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robstah writes "The Debian project have announced the opening of nominations for this year's Debian Project Leader (DPL) elections. The first nomination, that of Matthew Garrett (of Dasher fame) has also been announced on Debian Planet."

An anonymous submitter writes "Debian Planet has a good discussion of the most recent release update from the new Debian release managers. The most interesting point is the current hard freeze of base+standard and an optimistic but doable release date in September."

An anonymous submitter writes "Debian Planet has a good discussion of the most recent release update from the new Debian release managers. The most interesting point is the current hard freeze of base+standard and an optimistic but doable release date in September."

hsoom writes "Debian Planet is reporting that unofficial sarge-based ISOs using the Anaconda installer can be downloaded from here. The features developed so far include '...changed the code that installs software to use APT instead of RPM, removed Red Hat-specific configuration hooks, and written a new tool called picax that builds Anaconda-based installation CDs from a Debian repository'. However there are features that are not yet working and it is not recommended for use in a production environment."

robstah writes "An alpha release of the next generation Debian installer (Debian-Installer) has been announced. Debian-Installer is an actively developed replacement for the older and now rather delapidated boot-floppies installer. This alpha release is available for i386 only as ports to other platforms are not yet significantly mature. Volunteers are requested to test this new installer and help contribute to Sarge, the next release of Debian GNU/Linux." Now's the time to complain if you want to be heard.

FrankNFurter writes "Debian Planet features a review of Debian 3.0 from a user's perspective. Time for a reality check, debianistas." And twstdr00t writes "Linuxwatch.org has posted their review of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 Woody. 'The package managment system is nice and easy to use. But the lack of good configuration and installation takes that all away from Debian.'"

eyez writes "Apparently, the recent decision of OPN(now freenode) to ask for donations has ruffled the feathers of a few debian people. This article on DebianPlanet talks about the current discussion on the debian mailing lists which talks about the possibility of moving #debian (and #debian*) off of OPN altogether."

Figuring you can never get too much Ian Jackson, Trevelyan writes: "Debian Planet has an interview with the long time Debian maintainer, and a former DPL, a current member of the technical committee and the author of dpkg. Also announced Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r7 released. In case some of you thought Debian won't be releasing anything this year =)"

Figuring you can never get too much Ian Jackson, Trevelyan writes: "Debian Planet has an interview with the long time Debian maintainer, and a former DPL, a current member of the technical committee and the author of dpkg. Also announced Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r7 released. In case some of you thought Debian won't be releasing anything this year =)"

robstah writes: "Bart Bunting, a Debian developer has won two gold medals in the 2002 Paralympics games. This story at Debian Planet has more information. I think we should commend Bart for his excellent achievement and wish him luck for the future."

robstah writes: "Bart Bunting, a Debian developer has won two gold medals in the 2002 Paralympics games. This story at Debian Planet has more information. I think we should commend Bart for his excellent achievement and wish him luck for the future."

evil_one writes: "Debian Planet is reporting that the official announcement has gone out regarding Debconf 2002. It's going to be held July 6-8th , making it rather convenient for anyone who wants to attend the Ottawa Linux symposium this year."

robstah writes: "Vintage Alpha based systems, such as the DECstation are often available going cheap at auctions or free from a skip as companies 'upgrade' to PCs. As many goverments now want to prevent computers from ending up in landfill one solution is for us geeks to recycle. How? Installing Debian of course. Debian Planet has a great article on installing Debian on vintage Alphas."

willybur submits word of this Debian Planet story on the upcoming release of its next stable version. The article says: "According to Anthony Towns (our beloved Release Manager), woody is nearing release. All but three RC base bugs are fixed now, and the bugsquashing party is working through the RC bugs in standard. It's not all good news though. The bad news is that this means we're probably releasing soon, and that of the hundreds of less important packages with RC bugs (eg, bugzilla, craft, crossfire-{client,server}, epic4, fvwm95, gmc, gnome-admin, intuitively, kdepim, moon-lander, tkdesk, wine, and xosview) will be getting randomly ripped out of testing ... Check the stuff that's important to you and get it fixed before it's too late." Says willybur: "See the announcement on debian-devel-announce."

robstah writes: "The installer is the heart of any Operating System, Debian is no different. The mature but ageing boot-floppies installer will rear its head for the last time in woody. In this interview with Adam Di Carlo, one of the lead developers of this system we investigate the past, present and future of the Debian installation system ready for the upcoming release of woody: The next generation of Debian."

nicedream writes "Debian Planet is reporting that Progeny is killing the NOW project. " A reader also submitted the actual e-mail from Ian Murdock ^? . It appears that the current economic climate has had an adverse effect on Progeny - which is not surprising. Ian's also got some musings on the state of computing/networking, which outline some of the thoughts behind the NOW project.

EmilEifrem writes: "Everyone and their mom will have submitted this, but woody aka testing aka Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 is entering frozen stage. Check out the announcement at DebianPlanet." The freeze process is different from previous freezes; read the announcement for details.

Sould writes " Debian Planet are running a story here discussing whether Debian should retain document-specific cripples in xpdf - a GPLed pdf viewer that honours Adobe's copy controls. "

Sould writes " Debian Planet are running a story here discussing whether Debian should retain document-specific cripples in xpdf - a GPLed pdf viewer that honours Adobe's copy controls. "

Denial writes "Wichert Akkerman, the outgoing Debian Project Leader, has been interviewed on DebianPlanet. After two terms as the leader of the debian project, Wichert has decided to call it quits. He talks about how the election for a leader works, his plans for the future (VA Linux) and about the future of Debian. Interesting stuff."

Denial writes "Wichert Akkerman, the outgoing Debian Project Leader, has been interviewed on DebianPlanet. After two terms as the leader of the debian project, Wichert has decided to call it quits. He talks about how the election for a leader works, his plans for the future (VA Linux) and about the future of Debian. Interesting stuff."

Netsnipe writes "In a few days time, DebianPlanet will be covering Linux Conference Australia (LCA) being hosted at the University of New South Wales by Linux Australia from January 17-20 in Sydney. The timing of this year's LCA has been coincidentally close to the release of the 2.4 Linux kernel two weeks ago and it is the first major gathering of important Linux developers of the year. In the spirit of the Debian project, we at DebianPlanet want to make our interviewing process as open as the Debian distribution is with their own reporting and processes. To further this aim we are inviting everyone to submit their own questions to our interviewees and share a major opportunity to learn where the Linux community is heading towards. Our question submission system is now open to all at our website. "

Netsnipe writes "In a few days time, DebianPlanet will be covering Linux Conference Australia (LCA) being hosted at the University of New South Wales by Linux Australia from January 17-20 in Sydney. The timing of this year's LCA has been coincidentally close to the release of the 2.4 Linux kernel two weeks ago and it is the first major gathering of important Linux developers of the year. In the spirit of the Debian project, we at DebianPlanet want to make our interviewing process as open as the Debian distribution is with their own reporting and processes. To further this aim we are inviting everyone to submit their own questions to our interviewees and share a major opportunity to learn where the Linux community is heading towards. Our question submission system is now open to all at our website. "

Netsnipe writes: "Shortly after the release of Progeny Debian Beta 1, I wrote an article on DebianPlanet called "Blurring the Line Between Pure Debian and its Commercial Variants" questioning the standing of commercial variants of Debian among the many purists to Debian's non-commercial principles who would find it hard-pressed to stray from mainstream Debian. The article's accompanying poll illustrated that an overwhelming 58% of respondents would not use a commercial variant of Debian as opposed to 32% who would. Ian Murdock, a former founding member of Debian GNU/Linux and now the founder and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems has written an interesting reply to my article where he defends Progeny despite its commercial leanings and explains how he feels it stands within the Debian scene. "

Netsnipe writes: "Shortly after the release of Progeny Debian Beta 1, I wrote an article on DebianPlanet called "Blurring the Line Between Pure Debian and its Commercial Variants" questioning the standing of commercial variants of Debian among the many purists to Debian's non-commercial principles who would find it hard-pressed to stray from mainstream Debian. The article's accompanying poll illustrated that an overwhelming 58% of respondents would not use a commercial variant of Debian as opposed to 32% who would. Ian Murdock, a former founding member of Debian GNU/Linux and now the founder and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems has written an interesting reply to my article where he defends Progeny despite its commercial leanings and explains how he feels it stands within the Debian scene. "

Netsnipe writes: "Shortly after the release of Progeny Debian Beta 1, I wrote an article on DebianPlanet called "Blurring the Line Between Pure Debian and its Commercial Variants" questioning the standing of commercial variants of Debian among the many purists to Debian's non-commercial principles who would find it hard-pressed to stray from mainstream Debian. The article's accompanying poll illustrated that an overwhelming 58% of respondents would not use a commercial variant of Debian as opposed to 32% who would. Ian Murdock, a former founding member of Debian GNU/Linux and now the founder and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems has written an interesting reply to my article where he defends Progeny despite its commercial leanings and explains how he feels it stands within the Debian scene. "

Netsnipe writes: "Shortly after the release of Progeny Debian Beta 1, I wrote an article on DebianPlanet called "Blurring the Line Between Pure Debian and its Commercial Variants" questioning the standing of commercial variants of Debian among the many purists to Debian's non-commercial principles who would find it hard-pressed to stray from mainstream Debian. The article's accompanying poll illustrated that an overwhelming 58% of respondents would not use a commercial variant of Debian as opposed to 32% who would. Ian Murdock, a former founding member of Debian GNU/Linux and now the founder and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems has written an interesting reply to my article where he defends Progeny despite its commercial leanings and explains how he feels it stands within the Debian scene. "

Netsnipe writes: "Shortly after the release of Progeny Debian Beta 1, I wrote an article on DebianPlanet called "Blurring the Line Between Pure Debian and its Commercial Variants" questioning the standing of commercial variants of Debian among the many purists to Debian's non-commercial principles who would find it hard-pressed to stray from mainstream Debian. The article's accompanying poll illustrated that an overwhelming 58% of respondents would not use a commercial variant of Debian as opposed to 32% who would. Ian Murdock, a former founding member of Debian GNU/Linux and now the founder and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems has written an interesting reply to my article where he defends Progeny despite its commercial leanings and explains how he feels it stands within the Debian scene. "

Today, more on setting up XFree86 4.0 with Debian; getting broadband in Whitefish, Montana and other metropolae; coming changes for players of EverQuest (but at least with a bit of explanation), and more words from the hellhole -- err, Hellmouth. Just read on.

Getcher Woody in prime operation! You may have noticed the report Saturday that Xfree86 debs are now available, and many readers pointed out problems with setting the newest XFree up. A mysteriously unnamed correspondent writes: "i've written an article to answer some of the questions raised and give an intro into how to set [XFree86 in Debian's unstable tree] up (3dx specifically)."

"Sir, I can't sell this to you without your GPS coordinates. No -- really, store policy." einstein writes "MSN and Radio Shack have gotten together to provide high speed internet access that will cover most of the continental US, looks to be great for rural areas, but the downfalls include: $59.95 a month upfront, for a year, $299 bucks in equipment, only works with Windows 98, and you have to buy a computer from Radio Shack. ugh."

D'ja ever stop to think of it this way ... Mr. Buckaroo writes: "Verant Interactive is again trying to change the license agreement of Everquest to make it legal for them to gather whatever information/files from your machine they deem necessary. They are also changing the agreement to prevent sale of characters, items, etc. I remember when games were just games."

Mr. Buckaroo included the full text of a letter to players from John Smedley Verant Interactive's president and CEO. It's long, but worth reading.Makes you think about the voluntary nature of this and the other software you use, and what you're willing to tolerate on your own system.

Dear EverQuest Players,
An exciting time is now at hand. Within the next 2 days the Login Servers will be coming down and we will be doing a patch that will add the EverQuest Store into the front end of the game. At that time, the first product we will be offering will be the EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark (RoK) upgrade for existing customers. This will allow existing customers of EverQuest to purchase RoK for $16.95 (Plus S&H). In addition, we will offer various shipping options depending on which country you live in. EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark will be launching on April 24th. We want to insure that this product is in everybody's hands on or before that date.

In addition to this change, we will also be modifying our User Agreement and Software License to add in some additional Terms and Conditions that we will require everyone to agree to before playing EverQuest.

The first of these changes concerns the selling of EverQuest Characters and Items outside of the game (i.e. things like Ebay). Here is the text of this change:

"You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."

You may ask why we are doing this. There are many reasons, but first and foremost of them is the amount of trouble this is causing our Customer Service group. Simply put there area lot of people out there who defraud others and we are being put in the middle of it, and we don't have the time or the resources to assist people with these disputes when they arise. The next reason is amore philosophical one and that is that we believe people should have to earn their items and characters in the game rather than from buying them outside the game. Obviously the second point can be argued from other perspectives that we do in fact respect, but we wanted you to hear ours.

The next change to the User Agreement and Software license concerns our efforts to stop people from hacking EverQuest and from doing malicious acts that we feel can affect EverQuest as an ongoing business concern. We have developed the technology to check for these hacking tools/programs and report that fact back to us. Without getting into the specifics of this technology, I can say that we in no way will search a user's harddrive(aside from the EverQuest directory during the patching process), registry nor will we send back any information other than the fact that a user is in fact running one of these programs (specifically we are NOT sending information about everything the user is running back to our servers).

It's disturbing that the amount of recent developments in the hacking community force us to do this. Many will say "ShowEQ" isn't worth worrying about. To us, it's cheating and it's not something we can allow in a game like EverQuest where it affects other people's enjoyment of the game. In addition, although this is the first time we'll be acknowledging this, ShowEQ isn't the worst offender. Recently we had someone attempting to bring down our servers with another malicious program. We were able to quickly identify what was going on and insure this didn't happen again, but nonetheless the potential is there and we need to be able to quickly identify and stop these types of programs. Again, I want to say it clearly that we will in NO WAY send any information back to the Everquest servers other than information regarding programs that we feel interfere with the intended operation of EverQuest. We have had this technology available for some time, but recently we've found it's going to be necessary to go to greater lengths to stop this kind of thing. To those of you concerned about privacy (and rightly so) I want to say that we feel it's necessary to do this but we want you to be informed that we are going to try these measures to protect both ourselves and the game's players.

Here is the text of this change:

"You hereby grant us permission to download Game-related files to you. You also grant us permission to access, extract and upload(i) Game-related data as part of the patching process and (ii)data relating to any program that we, in our reasonable discretion,determine interferes with the proper operation of EverQuest."

[Updated 4:10GMT by timothy:] Reader Ted Milker set me straight on the above item, writing "That letter you posted about Everquest is months old. And it all came about from Everlore copying EQ Vaults archived news. EQ Vault restored a backup, and one of Everlore's posters decided to "scoop" that story without even reading it very carefully. Ruins of Kunark has been out for months, and April is past." Sheesh -- given game development time, I thought they meant next April! Mea culpa.

Involuntary servitude is another way to spell "truancy laws" Finally, Part Two of our trek through the Hellmouth is online. Read for more reactions on the world of bullies of all ages, and how to pull through it.