pages when looking at page 2 or more of a contributor
  • Fixed layout breakage with longs word and URLs
  • Users are now able to edit their idea descriptions.

Spam handling:

  • Limit the number of lines displayed on lists.
  • Limit the time between submissions to one minute.

Roles:

  • New Moderator role: able to handle duplicate reports, delete comments and ideas, change all the contents of the ideas
  • New Ubuntu Developer role: able to fill the “Developer Comments” field of an idea, and change its status.
  • Users of both new roles as well as admins are more noticeable on comments (bold + logo).

Advanced search page:

  • Added random ordering.
  • Added most popular today, this week, this month ordering.

Administration:

  • Ability to change the front page description without SQL updates!

My ideas page:

  • User are now able to see their ideas marked as duplicates, and their deleted ideas. No more disappearing ideas!