Debian Project News - November 4th, 2011
Welcome to this year's fourteenth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:
- Updated Debian: 6.0.3 and 5.0.9 released
- DebConf12 official dates
- Debian Installer localisation
- Feedback after DebConf11
- Uses of Emdebian
- Bits from the DPL
- New Member process
- Further interviews
- Other news
- New Debian Contributors
- Important Debian Security Advisories
- New and noteworthy packages
- Work-needing packages
- Want to continue reading DPN?
Updated Debian: 6.0.3 and 5.0.9 released
The third update for Debian 6.0 (codename
Squeeze
) and the ninth update
for Debian 5.0 (codename Lenny
) have been released.
These updates mainly add corrections for security problems to the stable and
oldstable releases, along with some adjustments for serious problems.
DebConf12 official dates
The DebConf team announced the final and official dates for DebConf12: DebCamp will be held from July 1 to 7 2012, followed by DebConf from July 8 to 14, in Managua, Nicaragua. DebConf will be preceded by a day during which the doors are opened to the general public, commonly called Debian Day. For further information, please visit the DebConf12 web pages.
Debian Installer localisation
Christian Perrier reported some new progress in Debian Installer localisation. Nineteen languages are now up to date for D-I's core files; eight (Czech, Dutch, French, German, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish) are 100% complete for the moment, and many more should reach this hall of fame pretty soon, thanks to the translators.
Feedback after DebConf11
After his This week in Debian
interview,
Adnan Hodzic wrote a summary of DebConf11
and its consequences.
He offers an inside view of DebConf organisation, sharing some of
the stresses and the amazing experiences he had with other organisers.
Among the after-effects: the Government of Republika Srpska may
seriously consider free and open source software for their own use,
and Adnan has taken a vacation to prepare himself for his next projects.
Uses of Emdebian
Continuing his
series on Emdebian, Neil Williams posted an article about
the use of Emdebian on special purpose computers. The common
features of special purpose computers include: single task only, single-user support,
single mode input, restricted connectivity, constrained user data. On
this kind of computer Emdebian is very popular for many reasons, such as the
multi-tasking kernel and userspace which provide a responsive machine, or
the mere fact that in Emdebian (unlike proprietary competitors)
the graphical software is trivially separated from the core software.
But the most important reason is that Emdebian Grip allows better
debugging: in fact, Emdebian Grip is binary compatible with the
equivalent Debian suite and when a bug appears in the high level user
interface, it is much easier to debug that on the desktop than on the
device
, said Neil.
Bits from the DPL
Stefano Zacchiroli reminded us that Wheezy is a
few
months away from its freeze: everyone can help.
He reported about some discussions
that are worth attention; about maintainers'
and porters' responsibilities; reasons not to use private
email aliases; etc.
Stefano gave updates about sprints (for coordinating which there is a new mailing list)
and the trademark policy.
He also recently attended the Linux Day
in Parma, Italy,
and the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Florida.
New Member process
Enrico Zini announced that the New Maintainer
process
has changed its name, to become the New
Member process
: the procedure is still the same, and even its initials
are unchanged, but its name is no longer confusing and ambiguous.
Thanks to Stefano Zacchiroli for his proposal.
Jan Hauke Rahm also joined the New Member Front Desk, which can now be reached
at nm@debian.org.
Further interviews
Since the last issue of the Debian Project News,
two new issues of the This week in
Debian
podcast have been published: with
Jonathan
Nadeau, who talks about the Ohio LinuxFest and his internship at the FSF; and with
Adnan
Hodzic, who talks about DebConf11.
Other news
Julien Cristau announced that in the current testing Debian distribution, the default Python version pointed at by the /usr/bin/python symlink is now Python 2.7.
Meike Reichle officially announced the Wheezy Bug Squashing Party Marathon, starting in Hildesheim on December 2, 2011.
New Debian Contributors
Twenty-four people have started to maintain packages since the previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Harish Badrinath, Andrew Harvey, Michael Jumper, Jakub Adam, Tiziano Zito, Zlatan Todoric, Ivo Maintz, Judit Foglszinger, Daniel Hughes, Mark Owen, Rico Rommel, Alex Chiang, Daniel Schaal, Alexander Chernyakhovsky, Jerome Robert, Shell Xu, Sebastian Eichelbaum, Jeroen Nijhof, Michael Milligan, Emmanuel Thomas-Maurin, Arthur Gautier, Kouhei Maeda, Rodolphe Pelloux-Prayer and Ahmed Toulan into our project!
Important Debian Security Advisories
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): linux-2.6, openjdk-6, iceape, iceweasel, puppet, openoffice.org, quagga, icedove, cyrus-imapd-2.2, policykit-1, dokuwiki, moin, bugzilla, radvd, wireshark, kfreebsd-8, pam, libfcgi-perl, freetype, torque, simplesamlphp, tor, python-django, phpldapadmin, mahara, man2html and xen. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.
Debian's Backports Team released advisories for these packages: puppet (updated announce) and iceweasel, Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.
Debian's Stable Release Team released update announcements for the packages: tzdata (last updated announce) and clamav. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.
Debian's Volatile Team released update announcements for the packages: tzdata (last updated announce) and clamav. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.
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 (and the separate backports
list, and stable updates
list or volatile
list, for Lenny
, the oldstable distribution) for announcements.
New and noteworthy packages
Hundreds of packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among many others are:
- dff — powerful, efficient and modular digital forensic framework
- ebook-speaker — eBook reader that reads aloud in a synthetic voice
- openteacher — learn words in a foreign language
- openxenmanager — full-featured graphical management tool for Xen using XenApi
- ptex2tex — easy generation of (possibly complex) LaTeX environments
- qxw — advanced interactive crossword construction tool
- rbenv — simple per-user Ruby version manager
- shinken — flexible monitoring tool
- unbound-anchor — utility to securely fetch the root DNS trust anchor
- x2 — brand new text editor for the GNOME desktop
Work-needing packages
Currently 400 packages are orphaned and 145 packages are up for adoption: please visit the complete list of packages which need your help.
Want to continue reading DPN?
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This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Francesca Ciceri, David Prévot, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Alexander Reshetov and Justin B Rye.