Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #123 -- Part 1

Submitted by k4tz on Mon, 01/05/2009 - 11:11

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #123 for the weeks December 21st - January 3rd, 2008. In this issue we cover: Notification, indicators and alerts, Making LoCo Teams Rock, Planet Ubuntu and Corporate Blogs, Ubuntu live on TV, Ubuntu Berlin review of 2008, Tunisian Team Events in December, 12 days of Launchpad, Full Circle Magazine #20, Meeting Summaries, and much, much more!

UWN Translations

  • Note to translators and our readers: We are trying a new way of linking to our translations pages. Please follow the link below for the information you need.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeekly...r/Translations

In This Issue

  • Notifications, indicators and alerts
  • Making LoCo Team Rock
  • Planet Ubuntu and Corporate Blogs
  • Ubuntu Stats
  • Ubuntu Live on TV
  • Ubuntu Berlin review of 2008
  • Tunisian Team Events in December
  • 12 days of Launchpad
  • Ubuntu Forums News
  • In the Press & Blogosphere
  • Full Circle Magazine #20
  • Meeting Summaries
  • Upcoming Meetings & Events
  • Updates & Security

General Community News

Notifications, indicators, and alerts

In a recent blog article from Mark Shuttleworth(here be dragons) we get an insight into the work being considered for notifications, indicators, and alerts. These are the bubble desktop items that draw our attention to various indicators that need our attention. Notifications are interesting, subtle and complex, with a lot of different approaches on many different platforms. The proposed changes are to simplify and eliminate complexity, while still making it possible to meet the use cases known today. The key proposals we are making are that:

  • There should be no actions on notifications.
  • Notifications should not be displayed synchronously, but may be queued. Our implementation of the notification display daemon will display only one notification at a time, others may do it differently.

This work will show up as a new notification display agent, not as a fork or patch to the existing GNOME notification daemon. It isn't felt that the client API - libnotify - needs to be changed for this experiment, though it may not display notifications sent through that API that use capabilities that are thought to be deprecated.

The most controversial part of the proposal is the idea that notifications should not have actions associated with them. In other words, no buttons, sliders, links, or even a dismissal [x]. When a notification pops up, you won’t be able to click on it, you won’t be able to make it go away, you won’t be able to follow it to another window, or to a web page. The core of the idea is to lessen the responsibility of the user by relieving them of having to respond to a notification, but still giving them the information they need.

You can read the whole article, see a short video showing how the new notification might look, and find out what Mark's three pronged attack strategy will be at the link. http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/253

Making LoCo Teams Rock

Jono Bacon has a few things he'd like to see done, to help new teams achieve approved status and help existing teams to be more productive.

  • Database the list of LoCo teams - This would improve data mining, help keep a current perspective on the LoCo community, and make it easier for new members to find the nearest team to join.
  • Education - His suggestion is to hold an Open Week style event to improve how great teams can better educate new teams by passing on best practices and great experience.
  • Contacts and messaging - The ability to share stories, experiences, and tips through blogs, articles, YouTube and anywhere else that would attract attention to the LoCo Teams and their work.

Read more at: http://www.jonobacon.org/2008/12/30/...co-teams-rock/

Planet Ubuntu and Corporate Blogs

A proposal is being raised to include Corporate blogs on Planet Ubuntu. Of course there would be guidelines, such as no advertising, Community Council oversight, and an employee with Ubuntu membership as the responsible person for the blog entry. Other guidelines also exist. See them all at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PlanetUbuntu/CorporateBlogs

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (47766)+326 over last week
  • Critical (23)+4 over last week
  • Unconfirmed (18785)+349 over last week
  • Unassigned (40405)+1100 over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (239941)+2135 over last week

As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

Translation Stats Intrepid

  • Spanish (15871)-1315 over last week
  • French (61915)+/-0 over last week
  • Swedish (72541)+/-0 over last week
  • Brazilian Protuguese (77812)-2954 over last week
  • English (UK) (81460)+/-0 over last week

Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/

5-a-day bug stats

==== Top 5 contributors for the past 7 days ====

  • crimsun (179)
  • vorian (44)
  • chrisccoulson (33)
  • andres-mujica (29)
  • blueyed (26)

==== Top 5 teams for the past 7 days ====

  • dcteam (179)
  • ubuntu-us-ohio (58)
  • ubuntu-co (29)
  • ubuntu-chicago (24)
  • ubuntu-oklahoma (21)

5-A-Day stats provided by Daniel Holbach. See http://daniel.holba.ch/5-a-day-stats/

Ubuntu Brainstorm Top 5 this week

  • "Mount anyway" button on NTFS disk mount error
  • "Speed up" Ubuntu by reducing duration of Compiz animations
  • Improve External Monitor Support
  • Ctrl + Z should work in F-Spot too
  • Panel icons and applets move around too much

Ubuntu Brainstorm is a community site geared toward letting you add your ideas for Ubuntu. You can submit your own idea, or vote for or against another idea. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

LoCo News

Ubuntu Live on TV

Milo Casagrande has posted that there would be an interview with Fabio Marzocca on the local Rome TV channel, RomaUno. The interview, in Italian, is about Ubuntu and the Italian community.[1]

[1] http://www.ubuntu-it.org/media/romauno.avi

http://milocasagrande.wordpress.com/...on-tv-uds-and/

Ubuntu Berlin review of 2008

Ubuntu Berlin looks back on some of the achievements of 2008, including things like meetings, Bug Jams, release parties, and much more. In addition, they include a list of goals for 2009, which include focusing on Ubuntu related topics, release parties, workshops, and Bug Jams. The entire list can be seen at: http://www.screenage.de/blog/2008/12...eview-of-2008/

Tunisian Team Events in December

The Tunisian Ubuntu team was invited by the Tunisian Ministry of Communication Technologies to participate in an open source seminar titled "Free Software: A Strong Involvement of IT". During the course of the presentations they offered testimonies on the use of open source software in companies. They also gave a lecture on Ubuntu, their LoCo, and what activities they participate in. Ali Ben Brahim also talked about the Ubuntu philosophy in business, and the advantages of using Ubuntu in business settings.

In December, they completed the first of 2 phases of migrating the National Engineering School of Sfax (ENIS) to Ubuntu. This first phase included presentations to students, teachers and technical staff of ENIS[1], and installing ubuntu on 150 PC.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TunisianTeam/Presentations (presentations are in French)

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TunisianTeam...20Event%208.12

 

PART 2 PART 3

 

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1030706