Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 15 for the week of September, 17 - 23 2006. This issue is all about Scott James Remnant. If you see a sentence without his name, report it as a typo. You may notice the occasional word about someone or something other than Scott or Upstart, such as the LTSP Hackfest, rest assured that these are probably known typos, but feel free to report them anyway.

Si possono sempre trovare questa ed altre newsletter settimanali di Ubuntu all'indirizzo: http://www.ubuntu-it.org/index.php?page=u-weekly

Notizie Generali sulla Comunità

Scott James Remnant on LugRadio

Earlier this week, Scott announced, along upstart 0.2.7 release, that he will be on LugRadio this Monday: "Look out for the next episode of [http://www.lugradio.org/ LugRadio], it contains an interview about upstart with yours truly (if Jono remembered to plug my mike in :p); that should be out on Monday."

Scott James Remnant on Edgy+1

Edgy has not even been released yet, but people are already itching for Edgy+1. Scott has been musing recently and that musing hit his blog, with a post titled "What I want to see in Edgy+1". The post is dedicated to looking at technologies that make communication easier, whether it between users or between hardware. Scott first talks about Telepathy, the new communications framework, and how it (and galago and farsight) will change the way users communicate with each other, as well as make it easy for application developers to include IM functions into their applications. Continuing on the communications front, Scott then talks about automatic network config with Avahi and Zeroconf, as well as easier bluetooth connections and better synchronization. You can read more at http://www.netsplit.com/blog/articles/2006/09/22/what-i-want-in-edgy-1

LTSP Hackfest

Members of the [http://ltsp.org LTSP project], and developers from several distributions, gathered in Clarkston, Michigan last weekend to plot the future of LTSP. Ubuntu was there to oversee the beginning of work related to merging the Ubuntu LTSP into mainline LTSP. Jorge Castro was there, and wrote about it for [http://news.linux.com/news/06/09/21/233234.shtml?tid=47 Linux.com].

Nuove Applicazioni in Edgy

The Beta release of Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) is almost upon us (it is scheduled for release on Sept 28th). As such, Matt Zimmerman has announced a freeze of "main" until that release. The current priorities for the beta release mostly revolve around bug fixing. You can read more about the Beta freeze at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2006-September/000196.html

This week has brought us, amongst others:

• upstart 0.2.7
• python 2.5
• firefox 2.0b2
• openoffice 2.0.4~rc2

A number of ichthux-* packages rolled into Edgy in the last week. These are packages for a Kubuntu-based project called Ichthux (http://www.ichthux.com) which is producing a set of default apps and artwork for the Christian user community. So far ichthux-meta, ichthux-default-settings, ichthux-emoticons, and ichthux-konqueror-shortcuts have been uploaded along with several Sword modules for various languages with more to come before the Edgy Universe Freeze. The Ichthux development team is composed of Ubuntu and Debian developers such as Raphaël Pinson (Kubuntu core dev), Jordan Mantha (MOTU), and Ben Armstrong (Debian Developer).

Readahead, a tool to speed up boot times by reading files into a cache, has recently been updated by Scott James Remnant. In order for readahead to be effective, it must be updated regularly. On a development release, this can be somewhat tricky, due to the number of changes made. Futher, several communities members playing with readahead discovered it ran better in the foreground during boot, rather than the background. Both of these changes, amongst others, can be found in readahead-list_0.20050517.0220. You can read more about the specific changes, including boot times, at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2006-September/020967.html

Martin Pitt has announced the general availability of packages with debug symbols, as part of the apt-get-debug symbols spec (https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/apt-get-debug-symbols). Currently the packages are only available through Martin's people.ubuntu.com archive, but work is preceding apace on getting them into the Ubuntu archives. Further, work is also being done to pull in the debug packages automatically, via the new crash collection tool, apport. You can read more about Martin's work at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2006-September/000195.html

A common question users ask is why Ubuntu does not install NetworkManager, a new tool to control wireless and other networks, by default. NetworkManager was evaluated in the 6.06 development cycle and found lacking, although a fully comprehensive answer has never really been available. In a recent thread on ubuntu-devel asking this very question, Scott James Remnant laid out the various issues. You can read Scott's answer at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2006-September/020886.html

Daniel Holbach, between uploading new telepathy packages, found time to update the various PDA utilities. pilot-link (0.12.1), gnome-pilot and gnome-pilot-conduits (both 2.0.14) have landed in Edgy. Daniel has also asked for testers of this new code, over at the https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PDATesters/Hardware wiki page. You can read more about it at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2006-September/020880.html

The Telepathy team continued full steam ahead this week. Telepathy-inspector was updated to 0.3.4. Riccardo Setti also joined the team, uploading telepathy-gabble 0.3.6. Finally, the ever busy Scott James Remnant wrote a blog post about what he would like to see in Edgy+1. Featured prominently in the blog post was Telepathy. You can read Scott's post at http://www.netsplit.com/blog/articles/2006/09/22/what-i-want-in-edgy-1

The world of Edgy, was, as always, busy these week. These are only a small fraction of the changes that happened in the Edgy world. If you don't see something you think should have been covered (maybe something else Scott did?), we are always looking for new editors.

La Stampa dice

Enterprise Storage Forum takes a look at The Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org) and find Ubuntu under the hood:

As for the software running the system, it's almost all open source. "Primarily now we're using the Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) release of Debian (www.debian.org) for our OS," says Berry. "It's very easy to manage and install. We also use Linux, which we've used for many years in different flavors. And we use Apache and things like Perl and PHP."

For the Archive, the decision to go with open source software was based on cost savings as well as experience.

"Obviously you don't pay the big licensing fees," says Berry. "But it also gives us a lot of openness and freedom, and the Archive is usually pushing some technical edge. So it's nice to have that flexibility, which we wouldn't necessarily have had with vendor software."

More tech details about the archive can be found at http://tinyurl.co.uk/rho1

CNET's Tom Merritt has recorded a video introduction to Ubuntu. You can watch it http://tinyurl.co.uk/gi50

Userful Corporation and Canonical are working together to deliver even more value to organizations that deploy Ubuntu:

"Our virtualized X-server enables a single Ubuntu PC equipped with extra video cards to support up to 10 monitors, USB keyboards, and users simultaneously," says Tim Griffin, President of Userful. "Ubuntu with Userful's 'Multiplier' offers dramatic hardware and software savings, literally offering organizations ten Linux workstations for what they would otherwise spend on just a single Windows computer with commercial office and graphics software."

Userful's Multiplier software is ideally suited for organizations that wish to deploy large numbers of workstations for users without deploying a large number of computers. By sharing the processing power and resources of modern, often overpowered PCs with up to nine additional users, Userful and Ubuntu can reduce IT management, electrical and cooling costs by more than fifty percent per workstation.

"By making Userful's Multiplier available on Ubuntu, we are adding significantly to the potential savings to be made by our customers," commented Malcolm Yates, ISV and Partner Manager at Canonical. "This unique solution is suitable for schools, small businesses and developing markets, where computing resources tend to be scarce."

There's more at http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/274522.htm

(Full Disclosure: Ubuntu Weekly New's Chief Editor, Corey Burger, works for Userful and fought to exclude this story due to conflict of interest. He was overruled.)

ITWeek.co.uk and WhatPC.co.uk reporter Barry Shilliday has discussed two alternative methods of installing extra software on Ubuntu, and also discussed the Kubuntu desktop alternative.

In this article, we expand on a previous article that examined the update of a fresh Ubuntu Dapper Drake installation to make it more desktop and multimedia-friendly, by looking at the automated options.

In addition, we take a closer look at Ubuntu’s KDE offspring, Kubuntu.

While we appreciate the discussion, we would like to advise that use of EasyUbuntu and Automatix are generally discouraged.

You can read the article at http://www.itweek.co.uk/personal-computer-world/features/2164751/making-ubuntu-easier

Meetings and other similar events

IRC Meetings in #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net this coming week include:

• Technical Board Meeting on Tues, Sept. 26, 20:00 UTC
• Edubuntu Meeting, on Wed, Sept. 27, 20:00 UTC
• Ubuntu Development Team Meeting on Thu, Sept. 28, 23:00 UTC
• Ubuntu Desktop Effects Team Meeting on Fri, Sept. 29, 16:00 UTC

Upcoming Events

Its that time again, Hug day. Sept 27 is Hug day, and we want YOU for bug closing. How you ask? simply login to Launchpad's bug manager [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bugs Malone] and start triaging. For more detailed information: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay

Caratteristica della settimana

For many end users simply unplugging a usb thumbdrive is the norm. What many, however, do not know is that this can be damaging to the data. Edgy now has a small unobtrusive warning popup that informs the user if the data did not sync before unplugging usb. This will prevent many usb related data losses.

attachment:usbremovalerror.png

Agiornamenti di sicurezza

• USN-351-1: Firefox vulnerabilities
• USN-350-1: Thunderbird vulnerabilities
• USN-349-1: gzip vulnerabilities
• USN-348-1: GnuTLS vulnerability

Aggiornamenti Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

Documentation for Stable Release updates

Matt Zimmerman has produced a document outlining the steps necessary to get a non-security related update into a stable release of Ubuntu. You can read more about the Why, When and How of these types of updates at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates

Statistiche sui bug

• Aperti (15560) (+242 rispetto alla settimana precedente)
• Non confermati (8265)
• Non assegnati (10826)
• Tutti i bug fin'ora riportati (55517)

Come al solito, il team Bug Squad ha bisogno di maggior aiuto. Se vuoi contribuire, visita https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs

Puoi controllare le statistiche sui bug su: http://people.ubuntu-in.org/~carthik/bugstats/

Risorse Aggiuntive

Come sempre nuove informazioni e aggiornamenti sono dispobili su:

• http://www.ubuntu.com/news

e

• http://fridge.ubuntu.com/

Conclusioni

Grazie per aver letto la Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. Alla prossima settimana!

Crediti

La Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter è scritta da:

• Corey Burger
• Alexandre Vassalotti
• Michael Vogt
• John Little
• Eldo Varghese
• Paul O'Malley
• Melissa Draper
• e molti altri

Commenti

Questo documento è mantenuto dal team Ubuntu Marketing. Siete liberi di contattarci riguardo qualsiasi commento o suggerimento mandando sia una email a ubuntu-marketing su lists.ubuntu.com o utilizzando uno qualsiasi degli altri metodi elencati sulla [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam pagina dei contatti dell'Ubuntu Marketing Team] (in lingua inglese)