Debian Weekly News - May 25th, 2005

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/21/
Debian Weekly News - May 25th, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 21st issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. A lot of activity has still been recorded on the
[1]debian-release list in order to fix the remaining
[2]release-critical bugs and to get the translations into shape. Matt
Whipp [3]quoted several people to counter the claim that Free
Software is running short of developers.

 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/
 2. http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/
 3. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/69766/open-source-not-running-short-of-developers.html

Debian Desktop with 12 Watts. Silas Bennett wanted to run a low-power
desktop system and ended up using a [4]Mac mini. He [5]described
that he had removed the hard disk and CD-ROM drive to save power and
space that he could reuse with a battery pack, so that the system
draws 12 watts from it. He was also delighted to see the sarge
installer run flawlessly.

 4. http://www.apple.com/macmini/
 5. http://www.home.earthlink.net/~silasb/macbat/

Debian GNU/Hurd running GNOME and Qt. Michael Banck [6]managed to get
GNOME compile and run on GNU/Hurd, albeit with some caveats and loose
ends, and also took a [7]screenshot. Several packages had to be
modified in order to make them build, so that GNOME won't be uploaded
for hurd-i386 soon, but the general issues seem to have been solved.
In related news, Qt is [8]running fine on the Hurd as well, and
volunteers are sought after for porting KDE.

 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2005/05/msg00109.html
 7. http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/media/hurd-gnome.png
 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2005/04/msg00082.html

Changes to the weekly WNPP Posting. Martin Michlmayr [9]announced
that the weekly mail about work-needing and prospective [10]packages
won't be sent to the announce list anymore but to the dedicated
[11]debian-wnpp list instead. In addition to that, future mails will
only include new entries in order to have the mails be helpful again.

 9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/05/msg00012.html
 10. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/21/$HOME)/devel/wnpp/
 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-wnpp/

Confusing Package Versions. Nico Golde [12]noticed that the most
recent version of [13]unrar has a lower version number than the
packages before. Roberto Sanchez [14]explained that the old package
was non-free and has been replaced by a free version with a lower
version number. Unfortunately it can't [15]cope with current RAR 3.x
archives. The free version has since then been renamed into
[16]unrar-free to avoid confusion.

 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg01023.html
 13. http://packages.debian.org/unrar
 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg01024.html
 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg01029.html
 16. http://packages.debian.org/unrar-free

Packaging Waste. Romain Beauxis wanted to [17]package [18]waste a
collaboration tool for small teams. Mirco Bauer [19]noted that the
authors considered this [20]unauthorised software. It seems that
Nullsoft's parent company AOL didn't agree to the release, hence the
strong message.

 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg00444.html
 18. http://waste.sourceforge.net/
 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/05/msg00353.html
 20. http://www.nullsoft.com/free/waste/

Last Update to Woody. Joey Schulze [21]sent in the [22]preparation for
the last update to Debian 3.0. As usual, this mostly adds recent
security updates to the woody release. He also [23]explained that
there can't be another update after the release of sarge due to
deficiencies in the archive [24]suite.

 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/05/msg00013.html
 22. http://people.debian.org/~joey/3.0r6/
 23. http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200505130653
 24. http://cvs.debian.org/dak/?cvsroot=dak

Non-US being phased out. Frans Pop [25]proposed a paragraph about the
end of the non-US archive to be added to the [26]release notes since
it is dysfunctional and not needed anymore. From the 29 [27]packages
still included, only five haven't been able to be [28]moved into the
main archive.

 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/05/msg01163.html
 26. http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/releasenotes
 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/05/msg01354.html
 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/05/msg01355.html

Debian-Volatile Strategy. The volatile team [29]pondered to create a
second [30]volatile archive with less strict criteria. This would help
packages such as [31]Gaim that need to be updated during the lifetime
of sarge in order to support modified protocols. They are also looking
for ways to announce updated packages.

 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/05/msg00016.html
 30. http://volatile.debian.net/
 31. http://packages.debian.org/gaim

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

 * DSA 724: [32]phpsysinfo -- Cross site scripting.
 * DSA 725: [33]ppxp -- Local root exploit.
 * DSA 726: [34]oops -- Format string vulnerability.
 * DSA 727: [35]libconvert-uulib-perl -- Arbitrary code execution.

 32. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-724
 33. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-725
 34. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-726
 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-727

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [36]recently or contain important updates.

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

 * [37]bbclone -- PHP based Web Counter on Steroids.
 * [38]chora2 -- Code repository viewing component for horde
   framework.
 * [39]cyrus2courier -- Converts Cyrus mailbox format to Maildir.
 * [40]desktop-profiles -- Framework for setting up desktop profiles.
 * [41]drift -- Type sensitive preprocessor for Haskell.
 * [42]grabc -- Identifies an onscreen colour using a crosshair
   cursor.
 * [43]installation-report -- System installation report.
 * [44]kiosktool -- Configure the KDE kiosk framework.
 * [45]p7zip -- File archiver with high compression ratio.
 * [46]releaseforge -- Alternative to SourceForge's File Release
   System (FRS).
 * [47]schism -- ImpulseTracker clone aiming at providing the same
   look&feel.
 * [48]unrar-free -- Unarchiver for .rar files.
 * [49]webcpp -- Configurable utility to convert source code to HTML.
 * [50]yaws -- High performance HTTP 1.1 webserver written in Erlang.
 * [51]z80asm -- Assembler for the Zilog Z80 microprocessor.

 37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/bbclone
 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/chora2
 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/cyrus2courier
 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/desktop-profiles
 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/drift
 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/grabc
 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/installation-report
 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kiosktool
 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/p7zip
 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/releaseforge
 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/schism
 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/unrar-free
 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/webcpp
 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/yaws
 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/z80asm

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 [52]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [53]dwn@debian.org.

 52. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 53. mailto:dwn@debian.org


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