Frugalware Linux Newsletter - Issue 69
...to inform...to educate...to entertain
"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending." Maria Robinson
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:
- Frugalware release party has been cancelled
- Tips and tricks - Be bold and try a new font!
- Focus On Package(s) - NetSurf and gbainy
Events etc
Here's a selection of recent events and other items that you might find interesting:
Frugalware release party has been cancelled
In newsletter issue 66, it was announced that the Frugalware 1.3 release party was to be hosted by Danish translator - beecarl - at his house. Drinks and food were all arranged, and all travel arrangements made, with developers and contributors traveling by plane, train, car, bus and donkey. It's with great sadness then, that we have to announce that the release party has been cancelled. Beecarl instead decided to "jump ship" (to use an English-language phrase), more accurately, he jumped on a ship. If you don't believe it, please read his blog entry. It's hard to believe that he would prefer a free and easy life on the open sea to hosting a noisy party for a large number of geeks. Oh well, maybe he'll have returned in time for 1.4's release party? Until then we'll just sit here and look out over the ocean...
New Packages
No new packages have been added to Frugalware since the last newsletter issue, but that's not because the developers are taking a break. With Frugalware release 1.3 - code-name "Haven" - due soon, new packages are not allowed. Until 1.3 is released the developers are focused on fixing existing bugs. New packages must wait until after 1.3 has been released.
Tips and tricks
Disclaimer - Be aware that the hints & tips provided here have NOT been tested and so come with no warranty.
Be bold and try a new font!
Geeks are generally known as risk-takers, constantly living life on the edge, taking chances and daring to dream. It only makes sense, then, that you might like to take this to the extreme and try some new monospace fonts in your terminal emulator. There are some excellent monospace TrueType fonts available, packaged for Frugalware. Terminus looks like a bitmap font (and the bitmap version is available in another package), very square and very easy to read, even at quite a small size. It was designed to ease eyestrain over long coding sessions. Monaco looks much like the default monospace font on Apple PCs. It's more rounded and with some letters having serifs, looks more stylish than some other monospace fonts. DejaVu Sans Mono, Droid Sans Mono and Liberation Mono look very similar and each are excellent fonts. Any one of these could be just the font you're looking for so please - install and try them all.
Remove orphaned packages
Every now and then you should search for a remove orphaned packages. As stated in pacman-g2's man page, they "were installed as a dependency (i.e. not installed explicitly) and are not required by any other packages". Since they're no longer required, they're simply using disk space for no good reason. Entering the following command will give you a list of orphaned packages, which you can then have pacman-g2 remove.
pacman -Qe
This section relies on your contributions! If you have some tips and tricks that you would like to be shown in the newsletter, please post them on the forums.
Focus On Package(s)
NetSurf
NetSurf describes itself as "Small as a mouse, fast as a cheetah, and available for free. NetSurf is a portable web browser for RISC OS, AmigaOS, BeOS and UNIX-like platforms." Unlike several other web browsers, it's not based on either the WebKit or Gecko engines, but uses its own engine. This means that it has very few dependencies and is not tied to a desktop environment. It is very fast to start but has all the major features you would expect from a web browser, including proxy support, ability to search from the address bar and content blocking. In my experience it has some quirks when rendering various web sites but nothing that would cause difficulty. Even if you already have one of the major browsers installed, you might like to use NetSurf to load web content on demand - e.g. opening links in email messages or messages on identi.ca.
gbrainy
gbrainy "is a brain teaser game and trainer to have fun and to keep your brain trained" according to its home page. These games make a nice change from first-person shooters because they challenge your brain power. It has three difficulty settings which is good if you find the games too hard or too easy. When you complete each game, or decide to quit ( :) ), gbrainy provides you a barchart which shows your results over the various types of games and provides tips on how you might improve. Pay attention to those tips and soon you might be a gbrainy champion.
Bug fixes
The following table gives you a overview of activity on bugs and feature requests as at 19 August 2010. In each cell of the table is a link to a detailed list of the relevant bugs or feature requests.
| Activity | Bugs | Feature Requests |
|---|---|---|
| Open | 129 | 191 |
| Opened since the previous newsletter | 8 | 0 |
| Closed since the previous newsletter | 60 | 2 |
Security announcements
Remember - According to the normal support arrangements for Frugalware, the release of 1.2 ("Locris") means that no further security or bug fixes will be released for Frugalware 1.1 ("Getorin") or earlier.
Here is a list of security issues which have been discovered and fixed in the 1.2 release since the previous newsletter.
| FSA | Package | FSA Description | Upgrade To |
|---|---|---|---|
| FSA685 | drupal6-views | See FSA684 for details. | drupal6-views-6.x_2.11-1locris1 |
| FSA684 | drupal-views | Multiple vulnerabilities have been reported in the Views module for Drupal, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct cross-site request forgery, and cross-site scripting attacks | drupal-views-5.x_1.8-1locris1 |
| FSA683 | drupal6-filefield | See FSA682 for details. | drupal6-filefield-6.x_3.4-1locris1 |
| FSA682 | drupal-filefield | A vulnerability has been reported in the FileField module for Drupal, which can be exploited by malicious users to conduct script insertion attacks | drupal-filefield-5.x_2.5-1locris1 |
| FSA681 | openssl | Multiple vulnerabilities have been reported in OpenSSL: 1) A vulnerability is caused due to certain applications (e.g | openssl-0.9.8-19locris1 |
| FSA680 | drupal6-cck | Some vulnerabilities have been reported in the Drupal Content Construction Kit, which can be exploited by malicious users to disclose sensitive information | drupal6-cck-6.x_2.7-1locris1 |
| FSA679 | drupal-cck | A vulnerability has been reported in the Drupal Content Construction Kit, which can be exploited by malicious users to disclose sensitive information | drupal-cck-5.x_1.12-1locris1 |
| FSA678 | nss | A vulnerability has been reported in Network Security Services (NSS), which can be exploited by malicious people to manipulate certain data | nss-3.12.6-1locris1 |
| FSA677 | pcre | Michael Santos has discovered a vulnerability in PCRE, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) or potentially compromise an application using the library | pcre-8.02-1locris1 |
About the newsletter
Author
The Frugalware newsletter is written and edited 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 by their respective communities as soon as possible. Please be patient as it can take some time to translate each issue. 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 occurred 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.