OpenMandriva 3 Alpha, Debian LTS Recruitment, & Gentoo Git
The OpenMandriva Community today announced OpenMandriva Lx 3 Alpha. Version 3 will bring some exciting new features including hints of Plasma 5. The Debian Project today asked for help with Debian LTS for Wheezy and Jessie. The Gentoo Project today announced Git changes and blogger Fitzcarraldo shared his experiences installing Gentoo on his new laptop. And for something a bit different, Martin Grässlin today posted from Plasma running under Wayland.
OpenMandriva Lx 3 Alpha was announced today with requests for testers saying, "Together, we can make OpenMandriva Lx a great project." Among the changes is a new "sequential number scheme," but the packages will still show 2015.0. Version 3 will bring UEFI support, a new installer, new login screen, and the inclusion of Steam. The team is planning to include KDE Framework and Plasma 5 as soon as a QT5.5 bug is resolved. They are also working on Wayland support as well as alternative desktops Hawaii and Papyros. Other changes include using KDE Control Module for Grub, deprecating drakfirewall for FirewallD, and changing the old menu launcher to Homerun Launcher. Download your copy from Sourceforge.net or see the announcement for Torrents. Be sure to check the Errata for crucial notes.
OpenMandriva Lx 3 Alpha
The Debian Project today posted a plea for new LTS support team members. The post said the sub-project is a success, but more help is needed what with Wheezy and Jessie soon to be added. As it is now only a couple of architectures are supported and many popular packages are not. They need developers and funding. So, if you'd like to help or know of someone who might, see the full post for contact information. In other Debian news, Richard Hartmann posted his Jessie bug report today reporting 40 unaddressed packages, but confident of tomorrow's release.
The Gentoo guys today posted that the Git changes they've been discussing are in effect. "The old overlays hostnames (git.overlays.gentoo.org and overlays.gentoo.org) have now been disabled, as well as non-SSH traffic to git.gentoo.org." They are separating authenticated from anonymous pulls onto different servers for security and performance. See that full announcement if this applies to you. In other Gentoo news, blogger Fitzcarraldo was determined to have the source-based distribution on his new Clevo W230SS laptop. Deity bless him.
Martin Grässlin, KDE developer extraordinaire, today said he's just turned the desktop "world upside down." He said he was posting from Plasma running under Wayland. The KDE project is working toward full Wayland support due to limitations in Xorg. It's only Kwin and a rootless XWayland for now, but Grässlin said, "This marks an important step in the process of getting Plasma and KWin ready for Wayland. It means I write a blog post without fear of session crashes every few seconds." He later mentioned that NVIDIA reiterated their future support, bringing a wave of relief to your Humble. In what may be the theme of tonight's report, Grässlin too appealed to his readers for support. He said, "This is a wonderful time to start working on KWin. There are lots of small tasks to work on."