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Electing the openSUSE board

The openSUSE project takes another step in becoming a true community project. The current openSUSE board, appointed by Novell, will soon be replaced by an elected board. The question that is being debated on the opensuse-project mailing list is "Who can vote for the openSUSE board?"

Among the openSUSE community there are Members and a larger number of Users. ""openSUSE Members" are specifically distinguished contributors who have brought a continued and substantial contribution to the openSUSE project. They are approved by the openSUSE board." Becoming a user is as easy as registering on the wiki.

Some possible answers to the "who can vote" question include:

• members only
• anyone (members + registered users)
• members + non-members vouched for by members
• members + users who have signed the Guiding Principles

At this time the number of members is low. There are concerns that having members (who are appointed by the board) as the only voters for the board could exclude the greater community. On the other hand opening up elections to the greater user community is difficult to police. It should be verifiable that those who are eligible to vote have only one vote counted. Other projects may serve as a guide for this issue.

Debian has the Debian Voting Information page which defines how voting is done and how votes are counted. Debian restricts voting to Debian Developers (DDs), who much sign their vote with their key which is also on the official keyring. DDs may vote more than once, but only the last vote is counted, so voting is restricted and it's easy to insure one-vote-per-person.

The Fedora project has defined Fedora Board Elections more recently than Debian. This document states that 5 of 9 seats on the board are appointed by the board. Voting is open for the remaining seats to those who have a valid account in the Fedora Account System. Getting an account on the Fedora Account System requires an application and approval process that is somewhat similar to becoming an openSUSE Member.

The GNOME Foundation Elections process was also raised as a model. GNOME membership is open to any contributor willing to go through the application process.

Given those three examples it does seem that voting privileges are typically restricted to a subset of the community that has made both a commitment and continuing contributions to the project. The main difference is that openSUSE membership is relatively new and is therefore a small segment of the greater community. Over time the membership will grow and members only elections may become more appealing. In any case, the procedures that are defined for this election may be changed for subsequent elections.

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New Releases

64 Studio 2.1rc1 is out

The first release candidate for 64 Studio 2.1 is available for testing. Click below for a look at known bugs, download and other information.

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Debian Installer Lenny Beta1

The first beta of the Debian Lenny installer is available for testing. There are many new features that were not in the etch installer. "The debian-installer team is still looking for active contributors for new features, bug triaging and squashing, improvements on the manual and the developer documentation. If you want Lenny to release on time, please join and help."

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Announcing Foresight 2.0

Foresight Linux 2.0 has been released for the x86 and x86_64 platforms, it features the recently released GNOME 2.22 desktop environment. "Foresight Linux is a Linux distribution for your desktop that features a rolling release schedule that always keeps your desktop up to date. Foresight includes innovative applications that make using your computer easy, including Banshee for music management, F-Spot for photo management, as well as vibrant user and developer community. New in Foresight 2.0: The Foresight 2.0 features a new tar-based installer, that should install in less than 10 minutes, including formatting a 200 GB hard drive."

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Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring RC 2 "Aceras" released

The second release candidate of Mandriva Linux 2008.1 is available. " This pre-release includes support for easy synchronization of Windows Mobile 5+, Blackberry and Nokia devices, the Codeina multimedia codec installation system, support for Radeon HD 3xxx series graphics cards, more improvements to the Mandriva software installation tools, the finalized 2008 Spring theme, a new metapackage for easily installing a complete LAMP setup, and available KDE 4.0.2."

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Ulteo Application System Beta1 ready for download

Ulteo has released the Ulteo Application System (AS) Beta1. The AS is an installable version of Ulteo, for the local PC, that comes with applications and features. The previously released Online Desktop (OD) uses the network to provide applications and online document storage. "automatic synchronization of documents with the Ulteo Online Desktop, automatic upgrading, new "My Digital life" panel, full installation in about 5 minutes, hundreds applications available--That's what user can find in this just-released installable version of Ulteo Application System Beta1."

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Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

Bits from the Lintian maintainers

Russ Allbery presents a look at Debian lintian development. "Lintian has been under fairly active development for the past couple of years. We've been averaging a "large" release closing a double-digit number of bugs every couple of months or so, usually followed by a few quick bug fix releases in new checks. There have been 18 Lintian releases since the etch release. Lintian currently has 674 different tags, up from the 500 milestone about four years ago despite consolidation of closely-related tags."

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Bits about Bug Squashing Parties (BSPs)

Debian bug squashing parties are happening in real life. Even if you are not close to any of the actual locations where people are squashing bugs, you join in on IRC. Click below for more information on where and when people will be squashing those release critical bugs in Lenny.

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Status of dependency based boot sequencing release goal 2008-03

Petter Reinholdtsen looks at the status of the release goal of converting the Debian boot sequencing to use dynamic and dependency based ordering instead of hardcoded sequence numbers. "To weed out these bugs, testing is needed. As there are still a lot of problems with packages not propagating into testing, I would recommend to limit testing to unstable installations at the moment."

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Fedora

Fedora 9 to remove pointers to proprietary codecs

The Fedora project board met on March 11 and decided to remove the pointers to the "non-free" Fluendo codecs from Codeina (aka CodecBuddy) for Fedora 9. This is a big change from the Fedora 8 behavior. The only Fluendo codec that will still be referenced from Codeina is the free MP3 codec, which may have patent problems in some jurisdictions. As might be guessed, there are folks on both sides of this contentious issue. Some think it runs counter to the ideals of Fedora, while others lament the treatment of Fluendo. LWN covered Codeina/CodecBuddy last November.

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Fedora's advice on GPL compliance

The Fedora Project has been worried about remaining in compliance with the GPL while handing out binary distribution CDs. The result is this set of guidelines. "Now, if someone at the show asks, you can encourage them to download the code themselves (and become a contributor to Fedora). If they insist on getting source code on physical media, then provide them with CDs with the source code. This is an additional bit of work on the part of our Ambassadors, but it protects both the Ambassadors, and the Fedora Project, from any undue criticism and future obligation under these licenses."

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K12Linux Development Resources

K12Linux sub-project is working to integrate LTSP5 into Fedora 9. LTSP enables any machine to become a terminal server and to boot thin clients.

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Fedora Board Recap 2008-MAR-04

Here's a look at the March 4, 2008 meeting of the Fedora Board, where topics included Secondary Arch Hosting, Post-release updates of custom spins, and several other topics.

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Fedora Board Recap 2008-MAR-11

Click below for a look at the March 11 meeting of the Fedora board. Topics discussed include Post-release updates of custom spins, Google Start Page, Codeina, and several other topics.

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Tiemann speech online

Michael Tiemann's "Fedora in the Enterprise" speech from FUDCon Raleigh 2008 is now available in Ogg Theora format on the Fedora torrent site. "Unfortunately, some scheduling and technical conflicts meant we couldn't capture the entire speech, but only the first 15 minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience, and hope you enjoy the segment we were able to provide."

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Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Council summary for 13 March 2008

Click below for some notes from the March 13 meeting of the Gentoo council. Continuing topics include slacker arches, GLEP 46 and EAPI=0. New topics include Summer of Code, package maintainers, amd64 arch team and big bug list, and more.

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Mandriva Linux

Synchronizing with Windows Mobile 5 and 6 made easy in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring

Adam Williamson has been working on "the easiest ever support for synchronizing with Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices in any distribution", for the upcoming Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. "Support is included for synchronizing with both KDE (KDE PIM) and GNOME (Evolution). Similarly easy synchronization is also possible with many Nokia phones and with Blackberry devices."

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SUSE Linux and openSUSE

openSUSE Packaging Days II

openSUSE Packaging Days is an event for application developers, project contributors and anyone else who wants to learn how to provide binary packages for all the popular distributions. The openSUSE Build Service will do most of the work for you. Join in on IRC Freenode at #opensuse-buildservice during April 4 - 5, 2008, where community members will be standing by to to provide support and answer questions about using the build service and creating packages.

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openSUSE participates in Google Summer of Code: Looking for Mentors, Projects, Students

openSUSE has been accepted into the Google Summer of Code 2008. "We're now in the "interim period" for students to discuss application ideas with mentoring organizations. (That'd be us.) Students will then have from March 24th through March 31st to apply to Google." Students should look at the ideas page for more information and timeline.

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Recordings of FOSDEM talks are online

openSUSE has made available videos from FOSDEM. They are linked from this page.

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Ubuntu family

Ubuntu gets SELinux

It's official: SELinux is now available in the Ubuntu development ("Hardy Heron") distribution. "This is the result of the amazing work of the ubuntu-security and ubuntu-hardened teams, as well as the huge contributions from the folks at Tresys. (note: SELinux will not be the default, but is available as a security option.)" Installing it is a simple apt operation.

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Ubuntu Technical Board decisions

Matt Zimmerman reports on two decisions made by the Ubuntu Technical Board regarding the Ubuntu 8.04 release. 1) Automatic indexing in tracker will be disabled by default. 2) The SPARC port will not be officially supported in Ubuntu 8.04. Click below for details.

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Celebrating Hug Day - 20 March 2008

Ubuntu hug days have going on regularly, each one targeting some part of Hardy that needs work. This one on the 20th is dedicated to NetworkManager. Find out more about Hug Days.

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New Distributions

Clonezilla Live

Clonezilla Live combines Debian Live with Clonezilla to create a tool for easily cloning individual machines using a CD, DVD or USB flash drive. Clonezilla live 1.0.9-19 (stable) was recently announced.

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Distribution Newsletters

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #82

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for March 15, 2008 covers the Ubuntu 8.04 beta freeze, Ubuntu Classroom team, the return of Ubuntustats.com, LoCo projects from the Jordanian, New Mexico, and UK teams, Ubuntu Studio at Sheffield University, and much more.

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OpenSUSE Weekly News/14

In this week's openSUSE Weekly News you'll find Videos and Slides from FOSDEM 2008, openSUSE to Participate in Google Summer of Code 2008, Novell Free Hugs at CeBit 2008, KIWI-LTSP 0.3.14 Now Out, LimeJeOS, the openSUSE-based JeOS is Born, Banshee 1.0Alpha1 is Available with 1-Click-Install, New KDE Four Live and updated KDE 4.1 Snapshot Packages, HP to preload SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on Notebooks, Desktops, In Tips and Tricks: Best Practices for Editing Configuration Files, Upcoming: openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 3 (later today), and more.

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Gentoo Monthly Newsletter

The March edition of the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter covers Gentoo Trustee Election Result, New operations lead for SPARC, New Gentoo Book, Council Meeting Summary, and several other topics.

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Fedora Weekly News Issue 124

The Fedora Weekly News for March 10, 2008 is out. "In Announcements, we have "Announcing the relaunch of the Fedora BugZappers!" In Planet Fedora, we have "OLS (Ottawa Linux Symposium)", "Fluendo, Bastien, et al", "Desktop User Guide (Needs help to finish it off)", and "OpenExpo 2008 - Day 2"" Several other topics are covered as well.

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Debian's misc development news (#5)

This edition of misc development news covers the Debian Documentation Project switch to SVN, Machine-interpretable debian/copyright, WNPP status changes sent to PTS subscribers, a new method for device probing in grub-install / update-grub and policy checker linda removed from testing/unstable. Click below for details.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 244

The DistroWatch Weekly for March 17, 2008 is out. "PC-BSD, a user-friendly variant of FreeBSD with a web-based software installation system, continues to deliver updated releases on a regular basis. We'll take a look at the just-released version 1.5. Does it support modern hardware well? And can it challenge the popular desktop Linux distributions? Read below for some answers. In the news section, Ubuntu enters a beta freeze stage, KNOPPIX gets busy with bug fixes, the Hungarian PCLinuxOS community releases PCe17OS, OpenBSD publishes the 4.3 information page, and Dru Lavigne announces the availability of an up-to-date BSDA certification DVD. Also in this issue, learn about pkg-get, a package management utility for OpenSolaris and follow an interesting analysis of the DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking logs as published by a group of data mining researchers in France."

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Distribution meetings

DebConf8 Registration closes soon

Registration for DebConf8 will close at the end of this month. DebConf8 will take place in Mar del Plata, Argentina from Sunday 10 to Saturday 16 August 2008.

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Interviews

People of openSUSE: Timo Hönig

People of openSUSE introduce Timo Hönig. "What do you think was your most important contribution to the openSUSE project/community or what is the contribution that you're most proud of? Definitely the times when I broke D-Bus in late RC phase. Those times made people realized how buggy their own applications are, as the applications nicely threw signal 11. Other than that, all of my open source projects."

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Distribution reviews

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 Beta released (Linux-Watch)

Linux-Watch takes a look at the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 beta release. "This beta is being made available across the entire RHEL family. So you can try both the vanilla RHEL 5.2 and the Advanced Platform version on the AMD and Intel 64, Itanium, S/390, System p, and System z platforms. The beta for the RHEL 5 Desktop for x86 and AMD64/Intel is also being made available. The major upgrades are going to be in virtualization. RHEL is upgrading its core virtualization hypervisor, Xen, to Xen 3.1.2. It also features improvements in its NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) interface as well as support for up to 64 processors per system with up to 512GB of memory per server."

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