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Debian Weekly News – June 3, 2003

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/22/

Debian Weekly News – June 3rd, 2003

Welcome to this year’s 22nd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter
for the Debian community. Petter Reinholdtsen [1]announced a new
Skolelinux CD [2]image a while ago that fixes many bugs and uses
the debian-installer already. Mario Lang urgently needs [3]help
fixing bugs in the speakup kernel packages, otherwise the package
has to be abandoned.

1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-0305/msg00000.html

2. ftp://developer.skolelinux.no/skolelinux-cd/

3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-accessibility-0305/msg00015.html

Discussion about Debian on the Mac. This Slashdot [4]posting
complains about the difficulty of installing Debian on an iBook and
says: “Knoppix has certainly made it easier to put Debian on x86
machines, but does such a thing exist for Macs?” In the discussion,
some readers argued that installing Debian is not that difficult
(possibly even easier on a Mac) and that package management is more
important, given that you only want to install once. Others
mentioned [5]Gentoo’s live [6]CD for PowerPC.

4.
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/05/25/2217237.shtml?tid=106&tid=185

5. http://gentoo.org/
6.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo/releases/1.4_rc4/ppc/livecd/allstages/

New Mailing Lists for Debian. Anand Kumria [7]announced five new
mailing lists hosted at [8]lists.debian.org/. The
[9]debian-multimedia list was already covered in our last issue.
The [10]debian-x86-64 list aims at people porting Debian to AMD’s
new 64-bit architecture. The [11]debian-ukrainian list provides a
forum for Ukrainian users. Finally, [12]debian-l10n-polish and
[13]debian-l10n-turkish intend to help translate Debian into Polish
and Turkish.

7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0305/msg00015.html

8. http://lists.debian.org/
9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-multimedia/

10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-x86-64/

11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-ukrainian/

12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-polish/

13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-turkish/

Flaming with Jamie Zawinski. LiveJournal contains a [14]report
by Jamie Zawinski, the author of the [15]xscreensaver program, in
which he complains about Branden Robinson [16]being a “gigantic
flaming dick”. However, it is not clear to us why Jamie
[17]considered the answer to be a flame. Branden was
demonstratively objective in his reply. Jamie was confused by a
string in the changelog of an unofficial Debian package of XFree86,
that he found on the Internet, which contained the name of his
program.

14. http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/204780.html

15. http://packages.debian.org/xscreensaver

16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-x-0305/msg00252.html

17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-x-0305/msg00264.html

Debian Menu System Development. Bill Allombert [18]announced
that the menu system is actively maintained again. Bill and Morten
Brix Pedersen fixed more than 80 bugs in the package and created a
[19]project in Alioth. The package also [20]supports
internationalisation. He also [21]mentions that icons are not
required anymore to only use 24 colors documented in the menu
package.

18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0305/msg00016.html

19. http://alioth.debian.org/projects/menu/

20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n-0304/msg00008.html

21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0305/msg00051.html

Quantian Scientific Computing Environment. Dirk Eddelbüttel
[22]announced [23]Quantian, a remastered version of [24]Knoppix.
[25]Quantian differs from Knoppix by adding a set of programs of
interest to applied or theoretical workers in quantitative or
data-driven fields. It still retains all of Knoppix’ impressive
features in terms of automatic configuration of virtually all
available hardware features. If there is sufficient interest, this
project may become a Debian subproject.

22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0305/msg02037.html

23. http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html

24. http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/

25. http://software.biostat.washington.edu/edd/quantian/

Improved Indian Support for Debian. Jaldhar Vyas [26]wondered if
there is any interest in a sub-project for increasing the support
for Indian languages within Debian. Both GNOME and KDE contain
viable support already. His goals would be to package Indian
support software or write it as necessary, help with i18n and l10n
for existing software and advocate the use of Debian in the Indian
community.

26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0305/msg01859.html

Distributing Sound Files. Roberto Gordo Saez [27]wondered if he
is permitted to use the sounds of a package that is distributed
considerably free in a different project. After looking at the
[28]chromium game he found out that it contains third party sound
files, which may originally be distributed under a different
[29]license.

27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0305/msg00544.html

28. http://packages.debian.org/chromium

29. http://www.findsounds.com/cpolicy.html

Knoppix CD for Machine Clusters. Slashdot [30]reported about an
effort by Wim Vandersmissen who created [31]ClusterKnoppix. He
added support for [32]openMosix to a regular [33]Knoppix image. The
new CD features the openMosix terminal server, openMosix
autodiscovery, and clustermanagement tools such as openMosix
userland.

30. http://slashdot.org/articles/03/05/29/1336229.shtml
31. http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix/

32. http://openmosix.sourceforge.net/

33. http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/

Debian on Power4 Highend Server. Florian Weps [34]reported about
the opportunity he had to test an [35]IBM p630 for a few weeks.
After the AIX tests were finished, he and his colleagues decided to
[36]install Debian GNU/Linux on one partition of this machine. They
benefitted a lot from the [37]howto by Rolf Brudeseth covering the
Debian network installation on IBM RS/6000 machines.

34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc-0305/msg00542.html

35. http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/au/pseries/630/

36. http://people.debian.org/~fmw/p630-LPAR-Debian-en.txt

37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc-0207/msg00858.html

Conferences in Austria and Brazil. The Debian project
[38]announced that it has been invited to participate in two
conferences that are taking place from June 5th to 7th. At the
[39]LinuxWochen in Vienna, Austria, Debian will be present with a
booth staffed by Gerfried Fuchs who will also give a talk about
Debian and organize a keysigning party. At the [40]International
Free Software Convention in Porto Alegre, Brazil, almost all
Brazilian Debian Developers will meet while Bdale Garbee and
Wichert Akkerman will give talks.

38. http://www.debian.org/News/2003/20030531

39. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/0605-linuxwochen

40. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/0605-softwarelivre

Debian featured in HP Whitepaper. In a [41]whitepaper from HP
that covers Open Source for web services development Debian is
prominently mentioned. The document emphasises its
vendor-neutralness, the strict open-source-only policy, its
vigorous quality program, that avoids the types of issues that have
recently plagued certain commercial distributions, and more.
Finally, Debian has a very easy to use interface for installing and
updating software packages.

41.
http://devresource.hp.com/drc/technical_white_papers/wsopensrc.pdf

Managing Package Source with Subversion? Marcelo Magellon
[42]wondered if and how to maintain the source of Debian packages
with Subversion. Most notably, he’s interested in a way to convert
an existing CVS repository to Subversion. Joey Hess answered that
he uses a set of handmade scripts for maintenance and [43]reported
about his experiences with Subversion.

42. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0305/msg02056.html

43. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0305/msg02121.html

Compiling 64bit Sparc Kernel. Martin Pitt would [44]like to
compile a late 2.5 kernel for sparc64 which runs a 64bit kernel but
a 32bit userland. Therefore he needs a cross-compiler and egcs64
seems to old for him. Ben Collins [45]explained that it will build
the kernel, and after a bug is fixed the kernel will even run. He
also mentioned that gcc-3.3 will compile 64bit kernels, but they do
not boot.

44. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0305/msg02059.html

45. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0305/msg02072.html

New Tags for the Bug Tracking System. Colin Watson [46]announced
two new tags for the [47]Bug Tracking System. The tag [48]lfs
refers to bugs about large file support and [49]ipv6 refer to bugs
with support for IPv6. Guido Günther [50]added that if these
things get tags it would make a lot of sense to add architecture
tags as well in order to classify problems on certain
architectures. James Troup [51]objected, though.

46. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0305/msg02174.html

47. http://www.debian.org/Bugs/
48. http://bugs.debian.org/tag:lfs

49. http://bugs.debian.org/tag:ipv6

50. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0305/msg02192.html

51. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0306/msg00023.html

Invariant Sections in Documentation. Richard Stallman started a
[52]discussion that again covers problems inherited by the GNU
[53]Free Documentation License (GFDL) if a document includes
invariant sections which renders the document non-free according to
Debian’s interpretation. It seems that the GFDL is a dangerous
license which does not always imply free documentation.

52. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0305/msg00545.html

53. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

Embedded Debian Package Management. Bruno Randolf [54]would like
to use the Debian package management system for an embedded
distribution on a MIPS platform. Therefore he has investigated
several projects and found out that there seems to be quite a lot
approaches and ideas, but only little coordination. Wookey also
[55]mentioned the [56]mini policy for cross-compiling related
packages.

54. http://lists.debian.org/debian-embedded-0305/msg00004.html

55. http://lists.debian.org/debian-embedded-0305/msg00006.html

56. http://sprite.fr.eu.org/cross-packages-mini-policy.txt

GNU Emacs Manual considered non-free. Jérôme Marant
[57]reported that the GNU Emacs Manual will have to be moved to
non-free, due to invariant sections and the use of the GNU FDL.
Invariant sections don’t allow modifications which are required by
the [58]Debian Free Software Guidelines. This is very unfortunate,
especially since it affects documentation from the [59]Free
Software Foundation.

57. http://lists.debian.org/debian-emacsen-0305/msg00033.html

58. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

59. http://www.fsf.org/

OpenOffice.org 1.1beta Debian Packages. The Debian
OpenOffice.org team proudly [60]announced the availability of
preliminary packages of [61]OpenOffice.org 1.1 beta. They are
downloadable from the debian-openoffice [62]mirrors, in section
‘unstable’. These packages are not yet polished with all features
from the 1.0.x packages, but the majority of the functionality is
in place.

60. http://lists.debian.org/debian-openoffice-0305/msg00166.html

61. http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/1.1beta/

62. http://www.linux-debian.de/openoffice/mirrors.html

Software Patents Meetings. Wookey [63]forwarded an announcement
for a public [64]meeting taking place on June 5th in Cambridge.
There is another meeting set up in [65]Strasbourg by the [66]FFII
on June 7th where developers will be able to talk to politicians.
The EU software and gene patent debates have shown a frightening
willingness of Europe’s legislators to ignore all informed
discussions, including EU-sponsored studies, and to restrict the
creative freedom if its citizens without a twinkling of the
eye.

63.
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/debian-uk/2003-June/001481.html

64. http://www.tangledtime.com/patents.htm

65. http://swpat.ffii.org/termine/2003/europarl/07/

66. http://swpat.ffii.org/

Debian Day at LinuxTag 2003. There will be a one day
[67]conference dedicated to Debian people at this years’
[68]LinuxTag in Karlsruhe, targeting advanced users and developers.
It will take place on Friday, June 11th, and last for the entire
day. The project is still looking for speakers and topics. If you
would like to give a talk at this Debian conference, please get in
touch with [69]Martin Schulze immediately.

67. http://www.infodrom.org/Debian/events/LinuxTag2003/day.html

68. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/0710-linuxtag

69. mailto:joey@debian.org

Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you
update your systems if you have any of these packages
installed.

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to
the unstable Debian archive recently or contain important
updates.

  • [71]aft — Document preparation system for “free form”.
  • [72]arson — KDE frontend for burning CDs.
  • [73]debtags — Enables support for package tags.
  • [74]gmp-ecm — Factor integers using the Elliptic Curve
    Method.
  • [75]gpdf — Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer.
  • [76]kgpg — GnuPG frontend for KDE.
  • [77]kwiki — Quickie Wiki that’s not too Tricky.
  • [78]labrea — Sticky honeypot and IDS.
  • [79]motioneye — PPM/JPG snapshots or MJPEG compressed video on
    Vaio Laptops.
  • [80]mysqlcc — The official GUI interface for MySQL.
  • [81]oooqs-kde — OpenOffice.org QuickStarter applet for
    KDE.
  • [82]openexr — Viewer and docs for the OpenEXR image
    format.
  • [83]pen — This is pen, a load balancer for “simple” tcp based
    protocols such.
  • [84]pyblosxom — simple weblog (“blog”) written in Python.
  • [85]sdcc-doc — Documentation for the SDCC compiler.
  • [86]tagcolledit — GUI editor for tagged collections.
  • [87]zopectl — Zope instances controlling utility.

71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/aft.html

72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/arson.html

73. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/debtags.html

74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/gmp-ecm.html

75. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/gpdf.html

76. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kgpg.html

77. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/kwiki.html

78. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/labrea.html

79. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/motioneye.html

80. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/mysqlcc.html

81. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/oooqs-kde.html

82. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/openexr.html

83. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/pen.html

84. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/pyblosxom.html

85. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/sdcc-doc.html

86. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/tagcolledit.html

87. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/zopectl.html

Orphaned Packages. 6 packages were orphaned this week and
require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 189 orphaned
packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed
to the Free Software community. Please see the [88]WNPP pages for
the full list, and please add a note to the bug report and retitle
it to ITA: if you plan to take over a package.

88. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

  • [89]pente — Five in a row game for X and the console.
    ([90]Bug#195686)
  • [91]fwctl — Configure ipchains firewall using higher level
    abstraction. ([92]Bug#195177)
  • [93]gnophone — An internet telephone application.
    ([94]Bug#195601)
  • [95]phonecore — IAX software telephone framework.
    ([96]Bug#195602)
  • [97]pose — PalmOS Emulator. ([98]Bug#195373)
  • [99]pose-skins — Skins for the PalmOS Emulator.
    ([100]Bug#195374)

89. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/pente.html

90. http://bugs.debian.org/195686

91. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/fwctl.html

92. http://bugs.debian.org/195177

93. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/gnophone.html

94. http://bugs.debian.org/195601

95. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libphonecore1.html

96. http://bugs.debian.org/195602

97. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/pose.html

98. http://bugs.debian.org/195373

99. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/pose-skins.html

100. http://bugs.debian.org/195374

Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this
newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers who investigate
the Debian community and report about events in the community.
Please see the [101]contributing page to find out how to help.
We’re looking forward to receiving your mail at [102]dwn@debian.org.

101. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing

102. mailto:dwn@debian.org

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