Distributions
Fedora's working groups
Last August we covered a proposal to change how Fedora is built that was being pushed by Matthew Miller. This proposal divided Fedora into "rings," with a tightly-controlled core component serving as the base for various outer layers aimed at specific use cases. Since then, work on this idea has progressed somewhat, and the Fedora project is now trying to put together a governance structure that can implement it. In the process it's revealing more of what the project's leaders have in mind and how this plan may raise some tensions with the wider community.Back in September, Matthew posted a call for nominations for a set of "working groups" that would drive the future of Fedora. Each of these working groups would function as a subcommittee of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) and handle everything that is specific to its particular topic; FESCo's job will become one of handling issues that affect more than one of these working groups:
The current plan is to have five working groups, two of which are directly tied to the "rings" in the original proposal. There will be a "Base Design" group that will manage the core of the Fedora system; this core includes the kernel, low-level plumbing, and the toolchain needed to build it all. The "Environments & Software Stacks" group is charged with managing the next layer, which includes development environments, desktop environments, and more. These two layers provide the substrate that most real-world uses of Fedora will want to have.
From here, it appears that the Fedora distribution is going to fork into three "products" (workstation, server, and cloud), each of which will be run by its own working group. The plans for these groups are intentionally fuzzy until the groups themselves are formed:
Some participants on the Fedora development list were a little disappointed to see that there was not an embedded product on the list. Red Hat's Stephen Gallagher confirmed that an embedded product is not envisioned for now, though, he noted, there will be a place for ARM in the server and cloud variants. Given the current level of Fedora use in the embedded world (or the lack thereof) this position might make sense, but it would be a shame if Fedora were to show a lack of ambition in this area in the long term.
The biggest fuss, however, was certainly about the process by which the groups will be chosen and the degree of freedom they will have. This process was briefly described in the FESCo ticket system and discussed at the October 2 FESCo meeting. In short, FESCo will assign one of its own members to each of the working groups; that delegate will then select nine members from those who have nominated themselves for the position. Nominations are being gathered on this wiki page and will close on October 14, so anybody with an interest in participating should put their name in soon.
How much latitude will the working groups have to define their various
products? During the meeting (IRC
log), Miloslav Trmač complained about the proposed rule stating that
Red Hat employees could not hold more than half of any working group's
seats, saying "
The deliberations of these working groups will be public, so we will be
able to see how it actually plays out. Chances are that things will
generally go in directions that are agreeable to Red Hat for a simple
reason: Red Hat is paying the bulk of the developers who actually get the
work done. Nobody could realistically expect that a Fedora working group,
no matter how independent, would have the power to direct the activities of
Red Hat's staff. So, naturally, directions that are interesting to Red Hat
are likely to get more developer time and, thus, to progress more quickly.
In any case, the next step is to name the members of these committees and
to let them start the process of deciding what they want to do. The shape
of the Fedora 21 release probably will not change much as a result of
the new design, but it would be surprising if the releases after that
didn't exhibit some new directions. Within a year or two, we could have a
Fedora distribution with three distinct flavors, each of which is optimized
for a different user community. It will be interesting to watch.
I'd rather be upfront with that this needs to work for
Red Hat
". Peter Jones translated that as "basically if
whatever they come up with doesn't work for RH, it's a non-starter
",
and Matthew added "
Right. that's a big elephant that underlies
everything Fedora does without actually being in our mission docs.
"
That was enough to inspire Jóhann B. Guðmundsson, who has a long history of
dissatisfaction with Fedora project governance, to dismiss the entire exercise as "nothing
but an utter and total shenanigan on RH behalf
". This outburst drew
responses from several Red Hat employees, all of whom said that Red Hat had
no intention of dictating directions to Fedora. As Matthew put it:
Brief items
OpenBSD ports gets long-term support
Reiner Jung looks at an initiative to provide long-term support for OpenBSD ports. "To address the separate but related needs of OpenBSD users there is a requirement to provide the very latest release of software and to increase the longevity of an existing stable release. These are two challenging propositions and both are real world requirements. There are various reasons for this and for some organisations the ongoing provision of a stable and reliable release which doesn't hinder or impact normal operations, is of paramount importance. To address these needs M:Tier will release "Long Time Support" (LTS) for OpenBSD ports. This new service will be introduced for the forthcoming OpenBSD v5.4 release scheduled for 1st November 2013." Details are available at M:Tier's website. (Thanks to Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse)
Oracle Linux Release 5 Update 10
Oracle has announced the general availability of Oracle Linux Release 5 Update 10 for x86 (32 bit) and x86_64 (64 Bit) architectures. This release has numerous bug fixes and improvements.PC-BSD 9.2 released
The PC-BSD 9.2-RELEASE images are available. Based on FreeBSD 9.2, this release features a number of improvements to ZFS functionality, GitHub migration, and more.
Distribution News
Debian GNU/Linux
bits from the DPL -- September 2013
Debian Project Leader Lucas Nussbaum presents a few bits about DPL activities during September and early October. Topics include some calls for help, OPW, interviews and talks, assets, sprints, and more.Debian's Google Summer of Code 2013 Wrap-up
Debian participated in Google Summer of Code with 15 of 16 projects successfully completed. "We would like to thank everybody involved in the program — the thirty mentors, sixteen students, and the DebConf team — for making this a success. We have been told by many students that they will continue their projects or will get involved in other areas of Debian even after the summer and we consider this to be the most significant achievement of our participation."
openSUSE
openSUSE's Google Summer of Code 2013
openSUSE participated in this year's Google Summer of Code with 9 out of 12 successfully completed projects. "It was a nice experience working for this summer. A lot of thanks to all mentors, who took out valuable time out of their busy schedules for the students. We can improve in lots of places, and come back better next year!"
Ubuntu family
Next Ubuntu Developer Summit
The next Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) will be held online during November 19-21. The event is free and open to everyone. Sessions need to be set up and registered with proposals due by November 1.
Other distributions
Woof now in maintenance mode
Barry Kauler has announced that he intends to retire from Puppy Linux and Woof development. Woof is the build system for Puppy Linux and its "puplets". "I don't plan to just suddenly pull the plug, rather just put Woof (and Puppy) in "maintenance mode" for the next year (or as long as I deem necessary), while a few things get sorted out. "Maintenance mode" means that I will continue to work on Woof, but just focused on essential fixes, rather than any new features."
Newsletters and articles of interest
Distribution newsletters
- This Week in CyanogenMod (October 5)
- DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 528 (October 7)
- Tails report (for September)
- Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 337 (October 6)
arkOS : An Anti-Cloud Server Management Distribution For Raspberry Pi (Crazy Engineers)
Crazy Engineers has an introduction to arkOS. "The initiative of CitizenWeb Project & Jacob Cook, arkOS is Arch-Linux based Anti-cloud server management custom Linux distribution, specially built for Raspberry Pi promoting decentralization and democratization of Internet. arkOS allows you to host your own Website, Email & also your own private cloud service. All of these functions are managed by a GUI (Graphical User Interface) application known as 'Genesis', a one-stop shop which runs on top of arkOS; where you can add, modify & customize the arkOS nodes, allowing the user to easily install Server applications, plugins, upload - manage files & manage your (own) cloud."
The Klaus Knopper Interview (Everyday Linux User)
Everyday Linux User has an interview with Klaus Knopper, creator of Knoppix. "I am very interested in feedback. Negative feedback with a detailed error description or complaints about things that are not intuitive is actually very valuable for me, it helps me to improve the system or remove software packages that are not working correctly or are superseded by better ones. Of course I'm also happy to receive an occasional "everything is working fine" message, or success stories for data rescue or for getting certain hardware to work again, too, but I take complaints and criticism very seriously, and try to analyze problems and help as far as my free time allows, or explain why some things are just as they are and are going to stay that way (like the missing browser Flash plugin and restrictive security settings in Firefox and Chromium, complaint number one, but I'm not going to change this!)."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
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