Distributions

Autodownloading considered harmful

A Fedora user recently asked: might it be possible for the project to put together a package which would automatically download and install the (proprietary) Google Earth application? Debian has googleearth-package, which makes an installable package from the downloaded application, but there is no such convenience for Fedora users. The quick answer appeared to be "no" - Fedora is for free software only, and packaging tools for proprietary programs do not fit the bill.

It did not take long for others to point out the "autodownloader" facility shipped with the Fedora games spin now. This tool is needed to make certain games work where the game is free software, but it needs proprietary data to provide the full experience. Games like Quake3 and Rise of the Triad fit this description. With autodownloader, these games can be shipped with Fedora and the proprietary data will be fetched automatically on the destination machine. This scenario does not seem all that different than downloading a proprietary application like Google Earth and installing it.

The difference, as seen by the Fedora camp, is that autodownloader can only obtain data, not code. The fact that much of that data may, in fact, be code which is fed to a virtual machine within the game is sort of glossed over. In the discussion, it was also suggested that games requiring autodownloader should come with enough free data to be minimally usable, though that does not seem to have been enforced with great vigor. Alan Cox's suggestion that the real test should be "is it possible to create free data for this game?" makes some sense, but that is not the operative rule now.

Such a discussion cannot go on long, though, before somebody brings up the real sore point: CodecBuddy. This time, it was Hans de Goede who raised the issue:

According to Hans, there is no point in discussing autodownloader as long as CodecBuddy remains in the repository.

Outgoing Fedora leader Max Spevack is trying to organize a discussion aimed at reaching some sort of clarity on these issues. Christopher Blizzard had an interesting idea: hand more of the decisions about (and responsibility for) the shipping of problematic code to the upstream projects. The Miro project was held up as an example. Christopher's proposal has some echoes of the disintermediation of distributions discussion which was covered here last week. When it comes to patent-encumbered codecs, distributions like Fedora would happily accept disintermediation.

In the absence of a real solution to the patent problem, some sort of disintermediation may be the only workable answer for distributions like Fedora. They may not be willing to ship the code, but others are. So it's mostly just a matter of making the connection between those repositories and the users as straightforward and painless as possible. Spending time with search engines to find useful programs or data may build character, but it does not help create a useful or pleasurable Linux user experience.

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New Releases

Nexenta Core Platform 1.0 released

Version 1.0 of the Nexenta Core Platform - essentially a port of the Ubuntu Dapper distribution onto the Solaris kernel - is available. "With the power of Debian tools behind it, NexentaCore could be customized for any vertical application or distribution: KDE, GNOME, XFCE centric Desktops, LAMP servers, Xen Dom0 ZFS-powered servers, and more. Unlike NexentaOS desktop distribution, NexentaCore does not aim to provide a complete desktop. The overriding objective for NexentaCore is - stable foundation."

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OpenSolaris Developer Preview 2 Available

The OpenSolaris Developer Preview 2 is available for download. "This is an x86-based LiveCD install image, containing some new and emerging OpenSolaris technologies and should be considered a developer preview only." This Project Indiana release is a binary distribution based on the OpenSolaris source code.

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The Fedora 8 Xfce Spin

For the Xfce users out there: the Fedora 8 Xfce spin is now available. "Fedora Xfce Spin is a bootable Fedora Live CD image available for x86 and x86_64 architecture. It can be optionally installed to hard disk or converted into boot USB images and is ideal for Xfce fans and for users running Fedora on relatively low resource systems."

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Fedora 9 Alpha Jigdo

The Fedora Unity project has the Fedora 9 Alpha release available via Jigdo. "Jigdo saves you a lot of bandwidth and time if you already have the data (maybe a local mirror or previously released media), and has been proposed as a feature for Fedora 9."

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Fedora 8 20080204 Re-Spin

The Fedora Unity Project has announced the release of new ISO Re-Spins (DVD and CD Sets) of Fedora 8. "These Re-Spin ISOs are based on the officially released Fedora 8 installation media and include all updates released as of February 4,2008. The ISO images are available for i386 and x86_64 architectures via jigdo."

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Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

Bits of the gnome 1.x removal effort

Pierre Habouzit has been working on removing all the bits of GNOME 1.x for Debian Lenny. "If there is a package you love in that list, it'd be _really_ great to send patches to migrate them to gnome2/gtk2 libraries. This is a call for help, because it requires some knowledge of gnome/gtk core libraries for some of those."

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UTF-8 manual pages

Colin Watson is working on changing all the legacy encodings in Debian documents to UTF-8. "Historically, translated manual pages have been installed using a variety of character encodings, usually legacy ones (ISO-8859-*, KOI8-R, EUC-*, and so on). While these encodings are still supported, I now recommend that Debian developers begin to install all manual pages in UTF-8."

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Tcl/Tk release goals

Francesco P. Lovergine looks at the status of Tcl/Tk as it is being packaged for Debian Lenny. "The Tcl/Tk team announced in October that some work is happening off-stage about Tcl/Tk versions and their reverse dependencies. A new policy document is currently available whose aim is introducing some order and improvements in the current Tcl/Tk status. We are now moving forward by defining a few release goals for Lenny, which are of interest for the release team and all involved maintainers and packages."

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Fedora

Fedora Board Recap 2008-FEB-06

Click below for a look at the February 6 meeting of the Fedora Board. Topics include the Xfce spin, board goals, the Fedora account system, and a community architecture update.

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SUSE Linux and openSUSE

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 enters Extended Maintenance

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 has been moved to the Extended Maintenance classification. "So lets take a look back at the history of SLES 8... SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 was released end of October 2002, making its regular maintenance lifetime 5 years. SLES 8 was based on the UnitedLinux development also done by SUSE which was a cooperation between SUSE, Caldera, Connectiva and TurboLinux. The Linux kernel was originally 2.4.19, but was upgraded to 2.4.21 base with Service Pack 3."

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Distribution Newsletters

Fedora Weekly News Issue 119

The Fedora Weekly News for February 4, 2008 is out. Announcements include "Announcing Fedora 9 Alpha", "Fedora 9 Alpha Jigdo" and "Fedora 8 20080204 Re-Spin", Planet Fedora articles include "A word of thanks", "Happy 10th Birthday, Open Source!", "Field report from GNUnify 2008", "SCALE 6x: I'm Here - Saturday in Review", "SCALE 6x: cally four nya" and "Fedora General-Purpose Posters Part 2", plus several other topics.

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OpenSUSE Weekly News/9

This edition of the openSUSE Weekly News covers openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 2 is out, openSUSE Membership Now Open for Applications, Hackweek Part II this week at SUSE, In Planet SUSE: Lightning-fast package management for 11.0, Command-line 1-Click-Install, Upcoming: FOSDEM, and much more.

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PCLOS Magazine #18

The February 2008 edition of PCLinuxOS Magazine (PDF) is available. Get the latest news, tip and tricks for PCLinuxOS.

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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #77

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for the weeks February 3 - February 10, 2008 covers MOTU Elections, Clutch BitTorrent WebUI, Parallels in the Ubuntu partner repository, Firefox 3 in 7.10, and much more.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 239

The DistroWatch Weekly for February 11, 2008 is out. "Slackware Linux isn't the most user-friendly distribution, but thanks to the effort of several independent projects, it has been turned into a more palatable operating system for novice users. One of them, Zenwalk Linux, has matured into a sophisticated distribution, complete with superb hardware detection, a graphical package configuration tool, and several setup utilities; read below for a first-look review of Zenwalk Linux 5.0. In the news section, Fedora and openSUSE present new development builds, Software Wydawnictwo launches BSD Magazine, gOS hints at the change of user interface for deployment on Everex Cloudbooks, and CIO.com interviews Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier, the new openSUSE community manager. Finally, good news for the fans of SLAX - the long awaited version 6.0 of the Slackware-based live CD will finally arrive this week."

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Distribution meetings

Extremadura 2008 Debian Work Meetings

There will be four Debian work meetings sponsored by the government of Extremadura, Spain in 2008. "These meetings will look very much like those in the years before. Extremadura will pay european flights, food and accommodation for up to 20 people. Several smaller teams can share a meeting. The DPL will most likely approve sponsorship for additional participants or travel from abroad if need arises. The meetings will last from wednesday to sunday (with travel on wednesday and sunday)."

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Ubuntu Developer Week

The Ubuntu Developer Week (February 18 - 22, 2008) is an IRC event where potential contributors can learn more ways to get involved with Ubuntu.

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Distribution reviews

Vector Linux 5.9: Light, fast Slackware-based distro (TuxMachines)

TuxMachines reviews Vector Linux 5.9. "Vector Linux 5.9, released in late December of last year, is a Slackware 12.0-based distribution that uses Xfce 4.4.2 as its default user interface ("UI"). Generally speaking, Xfce requires less horsepower than other UIs, like GNOME and KDE, and so Vector Linux ("VL" for short) bills itself as an excellent operating system to install on older, lower-powered computers. I've been using it for the past two weeks, and like what I see."

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