------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
October 29th, 2012 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2012/21/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's twenty-first issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Debian Installer 7.0 Beta3 released
* Reports from the latest BSPs
* 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 Installer 7.0 Beta3 released
-----------------------------------
Cyril Brulebois announced the third beta release of the Debian Installer
7.0 [1]. One of the major improvements in this version of the Debian
Installer is EFI support for 64-bit PCs, which allows installation in
EFI mode instead of using the legacy BIOS. This is a first step towards
full support for UEFI Secure Boot, which is not yet present. Another
interesting new feature in the installer is full IPv6 support during the
installation process. You can check the errata [2] for details and a
full list of known issues.
1: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2012/20121018
2: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata
Reports from the latest BSPs
----------------------------
Jonathan Wiltshire sent a report from the Alcester BSP [3] held between
12 and 14 October. During the party, six Debian Developers and one
Debian contributor worked on a total of 51 bugs. During the same
weekend, Dutch Debian developers and enthusiasts gathered in Utrecht for
another Bug Squashing Party [4]: they worked on several RC bugs as well
as debconf translations.
3: http://lists.debian.org/334dc3a99b55eb8fe8e299dd04b5d28c@hogwarts.powdarrmonkey.net
4: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/10/msg00312.html
Other news
----------
Arno Töll, mentors.debian.net maintainer, drafted an initial
proposal [5] last month for a simple procedure for salvaging
unmaintained packages. After some discussion, Lucas Nussbaum, QA team
member, put forward an updated proposal [6] for allowing contributors to
orphan an unmaintained package, and make it easy to adopt the package
after this first step. While the discussion is still ongoing, Stefano
Zacchiroli, Debian Project Leader, is confident that a consensus [7]
will emerge from it.
5: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/09/msg00654.html
6: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/10/msg00469.html
7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/10/msg00575.html
Raphael Geissert created a nice map of the Debian mirror network [8].
8: http://rgeissert.blogspot.it/2012/10/debian-mirrors-map.html
Martín Ferrari announced the birth of the Ireland Debian User Group
(DUG) [9]: for more information you can contact the group mailing
list [10].
9: http://lists.debian.org/CAL60Pd9QbdK24T-3D135fDWQAQn9iPV+Y=_5QWtjx2LB6kEoNA@mail.gmail.com
10: https://lists.debian.org/debian-dug-ie/
Andreas Tille sent some bits from Debian Pure Blends [11], summarising
the current situation of the various blends.
11: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/10/msg00008.html
Upcoming events
---------------
There are several upcoming Debian-related events:
* November 3, Dublin, Ireland, Second Debian bug squashing party in Dublin [12]
* November 9-11, Gothenburg, Sweden, Debian booth at the Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit [13]
12: http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2012/11/ie/Dublin
13: http://www.debian.org/events/events/2012/1109-fscons
You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks on
the events section [14] of the Debian web site, or subscribe to one of
our events mailing lists for different regions: Europe [15],
Netherlands [16], Hispanic America [17], North America [18].
14: http://www.debian.org/events
15: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu
16: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl
17: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha
18: 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 [19]? Send an email
to the Debian Events Team [20].
19: http://www.debian.org/events/talks
20: events@debian.org
New Debian Contributors
-----------------------
Five applicants have been accepted [21] as Debian Maintainers, and five
people have started to maintain packages [22] since the previous issue
of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Guo Yixuan (郭溢譞), Mike
Gabriel, Xiangfu Liu (刘向富), Marcin Juszkiewicz, Lifeng Sun, Xerxes
Rånby, Cesare Falco, Carlos Miguel Jenkins Pérez, Gianfranco Costamagna,
and Christopher Knadle into our project!
21: http://lists.debian.org/E1TR1V0-0001mD-HT@franck.debian.org
22: 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 [23], the upcoming release, Debian "Wheezy", is currently
affected by 464 Release-Critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily
solved or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, about 235
Release-Critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen.
Lucas Nussbaum published some more detailed statistics [24].
23: http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi
24: http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=734
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): libexif [25], bind9 [26], tiff [27], cups-pk-
helper [28], viewvc [29], tinyproxy [30], iceweasel [31], exim4 [32],
request-tracker3.8 [33], and rtfm [34]. Please read them carefully and
take the proper measures.
25: http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2559
26: http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2560
27: http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2561
28: http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2562
29: http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2563
30: http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2564
31: http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2565
32: http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2566
33: http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2567
34: http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2568
Debian's Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the
packages tzdata [35], clamav [36], and clive [37]. Please read it
carefully and take the proper measures.
35: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2012/10/msg00000.html
36: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2012/10/msg00001.html
37: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2012/10/msg00002.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 [38] (and the separate backports
list [39], and stable updates list [40]) for announcements.
38: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
39: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
40: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
40 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [41] are:
* expeyes-clib — hardware and software framework for developing science experiments [42]
* fonts-kalapi — Kalapi Gujarati Unicode font [43]
* gentle — suite to plan genetic cloning suite to plan genetic cloning [44]
* python-pgpdump — PGP packet parser library [45]
* python-translitcodec — Unicode to 8-bit charset transliteration codec [46]
41: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
42: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/expeyes-clib
43: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fonts-kalapi
44: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gentle
45: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-pgpdump
46: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-translitcodec
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently [47] 474 packages are orphaned [48] and 136 packages are up
for adoption [49]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [50].
47: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/10/msg00542.html
48: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
49: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
50: 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 [51] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
<debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>.
51: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Moray Allan, Cédric
Boutillier, Francesca Ciceri, David Prévot and Justin B Rye.
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature