Linux

The announcement below has been posted under the News section of the GNU website.

GNU Hurd is the GNU project’s replacement for the Unix kernel and comprises a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control and other features that are implemented by the Unix or similar kernels (e.g. Linux).

It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian “sid” at the time of the Debian “wheezy” release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.

The installation ISO images can be downloaded from Debian Ports in the usual three Debian flavors: NETINST, CD, DVD. Besides the friendly Debian installer, a pre-installed disk image is also available, making it even easier to try Debian GNU/Hurd.

Debian GNU/Hurd is currently available for the i386 architecture with more than 10.000 software packages available (more than 75% of the Debian archive, and more to come!).

Please make sure to read the configuration information, the FAQ, and the translator primer to get a grasp of the great features of GNU/Hurd.

Due to the very small number of developers, our progress of the project has not been as fast as other successful operating systems, but we believe to have reached a very decent state, even with our limited resources.

We would like to thank all the people who have worked on GNU/Hurd over the past decades. There were not many people at any given time (and still not many people today, please join!), but in the end a lot of people have contributed one way or another. Thanks everybody!

Amarok is a great media player for the Linux platform and one I’ve used for years; and now it’s also available for Unix and Windows too.

The Amarok team announced the release of version 2.7.1, codenamed “Harbinger” on Wednesday this week. According to the following from the release announcement, it’s a release to fix one bug in particular:

The Amarok Team has discovered a very unpleasant bug in QtWebkit ↔ GStreamer interaction that made continuous playing almost impossible, due to frequent crashing. We decided to work around it in our code and take it as an opportunity to release a bugfix version. It contains a couple of other fixes we deemed important.

This version only contains some very essential fixes and changes compared to 2.7.0:

• A modification in handling MusicBrainz ID tags was needed to avoid problems with falsely duplicate tracks.
• We fixed a weird behaviour when the “Use Music Location?” question is answered “Yes” on the first run.
• We now have worked around the QtWebkit ↔ GStreamer bug that caused frequent crashes on track start; this happened if the Wikipedia applet tried to load a page containing an audio tag.
• The database is now also created if the home directory contains non-ASCII characters.
• The Nepomuk Collection now also shows track numbers.

These changes have also been incorporated into the next release – 2.8.0 – which is still in development and promises yet more fixes and enhancements.

Laptops for crew use on the International Space Station (ISS) are being migrated from Windows to Linux, the Linux Foundation reports.

The reason for the migration, given by Keith Chuvala of United Space Alliance, a NASA contractor deeply involved in Space Shuttle and ISS operations was as follows:

We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable – one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust or adapt, we could.

The laptops will be running Debian and those currently running Scientific Linux, a Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone, will likewise be converted to Debian, according to ZDNet.

On 4th May, Debian made the following announcement concerning the release of Debian 7.0, the latest stable release of this venerable Linux distribution.

After many months of constant development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 7.0 (code name “Wheezy”).

This new version of Debian includes various interesting features such as multiarch support, several specific tools to deploy private clouds, an improved installer and a complete set of
multimedia codecs and front-ends which remove the need for third-party repositories.

Multiarch support, one of the main release goals for Wheezy, will allow Debian users to install packages from multiple architectures on the same machine. This means that you can now, for the first time, install both 32- and 64-bit software on the same machine and have all the relevant dependencies correctly resolved, automatically.

The installation process has been greatly improved: Debian can now be installed using software speech, above all by visually impaired people who do not use a Braille device. Thanks to the combined efforts of a huge number of translators, the installation system is available in 73 languages and more than a dozen of them are available for speech synthesis too.

In addition, for the first time, Debian supports installation and booting using UEFI for new 64-bit PCs (amd64), although there is no support for Secure Boot yet.

This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as:

• Apache 2.2.22
• Asterisk 1.8.13.1
• GIMP 2.8.2
• an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 3.4
• GNU Compiler Collection 4.7.2
• Icedove 10 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird)
• Iceweasel 10 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox)
• KDE Plasma Workspaces and KDE Applications 4.8.4
• kFreeBSD kernel 8.3 and 9.0
• LibreOffice 3.5.4
• Linux 3.2
• MySQL 5.5.30
• Nagios 3.4.1
• OpenJDK 6b27 and 7u3
• Perl 5.14.2
• PHP 5.4.4
• PostgreSQL 9.1
• Python 2.7.3 and 3.2.3
• Samba 3.6.6
• Tomcat 6.0.35 and 7.0.28
• Xen Hypervisor 4.1.4
• the Xfce 4.8 desktop environment
• X.Org 7.7
• more than 36,000 other ready-to-use software packages, built from nearly 17,500 source packages.

With this broad selection of packages, Debian once again stays true to its goal of being the universal operating system. It is suitable for many different use cases: from desktop systems to netbooks; from development servers to cluster systems; and for database, web, or storage servers. At the same time, additional quality assurance efforts like automatic installation and upgrade tests for all packages in Debian’s archive ensure that Wheezy fulfils the high expectations that users have of a stable Debian release. It is rock solid and rigorously tested.

You can install Debian on computers ranging from handheld systems to supercomputers, and on nearly everything in between. A total of nine architectures are supported: 32-bit PC / Intel IA-32 (i386), 64-bit PC / Intel EM64T / x86-64 (amd64), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Sun/Oracle SPARC (sparc), MIPS (mips (big-endian) and mipsel (little-endian)), Intel Itanium (ia64), IBM S/390 (31-bit s390 and 64-bit s390x) and ARM EABI (armel for older hardware and armhf for newer hardware using hardware floating-point).

Want to give it a try?
If you want to simply try it without having to install it, you can use a special image, known as a live image, available for CDs, USB sticks, and netboot set-ups. Initially, these images are provided for the amd64 and i386 architectures only. It is also possible to use these live images to install Debian. More information is available from the Debian Live homepage.

If, instead, you want to directly install it, you can choose among various installation media, such as Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, CDs and USB sticks, or from the network. Several desktop environments – GNOME, KDE Plasma Desktop and Applications, Xfce, and LXDE – may be installed through CD images; the desired one may be chosen from the boot menus of the CDs/DVDs. In addition, multi-architecture CDs and DVDs are available which support installation of multiple architectures from a single disc. Or you can always create bootable USB installation media (see the Installation Guide for more details).

The installation images may be downloaded right now via bittorrent (the recommended method), jigdo, or HTTP; see Debian on CDs for further information. Wheezy will soon be available on physical DVD, CD-ROM, and Blu-ray Discs from numerous vendors, too.

Already a happy Debian user and you only want to upgrade?
Upgrades to Debian 7.0 from the previous release, Debian 6.0 (codenamed “Squeeze”), are automatically handled by the apt-get package management tool for most configurations. As always, Debian systems may be upgraded painlessly, in place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read the release notes as well as the installation guide for possible issues and for detailed instructions on installing and upgrading. The release notes will be further improved and translated [in]to additional languages in the weeks after the release.

I’ve been using Wheezy on my laptop since release candidate 1 and can testify to it being rock solid and reliable. In particular, the screen display seems much more stable than it ever did under Ubuntu. Indeed the only problems I had with installing Wheezy were getting the wifi working (simply a matter of downloading and installing the correct firmware for the Broadcom chip on the card) and forgetting to install such little extras as libdvdcss2 so I could watch DVDs.

Why have I changed from Ubuntu? Unfortunately, the long-term support (updates) for the version I was running (10.0.4) runs out this month and subsequent versions have switched to the Unity desktop (not my favourite). I still regard Ubuntu as a great distribution, especially for beginners, to whom I’d recommend it for ease of use. Furthermore, for those who dislike Unity, there’s always the KDE-based Kubuntu, of course… 🙂

If you’re interested in safe, secure internet browsing, you’ll be interested in the Tor Browser Bundle.

Tor itself is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the internet. As a user, Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your internet connection from learning what sites you visit; it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location and it lets you access sites which are blocked. For more information about Tor, read the project’s overview page.

The Tor Browser Bundle lets you use Tor on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows without the need to install any software. all you need to do is unzip the package for your particular OS, and it’s ready to use. The Tor Browser bundle can run off a USB flash drive, is self-contained and comes with a pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity.

Yesterday Neil McGovern posted an email to the Debian Development announce list giving the timetable for the next release of the stable version of Debian GNU/Linux, codenamed Wheezy.

We now have a target date of the weekend of 4th/5th May for the release. We have checked with core teams, and this seems to be acceptable for everyone. This means we are able to begin the final preparations for a release of Debian 7.0 – “Wheezy”.

The intention is only to lift the date if something really critical pops up that is not possible to handle as an errata [sic], or if we end up technically unable to release that weekend (e.g. a required machine crashes or d-i explodes in a giant ball of fire). Every other RC fix that does not make it in time will be r1 material. Please be sure to contact us about the RC fixes you would like included in the point release!

Status
======

From the usertags page you can see a total of:
Blockers for Wheezy bugs (2 bugs)
Planned for removal bugs (4 bugs)
Ignored for Wheezy bugs (58 bugs)

These have all been actioned/fixed. However, there are also about 17 bugs that have not yet been tagged and are not hinted. These will be actioned shortly.

Awesomeness of Wheezy
=====================

We really need some more work on http://wiki.debian.org/NewInWheezy, please help contribute! Let’s tell everyone why Wheezy will be the best release ever.

As well as this, release notes, installation guides and documentation in general, especially translations can always do with some work. Please see previous mails on these, and help if you can.

I’ve been using Wheezy on my laptop for the last couple of weeks and it’s a very stable, reliable operating system. See instructions for getting Debian if you want to use or try it too.