Thank you to everyone who voted in the Tech Board election, which came to a result last night. We had 84 votes from 130 eligible voters. The new Tech Board in reverse alphabetical surname order is:

• Matt Zimmerman
• Mark Shuttleworth
• Scott James Remnant
• Martin Pitt
• Kees Cook

Detailed results are available at:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/cgi-perl/civs/results.pl?id=E_e09bf9bea196cfff

Thanks also to Mario and Evan, who made it a far more interesting race, and to the rest of the new Board for their willingness to lead in this capacity.

[Discuss the New Tech Board on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Mark Shuttleworth on Tue Sep 1 16:02:31 BST 2009

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

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 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

Following up last week’s great session about Mozilla Packaging Techniques, Emmet Hikory (persia) will be giving a session about how to upgrade a package properly. The session will take place on August 6th, at 6:00 UTC in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net. We hope to see you there. As always, if you are interested in viewing the logs for any of our previous sessions, they are available on the wiki.

[Discuss this Packaging Training Session on the Forums]

Originally posted by Nathan Handler here on August 6, 2009 at 2:21 am

Tomorrow at 30th July, 06:00 UTC Alexander Sack (asac) from the Ubuntu Mozilla Team will give a session on the techniques they use for packaging Mozilla packages. He will cover packaging of extensions, and how they make use of bzr to co-ordinate their work.
Join us in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net.

[Discuss this Packaging Training Session on the Forums]

Originally posted by James Westby here on July 29, 2009 at 7:06 pm

Recently I have been talking to Prentice Hall, the rather spanky-awesome publishers of The Official Ubuntu Book by Mako, Matthew Helmke and Corey Burger, and the brand new Official Ubuntu Server Book by our friend and yours, Kyle Rankin and Mako. These books were commissioned by Debra Williams-Cauley who has been awesome getting them on the shelves, and her sidekick is one Heather Fox who I have been chatting with recently to see if we can score some free copies for our rather fantastic Ubuntu LoCo Teams. Fortunately, Heather has been able to make the magic happen.

Prentice Hall are happy to send each and every approved LoCo team one free copy of The Official Ubuntu Book and one free copy of The Official Ubuntu Server book. To be entirely clear: this is one copy of each book per team. This will be a great addition to each team’s library of Ubuntu books!

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

1. The team contact shown on our LoCo Team List (and only the team contact) should send Heather Fox an email at heather DOT fox AT pearson DOT com and include 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. Heather will process your application and let you know if it is approved.
3. If approved, she will get your books in the post.

A few notes:

• Only approved teams are eligible for the free copies of the books.
• 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.
• Prentice Hall will cover postage, but not any import tax or other shipping fees.
• When you have the books, it is up to you what you do with them. We recommend you share them between members of the team. LoCo Leaders: please don’t hog them for yourselves!
• The deadline for getting your requests in Wed 12th August 2009.

If you have any questions or queries, don’t contact me or Canonical, contact Heather Fox at heather DOT fox AT pearson DOT com.

Also, for those teams who are not approved or yet to approved, you can still score a rather nice 35% discount on the books by registering your LoCo with the Prentice Hall User Groups Program.

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

[Discuss this on the Forums]

Originally posted by Jono Bacon here on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

Welcome to Karmic Koala Alpha-3, 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 3 is the third 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-3/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-3/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-3/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/karmic/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu Studio)

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

Alpha 3 includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale testing. This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For an overview of new features and a list of known bugs (that you don’t need to report if you encounter).

For Ubuntu please see:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha3

For Kubuntu please see:

https://wiki.kubuntu.org/KarmicKoala/Alpha3/Kubuntu

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 on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list by Martin Pitt on Thu Jul 23 14:57:09 BST 2009