Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #119 -- Part 1

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #119 for the week November 23rd - November 29th, 2008. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase II, Archive of Interviews, New MOTU: Onkar Shinde, Ubuntu Tamil Team, Ubuntu Tunisia Team, Ubuntu-NL release party, Launchpad 2.1.11 and Open ID Support, RSS feeds for Ubuntu Forums, Ubuntu Podcast #13, Full Circle Magazine #19, Community Interview of Nicolas Scerpella, Hardening the Linux Desktop, Coming Soon: Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference, 50 amazing Ubunt time-saving tips, 50 of the best looking Gnome/Ubuntu desktop themes, Team 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

• Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase II
• Archive of Interviews
• New MOTU: Onkar Shinde
• Ubuntu Stats
• Ubuntu Tamil Team
• Ubuntu Tunisia Team
• Ubuntu-NL release party
• Launchpad 2.1.11 and Open ID support
• RSS feeds for Ubuntu forums
• In the Press & Blogosphere
• Ubuntu Podcast #13
• Full Circle Magazine #19
• Community Interview of Nicolas Scerpella
• Hardening the Linux Desktop
• Coming Soon: Ubuntu Pocket Guide & Reference
• 50 amazing Ubuntu time-saving tips
• 50 of the best looking Gnome/Ubuntu desktop themes
• Team Meeting summaries
• Upcoming Meetings & Events
• Updates & Security

Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase II

Jono Bacon has announced the Second Free Culture Showcase, your opportunity to show off your creativity in Jaunty Jackalope. The winning entries will be available in the Examples/ folder in the home directory of shipped CDs and download images of the Ubuntu 9.04 release. Entering the showcase is simple:

• Your submission must be one of the following:
• Audio Entries - no larger than 1MB in size - made available in Ogg Vorbis format.
• Video Entries - no larger than 2.5MB in size - made available in Ogg Theora format.
• Photo/Graphic Entries - no larger than 0.5MB in size - made available in PNG or JPG formats.

• All entries must be licensed and distributable under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license.

• Upload your submission somewhere online (there are lots of free hosting solutions available such as archive.org). Do not email any of the organizers or judges with your submissions.

• Add your entry to one of the submission tables at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase.

• When the deadline for submissions closes, our panel of judges will pick a shortlist, and the Community Council will then pick the final winners from the shortlist.

The deadline is February 6, 2009. http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=1427

Archive of Interviews

Daniel Holbach has started an archive of Developer Interviews[1] in order to showcase all the exciting things that people in the community have been, or are involved in. At this point, it is a "work in progress" but he would like to have more interviews of Ubuntu Members added to it. Daniel is also thinking of adding a box with the latest interviews to the Hall of Fame.[2] Drop by either link to learn more about some of the great people in our community.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Interviews

[2] http://hall-of-fame.ubuntu.com/

http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=282

New MOTU: Onkar Shinde

We're very pleased to announce that Onkar Shinde (slytherin) joined the MOTU team. His outstanding work in the area of Java packaging and maintenance made our choice easy.

Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~onkarshinde

Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OnkarShinde

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

• Open (48498)+42 over last week
• Critical (18)-1 over last week
• Unconfirmed (19578)-97 over last week
• Unassigned (40346)+47 over last week
• All bugs ever reported (234122)+1884 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 (18543)-364 over last week
• French (61913)-21 over last week
• Swedish (75422)-1110 over last week
• English (UK) (81459) +/-0 over last week
• Brazilian Portuguese (81715)-792 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 (747)
• chrisccoulson (81)
• alessandro-ghersi (55)
• hew (45)
• jibel (41)

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

• dcteam (749)
• ubuntu-cl (135)
• ubuntu-berlin (54)
• ubuntu-de-locoteam (52)
• ubuntu-au (45)

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

LoCo News

Ubuntu Tamil Team

Tiruppur, Nov 22nd. The Textile Town of TamilNadu, India - Tiruppur[1] witnessed the Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex release in a demonstration given by its IT Association - TITA[2]. Members of Tiruppur IT Association demonstrated Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, and its various features including Tamil Language support, Multimedia Capabilities, Office Suites, Package Management techniques, Wine, etc.

The Ubuntu Tamil Team proposed, that a one day Monthly Training program on Ubuntu, be organized for people who purchase computers through the Association Members. This should motivate people to switch over to Free Software with confidence. Sri Ramadoss and Siva from the Ubuntu Tamil Team conducted the event. The secoond day of the event explored the Ubuntu Server capabilities for the TITA members. More demand were made on the Server segment.

It was a memorable event, and the team wishes to thank the Tiruppur IT Association for providing the team with this opportunity. Special thanks also to Mr. Ravichadran, President of IT association, Mr. Babu, Mr. Thiyagu, Mr. Senthil, and others for their backing and helping with this event.

Photos soon at: http://amachu.wordpress.com/2008/11/...ntrepid-lauch/

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirupur

[2] http://tita.in

Tunisia Team

The Tunisian Team held an install party and conference on November 15th at the Multimedia and Computer Science Institute of Sfax, Tunisia. Held in conjunction with the local cell of the Tunisian Association Young and Sciences, they started the day with a booth of about 10 laptops powered by Ubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Ubuntu Muslim Edition. They distributed about 40 CDs, burned iso images, and did some USB installations. The team also made 2 presentations, one to introduce FOSS and Ubuntu, and the other to talk about UbuntuStudio. http://rafiiik.blogspot.com/2008/11/...onfrences.html

Ubuntu-Netherlands release party

The Netherlands Team held a release party in Groningen, and it was quite successful according to Herman Bos. The team had about 50 people stay through the whole program. Herman felt that the size of the party was good, and that a good time was had by all in attendance. Two talks were given during the party, too.

http://dev.osso.nl/herman/blog/2008/...rty-groningen/ (in English)

http://prikbord.ubuntu-nl.org/blog/2...-door-laacque/ (in Dutch)

Launchpad News

Launchpad 2.1.11 and Open ID support

Launchpad 2.1.11 has just been released, and includes two major features. First, OpenID, that lets you access many different websites, such as SourceForge, Blogger, LiveJournal and thousands of others,just got better. Second is the ability to contact other Launchpad users when their email address is hidden. By using the new "Contact this user/team" link you can email up to three users/teams per day. For more information on this, go to the Launchpad "Contacting People" page. https://help.launchpad.net/YourAccount/ContactingPeople

http://news.launchpad.net/releases/l...t-other-people

Ubuntu Forums News

RSS Feeds for Ubuntuforums

bapoumba has a solution for those looking for RSS feeds of the Ubuntuforums. The dedicated page for the feeds was lost in the last big upgrade of the Ubuntuforums software. It may come back, but in the meantime here is a work-around. By clicking on a sub-forum thread in the Ubuntuforums front page and looking at the address bar, you will see a number at the very end. This is the forum-id number. So, for example, the URL for Absolute Beginner's Talk (ABT) would be http://ubuntuforums.org/external.php?forumids=326. The one for the complete forums RSS would be http://ubuntuforums.org/external.php.

http://bapoumba.wordpress.com/2008/1...-ubuntuforums/

PART 2 PART 3

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=998307