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DistributionsNews and Editorials Debian's Alioth crackedAnybody having trouble getting through to the Debian Alioth web server now knows why: the system was broken into by way of a pmwiki vulnerability. "This security alert is over, however we have way too many projects running some custom-installed web applications. We're going to review everything that is installed and come up with suggestion to use the packaged (and thus security-supported) version of the web applications when possible."It has now been decided that the new Alioth will be hosted in a Xen client. "This means it's easy to stop (or shutdown) the Alioth host for inspection, or to simply reinstall it from scratch. That's why while preparing the new Alioth, I'm documenting the configuration of all the services."
New Releases Ubuntu 6.10 alpha - Knot 2 releasedEdgy Eft Knot 2, the second in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Edgy development cycle, is now available in Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu flavors.
Slackware 11.0 rc4Slackware 11.0 should be out soon. A fourth release candidate has been announced in the September 3 change log entry. For a complete list of changes check the slackware-current changelog.
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 updatedThe Debian project has updated the stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (codename `sarge'). "This update mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems. Those who frequently update from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update."
Distribution News Yet another Debian resolution on firmwareDebian project leader Anthony Towns has put forward a new general resolution proposal for the Debian developers to consider. This one starts with the idea that the social contract, in its current form, cannot be met, so it should be reverted to its pre-2004 language. The resolution would explicitly exempt firmware, allowing "etch" to be released on time and in compliance with the social contract. "I think it's a mistake to have a social contract that we can't meet -- I would much rather say "we're not only meeting our social contract, but we're going above and beyond it" than keep worrying about how we've overpromised and keep having to underdeliver." Click below for the full text, or see this LWN article for the previous episode in this story.
cdrkit: Debian's fork of cdrtoolsThe Debian cdrtools maintainers have posted the first version of "cdrkit," the project's fork of the cdrtools package. The reasons behind this fork were covered in LWN last month. It was nearly bound to happen; the real question is the extent to which distributors will cooperate in the maintenance of the new version. The Debian folks have reached out to other distributors, so the initial signs are good. Meanwhile, cdrkit needs testing.
minutes of debburn/cdrkit team meeting, 2006-09-05Click below for the minutes of the September 5 meeting of the debburn/cdrkit maintainers.
New Debian Tcl/Tk list, maintenance team formingDebian's tcl/tk maintainer is putting together a team to co-maintain tcl/tk and some of it's add-ons (e.g. tcllib, itcl). "It is also, in my opinion, past time to develop some more formal policies for tcl/tk-using packages. For this reason, I have created a mailing list for discussing Debian's tcl/tk infrastructure and policy, and an Alioth project for tcl/tk maintenance."
Debian Bug Squashing Party in Zurich: 9 Sept 2006Two Debian Bug Squashing Parties will take place in Zurich, Switzerland. The first will take place Saturday, 9 Sept. 2006.
Bug Squashing around the world - more about the BSP-MarathonClick below for an update on more Debian Bug Squashing Parties around the world.
Fedora Core to drop openmotifIt's official: Fedora Core 6 will not include the openmotif library, which has a non-free license. The library will be removed prior to the October 2 development freeze. As a result, a number of packages using openmotif (including cmucl, ddd, nedit, and xpdf) will break; they, too, will be removed if they cannot be shifted over to lesstif in the next month (but, in most cases, that work has already been done).
Gentoo Trustees AnnouncementThe Gentoo Foundation has announced its newly elected Board of Trustees. The new board has five members; Chris Gianelloni, Grant Goodyear, Stuart Herbert, Seemant Kulleen and Renat Lumpau.
The future of NetBSDCharles Hannum, one of the original NetBSD developers, has sent out a long, unhappy posting about the state of that project. "The NetBSD Project has stagnated to the point of irrelevance. It has gotten to the point that being associated with the project is often more of a liability than an asset. I will attempt to explain how this happened, what the current state of affairs is, and what needs to be done to attempt to fix the situation." Click below for the original message; the full discussion can be found in the archives.
Ubuntu Edgy feature freeze imminentAccording to the Ubuntu schedule, the Edgy feature freeze is in effect. A beta release is expected before the end of the month.
New Distributions Ubuntu Christian EditionUbuntu Christian Edition is a free, open source operating system geared towards Christians. It is based on Ubuntu Linux and is suitable for both desktop and server use. Along with the standard Ubuntu applications, Ubuntu Christian Edition includes the best available Christian software. The latest release contains GnomeSword, a top of the line Bible study program for Linux based on the Sword Project. The recently released Ubuntu CE v1.2 is based on Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS.
Distribution Newsletters Debian Weekly NewsThe Debian Weekly News for September 5, 2006 looks at security updates to the sarge Mozilla packages that need testing, availability of DebConf session videos, donations needed for an etch release advertisement, a new Tcl/Tk team, bug squashing parties and much more.
Gentoo Weekly NewsletterThe Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for August 28, 2006 covers the Gentoo 2006.1 release, GCC 4.1.1/ glibc 2.4 stable, Gentoo Summer Camp and several other topics.
Ubuntu Weekly News #12The Ubuntu Weekly News for September 2, 2006 is out. "In this edition, read about the release of a milestone image and call for testing, a roundup of news from the Google Summer of Code student projects and a sneak preview news of another project, 'upstart', by Ubuntu Developer Scott James Remnant, designed to change the way that a Unix/Linux boots for the first time in 30 years."
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 167The DistroWatch Weekly for September 4, 2006 is out. "Following a new release of Gentoo Linux last week, another popular "geek" project is likely to announce a major new version this week. Slackware Linux, the world's oldest surviving Linux distribution, has been through no fewer than four release candidates, so the final version can't be far away. Also expected later this week - GNOME 2.16. In other news, Linspire scraps the annual fee for its software repository, Ubuntu contributors keep enhancing their favourite distribution with extra software, services and even a new start-up script, and the NetBSD world is rocked by accusations of mismanagement by one of the project's founders. We also have the pleasure to announce that DistroWatch has once again been voted one of the "Top 101" web sites by PC Magazine and that the August 2006 donation of US$350 goes to the Puppy Linux project."
Minor distribution updates First release candidate for 64 Studio distribution64 Studio 0.9.4 is the first release candidate for the 64 Studio 1.0 distribution. "The CD image will install a custom Debian system specialised for multimedia content creation, including a NUMA-enabled SMP Linux 2.6.17 kernel with realtime preemption for dual Opteron systems."
Updated versions and derivates of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (Heise Online)Heise Online covers the release of CentOS 4.4. "The novel features introduced with the update include among others a transition from Mozilla Suite 1.7 to its indirect successor Seamonkey 1.0, which will henceforth be maintained. For some items of hardware such as the network chips by Intel, Broadcom and Nvidia, as well as the Qlogic storage adapter, drivers such as bnx2, cciss, e1000, emulex, forcedeth, qlogic and tg3 were updated. While the drivers that were added are the SAS driver adp94xx by Adaptec and the OpenIPMI tools. In addition the update sported improvements with regard to network, USB, and SCSI subsystems, as well as NFS and autofs4."
September 5th - Morphix SVN Commit DayMorphix has released Morphix Base 0.5-pre6 'Amalthea', MorphixLiveKiosk 0.01 and MorphingMorphix 0.3, as part of Morphix SVN Commit Day, September 5, 2006.
Package updates Fedora updatesUpdates for Fedora Core 5: anacron (bug fix), enscript (wrap long headers), mkinitrd (rebuild against parted-1.7.1), pyparted (rebuild against parted-1.7.1), mc (new mc CVS snapshot), db4 (bug fix), gnome-applets (bug fix), cups (bug fix), gimp (version 2.2.13), xsane (version 0.991).
rPath updatesUpdates for rPath Linux 1: conary, conary-build, conary-repository (Conary 1.0.30 maintenance release).
Trustix updatesUpdates for Trustix Secure Linux 2.2 & 3.0: amavisd-new, apache, cyrus-sasl, nfs-utils, openswan and squid (various bug fixes).
Ubuntu updatesUpdates for Ubuntu 6.06 LTS: kboincspy_0.9.1-3~dapper1, seahorse_0.9.3-0ubuntu5~dapper1, konversation_1.0-0ubuntu1~dapper1, openoffice.org 2.0.3-6dapper1, openoffice.org-l10n 2.0.3-6dapper1, openoffice.org-amd64 2.0.3-6dapper1-1, openoffice.org 2.0.3-6dapper2.
Newsletters and articles of interest Maintainer's resignation highlights problems in Debian project (Linux.com)Linux.com covers the resignation of Matthew Garrett from the Debian project. "The resignation of Matthew Garrett, one of the most active developers in Debian, has drawn attention to some ongoing issues about how the project operates. Specifically, Garrett's announcement on his blog cites a lack of civility and a slowness in decision-making, and compares Debian unfavorably to Ubuntu, the Debian-derived distribution which is increasingly attracting the efforts of many Debian maintainers."
Distribution reviews Linux From Scratch (Packt Publishing)Packt Publishing interviews Gerard Beekmans, creator of Linux From Scratch. "MS: What prompted you to write Linux From Scratch? GB: I started working with Linux about eight years ago. I was living in The Netherlands at the time (where I was born and raised). After trying out a few distributions I couldn't settle on any one pre-packed system to fit my needs. I also didn't get the feeling I was learning everything I could learn about how Linux works, especially behind the scenes. That's how the LFS project started. I was putting together a Linux system from scratch as an attempt to figure out how things worked. I wrote down the steps I took to get such a system up and running, thinking that there are probably other people out there who would be interested in it."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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