Debian Weekly News - 29 Dec 1998 to 5 Jan 1999
[ Also available on the web at http://www.debian.org/~joeyh/debiannews.html ]
Debian Weekly News - 29 Dec 1998 to 5 Jan 1999
Welcome to the first edition of Debian Weekly News, a newsletter for
the debian developer community, unabashedly imitating [1]Linux Weekly
News. This issue is somewhat an experiment, and will be continued
based on reader responses and my free time.
RMS is using debian! He has it installed on his Toshiba laptop and has
been active on the lists, making comments and asking questions (he
needs help to get PCMCIA working, it seems). RMS is also concerned
that debian may be pushing non-free too hard by making free packages
(like tetex) suggest non-free packages (like tetex-nonfree). Several
possible solutions have been raised, discussion is on-going. Along
with the debian hurd port, will this spell larger FSF participation in
debian in the future?
I'm sure you know linux 2.2 is nearing completion - the 2.2pre series
has begun. Consensus seems to be that kernel 2.2 is too large a change
for slink at this point, but all packages should be made to work with
it. In related news, new boot-floppies for slink are [2]out and use
kernel 2.0.36.
What's new in debian 2.2? Martin Schultz is [3]looking for submissions
to be used on the press release but has gotten little feedback yet.
Jorn Goerzen [4]made a bold suggestion: skip slink, freeze potato, and
ship it as 2.2. He feels progress on getting slink releasable is too
slow and it is becoming quickly outdated in the meantime. Reaction is
very mixed.
Will debian have a booth at the upcoming linux conventions? LinuxExpo
has a $1,200 price tag, LinuxWorld is in the $15,000 range. Contrast
to TheBazaar which may provide a free booth, as did the Atlanta Linux
Showcase. James LewisMoss (aka Dres) [5]posted to Slashdot asking for
help to raise the $1,200 for the LinuxWorld booth, with good results
-- we may get a free booth as a non-profit after all, if that fails,
many people have offered donations. (This also [6]brings up the
question, does debian still have money in the bank? The answer -- yes,
but we don't want to spend it on things like conventions.)
There's been [7]some discussion about making packages log important
install-time notes to a file instead of just displaying it on the
screen, and the best way to implement that. Several prototype logging
tools have been written.
Some news about debian servers that has come up this week:
* The technical difficulties on non-us.debian.org continue. The
incoming directory there is read-only. This has been preventing
bug fixes to packages in non-us for a while now.
* The MTA on va.debian.org is soon going to change from qmail to
exim. Be sure to change your .qmail files into .forward files
beforehand.
Interesting and important package releases this week include:
* In the realm of security, Ben Collins found and [8]fixed a nasty
hole that let cfengine overwrite any file on the system.
* There's been some interest lately about the new MTA, postfix (AKA
IBM Secure Mailer, AKA vmailer). A package was uploaded, but was
rejected because of licensing troubles.
_________________________________________________________________
GPL Copyright 1998, 1999 by [9]Joey Hess
References
1. http://lwn.net/
2. http://debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-changes-9812/msg01861.html
3. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-publicity-9812/msg00014.html
4. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg00126.html
5. http://slashdot.org/articles/98/12/29/1216242.shtml
6. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=98/12/29/1216242&pid=0#1992
7. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9812/msg02930.html
8. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-changes-9812/msg01950.html
9. mailto:joeyh@debian.org
--
see shy jo
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