• Description:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LanguagePackTranslationDeadline

• Description: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReleaseCandidate

• Description:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelFreeze

• Description:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NonLanguagePackTranslationDeadline

• Description:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StringFreeze

• Description:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BetaRelease

• Description:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserInterfaceFreeze

NetworkManager is a tool that was designed to make managing wireless networks easy, particularly for laptop users. Unfortunately the tool has always needed some work to get it working right in Ubuntu, seemingly always releasing at the most inopportune time in relation to the Ubuntu schedule, or depending on some development driver in a far away land …

This time, however, things are looking up. Johan Kiviniemi, Mario Danic, Adam Conrad, Luka Renko, and Anthony Mercatante have volunteered to get Network Manager 0.6.1 packages up to shape, with the intent to make it in time for the final release of Dapper. They’ve put in a ton of work patching code, testing cards, and packaging it all up for testing. Unfortunately, time not particularly abundant these days, but Matthew Garrett was quick to point out:

This is entirely a community contribution, but now that the hard work has been done it should (with luck) be possible to squeeze this in. If people could test the packages and find any bugs as quickly as possible, that makes things a great deal more likely.

The team has put up pages for for NetworkManager (the GNOME front end) and KNetworkManager (the KDE front end) with instructions on how to get started. Bugs can be reported to debian (AT) johan.kiviniemi.name. You can also find _ion and Pygi on Freenode (irc.freenode.net) to report bugs. You’ll also find more information in the dicussion thread below.

[Discuss]

While the change in schedule has been publicized throughout the web, sabdfl just made the official announcement detailing the six week delay in the Dapper release. The exact schedule has already been posted. The magic day is now June 1st 2006, so keep the beer chilled for just a bit longer. Note that:

This is not a general relaxation of the freeze process. While there are some new features that are being integrated, the general stabilisation and bug fixing freeze remains in place, with some specific exceptions.

This is extra time is also an excellent time for our multilingual volunteers to get in some last minute polish. Dafydd Harries is asking for some help in bringing the localization efforts up to par, especialy for “those languages with complex display and input requirements like Korean, Japanese and Chinese in all its variants.”

[Discuss]

Matt Zimmerman sent out a note reminding everyone that “Feature Freeze” for Ubuntu 6.04 is coming up in two days:

The feature freeze for Dapper begins this Thursday, February 23rd. This means that feature goal development be substantially complete. Features which are behind schedule may be granted exceptions (for priority goals with a clear roadmap to completion) or deferred to the next release.

Ben Collins has also asked for community wide testing of the server and desktop kernels during this time, as the kernel freeze is just a mere six weeks away. The entire development schedule is available, as always, on the wiki.

[Discuss]