Debian Archive

Lars Wirzenius wondered how usable Debian with GNOME is for the uninitiated, or more specifically, for someone who has been using Windows for a number of years, and switches to Debian. The experiment will continue for a couple of months. The first use went pretty well, with only a couple of real problems which he outlined.

"The OpenVZ project today announced its operating system-level server virtualization software technology is incorporated into Debian GNU/Linux giving users full access to OpenVZ software, which helps increase server utilization rates. At the same time, the OpenVZ project revised licensing terms for its user-level utilities under the GNU GPL license to comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Also, OpenVZ software now conforms with the LSB/FHS."

There is an update for the next Debian release plan. According to Marc Brockschmidt Etch will carry 4.0 as version number and should be released on December 4th, 2006. "Please note that as of now, RC bugs and problematic transitions are our main concern. There has been progress, but we still need to lower the number of release critical bugs further."

The Debian GNU/Linux project today admitted a hacker had compromised one of its internal servers. "Early this morning we discovered that someone had managed to compromise gluck.debian.org," Debian developer James Troup wrote in an e-mail to the Debian community. "We've taken the machine offline and are preparing to reinstall it," Troup continued, noting a number of key services were currently offline as a result.

The Debian Administration website gives a small tutorial in using the new desktop notification deamon included in GNOME to create simple desktop popups. "There are several times when you'll be writing a script, or a program, which needs to communicate with the desktop user and here we'll look at two of the more modern approaches."

"DebConf is best known as an annual gathering of Debian developers. But the Debian project likes the name so much that it uses it - give or take a capital 'C' - for the system used to configure Debian packages. Just as the conference is central to the social aspects of Debian, so the program is central to the package management system that is one of Debian's main technical advantages. Debconf gives users as fine a degree of control during configuration as they choose."

The Elive project has released the first beta build of the upcoming Elive 0.5 Enlightenment live CD. "New live CD system - Elive has moved from Morphix to DSS; new kernel 2.6.15 with a lot more hardware support, also for wireless networking, take a look to the list of new drivers added; new installer features; Elive has new system of elive-skel, you can select 'night look' or 'elive look' in the boot of the live CD system; introductory tutorial to Enlightenment hot keys on E16; Unionfs version 1.1.4; Evidence doesn't crash any more; email client integrated with the system." There's a screenshot tour.

The spirit of the RISC OS desktop can now be easily be installed on Debian GNU/Linux systems, after the ROX desktop collection was released in a Debian package. The package came about after Dennis Tomas decided pull the suite into one place for users to download and install. The ROX desktop takes familiar user interface components from the RISC OS desktop, such as drag'n'drop and the filer, to create a more friendlier desktop for users of Unix-like operating systems. User Dan Macdonald told us: "It is now incredibly easy for people to install a full ROX (RISC OS on X) desktop, complete with auto-mounting of removeable discs, under Debian Linux."

"Knoppix comes bundled with a bucket of tools, and although 1.7GB of uncompressed space goes a long way, you might hit the problem of having to use software that Knoppix doesn't include by default. Additionally, you may make changes in configurations that you want to keep when you reboot, or store data between Knoppix sessions. Thankfully, there are a few different ways to solve this problem, some being easier to use and more successful than others. This article shows you how to use and modify Knoppix to save your data and install new software."

The widely-used Debian GNU/Linux distribution has a new project leader, Australian Anthony Towns, following an election process spanning several weeks. Australian Anthony Towns won the poll from a field of several candidates after 421 votes - from 43 percent of the eligible community of Debian developers - were cast. He will take up the post for one year from Monday 17 April, taking over from incumbent Branden Robinson.

"This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen on a Debian Sarge system. Xen lets you create guest operating systems, so called 'virtual machines' or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other."

Over the last two weeks, Debian developer Martin Michlmayr compiled the whole Debian archive on a quad-core MIPS machine donated by Broadcom using GCC 4.1. The aim was to find problems in GCC 4.1 itself and bugs in free software projects exhibited by GCC's increased standards conformance (in particular regarding C++ code). Read more for the details.

MadPenguin reviews SimplyMEPIS, and concludes: "The bottom line here is when reviewing a desktop Linux candidate, I expect to have a certain amount of functionality at hand, and a certain amount of polish. SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3 lacks both in my opinion. If you're looking for a fundamental installation and don't mind spending a bunch of time fixing/adjusting things that normally would have been done for you already, MEPIS might be for you. If you're looking for a desktop that pretty much works out of the box, handles removable media with grace, and isn't going to rob you of productive time, then I'd recommend sticking with something like Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva, or SUSE."

"It was recently annouced that desktop Linux's golden child, Ubuntu, may begin to offer Linspire's Click-N-Run service. This story which hit the internet just a few days ago is big news for the desktop Linux community. Ubuntu, which is the most popular Linux distribution (according to DistroWatch) has had a profound impact on the desktop operating system industry and any move it makes is going to be a critical one. Overall, feelings about this are understandably mixed."