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DistributionsNews and Editorials Debian Project Leader Election 2008The Debian Project Leader election is well underway. The debate is over and the first call for votes has gone out. If it seems like the process is going faster this year, that's because it is. Last year a constitutional amendment to reduce the length of the DPL election process was adopted by the developers.There were three candidates nominated for this year's election; Marc Brockschmidt, Raphaël Hertzog and Steve McIntyre. Information about this election can be found on this year's vote page. Steve McIntyre has been a Debian Developer for more than 11 years. During that time he acquired a wide range of packaging experience, worked on creating the official CDs (and DVDs) and hosting machines used by Debian. Steve also served as Assistant Project Leader under Anthony Towns, so he has some idea of what the job entails. This is not the first time he's run for DPL either. In addition to this year's platform, his 2006 and 2007 platforms are also available. While Steve has no plans to appoint a DPL team, he is willing to delegate tasks when appropriate. His goals include improving communications within the project and improving the workflow, getting people to ask for help when they need it or to step down when they can't devote enough time to the job.
In my opinion, a key part of working effectively is honesty. We can all
suffer from a lack of time to do the jobs that we've promised to
do. After all, real life has a nasty habit of intruding on our so-called
"spare" time. So long as we don't let things delay too far, we can cope
and still contribute. But at some point, we need to be more honest with
ourselves and actually admit that we can't continue with the jobs that
we've promised to do. It's a hard thing to do, but in a friendly
community where we're all working together towards a common goal there
should be no shame in asking for help.
Raphaël Hertzog is also no stranger to DPL elections. He ran in 2002 and 2007, in addition to this year. Raphaël has proposed a small team of two other individuals (Moritz Muehlenhoff and Lucas Nussbaum) to help him with the DPL duties. His goals include making Debian more visible and recruiting more contributors.
While the number of packages in Debian increased a lot since 2001, the
number of active developers stayed the same. We could definitely use more
developers to continue increase the quality of our distribution (teams
with hundreds of bugs are quite common). We made a first step with the
Debian Maintainer proposal, but we can do more. I'm not saying that we
should give upload rights to less skilled people: we don't want to
compromise on quality.
He would also like to improve the core teams such as keyring managers, NM/DAM, ftpmasters, and the press team. Unofficial services that have proved useful (mentors.debian.net and backports.org) should be integrated officially into Debian. Marc Brockschmidt has been a Debian Developer since 2004 and has been involved in many parts of Debian since then, including helping with the New Maintainer process, as an AM to dozens of people, at the NM Frontdesk and working with the release team. He also helps to manage a network of hosts used for autobuilding, porting and other Debian-related services. Improving communications is a popular goal for DPL candidates, but has some thoughts on that:
Before writing this platform, I had a look at the platforms of the past
years and was amazed that nearly everyone talked about "improving
communication", usually meaning that flaming shouldn't be allowed. I
don't think this is possible - we can hardly replace all involved
developers by cuddly stuffed animals. Good software developers have a
strong opinion about topics dear to their heart, two good developers
usually have two different opinions. Discussion, even bordering on
flames, is OK - as long as it leads to a result.
He would like to see more "Bits from ..." mails on debian-devel-announce for better internal communication. He would also like to see better presentation of Debian to outsiders. Like Raphaël, he would like backports.org to become an official Debian service. Summer of Code has been useful in bringing together some cool ideas with people who can work on them. Marc would like to see that wiki page remain active throughout the year. Marc admits that he doesn't have as much free time as the DPL will take, and plans to delegate heavily, especially finding others to present Debian to the rest of the world at conferences. Voting for these candidates will be open until April 13 and the term for the new DPL will start soon after, on April 17, 2008.
New Releases Gentoo 2008.0_beta1 unleashedThe Gentoo project has announced the release of the first beta for Gentoo Linux 2008.0. "You can help make 2008.0 amazing! Test out this beta and report any functionality issues you encounter. Since this is the first beta, we're looking only for bugs in functionality, not bugs in appearance such as desktop backgrounds or other artwork. We expect to release a second beta once your testing has helped us fix problems with this first beta." Get 2008.0_beta1 from the usual places.
Fedora Unity releases updated Fedora 8 Re-SpinThe 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 March 31st, 2008. The ISO images are available for i386, x86_64 and PPC architectures via Jigdo.
Fedora Rawhide 20080328 Snapshot ReleasedFedora has released a Rawhide (development branch) snapshot in ISO and Live forms. "The Live images were actually made from yesterday's rawhide as the attempt from today's rawhide overflowed the CD size. The CDs and DVDs were made with today's rawhide plus an updates.img inserted into them to resolve some known issues we found in testing this morning." Available only by bittorrent.
Distribution News Fedora Fedora Mirrors WantedThe Fedora project is looking for some new mirrors as they prepare for the Fedora 9 release. Additional public mirrors would be particularly useful in areas where there are large numbers of users, but few mirrors: China, India, Africa, and Brazil among them.
Announcement list for Fedora Translation CommunityFedora has a new announce list for the Localization Project. The email address is fedora-trans-announce@redhat.com - or use the mailman interface to join.
NOTICE: fedora-triage-list is being re-purposedThe recently relaunched Fedora BugZappers will be conducting their business on fedora-test-list@redhat.com. In its previous incarnation BugZappers email used fedora-triage-list. Going forward the fedora-triage-list will be used for notifications of mass changes. Click below for additional information.
And now for something completely different...Fedora's latest Special Interest Group (SIG) is the Python SIG. "Regardless of whether you are a newbie or a grizzled veteran, a Sunday dabbler or a hardcore hacker, or merely curious what this is all about, all are welcome." Sign up for the mailing list and join the discussion.
Fedora Board Recap 2008-MAR-25Click below for a recap of the March 25 meeting of the Fedora board. Topics include a followup to previous business, post-release updates of custom spins, trademark licensing, Fedora accounts, and more.
SUSE Linux and openSUSE openSUSE Board election proposalThe current openSUSE board has announced a proposal for future board elections. There is an open comment period of two weeks, beginning March 31 before the board will vote on the proposal. Click below to view the proposal.
Ubuntu family UbuntuHCL.org launchedUbuntuHCL.org is a comprehensive hardware database for Ubuntu users. You will find user submitted articles and reviews with comments, RSS feeds of the reviews and articles, enhanced user account security, a new user friendly layout and better search capabilities. Check out new hardware before you buy, and let other users know what works for you.
Standing down from the technical boardMatthew Garrett has resigned from his position as the community representative on the Ubuntu technical board. "However, as some of you possibly know, I've recently agreed to take a position with Red Hat. While I don't see this as being incompatible with being part of the Ubuntu community (and I certainly don't want to set a precedent!), this is likely to reduce the amount of time I have to be involved in Ubuntu. Without being an active member of the Ubuntu community, it's difficult for me to claim to represent it - and so, as a result, I will be standing down from the technical board in order to allow the election of a new community member."
New Distributions MyrinixMyrinix - Digital Home Edition is a Debian and sidux) based live CD/DVD. Using Myrinix you can connect a High Definition Plasma TV or a big LCD screen to a central server that can record and play DVD or internet. Myrinix 2007-08/4 live CD/DVD is currently available for download.
Distribution Newsletters Fedora Weekly News Issue 126The Fedora Weekly News for March 24, 2008 looks at the announcements of "F9 Beta release announcement", "Rawhide 20080328 Snapshot", "FUDCon Lodging", "Fedora Python SIG" and "Fedora Updates System", Planet Fedora articles "OS Wrangler and Server Developers still needed", "Reviewing toolchains -- publican and /cvs/docs", "NetworkManager and mobile broadband", "Persistence of vision" and "Seek ye students", and several other topics.
OpenSUSE Weekly News/16This edition of the openSUSE Weekly News looks at SoC application deadline extended, People of openSUSE: Marco Michna, openSUSE Board election proposal, openSUSE IRC - call for participation, Calling booth volunteers! LugRadio Live, LinuxFest Northwest, Packaging Day II, and more.
Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #84The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for March 29, 2008 covers new MOTUs, Ubuntu 6.10 End-of-Life, Xubuntu refocuses, Ubuntu countdown graphics, Launchpad 1.2.3, Launchpad logo contest closing, Ubuntu UK Podcast #2, Reside@HOME: Linux Health Care, PWN To OWN (Ubuntu wins), and much more.
Full Circle #11 - out now!Full Circle Magazine, the Independent Magazine for the Ubuntu Linux Community, has announced the release of issue #11. Go to this page to download the issue in PDF.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 246The DistroWatch Weekly for March 31, 2008 is out. "Good things come in a small package and nowhere is this more evident than in the case of SliTaz GNU/Linux 1.0 - a new mini Linux distribution that packs a full desktop with many popular applications, utilities and web development tools into a 25 MB live CD. Complete with its own package management system, a text-mode installer and a remastering utility, SliTaz has to be one of the most impressive Linux distributions in recent memory. How can they pack so much into so little space? Read on for a first-look review of the project's 1.0 release. In other news, a Norwegian hardware site interviews Arch Linux project leader Aaron Griffin, Automatix announces the end of development of the popular software installation tool, Klaus Knopper releases the new KNOPPIX 5.3.1, and a nostalgic reader retraces the steps of installing Debian GNU/Linux 1.3 on today's hardware."
Newsletters and articles of interest Automatix development comes to an end (DesktopLinux)DesktopLinux reports that development of Automatix is over. "Love it or hate it, anyone who runs Ubuntu has at least heard of Automatix. This program made it possible for any Ubuntu user to easily add a host of new programs and media codices to a desktop. Now, however, Automatix's developers are being pulled away to other projects, so they have announced that they will no longer be working on their popular software installation program."
Interviews Arch Linux: Popular KISS distro (Hardware.no)Hardware.no has an interview with Arch Linux developer Aaron Griffin. "I originally began using Arch back in 2003. You could say I grew up on Arch, as most of my heavy technical knowledge was learned on an Arch box. Later on, I was asked to come on board the core development team, and became the lead developer for pacman, as well as developing tools such as mkinitcpio."
People of openSUSE: Marco MichnaPeople of openSUSE introduce Marco Michna. "When did you join the openSUSE community and what made you do that? Unfair question but lets answer it :-) I have been involved in the discussions from the idea to the execution. It was a nice process and good to see that top managers cared. I'm a member of the "community" since the first day I touched a S.u.S.E. system and always will be! My blood is green!"
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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