Debian Weekly News - 9 to 15 Feb 1999
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/current/issue/
Debian Weekly News - 9 to 15 Feb 1999
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Welcome to the seventh edition of Debian Weekly News, a newsletter for
the Debian developer community. If this issue is a little slim, it's
because I spent most of yesterday attending Windows Refund Day instead
of working on it, and most of my contributors have been just as busy
with other things. To split up the work load some more, I'm looking
for more contibutors to help with reading the lists and sending me
summaries for this newsletter, [8]mail me if you're interested.
If things go [9]as planned, Debian 2.1 will be released on March 2nd.
This is very good news, because to judge by traffic on the lists this
week, everyone is tired of being in the freeze.
Bob Hilliard is making slink's [10]Release Notes document. On a
related note, the next boot-floppies upload will probably be the last
one for slink, since most bugs are resolved, and the installation
manual is almost done.
Some of the most substantial changes from hamm to slink include alpha
and sparc architectures. The sparc release is even more impressive
because it is [11]based on glibc2.1. This means lots of bug fixes for
packages that didn't work with glibc2.1 have already been made. The
end result: other platforms will have a much easier time converting to
glibc2.1. Experimental glibc2.1 packages are now available for i386 as
well, and some i386 packages were uploaded this week linked to that
library. Don't do that; glibc 2.1 will not go into the i386
architecture of potato until after slink is released.
If you're in Japan and would like to buy a computer with Debian
pre-loaded, you're in luck. " [12]CUTE 2000, an all-in-one Linux based
server was exhibited at the NET & COM '99 show. It is based on Debian
GNU/Linux, and includes software for functions such as DNS, WWW, SMTP,
FTP, SAMBA, NETATALK, DHCP and others."
In security news this week it was announced to bugtraq that the super
package has a [13]buffer overrun hole, a fix was uploaded for all
versions of Debian a few hours later. Also, the maintainer of cfengine
discovered and fixed a [14]temporary file security hole in it, and the
maintainer of grepmail [15]found and fixed 2 security holes in that
package. Despite what you may read on [16]LWN, Debian does take
security very seriously. It must be admitted that our security web
pages do continue to lag behind the latest fixes.
If you're thinking of upgrading to a 2.2.x kernel, check out [17]rcw's
kernel 2.2 checklist for an idea on what will break and what needs to
be upgraded.
Some [18]complaints about the instability of our gnome and gtk
packages (which tend to break everything that depends on them with
each new release) quickly led to a [19]useful idea: form a Debian
gnome team, which will coordinate making consistent releases of all
the gnome related packages. A [20]proposal was made to this effect,
and has met with acceptance from the maintainers.
Due to licensing problems, the programs skill and snice have been
moved from procps into a new package named procps-nonfree. They will
probably be [21]dropped from Debian entirely unless people have a
strong need for them.
As if Debian's not big enough already, there is now [22]some talk of
packaging E, wmaker, and gtk themes, and perhaps irc client scripts.
No one has any real objections to this happening, provided the
copyrights of the themes are ok.
New packages added to Debian this week include:
* [23]aspell, a more intelligent ispell replacement.
* The classic arcade game [24]xinvaders has been added back into
Debian.
* [25]realtimebattle, in which you program robots that fight each
other.
* [26]wmaker-kde and [27]wmaker-gmone, versions of wmaker with
support for those environments.
* [28]zicq, yet another ICQ client.
* [29]sketch, a vector graphics program.
* [30]uptimed, which keeps track of the highest uptimes your system
achieves.
* [31]irssi, an irc client for the gnome panel.
* [32]wmheadlines, which displays slashdot and other linux news
headlines in windowmaker's menus.
Server news
* Problems with non-us.debian.org continue. There have been
[33]offers to move non-US to Australia, but nothing official has
been done yet.
* va.debian.org has been [34]upgraded to slink. It's no longer being
used as the gnome cvs archive, so is mostly idle, and can be used
to build packages.
Followups to previous news items:
* The cause of the bug that makes cron switch to UTC time [35]has
been found.
* The [36]logo submissions in the Gimp contest keep pouring in; the
number has doubled from what was available last week. Here's a
[37]good example.
References
8. mailto:joeyh@debian.org
9. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-announce-9902/msg00011.html
10. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9902/msg00446.html
11. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-testing-9902/msg00064.html
12. http://www.NikkeiBP.AsiaBizTech.com/Database/1999_Feb/08/Mor.02.gwif.html
13. http://www.geek-girl.com/bugtraq/1999_1/0706.html
14. http://www.geek-girl.com/bugtraq/1999_1/0710.html
15. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-changes-9902/msg00944.html
16. http://www.lwn.net/
17. http://www.debian.org/~rcw/2.2/
18. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9902/msg01172.html
19. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9902/msg01176.html
20. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9902/msg01281.html
21. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/1999/7/mail.html#1
22. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9902/msg01283.html
23. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/aspell.html
24. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/games/xinvaders.html
25. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/games/realtimebattle.html
26. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/x11/wmaker-kde.html
27. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/x11/wmaker-gnome.html
28. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/zicq.html
29. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/graphics/sketch.html
30. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/utils/uptimed.html
31. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/irssi.html
32. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/x11/wmheadlines.html
33. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9902/msg00429.html
34. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9902/msg01364.html
35. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9902/msg00954.html
36. http://contest.gimp.org/view.cgi?month=1999-02
37. http://contest.gimp.org/view.cgi?month=1999-02&mode=show&graphic=idsfa-0
--
see shy jo
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