Garfield's Opensource News: Fedora Weekly News #157

-- Fedora Weekly News Issue 157 --

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 157 for the week ending December
21st, 2008.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue157

In our last issue of 2008, Announcements reminds you of FWN's holiday
schedule and presents the gift of the Omega distro, Planet is chock full
of tasty tidbits from the Fedora blogosphere, Developments invites you
to warm your hands over a "Nautilus Spatial-mode Flamewar",
Documentation invites you to a "Holiday Hackfest", Translations reports
on the re-organization of "Sponsors for cvsl10n", Artwork unwraps some
shiny "Creation Highlights", SecurityAdvisories lists some ways to avoid
a lump of coal from Santa, and the usual sleigh-load of Virtualization
goodies includes instructions on "Building oVirt from Rawhide." We would
like to thank our readers for their interest and attention and all our
contributors for producing the goods week after week. May you all have a
happy and relaxing holiday and we look forward to seeing you again in
January 2009.

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page[1]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list@redhat.com

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala

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

-- Announcements --

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

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/

Contributing Writer: Max Spevack

-- FWN Holiday Break --

Fedora Weekly News will be on vacation for the next two weeks. Our next
issue will be published on January 12th. Happy holidays!

-- FUDCon Boston 2009 --

FUDCon Boston 2009 is January 9-11. It is not too late to register[1].

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConF11

-- Fedora Remixes --

Rahul Sundaram announced[2] the General Availability of Omega 10, "a
Linux based operating system and a community Fedora Remix for desktop
and laptop users."

Sundaram added, "It is a installable Live CD for regular PC (i686
architecture) systems. It has all the features of Fedora 10 and a number
of additional multimedia players and codecs. You can play any multimedia
including MP3 music or commercial DVD's out of the box."

For additional information, and to download Omega or view the kickstart
used to create it, please read the full announcement.

[2]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-December/msg00014.html

-- Planet Fedora --

In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an
aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.

http://planet.fedoraproject.org

Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin

-- General --

Máirín Duffy said[1] it best: "ZOMG Stickers!!!!11"

Rex Dieter announced[2] a new fedora-kde mailing list

Harald Hoyer analyzed[3] the Fedora 10 boot process on an EeePC 901 with
a solid-state disk, including some easy optimizations

Casey Dahlin wrote a series[4,5,6,7] on a new internal state machine
driving the Upstart service manager

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay discussed[8] some of the commonly overlooked
difficulties of the commonly overlooked process of internationalization
(i18n) and localization (l10n)

Warren Togami had[9] some problems netbooting old PowerPC Macs as Thin
Clients (and is open to suggestions)

Tim Waugh posted[10] a tutorial on preventing a Python/GTK+ application
from appearing to freeze while performing CUPS operations

Abhishek Rane summarized[11] his thoughts on "Best of FOSS and Linux in
2008"

Dimitris Glezos described[12] Transifex and their new startup company
built around it

Christoph Wickert embedded[13] a video interview with Mario Behling
talking about LXDE

Jef Spaleta offered[14] a number of retrospective questions at the end
of his tenure on the Fedora Board

Sébastien Bilbeau posted[15] the "25 Best Linux Desktop Customization
Screenshots"

Yaakov Nemoy mused[16] about the relationship between the Open Source
development process and anarchy

[1] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/65838.html

[2] http://rdieter.livejournal.com/11262.html

[3] http://www.harald-hoyer.de/personal/blog/fedora-10-boot-analysis

[4]
http://screwyouenterpriseedition.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-upstart-state-machine.html

[5]
http://screwyouenterpriseedition.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-upstart-state-machine-part-2.html

[6]
http://screwyouenterpriseedition.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-upstart-state-machine-part-3.html

[7]
http://screwyouenterpriseedition.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-upstart-state-machine-part-4.html

[8] http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2008/12/16/and-here-we-go-again-2/

[9] http://wtogami.livejournal.com/29574.html

[10] http://cyberelk.net/tim/2008/12/17/cups-gtk-python-and-threading/

[11] http://www.abhishekrane.com/2008/12/17/best-of-foss-and-linux-in-2008/

[12] http://dimitris.glezos.com/weblog/2008/12/17/chasing-a-dream

[13]
http://www.christoph-wickert.de/blog/2008/12/18/lxde-presentation-at-red-hat-singapore/

[14] http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/29998.html

[15]
http://www.tux-planet.fr/25-best-linux-desktop-customization-screenshots/

[16]
http://loupgaroublond.blogspot.com/2008/12/open-source-and-anarchism.html

-- Events --

Fedora Release Party in Milan[17]

Fedora Day at Menoufiya Universty, Egypt[18]

[17]
http://people.byte-code.com/fcrippa/2008/12/19/fedora-release-party-milan-italy/

[18]
http://www.fossology.net/Fedora_Day_at_Menoufiya_Universty_Egypt_release_10

-- Developments --

In this section the people, personalities and debates on the
@fedora-devel mailing list are summarized.

Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley

-- Nautilus Spatial-mode Flamewar --

The tired, old topic of whether nautilus should use "spatial-mode" as a
default was re-opened[1] by MarkG85 in the form of a request for list
subscribers to "vote" on the mailing list for a reversion to
"browser-mode". In spatial-mode nautilus opens a new window for each
directory unless one middle-clicks or holds the shift key down.

It was pointed out by several contributors that voting "+/- 1" was not a
recognized way to achieve change within the Fedora Project. Chris Adams
asked[2] if he and his friends "[...] should [...] all spam fedora-devel
with `+1' and `metoo' to change the default background color? What if it
is 20 friends, or 100, or 500?" A similar point was made[3] by Jef Spaleta.

Dimi Paun expressed[4] frustration with what he charcaterized as "lame
community involvenment" and several personal attacks were made on both
the maintainer and other contributors who had deprecated the attempt to
take a mailing list vote. After tempers had flared Jeff commented[5]:
"Noone has figured out how to write a markup language for human
intention...and as a result any passionate discussion degrades severely
as we are wired to read intention but without body language and vocal
ques...we absolutely do it wrong when relying solely on written
language. Even more so with English! If we mandated everyone encode
thought into Lisp we'd be having more constructive discussions (and less
of them). The productivity of the list would be through the roof."

In response to a challenge to detail some advantages of spatial-mode
Tomas Torcz was among those who offered[6] that the persistent screen
placement of directory windows was a major advantage. He also suggested
a way to avoid leaving multiple windows open: "When I open new window
and don't want parent directory open, I just open with middle button.
Some people prefer Shift+click in this situation. I never has to use
`Close all parent folder' (ctrlshift-w), but I aware it exist." Joonas
Sarajärvi confirmed[7] the persistence as an advantage: "[...] the state
of each folder is persistent. Every window opens in the same view that
it had when I reopen them. I can have appropriate zoom levels and views
for every directory I commonly use."

Very much later in the thread, after he had been referred to several
times, the package maintainer Alexander Larsson replied[8] that he was
unconvinced both by the tone and content of the argument that there was
a case to be made for changing the default.

It is possible to choose which behavior one wants by at least two
methods. One can either use the GUI

Nautilus -> Preferences -> Behavior -> Always open in browser windows

or else change the GConf setting using

gconftool-2 --type boolean --set
/apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser true

As part of the argument involved a desire to be able to replicate these
settings automatically and possibly distribute them to others Matthias
Clasen suggested[9] that anyone wishing to make permanent change to the
default settings could create a sabayon profile.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02089.html

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02286.html

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02305.html

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02416.html

[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02392.html

[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02387.html

[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02213.html

[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02189.html

[9]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02389.html

-- Font Package Naming Guidelines --

Nicholas Mailhot ensured[1] that everyone was made aware of the new font
package naming rules for Fedora 11. These will help break up large font
packages in order to allow users to obtain fonts from desired families
without imposing a large download burden.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02597.html

-- How to become a Co-Maintainer --

Ray Van Dolson asked[1] for some information on identifying the current
(co)maintainers of the proftpd package, the procedure to become a
co-maintainer and the abilities to push bugfixes which this would confer
upon him if the primary maintainer were absent.

A full answer was provided[2] by Patrice Dumas with links to PackageDB
and the policies on the wiki regarding non-responsive maintainers.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02253.html

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02255.html

-- Proposed Package Re-Naming Guidelines --

Feedback was requested[1] by Kevin Fenzi on a draft guideline concerning
the re-naming of packages either as a result of upstream action or
locally to adhere to the NamingGuidelines.

Patrice Dumas and Dennis Gilmore remembered[2] that a re-review followed
by EOL of the old package was the current practice.

Jason Tibbitts[3] and Jesse Keating[4] referenced IRC discussions of the
practice and its advantages in checking the Obsoletes and Provides in
discussion with Jochen Schmitt. Jochen was concerned[5] that the process
be kept lightweight as opposed to a full review.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02052.html

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02054.html

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02058.html

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02056.html

[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02060.html

-- Exiv2 Bump in Rawhide --

Rex Dieter announced[1] that a bump to exiv2-0.18[2] would occur soon
including a soname bump. Jon Ciesla offered to help and Rex produced[3]
a quick list of dependent applications.

When Matej Cepl struggled with some odd results Michael Chudobiak
answered[4] that the API had changed a good deal.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02061.html

[2] Exiv is a command-line utility for examining EXIF and IPTC metadata
of images.

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02068.html

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02244.html

-- wxGTK2 to wxGTK Re-name --

Michael Schwendt discovered[1] that a rename had been performed[2] some
time ago so that there was no wxGTK2-devel package available. Dan Horák
explained[3] that only audacity was affected. There was[4] some
discussion about whether versioned Provides should be kept indefinitely.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg01897.html

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg01972.html

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg01975.html

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg02046.html

-- RFC: Description Text in Packages --

Follow-up action (see FWN#153[1]) was requested[2] by Richard Hughes for
packagers to fix "isane descriptions" in their package summary text.
Enlightenment was singled out as an example of an undesirable multi-page
description. Richard also asked for comments on how bullet-points should
be represented and the use of UTF-8.

A heated discussion followed[3] in which Nicolas Mailhot deprecated the
possible development of a "broken application-side transcoding system".
He advocated the use of UTF-8 over ASCII for several reasons including
supporting the default Asian locales. Paragraph boundaries and lists
were also mentioned[4] as a special area of concern.

This is a long and painful thread to read which expresses a conflict
between constraints imposed by PackageKit and how things are currently
done. Packagers should probably skim it to determine what final
decisions are going to be made. Richard Hughes seemed[5] to decide to
implement what seemed to him to be sane changes to gnome-packagekit in
which "If you're [g]oing to use [UTF-8 representations of
skull-and-crossbones and radiation-hazard symbols] in a spec file, then
the text box is going to look rubbish and be all on one line. If you use
a description longer than a few hundred words, gnome-packagekit will
truncate it."

[1]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue153#RFC:_Fix_Summary_Text_for_Lots_of_Packages

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg01550.html

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg01555.html

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg01577.html

[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-December/msg01927.html

-- Documentation --

In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

Contributing Writer: Jason Taylor

-- Holiday Hackfest --

This year there is going to be a Virtual Hackfest[0] with the goal of
getting Fedora Documentation Project Guides up to date and ready for
publication. Karsten presented a ToDo list[1] this week. The dates for
the Hackfest are December 27, 2008 through January 4, 2009.

[0] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project_Holiday_Virtual_Hackfest

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-December/msg00139.html

-- Translation --

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n)
Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N

Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee

-- Sponsors for cvsl10n --

The discussion about reorganizing the cvsl10n sponsorship process was
restarted by KarstenWade[1], highlighting the long queue of new entrants
waiting for sponsorhip. Currently, the policies governing the
sponsorship process for the cvsl10n group do not ensure notification to
the language team's co-ordinator of a new entrant, unless informed by
the latter. As a result of a precaution taken by the current sponsor
against arbitrary approval, the waiting queue has been growing.
Suggested changes include, providing all the co-ordinators with
sponsorship rights.

KarstenWade also suggested the renaming of the admin group to "l10n"
instead of "cvsl10n".

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-December/msg00079.html

-- Kudos for the Serbian Translation Team and FLP --

OisinFeeley and PaulFrields informed[2] about the prompt work done by
the Serbian contributors of the Fedora Localization Project, as part of
Serbian Government's initiatives to localize open source software. An
article in LWN[3] (available publicly after Dec 25th 2008) says that 99%
work of the Fedora Translation was completed on time.

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-December/msg00074.html

[3] http://lwn.net/Articles/310740/

-- Transifex Outage --

An unplanned outage of the Transifex instance, on
http://translate.fedoraproject.org occurred last week, alongwith koji,
wiki and smolt outage[4].

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-December/msg00072.html

-- Artwork --

In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

-- Perspective and the Echo Icons --

Martin Sourada called for a decision[1] on @fedora-art "we need to make
final decisions about the new perspective to Echo and update the
guidelines appropriately" with his proposal being "We will start new
Echo Perspective icon theme which will * be developed in parallel to the
current Echo * until it reaches good enough coverage, it will fallback
to current Echo and gnome-icon-theme * use same Perspective Projection
as in tango/mango for 32x32 icons and bigger, and in cases where it
helps icon distinction in smaller sizes as well, Flat Perspective will
be used for the rest * allow small amount of glows/glazes/shines in
256x256 version to achieve better realistic look * use ~ 1 px thick
solid borders at all sizes"

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-December/msg00109.html

-- The FUCCon Boston 2009 T-shirt --

In a message addressed to both @fedora-art and @fedora-marketing Máirín
Duffy asked for a vote[1] for the design of the official T-Shirt for the
upcoming FUDCon in Boston "I made the design two-color so hopefully
it'll be cheaper to print [...] There's two main designs that are just
different in the treatment of the back portion of the shirt" and the
majority of the respondents opted for one of them[2], which at the time
of this writing should be already going to print.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-December/msg00092.html

[2]
https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/1/17/Artwork_T(2d)Shirt_fudcon-boston-2009-1_design.png

-- Creation Highlights --

This week a few members of the community shared with @fedora-art some of
their latest works:

* María Leandro continued her work[1] on a promo video[2] (warning:
streaming Flash content);
* Susmit Shannigrahi started[3] a leaflet[4] to be handed at Fedora
booths;
* Mola Pahnadayan created[5] a cool looking 3D composition Blender,
pretty much in his style famous form the Fedora Core 6 DNA wallpaper.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-December/msg00125.html

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od8Utt6anLw

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-December/msg00099.html

[4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Image:Leaflet.png

[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-December/msg00116.html

[6] http://mola-mp.deviantart.com/art/Fedora-10-106577570

-- Security Advisories --

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

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

Contributing Writer: David Nalley

-- Fedora 10 Security Advisories --

-- Fedora 9 Security Advisories --

-- Fedora 8 Security Advisories --

Fedora 8 is nearing EOL
Per FESCo support for Fedora 8 will be discontinued on January 7th 2009
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg02014.html

-- Virtualization --

In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list,
@fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora
virtualization technologies.

Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley

-- Libvirt List --

This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.

-- sVirt 0.20 Patch Request for Comments --

James Morris announced[1] "the release of v0.20[2] of sVirt, a project
to add security labeling support to Linux-based virtualization. I'm
hoping to be able to propose an initial version for upstream merge
within the next few minor releases, tasks for which are being scoped out
in the new TODO list[3]."

"If the current release passes review, the next major task will be to
add dynamic MCS labeling of domains and disk images for simple isolation."

Daniel P. Berrange said "this patch all looks pretty good to me from a
the point of view of libvirt integration & XML config representation."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-December/msg00260.html

[2]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue149#sVirt_Initial_Prototype_Release

[3] http://selinuxproject.org/page/SVirt/TODO

-- Latest libvirt on RHEL and CentOS 5.2 --

Marco Sinhoreli needed[1] image:Echo-package-16px.pnglibvirt 0.5.x for
testing oVirt on RHEL 5.2. Marco wondered what was necessary to update
from the 0.3.x version available for RHEL.

Soon after, Daniel P. Berrange "uploaded[2] a set of patches[3] which
make libvirt 0.5.1 work with RHEL-5's version of Xen. Basically we have
to tweak a few version assumptions to take account of fact that RHEL-5
Xen has a number of feature backports like the new paravirt framebuffer
and NUMA support."

"Of course running a newer libvirt on RHEL-5 is totally unsupported but
hopefully these will be usful to those who absolutely need this newer
libvirt and don't mind about lack of support."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-December/msg00218.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-December/msg00298.html

[3] http://berrange.fedorapeople.org/libvirt-rhel5-xen/

-- oVirt Devel List --

This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list.

-- Building oVirt from Rawhide --

Perry Myers posted[1] instructions for building[2] and installing[3]
oVirt from rawhide.

--- end FWN 157 ---

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