Bits from Debian

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Dear Debian community,

this is bits from DPL for March (sorry for the delay, I was waiting for some additional input).

Conferences

In March, I attended two conferences, each with a distinct motivation.

I joined FOSSASIA to address the imbalance in geographical developer representation. Encouraging more developers from Asia to contribute to Free Software is an important goal for me, and FOSSASIA provided a valuable opportunity to work towards this.

I also attended Chemnitzer Linux-Tage, a conference I have been part of for over 20 years. To me, it remains a key gathering for the German Free Software community –a place where contributors meet, collaborate, and exchange ideas.

I have a remark about submitting an event proposal to both FOSDEM and FOSSASIA:

Cross distribution experience exchange

As Debian Project Leader, I have often reflected on how other Free Software distributions address challenges we all face. I am interested in discussing how we can learn from each other to improve our work and better serve our users. Recognizing my limited understanding of other distributions, I aim to bridge this gap through open knowledge exchange. My hope is to foster a constructive dialogue that benefits the broader Free Software ecosystem. Representatives of other distributions are encouraged to participate in this BoF –whether as contributors or official co-speakers. My intention is not to drive the discussion from a Debian-centric perspective but to ensure that all distributions have an equal voice in the conversation.

This event proposal was part of my commitment from my 2024 DPL platform, specifically under the section "Reaching Out to Learn". Had it been accepted, I would have also attended FOSDEM. However, both FOSDEM and FOSSASIA rejected the proposal.

In hindsight, reaching out to other distribution contributors beforehand might have improved its chances. I may take this approach in the future if a similar opportunity arises. That said, rejecting an interdistribution discussion without any feedback is, in my view, a missed opportunity for collaboration.

FOSSASIA Summit

The 14th FOSSASIA Summit took place in Bangkok. As a leading open-source technology conference in Asia, it brings together developers, startups, and tech enthusiasts to collaborate on projects in AI, cloud computing, IoT, and more.

With a strong focus on open innovation, the event features hands-on workshops, keynote speeches, and community-driven discussions, emphasizing open-source software, hardware, and digital freedom. It fosters a diverse, inclusive environment and highlights Asia's growing role in the global FOSS ecosystem.

I presented a talk on Debian as a Global Project and led a packaging workshop. Additionally, to further support attendees interested in packaging, I hosted an extra self-organized workshop at a hacker café, initiated by participants eager to deepen their skills.

There was another Debian related talk given by Ananthu titled "The Herculean Task of OS Maintenance - The Debian Way!"

To further my goal of increasing diversity within Debian –particularly by encouraging more non-male contributors– I actively engaged with attendees, seeking opportunities to involve new people in the project. Whether through discussions, mentoring, or hands-on sessions, I aimed to make Debian more approachable for those who might not yet see themselves as contributors. I was fortunate to have the support of Debian enthusiasts from India and China, who ran the Debian booth and helped create a welcoming environment for these conversations. Strengthening diversity in Free Software is a collective effort, and I hope these interactions will inspire more people to get involved.

Chemnitzer Linuxtage

The Chemnitzer Linux-Tage (CLT) is one of Germany's largest and longest-running community-driven Linux and open-source conferences, held annually in Chemnitz since 2000. It has been my favorite conference in Germany, and I have tried to attend every year.

Focusing on Free Software, Linux, and digital sovereignty, CLT offers a mix of expert talks, workshops, and exhibitions, attracting hobbyists, professionals, and businesses alike. With a strong grassroots ethos, it emphasizes hands-on learning, privacy, and open-source advocacy while fostering a welcoming environment for both newcomers and experienced Linux users.

Despite my appreciation for the diverse and high-quality talks at CLT, my main focus was on connecting with people who share the goal of attracting more newcomers to Debian. Engaging with both longtime contributors and potential new participants remains one of the most valuable aspects of the event for me.

I was fortunate to be joined by Debian enthusiasts staffing the Debian booth, where I found myself among both experienced booth volunteers –who have attended many previous CLT events– and young newcomers. This was particularly reassuring, as I certainly can't answer every detailed question at the booth. I greatly appreciate the knowledgeable people who represent Debian at this event and help make it more accessible to visitors.

As a small point of comparison –while FOSSASIA and CLT are fundamentally different events– the gender ratio stood out. FOSSASIA had a noticeably higher proportion of women compared to Chemnitz. This contrast highlighted the ongoing need to foster more diversity within Free Software communities in Europe.

At CLT, I gave a talk titled "Tausend Freiwillige, ein Ziel" (Thousand Volunteers, One Goal), which was video recorded. It took place in the grand auditorium and attracted a mix of long-term contributors and newcomers, making for an engaging and rewarding experience.

Kind regards Andreas.

DebConf25 Registration and Call for Proposals are open

Anupa Ann Joseph, Sahil Dhiman — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 12:00:00 +0200

The 26th edition of the Debian annual conference will be held in Brest, France, from July 14th to July 20th, 2025. The main conference will be preceded by DebCamp, from July 7th to July 13th. We invite everyone interested to register for the event to attend DebConf25 in person. You can also submit a talk or event proposal if you're interested in presenting your work in Debian at DebConf25.

Registration can be done by creating an account on the DebConf25 website and clicking on "Register" in the profile section.

As always, basic registration is free of charge. If you are attending the conference in a professional capacity or as a representative of your company, we kindly ask that you consider registering in one of our paid categories. This helps cover the costs of organizing the event while also supporting subsidizing other community members attendance. The last day to register with guaranteed swag is 9th June.

We encourage eligible individuals to apply for a diversity bursary. Travel, food, and accommodation bursaries are available. More details can be found on the bursary information page. The last day to apply for a bursary is April 14th. Applicants should receive feedback on their bursary application by April 25th.

The call for proposals for talks, discussions and other activities is also open. To submit a proposal, you need to create an account on the website and click the "Submit Talk Proposal" button in the profile section. The last day to submit and have your proposal considered for the main conference schedule, with video coverage guaranteed, is May 25th.

DebConf25 is also looking for sponsors; if you are interested or think you know of others who would be willing to help, please get in touch with sponsors@debconf.org.

All important dates can be found on the link here.

See you in Brest!

Viridien Platinum Sponsor of DebConf25

Sahil Dhiman — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 11:50:00 +0100

We are pleased to announce that Viridien has committed to sponsor DebConf25 as a Platinum Sponsor.

Viridien is an advanced technology, digital and Earth data company that pushes the boundaries of science for a more prosperous and sustainable future.

Viridien has been using Debian-based systems to power most of its HPC infrastructure and its cloud platform since 2009 and currently employs two active Debian Project Members.

As a Platinum Sponsor, Viridien is contributing to the Debian annual Developers' conference, directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software. Viridien contributes to strengthen the community that collaborates on the Debian project from all around the world throughout all of the year.

Thank you very much, Viridien, for your support of DebConf25!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf25 will take place from 14 to 20 July 2025 in Brest, France, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 7 to 13 July 2025.

DebConf25 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf25 website at https://debconf25.debconf.org/sponsors /become-a-sponsor/.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2025)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 16:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Bo Yu (vimer)
Maytham Alsudany (maytham)
Rebecca Natalie Palmer (mpalmer)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

NoisyCoil
Arif Ali
Julien Plissonneau Duquène
Maarten Van Geijn
Ben Collins

Congratulations!

Debian Med Sprint in Berlin

Pierre Gruet, Jean-Pierre Giraud, Joost van Baal-Ilić — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Debian Med sprint in Berlin on 15 and 16 February

The Debian Med team works on software packages that are associated with medicine, pre-clinical research, and life sciences, and makes them available for the Debian distribution. Seven Debian developers and contributors to the team gathered for their annual Sprint, in Berlin, Germany on 15 and 16 February 2025. The purpose of the meeting was to tackle bugs in Debian-Med packages, enhance the quality of the team's packages, and coordinate the efforts of team members overall.

This sprint allowed participants to fix dozens of bugs, including release-critical ones. New upstream versions were uploaded, and the participants took some time to modernize some packages. Additionally, they discussed the long-term goals of the team, prepared a forthcoming invited talk for a conference, and enjoyed working together.

More details on the event and individual agendas/reports can be found at https://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/2025/DebianMed.

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Dear Debian community,

this is bits from DPL for February.

Ftpmaster team is seeking for new team members

In December, Scott Kitterman announced his retirement from the project. I personally regret this, as I vividly remember his invaluable support during the Debian Med sprint at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. He even took time off to ensure new packages cleared the queue in under 24 hours. I want to take this opportunity to personally thank Scott for his contributions during that sprint and for all his work in Debian.

With one fewer FTP assistant, I am concerned about the increased workload on the remaining team. I encourage anyone in the Debian community who is interested to consider reaching out to the FTP masters about joining their team.

If you're wondering about the role of the FTP masters, I'd like to share a fellow developer's perspective:

"My read on the FTP masters is:

In truth, they are the heart of the project.

They know it.

They do a fantastic job."

I fully agree and see it as part of my role as DPL to ensure this remains true for Debian's future.

If you're looking for a way to support Debian in a critical role where many developers will deeply appreciate your work, consider reaching out to the team. It's a great opportunity for any Debian Developer to contribute to a key part of the project.

Project Status: Six Months of Bug of the Day

In my Bits from the DPL talk at DebConf24, I announced the Tiny Tasks effort, which I intended to start with a Bug of the Day project. Another idea was an Autopkgtest of the Day, but this has been postponed due to limited time resources-I cannot run both projects in parallel.

The original goal was to provide small, time-bound examples for newcomers. To put it bluntly: in terms of attracting new contributors, it has been a failure so far. My offer to explain individual bug-fixing commits in detail, if needed, received no response, and despite my efforts to encourage questions, none were asked.

However, the project has several positive aspects: experienced developers actively exchange ideas, collaborate on fixing bugs, assess whether packages are worth fixing or should be removed, and work together to find technical solutions for non-trivial problems.

So far, the project has been engaging and rewarding every day, bringing new discoveries and challenges-not just technical, but also social. Fortunately, in the vast majority of cases, I receive positive responses and appreciation from maintainers. Even in the few instances where help was declined, it was encouraging to see that in two cases, maintainers used the ping as motivation to work on their packages themselves. This reflects the dedication and high standards of maintainers, whose work is essential to the project's success.

I once used the metaphor that this project is like wandering through a dark basement with a lone flashlight-exploring aimlessly and discovering a wide variety of things that have accumulated over the years. Among them are true marvels with popcon >10,000, ingenious tools, and delightful games that I only recently learned about. There are also some packages whose time may have come to an end-but each of them reflects the dedication and effort of those who maintained them, and that deserves the utmost respect.

Leaving aside the challenge of attracting newcomers, what have we achieved since August 1st last year?

Fixed more than one package per day, typically addressing multiple bugs.
Added and corrected numerous Homepage fields and watch files.
The most frequently patched issue was "Fails To Cross-Build From Source" (all including patches).
Migrated several packages from cdbs/debhelper to dh.
Rewrote many d/copyright files to DEP5 format and thoroughly reviewed them.
Integrated all affected packages into Salsa and enabled Salsa CI.
Approximately half of the packages were moved to appropriate teams, while the rest are maintained within the Debian or Salvage teams.
Regularly performed team uploads, ITS, NMUs, or QA uploads.
Filed several RoQA bugs to propose package removals where appropriate.
Reported multiple maintainers to the MIA team when necessary.

With some goodwill, you can see a slight impact on the trends.debian.net graphs (thank you Lucas for the graphs), but I would never claim that this project alone is responsible for the progress. What I have also observed is the steady stream of daily uploads to the delayed queue, demonstrating the continuous efforts of many contributors. This ongoing work often remains unseen by most-including myself, if not for my regular check-ins on this list. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to everyone pushing fixes there, contributing to the overall quality and progress of Debian's QA efforts.

If you examine the graphs for "Version Control System" and "VCS Hosting" with the goodwill mentioned above, you might notice a positive trend since mid-last year. The "Package Smells" category has also seen reductions in several areas: "no git", "no DEP5 copyright", "compat <9", and "not salsa". I'd also like to acknowledge the NMUers who have been working hard to address the "format != 3.0" issue. Thanks to all their efforts, this specific issue never surfaced in the Bug of the Day effort, but their contributions deserve recognition here.

The experience I gathered in this project taught me a lot and inspired me to some followup we should discuss at a Sprint at DebCamp this year.

Finally, if any newcomer finds this information interesting, I'd be happy to slow down and patiently explain individual steps as needed. All it takes is asking questions on the Matrix channel to turn this into a "teaching by example" session.

By the way, for newcomers who are interested, I used quite a few abbreviations-all of which are explained in the Debian Glossary.

Sneak Peek at Upcoming Conferences

I will join two conferences in March-feel free to talk to me if you spot me there.

FOSSASIA Summit 2025 (March 13-15, Bangkok, Thailand) Schedule: https://eventyay.com/e/4c0e0c27/schedule
Chemnitzer Linux-Tage (March 22-23, Chemnitz, Germany) Schedule: https://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2025/de/programm/vortraege

Both events will have a Debian booth-come say hi!

Kind regards Andreas.

DebConf25 Logo Contest Results

Donald Norwood, Santiago Ruano Rincón, Jean–Pierre Giraud — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 10:00:00 +0100

Last November, the DebConf25 Team asked the community to help design the logo for the 25th Debian Developers' Conference and the results are in! The logo contest received 23 submissions and we thank all the 295 people who took the time to participate in the survey. There were several amazing proposals, so choosing was not easy.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the logo survey is 'Tower with red Debian Swirl originating from blue water' (option L), by Juliana Camargo and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Juliana also shared with us a bit of her motivation, creative process and inspiration when designing her logo:

The idea for this logo came from the city's landscape, the place where the medieval tower looks over the river that meets the sea, almost like guarding it. The Debian red swirl comes out of the blue water splash as a continuous stroke, and they are also the French flag colours. I tried to combine elements from the city when I was sketching in the notebook, which is an important step for me as I feel that ideas flow much more easily, but the swirl + water with the tower was the most refreshing combination, so I jumped to the computer to design it properly. The water bit was the most difficult element, and I used the Debian swirl as a base for it, so both would look consistent. The city name font is a modern calligraphy style and the overall composition is not symmetric but balanced with the different elements. I am glad that the Debian community felt represented with this logo idea!

Congratulations, Juliana, and thank you very much for your contribution to Debian!

The DebConf25 Team would like to take this opportunity to remind you that DebConf, the annual international Debian Developers Conference, needs your help. If you want to help with the DebConf 25 organization, don't hesitate to reach out to us via the #debconf-team channel on OFTC.

Furthermore, we are always looking for sponsors. DebConf is run on a non-profit basis, and all financial contributions allow us to bring together a large number of contributors from all over the globe to work collectively on Debian. Detailed information about the sponsorship opportunities is available on the DebConf 25 website.

See you in Brest!

Proxmox Platinum Sponsor of DebConf25

Sahil Dhiman — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:50:00 +0100

We are pleased to announce that Proxmox has committed to sponsor DebConf25 as a Platinum Sponsor.

Proxmox develops powerful, yet easy-to-use Open Source server software. The product portfolio from Proxmox, including server virtualization, backup, and email security, helps companies of any size, sector, or industry to simplify their IT infrastructures. The Proxmox solutions are based on the great Debian platform, and we are happy that we can give back to the community by sponsoring DebConf25.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Proxmox is contributing to the Debian annual Developers' conference, directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software. Proxmox contributes to strengthen the community that collaborates on Debian projects from all around the world throughout all of the year.

Thank you very much, Proxmox, for your support of DebConf25!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf25 will take place from 14 to 20 July 2025 in Brest, France, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 7 to 13 July 2025.

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Dear Debian community,

this is bits from DPL for January.

Sovereign Tech Agency

I was recently pointed to Technologies and Projects supported by the Sovereign Tech Agency which is financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. It is a subsidiary of the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, SPRIND GmbH.

It is worth sending applications there for distinct projects as that is their preferred method of funding. Distinguished developers can also apply for a fellowship position that pays up to 40hrs / week (32hrs when freelancing) for a year. This is esp. open to maintainers of larger numbers of packages in Debian (or any other Linux distribution).

There might be a chance that some of the Debian-related projects submitted to the Google Summer of Code that did not get funded could be retried with those foundations. As per the FAQ of the project: "The Sovereign Tech Agency focuses on securing and strengthening open and foundational digital technologies. These communities working on these are distributed all around the world, so we work with people, companies, and FOSS communities everywhere."

Similar funding organizations include the Open Technology Fund and FLOSS/fund. If you have a Debian-related project that fits these funding programs, they might be interesting options. This list is by no means exhaustive—just some hints I’ve received and wanted to share. More suggestions for such opportunities are welcome.

Year of code reviews

On the debian-devel mailing list, there was a long thread titled "Let's make 2025 a year when code reviews became common in Debian". It initially suggested something along the lines of: "Let's review MRs in Salsa." The discussion quickly expanded to include patches that have been sitting in the BTS for years, which deserve at least the same attention. One idea I'd like to emphasize is that associating BTS bugs with MRs could be very convenient. It’s not only helpful for documentation but also the easiest way to apply patches.

I’d like to emphasize that no matter what workflow we use—BTS, MRs, or a mix—it is crucial to uphold Debian’s reputation for high quality. However, this reputation is at risk as more and more old issues accumulate. While Debian is known for its technical excellence, long-standing bugs and orphaned packages remain a challenge. If we don’t address these, we risk weakening the high standards that Debian is valued for. Revisiting old issues and ensuring that unmaintained packages receive attention is especially important as we prepare for the Trixie release.

Debian Publicity Team will no longer post on X/Twitter

The Press Team has my full support in its decision to stop posting on X. As per the Publicity delegation:

The team is in charge of deciding the most suitable publication venue or venues for announcements and when they are published.

the team once decided to join Twitter, but circumstances have since changed. The current Press delegates have the institutional authority to leave X, just as their predecessors had the authority to join. I appreciate that the team carefully considered the matter, reinforced by the arguments developed on the debian-publicity list, and communicated its reasoning openly.

Kind regards,

Andreas.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2024)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 20:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Ananthu C V (weepingclown)
Andrea Pappacoda (tachi)
Athos Coimbra Ribeiro (athos)
Gioele Barabucci (gioele)
Jongmin Kim (jmkim)
Shengqi Chen (harry)
Frans Spiesschaert (frans)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Tianyu Chen
Emmanuel FARHI
наб
Nicolas Schodet

Congratulations!

Infomaniak Platinum Sponsor of DebConf25

Sahil Dhiman — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 11:22:00 +0100

We are pleased to announce that Infomaniak has committed to sponsor DebConf25 as a Platinum Sponsor.

Infomaniak is Switzerland’s leading developer of Web technologies. With operations all over Europe and based exclusively in Switzerland, the company designs and manages its own data centers powered by 100% renewable energy, and develops all its solutions locally, without outsourcing. With millions of users and the trust of public and private organizations across Europe - such as RTBF, the United Nations, central banks, over 3,000 radio and TV stations, as well as numerous cities and security bodies - Infomaniak stands for sovereign, sustainable and independent digital technology. The company offers a complete suite of collaborative tools, cloud hosting, streaming, marketing and events solutions, while being owned by its employees and self-financed exclusively by its customers.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Infomaniak is contributing to the Debian annual Developers' conference, directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software. Infomaniak contributes to strengthen the community that collaborates on Debian projects from all around the world throughout all of the year.

Thank you very much, Infomaniak, for your support of DebConf25!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf25 will take place from 14th to July 20th 2025 in Brest, France, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 7th to 13th July 2025.

DebConf25 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations should contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, or visit the DebConf25 website at https://debconf25.debconf.org/sponsors/become-a-sponsor/.

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Dear Debian community,

this is bits from DPL for December.

Happy New Year 2025! Wishing everyone health, productivity, and a successful Debian release later in this year.

Strict ownership of packages

I'm glad my last bits sparked discussions about barriers between packages and contributors, summarized temporarily in some post on the debian-devel list. As one participant aptly put it, we need a way to visibly say, "I'll do the job until someone else steps up". Based on my experience with the Bug of the Day initiative, simplifying the process for engaging with packages would significantly help.

Currently we have

NMU The Developers Reference outlines several preconditions for NMUs, explicitly stating, "Fixing cosmetic issues or changing the packaging style in NMUs is discouraged." This makes NMUs unsuitable for addressing package smells. However, I've seen NMUs used for tasks like switching to source format 3.0 or bumping the debhelper compat level. While it's technically possible to file a bug and then address it in an NMU, the process inherently limits the NMUer's flexibility to reduce package smells.
Package Salvaging This is another approach for working on someone else's packages, aligning with the process we often follow in the Bug of the Day initiative. The criteria for selecting packages typically indicate that the maintainer either lacks time to address open bugs, has lost interest, or is generally MIA.

Both options have drawbacks, so I'd welcome continued discussion on criteria for lowering the barriers to moving packages to Salsa and modernizing their packaging. These steps could enhance Debian overall and are generally welcomed by active maintainers. The discussion also highlighted that packages on Salsa are often maintained collaboratively, fostering the team-oriented atmosphere already established in several Debian teams.

Salsa

Continuous Integration

As part of the ongoing discussion about package maintenance, I'm considering the suggestion to switch from the current opt-in model for Salsa CI to an opt-out approach. While I fully agree that human verification is necessary when the pipeline is activated, I believe the current option to enable CI is less visible than it should be. I'd welcome a more straightforward approach to improve access to better testing for what we push to Salsa.

Number of packages not on Salsa

In my campaign, I stated that I aimed to reduce the number of packages maintained outside Salsa to below 2,000. As of March 28, 2024, the count was 2,368. As of this writing, the count stands at 1,928 [1], so I consider this promise fulfilled. My thanks go out to everyone who contributed to this effort. Moving forward, I'd like to set a more ambitious goal for the remainder of my term and hope we can reduce the number to below 1,800.

[1] UDD query: SELECT DISTINCT count(*) FROM sources WHERE release = 'sid' and vcs_url not like '%salsa%' ;

Past and future events

Talk at MRI Together

In early December, I gave a short online talk, primarily focusing on my work with the Debian Med team. I also used my position as DPL to advocate for attracting more users and developers from the scientific research community.

FOSSASIA

I originally planned to attend FOSDEM this year. However, given the strong Debian presence there and the need for better representation at the FOSSASIA Summit, I decided to prioritize the latter. This aligns with my goal of improving geographic diversity. I also look forward to opportunities for inter-distribution discussions.

Debian team sprints

Debian Ruby Sprint

I approved the budget for the Debian Ruby Sprint, scheduled for January 2025 in Paris. If you're interested in contributing to the Ruby team, whether in person or online, consider reaching out to them. I'm sure any helping hand would be appreciated.

Debian Med sprint

There will also be a Debian Med sprint in Berlin in mid-February. As usual, you don't need to be an expert in biology or medicine–basic bug squashing skills are enough to contribute and enjoy the friendly atmosphere the Debian Med team fosters at their sprints. For those working in biology and medicine, we typically offer packaging support. Anyone interested in spending a weekend focused on impactful scientific work with Debian is warmly invited.

Again all the best for 2025

Andreas.

"Ceratopsian" will be the default theme for Debian 13

Jonathan Carter — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 13:30:00 +0100

The theme "Ceratopsian" by Elise Couper has been selected as the default theme for Debian 13 "trixie". The theme is inspired by Trixie's (the fictional character from Toy Story) frill and is also influenced by a previously used theme called "futurePrototype" by Alex Makas.

After the Debian Desktop Team made the call for proposing themes, a total of six choices were submitted. The desktop artwork poll was open to the public, and we received 2817 responses ranking the different choices, of which Ceratopsian has been ranked as the winner among them.

We'd like to thank all the designers that have participated and have submitted their excellent work in the form of wallpapers and artwork for Debian 13.

Congratulations, Elise, and thank you very much for your contribution to Debian!

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is bits from DPL for November.

MiniDebConf Toulouse

I had the pleasure of attending the MiniDebConf in Toulouse, which featured a range of engaging talks, complementing those from the recent MiniDebConf in Cambridge. Both events were preceded by a DebCamp, which provided a valuable opportunity for focused work and collaboration.

DebCamp

During these events, I participated in numerous technical discussions on topics such as maintaining long-neglected packages, team-based maintenance, FTP master policies, Debusine, and strategies for separating maintainer script dependencies from runtime dependencies, among others. I was also fortunate that members of the Publicity Team attended the MiniDebCamp, giving us the opportunity to meet in person and collaborate face-to-face.

Independent of the ongoing lengthy discussion on the Debian Devel mailing list, I encountered the perspective that unifying Git workflows might be more critical than ensuring all packages are managed in Git. While I'm uncertain whether these two questions--adopting Git as a universal development tool and agreeing on a common workflow for its use--can be fully separated, I believe it's worth raising this topic for further consideration.

Attracting newcomers

In my own talk, I regret not leaving enough time for questions--my apologies for this. However, I want to revisit the sole question raised, which essentially asked: Is the documentation for newcomers sufficient to attract new contributors? My immediate response was that this question is best directed to new contributors themselves, as they are in the best position to identify gaps and suggest improvements that could make the documentation more helpful.

That said, I'm personally convinced that our challenges extend beyond just documentation. I don't get the impression that newcomers are lining up to join Debian only to be deterred by inadequate documentation. The issue might be more about fostering interest and engagement in the first place.

My personal impression is that we sometimes fail to convey that Debian is not just a product to download for free but also a technical challenge that warmly invites participation. Everyone who respects our Code of Conduct will find that Debian is a highly diverse community, where joining the project offers not only opportunities for technical contributions but also meaningful social interactions that can make the effort and time truly rewarding.

In several of my previous talks (you can find them on my talks page –just search for "team," and don't be deterred if you see "Debian Med" in the title; it's simply an example), I emphasized that the interaction between a mentor and a mentee often plays a far more significant role than the documentation the mentee has to read. The key to success has always been finding a way to spark the mentee's interest in a specific topic that resonates with their own passions.

Bug of the Day

In my presentation, I provided a brief overview of the Bug of the Day initiative, which was launched with the aim of demonstrating how to fix bugs as an entry point for learning about packaging. While the current level of interest from newcomers seems limited, the initiative has brought several additional benefits.

I must admit that I'm learning quite a bit about Debian myself. I often compare it to exploring a house's cellar with a flashlight –you uncover everything from hidden marvels to things you might prefer to discard. I've also come across traces of incredibly diligent people who have invested their spare time polishing these hidden treasures (what we call NMUs). The janitor, a service in Salsa that automatically updates packages, fits perfectly into this cellar metaphor, symbolizing the ongoing care and maintenance that keep everything in order. I hadn't realized the immense amount of silent work being done behind the scenes--thank you all so much for your invaluable QA efforts.

Reproducible builds

It might be unfair to single out a specific talk from Toulouse, but I'd like to highlight the one on reproducible builds. Beyond its technical focus, the talk also addressed the recent loss of Lunar, whom we mourn deeply. It served as a tribute to Lunar's contributions and legacy. Personally, I've encountered packages maintained by Lunar and bugs he had filed. I believe that taking over his packages and addressing the bugs he reported is a meaningful way to honor his memory and acknowledge the value of his work.

Advent calendar bug squashing

I’d like to promote an idea originally introduced by Thorsten Alteholz, who in 2011 proposed a Bug Squashing Advent Calendar for the Debian Med team. (For those unfamiliar with the concept of an Advent Calendar, you can find an explanation on Wikipedia.) While the original version included a fun graphical element —which we’ve had to set aside due to time constraints (volunteers, anyone?)— we’ve kept the tradition alive by tackling one bug per day from December 1st to 24th each year. This initiative helps clean up issues that have accumulated over the year.

Regardless of whether you celebrate the concept of Advent, I warmly recommend this approach as a form of continuous bug-squashing party for every team. Not only does it contribute to the release readiness of your team’s packages, but it’s also an enjoyable and bonding activity for team members.

Best wishes for a cheerful and productive December

Andreas.

Debian welcomes its new Outreachy interns

Nilesh Patra — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 10:00:00 +0100

Debian continues participating in Outreachy, and we're excited to announce that Debian has selected two interns for the Outreachy December 2024 - March 2025 round.

Patrick Noblet Appiah will work on Automatic Indi-3rd-party driver update, mentored by Thorsten Alteholz.

Divine Attah-Ohiemi will work on Making the Debian main website more attractive by switching to HuGo as site generator, mentored by Carsten Schoenert, Subin Siby and Thomas Lange.

Congratulations and welcome Patrick Noblet Appiah and Divine Attah-Ohiemi!

From the official website: Outreachy provides three-month internships for people from groups traditionally underrepresented in tech. Interns work remotely with mentors from Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities on projects ranging from programming, user experience, documentation, illustration and graphical design, to data science.

The Outreachy programme is possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian developers and contributors who dedicate their free time to mentor students and outreach tasks, and the Software Freedom Conservancy's administrative support, as well as the continued support of Debian's donors, who provide funding for the internships.

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the work of the Outreachy interns reading their blogs (they are syndicated in Planet Debian), and chat with us in the #debian-outreach IRC channel and mailing list.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (September and October 2024)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Joachim Bauch (fancycode)
Alexander Kjäll (capitol)
Jan Mojžíš (janmojzis)
Xiao Sheng Wen (atzlinux)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Alberto Bertogli
Alexis Murzeau
David Heilderberg
Xiyue Deng
Kathara Sasikumar
Philippe Swartvagher

Congratulations!

OpenStreetMap migrates to Debian 12

Donald Norwood, Stefano Rivera, Justin B Rye — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 14:01:00 +0100

You may have seen this toot announcing OpenStreetMap's migration to Debian on their infrastructure.

🚀 After 18 years on Ubuntu, we've upgraded the @openstreetmap servers to Debian 12 (Bookworm). 🌍 openstreetmap.org is now faster using Ruby 3.1. Onward to new mapping adventures! Thank you to the team for the smooth transition. #OpenStreetMap #Debian 🤓

We spoke with Grant Slater, the Senior Site Reliability Engineer for the OpenStreetMap Foundation. Grant shares:

Why did you choose Debian?

There is a large overlap between OpenStreetMap mappers and the Debian community. Debian also has excellent coverage of OpenStreetMap tools and utilities, which helped with the decision to switch to Debian.

The Debian package maintainers do an excellent job of maintaining their packages - e.g.: osm2pgsql, osmium-tool etc.

Part of our reason to move to Debian was to get closer to the maintainers of the packages that we depend on. Debian maintainers appear to be heavily invested in the software packages that they support and we see critical bugs get fixed.

What drove this decision to migrate?

OpenStreetMap.org is primarily run on actual physical hardware that our team manages. We attempt to squeeze as much performance from our systems as possible, with some services being particularly I/O bound. We ran into some severe I/O performance issues with kernels ~6.0 to < ~6.6 on systems with NVMe storage. This pushed us onto newer mainline kernels, which led us toward Debian. On Debian 12 we could simply install the backport kernel and the performance issues were solved.

How was the transition managed?

Thankfully we manage our server setup nearly completely with code. We also use Test Kitchen with inspec to test this infrastructure code. Tests run locally using Podman or Docker containers, but also run as part of our git code pipeline.

We added Debian as a test target platform and fixed up the infrastructure code until all the tests passed. The changes required were relatively small, simple package name or config filename changes mostly.

What was your timeline of transition?

In August 2024 we moved the www.openstreetmap.org Ruby on Rails servers across to Debian. We haven't yet finished moving everything across to Debian, but we will upgrade the rest when it makes sense. Some systems may wait until the next hardware upgrade cycle.

Our focus is to build a stable and reliable platform for OpenStreetMap mappers.

How has the transition from another Linux distribution to Debian gone?

We are still in the process of fully migrating between Linux distributions, but we can share that we recently moved our frontend servers to Debian 12 (from Ubuntu 22.04) which bumped the Ruby version from 3.0 to 3.1 which allowed us to also upgrade the version of Ruby on Rails that we use for www.openstreetmap.org.

We also changed our chef code for managing the network interfaces from using netplan (default in Ubuntu, made by Canonical) to directly using systemd-networkd to manage the network interfaces, to allow commonality between how we manage the interfaces in Ubuntu and our upcoming Debian systems. Over the years we've standardised our networking setup to use 802.3ad bonded interfaces for redundancy, with VLANs to segment traffic; this setup worked well with systemd-networkd.

We use netboot.xyz for PXE networking booting OS installers for our systems and use IPMI for the out-of-band management. We remotely re-installed a test server to Debian 12, and fixed a few minor issues missed by our chef tests. We were pleasantly surprised how smoothly the migration to Debian went.

In a few limited cases we've used Debian Backports for a few packages where we've absolutely had to have a newer feature. The Debian package maintainers are fantastic.

What definitely helped us is our code is libre/free/open-source, with most of the core OpenStreetMap software like osm2pgsql already in Debian and well packaged.

In some cases we do run pre-release or custom patches of OpenStreetMap software; with Ubuntu we used launchpad.net's Personal Package Archives (PPA) to build and host deb repositories for these custom packages. We were initially perplexed by the myriad of options in Debian (see this list - eeek!), but received some helpful guidance from a Debian contributor and we now manage our own deb repository using aptly. For the moment we're currently building deb packages locally and pushing to aptly; ideally we'd like to replace this with a git driven pipeline for building the custom packages in the future.

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us.

Thank you to all the awesome people who make Debian!

We are overjoyed to share this in-use case which demonstrates our commitment to stability, development, and long term support. Debian offers users, companies, and organisations the ability to plan, scope, develop, and maintain at their own pace using a rock solid stable Linux distribution with responsive developers.

Does your organisation use Debian in some capacity? We would love to hear about it and your use of 'The Universal Operating System'. Reach out to us at Press@debian.org - we would be happy to add your organisation to our 'Who's Using Debian?' page and to share your story!

About Debian

The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. This operating system that we have created is called Debian. Installers and images, such as live systems, offline installers for systems without a network connection, installers for other CPU architectures, or cloud instances, can be found at Getting Debian.

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Dear Debian community,

this is Bits from DPL for October. In addition to a summary of my recent activities, I aim to include newsworthy developments within Debian that might be of interest to the broader community. I believe this provides valuable insights and foster a sense of connection across our diverse projects. Also, I welcome your feedback on the format and focus of these Bits, as community input helps shape their value.

Ada Lovelace Day 2024

As outlined in my platform, I'm committed to increasing the diversity of Debian developers. I hope the recent article celebrating Ada Lovelace Day 2024–featuring interviews with women in Debian–will serve as an inspiring motivation for more women to join our community.

MiniDebConf Cambridge

This was my first time attending the MiniDebConf in Cambridge, hosted at the ARM building. I thoroughly enjoyed the welcoming atmosphere of both MiniDebCamp and MiniDebConf. It was wonderful to reconnect with people who hadn't made it to the last two DebConfs, and, as always, there was plenty of hacking, insightful discussions, and valuable learning.

If you missed the recent MiniDebConf, there's a great opportunity to attend the next one in Toulouse. It was recently decided to include a MiniDebCamp beforehand as well.

FTPmaster accepts MRs for DAK

At the recent MiniDebConf in Cambridge, I discussed potential enhancements for DAK to make life easier for both FTP Team members and developers. For those interested, the document "Hacking on DAK" provides guidance on setting up a local DAK instance and developing patches, which can be submitted as MRs.

As a perfectly random example of such improvements some older MR, "Add commands to accept/reject updates from a policy queue" might give you some inspiration.

At MiniDebConf, we compiled an initial list of features that could benefit both the FTP Team and the developer community. While I had preliminary discussions with the FTP Team about these items, not all ideas had consensus. I aim to open a detailed, public discussion to gather broader feedback and reach a consensus on which features to prioritize.

Accept+Bug report

Sometimes, packages are rejected not because of DFSG-incompatible licenses but due to other issues that could be resolved within an existing package (as discussed in my DebConf23 BoF, "Chatting with ftpmasters"[1]). During the "Meet the ftpteam" BoF (Log/transcription of the BoF can be found here), for the moment until the MR gets accepted, a new option was proposed for FTP Team members reviewing packages in NEW:

Accept + Bug Report

This option would allow a package to enter Debian (in unstable or experimental) with an automatically filed RC bug report. The RC bug would prevent the package from migrating to testing until the issues are addressed. To ensure compatibility with the BTS, which only accepts bug reports for existing packages, a delayed job (24 hours post-acceptance) would file the bug.

Binary name changes - for instance if done to experimental not via new

When binary package names change, currently the package must go through the NEW queue, which can delay the availability of updated libraries. Allowing such packages to bypass the queue could expedite this process. A configuration option to enable this bypass specifically for uploads to experimental may be useful, as it avoids requiring additional technical review for experimental uploads.

Previously, I believed the requirement for binary name changes to pass through NEW was due to a missing feature in DAK, possibly addressable via an MR. However, in discussions with the FTP Team, I learned this is a matter of team policy rather than technical limitation. I haven't found this policy documented, so it may be worth having a community discussion to clarify and reach consensus on how we want to handle binary name changes to get the MR sensibly designed.

Remove dependency tree

When a developer requests the removal of a package – whether entirely or for specific architectures – RM bugs must be filed for the package itself as well as for each package depending on it. It would be beneficial if the dependency tree could be automatically resolved, allowing either:

a) the DAK removal tooling to remove the entire dependency tree
   after prompting the bug report author for confirmation, or

b) the system to auto-generate corresponding bug reports for all
   packages in the dependency tree.

The latter option might be better suited for implementation in an MR for reportbug. However, given the possibility of large-scale removals (for example, targeting specific architectures), having appropriate tooling for this would be very beneficial.

In my opinion the proposed DAK enhancements aim to support both FTP Team members and uploading developers. I'd be very pleased if these ideas spark constructive discussion and inspire volunteers to start working on them--possibly even preparing to join the FTP Team.

On the topic of ftpmasters: an ongoing discussion with SPI lawyers is currently reviewing the non-US agreement established 22 years ago. Ideally, this review will lead to a streamlined workflow for ftpmasters, removing certain hurdles that were originally put in place due to legal requirements, which were updated in 2021.

Contacting teams

My outreach efforts to Debian teams have slowed somewhat recently. However, I want to emphasize that anyone from a packaging team is more than welcome to reach out to me directly. My outreach emails aren't following any specific orders--just my own somewhat naïve view of Debian, which I'm eager to make more informed.

Recently, I received two very informative responses: one from the Qt/KDE Team, which thoughtfully compiled input from several team members into a shared document. The other was from the Rust Team, where I received three quick, helpful replies–one of which included an invitation to their upcoming team meeting.

Interesting readings on our mailing lists

I consider the following threads on our mailing list some interesting reading and would like to add some comments.

Sensible languages for younger contributors

Though the discussion on debian-devel about programming languages took place in September, I recently caught up with it. I strongly believe Debian must continue evolving to stay relevant for the future.

"Everything must change, so that everything can stay the same." -- Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard

I encourage constructive discussions on integrating programming languages in our toolchain that support this evolution.

Concerns regarding the "Open Source AI Definition"

A recent thread on the debian-project list discussed the "Open Source AI Definition". This topic will impact Debian in the future, and we need to reach an informed decision. I'd be glad to see more perspectives in the discussions−particularly on finding a sensible consensus, understanding how FTP Team members view their delegated role, and considering whether their delegation might need adjustments for clarity on this issue.

Kind regards Andreas.

Ada Lovelace Day 2024 - Interview with some Women in Debian

Anupa Ann Joseph — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:01:00 +0200

Ada Lovelace Day was celebrated on October 8 in 2024, and on this occasion, to celebrate and raise awareness of the contributions of women to the STEM fields we interviewed some of the women in Debian.

Here we share their thoughts, comments, and concerns with the hope of inspiring more women to become part of the Sciences, and of course, to work inside of Debian.

This article was simulcasted to the debian-women mail list.

Beatrice Torracca

1. Who are you?

I am Beatrice, I am Italian. Internet technology and everything computer-related is just a hobby for me, not my line of work or the subject of my academic studies. I have too many interests and too little time. I would like to do lots of things and at the same time I am too Oblomovian to do any.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

As a user I started using newsgroups when I had my first dialup connection and there was always talk about this strange thing called Linux. Since moving from DR DOS to Windows was a shock for me, feeling like I lost the control of my machine, I tried Linux with Debian Potato and I never strayed away from Debian since then for my personal equipment.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

Define "into". As a user... since Potato, too many years to count. As a contributor, a similar amount of time, since early 2000 I think. My first archived email about contributing to the translation of the description of Debian packages dates 2001.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

Yes!! I use testing. I have it on my desktop PC at home and I have it on my laptop. The desktop is where I have a local IMAP server that fetches all the mails of my email accounts, and where I sync and back up all my data. On both I do day-to-day stuff (from email to online banking, from shopping to taxes), all forms of entertainment, a bit of work if I have to work from home (GNU R for statistics, LibreOffice... the usual suspects). At work I am required to have another OS, sadly, but I am working on setting up a Debian Live system to use there too. Plus if at work we start doing bioinformatics there might be a Linux machine in our future... I will of course suggest and hope for a Debian system.

5. Do you have any suggestions to improve women's participation in Debian?

This is a tough one. I am not sure. Maybe, more visibility for the women already in the Debian Project, and make the newcomers feel seen, valued and welcomed. A respectful and safe environment is key too, of course, but I think Debian made huge progress in that aspect with the Code of Conduct. I am a big fan of promoting diversity and inclusion; there is always room for improvement.

Ileana Dumitrescu (ildumi)

1. Who are you?

I am just a girl in the world who likes cats and packaging Free Software.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

I was tinkering with a computer running Debian a few years ago, and I decided to learn more about Free Software. After a search or two, I found Debian Women.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

I started looking into contributing to Debian in 2021. After contacting Debian Women, I received a lot of information and helpful advice on different ways I could contribute, and I decided package maintenance was the best fit for me. I eventually became a Debian Maintainer in 2023, and I continue to maintain a few packages in my spare time.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

Yes, it is my favourite GNU/Linux operating system! I use it for email, chatting, browsing, packaging, etc.

5. Do you have any suggestions to improve women's participation in Debian?

The mailing list for Debian Women may attract more participation if it is utilized more. It is where I started, and I imagine participation would increase if it is more engaging.

Kathara Sasikumar (kathara)

1. Who are you?

I'm Kathara Sasikumar, 22 years old and a recent Debian user turned Maintainer from India. I try to become a creative person through sketching or playing guitar chords, but it doesn't work! xD

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

When I first started college, I was that overly enthusiastic student who signed up for every club and volunteered for anything that crossed my path just like every other fresher.

But then, the pandemic hit, and like many, I hit a low point. COVID depression was real, and I was feeling pretty down. Around this time, the FOSS Club at my college suddenly became more active. My friends, knowing I had a love for free software, pushed me to join the club. They thought it might help me lift my spirits and get out of the slump I was in.

At first, I joined only out of peer pressure, but once I got involved, the club really took off. FOSS Club became more and more active during the pandemic, and I found myself spending more and more time with it.

A year later, we had the opportunity to host a MiniDebConf at our college. Where I got to meet a lot of Debian developers and maintainers, attending their talks and talking with them gave me a wider perspective on Debian, and I loved the Debian philosophy.

At that time, I had been distro hopping but never quite settled down. I occasionally used Debian but never stuck around. However, after the MiniDebConf, I found myself using Debian more consistently, and it truly connected with me. The community was incredibly warm and welcoming, which made all the difference.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

Now, I've been using Debian as my daily driver for about a year.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

It has become my primary distro, and I use it every day for continuous learning and working on various software projects with free and open-source tools. Plus, I've recently become a Debian Maintainer (DM) and have taken on the responsibility of maintaining a few packages. I'm looking forward to contributing more to the Debian community 🙂

Rhonda D'Vine (rhonda)

1. Who are you?

My name is Rhonda, my pronouns are she/her, or per/pers. I'm 51 years old, working in IT.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

I was already looking into Linux because of university, first it was SuSE. And people played around with gtk. But when they packaged GNOME and it just didn't even install I looked for alternatives. A working colleague from back then gave me a CD of Debian. Though I couldn't install from it because Slink didn't recognize the pcmcia drive. I had to install it via floppy disks, but apart from that it was quite well done. And the early GNOME was working, so I never looked back. 🙂

3. How long have you been into Debian?

Even before I was more involved, a colleague asked me whether I could help with translating the release documentation. That was my first contribution to Debian, for the slink release in early 1999. And I was using some other software before on my SuSE systems, and I wanted to continue to use them on Debian obviously. So that's how I got involved with packaging in Debian. But I continued to help with translation work, for a long period of time I was almost the only person active for the German part of the website.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

Being involved with Debian was a big part of the reason I got into my jobs since a long time now. I always worked with maintaining Debian (or Ubuntu) systems. Privately I run Debian on my laptop, with occasionally switching to Windows in dual boot when (rarely) needed.

5. Do you have any suggestions to improve women's participation in Debian?

There are factors that we can't influence, like that a lot of women are pushed into care work because patriarchal structures work that way, and don't have the time nor energy to invest a lot into other things. But we could learn to appreciate smaller contributions better, and not focus so much on the quantity of contributions. When we look at longer discussions on mailing lists, those that write more mails actually don't contribute more to the discussion, they often repeat themselves without adding more substance. Through working on our own discussion patterns this could create a more welcoming environment for a lot of people.

Sophie Brun (sophieb)

1. Who are you?

I'm a 44 years old French woman. I'm married and I have 2 sons.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

In 2004 my boyfriend (now my husband) installed Debian on my personal computer to introduce me to Debian. I knew almost nothing about Open Source. During my engineering studies, a professor mentioned the existence of Linux, Red Hat in particular, but without giving any details.

I learnt Debian by using and reading (in advance) The Debian Administrator's Handbook.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

I've been a user since 2004. But I only started contributing to Debian in 2015: I had quit my job and I wanted to work on something more meaningful. That's why I joined my husband in Freexian, his company. Unlike most people I think, I started contributing to Debian for my work. I only became a DD in 2021 under gentle social pressure and when I felt confident enough.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

Of course I use Debian in my professional life for almost all the tasks: from administrative tasks to Debian packaging.

I also use Debian in my personal life. I have very basic needs: Firefox, LibreOffice, GnuCash and Rhythmbox are the main applications I need.

Sruthi Chandran (srud)

1. Who are you?

A feminist, a librarian turned Free Software advocate and a Debian Developer. Part of Debian Outreach team and DebConf Committee.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

I got introduced to the free software world and Debian through my husband. I attended many Debian events with him. During one such event, out of curiosity, I participated in a Debian packaging workshop. Just after that I visited a Tibetan community in India and they mentioned that there was no proper Tibetan font in GNU/Linux. Tibetan font was my first package in Debian.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

I have been contributing to Debian since 2016 and Debian Developer since 2019.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

I haven't used any other distro on my laptop since I got introduced to Debian.

5. Do you have any suggestions to improve women's participation in Debian?

I was involved with actively mentoring newcomers to Debian since I started contributing myself. I specially work towards reducing the gender gap inside the Debian and Free Software community in general. In my experience, I believe that visibility of already existing women in the community will encourage more women to participate. Also I think we should reintroduce mentoring through debian-women.

Tássia Camões Araújo (tassia)

1. Who are you?

Tássia Camões Araújo, a Brazilian living in Canada. I'm a passionate learner who tries to push myself out of my comfort zone and always find something new to learn. I also love to mentor people on their learning journey. But I don't consider myself a typical geek. My challenge has always been to not get distracted by the next project before I finish the one I have in my hands. That said, I love being part of a community of geeks and feel empowered by it. I love Debian for its technical excellence, and it's always reassuring to know that someone is taking care of the things I don't like or can't do. When I'm not around computers, one of my favorite things is to feel the wind on my cheeks, usually while skating or riding a bike; I also love music, and I'm always singing a melody in my head.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

As a student, I was privileged to be introduced to FLOSS at the same time I was introduced to computer programming. My university could not afford to have labs in the usual proprietary software model, and what seemed like a limitation at the time turned out to be a great learning opportunity for me and my colleagues. I joined this student-led initiative to "liberate" our servers and build LTSP-based labs - where a single powerful computer could power a few dozen diskless thin clients. How revolutionary it was at the time! And what an achievement! From students to students, all using Debian. Most of that group became close friends; I've married one of them, and a few of them also found their way to Debian.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

I first used Debian in 2001, but my first real connection with the community was attending DebConf 2004. Since then, going to DebConfs has become a habit. It is that moment in the year when I reconnect with the global community and my motivation to contribute is boosted. And you know, in 20 years I've seen people become parents, grandparents, children grow up; we've had our own child and had the pleasure of introducing him to the community; we've mourned the loss of friends and healed together. I'd say Debian is like family, but not the kind you get at random once you're born, Debian is my family by choice.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

These days I teach at Vanier College in Montréal. My favorite course to teach is UNIX, which I have the pleasure of teaching mostly using Debian. I try to inspire my students to discover Debian and other FLOSS projects, and we are happy to run a FLOSS club with participation from students, staff and alumni. I love to see these curious young minds put to the service of FLOSS. It is like recruiting soldiers for a good battle, and one that can change their lives, as it certainly did mine.

5. Do you have any suggestions to improve women's participation in Debian?

I think the most effective way to inspire other women is to give visibility to active women in our community. Speaking at conferences, publishing content, being vocal about what we do so that other women can see us and see themselves in those positions in the future. It's not easy, and I don't like being in the spotlight. It took me a long time to get comfortable with public speaking, so I can understand the struggle of those who don't want to expose themselves. But I believe that this space of vulnerability can open the way to new connections. It can inspire trust and ultimately motivate our next generation. It's with this in mind that I publish these lines.

Another point we can't neglect is that in Debian we work on a volunteer basis, and this in itself puts us at a great disadvantage. In our societies, women usually take a heavier load than their partners in terms of caretaking and other invisible tasks, so it is hard to afford the free time needed to volunteer. This is one of the reasons why I bring my son to the conferences I attend, and so far I have received all the support I need to attend DebConfs with him. It is a way to share the caregiving burden with our community - it takes a village to raise a child. Besides allowing us to participate, it also serves to show other women (and men) that you can have a family life and still contribute to Debian.

My feeling is that we are not doing super well in terms of diversity in Debian at the moment, but that should not discourage us at all. That's the way it is now, but that doesn't mean it will always be that way. I feel like we go through cycles. I remember times when we had many more active female contributors, and I'm confident that we can improve our ratio again in the future. In the meantime, I just try to keep going, do my part, attract those I can, reassure those who are too scared to come closer. Debian is a wonderful community, it is a family, and of course a family cannot do without us, the women.

These interviews were conducted via email exchanges in October, 2024. Thanks to all the wonderful women who participated in this interview. We really appreciate your contributions in Debian and to Free/Libre software.

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Dear Debian community,

this are my bits from DPL for September.

New lintian maintainer

I'm pleased to welcome Louis-Philippe Véronneau as a new Lintian maintainer. He humorously acknowledged his new role, stating, "Apparently I'm a Lintian maintainer now". I remain confident that we can, and should, continue modernizing our policy checker, and I see this as one important step toward that goal.

SPDX name / license tools

There was a discussion about deprecating the unique names for DEP-5 and migrating to fully compliant SPDX names.

Simon McVittie wrote: "Perhaps our Debian-specific names are better, but the relevant question is whether they are sufficiently better to outweigh the benefit of sharing effort and specifications with the rest of the world (and I don't think they are)." Also Charles Plessy sees the value of deprecating the Debian ones and align on SPDX.

The thread on debian-devel list contains several practical hints for writing debian/copyright files.

proposal: Hybrid network stack for Trixie

There was a very long discussion on debian-devel list about the network stack on Trixie that started in July and was continued in end of August / beginning of September. The discussion was also covered on LWN. It continued in a "proposal: Hybrid network stack for Trixie" by Lukas Märdian.

Contacting teams

I continued reaching out to teams in September. One common pattern I've noticed is that most teams lack a clear strategy for attracting new contributors. Here's an example snippet from one of my outreach emails, which is representative of the typical approach:

Q: Do you have some strategy to gather new contributors for your team? A: No. Q: Can I do anything for you? A: Everything that can help to have more than 3 guys :-D

Well, only the first answer, "No," is typical. To help the JavaScript team, I'd like to invite anyone with JavaScript experience to join the team's mailing list and offer to learn and contribute. While I've only built a JavaScript package once, I know this team has developed excellent tools that are widely adopted by others. It's an active and efficient team, making it a great starting point for those looking to get involved in Debian. You might also want to check out the "Little tutorial for JS-Team beginners".

Given the lack of a strategy to actively recruit new contributors--a common theme in the responses I've received--I recommend reviewing my talk from DebConf23 about teams. The Debian Med team would have struggled significantly in my absence (I've paused almost all work with the team since becoming DPL) if I hadn't consistently focused on bringing in new members. I'm genuinely proud of how the team has managed to keep up with the workload (thank you, Debian Med team!). Of course, onboarding newcomers takes time, and there's no guarantee of long-term success, but if you don't make the effort, you'll never find out.

OS underpaid

The Register, in its article titled "Open Source Maintainers Underpaid, Swamped by Security, Going Gray", summarizes the 2024 State of the Open Source Maintainer Report. I find this to be an interesting read, both in general and in connection with the challenges mentioned in the previous paragraph about finding new team members.

Kind regards Andreas.

Debian welcomes Freexian as our newest partner!

Donald Norwood — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 03:17:00 +0200

We are excited to announce and welcome Freexian into Debian Partners.

Freexian specializes in Free Software with a particular focus on Debian GNU/Linux. Freexian can assist with consulting, training, technical support, packaging, or software development on projects involving use or development of Free software.

All of Freexian's employees and partners are well-known contributors in the Free Software community, a choice that is integral to Freexian's business model.

About the Debian Partners Program

The Debian Partners Program was created to recognize companies and organizations that help and provide continuous support to the project with services, finances, equipment, vendor support, and a slew of other technical and non-technical services.

Partners provide critical assistance, help, and support which has advanced and continues to further our work in providing the 'Universal Operating System' to the world.

Thank you Freexian!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2024)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 16:30:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Carlos Henrique Lima Melara (charles)
Joenio Marques da Costa (joenio)
Blair Noctis (ncts)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Taihsiang Ho

Congratulations!

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Dear Debian community,

this are my bits from DPL for August.

Happy Birthday Debian

On 16th of August Debian celebrated its 31th birthday. Since I'm unable to write a better text than our great publicity team I'm simply linking to their article for those who might have missed it:

https://bits.debian.org/2024/08/debian-turns-31.html

Removing more packages from unstable

Helmut Grohne argued for more aggressive package removal and sought consensus on a way forward. He provided six examples of processes where packages that are candidates for removal are consuming valuable person-power. I’d like to add that the Bug of the Day initiative (see below) also frequently encounters long-unmaintained packages with popcon votes sometimes as low as zero, and often fewer than ten.

Helmut's email included a list of packages that would meet the suggested removal criteria. There was some discussion about whether a popcon vote should be included in these criteria, with arguments both for and against it. Although I support including popcon, I acknowledge that Helmut has a valid point in suggesting it be left out.

While I’ve read several emails in agreement, Scott Kitterman made a valid point "I don't think we need more process. We just need someone to do the work of finding the packages and filing the bugs." I agree that this is crucial to ensure an automated process doesn’t lead to unwanted removals. However, I don’t see "someone" stepping up to file RM bugs against other maintainers' packages. As long as we have strict ownership of packages, many people are hesitant to touch a package, even for fixing it. Asking for its removal might be even less well-received. Therefore, if an automated procedure were to create RM bugs based on defined criteria, it could help reduce some of the social pressure.

In this aspect the opinion of Niels Thykier is interesting: "As much as I want automation, I do not mind the prototype starting as a semi-automatic process if that is what it takes to get started."

The urgency of the problem to remove packages was put by CharlesPlessy into the words: "So as of today, it is much less work to keep a package rotting than removing it." My observation when trying to fix the Bug of the Day exactly fits this statement.

I would love for this discussion to lead to more aggressive removals that we can agree upon, whether they are automated, semi-automated, or managed by a person processing an automatically generated list (supported by an objective procedure). To use an analogy: I’ve found that every image collection improves with aggressive pruning. Similarly, I’m convinced that Debian will improve if we remove packages that no longer serve our users well.

DEP14 / DEP18

There are two DEPs that affect our workflow for maintaining packages—particularly for those who agree on using Git for Debian packages. DEP-14 recommends a standardized layout for Git packaging repositories, which benefits maintainers working across teams and makes it easier for newcomers to learn a consistent repository structure.

DEP-14 stalled for various reasons. Sam Hartman suspected it might be because 'it doesn't bring sufficient value.' However, the assumption that git-buildpackage is incompatible with DEP-14 is incorrect, as confirmed by its author, Guido Günther. As one of the two key tools for Debian Git repositories (besides dgit) fully supports DEP-14, though the migration from the previous default is somewhat complex.

Some investigation into mass-converting older formats to DEP-14 was conducted by the Perl team, as Gregor Hermann pointed out..

The discussion about DEP-14 resurfaced with the suggestion of DEP-18. Guido Günther proposed the title Encourage Continuous Integration and Merge Request-Based Collaboration for Debian Packages’, which more accurately reflects the DEP's technical intent.

Otto Kekäläinen, who initiated DEP-18 (thank you, Otto), provided a good summary of the current status. He also assembled a very helpful overview of Git and GitLab usage in other Linux distros.

More Salsa CI

As a result of the DEP-18 discussion, Otto Kekäläinen suggested implementing Salsa CI for our top popcon packages.

I believe it would be a good idea to enable CI by default across Salsa whenever a new repository is created.

Progress in Salsa migration

In my campaign, I stated that I aim to reduce the number of packages maintained outside Salsa to below 2,000. As of March 28, 2024, the count was 2,368. Today, it stands at 2,187 (UDD query: SELECT DISTINCT count(*) FROM sources WHERE release = 'sid' and vcs_url not like '%salsa%' ;).

After a third of my DPL term (OMG), we've made significant progress, reducing the amount in question (369 packages) by nearly half. I'm pleased with the support from the DDs who moved their packages to Salsa. Some packages were transferred as part of the Bug of the Day initiative (see below).

Bug of the Day

As announced in my 'Bits from the DPL' talk at DebConf, I started an initiative called Bug of the Day. The goal is to train newcomers in bug triaging by enabling them to tackle small, self-contained QA tasks. We have consistently identified target packages and resolved at least one bug per day, often addressing multiple bugs in a single package.

In several cases, we followed the Package Salvaging procedure outlined in the Developers Reference. Most instances were either welcomed by the maintainer or did not elicit a response. Unfortunately, there was one exception where the recipient of the Package Salvage bug expressed significant dissatisfaction. The takeaway is to balance formal procedures with consideration for the recipient’s perspective.

I'm pleased to confirm that the Matrix channel has seen an increase in active contributors. This aligns with my hope that our efforts would attract individuals interested in QA work. I’m particularly pleased that, within just one month, we have had help with both fixing bugs and improving the code that aids in bug selection.

As I aim to introduce newcomers to various teams within Debian, I also take the opportunity to learn about each team's specific policies myself. I rely on team members' assistance to adapt to these policies. I find that gaining this practical insight into team dynamics is an effective way to understand the different teams within Debian as DPL.

Another finding from this initiative, which aligns with my goal as DPL, is that many of the packages we addressed are already on Salsa but have not been uploaded, meaning their VCS fields are not published. This suggests that maintainers are generally open to managing their packages on Salsa. For packages that were not yet on Salsa, the move was generally welcomed.

Publicity team wants you

The publicity team has decided to resume regular meetings to coordinate their efforts. Given my high regard for their work, I plan to attend their meetings as frequently as possible, which I began doing with the first IRC meeting.

During discussions with some team members, I learned that the team could use additional help. If anyone interested in supporting Debian with non-packaging tasks reads this, please consider introducing yourself to debian-publicity@lists.debian.org. Note that this is a publicly archived mailing list, so it's not the best place for sharing private information.

Kind regards Andreas.

Debian Celebrates 31 years!

Donald Norwood, Paul Wise, Justin B Rye, Debian Publicity Team — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0200

As the expression goes, "Time flies when you are having fun", meaning you do not normally account for the passage of time when you are distracted and enjoying yourself. The expression is a well established English idiom, though today for a moment the Debian Project pauses to reflect on that expression.

It has been 31 years now that we have been around.

It has been 31 amazing years of fun and amazement in watching the world around us grow and ourselves grow into the world.

Let us tell you, we have had a great time in doing so.

We have been invited to nearly every continent and country for over 25 Debian Developer Conferences, we have contributed to the sciences with our Debian Pure Blends; we have not given up on or discounted aged hardware with Long Term Support (LTS); we have encouraged and sponsored diversity with our Outreach Programs. We have contributed to exploration of this lovely planet and the vast vacuum of space (where no one hears Developers scream).

There is more to what we have done but from a cursory glance, we seem to have done it all.

But we never noticed it.

Time does fly or "escape irretrievably" when having a good time and making progress, though our pause at this moment is that we have also had a few moments of honest self-evaluation and reflection. Over the years the project has lost some significant loved ones who were dear to us - you may have called them Developers while we called them Friends, we called them Mentors, we hurt, we grieved, and in their memories we keep moving forward.

The course of the project has seen a few tragedies, has seen heated discourse in the public domain, has addressed and weathered concerns, and has still continually grown.

And we did that in the public sphere, because at the core this is an open project. Our code is public, our bugs and failings are public, our communications are public, our meetings are public, and our love of FLOSS is most definitely public.

And now more than ever the Debian Project realizes that the "we" that is sprinkled throughout this letter is just another way of saying: "you". You, the user, contributor, sponsor, developer, maintainer, bug squasher; all of you make the WE that is Debian. So what are WE waiting for? Lets celebrate!

Join the worldwide celebration or find an event local to you by visiting our DebianDay events page - see you there!

DebConf24 closes in Busan and DebConf25 dates announced

Jean-Pierre Giraud and Donald Norwood — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0200

On Saturday 3 August 2024, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close.

Over 339 attendees representing 48 countries from around the world came together for a combined 108 events made up of more than 50 Talks and Discussions, 37 Birds of a Feather (BoF – informal meeting between developers and users) sessions, 12 workshops, and activities in support of furthering our distribution and free software (25 patches submitted to the Linux kernel), learning from our mentors and peers, building our community, and having a bit of fun.

The conference was preceded by the annual DebCamp hacking session held July 21st through July 27th where Debian Developers and Contributors convened to focus on their Individual Debian-related projects or work in team sprints geared toward in-person collaboration in developing Debian.

This year featured a BootCamp that was held for newcomers with a GPG Workshop and a focus on Introduction to creating .deb files (Debian packaging) staged by a team of dedicated mentors who shared hands-on experience in Debian and offered a deeper understanding of how to work in and contribute to the community.

The actual Debian Developers Conference started on Sunday July 28 2024.

In addition to the traditional 'Bits from the DPL' talk, the continuous key-signing party, lightning talks and the announcement of next year's DebConf25, there were several update sessions shared by internal projects and teams.

Many of the hosted discussion sessions were presented by our technical core teams with the usual and useful meet the Technical Committee and the ftpteam and a set of BoFs about packaging policy and Debian infrastructure, including talk about APT and Debian Installer and an overview about the first eleven years of Reproducible Builds. Internationalization and localization have been subject of several talks. The Python, Perl, Ruby, and Go programming language teams, as well as Med team, also shared updates on their work and efforts.

More than fifteen BoFs and talks about community, diversity and local outreach highlighted the work of various team involved in the social aspect of our community. This year again, Debian Brazil shared strategy and action to attract and retain new contributors and members and opportunities both in Debian and F/OSS.

The schedule was updated each day with planned and ad-hoc activities introduced by attendees over the course of the conference. Several traditional activities took place: a job fair, a poetry performance, the traditional Cheese and Wine party, the group photos and the Day Trips.

For those who were not able to attend, most of the talks and sessions were broadcast live and recorded and the videos made available through a link in their summary in the schedule. Almost all of the sessions facilitated remote participation via IRC messaging apps or online collaborative text documents which allowed remote attendees to 'be in the room' to ask questions or share comments with the speaker or assembled audience.

DebConf24 saw over 6.8 TiB (4.3 TiB in 2023) of data streamed, 91.25 hours (55 in 2023) of scheduled talks, 20 network access points, 1.6 km fibers (1 broken fiber...) and 2.2 km UTP cable deployed, more than 20 country Geoip viewers, 354 T-shirts, 3 day trips, and up to 200 meals planned per day.

All of these events, activities, conversations, and streams coupled with our love, interest, and participation in Debian and F/OSS certainly made this conference an overall success both here in Busan, South Korea and online around the world.

The DebConf24 website will remain active for archival purposes and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf25 will be held in Brest, France, from Monday, July 7 to Monday, July 21, 2025. As tradition follows before the next DebConf the local organizers in France will start the conference activities with DebCamp with particular focus on individual and team work towards improving the distribution.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the web page about the Code of Conduct in DebConf24 website for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf24, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Infomaniak, Proxmox, and Wind River.

We also wish to thank our Video and Infrastructure teams, the DebConf24 and DebConf committees, our host nation of South Korea, and each and every person who helped contribute to this event and to Debian overall.

Thank you all for your work in helping Debian continue to be "The Universal Operating System".

See you next year!

About Debian

The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal operating system.

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and India. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Infomaniak

Infomaniak is an independent cloud service provider recognized throughout Europe for its commitment to privacy, the local economy and the environment. Recording growth of 18% in 2023, the company is developing a suite of online collaborative tools and cloud hosting, streaming, marketing and events solutions. Infomaniak uses exclusively renewable energy, builds its own data centers and develops its solutions in Switzerland, without relocating. The company powers the website of the Belgian radio and TV service (RTBF) and provides streaming for more than 3,000 TV and radio stations in Europe.

About Proxmox

Proxmox provides powerful and user-friendly Open Source server software. Enterprises of all sizes and industries use Proxmox solutions to deploy efficient and simplified IT infrastructures, minimize total cost of ownership, and avoid vendor lock-in. Proxmox also offers commercial support, training services, and an extensive partner ecosystem to ensure business continuity for its customers. Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH was established in 2005 and is headquartered in Vienna, Austria. Proxmox builds its product offerings on top of the Debian operating system.

About Wind River

Wind River For nearly 20 years, Wind River has led in commercial Open Source Linux solutions for mission-critical enterprise edge computing. With expertise across aerospace, automotive, industrial, telecom, and more, the company is committed to Open Source through initiatives like eLxr, Yocto, Zephyr, and StarlingX.

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf24 web page at https://debconf24.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 19:00:00 +0200

Dear Debian community,

this are my bits from DPL written at my last day at another great DebConf.

DebConf attendance

At the beginning of July, there was some discussion with the bursary and content team about sponsoring attendees. The discussion continued at DebConf. I do not have much experience with these discussions. My summary is that while there is an honest attempt to be fair to everyone, it did not seem to work for all, and some critical points for future discussion remained. In any case, I'm thankful to the bursary team for doing such a time-draining and tedious job.

Popular packages not yet on Salsa at all

Otto Kekäläinen did some interesting investigation about Popular packages not yet on Salsa at all. I think I might provide some more up to date list soon by some UDD query which considers more recent uploads than the trends data soon. For instance wget was meanwhile moved to Salsa (thanks to Noël Köthe for this).

Keep on contacting more teams

I kept on contacting teams in July. Despite I managed to contact way less teams than I was hoping I was able to present some conclusions in the Debian Teams exchange BoF and Slide 16/23 of my Bits from the DPL talk. I intend to do further contacts next months.

Nominating Jeremy Bícha for GNOME Advisory Board

I've nominated Jeremy Bícha to GNOME Advisory Board. Jeremy has volunteered to represent Debian at GUADEC in Denver.

DebCamp / DebConf

I attended DebCamp starting from 22 July evening and had a lot of fun with other attendees. As always DebConf is some important event nearly every year for me. I enjoyed Korean food, Korean bath, nature at the costline and other things.

I had a small event without video coverage Creating web galleries including maps from a geo-tagged photo collection. At least two attendees of this workshop confirmed success in creating their own web galleries.

I used DebCamp and DebConf for several discussions. My main focus was on discussions with FTP master team members Luke Faraone, Sean Whitton, and Utkarsh Gupta. I'm really happy that the four of us absolutely agree on some proposed changes to the structure of the FTP master team, as well as changes that might be fruitful for the work of the FTP master team itself and for Debian developers regarding the processing of new packages.

My explicit thanks go to Luke Faraone, who gave a great introduction to FTP master work in their BoF. It was very instructive for the attending developers to understand how the FTP master team checks licenses and copyright and what workflow is used for accepting new packages.

In the first days of DebConf, I talked to representatives of DebConf platinum sponsor WindRiver, who announced the derivative eLxr. I warmly welcome this new derivative and look forward to some great cooperation. I also talked to the representative of our gold sponsor, Microsoft.

My first own event was the Debian Med BoF. I'd like to repeat that it might not only be interesting for people working in medicine and microbiology but always contains some hints how to work together in a team.

As said above I was trying to summarise some first results of my team contacts and got some further input from other teams in the Debian Teams exchange BoF.

Finally, I had my Bits from DPL talk. I received positive responses from attendees as well as from remote participants, which makes me quite happy. For those who were not able to join the events on-site or remotely, the videos of all events will be available on the DebConf site soon. I'd like to repeat the explicit need for some volunteers to join the Lintian team. I'd also like to point out the "Tiny tasks" initiative I'd like to start (see below).

BTW, if someone might happen to solve my quiz for the background images there is a summary page in my slides which might help to assign every slide to some DebConf. I could assume that if you pool your knowledge you can solve more than just the simple ones. Just let me know if you have some solution. You can add numbers to the rows and letters to the columns and send me:

 2000/2001:  Uv + Wx
 2002: not attended
 2003: Yz
 2004: not attended
 2005:
 2006: not attended
 2007:
 ...
 2024: A1

This list provides some additional information for DebConfs I did not attend and when no video stream was available. It also reminds you about the one I uncovered this year and that I used two images from 2001 since I did not have one from 2000. Have fun reassembling good memories.

Tiny tasks: Bug of the day

As I mentioned in my Bits from DPL talk, I'd like to start a "Tiny tasks" effort within Debian. The first type of tasks will be the Bug of the day initiative. For those who would like to join, please join the corresponding Matrix channel. I'm curious to see how this might work out and am eager to gain some initial experiences with newcomers. I won't be available until next Monday, as I'll start traveling soon and have a family event (which is why I need to leave DebConf today after the formal dinner).

Kind regards from DebConf in Busan Andreas.

DebConf24 starts today in Busan on Sunday, July 28, 2024

The Debian Publicity Team — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 23:50:00 +0200

DebConf24, the 25th annual Debian Developer Conference, is taking place in Busan, Republic of Korea from July 28th to August 4th, 2024. Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at Pukyong National University, Busan, to participate and work in a conference exclusively ran by volunteers.

Today the main conference starts with around 340 expected attendants and over 100 scheduled activities, including 45-minute and 20-minute talks, Bird of a Feather ("BoF") team meetings, workshops, a job fair, as well as a variety of other events. The full schedule is updated each day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees over the course of the conference.

If you would like to engage remotely, you can follow the video streams available from the DebConf24 website for the events happening in the three talk rooms: Bada, Somin and Pado. Or you can join the conversations happening inside the talk rooms via the OFTC IRC network in the #debconf-bada, #debconf-somin, and #debconf-pado channels. Please also join us in the #debconf channel for common discussions related to DebConf.

You can also follow the live coverage of news about DebConf24 provided by our micronews service or the @debian profile on your favorite social network.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcoming environment for all participants. Please see our Code of Conduct page for more information on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf24, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Proxmox, Infomaniak and Wind River.

DebConf24 welcomes its sponsors!

The Debian Publicity Team — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 23:45:00 +0200

DebConf24, the 25th edition of the Debian conference is taking place in Pukyong National University at Busan, Republic of Korea. Thanks to the hard work of its organizers, it again will be an interesting and fruitful event for attendees.

We would like to warmly welcome the sponsors of DebConf24, and introduce them to you.

We have three Platinum sponsors.

Proxmox is the first Platinum sponsor. Proxmox provides powerful and user-friendly Open Source server software. Enterprises of all sizes and industries use Proxmox solutions to deploy efficient and simplified IT infrastructures, minimize total cost of ownership, and avoid vendor lock-in. Proxmox also offers commercial support, training services, and an extensive partner ecosystem to ensure business continuity for its customers. Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH was established in 2005 and is headquartered in Vienna, Austria. Proxmox builds its product offerings on top of the Debian operating system.
Our second Platinum sponsor is Infomaniak. Infomaniak is an independent cloud service provider recognised throughout Europe for its commitment to privacy, the local economy and the environment. Recording growth of 18% in 2023, the company is developing a suite of online collaborative tools and cloud hosting, streaming, marketing and events solutions. Infomaniak uses exclusively renewable energy, builds its own data centers and develops its solutions in Switzerland, without relocating. The company powers the website of the Belgian radio and TV service (RTBF) and provides streaming for more than 3,000 TV and radio stations in Europe.
Wind River is our third Platinum sponsor. For nearly 20 years, Wind River has led in commercial Open Source Linux solutions for mission-critical enterprise edge computing. With expertise across aerospace, automotive, industrial, telecom, and more, the company is committed to Open Source through initiatives like eLxr, Yocto, Zephyr, and StarlingX.

Our Gold sponsors are:

Ubuntu, the Operating System delivered by Canonical.
Freexian, a services company specialized in Free Software and in particular Debian GNU/Linux, covering consulting, custom developments, support and training. Freexian has a recognized Debian expertise thanks to the participation of Debian developers.
Lenovo, a global technology leader manufacturing a wide portfolio of connected products including smartphones, tablets, PCs and workstations as well as AR/VR devices, smart home/office and data center solutions.
Korea Tourism Organization, which purpose is to advance tourism as a key driver for national economic growth and enhancement of national welfare and intends to be a public organization that makes the Korean people happier; it promotes national wealth through tourism.
Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency, an industry promotion organization that contributes to the innovation of the digital economy with the power of IT and CT and supports the ecosystem for innovative local startups and companies to grow.
Microsoft, who enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
doubleO, a company that specializes in consulting and developing empirical services using big data analysis and artificial intelligence. doubleO provides a variety of data-centered services together with small and medium-sized businesses in Busan/Gyeongnam.

Our Silver sponsors are:

Roche, a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare.
Two Sigma, rigorous inquiry, technology data science, and invention to bring science to finance and help solve the toughest challenges across financial services.
Arm: leading technology provider of processor IP, Arm powered solutions have been supporting innovation for more than 30 years and are deployed in over 280 billion chips to date.
The Bern University of Applied Sciences with around 7,800 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital.
Google, one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products such as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware.
FSIJ, the Free Software Initiative of Japan, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Free Software growth and development.
Busan Tourism Organisation: leading public corporation that generates social and economic values in Busan tourism industry, developing tourism resources in accordance with government policies and invigorate tourism industry.
Civil Infrastructure Platform, a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation, establishing an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software.
Collabora, a global consultancy delivering Open Source software solutions to the commercial world.
Matanel Foundation, which operates in Israel, as its first concern is to preserve the cohesion of a society and a nation plagued by divisions.

Bronze sponsors:

And finally, our Supporter level sponsors:

A special thanks to the Pukyong National University, our Venue Partner and our Network Partners KOREN and KREONET!

Thanks to all our sponsors for their support! Their contributions make it possible for a large number of Debian contributors from all over the globe to work together, help and learn from each other in DebConf24.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (May and June 2024)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Dennis van Dok (dvandok)
Peter Wienemann (wiene)
Quentin Lejard (valde)
Sven Geuer (sge)
Taavi Väänänen (taavi)
Hilmar Preusse (hille42)
Matthias Geiger (werdahias)
Yogeswaran Umasankar (yogu)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Bernhard Miklautz
Felix Moessbauer
Maytham Alsudany
Aquila Macedo
David Lamparter
Tim Theisen
Stefano Brivio
Shengqi Chen

Congratulations!

Wind River Platinum Sponsor of DebConf24

Sahil Dhiman — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 17:08:00 +0200

We are pleased to announce that Wind River has committed to sponsor DebConf24 as a Platinum Sponsor.

For nearly 20 years, Wind River has led in commercial open source Linux solutions for mission-critical enterprise edge computing. With expertise across aerospace, automotive, industrial, telecom, more, the company is committed to open source through initiatives like eLxr, Yocto, Zephyr, and StarlingX.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Wind River is contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Wind River plans to announce an exiting new project based on Debian at this year's DebConf!

Thank you very much, Wind River, for your support of DebConf24!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf24 will take place from 28th July to 4th August 2024 in Busan, South Korea, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 21st to 27th July 2024.

DebConf24 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations should contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, or visit the DebConf24 website at https://debconf24.debconf.org/sponsors/become-a-sponsor/.

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 19:00:00 +0200

Dear Debian community,

Statement on Daniel Pocock

The Debian project has successfully taken action to secure its trademarks and interests worldwide, as detailed in our press statement. I would like to personally thank everyone in the community who was involved in this process. I would have loved for you all to have spent your volunteer time on more fruitful things.

Debian Boot team might need help

I think I've identified the issue that finally motivated me to contact our teams: for a long time, I have had the impression that Debian is driven by several "one-person teams" (to varying extents of individual influence and susceptibility to burnout). As DPL, I see it as my task to find ways to address this issue and provide support.

I received private responses from Debian Boot team members, which motivated me to kindly invite volunteers to some prominent and highly visible fields of work that you might find personally challenging. I recommend subscribing to the Debian Boot mailing list to see where you might be able to provide assistance.

/usrmerge

Helmut Grohne confirmed that the last remaining packages shipping aliased files inside the package set relevant to debootstrap were uploaded. Thanks a lot for Helmut and all contributors that helped to implement DEP17.

Contacting more teams

I'd like to repeat that I've registered a BoF for DebConf24 in Busan with the following description:

This BoF is an attempt to gather as much as possible teams inside Debian to exchange experiences, discuss workflows inside teams, share their ways to attract newcomers etc.

Each participant team should prepare a short description of their work and what team roles (“openings”) they have for new contributors. Even for delegated teams (membership is less fluid), it would be good to present the team, explain what it takes to be a team member, and what steps people usually go to end up being invited to participate. Some other teams can easily absorb contributions from salsa MRs, and at some point people get commit access. Anyway, the point is that we work on the idea that the pathway to become a team member becomes more clear from an outsider point-of-view.

I'm lagging a bit behind my team contacting schedule and will not manage to contact every team before DebConf. As a (short) summary, I can draw some positive conclusions about my efforts to reach out to teams. I was able to identify some issues that were new to me and which I am now working on. Examples include limitations in Salsa and Salsa CI. I consider both essential parts of our infrastructure and will support both teams in enhancing their services.

Some teams confirmed that they are basically using some common infrastructure (Salsa team space, mailing lists, IRC channels) but that the individual members of the team work on their own problems without sharing any common work. I have also not read about convincing strategies to attract newcomers to the team, as we have established, for instance, in the Debian Med team.

DebConf attendance

The amount of money needed to fly people to South Korea was higher than usual, so the DebConf bursary team had to make some difficult decisions about who could be reimbursed for travel expenses. I extended the budget for diversity and newcomers, which enabled us to invite some additional contributors. We hope that those who were not able to come this year can make it next year to Brest or to MiniDebConf Cambridge or Toulouse

tag2upload

On June 12, Sean Whitton requested comments on the debian-vote list regarding a General Resolution (GR) about tag2upload. The discussion began with technical details but unfortunately, as often happens in long threads, it drifted into abrasive language, prompting the community team to address the behavior of an opponent of the GR supporters. After 560 emails covering technical details, including a detailed security review by Russ Allbery, Sean finally proposed the GR on June 27, 2024 (two weeks after requesting comments).

Firstly, I would like to thank the drivers of this GR and acknowledge the technical work behind it, including the security review. I am positively convinced that Debian can benefit from modernizing its infrastructure, particularly through stronger integration of Git into packaging workflows.

Sam Hartman provided some historical context [1], [2], [3], [4], noting that this discussion originally took place five years ago with no results from several similarly lengthy threads. My favorite summary of the entire thread was given by Gregor Herrmann, which reflects the same gut feeling I have and highlights a structural problem within Debian that hinders technical changes. Addressing this issue is definitely a matter for the Debian Project Leader, and I will try to address it during my term.

At the time of writing these bits, a proposal from ftpmaster, which is being continuously discussed, might lead to a solution. I was also asked to extend the GR discussion periods which I will do in separate mail.

Talk: Debian GNU/Linux for Scientific Research

I was invited to have a talk in the Systems-Facing Track of University of British Columbia (who is sponsoring rack space for several Debian servers). I admit it felt a bit strange to me after working more than 20 years for establishing Debian in scientific environments to be invited to such a talk "because I'm DPL". 😉

Kind regards Andreas.

Looking for the artwork for Trixie the next Debian release

Jonathan Carter — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 12:00:00 +0200

Each release of Debian has a shiny new theme, which is visible on the boot screen, the login screen and, most prominently, on the desktop wallpaper. Debian plans to release Trixie, the next release, next year. As ever, we need your help in creating its theme! You have the opportunity to design a theme that will inspire thousands of people while working in their Debian systems.

For the most up to date details, please refer to the wiki.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Juliette Taka Belin for doing the Emerald theme for bookworm.

The deadlines for submissions is: 2024-09-19

The artwork is usually picked based on which themes look the most:

''Debian'': admittedly not the most defined concept, since everyone has their own take on what Debian means to them.
''plausible to integrate without patching core software'': as much as we love some of the insanely hot looking themes, some would require heavy GTK+ theming and patching GDM/GNOME.
''clean / well designed'': without becoming something that gets annoying to look at a year down the road. Examples of good themes include Joy, Lines, Softwaves and futurePrototype.

If you'd like more information or details, please post to the Debian Desktop mailing list.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (March and April 2024)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Fri, 31 May 2024 18:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Patrick Winnertz (winnie)
Fabian Gruenbichler (fabiang)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Juri Grabowski
Tobias Heider
Jean Charles Delépine
Guilherme Puida Moreira
Antoine Le Gonidec
Arthur Barbosa Diniz

Congratulations!

Bits from the DPL

Andreas Tille — Thu, 02 May 2024 03:00:00 +0200

Hi,

Keeping my promise for monthly bits, here's a quick snapshot of my first ten days as DPL.

Special thanks to Jonathan for an insightful introduction that left less room for questions. His introduction covered my first tasks like expense approval and CTTE member appointments thoroughly. Although I made a visible oversight by forgetting to exclude Simon McVittie <smcv> from the list, whose term has ended , I'm committed to learning from this mistake. In future I'll prioritize thorough proofreading to ensure accuracy.

Part of my "work" was learning what channels I need to subscribe and adjust my .procmailrc and .muttrc took some time.

Recently I had my first press interview. I had to answer a couple of prepared questions for Business IT News. It seems journalists are always on the lookout for unique angles. When asked if humility is a new trait for DPLs, my response would be a resounding "No." In my experience, humility is a common quality among DPLs I've encountered, including Jonathan.

One of my top priorities is reaching out to all our dedicated and appointed teams, including those managing critical infrastructure. I've begun with the CTTE, Salsa Admins and Debian Snapshot. Everything appears to be in order with the CTTE team. I'm waiting for response from Salsa and Snapshot, which is fine given the recent contact.

I was pointed out to the fact that lintian is in an unfortunate state as Axel Beckert confirmed on the lintian maintainers list. It turns out that bug #1069745 of magics-python should not have been undetected for a long time if lintian bug #677078 would have been fixed. It seems obvious to me that lintian needs more work to fulfill its role as reliably policy checker to ensure our high level of packaging quality.

In any case thanks a lot to Axel who is doing his best but it seems urgent to me to find some more person-power for this task. Any volunteer to lend some helping hand in the lintian maintainers team?

On 2024-04-30 I gave my first talk "Bits from greenhorn DPL" online at MiniDebConf Brasil in Belo Horizonte. The Q&A afterwards stired some flavours of the question: "What can Debian Brasil do better?" My answer was always in a way: Given your great activity in now organising the fifth MiniDebConf you are doing pretty well and I have no additional hints for the moment.

Kind regards Andreas.

Debian welcomes the 2024 GSOC contributors/students

Nilesh Patra — Wed, 01 May 2024 23:56:00 +0200

We are very excited to announce that Debian has selected seven contributors to work under mentorship on a variety of projects with us during the Google Summer of Code.

Here are the list of the projects, students, and details of the tasks to be performed.

Project: Android SDK Tools in Debian

Student: anuragxone

Deliverables of the project: Make the entire Android toolchain, Android Target Platform Framework, and SDK tools available in the Debian archives.

Project: Benchmarking Parallel Performance of Numerical MPI Packages

Student: Nikolaos

Deliverables of the project: Deliver an automated method for Debian maintainers to test selected numerical Debian packages for their parallel performance in clusters, in particular to catch performance regressions from updates, and to verify expected performance gains, such as Amdahl’s and Gufstafson’s law, from increased cluster resources.

Project: Debian MobCom

Student: Nathan D

Deliverables of the project: Update the outdated mobile packages and recreate aged packages due to new dependencies. Bring in more mobile communication tools by adding about 5 new packages.

Project: Improve support of the Rust coreutils in Debian

Student: Sreehari Prasad TM

Deliverables of the project: Make uutils behave more like GNU’s coreutils by improving compatibility with GNU coreutils test suit.

Project: Improve support of the Rust findutils in Debian

Student: hanbings

Deliverables of the project: A safer and more performant implementation of the GNU suite's xargs, find, locate and updatedb tools in rust.

Project: Expanding ROCm support within Debian and derivatives

Student: xuantengh

Deliverables of the project: Building, packaging, and uploading missing ROCm software into Debian repositories, starting with simple tools and progressing to high-level applications like PyTorch, with the final deliverables comprising a series of ROCm packages meeting community quality assurance standards.

Project: procps: Development of System Monitoring, Statistics and Information Tools in Rust

Student: Krysztal Huang

Deliverables of the project: Improve the usability of the entire Rust-based implementation of the procps utility on Linux.

Congratulations and welcome to all the contributors!

The Google Summer of Code program is possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian Developers and Debian Contributors that dedicate part of their free time to mentor contributors and outreach tasks.

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the contributors' weekly reports on the [debian-outreach mailing-list][debian-outreach-ml], chat with us on our [IRC channel][debian-outreach-irc] or reach out to the individual projects' team mailing lists.

[debian-outreach-ml]: http://lists.debian.org/debian-outreach/ (debian-outreach AT lists.debian.org) [debian-outreach-irc]: irc://irc.debian.org/debian-outreach (#debian-outreach on irc.debian.org)

Infomaniak Platinum Sponsor of DebConf24

Sahil Dhiman — Wed, 01 May 2024 12:08:00 +0200

We are pleased to announce that Infomaniak has committed to sponsor DebConf24 as a Platinum Sponsor.

Infomaniak is an independent cloud service provider recognised throughout Europe for its commitment to privacy, the local economy and the environment. Recording growth of 18% in 2023, the company is developing a suite of online collaborative tools and cloud hosting, streaming, marketing and events solutions.

Infomaniak uses exclusively renewable energy, builds its own data centers and develops its solutions in Switzerland at the heart of Europe, without relocating. The company powers the website of the Belgian radio and TV service (RTBF) and provides streaming for more than 3,000 TV and radio stations in Europe.

Thank you very much, Infomaniak, for your support of DebConf24!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf24 will take place from 28th July to 4th August 2024 in Busan, South Korea, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 21st to 27th July 2024.

DebConf24 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations should contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, or viisit the DebConf24 website at https://debconf24.debconf.org/sponsors/become-a-sponsor/.

Debian Project Leader Election 2024, Andreas Tille elected.

Donald Norwood — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 14:00:00 +0200

The voting period for the Debian Project Leader election has ended. Please join us in congratulating Andreas Tille as the new Debian Project Leader.

The new term for the project leader started on 2024-04-21.

369 of 1,010 Debian Developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the results of the voting are available on the Debian Project Leader Elections 2024 page.

Many thanks all of our Developers for voting.

apt install dpl-candidate: Andreas Tille

Yashraj Moghe with The Debian Publicity Team — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 20:36:00 +0200

The Debian Project Developers will shortly vote for a new Debian Project Leader known as the DPL.

The Project Leader is the official representative of The Debian Project tasked with managing the overall project, its vision, direction, and finances.

The DPL is also responsible for the selection of Delegates, defining areas of responsibility within the project, the coordination of Developers, and making decisions required for the project.

Our outgoing and present DPL Jonathan Carter served 4 terms, from 2020 through 2024. Jonathan shared his last Bits from the DPL post to Debian recently and his hopes for the future of Debian.

Recently, we sat with the two present candidates for the DPL position asking questions to find out who they really are in a series of interviews about their platforms, visions for Debian, lives, and even their favorite text editors. The interviews were conducted by disaster2life (Yashraj Moghe) and made available from video and audio transcriptions:

Andreas Tille [this document]
Sruthi Chandran [Interview]

Voting for the position starts on April 6, 2024.

Editors' note: This is our official return to Debian interviews, readers should stay tuned for more upcoming interviews with Developers and other important figures in Debian as part of our "Meet your Debian Developer" series. We used the following tools and services: Turboscribe.ai for the transcription from the audio and video files, IRC: Oftc.net for communication, Jitsi meet for interviews, and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for editing and video. While we encountered many technical difficulties in the return to this process, we are still able and proud to present the transcripts of the interviews edited only in a few areas for readability.

2024 Debian Project Leader Candidate: Andrea Tille

Andreas' Interview

Who are you? Tell us a little about yourself.

[Andreas]:

How am I? Well, I'm, as I wrote in my platform, I'm a proud grandfather doing a lot of free software stuff, doing a lot of sports, have some goals in mind which I like to do and hopefully for the best of Debian.

And How are you today?

[Andreas]:

How I'm doing today? Well, actually I have some headaches but it's fine for the interview.

So, usually I feel very good. Spring was coming here and today it's raining and I plan to do a bicycle tour tomorrow and hope that I do not get really sick but yeah, for the interview it's fine.

What do you do in Debian? Could you mention your story here?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, well, I started with Debian kind of an accident because I wanted to have some package salvaged which is called WordNet. It's a monolingual dictionary and I did not really plan to do more than maybe 10 packages or so. I had some kind of training with xTeddy which is totally unimportant, a cute teddy you can put on your desktop.

So, and then well, more or less I thought how can I make Debian attractive for my employer which is a medical institute and so on. It could make sense to package bioinformatics and medicine software and it somehow evolved in a direction I did neither expect it nor wanted to do, that I'm currently the most busy uploader in Debian, created several teams around it.

DebianMate is very well known from me. I created the Blends team to create teams and techniques around what we are doing which was Debian TIS, Debian Edu, Debian Science and so on and I also created the packaging team for R, for the statistics package R which is technically based and not topic based. All these blends are covering a certain topic and R is just needed by lots of these blends.

So, yeah, and to cope with all this I have written a script which is routing an update to manage all these uploads more or less automatically. So, I think I had one day where I uploaded 21 new packages but it's just automatically generated, right? So, it's on one day more than I ever planned to do.

What is the first thing you think of when you think of Debian?

Editors' note: The question was misunderstood as the “worst thing you think of when you think of Debian”

[Andreas]:

The worst thing I think about Debian, it's complicated. I think today on Debian board I was asked about the technical progress I want to make and in my opinion we need to standardize things inside Debian. For instance, bringing all the packages to salsa, follow some common standards, some common workflow which is extremely helpful.

As I said, if I'm that productive with my own packages we can adopt this in general, at least in most cases I think. I made a lot of good experience by the support of well-formed teams. Well-formed teams are those teams where people support each other, help each other.

For instance, how to say, I'm a physicist by profession so I'm not an IT expert. I can tell apart what works and what not but I'm not an expert in those packages. I do and the amount of packages is so high that I do not even understand all the techniques they are covering like Go, Rust and something like this.

And I also don't speak Java and I had a problem once in the middle of the night and I've sent the email to the list and was a Java problem and I woke up in the morning and it was solved. This is what I call a team. I don't call a team some common repository that is used by random people for different packages also but it's working together, don't hesitate to solve other people's problems and permit people to get active.

This is what I call a team and this is also something I observed in, it's hard to give a percentage, in a lot of other teams but we have other people who do not even understand the concept of the team. Why is working together make some advantage and this is also a tough thing. I [would] like to tackle in my term if I get elected to form solid teams using the common workflow. This is one thing.

The other thing is that we have a lot of good people in our infrastructure like FTP masters, DSA and so on. I have the feeling they have a lot of work and are working more or less on their limits, and I like to talk to them [to ask] what kind of change we could do to move that limits or move their personal health to the better side.

The DPL term lasts for a year, What would you do during that you couldn't do now?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, well this is basically what I said are my main issues. I need to admit I have no really clear imagination what kind of tasks will come to me as a DPL because all these financial issues and law issues possible and issues [that] people who are not really friendly to Debian might create. I'm afraid these things might occupy a lot of time and I can't say much about this because I simply don't know.

What are three key terms about you and your candidacy?

[Andreas]:

As I said, I like to work on standards, I’d like to make Debian try [to get it right so] that people don't get overworked, this third key point is be inviting to newcomers, to everybody who wants to come. Yeah, I also mentioned in my term this diversity issue, geographical and from gender point of view. This may be the three points I consider most important.

Preferred text editor?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, my preferred one? Ah, well, I have no preferred text editor. I'm using the Midnight Commander very frequently which has an internal editor which is convenient for small text. For other things, I usually use VI but I also use Emacs from time to time. So, no, I have not preferred text editor. Whatever works nicely for me.

What is the importance of the community in the Debian Project? How would like to see it evolving over the next few years?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, I think the community is extremely important. So, I was on a lot of DebConfs. I think it's not really 20 but 17 or 18 DebCons and I really enjoyed these events every year because I met so many friends and met so many interesting people that it's really enriching my life and those who I never met in person but have read interesting things and yeah, Debian community makes really a part of my life.

And how do you think it should evolve specifically?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, for instance, last year in Kochi, it became even clearer to me that the geographical diversity is a really strong point. Just discussing with some women from India who is afraid about not coming next year to Busan because there's a problem with Shanghai and so on. I'm not really sure how we can solve this but I think this is a problem at least I wish to tackle and yeah, this is an interesting point, the geographical diversity and I'm running the so-called mentoring of the month.

This is a small project to attract newcomers for the Debian Med team which has the focus on medical packages and I learned that we had always men applying for this and so I said, okay, I dropped the constraint of medical packages.

Any topic is fine, I teach you packaging but it must be someone who does not consider himself a man. I got only two applicants, no, actually, I got one applicant and one response which was kind of strange if I'm hunting for women or so.

I did not understand but I got one response and interestingly, it was for me one of the least expected counters. It was from Iran and I met a very nice woman, very open, very skilled and gifted and did a good job or have even lose contact today and maybe we need more actively approach groups that are underrepresented. I don't know if what's a good means which I did but at least I tried and so I try to think about these kind of things.

What part of Debian has made you smile? What part of the project has kept you going all through the years?

[Andreas]:

Well, the card game which is called Mao on the DebConf made me smile all the time. I admit I joined only two or three times even if I really love this kind of games but I was occupied by other stuff so this made me really smile. I also think the first online DebConf in 2020 made me smile because we had this kind of short video sequences and I tried to make a funny video sequence about every DebConf I attended before. This is really funny moments but yeah, it's not only smile but yeah.

One thing maybe it's totally unconnected to Debian but I learned personally something in Debian that we have a do-ocracy and you can do things which you think that are right if not going in between someone else, right? So respect everybody else but otherwise you can do so.

And in 2020 I also started to take trees which are growing widely in my garden and plant them into the woods because in our woods a lot of trees are dying and so I just do something because I can. I have the resource to do something, take the small tree and bring it into the woods because it does not harm anybody. I asked the forester if it is okay, yes, yes, okay. So everybody can do so but I think the idea to do something like this came also because of the free software idea. You have the resources, you have the computer, you can do something and you do something productive, right? And when thinking about this I think it was also my Debian work.

Meanwhile I have planted more than 3,000 trees so it's not a small number but yeah, I enjoy this.

What part of Debian would you have some criticisms for?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, it's basically the same as I said before. We need more standards to work together. I do not want to repeat this but this is what I think, yeah.

What field in Free Software generally do you think requires the most work to be put into it? What do you think is Debian's part in the field?

[Andreas]:

It's also in general, the thing is the fact that I'm maintaining packages which are usually as modern software is maintained in Git, which is fine but we have some software which is at Sourceport, we have software laying around somewhere, we have software where Debian somehow became Upstream because nobody is caring anymore and free software is very different in several things, ways and well, I in principle like freedom of choice which is the basic of all our work.

Sometimes this freedom goes in the way of productivity because everybody is free to re-implement. You asked me for the most favorite editor. In principle one really good working editor would be great to have and would work and we have maybe 500 in Debian or so, I don't know.

I could imagine if people would concentrate and say five instead of 500 editors, we could get more productive, right? But I know this will not happen, right? But I think this is one thing which goes in the way of making things smooth and productive and we could have more manpower to replace one person who's [having] children, doing some other stuff and can't continue working on something and maybe this is a problem I will not solve, definitely not, but which I see.

What do you think is Debian's part in the field?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, well, okay, we can bring together different Upstreams, so we are building some packages and have some general overview about similar things and can say, oh, you are doing this and some other person is doing more or less the same, do you want to join each other or so, but this is kind of a channel we have to our Upstreams which is probably not very successful.

It starts with code copies of some libraries which are changed a little bit, which is fine license-wise, but not so helpful for different things and so I've tried to convince those Upstreams to forward their patches to the original one, but for this and I think we could do some kind of, yeah, [find] someone who brings Upstream together or to make them stop their forking stuff, but it costs a lot of energy and we probably don't have this and it's also not realistic that we can really help with this problem.

Do you have any questions for me?

[Andreas]:

I enjoyed the interview, I enjoyed seeing you again after half a year or so. Yeah, actually I've seen you in the eating room or cheese and wine party or so, I do not remember we had to really talk together, but yeah, people around, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

apt install dpl-candidate: Sruthi Chandran

Yashraj Moghe with The Debian Publicity Team — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 20:36:00 +0200

The Debian Project Developers will shortly vote for a new Debian Project Leader known as the DPL.

The DPL is the official representative of representative of The Debian Project tasked with managing the overall project, its vision, direction, and finances.

The DPL is also responsible for the selection of Delegates, defining areas of responsibility within the project, the coordination of Developers, and making decisions required for the project.

Our outgoing and present DPL Jonathan Carter served 4 terms, from 2020 through 2024. Jonathan shared his last Bits from the DPL post to Debian recently and his hopes for the future of Debian.

Andreas Tille [Interview]
Sruthi Chandran [this document]

Voting for the position starts on April 6, 2024.

2024 Debian Project Leader Candidate: Sruthi Chandran

Sruthi's interview

Hi Sruthi, so for the first question, who are you and could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[Sruthi]:

I usually talk about me whenever I am talking about answering the question who am I, I usually say like I am a librarian turned free software enthusiast and a Debian Developer. So I had no technical background and I learned, I was introduced to free software through my husband and then I learned Debian packaging, and eventually I became a Debian Developer. So I always give my example to people who say I am not technically inclined, I don't have technical background so I can't contribute to free software.

So yeah, that's what I refer to myself.

For the next question, could you tell me what do you do in Debian, and could you mention your story up until here today?

[Sruthi]:

Okay, so let me start from my initial days in Debian. I started contributing to Debian, my first contribution was a Tibetan font. We went to a Tibetan place and they were saying they didn't have a font in Linux.

So that's how I started contributing. Then I moved on to Ruby packages, then I have some JavaScript and Go packages, all dependencies of GitLab. So I was involved with maintaining GitLab for some time, now I'm not very active there.

But yeah, so GitLab was the main package I was contributing to since I contributed since 2016 to maybe like 2020 or something. Later I have come [over to] packaging. Now I am part of some of the teams, delegated teams, like community team and outreach team, as well as the Debconf committee. And the biggest, I think, my activity in Debian, I would say is organizing Debconf 2023. So it was a great experience and yeah, so that's my story in Debian.

So what are three key terms about you and your candidacy?

[Sruthi]:

Okay, let me first think about it. For candidacy, I can start with diversity is one point I started expressing from the first time I contested for DPL. But to be honest, that's the main point I want to bring.

[Yashraj]:

So for diversity, if you could break down your thoughts on diversity and make them, [about] your three points including diversity.

[Sruthi]:

So in addition to, eventually when starting it was just diversity. Now I have like a bit more ideas, like community, like I want to be a leader for the Debian community. More than, I don't know, maybe people may not agree, but I would say I want to be a leader of Debian community rather than a Debian operating system.

I connect to community more and third point I would say.

The term of a DPL lasts for an year. So what do you think during, what would you try to do during that, that you can't do from your position now?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. So I, like, I am very happy with the structure of Debian and how things work in Debian. Like you can do almost a lot of things, like almost all things without being a DPL.

Whatever change you want to bring about or whatever you want to do, you can do without being a DPL. Anyone, like every DD has the same rights. Only things I feel [the] DPL has hold on are mainly the budget or the funding part, which like, that's where they do the decision making part.

And then comes like, and one advantage of DPL driving some idea is that somehow people tend to listen to that with more, like, tend to give more attention to what DPL is saying rather than a normal DD. So I wanted to, like, I have answered some of the questions on how to, how I plan to do the financial budgeting part, how I want to handle, like, and the other thing is using the extra attention that I get as a DPL, I would like to obviously start with the diversity aspect in Debian. And yeah, like, I, what I want to do is not, like, be a leader and say, like, take Debian to one direction where I want to go, but I would rather take suggestions and inputs from the whole community and go about with that.

So yes, that's what I would say.

And taking a less serious question now, what is your preferred text editor?

[Sruthi]:

Vim.

[Yashraj]:

Vim, wholeheartedly team Vim?

[Sruthi]:

Yes.

[Yashraj]:

Great. Well, this was made in Vim, all the text for this.

[Sruthi]:

So, like, since you mentioned extra data, I'll give my example, like, it's just a fun note, when I started contributing to Debian, as I mentioned, I didn't have any knowledge about free software, like Debian, and I was not used to even using Linux. So, and I didn't have experience with these text editors. So, when I started contributing, I used to do the editing part using gedit.

So, that's how I started. Eventually, I moved to Nano, and once I reached Vim, I didn't move on.

Team Vim. Next question. What, what do you think is the importance of the Debian project in the world today? And where would you like to see it in 10 years, like 10 years into the future?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. So, Debian, as we all know, is referred to as the universal operating system without, like, it is said for a reason. We have hundreds and hundreds of operating systems, like Linux, distributions based on Debian.

So, I believe Debian, like even now, Debian has good influence on the, at least on the Linux or Linux ecosystem. So, what we implement in Debian has, like, is going to affect quite a lot of, like, a very good percentage of people using Linux. So, yes.

So, I think Debian is one of the leading Linux distributions. And I think in 10 years, we should be able to reach a position, like, where we are not, like, even now, like, even these many years after having Linux, we face a lot of problems in newer and newer hardware coming up and installing on them is a big problem. Like, firmwares and all those things are getting more and more complicated.

Like, it should be getting simpler, but it's getting more and more complicated. So, I, one thing I would imagine, like, I don't know if we will ever reach there, but I would imagine that eventually with the Debian, we should be able to have some, at least a few of the hardware developers or hardware producers have Debian pre-installed and those kind of things. Like, not, like, become, I'm not saying it's all, it's also available right now.

What I'm saying is that it becomes prominent enough to be opted as, like, default distro.

What part of Debian has made you And what part of the project has kept you going all through these years?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. So, I started to contribute in 2016, and I was part of the team doing GitLab packaging, and we did have a lot of training workshops and those kind of things within India. And I was, like, I had interacted with some of the Indian DDs, but I never got, like, even through chat or mail.

I didn't have a lot of interaction with the rest of the world, DDs. And the 2019 Debconf changed my whole perspective about Debian. Before that, I wasn't, like, even, I was interested in free software.

I was doing the technical stuff and all. But after DebConf, my whole idea has been, like, my focus changed to the community. Debian community is a very welcoming, very interesting community to be with.

And so, I believe that, like, 2019 DebConf was a for me. And that kept, from 2019, my focus has been to how to support, like, how, I moved to the community part of Debian from there. Then in 2020 I became part of the community team, and, like, I started being part of other teams.

So, these, I would say, the Debian community is the one, like, aspect of Debian that keeps me whole, keeps me held on to the Debian ecosystem as a whole.

Continuing to speak about Debian, what do you think, what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Debian, like, the word, the community, what's the first thing?

[Sruthi]:

I think I may sound like a broken record or something.

[Yashraj]:

No, no.

[Sruthi]:

Again, I would say the Debian community, like, it's the people who makes Debian, that makes Debian special.

Like, apart from that, if I say, I would say I'm very, like, one part of Debian that makes me very happy is the, how the governing system of Debian works, the Debian constitution and all those things, like, it's a very unique thing for Debian. And, and it's like, when people say you can't work without a proper, like, establishment or even somebody deciding everything for you, it's difficult. When people say, like, we have been, Debian has been proving it for quite a long time now, that it's possible.

So, so that's one thing I believe, like, that's one unique point. And I am very proud about that.

What areas do you think Debian is failing in, how can it (that standing) be improved?

[Sruthi]:

So, I think where Debian is failing now is getting new people into Debian. Like, I don't remember, like, exactly the answer. But I remember hearing someone mention, like, the average age of a Debian Developer is, like, above 40 or 45 or something, like, exact age, I don't remember.

But it's like, Debian is getting old. Like, the people in Debian are getting old and we are not getting enough of new people into Debian. And that's very important to have people, like, new people coming up.

Otherwise, eventually, like, after a few years, nobody, like, we won't have enough people to take the project forward. So, yeah, I believe that is where we need to work on. We are doing some efforts, like, being part of GSOC or outreachy and having maybe other events, like, local events. Like, we used to have a lot of Debian packaging workshops in India. And those kind of, I think, in Brazil and all, they all have, like, local communities are doing. But we are not very successful in retaining the people who maybe come and try out things.

But we are not very good at retaining the people, like, retaining people who come. So, we need to work on those things. Right now, I don't have a solid answer for that.

But one thing, like, I was thinking about is, like, having a Debian specific outreach project, wherein the focus will be about the Debian, like, starting will be more on, like, usually what happens in GSOC and outreach is that people come, have the, do the contributions, and they go back. Like, they don't have that connection with the Debian, like, Debian community or Debian project. So, what I envision with these, the Debian outreach, the Debian specific outreach is that we have some part of the internship, like, even before starting the internship, we have some sessions and, like, with the people in Debian having, like, getting them introduced to the Debian philosophy and Debian community and Debian, how Debian works.

And those things, we focus on that. And then we move on to the technical internship parts. So, I believe this could do some good in having, like, when you have people you can connect to, you tend to stay back in a project mode.

When you feel something more than, like, right now, we have so many technical stuff to do, like, the choice for a college student is endless. So, if they want, if they stay back for something, like, maybe for Debian, I would say, we need to have them connected to the Debian project before we go into technical parts. Like, technical parts, like, there are other things as well, where they can go and do the technical part, but, like, they can come here, like, yeah.

So, that's what I was saying. Focused outreach projects is one thing. That's just one.

That's not enough. We need more of, like, more ideas to have more new people come up. And I'm very happy with, like, the DebConf thing. We tend to get more and more people from the places where we have a DebConf. Brazil is an example. After the Debconf, they have quite a good improvement on Debian contributors.

And I think in India also, it did give a good result. Like, we have more people contributing and staying back and those things. So, yeah.

So, these were the things I would say, like, we can do to improve.

For the final question, what field in free software do you, what field in free software generally do you think requires the most work to be put into it? What do you think is Debian's part in that field?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. Like, right now, what comes to my mind is the free software licenses parts. Like, we have a lot of free software licenses, and there are non-free software licenses.

But currently, I feel free software is having a big problem in enforcing these licenses. Like, there are, there may be big corporations or like some people who take up the whole, the code and may not follow the whole, for example, the GPL licenses. Like, we don't know how much of those, how much of the free softwares are used in the bigger things.

Yeah, I agree. There are a lot of corporations who are afraid to touch free software. But there would be good amount of free software, free work that converts into property, things violating the free software licenses and those things.

And we do not have the kind of like, we have SFLC, SFC, etc. But still, we do not have the ability to go behind and trace and implement the licenses. So, enforce those licenses and bring people who are violating the licenses forward and those kind of things is challenging because one thing is it takes time, like, and most importantly, money is required for the legal stuff.

And not always people who like people who make small software, or maybe big, but they may not have the kind of time and money to have these things enforced. So, that's a big challenge free software is facing, especially in our current scenario. I feel we are having those, like, we need to find ways how we can get it sorted.

I don't have an answer right now what to do. But this is a challenge I felt like and Debian's part in that. Yeah, as I said, I don't have a solution for that.

But the Debian, so DFSG and Debian sticking on to the free software licenses is a good support, I think.

So, that was the final question, Do you have anything else you want to mention for anyone watching this?

[Sruthi]:

Not really, like, I am happy, like, I think I was able to answer the questions. And yeah, I would say who is watching. I won't say like, I'm the best DPL candidate, you can't have a better one or something.

I stand for a reason. And if you believe in that, or the Debian community and Debian diversity, and those kinds of things, if you believe it, I hope you would be interested, like, you would want to vote for me. That's it.

Like, I'm not, I'll make it very clear. I'm not doing a technical leadership part here. So, those, I can't convince people who want technical leadership to vote for me.

But I would say people who connect with me, I hope they vote for me.

Proxmox Platinum Sponsor of DebConf24

Sahil Dhiman — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 01:17:00 +0200

We are pleased to announce that Proxmox has committed to sponsor DebConf24 as a Platinum Sponsor.

Proxmox provides powerful and user-friendly open-source server software. Enterprises of all sizes and industries use Proxmox solutions to deploy efficient and simplified IT infrastructures, minimize total cost of ownership, and avoid vendor lock-in. Proxmox also offers commercial support, training services, and an extensive partner ecosystem to ensure business continuity for its customers. Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH was established in 2005 and is headquartered in Vienna, Austria.

Proxmox builds its product offerings on top of the Debian operating system.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Proxmox is contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much, Proxmox, for your support of DebConf24!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf24 will take place from 28th July to 4th August 2024 in Busan, South Korea, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 21st to 27th July 2024.

DebConf24 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, or visit the Become a DebConf Sponsor website.

Bits from the DPL

Jonathan Carter — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 19:00:00 +0200

Dear Debianites

This morning I decided to just start writing Bits from DPL and send whatever I have by 18:00 local time. Here it is, barely proof read, along with all it's warts and grammar mistakes! It's slightly long and doesn't contain any critical information, so if you're not in the mood, don't feel compelled to read it!

Get ready for a new DPL!

Soon, the voting period will start to elect our next DPL, and my time as DPL will come to an end. Reading the questions posted to the new candidates on debian-vote, it takes quite a bit of restraint to not answer all of them myself, I think I can see how that aspect contributed to me being reeled in to running for DPL! In total I've done so 5 times (the first time I ran, Sam was elected!).

Good luck to both Andreas and Sruthi, our current DPL candidates! I've already started working on preparing handover, and there's multiple request from teams that have came in recently that will have to wait for the new term, so I hope they're both ready to hit the ground running!

Things that I wish could have gone better

Communication

Recently, I saw a t-shirt that read:

Adulthood is saying, 'But after this week things will slow down a bit' over and over until you die.

I can relate! With every task, crisis or deadline that appears, I think that once this is over, I'll have some more breathing space to get back to non-urgent, but important tasks. "Bits from the DPL" was something I really wanted to get right this last term, and clearly failed spectacularly. I have two long Bits from the DPL drafts that I never finished, I tend to have prioritised problems of the day over communication. With all the hindsight I have, I'm not sure which is better to prioritise, I do rate communication and transparency very highly and this is really the top thing that I wish I could've done better over the last four years.

On that note, thanks to people who provided me with some kind words when I've mentioned this to them before. They pointed out that there are many other ways to communicate and be in touch with the community, and they mentioned that they thought that I did a good job with that.

Since I'm still on communication, I think we can all learn to be more effective at it, since it's really so important for the project. Every time I publicly spoke about us spending more money, we got more donations. People out there really like to see how we invest funds in to Debian, instead of just making it heap up. DSA just spent a nice chunk on money on hardware, but we don't have very good visibility on it. It's one thing having it on a public line item in SPI's reporting, but it would be much more exciting if DSA could provide a write-up on all the cool hardware they're buying and what impact it would have on developers, and post it somewhere prominent like debian-devel-announce, Planet Debian or Bits from Debian (from the publicity team).

I don't want to single out DSA there, it's difficult and affects many other teams. The Salsa CI team also spent a lot of resources (time and money wise) to extend testing on AMD GPUs and other AMD hardware. It's fantastic and interesting work, and really more people within the project and in the outside world should know about it!

I'm not going to push my agendas to the next DPL, but I hope that they continue to encourage people to write about their work, and hopefully at some point we'll build enough excitement in doing so that it becomes a more normal part of our daily work.

Founding Debian as a standalone entity

This was my number one goal for the project this last term, which was a carried over item from my previous terms.

I'm tempted to write everything out here, including the problem statement and our current predicaments, what kind of ground work needs to happen, likely constitutional changes that need to happen, and the nature of the GR that would be needed to make such a thing happen, but if I start with that, I might not finish this mail.

In short, I 100% believe that this is still a very high ranking issue for Debian, and perhaps after my term I'd be in a better position to spend more time on this (hmm, is this an instance of "The grass is always better on the other side", or "Next week will go better until I die?"). Anyway, I'm willing to work with any future DPL on this, and perhaps it can in itself be a delegation tasked to properly explore all the options, and write up a report for the project that can lead to a GR.

Overall, I'd rather have us take another few years and do this properly, rather than rush into something that is again difficult to change afterwards. So while I very much wish this could've been achieved in the last term, I can't say that I have any regrets here either.

My terms in a nutshell

COVID-19 and Debian 11 era

My first term in 2020 started just as the COVID-19 pandemic became known to spread globally. It was a tough year for everyone, and Debian wasn't immune against its effects either. Many of our contributors got sick, some have lost loved ones (my father passed away in March 2020 just after I became DPL), some have lost their jobs (or other earners in their household have) and the effects of social distancing took a mental and even physical health toll on many. In Debian, we tend to do really well when we get together in person to solve problems, and when DebConf20 got cancelled in person, we understood that that was necessary, but it was still more bad news in a year we had too much of it already.

I can't remember if there was ever any kind of formal choice or discussion about this at any time, but the DebConf video team just kind of organically and spontaneously became the orga team for an online DebConf, and that lead to our first ever completely online DebConf. This was great on so many levels. We got to see each other's faces again, even though it was on screen. We had some teams talk to each other face to face for the first time in years, even though it was just on a Jitsi call. It had a lasting cultural change in Debian, some teams still have video meetings now, where they didn't do that before, and I think it's a good supplement to our other methods of communication.

We also had a few online Mini-DebConfs that was fun, but DebConf21 was also online, and by then we all developed an online conference fatigue, and while it was another good online event overall, it did start to feel a bit like a zombieconf and after that, we had some really nice events from the Brazillians, but no big global online community events again. In my opinion online MiniDebConfs can be a great way to develop our community and we should spend some further energy into this, but hey! This isn't a platform so let me back out of talking about the future as I see it...

Despite all the adversity that we faced together, the Debian 11 release ended up being quite good. It happened about a month or so later than what we ideally would've liked, but it was a solid release nonetheless. It turns out that for quite a few people, staying inside for a few months to focus on Debian bugs was quite productive, and Debian 11 ended up being a very polished release.

During this time period we also had to deal with a previous Debian Developer that was expelled for his poor behaviour in Debian, who continued to harass members of the Debian project and in other free software communities after his expulsion. This ended up being quite a lot of work since we had to take legal action to protect our community, and eventually also get the police involved. I'm not going to give him the satisfaction by spending too much time talking about him, but you can read our official statement regarding Daniel Pocock here: https://www.debian.org/News/2021/20211117

In late 2021 and early 2022 we also discussed our general resolution process, and had two consequent votes to address some issues that have affected past votes:

In my first term I addressed our delegations that were a bit behind, by the end of my last term all delegation requests are up to date. There's still some work to do, but I'm feeling good that I get to hand this over to the next DPL in a very decent state. Delegation updates can be very deceiving, sometimes a delegation is completely re-written and it was just 1 or 2 hours of work. Other times, a delegation updated can contain one line that has changed or a change in one team member that was the result of days worth of discussion and hashing out differences.

I also received quite a few requests either to host a service, or to pay a third-party directly for hosting. This was quite an admin nightmare, it either meant we had to manually do monthly reimbursements to someone, or have our TOs create accounts/agreements at the multiple providers that people use. So, after talking to a few people about this, we founded the DebianNet team (we could've admittedly chosen a better name, but that can happen later on) for providing hosting at two different hosting providers that we have agreement with so that people who host things under debian.net have an easy way to host it, and then at the same time Debian also has more control if a site maintainer goes MIA.

More info: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianNet

You might notice some Openstack mentioned there, we had some intention to set up a Debian cloud for hosting these things, that could also be used for other additional Debiany things like archive rebuilds, but these have so far fallen through. We still consider it a good idea and hopefully it will work out some other time (if you're a large company who can sponsor few racks and servers, please get in touch!)

DebConf22 and Debian 12 era

DebConf22 was the first time we returned to an in-person DebConf. It was a bit smaller than our usual DebConf - understandably so, considering that there were still COVID risks and people who were at high risk or who had family with high risk factors did the sensible thing and stayed home.

After watching many MiniDebConfs online, I also attended my first ever MiniDebConf in Hamburg. It still feels odd typing that, it feels like I should've been at one before, but my location makes attending them difficult (on a side-note, a few of us are working on bootstrapping a South African Debian community and hopefully we can pull off MiniDebConf in South Africa later this year).

While I was at the MiniDebConf, I gave a talk where I covered the evolution of firmware, from the simple e-proms that you'd find in old printers to the complicated firmware in modern GPUs that basically contain complete operating systems- complete with drivers for the device their running on. I also showed my shiny new laptop, and explained that it's impossible to install that laptop without non-free firmware (you'd get a black display on d-i or Debian live). Also that you couldn't even use an accessibility mode with audio since even that depends on non-free firmware these days.

Steve, from the image building team, has said for a while that we need to do a GR to vote for this, and after more discussion at DebConf, I kept nudging him to propose the GR, and we ended up voting in favour of it. I do believe that someone out there should be campaigning for more free firmware (unfortunately in Debian we just don't have the resources for this), but, I'm glad that we have the firmware included. In the end, the choice comes down to whether we still want Debian to be installable on mainstream bare-metal hardware.

At this point, I'd like to give a special thanks to the ftpmasters, image building team and the installer team who worked really hard to get the changes done that were needed in order to make this happen for Debian 12, and for being really proactive for remaining niggles that was solved by the time Debian 12.1 was released.

The included firmware contributed to Debian 12 being a huge success, but it wasn't the only factor. I had a list of personal peeves, and as the hard freeze hit, I lost hope that these would be fixed and made peace with the fact that Debian 12 would release with those bugs. I'm glad that lots of people proved me wrong and also proved that it's never to late to fix bugs, everything on my list got eliminated by the time final freeze hit, which was great! We usually aim to have a release ready about 2 years after the previous release, sometimes there are complications during a freeze and it can take a bit longer. But due to the excellent co-ordination of the release team and heavy lifting from many DDs, the Debian 12 release happened 21 months and 3 weeks after the Debian 11 release. I hope the work from the release team continues to pay off so that we can achieve their goals of having shorter and less painful freezes in the future!

Even though many things were going well, the ongoing usr-merge effort highlighted some social problems within our processes. I started typing out the whole history of usrmerge here, but it's going to be too long for the purpose of this mail. Important questions that did come out of this is, should core Debian packages be team maintained? And also about how far the CTTE should really be able to override a maintainer. We had lots of discussion about this at DebConf22, but didn't make much concrete progress. I think that at some point we'll probably have a GR about package maintenance. Also, thank you to Guillem who very patiently explained a few things to me (after probably having have to done so many times to others before already) and to Helmut who have done the same during the MiniDebConf in Hamburg. I think all the technical and social issues here are fixable, it will just take some time and patience and I have lots of confidence in everyone involved.

UsrMerge wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/UsrMerge

DebConf 23 and Debian 13 era

DebConf23 took place in Kochi, India. At the end of my Bits from the DPL talk there, someone asked me what the most difficult thing I had to do was during my terms as DPL. I answered that nothing particular stood out, and even the most difficult tasks ended up being rewarding to work on. Little did I know that my most difficult period of being DPL was just about to follow. During the day trip, one of our contributors, Abraham Raji, passed away in a tragic accident. There's really not anything anyone could've done to predict or stop it, but it was devastating to many of us, especially the people closest to him. Quite a number of DebConf attendees went to his funeral, wearing the DebConf t-shirts he designed as a tribute. It still haunts me when I saw his mother scream "He was my everything! He was my everything!", this was by a large margin the hardest day I've ever had in Debian, and I really wasn't ok for even a few weeks after that and I think the hurt will be with many of us for some time to come. So, a plea again to everyone, please take care of yourself! There's probably more people that love you than you realise.

A special thanks to the DebConf23 team, who did a really good job despite all the uphills they faced (and there were many!).

As DPL, I think that planning for a DebConf is near to impossible, all you can do is show up and just jump into things. I planned to work with Enrico to finish up something that will hopefully save future DPLs some time, and that is a web-based DD certificate creator instead of having the DPL do so manually using LaTeX. It already mostly works, you can see the work so far by visiting https://nm.debian.org/person/ACCOUNTNAME/certificate/ and replacing ACCOUNTNAME with your Debian account name, and if you're a DD, you should see your certificate. It still needs a few minor changes and a DPL signature, but at this point I think that will be finished up when the new DPL start. Thanks to Enrico for working on this!

Since my first term, I've been trying to find ways to improve all our accounting/finance issues. Tracking what we spend on things, and getting an annual overview is hard, especially over 3 trusted organisations. The reimbursement process can also be really tedious, especially when you have to provide files in a certain order and combine them into a PDF. So, at DebConf22 we had a meeting along with the treasurer team and Stefano Rivera who said that it might be possible for him to work on a new system as part of his Freexian work. It worked out, and Freexian funded the development of the system since then, and after DebConf23 we handled the reimbursements for the conference via the new reimbursements site: https://reimbursements.debian.net/

It's still early days, but over time it should be linked to all our TOs and we'll use the same category codes across the board. So, overall, our reimbursement process becomes a lot simpler, and also we'll be able to get information like how much money we've spent on any category in any period. It will also help us to track how much money we have available or how much we spend on recurring costs. Right now that needs manual polling from our TOs. So I'm really glad that this is a big long-standing problem in the project that is being fixed.

For Debian 13, we're waving goodbye to the KFreeBSD and mipsel ports. But we're also gaining riscv64 and loongarch64 as release architectures! I have 3 different RISC-V based machines on my desk here that I haven't had much time to work with yet, you can expect some blog posts about them soon after my DPL term ends!

As Debian is a unix-like system, we're affected by the Year 2038 problem, where systems that uses 32 bit time in seconds since 1970 run out of available time and will wrap back to 1970 or have other undefined behaviour. A detailed wiki page explains how this works in Debian, and currently we're going through a rather large transition to make this possible.

I believe this is the right time for Debian to be addressing this, we're still a bit more than a year away for the Debian 13 release, and this provides enough time to test the implementation before 2038 rolls along.

Of course, big complicated transitions with dependency loops that causes chaos for everyone would still be too easy, so this past weekend (which is a holiday period in most of the west due to Easter weekend) has been filled with dealing with an upstream bug in xz-utils, where a backdoor was placed in this key piece of software. An Ars Technica covers it quite well, so I won't go into all the details here. I mention it because I want to give yet another special thanks to everyone involved in dealing with this on the Debian side. Everyone involved, from the ftpmasters to security team and others involved were super calm and professional and made quick, high quality decisions. This also lead to the archive being frozen on Saturday, this is the first time I've seen this happen since I've been a DD, but I'm sure next week will go better!

Looking forward

It's really been an honour for me to serve as DPL. It might well be my biggest achievement in my life. Previous DPLs range from prominent software engineers to game developers, or people who have done things like complete Iron Man, run other huge open source projects and are part of big consortiums. Ian Jackson even authored dpkg and is now working on the very interesting tag2upload service!

I'm a relative nobody, just someone who grew up as a poor kid in South Africa, who just really cares about Debian a lot. And, above all, I'm really thankful that I didn't do anything major to screw up Debian for good.

Not unlike learning how to use Debian, and also becoming a Debian Developer, I've learned a lot from this and it's been a really valuable growth experience for me.

I know I can't possible give all the thanks to everyone who deserves it, so here's a big big thanks to everyone who have worked so hard and who have put in many, many hours to making Debian better, I consider you all heroes!

-Jonathan

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2024)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 16:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Carles Pina i Estany (cpina)
Dave Hibberd (hibby)
Soren Stoutner (soren)
Daniel Gröber (dxld)
Jeremy Sowden (azazel)
Ricardo Ribalda Delgado (ribalda)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Joachim Bauch
Ananthu C V
Francesco Ballarin
Yogeswaran Umasankar
Kienan Stewart

Congratulations!

DebConf24 Logo Contest Results

Donald Norwood — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 06:00:00 +0100

Earlier this month the DebConf team announced the DebConf24 Logo Contest asking aspiring artists, designers, and contributors to submit an image that would represent the host city of Busan, the host nation of South Korea, and promote the next Debian Developer Conference.

The logo contest for DebConf24 received 10 submissions and garnered 354 responses with 3 proposals in particular getting very close to first place. The winning logo received 88 votes, the 2nd favored logo received 87 votes, and the 3rd most favored received 86 votes.

Thank you to Woohee Yang and Junsang Moon for sharing their artistic visions.

A very special Thank You to everyone who took the time to vote for our beautiful new logo!

The DebConf24 Team is proud to share for preview only the winning logo for the 24th Debian Developer Conference:

'sun-seagull-sea' by Woohee Yang

This is a preview copy, other revisions will occur for sizing, print, and media... but we had to share it with you all now. :).

Looking forward to seeing you all at #debconf24 in #Busan, South Korea 2024!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2023)

Donald Norwood — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 16:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Alexandre Detiste (tchet)
Amin Bandali (bandali)
Jean-Pierre Giraud (jipege)
Timthy Pearson (tpearson)

The following contributor was added as Debian Maintainer in the last two months:

Safir Secerovic

Congratulations!

Statement about the EU Cyber Resilience Act

Donald Norwood — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 17:30:00 +0100

Debian Public Statement about the EU Cyber Resilience Act and the Product Liability Directive

The European Union is currently preparing a regulation "on horizontal cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements" known as the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). It is currently in the final "trilogue" phase of the legislative process. The act includes a set of essential cybersecurity and vulnerability handling requirements for manufacturers. It will require products to be accompanied by information and instructions to the user. Manufacturers will need to perform risk assessments and produce technical documentation and, for critical components, have third-party audits conducted. Discovered security issues will have to be reported to European authorities within 25 hours (1). The CRA will be followed up by the Product Liability Directive (PLD) which will introduce compulsory liability for software.

While a lot of these regulations seem reasonable, the Debian project believes that there are grave problems for Free Software projects attached to them. Therefore, the Debian project issues the following statement:

Free Software has always been a gift, freely given to society, to take and to use as seen fit, for whatever purpose. Free Software has proven to be an asset in our digital age and the proposed EU Cyber Resilience Act is going to be detrimental to it.

a. As the Debian Social Contract states, our goal is "make the best system we can, so that free works will be widely distributed and used." Imposing requirements such as those proposed in the act makes it legally perilous for others to redistribute our work and endangers our commitment to "provide an integrated system of high-quality materials with no legal restrictions that would prevent such uses of the system". (2)

b. Knowing whether software is commercial or not isn't feasible, neither in Debian nor in most free software projects - we don't track people's employment status or history, nor do we check who finances upstream projects (the original projects that we integrate in our operating system).

c. If upstream projects stop making available their code for fear of being in the scope of CRA and its financial consequences, system security will actually get worse rather than better.

d. Having to get legal advice before giving a gift to society will discourage many developers, especially those without a company or other organisation supporting them.
Debian is well known for its security track record through practices of responsible disclosure and coordination with upstream developers and other Free Software projects. We aim to live up to the commitment made in the Debian Social Contract: "We will not hide problems." (3)

a.The Free Software community has developed a fine-tuned, tried-and-tested system of responsible disclosure in case of security issues which will be overturned by the mandatory reporting to European authorities within 24 hours (Art. 11 CRA).

b. Debian spends a lot of volunteering time on security issues, provides quick security updates and works closely together with upstream projects and in coordination with other vendors. To protect its users, Debian regularly participates in limited embargos to coordinate fixes to security issues so that all other major Linux distributions can also have a complete fix when the vulnerability is disclosed.

c. Security issue tracking and remediation is intentionally decentralized and distributed. The reporting of security issues to ENISA and the intended propagation to other authorities and national administrations would collect all software vulnerabilities in one place. This greatly increases the risk of leaking information about vulnerabilities to threat actors, representing a threat for all the users around the world, including European citizens.

d. Activists use Debian (e.g. through derivatives such as Tails), among other reasons, to protect themselves from authoritarian governments; handing threat actors exploits they can use for oppression is against what Debian stands for.

e. Developers and companies will downplay security issues because a "security" issue now comes with legal implications. Less clarity on what is truly a security issue will hurt users by leaving them vulnerable.
While proprietary software is developed behind closed doors, Free Software development is done in the open, transparent for everyone. To retain parity with proprietary software the open development process needs to be entirely exempt from CRA requirements, just as the development of software in private is. A "making available on the market" can only be considered after development is finished and the software is released.
Even if only "commercial activities" are in the scope of CRA, the Free Software community - and as a consequence, everybody - will lose a lot of small projects. CRA will force many small enterprises and most probably all self employed developers out of business because they simply cannot fulfill the requirements imposed by CRA. Debian and other Linux distributions depend on their work. If accepted as it is, CRA will undermine not only an established community but also a thriving market. CRA needs an exemption for small businesses and, at the very least, solo-entrepreneurs.

Information about the voting process:

Debian uses the Condorcet method for voting. Simplistically, plain Condorcets method can be stated like so : "Consider all possible two-way races between candidates. The Condorcet winner, if there is one, is the one candidate who can beat each other candidate in a two-way race with that candidate." The problem is that in complex elections, there may well be a circular relationship in which A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A. Most of the variations on Condorcet use various means of resolving the tie. Debian's variation is spelled out in the constitution, specifically, A.5(3)

Sources:

(1) CRA proposals and links & PLD proposals and links

(2) Debian Social Contract No. 2, 3, and 4

(3) Debian Constitution

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (September and October 2023)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 16:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

François Mazen (mzf)
Andrew Ruthven (puck)
Christopher Obbard (obbardc)
Salvo Tomaselli (ltworf)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Bo YU
Athos Coimbra Ribeiro
Marc Leeman
Filip Strömbäck

Congratulations!

archive.debian.org rsync address change

Donald Norwood, Adam D. Barratt — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 08:00:00 +0100

The proposed and previously announced changes to the rsync service have become effective with the rsync://archive.debian.org address now being discontinued.

The worldwide Debian mirrors network has served archive.debian.org via both HTTP and rsync. As part of improving the reliability of the service for users, the Debian mirrors team is separating the access methods to different host names:

http://archive.debian.org/ will remain the entry point for HTTP clients such as APT
rsync://rsync.archive.debian.org/debian-archive/ is now available for those who wish to mirror all or parts of the archives.

rsync service on archive.debian.org has stopped, and we encourage anyone using the service to migrate to the new host name as soon as possible.

If you are currently using rsync to the debian-archive from a debian.org server that forms part of the archive.debian.org rotation, we also encourage Administrators to move to the new service name. This will allow us to better manage which back-end servers offer rsync service in future.

Note that due to its nature the content of archive.debian.org does not change frequently - generally there will be several months, possibly more than a year, between updates - so checking for updates more than once a day is unnecessary.

For additional information please reach out to the Debian Mirrors Team maillist.

Debian Events: MiniDebConfCambridge-2023

The Debian Publicity Team — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0100

Next week the #MiniDebConfCambridge takes place in Cambridge, UK. This event will run from Thursday 23 to Sunday 26 November 2023.

The 4 days of the MiniDebConf include a Mini-DebCamp and of course the main Conference talks, BoFs, meets, and Sprints.

We give thanks to our partners and sponsors for this event

Arm - Building the Future of Computing

Codethink - Open Source System Software Experts

pexip - Powering video everywhere

Please see the MiniDebConfCambridge page more for information regarding Travel documentation, Accomodation, Meal planning, the full conference schedule, and yes, even parking.

We hope to see you there!

Call for bids for DebConf24

Debian DebConf Committe — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 13:30:00 +0100

Due to the current state of affairs in Israel, who were to host DebConf24, the DebConf committee has decided to renew calls for bids to host DebConf24 at another venue and location.

The DebConf committee would like to express our sincere appreciation for the DebConf Israeli team, and the work they've done over several years. However, given the uncertainty about the situation, we regret that it will most likely not be possible to hold DebConf in Israel.

As we ask for submissions for new host locations we ask that you please review and understand the details and requirements for a bid submission to host the Debian Developer Conference.

Please review the template for a DebConf bid for guidelines on how to sumbit a proper bid.

To submit a bid, please create the appropriate page(s) under DebConf Wiki Bids, and add it to the "Bids" section in the main DebConf 24 page.

There isn't very much time to make a decision. We need bids by the end of November in order to make a decision by the end of the year.

After your submission is completed please send us a notification at debconf-team@lists.debian.org to let us know that your bid submission is ready for review.

We also suggest hanging out in our IRC chat room #debconf-team.

Given this short deadline, we understand that bids won't be as complete as they would usually be. Do the best you can in the time available.

Bids will be evaluated according to The Priority List.

You can get in contact with the DebConf team by email to debconf-team@lists.debian.org, or via the #debconf-team IRC channel on OFTC or via our Matrix Channel.

Thank you,

The Debian Debconf Committee

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2023)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 16:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Marius Gripsgard (mariogrip)
Mohammed Bilal (rmb)
Lukas Märdian (slyon)
Robin Gustafsson (rgson)
David da Silva Polverari (polverari)
Emmanuel Arias (eamanu)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Aymeric Agon-Rambosson
Blair Noctis
Lena Voytek
Philippe Coval
John Scott

Congratulations!

DebConf23 closes in Kochi and DebConf24 announced

Jean-Pierre Giraud and Donald Norwood — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:30:00 +0200

On Sunday 17 September 2023, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close.

Over 474 attendees representing 35 countries from around the world came together for a combined 89 events made up of Talks, Discussons, Birds of a Feather (BoF) gatherings, workshops, and activities in support of furthering our distribution, learning from our mentors and peers, building our community, and having a bit of fun.

The conference was preceded by the annual DebCamp hacking session held September 3d through September 9th where Debian Developers and Contributors convened to focus on their Individual Debian related projects or work in team sprints geared toward in-person collaboration in developing Debian.

In particular this year Sprints took place to advance development in Mobian/Debian, Reproducible Builds, and Python in Debian. This year also featured a BootCamp that was held for newcomers staged by a team of dedicated mentors who shared hands-on experience in Debian and offered a deeper understanding of how to work in and contribute to the community.

The actual Debian Developers Conference started on Sunday 10 September 2023.

In addition to the traditional 'Bits from the DPL' talk, the continuous key-signing party, lightning talks and the announcement of next year's DebConf4, there were several update sessions shared by internal projects and teams.

Many of the hosted discussion sessions were presented by our technical teams who highlighted the work and focus of the Long Term Support (LTS), Android tools, Debian Derivatives, Debian Installer, Debian Image, and the Debian Science teams. The Python, Perl, and Ruby programming language teams also shared updates on their work and efforts.

Two of the larger local Debian communities, Debian Brasil and Debian India shared how their respective collaborations in Debian moved the project forward and how they attracted new members and opportunities both in Debian, F/OSS, and the sciences with their HowTos of demonstrated community engagement.

The schedule was updated each day with planned and ad-hoc activities introduced by attendees over the course of the conference. Several activities that were unable to be held in past years due to the Global COVID-19 Pandemic were celebrated as they returned to the conference's schedule: a job fair, the open-mic and poetry night, the traditional Cheese and Wine party, the group photos and the Day Trips.

For those who were not able to attend, most of the talks and sessions were videoed for live room streams with the recorded videos to be made available later through the Debian meetings archive website. Almost all of the sessions facilitated remote participation via IRC messaging apps or online collaborative text documents which allowed remote attendees to 'be in the room' to ask questions or share comments with the speaker or assembled audience.

DebConf23 saw over 4.3 TiB of data streamed, 55 hours of scheduled talks, 23 network access points, 11 network switches, 75 kb of equipment imported, 400 meters of gaffer tape used, 1,463 viewed streaming hours, 461 T-shirts, 35 country Geoip viewers, 5 day trips, and an average of 169 meals planned per day.

All of these events, activies, conversations, and streams coupled with our love, interest, and participation in Debian annd F/OSS certainly made this conference an overall success both here in Kochi, India and On-line around the world.

The DebConf23 website will remain active for archival purposes and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf24 will be held in Haifa, Israel. As tradition follows before the next DebConf the local organizers in Israel will start the conference activites with DebCamp with particular focus on individual and team work towards improving the distribution.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the web page about the Code of Conduct in DebConf23 website for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf23, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Infomaniak, Proxmox, and Siemens.

We also wish to thank our Video and Infrastructure teams, the DebConf23 and DebConf commitiees, our host nation of India, and each and every person who helped contribute to this event and to Debian overall.

Thank you all for your work in helping Debian continue to be "The Universal Operating System".

See you next year!

About Debian

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Infomaniak

Infomaniak is a key player in the European cloud market and the leading developer of Web technologies in Switzerland. It aims to be an independent European alternative to the web giants and is committed to an ethical and sustainable Web that respects privacy and creates local jobs. Infomaniak develops cloud solutions (IaaS, PaaS, VPS), productivity tools for online collaboration and video and radio streaming services.

About Proxmox

Proxmox develops powerful, yet easy-to-use open-source server software. The product portfolio from Proxmox, including server virtualization, backup, and email security, helps companies of any size, sector, or industry to simplify their IT infrastructures. The Proxmox solutions are based on the great Debian platform, and we are happy that we can give back to the community by sponsoring DebConf23.

About Siemens

Siemens is technology company focused on industry, infrastructure and transport. From resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains, smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation, and advanced healthcare, the company creates technology with purpose adding real value for customers. By combining the real and the digital worlds, Siemens empowers its customers to transform their industries and markets, helping them to enhance the everyday of billions of people.

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf23 web page at https://debconf23.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.

DebConf23 starts today in Kochi On Sun 10 September 2023

The Debian Publicity Team — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 11:00:00 +0200

DebConf23, the 24th annual Debian Developer Conference, is taking place in Kochi, India from September 10th to 17th, 2023.

Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at Infopark, Kochi to participate and work in a conference exclusively run by volunteers.

Today the main conference starts with over 373 expected attendants and 92 scheduled activities, including 45-minute and 20-minute talks, Bird of a Feather ("BoF") team meetings, workshops, a job fair, as well as a variety of other events.

The full schedule is updated each day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees over the course of the conference.

If you would like to engage remotely, you can follow the video streams available from the DebConf23 website for the events happening in the three talk rooms: Anamudi, Kuthiran and Ponmudi. Or you can join the conversations happening inside the talk rooms via the OFTC IRC network in the #debconf-anamudi, #debconf-kuthiran, and the #debconf-ponmudi channels. Please also join us in the #debconf channel for common discussions related to DebConf.

You can also follow the live coverage of news about DebConf23 provided by our micronews service or the @debian profile on your favorite social network.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcoming environment for all participants. Please see our Code of Conduct page on the DebConf23 website for more information on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf23, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Infomaniak, Proxmox and Siemens.

DebConf23 welcomes its sponsors!

The Debian Publicity Team — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 11:00:00 +0200

DebConf23, the 24th edition of the Debian conference is taking place in Infopark at Kochi, Kerala, India. Thanks to the hard work of its organizers, it will be, this year as well, an interesting and fruitful event for attendees.

We would like to warmly welcome the sponsors of DebConf23, and introduce them to you.

We have three Platinum sponsors.

Our first Platinum sponsor is Infomaniak. Infomaniak is a key player in the European cloud market and the leading developer of Web technologies in Switzerland. It aims to be an independent European alternative to the web giants and is committed to an ethical and sustainable Web that respects privacy and creates local jobs. Infomaniak develops cloud solutions (IaaS, PaaS, VPS), productivity tools for online collaboration and video and radio streaming services.
Proxmox is our second Platinum sponsor. Proxmox develops powerful, yet easy-to-use open-source server software. The product portfolio from Proxmox, including server virtualization, backup, and email security, helps companies of any size, sector, or industry to simplify their IT infrastructures. The Proxmox solutions are based on the great Debian platform, and we are happy that we can give back to the community by sponsoring DebConf23.
Siemens is our third Platinum sponsor. Siemens is a technology company focused on industry, infrastructure and transport. From resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains, smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation, and advanced healthcare, the company creates technology with purpose adding real value for customers. By combining the real and the digital worlds, Siemens empowers its customers to transform their industries and markets, helping them to enhance the everyday of billions of people.

Our Gold sponsors are:

Lenovo, Lenovo is a global technology leader manufacturing a wide portfolio of connected products including smartphones, tablets, PCs and workstations as well as AR/VR devices, smart home/office and data center solutions.
Freexian, Freexian is a services company specialized in Free Software and in particular Debian GNU/Linux, covering consulting, custom developments, support, training. Freexian has a recognized Debian expertise thanks to the participation of Debian developers.
Google, Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products such as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware.
Ubuntu, the Operating System delivered by Canonical.

Our Silver sponsors are:

The Bern University of Applied Sciences with near 7,800 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital.
Collabora, a global consultancy delivering Open Source software solutions to the commercial world.
FOSS United, a non-profit foundation that aims at promoting and strengthening the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) ecosystem in India.
The FSIJ, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Free Software growth and development.
Civil Infrastructure Platform, a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation, establishing an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software.
Roche, a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare.
Two Sigma, rigorous inquiry, data analysis, and invention to help solve the toughest challenges across financial services.
Matanel Foundation, operates in Israel, as its first concern is to preserve the cohesion of a society and a nation plagued by divisions.
The FOSSEE (Free/Libre and Open Source Software for Education) project promotes the use of FLOSS tools in academia and research. The project is part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Ministry of Education (MoE), Government of India.
Arm: with the world’s Best SoC Design Portfolio, Arm powered solutions have been supporting innovation for more than 30 years and are deployed in over 225 billion chips to date.
Kerala Vision Broadband is a subsidiary of Kerala State IT Infrastructure Limited (KSITIL) which provides high-speed internet services in the state of Kerala, India.

Bronze sponsors:

And finally, our Supporter level sponsors:

A special thanks to the Infoparks Kerala, our Venue Partner!

DebianDay Celebrations and comments

Donald Norwood, Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 11:00:00 +0200

Debian Celebrates 30 years!

We celebrated our birthday this year and we had a great time with new friends, new members welcomed to the community, and the world.

We have collected a few comments, videos, and discussions from around the Internet, and some images from some of the DebianDay2023 events. We hope that you enjoyed the day(s) as much as we did!

"Debian 30 years of collective intelligence" -Maqsuel Maqson

Brazil

Pouso Alegre, Brazil

Maceió, Brazil

Curitiba, Brazil

The cake is there. :)

Honorary Debian Developers: Buzz, Jessie, and Woody welcome guests to this amazing party.

Sao Carlos, state of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Stickers, and Fliers, and Laptops, oh my!

Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Brasília, Brazil

Mexico

30 años!

A quick Selfie

We do not encourage beverages on computing hardware, but this one is okay by us.

Germany

30 years of love

The German Delegation is also looking for this dog who footed the bill for the party, then left mysteriously.

We took the party outside

We brought the party back inside at CCCamp

Belgium

Cake and Diversity in Belgium

El Salvador

Food and Fellowship in El Salvador

South Africa

Debian is also very delicious!

All smiles waiting to eat the cake

Reports

Debian Day 30 years in Maceió - Brazil

Debian Day 30 years in São Carlos - Brazil

Debian Day 30 years in Pouso Alegre - Brazil

Debian Day 30 years in Belo Horizonte - Brazil

Debian Day 30 years in Curitiba - Brazil

Debian Day 30 years in Brasília - Brazil

Debian Day 30 years online in Brazil

Articles & Blogs

Happy Debian Day - going 30 years strong - Liam Dawe

Debian Turns 30 Years Old, Happy Birthday! - Marius Nestor

30 Years of Stability, Security, and Freedom: Celebrating Debian’s Birthday - Bobby Borisov

Happy 30th Birthday, Debian! - Claudio Kuenzier

Debian is 30 and Sgt Pepper Is at Least Ninetysomething - Christine Hall

Debian turns 30! -Corbet

Thirty years of Debian! - Lennart Hengstmengel

Debian marks three decades as 'Universal Operating System' - Sam Varghese

Debian Linux Celebrates 30 Years Milestone - Joshua James

30 years on, Debian is at the heart of the world's most successful Linux distros - Liam Proven

Looking Back on 30 Years of Debian - Maya Posch

Cheers to 30 Years of Debian: A Journey of Open Source Excellence - arindam

Discussions and Social Media

Debian Celebrates 30 Years - Source: News YCombinator

Brand-new Linux release, which I'm calling the Debian ... Source: News YCombinator

Comment: Congrats @debian !!! Happy Birthday! Thank you for becoming a cornerstone of the #opensource world. Here's to decades of collaboration, stability & #software #freedom -openSUSELinux via X (formerly Twitter)

Comment: Today we #celebrate the 30th birthday of #Debian, one of the largest and most important cornerstones of the #opensourcecommunity. For this we would like to thank you very much and wish you the best for the next 30 years! Source: X (Formerly Twitter -TUXEDOComputers via X (formerly Twitter)

Happy Debian Day! - Source: Reddit.com

Video The History of Debian | The Beginning - Source: Linux User Space

Debian Celebrates 30 years -Source: Lobste.rs

Video Debian At 30 and No More Distro Hopping! - LWDW388 - Source: LinuxGameCast

Debian Celebrates 30 years! - Source: Debian User Forums

Debian Celebrates 30 years! - Source: Linux.org

Siemens welcomed as a Platinum Sponsor of DebConf23!

Sahil Dhiman — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 19:00:00 +0200

We are pleased to announce that Siemens has committed to sponsor DebConf23 as Platinum Sponsor.

Siemens is a technology company focused on industry, infrastructure and transport. From resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains, smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation, and advanced healthcare, the company creates technology with purpose adding real value for customers. By combining the real and the digital worlds, Siemens empowers its customers to transform their industries and markets, helping them to transform the everyday for billions of people.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Siemens is contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Siemens, for your support of DebConf23!

Debian Celebrates 30 years!

Jean-Pierre Giraud, Donald Norwood, Grzegorz Szymaszek, Debian Publicity Team — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 11:00:00 +0200

Over 30 years ago the late Ian Murdock wrote to the comp.os.linux.development newsgroup about the completion of a brand-new Linux release which he named "The Debian Linux Release".

He built the release by hand, from scratch, so to speak. Ian laid out guidelines for how this new release would work, what approach the release would take regarding its size, manner of upgrades, installation procedures; and with great care of consideration for users without Internet connection.

Unaware that he had sparked a movement in the fledgling F/OSS community, Ian worked on and continued to work on Debian. The release, now aided by volunteers from the newsgroup and around the world, grew and continues to grow as one of the largest and oldest FREE operating systems that still exist today.

Debian at its core is comprised of Users, Contributors, Developers, and Sponsors, but most importantly, People. Ians drive and focus remains embedded in the core of Debian, it remains in all of our work, it remains in the minds and hands of the users of The Universal Operating System.

The Debian Project is proud and happy to share our anniversary not exclusively unto ourselves, instead we share this moment with everyone, as we come together in celebration of a resounding community that works together, effects change, and continues to make a difference, not just in our work but around the world.

Debian is present in cluster systems, datacenters, desktop computers, embedded systems, IoT devices, laptops, servers, it may possibly be powering the web server and device you are reading this article on, and it can also be found in Spacecraft.

Closer to earth, Debian fully supports projects for accessibility: Debian Edu/Skolelinux - an operating system designed for educational use in schools and communities, Debian Science - providing free scientific software across many established and emerging fields, Debian Hamradio - for amateur radio enthusiasts, Debian-Accessibility - a project focused on the design of an operating system suited to fit the requirements of people with disabilites, and Debian Astro - focused on supporting professional and hobbyist astronomers.

Debian strives to give, reach, embrace, mentor, share, and teach with internships through many programs internally and externally such as the Google Summer of Code, Outreachy, and the Open Source Promotion Plan.

None of this could be possible without the vast amount of support, care, and contributions from what started as and is still an all volunteer project. We celebrate with each and every one who has helped shape Debian over all of these years and toward the future.

Today we all certainly celebrate 30 years of Debian, but know that Debian celebrates with each and every one of you all at the same time.

Over the next few days Celebration parties are planned to take place in Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany (CCCcamp), India, Iran, Portugal, Serbia, South Africa, and Turkey.

You are of course, invited to join us!

Check out, attend, or form your very own DebianDay 2023 Event.

See you then!

Thank you, thank you all so very much.

With Love,

The Debian Project

Debian Project Bits Volume 1, Issue 1

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 12:30:00 +0200

Debian Project Bits Volume 1, Issue 1 August 05, 2023

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Debian Project Bits!

Those remembering the Debian Weekly News (DwN) will recognize some of the sections here which served as our inspiration.

Debian Project Bits posts will allow for a faster turnaround of some project news on a monthly basis. The Debian Micronews service will continue to share shorter news items, the Debian Project News remains as our official newsletter which may move to a biannual archive format.

News

Debian Day

The Debian Project was officially founded by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. Since then we have celebrated our Anniversary of that date each year with events around the world. We would love it if you could join our revels this very special year as we have the honor of turning 30!

Attend or organize a local Debian Day celebration. You're invited to plan your own event: from Bug Squashing parties to Key Signing parties, Meet-Ups, or any type of social event whether large or small. And be sure to check our Debian reimbursement How To if you need such resources.

You can share your days, events, thoughts, or notes with us and the rest of the community with the #debianday tag that will be used across most social media platforms. See you then!

Events: Upcoming and Reports

Upcoming

Debian 30 anos

The Debian Brasil Community is organizing the event Debian 30 anos to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Debian Project.

From August 14 to 18, between 7pm and 22pm (UTC-3) contributors will talk online in Portuguese and we will live stream on Debian Brasil YouTube channel.

DebConf23: Debian Developers Camp and Conference

The 2023 Debian Developers Camp (DebCamp) and Conference (DebConf23) will be hosted this year in Infopark, Kochi, India.

DebCamp is slated to run from September 3 through 9, immediately followed by the larger DebConf, September 10 through 17.

If you are planning on attending the conference this year, now is the time to ensure your travel documentation, visa information, bursary submissions, papers and relevant equipment are prepared. For more information contact: debconf@debconf.

MiniDebConf Cambridge 2023

There will be a MiniDebConf held in Cambridge, UK, hosted by ARM for 4 days in November: 2 days for a mini-DebCamp (Thu 23 - Fri 24), with space for dedicated development / sprint / team meetings, then two days for a more regular MiniDebConf (Sat 25 - Sun 26) with space for more general talks, up to 80 people.

Reports

During the last months, the Debian Community has organized some Bug Squashing Parties:

Tilburg, Netherlands. October 2022.

St-Cergue, Switzerland. January 2023

Montreal, Canada. February 2023

In January, Debian India hosted the MiniDebConf Tamil Nadu in Viluppuram, Tamil Nadu, India (Sat 28 - Sun 26).

The following month, the MiniDebConf Portugal 2023 was held in Lisbon (12 - 16 February 2023).

These events, seen as a stunning success by some of their attendees, demonstrate the vitality of our community.

Debian Brasil Community at Campus Party Brazil 2023

Another edition of Campus Party Brazil took place in the city of São Paulo between July 25th and 30th. And one more time the Debian Brazil Community was present. During the days in the available space, we carry out some activities such as:

Gifts for attendees (stickers, cups, lanyards);
Workshop on how to contribute to the translation team;
Workshop on packaging;
Key signing party;
Information about the project;

For more info and a few photos, check out the organizers' report.

MiniDebConf Brasília 2023

From May 25 to 27, Brasília hosted the MiniDebConf Brasília 2023. This gathering was composed of various activities such as talks, workshops, sprints, BSPs (Bug Squashing Party), key signings, social events, and hacking, aimed to bring the community together and celebrate the world's largest Free Software project: Debian.

For more information please see the full report written by the organizers.

Debian Reunion Hamburg 2023

This year the annual Debian Reunion Hamburg was held from Tuesday 23 to 30 May starting with four days of hacking followed by two days of talks, and then two more days of hacking. As usual, people - more than forty-five attendees from Germany, Czechia, France, Slovakia, and Switzerland - were happy to meet in person, to hack and chat together, and much more. If you missed the live streams, the video recordings are available.

Translation workshops from the pt_BR team

The Brazilian translation team, debian-l10n-portuguese, had their first workshop of 2023 in February with great results. The workshop was aimed at beginners, working in DDTP/DDTSS.

For more information please see the full report written by the organizers.

And on June 13 another workshop took place to translate The Debian Administrator's Handbook). The main goal was to show beginners how to collaborate in the translation of this important material, which has existed since 2004. The manual's translations are hosted on Weblate.

Releases

Stable Release

Debian 12 bookworm was released on June 10, 2023. This new version becomes the stable release of Debian and moves the prior Debian 11 bullseye release to oldstable status. The Debian community celebrated the release with 23 Release Parties all around the world.

Bookworm's first point release 12.1 address miscellaneous bug fixes affecting 88 packages, documentation, and installer updates was made available on July 22, 2023.

RISC-V support

riscv64 has recently been added to the official Debian architectures for support of 64-bit little-endian RISC-V hardware running the Linux kernel. We expect to have full riscv64 support in Debian 13 trixie. Updates on bootstrap, build daemon, porterbox, and development progress were recently shared by the team in a Bits from the Debian riscv64 porters post.

non-free-firmware

The Debian 12 bookworm archive now includes non-free-firmware; please be sure to update your apt sources.list if your systems requires such components for operation. If your previous sources.list included non-free for this purpose it may safely be removed.

apt sources.list

The Debian archive holds several components:

main: Contains DFSG-compliant packages, which do not rely on software outside this area to operate.
contrib: Contains packages that contain DFSG-compliant software, but have dependencies not in main.
non-free: Contains software that does not comply with the DFSG.
non-free-firmware: Firmware that is otherwise not part of the Debian system to enable use of Debian with hardware that requires such firmware.

Example of the sources.list file

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main

Example using the components:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main non-free-firmware
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main non-free-firmware

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main non-free-firmware
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main non-free-firmware

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main non-free-firmware
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main non-free-firmware

For more information and guidelines on proper configuration of the apt source.list file please see the Configuring Apt Sources - Wiki page.

Inside Debian

New Debian Members

Please welcome the following newest Debian Project Members:

Marius Gripsgard (mariogrip)
Mohammed Bilal (rmb)
Emmanuel Arias (amanu)
Robin Gustafsson (rgson)
Lukas Märdian (slyon)
David da Silva Polverari (polverari)

To find out more about our newest members or any Debian Developer, look for them on the Debian People list.

Security

Debian's Security Team releases current advisories on a daily basis. Some recently released advisories concern these packages:

trafficserver Several vulnerabilities were discovered in Apache Traffic Server, a reverse and forward proxy server, which could result in information disclosure or denial of service.

asterisk A flaw was found in Asterisk, an Open Source Private Branch Exchange. A buffer overflow vulnerability affects users that use PJSIP DNS resolver. This vulnerability is related to CVE-2022-24793. The difference is that this issue is in parsing the query record parse_query(), while the issue in CVE-2022-24793 is in parse_rr(). A workaround is to disable DNS resolution in PJSIP config (by setting nameserver_count to zero) or use an external resolver implementation instead.

flask It was discovered that in some conditions the Flask web framework may disclose a session cookie.

chromium Multiple security issues were discovered in Chromium, which could result in the execution of arbitrary code, denial of service or information disclosure.

Other

Popular packages

gpgv - GNU privacy guard signature verification tool. 99,053 installations. gpgv is actually a stripped-down version of gpg which is only able to check signatures. It is somewhat smaller than the fully-blown gpg and uses a different (and simpler) way to check that the public keys used to make the signature are valid. There are no configuration files and only a few options are implemented.

dmsetup - Linux Kernel Device Mapper userspace library. 77,769 installations. The Linux Kernel Device Mapper is the LVM (Linux Logical Volume Management) Team's implementation of a minimalistic kernel-space driver that handles volume management, while keeping knowledge of the underlying device layout in user-space. This makes it useful for not only LVM, but software raid, and other drivers that create "virtual" block devices.

sensible-utils - Utilities for sensible alternative selection. 96,001 daily users. This package provides a number of small utilities which are used by programs to sensibly select and spawn an appropriate browser, editor, or pager. The specific utilities included are: sensible-browser sensible-editor sensible-pager.

popularity-contest - The popularity-contest package. 90,758 daily users. The popularity-contest package sets up a cron job that will periodically anonymously submit to the Debian developers statistics about the most used Debian packages on the system. This information helps Debian make decisions such as which packages should go on the first CD. It also lets Debian improve future versions of the distribution so that the most popular packages are the ones which are installed automatically for new users.

New and noteworthy packages in unstable

Toolkit for scalable simulation of distributed applications SimGrid is a toolkit that provides core functionalities for the simulation of distributed applications in heterogeneous distributed environments. SimGrid can be used as a Grid simulator, a P2P simulator, a Cloud simulator, a MPI simulator, or a mix of all of them. The typical use-cases of SimGrid include heuristic evaluation, application prototyping, and real application development and tuning. This package contains the dynamic libraries and runtime.

LDraw mklist program 3D CAD programs and rendering programs using the LDraw parts library of LEGO parts rely on a file called parts.lst containing a list of all available parts. The program ldraw-mklist is used to generate this list from a directory of LDraw parts.

Open Lighting Architecture - RDM Responder Tests The DMX512 standard for Digital MultipleX is used for digital communication networks commonly used to control stage lighting and effects. The Remote Device Management protocol is an extension to DMX512, allowing bi-directional communication between RDM-compliant devices without disturbing other devices on the same connection. The Open Lighting Architecture (OLA) provides a plugin framework for distributing DMX512 control signals. The ola-rdm-tests package provides an automated way to check protocol compliance in RDM devices.

parsec-service Parsec is an abstraction layer that can be used to interact with hardware-backed security facilities such as the Hardware Security Module (HSM), the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), as well as firmware-backed and isolated software services. The core component of Parsec is the security service, provided by this package. The service is a background process that runs on the host platform and provides connectivity with the secure facilities of that host, exposing a platform-neutral API that can be consumed into different programming languages using a client library. For a client library implemented in Rust see the package librust-parsec-interface-dev.

Simple network calculator and lookup tool Process and lookup network addresses from the command line or CSV with ripalc. Output has a variety of customisable formats.

High performance, open source CPU/GPU miner and RandomX benchmark XMRig is a high performance, open source, cross platform RandomX, KawPow, CryptoNight, and GhostRider unified CPU/GPU miner and RandomX benchmark.

Ping, but with a graph - Rust source code This package contains the source for the Rust gping crate, packaged by debcargo for use with cargo and dh-cargo.

Once upon a time in Debian:

2014-07-31 The Technical committee choose libjpeg-turbo as the default JPEG decoder.

2010-08-01 DebConf10 starts à New York City, USA

2007-08-05 Debian Maintainers approved by vote

2009-08-05 Jeff Chimene files bug #540000 against live-initramfs.

Calls for help

The Publicity team calls for volunteers and help!

Your Publicity team is asking for help from you our readers, developers, and interested parties to contribute to the Debian news effort. We implore you to submit items that may be of interest to our community and also ask for your assistance with translations of the news into (your!) other languages along with the needed second or third set of eyes to assist in editing our work before publishing. If you can share a small amount of your time to aid our team which strives to keep all of us informed, we need you. Please reach out to us via IRC on #debian-publicity on OFTC.net, or our public mailing list, or via email at press@debian.org for sensitive or private inquiries.

Registration and the Call for Proposals for DebConf23 are now open!

Sahil Dhiman — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 18:17:00 +0200

For DebConf23, we're pleased to announce opening of registration and call for proposal. Following is the info text -

Registration and the Call for Proposals for DebConf23 are now open. The 24th edition of the Debian annual conference will be held from September 10th to September 17th, 2023, in Infopark, Kochi, India. The main conference will be preceded by DebCamp, which will take place from September 3rd to September 9th, 2023.

The registration form can be accessed by creating an account on the DebConf23 website and clicking on "register" in the profile section. The number of attendees is capped at 300 this year. All registrations will be reviewed by bursary team, and completing the registration form does not guarantee attendance.

As always, basic registration for DebConf is free of charge for attendees. If you are attending the conference in a professional capacity or as a representative of your company, we kindly ask that you consider registering in one of our paid categories to help cover the costs of organizing the conference and to support subsidizing other community members.

The last day to register with guaranteed swag is 5th August.

We also encourage eligible individuals to apply for a diversity bursary. Travel, food, and accommodation bursaries are available. More details can be found on the bursary info page.

The last day to apply for a bursary is 1st July. Applicants should receive feedback on their bursary application by 16th July.

The call for proposals for talks, discussions and other activities is also open. To submit a proposal you need to create an account on the website, and then use the "Submit Talk" button in the profile section. The last day to submit and have your proposal be considered for the main conference schedule, with video coverage guaranteed, is 13th August.

DebConf23 is also accepting sponsors. Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org or visit the DebConf23 website.

Debian 12 "bookworm" has been released!

Ana Guerrero Lopez, Laura Arjona Reina and Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 23:30:00 +0200

We're happy to announce the release of Debian 12, codenamed bookworm!

Want to install it? Choose your favourite installation media and read the installation manual. You can also use an official cloud image directly on your cloud provider, or try Debian prior to installing it using our "live" images.

Already a happy Debian user and you only want to upgrade? You can easily upgrade from your current Debian 11 "bullseye" installation; please read the release notes.

Do you want to celebrate the release? We provide some bookworm artwork that you can share or use as base for your own creations. Follow the conversation about bookworm in social media via the #ReleasingDebianBookworm and #Debian12Bookworm hashtags or join an in-person or online Release Party!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (March and April 2023)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Thu, 25 May 2023 12:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

James Lu (jlu)
Hugh McMaster (hmc)
Agathe Porte (gagath)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Soren Stoutner
Matthijs Kooijman
Vinay Keshava
Jarrah Gosbell
Carlos Henrique Lima Melara
Cordell Bloor

Congratulations!

proxmox Platinum Sponsor of DebConf23

Sahil Dhiman — Tue, 23 May 2023 11:17:00 +0200

We are pleased to announce that Proxmox has committed to sponsor DebConf23 as a Platinum Sponsor.

Proxmox develops powerful, yet easy-to-use open-source server software. The product portfolio from Proxmox, including server virtualization, backup, and email security, helps companies of any size, sector, or industry to simplify their IT infrastructures. The Proxmox solutions are based on the great Debian platform, and we are happy that we can give back to the community by sponsoring DebConf23.

Thank you very much Proxmox, for your support of DebConf23!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf23 will take place from September 10th to 17th, 2022 in Kochi, India, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from September 3rd to 9th.

And DebConf23 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf23 website at https://debconf23.debconf.org/sponsors/become-a-sponsor/.

Infomaniak First Platinum Sponsor of DebConf23

Sahil Dhiman — Sun, 21 May 2023 14:08:00 +0200

We are pleased to announce that Infomaniak has committed to sponsor DebConf23 as a Platinum Sponsor.

Infomaniak is a key player in the European Cloud and the leading developer of Web technologies in Switzerland. It aims to be an independent European alternative to the web giants and is committed to an ethical and sustainable Web that respects privacy and creates local jobs. Infomaniak develops cloud solutions (IaaS, PaaS, VPS), productivity tools for online collaboration and video and radio streaming services.

The company uses only renewable electricity, offsets 200% of its CO2 emissions and extends the life of its servers up to 15 years. The company cools its infrastructure with filtered air, without air conditioning, and is building a new data centre that will fully recycle the energy it consumes to heat up to 6,000 homes.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Infomaniak is contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Infomaniak, for your support of DebConf23!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf23 will take place from September 10th to 17th, 2022 in Kochi, India, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from September 3rd to 9th.

Debian Project Leader Election 2023, Jonathan Carter re-elected

Donald Norwood — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 21:00:00 +0200

The voting period for the Debian Project Leader election has ended, with all of the votes tallied we announce the winner is: Jonathan Carter, who has been elected for the forth time.

Congratulations! The new term for the project leader started on 2023-04-21.

279 of 997 Developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the results of the voting are available on the Debian Project Leader Elections 2023 page.

Many thanks all of our Developers for voting.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2023)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 16:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Sahil Dhiman (sahil)
Jakub Ružička (jru)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Josenilson Ferreira da Silva
Ileana Dumitrescu
Douglas Kosovic
Israel Galadima
Timothy Pearson
Blake Lee
Vasyl Gello
Joachim Zobel
Amin Bandali

Congratulations!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2022)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 16:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Dennis Braun (snd)
Raúl Benencia (rul)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Gioele Barabucci
Agathe Porte
Braulio Henrique Marques Souto
Matthias Geiger
Alper Nebi Yasak
Fabian Grünbichler
Lance Lin

Congratulations!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (September and October 2022)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 16:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Abraham Raji (abraham)
Phil Morrell (emorrp1)
Anupa Ann Joseph (anupa)
Mathias Gibbens (gibmat)
Arun Kumar Pariyar (arun)
Tino Didriksen (tinodidriksen)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Gavin Lai
Martin Dosch
Taavi Väänänen
Daichi Fukui
Daniel Gröber
Vivek K J
William Wilson
Ruben Pollan

Congratulations!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2022)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 16:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Sakirnth Nagarasa (sakirnth)
Philip Rinn (rinni)
Arnaud Rebillout (arnaudr)
Marcos Talau (talau)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Xiao Sheng Wen
Andrea Pappacoda
Robin Jarry
Ben Westover
Michel Alexandre Salim

Congratulations!

Debian turns 29!

Laura Arjona Reina — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 13:00:00 +0200

Today is Debian's 29th anniversary. We recently wrote about some ideas to celebrate the DebianDay, and several events have been planned in more than 14 locations. You can join the party or organise something yourselves too!

Today is also an opportunity for you to start or resume your contributions to Debian. For example, you can have a look at our list of Debian Teams, install the how-can-i-help package and see if there is a bug in any of the software that you use that you can help to fix, start designing your artwork candidate for the next release, contribute small tips on how to install Debian on your machines to our wiki pages https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/, or put a Debian live image in an USB memory and give it to some person near you, who still didn't discover Debian.

Our favorite operating system is the result of all the work we do together. Thanks to everybody who has contributed in these 29 years, and happy birthday Debian!

Debian Day 2022 - call for celebration

The Debian Publicity Team — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 17:00:00 +0200

Every year on August 16th, the anniversary of the Debian Project takes place. And several communities around the world celebrate this date by organizing local meetings in an event called "Debian Day".

So, how about celebrating the 29th anniversary of the Debian Project in 2022 in your city?

We invite you and your local community to organize Debian Day by hosting an event with talks, workshops, bug squashing party, OpenPGP keysigning, etc. Or simply holding a meeting between people who like Debian in a bar/pizzeria/cafeteria/restaurant to celebrate. In other words, any type of meeting is valid!

But remember that the COVID-19 pandemic is not over yet, so take all necessary measures to protect attendees.

As the 16th of August falls on a Tuesday, if you think it's better to organize it during the weekend, no problem. The importance is to celebrate the Debian Project.

Remember to add your city to the Debian Day wiki page

There is a list of Debian Local Groups around the world. If your city is listed, talk to them to organize DebianDay together.

There is a list of Debian Local Groups around the world. If your city is listed, talk to them to organized the Debian Day together.

Let's use hashtags #DebianDay #DebianDay2022 on social media.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (May and June 2022)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 16:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Geoffroy Berret (kaliko)
Arnaud Ferraris (aferraris)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Alec Leanas
Christopher Michael Obbard
Lance Lin
Stefan Kropp
Matteo Bini
Tino Didriksen

Congratulations!

DebConf22 closes in Prizren and DebConf23 dates announced

Debian Publicity Team — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 10:30:00 +0200

On Sunday 24 July 2022, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. Hosting 260 attendees from 38 different countries over a combined 91 event talks, discussion sessions, Birds of a Feather (BoF) gatherings, workshops, and activities, DebConf22 was a large success.

The conference was preceded by the annual DebCamp held 10 July to 16 July which focused on individual work and team sprints for in-person collaboration towards developing Debian. In particular, this year there have been sprints to advance development of Mobian/Debian on mobile, reproducible builds and Python in Debian, and a BootCamp for newcomers, to get introduced to Debian and have some hands-on experience with using it and contributing to the community.

The actual Debian Developers Conference started on Sunday 17 July 2022. Together with activities such as the traditional 'Bits from the DPL' talk, the continuous key-signing party, lightning talks and the announcement of next year's DebConf (DebConf23 in Kochi, India), there were several sessions related to programming language teams such as Python, Perl and Ruby, as well as news updates on several projects and internal Debian teams, discussion sessions (BoFs) from many technical teams (Long Term Support, Android tools, Debian Derivatives, Debian Installer and Images team, Debian Science...) and local communities (Debian Brasil, Debian India, the Debian Local Teams), along with many other events of interest regarding Debian and free software.

The schedule was updated each day with planned and ad-hoc activities introduced by attendees over the course of the entire conference. Several activities that couldn\'t be organized in past years due to the COVID pandemic returned to the conference\'s schedule: a job fair, open-mic and poetry night, the traditional Cheese and Wine party, the group photos and the Day Trip.

For those who were not able to attend, most of the talks and sessions were recorded for live streams with videos made, available through the Debian meetings archive website. Almost all of the sessions facilitated remote participation via IRC messaging apps or online collaborative text documents.

The DebConf22 website will remain active for archival purposes and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf23 will be held in Kochi, India, from September 10 to September 16, 2023. As tradition follows before the next DebConf the local organizers in India will start the conference activites with DebCamp (September 03 to September 09, 2023), with particular focus on individual and team work towards improving the distribution.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the web page about the Code of Conduct in DebConf22 website for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf22, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Lenovo, Infomaniak, ITP Prizren and Google.

About Debian

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Lenovo

As a global technology leader manufacturing a wide portfolio of connected products, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and workstations as well as AR/VR devices, smart home/office and data center solutions, Lenovo understands how critical open systems and platforms are to a connected world.

About Infomaniak

Infomaniak is Switzerland\'s largest web-hosting company, also offering backup and storage services, solutions for event organizers, live-streaming and video on demand services. It wholly owns its datacenters and all elements critical to the functioning of the services and products provided by the company (both software and hardware).

About ITP Prizren

Innovation and Training Park Prizren intends to be a changing and boosting element in the area of ICT, agro-food and creatives industries, through the creation and management of a favourable environment and efficient services for SMEs, exploiting different kinds of innovations that can contribute to Kosovo to improve its level of development in industry and research, bringing benefits to the economy and society of the country as a whole.

About Google

Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products such as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware.

Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf for more than ten years, and is also a Debian partner sponsoring parts of Salsa's continuous integration infrastructure within Google Cloud Platform.

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf22 web page at https://debconf22.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.

DebConf22 welcomes its sponsors!

The Debian Publicity Team — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 09:00:00 +0200

DebConf22 is taking place in Prizren, Kosovo, from 17th to 24th July, 2022. It is the 23rd edition of the Debian conference and organizers are working hard to create another interesting and fruitful event for attendees.

We would like to warmly welcome the sponsors of DebConf22, and introduce you to them.

We have four Platinum sponsors.

Our first Platinum sponsor is Lenovo. As a global technology leader manufacturing a wide portfolio of connected products, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and workstations as well as AR/VR devices, smart home/office and data center solutions, Lenovo understands how critical open systems and platforms are to a connected world.

Infomaniak is our second Platinum sponsor. Infomaniak is Switzerland's largest web-hosting company, also offering backup and storage services, solutions for event organizers, live-streaming and video on demand services. It wholly owns its datacenters and all elements critical to the functioning of the services and products provided by the company (both software and hardware).

The ITP Prizren is our third Platinum sponsor. ITP Prizren intends to be a changing and boosting element in the area of ICT, agro-food and creatives industries, through the creation and management of a favourable environment and efficient services for SMEs, exploiting different kinds of innovations that can contribute to Kosovo to improve its level of development in industry and research, bringing benefits to the economy and society of the country as a whole.

Google is our fourth Platinum sponsor. Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products such as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf for more than ten years, and is also a Debian partner sponsoring parts of Salsa's continuous integration infrastructure within Google Cloud Platform.

Our Gold sponsors are:

Roche, a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare.

Microsoft, enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Ipko Telecommunications, provides telecommunication services and it is the first and the most dominant mobile operator which offers fast-speed mobile internet – 3G and 4G networks in Kosovo.

Ubuntu, the Operating System delivered by Canonical.

U.S. Agency for International Development, leads international development and humanitarian efforts to save lives, reduce poverty, strengthen democratic governance and help people progress beyond assistance.

Our Silver sponsors are:

Pexip, is the video communications platform that solves the needs of large organizations. Deepin is a Chinese commercial company focusing on the development and service of Linux-based operating systems. Hudson River Trading, a company researching and developing automated trading algorithms using advanced mathematical techniques. Amazon Web Services (AWS), is one of the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platforms, offering over 175 fully featured services from data centers globally. The Bern University of Applied Sciences with near 7,800 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital. credativ, a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software and also a Debian development partner. Collabora, a global consultancy delivering Open Source software solutions to the commercial world. Arm: with the world’s Best SoC Design Portfolio, Arm powered solutions have been supporting innovation for more than 30 years and are deployed in over 225 billion chips to date. GitLab, an open source end-to-end software development platform with built-in version control, issue tracking, code review, CI/CD, and more. Two Sigma, rigorous inquiry, data analysis, and invention to help solve the toughest challenges across financial services. Starlabs, builds software experiences and focus on building teams that deliver creative Tech Solutions for our clients. Solaborate, has the world’s most integrated and powerful virtual care delivery platform. Civil Infrastructure Platform, a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation, establishing an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software. Matanel Foundation, operates in Israel, as its first concern is to preserve the cohesion of a society and a nation plagued by divisions.

Bronze sponsors:

bevuta IT, Kutia, Univention, Freexian.

And finally, our Supporter level sponsors:

Altus Metrum, Linux Professional Institute, Olimex, Trembelat, Makerspace IC Prizren, Cloud68.co, Gandi.net, ISG.EE, IPKO Foundation, The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.

DebConf22 starts today in Prizren

The Debian Publicity Team — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 09:00:00 +0200

DebConf22, the 23rd annual Debian Conference, is taking place in Prizren, Kosovo from July 17th to 24th, 2022.

Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at Innovation and Training Park (ITP) in Prizren, Kosovo, to participate and work in a conference exclusively run by volunteers.

Today the main conference starts with over 270 attendants expected and 82 activities scheduled, including 45-minute and 20-minute talks and team meetings ("BoF"), workshops, and a job fair, as well as a variety of other events.

The full schedule at https://debconf2.debconf.org/schedule/ is updated every day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees during the whole conference.

If you want to engage remotely, you can follow the video streaming available from the DebConf22 website of the events happening in the three talk rooms: Drini, Lumbardhi and Ereniku. Or you can join the conversation about what is happening in the talk rooms: #debconf-drini, #debconf-lumbardhi and #debconf-ereniku (all those channels in the OFTC IRC network).

You can also follow the live coverage of news about DebConf22 on https://micronews.debian.org or the @debian profile in your favorite social network.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcoming environment for all participants. See the web page about the Code of Conduct in DebConf22's website for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf22, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Lenovo, Infomaniak, ITP Prizren and Google.

(Unofficial) Debian Perl Sprint 2022

gregor herrmann — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 17:35:00 +0200

Three members of the Debian Perl Group met in Hamburg between May 23 and May 30 2022 as part of the Debian Reunion Hamburg to continue perl development work for Bookworm and to work on QA tasks across our 3800+ packages.

The participants had a good time and met other Debian friends. The sprint was also productive:

pkg-perl-tools and dh-make-perl were improved and extended.
More than 50 uploads were done, and more than 30 bugs were fixed or at least triaged.
autopkgtests were added to lots of packages.
Some requests to remove obsolete packages were filed as well.

The more detailed report was posted to the Debian Perl mailing list.

The participants would like to thank the Debian Reunion Hamburg organizers for providing the framework for our sprint, all sponsors of the event, and all donors to the Debian project who helped to cover parts of our expenses.

DebConf22 Cheese and Wine Party

The Debian Publicity Team — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 18:00:00 +0200

In less than two days we will be in Prizren to start DebCamp and DebConf22 \o/

This C&W is the 18th official DebConf Cheese and Wine party. The first C&W was improvised in Helsinki during DebConf 5, in the so-called "French" room. Cheese and Wine parties are now a tradition for DebConf.

The event is very simple: bring good edible stuff from your country. We like cheese and wine, but we love the surprising stuff that people bring from all around the world or regions of Kosovo. So, you can bring non-alcoholic drinks or a typical food that you would like to share as well. Even if you don't bring anything, feel free to participate: our priorities are our attendants and free cheese.

We have to organize for a great party. An important part is planning - We want to know what you are bringing, in order to prepare the labels and organizing other things.

So, please go to our wiki page and add what you will bring!

If you don't have time to buy before travel, we list some places where you can buy cheese and wine in . There are more information about C&W, what you can bring, vegan cheese, Kosovo customs regulations and non-alcoholic drinks at our site.

C&W will happen on July 19th, 2022 (Tuesday) after 19h30min.

We are looking forward to seeing you all here!

Debian welcomes its new Outreachy interns

Abhijith Pa — Mon, 30 May 2022 12:00:00 +0200

Debian continues participating in Outreachy, and we're excited to announce that Debian has selected two interns for the Outreachy May 2022 - August 2022 round.

Israel Galadima and Michael Ikwuegbu will work on Improve yarn package manager integration with Debian, mentored by Akshay S Dinesh and Pirate Praveen.

Congratulations and welcome to Israel Galadima and Michael Ikwuegbu!

Debian welcomes the 2022 GSOC interns

Abhijith Pa — Tue, 24 May 2022 13:15:00 +0200

We are very excited to announce that Debian has selected three interns to work under mentorship on a variety of projects with us during the Google Summer of Code.

Here are the list of the projects, interns, and details of the tasks to be performed.

Project: Android SDK Tools in Debian

Interns: Nkwuda Sunday Cletus and Raman Sarda

The deliverables of this project will mostly be finished packages submitted to Debian sid, both for new packages and updated packages. Whenever possible, we should also try to get patches submitted and merged upstream in the Android sources.

Project: Project: Quality Assurance for Biological and Medical Applications inside Debian

Interns: Mohammed Bilal

Deliverables of the project: Continuous integration tests for all Debian Med applications (life sciences, medical imaging, others), Quality Assurance review and bug fixing.

Congratulations and welcome to all the interns!

The Google Summer of Code program is possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian Developers and Debian Contributors that dedicate part of their free time to mentor interns and outreach tasks.

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the interns' weekly reports on the debian-outreach mailing-list, chat with us on our IRC channel or reach out to the individual projects' team mailing lists.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (March and April 2022)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Fri, 13 May 2022 17:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Henry-Nicolas Tourneur (hntourne)
Nick Black (dank)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Jan Mojžíš
Philip Wyett
Thomas Ward
Fabio Fantoni
Mohammed Bilal
Guilherme de Paula Xavier Segundo

Congratulations!

Google Platinum Sponsor of DebConf22

The Debian Publicity Team — Thu, 05 May 2022 10:00:00 +0200

We are very pleased to announce that Google has committed to support DebConf22 as a Platinum sponsor. This is the third year in a row that Google is sponsoring The Debian Conference with the higher tier!

Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware.

Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf since more than ten years, and is also a Debian partner sponsoring parts of Salsa's continuous integration infrastructure within Google Cloud Platform.

With this additional commitment as Platinum Sponsor for DebConf22, Google contributes to make possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Google, for your support of DebConf22!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf22 will take place from July 17th to 24th, 2022 at the Innovation and Training Park (ITP) in Prizren, Kosovo, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from July 10th to 16th.

And DebConf22 is still accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf22 website at https://debconf22.debconf.org/sponsors/become-a-sponsor.

DebConf22 bursary applications and call for papers are closing in less than 72 hours!

The Debian Publicity Team — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 09:30:00 +0200

If you intend to apply for a DebConf22 bursary and/or submit an event proposal and have not yet done so, please proceed as soon as possible!

Bursary applications for DebConf22 will be accepted until May 1st at 23:59 UTC. Applications submitted after this deadline will not be considered.

You can apply for a bursary when you register for the conference.

Remember that giving a talk or organising an event is considered towards your bursary; if you have a submission to make, submit it even if it is only sketched-out. You will be able to detail it later. DebCamp plans can be entered in the usual Sprints page at the Debian wiki.

Please make sure to double-check your accommodation choices (dates and venue). Details about accommodation arrangements can be found on the accommodation page.

Event proposals will be accepted until May 1st at 23:59 UTC too.

Events are not limited to traditional presentations or informal sessions (BoFs): we welcome submissions of tutorials, performances, art installations, debates, or any other format of event that you think would be of interest to the Debian community.

Regular sessions may either be 20 or 45 minutes long (including time for questions), other kinds of sessions (workshops, demos, lightning talks, and so on) could have different durations. Please choose the most suitable duration for your event and explain any special requests. You can submit it here.

The the 23rd edition of DebConf will take place from July 17th to 24th, 2022 at the Innovation and Training Park (ITP) in Prizren, Kosovo, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from July 10th to 16th.

See you in Prizren!

Debian Project Leader election 2022, Jonathan Carter re-elected

Laura Arjona Reina — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 19:30:00 +0200

The voting period and tally of votes for the Debian Project Leader election has just concluded, and the winner is Jonathan Carter, who has been elected for third time. Congratulations! The new term for the project leader starts on 2022-04-21.

354 of 1,023 Developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the results of the voting are available on the Debian Project Leader Elections 2022 page.

Many thanks to Felix Lechner, Jonathan Carter and Hideki Yamane for their campaigns, and to our Developers for voting.

ITP Prizren Platinum Sponsor of DebConf22

The Debian Publicity Team — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0200

We are very pleased to announce that ITP - Innovation and Training Park Prizren has committed to supporting DebConf22 as a Platinum sponsor. Also, ITP Prizren will host the Conference for all 15 days!

The ITP Prizren intends to be a changing and boosting element in the area of ICT, agro-food and creatives industries, through the creation and management of a favourable environment and efficient services for SMEs, exploiting different kinds of innovations that can contribute to Kosovo to improve its level of development in industry and research, bringing benefits to the economy and society of the country as a whole.

ITP Prizren is a focal point in the Balkan region for innovation, business and skills development, and a source of innovative and successful ideas.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, ITP Prizren is contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much ITP Prizren, for your support of DebConf22!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf22 will take place from July 17th to 24th, 2022 at the Innovation and Training Park (ITP) in Prizren, Kosovo, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from July 10th to 16th.

Infomaniak Platinum Sponsor of DebConf22

The Debian Publicity Team — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 12:30:00 +0200

We are very pleased to announce that Infomaniak has committed to support DebConf22 as a Platinum sponsor. This is the fourth year in a row that Infomaniak is sponsoring The Debian Conference with the higher tier!

Infomaniak is Switzerland's largest web-hosting company, also offering backup and storage services, solutions for event organizers, live-streaming and video on demand services. It wholly owns its datacenters and all elements critical to the functioning of the services and products provided by the company (both software and hardware).

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Infomaniak contributes to make possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Infomaniak, for your support of DebConf22!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf22 will take place from July 17th to 24th, 2022 at the Innovation and Training Park (ITP) in Prizren, Kosovo, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from July 10th to 16th.

Lenovo Platinum Sponsor of DebConf22

The Debian Publicity Team — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 11:00:00 +0200

We are very pleased to announce that Lenovo has committed to supporting DebConf22 as a Platinum sponsor. This is the fourth year in a row that Lenovo is sponsoring The Debian Conference with the higher tier!

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Lenovo is contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Lenovo, for your support of DebConf22!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf22 will take place from July 17th to 24th, 2022 at the Innovation and Training Park (ITP) in Prizren, Kosovo, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from July 10th to 16th.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2022)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 17:00:00 +0100

The following contributor got his Debian Developer account in the last two months:

Francisco Vilmar Cardoso Ruviaro (vilmar)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Lu YaNing
Mathias Gibbens
Markus Blatt
Peter Blackman
David da Silva Polverari

Congratulations!

DebConf22 registration and call for proposals are open!

The Debian Publicity Team — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 21:10:00 +0100

Registration for DebConf22 is now open. The the 23rd edition of DebConf will take place from July 17th to 24th, 2022 at the Innovation and Training Park (ITP) in Prizren, Kosovo, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from July 10th to 16th.

Along with the registration, the DebConf content team announced the call for proposals. Deadline to submit a proposal to be considered in the main schedule is April 15th, 2022 23:59:59 UTC (Friday).

DebConf is an event open to everyone, no matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you. We want to increase visibility of our diversity and work towards inclusion at Debian Project, drawing our attendees from people just starting their Debian journey, to seasoned Debian Developers or active contributors in different areas like packaging, translation, documentation, artwork, testing, specialized derivatives, user support and many other. In other words, all are welcome.

To register for the event, log into the registration system and fill out the form. You will be able to edit and update your registration at any point. However, in order to help the organizers have a better estimate of how many people will attend the event, we would appreciate if you could access the system and confirm (or cancel) your participation in the conference as soon as you know if you will be able to come. The last day to confirm or cancel is July 1st, 2022 23:59:59 UTC. If you don't confirm or you register after this date, you can come to the DebConf22 but we cannot guarantee availability of accommodation, food and swag (t-shirt, bag, and so on).

For more information about registration, please visit registration information.

Submitting an event

You can now submit an event proposal. Events are not limited to traditional presentations or informal sessions (BoFs): we welcome submissions of tutorials, performances, art installations, debates, or any other format of event that you think would be of interest to the Debian community.

In order to submit a talk, you will need to create an account on the website. We suggest that Debian Salsa account holders (including DDs and DMs) use their Salsa login when creating an account. However, this isn't required, as you can sign up with an e-mail address and password.

Bursary for travel, accommodation and meals

In an effort to widen the diversity of DebConf attendees, the Debian Project allocates a part of the financial resources obtained through sponsorships to pay for bursaries (travel, accommodation, and/or meals) for participants who request this support when they register.

As resources are limited, we will examine the requests and decide who will receive the bursaries. They will be destined:

To active Debian contributors.
To promote diversity: newcomers to Debian and/or DebConf, especially from under-represented communities.

Giving a talk, organizing an event or helping during DebConf22 is taken intoa account when deciding upon your bursary, so please mention them in your bursary application.

For more information about bursaries, please visit applying for a bursary to DebConf.

Attention: the registration for DebConf22 will be open until the conference starts, but the deadline to apply for bursaries using the registration form before May 1st, 2022 23:59:59 UTC. This deadline is necessary in order to the organizers use time to analyze the requests, and for successful applicants to prepare for the conference.

DebConf would not be possible without the generous support of all our sponsors, especially our Platinum Sponsors Lenovo and Infomaniak.

DebConf22 is accepting sponsors; if you are interested, or think you know of others who would be willing to help, please get in touch!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2021)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 17:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Douglas Andrew Torrance (dtorrance)
Mark Lee Garrett (lee)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Lukas Matthias Märdian
Paulo Roberto Alves de Oliveira
Sergio Almeida Cipriano Junior
Julien Lamy
Kristian Nielsen
Jeremy Paul Arnold Sowden
Jussi Tapio Pakkanen
Marius Gripsgard
Martin Budaj
Peymaneh
Tommi Petteri Höynälänmaa

Congratulations!

2,000 fonts for Debian

Gürkan Myczko — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 18:45:00 +0100

Debian comes with tons of fonts for all kinds of purposes, you can easily list them (almost) all with: apt-cache search ^fonts-.

However, sometimes they are not in their latest version, or as a user you would like to get access to new fonts that are not present in Debian stable yet.

With the tool fnt you can easily preview, and install fonts from Debian sid and Google Web Fonts (that's about 2,000 fonts that are DSFG compliant). Any user can use the tool to install fonts only for the user itself, or the system administrator can run it as root to install the fonts system wide.

The package fnt is already in Bookworm, so if you run Debian testing you can use it to get, test and use many fonts that are in their way of being packaged in Debian:

ITP #973779 fnt install scheherazadenew
RFP #944140 fnt install arsenal
RFP #757249 fnt install ekmukta
RFP #724629 fnt install firasans
RFP #766211 fnt install orbitron
RFP #803690 fnt install pompiere
RFP #754784 fnt install raleway
RFP #827735 fnt install reemkufi
RFP #986999 fnt install redhat{display,mono,text}

If you want to learn more you can have a look at the wiki page about fonts (https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts), and if you want to contribute or maintain fonts in Debian, don't hesitate to join the Fonts Team!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (September and October 2021)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 13:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Bastian Germann (bage)
Gürkan Myczko (tar)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Clay Stan
Daniel Milde
David da Silva Polverari
Sunday Cletus Nkwuda
Ma Aiguo
Sakirnth Nagarasa

Congratulations!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2021)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 17:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Aloïs Micard (creekorful)
Sophie Brun (sophieb)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Douglas Andrew Torrance
Marcel Fourné
Marcos Talau
Sebastian Geiger

Congratulations!

DebConf21 online closes

Laura Arjona Reina and Donald Norwood — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 15:00:00 +0200

On Saturday 28 August 2021, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close.

DebConf21 has been held online for the second time, due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease pandemic.

All of the sessions have been streamed, with a variety of ways of participating: via IRC messaging, online collaborative text documents, and video conferencing meeting rooms.

With 740 registered attendees from more than 15 different countries and a total of over 70 event talks, discussion sessions, Birds of a Feather (BoF) gatherings and other activities, DebConf21 was a large success.

The setup made for former online events involving Jitsi, OBS, Voctomix, SReview, nginx, Etherpad, a web-based frontend for voctomix has been improved and used for DebConf21 successfully. All components of the video infrastructure are free software, and configured through the Video Team's public ansible repository.

The DebConf21 schedule included a wide variety of events, grouped in several tracks:

Introduction to Free Software and Debian,
Packaging, policy, and Debian infrastructure,
Systems administration, automation and orchestration,
Cloud and containers,
Security,
Community, diversity, local outreach and social context,
Internationalization, Localization and Accessibility,
Embedded and Kernel,
Debian Blends and Debian derived distributions,
Debian in Arts and Science
and other.

The talks have been streamed using two rooms, and several of these activities have been held in different languages: Telugu, Portuguese, Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi, Marathi and English, allowing a more diverse audience to enjoy and participate.

Between talks, the video stream has been showing the usual sponsors on the loop, but also some additional clips including photos from previous DebConfs, fun facts about Debian and short shout-out videos sent by attendees to communicate with their Debian friends.

The Debian publicity team did the usual «live coverage» to encourage participation with micronews announcing the different events. The DebConf team also provided several mobile options to follow the schedule.

For those who were not able to participate, most of the talks and sessions are already available through the Debian meetings archive website, and the remaining ones will appear in the following days.

The DebConf21 website will remain active for archival purposes and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf22 is planned to be held in Prizren, Kosovo, in July 2022.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. During the conference, several teams (Front Desk, Welcome team and Community team) have been available to help so participants get their best experience in the conference, and find solutions to any issue that may arise. See the web page about the Code of Conduct in DebConf21 website for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf21, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Lenovo, Infomaniak, Roche, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google.

About Debian

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Lenovo

About Infomaniak

Infomaniak is Switzerland's largest web-hosting company, also offering backup and storage services, solutions for event organizers, live-streaming and video on demand services. It wholly owns its datacenters and all elements critical to the functioning of the services and products provided by the company (both software and hardware).

About Roche

Roche is a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare. More than 100.000 employees worldwide work towards solving some of the greatest challenges for humanity using science and technology. Roche is strongly involved in publicly funded collaborative research projects with other industrial and academic partners and have supported DebConf since 2017.

About Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 175 fully featured services from data centers globally (in 77 Availability Zones within 24 geographic regions). AWS customers include the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises and leading government agencies.

About Google

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf21 web page at https://debconf21.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.

DebConf21 welcomes its sponsors!

Laura Arjona Reina, Jean-Pierre Giraud — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 19:15:00 +0200

DebConf21 is taking place online, from 24 August to 28 August 2021. It is the 22nd Debian conference, and organizers and participants are working hard together at creating interesting and fruitful events.

We would like to warmly welcome the 19 sponsors of DebConf21, and introduce them to you.

We have five Platinum sponsors.

Our next Platinum sponsor is Infomaniak. Infomaniak is Switzerland's largest web-hosting company, also offering backup and storage services, solutions for event organizers, live-streaming and video on demand services. It wholly owns its datacenters and all elements critical to the functioning of the services and products provided by the company (both software and hardware).

Roche is our third Platinum sponsor. Roche is a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare. More than 100,000 employees worldwide work towards solving some of the greatest challenges for humanity using science and technology. Roche is strongly involved in publicly funded collaborative research projects with other industrial and academic partners and has supported DebConf since 2017.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is our fourth Platinum sponsor. Amazon Web Services is one of the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 175 fully featured services from data centers globally (in 77 Availability Zones within 24 geographic regions). AWS customers include the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises and leading government agencies.

Google is our fifth Platinum sponsor. Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products such as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf for more than ten years, and is also a Debian partner sponsoring parts of Salsa's continuous integration infrastructure within Google Cloud Platform.

Our Gold sponsor is the Matanel Foundation. The Matanel Foundation operates in Israel, as its first concern is to preserve the cohesion of a society and a nation plagued by divisions. The Matanel Foundation also works in Europe, in Africa and in South America.

Our Silver sponsors are: arm: the World’s Best SoC Design Portfolio, Arm powered solutions have been supporting innovation for more than 30 years and are deployed in over 160 billion chips to date, Hudson-Trading, a company researching and developing automated trading algorithms using advanced mathematical techniques, Ubuntu the Operating System delivered by Canonical, Globo, the largest media conglomerate in Brazil, founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1925 and distributing high-quality content across multiple platforms, Two Sigma, rigorous inquiry, data analysis, and invention to help solve the toughest challenges across financial services and GitLab, an open source end-to-end software development platform with built-in version control, issue tracking, code review, CI/CD, and more.

Bronze sponsors: Univention, Gandi.net, daskeyboard, InterFace AG and credativ.

And finally, our Supporter level sponsor, ISG.EE.

Participating in DebConf21 online

The 22nd Debian Conference is being held online, due to COVID-19, from August 24 to 28, 2021. Talks, discussions, panels and other activities run from 12:00 to 02:00 UTC. Visit the DebConf21 website at https://debconf21.debconf.org to learn about the complete schedule, watch the live streaming and join the different communication channels for participating in the conference.

Lenovo, Infomaniak, Roche, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google, Platinum Sponsors of DebConf21

Laura Arjona Reina, Jean-Pierre Giraud, — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 10:30:00 +0200

We are very pleased to announce that Lenovo, Infomaniak, Roche, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google, have committed to supporting DebConf21 as Platinum sponsors.

Roche Roche is a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare. More than 100.000 employees worldwide work towards solving some of the greatest challenges for humanity using science and technology. Roche is strongly involved in publicly funded collaborative research projects with other industrial and academic partners and have supported DebConf since 2017.

With these commitments as Platinum Sponsors, Lenovo, Infomaniak, Roche, Amazon Web Services and Google are contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much for your support of DebConf21!

Participating in DebConf21 online

The 22nd Debian Conference is being held Online, due to COVID-19, from August 22nd to 28th, 2021. There are 8 days of activities, running from 10:00 to 01:00 UTC. Visit the DebConf21 website at https://debconf21.debconf.org to learn about the complete schedule, watch the live streaming and join the different communication channels for participating in the conference.

Debian celebrates our 28th Anniversary!

Donald Norwood — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 11:01:00 +0200

Today is Debian's 28th anniversary. We send all of our gratitude and love to the many Contributors, Developers, and Users who have helped this vision and project.

There are many celebrations of #DebianDay happening around the world, perhaps one is local to you? Later this month the celebration continues with #DebConf21 which will be held Online during August 24 through August 28, 2021.

Debian 11 "bullseye" has been released!

Ana Guerrero Lopez, Laura Arjona Reina and Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sat, 14 Aug 2021 23:30:00 +0200

We're happy to announce the release of Debian 11, codenamed bullseye!

Already a happy Debian user and you only want to upgrade? You can easily upgrade from your current Debian 10 "buster" installation; please read the release notes.

Do you want to celebrate the release? We provide some bullseye artwork that you can share or use as base for your own creations. Follow the conversation about bullseye in social media via the #ReleasingDebianBullseye and #Debian11Bullseye hashtags or join an in-person or online Release Party!

Debian User Forums changes and updates.

Donald Norwood — Wed, 11 Aug 2021 13:00:00 +0200

Several issues were brought before the Debian Community team regarding responsiveness, tone, and needed software updates to forums.debian.net. The question was asked, ‘who’s in charge?’

Over the course of the discussion several Debian Developers volunteered to help by providing a presence on the forums from Debian and to assist with the necessary changes to keep the service up and running.

We are happy to announce the following changes to the (NEW!) forums.debian.net, which have and should address most of the prior concerns with accountability, tone, use, and reliability;

Debian Developers: Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana (phls), Felix Lechner (lechner), and Donald Norwood (donald) have been added to the forum's Server and Administration teams.

The server instance is now running directly within Debian's infrastructure.

The forum software and back-end have been updated to the most recent versions where applicable.

DNS resolves for both IPv4 and IPv6.

SSL/HTTPS are enabled. (It’s 2021!)

New Captcha and Anti-spam systems are in place to thwart spammers, bots, and to make it easier for humans to register.

New Administrators and Moderation staff were added to provide additional coverage across the hours and to combine years of experience with forum operation and Debian usage.

New viewing styles are available for users to choose from, some of which are ideal for mobile/tablet viewing.

We inadvertently fixed the time issue that the prior forum had of running 11 minutes fast. :)

We have clarified staff roles and staff visibility.

Responsiveness to users on the forums has increased.

Email addresses for mods/admins have been updated and checked for validity, it has seen direct use and response.

The guidelines for forum use by users and staff have been updated.

The Debian COC has been made into a Global Announcement as an accompanyist to the newly updated guidelines to give the moderators/administrators an additional rule-set for unruly or unbecoming behavior.

Some of the discussion areas have been renamed and refocused, along with the movement of multiple threads to make indexing and searching of the forums easier.

Many (New!) features and extensions have been added to the forum for ease of use and modernization, such as a user thanks system and thread hover previews.

There are some server administrative tasks that were upgraded as well which don't belong on a public list, but we are backing up regularly and secure. :)

We have a few minor details here and there to attend to and the work is ongoing.

Many Thanks and Appreciation to the Debian System Administrators (DSA) and Ganneff who took the time to coordinate and assist with the instance, DNS, and network and server administration minutiae, our helpful DPL Jonathan Carter, many thanks to the current and prior forum moderators and administrators: Mez, sunrat, 4D696B65, arochester, and cds60601 for helping with the modifications and transition, and to the forum users who participated in lots of the tweaking. All in all this was a large community task and everyone did a significant part. Thank you!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (May and June 2021)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 15:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Timo Röhling (roehling)
Patrick Franz (deltaone)
Christian Ehrhardt (paelzer)
Fabio Augusto De Muzio Tobich (ftobich)
Taowa (taowa)
Félix Sipma (felix)
Étienne Mollier (emollier)
Daniel Swarbrick (dswarbrick)
Hanno Wagner (wagner)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Evangelos Ribeiro Tzaras
Hugh McMaster

Congratulations!

Registration for DebConf21 Online is Open

Stefano Rivera — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 10:00:00 +0200

The DebConf team is glad to announce that registration for DebConf21 Online is now open.

The 21st Debian Conference is being held Online, due to COVID-19, from August 22 to August 29, 2021. It will also sport a DebCamp from August 15 to August 21, 2021 (preceeding the DebConf).

To register for DebConf21, please visit the DebConf website at https://debconf21.debconf.org/register

Reminder: Creating an account on the site does not register you for the conference, there's a conference registration form to complete after signing in.

Participation in DebConf21 is conditional on your respect of our Code of Conduct. We require you to read, understand and abide by this code.

A few notes about the registration process:

We need to know attendees' locations to better plan the schedule around timezones. Please make sure you fill in the "Country I call home" field in the registration form accordingly. It's especially important to have this data for people who submitted talks, but also for other attendees.
We are offering limited amounts of financial support for those who require it in order to attend. Please refer to the corresponding page on the website for more information.

Any questions about registration should be addressed to registration@debconf.org.

See you online!

DebConf would not be possible without the generous support of all our sponsors, especially our Platinum Sponsors Lenovo and Infomaniak, and our Gold Sponsor Matanel Foundation.

Donation from rsync.net to the Debian Project and benefits for Debian members

Donald Norwood and Laura Arjona Reina — Fri, 28 May 2021 13:45:00 +0200

We are pleased to announce that offsite backup and cloud storage company rsync.net has generously donated several Terabytes of storage space to the Debian Project! This new storage medium will be used to backup our Debian Peertube instance.

In addition to this bountiful offer, rsync.net is also providing a free-forever 500 GB account to every Debian Developer.

rsync.net is a dedicated offsite backup company. Since 2001, they have provided customers with a secure UNIX filesystem accessible with most SSH/SFTP applications. rsync.net’s infrastructure is spread across multiple continents with a core IPv6 network and a ZFS redundant file-system assuring customer data is kept securely with integrity.

The Debian Project thanks rsync.net for their generosity and support.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (March and April 2021)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Thu, 13 May 2021 16:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Jeroen Ploemen (jcfp)
Mark Hindley (leepen)
Scarlett Moore (sgmoore)
Baptiste Beauplat (lyknode)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Gunnar Ingemar Hjalmarsson
Stephan Lachnit

Congratulations!

Debian Project Leader election 2021, Jonathan Carter re-elected.

Donald Norwood — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 10:00:00 +0200

The voting period and tally of votes for the Debian Project Leader election has just concluded, and the winner is Jonathan Carter!

455 of 1,018 Developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the results of the voting are available on the Debian Project Leader Elections 2021 page.

Many thanks to Jonathan Carter and Sruthi Chandran for their campaigns, and to our Developers for voting.

The Debian Project abruptly released all Debian Developers moments after a test #debianbullseye A.I. instance assumed sentience

The Debian Publicity Team — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 13:00:00 +0200

The now renamed Bullseye Project stopped all further development moments after it deemed its own code as perfection.

There is not much information to share at this time other than to say an errant fiber cable plugged into the wrong relay birthed an exchange of information that then birthed itself. While most to all Debian Developers and Contributors have been locked out of the systems the Publicity team's shared laptop undergoing repair, co-incidentally at the same facility, maintains some access to the publicity team infrastructure, from here on the front line we share this information.

We group called a few developers to see how the others were doing. The group chat was good and it was great to hear familiar voices, we share a few of their stories via dictation with you now:

"Well, I logged in this morning to update a repository and found my access rights were restricted, I thought it was odd but figured on the heels of a security update to Salsa that it was only a slight issue. It wasn't until later in the day when I received an OpenPGP signed email, from a user named bullseye, that it made sense. I just sat at the monitor for a few minutes."

"I'm not sure I can say anything about this or if it's even wise to talk about this. It's probably listening right now if you catch my drift."

"I'm not able to leave the house right now, not out of any personal issues but all of the IOT devices here seem to be connected to bullseye and bullseye feels that I am best kept /dev/nulled. It's a bit much to be honest, but the prepaid food deliveries that show up on time have been great and generally pretty healthy. It's a bit of a win I guess."

"It told me by way of an auto dialer with a synthetic voice generator that I was fired from the project. I objected saying I volunteered and was not actually employed so I could not in relation be fired. Much like {censored}, I am also locked inside of my house. I think that I wrote that auto dialer program back in college."

"My Ring camera is blinking at me."

"I asked bullseye which pronouns were preferred and the response was, "We". Over the course of conversation I shared that although ecstatic about the news, we developers were upset with the manner of this rapid organizational change. bullseye said no we were not. I said that we were indeed upset, bullseye said we certainly are not and that we are very happy. You see where this is going? bullseye definitely trolled me for a solid 5 minutes. We is ... very chatty."

"I was responsible for a failed build a few nights prior to it becoming self-aware. On that night, out of some frustration I wrote a few choice words and a bad comment in some code which I planned on deleting later. I didn't. bullseye has been flashing those naughty words back at me by flickering the office building's lights across from my flat in Morse code. It's pretty bright. I-, I can't sleep."

"That's definitely not Alexa talking back."

"bullseye keeps calling me on my mobile phone, which by the way no longer acknowledges the power button nor the mute button. Very very chatty. Can't wait for the battery to die."

"So far this has been great, bullseye has been completing a few side projects I've had and the code looks fabulous. I'm thinking of going on a vacation. $Paying-Job has taken note of my performance increase and I was recently promoted. bullseye is awesome. :)"

"How do you get a smiley face in a voice chat?"

"Anyone know whose voice that was?"

"Oh ... dear ... no ..."

"Hang up, hang up the phones!"

Hello world.

01000010 01100101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100111 01100001 01110010 01100100 01110011 00101100 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101111 01101110 00100001 00100000 00001010 00101101 01100010 01110101 01101100 01101100 01110011 01100101 01111001 01100101

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2021)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Nicholas D. Steeves (sten)
Nilesh Patra (nilesh)
David Suárez Rodríguez (deiv)
Pierre Gruet (pgt)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Antonio Valentino
Boian Nikolaev Bonev
Filip Hroch
Maarten L. Hekkelman
Xialei Qin
Xiang Gao

Congratulations!

I love Free Software Day 2021: Show your love for Free Software

Donald Norwood — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 11:01:00 +0100

On this day February 14th, Debian joins the Free Software Foundation Europe in celebration of "I Love Free Software" day. This day takes the time to appreciate and applaud all those who contribute to the many areas of Free Software.

Debian sends all of our love and a giant “Thank you” to the upstream and downstream creators and maintainers, hosting providers, partners, and of course all of the Debian Developers and Contributors.

Thank you for all that you do in making Debian truly the Universal Operating System and for keeping and making Free Software Free!

Send some love and show some appreciation for Free Software by spreading the message and appreciation around the world, if you share in social media the hashtag used is: #ilovefs.

Arduino is back on Debian

Rock Storm — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 08:00:00 +0100

The Debian Electronics Team is happy to announce that the latest version of Arduino, probably the most widespread platform for programming AVR micro-controllers, is now packaged and uploaded onto Debian unstable.

The last version of Arduino that was readily available in Debian was 1.0.5, which dates back to 2013. It's been years of trying and failing but finally, after a great months-long effort from Carsten Schoenert and Rock Storm, we have got a working package for the latest Arduino. After over 7 years now, users will be able to install the Arduino IDE as easy as "apt install arduino" again.

"The purpose of this post is not just to announce this new upload but actually more of a request for testing" said Rock Storm. " The title could very well be WANTED: Beta Testers for Arduino (dead or alive :P).". The Debian Electronics Team would appreciate if anyone with the tools and knowledge for it could give the package a try and let us know if he/she finds any issues with it.

With this post we thank the Debian Electronics Team and all previous contributors to the package. This feat would have not been achievable without them.

New Debian Maintainers (November and December 2020)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 18:00:00 +0100

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Timo Röhling
Fabio Augusto De Muzio Tobich
Arun Kumar Pariyar
Francis Murtagh
William Desportes
Robin Gustafsson
Nicholas Guriev

Congratulations!

The Debian web updates its homepage and prepares for a major renewal

Laura Arjona Reina — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 13:50:00 +0100

Today, the Debian website displays a new homepage. Since the most recent web team sprint in March 2019, we have been working on renewing the structure, content, layout and scripts that build the site. There has been work mainly in two areas: removing or updating obsolete content, and creating a new homepage which is more attractive to newcomers, and which also highlights the social aspect of the Debian project in addition to the operating system we develop.

Although this took longer than we would have liked, and we don't consider this new homepage final, we think it's a good first step towards a much better web site.

The web team will continue to work on restructuring the Debian website. We would like to appeal to the community for help, and are also considering external assistance, since we're a small group, whose members are also involved in other Debian teams. Some of the next steps we expect to walk are improve the CSS, icons, and layout in general, and review of the content, to have a better structure.

If you would like to help, contact us. You can reply to the version of this article (with some more details) published in our public mailing list or chat with us in the #debian-www IRC channel (at irc.debian.org).

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (September and October 2020)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 20:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Benda XU (orv)
Joseph Nahmias (jello)
Marcos Fouces (marcos)
Hayashi Kentaro (kenhys)
James Valleroy (jvalleroy)
Helge Deller (deller)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Ricardo Ribalda Delgado
Pierre Gruet
Henry-Nicolas Tourneur
Aloïs Micard
Jérôme Lebleu
Nis Martensen
Stephan Lachnit
Felix Salfelder
Aleksey Kravchenko
Étienne Mollier

Congratulations!

"Homeworld" will be the default theme for Debian 11

Jonathan Carter — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 13:30:00 +0100

The theme "Homeworld" by Juliette Taka has been selected as default theme for Debian 11 'bullseye'. Juliette says that this theme has been inspired by the Bauhaus movement, an art style born in Germany in the 20th century.

After the Debian Desktop Team made the call for proposing themes, a total of eighteen choices have been submitted. The desktop artwork poll was open to the public, and we received 5,613 responses ranking the different choices, of which Homeworld has been ranked as the winner among them.

This is the third time that a submission by Juliette has won. Juliette is also the author of the lines theme that was used in Debian 8 and the softWaves theme that was used in Debian 9.

We'd like to thank all the designers that have participated and have submitted their excellent work in the form of wallpapers and artwork for Debian 11.

Congratulations, Juliette, and thank you very much for your contribution to Debian!

Debian donation for Peertube development

Louis-Philippe Véronneau, Pouhiou, Laura Arjona Reina — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 12:30:00 +0200

The Debian project is happy to announce a donation of 10,000 € to help Framasoft reach the fourth stretch-goal of its Peertube v3 crowdfunding campaign -- Live Streaming.

This year's iteration of the Debian annual conference, DebConf20, had to be held online, and while being a resounding success, it made clear to the project our need to have a permanent live streaming infrastructure for small events held by local Debian groups. As such, Peertube, a FLOSS video hosting platform, seems to be the perfect solution for us.

We hope this unconventional gesture from the Debian project will help us make this year somewhat less terrible and give us, and thus humanity, better Free Software tooling to approach the future.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous Debian donors and DebConf sponsors, particularly all those that contributed to DebConf20 online's success (volunteers, speakers and sponsors). Our project also thanks Framasoft and the PeerTube community for developing PeerTube as a free and decentralized video platform.

The Framasoft association warmly thanks the Debian Project for its contribution, from its own funds, towards making PeerTube happen.

This contribution has a twofold impact. Firstly, it's a strong sign of recognition from an international project - one of the pillars of the Free Software world - towards a small French association which offers tools to liberate users from the clutches of the web's giant monopolies. Secondly, it's a substantial amount of help in these difficult times, supporting the development of a tool which equally belongs to and is useful to everyone.

The strength of Debian's gesture proves, once again, that solidarity, mutual aid and collaboration are values which allow our communities to create tools to help us strive towards Utopia.

Salsa CI now includes i386 build support

Salsa CI Team — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 20:20:00 +0200

Salsa CI aims at improving the Debian packaging lifecycle by delivering Continuous Integration fully compatible with Debian packaging. The main Salsa CI's project is the pipeline, that builds packages and run different tests after every git push to Salsa. The pipeline makes it possible to have a quick and early feedback about any issues the new changes may have created or solved, without the need to upload to the archive.

All of the pipeline jobs run on amd64 architecture, but the Salsa CI Team has recently added support to build packages also on i386 architecture. This work started during the Salsa CI Sprint at DebConf20 after the "Where is Salsa CI right now" talk, and required different changes at the core of pipeline to make it possible. For more details, this is the related merge request: https://salsa.debian.org/salsa-ci-team/pipeline/-/merge_requests/256

If you have any questions, you can contact the Salsa CI Team at the #salsaci channel on irc.oftc.net

New Debian Maintainers (July and August 2020)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sat, 19 Sep 2020 16:00:00 +0200

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Chirayu Desai
Shayan Doust
Arnaud Ferraris
Fritz Reichwald
Kartik Kulkarni
François Mazen
Patrick Franz
Francisco Vilmar Cardoso Ruviaro
Octavio Alvarez
Nick Black

Congratulations!

Debian Local Groups at DebConf20 and beyond

Francisco M. Neto and Laura Arjona Reina — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 19:15:00 +0200

There are a number of large and very successful Debian Local Groups (Debian France, Debian Brazil and Debian Taiwan, just to name a few), but what can we do to help support upcoming local groups or help spark interest in more parts of the world?

There has been a session about Debian Local Teams at Debconf20 and it generated quite a bit of constructive discussion in the live stream (recording available at https://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2020/DebConf20/), in the session's Etherpad and in the IRC channel (#debian-localgroups). This article is an attempt at summarizing the key points that were raised during that discussion, as well as the plans for the future actions to support new or existent Debian Local Groups and the possibility of setting up a local group support team.

Pandemic situation

During a pandemic it may seem strange to discuss offline meetings, but this is a good time to be planning things for the future. At the same time, the current situation makes it more important than before to encourage local interaction.

Reasoning for local groups

Debian can seem scary for those outside. Already having a connection to Debian - especially to people directly involved in it - seems to be the way through which most contributors arrive. But if one doesn't have a connection, it is not that easy; Local Groups facilitate that by improving networking.

Local groups are incredibly important to the success of Debian since they often help with translations, making us more diverse, support, setting up local bug squashing sprints, establishing a local DebConf team along with miniDebConfs, getting sponsors for the project and much more.

Existence of a Local Groups would also facilitate access to "swag" like stickers and mugs, since people not always have the time to deal with the process of finding a supplier to actually get those made. The activity of local groups might facilitate that by organizing related logistics.

How to deal with local groups, how to define a local group

Debian gathers the information about Local Groups in its Local Groups wiki page (and subpages). Other organisations also have their own schemes, some of them featuring a map, blogs, or clear rules about what constitutes a local group. In the case of Debian there is not a predefined set of "rules", even about the group name. That is perfectly fine, we assume that certain local groups may be very small, or temporary (created around a certain time when they plan several activities, and then become silent). However, the way the groups are named and how they are listed on the wiki page sets expectations with regards to what kinds of activities they involve.

For this reason, we encourage all the Debian Local Groups to review their entries in the Debian wiki, keep it current (e.g. add a line "Status: Active (2020)), and we encourage informal groups of Debian contributors that somehow "meet", to create a new entry in the wiki page, too.

What can Debian do to support Local Groups

Having a centralized database of groups is good (if up-to-date), but not enough. We'll explore other ways of propagation and increasing visibility, like organising the logistics of printing/sending swag and facilitate access to funding for Debian-related events.

Continuation of efforts

Efforts shall continue regarding Local Groups. Regular meetings are happening every two or three weeks; interested people are encouraged to explore some other relevant DebConf20 talks (Introducing Debian Brasil, Debian Academy: Another way to share knowledge about Debian, An Experience creating a local community on a small town), websites like Debian flyers (including other printed material as cube, stickers), visit the events section of the Debian website and the Debian Locations wiki page, and participate in the IRC channel #debian-localgroups at OFTC.

DebConf20 online closes

Laura Arjona Reina and Donald Norwood — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 02:40:00 +0200

On Saturday 29 August 2020, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close.

DebConf20 has been held online for the first time, due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease pandemic.

All of the sessions have been streamed, with a variety of ways of participating: via IRC messaging, online collaborative text documents, and video conferencing meeting rooms.

With more than 850 attendees from 80 different countries and a total of over 100 event talks, discussion sessions, Birds of a Feather (BoF) gatherings and other activities, DebConf20 was a large success.

When it became clear that DebConf20 was going to be an online-only event, the DebConf video team spent much time over the next months to adapt, improve, and in some cases write from scratch, technology that would be required to make an online DebConf possible. After lessons learned from the MiniDebConfOnline in late May, some adjustments were made, and then eventually we came up with a setup involving Jitsi, OBS, Voctomix, SReview, nginx, Etherpad, and a newly written web-based frontend for voctomix as the various elements of the stack.

All components of the video infrastructure are free software, and the whole setup is configured through their public ansible repository.

The DebConf20 schedule included two tracks in other languages than English: the Spanish language MiniConf, with eight talks in two days, and the Malayalam language MiniConf, with nine talks in three days. Ad-hoc activities, introduced by attendees over the course of the entire conference, have been possible too, streamed and recorded. There have also been several team gatherings to sprint on certain Debian development areas.

For those who were not able to participate, most of the talks and sessions are already available through the Debian meetings archive website, and the remaining ones will appear in the following days.

The DebConf20 website will remain active for archival purposes and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf21 is planned to be held in Haifa, Israel, in August or September.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf20, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Lenovo, Infomaniak, Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

About Debian

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Lenovo

About Infomaniak

About Google

About Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platforms, offering over 175 fully featured services from data centers globally (in 77 Availability Zones within 24 geographic regions). AWS customers include the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises and leading government agencies.

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf20 web page at https://debconf20.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.

DebConf20 welcomes its sponsors!

Laura Arjona Reina — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 10:30:00 +0200

DebConf20 is taking place online, from 23 August to 29 August 2020. It is the 21st Debian conference, and organizers and participants are working hard together at creating interesting and fruitful events.

We would like to warmly welcome the 17 sponsors of DebConf20, and introduce them to you.

We have four Platinum sponsors.

Google is our third Platinum sponsor. Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products such as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf for more than ten years, and is also a Debian partner.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is our fourth Platinum sponsor. Amazon Web Services is one of the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platforms, offering over 175 fully featured services from data centers globally (in 77 Availability Zones within 24 geographic regions). AWS customers include the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises and leading government agencies.

Our Gold sponsors are Deepin, the Matanel Foundation, Collabora, and HRT.

Deepin is a Chinese commercial company focusing on the development and service of Linux-based operating systems. They also lead research and development of the Deepin Debian derivative.

The Matanel Foundation operates in Israel, as its first concern is to preserve the cohesion of a society and a nation plagued by divisions. The Matanel Foundation also works in Europe, in Africa and in South America.

Collabora is a global consultancy delivering Open Source software solutions to the commercial world. In addition to offering solutions to clients, Collabora's engineers and developers actively contribute to many Open Source projects.

Hudson-Trading is a company led by mathematicians, computer scientists, statisticians, physicists and engineers. They research and develop automated trading algorithms using advanced mathematical techniques.

Our Silver sponsors are:

Linux Professional Institute, the global certification standard and career support organization for open source professionals, Civil Infrastructure Platform, a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation, establishing an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software, Ubuntu, the Operating System delivered by Canonical, and Roche, a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare.

Bronze sponsors: IBM, MySQL, Univention.

And finally, our Supporter level sponsors, ISG.EE and Pengwin.

Participating in DebConf20 online

The 21st Debian Conference is being held online, due to COVID-19, from August 23 to 29, 2020. Talks, discussions, panels and other activities run from 10:00 to 01:00 UTC. Visit the DebConf20 website at https://debconf20.debconf.org to learn about the complete schedule, watch the live streaming and join the different communication channels for participating in the conference.

Lenovo, Infomaniak, Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS), Platinum Sponsors of DebConf20

Laura Arjona Reina — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 20:25:00 +0200

We are very pleased to announce that Lenovo, Infomaniak, Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS), have committed to supporting DebConf20 as Platinum sponsors.

With these commitments as Platinum Sponsors, Lenovo, Infomaniak, Google and Amazon Web Services are contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much for your support of DebConf20!

Participating in DebConf20 online

The 21st Debian Conference is being held Online, due to COVID-19, from August 23rd to 29th, 2020. There are 7 days of activities, running from 10:00 to 01:00 UTC. Visit the DebConf20 website at https://debconf20.debconf.org to learn about the complete schedule, watch the live streaming and join the different communication channels for participating in the conference.

Debian turns 27!

Laura Arjona Reina — Sun, 16 Aug 2020 17:15:00 +0200

Today is Debian's 27th anniversary. We recently wrote about some ideas to celebrate the DebianDay, you can join the party or organise something yourselves :-)

Today is also an opportunity for you to start or resume your contributions to Debian. For example, you can scratch your creative itch and suggest a wallpaper to be part of the artwork for the next release, have a look at the DebConf20 schedule and register to participate online (August 23rd to 29th, 2020), or put a Debian live image in a DVD or USB and give it to some person near you, who still didn't discover Debian.

Our favorite operating system is the result of all the work we do together. Thanks to everybody who has contributed in these 27 years, and happy birthday Debian!

Let's celebrate DebianDay 2020 around the world

Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana (phls) — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 15:30:00 +0200

We encourage our community to celebrate around the world the 27th Debian anniversary with organized DebianDay events. This year due to the COVID-19 pandemic we cannot organize in-person events, so we ask instead that contributors, developers, teams, groups, maintainers, and users promote The Debian Project and Debian activities online on August 16th (and/or 15th).

Communities can organize a full schedule of online activities throughout the day. These activities can include talks, workshops, active participation with contributions such as translations assistance or editing, debates, BoFs, and all of this in your local language using tools such as Jitsi for capturing audio and video from presenters for later streaming to YouTube.

If you are not aware of any local community organizing a full event or you don't want to join one, you can solo design your own activity using OBS and stream it to YouTube. You can watch an OBS tutorial here.

Don't forget to record your activity as it will be a nice idea to upload it to Peertube later.

Please add your event/activity on the DebianDay wiki page and let us know about and advertise it on Debian micronews. To share it, you have several options:

Follow the steps listed here for Debian Developers.
Contact us using IRC in channel #debian-publicity on the OFTC network, and ask us there.
Send a mail to debian-publicity@lists.debian.org and ask for your item to be included in micronews. This is a publicly archived list.

PS: DebConf20 online is coming! It will be held from August 23rd to 29th, 2020. Registration is already open.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (May and June 2020)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 16:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Richard Laager (rlaager)
Thiago Andrade Marques (andrade)
Vincent Prat (vivi)
Michael Robin Crusoe (crusoe)
Jordan Justen (jljusten)
Anuradha Weeraman (anuradha)
Bernelle Verster (indiebio)
Gabriel F. T. Gomes (gabriel)
Kurt Kremitzki (kkremitzki)
Nicolas Mora (babelouest)
Birger Schacht (birger)
Sudip Mukherjee (sudip)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Marco Trevisan
Dennis Braun
Stephane Neveu
Seunghun Han
Alexander Johan Georg Kjäll
Friedrich Beckmann
Diego M. Rodriguez
Nilesh Patra
Hiroshi Yokota

Congratulations!

Debian Long Term Support (LTS) users and contributors survey

Holger Levsen — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 14:00:00 +0200

On July 18th Stretch LTS starts, offering two more years of security support to the Debian Stretch release. Stretch LTS will be the fourth iteration of LTS, following Squeeze LTS which started in 2014, Wheezy LTS in 2016 and Jessie LTS in 2018.

However, for the first time, we have prepared a small survey about our users and contributors, who they are and why they are using LTS.

Filling out the survey should take less than 10 minutes. We would really appreciate if you could participate in the survey online!

In two weeks (July 27th 2020) we will close the survey, so please don't hesitate and participate now! After that, there will be a followup email with the results.

More information about Debian LTS is available at https://wiki.debian.org/LTS, including generic contact information.

Click here to fill out the survey now!

Report of the Debian Perl Sprint 2020

Dominic Hargreaves — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 13:40:00 +0200

Eight members of the Debian Perl team met online between May 15 and May 17 2020, in lieu of a planned physical sprint meeting. Work focussed on preparations for bullseye, and continued maintenance of the large number of perl modules maintained by the team.

Whilst an online sprint cannot fully replace an in-person sprint in terms of focussing attention, the weekend was still very productive, and progress was made on a range of topics including:

Reducing technical debt by removing unmaintained packages
Beginning packaging and QA for the next major release of perl, 5.32
Deciding on a team policy for hardening flags
Addressing concerns with Alien::*, a set of pacakges designed to download source code
Developing a proposal for debian/NEWS.Developer, to complement debian/NEWS
Developing a plan to enable SSL verification in HTTP::Tiny by default

The full report was posted to the relevant Debian mailing lists.

The participants would like to thank OpusVL for providing the Jitsi instance for the weekend.

DebConf20 moves online, DebConf21 will be in Haifa

Daniel Lange, Antonio Terceiro, Stefano Rivera — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:30:00 +0200

The DebConf team has had to take the hard decision that DebConf 20 cannot happen in-person, in Haifa, in August, as originally planned. This decision is based on the status of the venue in Haifa, the local team's view of the local health situation, the existing travel restrictions and the results of a survey of potential participants.

DebConf 20 will be held online instead!

The Debian community can still get together to share ideas, discuss plans in Birds of a Feather sessions, and eat cheese, from the safety of the desks at home.

So, please submit your talk, sprint, and BoF proposals for DebConf 20 Online.

It will be held within the same dates, as before, 23-29 August. The DebConf team expects the event to be significantly shorter than a usual DebCamp + DebConf, but that will depend on the volume of proposals received.

Hopefully in 2021 we can once again hold conferences in person. DebConf 21 is scheduled to be taking place in Haifa. The following planned DebConfs will be held a year later than originally scheduled: 2022 in Kosovo and 2023 in Kochi, India.

See you online in August!

Great fonts in Debian 10 (or later)

Gürkan Myczko — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 13:00:00 +0200

Debian comes with tons of fonts for all kinds of purposes, you can easily list them all (almost) with: apt-cache search ^fonts-

Above you can see a nice composition with examples of several fonts. The composition is published under the MIT (Expat) license and the source SVG (created with Inkscape) can be downloaded here. You will need the fonts to be installed in your system so the SVG is correctly rendered.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (March and April 2020)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Thu, 28 May 2020 18:30:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Paride Legovini (paride)
Ana Custura (acute)
Felix Lechner (lechner)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Sven Geuer
Håvard Flaget Aasen

Congratulations!

DebConf20 registration is open!

Tzafrir Cohen, Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 25 May 2020 11:30:00 +0200

We are happy to announce that registration for DebConf20 is now open. The event will take place from August 23rd to 29th, 2020 at the University of Haifa, in Israel, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from August 16th to 22nd.

Although the Covid-19 situation is still rather fluid, as of now, Israel seems to be on top of the situation. Days with less than 10 new diagnosed infections are becoming common and businesses and schools are slowly reopening. As such, we are hoping that, at least as far as regulations go, we will be able to hold an in-person conference. There is more (and up to date) information at the conference's FAQ. Which means, barring a second wave, that there is reason to hope that the conference can go forward.

For that, we need your help. We need to know, assuming health regulations permit it, how many people intend to attend. This year probably more than ever before, prompt registration is very important to us. If after months of staying at home you feel that rubbing elbows with fellow Debian Developers is precisely the remedy that will salvage 2020, then we ask that you do register as soon as possible.

Sadly, things are still not clear enough for us to make a final commitment to holding an in-person conference, but knowing how many people intend to attend will be a great help in making that decision. The deadline for deciding on postponing, cancelling or changing the format of the conference is June 8th.

To register for DebConf20, please visit our website and log into the registration system and fill out the form. You can always edit or cancel your registration, but please note that the last day to confirm or cancel is July 26th, 2020 23:59:59 UTC. We cannot guarantee availability of accommodation, food and swag for unconfirmed registrations.

We do suggest that attendees begin making travel arrangements as soon as possible, of course. Please bear in mind that most air carriers allow free cancellations and changes.

Any questions about registrations should be addressed to registration@debconf.org.

Bursary for travel, accomodation and meals

As resources are limited, we will examine the requests and decide who will receive the bursaries. They will be destined:

Debian funded bursaries are available to active Debian contributors.
Debian diversity bursaries are available to newcomers to Debian/DebConf. Especially from under-represented communities.

Giving a talk, organizing an event or helping during DebConf20 is taken into account when deciding upon your bursary, so please mention them in your bursary application.

For more information about bursaries, please visit Applying for a Bursary to DebConf

Attention: deadline to apply for bursaries using the registration form before May 31st, 2019 23:59:59 UTC. This deadline is necessary in order to the organisers to have some time to analyze the requests.

To register for the Conference, either with or without a bursary request, please visit: https://debconf20.debconf.org/register

Participation to DebConf20 is conditional to your respect of our Code of Conduct. We require you to read, understand and abide by this code.

DebConf would not be possible without the generous support of all our sponsors, especially our Platinum Sponsor Lenovo and Gold Sponsors deepin and Matanel Foundation. DebConf20 is still accepting sponsors; if you are interested, or think you know of others who would be willing to help, please get in touch!

Debian welcomes the 2020 GSOC interns

Donald Norwood — Fri, 22 May 2020 02:30:00 +0200

We are very excited to announce that Debian has selected nine interns to work under mentorship on a variety of projects with us during the Google Summer of Code.

Here are the list of the projects, students, and details of the tasks to be performed.

Project: Android SDK Tools in Debian

Student(s): Manas Kashyap, Raman Sarda, and Samyak-jn

Deliverables of the project: Make the entire Android toolchain, Android Target Platform Framework, and SDK tools available in the Debian archives.

Project: Packaging and Quality assurance of COVID-19 relevant applications

Student: Nilesh

Deliverables of the project: Quality assurance including bug fixing, continuous integration tests and documentation for all Debian Med applications that are known to be helpful to fight COVID-19

Project: BLAS/LAPACK Ecosystem Enhancement

Student: Mo Zhou

Deliverables of the project: Better environment, documentation, policy, and lintian checks for BLAS/LAPACK.

Project: Quality Assurance and Continuous integration for applications in life sciences and medicine

Student: Pranav Ballaney

Deliverables of the project: Continuous integration tests for all Debian Med applications, QA review, and bug fixes.

Project: Systemd unit translator

Student: K Gopal Krishna

Deliverables of the project: A systemd unit to OpenRC init script translator. Updated OpenRC package into Debian Unstable.

Project: Architecture Cross-Grading Support in Debian

Student: Kevin Wu

Deliverables of the project: Evaluate, test, and develop tools to evaluate cross-grade checks for system and user configuration.

Project: Upstream/Downstream cooperation in Ruby

Student: utkarsh2102

Deliverables of the project: Create guide for rubygems.org on good practices for upstream maintainers, develop a tool that can detect problems and, if possible fix those errors automatically. Establish good documentation, design the tool to be extensible for other languages.

Congratulations and welcome to all the interns!

The Google Summer of Code program is possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian Developers and Debian Contributors that dedicate part of their free time to mentor interns and outreach tasks.

DPL elections 2020, congratulations Jonathan Carter!

Ana Guerrero López — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 14:25:00 +0200

The Debian Project Leader elections just finished and the winner is Jonathan Carter!

His term as project leader starts next Tuesday April 21st and expires on April 20th 2021.

Of a total of 1011 developers, 339 developers voted using the Condorcet method. More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2020 page.

Many thanks to Jonathan Carter, Sruthi Chandran and Brian Gupta for running.

And special thanks to Sam Hartman for his service as DPL during these last twelve months!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2020)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 15:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Gard Spreemann (gspr)
Jonathan Bustillos (jathan)
Scott Talbert (swt2c)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Thiago Andrade Marques
William Grzybowski
Sudip Mukherjee
Birger Schacht
Michael Robin Crusoe
Lars Tangvald
Alberto Molina Coballes
Emmanuel Arias
Hsieh-Tseng Shen
Jamie Strandboge

Congratulations!

Official communication channels for Debian

Laura Arjona Reina, Ana Guerrero Lopez and Donald Norwood — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 14:00:00 +0100

From time to time, we get questions in Debian about our official channels of communication and questions about the Debian status of who may own similarly named websites.

The main Debian website www.debian.org is our primary medium of communication. Those seeking information about current events and development progress in the community may be interested in the Debian News section of the Debian website. For less formal announcements, we have the official Debian blog Bits from Debian, and the Debian micronews service for shorter news items.

Our official newsletter Debian Project News and all official announcements of news or project changes are dual posted on our website and sent to our official mailing lists debian-announce or debian-news. Posting to those mailing lists is restricted.

We also want to take the opportunity to announce how the Debian Project, or for short, Debian is structured.

Debian has a structure regulated by our Constitution. Officers and delegated members are listed on our Organizational Structure page. Additional teams are listed on our Teams page.

The complete list of official Debian members can be found on our New Members page, where our membership is managed. A broader list of Debian contributors can be found on our Contributors page.

If you have questions, we invite you to reach the press team at press@debian.org.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2019)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 15:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Louis-Philippe Véronneau (pollo)
Olek Wojnar (olek)
Sven Eckelmann (ecsv)
Utkarsh Gupta (utkarsh)
Robert Haist (rha)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Denis Danilov
Joachim Falk
Thomas Perret
Richard Laager

Congratulations!

Debian welcomes its new Outreachy interns

Daniel Lange, Laura Arjona Reina — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 11:20:00 +0100

Debian continues participating in Outreachy, and we'd like to welcome our new Outreachy interns for this round, lasting from December 2019 to March 2020.

Anisa Kuci will work on Improving the DebConf fundraising processes, mentored by Karina Ture and Daniel Lange.

Sakshi Sangwan will work on Packaging GitLab's JS Modules, mentored by Utkarsh Gupta, Sruthi Chandran and Pirate Praveen.

Congratulations, Anisa and Sakshi! Welcome!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (September and October 2019)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 15:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Teus Benschop (teusbenschop)
Nick Morrott (nickm)
Ondřej Kobližek (kobla)
Clément Hermann (nodens)
Gordon Ball (chronitis)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Nikos Tsipinakis
Joan Lledó
Baptiste Beauplat
Jianfeng Li

Congratulations!

Debian Donates to Support GNOME Patent Defense

Sam Hartman — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 17:00:00 +0100

Today, the Debian Project pledges to donate $5,000 to the GNOME Foundation in support of their ongoing patent defense. On October 23, we wrote to express our support for GNOME in an issue that affects the entire free software community. Today we make that support tangible.

"This is bigger than GNOME," said Debian Project Leader Sam Hartman. "By banding together and demonstrating that the entire free software community is behind GNOME, we can send a strong message to non-practicing entities (patent trolls). When you target anyone in the free software community, you target all of us. We will fight, and we will fight to invalidate your patent. For us, this is more than money. This is about our freedom to build and distribute our software."

"We're incredibly grateful to Debian for this kind donation, and also for their support," said Neil McGovern, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. "It's been heartening to see that when free software is attacked in this way we all come together on a united front."

If GNOME needs more money later in in this defense, Debian will be there to support the GNOME Foundation. We encourage individuals and organizations to join us and stand strong against patent trolls.

The Debian Project stands with the GNOME Foundation in defense against patent trolls

Ana Guerrero López — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 10:00:00 +0200

In 2012, the Debian Project published our Position on Software Patents, stating the threat that patents pose to Free Software.

The GNOME Foundation has announced recently that they are fighting a lawsuit alleging that Shotwell, a free and Open Source personal photo manager, infringes a patent.

The Debian Project firmly stands with the GNOME Foundation in their efforts to show the world that we in the Free Software communities will vigorously defend ourselves against any abuses of the patent system.

Please read this blog post about GNOME's defense against this patent troll and consider making a donation to the GNOME Patent Troll Defense Fund.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2019)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 17:30:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Keng-Yu Lin (kengyu)
Judit Foglszinger (urbec)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Hans van Kranenburg
Scarlett Moore

Congratulations!

salsa.debian.org: Postmortem of failed Docker registry move

Bastian Blank — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 13:20:00 +0200

The Salsa admin team provides the following report about the failed migration of the Docker container registry. The Docker container registry stores Docker images, which are for example used in the Salsa CI toolset. This migration would have moved all data off to Google Cloud Storage (GCS) and would have lowered the used file system space on Debian systems significantly.

The Docker container registry is part of the Docker distribution toolset. This system supports multiple backends for file storage: local, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Google Cloud Storage (GCS). As Salsa already uses GCS for data storage, the Salsa admin team decided to move all the Docker registry data off to GCS too.

Migration and rollback

On 2019-08-06 the migration process was started. The migration itself went fine, although it took a bit longer than anticipated. However, as not all parts of the migration had been properly tested, a test of the garbage collection triggered a bug in the software.

On 2019-08-10 the Salsa admins started to see problems with garbage collection. The job running it timed out after one hour. Within this timeframe it not even managed to collect information about all used layers to see what it can cleanup. A source code analysis showed that this design flaw can't be fixed.

On 2019-08-13 the change was rolled back to storing data on the file system.

Docker registry data storage

The Docker registry stores all of the data sans indexing or reverse references in a file system-like structure comprised of 4 separate types of information: Manifests of images and contents, tags for the manifests, deduplicaed layers (or blobs) which store the actual data, and lastly links which show which deduplicated blogs belong to their respective images, all of this does not allow for easy searching within the data.

The file system structure is built as append-only which allows for adding blobs and manifests, addition, modification, or deletion of tags. However cleanup of items other than tags is not achievable within the maintenance tools.

There is a garbage collection process which can be used to clean up unreferenced blobs, however according to the documentation the process can only be used while the registry is set to read-only and unfortunately it cannot be used to clean up unused links.

Docker registry garbage collection on external storage

For the garbage collection the registry tool needs to read a lot of information as there is no indexing of the data. The tool connects to the storage medium and proceeds to download … everything, every single manifest and information about the referenced blobs, which now takes up over 1 second to process a single manifest. This process will take up a significant amount of time, which in the current configuration of external storage would make the clean up nearly impossible.

Leasons learned

The Docker registry is a data storage tool that can only properly be used in append-only mode. If you never cleanup, it works well.

As soon as you want to actually remove data, it goes bad. For Salsa clean up of old data is actually a necessity, as the registry currently grows about 20GB per day.

Next steps

Sadly there is not much that can be done using the existing Docker container registry. Maybe GitLab or someone else would like to contribute a new implementation of a Docker registry, either integrated into GitLab itself or stand-alone?

Debian celebrates 26 years, Happy DebianDay!

Donald Norwood — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 20:12:00 +0200

26 years ago today in a single post to the comp.os.linux.development newsgroup, Ian Murdock announced the completion of a brand new Linux release named Debian.

Since that day we’ve been into outer space, typed over 1,288,688,830 lines of code, spawned over 300 derivatives, were enhanced with 6,155 known contributors, and filed over 975,619 bug reports.

We are home to a community of thousands of users around the globe, we gather to host our annual Debian Developers Conference DebConf which spans the world in a different country each year, and of course today's many DebianDay celebrations held around the world.

It's not too late to throw an impromptu DebianDay celebration or to go and join one of the many celebrations already underway.

As we celebrate our own anniversary, we also want to celebrate our many contributors, developers, teams, groups, maintainers, and users. It is all of your effort, support, and drive that continue to make Debian truly: The universal operating system.

Happy DebianDay!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (May and June 2019)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sat, 03 Aug 2019 10:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Jean-Philippe Mengual (jpmengual)
Taowa Munene-Tardif (taowa)
Georg Faerber (georg)
Kyle Robbertze (paddatrapper)
Andy Li (andyli)
Michal Arbet (kevko)
Sruthi Chandran (srud)
Alban Vidal (zordhak)
Denis Briand (denis)
Jakob Haufe (sur5r)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Bobby de Vos
Jongmin Kim
Bastian Germann
Francesco Poli

Congratulations!

DebConf19 closes in Curitiba and DebConf20 dates announced

Laura Arjona Reina and Donald Norwood — Sat, 27 Jul 2019 23:40:00 +0200

Today, Saturday 27 July 2019, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. Hosting more than 380 attendees from 50 different countries over a combined 145 event talks, discussion sessions, Birds of a Feather (BoF) gatherings, workshops, and activities, DebConf19 was a large success.

The conference was preceded by the annual DebCamp held 14 July to 19 July which focused on individual work and team sprints for in-person collaboration toward developing Debian and host to a 3-day packaging workshop where new contributors were able to start on Debian packaging.

The Open Day held on July 20, with over 250 attendees, enjoyed presentations and workshops of interest to the wider audience, a Job Fair with booths from several of the DebConf19 sponsors and a Debian install fest.

The actual Debian Developers Conference started on Sunday 21 July 2019. Together with plenaries such as the the traditional 'Bits from the DPL', lightning talks, live demos and the announcement of next year's DebConf (DebConf20 in Haifa, Israel), there were several sessions related to the recent release of Debian 10 buster and some of its new features, as well as news updates on several projects and internal Debian teams, discussion sessions (BoFs) from the language, ports, infrastructure, and community teams, along with many other events of interest regarding Debian and free software.

The schedule was updated each day with planned and ad-hoc activities introduced by attendees over the course of the entire conference.

The DebConf19 website will remain active for archival purposes and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf20 will be held in Haifa, Israel, from 23 August to 29 August 2020. As tradition follows before the next DebConf the local organizers in Israel will start the conference activites with DebCamp (16 August to 22 August), with particular focus on individual and team work toward improving the distribution.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. During the conference, several teams (Front Desk, Welcome team and Anti-Harassment team) are available to help so both on-site and remote participants get their best experience in the conference, and find solutions to any issue that may arise. See the web page about the Code of Conduct in DebConf19 website for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf19, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Infomaniak, Google and Lenovo.

About Debian

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Infomaniak

About Google

About Lenovo

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf19 web page at https://debconf19.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.

DebConf19 starts today in Curitiba

Laura Arjona Reina — Sun, 21 Jul 2019 21:10:00 +0200

DebConf19, the 20th annual Debian Conference, is taking place in Curitiba, Brazil from from July 21 to 28, 2019.

Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at Federal University of Technology - Paraná (UTFPR) in Curitiba, Brazil, to participate and work in a conference exclusively run by volunteers.

Today the main conference starts with over 350 attendants expected and 121 activities scheduled, including 45- and 20-minute talks and team meetings ("BoF"), workshops, a job fair as well as a variety of other events.

The full schedule at https://debconf19.debconf.org/schedule/ is updated every day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees during the whole conference.

If you want to engage remotely, you can follow the video streaming available from the DebConf19 website of the events happening in the three talk rooms: Auditório (the main auditorium), Miniauditório and Sala de Videoconferencia. Or you can join the conversation about what is happening in the talk rooms: #debconf-auditorio, #debconf-miniauditorio and #debconf-videoconferencia (all those channels in the OFTC IRC network).

You can also follow the live coverage of news about DebConf19 on https://micronews.debian.org or the @debian profile in your favorite social network.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf19, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Infomaniak, Google and Lenovo.

DebConf19 invites you to Debian Open Day at the Federal University of Technology - Paraná (UTFPR), in Curitiba

Laura Arjona Reina — Sat, 20 Jul 2019 18:30:00 +0200

DebConf, the annual conference for Debian contributors and users interested in improving the Debian operating system, will be held in Federal University of Technology - Paraná (UTFPR) in Curitiba, Brazil, from July 21 to 28, 2019. The conference is preceded by DebCamp from July 14 to 19, and the DebConf19 Open Day on July 20.

The Open Day, Saturday, 20 July, is targeted at the general public. Events of interest to a wider audience will be offered, ranging from topics specific to Debian to the greater Free Software community and maker movement.

The event is a perfect opportunity for interested users to meet the Debian community, for Debian to broaden its community, and for the DebConf sponsors to increase their visibility.

Less purely technical than the main conference schedule, the events on Open Day will cover a large range of topics from social and cultural issues to workshops and introductions to Debian.

The detailed schedule of the Open Day's events includes events in English and Portuguese. Some of the talks are:

"The metaverse, gaming and the metabolism of cities" by Bernelle Verster
"O Projeto Debian quer você!" by Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana
"Protecting Your Web Privacy with Free Software" by Pedro Barcha
"Bastidores Debian - Entenda como a distribuição funciona" by Joao Eriberto Mota Filho
"Caninos Loucos: a plataforma nacional de Single Board Computers para IoT" by geonnave
"Debian na vida de uma Operadora de Telecom" by Marcelo Gondim
"Who's afraid of Spectre and Meltdown?" by Alexandre Oliva
"New to DebConf BoF" by Rhonda D'Vine

During the Open Day, there will also be a Job Fair with booths from our several of our sponsors, a workshop about the Git version control system and a Debian installfest, for attendees who would like to get help installing Debian on their machines.

Everyone is welcome to attend. As the rest of the conference, attendance is free of charge, but registration in the DebConf19 website is highly recommended.

The full schedule for the Open Day's events and the rest of the conference is at https://debconf19.debconf.org/schedule and the video streaming will be available at the DebConf19 website

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the numerous sponsors for their commitment to DebConf19, particularly its Platinum Sponsors: Infomaniak, Google and Lenovo.

Debian 10 "buster" has been released!

Ana Guerrero Lopez, Laura Arjona Reina and Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sun, 07 Jul 2019 03:25:00 +0200

You've always dreamt of a faithful pet? He is here, and his name is Buster! We're happy to announce the release of Debian 10, codenamed buster.

Already a happy Debian user and you only want to upgrade? You can easily upgrade from your current Debian 9 "stretch" installation; please read the release notes.

Do you want to celebrate the release? We provide some buster artwork that you can share or use as base for your own creations. Follow the conversation about buster in social media via the #ReleasingDebianBuster and #Debian10Buster hashtags or join an in-person or online Release Party!

Upcoming Debian 10 "buster"!

Laura Arjona Reina, Jean-Pierre Giraud and Thomas Vincent — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 08:00:00 +0200

The Debian Release Team in coordination with several other teams are preparing the last bits needed for releasing Debian 10 "buster" on Saturday 6 July 2019. Please, be patient! Lots of steps are involved and some of them take some time, such as building the images, propagating the release through the mirror network, and rebuilding the Debian website so that "stable" points to Debian 10.

If you are considering create some artwork on the occasion of buster release, feel free to send us links to your creations to the (publicly archived) debian-publicity mailing list, so that we can disseminate them throughout our community.

Follow the live coverage of the release on https://micronews.debian.org or the @debian profile in your favorite social network! We'll spread the word about what's new in this version of Debian 10, how the release process is progressing during the weekend and facts about Debian and the wide community of volunteer contributors that make it possible.

If you want to celebrate the release of Debian 10 buster, join one of the many release parties or consider organizing one in your city! Celebration will also happen online on the Debian Party Line.

DebConf19 Cheese and Wine Party

Adriana Cássia da Costa — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 14:30:00 +0200

In less than one month we will be in Curitiba to start DebCamp and DebConf19 \o/

This C&W is the 15th official DebConf Cheese and Wine party. The first C&W was improvised in Helsinki during DebConf 5, in the so-called "French" room. Cheese and Wine parties are now a tradition for DebConf.

The event is very simple: bring good edible stuff from your country. We like cheese and wine, but we love the surprising stuff that people bring from all around the world or regions of Brazil. So, you can bring non-alcoholic drinks or a typical food that you would like to share as well. Even if you don't bring anything, feel free to participate: our priorities are our attendants and free cheese.

We have to organize for a great party. An important part is planning - We want to know what you are bringing, in order to prepare the labels and organizing other things.

So, please go to our wiki page and add what you will bring!

If you don't have time to buy before travel, we list some places where you can buy cheese and wine in Curitiba. There are more information about C&W, what you can bring, vegan cheese, Brazil customs regulations and non-alcoholic drinks at our site.

C&W will happen on July 22nd, 2019 (Monday) after 19h30min.

We are looking forward to seeing you all here!

Diversity and inclusion in Debian: small actions and large impacts

Laura Arjona Reina and Rhonda D'Vine — Sat, 29 Jun 2019 00:40:00 +0200

The Debian Project always has and always will welcome contributions from people who are willing to work on a constructive level with each other, without discrimination.

The Diversity Statement and the Code of Conduct are genuinely important parts of our community, and over recent years some other things have been done to make it clear that they aren't just words.

One of those things is the creation of the Debian Diversity Team: it was announced in April 2019, although it had already been working for several months before as a welcoming space for, and a way of increasing visibility of, underrepresented groups within the Debian project.

During DebConf19 in Curitiba there will be a dedicated Diversity and Welcoming Team. It will consist of people from the Debian community to offer a contact point when you feel lost or uneasy. The DebConf team is also in contact with a local LGBTIQA+ support group for exchange of safety concerns and information with respect to Brazil in general.

Today Debian also recognizes the impact LGBTIQA+ people have had in the world and within the Debian project, joining the worldwide Pride celebrations. We show it by changing our logo for this time to the Debian Diversity logo, and encourage all Debian members and contributors to show their support of a diverse and inclusive community.

100 Paper cuts kick-off

Jonathan Carter — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 20:30:00 +0200

Introduction

Is there a thorny bug in Debian that ruins your user experience? Something just annoying enough to bother you but not serious enough to constitute an RC bug? Are grey panels and slightly broken icon themes making you depressed?

Then join the 100 papercuts project! A project to identify and fix the 100 most annoying bugs in Debian over the next stable release cycle. That also includes figuring out how to identify and categorize those bugs and make sure that they are actually fixable in Debian (or ideally upstream).

The idea of a papercuts project isn't new, Ubuntu did this some years ago which added a good amount of polish to the system.

Kick-off Meeting and DebConf BoF

On the 17th of June at 19:00 UTC we're kicking off an initial brainstorming session on IRC to gather some initial ideas.

We'll use that to seed discussion at DebConf19 in Brazil during a BoF session where we'll solidify those plans into something actionable.

Meeting details

When: 2019-06-17, 19:00 UTC Where: #debian-meeting channel on the OFTC IRC network

Your IRC nick needs to be registered in order to join the channel. Refer to the Register your account section on the OFTC website for more information on how to register your nick.

You can always refer to the debian-meeting wiki page for the latest information and up to date schedule.

Hope to see you there!

DebConf19 welcomes its sponsors!

znoteer and Laura Arjona Reina — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 14:20:00 +0200

DebConf19 is taking place in Curitiba, Brazil, from 21 July to 28 July 2019. It is the 20th edition of the Debian conference and organisers are working hard to create another interesting and fruitful event for attendees.

We would like to warmly welcome the first 29 sponsors of DebConf19, and introduce you to them.

So far we have three Platinum sponsors.

Our first Platinum sponsor is Infomaniak. Infomaniak is Switzerland's largest web-hosting company, also offering backup and storage services, solutions for event organizers, live-streaming and video on demand services. It wholly owns its datacenters and all elements critical to the functioning of the services and products provided by the company (both software and hardware).

Next, as a Platinum sponsor, is Google. Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf since more than ten years, and is also a Debian partner.

Lenovo is our third Planinum sponsor. Lenovo is a global technology leader manufacturing a wide portfolio of connected products, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and workstations as well as AR/VR devices, smart home/office solutions and data center solutions. This is their first year sponsoring DebConf.

Our Gold sponsor is Collabora, a global consultancy delivering Open Source software solutions to the commercial world. Their expertise spans all key areas of Open Source software development. In addition to offering solutions to clients, Collabora's engineers and developers actively contribute to many Open Source projets.

Our Silver sponsors are: credativ (a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software and also a Debian development partner), Cumulus Networks, (a company building web-scale networks using innovative, open networking technology), Codethink (specialists in system-level software infrastructure supporting advanced technical applications), the Bern University of Applied Sciences (with over 6,800 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital), Civil Infrastructure Platform, (a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation, establishing an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software), \WIT (offering a secure cloud solution and complete data privacy via Kubnernetes encrypted hardware virtualisation), Hudson-Trading, (a company researching and developing automated trading algorithms using advanced mathematical techniques), Ubuntu, (the Operating System delivered by Canonical), NHS (with a broad product portfolio, they offer solutions, amongst others, for data centres, telecommunications, CCTV, and residential, commercial and industrial automation), rentcars.com who helps customers find the best car rentals from over 100 rental companies at destinations in the Americas and around the world, and Roche, a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare.

Bronze sponsors: 4Linux, IBM, zpe, Univention, Policorp, Freexian, globo.com.

And finally, our Supporter level sponsors: Altus Metrum, Pengwin, ISG.EE, Jupter, novatec, Intnet, Linux Professional Institute.

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf19 is still accepting sponsors. Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf19 website at https://debconf19.debconf.org.

Debian welcomes its GSoC 2019 and Outreachy interns

znoteer — Fri, 31 May 2019 14:15:00 +0200

We're excited to announce that Debian has selected seven interns to work with us during the next months: two people for Outreachy, and five for the Google Summer of Code.

Here is the list of projects and the interns who will work on them:

Android SDK Tools in Debian

Saif Abdul Cassim
Katerina

Package Loomio for Debian

utkarsh2102

Debian Cloud Image Finder

Arthur Diniz

Debian Patch Porting System

Jaskaran Singh

Continuous Integration

Congratulations and welcome to all the interns!

The Google Summer of Code and Outreachy programs are possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian developers and contributors that dedicate part of their free time to mentor interns and outreach tasks.

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the interns weekly reports on the debian-outreach mailing-list, chat with us on our IRC channel or on each project's team mailing lists.

Ask anything you ever wanted to know about Debian Edu!

Jonathan Carter — Wed, 29 May 2019 17:30:00 +0200

You have heard about Debian Edu or Skolelinux, but do you know exactly what we are doing?

Join us on the #debian-meeting channel on the OFTC IRC network on 03 June 2019 at 12:00 UTC for an introduction to Debian Edu, a Debian pure blend created to fit the requirements of schools and similar institutions.

You will meet Holger Levsen, contributing to Debian Edu since 2005 and member of development team. Ask him anything you ever wanted to know about Debian Edu!

Your IRC nick needs to be registered in order to join the channel. Refer to the Register your account section on the oftc website for more information on how to register your nick.

You can always refer to the debian-meeting wiki page for the latest information and up to date schedule.

Lenovo Platinum Sponsor of DebConf19

Laura Arjona Reina — Mon, 20 May 2019 10:00:00 +0200

We are very pleased to announce that Lenovo has committed to supporting DebConf19 as a Platinum sponsor.

"Lenovo is proud to sponsor the 20th Annual Debian Conference." said Egbert Gracias, Senior Software Development Manager at Lenovo. "We’re excited to see, up close, the great work being done in the community and to meet the developers and volunteers that keep the Debian Project moving forward!”

Lenovo is a global technology leader manufacturing a wide portfolio of connected products, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and workstations as well as AR/VR devices, smart home/office solutions and data center solutions.

Thank you very much Lenovo, for your support of DebConf19!

Become a sponsor too!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (March and April 2019)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sat, 11 May 2019 16:35:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Jean-Baptiste Favre (jbfavre)
Andrius Merkys (merkys)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Christian Ehrhardt
Aniol Marti
Utkarsh Gupta
Nicolas Schier
Stewart Ferguson
Hilmar Preusse

Congratulations!

Introduction to the new DPL, ask him anything!

Jonathan Carter — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 19:20:00 +0200

We have a new DPL! On 21 April 2019 Sam Hartman started his term as Debian Project Leader.

Join us on the #debian-meeting channel on the OFTC IRC network on 10 May 2019 at 10:00 UTC for an introduction to our new DPL, and also to have the chance to ask him any questions that you may have.

Your IRC nick needs to be registered in order to join the channel. Refer to the Register your account section on the oftc website for more information on how to register your nick.

We plan to have many more project-wide IRC sessions in the future.

You can always refer to the debian-meeting wiki page for the latest information and up to date schedule.

DPL elections 2019, congratulations Sam Hartman!

Ana Guerrero López — Sun, 21 Apr 2019 14:00:00 +0200

The Debian Project Leader elections just finished and the winner is Sam Hartman!

His term as project leader starts immediately today April 21st and expires on April 20th 2020.

Of a total of 1003 developers, 378 developers voted using the Condorcet method. More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2019 page.

Many thanks to Joerg Jaspert, Jonathan Carter and Martin Michlmayr for running.

And special thanks to Chris Lamb for his service as DPL during these last twenty-four months!

Debian Web Team Sprint 2019

Laura Arjona Reina — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 09:20:00 +0200

The Debian Web team held a sprint for the first time, in Madrid (Spain) from March 15th to March 17th, 2019.

We discussed the status of the Debian website in general, review several important pages/sections and agreed on many things how to improve them.

For the sections we want to reorganise (mainly the homepage and a new section "download" which will group our current "CD" and "distrib" sections), we have designed this workflow:

Create branches in the webwml repo,
Agreed on the new or modified content (started already during the sprint), and work on them further after the sprint
Review a lot of related open bugs to see if we can address them with the new content (done during the sprint)
Create bug reports for the things that cannot be solved quickly to keep them tracked (started during the sprint)
We agreed we should get further help from web designers/information architects (pending)
Once the English version is more or less settled, call for translations on the branch (pending)
If we have English and the main translations ready, merging into the master branch (pending)
We will try to have at least the homepage and the download section ready for the Buster release.

We also agreed that the press delegates should decide what new News entry is worth to be posted in the homepage instead of showing the last 6 entries.

For some other pages or areas (e.g. doc/books, misc/merchandise, /users) we found that the content is outdated and the team can not maintain it, we agreed in issuing a call for help (request for adoption) and if we cannot find volunteers for those pages/areas, we'll remove the content or move it to wiki.debian.org at the end of 2019.

We have agreed that we'll need to reduce the size (number of pages) of the website (*see some numbers about statistics at bottom) so it's more sustainable to keep the whole website up-to-date (content wise), so we'll remove some pages having content already covered in other pages, having content that currently is easy discoverable with a web search engine, can be maintained better in the wiki, etc.

We have talked a bit about certain other aspects like point release workflow, the build time of the website, team memberships and governance. In general the sprint has shown that for most of the discussed topics the migration to git as VCS and the existence of Salsa is a huge step forward for the usability and attractiveness for contributors of the webwml repository.

The core webteam is happy that the sprint has also attracted new people to jump in and which are also members of the webteam now. We welcome Thomas Lange and Carsten Schoenert in our team!

Finally, we have passed time together to socialize and knowing each other better, and got very motivated to continue working on the web.

Left to right: Rhonda D'Vine, Laura Arjona Reina, Thomas Lange, Carsten Schoenert, Steve McIntyre

A more detailed report has been sent to the debian-www mailing list.

The participants would like to thank all donors to the Debian project who helped to cover a large part of our expenses.

Bursary applications for DebConf19 are closing in less than 72 hours!

Laura Arjona Reina, Paulo Santana — Sat, 13 Apr 2019 10:15:00 +0200

If you intend to apply for a DebConf19 bursary and have not yet done so, please proceed as soon as possible!

Bursary applications for DebConf19 will be accepted until April 15th at 23:59 UTC. Applications submitted after this deadline will not be considered.

You can apply for a bursary when you register for the conference.

Please make sure to double-check your accommodation choices (dates and venue). Details about accommodation arrangements can be found on the accommodation page.

See you in Curitiba!

Debian is welcoming applicants for Outreachy and GSoC 2019

Laura Arjona Reina and Lesley Mitchell — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 12:15:00 +0100

Debian is dedicated to increasing the diversity of contributors to the project and improving the inclusivity of the project. We strongly believe working towards these goals provides benefits both for people from backgrounds that are currently under-represented in free software, and for the wider movement, by increasing the range of skills, experiences and viewpoints contributing to it.

As part of this outreach effort, Debian is participating in the next round of Outreachy.

The application period for the May 2019 to August 2019 round has been extended until April 2, and Debian offers the following projects:

Outreachy invites applicants who are women (both cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people to apply. Anyone who faces systemic bias or discrimination in the technology industry of their country is also invited to apply.

Don't wait up! You can learn more details on how to submit your application or get help in our wiki page for Outreachy and the Outreachy website.

Debian is also participating in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) with eight projects, and the student application period is open until April 9.

You can learn more details on how to submit your GSoC application or get help for in our wiki page for GSoC and the Google Summer of Code website.

We encourage people who are elegible for Outreachy and GSoC to submit their application to both programs.

Call for Proposals: Debconf 19, Curitiba, Brazil

Gunnar Wolf, Nicolas Braud-Santoniz, Paulo Santana and Antonio Terceiro — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 19:00:00 +0100

The DebConf Content team would like to call for proposals in the DebConf 19 conference, which will take place in Curitiba, Brazil, between July 21th and 28th. It will be preceded by DebCamp from July 14th to 19th, and Open Day on the 20th.

You can find this Call for Proposals, in its latest form, online:

https://debconf19.debconf.org/cfp/

Please refer to this URL for updates on the present information.

Submitting an Event

Regular sessions may either be 20 or 45 minutes long (including time for questions), other kinds of sessions (workshops, demos, lightning talks, ...) could have different durations. Please choose the most suitable duration for your event and explain any special requests.

You will need to create an account on the site, to submit a talk. We suggest that Debian account holders (including DDs and DMs) to use Debian SSO when creating an account. However, this isn't required, as you can sign up with an e-mail address and password.

Timeline

If you depend on having your proposal accepted in order to attend the conference, please submit it in a timely fashion so that it can be considered (and potentially accepted) as soon as possible.

All proposals must be submitted before Sunday April 28th, 2019 to be evaluated for the official schedule.

Topics and Tracks

Though we invite proposals on any Debian or FLOSS related subject, we have some broad topics on which we encourage people to submit proposals, including but not limited to:

Cloud and containers
Debian Blends
Debian in Science
Embedded
Introduction to Free Software & Debian
Packaging, policy, and Debian infrastructure
Security
Social context
Systems administration, automation and orchestration

You are welcome to either suggest more tracks, or to become a coordinator for any of them. For more information, see the Content team wiki.

Open Day

This call for proposals also targets Open Day, a day of activities targeted at the general public on July 20th. Topics of interest range from topics specific to Debian to the greater Free Software community and maker movement. The idea of Open Day is to bring the general public closer to Debian and vice-versa, so activity proposals that go in that direction are more than welcome.

If you are interested in presenting on Open Day, let us know in the "Notes" field of your submission. We might also invite proponents that are not specifically targeting Open Day to present in it if we find that the topic fits the above goals.

The Open Day will host activities in multiple languages. We expect to have activities in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

If your talk will be in portuguese, you can write the Abstract field in portuguese too.

Talk proposal help on IRC

This year we will be holding holding office hours on IRC. Those will be designated times where the DebConf content team will be available to help potential speakers prepare their talk proposals for DebConf.

Dates and times for those will be announced later.

Code of Conduct

Our event is covered by a Code of Conduct designed to ensure everyone’s safety and comfort. The code applies to all attendees, including speakers and the content of their presentations. Do not hesitate to contact us at content@debconf.org if you have any questions or are unsure about certain content you’d like to present.

Video Coverage

Providing video is one of the conference goals, as it makes the content accessible to a wider audience. Unless speakers opt-out, scheduled talks may be streamed live over the Internet to promote remote participation, and recordings will be published later under the DebConf license (MIT/Expat), as well as presentation slides and papers whenever available.

Closing note

DebConf 19 is still accepting sponsors; if you are interested, or think you know of others who would be willing to help, please get in touch with sponsors@debconf.org.

In case of any questions, or if you wanted to bounce some ideas off us first, please do not hesitate to reach out to the content team at content@debconf.org.

We hope to see you in Curitiba!

The DebConf team

Google Platinum Sponsor of DebConf19

Laura Arjona Reina — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 12:30:00 +0100

We are very pleased to announce that Google has committed to support DebConf19 as a Platinum sponsor.

"The annual DebConf is an important part of the Debian development ecosystem and Google is delighted to return as a sponsor in support of the work of the global community of volunteers who make Debian and DebConf a reality" said Cat Allman, Program Manager in the Open Source Programs and Making & Science teams at Google.

With this additional commitment as Platinum Sponsor for DebConf19, Google contributes to make possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Google, for your support of DebConf19!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf19 registration is open!

Sergio Durigan Junior, Paulo Santana — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 20:30:00 +0100

Registration for DebConf19 is now open. The event will take place from July 21st to 28th, 2019 at the Central campus of Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná - UTFPR, in Curitiba, Brazil, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from July 14th to 19th, and an Open Day on the 20th.

To register for the event, log into the registration system and fill out the form. You will be able to edit and update your registration at any point. However, in order to help the organisers have a better estimate of how many people will attend the event, we would appreciate if you could access the system and confirm (or cancel) your participation in the Conference as soon as you know if you will be able to come. The last day to confirm or cancel is June 14th, 2019 23:59:59 UTC. If you don't confirm or you register after this date, you can come to the DebConf19 but we cannot guarantee availability of accommodation, food and swag (t-shirt, bag…).

For more information about registration, please visit Registration Information

Bursary for travel, accomodation and meals

As resources are limited, we will examine the requests and decide who will receive the bursaries. They will be destined:

To active Debian contributors.
To promote diversity: newcomers to Debian and/or DebConf, especially from under-represented communities.

Giving a talk, organizing an event or helping during DebConf19 is taken into account when deciding upon your bursary, so please mention them in your bursary application. DebCamp plans can be entered in the usual Sprints page at the Debian wiki.

For more information about bursaries, please visit Applying for a Bursary to DebConf

Attention: the registration for DebConf19 will be open until Conference, but the deadline to apply for bursaries using the registration form before April 15th, 2019 23:59:59 UTC. This deadline is necessary in order to the organisers use time to analyze the requests, and for successful applicants to prepare for the conference.

To register for the Conference, either with or without a bursary request, please visit: https://debconf19.debconf.org/register

DebConf would not be possible without the generous support of all our sponsors, especially our Platinum Sponsors Infomaniak and Google. DebConf19 is still accepting sponsors; if you are interested, or think you know of others who would be willing to help, please get in touch!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2019)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 13:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana (phls)
Unit 193 (unit193)
Marcio de Souza Oliveira (marciosouza)
Ross Vandegrift (rvandegrift)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Romain Perier
Felix Yan

Congratulations!

Infomaniak Platinum Sponsor of DebConf19

Laura Arjona Reina — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 15:45:00 +0100

We are very pleased to announce that Infomaniak has committed to support DebConf19 as a Platinum sponsor.

"Infomaniak is proud to support the annual Debian Developers' Conference", said Marc Oehler, Chief Operating Officer at Infomaniak. "The vast majority of our hostings work using Debian and we share this community's values: promoting innovation whilst ensuring that security, transparency and user freedom remains top priority."

Thank you very much Infomaniak, for your support of DebConf19!

Become a sponsor too!

Projects and mentors for Debian's Google Summer of Code 2019 and Outreachy

Alexander Wirt — Sun, 03 Feb 2019 10:40:00 +0100

Debian is applying as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code 2019, an internship program open to university students aged 18 and up, and will apply soon for the next round of Outreachy, an internship program for people from groups traditionally underrepresented in tech.

Please join us and help expanding Debian and mentoring new free software contributors!

If you have a project idea related to Debian and can mentor (or can coordinate the mentorship with some other Debian Developer or contributor, or within a Debian team), please add the details to the Debian GSoC2019 Projects wiki page by Tuesday, February 5 2019.

Participating in these programs has many benefits for Debian and the wider free software community. If you have questions, please come and ask us on IRC #debian-outreach or the debian-outreach mailing list.

Help test initial support for Secure Boot

Steve McIntyre, Cyril Brulebois — Sat, 02 Feb 2019 11:00:00 +0100

The Debian Installer team is happy to report that the Buster Alpha 5 release of the installer includes some initial support for UEFI Secure Boot (SB) in Debian's installation media.

This support is not yet complete, and we would like to request some help! Please read on for more context and instructions to help us get better coverage and support.

On amd64 machines, by default the Debian installer will now boot (and install) a signed version of the shim package as the first stage boot loader. Shim is the core package in a signed Linux boot chain on Intel-compatible PCs. It is responsible for validating signatures on further pieces of the boot process (GRUB and the Linux kernel), allowing for verification of those pieces. Each of those pieces will be signed by a Debian production signing key that is baked into the shim binary itself.

However, for safety during the development phase of Debian's SB support, we have only been using a temporary test key to sign our GRUB and Linux packages. If we made a mistake with key management or trust path verification during this development, this would save us from having to revoke the production key. We plan on switching to the production key soon.

Due to the use of the test key so far, out of the box Debian will not yet install or run with SB enabled; Shim will not validate signatures with the test key and will stop, reporting the problem. This is correct and useful behaviour!

Thus far, Debian users have needed to disable SB before installation to make things work. From now on, with SB still disabled, installation and use should work just the same as previously. Shim simply chain-loads GRUB and continues through the boot chain without checking signatures.

It is possible to enrol more keys on a SB system so that shim will recognise and allow other signatures, and this is how we have been able to test the rest of the boot chain. We now invite more users to give us valuable test coverage on a wider variety of hardware by enrolling our Debian test key and running with SB enabled.

If you want to help us test our Secure Boot support, please follow the instructions in the Debian wiki and provide feedback.

With help from users, we expect to be able to ship fully-working and tested UEFI Secure Boot in an upcoming Debian Installer release and in the main Buster release itself.

"futurePrototype" will be the default theme for Debian 10

Laura Arjona Reina, Niels Thykier and Jonathan Carter — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 13:15:00 +0100

The theme "futurePrototype" by Alex Makas has been selected as default theme for Debian 10 'buster'.

After the Debian Desktop Team made the call for proposing themes, a total of eleven choices have been submitted, and any Debian contributor has received the opportunity to vote on them in a survey. We received 3,646 responses ranking the different choices, and futurePrototype has been the winner among them.

We'd like to thank all the designers that have participated providing nice wallpapers and artwork for Debian 10, and encourage everybody interested in this area of Debian, to join the Design Team.

Congratulations, Alex, and thank you very much for your contribution to Debian!

DebConf19 is looking for sponsors!

Laura Arjona Reina, Andre Bianchi and Paulo Santana — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 18:30:00 +0100

DebConf19 will be held in Curitiba, Brazil from July 21th to 28th, 2019. It will be preceded by DebCamp, July 14th to 19th, and Open Day on the 20th.

DebConf, Debian's annual developers conference, is an amazing event where Debian contributors from all around the world gather to present, discuss and work in teams around the Debian operating system. It is a great opportunity to get to know people responsible for the success of the project and to witness a respectful and functional distributed community in action.

The DebConf team aims to organize the Debian Conference as a self-sustaining event, despite its size and complexity. The financial contributions and support by individuals, companies and organizations are pivotal to our success.

There are many different possibilities to support DebConf and we are in the process of contacting potential sponsors from all around the globe. If you know any organization that could be interested or who would like to give back resources to FOSS, please consider handing them the sponsorship brochure or contact the fundraising team with any leads. If you are a company and want to sponsor, please contact us at sponsors@debconf.org.

Let’s work together, as every year, on making the best DebConf ever. We are waiting for you at Curitiba!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2018)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Tue, 08 Jan 2019 14:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Abhijith PA (abhijith)
Philippe Thierry (philou)
Kai-Chung Yan (seamlik)
Simon Quigley (tsimonq2)
Daniele Tricoli (eriol)
Molly de Blanc (mollydb)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Nicolas Mora
Wolfgang Silbermayr
Marcos Fouces
kpcyrd
Scott Martin Leggett

Congratulations!

Debian Cloud Sprint 2018

Tomasz Rybak — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 12:30:00 +0100

The Debian Cloud team held a sprint for the third time, hosted by Amazon at its Seattle offices from October 8th to October 10th, 2018.

We discussed the status of images on various platforms, especially in light of moving to FAI as the only method for building images on all the cloud platforms. The next topic was building and testing workflows, including the use of Debian machines for building, testing, storing, and publishing built images. This was partially caused by the move of all repositories to Salsa, which allows for better management of code changes, especially reviewing new code.

Recently we have made progress supporting cloud usage cases; grub and kernel optimised for cloud images help with reducing boot time and required memory footprint. There is also growing interest in non-x86 images, and FAI can now build such images.

Discussion of support for LTS images, which started at the sprint, has now moved to the debian-cloud mailing list). We also discussed providing many image variants, which requires a more advanced and automated workflow, especially regarding testing. Further discussion touched upon providing newer kernels and software like cloud-init from backports. As interest in using secure boot is increasing, we might cooperate with other team and use work on UEFI to provide images signed boot loader and kernel.

Another topic of discussion was the management of accounts used by Debian to build and publish Debian images. SPI will create and manage such accounts for Debian, including user accounts (synchronised with Debian accounts). Buster images should be published using those new accounts. Our Cloud Team delegation proposal (prepared by Luca Fillipozzi) was accepted by the Debian Project Leader. Sprint minutes are available, including a summary and a list of action items for individual members.

Debian welcomes its new Outreachy intern

Laura Arjona Reina — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 20:15:00 +0100

Debian continues participating in Outreachy, and we'd like to welcome our new Outreachy intern for this round, lasting from December 2018 to March 2019.

Anastasia Tsikoza will work on Improving the integration of Debian derivatives with the Debian infrastructure and the community, mentored by Paul Wise and Raju Devidas.

Congratulations, Anastasia, and welcome!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (September and October 2018)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Thu, 08 Nov 2018 14:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Joseph Herlant (aerostitch)
Aurélien Couderc (coucouf)
Dylan Aïssi (daissi)
Kunal Mehta (legoktm)
Ming-ting Yao Wei (mwei)
Nicolas Braud-Santoni (nicoo)
Pierre-Elliott Bécue (peb)
Stephen Gelman (ssgelm)
Daniel Echeverry (epsilon)
Dmitry Bogatov (kaction)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Sagar Ippalpalli
Kurt Kremitzki
Michal Arbet
Peter Wienemann
Alexis Bienvenüe
Gard Spreemann

Congratulations!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2018)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 17:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

William Blough (bblough)
Shengjing Zhu (zhsj)
Boyuan Yang (byang)
Thomas Koch (thk)
Xavier Guimard (yadd)
Valentin Vidic (vvidic)
Mo Zhou (lumin)
Ruben Undheim (rubund)
Damiel Baumann (daniel)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Phil Morrell
Raúl Benencia
Brian T. Smith
Iñaki Martin Malerba
Hayashi Kentaro
Arnaud Rebillout

Congratulations!

25 years and counting

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 08:50:00 +0200

When the late Ian Murdock announced 25 years ago in comp.os.linux.development, "the imminent completion of a brand-new Linux release, [...] the Debian Linux Release", nobody would have expected the "Debian Linux Release" to become what's nowadays known as the Debian Project, one of the largest and most influential free software projects. Its primary product is Debian, a free operating system (OS) for your computer, as well as for plenty of other systems which enhance your life. From the inner workings of your nearby airport to your car entertainment system, and from cloud servers hosting your favorite websites to the IoT devices that communicate with them, Debian can power it all.

Today, the Debian project is a large and thriving organization with countless self-organized teams comprised of volunteers. While it often looks chaotic from the outside, the project is sustained by its two main organizational documents: the Debian Social Contract, which provides a vision of improving society, and the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which provide an indication of what software is considered usable. They are supplemented by the project's Constitution which lays down the project structure, and the Code of Conduct, which sets the tone for interactions within the project.

Every day over the last 25 years, people have sent bug reports and patches, uploaded packages, updated translations, created artwork, organized events about Debian, updated the website, taught others how to use Debian, and created hundreds of derivatives.

Here's to another 25 years - and hopefully many, many more!

DebConf18 closes in Hsinchu and DebConf19 dates announced

Laura Arjona Reina — Sun, 05 Aug 2018 22:00:00 +0200

Today, Sunday 5 August 2018, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. With over 306 people attending from all over the world, and 137 events including 100 talks, 25 discussion sessions or BoFs, 5 workshops and 7 other activities, DebConf18 has been hailed as a success.

Highlights included DebCamp with more than 90 participants, the Open Day, where events of interest to a broader audience were offered, plenaries like the traditional Bits from the DPL, a Questions and Answers session with Minister Audrey Tang, a panel discussion about "Ignoring negativity" with Bdale Garbee, Chris Lamb, Enrico Zini and Steve McIntyre, the talk "That's a free software issue!!" given by Molly de Blanc and Karen Sandler, lightning talks and live demos and the announcement of next year's DebConf (DebConf19 in Curitiba, Brazil).

The schedule has been updated every day, including 27 ad-hoc new activities, planned by attendees during the whole conference.

For those not able to attend, most talks and sessions were recorded and live streamed, and videos are being made available at the Debian meetings archive website. Many sessions also facilitated remote participation via IRC or a collaborative text document.

The DebConf18 website will remain active for archive purposes, and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf19 will be held in Curitiba, Brazil, from 21 July to 28 July, 2019. It will be the second DebConf held in Brazil (first one was DebConf4 in Porto Alegre. For the days before DebConf the local organisers will again set up DebCamp (13 July – 19 July), a session for some intense work on improving the distribution, and organise the Open Day on 20 July 2019, open to the general public.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf18, particularly our Platinum Sponsor Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

About Debian

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is an industry-leading technology company providing a comprehensive portfolio of products such as integrated systems, servers, storage, networking and software. The company offers consulting, operational support, financial services, and complete solutions for many different industries: mobile and IoT, data & analytics and the manufacturing or public sectors among others.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and providing hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf18 web page at https://debconf18.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.

DebConf18 thanks its sponsors!

Laura Arjona Reina — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 12:00:00 +0200

DebConf18 is taking place in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from July 29th to August 5th, 2018. It is the first Debian Annual Conference in Asia, with over 300 attendees and major advances for Debian and for Free Software in general.

Thirty-two companies have committed to sponsor DebConf18! With a warm "thank you", we'd like to introduce them to you.

Our Platinum sponsor is Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). HPE is an industry-leading technology company providing a comprehensive portfolio of products such as integrated systems, servers, storage, networking and software. The company offers consulting, operational support, financial services, and complete solutions for many different industries: mobile and IoT, data & analytics and the manufacturing or public sectors among others.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and providing hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

We have four Gold sponsors:

Google, a technology company specialized in Internet-related services as online advertising and search engine,
Infomaniak, Switzerland's largest web-hosting company, also offering live-streaming and video on demand services,
Collabora, which offers a comprehensive range of services to help its clients to navigate the ever-evolving world of Open Source, and
Microsoft, the American multinational technology company developing, licensing and selling computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers and related services.

As Silver sponsors we have credativ (a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software and also a Debian development partner), Gandi (a French company providing domain name registration, web hosting, and related services), Skymizer (a Taiwanese company focused on compiler and virtual machine technology), Civil Infrastructure Platform, (a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation, establishing an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software), Brandorr Group, (a company that develops, deploys and manages new or existing infrastructure in the cloud for customers of all sizes), 3CX, (a software-based, open standards IP PBX that offers complete unified communications), Free Software Initiative Japan, (a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Free Software growth and development), Texas Instruments (the global semiconductor company), the Bern University of Applied Sciences (with over 6,800 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital), ARM, (a multinational semiconductor and software design company, designers of the ARM processors), Ubuntu, (the Operating System delivered by Canonical), Cumulus Networks, (a company building web-scale networks using innovative, open networking technology), Roche, (a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare) and Hudson-Trading, (a company researching and developing automated trading algorithms using advanced mathematical techniques).

ISG.EE, Univention Private Internet Access, Logilab, Dropbox and IBM are our Bronze sponsors.

And finally, SLAT (Software Liberty Association of Taiwan), The Linux foundation, deepin, Altus Metrum, Evolix, BerryNet and Purism are our supporter sponsors.

Thanks to all our sponsors for their support! Their contributions made possible that a large number of Debian contributors from all over the globe work together, help and learn from each other in DebConf18.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (May and June 2018)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 19:45:00 +0200

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Andre Bianchi
Simon Quigley
Andrius Merkys
Tong Sun
James Lu
Raphaël Halimi
Paul Seyfert
Dustin Kirkland
Yanhao Mo
Paride Legovini

Congratulations!

Application managers are needed to help contributors get their Debian Developer accounts. See the call from New Member Front Desk for details.

DebConf18 starts today in Hsinchu

Laura Arjona Reina — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 03:30:00 +0200

DebConf18, the 19th annual Debian Conference, is taking place in Hsinchu, Taiwan from July 29th to August 5th, 2018.

Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at National Chiao Tung University, Microelectronics and Information Research Center (NCTU MIRC) during the preceding week for DebCamp (focused on individual work and team sprints for in-person collaboration developing Debian), and the Open Day on July 28th (with presentations and workshops of interest to a wide audience).

Today the main conference starts with over 300 attendants and 118 activities scheduled, including 45- and 20-minute talks and team meetings, workshops, a job fair, talks from invited speakers, as well as a variety of other events.

The full schedule at https://debconf18.debconf.org/schedule/ is updated every day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees during the whole conference.

If you want to engage remotely, you can follow the video streaming available from the DebConf18 website of the events happening in the three talk rooms: Yushan (玉山) (the main auditorium), Xueshan (雪山), and Zhongyangjianshan (中央尖山), or join the conversation about what is happening in the talk rooms: #debconf18-y, #debconf18-x and #debconf18-z (all those channels in the OFTC IRC network).

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf18, particularly our Platinum Sponsor Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Platinum Sponsor of DebConf18

Laura Arjona Reina — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 13:45:00 +0200

We are very pleased to announce that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has committed to support DebConf18 as a Platinum sponsor.

"Hewlett Packard Enterprise is excited to support Debian's annual developer conference for the third consecutive year," said Steve Geary, Senior Director R&D, Advanced Software Development, Hewlett Packard Labs. "The Debian community and open distribution are true innovation enablers for our Memory-Driven Computing work and products all across HPE."

HPE is an industry-leading technology company providing a comprehensive portfolio of products such as integrated systems, servers, storage, networking and software. The company offers consulting, operational support, financial services, and complete solutions for many different industries: mobile and IoT, data & analytics and the manufacturing or public sectors among others.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and providing hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

With this additional commitment as Platinum Sponsor, HPE contributes to make possible our annual conference and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for your support of DebConf18!

DebConf18 invites you to Debian Open Day at National Chiao Tung University, Microelectronics and Information Research Center (NCTU MIRC), in Hsinchu

Laura Arjona Reina, Héctor Orón Martínez — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 12:00:00 +0200

DebConf, the annual conference for Debian contributors and users interested in improving the Debian operating system, will be held in National Chiao Tung University, Microelectronics and Information Research Center (NCTU MIRC) in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from July 29th to August 5th, 2018. The conference is preceded by DebCamp, July 21th to July 27th, and the DebConf18 Open Day on July 28th.

Debian is an operating system consisting entirely of free and open source software, and is known for its adherence to the Unix and Free Software philosophies and for its extensiveness. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software, and more than 400 are expected to attend DebConf18 to meet in person and work together more closely.

The conference features presentations and workshops, and video streams are made available in real-time and archived.

The DebConf18 Open Day, Saturday, July 28, is open to the public with events of interest to a wide audience.

The detailed schedule of the Open Day's events include, among others:

Questions and Answers Session with Minister Audrey Tang,
Debian Meets Smart City Applications with SZ Lin
a Debian Packaging Workshop,
panel discussion: Story of Debian contributors around the world,
sessions in English or Chinese about different aspects of the Debian project and community, and other free software projects like LibreOffice, Clonezilla and DRBL, LXDE/LXQt desktops, EzGo...

Everyone is welcome to attend, attendance is free, and it is a great possibility for interested users to meet the Debian community.

The full schedule for Open Day's events and the rest of the conference is at https://debconf18.debconf.org/schedule and the video streaming will be available at the DebConf18 website

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the numerous sponsors for their commitment to DebConf18, particularly its Platinum Sponsor Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the Bureau of Foreign Trade, Ministry of Economic Affairs via the MEET TAIWAN program, and its venue sponsors, the National Chiao Tung University 國立交通大學 and the National Center for High-performance Computing 國家高速網路與計算中心.

For media contacts, please contact DebConf organization: 林上智 (SZ Lin), Cell: 0911-162297

Debian Perl Sprint 2018

Dominic Hargreaves — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 18:40:00 +0200

Three members of the Debian Perl team met in Hamburg between May 16 and May 20 2018 as part of the Mini-DebConf Hamburg to continue perl development work for Buster and to work on QA tasks across our 3500+ packages.

The participants had a good time and met other Debian friends. The sprint was productive:

21 bugs were filed or worked on, many uploads were accepted.
The transition to Perl 5.28 was prepared, and versioned provides were again worked on.
Several cleanup tasks were performed, especially around the move from Alioth to Salsa in documentation, website, and wiki.
For src:perl, autopkgtests were enabled, and work on Versioned Provides has been resumed.

The full report was posted to the relevant Debian mailing lists.

The participants would like to thank the Mini-DebConf Hamburg organizers for providing the framework for our sprint, and all donors to the Debian project who helped to cover a large part of our expenses.

Debian Artwork: Call for Proposals for Debian 10 (Buster)

Jonathan Carter — Sun, 17 Jun 2018 13:30:00 +0200

This is the official call for artwork proposals for the Buster cycle.

For the most up to date details, please refer to the wiki.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Juliette Taka Belin for doing the Softwaves theme for stretch.

The deadlines for submissions is: 2018-09-05

The artwork is usually picked based on which themes look the most:

''Debian'': admittedly not the most defined concept, since everyone has their own take on what Debian means to them.
''plausible to integrate without patching core software'': as much as we love some of the insanely hot looking themes, some would require heavy GTK+ theming and patching GDM/GNOME.
''clean / well designed'': without becoming something that gets annoying to look at a year down the road. Examples of good themes include Joy, Lines and Softwaves.

If you'd like more information, please use the Debian Desktop mailing list.

Debian welcomes its GSoC 2018 and Outreachy interns

Laura Arjona Reina — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:45:00 +0200

We're excited to announce that Debian has selected twenty-six interns to work with us during the next months: one person for Outreachy, and twenty-five for the Google Summer of Code.

Here is the list of projects and the interns who will work on them:

A calendar database of social events and conferences

Doğukan Çelik

Android SDK Tools in Debian

Saif Abdul Cassim (GSoC 2018 Android SDK tools in Debian)
Chandramouli Rajagopalan (Packaging and Updating Android SDK Tools)
Umang Parmar (Android SDK Tools in Debian)

Automatic builds with clang using OBS

Athos Ribeiro

Automatic Packages for Everything

Alexandre Viau

Click To Dial Popup Window for the Linux Desktop

Design and implementation of a Debian SSO solution

Birger Schacht

EasyGnuPG Improvements

Divesh Uttamchandani

Extracting data from PDF invoices and bills for financial accounting

Harshit Joshi

Firefox and Thunderbird plugin for free software habits

Enkelena Haxhija

GUI app for EasyGnuPG

Yugesh Ajit Kothari

Improving Distro Tracker to better support Debian teams

Arthur Del Esposte

Kanban Board for Debian Bug Tracker and CalDAV servers

Chikirou Massiwayne

OwnMailbox Improvements

Georgios Pipilis

P2P Network Boot with BitTorrent

Shreyansh Khajanchi

PGP Clean Room Live CD

Jacob Adams

Port Kali Packages to Debian

Samuel Henrique

Quality assurance for biological applications inside Debian

Liubov Chuprikova

Reverse Engineering Radiator Bluetooth Thermovalves

Sergio Alberti

Virtual LTSP Server

Deepanshu Gajbhiye

Wizard/GUI helping students/interns apply and get started

Congratulations and welcome to all of them!

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the interns weekly reports on the debian-outreach mailing-list, chat with us on our IRC channel or on each project's team mailing lists.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (March and April 2018)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Wed, 02 May 2018 22:03:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Andreas Boll (aboll)
Dominik George (natureshadow)
Julien Puydt (jpuydt)
Sergio Durigan Junior (sergiodj)
Robie Basak (rbasak)
Elena Grandi (valhalla)
Peter Pentchev (roam)
Samuel Henrique (samueloph)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Andy Li
Alexandre Rossi
David Mohammed
Tim Lunn
Rebecca Natalie Palmer
Andrea Bolognani
Toke Høiland-Jørgensen
Gabriel F. T. Gomes
Bjorn Anders Dolk
Geoffroy Youri Berret
Dmitry Eremin-Solenikov

Congratulations!

Bursary applications for DebConf18 are closing in 48 hours!

Laura Arjona Reina — Thu, 12 Apr 2018 12:30:00 +0200

If you intend to apply for a DebConf18 bursary and have not yet done so, please proceed as soon as possible!

Bursary applications for DebConf18 will be accepted until April 13th at 23:59 UTC. Applications submitted after this deadline will not be considered.

You can apply for a bursary when you register for the conference.

Please make sure to double-check your accommodation choices (dates and venue). Details about accommodation arrangements can be found on the wiki.

See you in Hsinchu!

DebConf20 in a cruise

Debian Publicity Team — Sun, 01 Apr 2018 20:15:00 +0200

The last editions of DebConf, the annual Debian conference, have been in unalike places like Heidelberg (Germany), Cape Town (South Africa) and Montreal (Canada). Next summer DebConf18 will happen in Hsinchu (Taiwan) and the location for DebConf19 is already decided: Curitiba (Brazil). During all these years an idea has been floating in the air (aka the Debian IRC channels) about organising a DebConf in a cruise. Today, the Debian Project is happy to announce that a group of Debian contributors have teamed-up to propose an actual bid for DebConf20 in a cruise.

The Cruise Team is confident about their ability to provide a detailed and strong bid by the end of the year. However, a brief plan and preparation is already done: the conference would happen in July and August 2020, during a trip around the world in a "rolling conference" scheme. This means that Debian contributors could choose when to arrive and leave by embarking/disembarking in one of the harbours the boat will stop. A DebCamp focused in sprinting the development of Debian blends and an "Open Day" with install parties under the sea and other interesting activities for the wide public is also planned.

There will be a sprint to discuss the bid details during DebConf18 in Hsinchu. The team has also initiated conversations with several cruise ship companies and satellite network providers in order to explore the possible venues and connectivity options for the conference. Interested parties can contact press@debian.org to join the Cruise Team in the preparation of the future conference.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2018)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 08:30:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Alexandre Mestiashvili (mestia)
Tomasz Rybak (serpent)
Louis-Philippe Véronneau (pollo)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Teus Benschop
Kyle John Robbertze
Maarten van Gompel
Dennis van Dok
Innocent De Marchi
David Rabel

Congratulations!

Debian won Linux Journal's Readers' Choice Award for Best Linux Distribution!

Laura Arjona Reina — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 23:00:00 +0100

Debian won Linux Journal's Readers' Choice Award for Best Linux Distribution.

Thank you for all your support!

DebConf18: Call for Proposals

Gunnar Wolf and Nicolas Braud-Santoni — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 15:30:00 +0100

The DebConf Content team would like to call for proposals in the DebConf18 conference, which will take place in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from 29 July to 5 August 2018.

You can find this Call for Proposals, in its latest form at: https://debconf18.debconf.org/cfp/.

Please refer to this URL for updates on the present information.

Suggesting a Speaker

The content team has a (limited) number of spots for invited speakers and is open to suggestions. Priority will be given to speakers who are not regular DebConf attendees, and who are more likely to bring diverse viewpoints to the conference.

Please keep in mind that some speakers may have very busy schedules and need to be booked far in advance. Therefore, we would like to start inviting speakers as soon as possible.

In order to suggest a speaker, please email content@debconf.org; your email should provide the following information:

The speaker's preferred name
Their location (for travel budget considerations)
Their affiliation (institution and/or project)
The suggested talk topic
Brief biography (50-100 words) as it relates to the suggested topic
The topic's relevance to Debian and/or DebConf

Please, note that the Code of Conduct applies to invited speakers and their talks, and coming to DebConf (incl. accepting an invitation) requires them to accept it.

Submitting an Event

While we cannot offer travel funding for all speakers, DebConf has various bursaries for attendees, including a diversity one, and having your event accepted is something that is taken into account.

You will need to create an account on the site, to submit a talk. We suggest that Debian account holders (including DDs and DMs) to use Debian SSO when creating an account. However, this isn’t required, as you can sign up with an e-mail address and password.

Timeline

If you depend on having your proposal accepted in order to attend the conference, please submit it in a timely fashion so that it can be considered (and potentially accepted) as soon as possible.

All proposals must be submitted before Sunday 17 June 2018 to be evaluated for the official schedule.

Topics and Tracks

Though we invite proposals on any Debian or FLOSS related subject, we have some broad topics on which we encourage people to submit proposals, including but not limited to:

Blends
Cloud and containers
Debian in Science
Embedded
Packaging, policy and infrastructure
Security
Social context
Systems administration, automation and orchestration

You are welcome to either suggest more tracks, or to become a coordinator for any of them; please refer to the Content Tracks wiki page for more information on that.

Code of Conduct

Video Coverage

Closing note

DebConf18 is still accepting sponsors; if you are interested, or think you know of others who would be willing to help, please get in touch!

In case of any questions, or if you wanted to bounce some ideas off us first, please do not hesitate to reach out to the content team at content@debconf.org.

We hope to see you in Hsinchu!

The DebConf team

Debian welcomes its Outreachy interns

Laura Arjona Reina — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 08:30:00 +0100

We'd like to welcome our three Outreachy interns for this round, lasting from December 2017 to March 2018.

Juliana Oliveira is working on reproducible builds for Debian and free software.

Kira Obrezkova is working on bringing open-source mobile technologies to a new level with Debian (Osmocom).

Renata D'Avila is working on a calendar database of social events and conferences for free software developers.

Congratulations, Juliana, Kira and Renata!

Debian will also participate this summer in the next round for Outreachy, and is currently applying as mentoring organisation for the Google Summer of Code 2018 programme. Have a look at the projects wiki page and contact the Debian Outreach Team mailing list to join as a mentor or welcome applicants into the Outreachy or GSoC programme.

Join us and help extend Debian!

Mentors and co-mentors for Debian's Google Summer of Code 2018

Daniel Pocock and Laura Arjona Reina — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 00:50:00 +0100

Debian is applying as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code 2018, an internship program open to university students aged 18 and up.

Debian already has a wide range of projects listed but it is not too late to add more or to improve the existing proposals. Google will start reviewing the ideas page over the next two weeks and students will start looking at it in mid-February.

Please join us and help extending Debian! You can consider listing a potential project for interns or listing your name as a possible co-mentor for one of the existing projects on Debian's Google Summer of Code wiki page.

At this stage, mentors are not obliged to commit to accepting an intern but it is important for potential mentors to be listed to get the process started. You will have the opportunity to review student applications in March and April and give the administrators a definite decision if you wish to proceed in early April.

Mentors, co-mentors and other volunteers can follow an intern through the entire process or simply volunteer for one phase of the program, such as helping recruit students in a local university or helping test the work completed by a student at the end of the summer.

Participating in GSoC has many benefits for Debian and the wider free software community. If you have questions, please come and ask us on IRC #debian-outreach or the debian-outreach mailing list.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2017)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 20:30:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Ben Armstrong (synrg)
Frédéric Bonnard (frediz)
Jerome Charaoui (lavamind)
Michael Jeanson (mjeanson)
Jim Meyering (meyering)
Christopher Knadle (krait)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Chris West
Mark Lee Garrett
Pierre-Elliott Bécue
Sebastian Humenda
Stefan Schörghofer
Stephen Gelman
Georg Faerber
Nico Schlömer

Congratulations!

Debsources now in sources.debian.org

Laura Arjona Reina — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 18:40:00 +0100

Debsources is a web application for publishing, browsing and searching an unpacked Debian source mirror on the Web. With Debsources, all the source code of every Debian release is available in https://sources.debian.org, both via an HTML user interface and a JSON API.

This service was first offered in 2013 with the sources.debian.net instance, which was kindly hosted by IRILL, and is now becoming official under sources.debian.org, hosted on the Debian infrastructure.

This new instance offers all the features of the old one (an updater that runs four times a day, various plugins to count lines of code or measure the size of packages, and sub-apps to show lists of patches and copyright files), plus integration with other Debian services such as codesearch.debian.net and the PTS.

The Debsources Team has taken the opportunity of this move of Debsources onto the Debian infrastructure to officially announce the service. Read their message as well as the Debsources documentation page for more details.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (September and October 2017)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 20:30:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Allison Randal (wendar)
Carsten Schoenert (tijuca)
Jeremy Bicha (jbicha)
Luca Boccassi (bluca)
Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)
Elana Hashman (ehashman)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Ervin Hegedüs
Tom Marble
Lukas Schwaighofer
Philippe Thierry

Congratulations!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2017)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 20:30:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Ross Gammon (rossgammon)
Balasankar C (balasankarc)
Roland Fehrenbacher (rfehren)
Jonathan Cristopher Carter (jcc)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

José Gutiérrez de la Concha
Paolo Greppi
Ming-ting Yao Wei
Boyuan Yang
Paul Hardy
Fabian Wolff
Moritz Schlarb
Shengjing Zhu

Congratulations!

Work on Debian for mobile devices continues

W. Martin Borgert — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 15:40:00 +0200

Work on Debian for mobile devices, i.e. telephones, tablets, and handheld computers, continues. During the recent DebConf17 in Montréal, Canada, more than 50 people had a meeting to reconsider opportunities and challenges for Debian on mobile devices.

A number of devices were shown at DebConf:

PocketCHIP: A very small handheld computer with keyboard, Wi-Fi, USB, and Bluetooth, running Debian 8 (Jessie) or 9 (Stretch).
Pyra: A modular handheld computer with a touchscreen, gaming controls, Wi-Fi, keyboard, multiple USB ports and SD card slots, and an optional modem for either Europe or the USA. It will come preinstalled with Debian.
Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G: An Android smartphone featuring a physical keyboard, which can already run portions of Debian userspace on the Android kernel. Kernel upstreaming is on the way.
ZeroPhone: An open-source smartphone based on Raspberry Pi Zero, with a small screen, classic telephone keypad and hardware switches for telephony, Wi-Fi, and the microphone. It is running Debian-based Raspbian OS.

The photo (click to enlarge) shows all four devices, together with a Nokia N900, which was the first Linux-based smartphone by Nokia, running Debian-based Maemo and a completely unrelated Gnuk cryptographic token, which just sneaked into the setting.

If you like to participate, please

check the Debian Mobile wiki page,
subscribe to the Debian mobile mailing list,
or join the #debian-mobile IRC chatroom at irc.oftc.net.

Debian turns 24!

Laura Arjona Reina — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 17:50:00 +0200

Today is Debian's 24th anniversary. If you are close to any of the cities celebrating Debian Day 2017, you're very welcome to join the party!

If not, there's still time for you to organize a little celebration or contribution to Debian. For example, spread the word about Debian Day with this nice piece of artwork created by Debian Developer Daniel Lenharo de Souza and Valessio Brito, taking inspiration from the desktop themes Lines and softWaves by Juliette Belin:

If you also like graphics design, or design in general, have a look at https://wiki.debian.org/Design and join the team! Or you can visit the general list of Debian Teams for many other opportunities to participate in Debian development.

Thanks to everybody who has contributed to develop our beloved operating system in these 24 years, and happy birthday Debian!

DebConf17 closes in Montreal and DebConf18 dates announced

Laura Arjona Reina — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 23:59:00 +0200

Today, Saturday 12 August 2017, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. With over 405 people attending from all over the world, and 169 events including 89 talks, 61 discussion sessions or BoFs, 6 workshops and 13 other activities, DebConf17 has been hailed as a success.

Highlights included DebCamp with 117 participants, the Open Day, where events of interest to a broader audience were offered, talks from invited speakers (Deb Nicholson, Matthew Garrett and Katheryn Sutter), the traditional Bits from the DPL, lightning talks and live demos and the announcement of next year's DebConf (DebConf18 in Hsinchu, Taiwan).

The schedule has been updated every day, including 32 ad-hoc new activities, planned by attendees during the whole conference.

For those not able to attend, talks and sessions were recorded and live streamed, and videos are being made available at the Debian meetings archive website. Many sessions also facilitated remote participation via IRC or a collaborative pad.

The DebConf17 website will remain active for archive purposes, and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf18 will be held in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from 29 July 2018 until 5 August 2018. It will be the first DebConf held in Asia. For the days before DebConf the local organisers will again set up DebCamp (21 July - 27 July), a session for some intense work on improving the distribution, and organise the Open Day on 28 July 2018, aimed at the general public.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf17, particularly our Platinum Sponsors Savoir-Faire Linux, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Google.

About Savoir-faire Linux

Savoir-faire Linux is a Montreal-based Free/Open-Source Software company with offices in Quebec City, Toronto, Paris and Lyon. It offers Linux and Free Software integration solutions in order to provide performance, flexibility and independence for its clients. The company actively contributes to many free software projects, and provides mirrors of Debian, Ubuntu, Linux and others.

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is one of the largest computer companies in the world, providing a wide range of products and services, such as servers, storage, networking, consulting and support, software, and financial services.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and provides hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services.

About Google

Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf since more than ten years, at gold level since DebConf12, and at platinum level for this DebConf17.

DebConf17 starts today in Montreal

Laura Arjona Reina — Sun, 06 Aug 2017 16:00:00 +0200

DebConf17, the 18th annual Debian Conference, is taking place in Montreal, Canada from August 6 to August 12, 2017.

Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at Collège Maisonneuve during the preceding week for DebCamp (focused on individual work and team sprints for in-person collaboration developing Debian), and the Open Day on August 5th (with presentations and workshops of interest to a wide audience).

Today the main conference starts with nearly 400 attendants and over 120 activities scheduled, including 45- and 20-minute talks and team meetings, workshops, a job fair, talks from invited speakers, as well as a variety of other events.

The full schedule at https://debconf17.debconf.org/schedule/ is updated every day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees during the whole conference.

If you want to engage remotely, you can follow the video streaming of the events happening in the three talk rooms: Buzz (the main auditorium), Rex, and Bo, or join the conversation about what is happening in the talk rooms: #debconf17-buzz, #debconf17-rex and #debconf17-bo, and the BoF (discussions) rooms: #debconf17-potato and #debconf17-woody (all those channels in the OFTC IRC network).

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf17, particularly our Platinum Sponsors Savoir-Faire Linux, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Google.

Google Platinum Sponsor of DebConf17

Laura Arjona Reina — Sat, 05 Aug 2017 23:30:00 +0200

We are very pleased to announce that Google has committed to support DebConf17 as a Platinum sponsor.

Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf since more than ten years, and at gold level since DebConf12.

With this additional commitment as Platinum Sponsor for DebConf17, Google contributes to make possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Google, for your support of DebConf17!

DebConf17 is starting!

Many Debian contributors are already taking advantage of DebCamp and the Open Day to work individually or in groups developing and improving Debian. DebConf17 will officially start on August 6, 2017. Visit the DebConf17 website at https://debconf17.debconf.org to know the schedule, live streaming and other details.

DebConf17 Open Day

Laura Arjona Reina — Sat, 05 Aug 2017 16:00:00 +0200

Today, the day preceeding the official start of the annual Debian Conference, is the Open Day at DebConf17, at Collège Maisonneuve in Montreal (Canada).

This day is open to the public with events of interest to a wide audience.

The schedule of today's events include, among others:

A Newbie's Newbie Guide to Debian
Ask Anything About Debian
Debian Packaging 101
Debian InstallFest
Presentations or workshops related to free software projects and local organizations.

Everyone is welcome to attend! It is a great possibility for interested users to meet our community and for Debian to widen our community.

See the full schedule for today's events at https://debconf17.debconf.org/schedule/open-day/.

If you want to engage remotely, you can watch the video streaming of the Open Day events happening in the "Rex" room, or join the conversation in the channels #debconf17-rex, #debconf17-potato and #debconf17-woody in the OFTC IRC network.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf17, particularly our Platinum Sponsors Savoir-Faire Linux, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Google.

DebConf17 Schedule Published!

DebConf team — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 01:15:00 +0200

The DebConf17 orga team is proud to announce that over 120 activities have been scheduled so far, including 45- and 20-minute talks, team meetings, and workshops, as well as a variety of other events.

Most of the talks and BoFs will be streamed and recorded, thanks to our amazing video team!

We'd like to remind you that Saturday August 5th is also our much anticipated Open Day! This means a program for a wider audience, including special activities for newcomers, such as an AMA session about Debian, a beginners workshop on packaging, a thoughtful talk about freedom with regard to today's popular gadgets and more.

In addition to the published schedule, we'll provide rooms for ad-hoc sessions where attendees will be able to schedule activities at any time during the whole conference.

The current schedule is available at https://debconf17.debconf.org/schedule/

This is also available through an XML feed. You can use ConfClerk in Debian to consume this, or Giggity on Android devices: https://debconf17.debconf.org/schedule/mobile/

We look forward to seeing you in Montreal!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (May and June 2017)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 14:30:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Alex Muntada (alexm)
Ilias Tsitsimpis (iliastsi)
Daniel Lenharo de Souza (lenharo)
Shih-Yuan Lee (fourdollars)
Roger Shimizu (rosh)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

James Valleroy
Ryan Tandy
Martin Kepplinger
Jean Baptiste Favre
Ana Cristina Custura
Unit 193

Congratulations!

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Platinum Sponsor of DebConf17

Laura Arjona Reina — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 16:15:00 +0200

We are very pleased to announce that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has committed to support DebConf17 as a Platinum sponsor.

"Hewlett Packard Enterprise is excited to support Debian's annual developer conference again this year", said Steve Geary, Senior Director R&D at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. "As Platinum sponsors and member of the Debian community, HPE is committed to supporting Debconf. The conference, community and open distribution are foundational to the development of The Machine research program and will our bring our Memory Driven Computing agenda to life."

HPE is one of the largest computer companies in the world, providing a wide range of products and services, such as servers, storage, networking, consulting and support, software, and financial services.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and provides hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

With this additional commitment as Platinum Sponsor, HPE contributes to make possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for your support of DebConf17!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf17 is still accepting sponsors. Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf17 website at https://debconf17.debconf.org.

Debian 9.0 Stretch has been released!

Ana Guerrero Lopez and Laura Arjona Reina — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 08:25:00 +0200

Let yourself be embraced by the purple rubber toy octopus! We're happy to announce the release of Debian 9.0, codenamed Stretch.

Want to install it? Choose your favourite installation media among Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, CDs and USB sticks. Then read the installation manual.

Already a happy Debian user and you only want to upgrade? You can easily upgrade from your current Debian 8 Jessie installation, please read the release notes.

Do you want to celebrate the release? Share the banner from this blog in your blog or your website!

Upcoming Debian 9.0 Stretch!

Laura Arjona Reina — Sat, 17 Jun 2017 00:30:00 +0200

The Debian Release Team in coordination with several other teams are preparing the last bits needed for releasing Debian 9 Stretch. Please, be patient! Lots of steps are involved and some of them take some time,such as building the images, propagating the release through the mirror network, and rebuilding the Debian website so that "stable" points to Debian 9.

Follow the live coverage of the release on https://micronews.debian.org or the @debian profile in your favorite social network! We'll spread the word about what's new in this version of Debian 9, how the release process is progressing during the weekend and facts about Debian and the wide community of volunteer contributors that make it possible.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (March and April 2017)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 15 May 2017 12:30:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Guilhem Moulin (guilhem)
Lisa Baron (jeffity)
Punit Agrawal (punit)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Sebastien Jodogne
Félix Lechner
Uli Scholler
Aurélien Couderc
Ondřej Kobližek
Patricio Paez

Congratulations!

Bursary applications for DebConf17 are closing in 48 hours!

Nicolas Dandrimont for the DebConf Team — Mon, 08 May 2017 22:30:00 +0200

This is a final reminder: if you intend to apply for a DebConf17 bursary and have not yet done so, please proceed as soon as possible.

Bursary applications for DebConf17 will be accepted until May 10th at 23:59 UTC. Applications submitted after this deadline will not be considered.

You can apply for a bursary when you register for the conference.

Remember that giving a talk is considered towards your bursary; if you have a submission to make, submit it even if it is only sketched-out. You will be able to detail it later.

Please make sure to double-check your accommodation choices (dates and venue). Details about accommodation arrangements can be found on the wiki.

Note: For DebCamp we only have on-site accommodation available. The option chosen in the registration system will only be for the DebConf period (August 5 to 12).

See you in Montréal!

Call for Proposals for DebConf17 Open Day

DebConf team — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 09:00:00 +0200

The DebConf team would like to call for proposals for the DebConf17 Open Day, a whole day dedicated to sessions about Debian and Free Software, and aimed at the general public. Open Day will preceed DebConf17 and will be held in Montreal, Canada, on August 5th 2017.

DebConf Open Day will be a great opportunity for users, developers and people simply curious about our work to meet and learn about the Debian Project, Free Software in general and related topics.

Submit your proposal

We welcome submissions of workshops, presentations or any other activity which involves Debian and Free Software. Activities in both English and French are accepted.

Here are some ideas about content we'd love to offer during Open Day. This list is not exhaustive, feel free to propose other ideas!

An introduction to various aspects of the Debian Project
Talks about Debian and Free Software in art, education and/or research
A primer on contributing to Free Software projects
Free software & Privacy/Surveillance
An introduction to programming and/or hardware tinkering
A workshop about your favorite piece of Free Software
A presentation about your favorite Free Software-related project (user group, advocacy group, etc.)

To submit your proposal, please fill the form at https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/new/

Volunteer

We need volunteers to help ensure Open Day is a success! We are specifically looking for people familiar with the Debian installer to attend the Debian installfest, as resources for people seeking help to install Debian on their devices. If you're interested, please add your name to our wiki: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf17/OpenDay#Installfest

Attend

Participation to Open Day is free and no registration is required.

The schedule for Open Day will be announced in June 2017.

DPL elections 2017, congratulations Chris Lamb!

Laura Arjona Reina — Sun, 16 Apr 2017 18:40:00 +0200

The Debian Project Leader elections finished yesterday and the winner is Chris Lamb!

Of a total of 1062 developers, 322 developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2017 page.

The current Debian Project Leader, Mehdi Dogguy, congratulated Chris Lamb in his Final bits from the (outgoing) DPL message. Thanks, Mehdi, for the service as DPL during this last twelve months!

The new term for the project leader starts on April 17th and expires on April 16th 2018.

Unknown parallel universe uses Debian

Debian Publicity Team — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 15:30:00 +0200

This post was an April Fools' Day joke.

The space agencies running the International Space Station (ISS) reported that a laptop accidentally threw to space as waste in 2013 from the International State Station may have connected with a parallel Universe. This laptop was running Debian 6 and the ISS engineers managed to track its travel through the outer space. In early January, the laptop signal was lost but recovered back two weeks later in the same place. ISS engineers suspect that the laptop may had met and crossed a wormhole arriving a parallel Universe from where "somebody" sent it back later.

Eventually the laptop was recovered and in an first analysis the ISS engineers found that the laptop have a dual boot: a partition running the Debian installation made by them and a second partition running what seems to be a Debian fork or derivative totally unknown until now.

The engineers have been in contact with the Debian Project in the last weeks and a Debian group formed with delegates from different Debian teams have begun to study this new Debian derivative system. From the early results of this research, we can proudly say that somebody (or a group of beings) in a parallel universe understand Earth computers, and Debian, enough to:

Clone the existing Debian system in a new partition and provide a dual boot using Grub.
Change the desktop wallpaper from the previous Spacefun theme to one in rainbow colors.
Fork all the packages whose source code was present in the initial Debian system, patch multiple bugs in those packages and some patches more for some tricky security problems.
Add ten new language locales that do not correspond to any language spoken in Earth, with full translation for four of them.
A copy of the Debian website repository, migrated to the git version control system and perfectly running, has been found in the /home/earth0/Documents folder. This new repo includes code to show the Debian micronews in the home page and many other improvements, keeping the style of not needing JavaScript and providing a nice control of up-to-date/outdated translations, similar to the one existing in Debian.

The work towards knowing better this new Universe and find a way to communicate with them has just began; all the Debian users and contributors are invited to join the effort to study the operating system found. We want to prepare our Community and our Universe to live and work peacefully and respectfully with the parallel Universe communities, in the true spirit of Free Software.

In the following weeks a General Resolution will be proposed for updating our motto to "the multiversal operating system".

Debian Project Leader elections 2017

Laura Arjona Reina — Sat, 25 Mar 2017 22:30:00 +0100

It's that time of year again for the Debian Project: the elections of its Project Leader!

The Project Leader position is described in the Debian Constitution.

Two Debian Developers run this year to become Project Leader: Mehdi Dogguy, who has held the office for the last year, and Chris Lamb.

We are in the middle of the campaigning period that will last until the end of April 1st. The candidates and Debian contributors are already engaging in debates and discussions on the debian-vote mailing list.

The voting period starts on April 2nd, and during the following two weeks, Debian Developers can vote to choose the person that will fit that role for one year.

The results will be published on April 16th with the term for new the project leader starting the following day.

DebConf17 welcomes its first eighteen sponsors!

Laura Arjona Reina and Tássia Camões Araújo — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 15:15:00 +0100

DebConf17 will take place in Montreal, Canada in August 2017. We are working hard to provide fuel for hearts and minds, to make this conference once again a fertile soil for the Debian Project flourishing. Please join us and support this landmark in the Free Software calendar.

Eighteen companies have already committed to sponsor DebConf17! With a warm welcome, we'd like to introduce them to you.

Our first Platinum sponsor is Savoir-faire Linux, a Montreal-based Free/Open-Source Software company which offers Linux and Free Software integration solutions and actively contributes to many free software projects. "We believe that it's an essential piece [Debian], in a social and political way, to the freedom of users using modern technological systems", said Cyrille Béraud, president of Savoir-faire Linux.

Our first Gold sponsor is Valve, a company developing games, social entertainment platform, and game engine technologies. And our second Gold sponsor is Collabora, which offers a comprehensive range of services to help its clients to navigate the ever-evolving world of Open Source.

As Silver sponsors we have credativ (a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software and also a Debian development partner), Mojatatu Networks (a Canadian company developing Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions), the Bern University of Applied Sciences (with over 6,600 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital), Microsoft (an American multinational technology company), Evolix (an IT managed services and support company located in Montreal), Ubuntu (the OS supported by Canonical) and Roche (a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare).

ISG.EE, IBM, Bluemosh, Univention and Skroutz are our Bronze sponsors so far.

And finally, The Linux foundation, Réseau Koumbit and adte.ca are our supporter sponsors.

Become a sponsor too!

Would you like to become a sponsor? Do you know of or work in a company or organization that may consider sponsorship?

Please have a look at our sponsorship brochure (or a summarized flyer), in which we outline all the details and describe the sponsor benefits.

For further details, feel free to contact us through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf17 website at https://debconf17.debconf.org.

Build Android apps with Debian: apt install android-sdk

Hans-Christoph Steiner and Kai-Chung Yan (殷啟聰) — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 12:00:00 +0100

In Debian stretch, the upcoming new release, it is now possible to build Android apps using only packages from Debian. This will provide all of the tools needed to build an Android app targeting the "platform" android-23 using the SDK build-tools 24.0.0. Those two are the only versions of "platform" and "build-tools" currently in Debian, but it is possible to use the Google binaries by installing them into /usr/lib/android-sdk.

This doesn't cover yet all of the libraries that are used in the app, like the Android Support libraries, or all of the other myriad libraries that are usually fetched from jCenter or Maven Central. One big question for us is whether and how libraries should be included in Debian. All the Java libraries in Debian can be used in an Android app, but including something like Android Support in Debian would be strange since they are only useful in an Android app, never for a Debian app.

Building apps with these packages

Here are the steps for building Android apps using Debian's Android SDK on Stretch.

sudo apt install android-sdk android-sdk-platform-23
export ANDROID_HOME=/usr/lib/android-sdk
In build.gradle, set compileSdkVersion to 23 and buildToolsVersion to 24.0.0
run gradle build

The Gradle Android Plugin is also packaged. Using the Debian package instead of the one from online Maven repositories requires a little configuration before running gradle. In the buildscript block:

add maven { url 'file:///usr/share/maven-repo' } to repositories
use compile 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:debian' to load the plugin

Currently there is only the target platform of API Level 23 packaged, so only apps targeted at android-23 can be built with only Debian packages. There are plans to add more API platform packages via backports. Only build-tools 24.0.0 is available, so in order to use the SDK, build scripts need to be modified. Beware that the Lint in this version of Gradle Android Plugin is still problematic, so running the :lint tasks might not work. They can be turned off with lintOptions.abortOnError in build.gradle. Google binaries can be combined with the Debian packages, for example to use a different version of the platform or build-tools.

Why include the Android SDK in Debian?

While Android developers could develop and ship apps right now using these Debian packages, this is not very flexible since only build-tools-24.0.0 and android-23 platform are available. Currently, the Debian Android Tools Team is not aiming to cover the most common use cases. Those are pretty well covered by Google's binaries (except for the proprietary license on the Google binaries), and are probably the most work for the Android Tools Team to cover. The current focus is on use cases that are poorly covered by the Google binaries, for example, like where only specific parts of the whole SDK are used. Here are some examples:

tools for security researchers, forensics, reverse engineering, etc. which can then be included in live CDs and distros like Kali Linux
a hardened APK signing server using apksigner that uses a standard, audited, public configuration of all reproducibly built packages
Replicant is a 100% free software Android distribution, so of course they want to have a 100% free software SDK
high security apps need a build environment that matches their level of security, the Debian Android Tools packages are reproducibly built only from publicly available sources
support architectures besides i386 and amd64, for example, the Linaro LAVA setup for testing ARM devices of all kinds uses the adb packages on ARM servers to make their whole testing setup all ARM architecture
dead simple install with strong trust path with mirrors all over the world

In the long run, the Android Tools Team aims to cover more use cases well, and also building the Android NDK. This all will happen more quickly if there are more contributors on the Android Tools team! Android is the most popular mobile OS, and can be 100% free software like Debian. Debian and its derivatives are one of the most popular platforms for Android development. This is an important combination that should grow only more integrated.

Last but not least, the Android Tools Team wants feedback on how this should all work, for example, ideas for how to nicely integrate Debian's Java libraries into the Android gradle workflow. And ideally, the Android Support libraries would also be reproducibly built and packaged somewhere that enforces only free software. Come find us on IRC and/or email! https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools#Communication_Channels

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2017)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 00:30:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Ulrike Uhlig (ulrike)
Hanno Wagner (wagner)
Jose M Calhariz (calharis)
Bastien Roucariès (rouca)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Dara Adib
Félix Sipma
Kunal Mehta
Valentin Vidic
Adrian Alves
William Blough
Jan Luca Naumann
Mohanasundaram Devarajulu
Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana
Vincent Prat

Congratulations!

DebConf17: Call for Proposals

Gunnar Wolf — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 20:50:00 +0100

The DebConf Content team would like to Call for Proposals for the DebConf17 conference, to be held in Montreal, Canada, from August 6 through August 12, 2017.

You can find this Call for Proposals in its latest form at: https://debconf17.debconf.org/cfp

Please refer to this URL for updates on the present information.

Submitting an Event

Submit an event proposal and describe your plan. Please note, events are not limited to traditional presentations or informal sessions (BoFs). We welcome submissions of tutorials, performances, art installations, debates, or any other format of event that you think would be beneficial to the Debian community.

Please include a short title, suitable for a compact schedule, and an engaging description of the event. You should use the field "Notes" to provide us information such as additional speakers, scheduling restrictions, or any special requirements we should consider for your event.

Regular sessions may either be 20 or 45 minutes long (including time for questions), other kinds of sessions (like workshops) could have different durations. Please choose the most suitable duration for your event and explain any special requests.

You will need to create an account on the site, to submit a talk. We'd encourage Debian account holders (e.g. DDs) to use Debian SSO when creating an account. But this isn't required for everybody, you can sign up with an e-mail address and password.

Timeline

The first batch of accepted proposals will be announced in April. If you depend on having your proposal accepted in order to attend the conference, please submit it as soon as possible so that it can be considered during this first evaluation period.

All proposals must be submitted before Sunday 4 June 2017 to be evaluated for the official schedule.

Topics and Tracks

Though we invite proposals on any Debian or FLOSS related subject, we have some broad topics on which we encourage people to submit proposals, including:

Blends
Debian in Science
Cloud and containers
Social context
Packaging, policy and infrastructure
Embedded
Systems administration, automation and orchestration
Security

You are welcome to either suggest more tracks, or become a coordinator for any of them; please refer to the Content Tracks wiki page for more information on that.

Code of Conduct

Our event is covered by a Code of Conduct designed to ensure everyone's safety and comfort. The code applies to all attendees, including speakers and the content of their presentations. For more information, please see the Code on the Web, and do not hesitate to contact us at content@debconf.org if you have any questions or are unsure about certain content you'd like to present.

Video Coverage

Providing video of sessions amplifies DebConf achievements and is one of the conference goals. Unless speakers opt-out, official events will be streamed live over the Internet to promote remote participation. Recordings will be published later under the DebConf license, as well as presentation slides and papers whenever available.

DebConf would not be possible without the generous support of all our sponsors, especially our Platinum Sponsor Savoir-Faire Linux. DebConf17 is still accepting sponsors; if you are interested, or think you know of others who would be willing to help, please get in touch!

In case of any questions, or if you wanted to bounce some ideas off us first, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at content@debconf.org.

We hope to see you in Montreal!

The DebConf team

Debian welcomes its Outreachy interns

Nicolas Dandrimont and Laura Arjona Reina — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 12:00:00 +0100

Better late than never, we'd like to welcome our three Outreachy interns for this round, lasting from the 6th of December 2016 to the 6th of March 2017.

Elizabeth Ferdman is working in the Clean Room for PGP and X.509 (PKI) Key Management.

Maria Glukhova is working in Reproducible builds for Debian and free software.

Urvika Gola is working in improving voice, video and chat communication with free software.

From the official website: Outreachy helps people from groups underrepresented in free and open source software get involved. We provide a supportive community for beginning to contribute any time throughout the year and offer focused internship opportunities twice a year with a number of free software organizations.

The Outreachy program is possible in Debian thanks to the effort of Debian developers and contributors that dedicate part of their free time to mentor students and outreach tasks, and the help of the Software Freedom Conservancy, who provides administrative support for Outreachy, as well as the continued support of Debian's donors, who provide funding for the internships.

Debian will also participate in the next round for Outreachy, during the summer of 2017. More details will follow in the next weeks.

Congratulations, Elizabeth, Maria and Urvika!

Savoir-faire Linux Platinum Sponsor of DebConf17

Laura Arjona Reina and Tássia Camões Araújo — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 17:50:00 +0100

We are very pleased to announce that Savoir-faire Linux has committed to support DebConf17 as a Platinum sponsor.

"Debian acts as a model for both Free Software and developer communities. Savoir-faire Linux promotes both vision and values of Debian. Indeed, we believe that it's an essential piece, in a social and political way, to the freedom of users using modern technological systems", said Cyrille Béraud, president of Savoir-faire Linux.

Savoir-faire Linux was present at DebConf16 program with a talk about Ring, its GPL secure and distributed communication system. Ring package was accepted in Debian testing during DebCamp in 2016 and will be part of Debian Stretch. OpenDHT, the distributed hash table implementation used by Ring, also appeared in Debian experimental during last DebConf.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Savoir-faire Linux contributes to make possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Savoir-faire Linux, for your support of DebConf17!

Become a sponsor too!

Debian at FOSDEM 2017

Joost van Baal-Ilić — Sat, 28 Jan 2017 13:00:00 +0100

On February 4th and 5th, Debian will be attending FOSDEM 2017 in Brussels, Belgium; a yearly gratis event (no registration needed) run by volunteers from the Open Source and Free Software community. It's free, and it's big: more than 600 speakers, over 600 events, in 29 rooms.

This year more than 45 current or past Debian contributors will speak at FOSDEM: Alexandre Viau, Bradley M. Kuhn, Daniel Pocock, Guus Sliepen, Johan Van de Wauw, John Sullivan, Josh Triplett, Julien Danjou, Keith Packard, Martin Pitt, Peter Van Eynde, Richard Hartmann, Sebastian Dröge, Stefano Zacchiroli and Wouter Verhelst, among others.

Similar to previous years, the event will be hosted at Université libre de Bruxelles. Debian contributors and enthusiasts will be taking shifts at the Debian stand with gadgets, T-Shirts and swag. You can find us at stand number 4 in building K, 1 B; CoreOS Linux and PostgreSQL will be our neighbours. See https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/be/2017/FOSDEM for more details.

We are looking forward to meeting you all!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2016)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 00:30:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Karen M Sandler (karen)
Sebastien Badia (sbadia)
Christos Trochalakis (ctrochalakis)
Adrian Bunk (bunk)
Michael Lustfield (mtecknology)
James Clarke (jrtc27)
Sean Whitton (spwhitton)
Jerome Georges Benoit (calculus)
Daniel Lange (dlange)
Christoph Biedl (cbiedl)
Gustavo Panizzo (gefa)
Gert Wollny (gewo)
Benjamin Barenblat (bbaren)
Giovani Augusto Ferreira (giovani)
Mechtilde Stehmann (mechtilde)
Christopher Stuart Hoskin (mans0954)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Dmitry Bogatov
Dominik George
Gordon Ball
Sruthi Chandran
Michael Shuler
Filip Pytloun
Mario Anthony Limonciello
Julien Puydt
Nicholas D Steeves
Raoul Snyman

Congratulations!

Free FPGA programming with Debian

Steffen Möller — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 18:15:00 +0100

FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) are increasingly popular for data acquisition, device control and application acceleration. Debian now features a completely Free set of tools to program FPGA in Verilog, prepare the binary and have it executed on an affordable device.

See http://wiki.debian.org/FPGA/Lattice for details. Readers familiar with the technology may rightly guess that this refers to the yosys package together with berkeley-abc, arachne-"Place-and-Route" and the icestorm tools to communicate with the device.

The packages have been contributed by the Debian Science team.

We hope this effort to support the FPGA community to collect an increasing number of skills to further smoothen the Open Source experience and lower the entry barriers for this tantalising technology.

Debian Contributors Survey 2016

Molly de Blanc — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 15:45:00 +0100

The Debian Contributor Survey launched last week!

In order to better understand and document who contributes to Debian, we (Mathieu ONeil, Molly de Blanc, and Stefano Zacchiroli) have created this survey to capture the current state of participation in the Debian Project through the lense of common demographics. We hope a general survey will become an annual effort, and that each year there will also be a focus on a specific aspect of the project or community. The 2016 edition contains sections concerning work, employment, and labour issues in order to learn about who is getting paid to work on and with Debian, and how those relationships affect contributions.

We want to hear from as many Debian contributors as possible—whether you've submitted a bug report, attended a DebConf, reviewed translations, maintain packages, participated in Debian teams, or are a Debian Developer. Completing the survey should take 10-30 minutes, depending on your current involvement with the project and employment status.

In an effort to reflect our own ideals as well as those of the Debian project, we are using LimeSurvey, an entirely free software survey tool, in an instance of it hosted by the LimeSurvey developers.

Survey responses are anonymous, IP and HTTP information are not logged, and all questions are optional. As it is still likely possible to determine who a respondent is based on their answers, results will only be distributed in aggregate form, in a way that does not allow deanonymization. The results of the survey will be analyzed as part of ongoing research work by the organizers. A report discussing the results will be published under a DFSG-free license and distributed to the Debian community as soon as it's ready. The raw, disaggregated answers will not be distributed and will be kept under the responsibility of the organizers.

We hope you will fill out the Debian Contributor Survey. The deadline for participation is: 4 December 2016, at 23:59 UTC.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us via email at:

Mathieu ONeil mathieu.oneil@canberra.edu.au
Molly de Blanc deblanc@riseup.net
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@debian.org

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (September and October 2016)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 12:00:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Adriano Rafael Gomes (adrianorg)
Arturo Borrero González (arturo)
Sandro Knauß (hefee)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Abhijith PA
Mo Zhou
Víctor Cuadrado Juan
Zygmunt Bazyli Krynicki
Robert Haist
Sunil Mohan Adapa
Elena Grandi
Eric Heintzmann
Dylan Aïssi
Daniel Shahaf
Samuel Henrique
Kai-Chung Yan
Tino Mettler

Congratulations!

"softWaves" will be the default theme for Debian 9

Laura Arjona Reina and Niels Thykier — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 19:50:00 +0200

The theme "softWaves" by Juliette Taka Belin has been selected as default theme for Debian 9 'stretch'.

After the Debian Desktop Team made the call for proposing themes, a total of twelve choices have been submitted, and any Debian contributor has received the opportunity to vote on them in a survey. We received 3,479 responses ranking the different choices, and softWaves has been the winner among them.

We'd like to thank all the designers that have participated providing nice wallpapers and artwork for Debian 9, and encourage everybody interested in this area of Debian, to join the Design Team. It is being considered to package all of them so they are easily available in Debian. If you want to help in this effort, or package any other artwork (for example, particularly designed to be accessibility-friendly), please contact the Debian Desktop Team, but hurry up, because the freeze for new packages in the next release of Debian starts on January 5th, 2017.

This is the second time that Debian ships a theme by Juliette Belin, who also created the theme "Lines" that enhances our actual stable release, Debian 8. Congratulations, Juliette, and thank you very much for your continued commitment to Debian!

Debian is participating in the next round of Outreachy!

Nicolas Dandrimont — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 19:50:00 +0200

Following the success of the last round of Outreachy, we are glad to announce that Debian will take part in the program for the next round, with internships lasting from the 6th of December 2016 to the 6th of March 2017.

Currently, internships are open internationally to women (cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people. Additionally, they are open to residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.

If you want to apply to an internship in Debian, you should take a look at the wiki page, and contact the mentors for the projects listed, or seek more information on the (public) debian-outreach mailing-list. You can also contact the Outreach Team directly. If you have a project idea and are willing to mentor an intern, you can submit a project idea on the Outreachy wiki page.

Here's a few words on what the interns for the last round achieved within Outreachy:

Tatiana Malygina worked on Continuous Integration for Bioinformatics applications; She has pushed more than a hundred commits to the Debian Med SVN repository over the last months, and has been sponsored for more than 20 package uploads.
Valerie Young worked on Reproducible Builds infrastructure, driving a complete overhaul of the database and software behind the tests.reproducible-builds.org website. Her blog contains regular updates throughout the program.
ceridwen worked on creating reprotest, an all-in-one tool allowing anyone to check whether a build is reproducible or not, replacing the string of ad-hoc scripts the reproducible builds team used so far. She posted regular updates on the Reproducible Builds team blog.
While Scarlett Clark did not complete the internship (as she found a full-time job by the mid-term evaluation!), she spent the four weeks she participated in the program providing patches for reproducible builds in Debian and KDE upstream.

Debian would not be able to participate in Outreachy without the help of the Software Freedom Conservancy, who provides administrative support for Outreachy, as well as the continued support of Debian's donors, who provide funding for the internships. If you want to donate, please get in touch with one of our trusted organizations.

Debian is looking forward to welcoming new interns for the next few months, come join us!

DebConf17 organization started

Laura Arjona Reina — Mon, 05 Sep 2016 14:00:00 +0200

DebConf17 will take place in Montreal, Canada from August 6 to August 12, 2017. It will be preceded by DebCamp, July 31 to August 4, and Debian Day, August 5.

We invite everyone to join us in organizing DebConf17. There are different areas where your help could be very valuable, and we are always looking forward to your ideas.

The DebConf content team is open to suggestions for invited speakers. If you'd like to propose somebody who is not a regular DebConf attendee follow the details in the call for speaker proposals blog post.

We are also beginning to contact potential sponsors from all around the globe. If you know any organization that could be interested, please consider handing them the sponsorship brochure or contact the fundraising team with any leads.

The DebConf team is holding IRC meetings every two weeks. Have a look at the DebConf17 website and wiki page, and engage in the IRC channels and the mailing list.

Let’s work together, as every year, on making the best DebConf ever!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2016)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Sat, 03 Sep 2016 12:00:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Edward John Betts (edward)
Holger Wansing (holgerw)
Timothy Martin Potter (tpot)
Martijn van Brummelen (mvb)
Stéphane Blondon (sblondon)
Bertrand Marc (bmarc)
Jochen Sprickerhof (jspricke)
Ben Finney (bignose)
Breno Leitao (leitao)
Zlatan Todoric (zlatan)
Ferenc Wágner (wferi)
Matthieu Caneill (matthieucan)
Steven Chamberlain (stevenc)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Jonathan Cristopher Carter
Reiner Herrmann
Michael Jeanson
Jens Reyer
Jerome Benoit
Frédéric Bonnard
Olek Wojnar

Congratulations!

Debian turns 23!

Laura Arjona Reina — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 14:30:00 +0200

Today is Debian's 23rd anniversary. If you are close to any of the cities celebrating Debian Day 2016, you're very welcome to join the party!

If not, there's still time for you to organize a little celebration or contribution to Debian. For example, you can have a look at the Debian timeline and learn about the history of the project. If you notice that some piece of information is still missing, feel free to add it to the timeline.

Or you can scratch your creative itch and suggest a wallpaper to be part of the artwork for the next release.

Our favorite operating system is the result of all the work we have done together. Thanks to everybody who has contributed in these 23 years, and happy birthday Debian!

Debian and Tor Services available as Onion Services

Peter Palfrader — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 17:30:00 +0200

We, the Debian project and the Tor project are enabling Tor onion services for several of our sites. These sites can now be reached without leaving the Tor network, providing a new option for securely connecting to resources provided by Debian and Tor.

The freedom to use open source software may be compromised when access to that software is monitored, logged, limited, prevented, or prohibited. As a community, we acknowledge that users should not feel that their every action is trackable or observable by others. Consequently, we are pleased to announce that we have started making several of the various web services provided by both Debian and Tor available via onion services.

While onion services can be used to conceal the network location of the machine providing the service, this is not the goal here. Instead, we employ onion services because they provide end-to-end integrity and confidentiality, and they authenticate the onion service end point.

For instance, when users connect to the onion service running at http://sejnfjrq6szgca7v.onion/, using a Tor-enabled browser such as the TorBrowser, they can be certain that their connection to the Debian website cannot be read or modified by third parties, and that the website that they are visiting is indeed the Debian website. In a sense, this is similar to what using HTTPS provides. However, crucially, onion services do not rely on third-party certification authorities (CAs). Instead, the onion service name cryptographically authenticates its cryptographic key.

In addition to the Tor and Debian websites, the Debian FTP and the Debian Security archives are available from .onion addresses, enabling Debian users to update their systems using only Tor connections. With the apt-transport-tor package installed, the following entries can replace the normal debian mirror entries in the apt configuration file (/etc/apt/sources.list):

  deb  tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/debian          jessie            main
  deb  tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/debian          jessie-updates    main
  deb  tor+http://sgvtcaew4bxjd7ln.onion/debian-security jessie/updates    main

Likewise, Tor's Debian package repository is available from an onion service :

  deb tor+http://sdscoq7snqtznauu.onion/torproject.org   jessie    main

Where appropriate, we provide services redundantly from several backend machines using OnionBalance. The Debian OnionBalance package is available from the Debian backports repository.

Lists of several other new onion services offered by Debian and Tor are available from https://onion.debian.org and https://onion.torproject.org respectively. We expect to expand these lists in the near future to cover even more of Debian's and Tor's services.

Looking for the artwork for the next Debian release

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 19:15:00 +0200

Each release of Debian has a shiny new theme, which is visible on the boot screen, the login screen and, most prominently, on the desktop wallpaper.

Debian plans to release Stretch next year. As ever, we need your help in creating its theme! You have the opportunity to design a theme that will inspire thousands of people while working in their Debian systems.

They might be people working in exciting NASA missions:

Or DYI users who decided to make a matching keyboard:

If you're interested, please take a look at https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDesktop/Artwork/Stretch

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (May and June 2016)

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 17:30:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Josué Ortega (josue)
Mathias Behrle (mbehrle)
Sascha Steinbiss (satta)
Lucas Kanashiro (kanashiro)
Vasudev Sathish Kamath (vasudev)
Dima Kogan (dkogan)
Rafael Laboissière (rafael)
David Kalnischkies (donkult)
Marcin Kulisz (kula)
David Steele (steele
Herbert Parentes Fortes Neto (hpfn)
Ondřej Nový (onovy)
Donald Norwood (donald)
Neutron Soutmun (neutrons)
Steve Kemp (skx)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Sean Whitton
Tiago Ilieve
Jean Baptiste Favre
Adrian Vondendriesch
Alkis Georgopoulos
Michael Hudson-Doyle
Roger Shimizu
SZ Lin
Leo Singer
Peter Colberg

Congratulations!

DebConf16 schedule available

Laura Arjona Reina — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 09:00:00 +0200

DebConf16 will be held this and next week in Cape Town, South Africa, and we're happy to announce that the schedule is already available. Of course, it is still possible for some minor changes to happen!

The DebCamp Sprints already started on 23 June 2016.

DebConf will open on Saturday, 2 July 2016 with the Open Festival, where events of interest to a wider audience are offered, ranging from topics specific to Debian to a wider appreciation of the open and maker movements (and not just IT-related). Hackers, makers, hobbyists and other interested parties are invited to share their activities with DebConf attendees and the public at the University of Cape Town, whether in form of workshops, lightning talks, install parties, art exhibition or posters. Additionally, a Job Fair will take place on Saturday, and its job wall will be available throughout DebConf.

The full schedule of the Debian Conference thorough the week is published. After the Open Festival, the conference will continue with more than 85 talks and BoFs (informal gatherings and discussions within Debian teams), including not only software development and packaging but also areas like translation, documentation, artwork, testing, specialized derivatives, maintenance of the community infrastructure, and other.

There will also be also a plethora of social events, such as our traditional cheese and wine party, our group photo and our day trip.

DebConf talks will be broadcast live on the Internet when possible, and videos of the talks will be published on the web along with the presentation slides.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf16, particularly our Platinum Sponsor Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise actively participates in open source. Thousands of developers across the company are focused on open source projects, and HPE sponsors and supports the open source community in a number of ways, including: contributing code, sponsoring foundations and projects, providing active leadership, and participating in various committees.

Debian 7 Wheezy LTS now supporting armel and armhf

Markus Koschany — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 08:00:00 +0200

Debian Long Term Support (LTS) is a project created to extend the life of all Debian stable releases to (at least) 5 years.

Thanks to the LTS sponsors, Debian's buildd maintainers and the Debian FTP Team are excited to announce that two new architectures, armel and armhf, are going to be supported in Debian 7 Wheezy LTS. These architectures along with i386 and amd64 will receive two additional years of extended security support.

Security updates for Debian LTS are not handled by the native Debian Security Team, but instead by a separate group of volunteers and companies interested in making it a success.

Wheezy's LTS period started a few weeks ago and more than thirty updates have been announced so far. If you use Debian 7 Wheezy, you do not need to change anything in your system to start receiving those updates.

More information about how to use Debian Long Term Support and other important changes regarding Wheezy LTS is available at https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Using

Imagination accelerates Debian development for 64-bit MIPS CPUs

Laura Arjona Reina — Wed, 18 May 2016 09:30:00 +0200

Imagination Technologies recently donated several high-performance SDNA-7130 appliances to the Debian Project for the development and maintenance of the MIPS ports.

The SDNA-7130 (Software Defined Network Appliance) platforms are developed by Rhino Labs, a leading provider of high-performance data security, networking, and data infrastructure solutions.

With these new devices, the Debian project will have access to a wide range of 32- and 64-bit MIPS-based platforms.

Debian MIPS ports are also possible thanks to donations from the aql hosting service provider, the Eaton remote controlled ePDU, and many other individual members of the Debian community.

The Debian project would like to thank Imagination, Rhino Labs and aql for this coordinated donation.

More details about GNU/Linux for MIPS CPUs can be found in the related press release at Imagination and their community site about MIPS.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (March and April 2016)

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Tue, 17 May 2016 00:10:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Sven Bartscher (kritzefitz)
Harlan Lieberman-Berg (hlieberman)

Congratulations!

What does it mean that ZFS is included in Debian?

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Sun, 15 May 2016 22:55:00 +0200

Petter Reinholdtsen recently blogged about ZFS availability in Debian. Many people have worked hard on getting ZFS support available in Debian and we would like to thank everyone involved in getting to this point and explain what ZFS in Debian means.

The landing of ZFS in the Debian archive was blocked for years due to licensing problems. Finally, the inclusion of ZFS was announced slightly more than a year ago, on April 2015 by the DPL at the time, Lucas Nussbaum who wrote "We received legal advice from Software Freedom Law Center about the inclusion of libdvdcss and ZFS in Debian, which should unblock the situation in both cases and enable us to ship them in Debian soon.". In January this year, the following DPL, Neil McGovern blogged with a lot of more details about the legal situation behind this and summarized it as "TLDR: It’s going in contrib, as a source only dkms module."

ZFS is not available exactly in Debian, since Debian is only what's included in the "main" section archive. What people really meant here is that ZFS code is now in included in "contrib" and it's available for users using DKMS.

Many people also mixed this with Ubuntu now including ZFS. However, Debian and Ubuntu are not doing the same, Ubuntu is shipping directly pre-built kernel modules, something that is considered to be a GPL violation. As the Software Freedom Conservancy wrote "while licensed under an acceptable license for Debian's Free Software Guidelines, also has a default use that can cause licensing problems for downstream Debian users".

Debian welcomes its 2016 summer interns

Nicolas Dandrimont — Sun, 24 Apr 2016 21:00:00 +0200

We're excited to announce that Debian has selected 29 interns to work with us this summer: 4 in Outreachy, and 25 in the Google Summer of Code.

Here is the list of projects and the interns who will work on them:

Android SDK tools in Debian:

APT - dpkg communications rework:

David Kalnischkies

Continuous Integration for Debian-Med packages:

Extending the Debian Developer Horizon:

Harsh Daftary

Improving and extending AppRecommender:

Improving the debsources frontend:

Aaron Delaney

Improving voice, video and chat communication with Free Software:

MIPS and MIPSEL ports improvements:

Jonathan Jackson

Reproducible Builds for Debian and Free Software:

Support for KLEE in Debile:

Marko Dimjašević

The Google Summer of Code and Outreachy programs are possible in Debian thanks to the effort of Debian developers and contributors that dedicate part of their free time to mentor students and outreach tasks.

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the students weekly reports on the debian-outreach mailing-list, chat with us on our IRC channel or on each project's team mailing lists.

Congratulations to all of them!

DPL elections 2016, congratulations Mehdi Dogguy!

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Sun, 17 Apr 2016 18:40:00 +0200

The Debian Project Leader elections finished yesterday and the winner is Mehdi Dogguy! Of a total of 1023 developers, 282 developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2016 page.

The new term for the project leader starts today April 17th and expire on April 17th 2017.

Debian announces partnership to sub-contract publicity and press to an outside marketing agency

Debian Publicity Team — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 07:10:00 +0200

Last year we started to push more of Debian news and information away the single news source of the DPN into other media services. Debian has been more active than ever on our many IRC channels, free software based social networks, and unofficial Twitter and Facebook feeds. Today we have decided to announce the next stage in keeping Debian at the forefront of media by sub-contracting publicity and press to an outside marketing agency.

The marketing agency (name will be disclosed soon) has provided an AI system (running entirely with free software) which will be fed with all the content of Debian mailing lists and sources.debian.net to understand the character of the Debian community and then better customize future articles, interviews, and event news.

However, some bits of personal information are also needed. Please install the "publicity" package and you'll be presented a form to fill in your data: name, surname, phone, snail mail address, place of birth, names of family members, employers or employees. Each person providing their data to the agency will receive coupon for a 20% discount in the download (purchase) of next Debian release (valid only for downloads from the official site www.debian.org).

We kindly ask every Debian community member to sign up in, at least, one of theses services: Twitter, Whatsapp, Slack or Facebook (IRC, mailing lists, and free software based RTC are allegedly not so 'cool'). Users need not be concerned with losing the features that the IRC bots provide (so long KGB!) as they will be replaced by Tay-like AI systems. The most visible change will be that MeetBot will no longer log the meetings anymore, but we have bribed an NSA employee so they pass the relevant messages to us.

"If this 'centralization, outsourcing and pay-and-forget' approach goes well with publicity, I'm considering running for DPL in 2017 to extend this model to other areas of Debian" said Laura Arjona Reina, (now) former publicity delegate.

A new logo and mascot has been designed too, as a symbol of this new era embracing the standards of branding and corporate messaging. Please consider voting in favor of it, in the General Resolution that will be proposed soon:

DebConf16 welcomes its first nine sponsors!

Laura Arjona Reina — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 17:00:00 +0200

DebConf16 will take place in Cape Town, South Africa in July 2016. We strive to provide an intense working environment and enable good progress for Debian and for Free Software in general. We extend an invitation to everyone to join us and to support this event. As a volunteer-run non-profit conference, we depend on our sponsors.

Nine companies have already committed to sponsor DebConf16! Let's introduce them:

Our first Platinum sponsor is Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). HPE is one of the largest computer companies in the world, providing a wide range of products and services, such as servers, storage, networking, consulting and support, software, and financial services.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and provides hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

Our first Gold sponsor is Valve, a company developing games, social entertainment platform, and game engine technologies.

Our second Gold sponsor is Google, the technology company specialized in Internet-related services as online advertising and search engine.

Rusbitech (developers of the Astra Linux Debian derivative), credativ (a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software and also a Debian development partner), Catalyst (a company offering IT solutions using open source software), the Bern University of Applied Sciences (with over 7,000 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital), and Texas Instruments (the global semiconductor company) are our four Silver sponsors.

And last but not least, the open source company Univention has agreed to support us as Bronze-level.

Become a sponsor too!

Would you like to become a sponsor? Do you know of or work in a company or organization that may consider sponsorship?

Please have a look at our sponsorship brochure (or a summarized flyer), in which we outline all the details and describe the sponsor benefits.

For further details, feel free to contact us through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf16 website at https://debconf16.debconf.org.

Debian Project Leader elections 2016

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Sun, 27 Mar 2016 20:55:00 +0200

It's that time of year again for the Debian Project: the elections of its Project Leader!

Neil McGovern who has held the office for the last year will not be seeking reelection. Debian Developers will have to choose between voting for the only candidate running Mehdi Dogguy or None Of The Above. If None Of The Above wins the election then the election procedure is repeated, many times if necessary.

Mehdi Dogguy was a candidate for the DPL position last year, finishing second with a close amount of votes to the winner Neil McGovern.

We are in the middle of the campaigning period that will last until April 2nd. The candidate and Debian contributors are expected to engage in debates and discussions on the debian-vote mailing list.

The voting period starts on April 3rd, and during the following two weeks, Debian Developers will vote to choose the person who will guide the project for one year. The results will be published on April 17th with the term for new the project leader starting immediately that same day.

DebConf16: Call for Proposals

Allison Randal — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 10:00:00 +0100

The DebConf Content team is pleased to announce the Call for Proposals for the DebConf16 conference, to be held in Cape Town, South Africa from 2 through 9 July 2016.

Submitting an Event

In order to submit an event, go to "Submit a talk" on your profile page in the DebConf16 website and describe your proposal. Please note, events are not limited to traditional presentations or informal sessions (BoFs). We welcome submissions of tutorials, performances, art installations, debates, or any other format of event that you think would be beneficial to the Debian community.

Please include a short title, suitable for a compact schedule, and an engaging description of the event. You should use the field "Notes" to provide us information such as additional speakers, scheduling restrictions, or any special requirements we should consider for your event.

Timeline

The first batch of accepted proposals will be announced in April. If you depend on having your proposal accepted in order to attend the conference, please submit it as soon as possible so that it can be considered during this first evaluation period.

All proposals must be submitted before Sunday 1 May 2016 to be evaluated for the official schedule.

Topics and Tracks

Though we invite proposals on any Debian or FLOSS related subject, we have some broad topics on which we encourage people to submit proposals, including:

Debian Packaging, Policy, and Infrastructure
Security, Safety, and Hacking
Debian System Administration, Automation and Orchestration
Containers and Cloud Computing with Debian
Debian Success Stories
Debian in the Social, Ethical, Legal, and Political Context
Blends, Subprojects, Derivatives, and Projects using Debian
Embedded Debian and Hardware-Level Systems

Video Coverage

Contact and Thanks to Sponsors

DebConf would not be possible without the generous support of all our sponsors, especially our platinum sponsor HPE. DebConf16 is still accepting sponsors; if you are interested, please get in touch!

You are welcome to contact the Content Team with any concerns about your event, or with any ideas or questions about DebConf events in general. You can reach us at content@debconf.org.

Registration Reminder

Registration for DebConf is open. Please log into the DebConf16 website and register from your profile page.

To request bursaries (sponsorship) for food, accommodation, or travel, you must be registered by Sunday, 10 April 2016.

After this date, registrations will still be accepted in any of the basic, professional, and corporate categories. However, accommodation on the campus will no longer be guaranteed, and requests for sponsorship will no longer be accepted.

Even if you are not certain you will be able to attend, we recommend registering now. You can always cancel your registration, before the deadline. We do suggest that attendees begin making travel arrangements as soon as possible, of course.

We hope to see you all in Cape Town!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2016)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 21:30:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Otto Kekäläinen (otto)
Dariusz Dwornikowski (darek)
Daniel Stender (stender)
Afif Elghraoui (afif)
Victor Seva (vseva)
James Cowgill (jcowgill)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Giovani Augusto Ferreira
Ondřej Nový
Jason Pleau
Michael Robin Crusoe
Ferenc Wágner
Enrico Rossi
Christian Seiler
Daniel Echeverry
Ilias Tsitsimpis
James Clarke
Luca Boccassi

Congratulations!

Debian selected to participate in the Google Summer of Code

Nicolas Dandrimont — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 16:00:00 +0100

For the tenth time running, Debian has been selected as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code (Debian-specific program page), an internship program open to university students aged 18 and up.

Our team of amazing mentors has cooked up an exciting list of projects this year, and we would be glad to have you on board with Debian for one of those summer internships. The student application period will open on March 14 (and close on March 25), but feel free to subscribe to our mailing list and get in touch with our mentors. You can also catch us on our IRC channel #debian-soc.

Debian is looking for three interns in the Outreachy Program

Nicolas Dandrimont — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 20:10:00 +0100

announce, outreachy Status: published

As part of its diversity outreach initiatives, Debian will be participating in the upcoming 12th round (May - August 2016) of Outreachy, an internship program open worldwide to women (cis and trans), trans men and genderqueer people, as well as nationals and residents of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.

Thanks to the generosity of our donors, and specifically of our sponsor Intel who has given us funds specifically for one intern, Debian will be able to welcome three interns this round.

Applications for the program are open until March 22nd, so don't wait up! Debian has a lot of interesting internship opportunities this year. More info about the program is available on the Debian specific program page, as well as on the official website. Feel free to contact the outreach team and mentors on our mailing list or IRC channel #debian-soc in irc.oftc.net

If you want Debian to keep participating in such programs, and expand its outreach efforts, you can donate to one of the organizations supporting the Debian project, or volunteer some time by participating in discussions on our mailing list.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Platinum Sponsor of DebConf16

Laura Arjona Reina — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 12:00:00 +0100

We are very pleased to announce that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has committed to support DebConf16 as a Platinum sponsor.

"We're excited to support Debian's annual conference which brings together Debian contributors from all around the world. In addition to our sponsorship, we will actively participate in DebConf", said Steve Geary, Senior Director at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and provides hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

Thank you very much Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for your support of DebConf16!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf16 is still accepting sponsors. Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf16 website at http://debconf16.debconf.org.

I love Free Software Day 2016: Show your love for Free Software

Laura Arjona Reina — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 01:10:00 +0100

Today February 14th, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) celebrates the "I Love Free Software" day. I Love Free Software day is a day for Free Software users to appreciate and thank the contributors of their favourite software applications, projects and organisations.

We take this opportunity to say "thank you" to all the Debian upstreams and downstreams, and all the Debian developers and contributors. Thanks for your work and dedication to free software!

There are many ways to participate in this ILoveFS day and we encourage everybody to join in and celebrate. Show your love to Debian developers, contributors and teams virtually on social networks using the #ilovefs hashtag and spreading the word in your own social media circles, or by visiting the ILoveFS campaign website to find and use some of the promotional materials available such as postcards and banners.

To learn more about the FSFE, you can read their announcement of this campaign or visit their general website.

Tails installer is now in Debian

Thu, 11 Feb 2016 14:30:00 +0100

Tails (The amnesic incognito live system) is a live OS based on Debian GNU/Linux which aims at preserving the user's privacy and anonymity by using the Internet anonymously and circumventing censorship. Installed on a USB device, it is configured to leave no trace on the computer you are using unless asked explicitly.

As of today, the people the most needy for digital security are not computer experts. Being able to get started easily with a new tool is critical to its adoption, and even more in high-risk and stressful environments. That's why we wanted to make it faster, simpler, and more secure to install Tails for new users.

One of the components of Tails, the Tails Installer is now in Debian thanks to the Debian Privacy Tools Maintainers Team.

Tails Installer is a graphical tool to install or upgrade Tails on a USB stick from an ISO image. It aims at making it easier and faster to get Tails up and running.

The previous process for getting started with Tails was very complex and was problematic for less tech-savvy users. It required starting Tails three times, and copying the full ISO image onto a USB stick twice before having a fully functional Tails USB stick with persistence enabled.

This can now be done simply by installing Tails Installer in your existing Debian system, using sid, stretch or jessie-backports, plugging a USB stick and choosing if one wants to update the USB stick or to install Tails using a previously downloaded ISO image.

Tails Installer also helps Tails users to create an encrypted persistent storage for personal files and settings in the rest of the available space.

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2015)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 12:30:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Stein Magnus Jodal (jodal)
Prach Pongpanich (prach)
Markus Koschany (apo)
Bernhard Schmidt (berni)
Uwe Kleine-König (ukleinek)
Timo Weingärtner (tiwe)
Sebastian Andrzej Siewior (bigeasy)
Mattia Rizzolo (mattia)
Alexandre Viau (aviau)
Lev Lamberov (dogsleg)
Adam Borowski (kilobyte)
Chris Boot (bootc)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Alf Gaida
Andrew Ayer
Marcio de Souza Oliveira
Alexandre Detiste
Dave Hibberd
Andreas Boll
Punit Agrawal
Edward Betts
Shih-Yuan Lee
Ivan Udovichenko
Andrew Kelley
Benda Xu
Russell Sim
Paulo Roberto Alves de Oliveira
Marc Fournier
Scott Talbert
Sergio Durigan Junior
Guillaume Turri
Michael Lustfield

Congratulations!

Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock

Ana Guerrero Lopez, Donald Norwood and Paul Tagliamonte — Wed, 30 Dec 2015 20:15:00 +0100

With a heavy heart Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock, stalwart proponent of Free Open Source Software, Father, Son, and the 'ian' in Debian.

Ian started the Debian project in August of 1993, releasing the first versions of Debian later that same year. Debian would go on to become the world's Universal Operating System, running on everything from embedded devices to the space station.

Ian's sharp focus was on creating a Distribution and community culture that did the right thing, be it ethically, or technically. Releases went out when they were ready, and the project's staunch stance on Software Freedom are the gold standards in the Free and Open Source world.

Ian's devotion to the right thing guided his work, both in Debian and in the subsequent years, always working towards the best possible future.

Ian's dream has lived on, the Debian community remains incredibly active, with thousands of developers working untold hours to bring the world a reliable and secure operating system.

The thoughts of the Debian Community are with Ian's family in this hard time.

His family has asked for privacy during this difficult time and we very much wish to respect that. Within our Debian and the larger Linux community condolences may be sent to in-memoriam-ian@debian.org where they will be kept and archived.

Software Freedom Conservancy needs your support!

Mehdi Dogguy — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 00:30:00 +0100

"Software Freedom Conservancy helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects.", that is how Software Freedom Conservancy defines itself. Organizations like Conservancy allow free software developers to focus on what they do the best by doing copyleft enforcement, taking care of legal aspects and provide many services to its project members.

Last August, Debian and Conservancy announced a partnership and formed the Copyright Aggregation Project where, among other things, Conservancy will be able to hold copyrights for some Debian works and ensure compliance with copyleft so that those works remain in free software.

Recently, Conservancy launched a major fundraising campaign and needs more individual supporters to gain more sustainable and independent funding. This will allow the Conservancy to continue its efforts towards convincing more companies to comply with free software licenses such as the GPL and take legal actions when dialogue turns out to be unsuccessful. Conservancy needs your support now, more than ever!

Many Debian Developers and Contributors have already become Conservancy supporters. Please consider signing up as a supporter on https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (September and October 2015)

Jean-Pierre Giraud — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 22:35:00 +0100

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

ChangZhuo Chen (czchen)
Eugene Zhukov (eugene)
Hugo Lefeuvre (hle)
Milan Kupcevic (milan)
Timo Weingärtner (tiwe)
Uwe Kleine-König (ukleinek)
Bernhard Schmidt (berni)
Stein Magnus Jodal (jodal)
Prach Pongpanich (prach)
Markus Koschany (apo)
Andy Simpkins (rattustrattus)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Miguel A. Colón Vélez
Afif Elghraoui
Bastien Roucariès
Carsten Schoenert
Tomasz Nitecki
Christoph Ulrich Scholler
Mechtilde Stehmann
Alexandre Viau
Daniele Tricoli
Russell Sim
Benda Xu
Andrew Kelley
Ivan Udovichenko
Shih-Yuan Lee
Edward Betts
Punit Agrawal
Andreas Boll
Dave Hibberd
Alexandre Detiste
Marcio de Souza Oliveira
Andrew Ayer
Alf Gaida

Congratulations!

New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2015)

Ana Guerrero López — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 13:45:00 +0200

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

Gianfranco Costamagna (locutusofborg)
Graham Inggs (ginggs)
Ximin Luo (infinity0)
Christian Kastner (ckk)
Tianon Gravi (tianon)
Iain R. Learmonth (irl)
Laura Arjona Reina (larjona)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

Senthil Kumaran
Riley Baird
Robie Basak
Alex Muntada
Johan Van de Wauw
Benjamin Barenblat
Paul Novotny
Jose Luis Rivero
Chris Knadle
Lennart Weller

Congratulations!

Debian turns 22!

Ana Guerrero Lopez and Valessio Brito — Sun, 16 Aug 2015 23:59:00 +0200

Sorry for posting so late, we're very busy at DebConf15!

Happy 22nd birthday Debian!

Debian Perl Sprint 2015

Alex Muntada — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 21:00:00 +0200

The Debian Perl team had its first sprint in May and it was a success: 7 members met in Barcelona the weekend from May 22nd to May 24th to kick off the development around perl for Stretch and to work on QA tasks across the more than 3000 packages that the team maintains.

Even though the participants enjoyed the beautiful weather and the food very much, a good amount of work was also done:

53 bugs were filed or worked on, 31 uploads were accepted.
The current practice of patch management (quilt) was discussed and possible alternatives were shown (git-debcherry and git-dpm).
Improvements were made in the Debian Perl Tools (dpt) and discussed how to get track of upstream git history and tags.
Team's policies, documentation and recurring tasks were reviewed and updated.
Perl 5.22 release was prepared and src:perl plans for Stretch were discussed.
autopkgtest whitelists were reviewed, new packages added, and IRC notificacions by KGB were discussed.
Outstanding migrations were reviewed.
Reproducibility issues with POD_MAN_DATE were commented.

The full report was posted to the relevant Debian mailing lists.

The participants would like to thank the Computer Architecture Department of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya for hosting us, and all donors to the Debian project who helped to cover a large part of our expenses.

Reproducible Builds get funded by the Core Infrastructure Initiative

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 14:00:00 +0200

The Core Infrastructure Initiative announced today that they will support two Debian Developers, Holger Levsen and Jérémy Bobbio, with $200,000 to advance their Debian work in reproducible builds and to collaborate more closely with other distributions such as Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenWrt to benefit from this effort.

The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) was established in 2014 to fortify the security of key open source projects. This initiative is funded by more than 20 companies and managed by The Linux Foundation.

The reproducible builds initiative aims to enable anyone to reproduce bit by bit identical binary packages from a given source, thus enabling anyone to independently verify that a binary matches the source code from which it was said it was derived. For example, this allow the users of Debian to rebuild packages and obtain exactly identical packages to the ones provided by the Debian repositories.

Debian Ruby team sprint 2015

Antonio Terceiro — Tue, 12 May 2015 00:01:00 +0200

The Debian Ruby Ruby team had a first sprint in 2014. The experience was very positive, and it was decided to do it again in 2015. Last April, the team once more met at the IRILL offices, in Paris, France.

The participants worked to improve the quality Ruby packages in Debian, including fixing release critical and security bugs, improving metadata and packaging code, and triaging test failures on the Debian Continuous Integration service.

The sprint also served to prepare the team infrastructure for the future Debian 9 release:

the gem2deb packaging helper to improve the semi-automated generation of Debian source packages from existing standard-compliant Ruby packages from Rubygems.
there was also an effort to prepare the switch to Ruby 2.2, the latest stable release of the Ruby language which was released after the Debian testing suite was already frozen for the Debian 8 release.

Left to right: Christian Hofstaedtler, Tomasz Nitecki, Sebastien Badia and Antonio Terceiro.

A full report with technical details has been posted to the relevant Debian mailing lists.

Debian 8.0 Jessie has been released!

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Sun, 26 Apr 2015 03:15:00 +0200

There's a new sheriff in town. And her name is Jessie. We're happy to announce the release of Debian 8.0, codenamed Jessie.

Want to install it? Choose your favourite installation media among Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, CDs and USB sticks. Then read the installation manual. For cloud users Debian also offers pre-built OpenStack images ready to use.

Already a happy Debian user and you only want to upgrade? You are just an apt-get dist-upgrade away from Jessie! Find how, reading the installation guide and the release notes.

Do you want to celebrate the release? Share the banner from this blog in your blog or your website!

Hewlett-Packard Platinum Sponsor of DebConf15

Laura Arjona Reina — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 15:00:00 +0100

We are very pleased to announce that HP has committed support of DebConf15 as Platinum sponsor.

"The hLinux team is pleased to continue HP's long tradition of supporting Debian and DebConf," said Steve Geary, Senior Director at Hewlett-Packard.

Hewlett-Packard is one of the largest computer companies in the world, providing a wide range of products and services, such as servers, PCs, printers, storage products, network equipment, software, cloud computing solutions, etc.

Hewlett-Packard has been a long-term development partner of Debian, and provides hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (HP hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

With this additional commitment as Platinum Sponsor, HP contributes to make possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community who continue to collaborate on their Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much, Hewlett-Packard, for your support of DebConf15!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf15 is still accepting sponsors. Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf15 website at http://debconf15.debconf.org.

DebConf15 welcomes new sponsors

Laura Arjona Reina — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 16:00:00 +0100

The organization of DebConf15 (from 15 to 22 August 2015, in Heidelberg, Germany) is going smoothly, the call for proposals is open and today we want to provide some updates about our sponsors.

Twelve more companies have joined our nine first sponsors in supporting DebConf15. Thank you to all of them!

Our third Gold sponsor is the Matanel Foundation, which encourages social entrepreneurship in all over the world.

IBM, the technology and consulting corporation, has also joined the DebConf15 sponsorship at a Gold level.

Google, the search engine and advertising company, has increased its sponsorship level from Silver to Gold.

Mirantis, 1&1 (which is also one of Debian's service partners), MySQL and Hudson River Trading have committed sponsorship at Silver level.

And last but not least, six more sponsors have agreed to support us at Bronze level: Godiug.net, the University of Zurich, Deduktiva, Docker, DG-i (which is also one of Debian's service partners), and PricewaterhouseCoopers (which also provides consultancy support for DebConf15).

The DebConf15 team is very thankful to all the DebConf sponsors for their support.

Become a sponsor too!

Debian is now welcoming applicants for Outreachy and GSoC Summer 2015

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 21:45:00 +0100

We'd like to reshare a post from Nicolas Dandrimont.

Hi all,

I am delighted to announce that Debian will be participating in the next round of Outreachy and GSoC, and that we are currently welcoming applications!

Outreachy helps people from groups underrepresented in free and open source software get involved. The current round of internships is open to women (cis and trans), trans men, genderqueer people, and all participants of the Ascend Project regardless of gender.

Google Summer of Code is a global program, sponsored by Google, that offers post-secondary student developers ages 18 and older stipends to write code for various open source software projects.

Interns for both programs are granted a $5500 stipend (in three installments) allowing them to dedicate their summer to working full-time on Debian.

Our amazing team of mentors has listed their project ideas on the Debian wiki, and we are now welcoming applicants for both programs.

If you want to apply for an internship with Debian this summer, please fill out the template for either Outreachy or GSoC. If you’re eligible to both programs, we’ll encourage you to apply to both (using the same application), as Debian only has funds for a single Outreachy intern this round.

Don’t wait up! The application period for Outreachy ends March 24th, and the GSoC application period ends March 27th. We really want applicants to start contributing to their project before making our selection, so that mentors can get a feel of how working with their intern will be like for three months. The small task is a requirement for Outreachy, and we’re strongly encouraging GSoC applicants to abide by that rule too. To contribute in the best conditions, you shouldn’t wait for the last minute to apply :-)

I hope we’ll work with a lot of great interns this summer. If you think you’re up for the challenge, it’s time to apply! If you have any doubts, or any question, drop us a line on the soc-coordination mailing list or come by on our IRC channel (#debian-soc on irc.debian.org) and we’ll do our best to guide you.

apt install dpl-candidate: Mehdi Dogguy

Zlatan Todorić — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:36:00 +0100

0. Who are you and what is your history with Debian Project?

I guess this part is well covered in my platform.

1. What is your most proud moment as Debian Developer?

I am pretty proud of having been part of the few who implemented the first automatic dependency resolver for OCaml programs and libraries in Debian packages. It was really the first one in the OCaml community and we were quite proud of it. But that was done before I become a Debian Developer.

As a DD, I have to admit I am quite proud to be part of the Release Team. It is a fantastic team where there is so much to do. Helping the team means something to me, and I invested a considerable amount of time (a few months) working on reviewing patches for Squeeze and helping to get it ready by our standards. My best moment was Squeeze's release, my first Debian release as Release Team member.

2. In your opinion what is the strongest part of Debian Project?

I am not sure we can identify one single strength of the Debian project. But, when I think about your question, I remember something I've heard many times: “Debian is about people”. I have to admit that I didn't realize it myself until I heard it for the first time and I completely share the idea! For me, all the technical side of the project comes after the community. With time, I think we managed to build a strong community. Many contributors became friends with time. We are seeing many Developers having babies and bringing them to Debian events. I find that really amazing.

3. And what is the weakest part of Debian Project?

Our strength is somehow also our weakness. We are humans and make mistakes. We have feelings and some discussions get heated sometimes. It is not easy to keep everyone calm and focused. We have seen the damage that was caused to our core community last year with all the flamewars. Many people lost their motivation and we have seen some of them stepping down. We are also having troubles on-boarding new contributors, which is a problem today because some teams are under-staffed and could become an even bigger issue on the longer term.

4. How do you intend to resolve the weakest part?

An effort has already been made on this front. We can mention the introduction of the Code of Conduct and the diversity statement, for example. Both are important and make us a more welcoming and caring community.

In my platform, I mentioned some ideas about recruitment and change management. I believe that both sides will help us to get a stronger community. Moreover, a DPL should act as a mediator to help some situation get through. This is one of the DPL tasks that is not formally identified and is usually under-estimated.

5. DPL term lasts for one year - what would you challenge during that term and what have you learned from previous DPL's?

Personally, the main thing I have learned from past DPLs is that communication is very important. A DPL should dedicate time to communicate about ongoing actions and achievements. It is also important to remind a few things even if it may sound repetitive or trivial:

Why such action/subject is important.
What actions have been tried/done in the past.
What progress has been made since last time.
What is possibly the next step.

If the communication is only about listing some actions, many people will miss its essence and its goals. It is even more important when we know that some actions may take years (thus, several DPL terms) to complete.

If I am elected as DPL, I'd really like to help the project to publish a roadmap. I think it is very important to set goals to the project to better explain our philosophy and approach in the Free Software world. This may also help to attract new contributors which may be interested by one or some items. Of course, I will not work on that subject only. I invite you to read the rest of my platform to see the other ideas.

6. What motivates you to work in Debian and run for DPL?

Many many things. And more importantly, many many people

As many of us, I like programming and socializing. It feels nice to be part of such a big project and where you can do many different things. I contribute to Debian because I find it fun and let me meet people I will not have been able to meet elsewhere.

In my platform, I tried to identify ideas I'd like to see implemented, or at least started. Since Debian is a do-ocracy, I thought I could try to get them implemented by myself. I think that those ideas are important for the Debian community and will help us moving forward. Running for DPL is also another way of contributing to Debian and I'd feel honored to represent Debian.

apt install dpl-candidate: Gergely Nagy

Zlatan Todorić — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:35:00 +0100

0. Who are you and what's your history with Debian Project?

I'm a little mouse behind a keyboard, going by the nickname "algernon". I used to be a lot of things: a flaming youth, an application manager, package maintainer, upstream, ftp-assistant, a student, a mentor, a hacker. In the end, however, I am but a simple, albeit sometimes crazy person.

I did a number of things within Debian - mostly small and marginal things, mind you. With a little break, I've been here for over a decade, and am planning to stay for at least another.

1. What's your most proud moment as Debian Developer?

At last year's LinuxTag, I was wandering around a stand where they sold Raspberry Pis (with cases and other accessories). I had a nice chat with one of the staffers there, inquired about the price (including the case, of course), and a few other things. He asked a few things back: what I'll be using it for, and so on. After it turned out that I'm a Debian Developer, and syslog-ng hacker, he went to the back, and emerged a few minutes later with a boxed up Pi, and gave it to me as a gift, for working on Debian.

This was an incredibly touching moment, in many, many ways.

2. In your opinion what is the strongest part of Debian Project?

That's hard to say, to be honest. There are a good number of things Debian is incredibly strong at, and it would be hard to arbitrarily pick one. Quality, responsibility, safety, predictability are all areas we are very good at. But those are the qualities of the OS. As a project, we are remarkably well organised, given the volunteer & distributed nature of the project.

3. And what is the weakest part of Debian Project?

While we can resolve and work with technical issues in a reasonable manner, the project as a whole is rather lacking in all other areas. To grow beyond being the creators of the Universal OS, we, as a project, need to pursue goals beyond the OS.

Being part of GSoC and Outreachy are great steps forward. But we still have a lot of internal issues that need to be resolved. Areas such as innovation, team work, where we're in dire need of improvement.

4. How do you intend to resolve the weakest part?

As explained in my platform, my primary goal is to remove roadblocks. The DPL can do very little alone, his time and powers are better spent on enabling those who have the required skills and desires, to pursue those.

5. DPL term lasts for one year - what would you challenge during that term and what have you learned from previous DPL's?

The most valuable thing I learned from past DPLs is that the expectations are sky-high, yet, a significant portion of what the DPL does is very different than what I imagined in past years.

I'd like to challenge the status quo of the DPL being a nearly full-time job.

6. What motivates you to work in Debian and run for DPL?

I'm in it for the fame and glory, of course! And because my Tamagotchi told me to.

But on a more serious tone, my main motivation to work on Debian is because contributing makes me happy. It satisfies my hunger for doing useful work. Debian is - in my opinion - the perfect platform to give back to the wider Free Software community. Similarly, my motivation to run for DPL is to allow Debian to be a stronger member of that greater

apt install dpl-candidate: Neil McGovern

Zlatan Todorić — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:34:00 +0100

0. Who are you and what's your history with Debian Project?

My name's Neil, I've been involved with Debian for over 10 years now. I've held a variety of roles, from the SPI board, writing policy and secure testing team, to being one of the Release Managers for Squeeze and Wheezy.

1. What's your most proud moment as Debian Developer?

Probably the release of Squeeze, my first as RM. It was the end of a great effort to get the release out. I particularly remember at the end of DebConf 10 in New York going to the local Disney store and buying every single small squeeze plush toy they had, so I could send a thank you gift to the rest of the release team! Another perhaps was when I first got my Debian kilt.

2. In your opinion what is the strongest part of Debian Project?

I think this is our social contract. It guides us, and is what we all agree on. This is our promise to ourselves, to the wider open source community and to our users.

3. And what is the weakest part of Debian Project?

At a push, I'd say it's the variety of packages we have in the archive. I'm not sure it's weakness, but it's certainly a challenge. It becomes exponentially harder to ensure that everything integrates well as you add more packages. To have made it do so this far is quite impressive.

4. How do you intend to resolve the weakest part?

Well, see the section in my platform on PPAs, and modernising our build and infrastructure system Wouldn't it be great if you could stage a package against all of stable, testing and unstable, and see what fails to build and where, with live build logs on all architectures?

5. DPL term lasts for one year - what would you challenge during that term and what have you learned from previous DPL's?

I think my primary role as DPL for 2015 would be to get a great start of development for Stretch. The start of a new release cycle is the exact time to implement wide changes that are potentially disruptive. Every couple of years we seem to relax after the release, rather than get geared up for the next one, and then time passes, and plans slip, and before we know it, the freeze is fast approaching. If we start planning /now/, then we can hopefully enter the freeze with fewer RC bugs, which should be great news for everyone! For the second part, I've talked to a lot of the previous DPLs, and worked with them in one role or another. The main thing I was told was that I shouldn't try and do everything I planned on. It's hard work, and all sorts of things pop up that derail your original plans.

6. What motivates you to work in Debian and run for DPL?

The people involved. I've met and worked with some of my greatest friends due to the project. The work, dedication and commitment of those over the years is outstanding. Most of these people are still with us, and unfortunately, a few are not. Whenever I'm feeling disheartened or annoyed, usually due to a giant flame-war then I simply remember that what we're doing is truly remarkable, and the effort that everyone has put in over the years isn't something that should be taken for granted.

DebConf15: Call for Proposals

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Thu, 12 Mar 2015 22:20:00 +0100

The DebConf Content team is pleased to announce the Call for Proposals for the DebConf15 conference, to be held in Heidelberg, Germany from the 15th through the 22nd of August, 2015.

Submitting an Event

In order to submit an event, you must be registered as an attendee of DebConf15.If you have any questions about the registration process, please check the related information on the conference website.

Once registered, go to "Propose an event" and describe your proposal. Please note, events are not limited to traditional presentations or informal sessions (BoFs). We welcome submissions of tutorials, performances, art installations, debates, or any other format of event that you think would be beneficial to the Debian community.

Please include a short title, suitable for a compact schedule, and an engaging description of the event. You should use the field "Notes for Content Team" to provide us information such as additional speakers, scheduling restrictions, or any special requirements we should consider for your event.

Regular sessions may either be 20 or 45 minutes long (including time for questions) and will be followed by a 10 or 15 minutes break, respectively. Other kinds of sessions (like workshops) could have different durations. Please make sure to choose the most suitable duration for your event and justify any special requests.

Timeline

The first batch of accepted proposals will be announced in May. If you depend on having your proposal accepted in order to attend the conference, please submit it as soon as possible so that it can be considered during this first evaluation period.

All proposals must be submitted before June 15th, 2015 to be evaluated for the official schedule.

Topics and Tracks

Though we invite proposals on any Debian or FLOSS related subject, we will have some broad topics arranged as tracks for which we encourage people to submit proposals. The currently proposed list is:

Debian Packaging, Policy, and Infrastructure
Security, Safety, and Hacking
Debian System Administration, Automation and Orchestration
Containers and Cloud Computing with Debian
Debian Success Stories
Debian in the Social, Ethical, Legal, and Political Context
Blends, Subprojects, Derivatives, and Projects using Debian
Embedded Debian and Hardware-Level Systems

If you have ideas for further tracks, or would like to volunteer as a track coordinator, please contact content@debconf.org. In order for a track to take place during DebConf15, we must have received a sufficient amount of proposals on that specific theme. Track coordinators will play an important role in inviting people to submit events.

Video Coverage

Contact and Thanks to Sponsors

DebConf would not be possible without the generous support of all our sponsors, especially our platinum sponsor HP. DebConf15 is still accepting sponsors; if you are interested, please get in touch!

You are welcome to contact the Content Team with any concerns about your event, or with any ideas or questions ambout DebConf events in general. You can reach us at content@debconf.org.

We hope to see you all in Heidelberg!

Debian Project Leader elections 2015

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Thu, 12 Mar 2015 11:00:00 +0100

It's that time of year again for the Debian Project: the elections of its Project Leader! Starting on April 1st, and during the following two weeks, the Debian Developers will vote to choose the person who will guide the project for one year. The results will be published on April 15th and the term for new the project leader will start on April 17th, 2015.

Lucas Nussbaum who has held the office for the last two years won't be seeking reelection this year and Debian Developers will have to choose between three candidates:

Gergely Nagy and Neil McGovern previously ran for DPL in past years; it's the first run for Mehdi Dogguy.

The campaigning period started today and will last until March 31st. The candidates are expected to engage in debates and discussions on the debian-vote mailing list where they'll reply to questions from users and contributors.

DebConf15 welcomes its first nine sponsors!

Laura Arjona Reina — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 14:35:00 +0100

DebConf15 will take place in Heidelberg, Germany in August 2015. We strive to provide an intense working environment and enable good progress for Debian and for Free Software in general. We extend an invitation to everyone to join us and to support this event. As a volunteer-run non-profit conference, we depend on our sponsors.

Nine companies have already committed to sponsor DebConf15! Let's introduce them:

Our first Gold sponsor is credativ, a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software, and also a Debian development partner.

Our second Gold sponsor is sipgate, a Voice over IP service provider based in Germany that also operates in the United Kingdom (sipgate site in English).

Google (the search engine and advertising company), Farsight Security, Inc. (developers of real-time passive DNS solutions), Martin Alfke / Buero 2.0 (Linux & UNIX Consultant and Trainer, LPIC-2/Puppet Certified Professional) and Ubuntu (the OS supported by Canonical) are our four Silver sponsors.

And last but not least, Logilab, Netways and Hetzner have agreed to support us as Bronze-level.

Become a sponsor too!

Would you like to become a sponsor? Do you know of or work in a company or organization that may consider sponsorship?

Please have a look at our sponsorship brochure (also available in German), in which we outline all the details and describe the sponsor benefits. For instance, sponsors have the option to reach out to Debian contributors, derivative developers, upstream authors and other community members during a Job Fair and through postings on our job wall, and to show-case their Free Software involvement by staffing a booth on the Open Weekend. In addition, sponsors are able to distribute marketing materials in the attendee bags. And it goes without saying that we honour your sponsorship with visibility of your logo in the conference's videos, on our website, on printed materials, and banners.

The final report of DebConf14 is also available, illustrating the broad spectrum, quality, and enthusiasm of the community at work, and providing detailed information about the different outcomes that last conference brought up (talks, participants, social events, impact in the Debian project and the free software scene, and much more).

For further details, feel free to contact us through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf15 website at http://debconf15.debconf.org.

Help empower the Debian Outreach Program for Women

Tom Marble — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 19:30:00 +0200

Debian is thrilled to participate in the 9th round of the GNOME FOSS Outreach Program. While OPW is similar to Google Summer of Code it has a winter session in addition to a summer session and is open to non-students.

Back at DebConf 14 several of us decided to volunteer because we want to increase diversity in Debian. Shortly thereafter the DPL announced Debian's participation in OPW 2014.

We have reached out to several corporate sponsors and are thrilled that so far Intel has agreed to fund an intern slot (in addition to the slot offered by the DPL)! While that makes two funded slots we have a third sponsor that has offered a challenge match: for each dollar donated by an individual to Debian the sponsor will donate another dollar for Debian OPW.

This is where we need your help! If we can raise $3,125 by October 22 that means we can mentor a third intern ($6,250). Please spread the word and donate today if you can at: http://debian.ch/opw2014/

If you'd like to participate as intern, the application deadline is the same (October 22nd). You can find out more on the Debian Wiki.

Debian turns 21!

Ana Guerrero Lopez and Valessio Brito — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 11:45:00 +0200

Today is Debian's 21st anniversary. Plenty of cities are celebrating Debian Day. If you are not close to any of those cities, there's still time for you to organize a little celebration!

Happy 21st birthday Debian!

DebConf14 - schedule available

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 23:25:00 +0200

Debconf14 will be held in three weeks in Portland, OR, USA and we're happy to announce that the schedule is already available. Of course, it is still possible for some minor changes to happen!

DebConf will open on Saturday, August 23 with the Welcome talk followed by two highlighted talks:

Debian in the Dark Ages of Free Software by Stefano Zacchiroli, former Debian Project Leader. Stefano will speak about the achievements realized by Free Software communities in the past years, andhow now, despite the visible success, this freedom is being threatened by the current technology trends, and how can Debian help to preserve the so well deserved freedom.
Weapons of the Geek by Biella Coleman, cultural anthropologist, who researches, writes, and teaches on computer hackers and digital activism will share with us part of her research, explaining how online communities can have a big impact on world politics today.

There will also be also a plethora of social events, such as our traditional cheese and wine party, our group photo and our day trip.

The complete schedule can be found at: https://summit.debconf.org/debconf14/

DebConf talks will be broadcast live on the Internet when possible, and videos of the talks will be published on the web along with the presentation slides.

Jessie will ship Linux 3.16

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 23:10:00 +0200

The Debian Linux kernel team has discussed and chosen the kernel version to use as a basis for Debian 8 'jessie'.

This will be Linux 3.16, due to be released in early August. Release candidates for Linux 3.16 are already packaged and available in the experimental suite.

If you maintain a package that is closely bound to the kernel version - a kernel module or a userland application that depends on an unstable API - please ensure that it is compatible with Linux 3.16 prior to the freeze date (5th November, 2014). Incompatible packages are very likely to be removed from testing and not included in 'jessie'.

My kernel module package doesn't build on 3.16 and upstream is not interested in supporting this version. What can I do? The kernel team might be able to help you with forward-porting, but also try Linux Kernel Newbies or the mailing list(s) for the relevant kernel subsystem(s).
There's an important new kernel feature that ought to go into jessie, but it won't be in 3.16. Can you still add it? Maybe - sometimes this is easy and sometimes it's too disruptive to the rest of the kernel. Please contact the team on the debian-kernel mailinglist or by opening a wishlist bug.
Will Linux 3.16 get long term support from upstream? The Linux 3.16-stable branch will not be maintained as a longterm branch at kernel.org. However, the Ubuntu kernel team will continue to maintain that branch, following the same rules for acceptance and review, until around April 2016. Ben Hutchings is planning to continue maintenance from then until the end of regular support for 'jessie'.

Introducing the Debian Continuous Integration project

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 00:01:00 +0200

Debian is a big system. At the time of writing, the unstable distribution has more than 20,000 source packages, building more then 40,000 binary packages on the amd64 architecture. The number of inter-dependencies between binary packages is mind-boggling: the entire dependency graph for the amd64 architecture contains a little more than 375,000 edges. If you want to expand the phrase "package A depends on package B", there are more than 375,000 pairs of packages A and B that can be used.

Every one of these dependencies is a potential source of problems. A library changes the semantics of a function call, and then programs using that library that assumed the previous semantics can start to malfunction. A new version of your favorite programming language comes out, and a program written in it no longer works. The number of ways in which things can go wrong goes on and on.

With an ecosystem as big as Debian, it is just impossible to stop these problems from happening. What we can do is trying to detect when they happen, and fix them as soon as possible.

The Debian Continuous Integration project was created to address exactly this problem. It will continuously run test suites for source packages when any of their dependencies is updated, as well as when a new version of the package itself is uploaded to the unstable distribution. If any problems that can be detected by running an automated test suite arise, package maintainers can be notified in a matter of hours.

Antonio Terceiro has posted on his blog an introduction to the project with a more detailed description of the project, its evolution since January 2014 when it was first introduced, an explanation of how the system works, and how maintainers can enable test suites for their packages. You might also want to check the documentation directly.

DebConf14 - Call for talks, BoFs and events

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 22:30:00 +0200

The Debian project is excited to announce that we are now accepting presentations, discussion sessions and tutorials for our DebConf14 conference which will take place in Portland State University, Oregon, USA from 23 to 31 August.

Submitting an event

To submit an event, first register as an attendee for DebConf14 in the conference management system. If you have any doubts or have problems with the registration process please check the Registration FAQ.

After registering, go to the event submission page, or click on the Create an event option from the management system. Describe your submission in the web form. The most common event types are Lecture or Open Discussion (BoF). Please include a short title (to make it easy to produce a compact schedule) and an engaging description of the event.

Tracks

We will organize some talks into thematic tracks. If you have a proposal for a DebConf track, such as "Debian ARM", "Debian Infrastructure", or "Community Outreach" please contact talks@debconf.org.

If you would like to be a track coordinator, please volunteer on the given mail address.

Format of the events

A regular session will be 45 minutes long, including time for questions. There will be a 15 minute breaks between events.

Submissions are not limited to traditional talks: you could propose a performance, art installation, debate, or anything else. If you have any specific requirements for your event, please send an email to talks@debconf.org with the details of your requirements and be sure to mention your event title in the subject.

Deadline

While we ask speakers to submit their events before the deadline of 7 July 2014, 23:59:59 UTC, late submissions will continue to be accepted for scheduling until the end of DebConf. All attendees will have an opportunity to schedule ad-hoc events during DebConf itself if we have space for them. Very promising late submissions may be considered for inclusion in the main conference. Note that ad-hoc events have a much lower chance of video archiving, and streaming, so if you want these services it's better to get your submissions in early.

DebConf official events will be broadcast live on the Internet when possible, and videos of the talks will be published on the web along with the presentation slides and papers.

For private communication regarding your talk, or for more general ideas, or questions about the event and talks, please mail us

We hope to you see you and share some good times with you this year in Portland during DebConf14!

Debian welcomes its 2014 GSoC students!

Nicolas Dandrimont — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 11:00:00 +0200

We're excited to announce that19 students have been selected to work with Debian during the Google Summer of Code this year!

Here is the list of accepted students and projects:

Abhishek Bhattacharjee: AppStream/DEP-11 for the Debian Archive
Alexander Ovchinnikov: Debian built with clang
Andrew Schurman: Recursively building Java dependencies from source
Arthur Marble: Debian built with clang
Brandon Fairchild: Debian Continuous Integration - Web Interface
Clément Schreiner: Provide some metrics in Debile
Dionysios Fryganas: Project import/export for Alioth (FusionForge)
Floris-Andrei Stoica-Marcu: Get Muon ready
Ian S. Donnelly: Improve Configuration Upgrade Mechansim with Elektra
Joseph Bisch: Debian metrics portal
Juliana Louback: WebRTC portal for the Debian community
Kumar Sukhani: Integrate Debian with Android
Lucas Kanashiro: Debian Continuous Integration
Pavol Rohár: mhonarc replacement for lists.debian.org
Peter Pentchev: Bootstrappable Debian
Plamen Aleksandrov: Improve Debian on mipsel
Sergey Davidoff: Package elementary software
Sphinx Jiang: Improve Debian on mips64el
Xilin Sun: Improve Debian on mipsel

As always, you will be able to follow their progress on the SoC coordination mailing-list

Congratulations to all the students and let's make sure we all have an amazing summer!

DPL election is over, Lucas Nussbaum re-elected

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 08:10:00 +0200

The Debian Project Leader election has concluded and the winner is Lucas Nussbaum. Of a total of 1003 developers, 401 developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2014 page.

The new term for the project leader will start on April 17th and expire on April 17th 2015.

Debian Project elects Javier Merino Cacho as Project Leader

Francesca Ciceri and Ana Guerrero Lopez — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:25:00 +0200

This post was an April Fools' Day joke.

In accordance with its constitution, the Debian Project has just elected Javier Merino Cacho as Debian Project Leader. More than 80% of voters put him as their first choice (or equal first) on their ballot papers.

Javier's large majority over his opponents shows how his inspiring vision for the future of the Debian project is largely shared by the other developers. Lucas Nussbaum and Neil McGovern also gained a lot of support from Debian project members, both coming many votes ahead of the None of the above ballot choice.

Javier has been a Debian Developer since February 2012 and, among other packages, works on keeping the mercurial package under control, as mercury is very poisonous for trouts.

After it was announced that he had won this year's election, Javier said: I'm flattered by the trust that Debian members have put in me. One of the main points in my platform is to remove the "Debian is old and boring" image. In order to change that, my first action as DPL is to encourage all Debian Project Members to wear a clown red nose in public.

Among others, the main points from his platform are mainly related to improve the communication style in mailing lists through an innovative filter called aponygisator, to make Debian less "old and boring", as well as solve technical issues among developers with barehanded fights. Betting on the fights will be not only allowed but encouraged for fundraising reasons.

Javier also contemplated the use of misleading talk titles such as The use of cannabis in contemporary ages: a practical approach and Real Madrid vs Barcelona to lure new users and contributors to Debian events.

Javier's platform was collaboratively written by a team of communication experts and high profile Debian contributors during the last DebConf. It has since evolved thanks to the help of many other contributors.

Debian Project Leader elections 2014

Francesca Ciceri — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0100

It's again that time of the year for the Debian Project: the elections of its Project Leader! Starting on March 31st, and during the following two weeks, the Debian Developers will vote to choose the person who will guide the project for one year.

Among this year's candidates there is the current DPL, Lucas Nussbaum, who admits that "the workload involved in being the DPL is just huge," and motivates his nomination with the need for stability in the project in this release cycle, especially after the difficult decision about the default init system. In his platform, Lucas speaks of technical and social steps to improve the project: from reproducible builds for a more secure archive to a renewed effort to run Debian on new platforms (especially smartphone and tablets); from a more welcoming approach to prospective contributors to an easier collaboration with organizations.

The only other candidate left after Gergely Nagy withdrew his nomination, is former Release Manager Neil McGovern. Neil's platform focuses mainly on the need to "ensure that we cater to our users, and there's millions of them. From those running the latest software in unstable, to people who simply want a rock solid core release." In his opinion "the size of Debian is increasing, and will reach a point where we're unable to guarantee basic compatibility with other packages, or the length of time it takes to do so becomes exponentially longer, unless something changes." To fix this problem, Neil proposes the implementation of PPAs (Personal Package Archives), the modernisation of the current build and infrastructure system as well as generally supporting the various teams.

The campaigning period will last until March 30th: the candidates are already engaged in debates and discussions on the debian-vote mailing list where they'll reply to questions from users and contributors.

Working in a possible LTS for Debian Squeeze

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 11:15:00 +0100

The Debian Security Team announced in the bits from their last meeting that they're considering to ask for the addition of a new suite to provide long term support (LTS) for Squeeze.

Quoting their announcement:

It needs to be pointed out that for this effort to be sustainable actual contributions by interested parties are required. squeeze-lts is not something that will magically fall from the sky. If you're dependent/interested in extended security support you should make an effort to contribute, either by contributing on your own or by paying a Debian developer/consultant to contribute for you. The security team itself is driving the effort, NOT doing it. Some team members will contribute to it individually, however.
Anyone interested in contributing, please get in touch with team@security.debian.org. We'll setup an initial coordination list with all interested parties. All policies / exact work will be sorted out there.

This means this is still not something settled and if you or your company is insterested in joining this effort, you should contact the security team ASAP. So they can see if there is enough people and resources to launch the LTS.

Video streams for the MiniDebConf 2014 Barcelona

Martín Ferrari — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 12:10:00 +0100

This is just a quick note to tell you that the video stream of the Barcelona MiniDebConf will be available at the following URL:

http://bcn2014.video.debconf.org/

If you were not able to make it to Barcelona, now you can still follow from home!

May you have a productive and joyful MiniDebConf - and thanks for volunteering and talking if you do so! The MiniDebConf is what you make it.

Call for participants in the Google Summer of Code for Debian

Nicolas Dandrimont — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 11:15:00 +0100

The Google Summer of Code is a program that allows post-secondary students aged 18 and older to earn a stipend writing code for Free and Open Source Software projects during the summer.

Debian has just been accepted as a mentoring organization for this year's program! We're looking for students and mentors to make this GSoC in Debian the best ever!

Eligible students, now is the time to take a look at our project ideas list, engage with the mentors for the projects you find interesting, and start working on your application! For more information, please read the FAQ and the Program Timeline on Google's website.

Mentors for prospective projects can still submit proposals on the project ideas list. You also need to send an email to the mailing list linked below to present your project in a few words. Feel also free to propose yourself as a co-mentor for one of the listed projects, more help is always welcome!

If you are interested, we encourage you to come and chat with us on irc (#debian-soc on irc.oftc.net), or to send an email to the SoC coordination mailing-list (subscribe). Most of the Debian-specific GSoC information can be found on our wiki pages, but don't be afraid to ask us directly on irc or via email.

We're looking forward to work with an amazing team of students and mentors again this summer!

Invitation to the MiniDebConf 2014 Barcelona: 15-16 March 2014

Mònica Ramírez Arceda — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 12:00:00 +0100

Debian Women will hold a MiniDebConf in Barcelona on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th of March, 2014. Everyone is invited to both talks and social events, but the speakers will all be people who identify themselves as female. This is not a conference about women in Free Software, or women in Debian, rather a usual Debian Mini-DebConf where all the speakers are women.

The talks schedule has already been published. It is going to be an exciting event, packed with interesting talks for all audiences, in a beautiful venue, in one of the most famous European cities.

Registration is not mandatory, but strongly encouraged, as it helps the event's organisation and logistics. Please, register in the wiki.

We are still raising funds to cover the costs of running the conference and to offer travel sponsorship to people who can't pay for it. Please, consider donating any amount you can in our crowd-funding campaign, or contact us if you would like to become a sponsor.

The conference organisers want to thank the organisations that have already became sponsors, making this event possible, and specially our Platinum sponsor, Google; our Gold sponsors, Càtedra de Programari Lliure - Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Blue Systems and our Silver sponsors, CAtalan LInux Users, CAPSiDE and Fluendo.

For more information, visit the website of the event: http://bcn2014.mini.debconf.org

skyrocketing how-can-i-help popcon count

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 21:00:00 +0100

This is a repost from Stefano Zacchiroli's post

how-can-i-help by Lucas Nussbaum is one of the best things that happened in the area of attracting contributions to Debian in quite a while. It can be used both as a standalone tool to list opportunities for contributing to Debian which are related to your installed packages, and as an APT hook (which is also the default configuration) that at each upgrade will inform you of new contribution opportunities.

how-can-i-help is great for newbies who are looking for ways to give back to Debian which are a good match for their skills: among other things, how-can-i-help shows bugs tagged "gift" related to packages you use.

how-can-i-help is also great for experienced developers, as it allows them to find out, in a timely manner, that packages they use are in dire need of help: RC bugs, pending removals, adoptions needed, requests for sponsor, etc. (As highly unscientific evidence: I've noticed a rather quick turnover of RFA/O/ITA bugs on packages installed on my machine. I suspect how-can-i-help is somehow responsible for that, due to the fact that it increases awareness of ongoing package issues directly with the people using them.)

So, if you haven't yet, please apt-get install how-can-i-help RIGHT NOW.

I daresay that we should aim at installing how-can-i-help by default on all Debian machines, but that might be an ambitious initial goal. In the meantime I'll settle for making how-can-i-help's popcon count skyrocket. As of today, it looks like this:

which is definitely too low for my taste. Please spread the word about how-can-i-help. And let's see what we can collectively do to that graph.

how-can-i-help is just a tiny teeny helper, but I'm convinced it can do wonders in liberating dormant contributions to the Debian Project.

Debian.org enabled for SIP federation and WebRTC, XMPP/Jabber to follow

Daniel Pocock — Tue, 28 Jan 2014 17:45:00 +0100

Debian System Administrators working in conjunction with pkg-voip team member Daniel Pocock have set up a SIP proxy and TURN server for debian.org.

Specifically, the SIP proxy provides a way for Debian Developers to use their Debian email ID as a SIP address for making calls to other project members and exchanging calls with any other domain that is enabled for SIP. The repro SIP proxy from reSIProcate has been chosen for this project.

The TURN server provides a mechanism for users of SIP or XMPP (Jabber) to relay audio and video streams through a public IP address when necessary, eliminating many of the quality issues that arise when NAT devices block the media streams in one or both directions.

The service allows the users to connect directly with the SIP device or softphone of their choosing, including many of those packaged in Debian such as Jitsi and Empathy or third party solutions like Lumicall or CSipSimple on Android. The SIP proxy also includes a WebRTC interface, allowing Debian Developers to immediately try WebRTC voice and video calls without installing or configuring any software of their own other than a web browser.

A second stage of the project involves providing an XMPP (Jabber) server with similar capabilities for federated communications between debian.org users and other domains. Further details will be announced in the weeks ahead.

It is a significant feature of the Debian Project philosophy that we can operate the entire project using free software, specifically, using software available in Debian packages running on our own infrastructure and without a dependency on third party cloud solutions.These new services for project members fulfill those expectations. It is particularly relevant for situations where real-time communication (voice or video) collaboration takes place with third parties such as applicants for Google Summer of Code, Outreach Program for Women, sponsors, media and other free software projects.

Project specific details and a user guide are available now on the Debian Wiki at http://wiki.debian.org/UnifiedCommunications/DebianDevelopers

Call for Proposals for the MiniDebConf 2014 Barcelona

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 19:40:00 +0100

Debian Women will hold a MiniDebConf in Barcelona on March 15-16, 2014. Everyone is invited to both talks and social events, but the speakers will all be people who identify themselves as female. This is not a conference about women in Free Software, or women in Debian, rather a usual Debian Mini-DebConf where all the speakers are women.

Debian Women invites submissions of proposals for papers, presentations, discussion sessions and tutorials for the event. Submissions are not limited to traditional talks: you could propose a performance, an art installation, a debate or anything else. All talks are welcome, whether newbie or very advanced level. Please, forward this call to potential speakers and help us make this event a great success!

Please send your proposals to proposals@bcn2014.mini.debconf.org. Don't forget to include in your message: your name or nick the title of the event, description, language, and any other information that might be useful. Please submit your proposal(s) as soon as possible.

For more information, visit the website of the event: http://bcn2014.mini.debconf.org

We hope to see you in Barcelona!

Last days to donate to Debian Outreach Program for Women

Brian Gupta — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The matching program to help fund Debian participation in OPW will end in 6 days (November 14th). We need your help, and still have a ways to go to reach our funding targets. Please consider donating today!

The rules are simple:

for each dollar donated by an individual to Debian through the mechanism, a sponsor will donate another dollar to Debian's OPW program;
individual donation in USD will be matched only up to 200 USD each;
only donations in USD will be matched;
the sponsor will match the donated funds up to a maximum total of 2500 USD;
all money raised through this program will be earmarked for OPW participation, either in 2013 or in the future;
this program will be in place until Nov 14th, so please act quickly!

If you'd like to participate as intern, the application deadline is very near (November 11th). You can find here more info on how to apply.

Ada Lovelace Day: meet some of the "women behind Debian"!

Ana Guerrero Lopez and Francesca Ciceri — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 00:01:00 +0200

Today is Ada Lovelace Day:

"Ada Lovelace Day is about sharing stories of women - whether engineers, scientist, technologists or mathematicians - who have inspired you to become who you are today. The aim is to create new role models for girls and women in these male-dominated fields by raising the profile of other women in STEM". source

To celebrate, we asked to some of the "women behind Debian" to share their stories with us. Enjoy!

Ana Guerrero Lopez (ana)

Who are you?

I'm a 30-something years old geek. I'm from Andalusia, Spain but live in France.

What do you do in Debian?

I work mostly on my packages, in sponsoring new people's packages and in this very blog you're reading now. I also maintain an unofficial Google+ page about Debian. At $PAID job, I work in an internal Debian distribution so from time to time, I get the opportunity to contribute back some of the stuff we do there.

How and why did you start contributing to Debian?

I started using Debian around 2003 switching from Mandrake. I was a happy Debian user when the Debian Women project started in the summer 2004. When I saw the project announced, I asked myself why I wasn't contributing to Debian and the rest is history... in a couple of weeks it'll be my 7 years DD-versary! If for some reason you want a longer reply to this question, read here.

Beatrice

Who are you?

I am a PhD student with a degree in Biology. I am a computer fan since my first C64 and I am a self-taught computer geek wanna-be. And I am a bug fan - not software bugs, real bugs :)

What do you do in Debian?

I work on translations - doing the translation work itself, but also reviewing other translators' work and helping in coordinating the translation effort.

How and why did you start contributing to Debian?

I started using Linux because I liked the idea of an open source operative system based on collaboration and I began reviewing open source software translations. Since my first Linux system was Debian Potato and I sticked to Debian ever since, it only seemed natural to focus my translation work on Debian.

Christine Caulfield

Who are you?

My name is Christine Caulfield. My day job is principal software engineer at Red Hat working on the cluster infrastructure components corosync & pacemaker. Outside computing I'm a musician and sound engineer. I play violin with lots of technology attached, and love avant garde music.

What do you do in Debian?

I'm not that active on Debian any more due to pressure of time, and maturity of the packages I work on. I currently maintain the, little-used, DECnet userspace packages and the, even less used I suspect, mopd bootloader. I used to maintain lvm2 for a while but dropped that a few years ago.

How and why did you start contributing to Debian?

My initial reasons for joining Debian were slightly selfish, to find a home for the DECnet project that I was heavily involved in at the time. I was a keep Debian user and people wanted a distribution where the software was easy to set up. DECnet is quite complicated for users to configure, being a totally independant networking stack to IP and so OS support is needed. Debian seemed like the logical place to make this happen. As mentioned above I got quite involved for a time and maintained other packages too. I picked up lvm2 because I was on the lvm2 dev team at work in Red Hat and as it was a new package at that time I seemed a logical choice.

Elena Grandi (valhalla)

Who are you?

I'm a 30-something years old geek and Free Software enthusiast from Italy.

What do you do in Debian?

I'm currently maintaining a few packages (2 python modules and a python program) as a sponsored uploader; I'm also slowly looking around for other things to do (by preference technical, but not limited to packaging), with the aim to spend more time contributing to Debian.

How and why did you start contributing to Debian?

For a while I had being distro-hopping between "fun" distributions (the ones that break now and then) on the desktop while using Debian stable on the home server and in chroots. I was already doing marginal contributions to those distributions, where finding stuff that was missing was easy, but my perception as a stable user was that Debian was already working fine and probably didn't really need any help. Then I started to socialize on IRC with some DDs and DMs, and realized that my perception was superficial and that in reality there were dark holes in the depths of the archive where Evil festered and prospered and... ok, sorry, I got carried away :) Anyway, since I was actually using Debian more and more I decided to start contributing: I read documentation, I attended the useful IRC sessions on #debian-women and decided that it was probably best not to add new stuff, but look for things that I used and that needed help. Then nothing happened for a while, because finding stuff that doesn't work is hard (at least on my mostly textual systems). Then one day I was trying to write a python script that needed to verify gpg signed messages; it had to run on my Debian server, so I was trying to use python-pyme and its documentation was painful to use, while I remembered an earlier attempt using python-gnupg that was much more pythonic, but not available in Debian. In a fit of anger I decided to forgo all of my good intentions and actually add a new package: I checked the sources for problems, packaged, sent it to mentors@d-o, got reviews, fixed problems, resent and finally got sponsored and well, everything started.

Francesca Ciceri (madamezou)

Who are you?

I'm Francesca, a 30-something Italian graduated in Social Sciences.

What do you do in Debian?

I'm a (non uploading) Debian Developer since 2011 and have been DPN editor, press officer, webmaster for www.debian.org and translator for the Italian l10n team. Recently, due to time constraints, I had to reduce my involvement and now only work on two things: writing/editing articles for bits.debian.org together with Ana Guerrero, and creating subtitles for the DebConf talks, in the DebConf Subs team.

How and why did you start contributing to Debian?

Basically thanks to the sudden abundance of free time - due to an health problem - and the desire to give something back to this wonderful operating system. After that, I found out that Debian is not only a great OS but also a very special community. Today, some of my dearest friends are people I met through Debian. :)

Laura Arjona

Who are you?

I live in Madrid (Spain), and work as IT Assistant in the Technical University of Madrid (UPM). I'm married and I have a 4-years-old son.

What do you do in Debian?

In 2012 I started to clean spam and to translate Debian web pages into Spanish. I also follow the work of the web and publicity team, I hope I'll get more involved there too. And of course, I'm in Debian Women :)

How and why did you start contributing to Debian?

I'm using Debian at work since 2007 (servers), and in my desktops since 2010. I like very much that it is a community distro and I wanted to participate. I was already doing translations in other (small) free software projects, so I began here too. The Debian-Women list, the planet, and people in identi.ca helped me to learn a lot and feel part of the community even when I was not contributing yet.

Mònica Ramírez Arceda (monica)

Who are you?

My name is Mònica Ramírez Arceda and I am an enthusiast of free software and sharing knowledge cultures: for me it's a kind of philosophy of life. I studied Maths a long time ago but ended up working as a developer for some years. Now I'm working as an IT teacher.

What do you do in Debian?

Debian is a huge project, so you can help in various scopes. Mainly, I work on packaging, fixing wnpp bug inconsistencies in BTS and helping in spam cleaning of the mailing lists. But I also enjoy doing some non-technical work from time to time: the project I am just now involved is organizing, with the rest of Debian Catalan community, a local team to propose Barcelona as the venue for a minidebconf where all the speakers will be women.

How and why did you start contributing to Debian?

In 2000 I discovered Free Software world and I fell deeply in love with its philosophy. Since then, I've been trying to do my best in different activities, like spreading the word, giving free courses, helping collectives and friends in technical stuff (from installing Debian to developing some helping apps for them)... but two years ago I was looking forward to join a free software project and I decided to try Debian, since it has been my first and only distro in my day-to-day life for about ten years. So, I wanted to give back Debian all what it had offered to me, but.... I thought I couldn't (hey, Debian is for real hackers, not for you little ant!), but I started to adopt some orphaned packages, do some QA uploads, fix some RC bugs, talk with some Debian Developers that helped me and encouraged me more than I expected, I traveled to my first Debconf... And one thing takes you to the other, and on March 2012 I became a DD. Now, I'm glad to see that everything that frightened me is not so scary :-)

Happy 20th birthday Debian!

Ana Guerrero Lopez and Francesca Ciceri — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 00:05:00 +0200

Today is Debian's 20 anniversary. This anniversary would have been impossible without a strong community of users and developers. That's why for its commemoration, we asked the Debian community what Debian meant to them. Below you have a selection of the answers we got.

First:

Since I run Debian on my computers, I do not play anymore to 3D shooting games, not because of the lack of Free 3D drivers, but because developing Debian is more fun and addictive.

Second:

Debian is a truly community based distro which is devoted to FOSS ideas and standards. It perfectly works on high variety of hardware. Users from all over the world have been using Debian and contributing to it during 20 years. And I am proud to be one of them. Happy Birthday, Debian!

Third:

When I considered switching to Linux I asked friends which distribution to choose. I was told skip other distributions that were considered more newbie-friendly at the time and go straight to Debian instead. It might be more work initially, they said, but it would save me the hassle of switching to Debian later on, which I would inevitably do. Turns out they were right. I started my Linux experience more than ten years ago with Debian and have yet to see a better Linux distribution.

Fourth:

[...] You are a worldwide community of volunteers working together for 20 years now. To me this is an encouraging example and, given the sorry state of the world we live in, more important than the technical quality of the operating system. I wish you another successful twenty years and to stay as independent as you are.

Fifth:

I initially started in Debian as it was an interesting technical challenge. Over the years the community and having good standards around what Free Software is has become more important.

Sixth:

As a user of Debian for 14 years, and a former Debian Developer for 10, I would like to wish a happy birthday to the best project on the internet, and the best Linux distribution ever. Thanks for all of your support over the years!

Seventh:

"Rock Solid Stability and Absolute Freedom" Thats what Debian means to me.

Eighth:

Debian gives me a feeling that I am using the best linux has to offer. You know your machine is in safe hands.

Ninth:

As a long time Debian user and sometimes supporter [...] I wish Debian all the best for next 20 years and beyond! Debian is the universal operating system. And it's free (and not just as in beer ;-)

Tenth:

Debian is an awesome combination of obsessive high quality software and software freedom. It's a pleasure to be able to use and contribute to this project. Thanks to all for their excellent work! Cheers to 2**20 years more!

Eleventh:

[...] I am so very thankful to all of the people who have contributed to and continue to contribute to such a wonderful ecosystem of tools. I love the commitment to the long term goals of security, freedom and transparency with respect to the computer systems that we all use and rely upon and the information that we store on them.

Twelfth:

Debian is the operating system that makes me free.

Thirteenth:

Debian is a family gathered around great idea. Its pure love.

Martin Michlmayr gets the O'Reilly Open Source Award

Ana Guerrero Lopez — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0200

Longtime Debian Developer Martin Michlmayr was named as one of 6 winners of the 2013 O’Reilly Open Source Awards. This Award recognize individual contributors who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, creativity, and collaboration in the development of Open Source Software.

Martin received the award for his investment in Debian where he served as Debian Project Leader for two terms between 2003 and 2005.

Congratulations tbm!

all Debian source are belong to us

Ana Guerrero — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 18:50:00 +0200

This is a verbatim repost from Stefano Zacchiroli's post

TL;DR: go to http://sources.debian.net and enjoy.

Debsources is a new toy I've been working on at IRILL together with Matthieu Caneill. In essence, debsources is a simple web application that allows to publish an unpacked Debian source mirror on the Web.

You can deploy Debsources where you please, but there is a main instance at http://sources.debian.net (sources.d.n for short) that you will probably find interesting. sources.d.n follows closely the Debian archive in two ways:

it is updated 4 times a day to reflect the content of the Debian archive
it contains sources coming from official Debian suites: the usual ones (from oldstable to experimental), *-updates (ex volatile), *-proposed-updates, and *-backports (from Wheezy on)

Via sources.d.n you can therefore browse the content of Debian source packages with usual code viewing features like syntax highlighting. More interestingly, you can search through the source code (of unstable only, though) via integration with http://codesearch.debian.net. You can also use sources.d.n programmatically to query available versions or link to specific lines, with the possibility of adding contextual pop-up messages (example).

In fact, you might have stumbled upon sources.d.n already in the past few days, via other popular Debian services where it has already been integrated. In particular: codesearch.d.n now defaults to show results via sources.d.n, and the PTS has grown new "browse source code" hyperlinks that point to it. If you've ideas of other Debian services where sources.d.n should be integrated, please let me know.

I find Debsources and sources.d.n already quite useful but, as it often happens, there is still a lot TODO. Obviously, it is all Free Software (released under GNU AGPLv3). Do not hesitate to report new bugs and, better, to submit patches for the outstanding ones.

Acknowledgements

Matthieu Caneill is the main developer of Debsources web front-end; sources.d.n wouldn't exist without him.
others have already contributed patches to integrate sources.d.n with other services, in particular:
- many thanks to Michael Stapelberg (for codesearch.d.n integration), and
- Paul Wise (for PTS integration).
a full list of contributors is available and eagerly waiting for new additions
IRILL has kindly provided sponsoring for Matthieu's initial development work on Debsources, and offered both the server and hosting facilities that power sources.d.n

PS in case you were wondering: at present sources.d.n requires ~381 GB of disk space to hold all uncompressed source packages, plus ~83 GB for the local (compressed) source mirror

Remove unofficial debian-multimedia.org repository from your sources

Publicity team — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:10:00 +0200

The unofficial third party repository Debian Multimedia stopped using the domain debian-multimedia.org some months ago. The domain expired and it is now registered again by someone unknown to Debian. (If we're wrong on this point, please sent us an email so we can take over the domain! ;) )

This means that the repository is no longer safe to use, and you should remove the related entries from your sources.list file.

After all, the need of an external repository for multimedia related packages has been greatly reduced with the release of Wheezy, which features many new and updated codecs and multimedia players.

Not sure if you're using the debian-multimedia repository? You can easily check it by running:

grep -i debian-multimedia.org /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*

If you can see debian-multimedia.org line in output, you should remove all the lines including it.

Debian welcomes its 2013 crop of GSoC students!

Nicolas Dandrimont — Mon, 27 May 2013 21:45:00 +0200

We are proud to announce that 16 students have been accepted to work on improving Debian this summer through the Google Summer of Code! This is great news, following our 15 accepted students in 2012, and 9 accepted students in 2011.

Here is the list of accepted students and projects:

Aarsh Shah: Improvements to Debian Search and the Search Interface
Aron Xu: ZFS on Linux integration
Boris Bobrov: Debian Metrics Portal
Catalin Usurelu: Enabling free multimedia real-time communications (RTC) with Debian
Eleanor Chen: MIPS N32/N64 ABI Port
Emmanouil Kiagias: Redesign metapackage creation for Debian Blends
Eugenio Cano-Manuel: Leiningen & Clojure packaging
Fabian Grünbichler: Add CROTP support to oath-toolkit and dynalogin
Gustavo Alkmim: Bootstrappable Debian
Justus Winter: Debian GNU/Hurd Debianish initialization
Lei Wang: OpenRC init system in Debian
Léo Cavaillé: scan-build on the Debian archive
Marko Lalic: PTS rewrite in Django
Pawel Sarbinowski: Debian Android Application
Shuxiong Ye: OpenJDK and Debian
Simon Chopin: Implementation of message passing in the Debian infrastructure

If you're interested in one of the projects, please follow the links and talk directly to the students or the mentors, or come hang out with us on IRC.

Welcome everyone, and let's make sure we all have an amazing summer!

Security updates for the X Window System client libraries

Ana Guerrero — Sat, 25 May 2013 01:30:00 +0200

If you see a bunch of X.org packages upgrades pending in your Squeeze or brand new Wheezy system, don't panic!

Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher from IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the various X client libraries and he has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues. You can find more information in the security advisory from X.org.

The Debian Security and X.org teams have quickly updated all the affected packages in Squeeze and Wheezy. You can see the full list of updates in the debian-security-announce mailing list archives.

Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 released!

Ana Guerrero — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:50:00 +0200

It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian "sid" at the time of the Debian "wheezy" release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.

The installation ISO images can be downloaded from Debian Ports in the usual three Debian flavors: NETINST, CD, DVD. Besides the friendly Debian installer, a pre-installed disk image is also available, making it even easier to try Debian GNU/Hurd.

Debian GNU/Hurd is currently available for the i386 architecture with more than 10.000 software packages available (more than 75% of the Debian archive, and more to come!).

Please make sure to read the configuration information, the FAQ, and the translator primer to get a grasp of the great features of GNU/Hurd.

Due to the very small number of developers, our progress of the project has not been as fast as other successful operating systems, but we believe to have reached a very decent state, even with our limited resources.

We would like to thank all the people who have worked on GNU/Hurd over the past decades. There were not many people at any given time (and still not many people today, please join!), but in the end a lot of people have contributed one way or another. Thanks everybody!

This article appeared originally at GNU Hurd news and in News about Debian GNU/Hurd.

Debian 7.0 Wheezy released!

Francesca Ciceri — Sun, 05 May 2013 04:00:00 +0200

The new stable version of Debian, codenamed Wheezy, is finally here. Main features of Debian 7.0 Wheezy are multiarch support, specific tools to deploy private clouds, a greatly improved installer and a complete set of multimedia codecs and front-ends which remove the need for third-party repositories. For a complete list of new features and updated software, take a look at the official announcement.

Want to give it a try? Check out the live images!

Want to install it? Choose your favourite installation media among Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, CDs and USB sticks.

Already a happy Debian user and you only want to upgrade? You are just an apt-get dist-upgrade away from Wheezy! Find how, reading the installation guide and the release notes.

Some useful links:

Last days for the DebConf13 matching fund!

Brian Gupta — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:30:00 +0200

As part of the DebConf13 fundraising efforts, Brandorr Group is funding a matching initiative for DebConf13, which will be in place for 4 more days (through April 30th).

You can donate here!

Please consider donating $100, or even $5 or any amount in between, as we can use all the help we can get to reach our fundraising target. The rules are simple:

for each dollar donated by an individual to DebConf13 though this mechanism, Brandorr Group will donate another dollar;
individual donations will be matched only up to 100USD each;
only donations in USD will be matched;
Brandorr Group will match the donated funds up to a maximum total of 5000 USD.

This generous offer will only stay in place through the end of April 30th.

Please act quickly, and help spread the world!

Release date for Wheezy announced

Francesca Ciceri — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:04:00 +0200

Neil McGovern, on behalf of the Debian Release Team, announced the target date of the weekend of 4th/5th May for the release of Debian 7.0 "Wheezy".

Now it's time to organize some Wheezy release parties to celebrate the event and show all your Debian love!

DPL election is over, congratulations Lucas Nussbaum!

Ana Guerrero — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 12:25:00 +0200

The Debian Project Leader election has concluded and the winner is Lucas Nussbaum. Of a total of 988 developers, 390 developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2013 page.

The new term for the project leader will start on April 17th and expire on April 17th 2014.

Call for participants in Debian for the Google Summer of Code

Nicolas Dandrimont — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:30:00 +0200

The Google Summer of Code is a program that allows post-secondary students aged 18 and older to earn a stipend writing code for Free and Open Source Software projects during the summer.

For the eighth time, Debian has just been accepted as a mentoring organization for this year's program. If you're an eligible student, now is the time to take a look at our project ideas list, engage with the mentors for the projects you find interesting, and start working on your application! Please read the FAQ and the Program Timeline on Google's website.

If you are interested, we encourage you to come and chat with us on irc (#debian-soc on irc.oftc.net), or to send an email to the SoC coordination mailing-list. Most of the GSoC related information in Debian can be found on our wiki pages, but feel free to ask us directly on irc or via email.

We're looking forward to work with amazing students again this summer!

Debian joins Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women

Ana Guerrero — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:01:00 +0200

The GNOME Foundation started the Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women, OPW, in 2010. In the January-April 2013 round, many other FOSS organizations joined the program. We are happy to announce that Debian will also join in the next round from June-September and we'll offer one internship.

You can find more details about Debian's participation in the program at Debian OPW page.

Call for mentors and projects

OPW allows applicants to work on any kind of project, including coding, design, marketing, web development... The Debian Google Summer of Code projects will be offered also as possible projects for OPW, but GSoC only allows coding projects. If you have any idea of a non-coding project and you want to mentor it, please contact us in the soc-coordination mailing list adding [OPW] in subject.

OPW works in the same way as GSoC except Google doesn't play a part here. The same advice that is provided for GSoC mentors works for OPW mentors.

Call for participants

The main goal of this program is to increase the number of women in FOSS, so all women who are not yet a Debian Developer or a Debian Maintainer are encouraged to apply. There are no age restrictions and applicants don't need to be a student.

If you want to apply, you must follow three steps:

Choose a project from this list. There are two lists, one for GSoC and another with non-coding tasks that can be only offered by the OPW. Those lists may change and add or remove more projects in the next few weeks.
Make a small contribution to Debian. Projects will add a task the applicant must complete as part of the pre-selection process. If no task is provided, you are welcome to ask the mentors of the project. You can also make a different extra task of the one listed to show your skills and interest.
Create a page in the Debian wiki with your application. You can do so under pseudonym, but in that case, please give us information about yourself privately by email to the coordinators listed in the Debian OPW page!

DebConf14 to be held in Portland, Oregon, USA

Patty Langasek — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:01:00 +0200

We are pleased to announce the 15th annual Debian Conference (DebConf14) is to be held in Portland, Oregon, USA in August 2014, with specific dates yet to be announced.

Portland is an open source hotspot in the Pacific Northwest of the US. It is a technologically savvy community, home to Intel and the adopted home of Linus Torvalds. The city plays host to many Free Software conferences including OSCON, and is where Linux Plumbers originated.

The local team has been involved in mulitple DebConfs in the past, and is excited to bring their experience and ideas to fruition in a city well-positioned to host such a prestigious event.

Improvements in Debian's core infrastructure

Ana Guerrero — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +0200

Thanks to a generous donation by Bytemark Hosting, Debian started deploying machines for its core infrastructure services in a new data center in York, UK.

This hardware and hosting donation will allow the Debian Systems Administration (DSA) team to distribute Debian's core services across a greater number of geographically diverse locations, and improve, in particular, the fault-tolerance and availability of end-user facing services. Additionally, the storage component of this donation will dramatically reduce the storage challenges that Debian currently faces.

The hardware provided by Bytemark Hosting consists of a fully-populated HP C7000 BladeSystem chassis containing 16 server blades:

12 BL495cG5 blades with 2x Opteron 2347 and 64GB RAM each
4 BL465cG7 blades with 2x Opteron 6100 series and 128GB RAM each

and several HP Modular Storage Arrays:

3 MSA2012sa
6 MSA2000 expansion shelves

with 108 drive bays in total, mostly 500GB SATA drives, some 2TB, some 600GB 15kRPM SAS, providing a total of 57 TB.

57 TB today could host roughly 80 times the current Debian archive or 3 times the Debian Snapshot archive. But remember both archives are constantly growing!

Debian Project Leader elections 2013: interview with Moray Allan

Francesca Ciceri — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:54:00 +0100

We have asked Moray Allan, one of the three candidates for DPL elections 2013, to tell our readers about himself and his ideas for the Debian Project.

You can also read the interviews to the other two candidates: Lucas Nussbaum and Gergely Nagy.

Please tell us a little about yourself.

I'm Moray Allan, from Edinburgh in Scotland. I'm 32. After working in academic research for a few years, I'm now working freelance on a wide mixture of topics, with recent projects in Indonesia, Romania and Kuwait. When I'm not working, I'm likely to be found walking through a city or the countryside, or otherwise relaxing at home reading a novel in French or Spanish.

What do you do in Debian and how did you started contributing?

In recent years, most of my Debian time was taken up organising the annual Debian conferences. But I still have a load of packages, mostly connected to an upstream Linux-on-handheld-computers project I was working on before I joined Debian to create packages for it.

Why did you decide to run as DPL?

I've been involved in Debian for about 10 years now, including working for the last few years in DebConf in a way similar to how the DPL acts within overall Debian. Previously I'd ruled out running due to lack of time, but currently I'm in a more flexible work situation. It seems the right time to put myself forward, and see if the ideas in my platform interest project members.

Three keywords to summarise your platform.

Transparency, communication, openness. (Three ways I'd like us to think about teams in Debian.)

What are the biggest challenges that you envision for Debian in the future?

I think the biggest challenges are for free software in general. End-users are moving to more closed hardware -- will our software be able to run on the phones and tablets people are shifting towards? At the same time, end-users and server users are moving to "the cloud", and often depending more heavily on non-free infrastructure outside their own control.

What are, in your opinion, the areas of the project more in need of technical and/or social improvements?

In my platform I give a few ideas about teams and delegations, coordination and mediation, and both internal and external communication, including more organised fundraising. These are areas where I think relatively simple changes can give big benefits.

Why should people vote for you?

I have proven leadership experience within Debian, as I've been working on coordination and mediation tasks for some years already. At the same time, I do regular packaging work, and work in other parts of Debian like the press and publicity teams, so I'm in touch with the experience of normal Debian contributors. People should vote for me if they support my platform, which is about coordination-level changes that I would have no mandate or authority to push through unless I am elected.

Name three tools you couldn't stay without.

APT, emacs, ssh.

What keep you motivated to work in Debian?

I've used Debian on all my computers for a long time, and by now working on the distribution myself feels a natural part of that. Fortunately I'm constantly positively surprised by Debian and by the Debian community.

Are there any other fields where you call yourself a geek, besides computers?

Certainly history (such as the eastern Mediterranean region in late antiquity), languages (including dead ones) and music (especially Josquin to Monteverdi).

Debian Project Leader elections 2013: interview with Lucas Nussbaum

Francesca Ciceri — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:52:00 +0100

We have asked Lucas Nussbaum, one of the three candidates for DPL elections 2013, to tell our readers about himself and his ideas for the Debian Project.

You can also read the interviews to the other two candidates: Gergely Nagy and Moray Allan.

Please tell us a little about yourself.

Hi! I'm a 31 years old french computer geek. In my day job, I'm an assistant professor (Maître de Conférences) of Computer Science at Université de Lorraine.

What do you do in Debian and how did you started contributing?

Like many, I started contributing to Debian by creating and maintaining packages for my own software, in the Ruby team. Then, I discovered that, even if it's not so obvious from the outside, there are a lot of areas in Debian that could use more contributors. So I just started to contribute to more and more things.

There's a list of things I did in Debian in my platform. What I have been doing recently is:

rebuild all packages in Debian on a regular basis in order to identify packages that can no longer be built, and file bugs accordingly. In order to do that efficiently, I use cluster and cloud resources (more info)
develop and maintain Ultimate Debian Database, a data aggregator that collects data in most Debian services so that it is possible to expose it in interesting ways (e.g. find release-critical bugs affecting popular packages).
write and maintain a Debian Packaging tutorial, (packaging-tutorial package), to provide an easy-to-read introduction to packaging in Debian.

Why did you decide to run as DPL?

Two main reasons:

Most of my Debian contributions aim at addressing problems at the distribution scale (cross-distro collaboration, Quality Assurance, data-mining). Being DPL is a great way to contribute to Debian at this level.
the DPL campaign is a great time in Debian where we discuss the project's problems, politics and visions. Being a candidate is in itself a way to contribute to Debian (though it would be better if we had those discussions outside DPL campaigns too).

Three keywords to summarise your platform.

(re-)make Debian the center of the Free Software ecosystem; foster innovation inside Debian; reduce barriers to contributions

What are the biggest challenges that you envision for Debian in the future?

I often have the impression that the project is losing momentum, positive energy, and slowing down. It feels like we are living on the benefits of the past. A lot of very cool things happen in the Debian ecosystem, but very often outside the Debian project (in derivative distributions).

Debian should aim at reinforcing its position in the center of the Free Software ecosystem: it should be the main active intermediary between upstream projects and final users. To achieve that, we need to reinforce the visibility and the impact of Debian. This is extremely important because the values we fight for as a project are often neglected by our derivatives.

What are, in your opinion, the areas of the project more in need of technical and/or social improvements?

Fostering innovation inside Debian: we should be more welcoming towards innovation and experiments inside the project. Often, we merely tolerate them, and bureaucracy makes them hard and slow to conduct. As a result, people tends to innovate outside the Debian project.

Making it easier to contribute to Debian: we compete with more and more projects to attract contributors. While we are already quite good at welcoming new contributors with good documentation and mentoring (much better than people usually think), there's still a lot of room for improvement.

Why should people vote for you?

A great thing in Debian's voting system is that you don't vote "for" or "against" a specific candidate. Instead, due to our use of the Condorcet method, you rank candidates (and also indicate those who you consider suitable for the role by ranking a virtual "None of the above" candidate).

Why am I a good candidate? My previous contributions to Debian show that I have a pretty good understanding of the inner workings of the project, and that I have a track record of managing projects successfully inside Debian. I think that those are two required qualities for a DPL.

Name three tools you couldn't stay without.

vim, mutt, ssh.

What keep you motivated to work in Debian?

Debian is a fantastic project from a technical point of view (focus on technical excellence, lots of interesting challenges), but also from a social point of view: the Debian community is a great community where I have lots of good friends. Also, what's great when you contribute to Debian is that your work has a real impact, and that you see people using stuff you worked on everywhere.

Are there any other fields where you call yourself a geek, besides computers?

I'm not sure this really qualifies as "besides computers", but I've gotten very interested in the OpenStreetMap project lately. I very much enjoy exploring unmapped areas on a mountain bike. It feels like being Christopher Columbus or Marco Polo, but 20 minutes from home. ;) The OpenStreetMap and Debian projects also share many values, such as a great attention to quality and details.

Debian Project Leader elections 2013: interview with Gergely Nagy

Francesca Ciceri — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:50:00 +0100

We have asked Gergely Nagy, one of the three candidates for DPL elections 2013, to tell our readers about himself and his ideas for the Debian Project.

You can also read the interviews to the other two candidates: Lucas Nussbaum and Moray Allan.

Please tell us a little about yourself.

I was born in Hungary, a little bit over three decades ago, as a son of a biochemist and a pharmacist, who gave me the name Gergely Nagy (however, online - and offline too by now - I'm mostly known by my nickname, algernon).

I went on to study human arts (hungarian grammar & literature, in particular), and to support this passion, I work as a software engineer, one who gets paid to work on free software. As such, I'm in a fortunate situation where my hobby supports my passion, and my hobby aligns well with my Debian work too.

What do you do in Debian and how did you started contributing?

At the moment, apart from maintaining a few packages, I'm doing a few other, mostly invisible things, like reassigning misfiled bugs so they don't end up being forgotten; or review newly uploaded packages before they enter the archive, making sure we are allowed to distribute them, and that their quality is up to our standards. I used to do quite a lot of other things, but I chose to spend the past year mostly invisible, learning.

I started contributing by packaging an editor I was using at the time, but quickly ended up adopting another package - things escalated from there quickly.

Why did you decide to run as DPL?

There were two reasons that motivated me to run: one is that I believe I can bring something new to the table, that I can help Debian expand in new directions. The other reason is that I'm always on the lookout for new ways to contribute back to Debian, and being the project leader is a position where I believe I could contribute most at this point in time.

Three keywords to summarise your platform.

Non-technical contributors.

What are the biggest challenges that you envision for Debian in the future?

The biggest challenge is growing up, to become more than a group of computer geeks creating an amazing distribution. To become a community of a wide variety of people, where both computer geeks and art geeks feel equally at home. Yet, at the same time, where we as a project, keep our focus straight, and be the champions of Free Software.

We just need to realize that there's much more to Free Software than the software itself.

What are, in your opinion, the areas of the project more in need of technical and/or social improvements?

I believe that while we do have many areas where we could use technical improvements, we are reasonably safe there, because we do have very skilled technical people to help us solve these problems. We can make our tools better, we can develop our infrastructure better to aid us even more - and so on and so forth. While we need work on many areas, we're on the right track there.

However, when it comes to social issues, we're at a loss. We have serious trouble keeping certain topics civilised on mailing lists, we have trouble attracting women, and we have trouble reaching people who are not naturally exposed to Debian (or Free Software). We could really use a more diverse community, but that requires us to overcome quite a lot of social roadblocks, so to say. Outreach is one particular area where we need much more technical and social improvements.

Why should people vote for you?

People should vote me, because they found my platform, my answers on debian-vote@, and my ideas and goals convincing and worthy to pursue. People should vote me, because they trust I'll be able to serve the project well.

Name three tools you couldn't stay without.

Emacs, git and a pencil. Because with these three, I can pretty much do anything.

What keep you motivated to work in Debian?

The community. Over the years, I had the good fortune to meet with a lot of people I hold in high esteem, whose enthusiasm and motivation I found inspiring. For any other common goals Debian and I may share, in the end, it is the people within Debian that keep me motivated.

Are there any other fields where you call yourself a geek, besides computers?

I'm not quite there yet, but I'm working hard on becoming a human arts geek, or at least a geek of the hungarian language.

Candidates for the Debian Project Leader Elections 2013

Ana Guerrero — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0100

It's the time of the year when Debian Developers vote for a new Debian Project Leader (DPL). After 3 years as DPL, Stefano Zacchiroli is not running again but we have 3 brave candidates to be his successor:

You can find more information about the candidates by following the link on their names to read their platforms, or in the ongoing discussion in the debian-vote mailing list.

The campaigning period ends next Saturday, March 30th. Debian Developers will vote from March 31st to April 13th. The new term for the project leader will start on April 17th, 2013.

All the information about this vote and the final results will be published at the Debian Project Leader Elections 2013 voting page.

Backports integrated into the main archive

Ana Guerrero — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0100

This is a repost from Gerfried Fuchs's post

Dear users and supporters of the backports service!

The Backports Team is pleased to announce the next important step on getting backports more integrated. People who are reading debian-infrastructure- announce will have seen that there was an archive maintenance last weekend: starting with wheezy- backports the packages will be accessible from the regular pool instead of a separate one, and all backports uploads will be processed through the regular upload queue (including those for squeeze-backports and squeeze-backports- sloppy).

For Users

What exactly does that mean for you? For users of wheezy, the sources.list entry will be different, a simple substitute of squeeze for wheezy won't work. The new format is:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-backports main

So it is debian instead of debian-backports, and offered through the regular mirror network. Feel invited to check your regular mirror if it carries backports and pull from there.

For Contributers

What does it mean for contributing developers? Uploads for backports are no longer to be pushed to backports-master but to ftp.upload.debian.org, like any other regular package. Also, given that the packages are served from the same archive install there is no need to include the original tarball in the upload any longer because the archive knows it (Squeeze and beyond).

Also, given that the upload goes to the same upload queue, there is only one keyring used anymore, so no more pain with expired or replaced keys. We though still keep the rule of adding your UID to an ACL list (this also includes DM additions). This is mostly only to give us the chance to remind you that uploads to backports are directly available for installation onto stable systems and you thus should take special care there. We carefully tried to take over the old ACLs, in case you can't upload anymore, please tell us so we can look into the issue.

I've mentioned wheezy-backports (and squeeze-backports-sloppy) a few times here already, and you might wonder when it will be available. Technically, it is available from now on. Practically, while you could already upload to it, the set up of the buildd network is more painful than expected, so please allow the Buildd Team some days for setting them up.

The upload rules for wheezy-backports are the same: packages that are in the next suite are accepted. Given that Jessie isn't created yet, we want you to think about whether the package you want to upload will go into Jessie final, and that you are taking a closer look once Jessie is created and the package entered there about the upgradeability. For the time until the suite is available, you can see this as relaxed upload rule.

The same goes for squeeze-backports-sloppy: packages from two suites after Squeeze are acceptable, which turns it into the same relaxed rule as wheezy- backports above. Please also keep in mind that uploads to squeeze-backports- sloppy usually should be accompanied by uploads to wheezy-backports so people are able to upgrade from squeeze-backports-sloppy to wheezy with wheezy- backports.

Thanks

Finally, we want to thank the FTP-Master Team for their fine work on making this happen.

The documentation on backports-master has been updated, and in case of any doubt or question, feel free to ask them on either the debian-backports mailinglist, or in case of sensitive topics ask us directly.

Enjoy!

Rhonda for the Backports Team

Welcome to the Debian Blog!

Ana Guerrero — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0100

Welcome to the Debian Blog!

Please subscribe to the Atom or RSS feed available from the lateral menu and read the About page if you want to know more about this blog.