It's hard to believe that a whole school year has passed and another is about to begin! Our little ubermix project has grown up to a huge movement, with more than 50 school districts and other organizations now deploying at scale, on over 80,000 devices all around the world! We've also got a bunch of press, including eSchool News Fifty of the best ed-tech products for schools, District Administration's 2012 Readers' Choice Top 100 Products, several articles on OpenSource.com, and the cover of this quarter's Ed Tech Magazine.

Now that many of you are gearing up for the new school year, I wanted to make sure you have all the latest information about ubermix and to inform you of an important fix for an issue with older Broadcom wireless cards and the latest release.

With the release of version 1.08x, ubermix has surpassed the default Ubuntu 12.04 software base in a number of ways. Specifically, ubermix 1.08x brings:

• A significantly newer, custom kernel and drivers, which provides increased performance and better support for the latest hardware (including a number of touchscreen devices).
• Updated versions of a number of applications to the latest source releases, including LibreOffice, GIMP, Nitro, and others.
• A variety of optional add-ons, including Everpad (Evernote client), Google Apps Icon Pack, and an indicator that checks for updates to the latest web browsers.
• The addition of an ubermix software repository in the default installation, which makes keeping ubermix up-to-date far easier.
• Reliability and performance improvements across a number of ubermix-specific functions.

You can download and install the latest ubermix image and/or virtual machines from the ubermix Download and Install page. If you need help, be sure to check the ubermix wiki and forums, and of course, feel free to contact me directly.

With all the driver updates and changes, it was recently discovered that there is an issue with older Broadcom 43xx series wireless cards in some older netbooks and other devices running the latest release. Symptoms include inability to connect to wireless, frequent disconnects, or no wireless adapter appearing at all.

If you experience this or similar issues, rest assured that they are easily fixed by installing an older version of the Broadcom wireless driver. First, make sure that you have a Broadcom 43xx series card by following the instructions on the wiki here. If you do, simply follow these instructions to install the older driver.

All the best to each of you in the coming year!

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