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DistributionsNews and Editorials A Code of ConductThe openSUSEThere seems to be a trend among open source projects to adopt a code of conduct. As the number of people participating on mailing lists and IRC channels increases, so does the level of poorly stated questions, off-topic chatter and other annoyances. As levels of frustration increase so does the potential for rudeness. Whether a poster intends to be rude, or is only perceived to be rude makes little difference. The international nature of this communication almost ensures there will be some misunderstandings based on culture and language. So do codes of conduct really work? They can, but often they do not. If the code is not enforced then there is no incentive for anyone to read the code, much less follow it. If the code is too actively enforced it will stifle communication. Somewhere in between there must be a happy medium. Finding it can be a challenge for even the most diplomatic of enforcers. There are no quick fixes for the problems that come with active channels of communication. There are many documents throughout the web that urge people to be polite and helpful, how to ask better questions and how to provide better answers. LWN readers may be more aware of them than the average netizen. It is up to the aware to educate the unaware in as kind and gentle a manner as possible.
New Releases FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE AnnouncementThe FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has announced the availability of FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE. This release continues the development of the 6-STABLE branch providing performance and stability improvements, many bug fixes and new features.
Foresight 2.0 Alpha 3 ReleasedThe third alpha of Foresight 2.0 has been released. "The Foresight 2.0 alpha series features a new tar-based installer, that should install in less than 10 minutes, including formatting a 200 GB hard drive. Foresight is also developing new editions including KDE and XFCE in addition to GNOME available for x86 and x86_64 processors."
Ubuntu 6.06.2 LTS releasedThe second maintenance release of "Dapper Drake" is available. "Over 600 post-release updates have been integrated, so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation, and a number of bugs in the installation system have been corrected. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS." Click below for more details.
Distribution News Debian GNU/Linux Reordering the boot for fun and profitPetter Reinholdtsen has announced an experimental dependency based boot sequencing project for Debian. "For a few years now, I have worked on a replacement for the trusty old way of organising the Debian boot. Did you ever make a package with an init.d script, and wonder which sequence number to pick for your script? I am talking about the numbers in the file names in /etc/rc[S0-6].d/. Or are you one of the lucky ones that could just ask for the defaults, and ignore the problem? Picking a good sequence number is very hard some times, for example when you want to run after program Z started at sequence number 20 and before program X also started sequence number 20."
Fedora Fedora blocking patent-encumbered gamesThe lawyers at Red Hat have become concerned about a set of game patents which, apparently, are being actively enforced. These patents cover "A game where 'targets' move across the screen to a predetermined point or line, where the player hits a button/key/mouse click as the target(s) crosses that point or line, and gets points." What that means is that games of the "Guitar Hero" or "Dance Dance Revolution" genre (pydance, for example) cannot be part of the Fedora distribution.
Fedora 8/ARM availableThe Fedora 8 package repository has been built for ARMv5 EABI, soft-float, little endian. "The easiest way to start using Fedora 8/ARM is to download the prebuilt root filesystem, which can be booted in QEMU, or chroot'ed into or booted from on any ARMv5 or later processor running in little endian mode. Additional packages can be installed by using yum, which is provided in the filesystem."
Fedora Board Recap 2008-JAN-13John Poelstra provides a recap of the January 13th meeting of the Fedora board. Topics include a budget update, FUDCon F9 survey, FUDCon F10 Boston, customized spin requests, and several other topics.
Gentoo Linux Grant Goodyear on GentooGrant Goodyear, a Gentoo trustee, has posted some information on Gentoo's status. "Many, many people have assumed, quite understandably, that with the Foundation's charter having been revoked, that the Foundation has thus ceased to exist. That's not really true. You can see this by looking at the NM statutes, but it's simplest to see by looking at what happens when NM receives the application for reinstatement. The New Mexico public regulation commission will determine if all of our paperwork is in order. If it isn't, they'll let us know what we need to do to complete it. Once it is, the commission will cancel the certificate of revocation and file a certificate of reinstatement that takes effect "as of the effective date of the administrative revocation and the corporation resumes carrying on its business as if the administrative revocation had never occurred"."
SUSE Linux and openSUSE Build Service Repositories Get New GPG KeysThe openSUSE build service repository has new GPG keys. Click below to find out more about this security feature.
Distribution Newsletters Fedora Weekly News Issue 116The Fedora Weekly News for January 14, 2008 looks at the vote for the Fedora 9 codename, Planet Fedora articles "Looking for a few good hackers!", "Fire in the Attic, Proof of the Prize", and "PackageKit Interview", and several other topics.
First Gentoo Monthly Newsletter publishedA new monthly publication, taking the place of the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter that went silent last October, has been announced. The January issue of Gentoo Monthly news carries a report of the Gentoo council meeting as well as information on the Gentoo Foundation status and reactions to Daniel Robbins offer (which was covered on last week's Distributions page), KDE 4 in Gentoo, Gentoo at FOSS.in and more. Click below for the issue.
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter: 19 January 2008This is a special edition of the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, covering statistics from October 15 to December 21, 2007.
openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 6This edition of the openSUSE Weekly News looks at openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 1, Federico unveils the latest community member, Qt 4.4 in Factory; FOSDEM draft online; more work on imaging support for the OBS, tips and tricks and much more.
Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #74The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for January 19, 2008 covers layout contest for Kubuntu.org, Ubuntu case studies, mugs from Germany for your Loco Team, FOSS in Egypt, and much more.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 236The DistroWatch Weekly for January 21, 2008 is out. "Continued efforts to resolve the leadership issues in Gentoo Linux, a controversy following the Manbo Labs deal between Mandriva and Turbolinux, and the unexpected purchase of MySQL by Sun Microsystems were the main headlines of the past week. But much has happened behind all the high-profile announcements too: openSUSE released the first prototype of its new, Qt4-based installer, Ubuntu published a free, 400-page desktop course, KDE continued to defend its decision to release version 4.0.0 in a seemingly unfinished state, and Dreamlinux announced the upcoming version 3.0 of its Mac OS X-like desktop distribution. Finally, don't miss our feature story, a hands-on report about Linux in Vietnam."
Newsletters and articles of interest Spinning a Fedora Linux Live CD (InformIT)Christopher Negus describes the use of livecd-creator to create your own Fedora spin. "The livecd-creator command is packaged in the livecd-tools package, along with more than a dozen sample kickstart files. These kickstart files can be used to build your own specialized live CD immediately, including a GNOME desktop, KDE desktop, developer workstation, electronic lab workstation, gaming desktop, or a minimal Fedora system."
Interviews Fedora developers on PackageKitJonathan Roberts interviews Richard Hughes and Robin Norwood about the PackageKit project. "PackageKit aims to take the pain out of the package management on GNU/Linux systems and create a system that can compete with Windows and Mac. Development is proceeding at a rapid pace and it is set to be available in Fedora 9. To find out more, we talked to Richard Hughes, project creator, and Robin Norwood, the Fedora feature owner; as always, you can catch some screenshots at the end!"
Distribution reviews Arch Linux - Is this really a geek's distro? (PlanetOSS)PlanetOSS has a review of Arch Linux. "The best part of Arch is pacman (at least for me). Pacman is a package management system which maintains the compressed pkg files. If you know the basic options of pacman you do not need a GUI tool for package management. Pacman is a package management system which maintains the compressed pkg files."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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