A few days ago it became known that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China has decided to use Ubuntu as a reference operating system for its national program running, emphasizing its advantages such as flexibility, openness, the popularity and availability of standards development. Announcement was the result of a five-year transition plan and the accelerated growth of open source software ecosystem in China.

Everything else, in Beijing will be an office development, which Canonical, in close cooperation with their Chinese counterparts will be to further develop the Ubuntu with a focus on the Chinese market.

New official derived distro will be called Ubuntu Kylin, which, like the other versions of the operating system family Ubuntu, will be presented in April. The distinctive features of the Chinese version of the statute, except, of course, complete localization, characteristics such as the inclusion of the Chinese calendar, input methods and integration with local services.

According to Mark Shuttleworth:

Release Ubuntu Kylin Chinese community will integrate with the community of free software Ubuntu.

Added:

C Ubuntu Kylin, China will get a secure and stable operating system that was created with a global community of Ubuntu. Ubuntu combines proven technology, mature ecosystem and strong partnerships with the ISV and OEM manufacturers, and coupled with the initiative of cooperation with China, we also have the strength to develop for all platforms, phones, tablets, servers, desktops and clouds.

The integration in cooperation with the 7digital -powered and available for Ubuntu 10.04 Ubuntu One Music Store was previously using the Gnome media player Rhythmbox. Banshee also has a corresponding extension. The shares purchased will be transferred except as a local downloads in the personal Ubuntu One memory of the user and can be synchronized from there, with each connected client PC. At extra cost from there also streaming the shares purchased is possible on a mobile phone.

Like Ubuntu, now tells , the Music Store has been extended so that users acquire their music directly via browser or mobile phone. The pieces move without downloading directly in Rhythmbox in Ubuntu One’s personal area. The user starts on his computer to Ubuntu One client, it automatically synchronizes with the Music Store and is available for the shares purchased. Alternatively, the access via the Ubuntu One Web Dash is possible. Also can be traced in the browser changes. Functionally, the new store so that the same comfort as the Ubuntu One Music Store in Rhythmbox, but also catchy navigation that will make finding and buying music even easier.

Links: Ubuntu One

This smartphone is being developed by NexCrea, which advertises itself as the first company to release a smartphone with technology Ubuntu for Android. That the company has launched a promotional video NexPhone.

Naturally NexCrea not the first to work on a smartphone with Ubuntu for Android. But in NexCrea want to do more, and do it with style. Just look how it will look NexPhone , NexTablet , NexLaptop , NexMonitor .

Even given the fact that there is not even a prototype yet NexPhone, prices are already known devices:

• NexPhone and NexDock – $ 499;
• NexTablet – $ 149;
• NexLaptop – $ 199;
• NexMonitor the keyboard and trackpad – $ 199.

The fate of the project is determined by the donations that are collected here . Developers want to raise $ 950,000, the money will be used to build a prototype. At the time of writing, only collected $ 1,351.

The technology is very interesting. Let’s hope that receives the required amount, and we will soon be able to order these devices.

Among the features worth noting:

• sort, rename, delete, menu loader;
• support GRUB2 and BURG;
• setting the default operating system, kernel parameters and specify a delay before loading;
• setting a background image, text color, screen resolution.

All changes will be saved and will be reset at reboot.

Innovations in Grub Customizer 3.0 mainly affected user interface improvements, including integrated the settings dialog, instead of switches now used basket and there was an option to reset the default configuration.

Installing Grub Customizer in Ubuntu

Setting is available from the PPA for all versions of Ubuntu, starting with 10.04. Commands to install:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install grub-customizer.

After Ubuntu had introduced the software center, it was also allows external developers to build their applications (for Ubuntu consistently referred to as apps) in the Software Center upload. Before activation but there is a manual review of the app, which, according to a notice from David Planella now leads increasingly to frustration because of the great interest of the developers, as well as on Ubuntu App Showdown read, was the review team is overloaded. Weeks of delays are the result.

Uploads to the Software Center is so popular because it allows app developers, the latest versions relatively quickly bring to the users. The alternative way to package the software for Ubuntu leads, initially on the development version of Ubuntu (or Debian) and to be included in the next official version of Ubuntu. Available at the time of the Ubuntu application has already be outdated. In extreme cases, it is an app that was written for a specific event, and is no longer needed after the event.

The Ubuntu team to Jono Bacon, Michael Hall and David Planella sees it as absolutely necessary to relieve the review team to accelerate the introduction of apps significantly. There now have a draft of the new upload process presents for app developers. The aim of the draft is a process by which developers can upload their apps “directly in Ubuntu,” without compromising the security and stability of the system. The key to this automated testing for basic items and AppArmor rules that restrict the rights of the apps.

While so far the apps are usually installed in / opt, Ubuntu sees some problems and wants to ensure that future apps will be installed under / usr as the native components. Any name conflicts are avoided in advance by tests on an upload server.

One of the key points in the app offer is security. So far, should the manual review process to ensure that Trojan, malware and other problematic software were excluded from the Software Center. The new process will significantly reduce manual work and consist of six steps. In the first step, the developer creates the package for its app, which is supported by tools such as Quickly and pkgme. Then the developer must apply for the inclusion of his app, for which he must prove that he owns the rights to the app, and an official representative of the project or the company. In the third step, the developer via the form to specify the required resources of the app, which is used for automatic generation of AppArmor rules. Now the app can be uploaded, whereupon an automatic checking, whether it corresponds to the packaging and safety rules. After this procedure was executed once and the app is available in the Software Center, the developer can upload new versions without fuss. The Software Center will coming from outside developers apps are clearly marked to make clear that Ubuntu is not or only partially responsible for these apps is.

The plan of Ubuntu provides initially allow only packaged apps for uploading. Later, it will be the developers made even easier by also tarballs or PPA repositories are allowed. The specification that is not yet finished, explains the points mentioned in detail. It contains specific dates yet.

Chromium is one of the repositories used to install the latest stable version (currently 21), and the other versions are under development (currently 23).

Installing Chromium in Ubuntu 12.04

PPA with the stable version of Chromium:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:av-shkop/chromium sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

PPA with the development version:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:av-shkop/chromium-dev sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

The main purpose of registration is a separate version of the creation of a “pure» GNOME environment using the latest release of GNOME 3.6.

However, the new versions of these packages, such as the file manager Nautilus and Totem media player will not be included due to the fact that they are not in the official repositories Ubuntu, due to a number of technical and controversial issues, but you can put them out of GNOME 3 PPA .

Since the main priority of distribution to include only the components of GNOME, so were removed such native applications for users of Ubuntu, as Ubuntu One and center applications.

The new name

As is known, the distribution is called GNOMEbuntu, but after conviction community, it was decided to rename it «Ubuntu GNOME Remix».

Changes:

• Web (in the past Epiphany), as the default browser;
• LibreOffice is now used instead of the office suites Abiword and Gnumeric;
• Evolution e-mail client has been replaced Thunderbird;
• display manager GDM;
• package manager «Software»;

Defaults to the desktop environment GNOME Shell, but is also available and GNOME Classic, is used to support low-power systems.

Download Ubuntu GNOME Remix

Issue in the early stages of development, it is not recommended for a production system and for testing purposes only.

Download the first alpha Ubuntu GNOME Remix

Issue is a edition with a clean installation of Gnome, which combines a number of components of Ubuntu. Release date is scheduled, as well as for other distributions from the family of Ubuntu (Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Lubuntu, etc.), on October 18 of this year.

What will be included

The Nautilus file manager will be the same version as in Ubuntu. Recall that the Ubuntu developers have refused to move to version 3.6 at 12.10, but instead were asked to leave the old 3.4, which still contains the deleted data.

Desktop environment by default GNOME-Shell, and instead of a display manager LightDM will use native GDM.

Other changes discussed:

• Epiphany can be a Web browser by default;
• Abiword can be included instead of LibreOffice;
• Ubuntu One will not default;
• will include GNOME Classic (compatible with indicator-applet Ubuntu);
• Rhythmbox music player will default;
• Center Updater application and can be removed;
• application «Documents» will not be included, since curled from LibreOffice.

Among the innovations:

• Fixed storage options for load / save files in JPEG;
• Fixed positioning of inserted elements;
• Performance improved on-screen filters, especially when working with color.

A complete list of changes can be found here .

The new release does not include any new features, but mostly just different fixes. According to plans , the next stable version of GIMP 2.10, will combine the tools of transformation, and also includes complete support for GEGL and images of high bit rate.

Installing GIMP 2.8.2 in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

Setting is available from the PPA for Ubuntu 12.04:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gimp

For other distributions for the installation files are available from the download page .