Debian Weekly News - June 8th, 2005

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/23/
Debian Weekly News - June 8th, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 23rd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Now that Debian 3.1 has been released, people
are keen to celebrate this. There may be a [1]party in your
neighbourhood as well. Branden Robinson [2]announced that [3]SPI,
Debian's legal umbrella, is now able to accept donations via check
from Canada.

 1. http://wiki.debian.net/?ReleasePartySarge
 2. http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2005/000117.html
 3. http://www.spi-inc.org/

Debian Sarge released. The Debian project [4]announced the release of
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 alias sarge. After three years of development,
this release marks another milestone in the history of Debian. With
more than 15,000 binary packages, a lot of updated software and the
new and shiny [5]installer this release boosts Debian back into the
present.

 4. http://www.debian.org/News/2005/20050606
 5. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Problems with new Debian DVDs and CDs. Colin Watson [6]reported about
a problem with the brand-new 3.1r0 CD/DVD images. Due to incorrect
Release files on the images the apt resource for
[7]security.debian.org is not active. As a result, users who install
from these images won't benefit from security updates automatically.
New 3.1r0a images should be available when this issue is released to
correct this flaw.

 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/06/msg00003.html
 7. http://www.debian.org/security/

Debian at Code Fest Japan 2005. In the Japanese capitol city, Tokyo,,
[8]Code Fest Japan 2005 was held. Around 40 hackers from all around
Japan have assembled for a 24-hour endurance hacking session. A dozen
Debian developers from Japan and China attended the session and worked
on Debian. Hacking included developments around Input Methods
(im-switch), testing printers with CUPS and porting Debian to the m32r
architecture. Participants left [9]notes on how they endured their 24
hours.

 8. https://members.fsij.org/trac/codefest2005/
 9. https://members.fsij.org/trac/codefest2005/wiki/Record.en

Delaying the Release? Rickard Armiento [10]brought up an [11]issue
with KDE that several people considered release-critical, although
others believed that it's just a normal bug. The random screensaver of
KDE, which is not activated by default, ignores the settings of
[12]xscreensaver and randomises over all existing screensavers. This
includes the WebCollage screensaver that loads random images from the
network, which can include offensive content.

 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/06/msg00031.html
 11. http://bugs.debian.org/311683
 12. http://packages.debian.org/xscreensaver

QA Goals for Etch. Shortly after the [13]release of sarge, Frank
Lichtenheld mentioned his [14]goals for quality assurance (QA) work
for the etch release. All packages should installable and removable on
a clean target, the number of overlapping files needs to be minimised.
He would also like to fix the last twenty packages that can't be
installed non-interactively.

 13. http://www.debian.org/News/2005/20050606
 14. http://www.livejournal.com/users/djpig/9260.html

GNOME 2.10 in unstable. Josselin Mouette [15]reported that following
the release, the GNOME team is in the process of moving GNOME 2.10
packages from the experimental repository to unstable. The core
libraries are already installed, and the rest will follow within a few
days. A handful of packages will require updates to their .desktop
files so that they appear correctly in the menus.

 15. http://www.livejournal.com/users/np237/3413.html

Library ABI Changes. Philipp Kern [16]wondered what to do besides
updating the soname if the maintainer notices that the application
binary interface (ABI) of the library is changed. Hamish Moffatt
[17]explained that an advantage of keeping the old library in section
oldlibs for a while is less hassle for local admins with self-compiled
binaries. Tollef Fog Heen [18]added that when the package name is
changed as well, older versions will stay on the admin's system.

 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg01394.html
 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg01405.html
 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg01414.html

Keysigning without personally meeting. Wesley Landake [19]proposed a
guideline to sign other people's keys without meeting them in person.
This method was soon revealed as weak since [20]falsifying a graphic
is no crime, because a notary is not as [21]trustworthy in every
country and because the web of trust is entirely [22]self-contained,
without putting any trust on government and state official. In short,
keysigning requires to meet in person for a reason.

 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg01435.html
 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg01466.html
 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg00014.html
 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg00001.html

Debian Java in Sarge. Arnaud Vandyck gave a rough [23]overview about
what has changed between woody and sarge with Java on Debian. Most
notably sarge contains improved and new free Java runtime
environments. In addition to that, a lot of software got packaged and
moved to the main section. Java packages are also group-maintained via
[24]Alioth.

 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/06/msg00002.html
 24. http://pkg-java.alioth.debian.org/

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

 * DSA 731: [25]krb4 -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 732: [26]mailutils -- Several vulnerabilities.

 25. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-731
 26. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-732

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [27]recently or contain important updates.

 27. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main

 * [28]asn1c -- ASN.1 compiler for C.
 * [29]bake -- yet another Make replacement (Python).
 * [30]boo -- OO, statically typed programming language for the CLI.
 * [31]droidbattles -- Game of programming battle droids.
 * [32]estraier -- Full-text search system for personal use.
 * [33]fish -- Friendly interactive shell.
 * [34]gtk-sharp -- Gtk# suite, CLI bindings for Gtk+ and GNOME.
 * [35]gwaterfall -- View all characters of font in all sizes.
 * [36]ipkungfu -- Iptables-based Linux firewall.
 * [37]kraptor -- Classic shoot 'em up scroller game.
 * [38]linuxsampler -- Realtime audio sampler.
 * [39]proguard -- Java class file shrinker, optimiser, and
   obfuscator.
 * [40]ptunnel -- Tunnel TCP connections over ICMP packets.
 * [41]rekall -- Graphical database front-end.
 * [42]supertransball2 -- Thrust type of game.
 * [43]t-coffee -- Multiple Sequence Alignment (Biology).
 * [44]ytnef -- Improved decoder for application/ms-tnef attachments.

 28. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/asn1c
 29. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/bake
 30. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/boo
 31. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/droidbattles
 32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/estraier
 33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/shells/fish
 34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/gtk-sharp
 35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gwaterfall
 36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ipkungfu
 37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/kraptor
 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/linuxsampler
 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/proguard
 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ptunnel
 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/rekall
 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/supertransball2
 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/t-coffee
 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/ytnef

Removed Packages. 2 packages have been [45]removed from the Debian
archive during the past week:

 45. http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt

 * lw-pro-installer -- Installer for Xanalys' Lispworks ANSI Common
   Lisp System
   [46]Bug#297431: Request of QA; Has never been part of a stable
   release
 * cl-reversi-clim -- Reversi game for Common Lisp (CLIM Executable)
   [47]Bug#311197: Request of Maintainer, contrib, alternatives exist

 46. http://bugs.debian.org/297431
 47. http://bugs.debian.org/311197

Want to continue reading DWN? 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 [48]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [49]dwn@debian.org.

 48. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 49. mailto:dwn@debian.org


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