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Hello Ubuntu developers,

Welcome to Intrepid Ibex Alpha-3, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.10.

Pre-releases of Intrepid are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable
system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even
frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and
those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 3 is the third in a series of milestone CD images that will be
released throughout the Intrepid development cycle. The Alpha images are
known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while
representing a very recent snapshot of Intrepid. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/intrepid/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu Education Edition)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-3/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-3/ (Xubuntu)

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

Alpha 3 includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale
testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha3 for
information on changes in Ubuntu.

This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a
list of known bugs (that you don’t need to report if you encounter), please
see: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha3

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop
Hardy, have a look at the intrepid-changes mailing list:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/intrepid-changes

We also suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list
if you’re interested in following Ubuntu development. This is a
low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of
approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other
interesting events.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu

Enjoy,
–
Steve Langasek
On behalf of the Ubuntu release team

The Ubuntu development team yesterday released a series of security fixes for PHP running on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, 7.04, 7.10 and Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

The updates fix a number of security risks in PHP, including a problem with PHP not properly checking the length of the string parameter to the fnmatch function. An attacker could cause a denial of service in the PHP interpreter if a script passed untrusted input to the fnmatch function.

The fix also fixes a flaw in the cURL library that allowed safe_mode and open_basedir restrictions to be bypassed. If a

PHP application were tricked into processing a bad file:// request, an attacker could read arbitrary files.

Read more at Tectonic

Essentially, all major computer retail stores will carry computers with Ubuntu pre-installed by the end of 2008 or early 2009, predicted a Canonical manager who met with The VAR Guy at OSCON. But this isn’t another Linux desktop PC story. In this case, the computers are Netbooks (also known as sub-notebooks). Here’s the scoop.

At least two “multinational corporations” (translation: Big PC or consumer electronics companies) have agreed to preinstall Ubuntu Netbook Remix edition on forthcoming sub-notebook devices, according to Gerry Carr, a Canonical marketing manager.

Read more at The Var Guy

This evening at OSCON 2008, Mark Shuttleworth had keynoted and talked about driving innovation within free software, the Web, and Linux on mobile devices were among the topics during his 30 minute talk.

In addition, Mark had talked briefly about revision control systems / bug reporting. Of course, he mentioned Canonical’s Launchpad…

Read more at Phoronix

The Ubuntu Muslim Edition team is proud to announce the release of UbuntuME 8.04.1. This release is only available as an installable DVD.

Highlights:

• WebStrict (parental control tool) enabled by default (so as browsing the Internet is safe)
• Zekr 0.7.0 (Quran study tool) installed and configured to play Quran recitations
• Minbar and Firefox “Pray Times” addon installed
• Monajat (display Islamic prayers)
• Thwab (encyclopedia)
• UbuntuME artworks: usplash, login screen, islamic wallpapers, theme etc.

Quran recitations provided by www.versebyversequran.com: Muhammad Siddeeq al-Minshawi (16kbps, 193 MB), Huzify (24 kbps, 322 MB), Sa’ad al-Ghamadi (40 kbps, 433 MB) and Mishary Rashed Alafasy (128 kbps, 1.6 GB)

NEW WITH THIS RELEASE
Tons of useful softwares have been added on the DVD:

• multimedia: libraries for reading DVDs, codecs, flash player, vlc etc.
• Education: full suite of softwares for kids (kturtle, tuxmath, tuxpaint, gcompris etc.), stellarium, celestia etc.
• Miscellaneous: scribux, inkscape, virtualbox, Adobe Reader, skype, ubuntu tweak, envyng, and a lot of utilities (compizconfig-settings-manager, nautilus-open-terminal, glipper, galternatives, startupmanager, pessulus etc.)
• Arabic support: language-pack-ar, aspell-ar, acon, bicon

The full list of packages and their description is available here: www.ubuntume.com/contents

To get Ubuntu Muslim Edition 8.04.1: www.ubuntume.com/installation

xPUD is a small and fast booting LiveUSB, usually boots into X within 15-seconds, and starts an easy-to-use UI as soon as possible.

Being a Ubuntu derivative with APT/dpkg system, the rootfs is quite small: only 67MB of core image, including Ubuntu 8.04 compatible kernel, Xvesa as xserver, web browser (firefox), media player (mplayer) and input method (scim).

This project is under heavy development, and we’re looking forward to any kind of feedback, please visit http://xpud.org/ for more information.

Best regards,
penk

To Ubuntu Look pages section is added new Ubuntu derivate - Maryan Linux.
What is Maryan-linux?
It is a linux distribution based on Ubuntu with Enlightment 17 as default desktop.
Maryan Linux aims to be the most polished user-friendly E17 OS with the greatest ‘Out of Box’ experience.
Maryan also includes the most lightweight desktops environments, all them are ready-to-use: Fluxbox, Pekwm, LXde
You won’t know Enlightment 17 until you download it.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #100 for the week July
13th - July 19th, 2008. In this issue we cover: UWN 100th Issue, UWN
Past & Present Staff Podcast, Mark Shuttleworth podcast, Comments from
Past & Present Editors, Joining the UWN staff, New Ubuntu QA team,
Call for nominations for Tech Board, Alpha 3 soft freeze, Next UDS,
Peru LoCo gives Ubuntu presentation at San Marcos University, Ubuntu
Ireland gets local press coverage, Ubuntu Nicaragua Continues with TV
shows, New Leader for Ubuntu France, Ubuntu-UK podcast #10, and much,
much more!

== UWN Translations ==

* Note to translators and our readers: We are trying a new way of
linking to our translations pages. Please follow the link below for
the information you need.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Translations

== In This Issue ==

* Ubuntu 100th Issue
* UWN Past & Present Editors Podcast
* Mark Shuttleworth podcast
* Joining the UWN staff
* New Ubuntu QA team
* Call for nominations for Tech Board
* Alpha 3 soft freeze
* Next Ubuntu UDS
* Ubuntu stats
* LoCo news
* Ubuntu Forums news
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Ubuntu-UK podcast #10
* UWN podcast transcriptions
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security

• Read more: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue #100

Yesterday we shared that Dell has started shipping Ubuntu 8.04 PCs. Initially there are only three “Dellbuntu” PCs (two notebooks and one desktop) with this Long-Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu, but additional models will begin appearing as soon as next month…

Read more at Phoronix

It’s finally official. Dell’s Ubuntu Linux PCs now come with the latest build of the operating system, version 8.04. That may not seem like news, but it’s actually a significant move by Dell. Here’s why.

Microsoft recently began its latest Windows Vista offensive, this time trying to assure partners and customers that they can migrate to Vista with confidence. Sure, Dell supports Vista — but the PC giant also supports customer choice.
Dell began offering Ubuntu on selected consumer PCs about a year ago. The VAR Guy has one (and, full disclosure, he loves it). But this is the year that Ubuntu was supposed to move from geek users to a broader set of consumers — thanks to the release of Ubuntu 8.04 in April 2008.

Read more at The Var Guy

For the last couple of weeks, Jordan Mantha been working behind the scenes on creating a community Ubuntu QA (quality assurance) team. For quite a while Canonical has largely driven QA efforts in Ubuntu. The community can and should step up in this area (see this wiki page for more background information).

In short, a new community-driven Ubuntu QA team is up and running! The IRC channel is #ubuntu-quality and the mailing list is ubuntu-qa.

Read more at Fridge

Ubuntu Linux isn’t just for desktop users anymore. That will be the key message when Canonical and Openbravo demonstrate open source ERP software on Ubuntu servers at Linuxworld in August, The VAR Guy has learned. Here’s the scoop, directly from Openbravo CEO Manel Sarasa (pictured).

First, a little about Openbravo. Based in Spain, Openbravo is an open source company that focuses on enterprise resource planning (ERP) and point-of-sale (POS) software. Yes, open source ERP and POS — a killer combination for a market that needs disrupting, The VAR Guy believes.

Read more at The Var Guy

Linux Mint 5 XFCE Community Edition RC1 (BETA 025) is out and available for download. We’re planning to release the stable version of this edition in two weeks so I hope you’ll be numerous to test it and we’ll receive plenty of feedback.

Please find all relevant information about this release at this address: http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa_xfce.php

I’d also like to thank and congratulate Merlwiz79 for maintaining this edition and for making it better and better with each release.

Have fun with it and don’t forget to give us feedback by replying to this thread.

Clem.

With over a year of inactivity, the latest alpha of nUbuntu 8.04 has finally surfaced.

With this comes many new bug fixes and updates. All of the latest security and penetration tools are included to make this you’re primary pentesting livecd.

We’ve been working hard over the past month to bring you this update and the day has finally come and all the hard work paid off.

If you’re ready to download this, head on over to our download page here:

http://nubuntu.org/downloads.php

This release is much more stable and secure than any of its predecessors.

Please let us know of any bugs and anything you would like to see in the final version of this by posting at

http://forums.nubuntu.org

Join in the chat on IRC with your fellow nUbuntu’ers, we’re on the FreeNode IRC Network in #nubuntu

I would personally like to say thank you to all of our mirrors for donating their bandwidth.

-Phobos

A download manager is a computer program designed to download files from the Internet,unlike a web browser, which is mainly intended to browse web pages on the World Wide Web (with file downloading being of secondary importance).

Read more at Ubuntu Geek

Is Mr Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, slowly warming towards KDE? Or is the man merely trying to keep the KDE folk onside, after a whole host of “technical writers” have attacked the new release of that desktop environment?
Whatever the reason(s), his latest comments - in an interview given to the publication derStandard.at - make for interesting reading.

Like many others who are part of some camp or the other, people who are part of the free and open source software community often tend to fall into the mistake of circling the wagons and not admitting to essential truths, even when these become self-evident. If we do happen to ventilate - and I’m often “guilty” of that cardinal “sin” - then the rest of the righteous crowd shouts us down.

Read more at iTWire

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 99 for the weeks July 6th - July 12th, 2008 is now available. In this issue we cover: special 100th issue of the UWN next week, Intrepid Alpha 2 released, MOTU news and videos, new Universe contributor, summary of UDS discussions, new Kubuntu website, Ubuntu Venezuela 2 year anniversary, Launchpod episode #7, Tutorial of the week, Technical Update, Ubuntu in US retailers, and much, much more!

• Special 100th Issue of the UWN Next Week
• Intrepid Alpha 2 Released
• New MOTU
• New Universe Contributor
• MOTU Videos - “This is how I fix a bug”
• Summary of UDS Discussions
• New Kubuntu Website
• Ubuntu Stats
• Ubuntu-Venezuela Celebrates 2nd Anniversary
• Launchpod Episode #7
• Ubuntu Forums Tutorial
• Technical Update
• In the Press & Blogosphere
• Canonical & Valusoft bring Ubuntu Support to US Retailer
• Upcoming Meetings & Events
• Updates & Security

Special 100th Issue of the UWN Coming Next Week

Don’t miss the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter next week as we celebrate our 100th issue with the Ubuntu community. There will be interviews with community members, a retrospect, and insights from past and present UWN staffers. You definitely won’t want to miss this issue, so make sure your RSS feed is up to date, your email subscription is current, or the wiki bookmarked for a very special anniversary issue of the UWN!

Hello Ubuntu developers,

Welcome to Intrepid Ibex Alpha-2, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.10.

Pre-releases of Intrepid are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable
system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even
frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and
those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 2 is the second in a series of milestone CD images that will be
released throughout the Intrepid development cycle. The Alpha images are
known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while
representing a very recent snapshot of Intrepid. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/intrepid/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-2/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Education Edition)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-2/ (Xubuntu)

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

Alpha 2 includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale
testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha2 for
information on changes in Ubuntu.

This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a
list of known bugs (that you don’t need to report if you encounter), please
see: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha2

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop
Hardy, have a look at the intrepid-changes mailing list:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/intrepid-changes

We also suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list
if you’re interested in following Ubuntu development. This is a
low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of
approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other
interesting events.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu

Enjoy,
–
Steve Langasek
On behalf of the Ubuntu release team

Ubuntu’s rise to power has been rapid, historic and well-deserved. It’s the best Linux distribution ever, but most people only use a fraction of its power. Award-winning Linux author Keir Thomas gets down and dirty with Ubuntu to provide over 300 concise tips that enhance productivity, avoid annoyances, and simply get the most from Ubuntu. You’ll find many unique tips here that can’t be found anywhere else. You’ll also get a crash course in Ubuntu’s flavor of system administration. Whether you’re new to Linux or an old hand, you’ll find tips to make your day easier.

Read more at The Pragmatic Programmers

Upon seeing the news that Ubuntu was being sold in Best Buys for $20, I decided to go down to my local Best Buy and see what the box looked like and where it was.

The placement was fine, not great, not bad. It was no where near the big display of Vista, which is too bad. Instead, it was placed a few shelves under the few remaining boxes of Windows XP. While the placement could have been better, I don’t blame Best Buy at all. It would be surprising if it was displayed as well as Vista.

Read more at Linux Loop