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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 321

Mon, 06/17/2013 - 15:48

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #321 for the week June 10 – 16, 2013, 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 Joseph
  • Paul White
  • Tiago Carrondo
  • Jim Connett
  • Matt Rudge
  • 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

Certificates For Ubuntu Members

Fri, 06/14/2013 - 15:26

The Ubuntu community is a core part of what makes us what we are, and right at the center of that are our Ubuntu Members. Ubuntu Members provide *significant and sustained* contributions over a wide range of areas such as packaging, documentation, programming, translations, advocacy, support, and more. We always want to do our best to recognize and appreciate our many members in the Ubuntu family, across these many different teams and our flavors.

I am pleased to announce a new benefit for new Ubuntu Members. When you become approved as an official Ubuntu Member, you will be mailed a printed certificate signed by Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project to recognize your membership. We hope you put it up on your wall where you contribute to Ubuntu and bring freedom and openness to technology.

A few notes:

  • The certificates are rather nice. Designed by the design team and printed on nice stock, they are a nice representation of your membership.
  • We will only send you one certificate; you don’t get a new one when you renew your membership.
  • Due to the fact that we currently have **769** active Ubuntu members, we don’t have the time or resources to send every existing member a certificate automatically (just getting all those addresses would be enough of a challenge!). If however you fill in the form below to request one, we will honor it.
  • If you have any questions or queries with these certificates, please contact michelle@canonical.com who can help.
How To Get Your Certificate

Please only request a certificate if you are an existing Ubuntu Member, otherwise your request will be rejected. If you are not sure if you are a member or not, please check your profile page on Launchpad to see if you are member of the ubuntu-members group.

To get one simply fill in this form.

We hope to send out certificates within 14 days, but we are currently waiting on getting them signed by Mark, so it may take a little longer initially.

Thanks!

Contributed by Jono Bacon

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 320

Tue, 06/11/2013 - 09:25

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #320 for the week June 3 – 9, 2013, 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 Joseph
  • Jasna Bencic
  • Paul White
  • Javier Lopez
  • David Morfin
  • Jim Connett
  • Matt Rudge
  • 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

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 319

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 15:46

Community on ubuntu.com

Fri, 05/31/2013 - 08:53

We’re very happy to announce that community.ubuntu.com is now online. It is the primary address for interested Ubuntu users to stay involved and get informed about what our community is doing.

Our new community website: http://community.ubuntu.com/

A handful of contributors worked hard with the Canonical Design and Web team and from now on it will be easy for us as a community to keep the site up to date.

If you want to help out and improve things, feel free to file bugs on the ubuntu-community-website project, where we keep track of things.

Thanks again to everyone who helped out with this project. Well done!

Mark Shuttleworth closes Ubuntu bug #1

Thu, 05/30/2013 - 17:54

The first bug filed in the Ubuntu project was filed by Mark Shuttleworth on August 19th, 2004: Microsoft has a majority market share

Today he marked the bug “Fix Released” with the following comment:

Personal computing today is a broader proposition than it was in 2004: phones, tablets, wearables and other devices are all part of the mix for our digital lives. From a competitive perspective, that broader market has healthy competition, with IOS and Android representing a meaningful share (see http://www.zdnet.com/windows-has-fallen-behind-apple-ios-and-google-android-7000008699/ and in particular http://cdn-static.zdnet.com/i/r/story/70/00/008699/meeker620-620×466-620×466.jpg?hash=ZQxmZmDjAz&upscale=1).

Android may not be my or your first choice of Linux, but it is without doubt an open source platform that offers both practical and economic benefits to users and industry. So we have both competition, and good representation for open source, in personal computing.

Even though we have only played a small part in that shift, I think it’s important for us to recognize that the shift has taken place. So from Ubuntu’s perspective, this bug is now closed.

There is a social element to this bug report as well, of course. It served for many as a sort of declaration of intent. But it’s better for us to focus our intent on excellence in our own right, rather than our impact on someone else’s product. In the (many) years since this bug was filed, we’ve figured out how to be amazing on the cloud, and I hope soon also how to be amazing for developers on their desktops, and perhaps even for everyday users across that full range of devices. I would rather we find a rallying call that celebrates those insights, and leadership.

It’s worth noting that today, if you’re into cloud computing, the Microsoft IAAS team are both technically excellent and very focused on having ALL OS’s including Linux guests like Ubuntu run extremely well on Azure, making them a pleasure to work with. Perhaps the market shift has played a role in that. Circumstances have changed, institutions have adapted, so should we.

Along those lines, it’s good to reflect on how much has changed since 2004, and how fast it’s changed. For Ubuntu, our goal remains to deliver fantastic experiences: for developers, for people building out production infrastructure, and for end-users on a range of devices. We are doing all of that in an environment that changes completely every decade. So we have to be willing to make big changes ourselves – in our processes, our practices, our tools, and our relationships. Change this bug status is but a tiny example.

Shuttering the Ubuntu Billboard Photo Contest

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 10:15

Recently we announced a contest to spot Ubuntu billboards in the wild in Russia and the Ukraine. The contest required you to take an original photograph of a billboard containing a Dell advertisement with Ubuntu. Due to extenuating circumstances, we have been informed the billboards have been taken down. In light of this news, we unfortunately have to end the Ubuntu billboard photo contest early.

As of today, May 28th, 2013, the contest is officially ended. No further submissions will be accepted. Those who submitted a picture will be contacted with further details. Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest. We hope you enjoyed seeing Ubuntu displayed on the billboards and hunting to find a sighting.

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 318

Mon, 05/27/2013 - 22:54

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #318 for the week May 20 – 26, 2013, 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 Joseph
  • Jasna Bencic
  • Paul White
  • Howard Chan
  • Radu Stoica
  • David Morfin
  • Matt Rudge
  • 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

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 317

Mon, 05/20/2013 - 15:55

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #317 for the week May 13 – 19, 2013, 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 Joseph
  • Paul White
  • John Kim
  • Benjamin Kerensa
  • David Morfin
  • Amber Graner
  • The Alpaca Herder
  • Jim Connett
  • 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

Gandi now offers discounts for Ubuntu Members

Wed, 05/15/2013 - 20:41

The Ubuntu Community Council is happy to announce the availability of discounts from Gandi to Ubuntu Members! Members will be granted E rates for domains and partner rates for cloud hosting (-50% from public price).

To redeem this benefit, members should send an email to non-profit@gandi.net from their @ubuntu.com email address that includes:

  • A Gandi handle (see here to create a new one if requred)
  • The currency they use (Euro, USD or GBP are available)

Huge thanks to the kind folks at Gandi for offering this benefit to our members, and also thanks to community member Benjamin Kerensa for reaching out to them to request it.

Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph, on behalf of the Ubuntu Community Council

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 316

Mon, 05/13/2013 - 16:55

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #316 for the week 6 – 13 May, 2013, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

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

  • Amber Graner
  • Craig Sargent
  • Paul White
  • John Kim
  • Javier Lopez
  • Tiago Carrondo
  • Jim Connett
  • Jose Antonio Rey
  • 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

Announcing the Ubuntu Billboard Photo Contest

Mon, 05/13/2013 - 11:17

In cooperation with Dell, we’re thrilled to announce the Ubuntu Billboard Photo Contest in Russia and Ukraine. From today on, and until the end of May, you can participate in this challenge to submit pictures of one or more of the billboards with Dell and Ubuntu adverts spread across 6 major cities in Russia and Ukraine. You can win exciting prizes, including a Dell laptop with Ubuntu preinstalled.

The prizes

The lucky winners will be taking home one of these succulent prizes:

1st Prize 2nd Prize 3rd Prize Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook Laptop, Developer Edition Bundle of articles from the Ubuntu Store: including an Ubuntu Messenger Bag, an Ubuntu Neoprene Laptop Sleeve, and a Circle of Friends T-Shirt 100GB Ubuntu One storage + Music streaming for a year The rules
  1. Term: 3 weeks , from the 13th of May to the 2nd of June
  2. Judging Criteria:
    • Quality (40%) – e.g. is the photographic quality good? Is the picture available at high resolutions?
    • Creativity (40%) – e.g. is the content original, creative?
    • Number of views (20%) – i.e. how popular is the content?

Each participant can submit up to 3 pictures according to the topic: “Ubuntu Billboards in Russia and Ukraine” and featuring at least one such billboard. Each picture must provide location metadata to pinpoint it to one of the major cities in each country where billboards are being displayed.

Pictures can be altered digitally with editing tools, but no logos, brand names or trademarks are allowed. Pictures must be submitted under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license and their content must be suitable for general audiences, respecting the Ubuntu Code of Conduct.

How to participate

Taking part in the contest is easy:

  1. Find a billboard near you. The cities in Russia are Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk and Izhevsk; the cities in Ukraine are Kiev, Lvov, and Dnepropetrovsk. Russian billboard samples >
  2. Take an awesome picture or more!. If you wish, edit it digitally. Remember to keep the geolocation data in the picture
  3. Upload your pictures to Flickr. You might need to create an account there if you don’t have one already.
  4. Go to the Ubuntu Billboards group in Flickr, and join it
  5. Add your pictures to the Ubuntu Billboards group in Flickr. Remember there is a maximum of 3 pictures per participant.
  6. Promote your work! Show off your cool Ubuntu pictures in the social networks

If you’ve got any question related to the contest, feel free to use the comments on this announcement or start a thread in the group’s discussion.

Looking forward to seeing more of those Ubuntu billboards in the wild!

Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) End of Life reached on May 9, 2013

Fri, 05/10/2013 - 12:06

This is a follow-up to the End of Life warning sent last month to
confirm that as of today (May 9, 2013), Ubuntu 11.10 is no longer
supported. No more package updates will be accepted to 11.10, and
it will be archived to old-releases.ubuntu.com in the coming weeks.

The original End of Life warning follows, with upgrade instructions:

Ubuntu announced its 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) release almost 18 months
ago, on October 13, 2011. As with the earlier releases, Ubuntu
committed to ongoing security and critical fixes for a period of 18
months. The support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 11.10
will reach end of life on Thursday, May 9th. At that time, Ubuntu
Security Notices will no longer include information or updated
packages for Ubuntu 11.10.

The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 11.10 is via Ubuntu 12.04.
Instructions and caveats for the upgrade may be found at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PreciseUpgrades. Ubuntu 12.04
continues to be actively supported with security updates and
select high-impact bug fixes. All announcements of official security
updates for Ubuntu releases are sent to the ubuntu-security-announce
mailing list, information about which may be found at
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-security-announce.

Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most
highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users in homes,
schools, businesses and governments around the world. Ubuntu is Open
Source software, costs nothing to download, and users are free to
customise or alter their software in order to meet their needs.

On behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team,

Adam Conrad

Originally posted on the ubuntu-announce mailing list on Thu May 9 20:06:34 UTC 2013.

Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Desktop End of Life reached on May 9, 2013

Fri, 05/10/2013 - 12:02

This is a follow-up to the End of Life warning sent last month to
confirm that as of today (May 9, 2013), Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop is no
longer supported. This announcement is for the desktop product only,
Ubuntu 10.04 Server is still supported for another two years.

The original End of Life warning follows, with upgrade instructions:

Ubuntu announced its 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) release almost 3 years ago,
on April 29, 2010. As with the earlier LTS releases, Ubuntu committed
to ongoing security and critical fixes for a period of 3 years on the
desktop. The support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 10.04
Desktop will reach end of life on Thursday, May 9th. At that time,
Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated
packages for Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop. Ubuntu 10.04 Server continues to
be supported for another 2 years.

The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 10.04 is via Ubuntu 12.04.
Instructions and caveats for the upgrade may be found at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PreciseUpgrades. Ubuntu 12.04
continues to be actively supported with security updates and
select high-impact bug fixes. All announcements of official security
updates for Ubuntu releases are sent to the ubuntu-security-announce
mailing list, information about which may be found at
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-security-announce.

Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most
highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users in homes,
schools, businesses and governments around the world. Ubuntu is Open
Source software, costs nothing to download, and users are free to
customise or alter their software in order to meet their needs.

On behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team,

Adam Conrad

Originally posted on the ubuntu-announce mailing list on Thu May 9 20:03:39 UTC 2013

Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) End of Life reached on May 9, 2013

Fri, 05/10/2013 - 11:57

This is a follow-up to the End of Life warning sent last month to
confirm that as of today (May 9, 2013), Ubuntu 8.04 is no longer
supported. No more package updates will be accepted to 8.04, and
it will be archived to old-releases.ubuntu.com in the coming weeks.
The original End of Life warning follows, with upgrade instructions:

Ubuntu announced its 8.04 (Hardy Heron) release almost 5 years ago,
on April 24, 2008. As with the earlier LTS releases, Ubuntu committed
to ongoing security and critical fixes for a period of 5 years. The
support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 8.04 will reach end
of life on Thursday, May 9th. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices
will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 8.04.

The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 8.04 is via Ubuntu 10.04.
Users are encouraged to evaluate and upgrade to our latest 12.04 LTS
release via 10.04. Instructions and caveats for the upgrades may be
found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LucidUpgrades and
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PreciseUpgrades. Ubuntu 10.04 and
12.04 continue to be actively supported with security updates and
select high-impact bug fixes. All announcements of official security
updates for Ubuntu releases are sent to the ubuntu-security-announce
mailing list, information about which may be found at
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-security-announce.

Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most
highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users in homes,
schools, businesses and governments around the world. Ubuntu is Open
Source software, costs nothing to download, and users are free to
customise or alter their software in order to meet their needs.

On behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team,

Adam Conrad

Originally posted on the ubuntu-announce mailing list on Thu May 9 20:05:04 UTC 2013

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 315

Mon, 05/06/2013 - 16:49

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 314

Mon, 04/29/2013 - 15:49

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #314 for the week April 22 – 28, 213, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

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

  • Amber Graner
  • Jose Antonio Rey
  • 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

New members of the Ubuntu LoCo Council Announced

Sat, 04/27/2013 - 07:47

On the behalf of the Community Council I would like to welcome our newly appointed members to the LoCo Council:

Thank you to all who their names forward, we always have great applicants, and the decision is never easy and we hope you all consider applying again in the future.

Originally posted to the ubuntu-news-team mailing list on Fri Apr 26 11:52:58 UTC 2013 by Laura Czajkowski

The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Thu, 04/25/2013 - 08:08

Congratulations and thanks to the entire extended Ubuntu community for today’s release of Ubuntu 13.04, the Raring Ringtail. Feedback over the past few months on raring has been fantastic – pretty much universal recognition of the performance and quality initiatives Rick’s team have lead and which have been embraced across the platform and the community.

In the work to underpin a rolling release, we made huge strides in automated quality assessment and performance testing. From here on our, I’m going to treat the cutting edge of Ubuntu as a rolling release, because the team have done such an amazing job of making daily quality a reality. That’s a value that we have all adopted, and the project is much better off for it.

Slipping the phrase ‘ring ring’ into the codename of 13.04 was, frankly, a triumph of linguistic engineering. And I thought I might quit on a high… For a while, there was the distinct possibility that Rick’s Rolling Release Rodeo would absolve me of the twice-annual rite of composition that goes into the naming of a new release. That, together with the extent of my travels these past few months, have left me a little short in the research department. I usually spend a few weekend afternoons doodling with a dictionary (it’s actually quite a blast, and I recently had the pleasure of actually knowing what some ponce was talking about when they described something as ‘rugose’).

So today I find myself somewhat short in the naming department, which is to say, I have a name, but not the soliloquy that usually goes with it!

Which is why, upon not very deep reflection, I would like to introduce you to our mascot for the next six months, the saucy salamander.

The salamander is one of nature’s most magical creatures; they are a strong indicator of a pristine environment, which is a fitting way to describe the new world emerging around Ubuntu Touch – new applications, a new SDK, a gorgeous clean interface. You’ll find salamanders swimming in clear, clean upstreams – which is exactly what’s forming around Ubuntu’s mobile ecosystem. It’s a way of saying ‘thank you’ to the tremendous community that has joined the effort to create a single unified experience from phone to PC, with tons of crisp and stylish core apps made by people from all over the world who want to build something fast, fresh and free. And we’re saucy too – life’s to short to be stodgy or stilted. Our work is our play – we make amazing things for a huge audience, we find space for pretty much every flavour of interface and do it with style.

Happy release day everyone! Here’s to a super saucy cycle.

Originally posted here by Mark Shuttleworth on Thursday, April 25th, 2013

Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) Released

Thu, 04/25/2013 - 05:35

The Ubuntu team is very pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 13.04 for Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products.

Codenamed “Raring Ringtail”, 13.04 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. This release cycle has seen a significant push toward daily quality, which has allowed most developers and users to participate more actively throughout the cycle, and we feel this also shows in the final quality of this release.

Along with performance improvements to Unity, updates to common desktop packages, and updated core and toolchain components, Ubuntu 13.04 also includes the new Friends service, to consolidate all social networking accounts via Ubuntu Online Accounts. Also included is a tech preview of Upstart’s new user session feature.

Ubuntu Server 13.04 includes the Grizzy release of OpenStack, alongside deployment and management tools that save devops teams time when deploying distributed applications – whether on private clouds, public clouds, x86 or ARM servers, or on developer laptops. Several key server technologies, from MAAS to Ceph, have been updated to new upstream versions with a variety of new features, and a preview of the new Go rewrite of Juju is available in the backports repository.

Read more about the new features of Ubuntu 13.04 in the following press releases:

Maintenance updates will be provided for Ubuntu 13.04 for 9 months, through January 2014.

Thanks to the efforts of the global translation community, Ubuntu is now available in 42 languages. For a list of available languages and detailed translation statistics for these and other languages, see:

The newest Kubuntu 13.04, Edubuntu 13.04, Xubuntu 13.04, Lubuntu 13.04 and Ubuntu Studio 13.04 are also being released today. More details can be found in their announcements:

This release cycle, we welcome two new flavours to the Ubuntu archive, Ubuntu GNOME and UbuntuKylin. For more information about each, see their wiki pages, and welcome them to the family:

To get Ubuntu 13.04

In order to download Ubuntu 13.04, visit:

Users of Ubuntu 12.10 will be offered an automatic upgrade to 13.04 via Update Manager. For further information about upgrading, see:

As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.

We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document caveats, workarounds for known issues, as well as more in-depth notes on the release itself. They are available at:

Find out what’s new in this release with a graphical overview:

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but aren’t sure, you can try asking in any of the following places:

Help Shape Ubuntu

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at:

About Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, netbooks and servers, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional services including support are available from Canonical and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit:

More Information

You can learn more about Ubuntu and about this release on our website listed below:

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume announcement list at:

Originally posted to the ubuntu-announce mailing list by Adam Conrad on Thu Apr 25 12:07:30 UTC 2013

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