Distributions

Gentoo's growing pains

A post to the Gentoo-devel mailing entitled Gentoo: State of the Union and the discussion that followed show that Gentoo is having some growing pains. It's not the first or the only sign, but the thread covers most of the major signs.

Gentoo now has more than 300 developers and over ten thousand packages in portage, a size that rivals Debian, and it got there in a fairly short period of time. Some growing pains are a natural consequence of that growth.

Topics in this discussion include the ease (or lack thereof) of becoming a Gentoo developer, the usefulness of GLEPs (Gentoo Linux Enhancement Proposals), separating a development tree from a stable tree, voting, source management control systems and more.

How easy should it be to become a developer? Anyone should be able to jump in and contribute, but that doesn't mean they should be granted commit access right away. Granting commit access too easily creates problems, usually due to the errors of inexperienced people. If the process is easy enough, it's only a matter of time before someone with malicious intent starts mucking with the tree. Currently Gentoo requires prospective developers to take a quiz. There is generally some mentoring that to help the person get ready for the quiz. Once a person passes the quiz they should know enough about how Gentoo works to avoid commit errors. The malicious are not likely to work that hard and the mentor has a good chance of weeding them out before they get that far in any case.

The process does get bogged down when there are not enough mentors. Not every developer makes a good mentor. Even those who are good mentors may have personality conflicts with some people. This problem is not unique to Gentoo. Overall, it seems that becoming a Gentoo developer is easy enough to attract a steady stream of new people, but commit access is restrictive enough to prevent major problems.

GLEPs may be proposed by users or developers. They get written up the GLEP editors and posted to the development list for discussion. During the discussion the GLEP is revised. Some die during the recursive iterations, some go on to a vote. If the GLEP only affects a single team it will be voted on by that team. GLEPs with broader implications are voted on by the Gentoo Council. Even if the GLEP passes, it may not be implemented. This is not ideal, but at least the trail of dead GLEPs provide insight to bad ideas and keep them from being proposed over and over and over again.

Gentoo still has much to work out. The project has the advantage of seeing what works (and what doesn't) in the Debian project. They have the opportunity of making all new mistakes as the project deals with its growth and popularity. From an editorial standpoint it can be fun to watch.

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Ark Linux Live 2006.1-pre1

Ark Linux has released the first live CD version of its upcoming 2006.1 KDE-centric distribution.

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OpenBSD 3.9 released

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PC-BSD 1.0 released

PC-BSD software has announced the release of PC-BSD 1.0 for x86 based processors. "This first "non-beta" release of PC-BSD ushers in a new era of stability and simplicity for desktop operating systems based on UNIX. Powered by the latest FreeBSD 6.0 and integrated with KDE 3.5.2, PC-BSD provides a solid server base, while being user-friendly enough to run as a primary desktop system."

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SUSE Linux 10.1 RC3 and factory tree

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Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu/Xubuntu 6.06 LTS Beta 2 released

Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu has a joint announcement (click below) for the beta 2 release of 6.06 LTS. "This release corrects some serious flaws in the installer present on the Desktop CD in the first Beta release. Although the text-mode install CD also forms part of this release, it has not been modified since Beta 1." Xubuntu has also announced it's beta 2 release.

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White Box Enterprise Linux 4 Respin 1 now available

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Debian: bits from the release team

It's about 7 months until the Etch release. "Which architectures will be released with Etch has not yet been finalized, but of course as we are getting nearer to release, changes are less likely. There is one change to last status: Arm now qualifies as a release architecture again. Congratulations to the arm porter team for that. We will re-evaluate the architectures twice again before release of Etch, this is about middle of June and about end of July when we start to freeze."

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Debian's BTS gains a remote bug tracking feature

Pierre Habouzit covers his new bug tracking tool. "This tool lists every BTS bug that is forwarded to a remote Bug Tracker. If it knows how to get a Status and possibly a Resolution (if the Status is a closing Status)..."

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Fedora and Google's Summer of Code

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Ubuntu Freeze reminders

Ubuntu and siblings are about a month away from the 6.06 LTS Final. Click below to see a description of the various freeze states that are currently in effect.

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Ubuntu Developer Summit

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Ubuntu local

The Ubuntu Bangladeshi Local Community Team (Ubuntu-BD LoCo Team) has been formed. "The team's main aim is to create a solid platform for all Bangladeshi Ubuntu users, where they can teach and learn by helping each other, share ideas and experiences, and most importantly promote the use of Ubuntu to home users, offices, and educational institutions."

The ubuntu-utah mailing list has been announced. "This list will be used primarily by the Ubuntu-Utah LoCo Team for announcements, discussion and local technical support."

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Debian Weekly News

The Debian Weekly News for May 2, 2006 covers the return of web content for past Debian Conferences, removing cruft from unstable, help needed for PowerPC port, relicensing of Debian web pages, /usr/doc transition finished, and several other topics.

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Fedora Weekly News Issue 44

The Fedora Weekly News for May 1, 2006 looks at the Fedora Package Announcement List Split, Fedora and Google's Summer of Code, vFUDCon: virtual FUDCon, Fedora Education: Development Focus, Linuxfest Northwest 2006, LinuxWorld Toronto 2006 Update, Building an updated Fedora Core 5 DVD, FC5 in Linux Magazine and more.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of May 1, 2006 looks at Gentoo's participation in Google Summer of Code, a new Howto on backtraces, ebuild improvements and user feedback, and other topics.

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DistroWatch Weekly

The DistroWatch Weekly for May 1, 2006 is out. "This issue focuses on Linspire, or more precisely Freespire, a new distribution built with the same user-friendly aspects as its commercial partner, but without the price tag; besides revisiting the Freespire press release, we also bring you an interview with Kevin Carmony, the company's CEO. The news section then informs about all the recent BSD releases, brings news from the Slackware current changelog, and provides updates on the development of Kubuntu. Robert Storey is back with his "tips and tricks" column, advising on how to use GRUB with the XFS file system. Finally, it's our pleasure to announce that the April 2006 donation of US$260 goes to the Doxygen project."

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Fedora updates

Updates for Fedora Core 5: system-config-date (bug fix), pygtk2 (update to 2.8.6), libstdc++so7 (fixes linking libstdc++so7 with libtool on ppc), gnome-user-share (update to 0.10), gnome-vfs2 (fix typo in 2.14.1 update), gnome-games (update extra data to 2.14.0), rhythmbox (update to 0.9.4.1), gnbd-kernel (update to 2.6.16-1.2096_FC5), cman-kernel (update to 2.6.16-1.2096_FC5), dlm-kernel (update to 2.6.16-1.2096_FC5), GFS-kernel (update to 2.6.16-1.2096_FC5), tetex (bug fixes), libstdc++so7 (fixes linking libstdc++so7 with libtool on ppc).

Updates for Fedora Core 4: system-config-date (bug fix)

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Mandriva update

Mandriva has updated the module-init-tools packages to fix a CUPS-related bug.

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Slackware updates

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OpenBSD 3.9: Blob-Busters Interviewed (O'ReillyNet)

OpenBSD 3.9 is out, and Federico Biancuzzi has interviewed the team. "Freedom, openness, security -- these principles lead OpenBSD development. The song for this release, Blob!, and the new artworks that promote them. This release, like every OpenBSD release, contains OpenBSD and its source code. It runs on a wide variety of hardware. It contains many new features and improvements. OpenBSD attempts to convince vendors to release documentation and often reverse-engineers around the need for blobs. OpenBSD remains blob-free. Anyone can look at it, assess it, and improve it. If it breaks, it can be fixed."

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The Perfect Setup - CentOS 4.3 (64-bit) (HowtoForge)

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My desktop OS: Kubuntu Breezy (NewsForge)

This NewsForge article looks at Kubuntu on the desktop. "I'm an open source developer and a freelance writer, and I rely on my laptop. I've been using Linux for eight years, and I'm pretty comfortable with the command line. I don't shy from compiling a kernel, or rewriting init scripts to get things working properly. I'm a little weary though from the bad old days of having to fight with Linux to get my computer to work properly. I'm developing a growing appreciation for distributions that "just work." I need a stable Linux that allows me to easily install the latest versions of software and that has good support for power management on a laptop. With that in mind I installed Kubuntu Breezy, and Kubuntu blew me away."

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Xubuntu 6.06 Beta Review (Gnuman.com)

Gnuman.com reviews Xubuntu 6.06 beta. "XFCE is a nice feature for those who have an older system and can't afford or just want to try something new. This system has quite a few nifty programs and ran quite smoothly. It was quite easy to setup user accounts when you ran the installation program and gave you the option of adding one user or many users at the same time."

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