A new software development collaborative service for Ubuntu Linux is being launched today to give developers a consolidated arena to build code for Ubuntu on the desktop, server and for mobile applications.

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #66, for the week November 18th - November 17th, 2007 is now available. In this issue we cover Macedonia Students Use Ubuntu, New MOTU’s, Azureaus Gets Fix, Launchpad News, Ubuntu Forum News, and much, much more.

Two days ago we had several power cuts that completely managed to scrag my hard drives in logan and cerebro (the Fileserver), Ho hum… Time for a re-install, I guess. Good job the data on the file server was on a separate hard drive. Having done some research since the first install, now might be the time to add some security to the systems by utilizing several partitions to protect the data. The idea being that if the system goes down I can work on that and configuration as well as user data remains safe.

I’ve been very happy with all the recent feedback I’ve had on the folding project.  I’ve been getting a lot of emails regarding use and feedback, and I really appreciate it.  Based on much of this feedback I’m release version 0.5.2, which has some updates that I hope you’ll enjoy.

When it comes to FOSS, or Free Open Source Software, the general conception is that it’s available at absolutely no cost to you.  But is it really?  That depends on a lot of things actually.  The true cost of FOSS is actually dependent on a much larger and more complex array of economical factors than most people realize.  In the end, the cost of FOSS goes far beyond the standard money you see change hands, and the true costs may surprise you.

I’m so contempt with using Google that I never change this search option bar in Firefox. Never even bothered clicking it, though I know its handy for accessing Wiki or Amazon and so on but I always found it easier to type the search term in precisely and get to whatever I wish using Google.

Interested in creating your own Ubuntu packages using Launchpad’s Personal Package Archives?

Next week sees the second Personal Package Archives 101 session. Launchpad developer Celso Providelo (cprov) and MOTU member Jordan Mantha (Laserjock) will take you through the basics of Personal Package Archives and, if there’s time, take questions.

The GNOME Foundation has issued a statement in response to recent accusations that it has been supporting the acceptance of Microsoft's Office Open XML format (OOXML) as an ECMA standard at the expense of the Open Document Format (ODF), the open standard used by OpenOffice.org, KOffice and other free software office applications. However, whether the statement's attempt at logical rebuttal will do anything to reduce the emotions or altruism behind the criticisms is anybody's guess.

In addition to Ubuntu 6-months stable releases and the next version of ubuntu is 8.04 with Code Name “Hardy Heron” but this release will proudly wear the badge of Long Term Support (LTS) and be supported with security updates for five years on the server and three years on the desktop.

Don’t like editing configuration files and changing values in gconf-editor? Ubuntu Tweak provides a simple interface for tweaking hidden settings in Ubuntu.

Changes are part of Nature so as with Technology.. Though this cannot be True for Windows and Mac cause the life cycle of a single Version is too much which is not the case with Linux.. Open Source evolve at very rapid rate and with evolution comes new & special changes … Today with a hike in Linux acceptance its pretty hard for competitors to provide similar solutions at free of cost. Open Source is known for User Interaction with Operating System which cannot be done with other OS

Ladies and Gentleman, the November 2007 Community Report is now available! Go and read it to find out what many of the Ubuntu teams have worked on this month. Rock and roll.

Currently OpenOffice’s presentation program Impress lacks a presentation view with notes and so on for a second monitor during presentations. But the feature is in active development, and first results are visible.

This isn’t about literally searching your install of Ubuntu, this is about searching the Internet for help.  For example, if I search Google for Ubuntu games, I get a general mish mash.  I get a Digg story on the Top 10 Ubuntu Linux Games.  Better yet though, I can use a customized search just for Ubuntu.

Ah, the crassness of the commercialized holiday season is upon us, and I could curl my lip and refuse to participate, but no! Instead, I have scoured the Internet for holiday gifts that are geeky with an open source, stick-it-to-the-man slant. Now these are just my random, probably unsuitable selections, but you feel free to add your own ideas.

Although Mozilla Corporation has this week released the opening 3.0 beta of its popular Firefox Web browser, it has issued a warning to mainstream Web users that the beta should only be adopted by related software developers and those officially connected to the browser’s testing process.

As my colleague Sam Varghese has written , after nearly two weeks of flawless operation, my first Ubuntu Linux installation unexpectedly became unstable, crashed and was unable to be booted. Puzzled that an OS with the reputed stability of Ubuntu could behave like this, I searched forums and user groups for an explanation. What I found led me to believe that an open source package manager called Automatix that I installed was the cause. As a result, I am going to try an experiment: same computer, two disks, two clean installs, two operating systems - Vista and Ubuntu. But is there an issue with Linux and video codecs?

So there you are. You’re an average geek with a nice cluster of Linux systems. All configured to act together in whatever you’re doing with it.

One of the reoccurring ideas in revisions of the desktop is to tie it more closely to the Internet. The idea was last popular in the late 1990s, when one example of it was the use of KDE's Konqueror for both web browsing and file management. Now, with the GNOME Online Desktop (GOD), the idea has been revived to reflect the rise of social networks and file sharing. The revisions to the standard GNOME desktop are easy to learn, but how you view them will probably depend on how much you participate in the phenomena they're designed to accommodate.

Microsoft's rivalry with Google heated up considerably this past year when rumors surfaced that Google might release its own operating system to compete with Windows. Has Google finally jumped into the fray with its own OS?