Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/10/
Debian Weekly News – March 9th, 2004
Welcome to this year’s tenth issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter
for the Debian community. Christoph Berg [1]reported about a
Knoppix based [2]live CD including lots of the hamradio software
Debian ships. Wichert Akkerman [3]announced that the [4]alioth
service has been moved to a new server. Additionally, Ethan Sommer
has set up a [5]collection of Open Source advocacy papers.
1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-hams-0402/msg00019.html
2. http://hubert.fink.bei.t-online.de/knoppix.html
3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0403/msg00002.html
4. http://alioth.debian.org/
5. http://ossadvocacy.org/
Questions for the Candidates. Anthony Towns formulated a set of
[6]questions for the project leader candidates. In his platform
only Gergely Nagy mentioned changes to the distribution, replace
perl scripts in base by [7]shoop scripts. The questions include the
new-maintainer process, announcements, installer development,
release process/progress and more. Andreas Tille also submitted a
set of [8]questions.
6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0403/msg00010.html
7. http://packages.debian.org/shoop
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0403/msg00018.html
DPL Bits. Martin Michlmayr sent in another [9]report and said
that over the last two weeks he attended three conferences:
[10]Open Source World Conference in Spain, [11]FOSDEM in Belgium,
and a conference in Italy organized by Firenze Tecnologia. He added
reports for these conferences as well. Also, a London based company
is interested in having a 64 bit port of Debian to PowerPC and are
willing to invest resources in this.
9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0403/msg00000.html
10. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0218-oswc
11. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0221-fosdem
11 Keystrokes away from Debian. Joey Hess [12]counted the
keystrokes in a Debian installation with DHCP and partman’s spiffy
streamlined autopartitoning. 11 keystrokes from the boot prompt to
the “Welcome to Debian” screen. 10 of them even were “Enter”. The
one extra was selecting the “Yes, please nuke my drive” button. He
believes that perhaps two more keystrokes could be removed.
12.
http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/11_keystrokes_to_debian-2004-03-04-01-58.html
Video Cluster running Debian. The [13]Visualization Group at
Penn State University has been [14]building a graphics cluster and
tiled video display wall using it for Architecture and Engineering
applications. They utilise [15]Distributed Multiheaded X and
[16]Chromium for an interactive, parallelized application
environment. Applications are developed with [17]VTK and
[18]OpenSG. [19]VideoLAN is also used to stream a video source to
multiple displays via multicast for tiled video.
13. http://viz.aset.psu.edu/
14. http://viz.aset.psu.edu/ga5in/ImmersiveEnvironmentsLab.html
15. http://dmx.sourceforge.net/
16. http://chromium.sourceforge.net/
17. http://www.vtk.org/
18. http://www.opensg.org/
19. http://www.videolan.org/
Does Debian scare away Women? Amaya Rodrigo Sastre [20]asked the
project leader candidates about their ideas to encourage more women
to be involved and what the benefits would be. Helen Faulkner
[21]explained that women face subtle problems and that on average,
women are likely to be not so confident that their skills will
allow them to survive in an environment like debian, compared to
their male counterparts. The following discussion seems to have
very well [22]proven this.
20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0403/msg00040.html
21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0403/msg00067.html
22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0403/msg00132.html
Call for Votes on a General Resolution. Manoj Srivastava
[23]called for votes on a [24]General Resolution to decide on
future handling of the non-free section. Votes must be received by
Sunday, March 21st. The vote is being conducted in accordance with
the policy delineated in section Standard Resolution Procedure of
the [25]Debian Constitution.
23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0403/msg00377.html
24. http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_002
25. http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution
Supporting Hurd with ext2. Roland McGrath has [26]written a
patch for Linux 2.6 which makes it possible to get and set
[27]passive translators for Hurd via extended attributes for the
ext2 filesystem on Linux 2.6. This makes it possible to archive
passive translators using [28]star. Using experimental [29]kernel
packages, Michael Banck was able to extract a Debian GNU/Hurd base
tarball and [30]successfully boot into a working Debian GNU/Hurd
installation without having to setup translators natively. This
could considerable ease the installation of Debian GNU/Hurd if this
patch gets accepted upstream.
26. http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2004-02/msg00108.html
27. http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-doc-translator#actpas
28. http://packages.debian.org/star
29. http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/xattr-hurd/
30. http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2004-03/msg00029.html
Debian Conference: Call for Papers. Andreas Schuldei sent out
the [31]call for papers for this years’ [32]Debian Conference which
will take place from May 26th to June 2nd in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
On day one there will be an introductory talk for all speakers
covering public speaking. The deadline for submissions is April 1st
and interested people should only submit a short description of the
presentation and provide technical details.
31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0403/msg00004.html
32. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0526-debconf
Debian Source Archive. Joachim Breitner [33]wondered whether it
is possible and useful, to have a website with all source packages
from the Debian archive extracted and available, including older
versions. Shaun ONeil [34]mentioned the peek of mirror.ac.uk/ to look into archives and
Roland Bauerschmidt [35]suggested to use Subversion and
ViewCVS.
33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0403/msg00008.html
34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0403/msg00023.html
35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0403/msg00034.html
Transition Plan for non-free. Michael Banck [36]proposed a
transition plan to move the non-free archive off of debian.org and
on nonfree.org. In particular he talks about replicating the FTP
archive, the [37]bug tracking system, the [38]package tracking
system and some mailing lists. He also called for help since the
services would have to be set up at the beginning. At the end, only
a few people would be required to maintain the service.
36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project-0403/msg00202.html
37. http://bugs.debian.org/
38. http://packages.qa.debian.org/
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you
update your systems if you have any of these packages
installed.
- [39]libxml — Arbitrary code execution.
- [40]Linux 2.2.19 (arm) — Local root exploit.
- [41]wu-ftpd — Multiple vulnerabilities.
39. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-455
40. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-456
41. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-457
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to
the unstable Debian archive [42]recently or contain important
updates.
42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main
- [43]adabrowse — HTML generator for Ada 95 library unit
specifications. - [44]apollon — KDE-based interface to the giFT file-sharing
system. - [45]apwal — Icon-based floating application launcher with
transparency. - [46]bacula — Network backup, recovery and verification.
- [47]blogtk — GTK Weblogging client.
- [48]camera — GNUstep application for digital still
cameras. - [49]clipbook — GNUstep Pasteboard Viewer.
- [50]cscvs — System for integrating CVS repositories into Arch
archives. - [51]darcs — David’s advanced revision control system.
- [52]dcoprss — KDE RSS utilities.
- [53]dvbackup — Backup tool using MiniDV camcorders.
- [54]emms — The Emacs MultiMedia System.
- [55]gwremote — GNUstep Remote Workspace Manager.
- [56]highlight — Universal source code converter.
- [57]kbruch — Fraction calculation teaching tool for KDE.
- [58]kdewebdev — Web development applications from the official
KDE release. - [59]kfilereplace — Batch search-and-replace component for
KDE. - [60]kgamma — Gamma correction KControl module.
- [61]kig — Interactive geometry program for KDE.
- [62]kmilo — KDE kded hardware support module.
- [63]kpdf — PDF viewer for KDE.
- [64]ksvg — SVG viewer for KDE.
- [65]kwalletmanager — KDE Wallet Manager.
- [66]kwifimanager — KDE Wireless LAN Manager.
- [67]kxsldbg — Graphical XSLT debugger for KDE.
- [68]latex-xcolor — Easy driver-independent TeX class for
color. - [69]muine — Simple music player.
- [70]netselect-apt — Choose the fastest Debian mirror with
netselect. - [71]nyquist — Language for music composition and sound
synthesis. - [72]okle — DVD player for KDE.
- [73]openload — Tool for load testing of web applications.
- [74]pgf — TeX Portable Graphic Format.
- [75]phpbb2 — Fully featured and skinneable flat (non-threaded)
webforum. - [76]popfile — E-Mail classification tool.
- [77]pscan — Format string security checker for C files.
- [78]pycaml — OCaml bindings to embed Python interpreter and
objects. - [79]readpst — Converts Outlook PST files to mbox and
others. - [80]udev — /dev/ management daemon.
- [81]vrel — Virtual Reality Engine Language parser.
- [82]wordpress — Semantic personal publishing platform.
43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/adabrowse
44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/apollon
45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/apwal
46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/bacula
47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/blogtk
48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/camera
49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/clipbook
50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cscvs
51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/darcs
52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/dcoprss
53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/dvbackup
54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/emms
55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/gwremote
56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/highlight
57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/kbruch
58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kdewebdev
59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kfilereplace
60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/kgamma
61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/kig
62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/kmilo
63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/kpdf
64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/ksvg
65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/kwalletmanager
66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/kwifimanager
67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/kxsldbg
68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/latex-xcolor
69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/muine
70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/netselect-apt
71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/nyquist
72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/okle
73. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/openload
74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/pgf
75. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/phpbb2
76. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/popfile
77. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/pscan
78. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libdevel/pycaml
79. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/readpst
80. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/udev
81. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/vrel
82. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/wordpress
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83. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
84. mailto:dwn@debian.org