Ubuntu Look

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

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

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

Faithful readers of this column may remember news we reported back in early April that the next Ubuntu release had been cunningly named “Jabbering Jackass.” The news came from a memo that got leaked to the Linux Loop, the story went, and it was, of course, an April Fools’ Day joke — which we knew all along. Anyhoo, turns out the *real* next version of Canonical’s very excellent software — sans the “cuddly cartoon donkey” — will be Jaunty Jackalope, as Mark Shuttleworth himself announced on a mailing list post last week.

Read more at LinuxInsider

Firefox, what’s not to love about this open-source web browser? Well, a number of users following the development work on Ubuntu 8.10 (the Intrepid Ibex) are feeling rather outraged over Mozilla Firefox 3.0.2 and later. In the latest Ubuntu packages, Firefox requires an EULA (End-User License Agreement) be accepted the first time you launch the browser…

Read more at Phoronix

I love the Ubuntu Wiki, and I think the Official Ubuntu Documentation is great! These are two important reasons why Ubuntu has been such a successful Linux distribution.

But at the end of the day, I’m a terminal-and-manpage kind of a guy.

Earlier this year, I found myself on IRC answering basic questions from an Ubuntu user about some random utility, and I asked him if he had read the manpage yet. He responded that he had read whatever he could find on the web, but he didn’t really dabble on the command line in general.

Read more …

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #107 for the week of August 31st - September 7th, 2008 is now available.

In this Issue:

* Intrepid Alpha 5 released
* KDE Community Stabilizes Desktop with KDE 4.1.1
* KDE 4.1.1 available for Kubuntu 8.04
* Wanted: Moderators for Ubuntu Brainstorm
* Ubuntu Developer Week Summary
* PackageKit: Call for testing
* Two Years Going Strong
* New MOTU
* Ubuntu Package Status Pages
* New proposed WikiGuide Page
* Call for feedback on new wiki theme
* Ubuntu Stats
* LoCo News
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu UK podcast #13
* Say Ubuntu!
* KDE Usability Project Video(Celeste Lyn Paul)
* Atlanta Linux Fest
* 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!

The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. With “Intrepid Ibex” Alpha 5 come some new features as well as lots of bug fixes.

This is still an alpha release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released on October 30th, 2008.
Upgrading from Ubuntu 8.04

To upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04, press Alt+F2 and type in “update-manager -d” (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release ‘8.10′ is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.
New Features in Intrepid

These features are showcased for your attention. Please test them and report any bugs you find on Launchpad: http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu .
GNOME 2.23.91

Ubuntu brings you the newest GNOME 2.23.91 desktop environment with tons of bug-fixes and new features, some of which include:

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Nautilus file manager has tab support and Eject icons for removable drives in Places sidebar.
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File Roller archive manager now supports ALZ, RZIP, CAB, TAR.7Z file types also.

X.Org server 7.4

X.Org 7.4, the latest stable version of X.Org, is available in Intrepid. This release brings much better support for hot-pluggable input devices such as tablets, keyboards, and mice. At the same time this will allow the great majority of users to run without a /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
Linux kernel 2.6.27

The kernel team is evaluating use of Linux kernel 2.6.27 for Ubuntu 8.10, which is included in Intrepid Alpha 5 as part of this evaluation process. This is a significant release with better hardware and numerous bug-fixes which is believed will provide overall improvement for Ubuntu 8.10. Regressions in 2.6.27 should be reported to the Ubuntu kernel team via https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux.
Encrypted private directory

The ecryptfs-utils package was recently promoted to Ubuntu main, with support for an secret encrypted folder in your Home Folder.

You can help test this new feature, by going Applications → Accessories → Terminal and typing:

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sudo aptitude install ecryptfs-utils
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ecryptfs-setup-private

Guest session

The User Switcher panel applet (package fast-user-switch-applet) now provides an extra entry for starting a Guest session. This creates a temporary password-less user account with restricted privileges: the account cannot access any users’ home directories, nor permanently store data. This is sufficiently safe to lend your laptop to someone else for a quick email check, or to use it as a surf station for guests in your house.
Network Manager 0.7

Intrepid Ibex ships Network Manager 0.7, which comes with long-expected features, such as:

* system wide settings (i.e., no need to log in in order to get a connection)
* management of 3G connections (GSM/CDMA)
* management of multiple active devices at once
* management of PPP and PPPOE connections
* management of devices with static IP configurations
* route management for devices

More information can be found on the Network Manager wiki.
“Last successful boot” recovery entry

On each successful boot, Intrepid will retain a copy of your running kernel and make it available from the boot loader as a “Last successful boot” option. This makes it possible for old kernel packages to be safely auto-removed by the package manager, instead of being kept indefinitely.
DKMS

DKMS is included in Alpha 5, allowing kernel drivers to be automatically rebuilt when new kernels are released. This makes it possible for kernel package updates to be made available immediately without waiting for rebuilds of driver packages, and without third-party driver packages becoming out of date when installing these kernel updates.
Download Alpha 5

Get it while it’s hot. ISOs and torrents are available at:

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http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/intrepid/alpha-5/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-5/ (Ubuntu Education Edition)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-5/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-5/ (Xubuntu)

Known Issues

As is to be expected at this stage of the release process, there are several known bugs that users are likely to run into with Intrepid Alpha 5. We have documented them here for your convenience along with any known workarounds, so that you don’t need to spend time reporting these bugs again:

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When using manual partitioning and configuring crypt+LVM, the partitioning will fail in certain configurations. As a workaround, you can use the “Entire disk with encryption” install option. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/251640
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The Intrepid 2.6.27-2 kernel fails to boot as a Guest under VirtualBox. This issue is expected to be resolved for Intrepid Alpha 6. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/246067
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Resume from Suspend with the 2.6.27-1 and 2.6.27-2 kernel will cause the system to reboot/shutdown. This issue should be resolved with the 2.6.27-3 kernel which will be uploaded post Alpha5. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/262423
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A list of known regressions regarding the 2.6.27 kernel has been assembled at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?field.tag=regression-2.6.27
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On Ubuntu systems, the “Shutdown” button in the Quit… menu does not shut down the system, but instead logs the user out. Investigation of this issue is ongoing. For now, please shut down from the log-in menu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/250506
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On Ubuntu systems, the default desktop theme is wrong. As a workaround, please select “Human-Murrine” (or another theme of your choice) in System → Preferences → Appearance. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/256972
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The X.Org configuration file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) still has InputDevice entries for the mouse and keyboard, but they are ignored now because input-hotplug is used. The keyboard settings come from /etc/default/console-setup, and to change them please use “sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup”. After that, HAL and X need to restart.
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After upgrading to this version, some keys might misbehave in X. Please make sure you have set the keyboard model as Generic Evdev-managed keyboard in System → Preferences → Keyboard, in the tab Layouts. If some keys still have problems, please file a bug against xkeyboard-config, and provide the output of setxkbmap -print and xkbcomp :0 - both run in the Terminal.
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Memtest86+, accessible via the boot menu, falsely reports some memory as failing the test. Investigation of this issue is ongoing. http://launchpad.net/bugs/246412

Reporting Bugs

It should come as no surprise that this alpha release of Intrepid Ibex contains other bugs. Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help fix bugs and improve future releases. Please report bugs through the Ubuntu bugtracker

If you want to help out with bugs, the Bug Squad is always looking for help.
Participate in Ubuntu

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

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http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/

More Information

You can find out more about Ubuntu on the Ubuntu website and Ubuntu wiki.

To sign up for future Ubuntu development announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s development announcement list at:
http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

Canonical is taking three small but significant steps to build a partner channel for Ubuntu Linux. The VAR Guy stumbled upon the strategy during a surprise visit to Canonical’s offices near Boston. Here’s the scoop.

During a visit to OnForce, which operates an online marketplace for solutions providers, The VAR Guy popped his head into the neighboring offices of Canonical. While there, he picked up some marketing materials from the Ubuntu Linux promoter.

The materials had three key messages, written for:

• Solutions providers (VARs, integrators, etc.)
• System builders (white box PC makers)
• Partners, customers and consumers seeking training

Read more at The VAR Guy

Sure, Windows is expected to run on 1 billion devices by 2010. But a loud minority is making its voice heard by moving to Ubuntu Linux. In fact, Canonical’s marketing materials state that Ubuntu now has more than 8 million users.

Alas, measuring Ubuntu’s active installed base can be tricky since a single copy o the operating system can be freely installed over and over again on multiple systems. And in mid-2007 during the Ubuntu Live conference, Ubuntu/Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth estimated the operating system’s installed base at 6 million to 12 million users.

Read more at The VAR Guy