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Fedora Weekly News Issue 122

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 122 for the week of February 25th, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue122

In Announcements, we have "Fedora Board IRC meeting 2008-03-04".

In Fedora Marketing, we have "Banners for Interviews", "Network Manager Interview", "New Fedora Chair plans to remove obstacles for volunteers" and many more.

We are always looking for more writers to help us deliver timely information to the Fedora community.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join.


Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from Fedora Project.

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-announce-list

Contributing Writer: ThomasChung

Fedora Board IRC meeting 2008-03-04

PaulFrields announces in fedora-announce-list[1] ,

"The Fedora Board will hold an IRC meeting on Tuesday, 4 March 2008, at 1900 UTC (2:00pm EST, 11:00am PST). This meeting will NOT be held in #fedora-meeting, since it is being used by the community at that time."

"Because we hope for a large turnout, this setup promotes an orderly process when the Board takes questions or open issues. The length of the Q&A will depend on availability of the Board members and interest from the community."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-March/msg00000.html

Marketing

In this section, we cover Fedora Marketing Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: JohnBabich

Banners for Interviews

MikeMcGrath informs [1] "We've got a generic banner that can easily be edited with interviewers name and put into the rotation, if someones interested in doing that (and coming up with other ads for the banner links) stop by the fedora-websites-list and we'll get you setup."

JonathanRoberts replies [2] "I was already a step ahead of you here :) I've the sources of the generic interview banner and will be posting it for use everytime a new interview comes up. Is the websites list the best place to drop these when I've got them done?"

Mike responds [3] "You can do that, if you want to get the middle man out of the way you can apply for the sysadmin and sysadmin-web groups. That will give you access to alter the banners directly."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00418.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00421.html

[3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00423.html

Network Manager Interview

JonathanRoberts announces [1] that "a new interview is up. This time it's with Dan Williams [2] and all about the cool new NetworkManager features that are going to be landing in Rawhide in the coming weeks and months..."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00422.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Interviews/DanWilliams

Fedora NPO founded at FOSDEM in Bruxelles

Gerold Kassube announces [1]

"Dear *,

it is a great pleasure for us to share with you the official announcement of the Fedora EMEA NPO as you can read below:

The idea of improving the way in which Fedora is supported started in 2006, and has been given shape and carefully prepared during the following year. On February 23rd, 2008, conform German Law and established in the German district Lörrach, 10 active members of the European Fedora Community founded a non-profit association called "Fedora EMEA e.V.".

This foundation increases the possibilities to inform a broader mass about the Fedora Project and forms a focal point and economic base for Fedora Project supporters. For companies and other organizations, the Fedora Project supporters are now organized in a solid, efficient and transparent way. The foundation reports to the Fedora Project regularly.

As President of the Board, the members elected Gerold Kassube (Germany), long-time member of the Fedora Ambassador Team. The members also elected Jeroen van Meeuwen (The Netherlands), and Fabian Affolter (Switzerland) to become the organization's Vice-Presidents, and trusted Robert Scheck (Germany) to manage the foundations assets.

In just a few weeks, during LinuxTag 2008 in Germany, the foundation has it's first General Members Assembly. Because all parties involved still have a lot of work to do, the necessary information to support the organization and membership subscription forms will become available online in the near future.

On behalf of the Board

Gerold Kassube"

PaulFrields, the new Fedora Project Leader, congratulates [2] the Fedora EMEA NPO and adds that

"In the future, possibly before the release of Fedora 10, the Board will begin accepting additional applications from groups that have reached this advanced stage of planning. We are using Fedora EMEA as a pilot to figure out a framework for enabling additional worldwide communities. We chose Fedora EMEA specifically because this group had already achieved a very high level of organization, community interest, and command of the details surrounding funding and legality in their region.

I would urge any additional groups that are considering formation to reach a similar state of readiness by that time. The Board wants to ensure that Fedora's community groups worldwide develop consistently, and with proper resources to enable their success."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00420.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00435.html

Beta Freeze Release Overview

JonathanRoberts puts forth [1] "the beta freeze is coming soon (next week according the e-mail I just saw!) and so I'm thinking we really need to start work on the release overview. If you want to start filling out and updating that would be really super awesome!"

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00433.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/SingleSourceSummary

Beta Freeze Release Notes

Jonathan continues [1] on a related topic: "OK all, I've copied the content from the Alpha Release Notes...so that we can begin updating it for the Beta release [2] ."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00483.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org//wiki/Releases/9/Beta/ReleaseNotes

New Fedora Chair plans to remove obstacles for volunteers

RahulSundaram notifies [1] us of an article about the new Fedora Project Leader [2] : ""The job is to remove obstacles in the way of the community," says Paul W. Frields, speaking about his new position as Fedora Chair. After only a few weeks in the position, Frields is still learning his way around and getting to know his colleagues, but already this vision is a common refrain in his comments, underlying all his comments about what he hopes the Fedora project will achieve while he is coordinating its efforts."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00439.html

[2] http://www.linux.com/feature/127802

SELinux Article: Seatbelt for Software

RahulSundaram spots [1] "An extensive report on the real world advantages of SELinux [2] . A must read if you care about security (and you should)."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00419.html

[2] http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2008/022408-selinux.html

X.Org 7.4 Release Planning

The ever-vigilant RahulSundaram finds [1] this article [2] on AdamJackson: "With Red Hat's Adam Jackson being interested in shipping X.Org 7.4 for Fedora 9, he has stepped up as becoming the release manager of this next X.Org release and has put together a schedule that will allow this to become possible. "

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00441.html

[2] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjM2MA

Fedora on the Final Frontier

Going where no man has gone before, RahulSundaram explores [1] his posting [2] to OSNews, publicizing JackAboutboul's visit [3] to NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

JohnBabich notes [4] This story has...1,063 diggs, as of 11:00 hrs UTC today [29 February 2008] ...Conclusion: People like this kind of story!"

Note: There were 1,361 diggs, as of 2100 Hrs UTC, 2 March, making this the most popular Fedora article on Digg of all time.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00469.html

[2] http://www.osnews.com/story/19405/Fedora_on_the_Final_Frontier

[3] http://jaboutboul.blogspot.com/2008/02/fedora-on-final-frontier.html

[4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00480.html

Meeting on Fedora Marketing Plan

GregDeKoenigsberg, Community Development Manager, summarizes [1] the meeting on the topic of developing a Fedora marketing plan:

"John Adams, of the Red Hat Brand team, has provided us with a template of what a full Marketing Plan looks like. That templates lives on the Fedora wiki [2] . We've dramatically simplified our task list to focus on fleshing out a full marketing plan for Fedora based on this skeleton. The task list, with owners, can be found here [3] :

Over the next week, the owners of key sections of this Marketing Plan will be asking questions, making proposals, and filling this plan in, bit by bit.

If someone asks a question of you on-list -- like "I think that our target audience for press releases should be X, Y, and Z" -- PLEASE RESPOND. You're on this mailing list because you care about the marketing of Fedora, so please take this opportunity to express your opinions. You folks *are* Fedora. We need to hear you.

Next week we will convene on IRC once again to see what progress we've made. Details:

Time: Thursday, March 6, 2000 GMT/UTC (3pm Eastern US) IRC: irc.freenode.net, #fedora-mktg

Thanks to all of today's participants. It's been a while since I led an IRC meeting, and this one was extremely worthwhile. Let's keep the momentum going."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00474.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/MarketingPlan

[3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Tasks

Ambassadors

In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors

Contributing Writer: JeffreyTadlock

Fedora EMEA Founded at FOSDEM

GeroldKassube announced [1] the founding of the Fedora EMEA while at FOSDEM. The goal of the organization is to "...inform a broader mass about the Fedora Project and forms a focal point and economic base for Fedora Project supporters ..." in the EMEA region. Additional information regarding the Fedora EMEA is also available in the wiki [2] .

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00204.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/EMEA

Fedora Ambassadors Will Be At OpenExpo 2008

FabianAffolter announced on the Ambassadors list [1] that Fedora will have a presence at OpenExpo 2008 in Berne, Switzerland on March 12th and 13th. Additional details about the event are in the wiki [2] and on the Open Expo site [3] . If you are in the area, be sure to drop by the booth and meet some of the Fedora Ambassadors.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00238.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/OpenExpo/OpenExpo2008_Berne

[3] http://www.openexpo.ch/openexpo-2008-bern/

Northeastern University Speaking Engagement Report

JesseKeating posted [1] to the Ambassadors list a report from a recent talk he had given at Northeastern University. There were approximately thirty students in attendance for the talk. Jesse covered several topics including a brief history on Linux and GNU, a comparison between today's distributions, a look at the Fedora build process and a question answer period.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00232.html

Chemnitzer LinuxTage 2008 Reports

JoergSimon has posted several reports [1-5] on the CLT08 event this weekend. Don't miss his reports posted to the Ambassador list and on his blog posts with pictures covering the preparation for the event and news from the event itself.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00252.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-March/msg00008.html

[3] http://kitall.blogspot.com/2008/02/clt08-preparation.html

[4] http://kitall.blogspot.com/2008/02/clt08-preparation-part-2.html

[5] http://kitall.blogspot.com/2008/03/clt08-stormy-day-1.html

FAmSCo Summary

Work is starting to pick up for FAmSCo starting with a new budget for the year. Expect to see more announcements to the Ambassadors mailing list once FAmSCo gets some of the logistics worked out. We have more money budgeted for events this year than in previous years thank to the hard work of MaxSpevack. If you have an event coming up be sure to add it to the Fedora Events page [1] so we are aware of it.

FAmSCo has also been working on determining a good way to gather reports from the events to help create some metrics to justify the increased budget. FAmSCo is still determining what types of data we need to gather and how a standardized report should look. FAmSCo will announce the results of these talks to the Ambassadors mailing list.

[1] FedoraEvents

Advisory Board

In this section, we cover discussion in Fedora Advisory Board.

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board

Contributing Writer: MichaelLarabel

What Defines A Fedora Spin?

JoshBoyer, on behalf of rel-eng, has asked the fedora-advisory-board what warrants an official Fedora spin. His question comes with 14 different Fedora spins currently being considered and the massive disk space each would consume, while the package variation between each spin is generally minimal. Of course, there are also other factors involved with each spin such as testing and the bandwidth to serve these additional files. Specifically, Josh had questioned the need for localized Fedora spins. There is a variety of feedback to this question, which can be found in the mailing list[1] .

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-February/msg00201.html

Documentation

In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

Contributing Writer: JohnBabich

Welcome Email

MikeMcGrath challenges [1] "Hey docs people! I'm working on FAS2 [2] , its getting real close. I was wondering if someone would draft up what they want the welcome email to say when people sign up for an account for the first time. Something to encourage them and help them through the process of what to do after the cla is signed.

Joining the Fedora Project is like walking into IKEA the first time. Lets try to ease that :)"

JonathanRoberts rises [3] to the challenge, saying "Urm...this is maybe a bit longer than you had in mind? But you might like it".

Ever the gentlemen, Mike responds [4] "thanks..."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00147.html

[2] FAS2 is the new Fedora Accounting System, see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/AccountSystem2 for more details

[3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00149.html

[4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00150.html

Artwork

In this section, we cover Fedora Artwork Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Contributing Writer: NicuBuculei

Multi-resolution backgrounds

MatthiasClasen ping[1] the Art team about a new small but awesome features which just landed in Rawhide: multi-resolution animated backgrounds. So now we can define a background wallpaper in a XML and it can not only adjust its image according with the time (for example to reflect the daylight like in F8), but it can also pick the best suited image size, without the need for manual adjustment from the user.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00206.html

Which color is Fedora?

Following the context of one particular theme proposal for Fedora 9 and its color variations, MartinSourada express his concern[1] about using another color than the traditional blue in Fedora themes: "As for the issue of being it blue, well, I don't like very much the idea of having different colour wallpaper than blue, not only because I like blue [...] , but mostly because I, and many other people, have Fedora already associated with blue. Yeah, we can experiment with other colours as well, but as far as we don't want to confuse people we need blue to be the main colour."

NicuBuculei backs this[2] : "I think blue should be *at least* partly used, so It could be gray with some secondary blue elements. [...] Ubuntu is brown, SUSE is green, Fedora is blue", MairinDuffy consider[3] the user feed-back from users which tend to favor a grey tone this round and comes with and idea for a nice blue touch.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00194.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00159.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00216.html

Themes development

With Round 3 deadline next week[1] , the two remaining themes for Fedora 9 get final touches:

  • LuyaTshimbalanga updates F9 Themes Shoowa[6] with a smooth, curvy variant[2] , a change welcomed by JeffSpaleta
  • In the meantime, F9 Themes Sulfuric Waves[7] is on fire (literally). MairinDuffy add a shade of blue in the form of fire over the yellow sulfur crystals[3] , NicuBuculei[4] and JeffSpaleta[5] play with their own variants is something which looks like converging to a consensus.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00233.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00243.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00225.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00231.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00247.html

[6] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F9Themes/Shoowa

[7] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F9Themes/Waves

Daily Package

In this section, we recap the packages that have been highlighted as a Fedora Daily Package.

http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/

Contributing Writer: ChrisTyler

Planet - Feed aggregator

Productive Mondays highlight a timesaving tool. This Monday[1] we covered Planet[2] :

"Planet is a feed aggregator which assembles multiple RSS or Atom newsfeeds into a single web page and feed, like Planet Fedora, Planet Gnome, or Planet KDE."

[1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/170-Productive-Monday-Planet-Feed-aggregator.html

[2] http://planetplanet.org/

Autotrace - Convert bitmaps to Vector graphics

Artsy Tuesdays highlight a graphics, video, or sound application. This Tuesday[1] Autotrace[2] was featured:

"autotrace ... is a command-line utility that can accept a wide range of bitmap input formats and produce output in several vector formats including scalable vector graphics (svg), encapsulated Postscript (eps), portable data format (pdf), and Adobe Illustrator (ai) format."

[1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/171-Artsy-Tuesday-Autotrace-Convert-bitmaps-to-Vector-graphics.html

[2] http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/

How does Pulseaudio start?

This week's Wednesday Why article[1] discussed how the Pulseaudio daemon is started as part of a Gnome desktop session. None of the gnome-session configuration files mention the Pulseaudio daemon, but it reliably starts whenever Gnome starts, and the output of 'ps' shows gnome-session to be its parent. The answer to this mystery lies in the relationship between gnome-session and the legacy esound daemon.

[1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/172-Wednesday-Why-How-does-Pulseaudio-start.html

lshw-gui - Browse hardware info

GUI Thursdays highlight software that provides, enhances, or effectively uses a GUI interface. This Thursday[1] , lshw-gui[2] was discussed:

"Fedora offers many tools for viewing detailed hardware information, including lsusb, lspci, hdparm, and direct access to the /proc and /sys filesystems. ... lshw-gui provides a convenient graphical interface into this rich source of information, enabling you to easily drill down into the specific details of each subsystem and device."

[1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/173-GUI-Thursday-lshw-gui-Browse-hardware-info.html

[2] http://ezix.org/project/wiki/HardwareLiSter

Quarry - Multi-purpose game board

Friday Fun highlights fun, interesting, and amusing programs. This Friday[1] , we took a look at Quarry[2] :

"Quarry is a multi-purpose graphical game board for playing Go, Amazons, or Reversi. By itself, it permits users to play against each other, but the addition of GTP (game text protocol) game engines such as gnugo or grhino enables play against the computer."

[1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/174-Friday-Fun-Quarry-Multi-purpose-game-board.html

[2] http://home.gna.org/quarry/

Security Advisories

In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce.

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce

Contributing Writer: ThomasChung

Fedora 8 Security Advisories

Fedora 7 Security Advisories

Events and Meetings

In this section, we cover event reports and meeting summaries from various Projects and SIGs.

Contributing Writer: ThomasChung

Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2008-02-26

Fedora Community Architecture Meeting 2008-02-25

Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee Meeting (Log) 2008-02-29

Fedora Marketing Meeting (Log) 2008-02-28

Fedora Documentation Steering Committee Meeting (Log) 2008-02-27

Fedora Engineering Steering Committee Meeting 2008-02-28

Fedora Infrastructure Meeting (Log) 2008-02-28

Fedora Release Engineering Meeting 2008-02-25

Fedora Bug Zappers Meeting 2008-MM-DD

  • No Report

Fedora SIG EPEL Report Week 09/2008

Fedora SIG KDE Meeting 2008-02-26

Fedora SIG Store Meeting (Log) 2008-02-27