Debian Project News - March 31st, 2014

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The Debian Project                                http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News                    [email protected]
March 31st, 2014              http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2014/06/
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to this year's sixth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. Topics covered in this issue include:

  * Debian Installer Jessie Alpha 1 released
  * Indian federal state of Tamil Nadu adopts
    Debian derivative BOSS GNU/Linux as official OS
  * Rebuild of the Debian archive with Clang
  * BeagleBoard shifts to Debian
  * Other news
  * New Debian Contributors
  * Important Debian Security Advisories
  * New and noteworthy packages
  * Work-needing packages
  * Want to continue reading DPN?


Debian Installer Jessie Alpha 1 released
----------------------------------------

On March 19, Cyril Brulebois, member of the Debian Installer team=C2=A0[1],
announced the Debian Installer Jessie Alpha 1 release=C2=A0[2]: the first
alpha version of the installer for Debian 8 "Jessie".

Several improvements have been introduced, among which are a bug-fix in
the apt-setup package and the fact that the grub-installer now supports
selecting the GRUB boot disk via a menu. Further, the default desktop
environment for the time being is Xfce, though this will be re-evaluated
in August. As far as hardware support changes are concerned, a few
architectures are no longer supported, and there will be no installer
support for sparc systems due to the failure to build the package for
that platform; the Release Team are evaluating the future of sparc as an
official port. The Linux kernel has been updated from 3.2 to 3.13 and
the FreeBSD kernel from 9.0 to 9.2.

Finally, Cyril's message calls on all Debian members and supporters to
assist with the release process by finding and submitting bugs against
the installer. The CDs and other resources needed for testing it are
available on the web page=C2=A0[3]. The team in charge of the Debian
installer can also be contacted via the Debian-boot mailing list=C2=A0[4] a=
nd
the #debian-boot IRC channel on irc.debian.org.

    1: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team
    2: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/03/msg00009.html
    3: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer
    4: http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/


Indian federal state of Tamil Nadu adopts Debian derivative BOSS GNU/Linux =
as official OS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
--------------

It was as far back as July 2011 when the federal government of India
decided to launch a new ICT policy based on the mandatory usage of open
source operating systems rather than proprietary software, as a reaction
to Microsoft's announcement that they would no longer support Windows XP
after April 8, 2014. Later that year, in November 2011, the federal
state of Tamil Nadu, located in the very south of the Indian
subcontinent, released Government Order No. 15=C2=A0[5], introducing the
Debian derivative BOSS (Bharat Operating Systems Solutions) GNU/Linux as
a mandatory operating system to be installed and used on all
governmental computer systems, particularly on those of the Department
of Information Technology.

BOSS GNU/Linux, developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced
Computing (C-DAC), has support for all Indian languages, bio-sensing
devices, and digital signatures, and can be customised for local
environments, as the Indian newspaper The Hindu=C2=A0[6] points out in a
recent article. Besides the cost saving effects of switching to BOSS
GNU/Linux, it was the reduced risk of being infected by viruses or
affected by hacking or phishing attacks that led the Indian Government
to implement the new operating system.

Despite the order issued in November 2011, many Tamil Nadu governmental
offices had been continuing to use Windows XP, but the recent Microsoft
announcement stating that support would not be continued beyond April 8
made the Tamil Nadu government advise its departments to install BOSS
GNU/Linux mandatorily on all their systems, issuing another order some
weeks ago.

    5: http://bosslinux.in/sites/default/files/BOSS-in-DIT.pdf
    6: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/tn-state-department=
s-asked-to-switch-over-to-open-source-software/article5799039.ece


Rebuild of the Debian archive with Clang
----------------------------------------

Sylvestre Ledru published on his blog=C2=A0[7] the results of a complete
rebuild of the Debian archive with Clang=C2=A03.4, which he ran together wi=
th
David Su=C3=A1rez. Currently, 2193 packages in the archive are failing to
build from source. Although this is about the same number of failing
builds as with Clang=C2=A03.3 more than a year ago, it is good news because
the number of packages in the archive has increased (meaning that the
percentage of failures decreased), and Clang=C2=A03.4 also has more checks
and error detection. Results and statistics are available on a dedicated
website=C2=A0[8].

    7: http://sylvestre.ledru.info/blog/2014/03/21/rebuild-of-debian-using-=
clang
    8: http://clang.debian.net/


BeagleBoard shifts to Debian
----------------------------

The BeagleBone Black=C2=A0[9] is a community-supported development platform
combining the power of an ARM development board with the hobby potential
of two 32-bit microcontrollers. In an interview=C2=A0[10], Jason Kridner,
co-founder of BeagleBoard.org=C2=A0[11] indicates that the default operating
system on those BeagleBone Black boards, as well as for other
BeagleBoard.org boards, is being shifted to Debian=C2=A0[12].

    9: http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone%20Black
   10: http://opensource.com/life/14/3/interview-jason-kridner-beagleboard
   11: http://beagleboard.org
   12: http://beagleboard.org/latest-images/


Other news
----------

David Moreno announced=C2=A0[13] on his blog that a new mailing list,
debian-astro=C2=A0[14], has been set up=C2=A0[15] to create a discussion sp=
ace for
astronomy in Debian, both for professionals and amateurs, and in general
for talk about packaging and development of astronomy-related tools in
Debian.

   13: http://damog.net/blog/new-debian-mailing-list-debian-astro.html
   14: http://lists.debian.org/debian-astro
   15: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=3D741538

Lucas Nussbaum, Debian Project Leader, updated=C2=A0[16] the delegation for
the New Member Front Desk team, which welcomes two new members: Jan
Dittberner and Mike Gabriel.

   16: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/03/msg00012.html

The voting period for the Debian Project Leader Elections=C2=A02014=C2=A0[1=
7] is
open until April=C2=A013=C2=A0[18]. The new term for the project leader sta=
rts on
April=C2=A017.

   17: http://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_001
   18: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/03/msg00013.html

Adam D. Barratt announced that the "Wheezy"=C2=A07.5 point release is
scheduled for April=C2=A026=C2=A0[19]. The NEW queue for the stable distrib=
ution
will be frozen one week before the actual release date.

   19: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2014/03/msg00158.html


New Debian Contributors
-----------------------

2 people have started to maintain packages=C2=A0[20] since the previous iss=
ue
of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Gunnar Hjalmarsson, and Akira
Mitsui into our project!

   20: http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi


Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------

Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): python2.7=C2=A0[21], iceweasel=C2=A0[22], extplorer=C2=A0[2=
3],
chromium-browser=C2=A0[24], libyaml=C2=A0[25], libyaml-libyaml-perl=C2=A0[2=
6],
libxalan2-java=C2=A0[27], ruby-actionmailer-3.2=C2=A0[28],
ruby-actionpack-3.2=C2=A0[29], and postfixadmin=C2=A0[30]. Please read them
carefully and take the proper measures.

   21: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2880
   22: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2881
   23: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2882
   24: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2883
   25: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2884
   26: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2885
   27: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2886
   28: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2887
   29: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2888
   30: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2889

Debian's Stable Release Team released update announcements for these
packages: tzdata (for Squeeze=C2=A0[31] and Wheezy=C2=A0[32]) and clamav (f=
or
Squeeze=C2=A0[33] and Wheezy=C2=A0[34]). Please read them carefully and tak=
e the
proper measures.

   31: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2014/03/msg00003.html
   32: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2014/03/msg00004.html
   33: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2014/03/msg00005.html
   34: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2014/03/msg00006.html

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=C2=A0[35] (and the separate backports
list=C2=A0[36], and stable updates list=C2=A0[37]) for announcements.

   35: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
   36: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
   37: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/


New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------

216 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others=C2=A0[38] are:

  * arriero =E2=80=94 tool to simplify the management of several Debian pac=
kages=C2=A0[39]
  * cgroupfs-mount =E2=80=94 light-weight package to set up cgroupfs mounts=
=C2=A0[40]
  * djvubind =E2=80=94 simple creation of djvu files=C2=A0[41]
  * fedmsg =E2=80=94 Fedora messaging infrastructure system - general utili=
ties=C2=A0[42]
  * fonts-humor-sans =E2=80=94 font that looks like handwritten text=C2=A0[=
43]
  * forkstat =E2=80=94 process fork/exec/exit monitoring tool=C2=A0[44]
  * gmediarender =E2=80=94 small headless UPnP media renderer=C2=A0[45]
  * larch =E2=80=94 tool to copy messages from one IMAP server to another=
=C2=A0[46]
  * ooniprobe =E2=80=94 utility to probe for the Open Observatory of Networ=
k Interference (OONI)=C2=A0[47]
  * pagekite =E2=80=94 tool to make localhost servers publicly visible.=C2=
=A0[48]
  * patchelf =E2=80=94 utility to modify properties of ELF executables=C2=
=A0[49]

   38: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
   39: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/arriero
   40: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cgroupfs-mount
   41: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/djvubind
   42: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fedmsg
   43: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fonts-humor-sans
   44: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/forkstat
   45: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gmediarender
   46: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/larch
   47: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ooniprobe
   48: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pagekite
   49: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/patchelf


Work-needing packages
---------------------

Currently=C2=A0[50] 567 packages are orphaned=C2=A0[51] and 134 packages ar=
e up
for adoption=C2=A0[52]: please visit the complete list of packages which ne=
ed
your help=C2=A0[53].

   50: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/03/msg00521.html
   51: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
   52: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
   53: 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=C2=A0[54] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
<[email protected]>.

   54: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute


This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Stephan Beck, C=C3=A9dric
Boutillier and Justin B Rye.



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