Re: open source or free software?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Aug 31, 2014 at 09:42:00PM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> On 8/31/14, Werner Baumann  wrote:
> > I don't feel the need to talk about "open soure" on depian-project at
> > the moment. But if you do, don't forget the origins. A good summary is
> > at http://oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/raymond2.html. It is
> > really worth reading from first hand what the intentions of the
> > Open-Source-campaign are.
> >
> > I especially like this bit:
> > "It seemed clear to us in retrospect that the term "free software" had
> > done our movement tremendous damage over the years. Part of this
> > stemmed from the well-known "free-speech/free-beer" ambiguity. Most of
> > it came from something worse--the strong association of the term "free
> > software" with hostility to intellectual property rights, communism,
> > and other ideas hardly likely to endear themselves to an MIS manager."
> 
> :)
> 
> That is funny.
> 
> 
> > And so I will stay with the communist term "free software".
> 
> It seems to me the term "libre software" resonates reasonably
> unambiguously throughout 'the community'. Good luck getting
> the FSF to use that term though... there are many years of
> 'investment' in the term "free software" and it is embedded
> deeply in license terms, and documentation.
> 

Hi Zenaan,

No, in fact rms will quite happily use the libre word - wherever
possible I use FLOSS - Free/Libre/Open Source Software - and emphasise
that fact that it's not free of cost (or work - you still may have to check
licence conditions/comply with linking/distribution restrictions) - but that
the freedom is to modify, work with, fix bugs in ...

FLOSS is a good word - even esr and Bruce Perens have come to appreciate
that the OSD - based in turn on Debian's Free Software Guidelines - was,
in retrospect a confusing factor and made things difficult.

Hope this helps,

AndyC


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Re: Downloading and installation of 8 CDs and 3 DVDs for just one debian GNU/Linux

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 11:21:41AM +0100, John Smith wrote:
> Downloading and installation of 8 CDs and 3 DVDs for just one debian
> GNU/Linux, its too heavy. Rewrite this Operating System in C language and
> make it smaller than one GB. Thanks.
> 
> 
> John Smith

John,

This is probably off topic for debian-project and better for debian-user
but I'll leave this here so that it can be found by others.

If you have network bandwidth: use one netinst CD - less than 300 MB
to download.

There's a lot to Debian - 30,000 packages to choose from. Lots in C,
some in C++, Ruby, bash script, python ...

If you don't have network bandwidth to download packages directly from
the 'Net, then DVD1 should provide more than enough to build a decent 
working system with common options. 4.4GB maximum.

Copying also to debian-cd so that search engines can find this here too.

All the best,

AndyC


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Re: about version of Debian for USB flash drive.

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Feb 01, 2015 at 01:28:30AM +0300, Iskander wrote:
> Good morning.
> 
> I don't know why you can't put version of debian for usb  flash drive. Is it 
> difficult for you? Why there are 3 dvd iso's on your site? Who the hell use 
> dvd or cd?
> 

Dear sir

This is becoming a frequently asked question (FAQ).  

1. The list you have posted this to is the (non-technical) mailing list for the 
entirety of the Debian project. 

2. This type of query would be better on the debian-user mailing list or the 
debian-cd list.

3. If you do not have access to a network or your system does not boot from USB 
- CD and DVD images can be very useful.

4. The netinst image  OR CD1 OR DVD1 for the commonest architectures can be put 
on a USB stick. If the computer recognises
booting from USB, the resulting USB stick is bootabe.

5. Debian has over 40,000 packages available for each of ten architectures or 
so - that's why you have more than one DVD. _IF_
you want to install pretty much all of Debian AND don't have network access - 
you can. "Who the h*** use dvd or cd?" We do:
and you can too if that's what you wish to do.

All the very best,

AndyC





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Re: NCR unix system v/386 release 4 recover root password

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2015 at 04:26:42PM +0300, Mohammed El-Saadani wrote:
> Dear All
> we have NCR 3455 system from long time as attached all information for
> server (images)  ,
> so  we need your help to assist us to get root password which lost it ,
> really we appreciate your efforts  if you can send us the procedure for
> resting the administrator (root) password
> which this server handle data base application writing in COBOL language
> 
> Actually i try to mount the HD to Centos 5.6 but it cant recognize the UNIX
> file system type  (GNU HURD or SysV) , so I cant reach to *passwd* file to
> edit it to reset password . for that reason i send you this e-mail and i
> hope if you can gently guide me with simple procedure  how i can mount the
> file system (GNU HURD or SysV) on Linux system or which OS UNIX / Linux
> even Live CD could help me to recognize this type of file system really I
> need solve this issue because need to add network printer to this server
> but  I don't have privilege  for that till get root password .
> 
> 
> *Note:*
> *we have SCSI to USB converter which we can connect the HD extrnaly to my
> laptop *
> 
> P?riph?rique Amorce  D?but  Fin  Blocks  Id Syst?me
> /dev/hdb4*1 5234194157+ 63*GNU HURD
> or SysV*
> 
> your fast response and concerns highly appreciated
> 
> [image: Displaying]
> 
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> M.Saad

mount -t sysv /dev/hdb4 /mnt

for example.

sysv appears not to have any special options.


man mount 

may help. Note thre is absolutely no guarantee of anything at all working :(

AndyC


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Re: Debian 7.8

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 06:06:24PM +, Satya Prakash wrote:
> Dear Debian Project Team,
> 
> I need to download Debian 7.8 version, however I am finding it difficult to 
> locate it on the site.
> 
> If possible, kindly provide direct URL for downloading this version. Looking 
> forward for your response.
> 


Debian project is probably the wrong list for user questions - in future you 
might want to try debian-user or,
for this, debian-cd

http://cdimage.debian.org/archive/7.8.0/

You probably only need the first CD or DVD. If you have a reasonable amount of 
network bandwidth available to you
you may be able to use just the netinst .iso which requires a good internet 
connection since all packages are 
downloaded from the 'Net.

Hope this helps,

AndyC



> Thanks,
> Satya Prakash
> Cell:- +46-733-801-651
> 
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Re: Free Software

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Jun 04, 2015 at 04:42:02PM +0200, mrtx wrote:
> 
> I really like Debian. I reckon it is the best distro I've ever used, for
> several reasons.
> I know Debian is by default 100% free software. The kernel is deblobbed
> and its default main repository contains only free software.
> 

Everything in Debian main has always been fully libre as far as we've been
able to make it. That's the goal behind the Debian Social Contract and the 
Debian Free Software Guidelines.

Non free things inadvertently included in the main repository are tagged as
bugs and removed when found.

Things that change status e.g. Firefox where the status has been changed at
the originator's request have been moved as they change.

This sort of thing could possibly be better asked on debian-user.

Hope this helps,

AndyC


> I understand Debian got completely libre by the version 6. Debian 5 and
> all the former versions used a vanilla linux (non deblobbed) kernel.
> 
> My question is: Has the Debian's main repository always been made of
> only free software? Has it contained only free software since the first
> Debian version?
> 
> If a non-free package accidentally slipped into the main repository,
> this would be regarded as a bug. Wouldn't it?
> I'd like to know (I searched on the website for this info but couldn't
> manage to find it), since the very beginnings of Debian, how many such
> bugs have been filed?
> 
> I know Debian's policy about the free software guidelines is very strict
> and you guys do a very good job, but I guess, maybe a few times, by
> mistake, some proprietary code did wind up in the main repo..
> 
> 
> Thanks. Have a nice day!
> 
> 



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Re: Future release roadmap

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 02:51:46PM +, Vogel, Steve wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> We are planning resources to support our products running on Debian and would 
> like to know an approximate timeline (through Q1 of 2017) of releases.  We 
> understand stable version 8.1 was released in June.  What guidance should we 
> use to plan support for stable 8.2. and stable 8.3?  In general how 
> frequently do these releases come out?
> 
> Many thanks for any planning guidance you can provide.
> 
> Steve Vogel
> Program Manager, Data Center Group
> Intel Corporation
> 780 Fifth Avenue, Suite 140
> King of Prussia, PA 19406
> steve.vo...@intel.com
> Office: 609-953-5342
> Cell: 609-828-9360
>  [cid:image002.jpg@01D051BE.2FFB2A50]
> 
> 


Speaking purely personally - as an individual Debian developer - but explicitly 
NOT on behalf of the release team or the wider project as a whole.

On average, lately a Debian major release - where major is 7, 8 - comes out 
about once every two years and there's normally at least one year of support 
beyond that.

In that period, there are wrap up releases which include security fixes etc. 
about once a quarter.  The major version is still 8, for example, and the point 
releases
merely wrap up the fixes that you would normally get by updating regularly plus 
a few fixes if e.g. it becomes necessary to remove a package from the 
distribution altogether.

By way of example: the prior stable distribution of Debian - Debian 7 codename 
Wheezy - is about to get a point release, though it is no longer the primary 
stable release. In three years, you might expect to see 8-10 individual point 
releases.

At the same time, 8 - Jessie - will receive an update to 8.2 or so the plans 
are being arranged at the moment.

For Q1 17 - We'll hopefully have Debian 9 - Stretch - so 8 will be oldstable. 7 
will be oldoldstable.

There are also attempts to prolong support for older Debian versions using the 
LTS name. Such significantly extended lifespans may come at a cost in that it 
may not be possible to maintain as wide a spread of packages as when that 
version was first released - Debian is volunteer maintained and there's only so 
much
effort to go around. As others have said, talk to the release team. 

For future reference: the second of the first couple of Alpha releases of the 
installer for Debian 9 has been produced within the last couple of weeks - as 
such,
we're probably 18-24 months away from release of Debian 9 Stretch as a finished 
article, based on prior experience - though that's a time frame that may change 
significantly. 

All the best

AndyC

[amaca...@galactic.demon.co.uk / amaca...@debian.org]
> 

Re: Software Freedom Conservancy needs our cash

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 01:17:53PM +, Ian Jackson wrote:
> As reported here:
>   https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
> 
> Conservancy is an amazingly good thing.  They are the only
> organisation doing GPL enforcement for non-FSF projects.  They are
> facing financial problems because one of their major donors has
> withdrawn.  Conservancy's determination to make the GPL stick, by
> lawsuit if necessary, is not popular amongst rich corporates.
> 
> I have just signed up.  I think any Debian contributor who believes in
> copyleft, and can afford it, should probably sign up too.
> 

Signed up yesterday to take advantage of the anonymous offer for matched
funds for several subscriptions :)

> If, like me, you work on copylefted software in your day job, or you
> hope to do so in the future, the GPL is for you not just an important
> tool to help change the world, but also an assurance of your personal
> autonomy.
> 
> 
> Could Debian as a project sign up ?  Conservancy is a 503(c), like
> SPI, so perhaps we in Debian could commit a modest regular funding
> stream to Conservancy.
> 

It might be a little more complicated than that given our own 501(c)
status, I think (but I am no longer a lawyer end never was an American
tax lawyer.

> Debian depends heavily on GPL'd software and most of the
> Debian-specific tools we have written over the years are copyleft.  We
> depend on our copyleft being enforced to ensure that all users of
> Debian (including users of Debian derivatives) have the freedoms that
> our community (and our Social Contract) promise.
> 
> Debian's presence in the list of sponsors would be valuable as an
> example, too.
> 

But everybody already knows we care about Free software 

All the very best to all,

AndyC

> 
> Ian.

Re: Obtaining Debian Install PKG

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 06:47:54AM -0500, John Klinvex wrote:
> Dear Support,
> 
> I apologize for bothering you with a simple question.
> 
> I have several legacy systems (old) that I am installing Debian onto.  I
> also wish to install other packages (Kicad, Freecad, Mercurial, Gmsh, and
> Qucs).  I like using the apt-get installation procedure so I want to be
> sure to download the package suitable for this.  Could you confirm which of
> the many downloads match my criteria?  Thank you so much!!!  You do a
> wonderful job!
> 

Dear John,

This is a question probably better asked on debian-user mailing list rather 
than debian-project which is used for formal announcements.

Kicad, freecad, mercurial, gmsh are all currently available in Debian 8
(jessie).

Qucs is not available as far as I can see - the upstream project website
has details of a possible maintainer to contact, however.

Copying directly to you - against the normal ettiquette of Debian lists -
because I'm unsure whether you are subscribed to the list.

All the very best,

Andy C.

amaca...@debian.org



> John Klinvex
> Electrical Engineer
> profjo...@gmail.com

debian-project@lists.debian.org

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Mar 03, 2017 at 07:43:18PM +0100, swjatoslaw gerus wrote:
> To  debian-project@lists.debian.org
> 
> 

This is the general list for the whole of the Debian project. This would be 
better addressed to a debian-user list.

> 
>   Gentlemen

And ladies / men / women / nonbinary folk ...

> 
>   Which of C compiler must be downloaded for wine -2.2
> and how ?
> 
>   Relevant comment would appreciated 
> ##
> su 
> 
> apt-get install gcc 
> 

Try gcc5 as the package name. If you're not sure how to find a package - 
apt-cache search {package]. In this case - apt-get install build-essential
will give you all the packages you need to build things.
> 
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree   
> Reading state information... Done
> Package gcc is not available, but is referred to by another package.
> This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
> is only available from another source
> 
> E: Package 'gcc' has no installation candidate
> #
> 

apt-get install wine [or wine32] might save you some work.

[snip comppile failure because no gcc]
> ## - ##
> 
> hostname = rr
> uname -m = x86_64
> uname -r = 4.9.0-kali2-amd64
> uname -s = Linux
> uname -v = #1 SMP Debian 4.9.10-1kali1 (2017-02-20)

You're running Kali - a Debian derivative but not Debian. Please go and ask on 
a Kali list. Not many of us run Kali: everyone who runs Kali
will know their system batter.

All the very best

Andy C.

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 01:53:49PM +0200, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> On several occasions people have asked me about Debian t-shirts and the
> polo shirts when I'm going to an event or after seeing a video where I
> am wearing the polo shirt.
> 
> At some events there are opportunities to mass-produce things in
> collaboration with the event team, lowering costs and avoiding the cost
> of shipping into the event.  For example, the FOSSASIA team produced a
> lot of roll-up banners and three Debian banners were included in the
> batch.  Similar deals can lower the cost of t-shirt production,
> especially when the event takes place in a location where costs are lower.
> 

I'd seriously suggest you chat to Steve, Phil Hands and others who've
been involved in this over the years. It's not quite a no-win scenario
but it's probably not far off. Get good quality polo shirts, for
example, that will lst for a few years - and someone will wear the same
shirt for a long time, to multiple events or whatever - but you can't
then sell them another shirt quickly. With the numbers of shirts you 
can reasonably sell in five years or so, it rapidly becomes a large
outlay of cash up front for a small, delayed return.

Debian tartan, even more so - high production cost and will wear for
many years - but still desirable :)

> A few people have expressed concern about the production of t-shirts though:
> 
> - production cost and difficulty of transporting in luggage, both
> relatively high compared to the cost of stickers and some other merchandise
> 
> - lack of volunteers willing to handle and dispatch inventory (this was
> raised by debian.ch after trying to retail some online)
> 

Debian.ch did one very cool piece of merchandise - customised Victorinox
knives with Debian logo. Fantastic, useful - and potentially illegal to 
carry but a lovely thing. I think it took a huge time to organise the
logistics although the cost wasn't huge since the manufacturers do this
regularly and the retooling isn't massive the overhead was high.

> Personally, I feel that clothing makes a particularly strong impression
> as people only wear one t-shirt at a time and if they choose to wear a
> Debian t-shirt, that is a strong endorsement of the Debian project. 
> Conversely, if there is an absence of Debian t-shirts in the community
> (or if Debian was to produce too many shirts that all look the same)
> people wear other things.
> 
> I also feel that the relative effort for a developer to organize a batch
> of 100 is not much more than the effort of producing 10 or 20.
> 

See above :(

> This brings me to a few questions:
> 
> - how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary
> goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure?
> 

Debian isn't "a brand" per se - and look back years in the mailing list
about logos, copyrights etc. - maybe the DPL may have a different view?

> - would it be reasonable for 1% - 2% of Debian's reserves to be tied up
> in slow moving inventory items like t-shirts that take up to a year to
> fully turnover?  As the reserves are mostly kept in cash Debian probably
> loses at least that much to inflation each year anyway.
> 

Some of SPI's revenues - as the umbrella body that handles finances -
come from providing tax/admin/donation handling for other projects. They
can best handle cash - handling physical inventory / accounting for it /
exchange rates / writing down storage costs might be too much.

> - what is the best strategy for production and distribution?  Would it
> be cheaper and less effort for volunteers if 10,000 shirts were simply
> produced in China and divided up between every developer willing to
> distribute them within their local community at their own pace and
> without formal inventory controls?  Or is it better to produce small
> batches when the opportunity arises?

10,000 shirts might be the project sales for thirty years if you're
unlucky :(

> 
> - what should be produced?  In low quantities we get very standard
> t-shirts.  In higher quantities we may have more choices of fabrics,
> more distinctive styles and printing techniques that last longer.  We
> could even produce some rolls of Debian fabric for people to have
> tailor-made shirts, table cloth, curtains, etc.
> 
> - what aspects of production are people willing to volunteer for?  For
> example, some people have volunteered to create t-shirt designs and
> other people have volunteered for Debian booths at events.  What other
> tasks do people need to volunteer for, e.g. keeping inventory, and are
> there volunteers?
> 
> - has anybody looked at any strategies to completely outsource
> merchandising or to do such things jointly with other groups to get
> economies of scale?  For example, at some events the Debian t-shirts can
> be retailed on a table run by the local community without developers
> needing to be at a booth, all we may need to do is bring the stock and
> take it away again later.
> 

It migh

Re: GitHub Open Source Survey 2017

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, Jun 06, 2017 at 06:23:30PM +0100, Chris Lamb wrote:
> Hi -project,
> 
> GitHub recently published the announcements of their 2017 Open Source
> Survey:
> 
>   http://opensourcesurvey.org/2017/
> 
> 
> I was wondering whether any fellow developers had read this and whether
> they had evaulated it in the context of the Debian project. To kick this
> off, let me quote some of their key insights:
> 
>  * Documentation is highly valued, frequently overlooked, and a
>means for establishing inclusive and accessible communities.
> 

Debian gets this. It's relatively well documented. 


>  * Negative interactions are infrequent but highly visible, with
>consequences for project activity.

Much more visible here because we don't tend to hide problems,
potentially. It has had HUGE consequences for a few things but,
in general Debian works well
> 
>  * Open source is used by the whole world, but its contributors
>don't yet reflect its broad audience.
> 

We do better than many - and we know where we're under-representative.

>  * Using and contributing to open source often happens on the job.

Or in universities / bedrooms ... we understand FLOSS better than most.
> 
>  * Open source is the default when choosing software.

Tell me again, what part of closed source software is part of Debian
main? :)

All best

Andy C

> 
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> -- 
>   ,''`.
>  : :'  : Chris Lamb
>  `. `'`  la...@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
>`-

Re: Linux Mint Operating System V.S Other Operating Systems

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 12:01:52PM -0500, Walsh, Ryan wrote:
> My name is Ryan Walsh and I am a gifted student from Saint Charles MO. I am
> researching why Linux Mint is more popular than other operating systems. I
> am really enjoying researching this topic and I have some questions about
> Debian for research:
> 
> 1. What was Debian mainly built towards accomplishing on servers?

Debian is the second oldest Linux distribution after Slackware. It runs
on many machine types and is intended as "the universal operating
system" Not just for servers, but for desktops, supercomputers, small
ARM based boards ...

> 
> 2. What about Debian separates it from other operating systems like Ubuntu,
> Mint,  or Red Hat?

Non commercial. Debian is the ancestor distribution for Ubuntu and
therefore for all other Ubuntu-derived distributions like Mint.

Red Hat is a commercial distribution based on RPM package format.

Debian policy and packaging guidelines make Debian more consistent

> 
> 3. What inspired Debian (a.k.a why did you create Debian instead of just
> using another operating system?)

It preceded most other Linux distributions. Linux kernel is 26 years
old, Debian is 24.
> 
> 4. Why is Debian only on version 9 while Mint is on version 18?
> 

Version numbering is a whole other question :) You'll find that each 
distribution does things slightly differently - Ubuntu is date based,
for example.

> 
> Thank you for your time!

No problem - but these sorts of questions would be better asked on
debian-user as a mailing list. Debian-project is usually used for
project wide announcements and similar

[I used to co-maintain one of the Distributions HOWTO documents for the
Linux Documentation Project]

All the very best

Andrew Cater

Re: Debian supports pridemonth?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On 01/07/2019 18:22, Sam Hartman wrote:
>> "Adrian" == Adrian Bunk  writes:
> 
> >> and so forth, since they're the experts on what they would find
> >> the most meaningful within the Debian context.
> 
> Adrian> Debian having a position on general political issues can be
> Adrian> dangerous.
> 
> Absolutely.
> I think that each time we should link what we're doing back to our goal
> of making a great free software operating system for our users.
> And link back to our priorities of our users and free software.
> In this instance, the link is obvious for me.
> We as a community have decided that being inclusive helps us make a
> great free software operating system.
> 
> Our diversity and publicity teams have decided that supporting pride
> month helps a part of our community feel more included.  By helping this
> part of our community feel included we make it easier for them to
> participate.  We let them know they matter.
> And I at least believe that makes it easier for them to contribute and
> thus we get a better operating system.
> 
> I do think that linking any political action back to our goals and not
> letting our mission drift is important.
> I don't think we do that enough.
> It's just that in this instance I personally think the action is
> justified.
> 
> Adrian> If Debian as a project is making general political
> Adrian> statements, then having a Debconf in Israel without a strong
> Adrian> public message regarding the situation of the Palestinian
> Adrian> people would make Debian appear to fully support the Israeli
> Adrian> side.
> 
> I certainly think we should be making an extra effort to welcome
> Palestinian people to our project especially given the Debconf 20
> decision.
> People are hurt by the Debconf 20 decision, and  I think part of
> respecting them is to acknowledge pain that our decision has caused and
> to be as welcoming as we can.
> 
> Adrian> Just like many LGBTQ project members might have a problem
> Adrian> with Debconf in a country where homosexuality is illegal.
> 
> Yep, absolutely.
> 
> Adrian> Most people from Israel are nice people and clearly welcome
> Adrian> in Debian, and so are contributors from countries where
> Adrian> homosexuality is illegal.
> 
> Adrian> But if Debian does make political statements, then Debians
> Adrian> position on the Israeli-Palestine conflict is a valid issue
> Adrian> for discussions on project mailing lists and in GRs.
> 
> I disagree with that.  I do think that our position on how that conflict
> affects the Debconf venue selection is appropriate for project lists
> where debconf venue selection is on-topic.
> 
> 
> Adrian> The decision that Debconf 2020 will be in Israel can be
> Adrian> overridden by GR.
> 
> Yes.
> There would be a high cost to doing that, but yes it can.
> 
> Adrian> The easy way would be if Debian would consider itself a
> Adrian> purely technical project and abstain from making any
> Adrian> political statements, except ones strongly related to being
> Adrian> a Linux distribution.
> 
> The easy and painful way.
> 
> 
> --Sam
> 
Regardless of what some folk say about pridemonth - it is deeply,
deeply, sadly, ironic and painful that folk are arguing about
pridemeonth in mails interleaved even as a valued contributor announces
she is trans.

Tina - welcome to a life of having to defend your every move in every
social and anti-social situation - but welcome regardless and with every
good wish, as ever,

Andy C.

Proposal to deprecate and remove mailing list specific code of conduct

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Folks,

We currently have a minimal Debian mailing list code of conduct at
https://www.debian.org/MailingLists which is, essentially,
primarily tips on how to format email. At the same time, we have the
main Debian Code of Conduct at https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct} which 
is also referenced on the mailing lists page.

This has the potential to be confusing and certainly the intent of the
text overlaps in large part: is it now sensible to drop the mailing
list code of conduct per se and refer only to the main Debian code of
conduct in the future?

The fewer resources we have to direct people to, have to keep up to
date and to copy across various platforms then potentially the better.

Note: For the avoidance of doubt: this is not an attempt to lessen the
good effect of the mailing list code of conduct, which has been in effect
for a long time, nor is it an excuse for another flame war as to
whether/why we should have any code of conduct at all.  

The main Debian Code of Conduct, applicable to all Debian mailing lists, 
forums and public media is probably enough for all purposes, works well and
was passed into effect by a GR: in some sense, that's not negotiable. 
This is merely an attempt to simplify things a little
particularly for folk new to Debian.

Your thoughts on this would be very much appreciated

With all the very best wishes to all, as ever,

Andy Cater

[Speaking on behalf of the Debian Community team: this content of this email
has also been reviewed by other members of the team]

Results of two votes are due shortly

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Everyone :

The project is expecting the results of two votes shortly.

The results won't please everyone - they never do. Please continue to be 
polite and constructive and work positively with your Debian colleagues 
however the votes fall.

With thanks for your consideration in this

Andy Cater - for the Community team

Re: DEP-16 Confidential votes

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 11:01:36PM +0200, Timo Röhling wrote:
> * Stéphane Glondu  [2021-04-16 17:12]:
> > I would be glad to help :-)
> Great!
> 
> > > With all that being said and having made my case, I am open for any
> > > reasonably secure solution (including Belenios) that we can agree on,
> > > and I will help implement it if I can.
> > And I am open to make changes in Belenios if needed.
> I'd like to raise two questions for debate:
> 
> 1. Do we want to retain the ability to vote openly?
> 
> Obviously, open votes are more transparent, which is nice and very
> appropriate for many technical issues that we might vote on. On the
> other hand, most votes in Debian are DPL elections anyway.
> 
Yes, as far as possible. Agreed: most votes are the annual DPL election.

> 2. How much are we committed to the current process that works
> exclusively via email?
> 
> Personally, I think that a structured HTML form is more accessible for
> screen readers than pure text ballots, and you can still make the web
> interface render nicely in a text browser such as Lynx or w3m.
> 
> On the other hand, some people might have considerably less trust in
> their web browser than their email client.
> 

No, please don't. We already have problems enough with HTML - a structured
form would need to be fully accessible, secure, validated. A signed email
is (relatively) more straightforward and has served us well for the last
25 years.

Just my 0.02 - but we're all probably getting well ahead of ourselves -
having just had two votes, maybe we should not be changing the system
immediately.

Andy Cater

> 
> Cheers
> Timo
> 
> -- 
> ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀   ╭╮
> ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁   │ Timo Röhling   │
> ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀   │ 9B03 EBB9 8300 DF97 C2B1  23BF CC8C 6BDD 1403 F4CA │
> ⠈⠳⣄   ╰╯

Re: Problems of migrating Debian8 "Jessie" to Debian 10 "Buster"

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 11:28:39AM -0400, Henry Chang wrote:
> Hi Chris,
> 
> Because I could no longer install Debian 8 "Jessie" on new machine and
> update the old machines, I migrate to Debian 10 "Buster" with KDE Plasma.
> But I found lots of problems and would appreciate your help solve them:
> 
Did you update to Debian 9 and then to Debian 10? If you skipped releases
- there's no straightforward way to work out what's gone wrong, necessarily.

This might be better asked in debian-user: debian-project is perhaps
not the most appropriate place.

> 1. "Buster" system freezes when I am running programs in various virtual
> desktop, especially YouTube. Is it a bug?
> 
> 2. "Buster" no longer supports ecryptfs. Is there any other way to encrypt
> a directory?
> 
> 3. Some of regex commends that worked on old Debian Jessie do not work on
> "Buster". What's wrong?
> 
> 4. Is there any way to install the old "Jessie"?

You can always start again: install Jessie from the beginning then 
update to the latest versions gradually. Back up / save any data
from the machine before you do so: the installation from new
will almost certainly wipe all data.

With every good wish

Andrew Cater

> 
> Regards
> 
> 
> Henry
> 
> ---
> Muchiu (Henry) Chang, PhD. Cantab
> Patent Mapping Intelligence Researcher &
> Monte Carlo Modeling Simulation Expert
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcc212/ 
> tel. +1-416-828-5676

Re: Debian logo

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 11:03:08AM -0400, Joshua Allen wrote:
> Dear debian,
> I was wondering if the logo was inspired by bdale garbee's tie dye shirt?
> 
> Thanks
> Josh

It was subject to a Debian vote in 1999 - https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLogo

"The chicken" was used for a period before that.

The version with the bottle appears to have been more or less unused - the 
Open Use logo - and almost everyone has used the Debian Official logo - the
swirl.

The swirl is also very close to one of the demo outlines in a commercial
graphics application - I forget which.

All the very best, as ever

Andy Cater

Re: Will this run a mysql php

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 03:49:00AM +1030, Zain Grant wrote:
> Will this connect with mysql php in the banking cloud so it connects with
> the banking world of transfer and deposit can u get back tome im deploying
> a bank php mate needing this done asap with a server that connects in the
> cloud of banking of debian and mysql or what is needed to get this bank php
> running in the real world of banking properly with no exensive fees just so
> it works no more thank you capitalone

Hi Zain,

Debian-project is a mailing list for the whole of the Debian project.
This query might be better if redirected to the debian-user mailing list.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/ lists the archive and gives instructions
for subscription.

With every good wish as ever,

Andy Cater

Re: Concerns about how the Security information is presented on Debian.org

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Dec 19, 2021 at 05:37:40PM +0100, Max WillB wrote:
> Davide Prina wrote:
> 
> > you must understand that who report a security problem can be a 
> > different person 
> 
> The point is, to quote the paper:
> 
> "a vast majority of vulnerabilities and their corresponding security 
> patches remain beyond public exposure"
> 
> Vulnerabilities are fixed in fresh versions of software. The versions in 
> Stable stay vulnerable, even if all CVEs are reported to Debian 
> (which I don't think is the case) and even if they are all fixed quickly 
> (which is definitely not the case)  It's a limitation of Debian's and RH's 
> approach, compared to the rolling-release approach. This is one of the
> two things I mentioned that debian.org/security is not telling you.
> 
> > chromium has been removed from testing
> 
> That doesn't help people who trusted debian.org/security and are running it.
> 
> 
> 

Dear Max,

In this - and in your previous message to the list - you imply that this
reticence is malicious and that Debian is withholding the truth.

If upstream projects don't declare and share vulnerabilites - we all suffer.
Responsible disclosure generally means that all distributions collaborate
and fix vulnerabilities together - and you notice this where distributions
are given 30 or 90 days notice of a vuln. that is embargoed while everyone
fixes it - all then release fixes more or less together. See lots of kernel 
vulnerabilities, for example

CVEs are generally available. Debian folk who find vulns. also tend to talk
to upstream. For some packages, problems are Debian-specific: most people
don't care if a given package doesn't build on armhf / arm64 or i386. 
Patches to get Debian building Firefox on those arches may not be top
priority on Mozilla's list.

Specifically for Firefox and Chromium: these are large packages, very
frequently released. Debian's not hiding problems particularly and is 
working to build these packages for all supported distributions. 
Dependency chains within them may mean building specific toolchains just
for Mozilla, for example, to enable the packages to be built on stable 
and oldstable. That work is going on: the progress isn't hidden.
Debian's work helps inform Ubuntu and other .deb based distributions that
may have their own priorities (and their own security problems).

Ultimately, though - Debian's a do-ocracy: there comes a point at which
we have to rely on upstream to fix htings and take notice, we need more 
volunteers to help test/file bugs/test fixed things or we fall back on the 
comprehensive warranty statements we provide with each package.
Telling the Project as a whole that we're not doing the right thing
doesn't particularly help motivate the people who are working to do the right
thing and doesn't provide useful feedback on existing efforts.

Given the difficulties in building say, Firefox - 3.7M lines of code,
profuse dependencies, integrated unstable version Rust toolchains that 
change versions regularly and an upstream that changes very regularly - and 
given the fact that you feel we're not doing our job - what insight persuades 
you that a rolling distribution from the same people with the same constraints
 would handle security any better in a shorter timeframe?

This discussion would be better on debian-security: if you want to see the 
output of Debian's security focused developers, check out the archives
for debian-security-announce mailing list - you'll find the fixes for 
log4j are there with minimum delay, for example.

With every good wish, as ever,

Andrew Cater


> -- 
> Sent with https://mailfence.com  
> Secure and private email
> 

Re: Graphic equalizer in Rhyhmbox

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 11:07:11PM +0100, Riccardo wrote:
> Hello, on my notebook i use Linux Mint Debian Edition, since i would
> like to install the equalizer in the excellent Rhythmbox player, can
> you insert the rhythmbox-plugin-complete package in the Package
> Manager?
> So I could have the very useful graphic equalizer.
> Thank you
> 
> Best regards.
> 
> Riccardo - Torino (Italy)

Reply sent to this via the duplicate in debian-devel.

Andy Cater

Re: Emails are public on the website

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 12:30:36PM +0530, Dipansh Parmar wrote:
> Hello Debian team,
> I'm not sure if it is the intended behavior or not but I just wanted to let
> you guys know. The emails regarding Debian are public on the website and
> can be found at https://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2021/05/. Please review.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Dipansh Parmar

Hi Dipansh,

This is expected behaviour: this is a public mailing list. Happy to answer
further questions on the debian-user mailing list: the FAQ [Frequently Asked
Questions] link posted there every month may also help. See:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/12/msg00010.html 

for example.

With every good wish,

Andrew Cater

Re: How about using national flags instead of text in debian.org?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Feb 05, 2012 at 10:32:43AM +0100, Gerfried Fuchs wrote:
>Hi,
> 
> * Hyun-Gwan Seo  [2012-02-05 09:10:53 CET]:
> > How about using national flags?
> > I think that national flags are much more helpful and eidetic than text.
> 
>  Flags represent nations and not language.  Having the German flag for
> the German language is mildly insulting for myself because I am from
> Austria.  Also, the same issue applies for a big amount of other areas.
> 
A long time ago we lost at least one good developer on precisely this issue: 
Herbert Xu
resigned because of Chinese/Taiwanese flag issues, if I remember correctly.

Chinese covers Hong Kong and Macao SARs, People's Republic of China, Singapore 
and Taiwan/Republic of China as a minimum - 
- more or less in English alphabetical order - which one flag would you want? 

[And that doesn't cover the Chinese diaspora in Australia/Canada/US/UK - what 
do you do if you're British-born Chinese?]

"Traditional" Chinese - seemingly OK for everywhere other than PRC / Simplified 
Chinese OK for PRC for the flag captions?

This is _EXACTLY_ why Fedora and Red Hat stopped relying on flags for language 
identification. Character sets are another
issue for Chinese but at least that should have been sorted out slightly by 
Unicode :)

> > If you don't understand my suggestion, please visit following websites.
> > http://www.red5server.org/
> 
>  Why should a brit click on the US flag?
> 
> > http://gambas.sourceforge.net
> 
>  Why should an american click on the british flag?
> 
>  Please also read this posting, and following links from there to
> understand the issue:
> 
> http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200604/indicating_language_choice_flags_text_both_neither/
> 
>  Thanks,
> Rhonda
> -- 

Rhonda, as in so many other things, is absolutely right :)

Andy Cater


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Re: Diversity statement for the Debian Project

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 09:49:34AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> gregor herrmann  writes:
> 
> > On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:38:39 +0100, Enrico Zini wrote:
> >
> > > I can think of another thing that we care about, which I don't see
> > > mentioned here: "We expect people to be constructive members of the
> > > community."
> >
> > Agreed.
> >
> > And I think we are also not open to people who don't share these
> > values, e.g. people with a racist, sexist, ... behaviour.
> 
> That gets to another troubling part of the draft: Are there not some
> political opinions, even some religions, that we should discriminate
> against as being detrimental to the goal of a universal operating
> system?
> 
> -- 
>  \  “Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity |
>   `\of the graveyard.” —Justice Roberts in 319 U.S. 624 (1943) |
> _o__)  |
> Ben Finney


It's difficult. We don't censor our mailing lists: we don't often throw
people out. We are very accepting.

This si the argument that comes up so very regularly when we get people from
outside the project saying "Remove my name/post because I did something silly 
a long time ago" - it's a bit late, and all you do is draw further attention 
to yourself - it's archived everywhere.

We don't tolerate extreme sexist/racist behaviour - but we will accept 
many forms of intolerant/difficult behaviour on our mailing lists. 
People do begin to understand the culture after a while and most people
work together well. In fact, Debian is a textbook example of a self-organising
society - most of us hang around here because we want to and we value Debian
the operating system and Debian the Project/society/internet grouping.

It happens that we've got LGBT, many racial backgrounds, both biological sexes, 
all gender identities,
people from many language backgrounds, people with disabilities, people of all 
religious beliefs 
and people who have none (should I need a pastor who is also a sysadmin, I know 
exactly
who to turn to, for example), people who live in all environments up to and 
including the ultra 
self-sufficient types living remotely and off-grid.

About the only political stance we've taken was a very long time ago: posts 
from a Finnish neo-Nazi
weere removed as a) culturally inappropriate, b) essentially entirely 
irrelevant to Debian and 
c) inappropriate for certain European and other countries where Nazi propaganda 
is illegal.

Debian _sounds_ diverse and is diverse: novice users may be significantly put 
off by perceived technical
difficulty, novice maintainers/developers/formally recognised contributors are 
usually Debian users
with some degree of experience - but we all contribute in some way.


Don't get too hung up on the statement provided that it's fairly reflective of 
the fact that the
project seeks to be inclusive and to support the OS which is largely 
culture-neutral.

Just my 0.2c

AndyC


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Re: Possibly moving Debian services to a CDN

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 08:44:56AM +0200, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
> Dear Project,
> 
> The System Administration Team (DSA) are considering moving some of the
> static hosting that Debian currently provides from our infrastructure to
> one or more CDNs. We have received feedback indicating that a broader
> discussion is desired.
> 
> Debian has, for over a decade, operated its own form of a content
> delivery network (multiple variants, actually) by leveraging our own
> infrastructure as master sources and community-provided infrastructure
> (primarily from universities and regional network providers) for local
> distribution.
> 
It works - tell anyone to use ftp.[country name].debian.org and it 
"just works". If ftp.[mycountry].debian.org is down, use ftp.[neighbour country]
.debian.org - and, crucially, it's all under one debian.org domain.

If managers/software licensing mavens/project funding authorities etc. question 
where your 
software is actualy from - it's from Debian themselves.

That's a really, really good thing.

> 
> We appreciate feedback while we continue our investigation of CDNs.
> 
> Thanks for your interest,
> -- 
> Tollef Fog Heen for the Debian System Administration team
> 

This is (potentially) good news for laptop/desktop users: instant access from 
closest mirrors. 
This is also an increasing trend: Firefox, Raspbian, Archlinux (I think) are 
all CDN served.

If you run behind restrictive firewall policies / in corporate land, it's not 
nearly so hot.
Static long lasting mirrors are really useful here when you have to ask your 
network admin.
to unblock firewalls for each IP address. 

If you want to configure > 10 servers, say, or to build repeated groups of 
servers over a long time, 
it's good to have consistency and the existing network provides this. If the 
trend globally is 
to CDNs, however, it will be hard to buck the trend for the long term.

Just my 0.02€

Andy




signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: Xfce by default

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 03:50:59PM +, Camaleón wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Nov 2013 15:42:13 +0100, Stefan Mauerberger wrote:
> 
> > Hi There!
> > 
> > Just wanted to let you know that from my point of view it is a very bad
> > call changing Debian's default desktop once more. (... GNOME2 -> GNOME3
> > -> Xfce -> ???)
> 
> IIRC, this was discussed days ago¹ on "debian-devel" mailing list.
> 
> > I am nothing but a super stupid user and I do not care what is under the
> > hoods. Nevertheless, what I can tell you is that users are expecting
> > continuity! I do not want to change all of my habits for every new
> > release.
> > Be pragmatic and stay with GNOME3! That is the simple message I have to
> > make.
> 
> If you ask me, I'm now more inclined to have no default desktop at all 
> and ask the user what he/she wants to get when installing Debian from a 
> big media (DVD) even if this action requires changes in the installer.
> 
> ¹http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/10/thrd2.html#00496
> 

This for me - no desktop installed by default - but an easy
way to choose whichever desktop you want if you want one -
would be ideal.

Can we produce a minimal netinst which does just this
for a default install and adds desktop selection
for an expert install.

This would be ideal for minimal servers, VMs and test 
installations.

Andy

amaca...@debian.org


> Greetings,
> 
> -- 
> Camaleón
> 
> 
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Re: Google ads on debian.org

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 06:35:15PM +0100, Martin Schulze wrote:
> 
> I object.  Not by any price we have to pay (and turning www.debian.org
> into a commercial page *is* a high price, which could also result in
> losing some of our sponsors who provide a mirror of the pages)
> 
Thanks Joey, couldn't put it better myself, no matter how I tried :)

Andy

Re: Upcoming relaeas

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2007 at 08:10:46AM +0200, David Ramsay wrote:
> Hey, I'm wondering if you have any more info on when Debian 4.0 will be
> released?
> 
> Kind Regards
> 
> David Ramsay
> 

Debian 4.0 - currently codenamed Etch - will be released when it's 
ready and will then become the Debian stable version.

The current Debian stable version is 3.1 release 4 which was codenamed 
Sarge prior to release.

The 4.0 release candidate is currently available if you use Debian 
"testing". A freeze of the base system has already taken place as 
part of the preparation process prior to formal release of 4.0 as stable. 

Changes to the release candidate are being hand moderated at the moment 
- packages and package changes are being individually approved 
if they change what will be released as 4.0.

Some bugs remain to be fixed: testing is still going on. A long freeze 
is not anticipated but your guess is as good as anyone's as to the exact 
day/date/time it will be released - there is usually a Debian sweepstake 
of some sort to guess the _actual_ time of release.

Once 4.0 is released as stable, the new "testing" will be known by the 
code name Lenny. On past form, a couple of months of mayhem will then 
ensue in testing as people try to upload new versions of packages, bug 
fixes etc. which were held up by the release freeze which safeguards a 
stable release :)

Hope this helps,

Andy

> 
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Re: Measuring Debian progress

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Jan 07, 2007 at 01:59:35PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 07, 2007 at 08:04:31PM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> > 
> > * Total number of non-pseudo-packages that bugs.debian.org knows about.
> > * Number of open bugs, in total, and for each severity, and a count of
> > all non-wishlist, non-wontfix bugs.
 ...
> > * Number of bugs opened or closed since the previous report.
> > 
> (Snip mathematical proof of "Bogonic Quality Numbers" :)
> 
> I would like to offer my completely worthless 2 cents here.
> 
> I think that the aggregate statistics are OK.  It will help to identify
> trends in the distribution as a whole.  They are not perfect, but then
> no metric really is.  

Once upon a time, I worked in the employment office, paying people 
unemployment benefit. An office senior manager retired: asked for some 
good advice he said, more or less "Never trust the official figures ..." 
and then recounted that, as a very junior manager in a small office many 
years before, he had been asked to try to fiddle figures for a month - 
to try to get round the system as an official test of how easy it would be to 
defraud/mislead the systems, audits, checks and balances. It was 
surprisingly easy - if you needed to employ young workers under 25, 
you'd concentrate on them to the detriment of everybody else for a week, 
if you needed to show good figures for disabled clients, you'd only 
interview disabled people for a week and postpone interviews with others 
... Needless to say, the example was a good one: just because you _can_ 
prove anything with figures, doesn't mean you _should_ :)

> 
> There are lots of other issues, but I will not go into those now.
> 
> Now, my opinion on the "Bogonic Quality Numbers" is that they should be
> left out entirely.  The only thing worse than metrics is useless or
> incorrect metrics.  Because of the nature of software and the wide range
> of packages in Debian, any attempt to assign a quality metric to a
> particular package is probably not worthwhile.
> 

Anything that will help get an overall picture will help, IMHO :)

Thanks Lars, for some good ideas,

All the best,

Andy



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Re: Please expulse Frans Pop from debian, ... was : [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Re: This is getting ridiculous ...]

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Mon, Apr 02, 2007 at 02:20:58PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> Hi, please read the following, and this may give you more of an insight about
> the situation.
> 
Sven,

En franc,ais mauvais, afin que vous y comprenne: taisez en donc s'il 
vous plait si cela vous soit encore possible. On a deja trop entendu du tout. 
Prenez-le hors des listes Debian s.v.p. Merci donc.

Amicalement - car je sais bien que vous etes aussi gentil que sensible.

Andy

[In bad French, so that you can understand it: please shut up if you 
are still able to do so. Everyone's heard too much about it all already. 
Please take it out of the Debian lists. Thanks.

In friendship - because I know that you are both polite and sensitive.

Andy]

 


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Re: Help...information please

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 02:57:43PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> 
>    I realize that I may have the wrong place, however I'm hoping that  
> I might also have the right people. The information I seek is this: Is  
> Libranet 2.8 or 3 still available? 

Unfortunately, Libranet was a father and son company. When the father 
sadly died, the son felt unable to carry the business on.

> If so how can I obtain it?

Up until last month, the Linux Emporium had some 2.8 disks. Other 
vendors may have a few left. Essentially, the distribution died, the 
website is gone long since - even if you could find an installation 
disk, you'd have nothing and no support thereafter.

> All I know is that it was based on Debian. Google and like company carry  
> information dated back to 2003. 

It was based on Debian but with some innovative user-friendly features 
for the time. The nearest today is probably Mepis / Ubuntu - desktop 
distributions. The innovations were closed source so have gone.

It is said to be in the Debian  
> archives, however not being an archivist I do not know how to search  
> this fine well of information. All I know what to do is ask, and this  
> I am doing. Any assistance you can give me I will trually appreciate.
> 
>   Thank you for your time, patience and anticipated assistance.
> 
>   Ray Gagne. 

Hope this helps,

Andy

Re: Supported or Certified Hardware

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 02:04:34PM -0400, Mike Houle wrote:
[Reformatted to remove HTML]

> Hi,
> I am a QA engineer at Sun Microsystems and have been tasked
> with looking into supporting Debian on some of our
> systems. Many other OS vendors have a certification program for
> hardware and systems, where a series of tests are run and upon 
> completion, the system/hardware is posted to a list of "certified 
> hardware" for that OS. Is there any such program for Debian?

Speaking purely as my opinion - and not necessarily on the part of the 
project or the Sparc port developers :)

No, not as such. Debian is an association of volunteer developers
and our OS is supported by volunteers. Debian prides itself on running 
Linux kernels on a wide variety of hardware  - from supercomputers to 
PDAs to network attached storage devices - and on maintaining 
application ports to eleven or twelve machine architectures. You can run 
an entire distribution on Sun / Alpha / Intel 32 bit / AMD/Intel 64 bit 
with barely a change. (We're currently having difficulty supporting some 
of the older 32 bit Sun machines beyond the current Debian stable - but 
that's as much a function of kernel support and lack of older machines 
as anything. It's possibly the same if you want to get Solaris 10 onto 
a Sun Sparc 20 at this point.) 

 Debian should run on newer Sun Sparc and Intel/AMD 
processor-based hardware with no particular difficulty: because there is 
no Debian hardware bias/particular commercial axe to grind in favour of 
one hardware vendor or another, there should be no "business interests" 
obstacles. 

> If so, can someone please provide me with information or a contact to 
> get involved in this process? If there isn't a process for 
> certification, is there anywhere that a list of "supported" hardware 
> exists, and how could a systems vendor get their products on this 
> list? I would like to learn more about what certification program, if 
> any, exists, and what it would require to certify systems for Debian

We don't normally do "Certified to run Debian" stickers - if someone 
has hardware that looks interesting and can loan us some, there's likely 
to be a Debian port if enough people are interested. IBM loaned time on
an s390, HP have loaned time, employed Debian developers on staff and 
helped Debian with donations to help maintain the ports for HP-PA 
and Itanium architectures. 

Since Debian isn't in the business of selling boxed sets / commercial 
support / industry partnerships with competing OS vendors / middleware, 
training or applications we don't have the pressure of being a vendor 
per se - but we do support our users - they, in turn may come to Sun to 
say "I'm thinking of running Debian on Sun hardware - do _you_ support 
Debian on your hardware". 

As far as I can see, this is exactly the line that HP are now taking - 
they will support Debian on HP hardware in some configurations and will 
supply help to get it installed - they've "self certified" because the 
customer demand is there and HP have accepted that the support burden 
for Debian on their hardware is feasible for them, given that they also 
support other Linuxes. Dell, by contrast, have taken the initial 
tentative step of partnering with a commercial Debian derivative, 
providing a minimal level of "it works on our hardware" certification and 
effectively passing support burden on to Canonical - at least in the short 
term.

> Mike
>  
> Mike Houle
> OS Certification Lead
> Global Design Group
> 

All the best,

Andy

[Possibly better to follow this up on the general debian-devel mailing 
list for Debian developers or the specific debian-sparc list - see the 
main Debian page for mailing list subscription instructions.]


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Re: How? Where? What?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2008 at 01:36:49PM +, Toni Olsson wrote:
> 
> Hello!
>  
> I´m not the kind of person who reads alla your list about the contents in 
> your program, I just want to install it without any complications. Now I just 
> want from you one (1) link to download it from, not twenty.
>  
> Please help me out here and I´m glad to check your program out and install it 
> in one of my computers for evaluation. If there´s a good result I´m also 
> installing it in my daughters computer.
>  
>  
> So thanks in advance and thanks for giving it to the people for free.
>  
>  
>  
> Regards
>  
> Toni Olsson
> _
> Spara, redigera och organisera dina foton enkelt med Photo Gallery!
> http://get.live.com/photogallery/overview


http://www.se.debian.org may help, as may ftp://ftp.se.debian.org ??

(Assuming that I'm reading your .sig as ?? Swedish ?? )

Andy

Re: Debian and non-free

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 11:24:18PM +0200, David Paleino wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:16:48 -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 06:12:08PM +0200, David Paleino wrote:
> > No.  I agree with you, and actually proposed a General Resolution 8
> > years ago to get rid of non-free software:
> > 
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2000/06/msg00549.html
> > http://www.debian.org/vote/2000/vote_0008
> > 

I seem to recall this earlier, in 1999 when RMS first raised this:

Vanity googling amacater and RMS revealed the thread, including comments 
by Ian Lynagh.

The installer now does almost exactly what I asked then :)

Essentially, this has gone backwards and forwards for years. Although 
David's wording is good, now is not the time - we need to get Lenny out.

gNewsense being based on Ubuntu (itself non-free from RMS' viewpoint) 
seems just plain wrong to me - but that's me. It is notable that Mark 
Shuttleworth has effectively ceased work on Gobuntu which is the Ubuntu 
parallel. 

> Instead of removing non-free, I'd support the idea of non-free.org, and if 
> that
> will make the FSF endorse us again, why not? :)
> 
> Non-free is there just because the free counterparts aren't optimal. Someday
> these will, and non-free will just disappear from Debian :)
> 

At this point, the pain of setting up parallel infrastructure and so on 
will outweigh the gain. Situations with binary firmware blobs are 
becoming better, though the path to full freedom is probably asymptotic 
:)

Andy - running GNU/Linux :)




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Re: FOSDEM videos released

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 10:52:06PM +, Serafeim Zanikolas wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 06:09:11PM +0100, Holger Levsen wrote [edited]:
> > blogging (1-203) life; title=FOSDEM videos released
> > [..] And second, I 
> > have no real clue how useful our streaming efforts are, I believe the 
> > recordings are useful, but in both cases feedback from people who find 
> > them useful is appreciated! Covering FOSDEM is certainly a lot of fun, 
> > but 
> > it's also a lot of work and leaves not much room for seeing other parts 
> > of 
> > the conference. So a short reply (I'll post this to d-d-a with reply-to 
> > set to -project) will be very much appreciated! :)
> 
> Yes, streaming is most definitely appreciated by those of us that weren't
> lucky enough to be around!
> 
> Many thanks,
> Serafeim
> 
Streaming good: downloads good: timeliness excellent: quality superb

All very best,

AndyC

> 
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Removal of non-free etc.

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Hi all,

I've just waded through 250+ posts.  I'm a developer and also an
active Debian user at work. I work with a bunch of programmers for 
Windows/Linux/Solaris - I'm their tech. supprort guy, so I get to
do some sysadmin. work, building disks, fixing faulty hardware - 
the works.

If I get the choice of Linux, I install Debian - it's on about 7
out of 150 machines now.  Another 2 have Red Hat, one has Corel,
we've a diehard Slackware user - and so on.

Attitudes vary: I've just built an internet machine and a firewall.
My boss - an NT programmer - wanted me to only install from a boxed
set "silver disks - no gold CD's allowed here"  When I tried to reason
that the latest "boxed set" was the O'Reilly/VA/SGI set from Sept. 99
and that I'd need to do a huge update to get to reasonably current AND
that I'd have to FTP Netscape - he blew up.  [Four gold CD's later, I'd
saved a 200M download and built two machines in a day.]  "What do you
mean Netscape isn't free"

Debian quality is outstanding - one of our guys installed Corel -
root can run Netscape by design regardless of security issues.

Debian support is good - another installed Mandrake  6.5 and discovered
to his cost that they only support the latest and greatest - he downlaoded
mamy MB of software over the net only to discover that it was for version
7.0.  Apt won't let you do that.

Another insisted I install RedHat because it had a GUI to do the network
config. and he couldn't be bothered to spend 1/2 hour learning ifconfig
amd manually editing files.

All these guys are pragmatic - they just want it to work. Technical 
excellence doesn't cut ice with them (though one of the Solaris guys 
said "We use Linux when we can because you can do so  much more with it")
DFSG / Social Contract concerns don't matter. This is the real world - and
it's a world in which Debian excels.

I know that Debian main is _Debian_ and that the rest isn't part of the
distribution - I've got posts from the last time this was raised when RMS
got fairly involved.  

Contrib / non-US / non-free are all restricted for use in some way.
Leaving aside the mention of DFSG-freeness for tne moment - put a 
bloody big README on the top level of the FTP mirror and on the Web
site and its mirrors. "Debian's distribution of GNU Linux is to
be found in the subdirectories marked /main. Any other software
packaged as .deb format is not to be regarded as forming part of 
the Debian distribution but is provided as ancillary to that distribution.
The packages not in the Debian main distribution may be subject to restrictions on 
use/licensing or export." or something of that sort.

Create a directory called RESTRICTED and branch contrib / non-free / noon-US from 
under it.It would be nice to implement package pools for woody and to seek 
cooperation with Corel / Stormix to include their patches/non-free parts in 
appropriate subdirectories in this structure. It would certainly help people moving
from Stormix/Corel to Debian and make it clear to us how these differ from Debian 
proper. [Stormix admit that their current beta is following potato closely for example 
- Storm Rain is basically slink with current patches and security fixes applied.]

Apropos the "point users at suitable free alternatives"  school of thought.
If they insist on Netscape / xv they will install it if available. If not 
they'll dump Debian. Non-free will wither on the vine - eventually - but
its use now is a means to an end.

Now can we release potato please - I need a packaged boxed set to please
my bosses.  Although the test cycle one silver CD's are a start, they 
won't be happy until I can put in a purchase order to an "Official Debian"
supplier.

Thanks for all,

Andy
  


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Re: Debian's Future in the Coporate World

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2005 at 11:28:38AM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
> also sprach Atwal, Steve <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005.03.09.1847 +0100]:
> > - I've been using versions of Debian (namely Libranet) on 5-6 Linux servers 
> > at
> > work for years. I'm facing increasing opposition from senior management to
> > justify using Debian as opposed to RedHat due to the fact that most major
> > hardware and software vendors do not list Debian as being supported by their
> > product, e.g. Plone, IBM hardware, etc.
> 
> Plone lists Debian as the first supported Linux distribution.
> 
Most stuff can be made to work on Debian. This is, potentially,
different with other distributions. An install of an Oracle package on
RHEL 3, for example, forced me to downgrade the system C compiler and
libraries just to be able to install - and Oracle support RH well.
> 
> > - I'm also facing increasing opposition since Debian doesn't seem
> > to have "as nice a GUI interface" as RedHat for performing major
> > functions such as Samba setup, clusters, networking, etc. And yes,
> > we are using WebMin.
> 
Having worked with RHEL 3 and 4 recently and also installed SuSE 9.2 -
some of the libraries and functionality I needed just weren't there.  An
install of Debian showing CJK functionality using EMACS with Mule
extensions was the only one to show all the fonts correctly, for example
- and Debian includes three or four different methods for CJK input, all of
  which work.
> 
> Also, make sure they get the message that you are the one to have to
> deal with the system, not them (subtly, not directly). Tell them
> that you are way more confident to be able to meet their
> requirements in terms of the services the machines offer when you
> actually know the machines and know what's going on where and when.

This is _precisely_ why I use Debian.
> 
Update a system on the fly using apt-get update ; then do the
corresponding update with RHN, for example.

HTH,

Andy



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Re: non-free but distributable packages and kernel firmware

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 01:47:06AM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 09, 2005 at 01:17:02AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > Henning Makholm wrote:
>  
> > There's probably also the "free-use" and "nonprofit-use" properties -- 
> > can I use this package without having to worry about the license, can I 
> > use it at home, or at work as well? Maybe:
> > 
> > free-use
> > free-dist
> > free-local-mod / free-dist-mod
> > 
> > nonprofit-use
> > nonprofit-dist
> > nonprofit-local-mod / nonprofit-dist-mod

Charities and other "non-profit" situations, CD's "not for profit" and
so on.

non-commercial-use
non-commercial-dist
non-commercial-local-mod / non-commercial-dist-mod

Personal use where work use requires commercial licence, for example.

> > 
> > fsf-free

Should this rather be GFDL-free ??

> > osi-free
> > free-software / free-software-and-firmware

national restrictions / age restrictions

e.g.violent games in Germany/Brazil, non-Islam religion in Saudi
Arabia?? 
> 
> This proposal is the best thing I've seen in this whole debate in years.
> 
> 
> Michael
> 
> -- 
> Michael Banck
> Debian Developer
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.advogato.org/person/mbanck/diary.html
> 
> 
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Re: questions

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 10:18:52PM -0700, Andrew Swerdlow wrote:
> Hi I just have a few questions, which I could not quite find on the web
> site. 
> 
> 1) how many active developer work on debian?
> 
Round about 1000, spread worldwide. [A few are relatively inactive,
there is always an amount of maintainer churn, with new people joining
and a few retiring. Some Debian developers are much more visible on
the mailing lists than others, for example, so it's not easy to see
just how many there are at any one time.]

> 2) How can I contribute code to the project? (what is the process)

Read mailing lists for a month or so, perhaps contribute bug fixes.
Apply through the Debian New Maintainer process: look at www.debian.org
and check out the Developers link as a starting point.

> 
> 3) what is the organizational structure of the organization?
> 
All developers are effectively equal. Some take on onerous tasks like
being ftpmasters / release managers / application managers for new
maintainers. Some of these roles are now being taken up by teams of 
developers. The Debian project leader is elected by the developers:
[his] - we haven't had a woman yet - role is to be a spokesperson /
point of contact and whatever else we need him to be. In general,
Debian is NOT hierarchical or heavily structured :) Every DD is a
volunteer.

If you're interested in becoming a developer, it may help to read
the debian mentors list - which is designed for people to help and
advise prospective developers. While it is natural to post to
debian-project at first sight, this may not be the most appropriate
list.

Andy
> 
> Thank you
> 
> Andrew S
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Founding moment for Debian

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 09:15:42AM +0200, Martin Schulze wrote:
> 
> See here:
> http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=CBusDD.MIK%40unix.portal.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain
> 
> Regards,
> 
>   Joey
> 
Joey,

Thanks for this :)  It's inspiring to see that Debian started out as
it goes on.  It is worrying ,however, that it was intended to ease
the burden for those without 'Net access.  (As someone downloading
nearly 3MB of package information each night to get my update fix
that sentence is now particularly ironic :) )

Have shared the link with a colleague - who will probably post it
to my local LUG.

Have a great 20030816

Andy

Re: question

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 04:16:13PM -0400, Thompson-Laurin, Harriet wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am a systems analyst taking a course at the University of Phoenix on Unix.  
> My teacher has assigned a project in which I need to obtain specific 
> information about Debian.  Although I searched your website, I wasn't able to 
> find out if Debian runs on Pentium 4's.
> 
> Specifically, I am to find information regarding Debian regarding:
>   Cost 
Free to download.  Free updates over the network.  Available on pressed
CD's at minimal cost. [7 CD's needed for "stable" 10 for "testing" 
probably 11 for "unstable"] CD1 is all you need to install a minimal 
system so, say, $2 US from Cheapbytes.  A UK distributor used to give 
out CD1 free to people who requested it.
>   Market share
Overall Linux market share is ~5%  However, it's freely copyable so,
I have 7 machines here on three different hardware architectures and
three at work - none "licensed" with any vendor - all run Debian.
A very recent Netcraft survey suggests that Debian is second in terms of 
Linux webservers on the net.
>   Hardware requirements
386 with 12M of memory upwards.  A minimal install is around 100MB, full 
install for a desktop might need 2-3GB (but that would include 
image viewers, file converters, several flavours of editor and so on).  
A machine running major services and acting as a primary server for a 
large corporation ?
[Plus any of 10 other architectures, from Motorola M68000 through MIPS,
to DEC Alpha or ARM - PDA to supercomputer]

>   File Processing
Databases? [Postgresql/MySQL] File editing?? MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint 
compatibility [Openoffice.org/GNUmeric]
>   Programming capabilities
Name a programming language, it's probably here somewhere.
>   Availability of application software
Via the 'Net.  Not as widely supported for e.g. Rational Rose/Oracle as 
the RedHat Enterprise edition - the biggest commercial vendors want 
minimal numbers of distributions to support - but virtually anything can 
be made to run.  HP use Debian GNU/Linux extensively in house - if 
nothing else, because nothing else runs on HP PA-Risc.
 
>   User interface
Command line / KDE / GNOME / any one of about twenty other window 
managers :)
> 
> Then I am to apply this information to a scenario in which a company 
>is "facing the dilemma of upgrading the desktop PC's to run either 
> Windows XP Professional or Linux platform (Debian)".  In the teacher's 
> scenario, the following was provided about the mythical company's 
> current hardware:
Note: desktops.  [The question is slightly ambiguous - I'm assuming
you don't need each machine to dual boot WinXP Pro _and_ Debian. If
you do need dual boot then, as stated by someone else, you may as well
junk 750 PC's as being unable to run XP.  So you have say a $450 
computer x 750 + OS and application costs - $750,000 plus the costs of
upgrading the machines running Win2k to XP]
> 
> 400 pc's running Windows 95/98 with a Pentium CPU, 64mb RAM and 2Gb hard 
> drive and below or equal to 300 Mhz.
Will run Debian.  May not run everything ultra fast.  Could be used as X 
terminals and "dumb clients" being fed from a server.  See, for example 
how the Florida city of Largo has done this using LTSP [Linux Terminal 
Server Project].
> 350 pc's running Windows NT with a Pentium 2 CPU, 128 RAM and 4 GB hard drive
Will run Debian and a full environment. [Would barely run XP at all]
> 150 pc's running Windows 2000 with a Pentium 3 CPU, 256 RAM and 20 GB hard 
> drive
> 100 pc's running Windows XP with a Pentium 4 CPU, 256 RAM and 40 GB hard 
> drive.
>
Both the above hardware specs. would be fine with whatever you threw at 
them.

Assuming the "infrastructure servers" for such a large organisation are 
still Windows based, you'd need to look into Samba.  KDE and Gnome now
have Windows Remote Desktop client capability to connect to Windows 
terminal servers.  If they're Linux based servers or you get to set them 
up afresh - no problem at all. Linux machines may be able to replace
Windows machines as domain controllers by using Samba. [No licensing 
costs :) ]

Bonus points - the German Interior Ministry has just
published a major document outlining the suggested changeover from 
Windows -> Linux.  It's 400 pages odd of technical German, but it 
outlines the whole process, including changing over applications.
Trawl Google for it, it was also mentioned on Linux Weekly News as
having been announced at LinuxWorld Expo.

If you have an organisation like that in the Real World, you also have 
hidden costs.  

Currently, you have five generations of Windows software - three
now unsupported by Microsoft wef July 2003. You have Windows 
hardware folk/technical support who are probably tearing their hair out 
trying to keep 1000 desktops running on a daily basis.  You have three 
or four different UI's and probably three or four generations of app software 
like MS Word in all likelihood.  [The oldes

Re: Skolelinux and the "Debian Labs" idea

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2003 at 07:25:37AM -0700, Derek Neighbors wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> I think great caution should be exercised here.  One thing Debian
> appears to take very seriously is it's social contract and the
> evaluation of the licenses of the packages it puts in main.  I think
> that Debian should not blindly jump on an "increased" marketing
> opportunity solely because it is available.  I think this mail is proof
> that it is going through a review/thought process which is great. :)
> 
Skolelinux Debian _Associates_ perhaps ?? Debian Labs makes it seem
they develop/test on Debian's behalf and at Debian's request - which is
not quite corect.

> 
> The problem becomes, once you open the gate for them, have you opened
> pandora's box?  What happens when someone who you dont like what they do
> or the people involved with the project and they want to use the Debian
> name?

Agreed. We have enough trouble with rogue domain registrations and
the like.

> 
> | It's quite unfortunate that they cannot use the Debian name because of
> | this reason since the Skolelinux project does an excellent job and
> | could generate good publicity for Debian when they emphasize their
> | relationship to Debian through their name.  There are many good Debian
> 
Alternatively -

If they're Debian developers and a valid Debian sub-project -
why not "sponsor" them in the same way that the FSF once sponsored
us and suggest a name change for the project to Debian Skolelinux ??

> This will be no easy task mind you.  From what I have seen on the
> debian-legal list and debian-policy list it is hard to get a large
> number of Debian developers to agree on such matters, but I think it is
> the only way you can approach it without shooting yourself in the foot.

Too bloody right :)
> 
> | I would like to ask for comments on this idea.  Are people comfortable
> | with organizations calling themselves " Debian Labs" assuming
> | that they are doing Debian related work and generally conform to a set
> | of guidelines (which are yet to be developed).  Also, is there anyone
> | interested in helping develop these guidelines?
> 
> I would be interested in being involved in such guidelines.
> 
As would I.

Andy

Re: About the broken jigdos and gluck's load

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 03:02:45PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> [ Note CC: and Reply-To: to d-project ]
> 
> On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 03:25:03PM +0200, Mattias Wadenstein wrote:
> >On Thu, 14 Oct 2004, Colin Watson wrote:
> >>
> >Ok, so do we have a better idea of a good machine to use for CD builds? Or 
> >should we just keep on using gluck, despite it being rather slow?
> 
> Gluck currently looks to be too slow to be at all useful; see Manty's
> earlier mail. The easiest way to get CD/DVD builds done may be to move
> them off to separate machine(s) altogether.
> 
What do you need - is a P4 1.6GHz with about 200G of disk enough.
Connectivity is 512 up / 3M download (I think) and, in a separate
message to stevem, I've asked how to set up a full Debian mirror.

Machine is one of mine housed at home: can be on 365*24*7 if need be.


> To do builds in an acceptable time needs a reasonable-spec machine,
> ideally with fast disks. Disk performance falls through the floor as
> more people start using the same spindles, so we're much better off if
> we can get a dedicated machine or, failing that, a dedicated set of
> disks for the mirror and build space.
> 

HTH,

Andy
> -- 
> Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.[EMAIL 
> PROTECTED]
> "Further comment on how I feel about IBM will appear once I've worked out
>  whether they're being malicious or incompetent. Capital letters are 
> forecast."
>  Matthew Garrett, http://www.livejournal.com/users/mjg59/30675.html

Re: Debian, lists and discrimination

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

> 
> Yep, I think it behoves us to consider that as well.  As I said in a
> previous message
> (http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2004/08/msg00053.html), we should
> examine what changes to the project's culture need to take place, and
> whether those would be net-beneficial.  It might turn out that the
> rough-and-tumble, highly competitive and confrontational nature of the
> project is what creates the excellence we have, and the contributions we
> would gain as a result would not remedy that.  If so, we would be crazy to
> change.
> 
Debian doesn't discriminate against people living with
disabilities (Espy springs most readily to mind: as a wheelchair user,
I've experienced no reaction at all).

Debian doesn't practise religous discrimination: we have Christians,
including ministers, of all varieties. We have atheists. We also have
(at least) Jews, Hindus and a Baha'i (??spelling??) but that's
immaterial. Religion is, thankfully, a private matter and doesn't
necessarily impact on code quality. Ditto for sexual
life/preference/orientation - it's basically immaterial if the person
concerned can code.  Show us the code is the main argument here.

Debian doesn't have many women developers. The existing developers can be
argumentative, difficult or obtuse - but we are all, undeniably,
brilliant :)  Many arguments within Debian turn into flamewars and name
calling - others don't. I'm not sure there is a common factor. Positive
discrimination to bring women into the Project would be and is wrong:
I'd rather see debian-women as a means of levelling the playing field
and providing a place to discuss the issues that arise.

There is an Anglophone bias - there is also a Northern European/North 
American bias in the distribution of developers.  On the other hand, I can't
force someone on Pitcairn Island to run Debian just so that I can claim
Debian in one of the world's smallest territories. With initiatives like
Impi Linux in S. Africa, there's no obvious reason why we shouldn't get 
Sotho/Venda speaking developers, for example, but we might not see them
often on English speaking lists.

Net connectivity, international bandwidth and cost may all play a part.  
Could we get good Debian mirrors/machines into S. America or S.Africa, 
for example (or persuade Telstra to pay for bandwidth for 
Australia/New Zealand)?

> However, I don't think we have to turn the project into corn syrup in order
> to gain the willing contribution of those we are unknowingly hostile to.  I,
> for one, would be unlikely to continue to contribute if we had to constantly
> mince words or participate in group hugs with every bug report.  Luckily, I
> don't think we're going to have to go that far.  What has to be done is
> still to be worked out in large part, however, so we shouldn't go making
> assumptions either way about end-game effects, I guess.
> 
We don't have to mince words/group hug. We should use a measure of
restraint and show respect. There is also a line to be drawn between
"Debian professional life" (to coin a phrase) and the standards expected
within this community and personal beliefs/biases/prejudices - it is always 
as well to remember that other people may have good and valid reasons for 
thinking/acting differently before
you flame them :)

Just my 0.02 Euro 

Andy

Re: stable (11.3) Not yet planned (likely to be February 2022)

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2022 at 01:06:13PM +0100, phil995511 - wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> The version 11.3 of Debian was expected for the month of February 2022.
> 
> https://release.debian.org/
> 
> Unfortunately this date forecast was not respected.
> 
> Can we expect an upcoming release of this version 11.3 including bug and
> security issues fixes ?
> 
> Regards.
> 
> Philippe

There are discussions going on between the release team, press team,
Debian media team (who make the CD/DVD etc. images) to get an agreed
date soon - at the end of this month or the first couple of weekends
in April. In all likelihood, there will also be a point release
of Debian 10 (Buster) at the same time as well. 

I hope this is helpful.

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater

Re: Debian Update Cycle

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 10:27:42PM +0100, phil995511 - wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Don't you think it would be smart to integrate all the updates contained in
> the Backports directory with each new minor update of our favorite OS ? For
> example for the versions 11.3, 11.4, etc ?
> 

In my (limited) view: no, this would not be a useful idea if we wanted
to maintain some degree of stability / backwards compatibility between
point releases.

The packages in backports generally are less general they are also very
much less tested. The net effect would be to render each point release
(roughly every three months or so) potentially less stable than the last.

> This would make Debian easily compatible with all the new devices
> available, without having to use the line of code too much... it would
> therefore make Debian more accessible to all non-experienced Linux users.
> 

It generally takes quite a time to make sure that Debian works on new
devices - certainly longer than a point release. Updates once every two
years on a major release seem sensible. [And some new devices never
achieve Debian support - that's in the way of things, especially, say
some with minority architectures].

> This would also facilitate the work of updating packages such as the Linux
> kernel, which would hardly need to be in the LTS version to be used on
> Debian and therefore maintained for many years by the Debian and Kernel.org
> maintainers.
> 

You need a kernel maintained for about five years by the time you reach the
end of ELTS: "shiny new stuff" is always sligthly problematic.

> It would seem to me to strengthen the overall security of Debian, with less
> effort/labor.
> 

Sadly, the same amount of labour to package and increased amounts of labour
to maintain distribution-wide I fear.
> Best regards.
> 
> Philippe

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater

Re: Debian Update Cycle

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 10:00:16PM +, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

Bad form to follow up to myself - but the second list was debian-kernel NOT
debian-boot

> On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 10:27:42PM +0100, phil995511 - wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > Don't you think it would be smart to integrate all the updates contained in
> > the Backports directory with each new minor update of our favorite OS ? For
> > example for the versions 11.3, 11.4, etc ?
> > 
> 
> In my (limited) view: no, this would not be a useful idea if we wanted
> to maintain some degree of stability / backwards compatibility between
> point releases.
> 
> The packages in backports generally are less general they are also very
> much less tested. The net effect would be to render each point release
> (roughly every three months or so) potentially less stable than the last.
> 
> > This would make Debian easily compatible with all the new devices
> > available, without having to use the line of code too much... it would
> > therefore make Debian more accessible to all non-experienced Linux users.
> > 
> 
> It generally takes quite a time to make sure that Debian works on new
> devices - certainly longer than a point release. Updates once every two
> years on a major release seem sensible. [And some new devices never
> achieve Debian support - that's in the way of things, especially, say
> some with minority architectures].
> 
> > This would also facilitate the work of updating packages such as the Linux
> > kernel, which would hardly need to be in the LTS version to be used on
> > Debian and therefore maintained for many years by the Debian and Kernel.org
> > maintainers.
> > 
> 
> You need a kernel maintained for about five years by the time you reach the
> end of ELTS: "shiny new stuff" is always sligthly problematic.
> 
> > It would seem to me to strengthen the overall security of Debian, with less
> > effort/labor.
> > 
> 
> Sadly, the same amount of labour to package and increased amounts of labour
> to maintain distribution-wide I fear.
> > Best regards.
> > 
> > Philippe
> 
> All the very best, as ever,
> 
> Andy Cater
> 

A quiet reminder: please be considerate.

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Readers of Debian-project

This is a quiet reminder that debian-project and all Debian mailing lists are
governed by the mailing lists code of conduct and the main Debian code of 
conduct.

* Please be considerate of each other: assume good faith and treat each other
  with the respect that each of us deserves.

* People can make unintentioned mistakes: we're all human. Pointing out that
  a mistake has been made need not be a finger-pointing exercise or an excuse
  for a large number of emails.

* It shouldn't need twenty people to make a point or start arguments and
  counter arguments. If someone has already written what you would have wanted
  to write, that's fine: in many cases you can safely leave it there.
  The list is moderated: the volunteers moderating the list and everyone
  reading the list will appreciate you for not providing more to read through.

  With thanks: the Community Team have recently put together some thoughts
  and considerations expanding on the Code of Conduct and giving some examples
  that may be useful.
  https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct_interpretation

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater

[On behalf of the Debian Community Team]

Re: several questions /Debian Source Code build 11.3/related to Unrestricted Encryption Source Code Notification Commodity

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Apr 13, 2022 at 04:44:02PM +0300, Екатерина Лапшина wrote:
> Good afternoon!
> 
> 

Good afternoon, Ekaterina
> 
> We are planning to use Debian Source Code build 11.3 (the “Software”) in
> Russia and have several questions related to Unrestricted Encryption Source
> Code Notification Commodity (
> https://www.debian.org/legal/notificationforarchive, “Notification”) and
> export restrictions of the US Export Control Act ("EAR").
> 
> 

Only source code: no binaries? The source code requirement is an old one - see
below - and effectively disappeared a long time ago.

This all dates initiallly from 200/2001 - Ben Collins was the Debian Project
Leader then.

The legal opinion then from US lawyers is at 
https://www.debian.org/legal/cryptoinmain.en.html.

At one point, we maintained cryptographic software in a separate "non-US" 
archive. That's not been necessary for approximately 15 or 20 years.

> 
> In your Notification you mention that Debian is free access code
> (accordingly we suppose that it can be EAR99 or Not subject to EAR). At the
> same time you refer to the exception TSU specified in Part 740.13 EAR
> (however, paragraph e(1) is missing in the text we saw
> https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-15/subtitle-B/chapter-VII/subchapter-C/part-740/section-740.13).
> You also refer to the cryptography functionality thank can trigger
> exception ENC as well
> 

The review by the NSA went long ago. Debian has treated the code as being
exportable worldwide but has not normally accepted new official mirrors in 
countries subject to US sanctions like Iran, Syria or Cuba.

I'm unaware of Russian law at the moment: it is possible that import and
use in Russia would be legitimate under Russian law.
> 
> 
> Accordingly we would like to know whether:
> 
> (1)   the Software can be freely distributed, including in Russia, due to
> being EAR99 or Not subject to EAR
>

This appears to be the case, at least de facto.

> (2)   the Software is subject to other ECCN (please specify, which one) and
> can be distributed only subject to exceptions (TSU, ENC or other - please
> specify)
> 

Various people have asked about ECCN over the years: it seems that our 
software is acceptable for US export and import. I am NOT a registered lawyer
- none of this should be taken as legal advice.
> 
> 
> Thank you

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater

Re: several questions /Debian Source Code build 11.3/related to Unrestricted Encryption Source Code Notification Commodity

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2022 at 04:27:28PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> On Wed, 2022-04-13 at 14:14 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> 
> > I'm unaware of Russian law at the moment: it is possible that import and
> > use in Russia would be legitimate under Russian law.
> 
> There already are Russian Debian derivatives like Astra Linux, so
> presumably this is fine.
> 
> https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census/AstraLinux
> 
> -- 
> bye,
> pabs
> 
> https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

Ekaterina,

To follow up to this:

https://www.debian.org/mirror/list suggests that there are already six
mirrors within the Russian Federation while one of them is an official
country top-level mirror of Debian.

Bandwidth varies: I'd suggest contacting the administrators there
to see how usable it is. You may also find that a local university
or higher education institution may have a private Debian mirror.

ftp.ru.debian.org appears to be at campus.mephi.ru
[National Research Nuclear University : MEphI] and the 
administrator's email is mirror-priv...@ut.mephi.ru 

That suggests that there is no particular problem either from
Debian or from within Russia. Any situation may change but you
will probably get the best information by talking to Russians
using/administering/responsible for Debian systems.

https://www.debian.org/international/Russian suggests two
Debian mailing lists. We also appreciate that not all our
documentation / websites / Wiki pages are translated but
https://www.debian.org/index.ru.html may also give you
useful information in Russian if this is of benefit.

With every good wish,

Andrew Cater

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

[Poster is cc'd by me because he is not subscribed to the debian-project list]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2022 at 03:17:03PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> On 9/14/2022 12:22 PM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > People of debian-user :)
> >
> > This thread does seem to be degenerating slightly into accusations and
> > name-calling, justified or not. Without prejudice to anyone: please may
> > I remind you that debian-user and all Debian lists and IRC channels are
> > subject to the Debian Code of Conduct.
> >
> > It would be very much appreciated if disagreements could be resolved
> > constructively and in a positive way. Ad hominem attacks don't help
> > anyone here. Taking a breath / walking away from the keyboard for half
> > a day might also help get a sense of perspective in any mailing list
> > opinion difference. (And yes, I know about https://xkcd.com/386/ and
> > the difficulty that brings).
> >
> > With every good wish, as ever,
> >
> > Andy Cater
> >
> > [For and on behalf of the Debian Community Team]
> >
> 
> Thanks for this, Andy, I admit I did get caught up in behavior that appears
> as trolling.
> 
> As you point out, the aforementioned thread only slightly has degenerated
> and I think there are some useful discussions in it despite the problems.
> One legitimate topic for discussion that arose in that thread is:
> 
> Are only Debian Developers with voting rights (DDs) considered to be members
> of the Debian community, or are the users also members of the Debian 
> community?
> 

Hi Chuck,

I'm going to assume good intent and answer you as best I can. At its heart,
Debian is a "do-ocracy" and you get out of it what you're able to put into
it. We're all volunteers and that has to be remembered.

"The community" in its broadest sense is the developers, maintainers,
contributors and the users - everyone building and using Debian for whatever
purpose. You don't normally get recognition just for using Debian but you
build up a reputation by contributing. 

You don't have to be a Debian maintainer or a Debian developer to contribute.
You can file good bug reports - or check reports opened by other people and
reply if your experience is similar/you're using identical hardware, say, and
the bug bites you. You can contribute to the Wiki, you can contribute 
positively to the mailing lists. You don't get a vote in general resolutions
(GRs) but you're involved. "Drive by contributors" often gradually decide they
want to become a Debian Maintainer. That means going through a formal process
to check on the sorts of things you can contribute. From there, the step
to being a Debian Developer is relatively small. At that point, you get a 
formal vote on burning issues like GRs.

You  can get a lot more information by looking at the wiki, the documentation
for new maintainers, installing the Debian Administrators handbook - package
debian-handbook .

> If Debian users are also members of the community, their opinion should be
> valued, but what mechanism exists for the voice of Debian users to be heard in
> the decisions that DDs make about the Debian Project? I ask this question
> because AFAICT, the users have no formal voice at all in the decisions about
> how the Debian Project is run. And this fact is perhaps why I am misunderstood
> by some on debian-user. Debian-user seems to be dominated by the idea that
> a mere user of Debian software should have no voice in the decisions, no 
> matter
> how great or how small that decision might be, that the Debian Project has to
> face each day. For example, a little decision: a package maintainer decides
> whether or not to respond to a bug report, and a big decision: the DDs vote
> on resolutions to determine the level of support for non-default init systems.
> 

I'd suggest to anyone to read the mailing list archives for a while and see how
they show Debian and the decision processes we have internally.
https://lists.debian.org/ is a good start. 

Big decisions can take a *long* time and some can be divisive: systemd 
discussions went on for months, sometimes with increasing rancour and
misunderstandings on all sides but that was, perhaps, exceptional in
recent years.

> I think Debian users should have some say, some voting power, some way
> of influencing the direction of the Debian Project because in the end the
> long-term success of the project depends on whether or not Debian software
> is continues to be useful for its users over the long term. I think if over 
> time
> Debian becomes software that is only useful to the DDs and not to a large
> pool of users around the world who are passionate about free software,
> Debian would have failed in its mission 

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> On 9/16/22 12:12 AM, Nilesh Patra wrote:
>>
> > On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 06:17:02PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> bugs are important. I am not a DD so my bugs are not as important to the
> maintainers who have a greater responsibility to respond to a DD's bug than
> to an unknown user's bug. That is the way it should be. No problem here, and
> please no one reply and say I am complaining. I am not. I am just seeing
> how things work at Debian and I think they work fairly well.
> 
Hi Chuck,

*Just because you're a DD* is not a priority call for bugs. At least one
of the bugs you reference is for Xen and seems to have bounced between
Debian and kernel devs. and still, perhaps, not to be fixed, for example.

Xen is a much lower priority than it used to be when it was the first
hypervisor in common use. There are fewer maintainers _anywhere_ with
deep knowledge of Xen. If the bug with Xen keyboard doesnt' get fixed
quickly in Debian, it may be bacause there isn't a maintainer / there
are other higher priority bugs / it genuinely should be fixed upstream.

If you know a fix - you can talk to the Xen maintainer in Debian, you could 
submit a patch, you could ask them if they want to work with you to see
it fixed. If they say it's a wishlist bug / they have higher priorities on
their tiem - you can still help.

You can politely ask the Linux kernel maintainers similarly. You can ask the
Linux Foundation at xenproject.org if the bug is still there in their version.
It's a "do-ocracy" that may rely on you to chase.

I reiterate my suggestion to you to go and read list archives / documentation
/ the Codes of Conduct to get a better picture of who you are asking, what
you are asking for and generally "How Debian works". Long messages to 
debian-user and debian-project may not help here as an initial approach.

Russ and Wouter and others have made suggestions as to how to approach
people in a better way so that they will listen to you and read what
you have to say more readily.

With every good wish,

Andy Cater


> >
> > In that case, it is nice to file good bug reports (as Andy told you) and if 
> > you have a
> > patch, that's even better. You could consider to ping maintainers after a 
> > week or so if
> > you think it is important.
> 
> Thanks for the advice. I think a week is way to short. They probably would
> think I am a nag and a troll if I did that. I usually wait six months and they
> still ignore the bug sometimes.
> 
> > And if you think something very critical is broken, you could
> > even raise the severity of the bug, I don't see a lot of problem with it.
> >
> > And yes, sometimes the maintainers of a package _can_ be AFK too,
> 
> For six months?
> 
> > this is volunteer work
> > after all. Someone might be on a vacation, or in a conference, or 
> > travelling, or busy with RL
> > and seeing your BR on an immediate basis isn't a possibility.
> >
> > > Also, in my experience, these bugs and catastrophic failures caused by 
> > > updates
> > > of a supposedly stable release happened *much* less often when I used 
> > > software
> > > that is written by paid developers.
> >
> > Fine, but what do you propose to do here? Pay all DDs for fixing bugs? Who 
> > will manage the finances/funding?
> > What if a bug report is critical and someone is unwilling to pay for a fix? 
> > What if someone needs a break for
> > whatever reason? -- have you considered to give a thought about these?
> 
> You misunderstand me a bit here. If I wanted to propose the idea of
> paying Debian volunteers formally, I would have not have done it
> on debian-user. The comments so far make realize that is not how
> Debian people want to handle the problem of maintainer burn-out,
> which seems to be the complaint of some maintainers.
> 
> >
> > Also, I'd like to say that calling out Debian contributors with "Hey, you 
> > are doing a horrible job" is
> > a negative thing for us to hear as well. You said that you got a few 
> > negative replies, which you are annoyed
> > with, this goes both ways, really.
> >
> 
> You failed to notice the messages when I thanked the maintainers
> when they fixed the bug. Please judge me on the facts, not just the
> parts you pick out that make me look like a terrible person. IIRC,
> that would be against the Debian Code of Conduct.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Chuck
> 

Re: Error on the website on support of version

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 12:18:36PM +0200, Laetitia PASQUET wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The page here : https://wiki.debian.org/fr/LTS on your website is not
> uptodate with the version of support for exemple with debian 11 which is
> mentioned with futur version.
> 
> Could you update the page please ?
> 
> Cordialement,
> 
> Laetitia Pasquet
> Architecte solution
> 

Hi Laetitia,

I think you may have the wrong impression here. Debian is not the same as other 
Debian derived distributions where the Long Term Support version is supported
for five years.

Debian is released approximately every two years. Each release is supported
by the main Debian project for up to one year after the next release is made.
The current stable release is Debian 11 with code name Bullseye.

This was first released in 2022 so will be supported up until at least 2024.
(We anticipate the release of Debian 12 sometime in 2023).

At that point, Debian 11 will move to be supported by the LTS team and 
they will support it for another two years or so, before passing it to the
ELTS team. They provide commercial support for a subset of packages within
that release at that stage.

Because Debian 11 is still the stable version - and currently supported by
the main Debian project - it is not yet Debian LTS. Debian LTS is currently
Debian 10


https://www.debian.org/releases/index.fr.html vous l'explique, je crois :)

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater

> 
> 
> 
> ZI BELLE ETOILE
> 
> Place des Pléiades
> 
> 44470 CARQUEFOU
> 
> 02 28 22 26 23
> 
> Mieux nous connaître sur :
> 
> ugieiris.fr
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> 
> Les entités du Groupement U peuvent traiter des données à caractère 
> personnel dans le cadre de leurs échanges. Plus d'informations 
> 

Re: Debian AWS AMI Images - Can't access 20+ servers...

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 09:26:02AM -0700, Eric Stone wrote:
> Hello Debian,
> 

Hi Eric,

> I have a problem on AWS, where I have about 20 servers that I cannot access
> because I cannot re-subscribe to the AMI.
> 
> The issue is the AMI - I can not re-subscribe to the marketplace image.
> 
> AMI:ami-00424db9a7a4b343b
> 
> PROBLEM:   In order to use this AWS Marketplace product you need to accept
> terms and subscribe. To do so please visit
> https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp?sku=55q52qvgjfpdj2fpfy9mb1lo4
> 
> Amazon Account ID:  412380406902
> 

Debian 9 is fairly old now and may no longer be supported. 
https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/search/results?searchTerms=Debian
shows images for Debian 10 and Debian 11.

If you're having difficulties with Amazon AWS, I suggest you contact
Amazon customer support for AWS rather than the Debian Project itself.

If the issue is how Amazon AMIs are built, then it may be that the 
debian-cloud team can provide details of what they provide to Amazon.

Hope this helps,

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater

> I need to be subscribed, can you please help?
> 
> Who runs the Amazon / AWS / Relationship??
> 
> 
> Sincerely,
> Eric Stone
> erictst...@gmail.com

Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

All,

This is in the context of a mail to the Community Team raising a query about
fortunes-off - the fortune cookie database that contains offensive fortunes.

The specific query was about Nazi quotes from someone in Europe - I don't
believe our database currently contains these, as they were purged from the
BSD package from which ours is derived but I would be prepared to be very
wrong here. 

The point was made that if the database did contain Nazi quotes / a swastika
it might make it illegal to host the content on mirrors in at least Germany
or Austria.

The database dates back to 1997 or so - I note one of the upstream maintainers
from around that time (Amy Lewis) having concerns about fortunes-offensive
categories.

This database contains some quotes categories that probably don't fit in with
our Debian values or general societal values 25 years on - ethnic, homophobia
and a few others. 

This does raise the wider question: we're about to freeze for Bookworm.
Removing leaf packages and packages with a small user count might be profitable
at this point. Fortune-mod has some bugs at the moment preventing testing
transition and has had several NMUs prior to the latest upload.

Would it be a good idea to at least remove fortunes-off and the corresponding
data file for Bookworm at this point and going forwards?
It saves a tiny amount of space and a few translations and represents a small
simplification of Debian at minimal cost.

We don't have to ship the whole world of data just because it's available: if
anyone wants to package their own collections of fortune quotes for themselves, 
the instructions are readily available to do so on the 'Net.

Your thoughts, please.

Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sat, Nov 19, 2022 at 03:39:14PM -0500, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2022 at 05:31:56PM +0100, Dominik George wrote:
> > 
> > The question is not whether hosting is illegal (I don't think it is).
> > 
> > The question is whether we promote Nazi ideology or not. And the
> > answer is clearly "No", and that is a fact, not sumething that is up
> > for discussion.
> > 
> Right, and has has been discussed before (more times than can be
> counted, most likely) having some sort of content does not imply that
> the ideology itself is promoted.  The presence of the texts of the
> Torah, the Christian Bible, the Quran, and other holy books in Debian
> does not mean that Debian as an organization supports all of the various
> ideologies entailed therein.
> 

It may be a fact that we don't promote Nazism but the presence of Nazi texts
may itself be problematic to some people. There are other elements in
fortunes-off which are perhaps inappropriate within Debian.

It may be that fortunes-off doesn't constitute a corpus of (optional)
text that is worth retention? The fashion for fortunes has rather
disappeared in the last 25 years, after all.

> Neither does the presence of the anarchism and fortune-anarchism
> packages mean that the Debian project supports anarchy.
> 

It could be argued that the Bible, Koran and anarchism texts are a corpus
of study texts - 51 quotes from Mein Kampf maybe not justifiable as such?

> In other words, lets at least be consistent.
> 
> Regards,
> 

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater

> -Roberto
> 
> -- 
> Roberto C. Sánchez
> 

Re: Removing software because we disagree with its values

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Hi Sam,

I respect absolutely what you say. I'm not sure that fortunes-offensive has any 
particular literary
merit, I'm not sure myself that, now that the separate binary for fortunes-off 
has been removed,
that the dat file merits inclusion. It was a leaf package on a small games 
package that is optional
and not with a high popcon value.

If we're going to get Bookworm out, now is a good time to be thinking of things 
that could usefully
be removed to lower a maintenance burden

I didn't raise this as censorship. You may have noticed that I explicitly 
*didn't* raise this as 
a member of Community Team but as myself, though I did mention that a query had 
come to CT about the
Mein Kampf quotes and I wondered if the simpler solution was just to remove 
them / the package.
[Thanks to Dominik George for grepping them out for me in his reply]

I suspect there is also a slight difference of understanding of the merits of 
free speech on either
side of the Atlantic: it's a cultural thing and I suspect I tend to the 
European side here :)

I'm not going to die in a ditch over this but I raised it as a genuine query to 
the project in good faith
and without any agenda.

All best, as ever,

Andy Cater

SUMMARY [Was Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?]

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

All,

Thank you for your considered opinions thus far. We have various developers
who have written defending free speech: we've had others who have expressed
various reservations with one aspect or other of the status quo.

There's been a grudging consensus that this is *hard*. It's very hard indeed
to draw good conclusions as to what to do when everyone agrees that something
could be done and disagrees with what that should be.

Notably, Sam Hartman and Branden Robinson have pointed up flaws with the
existing categorisations and with a blanket removal based on preference.
It's also noticeable that this largely comes down to consideration of 
fortunes in English - almost nothing has been said about other fortunes files
or other languages, though Sam talked about cultural perceptions.

A serious suggestion: it is not necessary for Debian to package fortune files
at all.

 The single collection we have is largely a random collection from BSD of
1995 vintage, itself representative of one Unix site in 1995 or earlier.
The upstream Github repository is potentially only one of many disparate sites
on the 'Net and the English language collection doesn't reflect the languages
of Debian users worldwide.

PyPi has a fortunes-mod equivalent to read fortunes files: it doesn't
necessarily include strfile but it will handle pre-existing fortune files.
It should be open to anybody to make their own fortunes files - just as
anyone can make a mix of their own music on their favourite music player.

If Debian doesn't distribute fortune files but instead provides the means
for users to make/download their own choice, nothing is lost. Debian is
not responsible for maintaining any file content, whether questionable
or unobjectionable depending on viewpoint, and we lose the burden of 
translation, maintenance and policing of content. 

This also means that anyone who wishes can add the *missing* content requested
in the bugs over years into their own files at their own risk.

Your thoughts, again, please.

Andy Cater. 

Re: SUMMARY [Was Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?]

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 02:14:38PM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2022-11-23 at 13:06, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> 
> > A serious suggestion: it is not necessary for Debian to package
> > fortune files at all.
> 
> I find this suggestion demotivating and discouraging.
> 
> > The single collection we have is largely a random collection from BSD
> > of 1995 vintage, itself representative of one Unix site in 1995 or
> > earlier.
> 

https://github.com/Distrotech/fortune-mod/tree/master/datfiles has the 
majority of what we have - and similarly for other Linux distros, I
believe.

> I believe that this statement is inaccurate. There are parts of the
> collection which are Debian-specific (the earliest of which, per the
> changelog, were added in 1999), and others which have been added far
> more recently than 1995 (there have been what seem like substantive
> additions at least as recently as 2006).
> 
> The way the Debian packaging splits the collection into various files,
> which I understand is not necessarily done upstream, can also be valuable.
> 

See above.

> > The upstream Github repository is potentially only one of many
> > disparate sites on the 'Net and the English language collection
> > doesn't reflect the languages of Debian users worldwide.
> 
> Can you point to the repository you're referencing?
> 
> I wanted to check that repository to see whether it had the
> Debian-specific parts of the collection, but since I can't find it, I
> can't verify that before sending this.
> 
> The only repository URLs I find in the package metadata are the
> Vcs-Browser and Vcs-Git URLs from 'apt-cache showsrc fortunes-off'
> (which shows the information for the fortune-mod source package), and
> those are under anonscm.debian.org.
> 
> /usr/share/doc/fortune-mod/README.gz lists several URLs, at least one of
> which appears to be a repository, but it isn't on GitHub and leads to a
> 404.
> 
> The files under /usr/share/doc/fortunes*/ don't seem to list any URLs at
> all - except for one in changelog.Debian.gz, which dates from 1998 and
> is about the addition of the 'perl' fortunes file.
> 
> The only upstream I can find referenced is the references in
> changelog.debian.gz to "Pascal Hakim", but no apparent place to find
> whatever upstream that person might host seems to be mentioned.
> 
> > PyPi has a fortunes-mod equivalent to read fortunes files: it
> > doesn't necessarily include strfile but it will handle pre-existing
> > fortune files. It should be open to anybody to make their own
> > fortunes files - just as anyone can make a mix of their own music on
> > their favourite music player.
> > 
> > If Debian doesn't distribute fortune files but instead provides the
> > means for users to make/download their own choice, nothing is lost.
> > Debian is not responsible for maintaining any file content, whether
> > questionable or unobjectionable depending on viewpoint, and we lose
> > the burden of translation, maintenance and policing of content.
> 
> I sharply disagree that nothing is lost, but I don't seem to have the
> emotional energy to try to explain why without becoming argumentative
> and probably just making things worse overall. (I have held back a draft
> which makes the attempt, but which I suspect distinctly fails.)
> 
> > This also means that anyone who wishes can add the *missing* content
> > requested in the bugs over years into their own files at their own
> > risk.
> > 
> > Your thoughts, again, please.
> 
> I am reasonably certain that this would just lead to far fewer people
> bothering to make use of the fortunes database(s) at all, thereby
> creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about how irrelevant this is in the
> modern world.
> 
> From my perspective, this whole discussion looks like someone whom I've
> respected coming in and proposing to take away one of the small things
> I somewhat like having around, and that taking-away happening almost
> immediately despite the existence of pushback over it, and then that
> person reacting to the pushback by proposing to take away a *bigger*
> thing that I even *more* like having around. I imagine it's not hard to
> see how that could be upsetting or demotivating.
> 

The way it was packaged 25 years ago doesn't necessarily mean that we
have to continue to do the same indefinitely - we now have a much wider
Internet to select from rather than storing program and files in the same
space.

I could see that being upsetting or demotivating - I'm not proposing
removing anything from the 'Net or files that already exist: I'

Re: ITA: fortunes-mod (was: SUMMARY [Was Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?])

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 03:05:29PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> [I'm using the pseudonymous respondent's message to reply to Mr. Cater
> as well.  Mind the angle brackets for quotation context.]
> 
> At 2022-11-23T14:14:38-0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> > On 2022-11-23 at 13:06, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > > Thank you for your considered opinions thus far. We have various
> > > developers who have written defending free speech: we've had others
> > > who have expressed various reservations with one aspect or other of
> > > the status quo.
> > > 
> > > There's been a grudging consensus that this is *hard*.
> 

No - there is a consensus that splitting things based on cultural preference
is hard - you and Sam both agree on that point - various other people in
the discussion have had other viewpoints. Notably, I'm not actually 
suggesting that it's straightforward for all the reasons put forward by
everyone in the discussion.

> I gather that you don't join in that consensus, because your
> prescriptions are quick and easy.  Mr. Dowland's assessment of everyone
> who wants his action reversed as being desirous of association with
> racism, sexism, and pro-Nazi sentiment[1] is facile, hasty, and
> fallacious.
> 

The reason I brought this to debian-project is absolutely that CT had a query
from someone living in Germany as to the desirability of Nazi quotations in
fortunes-off and the suggestion from that person that this *might* be illegal
to host in Germany, Austria [Czech Republic and France at least also have 
similar laws I believe]. As I wrote, I wasn't sure that Nazi quotes were still
there - they are - and you were helpful in identifying where several of them
are.

Notably, I haven't assessed anybody's motives in this.

> Neither you nor he, therefore, is well placed to present a
> (presumptively neutral) summary of the discussion.  (Neither am I.)
> 

I don't have a categorical view one way or another on this hence bringing it
to this list. It did seem to me that some of the quotations wouldn't fit well
with the Code of Conduct. If you take Sam's view, that's OK, because this is
a game and we shouldn't apply the spirit of the Code of Conduct to software

Some of the people replying have one view, some another.

> > > Notably, Sam Hartman and Branden Robinson have pointed up flaws with
> > > the existing categorisations and with a blanket removal based on
> > > preference. It's also noticeable that this largely comes down to
> > > consideration of fortunes in English - almost nothing has been said
> > > about other fortunes files or other languages, though Sam talked
> > > about cultural perceptions.
> > > 
> > > A serious suggestion: it is not necessary for Debian to package
> > > fortune files at all.
> 
> I'm going to have to add "a serious suggestion" to "honestly" and "trust
> me" as linguistic tags that flag a declaration as deceptive.
> 

It should be obvious from Debian list archives that I try to think through
what I write and consider who is reading it. It's not a frivolous, spur of 
the moment sentence: it's not axiomatic that we should still package
fortunes and translate them. Nor is it necessary for us to police what others
would choose to read or select for themselves.

It is a serious suggestion because it's thought through: you may note
from what I write that I'm endeavouring to be even-handed and transparent.
I also try to write clear prose and not weasel words.

Just because it was done that way in 1995 doesn't mean we have to do this now.

> Have you worked on embedded systems, ever?  It's not _necessary_ for
> Debian to package much of anything.  We could arguably serve just as
> well as "universal OS" by providing only a nucleus, say, a high-quality
> microkernel.[2]  Minimalism has never been an objective of the package
> archive.  This fact has been so transparently obvious for so long that
> it is difficult for me to maintain the presumption that you are arguing
> in good faith.
> 

I'm not arguing in *bad* faith; I'm thinking that we don't have to package
everything that we always have just because we've always done it that way

> > I find this suggestion demotivating and discouraging.
> 
> Sorry to hear that.  My own reaction is better termed "pissed off".
> 
> > I believe that this statement is inaccurate. There are parts of the
> > collection which are Debian-specific (the earliest of which, per the
> > changelog, were added in 1999), and others which have been added far
> > more recently than 1995 (there have been what seem lik

Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 12:34:02AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 11:18:48AM +0100, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:
> > "Roberto A. Foglietta"  wrote on 20/11/2022 at 
> > 22:14:35+0100:
> > 
> 
> I think the bit of "rational approach" is to see *why* the package was
> called "offensive" (because $DPL-of-a-long-time-ago decided that certain
> subjects are offensive and they shouldn't be in the "regular" package),
> and whether it actually results in a net positive (answer: probably not,
> depending on your point of view).
> 
> If the "offensive" package were, in fact, mostly nazi and other such
> similar content then you would have a point; but I in fact used to have
> "fortune -o" in my .bashrc file, and, no, it really isn't. You might get
> personally insulted occasionally, but that's about it (and if you can't
> stand that, then, well, don't install the "offensive" package and/or
> don't use the "-o" parameter to fortune -- I mean, there are *two*
> barriers!).
> 
> Perhaps if there is something in the "offensive" package that we can
> point to and declare really problematic, we can file bugs about that?
> But just removing the whole package because "oh no" feels like the
> baby/bathwater story and, yes, cancel culture.
> 

It's tagged that way in the BSDs and in the GitHub repository which seems
to be *most* of the upstream. It's an open queston as to whether it's humorous
it's an open question as to who wants to actually maintain it, fix bugs,
add quotes - and, essentially, become upstream (you'd need to get knightbrd
quotes included somewhere, for example).

Dropping fortunes-offensive completely (and the associated
 translations/extra files in Italian and
Spanish) is one straightforward way to solve a problem. There's no firm
consensus for that. That's OK.

Not packaging the single .dat file and telling people how to download it (and
other fortunes files / how to write their own) would be another way.
(And yes, we could be missing out on great fortune cookies from lots
of other places).

The utility of a separate package depends on how much work it is to 
produce it. That was the renaming bug that jmtd fixed, I think.
I think removing Hitler/Goebbels quotes from an obscure game is worthwhile:
it stops any association / any *Debian encourages Nazism* and means that we
don't have to worry about hosting it anywhere at all.

It is always worthwhile to remember that Debian is worldwide, is used by
people of all ages and sensibilities and has a set of values.
Whether we need to apply those to every game / piece of content?

The discussion didn't seem to find full consensus but it wasn't intended as
censorship

Andy Cater

> -- 
>  w@uter.{be,co.za}
> wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org}
> 
> I will have a Tin-Actinium-Potassium mixture, thanks.
> 

Re: archive

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2023 at 02:45:51PM +0200, to...@ukr.net wrote:
> Hi! I'm interested in a question about the archive/old versions. The site 
> https://www.debian.org/distrib/archive.en.html states that over time you stop 
> keeping binary packages for older versions. Please tell me, over time, you 
> remove binary packages from archive? Please give me the answers!

So - we don't always keep all the binaries for all the point releases, for 
example.

So when 11.5 is released and updates 11.4, the superseded binaries aren't 
kept around. 11.6 will update 11.5 and so on.

For *old* releases, you may find that the only binaries left are in
the CDs/DVDs. [If, say, you want Debian 4.0, then we've probably got 
copies of the CDs around.]

For the oldest releases, you may find that there's only the final release
archived (so, for example, without checking, for 5.*, you might only have
5.10 available - but that's OK, because that was the last version of 5
released).

This does make it hard if you come across an old machine that hasn't been
updated in several years or for some reason or another your machine is
pinned to a particular version - but, in general, you can update to the
latest point release for a particular version - so 5.10 - then update to 6.*, 
7.* and so on up until 11.6

Hope this helps,

Andy Cater
Hope this helps,

Re: Debian 12 install

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 05:31:41PM +0330, Danial Behzadi wrote:
> If this is not a trolling, Please decalre what are you talking about
> exactly.
> 
> در سه‌شنبه, ژوئن 20 2023 at ۱۳:۱۲:۴۱ +00:00:00, eladZ1i8
>  نوشته بود:
> > Hi, Just installed Debian 12 - have been using Debian since version 4 -
> > I was greeted with the Google & Microsoft account info - now no longer
> > using Debian - seriously how could you people do this - first Ubuntu now
> > Debian pretty disgusting.
> > regards
> > Bob

I think you'll find that this is explicitly not a Debian thing. It is something
supplied with the latest GNOME desktops: if you don't select another desktop
environment, then GNOME will come by default.

This is *not* an explicit request for Google/Microsoft credentials - it's an 
offer to you to put them in if you wish when you first run GNOME. The default
answer is to Skip this in any event.

I think this is standard for Red Hat derived distributions as well now with
newer versions of GNOME.

Follow ups to the debian-user mailing list, please. 

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater
> 

Re: Debian fix sound

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Jun 21, 2023 at 10:58:16PM +0200, Remi wrote:
> Hello can you make it compatible with debian 12 it is currently
> incompatible with my computer here it is characteristic intel UHD 600 intel
> Celeron J4125 the problem there is no HDMI sound please contact me for more
> information

Remi,

Do you have the entries for non-free firmware in your /etc/apt/sources.list?

https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList

I suspect you might need something like the firmware for Intel sound.

Follow up to debian-user mailing list please, as this is an appropriate
question for that list.

With every good wish,

Andy Cater

Re: Questionable Package Present in Debian: fortune-mod

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 02:39:00PM -0400, Thomas Ward wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> Debian Bug #1024501 [1]indicates that data files are present in the
> fortune-mod package which are against Debian policy:
> 
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> *** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***
> 
>* What led up to the situation?
> 
> As mentioned on Debian-project mailing list:
> This is no longer appropriate for Debian. Fortunes-off binary package has
> been removed: can we remove the data files, please.
> 
> This is not yet removed if I read the changelog from Debian.There are
> additional components in the source code which quote these that suggest it
> may be prudent for a complete deletion. Downstream in Ubuntu, this package
> was removed due to violation of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct [2], and as the
> package in Ubuntu and the package in Debian are identical to each other, it
> may be prudent for the Debian community to remove the package in Unstable
> and Testing for similar reasons.  However, this was extended to the source
> package as the *source contents* contain the offensive wording, etc.
> 

As the person who raised this on debian-project in November 2022 - see the
archives for debian-project for November/December 2022
> 
> Can we put this package into the 'considered for removal' list or simply
> remove the package as violation of the Debian Code of Conduct from all
> releases?
> 

There was unfortunately no consensus on removal on debian-project and
G. Branden Robinson filed an ITA - intent to adopt - for this package at
the time.

In the absence of any apparent package, this should possibly be 
added to files considered for removal: in some sense, it would still 
have been easier to do this prior to Bookworm release, but, hey, you 
can't do everything :)

Thoughts? As noted, the bug remains open.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater

[amaca...@debian.org]
> 
> 
> Thomas
> 
> 
> 
> [1]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1024501
> 
> [2]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fortune-mod/+bug/1996682

Re: Questionable Package Present in Debian - fortune-mod

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Subject: Re: Questionable Package Present in Debian: fortune-mod

On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 05:32:22PM +, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On 2023-08-21 20:16:22 +0300 (+0300), Dmitry Baryshkov wrote:
> [...]
> > According to Debian's CoC we use non-offensive ways to communicate
> > within the project, so that everybody is welcome to speak and
> > contribute. But we should not censor software. If there is a
> > misogynistic comment in GNU HURD sources, should we censor it out?
> 
> For that matter, if Debian was going to get into book burning over
> racist, homophobic and misogynistic writing, all those packaged
> versions of religious texts would presumably be the first things
> tossed onto the pyre.
> -- 
> Jeremy Stanley

OK. With respect to Branden, Sam, Rodrigo Sanchez and Wouter - this isn't
*just* a free speech matter and Debian isn't particularly censoring content.

That being said: In some sense, the Code of Conduct governs how we behave with 
respect to the outside world and definitely colours how we appear there to
Debian outsiders. We have a Code of Conduct and folk expect us to follow it.

In this instance:

fortune, fortunes-off and so on: it's a GAME. It's not a core package.
Fortunes-off is a leaf package of a small package.

Fortune as a *thing* existed before the BSDs but it became widely adopted 
with Unix v6 and then BSD.

FreeBSD - our "upstream" apparently abandoned all fortunes apart from those
relating to system administration in 2017 - because of complaints about
Hitler quotes.

Ubuntu - our "downstream" has abandoned fortunes-off as incompatible with
their Code of Conduct (which is strikingly similar to ours).

We had complaints in November and then a reminder in this thread.

The US has guaranteed freedom of speech within the US: other jurisdictions
specifically have provisions against Nazism, Nazi symbols, Nazi quotes in
public. [France/Germany/Austria and others, particularly in Europe].

More cogently: where are we going to get our fortunes from - where's the 
canonical source now that FreeBSD has gone?

Who is going to take responsibility for checking quotes and translations
in all languages and dealing with requests for additions and deletions?
[Each language should have the full quota of quotes where feasible - compare
the Debian installer or the wiki - no language should be inferior as far
as this is possible]

If it is the package maintainer, is this an appropriate burden for a package
on which others may judge the project as a whole, rightly or wrongly?

Whose freedom to select quotes trumps all other opinions?

Branden - if you introduce a new "fortunes-nsfw", this is a new package
which will obsolete all previous ones and will need to go through NEW?

if you really want the Project to continue with this package / these 
packages, may I suggest a straightforward series of small changes?

* Make the fortunes package a reader for fortune-format files.
* Add a doc package detailing how to create the valid format of files that
fortune as a program will read. How to form a fortune from arbitrary text.
* Debian as a whole stops shipping fortune formatted files and lets users
compose or download/translate their own fortune databases.

There's no censorship of files/thought/speech

Each user is free to create their own fortunes to suit how they feel

The Debian Project as a whole does not have to take a position on the 
content of any file, though noting that the removal of the prior fortunes
files follows established practice by other distributions when encountering
these problematic files with no sources, poor attribution or other issues.

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater
[amaca...@debian.org]

Re: Problem boot DEBIAN 10.2

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 04:16:04PM +0100, Tarik OULDKADI wrote:
> Hello
> Tarik from algeria 
> I m technical engineer with HP Large printer in algeria 
> This printers need to install a caldera rip
> To install this caldera, it s necessery to install DEBIAN 
> The installation of debian 10.2 turned perfectelly
> but when i but the debian, I have this error message:
> failed to load rtl_nic/rt18168h62.fw
> 

rip - Raster Image Processor ?

Does it need to be Debian 10.2? The latest version of Debian 10 was Debian
10.13

Debian 10 is no longer supported by security updates. 
https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/

It is probable that you need firmware-realtek from the Debian non-free software
archive. Installing from the "unofficial" non-free medium would give you
this, otherwise you will need to add the .deb package.

There is no way to skip Debian major releases: to get to the latest Debian - 
Debian 12 - you would need to update via Debian 11 or do a reinstall.

The media images for Debian 12 include the non-free firmware packages on
the medium.

With every good wish, as ever,

Andrew Cater
[amaca...@debian.org]
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Cordialement 
> 
>  
> 
> Tarik OULDKADI
> 
> Service technique
> 
> ASKY PRINT ALGÉRIE
> 
> Mob: +213670119268

Re: Problem With Debian Root Desktopy

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 09:47:20PM +, Saurav Sarkar wrote:
> Hi,
> I was using purchased Debian 8.1.0 and wanted to upgrade to some higher 
> versions after using it for few years.
> So I downloaded Debian 10 and found that "root" account do not have full 
> rights that is "root" user cannot right click on the root's Desktop even 
> "root" user cannot see the root's Desktop Icons also.

This is probably a user level query and probably not something suitable
for the list that goes to the entire Debian Project - follow-ups to the 
debian-user mailing list perhaps?

> I emailed to you but no reply came.
> I thought maybe downloaded version have problem.
> So now i bought Debian 12.1.0 and found that the problem resists, that is 
> "root" user cannot right click on the root's Desktop even "root" user cannot 
> see the root's Desktop Icons also.

Various of the desktop environments discourage direct log-in as root because
this can cause security problems. In GNOME, there is a setting that you 
can manually make to allow root login in gdm, but this is not recommended.

> In Debian 8.1.0 there is no such problems.

With respect, Debian 8.1 is quite a long time ago - security threats (and
security practices) may have changed quite a lot and large parts of the 
Debian codebase have been updated because of security bugs in those years
.
> So i want to know Why "root" or "administrator" account do not have Full 
> Rights to their Desktop ?

This GUI login as root has been discouraged for a long time but you can
find ways to enable it if you wish. 

> My money gone to HELL.
> Bye,Regards,Saurav Sarkar

With every good wish,

Andy Cater
[amaca...@debian.org]

Re: Problem With Debian Root Desktop

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 08:47:12AM +, Saurav Sarkar wrote:
> Hi,
> I like to use Mate Desktop because it is almost different from other Desktop 
> views.

Hi 

As previously suggested, this is more a question for debian-user mailing list
than the whole Debian Project.

> And not giving the permission for right clicking on root's Desktop and not 
> giving the permission of viewing the root's Desktop Icons is something like 
> President of United States which is now Joe Biden can enter White House but 
> do not have permissions to sit on chairs in White House and even do not have 
> permissions to sit beside discussion table in White House.
> Or King Charles can enter Buckingham Palace but do not have permissions to 
> sit on chairs, and even do not have permissions to lay down on bed or sleep 
> on bed.

If you set up a normal non-root user and give them sudo privileges, you do
not _need_ root login inside a GUI.

As others have suggested, this is a significant security problem if you wish
to run a graphical environment as root.

> Even the root cannot give sound output, actually cannot sense the sound card 
> in Debian 12.1.0.

*Which* sound care? What does the output from  dmesg say if run by root -
can you then check to find the sound device in the output?

> No problem with sounds in users in Debian 12.1.0.

Then the desktop is potentially working as designed.

> Rest is Debian Developers thought.
> Next time i will not go for Debian Linux even other linux distros may not 
> have Mate Desktop still i will not go for Debian anymore.

I think you may find similar problems with any of the Debian derivatives which
all tend to work the same way. Likewise Fedora and the Red Hat derivatives -
all discourage calling a GUI as the root user.

> Bye,
> Regards,Saurav Sarkar+919830668794

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater
[amaca...@debian.org]

Re: Information

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Mon, Oct 23, 2023 at 07:24:06PM +0200, Giovanni Guarino wrote:
> Dear Sirs,
> 
> First of all thank you for your big work to continue to support debian.
> I have installed version 12 and I want to inform you that the Shared
> Clipboard and Drag & Drop doesn't work.
> With lsmod i saw vboxguest perfectly installed but doesn't work
> Thank you very much
> Giovanni Guarino

Good evening Giovanni,

This is probably a question better suited to the debian user mailing list
than the main Project mailing list - maybe follow up there.

Is it possible that you are using Wayland rather than X?
If it does not work under one, try the other if available to you.

Which desktop environment do you have installed?

Debian itself no longer packages virtualbox in stable releases because
of concerns about security update policies: you might be better to ask
Oracle themselves, perhaps.

https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater

amaca...@debian.org

Re: Question regarding to the status of Debian 11 (bullseye) AMIs

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Mon, Feb 05, 2024 at 10:41:57PM +, yu, bing wrote:
> Hi Debian Team,
> 
> This is Bing Yu, a software engineer from NetApp. I am working on a project 
> using Debian 11 and I realised our official Debian 11 (bullseye) AMIs for 
> Amazon EC2 hasn’t been updated since Oct 2023 
> https://wiki.debian.org/Cloud/AmazonEC2Image/Bullseye
> 
> Debian community used maintained this AMI more frequently but that doesn’t 
> seem to be the case anymore. Consider Debian 11 is still active version of 
> Debian, do we still expect an update on Debian 11 (bullseye) AMIs for Amazon 
> EC2 coming soon?
> 

Hi Bing,

I'd expect an update with the next point release - probably this coming
weekend 10/11 February. Bullseye is the former stable release and is
released in synchrony with the current Debian 12 - but every *other* point
release. This means that it's released roughly every 4-5 months.

The release team are planning 11.9 for February and, probably, another
release just before it drops from Debian security support to Long Term
Support status on 1st July 2024. 

As ever, Debian is ready when its ready - so dates can slip.

Andy
(amaca...@debian.org)

Working with the Debian images team who coordinate with the Release Team.
> Thanks very much,
> 
> Bing

Re: Cosmic DE

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Feb 22, 2024 at 08:19:24AM -0500, Hugo Fortin wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I'm looking foward to the new Cosmic Desktop Environement from Pop_OS.
> 
> Because it's 100% written in Rust and designed from to start to be Wayland
> Only, this DE is extremely important for the Linux Desktop.
> 

This will depend very much on whether Pop_OS

a) Chooses to release all sources and the toolchain needed to build them.
b) Chooses to rebase from Ubuntu - Pop_OS is a derivative of a derivative.
[This is a Debian list - we can't guarantee what other derivatives may
or may not do]

> I know this DE will be released this summer as an Alpha, but I would be so
> gratefull if you make it possible to Install Cosmic from a fresh Install and
> as the unique DE on it.
> 

As an Alpha release, you might be able to put in a wish list bug for this
to be built in Debian unstable and to percolate to Debian testing.
That would depend on someone wanting to commit to packaging it - and,
ideally, that should only come with a stable version.

The Debian installer is set up to allow you a choice of desktop environments.
if you select Debian desktop environment, you are selecting Gnome but 
the option to uncheck that and select any one of ten or so desktops is
already there. We'd be very unlikely to produce a custom spin here - this 
is not Fedora or Ubuntu with one desktop per spin - Cosmic would just be
another choice.

> I'm sure Pop_OS will be happy about it, and I would happily donate to Debian
> if I get a keen reply on this regard.
> 

Do feel free to donate time/energy or money to Debian whether or not you
get a keen reply - it's all done by people putting in effort for the
things that matter to them.

> Thank for your time.
> 
> Hugo
>

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy
(amaca...@debian.org) 

Re: Debian [source code]

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2024 at 03:00:04PM +, Gauthier Kidjat Kwatatshey wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> 
> I'm contacting you because we need your help or recommendations on how to 
> download the full source code for Debian 
> 
> 

Good evening,

If you need all the source code for the Debian current release, I'd
suggest setting up a local Debian mirror for yourself.

You can find DVD sized images containing source - 20 DVDs - at
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/source/iso-dvd/

Can I suggest follow up to the debian-user mailing list. Debian-project
is a project-wide mailing list.

With every good wish, as ever,

Andrew Cater
[amaca...@debian.org]

> Looking forward to hearing from you
> 
> Best Regards
> Gauthier Kwatatshey
> 
> 
> Gauthier Kidjat Kwatatshey
> Principal
> 
> Storm Reply
> Ul. Wroclawska 54
> 40-217 - Katowice - POLAND
> phone: +48 32 74568-00
> g.kidjatkwatats...@reply.com
> www.reply.com
> 
> [Storm Reply]
> 
> 
> 
> Storm Reply – A business unit of Reply Polska Sp z o.o.
> Share Capital: 40,000 PLN
> Registered Office: ul. Gliwicka 6/2, 40-079 Katowice, POLAND
> Register of Companies: District Court Katowice-East in Katowice, no. 
> 368305
> Tax Number (NIP): 6342766688
> Board of Directors: Dr. Thomas Hartmann, Daniele Angelucci, Giorgio Modolo

Swap partition default size [WAS Re: Problem With Hard Disk Partitioning In Debian Linux 12.x]

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Jul 07, 2024 at 07:14:28AM +, Saurav Sarkar wrote:
> Hi,

Hi Suarav,

Unfortunately, this is the wrong list: debian-project reaches the whole of
Debian. Follow up set to the debian-user mailing list.

> The SWAP Partition is too low in Debian 12.x that is just 1 GB.

This was a considered decision. The old setting defaulted to double the RAM
size - not ideal if you have large RAM and a smaller disk. If the disk
is partitioned with all files in one partition using LVM, for example,
relative sizes per partition will work well and adjust dynamically.

> In Debian 8.x the SWAP Partition automatically adjusted as per the Hard Disk 
> Sizes which can have 20 GB also.

Please see above. Under most conditions, heavy use of swap would indicate
a problem and the default size works for many.

> Manual Partitioning in Debian 12.x is not happening to adjust SWAP Partition 
> and for other Folder Partitions.

If you do choose manual partitioning, you can set partition sizes to
what you wish - the default for swap is 1 GB but you can set it to any
size you wish. The defaults changed in Debian 11 (bullseye).

Hope this helps,

Andy
(amaca...@debian.org)
> Bye,
> Saurav SarkarA Debian Linux User

Debian Linux for smartphones [WAS Re: (No Subject)]

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Jul 12, 2024 at 04:17:21PM +, Mike wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> Is there any debian linux for smartphones?
> If yes, how to install it?

Hi Mike,

The list you've posted to is the main list for the whole of the Debian
project. I suggest follow up to the Debian-user mailing list.

Mobian is one Debian-based smartphone OS. Several of the Linux-based
smartphone OSes are ultimately based on Debian. Debian itself does
not yet produce an installer for smart phones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_mobile_devices may help
as a starting point.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy
(amaca...@debian.org)