[News]

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #185 for the week March
14th - March 20th, 2010. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1
released, Ubuntu Global Jam: time is ticking, Call for Community help:
Ubuntu.com Website Localization Project, Launchpad’s Bug Watch system
and other animals, Upgrade Jams – made easy, Server Bug Zapping -
eucalyptus and euca2ools, Nominate your favorite Ubuntu Server
Papercuts, Full Circle Podcast #2: The Full Circle of Light (Brown), and
much, much more!

== UWN Translations ==

* Note to translators and our readers: We are trying a new way of
linking to our translations pages. Please follow the link below for the
information you need.

https://wiki.ubuntu....er/Translations

== In This Issue ==

* Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 released
* Ubuntu Global Jam: time is ticking
* Call for Community help: Ubuntu.com Website Localization Project
* Ubuntu Stats
* Launchpad’s Bug Watch system and other animals
* Upgrade Jams – made easy!
* Server Bug Zapping - eucalyptus and euca2ools
* Nominate your favorite Ubuntu Server Papercuts
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Full Circle Podcast #2: The Full Circle of Light (Brown)
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security

== General Community News ==

=== Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 released ===

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the first beta release of Ubuntu
10.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) Desktop, Server, and Netbook editions and
of Ubuntu 10.04 Server for Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) and Amazon's
EC2. Codenamed "Lucid Lynx", 10.04 LTS continues Ubuntu's proud
tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source
technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Desktop and Netbook Editions continue the trend of
ever-faster boot speeds, with improved startup times and a streamlined,
smoother boot experience.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server Edition provides even better integration of the
Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, with its install-time cloud setup.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server for UEC and EC2 brings the power and stability
of the Ubuntu Server Edition to cloud computing, whether you're using
Amazon EC2 or your own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud.

The Ubuntu 10.04 family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu
Studio, and Mythbuntu, also reach beta status.

To upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 from Ubuntu 9.10 or Ubuntu 8.04
LTS, follow these instructions:
https://help.ubuntu....y/LucidUpgrades

For a list of mirrors to download the new Beta release, please follow
the link below.

https://lists.ubuntu...rch/000129.html

=== Ubuntu Global Jam: time is ticking ===

The countdown has started for the Ubuntu Global Jam. It’s less than 10
days until Ubuntu teams around the globe show off some community power
and join the fest to make our favourite OS even more awesome.
https://wiki.ubuntu....UbuntuGlobalJam

For the late-comers:

* WHAT: Ubuntu Global Jam - https://wiki.ubuntu....UbuntuGlobalJam
* WHEN: Weekend of the 26th to 28th of March 2010
* WHERE: Everywhere around the world! Check out your nearest Lo``Co

There are plenty of activities to choose this time (Bugs, Testing,
Upgrade, Documentation, Translations, Packaging). Be creative!

* Bugs: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams/Bugs
* Testing: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams/Testing
* Upgrading: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams/Upgrade
* Documentation: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams/Docs
* Packaging: https://wiki.ubuntu....ms/Translations

And do remember to add your event to the Lo``Co Directory as well.

If you’ve never run a jam, do join us on IRC in #ubuntu-locoteams and
ask questions, or even better, check out Jono’s videocast and the easy
steps on how to organize and run one. We’ve also been running some
training sessions on IRC you might find interesting.
https://wiki.ubuntu....rainingSessions

http://davidplanella...ime-is-ticking/

=== Call for Community help: Ubuntu.com Website Localization Project ===

It a my pleasure to announce a new project to better the Ubuntu.com
website experience, specifically for users who prefer a language other
than English. The new project, called Website Localization [1] will put
a short (4-5 word) message on any www.Ubuntu.com
web page directing users to more resources in
their preferred language.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu....iteLocalization

This project has two main parts to it. The first part of the Website
Localization project is the technical aspect of the project. It is the
goal of the project to create a script that will pull out of a users web
browser their preferred language. The second part of this project is
creating landing pages for as many resources as possible. This part of
the project will be done by Lo``Cos and the i18n team. The landing pages
will be on the wiki, and will be ever changing to direct users to the
best information that we can give them. The goal is to have the project
completed and implemented by the
end of May.

Chris Johnston is heading the project, but he can't do all of this
himself, so he is going to need help from the Ubuntu community. At this
point, he needs some assistance with the technical side of
the project. He needs a few people to create the script that will detect
the users preferred language, and then show them a link to the landing
page in their language. If you have the skills needed to help out with
this Website Localization project, please send Chris an email with your
name, launchpad account, a little bit of information about the
experience you have and your general ability (time zone, and anything
else that may help him out). His goal is to get a group of a few people
to work on the technical aspect of this project and have a meeting in
the next few weeks to discuss the project in a little more detail, and
determine the best way to make this happen.

https://lists.ubuntu...rch/004273.html

== Ubuntu Stats ==

=== Bug Stats ===

* Open (76766) +399 over last week
* Critical (27) -2 over last week
* Unconfirmed (36996) +23 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 Karmic ===

1. English (United Kingdom) (2) Not listed last week
2. Spanish (13129) Not listed last week
3. French (43102) Not listed last week
4. Brazilian Portuguese (43389) Not listed last week
5. Swedish (64252) Not listed last week

Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx", see more
at: https://translations...t/ubuntu/lucid/

=== Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week ===

* Tabs in Office - http://brainstorm.ub...com/idea/24078/
* Put the gedit search in a toolbar like in Firefox - Put the gedit
search in a toolbar like in Firefox
* Safe Active``X Alternative - http://brainstorm.ub...com/idea/24070/
* I would like to be notified when a large file operation (copy/move) is
completed - http://brainstorm.ub...com/idea/24057/
* Nautilus "List View" problems - http://brainstorm.ub...com/idea/24069/

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/

== Launchpad News ==

=== Launchpad’s Bug Watch system and other animals ===

Launchpad has a feature where it periodically checks the status of
remote bugs (as in, bugs recorded in another bug tracker, like bug 12720
in Django).

When someone links a bug on Launchpad with a remote bug it’s called a
bug watch. All the bug watches for a bug appear in the Launchpad bug
page in an area called “Remote bug watches”. Check out bug 513719 to see
a bug watch for bug 12720 in Django.

If the remote bug tracker has been set as the bug tracker for a project
in Launchpad, bug tasks for that project can be linked to a specific
remote bug too. When the status of the remote bug changes, Launchpad
changes the status of the bug task to match, and sends out email to
subscribers, the same as if the status had been changed in Launchpad.
See the Django bug task in bug 513719 for an example.

Going further, comments can be synchronized too, in both directions.
Recent versions of Bugzilla have this capability built in, but older
versions can be supported with a plugin. There’s also a plugin for Trac.

This is all very nifty stuff, but it suffers because it doesn’t work
very well! Yet. Part of the problem is due to complexity, and part due
to development of the code base.

We’re trying to fix these issues now. We’ve made checkwatches – the
program that drives the bug watch machinery – run multi-threaded. This
works, but it hammers our database, so we need to figure out how to
alleviate that next.

We’ve started the work to move the code base over to using Twisted. This
is a better model for managing a lot of concurrent network activity. As
more and more bug watches are registered with Launchpad, we’re going to
need it.

http://blog.launchpa...d-other-animals

== The Planet ==

=== Daniel Holbach: Upgrade Jams – made easy! ===

We’re all gearing up towards Ubuntu Global Jam and I LIKE IT! More and
more teams are signing up in the Lo``Co Directory. Once you managed to
find a venue, tell a few friends, you’re basically all set. the Jams
page has all the information you need.

* Ubuntu Global Jam: https://wiki.ubuntu....UbuntuGlobalJam
* Lo``Co Directory: http://loco.ubuntu.c...lobal/3/detail/
* Jams Page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams

One thing I’d like to point out specifically is Upgrade Jams. They’re
probably the most straight-forward way to help out. Just upgrade, test
and report what you find. With Lucid becoming 10.04 we have another LTS
that is going to be supported for for 3 years on the Desktop and 5 on
the Server, so we’ll have a lot of people upgrading and installing it,
so we want to make sure it’s all in tip-top shape. The upgrade process
is part of the experience.

* Jams Upgrade Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams/Upgrade
* Jams Testing Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams/Testing

I love to say this: straight-forward just got easier. One problem you’ll
have with an upgrade jam is that you need lots of bandwidth. If you
don’t have that you might want to set up a proxy or mirror or cache or
something. The easiest I could find is squid-deb-proxy (a new feature,
by Michael Vogt, in Lucid).

Basically on the server (or cache machine) you run: $ sudo apt-get
install squid-deb-proxy

And on the client (where you do the upgrade) you run: $ sudo apt-get
install squid-deb-proxy-client

Done.

As this feature is not in karmic yet, I backported it:

* $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dholbach/ppa
* $ sudo apt-get update

and install squid-deb-proxy or squid-deb-proxy-client.

I found it too hard to backport for hardy (which we support upgrades to
→lucid too), so for a hardy upgrade you will have to set up the proxy
information in “System → Preferences → Network Proxy” manually.

This is going to be awesome!

http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=630

=== Dustin Kirkland: Server Bug Zapping - eucalyptus and euca2ools ===

So far, the KVM and Samba bug zapping weeks have been a success!

Next week, we will be focusing on Eucalyptus, Euca2ools, and UEC in
general. In fact, Mathias Gug, Scott Moser, and I will be on-site at
Eucalyptus Systems in Santa Barbara, California. We're going to spend
the whole week working on UEC, ensuring that the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Cloud
offering is the best damn Linux hosted Cloud Computing platform in the
industry.

Call For Participation

If you have any vested interest in the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, please
give us hand next week!

Take a look at the open bugs against:

* eucalyptus: https://bugs.edge.la...urce/eucalyptus
* euca2ools: https://bugs.edge.la...ource/euca2ools
* cloud-init: https://bugs.edge.la...urce/cloud-init
* cloud-utils: https://bugs.edge.la...rce/cloud-utils

Help us reproduce those, or let us know if they're fixed. Come hang out
in #ubuntu-server next week.

http://blog.dustinki...lyptus-and.html

=== Thierry Carrez: Nominate your favorite Ubuntu Server Papercuts ===

An Ubuntu Server LTS release stays around for 5 years, so during the
development cycle there is an increased focus in QA, bugfixing and
stability. During Lucid UDS in Dallas, we discussed of various ways of
translating that effort into clear actions. One of those discussions was
geared towards improving the Ubuntu Server user (sysadmin) experience:
we could focus on fixing lots of minor annoyances, low-hanging-fruit
bugs that traditionally get less attention than others. On the footsteps
of the excellent One hundred papercuts project (from the User experience
team), this project was named Server papercuts.

This project is led by the Ubuntu Server community, for the Ubuntu
Server community. We discussed the implementation details during our
weekly IRC meetings, a specific Launchpad project was created, together
with a team to triage the candidates (with a cool badge).

Now it’s time to nominate your personal pet bug, your favorite minor
annoyance, your preferred PITA ! Here is the process to follow:

1. If the papercut isn’t already filed as an Ubuntu bug in Launchpad,
file a bug against the affected Ubuntu package
2. Look up the bug you want to nominate as a Server papercut, then click
on “Also affects project”
3. Click “Choose another project” and type in “server-papercuts”, click
“Continue”
4. Click on “Add to Bug report”

That’s it ! Your bug will now show up on the Server papercuts buglist
and we’ll Confirm or Invalid-ate it soon, when we start getting a good list.

Here are a few guidelines on what makes a good Server papercut:

* Bug affects a server package
* Bug has an obvious and easy fix
* Bug makes the life of the sysadmin more miserable

Here are a few guidelines on what doesn’t make a good Server papercut:

* New features
* Large-scale improvements that affect multiple packages
* Your solution is likely to result in a new papercut for someone else

For more details, complete acceptation criteria is described in the
project spec. https://wiki.ubuntu....erPapercutsSpec

http://fnords.wordpr...rver-papercuts/

== In The Press ==

=== Ubuntu 10.04 beta 1 is looking good, less brown ===

Ryan Paul, writing for ars technica, talks about some of the new things
in Lucid Lynx. His article starts off with the theme and branding, a new
application indicator system, the Me Menu, the addition of Pitivi video
editing, and the removal of the GIMP photo editing. He also notes some
changes that have taken place since the Alpha version, mostly things
that have been smoothed out and cleaned up. Ryan includes numerous
screenshots to back up his claims. Read the whole article at:
http://arstechnica.c...-less-brown.ars

=== Nerd alert: first Lucid Lynx Ubuntu beta fun ===

Scott Gilbertson, writing for The Register (el Reg, for those in the
know), is impressed with what he has seen of the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta.
He notes that for him everything "just worked" right out of the box.
Even his iPhone showed up in Nautilus. He was most impressed with the
addition Gwibber social networking app and the new themes. See how your
impressions stack up against his:
http://www.theregist...id_lynx_review/

=== Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 1 Released [Screenshots Tour] ===

Web``Upd8 takes a look at the Lucid Lynx Beta, and offers you a look,
too. It shows off both the Ambiance and Radiance themes, boot splash and
log-in screens, and logo. Also noted were some of the changes to the
GNOME panel apps. Ubuntu Software Center was redesigned, and they show
some of the improvements. See what you think of the latest look of Lucid
Lynx:
http://www.webupd8.o...1-released.html

=== Ubuntu pre-release testing made ease with TestDrive ===

Ryan Paul, of ars technica, has been introduced to a new development in
Ubuntu, by Jorge Castro. Called Test``Drive, this tool will download an
iso and configure a VM for it to run in. More than just that, it will
cache the iso and use rsync to update the parts that have changed. That
way you can continuously test daily builds of a new release. It supports
both KVM and Virtual``Box and is easy enough for causal users that
simply want to see what's changed. To get Test``Drive on Ubuntu 9.10,
you can install it from the project's PPA.[1] For more details, visit
its project page on Launchpad.[2]

1. https://edge.launchp...ve/+archive/ppa
2. https://edge.launchpad.net/testdrive

http://arstechnica.c...h-testdrive.ars

=== Testing The Different Ubuntu 10.04 Kernels ===

Michael Larabel of Phoronix tells us that the release of Ubuntu 10.04
LTS "Lucid Lynx" is quickly approaching next month. While it may not be
as exciting as looking at the many new end-user features, in this
article he is testing out the available kernels for Ubuntu 10.04.
Besides the standard Linux 2.6.32 kernel used in the Lucid release,
there is also a specialized server kernel as well as a new -preempt
kernel is now available. Larabel looks at how these different kernels
perform and how they compare to the mainline Linux kernels with the
2.6.32, 2.6.33, and 2.6.34-rc1 releases. For the benchmarks that were
influenced by the different kernels Larabel tested, his simple summary
is that the -preempt kernel had its advantages in the disk tests. Follow
the link for further details.

http://www.phoronix....d_kernels&num=1

=== Testing The Power Management Of Ubuntu 10.04 ===

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports that a call for testing went out to
try out the new pm-utils-powersave-policy package that should be making
its way into the Lucid Lynx repository in time for the release of Ubuntu
10.04 LTS next month. This package offers up several fixes and new power
savings features that should help those mobile users running Ubuntu
10.04 to prolong their battery life. Larabel tested out this new package
with a notebook and netbook to see how it changes the power game for
Ubuntu 10.04 along with whether it's much of an improvement over the
current Ubuntu 9.10 release. From Phoronix's Core 2 Duo notebook it's
looking like Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" shaping up to go through less
power than Ubuntu 9.10, but with the Atom netbook this is not
necessarily the case. Click on the link to read more on the tests that
Larabel conducted and what the results were.

http://www.phoronix....d_pmutils&num=1

=== Shuttleworth heir opens up on Ubuntu biz ===

Timothy Prickett Morgan of Channel Register thinks that when you have
Mark Shuttleworth as your backer, as commercial Linux distributor
Canonical does, it is a bit like having money in the bank when the bank
also believes fervently in your cause. While Shuttleworth may be the
Self Appointed Benevolent Dictator For Life at the Ubuntu project, that
does not mean that he is the best person to lead Canonical, or that he
wants to steer Canonical. He clearly doesn't, since Jane Silber, the
long-time chief operating officer at Canonical, was tapped last December
to replace Shuttleworth as CEO. Timothy speaks to Jane Silber on a range
of topics in this article, which you can find at the link below.

http://www.channelre...cal_ceo_silber/

=== Ubuntu Lucid Lynx: Ubuntu's Most Innovative ===

Datamation's Bryce Byfield notes that Ubuntu’s Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04)
is still six weeks away from release. However, the daily builds and news
releases suggest that Lucid will be one of the most innovative versions
of Ubuntu for several years. Scheduled as a Long Term Support release
that will be supported for three years on the desktop and five on the
server, Lucid also shows Ubuntu pressing hard toward well-defined goals.
Usability, adaptability, commercialization -- few releases of any
distribution can be summarized so tidily as Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx does.
Such well-defined goals alone would make Lucid an ambitious release.

http://itmanagement....-Innovative.htm

=== Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta Released ===

Michael Larabel of Phoronix reports that it's arriving a day late, but
Steve Langasek has announced the release of the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta on
Friday March 19th. This first major Ubuntu update of 2010 is codenamed
"Lucid Lynx". Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Mythbuntu
have all reached a 10.04 Beta status too. Details and download links for