Hi,

As with each and every cycle, we review what we have achieved and discuss what we need to do next. Starting from this cycle (Vivid Vervet), we decided to do things differently and of course, better. We have introduced Ubuntu GNOME Cycle Assessment. Knowing your weakness is needed and sometimes better than knowing only your strength. We can’t become better without knowing our mistakes/weakness and work hard to fix/improve that.

Now, we have a Team Structure. Even better, we have introduced a very helpful way to help us in recruiting new people to our team; we called it Ubuntu GNOME Needed Roles.

And, because:

All of us are smarter than anyone of us

Ubuntu GNOME, as a community project should not be a one-man project but instead, a community, everyone within helps each other.

When Ubuntu GNOME Sub-Teams were created and introduced, it was hard at that time (due to short time limit) to recruit many people needed to fill the roles and be the drivers of these Sub-Teams. Today, a lot has changed and Ubuntu GNOME community is better, bigger and gained more experience by time.

That said, the next step was sending this email and announcing a real change within Ubuntu GNOME community.

And, here is the great news 🙂

• Ubuntu GNOME Marketing and Communications Team
• Ubuntu GNOME Translations Team

Both have NEW Team Leader/Driver 😀

New bloods, accepted the challenge. Not that they are new to Ubuntu GNOME as users, but they are new on these roles.

• Keith Myers – Marketing and Communications NEW Team Leader/Driver
• Elias Psallidas – Acting Marketing and Communications Team Leader
• Efstathios (Stathis) Iosifidis – Translations NEW Team Leader/Driver

All the above people have showed a great deal of interest into Ubuntu GNOME and they have promised to support, help and work hard side by side to make Ubuntu GNOME even better. Thus, offer taken and challenge accepted.

There are more needed roles. We are looking for more people to join in.

Meanwhile, we are very much pleased to make this official announcement and we are confident that the new drivers will do their best. Please, join me to welcome them to their new roles and wish them all the best 🙂

Thank you!

Ali/amjjawad
Ubuntu GNOME Community Manager

Hi,

On the mailing list, I have sent this email.

Who is interested to use/run Ubuntu GNOME as a Rolling Release?!

And apparently, there are many interested in this idea.

To keep it simple and short, here is how to achieve that.

First of all, those who are testing Ubuntu GNOME Development Releases (Vivid Vervet for this cycle), are actually using Ubuntu GNOME as a Rolling Release and perhaps they don’t even know that 🙂

1. Go to Ubuntu GNOME Testing Wiki Page.
2. Download the latest daily build.
3. Install it on your machine/virtual machine.
4. Done – you are now using a Rolling Release.

Once Vivid Vervet (15.04) will be released, then your system will be stable once you update it on the release day.

Then, how can you keep using Ubuntu GNOME as a Rolling Release?

That is very easy:

1. There is a release called “devel“.
2. If you put that in /etc/apt/sources.list instead of utopic/vivid etc, you will be kicked over the new devel version a few days after it opens.
3. No need to ever upgrade to the next version/release; just a dist-upgrade is enough.

These days, the devel series are a bit stable, there are lots of automated testing, that makes sure everything is installable and passes tests before it propagates to the main archive. There is the odd issue that slips through the tests, but they get fixed quickly and while we wouldn’t recommend it for a full production system, the people that want the latest and greatest GNOME and tinker a bit, would be fine on it.

This is how to edit /etc/apt/sources.list?

For this cycle, whenever you see “vivid“, replace that with “devel“. Once WW Cycle will start, you don’t need to do anything except waiting until the new development cycle officially starts.

I hope that was fun, helpful and useful. If you have any Question/Feedback, please contact us.

Thank you!

Ali/amjjawad
Ubuntu GNOME Community Manager

Update: https://www.gnome.org/news/2014/11/groupon-has-agreed-to-change-its-product-name/

Hello Ubuntu GNOME Community,

Sad but true. Everyone I suppose is shocked. I have seen this today on Facebook – Help the GNOME Foundation defend the GNOME trademark against Groupon! – and I still can’t believe my eyes but this is not a joke, sadly .. this is true and official:

“GNOME” has been a familiar name in software for the past 17 years, and a registered trademark since 2006. The GNOME project has been a staple desktop for GNU/Linux and BSD desktops. It was the default desktop for Sun Microsystems workstation class machines, continues to be the default desktop for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server distributions, and it is the default desktop of Fedora and Debian. SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service solution for the retail industry is based on GNOME. GNOME technology can be found in TVs, tablets, phones, consumer devices, and in common software everywhere.

Recently Groupon announced a product with the same product name as GNOME. Groupon’s product is a tablet based point of sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation.” The GNOME community was shocked that Groupon would use our mark for a product so closely related to the GNOME desktop and technology.

Please read this email from Tobias Mueller.

I have contacted GNOME Foundation by sending this email to the mailing list. And after spreading the word, I sent this email too. I have also contacted Ubuntu GNOME Community and informed everyone via the mailing list and this one as well. This has been done to make sure everyone is informed and updated.

Now, with this post on Ubuntu GNOME Website, even more people within Ubuntu GNOME should be informed. I shall also share this on Ubuntu GNOME Social Media channels.

As mentioned on the emails, if you can’t donate money, kindly donate some of your time to help GNOME Foundation defend the GNOME Trademark against Groupon.

I have created the above banner which could be used on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any other site/channel. Please, feel free to use it.

Do not forget to use these hashtags: #DefendGNOME #GNOME

Everyone is invited to help and spread the word.

Thank you for reading and we expect some serious action from your side!

Ali/amjjawad
Ubuntu GNOME Community Leader