Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 255
http://fridge.ubuntu.com/wp-content/...aper-icon4.jpg
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 255 for the week February 27 - March 4, 2012.
In This Issue
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) Beta 1 Released.
- Ubuntu 12.04 Development Update
- Ubuntu Stats
- LoCo News
- Michael Hall: Contributing to Unity for non-developers: Keywords
- Tiago Hillebrandt: Interview: Nick Tait, Unity project manager
- Clint Byrum (SpamapS): Precise is coming
- Canonical Design Team: About Usability Testing - Recruiting
- Ubuntu's Bold Mobile Gambit
- Ubuntu 12.04 hits beta, brings smooth Unity for marching masses
- Ubuntu for Android Gets Shown Off At Mobile World Congress
- Paul Wise: Debian/Ubuntu games screenshot party results
- In Other News
- Other Articles of Interest
- Featured Podcasts
- Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
- Weekly Official Ubuntu Flavors Team Meetings
- Upcoming Meetings and Events
- Updates and Security for 8.04, 10.04, 10.10, 11.04 and 11.10
- And much more!
General Community News
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) Beta 1 Released.
Kate Stewart of the Ubuntu Release Team has announced the first beta release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products, along with the recognized flavors. "Codenamed 'Precise Pangolin', 12.04 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work throughout this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs."
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ch/000899.html
Ubuntu 12.04 Development Update
The Developer News team writes about the transition of Ubuntu 12.04 from Alpha Testing into the first phase of Beta Testing. Nicholas Skaggs has a number of items you can help out with by simply doing a bit of testing.
Also covered are some reoccurring events (including the new Fix-it Friday) and an interview with community member Benjamin Kerensa who has recently begun to get involved with development.
The post wraps up with a list of outstanding tasks which need to be completed, several ideas for getting involved, how to find something to work on and getting in touch with Ubuntu developers.
http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2012/03/01/...ent-update-16/
Ubuntu Stats
Bug Stats
- Open (90205) +547 over last week
- Critical (108) +4 over last week
- Unconfirmed (46831) +126 over last week
As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad
Translation Stats Oneiric
- English (Australia) (2) +/-0 over last week
- Spanish (8496) -19 over last week
- English (United Kingdom) (29698) -589 over last week
- Bosnian (37556 )-2 over last week
- Brazilian Portuguese (42973) -531 over last week
Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Oncelot", see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/oneiric/ and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations
Ubuntu Brainstorm Top this week
Ubuntu Brainstorm is a community site geared toward letting you add your ideas for Ubuntu. You can submit your own idea, or vote for or against another idea. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/
Ask Ubuntu Top 5 Questions this week
Ask (and answer!) your own questions at http://askubuntu.com
LoCo News
2012 Ubuntu-my LoCo Team T-shirt
Khairul Aizat Kamarudzzaman writes that recently the Ubuntu Malaysia Team held a competition to design an Ubuntu Malaysia t-shirt for the up and coming Ubuntu 12.04 release. The winning design has been chosen and orders for the T-shirts are now open to Ubuntu users in Malaysia.
http://blog.myfenris.net/2012/02/28/...-team-t-shirt/
Jamming Artists and the Ubuntu Community
Charles Profitt of the New York Ubuntu LoCo blogs about having an artist contribute to the Ubuntu Community by producing Forum Avatars for the Ubuntu Global Jam and several new art resources for the New York Loco Team. "Beautiful!! The team now has a much improved logo to use with print media as well as properly sized logos for Launchpad, the loco portal, and our wiki page."
http://ftbeowulf.wordpress.com/2012/...ntu-community/
Ubuntu Global Jam Italy (Pistoia): a quick review
Andrea Grandi shares with us an Ubuntu Global Jam event that was held in the city of Pistoia, Italy. There were 15 participants (with several more participating via IRC) with the main focus areas being translations (from English to Italian) as well as learning to implement automatic tests. The day was rounded up with a tour of the city and a great time was had by all.
http://www.andreagrandi.it/2012/03/0...-quick-review/
The Planet
Michael Hall: Contributing to Unity for non-developers: Keywords
Michael Hall publishes a 4-step tutorial on his blog explaining how non-developers can contribute to the Unity Dash by making the application search functions better. His tutorial includes how to add keywords to an application and send the changes to Ubuntu to be included in the 12.04 release.
http://mhall119.com/2012/02/contribu...pers-keywords/
Tiago Hillebrandt: Interview: Nick Tait, Unity project manager
In this interview Tiago Hillebrandt talks to Nick Tait, the Unity Project Manager, about his job at Canonical, the up and coming Ubuntu 12.04 release and Unity.
http://tiagohillebrandt.eti.br/blog/...oject-manager/
Jono Bacon: Call For Manual Test Writers
Jono Bacon shares a call for volunteers to help write manual Checkbox tests for several applications to help ensure consistent quality in the 12.04 release. The now released beta1 is mentioned in this post, but the tests will also be used for the beta2.
http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/02/28/...-test-writers/
Alan Pope: Unity is the best choice for the future of Ubuntu
Alan Pope explains why Unity is the right choice for Ubuntu in order to move the project forward as part of a new debate segment for the Ubuntu U.K. Podcast.
http://popey.com/blog/2012/02/29/uni...ure-of-ubuntu/
Clint Byrum (SpamapS): Precise is coming
Clint Byrum shares with us some of the work done by the Canonical Server Team in the past two years that has "led to precise's awesomeness." He covers inclusion of CEPH in Maverick, improvements to Upstart in Natty, the debut of juju and more.
http://fewbar.com/2012/03/precise-is-coming/
Canonical Design Team: Testing, testing, testing. It prints!
Ubuntu has a new printer test page that has been updated with the new Ubuntu logo as well as enhanced to use less ink. The design team asks that you try it out and report any bugs.
http://design.canonical.com/2012/03/printer-test-page/
Canonical Design Team: About Usability Testing - Recruiting
Every three months Charline Poirier conducts Usability Testing to gauge progress towards achieving a greater user experience with Ubuntu. Often times the question arises about the process that was followed and Charline has started to answer this multi-faceted question starting with this post, the focus of which is recruiting participants.
http://design.canonical.com/2012/03/...ng-recruiting/
In The Press
Ubuntu's Bold Mobile Gambit
Katherine Noyes of LinuxInsider writes about Ubuntu for Android and how it "became clear that the news had struck some kind of chord with observers far and wide, prompting nothing less than a large-scale reconsideration of the current state of computing." Some of the responses were positive towards Canonical and Ubuntu while others just saw this as another attempt to stop Canonical from hemorrhaging money.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/74510.html
Ubuntu 12.04 hits beta, brings smooth Unity for marching masses
The Register reports on the first beta of the upcoming 12.04 LTS release on Thursday. Among many new features and a much more stable version of Unity, they report that this version looks to have a renewed focus for business with a longer support period and a Business Remix.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03...4_beta_review/
In The Blogosphere
Ubuntu for Android Gets Shown Off At Mobile World Congress
Joey Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! reports on AndroidCentral's Phil Nickinson's comments from one of the premier events for mobile devices, Mobile World Congress (MWC). This year it was held in Barcelona and Ubuntu for Android was strutting its stuff. Sneddon was impressed and excited to the point of "want now" but reports that "exact details remain scant on the ground as to when you can expect to get your hands on it."
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/u...bile-congress/
Paul Wise: Debian/Ubuntu games screenshot party results
The Debian/Ubuntu games team recently organised a half-day screenshots party for creating screenshots for all the games that are available in Debian/Ubuntu. "Over the 7 hours of the party, they uploaded 100 screenshots for 40 different packages. Of the packages, 2 are available only in Debian (auralquiz, cutechess), one is available only in Ubuntu (plasma-widget-tictactoe) and the rest are available in both. "I think we got quite a bit done for such a small group."
http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2012/...party-results/
Powerful 'Cotton Candy' Linux PC goes on sale
John E Dunn of TechWorld writes about 'Cotton Candy' a powerful tiny computer that can run either Ubuntu or Android 4.0. "The $199 (APS139) computer's small size - it is enclosed within a USB stick case - belies its power. Underneath lies a custom design comprising a 1.2 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor with 1GB or RAM, supporting for up to 64GB of microSD storage." Dunn goes on to say, "Despite being commercial, Cotton Candy is not a huge distance away from the philosophy of the UK's Raspberry Pi project."
http://www.networkworld.com/news/201...8.html?hpg1=bn
HUD Is Now Available For Unity 2D Too [Ubuntu 12.04]
A very last minute inclusion sees HUD available in Unity 2D. At time of writing it isn't available in the official Precise repositories but by adding the Unity Team PPA it can be installed (see article for more details/instructions)
http://www.webupd8.org/2012/03/hud-i...ty-2d-too.html
Beta1 Reviews
There have been many reviews of the Beta 1 release, the following are a sampling that caught the attention of our editors.
In Other News
Ubuntu for Android success at Mobile World Congress
With more than 4000 delegates visiting the Ubuntu booth in the first two days at the recent Mobile World Congress John Bernard of Canonical reports that the booth was a resounding success. "The reception has been overwhelmingly positive among hardware manufacturers and operators, and indeed among hundreds of individuals and enterprises who can't wait to get their hands on a new smartphone running Ubuntu for Android."
http://blog.canonical.com/2012/03/01...orld-congress/
Other Articles of Interest
Featured Podcasts
Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S05E01 - An Exhortation to Peace and Unity
"Mark Johnson, Tony Whitmore & Alan Pope are joined by guest presenter Andy Piper for the first episode of the new season of the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo Team!"
Topics include events, a new debates section where they discuss Unity, news and more.
http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/2012/02...ace-and-unity/
Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
Weekly Official Ubuntu Flavors Team Meetings
Upcoming Meetings and Events
For upcoming meetings and events please visit the calendars at fridge.ubuntu.com: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/calendars/
Updates and Security for 8.04, 10.04, 10.10, 11.04 and 11.10
Security Updates
Ubuntu 8.04 Updates
Ubuntu 10.04 Updates
Ubuntu 10.10 Updates
Ubuntu 11.04 Updates
Ubuntu 11.10 Updates
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Additional Ubuntu News
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and
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Conclusion
Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.
See you next week!
Credits
The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:
- Elizabeth Krumbach
- Charles Profitt
- Chris Druif
- Neil Oosthuizen
- And many others
Glossary of Terms
Other acronyms can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/glossary
Ubuntu - Get Involved
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This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Weekly News Team. If you have a story idea or suggestions for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list at https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/lis...untu-news-team and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Ideas. If you'd like to contribute to a future issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, please feel free to edit the appropriate wiki page. If you have any technical support questions, please send them to ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com.
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