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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
August 21st, 2012 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2012/16/
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Welcome to this year's sixteenth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Debian celebrates its 19th birthday
* Help the Debian Installer team: test the new version of the installer
* Bits from the DPL
* Other news
* Upcoming events
* New Debian Contributors
* Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?
Debian celebrates its 19th birthday
-----------------------------------
On August 16, the Debian Project celebrated its nineteenth birthday [1]
since Ian Murdock's original founding announcement [2]. Debian
contributors and users celebrated it all over the globe: appreciation
messages and pictures of the parties can be followed on the Thank you
Debian [3] website, maintained this year by Lincoln de Sousa and Marcelo
Jorge Vieira. You can submit your own message directly on the web
platform or using the Identi.ca hashtag #thxdebian. For this occasion,
Leandro Gómez created a nice birthday postcard [4] while some [5]
other [6] contributors [7] blogged about their first experiences with
Debian.
1 : http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120816
2 : http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development/msg/a32d4e2ef3bcdcc6
3 : http://thanks.debian.net
4 : http://leogg.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/happy-birthday-debian/
5 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2012/08/16/happy-birthday-debian-and-memories-of-an-old-timer/
6 : http://gwolf.org/blog/19-years-debian
7 : http://blog.pault.ag/post/29667512949
Help the Debian Installer team: test the new version of the installer
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The Debian Installer team announced [8] the first beta release of the
installer for Debian 7.0 "Wheezy". The team asks Debian users to help in
testing and improving this new version of the installer: while there are
some known issues [9] with the installer that do not need to be
reported, it is very important to try the installer in order to find all
possible bugs before the release. Problems should be reported as an
installation report [10].
8 : http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2012/20120804
9 : http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata
10 : http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch05s04.html#submit-bug
Bits from the DPL
-----------------
Stefano Zacchiroli sent his monthly report [11] on DPL activities.
Stefano reported about the ongoing discussion with the FSF about Debian
Freeness, as well as an important discussion about the trademark policy
draft and the logo relicensing.
11 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/08/msg00001.html
Other news
----------
The 30th issue of the miscellaneous news for developers [12] has been
released and covers the following topics:
* Report from DSA Team Sprint
* Using RAM for temporary files?
* Control Commands at <submit@bugs.debian.org> time
* Debian Maintainer Dashboard
* Declaring media (MIME) types with FreeDesktop menu entry files
12 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/08/msg00003.html
Justin B. Rye has started an informational wiki page describing where
package names come from, suggestively entitled "Why the name" [13]. As
the page description says, giving cryptic names to software is a well-
established UNIX tradition, and the explanations are often missing from
the documentation, either because the developers imagine it's obvious
(usually wrongly) or because they think nobody cares (and here they're
usually right, or it would turn up as FAQ material).
13 : http://wiki.debian.org/WhyTheName
Upcoming events
---------------
There is one upcoming Debian-related event:
* August 25-26 Sankt Augustin, Germany — Debian booth at FrOSCon [14]
14 : http://www.debian.org/events/2012/0825-froscon
You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks on
the events section [15] of the Debian web site, or subscribe to one of
our events mailing lists for different regions: Europe [16],
Netherlands [17], Hispanic America [18], North America [19].
15 : http://www.debian.org/events
16 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu
17 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl
18 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha
19 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-na
Do you want to organise a Debian booth or a Debian install party? Are
you aware of other upcoming Debian-related events? Have you delivered a
Debian talk that you want to link on our talks page [20]? Send an email
to the Debian Events Team [21].
20 : http://www.debian.org/events/talks
21 : events@debian.org
New Debian Contributors
-----------------------
Five applicants have been accepted [22] as Debian Maintainer, and
eighteen people have started to maintain packages [23] since the
previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Alexander
Golovko, Elías Alejandro Año Mendoza, Gustavo Panizzo, Ian Campbell,
Nicolas Bourdaud, Marc Pegon, Marco Maria Francesco De Santis, Jose G.
López, Ariane Boehm, Jocelyn Jaubert, Emmanuel Kasper, Sascha Steinbiss,
Eva Reisinger, Julia Ertl, Andrej Belym, Julien Puydt, Markus Frosch,
Daniele E. Domenichelli, Emmanuel Promayon, Ralf Jung, Vincent Hobeïka,
Cedric Staniewski, and Guy Yachdav into our project!
22 : http://lists.debian.org/E1T2Bti-0007f5-IW@franck.debian.org
23 : http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi
Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
---------------------------------------------------------
According to the Bugs Search interface of the Ultimate Debian
Database [24], the upcoming release, Debian "Wheezy", is currently
affected by 487 Release-Critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily
solved or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, about 295
Release-Critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen.
24 : http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi
There are also some hints on how to interpret [25] these numbers.
25 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): bind9 [26], krb5 [27], isc-dhcp [28],
openoffice.org [29], libxml2 [30], fckeditor [31], globus-gridftp-
server [32], openttd [33], expat [34], libotr [35], php5 [36],
icedove [37], python-django [38], rssh [39], and xen [40]. Please read
them carefully and take the proper measures.
26 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2517
27 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2518
28 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2519
29 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2520
30 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2521
31 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2522
32 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2523
33 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2524
34 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2525
35 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2526
36 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2527
37 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2528
38 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2529
39 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2530
40 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2531
Debian's Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the
package: clamav [41]. Please read it carefully and take the proper
measures.
41 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2012/08/msg00001.html
Please note that these are a selection of the more important security
advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about
security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please
subscribe to the security mailing list [42] (and the separate backports
list [43], and stable updates list [44]) for announcements.
42 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
43 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
44 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
308 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [45] are:
* fractalnow — fast, advanced fractal generator [46]
* genometools — versatile genome analysis toolkit [47]
* hoteldruid — web-based property management system for your hotel or B&B [48]
* screenkey — screencast tool to display your keystrokes [49]
* soundgrain — graphical interface to control granular sound synthesis modules [50]
* web2ldap — full-featured web-based LDAPv3 client [51]
* travis — trajectory analyzer and visualizer [52]
* pax-britannica — one-button multi-player real-time strategy game [53]
* pepper — source code repository statistics and report tool [54]
* storymaps — free story planning and writing application for children [55]
45 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
46 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fractalnow
47 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/genometools
48 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/hoteldruid
49 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/screenkey
50 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/soundgrain
51 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/web2ldap
52 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/travis
53 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pax-britannica
54 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pepper
55 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/storymaps
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently [56] 465 packages are orphaned [57] and 143 packages are up
for adoption [58]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [59].
56 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/08/msg00371.html
57 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
58 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
59 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested
Want to continue reading DPN?
-----------------------------
Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer
writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on.
Please see the contributing page [60] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
<debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>.
60 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Francesca Ciceri, David
Prévot, Justin B Rye and Victor Nițu.
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