Bits from Debian

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Ross Gammon (rossgammon)
• Balasankar C (balasankarc)
• Roland Fehrenbacher (rfehren)
• Jonathan Cristopher Carter (jcc)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• José Gutiérrez de la Concha
• Paolo Greppi
• Ming-ting Yao Wei
• Boyuan Yang
• Paul Hardy
• Fabian Wolff
• Moritz Schlarb
• Shengjing Zhu

Congratulations!

Work on Debian for mobile devices, i.e. telephones, tablets, and handheld computers, continues. During the recent DebConf17 in Montréal, Canada, more than 50 people had a meeting to reconsider opportunities and challenges for Debian on mobile devices.

A number of devices were shown at DebConf:

• PocketCHIP: A very small handheld computer with keyboard, Wi-Fi, USB, and Bluetooth, running Debian 8 (Jessie) or 9 (Stretch).
• Pyra: A modular handheld computer with a touchscreen, gaming controls, Wi-Fi, keyboard, multiple USB ports and SD card slots, and an optional modem for either Europe or the USA. It will come preinstalled with Debian.
• Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G: An Android smartphone featuring a physical keyboard, which can already run portions of Debian userspace on the Android kernel. Kernel upstreaming is on the way.
• ZeroPhone: An open-source smartphone based on Raspberry Pi Zero, with a small screen, classic telephone keypad and hardware switches for telephony, Wi-Fi, and the microphone. It is running Debian-based Raspbian OS.

The photo (click to enlarge) shows all four devices, together with a Nokia N900, which was the first Linux-based smartphone by Nokia, running Debian-based Maemo and a completely unrelated Gnuk cryptographic token, which just sneaked into the setting.

If you like to participate, please

• check the Debian Mobile wiki page,
• subscribe to the Debian mobile mailing list,
• or join the #debian-mobile IRC chatroom at irc.oftc.net.

Today is Debian's 24th anniversary. If you are close to any of the cities celebrating Debian Day 2017, you're very welcome to join the party!

If not, there's still time for you to organize a little celebration or contribution to Debian. For example, spread the word about Debian Day with this nice piece of artwork created by Debian Developer Daniel Lenharo de Souza and Valessio Brito, taking inspiration from the desktop themes Lines and softWaves by Juliette Belin:

If you also like graphics design, or design in general, have a look at https://wiki.debian.org/Design and join the team! Or you can visit the general list of Debian Teams for many other opportunities to participate in Debian development.

Thanks to everybody who has contributed to develop our beloved operating system in these 24 years, and happy birthday Debian!

Today, Saturday 12 August 2017, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. With over 405 people attending from all over the world, and 169 events including 89 talks, 61 discussion sessions or BoFs, 6 workshops and 13 other activities, DebConf17 has been hailed as a success.

Highlights included DebCamp with 117 participants, the Open Day, where events of interest to a broader audience were offered, talks from invited speakers (Deb Nicholson, Matthew Garrett and Katheryn Sutter), the traditional Bits from the DPL, lightning talks and live demos and the announcement of next year's DebConf (DebConf18 in Hsinchu, Taiwan).

The schedule has been updated every day, including 32 ad-hoc new activities, planned by attendees during the whole conference.

For those not able to attend, talks and sessions were recorded and live streamed, and videos are being made available at the Debian meetings archive website. Many sessions also facilitated remote participation via IRC or a collaborative pad.

The DebConf17 website will remain active for archive purposes, and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf18 will be held in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from 29 July 2018 until 5 August 2018. It will be the first DebConf held in Asia. For the days before DebConf the local organisers will again set up DebCamp (21 July - 27 July), a session for some intense work on improving the distribution, and organise the Open Day on 28 July 2018, aimed at the general public.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf17, particularly our Platinum Sponsors Savoir-Faire Linux, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Google.

Savoir-faire Linux is a Montreal-based Free/Open-Source Software company with offices in Quebec City, Toronto, Paris and Lyon. It offers Linux and Free Software integration solutions in order to provide performance, flexibility and independence for its clients. The company actively contributes to many free software projects, and provides mirrors of Debian, Ubuntu, Linux and others.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is one of the largest computer companies in the world, providing a wide range of products and services, such as servers, storage, networking, consulting and support, software, and financial services.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and provides hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services.

Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware.

Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf since more than ten years, at gold level since DebConf12, and at platinum level for this DebConf17.

DebConf17, the 18th annual Debian Conference, is taking place in Montreal, Canada from August 6 to August 12, 2017.

Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at Collège Maisonneuve during the preceding week for DebCamp (focused on individual work and team sprints for in-person collaboration developing Debian), and the Open Day on August 5th (with presentations and workshops of interest to a wide audience).

Today the main conference starts with nearly 400 attendants and over 120 activities scheduled, including 45- and 20-minute talks and team meetings, workshops, a job fair, talks from invited speakers, as well as a variety of other events.

The full schedule at https://debconf17.debconf.org/schedule/ is updated every day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees during the whole conference.

If you want to engage remotely, you can follow the video streaming of the events happening in the three talk rooms: Buzz (the main auditorium), Rex, and Bo, or join the conversation about what is happening in the talk rooms: #debconf17-buzz, #debconf17-rex and #debconf17-bo, and the BoF (discussions) rooms: #debconf17-potato and #debconf17-woody (all those channels in the OFTC IRC network).

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf17, particularly our Platinum Sponsors Savoir-Faire Linux, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Google.

We are very pleased to announce that Google has committed to support DebConf17 as a Platinum sponsor.

Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware.

Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf since more than ten years, and at gold level since DebConf12.

With this additional commitment as Platinum Sponsor for DebConf17, Google contributes to make possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Google, for your support of DebConf17!

Many Debian contributors are already taking advantage of DebCamp and the Open Day to work individually or in groups developing and improving Debian. DebConf17 will officially start on August 6, 2017. Visit the DebConf17 website at https://debconf17.debconf.org to know the schedule, live streaming and other details.

Today, the day preceeding the official start of the annual Debian Conference, is the Open Day at DebConf17, at Collège Maisonneuve in Montreal (Canada).

This day is open to the public with events of interest to a wide audience.

The schedule of today's events include, among others:

• A Newbie's Newbie Guide to Debian
• Ask Anything About Debian
• Debian Packaging 101
• Debian InstallFest
• Presentations or workshops related to free software projects and local organizations.

Everyone is welcome to attend! It is a great possibility for interested users to meet our community and for Debian to widen our community.

See the full schedule for today's events at https://debconf17.debconf.org/schedule/open-day/.

If you want to engage remotely, you can watch the video streaming of the Open Day events happening in the "Rex" room, or join the conversation in the channels #debconf17-rex, #debconf17-potato and #debconf17-woody in the OFTC IRC network.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf17, particularly our Platinum Sponsors Savoir-Faire Linux, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Google.

The DebConf17 orga team is proud to announce that over 120 activities have been scheduled so far, including 45- and 20-minute talks, team meetings, and workshops, as well as a variety of other events.

Most of the talks and BoFs will be streamed and recorded, thanks to our amazing video team!

We'd like to remind you that Saturday August 5th is also our much anticipated Open Day! This means a program for a wider audience, including special activities for newcomers, such as an AMA session about Debian, a beginners workshop on packaging, a thoughtful talk about freedom with regard to today's popular gadgets and more.

In addition to the published schedule, we'll provide rooms for ad-hoc sessions where attendees will be able to schedule activities at any time during the whole conference.

The current schedule is available at https://debconf17.debconf.org/schedule/

This is also available through an XML feed. You can use ConfClerk in Debian to consume this, or Giggity on Android devices: https://debconf17.debconf.org/schedule/mobile/

We look forward to seeing you in Montreal!

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Alex Muntada (alexm)
• Ilias Tsitsimpis (iliastsi)
• Daniel Lenharo de Souza (lenharo)
• Shih-Yuan Lee (fourdollars)
• Roger Shimizu (rosh)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• James Valleroy
• Ryan Tandy
• Martin Kepplinger
• Jean Baptiste Favre
• Ana Cristina Custura
• Unit 193

Congratulations!

We are very pleased to announce that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has committed to support DebConf17 as a Platinum sponsor.

"Hewlett Packard Enterprise is excited to support Debian's annual developer conference again this year", said Steve Geary, Senior Director R&D at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. "As Platinum sponsors and member of the Debian community, HPE is committed to supporting Debconf. The conference, community and open distribution are foundational to the development of The Machine research program and will our bring our Memory Driven Computing agenda to life."

HPE is one of the largest computer companies in the world, providing a wide range of products and services, such as servers, storage, networking, consulting and support, software, and financial services.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and provides hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

With this additional commitment as Platinum Sponsor, HPE contributes to make possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for your support of DebConf17!

DebConf17 is still accepting sponsors. Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf17 website at https://debconf17.debconf.org.

Let yourself be embraced by the purple rubber toy octopus! We're happy to announce the release of Debian 9.0, codenamed Stretch.

Want to install it? Choose your favourite installation media among Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, CDs and USB sticks. Then read the installation manual.

Already a happy Debian user and you only want to upgrade? You can easily upgrade from your current Debian 8 Jessie installation, please read the release notes.

Do you want to celebrate the release? Share the banner from this blog in your blog or your website!

The Debian Release Team in coordination with several other teams are preparing the last bits needed for releasing Debian 9 Stretch. Please, be patient! Lots of steps are involved and some of them take some time,such as building the images, propagating the release through the mirror network, and rebuilding the Debian website so that "stable" points to Debian 9.

Follow the live coverage of the release on https://micronews.debian.org or the @debian profile in your favorite social network! We'll spread the word about what's new in this version of Debian 9, how the release process is progressing during the weekend and facts about Debian and the wide community of volunteer contributors that make it possible.

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Guilhem Moulin (guilhem)
• Lisa Baron (jeffity)
• Punit Agrawal (punit)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Sebastien Jodogne
• Félix Lechner
• Uli Scholler
• Aurélien Couderc
• Ondřej Kobližek
• Patricio Paez

Congratulations!

This is a final reminder: if you intend to apply for a DebConf17 bursary and have not yet done so, please proceed as soon as possible.

Bursary applications for DebConf17 will be accepted until May 10th at 23:59 UTC. Applications submitted after this deadline will not be considered.

You can apply for a bursary when you register for the conference.

Remember that giving a talk is considered towards your bursary; if you have a submission to make, submit it even if it is only sketched-out. You will be able to detail it later.

Please make sure to double-check your accommodation choices (dates and venue). Details about accommodation arrangements can be found on the wiki.

Note: For DebCamp we only have on-site accommodation available. The option chosen in the registration system will only be for the DebConf period (August 5 to 12).

See you in Montréal!

The DebConf team would like to call for proposals for the DebConf17 Open Day, a whole day dedicated to sessions about Debian and Free Software, and aimed at the general public. Open Day will preceed DebConf17 and will be held in Montreal, Canada, on August 5th 2017.

DebConf Open Day will be a great opportunity for users, developers and people simply curious about our work to meet and learn about the Debian Project, Free Software in general and related topics.

We welcome submissions of workshops, presentations or any other activity which involves Debian and Free Software. Activities in both English and French are accepted.

Here are some ideas about content we'd love to offer during Open Day. This list is not exhaustive, feel free to propose other ideas!

• An introduction to various aspects of the Debian Project
• Talks about Debian and Free Software in art, education and/or research
• A primer on contributing to Free Software projects
• Free software & Privacy/Surveillance
• An introduction to programming and/or hardware tinkering
• A workshop about your favorite piece of Free Software
• A presentation about your favorite Free Software-related project (user group, advocacy group, etc.)

To submit your proposal, please fill the form at https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/new/

We need volunteers to help ensure Open Day is a success! We are specifically looking for people familiar with the Debian installer to attend the Debian installfest, as resources for people seeking help to install Debian on their devices. If you're interested, please add your name to our wiki: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf17/OpenDay#Installfest

Participation to Open Day is free and no registration is required.

The schedule for Open Day will be announced in June 2017.

The Debian Project Leader elections finished yesterday and the winner is Chris Lamb!

Of a total of 1062 developers, 322 developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2017 page.

The current Debian Project Leader, Mehdi Dogguy, congratulated Chris Lamb in his Final bits from the (outgoing) DPL message. Thanks, Mehdi, for the service as DPL during this last twelve months!

The new term for the project leader starts on April 17th and expires on April 16th 2018.

This post was an April Fools' Day joke.

The space agencies running the International Space Station (ISS) reported that a laptop accidentally threw to space as waste in 2013 from the International State Station may have connected with a parallel Universe. This laptop was running Debian 6 and the ISS engineers managed to track its travel through the outer space. In early January, the laptop signal was lost but recovered back two weeks later in the same place. ISS engineers suspect that the laptop may had met and crossed a wormhole arriving a parallel Universe from where "somebody" sent it back later.

Eventually the laptop was recovered and in an first analysis the ISS engineers found that the laptop have a dual boot: a partition running the Debian installation made by them and a second partition running what seems to be a Debian fork or derivative totally unknown until now.

The engineers have been in contact with the Debian Project in the last weeks and a Debian group formed with delegates from different Debian teams have begun to study this new Debian derivative system. From the early results of this research, we can proudly say that somebody (or a group of beings) in a parallel universe understand Earth computers, and Debian, enough to:

• Clone the existing Debian system in a new partition and provide a dual boot using Grub.
• Change the desktop wallpaper from the previous Spacefun theme to one in rainbow colors.
• Fork all the packages whose source code was present in the initial Debian system, patch multiple bugs in those packages and some patches more for some tricky security problems.
• Add ten new language locales that do not correspond to any language spoken in Earth, with full translation for four of them.
• A copy of the Debian website repository, migrated to the git version control system and perfectly running, has been found in the /home/earth0/Documents folder. This new repo includes code to show the Debian micronews in the home page and many other improvements, keeping the style of not needing JavaScript and providing a nice control of up-to-date/outdated translations, similar to the one existing in Debian.

The work towards knowing better this new Universe and find a way to communicate with them has just began; all the Debian users and contributors are invited to join the effort to study the operating system found. We want to prepare our Community and our Universe to live and work peacefully and respectfully with the parallel Universe communities, in the true spirit of Free Software.

In the following weeks a General Resolution will be proposed for updating our motto to "the multiversal operating system".

It's that time of year again for the Debian Project: the elections of its Project Leader!

The Project Leader position is described in the Debian Constitution.

Two Debian Developers run this year to become Project Leader: Mehdi Dogguy, who has held the office for the last year, and Chris Lamb.

We are in the middle of the campaigning period that will last until the end of April 1st. The candidates and Debian contributors are already engaging in debates and discussions on the debian-vote mailing list.

The voting period starts on April 2nd, and during the following two weeks, Debian Developers can vote to choose the person that will fit that role for one year.

The results will be published on April 16th with the term for new the project leader starting the following day.

DebConf17 will take place in Montreal, Canada in August 2017. We are working hard to provide fuel for hearts and minds, to make this conference once again a fertile soil for the Debian Project flourishing. Please join us and support this landmark in the Free Software calendar.

Eighteen companies have already committed to sponsor DebConf17! With a warm welcome, we'd like to introduce them to you.

Our first Platinum sponsor is Savoir-faire Linux, a Montreal-based Free/Open-Source Software company which offers Linux and Free Software integration solutions and actively contributes to many free software projects. "We believe that it's an essential piece [Debian], in a social and political way, to the freedom of users using modern technological systems", said Cyrille Béraud, president of Savoir-faire Linux.

Our first Gold sponsor is Valve, a company developing games, social entertainment platform, and game engine technologies. And our second Gold sponsor is Collabora, which offers a comprehensive range of services to help its clients to navigate the ever-evolving world of Open Source.

As Silver sponsors we have credativ (a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software and also a Debian development partner), Mojatatu Networks (a Canadian company developing Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions), the Bern University of Applied Sciences (with over 6,600 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital), Microsoft (an American multinational technology company), Evolix (an IT managed services and support company located in Montreal), Ubuntu (the OS supported by Canonical) and Roche (a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare).

ISG.EE, IBM, Bluemosh, Univention and Skroutz are our Bronze sponsors so far.

And finally, The Linux foundation, Réseau Koumbit and adte.ca are our supporter sponsors.

Would you like to become a sponsor? Do you know of or work in a company or organization that may consider sponsorship?

Please have a look at our sponsorship brochure (or a summarized flyer), in which we outline all the details and describe the sponsor benefits.

For further details, feel free to contact us through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf17 website at https://debconf17.debconf.org.

In Debian stretch, the upcoming new release, it is now possible to build Android apps using only packages from Debian. This will provide all of the tools needed to build an Android app targeting the "platform" android-23 using the SDK build-tools 24.0.0. Those two are the only versions of "platform" and "build-tools" currently in Debian, but it is possible to use the Google binaries by installing them into /usr/lib/android-sdk.

This doesn't cover yet all of the libraries that are used in the app, like the Android Support libraries, or all of the other myriad libraries that are usually fetched from jCenter or Maven Central. One big question for us is whether and how libraries should be included in Debian. All the Java libraries in Debian can be used in an Android app, but including something like Android Support in Debian would be strange since they are only useful in an Android app, never for a Debian app.

Here are the steps for building Android apps using Debian's Android SDK on Stretch.

1. sudo apt install android-sdk android-sdk-platform-23
2. export ANDROID_HOME=/usr/lib/android-sdk
3. In build.gradle, set compileSdkVersion to 23 and buildToolsVersion to 24.0.0
4. run gradle build

The Gradle Android Plugin is also packaged. Using the Debian package instead of the one from online Maven repositories requires a little configuration before running gradle. In the buildscript block:

• add maven { url 'file:///usr/share/maven-repo' } to repositories
• use compile 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:debian' to load the plugin

Currently there is only the target platform of API Level 23 packaged, so only apps targeted at android-23 can be built with only Debian packages. There are plans to add more API platform packages via backports. Only build-tools 24.0.0 is available, so in order to use the SDK, build scripts need to be modified. Beware that the Lint in this version of Gradle Android Plugin is still problematic, so running the :lint tasks might not work. They can be turned off with lintOptions.abortOnError in build.gradle. Google binaries can be combined with the Debian packages, for example to use a different version of the platform or build-tools.

While Android developers could develop and ship apps right now using these Debian packages, this is not very flexible since only build-tools-24.0.0 and android-23 platform are available. Currently, the Debian Android Tools Team is not aiming to cover the most common use cases. Those are pretty well covered by Google's binaries (except for the proprietary license on the Google binaries), and are probably the most work for the Android Tools Team to cover. The current focus is on use cases that are poorly covered by the Google binaries, for example, like where only specific parts of the whole SDK are used. Here are some examples:

• tools for security researchers, forensics, reverse engineering, etc. which can then be included in live CDs and distros like Kali Linux
• a hardened APK signing server using apksigner that uses a standard, audited, public configuration of all reproducibly built packages
• Replicant is a 100% free software Android distribution, so of course they want to have a 100% free software SDK
• high security apps need a build environment that matches their level of security, the Debian Android Tools packages are reproducibly built only from publicly available sources
• support architectures besides i386 and amd64, for example, the Linaro LAVA setup for testing ARM devices of all kinds uses the adb packages on ARM servers to make their whole testing setup all ARM architecture
• dead simple install with strong trust path with mirrors all over the world

In the long run, the Android Tools Team aims to cover more use cases well, and also building the Android NDK. This all will happen more quickly if there are more contributors on the Android Tools team! Android is the most popular mobile OS, and can be 100% free software like Debian. Debian and its derivatives are one of the most popular platforms for Android development. This is an important combination that should grow only more integrated.

Last but not least, the Android Tools Team wants feedback on how this should all work, for example, ideas for how to nicely integrate Debian's Java libraries into the Android gradle workflow. And ideally, the Android Support libraries would also be reproducibly built and packaged somewhere that enforces only free software. Come find us on IRC and/or email! https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools#Communication_Channels