Ubuntu Weekly Report: 9th - 15th September 2007

The Ubuntu community worked hard this week, hardware manufacturers like Dell got more involved in the development of Ubuntu Linux (they've remastered the Ubuntu 7.04 ISO for their computers), the Finnish division of Ubuntu delivers their distribution to Finland's parliament representatives and a lot more things happened in the 9th - 15th September week.

The most important event was the remastering of Ubuntu 7.04 by Dell. This version includes native system hardware support and many fixes were made, but some still remained and are being tracked down via Launchpad. The Ubuntu 7.04 Live CD is available for download from Softpedia and was created to resolve known problems on the Inspiron E1505N, Inspiron 1420N and Inspiron 530N systems.

Ubuntu Finland sent out Ubuntu CDs and information about the distribution, Linux and free software to each member of Finland's parliament at the start of September. The campaign's goal is to increase the awareness of the representatives regarding free software and the possibilities it can offer in schools and in administration. Thanks to Edubuntu, a special edition of Ubuntu, substantial savings have been made in a great number of schools in Finland.

Lenovo is considering offering another Linux distribution, possibly Ubuntu, after they've started shipping SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on its T-Series Thinkpads. After a survey opened by Matt Kohut, Lenovo's worldwide competitive analyst, on 7th September, Ubuntu got the first place and after it, at a long distance, was Debian. The third place was taken by a user suggestion of any Linux that doesn't carry binary-only drivers, so everyone can benefit, and with well documented hardware.

Ubuntu 7.10 or Gutsy Gibbon is getting closer and closer to the day when it will be fully functional and available for download. A daily build, from September 4, shows a lot of improvements over the previous release, Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). A problem that Feisty Fawn had was with DHCP, issue fixed in Gutsy Gibbon which can get an IP address immediately after the distribution is installed. A lot of eye-candy was promised, by integrating Compiz Fusion in the next release of Ubuntu, Gutsy Gibbon.

There were some security problems and bugs fixed this week for the 6.06, 6.10 and 7.04 Ubuntu releases. A general security update for all the versions was USN-512-1 Quagga vulnerability, which got fixed quickly.

The updates for Ubuntu 6.06 LTS are:

￭ lighttpd 1.4.11-3ubuntu3.5
￭ curl 7.15.1-1ubuntu3
￭ update-manager 0.42.2ubuntu22.1
￭ partman-lvm 32ubuntu3
￭ openmcu 2.1.0-2build1.1
￭ plr 1:0.6.2-1ubuntu0.1
￭ quagga 0.99.2-1ubuntu3.3

Let's move on to Ubuntu 6.10:

￭ lighttpd 1.4.13~r1370-1ubuntu1.3
￭ plr 1:0.6.2-4ubuntu0.1
￭ mythplugins 0.20.2-0ubuntu0.6.10
￭ quagga 0.99.4-4ubuntu1.2

The last one is Ubuntu 7.04:

￭ lighttpd 1.4.13-9ubuntu4.2
￭ openmcu 2.1.1-3build0.1
￭ app-install-data-commercial 7.3
￭ plr 1:0.6.2-4ubuntu1.2
￭ mythplugins 0.20.2-0ubuntu0.7.04
￭ update-manager 1:0.59.24
￭ quagga 0.99.6-2ubuntu3.2

The next week will certainly bring more news and changes from the Ubuntu world, due to the increasing interest in this operating system. Until next time, have fun 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.