Table of Contents

• Welcome
• Events
• Frugalware's developer are people too! - IroniQ
• Tips and tricks - man - odd symbols appearing
• 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:

• Frugalware's developer are people too! - IroniQ
• Tips and tricks - man - odd symbols appearing
• ryuo is now a developer!
• Users fight it out in IRC

Events

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

• ryuo is now a developer!

  Recently, VMiklos proposed and everyone agreed that ryuo be accepted into the prestigous club of Frugalware developers. He was granted all rights normally granted to a developer, including full access to the git repository. Those who don't subscribe to the development mailing list may not know that ryuo had been submitting package build scripts for some time now. With the help of other developers - particularly VMiklos and crazy, he quickly improved his packaging skills. Congratulations to ryuo for his hard work and his reward in becoming a developer. We look forward to many more packages to come.

  Existing developers are grateful that as part of his new status as a developer, ryuo has a Frugalware domain email address. This will eliminate the spam which appeared as a signature to each of his email messages. :P

• Polish translations - get ready

  Mateusz Tybura - AKA wujciol - has recently joined the Frugalware project to provide translation to Polish. If you see wujciol on IRC or in the forums, please encourage this work. One of the goals of Frugalware is to be accessible to as many people as possible in their native language.

• Users fight it out in IRC

  On 27 May 2008, a fight broke out amongst several people on the Frugalware IRC channel. An innocent developer who also happened to be in the channel was used as a weapon. Thankfully the fight didn't last for long. Since developers are usually quite soft and most Frugalware users are weak, no-one was actually hurt. Those who took part in the fight have been asked to use Windows Vista for one week as punishment. Below is a record of what happened.

  * ryuo smacks Noobie| with Thomas Crapper's Golden Toiletseat.

  * Noobie| slaps ryuo with a krix

  <krix>	uhm

  * krix throws Noobie| at ryuo

  * ryuo smacks Noobie| with a boobaa.

  <ryuo> yes, lets play smack each other with developers game

  <DeX77> devs aren't allowed to play

  <Noobie|>	xD

Frugalware's developers are people too!

In this feature of the newsletter, Frugalware's 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).

IroNiQ

This issue's interview is with IroniQ, whose main role in the Frugalware development team is system administration. Please stand and hum the Hungarian national anthem while you read his interview.

What's your name?

VASAS Krisztián

What's your IRC nickname?

IroNiQ

In what country do you live?

Hungary

In what country were you born?

Hungary

What do you like the most about where you live?

Most of the time I live in Bupapest, the capital of Hungary. I like it because of the bustle of the city. But my parents live in the Mátra mountains and if I want to relax, I go there and hike or just don't do anything.

What do you do for the Frugalware project?

I was the Xfce maintainer for a time, but I didn't have enough time for it and gave this maintainership to Priyank. Now I'm the bug tracking system and homepage admin, sysadmin of the buildservers and I help administer the main server.

What motivates you to work on Frugalware?

I tried several Linux distributions (almost all of the big ones) but something was missing from all of them. When I heard about Frugalware I tried it and found what I was looking for and started making packages for it.

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

I was working as a network manager with switches and routers, but now I'm changing jobs so soon I'll work with IT security.

What's the view from your front door?

The view from my front door is only a staircase, that's small and dark, but my window is to an alley, behind this alley is a nice park. Please look out the window.

Tips and tricks

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

• man - odd symbols appearing - submitted by 'olegfink'

  If you get unreadable symbols when using man,open /etc/man.conf with editor of your choice (e.g. vim) and change

  /usr/bin/nroff -Tlatin1 -mandoc -c

  to

  /usr/bin/nroff -Tutf8 -mandoc -c

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)

NoteCase

According to its home page, "NoteCase is a hierarchical note manager (aka. outliner). It helps you organize your everyday text notes into a single document, with individual notes placed in the tree-like structure (each note can have its sub-notes, ...). To ensure your privacy, encrypted document format is supported, along with standard unencrypted format." We all scribble notes on pieces of paper which get lost or forgotten. Searching for just the right piece of paper is usually impossible. Tools like NoteCase can fix this problem and allow you to add some structure to what would otherwise be random notes.

Bug fixes

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

Security announcements

Remember - According to the normal support arrangements for Frugalware, the release of 0.8 ("Kalgan") means that support for the previous release has ended. This means that no further security or bug fixes will be released for Frugalware 0.7 ("Sayshell").

Here is a list of security issues which have been discovered and fixed in the 0.8 release since the previous newsletter.

Thankfully there are no security issues to report in this issue.

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. 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.