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Welcome to this year's 13th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include:

Bits from the Debian CD team

Steve ?McIntyre posted some [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/10/msg00003.html bits from the Debian CD team]. With the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" CD images, DVD images as well as Blue Ray disc images will be available. For the first time in several years, users should be able to fit all of the packages for one architecture on a single disc. But due to the increased size of the Debian archive and the limitation regarding bandwidth and archive size (especially on our mirrors) only a limited number of each image will be available for direct download on our mirrors.

All images will be available via Jigdo (a tool which creates images by downloading single files (e.g. .deb packages) and putting them on the right place in a large file), and most images for the popular architectures will be available as torrent, too.

He furthermore gave some numbers about the total numbers of images needed to be created for Lenny. Summarized over all architectures that would be 414 CD images, 64 DVD images and 13 Blue-Ray Disc images.

Debian, software patents and archive layout

A recently announced [http://bugs.debian.org/501190 intent to package moon], an open source implementation of a patented proprietary product, caused some [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00063.html discussion regarding software patents]. Packaging such a kind of software and distributing it via our mirror network could be a legal risk for Debian and it's mirrors.

Paul Wise argued that problems caused by these kind of software are already addressed by unoffical archives like [http://www.debian-multimedia.org debian-multimedia.org] and [http://www.debian-unofficial.org debian-unofficial.org]. Reinhard Tartler [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00152.html pointed out some flaws with these archives] and [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00127.html proposed to introduce] a new section beside main, contrib and non-free, and to adapt the policy accordingly. His proposal, however, had some flaws, too.

Statistics about packages.debian.org usage

Since [http://packages.debian.org packages.debian.org] has been moved to a new host sponsored by [http://www.1und1.info/ 1&1], Jörg Jasper took the opportunity and [http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/10/19/packagesdebianorg-1.html published some data] about the usage of this service. Since the start of this year packages.debian.org already saw 5'777'672 unique visitors downloading the page 122'314'763 times (both numbers excluding bots, like crawlers for search engines). Nearly the half of the visitors directly went to packages.debian.org, while less than a quarter came by way of a search engine.

unoffical bug tracker and delayed queue

The [http://bts.turmzimmer.net unofficial tracker] for release critical bugs [http://blogs.turmzimmer.net/2008/10/14#lenny-4 now incorporates] bugs fixed by uploads to the so-called delayed queue. This makes it easier to track bugs needing to be worked on. The delayed queue is used for package not uploaded by the regular maintainer of the package (so called NMUs).

Bits from the Eee PC team

Ben Armstrong delivered a [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/10/msg00002.html report] on the status of the port of Debian for the Eee PC netbooks. A recent upload of the Linux Kernel fixed some thermal problems and solved issues with ACPI. Also, the ath5k driver included with the Linux kernel 2.6.27 supports the wireless adaptors of the 701, 900, 900A and 1000HD models, which so far required a non-free driver.

Policy for backporting KDE features

Sune Vuorela [http://pusling.com/blog/?p=89 wondered] how to deal with features introduced in recent version of the desktop environment KDE. Other distributions often seem to backport new features to older versions they ship in their releases. He lists some pros and cons, and wonders whether Debian should do similar.

Listing of debian.net domains

Nico Colde reported that the he removed his list of debian.net subdomains (which can be registered by any Debian Developer) due to privacy issues. He [http://nion.modprobe.de/blog/archives/655-debian.net-domain-page-no-longer-available.html asks] developers to add their debian.net subdomains to a [http://wiki.debian.org/DebianNetDomains wiki page].

Report from Skolelinux/Debian-edu gathering

Sune Vuorela [http://pusling.com/blog/?p=88 reported] on the recent gathering of Skolelinux / Debian-Edu developers. He spent some time working on educational videos, KDE related education packages as well as GNASH, a free software flash player.

Slogan for "Lenny"

The Debian Art team is seeking a slogan for the next stable release Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny". The discussion as well as a poll can be found in the archives of the [http://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity/2008/10/msg00037.html debian publicity mailing list].

Systems 2008

From Tuesday the 21st of October to Friday the 24th of October, the Debian Project will participate with a booth at the Systems 2008 in Munich, Germany. Please see the respective [http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEventsDeSystems2008 events page] for further details.

# FIXME: those dates are really badly formatted, I think. --madduck

Technical Dutch Open Source Event 2008

From Saturday the 25th of October to Sunday the 26th of October, the Debian Project will participate with a booth at the Technical Dutch Open Source Event (T-DOSE) in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Please see the respective [http://www.debian.org/events/2008/1025-t-dose events page] for further details. # FIXME: those dates are really badly formatted, I think. --madduck

New Developers

SInce the previous issue of the Debian Project News, 7 applicants have been accepted as [http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2008/10/msg00026.html Debian Developers], and 3 as [http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/10/msg00040.html Debian Maintainers] Please welcome Adam Barratt, Julian Andres Klode, Jonny Lamb, Joachim Reichel, Bradley Smith, Behan Webster and Giridhar Appaji Nag Y as well ass Emmanuel Bouthenot, Samuel Thibaul and David Paleino to our project!

Important Debian Security Advisories

Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1649 iceweasel], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1650 openldap], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1651 ruby1.8], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1652 runy1.9], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1653 linux-2.6.18] and [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1655 libxml2]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.

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

New and noteworthy packages

The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently ([http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg among others]):

[http://debaday.debian.net/2008/10/19/memstat-identify-what-is-using-up-virtual-memory/ memstat] (a tool to identify what is using up virtual memory) and [http://debaday.debian.net/2008/10/12/smartmontools-control-the-health-of-your-hard-disk/ smartmontools] (a set of tools to control the health of your status hard disk) where presented by Debian Package of the Day.

Work-needing packages

Currently 441 packages are orphaned and 124 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00217.html recent] [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00339.html reports] to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested packages which need your help].

Want to continue reading DPN?

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 [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.

Meike Reichle and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl contributed to this issue of the Debian Project News.


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