After our previous story about an Ubuntu billboard being spotting in the US, it was tracked down by satellite to San Francisco in the United States. Standing next to Highway 101, the main Motorway/Autoroute in Silicon Valley, and right outside the headquaters of database company Oracle, an Oracle insider even asked on their blog if the sign was dropping hints at Oracle employees…

Hot on that news, Desktop Linux have spotted more Ubuntu billboards in the wild and come up with their own suggestion about a connection to the LinuxWorld Expo happening in California during this week (August 14th-17th).

From the same event, we hear that Ubuntu’s Matt Zimmerman has been having a Q&A session with the press, trying to answer how Ubuntu has managed to gain so much popularity in a comparatively short amount of time.

what differentiates one distribution [from] another, more than anything else, is its community of users and developers: how well they organize themselves, the image they present to potential users, their grassroots role in spreading awareness about the distribution. The bulk of any distribution is made up of the same core components, while no two communities share the same character, and users gravitate toward a community that feels like a good fit for them.

Did you manage to attend LinuxWorld or spot any new billboards? Tell us about it!

The Ubuntu New Users Network (NUN), a group of Ubuntu enthusiasts, has created the first Ubuntu Classroom.

Providing new users with a one-on-one environment to learn Ubuntu’s ins and outs,the Classroom also doubles as a location for biweekly lectures ranging from the basics, all the way up to system administration.

Recently, the network was featured in an article over at Linux.com. Mayank Sharma interviewed one of the New User Mentors, Richard Johnson, and had this to say:

Ubuntu Linux might be an easy distribution to use, but some new users quickly run into things that bewilder them. Commands like sudo, apt-get, and terminal make newbies scurry around for help from forum boards, mailing lists, and IRC. To help such newcomers, Ubuntu has put together a community team that ensures new users are handled with care. The New Users Network, or NUN, is a group of experienced Ubuntu enthusiasts who help new Ubuntu users come to grips with the operating system.

Interested in becoming a mentor? Visit the New Users Network page. To view upcoming lectures, head on over to the Classroom page.

[Discuss NUN in the forums.]

This week, I talked with Matt Zimmerman, chairman of the technical board and CTO for Ubuntu - the Debian-based Linux distribution, which has become one of the most popular Linux flavors among open source enthusiasts. We spoke about Ubuntu’s latest LTS offering, whether Ubuntu is being adopted on servers, and how to compare one open source organization to another.

I cannot overstate how important this is: Ubuntu is the first real “desktop” Linux I’ve ever seen. There’s a lot of polish to it, most of the “right” things have been hidden from non-Linux geeks, and it just works.

I’ve read so many other stories like this but had to see it for myself.

If you’ve been waiting years and years for desktop Linux (or laptop Linux) to finally arrive, give Ubuntu a shot. Seriously.

More4 News, a Channel4 associate, interviewed Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth recently. The video of the interview is available at the online news story. Mark talks about philanthropy and technology in the interview, and we get to know that he loves the geek culture :)

When you’ve made £400m before your 30th birthday -you’d probably want to spend the rest of your days living the highlife.
But not Mark Shuttleworth who made his fortune when he sold off his internet security company four years ago.
Since then, he has given half of it to charity and bought a £13m pound ticket to space station.
Now he’s working hard to create a free software - which he hopes will rival Microsoft. He has given a rare interview to More 4 News.

Update: Jonathan Riddell tells us: The direct link to the video is mms://longurl… (right-click, copy) which can be downloaded using mimms from universe, then played with the w32codecs and mplayer. …If it doesn’t work out of the box :-)

[Discuss the video on the forums]

The purpose of this article is to build an inexpensive RAID 5 Network Attached Storage (NAS) system. I’ll then compare the home-built system to off-the-shelf products to see how they compare in terms of performance.

A much more business-like implementation of Linux, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS retains many of the features that have made it so popular, with sensible enhancements in terms of installation, hardware support and usability. Still a very complete solution and equally suitable for both enthusiast and production use.

SearchSecurity.com has identifed Ubuntu as the quickest major Linux distribution when it comes to fixing security vulnerabilities.

“One way to make a non-scientific determination as to how quickly various Linux distributions publish their updates is by searching the Secunia database of advisories … In this instance, Ubuntu and Fedora received the highest scores overall, reflecting their tendency to be among the first responders for many issues.”

So, Ubuntu’s free, easy to use, looks great and it’s secure.

Congratulations to Martin Pitt and the rest of the Ubuntu security team!

SearchSecurity.com story.

[Discuss “Top for security” in the forums]

I recently replaced SuSE 10.1 with Ubuntu 6.06, also known as Dapper Drake, on my main PC in a matter of minutes, and am now enjoying a clean, feature-rich computing environment that is easy to configure and just works.

Dapper has been given a “Recommended” award by IT Reviews:

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is a very complete and usable Linux distribution and one that’s remarkably easy to get to grips with compared to some others. All of which makes it a good starting point for newcomers, but don’t be fooled into thinking it’s cut-down in any way. As well as appealing to the hobbyist, Ubuntu is a full Linux implementation with everything needed for business use, including automatic updates and commercial support should you need it.