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DistributionsNotes from the Fedora project The Fedora folks have a lot of important problems on their mind. As part of that, there is currently a tense election underway - to choose the codename for the Fedora 10 release. There's a list of nine suitably silly, Red-Hat-legal-approved names to choose from. Your editor, fresh from another failed Rawhide update, suggests voting for "terror." Even though Rawhide hasn't been that terrible recently.Another election - this one for the membership of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCO), just finished. FESCO members this time around will be Bill Nottingham, Kevin Fenzi, Dennis Gilmore, Brian Pepple, David Woodhouse, Jarod Wilson, Josh Boyer, Jon Stanley and Karsten Hopp. For the curious, the FESCO mission is:
FESCo handles the process of accepting new features, the acceptance
of new packaging sponsors, Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and SIG
Oversight, the packaging process, handling and enforcement of
maintainer issues and other technical matters related to the
distribution and its construction.
The new feature aspect of the job could be interesting in the near future; there has been some clear confusion on what constitutes a new feature, as compared to a mere "enhancement" which does not involve FESCO. The surprising (to some) replacement of RPM in Rawhide was one of those ambiguous issues which brought this question to the fore. There is now an enhanced draft feature policy up for review which, it is hoped, will clarify the situation. Back in June, the results from the Fedora board election raised some concerns about the process. One reaction to these concerns can now be seen in this proposal for term limits for board members. The reasoning behind this proposal is explained thusly by project leader Paul Frields:
The problem at hand was the perceived dominance by full-time Fedora
people on the Board. People who spend their entire $DAYJOB as well
as their spare time on Fedora are automatically very involved and
visible. That can translate directly to votes on the basis of name
recognition, which really disadvantages people who are very
involved, but in a somewhat more limited fashion because they don't
have the luxury of doing Fedora all day every day.
So the full-time Fedora folks are simply too prominent, to the point that they need to be eased off the stage after a couple of terms on the board to make room for everybody else. Of course, there's a couple of exceptions. The Fedora project leader, not being an elected member of the board, has no such limits. More to the point, though: term limits would not apply to those board members appointed by Red Hat. The reasoning here is:
Extending these term limits to Red Hat appointed seats is not
sensible for a number of reasons -- institutional knowledge,
flexibility, etc.
As of this writing, there has not been a whole lot of discussion of the term limit proposal; opinions which have been posted are not entirely positive. Fedora project members will want to consider whether this proposal can achieve its stated goal. It would be unfortunate if an up-and-coming outsider - with associated institutional memory - got term-limited off the board just as they were really hitting their stride. Finally, OLPC enthusiasts may want to have a look at the newly-formed OLPC special interest group. This group is working to make the Fedora distribution (already shipped by OLPC) as well suited to that platform as possible. One of the results should include a special Sugar "spin" of Fedora. There is a mailing list available for interested people to join.
New Releases BLAG 90001 (oxygen) Released BLAG 90001 is out; it is mainly an update for various "annoying issues" in BLAG 90000. "In sum, this release contains less suck." It has 97 package updates in all.
CentOS 5 i386 - The CentOS-5.2 i386 Live CD is released The CentOS Development team has announced the availability of the CentOS 5.2 i386 Live CD. The live CD can be used as a workstation or as a rescue CD.
Dragonfly BSD 2.0 released The Dragonfly BSD 2.0 release is available. The big change would appear to be the HAMMER filesystem, which supports snapshots, no-fsck crash recovery, mirroring, and more.
Updated Fedora 9 Re-Spin released A new version of the Fedora 9 respin has been released by the Fedora Unity Project. "Fedora Unity has taken up the Re-Spin task to provide the community with the chance to install Fedora with recent updates already included. These updates might otherwise comprise more than 1.91 GByte of downloads for a full install, and an additional 265.69 MByte for pulled in dependencies."
Distributions: GNUSTEP CD 1.9 released The GNUstep project has released version 1.9 of its live CD, which includes many GNUstep software packages for a development environment and more.
NimbleX 2008 released NimbleX is a distribution, based on Slackware, intended to provide a useful desktop system with a 200MB image suitable for burning on mini-CDs. The 2008 release is out; see this page for a discussion of features in this release.
Webconverger 3.2 released Webconverger uses Debian Live technology to provide a Web platform for kiosks, thin clients, or anywhere else you want a secure, dedicated web browser. Webconverger 3.2 with Iceweasel 3 is available for download.
Distribution News Debian GNU/Linux Release Update: freeze, architecture requalification Luk Claes presents a Lenny release update. Click below to find out more about the Freeze status, Architecture status, Release goals, BSP Marathon, the Release schedule and Tricks from the Release Team.
Fedora Fedora considering a new privacy policy A new draft privacy policy for the Fedora Project has been posted for discussion. This policy has been written to address some concerns about the Red Hat privacy policy currently in use. Discussion is happening on the Fedora advisory board list.
Fedora Board Recap 2008-JUL-15 Click below for a summary of the July 15th meeting of the Fedora Board. The main topics are Mingw and Release Stability.
Announcing the Fedora OLPC Special Interest Group The formation of the Fedora OLPC Special Interest Group has been announced. Its mission is to provide the OLPC project with a strong, sustainable, scalable, community-driven base platform for innovation.
Fedora Talk launches The Fedora Project has announced the launch of Fedora Talk, an Asterisk-based telephony system. "Fedora contributors can set up ad hoc conferences, further deepening social connections and creating a more efficient method for communication when working on certain projects. In the future, we hope to add web conference capabilites for anyone with VoIP access. There are other possibilities to explore with Fedora Talk as well. What if, in the future, a Fedora volunteer could claim an hour of time to run a VoIP phone and answer user or contributor questions?"
SUSE Linux and openSUSE openSUSE 11.0 Survey online The openSUSE developers would like to know what you think about openSUSE 11.0. If you have been using openSUSE 11.0 consider taking a few minutes to fill out this survey.
openSUSE Kernel bug squashing day The first openSUSE Kernel bug squashing day has been set for Wednesday, July 30, 2008.
Distribution Newsletters Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue #100 The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for July 19, 2008 covers: UWN 100th Issue, UWN Past & Present Staff Podcast, Mark Shuttleworth podcast, Comments from Past & Present Editors, Joining the UWN staff, New Ubuntu QA team, Call for nominations for Tech Board, Alpha 3 soft freeze, Next UDS, Peru LoCo gives Ubuntu presentation at San Marcos University, Ubuntu Ireland gets local press coverage, Ubuntu Nicaragua Continues with TV shows, New Leader for Ubuntu France, Ubuntu-UK podcast #10, and much more.
OpenSUSE Weekly News/31 This issue of the OpenSUSE Weekly News covers the next Helping Hands Event, www.opensuse-tutorials.com, Hubert Mantel: openSUSE Gets the JeOS, People of openSUSE: Bryen Yunashko, Pascal Bleser: Reporting Packman package bugs, Jigish Gohil: New Compiz plugins and more.
Fedora Weekly News Issue 135 This issue of the FWN looks at FESCo elections, FUDCon Brno, Release Engineering Email Trac Queue Disabled, plus Planet Fedora articles Fedora at RoboCup, FUDCon Brno, Privacy policy update, Beat writers needed, Workarounds, Python dictionary optimizations, SELinux and Security in the 2.6.26 Kernel, and Steampunk photography - a GIMP tutorial, and much more.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 262 The DistroWatch Weekly for July 21, 2008 is out. "Things picked up a bit this week, especially in developmental releases. In the news this week Mandriva announces their new netbook OS and Ubuntu geared up their community QA team. Our feature story this week was contributed by Steven Lake of www.raiden.net. Steven is a versatile writer penning software and hardware reviews, howtos, and opinions. I think he even has a book or two going on his site. We're pleased he's submitted an in-depth look at the latest Sabayon Linux for us today. This week in reviews of lesser covered distributions includes Myah OS, Blag 90000, and Simplis GNU/Linux."
Distribution meetings FUDCon Brno 2008 The next FUDCon will take place in Brno, Czech Republic, from September 5 - 7, 2008. "The main conference day and social event will be on Saturday (to attract the most people), with hackfest days on Friday and Sunday. FUDCon is always free to attend, no matter where in the world it is located."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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