Devon and Cornwall GNU/Linux Users Group

Category Archives: debian

Exeter Raspberry Pi jam – 1/11/2014

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Today was another excellent pi jam up in Exeter,  and well attended,  the word is getting out there.

Highlights

Tom Brough demonstrated the parity bit trick and also had some coloured cones to demonstrate how a bubble sort works,  you can try this take about 8 cones of different sizes and put them randomly in a line now sort them one by one so the line goes from biggest to smallest.

I spent some time, with some help working on getting scratch to talk to the pi liter,  once done (not too difficult) we spent some time then creating a program that is the same as the chaser type program written in python.  This works really well,  further enhancements allows the user to interact, chance speed as well as stop / start the routine.

I also had a chat with another user who showed me his chromebook running lubuntu.  This was also connected to the Pi with vnc,  the performance was excellent.

Ivan was also showing various projects and we had minecraft running on another pi.  In the fab lab was the usual beginner work shop where you can learn to light up leds on a bread (project) board using the raspberry Pi GPIO

So in all excellent,   Looking forward to next week as it is the Torbay Pi jam from 1 – 3 at Paignton Library,   good news is that the 3 sd cards (well micro + adapters) arrived to day so these are all ready for next week,    I may look at preparing at least one with Noobs,  as this may save time next week.

Thank you to Simon and Exeter library for hosting another pi jam and everyone who attended.

Debian Jessie Beta 2

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The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the second beta
release of the installer for Debian 8 "Jessie".


Important changes in this release of the installer
==================================================

 * Gnome is now the default desktop environment on Linux again.
 * A list of desktop environments is displayed in tasksel, making it
   easy to install another desktop environment (or several of them).
   Unfortunately that is currently a bit underdocumented (#764026).
 * Preliminary support for the arm64 and ppc64el architectures has been
   added.


Other changes in this release of the installer
==============================================

 * brltty: Append the configuration inherited from d-i to the end of
   brltty.conf instead of overwriting it (which was thus losing the
   documentation for the user).
 * brltty: Enable accessibility in XFCE, LXDE and MATE sessions too.
 * busybox: Add support for /32 subnets in udhcpc script (#652573).
 * choose-mirror: Strip off any scheme part found at the start of
   mirror/*/hostname (#706191).
 * console-setup: Correct default keymap for South Korea (#756052).
 * console-setup: Use nepali keymap for Nepali and Tharu by default.
 * debian-installer:
    - Fix the PXE boot images built for kfreebsd, hurd (#759686).
    - Add fonts-lohit-guru-udeb to gtk images, fixing rendering for
      Punjabi (#761573).
    - Remove desktop selection from syslinux; now available in
      tasksel.
    - Keep Linux modules.builtin file in the initrd.
    - Fix lib location and search path for syslinux >= 5 (#756275).
 * fontconfig: Add conf.avail directory to the udeb, fixing broken
   Monospace font in graphical installer (#739011).
 * hw-detect: Improve driver injection disk support.
 * hw-detect: Move firmware installation code to pre-pkgsel.d
 * hw-detect: Correct detection of Macs needing to blacklist snd-aoa
   modules (#650588).
 * iso-scan: Do not error out when searching in folders with
   shell-special characters in their name (#640789).
 * lowmem: Update lowmem limits for linux-x86.
 * lowmem: Make the / ramfs fill the whole memory again (#759336).
 * netcfg: Do not kill_dhcp_client after setting the hostname and
   domain, otherwise Linux udhcpc will stop renewing its lease, and on
   other platforms dhclient will de-configure the network interface
   (#757711, #757988).
 * netcfg: Don't copy /etc/network/interfaces to /target if
   netcfg/target_network_config=ifupdown (#709017).
 * netcfg: Fix support for entering an ESSID manually, it was
   previously getting ignored (#757478).
 * preseed: Update auto-install/defaultroot for jessie.
 * preseed: Always disable locale & keyboard question when auto is
   enabled, even if no preseed file was given on boot, in case the dhcp
   server provides it (#759290).
 * rootskel: Update lowmem limit for gtk on linux-x86.
 * rootskel: Use a tmpfs for some directories to avoid running out of
   space in the fixed-size initrd on kfreebsd-* (#757985).
 * rootskel-gtk: Update gtk-set-font to learn a new mapping (Lohit
   Punjabi).


Hardware support changes
========================

 * libdebian-installer: arm64: Detect UEFI based systems as "efi"
   subarch.
 * libdebian-installer: Add ppc64 and ppc64el support.
 * linux:
    - Include preliminary support for arm64 and ppc64el.
    - udeb: Add ccm, ctr to crypto-modules (#761902).
    - [armhf] udeb: Add ehci-platform, ohci-platform and phy-sun4i-usb
      to usb-modules (#761591).
    - udeb: Add rsi_usb to nic-wireless-modules
    - udeb: Add ath6kl_sdio, libertas_cs, libertas_sdio, mwifiex_sdio,
      r8192u_usb, r8723au, rtl8188eu, rtl818x_pci, rtl8723be,
      rtl8821ae, spectrum_cs to nic-wireless-modules.
    - [armel/orion5x] udeb: Include mvmdio in nic-modules udeb.
    - udeb: Add new sound drivers to sound-modules (#756998).


Known bugs in this release
==========================

 * Firmware handling: udev no longer reports missing firmware
   (#725714), and patches for the kernel need polishing before we are
   able to restore support for loading missing firmware.
 * CD-ROM modules are missing on ppc64el, but the netboot flavour is
   working correctly. This will be fixed in the next release.


Feedback for this release
=========================

We need your help to find bugs and further improve the installer, so
please try it. Installer CDs, other media and everything else you will
need are available at our web site[3].


Thanks
======

The Debian Installer team thanks everybody who has contributed to this
release.

 1. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team
 2. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata
 3. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer

Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women

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This came through on e-mail today

Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women
======================================================

The GNOME Foundation started the Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program
for Women, OPW, in 2006. It was quite successful, and in the January-April 2013
round, many other FOSS organizations joined the program. We are happy to
announce that Debian will participate in the next round
(December '14-March '15) and, pending sponsorship, we'll offer up to three
internships. 

You can find more details about the program:
* http://wiki.debian.org/OutreachProgramForWomen with details about
Debian's participation.
* http://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen with details about the
program in general.

Call for mentors and projects
=============================

OPW allows applicants to work on any kind of project, including coding,
design, marketing, web development... If you have any idea for a
project and you want to mentor it, please contact us at opw@debian.org
and we'll guide you through the process.

OPW provides a lot of useful information for mentors on the GNOME Wiki at
https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen/Admin/InfoForMentors. Please
have a look, and don't hesitate to contact us if you have any question.

Call for participants
=====================

The main goal of this program is to increase the number of women in
FOSS, so all women who are not yet a Debian Developer or a Debian
Maintainer are encouraged to apply. There are no age restrictions and
applicants don't need to be a student.

If you want to apply, you must follow three steps:

1. Choose a project from the list of proposed projects on
http://wiki.debian.org/OutreachProgramForWomen. Those lists may change as
mentors add themselves over the next few weeks.

2. Make a small contribution to Debian. Projects will add a task the
applicant must complete as part of the pre-selection process. If no task
is provided, you are welcome to ask the mentors of the project. You can
also make a different extra task of the one listed to show your skills
and interest.

3. Create a page in the Debian wiki with your application. You can do so
under pseudonym, but in that case, please give us information about
yourself privately by email to the people below!


The Debian OPW coordinators <opw@debian.org>
 Tom Marble
 Nicolas Dandrimont