Debian Weekly News - February 6th, 2002
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/6/
Debian Weekly News - February 6th, 2002
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Welcome to the sixth issue of 2002's series of DWN, the weekly
newsletter for the Debian community. The feedback we received after we
tried another mail format, was overwhelming and mostly appreciating
the new format. I guess, we will keep it. Not directly affecting
Debian, a heated [1]debate is going on in Germany, [2]discussing
whether Free Software (i.e. GNU/Linux) should be used by the
parliament or not.
1. http://www.linux-verband.de/aktuell/News_140.de.shtml
2. http://www.bundestux.de/english.html
Preparing the Next Stable Revision. In another quixotic attempt, Joey
is [3]preparing another revision of the stable Debian distribution
(r6) and will infrequently send [4]reports so people can actually
comment on it and intervene whenever this is required. As usual the
next stable revision will mainly add new security fixes.
3. http://people.debian.org/~joey/2.2r6/
4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0201/msg00015.html
Problem with Donations. Martin Krafft started a [5]discussion about
donating money (and equipment) to the Debian project. He pointed out
that it is rather difficult to donate money to the Debian project if
you're not living in the U.S. or in Germany. A [6]PayPal account
could help here, but there are [7]horror stories out there as well,
and it seems difficult to reach a human being in case of trouble.
Additionally, individuals could act as relay, but only donations to
charitable organizations are tax-deductable.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg02673.html
6. http://www.paypal.com/
7. http://www.paypalwarning.com/
Fixing Packages in Testing. Robert McQueen and Jonathan McDowell wrote
a [8]proposal that talks about woody-proposed-updates. Fixing bugs in
testing can be problematic if the current version in unstable is a new
upstream release or is linked against newer libraries that prevents
their inclusion in testing until the package is considered ready. This
dual-feed approach to testing should bring us much closer to the ideal
of having a testing that remains bug-free and current enough.
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0202/msg00085.html
Installing Debian Packages on AIX. IBM is distributing free software
tools for its AIX platform packaged as rpm files. This is
disappointing for people who used to work on Debian, especially if it
comes to source modifications and package rebuilding. Hence, several
people are [9]interested in porting dpkg to AIX as well, in order to
be able to install Debian packages there.
9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0202/msg00088.html
Bugs That Require Help. Martin Michlmayr reports that the [10]QA web
site now features listings of bugs tagged [11]help, [12]security and
[13]unreproducible. People who care about the woody release should
take some time and go help with those bugs. Developers who would like
to know how to tag bug reports against packages they maintain, should
read the [14]documentation.
10. http://qa.debian.org/
11. http://qa.debian.org/bts-help.html
12. http://qa.debian.org/bts-security.html
13. http://qa.debian.org/bts-unreproducible.html
14. http://www.de.debian.org/Bugs/server-control
Loki Games Inc. Goes Out of Business. Many users and developers of
GNU/Linux, who use their system for playing games, feel sad about
[15]Loki's demise. However, some projects and the CVS repository of
Loki will last. This should be a general reminder, that we should not
pirate software, which may lead to their companies going out business.
Frankly to say, One of reasons that many people show their back to
GNU/Linux is the lack of many games and support.
15. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/25/1346211
LSB 1.1 Released. I has been reported on February 1st, 2002, that
[16]Linux Standard Base 1.1 (LSB) was released together with the first
version of the [17]Linux Internationalization Initiative Standard to
deal with GNU/Linux language barriers. This project tries to assure
users that their choice of GNU/Linux will be supported across vendors
as well as across hardware platforms. It will be very useful for
breaking the barrier among many GNU/Linux distributions including
Debian GNU/Linux which sponsores [18]mailing lists for this LSB
project.
16. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/02/01/141215.shtml
17. http://www.li18nux.net/
18. http://lists.debian.org/lsb.html
Successful Booth at LWCENY. Jaldhar Vyas, who organized the Debian
booth at the past LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in New York City,
wrote a [19]summary after the show. Twelve people from Debian showed
up at the booth. At the booth, they got machines of several
architectures (sparc, mips, alpha, and parisc) running which most
visitors found quite impressive.
19. http://www.debian.org/events/2002/0130-lwce-report
Status of Debian Jr. Ben Armstrong sent in a [20]status report for
Debian Jr. It has been a while since Ben Armstrong reported on how
Debian Jr. is developing. A number of improvements have been made to
the [21]Debian Jr. web site to give people a better idea of what they
have accomplished. Since nobody has stepped forward to work on Debian
in education, Debian Jr. has taken membership in the newly formed
[22]Schoolforge coalition, a group of "independent organisations that
advocate, use and develop open resources for primary and secondary
education".
20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0202/msg00001.html
21. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-jr/
22. http://www.schoolforge.net/
Updating Outdated Netscape Packages. Diego Biurrun, who wrote the
[23]article on DebianPlanet that we commented on in our last issue,
sent us an update. The maintainer for our Netscape packages, Ryan
Murray, was waiting for CJK translations, is working on 4.79 packages
and hopes to finish them soon. Diego has started doing some productive
work and helped Ryan Murray by sifting through the bug lists and
weeding out around 90 outdated and/or unreproducible bugs, merging a
few and assigning to other packages if they did not belong to
Netscape.
23. http://www.debianplanet.org/article.php?sid=570
New Boot-Floppies 3.0.19? New boot-floppies are [24]about to be
released soon. The current version 3.0.18 was released on December 18
and an impressive number of changes were made to the current code in
CVS. It's time to let people test the system. One outstanding issue,
however, that may hold this release, is the pending non-maintainer
upload of slang1-utf8.
24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0202/msg00112.html
Updated XFree86 Packages for Potato. Charl P. Botha [25]announced new
potato packages of Branden's official 4.1.0-13 release. People who are
still running Debian 2.2 (potato) and want to use these newer X
packages, should read [26]this before upgrading.
25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-x-0201/msg00095.html
26. http://people.debian.org/~cpbotha/xf410_potato/READ.THIS
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
Debian archive recently.
* [27]ack -- Kanji code converter.
* [28]gnoise -- A GTK+ based wave file editor.
* [29]mutella -- A Command line based Gnutella client.
* [30]ne -- Nice Editor, an easy-to-use and powerful editor.
* [31]nget -- Auto-resuming command line nntp file grabber.
* [32]pratico -- A guide to great and usually unknown features in
Debian.
* [33]sinek -- GTK+ video/audio player, an alternative frontend to
Xine.
* [34]snac -- A relatively complete algebraic calculator for GNOME.
* [35]tora -- A graphical toolkit for database developers and
administrators.
* [36]vftool -- A tool to generate VF files for dvi2ps/dvi2dvi.
* [37]yelp -- Help browser for Gnome 2.
27. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/ack.html
28. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/gnoise.html
29. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/mutella.html
30. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/ne.html
31. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/news/nget.html
32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/pratico.html
33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/sinek.html
34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/snac.html
35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/tora.html
36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/vftool.html
37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/yelp.html
Security Updates. You know the drill, please make sure that you update
your systems if you have this package installed.
* [38]rsync -- Remote exploit.
* [39]jgroff -- Format string vulnerability.
38. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-106
39. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-107
Orphaned Packages. 14 packages were orphaned this week and need a new
maintainer. This makes it total 108 orphaned packages. Please see the
[40]WNPP pages for the full list.
* [41]cronosii ([42]Bug#132081) -- Fast, light-weight and functional
GNOME e-mail client.
* [43]dcethreads ([44]Bug#131736) -- A DCE Threads emulation layer
ontop of LinuxThreads.
* [45]freedce ([46]Bug#131737) -- A free implementation of DCE RPC.
* [47]gatos ([48]Bug#131566) -- ATI All-in-Wonder TV capture
software.
* [49]glut ([50]Bug#132020) -- The OpenGL Utility Toolkit.
* [51]grun ([52]Bug#131205) -- GTK based Run dialog.
* [53]latte ([54]Bug#131722) -- The Language for Transforming Text
(currently to html).
* [55]maplay3 ([56]Bug#132372) -- obsolete package.
* [57]mico-2.3.5 ([58]Bug#132300) -- A fully compliant CORBA
implementation.
* [59]odb ([60]Bug#131738) -- Object Data Base.
* [61]rmc ([62]Bug#131732) -- Remote method call.
* [63]seahorse ([64]Bug#132441) -- A Gnome front end for GnuPG.
* [65]smupsd ([66]Bug#131662) -- UPS monitoring daemon.
* [67]svgalib ([68]Bug#132042) -- Console SVGA display utilities.
40. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/cronosii.html
42. http://bugs.debian.org/132081
43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libdcethreads2.html
44. http://bugs.debian.org/131736
45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libfreedce.html
46. http://bugs.debian.org/131737
47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/gatos.html
48. http://bugs.debian.org/131566
49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/glutg3.html
50. http://bugs.debian.org/132020
51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/grun.html
52. http://bugs.debian.org/131205
53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/latte.html
54. http://bugs.debian.org/131722
55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/maplay3.html
56. http://bugs.debian.org/132372
57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libmico2.3.5.html
58. http://bugs.debian.org/132300
59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libodb0.html
60. http://bugs.debian.org/131738
61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/librmc.html
62. http://bugs.debian.org/131732
63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/non-us/seahorse.html
64. http://bugs.debian.org/132441
65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/smupsd.html
66. http://bugs.debian.org/131662
67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/svgalibg1.html
68. http://bugs.debian.org/132042
Did You See More News? Please keep us informed! Be sure to send us
feedback, news and tips about new or old packages to
[69]dwn@debian.org.
69. mailto:dwn@debian.org
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