#use wml::debian::projectnews::header PUBDATE="2010-06-14" SUMMARY=""
#use wml::debian::acronyms

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 Copyright (c) 2010 Jeremiah C. Foster
 Copyright (c) 2010 David Prévot
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<a name="0"></a>
<p>Welcome to this year's fifth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="#1">Debian Community Poll</a></li>
  <li><a href="#2">Automatic installation of hardware specific packages</a></li>
  <li><a href="#3">Desktop artwork and themes for Debian <q>Squeeze</q></a></li>
  <li><a href="#4">D-I string freeze coming up</a></li>
  <li><a href="#5">Provisional list of talks for DebConf10</a></li>
  <li><a href="#6">License usage in Debian</a></li>
  <li><a href="#7">... and much more</a>.</li>
</ul>


<a name="1"></a>
<h2>Debian Community Poll</h2>

<p>After getting the idea during the recent <a
href="http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Miniconf-LT-Berlin/2010">Mini Debian
Conference</a> in Berlin, Torsten Werner <a
href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2010/06/debian-community-poll.html">prepared</a>
a <a href="http://tinyurl.com/3y33ska">poll for users of the Debian Operating
System</a> asking different types of questions like the usage of derivatives,
about the <a href="http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines">Debian
Free Software Guidelines</a> and Firmwares and of course releases.</p>

<p>The Poll is available at <a
href="http://tinyurl.com/3y33ska">http://tinyurl.com/3y33ska</a>.  Torsten asks
to spread the link to as many users as possible.</p>


<a name="2"></a>
<h2>Automatic installation of hardware specific packages</h2>

<p>Petter Reinholdtsen introduced a new change into the Debian installation
system allowing the installation of <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/2fly6f0ypze.fsf@login2.uio.no">hardware
specific packages</a> at installation time (or on an already installed
system).  This is useful for certain RAID controllers, graphic adaptors and
other hardware, and is done by mapping PCI and USB IDs to the names of Debian
packages.  Petter welcomes help maintaining this list.</p>

<p>He also pointed out that for hot swappable devices this approach won't
work, and wonders whether the existing discover package should be adapted
to also support listening to DBus events, or whether <a
href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> could be ported to
Debian.</p>


<a name="3"></a>
<h2>Desktop artwork and themes for Debian <q>Squeeze</q></h2>

<p>Valessio Brito <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2010/06/msg00003.html">started</a>
to collect ideas and proposals for the <a
href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDesktopArtworkSqueeze">desktop artwork
used in Debian 6.0 <q>Squeeze</q></a>.  This artwork would be the base for
common themes throughout the system.  Yves-Alexis Perez started to <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2010/06/msg00004.html">list
possible uses</a> for that artwork ranging from themes for different
desktop environments through boot splash screens to website banners.  He also
asked for more comments about the artwork from other users.</p>


<a name="4"></a>
<h2>Debian Installer string freeze coming up</h2>

<p>Christian Perrier <a 
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100606071056.GA16165@mykerinos.kheops.frmug.org">proposed</a>
a <q>string freeze</q> in order to officially notify translators that they should
consider completing their current work. Christian wrote: <q>During the string
freeze, developers would be required to avoid committing changes that involved
modifications to localizable strings. Each of these would require a prior 
discussion in debian-boot and a formal ACK to commit.</q> He proposed <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2010/06/msg00015.html">
Sunday July 4th as deadline for the string freeze</a>. Time to finish up those translations!
</p>


<a name="5"></a>
<h2>Provisional list of talks for DebConf10</h2>

<p>Ana Guerrero <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100609025528.GA19122@pryan.ekaia.org">announced</a>
the publication of a <a
href="https://penta.debconf.org/dc10_schedule/events.en.html">provisional list
of talks for DebConf10</a>. She also mentioned the opportunities for ad-hoc events to be
scheduled during DebConf, in order to plan a last minute event with others once
at DebConf. Details on the scheduling of these events will be available at the
conference.</p>

<p>Some of the planned highlights are <q>Bits from the Debian Project
Leader</q>, <q>Debian in (and on) the cloud</q>, <q>Debian/kFreeBSD from the
FreeBSD Point of View</q>, <q>Multimedia Patents vs. Debian</q>, <q>RC bug
fixing + NMU = Fun</q> and <q>The Nexenta Project: OpenSolaris + APT +
GNU</q>.</p>


<a name="6"></a>
<h2>License usage in Debian</h2>

<p>While working on requests to add specific license texts to
<tt>/usr/share/common-licenses/</tt>, Russ Allbery wrote a script to check,
which license are used how often in the Debian archive.  He also published <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2010/06/msg00099.html">his
results</a>.  Not surprising: The most used licenses are the different forms and
versions of the GNU General Public License.</p>


<a name="7"></a>
<h2>Other news</h2>

<p>Ana Guerrero <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100525173727.GA5200@pryan.ekaia.org">announced</a>
that the migration of the <a
href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWomen">Debian-Women wiki</a> into
Debian's wiki is now complete. There's still a little work to do: if you
want to contribute, take a look at the <a
href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWomen#migrationTODO">migration TODO
list</a>.</p>

<p>Adrian von Bidder announced that he will now <a
href="http://blog.fortytwo.ch/archives/84-Order-Your-Debian-Swirl-Umbrella-Now.html">take
orders</a> for <a
href="http://blog.fortytwo.ch/archives/80-Yay!-Debian-Logo!.html">Debian
Umbrellas</a>.</p>

<p>Bill Allombert announced that <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100606132103.GJ11095@yellowpig">circular
dependencies in unstable reached an all-time low</a>. Even if fixing some might be too
intrusive for <q>Squeeze</q>, Petter Reinholdtsen noticed that some
of them may also cause <a 
href="http://lists.debian.org/2flr5kgozc0.fsf@login2.uio.no">upgrades from
<q>Lenny</q> to <q>Squeeze</q> to fail</a>.</p>

<p>Andrew Pollock blogged about his recent <a
href="http://blog.andrew.net.au/2010/06/08#dhcp_4.1_progress_report2" >progress
on the ISC DHCP 4.1 package</a>: packages in experimental appear to work, and
upgrade cleanly from the 3.1 packages, so they will soon reach unstable.</p>

<p>The <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/project/2010/04/">previous issue of
the Debian Project News</a> mentioned, that the boot loader <a
href="http://packages.debian.org/lilo">LiLO</a> was about to removed from
Debian due to missing upstream development.  In the <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00117.html">following
discussion</a> Joachim Wiedorn volunteered to take over upstream development,
while the Debian Maintainer William Pitcock will continue <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00137.html">taking care
of packaging</a> once upstream development created a release that actually has
merit.</p>

<p>Bastian Blank wondered, whether Debian 6.0 <q>Squeeze</q> should be shipped
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00220.html">Xen 3.4 or
4.0</a> and listed some pros and cons for both versions.</p>


<a name="8"></a>
<h2>New Developers and Maintainers</h2>

<p>Six applicants have been
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1OLPhC-0004Dr-AN@merkel.debian.org">accepted</a>
as Debian Developers and two applicants have been
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1OJ5es-00033L-A1@ries.debian.org">accepted</a>
as Debian Maintainer since the previous issue of the Debian
Project News.  Please welcome Dominique Belhachemi, Sylvain Beucler, Scott
Kitterman, Giovanni Mascellani, Alessio Treglia, Ulises Vitulli,
Hannes von Haugwitz and Tang Ke into our project!</p>


<a name="9"></a>
<h2>Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release</h2>

<p>According to the <a href="http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php">unofficial
RC-bugs count</a>, the upcoming release, Debian 6.0
<q>Squeeze</q>, is currently affected by
424 release critical bugs.
81 of them have already been fixed in Debian's <q>unstable</q> branch. Of the remaining
343 release critical bugs,
46 already have a patch (which might need testing) and
14 are marked as pending.</p>

<p>Ignoring these bugs as well as release critical bugs for packages in contrib or non-free,
211 release critical bugs remain to be solved for the
release to happen.</p>


<a name="10"></a>
<h2>Important Debian Security Advisories</h2>

<p>Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others):
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2054">bind9</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2055">OpenOffice.org</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2056">zonecheck</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2057">mysql-dfsg-5.0</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2058">glibc</a>,
Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.</p>

<p>Please note that these are a selection of the more important security
advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about
security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please
subscribe to the <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/">security mailing
list</a> for announcements.</p>


<a name="11"></a>
<h2>New and noteworthy packages</h2>

<p>The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive
recently (<a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg">among
others</a>):</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ants">ants &mdash; advanced normalization tools for brain and image analysis</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bucardo">bucardo &mdash; asynchronous replication system for PostgreSQL</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bup">bup &mdash; highly efficient file backup system based on git</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cloc">cloc &mdash; statistics utility to count lines of code</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/connectagram">connectagram &mdash; word unscrambling game</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/desktopnova">desktopnova &mdash; utility that changes the wallpaper automatically</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/emdebian-crush">emdebian-crush &mdash; emdebian crossbuilding helpers</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/espeakedit">espeakedit &mdash; A multi-lingual software speech synthesizer - editor</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/eucalyptus-cloud">eucalyptus-cloud &mdash; Elastic Utility Computing Architecture - Cloud controller</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fcgiwrap">fcgiwrap &mdash; simple server to run CGI applications over FastCGI</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fetch-crl">fetch-crl &mdash; Downloads Certificate Revocation Lists</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/freespacenotifier">freespacenotifier &mdash; free space notification module for KDE</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/frontaccounting">frontaccounting &mdash; A web based double-entry accounting and ERP program</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/glpeces">glpeces &mdash; Tangram (puzzle) game clone</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/grr.app">grr.app &mdash; RSS reader for GNUstep</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gst123">gst123 &mdash; GStreamer based command line media player</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/guayadeque">guayadeque &mdash; lightweight music player</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/haskell-debian-utils">haskell-debian-utils &mdash; Various helpers to work with Debian packages</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/hpanel">hpanel &mdash; minimalist panel for X</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/html2markdown">html2markdown &mdash; convert HTML page into ascii markdown format</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jackmeter">jackmeter &mdash; a basic command line meter for the JACK audio system</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jkmeter">jkmeter &mdash; horizontal or vertical bargraph audio level meter for Jack Audio Connection Kit</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jpegjudge">jpegjudge &mdash; determine which of two given jpegs (same size) is the original</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kraft">kraft &mdash; small business-management application</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ltpanel">ltpanel &mdash; lightweight tasklist panel for minimalist WMs</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/lunch">lunch &mdash; distributed process launcher</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mango-lassi">mango-lassi &mdash; Share mouse and pointer with other computers</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/nam">nam &mdash; the Network Animator</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ns2">ns2 &mdash; Ns is a discrete event simulator targeted at networking research</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/openstv">openstv &mdash; single transferable vote and instant runoff voting software</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/otcl-shells">otcl-shells &mdash; OTcl shells</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pdebuild-cross">pdebuild-cross &mdash; cross-building support for pbuilder</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/plymouth-x11">plymouth-x11 &mdash; Graphical Boot Animation and Logger</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/quvi">quvi &mdash; command line tool for parsing video download links</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/radicale">radicale &mdash; simple calendar server - daemon</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/radiotray">radiotray &mdash; online radio streaming player</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rawtherapee">rawtherapee &mdash; A free RAW converter and digital photo processing software</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ruby-tomoe">ruby-tomoe &mdash; Handwriting recognition engine (ruby binding)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rxp">rxp &mdash; A validating XML parser</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sakura">sakura &mdash; simple but powerful libvte-based terminal emulator</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sentinella">sentinella &mdash; System monitor that can react to user chosen conditions</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sflphone-gnome">sflphone-gnome &mdash; SIP and IAX2 compatible VoIP phone - GNOME client</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/silentjack">silentjack &mdash; silence detector for the JACK audio system</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/smarty3">smarty3 &mdash; Template engine for PHP</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/stterm">stterm &mdash; an extremely simple terminal for windowed system</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/tiled">tiled &mdash; generic tile map editor</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ttf-denemo">ttf-denemo &mdash; Music Notation Symbol Fonts for denemo</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/u-boot">u-boot &mdash; A boot loader for embedded systems</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ufraw-batch">ufraw-batch &mdash; batch importer for raw camera images</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/upnp-router-control">upnp-router-control &mdash; simple program that manages UPnP compliant routers</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/vainfo">vainfo &mdash; Video Acceleration (VA) API for Linux -- info program</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/wiki2beamer">wiki2beamer &mdash; Tool to create LaTeX beamer presentations in wiki syntax</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xen-tools">xen-tools &mdash; Tools to manage Xen virtual servers</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/yoshimi">yoshimi &mdash; A software synthesizer based on ZynAddSubFX</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zynjacku">zynjacku &mdash; JACK based host for LV2 synths and LV2 plugins</a></li>
</ul>

<a name="12"></a>
<h2>Work-needing packages</h2>

<p>Currently
627 packages are orphaned and
132 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1OKKlx-0007DT-Va@merkel.debian.org">recent</a>
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1OMs6i-0006PZ-Rt@merkel.debian.org">reports</a>
to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of
<a href="http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested">packages which need
your help</a>.</p>


<a name="13"></a>
<h2>Want to continue reading DPN?</h2>

<p>Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers
to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute">contributing
page</a> to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail
at <a href="mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org">debian-publicity@lists.debian.org</a>.</p>


#use wml::debian::projectnews::footer editor="David Prévot, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl"