Debian Weekly News - January 3rd, 2006

Posted by tadelste on Jan 3, 2006 1:00 PM EDT
Mailing list; By Martin Schulze
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Welcome to this year's 1st issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Mohammed Adnène Trojette summarised all major Debian events in 2005 in the [1]timeline for 2005. Philip Charles [2]reported that he has uploaded the latest [3]CD images for Debian GNU/Hurd. Manoj Srivastava [4]announced that the debian-private list is only private for three years after the general resolution on the [5]declassification procedure has passed.

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/01/
Debian Weekly News - January 3rd, 2006
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1. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/timeline 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2005/10/msg00033.html 3. http://ftp.gnuab.org/pub/debian-cd/current/ 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/12/msg00114.html 5. http://www.debian.org/vote/2005/vote_002

Reducing the Archive Size. Gürkan Sengün [6]summarised the effect of different compression algorithms on the total size of the archive. Raphaël Hertzog [7]noticed that the support of [8]7-zip archives in [9]dpkg is evaluated in order to reduce Debian's archive overall size. Steinar H. Gunderson [10]added that CPU power is also a major point to take in account.

6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00759.html 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00809.html 8. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/p7zip 9. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Dpkg7Zip 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00760.html

Debian Packages via BitTorrent. George Danchev [11]mentioned [12]apt-torrent in order to download packages upon an upgrade in parallel. The packages is composed of an apt proxy and a BitTorrent package fetcher, i.e. a seeder and a tracker. It run as a system daemon.

11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00190.html 12. http://sianka.free.fr/documentation.html

Report from FOSS.IN 2005. Kartik Mistry [13]reported about this year's [14]FOSS.IN conference that was formerly known as [15]Linux Bangalore and where two Debian related talks were held. Jaldhar Vyas also [16]reported about meetings with other Indian Debian developers he met during the conference.

13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00538.html 14. http://foss.in/2005/ 15. http://linux-bangalore.org/ 16. http://www.braincells.com/debian/index.cgi/search/item=121

Archive Architecture Qualification. Anthony Towns [17]started that decision process about the architectures that should be handled by the official Debian [18]archive. The main limitation on accepting new architectures is their space requirement on the servers. Architectures will need to demonstrate that the effort to support them isn't a complete waste of time. Strategies for non-release architectures are also needed so that they could do snapshot releases.

17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/12/msg00014.html 18. http://ftp-master.debian.org/

Promoting VIM as default. Joey Hess [19]proposed to use a special [20]vim package as default vi. Its maintainer has managed to create a [21]vim-tiny package that is only marginally larger than [22]nvi, which is the standard vi included in the base system. Some [23]default settings are not appreciated, though.

19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00796.html 20. http://packages.debian.org/vim 21. http://packages.debian.org/vim-tiny 22. http://packages.debian.org/nvi 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00936.html

/var/run versus /run. Thomas Hood [24]wondered whether the Debian system should use /var/run or /run. Anthony Towns [25]summarised the arguments pro and contra certain directories and concluded that each of the solutions has a degree of ugliness.

24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00909.html 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00948.html

Thoughts on the Quality of Debian. Lars Wirzenius [26]thought about ways to make Debian better from a technical point of view. He summarised several areas where the quality of the Debian distribution is improved, including using tools with higher levels of abstraction, reporting and fixing bugs, bug squashing parties, automated testing and quality assurance.

26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg01034.html

Using a moving License. Florent Bayle [27]wondered how to treat a package whose license links to a web page instead of including it. This license could be altered after the package has been included in Debian. Decklin Foster [28]explained that Debian may redistribute it under the license which it has received and that the license text must be distributed along with the software.

27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/12/msg00124.html 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/12/msg00133.html

General Resolution: GNU Free Documentation License. Anthony Towns [29]proposed an official statement with regards to the [30]GNU Free Documentation License. It's been six months after the [31]editorial changes of the [32]social contract that forbid non-free documentation to be distributed with Debian.

29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/12/msg00115.html 30. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html 31. http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003 32. http://www.debian.org/social_contract

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [33]recently or contain important updates.

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

* [34]aspectc++ -- Aspect-oriented programming extension for C++. * [35]boost-build -- Build system. * [36]bzrtools -- Collection of tools for bzr. * [37]cdrbq -- Graphical CD burning frontend. * [38]conspy -- Remote control of Linux virtual consoles. * [39]cvsnt -- Better CVS. * [40]eclipse-cdt -- C/C++ Development Tools for Eclipse. * [41]freeloader -- GNOME download manager supporting torrents. * [42]gcx -- Astronomical image processing and photometry GTK+ application. * [43]gdebi -- Simple tool to install deb files. * [44]gifsicle -- Tool for manipulating GIF images. * [45]gnome-sudoku -- Game for the popular Japanese sudoku logic puzzle. * [46]granule -- Flashcard program for learning new words. * [47]grsync -- GTK+ frontend for rsync. * [48]kmess -- Instant messenger to use MSN on KDE. * [49]knetdockapp -- Network activity monitor applet for KDE. * [50]leo -- English-German dictionary using dict.leo.org. * [51]linhdd -- GTK frontend for cfdisk/df/hdparm/mkfs. * [52]link-grammar -- Carnegie Mellon University's link grammar parser for English. * [53]ndoc -- Code documentation generator for .NET. * [54]pessulus -- Lockdown editor for GNOME. * [55]postfix-smtpguard -- Smtpguard policy service daemon for Postfix. * [56]procinfo -- Displays system information from /proc. * [57]qliss3d -- Demonstration tool for Lissajous physiques. * [58]runit-services -- UNIX init scheme with service supervision (services). * [59]smart-notifier -- Graphical hard disk health status notifier. * [60]sobby -- Dedicated server for collaborative editing. * [61]sudo-ldap -- Provide limited super user privileges to specific users. * [62]sysprof -- System-wide Linux profiler. * [63]tofrodos -- Converts DOS <-> Unix text files, alias tofromdos. * [64]uim-el -- Emacs frontend for uim. * [65]vamps -- Tool to recompress and modify the structure of a DVD. * [66]yample -- Yet Another Mail Processing Language.

34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/aspectc++ 35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/boost-build 36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/bzrtools 37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/cdrbq 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/conspy 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cvsnt 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/eclipse-cdt 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/freeloader 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/gcx 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/gdebi 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gifsicle 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/gnome-sudoku 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/granule 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/grsync 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/kmess 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/knetdockapp 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/leo 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/linhdd 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/link-grammar 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/ndoc 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/pessulus 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/postfix-smtpguard 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/procinfo 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/qliss3d 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/runit-services 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/smart-notifier 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/sobby 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/sudo-ldap 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/sysprof 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/tofrodos 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/uim-el 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/vamps 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/yample

Orphaned Packages. 1 package was orphaned this week and requires a new maintainer. This makes a total of 171 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [67]WNPP pages for the full list, and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you plan to take over a package.

67. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

* [68]psh -- Interactive shell with the power of perl. ([69]Bug#344748)

68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/shells/psh 69. http://bugs.debian.org/344748

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 [70]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [71]dwn@debian.org.

70. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 71. mailto:dwn@debian.org

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