--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/05/ Debian Weekly News - February 3rd, 2004 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's fifth issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Most true Unix geeks will recognise just how nice [1]lpd is as a distributed queueing mechanism for managing all jobs sent to the printer, but don't realise it can be used for other things as well. In fact, it can be viewed as a general queueing mechanism and used as an [2]engine for distributed spooling of audio files. The January issue of the German [3]LinuxUser magazine shipped with [4]Knoppix, Debian 3.0 and sarge on two [5]DVDs. 1. http://packages.debian.org/lpr 2. http://patrick.wagstrom.net/weblog/archives/000128.html 3. http://www.linux-user.de/ 4. http://www.knoppix.org/ 5. http://www.linux-user.de/DVD/ Debian Project at European Conferences. The Debian project [6]announced that its members and affiliates will attend four exhibitions and conferences that cover Free Software and GNU/Linux in Europe. From February 3rd to 5th [7]Solutions Linux takes place in Paris, France. On February 16th and 17th [8]Linux Expo Ulm will take place in Ulm, Germany. Finally on February 21st and 22nd [9]FOSDEM will take place in Brussels, Belgium, where the Debian project will share a developers room with another project and organise a mixed schedule. 6. http://www.debian.org/News/2004/20040131 7. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0203-solutionslinux 8. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0216-linux-expo-ulm 9. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0221-fosdem Debian fastest growing Distribution. Over the last six months Debian has been the fastest [10]growing GNU/Linux distribution when measured by counting active sites that contain the name of a distribution in the Apache Server header. A distribution name is present in a little over a quarter of Linux based Apache sites. In January 2004 [11]Netcraft counted 442,752 Apache servers running on Debian, a 25 % growth rate from 355,469 counted in July 2003. 10. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/01/28/debian_fastest_growing_linux_distribution.html 11. http://news.netcraft.com/ Report from Practical Linux and Dresden InfoTag. Alexander Schmehl wrote a [12]report about Practical Linux in Gießen, and a [13]report about LinuxInfoTag in Dresden, both in Germany. They were small events but the Debian booth was crowded, as usual, so they ran out of freebees before the end. In Gießen, Alexander also gave a talk and a workshop covering the Debian system. 12. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/1011-plgiessen-report 13. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/1018-lit-dresden-report XFree86 to alter its License. According to an [14]announcement of the XFree86 project there will be a new [15]license starting with XFree86 v4.4.0-RC3. There are some [16]worries (German) that these changes might be incompatible with the GPL due to a BSD-style advertising [17]clause. Branden Robinson indicated that he will probably not be maintaining the system using the new license. 14. http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/forum/2004-January/001892.html 15. http://www.xfree86.org/legal/licenses.html 16. http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2004/6414.html 17. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html Report from LinuxWorld Expo New York. Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote a [18]report about the successful Debian presence at this year's [19]LinuxWorld Expo in New York. The Debian booth attracted a lot people, usually more experienced than on past events, and they handed out many CDs, flyers and t-shirts. He also gave an [20]interview on SYS-CON radio covering the Debian project. 18. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0121-lwe-report 19. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0121-lwe 20. http://www.linuxworld.com/story/40006.htm Debian Extra CD Project. A few people have [21]started a new [22]project to provide an additional CD for the stable Debian distribution. They want to update the desktop software (GNOME and KDE most likely) with [23]backported packages but don't want to force people to download large amounts of data. 21. http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2004/6398.html 22. http://debian-extra-cd-proj.homelinux.org/ 23. http://www.backports.org/ Debian Administrator's Toolbox. David B. Harris is [24]soliciting package [25]lists from other Debian administrators. He's going to put together a live CD of applications and utilities he wants to have everywhere. He's going to put them on 185 MB CD media for its small size. 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0401/msg01862.html 25. http://eelf.ddts.net/~dbharris/temp/used-package-list Debian-Installer Call for Help. Joey Hess [26]called for helping the development of the [27]debian-installer. The debian-boot team still lacks manpower for several tasks such as report processing, documentation, PCMCIA, low memory support, arm, sparc and s390 ports, policy checks for udeb files, boot screen, support for PPP and much more. 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0401/msg00015.html 27. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ Distribution Chords of Music? Raphael Goulais [28]wondered if it would be ok to distribute chords but not melody since this is done in [29]mma. Henning Makholm [30]added that many popular tunes work with chord sequences that are so generic and nondescript that it would be ridiculous to claim a copyright on them. 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0401/msg00154.html 29. http://packages.debian.org/mma 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0401/msg00152.html Supporting new GNU TLS Library. Kenshi Muto [31]wondered how he should switch CUPS from GNU TLS version 7 to version 10. Matthias Klose asked him to wait until the current version of CUPS has entered testing, so that a recent version will be distributed at least. Andreas Metzler also [32]asked to wait until [33]libgnutls10 has entered testing so this can't keep a new version of CUPS out of testing. 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0401/msg01985.html 32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0401/msg01992.html 33. http://packages.debian.org/libgnutls10 License Change for C-Kermit. Ian Beckwith [34]reported about his conversation to Frank da Cruz, the author of [35]C-Kermit. Both would like to see Kermit move to main and are negotiating a license change. In 2000 the license was already altered in order to free C-Kermit more, but it is still not compliant with the [36]Debian Free Software Guidelines. 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0401/msg00127.html 35. http://packages.debian.org/ckermit 36. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines Browsers without "mailto" Support? Andreas Tille [37]noticed that both [38]Galeon and [39]Firebird don't know how to handle mailto URLs until a GNOME mail reader is [40]configured, which is not the case on a new desktop. Felipe Almeida Lessa [41]confirmed this behaviour for Galeon, but not for Firebird. He assumes that the support for mailto URLs does not exist yet. 37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0401/msg02016.html 38. http://packages.debian.org/galeon 39. http://packages.debian.org/mozilla-firebird 40. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0401/msg02058.html 41. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0401/msg02088.html Changing the Priority for GCC? Andrea Menucc [42]complained about [43]GCC having priority standard. Unless the user goes into [44]dselect and deselects all of them, GCC and friends will always be installed. When either space or bandwidth is low, this can be quite annoying. Hence, he proposed to move them to priority "optional". Nathanael Nerode [45]explained that the issue is not that easy since a lot of packages depend on [46]CPP which should therefore stay at the old priority. 42. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0401/msg02102.html 43. http://packages.debian.org/gcc 44. http://packages.debian.org/dselect 45. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0401/msg02210.html 46. http://packages.debian.org/cpp Goals for a new Debian-Installer Release. Joey Hess [47]discussed goals for another release of the [48]debian-installer which could become beta 3. This includes discover 2, partman, using [49]grub, support for XFS, Linux 2.6, improved language chooser, less questions in [50]base-config, better PCMCIA and wireless support, sub-architecture support for PowerPC and m68k and a move to [51]subversion, among others. 47. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0401/msg02610.html 48. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer 49. http://packages.debian.org/grub 50. http://packages.debian.org/base-config 51. http://packages.debian.org/subversion Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [52]trr19 -- Local games exploit. * [53]Perl -- Information leak in suidperl. * [54]crawl -- Local group games exploit. 52. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-430 53. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-431 54. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-432 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [55]recently or contain important updates. 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main * [56]adduser-ng -- Add and remove users and groups. * [57]cdebootstrap -- Bootstrap a Debian system. * [58]debram -- Ramified catalog of available .debs. * [59]drip -- GNOME application for encoding a DivX from a DVD. * [60]drpython -- Simple and customizable editor for the Python language. * [61]eli -- Compiler construction kit. * [62]fig2ps -- Converts xfig files into ps or pdf files using LaTeX for processing text. * [63]filelight -- Show where your diskspace is being used. * [64]flexbackup -- Flexible backup tool for small to medium sized installations. * [65]flowscan -- Flow-based IP traffic analysis and visualization tool. * [66]gnugk -- OpenH323 Gatekeeper - The GNU Gatekeeper. * [67]ion2 -- Keyboard-friendly window manager with tiled windows (v2). * [68]iptotal -- Monitor for IP traffic, not requiring SNMP. * [69]kdiff3 -- Compares and merges 2 or 3 files or directories. * [70]madison-lite -- Display versions of Debian packages in an archive. * [71]makeztxt -- Create zTXT databases from ASCII files to read them in a Palm. * [72]mma -- Musical Midi Accompaniment generator. * [73]odin -- Powerful make replacement. 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/adduser-ng 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/cdebootstrap 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/debram 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/drip 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/drpython 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/eli 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/fig2ps 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/filelight 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/flexbackup 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/flowscan 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/comm/gnugk 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/ion2 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/iptotal 69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kdiff3 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/madison-lite 71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/makeztxt 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/mma 73. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/odin Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [74]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 74. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 75. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
