Ubuntu Weekly News #17

Fri Oct 13 04:07:50 BST 2006

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 17 for the week of Oct
1 - 7, 2006. In this issue we cover the end of the Ubuntu Video
contest, the new Bluetooth team, Ubuntu in Indiana schools and much
more.

You can find older Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter issues at::
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter

== General Community News ==

The winner of the $100 USD Ubuntu Video contest has been announced.
Mous, the creator of multiple Linux gaming videos, was selected
because his videos presented an image of Ubuntu that challenges the
assumptions people have about Linux gaming. His work was widely
circulated and appeared in multiple gaming forums, receiving very
positive feedback. You can see the full announcement and his videos at
http://www.ubuntuvideo.com/and_the_winner_is

=== Kubuntu/Debian KDE Extras ===

Achim Bohnet made a page describing how Kubuntu packagers can make
sure their packages get into Debian too, through the Debian KDE Extras
team.

https://wiki.kubuntu.org/KubuntuKDEExtras

=== Rosetta and Upstream Collaboration ===

The Rosetta developers responded to comments from the KDE translators
with some notes that are valid for all upstream projects that Rosetta
includes.

https://wiki.kubuntu.org/RosettaAndUpstreamCollaboration

http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDERosettaCollaboration

=== New Bluetooth Team ===

Daniel Holbach announced the formation of the Bluetooth Team for
Ubuntu. As Edgy is but a few weeks away, the main goal is to look
towards Edgy+1 to "make it nice and sweet" in the words of Daniel. You
can read more at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bluetooth and
https://launchpad.net/people/bluetooth

== Changes in Edgy ==

This week was fairly quiet in Edgy, as we approach the final release.

Users of Xen will be pleased to see that xen-3.0 3.0.3~rc1 came out
this week, thanks to the hard work of Andrew Mitchell and Chuck Short.
Later in the week Andrew updated to the rc2 release.

Fabio M Di Nitto uploaded a number of cluster packages this week,
including the new Openais 0.80.1 and redhat-cluster-suite 2.20061002.
The latter includes changes from a bugsquishing party held upstream.

The printing world got a little saner this week, with Till Kamppeter
uploading foomatic-db-engine 3.0.2-20060925, which merges all of
Ubuntu and Debian's patches upstream. Till also uploaded
foomatic-db-hpijs 20060925 while Martin Pitt merged cupsys 1.2.4 from
Debian, including a great many bug fixes. Finally cups-pdf 2.4.2 was
synced from Debian.

A few of the gnustep packages were also synced from Debian this week.
They include gnustep-base 1.13.0, gnustep-gui 0.11.0 and gnustep-make
1.13.0.

In the Java world, libjcommon-java 1.0.6 arrived this week, which
allowed the package to move to universe, now that it builds with Free
Java. Likewise libjfreechart-java 1.0.2 was uploaded by Mattias Klose
and moved to universe. Also uploaded was ecj-bootstrap 3.2.1, synced
from Debian.

Bazaar, the distributed revision control tool, was updated to 0.11 by
Etienne Goyer. The new release brings speed improvements and other
changes. You can read more at
https://lists.canonical.com/archives/bazaar-ng/2006q4/017779.html

If you feel the need to mix your Python and .NET, the 1.0 release of
Ironpython was uploaded by Matthias Klose. You can read the 1.0
release notes at
http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=IronPython&title=v1.0%20Release%20Notes

=== Ubuntu ===

Andrew Mitchell uploaded the new 0.2.1 release of F-spot, the photo
management application. Aside a huge number of bug fixes, this version
brings support for scaling images when they are being emailed,
exporting them in the correct rotation and Picasa export support.

In the artwork world, there were a number of new packages this week.
Frank Schoep uploaded edgy-community-wallpapers 0.2-0 and later in the
week Daniel Holbach uploaded 0.3 of the same package. Daniel also
uploaded human-icon-theme 0.4, which adds new emblems from the Art
Team. Finally, Daniel uploaded edgy-gdm-themes 0.4 and ubuntu-sounds
0.5. The new ubuntu-sounds package might solve
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/61530, where it was
discovered that the Teardown spec had shortened the shutdown procedure
so much that the shutdown sound was being silenced too early.

The Telepathy team was very quiet this week, with only
telepathy-butterfly 0.1.1 being uploaded by Samuel Maftoul.

A few other pieces of the Ubuntu desktop got updated this week,
including the new poppler 0.5.4 and rhythmbox 0.9.6. Both uploaded by
Sebastian Bacher, the new Rhythmbox includes some DAAP fixes, ID3 tag
writing issues, UI and i18n improvements and more. You can read more
at http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/news.html. Also uploaded
this week was ubuntu-meta 1.26 and 1.27, the former of which added
onboard, libgl1-mesa-glx, linuxprinting.org-ppds, util-linux-locales
while moving gnome-games to recommends. 1.27 also added avahi-daemon
to the default install.

One of the most interesting new apps in Edgy this week is backstep
0.3, a tool to draw icons of minimized apps on the desktop. You can
read more about Backstep at http://backstep.sourceforge.net/

=== Kubuntu ===

The kubuntu-meta packages saw two updates this week, both by Anthony
Mercatante, 1.15 and 1.16. The former added digikam and removed
kmplayer-konq-plugins from kubuntu-desktop and the latter reverted the
previous change to read the plugins back in.

=== Xubuntu ===

The week started with the Xubuntu people finishing the split up of the
XFFM file manager package. As such, Gauvain Pocentek and David Valot
uploaded xffm-samba 4.5.0, xffm-filemanager 4.5.0, xffm-gui 4.5.0,
xffm-fstab 4.5.0, xffm-recent 4.5.0, xffm-icons 4.5.0, xffm-trash
4.5.0, xffm-proc 4.5.0. A few days later Gauvain uploaded the xffm4
4.5.0, which is the new modular metapackage.

Xffm was not the only piece of Xubuntu that saw changes this week.
Jani Monoses uploaded the new xubuntu-system-tools 2.15.5, which is a
branch of the gnome-system-tools. Jani also uploaded xfce4-dict-plugin
0.2.0, xfce4-mailwatch-plugin 1.0.1, and  xfwm4 4.3.99.1svn+r23289.
Gauvain Pocentek uploaded the first release of xfce4-cpu-freq-plugin,
0.0.1. Two changes to the xubuntu-meta package came this week, 2.14,
which added gxine, onboard and xfce4-dict-plugin to the desktop, and
one of the last uploads of the week, 2.15, which adds the
system-config-printer tool to the desktop.

=== Ichthux ===

The Ichthux team continued their work this week. Raphael Pinson
uploaded ichthux-meta 1.0ubuntu2, which adds ichthux-artwork-usplash,
ichthux-default-settings, and sword-language-pack-nl to the default
install. Jordan Mantha also uploaded ichthux-docs 6.10, the initial
upload of the documentation for this distro.

== In The Press ==

Benjamin Smedberg of Mozilla raised some concerns about the
cathedral-like nature of Ubuntu (and any other distros) archives. He
wondered about how Ubuntu can manage new applications and the ability
for people to install from the "Bazaar", as he called it. You can read
more at http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/blog/2006-10-04/is-ubuntu-an-operating-system/

Newsforge reports on Benetech, a charity whose mission is to use
technology to improve the world.  They use Kubuntu and Ubuntu on their
desktops Ball cited Ubuntu's ease of setup and installation as the
reason for the switch. ''"If you have to roll out 10 or 15 machines,
Gentoo's [inconvenient]. Most of our machines are Kubuntu, but there
are a couple of GNOME people in our organization."''

There's more at
http://business.newsforge.com/business/06/09/29/1827208.shtml?tid=39&tid=150&tid=132

ZDNet takes a look at Canonical as it gears up and shoots for profitability:

''Canonical is the 65-employee start-up behind a popular version of
Linux called "Ubuntu". The company is betting that it can win a place
in the market using a strategy that dominant Linux seller Red Hat has
dropped.''

''Red Hat offers two versions of Linux: Fedora Core and Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. Fedora Core is free, but relatively untested and
unsupported by Red Hat, while RHEL is supported and certified, but
must be purchased. With Canonical's Ubuntu, however, the free and
supported versions are identical--the approach Red Hat abandoned in
2003.''

''"We believe that Ubuntu should be free to everyone--not just a trial
version, but our very best version," said Christopher Kenyon,
Canonical's business development manager. The South African company
even ships free CDs anywhere in the world. Using that strategy, it
expects profitability within 24 months, he added.''

Visit http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6123249.html?tag=st.num for
the rest of the article.

eSchool News reports of Indiana and the 269 Ubuntu machines across 9 classrooms

Visit  http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2006/10/001568.php to read the
rest of the article.

== Meetings and other similar events ==

October 4th was a Hug Day, where Ubuntu users and developers get
together and focus on getting our expanding bug count under check. You
can read more about Hug Days at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay

The Development Team held their weekly meeting on October 5 this week.
You can read the developer updates at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelTeamMeeting20061005

== Security Updates ==

 * USN-359-1: Python vulnerability - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-359-1
 * USN-358-1: ffmpeg, xine-lib vulnerabilities -
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-358-1
 * USN-357-1: mono vulnerability - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-357-1
 * USN-353-2: OpenSSL vulnerabilities - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-353-2
 * USN-356-1: gdb vulnerability - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-356-1
 * USN-355-1: OpenSSH vulnerabilities http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-355-1
 * USN-354-1: Firefox vulnerabilities - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-354-1

== Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates ==

Fabio D Nitto uploaded cpio 2.6-10ubuntu0.2 to dapper-updates this week.

There were a few backports this week. They included:
 * ktorrent 2.0.2-0ubuntu2~dapper1
 * phpgroupware 0.9.16.011-1~dapper1
 * gnomebaker 0.6.0-0ubuntu1~dapper1
 * altermime 0.3.7-2~dapper1
 * acidrip 0.14-0.2ubuntu2~dapper1
 * debootstrap 0.3.3.0ubuntu5~dapper1
 * sg3-utils 1.21-1ubuntu1~dapper1
 * readahead-list 1:0.20050517.0220-0ubuntu5~dapper1

== Bug Stats ==

 * Open  (16144) (+460 over last week)
 * Critical (16)
 * Unconfirmed (8206)
 * Unassigned (11556)
 * All bugs ever reported (58793)

Daniel Holbach has posted a list of Bug Tasks for people looking for
things to do. You can read more at [WWW]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2006-September/000908.html

As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started,
please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs

Check out the bug statistics: http://people.ubuntu-in.org/~carthik/bugstats/

=== New features in Apport ===

Apport is a new tool in Edgy to allow users to collect backtraces,
amongst other things. There were two major announcments about it this
week. The first relates to duplicate bugs. Often a single bug will be
duplicated many times. Rather than have lots of duplicates filed, it
is better to redirect that person to a common bug. As such, Martin
Pitt, the developer of Apport, has announced Bug Patterns. You can
read more at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2006-October/021502.html

The 2nd piece of news involves the retrace tool, which is used for
developers to process backtraces after the fact. This allows the
direct downloading of the ddebs (debs containing the debug symbols)
and then rerun the stack trace to get better debugging symbols. You
can read more at
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2006-October/021500.html

== Additional Ubuntu News ==

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As always, you can find more news and announcements at:

 http://www.ubuntu.com/news

and

 http://fridge.ubuntu.com/

== Conclusion ==

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. See you next week!

== Credits ==

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

 * Corey Burger
 * John Little
 * Jenda Vencura
 * Jonathan Riddell
 * Pete Savage
 * Melissa Draper
 * And many others

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