With 2007 coming to an end, I started thinking about the time I’ve spent in the Ubuntu community. This was the first year that I moved from being a user to a contributor.

Writing for the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, I try to keep my ear to the ground and track the major happenings in the community. It is truly amazing to see how large the Ubuntu community is and how fast it continues to grow. To LoCos getting more and more interested members everyday, all over the world, to the increasing numbers joining the MOTU ranks. Two great releases have garnered Ubuntu lots of press and blog coverage. Here are some of my highlights of the year.

Major Releases

Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) - The first release of the year came out with a bang. The Windows migration tool helped copy over IE favorites, Firefox bookmarks, wallpapers, and IM contacts into Ubuntu. An easy codec installation UI made it easy to download everything needed to play mp3, divx, xvid, and various other file formats, increasing Ubuntu’s entertainment value. A Restricted Drivers Manager simplified installation of proprietary wireless and video drivers.

Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) - Enabled by default, Compiz Fusion brings the bling to the masses. Firefox comes with an integrated plugin finder wizard that allows for easy installation of addons like Flash and AdBlock. AppArmor provides an additional layer of protection against undiscovered security vulnerabilities in applications.

Gobuntu - Sticking to the FSF’s four freedoms, this release contains only open-source non-restricted software.

JeOS - Pronounced “juice,” Just Enough Operating System is meant specifically for virtual appliances. A smaller size and performance optimized for virtualization products, it is targeted for ISVs interesting in building appliances that can be rolled out in large virtual deployments.

Mobile and Embedded Project - Sponsored by Canonical and Intel, the project aims to deliver an OS for mobile internet devices based on Ubuntu. The UI framework is based on Hildon, a GNOME project. A pre-alpha version has been released with Ubuntu 7.10.

Community Happenings

There has been tremendous work done by LoCos promoting and supporting Ubuntu in their respective communities. While many new teams were created, 24 teams became approved LoCos:

ArgentinaTeam, AustriaTeam, BangladeshiTeam, BrazilianTeam, CanadianTeam, CatalanTeam, DanishTeam, IranianTeam, NicaraguanTeam, SerbianTeam, SwissTeam, ThaiTeam, US-DCTeam, US-FloridaTeam, GeorgiaUSTeam, US-KentuckyTeam, US-MassachusettsTeam, US-NewJerseyTeam, US-NewMexicoTeam, US-MichiganTeam, US-OhioTeam, US-PennsylvaniaTeam, US-UtahTeam, VenezuelanTeam

Not like anyone needs a reason to party, but the releases gave all LoCos a chance to enjoy themselves. Feisty release parties and Gutsy release parties were held all over the world to celebrate all the hard work the community had done. Many pictures can be found on Flickr and Picasa.

Not only did LoCos support their respective communities, but many went out of their way to help other LoCos. For example, the MassachusettsTeam took the initiative to organize a bulk purchase of aluminum case badges that Ubuntu users could proudly display on their computers. 18,000 thousands badges were ordered at 21 cents (USD) a piece. They were distributed in the US, France, UK, Switzerland, Costa Rica, and many other countries.

The Community Council also recognized over a hundred new members for their work in LoCos, translations, forums, IRC, and many other different aspects of Ubuntu.

The Ubuntu Forums is the first line of support for many users. Stats from March show, on average, 14,000 new accounts are created each month, 22,000 new threads a month, 136,000 new posts each month, 3.7 million visits each month, and about 12.6 million page views per month. With the increased popularity of Ubuntu from the release of 7.04 and 7.10, these numbers have likely increased considerably!

Open Week provided people a chance to find out more about Ubuntu and the community. Online workshops were held to learn more about Ubuntu, talking to developers, and learning about tools available to the community. Topics ranged from packaging and LoCo teams to Q&A sessions with Mark Shuttleworth. Logs of the Feisty sessions and Gutsy sessions are available on the wiki.

Full Circle Magazine started up earlier this year to cover Ubuntu and OSS. The magazine contains reviews, How-Tos, interviews, Q&As, and covers the various Ubuntu derivitaves. Issue #8 has just been released!

Not everything went well though. Community hosted servers which housed the online presence of some LoCos and projects were compromised since they were running unsupported versions of Ubuntu. There was much misinformation being floated around, like some mistakenly assuming that Canonical was responsible for running the servers. Now, LoCos and projects do have the option of having sites on Canonical hosted and maintained servers, or providing their own hosting.

Dude, You Got A Dell!

While vendors like system76 and ZaReason have been selling computers pre-installed with Ubuntu for some time, Dell made a huge splash by announcing they would do the same. The machines are available in the US and Europe. On its wiki, Dell makes available 7.04 and 7.10 ISOs that include all the necessary drivers for their computers. http://www.dell.com/open

Positive Press

Ubuntu’s success was well recognized by the media. At CeBit, PC Welt awarded Ubuntu the “Editor’s Choice Award for Open Source.” Coming in at #16 on PC World’s Top 20 Products of the Year: “Fast and friendly, Ubuntu has solidified itself as the one Linux distribution that Linux geeks love and newbies can comfortably use.” Linux Magazine listed Canonical as one of the 20 companies to watch in 2007.

While Ubuntu is known to be used internally at Google and IBM (ODP) and sites like the Internet Archive, the biggest deployment may be in Macedonia. 7,000 Ubuntu PCs have already been sent to Macedonian schools, 20,000 are expected to be eventually deployed. More than 160,000 students will share the machines through hardware provided by NComputing.

Blogosphere

Probably the most widely discussed video of the year belongs to a librarian. At Calef Library, in Washington, Vermont, Jessamyn Charity West, created a video of installing Ubuntu on donated computers. Since the computers came with no licenses for Windows, Jessamyn records the process of burning an ISO of Ubuntu and overwriting Windows. On camera, she demonstrates how Ubuntu is instantly useful to library users since it comes with OpenOffice and Gaim pre-installed. See the video at http://www.librarian.net/stax/2042/do-you-ubuntu/.

Matthew Garrett’s dissection of Automatix created lots of contraversy. While acknowledging that Automatix filled a need, he says that “Automatix is actively dangerous to systems - ranging from damage to small items of user configuration, through removing user-installed packages without adequate prompting or warning and up to the (small but existing) potential to leave a system in an unbootable state.” http://mjg59.livejournal.com/77440.html

Laptop hard drive wear and tear was also a hot topic. Hard drives are rated for a certain number of load/unload cycles and enabling power management through laptop-mode could shorten the lifespan of the hard drive. The issue is most likely the default BIOS or firmware settings, which Ubuntu does not change. The blog that started the discussion: http://www.linux-hero.com/rant/explanation-ubuntu-hard-drive-wear-and-tear. Matthew Garrett’s response at http://mjg59.livejournal.com/77672.html.

All this covers merely a drop in the Ubuntu bucket. Many LoCos have successfully run large install fests and gotten libraries and schools to deploy Ubuntu. MOTUs keep bringing us better and better apps. Well known companies are using Ubuntu and Ubuntu will become more ubiquitous once it is deployed on mobile devices.

This year has been exciting in the Ubuntu world. With the upcoming release of 8.04 LTS, 2008 will present even more fun opportunities!