#use wml::debian::projectnews::header PUBDATE="2010-06-28" SUMMARY=""
#use wml::debian::acronyms

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<a name="0"></a>
<p>Welcome to this year's sixth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="#1">Bits from the Release Team</a></li>
  <li><a href="#2">Call for volunteers for DebConf10</a></li>
  <li><a href="#3">Debian Live Web Images Builder</a></li>
  <li><a href="#4">Results from the Debian community poll</a></li>
  <li><a href="#5">FAI workshop 2010</a></li>
  <li><a href="#6">Debian Project at LSM/RMLL 2010</a></li>
  <li><a href="#7">Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 <q>Lenny</q> updated</a></li>
  <li><a href="#8">... and much more</a>.</li>
</ul>


<a name="1"></a>
<h2>Bits from the Release Team</h2>

<p>
Release manager Adam D. Barratt sent <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/06/msg00002.html">Bits
from the release team</a>, in which he welcomes Mehdi Dogguy to the team.
Other enthusiastic Debian Developers who are interested are invited to <a
href="mailto:debian-release@lists.debian.org">contact the team</a>.
</p>

<p>
Lots of transitions are finished, and in order to make the boot process faster, <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/05/msg00009.html">parallel
booting should be enabled by default</a>. <q>Squeeze</q> will release with
GNOME 2.30 along with the already transitioned KDE 4.4.3. With EGLIBC 2.11
already in <q>testing</q>, Python 2.6 and Perl 5.12 (among a few others)
should be able to transition before the freeze.
</p>

<p>
As announced earlier, <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/05/msg00000.html">new
transitions are in freeze</a> in order to make it easier to finish current and
already scheduled transitions. <q>Squeeze</q> will be frozen when Python 2.6
and the other transitions are completed, maybe during late August if everybody
works together.
</p>


<a name="2"></a>
<h2>Call for volunteers for DebConf10</h2>

<p>Gabriella Coleman sent out a <a
href="http://gabriellacoleman.org/blog/?p=2001">call for volunteers for
DebConf10</a> on her blog. She mentioned a <a
href="http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Jobs#Conference_volunteers">list of things
that DebConf needs from volunteers</a>, so if
you are in New York or environs you might consider helping out if something on 
the list matches your skills and interests. There is also an amazing <a
href="http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/TouristActivities">list of
free events</a>, events that take place before, during and after
DebConf. The list has theatre, movies and music as well as other types of events
to choose from; during DebConf alone there are free concerts from Gil Scott Heron
and Basia Bulat, just to name a couple. 
</p>


<a name="3"></a>
<h2>Debian Live Web Images Builder</h2>

<p>
Daniel Baumann <a href="http://blog.daniel-baumann.ch/2010/06/20#20100620_debian-live-webbuilder">announced</a>
that thanks to outstanding debian-live contributor Richard Nelson
a <a href="http://live-helper.debian.net/">live-helper
web-frontend of the Debian Live Project</a> is now available: it lets users get
their own customised images without needing to install <a
href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/live-helper">live-helper</a> and build
them on their own.
</p>


<a name="4"></a>
<h2>Results from the Debian community poll</h2>

<p>
Torsten Werner published the <a
href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2010/06/results-from-debian-community-poll.html">results
of his Debian community poll</a> (followed by a <a
href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-results-from-debian-community-poll.html">second
part</a>) and thanks all participants. With over 80% answering that they do not
contribute directly to Debian, this is the biggest ever survey of Debian's user base,
giving hints on how Debian should deal with its non-free section,
its release policy, and
the importance of the <a
href="http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines">Debian Free Software
Guidelines</a> to its user base.
</p>


<a name="5"></a>
<h2>FAI workshop 2010</h2>

<p>Michael Prokop mentioned on his blog that there will be an <a
href="http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2010/06/22/fai-developer-workshop-2010/">FAI
workshop at the Linuxhotel in Essen, Germany</a>. FAI stands for <q>Fully
Automated Install</q> and is an important tool when dealing with large numbers
of computers, for example. As Michael writes: <q>As the name states the workshop
is targeted towards FAI developers. We &mdash; the FAI developers &mdash; want
to get FAI into shape for squeeze, discuss pending issues like
Ubuntu packaging, release management and of course meet in real life for networking
and socialising.</q> Sounds like fun.
</p>


<a name="6"></a>
<h2>Debian Project at LSM/RMLL 2010</h2>

<p>
The Debian Project will be represented at the <a
href="http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100618">Libre Software Meeting /
Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre (LSM/RMLL) event in Bordeaux, France,
this year</a>. Debian related talks have been organised, as well as a <a
href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP2010/Bordeaux">Bug Squashing Party (BSP)</a>.
Everyone interested in helping Debian is welcome at the BSP; there will be
enough developers around to sponsor your NMUs.
</p>


<a name="7"></a>
<h2>Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 <q>Lenny</q> updated</h2>

<p>
<!-- NOTE:  The URL for the announcement might change on short notice! -->
The <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100626">fifth update of
Debian's stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (codename <q>lenny</q>)</a>
has been released.  This update mainly adds corrections for security problems
to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems.
Further updates include the Linux kernel itself as well as the
debian-installer.
</p>


<a name="8"></a>
<h2>Other news</h2>

<p>
Alexander Reichle-Schmehl <a
href="http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/releasing-squeeze-24">announced</a> he
has again started publishing <a
href="http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats">statistics of the release
critical bug reports</a> on a weekly basis.
</p>

<p>
Martin Michlmayr announced that <a
href="http://www.cyrius.com/journal/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/esata-support">Debian
support for eSATA SheevaPlug is now available</a>. He has updated the <a
href="http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/install.html">install
guide</a> accordingly and provided a trick to add eSATA support for an already
running Debian eSATA SheevaPlug installed as a regular SheevaPlug.
</p>

<p>
Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli, proposed some <a
href="http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/06/debian_meeting_guidelines_RFC/">guidelines
for meetings inside the Debian Project</a>. His goal is to help organisers to
provide prerequisites in a community-compatible way, with a process
that includes announcements before the meeting and minutes after.
</p>

<p>
FTP master Mark Hymers announced that <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/06/msg00003.html">Etch
has been moved to archive.debian.org</a>, following the
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/2010/msg00005.html">last Etch
point release</a> published last month.
</p>

<p>
Debian Auditor Luk Claes sent an <a href="http://lists.debian.org/4C24E91E.4000405@debian.org">overview of the most important financial flows</a>
of money hold on Debian's behalf.
</p>

<p>
GRUB maintainer Colin Watson gave a small <a
href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~cjwatson/blosxom/2010/06/21#2010-06-21-grub2-boot-problems">report
on the status of the grub package</a> with regard to several release issues.
</p>

<p>
initramfs maintainer Michael Prokop <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00393.html">called for
testing of initramfs-tools 0.97</a>, a tool used to create an inital ramdisk
file to boot a system. The packages available should work on all Debian systems
and should be checked on a wide variety of platforms.
</p>

<p>
Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli <a
href="http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/06/Debian_consultancy_for_the_European_Framework_Programme/">reported</a>
on his recent invitation to the European Commission.  In a joint session of
academic and industrial research projects and EC commissioners, Stefano helped
summarise best and worst practices in the interaction between research
projects and FOSS communities.
</p>


<a name="9"></a>
<h2>New Developers and Maintainers</h2>

<p>Three applicants have been
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1ORhRf-0002Fe-Fh@ries.debian.org">accepted</a>
as Debian Maintainers since the previous issue of the Debian
Project News.  Please welcome Carl Chenet, Mathias Behrle and Thomas Koch
into our project!</p>



<a name="10"></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
419 release critical bugs.
65 of them have already been fixed in Debian's <q>unstable</q> branch. Of the remaining
354 release critical bugs,
55 already have a patch (which might need testing) and
19 are marked as pending.</p>

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


<a name="11"></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> (updated),
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2061">samba</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2062">sudo</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2063">pmount</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="12"></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/awn-settings">awn-settings &mdash; preferences manager for avant-window-navigator</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/backfire-dkms">backfire-dkms &mdash; kernel module for signal benchmarking (DKMS)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/baobab">baobab &mdash; GNOME disk usage analyzer</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/beid-mozilla-plugin">beid-mozilla-plugin &mdash; beID mozilla plugin</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bluetile">bluetile &mdash; modern tiling window manager with a gentle learning curve</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/boolector">boolector &mdash; SMT solver for bit-vectors and arrays</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bzr-grep">bzr-grep &mdash; bazaar plugin to grep files and history</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/freerdp-x11">freerdp-x11 &mdash; RDP client for Windows Terminal Services</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-dictionary">gnome-dictionary &mdash; GNOME dictionary application</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-screenshot">gnome-screenshot &mdash; screenshot application for GNOME</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-search-tool">gnome-search-tool &mdash; GNOME tool to search files</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-system-log">gnome-system-log &mdash; system log viewer for GNOME</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-utils-common">gnome-utils-common &mdash; data files for the GNOME utilities</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/indicator-applet">indicator-applet &mdash; GNOME panel indicator applet</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kprogress">kprogress &mdash; KDE login progress indicator</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/lekhonee-gnome">lekhonee-gnome &mdash; desktop client for wordpress blogs</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/logkeys">logkeys &mdash; keylogger for GNU/Linux systems</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/minitube">minitube &mdash; native YouTube client</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/opencc">opencc &mdash; simplified-traditional Chinese conversion tool</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/partman-btrfs">partman-btrfs &mdash; add to partman support for btrfs</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/phonefsod">phonefsod &mdash; SHR daemon for freesmartphone.org interaction</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/plasma-widget-networkmanagement">plasma-widget-networkmanagement &mdash; Network Management widget for KDE4 Plasma</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/plasma-widget-yawp-dbg">plasma-widget-yawp-dbg &mdash; debugging symbols for yaWP and its Ions</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sessioninstaller">sessioninstaller &mdash; APT based installer using PackageKit's session DBus API</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sharand">sharand &mdash; generate cryptographically secure pseudo random file</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/shorewall-init">shorewall-init &mdash; Shorewall initialization</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xen-hypervisor-4.0-amd64">xen-hypervisor-4.0-amd64 &mdash; Xen Hypervisor on AMD64</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xen-hypervisor-4.0-i386">xen-hypervisor-4.0-i386 &mdash; Xen Hypervisor on i386</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-sync">xul-ext-sync &mdash; extension to sync bookmarks, passwords and other user data between devices</a></li>
</ul>


<a name="13"></a>
<h2>Work-needing packages</h2>

<p>Currently
619 packages are orphaned and
143 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1OPPRY-0007be-9V@merkel.debian.org">recent</a>
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1ORwmT-0006DO-NT@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="14"></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="Jeremiah Foster, David Prévot, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl"