Ubuntu Weekly Report: 16th - 22nd September

Another full week for the Ubuntu community has ended. But this week brought a new Launchpad release, a Software Freedom Day organized by the Ubuntu Nicaragua Team, the Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 beta version and many events and updates. Keep on reading to find out more!

In two days we'll see the beta release of Ubuntu 7.10 (and I'm sure many of you are anxious to get it), and the last week was a beta freeze. During it all uploads to main must be approved by a member of the release team, and persons who had important fixes were advised to contact such members as soon as possible. The uploads to universe were not subject to release management approval.

Launchpad 1.1.9 was released and has some interesting changes:

• New "remote" branches: register a remote branch if you want Launchpad to monitor it and link to its code-browser but you don't want Launchpad to import the branch itself. Ideal for security related branches.

• bzr+ssh is now the recommended way to upload a branch to Launchpad. sftp is still available.

• Updated the PPA terms of service to allow for a wider range of free and open licences.

• You can now search for Incomplete bugs based on whether they've had a response or not.

• If you add a bug watch in an external tracker that Launchpad doesn't already know about, you can add the new bug tracker at the same time.

• Upstream projects now have a view to show all bugs that need to be forwarded to that project from a distribution.

• All of a project's translation files are downloadable in a single tarball.

• KDE plurals and context strings are now supported in translation imports and exports.

A new Privacy and Data Retention policy has been introduced by the Launchpad team and covers the relationship between the users and Launchpad. It describes the ways in which Launchpad uses and retains data like:

• gathering data
• using cookies
• collecting and using data
• allowing for data removal and account closure.

According to a survey from Desktop Linux.com, Ubuntu is used by 30% of GNU/Linux users and is recommended for the beginners, although it can be used by the more tech-savvy persons, thanks to its great number of applications that can satisfy even the most pretentious user.

Samsung Q1 Ultra UCMPC is a mobile device that allows you to load on it Ubuntu Mobile (a pre-alpha release, the alpha will be available on 18th October, with Ubuntu 7.10, while the final release will appear with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on 24th April 2008). This mobile Linux distribution is based on the primary Ubuntu core, with additions from Intel's set of "Moblin" Linux core tweaks for mobile internet devices plus the GNOME mobile desktop environment.

The Ubuntu-ni LoCo Team together with the Nicaraguan GNU/Linux Users Group organized the first Software Freedom Day on the 13th September in Managua, Nicaragua. Some conferences took place on topics like "Free educational software", "Linux in the education", "Linux Terminal Server Project" etc. The most amazing thing is that these conferences I mentioned here were held by persons with ages from 12 to 16.

This week brought more updates and fixes for 6.06 LTS, 6.10, 7.04 Ubuntu releases. Some common security fixes for all of them are:

• USN-513-1 Qt vulnerability
• USN-514-1 X.org vulnerability
• USN-515-1 t1lib vulnerability
• USN-516-1 xfsdump vulnerability

Let's start with the older version, Ubuntu

6.06 LTS and see what updates were made for it:

• gforge 3.1-31ubuntu0.1
• qt-x11-free 3:3.3.6-1ubuntu6.4
• xorg-server 1:1.0.2-0ubuntu10.7
• postgresql-8.1 8.1.10-0ubuntu0.6.06.1
• t1lib 5.1.0-2ubuntu0.6.06.1
• xfsdump 2.2.30-1ubuntu0.1

Now let's see what updates were made for Ubuntu 6.10:

• gforge 3.1-31sarge1ubuntu0.1
• qt-x11-free 3:3.3.6-3ubuntu3.3
• postgresql-8.1 8.1.10-0ubuntu0.6.10.1
• t1lib 5.1.0-2ubuntu0.6.10.1
• xfsdump 2.2.38-1ubuntu0.6.10.1
• upstart 0.2.7-7.1

Finally, Ubuntu 7.04:

• gforge 4.5.14-22ubuntu1.1
• qt-x11-free 3:3.3.8really3.3.7-0ubuntu5.2
• postgresql-8.2 8.2.5-0ubuntu0.7.04.1
• t1lib 5.1.0-2ubuntu0.7.04.1
• clamav 0.90.2-0ubuntu1.4
• xfsdump 2.2.38-1ubuntu0.7.04.1
• update-manager 1:0.59.25

In two days, the first beta of Ubuntu 7.10 will be available and I'm pretty sure it will make a lot of waves in the Linux world. See you next week; until then, have an interesting week with Ubuntu!

You can read more in the official Ubuntu weekly newsletter.

You can download the Alpha version of Ubuntu 7.10 (for testing purposes only) right now from Softpedia.

You can download Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn right now from Softpedia.

You can download Kubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn right now from Softpedia.

You can download Xubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn right now from Softpedia.

You can download Edubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn right now from Softpedia.