Fedora Weekly News Issue 285
Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 285[1] for the two weeks ending August 31, 2011. What follows are some highlights from this issue.
Our issue kicks off this week with news of Fedora 16 Alpha's release -- details inside! Eighteen articles this week from Fedora In the News, including many thoughts on Fedora 16, GNOME 3, and Linux's 20th birthday! In Ambassador news this week, new Ambassadors to the Project, a summary of discussion on the Ambassador and FAmSCo lists, and pointers to recent Fedora-related events. Quality Assurance brings us much goodness, including news on the recent internationalization and localization test week, Fedora 16 Alpha prep work, release criteria updates and more. Security Advisories brings us current with the latest security-related package releases for Fedora 14, 15 and 16, and our issue rounds out with news from the Fedora Planet, including event reports from Taipei, India, Paris and more!
An audio version of some issues of FWN - FAWN - are available! You can listen to existing issues[2] on the Internet Archive. If anyone is interested in helping spread the load of FAWN production, please contact us!
If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[3]. We welcome reader feedback: news@lists.fedoraproject.org
FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson
Announcements
In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project, including general announcements[1], development announcements[2] and Events[3].
Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco
Fedora Announcements
Announcing the release of Fedora 16 Alpha!!
Dennis Gilmore announced[1]:
"The Fedora 16 "Verne" Alpha release is available! This release offers a preview of some of the best free and open source technology currently under development. Catch a glimpse of the future:
http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease
What is the Alpha release?
The Alpha release contains all the exciting features of Fedora 16 in a form that anyone can help test. This testing, guided by the Fedora QA team, helps us target and identify bugs. When these bugs are fixed, we make a Beta release available. A Beta release is code-complete, and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The final release of Fedora 16 is due in early November.
We need your help to make Fedora 16 the best release yet, so please take a moment of your time to download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are important to you are working. If you find a bug, please report it -- every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions of Fedora users worldwide. Together, we can make Fedora a rock-solid distribution. (Read down to the end of the announcement for more information on how to help.) Features
This release of Fedora includes a variety of features both over and under the hood that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing state of free software. Examples include:
- System Boot. Fedora 16 introduces GRUB2, the long-awaited
next-generation boot-loader for Linux. GRUB2 automatically recognizes other operating systems, supports LVM2 and LUKS partitions, and is more customizable than the previous version. In this release, only x86 systems with a BIOS uses GRUB2 by default. Work is ongoing for making GRUB2 the default for other architectures and systems.
- Services Management. Fedora 15 introduced the Systemd services
management program. This release features better integration of Systemd via conversion to native systemd services from legacy init scripts in many software components -- for desktop users, this means faster boot times; for system administrators it means more powerful management of services.
- Desktop Updates. The two major desktop environments have been
updated to the latest releases: KDE Software Compilation 4.7 and GNOME 3.1 development release.
- SELinux Enhancements. SELinux policy package now includes a
pre-built policy that will only rebuild policy if any customizations have been made. A sample test run shows 4 times speedup on installing the package from 48 Seconds to 12 Seconds and max memory usage from 38M to 6M. In addition to that, SELinux file name transition allows better policy management. For instance, policy writers can take advantage of this and write a policy rule that states, if a SELinux unconfined process creates a file named resolv.conf in a directory labelled etc_t, the file should get labeled appropriately. This results is less chances of mislabeled files. Also, from this release onwards, selinuxfs is mounted at /sys/fs/selinux instead of in /selinux. All the affected components including anaconda, dracut, livecd-tools and policycoreutils have been modified to work with this change.
- System Accounts. Fedora now standardizes on login.defs as
authority for UID/GID space allocation, and has moved boundary between system and user accounts from 500 to 1000 to match conventions followed by several other Linux distributions. Upgrading from a existing release will not be affected by this change and you can use kickstart to override this change during installation if necessary.
- Chrony NTP. Fedora has switched over to using Chrony as the
default NTP client. There are several advantages including smaller memory footprint (1.3MB vs 6MB resident size), no unnecessary process wakeups which results in better power savings. better timekeeping on systems not running 24/7 or without permanent internet connection or with low quality/unstable clocks (virtual machines). Once the clock is synchronized, applications are not upset by backward time jumps. system-config-date and GNOME settings daemon has been modified to use Chrony as well.
- HAL Removal. HAL, a hardware abstraction layer which has been a
deprecated component for several releases, has been completely removed from all Fedora spins and DVD. Software components using HAL have moved over to using udisks and upower as well as libudev for device discovery. This results in faster system bootup and faster startup for applications depending on device discovery.
- Cloud Updates. Fedora now includes a number of new and improved
features to support cloud computing, including a "cloud ready" version of GlusterFS, including additional auth*/crypto/multi-tenancy; pacemaker-cloud, application service high availability in a cloud environment; Condor Cloud, an IaaS cloud implementation using Condor and the Deltacloud API, and Aeolus.
- Virtualization. Once again Fedora raises the bar on
virtualization support, including expanded virtual network support, an improved Spice for managing virtual machines, restored Xen support, a new virtual machine lock manager, and improved ability to browse guest file systems.
- Developer Improvements. Developers get many goodies with Verne,
including updated Ada, Haskell and Perl environments, a new Python plugin for GCC and a number of new and improved APIs.
These and many other improvements provide a wide and solid base for future Fedora releases. This release increases the range of possibilities for developers and helps Fedora to maintain its position at the leading edge of free and open source technology.
A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available here[2]
We also have nightly composes of alternate spins available here [3]
Issues and Details
For more information including common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_16_Alpha_release_notes
A shorter list of common bugs can be found here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F16_bugs
Contributing
Bug reports are helpful, especially for Alpha. If you encounter any issues please report them and help make this release of Fedora the best ever.
Thank you, and we hope to see you in the Fedora project!"
Fedora Development News
The Development Announcement[1] list is intended to be a LOW TRAFFIC announce-only list for Fedora development.
Acceptable Types of Announcements
- Policy or process changes that affect developers.
- Infrastructure changes that affect developers.
- Tools changes that affect developers.
- Schedule changes
- Freeze reminders
Unacceptable Types of Announcements
- Periodic automated reports (violates the INFREQUENT rule)
- Discussion
- Anything else not mentioned above
Please rebuild your package with latest translation
Noriko Mizumoto announced[1]:
"Dear Fedora package maintainers
To have Fedora 16 high standard in non-English versions, Fedora Localization will have our review packages process using the image composed specifically for this purpose. This image will be composed between 25-26 August. Then many different languages' translators can actually install the image, review your package translation quality and modify it or file a bug if any before translation deadline.
Therefore, could you please take your latest translation from Transifex and rebuild your package with it by then for composing?
Many thanks
noriko Fedora Localization"
Fedora Events
The purpose of event is to build a global Fedora events calendar, and to identify responsible Ambassadors for each event. The event page is laid out by quarter and by region. Please maintain the layout, as it is crucial for budget planning. Events can be added to this page whether or not they have an Ambassador owner. Events without an owner are not eligible for funding, but being listed allows any Ambassador to take ownership of the event and make it eligible for funding. In plain words, Fedora events are the exclusive and source of marketing, learning and meeting all the fellow community people around you. So, please mark your agenda with the following events to consider attending or volunteering near you!
Upcoming Events (June - August 2011)
- North America (NA)[1]
- Central & South America (LATAM): [2]
- Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)[3]
- India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)[4]
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY12_Q2_.28June_2011_-_August_2011.29
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY12_Q2_.28June_2011_-_August_2011.29_2
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY12_Q2_.28June_2011_-_August_2011.29_3
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY12_Q2_.28June_2011_-_August_2011.29_4
Past Events
Archive of Past Fedora Events[1]
Additional information
- Reimbursements -- reimbursement guidelines.
- Budget -- budget for the current quarter (as distributed by FAMSCo).
- Sponsorship -- how decisions are made to subsidize travel by community members.
- Organization -- event organization, budget information, and regional responsibility.
- Event reports -- guidelines and suggestions.
- LinuxEvents -- a collection of calendars of Linux events.
Fedora In the News
In this section, we cover news from the trade press and elsewhere that is re-posted to the Fedora Marketing list[1].
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing
Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco
Fedora 16 KDE and GNOME 3 Alpha screenshots (LinuxBSDoc.com)
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] a posting including Fedora 16 Alpha KDE and GNOME 3 screenshots:
"...Anaconda, the Fedora installer, will be using the GPT partition table by default. There were some doubts about that, but the images in this article confirms it. GPT partition table will be the default, when Fedora 16 is finally released, which will be in early November (2011).
GPT, the GUID Partition Table, is an alternate disk partition table scheme that solves two problems associated with the MBR (Master boot Record) partition table: It allows the configuration of more than four primary partitions, the maximum supported by MBR, and also supports disk partitions of more than 2 TB.
From the test installations I carried out, I observed that GPT is the default if Fedora is installed in standalone mode. If, however, there is an existing distribution or another operating system on the drive, and you attempt to dual-boot, it defaults to the MBR partition table."
The full post is available[2].
A Look Through Fedora 16 Alpha (Phoronix.com)
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] another article on Fedora 16 Alpha:
"The GNOME Shell for version 3.2 is not radically different, but still nicer than early versions of Ubuntu's Unity desktop (granted, Unity in Ubuntu 11.10 is also becoming more friendly and polished). Fortunately, Fedora is always shipping with the latest open-source graphics drivers and other core components, so the GNOME Shell should work relatively well on Radeon / Nouveau / Intel"
The full post is available[2].
Alpha version of Fedora 16 "Verne" released
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]
"The alpha uses Linux kernel 3.0, but versions released from late September or early October are expected to move to version 3.1. It includes the alpha version of KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.7.0, and GNOME 3.1.5 will provide a foretaste of GNOME 3.2. The development team has also replaced further init scripts with systemd units. Systemd replaced upstart in Fedora 15. The planned switch to using Btrfs as the default file system has been deferred to a future version."
The full post is available[2].
Free as in sake: The story of Koji
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] a nice review article on Koji:
"During the Core-Extras merger, being able to use Koji was a huge help to Fedora. While some integration work was required, all other options would have demanded much more effort. Red Hat had already been building pre-merger versions of Core in an early version of Koji, so the transition was simply less drastic. Furthermore, Koji's robust XML-RPC interface allowed other parts of Fedora infrastructure to tie in with relative ease. Over the past four years, Koji has shown its flexibility as Fedora's needs have changed"
The full post is available[2].
Red Hat's Aeolus to 'out-Linux' Rackspace's cloud: OpenStack with a Fedora twist
Robyn Bergeron forwarded[1] an article on Red Hat's current efforts with cloud services:
"Red Hat is leading a Fedora-like effort to succeed where OpenStack has struggled in building an open-source cloud founded on broad community input.
Red Hat's engineers are building Aeolus, a software suite to spin up, manage and deploy applications from physical and virtual servers to any public or private cloud.
Red Hat claims Aeolus will let you pluck apps from various virtual machines and throw them into different clouds: so your choice of cloud is not pre-determined by the hypervisor you use.
While it works with vSphere, Aeolus also runs on KVM, the open-source hypervisor embraced by Red Hat and at the heart of the anti-VMware Open Virtualization Alliance it launched in May with server heavyweights and aspiring cloud providers Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
Aeolus will allow you to configure, program and provision applications on your virtual servers and then let them overflow to Amazon's EC2, Rackspace, and "other" yet-to-be-determined clouds."
The full post is available[2].
Fedora 16 to have Grub2, GNOME 3.2 and KDE 4.7 (The H Online)
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] an article on some upcoming features in Fedora 16 from The H Online:
"The feature list contains 40 items, including GNOME 3.2 and KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.7. The developers are planning to switch to using Grub2 for the boot loader. Having switched to systemd, as an alternative to sysvinit and upstart, in Fedora 15, the project plans to replace further sysv init scripts with systemd units in version 16. Furthermore, Fedora is to offer everything that's required for Xen virtualisation, as version 3.0 of the Linux kernel, which is now expected to be released on Friday, will include all the necessary components."
The full post is available[2].
Google Web Fonts prove free fonts are flourishing (Linux Pro Magazine)
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"Historically, fonts have been a weak point in free software. There were probably two reasons: first, programmers were mostly indifferent to fonts, and, second, font designers were concerned about how their work might be used. However, in the last five years, the problem has been largely corrected, as a look at the Google Web Fonts page shows."
The full post is available[2].
National meet on Free Open Source Software (ExpressBuzz.com)
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"KOCHI: The Federal Institute of Science and Technology will organise a two-day national conference on Free Open Source Software. The conference organised by the Computer Science Department of FISAT and the FISAT Free Software Cell will be held on FISAT campus on August 26 and 27.
In the two-day meet, Praseed Pai, author of ‘Slang For .net’, will speak on Cross Platform Development. Shakti Kannan, Ambassador of Fedora, Pune, and Ranjith Siji, Chief Technology Officer of Walking Ant Technologies will speak on other sessions."
The full post is available[2].
Infographic sums up Linux then and now (Geek.com)
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"One of the most telling stats, based on information gathered from LinuxCon registrations this year, is how the different distributions have won or lost favor with users. Although Fedora used to hold nearly half the market share (45%), it has now dropped firmly into second place (28%) behind the growing popularity of Ubuntu (34%). One positive aspect of this change is more distributions are getting users’ attention and use, and Linux Mint has recently joined the more well-known and older distros on the list."
The full post is available[2].
Feature preview of Fedora 16 installer
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"GPT, the GUID Partition Table, is an alternate disk partition table scheme that solves two problems associated with the MBR (Master boot Record) partition table. It allows the configuration of more than four primary partitions, the maximum supported by MBR, and also supports disk partitions of more than 2 TB. So GPT will be the default partition table scheme on Fedora 16"
The full post is available[2].
Fedora Postpones Switch To Btrfs; Fedora 17 Is Now The Target Release For The Switch
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"The Fedora developers have listened and have decided that Fedora 16 will not use Btrfs by default. The announcement was made by Josef Bacik, Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat. Bacik, however, mentioned that Btrfs is still being considered as the default filesystem for future release of Fedora. The target release to have Btrfs by default has been shifted to Fedora 17 now."
The full post is available[2].
Fedora 16 to skip btrfs by default (Network World)
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"I'm actually encouraged by the fact that btrfs is being delayed for default for another release. It shows that the Fedora release process and objectives are working well. Bacik has also displayed a great deal of patience (as far as I've seen, anyway) with bug reports and complaints while working to get it up to speed."
The full post is available[2].
Fedora not to switch to Btrfs in version 16
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"Recently, it became apparent that Btrfs has not met the stipulated criteria. The main reason for this continues to be the still ongoing development of a decent program for testing and repairing Btrfs file systems. Bacik had previously hoped that such a program would be released in May; now, the developer has mentioned a time frame of "a few weeks", but has also said that the developers' target is the Linux Plumbers Conference, which will start on 7 September. The Fedora project will probably make a second attempt to switch in Fedora 17."
The full post is available[2].
Oracle, SUSE, Red Hat drive 70% of LibreOffice development (ZDNet.com)
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"Upon the release of LibreOffice 3.4.2, the Document Foundation announced that Oracle and SUSE each contributes roughly 25 percent of the latest commits, while Red Hat contributed another 20 percent. Following Oracle’s donation of Openoffice to the Apache Foundation earlier this year, The Document Foundation wants to reassure the technology public that corporate support for LibreOffice is strong and that this Office suite is “enterprise ready.”
The full post is available[2].
Can GNOME 3 Become the Next Big Open Source Contender? (TheVarGuy.com)
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"There’s a lot to like about GNOME Shell in its current form. It’s functional, graceful and arguably more intuitive than Canonical’s Unity, which suffers, for instance, from the lack of any means for adding virtual desktops other than editing gconf values by hand."
The full post is available[2].
Praise for Fedora 15 and KDE 4.6.x - A great experience!
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"Some old time Fedora users may be aware of Fedora's poor track record when it comes to KDE although things have been changing ever since the release of KDE 4.x. I regularly try Fedora KDE and so far haven't been fully convinced with the experience until now.
As a fan of both Fedora and KDE it gives me pleasure to say Fedora 15 with KDE 4.6.x is a great experience!"
The full post is available[2].
Living with Fedora – A Debian/Ubuntu User’s Take on Fedora 15
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"If I was to sum up my opinion on Fedora 15 in one sentence, it’d have to be “Rough, but with great potential“. Gnome 3 is still a baby, and Fedora took a bold step by pushing it to the forefront, and I applaud them for that. As cozy as it may be, there’s still a whole lot of polish left to be done. The front-end is still rough, and the back-end doesn’t seem to have yet caught up with all the changes. If Fedora can manage to take the successes in this release (which are many) and smooth out some of those rough spots (which are also many), then Fedora 16 is likely to pull a lot of users away from Ubuntu permanently. From the looks of it, I’ll be one of them."
The full post is available[2].
Linux at 20, some personal memories
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:
"By this time, summer of 1991, we had both started posting to Usenet. In August, Linus mentioned his kernel project on comp.os.minix for the first time. Later on, he decided to make the code available, and got one of the admins of ftp.funet.fi to put it there. For this, the project needed a name. Linus wanted to call it Freax, but Ari Lemmke, the ftp.funet.fi admin, decided to call it Linux instead. You can find the Freax name in the Makefile of the earliest Linux releases."
The full post is available[2].
Ambassadors
This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Ambassadors Project[1].
Contributing Writer: Richard A Vijay For days of the week starting from 25 August 2011 to 01 September 2011 [2]
Beat this week
Headlines from mailing lists
- Biweekly Meeting reminder on 03 September 2011 at 4:00 UTC Saturday
- FUDCon Milan: Hotel updates
- Fedora 16 i18n / l10n test week
- Test driving" Fedora 16. The Alpha release
- F16 KVM+spice and testing initiative on Nouveau (Opensource driver for nVidia cards)
- IIPT Fedora User Group – Cergy, France
- Linux Day 2011 Celebration
- ICE-FOSS 2011
- F16 Release Events wiki and Media & Swag Planning
- Fedora Round Table Budapest 2011
- FAD SL -Sri Lanka
- FrOSCon 2011 - St Augustin
- Travel planning for FUDCon Milan
- 20 Years of Linux
- The FAms Way initiative of Fedora Classroom
Welcome New Ambassadors
Welcome to our new sponsored Ambassador group members:
Christian Bryant from the USA, mentored by Scott Williams
Adir Shemesh from Israel, mentored by Robert Scheck
Paulo Mauricio da Conceição, Junior from Brazil, mentored by Daniel Bruno
Congrats and Wishes to all New members from Fedora Team.
Summary of traffic on Ambassadors mailing list
- Biweekly Meeting reminder on 03 September 2011 at 4:00 UTC Saturday raised by David Ramsey
- FUDCon Milan: Hotel updates posted by Francesco Crippa
- Fedora 16 i18n / l10n test week reported by Adam Williamson
- Test driving" Fedora 16. The Alpha release posted by David Ramsey
- F16 KVM+spice and testing initiative on Nouveau (Opensource driver for nVidia cards) reported by David Ramsey
- Fedora User Group – Cergy,France reported by Kaesar ALNIJRES
- Linux Day Celebration 2011 reported by Heherson Pagcaliwagan
- ICE-FOSS 2011 reported by Shakthi Kannan
- Fedora 16 Release Events wiki and Media & Swag Planning
- Fedora Round Table Budapest 2011 reported by Joerg Simon
- FAD SL reported by Buddhika
- FrOSCon 2011 at St Augustin reported by Christoph
- Travel planning for FUDCon Milan by Jared K. Smith
- 20 years of Linux reported by Jukka Palander
- APAC meeting on this Saturday - Friendly Reminder from Engels Antonio
- EMEA ambassadors meeting 2011-08-24 minutes reported by Christoph
- The FAms Way initiative of Fedora Classroom by Buddhika
FAmSCo Meeting
- FAmSCo Report: July 2011[18] reported by Igor Pires Soares
- Meeting logs for famsco meeting 2011-08-20 by Neville
Events reported on Ambassadors mailing list
- Fedora User Group – Cergy,France reported by Kaesar ALNIJRES
- Software Freedom Day on Sept. 17 reported by Magie
- ICE-FOSS 2011 reported by Shakthi Kannan
- FAD SL reported by Buddhika
- FrOSCon 2011 at St Augustin reported by Christoph
- TDD, BDD with Ruby, Rails, Cucumber, Diaspora at PICT[25]
Campus Ambassadors mailing list-Summary of traffic
No news.
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-September/018171.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018170.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018168.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018165.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018166.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018161.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018155.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018153.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018152.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018145.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018137.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018135.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018134.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018133.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018123.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018117.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018100.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018119.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018101.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018161.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018162.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018153.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018137.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018135.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-August/018104.html
QualityAssurance
In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1]. For more information on the work of the QA team and how you can get involved, see the Joining page[2].
Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson
Test Days
Internationalization and localization test week was ongoing during the week - there will be a full report next week. There were three test days: desktop localization on Tuesday 2011-08-30[1], localization and internationalization in the installer on Wednesday 2011-08-31[2], and desktop internationalization on Thursday 2011-09-01[3].
Next week will be Graphics Test Week - yes, it's time to make sure the graphics drivers are in shape for Fedora 16! Tuesday 2011-09-06 will be Nouveau Test Day[4], Wednesday 2011-09-07 will be Radeon Test Day[5], and Thursday 2011-09-08 will be Intel graphics Test Day[6]. As always we need to check up and make sure there are no big problems in graphics card support, check on progress since the last day, and ensure 3D support is in good shape for GNOME Shell. If you have an NVIDIA, AMD or Intel graphics card - and that's more than 95% of you! - please come along and help out.
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-08-30_L10n_Desktop
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-08-31_L10n_I18n_Installation
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-01_I18n_Desktop
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-06_Nouveau
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-07_Radeon
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-08_Intel
Fedora 16 Alpha preparation
Following the previous week's slip, Fedora 16 Alpha RC4 arrived on 2011-08-15[1]. Two more blocker bugs[2] [3] were quickly discovered in the new build, and Alpha RC5 promptly followed it on 2011-08-16[4]. The team put in a heroic effort to complete Alpha validation testing on RC5 in less than 24 hours, with the installation[5], base [6] and desktop [7] matrices all filled out. As the testing exposed no further blocker bugs, the QA team was able to report that RC5 met the release requirements at the Go / No-Go meeting of 2011-08-17[8], and the release was declared gold.
Masami Ichikawa noticed that some libreport packages were missing from the Alpha Xfce and LXDE live images, which stopped abrt and sealert from being able to report bugs on these live images[9]. Kevin Fenzi reported that he had fixed the problem post-Alpha[10].
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2011-August/000266.html
- ↑ http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=730863
- ↑ http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=730887
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2011-August/000268.html
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_16_Alpha_RC5_Install
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_16_Alpha_RC5_Base
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_16_Alpha_RC5_Desktop
- ↑ http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2011-08-17/f16_alpha_gono-go_meeting_%232.2011-08-17-21.05.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-August/101912.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-August/102002.html
Test compose extension for Fedora 16 Beta
At the weekly meeting of 2011-08-22[1], John Dulaney suggested starting the release validation period for Fedora 16 Beta earlier by producing the first test compose (a full build of the live and install image set that makes up a (pre-)release, but which happens ahead of the freeze date for the next (pre-)release and hence cannot possibly be validated as the (pre-)release image set) ahead of schedule. Adam Williamson had been thinking along the same lines, and suggested replacing the "Pre-Beta Acceptance Test Plan" milestone with an earlier TC1 compose. The group was generally in favor of the idea. Later, Adam and John were able to obtain the agreement of the installer and release engineering teams.
Release criteria updates
Adam Williamson reported that he had committed his proposed modifications to the firstboot release criteria and validation tests (see FWN #284)[1]. Adam also made two alternate proposals for refining how the criteria apply to installations to EFI systems[2]. Peter Robinson[3] and Jurgen Kramer[4] generally agreed with the idea of promoting the importance of EFI installations.
Adam also kicked off a discussion about kickstart release criteria[5]. Stephen Smoogen suggested a minimal criterion could be "Does it take a minimal kickstart and build a default system. The minimal being the exact stuff that would be created if a person just clicked through a release."[6].
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-August/101916.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-August/101939.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-August/101942.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-August/101944.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-August/102052.html
- ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-August/102163.html
Explaining the need for a BIOS boot partition during installation
Tom Horsley questioned whether the Fedora 16 installer's message explaining the need for a BIOS boot partition when booting from BIOS (rather than EFI) using a drive with a GPT disk label was understandable[1]. Adam Williamson wasn't sure the installer was the right place for a detailed explanation of GPT issues[2], but Scott Robbins[3] and Rahul Sundaram[4] agreed with Tom. Rahul suggested filing a bug requesting the message be improved.
Fedora 16 in boot.fedoraproject.org
"Tony" reported that there was no Fedora 16 option available at http://boot.fedoraproject.org[1]. Kevin Fenzi apologized for the oversight and said he had added it to the menu[2]. Tony responded to say that things were working great[3].
Security Advisories
In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce for the week ending August 24, 2011.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce
Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco
Fedora 16 Security Advisories
- vips-7.24.7-2.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064445.html
- nip2-7.24.2-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064446.html
- setup-2.8.36-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064441.html
- apache-commons-daemon-1.0.7-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064432.html
- xen-4.1.1-3.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064431.html
- cifs-utils-5.0-2.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064316.html
- libmodplug-0.8.8.4-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064279.html
- drupal7-7.6-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064259.html
- gimp-2.6.11-21.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064232.html
- zabbix-1.8.6-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064169.html
- dhcp-4.2.2-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064151.html
- bugzilla-4.0.2-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064120.html
- mozvoikko-1.9.0-6.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064907.html
- firefox-6.0-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064905.html
- xulrunner-6.0-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064904.html
- thunderbird-6.0-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064906.html
- foomatic-4.0.8-4.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064898.html
- hplip-3.11.7-2.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064881.html
- cups-1.5.0-6.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064873.html
- tcptrack-1.4.2-1.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064749.html
- quake3-1.36-11.svn2102.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064622.html
- openarena-0.8.5-4.fc16 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064621.html
Fedora 15 Security Advisories
- thunderbird-6.0-1.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064401.html
- thunderbird-lightning-1.0-0.48.b5.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064400.html
- vips-7.24.7-2.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064342.html
- nip2-7.24.2-1.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064341.html
- gimp-2.6.11-21.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063964.html
- bugzilla-3.6.6-1.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063946.html
- gnome-python2-extras-2.25.3-33.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063901.html
- firefox-6.0-1.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063898.html
- xulrunner-6.0-2.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063897.html
- mozvoikko-1.9.0-6.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063900.html
- perl-Gtk2-MozEmbed-0.09-1.fc15.2 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063899.html
- kernel-2.6.40.3-0.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063890.html
- zabbix-1.8.6-1.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063884.html
- pidgin-2.10.0-1.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064943.html
- xen-4.1.1-3.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064939.html
- cups-1.4.8-2.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064600.html
- apache-commons-daemon-1.0.7-1.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064564.html
- mingw32-libpng-1.4.8-1.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064547.html
- mingw32-libpng-1.4.8-1.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064528.html
- dhcp-4.2.1-10.P1.fc15 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064504.html
Fedora 14 Security Advisories
- gimp-2.6.11-21.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064398.html
- kernel-2.6.35.14-95.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064393.html
- xulrunner-1.9.2.20-1.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064384.html
- firefox-3.6.20-1.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064383.html
- thunderbird-3.1.12-1.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064390.html
- mozvoikko-1.0-23.fc14.1 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064385.html
- perl-Gtk2-MozEmbed-0.08-6.fc14.28 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064382.html
- gnome-web-photo-0.9-22.fc14.1 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064388.html
- thunderbird-lightning-1.0-0.42.b3pre.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064386.html
- galeon-2.0.7-42.fc14.1 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064387.html
- gnome-python2-extras-2.25.3-32.fc14.1 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064381.html
- vips-7.24.7-2.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064373.html
- nip2-7.24.2-1.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064372.html
- bugzilla-3.6.6-1.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063967.html
- zabbix-1.8.6-1.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/063904.html
- freetype-2.4.2-5.fc14 - http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-August/064934.html
Planet Fedora
This is the Planet Fedora section, covering news from planet.fedoraproject.org[1], a collection of blogs from Fedora users spanning the globe.
Contributing Writer: Joel Braun
Events
FrOSCon 2011
Sirko Kemter reflected on his experiences at FrOSCon 2011[1].
COSCUP 2011:Taipei
Bastien Nocera blogged on his time representing GNOME at COSCUP 2011[2].
FUDCon India
Rahul Sundaram posted the meeting minutes for the August 23 meeting on FUDCon India[3].
GNU Hacker's Meeting Paris
Dodji Seketeli wrote on the GNU hacker's meeting happening later this month in Paris[4].
Fedora Community
The most talked about news this week has been the release of the Fedora 16 Alpha, "Verne". This has been covered by announcements from Adam Williamson[5], Steven Smoogen[6], Paul Frields[7], and Nathaniel McCallum[8] among many others.
General
Daiki Ueno posted his thoughts on eekboard 1.0, an onscreen keyboard program[9].
Aditya Patawari wrote on using munin to log and analyze graphical data on server traffic[10].
There has been discussion on the release of NetworkManager 0.9, including a list of features[11] by Dan Williams, and a general announcment by Fedora-Uruguay[12].
- ↑ http://karl-tux-stadt.de/ktuxs/?p=3335
- ↑ http://www.hadess.net/2011/08/coscup-2011-taipei.html
- ↑ http://mether.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/fudcon-india-aug-23rd-2011-face-to-face-meeting-minutes/
- ↑ http://dodji.blogspot.com/2011/08/gnu-hackers-meeting-2011-in-paris.html
- ↑ http://www.happyassassin.net/2011/08/23/fedora-16-alpha-released/
- ↑ http://smoogespace.blogspot.com/2011/08/tuesday-2011-08-23.html
- ↑ http://paul.frields.org/2011/08/24/trying-out-fedora-16-alpha/
- ↑ http://nathaniel.themccallums.org/2011/08/24/fedora-16-alpha/
- ↑ http://blog.du-a.org/?p=855
- ↑ http://blog.adityapatawari.com/2011/08/munin-server-statistics-easy-way.html
- ↑ http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/2011/08/25/when-the-sun-shines-well-shine-together/
- ↑ http://fedora-uy.org/node/344