Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 503

By tsimonq2 | Published: 2017-03-28

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #503 for the weeks March 13 – 26, 2017, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Simon Quigley
  • OerHeks
  • Chris Guiver
  • Darin Miller
  • Alan Pope
  • Valorie Zimmerman
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, 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 License

Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) Final Beta released

By lyz | Published: 2017-03-24

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the final beta release of the Ubuntu 17.04 Desktop, Server, and Cloud products.

Codenamed “Zesty Zapus”, 17.04 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

This beta release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Cloud products, but also the Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, UbuntuKylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu flavours.

We’re also pleased with this release to welcome Ubuntu Budgie to the family of Ubuntu community flavours.

The beta images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of 17.04 that should be representative of the features intended to ship with the final release expected on April 13th, 2017.

Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server, Cloud Images

Yakkety Final Beta includes updated versions of most of our core set of packages, including a current 4.10 kernel, and much more.

To upgrade to Ubuntu 17.04 Final Beta from Ubuntu 16.10, follow these instructions:

The Ubuntu 17.04 Final Beta images can be downloaded at:

Additional images can be found at the following links:

As fixes will be included in new images between now and release, any daily cloud image from today or later (i.e. a serial of 20170323 or higher) should be considered a beta image. Bugs found should be filed against the appropriate packages or, failing that, the cloud-images project in Launchpad.

The full release notes for Ubuntu 17.04 Final Beta can be found at:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZestyZapus/ReleaseNotes

Kubuntu

Kubuntu is the KDE based flavour of Ubuntu. It uses the Plasma desktop and includes a wide selection of tools from the KDE project.

The Final Beta images can be downloaded at:

More information on Kubuntu Final Beta can be found here:

Lubuntu

Lubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu that targets to be lighter, less resource hungry and more energy-efficient by using lightweight applications and LXDE, The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, as its default GUI.

The Final Beta images can be downloaded at:

More information on Lubuntu Final Beta can be found here:

Ubuntu Budgie

Ubuntu Budgie is community developed desktop, integrating Budgie Desktop Environment with Ubuntu at its core.

The Final Beta images can be downloaded at:

More information on Ubuntu Budgie Final Beta can be found here:

Ubuntu GNOME

Ubuntu GNOME is a flavor of Ubuntu featuring the GNOME desktop environment.

The Final Beta images can be downloaded at:

More information on Ubuntu GNOME Final Beta can be found here:

UbuntuKylin

UbuntuKylin is a flavor of Ubuntu that is more suitable for Chinese users.

The Final Beta images can be downloaded at:

More information on UbuntuKylin Final Beta can be found here:

Ubuntu MATE

Ubuntu MATE is a flavor of Ubuntu featuring the MATE desktop environment.

The Final Beta images can be downloaded at:

More information on UbuntuMATE Final Beta can be found here:

Ubuntu Studio

Ubuntu Studio is a flavor of Ubuntu that provides a full range of multimedia content creation applications for each key workflows: audio, graphics, video, photography and publishing.

The Final Beta images can be downloaded at:

More information about Ubuntu Studio Final Beta can be found here:

Xubuntu

Xubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu that comes with Xfce, which is a stable, light and configurable desktop environment.

The Final Beta images can be downloaded at:

More inormation about Xubuntu Final Beta can be found here:

Regular daily images for Ubuntu, and all flavours, can be found at:

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for clients, servers and clouds, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional technical support is available from Canonical Limited and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit http://www.ubuntu.com/support

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions really help us to improve this and future releases of Ubuntu. Instructions can be found at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this beta release on our website, IRC channel and wiki.

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume announcement list at:

Originally posted to the ubuntu-announce mailing list on Thu Mar 23 22:00:58 UTC 2017 by Adam Conrad on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team

Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) reaches End of Life on April 28 2017

By lyz | Published: 2017-03-15

Ubuntu announced its 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) release almost 5 years ago, on April 26, 2012. As with the earlier LTS releases, Ubuntu committed to ongoing security and critical fixes for a period of 5 years. The support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 12.04 will reach end of life on Friday, April 28th. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 12.04.

The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 12.04 is via Ubuntu 14.04. Users are encouraged to evaluate and upgrade to our latest 16.04 LTS release via 14.04. Instructions and caveats for the upgrades may be found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/TrustyUpgrades and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/XenialUpgrades. Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 continue to be actively supported with security updates and select high-impact bug fixes. All announcements of official security pdates for Ubuntu releases are sent to the ubuntu-security-announce mailing list, information about which may be found at:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-security-announce

For users who can’t upgrade immediately, Canonical has just announced an extended support package for Ubuntu Advantage customers, which will keep delivering security updates while you evaluate your upgrades to newer releases. The announcement, with details about how and where to purchase extended support, can be found at:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2017-March/000217.html

Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users in homes, schools, businesses and governments around the world. Ubuntu is Open Source software, costs nothing to download, and users are free to customise or alter their software in order to meet their needs.

Originally posted to the ubuntu-security-announce mailing list on Wed Mar 15 00:58:05 UTC 2017 by Adam Conrad, on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team

Upcoming Vacant Developer Membership Board seats: Call for nominations

By lyz | Published: 2017-03-14

The membership of Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre in the Developer Membership board will be expiring shortly and Adam Conrad’s membership will expire a few months after that. Subsequently, this email is a call for nominations to fill both of their positions although one elected developer will not begin their term immediately.

The DMB is responsible for reviewing and approving new Ubuntu developers, meeting for about an hour once a fortnight. Candidates should be Ubuntu developers themselves, and should be well qualified to evaluate prospective Ubuntu developers and decide when to entrust them with developer privileges or to grant them Ubuntu membership status.

The new member will be chosen using Condorcet voting. Members of the ubuntu-dev team in Launchpad will be eligible to vote. To ensure that you receive a ballot in the initial mail, please add a visible email address to your Launchpad profile (although there will be an opportunity to receive a ballot after the vote has started if you do not wish to do this).

The term of the new board members will be at least two years (there will be some changes to terms to get these two positions to share the same expiration date). Providing at least three valid nominations are received, voting will commence on Wednesday, March 22, 2017 and will last for approximately 7 days, ending on or around Wednesday, March 29, 2017. The DMB will confirm the appointments in its next meeting thereafter.

Please send GPG-signed nominations to developer-membership-board at lists.ubuntu.com (which is a private mailing list accessible only by DMB members) by midnight UTC on Tuesday, March 21, 2017.

If nominating a developer other than yourself, please confirm that the nominee is happy to sit on the board before emailing the DMB.

Please consider writing a short statement on your wiki page if nominated so that others get a better idea of for whom they are voting. If you include a link to this wiki page in your nomination mail or a followup, the DMB will share it when the call for votes begins.

Originally posted to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list on Tue Mar 14 21:44:49 UTC 2017 by Brian Murray, on behalf of the DMB

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 502

By tsimonq2 | Published: 2017-03-14

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #502 for the week March 6 – March 12, 2017, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Simon Quigley
  • Chris Guiver
  • Jose Antonio Rey
  • Elizabeth K. Joseph
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, 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 License