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Fedora Weekly News Issue 286

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 286[1] for the three weeks ending September 21, 2011. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

In announcements this week, nominations for the release name for Fedora 17 is open; some changes to the packaging guidelines, and details on the Fedora 16 beta go/no go meeting. Fedora In the News this week provides one story, an article from LinuxInsider.com on comparing recent top linux distros, Fedora amongst them. In the Ambassadors beat this week, updates from the mailing list discussion and many Fedora related event reports. Security Advisories brings up current with security-related packages released since the last issue, and our issue wraps up with coverage of the Planet Fedora -- news and views from around the Fedora blogosphere. Enjoy!

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

Fedora Announcements are the place where you can find the major coverage from the Fedora Project including general announcements[1], development announcements[2] and Fedora Events[3].

Contributing Writer: Rashadul Islam

Fedora 17 Release Naming: Nominations are now open!

Fedora Project Leader, Jared K. Smith [1] on Tue Sep 13 13:49:39 UTC 2011 announced[2][3] the Fedora 17 Release Naming. The details of the report is follows:

"It is once again time to choose the release name for the next Fedora release. Potential names will be accepted for consideration beginning September 13th (in other words, NOW) through September 20. Please submit your best ideas to the Fedora wiki at the address below:

[4]

Please note that you *must* follow the instructions and guidelines at the page listed above if you want your name to be considered. For instance, there must be an "is-a" link between the name Verne (from Fedora 16) and the name you suggest. That link must be different than previous links for Fedora release names. Also, we ask that you please conduct the required searches for brand and trademark names that might cause us problems.

Read the full guidelines at the wiki page listed above, where you can also find full schedule details for the release naming process.

For those of you interested in reviewing the history of Fedora release names, there is an appropriately named wiki page for doing so at [5]

Please try to pick a name that is fun and creative. Don't delay... do it today! We all want an awesome name for Fedora 17!"

[Guidelines Change] Changes to the Packaging Guidelines

Tom Callaway[1] on Thu Sep 22 17:06:51 UTC 2011 announced[2],

"The section of the Packaging Guidelines regarding Compiler Flags has been updated and improved, most notably, to document handling of PIE enabled packages.

[3]

The prohibition against unnecessary explicit library requires has been updated with an example of when explicit library requires are useful and allowed. The example addresses packages that use features of a library added after the library initially adopted its current SONAME.

[4]

An additional md5 implementation was added to the list of bundling exceptions:

[5]

These guidelines (and changes) were approved by the Fedora Packaging Committee (FPC).

Many thanks to Kevin Fenzi, Adam Jackson, and all of the members of the FPC, for assisting in drafting, refining, and passing these guidelines.

As a reminder: The Fedora Packaging Guidelines are living documents! If you find something missing, incorrect, or in need of revision, you can suggest a draft change. The procedure for this is documented here: [6]

Thanks"

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

F16 Beta Go/No-Go meeting

Robyn Bergeron[1] on Tue Sep 20 19:25:41 UTC 2011 announced[2],

"Join us on irc.freenode.net #fedora-meeting for this important meeting.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 @21:00 UTC (17:00 EDT/14:00 PDT)

"Before each public release Development, QA and Release Engineering meet to determine if the release criteria are met for a particular release. This meeting is called the: Go/No-Go Meeting."

"Verifying that the Release criteria are met is the responsibility of the QA Team."

For more details about this meeting see: [3]

In the meantime, keep an eye on the Fedora 16 Alpha Blocker list:

[4]"

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 (September - December 2011)

  • North America (NA)[1]
  • Central & South America (LATAM): [2]
  • Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)[3]
  • India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)[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

Which Linux Distro Leads the Pack? (linuxinsider.com)

Robert Jensen forwarded[1] a posting including Fedora 16 Alpha KDE and GNOME 3 screenshots:

"...how do Linux bloggers have fun? That's right, by engaging in a little high-spirited debate -- not of some weighty, industry-changing subject this time, though, but of a matter very close to all of our hearts. It's time, in other words, to ask the question once again: Which distro is best?

It is with deepest gratitude to the ever-awesome geeks over at TuxRadar that Linux Girl calls your attention, dear readers, to a wonderfully thorough side-by-side comparison they recently performed on six of today's most popular Linux distributions: Fedora, Mint, Arch, Ubuntu, Debian and OpenSUSE.

Hyperlogos blogger Martin Espinoza took issue with TuxRadar's inclusion of Fedora.

"Putting Fedora at the top of a 'best distributions' list is like putting a prototype car at the top of a list of cars to buy this year," Espinoza told Linux Girl.

"Fedora is the alpha test version for RHEL," he explained. "They break things there first. You'd have to be a nut to run it on a production system (though apparently, many people do) because the entire purpose of Fedora is to permit Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) to try new things and break stuff."

Discussion on the Fedora marketing list continued, wondering when the mis-perception that Fedora is primarily a development path for Red Hat Enterprise Linux would end[2][3]

The full post is available[4].

Ambassadors

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Ambassadors Project[1].

Contributing Writer: Richard A Vijay For days of the week starting from 01 September 2011 to 08 September 2011 (19hrs GMT+1) [2]

Beat this week

Headlines from mailing lists

  • APAC Fedora 16 Wiki and reminder, the regular biweekly APAC meeting this on Saturday, September 03rd, 2011 at 04:00 UTC. by David Ramsey
  • Regular biweekly APAC meeting notes on 2011 Sep 03‏ Buddhika Kurera. Thread includes Truong Anh. Tuan and Abhishek Singh
  • A very quick event report Festival of Cergy's associations 2011 published by Kaesar ALNIJRES
  • Review about the FrOSCon 2011 in Sankt Augustin,Germany published by Robert Scheck
  • Reminder French Fedora Meeting from bochecha
  • FAmNA meeting reminder from Jamie Williams
  • FAmSCo reminder by Christoph Wickert. Discussion thread participation includes Pierros Papadeas,Truong Anh. Tuan,Christoph Wickert,Larry Cafiero
  • Reminder -EMEA ambassadors meeting tomorrow 2011-09-07 Christoph Wickert
  • FAmNA 09/06/2011 log and Minutes by Jamie Williams
*EMEA ambassadors meeting 2011-09-07 minutes   Christoph Wickert

Summary of traffic on Ambassadors mailing list

  • APAC Fedora 16 Wiki and reminder, the regular biweekly APAC meeting this on Saturday, September 03rd, 2011 at 04:00 UTC. by David Ramsey

[1]

  • Regular biweekly APAC meeting notes on 2011 Sep 03‏ thread by Buddhika Kurera

[2]

  • A very quick event report Festival of Cergy's associations 2011 published by Kaesar ALNIJRES

[3]


  • Review about the FrOSCon 2011 in Sankt Augustin,Germany by Robert Scheck

[4]

  • Reminder French Fedora Meeting from bochecha

[5]

  • FAmNA meeting 09/06/2011 reminder from Jamie Williams

[6]

  • FAmSCo reminder by Christoph Wickert, Reminder to keep meeting pages updated regularly.
[7]
  • EMEA ambassadors meeting reminder for meeting on 2011-09-07 by Christoph Wickert

[8]

  • FAmNA 09/06/2011 log and Minutes by Jamie Williams

[9]

  • EMEA ambassadors meeting 2011-09-07 minutes Christoph Wickert

[10]

FAmSCo Meeting

  • FAmSCo reminder by Christoph Wickert, Reminder to keep meeting pages updated regularly.
[11]


Events reported on Ambassadors mailing list

  • A very quick event report Festival of Cergy's associations 2011 published by Kaesar ALNIJRES

[12]


  • Review about the FrOSCon 2011 in Sankt Augustin,Germany by Robert Scheck

[13]

Campus Ambassadors mailing list-Summary of traffic

No news.

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

Fedora 15 Security Advisories

Fedora 14 Security Advisories

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

PyCon India

Shakthi Kannan posted on his experience speaking at PyCon India 2011, as well as his thoughts on various keynotes and events.

Shreyank Gupta gave a day-by-day recap on what happened at PyCon.

Software Freedom Day Panama

Alejandro Perez posted on Fedora's presence [1] at Software Freedom Day Panama, talking about some of the demonstrations and promotion there.

Fedora Community

Lately, there has been much discussion on the push for Fedora 16, fueled by many testers opinions, and the work of the development team to fix bugs.

Adam Williamson blogged why the Fedora 16 Beta would be delayed, citing several bugs in his post[2].

Martin Sourada posted some of the wallpapers[3] in the F16 Beta, and talked about the inclusion of supplemental wallpapers in the new release.

General

Garrett Holmstrom wrote on [4] a new, smarter way to import packages into Fedora.

Keiran "Affix" Smith blogged about his upgrade and use of the F16 beta, as well as a few thoughts on some of the changes[5].