Ubuntu News

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #203 for the week July 18th - July 24th and is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Last call for Maverick server papercuts
• Ubuntu Maverick open for translation
• Native readers: extending the Beta
• MOTU Interview: Maia Kozheva (sikon / LucidFox)
• An Interview With Silver Fox
• Ubuntu Developer Week Re-Cap
• Ubuntu Stats
• Approval and Re Approval Process
• LoCo Council July Meeting minutes
• Delivering the Ubuntu Colombia Contact
• Stepping Down from Ubuntu Bangladesh
• Dun Laoghaire July Geeknic
• Ubuntu-fr at Les Vieilles Charrues
• Launchpad News
• Ubuntu at Non-Technical Events
• More cleansweep.
• Discussion request: multilingual posts on Planet Ubuntu or not?
• The Official Ubuntu Book – 5th Edition
• This week in design – 23 July 2010
• Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04 is now available in Greek!
• How to Ask Smart Questions by Martin Owens
• Ubuntu One iphone client, source code released
• Ubuntu Translation Teams Healthcheck
• An invitation to join Ubuntu’s Q&A group on Shapado.com
• Akademy 30 second interviews, Eben Moglen, Helsinki, Prague
• “Blog about what you’re doing”
• Bugs vs Blueprints
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• Windows or Ubuntu?
• Linux Box To Market Ubuntu
• Dell drops Ubuntu PCs from website… for now
• Is Linux Too Much for One Mere Mortal to Handle?
• Rackspace’s Risky Open Cloud Bet
• Featured Podcasts
• Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security
• and much much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• J Scott Gwin
• Liraz Siri
• Nathan Handler
• Penelope Stowe
• Daniel Calab
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

… also known as Ubuntu Global Jam is coming up swiftly, so make sure you put 27th-29th August into your calendar and talk your local Ubuntu friends into participating.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam

Ok, so it’s Ubuntu Global Jam. What does that mean? What’s going to happen?

Simple. It’s going to happen what you make happen. Whatever your team enjoys doing is great. The only requirements are: it needs to be fun and it should make Ubuntu better somehow.

Ok. What does that mean?

We had loads of different jams around the world already: events where people get together locally and make Ubutnu better by working on bugs, packaging, translations, documentation, testing, upgrading or whatever else they enjoy doing.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams

In the past we had events all around the globe, where new friends met for the first time, people learned from each other, people from other open source projects were invited and where everybody (most importantly) had a fantastic time.

If your LoCo team already knows when and where it’s going to happen, add the event to the LoCo Directory. We set up the event on loco.ubuntu.com already.

http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/global/195/detail/

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams has lots of information on how to to organise the event properly, and what kind of preparation your team mates should look into depending on what your team wants to do. Stay tuned for tuition sessions where you can ask all your questions. A good place for getting that information is of course loco-contacts or the ubuntu-event-planners mailing list.

If you’re part of a LoCo team, please bring it up with your team, talk to them, find out what they like, meet and make Ubuntu rock even harder.

[Discuss the Ubuntu Global Jam on the Forum]

Originally sent to the loco-contacts Mailing List by Daniel Holbach on Tue Jul 27 14:59:33 BST 2010

Age: 23
Location: Novosibirsk, Russia
IRC Nick: LucidFox

Maia Kozheva

Desktop

Desk

How long have you used Linux and what was your first distro?
My first attempt to use Linux was back in 2001 or 2002, called something like WinLinux 2000 – it was a version of Linux that ran from under Windows, with very old software like KDE1. But I prefer to count my Linux experience from 2004, when I first installed Debian Woody into a dual boot to test-build Colonization Too (an open source 2D video game I was contributing to, now dead).

By then, many of the distribution’s packages were very outdated, and, not knowing about testing and unstable releases, I started manually compiling and installing many core components. I ended up with quite a mishmash of a system, more LFS than Debian, with software from old .debs and manually from tarballs, and it was a pain trying to make the system do what I wanted, but I was so excited at having a working GUI environment that was not Windows, and having a working C/C++ compiler, that I was willing to forgive it many major flaws. Plus all the tweaking, up to and including building custom kernels, taught me a lot of knowledge about Linux internals that came very useful in the future.

How long have you been using Ubuntu?
Since late 2005. Ubuntu Breezy was my first Linux distribution to Just Work (although even it required a considerable amount of tweaking by modern Linux standards), so I never installed any other OS on my home machine except on virtual machines, and deleted Windows shortly thereafter.

When did you get involved with the MOTU team and how?
Like many open source involvements, it began with an attempt to scratch a personal itch, in August 2007. I wanted to update the Psi instant messenger, which was then outdated in Ubuntu. I was curious about the process of creating .deb packages to begin with, so I read the packaging guide, read about uploading to REVU, and uploaded my first package. (Don’t do this at home, kids – REVU is not for updating existing packages!) My first packaging attempts were really ugly, but quickly improved thanks to both the packaging guides and the feedback from MOTUs.

What helped you learn packaging and how Ubuntu teams work?
Mostly the packaging guides on the Debian and Ubuntu websites, and first-hand experience with contributing new and updated packages to Ubuntu. When I needed to learn about some obscure packaging features, I usually looked at packages where they were already implemented.

What’s your favorite part of working with the MOTU?
The knowledge that you have achieved something. Watching the changes land in the archive, and knowing that in the span of a few hours, they will be there on mirrors around the whole world, for the benefit of thousands of Ubuntu users.

Any advice for people wanting to help out MOTU?
Be bold. The developers aren’t a cabal cult worshiping the Dark God of Ubuntu, they’re friendly people willing to help. If you have questions and a web search doesn’t answer them, come to IRC and ask! Along the way, you can learn something new from the conversations that go there all the time.

Learn by example, learn the typical solutions to your problem and try to follow the conventions. Don’t forget that Ubuntu gets most of its packages from Debian, and consider also contributing to Debian so that your effort benefits two distributions at once.

Are you involved with any local Linux/Ubuntu groups?
So far, my involvement has been limited to one presentation I gave at Ubuntu Global Jam here in Novosibirsk, at the request of one of the LUG organizers. I explained how Ubuntu development worked, some technical details about packaging, then logged onto Launchpad, wrote and uploaded a bugfix for a package in front of the eyes of the interested ones.

What are you going to focus on in Maverick and Maverick+1?
In Maverick, I have been mostly focused on patching software to interoperate with the indicator menus, including the still-in-development global menu, and pushing my non-Ubuntu-specific changes into Debian. In Maverick+1… Well, I’d like to get Pinta into a condition when it can go into the default install, since I think it neatly fills the niche of a general-purpose image editor, a “GIMP for casual users”. The final decision is with the desktop team, though.

What do you do in your other spare time?
Watch movies with my sweetheart, contribute to other open source projects, try my hand at speculative fiction. Occasionally post bileful rants about $personal_annoyance in my blog. But that’s rare. Sort of.

[Discuss Maia Kozheva’s Interview on the Forum]

Originally posted by Daniel Holbach here on July 23, 2010 at 08:30 am

So, it is without further ado that I introduce my next victim guest. Silver Fox is generally a quiet member of the Ubuntu Beginners Team, but does good work within said team which goes – largely – unnoticed. I thought it would be appropriate to try and bring these to light for others to see.

1. Tell as much as you’re willing about your “real life” like name, age, gender, location, family, religion, profession, education, hobbies, etc.

I am a professional web developer and database administrator living and working in the UK. I don’t really have much family but I do have a good number of friends. My hobbies include running, badminton and just lately photography. I also keep a blog where I post pretty much anything on my mind.

2. When and how did you become interested in computers? in Linux? in Ubuntu?

The earliest computer I remember “playing” with was an acorn electron. I got fascinated by how what you typed somehow made sense to the computer (certainly didn’t to me). I got it into my head to try and work out how this all works. After much time and effort I had to give up, I just didn’t “get it”.

I can’t remember what I was doing after that but I picked up the computer interest sometime around windows 3.1. Again I was drawn to the programming side , with fond memories of writing applications in qbasic. This time I seemed to get on better with it and stuck the course. Years later I found myself with a ?BSc (Hons).

Linux was a bit of a background noise initially to me, I had heard people mention it but I was not sure what to make of it at all. I finally took a jump after some serious problems with Microsoft Vista. A colleague suggested I try Ubuntu (I believe I caught the end of 7.10). Since then I have tried many distros but a firm favourite would have to be Ubuntu (and those based on it).

3. When did you become involved in the forums (or the Ubuntu community)? What’s your role there?

I joined Ubuntu Forums in June 2008, though I lurked for a period before hand. Here is a link to my profile. I try to help anyone I can, even if its pointing them to a howto. I especially try to help those who post in Absolute Beginners Talk. These are the people I can relate to most, totally stuck and feeling lost. I consider myself a beginner at best but I would like to think I must have learnt something by now about Ubuntu

4. Are you an Ubuntu member? If so, how do you contribute? If not, do you plan on becoming one?

I am an Ubuntu Member. Here is a link to my wiki page. My main involvements are with the Ubuntu Beginners Team. I am in my second term of leading the IRC focus group. This group aims to provide real time support to those who require help. I have other activities listed on my wiki page for those who would like an in depth breakdown.

5. What distros do you regularly use? What software? What’s your favorite application? Your least favorite?

Currently I am mainly using Ubuntu and #! Crunchbang Linux at home. From time to time I boot into Fedora and Zenix.

My favourite application would probably be Firefox. Its usually one of the first application I run when I turn on my computer

6. What’s your fondest memory from the forums, or from Ubuntu overall? What’s your worst?

My fondest memories on the forum are two little words, Thank You. I get great pleasure from knowing that I helped someone.

7. What luck have you had introducing new computer users to Ubuntu?

I have had some success in introducing people to Ubuntu. A few of my friends are now happily running the operating system with me serving as immediate source to help if it goes wrong (very little has )

8. What would you like to see happen with Linux in the future? with Ubuntu?

?I would like to see awareness of Linux increase to the point where I can talk to “Joe Public” about Linux and to not get a blank look back.

9. If there was one thing you could tell all new Ubuntu users, what would it be?

Hello and welcome The community is fantastic. Never feel like you are alone when tackling a problem.

[Discuss Silver Fox’s Interview on the Forum]

Originally posted by Joe Barker here on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Richard Johnson has tendered his resignation from the Developer Membership Board, and so we are soliciting nominations to fill this vacancy.

The DMB is responsible for reviewing and approving new Ubuntu developers, meeting for about an hour once a fortnight. Candidates should be Ubuntu developers themselves, and should be well qualified to evaluate prospective Ubuntu developers and decide when to entrust them with developer privileges.

The new member will be chosen using Condorcet voting. Members of the ubuntu-dev team in Launchpad will be eligible to vote.

Please send nominations to developer-membership-board at lists.ubuntu.com (which is a private mailing list accessible only by DMB members) by 29 July.

[Discuss the Developer membershipo Board Vacancy on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce Mailing List by Collin Watson on Thu Jul 15 16:26:28 BST 2010

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #202 for the week July 11th - July 17th and is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase calls all artists to contribute to next version of Ubuntu
• Operation Cleansweep: We Need You!
• Ubuntu Accessibility Team Personas Survey
• ISO testers for the Hall of Fame
• Ubuntu User Days Wrap-Up
• Ubuntu Stats
• Rocking The LoCo Council
• Ubuntu: a computer operating system built around community
• Ubuntu Chicago Bike Tour
• The Early-Summer LoCo BBQ at hutchnate’s house was a tasty success!
• Ubuntu Honduras LoCo Team Wakes up
• Launchpad News
• Launchpad EPIC 2010 photo
• Showing first/last 40 comments in Launchpad
• Three tips for faster launchpadlib api clients
• Ahmed Kamal Joins the Horsemen
• Reviewers Team and Operation Cleansweep
• Ubuntu Manual Project core philosophy
• Man Your Browser
• Android SDK on Ubuntu
• KDE SC 4.5 RC 2 Packages Available
• KOffice 2.2.1 is out
• Updating the Ubuntu Packaging Guide
• Building a Ubuntu website on Stackexchange
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• Mozilla Ramps Up Vulnerability Reward Program
• Firefox joins Microsoft in uncool kids class - Chrome hangs out, looks good
• Linux to eclipse Microsoft’s ‘all-in’ tablet enthusiasm
• TurnKey Appliance Development Contest: An Open Source Summer Bonanza!
• The GIMP 2.6.10 Ubuntu Karmic And Lucid PPA
• Google App Inventor: Make Your Own Android Apps
• Spotify music streaming service comes to Linux
• The End of Shot of JAQ
• Introducing HTML5: a book review
• Keeping things simple: the Linux kernel
• sudo apt-get install sl is Fun!
• Featured Podcasts
• Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings & Events
• Updates and Security
• and much much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• Liraz Siri
• J Scott Gwin
• Penelope Stowe
• Nigel Babu
• Mike Holstein
• Daniel Calab
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

One of the goals identified for the Ubuntu Accessibility Team for this cycle is to create personas that can be used by designers and developers to get them thinking about accessibility. Personas are fictional people created to give designers and developers a face and personality to consider when working. Personas just make it a little more personal rather than just concepts.

To help researching all the various accessibility needs of users, we’ve created a survey about how people with disabilities of all types use their computers. Now we need as many people as possible to fill it out. We really want to get feedback from as many different types of disabilities so we can figure out what best suits users as far as needs and where the major problems may lie. We don’t just want to hear from Ubuntu users, but everyone.

The survey can be found at two places:

1. On a wordpress blog with text boxes. This can be filled out completely anonymously (no e-mail required or anything): access.libertus.co.uk
2. On a wiki page that can be e-mailed to the e-mail address provided. This version also has some more background information on what we’re doing: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Personas/Survey

If anyone has any questions or anything, please feel free to leave them here or you can e-mail ubuntu.accessibility.survey@gmail.com if you don’t want to ask publicly.

Also, please let me [Penelope Stowe] know if you have an access problem with both versions of the survey as I really don’t want anyone barred from taking it due to not being able to access it. We were able to test with a screen reader, but I know we don’t have things like variable text sizes or the ability to play with the colours of the sites.

We’re hoping to gather the responses we need by August 8th.

[Discuss the Ubuntu Accessibility Team Personas Survey on the Forums]

Originally posted here by Penelope Stowe on July 14th, 2010

Evan, seen lurking here in the background, has a favour to ask. Stackoverflow is a website that allows professional and enthusiast developers to ask questions of one another in order to share ideas, solutions and make the life of developers better. It’s an extremely high quality resource but those clever folks over at Stack Overflow aren’t content to stop there!

They have another site they call Area 51. This is where groups of people can propose custom sites based around Stack Overflow for their own projects. This is where Evan’s favour comes in as he, like many of us working on Ubuntu, would like to have a really great place to send people with questions about Ubuntu. Not only that but one that’s already got an army of intelligent helpful people helping one another – with a healthy collection of Ubuntu users in there too I’ll wager.

A stackexchange powered solution would be nothing short of amazing and YOU can help!

But how do I help, Iain?

I’m thrilled you asked!

1. Visit the Ubuntu proposal page on stackexchange.

2. Register and vote for this proposal.

Then while you enjoy a celebratory cup of tea and a biscuit think of ways to spread this as far and wide as you can.

Let’s tweet www.tinyurl.com/stackexchange using #ubuntu and put up signs in our offices, and send each other pictures of these signs in our offices!

Tell your brothers, sisters, friends, lovers, mothers, ex-lovers, ex-mothers … wait that doesn’t work … get a tattoo!*

If you can think of any other ways of getting this out there tell us in the comments! Thanks for listening and good luck. We’ll follow up with progress At time of writing we have 76 people committed!

*Seriously, really don’t get a tattoo

[Discuss Vote now for a more supportive future! on the Forums]

Originally posted here by Iain Farrell on July 14th, 2010

This week’s Bug Day target is *drum roll please* Pidgin!

The task is to assign to the right package and triage those as well:

• 100 New bugs need a hug
• 78 Incompletes bugs need a status check
• 100 Confirmed bugs need a review

Bookmark it, add it to your calendars, turn over those egg-timers!

• Thursday, 15 July 2010
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20100715

Are you looking for a way to start giving some love back to your adorable Ubuntu Project?

Did you ever wonder what Triage is? Want to learn about that?

This is a perfect time!, Everybody can help in a Bug Day! Open your IRC Client and go to #ubuntu-bugs (freenode) the BugSquad will be happy to help you to start contributing!

Wanna be famous? Is easy! remember to use 5-A-day so if you do a good work your name could be listed at the top 5-A-Day Contributors in the Ubuntu Hall of Fame page!

We are always looking for new tasks or ideas for the Bug Days, if you have one add it to the Planning page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/Planning

If you’re new to all this, head to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs

[Discuss Announcing this week’s Bug Day target - Pidgin - Thursday, July 15th, 2010! on the Forums]

Originally sent to the Ubuntu Devel Announce Mailing List by Kamus on Tue Jul 13 19:32:18 BST 2010

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #201 for the week July 4th - July 10th and is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Welcome New Ubuntu Members
• Kubuntu developer wins KDE Akademy 2010 Award
• The Ubuntu Font
• Ubuntu Developer Week
• Indicator Panel Menu Rocks the House
• Ubuntu Translations Interviews: Milo Casagrande (Italian Team)
• Ubuntu Closes Root Hole
• Ubuntu Stats
• LoCos, Leaders, and Lessons Learned: Massachusetts Team
• June LoCo Health Check Follow-up
• New Launchpad Bugs Status: Opinion
• Cleansweep Progress Report
• Accessing files made easy – Exploring vs Finding
• Dear Canonical
• We’ve packaged all of the free software…what now?
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• How to Install Ubuntu on Your Nexus One/Android!
• GNOME Amazon Referral Fees June 2010
• Ailurus - A Useful Ubuntu Tweak Alternative For Beginners
• Using Bazaar on Subversion Repositories
• GIMP Plugin Registry 3.5.1 Gets ~129 New Plugins
• Getting Amarok running in Ubuntu 10.04
• Featured Podcasts
• Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security
• UWN A Sneak Peek
• and much much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• Liraz Siri
• Penelope Stowe
• Daniel Caleb
• Mike Holstein
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Article contributed by Amber Graner

In the latest LoCo Team interview in this US Teams Interview Series - LoCos, Leaders, and Lessons Learned, Amber Graner talks to Martin Owens of the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo Team. Martin talks about the tools the team uses, events they attend as well as help with, and what advice the Massachusetts LoCo Team would give to other teams and community members and much much more!

US-Teams: Could you tell us a little about you and what your role in the LoCo Team is?

Martin Owens: My current role in the Massachusetts Local team is as a leader and official contact to the world wide community, I provide each member with assurances and self-authority in cases where members are too shy to take the initiative and I also supply the local team with news and interesting updates that may effect us.

US: When was the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo team started? How long after it was started did it take to get approved?

MO: It was started way back in 2007 when a group of us went out for pizza, since then it’s become much more formalised now that there is some direction and definition about what a local community group is supposed to do. Once you’ve found your feet and got some events organised it’s possible to get approved, we got approved way back when you had to go to the council directly. It was easier to set up events since Ship-it would still give people small amounts of CDs to get started back then.

US: What tools do you use for your team? Mailing Lists, Forums, IRC, websites, Micro-blogging sites etc.

MO: At the moment our primary communication is IRC for transient discussion and mailing lists for announcements and more permanent discussions, we do announce on website, broadcast accounts and forums but we tend not to use them for more than that.

US: On the road to LoCo approval what were some of the challenges the team faced and how did the team overcome them?

MO: The team has had not unexpected criticism from the geek community here in Massachusetts about the singular focus on one distribution, from the FSF (based in Boston) and the very old and well established LUGs and university groups who don’t want to look like they favor one commercial product.

This has made event organizing challenging since we have to attract people who are outside of universities in a university town and try and spark interest in advocacy in unusual places.

US: What are the biggest challenges your team faces now and what strategies does the team use to over come them?

MO: Apathy is the biggest problem with any team I think, keeping things energetic over a long time without having any full time members to keep on top of the little administrative burdens which make everything less fun. That’s why things like loco.ubuntu.com are needed, to take away the burdens and help us make making events awesome and enjoyable.

US: What types of activities does the LoCo Team participate in? Are there any events the LoCo team sponsors?

MO: We used to have training sessions every Tuesday for two years and sometimes special sessions on Wednesdays for advanced classes but the community center moved we were teaching at moved to Apple iMacs and now those have stopped. We also run events at Sci-Fi or similar events, booths at these events can pull in people who are slightly non geeky and introduce new people and add a layer of authenticity which is missing from something not on a shelf in a shop.

US: What are some of the projects your LoCo team has worked on? What are some of the upcoming projects the Ubuntu community can expect to see from the LoCo team throughout the next cycle?

MO: After the success of Anime Boston we’ve got another similar event at Pi-Con5, it’s a mid state event which should attract people from a wide area who can’t normally get into Boston proper. There is also Ubuntu Hours happening and some random community work sparking off which plans are not yet confirmed for.

US: What are some of the ways in which the LoCo actively recruits new members? What resources have you created or do you use (ie posters, fliers, business cards, banners etc).

MO: Traditionally we’ve tried to keep our advertising to Ubuntu it’s self, the thinking was that attracting new Ubuntu members would grow the pool of interested people who would come and help out inside the group for advocacy. Now I think it’s time to reassess that thinking and perhaps have adverts for the group it’s self in places such as universities.

US: What do you think is the best aspect of being part of a LoCo team is?

MO: Getting support from people who you know.

US: What has been the most rewarding and exciting moment for the LoCo Team to date and why?

MO: Probably setting up a community lab with ubuntu, including servers then training people how to use the PXE boot to install ubuntu on many new machines to go out into the community.

US: What suggestions would you offer for newly formed LoCo teams or those teams working toward approval right now?

MO: Make sure you do social events, get a home base organized even if it’s a coffee shop somewhere and make sure there is an official contact, and don’t worry about stepping on peoples toes at the start, too many times people are too cautious with their organisation plans.

US: What tips, tricks, tools, references etc would you suggest for the leadership of a LoCo team?

MO: Use all the resources available to make great posters and flyers, http://openclipart.org/ http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org/ or http://ubuntu-artists.deviantart.com anything that you can legally derive wonderfully looking designs and work them into local targets.

US: When you think of the Ubuntu Community and the spirit of Ubuntu how does the LoCo embody and share that spirit?

MO: We embrace the code of conduct and look to make sure there isn’t any mean spirits, everyone should be free to enjoy Ubuntu and it’s community.

US: Is there anything else about the LoCo team, or suggestions for being an effective and successful LoCo team you would like to share that you haven’t already?

MO: Make sure that you set everything up and listen to advice from other leaders, they’ve usually got great ideas in what kind of events to set up.

[Discuss this interview with the Massachusetts Team on the Forum]

Originally posted by Elizabeth Krumbach here on Fri Jul 9 2010 19:59

For those who previously read about prize-winning Kubuntu developer Aurélien Gâteau, you’ll be please to know dishing out prizes and lots of sauna aren’t the only thing happening at the international KDE Akademy 2010 conference happening this week in Tampere, Finland.

Tonight (Wednesday, 7 July 2010, 18:00 UTC) Akademy will be broadcasting live for Kubuntu Tutorials Day.

• Alan Alpert from Nokia will be running a session on introducing Qt Quick and QML. Qt Quick is a new and exciting way to program, centered around design rather than code.
• Johan Thelin (pictured) will be introducing programming in Qt.
• Sessions on Beastie Hunting, Packaging and Merging with the “Ninjas” and Kubuntu Maverick (due to be released as Ubuntu 10.10 in October 2010) follow later.

The tutorials are free and newcomers are welcomed! Join everyone else on irc.freenode.net #kubuntu-devel at 18:00 UTC with your computers prepared:

• For Johan Thelin’s Qt talk: sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev qtcreator
• For Alan Alpert’s Qt Quick talk: download and install a newer version of Qt Creator before the tutorial. Note: the Qt Creator currently in the Kubuntu archives is not new enough, the pre-compiled version of Qt Creator above from Nokia is needed instead.
  

This week’s Bug Day target is *drum roll please* Bugs without a package!

The task is to assign to the right package and triage those as well:

• 100 New bugs without a package need a hug
• 100 Confirmed bugs without a package need a review

Bookmark it, add it to your calendars, turn over those egg-timers!

• Thursday, 8 July 2010
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20100708

Are you looking for a way to start giving some love back to your adorable Ubuntu Project?

Did you ever wonder what Triage is? Want to learn about that?

This is a perfect time!, Everybody can help in a Bug Day! Open your IRC Client and go to #ubuntu-bugs (freenode) the BugSquad will be happy to help you to start contributing!

Wanna be famous? Is easy! remember to use 5-A-day so if you do a good work your name could be listed at the top 5-A-Day Contributors in the Ubuntu Hall of Fame page!

We are always looking for new tasks or ideas for the Bug Days, if you have one add it to the Planning page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/Planning

If you’re new to all this, head to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs

[Discuss Announcing this week’s Bug Day target - Bugs without a package - Thursday, July 8th, 2010! on the Forums]

Originally sent to the Ubuntu Devel Announce Mailing List by Kamus on Tue Jul 6 16:16:53 BST 2010

Ubuntu is brought to users in their own language by a large community of volunteer translators, who tirelessly work on localizing every part of the operating system on every release.

This week we’re introducing you to Aron Xu, the Simplified Chinese translation team coordinator.

Could you tell us a bit about you and the language you help translate Ubuntu into?

My name is Aron Xu, a high school student, and it will be my senior year from Sept, 2010. Now I am working as the leader of Ubuntu Simplified Chinese translators, committer on GNOME/KDE, and translator on the TP (translationproject.org) to help translate Ubuntu and other free software to Simplified Chinese (zh_CN), and being a member of the Ubuntu Translations Coordinators team to help on general problems in the Ubuntu translation community.

How and when did you become an Ubuntu translator?

My first contributed string was submitted via Launchpad in July, 2008. Soon I was accepted as an official member of Ubuntu Simplified Chinese Translators team. In Sept, 2008, I started my work on GNOME translations as a translator.

What other projects do you help with inside the community?

Apart from helping translating Ubuntu (upstream projects like GNOME/KDE/Debian and Ubuntu specific things) and coordinating work between teams, I am also helping with some separate projects like Pidgin, Enlightenment, etc.

Do you belong to an Ubuntu LoCo team? If so, which one?

Of course yes, I belong to Ubuntu China LoCo team, and work as a core member on event organization and infrastructure administration.

How can people who want to help with translating Ubuntu and all the various pieces and parts into your language get started?

We have quite a few documents about how to start translating various kinds of free software and what the requirements on quality are. People who want to start working can simply find the documents on our LoCo Wiki and contact the correct team to get more help if needed.

What’s the desktop experience for Ubuntu users in your language? Is Ubuntu in your language popular among native speakers?

User experience in Simplified Chinese is quite good now, but there are still some unresolved issues in font, input method and encoding fields. We are working with developers who are related and trying to get rid of them in the near future.

Ubuntu is still not so popular in China, but the amount of users is increasing rapidly. Most people had learned about Windows during their education at school; we need to work harder to promote Ubuntu to let them know it and fall in love with it.

Where does your team need help?

Although Ubuntu is not so popular compared with Windows in China, the number of users is still very large. We have 245190 registered users on our LoCo forum and I believe there are much more users in reality. One of the most important problems getting on the way of more people switching to Ubuntu is that they would like to have a fully localized environment with the Live CD or at the very moment that installation has completed, so our team wants to have full Simplified Chinese language packs and usable input method shipped with the official CD in future releases.

We know that Ubuntu has the ability to install language support during/after the installation, but new users always get confused when they boot the system with the Live CD and complete the installation without active Internet connection. In the Lucid release cycle, we had tried to get the language packs into Live CD in daily builds, but they were finally removed because of disk space arguments without any notification sent to us, which disappointed so much Chinese users. We need somebody to tell us how can we get our language packs into the CD without final removal. Ubuntu will have a considerable number of new users in this simple way, why not regard Chinese language packs as other ones already in the CD that are preferred not to be removed because of disk space?

Do you know of any projects or organizations where Ubuntu is used in your language?

There are several commercial groups has started to use Ubuntu with commercial Canonical support subscription. Some middle schools have make Ubuntu as their essential part of computer class, such as Chengdu Foreign Language School.

What do you feel is the most rewarding part of translating Ubuntu?

It is simple to explain, I feel really happy when I see people running software that I’ve worked on.

Is there anything else about your team or translation efforts that I haven’t asked you about that you would like to talk about?

Ubuntu Simplified Chinese Translators is a big team formed by over 80 members, and the number of contributors is over 300 as recorded in the Ubuntu China Translations Contributors team in Launchpad. We don’t have the problem of lacking contributors, but such a big amount of people caused some difficulties in team management. I’d like to say it’s better to have more translators upstream like GNOME/KDE to work on the body part of translations, and only keep a suitable number of translators to work on Ubuntu specified strings in Launchpad. So, we are having a Restricted team policy to keep the team from growing out of control, then send new contributors to upstream and add them to Ubuntu China Translations Contributors team to have a clear membership in rewarding of their contribution.

As a member of Ubuntu Translations Coordinators team, I found there are problems on the position definition of Ubuntu Translators during my routine work. It is a topic that is worth discussing and maybe some changes could be made by teams in the Ubuntu translation community.

Do you speak languages? Join the our translation community and make Ubuntu accessible to everyone in their own language. You can:

• Get in touch with a translation team or create your own
• Help translating this language

[Discuss Ubuntu Translations Interviews: Aron Xu (Simplified Chinese Team) on the Forums]

Top Kubuntu developer Aurélien Gâteau (agateau) has been honoured with an Akademy Award for 2010. The Akademy Awards are given out each year at the annual KDE Akademy conference; the jury being formed of previous prize-winners.

Aurélien won the award for his work on Gwenview, the image viewing application which ships with Kubuntu. He was also commended at Akademy for his work in getting the KDE Status Notifier specifications adopted by the Ubuntu project, where they are known under the name Application Indicators along with necessary DBusMenu additions.

The annual Akademy conference is being held this week in Tampere in Finland, a city just fifteen kilometres from the small world-famous town called “Nokia” after which half of the worlds’ mobile phones are named. Developers and contributors at Akademy are discussing their plans to make the KDE Platform, Plasma workspaces and Applications rock even harder. Much of the discussion is about how to integrate with Intel and Nokia’s Meego mobile system.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #200 for the week June 27th - July 3rd and is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Welcome to the 200th Issue of UWN
• History
• Retrospect
• Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Editors and Staff - Past and Present
• 200th Issue Interviews
• Joining the UWN staff
• Maverick Alpha 2 released
• Ubuntu Developer Week is back!
• Ubuntu User Days - Scheduled for July 10-11, 2010
• Welcome Alessandro Ghersi (lex79) to kubuntu-dev
• Translations Advocacy
• Help wanted: Testing programs that use the notification area
• ubuntu-jobs@lists.ubuntu.com mailing list
• Ubuntu Stats
• loco.ubuntu.com meeting
• UPDATED: Launchpad read-only 23.00 UTC 6th July
• Cleansweep Updates
• Drupal usage within the Ubuntu Community
• GRUB 2: With luck…
• Application Menu status update for 2 July
• Local School Board and Ubuntu
• Review of Kubuntu Netbook – Maverick Alpha 2
• Dropping the “L” Word
• Creating Ubuntu Server Disk Images using vmbuilder
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• QBzr 0.19 Beta 2 Released
• Take 60 Seconds With Stuart Langridge
• 2010 ARRL Field Day Running Ubuntu
• TurnKey Linux Beta Launches Byobu by Default at Login
• Ohio LinuxFest Call For Presentations Extended
• Free software training, free software training, or just GNOME Training!
• Featured Podcasts
• Ubuntu Development Team Weekly Meeting Minutes Links
• Monthly Team Reports: June 2010
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security
• and much much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• Liraz Siri
• Nathan Handler
• J. Scott Gwin
• Daniel Caleb
• Penelope Stowe
• Jonathan Carter
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Welcome to Maverick Meerkat Alpha 2, which will in time become Ubuntu 10.10.

Pre-releases of Maverick are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 2 is the second in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Maverick development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Maverick. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Desktop and Netbook)
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Server for UEC and EC2)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Kubuntu Desktop and Netbook)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Studio)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/maverick/alpha-2/ (Mythbuntu)

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

Alpha 2 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/maverick/alpha2 for information on changes in Ubuntu.

This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a list of known bugs (that you don’t need to report if you encounter), please see:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/maverick/alpha2

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop Maverick, have a look at the maverick-changes mailing list:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/maverick-changes

We also suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list if you’re interested in following Ubuntu development. This is a low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other interesting events.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce Mailing List by Martin Pitt on Thu Jul 1 17:56:01 BST 2010

Ubuntu Developer Week is back again, which means five days of action-packed IRC sessions where you learn more about hacking on Ubuntu, developing Ubuntu and how to interact with other projects.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek

We’ll have a fantastic time from July 12th 2010 to July 16th 2010, great speakers, interesting sessions, lots of good questions and great people who get to know each other.

If you’re new to Ubuntu Developer Week and what it is, check out the general page, how to join in and how it all works.

Our sessions cover:

• Getting involved with Ubuntu development, becoming a Kubuntu Ninja, Authoring Upstart jobs, Working With Translations, Having fun with Packaging QA
• How Daily Builds work, Operation Cleansweep, Setting up a validation dashboard, Working with Merge Proposals, Working with Django, Adopting an Upstream, Forwarding Bugs and Patches Upstream
• How to work with Debian, Ubuntu Server, Xubuntu and Edubuntu goodness, Kernel Triage
• Widgetcraft, QT Quick, QML
• Desktop goodness, Application Indicators, Rocking Papercuts
• Lots of FUN
  

[Discuss Ubuntu Developer Week on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce Mailing List by Daniel Holbach on Wed Jun 30 11:12:20 BST 2010

This week’s Bug Day target is *drum roll please* xkeyboard-config!

• 48 New bugs need a hug
• 8 Incomplete bugs need a status check
• 14 Confirmed bugs need a review

Bookmark it, add it to your calendars, turn over those egg-timers!

• Thursday, 1 July 2010
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20100701

Are you looking for a way to start giving some love back to your adorable Ubuntu Project?

Did you ever wonder what Triage is? Want to learn about that?

This is a perfect time!, Everybody can help in a Bug Day! Open your IRC Client and go to #ubuntu-bugs (freenode) the BugSquad will be happy to help you to start contributing!

Wanna be famous? Is easy! remember to use 5-A-day so if you do a good work your name could be listed at the top 5-A-Day Contributors in the Ubuntu Hall of Fame page!

We are always looking for new tasks or ideas for the Bug Days, if you have one add it to the Planning page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/Planning

If you’re new to all this, head to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs

[Discuss Announcing this week’s Bug Day target - xkeyboard-config - Thursday, July 1st, 2010! on the Forums]

Originally sent to the Ubuntu Devel Announce Mailing List by Kamus on Tue Jun 29 17:11:42 BST 2010

Columbus, Ohio — June 29, 2010 — Bring your A Game and pitch a proposal that will help educate and entertain the masses at this year’s Ohio LinuxFest. The organizers have extended the call for presentations until July 7th to ensure the best possible selection of talks for this year’s Ohio LinuxFest.

We’re looking for speakers who can address a wide range of topics related to Linux and open source. Talks suited for beginners or experts, or in-between, are welcome. We’re particularly interested in talks on current topics like Android, MeeGo, KVM, Python for System Administration, WordPress, GNOME, KDE, Ruby on Rails, Django, Linux distributions, and more. And just because it’s a LinuxFest doesn’t mean we won’t welcome BSD-related talks with open arms. In short, if it’s relevant to the OLF audience, we’d like to hear your ideas.

Get them in quick, though! The call for presentations is online at http://www.ohiolinux.org/cfp10.html. You have until July 7th to submit your best proposals, speakers will be notified approximately two weeks after the CFP ends. Successful proposals will be detailed, interesting, and free of marketing content.

Keynote speakers for Ohio LinuxFest are already selected. Speakers will be on the same schedule as GNOME Executive Director Stormy Peters, and Ogg creator Christopher “Monty” Montgomery. Have questions about the CFP? Shoot an email to speakers@ohiolinux.org.

The Ohio LinuxFest is an annual conference dedicated to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Held in Columbus, Ohio every Fall, the Ohio LinuxFest is the largest FOSS conference in the MidWest. More than 1,300 people attended last year’s OLF. Registration is free and open to anyone interested in Linux and open source. For more information on Ohio LinuxFest, see http://www.ohiolinux.org/.

[Discuss Ohio LinuxFest Call For Presentations Extended on the Forums]

Originally posted here by Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier on on Tue, 2010-06-29 09:22