Debian Project News - April 29th, 2013

[Saxman]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
April 29th, 2013 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/09/
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Welcome to this year's ninth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. Topics covered in this issue include:

* Release date for Wheezy announced
* First Qt 5 packages in experimental
* Debian Edu Wheezy alpha release
* Other news
* Upcoming events
* New Debian Contributors
* Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?


Release date for Wheezy announced
---------------------------------

Neil McGovern, on behalf of the Release Team, announced that the next
stable version of Debian, "Wheezy", will be released during the first
weekend of May (4/5 May) [1]. Help with the final touches is welcome:
"release notes, installation guides and documentation in general,
especially translations can always do with some work. Please see
previous mails on these, and help if you can", explained Neil. And to
show Debian your love, you can organise a Release Party in your
city [2].

1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-an ... 00006.html
2: http://wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartyWheezy


First Qt 5 packages in experimental
-----------------------------------

Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer announced that the first Qt 5
packages have been accepted in the experimental suite [4]. For now they
are available only for the 64-bit PC (amd64) architecture, but soon they
will be available in the 32-bit PC flavour as well. As for the ARM based
ones, it will take a bit more time. These packages have no GLES2 or
Wayland support, but non-official packages with GLES2/Wayland enabled
will be provided at some point, for testing purposes.
As for future plans, Lisandro said that "other parts of Qt 5 are on the
way. And remember, these packages would not have been possible if it
weren't for the great Debian's pkg-kde team".

4: http://perezmeyer.blogspot.it/2013/04/o ... tools.html


Debian Edu Wheezy alpha release
-------------------------------

Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, made its first Wheezy based alpha
release on 26 April. It aims to provide an out-of-the box environment of
a completely configured school network, featuring:

* GOsa² web interface for adding users and machines
* PXE-based network booting environment
* A complete collection of educational and office software

You can read the full release announcement in the Debian Edu list
archive [5]. If you'd like to contribute to the project's development,
please access the wiki page for new Debian Edu contributors [6].

5: http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013 ... 00132.html
6: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Contribute


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

The 32nd issue of the miscellaneous news for developers [7] has been
released and covers the following topics:

* Misc news on the QA infrastructure
* Shrinking the archive with dedup.debian.net
* DEP 12 started
* Turtle RDF meta-data for the PTS
* An easier way to find work-needing packages of interest

7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-an ... 00007.html

Niels Thykier sent some bits from the Lintian maintainers [8] presenting
some of its new features. Lintian [9] is one of the most important and
most used package checkers for Debian packages, primarily checking for
Debian Policy violations and violations of various sub-policies.

8: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-an ... 00008.html
9: http://lintian.debian.org/

Andreas Tille sent an update on the status of the Debian Blends
project [10]. In the mail, he explained the challenge that the various
Debian Blends are currently facing, as well as asking for contributors
to improve the general user experience for Wheezy users of Blends
packages.

10: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-an ... 00010.html


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

For a list of Wheezy release parties, follow the constantly expanding
wiki page [11], where all the known release events are listed.

11: http://wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartyWheezy

You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks on
the events section [12] of the Debian web site, or subscribe to one of
our events mailing lists for different regions: Europe [13],
Netherlands [14], Hispanic America [15], North America [16].

12: http://www.debian.org/events
13: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu
14: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl
15: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha
16: 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 [17]? Send an email
to the Debian Events Team [18].

17: http://www.debian.org/events/talks
18: events@debian.org


New Debian Contributors
-----------------------

3 applicants have been accepted [19] as Debian Maintainer since the
previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Simon Chopin,
Markus Wanner and Matteo Cypriani into our project!

19: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/ ... 00080.html


Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
---------------------------------------------------------

According to the Bugs Search interface of the Ultimate Debian
Database [20], the upcoming release, Debian "Wheezy", is currently
affected by 24 Release-Critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily
solved or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, about 19
Release-Critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen.

20: http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi

There are also more detailed statistics [21] as well as some hints on
how to interpret [22] these numbers.

21: http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/20 ... r_Week_17/
22: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats


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

Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): curl [23], xorg-server [24], xen [25] and tinc [26].
Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.

23: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2660
24: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2661
25: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2662
26: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2663

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 [27] (and the separate backports
list [28], and stable updates list [29]) for announcements.

27: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
28: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
29: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/


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

338 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [30] are:

* cardpeek — tool to read the contents of ISO7816 smartcards [31]
* editorconfig — coding style indenter for all editors [32]
* fatrace — report system wide file access events [33]
* fsharp — functional-first programming language [34]
* invesalius — 3D medical imaging reconstruction software [35]
* kanla — small-scale alerting daemon [36]
* neard — Near Field Communication (NFC) management daemon [37]
* nocache — tool to bypass/minimize file system caching for a program [38]
* seekwatcher — utility to visualize block I/O patterns [39]
* shineenc — fixed-point MP3 encoding library [40]

30: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
31: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cardpeek
32: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/editorconfig
33: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fatrace
34: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fsharp
35: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/invesalius
36: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kanla
37: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/neard
38: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/nocache
39: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/seekwatcher
40: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/shineenc


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

Currently [41] 523 packages are orphaned [42] and 145 packages are up
for adoption [43]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [44].

41: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/20 ... 00811.html
42: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
43: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
44: 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 [45] to find out how to help. We're
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<debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>.

45: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute


This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Moray Allan, Cédric
Boutillier, Francesca Ciceri, David Prévot, Justin B Rye and Victor
Nițu.