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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 251

Tue, 2012-02-07 04:46

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #251 for the week January 30 – February 5, 2012, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

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

  • Elizabeth Krumbach
  • Chris Druif
  • Vikram Dhillon
  • Liraz Siri
  • 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

Categories: News

Precise Pangolin Alpha 2 Released!

Thu, 2012-02-02 20:50

Welcome to Precise Pangolin Alpha 2, which will in time become Ubuntu 12.04.

Pre-releases of Precise Pangolin 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 images that will be released throughout the Precise development cycle.

This is the first Ubuntu milestone release to include images for the armhf architecture, for the ARM CPUs using the hard-float ABI.

New packages showing up for the first time include:

  • Linux Kernel 3.2.2 (3.2.0-12.21)
  • Upstart 1.4
  • Unity 5.0
  • LibreOffice 3.5 beta 2

You can download Alpha 2 images here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server)

Additional images are also available at:

http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Cloud Server)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-core/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Core)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/precise/ (Ubuntu Netboot)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Edubuntu DVD)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Lubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Mythbuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Xubuntu)

Alpha 2 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a more detailed description of the changes in the Alpha 2 release and the known bugs (which can save you the effort of reporting a duplicate bug, or help you find proven workarounds), please see:

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

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop 12.04, we suggest that you subscribe initially to the ubuntu-devel-announce list. 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

Originally sent to the ubuntu-release mailing list by Kate Stewart on Thu Feb 2 20:27:28 UTC 2012

Categories: News

Ubuntu 12.04 Development update

Thu, 2012-02-02 13:47
Development Update

It is the week of Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha 2 which is to be released in just a few hours. Everybody has been getting their good work into Ubuntu, so it is a great opportunity for everyone to go check it out and test it. If you are excited by 12.04, just check out our testing pages and report back your results. The earlier we get them, the better!

Currently there is also a test rebuild of the whole archive going on, which will hopefully identify all the build errors early enough. In two weeks time Feature Freeze will be reached, at which point we stop introducing new features, packages, and APIs, and concentrate on fixing bugs in the development release.

Jeremy Bicha, a great contributor to the Desktop team, wrote up a nice explanation of how the components of the Ubuntu Desktop were chosen this cycle. It shows how much consideration goes into putting the release together and how coordination between Ubuntu and its upstreams is important.

Events

It is Ubuntu Developer Week, the event for getting involved, learning more, peeking behind the scences, and learning more from experience developers. Day 1 and Day 2 have already passed, but if you couldn’t make it to the sessions, read the following summaries to find out what happened. They contain links to the logs of the sessions.

Ubuntu Developer Week will only still be today, Thursday 2nd February 2012.

Things which need to get done

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed:

<if teams ask us to add more stuff to this list, we’re of course happy to do it>

First timers!

We had two new contributors to Ubuntu who got their first upload in: Jean-Michel Vourgere and Sébastien Ramage. Great work! Both helped keeping Debian and Ubuntu in sync and good fixes into Ubuntu.

New contributor: Simon Steinbeiß

Benjamin Kerensa talked to Simon Steinbeiß, here’s what he has to say:

How did you get involved?
I got involved in Ubuntu by starting to use Xubuntu and then hanging out in its IRC channels. I engaged in discussions about Xubuntu’s artwork and default application set. After a while I started bringing in proposals and my own ideas. The developer team was really helpful and that’s how I got involved in the Xubuntu artwork team.

What was your experience like?
Well generally positive. Obviously there are always compromises to be made. When doing a gtk-theme for yourself or a panel-layout you apply different criteria then when doing it for an unkown amount of anonymous users. But I’d say it’s a rewarding job and the reviews of Xubuntu’s artwork have been pretty good since I’ve been involved (*brag* )

What did you like most about it?
The fact that there was a good community and everyone wanted to make Xubuntu better. I have “converted” quite a few friends of mine who formerly used Windows, so I got personally interested in making Xubuntu better. It seemed easier to improve things in Xubuntu itself than going around after each release and fixing things for my all my friends I also liked the fact that my artwork could be seen and used by so many people, it’s always great for an artist to have such a wide audience.

Is there anything that should have been easier? What do you recommend to other contributors who think about starting to get involved?
That is difficult to tell. I have the feeling that with many open-source or community-driven projects it’s about building relationships to people initially and that depends on the structure of the team you want to be a part of. If it’s a good team with good leadership it obviously might be easier to get involved. But it also depends on other factors like your personal motivation – no-one should be trusted with important tasks right from the start, so hanging in there for a bit is a necessary step to build trust.

What do you do in your other spare time?
I’m currently doing a PhD in the humanities. I finished my MAs in Philosophy and Religious Studies (no, not Theology!) and I’m currently conducting research projects in both fields at my university.

Get Involved
  1. Read the Introduction to Ubuntu Development. It’s a short article which will help you understand how Ubuntu is put together, how the infrastructure is used and how we interact with other projects.
  2. Follow the instructions in the Getting Set Up article. A few simple commands, a registration at Launchpad and you should have all the tools you need, and you’re ready to go.
  3. Check out our instructions for how to fix a bug in Ubuntu, they come with small examples that make it easier to visualise what exactly you need to do.
Find something to work on

Pick a bitesize bug. These are the bugs we think should be easy to fix. Another option is to help out in one of our initiatives.

In addition to that there are loads more opportunities over at Harvest.

Getting in touch

There are many different ways to contact Ubuntu developers and get your questions answered.

Categories: News

Unity 5.2: What’s new, and a call for testing

Wed, 2012-02-01 14:00

It’s been a few weeks since the last drop of unity, and now the unity team has readied the new version of unity 5.2. Let’s walk through how to preview the new features unity 5.2 is bringing, and help test those features using checkbox! Checkbox allows you to get your feedback straight into the hands of the unity developers and report any problems your system may have with the new version of unity. First let’s talk a little bit about what’s new. Note that these features only exist for right now in Unity 3D.

  • Multi-monitor support
    • You will now see launchers on each of your monitor, and when you scroll across a monitor, you should feel some resistance in order to allow for you to use the launcher on that screen.
  • New screen edge detection
    • To invoke the launcher, you now need to push (or “scroll into”) against the left of the screen, rather than hover for X seconds. No more hitting the back button in firefox and having the launcher pop up in your way!

Feedback is appreciated on these features especially. Utilize #ubuntu-unity on freenode and checkbox feedback form to let the developers know how they work for you.

Installing

Prerequisites: Make sure you are running the latest version of
precise, and all your packages are up to date. Unfortunately this cannot
be installed on oneiric or any previous ubuntu release. 

Also, unity 5.2 did not ship with “the HUD” sadly. So if you have been testing the HUD you will need to use ppa-purge to remove and downgrade your packages. See this post for information on using ppa-purge if you need help doing so.

1) Add the unity ppa (https://launchpad.net/~unity-team/+archive/ppa). You can do this by issuing the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:unity-team/ppa

2) Update apt and run a dist upgrade — this should prompt you to upgrade unity and some indicators as well as install checkbox-unity.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

3) Restart your unity session by logging out and logging back in again.

Ok, hopefully the upgrade went smooth for you, but if not, head over to freenode #ubuntu-unity channel and let folks know what went wrong.

Testing

So, now that your up and running you can run the through the manual tests the unity team has prepared. Open the dash and type ‘unity testing’. The Checkbox Unity Tests should launch. Checkbox will gather some information on your system and then ask you which tests you wish to run. Once complete you will see a link containing your system report and an option to publish it to launchpad. Use the text box below the link to enter your launchpad email address and then hit submit. This will ensure your results and feedback go to the unity developers.

Please ensure you have finished and submitted your testing results ASAP. The testing window will be closed this Thursday at
8am UTC, in order to give the unity developers time to finish fixing the bugs found. Then unity 5.2 will be pushed to precise and coding on Unity 5.4 will begin.

Filing Bugs

Please file bugs against unity package in launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+filebug). When filing, please make sure to tag your bug ’5.2-rc1′ and mention your running Unity 5.2-rc1 in your description.

Final Thoughts

Don’t hesitate to reach out to the unity team on IRC #ubuntu-unity on freenode at any time or to follow the latest in unity development. Thanks for helping test ubuntu and unity!

Originally posted here by Nicholas Skaggs on Tuesday, January 31, 2012.

Categories: News

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 250

Wed, 2012-02-01 00:59

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #250 for the week January 23 – 29, 2012, and the full version is available here.

In this Issue we cover:

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

  • Elizabeth Krumbach
  • Chris Druif
  • Liraz Siri
  • 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

Categories: News

Ubuntu Developer Summit Sponsorship Now Open

Fri, 2012-01-27 20:33

The Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) is the most important event in the Ubuntu calendar. It is where we get together to discuss, design, and plan the next version of Ubuntu; in this case the Ubuntu 12.10 release.

The next UDS takes place at The Oakland Marriott City Center, Oakland, California, USA from the 7th – 11th May 2012. You can find out more about why UDS is interesting from the perspective of a member of the community, an upstream contributor, and a vendor. We also welcome everyone to participate remotely if you can’t attend the event in person. More more details on how to get there, see this page.

At the heart of a great UDS is a diverse group of attendees who can bring their experience and expertise to the discussions. You don’t have to be technical, or be a programmer or packager to attend – UDS is open to everyone (including non-Ubuntu folks) and free to attend. We encourage everyone with an interest in Ubuntu to attend.

Sponsorship

For every UDS Canonical sponsors the hotel and accommodation of a set of community members to ensure they are free to contribute and bring value to the discussions. We have a limited budget so we can’t sponsor everyone, but we are always keen to have a capable and diverse group to sponsor:

  • We strive to support community members who are actively involved in Ubuntu and who are providing significant and sustained contributions to the Ubuntu project.
  • We always welcome Upstream contributors who are bring value to Ubuntu indirectly via active participation in their upstream project, but who are keen to see quality support for that upstream in Ubuntu.
  • Contributors are willing to actively participate not only throughout the full Ubuntu Developer Summit week, but also following with active contributions throughout the release cycle.
  • We are always keen to welcome members of the community who have never been to UDS before and are keen to participate and experience the event.
  • You don’t have to provide technical contributions to apply – if you have participated in the areas of advocacy, documentation, testing, art, design etc, you are encouraged to apply.
  • UDS is an event that encourages diversity – we welcome everyone to apply for sponsorship, irrespective of gender, race, impairment, technical expertise, or other factors.

If you are participating in the Ubuntu community, we would love you to apply for sponsorship. This is how it works:

  1. You can apply for sponsorship by following these instructions. Apologies for the different forms you need to fill in – we are going to consolidate these forms at the next UDS. The deadline for submissions is Wed 22nd February 2012 so be sure to get yours in!
  2. When the deadline is reached we will assess the applications and finalize who we will be able to sponsor.
  3. You will then receive an email outlining whether we can sponsor you or not.

Simple! I look forward to seeing your applications, and seeing many of you in Oakland!

Originally posted here by Jono Bacon on Friday, January 27, 2012.

Categories: News

juju events for 2012

Fri, 2012-01-27 19:52

The juju team has locked down the local events they’re attending in 2012, if you deploy Ubuntu in the cloud then they’d love to see you at the following events:

More details about planning juju talks and events available here: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/juju/2012-January/001223.html

Originally posted to the ubuntu-news-team mailing list by Jorge Castro on Fri Jan 27 17:29:27 UTC 2012

Categories: News

Featured Ubuntu Software Centre apps for January 2012

Fri, 2012-01-27 14:41

We’re back with a new edition of the featured apps in the Ubuntu Software Centre. The theme this month is going to be gaming, and for this we’ve carefully hand-picked and brought you 3 of the coolest, slickest games now available in Ubuntu. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Core Breach

CoreBreach is an anti-gravity racing game with combat-based gameplay. Its unique graphic style, with a cell-shaded look, sets up a very futuristic atmosphere with a wide range of choices for ships, race tracks and powerful weapons.

Its intuitive controls support common types of steering wheels and game pads to enjoy the full driving experience directly from your computer.

And Yet it Moves

And Yet It Moves is an award-winning physics-based platform game in which players rotate the game world at will to solve challenging puzzles. Tilting the world turns walls into floors, slides into platforms, and stacks of rocks into dangerous hazards.

Players navigate through a paper collage world created with colorful pieces of cardboard and set to distinctive music. With four different environments and unlockable modes, And Yet It Moves is a platformer that will provide gamers with endless challenges.

Oil Rush

Oil Rush is a real-time naval strategy game based on group control. It combines the strategic challenge of a classical RTS with the sheer fun of Tower Defence.

Fight the naval war between furious armies across the boundless waters of the post-apocalyptic world. Pump the ever-so-precious black gold by oil rigs, capture platforms and destroy the enemy in the sea and in the air. Be ingenious to unlock super technologies and quick to send your squads straight into the heat of the battle!

Want your app to be featured next?

So are you a developer and would like your app to be featured in the Ubuntu Software Centre and available to millions of Ubuntu users? Well, nothing easier than that, then: head up to the Ubuntu App Developer site and get your app published in 6 easy steps ›.

We’re confident these cool games will keep you busy until the next featured apps post!

Follow Ubuntu App Development on:

 

 

Original source: the Ubuntu App Developer Site

Social Media Icons by Paul Robert Lloyd

Categories: News

Ubuntu 12.04 Development update

Thu, 2012-01-26 15:44
Development Update

Huzzah, time flies when you are having fun. We are in week 15 of the release already and have 13 weeks left until release. Next week, according to the plan, we will get Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha 2 out. As you can imagine, everybody is trying to get their current work into Precise, so it is well-represented and can be played with and tested.

With Mark Shuttleworth’s major announcement that Ubuntu’s Desktop will soon offer an additional way to interact with your applications through a more innovative and modern “HUD” or “Heads Up Display” we took the opportunity to highlight some of the blog posts covering this major development in the roadmap of Unity: PCWorld, The Register, The Inquirer.

An upload which got a lot of interest was gnome-control-center 3.2.2-2ubuntu4. OMG!Ubuntu! probably covered it first: Unity now has configuration options for you.

Events

Developer Membership Board Meeting – Monday January 30, 2012 19:00 UTC
The Ubuntu Developer Membership Board will have its regularly schedule meeting to address general agenda items and review applications of Ubuntu developers to be granted upload rights.

Ubuntu Developer Week – January 31st – February 2nd
The Ubuntu Developer Week is an event that takes place over a period of three days which aims to educate people who are interested in Ubuntu Development while better equipping existing developers with techniques on packaging and holding sessions covering various teams and what they do. See below about more information.

Things which need to get done

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed:

Spotlight: From your Ubuntu developer with love: Ubuntu Developer Week

Ubuntu Developer Week will start in five day, from Tuesday, 31st January to Thursday, 2nd February there will be heaps of online IRC sessions all allowing you to step behind the scenes and find out how things work. We managed to get loads of Ubuntu developers and other experits on board to explain, teach, entertain and answer your questions.

Joining in is pretty simple, use an IRC client (or web client) or just install and use lernid to connect. In one channel the session is taking place, while in a second channel discussions can happen or questions can be asked. This allows uninterrupted, action-packed sessions, where questions can be carried-forward, while discussing and having a good time with others.

If you have a look at the list of session you can see how this event is full of win. Let’s run through them real quick.

Packaging
We will kick off with two hours of introduction and getting a development environment set up, have a session about Dos and Dont’s and learn more about incorporating changes from other projects into Ubuntu. On the second day we will find out how to update packages to new versions, how to use Ubuntu Distributed Development to merge changes easily and find out how to work with Debian, Ubuntu’s most important upstream project. On the last day, we will toy around with building packages locally, find out what to bear in mind when writing changelog entries and check out automated packaging with ‘pkgme’.

Quality Assurance and fixing bugs
Beware: lots of goodness ahead! On the automated testing front there will be automated User Experience testing and an introduction to our Jenkins automated testing infrastructure. On day 2 we will learn how to use the development release in a sane manner and how to go about fixing small bugs in Unity. The last day will be full of bug fixing action, so hold tight: we will fix Desktop bugs, learn how to triage Desktop bugs, also what to do with internationalisation bugs and what the general bug life-cycle looks like.

Writing Code
We will kick off with an overview of Ubuntu’s technologies, move forward with Unity Lenses, how to write them and get more information into Unity’s dash. Day 2 brings you up to speed on how to get your app into Ubuntu, and a speaker whose birthday and getting up really early did not stop him from introducing you to HTML and CSS. On our last day you will find out more about how to write Lenses this time with Singlet, also we will have a great session about pair programming and code review in the cloud, how to make use of Ubuntu One’s U1DB and how to wrap your apps around Ubuntu One’s services.

Ubuntu projects
Ubuntu has grown dramatically, which is why you probably want to learn more about all the projects it has spawned. On our first day, our speakers will bring you up to speed on Edubuntu, our Ubuntu flavour for schools and have a session about Ubuntu TV and how it all works. Day 2 will bring you into the fold when it comes to deploying services into all kinds of scenarios using juju charms. Our last day will introduce you to the Ubuntu Documentation project, how it works and how you can help out.

Speakers from all parts of the globe put effort into this event and they will share their experience there. We look forward to seeing you there, join in or read the logs afterwards.

Get Involved
  1. Read the Introduction to Ubuntu Development. It’s a short article which will help you understand how Ubuntu is put together, how the infrastructure is used and how we interact with other projects.
  2. Follow the instructions in the Getting Set Up article. A few simple commands, a registration at Launchpad and you should have all the tools you need, and you’re ready to go.
  3. Check out our instructions for how to fix a bug in Ubuntu, they come with small examples that make it easier to visualise what exactly you need to do.

 

Find something to work on

Pick a bitesize bug. These are the bugs we think should be easy to fix. Another option is to help out in one of our initiatives.

In addition to that there are loads more opportunities over at Harvest.

Getting in touch

There are many different ways to contact Ubuntu developers and get your questions answered.

Categories: News

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 249

Thu, 2012-01-26 01:02

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #249 for the week January 16 – 22, 2012, and the full version is available here.

In this Issue we cover:

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

  • Elizabeth Krumbach
  • Benjamin Kerensa
  • Chris Druif
  • Amber Graner
  • 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

Categories: News

Ubuntu Developer Week: 31st January-2nd February

Wed, 2012-01-25 15:02

It’s everybody’s second-most favourite time of the release again. No, not the actual release, but it’s Ubuntu Developer Week!

Join us from Tuesday, 31st January 2012 to Thursday, 2nd February 2012 for three action-packed days full of tutorial and hands-on session all around Ubuntu development. We spared no efforts to bring you a very diverse set of topics and a very diverse set of speakers as well. This time we managed get speakers from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, Spain, UK and USA.

No matter if you are new to Ubuntu development or quite experienced already, we are sure going to have an interesting session for you. Here’s just an excerpt of the great things to come:

  • Packaging: find out how software is put into Ubuntu and how it’s maintained. We have a variety of hands-on sessions where Ubuntu developers share their experience with you. It’s the perfect time to get involved.
    Sessions: Intro to Ubuntu development, Getting set up, Dos and Dont’s, working with Upstream projects, building packages locally, using pkgme for automatic packaging, writing good changelog entries, distributed development and loads more.
  • Quality Assurance and Bug Fixing: One of the greatest ways to contribute to Open Source is resolving problems. Not only for you, but for millions of users out there. Join in to find out from experts how to make Ubuntu even better.
    Sessions: Bug lifecycle, triaging bugs, fixing small bugs in lots of different settings, automated testing, and lots of hands-on action
  • Writing code: we will talk about apps, tools, projects and infrastructure to make writing software for Ubuntu even easier.
    Sessions: automated testing, pair programming, code review, technology overview, introductions to many cool technologies and making your apps rock.
  • Ubuntu projects and Ubuntu in the bigger picture: Ubuntu has grown dramatically and lots of different project make the awesomeness we release every six months. Find out who’s doing what and what’s new.
    Sessions: Ubuntu TV, Edubuntu, juju, the Cloud, Unity and Debian.

Joining in is trivial. Use normal IRC (even a web browser will do) or install Lernid and connect.

We put lots of effort into this great event. 31st January to 2nd February will be a great time and just for you. Bring your friends and your questions.

As this is generally asked very often: yes, we will keep logs of all the session if you shouldn’t be able to attend. We will make them available on the Ubuntu Developer Week page.

More info:

Categories: News

Planet Ubuntu Update

Tue, 2012-01-24 18:47

Dear Ubuntu Community,

During UDS-P, it was brought to the attention of the Community Council that blogs being syndicated to Planet Ubuntu included former Ubuntu Member blogs.

In order to update the what Planet Ubuntu aggregates to the public, the Community Council, with the help of Alan Bell, compared the Planet Ubuntu Blog list with the current Ubuntu members list, and removed the blogs belonging to those with lapsed memberships. Current Ubuntu Members whose blogs are syndicated to Planet Ubuntu were then matched with their Launchpad IDs. We also want to remind everyone that the “nick” field of the planet config is for your Launchpad ID.

If you are an Ubuntu Member, and you feel your blog has been removed from Planet Ubuntu in error simply add your blog with the updated information back to Planet Ubuntu.

If your Ubuntu Membership has lapsed accidentally and your blog has been removed from Planet Ubuntu please contact the membership boards (ubuntu-membership-boards@lists.ubuntu.com) to be readded to the Ubuntu Members team and then simply add your blog with the updated.

More information on adding your blog to Planet Ubuntu can be found at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PlanetUbuntu

If you have questions or concerns please feel free to email the Ubuntu Community Council at: community-council@lists.ubuntu.com

On behalf of the Ubuntu Community Council, Milo Casagrande

Categories: News

Looking for PHP Developers to assist with forums upgrade

Mon, 2012-01-23 19:11

The Ubuntu Community is looking for a PHP/OpenID hero to help us in a bit of a bind we have on the forums.

The forums need a branding update, as well as an update to the vbulletin software we are running. Unfortunately Vbulletin doesn’t support openid(!).

Let us please not bring alternates to Vb into the discussion just yet.

In the past there was a bit of custom php that was done in order to enable Ubuntu users to use their Ubuntu Single Sign On account. This doesn’t work with the new version of vbulletin, and this is a blocker to the upgrade.

The Forums Council is thus in search of a volunteer(s) that would be willing to work with the Canonical IS team and the Forums Council to make this happen. Ideally you’d be comfortable with PHP and vbulletin already, and wouldn’t mind a brutal security review from the IS and security teams in Ubuntu, but hey, you’d be the guy that fixed logins on the forums, with all the fame (or infamy) and glory that it entails.

Feel free to PM the Forums Council if you’re interested. The forums have always been a crucial element of Ubuntu’s success, and it’d be a great way to contribute if you’re looking for something to do.

See also: http://castrojo.tumblr.com/post/16165219934/ubuntu-forums-needs-single-sign-on-looking-for-a-php

Originally posted to The Community Cafe on ubuntuforums.org by bodhi.zazen on Mon 23 January

Categories: News

New Forum Council Members

Fri, 2012-01-20 19:47

As some of you may have noticed some of the FC members have become less active over the last few months.

As a result we have asked cariboo907, coffeecat, and overdrank to replace the less active members bapoumba, jdong, and Joeb454.

I would like to thank bapoumba, jdong, and Joeb45 for their service and dedication to the forums and this change is in no way personal nor does it reflect poory on their service and dedication.

The change has been for the greater good of the Forums Community as we need an active FC.

Originally posted to The Community Cafe on ubuntuforums.org by s.fox on Fri 20 January

Categories: News

Ubuntu 12.04 Development update

Thu, 2012-01-19 16:52
Development Update

Welcome back everyone after the holiday break. Since we spoke the last time, there has lots been happening. By now we only have 14 weeks left until Ubuntu 12.04 a.k.a. Precise Pangolin, another LTS release gets out the door.

In the meantime we have passed January 12th, where we reached the Debian Import Freeze release milestone. This means that – as a measure to solidify the code base – the automatic code imports from Debian have been stopped, now they have to be explicitly request by developers. In two weeks Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha 2 will be released and in four weeks, we will hit Feature Freeze. By then we hope that most features are mostly implemented. Time is rushing!

Last week a large portion of Canonical Ubuntu engineers met up in Budapest, which resulted in a lot of teams getting their burndown charts back on track again.

Another piece of great news is some progress the Bazaar team has to report. Bazaar and its tool selection now offer much improved quilt patch handling in Debian Sid and Ubuntu Precise. If you are new to the Ubuntu development world, this might sound a bit confusing. So here is why this great news for everyone: Bazaar is how Ubuntu developers (among many others) do distributed development. Multiple people working on different aspects of the thousands pieces of code at the same time, all in a sane way, with straight-forward methods to merge code from others reliably. So far so good. On top of that we have to deal with source packages: so to build .deb binary packages from source, we look at a source tarball straight from the software authors, plus a number of patches and modifications. Up until now having to deal with patches on top of a tarball in distributed version control was cumbersome. By having cleverer mechanisms to deal with standard situation, things have just improved a lot.

Events

Ubuntu Developer Week
From 31st January to 2nd February we will have Ubuntu Developer Week again. Hours of great fun, tutorials, demo sessions and more to bring you closer to the Ubuntu development, how it works and what is going on. Expect a separate announcement real soon now.

Things which need to get done

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed:

 

First timers!

We have bucket-loads of new contributors, isn’t it awesome? These fine people got involved and put some hard work into making Ubuntu Precise better for you: Michele Giacomoli, Steven Allen, Simon Steinbeiß and Robert Roth.

Also do we have somebody who gained upload rights to Ubuntu: it’s Fathi Boudra, who put lots of work into the KDE-related bits! Welcome on board!

Spotlight / Interview

Interview with Alessandro Menti conducted by bkerensa

How did you get involved?

I got involved through the bug triaging process – I simply confirmed a nasty OpenBVE bug (#877776) that prevented the program from starting, adding my observations in a comment (I didn’t have time at that moment to search on the Internet for a possible fix and thought about downloading the source code and debugging it in my free time). A little after, the original reporter found a fix (a missing dependency); since I was interested in getting the problem solved and the patch was pretty simple (I already had some experience at building Ubuntu packages), I submitted it and got it included.

What was your experience like?

The experience was quite straight, I managed to get all the necessary documentation and understand the recommended procedures easily. Once or twice I had some doubts, but I solved them quickly with the assistance of one or two developers on the Ubuntu IRC channels.

 What did you like most about it?

The part I liked the most is the “collaborative feeling” – the sensation of being part of an active community. Everyone – from the uploaders to the Ubuntu developers – was helpful, friendly and focused on improving the project; I especially appreciated the attitude of the ones who helped me on the IRC channels (they were more than willing to guide me and give suggestions).

Is there anything that should have been easier? What do you recommend to other contributors who think about starting to get involved?

The initial patch approval for uploading should have been quicker (the bug lay there for about a month before the fix was uploaded to precise), especially since the fix was small and with little regression potential, although I understand that dealing with the huge mass of Ubuntu bugs filed on Launchpad is a difficult job, given the relatively small number of active volunteers.
To the other contributors, I’d recommend to:

  1. read the documentation on the Ubuntu Wiki, especially to understand the established release procedures;
  2. start by performing relatively simple tasks like triaging or contributing small patches before focusing on an area of particular interest;
  3. “be bold” (quoting from Wikipedia), that is, not be afraid to make changes and patches just because they are not completely familiar with conventions and tasks; if they are unsure, they should just ask on the IRC channels, somebody is always there to help.

What do you do in your other spare time?

I’m currently a Computer Science student at my university and am getting my Bachelor’s Degree in the summer, so I haven’t got much free time now – when I’m not studying, I usually code, hang on the Ubuntu IRC channels, triage bugs, translate some software or read books (especially philosophic texts).

Get Involved
  1. Read the Introduction to Ubuntu Development. It’s a short article which will help you understand how Ubuntu is put together, how the infrastructure is used and how we interact with other projects.
  2. Follow the instructions in the Getting Set Up article. A few simple commands, a registration at Launchpad and you should have all the tools you need, and you’re ready to go.
  3. Check out our instructions for how to fix a bug in Ubuntu, they come with small examples that make it easier to visualise what exactly you need to do.
Find something to work on

Pick a bitesize bug. These are the bugs we think should be easy to fix. Another option is to help out in one of our initiatives.

In addition to that there are loads more opportunities over at Harvest.

Getting in touch

There are many different ways to contact Ubuntu developers and get your questions answered.

Categories: News

Vacant Developer Membership Board seat: Call for nominations

Tue, 2012-01-17 02:27

We will soon have a Vacant Developer Membership Board seat. Michael Bienia is reaching the end of his term, and we need to find a replacement. This is a call for nominations.

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 or to grant them Ubuntu membership status.

The new member will be chosen using Condorcet voting. Members of the ubuntu-dev team in Launchpad will be eligible to vote. To ensure that you receive a ballot in the initial mail, please add a visible email address to your Launchpad profile (although there will be an opportunity to receive a ballot after the vote has started if you do not wish to do this).

The term of the new board member will be 2 years. Providing at least one nomination is received, voting will commence on Tuesday 31 January 2012 and last for 2 weeks, ending on Tuesday 14 February 2012. The DMB will confirm the appointment in its next meeting thereafter.

Please send nominations to developer-membership-board at lists.ubuntu.com (which is a private mailing list accessible only by DMB members) by Monday 30 January 2012.

If nominating a developer other than yourself, please confirm that the nominee is happy to sit on the board before emailing the DMB.

Please consider writing a short statement on your wiki page if nominating so that others get a better idea of who they are voting for. If you include a link to this in your nomination mail or a followup, the DMB will share it when the call for votes begins.

Originally posted to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Stefano Rivera on Mon Jan 16 14:40:29 UTC 2012

Categories: News

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 248

Mon, 2012-01-16 23:39

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #248 for the week January 9 – 15, 2012, and the full version is available here.

In this Issue we cover:

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

  • Elizabeth Krumbach
  • holstein
  • Alex Lourie
  • Benjamin Kerensa
  • Neil Oosthuizen
  • Liraz Siri
  • Chris Druif
  • And many others

We on the Ubuntu News Team wish each of you a happy and joyous holiday season. The news team will be spending the next two weeks enjoying this season and we hope you will be too.

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

Categories: News

Interview with Quackers

Sat, 2012-01-14 21:00

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

Ok, I’m Mike Donald, I’m 51 yearsw old and I live in Manchester, UK

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

My introduction to computers came in 1989 when I was working in a Magistrates Court in Manchester. It was a ICL ME29 mainframe computer system. I had never seen a computer close up before this time let alone owned one.

I took an interest in its workings (hardware and software) and within a year I was writing small search programs to cut down on the amount of time it took to search the system for an account with a given set of conditions. I ended up running that mainframe for about 2 years. I still didn’t own a computer of my own.

I left the Courts service in 1991 and as a complete change took my HGV class 1 licence as I had always wanted to drive articulated lorries! Strange I know, but whatever. I did that for 12 years and left about 2 years ago, to rest and play golf 

I bought my first computer (a Packard Bell Easynote F7305) in 2004 and fudged my way around for a while. Over the next few years I bought a Philips desktop computer, which is still going strong and a top-of-the-range Sony Vaio. This Vaio is what I now use every day.

I was thoroughly disillusioned with Windows due to what I saw as ridiculous shortfalls in a system that had been around for years (XP). Its failings were legion, in my book, so I tried Ubuntu in 2007. Sadly I didn’t know enough to get the wireless working and I had one or two video problems, so I then experimented with Mac OSX86. I managed to get that up and working on my desktop and my Vaio, in various states of success.

Last year I tried Ubuntu 10.04 and was extremely impressed with how much worked “out of the box” and stayed with that until 10.10 arrived and upgraded before it was released. I have participated in testing new releases since.

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

In my Ubuntu travels the Ubuntuforums have been invaluable as a problem-solving source. I decided early on that I would like to help others in the way that I was helped by people on UF.

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

I have very recently become an Ubuntu Member, and I’m very pleased about that 

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

I use Ubuntu, BodhiLinux and PCLinuxOS on a regular basis.

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

My most satisfying day (and night) on UF was when I spent 8 hours helping someone through a particularly convoluted set of circumstances to a fully successful outcome. I stayed up all night to do it. Both myself and the user were very happy with the outcome.

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

No answer given.

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

I would genuinely love to see Linux take a much larger share of the market place. I believe this is going to be very difficult though, due to both economic pressures and literally getting the word out to people that there is an alternative to Windows.

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

If I could tell prospective Ubuntu users one thing it would be to read, read and read before jumping in, and to make sure you can go back to what you have, before you start.

Originally Posted here on 2012-01-14

Categories: News

Ubuntu User Days — This Weekend!

Wed, 2012-01-11 05:58

This weekend from Saturday 13:30 UTC through Sunday 03:00 UTC the Classroom team will be hosting Ubuntu User Days!

User Days was created to be a set of chat-based classes offered during a one day period to teach the beginning or intermediate Ubuntu user the basics to get them started with Ubuntu. User Days sessions include:

  • find equivalent programs in Ubuntu
  • learn how to get help
  • learn the basics of how to use the command line in Ubuntu
  • learn how to get involved in the community

So join us by coming to #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net (#ubuntu-classroom-chat for questions) this weekend!

Our full schedule is as follows:

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Time (UTC) Subject Presenter 13:30 Introduction to User Days pleia2, nigelb 14:00 Launchpad and How to Use Restricted Drivers ashickur-noor 15:00 Introduction to Ubuntu holstein 16:00 Firewall Basics the_hydra 17:00 I have an idea to improve Ubuntu – what should I do? Cheesehead 18:00 Unity Lenses davidcalle 19:00 Installing Software stlsaint 20:00 Accessibility in Unity AlanBell 21:00 Finding Help in Ubuntu bkerensa 22:00 Customizing Unity philipballew and jrgifford 23:00 Introduction to Firefox JoseeAntonioR

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Time (UTC) Subject Presenter 00:00 Ubuntu Equivalents sagaci 01:00 How to Get Involved with the Community benonsoftware 02:00 Commandline Basics tonyyarusso

Originally posted to the Ubuntu Classroom blog by Elizabeth Krumbach on January 11, 2012 at 5:53 UTC

Categories: News