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Ubuntu Technical Board on Feisty Fawn

Ubuntu's Feisty Fawn (aka 7.04) release is scheduled for mid-April. The fourth Herd CD, an alpha release reasonably free of showstoppers, should be out by the time you read this, for most or all of the official variants (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu).

Ubuntu has always taken a middle road in the free vs. non-free course of Linux distributions. Middle enough that two Ubuntu-based distributions have variants that are working on both sides of the fence. gNewSense strives for 100% FSF approved purity while Linux Mint is willing to sacrifice some freedom for convenience.

Like Debian, its parent project, Ubuntu has always provided some proprietary software, in the Multiverse repository which is not enabled by default, similar to the non-free repository in Debian.

Early in Feisty's development cycle it was reported that Ubuntu would ship binary drivers by default in Feisty. Mostly it sounded like it would be even easier to get at those drivers; however according to the latest announcement from Ubuntu's Technical Board it sounds pretty much like the status quo. "Ubuntu 7.04 will preserve the status quo with respect to proprietary video drivers. As in previous releases, these drivers will be provided for the convenience of users who choose to use them, but they will not be activated by default."

This announcement also looked at the status of the PowerPC edition. "Beginning with Ubuntu 7.04, the PowerPC edition of Ubuntu will be reclassified as unofficial. The PowerPC software itself and supporting infrastructure will continue to be available, and supported by a community team."

Those interested may join the Ubuntu PowerPC Architecture Team to work on the unofficial port. PowerPC releases will be maintained for all supported earlier releases. PowerPC servers will be supported until 2011 on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

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New Releases

Fedora 7 Test 1 Release Notes

An abridged, "one-sheet" version of the Release Notes for Fedora 7 test1 (6.90) is now available. The full set of release notes will be released with test3.

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Trustix Secure Linux 3.0.5 RC 2

Trustix Secure Linux 3.0.5 RC 2 is out. This release adds postgresql 8.2.3, cpplus 3.3, samba 3.0.24, php 5.2.1, and lots of bug fixes and security updates.

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Distribution News

Linspire switches to Ubuntu

Linspire and Canonical have sent out a press release announcing a "technology partnership" between the two. The core of the deal appears to be that Linspire will base future versions of its distribution products on Ubuntu Linux rather than Debian. "Linspire will continue combining proprietary drivers, codecs and applications with open source software by default in their operating systems. This approach, unique among Linux distributions, offers out-of-the-box support for a broader range of software, hardware and multimedia file types than the Debian or Ubuntu baseline alone."

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Debian votes

The second call for nominations has gone out in this year's Debian Project leader elections.

There is a proposed general resolution which should soon be open for voting. "The Debian project resolves that Debian developers allowed to perform combined source and binary packages uploads should be allowed to perform binary-only packages uploads for the same set of architectures."

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Debian announcements

Inactive Debian developer accounts will be deleted using regular WaT (*W*here *a*re *T*hey?) runs to determine a developer's status. "Selection of the people included in those runs will be done in a way that we avoid sending out such mails to active people. As a good start we will take the upcoming DPL vote as an input source, everyone who doesn't vote this year will be included in the first run. * Please note that you can vote without expressing an opinion! *"

The expiration of the Debian archive's signing key for 2006 has broken most of the installation media from etch RC1. "The only RC1 images that should remain usable are the full installation CDs and DVDs, but only when used without a network mirror."

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CentOS mailing list are going international

CentOS mailing lists will be available in German, French, Czech, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish added to the existing English list.

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Changes to fedora-advisory-board list

The Fedora Advisory Board mailing list is becoming more open. Membership once required moderator approval, with a readonly list for those who wanted to follow along by not post. Now the advisory board list is open to all and the read-only list will disappear on March 1. "This decision also has the potential to lead to increased traffic on the list. Let's keep the traffic on-topic and high in signal, versus noise. The list's job will be to police its own."

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Distribution Newsletters

Debian Weekly News

The Debian Weekly News for February 13, 2007 covers a competition to augment and revise the current Secure Hash Standard, Debian etch on an old ThinkPad notebook, the question of supporting package downloads, LDAP and infrastructure updates, a final FOSDEM schedule, Debian powers New Zealand's electoral enrollment, restructuring parts of the Debian website, Debian-Installer Release Candidate 2, Debian GNU/Linux support from Hewlett-Packard, the Call for Project Leader Nominations, Debian Live Autobuilder, a first test report on Multiarch DVD, automatic installation and removal tests, archive signing key for 2007, and much more.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for February 5, 2007 covers KDE team seeking help, removal of mail-mta/qmail, interview with zzam, and several other topics.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 189

The DistroWatch Weekly for February 12, 2007 is out. "It was a fairly quiet week, with only Mandriva's new beta release and Linspire's announcement about its partnership with Ubuntu making major headlines. In this week's issue, we have the honour to bring you a rare interview with a female entrepreneur and Linux enthusiast: Dianne Ursini from Pioneer Linux. The news section then starts with a sad news of Florent Villard (Warly) leaving his employer (Mandriva) of eight years, before it continues with an observation about the Linspire announcement, comment on the Fedora release notes issue, update on the second release candidate of Debian Installer, and information about the status of Ulteo. Finally, don't miss several interesting links, such as the story of the RPM package manager and an interview with "Jaromil", the founder and developer of the dyne:bolic multimedia live CD."

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Distribution meetings

Upcoming Debian meetings

Andreas Schuldei reports on a couple of upcoming Debian meetings; one in France and one in Brussels (during FOSDEM).

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DebConf8 location: Mar del Plata, Argentina

A location has been set for DebConf8, the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina. "The estimated dates are the second and third weeks of August, 2008. Which means that this will be the first DebConf to take place in winter."

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Upcoming Ubuntu Events

Some upcoming Ubuntu events include Ubuntu Education Summit, 3-4 May 2007 in Sevilla, Spain, Ubucon - Sevilla, 5 May 2007 in Sevilla, Spain, Ubuntu Developer Summit, 6-11 May 2007 in Sevilla, Spain and Ubuntu Live, 22-24 July 2007 in Portland, Oregon, USA.

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Newsletters and articles of interest

Discussing Dyne:Bolic and Freedom with Denis Jaromil Rojo (Packt Publishing)

Mayank Sharma talks with Denis "Jaromil" Rojo. "Denis "Jaromil" Rojo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaromil) is an artist and a FOSS hacker. He's popularly known for Dyne:Bolic (http://www.dynebolic.org/), a Live CD distribution that contains several applications for audio and video manipulation. As a programmer, he is author of several free software that present new possibilities for online radios. As an artist he is known for his netart performances (http://lab.dyne.org/JaromilTalks) and for crafting the most elegant and efficient 13-character forkbomb ever written (http://www.digitalcraft.org/?artikel_id=292)."

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Distribution reviews

GoboLinux's recipe for delicious package management (Linux.com)

Linux.com plays with GoboLinux. "From the start, GoboLinux's developers had no intentions of adding another package format like RPM or Debian packages. Furthermore, depending on the popularity of an application it might or might not be available in the RPM or Debian package formats. But all applications will be available as a compressed source tarball. Hisham H. Muhammad, who developed GoboLinux along with André Detsch, explains that a tarball can simply be unpacked, and then three commands, 'configure, make, make install', should install it."

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New stable version of EnGarde Secure Linux hits the web (DesktopLinux)

DesktopLinux looks at the release of EnGarde Secure Community Edition, version 3.0.12. "Guardian Digital on Feb. 7 announced the release of a new stable version EnGarde Secure Community Edition, version 3.0.12. The security-oriented Linux distribution features a 2.6.19 kernel and the latest versions of several server-based applications, and is intended for use as a Web, DNS, email, database, and general Internet server."

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STUX live CD: Some technical difficulties (Linux.com)

Linux.com reviews the STUX live CD. "STUX is a Slackware/Knoppix-powered live CD with the Morphix-like ability to build a custom ISO. While the combination has high potential, this implementation leaves something to be desired. It's worth the experience if you enjoy using new distributions, but if you're looking to replace your current desktop OS, look elsewhere."

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