we need a release announcement -- soon [source material]
Real soon now we're going to need some document that we can use as a
release announcement for potato. As far as I know, we don't have one
yet, right?
I think the problem is that we've been working on this so long, we've begun
to forget what's changed since the last release. :-/ So I'm going to try to
gather as many possible things to announce as I can in this email and
thread. We can sort it out later.
I've just read all posts made to debian-publicity in the past year, and
the following items have been suggested for such a document:
* <idea>Check with ftp sites and mirrors how many unique IP's have dl's
the potato package list, the brag:
"This is the best-tested linux distribution release in history" and cite
the total number of systems that have installed potato from the net.
* Revamped "task" selection make it easier to specify what to use your
new Debian system for.
* debconf [ probably not used widly enough to be announced yet though ]
* A new logo.
* Count up number of packges that have been updated upstream.
Actually, I just did this, and between slink and potato:
- 792 source packages were updated to new upstream versions
- 626 source packages stayed at the same upstream version
- 1236 new source packages, including these (trying to pick
well-known or important ones):
. postfix
. openldap
. debbugs, jitterbug
. w3m
. ruby
. lm-sensors
. gdm
. cvsup
. everybuddy
. tidy
. xplanet
. zope
. xmms
. logrotate
. kaffe
. gnome-napster, gnapster, gnap
. and 56 new games!
* More streamlined install process, featuring improved network install
capabilities.
* Get quotes from people (Stormix, other derived distros, project leader,
whoever).
There is some useful publicity information in the release notes for potato:
* Debian's previous release, Debian GNU/Linux 2.1, included four
officially supported architectures: Intel x86, Motorola 680x0, Alpha, and
SPARC. In this new release, we have introduced two additional
architectures: PowerPC and ARM.
* Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 ships with kernels from the 2.2 kernel series.
The 2.2 kernel series are a new kernel generation introducing several
valuable changes both in the kernel and in other programs based on kernel
features, along with a whole slew of new hardware drivers and bug fixes
for existing drivers.
* Enhancements to installation system:
- notable improvements in network installation support, including
DHCP configuration support
- more architectures support serial console installation
- Post-reboot configuration, which used to be performed by a batch of
shell scripts, are now performed by the base-config package, which
uses debconf. It is expected that for the next
major Debian release, debconf will be the main interface users
interact with during installation and configuration.
- Simplified X configuration, including video card autodetection.
* In this release, most of the basic system utilities have started using
PAM, the Pluggable Authentication Modules, which provides system
administrators with a powerful method of controlling system access and
methods of authentication.
* The 2.2 release is the first version of Debian that includes complete
support for our Japanese users. Additionally, we have increased the
level of internationalization, and improved support for most non-Latin
languages.
* The number of packages our main distribution includes is now around
3950, increasing the number of packages by 50%, as usual.
* New GNU C Library release 2.1.2.
* The 2.2 release also features several important program and library
upgrades, such as XFree86 3.3.6, Perl 5.005.03, GCC 2.95.2, PAM 0.72,
GTK+/GLib 1.2.7, GNOME 1.0.56, ncurses 5.0, teTeX 1.0.6, XEmacs 21.1.8,
S-Lang 1.3.9, GGI 1.99.2, and many more.
* As with the upgrade from release 2.0 to 2.1, most changes from 2.1 to
2.2 are incremental. A lot of new packages and new versions of old
packages are included, along with a bounty of new features and bug fixes.
The same dpkg+apt packaging system is still used for performing the
upgrades, and we have made every effort to make the transition as painless
and as flawless as possible.
For reference, here is the press release for Debian 2.1, which didn't
really get worked on by everyone, just by Martin Schultze who put it
together at the last minute (let's not have that happen again):
http://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity-9903/msg00013.html
And the press release for Debian 2.0, which did get worked on by a lot
of people:
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/mjrauhal/linux/cola.archive/1998-07/mjr.1998-07-27.013
--
see shy jo
Reply to: