Debian Project News - June 9th, 2008
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Debian Project News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2008/04/
Debian Project News - June 9th, 2008
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Welcome to this year's 4th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community.
Some of the topics covered in this issue:
* Release Update
* Beta-2 of the Lenny Debian Installer released
* Report from LinuxTag 2008
* Call for help by the german translation team
* ... and much more.
Release Update
Marc Brockschmidt reported[1] about the status of the upcoming stable
release. After some major transitions, like the ocaml transition[2][3]
"Lenny" is in good shape, but still a lot of work needs to be done. Since
the armel architecture made great improvements the release team decided
to upgrade it to a proper release architecture.
1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/06/msg00000.html
2: http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2008/05/debian_ocaml_news/
3: http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2008/06/ocaml_3.10.2_is_in_testing/
Regarding Lenny the Qt/KDE Packaging Team [4]decided that the upcoming
release will be shipped with KDE 3.5.9 (and with the KDE 4.1 development
platform: kde4libs, kdepimlibs and kdebase-runtime).
4: http://ekaia.org/blog/2008/06/08/lets-go-for-kde-359-in-lenny/
Debian Installer for Lenny Beta-2 ready for testing
The second beta version of the Debian Installer for the upcoming
release "Lenny" has been released. Some new or improved features are:
* Linux Kernel version 2.6.24
* i386 and amd64 have a new boot menu, allowing a more user-friendly
selection of boot options (e.g. for the graphical installer)
* full support for encrypted partitioning for the graphical installer
* The installer will warn users when the translation of the installer
to their language is incomplete
* When using the KDE or Xfce CD images it is now possible to select
additional tasks
Images for different installation media and architectures are available
for testing[5]. After using the Debian-Installer, please send an
installation report, even if there weren't any problems.
5: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
Bits from the ftp-masters
Joerg Jaspert sent out "bits from the ftp-masters"[6] containing recent
activities of that team, including some personnel changes as well as a
lot of code changes regarding Debian's infrastructure improving the
overall teamwork, for example by making it easier for the release team to
handle transitions. He also asked for volunteers for new ftp assistants.
Later he reported[7] that he already got four volunteers as well as
several other suggestions for improvements.
6: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/05/msg00012.html
7: http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/06/05/ftp-assistants.html
Report from LinuxTag 2008
Bastian Venthur[8] and Noel Koethe[9] reported about this year's Debian
booth at the LinuxTag 2008, a major conference about free software in
Europe. Marko Jung, one of the organisers, [10]added thanks for the good
job the booth staff did. He also notes, that there was a high demand from
the visitors' side for a Debian sub-conference at next year's LinuxTag.
8: http://blog.venthur.de/2008/05/31/linuxtag-2008/
9: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2008/06/msg00001.html
10: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2008/06/msg00003.html
Handling of removed packages
Marc Brockschmidt wondered about the proper way to handle packages
removed between two releases[11]. One of his major concerns are packages
becoming unsupported without users noticing it. Several people replied,
that package management tools are already trying to notify users, while
Frans Pop pointed out[12], that the release notes[13] have a chapter
handling this issue.
11: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/05/msg01100.html
12: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/05/msg01103.html
13: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading#s-obsolete
French debconf translations completed
Christian Perrier reported[14] that the french translation team finished
translating all templates for the debconf system, helping users to
configure packages on installation time. He notes, that some of these
packages still need to add the translated templates. German, Czech and
Portuguese are also quite close to the 100% mark.
14: http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2008/06/01#french-100-virtually
Call for help by the German translation team
The German translation team sent a call for help[15] for the translation
of package descriptions. The upcoming stable release will support showing
users translated descriptions of available packages, but currently only
2100 of the more than 18000 package descriptions are translated to
German. The statistics[16] for other packages are similar. Information on
how to help the ongoing translation effort is available at our
website[17].
15: http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-german/2008/05/msg01534.html
16: http://ddtp.debian.net/ddtss/index.cgi/xx
17: http://www.debian.org/international/l10n/ddtp
Other News
The 8th issue of the miscellaneous news for developers[18] has been
released and covers the following topics: Minor update to the mailing
list code of conduct, Document aimed at upstreams in preparation, d-i
beta2 in preparation, breaks beta 1, New "transition check" tool.
18: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/05/msg00013.html
Christian Perrier reported some news from samba packages development
team[19]. He later asked for tests of his packages[20].
19: http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2008/06/01#samba-may31
20: http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2008/06/01#samba-32rc1%20Samba%203.2.0-rc1
Petter Reinholdtsen found some ways to reduce the boot time of his Debian
system by 37,5%[21] and asked for further ideas.
21: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/05/msg01119.html
Norbert Tretkowski reported[22], that backports.org, a service providing
unofficial updated packages for the current stable release, turned 5
years old on May 27th. Congratulations!
22: http://tretkowski.de/blog/archives/415-5-years-backports.org.html
Sandro Tosi uploaded a new version of reportbug[23], which is now
maintained in a team.
23: http://sandrotosi.blogspot.com/2008/05/reportbug-340-in-unstable.html
Important Debian Security Advisories
Debian's Security Team released among others advisories for the packages
Samba[24], Linux 2.6.18[25][26] and tomcat 5.5[27]. Please read them
carefully and take the proper measures.
24: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00168.html
25: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00166.html
26: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00172.html
27: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00174.html
Please note, that those are only the most important security advisories
of the last two weeks. If you would like to be always up to date
regarding security advisories released by the Debian Security Team,
please subscribe to the our mailing list for security announcements[28].
28: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
Work-needing packages
Currently 450 packages are orphaned and 107 packages are up for adoption.
Please take a look at the recent[29] reports[30] if there are packages
you are interested in or view the complete archive of packages requesting
help[31].
29: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/05/msg01144.html
30: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/06/msg00155.html
31: 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 who watch the Debian community and
report about what is going on. Please see our "HOWTO contribute" page[32]
to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at
debian-publicity@lists.debian.org[33].
32: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
33: mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Meike Reichle, Ana
Guerrero and Alexander Schmehl.
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