The Fridge - News for Human Beings

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #168

johnc4510 — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:01:57 +0000

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #168 for the week November 8th - November 14th, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:
* UDS: How to participate even if you aren’t attending
* Lucid translation imports are now active
* New Ubuntu Developers
* Ubuntu Stats
* New York State Release Celebration
* The Planet: Dustin Kirkland, Shane Fagan
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Arkeia Releases Free Network Backup Software for Ubuntu
* Canonical and Creative Commons Meet Donations Target
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

* John Crawford
* Craig A. Eddy
* Dave Bush
* Sayak Banerjee
* Liraz Siri
* And many others

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!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons LicenseAttribution 3.0 License

Edubuntu Council Elections

nhandler — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:41:42 +0000

As you may have noticed, the Edubuntu project have been going through some big changes recently. Something we have been working on with the Ubuntu Community Council for a while now is to have the Edubuntu Council back to a reasonable size (5 members).

That’s why, today, we are announcing that there will be an election for new Edubuntu Council members. Jordan Mantha will be resigning from his Edubuntu Council position due to time constraints from his new job. The two remaining members, Jonathan Carter and Stéphane Graber will be running for re-election.

How will the election work:

First week (#47, next week), we’ll be taking candidatures on the following wiki page: https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Edubuntu/Council/Election
On the week after (#48), the Ubuntu Community Council will setup a vote where all edubuntu-members will be asked to vote and choose the 5 candidates they want as Edubuntu Council members.
Early on the week after that (#49), the 5 new Edubuntu Council members will be announced by the Ubuntu Community Council and be added to the Launchpad team.

During the election process, the current Edubuntu council remains as it currently is.

Ubuntu members will be able to make nominations by adding themselves to the https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Edubuntu/Council/Election or propose a candidate anonymously by contacting an Edubuntu Council member who will add that person the wiki page. The Edubuntu Council will then forward the list of nominees to the Community Council.

The Community Council will set up a vote for Edubuntu Members and announce the results of the election. In the case where the new Edubuntu Council member is not an Edubuntu Member, they will receive Edubuntu Membership concurrently. Edubuntu council elections will occur anually, existing members may re-apply.

[Discuss the Edubuntu Council Elections on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-news-team mailing list by Jonathan Carter on Sun Nov 15 18:27:48 GMT 2009

How to participate remotely and get your points heard

nhandler — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:47:03 +0000

Aloha, so UDS is around the corner and I’ll be attending it. I’m really looking forwarding to meeting some of the folks that I met last May and also new people. UDS Lucid is taking place in Dallas Texas, which is going to be 6 hours behind Irish time folks. But that shouldn’t be a reason not to take part remotely.

Remote participation is encouraged, via IRC, Lifestream Gobby and Live Stream. There are a number of EXTRA channels to join as each room at the venue will have a different track topic in it every hour. So it’s not by Stream type so you do have to keep an eye on the time table. I’m posting today so you know in advance. The Overall discussion, including plenary: #ubuntu-devel-summit on freenode.

Discussion Channels – The tracks are shuffled around different rooms, so the irc channels are /per room/, not per track. Here are the channels, which corresponds to the room of the session in the schedule.

#ubuntu-uds-waverly
#ubuntu-uds-stanford
#ubuntu-uds-madison
#ubuntu-uds-esmeralda
#ubuntu-uds-mayflower
#ubuntu-uds-riviere
#ubuntu-uds-vinoy
#ubuntu-uds-presidente
#ubuntu-uds-riogrande
#ubuntu-uds-lonestar1
#ubuntu-uds-lonestar2
#ubuntu-uds-lonestar3
#ubuntu-uds-alamo1
#ubuntu-uds-alamo2

For Icecast – see the link here

A stream of all Ubuntu and UDS posts made to Identi.ca, Twitter, and Flickr can be found at http://summit.ubuntu.com/media/lifestream.html or if you just want to follow a certain track here is a list of them

@udscommunity

Gobby is my new best friend, having used it last May I found it an excellent resource and try and use it whenever I can. Everyone can take part using this, so an ideal way is to have the IRC channel open, or stream coming in and having the gobby document open. You can see extra thoughts been added here, or reasons for comments made in the channel, you can also add your thoughts here.

gobby.ubuntu.com

Gobby is being used at UDS to collaborate on the specifications that are being written and to facilitate remote participation.

To take part, please install Gobby (available in universe) and tell it to connect to gobby.ubuntu.com. You will be presented with a list of documents being edited. During any session or meeting, and particularly at the end of one, please do make a local backup of your documents. WARNING: There is a new gobby in karmic, gobby-infinote, we will NOT be using this at UDS since we need for people on older releases to participate. Ensure you are using the “gobby” package.

Finally, to take part I’d suggest a few things, have the channels joined before hand, a browser open with the timetable on it and remember each Room will have a different track topic in it at different times. If you have the icecast running, perhaps wear a set of headphones so you can hear better without distractions. If you’re in a channel and someone is talking and they are faint do write on the channel asking them to SPEAK UP YOU CANNOT HEAR THEM! you won’t be the only one!

If you make a comment on IRC and you want it to be conveyed to the people in the room, tell someone, perhaps make it bold so it stands out if it’s a busy discussion. But do poke again if it was missed and you want it conveyed.

Use gobby, and take part, you are a part of the community also, you’re comments are needed to help shape Lucid. Save the document afterwards locally if you like so you have a reference for it, I found that useful 2-3 months down the line when I wanted to refer to ideas that came up last May.

One other thing, on freenode you are limited to join a maximum of 20 channels. If you need to join more you need to join #freenode and ask a staffer there to allow you to join 20+ .

Also all of the information and more is here

[Discuss UDS Remote Participation on the Forums]

Originally posted by Laura Czajkowski here on 11/12/2009 09:40 am

Creating a roadmap for more successful teams

nhandler — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:32:54 +0000

One of the challenges that every community faces, particularly teams inside a larger community, is the ability to coordinate what goals and ambitions the team is going to work on. Traditionally this has always been somewhat ad-hoc: people join a team and work on whatever they feel like. Ideas are ten-a-penny though. For most teams that work on larger projects (such as events, software, products and more) to actually be productive, coordinating this work can be complex: some projects require coordination across many people with different skill-sets, time-availability and resources.

Something I would like us to work towards in the Ubuntu community is encouraging a culture of best-practise in how we plan our work and coordinate our awesome teams to work together on projects. I believe this kind of coordination can help our teams increase the opportunity for success in their work, feel more empowered and productive and provide greater insight to people outside those teams on what the team is doing.

An effective way of doing this is to build a Roadmap for each cycle. This provides an opportunity to capture a set of goals the team will work together to achieve in each six-month period. This article outlines how to build such a Roadmap.

Creating Your Roadmap

While at first a roadmap can feel a little like a nod to the gods of bureaucracy, they actually possess many benefits:

Direction – one of the biggest complaints teams often report is a lack of direction. If a team gets into the habit of creating a roadmap at the beginning of a cycle, it gives the team a sense of focus and direction for the coming cycle.
Documented commitments are more effective – a common rule in Project Management training is that actions assigned to people in a shared document are more effective than ad-hoc or private commitments. By documenting who will work on what in a cycle and putting their name next to an action can help seal a sense of accountability for their contributions to the project.
Feeling of success – regularly revisiting a roadmap and checking off items that have been completed can develop a strong feeling of progress and success. It makes a team feel productive.

I spent some time recently putting together a little bit of infrastructure to help making roadmaps as simple as possible. This is how it works.

Step 1: Decide what your team wants to do

The first step is to open up a discussion with your team to talk about things that the team would like to do. As an example, a LoCo Team may want to organize a booth at a given conference or work together on marketing materials, a documentation team may want to work together on a book or guide, a software team may want to work together towards a first release, and a translations team may want to work together on documentation to help translate a particular language and organize translations events and sprints.

The most effective of way of having this conversation is to produce a wiki page in which people can jot down their ideas and this can form the basis of converting key popular ideas in the team into roadmap items. Keep the discussion focused on the next cycle (which lasts six months). You should make sure you have these discussions out in the open in your team communication channels, be it mailing lists, IRC channels or otherwise.

It is important to note that not every contribution has to be on the roadmap. Roadmaps are great for larger projects and goals.

Step 2: Create your roadmap document

To make things as simple as possible, I have created a roadmap template and place to store roadmaps. This is how it works:

Go to http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Roadmaps/Lucid and create a page in that namespace that reflects your team (e.g. http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Roadmaps/Lucid/ExampleTeam). Be sure to add a link to your new page on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Roadmaps/Lucid by using this markup: [[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Roadmaps/Lucid/ExampleTeam|Example Team]].
Open up a new browser tab and go and view the roadmap template. Click on Edit and copy the content from the template into your new team page that you created in the previous step.

You are now ready to start building the roadmap.

Step 3: Capturing projects in your roadmap

The roadmap is broken into a set of sections, each of which points to a particular goal you want to achieve. Each goal then has an Objective block which provides a task that needs to be completed to achieve part of the goal. Each goal can have many objectives.

The Objective block is structured like this:

OBJECTIVE: An Objective is a goal that you want to achieve. Summarize your objective here in one sentence (e.g. ‘Exhibit Ubuntu at OSCON‘ and ‘Create Lucid Marketing Materials‘).
SUCCESS CRITERIA: This is a statement that can be clearly read to determine success on the above Objective. This needs to be as clear as possible and not vague: it will indicate if you achieved the Objective (e.g. ‘A successful exhibition at OSCON‘ and ‘Lucid website buttons, banner ads and wallpaper provided for LoCo Teams‘).
ACTIONS: This is a set of steps that need to be executed to achieve the Objective. It is recommended that if someone volunteers to commit to delivering on an action, you put it in brackets (e.g. Print out LoCo logo on a banner (Jono Bacon)). There can be multiple actions for each Objective.
BLUEPRINT: If a Launchpad Blueprint applies to this Objective, link it here (optional).
DRIVER: If someone is coordinating this objective and helping those involved to deliver on their actions, list that person here (optional).

The aim here is to try and capture what your team wants to do and who will be contributing to the goal. Let’s look at an example of organizing an event:

OBJECTIVE: Exhibit Ubuntu at LugRadio Live 2009

SUCCESS CRITERIA: A successful Ubuntu exhibition complete with demonstrations and materials.

ACTIONS:

Confirm booth space with LugRadio Live organizers (Steve Harris)

File a request for CDs from ShipIt (Bruce Dickinson)

Develop artwork for main banner sign, staff badges, flyers (Janick Gers)

Provide demonstration laptops (2 x laptops) (Dave Murray and Adrian Smith)

Prepare demonstration speaking script (Nicko McBrain)

Promote our presence on LugRadio forums, Planet Ubuntu and Full Circle Magazine (Steve Harris)

BLUEPRINT: N/A

DRIVER: Steve Harris

The goal of a roadmap is to capture as many of these projects and apply the same structure that no only communicates what needs to be done, but also who has volunteered to work on which actions.

At the Ubuntu Developer Summit next week I will be working with many teams to talk more about this approach to roadmaps and encouraging our various teams, LoCo teams and councils to start experimenting with a roadmap to see how well it can help the team be successful.

[Discuss Roadmaps on the Forum]

Originally posted by Jono Bacon here on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 12:48 am

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #167

johnc4510 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:07:56 +0000

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #167 for the week November 1st - November 7th, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:

* Lucid open for development
* Ubuntu Open Week review
* Updating the Ubuntu Code of Conduct
* Ubuntu Marketing Team revival and SpreadUbuntu
* Ubuntu Stats
* LoCo News: Tunisia, Norway, New York State, Massachusetts
* Ubuntu Forums Tutorial of the Week
* Ubuntu Hits Italian National TV (again)
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Canonical Matching Creative Commons Donations
* LugRadio Documentary – Now Available Online
* Team Meeting Summaries: October 2009
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

* John Crawford
* Craig A. Eddy
* Dave Bush
* Sayak Banerjee
* Amber Graner
* Isabelle Duchatelle
* Nathan Handler
* And many others

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!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons LicenseAttribution 3.0 License

Ubuntu Open Week in a Nutshell

nhandler — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:29:19 +0000

Ever wonder what all the excitement about? Did you miss a day of Ubuntu Open Week or maybe a session you really wanted to participate in? Let’s review this week of EDUCATIONAL EXCITEMENT, COLLABORATIVE CURRCULA, and INCLUSIVE INSTRUCTION.

Ubuntu Open Week had 40 hours of session, with each session hovering at about 300 people per session. Imagine a week long 300+ conference somewhere. If you have ever attended a conference of this size you can appreciate the significance this many participants from across the world coming together across multiple timezones, without the expense of hotel rooms, travel, AV needs and food. Online conferences such as Ubuntu Open Week afford people the ability to learn in the comfort of their own homes or office.

The way people participated in Ubuntu Week was to the IRC Channels on Freenode via the Ubuntu Open Week wiki or through their IRC Chat client of their choice. The channels needed to participate were #ubuntu-classroom where each session was taught, and #ubuntu-classroom-chat where people could talk about the ongoing session and ask questions to the Presenter. Participants were encouraged to ask questions in the #ubuntu-classroom-chat channel using the following format: QUESTION: Then state their question. The purpose for using the “Question: question stated” format is so that the person who is either presenting or helping the presenter can find the questions easily and paste them in the #ubuntu-classroom channel.

Lets review what Ubuntu Open Week is (from the Ubuntu Open Week Wiki)

Ubuntu Open Week is a series of online workshops where you can:

learn about the Ubuntu landscape
talk to some of the key developers from the Ubuntu project
find out about the Community and its relationship with Canonical
participate in an open Q&A with Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu

Nathan Handler gives an awesome summary of the Day one activities in his Blog: UOW: Summary Day 1 - OutLook Day 2. For a Summary of Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, and Day 5, I followed in the style of Nathan and tried to give summaries of each day. Both Nathan and I have links to the Logs for each day.

Again if you missed any part of Ubuntu Open Week the check out the wiki. If you want a quick summary of the sessions check out the links above.If you want to know more about each session and those presenters then a look at the Ubuntu Open Week Booklet is just the thing you are looking for. Also the Wiki for this event can be found here, and the Logs for the week can be found here.

A big shout of “Thanks” goes out to ALL the presenters, and participants who made Ubuntu Open Week - Karmic amazing, exciting, and just awesome. Hope to see everyone back again in May 2010 for the next Open week and next time bring a friend or two.

[Discuss Ubuntu Open Week on the Forums]

Originally posted by Amber Graner here on Saturday, November 7, 2009

Lucid open for development

nhandler — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:32:10 +0000

I’m happy to report that the Lucid Lynx is now open for uploads.

We do not recommend that users upgrade to Lucid at this time; it is likely to be in very considerable flux until the initial round of merges is complete. As ever, any developers wishing to take the plunge at this early stage should ensure that they are comfortable with recovering from anything up to complete system failure.

Automatic syncs from Debian will begin shortly. Because Lucid is an LTS, autosyncing will track the Debian testing series for this cycle, rather than Debian unstable as we normally do.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS

We expect this more conservative policy for package syncing will enable us to prepare a more stable long-term support release. The cost of this approach is that not only regressions will be delayed from reaching Lucid - bugfixes uploaded to Debian unstable will be delayed too (packages uploaded to Debian unstable normally don’t reach Debian testing for at least 10 days). If you believe a newer package version from unstable is needed for any reason, please don’t hesitate to request a sync using the normal process:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SyncRequestProcess

Likewise, package merges from either testing or unstable are perfectly ok, as needed. Merge-o-Matic (https://merges.ubuntu.com/) currently points at Debian unstable; we hope to be able to provide merge data for Debian testing in a week or so, in the meantime please be aware of this fact when preparing any merges.

As usual, the release schedule for Lucid is available at <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidReleaseSchedule>. This year, the first milestone will come in mid-December, well after UDS, and the end of automatic Debian package syncs is not planned until February - shortly before feature freeze itself. Since this cycle’s schedule includes a significant number of changes compared with respect to past releases, there’s been a lot of feedback, some of which is still being incorporated.
This may still result in some fine-tuning of the more specific freezes on the timeline; you can expect this to all be finalized by the end of this week.

[Discuss Lucid Being Open For Development on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek on Tue Nov 3 11:40:22 GMT 2009

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #166

johnc4510 — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:04:47 +0000

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #166 for the week October 25th - October 31st, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:

* Ubuntu 9.10 released
* Ubuntu Open Week
* Ubuntu One Blog: File sync status update
* Canonical Blog: Landscape 1.4 Adds UEC Support
* Asia Oceania Membership Board - 27 Oct 09
* New MOTU
* Ubuntu Stats
* Ubuntu LoCo News: AZ, Dublin, Tamil, El Salvador, & Italy
* Meet Francis Lacoste
* Accessing Git, Subversion and Mercurial from Bazaar
* Commenting on questions
* The PLanet: Jono Bacon, Jamie Strandoge, Miguel Ruiz, & Amber Graner
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Full Circle Magazine #30
* Ubuntu Rescue Remix
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

* John Crawford
* Craig A. Eddy
* Dave Bush
* Sayak Banerjee
* Amber Graner
* And many others

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!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons LicenseAttribution 3.0 License

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #165

johnc4510 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:01:36 +0000

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #165 for the week October 18th - October 24th, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:

* Release Candidate for Ubuntu 9.10 now available
* October 21st America’s Membership Board Meeting
* Ubuntu IRC Council Elections
* Keeping Ubuntu CD’s Available
* Ubuntu Stats
* Ubuntu Zimbabwe LoCo Team at ICT Africa 2009
* Austin’s Karmic Release Party
* Launchpad: The next six months
* Meet Matthew Revell
* Launchpad offline 4:00UTC - 4:30UTC October 26th
* The Planet
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* TurnKey: 40 Ubuntu-based virtual appliances released into the cloud
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

* John Crawford
* Craig A. Eddy
* Dave Bush
* Amber Graner
* Sayak Banerjee
* Liraz Siri
* And many others

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!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons LicenseAttribution 3.0 License

Announcing the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 9.10

nhandler — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:50:54 +0000

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop and Server editions, Ubuntu 9.10 Server for UEC and EC2, and the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Codenamed “Karmic Koala”, 9.10 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable, and suitable for testing by any user.

Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop Edition improves on the work of 9.04 to get you going faster, with improved startup times and a streamlined boot experience.

Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition integrates Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud setup in the installer and provides improvements to system security with AppArmor, including an AppArmor profile for libvirtd to further isolate virtual machines from the host system.

Ubuntu 9.10 Server for UEC and EC2 brings the power and stability of the Ubuntu Server Edition to cloud computing, whether you’re using Amazon EC2 or your own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud.

The Ubuntu 9.10 family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Mythbuntu, also reach RC status today. This release sees the first technology preview of Kubuntu Netbook.

The final release of Ubuntu 9.10 is scheduled for 29 October 2009 and will be supported for 18 months on both desktops and servers. Users requiring a longer support lifetime on the server may choose to continue using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, with security support until 2013, rather than upgrade to 9.10.

Before installing or upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 please review the instructions and caveats in the release notes:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910

In addition, there are a small number of known bugs in the release candidate that will be fixed before the Ubuntu 9.10 release, but warrant highlighting for your attention:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910overview#Known%20issues

About The Release Candidate
—————————————-

The purpose of the Release Candidate is to solicit one last round of testing before the final release. Here are ways that you can help:

Upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04 to the Release Candidate by following the instructions in the release notes referenced above.
Participate in installation testing using the Release Candidate CD images, by following the testing and reporting instructions at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/ISO

Desktop features
————————

GNOME 2.28 featuring Empathy: with this latest release, Ubuntu now uses the Empathy instant messaging service by default, introducing the Telepathy framework.

Ubuntu Software Center: the first step in a replacement for Add/Remove Software has landed.

New boot experience: multiple changes to look, feel and speed of the boot experience have been included in the Ubuntu 9.10 release candidate.

Server features
———————-

Cloud computing: Ubuntu 9.10 builds on the tantalizing cloud support in Ubuntu 9.04, with support for Eucalyptus configuration at install time and publishing of standard VM images for UEC.

AppArmor: Ubuntu 9.10 continues to raise the bar for server security, with AppArmor profiles enabled by default for ntpd and libvirt providing another layer of protection from attacks on the network or via guest virtual machines.

UEC and EC2: Ubuntu 9.10 includes the first official release of Ubuntu Server images for UEC and for Amazon’s EC2, giving you everything you need for rapid deployment of Ubuntu instances in a cloud computing environment. UEC images, and information on running Ubuntu 9.10 on EC2, are available at:

http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/9.10/rc

Ubuntu Netbook Remix features
——————————————-
Ubuntu Netbook Remix is optimised for Intel Atom netbooks and compatible x86 devices. It includes a new consumer-friendly interface that allows users to quickly and easily get on-line and use their favourite applications. This interface is optimised for a retail sales environment.

It includes the same faster boot times and improved boot experience as Ubuntu desktop.

Kubuntu features
————————

Kubuntu 9.10, built on KDE 4.3, brings users a complete, full-featured KDE 4 desktop with many new applications and innovations.

This is the first release for a new Kubuntu variant, Kubuntu Netbook Edition. Built on a Kubuntu base, it brings users an exciting first look at KDE’s netbook-oriented desktop environment.

New features include better integration with OpenOffice.org and various social website connections for applications. Notable problems with network management and user configuration have been fixed.

Please see https://wiki.kubuntu.org/KarmicKoala/RC/Kubuntu for all the details.

For upgrade instructions from Kubuntu 9.04 or 8.04 see
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KarmicUpgrades/Kubuntu

Xubuntu features
————————

Xubuntu 9.10 comes with the light-weight Xfce 4.6 desktop environment to provide a desktop designed for productivity while conserving system resources.

Xubuntu 9.10 is proud to offer an improved multimedia experience with the Exaile media player, a more integrated power management solution with the Xfce4 power manager, and more convenience built right in with improved multimedia volume key support and more consistent desktop notifications.

Please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/KarmicKoala/RC for the full list and details about all the great enhancements Xubuntu 9.10 has to offer.

Edubuntu features
————————-

Edubuntu 9.10 transitions from an add-on educational CD that depended on an existing Ubuntu installation to a full Ubuntu derivative delivered on as a DVD image. This allows prospective users and decision makers to try the educational offerings prior to installation and the flexibility to make Edubuntu a first class educational operating system.

Mythbuntu features
—————————

Mythbuntu 9.10 introduces MythTV 0.22. The entire stack has been ported to QT4 and now allows for very neat UI effects. Also 0.22 adds support for VDPAU hardware acceleration, and HD-PVR hardware support.

Please see http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.22 for more details about changes introduced in 0.22.

See http://mythbuntu.org/9.10/rc for information about the Mythbuntu release candidate.

A more complete tour of the features new in 9.10 can be found at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910overview

About Ubuntu
——————

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, netbooks and servers, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional services including support are available from Canonical and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit http://www.ubuntu.com/support

To Get the Ubuntu 9.10 Release Candidate
————————————————————

To upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 Release Candidate from Ubuntu 9.04, follow these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KarmicUpgrades

Or, to perform a new installation or try out 9.10 “live” from CD, download the Ubuntu 9.10 Release Candidate here (choose the mirror closest to you):

Asia:

* http://mirror.unej.ac.id/ubuntu-cd/9.10 (Indonesia)
* http://ubuntu.qualitynet.net/releases/9.10 (Kuwait)
* http://ftp.linux.org.tr/ubuntu-releases/9.10 (Turkey)

Europe:

* http://ubuntu.ipacct.com/releases/9.10 (Bulgaria)
* http://ucho.ignum.cz/ubuntu-releases/9.1 (Czechia)
* http://ubuntu.univ-nantes.fr/ubuntu-cd/9.10 (France)
* http://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/ubuntu.iso/9.10 (Germany)
* http://ie.releases.ubuntu.com/9.10 (Ireland)
* http://releases.ubuntu.fastbull.org/ubuntu-releases/9.10 (Italy)
* http://no.releases.ubuntu.com/9.10 (Norway)
* http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/9.10 (Sweden)

North America:

* http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs/9.10 (United States)
* http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu-releases/9.10 (Canada)
* http://mirrors.cat.pdx.edu/ubuntu-releases/9.10 (United States)
* http://ubuntu.media.mit.edu/ubuntu-releases/9.10 (United States)

Oceania/Australia:

* http://ftp.citylink.co.nz/ubuntu-releases/9.10 (New Zealand)

South America:

* http://mirrors.ucr.ac.cr/ubuntu-cd/9.10 (Costa Rica)

Rest of the world:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10 (Great Britain)

Please download using Bittorrent if possible. See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BitTorrent for more information about
using BitTorrent.

Feedback and Participation
—————————————

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

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

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help turn this Release Candidate into the best release of Ubuntu ever. Please note that, where possible, we prefer that bugs be reported using the tools provided, rather than by visiting Launchpad directly. Instructions can be found at

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but are not sure, first try asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel on FreeNode, on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

More Information
————————

You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this preview release on our website, IRC channel and wiki. If you are new to Ubuntu, please visit:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume announcement list at:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce

[Discuss the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 9.10]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek on Thu Oct 22 19:30:41 BST 2009