path: root/english/News/weekly/2006/19/index.wml

#use wml::debian::weeklynews::header PUBDATE="2006-05-09" SUMMARY="Terminology, IRC, Release, BTS, Preseeding, Coding, Wiki, Karma"
# $Id$

<p>Welcome to this year's 19th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the
Debian community.  Uwe Hermann <a
href="http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/debian-packages-release-names">\
investigated</a> changelog files and recognised a number of interesting release
names for packages.  Several Debian developers gather in Oaxtepec, Mexico,
where this year's <a
href="$(HOME)/events/2006/0514-debconf">Debian Conference</a>
will take place and is preceded by a working camp that already started.</p>

<p><strong>Unified Terminology for Distribution Names.</strong> Christian
Perrier <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/05/msg00000.html">reported</a>
on a discussion on the <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-french/">debian-l10n-french</a>
mailing list covering different terminology in various Debian documents
referring to <code>stable</code>, <code>sarge</code>, 3.1 etc.  He <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/05/msg00122.html">proposed</a> to
use distribution to refer to the Debian distribution in general and
suite when talking about <code>stable</code>, <code>testing</code> etc., using
release for release names and version when referring to the version numbers.</p>

<p><strong>Moving irc.debian.org.</strong> Steve McIntyre <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/04/msg00333.html">asked</a>
if it would be useful to move the irc.debian.org alias away from the <a
href="http://www.freenode.net/">Freenode</a> network to the <a
href="http://www.oftc.net/oftc/">OFTC</a> network, which is a supported
project of <a
href="http://www.spi-inc.org/">SPI</a> and hosts IRC
channels for a lot of open source projects. Steve's intention was seconded
by a number of developers. This move would have the advantage that all
Debian related IRC channels could be concentrated on one IRC network.
Paul Johnson <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/04/msg00342.html">asked</a>
if it would be better to move to a Jabber-based network instead of IRC.</p>

<p><strong>Etch Release Update.</strong> Andreas Barth <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/05/msg00000.html">\
confirmed</a> the timeline to release <a href="$(HOME)/releases/etch/">\
etch</a> in December.  He stated that the <a href="$(HOME)/ports/arm/">\
ARM</a> port qualifies as a release architecture again and that the list of
release architectures are not finalised and will be re-evaluated twice before
the release.  The kernel that will be used still needs to be decided upon.  More release
assistants will help keep the release on track.</p>

<p><strong>Tracking forwarded bugs in the BTS.</strong> Pierre Habouzit <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/05/msg00001.html">\
announced</a> the creation of a new service called <a
href="http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/bts-link/trunk/">bts-link</a>. It
allows Debian maintainers to follow the status of the bugs they
forward to their upstream's bug tracking
systems directly in the Debian BTS. As of now, it supports
<a href="http://www.bugzilla.org/">Bugzilla</a> (which
is used by KDE, Gnome, X.org, GCC, Mozilla and others),
<a href="http://www.edgewall.com/trac/">Trac</a> (used by VideoLAN) and
<a href="http://savannah.gnu.org/">Savannah</a>. <a
href="http://www.sourceforge.net/">Sourceforge</a>'s bug tracking system
shall follow.</p>

<p><strong>Automating new Debian Installations with Preseeding.</strong> A new
<a href="http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/394">document</a>
describes the technique of doing unattended Debian installations with
preseeding.  The preseed file contains answers to all <a
href="http://packages.debian.org/debconf">debconf</a> questions asked during
the installation.  Its generation is explained in the article.  The file's
location may be given as a path or a URL.</p>

<p><strong>Debian participates in the Summer of Code.</strong> The Debian
project <a href="$(HOME)/News/2006/20060508">announced</a> its participation
in Google's <a href="http://code.google.com/soc/">Summer of Code</a>.  More
than 50 development <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2006">\
tasks</a> related to Debian cover general improvements, quality assurance,
releasing and testing the distribution, package management, new applications,
security, infrastructure and the improvement of particular packages.  Students
and the mentoring organisation will receive funding after the tasks have been
worked on.</p>

<p><strong>Wiki Development.</strong> Petter Reinholdtsen <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2006/04/msg00157.html">reported</a> 
about his efforts to write Wiki pages with <a
href="http://packages.debian.org/openoffice.org">OpenOffice.org</a> which is
done with the help of a <a href="http://ooowiki.de/Writer2MoinMoin">macro
set</a> that converts an OpenOffice.org document into MoinMoin syntax.  Later
he <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2006/05/msg00017.html">\
reported</a> successful PDF generation from the Wiki page by exporting the
contents as DocBook XML.</p>

<p><strong>Maintainer's Karma revived.</strong> Gürkan Sengün was missing the old
karma page from Dirk Eddelbüttel and the package status page by Takuo Kitame
(&#21271;&#30446; &#25299;&#37070;).
To fill the gap he has <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/04/msg00840.html">created</a>
a new overview
page combining both.  This service is hosted on the GNU/kFreeBSD porter
machine, kindly provided by Aurelien
Jarno.</p>

<p><strong>Security Updates.</strong> You know the drill.  Please make sure
that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed.</p>

<ul>
<li>DSA 1050: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2006/dsa-1050">clamav</a> --
    Denial of service or arbitrary code execution.
<li>DSA 1051: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2006/dsa-1051">mozilla-thunderbird</a> --
    Several vulnerabilities.
<li>DSA 1052: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2006/dsa-1052">cgiirc</a> --
    Arbitrary code execution.
<li>DSA 1053: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2006/dsa-1053">mozilla</a> --
    Arbitrary code execution.
<li>DSA 1054: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2006/dsa-1054">tiff</a> --
    Denial of service and arbitrary code execution.
</ul>

<p><strong>New or Noteworthy Packages.</strong> The following packages were
added to the unstable Debian archive <a
href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main">recently</a> or contain
important updates.</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/btscanner">btscanner</a>
    &mdash; Ncurses-based scanner for Bluetooth devices.</li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/derivations">derivations</a>
    &mdash; Book: Derivations of Applied Mathematics.</li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/gbindadmin">gbindadmin</a>
    &mdash; GTK+ configuration tool for bind9.</li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/ikiwiki">ikiwiki</a>
    &mdash; Wiki compiler.</li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/comm/wammu">wammu</a>
    &mdash; Phone manager.</li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Orphaned Packages.</strong> 7 packages were orphaned this week and
require a new maintainer.  This makes a total of 302 orphaned packages.  Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software
community.  Please see the <a href="$(HOME)/devel/wnpp/">WNPP pages</a> for
the full list, and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA:
if you plan to take over a package.</p>

<ul>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/f-prot-installer">f-prot-installer</a>
     &mdash; F-Prot(tm) Antivirus installer package.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/364731">Bug#364731</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/galternatives">galternatives</a>
     &mdash; Graphical setup tool for the alternatives system.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/365365">Bug#365365</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gnobog">gnobog</a>
     &mdash; GNOME Bookmarks Organiser.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/366013">Bug#366013</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gnome-iconedit">gnome-iconedit</a>
     &mdash; Small tool to create icons for the GNOME desktop.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/366012">Bug#366012</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/qtorrent">qtorrent</a>
     &mdash; Graphical BitTorrent client using Qt 3.x.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/365959">Bug#365959</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/rtlinux">rtlinux</a>
     &mdash; Real-Time-Linux, a POSIX-compatible hard realtime operating system.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/365717">Bug#365717</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/svn-arch-mirror">svn-arch-mirror</a>
     &mdash; One-way mirroring from Subversion to Arch revision control.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/364859">Bug#364859</a>)
     </li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Removed Packages.</strong> 10 packages have been <a
href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt">removed</a> from the Debian
archive during the past week:</p>

<ul>
<li> xmms-alarm-bmp1 -- BMP general plugin using beep-media-player as an alarm clock work
     <br><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/272859">Bug#272859</a>:
     Request of QA, has never been part of a stable release, RC-buggy, superseded by bmp-alarm.
</li>
<li> doc-linux-sv -- Linux HOWTOs in Swedish - HTML version
     <br><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/273702">Bug#273702</a>:
     Request of QA, orphaned, very very outdated.
</li>
<li> libdb2-ruby -- Interface to Berkeley DB for Ruby 1.6
     <br><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/344725">Bug#344725</a>:
     Request of maintainer, depends on obsolete db2.
</li>
<li> libtest-builder-tester-perl -- Helper testing library for Test::Builder tests
     <br><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/353134">Bug#353134</a>:
     Request of maintainer, superseded by libtest-simple-perl.
</li>
<li> xpcd -- PhotoCD tool collection: Base
     <br><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/357014">Bug#357014</a>:
     Request of maintainer, orphaned; dead upstream.
</li>
<li> postgresql-8.0 -- Object-relational SQL database, version 8.0 server
     <br><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/363963">Bug#363963</a>:
     Request of maintainer, superseded by postgresql-8.1.
</li>
<li> kernel-patch-2.4-preempt -- Reduces the latency of the Linux kernel
     <br><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/361161">Bug#361161</a>:
     Request of maintainer, deprecated due to requiring 2.4 kernel.
</li>
<li> zope2.7 -- Open Source Web Application Server
     <br><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/362283">Bug#362283</a>:
     Request of maintainer, superseded by zope2.
</li>
<li> devfsd -- Daemon for the device file system
     <br><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/363402">Bug#363402</a>:
     Request of maintainer, obsolete.
</li>
<li> mozilla-thunderbird -- Mozilla Thunderbird stand-alone mail client
     <br><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/363270">Bug#363270</a>:
     Request of maintainer, superseded by thunderbird.
</li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Want to continue reading DWN?</strong> Please help us create this
newsletter.  We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian
community and report about what is going on.  Please see the <a
href="$(HOME)/News/weekly/contributing">contributing page</a> to find out how
to help.  We're looking forward to receiving your mail at <a
href="mailto:dwn@debian.org">dwn@debian.org</a>.</p>

#use wml::debian::weeklynews::footer editor="Sebastian Feltel, Mohammed Adnène Trojette, Martin 'Joey' Schulze"