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If so, then make your way to the Ubuntu Chicago and College of DuPage Gutsy Release Party and Install Fest. It is now midnight here in Chicago and I have just finished burning a set of CDs for tomorrow. I used some LightScribe love on them, however I rushed the job. I used an Ubuntu label image I found online, but the Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu ones I made. The Xubuntu one isn’t the greatest, only because I couldn’t do the logo like the rest, because of that pesky mouse in the middle, and the last time I checked, a CD was like a donut, it has a hole in the middle

Anyways, tomorrow from 10am until 4pm (CST) at the College of DuPage. 425 Fawell Blvd, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137. We will be in room SRC 1544, and as long as I don’t forget, I will put up some signage at the 2 main entrances. So if you don’t see a sign, you are in the wrong place, unless it is the roundish looking white building, then you are in the right place. Just come on down to the first floor and have some fun!

HERE are what the CDs look like after LightScribing them. Not the best, but they work

Just a quick thank you to the crew over at System76 for the flyers and the “Powered by Ubuntu” stickers for the Ubuntu Chicago Gutsy Release Fest and the CoDLUG Install Fest. If you are in the Chicagoland area, please stop on by. Bring a computer and lets install Gutsy!

Here is the flyer!

No you geeks, that wasn’t the beginning of a math equation, that is when the next release of Kubuntu will be out. Yes that’s right, Kubuntu! Everyone else shows off the brownage, except for a select few of us, we prefer the blue.

Some of the new things you can expect with Kubuntu 7.10 are KDE 3.5.7, Amarok 1.4.7, Dolphin (new default KDE file manager - Konqueror is still there, don’t worry), digiKam 0.9.2, maybe some Strigi goodness, a new GDebi KDE front end for easy .deb file installation, and so much more. If you are interested in seeing how the changes have been moving along, feel free to read over the following release notes of the development releases:

• Tribe 1
• Tribe 2
• Tribe 3
• Tribe 4
• Tribe 5
• Beta

You know, honestly the release of 7.10 doesn’t excite me much anymore, what does excite me is the day they open up the repos for developers to start working on 8.04. Then a week or so later, it is dist-upgrade time. Hard for me to stay on a “stable” system, even though I have yet to really run into destruction with development snapshots (”knock on wood”).

Anyways, if you are in the Chicago land area on October 21, 2007 between the hours of 10am and 4pm, we will be holding a 7.10 release party as well as an install fest. Where you ask? At the College of DuPage in the SRC building, room 1544. If you are interested, keep an eye out on our broken Ubuntu Chicago website, or take a look at the CoDLUG website. If you can’t wait, this weekend at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I will be giving a KDE 4 talk. Interested in showing up to the talks and the install fest? Take a look at the Install Fest website.

Yet Another Open Week Post…

Tomorrow, Friday, April 27^th, I will be giving a talk for the Ubuntu Open Week on the Ubuntu Documentation Project. On Saturday, April 28^th, I will be giving another talk on Creating an Ubuntu Local Community Team. Now prior to, in between, and after my talks there are many other amazing talks. Check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek for more information on the talks. If you see a talk that you missed, don’t worry, they are publishing the logs and I heard they are going to extend some of the talks into next week for a second go round. I look forward to seeing you all there.

Here is what you do to come see the talks (via IRC):

• Server: chat.freenode.net
• Port: 8001
• Channel: #ubuntu-classroom (note that #ubuntu-classroom-chat will be open for you to ask your questions during the talks.

LoCo Love! Illinois people (that small corn state in the US) you now have a place to call home in the Ubuntu community. Tonight, after talks with other Ubuntu members it has been decided to start an Ubuntu Illinois Local Community Team. Since I have been the team lead in a way for Ubuntu Chicago, it was decided that I should go ahead and get the project rolling. Well after further thought, a couple of dreams and some hacking, Illinois has now been Ubuntu’ized.

What is a LoCo? A LoCo, or Local Community, is a team of Ubuntu enthusiast that want to see Ubuntu succeed. The team will be made up of people from all walks of life with advocacy and support of Ubuntu in their minds. The building process will be slow, but if you are in the state of Illinois and would like to be apart of the Ubuntu community, you now have a place to start. What will we do? Right now the growth of membership is a large priority. Once we have a strong membership, and during the process of gaining new members, we will give talks, do demos, advocate (market) Ubuntu anyway possible. We will help people switch over, we will provide them with support, and we will turn them into enthusiasts as well.

Ubuntu Chicago in the past year has had some pretty good success. The team has held in-depth meetings, members have given talks at local events, converted hundreds of local users and have even helped support those users with their new life in the free software world.

Sign me up! Well, you can sign up yourself to show that you are interested in helping Ubuntu and Ubuntu Illinois grow. Head on over to the team page on launchpad and sign up. Note that you have to have an account on the launchpad first. Until the team gets up to speed the Ubuntu Chicago mailing list will be used for communications as well as the IRC channel. So, point your IRC client to #ubuntu-illinois on Freenode which will redirect you for the time being to #ubuntu-chicago. Say hi and hang out. Within the following months we are hoping to have a decent turn out in membership as well as events planned at the state universities. Keep an eye out for an updated wiki page for the team as well.

Thanks to everyone who helped in conceiving this idea and for poking me enough times to go ahead and start it up.

Yes, we are beating the hell out of this topic. Why? Because we are looking for Ubuntu enthusiasts who are either:

1. Apart of a Local Community Team (LoCo)
2. Looking to join a LoCo
3. Possibly interested in starting a LoCo

No matter your status we do in fact want and need your help. We are working on documenting everything, and we mean everything, about LoCo teams. Do you have questions you want answered? Well we want our documentation to answer them for you, so bring your questions! Want to know what all is involved in setting up, running, and maintaining a LoCo? Well our documentation should be able to answer those questions for you. No matter the topic, the question, or anything else you can think up, we want and need it in our LoCo documentation.

So what we, the Ubuntu LoCo Community, have done is created the Ubuntu LoCo Docs Day. What is it you might ask? It is a full day, 24 hours or more if you can stay awake that long, of documenting everything and anything LoCo. The better the LoCo documentation the easier it is for new enthusiasts to get involved in this wonderful Ubuntu community.

So when is it? I knew you were going to ask that. How does March 3rd suit you? Yes, no matter where at in the world you are at, March 3rd from 00:01 all the way unti 23:59 of that day is LoCo Doc Day.

So where is it? Worldwide dude! No really, everywhere in the world it is LoCo Doc Day on March 3rd, so no matter where you are at, that’s where it is OK, really it is in #ubuntu-locoteams on IRC. How do I connect to IRC? Wow, you are just loaded with questions today aren’t you? You have your options, but since you are asking, here are the easy ones. X-Chat and Gaim for you GNOME/Ubuntu users and Konversation for you super-smart KDE/Kubuntu users (/me waits for the flames). You will want to set your respective client to connect to chat.freenode.net and use port 8001 just to be secure. Don’t worry, we aren’t a bunch of silly hackers sitting in a channel waiting for you to connect so we can grab your IP and create world havoc. OK, well not all of us, just Joey and Melissa. Once you have connected to the server, most clients will respect you typing /join #ubuntu-locoteams and then pressing enter.

CALLING ALL TRANSLATORS!!! We definitely want and need you big time for this event. Not only do we want English documentation, but we also want documentation for your language. Why? Well not everyone is down with this English thing. I was raised all my life in the United States and I still suck at English. Anyways, it is easier for prospective members in your locales to read their native language. So if you can take English and convert it to <insert your language here> then you are a must