Fedora Weekly News 195

Monday, 28 September 2009

     * 1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 195
           o 1.1 Announcements
                 + 1.1.1 New channel on freenode called #fedora-fad
                 + 1.1.2 All Features Need to be 100% by Beta Freeze 
(2009-09-29)
                 + 1.1.3 GraphicsMagick-1.3.x for F-11 (ABI change)
                 + 1.1.4 Announcing Fedora 12 Snapshot 3
                 + 1.1.5 Updating libchamplain to 0.4.0
                 + 1.1.6 Fedora 12 Mass Branching coming soon
                 + 1.1.7 Upcoming Events
           o 1.2 Planet Fedora
                 + 1.2.1 General
                 + 1.2.2 FAD EMEA 2009 Links Roundup
           o 1.3 Marketing
                 + 1.3.1 Marketing Meeting Log for 2009-09-22
                 + 1.3.2 F12 Talking points
                 + 1.3.3 Matchmaking for Feature Profile interviews
                 + 1.3.4 Fedora Insight status
                 + 1.3.5 Marketing Research
                 + 1.3.6 Coming up next
           o 1.4 Ambassadors
                 + 1.4.1 Utah Open Source Conference is coming
                 + 1.4.2 Get on the map
                 + 1.4.3 Fedora 12 is coming
           o 1.5 QualityAssurance
                 + 1.5.1 Test Days
                 + 1.5.2 Weekly meetings
                 + 1.5.3 Fedora 12 Beta Test compose
                 + 1.5.4 Bug resolution discussion
           o 1.6 Artwork
                 + 1.6.1 Mosaic Polish

- Fedora Weekly News Issue 195 -

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 195[1] for the week ending September 
27, 2009. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

Kicking off this week's issue in announcements, a new IRC channel for 
Fedora Activity Days, launched in time for the next upcoming FAD in 
Germany, and updates on feature freeze for Fedora 12 beta this week, 
along with other related updates. From the Fedora Planet, postings and 
views from Fedora contributors worldwide, and a collection of FAD EMEA 
related links. In marketing news, Fedora 12 talking points, Fedora 
Insight status and other current activities. In ambassadors, details of 
the upcoming Utah Open Source Conference, and activities Ambassadors can 
do for Fedora 12. The Quality Assurance beat this week brings up 
up-to-date on weekly meeting and Test Day activities, as well as Fedora 
12 beta related work. This issue rounds out with news from the 
Art/Design team, providing detail on the mosaic polish for the Fedora 12 
theme. That rounds out this week's issue of Fedora Weekly News, which we 
hope you enjoy!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see 
our 'join' page[2]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list(a)redhat.com

The Fedora News team is collaborating with Marketing and Docs to come up 
with a new exciting platform for disseminating news and views on Fedora, 
called Fedora Insight. If you are interested, please join the list and 
let us know how you would like to assist with this effort.

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue194
    2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join

-- Announcements --

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project[1] [2] [3].

Contributing Writer: Rashadul Islam

    1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/
    2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/
    3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events

THE BREAKING news (Fedora 12 (Constantine) related) are as follows:

--- New channel on freenode called #fedora-fad ---

Gerold Kassube announced[1] the new IRC-Channel #fedora-fad which is 
opened right now for everybody to attend a FAD (== Fedora Activity Day) 
online. Gerold mentioned, “I created that channel, because of some 
people asked (also in the past) about who cann't attend a FAD. The next 
FAD in EMEA takes place (again and by tradition) in Rheinfelden, Germany 
on the next weekend [2]. ”

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-September/msg000...
    2. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD_EMEA_2009

--- All Features Need to be 100% by Beta Freeze (2009-09-29) ---

John Poelstra had explicitly announced[1] that All Features Need to be 
100% by Beta Freeze by Tuesday, September 29th, 2009.

Beta Freeze [2] means that all features and their associated feature 
pages must be at 100% completion by this date. The following features 
are currently not 100% complete and need to be by Tuesday, September 29, 
2009. In many cases it appears they are just 1% away.

[3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] 
[19] [20] [21]

Poel also mentioned, “I will raise feature pages not at 100% at FESCo's 
meeting on October 2, 2009. Hopefully my job will be easy and there 
there won't be any.”

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-September/msg00...
    2. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Beta_Freeze_Policy
    3. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/DisplayPort
    4. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Features/FCoE
    5. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FedoraStudio
    6. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/GFS2ClusteredSamba
    7. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Gnome2.28
    8. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_Huge_Page_Backed_Memory
    9. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/liblvm
   10. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/LowerProcessCapabilities
   11. 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MoreNetworkManagerMobileBroadband
   12. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/PolicyKitOne
   13. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FedoraMoblin
   14. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NFSv4Default
   15. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/PackageKitBrowserPlugin
   16. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SystemTapEclipseGUI
   17. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SystemtapTracingRefresh
   18. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Thusnelda
   19. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VolumeControlContinued
   20. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XI2
   21. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F12X86Support

--- GraphicsMagick-1.3.x for F-11 (ABI change) ---

Rex Dieter announced[1], “Heads up, I'm working on a GM-1.3.7 update to 
F-11 which includes an ABI break. I'll be taking care of building/fixing 
dependent packages (including dvdauthor, koffice).”

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-September/msg00...

--- Announcing Fedora 12 Snapshot 3 ---

“Fedora 12 Snapshot 3 is now available for testing. These snapshots 
consist of live images only. These were composed yesterday, and made 
available today.” announced Jesse Keating[1][2][3] Jessy requested to 
report issues in bugzilla.

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-September/msg00...
    2. http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/
    3. http://spins.fedoraproject.org/

--- Updating libchamplain to 0.4.0 ---

Debarshi Ray included[1] , “I am going to build libchamplain-0.4.0 for 
Rawhide in a few hours and this involves a change in the soname that 
will affect: + eog-plugins + empathy”

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-September/msg00...

--- Fedora 12 Mass Branching coming soon ---

Jesse Keating announced[1], “Per the Fedora 12 Schedule[2] , mass 
branching for Fedora 12 will happen on the 28th of September, which is 
this coming Monday. There will be a short CVS outage associated with 
this event. The exact timing of this outage has not been decided yet, 
but we will send the outage notification when it has been decided.”

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-September/msg00...
    2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Schedule

--- Upcoming Events ---

Mark your agenda with the following events. Please, consider attending 
or volunteering at an event near you!

     * North America (NA)[1]
     * Central & South America (LATAM)[2]
     * Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)[3]
     * India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)[4]

    1. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY10_Q3_.28September_2009_-_November...
    2. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY10_Q3_.28September_2009_-_November...
    3. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY10_Q3_.28September_2009_-_November...
    4. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY10_Q3_.28September_2009_-_November...

-- Planet Fedora --

In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora[1] - an 
aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.

Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin

    1. http://planet.fedoraproject.org

--- General ---

This past week, Richard W.M. Jones posted a number of tidbits on 
interesting ways of manipulating virtual machines using Fedora. First, 
there is virt-rescue[1], which "lets you get a rescue shell on your 
virtual machine" but running on the host machine. The virt-edit[2] tool 
allows you to edit files from the host environment. Lastly, 
virt-ifconfig[3] can list the IP addresses of network interfaces on 
virtual machine guests.

After Mark Shuttleworth's recent keynote at LinuxCon, Chris Ball 
questioned[4] a potentially sexist remark that Shuttleworth made. Adam 
Williamson used[5] the opportunity to "consider the wider issues around 
the topic."

Marc Ferguson announced[6] that a new site, FOSS Threads has been 
launched, where you can buy "designer geekwear. Our shirts are designed 
to fashionably get attention, start conversations and share your love 
for free and open source software."

Speaking of eye-candy, the SMonohand[7] font has a "chalkboard-y" look 
to it, and Máirín Duffy is looking[8] for someone interested in 
packaging it for Fedora.

Ingvar Hagelund wrote[9] a short shell script that can automatically 
monitor the service contract expiration of Dell systems.

Kulbir Saini found[10] an interesting plugin for Pidgin for use when 
people ask questions that could easily be solved with a simple Google 
search.

    1. http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/virt-rescue/
    2. http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/virt-edit/
    3. http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/virt-ifconfig/
    4. http://blog.printf.net/articles/2009/09/25/on-keynotes-and-apologies
    5. http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/09/25/sexism-debate/
    6. http://www.fergytech.com/2009/09/foss-threads-launched/
    7. http://openfontlibrary.org/media/files/dalles/403
    8. 
http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/shameless-font-packaging-begging-a...
    9. 
http://ingvar.blog.linpro.no/2009/09/23/todays-sysadmin-tip-monitoring-de...
   10. http://gofedora.com/how-to-save-stupid-tech-support-questions/

--- FAD EMEA 2009 Links Roundup ---

The Fedora Ambassador Day EMEA 2009 took place this past weekend in 
Rheinfelden, Germany. There were lots of interesting posts from Max 
Spevack[1],[2],[3],[4], Joerg Simon[5],[6], Yaakov Nemoy[7] and Pierros 
Papadeas[8].

    1. http://spevack.livejournal.com/91407.html
    2. http://spevack.livejournal.com/91757.html
    3. http://spevack.livejournal.com/92156.html
    4. http://spevack.livejournal.com/92201.html
    5. http://kitall.blogspot.com/2009/09/fad-emea-2009.html
    6. http://kitall.blogspot.com/2009/09/fad-emea-2009-day2.html
    7. 
http://loupgaroublond.blogspot.com/2009/09/fad-emea-rheinfelden-friday.html
    8. http://pierros.papadeas.gr/?p=42

-- Marketing --

In this section, we cover the Fedora Marketing Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Chaitanya Mehandru

--- Marketing Meeting Log for 2009-09-22 ---

Meeting logs [1] and notes [2] for the 2009-09-22. Fedora Marketing 
Meeting were made available. All Marketing meetings and notes are open 
to the public. [3]

Thanks to Robyn Bergeron for running the meeting in Mel’s absence!!

--- F12 Talking points ---

Talking points are more or less done[4] and now ambassadors can start 
using them. Ambassadors can choose from various suggestions on using 
talking points[5].

--- Matchmaking for Feature Profile interviews ---

With the F12 talking points out already, we need to start doing print or 
podcast interviews around some of the points /features[6]. We identified 
the desktop,admin and development users category and selected 4 talking 
points that should definitely have interviews to go along with them- 
Next-Gen Ogg, NetworkManager enhancements, Virt improvements, and 
Systemtap improvements.

The tools / information to start doing interviews are available[7]. If 
someone is willing to take something on, please add your name to the 
wiki as the owner so we know that we (a) have an owner, and (b) don't 
have 12 owners being redundant.

Paul W. Frields has graciously volunteered to do the SystemTap interview 
and has shared a stub page for the systmetap interview he did in F11[8]. 
A podcast will be available soon. Thanks Paul!!!

We're still looking to synchronize interviewees and interviewers[9].

--- Fedora Insight status ---

We originally planned to launch Fedora Insight on September 29 (right 
before infrastructure freeze), but to get a stable platform up and 
tested, with a contribution workflow we're all happy with, we pushed the 
launch date out until right after the freeze instead and moved it to Oct 
14(when the freeze lifts), and the revised schedule is available[10]. 
[11][12].

--- Marketing Research ---

Robyn is working on a list of questions on marketing research to be sent 
out and will keep plugging away at market research.

--- Coming up next ---

In-depth feature profiles are on track and should get finished by 
2009-10-06. Help with podcasts is available on a wiki page "How to make 
a podcast" and provides advises on how to start with making podcasts for 
best results[13].

Red Hat Marketing/PR will be helping a during the F12 release cycle and 
we should have a release video ready for release day. Paul will be 
recording the video and is currently working to get a couple feature 
videos ready in the coming weeks.

    1. 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-09-22/fedora-meeting...
    2. 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-09-22/fedora-meeting...
    3. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing_meetings
    4. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Talking_Points
    5. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2009-September/ms...
    6. https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/73
    7. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:F12_in-depth_features
    8. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SystemTap_in_Fedora_12
    9. https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/73
   10. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Insight#Schedule
   11. 
https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/query?status=new&status=assig...
   12. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Schedule
   13. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_make_a_podcast

-- Ambassadors --

In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project[1].

Contributing Writer: Larry Cafiero

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors

--- Utah Open Source Conference is coming ---

If you live in the Mountain West region of the U.S. -- and even if you 
don't -- don't miss the region's biggest and best Linux festival. 
Registration is still open for Utah Open Source Conference 2009, to be 
held in Salt Lake City, Utah, from Oct. 8-10. This is the third year of 
this annual event, and Fedora is one of the sponsors.

Fedora will have a booth at the event and those in the area are urged to 
attend the event and are welcome to help out. For more information on 
staffing the booth, contact Larry Cafiero at 
lcafiero-at-fedoraproject-dot-org.

--- Get on the map ---

Want to find the nearest ambassador? How about one in Belarus? Now you can.

Susmit Shannigrahi reports that finding out the nearest ambassadors, 
which was once a tedious task, is now as simple as viewing a map. The 
map is at here and instructions on how to place yourself on the map can 
be found at here.

--- Fedora 12 is coming ---

While you may still be promoting Fedora 11 in your areas, you can make 
plans for Fedora 12 events to promote and celebrate the release of our 
next version.

As such, with the upcoming release of Fedora 12, this is a reminder that 
posting an announcement of your event on Fedora Weekly News can help get 
the word out. Contact FWN Ambassador correspondent Larry Cafiero at 
lcafiero-AT-fedoraproject-DOT-org with announcements of upcoming events 
-- and don't forget to e-mail reports after the events as well.

-- QualityAssurance --

In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1].

Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA

--- Test Days ---

Last week's Test Day[1] was on Xfce[2], the popular alternative desktop. 
including PulseAudio[3]. The always-loyal Xfce enthusiast base turned 
out to check on the polish of the Xfce desktop for Fedora 12, and filed 
many useful bug reports. Thanks to everyone who came out.

Next week's Test Day[4] on 2009-10-01 will be on the installer's 
(Anaconda) storage system. As always, the Test Day will run all day in 
the #fedora-test-day IRC channel. The complete rewrite of Anaconda's 
storage code which first appeared in Fedora 11 continues to be refined, 
so please come out to the Test Day and help us ensure Anaconda is tested 
on a wide range of storage hardware and configurations.

No Fit and Finish track Test Day is planned for next week.

If you would like to propose a main track Test Day for the Fedora 12 
cycle, please contact the QA team via email or IRC, or file a ticket in 
QA Trac[5].

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-24_XFCE
    2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Xfce
    3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-16_Audio
    4. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-10-01_Anaconda/Features/Stora...
    5. http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/

--- Weekly meetings ---

The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-09-21. The full log is 
available[2]. Adam Williamson noted that the zsync issues raised at the 
previous meeting had been discussed in a development mailing list 
thread[3], but no real movement had yet occurred.

Adam Williamson mentioned that the beta release process was getting 
underway, and the test compose would be happening on 2009-09-23. He also 
reminded the group that a blocker bug review meeting would be taking 
place on 2009-09-25. He asked the group to test the test compose, 
Rawhide itself, and the nightly Rawhide live CDs as much as possible, 
and particularly to try and test beta blockers bugs that required 
re-testing.

David Pravec said he had been talking to the Anaconda team and they were 
unhappy about significant changes being made to components on which 
Anaconda depends so close to the beta release time. The specific example 
raised was the major changes made to the nss package in the days before 
the meeting. The group discussed the problem, and agreed that there 
needed to be better communication between the Anaconda team and 
developers responsible for the components on which it relies. Jesse 
Keating pointed out that such changes sometimes result from the Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux development process, with Red Hat staff being requested 
to make changes in Fedora for the ultimate benefit of that product. The 
group unanimously felt that there should be a process for such changes 
which ensures that they do not negatively affect the Fedora development 
process, and that Red Hat Enterprise Linux engineers should be required 
to be considerate of Fedora deadlines and processes when making changes 
to Fedora. Jesse said he should be able to raise this issue with the 
appropriate Red Hat management staff.

Seth Vidal asked the group whether it would be acceptable to submit a 
new version of yum which includes history support to Rawhide prior to 
the release of Fedora 12 Beta. After some discussion, the group agreed 
that it would be an acceptable risk to make this change, as Seth had 
already performed some good testing on it and had a good plan for 
backing out the change if it became necessary.

The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[4] was held on 2009-09-22. The full 
log is available[5]. Edward Kirk noted there had been no real movement 
on the triage day improvement topic, but he was hoping to pull something 
together soon.

Edward Kirk was also looking for a way to improve the tracking of action 
items from previous meetings, some of which he felt had fallen through 
the cracks in the past. After some discussion, John5342 suggested using 
the team's trac instance[6] for this purpose, and the group agreed this 
was a good idea. Edward Kirk volunteered to transfer any outstanding 
action items from previous meetings to Trac.

No-one had heard from Brennan Ashton regarding the triage metrics 
project in the week before the meeting.

Richard June gave an update on the kernel triage project. He was still 
finding that the wireless tickets he was checking were all well-filed 
and would not much benefit from triage. He was therefore moving to look 
at a wider range of kernel bugs to see if this impression held true. He 
was also planning to get in touch with kernel developers to get some 
instruction on what kinds of information they would require on 
particular bugs.

The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-09-28 at 1600 UTC in 
#fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-09-29 at 
1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting.

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings
    2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20090921
    3. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-September/msg00525....
    4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings
    5. 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-09-22/fedora-meeting...
    6. http://fedorahosted.org/triage/

--- Fedora 12 Beta Test compose ---

Liam Li announced[1] the Fedora 12 Beta test compose, a test build to 
check for major showstopper bugs that would appear only in the 
traditional installer physical media builds. Earlier, he had sent a mail 
detailing the types of testing[2] that would be useful, and the results 
matrix page[3] for reporting results. Several people reported failures 
with the test compose images, and Liam later announced an updated test 
compose[4] which fixed the most significant bug affecting the earlier 
compose.

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00560.html
    2. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00446.html
    3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_12_Beta_TC_Install
    4. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00656.html

--- Bug resolution discussion ---

Sergey Rudchenko asked[1] whether triagers could ever close a bug as 
NEXTRELEASE without reference to the maintainer responsible for the bug. 
Adam Williamson explained[2] that this was rarely the case, as it would 
require certain knowledge of the maintainers intentions regarding which 
releases they intended to fix the bug in.Karel Volny asked[3] why some 
of what Adam had said did not seem to match the policy documented on the 
Bugzilla page[4]. Adam explained[5] that the canonical reference for 
Fedora's bug process is in fact on the Wiki[6], and explained some 
wrinkles around distribution versioning, which he promised to explain on 
the Wiki page.

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00549.html
    2. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00552.html
    3. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00563.html
    4. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/page.cgi?id=fields.html#status
    5. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00565.html
    6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/BugStatusWorkFlow

-- Artwork --

In this section, we cover the Fedora Design Team[1].

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

--- Mosaic Polish ---

Máirín Duffy proposed[1] a new 3D way to produce a polished version of 
the mosaic that will be used for the Fedora 12 theme "I came up with 
this today, polishing on the original mosaic [[User:tatica|María] did 
with the blur/focus technique we had discussed trying a while back" 
inquiring if it is a path worth using. It was positively appreciated, 
with only a reserve from[2] Martin Sourada about the amount of bokeh[3] 
used: "It looks really great, although while excellent for anaconda 
banner, I think the amount of lens flare in the wallpaper is a little 
too much."

    1. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-September/00108...
    2. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-September/00109...
    3. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-September/00109...

- end FWN #195 -

Pascal Calarco, Fedora Ambassador, Indiana, USA
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pcalarco

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