News for Gentoo (from the horse's mouth )
The July issue of the GentooMonthly Newsletter has been released. In this month's issue:2008.0 release, Gentoo at Peel Fresco Music Lounge and more!
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.
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.
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.
The June issue of the GentooMonthly Newsletter has been released. In this month's issue: LinuxTagand FliSoL, GSOC interview, Gentoo in space, and more!
Developer Donnie Berkholz, who is a council member, the X maintainer and PR team lead, spoke with David Abbott of LinuxCrazy. Download the podcast.
He described how he became a developer as well as his work on X, the council, the public relations team and the Summer of Code project he's mentoring for. Donnie also recommended the best video cards if you support open source. He saw the Linux desktop's future as increasing integration and security. Here's how Donnie described how Gentoo makes progress and where to go from here:
"The more time I spend in Gentoo, the more I realize that it's the individual developers who really drive most of our innovations. They don't happen because the council makes a decision. They happen because the developer, or a few of them, think that it sounds like a cool idea, and make it happen. ..."
"Making Gentoo great is my biggest goal right now, and greatness is a process. It's not a place. So you can't get somewhere and say you're great. You always have to keep striving for it. For a while we've been content to stick with the status quo instead of striving for greatness, but we have to change that and to always improve Gentoo."
If you would rather read it, forums user dch24 created a transcript of the interview.
The May issue of theGentoo Monthly Newsletterhas been released. In this month's issue: Gentoo Foundation status, Summerof Code interview, network monitoring, and more!
If you're interested in the legal standing of Gentoo, you can relax because in the past week, the State of New Mexico declared that the Gentoo Foundation Inc has returned to good standing and is free to do business. This accomplishment allows other aspects of the foundation's work to proceed again. The foundation takes care of Gentoo's intellectual property (copyrights, trademarks) and money. It ensures that nobody violates our copyrights and trademarks, serves as a place to hold money, and decides where to devote that money.
Thanks to everyone involved with returning Gentoo to good legal standing, and thanks to our community for your patience!
Joshua Jackson and Josh Nichols contributed the draft for this announcement.
2008.0_beta2 is here. Thanks to you, our community, for testing beta1 and filing many bugs. You can help make 2008.0 amazing! Test out this beta and report any functionality issues you encounter. Since this is still a beta, we're looking only for bugs in functionality, not bugs in appearance such as desktop backgrounds or other artwork.
This should be the last beta and will be followed by the final 2008.0 release after further bug fixing.
Get 2008.0_beta2 from the usual places.