Debian Weekly News - November 30th, 2004

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/47/
Debian Weekly News - November 30th, 2004
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Welcome to this year's 47th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Debian flyers have been [1]moved to [2]Alioth
for easier maintenance and contribution. Despite the upcoming release
of sarge, another [3]update to the current stable release is being
[4]prepared.

 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/11/msg00014.html
 2. http://debian-flyers.alioth.debian.org/
 3. http://people.debian.org/~joey/3.0r4/
 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/11/msg00219.html

Debian News RSS Feed. Greg Stark [5]wondered if [6]Debian Weekly
News is available via RSS. Romain Francoise [7]pointed out that
[8]GMANE provides RSS feeds for many Free Software lists, including
Debian News [9]RSS and in [10]blog" format. There is currently no
official RSS feed provided by the Debian project, though
[11]volunteers are welcome to write the necessary code.

 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/11/msg00772.html
 6. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/
 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/11/msg00777.html
 8. http://gmane.org/
 9. http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news
 10. http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news
 11. http://www.debian.org/devel/website/

Saving Download Bandwidth. Goswin von Brederlow [12]proposed to
provide sorted Packages files in order to reduce the amount of data
that needs to be retrieved for each update since the Packages file for
sid is already 13 MB (3.5 MB compressed) large. Adam Heath [13]added
that the package name alone would not be sufficient and Eduard Bloch
[14]mentioned apt-dupdate as another means to speed up the download.
Several developers have contributed ideas and code about this to
[15]Bug#128818.

 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/11/msg00790.html
 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/11/msg00916.html
 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/11/msg00812.html
 15. http://bugs.debian.org/128818

The Workstation OS: Debian. Hindistan Kivilcim [16]explained the
reasons to make Debian GNU/Linux the operating system (OS) on his
workstation which are crystal clear: "Installing new applications and
configuring old ones in Debian GNU/Linux is a breeze. You do not have
to worry about dependencies, library problems, or even former
configuration files." He also emphasised package dependencies versus
file dependencies.

 16. http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/23/1933211

OpenOffice.org 1.9 for Debian. Chris Halls [17]announced very rough
[18]packages for OpenOffice.org 1.9.62 as a preview for the upcoming
version 2.0. He warns that these packages are not of the same quality
or caliber as Debian users would normally expect to see. They mostly
lack proper Debian integration as well and the packages will be placed
in /opt/openoffice1.9.62/.

 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-openoffice/2004/11/msg00216.html
 18. http://people.debian.org/~halls/openoffice/test/ooo1.9-java/

Remote Collaboration. Don Marti [19]wrote about fostering the
conversations that make a group a team. He mentions that mail can
quickly turn into personal accusations and misunderstandings so that a
short phone call may avoid real trouble. He also emphasised on the
value of online meetings (IRC, IM) and cooperative online resources
(bug tracking system, wikis) and mentioned when they should not be
used.

 19. http://zgp.org/~dmarti/blosxom/business/collaboration.html

Installing Linux 2.6 on Debian. Falko Timme wrote a [20]tutorial on
running Linux 2.6 together with Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (woody). In order
to have module support some backports need to be installed. One of the
final steps is creating a ramdisk so that the kernel will boot
properly.

 20. http://www.falkotimme.com/howtos/debian_kernel2.6_compile/

Bug Squashing Parties last Weekend. During the bug squashing parties
last weekend, several [21]release-critical bugs have been closed.
Additionally, a solution for the KDE removal [22]problem has been
discussed and improvements to the testing scripts prepared. There are
some pictures from the party in [23]Frankfurt, Germany. Corrections
for the remaining problems are still appreciated.

 21. http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/
 22. http://bugs.debian.org/183702
 23. http://www.inittab.de/gallery/2004/bsp_0411/

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

 * DSA 595: [24]bnc -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 596: [25]sudo -- Privilege escalation.
 * DSA 597: [26]cyrus-impad -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 598: [27]yardradius -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 599: [28]tetex-bin -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 601: [29]libgd1 -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 602: [30]libgd2 -- Arbitrary code execution.

 24. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-595
 25. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-596
 26. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-597
 27. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-598
 28. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-599
 29. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-601
 30. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-602

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [31]recently or contain important updates.

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

 * [32]acovea -- Analysis of compiler options via evolutionary
   algorithms.
 * [33]dstat -- Versatile resource statistics tool.
 * [34]fceu -- FCE Ultra - Nintendo (8-bit) emulator.
 * [35]gip -- IP calculator for GNOME desktop environment.
 * [36]gnulib -- GNU Portability Library.
 * [37]hotsmtp -- SMTP to Hotmail (HTTPmail) gateway.
 * [38]kimdaba -- KDE tool for indexing, searching and viewing images
   by keywords.
 * [39]mozilla-opensc -- Mozilla plugin for authentication using
   OpenSC.
 * [40]nip2 -- Spreadsheet-like graphical image manipulation tool.
 * [41]pxlib1 -- Library to read/write Paradox database files.
 * [42]slat -- Tools for information flow analysis of SELinux
   policies.
 * [43]timecode-dev -- C++ hierarchy which controls and describes
   time code.
 * [44]unalz -- Utility used for decompressing alzip format file.
 * [45]wx2.5-common -- wxWidgets Cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit 2.5.
 * [46]zvbi -- VBI proxy daemon and wrapper.

 32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/acovea
 33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/dstat
 34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/fceu
 35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gip
 36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/gnulib
 37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/hotsmtp
 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/kimdaba
 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/mozilla-opensc
 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/nip2
 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/pxlib1
 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/slat
 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libdevel/timecode-dev
 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/unalz
 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/wx2.5-common
 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/zvbi

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 [47]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [48]dwn@debian.org.

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


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