Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

fabbe writes "The 6th annual Debian Developers Conference (DebConf) was held in Helsinki, Finland from July 10th to July 17th 2005. With over 300 registered participants from around 40 countries, this was the largest DebConf to date. More than 20 sponsors provided DebConf with a total budget of around 125,000 euros. The conference featured talks, workshops, demonstrations, coding marathons and round table discussions on various aspects of the Debian Project. The presentations were captured by the DebConf5 Video Team and are available online at at Debian's site. "

Comments

A question that has been bothering me:

[Anonymous Coward]

Do these confrences ever end in failure?

Re:A question that has been bothering me:

[Darkon]

Do these confrences ever end in failure?

This one might well do given the current climate.

Re:A question that has been bothering me:

[10scjed]

It just means the conference closed out with a return code of 0

Success?

[October_30th]

Hmm... what would have been seen as a failure? Just curious.

Re:Success?

[suitepotato]

Actually, I was going to ask this too. I mean, it's like saying in the news that someone "suffered an untimely death". Might they have "enjoyed a timely death"?

"Damn, Mr. Reaper. That was right on time. Another minute and it would have been really bad timing."

What WOULD failure be for this? They declared surrender and changed the base to Red Hat/Fedora Core? They decided that the new policy was too fast and people can't live at these speeds and we need to go back to the "when Hell freezes over" method of updates?

What the hell is failure for a Debian Conference? Most not getting drunk after hours at the bar with their friends? No one gets lucky with a geekette? What was the definition of success?

Seems weasel-worded to me. I think it would be better to say that the conference "went well" or "went wonderfully" or "narrowly avoided raid by local police".

Re:Success?

[poopdeville]

Actually, I was going to ask this too. I mean, it's like saying in the news that someone "suffered an untimely death". Might they have "enjoyed a timely death"?

Except that when "suffer" is used as a transitive verb (which is to say, when it takes an object), it means primarily "to undergo or sustain." Similarly, the primary definition of the noun "success" is "The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted." Evidently, the Debian team was attempting to make this the largest DebConf ever.

The Utnubu Project

[ballstothat]

Perhaps one of the more interesting bits to emerge from this was the Utnubu project...

Link:
http://www.joachim-breitner.de/blog/archives/59-Li nux-Ball-Utnubu.html

I think Debian can learn a lot from the rapid success of Ubuntu, and hopefully this project will help heal some of the growing rifts between the two camps.

Re:The Utnubu Project

[diegocgteleline.es]

I, for one, erase my Ubuntu partition and welcome our new Utunbu overlords!

Re:The Utnubu Project

[electrichamster]

Compact version of your sig:
10 PRINT "Balls To This Post"
20 GOTO 10

:P

Re:The Utnubu Project

[Anonymous Coward]

Utnubu? Did they think Ubunto too easy to pronounce or something?

Re:The Utnubu Project

[ballstothat]

I have a hard time admitting that your cleaned-up version of my code will compile faster, but I'll admit defeat

However, it has always been my personal credo that it's "all about goto 10 loops". And frankly, I think that applies to all facets of life, not just BASIC programming.

Re:The Utnubu Project

[nurhussein]

I, for one, erase my Ubuntu partition and welcome our new Utunbu overlords!

It's "Utnubu" dammit! Ubuntu for n00bs!

Re:The Utnubu Project

[electrichamster]

However, it has always been my personal credo that it's "all about goto 10 loops". And frankly, I think that applies to all facets of life, not just BASIC programming.

I think you'll find thats called obsessive compulsive disorder.

Re:The Utnubu Project

[Anonymous Coward]

And this video is clearly inspiring on those issues

http://dc5video.debian.net/2005-07-14/02-Ubuntu_Ta lk-Mark_Shuttleworth.mpeg

Re:The Utnubu Project

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Thats not what I heard.... nope. The word on the street is that "Utnubu" is for _Ut_ter Nubu's. Hence the name! ;)

Did it help this issue ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux drivers are the problem that it is not mainstream. Any advances mentioned ?

Re:Did it help this issue ?

[ssj_195]

The only possible things that could help with this are:

1) 100 programmers are hired full-time to reverse-engineer drivers;

2) More than a handful of manufacturers actually open up their specs;

3) Linux freezes its ABI, which I for one am not particularly in favour of.

None of these have happened, to my knowledge. Oh, and Linux Desktop has bigger problems than drivers, but those that can plausibly be solved via hard work are rapidly being addressed.

Re:Did it help this issue ?

[Anonymous Coward]

are you an idiot?

support != working out of the box

most people define support as, "there exists a driver, which I can install on my system, without having to write any code of my own"

I can on... you obviousally know nothing about support.

Good lord.

[debrain]

Google: "Debian bittorrent", [I'm feeling lucky]

Downloading Debian CD images with BitTorrent

Re:Good lord.

[Saven Marek]

The site isn't clear on it which one of those CD images contains the videos?

wow...RTFA!

[huckda]

It's most interesting with pretty much zero insight as to what made it "successful"...

Re:wow...RTFA!

[NineNine]

It's most interesting with pretty much zero insight as to what made it "successful"..

I think that it's implied that it was successful because a whopping 300 people registered. I'm not saying that this criteria is either good or bad, but that's what I take from the summary + article.

oh my fucking god.

[Anonymous Coward]

whoa. just whoa.

Re:oh my fucking god.

[electrichamster]

Gentlemen, start your wget's.

Re:oh my fucking god.

[garcia]

It's amazing that "women in software" (of any kind) should raise a comment like "oh my fucking god." and "whoa. just whoa". You wonder why they shy away... A bunch of horny geeks getting excited over something completely mundane.

Get a grip and grow up.

For those of you that don't want to download the video: It's the opening slide for "Women in Debian and Free Open Source Sofware" by Magni Onsoien and Erin Clark (7/15/05).

Re:oh my fucking god.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentlemen, start your wget's.

Could be wrong, but it appears they are limiting downloads to 2 connections per ip. All my 3rd downloads are spinning until one of the two running ones complete. Torrents, people.. PLEASE this is nuts!

Re:oh my fucking god.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother. I've download the first 30MiB and both girls are fucking ugly.

Re:oh my fucking god.

[alfino]

I've had the pleasure to meet most of the Debian women at the debconf. And believe it or not: they were there to hack and improve Debian, not to serve as sexual attractors. Strangely, noone at debconf had a problem with that, or even thought otherwise. So why don't you (average slashdot reading horny male geek) go jack off to some porn site and not come back?

Re:oh my fucking god.

[Knuckles]

To be fair to the OP, later on a girl with really big boobs can be seen *ducks*

Re:oh my fucking god.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that we have your attention... Do any of you know this Mitch Obrian fellow? (aka the troll)

Funny that nobody has mentioned the unisex sauna yet. Alas, no pictures!

Re:oh my fucking god.

[Daytona89]

Mundane? What if the women are Debiant? Debiant Debutantes even? I smell a video deal.

Re:oh my fucking god.

[tyrione]

You wonder why they shy away... A bunch of horny geeks getting excited over something completely mundane.

Get real. Women who love attention from men don't shy away. Dykes and lipstick lesbian[read bisexual] shy away, while even the traditional prude in her mid-twenties still saving herself for the fantasy white knight still gets a tingle by all the attention.

Re:oh my fucking god.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh yeah, and how would you know?
It isn't simply a matter of swapping the situation around and envisaging what guys would think of all the attention from a bunch of girls.

Congratulations!

[hobotron]

You just described the formula for a successful meeting!

"success"? Huh?

[diegocgteleline.es]

Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

Success? Could it be different; I mean, successful here means "it was not cancelled"?

Re:"success"? Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Success" as in "the conference attendees were not attacked by a giant tentacled monster from outer space".

DebConf ends in success...

[Gandul]

...with all registered participants singing kumbaya.

and their consensus...

[gik]

"let's use redhat as our base distro from now on!"

(DUCKS)

Re:and their consensus...

[suitepotato]

They also announced that the name was a joke gotten out of hand and no one could remember what it was anyways, so it will now be called "Debbie".

Lawyers for Little Debbie and several hundred thousand women named Deborah were audibly drooling.

Trekkies promised a write-in campaign saying that no one hearing the name would be in the slightest reminded of the Denebian Slime Eel reference anymore.

Define Success

[ari_j]

For some, success is holding a conference on schedule with no deaths or maimings. For others, it is deciding exactly what the goals are for the next release. The blurb does not tell us what success the conference actually met, and from the other comments so far it appears that the article doesn't, either.

Why not just say "Sixth DebConf Ends" instead of "...Ends in Success" when the additional words are meaningless?

Re:Define Success

[MrHanky]

Of course. For Debian, success is defined as "relatively few deaths and maimings -- under a free license". HTH.

Re:Define Success

[martin-boundary]

Remember that Debian is a Unix like system, and in the Unix philosophy successful conferences don't print out anything. That extra bit you're talking about was added by the slashdot submitter interface, but you can easily remove it by exporting the environment variable SLASHDOT_PEDANTIC="no". It's really only intended to make the exit code visible in the GUI.

SAT-Style Analogy

[ballstothat]

Ubuntu : Debian :: PC-BSD : FreeBSD

Re:wow, no torrents..

[electrichamster]

Apparently noone who has enough bandwidth understands the bittorrent concept either.

As if Ubuntu wasn't weird enough..

[spaztech]

As if telling everyone, "Here, have a copy of 'Ubuntu,'" wasn't bad enough. Now I can tell them I am also in full support of 'Utnubu' which is Ubuntu backwards. My coffee induced stutter is challenged enough. Seriously, I cringe everytime someone says, "OOB-WHAT-TOO?" as I hand them a copy.

Re:As if Ubuntu wasn't weird enough..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure Red Hat can put a lot of their sucess down to having a non-ridiculous name.

Congratulations Debian...

[pdbaby]

...on the completion of DebConf 1998!

Ah but I do jest. Huzzah for Debian, my favourite distro

I'm glad it was successful

[Lemming Mark]

But who won?

oblig torrent

[LinuxHam]

Crap. I got two of the three vids before the site slowed to a crawl. Can someone please bundle the presentations and vids into a torrent?

Re:oblig torrent

[LinuxHam]

Replying to self. I went right to the camp and didn't notice the hundreds of megs in each day's directory. I thought the days were going to hold the PPTs or PDFs. Sheesh.

Re:Debian?!?!?!

[iggymanz]

I see dead operating systems, they're all around me, on servers shuffling traffic and packets, and they don't even know that they're dead

Question

[101percent]

What really upsets me is they made their video files in something other than ogg theora. Why?

Re:Question

[David McBride]

Because they want as many people as possible to be able to play them. Ogg Theora support isn't as widespread as MPEG2.

Re:Question

[lspd]

What really upsets me is they made their video files in something other than ogg theora. Why?

As a member of the Debconf video team, the guy that took all of the video home to finish processing, a Debian Developer and a Free Software nut, I'm probably as well qualified as anyone to answer this question.

In a nutshell it's mpeg rather than Theora because none of the people arguing now, after the fact, that it should have been done in Theora were volunteering to help when the actual work was underway. Ffmpeg is GPL, it's in Debian main, and it has no problem encoding to mpeg-1. There are enough stupid software patents to be relatively certain that both Theora and mpeg-1 infringe on some. If there is a valid freeness issue against mepg-1, file a bug against the ffmepg package.

Mpeg-1 allows anyone on any platform to view the files with minimal fuss. The results look remarkably good at the low bitrate used and AFAIK no one is running around suing over the use of mpeg-1. For a low bitrate encoding, what exactly does Theora add?

It's even more comical that some are saying we should have used Theora while others are arguing that we should make DVD images (mpeg-2, where patents are actively enforced.) You really can't please everyone.

Still, for anyone who wants the wholesome buzzword goodness of Theora, wait until we're finished processing the videos and Theora versions will be made available.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Well put, lpsd! (I'm Herman, btw)

We will try and please everyone, eventually. Compressing a week's worth of video several times in different formats takes a non-trivial amount of CPU time. By Debconf6 I hope we have sorted out how to do it timely and efficiently.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

As one of the DC5 video team members, I can tell you why: MPEG1 is patent-free and widely available. Theora/OGG streams are better quality and more hip, but we would be excluding a lot of users.

Some people have expressed an interest in creating a Theora/OGG compressed set, so your wish may still come to happen. But we had limited resources, and a ton of videos to capture and encode. Even with fast processors, we could not afford to be processing multiple versions "on the go", we had to do one, and move on to the next day.

Theora/OGG are not widely supported. Don't play in QT, MS Media Player, etc. So we went for least common denominator. This way, we have one guy complaining we aren't hip. The other way, it'd be a zillion people whining that they can't see it.

Success!

[RumGunner]

Bill Gates is bankrupt, and everyone now runs Debian. Great conference everybody.

Successful end?

[stienman]

Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

Ok, so how exactly can a conference be unsuccessfully ended? Is this where the attendees launch a sit-in and prevent the conference from ending, or what?

It just seems like a hollow success.

"What was good about the conference you jsut attended sir?"
"Well, it ended. I'm quite thrilled by how well the organizers were able to get everyone to pack up and go - it was quite a success."

-Adam

Re:Successful end?

[Stauf]

~$ debconf
Usage: debconf [options] command [args]
~$ echo $?
255

My debconf didn't end in success :(

MPEG1 is playable for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Ogg/Theora will be made available, eventually. So will DVDs, I hope. MPEG1 is the format that most people can play without installing extra software. MPEG-LA collects royalties for MPEG2 and MPEG4, so those are unsuitable.

Ogg/Theora requires extra software to be installed, even for many Linux users. Hence, Theora was not the first choice of the video team.

Re:MPEG1 is playable for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Ogg/Theora requires extra software to be installed, even for many Linux users

Then this should be the perfect occation to promote Theora and make those users install it. It's not that hard: just do a search for 'theora' in synaptic and click-n-install. I prefer the gstreamer-lib to go with totem-gstreamer.

You are using "testing" or "unstable"?

[Anonymous Coward]

If so, that's why.

Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, a friend recommended "unstable" sources.list in order to get the latest and greatest in software packages. Now it's too late to go back to sarge and I'll just need to figure a way around the current no X problem (or install everything again like I know how).

Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame your friend, not Debian. They actively discourage end users from using Unstable. It is meant for developers working towards incorporating their packages into the Debian "framework."

In any event, it probably isn't too late to downgrade to Testing. Point your sources.list to Testing and try installing xserver-xfree86 and xserver-common. Work backwards from there, fixing any dependency issues.

Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"?

[grolschie]

Debian "unstable" is fine. Problems arise when people add unofficial sources to /etc/apt/sources.list

Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I always hear people being encouraged to run unstable. They say "oh unstable is more stable than most distros and it's really up to date!".

It's the classic Debian Switcharoo.

Want new software? Run unstable! Oh, it broke, well you should have been running stable!

Once you get tired of the games just move on to a professional distro not this hobby horse crap made by college kids and unemployed c coders in their free time.

Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I always hear people being encouraged to run unstable. They say "oh unstable is more stable than most distros and it's really up to date!".

It is true. Other distros have dependency hell, too. Especially if you try and upgrade them, instead of reinstalling.

Once you get tired of the games just move on to a professional distro

If you are comfortable with doing things the Windows way (i.e. reinstalling when the time comes for a major upgrade) I suggest you keep on with that.

I have painted myself into a corner with SuSE, dependancy-wise. That happened easier than it would have happened with Debian.

Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"?

[FishandChips]

Debian unstable is not fine, in fact it's a bit of a joke. Neither Gnome 2.10 desktop environment nor KDE 3.4.1 are currently available - the first is borked and the second isn't around at all. Funny that, since plenty of other distros have been running both quite happily for a few months now. We won't even go into wifi or xorg. As other distros, even Debian-based ones, show more and more that it doesn't have to be like this, a lot of folks must be wondering what on earth Debian is actually for. No amount of gay write-ups about Debconf can conceal the feeling that the Debian folks still haven't noticed that the world's moved on a bit since the 1970s.

Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"?

[LordoftheWoods]

It is intriguing and irritating how many people there are who dont use Debian but complain about it. gnome-about for me reveals version 2.10.2, and things have been running smoothly for me. It may not be "all there" but its certainly not "borked."

If you watch the videos you'll see a nice anecodote about how one of the devs was complaining long ago before he was a DD, yet after it was suggested that he fix what he didn't like, he actually DID. Before you go about calling something a "joke," get your facts straight. unstable is development code and is not targetted at users (not that the adventurous can't, however, use it; I have in fact had few problems). It is not a "joke" because it serves its purpose perfectly: acting as a sort of 'entry point' for new packages and upgrades of old ones.

Last I checked, GNOME 2.8 (from Sarge) is not from the '70s. Getting the latest and greatest software released has never, ever, been a priority in Debian. Building the best possible OS is, and this means letting things stabilize in unstable and testing before being released. Debian as an organization will not, as a rule, risk a release of new and unproven code to its stable OS. So before you go ranting about how your distro r0x and such, you could do yourself a favor and try to understand the distro you love bashing. To further refute your comment:

mike@Tyr:~$ apt-cache show xserver-xorg | grep Version:
Version: 6.8.2.dfsg.1-4

Yes, this is a recent development, but it still shows a total lack of factual backing on your part. ( You don't have to run Debian to find these things out, there is packages.debian.org )

I have no idea what about Debian could make a fellow Linux-user say such things such as that the information provide about the conference are "gay write-ups" to "conceal the feeling that the Debian folks still haven't noticed that the world's moved on a bit since the 1970s." Such hostility is utterly unfounded.

And before the Ubuntu fans enter combat with their notions that Ubuntu has "replaced" Debian, let me say that you betray the beliefs of your own group of developers by saying that. I do not believe that any Ubuntu dev beliefs that Ubuntu has replaced Debian. Ubuntu had been a good citizen in the community and has contributed much back to its base distro. There is a generally good relationship between the two. The idea that Ubuntu makes Debian obsolete is created by misguided Ubuntu fans and contrasts with the ideas of those in charge of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a great OS, it has benefitted immesurably from the countless hours of work put into Debian, and I believe it will continue to benefit from that work. It is not, at least not yet, completely independent from its base. Ubuntu has put tons of work into making an easy-to-use Debian with a pretty face, and to provide the world's kiddies with the latest and greatest software. Only a select group of Ubuntu fans have declared independence from Debian. I dare say that Ubuntu and Debian are not all that different; what the users see (and complain about) has changed since the people who created Ubuntu care about addressing problems which Debian devs don't see as problems worth addressing, or that they believe need to be addressed by individuals according to their needs and not be predetermined by the distro.

This is a bit overboard in the rant department to me, but i feel it was worth it. I will come to the defense of Debian as long as I continue to see it as the best distro for me, and that may mean thourougly addressing the misguided accusations of others. Let the inevitable flameware begin (for the Xth time, where X is immesurably large).

Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"?

[FishandChips]

As it happens I use Debian Sid and typed my comments on it (then and now). Try hitting apt-get install gnome-desktop-enviroment. Your post suggests exactly why Debian is struggling to adapt to the twenty-first century: patronising incomprehension of the aspirations and needs of orginary computer users, for which read human beings: "Ubuntu has put tons of work into making an easy-to-use Debian with a pretty face, and to provide the world's kiddies with the latest and greatest software." So other distros are toys for kids, only real men use Debian, etc. Some of us can see where this is leading and we aren't keen to go there, imho.

Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"?

[LordoftheWoods]

Other distros are not necessarily toys for kids, if you had read my post you would have seen I find Ubuntu a very amiable distribution. Not just for kids, but for anyone who enjoys using it. I don't like the "There is only Debian" or "Real Men use Debian" mentalities either. My opinion is that if you are an ordinary computer user and also the maintainer of your computer (you know how many problems this causes in the Windows camp), then you have needs which Debian does not serve and Ubuntu would be a much better choice. As for the dependency issue with gnome-desktop-environment, this is generally a non-issue: it is just a slight quirk which happens every now-and-then because of the fine granularity of packages being released into the archive. Yes, it could be avoided by reworking the scripts which release the packages into the archive, but as I said it is a non-issue because those who use unstable are supposed to be developers who know what that means and that it will be resolved when all dependencies are released into the archive. It even explains it to you:

"Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming."

Again, this is just how it works since packages are released little-by-little into unstable. But somehow I suspect you already knew this..

Also, the only reason I chose to use the world 'kiddies' in my post was to characterize the whining which often happens about Debian due to the age of its stable packages. Besides, why would "ordinary computer users" feel the need to upgrade anyway? Why would they even consider using unstable, Debian's development system? Some such users in the windows camp are still using 7-yr old Windows 98. The only updates they really need are the "Priority: high" ones to software with potential security vulnerabilities, they hardly need to update all of GNOME.

Not in Helsinki

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW DebConf5 was held in Espoo, not in Helsinki.

Erinn Clark

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the distros, Debian definitely has the best looking geek chicks on board.

Re:Erinn Clark

[Anonymous Coward]

You still have to compete with the BSD attractor.

Sorry, no links, last attempt apparently blew up the BSD-box the pictures were on... Heh heh.

slammed

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I got one frame in!

Re:I am an end-user: Debian sucks

[Sinus0idal]

Maybe you have done an apt-get upgrade where an apt-get dist-upgrade may have been more apt ha, get it.

Taxiiiii

Sixth?

[bioglaze]

If this was sixth, was the first one 0th?

Re:Sixth?

[darketernal]

Yes.

and our consensus?

[consonant]

all you base are belong to us

Phew...

[Momoru]

Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

At least it wasn't like the previous five DebConf's which ended in bloodshed.

Re:Phew...

[Jim Hall]

Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

Nope, doesn't help. For some reason, I'm still reading this headline as "Sith DebConf Ends in Success".

So now the Sith have organized, and it's no longer "one master, one apprentice." Damn. Time to get your lightsabers ready.

High level of comments

[Anonymous Coward]

I must say that the slashdotters comments are very informative, analytical, well written and informative. More of this stuff please ...

Mark Shuttleworth gave a talk on Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Shuttleworth gave a talk about the purpose of Ubuntu.

The video server is still responsive; there should be a mirror or two of that video, btw.

Questions on current Sid

[tyrione]

Some questions (if these were addressed at the conference my apologies for asking here):

• What is the status on KDE 3.4.1 and accompanying addons becoming current with X.org currently kludging its way through Sid?[alioth hasn't updated its 3.4.1 packages since early June, long before Branden submitted X.org into Sid.]
• When the hell is GNUstep going to get rebuilt against Freetype 2.1.10?
• When will the Debian Java Policy become standard and agree upon?
• Should I just build my own local debs for Eclipse 3.1 or will they be released before 2010?
• What is the status, or if a plan even exists, regarding Debian working on a seemless Wireless config subsystem similar to say OS X? [waproamd, ndiswrapper, etc are ductape building blocks]*

I am well aware that all these questions could be directed to a package manager, yet when it's broadcast to a higher level audience more attention helps overcome the inertia in place which always causes those package manager to accelerate their updates and/or be more pro-active on such concerns.

[Note: I would assume when municipalities adopt the OSS model they plan on having both wired and wireless options accessible to their employees that could only help us regular users in seeing improvements to a vitally overlooked section of networking]

Re:Questions on current Sid

[andersa]

What is the status on KDE 3.4.1 and accompanying addons becoming current with X.org currently kludging its way through Sid?[alioth hasn't updated its 3.4.1 packages since early June, long before Branden submitted X.org into Sid.]

Everybody is working on the transition from GCC 3.3 to GCC 4. A big pile of packages have still to be rebuild. During that time the X Strike Force is working on getting Xorg to compile on all architectures. Once all that is in place. KDE 3.4.1 will be uploaded, and the bug squishing on that will begin. I'm guessing a month or so before a fully working KDE 3.4.1 is in sid, give a couple of months/take a week.. ;)

In the meantime you can still use Alioth KDE 3.4.1 packages with sid and xorg (Yes, Really!). You need to delete all aspell and libjack packages from sid, and get libaspell and libjack from testing, then KDE will install without problems. And hold off on upgrading once you have something that works, unless you are prepared to sort out the dependency issues that are bound to arise

Re:Questions on current Sid

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am well aware that all these questions could be directed to a package manager, yet when it's broadcast to a higher level audience more attention helps overcome the inertia in place which always causes those package manager to accelerate their updates and/or be more pro-active on such concerns."

You're assuming the packages managers read slashdot, and if they did that they carefully crawl through all comments?

My interpretation of your post (and I'm betting top dollar I am not along on this one) is that you are A.) too lazy to email the packages managers and B.) showing off.

Do us all a favour and just talk to the right people and stop showing off.

Re:Questions on current Sid

[Anonymous Coward]

s/along/alone/

Re:Questions on current Sid

[Overfiend]

[alioth hasn't updated its 3.4.1 packages since early June, long before Branden submitted X.org into Sid.]

Correction: I didn't upload the X.Org X11 packages to unstable (sid). David Nusinow did. David has taken the lead on X.Org X11 responsibilities, as I have recently acquired others.

Doesn't stop me from helping out and doing commits, but I've been distancing myself from the actual package uploads over the past year or so. For example, Fabio Massimo Di Nitto handled most of the XFree86 4.3.0 uploads.

Re:Questions on current Sid

[tyrione]

Thanks for the correct. I hadn't figured once you were elected to lead the Debian Ship you'd have to handoff X packages as well.

I've got them installed with Alioth packages, with a little tinkering it is working.

More info on Available Videos

[sirmikester]

Check out http://wiki.debian.net/?DebConf5Talks for more details about the available videos (some including slides).

Ob "Monty Python and the Holy GPL" reference

[g2devi]

MORTICIAN: Bring out your dead!
Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
SLASHDOT: Here's one -- nine pence.
DEBIAN: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: What?
SLASHDOT: Nothing -- here's your nine pence.
DEBIAN: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: Here -- he says he's not dead!
SLASHDOT: Yes, he is.
DEBIAN: I'm not!
MORTICIAN: He isn't.
SLASHDOT: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
DEBIAN: I'm getting better!
SLASHDOT: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.
MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that -- it's against regulations.
DEBIAN: I don't want to go on the cart!
SLASHDOT: Oh, don't be such a baby.
MORTICIAN: I can't take him...
DEBIAN: I feel fine!
SLASHDOT: Oh, do us a favor...
MORTICIAN: I can't.
SLASHDOT: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
MORTICIAN: Naaah, I got to go on to SCO's -- they've lost nine today.
SLASHDOT: Well, when is your next round?
MORTICIAN: Thursday.
DEBIAN: I think I'll go for a walk.
SLASHDOT: You're not fooling anyone y'know. Look, isn't there something you can do?
DEBIAN: I feel happy... I feel happy.

no roiting or violence is good

[achacha]

At least there was no rioting, raping or pillaging, I would say it was a success. With these Debian people you can never tell which way things will go.

ends in success?

[m4c north]

exit $SUCCESS

Re:wow, no torrents..

[Karora]

We discussed having torrents, but the host for the videos supposedly has multiple Gb to the internet and is better able to handle streaming (if the client software supports it) than torrents.

I'd be interested to know what the bandwidth usage is, but I doubt that the bandwidth is challenged unless a lot of people are downloading 150MB videos by accident. I'd expect more cherry-picking than mirroring (it's a total of 7G or so).

Feel free to set up a torrent though - this is open source, scratch-your-own-itch territory, after all... :-)

.

300-40-20

[damicha]

you say

300 participants (usually 15$ are industry sponsored at compatable events)

40 countries, makes less than 10 per each of 40 countries.........

20 sponsors.....

this is one sponsor every 15 participants.....

Are you sure about having the Debian numbers, not some DoD 'conference'?

If so, bye bye debian...........

Re:1992 Called...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, happy Monday.

There. Feel better?

--
Trolling all trolls from 1992_Called to users.pl