Debian Weekly News - 2 to 8 Mar 1999
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/1999/10/
Debian Weekly News - 2 to 8 Mar 1999
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Debian Weekly News - 2 to 8 Mar 1999
Welcome to Debian Weekly News, a newsletter for the Debian developer
community.
Debian 2.1 is officially released, for real this time. The release
went off quite smoothly, with no last minute emergencies. More
information on [8]this page. Congratulations, all.
The Debian booth at LinuxWorld expo was a great success. We talked to
large numbers of people, recruited new developers, and gave away a ton
of free CD's. Wichert also talked to a large number of companies who
are interested in Debian; press releases will probably start appearing
about the results of those talks.
The [9]Empeg in-car mp3 player runs Debian and was at our booth at
LinuxWorld. This device generated a lot of interest, including this
[10]Wired Article. Never expect the media to get things quite right:
"The Empeg player is being shown at the back of the Debian booth and
runs the company's distribution of Linux. " (It was front and center
in the booth and of course Debian isn't a company.)
Our booth also received a coveted Slashdot LinuxWorld [11]award for
Highest Density EMF in a Booth. "I think they've got 38 computers, an
empeg, and more geeks than I thought possible in a 10x10 space. Next
show they'll have to build shelves and stack them."
Linux Weekly News used our booth as a place to write LWN on March 4th.
Their comments on the booth: "Way back [...] was 'the ghetto,' where
the likes of the Free Software Foundation, Debian, Slashdot, and
others hung out. Fortunately, lots of people found their way back
there; the Debian booth, for example, has been generally
unapproachable. [...] the Debian folks at LinuxWorld have been great,
providing a nice place for Liz to stash and recharge her laptop. It's
been fun getting to meet so many of you!" Nice meeting you too..
A lot of Debian people got together for dinner on Wednesday after the
expo, 22 people attended in all, even Bruce Perens was there.
If the above isn't enough information about LinuxWorld, annotated
pictures of Debian people at the event are [12]here, and there are
also summaries of [13]day 1 and [14]day 2.
Spurred by the release date slipping last week, here are some
[15]thoughts about release management by Richard Braakman. In addition
to proposing a number of changes in the way responsibilities are
delegated for a new release and tasks that would need to be complete
before a release could be frozen, he proposes a lengthy development
time of several months and short freeze time of two to three weeks.
This might be worth considering for the Potato release. Also, [16]here
is a summary by Brandon Mitchell of previous discussions on this
topic.
Ian Jackson is [17]working on dpkg again, merging in all fixes made in
NMU's in the past year or so. His dpkg CVS tree is [18]available on
VA.
The debian-java mailing list is discussing a "sub policy" for the Java
language. The aim is to write this sub policy (two drafts have been
presented), covering the packaging of Java compilers, Java virtual
machines and programs written in Java. All Java programmers or
packagers are invited to join in and give advice.
Ben Collins [19]reports that the version of PAM in potato is working
correctly after fixing some 50+ bugs. The incorporation of PAM into
Debian can affect many different packages (ftp, telnet, ssh, etc.)
which might use this method of authentication. As a result, he has
proposed a mailing list for developers whose packages might need to be
integrated with PAM.
A [20]suggestion to make the "software which should be packaged" part
of the WNPP a separate entity was made recently and received positive
responses. The new creation will be more like a searchable and
browsable database.
PC Magazine [21]reviewed several linux distributions including Debian.
It's short, a bit harsh, but there's a lot of truth in there. Outside
reviews are a great way to find the trouble spots that one may have
forgotten after using a product for several years.
There has been some work on gnome 1.0. A [22]staging area has been set
up for those that want to jump the gun and install it now.
Attention Finnish users and developers: there will be a meeting in
Finland this weekend. Read the [23]announcement (in Finnish) for more
information.
The only security news this week is that another buffer overflow was
[24]fixed in super.
New packages added to Debian this week include:
* [25]astyle: Artistic style, a source code indenter for C/C++ and
Java
* Yet another shell: [26]esh, the easy shell
* [27]gnudip: provides dynamic DNS services
* More netscape packages than you can shake a stick at.
Followups to previous news items:
* Correction: The new ftp.debian.org has been up for two months now,
last issue of this newsletter said it was "soon to arrive".
* Correction: The Mac at the Debian booth at linuxworld was actually
a Mac SE 30, not just a Mac SE.
* The article on Slink is now available on the [28]Open Resources
website. It is comprehensive enough to serve as a valuable
addition to the Debian FAQ.
Thanks to this week's contributors: Michael Dahlberg, Randolph Chung,
Brandon Mitchell, and Stephane Bortzmeyer.
_________________________________________________________________
References
7. http://insite.verisim.com/search/debian/simple
8. http://www.debian.org/News/1999/19990309
9. http://www.empeg.com/
10. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/18236.html
11. http://slashdot.org/articles/99/03/04/143225.shtml
12. http://www.debian.org/~joeyh/linuxworld/
13. http://netgod.net/~slash/articles/99/03/03/1853202_F.shtml
14. http://netgod.net/~slash/articles/99/03/03/196233_F.shtml
15. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9903/msg00343.html
16. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9903/msg00477.html
17. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-dpkg-9903/msg00034.html
18. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/1999/10/mail#2
19. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9903/msg00124.html
20. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9903/msg00485.html
21. http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/opensource/390823.html
22. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-announce-9903/msg00003.html
23. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/1999/10/mail#1
24. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-changes-9903/msg00082.html
25. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/devel/astyle.html
26. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/shells/esh.html
27. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/gnudip.html
28. http://www.openresources.com/magazine/debian-21/
--
see shy jo
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