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The Debian Project                                http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News                    debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
May 13th, 2013                http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/10/
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Welcome to this year's tenth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. Topics covered in this issue include:

  * Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" released
  * What's new in Debian "Wheezy" ?
  * DebConf11 and 12 videos
  * Debian beyond the cloud
  * Debian in Google Compute Engine
  * Bits from the DPL
  * "Coding Freedom" : a closer look at Debian contributors
  * Other news
  * Upcoming events
  * Important Debian Security Advisories
  * New and noteworthy packages
  * Work-needing packages
  * Want to continue reading DPN?

Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" released
----------------------------

27 months after the release of Debian 6.0 "Squeeze", a new stable
version of the Debian operating system, Debian 7.0 "Wheezy", was
released on May 4, 2013 [1]. Among other improvements, this release
brings to its users multiarch support [2], various tools to deploy
private clouds [3], an improved installer supporting software speech,
which makes accessibility one of its strong points, and an expanded set
of multimedia codecs.
Adam D. Barratt, Release Team manager, has already announced a first
point release planned for next month [4] and given advice to maintainers
about further uploads to "unstable" : the development of "Jessie" is
already starting.
Joerg Jaspert, Debian FTP master, gave some insight into the workflow
needed by the FTP team to release a new stable version of Debian [5],
while Raphael Geissert noted [6] that "in the first 48 hours after its
log files were rotated last Sunday, http.debian.net [7] handled almost 2
million requests, for an average of 11 requests per second".
Meanwhile, Debian users and enthusiasts from all over the world are
organising parties [8] to celebrate the release of "Wheezy" : the
Catalan Debian community [9] and some Indian Debian users [10] already
seem to have had some fun! If you're going to have a party, share your
report and pics with us using the identi.ca hashtag #releaseparty [11].

    1: http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504
    2: http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110726b
    3: http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120425
    4: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/05/msg00003.html
    5: http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2013/05/wheezy-release.html
    6: http://rgeissert.blogspot.com/2013/05/almost-one-million-requests-per-day.html
    7: http://http.debian.net
    8: http://wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartyWheezy
    9: http://dunetna.probeta.net/doku.php/blog:debian_wheezy_party_barcelona
   10: http://fossevangelist.blogspot.in/2013/05/releasepartywheezy-india-india-india.html
   11: http://identi.ca/tag/releaseparty

What's new in Debian "Wheezy" ?
-------------------------------

Michael Prokop launched the #newinwheezy initiative [12] aimed at
presenting to users and fellow developers the packages that have been
newly introduced in "Wheezy". According to the Debian contributors who
joined the initiative, among the most interesting new packages are:
various forensic tools [13]; vcsh [14] ("manage config files in $HOME
via fake bare git repositories"); Charybdis [15] ("a popular and solid
IRC server which is the base of the software behind the Freenode
network"); packages from the Grml system [16]; mosh [17] (a "UDP based
remote shell terminal which works better than SSH in case of lag");
several lightweight browsers (dillo, netsurf, surf and xxxterm) [18];
libghc-stm-dev, a tool to help with writing non-buggy threaded
programs [19]; scratch [20] ("an easy, interactive, collaborative
programming environment designed for creation of interactive stories,
animations, games, music, and art") and plymouth [21] ("a boot-time I/O
multiplexer").

   12: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/04/msg00870.html
   13: http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2013/04/29/the-newinwheezy-game-new-forensic-packages-in-debianwheezy/
   14: http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2013/04/29-newinwheezy/
   15: http://anarcat.koumbit.org/2013-05-01-new-debian-release-my-contributions-newinwheezy-game
   16: http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2013/05/02/the-newinwheezy-game-grml-packages-in-debianwheezy/
   17: http://noone.org/blog/English/Computer/Debian/New%2520SSH%2520stuff%2520in%2520Wheezy.html
   18: http://noone.org/blog/English/Computer/Debian/New%2520web%2520browsers%2520in%2520Wheezy.html
   19: http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/the_newinwheezy_game:_STM/
   20: http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html
   21: http://web.dodds.net/~vorlon/wiki/blog/Plymouth_is_not_a_bootsplash/

DebConf11 and 12 videos
-----------------------

IRILL, sponsor of Debian for DebConf videos, has published all of the
videos from DebConf11 and 12. They are available both in MP4 (H.264) and
(recommended) Ogg formats, and easily available through their video
player (DebConf11: 56 videos [22]; DebConf12: 72 videos [23]).

   22: http://www.irill.org/videos/debconf-11/
   23: http://www.irill.org/videos/debconf-12/

Debian beyond the cloud
-----------------------

Keith Chuvala, the manager of Space Operations Computing (SpOC) for
NASA, announced this week [24] that the agency will switch to Debian on
the International Space Station's laptops. Specifically, the ISS
astronauts will be using computers running Debian 6. Chuvala mentioned
they "needed an operating system that was stable and reliable", and that
they will rely on the Linux Foundation for training their astronauts and
IT specialists.

   24: http://www.zdnet.com/to-the-space-station-and-beyond-with-linux-7000014958/

Debian in Google Compute Engine
-------------------------------

Google recently announced the availability of Debian images on its
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Google Compute Engine [25]. At the
moment, both 6.x and 7.x versions of Debian are distributed on their
infrastructure, in order to provide an easier workload migration. For
fast performance and to reduce bandwidth costs, Google is hosting a
Debian package mirror for use by Google Compute Engine Debian instances.
As Google announced, Debian will be the default image type for Compute
Engine from now on.

   25: https://cloud.google.com/products/compute-engine

Bits from the DPL
-----------------

Lucas Nussbaum sent his first monthly report of DPL activities [26].
Besides thanking the other candidates, the voters and the previous
project leader, Stefano Zacchiroli, the newly elected Project Leader
summarised his first thirteen days of activity. Lucas focused
particularly on the ongoing discussion about the Debian logo as a
registered trademark [27], planned - with the help of Moray Allan - a
survey of the main Debian teams to verify their health status, and
started work on improving and documenting paths into the project.

   26: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/05/msg00002.html
   27: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2013/04/msg00082.html

"Coding Freedom" : a closer look at Debian contributors
-------------------------------------------------------

Gabriella Coleman announced the recent publication of her book, "Coding
Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking" [28], which was mostly
inspired by Debian's community and active members. The book strives to
identify and explain the key factors that have influenced the
development of free software projects, while examining the social impact
they have had. A good portion was based on Debian, following two years
of ethnographic research. There is one chapter dedicated to the project
and many others draw on interviews with Debian developers.
The book is available under a Creative Commons license and freely
available for download [29].

   28: http://codingfreedom.com/
   29: http://codingfreedom.com/buy_download.html

Other news
----------

Guido Günther sent a report from the 6th Debian Groupware Meeting [30]
held in Essen, Germany.

   30: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/04/msg00012.html

Gunnar Wolf announced that the deadline for sponsored registration for
DebConf13 in Switzerland has officially been extended to Sunday May
19 [31]. For more information about how to register, you can check the
original announcement about the opening of registration [32].

   31: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/05/msg00006.html
   32: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/05/msg00001.html

Upcoming events
---------------

There is one upcoming Debian-related event:

  * May, 28-29, Paris, France — Debian boot at Solutions Linux [33]

   33: http://www.debian.org/events/2013/0528-solutionslinux

You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks on
the events section [34] of the Debian web site, or subscribe to one of
our events mailing lists for different regions: Europe [35],
Netherlands [36], Hispanic America [37], North America [38].

   34: http://www.debian.org/events
   35: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu
   36: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl
   37: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha
   38: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-na

Do you want to organise a Debian booth or a Debian install party? Are
you aware of other upcoming Debian-related events? Have you delivered a
Debian talk that you want to link on our talks page [39]? Send an email
to the Debian Events Team [40].

   39: http://www.debian.org/events/talks
   40: events@debian.org

Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------

Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): mysql-5.5 [41], xen [42], stunnel [43] and
strongswan [44]. Please read them carefully and take the proper
measures.

   41: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2667
   42: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2666
   43: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2664
   44: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2665

Debian's Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the
package: clamav [45]. Please read it carefully and take the proper
measures.

   45: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2013/04/msg00000.html

Please note that these are a selection of the more important security
advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about
security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please
subscribe to the security mailing list [46] (and the separate backports
list [47], and stable updates list [48]) for announcements.

   46: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
   47: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
   48: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/

New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------

373 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [49] are:

  * corekeeper — tool to enable core files and report crashes to the sysadmin [50]
  * debian-lan-config — FAI config space for the Debian-LAN system [51]
  * ext4magic — tool to recover deleted files from ext3 or ext4 partitions [52]
  * gmsl — extra functions to extend functionality of GNU Makefiles [53]
  * iceowl — standalone calendar application [54]
  * nsnake — classic snake game with textual interface [55]
  * python-odf — complete API for OpenDocument in Python [56]
  * qupzilla — lightweight web browser based on libqtwebkit [57]
  * sanewall — easy to use but powerful iptables stateful firewall [58]
  * watchcatd — process monitoring daemon [59]
  * wfrog — web-based customizable weather station software [60]

   49: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
   50: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/corekeeper
   51: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-lan-config
   52: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ext4magic
   53: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gmsl
   54: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceowl
   55: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/nsnake
   56: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-odf
   57: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/qupzilla
   58: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sanewall
   59: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/watchcatd
   60: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/wfrog

Work-needing packages
---------------------

Currently [61] 512 packages are orphaned [62] and 139 packages are up
for adoption [63]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [64].

   61: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/05/msg00536.html
   62: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
   63: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
   64: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested

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 contributing page [65] to find out how to help. We're
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   65: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute

This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Cédric Boutillier,
Francesca Ciceri, Sylvestre Ledru, Victor Nițu and Justin B Rye..