Gentoo Weekly Newsletter: 4 September 2006Developer Daniel Drake wrote in to mention that the net-misc/bcm4400 package in portage has been deprecated and will be removed from the tree soon. The package has been superceded by the maintained in-kernel drivers. Users using this package should migrate to using the in-kernel drivers as soon as possible on any affected machines. Carsten Lohrke of the Gentoo KDE team wishes to inform users that the versions of KDE 3.4 will be removed from the tree in a couple days. The KDE 3.5 release has been marked stable on every architecture with KDE support for some time, and the KDE team would like to remove 3.4 to allow them to better focus on the much-improved 3.5 versions and beyond. KDE 3.4 lacks upstream support and includes several problems, including incompatibility with recent X.Org implementations. media-video/nvidia-glx and media-video/nvidia-kernel removal As most people using the binary nVidia drivers are aware, the media-video/nvidia-glx and media-video/nvidia-kernel packages have been deprecated for some time in favor of x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers and x11-drivers/nvidia-legacy-drivers. The nvidia-legacy-drivers package supports nVidia cards from the TNT through the GeForce 5 line, and some GeForce 6 series cards. The nvidia-drivers package supports cards from the GeForce 3 series and up. The older drivers are scheduled for removal on September 29. The newer drivers support newer hardware, and the current drivers in testing support xorg-x11-7.1, while the older drivers have gotten no new updates. To switch to the newer drivers, do the following:
Once you start/restart X, you will be using the new drivers. UK Linux Awards 2006 nominations open LinuxUser and Developer Magazine has opened their nominations for their fourth annual UK Linux Awards. You can nominate, vote, and book tables at the site for this year's awards. Gentoo looks forward to hearing the winners of this year's awards and wishes all nominees the best of luck. Free Linux Disk project fundraiser The Free Linux Disk project is having a fundraiser to purchase equipment to improve their ability to produce Linux media in a timely manner. The project ships disks from several community-based distributions, as well as many free commercially-backed distributions. Their goal is to raise $4500 CDN to purchase a rImage 2000i disk duplicator to meet the current demands. The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is seeking writers to assist with some sections of the newsletter which have been neglected for some time. Specifically, we are looking to find individuals who are willing to write summaries of the gentoo-user and gentoo-dev mailing lists on a weekly basis. A strong grasp of written English is required. We would also like to see more submissions for the "Tips and Tricks" section, so if you have an amazing tip or trick you use on Gentoo, send it in and we will publish it in an upcoming GWN. If you think that you might be interested in helping out, please email the GWN staff at gwn-feedback@gentoo.org. Australia: Software Freedom Day, Canberra On Software Freedom Day in Canberra Australia (held early on 9th September), CLUG members (including Gentoo developer Daniel Black) will be handing out Linux CDs including the Gentoo 2006.1 CD. They will be giving software demonstrations, providing information about free software, raising awareness about Australian software freedom legal issues, providing information about local support groups, and getting you on your penguin feet with a Linux installation. DesktopLinux.com (29 Aug 2006) The results of DesktopLinux.com's 2006 Desktop Linux Market survey, taken from over 15,000 Linux users from the web site, are in and have been tallied. Gentoo Linux scored fourth place overall, which was surprising to author Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, with 9.6 percent of users preferring Gentoo to other Linux distributions on their desktops. Author Rob Williams puts Gentoo's latest release, Gentoo Linux 2006.1, through the paces and writes about the new version of the Gentoo Linux Installer as well as the LiveCD environment. Rob also goes on to identify several improvements in the media over 2006.0's release. Software in Review (1 Sep 2006) Jem Matzan's review of Gentoo Linux 2006.1 starts off with a more general overview of Gentoo Linux before delving into his review of the new release. After his introduction, he highlights some of the new features of the 2006.1 release, then proceeds to perform an installation. After this, he proceeds to write about things that he disliked about the installation's default choices and lists several areas where he felt that the installation from the Installer was lacking. His conclusion has a list of improvements that he would like to see made to the installation media. Sean Michael Kerner's article for Internetnews.com lists many changes in the new release, as well as a few words from Gentoo's own Christel Dahlskjaer about the release. The following developers recently left the Gentoo project:
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo project:
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo project:
X.org and some X.org libraries: Local privilege escalations X.org, libX11, xdm, xf86dga, xinit, xload, xtrans, and xterm are vulnerable to local privilege escalations because of unchecked setuid() calls. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement Wireshark: Multiple vulnerabilities Wireshark is vulnerable to several security issues that may lead to a Denial of Service and/or the execution of arbitrary code. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement Motor: Execution of arbitrary code Motor uses a vulnerable ktools library, which could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement PHP contains a function that, when used, could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org) to record and track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the development team. Between 27 August 2006 and 03 September 2006, activity on the site has resulted in:
Of the 11007 currently open bugs: 40 are labeled 'blocker', 124 are labeled 'critical', and 523 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:
Please send us your feedback and help make the GWN better. 8. GWN subscription information To subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank e-mail to gentoo-gwn+subscribe@gentoo.org. To unsubscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank e-mail to gentoo-gwn+unsubscribe@gentoo.org from the e-mail address you are subscribed under. The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is also available in the following languages:
|
|
