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News and Editorials

How private is debian-private?

There is a general resolution currently under discussion by Debian Developers (DDs) on whether or not to declassify the archives of the Debian Private Mailing List. "In accordance with principles of openness and transparency, Debian will seek to declassify and publish posts of historical or ongoing significance made to the Debian Private Mailing List."

The debian-private mailing list is for "Private discussions among developers: only for issues that may not be discussed on public lists." So why open the archives?

Discussion on the debian-vote mailing list begins with this post from Anthony Towns.

Manoj Srivastava quickly pointed out that posters to debian-private have an expectation of privacy which should not be violated. Nonetheless the proposal received a number of seconds and a variety of amendments that would allow for part of the archive to be opened.

Some of the amendments favor opening up posts if author consent can be obtained. This may or may not extend to all authors in cases of quoted text within a post. Also if the author(s) don't respond, is that implicit permission, or not? Others favor the idea that only future content be opened, posts made after a vote changes the nature of debian-private. There were a few more labor intensive suggestions on the creation of a declassification team which could determine which posts should remain private and which should be made public. Perhaps everything more than five years old should be declassified, since much of the truly personal information should be obsolete by then.

The discussion continues. No time has been set for a vote. The latest is a counter proposal from Daniel Ruoso that attempts to bridge the gap between the need for openness and the private nature of debian-private.

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New Releases

DCC 3.0 released

The DCC Alliance has announced the availability of DCC 3.0, a Debian-based distribution core which offers LSB 3.0 compliance. There is also a simple reference installation distribution, based on DCC 3.0, which can be installed by people interested in working with DCC.

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Zenwalk Linux 2.0.1 released (TechNews)

TechNews takes a quick look at the recently released Zenwalk 2.0.1. "Zenwalk Linux 2.0.1 also introduces new startup scripts that launch most services in parallel, making boot process faster."

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Distribution News

Fedora-netdev kernels available for FC4

John W. Linville has made netdev kernels available for Fedora Core 4. Click below for a list of patches applied to the kernel-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4.netdev.3 package, or see John's netdev site for additional information. The next version kernel-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4.netdev.4 has also been released.

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Ubuntu Masters of the Universe

A new #ubuntu-motu-school channel has been created to discuss the basics of packaging, merging and fixing packages for the Ubuntu Universe.

The tenth issue of the MOTU report is out, with a looks at what's happening in the Universe.

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Macedonia Deploys 5,000 GNOME Desktops in Public Schools (GNOME Journal)

GNOME Journal reports that the Republic of Macedonia has decided to deploy Ubuntu (and GNOME) in 468 schools and 182 computer labs nationwide.

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StrongARM tactics

Vincent Sanders looks at the status of Debian's ARM port, which is alive and well. "However, we are in need of assistance! Recently ARM was "separated" from testing as it is believed it was not keeping up. In fact, the ARM buildds are generally keeping up well - the problem now is a large pile of 131 "maybe-failed" packages. To get back into testing, we need some developer help to debug and fix these problems." Simtec is offering discounted CATS boards to Debian Developers to help get the ARM port ready for etch.

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DebConf5 Final Report released

The DebConf5 Final Report has been released. It's available as a PDF file.

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International Debian work meetings in Extremadura, Spain, during 2006

The Region of Extremadura Spain currently deploys around 80,000 Debian desktops. They are generously offering to sponsor several meetings of Debian developers.

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Distribution Newsletters

Debian Weekly News

The Debian Weekly News for December 6, 2005 looks at a host for the LDAP gateway to the BTS, the general resolution on opening the debian-private archives, the final Debconf5 report, using per-user temporary directories, a status update on the C++ transition, new features in the latest kernel package, and other topics.

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Fedora Weekly News Issue 24

The Fedora Weekly News covers Red Hat Magazine - November 2005, FC5 Test 1 Announcement and Reviews, Fedora Core 3 Status Update, Announcing Fedora Directory Server 1.0, Unofficial FAQ Update: 2005-11-29, Fedora Logo Update, Newsworthy changes in Rawhide, Expanding Linux Partitions with LVM, and several other topics.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of December 5, 2005 looks at gcc 3.4.4 (stable on x86), Power.org offers developer memberships for free, 100,000 registered Gentoo Forums users, a call for GWN contributors, FOSS.IN Bangalore, Linuxtage Essen, and more.

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DistroWatch Weekly

The DistroWatch Weekly for December 5, 2005 is out. "New major releases of KDE, Firefox and Apache have prompted us to take a closer look at the major distribution's handling of package updates, the availability of backports and other related issues. Does your distribution provide backports for popular new software? Or do you have to wait for the next version bump to enjoy recently released packages? Also in this issue: an introduction to a GNOME-based Windows XP clone from Russia and a quick look at the excellent Archie Live CD. Finally, our November 2005 donation goes to the often-nominated KANOTIX project."

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Package updates

Fedora updates

Fedora Core 4 updates: openoffice.org (bug fix), alsa-lib (bug fix), attr (cleanup), acl (cleanup and bug fix), selinux-policy-targeted (load the correct policy), selinux-policy-strict (load the correct policy), alsa-utils (new upstream version).

Fedora Core 3 updates: openldap (upgrade to new upstream version), perl (fixes breakage caused by Security Update 1116), logwatch (report yum service logs).

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Mandriva update

Mandriva has updated eagle-usb for Mandriva Linux 2006.0. "This update loads the firmware each time an eagle-usb modem is plugged in, not just when the eagle-usb module is loaded."

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Miscellaneous Articles

Son of Libranet founder hopes to keep distro, tools alive (NewsForge)

The Libranet distribution may not be dead yet, according to this NewsForge article. "While it may appear that the death knell for Libranet has been sounded, there may be a little life left in the distribution yet. Tal Danzig, the owner and technical leader of Libranet, said in an email interview yesterday he would not let the distribution, and tools that have endeared it to users, simply fade from existence. Danzig, who has been involved with Libranet since his father Jon Danzig built the distro and founded the project surrounding it in 1999, said he is looking for somebody to take over Libranet's business operations and turn it into a "major player" in the GNU/Linux market. For the time being, however, the distribution is in a sort of limbo."

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A very long chat with Debian's Branden Robinson (TuxJournal)

Vincenzo Ciaglia talks with Branden Robinson, the current Debian Project Leader. "Debian GNU/Linux, like all GNU/Linux distributions, is the product of a massive cooperative effort. In my view, the essential mission of the Debian Project is to produce the best Free Software operating system that we can. We not only want to produce a high-quality system; we also consider it necessary to preserve, for ourselves and for our users alike, the freedoms that enabled us to achieve that quality in the first place, and which will permit us to improve the system even further."

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The Perfect Setup - Mandriva 2006 Free Edition (HowtoForge)

HowtoForge sets up Mandriva 2006 Free as a web server. "This is a detailed description about the steps to be taken to setup a Mandriva 2006 Free Edition based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (web server (SSL-capable), mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS!), DNS server, FTP server, MySQL server, POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.)."

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Distribution reviews

First look: BeleniX live CD (NewsForge)

NewsForge reviews the BeleniX live CD which is based on the OpenSolaris kernel. "Named after Belenos, the sun god in Celtic mythology, BeleniX is being developed at Sun Microsystem's India Engineering Center in Bangalore. The ISO is available in a 230MB bzip compressed file, which you can download through HTTP or BitTorrent."

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Damn, I like Damn Small Linux (Linux-Watch)

Linux-Watch takes a look at Damn Small Linux. "DSL, for those of you who don't know it, is one of several "mini-Linux" distributions. Of the set, it's probably the most well thought of since it actually manages to pick a GUI into its goodness and, having turned version 2.0 recently, it's the most mature of the mini-Linuxes."

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