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Welcome to this year's 8th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue:

"Lenny" frozen

Marc Brockschmidt, Release Manager, announced that "Lenny", the upcoming new stable release, has been [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00002.html frozen] as [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/07/msg00005.html planned]. Automatic transition of new packages from the development branch "sid" or "unstable" to the current testing branch "lenny" have been stopped and now need manual approval. Packages fixing release critical or important bugs or adding documentation or translation fixes can be approved by the release team upon request.

Lenny is still scheduled to be released in September 2008.

Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 updated including support for newer hardware

The Debian project [http://www.debian.org/News/2008/20080726 released] an updated version of its current stable release Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 "etch" called "etch and a half". While this update mainly includes security fixes and fixes for severe bugs, the Debian project has for the first time also added support for newer hardware by adding new drivers with updated Linux kernel and X.org packages. The new drivers are optional and the old versions will still be supported.

Detailed upgrade instructions are available in the respective [http://www.debian.org/News/2008/20080726 announcement], the [http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/etchnhalf etch and a half release notes] and the [http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/debian-installer/etchnhalf etch and a half installation guide].

Schedule for 8th annual Debian Conference announced

Jörg Jaspert [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00001.html announced] the [https://penta.debconf.org/dc8_schedule/ schedule for the 8th annual Debian Conference] which will be held from August 10th to August 16th, 2008 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. As usual the schedule has to considered as "work in progress" since session slots will be filled during the conference with spontaneous sessions, so called BoF ("Birds of a feather") sessions.

For those, who can't attend the conference the DebConf video team will try to stream all sessions, so interested people can point their media play (e.g. xine or totem) to http://video.debconf.org:8000 or http://video.eu.debconf.org:8000, http://video.na.debconf.org:8000 and http://video.au.debconf.org:8000 respectively. The file names are microcine.ogv.m3u and salon_del_mar.ogv.m3u, depending on the respective location of the event. IRC channels which can be used to participate in discussion sessions will be announced separately; an schedule with times in UTC is in preparation. After DebConf8 the sessions will also be available as videos at http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/.

In related news, the organizers of the Debian Conference are [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00000.html looking for location proposals] for the 10th annual Debian Conference to be held in 2010. Groups interested in hosting our 10th conference should prepare their proposal according to [http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/LocationCheckList this checklist] and send it to debconf-team@lists.debconf.org.

Debian Days around the world

Debian users around the world are preparing to celebrate the [http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay2008 15th anniversary of the Debian project] on August 16th 2008. Currently Debian Days are planned in Nicaragua, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, Chile, Argentina and eight different locations in Brazil. Apart from general celebrating the Debian Days will feature install fests, talks, discussion panels, LAN parties, Debian merchandising, software demonstrations, advanced installation workshops, knowledge exchange and much more.

The Brazilian Portuguese event will be transmitted on-line by tv.softwarelivre.org and torrents will be available after. Other Brazilian Debian User Groups interested in their own event transmissions may visit the event page for details.

Limited Xen support in Lenny

A recent discussion on the debian-devel list highlighted that due to the upstream delays in getting Xen support integrated into kernels beyond 2.6.18, Lenny will need to ship with limited Xen support. Pasi Kärkkäinen explained [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00475.html the situation] and Bastian Blank wrote [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00476.html an article] about the options the Debian Project has. His conclusion is to support a 2.6.18 kernel in Lenny, until "lenny-and-a-half" adds better Xen support. However, the release managers have not yet confirmed the final decision.

Screenshots of GUI applications

Roberto Sanchez [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00770.html raised the topic of screenshots for GUI applications]. Since it's often difficult to judge a package only based on the textual package description, he would like to see the possibility to add screenshots of specific applications to Debian, allowing package search and maintenance tools to show the user what he or she can expect from a specific package.

During the discussion Raphael Hertzog [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00782.html reminded of a previous discussion during the 6th Debian Conference] and Paul Wise [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00774.html added], that the Debian Package Games Team already creates screenshots for their games, which are available in the package [http://packages.debian.org/games-thumbnails games-thumbnails] and are used by [http://packages.debian.org/goplay goplay], a debtags based browser for game related packages. Jon Dowland [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00877.html pointed out possible legal issues], since screenshots could be seen as derivative works of the original application in some legislations.

Bits from the Debian Eee PC team

Ben Armstrong [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00002.html reports] on the current activities of the [http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC Debian Eee PC team]: Debian's next release Lenny will work with all of the earliest models of the Eee PC and the Eee PC team hopes to soon realise its goal of a completely DFSG free system for the earliest models of the Eee Pc. Newer models are now able to install using the atl1e ethernet driver from eeepc.debian.net, support for wireless and other aspects of the new hardware will follow soon, also the wireless custom Debian-installer is making good progress. There are currently two Debian-live USB images available: a demo of the [http://lxde.org/ LXDE] (a lightweight desktop environment that is made with the Eee PC in mind) desktop and a minimal console-only image for rescue/backup. The team is also always looking for new members to support Debian's support for the Eee Pc.

SELinux and linux

Russel Coker [http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/07/31/installing-se-linux-on-lenny/ gave] [http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/08/01/selinux-activate/ several] [http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/08/04/lenny-se-linux-on-the-desktop/ updates] on security enhanced Linux in the upcoming stable release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny".

adept package manager version 3.0 alpha

Petr Ročkai gave a [http://web.mornfall.net/blog/adept_3.0_alpha_5.html report] about his work on a rewritten version of adept, a package management tool for KDE. He points out, that the new version of adept has been improved regarding speed, reliability and user experience. Among the new features he added, he lists full text search and handling of interactive installs (regarding for example debconf and changed configuration files).

Debian Project at FrOSCon 2008

From Saturday the 23rd of August 2008 to Sunday the 24th of August 2008, the Debian Project will participate with a booth at Free and Open Source Software Conference 2008 in St. Augustin, Germany. Please see the respective [http://www.debian.org/events/2008/0823-froscon events page] for further details.

Other news

Stefano Zacchiroli [http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2008/07/reminder:_Homepage_pseudo_fields_are_GONE/ reminded] package maintainers, that the old pseudo header for upstream Homepages in the package description has been replaced by a proper header, which should now be used.

Ian Jackson [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00844.html pointed out] how to properly rename a package especially to ease the transition of other packages dependencies.

Christian von Essen [http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2008/07/msg00105.html reported] about his [http://www.debian.org/News/2008/20080427 Google Summer of Code project] the [http://wiki.debian.org/UltimateDebianDatabase "Ultimate Debian Database"], which combined Debian information from various sources. He's also looking for [http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2008/08/msg00002.html example queries] for further tests of his database layout.

By popular request the DPN will as from now again feature a list of new and noteworthy packages, that have recently been added to the unstable branch. The list will feature editorial picks from official list of [http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg new packages] and will be appended to each issue of the Debian Project News.

Important Debian Security Advisories

Debian's Security Team released among others advisories for the packages [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1613 libgd], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1614 iceweasel], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1615 xulrunner ], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1616 clamav], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1620 python2.5], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1621 icedove] and [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1625 cupsys]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.

Please note that those are only the most important security advisories of the last two weeks. If you would like to be kept up to date about the security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ mailing list for security announcements.]

Work-needing packages

Currently x packages are orphaned and y packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/06/msg00762.html recent] [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00004.html reports] to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete archive of packages requesting [http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested help].

Want to continue reading DPN? 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 [http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute contributing page] to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at debian-publicity@lists.debian.org.

AndreFelipeMachado, Graham Cobb, Paul van der Vlis, Meike Reichle and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl contributed to this issue of the Debian Project News.


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