Fedora Weekly News Issue 96

= Fedora Weekly News Issue 96 =

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 96[1] for the week of July 8th
through July 14th 2007. The latest issue can always be found here[2]
and RSS Feed can be found here[3].

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue96

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/LatestIssue

[3] http://fedoranews.org/cms/FWN/feed

1. Announcements
1. The “new” Fedora Board
2. FESCo Elections — voting open
2. Planet Fedora
1. Attn: Content Management Geeks
2. Fedora 8 themes – Round 1
3. RMLL07 : Alan Cox on fedora-fr booth
3. Marketing
1. How’s Fedora 7 Faring?
2. Fedora 7 KDE spin and Akademy
4. Developments
1. Video and Keymap Quirks
2. OLPC software: our first release and beyond
5. Maintainers
1. The Weekly EPEL Report
2. Fever Hits Fedora
6. Documentation
1. Current Status of Man/Info GSoC Project
2. Help Define Docs Workflow
7. Translation
1. Translation Website
8. Infrastructure
1. Fedorapeople.org
2. Outage Info
3. DB Upgrade
4. Common Problems Solved?
9. Artwork
1. More Theme Proposals
2. Nodoka Theme Engine
10. Security Week
1. Flash Player Security Update
2. Security and Accountability
11. Daily Package
1. Paquet Fedora du jour
2. ooo2txt – OpenOffice.org documents to Text
3. Ardour – Digital Audio Workstation
4. Menus
5. System-config-lvm – LVM GUI tool
6. Stellarium – Software planetarium
12. Advisories and Updates
1. Fedora 7 Security Advisories
2. Fedora Core 6 Security Advisories
13. Events and Meetings
1. Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2007-07-10
2. Fedora Documentation Steering Committee 2007-MM-DD
3. Fedora Engineering Steering Committee Meeting 2007-07-12
4. Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Meeting 2007-07-11
5. Fedora Infrastructure Meeting (Log) 2007-MM-DD
6. Fedora Packaging Committee Meeting 2007-07-10
7. Fedora Release Engineering Meeting 2007-07-09
8. Fedora Translation Project Meeting 2007-07-10
14. Feedback

== Announcements ==

In this section, we cover announcements from various projects.

Contributing Writer: ThomasChung

=== The “new” Fedora Board ===

MaxSpevack announces in fedora-announce-list[1]

“We’ve just completed the first Fedora Board[2] succession process,
and I wanted to take a moment to share the results with everyone.
Staying on for another release cycle are SethVidal, BillNottingham,
ChristopherBlizzard, and MattDomsch.”

“Joining them are 5 new Board members: KarstenWade, DennisGilmore,
ChristopherAillon, JefSpaleta, SteveDickson”

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2007-July/msg00005.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board

=== FESCo Elections — voting open ===

BrianPepple announces in fedora-announce-list[1],

“Voting is now open for the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee
elections. All 13 seats are up for election. The candidates are (in
alphabetical order):”

(See the announcement for a list of candidates.)

“For details and some future plans of these fine people see:[2]”

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2007-July/msg00006.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SteeringCommittee/Nominations

== Planet Fedora ==

In this section, we cover a highlight of Planet Fedora – an
aggregation of blogs from world wide Fedora contributors.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Planet

Contributing Writers: ThomasChung

=== Attn: Content Management Geeks ===

KarstenWade points out in his blog[1],

“Now is the time to weigh in on the next generation of the Fedora
Documentation Publishing Platform. JonathanSteffan is running this as
his Summer of Code project.”

“Our goal is to enable 10x the current number of people to be active
publishers of formal Fedora content. Out goal is to make writing,
editing, translating, and publishing content for Fedora fun, easy, and
profitable. If you have any insights in to how we should define our
custom workflow and how we might want to tweak the default workflow in
Plone, please join the discussion[2].”

[1] http://iquaid.livejournal.com/21006.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-docs-list

=== Fedora 8 themes – Round 1 ===

NicuBuculei points out in his blog[1],

“Later today, 11 July, is the end date of the Round 1 in the 3 round
process to create a new theme[2] for the next release, Fedora 8. The
focus in the first round was to gather ideas, concepts, metaphors,
which would be refined in the next two rounds. Here is what we got so
far:”

(See a list of proposed themes in his blog)

[1] http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2007/07/fedora-8-themes-round-1.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F8Themes

=== RMLL07 : Alan Cox on fedora-fr booth ===

MaximeCarron points out in his blog[1],

“First and little post from RMLL[2] (Free Software World Meetings).
It’s a really great pleasure to have AlanCox on our booth.”

(See two event photo from his blog)

[1] http://blog.fedora-fr.org/pingoomax/post/RMLL07-%3A-Alan-Cox-on-fedora-fr-booth

[2] http://www.rmll.info/

Editor’s Note: More complete event photos are available at[1].

[1] http://carron.maxime.free.fr/fedora/photos/rmll07/

== Marketing ==

In this section, we cover Fedora Marketing Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: ThomasChung

=== How’s Fedora 7 Faring? ===

RahulSundaram reports in fedora-marketing-list[1],

“It’s been about one month since the release of Fedora 7 and we
thought it was time to give you a few updates.”

“We’ve had over 300,000 installations of Fedora 7 in the first month
since its release on May 31. That number is thus far pretty in-line
with expectations, given that Fedora Core 6 received close to 400,000
installations in its first month, and we expect that people will wait
a little while to upgrade their systems. Fedora keeps a statistics
page[2] with information about the newest releases if you’d like to
learn more.”

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2007-July/msg00019.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics

=== Fedora 7 KDE spin and Akademy ===

RahulSundaram reports in fedora-marketing-list[1],

“Rex Dieter from the KDE SIG in Fedora gave a talk[2] about the Fedora
7 KDE spin Akademy, the KDE conference. Apparently, Fedora is the only
major distribution planning to include KDE 4 by default in the next
version.”

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2007-July/msg00017.html

[2] http://akademy.kde.org/conference/talks/07.php

Editor’s Note: Here is corrected link of the video[1] of his talk.

[1] http://home.kde.org/~akademy07/videos/1-20-Fedora_7_KDE_spin.ogg

== 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: RahulSundaram

(Our regular contributor OisinFeeley is not available for this week.
RahulSundaram is contributing for this week. If you follow
fedora-devel-list closely and would like to contribute for next week,
please contact ThomasChung. )

=== Video and Keymap Quirks ===

RichardHughes reports in fedora-devel-list[0],

“You might have heard about the HAL quirk site [1] for suspend and resume
quirks before, but now we are collecting keymap quirks to make the
special buttons such as multimedia keys and Fn function keys do the
right thing.”

“I’ve blogged about this yesterday[2], but I am asking for patches from
the fedora development community. In this way we can make laptop special
keys “just work” for Fedora 8.”

“With a little help, we can make F8 on a laptop seriously rock [3].”

[0] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-July/msg00541.html

[1] http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/quirk/

[2] http://hughsient.livejournal.com/29730.html

[3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureLaptopImprovements

=== OLPC software: our first release and beyond ===

WalterBender reports in LWN[1],

“OLPC[2] software efforts have been, from Day 1, a community effort. The
extent to which the community has risen to the occasion at every
level—from firmware to application and content development—is an
inspiration. As we approach our final series of trial software
releases this summer and our first release this fall, it is
appropriate to reflect on what we have achieved and where we are
heading.”

“Our choice of Fedora—we are almost transitioned to the newly-released
Fedora Core 7—as our distribution has also contributed to controversy
within the Linux community. There are any number of small-footprint
distributions that may well have served our purposes, but Fedora met
and continues to meet our needs; and the dedication of the Red Hat
team at every level has been extraordinary. Without the likes of
MarceloTosatti and DavidWoodhouse, we would be far short of our
goals. Red Hat shares our uncompromising dedication to free and
open-source solutions and continues to go the extra mile to ensure
that neither quality or principles are sacrificed.”

[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/240536/

[2] http://laptop.org/

== Maintainers ==

In this section, we cover Fedora Maintainers, the group of people who
maintain the software packages in Fedora.

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-maintainers

Contributing Writer: MichaelLarabel

=== The Weekly EPEL Report ===

With this past week’s EPEL report[1], the most important happenings
has been enacting a policy for branching packages for EPEL if the
Fedora maintainer doesn’t react and a target date for an official EPEL
announcement. On July 19 is the date for the EPEL announcement and all
broken dependencies need to be fixed before hand. This announcement
was later delayed to July 26 [2].

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-maintainers/2007-July/msg00075.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-maintainers/2007-July/msg00141.html

=== Fever Hits Fedora ===

Fever, a way to check upstream version changes, was previously for
Fedora Extras, but thanks to Koji and work done by Michael Bentkowski,
it can now be used against all Fedora packages[1].

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-maintainers/2007-July/msg00080.html

== Documentation ==

In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

Contributing Writer: JonathanRoberts

=== Current Status of Man/Info GSoC Project ===

RiaDas writes to the list to provide an update on the current status
of his Google Summer of Code project[1]. The current status is
regularly updated on his SoC wiki page[2]; the total project plan can
also be found on the wiki[3].

As it stands, man pages are being converted to HTML using man2html,
but he is struggling to find a similar tool for info pages. The other
question currently being struggled with is whether to display the diff
for man pages across releases based on HTML files, or on the ROFF
files.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2007-July/msg00034.html

[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RiaDas/SoC

[3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SummerOfCode/2007/RiaDas

=== Help Define Docs Workflow ===

KarstenWade posted[1] to the list following a conversation with
JonathanSteffan about his current development work, creating the next
generation publishing system for the DocsProject. It is intended that
this new system will make it much easier to write, edit and publish
using everyone’s favorite tools. Included in the mail is a number of
questions JonathanSteffan had, and would like feedback from anybody
who has experience with the workflow fo the DocsProject; as always, if
you can help drop a note to the fedora-docs-list[2].

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2007-July/msg00052.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-docs-list

== Translation ==

This section, we cover the news surrounding the Fedora Translation
(L10n) Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N

Contributing Writer: JasonMatthewTaylor

=== Translation Website ===

The http://translate.fedoraproject.org website is nearly ready after a
lot of work from Dimitris Glezos and others. This should be a big help
in the future with organization of the group and tracking of tasks and
progress.

== Infrastructure ==

In this section, we cover the Fedora Infrastructure Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure

Contributing Writer: JasonMatthewTaylor

=== Fedorapeople.org ===

SethVidal and MikeMcGrath attempted to clear up[1] how
fedorapeople.org can be access and/or used by developers and the
Fedora users.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2007-July/msg00078.html

=== Outage Info ===

MikeMcGrath posted[1] about the new outage information page which can
be used by the admins or just information for the curious user(s). The
page can be found at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/SOP/Outage

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2007-July/msg00081.html

=== DB Upgrade ===

This week saw the DB upgrade/migration completed[1], both Postgres and
MySQL were upgraded and multiple DB’s were migrated to a new box (at
least for the short term).

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2007-July/msg00086.html

=== Common Problems Solved? ===

The Infrastructure group has a page,
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/CommonProblems that
addresses some frequently seen issues that users/volunteers can/will
be faced with. The initial post can be seen here[1].

[1]https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2007-July/msg00091.html

== Artwork ==

In this section, we cover Fedora Artwork Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Contributing Writer: JonathanRoberts

=== More Theme Proposals ===

MartinSourada sent a message[1] to the list announcing his new theme
proposal, Floating Cubes[2], using ideas taken from linear algebra.

MolaPahnadayan also sent a message[3] to the list, announcing another
proposed theme, entitled Thunder[4].

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2007-July/msg00081.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F8Themes/FloatingCubes

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2007-July/msg00083.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2007-July/msg00083.html

=== Nodoka Theme Engine ===

Work on the Nodoka GTK+ and Metacity theme is now progressing rapidly,
with a modified version of the Murrine theme engine having been
created to allow greater flexibility and to make it easier to achieve
the final look the team desire[1]. The theme engine has now been
packaged, along with the Metacity theme, and are available on the
wiki[2]. These packages are set to be sent for review, with the hope
that they will make an appearance in the repositories of Fedora 8 Test
1 or Test 2; on the advice of MatthiasClasen they were repackaged to
reflect new standards for artwork packaging[3].

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2007-July/msg00095.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/NodokaTheme

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2007-July/msg00109.html

== Security Week ==

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

Contributing Writer: JoshBressers

=== Flash Player Security Update ===

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb07-12.html

Adobe released a new version of flash player last week. The update in
itself isn’t terribly significant, but this brings up a great
opportunity to stress the importance of not running Flash Player as a
standalone plugin. Firefox currently has the ability to magically
install Flash Player if you visit a site that requires it, and you
don’t have it installed. The problem with this installation method is
that you will never get security updates for your local copy. Fedora
users should install flash from mplug.org here:
http://macromedia.mplug.org/

This is a great service WarrenTogami provides. As long as you rely on
this yum repository for Flash Player, you should receive the necessary
updates to keep your browser secure.

=== Security and Accountability ===

http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2007/07/10/security-issue-in-url-protocol-handling-on-windows/

Last week a security flaw was found in the way Internet Explorer
passes a URL to Firefox. This done via a special protocol handler
that Firefox registers when installed on a windows system. Microsoft
claims this isn’t their problem, Mozilla claims it is. Luckily this
flaw is going to be fixed in Firefox. It’s admirable that the Firefox
developers are willing to do what’s best for their users.

The moral of this story is that there are significant advantages to
the current Linux distribution model. If a similar flaw was found in
Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, there is nobody to bicker with.
It’s not uncommon for vendors to spend more time pointing fingers at
each other when something goes wrong. There can certainly be an
advantage to getting all your bits from one place.

== Daily Package ==

In this section, we recap the packages that have been highlighted as a
Fedora Daily Package.

http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/

Contributing Writer: ChrisTyler

=== Paquet Fedora du jour ===

The Fedora Daily Package is now being translated into French at Paquet
Fedora du jour[1], thanks to the efforts of Jean-François Martin
(Lokthare).

[1] http://blog.fedora-fr.org/paquet-fedora-du-jour/

=== ooo2txt – OpenOffice.org documents to Text ===

”Productive Mondays” highlight a timesaving tool. This Monday[1] we
covered ooo2txt[2]:

“Sometimes it’s desirable to deal with the contents of OpenOffice.org
text documents as plain text. The ooo2txt program makes this easy:
give it an .odt filename and it will send the text to standard output.
You can redirect the output to a file or pipe it into other tools
(such as grep or sed).”

[1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/91-Productive-Monday-ooo2txt-OpenOffice.org-documents-to-Text.html

[2] http://ooo2txt.fr.st/

=== Ardour – Digital Audio Workstation ===

”Artsy Tuesdays” highlight a graphics, video, or sound application.
This Tuesday[1] Ardour[2] was featured:

“Ardour is a digital audio workstation with a long list of features.
You can use it as a multichannel hard disk recorder or a mixer with
unlimited busses, tracks, and plugins, and you can control it from
your keyboard/mouse or a MIDI Machine Control board.”

[1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/93-Artsy-Tuesday-Ardour-Digital-Audio-Workstation.html

[2] http://ardour.org/

=== Menus ===

The ”Wednesday Why” article[1] was on the Fedora desktop application menus:

“Fedora’s application menus include many different programs from
different packages. Fedora supports multiple desktop environments,
including GNOME, KDE, and Xfce, and each of these has a different menu
structure, which may include or exclude certain proograms, such as the
control panels for each environment. Each menu title and menu entry
can be be presented in multiple languages. Furthermore, the menu
layout has changed between Fedora releases, even though some of the
packages have not changed. How does this all work?”

[1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/94-Wednesday-Why-Menus.html

=== System-config-lvm – LVM GUI tool ===

”GUI Thursdays” highlight a software that provides, enhances, or
effectively uses a GUI interface. This Thursday[1], system-config-lvm[2] was
discussed:

“System-config-lvm provides a graphical interface to the LVM tools
(and related utilities, including fsck and resize2fs) which is good
for non-emergency storage administration.”

[1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/92-GUI-Thursday-System-config-lvm-LVM-GUI-tool.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/Deployment_Guide-en-US/s1-system-config-lvm.html

=== Stellarium – Software planetarium ===

”Friday Fun” highlights fun, interesting, and amusing programs. This
Friday[1], we took a look Stellarium[2]:

“Stellarium provides an amazing, interactive planetarium experience on
your Fedora system. Combining a catalog of more than 100,000 stars
with landscape imagery, atmospheric effects, a lot of math, and
OpenGL, Stellarium renders the sky in real time, with sufficient
quality that it is used in some planetariums.”

[1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/95-Friday-Fun-Stellarium-Software-planetarium.html

[2] http://stellarium.org/

== Advisories and Updates ==

In this section, we cover Secuirity Advisories and Package Updates
from fedora-package-announce.

Contributing Writer: ThomasChung

=== Fedora 7 Security Advisories ===

* [SECURITY] flac123-0.0.11-1.fc7 -
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FSA/F7/FEDORA-2007-1045
* [SECURITY] gimp-2.2.16-2.fc7 -
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FSA/F7/FEDORA-2007-1044
* [SECURITY] phpPgAdmin-4.1.3-1.fc7 -
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FSA/F7/FEDORA-2007-1013
* [SECURITY] wireshark-0.99.6-1.fc7 -
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FSA/F7/FEDORA-2007-0982

=== Fedora Core 6 Security Advisories ===

* [SECURITY] httpd-2.2.4-2.1.fc6 -
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FSA/FC6/FEDORA-2007-615
* [SECURITY] wireshark-0.99.6-1.fc6 -
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FSA/FC6/FEDORA-2007-628

== Events and Meetings ==

In this section, we cover event reports and meeting summaries from
various projects.

Contributing Writer: ThomasChung

=== Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2007-07-10 ===

* https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2007-July/msg00004.html

=== Fedora Documentation Steering Committee 2007-MM-DD ===

* Not Reported

=== Fedora Engineering Steering Committee Meeting 2007-07-12 ===

* https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-July/msg00774.html

=== Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Meeting 2007-07-11 ===

* https://www.redhat.com/archives/epel-devel-list/2007-July/msg00087.html

=== Fedora Infrastructure Meeting (Log) 2007-MM-DD ===

* Not Reported

=== Fedora Packaging Committee Meeting 2007-07-10 ===

* https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-maintainers/2007-July/msg00127.html

=== Fedora Release Engineering Meeting 2007-07-09 ===

* https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-July/msg00530.html

=== Fedora Translation Project Meeting 2007-07-10 ===

* https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2007-July/msg00033.html

== Feedback ==

This document is maintained by the Fedora News Team[1]. Please feel
free to contact us to give your feedback. If you’d like to contribute
to a future issue of the Fedora Weekly News, please see the Join[2]
page to find out how to help.

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join

–
Thomas Chung
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThomasChung