Distros
Gentoo Monthly Newsletter -- 30 November 2008
The November issue of the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter has been released. In this month's issue: Kernel team, Incognito, Gentoo-wiki returns, and more!
Gentoo Monthly Newsletter -- 30 September 2008
The September issue of the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter has been released. In this month's issue: EAPI-2 approved, Gentoo-Quebec training, learn to use iotop, and more!
New release strategy to provide more current install media
In future releases, Gentoo will focus on a more back-to-basics approach that will give you up-to-date install media on a regular basis and make much better use of our human resources. We're looking into automated weekly builds of the minimal CDs and stage tarballs as well as maybe an annual LiveCD release. We will keep you updated as we decide on the details of this new approach.
Consequently, we're canceling the 2008.1 release. The release engineering team has to reconsider its priorities—we overstretched our human resources during the prolonged 2008.0 release process. This caused too much stress for our release engineers and multiple postponements of the release.
You can help! The release engineering team is looking for new volunteers because it perpetually has a severe lack of manpower. We are particularly looking for people with a good grasp of ebuild development and the ability to debug/fix problems that crop up during building and testing of the stage tarballs and ISO images. We will update the staffing needs page with more details.
Ben de Groot contributed the draft for this announcement.
Get involved: Bugday coming up Saturday
What: Gentoo contributors get together to help each other fix bugs
Where: irc.freenode.net, #gentoo-bugs
When: Saturday, September 6, in a timezone near you
What do you need to bring?
- A Gentoo system, an Internet connection and an IRC client
- Your bug. If you don't have one, we will find you one to suit your area of interest and your skills
- Your favorite editor
- A way to test that your bug is fixed (asking people counts!)
- You don't need to know C, C++, or bash
What's a bug? Gentoo's way of tracking change requests. A change request can be anything from "I've found a typo in foo" to "I've built this really useful program called bar but there's no ebuild for it." Bugs have various levels of helpfulness, from identifying the existence of a problem to localizing the problem to providing the patch to fix it.
There are bugs in documentation such as man pages as well as ebuilds and the source code that Gentoo distributes. These bugs are problem reports. Bugs for things Gentoo doesn't do yet but you think should be done are feature requests. Bugday is more about fixing problems than adding features, but you won't be turned away if you want help with a new feature.
Want to know more about Bugday? It's held on the first Saturday of every month. It's an opportunity for everyone to contribute to making Gentoo better, and eventually you might even become a Gentoo developer. See the Bugday project page for more details.
Bugday is about community spirit. Gentoo is a community—there is no "me" and "them", there is only "we," so instead of lobbying for "them" to fix your particular bug, work together to fix it! Bugday is an opportunity to get help to help yourself.
If you've been wanting to get involved but weren't sure how, Bugday is a great way for you to see what goes on in making a distribution and get involved in Gentoo.
Roy Bamford contributed the draft for this announcement.
Gentoo Monthly Newsletter -- 31 August 2008
The August issue of the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter has been released. In this month's issue: PHP4 removal, GSOC interview, new Gentoo-based distributions, and more!
Gentoo Monthly Newsletter -- 28 July 2008
The July issue of the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter has been released. In this month's issue: 2008.0 release, Gentoo at Peel Fresco Music Lounge and more!
2008.0-r1 may help if you've had LiveCD problems
For those unfortunate souls who couldn't boot or burn the LiveCD, we've provided the 2008.0-r1 revision bump. It fixes these specific problems:
- Bug #230998: 2008.0 LiveCD for x86/amd64 messes up when copying kernel/initramfs into tmpfs
- Bug #231024: LiveCD AMD64 image does not fit on ordinary 700MB CD
We apologize if you encountered one of these problems. We fixed them as quickly as we could after hearing about them. Get the new 2008.0-r1 revision from our "Get Gentoo!" page.
Gentoo Linux 2008.0 released
The 2008.0 final release is out! Code-named "It's got what plants crave," this release contains numerous new features including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD. LiveDVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree.
- Updated installer: The installer now only performs networkless installations using the packages and ebuild tree on the LiveCD. It also contains numerous fixes for extended and logical partitions.
- Improved hardware support: Moving to the 2.6.24 kernel added many new drivers for hardware released since the 2007.0 release.
- Complete rework of profiles: Restructuring profiles allowed significant cleanup of redundancies, reducing developer maintenance and confusion. The difference for you is that profiles now appear in /usr/portage/profiles/ under default/linux/ instead of default-linux/. See the upgrading guide for more details.
- Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD: To save space, the LiveCDs switched to the smaller Xfce environment. This means that a binary installation using the LiveCD will install Xfce, but you're still free to build GNOME or KDE from source.
- No LiveDVDs on x86 or amd64: In the interest of getting the release out, the release engineering team decided to postpone LiveDVDs because of problems in their generation. They may show up later—if so, we'll let you know.
- Updated packages: Highlights of the 2008.0 release include Portage 2.1.4.4, a 2.6.24 kernel, Xfce 4.4.2, gcc 4.1.2 and glibc 2.6.1.
A big thanks goes out to our release engineering team members for their hard work over many months to turn 2008.0 into reality.
Get the new release from our "Get Gentoo!" page.
New council elected
Elections just ended for the Gentoo council for the next year. Turnout was 57% with 145 developers voting, which is quite excellent. The council, created by GLEP 39 to replace Gentoo's previous hierarchy, decides on global issues and policies that affect multiple projects. To select council members, Gentoo uses the Condorcet voting method, which involves ranking them in order rather than just picking a single candidate. Here are your new council members, listed by ranking in the election results:
All of the previous council members who ran again were re-elected, and the two new members are Mark Loeser and Tobias Scherbaum. A full list of ranked candidates is also available. These graphs illustrate the results more clearly. They are histograms, where higher columns on the left side indicate high rankings, and higher columns on the right side indicate low rankings.
The new council members will get right to work—the new council's first meeting, scheduled for July 10, is approaching fast.
Get involved: Bugday coming up Saturday
What: Gentoo contributors get together to help each other fix bugs
Where: irc.freenode.net, #gentoo-bugs
When: Saturday, July 5, in a timezone near you
What do you need to bring?
- A Gentoo system, an Internet connection and an IRC client
- Your bug. If you don't have one, we will find you one to suit your area of interest and your skills
- Your favorite editor
- A way to test that your bug is fixed (asking people counts!)
- You don't need to know C, C++, or bash
What's a bug? Gentoo's way of tracking change requests. A change request can be anything from "I've found a typo in foo" to "I've built this really useful program called bar but there's no ebuild for it." Bugs have various levels of helpfulness, from identifying the existence of a problem to localizing the problem to providing the patch to fix it.
There are bugs in documentation such as man pages as well as ebuilds and the source code that Gentoo distributes. These bugs are problem reports. Bugs for things Gentoo doesn't do yet but you think should be done are feature requests. Bugday is more about fixing problems than adding features, but you won't be turned away if you want help with a new feature.
Want to know more about Bugday? It's held on the first Saturday of every month. It's an opportunity for everyone to contribute to making Gentoo better, and eventually you might even become a Gentoo developer. See the Bugday project page for more details.
Bugday is about community spirit. Gentoo is a community—there is no "me" and "them", there is only "we," so instead of lobbying for "them" to fix your particular bug, work together to fix it! Bugday is an opportunity to get help to help yourself.
If you've been wanting to get involved but weren't sure how, Bugday is a great way for you to see what goes on in making a distribution and get involved in Gentoo.
Roy Bamford contributed the draft for this announcement.
Fedora Tunisia: Fedora 10 (Cambridge)
Le projet Fedora est fier d'annoncer la disponibilité de la version
finale de Fedora 10. Vous pouvez l'obtenir dès maintenant sur
https://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora
A l'occasion de la disponibilité de cette nouvelle version, l'équipe de
Fedora-Tunisia organise le 13 décembre un événement à L'INSAT (Tunis) pour en découvrir toutes les nouveautés.
De plus, vous pourrez rejoindre à la communauté Fedora en amenant soit
votre ordinateur portable, afin d'y installer la nouvelle version, soit
une clé USB de grande capacité (au moins 1GB), afin de repartir avec
Fedora 10 dans votre poche, version utilisable partout, sur n'importe
quel ordinateur.
Au niveau des nouveautés de Fedora 10, rappelons:
- Démarrage plus rapide et entièrement graphique grâce au
remplacement de RHGB par Plymouth. - Nouveau NetworkManager avec partage de connexion WiFi.
- Gestion des imprimantes facilitée.
- Meilleure gestion des télécommandes et liaisons infrarouges.
- Gestion facilitée et plus rapide des logiciels grâce à
PackageKit et RPM 4.6. - Sectool, un framework d'audit et de sécurité.
- Nouvelle version de PulseAudio plus réactive et consommant moins
de ressources. - Intégration du thème graphique « Solar ».
* Kernel 2.6.27.5 avec notamment un meilleur support WiFi et
Webcam (plus de 250 nouveaux modèles sont supportés). - Gnome 2.24, KDE 4.1.2, NetBeans 6.1, Eclipse 3.4, OpenOffice.org
3.0, GIMP 2.6 et de nombreuses autres nouveautés logicielles. - Ajout des environnements de bureau LXDE et SUGAR.
Une liste plus complète ainsi que le détail de chacune des nouveautés
citées est disponible sur
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureList
Des captures d'écran et une vidéo de démarrage avec Plymouth sont
disponibles sur https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tours/Fedora10
Le text de l'annonce est basé sur la version de Fedora-fr qu'on remercie.
Jeff Bailey: Coming up to the third night in the new place...
I'm sitting in the corner of what will be the office space. Right now, it's got the cordless phone, the wifi router, the cable modem, and the Vonage (codec? modem? codec seems likely, how wonderfully archaic). Off to the side is a sewing table of some sort that the former owners left behind which has the power brick for our cell phones and Angie's laptop on it.
We're running laundry for the first time in the washing machine downstairs, and seasoning the new cast iron frying pan. Leif had a bath earlier and actually went down at about the normal time. He woke up at 05h30 this morning, probably due to the lack of curtains. It apparently starts to get bright early, and none of us are sleeping well with three of us in a double.
Our furniture is due to arrive somewhere between the 15th and the 18th. I phoned today and the moving company told us that the stuff hasn't left California yet. Ah well. We've purchased a toaster over and electric kettle so far. We bought the stove, washer and dryer from the former owner. There was a spare fridge downstairs that we're using, but mostly we're using the step outside the kitchen door. We're back in Quebec and it's cold enough to keep things out there. =)
This place is easily the largest place I've lived in since my parents split up when I was 8. Angie and I are really trying hard not to fill it with crap, but actually think through what we need.
I signed Angie and I up for gym memberships today after work. Yesterday was cell phones. Angie picked up some new pots and pans. Tomorrow will be towels and some dishes.
Anyone know if it's better to buy a fridge and dishwasher before Christmas or after? =)
The new home number, cell numbers and such will be in Facebook and Orkut in a moment.
Raphael Geissert: php now has name\spaces support
Biella Coleman: Dogs dance in the snow, while cats do not.
Next time I have to explain why I (really) prefer dogs to cats, I will not provide an argument. Instead, I will point people to this video.
While the video is not an instance of joking, it is nonetheless a potent example of humor, at least in the way that the philosopher, Simon Critchley has defined it in his compact and very powerful (and very beautifully written) book, On Humour:
Jokes tear holes in our usual predictions about the empirical world. We might say that humour is produced by a disjunction between the way things are and they way they are represented in the joke, between expectation and actuality. Humour defeats our expectations by producing a novel actuality, by changing the situation in which we find ourselves…
Biella Coleman: Good Free Software Video Editor
Dear Lazy Web (this is a from a friend and I know next to nothing about video editing software):
“Is there a good free video editor, on par with GIMP, that has a decently gradual learning curve, and works well?”
Pablo Lorenzzoni: Debian crashing the Internet!?
I just read on Slashdot a pointer to an article about GitTorrent and it made me wonder about these “meta-distributed” systems. Although I don’t share the article’s author enthusiasm, it’s a really good idea.
Anyways, browsing that article, I ended up on another one about Debtorrent. This I’ve already read about and decided to keep an eye on for some time now… It happens that one line on that article called my attention (and I quote):
At the last major upgrade of Debian/Stable, all the routers at the major International fibreoptic backbone sites across the world redlined for a week. (emphasis added)
Well… that was a surprise. Of course I know of the size and importance of Debian, but I thought our systems were more efficient (or that our “release-generated-traffic” were not of that magnitude). I began googling for a pointer on that… Anything: a quote, an URL, a list message… anything that could make that claim verifiable: Guess what: I found none!
Meanwhile, on Slashdot, other people started following the same subject...
So, is it true? Does anyone have any pointers to that? It seems quite unlikely to me… But hey! That’s just me: maybe the Internet is not that big :-)
