Debian Weekly News - December 30th, 2003
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/52/
Debian Weekly News - December 30th, 2003
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Welcome to this year's 52nd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. LinuxCertified [1]announced the Debian-certified
[2]LC2430 laptop, which is sold with Debian GNU/Linux pre-configured.
Merry Christmas: Nathanael Nerode [3]noticed that the list of
[4]release critical bugs is below 600.
1. http://linuxcertified.com/debian-linux-laptop.html
2. http://linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2430.html
3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0312/msg01952.html
4. http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/
Debian Timeline 2003. We have prepared a [5]timeline for the ending
year as retrospective of a quite exciting and active year. It lists
(hopefully) all major events of the year 2003 as they were mentioned
in the past 51 issues of DWN. They are composed by a total of 36
volunteer writers and translated into a dozen languages by many
developers. A big and warm thanks for your great work.
5. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/timeline
Testing Advances. Anthony Towns [6]reported that several packages
with release-critical bugs have been removed from testing. Perl and
zlib were also pushed to move into testing soon. He also noted that
anyone can upgrade and downgrade bug reports if it is appropriate.
There's no need to ask the maintainer or the release manager unless
you're concerned with the "in the package maintainer's opinion, makes
the package unsuitable for release" clause.
6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release-0312/msg00044.html
Removal of non-free Components. Andrew Suffield [7]proposed a general
resolution to exclude non-free software from the next and all future
release processes. He also proposed disabling the possibility of
uploading packages into non-free and that the Debian project cease
active support of the non-free section. Anthony Towns [8]stated that
this proposal violates the [9]social contract and therefore cannot be
passed.
7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0312/msg00011.html
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0312/msg00013.html
9. http://www.debian.org/social_contract
2003 GNU/Linux Timeline. Our colleagues from [10]Linux Weekly News
prepared the 6th annual [11]GNU/Linux Timeline. A year is a long time
in the Free Software world, and in 2003 there were lawsuits filed,
major releases made, and, as always, the code got better. A few of the
Debian related events that are mentioned include the [12]mICQ drama,
the [13]project leader election, and of course, [14]Debian's tenth
birthday. The timeline is split up by months, as usual.
10. http://lwn.net/
11. http://lwn.net/Articles/Timeline2003/
12. http://lwn.net/Articles/60780/
13. http://lwn.net/Articles/60781/
14. http://lwn.net/Articles/60786/
Comprehensive Debian Installer Reports. Rick Moen created a [15]page
in which he describes all known ways to install Debian. He debunks
some common misconceptions about Debian installers, such as no
user-friendly installers, no easy XFree86 4.3.0 support, no ReiserFS
support, no software-RAID support and so on. Rick lists and describes
new-user friendly installers, run-from-CD variants, unofficial
installer images, the official installer, specialised variants, chroot
installation, PXE installation, installation from a USB memory stick,
and 'make your own' installers.
15. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html
Debian Installer Ports Status. Joey Hess reported on the [16]status of
the debian-installer ports. The i386 port is on track for beta 2 and
seems to be working well. The PowerPC port is very shaky and needs a
Debian admin or a kindly offer from someone with a PowerPC box. IA64
probably works, but there are no install reports to back this up. The
mips port may be in beta 2. It almost works, but there may be some
final issues to attend to. Status of the arm port is uncertain. There
seems to be progress, but apparently no install reports. Finally,
status of mipsel is also unclear, but it may be a little behind.
16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0312/msg01577.html
APT 0.6.x in Experimental. Matt Zimmerman [17]announced that he has
uploaded apt 0.6 into experimental. This branch of apt represents a
first pass at merging apt-secure into apt proper. Other new features
are planned, but this is the first. No extra effort should be required
unless one uses non-Debian package sources, in which case an extra
confirmation step will be required by apt-get.
17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0312/msg01986.html
Automatic Generation of Perl Packages for Debian. Andreas Klein
[18]announced a program he wrote that [19]turns Perl modules into
Debian packages automatically. This [20]tool is quite useful for users
when the respective Perl modules haven't been packaged officially.
This is somewhat similar to dh-make-perl.
18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-perl-0311/msg00023.html
19. http://www.mathematik.uni-kassel.de/~klein/debian/
20. http://www.mathematik.uni-kassel.de/~klein/debian/perl2deb
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have this package installed.
* [21]xsok -- Local group games exploit.
21. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-405
Want to continue reading DWN? 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 the [22]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [23]dwn@debian.org.
22. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
23. mailto:dwn@debian.org
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