DistroStuff

Welcome to this year's 15th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debiancommunity.br /Some of the topics covered in this issue include:

Otavio Salvador a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/11/msg00002.html"announced/athe first release candidate for the installer to be shipped withDebian GNU/Linux 5.0 qLenny/q.

Christoph Haasa href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/11/msg00003.html"announced/aa new a href="http://screenshots.debian.net"screenshots.debian.net/a website that serves as a public repository of screenshots of applicationscontained in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. It was created to help usersget an impression of what a given piece of software will look like on theirdesktops before they install it. Anybody can take screenshots and upload them;the site admin team will review the contributions before they become publiclyvisible. Support for screenshots has already been built into thea href="http://packages.debian.org/synaptic"synaptic/a package manager, whileintegration in specialised package browsers likea href="http://packages.debian.org/goplay"goplay/a and thea href="http://packages.debian.org"general web interface/a are beingdiscussed.

On the occasion of the production of aa href="http://ksvichaar.blogspot.com/2008/11/art-quilts-xiii-lucky-break.html"customDebian quilt/a Francesco Polia href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/11/msg00045.html"noted/athat the license for the a href="http://www.debian.org/logos/"qOpen UseLogo/q/a (also known as the qswirl/q) has been changed from a licenseconsidered to be non-free to ana href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License"MIT style license/a grantingmore rights to everyone. This fixes a long standing ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/212895"bug/a.

Martin Michlmayr a href="http://www.cyrius.com/journal/gcc/gcc-4.4-archive-build"announced/athe results from an archive rebuild with a snapshot of the upcoming GCC 4.4.About 220 bugs were filed as part of the archive rebuild and a small number ofbuild failures still need to be analyzed. The majority of GCC 4.4 relatedbuild failures are trivial, and are often caused because ofa href="http://www.cyrius.com/journal/gcc/gcc-4.4-preprocessor-errors"improved/apreprocessor checks in GCC 4.4 ora href="http://www.cyrius.com/journal/gcc/gcc-4.4-include"missing/a #includestatements.

Martin Borgert a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc/2008/11/msg00034.html"asked forhelp/a for the release notes of the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0qLenny/q. Some noteworthy problems have not yet been documented, so heasks for volunteers who understand some of these issues to write aboutthem.

Andreas Tillea href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/11/msg00001.html"announced/athat the Custom Debian Distributions (more or less, package setsfor specific needs maintained inside Debian) should now be referred to asqDebian Pure Blends/q. The name has been changed, since the old one wasmisleading. Many people thought Custom Debian Distributions were somethingmaintained outside of Debian and which added new features. After somediscussion members of all these teams agreed on the new name, hoping it wouldclarify their status (though thisa href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00202.html"was/aa href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00249.html"not/auniversally seen as a success).

Enrico Zinia href="http://www.enricozini.org/2008/tips/popzimmer.html"developed a new script/athat shows Lenny release critical bugs ordered by popularity. For those whoare looking to squash the bugs that are causing the most pain, this script laysout exactly where to look. Anyone interested in running the script will needaccess to ttpeople.debian.org/tt where the script can be found at tt~enrico/popzimmer/tt.

Anne Goldenberg, a PhD student in communication and sociology, who is currentlystudying the Debian Wiki,a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00757.html"announced/aa a href="http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/labcmo/portraitdulibre/index.php?sid=65733lang=en"survey/aaimed at gaining a better understanding of the uses and conceptionsof the Debian Wiki within the Debian community. The results will be put onlineunder a free license and announced via the mailing-lists.

3 applicants have beena href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/11/msg00027.html"accepted/aas Debian Maintainers since the previous issue of the Debian Project News.Please welcome Giuseppe Iuculano, Thorsten Glaser and Franck Joncourt to ourproject!