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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
January 6th, 2014 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2014/01/
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Welcome to this year's first issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* SteamOS, a game oriented Debian derivative
* Mini-DebConf in Phnom Penh
* Mini-DebConf in Barcelona
* Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament to use Debian for email encryption
* An automatic list of Debian contributors
* Bits from the DPL
* Bits from the Release Team
* Interviews
* 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?
SteamOS, a game oriented Debian derivative
------------------------------------------
Valve Software [1] has made available images for SteamOS [2], a Debian
derivative aimed at providing a gaming experience built for the big
screen. This gaming operating system is based on Debian 7 (codename
"Wheezy"). Installation instructions are available from the the SteamOs
website [3]. A dedicated page in the Debian wiki [4] lists additional
information about this Debian derivative.
1: http://www.valvesoftware.com
2: http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/
3: http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown
4: https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census/SteamOS
Mini-DebConf in Phnom Penh
--------------------------
FOSSASIA [5] is inviting Debian contributors and fans to Phnom Penh,
Cambodia for a Mini-DebConf from February 28 to March 2, 2014. After
previous events in Vietnam and a successful Mini-DebConf 2010 [6] in
Ho Chi Minh City it is time to bring together some of the awesome
Debian folks in the region again and organise another Mini-DebConf:
Phnom Penh 2014. The event will be held at Norton University, the
leading IT institution in Cambodia, and will bring together a number
of free software projects. Please join us, add your name to the
wiki [7], and spread the word!
5: http://fossasia.org
6: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianVietnam/MiniDebConf2010
7: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianCambodia/MiniDebConf2014
Mini-DebConf in Barcelona
-------------------------
Debian Women [8] is proud to announce [9] that a Mini-DebConf [10] will
be organised in Barcelona on 15-16 March 2014. The idea behind the
conference is not to talk about women in free software, or women in
Debian, but Debian subjects more inclusive for women. Everybody is
invited, but speakers are expected to be all people identifying
themselves as women. Conference organisers are seeking proposals for
papers, presentations, discussion sessions, and tutorials. If you have
one or more proposals, send them to
<proposals@bcn2014.mini.debconf.org>.
8: http://www.debian.org/women
9: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2013/12/msg00011.html
10: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWomen/Projects/MiniDebconf-Women/2014
Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament to use Debian for email encryption
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Harms [11], co-president of the Greens/EFA Group in the European
Parliament, announced a project to use trustworthy encryption [12] in
cooperation and dialogue with European Parliament IT services and
Debian. Recognising that we "live in a digital environment polluted by
pervasive surveillance", she sees encrypted software as a small first
step to ensure nobody but the intended recipent of an email can read it.
Greens/EFA will use a selection of Free Software from Debian running on
regular consumer laptops. "As Greens in the European Parliament we are
very pleased that we are supported by Debian [...], a community of
programmers and developers abiding to a social contract [13] to share
and maintain their common resource which they call Free Software", she
said.
11: http://www.rebecca-harms.de/index.php/lesen/trustworthy-encryption-a-small-step-to-stop-the-pollution--32935
12: http://www.greens-efa.eu/software-procurement-11372.html
13: http://www.debian.org/social_contract
An automatic list of Debian contributors
----------------------------------------
Enrico Zini announced [14] that a list of known Debian contributors is
available at http://contributors.debian.org/. "The list will never be
fully comprehensive, but it will try to be the best effort Debian can
possibly make to credit everyone", Enrico said. The list is created from
data sources [15] which can be added to take into account new types of
contributions. Please refer to Enrico's message for implementation
details.
14: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/12/msg00009.html
15: http://contributors.debian.org/sources/
Bits from the DPL
-----------------
Lucas Nussbaum sent his monthly report of DPL activities for November
2013 [16]. Among other topics, Lucas gave an update on the participation
of Debian in the Outreach Program for Women [17]. He also started a
discussion [18] about the role of release goals, and a proposal to
replace them with procedures built on the existing recommended practices
for mass bug filings.
16: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/12/msg00003.html
17: http://gnome.org/opw/
18: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/11/msg00455.html
Lucas also recently updated delegations for the Policy Editors [19], the
Debian Keyring Maintainers [20], the Debian Account Managers [21], the
Press Team [22], and the Debian System Administrators [23]. He also
officialised the existence and the powers of the Release Team by
publishing the first delegation [24] for this team.
19: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/12/msg00004.html
20: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/12/msg00005.html
21: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/12/msg00006.html
22: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/01/msg00000.html
23: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/01/msg00001.html
24: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/12/msg00007.html
Bits from the Release Team
--------------------------
Niels Thykier sent some bits from the Release Time [25], with a precise
timeline of events that need to happen before the freeze for the next
stable Debian release, Jessie, which is scheduled for November 5 2014.
He also mentioned that the results from piuparts [26], a tool to test
installation, upgrade and removal of Debian packages, are now integrated
into Britney, the software taking care of the migration of packages from
unstable to testing.
25: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/12/msg00008.html
26: http://piuparts.debian.org/
Interviews
----------
There have been DebianEdu interviews [27] with Dominik George [28] and
Klaus Knopper [29], who both describe, among other things, how they got
involved in Debian Edu and their views about it.
27: http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju/
28: http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html
29: http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html
Other news
----------
The third update of the stable distribution of Debian
(codename "Wheezy") was released on December 14 [30].
30: http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20131214
Jakub Wilk posted on his blog [31] a one-liner script, named μdput, to
efficiently replace dput or dput-ng for package uploading on a flaky
network connection.
31: http://jwilk.net/blog/20131225-udput
Martin Zobel-Helas sent minutes of the DSA Team Meeting [32], held on
December 13, 2013.
32: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2014/01/msg00003.html
The update for Wheezy of the Debian Administrator's handbook [33],
prefaced by Lucas Nussbaum, the current Debian Project Leader, and
Stefano Zacchiroli, Debian Project Leader from 2010 to 2013, is
available [34] for download from the website of the book, or as the
debian-handbook [35] on Debian systems running unstable.
33: http://debian-handbook.info/
34: http://debian-handbook.info/2013/major-update-of-the-debian-administrators-handbook-for-debian-7-wheezy/
35: http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/debian-handbook
Niels Thykier announced [36] that he has automated the reprocessing of
packages in the Debian archive when there is a new version of
Lintian [37], a tool to find bugs and policy violations in packages.
Reprocessing the whole Debian archive with Lintian 2.5.20 is expected to
take about 3 to 4 weeks.
36: http://nthykier.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/automated-reprocessing-of-packages-on-lintian-debian-org/
37: http://lintian.debian.org/
Upcoming events
---------------
There is one upcoming Debian-related event:
* January 18-19, Paris, France — Paris Mini-DebConf [38] in Telecom ParisTech [39]
38: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Miniconf-Paris/2014
39: http://www.telecom-paristech.fr/eng/practical-information/getting-there.html#c2489
You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks on
the events section [40] of the Debian wiki, or subscribe to one of our
events mailing lists for different regions: Europe [41],
Netherlands [42], Hispanic America [43], North America [44].
40: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents
41: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu
42: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl
43: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha
44: 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 [45]? Send an email
to the Debian Events Team [46].
45: http://www.debian.org/events/talks
46: events@debian.org
New Debian Contributors
-----------------------
Four applicants have been accepted [47] as Debian Developers,
eight applicants have been [48] accepted [49] as Debian Maintainers,
and twenty-five people have started to maintain packages [50] since
the previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome
Thomas Bechtold, Miguel Landaeta, Andrea Colangelo, Mike Miller,
Michael Fladischer, Axel Wagner, Chris Boot, ChangZhuo Chen (陳昌倬),
Dima Kogan, Elmar Heeb, Hendrik Tews, Jakob Haufe, Radu-Bogdan Croitoru,
Walter Reiner, Ghislain Vaillant, Antonio Ospite, Ben Carrillo, Stewart
Smith, Sergio Schvezov, Otto Kekäläinen, Mechtilde Stehmann,
Sebastien Badia, Christian Stalp, Mitsuya Shibata, Bret Curtis,
Alexandre Gramfort, Zev Benjamin, Folkert van Heusden, Julien Muchembled,
Noriyuki Ohkawa, Silvio Rhatto, Zygmunt Krynicki, Benjamin Eikel,
Lennart C. Karssen, Simon John, Mats Sjöberg, and Christos Trochalakis
into our project!
47: https://nm.debian.org/public/nmlist#done
48: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2013/12/msg00013.html
49: http://lists.debian.org//debian-project/2013/12/msg00093.html
50: 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 [51], the upcoming release, Debian "Jessie", is currently
affected by 476 Release-Critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily
solved or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, about 330
Release-Critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen.
51: http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi
There are also more detailed statistics [52] as well as some hints on
how to interpret [53] these numbers.
52: http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2013/12/27-Debian_Release_Critical_Bug_report_for_Week_52/
53: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): openjpeg [54], ruby1.8 [55], ruby1.9.1 [56], chromium-
browser [57], samba [58], gimp [59], varnish [60], munin [61],
php5 [62], libtar [63], mysql-5.5 [64], iceape [65], nspr [66],
gnupg [67], xorg-server [68], pixman [69], curl [70], wireshark [71],
denyhosts [72], libcommons-fileupload-java [73], drupal6 [74],
hplip [75], ruby-i18n [76], puppet [77], memcached [78], openssl [79],
and typo3-src [80]. Please read them carefully and take the proper
measures.
54: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2808
55: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2809
56: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2810
57: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2811
58: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2812
59: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2813
60: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2814
61: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2815
62: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2816
63: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2817
64: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2818
65: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2819
66: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2820
67: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2821
68: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2822
69: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2823
70: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2824
71: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2825
72: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2826
73: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2827
74: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2828
75: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2829
76: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2830
77: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2831
78: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2832
79: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2833
80: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2834
Debian's Backports Team released advisories for these packages:
roundcube [81], strongswan [82], openssh [83], and nbd [84]. Please read
them carefully and take the proper measures.
81: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2013/12/msg00000.html
82: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2013/12/msg00001.html
83: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2013/12/msg00002.html
84: http://lists.debian.org//debian-backports-announce/2013/12/msg00003.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 [85] (and the separate backports
list [86], and stable updates list [87]) for announcements.
85: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
86: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
87: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
670 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [88] are:
* automx — tool providing account configuration data to mailclients [89]
* bugs-everywhere — distributed bug tracking system using VCS storage [90]
* calligraactive — tablet version of Calligra [91]
* codespell — find and fix common misspellings in text files [92]
* crudini — utility for manipulating ini files [93]
* debmake — helper script to make the Debian source package [94]
* fssync — file system synchronization tool (1-way, over SSH) [95]
* geary — lightweight email client designed for the GNOME desktop [96]
* git-repair — repair various forms of damage to git repositorie [97]
* jshon — command line tool to parse, read and create JSON [98]
* keyringer — distributed secret management using GnuPG and Git [99]
* loook — tool to search strings in ODF documents [100]
* mariadb-server — MariaDB database server [101]
* pumpa — simple desktop client for pump.io, the distributed social network [102]
* vim-youcompleteme — fast, as-you-type, fuzzy-search code completion engine for Vim [103]
* vokoscreen — easy to use screencast creator [104]
* whiteboard — simple collaborative text editor for the web [105]
* x509-util — utility for X.509 certificates and chains [106]
* yara — help to identify and classify malwares [107]
* zmap — network scanner for researchers [108]
88: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
89: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/automx
90: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bugs-everywhere
91: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/calligraactive
92: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/codespell
93: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/crudini
94: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debmake
95: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fssync
96: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/geary
97: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/git-repair
98: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jshon
99: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/keyringer
100: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/loook
101: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mariadb-server
102: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pumpa
103: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/vim-youcompleteme
104: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/vokoscreen
105: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/whiteboard
106: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/x509-util
107: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/yara
108: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zmap
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently [109] 541 packages are orphaned [110] and 156 packages are up
for adoption [111]: please visit the complete list of packages which
need your help [112].
109: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/debian-devel/2014/01/msg00033.html
110: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
111: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
112: 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 [113] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
<debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>.
113: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Mario Behling,
Cédric Boutillier, Elizabeth Krumbach, Carl J Mannino and Justin B Rye.
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