The Gutsy Gibbon

The Gutsy Gibbon

In an announcement to the Ubuntu Development Announcement mailing list, Mark Shuttleworth announced the next version of (K)(X)Ubuntu, the Gutsy Gibbon. No longer will we be referencing Feisty+1 or the next release or the yet unamed version, but Ubuntu 7.10 will be now known as the Gutsy Gibbon.
In the email Mark describes why the Gibbon won over the Gnu:

The Gibbon won the G-race to be our engineering mascot for this next
release, but it was a close run. We very much wanted to honour the
tremendous contributions of the GNU project to Free Software by awarding
the role to the Glossy Gnu. This prompted an intense internal debate
about trademarks, at which both the Fiery Fox and the Icy Weasel were
heard. In the end, however, the judge, jury and elocutionary (that would
be me) took a liking to the Gibbon’s extraordinary reach, and the Gibbon
won outright.

In the announcement email, Mark mentions that the Gibbon will expand the Ubuntu commitment for having open source drivers and not including binary drivers by default and increasing cooperation w/ the folks behind Gnewsense a completely GNU distribution of Ubuntu

[N]o firmware, drivers, imagery, sounds, applications, or other content which do not include
full source materials and come with full rights of modification,
remixing and redistribution. There should be no more conservative home,
for those who demand a super-strict interpretation of the “free” in free
software. This work will be done in collaboration with the folks behind
Gnewsense.

Hopefully this commitment will increase the desire of companies to produce open source drivers for video cards, sound cards, etc…

In further related news the release schedule for 7.10, the Gutsy Gibbon, has been announced and released on the wiki page. There are several changes in the schedule from the Feisty release schedule and they are noted in another email from the release manager, Scott Remmant.

- there are 6 milestone releases; initially spaced three weeks apart, then moving to two weeks apart from FeatureFreeze onwards.

- the developer sprint is a little earlier in the process, this was to accommodate dates of conferences and known developer holidays.

- BetaRelease is one week after the release of GNOME 2.20.0

FinalRelease is three weeks after Beta, instead of the usual four; this is to allow us to release on October 18th. We will release with as many of the GNOME 2.20.1 fixes as possible.

The milestone releases, know in Feisty as Herds, will be known as tribes with the first one scheduled for June 7th, 2007. Development will open up the day that Feisty is released w/ the toolchain first being updated and then the usual flow from upstream to actual product will occur. For more detailed information visit the release schedule wiki page

An iPod for every kid, give me a break

I can’t believe this article, Democrats in the State legislator want to pass a law that will give all students in schools in the state of Michigan an iPod or other type of MP3 player. Sure that will help students study better and graduate. What an absolute friggen joke our state is becoming. Already people are leaving Detroit in droves forcing the city to close 35 schools (they orginally planned to close up to 50 some reports say).
There are other great points in the article, great jems that show how brilliant those in State House an Senate are, the Senate Democrat leader Andy Dillon has another brilliant plan.

For example, Dillon says he would shift the burden of business taxes to companies that operate in Michigan, but don’t have a facility here. The certain outcome of that plan is to drive even more businesses out of Michigan.

That’s great tax companies investing in Michigan but don’t have facilities in the state. I am sure that will make more people want to invest in the state. Awesome…. I’m sure that will help the state out. Maybe I’ll move to Arkansas which Michigan seems to have taken over as the laughing stock of the country

Official Ubuntu Book in Japanese!!!

I was a little behind in checking my email and just saw an email that The Official Ubuntu book, will be translated into Japanese. That is so cool, something that I helped write will be available in different languages. It is pretty awesome to be a published author, well co-author, but still, and it is a further honor that people will be translating the book into another langaguge. Good luck translating the updated book for Feisty.

UPDATE:
Looks like the version released will be the “old” version which is w/ the Dapper information.

Since the publisher only have the english version talking about Dapper, the
translated version is based on original book for Dapper.
But we think Japanese Ubuntu users will hope to know about Feisty,
we added informations about Feisty. I hope this makes clear about which version.

Bored or Burned out???

I’ve been struggeling lately trying to find something exciting to do again, some how to get back working on either Altiris stuff or Kubuntu stuff and yet I sit in front of the computer completly bored and lacking focus and drive on what I want to do. I’ve finished the updates for The Official Ubuntu book and the documentation for Feisty has been released. Now I have no clue what I want to do.
I also am busy working on site again next week for the next 3 weeks so I will be busy again and not blogging much, though I doubt people read this site this much.