free software | Steve Woods

“Rock solid” Debian 7 released

06/05/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech
On 4th May, Debian made the following announcement concerning the release of Debian 7.0, the latest stable release of this venerable Linux distribution.
After many months of constant development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 7.0 (code name “Wheezy”).

This new version of Debian includes various interesting features such as multiarch support, several specific tools to deploy private clouds, an improved installer and a complete set of
multimedia codecs and front-ends which remove the need for third-party repositories.

Multiarch support, one of the main release goals for Wheezy, will allow Debian users to install packages from multiple architectures on the same machine. This means that you can now, for the first time, install both 32- and 64-bit software on the same machine and have all the relevant dependencies correctly resolved, automatically.

The installation process has been greatly improved: Debian can now be installed using software speech, above all by visually impaired people who do not use a Braille device. Thanks to the combined efforts of a huge number of translators, the installation system is available in 73 languages and more than a dozen of them are available for speech synthesis too.

In addition, for the first time, Debian supports installation and booting using UEFI for new 64-bit PCs (amd64), although there is no support for Secure Boot yet.

This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as:
With this broad selection of packages, Debian once again stays true to its goal of being the universal operating system. It is suitable for many different use cases: from desktop systems to netbooks; from development servers to cluster systems; and for database, web, or storage servers. At the same time, additional quality assurance efforts like automatic installation and upgrade tests for all packages in Debian’s archive ensure that Wheezy fulfils the high expectations that users have of a stable Debian release. It is rock solid and rigorously tested.

You can install Debian on computers ranging from handheld systems to supercomputers, and on nearly everything in between. A total of nine architectures are supported: 32-bit PC / Intel IA-32 (i386), 64-bit PC / Intel EM64T / x86-64 (amd64), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Sun/Oracle SPARC (sparc), MIPS (mips (big-endian) and mipsel (little-endian)), Intel Itanium (ia64), IBM S/390 (31-bit s390 and 64-bit s390x) and ARM EABI (armel for older hardware and armhf for newer hardware using hardware floating-point).

Want to give it a try?
If you want to simply try it without having to install it, you can use a special image, known as a live image, available for CDs, USB sticks, and netboot set-ups. Initially, these images are provided for the amd64 and i386 architectures only. It is also possible to use these live images to install Debian. More information is available from the Debian Live homepage.

If, instead, you want to directly install it, you can choose among various installation media, such as Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, CDs and USB sticks, or from the network. Several desktop environments – GNOME, KDE Plasma Desktop and Applications, Xfce, and LXDE – may be installed through CD images; the desired one may be chosen from the boot menus of the CDs/DVDs. In addition, multi-architecture CDs and DVDs are available which support installation of multiple architectures from a single disc. Or you can always create bootable USB installation media (see the Installation Guide for more details).

The installation images may be downloaded right now via bittorrent (the recommended method), jigdo, or HTTP; see Debian on CDs for further information. Wheezy will soon be available on physical DVD, CD-ROM, and Blu-ray Discs from numerous vendors, too.

Already a happy Debian user and you only want to upgrade?
Upgrades to Debian 7.0 from the previous release, Debian 6.0 (codenamed “Squeeze”), are automatically handled by the apt-get package management tool for most configurations. As always, Debian systems may be upgraded painlessly, in place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read the release notes as well as the installation guide for possible issues and for detailed instructions on installing and upgrading. The release notes will be further improved and translated [in]to additional languages in the weeks after the release.
I’ve been using Wheezy on my laptop since release candidate 1 and can testify to it being rock solid and reliable. In particular, the screen display seems much more stable than it ever did under Ubuntu. Indeed the only problems I had with installing Wheezy were getting the wifi working (simply a matter of downloading and installing the correct firmware for the Broadcom chip on the card) and forgetting to install such little extras as libdvdcss2 so I could watch DVDs.

Why have I changed from Ubuntu? Unfortunately, the long-term support (updates) for the version I was running (10.0.4) runs out this month and subsequent versions have switched to the Unity desktop (not my favourite). I still regard Ubuntu as a great distribution, especially for beginners, to whom I’d recommend it for ease of use. Furthermore, for those who dislike Unity, there’s always the KDE-based Kubuntu, of course… 🙂
libwww released 20 years ago today

30/04/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

The H Online reminds us that 20 years ago CERN in Geneva gave Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau official permission to release the libwww library free of charge, according to Berners-Lee, “to create a server or a browser, to give it away or sell it, without any royalty or other constraint”.

Since then this act of altruism on the part of CERN has had a profound effect on the world of communications. libwww (Library World Wide Web) is a highly modular client-side web API for Unix and Windows, as well as being the name of the reference implementation of this API. It can be used for both large and small applications, including web browsers/editors, robots and batch tools.

Its more modern replacement is considered to be libcurl.

You can read more about libwww on Wikipedia.

Reposted from Bristol Wireless.
Recommended software: Tor Browser Bundle

27/04/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

If you’re interested in safe, secure internet browsing, you’ll be interested in the Tor Browser Bundle.

Tor itself is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the internet. As a user, Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your internet connection from learning what sites you visit; it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location and it lets you access sites which are blocked. For more information about Tor, read the project’s overview page.

Tor Browser Bundle in action. I was in Bristol. The IP address resolves to San Donato Milanese in Italy.

The Tor Browser Bundle lets you use Tor on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows without the need to install any software. all you need to do is unzip the package for your particular OS, and it’s ready to use. The Tor Browser bundle can run off a USB flash drive, is self-contained and comes with a pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity.
Debian 7.0 due for release in early May

19/04/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

Yesterday Neil McGovern posted an email to the Debian Development announce list giving the timetable for the next release of the stable version of Debian GNU/Linux, codenamed Wheezy.

We now have a target date of the weekend of 4th/5th May for the release. We have checked with core teams, and this seems to be acceptable for everyone. This means we are able to begin the final preparations for a release of Debian 7.0 – “Wheezy”.

The intention is only to lift the date if something really critical pops up that is not possible to handle as an errata [sic], or if we end up technically unable to release that weekend (e.g. a required machine crashes or d-i explodes in a giant ball of fire). Every other RC fix that does not make it in time will be r1 material. Please be sure to contact us about the RC fixes you would like included in the point release!

Status
======

From the usertags page you can see a total of:
Blockers for Wheezy bugs (2 bugs)
Planned for removal bugs (4 bugs)
Ignored for Wheezy bugs (58 bugs)

These have all been actioned/fixed. However, there are also about 17 bugs that have not yet been tagged and are not hinted. These will be actioned shortly.

Awesomeness of Wheezy
=====================

We really need some more work on http://wiki.debian.org/NewInWheezy, please help contribute! Let’s tell everyone why Wheezy will be the best release ever.

As well as this, release notes, installation guides and documentation in general, especially translations can always do with some work. Please see previous mails on these, and help if you can.

I’ve been using Wheezy on my laptop for the last couple of weeks and it’s a very stable, reliable operating system. See instructions for getting Debian if you want to use or try it too.
Open source career taster days for women

17/04/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

In conjunction with both Fossbox and Flossie, BCSWomen, the British Computer Society’s specialist women’s group, is organising 3 open source career taster days for women in London next month.

The days involved are 13th, 20th and 28th May and the sessions will run from 10.00 am to 5.00pm.

All the taster days will be held at BCS, 1st Floor, The Davidson Buidling, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA (map).

The cost will be £10.00 plus VAT (i.e. £12.00 in total) per day, but this will include lunch and refreshments.

The organisers are promoting these days as a series of three one-day workshops for women returners aimed at raising awareness of Open Source development as a dual skillset or second career.

The course will aim at building awareness and confidence and help women take some first steps either towards learning to code or to update existing skills and to learn how they might contribute to open source projects. It will also aim to raise awareness of self-training opportunities and of open source career paths and entry points.

Day 1 will include and introduction to FLOSS culture and licensing models, plus programming for Android mobile devices using MIT App Inventor.

Day 2 will comprise an introduction to open source projects and resources, as well as an introduction to Git.

Day 3 will give participants an introduction to programming with Python.

Online bookings only will be accepted and those interested are advised that places are limited.

Full details here.

Reposted from Bristol Wireless.
How many LibreOffice users are there?

15/04/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards

It’s always difficult trying to work out how many users of particular software packages there are out there. Be that as it may, The Document Foundation, the body behind the open source LibreOffice suite, has made an attempt at estimating the suite’s users.

According to a report today in Le Monde Informatique, estime that the suite has 20 to 30 million users on Linux (many Linux distributions, e.g. Ubuntu and Debian, include LibreOffice as the standard office suite in their disk images. Ed.) and another 30 to 40 million users on Windows. Up to last autumn, LibreOffice had been downloaded 20 million times.
LibreOffice 3.6.6 released today

11/04/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

The blog of The Document Foundation, the German foundation behind LibreOffice, announced the release of LibreOffice 3.6.6, the free and open source office suite for Windows, MacOS and Linux. It is described by the Foundation as a maintenance release for the 3.6 series

LibreOffice for all your office suite needs: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, database, drawing and formulas

This release is aimed at businesses and individual end users who prefer stability to more advanced features (those who want more advanced features can sample LibreOffice 4. Ed.). This new release is suited to the increasing number of organisations migrating to LibreOffice, which is steadily growing worldwide.

LibreOffice 3.6.6 is available for immediate download from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice are also available from the Extensions Centre.
Debian joins OPW

09/04/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech
The GNOME Foundation started the Free & Open Source Software Outreach Programme for Women, otherwise known as OPW, in 2010. Many other FOSS organisations joined the programme in the January-April 2013 round. Bits from Debian, the official blog of the Debian Project, announced yesterday that Debian will also be joining in the next round of OPW from June-September and offering one internship.

More details about Debian’s participation in the programme can be found on Debian’s dedicated OPW page.

OPW allows applicants to work on any kind of project, including coding, design, marketing and web development. The Debian Google Summer of Code (GSoC) projects will also be offered as possible projects for OPW, but GSoC only allows coding projects. If potential participants have any idea of a non-coding project and want to mentor one, please contact Debian on the soc-coordination mailing list adding [OPW] in subject line.

OPW works in the same way as GSoC except there’s no Google involvement. The same advice that is provided for GSoC mentors works for OPW mentors.

The main goal of OPW is to increase the number of women in FOSS, so all women who are not yet Debian developers or maintainers are encouraged to apply. There are no age restrictions and applicants don’t have to be students.

Applicants need to take the following 3 steps:
- Choose a project from this list. There are actually two lists, one for GSoC and another with non-coding tasks that can be only offered by the OPW. Those lists may change over 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 on the Debian wiki with your application. Applicants may use a pseudonym, but in that case, please give Debian about yourself privately by email to the coordinators listed on the Debian OPW page.
This is a repost from Bristol Wireless.
2nd release candidate for LibreOffice 4.0.2 available

29/03/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards

On 28th March, just one day after Document Freedom Day (posts passim) the LibreOffice team made the 2nd and final release candidate for LibreOffice 4.0.2 available for evaluation, quality assurance testing, etc.

As per usual, potential users are warned that this is a development version and it should not be installed on production machines: in other words, the developers recommend not using LibreOffice pre-release builds for “mission-critical” purposes. These are intended for testing purposes only.

For further information, potential users should consult the release notes.
Weak crypto keys in NetBSD

25/03/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

A serious error has occurred in the random number generator in free Unix derivative NetBSD, which can result in the system’s cryptographic keys being too weak and allowing them to be cracked, German IT news website Heise reports. The cause is misplaced brackets in the program code of the NetBSD kernel. The developers have made a kernel update available to preclude the problem in future. In addition, they are recommending that users of keys produced with either NetBSD 6.0 or the current version of NetBSD change these as a matter of urgency.

The programming error can result in the system producing random numbers which are not particularly random. This danger is especially great if the system is just booting as the system has very little entropy available at this time. The problem has particularly serious effects on 32 bit platforms where cryptographic keys containing only some 32 bits entropy are produced under these circumstances. The resulting 4 billion possibilities can be tried in turn. NetBSD 6.1 will remedy the error.

In particular, keys for SSH servers (which are normally produced at system start-up) are definitely affected. All SSH server keys which have been produced on NetBSD 6 systems should be changed as a matter of urgency. Since the ECDSA algorithm was first introduced with version 6, the relevant keys are very likely to be weak.

Full details of the problem can be found in this NetBSD security advisory notice.

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