This year our efforts have paid off and despite there being more mentoring organizations than there were in 2011 (175 in 2011 and 180 in 2012), this year in Debian we got 81 submissions versus 43 submissions in 2011.

I bought some HTPC a few years ago to run XBMC, a neat media center solution. At the time, to avoid any problems, I installed it on top of a minimal Ubuntu Lucid installation with the official packages from the team XBMC. Recently, XBMC Eden has been released and XBMC has landed into Debian unstable. [...]

The Debian Project produces an entirely Free operating system that empowers its users to be in control of the software running their computers. These days, more and more computing is being moved away from user computers to the so-called “cloud” – a vague term often used to refer to Software as a Service (SaaS) [1] [...]

First, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been working on porting the native Solaris ZFS source to the Linux kernel as a kernel module. So long as the project remains under contract by the Department of Defense in the United States, I’m confident there will be continuous updates.

Whether you’re a beginner or you’ve been using Linux systems for years, you probably have an opinion on what the best distribution is. “Best,” is obviously a relative term, and we understand that what’s best for beginners may not be best for advanced users, and so on.

sitecopy is a tool for copying locally stored web sites to a remote web server (using FTP or WebDAV). It helps you to keep the remote site synchronized with your local copy by uploading modified local files and deleting remote files that have been deleted on the local computer. This tutorial shows how you can [...]

This tutorial teaches you how to setup Gitlab on Debian 6, Ruby 1.9.3, Phusion Passenger and Nginx. It assumes that Gitlab and the git repositories are hosted on the same machine.

SPDY (pronounced “SPeeDY”) is a new networking protocol whose goal is to speed up the web. It is Google’s alternative to the HTTP protocol and a candidate for HTTP/2.0. SPDY augments HTTP with several speed-related features such as stream multiplexing and header compression. To use SPDY, you need a web server and a browser (like [...]

In the past I have written several howtos for remotely unlocking fully encrypted Debian installations. With the advent of Debian Squeeze, the developers have integrated a simple way to do so. Most stuff is provided directly by Debian itself – meaning you don’t need 3rd party scripts anymore. However it still involves a few steps [...]

Samuel Thibault is a French guy like me, but it took years until we met. He tends to keep a low profile, even though he’s doing lots of good work that deserves to be mentioned. He focuses on improving Debian’s accessibility and contributes to the Hurd.

In the Czech municipality of Grygov open source is used almost everywhere. It covers most of the applications used by the administration, offers public Internet access across the entire village and it is the basis for an SMS gateway linking the regional fire department with the volunteers in the village. The software even keeps parents [...]

Welcome to this year’s eight issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include…:

This guide explains how you can configure DNSSEC on BIND9 (version 9.7.3 that comes with Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 11.10) on Debian Squeeze and Ubuntu 11.10. It covers how to enable DNSSEC on authoritative nameservers (master and slave) and on resolving nameservers, creation of keys and much more..

This is the first time the project has had a leader for so long, apart from the time when its founder Ian Murdock was in charge from August 1993 till March 1996,

Dear project members, here is my monthly DPL activity report, this time for last March. It is delayed by a couple of weeks because, myself being both incumbent and candidate DPL, I preferred not to use d-d-a during the voting period unless really needed. Apologies for the delay (or the unneeded paranoia, you name it).

This is a short HOWTO on setting up a backported Postgresql 9.1 database with streaming replication on Debian Squeeze.

In accordance with its constitution [1], the Debian Project has just reelected Stefano Zacchiroli for a third year as Debian Project Leader. More than 80% of voters put him as their first choice (or equal first) on their ballot papers. This is the first time in the history of the project that a candidate wins [...]

Hi, The winner of the election is Stefano Zacchiroli. His new term will start on April 17th, 2012.

Here are some benchmarks comparing Debian GNU/kFreeBSD with the new 9.0 kernel, Debian GNU/Linux with the Linux 3.2 kernel, and FreeBSD/PC-BSD 9.0.

The Debian Project is pleased to announce that registration is now open for DebConf12, which will take place in Managua, Nicaragua, from Sunday 8 July to Saturday 14 July 2012. The conference will be preceded as usual by one week of DebCamp, from Sunday 1 July to Saturday 7 July.

Debian invites submissions of proposals for papers, presentations, discussion sessions and tutorials for its DebConf12 conference which will take place in Managua, Nicaragua, in July.

Adding a PPA channel to your system is stupidly simple, but once you’ve done it and you’re not properly versed in Debian package management, you may have destroyed your system. I got this software from a PPA channel just so that I could try out the experimental Blu-Ray support. Little did I know (well, actually, [...]

Hi, This is the second call for votes for the Debian Project Leader Elections 2012.

I met Francesca in Debconf 11 in Banja Luka. If I recall correctly, it’s Enrico Zini who introduced me to her, because she was the “madamezou” (her IRC nickname) who started to get involved in the publicity team. Since then — and despite having a bachelor thesis to complete — she got way more involved [...]

Jitsi is a multi-protocol, multi-platform voice and video instant messenger client. It is mostly implemented in Java, and is Free/Open Source software licensed under the LGPL. Where other VoIP services and clients send data in the clear, Jitsi sets itself apart by making use of ZRTP to set up secure communication with SRTP, Secure Real-time [...]

The fifth Debian Groupware Meeting[1] was held in the LinuxHotel, Essen, Germany[2]. Eight persons attended which is an all time high! This is a short summary of what happened during the weekend:

Horde is a groupware suite that offers email, calendar, task, contact management and more things. It also offers SyncML and ActiveSync to synchronize with your cell phones or other software.

Welcome to this year’s seventh issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include: * Bits from Debian Med team * Debian joins the OSI * Report from DSA Team sprint * “Fascinating”: a Debian based tricorder * So long, and thanks for all the news * Interviews * [...]

This is one of those things that doesn’t get explained much, because it’s almost too simple to document: it’s often useful to keep a few Debian package files (.deb files, used in Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux distributions derived from them) available for installation, either on your local host or on other computers on the same [...]

Hi, This is the first call for votes for the Debian Project Leader Elections 2012.