Ubuntu Weekly News #12

[Corey Burger]

= Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter - Issue #12 =

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter - Issue #12 for the week of August 27 -
September 2, 2006

Welcome to this weeks issue of the Ubuntu weekly news. In this
edition, read about the release of a milestone image and call for
testing, a roundup of news from the Google Summer of Code student
projects and a sneak preview news of another project, 'upstart', by
Ubuntu Developer Scott James Remnant, designed to change the way that
a Unix/Linux boots for the first time in 30 years.

You can always find this and other Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issues at:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter

== In This Issue ==

 * Edgy Eft Knot 2 released
 * More news on upstart
 * Google Summer of Code final results
 * Security updates
 * Ubuntu 6.06 LTS updates
 * 6.06 backports
 * New apps in Edgy
 * Bug stats
 * In the press
 * Feature of the week - Gobby
 * UWN via RSS

== Edgy Eft Knot-2 released ==

Knot-2, the latest development release of Edgy Eft (which will become
Ubuntu 6.10), has been released.  This release brings the addition of
several new desktop applications (for example, Tomboy, a note-taking
program and F-Spot, a photo manager), a new Kubuntu theme, and much
more. You can read more at [http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/knot2 the
Knot-2 page on Ubuntu.com] or
[http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/edgy/knot-2/ download Knot-2].

== Upstart reaches a new milestone ==

Upstart, Ubuntu's new event-based service management daemon, has
reached the point where it can replace the sysvinit package. Steady
progress is being made by the author, Scott James Remnant, working
towards the goal of replacing the legacy sysvinit as the default
system init for Edgy. You can read more, including what and how to
test, on [http://www.netsplit.com/blog/work/canonical/upstart2.html
Scott's blog], where he also talks about various event types and how
to get involved in development. Upstart has even gained a logo,
created by Alexandre Vassalotti, as seen on Scott's blog.

== Google Summer of Code finishes for another year ==

Google's Summer of Code projects were handed in on August 21 and we
can now see the final results. As previously reported, Ubuntu started
with 22 projects, which can be seen at
[http://code.google.com/soc/ubuntu/about.html Google's page of Ubuntu
projects]. Please note that this list was compiled through the
diligent research of several members of the Ubuntu marketing team and
thus might not be completely correct. If we have missed anything, we
apologize in advance.

First, lets start by looking at the Ubuntu-specific projects.

=== Ubuntu projects ===

The Ubuntu specific projects covered a variety of different topics,
including a session backup tool and a migration assistant.

Samba GUI by Camille Percy
 * Status - 0.1 released
 * Project page - http://socg2006.googlepages.com/ubuntu-config-samba
 * Blog - http://socgguisambaconf.wordpress.com/

Ubuntu Welcome Centre by Parag M. Baxi
 * Status - Released
 * Project page - http://code.google.com/p/ubuntu-welcome-center/
 * Blog - http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~jigtopi/ghee22_blog/

Panel Switcher and Session Backup (originally Applications to Improve
Ubuntu) by Peter Moberg
 * Status - Both tools released
 * Project page - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PanelSwitcher and
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SessionBackup
 * Blog - http://blog.nurd.se/hype/

GLaunchpad/Consiel : GNOME Launchpad front-end by Lionel Dricot-
 * Status - Released
 * Blog and Project page -
http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?115-conseil-001-in-the-middle-of-the-boxes

Google Calendar Desklet by Teresa Thomas
 * Status - Some coding work done, unknown if released
 * Project page - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EsyncPlugins
 * Blog - http://2006.planet-soc.com/blog/249

Creation of a offline package updater/installer for Ubuntu by Baishampayan Ghose
 * Status - Unknown, design started
 * Project page - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OfflineUpdateSpec
 * Blog - http://g33k.wordpress.com/

Ubiquity Migration Assistant by Evan Dandrea
 * Status - Released and uploaded to the archives as migration-assistant
 * Project Page - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MigrationAssistance
 * Blog - http://www.evalicious.com/blog/

Incremental Updates for Debian Packages by Felix Feyertag
 * Status - Incomplete
 * Project Page - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/apt-sync

Network Authentication by Andrew Mitchell
 * Status - Unknown, apparently finished
 * Project Page -
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/network-authentication

=== Kubuntu projects ===

There were 4 Kubuntu specific projects. Jonathon Riddell, the lead
developer of Kubuntu, has created a
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KubuntuSummerOfCode2006 status page on the
Ubuntu wiki]

LVM support in Kubuntu installer by Armindo Manuel Sampaio da Silva
 * Status - Released
 * Download - http://kubuntu.org/~jriddell/qtparted-SoC.tgz

KDE formatting tool by Mickael Minarie
 * Status - Released and uploaded to the archives as kmformat
 * Project Page - http://www.micoulou.info/kformat/

Kubuntu OEM Redistribution Tools by Anirudh Ramesh
 * Status - Released
 * Project Page - http://muse.19inch.net/~abattoir/oem-config/

KControl/KDE-guidance module for Wine by Yuriy Kozlov
 * Status - In KDE SVN, under guidance module
 * Project page - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KDEGuidanceWineSpec
 * Blog - https://wiki.kubuntu.org/KDEGuidanceWineSpec/KdeGuidanceWineProgress
Yuriy Kozlov says:
"The project is a configuration module goes in system settings to
provide easy and logical access to configuration for running windows
programs with wine it has all the features of winecfg and a bit more
and is a bit more friendly. It's basically done, but i need to get a
patch into wine for one of the settings to work right. Wine devs
wanted my patch to change a bit more than i intended, so once that
gets in i need to change that part of my module a little as well.
Currently it's all in guidance in KDE svn."

=== Edubuntu projects ===

3 Edubuntu-specific projects were accepted, including the addition of
a much needed content filter.

Willow (a content filter) package and configuration GUI by Travis Watkins
 * Status - Released and in the Edgy universe repo as willow-ng
 * Project Page - http://www.realistanew.com/category/projects/willowng/
Spec changed to creation of new filter, due to quality of code of Willow

pyeducation/pyq -A testing/quizsystem for Edubuntu by Ryan Rousseau
 * Status - Released
 * Project Page - http://sourceforge.net/projects/py-education/
 * Blog - http://percentd.blogspot.com/

Safety Boat by Anselmo Lacerda Silveira de Melo
 * Status - Unknown
 * Blog - http://safetyboat.blogspot.com/

=== Accessibility projects ===

As part of the general effort to improve accessibility in Ubuntu,
Henrik Omma led two students to create two new tools.

OnBoard - On-screen keyboard targeted at tablets by Chris Jones
 * Status - Released
 * Project page - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Projects/onBoard
Chris Jones says:
"[The package is] reasonably feature complete and i'm getting quite a
lot of positive feedback from users.  Heno [Henrik Nilsen Omma], my
SoC mentor and one of the Ubuntu-a11y team is hoping to get it in main
for edgy and hopefully on the CD too. (...) It's an on-screen keyboard
meant to be a simpler alternative to the current gnome on-screen
keyboard.  It concentrates on point-and-click based users, leaving GOK
to handle switching scanning users."

XGL-based screen magnifier by Sven Jaborek
 * Status - Unknown, apparently not released
 * Project Page - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/compiz-mag

=== Bazaar projects ===

Bazaar, a distributed revision control system, also had 2 projects for
Summer of Code, under the general umbrella of the Ubuntu project.

Olive - Graphical User Interface for Bazaar-NG version control system
(bzr-gui) by Szilveszter Farkas
 * Status - Released and uploaded to the Ubuntu archives as olive
 * Project page - http://bazaar-vcs.org/Olive
 * Blog - http://phanatic.hu/

Submit bzr merge requests by email by Hermann Kraus -
 * Status - Unknown, apparently released
 * Project Page - http://bazaar-vcs.org/SubmitByMail

== Security Updates ==

There were no security updates this week

== Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates ==

OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 has been uploaded to dapper-proposed, the testing
archive for updates to Ubuntu 6.06.  Using the -proposed archive helps
ensure new updates are free of serious bugs, such as the X.org issue,
before they are released to the general -updates archive.  If you are
able, please help us test this update. You can find more information
at FIXME (location of wiki page that talks about how to test
dapper-proposed)

=== Backports ===

The backports team has been busy this week, and the following apps
where backported to 6.06:

checkinstall 1.6.0-2ubuntu1~dapper1
config-manager 0.3-3~dapper
bluefish 1.0.5-2~dapper1
amarok 2:1.4.2-0ubuntu2~dapper1
kboincspy 0.9.1-3~dapper1
seahorse 0.9.3-0ubuntu5~dapper1
konversation 1.0-0ubuntu1~dapper1
scribus-ng 1.3.3.2.dfsg-1~dapper1
kopete 4:3.5.4+kopete0.12.2-0ubuntu1~dapper1
debootstrap 0.3.3.0ubuntu3~dapper1
ilibtunepimp 0.4.2-3ubuntu3~dapper1
mod-cband 0.9.7.4-1~dapper1
libvisual 0.4.0-1~dapper1
xmoto 0.1.16-3~dapper1
xchat 2.6.6-0ubuntu1~dapper1
taglib 1.4-4~dapper1
squirrelmail 2:1.4.8-1~dapper1
spamassassin 3.1.3-1ubuntu1~dapper1
powersave 0.12.20-1ubuntu1~dapper1
phpmyadmin 4:2.8.1-1~dapper1
kpowersave 0.6.2-2ubuntu1~dapper1
gxine 0.5.7-1ubuntu4~dapper1
cacti 0.8.6h-3~dapper1

== New Apps In Edgy ==

This week brought much D-Bus love to edgy. (For those who don't know,
D-Bus is an "interprocess communication" tool. In laymans terms, it
allows apps to talk to one another). A whole host of people, including
Sebastian Droege, Michael Biebl, Sjoerd Simons, Anthony Baxter, Daniel
Stone, DavidZeuthen, Michel Daenzer, Daniel Silverstone, Kevin Ottens,
Daniel Holbach, helped close 56 bugs by working on '''dbus 0.92'''.

Giuseppe Borzi brought in '''keytouch-editor 2.2.1''' , which should
make people's lives easier with this program to configure the extra
function keys of the keyboard.

Lucas Nussbaum working on '''sqlrelay 0.37.1''', bringing some egdy
goodness to those who indulge in database connection pooling, proxying
and load balancing.

Jeremie Corbier, Stephen Gran and Mark Hymers brought us '''freeradius
1.1.3''', a high-performance and highly configurable RADIUS server.
This is a mostly bug fix version.

Brandon Hale uploaded '''Beagle 0.2.8''' this week, which fixed an
indexing issue amongst a whole slew of other bugs.

Szilveszter Farkas uploaded '''nanoweb 2.2.8''', a small webserver
written in PHP, which adds a spamcatcher module and some bugs.

Brandon Holtsclaw uploaded '''konversation 1.0''', the 1.0 release of
the KDE IRC client.

== Bug Stats ==

 * Open (14687) (+209 over last week)
 * Unconfirmed (7809)
 * Unassigned (9939)
 * All bugs ever reported (52355)

== In The Press ==

The xkcd webcomic takes an amusing look at the sudo command:

attachment:sandwich.png

Source: http://xkcd.com/c149.html

Search''Open''Source.com takes a look at Ubuntu's success and future prospects:

''The message from end users is consistent: Ubuntu has the chops to
continue on its successful path toward wider adoption in the
enterprise. Driving those accolades are factors like ease of
installation on the desktop as well as the spirited community that has
sprung up around the operating system. Today, according to Web sites
like DistroWatch.com, Ubuntu has more than 70,000 developers under its
umbrella and is the most popular Linux OS distribution.''

More at: http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid1_gci1213545,00.html

Engadget and Slashdot reported on the Janus Project, a custom built

== Feature Of The Week - Gobby ==

Have you ever tried working on the same documents with many people?
You may have discovered how difficult it is. You may have seen this
happen in company or charity offices around the world.

Computer programmers, like those who work on Ubuntu, encounter
similiar challenges everydays. The Ubuntu developers are spread out
across several continents, time-zones and countries so collaboration
can be difficult.  Developers try to manage collaboration with
"revision control" or "version control" tools.  Revision control
systems allow peoples the collaborate simultaneously on the same
projects.

In the office environment, you may start with a draft that everyone
''nearly'' agrees on.  The lawyers take the draft away and add a
disclaimer, Kelly from accounts improves one of the graphs, Sam in
press-relations spices up some of the language.  When the three teams
meet again at the end of the day, there are now '''three''' copies,
all slightly different.  The next step might be to appoint one person
to stitch them all together and integrate the three changes.  This is
the stage where the programmers win, the automatic ''revision
control'' tools take over and attempt to detect each change and splice
it into the final copy.

With everyone online it would be great to have those same features
available but without having to be programmers.  The answer to that
"Gobby", which you can easily install from the Add/Remove programs
menu.

attachment:uwn-gobby-reduced.png

After starting up Gobby and connecting to a central server (or having
other people connect to your own machine) you can share editing of a
document.  You can see in the screenshot above several of the Weekly
News editors working together, can you guess what the document is?
Changes are easy to follow in real-time with text from each connected
user appearing in a different colour.  There's no restrictions about
two people updating the same paragraph at the same time, you can start
editing a sentence even the previous person is continuing to type
words.  As soon as each character is typed, the letter immediately
flashes up on everyone else's screen.

Real-time editing is a real beauty to work with, so much so that Gobby
is now frequently used at Ubuntu conferences or summits.  With a dozen
developers seated around a table is possible for everyone to see,
read, update and improve the same specification document.  The
ultimate added advantage is that anyone not at the conference can just
as easily log-on with Gobby and start collaborating, regardless of
where in the world that Ubuntero may be.

Gobby is fun, fast, colourful and genuinely useful.  Check it out with
a quick visit to Synaptic, Adept or the Add/Remove programs menu and
start typing with you friends, colleagues or family!

== NEW: UWN via RSS ==

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== Additional News Resources ==

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
 * Paul O'Malley
 * Jenda Vancura
 * Paul Sladen
 * John Little
 * Eldo Varghese
 * And many others

== Feedback ==

This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Marketing Team. Please feel
free to contact us regarding any concerns or suggestions by either
sending an email to ubuntu-marketing at lists.ubuntu.com or by using
any of the other methods on the [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam
Ubuntu Marketing Team Contact Information Page]