Fedora Weekly News Issue 221

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 221^[1] for the week ending April 14, 2010. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

We're also pleased to note the availability of Fedora Audio Weekly News (FAWN), an audio version in Ogg Vorbis format for a few past FWN issues that one of our contributors has begun. Find it on the Internet Archive^[2] and have a listen!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page^[3]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list@redhat.com

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson

Marketing

In this section, we cover the happenings for Fedora Marketing Project from 2010-04-07 to 2010-04-13.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Neville A. Cross

Neville A. Cross started a thread about briefing ambassadors^[1] which has been evolving due the fact that it will invite ambassadors to submit photos for the One-page release notes^[2] and there was some concerns about. Those concern where later converted in a new thread by Paul W. Frields^[3] which will constitute a full invitation for pictures. From there we got in deep legals concerns.

Max Spevack^[4] lead the way into updates and translations of fedora flyer. Paul W. Frields^[5] pointed our attention for a revision of the talking points.

Students from Allegheny have been writing to the marketing list, but Nicholas Ozorak^[6] initiated a good flow of ideas regarding Fedora video distribution.

Stephen Gallagher^[7] asked for help from marketing team to publicite SSSD (System Security Services Daemon). His request came in the right time and was converted into a Feature Profile.

The release of Fedora 13 Beta has started a lot of news. Let's point one as example, this is one of the more catchy news (despite its inaccuracies), and was pointed among others by Kara Schiltz^[8]

Finally as any Tuesday, we got our meeting and as usual we keep logs^[9] to share with the world.

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

The Joy of Betas: Fedora 13 Beta Released Today (OStatic)

Kara Schlitz forwarded^[2] a 4/13/10 article from OStatic by Joe Brockmeyer:

"Beta" may not be my favorite word in the English language, but it's in the top 100. To some folks, beta may mean "not quite ready for prime time," but to me it means it's time to start enjoying a slew of new features. This is especially true with the Fedora 13 beta^[3] released today."

The full article is available^[4]

Fedora tempts fate with Apollo 13 (The Register; UK)

Adam Williamson posted^[1] a link to an article from the Register from 4/13/10, which begins:

"If thirteen is supposed to be an unlucky number, why tempt the Fates and launch the beta of a thirteenth version of a product on the thirteenth of the month - and on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission to the Moon, which damned near killed its three astronauts? And particularly when you have code-named that release "Goddard," after the American father of modern rocketry?

Well, you launch the first beta of Fedora 13 on a day like today precisely because of the triumph of intellect over superstition and - in the case of Apollo 13 and hopefully all open source software - of good engineering over bad."

The full article is available^[2]

Fedora 13 beta released with many goodies for the enterprise (NetworkWorld)

Rahul Sundaram forwarded^[1] a posting on Network World from 4/13/2010, which includes the comments:

"The popular Linux distribution, Fedora 13, has been released to its final beta and is chock full of features for enterprise use. . . . [T]he contributors to Fedora have built in many a feature to please the enterprise user who prefers a FOSS distro over a commercial one."

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2010-April/012408.html

The full article is available^[1]

Fedora 13 - Ubuntu's smart but less attractive cousin (The Register; UK)

Rahul Sundaram forwarded^[2] a link and some analysis of the following article posted to The Register on 4/13/2010, which begins:

"Review Number 13 is indeed an unlucky number for the next release of Fedora. Unfortunately for this popular distro, its beta arrives at almost the same time as the next release of Ubuntu, Lucid Lynx.

The Fedora 13 beta could get eclipsed by Ubuntu 10.04, later this month, because it lacks some of the flashy new features found in Canonical's distro that target the Linux novice and crosses into the world of mainstream consumers more than ever."

Rahul noted a couple areas for Marketing and others to think and act on:

"Perspective: We need to advertise the end user facing features more loudly. Ubuntu includes gwibber and a applet and advertises it as social networking built-in. We do have similar features: Pino is default for Fedora 13. If we can get the one page release notes effort pushed forward, it would help.

Factual corrections: Feel free to post them to the site. I don't have a account there yet. mesa-dri-drivers-experimental is not a separate driver. GNOME version is 2.30

Release notes: Does Anaconda create a separate /home only if the available space is more than 50 GB? Such details need to go into the release notes."

The full article is available^[3]

QualityAssurance

In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team^[1]. For more information on the work of the QA team and how you can get involved, see the Joining page^[2].

Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson

Test Days

Last week's Test Day^[1] was on virtualization^[2]. This was mainly focused on the Fedora virtualization stack, based around KVM, libvirt, and virt-manager. A small band of hardened virtualization testers were able to expose 14 bugs, which the developers are now investigating. Thanks to everyone who came out to help with the testing.

This week is a big moment in the Test Day schedule: Graphics Test Week. There will be three Test Days focusing on the three major graphics drivers: NVIDIA Test Day on Tuesday 2010-04-13^[3], ATI/AMD Test Day on Wednesday 2010-04-14^[4], and Intel graphics Test Day on Thursday 2010-04-15^[5]. As always, widespread graphics testing is critical to the development of these drivers. Around 75% of all bugs reported in the last Graphics Test Week have been closed (either as fixed, or as duplicates), so the information gathered isn't ignored! Testing can be done with a live image, so there's no need to have an unstable Fedora installation to do the testing, and the tests are easy to do and come with full instructions. Almost everyone has an NVIDIA, AMD/ATI or Intel graphics adapter, so please come out to help us test! The events will take place all day in the #fedora-test-day channel on Freenode IRC (if you're not sure how to use IRC, there's an instruction page^[6], or you can use WebIRC^[7]. If you can't make it on the day, you can still provide your results on the Wiki page before or after the event.

If you would like to propose a main track Test Day for the Fedora 13 cycle, please contact the QA team via email or IRC, or file a ticket in QA Trac^[8].

Fedora 13 testing

This week saw the group wrap up Fedora 13 Beta validation testing. After the previous week's delay, the fourth^[1] and fifth^[2] release candidate builds for the Beta arrived during the week. Installation^[3] and desktop^[4] validation testing for the RC4 build were both broadly successful, but Adam Williamson realized that the build included a critical bug which would cause systems containing a certain common network adapter to be unable to boot^[5], so the RC5 build provided an updated kernel to fix that issue. Adam posted a call for testing of the updated kernel^[6] which drew an overwhelming response, with dozens of group members confirming the kernel worked on their systems. The group re-ran the validation tests^[7], and subsequently agreed with the development and release engineering groups at the go/no-go meeting^[8] that the RC5 build met all the release criteria^[9] and so was suitable for release as Fedora 13 Beta. Rui He summarized the validation test results^[10] and encouraged more group members to be involved in the validation testing for future releases.

Testing non-English keyboard layouts

Petri Laine reported^[1] that he had experienced problems using a non-default keyboard mapping in Fedora 13 Beta RC5. Adam Williamson replied^[2] that similar bugs had occurred during previous release periods, and then announced^[3] that he had extended an installation validation test case^[4] and created a desktop validation test case^[5] to try to ensure that similar issues are caught in future testing rounds. Petri appended his report to an existing bug report^[6] and followed up on the problem there.

Ensuring packages are signed

James Laska proposed^[1] a new release criterion and validation test to ensure that all packages are signed with a valid Feora GPG signature. Bill Nottingham pointed out^[2] that this would not slot easily into the existing package release workflow. He also noted that Bodhi is supposed to reject un-signed packages. Jesse Keating explained^[3] that this was a mash configuration option which had been disabled intentionally for initial Branched composes as some packages were known not to be signed at that time. Bill ultimately suggested^[4] that the signature check should be re-enabled in the relevant mash configurations.

Bugzappers screencasts

At the weekly Bugzappers meeting^[1], Adam Williamson noted that he had not yet forwarded Shakthi Kannan's suggestion of making Bugzapping screencasts to the mailing list. The next day, he did so^[2]. Eric Lake, Chris Campbell and James Gledhill all posted in support of the idea, but no-one yet had the combination of free time and expertise to make the screencasts.

AutoQA

With Fedora 13 validation testing winding down, work on AutoQA was picking up steam again, with the team working on dependency checking^[1], tests^[2] to implement the Package Sanity Test Plan^[3], the results database idea^[4] and the automated installation test plan^[5].

Translation

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project^[1].

Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee

↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N

Upcoming Fedora 13 Tasks

John Poelstra informed^[1] the list about the upcoming tasks for Fedora 13. At present, besides the translation for the Fedora Guides and F13 Release Notes that are on schedule, FLP would be coordinating with the Fedora Websites team for the availability of POT/PO files for the translation of Website content.

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/trans/2010-April/007401.html

Fedora 13 and Beta Release Notes

Fedora Documentation team member John J. McDonough has automated the process to update the POT files for the Fedora 13 Release Notes^[1].

Additionally, the Fedora 13 Beta Release Notes, along with the translations in 8 languages were updated in the Fedora Docs main page by Paul Frields and Ruediger Landmann^[2].

Request for TQSG to be Linked from the Fedora Docs Main Page

Dimitris Glezos requested^[1] that the Translation Quick Start Guide (TQSG) be linked from the main documenation page of Fedora Docs (http://docs.fedoraproject.org). Currently it is linked from the 'Docs Tools' section from the left navigation bar of the main page^[2].

New Modules in translate.fedoraproject.org

certmonger^[1], jargon buster^[2] and Fedora Technical Notes^[3] are the new modules that have been requested to be added on translate.fedoraproject.org.

Additionally, the submissions to the F12 branch of readme-burning-isos module has been disabled and submissions into the F13 branch have been opened up^[4].

Team News

Kevin Raymond (French)^[1], Edmon Begoli (Croation and Bosnian)^[2], Jesús Franco (French)^[3] joined the Fedora Translation Project last week.

Pierros Papadeas takes over as the new coordinator for the Greek Team from Dimitris Glezos^[4].

Artwork

In this section, we cover the Fedora Design Team^[1].

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Fedora 13 Wallpaper

Kyle Baker debuted^[1] on the Design Team with an improved version of the wallpaper concept for Fedora 13 "My first submissions for the Fedora project are iterations of the F13 backgrounds", his work was well liked and Paul Frields proposed^[2] to be used as default "I really love it and would like the Design team to consider it for the final release", a proposal endorsed by other members. Only Martin Sourada reminded^[3] about the need for large resolutions "For final release we need something close 2048x1536 for 4:3 and 1920x1200 for wide [16:10] screens"

User experience designers

Paul Frields announced^[1] a piece he is writing^[2] "I've been working on a write up for the strategic working group regarding UX design, and I want to make sure I'm clearly stating the role of the Fedora Design team and how they interact with other groups" and asked the team for input.

Security Advisories

In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce.

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce