FWN/Issue131

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 131 for the week ending June 15, 2008.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue131

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page. Being a Fedora Weekly News beat writer gives you a chance to work on one of our community's most important sources of news, and can be done in only about 1 hour per week of your time.

We are still looking for beat writers to cover the highlights of Fedora Planet each week, Fedora Security Advisories, and to summarize the Fedora Events and Meetings that happened during each week.

Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project.

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-announce-list

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-announce

Contributing Writer: Max Spevack

Board Elections open on June 13

Paul Frields announces in fedora-announce-list[1],

"Elections for the Fedora Project Board open at 0001 UTC on 13 June 2008... The voting system is available at: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/voting

Any FAS account holder who has completed the CLA may vote in the election. Voting is open until 2359 UTC on 22 June 2008. Election results will be announced shortly thereafter. The final appointed seat on the Board will be filled after the general election as well.

Thank you to all the Board members whose seats are up for election, to Nigel Jones for our new voting application, and to the community in advance, for casting their votes for Fedora leadership."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-June/msg00006.html

Fedora Websites in need of development help

Max Spevack writes on fedora-devel-announce[1],

"The Fedora Websites team is actively looking for some development help on our build scripts -- this is the code that takes templates and turns it into HTML.

It's critical for people who want to create local mockups of new designs, and also for pushing our web code into test environments and ultimately into production."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-June/msg00001.html

Fedora 7 End of Life

Bill Nottingham announces on fedora-devel-announce[1],

"This is a reminder that F7 goes EOL on 2008-06-13. If you have any critical updates lingering in testing, you may want to have them moved final before then."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-June/msg00002.html

Marketing

In this section, we cover Fedora Marketing Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

Correction from last week: LWN.net

In last week's marketing section, we incorrectly referred to LWN.net as "Linux World News" [1] LWN.net used to be known as "Linux Weekly News," but is now known simply as LWN.net. We apologize for the error.

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue130#Linux_Weekly_News_Recommends_Fedora_9_for_Laptops_over_others

India Third-Largest Contributor To Fedora Community

Rahul Sundaram forwarded [1] an interesting article from EFYtimes.com of an interview [2] with Michael Chen, Director, Red Hat where he discusses a wide range of issues and thoughts on expanding Linux and open source in India during a recent visit there. In it, Chen assets that India is the third-largest contributor to Fedora, after North America and Europe.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00053.html

[2] http://www.efytimes.com/efytimes/26965/news.htm

Screencast Ideas wiki

Jeff Spaleta asked [1] for volunteers to watch the ScreenCast Ideas wiki page [2] for new videos and generate an RSS feed to view in miro. Greg Dekoenigsberg [3] created this channel [4].

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00059.html

[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/ScreencastIdeas

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00113.html

[4] https://www.miroguide.com/channels/6891

Flyers for FUDCon 2008

Paul W. Frields offered some sample text for Ambassadors to use for flyers for FUDCON 2008 [1]. Paul welcomes everyone to feel free to adapt this as appropriate.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00064.html

FedoraLife concept

Markus McLaughlin offered that it would be goodness to develop a "fedoraLife" concept a la Apple's iLife suite of applications and functionality [1], and suggested some new applications that Fedora could use to round out this feature set. A concept paper is available on Markus' blog [2] Duvelle Jones [3] mused that some of this functionality is extent in the Fedora Art Spins [4] Further discussion ensued, with Nicu Buculei reminding folks that the Fedora Art Spin project needs some new contributors to move that project forward, [5] and invited those interested to move discussion to the fedora-art-list [6] There was some further discussion on the various packages in Fedora that could meet these needs.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00080.html

[2] http://linuxglobe.wordpress.com/

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00083.html

[4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/ArtTeamProjects/FedoraArtStudio

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00091.html

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/

Red Hat, the largest contributing vendor to Xorg

Rahul Sundaram forwarded [1] an article [2] indicating that Red Hat has been the largest corporate contributor to the X project.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00118.html

[2] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=x_server_contributors&num=1

Hands on: Secrets of Fedora 8

Rahul Sundaram forwarded [1] another recent review of Fedora 8 [2] that concluded, "However, Fedora is perhaps the most pioneering distribution when it comes to experimenting with new technology, and for that reason some people may wish to stick with the previous release for a while longer. Fedora 8 has not remained stagnant at all, and has continued to receive very regular updates, including enhancements to security and many other areas."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00134.html

[2] http://www.pcw.co.uk/personal-computer-world/features/2218856/hands-secrets-fedora

Ambassadors

In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors

Contributing Writer: JeffreyTadlock

Release Party Contest Winner

The winner of the Fedora Release Party Contest [1] has been announced. FAmSCo was pleased to award the Fedora laptop bag to Grady Laksmono for organizing the Los Angeles, California release party. Read the full details in the announcement [2] sent to the ambassadors mailing list. All of the Fedora 9 release parties were a great success and the work put in by all ambassadors organizing and helping with a release party in their area deserve thanks for their hard work.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-April/msg00196.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-June/msg00191.html

Fedora and Open Source Tech Day - Pavia, Italy

Andrea Modesto Rossi announced [1] on the ambassadors mailing list that Fedora will be present at the GNU/Linux, Open Source and Fedora Tech Day in Pavia, Italy on June 15th. There will be many discussions on Open Source software and Fedora.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-June/msg00196.html

Froscon - Germany - Help Wanted

Robert Albrecht posted [1] a help wanted email for the booth at Froscon [2] in Sankt Augustin, Germany on August 23rd to 24th. If you are in the area and can help, please add to the email thread.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-June/msg00230.html

[2] http://www.froscon.org/

Developments

In this section, we cover the problems/solutions, people/personalities, and ups/downs of the endless discussions on Fedora Developments.

http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

Contributing Writer: Rahul Sundaram

Retiring Opyum

Debarishi Ray noted that he is retiring Opyum which handles offline package updates since PackageKit is gaining a similar feature that is going to be cross distribution as part of this year Google SoC as part of the Fedora Project.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-June/msg00383.html

Fedora Freedom and Linux-libre

Alexandre Oliva posted new information about David Woodhouse's effort to remove and aggregate firmware into a separate tarball. Though this was initially born out of a drive towards more freedom in software, David Woodhouse points out that are legal and technical benefits to such a move.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-June/msg00411.html

Enabling Autofsck by default

A call to enable this variable by default which runs filesystem checks without any prompts resulted in a long discussion about potential data loss and the impact of LVM

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-June/msg00544.html

Requirements gathering for new package source control

Jesse Keating is driving an effort towards moving the Fedora package specification and patches to a new and better source code management tool and is a collecting requirements from package maintainers on what kind of changes are desirable.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-June/msg00496.html

PackageKit UI

Richard Hughes has posted a new mockup of the PackageKit user interface which he hopes will address a number of issues and has solicited feedback from users.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-June/msg00689.html

Infrastructure

This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure

Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala

Infrastructure Secondary Offerings

Mike McGrath writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [1]

So one of the things that has made Fedora's Infrastructure successful is the amount of time we spend getting configs together and tested _before_ we go live with them. Often times re-doing things from scratch multiple times.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-June/msg00032.html

Artwork

In this section, we cover Fedora Artwork Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

With or without introduction

On the Fedora Art list Pavel Shevchuk raises an interesting question [1] about the need of a formal introduction for new members "I'm pretty sure people who really want to contribute can do it without loudmouth letters, bringing some artwork instead", Frank Murphy raises the issue of mentoring [2], where people new to FOSS may need some guidance and Nicu Buculei talks [3] about inter-human relations inside the team "spend some time together, know each other and maybe we will work better as a team" and mention about how many of the membership requests in the account system, started from the Join Fedora page [4] are not followed on the mailing list nor with real work.

[1] - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-June/msg00052.html

[2] - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-June/msg00059.html

[3] - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-June/msg00060.html

[4] - http://fedoraproject.org/en/join-fedora

Reviving the Fedora Art spin

The Art Studio spin, a customized version of Fedora geared toward creative use (graphic, sound and video editing) is an old project of the Art Team. Following a thread on the Fedora Marketing list [2], a few people expressed their [3], [4], [5] so there is a change this project will see the light is a foreseeable future.

[1] - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/ArtTeamProjects/FedoraArtStudio

[2] - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00080.html

[3] - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-June/msg00085.html

[4] - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-June/msg00086.html

[5] - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00131.html

Security Week

In this section, we highlight the security stories from the week in Fedora.

Contributing Writer: JoshBressers

Verizon Data-Breach Study

Verizon Business released a very interesting report on data breaches in the enterprise. Their findings are quite interesting, but two things especially stand out:

• Insider threat has decreased substantially.
• 90 percent of known vulnerabilities exploited had patches available for at least six months prior to the breach.

It seems that the single most important thing an administrator can do is to keep their system updated.