Arch Linux Newsletter

Apr 02, 2006
1.0.0
Jason Chu jason@archlinux.org
Jason "CanyonKnight" canyonknight@gmail.com

Summary

Welcome to the Arch Linux Newsletter. This document attempts to give you an "at a glance" look at the world of Arch Linux. Hope everyone enjoyed the "Current Changes" April Fool's Day joke!!

Table Of Contents

  1. Front Page News
  2. Devland
  3. Forum Highlights
  4. Mailing List Highlights
  5. Package Highlights
  6. FAQ
  7. ArchStats
  8. Seti@home
  9. folding@home
  10. Bugs
  11. Closing

Front Page News

  1. GNOME 2.14 and KDE 3.5.2 move to extra

    GNOME 2.14 and KDE 3.5.2 have been moved to extra. These releases bring quite a big amount of bugfixes, improvements and in the case of GNOME 2.14, speed increase.

    During the move several mirrors have been mirroring half of the repository, so expect some missing packages or broken dependencies on some mirrors today.

    Upgrading from the previous releases should go in a breeze, as far as we know, no special precautions, other than logging out of GNOME/KDE have to be taken.

    Please report bugs you find to our dear bugtracker.

    Now these two big things have been moved to current/extra, normal development can take place again, so expect updates to individual packages that have been outdated for a while now.

  2. Kernel 2.6.16.1 moved to current

    Kernel has move to current, enjoy new 2.6.16.1
    Intel modem drivers work again, thanks to Andrew Morton and the kernel crew who changed the kernel back to a state so the drivers will work again.

  3. Current Changes (Happy April Fool's Day)

    I just thought I would bring you all up to speed on some of the information currently going around the watercooler.

    Judd has officially accepted a job offer from Google, and as such, will be unable to continue with his Archlinux work.

    Lead of the project has moved to the capable hands of Jason Chu (Xentac). Jason's first order of business, as we push towards the 0.7.1.1 release (Codename: Pony), will be creating a [stable] repository, with older software. This will be the main focus of our work from now on, with all the security backports and compatibility fixes. As such, the normal repos will begin to lack a bit, but those will be removed in time as we move to a more 'stable' and 'production quality' release system.

    Expect 0.7.1.1 in a few weeks.

  4. Kernel 2.6.16 progress

    2.6.16.1-2 kernel has been uploaded to testing, this contains latest acpi, ipw2100/2200 drivers and alsa rc4 from the 2.6.17 kernel.
    Intel Modem drivers still do not work :( I contacted them but still no answer.
    Now the time for the movement to current:
    When 2.6.16.2 is released and I still have no answer from Intel about their decision for their modem drivers, intel536/537 drivers are no longer officially supported by arch (perhaps they will be resurrected in the future). For those that haven't tested 2.6.16 yet, check if it works on your machines and post bugs if you encounter problems.

  5. Kernel 2.6.16 - modularized capability

    Some people have requested that we move the default linux capability support to a module so that it can be replaced with other capability models.

    There's a catch though -- now that the capability stuff is modularized, it needs to be loaded before some daemons can be used (eg, vsftpd). We can help by having the rc.d scripts load the module, but some people will use xinetd for these daemons, so they'll have to manually load the module from somewhere (rc.local would work).

    This change will come with the 2.6.16 kernel, so please be aware.

  6. Server Migration Complete!

    Thanks to everyone's generous donations, Dale was able to purchase a nice shiny Dell server, which archlinux.org is now running on!

    I've migrated all our services over, but may have missed a thing or two... If you notice any weirdness, please let me know (judd@arch).

    Thanks!

Devland

  1. All of the developers are very happy with the new server. It's a treat to work with. Thanks everyone who donated!

Forum Highlights

  1. tyme provided quite a few badge logos to advertise Arch Linux.
  2. Fackamato created bootcharts of an Arch Linux install in an effort to improve start time.
  3. ody made an experimental script to mount a pacman database as a loopback file to increase performance.
  4. sweiss gave a few tips on getting more done with some shortcuts.

Mailing List Highlights

  1. Discussion on getting on a iPod to work under Arch Linux.
  2. Talk on what possible substitutes for Bootstrap are available on Arch.
  3. Intel modem users may have lost drivers on the new kernel. (The problem was solved: See "Kernel 2.6.16.1 moved to current" headline)

Package Highlights

FAQ

Q: What is the difference between AUR, COMMUNITY, and UNSUPPORTED?

A: AUR(Arch User Repository) is the name of the whole new system which is maintained by the TUs(Trusted Users). It lets anybody that signs up to upload PKGBUILDs to UNSUPPORTED but only TUs have access to COMMUNITY which is a binary repo that you can use with Pacman.

Q: Why aren't all packages in UNSUPPORTED added to COMMUNITY?

A: There are several reasons for that. The most important is that the package hasn't got many votes. It's also important that you vote for packages that already are in COMMUNITY, otherwise they could be disowned by the TUs and moved to UNSUPPORTED. Other reasons could be that the package is unmaintained upstream or has a licensing problem. Last but not least, no TU wants to do it.

Archstats

To Participate, visit: http://www.archlinux.org/~simo/archstats

Number of registered systems: 705
Longest recorded uptime: 496 days, 9 hours, 22 minutes, 38 seconds.
Average uptime: 12 days, 20 hours, 25 minutes, 20 seconds.
Least packages installed on a system: 12
Average installed packages: 495
Most packages installed on a system: 38847
Lowest Bogomips: 388.09
Average Bogomips: 3558.91
Highest Bogomips: 6914.04

Seti@Home

To Participate, visit: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=116975

Members: 21
Total credit: 211,467.34

folding@Home

Arch Linux Team Page

Team Number: 45032
Members: 41
Score: 404471
Ranking: 737 of 43491

Bugs

Closing

That's it for this time folks. If you have any opinions on the newsletter or have some things you wanna add, just send us a mail and we'll look into it.
Very best regards / Team Arch