#use wml::debian::projectnews::header PUBDATE="2010-08-23" SUMMARY="Debian turns 17, screenshots at <tt>packages.debian.org, some bits from ARM porters"
#use wml::debian::acronyms

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<a name="0"></a>
<p>Welcome to this year's tenth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="#1">Debian turns 17</a></li>
  <li><a href="#2">Screenshots at <tt>packages.debian.org</tt></a></li>
  <li><a href="#3">Some bits from ARM porters</a></li>
  <li><a href="#4">Join the DebConf Team</a></li>
  <li><a href="#5">Progress of the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port</a></li>
  <li><a href="#6">Bits from the MIA team</a></li>
  <li><a href="#7">... and much more</a>.</li>
</ul>

<a name="1"></a>
<h2>Debian turns 17</h2>

<p>The seventeenth birthday of the Debian project caused <a
href="http://www.tecchannel.de/pc_mobile/news/2030272/debian_wird_17_jahre_alt/">quite</a>
<a href="http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/41241-how-to-thank-debian-for-17-great-years">some</a>
<a href="http://www.dobreprogramy.pl/Debian-ma-juz-lat,Aktualnosc,19930.html">media</a>
<a href="http://www.marlexsystems.org/debian-festeja-17-anos-de-existencia/11374/">echo</a>,
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay2010">birthday parties</a> and
<a href="http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/478">c</a><a
href="http://jonathancarter.org/2010/08/16/happy-birthday-debian-2/">o</a><a
href="http://news.debian.net/">n</a><a
href="http://blog.venthur.de/2010/08/16/happy-birthday-debian/">g</a><a
href="http://digitizor.com/2010/08/16/happy-17th-birthday-debian-and-some-interesting-history/">r</a><a
href="http://www.stormos.org/node/2327">a</a><a
href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/happy-17th-birthday-debian-826722/">t</a><a
href="http://www.linux.com/community/blogs/happy-17th-birthday-debian.html">u</a><a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100816111701.717D7C818@nereida.gnuservers.com.ar">l</a><a
href="http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=541">a</a><a
href="http://andrew.mcmillan.net.nz/blog/thank_you_debian">t</a><a
href="http://www.itoperationz.com/2010/08/happy-birthday-debian/">i</a><a
href="http://blog.irwan.name/?p=1520">o</a><a
href="http://insidesocal.com/click/2010/08/happy-belated-birthday-debian.html">n</a><a
href="http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/08/happy_birthday_debian/">s</a>.</p>

<p>As a surprise present for most Debian contributors, Maintainers and Developers,
users were asked to submit their thanks via the website <a
href="http://thanks.debian.net">thanks.debian.net</a>, and birthday balloons pointing
to that page were added to several of Debian's web services.</p>

<p>About <a href="http://thank.debian.net/read_thanks">3000 submissions</a> were
received, ranging from plain <q>Thanks</q> in various forms, up to <a
href="http://www.marga.com.ar/blog/index.cgi/debian/Debian_Appreciation_Day_Recap.html">heartwarming</a>
messages in <a href="http://thank.debian.net/message/136">foreign
languages</a>.  We would like to thank all users for their feedback, which
really strengthened our project's morale and motivation!  Thanks!</p>

<p>As an unrelated sidenote, the editor would also like to mention that
Debian's <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/reportbug">bug submission tool
<tt>reportbug</tt></a> supports a <tt>--kudos</tt> option, making it
easy to submit thanks to package maintainers on the other 364 days of the year
;).</p>


<a name="2"></a>
<h2>Screenshots at <tt>packages.debian.org</tt></h2>

<p>As it is often easier to get an impression of an application by looking
at screenshots, instead of just reading a descriptive text, Gerfried
<q>Rhonda</q> Fuchs has integrated the <a
href="http://screenshots.debian.net"><tt>screenshots.debian.net</tt> service</a>
into the package information at <a
href="http://packages.debian.org"><tt>packages.debian.org</tt></a>.  See for example
the screenshot of the package <a
href="http://packages.debian.org/sid/extremetuxracer">extremetuxracer</a>.</p>

<p>For packages that do not yet have a screenshot available, a placeholder
image is shown. Users are encouraged to contribute by uploading their own
screenshots for their favourite applications.</p>


<a name="3"></a>
<h2>Some bits from ARM porters</h2>

<p>Riku Voipio published some <q><a
href="http://suihkulokki.blogspot.com/2010/08/unnofficial-bits-from-arm-porters.html">unofficial
bits from the ARM porters</a></q> in which he thanked ARM and Canonical for
sponsoring new machines for the project.  Besides giving Debian Contributors
a three times faster machine for their development work, it has allowed the buildd
infrastructure of machines automatically building new packages for specific architectures
and suites to be renewed, so that experimental
packages, <a href="http://www.debian.org/volatile/">volatile</a> packages,
non-free packages and packages from <a
href="http://www.backports.org/"><tt>backports.org</tt></a> are now automatically
built as well.  Finally, he announced some work being done on a <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2010/08/msg00008.html">Hardfloat
ARM port</a>, which will work better on newer ARM processors with a hardware
floating-point unit.</p>


<a name="4"></a>
<h2>Join the DebConf Team</h2>

<p>Richard Darst started a <a
href="http://debian-administration.org/users/rkd/weblog/1">series of blogs
about the organisation of the annual Debian Conference</a> by
commenting on the recent <q>DebConf &amp; Debian</q> discussion. He
doesn't see a difference between the two, and invites all interested
people to join the organisation team by subscribing to the <a
href="http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team">DebConf team
mailing list</a> and joining the <tt>#debconf-team</tt> IRC channel on
<tt>irc.debian.org</tt>. In his
<a href="http://debian-administration.org/users/rkd/weblog/2">second post</a>,
he explained the timeline of a DebConf.</p>


<a name="5"></a>
<h2>Progress of the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port</h2>

<p>Different aspects of the port of the Debian operating system <a
href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">to the FreeBSD kernel</a>
have made great progress recently.  The Debian installer has been <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100818113558.GA24988@hall.aurel32.net">upgraded</a>
to the FreeBSD kernel version 8.1, which also allows the
installation system to be used in languages other than English. Also the <a
href="http://packages.debian.org/debian-cd">debian-cd</a> scripts used to
create CD and DVD images <a
href="http://blog.einval.com/2010/08/20#kfreebsd_cds">now support the creation
of the new architectures</a>. Daily build images for Debian unstable are
already available; daily and weekly builds for <q>Squeeze</q> will be made available
with the next beta release of the Debian installer. However, the Debian
GNU/kFreeBSD related web pages are outdated, and help is needed to <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/4C6EAAE9.7090500@aurel32.net">fix the web and
wiki pages</a>.</p>


<a name="6"></a>
<h2>Bits from the MIA team</h2>

<p>Jan Hauke Rahm sent some <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100819082337.GA3379@ca.home.jhr-online.de">bits
from the MIA team</a>, which tries to identify and handle package maintainers
who sadly have become inactive. He gave some advice on how package maintainers should
react when they think a package has been neglected by its maintainer, and
stressed that the work of the <q>MIA</q> team is an important aspect of
quality assurance.</p>


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

<p>Valessio Brito <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100822233610.17057e8pnlc6inq2@ssl.eumx.net">wondered</a>
whether a webchat interface similar to the one used during the last Debian Conference
should be permanently available, to make it easier for users unfamiliar with
IRC to join.</p>

<p>Martin Zobel-Helas <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100817190121.GA31072@ftbfs.de">noted</a> that
now more than 50% of Debian's hosts and public services are reachable over
IPv6.</p>


<a name="8"></a>
<h2>Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release</h2>

	<p>According to the <a href="http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php">unofficial
	release-critical bug counter</a>, the upcoming release,
	Debian 6.0 <q>Squeeze</q>, is currently affected by
302 release-critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily solved
	or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, about
128 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/#2010-33">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>


<a name="9"></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-2091">squirrelmail</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2092">lxr-cvs</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-1919">smarty (update)</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2093">ghostscript</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2094">Linux 2.6.26</a>, and
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2095">lvm2</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="10"></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/3depict">3depict &mdash; visualisation and analysis for single valued point data</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bluedevil">bluedevil &mdash; The KDE bluetooth stack</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/eatmydata">eatmydata &mdash; library and utilities designed to disable fsync and friends</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/font-manager">font-manager &mdash; font management application for the GNOME desktop</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/freetts">freetts &mdash; speech synthesis system</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gitit">gitit &mdash; Wiki engine backed by a git or darcs filestore</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnuspool">gnuspool &mdash; A network-based print spooler</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/luakit">luakit &mdash; A fast and small web browser extensible by Lua</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mpris-remote">mpris-remote &mdash; command-line interface for mpris compatible media players</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mricron">mricron &mdash; magnetic resonance image conversion, viewing and analysis</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/phoneui-apps">phoneui-apps &mdash; SHR applications</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/spectacle">spectacle &mdash; RPM Spec file generator and management tool</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/stackapplet">stackapplet &mdash; panel applet to track reputation on StackExchange sites</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/wordpress-shibboleth">wordpress-shibboleth &mdash; Shibboleth plugin for WordPress</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-dispmua">xul-ext-dispmua &mdash; display Mail User Agent extension for Icedove</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-imap-acl">xul-ext-imap-acl &mdash; Extension to manage ACLs on IMAP folders</a></li>
</ul>


<a name="11"></a>
<h2>Work-needing packages</h2>

	<p>Currently
576 packages are orphaned and
135 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1Oji8F-0004w9-3M@merkel.debian.org">recent</a>
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1OmFTO-0002lR-Jb@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="12"></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 C. Foster, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl"
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