Gentoo Weekly Newsletter: July 21st, 2003
Gentoo Linux 1.4 to be released at LinuxWorld Expo Gentoo Linux 1.4 will be officially released at LinuxWorld Expo '03 in San Francisco, CA (August 5-7.) The Gentoo Linux crew will be at the show in .org pavilion booth #1. Please make plans to stop by, chat, and pick up your favorite build of Gentoo Linux 1.4 for free :) Gentoo Linux 1.4 available for pre-order Our new Gentoo Store is now online at http://store.gentoo.org, and we are now accepting pre-orders for Gentoo Linux 1.4 for x86, i686, Pentium III, Pentium 4 and Athlon XP, with other architectures coming soon. Each 2-CD set allows Gentoo to be installed without the need for an Internet connection, contains a large selection of pre-built packages (Xfree86, KDE, GNOME and many more,) and includes printed installation instructions. Gentoo Linux 1.4 will be officially released (and will ship) on August 5, 2003. Open positions in the Gentoo Linux project Gentoo Infrastructure team The Gentoo Infrastructure team is currently seeking volunteers for the following positions:
If you're interested in one of these positions, please send an email to Kurt Lieber. OpenAFS The Gentoo Linux project is looking for developers to maintain the OpenAFS package. Please email recruiters@gentoo.org if you are interested. Introducing the Gentoo Server project This week we'd like to introduce the Gentoo Server project, a community effort started by users who felt the need for a solid documentation base for the use and administration of Gentoo Linux in a production environment. Their new Wiki already contains much useful information contributed by regulars of the gentoo-sysadmin@gentoo.org mailing list and #gentoo-server IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, but is looking for more contributors to help it become the one-stop guide for serving with Gentoo that it aims to be. Definitely a great place to go to if you have a server-related question, or if you've just experienced a networking epiphany you'd like to share with your fellow Gentoomen. Bytemark Hosting begins offering Gentoo Linux Bytemark Hosting, a provider of UML(User-Mode Linux)-based virtual hosting solutions, has now begun offering Gentoo Linux as a distribution option for new and existing users. They've also donated a 256MB host to the Gentoo project, which is now hosting a European mirror of the main web site, and are continuing to offer a 10% discount to authors of open source software.
The following new security bugs were posted this week: User stories will be back next to week. Remember to send us your bizarre, hilarious, or incredible Gentoo stories so they can be featured here! 4. Featured Developer of the Week Kurt Lieber
This week, we're particularly pleased to feature Kurt Lieber. Kurt recently handed over responsibility for the Gentoo Weekly News, for which he served as inaugural editor, initiating the project with a post to the forums. The GWN has grown into one of the most popular and useful resources for the Gentoo community, thanks largely to Kurt's initial vision. Kurt began working with Gentoo by serving as moderator of the nascent forums. His effectiveness there prompted the role to grow into responsibility for Gentoo's infrastructure. Kurt and his team work tirelessly (and, too often, thanklessly) at maintaining the network of servers and mirrors that such a download-intensive distro as Gentoo requires to be successful. This accomplishment is a source of pride for Kurt. In his own words, "I'm proud of the team that we've slowly put together to work on infrastructure issues. It's still a work in progress, but we have a team of motivated, committed professionals who do an outstanding job of making me look good." The accomplishment is even more notable if we recall that there is no budget for infrastructure and that the team needs to somehow maintain an enterprise-class system using donated computers and hand-me-down equipment. In June, Kurt was amongst those named to form Gentoo's new management structure. Kurt will be one of six top-level managers, taking responsibility for strategic management of portage and Gentoo's Public Relations efforts, as well as his continuing role in managing Gentoo infrastructure. Kurt will also serve as a backup for developer relations management. Kurt took the time to comment on the new management structure for us: "My personal goal and one that I think I share with the rest of the team, is finding the minimum level of management required to effectively run this project. I'm not a big fan of complex structures, overly-burdensome rules and yards and yards of red tape. That said, I do appreciate and recognize that some amount of structure is needed to effectively steer a project of our size." Although he has contributed bug fixes to several OSS projects, Gentoo was Kurt's first formal role on a significant project. His favorite applications reflect his background as a system administrator: screen, irssi, cfengine and nagios. He uses KDE for his Window Manager and the venerable mutt for mail. An ironic twist to his sense of humor is displayed in the favorite quote he offered us:
Kurt lives in New York City, working for a Fortune 500 financial institution. He likes to tinker with old cars and takes special pleasure in his restored 1972 GMC Suburban. 1.4 Release at LinuxWorld Releases don't play a very important role in the Gentoo concept, but some features are related to distinct version numbers, most importantly the Gentoo Reference Platform (GRP) packages and the LiveCD. Plus everybody outside the realm of Gentoo Linux keeps ogling the numbers, anyway, and therefore need to be reminded of progress by bumping numerological evidence. Gentoo users have greeted the announcement of Gentoo 1.4 to be released in time for LinuxWorld in San Francisco on 5 August with a debate in the Forums, candied with a few completely irrelevant, albeit funny remarks about the thermodynamics of hell: When USE Flags Don't Work Many of us who run Gentoo on our headless servers utilize Gentoo's USE flags to tell Portage not to install anything graphical in nature on them. Loopingz, a command-line PHP user was curious why even with a "-qt" USE flag, PHP was still requiring QT. Robin Johnson, the PHP ebuild maintainer got involved and explained it all out for everyone. Link here. Becoming more involved with Gentoo's development Looking to contribute back or get more involved with the Gentoo project? User sdesseaux was. While looking for ways to contribute, he noticed how Gentoo's install procedure can be long and winding for those fairly new to Linux. He proposed a project to create a graphical installer and looked for feedback on such a project. Quickly, other users presented similar projects, such as the Gentoo Linux Install Script Project and a tool called InGen, which is provided on Gentoo's CVS server under gentoo/users/luke-jr/ingen/. Link here. Interesting bit of bash Aron Griffis posted a fantastic bit of bash that lists all the variables defined in a script. NYFIX Goes Gentoo on the Desktop! Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based technology consultant and market analysis firm, reported last week that an electronic stock trading system provider, NYFIX, has started transitioning their systems from Windows to Linux, for reasons quite understandable in their business: According to Aberdeen consultant Bill Claybrook, they were just tired of the downtime involved in applying patches to Windows systems... Now servers that used to run Windows or Solaris will be based on more conservative Linux distributions, but the desktops for traders will run Gentoo Linux. Read the whole article at Claybrook's blog, and join the discussion at the Forums. Italian Linux Magazine Covers Gentoo "Gentoo GNU/Linux - The Power of Optimization" is the title of an article written by Gentoo devs lu_zero and brain, aka Luca Barbato and Michele Balistreri that appeared in this month's Linux & C. magazine (issue #33). The seven page article gives an overview of what Gentoo represents and who it is designed for, and goes on to describe the installation process from the LiveCD in detail, with many tips and tricks on configuration issues, closing most appropriately with a wish for users to -- have fun. Bon divertimento indeed, check Linux & C.'s website for details on how to order a copy of the magazine that also contains four CDs, two of which are filled with Gentoo 1.4_rc4 and lots of additional Gentoo packages. Austria: Gentoo Vienna Community Holds Next Meeting on 5 August And the wagon train moves on. Once more the Gentoo users of Vienna have decided to switch locations for their next meeting scheduled to take place on 5 August. The scarcely clad waitresses at the Vienna Hooters will quite possibly be a distraction similar to the weirdos populating the Austrian communist party venue of the first Gentoo user group meeting earlier this year (see GWN report), but some of the organizers seem to expect a higher motivation for people to turn up if they can be promised a glimpse of female bellybuttons over the rim of their laptop screens... Coordination thread in the forums, still at this URL. Portage Watch is on hiatus this week, but will be back next week with the updated packages from this week and next week. The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org) to record and track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the development team. Between 11 July 2003 and 17 July 2003, activity on the site has resulted in:
Of the 3273 currently open bugs: 66 are labeled 'blocker', 134 are labeled 'critical', and 266 are labeled 'major'. The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period are:
The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during this period are:
Accessing the Kazaa network without Wine This week's tip shows you how to use giFT to access the Kazaa network without using WINE. The first step is to install giFT itself and the plugin for Kazaa network. giFT-fasttrack developers have not made an official release yet and the only way to get the plugin is through CVS. To install giFT run the following:
Because giFT is only a daemon we need to install some client. There are a number of choices available. In portage you can find: The are other clients available as well (check giFT project page), but these are the ones available in portage. In order to configure giFT run giFT-setup. On the step when you will be prompted for the plugins enter: OpenFT:FastTrack. OpenFT has to be there, otherwise the whole thing won't work. Now, when we have installed and configured giFT you can run it by issuing this command:
10. Quote/Signature of the week Quote/Signature of the week is on hiatus this week. If you see a funny quote or signature in the Gentoo Linux mailing lists, web forums, or IRC channels, don't hesitate to send it to us. The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux project.
Interested in contributing to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter? Send us an email. Please send us your feedback and help make GWN better. 14. GWN Subscription Information To subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank email to gentoo-gwn-subscribe@gentoo.org. To unsubscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank email to gentoo-gwn-unsubscribe@gentoo.org from the email address you are subscribed under. The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is also available in the following languages:
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