[gentoo-gwn] Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 29 December 2004

[Ulrich Plate]

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml
This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of 29 December 2004.
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==============
1. Gentoo News
==============
  
Second anniversary of the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
--------------------------------------------------
  
The inaugural edition of the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter was published on 23 
December 2002, a date conveniently placed at the end of the calendar year, 
henceforth to serve as a perfect excuse for reminiscing in major moments 
of the year gone by. This week's issue does contain some of the usual 
sections, but we've also made room for the traditional (meaning it's 
happened twice now, so it must be a tradition, right?) GWN staff and 
translator profiles. These are the people who have kept this publication 
alive for the past two years, and intend to keep delivering news and 
insights into the Gentoo machine in the future. We're on a steady 
publication schedule, some of the abandonned translations have been 
picking up again (notably the Turkish, Russian and French versions are now 
available once more!). A big round of applause to everyone working for the 
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter!
 
Now, sadly, and just like last year, we have been unable to round up 
everyone, what with Christmas always coming as a total surprise and all, 
but in return we promise yet another incomplete list of suspects, 
originally intended for publication this week, but postponed to the next 
GWN issue: Watch out for a look at some of the Gentoo Forum[1] 
administration and moderator crews to satisfy your curiosity.
 1. http://www.gentoo.org
 
A word of gratitude to our 12,000 mail recipients and the unknown number 
of people flocking to our website each week to read the GWN: Thank you for 
your support, it's a pleasure working for you! Please keep us posted about 
any Gentoo-related events, press cuttings, activities of all kinds that 
you think would be worth covering in the GWN. If it's interesting to you, 
chances are others would love to hear about it, too.
   
Gentoo buildtime and statistics database client
-----------------------------------------------
  
After many months since the old Gentoo statistic database went away, basc, 
a new buildtime and statistics client, is now in Portage. basc updates 
information about a host running Gentoo Linux to a central server[2] (in 
this example: RAM statistics). Among other information, the client 
collects the kernel's .config and the xorg.conf files, and the developers 
involved are currently evaluating whether it is possible to have it 
'suggest' configurations to new users based on previous configuration file 
contributions. 
 2. http://www.gentoo-stats.org/index.php?c=memstats
  
====================================
2. Gentoo Linux major events of 2004
====================================
  
Summary
-------
  
 * Introduction 
 * Daniel Robbins resigns as Chief Architect 
 * Gentoo requests NFP status 
 * Portage updates 
 * Deprecation of xfree86 in favor of xorg 
 * Gentoo named a finalist for the LWE product excellence awards 
 * Public Release of the Catalyst tool 
 * Release of Tenshi 
 * Gentoo/PPC and the PegasosPPC 
    
Introduction
------------
  
2004 has been an exciting and challenging year for the Gentoo community. 
We've grown significantly, and few would argue that Gentoo is now the 
preeminent source distribution of Linux - some publications are even 
recognizing Gentoo as one of the major mainstream distros. From major 
upgrades to the core system, through significant changes in base packages 
and even how the Gentoo community is organized, there has never been any 
shortage of news for us here at the GWN to report on. 
 
The sections below describe ten major events over the past year, with 
input from many Gentoo developers and selected by the GWN editor and 
writers. 
    
Daniel Robbins resigns as Chief Architect
-----------------------------------------
  
Gentoo's founder and Chief Architect, Daniel Robbins, retired[3] at the 
end of April. This news came as something of a shock, but Daniel felt the 
need to move on to something new and focus on his family, as he stepped 
aside to permit the new board (see below) to take over the reins. He still 
contributes to the project, and has been sighted on the mailing lists and 
in IRC. 
 3. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20040503-newsletter.xml#doc_chap1
    
Gentoo requests NFP status
--------------------------
  
In an event somewhat intertwined with Daniel Robbins' retirement, his 
plans to transit Gentoo to a Not-For-Profit organization[4] were 
culminated in early June[5], with the creation of the Gentoo Foundation, a 
Not-For-Profit corporation. This entrusted the copyrights to Gentoo 
technology, guidance of the project, and responsibility for administering 
the distro in the hands of a corporate entity with an elected board. 
 4. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20040419-newsletter.xml#doc_chap1
 5. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20040614-newsletter.xml#doc_chap1
    
Portage Updates
---------------
  
October saw the culmination of much of the work begun as portage-ng ("next 
generation Portage") with the release of Portage 2.0.51[6]. This release 
added several new features, including initial support for GPG package 
validation, FHS compliance, and significant performance improvements - not 
the least of which is the use of lockfiles for parallel fetching and 
merging. Of particular interest is the --newuse flag, which permits the 
re-emergence of affected packages after a USE flag change. 
 6. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20041025-newsletter.xml
 
This culminated a long series of upgrades to portage that saw the shift 
from make.conf globals and command-line keywords to the use of 
configuration files in /etc/portage that permitted finer package-level 
control. In particular, the use of the package.keywords file now permits 
the use of per-package keywords. 
    
LiveCD ISOs Available via BitTorrent
------------------------------------
  
In August, the Gentoo 2004.2 LiveCD had a parallel release using 
BitTorrent[7]. This allowed more efficient downloads of the large files 
using the popular P2P protocol. The experiment was a success, and it is 
expected that this option will remain available for future releases. 
 7. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20040823-newsletter.xml#doc_chap1
    
Release of the Gentoo Developer Handbook
----------------------------------------
  
In July, we reported[8] that devrel had released of an updated and 
expanded Gentoo Developer Handbook[9] that outlined not only the details 
of how to create and edit ebuilds, but the policies and infrastructure 
necessary to do so efficiently and as part of a team. 
 8. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20040726-newsletter.xml#doc_chap2
 9. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml
    
Deprecation of x11 in Favor of xorg
-----------------------------------
  
In September, the default X11 virtual was changed from the one provided by 
XFree86[10] (xfree) to that provided by X.Org[11] (xorg-x11). This meant 
that, by default, the GUI installed on portage would be the version from 
X.Org. This move was prompted by some changes made to XFree86's license 
for the 4.4.0 release that raised some question as to whether it was 
compatible with GPL'd software that linked X11 libraries. As of 31 
December 2004, XFree86 appears to be obsoleted and will be removed from 
the Portage tree, writes maintainer Donnie Berkholz[12]. 
 10. http://www.xfree86.org/
 11. http://www.x.org/
 12. spyderous@g.o
    
Gentoo named a finalist for the LWE product excellence awards
-------------------------------------------------------------
  
In January, we reported[13] that Gentoo had been named a finalist in the 
Linux World Expo Product Excellence Awards, in the category "best Open 
Source project". Gentoo was also nominated for the same award for the 
August LWE. Unfortunately, we lost to RealNetworks' Helix Player project 
and Firefox, respectively, but being named a finalist showed the 
recognition that Gentoo is getting in mainstream Linux circles. 
 13. 
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20040119-newsletter.xml#doc_chap1_sec2
    
Public Release of the Catalyst Tool
-----------------------------------
  
2004 saw substantial development on and a public release of the 
Catalyst[14] tool, which is used to generate and build the stages, 
packages and LiveCDs. The tool permits users to create their own 
architecture-specific LiveCDs, for example to create their own custom 
install builds, or to create a bootable Linux CD with a specific set of 
tools. 
 14. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/catalyst/
    
Release of Tenshi
-----------------
  
In June, we announced[15] the release of Tenshi[16] (formerly Wasabi), a 
log monitoring tool. Tenshi was developed for use on Gentoo infrastructure 
servers, but rapidly became robust enough for general release. Tenshi was 
one of the first software projects sponsored by Gentoo. 
 15. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20040607-newsletter.xml#doc_chap1
 16. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/infrastructure/tenshi/
    
Gentoo/PPC and the PegasosPPC
-----------------------------
  
Since October[17], Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.[18] (a Motorola company) 
donated 13 PegasosPPC desktops, equiped with 1 GHz G4 CPUs to Gentoo 
developers. This generous donation, to encourage development of FOSS 
Software on the platform, is an indication of the remarkable progress 
being made by the Gentoo PPC team in advancing Gentoo's support for that 
architecture. In November, we reported[19] that The Luxembourg-based 
company Genesi S.à.r.l.[20] had started shipping PegasosPPCs with Gentoo 
pre-installed. 
 17. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20041011-newsletter.xml#doc_chap1
 18. http://www.freescale.com/
 19. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20041129-newsletter.xml#doc_chap1
 20. http://www.genesi.lu/
    
=====================
3. GWN Staff Profiles
=====================
  
Summary
-------
  
 * Editor 
 * Authors 
 * German Translation Team 
 * Italian Translation Team 
 * Polish Translation Team 
 * Turkish Translation Team 
    
Editor
------
  
Figure 3.1: Ulrich Plate
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_plate.jpg
 
Ulrich Plate[21] has been with the GWN ever since its inaugural issue two 
years ago, but only recently took over the role of its editor from Yuji 
Carlos Kosugi who left in September 2004 to concentrate on his studies. 
Ulrich makes no secret of significant deficits in mastering the 
technicalities of publishing a newsletter, but can fall back on his 
training as a journalist and PR specialist for IT companies going back 20 
years to yield acceptable results, as far as presenting content is 
concerned. Each weekend the process of editing the GWN is under close 
surveillance by his family who try to make sure he doesn't spend too much 
time on it, with the actual publication on Monday morning 0:00 UTC 
providing little comfort - as a non-English speaker he's very much afraid 
of inadvertently saying "Belgium" some day. 
 21. plate@g.o
    
Authors
-------
  
Figure 3.1: AJ Armstrong
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_aja.jpg
 
AJ Armstrong[22] began working on the GWN when it first began in 2002. He 
recently returned to working on it from several months' hiatus that 
followed the birth of his first child. AJ teaches Computer Engineering 
Technology at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, including 
courses in Embedded Linux and Operating Systems theory. He also practices 
Karate and enjoys SCUBA diving, but most of his time is currently spent 
trying to figure out his son, who unfortunately arrived without any man 
pages. 
 22. aja@g.o
 
Figure 3.2: Brian Downey
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_bdowney.jpg
 
Brian Downey[23] began working on the community section of the GWN in 
September 2003. Other than breaking his Linux servers and Mac workstation 
computers, he spends his time with his wife Phaedrah and their cat Millie. 
This summer, he's planning on teaching an introductory Linux college 
course in between running a Linux consulting business and playing guitar 
and drums in his band. 
 23. bdowney@×××××××××××.net
 
Figure 3.3: Patrick Lauer
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_patrick.jpg
 
Patrick Lauer[24] Patrick Lauer has been writing the summaries for the 
gentoo-dev mailing list, some Tips and Tricks and other miscellaneous bits 
of news since he joined the GWN team in September 2004. He is a student of 
Computer Science at the RWTH Aachen in Germany, with most of his spare 
time being wasted between IRC (where he is known as bonsaikitten) and the 
Gentoo mailing lists where he is rumored to be building up a somewhat 
trollish reputation. Patrick's focus in Gentoo is on hunting bugs, and he 
intends to get a fully automated compile farm in the near future. Apart 
from that he's a busy Gentoo evangelist and tries to convert everybody he 
knows to the one true Linux. 
 24. patrick@g.o
    
German Translation Team
-----------------------
  
German Translators
 
Figure 3.1: Marc Herren
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_herren.png
 
Marc Herren aka dj-submerge[25] is 27 years old and lives in Bern 
(Switzerland). He's using Linux since 1998 and Gentoo for about 3 years. 
Currently he's working as a project leader in a networking company mainly 
dealing with HP-UX and Linux. Besides computers he plays volleyball a lot 
and spins the turntables. 
 25. dj-submerge@g.o
 
Figure 3.2: Tobias Scherbaum
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_scherbaum.jpg
 
Tobias Scherbaum[26] is 23 years old and lives in Oberhausen (Germany). A 
Gentoo user for about two and a half years, he is responsible for German 
translations within the Gentoo Documentation Project[27]. Sometimes he 
also contributes some "Tips & Tricks" to the GWN.
 26. dertobi123@g.o
 27. http://gdp.gentoo.org
 
Figure 3.3: Matthias F. Brandstetter
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_brandstetter.jpg
 
Matthias F. Brandstetter[28] is 21 and lives in Vienna (Austria). When he 
isn't translating the GWN into German, he is working as a freelancing 
Linux IT Consultant. In his spare time, Matthias likes to party with 
friends or read an interesting book. 
 28. haim@g.o
 
Figure 3.4: Tobias Hansen
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_hansen.jpg
 
Tobias Hansen[29], 24 years old, lives in Frankfurt am Main. He works as a 
computer scientist for end-to-end performance and availability 
measurements, and has been using Gentoo since 2002.
 29. tph@g.o
 
Nadi Sarrar[30] is 23 years old, lives in Berlin and is a Computer Science 
student at the Technical University of Berlin. A Gentoo Linux user since 
about 1.5 years, he enjoys making and listening to music besides 
functional programming.
 30. nadi@g.o
 
Markus Luisser[31]is 29 years old and works at the Institute of Chemical 
Engineering at the Vienna University of Technology, finishing his PhD 
thesis in the field of mechanical engineering. His job at the university 
carries the advantage of exclusively using Gentoo since more than two 
years. He spends his spare time mostly training Aikido.
 31. mluisser@g.o
 
Figure 3.5: Martin Ebner
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_ebner.jpg
 
Martin Ebner[32]is 29 years and lives in Salzburg, Austria. He is employed 
as a software developer in a company for access solutions - mainly in a 
Microsoft environment. As compensation he works with Linux for some years 
now at home. He is using Gentoo Linux since 1.5 years on his home server 
which is used as video server based on MythTV beside other typical server 
functions. Aside from computers he plays the trumpet and participates in 
folkloristic activities like the "Biergemeinschaft Gaisberg" 
(beer-community Gaisberg).
 32. martin@g.o
 
Figure 3.6: Tobias Matzat
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_matzat.jpg
 
Tobias Matzat[33]is 24 years old, lives in Trier and studies computer 
science at the Trier University of Applied Sciences. He's been using Linux 
and Gentoo for several years now, playing basketball, reading a good book 
and listening to loud music in his spare time.
 33. SirSeoman@g.o
 
Figure 3.7: Thomas Raschbacher
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_raschbacher.jpg
 
Austrian Thomas Raschbacher[34] aka LordVan is 22 years old and moved to 
the UK in October this year. He's using Linux since 1995 and Gentoo for 
about 3 years. Currently looking for a job in the UK, he is a Gentoo 
developer since December 2002. When he's not coding or translating the GWN 
he's usually listening to music, studying Japanese, reading Mangas or 
watching Animes.
 34. lordvan@g.o
 
Figure 3.8: Daniel Gerholdt
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_gerholdt.jpg
 
Daniel Gerholdt[35], also know as Sputnik1969 is 35 years old and lives in 
Germany's capital Berlin. He uses Linux since 1998 and discovered Gentoo 
in 2002. He is also looking for a new job, and has returned to studying at 
school whenever he's not mistreating his computer.
 35. sputnik1969@g.o
    
Italian Translation Team
------------------------
  
Figure 3.1: Marco Mascherpa
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_marco.jpg
 
Marco Mascherpa is 25 and lives in Milan, Italy. This year, after 
completing his degree in Computer Engineering, he has started working for 
a small consulting company. His contributions to the Gentoo project began 
at the end of 2002, translating the GWN, now he leads the Italian 
translators team. He loves to travel with his beautiful girlfriend, 
Raffaella, and he spends his spare time watching movies and reading. 
 
Figure 3.2: Stefano Rossi
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_rossi.jpg
 
Stefano Rossi is 25 years old, born and living in Rome, Italy. He has been 
on the Italian translation team for more than a year. He is studying 
Economics at the University Roma Tre. His favourite hobby is to follow the 
matches of AS Roma's soccer team everywhere in Italy, when possible. 
 
Figure 3.3: Stefano Lucidi
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_lucidi.jpg
 
Stefano Lucidi 24 years old and lives in Rome, Italy. He works as an IT 
consultant and studies computer science at the same time. Stefano started 
using Gentoo 3 years ago because a friend talked him into it, and but it 
was love on first sight, eventually making him the founder and 
administrator of Gentoo-Italia[36], a web site with news for the Italian 
community, and the new wiki[37] 
 36. http://www.gentoo-italia.net
 37. http://wiki.gentoo-italia.net
    
Polish Translation Team
-----------------------
  
Figure 3.1: Kuba Bożanowski
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_jbozanowski.jpg
 
Kuba 'fixxxer' Bożanowski[38] is a 24 year old CS student, living in 
Opole, Poland (although that's probably going to change once he's done 
with his thesis). Apart from computers he loves riding his mountain bike 
and playing guitar in a heavy metal band. He also enjoys a good read and 
good food (We've heard that he makes a pretty good pizza). 
 38. jbozanowski@×××××.com
 
Figure 3.2: Jakub Dziwisz
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_dziwisz.jpg
 
Jakub Dziwisz[39] lives in Krakow, Poland. He studies Computer Science at 
AGH-University of Science and Technology. His main field of interest and 
subject of his Master's Thesis is Grid computing. Recently, he started a 
portal devoted to these issues, www.grid-scape.org[40]. He has used Gentoo 
as his default OS since 2002, and since May he has helped to translate the 
GWN into Polish. 
 39. dziwisz@××××××××××××××.pl
 40. http://www.grid-scape.org/
 
Karol Góralski[41] lives in Radom, Poland, and works as system 
administrator. He maintains the gentoo.pl[42] server, providing many 
services for Polish Gentoo users. He has been involved in translation of 
the GWN for several months. 
 41. gooroo@××××××.pl
 42. http://www.gentoo.pl
 
Łukasz Strzygowski[43] is a 16 year old high school student, born and 
living in Kielce, Poland. He has used Gentoo for about two years. He is 
coordinator of Polish translation for the GWN, and was also involved in 
translation of the Gentoo Handbook. He was recently named a a member of 
the Gentoo development team and maintains some python-related packages. In 
his spare time he reads and learns programming. 
 43. lucass@××××××.or
    
Turkish Translation Team
------------------------
  
Figure 3.1: Bahadır Kandemir
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_bahadir.jpg
 
Bahadır Kandemir[44] is a 22 year old Computer Engineering student, born 
and living in Turkey. On his last year in college, he started working on 
Gentoo Handbook translations. After seeing its customizability and 
performance, he switched to Gentoo Linux. Bahadır has been translating GWN 
to Turkish since October 2004. He also works part-time for an automotive 
factory as an Intranet Applications Developer, but unfortunately he works 
with non-Unix operating systems. 
 44. bahadir@g.o
 
Figure 3.2: Erkan Kaplan
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041229_erkan.jpg
 
Erkan Kaplan[45] is a 34 year-old Management Economist, born in Turkey, 
living in Germany since 1992. He previously administrated Gentoo Handbook 
Turkish translations, and now he works on many translation projects 
including GWN, Gentoo Handbook and Mozilla. He has been a Linux addict 
since 1995, and a Gentoo Linux user since 2003. In his spare time, Erkan 
plays with his AS400 and analog electronic circuits. Now he's interested 
in Java, and will start studying "Software Programming with Java" at 
VW-Akademie in January. 
 45. erkan@××××××××××××××.org
    
==============
4. Future zone
==============
  
Closing in on Qt 4.0
--------------------
  
Qt 4.0 beta1 is now available in portage (hard masked, and still under 
development). The Trolls[46] have been hard at work to provide this major 
upgrade to the already popular Qt3 based desktop. New features include:
 46. http://www.trolltech.com
 
 * Tulip, a new set of template container classes. 
 * Interview, a model/view architecture for item views. 
 * Arthur, the Qt 4 painting framework. 
 * Scribe, the Unicode text renderer with a public API for performing 
low-level text layout. 
 * Mainwindow, a modern action-based mainwindow, toolbar, menu, and 
docking architecture.  
 
In addition, the following modules have been significantly improved since 
Qt 3: 
 
 * A fully cross-platform accessibility module, with support for the 
emerging SP-API Unix standard in addition to Microsoft and Mac 
Accessibility. 
 * The SQL module, which is now based on the Interview model/view 
framework. 
 * The network module, with better support for UDP and synchronous 
sockets. 
 * The style API, which is now decoupled from the widgets, meaning that 
you can draw any user interface element on any device (widget, pixmap, 
etc.). 
 * Enhanced thread support, with signal-slot connections across threads 
and per-thread event loops. 
 
The code is not production ready yet - there are still bugs to be worked 
out and ebuild installation issues to work through. However, software 
writers who are using the Qt3 library may be interested in upgrading to 
see what the latest offerings are, and begin looking at migrating their 
codebase. Upgrading to Qt4 should not interfere with an existing Qt3 
installation. 
 
More details can be found here[47]. 
 47. http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/
    
==================
5. Gentoo security
==================
  
kfax: Multiple overflows in the included TIFF library
-----------------------------------------------------
  
kfax contains several buffer overflows potentially leading to execution of 
arbitrary code. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[48] 
 48. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200412-17.xml
    
abcm2ps: Buffer overflow vulnerability
--------------------------------------
  
abcm2ps is vulnerable to a buffer overflow that could lead to remote 
execution of arbitrary code. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[49] 
 49. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200412-18.xml
    
phpMyAdmin: Multiple vulnerabilities
------------------------------------
  
phpMyAdmin contains multiple vulnerabilities which could lead to file 
disclosure or command execution. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[50] 
 50. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200412-19.xml
    
NASM: Buffer overflow vulnerability
-----------------------------------
  
NASM is vulnerable to a buffer overflow that allows an attacker to execute 
arbitrary code through the use of a malicious object file. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[51] 
 51. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200412-20.xml
    
MPlayer: Multiple overflows
---------------------------
  
Multiple overflow vulnerabilities have been found in MPlayer, potentially 
resulting in remote executing of arbitrary code. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[52] 
 52. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200412-21.xml
    
mpg123: Playlist buffer overflow
--------------------------------
  
mpg123 is vulnerable to a buffer overflow that allows an attacker to 
execute arbitrary code through the use of a malicious playlist. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[53] 
 53. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200412-22.xml
    
Zwiki: XSS vulnerability
------------------------
  
Zwiki is vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[54] 
 54. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200412-23.xml
    
=========================
6. Heard in the community
=========================
  
Web forums
----------
  
Overclockers: The day after...
 
What happens if you meticulously apply all tricks in the GCC book to your 
compilations, include all CFLAGS recommended by Acovea and known to man, 
and try to break all records of optimizations for packages in Gentoo? 
Exactly, you get to keep the pieces: 
 
 * Acovea analysis results against real world programs[55] 
 55. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=271084
    
gentoo-user
-----------
  
Package Manager Debate!
 
Emacs versus vim. Intel versus AMD. Now, portage versus RedHat's up2date. 
What are the fundamental differences, advantages, and disadvantages of 
up2date and Portage? The Gentoo community pipes up honest opinions and 
great information, as usual. Let the debate begin!
 
 * Gentoo's Portage vs. Redhat's up2date[56] 
 56. 
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/linux.gentoo.user/browse_thread/thread/222eac5c2ad82bbe/03265c7b784e038f#03265c7b784e038f
 
Building Custom Kernels and Portage
 
How does one build a custom kernel with specific options, outside of 
Portage but then at the same time notify the system that the said packages 
are already installed? In this thread, one user installs the ALSA sound 
system manually, and several other list memebers offer suggestions and 
guidance to get Portage to behave as requested. 
 
 * ALSA and my own kernel[57] 
 57. 
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/linux.gentoo.user/browse_thread/thread/e6706fb81d0f3cb2/aead1a0b5c042219?_done=%2Fgroup%2Flinux.gentoo.user%2Fthreads%3Fstart%3D30%26order%3Drecent%26&_doneTitle=Back&&d#aead1a0b5c042219
    
======================
7. Gentoo in the press
======================
  
Linux Weekly News (23 December 2004)
------------------------------------
  
In its yearly distro roundup[58], the Linux Weekly News (to whom we owe 
much gratitude for redistributing the GWN to their own readers each week!) 
mentions Gentoo: "Following a dramatic growth in popularity during the 
previous two years, the source-based Gentoo Linux has now matured into a 
mainstream, yet unique distribution that appeals to many technical users. 
Its adoption might be slowing down, though - not because Gentoo's founder 
Daniel Robbins is no longer with the project, but rather because most 
binary distributions have improved their package management to the point 
that dependency issues are no longer as annoying as they used to be. Also, 
some users have found that maintaining and updating a Gentoo system is 
time-consuming and not entirely fool-proof. Still, Gentoo has emerged (pun 
intended) as one of the most prominent and innovative Linux community 
projects, with unparalleled documentation, active community involvement, 
and ongoing work on support for new hardware architectures."
 58. http://lwn.net/Articles/116694/
    
Linux Weekly News (16 December 2004)
------------------------------------
  
One week before, Ladislav Bodnar of Distrowatch[59] fame wrote an 
article[60] for the same Linux Weekly News about his experiences with 
installing and running Gentoo Linux on the AMD64 platform. Having done the 
same exercise with Debian and Fedora in earlier LWN issues, he admits to 
having "cursed profusely" everytime compile errors delayed a successful 
installation, but closes with the observation that "while the effort 
required to achieve that goal was far greater than with the other two 
distributions, there is little doubt that Gentoo Linux is an elegant 
operating system with powerful package management and truly superb 
documentation."
 59. http://www.distrowatch.com
 60. http://lwn.net/Articles/114992/
    
================
8. Bugzilla 2004
================
  
Summary
-------
  
 * Statistics 
 * Closed Bug Ranking 
    
Statistics
----------
  
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[61]) to record and 
track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the 
development team. For 2004, between 1 January and 26 December, activity on 
the site resulted in: 
 61. http://bugs.gentoo.org
 
 * 38691 new bugs this year 
 * 22004 bugs closed or resolved this year 
 * 263 previously closed bugs were reopened this year 
 
Of the 7810 currently open bugs: 114 are labeled 'blocker', 229 are 
labeled 'critical', and 553 are labeled 'major'. 
    
Closed Bug Rankings
-------------------
  
The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs this year are: 
 
 * AMD64 Porting Team[62], with 1534 closed bugs[63]  
 * Gentoo Games[64], with 915 closed bugs[65]  
 * Gentoo KDE team[66], with 780 closed bugs[67]  
 * Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[68], with 759 closed bugs[69]  
 * Jeremy Huddleston[70], with 679 closed bugs[71]  
 * Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[72], with 664 closed bugs[73]  
 * Java Team[74], with 647 closed bugs[75]  
 * Portage Team[76], with 559 closed bugs[77]  
 * PPC64 Architecture Team[78], with 515 closed bugs[79]  
 * Mike Frysinger[80], with 442 closed bugs[81]  
 * Gentoo Security[82], with 396 closed bugs[83]  
 * Net-Mail Packages[84], with 381 closed bugs[85]  
 * Media-Video herd[86], with 358 closed bugs[87]  
 * Sven Vermeulen[88], with 349 closed bugs[89]  
 * PPC Porters[90], with 314 closed bugs[91]  
 * Gentoo X-windows Packagers[92], with 298 closed bugs[93]  
 * Mozilla Gentoo Team[94], with 281 closed bugs[95]  
 * x86 Kernel Team[96], with 279 closed bugs[97]  
 * Mirror Admins[98], with 239 closed bugs[99]  
 * Perl Devs[100], with 234 closed bugs[101]  
 * GCC Porting Team[102], with 229 closed bugs[103]  
 * Gentoo Science Related Packages[104], with 225 closed bugs[105]  
 * Gentoo Python Team[106], with 221 closed bugs[107]  
 * Gentoo Sound Team[108], with 218 closed bugs[109]  
 * Text-Markup Team[110], with 202 closed bugs[111]  
 62. amd64@g.o
 63. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=amd64@g.o
 64. games@g.o
 65. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=games@g.o
 66. kde@g.o
 67. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=kde@g.o
 68. base-system@g.o
 69. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=base-system@g.o
 70. eradicator@g.o
 71. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=eradicator@g.o
 72. gnome@g.o
 73. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=gnome@g.o
 74. java@g.o
 75. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=java@g.o
 76. dev-portage@g.o
 77. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=dev-portage@g.o
 78. ppc64@g.o
 79. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=ppc64@g.o
 80. vapier@g.o
 81. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=vapier@g.o
 82. security@g.o
 83. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=security@g.o
 84. net-mail@g.o
 85. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=net-mail@g.o
 86. media-video@g.o
 87. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=media-video@g.o
 88. swift@g.o
 89. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=swift@g.o
 90. ppc@g.o
 91. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=ppc@g.o
 92. x11@g.o
 93. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=x11@g.o
 94. mozilla@g.o
 95. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=mozilla@g.o
 96. x86-kernel@g.o
 97. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=x86-kernel@g.o
 98. mirror-admin@g.o
 99. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=mirror-admin@g.o
 100. perl@g.o
 101. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=perl@g.o
 102. gcc-porting@g.o
 103. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=gcc-porting@g.o
 104. sci@g.o
 105. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=sci@g.o
 106. python@g.o
 107. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=python@g.o
 108. sound@g.o
 109. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=sound@g.o
 110. text-markup@g.o
 111. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-01-01&chfieldto=2004-12-26&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=text-markup@g.o
    
===========================
9. Moves, adds, and changes
===========================
  
Moves
-----
  
The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:
 
 * None this week 
    
Adds
----
  
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:
 
 * Matthew Marlowe (MattM) - Apache 
 * Ming Zhao (ming) - tcltk herd, Gnome, CJK 
 * Marcus Hanwell (cryos) - Scientific herd, AMD64 
    
Changes
-------
  
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux 
project:
 
 * Jochen Maes (SeJo) - Recruiters (additional role) 
    
=====================
10. Contribute to GWN
=====================
   
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email[112].
 112. gwn-feedback@g.o
    
================
11. GWN feedback
================
   
Please send us your feedback[113] and help make the GWN better.
 113. gwn-feedback@g.o
    
================================
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================================
   
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 114. http://www.gentoo.org/news/da/gwn/gwn.xml
 115. http://www.gentoo.org/news/be/gwn/gwn.xml
 116. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/gwn.xml
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 118. http://www.gentoo.org/news/fr/gwn/gwn.xml
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 120. http://www.gentoo.org/news/it/gwn/gwn.xml
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 125. http://www.gentoo.org/news/es/gwn/gwn.xml
 126. http://www.gentoo.org/news/tr/gwn/gwn.xml
   
Ulrich Plate <plate@g.o> - Editor
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