Table of Contents

• Welcome
• Events
• Frugalware's developer are people too!
• Tips and tricks
• Focus on package(s)
• Bug fixes
• Security announcements
• About the newsletter

Welcome

The newsletter's aim is to keep you up to date with what's happened recently in the world of the Linux distribution 'Frugalware'.

Features of this issue include:

• Kalgan - "be still my beating heart"
• Tip - Redirect your terminal's output
• Geany - Want a simple but powerful GUI text editor? Your wish is granted!

Events

Here's a selection of events which have occurred since the previous newsletter:

• Kalgan - "be still my beating heart"

  On 17 February 2008, vmiklos announced the release of Frugalware 0.8 ("Kalgan") release candidate 2. Included in this release are quite a number of bug fixes, updated packages and new packages. For more details on this exciting release, read vmiklos' announcement. This is the last test release so the focus is now on bug fixing.

  The purpose of Frugalware's pre-releases and release candidates is to allow anyone who's interested to test the work in progress. If you have the bandwidth and time required to help, please test these pre-releases and release candidates. The more bugs that are found during the testing phase, the better the quality of the final release.

  According to my calculations, there are only 902,334,167,372,423,453 trillion light years to go. :) (In reality it's less than 4 weeks, according to the roadmap).

• Frugalware - you're beautiful!

  New artwork is under development for Frugalware 0.8 - Kalgan - by masta64. Masta64 is an associate of Devil505, a Frugalware developer. This is exciting because it maintains the very high standard of Frugalware artwork. Others are also working unofficially on artwork and have submitted this to the forums. music_composer recently submitted some nice artwork, including a wallpaper. Official or unofficial, all Frugalware-related artwork is welcome. Please submit your work in the forums so that others can appreciate and provide feedback.

• (Sing) I help you, you help me, we're just one big family

  Recently some non-developers have begun helping Frugalware. Jedifox has begun packaging applications with assistance and advice from developers. Martin Burda from the Czech Republic has offered to translate Frugalware into Czech. Please encourage their efforts because we need all the help we can get.

Frugalware's developer are people too!

This is a new feature of the newsletter in which various Frugalware developers reveal a little about themselves. The aim is to show that "Frugalware's developers are people too!" I thank the developers for taking the time to answer the questions. There will be one interview per newsletter (until we run out of developers).

I have chosen to interview vmiklos first because he started the Frugalware project. Please stand and hum the Hungarian national anthem while you read his interview.

What's your name?

Miklós Vajna, usually just Miklos as typing accents on an English keyboard is difficult.. you may know the situation.

What's your IRC nickname?

vmiklos. Some people say that I'm mxw_ as well, but it's just an IRC bot written by me. :)

In what country do you live?

Hungary.

In what country were you born?

The answer is the same.

What do you like the most about where you live?

I live in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. I like the city life. I like almost everything here, and there are still hills and forests near me so I can still go out if I want. :)

What do you do for the Frugalware project?

People say I'm the one who does "the rest". We have maintainers for different purposes like KDE, Xfce, games, x86_64.. and if there is no specific person to do something, then it'll be me. This basically includes the core packages like kernel, pacman-g2, fwsetup, pacman-tools and some administration like mailing lists, rsync, dns, ftp and such.

What motivates you to work on Frugalware?

First, I'm most comfortable with this distro, so just keeping it at the state where it is right now is far easier for me than switching to some other distro. And improving it is fun. Reading mails from users who say "Thanks for this great distro!" really makes me believe we are doing something useful.

What do you do when you're not working on Frugalware?

Besides learning and working - friends and I play guitar in a small guitar band.

What's the view from your front door?

Open the door and have a look

Tips and tricks

Disclaimer - Be aware that the hints & tips provided here have NOT been tested and so come with no warranty.

• Simple terminal file output - by 'prisoner1'

  Ever have a command (e.g. lshal) you entered in a terminal (e.g. konsole, xterm) but it output way too much to the screen? Well, there is a solution and it is the >>, and a file.

  Example:

  ~$ lshal >> OutputFileWhateverYouName

  In this example, the output from lshal will go to the file in the current directory, which in this case is your home directory. I hope that helps.

This section relies on your contributions! If have some tips and tricks that you would like to be shown in the newsletter, please post them on the forums in the Tips and Tricks section!

Focus On Package(s)

Geany

In this section of the newsletter, the aim is to make people aware of packages that they otherwise might not find. It's the turn of Geany, a simple but powerful text editor.

Geany is described on its home page as "a text editor using the GTK2 toolkit with basic features of an integrated development environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages. It supports many filetypes and has some nice features." Having moved recently from KDE to XFCE I was looking for a text editor with syntax highlighting, but only a few dependencies. I found exactly what I wanted - and more - in Geany. Even if you're already using a GUI text editor, take a look at Geany - you'll probably be surprised at its range of features.

Bug fixes

A list of bugs closed since the previous newsletter is available here.

Security announcements

According to the normal support arrangements for Frugalware, when Frugalware 0.7 (Sayshell) was released, support for the previous release ended. This means that no further security or bug fixes will be released for Frugalware 0.6 (Terminus).

Here is a list of security issues which have been discovered and fixed in the 0.7 release since the previous newsletter.

• FSA369 - kernel: A vulnerability has been reported in the Linux Kernel, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to cause a DoS (Denial of Service), disclose potentially sensitive information, and gain escalated privileges. Please upgrade to kernel-2.6.22-7sayshell5.
• FSA368 - flashplugin: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in Adobe Flash Player, where one vulnerability has an unknown impact and others can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges and by malicious people to bypass certain security restrictions, conduct cross-site scripting and HTTP request splitting attacks, disclose sensitive information, cause a Denial of Service (DoS), or to potentially compromise a user's system. Please upgrade to flashplugin-9.0.115.0-1sayshell1.
• FSA367 - qt4: A vulnerability has been reported in Qt, which can be exploited by malicious people to bypass certain security restrictions. Please upgrade to qt4-4.3.1-4sayshell1.

About the newsletter

Author

The Frugalware newsletter is written by Russell Dickenson (AKA phayz). Credit for the Frugalware distribution goes to the development team.

Translations

The newsletter is currently translated into French and Danish. The French translation is provided by the French Frugalware community. The Danish translation is provided by the Danish Frugalware community. Thanks to all those involved in providing and hosting these translations.

Release

To allow time for review and corrections, each newsletter is written ahead of its release date. Therefore it may not mention events which occured in the few days before its release - e.g. security fixes. To be sure that you've got the very latest information on these topics, go to the appropriate page of the Frugalware web site.

Feedback

If you have feedback about the Frugalware newsletter - whether good or bad - please provide it via the forums. Your feedback is valuable because we want the newsletter to meet the needs of Frugalware's users.