The Feature Freeze is now in effect for Karmic. The focus from here until release is on fixing bugs and polishing.

If you believe that a new package, a new upstream version of a package, or a new feature is needed for the release and will not introduce more problems than it fixes, please follow the Freeze Exception Process by filing bugs and subscribing ubuntu-release or motu-release as appropriate, or by contacting a designated delegate.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreezeExceptionProcess

Please also make sure that specs assigned to you for Karmic are updated to their current status (which should be at least Beta Available if not Deferred, or unless granted a freeze exception).

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/

Our next testing milestone, Karmic Alpha 5, is scheduled for next Thursday, September 3. Karmic Alpha 5 will again use a “soft freeze” for main. This means that developers are asked to refrain from uploading packages between Tuesday and Thursday which don’t bring us closer to releasing the alpha, so that these days can be used for settling the archive and fixing any remaining showstoppers.

The list of bugs targeted for alpha-5 can be found at:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+bugs?field.milestone=12713

Per the policy described at <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RCBugTargetting>, this list is used for tracking bugs that are blockers for the alpha 5 milestone - so as you can see, the list is currently quite short. If you know of other bugs that should be considered blockers, please nominate them for release and set the milestone target for those bugs. If you have questions about whether a bug should be considered a blocker, please contact a member of the release team.

And of course, please also consider helping with the bugs already listed there if you have the time.

Beyond that short list of bugs that are blockers for Alpha 5, we have those bugs that are listed as release-critical for Karmic as a whole:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+bugs

If you aren’t among the small group of people who have milestoned bugs assigned to you, please consider helping with those release-targeted bugs, using your best judgement with regard to the alpha freeze when uploading
fixes.

Please also help us to get the archive in a consistent state again for the alpha, as described on <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/PackageArchive#Consistency>.

Finally, if you know of new features in Karmic that you think should be highlighted for Alpha 5, let me or another member of the release team know so that they can be added to the technical overview at <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicKoala/TechnicalOverview>.

[Discuss Feature Freeze and the upcoming Alpha 5 on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek on Thu Aug 27 02:07:43 BST 2009

The Karmic Feature Freeze is scheduled for this Thursday, August 27.

This means that all of your Karmic-targeted specs should be either at Beta
Available or Postponed by the end of day on Wednesday. Please make sure to
update the status of your specs. You should check that packages you care
about are at a version suitable for release.

Requests for freeze exceptions for main should be filed as bugs in
Launchpad against the relevant package (or just “Ubuntu” if the
package is not available yet). Once the bug is filed and the necessary
information is available, please subscribe the ubuntu-release team.

For universe, the motu-release team will approve new packages and upstream
version freeze exceptions between now and the Beta.

It is expected that the MOTU release team will also delegate responsibility
for some exceptions to domain experts, as they have done in the past. Look
for this list to arrive by Thursday.

Please see this wiki page for full details on freeze exception requests:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreezeExceptionProcess

[Discuss the Upcoming Feature Freeze on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek on Tue Aug 25 01:52:37 BST 2009

Atlanta Linux Fest 2009 will be Saturday, September 19th 2009, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The event is being organized by the Ubuntu Georgia US Team.

The event is distribution-agnostic. There will be presentations on Fedora’s remixing capabilities and openSUSE’s build service. General topics important to the open source community will also be presented like the need to encourage more women in open source, building businesses around open source, and GPLv3. Well known open source applications will be showcased: SugarCRM, Drupal, Zenoss, and Blender. Red Hat and Google will discuss how to encourage contributors to join open source projects.

UbuCon Atlanta 2009 will be held with Atlanta Linux Fest. UbuCon will cover what is going on within the Ubuntu community and how to improve the Ubuntu community. Part unconference, part scheduled sessions, the Ubuntu Kernel Team will be on hand to test laptops for the upcoming Karmic Koala release. The Kernel Team will also teach the basics of hacking drivers. Presentations on audio in Ubuntu, Ubuntu server, and Ubuntu in the cloud will be discussed. Sessions talking about burnout, triaging bugs, and LoCo leadership are already planned. Attendees are encouraged to sign up to discuss any aspect of the community they are interested in.

Registration is free for the event (required to use WiFi).

To find out more about Atlanta Linux Fest 2009, visit http://atlantalinuxfest.org.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #156 for the week August 16th - August 22nd, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:

* Ubuntu Developer Week
* Karmic UNR packages now open for translation
* Another reason to become an Official Ubuntu Member
* Next Ubuntu Global Jam
* Ubuntu Stats
* Free Art of Community Book for Approved LoCo Teams
* Launchpad Screencasts
* Ubuntu Forums News
* The Planet
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Upcoming Meetings and Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

* John Crawford
* Craig A. Eddy
* Dave Bush
* Sayak Banerjee
* Isabelle Duchatelle
* 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

Recently I announced my brand spanking new book The Art of Community and so far the reception has been fantastic! Thanks to everyone who has been spreading the news about the book - continue to do your good thang! :-)

Well, I am a firm believer that you should look after your own family, and I am a member of the awesome Ubuntu family, so I have managed to swing a sweet deal with O’Reilly, the publishers of the book, to send all approved USA based teams a free printed copy of the book and all other approved teams a free electronic copy of the book. While we wish we could send all approved teams across the world a free printed copy, O’Reilly are only able to cater to USA based teams right now. Damn economy.

To keep this as simple as possible, you can request your book by following these steps:

1. The team contact shown on our LoCo Team List (and only the team contact) should send me an email to jono AT ubuntu DOT com with the subject line Free Art of Community Book For LoCo Team (be sure to type this subject line exactly as here or it may slip through the net). In your email include all the following details:
   • Your full name.
   • Which team you are from.
   • Your full address (including zip/postal code, region and country).
   • Your phone number, including country and area code.
2. I will assess whether you will receive a print or electronic edition.
3. A few weeks after the deadline you should receive your edition of The Art of Community, for free!

A few notes:

• Only approved teams are eligible for the free copies of the book.
• Only the team contact for each team (shown on this page) can make the request for the book.
• There is a limit of one copy of each book per approved team.
• O’Reilly will kindly cover postage, but not any import tax or other shipping fees.
• When you have the book, it is up to you what you do with it. We recommend you share it between members of the team. LoCo Leaders: please don’t hog it for yourselves! I would also really appreciate if you write a review of the book on your nearest Amazon website. :-)
• The deadline for getting your requests in Wed 2nd September 2009.

  Make sure you get your requests in by the deadline, anything after that will be sent to the bit bucket. :-)

  If you have any questions or queries, feel free to drop me an email. :-)

  All in all a pretty sweet deal, methinks. Enjoy!

  Originally posted by Jono Bacon here on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 1:01 am

I’m incredibly happy to announce the fourth Ubuntu Developer Week!

You are excited about Ubuntu, always had the feeling you want to „give back“ in one form or the other and you didn’t know how? Ubuntu Developer Week is the perfect opportunity for you to get involved and get a closer look at what’s happening behind the scenes. Make sure you mark the dates from Monday, 31st August 2009 to Friday, 4th September 2009 in your calendar! Just check out the timetable to learn more about which session is up next.

How this is going to work? Easy!

* Just join #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net and enjoy and participate in the sessions.
* Check if you need to prepare for a session.
* Ask your questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat, participate.
* Learn more about Ubuntu Development.

I’m very proud of the speakers this time. They managed to put together a fantastic assortment of topics, all very much focused on a hands-on experience for you: web development, Launchpad hackery, Debian/Ubuntu packaging, development techniques, etc. etc.

We have awesome speakers who will share their secret of success with you in a fun and interesting way.

* You are new to Ubuntu development? No problem, check out our brochure.
* You need more information on the speakers? No problem, check out our brochure.
* You need more information on the sessions and what’s going to happen there? No problem, check out our brochure.

I’m very very excited and am counting the days until then. This is going to be the perfect opportunity to learn more.

[Discuss Ubuntu Developer Week on the Forums]

Originally posted by Daniel Holbach here on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 4:14 pm

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #155 for the week August 9th - August 15th, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:
* Karmic Alpha 4 released
* New Ubuntu Members
* Developer News
* Reporting Ubuntu Community Problems: Jono Bacon
* Ubuntu Stats
* Ubuntu US Teams
* UbuCon Atlanta 2009
* Brazilian Council & New Brazilian Ubuntu Members
* Zim & the art of wiki development
* Ubuntu Server Tips - Help Wanted
* Ubuntu Community Learning Project
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu Podcast #32
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

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

Welcome to Karmic Koala Alpha 4, which will in time become Ubuntu 9.10.

Pre-releases of Karmic are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 4 is the fourth in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Karmic development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Karmic. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/alpha-4/ (Ubuntu)
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/alpha-4/ (Ubuntu Server UEC)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-4/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-4/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/karmic/alpha-4 (Ubuntu Studio)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-4/ (Mythbuntu)

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

Alpha 4 introduces the first Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud alpha images for Karmic. Information on using these images on your UEC instance or on Amazon EC2 can be found at the download page at:

http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/alpha-4/

Alpha 4 also includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha4 for information on changes in Ubuntu.

This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a
list of known bugs (that you don’t need to report if you encounter), please see:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha4

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop Karmic, have a look at the karmic-changes mailing list:
http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/karmic-changes

We also suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list if you’re interested in following Ubuntu development. This is a low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other interesting events.

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

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

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

[Discuss this Alpha Release on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek on Thu Aug 13 21:49:53 BST 2009

Time for another exciting Packaging Training Session. This time is going to be a bit unusual, we are going to be very hands-on. We will have Colin Watson, Daniel Holbach, James Westby and Sébastien Bacher around who will review your patches, updates and other sponsoring requests while you are there and point out problems on IRC.

• Where: #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net
• When: 13th August, 12:00 UTC

[Discuss this Packaging Training Session on the Forums]

Originally posted by Daniel Holbach here on August 12, 2009 at 9:50 am

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #154 for the week August 2nd - August 8th, 2009 is available.

In this issue we cover:

* Karmic Alpha 4 freeze ahead
* Landscape: Canonical Systems Management & Monitoring Tool
* Ubuntu Stats
* ubuntu-ph.org is back in business
* First Launchpad community meet-up
* Code Hosting quick-start guide
* notify-osd 0.9.16 released
* Migrating to an Encrypted Home Directory
* Touchscreen = Fail?
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu-UK Podcast: Day of Reckoning
* Full Circle Magazine #27
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

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