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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
March 31st, 2014 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2014/06/
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Welcome to this year's sixth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Debian Installer Jessie Alpha 1 released
* Indian federal state of Tamil Nadu adopts
Debian derivative BOSS GNU/Linux as official OS
* Rebuild of the Debian archive with Clang
* BeagleBoard shifts to Debian
* Other news
* New Debian Contributors
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?
Debian Installer Jessie Alpha 1 released
----------------------------------------
On March 19, Cyril Brulebois, member of the Debian Installer team [1],
announced the Debian Installer Jessie Alpha 1 release [2]: the first
alpha version of the installer for Debian 8 "Jessie".
Several improvements have been introduced, among which are a bug-fix in
the apt-setup package and the fact that the grub-installer now supports
selecting the GRUB boot disk via a menu. Further, the default desktop
environment for the time being is Xfce, though this will be re-evaluated
in August. As far as hardware support changes are concerned, a few
architectures are no longer supported, and there will be no installer
support for sparc systems due to the failure to build the package for
that platform; the Release Team are evaluating the future of sparc as an
official port. The Linux kernel has been updated from 3.2 to 3.13 and
the FreeBSD kernel from 9.0 to 9.2.
Finally, Cyril's message calls on all Debian members and supporters to
assist with the release process by finding and submitting bugs against
the installer. The CDs and other resources needed for testing it are
available on the web page [3]. The team in charge of the Debian
installer can also be contacted via the Debian-boot mailing list [4] and
the #debian-boot IRC channel on irc.debian.org.
1: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team
2: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/03/msg00009.html
3: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer
4: http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/
Indian federal state of Tamil Nadu adopts Debian derivative BOSS GNU/Linux as official OS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was as far back as July 2011 when the federal government of India
decided to launch a new ICT policy based on the mandatory usage of open
source operating systems rather than proprietary software, as a reaction
to Microsoft's announcement that they would no longer support Windows XP
after April 8, 2014. Later that year, in November 2011, the federal
state of Tamil Nadu, located in the very south of the Indian
subcontinent, released Government Order No. 15 [5], introducing the
Debian derivative BOSS (Bharat Operating Systems Solutions) GNU/Linux as
a mandatory operating system to be installed and used on all
governmental computer systems, particularly on those of the Department
of Information Technology.
BOSS GNU/Linux, developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced
Computing (C-DAC), has support for all Indian languages, bio-sensing
devices, and digital signatures, and can be customised for local
environments, as the Indian newspaper The Hindu [6] points out in a
recent article. Besides the cost saving effects of switching to BOSS
GNU/Linux, it was the reduced risk of being infected by viruses or
affected by hacking or phishing attacks that led the Indian Government
to implement the new operating system.
Despite the order issued in November 2011, many Tamil Nadu governmental
offices had been continuing to use Windows XP, but the recent Microsoft
announcement stating that support would not be continued beyond April 8
made the Tamil Nadu government advise its departments to install BOSS
GNU/Linux mandatorily on all their systems, issuing another order some
weeks ago.
5: http://bosslinux.in/sites/default/files/BOSS-in-DIT.pdf
6: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/tn-state-departments-asked-to-switch-over-to-open-source-software/article5799039.ece
Rebuild of the Debian archive with Clang
----------------------------------------
Sylvestre Ledru published on his blog [7] the results of a complete
rebuild of the Debian archive with Clang 3.4, which he ran together with
David Suárez. Currently, 2193 packages in the archive are failing to
build from source. Although this is about the same number of failing
builds as with Clang 3.3 more than a year ago, it is good news because
the number of packages in the archive has increased (meaning that the
percentage of failures decreased), and Clang 3.4 also has more checks
and error detection. Results and statistics are available on a dedicated
website [8].
7: http://sylvestre.ledru.info/blog/2014/03/21/rebuild-of-debian-using-clang
8: http://clang.debian.net/
BeagleBoard shifts to Debian
----------------------------
The BeagleBone Black [9] is a community-supported development platform
combining the power of an ARM development board with the hobby potential
of two 32-bit microcontrollers. In an interview [10], Jason Kridner,
co-founder of BeagleBoard.org [11] indicates that the default operating
system on those BeagleBone Black boards, as well as for other
BeagleBoard.org boards, is being shifted to Debian [12].
9: http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone%20Black
10: http://opensource.com/life/14/3/interview-jason-kridner-beagleboard
11: http://beagleboard.org
12: http://beagleboard.org/latest-images/
Other news
----------
David Moreno announced [13] on his blog that a new mailing list,
debian-astro [14], has been set up [15] to create a discussion space for
astronomy in Debian, both for professionals and amateurs, and in general
for talk about packaging and development of astronomy-related tools in
Debian.
13: http://damog.net/blog/new-debian-mailing-list-debian-astro.html
14: http://lists.debian.org/debian-astro
15: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741538
Lucas Nussbaum, Debian Project Leader, updated [16] the delegation for
the New Member Front Desk team, which welcomes two new members: Jan
Dittberner and Mike Gabriel.
16: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/03/msg00012.html
The voting period for the Debian Project Leader Elections 2014 [17] is
open until April 13 [18]. The new term for the project leader starts on
April 17.
17: http://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_001
18: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/03/msg00013.html
Adam D. Barratt announced that the "Wheezy" 7.5 point release is
scheduled for April 26 [19]. The NEW queue for the stable distribution
will be frozen one week before the actual release date.
19: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2014/03/msg00158.html
New Debian Contributors
-----------------------
2 people have started to maintain packages [20] since the previous issue
of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Gunnar Hjalmarsson, and Akira
Mitsui into our project!
20: http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): python2.7 [21], iceweasel [22], extplorer [23],
chromium-browser [24], libyaml [25], libyaml-libyaml-perl [26],
libxalan2-java [27], ruby-actionmailer-3.2 [28],
ruby-actionpack-3.2 [29], and postfixadmin [30]. Please read them
carefully and take the proper measures.
21: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2880
22: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2881
23: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2882
24: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2883
25: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2884
26: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2885
27: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2886
28: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2887
29: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2888
30: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2889
Debian's Stable Release Team released update announcements for these
packages: tzdata (for Squeeze [31] and Wheezy [32]) and clamav (for
Squeeze [33] and Wheezy [34]). Please read them carefully and take the
proper measures.
31: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2014/03/msg00003.html
32: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2014/03/msg00004.html
33: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2014/03/msg00005.html
34: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2014/03/msg00006.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 [35] (and the separate backports
list [36], and stable updates list [37]) for announcements.
35: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
36: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
37: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
216 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [38] are:
* arriero — tool to simplify the management of several Debian packages [39]
* cgroupfs-mount — light-weight package to set up cgroupfs mounts [40]
* djvubind — simple creation of djvu files [41]
* fedmsg — Fedora messaging infrastructure system - general utilities [42]
* fonts-humor-sans — font that looks like handwritten text [43]
* forkstat — process fork/exec/exit monitoring tool [44]
* gmediarender — small headless UPnP media renderer [45]
* larch — tool to copy messages from one IMAP server to another [46]
* ooniprobe — utility to probe for the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) [47]
* pagekite — tool to make localhost servers publicly visible. [48]
* patchelf — utility to modify properties of ELF executables [49]
38: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
39: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/arriero
40: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cgroupfs-mount
41: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/djvubind
42: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fedmsg
43: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fonts-humor-sans
44: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/forkstat
45: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gmediarender
46: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/larch
47: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ooniprobe
48: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pagekite
49: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/patchelf
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently [50] 567 packages are orphaned [51] and 134 packages are up
for adoption [52]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [53].
50: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/03/msg00521.html
51: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
52: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
53: 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 [54] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
<debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>.
54: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Stephan Beck, Cédric
Boutillier and Justin B Rye.
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