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DistributionsNews and Editorials The shape of FUDCons to comeThe Fedora Board Recap for January 13, 2009 included a lengthy discussion of FUDCon 11 and how to make future FUDCons better. FUDCon (Fedora Users and Developers Conference) provides a chance for developers to get together, hack and learn, have some beer and some laughs and generally get to know one another. This is important in a culture that encourages global participation. DebConf and the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) serve a similar purpose.DebConf takes place annually and provides a chance for Debian Developers to get together, meet and talk about common interests. Both UDS and FUDCon are held every six months and are venues to hash out new features and define the next version of their OS. UDS and DebConf are held in different places around the world, which allows a different subset of developers a better chance to attend. FUDCons are typically held in the U.S., usually near a Red Hat office. This is convenient for many developers, especially Red Hat employees who work on Fedora either full or part time. Many Fedora volunteers live in other countries and have little chance of attending, especially since FUDCons have a very limited budget for sponsoring users and developers. FUDCon is the shortest of these events, at least in part because of their limited budget. Red Hat funds FUDCon while other events find many corporate sponsors. FUDCon 10 was held in conjunction with a Red Hat Summit, but FUDCon 11 went much better without the added distraction of a Summit. Other things that make FUDCon successful include lots of BarCamp talks, easy access to public transportation, and streaming audio and video. In order to make FUDCon useful for the maximum number of people there is a post event survey that attendees, or want-to-be attendees, can fill out. Surveys such as this can make the next FUDCon a better experience for others. Things that help make a conference successful include reliable wireless connections, good food, and as previously mentioned good quality audio and streaming video. The latter is useful not only for people who missed a session, but also for review by people who were there. The future of FUDCon currently seems uncertain. Since scheduling FUDCon with Red Hat Summit proved not to work well, there will be no FUDCon at the Red Hat Summit in Chicago, in September 2009. Funding for a 2010 FUDCon in Boston is uncertain, although there may be a Fedora Activity Day (FAD) instead. More of the three day FUDCons may be shortened to a FAD. Fedora is becoming more independent from Red Hat, even though there will always be a strong connection. As part of that independence perhaps some additional sponsors for FUDCon would help preserve a vital event.
New Releases Jaunty Alpha 3 releasedUbuntu has released the third alpha for v9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). Click below for download information for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, UbuntuStudio and Mythbuntu.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Now AvailableRed Hat has released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, the third update to the current stable version. "In the third update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, customers will receive a wide range of enhancements, including significantly increased virtualization scalability, expanded hardware platform support and incorporation of OpenJDK Java technologies. Customers with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription will receive the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 update, which is available for immediate download from Red Hat Network." More information is available here. (Thanks to Rahul Sundaram)
Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Alpha 2Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Alpha 2 has been released. See the release notes for more information and errata.
KDE Four Live CDThe KDE Four Live CD contains KDE 4.2 RC 1 and Amarok, Digikam, K3b, KOffice2 development releases, bundled with openSUSE 11.1. A live CD with KDE 4.1.3 is also available.
GNUmed Live CD 0.3.9 released (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews has an announcement for the newest version of the GNUmed live CD. "With the help of this CD one can test drive GNUmed without altering the currently running environment such as operating system. No installation necessary."
Distribution News Debian GNU/Linux Bits from the Policy Team, call for volunteersThis report from the Debian Policy Team looks at Policy 3.8.1 which will be released shortly after Lenny, and a call for volunteers.
Fedora Announcing the Moksha Project and Fedora Community Project!The Moksha Project and Fedora Community Project have been announced. Moksha is a generic platform for creating live collaborative web applications. Fedora Community is a website portal built on top of the Moksha platform.
Announcing the Fedora Geo SpinThe Fedora Geo spin gathers a collection of mapping tools that run on Fedora. This includes tools for map making, integration into OpenStreetMap, and components that can be run on a GPS enabled device.
Trademark guidelines. (The Grand Fallacy)Paul Frields has an update on the preparation of Fedora's trademark guidelines. "Did you know there's a set of trademark guidelines for the Fedora brand and mark? They're getting less restrictive as we work through some details with Red Hat Legal. We're trying to help our community spread the Fedora message without burdening them too much with legal hoops, like you'd find in a traditional trademark situation. US law can make this sort of thing tricky but worthwhile when you consider the return on the time invested."
Migration of the Fedora Mailing ListsA movement is underway to migrate the Fedora mailing lists away from redhat.com. "Over the last several years, there has been some contention over why our mailing lists are @redhat.com instead of @fedoraproject.org, and there are also some concerns over the process of requesting new lists and so on. As a result, we ([Jon Stanley] and Dennis Gilmore) are beginning an effort to migrate fedora-*@redhat.com to lists.fedoraproject.org."
SUSE Linux and openSUSE openSUSE Project Opens Feature Tracking with openFATEThe openSUSE Project has announced that feature tracking and requests are now available to the larger openSUSE Community. The openSUSE feature tracking system, openFATE, is now live and accessible to anyone with an openSUSE account.
Wanted: Build Service ContributorsopenSUSE's Build Service is looking for contributors. "Have you ever wanted to join Build Service development, but you had no idea what to implement? Would you like a real opportunity to learn Ruby on Rails? This is a great time to start! The OBS developers have collected smaller projects on this wiki page. These projects are ideal for anyone new to OBS development. All you need is a local copy of the Web Client, which can easily be deployed on your development system."
Ubuntu family Proceedings from UDS for Ubuntu 9.04Notes from the Ubuntu Developer Summit covering Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) are available, with a section for each track (community, server, foundations, QA, kernel, mobile and desktop).
New Distributions CrunchBang LinuxCrunchBang Linux (#!) is an Ubuntu based distribution featuring the lightweight Openbox window manager and GTK+ applications. The distribution is developed from a minimal Ubuntu install and has been designed to offer a good balance of speed and functionality. CrunchBang 8.10.02 is available as builds of CrunchBang Linux, CrunchBang Linux "Lite" and CrunchEee. #! joins the list at version 8.10.02, released January 18, 2009.
Distribution Newsletters DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 286The DistroWatch Weekly for January 19, 2009 is out. "In this issue we take a look at Arch Linux, the minimal Linux distribution that packs a big punch. In the news section, openSUSE puts out a call for build developers and opens their feature tracker to the community, Fedora updates its artwork guidelines for Fedora 11 'Leonidas', Gentopia closes its doors, and Android Fanatic releases a Debian installer for Google's mobile device. Also in this issue, Ubuntu comments on the reasons behind the unavailability of restricted software in the distribution, while Singapore airlines rolls out Red Hat Linux to every one of its seats. Finally, we include a link to an article comparing three of the most popular mini distributions - Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux and TinyMe. Happy reading!"
Fedora Weekly News #159The Fedora Weekly News for January 19, 2009 is out. "This week's issue reveals the code name for Fedora 11 and provides coverage from the latest FUDCon in announcements. News abounds from around Fedora Planet, including musings on the reduction of the OLPC dev team, thoughts on what it means to contribute to Fedora from several contributors, and much more. Development reports on several discussions from the recent FUDCon on the possible future of comps.xml, new packages to Rawhide coming, and more. More depth of discussion on the need for a Fedora Project CMS is offered in the Docs beat, and Translations has lots more to report on new members of various internationalization teams. The Art beat has a wonderful in-depth look at approaches for themes for Fedora 11, and security advisories brings us up to date with recent updates there. We complete the issue with news from virtualization developments, including two items regarding sVirt, a project to add security labeling support to Linux-based virtualization, and other focused discussions with libvirt."
openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 55This issue of the openSUSE Weekly News covers: openSUSE Project Opens Feature Tracking with openFATE, openSUSE forums has reached 20K members, Wanted-Build Service Contributors, Joe Brockmeier: What happens with KDE with Qt license shift?, Katarina Machalkova: A fairytale about brave wizard QSplitter and evil ancient screen resolution from the last century.
Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #125The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for January 17, 2009 covers: Jaunty Alpha 3 released, Ubuntu Developer Week, Fridge Mockups, Technical Board Run off, UDS Jaunty Proceedings, Awards: Ubuntu Forums, Ubuntu, and Canonical, Dutch LoCo bringing it home, How Launchpad will open source, What's new with Launchpad API, Ubuntu-UK podcast #20, Ubuntu Podcast #17, Technical Board Meeting Minutes, Server Team Meeting Minutes, Desktop Team Meeting Minutes, and much more.
Distribution meetings FUDCon F11 Barcamp Session Video AvailableVideos from the FUDCon 11 barcamp sessions are available here. "These videos are in unedited .ogg/.ogv format and are under a CC-BY-SA 3.0-US license."
Interviews Interview with Tom "spot" Callaway (hardware.no)As seen in his blog, Fedora engineering manager Tom "spot" Callaway was recently interviewed by "one of Norway's largest online computer magazines". In it, he answers questions about various aspects of Fedora, including competition, both free and proprietary, what's coming in Fedora 11, the relationship with Red Hat, and more. "The structure of Fedora helps to minimize the pain of merging new technology and features. We were able to merge perl 5.10.0 during a single release window during the Fedora 9 timeline, and we did it in a way that most people were unaware that we had made any changes. We've already moved to Python 2.6 in our development tree (which will become Fedora 11), which puts us in a much better position for Python 3.0. Our kernel team keeps the latest kernel version in our development tree, so we have a pretty good idea of where we are with regards to functionality well before we branch off for the final release."
Distribution reviews Linux Mint 6.0 Felicia - Minty and sweet (Dedoimedo)Dedoimedo reviews Linux Mint 6.0 aka Felicia, with lots of screen shots "Linux Mint 6.0 Felicia is a fabulous distro. It's complete, well-polished, fast, simple, rich in features, and offering solid hardware support. It worked well with both my Nvidia and ATI cards and even loved my web camera. There were some small issues with a Wireless drivers and some mundane Windows media formats, but other than that, the performance was spotless."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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