Ubuntu Look

The sixth and final alpha version of the upcoming Ubuntu 8.10 (codename Intrepid Ibex), which is scheduled for release in late October this year, was made available a few hours ago and, as usual, we intend to keep you up-to-date with the latest changes in the Ubuntu 8.10 development. Compared with the fifth alpha, which brought, for the first time in the history of Ubuntu, a Linux kernel that is still in development and a useful restore function, this version comes with Firefox 3.0.2, Samba 3.2 and GNOME 2.24 Beta 2 (which includes some very nice features – see the first screenshot tour below). But first, let’s take a quick look at the included applications:

Read and look more at Softpedia

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #109 for the week of September 14th - September 20th, 2008 is now available.

In this Issue:

* Intrepid Ibex Alpha 6 released
* Codecs & DVD playback in Intrepid for all users
* Xubuntu News
* New Kubuntu Bug Team
* MOTU Team News
* FSD: Ubuntu-VE, Ubuntu-NI, and Ubuntu-NO
* Ubuntu-ZA leadership change
* Launchpad 2.1.9 released
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* In Other News
* Mozilla Team Meeting Summary
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security

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

Without further adu, allow me to introduce Mythbuntu 8.10 alpha 6.  With this release, we are providing mirroring on sponsored mirrors only.

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 Mythbuntu 8.10 Alpha 4: (yes that’s right, no alpha 5)

Stability

* Lots of bug fixes across the board in Ubiquity and Mythbuntu Control Centre.
* Bug fixes for MythTV
* General bug fixes

Testing PPA

* We are introducing a testing PPA. This PPA will contain software that is either not in the repositories, or is a more current version that what is in the repositories. This PPA will not contain updated MythTV packages (that is what the weekly builds repo is for), but instead will contain new and updated packages for programs such as MythExport, MythNetTv, and MythVideo-Bulk-Updater. Information on this PPA is located here

For more detailed feature information please visit us on launchpad

Hello Ubuntu developers,

Welcome to Intrepid Ibex Alpha-6, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.10.

Pre-releases of Intrepid 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 6 is the sixth in a series of milestone CD images released throughout
the Intrepid 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 Intrepid. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/intrepid/alpha-6/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-6/ (Ubuntu Education Edition)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-6/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-6/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/intrepid/alpha-6/ (UbuntuStudio)

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

Alpha 6 includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale
testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha6 for
information on changes in Ubuntu.

This is an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a list
of known bugs (that you don’t need to report if you encounter), please see:
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha6

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

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

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

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

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu

Enjoy,
–
Steve Langasek
On behalf of the Ubuntu release team

It was only ever a matter of time before Toshiba stripped off and jumped in the rapidly crowding Netbook pool. That time is now, but what sort of a splash will the Toshiba NB100 make?

Although some will argue that the Psion Netbook was the first of the sub-sub-notebook breed, you can ignore them and jump straight to the ASUS Eee PC if you want to meet and greet the machine that made the market.
And, for that matter, flooded it with model after model after model. With Dell and Acer doing very nicely thank you with their own Netbooks, it was only ever going to be a matter of time before the likes of Toshiba started to play the small, cheap computer game.

Read more at iTWire

We’re striving to identify 1,000 businesses and organizations across the globe that run Ubuntu on servers, desktops, laptops or mobile devices. Our fast-growing list of Ubuntu adopters — known as the Works With U 1000 — now includes law firms, technology companies, universities, real estate firms, media companies, financial services firms, and other types of organizations from across the globe.

Read more at Works With U

Matt Zimmerman, CTO of Canonical, is unhappy with Greg Kroah-Hartman, one of the Linux kernel maintainers, because of Kroah-Hartman’s keynote at the Linux Plumbers Conference. The keynote, described elsewhere as a reworking a June presentation, makes a number of claims about Canonical’s activity in the community, presenting various tables which showed Canonical not making many upstream patches and concluding “Canonical doesn’t give back to the community”.

After the keynote, Zimmerman said in a posting on his blog that he tried to start a discussion with Kroah-Hartman about these claims saying “I approached him immediately after his talk to suggest that we have a conversation about the topics he raised, but he wasn’t interested in talking with me at that time. I made a standing offer to talk with him at any time during the three-day conference, and hope that we can get to the bottom of this.”

Read more at heise open source

* News about Mint

Linux Mint 5 Elyssa KDE Community Edition is released

If you have RC1 (aka beta045) you don’t need to do anything. The difference between the two is that a bug that duplicated some folders in home is fixed

Linux Mint 5 Elyssa Fluxbox Community Edition RC1 is released

Keep your eyes open - more news soon.

* News about Linux

The next Ubuntu is to be called Jaunty Jackalope (let’s hope it becomes more than a myth…)

The talks at Ubuntu Developer Week are found here

Ubuntu puts all man pages on the internet

Mark Shuttleworth on design, user experience and development

Lenovo denies ditching Linux

The spread of the Linux virus Linux/Rst-B according to Sophos (quite a few root infected boxes out there)

The latest news about the kernel is always found here

* News about IT

The invaluable NoScript for Firefox plug-in just got a tad better.

A new version of VLC

ZoooS takes OpenOffice to web

Google to have data center at sea?

HP is trying to make Windows better

The Association of National Advertisers (US) wants the pact between Google and Yahoo stopped

Google-backed satellite project aims to give 3 billion more people Net access

Google closes hole in Single Sign-On service

Language of text messages can give you away

French oppose sinister government database

The major Internet outages so far in 2008

Phishing Cyber Gang Upgrades to Fast-Flux Botnet

Study: Weak Passwords Still Main Security Defense

San Francisco hunts for mystery device on city network

Threat From DNS Bug Isn’t Over, Experts Say

* Hardware news

Cisco pushes ‘network memory‘ to alleviate high-speed bottlenecks

Intel vPro and the future of tech support

Ultrasound to give feel to games

Startup introduces ‘unclonable’ chip technology

USB-stick with hardware AES-encryption has been cracked
* Trivia and other links

Scientists get death threats over Large Hadron Collider (because of the risk of creating black holes) and it has already been hacked.

VMware Fusion Helps CERN Physicists Analyze Data From Coolest Place on Earth

Read more at The Linux Mint Blog

We are proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 5 KDE Community Edition:

http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa_kde.php

I would like to thank Jamie “Boo” Birse for maintaining this edition. Our last poll indicated that 11% of Linux Mint users were running KDE CE so I’m sure this will come as great news

Notes:

- If you previously downloaded RC1 you do not need to upgrade/reinstall.

- There won’t be any miniKDE ISO coming with this release.

Forum announcement: http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=16871

Mark Shuttleworth is tap-dancing to work these days, he writes on his blog. Why? His Ubuntu Linux project has hired a team of “designers, user experience champions, and interaction design visionaries” tasked with the heady chore of making Linux the world’s most usable operating system.

After acknowledging the significance of the challenge, Shuttleworth admitted that he does not yet have all the answers. But, he said Ubuntu’s new “upstream” team — which will work separately from its “platform” team, to avoid conflicts of interest — would focus initially on participation in the X, OpenGL, GTK, Qt, GNOME, and KDE projects.

Read more at DesktopLinux