Four months ago Jono Bacon, the intrepid Ubuntu Community Manager, laid out plans for an Ubuntu Accomplishments application that would award users for accomplishing activities that would potentially forward the Ubuntu movement.

Accomplishments range from the basic tasks of registering with Launchpad, signing the Ubuntu code of conduct to more prestigious triumphs like becoming a community council member or an Ubuntu core developer. This app has now been realized.

A ton of work has gone into this project. The Ubuntu community is alive and well and continues the momentum of innovation other linux distributions rarely see. The first release of this app showcases some features but is no where near complete. Its worth installing and “checking” off items you have accomplished and it will give you goals to work for as well.

You can only install this on the new recently released version of Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin and its easy to do. You will need to install the PPA so updates for this app will be automatic for you.

Open up a terminal window and type this (and press enter):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-accomplishments/releases

Now update your package list:

sudo apt-get update

Now install the packages:

sudo apt-get install accomplishments-daemon accomplishments-viewer ubuntu-community-accomplishments

That should do it. Now go up to your Unity dash (top left) and type in “accomplishments” and you should find the newly installed app. Click to run it. If you already have a Launchpad account, click that trophy and type in your Launchpad email. This clever app will extrapolate your data from your account and award you trophies accordingly.

Great job Jono and to all who worked on this!

Read Jono’s original post here for more info: http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/05/01/first-ubuntu-accomplishments-release/

If you are keen to upgrade and try it out there are a couple ways to go about it.

#1 – press ALT+F2 and type in:

update-manager -d

Pressing ALT+F2 will bring up a box where you will enter the command above. It will look like one of these photos depending on which version of Ubuntu you have…

The Ubuntu Update Manager will start up and make sure to update all of your programs before clicking the Upgrade button. After doing all of the software updates, go ahead and proceed to press the New Ubuntu release ‘12.04’ is available Upgrade button.

Sit back and wait a couple hours if not longer. If you have a fast internet connection, then thats great. It will only take 20-60 minutes for a fast connection to download all of the upgrades. Now, depending on how fast your computer is will also determine the installation of all of your downloaded files. On an older single core processor expect another 60-90 minutes. One new multi core, like an i5 or i7 processor… this could go quite fast and you will be ready to go in no time!

#2 – The other method which Ive become a fan of is to download the ISO file right HERE and burn the file to disc and make a live CD of it. Then reboot the computer into the live disc (in this case 12.04 beta as an example) and you will be presented with a menu like such…

Select the second option “Upgrade Ubuntu XX.XX to XX.XX”. If you dont have this option dont continue as you might end up erasing your data.

I prefer this method of upgrading as it tends to go a bit quicker.

There is a beautiful new print test page that appeared about a month ago for the new release of Ubuntu 12.04. It looks very classy and offers more benefits. The new design uses a lot less ink and even offers printer info such as printer, PPD driver used, and media limit size. The photo above is from an old HP printer I just hooked up. Ubuntu found it immediately and now I need to run the printer alignment tool thats part of the HPLIP toolbox found in the Ubuntu Software Center.

Old Ubuntu Print Test Page:

Development Update

The Precise Pangolin Beta 2 is set to be released on Thursday, the 29th, If you feel comfortable testing beta releases, get the latest daily build and keep it updated. Don’t forget to report any bugs you find!
From now on it’s only one month until the release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Here’s the run-down of what is going to happen in the following weeks:

• Week of April 5th: Kernel Freeze.
• Week of April 12th: Non Language-Pack Translation Deadline (Tuesday), Final Freeze, Language-Pack Test Rebuild (Friday).
• Week of April 19th: Language-Pack Translation Deadline (Tuesday), Candidate Window Starts.
• Week of April 26th: Unseeded Universe Final Freeze (Tue), Final Release!

You know what this means: get your testing cap on or get ready to fix some last minute bugs.

Letting developers speak for themselves

• Server Team lead Robbie Williamson points out a great article about juju.
• Kees Cook announces the availability of seccomp filters in Ubuntu and how to use them.
• Michael Hall points out a nice article about Unity 5.8.
• Matt Fischer wrote a blog entry about how to use ubuntu-defaults-builder for rolling your own distro.
• Bjoern Michaelsen reports there’s a team putting together nice templates for LibreOffice.
• Marcin Juszkiewicz explains how to cross-compile a kernel an ARM kernel in Ubuntu 12.04.

Events

LibreOffice HackFest on April 14/15, 2012

Release Parties

And just a reminder to watch Ubuntu LoCo Directory for a Ubuntu 12.04 Release Party near you coming next month.

Things which need to get done

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed:

• There are Merges which need to be done (main,restricted, universe, multiverse).
• Also the Ubuntu Mozilla team is looking for help, so if you’re excited about Mozilla and what’s happening there, join IRC, talk to the guys on #ubuntu-mozillateam on irc.freenode.net.
• And then there are Security bugs you can take a look at, the team is a friendly bunch and they’re incredibly helpful in getting your patch reviewed.
• There are bitesize bugs.

• Also did John Lea from the Ubuntu Design team talk to us and mentioned that there are bugs up for grabs, where the design has been decided on and the implementation might need YOUR help. If you want to help improve Ubuntu’s UI, have a look at these!

First timers!

Adam Gandelman got upload rights for Ubuntu Server! Congratulations!
On their way to become Ubuntu developers, we had three folks who got their first uploads into Ubuntu. We have Vibhav Pant, who fixed bugs in gthumb, mercurial and kupfer. Also Vibhav synced ebook-speaker, jinput and calendarserver from Debian. Next up is Pasi Lallinaho who got a new version of xubuntu-artwork in. Charles Kerr got new versions of libappindicator, indicator-session, indicator-power and indicator-datetime into Ubuntu. Well done everyone!

Get Involved

1. Read the Introduction to Ubuntu Development. It’s a short article which will help you understand how Ubuntu is put together, how the infrastructure is used and how we interact with other projects.
2. Follow the instructions in the Getting Set Up article. A few simple commands, a registration at Launchpad and you should have all the tools you need, and you’re ready to go.
3. Check out our instructions for how to fix a bug in Ubuntu, they come with small examples that make it easier to visualise what exactly you need to do.

Find something to work on

Pick a bitesize bug. These are the bugs we think should be easy to fix. Another option is to help out in one of our initiatives.

• Help out with fixing packages which don’t build anymore.
• Help out with security bugs.

In addition to that there are loads more opportunities over at Harvest.

Getting in touch

There are many different ways to contact Ubuntu developers and get your questions answered.

• Be interactive and reach us immediately: talk to us in #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net.
• Follow mailing lists and get involved in the discussions: ubuntu-devel-announce (announce only, low traffic), ubuntu-devel (high-level discussions), ubuntu-devel-discuss (fairly general developer discussions).
• Stay up to date and follow the ubuntudev account on Facebook, Google+, Identi.ca or Twitter.

The wallpapers for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin have been selected! The 15 selected designs are now available for download here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-wallpapers/+bug/933562/+attachment/2918127/+files/Pangolin%20Wallpapers%20v1.1.zip

There are some great shots in this new batch and a few I could do without. There will be some changes with the future Ubuntu wallpaper selection process such as extending the process length so people new to Ubuntu can get their designs in as well as the possibility of limiting the number of entries per person. “Many people submitted way more images than is sensible. We have a very detailed photo diary of someone’s holiday, for example, and that’s not what choosing wallpapers is all about.”

Which ones are your favorites? Im a fan of any green landscape scene and the “Forbidden City” wallpaper in this release is exceptional.

Codenamed “Precise Pangolin”, 12.04 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 throughout this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

This release introduces a new set of images for the ARMv7 “hard float” ABI, denoted as armhf. There are still some armel images around, as we finish the migration, but 12.04 for ARM will be based on armhf.

The technology that allows GPUs to go into a very low power consumption state when the GPU is idle (RC6) is now enabled by default for Sandy Bridge systems, which should result in considerable power savings when this stage is activated.

The CD image size has been adjusted to 703MB to squeeze in every bit of package goodness we can on the installation CD images.

With Ubuntu 12.04, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Ubuntu Studio also reached Beta 1 status today.

Ubuntu Changes

Some of the new features now available are:

• A new way to quickly search and access any desktop application’s and indicator’s menu, called the HUD, can be accessed by taping the Alt key and entering characters.
• Unity setting can now be configured by the System Setting panel, and Nautilus support has been added to the Unity launcher.
• Support for ClickPad devices has been enhanced an now when a button is pressed on the trackpad surface, a second finger may be used to drag the cursor.
• The default music player has been switched to Rhythmbox, which again includes the UbuntuOne music store.
• LibreOffice has been updated to 3.5 beta 2. Please report any regressions that you notice.
• When installing packages through the software center, the corresponding language support packages are now installed automatically as well.

Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ for details.

Ubuntu Server and Cloud Images

• Improvements to OpenStack, LXC, and server provisioning have been included.
• The identity service (Keystone) used by OpenStack for authentication (authN) and high-level authorization (authZ) was updated to Keystone-light (redux branch).

Ubuntu Core

Ubuntu Core is a minimal rootfs for use in the creation of custom images, and now includes ARM hard float (armhf) images. Developers can use Ubuntu Core as the basis for their application demonstrations, constrained environment deployments, device support packages, and other goals.

Kubuntu

Kubuntu 12.04 Beta 1 has updated KDE’s plasma and applications to 4.8. In addition other significant changes include:

• Telepathy-KDE brings improved instant messaging to Kubuntu, offering easy chat capabilities on Facebook, MSN, GMail and many other services.
• Amarok 2.5 has added an MP3 shop and integration with GPodder, an online personal podcast archive.
• The Calligra office and creativity suite is now available, featuring Krita the world’s best painting app and top MS Office file importers.

Please see https://wiki.kubuntu.org/PrecisePangolin/Beta1/Kubuntu for details.

Edubuntu

Edubuntu 12.04 Beta 1 now ships the newest upstream version of LTSP 5.3, offering improved support for fat clients and other improvements. Other significant changes include:

• Epoptes, the new classroom management software, has an updated user interface.
• The Ubiquity slideshow has been updated.
• pastebinit and vim are now both installed by default.

For more details on what has changed in Edubuntu 12.04, please refer to http://www.edubuntu.org.

Xubuntu

Xubuntu 12.04 Beta 1 now uses the new Ubiquity installer. Other significant changes include:

• Alacarte is available by default, and will show all Xfce-related menu items on Xubuntu as well.
• New wallpaper and other tweaks and improvements to the looks of Xubuntu are in, including lots of GTK3 fixes for the Greybird theme.

For more information about the changes in Xubuntu 12.04, please go to http://xubuntu.org/.

Lubuntu

Lubuntu 12.04 now uses Lightdm as the display manager with the default gtk greeter. A new software-center optimized for Lubuntu is now available by default as well.

For more information about the changes in Lubuntu 12.04, please go to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu.

Ubuntu Studio

Ubuntu Studio 12.04 Beta 1 ships a live DVD for the first time,and is properly configured for the lightdm greeter. The XFCE transition is now almost complete, and there is an updated application set for typical desktop tasks (i.e. text editor, movie player, etc)

Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/precise/beta1 for more details on the above products.

About Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, and servers, 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.

To Get Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 1

To upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 1 from Ubuntu 11.10, follow these instructions:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PreciseUpgrades

Or, download Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 1 images from a location near you:
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/download (Ubuntu and Ubuntu Server).

In addition they can be found at the following links:

• http://releases.ubuntu.com/precise/ (Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server)
• http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/beta-1/ (Ubuntu Cloud Images)
• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/beta-1/ (Ubuntu DVD, preinstalled ARM images, source)
• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-core/releases/12.04/beta-1/ (Ubuntu Core)
• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/12.04/ (Ubuntu Netboot)
• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/precise/beta-1/ (Kubuntu)
• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/precise/beta-1/ (Xubuntu)
• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/precise/beta-1/ (Edubuntu)
• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/precise/beta-1/ (Ubuntu Studio)
• http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/precise/beta-1/ (Lubuntu)

The final version of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is expected to be released on April 26, 2012.

More Information

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

Ubuntu 12.04 is shaping up nicely. Last week Alpha 2 got released, which means you should be testing by now. Next week we will hit Feature Freeze, by which time we “stop introducing new features, packages, and APIs, and concentrate on fixing bugs in the development release”. This also means that new upstream versions (if they not part of on the release team’s list of exceptions or pure bug fix releases) will need to get a freeze exception from the release team. This is also a reason why Daniel Holbach called for a “Sponsorship Friday”, so the queue of uploads which need code review is emptied again.

Matt Fischer wrote an interesting article about how to write a LightDM greeter. The post is really well done, explaining how LightDM works internally and how to get the greeter done easily.

Events

We are excited to let you know about the Ubuntu Global Jam, an event where Ubuntu LoCo Teams around the world meet, have fun and together make Ubuntu better. Be it through translations, work on bugs, documentation, testing, packaging or whatever else. Check out the list of participating events to find if there’s something happening near where you live, or start an event yourself!

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Things which need to get done

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed:

• There’s Merges that need to be done (main, restricted, universe, multiverse).
• Also is the Ubuntu Mozilla team looking for help, so if you’re excited about Mozilla and what’s happening there, join IRC, talk to the guys on #ubuntu-mozillateam on irc.freenode.net.
• And then there’s Security bugs you can take a look at, the team is a friendly bunch and they’re incredibly helpful in getting your patch reviewed.
• There are bitesize bugs.
• Also did John Lea from the Ubuntu Design team talk to us and mentioned that there are bugs up for grabs, where the design has been decided on and the implementation might need YOUR help. If you want to help improve Ubuntu’s UI, have a look at these!

First timers!

We had a number of folks getting involved last week: Daniel d’Andrada, Nicolas Bonnefon, Kiall Mac Innes and Anton Gladky.

Spotlight: Kubuntu, alive and kicking

Benjamin Kerensa and Daniel Holbach briefly interviewed some of the Kubuntu developers to get an idea where things stand with Kubuntu.

The announcement that Canonical employee Jonathan Riddell would soon focus on goals other than Kubuntu maintenance has been widely been discussed in the media, so first we asked the team, if they would like to add anything to these discussions which had been missed. Jonathan Riddell started out by saying that “pulling the plug” as many headlines have put it was too harsh and that Kubuntu will get the community support it always has done. Also he pointed out that Kubuntu did pleasingly well during 11.10 when he also wasn’t working on it. We asked if the lack of you being involved full time would have any noticeable impact. Jonathan responded and said that he does community management, so nudges people towards tasks that they are capable of, and fills in areas of Kubuntu that are sometimes neglected, such as ISO testing and that these tasks will have been done by others.

As many readers probably don’t know how Kubuntu is put together, we asked how Kubuntu development has worked up until now. Rohan Garg gave us an overview: Basically, the Kubuntu team deals with the KDE and Qt packages in the Ubuntu archive, so whenever a new release is about to be made the team gets the source tarballs a couple of days before release and the team of “ Kubuntu ninjas” get cracking. They build, patch, and see to it that everything works as expected before release day, reporting any build issues upstream and getting tarballs respun is part and parcel of the job. Sometimes it happens that everyone is busy which causes delays in the release. Once the Kubuntu release is out, packages are usually backported into the Ubuntu backports repositories for the current stable release. The Kubuntu ninjas are also responsible for other KDE packages such as Amarok which are not part of the standard KDE release and as Jonathan Riddell pointed out that there is Qt and related bits too and added “with luck we can do some feature development (which is mostly specced out at UDS)”.

Testing is important as well. Jonathan mentioned ISO testing and Philip Muškovac explained that before stable release updates are pushed out, testing is done through public PPAs. Rohan and Philip went on and described how most of Kubuntu’s bug work is being done upstream: KDE bugs are directly reported in the KDE bug tracker, as KDE applications have their own bug/crash handling framework. Philip added that it would be great to have more contributions to bugs in Launchpad, so they can be forwarded to Upstream in a more timely fashion

Next we asked what’s in the cards for Kubuntu 12.04. Philip explained that the introduction of KDE 4.8 took a lot of time and that he is still supporting the Oxygen theme for GTK3. Rohan mentioned that a new IM client is being packaged right now, using the Telepathy framework. The packaging is almost done and testing will go on for a week before they enter the archive. Also was Rohan proud to admit that he is going to apply for Kubuntu upload rights!

It is interesting to note that Philip and Rohan both mentioned that the withdrawal of “official support” would actually make the development of Kubuntu easier: up until now all packages for the Kubuntu CDs had to be in the main repository, which requires a thorough investigation of the code. From now on Kubuntu bits could come from main and universe.

It is absolutely possible to contribute to Kubuntu and the team has enough tasks lined up, so you can help out. If it is triage of bugs, ISO testing, documentation or packaging: everyone is welcome to contribute and get involved. Jonathan mentioned that it is important that you are a “motivated self starter”, but that the fine people in #kubuntu-devel can help you out if you get stuck. The Kubuntu wiki page has more details.

Get Involved

1. Read the Introduction to Ubuntu Development. It’s a short article which will help you understand how Ubuntu is put together, how the infrastructure is used and how we interact with other projects.
2. Follow the instructions in the Getting Set Up article. A few simple commands, a registration at Launchpad and you should have all the tools you need, and you’re ready to go.
3. Check out our instructions for how to fix a bug in Ubuntu, they come with small examples that make it easier to visualise what exactly you need to do.

Find something to work on

Pick a bitesize bug. These are the bugs we think should be easy to fix. Another option is to help out in one of our initiatives.

• Help out with fixing packages that don’t build anymore.
• Help out with security bugs.

In addition to that there are loads more opportunities over at Harvest.

Getting in touch

There are many different ways to contact Ubuntu developers and get your questions answered.

• Be interactive and reach us most immediately: talk to us in #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net.
• Follow mailing lists and get involved in the discussions: ubuntu-devel-announce (announce only, low traffic), ubuntu-devel (high-level discussions), ubuntu-devel-discuss (fairly general developer discussions).
• Stay up to date and follow the ubuntudev account on Facebook, Google+, Identi.ca or Twitter.

The Ubuntu Wallpaper Flickr Group for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin is open for submissions! You can go here to see whats been uploaded and to upload your own…

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1860176@N24/

We have added submissions for most of the Ubuntu releases in the past few years. You can see what we submitted for 11.10 here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iheartubuntu

If you are a photographer or a wiz with graphics, we hope you join in and contribute to Ubuntu. this is an easy way to help out the greatest linux distro! UBUNTU!

It’s a perennial pleasure to pick pertinent and/or pithy placeholder names for Ubuntu releases. At least, I like to think of them as pertinent and/or pithy. I’ve had diverse feedback, shall we say. Nevertheless, it’s now a tradition, and it’s a pressing priority as we approach the release of Oneiric.

So, what will be our mascot for 12.04 LTS?

The letter P is pretty perfect. It’s also plentiful – my inbox has been rather full of suggestions – and we have options ranging from pacific to purposeful, via puckish and prudent. We’ll steer clear of the posh and the poncey, much as some would revel in the Portentious Palomino or the Principled Paca, those aren’t the winning names. Having spent the last six months elucidating the meaning of “oneiric” I think it might also be worth skipping the parenthetical or paralogical options too; so sadly I had to exclude the Perspicacious Panda and Porangi Packhorse (though being an LTS, that Packhorse was a near thing).

Being generally of a cheerful nature, I thought we’d avoid the Predatory Panther and Primeval Possum. Neither sounds like great company for a seven year journey, really. Same goes for the Peccable Peccary, Pawky Python and Perfidious Puku. So many bullets to dodge round here!

We’re looking for something phonetic, something plausible and something peaceful too. We’ll avoid the petulant, the pestilent, the phlegmy (phooey!), the parochial, the palliative and the psychotic. We’re aiming for mildly prophetic, and somewhat potent, without wanting to be all pedantic and particular. Phew.
So, what might work?

There are lots of lovely candidates. I have a fondness for phat. The Phat Platypus has a can-do kind of ring to it, but I don’t think it’ll fly.

I also like punchy and perky (the Perky Penguin is a nice nostalgic option) and persistent (better than permanent, peerless or penultimate) and playful and plucky and poised. Others like prescient and peaceable and pervasive (!) and pivotal. Pukka rings a nice old-world bell, but it’s possibly pejorative.
As you can see, it’s been something of a challenge to get this right.

Let’s ask the question differently – what are we trying to convey? 12.04 is an LTS. So we want it to be tough and long-lasting, reliable, solid as a rock and well defended. It’s also going to be the face of Ubuntu for large deployments for a long time, so we want it to have no loose ends, we want it to be coherent, neat.

We’ve told the story of the cloud in previous releases, and that comes to fruition in 12.04 with the first LTS that supports both the cloud guest, and cloud infrastructure, across ARM and x86 architectures. We’ve also told the story of Unity in previous releases, and that comes to fruition in a fast, lean interface that works well across clients both thick and thin. 12.04 is going to be a lot more than all that, but for the full reveal, you’ll need to wait till UDS! Nevertheless, we can take reliability, precision, and polish as a given.

Balancing all of those options, I think we have just the right mix in our designated mascot for 12.04 LTS. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Precise Pangolin.

Now, I’ve recently spent a few hours tracking a pangolin through the Kalahari. I can vouch for their precision – there wasn’t an ant hill in the valley that he missed. Their scales are a wonder of detail and quite the fashion statement. I can also vouch for their toughness; pangolin’s regularly survive encounters with lions. All in all, a perfect fit. There’s no sassier character, and no more cheerful digger, anywhere in those desert plains. If you want a plucky partner, the pangolin’s your match. Let’s pack light for a wonderful adventure together. See you in Orlando!

Originally posted here by Mark Shuttleworth on Wednesday, October 5, 2011.