Debian Project News - July 26th, 2010
Alexander Reichle-Schmehl <[email protected]> Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:06:04 +0200
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.debian.user.news |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/ Debian Project News [email protected] July 26th, 2010 http://debian.org/News/weekly/2010/08/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Welcome to this year's eighth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include: * Debian Day in New York coming up * Mini Debian conference in India * Debian Installer beta1 coming up * "This week in Debian" podcast? * How to make Debian more attractive for users? * ... and much more. Debian Day in New York coming up -------------------------------- The organisers of the DebConf10, the upcoming annual Debian Developer conference, announced that there will again be a Debian Day [2] for everybody interested in free software. It will be on the 1st of August at the Columbia University in New York City. During this event, there will be a full day of talks on several subjects such as free software in government, design and free software, free software advocacy as well as string of talks about the Debian project and operating system. Debian Day is free of charge, but a registration via e-mail is required to ease the organisation of that event. More information is available on http://debianday.org/ [3]. 2 : http://blog.debconf.org/blog/debconf10/ms_dc10debianday.dc 3 : http://debianday.org/ Mini Debian conference in India ------------------------------- Kartik Mistry announced a mini Debian Conference in India [4]. It will take place on 7th and 8th of August in Pune. Topics on the agenda range from an introduction of the "univeral operating system" to a discussion about "Debian community activities". A bug squashing party is planed as well. More details are available in theDebian wiki [5]. 4 : http://ftbfs.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/minidebconf-in-india/ 5 : http://wiki.debian.org/DebianIndia/MiniDebConf2010 Debian Installer beta1 coming up -------------------------------- Christian Perrier reported about the status of the upcoming beta1 of the Debian Installer for [6] "Squeeze" . This version has been translated into 65 languages, work for additional languages is already on the way. Christian also gave some tips on how this beta may already be tested, although the packages haven't completly migrated to Debian "Squeeze", yet. 6 : http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2010/07/19#di-squeeze-beta1-l10n "This week in Debian" podcast? ------------------------------ Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli was contacted by Jonathan Nadeau, who produces several podcast for the wider free software community, about creating a podcast about Debian [7]. This weekly podcast should interview someone, who refers about a Debian related topic. As Stefano emphasizes: "Any Debian-related topic is a good candidate: a team, an initiative, a general discussion about a relevant project aspect, etc. You don't even need any particular upfront preparation, as it'll be interview-like." Coordination for that has already been started on awiki page [8]. 7 : http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/07/debian_podcast_planning/ 8 : http://wiki.debian.org/ThisWeekInDebian How to make Debian more attractive for Users? --------------------------------------------- Petter Reinholdtsen noticed [9] that the number of submissions to Debian's Popularity Contest [10] (popcon for short) is decreasing since some weeks. Popcon is a system which anonymously sends a list of installed software packages to Debian, which allows Debian to prioritise their work (e.g. ordering of packages on installation media). Currently popcon isn't activated by default, so it was discussed, if this should be done, and if there was a way to do that in way not affect users privacy. Soon the discussion turned into the topic on how to make Debian more attractive to users [11]. 9 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 10 : http://popcon.debian.org 11 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] Some of the ideas raised (beside others) where: * offer phone support for Debian [12] * offer CD/DVD images allowing the installation of non-free material [13] (such as firmware files; it later turned out, that this has already been implemented) * automatic backports of updated packages [14] * improving Debian's webpage [15] (especially the front) * making it easier to submit bugs [16] 12 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 13 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 14 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 15 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 16 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] Other news ---------- Raphael Hertzog noted that the upcoming version of dpkg [17] - the core package maintainance tool - won't depend on perl anymore thus making dpkg even more suitable for embedded systems. 17 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/07/22/quick-news-dpkg-collab-maint-alioth-and-the-future/ Giuseppe Iuculano pointed some differences [18] between Debian's chromium-browser packages [19] and google-chrome out. 18 : http://www.iuculano.it/en/linux/debian/chromium-browser-vs-google-chrome/ 19 : http://packages.debian.org/chromium-browser The responsibilities of Debian's package maintainers, Debian's porters and Debian's buildd administrators (who take care of systems automatically building packages for specific architectures) has been discussed [20] on the general Debian project mailing list. 20 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] New Developers and Maintainers ------------------------------ One applicant has been accepted [21] as Debian Maintainer since the previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Antoine Beaupré into our project! 21 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release --------------------------------------------------------- According to the unofficial release-citical bug counter [22], the upcoming release, Debian 6.0 "Squeeze", is currently affected by 348 release-critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily solved or on the way of being solved, roughly speaking, about 152 release critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen. 22 : http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php There are also more detailed statistics [23] as well as some hints on how to interprete [24] these numbers. 23 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats/#2010-29 24 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats Important Debian Security Advisories ------------------------------------ Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): python-cjson [25], znc [26], freetype [27], libmikmod [28], libpng [29], mlmmj [30], and ncompress [31]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 25 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2068 26 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2069 27 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2070 28 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2071 29 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2072 30 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2073 31 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2074 Please note that these are a selection of the more important security advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the security mailing list [32] for announcements. 32 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ New and noteworthy packages --------------------------- The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently (among others [33]): 33 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg * archivemount -- mounting an archive for access as a file system [34] * composite -- live performance sequencer [35] * doctrine -- tool for object-relational mapping in PHP [36] * extplorer -- web file explorer and manager using Ext JS [37] * extremetuxracer-extras -- additional courses for Extreme Tux Racer [38] * freediams -- pharmaceutical drugs prescriptor [39] * freeplane -- Java program to create and edit mind maps. [40] * geogebra -- dynamic mathematics software for education [41] * gnome-paint -- simple, easy to use paint program for GNOME [42] * goaccess -- log analyzer and interactive viewer for the Apache Webserver [43] * ifetch-tools -- collector, monitoror, and image viewer from ip cameras [44] * kbackup -- easy to use backup program [45] * logfs-tools -- tools to manage LogFS filesystems [46] * pdfmod -- simple tool for modifying PDF documents [47] * roaraudio -- sound server for audio mixing [48] * screenie-qt -- fancy screenshot composer [49] * slimevolley -- unrealistic 2D volleyball simulation [50] * spacenavd -- daemon for using 3D input devices from 3Dconnexion [51] * xen-qemu-dm-4.0 -- Xen Qemu device model virtual machine hardware emulator [52] * xjadeo -- video player with Jack sync [53] * xz-lzma -- XZ-format compression utilities - compatibility commands [54] 34 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/archivemount 35 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/composite 36 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/doctrine 37 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/extplorer 38 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/extremetuxracer-extras 39 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/freediams 40 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/freeplane 41 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/geogebra 42 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-paint 43 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/goaccess 44 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ifetch-tools 45 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kbackup 46 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/logfs-tools 47 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pdfmod 48 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/roaraudio 49 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/screenie-qt 50 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/slimevolley 51 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/spacenavd 52 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xen-qemu-dm-4.0 53 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xjadeo 54 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xz-lzma Work-needing packages --------------------- Currently 608 packages are orphaned and 143 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the recent [55] reports [56] to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of packages which need your help [57]. 55 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 56 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 57 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? ----------------------------- Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the contributing page [58] to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [email protected] [59]. 58 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 59 : mailto:[email protected] This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [60]. 60 : mailto:[email protected]