Jaunty Jackalope

Ubuntu 9.04 Released!

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop and Server editions and Ubuntu Netbook Remix, continuing Ubuntu’s tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

Read more about the features of Ubuntu 9.04 in the following press releases:

Ubuntu 9.04 will be supported for 18 months on both desktops and servers. Users requiring a longer support lifetime may choose to continue using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS rather than upgrading to or installing 9.04.

Ubuntu 9.04 is also the basis for new 9.04 releases of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Mythbuntu:

To Get Ubuntu 9.04
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To download Ubuntu 9.04, or obtain CDs, visit:

Users of Ubuntu 8.10 will be offered an automatic upgrade to 9.04 via Update Manager. For further information about upgrading, see:

As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.

We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues. They are available at:

Find out what’s new in this release with a graphical overview:

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

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

Ubuntu 9.04 Free Culture Showcase Winners!

This is the competition in which creative types can submit their work for inclusion in the Examples/ folder of the next edition of Ubuntu. In this competition we expanded the Audio and Video categories to also include a Graphic/Photo category too. We netted a fantastic range of entries and many great submissions!

Our submissions list was then assessed by our esteemed community judging panel and they made selections from each category. This final set of selections was then voted on by the Ubuntu Community Council to find our winners. We would like to thank everyone for participating and congratulate each of the winners for having their work about to be delivered to millions of Jaunty desktops.

Without further ado, onto the winners!

Audio: Jean Francois Marais

South African bred and Taiwan based sound jeweler MoShang polishes rough audio diamonds and melds them with traditional Asian instruments and laid-back beats. In addition to his commercial releases, MoShang has made a remix album available for free download (Asian Variations – 2007) and was heavily involved as musician and producer with the free CABACA album by the CC Asia Band (2008). He has won a South African award for his music to the short film Angels in a Cage (2000) and his music has been featured in the HDTV Discovery Channel production Fantastic Festivals Of The World.

About the entry:

“I started the track Invocation early in 2008 with an eye to expanding my usual Chinese-based sonic palette with the addition of traditional Japanese instruments. I kicked it around some, but was only inspired to finish it after my first visit to Japan to attend the 2008 iCommons Summit in Sapporo and released the track on the Stone Bell EP towards the end of 2008. It opens with a tribal feel thanks to hira-daiko and shime-daiko drumming, and also features shakuhachi and male vocals in the Esashi Oiwake style of Hokkaido island”.

Video Category: Robbie Ferguson

Former radio announcer, Robbie Ferguson hosts Category5 Technology TV; a live, weekly TV-style broadcast that answers technology questions for a global audience. With roughly 50,000 viewers per week through their video podcast alone, the show has quickly (albeit unofficially) become a popular resource for both seasoned and rookie Ubuntu users. Robbie is happily married with two young children. He has been a respected professional in the technology field for many years, and is currently a senior web developer at an IT firm, where he spends his professional time coding advanced PHP applications and wooing other employees toward Ubuntu.

About the entry:

“When good friend Alan Pope (Ubuntu UK Podcast) suggested I post an entry in the Free Culture Showcase, I thought it was a great idea. I did wonder what I could possibly give to such a project? After all, my show is a live question-and-answer broadcast with no “production,” and no script. So when it came down to sitting in front of the cameras to put something together, I decided to just “be myself,” and speak candidly on my thoughts about the Ubuntu community; because when it comes down to it, I am really just another Ubuntu user”.

Graphic/Photo: William J McKee Jr

William considers himself your typical down to earth guy, fascinated with technology, nature, and how the two can meet sometimes with beautiful results. He has lived most of his life on the east coast, traveled a little, enough to appreciate the beauty we live in. Photography is still just a secondary hobby for him, but has always interested him.

About the shot:

“I snapped this, just over the border into Canada from NY. My wife was driving, and I happened to notice the clouds in one area were about to cut some light off, this usually looks good if you are fortunate enough to be in the right place/time. I took out our Canon Powershot Pro 1, and zoomed in, through the windshield of the car, and snapped a couple off. I got lucky with this one, although some editing of contrast was done, which brought out the color nicely. Even almost ruined shots can look good some of the time!”

Thanks also to Keith Worrell and Endolith for some of the patches and branches involved in the Example Content package.

Ubuntu 9.04 Countdown Banners Wanted

If you’re wanting to put your creative energy to work to help out Ubuntu, here’s your chance to make a highly visible contribution.

For a few releases now we’ve launched a “countdown banner” that is shown on the Ubuntu.com homepage and syndicated to sites across the net. For 8.10 we finally turned to the community to help out with this. We had some excellent contributions and chose two from Thorsten Wilms to make available. (Thanks a bunch thorwil!) See his work at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/countdown

Here is how it works:

Users who want to embed the countdown on their page will paste a single line of javascript. The javascript will write out the HTML necessary to display the image and the image will be different for each day starting about 30 days out. So for example, it might be, “Only 29 days until Ubuntu 9.04 is here!”

In the past this has been a simple PNG image but it does not have to be a static image. If you want to raise the bar by making it a comparably sized iframe that includes static HTML and interactive javascript, thats ok. But a static PNG works just as well. No Flash since this should not require non-free software to view.

The first few times we did this we offered the community only one banner. Last time we chose two. We are OK with giving a few excellent options to syndicate.

Most contributors to Ubuntu get the satisfaction of helping out a project bigger than themselves. However this is a particularly unique opportunity because your creative work will be seen by millions and millions and millions of people across the world on many different websites. Additionally, in praise and recognition to those who help out, there will be a link back to your blog or portfolio from the Ubuntu countdown page if your work gets chosen.

Here are the guidelines for contributions:

  • Lets keep the same size as before. It worked great. 180px wide x 150px high.
  • Optimized png, gif or jpg format or, if you’re gutsy, a lightweight iframe containing static HTML (no php etc), javascript and images. No google anayltics or web bugs, no flash, small download size, only link will be back to the ubuntu.com website. Animation should not be perpetual (i.e. stop after a few seconds) and should not annoy people. If you want to do the iframe thing ping me on IRC or email back to the list and we can discuss some ideas.
  • There are 32 images needed, days numbered 30 - 1, a “coming soon” for day 0 and an “it’s here” once 9.04 is released
  • It is not needed nor recommended to try to incorporate the release code name “Jaunty Jackalope” into the design
  • We need to see results soon.

This needs to go LIVE in 30 DAYS. Get moving!

That means if you want to participate start drawing up your idea now. Just sketch up one or two frames and post it to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/JauntyCountdownBanners - then subscribe and send an email to the ubuntu-web list letting us know about it and we’ll check it out.

Remember, the goal is to build excitement about the 9.04 release. Are you excited yet?

Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase II

DIGG!!

Jono Bacon has announced the second Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase, this time for the Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope release!

The Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase is an opportunity to bring the best of two great worlds together by showing off high quality Free Culture content in Ubuntu. At the heart of Ubuntu’s ethos is a belief in showcasing Free Software and Free Culture, and with each development cycle we present the opportunity for any Free Culture artist to put their work in front of millions of Ubuntu users around the world. Although the space restrictions are tight, and we are limited to how much content we can include, the Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase is an excellent opportunity for artists everywhere.

The winning submissions will be made available on the shipped CDs and download images of the Ubuntu 9.04 release. Every user will be able to find the content in the Examples/ folder in a home directory.

With this competition we are now not only accepting submissions for audio and video, but also graphic/photo submissions. This opens up the competition to all of you budding photographers and artists. We have a winner to find for each category, and the competition closes on 6th February 2009.

Entering the showcase is simple:

  • Your submission must be one of the following:
    • Audio Entries - no larger than 1MB in size - made available in Ogg Vorbis format.
    • Video Entries - no larger than 2.5MB in size - made available in Ogg Theora format.
    • Photo/Graphic Entries - no larger than 0.5MB in size - made available in PNG or JPG formats.
  • All entries must be licensed and distributable under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license.
  • Upload your submission somewhere online (there are lots of free hosting solutions available such as archive.org). Do not email any of the organisers or judges with your submissions.
  • Add your entry to one of the submission tables at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase.
  • When the deadline for submissions closes, our panel of judges will pick a shortlist, and the Community Council will then pick the final winners from the shortlist.

The deadline is 6th February 2009 and you can read more about it at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase.

Jaunty Jackalope and UDS Sponsorships

With the release of Ubuntu 8.10 approaching rapidly, Mark Shuttleworth has announced plans for Ubuntu 9.04, codenamed Jaunty Jackalope. The overarching goal is to provide a better user experience, one that not only matches existing consumer platforms, but sets a new standard.

Keeping that in mind, a goal of Jaunty Jackalope is to decrease boot and resume times. Deep integration of desktop and web applications will be pursued. Discussions related to bridging the gap between both types of applications started at UDS-Prague and will continue in Mountain View.

Since collaboration is key to the open source ecosystem, Jaunty will provide new ways for developers to work with Ubuntu. All of Ubuntu will be moved into Bazaar. This will allow any package to be easily branched, modified, and built for PPAs. Developers interested in specific packages will also be able to participate outside of the usual MOTU and core-dev structure.

Much of this hinges on the planning that will go on at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, in the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, Monday 8th - Friday 12th December 2008. UDS historically involved Canonical employees and sponsored community contributors. For Mountain View, anyone from the community can submit a request to be sponsored.

Individuals sponsored will be expected to lead a discussion in one of the key topics for Ubuntu 9.04:

  • Networking
  • Power Management
  • Desktop Experience
  • Booting
  • Hardware Support
  • Sharing and Backup
  • Desktop Configuration
  • Server Configuration
  • Network Authentication
  • Security
  • Community
  • Mobile
  • QA
  • Other

Discussions should center around an Ubuntu Brainstorm idea.

To increase the odds of sponsorship, community contributions like keeping up with 5-A-Day and helping with the sponsorship queue will be beneficial. Volunteering to do crew duty is also a plus.

See Jono Bacon’s post for more details on how to get sponsored.

The deadline for sponsorship requests is Thursday 25th September 2008.