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With GNOME 47 out, it’s time for my bi-annual wallpaper deep dive. For many, these may seem like simple background images, but GNOME wallpapers are the visual anchors of the project, defining its aesthetic and identity. The signature blue wallpaper with its dark top bar remains a key part of that.

In this release, GNOME 47 doesn’t overhaul the default blue wallpaper. It’s more of a subtle tweak than a full redesign. The familiar rounded triangles remain, but here’s something neat: the dark variant mimics real-world camera behavior. When it’s darker, the camera’s aperture widens, creating a shallower depth of field. A small but nice touch for those who notice these things.

The real action this cycle, though, is in the supplemental wallpapers.

We haven’t had to remove much this time around, thanks to the JXL format keeping file sizes manageable. The focus has been on variety rather than cutting old designs. We aim to keep things fresh, though you might notice that photographic wallpapers are still missing (we’ll get to that eventually, promise.

In terms of fine tuning changes, the classic, Pixels has been updated to feature newer apps from GNOME Circle.

The dark variant of Pills also got some love with lighting and shading tweaks, including a subtle subsurface scattering effect.

As for the new wallpapers, there are a few cool additions this release. I collaborated with Dominik Baran to create a tube-map-inspired vector wallpaper, which I’m particularly into. There’s also Mollnar, a nod to Vera Molnar, using simple geometric shapes in SVG format.

Most of our wallpapers are still bitmaps, largely because our rendering tools don’t yet handle color banding well with vectors. For now, even designs that would work better as vectors—like mesh gradients—get converted to bitmaps.

We’ve introduced some new abstract designs as well – meet Sheet and Swoosh. And for fans of pixel art, we’ve added LCD and its colorful sibling, LCD-rainbow. Both give off that retro screen vibe, even if the color gradient realism isn’t real-world accurate.

Lastly, there’s Symbolic Soup, which is, well… a bit chaotic. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it definitely adds variety.

Preview

If you’re wondering about the strange square aspect ratio, take a look at the wallpaper sizing guide in our GNOME Interface Guidelines.

Also worth noting is the fact that all of these wallpapers have been created by humans. While I’ve experimented with image generation for some parts of the workflow in some of of my personal projects, all this work is AIgen-free and explicitly credited.

As a JavaScript engine developer at Igalia I don’t find myself writing much plain C code anymore. I’m either writing JS or TypeScript, or hacking on large compiler codebases in C++1, or writing ECMAScript specification language. Frankly, that is fine with me. C’s time may not be over yet, but I wouldn’t be sad if I never had to write another line of it. (Hopefully this post conveys why.)

However, while working on modernizing an app written in C for the GNOME platform, that I hack on in my spare time, I wanted to copy a folder recursively using the GIO async APIs. Like cp -R at the shell, but without freezing up your GUI while it works.

C’s callback style for async programming, combined with lack of capturing variables in closures, is like going back to the dark ages if you’ve gotten used to languages with async/await style or even C++’s lambdas. I would’ve avoided writing this if I could, but apparently no one else had done it publicly on the internet that I could find.2 So here it is for your enjoyment.

typedef struct { GFile *dest_folder; GQueue *files_to_copy; GQueue *folders_to_copy; GFileCopyFlags flags; } CopyRecursiveClosure; /* Pre-declare so we can read them in the order they are executed: */ static void on_recursive_make_dir_finish(GFile *file, GAsyncResult *res, GTask *data); static void on_recursive_file_enumerate_finish(GFile* file, GAsyncResult *res, GTask *data); static void on_recursive_file_next_files_finish(GFileEnumerator *children, GAsyncResult *res, GTask *data); static void copy_file_queue_async(GTask *task); static void on_recursive_file_copy_finish(GFile *file, GAsyncResult *result, GTask *data); static void on_recursive_folder_copy_finish(GFile *file, GAsyncResult *result, GTask *data); static void copy_folder_queue_async(GTask *task); static void copy_recursive_closure_free(CopyRecursiveClosure *ptr); /** * copy_recursive_async: * @src: The source folder * @dest: Destination folder in which to place the copy of @src * @flags: #GFileCopyFlags to apply to copy operations * @prio: I/O priority, e.g. #G_PRIORITY_DEFAULT * @cancel: #GCancellable that will interrupt the operation when triggered * @done_cb: Function to call when the operation is finished * @data: Pointer to pass to @done_cb * * Copy the folder @src and all of the files and subfolders in it into the * folder @dest, asynchronously. * * The only @flags supported are #G_FILE_COPY_NONE and #G_FILE_COPY_OVERWRITE. */ void copy_recursive_async(GFile *src, GFile *dest, GFileCopyFlags flags, int prio, GCancellable *cancel, GAsyncReadyCallback done_cb, void *data) { g_return_if_fail(G_IS_FILE(src)); g_return_if_fail(G_IS_FILE(dest)); g_return_if_fail(flags == G_FILE_COPY_NONE || flags == G_FILE_COPY_OVERWRITE); g_return_if_fail(!cancel || G_IS_CANCELLABLE(cancel)); g_autoptr(GTask) task = g_task_new(src, cancel, done_cb, data); g_task_set_priority(task, prio); CopyRecursiveClosure *task_data = g_new0(CopyRecursiveClosure, 1); g_autofree char *basename = g_file_get_basename(src); task_data->dest_folder = g_file_get_child(dest, basename); task_data->files_to_copy = g_queue_new(); task_data->folders_to_copy = g_queue_new(); task_data->flags = flags; g_task_set_task_data(task, task_data, (GDestroyNotify)copy_recursive_closure_free); g_file_make_directory_async(task_data->dest_folder, prio, cancel, (GAsyncReadyCallback)on_recursive_make_dir_finish, g_steal_pointer(&task)); } /** * copy_recursive_finish: * @src: The source folder * @result: The #GAsyncResult passed to the callback * @error_out: (nullable): Return location for a #GError * * Complete the asynchronous copy operation started by copy_recursive_async(). * * Returns: %TRUE if the operation completed successfully, %FALSE on error. */ bool copy_recursive_finish(GFile *src, GAsyncResult *result, GError **error_out) { g_return_val_if_fail(G_IS_FILE(src), false); g_return_val_if_fail(G_IS_TASK(result), false); g_return_val_if_fail(g_task_is_valid(result, src), false); return g_task_propagate_boolean(G_TASK(result), error_out); } static void on_recursive_make_dir_finish(GFile *file, GAsyncResult *result, GTask *task_ptr) { g_autoptr(GTask) task = g_steal_pointer(&task_ptr); g_autoptr(GError) error = NULL; GCancellable *cancel = g_task_get_cancellable(task); int prio = g_task_get_priority(task); if (!g_file_make_directory_finish(G_FILE(file), result, &error)) { /* With the OVERWRITE flag, don't error out when the folder already * exists. (Hopefully plopping all the files in the existing folder is * sufficient. If not, another way to do this would be to delete the * existing folder recursively, so that extra existing files not in the * source don't remain in the destination.) */ CopyRecursiveClosure *data = g_task_get_task_data(task); bool overwrite = !!(data->flags & G_FILE_COPY_OVERWRITE); if (!overwrite || !g_error_matches(error, G_IO_ERROR, G_IO_ERROR_EXISTS)) { g_autofree char *path = g_file_get_path(file); g_task_return_prefixed_error(task, g_steal_pointer(&error), "Error creating destination folder %s: ", path); return; } } GFile *src = g_task_get_source_object(task); g_file_enumerate_children_async(src, "standard::*", G_FILE_QUERY_INFO_NONE, prio, cancel, (GAsyncReadyCallback)on_recursive_file_enumerate_finish, g_steal_pointer(&task)); } static void on_recursive_file_enumerate_finish(GFile *file, GAsyncResult *result, GTask *task_ptr) { g_autoptr(GTask) task = g_steal_pointer(&task_ptr); g_autoptr(GError) error = NULL; GCancellable *cancel = g_task_get_cancellable(task); int prio = g_task_get_priority(task); g_autoptr(GFileEnumerator) children = g_file_enumerate_children_finish(G_FILE(file), result, &error); if (!children) { g_autofree char *path = g_file_get_path(file); g_task_return_prefixed_error(task, g_steal_pointer(&error), "Error reading folder %s: ", path); return; } g_file_enumerator_next_files_async(children, 10, prio, cancel, (GAsyncReadyCallback)on_recursive_file_next_files_finish, g_steal_pointer(&task)); } static void on_recursive_file_next_files_finish(GFileEnumerator *children, GAsyncResult *result, GTask *task_ptr) { g_autoptr(GTask) task = g_steal_pointer(&task_ptr); g_autoptr(GError) error = NULL; GCancellable *cancel = g_task_get_cancellable(task); int prio = g_task_get_priority(task); g_autolist(GFileInfo) next_files = g_file_enumerator_next_files_finish(children, result, &error); if (error) { g_autofree char *path = g_file_get_path(g_file_enumerator_get_container(children)); g_task_return_prefixed_error(task, g_steal_pointer(&error), "Error reading files from folder %s: ", path); return; } CopyRecursiveClosure *data = g_task_get_task_data(task); if (next_files) { for (GList *iter = next_files; iter != NULL; iter = g_list_next(iter)) { GFileInfo *info = G_FILE_INFO(iter->data); GFileType type = g_file_info_get_file_type(info); g_autoptr(GFile) file = g_file_enumerator_get_child(children, info); switch (type) { case G_FILE_TYPE_DIRECTORY: g_queue_push_tail(data->folders_to_copy, g_steal_pointer(&file)); break; case G_FILE_TYPE_REGULAR: g_queue_push_tail(data->files_to_copy, g_steal_pointer(&file)); break; default: g_warning("Unhandled file type %d in recursive copy: %s", type, g_file_info_get_name(info)); continue; } } g_file_enumerator_next_files_async(children, 10, prio, cancel, (GAsyncReadyCallback)on_recursive_file_next_files_finish, g_steal_pointer(&task)); return; } copy_file_queue_async(g_steal_pointer(&task)); } static void copy_file_queue_async(GTask *task_ptr) { g_autoptr(GTask) task = task_ptr; CopyRecursiveClosure *data = g_task_get_task_data(task); g_autoptr(GFile) file = g_queue_pop_head(data->files_to_copy); if (file) { GCancellable *cancel = g_task_get_cancellable(task); int prio = g_task_get_priority(task); g_autofree char *basename = g_file_get_basename(file); g_autoptr(GFile) dest = g_file_get_child(data->dest_folder, basename); g_file_copy_async(file, dest, data->flags, prio, cancel, /* progress_callback = */ NULL, NULL, (GAsyncReadyCallback)on_recursive_file_copy_finish, g_steal_pointer(&task)); return; } copy_folder_queue_async(g_steal_pointer(&task)); } static void on_recursive_file_copy_finish(GFile *file, GAsyncResult *result, GTask *task_ptr) { g_autoptr(GTask) task = task_ptr; g_autoptr(GError) error = NULL; if (!g_file_copy_finish(file, result, &error)) { g_autofree char *path = g_file_get_path(file); g_task_return_prefixed_error(task, g_steal_pointer(&error), "Error copying file %s: ", path); return; } copy_file_queue_async(g_steal_pointer(&task)); } static void copy_folder_queue_async(GTask *task_ptr) { g_autoptr(GTask) task = task_ptr; CopyRecursiveClosure *data = g_task_get_task_data(task); g_autoptr(GFile) folder = g_queue_pop_head(data->folders_to_copy); if (folder) { GCancellable *cancel = g_task_get_cancellable(task); int prio = g_task_get_priority(task); copy_recursive_async(folder, data->dest_folder, data->flags, prio, cancel, (GAsyncReadyCallback)on_recursive_folder_copy_finish, g_steal_pointer(&task)); return; } g_task_return_boolean(task, true); } static void on_recursive_folder_copy_finish(GFile *folder, GAsyncResult *result, GTask *task_ptr) { g_autoptr(GTask) task = task_ptr; g_autoptr(GError) error = NULL; if (!copy_recursive_finish(folder, result, &error)) { g_autofree char *path = g_file_get_path(folder); g_task_return_prefixed_error(task, g_steal_pointer(&error), "Error copying folder %s: ", path); return; } copy_folder_queue_async(g_steal_pointer(&task)); } static void copy_recursive_closure_free(CopyRecursiveClosure *ptr) { g_object_unref(ptr->dest_folder); g_queue_free_full(ptr->files_to_copy, g_object_unref); g_queue_free_full(ptr->folders_to_copy, g_object_unref); g_free(ptr); }

You are welcome to take this code and customize it to your needs. I’m putting it into the public domain so hopefully nobody else has to go through this.

Although if you really want to, it could be improved by implementing progress callbacks like g_file_copy_async() has.

Just so you can understand what’s going on at a glance, here’s what it would look like in about 30 lines of JavaScript, with async/await style:

async function copyRecursive(src, dest, flags, prio, cancel) { const destFolder = dest.get_child(src.get_basename()); const overwrite = !!(flags & Gio.FileCopyFlags.OVERWRITE); try { await destFolder.make_directory_async(prio, cancel); } catch (error) { if (!overwrite || !error.matches(Gio.IOErrorEnum, Gio.IOErrorEnum.EXISTS)) throw error; } const children = await src.enumerate_children_async('standard::*', Gio.FileQueryInfoFlags.NONE, prio, cancel); let nextFiles; const filesToCopy = []; const foldersToCopy = []; while ((nextFiles = await children.next_files_async(10, prio, cancel)).length) { const { [Gio.FileType.REGULAR]: files, [Gio.FileType.DIRECTORY]: folders, } = Object.groupBy(nextFiles, info => info.get_file_type()); foldersToCopy.push(...folders?.map(info => children.get_child(info)) ?? []); filesToCopy.push(...files?.map(info => children.get_child(info)) ?? []); } for (const file of filesToCopy) { const dest = destFolder.get_child(file.get_basename()); await file.copy_async(dest, flags, prio, cancel, null, null); } for (const folder of foldersToCopy) await copyRecursive(folder, destFolder, flags, prio, cancel); }

(This excludes the imports and calls to Gio._promisify that you would have to do; hopefully we’ll get native async operations in GNOME 48!)

[1] C++ before C++11 used to be a worse experience than C. However, I don’t have to deal with that because the three major JS engines use C++17. It’s … its own category of special, but better.

[2] No, ChatGPT couldn’t do it either; it made up GIO APIs that don’t exist. If that programming technique is on the table, then sure, it’d have been a lot easier.

Beer, cake and ISO testing amidst rugby and jazz band chaos

On Saturday, the Debian South Africa team got together in Cape Town to celebrate Debian’s 31st birthday and to perform ISO testing for the Debian 11.11 and 12.7 point releases.

We ran out of time to organise a fancy printed cake like we had last year, but our improvisation worked out just fine!

We thought that we had allotted plenty of time for all of our activities for the day, and that there would be plenty of time for everything including training, but the day zipped by really fast. We hired a venue at a brewery, which is usually really nice because they have an isolated area with lots of space and a big TV – nice for presentations, demos, etc. But on this day, there was a big rugby match between South Africa and New Zealand, and as it got closer to the game, the place just got louder and louder (especially as a band started practicing and doing sound tests for their performance for that evening) and it turned out our space was also double-booked later in the afternoon, so we had to relocate.

Even amidst all the chaos, we ended up having a very productive day and we even managed to have some fun!

Four people from our local team performed ISO testing for the very first time, and in total we covered 44 test cases locally. Most of the other testers were the usual crowd in the UK, we also did a brief video call with them, but it was dinner time for them so we had to keep it short. Next time we’ll probably have some party line open that any tester can also join.

Logo

We went through some more iterations of our local team logo that Tammy has been working on. They’re turning out very nice and have been in progress for more than a year, I guess like most things Debian, it will be ready when it’s ready!

Debian 11.11 and Debian 12.7 released, and looking ahead towards Debian 13

Both point releases tested just fine and was released later in the evening. I’m very glad that we managed to be useful and reduce total testing time and that we managed to cover all the test cases in the end.

A bunch of things we really wanted to fix by the time Debian 12 launched are now finally fixed in 12.7. There’s still a few minor annoyances, but over all, Debian 13 (trixie) is looking even better than Debian 12 was around this time in the release cycle.

Freeze dates for trixie has not yet been announced, I hope that the release team announces those sooner rather than later, also KDE Plasma 6 hasn’t yet made its way into unstable, I’ve seen quite a number of people ask about this online, so hopefully that works out.

And by the way, the desktop artwork submissions for trixie ends in two weeks! More information about that is available on the Debian wiki if you’re interested in making a contribution. There are already 4 great proposals.

Debian Local Groups

Organising local events for Debian is probably easier than you think, and Debian does make funding available for events. So, if you want to grow Debian in your area, feel free to join us at #debian-localgroups on the OFTC IRC network, also plumbed on Matrix at #debian-localgroups:matrix.debian.social – where we’ll try to answer any questions you might have and guide you through the process!

Oh and btw… South Africa won the Rugby!

Seen warnings about high swap consumption in Plesk on Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS:

Had a look in top and noticed clamavd using 1.0G of swap. After a little digging around, it might be related to a change in ClamAV 0.103.0 where non-blocking signature database reloads were introduced.

Major changes

• clamd can now reload the signature database without blocking scanning. This multi-threaded database reload improvement was made possible thanks to a community effort.
  • Non-blocking database reloads are now the default behavior. Some systems that are more constrained on RAM may need to disable non-blocking reloads, as it will temporarily consume double the amount of memory. We added a new clamd config option ConcurrentDatabaseReload, which may be set to no.

I disabled the option and the difference is dramatic:

I’ll keep an eye on it I guess.

Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 24.04.1 LTS has been released. With the codename Noble Numbat, Lubuntu 24.04 is the 26th release of Lubuntu, the 12th release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment. Support lifespan Lubuntu 24.04 LTS will be supported for 3 years until April 2027. Our […]

Around a decade ago, I was happy to learn about bcache – a Linux block cache system that implements tiered storage (like a pool of hard disks with SSDs for cache) on Linux. At that stage, ZFS on Linux was nowhere close to where it is today, so any progress on gaining more ZFS features in general Linux systems was very welcome. These days we care a bit less about tiered storage, since any cost benefit in using anything else than nvme tends to quickly evaporate compared to time you eventually lose on it.

In 2015, it was announced that bcache would grow into its own filesystem. This was particularly exciting and it caused quite a buzz in the Linux community, because it brought along with it more features that compare with ZFS (and also btrfs), including built-in compression, built-in encryption, check-summing and RAID implementations.

Unlike ZFS, it didn’t have a dkms module, so if you wanted to test bcachefs back then, you’d have to pull the entire upstream bcachefs kernel source tree and compile it. Not ideal, but for a promise of a new, shiny, full-featured filesystem, it was worth it.

In 2019, it seemed that the time has come for bcachefs to be merged into Linux, so I thought that it’s about time we have the userspace tools (bcachefs-tools) packaged in Debian. Even if the Debian kernel wouldn’t have it yet by the time the bullseye (Debian 11) release happened, it might still have been useful for a future backported kernel or users who roll their own.

By total coincidence, the first git snapshot that I got into Debian (version 0.1+git20190829.aa2a42b) was committed exactly 5 years ago today.

It was quite easy to package it, since it was written in C and shipped with a makefile that just worked, and it made it past NEW into unstable in 19 January 2020, just as I was about to head off to FOSDEM as the pandemic started, but that’s of course a whole other story.

Fast-forwarding towards the end of 2023, version 1.2 shipped with some utilities written in Rust, this caused a little delay, since I wasn’t at all familiar with Rust packaging yet, so I shipped an update that didn’t yet include those utilities, and saw this as an opportunity to learn more about how the Rust eco-system worked and Rust in Debian.

So, back in April the Rust dependencies for bcachefs-tools in Debian didn’t at all match the build requirements. I got some help from the Rust team who says that the common practice is to relax the dependencies of Rust software so that it builds in Debian. So errno, which needed the exact version 0.2, was relaxed so that it could build with version 0.4 in Debian, udev 0.7 was relaxed for 0.8 in Debian, memoffset from 0.8.5 to 0.6.5, paste from 1.0.11 to 1.08 and bindgen from 0.69.9 to 0.66.

I found this a bit disturbing, but it seems that some Rust people have lots of confidence that if something builds, it will run fine. And at least it did build, and the resulting binaries did work, although I’m personally still not very comfortable or confident about this approach (perhaps that might change as I learn more about Rust).

With that in mind, at this point you may wonder how any distribution could sanely package this. The problem is that they can’t. Fedora and other distributions with stable releases take a similar approach to what we’ve done in Debian, while distributions with much more relaxed policies (like Arch) include all the dependencies as they are vendored upstream.

As it stands now, bcachefs-tools is impossible to maintain in Debian stable. While my primary concerns when packaging, are for Debian unstable and the next stable release, I also keep in mind people who have to support these packages long after I stopped caring about them (like Freexian who does LTS support for Debian or Canonical who has long-term Ubuntu support, and probably other organisations that I’ve never even heard of yet). And of course, if bcachfs-tools don’t have any usable stable releases, it doesn’t have any LTS releases either, so anyone who needs to support bcachefs-tools long-term has to carry the support burden on their own, and if they bundle it’s dependencies, then those as well.

I’ll admit that I don’t have any solution for fixing this. I suppose if I were upstream I might look into the possibility of at least supporting a larger range of recent dependencies (usually easy enough if you don’t hop onto the newest features right away) so that distributions with stable releases only need to concern themselves with providing some minimum recent versions, but even if that could work, the upstream author is 100% against any solution other than vendoring all its dependencies with the utility and insisting that it must only be built using these bundled dependencies. I’ve made 6 uploads for this package so far this year, but still I constantly get complaints that it’s out of date and that it’s ancient. If a piece of software is considered so old that it’s useless by the time it’s been published for two or three months, then there’s no way it can survive even a usual stable release cycle, nevermind any kind of long-term support.

With this in mind (not even considering some hostile emails that I recently received from the upstream developer or his public rants on lkml and reddit), I decided to remove bcachefs-tools from Debian completely. Although after discussing this with another DD, I was convinced to orphan it instead, which I have now done. I made an upload to experimental so that it’s still available if someone wants to work on it (without having to go through NEW again), it’s been removed from unstable so that it doesn’t migrate to testing, and the ancient (especially by bcachefs-tools standards) versions that are in stable and oldstable will be removed too, since they are very likely to cause damage with any recent kernel versions that support bcachefs.

And so, my adventure with bcachefs-tools comes to an end. I’d advise that if you consider using bcachefs for any kind of production use in the near future, you first consider how supportable it is long-term, and whether there’s really anyone at all that is succeeding in providing stable support for it.

Each release of Debian has a shiny new theme, which is visible on the boot screen, the login screen and, most prominently, on the desktop wallpaper. Debian plans to release Trixie, the next release, next year. As ever, we need your help in creating its theme! You have the opportunity to design a theme that will inspire thousands of people while working in their Debian systems.

For the most up to date details, please refer to the wiki.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Juliette Taka Belin for doing the Emerald theme for bookworm.

The deadlines for submissions is: 2024-09-19

The artwork is usually picked based on which themes look the most:

• ''Debian'': admittedly not the most defined concept, since everyone has their own take on what Debian means to them.
• ''plausible to integrate without patching core software'': as much as we love some of the insanely hot looking themes, some would require heavy GTK+ theming and patching GDM/GNOME.
• ''clean / well designed'': without becoming something that gets annoying to look at a year down the road. Examples of good themes include Joy, Lines, Softwaves and futurePrototype.

If you'd like more information or details, please post to the Debian Desktop mailing list.

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

• Patrick Winnertz (winnie)
• Fabian Gruenbichler (fabiang)

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

• Juri Grabowski
• Tobias Heider
• Jean Charles Delépine
• Guilherme Puida Moreira
• Antoine Le Gonidec
• Arthur Barbosa Diniz

Congratulations!

Hi,

Keeping my promise for monthly bits, here's a quick snapshot of my first ten days as DPL.

Special thanks to Jonathan for an insightful introduction that left less room for questions. His introduction covered my first tasks like expense approval and CTTE member appointments thoroughly. Although I made a visible oversight by forgetting to exclude Simon McVittie <smcv> from the list, whose term has ended , I'm committed to learning from this mistake. In future I'll prioritize thorough proofreading to ensure accuracy.

Part of my "work" was learning what channels I need to subscribe and adjust my .procmailrc and .muttrc took some time.

Recently I had my first press interview. I had to answer a couple of prepared questions for Business IT News. It seems journalists are always on the lookout for unique angles. When asked if humility is a new trait for DPLs, my response would be a resounding "No." In my experience, humility is a common quality among DPLs I've encountered, including Jonathan.

One of my top priorities is reaching out to all our dedicated and appointed teams, including those managing critical infrastructure. I've begun with the CTTE, Salsa Admins and Debian Snapshot. Everything appears to be in order with the CTTE team. I'm waiting for response from Salsa and Snapshot, which is fine given the recent contact.

I was pointed out to the fact that lintian is in an unfortunate state as Axel Beckert confirmed on the lintian maintainers list. It turns out that bug #1069745 of magics-python should not have been undetected for a long time if lintian bug #677078 would have been fixed. It seems obvious to me that lintian needs more work to fulfill its role as reliably policy checker to ensure our high level of packaging quality.

In any case thanks a lot to Axel who is doing his best but it seems urgent to me to find some more person-power for this task. Any volunteer to lend some helping hand in the lintian maintainers team?

On 2024-04-30 I gave my first talk "Bits from greenhorn DPL" online at MiniDebConf Brasil in Belo Horizonte. The Q&A afterwards stired some flavours of the question: "What can Debian Brasil do better?" My answer was always in a way: Given your great activity in now organising the fifth MiniDebConf you are doing pretty well and I have no additional hints for the moment.

Kind regards Andreas.

We are very excited to announce that Debian has selected seven contributors to work under mentorship on a variety of projects with us during the Google Summer of Code.

Here are the list of the projects, students, and details of the tasks to be performed.

Project: Android SDK Tools in Debian

• Student: anuragxone

Deliverables of the project: Make the entire Android toolchain, Android Target Platform Framework, and SDK tools available in the Debian archives.

Project: Benchmarking Parallel Performance of Numerical MPI Packages

• Student: Nikolaos

Deliverables of the project: Deliver an automated method for Debian maintainers to test selected numerical Debian packages for their parallel performance in clusters, in particular to catch performance regressions from updates, and to verify expected performance gains, such as Amdahl’s and Gufstafson’s law, from increased cluster resources.

Project: Debian MobCom

• Student: Nathan D

Deliverables of the project: Update the outdated mobile packages and recreate aged packages due to new dependencies. Bring in more mobile communication tools by adding about 5 new packages.

Project: Improve support of the Rust coreutils in Debian

• Student: Sreehari Prasad TM

Deliverables of the project: Make uutils behave more like GNU’s coreutils by improving compatibility with GNU coreutils test suit.

Project: Improve support of the Rust findutils in Debian

• Student: hanbings

Deliverables of the project: A safer and more performant implementation of the GNU suite's xargs, find, locate and updatedb tools in rust.

Project: Expanding ROCm support within Debian and derivatives

• Student: xuantengh

Deliverables of the project: Building, packaging, and uploading missing ROCm software into Debian repositories, starting with simple tools and progressing to high-level applications like PyTorch, with the final deliverables comprising a series of ROCm packages meeting community quality assurance standards.

Project: procps: Development of System Monitoring, Statistics and Information Tools in Rust

• Student: Krysztal Huang

Deliverables of the project: Improve the usability of the entire Rust-based implementation of the procps utility on Linux.

Congratulations and welcome to all the contributors!

The Google Summer of Code program is possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian Developers and Debian Contributors that dedicate part of their free time to mentor contributors and outreach tasks.

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the contributors' weekly reports on the [debian-outreach mailing-list][debian-outreach-ml], chat with us on our [IRC channel][debian-outreach-irc] or reach out to the individual projects' team mailing lists.

[debian-outreach-ml]: http://lists.debian.org/debian-outreach/ (debian-outreach AT lists.debian.org) [debian-outreach-irc]: irc://irc.debian.org/debian-outreach (#debian-outreach on irc.debian.org)

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With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Infomaniak is contributing to the Debian annual Developers' conference, directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software. Infomaniak contributes to strengthen the community that collaborates on Debian projects from all around the world throughout all of the year.

Thank you very much, Infomaniak, for your support of DebConf24!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf24 will take place from 28th July to 4th August 2024 in Busan, South Korea, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 21st to 27th July 2024.

DebConf24 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations should contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, or viisit the DebConf24 website at https://debconf24.debconf.org/sponsors/become-a-sponsor/.

The voting period for the Debian Project Leader election has ended. Please join us in congratulating Andreas Tille as the new Debian Project Leader.

The new term for the project leader started on 2024-04-21.

369 of 1,010 Debian Developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the results of the voting are available on the Debian Project Leader Elections 2024 page.

Many thanks all of our Developers for voting.

The Debian Project Developers will shortly vote for a new Debian Project Leader known as the DPL.

The Project Leader is the official representative of The Debian Project tasked with managing the overall project, its vision, direction, and finances.

The DPL is also responsible for the selection of Delegates, defining areas of responsibility within the project, the coordination of Developers, and making decisions required for the project.

Our outgoing and present DPL Jonathan Carter served 4 terms, from 2020 through 2024. Jonathan shared his last Bits from the DPL post to Debian recently and his hopes for the future of Debian.

Recently, we sat with the two present candidates for the DPL position asking questions to find out who they really are in a series of interviews about their platforms, visions for Debian, lives, and even their favorite text editors. The interviews were conducted by disaster2life (Yashraj Moghe) and made available from video and audio transcriptions:

• Andreas Tille [this document]
• Sruthi Chandran [Interview]

Voting for the position starts on April 6, 2024.

Editors' note: This is our official return to Debian interviews, readers should stay tuned for more upcoming interviews with Developers and other important figures in Debian as part of our "Meet your Debian Developer" series. We used the following tools and services: Turboscribe.ai for the transcription from the audio and video files, IRC: Oftc.net for communication, Jitsi meet for interviews, and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for editing and video. While we encountered many technical difficulties in the return to this process, we are still able and proud to present the transcripts of the interviews edited only in a few areas for readability.

2024 Debian Project Leader Candidate: Andrea Tille

Andreas' Interview

Who are you? Tell us a little about yourself.

[Andreas]:

How am I? Well, I'm, as I wrote in my platform, I'm a proud grandfather doing a lot of free software stuff, doing a lot of sports, have some goals in mind which I like to do and hopefully for the best of Debian.

And How are you today?

[Andreas]:

How I'm doing today? Well, actually I have some headaches but it's fine for the interview.

So, usually I feel very good. Spring was coming here and today it's raining and I plan to do a bicycle tour tomorrow and hope that I do not get really sick but yeah, for the interview it's fine.

What do you do in Debian? Could you mention your story here?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, well, I started with Debian kind of an accident because I wanted to have some package salvaged which is called WordNet. It's a monolingual dictionary and I did not really plan to do more than maybe 10 packages or so. I had some kind of training with xTeddy which is totally unimportant, a cute teddy you can put on your desktop.

So, and then well, more or less I thought how can I make Debian attractive for my employer which is a medical institute and so on. It could make sense to package bioinformatics and medicine software and it somehow evolved in a direction I did neither expect it nor wanted to do, that I'm currently the most busy uploader in Debian, created several teams around it.

DebianMate is very well known from me. I created the Blends team to create teams and techniques around what we are doing which was Debian TIS, Debian Edu, Debian Science and so on and I also created the packaging team for R, for the statistics package R which is technically based and not topic based. All these blends are covering a certain topic and R is just needed by lots of these blends.

So, yeah, and to cope with all this I have written a script which is routing an update to manage all these uploads more or less automatically. So, I think I had one day where I uploaded 21 new packages but it's just automatically generated, right? So, it's on one day more than I ever planned to do.

What is the first thing you think of when you think of Debian?

Editors' note: The question was misunderstood as the “worst thing you think of when you think of Debian”

[Andreas]:

The worst thing I think about Debian, it's complicated. I think today on Debian board I was asked about the technical progress I want to make and in my opinion we need to standardize things inside Debian. For instance, bringing all the packages to salsa, follow some common standards, some common workflow which is extremely helpful.

As I said, if I'm that productive with my own packages we can adopt this in general, at least in most cases I think. I made a lot of good experience by the support of well-formed teams. Well-formed teams are those teams where people support each other, help each other.

For instance, how to say, I'm a physicist by profession so I'm not an IT expert. I can tell apart what works and what not but I'm not an expert in those packages. I do and the amount of packages is so high that I do not even understand all the techniques they are covering like Go, Rust and something like this.

And I also don't speak Java and I had a problem once in the middle of the night and I've sent the email to the list and was a Java problem and I woke up in the morning and it was solved. This is what I call a team. I don't call a team some common repository that is used by random people for different packages also but it's working together, don't hesitate to solve other people's problems and permit people to get active.

This is what I call a team and this is also something I observed in, it's hard to give a percentage, in a lot of other teams but we have other people who do not even understand the concept of the team. Why is working together make some advantage and this is also a tough thing. I [would] like to tackle in my term if I get elected to form solid teams using the common workflow. This is one thing.

The other thing is that we have a lot of good people in our infrastructure like FTP masters, DSA and so on. I have the feeling they have a lot of work and are working more or less on their limits, and I like to talk to them [to ask] what kind of change we could do to move that limits or move their personal health to the better side.

The DPL term lasts for a year, What would you do during that you couldn't do now?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, well this is basically what I said are my main issues. I need to admit I have no really clear imagination what kind of tasks will come to me as a DPL because all these financial issues and law issues possible and issues [that] people who are not really friendly to Debian might create. I'm afraid these things might occupy a lot of time and I can't say much about this because I simply don't know.

What are three key terms about you and your candidacy?

[Andreas]:

As I said, I like to work on standards, I’d like to make Debian try [to get it right so] that people don't get overworked, this third key point is be inviting to newcomers, to everybody who wants to come. Yeah, I also mentioned in my term this diversity issue, geographical and from gender point of view. This may be the three points I consider most important.

Preferred text editor?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, my preferred one? Ah, well, I have no preferred text editor. I'm using the Midnight Commander very frequently which has an internal editor which is convenient for small text. For other things, I usually use VI but I also use Emacs from time to time. So, no, I have not preferred text editor. Whatever works nicely for me.

What is the importance of the community in the Debian Project? How would like to see it evolving over the next few years?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, I think the community is extremely important. So, I was on a lot of DebConfs. I think it's not really 20 but 17 or 18 DebCons and I really enjoyed these events every year because I met so many friends and met so many interesting people that it's really enriching my life and those who I never met in person but have read interesting things and yeah, Debian community makes really a part of my life.

And how do you think it should evolve specifically?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, for instance, last year in Kochi, it became even clearer to me that the geographical diversity is a really strong point. Just discussing with some women from India who is afraid about not coming next year to Busan because there's a problem with Shanghai and so on. I'm not really sure how we can solve this but I think this is a problem at least I wish to tackle and yeah, this is an interesting point, the geographical diversity and I'm running the so-called mentoring of the month.

This is a small project to attract newcomers for the Debian Med team which has the focus on medical packages and I learned that we had always men applying for this and so I said, okay, I dropped the constraint of medical packages.

Any topic is fine, I teach you packaging but it must be someone who does not consider himself a man. I got only two applicants, no, actually, I got one applicant and one response which was kind of strange if I'm hunting for women or so.

I did not understand but I got one response and interestingly, it was for me one of the least expected counters. It was from Iran and I met a very nice woman, very open, very skilled and gifted and did a good job or have even lose contact today and maybe we need more actively approach groups that are underrepresented. I don't know if what's a good means which I did but at least I tried and so I try to think about these kind of things.

What part of Debian has made you smile? What part of the project has kept you going all through the years?

[Andreas]:

Well, the card game which is called Mao on the DebConf made me smile all the time. I admit I joined only two or three times even if I really love this kind of games but I was occupied by other stuff so this made me really smile. I also think the first online DebConf in 2020 made me smile because we had this kind of short video sequences and I tried to make a funny video sequence about every DebConf I attended before. This is really funny moments but yeah, it's not only smile but yeah.

One thing maybe it's totally unconnected to Debian but I learned personally something in Debian that we have a do-ocracy and you can do things which you think that are right if not going in between someone else, right? So respect everybody else but otherwise you can do so.

And in 2020 I also started to take trees which are growing widely in my garden and plant them into the woods because in our woods a lot of trees are dying and so I just do something because I can. I have the resource to do something, take the small tree and bring it into the woods because it does not harm anybody. I asked the forester if it is okay, yes, yes, okay. So everybody can do so but I think the idea to do something like this came also because of the free software idea. You have the resources, you have the computer, you can do something and you do something productive, right? And when thinking about this I think it was also my Debian work.

Meanwhile I have planted more than 3,000 trees so it's not a small number but yeah, I enjoy this.

What part of Debian would you have some criticisms for?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, it's basically the same as I said before. We need more standards to work together. I do not want to repeat this but this is what I think, yeah.

What field in Free Software generally do you think requires the most work to be put into it? What do you think is Debian's part in the field?

[Andreas]:

It's also in general, the thing is the fact that I'm maintaining packages which are usually as modern software is maintained in Git, which is fine but we have some software which is at Sourceport, we have software laying around somewhere, we have software where Debian somehow became Upstream because nobody is caring anymore and free software is very different in several things, ways and well, I in principle like freedom of choice which is the basic of all our work.

Sometimes this freedom goes in the way of productivity because everybody is free to re-implement. You asked me for the most favorite editor. In principle one really good working editor would be great to have and would work and we have maybe 500 in Debian or so, I don't know.

I could imagine if people would concentrate and say five instead of 500 editors, we could get more productive, right? But I know this will not happen, right? But I think this is one thing which goes in the way of making things smooth and productive and we could have more manpower to replace one person who's [having] children, doing some other stuff and can't continue working on something and maybe this is a problem I will not solve, definitely not, but which I see.

What do you think is Debian's part in the field?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, well, okay, we can bring together different Upstreams, so we are building some packages and have some general overview about similar things and can say, oh, you are doing this and some other person is doing more or less the same, do you want to join each other or so, but this is kind of a channel we have to our Upstreams which is probably not very successful.

It starts with code copies of some libraries which are changed a little bit, which is fine license-wise, but not so helpful for different things and so I've tried to convince those Upstreams to forward their patches to the original one, but for this and I think we could do some kind of, yeah, [find] someone who brings Upstream together or to make them stop their forking stuff, but it costs a lot of energy and we probably don't have this and it's also not realistic that we can really help with this problem.

Do you have any questions for me?

[Andreas]:

I enjoyed the interview, I enjoyed seeing you again after half a year or so. Yeah, actually I've seen you in the eating room or cheese and wine party or so, I do not remember we had to really talk together, but yeah, people around, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

The Debian Project Developers will shortly vote for a new Debian Project Leader known as the DPL.

The DPL is the official representative of representative of The Debian Project tasked with managing the overall project, its vision, direction, and finances.

The DPL is also responsible for the selection of Delegates, defining areas of responsibility within the project, the coordination of Developers, and making decisions required for the project.

Our outgoing and present DPL Jonathan Carter served 4 terms, from 2020 through 2024. Jonathan shared his last Bits from the DPL post to Debian recently and his hopes for the future of Debian.

Recently, we sat with the two present candidates for the DPL position asking questions to find out who they really are in a series of interviews about their platforms, visions for Debian, lives, and even their favorite text editors. The interviews were conducted by disaster2life (Yashraj Moghe) and made available from video and audio transcriptions:

• Andreas Tille [Interview]
• Sruthi Chandran [this document]

Voting for the position starts on April 6, 2024.

Editors' note: This is our official return to Debian interviews, readers should stay tuned for more upcoming interviews with Developers and other important figures in Debian as part of our "Meet your Debian Developer" series. We used the following tools and services: Turboscribe.ai for the transcription from the audio and video files, IRC: Oftc.net for communication, Jitsi meet for interviews, and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for editing and video. While we encountered many technical difficulties in the return to this process, we are still able and proud to present the transcripts of the interviews edited only in a few areas for readability.

2024 Debian Project Leader Candidate: Sruthi Chandran

Sruthi's interview

Hi Sruthi, so for the first question, who are you and could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[Sruthi]:

I usually talk about me whenever I am talking about answering the question who am I, I usually say like I am a librarian turned free software enthusiast and a Debian Developer. So I had no technical background and I learned, I was introduced to free software through my husband and then I learned Debian packaging, and eventually I became a Debian Developer. So I always give my example to people who say I am not technically inclined, I don't have technical background so I can't contribute to free software.

So yeah, that's what I refer to myself.

For the next question, could you tell me what do you do in Debian, and could you mention your story up until here today?

[Sruthi]:

Okay, so let me start from my initial days in Debian. I started contributing to Debian, my first contribution was a Tibetan font. We went to a Tibetan place and they were saying they didn't have a font in Linux.

So that's how I started contributing. Then I moved on to Ruby packages, then I have some JavaScript and Go packages, all dependencies of GitLab. So I was involved with maintaining GitLab for some time, now I'm not very active there.

But yeah, so GitLab was the main package I was contributing to since I contributed since 2016 to maybe like 2020 or something. Later I have come [over to] packaging. Now I am part of some of the teams, delegated teams, like community team and outreach team, as well as the Debconf committee. And the biggest, I think, my activity in Debian, I would say is organizing Debconf 2023. So it was a great experience and yeah, so that's my story in Debian.

So what are three key terms about you and your candidacy?

[Sruthi]:

Okay, let me first think about it. For candidacy, I can start with diversity is one point I started expressing from the first time I contested for DPL. But to be honest, that's the main point I want to bring.

[Yashraj]:

So for diversity, if you could break down your thoughts on diversity and make them, [about] your three points including diversity.

[Sruthi]:

So in addition to, eventually when starting it was just diversity. Now I have like a bit more ideas, like community, like I want to be a leader for the Debian community. More than, I don't know, maybe people may not agree, but I would say I want to be a leader of Debian community rather than a Debian operating system.

I connect to community more and third point I would say.

The term of a DPL lasts for an year. So what do you think during, what would you try to do during that, that you can't do from your position now?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. So I, like, I am very happy with the structure of Debian and how things work in Debian. Like you can do almost a lot of things, like almost all things without being a DPL.

Whatever change you want to bring about or whatever you want to do, you can do without being a DPL. Anyone, like every DD has the same rights. Only things I feel [the] DPL has hold on are mainly the budget or the funding part, which like, that's where they do the decision making part.

And then comes like, and one advantage of DPL driving some idea is that somehow people tend to listen to that with more, like, tend to give more attention to what DPL is saying rather than a normal DD. So I wanted to, like, I have answered some of the questions on how to, how I plan to do the financial budgeting part, how I want to handle, like, and the other thing is using the extra attention that I get as a DPL, I would like to obviously start with the diversity aspect in Debian. And yeah, like, I, what I want to do is not, like, be a leader and say, like, take Debian to one direction where I want to go, but I would rather take suggestions and inputs from the whole community and go about with that.

So yes, that's what I would say.

And taking a less serious question now, what is your preferred text editor?

[Sruthi]:

Vim.

[Yashraj]:

Vim, wholeheartedly team Vim?

[Sruthi]:

Yes.

[Yashraj]:

Great. Well, this was made in Vim, all the text for this.

[Sruthi]:

So, like, since you mentioned extra data, I'll give my example, like, it's just a fun note, when I started contributing to Debian, as I mentioned, I didn't have any knowledge about free software, like Debian, and I was not used to even using Linux. So, and I didn't have experience with these text editors. So, when I started contributing, I used to do the editing part using gedit.

So, that's how I started. Eventually, I moved to Nano, and once I reached Vim, I didn't move on.

Team Vim. Next question. What, what do you think is the importance of the Debian project in the world today? And where would you like to see it in 10 years, like 10 years into the future?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. So, Debian, as we all know, is referred to as the universal operating system without, like, it is said for a reason. We have hundreds and hundreds of operating systems, like Linux, distributions based on Debian.

So, I believe Debian, like even now, Debian has good influence on the, at least on the Linux or Linux ecosystem. So, what we implement in Debian has, like, is going to affect quite a lot of, like, a very good percentage of people using Linux. So, yes.

So, I think Debian is one of the leading Linux distributions. And I think in 10 years, we should be able to reach a position, like, where we are not, like, even now, like, even these many years after having Linux, we face a lot of problems in newer and newer hardware coming up and installing on them is a big problem. Like, firmwares and all those things are getting more and more complicated.

Like, it should be getting simpler, but it's getting more and more complicated. So, I, one thing I would imagine, like, I don't know if we will ever reach there, but I would imagine that eventually with the Debian, we should be able to have some, at least a few of the hardware developers or hardware producers have Debian pre-installed and those kind of things. Like, not, like, become, I'm not saying it's all, it's also available right now.

What I'm saying is that it becomes prominent enough to be opted as, like, default distro.

What part of Debian has made you And what part of the project has kept you going all through these years?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. So, I started to contribute in 2016, and I was part of the team doing GitLab packaging, and we did have a lot of training workshops and those kind of things within India. And I was, like, I had interacted with some of the Indian DDs, but I never got, like, even through chat or mail.

I didn't have a lot of interaction with the rest of the world, DDs. And the 2019 Debconf changed my whole perspective about Debian. Before that, I wasn't, like, even, I was interested in free software.

I was doing the technical stuff and all. But after DebConf, my whole idea has been, like, my focus changed to the community. Debian community is a very welcoming, very interesting community to be with.

And so, I believe that, like, 2019 DebConf was a for me. And that kept, from 2019, my focus has been to how to support, like, how, I moved to the community part of Debian from there. Then in 2020 I became part of the community team, and, like, I started being part of other teams.

So, these, I would say, the Debian community is the one, like, aspect of Debian that keeps me whole, keeps me held on to the Debian ecosystem as a whole.

Continuing to speak about Debian, what do you think, what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Debian, like, the word, the community, what's the first thing?

[Sruthi]:

I think I may sound like a broken record or something.

[Yashraj]:

No, no.

[Sruthi]:

Again, I would say the Debian community, like, it's the people who makes Debian, that makes Debian special.

Like, apart from that, if I say, I would say I'm very, like, one part of Debian that makes me very happy is the, how the governing system of Debian works, the Debian constitution and all those things, like, it's a very unique thing for Debian. And, and it's like, when people say you can't work without a proper, like, establishment or even somebody deciding everything for you, it's difficult. When people say, like, we have been, Debian has been proving it for quite a long time now, that it's possible.

So, so that's one thing I believe, like, that's one unique point. And I am very proud about that.

What areas do you think Debian is failing in, how can it (that standing) be improved?

[Sruthi]:

So, I think where Debian is failing now is getting new people into Debian. Like, I don't remember, like, exactly the answer. But I remember hearing someone mention, like, the average age of a Debian Developer is, like, above 40 or 45 or something, like, exact age, I don't remember.

But it's like, Debian is getting old. Like, the people in Debian are getting old and we are not getting enough of new people into Debian. And that's very important to have people, like, new people coming up.

Otherwise, eventually, like, after a few years, nobody, like, we won't have enough people to take the project forward. So, yeah, I believe that is where we need to work on. We are doing some efforts, like, being part of GSOC or outreachy and having maybe other events, like, local events. Like, we used to have a lot of Debian packaging workshops in India. And those kind of, I think, in Brazil and all, they all have, like, local communities are doing. But we are not very successful in retaining the people who maybe come and try out things.

But we are not very good at retaining the people, like, retaining people who come. So, we need to work on those things. Right now, I don't have a solid answer for that.

But one thing, like, I was thinking about is, like, having a Debian specific outreach project, wherein the focus will be about the Debian, like, starting will be more on, like, usually what happens in GSOC and outreach is that people come, have the, do the contributions, and they go back. Like, they don't have that connection with the Debian, like, Debian community or Debian project. So, what I envision with these, the Debian outreach, the Debian specific outreach is that we have some part of the internship, like, even before starting the internship, we have some sessions and, like, with the people in Debian having, like, getting them introduced to the Debian philosophy and Debian community and Debian, how Debian works.

And those things, we focus on that. And then we move on to the technical internship parts. So, I believe this could do some good in having, like, when you have people you can connect to, you tend to stay back in a project mode.

When you feel something more than, like, right now, we have so many technical stuff to do, like, the choice for a college student is endless. So, if they want, if they stay back for something, like, maybe for Debian, I would say, we need to have them connected to the Debian project before we go into technical parts. Like, technical parts, like, there are other things as well, where they can go and do the technical part, but, like, they can come here, like, yeah.

So, that's what I was saying. Focused outreach projects is one thing. That's just one.

That's not enough. We need more of, like, more ideas to have more new people come up. And I'm very happy with, like, the DebConf thing. We tend to get more and more people from the places where we have a DebConf. Brazil is an example. After the Debconf, they have quite a good improvement on Debian contributors.

And I think in India also, it did give a good result. Like, we have more people contributing and staying back and those things. So, yeah.

So, these were the things I would say, like, we can do to improve.

For the final question, what field in free software do you, what field in free software generally do you think requires the most work to be put into it? What do you think is Debian's part in that field?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. Like, right now, what comes to my mind is the free software licenses parts. Like, we have a lot of free software licenses, and there are non-free software licenses.

But currently, I feel free software is having a big problem in enforcing these licenses. Like, there are, there may be big corporations or like some people who take up the whole, the code and may not follow the whole, for example, the GPL licenses. Like, we don't know how much of those, how much of the free softwares are used in the bigger things.

Yeah, I agree. There are a lot of corporations who are afraid to touch free software. But there would be good amount of free software, free work that converts into property, things violating the free software licenses and those things.

And we do not have the kind of like, we have SFLC, SFC, etc. But still, we do not have the ability to go behind and trace and implement the licenses. So, enforce those licenses and bring people who are violating the licenses forward and those kind of things is challenging because one thing is it takes time, like, and most importantly, money is required for the legal stuff.

And not always people who like people who make small software, or maybe big, but they may not have the kind of time and money to have these things enforced. So, that's a big challenge free software is facing, especially in our current scenario. I feel we are having those, like, we need to find ways how we can get it sorted.

I don't have an answer right now what to do. But this is a challenge I felt like and Debian's part in that. Yeah, as I said, I don't have a solution for that.

But the Debian, so DFSG and Debian sticking on to the free software licenses is a good support, I think.

So, that was the final question, Do you have anything else you want to mention for anyone watching this?

[Sruthi]:

Not really, like, I am happy, like, I think I was able to answer the questions. And yeah, I would say who is watching. I won't say like, I'm the best DPL candidate, you can't have a better one or something.

I stand for a reason. And if you believe in that, or the Debian community and Debian diversity, and those kinds of things, if you believe it, I hope you would be interested, like, you would want to vote for me. That's it.

Like, I'm not, I'll make it very clear. I'm not doing a technical leadership part here. So, those, I can't convince people who want technical leadership to vote for me.

But I would say people who connect with me, I hope they vote for me.

We are pleased to announce that Proxmox has committed to sponsor DebConf24 as a Platinum Sponsor.

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Dear Debianites

This morning I decided to just start writing Bits from DPL and send whatever I have by 18:00 local time. Here it is, barely proof read, along with all it's warts and grammar mistakes! It's slightly long and doesn't contain any critical information, so if you're not in the mood, don't feel compelled to read it!

Get ready for a new DPL!

Soon, the voting period will start to elect our next DPL, and my time as DPL will come to an end. Reading the questions posted to the new candidates on debian-vote, it takes quite a bit of restraint to not answer all of them myself, I think I can see how that aspect contributed to me being reeled in to running for DPL! In total I've done so 5 times (the first time I ran, Sam was elected!).

Good luck to both Andreas and Sruthi, our current DPL candidates! I've already started working on preparing handover, and there's multiple request from teams that have came in recently that will have to wait for the new term, so I hope they're both ready to hit the ground running!

Things that I wish could have gone better Communication

Recently, I saw a t-shirt that read:

Adulthood is saying, 'But after this week things will slow down a bit' over and over until you die.

I can relate! With every task, crisis or deadline that appears, I think that once this is over, I'll have some more breathing space to get back to non-urgent, but important tasks. "Bits from the DPL" was something I really wanted to get right this last term, and clearly failed spectacularly. I have two long Bits from the DPL drafts that I never finished, I tend to have prioritised problems of the day over communication. With all the hindsight I have, I'm not sure which is better to prioritise, I do rate communication and transparency very highly and this is really the top thing that I wish I could've done better over the last four years.

On that note, thanks to people who provided me with some kind words when I've mentioned this to them before. They pointed out that there are many other ways to communicate and be in touch with the community, and they mentioned that they thought that I did a good job with that.

Since I'm still on communication, I think we can all learn to be more effective at it, since it's really so important for the project. Every time I publicly spoke about us spending more money, we got more donations. People out there really like to see how we invest funds in to Debian, instead of just making it heap up. DSA just spent a nice chunk on money on hardware, but we don't have very good visibility on it. It's one thing having it on a public line item in SPI's reporting, but it would be much more exciting if DSA could provide a write-up on all the cool hardware they're buying and what impact it would have on developers, and post it somewhere prominent like debian-devel-announce, Planet Debian or Bits from Debian (from the publicity team).

I don't want to single out DSA there, it's difficult and affects many other teams. The Salsa CI team also spent a lot of resources (time and money wise) to extend testing on AMD GPUs and other AMD hardware. It's fantastic and interesting work, and really more people within the project and in the outside world should know about it!

I'm not going to push my agendas to the next DPL, but I hope that they continue to encourage people to write about their work, and hopefully at some point we'll build enough excitement in doing so that it becomes a more normal part of our daily work.

Founding Debian as a standalone entity

This was my number one goal for the project this last term, which was a carried over item from my previous terms.

I'm tempted to write everything out here, including the problem statement and our current predicaments, what kind of ground work needs to happen, likely constitutional changes that need to happen, and the nature of the GR that would be needed to make such a thing happen, but if I start with that, I might not finish this mail.

In short, I 100% believe that this is still a very high ranking issue for Debian, and perhaps after my term I'd be in a better position to spend more time on this (hmm, is this an instance of "The grass is always better on the other side", or "Next week will go better until I die?"). Anyway, I'm willing to work with any future DPL on this, and perhaps it can in itself be a delegation tasked to properly explore all the options, and write up a report for the project that can lead to a GR.

Overall, I'd rather have us take another few years and do this properly, rather than rush into something that is again difficult to change afterwards. So while I very much wish this could've been achieved in the last term, I can't say that I have any regrets here either.

My terms in a nutshell COVID-19 and Debian 11 era

My first term in 2020 started just as the COVID-19 pandemic became known to spread globally. It was a tough year for everyone, and Debian wasn't immune against its effects either. Many of our contributors got sick, some have lost loved ones (my father passed away in March 2020 just after I became DPL), some have lost their jobs (or other earners in their household have) and the effects of social distancing took a mental and even physical health toll on many. In Debian, we tend to do really well when we get together in person to solve problems, and when DebConf20 got cancelled in person, we understood that that was necessary, but it was still more bad news in a year we had too much of it already.

I can't remember if there was ever any kind of formal choice or discussion about this at any time, but the DebConf video team just kind of organically and spontaneously became the orga team for an online DebConf, and that lead to our first ever completely online DebConf. This was great on so many levels. We got to see each other's faces again, even though it was on screen. We had some teams talk to each other face to face for the first time in years, even though it was just on a Jitsi call. It had a lasting cultural change in Debian, some teams still have video meetings now, where they didn't do that before, and I think it's a good supplement to our other methods of communication.

We also had a few online Mini-DebConfs that was fun, but DebConf21 was also online, and by then we all developed an online conference fatigue, and while it was another good online event overall, it did start to feel a bit like a zombieconf and after that, we had some really nice events from the Brazillians, but no big global online community events again. In my opinion online MiniDebConfs can be a great way to develop our community and we should spend some further energy into this, but hey! This isn't a platform so let me back out of talking about the future as I see it...

Despite all the adversity that we faced together, the Debian 11 release ended up being quite good. It happened about a month or so later than what we ideally would've liked, but it was a solid release nonetheless. It turns out that for quite a few people, staying inside for a few months to focus on Debian bugs was quite productive, and Debian 11 ended up being a very polished release.

During this time period we also had to deal with a previous Debian Developer that was expelled for his poor behaviour in Debian, who continued to harass members of the Debian project and in other free software communities after his expulsion. This ended up being quite a lot of work since we had to take legal action to protect our community, and eventually also get the police involved. I'm not going to give him the satisfaction by spending too much time talking about him, but you can read our official statement regarding Daniel Pocock here: https://www.debian.org/News/2021/20211117

In late 2021 and early 2022 we also discussed our general resolution process, and had two consequent votes to address some issues that have affected past votes:

• https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/vote_003
• https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_001

In my first term I addressed our delegations that were a bit behind, by the end of my last term all delegation requests are up to date. There's still some work to do, but I'm feeling good that I get to hand this over to the next DPL in a very decent state. Delegation updates can be very deceiving, sometimes a delegation is completely re-written and it was just 1 or 2 hours of work. Other times, a delegation updated can contain one line that has changed or a change in one team member that was the result of days worth of discussion and hashing out differences.

I also received quite a few requests either to host a service, or to pay a third-party directly for hosting. This was quite an admin nightmare, it either meant we had to manually do monthly reimbursements to someone, or have our TOs create accounts/agreements at the multiple providers that people use. So, after talking to a few people about this, we founded the DebianNet team (we could've admittedly chosen a better name, but that can happen later on) for providing hosting at two different hosting providers that we have agreement with so that people who host things under debian.net have an easy way to host it, and then at the same time Debian also has more control if a site maintainer goes MIA.

More info: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianNet

You might notice some Openstack mentioned there, we had some intention to set up a Debian cloud for hosting these things, that could also be used for other additional Debiany things like archive rebuilds, but these have so far fallen through. We still consider it a good idea and hopefully it will work out some other time (if you're a large company who can sponsor few racks and servers, please get in touch!)

DebConf22 and Debian 12 era

DebConf22 was the first time we returned to an in-person DebConf. It was a bit smaller than our usual DebConf - understandably so, considering that there were still COVID risks and people who were at high risk or who had family with high risk factors did the sensible thing and stayed home.

After watching many MiniDebConfs online, I also attended my first ever MiniDebConf in Hamburg. It still feels odd typing that, it feels like I should've been at one before, but my location makes attending them difficult (on a side-note, a few of us are working on bootstrapping a South African Debian community and hopefully we can pull off MiniDebConf in South Africa later this year).

While I was at the MiniDebConf, I gave a talk where I covered the evolution of firmware, from the simple e-proms that you'd find in old printers to the complicated firmware in modern GPUs that basically contain complete operating systems- complete with drivers for the device their running on. I also showed my shiny new laptop, and explained that it's impossible to install that laptop without non-free firmware (you'd get a black display on d-i or Debian live). Also that you couldn't even use an accessibility mode with audio since even that depends on non-free firmware these days.

Steve, from the image building team, has said for a while that we need to do a GR to vote for this, and after more discussion at DebConf, I kept nudging him to propose the GR, and we ended up voting in favour of it. I do believe that someone out there should be campaigning for more free firmware (unfortunately in Debian we just don't have the resources for this), but, I'm glad that we have the firmware included. In the end, the choice comes down to whether we still want Debian to be installable on mainstream bare-metal hardware.

At this point, I'd like to give a special thanks to the ftpmasters, image building team and the installer team who worked really hard to get the changes done that were needed in order to make this happen for Debian 12, and for being really proactive for remaining niggles that was solved by the time Debian 12.1 was released.

The included firmware contributed to Debian 12 being a huge success, but it wasn't the only factor. I had a list of personal peeves, and as the hard freeze hit, I lost hope that these would be fixed and made peace with the fact that Debian 12 would release with those bugs. I'm glad that lots of people proved me wrong and also proved that it's never to late to fix bugs, everything on my list got eliminated by the time final freeze hit, which was great! We usually aim to have a release ready about 2 years after the previous release, sometimes there are complications during a freeze and it can take a bit longer. But due to the excellent co-ordination of the release team and heavy lifting from many DDs, the Debian 12 release happened 21 months and 3 weeks after the Debian 11 release. I hope the work from the release team continues to pay off so that we can achieve their goals of having shorter and less painful freezes in the future!

Even though many things were going well, the ongoing usr-merge effort highlighted some social problems within our processes. I started typing out the whole history of usrmerge here, but it's going to be too long for the purpose of this mail. Important questions that did come out of this is, should core Debian packages be team maintained? And also about how far the CTTE should really be able to override a maintainer. We had lots of discussion about this at DebConf22, but didn't make much concrete progress. I think that at some point we'll probably have a GR about package maintenance. Also, thank you to Guillem who very patiently explained a few things to me (after probably having have to done so many times to others before already) and to Helmut who have done the same during the MiniDebConf in Hamburg. I think all the technical and social issues here are fixable, it will just take some time and patience and I have lots of confidence in everyone involved.

UsrMerge wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/UsrMerge

DebConf 23 and Debian 13 era

DebConf23 took place in Kochi, India. At the end of my Bits from the DPL talk there, someone asked me what the most difficult thing I had to do was during my terms as DPL. I answered that nothing particular stood out, and even the most difficult tasks ended up being rewarding to work on. Little did I know that my most difficult period of being DPL was just about to follow. During the day trip, one of our contributors, Abraham Raji, passed away in a tragic accident. There's really not anything anyone could've done to predict or stop it, but it was devastating to many of us, especially the people closest to him. Quite a number of DebConf attendees went to his funeral, wearing the DebConf t-shirts he designed as a tribute. It still haunts me when I saw his mother scream "He was my everything! He was my everything!", this was by a large margin the hardest day I've ever had in Debian, and I really wasn't ok for even a few weeks after that and I think the hurt will be with many of us for some time to come. So, a plea again to everyone, please take care of yourself! There's probably more people that love you than you realise.

A special thanks to the DebConf23 team, who did a really good job despite all the uphills they faced (and there were many!).

As DPL, I think that planning for a DebConf is near to impossible, all you can do is show up and just jump into things. I planned to work with Enrico to finish up something that will hopefully save future DPLs some time, and that is a web-based DD certificate creator instead of having the DPL do so manually using LaTeX. It already mostly works, you can see the work so far by visiting https://nm.debian.org/person/ACCOUNTNAME/certificate/ and replacing ACCOUNTNAME with your Debian account name, and if you're a DD, you should see your certificate. It still needs a few minor changes and a DPL signature, but at this point I think that will be finished up when the new DPL start. Thanks to Enrico for working on this!

Since my first term, I've been trying to find ways to improve all our accounting/finance issues. Tracking what we spend on things, and getting an annual overview is hard, especially over 3 trusted organisations. The reimbursement process can also be really tedious, especially when you have to provide files in a certain order and combine them into a PDF. So, at DebConf22 we had a meeting along with the treasurer team and Stefano Rivera who said that it might be possible for him to work on a new system as part of his Freexian work. It worked out, and Freexian funded the development of the system since then, and after DebConf23 we handled the reimbursements for the conference via the new reimbursements site: https://reimbursements.debian.net/

It's still early days, but over time it should be linked to all our TOs and we'll use the same category codes across the board. So, overall, our reimbursement process becomes a lot simpler, and also we'll be able to get information like how much money we've spent on any category in any period. It will also help us to track how much money we have available or how much we spend on recurring costs. Right now that needs manual polling from our TOs. So I'm really glad that this is a big long-standing problem in the project that is being fixed.

For Debian 13, we're waving goodbye to the KFreeBSD and mipsel ports. But we're also gaining riscv64 and loongarch64 as release architectures! I have 3 different RISC-V based machines on my desk here that I haven't had much time to work with yet, you can expect some blog posts about them soon after my DPL term ends!

As Debian is a unix-like system, we're affected by the Year 2038 problem, where systems that uses 32 bit time in seconds since 1970 run out of available time and will wrap back to 1970 or have other undefined behaviour. A detailed wiki page explains how this works in Debian, and currently we're going through a rather large transition to make this possible.

I believe this is the right time for Debian to be addressing this, we're still a bit more than a year away for the Debian 13 release, and this provides enough time to test the implementation before 2038 rolls along.

Of course, big complicated transitions with dependency loops that causes chaos for everyone would still be too easy, so this past weekend (which is a holiday period in most of the west due to Easter weekend) has been filled with dealing with an upstream bug in xz-utils, where a backdoor was placed in this key piece of software. An Ars Technica covers it quite well, so I won't go into all the details here. I mention it because I want to give yet another special thanks to everyone involved in dealing with this on the Debian side. Everyone involved, from the ftpmasters to security team and others involved were super calm and professional and made quick, high quality decisions. This also lead to the archive being frozen on Saturday, this is the first time I've seen this happen since I've been a DD, but I'm sure next week will go better!

Looking forward

It's really been an honour for me to serve as DPL. It might well be my biggest achievement in my life. Previous DPLs range from prominent software engineers to game developers, or people who have done things like complete Iron Man, run other huge open source projects and are part of big consortiums. Ian Jackson even authored dpkg and is now working on the very interesting tag2upload service!

I'm a relative nobody, just someone who grew up as a poor kid in South Africa, who just really cares about Debian a lot. And, above all, I'm really thankful that I didn't do anything major to screw up Debian for good.

Not unlike learning how to use Debian, and also becoming a Debian Developer, I've learned a lot from this and it's been a really valuable growth experience for me.

I know I can't possible give all the thanks to everyone who deserves it, so here's a big big thanks to everyone who have worked so hard and who have put in many, many hours to making Debian better, I consider you all heroes!

-Jonathan

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

• Carles Pina i Estany (cpina)
• Dave Hibberd (hibby)
• Soren Stoutner (soren)
• Daniel Gröber (dxld)
• Jeremy Sowden (azazel)
• Ricardo Ribalda Delgado (ribalda)

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

• Joachim Bauch
• Ananthu C V
• Francesco Ballarin
• Yogeswaran Umasankar
• Kienan Stewart

Congratulations!

Earlier this month the DebConf team announced the DebConf24 Logo Contest asking aspiring artists, designers, and contributors to submit an image that would represent the host city of Busan, the host nation of South Korea, and promote the next Debian Developer Conference.

The logo contest for DebConf24 received 10 submissions and garnered 354 responses with 3 proposals in particular getting very close to first place. The winning logo received 88 votes, the 2nd favored logo received 87 votes, and the 3rd most favored received 86 votes.

Thank you to Woohee Yang and Junsang Moon for sharing their artistic visions.

A very special Thank You to everyone who took the time to vote for our beautiful new logo!

The DebConf24 Team is proud to share for preview only the winning logo for the 24th Debian Developer Conference:

'sun-seagull-sea' by Woohee Yang

This is a preview copy, other revisions will occur for sizing, print, and media... but we had to share it with you all now. :).

Looking forward to seeing you all at #debconf24 in #Busan, South Korea 2024!

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

• Alexandre Detiste (tchet)
• Amin Bandali (bandali)
• Jean-Pierre Giraud (jipege)
• Timthy Pearson (tpearson)

The following contributor was added as Debian Maintainer in the last two months:

• Safir Secerovic

Congratulations!

Debian Public Statement about the EU Cyber Resilience Act and the Product Liability Directive

The European Union is currently preparing a regulation "on horizontal cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements" known as the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). It is currently in the final "trilogue" phase of the legislative process. The act includes a set of essential cybersecurity and vulnerability handling requirements for manufacturers. It will require products to be accompanied by information and instructions to the user. Manufacturers will need to perform risk assessments and produce technical documentation and, for critical components, have third-party audits conducted. Discovered security issues will have to be reported to European authorities within 25 hours (1). The CRA will be followed up by the Product Liability Directive (PLD) which will introduce compulsory liability for software.

While a lot of these regulations seem reasonable, the Debian project believes that there are grave problems for Free Software projects attached to them. Therefore, the Debian project issues the following statement:

1. Free Software has always been a gift, freely given to society, to take and to use as seen fit, for whatever purpose. Free Software has proven to be an asset in our digital age and the proposed EU Cyber Resilience Act is going to be detrimental to it.

   a. As the Debian Social Contract states, our goal is "make the best system we can, so that free works will be widely distributed and used." Imposing requirements such as those proposed in the act makes it legally perilous for others to redistribute our work and endangers our commitment to "provide an integrated system of high-quality materials with no legal restrictions that would prevent such uses of the system". (2)

   b. Knowing whether software is commercial or not isn't feasible, neither in Debian nor in most free software projects - we don't track people's employment status or history, nor do we check who finances upstream projects (the original projects that we integrate in our operating system).

   c. If upstream projects stop making available their code for fear of being in the scope of CRA and its financial consequences, system security will actually get worse rather than better.

   d. Having to get legal advice before giving a gift to society will discourage many developers, especially those without a company or other organisation supporting them.

2. Debian is well known for its security track record through practices of responsible disclosure and coordination with upstream developers and other Free Software projects. We aim to live up to the commitment made in the Debian Social Contract: "We will not hide problems." (3)

   a.The Free Software community has developed a fine-tuned, tried-and-tested system of responsible disclosure in case of security issues which will be overturned by the mandatory reporting to European authorities within 24 hours (Art. 11 CRA).

   b. Debian spends a lot of volunteering time on security issues, provides quick security updates and works closely together with upstream projects and in coordination with other vendors. To protect its users, Debian regularly participates in limited embargos to coordinate fixes to security issues so that all other major Linux distributions can also have a complete fix when the vulnerability is disclosed.

   c. Security issue tracking and remediation is intentionally decentralized and distributed. The reporting of security issues to ENISA and the intended propagation to other authorities and national administrations would collect all software vulnerabilities in one place. This greatly increases the risk of leaking information about vulnerabilities to threat actors, representing a threat for all the users around the world, including European citizens.

   d. Activists use Debian (e.g. through derivatives such as Tails), among other reasons, to protect themselves from authoritarian governments; handing threat actors exploits they can use for oppression is against what Debian stands for.

   e. Developers and companies will downplay security issues because a "security" issue now comes with legal implications. Less clarity on what is truly a security issue will hurt users by leaving them vulnerable.

3. While proprietary software is developed behind closed doors, Free Software development is done in the open, transparent for everyone. To retain parity with proprietary software the open development process needs to be entirely exempt from CRA requirements, just as the development of software in private is. A "making available on the market" can only be considered after development is finished and the software is released.

4. Even if only "commercial activities" are in the scope of CRA, the Free Software community - and as a consequence, everybody - will lose a lot of small projects. CRA will force many small enterprises and most probably all self employed developers out of business because they simply cannot fulfill the requirements imposed by CRA. Debian and other Linux distributions depend on their work. If accepted as it is, CRA will undermine not only an established community but also a thriving market. CRA needs an exemption for small businesses and, at the very least, solo-entrepreneurs.

Information about the voting process:

Debian uses the Condorcet method for voting. Simplistically, plain Condorcets method can be stated like so : "Consider all possible two-way races between candidates. The Condorcet winner, if there is one, is the one candidate who can beat each other candidate in a two-way race with that candidate." The problem is that in complex elections, there may well be a circular relationship in which A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A. Most of the variations on Condorcet use various means of resolving the tie. Debian's variation is spelled out in the constitution, specifically, A.5(3)

Sources:

(1) CRA proposals and links & PLD proposals and links

(2) Debian Social Contract No. 2, 3, and 4

(3) Debian Constitution