Table of Contents
- Welcome
- Events
- Frugalware's developer are people too! - Devil505
- 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:
- Frugalware's developers are people too! - Devil505
- Tips and tricks - Get a better looking "man"
- Priyank is back!
Events
Here's a selection of events which have occurred since the previous newsletter:
-
Priyank is back!
After a break of about 4 weeks to "study for exams", Priyank is back in the wonderful land of Frugalware. It's good to see that he wasn't distracted by the cheerleaders of the Indian Premier League. :) Welcome back!
-
Polish translations in progress
As I mentioned in the previous newsletter, Mateusz Tybura - AKA wujciol - is translating Frugalware into Polish. The translation work is going well, which is great. If you see wujciol on IRC or in the forums, please encourage this work.
-
ryuo's going like a rocket
After only a few weeks as an official Frugalware developer, ryuo has been releasing a *LOT* of packages. In particular he's bringing up to date the ROX desktop-related packages. Well done, ryuo. Keep those packages coming!
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).
Devil505
This issue's interview is with Devil505, whose main role in the Frugalware development team is packaging, particularly games. Please stand and hum the French national anthem while you read his interview.
- What's your name?
Daniel ELEDUT
- What's your IRC nickname?
Devil505. I know what you think but I'm not satanic. Devil505 is the name of Jake Grafton's plane from "Flight of the Intruder", a book written by Stephen Coonts. In fact I like aircraft :))
- In what country do you live?
France
- In what country were you born?
France
- What do you do for the Frugalware project?
I'm a package maintainer, I'm maintaining mostly games :)
- What motivates you to work on Frugalware?
A long story, I'll try to make shorter ;) I tried many Linux distributions and finally I chose Frugalware Linux. Why? Because Frugalware is fast, optimized... and it's not so difficult to install it. I quickly realised there were not many French- speaking users. You must understand that it's difficult to get help when you don't speak English, as is the case for many French people. So I decided to create a community website for French-speaking users (France, Belgium, Quebec...). From this, Frugalware got new users and I was proud when vmiklos added a link on the official website. Then I learned to make packages and suggested my FrugalBuilds to the development team. With precious advice from Crazy and Priyank, I succeeded in making (nearly) correct packages. So, the devels accepted me into their team. It's very gratifying to make packages and to see users using them :) Moreover vmiklos and his team are very cool.
Tips and tricks
Disclaimer - Be aware that the hints & tips provided here have NOT been tested and so come with no warranty.-
Get a better looking "man" - submitted by 'phayz'
The output of the man command, although useful, is usually quite ugly. Using Gnome or KDE you can get better looking output from man. If you're using Gnome, the command "yelp man:[command]" will display in a nice-looking format the man page for [command]. If you're using KDE, entering "man:/[command]" in Konqueror's address bar will display in a nice-looking format the man page for [command].
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.
Focus On Package(s)
Gimmix
According to its home page, "Gimmix is a graphical music player daemon (MPD) client written in C using GTK+2. It's very simple and easy to use, yet offers many features to make your audio experience a pleasant one.
Features include:
- Simple and clean interface
- Compact and full view modes
- Library Browser
- Library Search (Search by Artist, Album, Filename etc)
- Playlist management (manage mpd playlists)
- ID3v2 Tag editing support
- Support for controlling gimmix through keyboard
- System tray icon support
- Notification support (Displays the currently playing song in systray)
- Small memory footprint.
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.
- FSA478 - xdvik: A security issue has been reported in xdvik, which can be exploited by malicious, local users. Please upgrade to xdvik-22.84.14-1kalgan1.
- FSA477 - graphicsmagick: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in GraphicsMagick, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) or potentially compromise a vulnerable system. Please upgrade to graphicsmagick-1.1.14-1kalgan1.
- FSA476 - asterisk-addons: A vulnerability has been reported in Asterisk Addons, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service). Please upgrade to asterisk-addons-1.4.7-1kalgan1.
- FSA475 - samba: Secunia Research has discovered a vulnerability in Samba, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a vulnerable system. Please upgrade to samba-3.0.30-1kalgan1.
- FSA474 - blender: Secunia Research has discovered a vulnerability in Blender, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a vulnerable system. Please upgrade to blender-2.45-2kalgan1.
- FSA473 - libvorbis: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in libvorbis, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) and potentially to compromise an application using the library. Please upgrade to libvorbis-1.2.0-2kalgan1.
- FSA472 - emacs: Morten Welinder has reported a vulnerability in GNU Emacs, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. Please upgrade to emacs-22.1-3kalgan2.
- FSA471 - stunnel: A security issue has been reported in Stunnel, which can be exploited by malicious people to bypass certain security restrictions. Please upgrade to stunnel-4.24-1kalgan1.
- FSA470 - imlib2: Secunia Research has discovered two vulnerabilities in imlib2, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) or compromise an application using the library. Please upgrade to imlib2-1.4.0-2kalgan1.
- FSA469 - mrxvt: A security issue has been reported in mrxvt, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges. Please upgrade to mrxvt-0.5.3-2kalgan1.
- FSA468 - rxvt-unicode: A security issue has been reported in rxvt-unicode, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges. Please upgrade to rxvt-unicode-9.02-2kalgan1.
- FSA467 - aterm: A security issue has been reported in aterm, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges. Please upgrade to aterm-1.0.1-2kalgan1.
- FSA466 - rxvt: Bernhard R. Please upgrade to rxvt-2.7.10-1kalgan1.
- FSA465 - net-snmp: A vulnerability has been reported in Net-snmp, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a vulnerable system. Please upgrade to net-snmp-5.4.1-4kalgan1.
- FSA464 - horde-webmail: Secunia Research has discovered a vulnerability in IMP Webmail Client and Horde Groupware Webmail Edition, which can be exploited by malicious people to bypass certain security restrictions and manipulate data. Please upgrade to horde-webmail-1.1-1kalgan1.
- FSA463 - openssl: Two vulnerabilities have been reported in OpenSSL, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service). Please upgrade to openssl-0.9.8-12kalgan1.
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.