Arch Linux Newsletter

Summary

Welcome to the Arch Linux Newsletter. This document attempts to give you an "at a glance" look at the world of Arch Linux.

Table Of Contents

Front Page News

1. archlinux.org gets a facelift
   Hello and welcome to the new archlinux.org website!
   
   The site is now running on the Django web framework and is sporting the new design posted by rezza on the forums.
   
   Some things may still be a little rough around the edges. If you notice some buglets here n' there, feel free to email me about them.
   
   
2. GTK 2.10 enters testing
   
   New versions of cairo,pango,glib2,gtk2,libgnomeui,gtk-engines and several image loader plugins entered testing. Noticeable changes:
   - speed improvements due to cairo
   - new fileselector
   - asynchronous gnomevfs fileselector, no longer hangs while browsing remote shares
   
   Known bugs:
   - gnome-terminal about screen doesn't close, will backport fix from CVS for this
   - gedit can't browse network:///, displays smb-root.desktop
   - some theme engines or image loader plugins are not updated to the 2.10 module dir, please report bugs for these.
   
   Please test your software with the new packages and report bugs when weird things happen on your system. Pango is still a development version, which means these packages can't enter current before Pango 1.14.0 has been released. Plans are to move these packages to current as soon as Pango 1.14.0 gets released and no bugs are open against these packages.
   
   

Devland

1. Aaron made a few changes to the boot scripts to shave off about 0.7 seconds. He needs to test them more, so you won't see them available just yet.
2. If you see the error "configure: error: C preprocessor "/lib/cpp" fails sanity check" or something like it while trying to build, you have to reinstall the kernel-headers package.

Forum Highlights

1. twiistedkaos made search add-ons for firefox.
2. hypermegachi likes the new Arch Linux website.
3. Pierluigi made a script which can upload packages to the AUR.
4. Gullible Jones was looking to block the ipv6 module.

Mailing List Highlights

1. Ways to detect wireless hotspots in an area.
2. Booting to single user mode when using mkinitcpio.
3. Method to monitor daemons that are running.

Package Highlights

• GTK 2.10 transition in testing
• General package updates

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: 728
Longest recorded uptime: 494 days, 3 hours, 29 minutes, 25 seconds.
Average uptime: 12 days, 16 hours, 5 minutes, 16 seconds.
Average installed packages: 426
Average system memory: 724MB
Lowest Bogomips: 266.13
Average Bogomips: 3563.83
Highest Bogomips: 6811.60

Seti@Home

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

Members: 34
Total credit: 328,871.45

folding@Home

Arch Linux Team Page
Extended Team Statistics

Team Number: 45032
Members: 65
Score: 752744
Ranking: 520 of 44549

Bugs

• AUR: Closed 2 - Opened 5
• Arch: Closed 80 - Opened 132

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