#use wml::debian::projectnews::header PUBDATE="2011-01-09" SUMMARY=""

# $Id$
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<p>Welcome to this year's first issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:</p>
<toc-display/>


# /!\ beta2 expected Saturday, will need s/beta1/beta2/ and link update
<toc-add-entry name="debian-edu">Debian Edu/Skolelinux 6.0.3 beta1 released</toc-add-entry>

<p>
Holger Levsen announced the <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/12/msg00683.html">release
of Debian Edu Squeeze 6.0.3 beta1</a>: <a
href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">download
and installation instructions</a> are
available on the wiki, and in particular a useful <a
href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/GettingStarted"><q>Getting
Started</q> chapter</a> in which you can find explanations
on how to login for the first time.
Feedback and installation reports can be send to the <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">Debian Edu mailing list</a>.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="DPL">Bits from the DPL</toc-add-entry>

<p>
Stefano Zacchiroli sent some <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">Bits
from the DPL</a> where he reported about the work done by Martin
Michlmayr as Auditor, in order to reconstruct Debian expenses and
budgets. Stefano also sent a call for help for the Wheezy artwork
organization and announced that Gunnar Wolf has volunteered to monitor on
behalf of Debian the discussion regarding the Creative Commons process
for revision 4.0.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="D-I-l10n">Update for Debian Installer localization</toc-add-entry>

<p>
Christian Perrier send a <a
href="http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2012/01/01#di-l10n-update-2012-01">some</a> <a
href="http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2012/01/02#di-l10n-update-2012-02">reports</a>
<a
href=http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2012/01/05#di-l10n-update-2012-03">
on Debian Installer localization</a>. In the first one, he announced the
100% completeness for the following languages: Czech, German, Persian,
French, Kazakh, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian; while
Italian is nearly fully complete (only missing two strings!). In his
second report, Christian announced that <q>A very important and critical
fix to partman-zfs broke a string in sublevel 4. Complete languages count
is thus down to zero.</q>: for now, there's no language fully complete.
In the last one, Italian and Ukrainian completed level 2 (and Italian is
so now fully completed) and 18 languages has already recovered from the
previous breakage.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="xserver">Forthcoming new release of the X server</toc-add-entry>

<p>Cyril Brulebois blogged about the <a
href="http://blog.mraw.org/2012/01/01/XServer_1.12RC1/">forthcoming
X server release 1.12</a>: one major change is the addition of
XI2.2 patches, which are related to the multitouch support. Another
significant change is the addition of support for Intel's Sandy Bridge New
Acceleration in the Debian packages.</p>

<toc-add-entry name="pnas">Scientific article on Debian in PNAS</toc-add-entry>

<p>
Micheal Hanke <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/12/msg00000.html">noted</a>
that the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (<q>PNAS</q>) of the United
States of America has a <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/11/14/1115960108.abstract">\
paper on the evolution of software in Debian</a>.
</p>
<p>
If you know other studies about Debian and its software, you can add it to our
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/CategoryPublication">related wiki
page</a>.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="infographic">New Debian Infographic</toc-add-entry>
<p>
Claudio Filho has published a beautiful <a
href="http://claudiocomputing.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/infographic_debian_history-en-v081.png?w=300&h=165">infographic
about Debian</a>. The main motivation was, <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity/2011/12/msg00066.html">as
Claudio said</a>, <q>to "draw" for final users how Debian can be good for
them</q>. 
<br />
Similar efforts were made <a
href="http://ascendances.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/timeline_debian_1993_20111.png">by Stéphane Blondon</a> and
<a href="http://chris-lamb.co.uk/2008/03/09/timeline-of-the-debian-project/">Chris
Lamb</a>, who created the <a href="http://timeline.debian.net/">Debian
Timeline website</a> and the related <a
href="http://packages.debian.org/sid/debian-timeline">Debian package</a>.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="debtags">New interface for Debtags website</toc-add-entry>

<p>
Enrico Zini announced a <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">\
new interface for the Debtags website</a>. Debtags is a project born to
classify Debian packages adding tags to them: <q>Debtags attaches
categories (we call them tags) to packages, creating a new set of useful
structured metadata that can be used to implement more advanced ways of
presenting, searching, maintaining and navigating the package
archive</q>, Enrico said <a
href="http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.html">while presenting the project in 2005</a>.
Using the new interface, it is possible to <a
href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/">search packages</a>, take a look
at <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/statistics/">statistics about
Debtags</a> and, obviously, <a
href="http://debtags.debian.net/getting-started/">help with the tagging
effort</a>. For more information about Debtags, you can visit the <a
href="http://wiki.debian.org/Debtags">related wiki page</a>.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="defoma">apt-get purge defoma</toc-add-entry>
<p>
Paul Wise reported that <a
href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2012/01/07/apt-get-purge-defoma/">the
transition from defoma to fontconfig is finally complete</a>. Defoma is
the Debian-specific font manager, long-time unmaintained while the
replacement (fontconfig) is cross-distribution and has a wide support
also from upstreams. In the past three years the <a
href="http://pkg-fonts.alioth.debian.org/">Debian Fonts Task Force</a>
has worked a lot in order to gain this result, thanks specially to the
work of Christian Perrier and Paul Wise. Please note that the transition
is not completely smooth:<q>Xorg does not yet support fontconfig so for
now programs relying on server-side fonts will only be able to use the
<tt>xfonts-</tt> packages shipping their fonts in the directories known
by the X server</q> and in addition <q>there are some <a
href="http://wiki.debian.org/gs-undefoma">issues</a> with Ghostscript and
CJK</q>, Paul said.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="interviews">Further interviews</toc-add-entry>

	<p>Since the last issue of the Debian Project News, 
two new issues of the <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/ThisWeekInDebian"><q>This week in
	Debian</q> podcast</a> have been published:  with
<a href="http://frostbitemedia.org/node/35">Jonathan Nadeau</a>,
about the Northeast GNU/Linux Fest; and with
<a href="http://frostbitemedia.org/node/31">Raphaël Hertzog</a>,
about the Debian handbook.
</p>

	<p>There has also been a
 <q>People behind Debian</q> interviews with
<a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/12/13/people-behind-debian-ben-hutchings-member-of-the-kernel-team/">Ben
Hutchings</a>, member of the kernel team.
</p>

<p>
In addition the <a href="http://neuro.debian.net/">NeuroDebian team</a> were
<a href="http://incf.org/newsroom/stories/neurodebian-the-value-of-an-integrated-tool-suite">interviewed</a>
by the <acronym lang="en" title="International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility">INCF</acronym>.
</p>


<toc-add-entry name="other">Other news</toc-add-entry>

<p>The 27th issue of the
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/12/msg00001.html">miscellaneous news for developers</a> 
has been released and covers the following topics:</p>
<ul>
  <li>Planet Debian Derivatives</li>
  <li>win32-loader.exe now eases access to the GNU/Hurd Debian-Installer</li>
  <li>Wiki bugstatus extended to Launchpad bugs</li>
  <li>dh-exec entering unstable</li>
  <li>derivatives patch generation prototype</li>
</ul>

<p>Uwe Hermann published a useful <a
href="http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/howto-using-openvpn-on-debian-gnu-linux">quick
howto on using OpenVPN on Debian GNU/Linux</a>.</p>

<p>
Jonas Smedegaard reported that <a
href="http://aceh.tribunnews.com/2011/12/11/ayo-jadi-hacker">the
Indonesian newspaper <q>Serambi</q> dedicated an article to his
Debian involvement</a> after his presence at a radio talkshow in Aceh,
Indonesia. Jonas was travelling Asia in order to deliver a series of talks
dedicated to <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianPureBlends">Debian Pure Blends</a>. 
More information about his trip are available on a related <a
href="http://wiki.jones.dk/DebianAsia2011">wiki page</a>.
</p>

<p>
The web team is pleased announce that <a
href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=567781">all
languages have finished their migration to UTF-8</a>, so the <a
href="$(HOME)">Debian website</a> is now available for everyone
in UTF-8, thanks to all translators who worked on this issue.
</p>

<p>
Asheesh Laroia wrote an <a
href="http://www.asheesh.org/note/debian/short-key-ids-are-bad-news.html">interesting
article about short key IDs with OpenPGP and GNU Privacy Guard</a>,
argumenting that using them is fundamentally insecure as it's easy to
generate collisions for short key IDs.
</p>

<p>The Debian Project was mentioned in an article by Bruce Byfield on
Datamation titled <a
href="http://www.datamation.com/open-source/2011-the-year-of-linux-disappointments-1.html"><q>2011:
The Year of Linux Disappointments</q></a>. According to the author, in
fact, while various Open Source projects saw a decline in 2011, the
Debian project <q>spent much of 2011 reinventing itself. In the past few
twelve months, it has — among other things — tried to encourage
cooperation among its derivatives, revamped its new member process, and
experimented with IRC training sessions.</q>.
</p>

<p>
Martin Zobel-Helas announced that <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/01/msg00040.html">he
applied the main theme of Debian website also to db.debian.org, the
internal LDAP directory of Debian Developers</a>. In the previous days, thanks
to Cristoph Berg, also the <a href="http://qa.debian.org/">Debian Quality
Assurance website</a> switched to the main theme.
</p>

<add-entry name="events">Upcoming events</toc-add-entry>
<p>There are several upcoming Debian related events:</p>
<ul>
 <li><tt>January 18th, Ballarat, AU</tt><a
 href="http://linux.conf.au/schedule/36/view_talk?day=wednesday">Freedom,
 Out of the Box!</a> by Bdale Garbee</li>
 <li><tt>January 18th, 's-Hertogenbosch, NL</tt> a workshop on
 <a href="http://lug.project073.nl/blog/events/debian-packaging-derde-bijeenkomst/">Debian
 Packaging</li>
 <li><tt>January 20th - 22nd, Los Angeles, US</tt> Debian booth at <a href="$(HOME)/events/2012/0120-scale10x">Tenth Annual Southern
 California Linux Expo</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
You can find more information about Debian related events and talks
on the <a href="$(HOME)/events">events section</a> of Debian web site
or subscribing to one of our events mailing lists for different regions:
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu">Europe</a>, 
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl">Netherlands</a>, 
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha">Hispanic America</a>, 
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-na">North America</a>.
</p>

<p>Do you want to organize a Debian booth or a Debian install party?
Are you aware of other upcoming Debian related events?
Have you delivered a Debian talk and want to link it on our 
<a href="$(HOME)/events/talks">talks page</a>? 
Send an email to the <a href="mailto:events@debian.org">Debian Events Team</a>.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="newcontributors">New Debian Contributors</toc-add-entry>

	<p>
Fifteen people have <a href="http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi">started
        to maintain packages</a> since the previous issue of the Debian
	Project News. Please welcome
Werner Detter,
Fredrik Thulin,
Eleanor Chen,
Sergiusz Pawlowicz,
Brian Thomason,
Mike Gabriel,
Ko van der Sloot,
Paul Boddie,
Mark Vejvoda,
Patrick Ulbrich,
Lucia Prado,
Jon Ludlam,
Kamil Ignacak,
Mike McClurg,
and
Leo Iannacone
	into our project!</p>


<toc-add-entry name="rcstats">Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release</toc-add-entry>

	<p>According to the <a href="http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi">Bugs Search
        interface of the Ultimate Debian Database</a>, the upcoming release,
	Debian 7.0 <q>Wheezy</q>, is currently affected by
797 release-critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily solved
	or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, about
532 release-critical bugs remain to be solved for the
	release to happen.</p>

	<p>There are also <a href="http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats/7.0-wheezy/2012-01">more detailed
	statistics</a> as well as some <a
	href="http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats">hints on how to
	interpret</a> these numbers.</p>


<toc-add-entry name="dsa">Important Debian Security Advisories</toc-add-entry>

	<p>Debian's Security Team recently released
	advisories for these packages (among others):
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2363">tor</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2364">xorg</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2365">dtc</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2366">mediawiki</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2367">asterisk</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2368">lighttpd</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2369">libsoup2.4</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2370">unbound</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2371">jasper</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2372">heimdal</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2373">inetutils</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2374">openswan</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2375">krb5, krb5-appl</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2376">ipmitool</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2377">cyrus-imapd-2.2</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2378">ffmpeg</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2379">krb5</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2380">foomatic-filters</a> and
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2011/dsa-2381">squid3</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> (and the separate <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/">backports
list</a>, and <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/">stable updates
list</a> or <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/">volatile
list</a>, for <q>Lenny</q>, the oldstable distribution) for announcements.</p>


<toc-add-entry name="nnwp">New and noteworthy packages</toc-add-entry>

<p>
367 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive
recently. <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg">Among
many others</a> are:</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/coccinella">\
	coccinella &mdash; communication tool (XMPP/Jabber) with a built-in
	whiteboard</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/colorhug-client">\
	colorhug-client &mdash; Tools for the Hughski
	colorimeter</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/eclipse-gef">\
	eclipse-gef &mdash; Eclipse graphical editing framework</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/exfat-utils">\
	exfat-utils &mdash; utilities to create, check, label and dump
	exFAT filesystem</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-documents">\
	gnome-documents &mdash; document manager for GNOME</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ho22bus">\ 
	ho22bus &mdash; simple application to memorize words</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jgit-cli">\
	jgit-cli &mdash; Java implementation of Git version
	control</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xcp-xapi">\
xcp-xapi &mdash; Xen Cloud Platform XenAPI server</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zanshin">\
	zanshin &mdash; to-do list manager for KDE</a></li>
 	
</ul>


<toc-add-entry name="wnpp">Work-needing packages</toc-add-entry>

	<p>Currently <a href="$(DEVEL)/wnpp/orphaned">\
203 packages are orphaned</a> and <a href="$(DEVEL)/wnpp/rfa">\
111 packages are up for adoption</a>: please visit the complete 
	list of <a href="$(DEVEL)/wnpp/help_requested">packages
	which need your help</a>.</p>


<toc-add-entry name="continuedpn">Want to continue reading DPN?</toc-add-entry>

<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="Francesca Ciceri, David Prévot, Justin B Rye, Paul Wise"
# Translators may also add a translator="foo, bar, baz" to the previous line