Debian Weekly News - October 7th, 2003
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/40/
Debian Weekly News - October 7th, 2003
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Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. DivisionTwo.com wrote an amusing [1]article
about a fictitious Barbie OS based on Debian. LinuxIT [2]announced it
would release its Linux Professional Institute Certification
[3]training manuals under a free license.
1. http://www.divisiontwo.com/articles/barbieOS.htm
2. http://www.linuxit.com/Press/Press030903.html
3. http://www.linuxit.com/lpi.html
emDebian at UK Linux Expo. LinuxDevices.com [4]reports that Debian's
Vincent Sanders will attend the upcoming [5]Linux Expo UK to discuss
ideas about emDebian at Debian's stand in the [6].Org Village.
[7]emDebian's aims are to improve Debian as a whole for embedded use
and to provide a set of tools to generate embedded device images
simply and quickly. LinuxDevices.com's annual [8]Embedded Linux
Market Survey showed Debian to be the third most popular GNU/Linux
distribution for embedded development.
4. http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4146203121.html
5. http://www.linuxexpouk.co.uk/Exhibition/Visiting/
6. http://www.linuxexpo.org.uk/
7. http://www.emdebian.org/
8. http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7301151332.html
Debian Project at European Conferences. The Debian project
[9]announced that its members and affiliates will attend four
exhibitions and conferences that cover Free Software and GNU/Linux in
Europe. On October 7th and 8th [10]Opensaar takes place in
Saarbrücken, Germany, with a talk about mail services with Debian by
Marko Jung. On October 8th and 9th [11]Linux Expo UK will take place
in Olympia, London, U.K. This is followed by [12]Practical Linux in
Giessen Germany on October 11th, where Alexander Schmehl will give a
talk and a workshop about Debian. Finally from October 14th to 16th
[13]Linux Kongress will take place in Saarbrücken, Germany, where
Thomas Lange will give a [14]tutorial about building a beowulf
cluster.
9. http://www.debian.org/News/2003/20031005
10. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/1007-opensaar
11. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/1008-linuxexpo
12. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/1011-plgiessen
13. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/1014-linuxkongress
14. http://www.linux-kongress.org/2003/tutorials/index.html#1_1_6
Summary of the Debian-Installer DebCamp. Joey Hess sent in a
[15]summary of the [16]DebCamp. He reported that more than ten
debian-installer developers met for four days in [17]Oldenburg and
worked quite successful on the new installer as the flood of CVS
messages demonstrated. As a result PowerPC is perhaps better supported
by debian-installer right now than is i386. Quite a lot of work was
done on general user interface issues. Many issues have been resolved
or worked on.
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0309/msg00850.html
16. http://people.debian.org/~pere/debian-installer/di-debcamp-2003-1.html
17. http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/Oldenburg2003/
BrailleSpeak Debian Mini-Distribution. The [18]BrailleSpeak project
[19]announced the [20]release of their "BrlSpeak Debian-based
Braille-Loopback Mini-Distribution". It provides a (temporary)
[21]solution for those who prefer installing a distribution on their
FAT32 partition without having to repartition the hard disk. However,
installation currently lacks speech support.
18. http://www.brlspeak.net/
19. http://search.luky.org/cola.2003/msg01030.html
20. http://www.brlspeak.net/release/
21. http://brlspeak.net/brlspeak-deb/iso/
Installing different Sets of Debian Machines. Joseph Rawson
[22]announced paella, which is based on [23]FAI and intends to support
installing different suites of software simultaneously. To achieve
this [24]paella uses a PostgreSQL database to store most of the
configuration.
22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01585.html
23. http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/
24. http://sourceforge.net/projects/paella/
Sarge Release Status. Scott James Remnant [25]checked how much of
Anthony Town's [26]release timetable has been met already. The
debian-installer has been tested and proven to work on i386 and
PowerPC already. Package removals also dropped the number of release
critical bugs a lot. Scott resumed with the statement that we are
roughly 14 days behind the schedule.
25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0310/msg00018.html
26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0308/msg00010.html
Free Debian Logo License? Simon Law sent in a [27]proposal to change
the Debian logo [28]license which is currently not free according to
the [29]Debian Free Software Guidelines. Mako Hill [30]added that
there are a number of problems with Debian trademark policy. This was
part of the rationale behind the creation of a [31]trademark committee
at SPI that is trying to draft some new legal policy recommendations.
27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0310/msg00002.html
28. http://www.debian.org/logos/
29. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0310/msg00206.html
31. http://lists.spi-inc.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/spi-trademark
Aptitude Annoyances and Improvements. Nathanael Nerode [32]complained
about several annoying things in [33]aptitude. Daniel Burrows
[34]explained that he currently does not have enough time to get
[35]aptitude working the way he likes. He also called for codevelopers
who submit patches for the issues he outlined.
32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0310/msg00074.html
33. http://packages.debian.org/aptitude
34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0310/msg00079.html
35. http://alioth.debian.org/projects/aptitude
Package Description Quality. Wolfgang Borgert [36]noticed some package
descriptions that were not quite helpful such as "Foo is a GTK+
application, that enables bar". He wondered where guidelines for good
package descriptions are located. Mathieu Roy [37]pointed out Colin
Walters' [38]guidelines.
36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0310/msg00186.html
37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0310/msg00188.html
38. http://people.debian.org/~walters/descriptions.html
License Requirements for DSP Binaries. Thomas Hood [39]wondered about
the [40]mwavem package that includes binaries for the Mwave digital
signal processor (DSP) chip found on some ThinkPad laptops. IBM
distributes the driver in a [41]tarball that says it is licensed under
the GNU [42]GPL. However no source is distributed. Glenn Maynard
[43]explained that the package cannot even be distributed in non-free
if the source code is not available.
39. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg01020.html
40. http://packages.debian.org/mwavem
41. http://oss.software.ibm.com/acpmodem/
42. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
43. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg01025.html
Embedded Debian Device won Prize. The German company [44]Innominate
has won the Wolfsburg AG Competence Prize, this year [45]awarded for
the IT category in the field of Network Embedded Systems. The awarded
mGuard security appliance runs a hardened Linux kernel 2.4 based on
Debian 3.0 that Innominate developed in-house.
44. http://www.innominate.de/
45. http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8505038381.html
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.
* [46]OpenSSL -- Denial of service issues.
46. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-393
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive recently or contain important updates.
* [47]abs-guide -- The Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide.
* [48]boot-icons -- Display boot progress using graphical icons.
* [49]console-terminus -- Fixed-width fonts for fast reading on the
Linux console.
* [50]dime -- DXF Import, Manipulation, and Export programs.
* [51]esmtp -- User configurable relay-only MTA.
* [52]gngeo -- NeoGeo emulator.
* [53]gtkatlantic -- Monopoly like game.
* [54]rlfe -- A front-end using readline to "cook" input lines for
other programs.
* [55]rnas-gtk -- Network-wide monitoring suite for monitoring
machine status.
* [56]roxen3 -- Roxen Challenger Webserver v3.
* [57]sim -- Simple Instant Messenger.
* [58]speedtouch -- Userspace driver for the Alcatel Speedtouch USB
ADSL Adapter.
* [59]spinner -- Sends small packets over a idle link.
* [60]teleport -- Moves GTK applications between displays.
* [61]tetrinet-client -- Textmode client for tetrinet, a multiplayer
tetris-like game.
* [62]tinyhoneypot -- Small honeypot to trap attackers.
47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/abs-guide.html
48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/boot-icons.html
49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/console-terminus.html
50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/dime.html
51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/esmtp.html
52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gngeo.html
53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gtkatlantic.html
54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/rlfe.html
55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/rnas-gtk.html
56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/roxen3.html
57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/sim.html
58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/speedtouch.html
59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/spinner.html
60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/teleport.html
61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/tetrinet-client.html
62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/tinyhoneypot.html
Orphaned Packages. 4 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 188 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [63]WNPP pages for the full list,
and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you
plan to take over a package.
63. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
* [64]cpanel -- Debian Chinese Panel. ([65]Bug#213908)
* [66]hotswap -- Manage hotswappable IDE hardware. ([67]Bug#213893)
* [68]picview -- Image preview and viewing system for GNOME.
([69]Bug#213889)
* [70]pyslsk -- Soulseek filesharing network client.
([71]Bug#213764)
64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/cpanel.html
65. http://bugs.debian.org/213908
66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/hotswap.html
67. http://bugs.debian.org/213893
68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/picview.html
69. http://bugs.debian.org/213889
70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/pyslsk.html
71. http://bugs.debian.org/213764
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 [72]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [73]dwn@debian.org.
72. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
73. mailto:dwn@debian.org
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