Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 473

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 473 for the week July 4 - 10, 2016.

Links to UWN

In This Issue

• Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) reaches End of Life on July 28 2016
• Welcome New Members and Developers
• Ubuntu Stats
• LoCo Events
• Zygmunt Krynicki: snapd 2.0.10 released to Fedora COPR
• Stephen M. Webb: Previewing the New Unity
• Ubuntu App Developer Blog: Shaping up universal snaps
• Stephen M. Webb: X11 Applications and Unity 8
• Zygmunt Krynicki: Fresh bite-sized bugs in snappy
• Ubuntu App Developer Blog: Aouncing new snap desktop launchers
• Daniel Pocock: Can you help with monitoring packages in Debian and Ubuntu?
• Ubuntu Studio: Backports, the benefits and the consequences.
• Daniel Holbach: Contributing to the world of snaps
• Canonical Design Team: Getting Vanilla ready for v1: the roadmap
• Canonical Design Team: See our designs on Behance and Dribble
• Chuck Short: Live migration with nova-lxd
• Adolfo Jayme Barrientos: Can you run the Unity desktop environment on Windows? Yes!
• 10 Desktop Snaps written in June
• Ubuntu Phone News
• Canonical News
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• Featured Audio and Video
• Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security for 12.04, 14.04, 15.10 and 16.04
• And much more!

General Community News

Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) reaches End of Life on July 28 2016

Adam Conrad aounces that Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) reaches its end of life on July 28, 2016. In this aouncement you can also find a link to instructions to upgrade 15.10 to the latest version of Ubuntu.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ly/003492.html

Welcome New Members and Developers

The Ubuntu Membership board welcomed a new Ubuntu member from AskUbuntu:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ly/002516.html

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

• Open (123880) +92 over last week
• Critical (360) -6 over last week
• Unconfirmed (61053) +19 over last week

As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

Ask Ubuntu Top 5 Questions this week

==== Most Active Questions ====

==== Top Voted New Questions ====

People Contributing the best questions and answers this week: Jacob Vlijm (http://askubuntu.com/users/72216/jacob-vlijm), terdon (http://askubuntu.com/users/85695/terdon), andrew.46 (http://askubuntu.com/users/57576/andrew-46), John Kugelman (http://askubuntu.com/users/141470/john-kugelman) and Rinzwind (http://askubuntu.com/users/15811/rinzwind)

Ask (and answer!) questions at http://askubuntu.com

LoCo Events

The following LoCo team events are currently scheduled in the next two weeks:

Looking beyond the next two weeks? Visit the LoCo Team Portal to browse upcoming events around the world:

http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/

The Planet

Zygmunt Krynicki: snapd 2.0.10 released to Fedora COPR

Zygmunt Krynicki aounced that "Fedora users can now get snapd 2.0.10 from the COPR repository. There are many bug fixes and new features in this release." He goes on to include a full list of fixes in his blog.

http://www.zygoon.pl/2016/07/snapd-2...dora-copr.html

Stephen M. Webb: Previewing the New Unity

Stephen M. Webb previews the new unity from Canonical. He writes that Unity 8 has been on phones and tablets for nearly a year now, however, it is not quite ready for the consumer desktop. He says, "Our current goal is to make the Unity 8 desktop available in the Ubuntu 16.10 release coming up this October as an alteative login session on the ISO (installation image)."

https://bregmatter.wordpress.com/201...the-new-unity/

Ubuntu App Developer Blog: Shaping up universal snaps

David Planella writes that Snap user and developer experience is a major focus at the next Heidelberg, Germany meeting, from 18-22 July. Projects such as Debian, Elementary OS, Fedora, KDE, Kubuntu, MATE or VLC have already confirmed participation at the event. He also includes a link to apply for participation.

http://developer.ubuntu.com/en/blog/...iversal-snaps/

Stephen M. Webb: X11 Applications and Unity 8

Stephen M. Webb writes that convergence has been a big topic in the community, with a goal to have one Ubuntu version for all devices. He shares details about how Unity 8, which is a graphical shell that presents a way to surface and launch applications and display some information, brings us convergence. He writes, "Part of the magic underlying Unity 8 is the Mir compositing display server, which replaces the venerable X11 display server" and goes on to explain how Libertine will be used to run X11 applications in Mir on Unity 8.

https://bregmatter.wordpress.com/201...s-and-unity-8/

Zygmunt Krynicki: Fresh bite-sized bugs in snappy

Zygmunt Krynicki writes how you can get involved in the snappy project, sharing that that there are plenty of new bugs to work on and extends the invitation to anyone wanting to help.

http://www.zygoon.pl/2016/07/fresh-b...in-snappy.html

Ubuntu App Developer Blog: Aouncing new snap desktop launchers

Didier Roche, writing for the Ubuntu App Developer Blog, aounces new desktop launchers. "The goal," he writes, "was to streamline the experience and make sure that all following user visible features are working, independent of the toolkit or technology you are using." HE shares that there are currently 5 launchers, depending on the technology you want to support: gtk2, gtk3, qt4, qt5 and glib-only for a lightweight, non graphical app, but needing basic integration like GSettings and MIME types.

http://developer.ubuntu.com/en/blog/...top-launchers/

Daniel Pocock: Can you help with monitoring packages in Debian and Ubuntu?

Daniel Pocock writes about monitoring packages in Debian and Ubuntu, the uses of them, and how to help maintain monitoring packages in Debian. He writes, "Monitoring packages are for everyone. Even if you are a single user or developer with a single desktop or laptop and no servers, you may still find some of these packages useful."

https://danielpocock.com/help-monito...ian-and-ubuntu

Ubuntu Studio: Backports, the benefits and the consequences.

The Ubuntu Studio team aounces that backports are coming soon to 14.04 and 16.04, explaining that these are development versions of software ported to stable releases. They explain the potential pitfalls of making these upgrades and offer advice on how to do it. While not released yet, they provide a road map of upcoming backports, with the Ardour application being the first to come.

http://ubuntustudio.org/2016/07/back...-consequences/

Daniel Holbach: Contributing to the world of snaps

Daniel Holbach points out some small but meaningful ways that you can contribute to Snappy. He briefly highlights contributing to snapd and Snapcraft, but goes on to talk about contributing to documentation, answering questions on AskUbuntu, and much more.

https://daniel.holba.ch/blog/2016/07...orld-of-snaps/

Canonical Design Team: Getting Vanilla ready for v1: the roadmap

Inayaili de Leon Persson reports that Vanilla is expecting its first official release in early September 2016. Inayaili reminds us how projects need short, mid and long term goals to help them achieve intended results and lists some of those (via link to Trello roadmap) for Vanilla. The purpose of the blog post is to document the process that a Vanilla patte should follow, which includes a diagram showing steps before submission through to full acceptance, but please note that this is still a work-in-progress.

http://design.canonical.com/2016/07/...1-the-roadmap/

Canonical Design Team: See our designs on Behance and Dribble

Steph Wilson quickly shares links to the Canonical Design Team Dribble and Bechance pages, noting they may be helpful for design inspiration.

http://design.canonical.com/2016/07/...atest-designs/

Chuck Short: Live migration with nova-lxd

Chuck Short briefs us on goals for nova-lxd's 16.04 development cycle, giving differences being used for 16.10 leading to live migration. A demo video of this migration is provided, plus commands necessary to implement.

https://zulcss.wordpress.com/2016/07...with-nova-lxd/

Adolfo Jayme Barrientos: Can you run the Unity desktop environment on Windows? Yes!

Adolfo Jayme Barrientos briefly showcases using the Unity 7 desktop environment on Windows 10 using the new Windows Subsystem for Linux.

https://fitoschido.wordpress.com/201...indows-ubuntu/

Other Community News

10 Desktop Snaps written in June

Didier Roche tells us about ten (10) favorite Snaps created during June, which include Krita, Jenkins, Cassandra, Freecad, Shout, Nextcloud, Htop, Moon-buggy, Hangups and Webdm. Some apps have links to 'uapp Explorer' (the unofficial app viewer for Ubuntu Touch).

http://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/07/0...itten-in-june/

Ubuntu Phone News

New uNav for Ubuntu Phone! Convergence + Fast POIs + Offline maps!

Marcos Costales writes about the newly released uNav system for the Ubuntu phone. The main improvements being the convergence over many devices, fast and custom POIs and offline maps.

http://thinkonbytes.blogspot.com/201...nvergence.html

The difference an OTA can make!

Amrisha Prashar talks about the importance of Over-the Air (OTA) updates for improving the performance of a device still in development. She talks about Ubuntu's first convergence device, the Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition tablet and how the overall functioning has been upped by the recent OTA-11 updates.

http://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/07/0...-ota-can-make/

uWriter for Ubuntu Phone: A basic offline word processor

Marcos Costales from blogs about uWriter, a free word processor for the Ubuntu Phone. He summarizes the whole experience in one word: "productivity".

http://thinkonbytes.blogspot.com/201...c-offline.html

Getting started: Creating Ubuntu Apps with Cordova

David Barth writes about his meeting with the Cordova development team at the recently held Phonegap Day EU. He shares about how both the teams had jointly hosted workshops for developing ubuntu apps with Cordova and also starting the release process for the cordova-ubuntu.4.3.4

http://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/07/0...-with-cordova/

Canonical News

In The Press

Canonical-Pivotal partnership makes Ubuntu preferred Linux distro for Cloud Foundry

Ron Miller of TechCrunch writes about the aouncement regarding the official partnership between Canonical and Pivotal, creators of the open source cloud development platform Cloud Foundry. He explains that with this aouncement, not only does Ubuntu become the default Linux distro for the platform, but it also gives users additional support from Canonical nd Ubuntu. He goes on to note that the two companies will be working on a security certification framework, naturally based around Ubuntu.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/06/ca...cloud-foundry/

Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review

Matt Farrington-Smith from The Inquirer reviews the newly released Dell XPS 13 laptop ruing on Ubuntu 14.04 SP1. This detailed review starts off with the hardware specs and the design of the laptop and continues into the software specs in the following page. He talks about the ease of installation and points out difficulties in moving from a Windows based OS to a Linux distro.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...edition-review

In The Blogosphere

Dekko Is Shaping Up Nicely for Desktop Convergence

Joey-Elijah Sneddon from OMG! Ubuntu! speaks about Ubuntu's native email client, Dekko, and its growth into an email client for Ubuntu desktop. He quotes that the current version is apt for Ubuntu phone and tablet and will surely be developed into a standard Ubuntu desktop issue in the near future.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/07/d...pp-convergence

A No Frills Weather Applet for Ubuntu

"Just something clear, and concise, and to the point," Joey-Elijah Sneddon from OMG! Ubuntu! talks about a new Ubuntu weather indicator.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/07/n...-applet-ubuntu

NVIDIA Aounces The GeForce GTX 1060, Linux Tests Happening

Michael Larabel from Phoronix discusses about NVIDIA's newly released GeForce GTX 1060 pascal graphics card and its subsequent testing in Ubuntu Linux. Laden with ample pictures of the product, he closes with a briefing about the NVidia Linux drivers for the new graphics card.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...060-soft&num=1

Ubuntu Touch OTA-13 to Introduce a New Power Manager for Ubuntu Phones, Tablets

Marius Nestor from Softpedia writes about the soon to be released OTA-12 updates for Ubuntu phones and tablets. He quotes that nothing new is to be expected other than bug fixes and goes on about the next update after OTA-12, the OTA-13 musing that the release might be having an entirely new power management package.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/ubunt...s-505979.shtml

Snap Packages vs. Flatpaks: The Differences and Which One You Should Use

Derrik Deiner from Make Tech Easier compare and contrasts about the two leading packaging software, Snappy , an Ubuntu based software developed by Canonical and Flatpaks, more of an open source version offering similar functionality. In answering "which is better?" he sums up by betting on both, stating two is better than one.

Editorial comment from UWN staff: This article provides valuable information comparing the formats, but it is worthy to note that Snaps are not actually "hard-coded to use the Snap package store" run by Canonical as the article states, it is possible to run your own snap repository.

https://www.maketecheasier.com/snap-...-vs-flatpacks/

Nexus 6 Is Now an Unofficial Ubuntu Phone, Wi-Fi & Bluetooth Support Coming Soon

Marius Nestor from Softpedia writes about an exclusive interview with Marius Gripsgard, a developer of unoffical ubuntu softwares for various devices. With the recent software updates to Ubuntu Touch phones like OnePlus and Nexus 5, he reports that the Ubuntu software might be up and ruing in the next edition of nexus, the Nexus 6.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/nexus...n-506050.shtml

32-bit Linux is Disappearing: What It Means for the Chael

Christopher Tozzi of The Var Guy reviews the implications of Dimitri John Ledkov's proposal to end support for 32-bit processors in Ubuntu by April 2018. He suggests that as hardware has become more and more similar, it will make the job of software vendors significantly easier. On the other hand, he notes that mobile platforms are becoming increasingly more complex, with x86 builds becoming as common as ARM ones.

http://thevarguy.com/open-source-app...-means-chael

Star Cloud PCG03U is a compact Ubuntu PC for $90

Brad Linder from Liliputing writes about the Star Cloud PCG03U, a small computer ruing Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. He writes, "...at $90, it's certainly an affordable option for folks looking for a small, fanless, low-power Ubuntu computer that you can use in the living room or in an office."

http://liliputing.com/2016/07/star-c...ntu-pc-90.html

Featured Audio and Video

Ubuntu Community Team Q&A - 5th July 2016

The Ubuntu community team convenes again for their weekly Q&A session in which they discuss community news and field questions from the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNvR_QpP18U

Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S09E19 - Perfectly Preserved Brain - Ubuntu Podcast

In this week's edition of the Ubuntu Podcast, the hosts discuss AMD's recently released Linux drivers, Mozilla's first round of funding for its Mission Partners program, and the 0day exploit for Lenovo's Thinkpad System Management Mode. The hosts also cover several community related news items including the release of Snapcraft 2.12 and uNav offline maps.

http://ubuntupodcast.org/2016/07/07/...eserved-brain/

Full Circle Weekly News #25

Just a quick message to let you know that Full Circle Weekly News #25 is out: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/podcas...weekly-news-25 and, Full Circle Magazine #110 came out a couple of weeks ago: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-110

The show is also available via:
RSS: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/feed/podcast
Stitcher Radio: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=85347&refid=stpr
TuneIn Radio: http://tunein.com/radio/Full-Circle-...-News-p855064/
and PlayerFM: https://player.fm/series/the-full-circle-weekly-news

Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings

Upcoming Meetings and Events

For upcoming meetings and events please visit the calendars at fridge.ubuntu.com: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/calendars/

Updates and Security for 12.04, 14.04, 15.10 and 16.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 12.04 Updates

End of Life - April 2017

Ubuntu 14.04 Updates

End of Life - April 2019

Ubuntu 15.10 Updates

End of Life - July 2016

Ubuntu 16.04 Updates

End of Life - April 2021

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Archives

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Additional Ubuntu News

As always you can find more news and aouncements at:

http://insights.ubuntu.com/

and

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/

Conclusion

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

See you next week!

Credits

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Elizabeth K. Joseph
• Walter Lapchynski
• Leonard Viator
• Simon Quigley
• Chris Guiver
• Athul Muralidhar
• Chris Sirrs
• And many others

Glossary of Terms

Other acronyms can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/glossary

Ubuntu - Get Involved

The Ubuntu community consists of individuals and teams, working on different aspects of the distribution, giving advice and technical support, and helping to promote Ubuntu to a wider audience. No contribution is too small, and anyone can help. It's your chance to get in on all the community fun associated with developing and promoting Ubuntu. http://community.ubuntu.com/contribute/

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