Ubuntu Look

Hello Ubuntu developers,

Welcome to Hardy Heron Alpha-5, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.04.

Pre-releases of Hardy 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 5 is the fifth in a series of milestone CD images that will be
released throughout the Hardy 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 Hardy. You can download it here:
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for another Launchpad release and this is one with something for just about everyone!

• Faster PPA builds: we’ve cut the time it takes to build packages in PPAs. The moment you upload your source, Launchpad starts building.
• More bug notifications: now you can subscribe to get bug mail about any milestone, project, package or distribution.
• Savannah bug watches: keep an eye on bugs tracked at savannah.gnu.org and savannah.nongnu.org
• Easier branch registrations: we’ve improved the UI on the branch registration page.
• Karma fiends take note: registering branches and linking branches to bugs or blueprints now earns you karma! Find out more about karma.

There’s also exciting news for Launchpad beta testers! You can now apply to use Launchpad to run a mailing list for a team you’re involved with. Find out more about the mailing list beta.

Read more at Launchpad News

The reactions to the screenshots of the prototypes of EnvyNG 1.1.x were positive however some users (see the comments to my previous posts and this blog post ) led me into thinking that it’s time for me to change EnvyNG’s icon and logo.

I won’t draw a new icon and logo myself though. I wouldn’t define myself as skilled with the GIMP or Inkscape therefore I need your help:

• If you are a designer (or you can use either the GIMP, Inkscape, etc.) you can send me an icon and logo (you can find my email address on my website) which reflect your idea of what EnvyNG should look like.
• If you’re not a designer you can post a comment the artwork you think it’s more appropriate.

Requirements for the icons and logos:

Read more at Alberto Milone’s Blog

Who are the world’s top Ubuntu Linux partners? The VAR Guy wants to know. And so do his readers. Our resident blogger has launched a global survey that will identify 100 of the world’s top Ubuntu integrators, solutions providers, VARs and channel partners. What’s in it for Ubuntu partners and what does it take to participate? Glad you asked.Here are some quick details.

• Survey Background: You’ll find information about the survey on our sister site, All About Ubuntu.
• Actual Survey: To complete the actual Ubuntu 100 survey, use this link. The survey only takes a few minutes to complete and it’s free.

Companies that appear on the Ubuntu 100 list will receive free, high-profile publicity on our media sites (All About Ubuntu, MSPmentor and The VAR Guy) and across the open source industry. Plus, existing and prospective Ubuntu customers will more easily discover your expertise.

Read more at The Var Guy

With Hardy now past feature-freeze it’s time to start to plan
features that are being lined up for inclusion after Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
is released in April.

And so I’d like to introduce you to the Intrepid Ibex, the release
which is planned for October 2008, and which is likely to have the
version number 8.10.

During the 8.10 cycle we will be venturing into interesting new
territory, and we’ll need the rugged adventurousness of a mountain
goat to navigate tricky terrain. Our desktop offering will once
again be a focal point as we re-engineer the user interaction model
so that Ubuntu works as well on a high-end workstation as it does on
a feisty little subnotebook. We’ll also be reaching new peaks of
performance - aiming to make the mobile desktop as productive as
possible. Read the rest of this entry »

So you need a computer. You’ve looked at the newest Dell XPS, maybe a spiffy HP Pavilion. You’ve surfed over to Apple’s Web store to drool over the powerful, stylish machines of Steve Jobs. But there’s a problem: You’re broke. You just don’t have — or shouldn’t be spending — the $600 to more than $2,000 you’d have to pay for one of those new digital hotrods. There’s still hope if you have the do-it-yourself daring to combine the free, open source operating system Ubuntu Linux with an inexpensive used personal computer.

Read more at LinuxInsider

Stanislav Hoferek has announced the release of Greenie Linux 1.2.8, “Battle For Wesnoth” edition, a live CD featuring the latest version of the popular game. The freely downloadable CD image contains a light-weight operating system based on Xubuntu 7.10 with Linux kernel 2.6.22, Xfce, Wesnoth 1.2.8 with additional campaigns, Poedit (for Wesnoth translators), Gedit with ability to view WML syntax, GIMP 2.4, AbiWord, Xfmedia player, Firefox, Pidgin and gFTP (to send files over Internet).

Read more at DistroWatch

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 78 for the weeks
February 10th - February 16th, 2008. In this issue we cover Developer
Week, MOTU Freeze Team, Hardy Alpha 5, Hug Day, PulseAudio, and, as
always, much, much more!

== In This Issue ==

* Ubuntu Developer Week
* MOTU Freeze Team
* Hardy Alpha 5 Coming Thursday, 21 February
* Hug Day - 19 February 2008
* PulseAudio in 8.04
* In The Press & Blogosphere
* Meeting Summaries
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* Bugs & Translations Read the rest of this entry »

Launchpad is kinda hard to describe. When I’m asked what it is, I normally use three or more of the words “open source free software support project Q&A code registration bugs management listing bazaar planning hosting”. Most people make comparisons to Sourceforge, Savannah, Berlios and Google code hosting, and while those are useful, it’s only a part of the picture. The other part, which is perhaps not as well understood, is that it’s also a public project registration service, similar to Freshmeat. Well, except for a twist.

Launchpad’s source code directory

In addition to providing a project registration service open to the public for free (with probably the best Google juice out there; this has caught some people off-guard before!), Launchpad takes this to a next step, and actually provides a unified interface for interacting with each project registered. The most obvious unified service that you can use today is our code directory, which I want to introduce here.

Read more at Launchpad News

Today we are introducing second Mythbuntu 8.04 alpha image.  With this release, we are providing mirroring on sponsored mirrors rather than a torrent only release.

It is very important to note that this release is not compatible with Mythbuntu 7.10 or any other MythTV 0.20.2 based distribution.

Changes from Alpha 1:

Lirc

* Rudimentary transmitter selection support is available for all devices but the pvr-150.
* Include support for lircrc files that are generated to ease the editting process.
* Include support for lircd.conf files to nicely organize lircd.conf
* Customizable options for remotes not included.
* DKMS support. If you have modules that get upgraded after 8.04 comes out, you can patch them via lirc-modules-source manually, or grab a lirc-modules-source from a future Ubuntu/Mythbuntu testing release and simply install it without any manual patching necessary.

Themes

* All themes are modularized into their own packages, so systems can be further streamlined
* Community themes. All of Justin H.’s wonderful themes have been included by default.

MythTV 0.21

* This release is based on the release-0-21-fixes branch which was created recently to prepare for 0.21’s release. Please report all bugs that you find related to MythTV 0.21 to the upstream bug tracker at http://svn.mythtv.org

Resolved Issues:

* Most of the bugs that were reported about the 7.10 release have been resolved. Please refrain from using non-alphanumeric characters for passwords in the installer however, as some issues are still pending with that.

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We appreciated all comments from the last relesee and would love to hear what you think of this release. Please make comments to our mailing list, on the forums (with a tag indicating that this is from 8.04 or hardy), or in #ubuntu-mythtv.As previously,
If you encounter any issues with anything in this release (including ubiquity), please file a bug on launchpad:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mythbuntu/8.04/

 Mythbuntu website