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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



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