I uploaded KDE 3.5.0 and KOffice 1.4.2 to Debian Backports. For users convenience, I uploaded ISO images and jigdo files (both i386 and source only) to Debian Unofficial. Thanks to several people for testing it, and especiall to nobse for accepting it.

I already got some feedback about the "device driver check CD"-thing. People got confused about it, so I will tell you a bit more about my intentions (although I wanted to start doing this not until next week, duuh). What is wrong with current live systems? There are already several Debian-based live systems and they are doing a great job. But, from the Debian perspective, most of them have one or more of the following disadvantages:

• They are unofficial projects, developed outside of Debian.
• They mix different distributions, e.g. testing and unstable.
• They support i386 only.
• They change package's behavior and/or appearance by stripping them down to save space.
• They including unofficial packages.
• They ship custom kernels with additional patches not part of Debian.
• They are large and slow due to their sheer size and thus not suitable for rescue issues.
• They are not available in different flavours, e.g. CDs, DVDs, USB-stick and netboot images

Why create our own live system? Debian is the Universal Operating System: IMHO we should have an official live system for showing arround and to officially represent the true, one and only Debian system with the following main advantages:

• It's an official Debian subproject.
• It reflects the (current) state of one distribution.
• It runs on as much architectures as possible.
• It consists of unchanged Debian packages only.
• It does not contain any unofficial package.
• It uses an unaltered Debian kernel-image with no additional patches (except from live system specific ones which maybe required).

Creating the Debian Live framework Such a life system framework would allow to create different images for different scenarios:

• A small "base-system" for rescue purposes.
• A normal "desktop-system" for demonstration purposes.
• A special "diagnose-system" for device functionallity and detection purposes.

The last one is this "confusing" thing I mentioned before. Wouldn't it be nice to have a live system to easy detect hardware? Imagine, you could take such an image, burn it on a CD or copy it on a USB-stick, go to your hardware shop and boot it. Since this system would use only official Debian packages, you can easily verify if your favourite piece of hardware is supported by Debian. Doubts like "it runs with Knoppix, so hopefully it runs with Debian too" are history by that. Maybe someone could implement then some sort of application which checks the hardware against Kenshis Debian GNU/Linux hardware compatibility list and displays some sort of report about the compatibility level of the tested hardware. I will definitely work on that goal. But first, I have to do a bit of research about the best techniques and create the framework arround it... Thanks to Myon for setting up the record live.debian.net.

Roland, you are stealing my thunder! *grr* Approximately three weeks ago, I decided to start the "Debian Live" initiative in my semester break - first unofficial, then trying to bring it into Debian and become an official subproject. One of the most important reason for me is having excately such a "device driver check CD"... However, today is the first day of my break and I will start working on it with the beginning of the next week.

Our Chair of Software Engineering at the ETH Zurich is addicted to the Eiffel programming language. Thus, a PhD student is working on an Eiffel Multimedia Framework, named EiffelMedia, and I'm doing the Debian packaging. After working the second year with Eiffel stuff now, I can say that packaging Eiffel programs (not the language itself) is a major PITA, with respect to the following two aspects: Eiffel is different

• Build tool is an Ant clone written in Eiffel, called geant (part of Gobo Eiffel).
  
  
• Paths are not hardcoded into the binaries, they are set by environment variables. You guessed it right - it's not a bug, it's a feature.
  
  
• There is no Eiffel compiler, just Eiffel-to-C wrappers which then issue the compilation to objectcode by a C compiler. Generating executables from Eiffel sources takes longer than from any other language.

Eiffel is non-free

There are not one... not two... but three incompatible Eiffel compilers arround. Oh yeah...

• EiffelStudio, developed by Betrand Meyers company Eiffel Software (formerly known as Interactive Software Engineering) reflects the reference implementation of the Eiffel language. Last summer, Eiffel was accepted as ECMA standard 367. Version 5.6 of EiffelStudio released back in fall 2005 does implement this standard.
  
  EiffelStudio is proprietary software (speaking of EiffelStudio means actually EiffelStudio Free Edition). Last year, I bitched Eiffel Softwares employees for about 3 month continuously to change the EULA for allowing non-modified redistribution. Thanks to be not ignored by Larry Miller from Eiffel Software, in the beginning of 2005 the EULA was changed and I could provide packages publicly. Theoretically, I could have moved them over to Debian non-free, but it's quite a large piece of software (190MB, source and binary packages) and the important parts (compiler and IDE) are still provided binary-only (so the archive would have to carry three arch specific version, makes 570MB in total per revision), thus no upload was considered. Additionally, EiffelStudio is available on Linux only for the i386, powerpc and amd64 architectures. All other platforms where Linux runs on are not supported.
  
  Another annoying problem with EiffelStudio is its nasty disclaimer flooding allover the buildlogs. It's built into every binary and displayed as the first 19 lines of every output of those:
  

  This program has been produced with a demo or non-commercial version
  of ISE EiffelStudio, the full lifecycle object-oriented development
  environment from Eiffel Software.
  This version is reserved for non-production use of Eiffel. Any other
  use requires purchase of a license.
  Eiffel Software offers commercial and academic licenses and
  support/maintenance contracts covering diverse needs.
  For more information please contact
  Eiffel Software at the address below or consult the Eiffel products page
  at http://www.eiffel.com/products/.
          Eiffel Software
          356 Storke Road
          Goleta CA 93117 USA 
          Telephone 805-685-1006, Fax 805-685-6869
          E-mail sales@eiffel.com
          http://www.eiffel.com
  

  This could have been "designed" a bit more discreet. However, as I do have to use wrapper scripts anyways for all binaries in the packages of any Eiffel program, I stripped that out by the occasion.
  
  
• Visual Eiffel developed by Object Tools was a proprietary Eiffel IDE and compiler suite. In November 2004, the compiler and the standard library were made free and are licensed under GPL.
  
  Unfortunately it was never fully compatible to EiffelStudio, actually years behind. It's not suprising that the project seemed never to be alive. Because it's still stuck with an old Eiffel language specification, it's even less useful today than it ever was.
  
  
• SmartEiffel (formerly know as SmallEiffel), developed by the LORIA Laboratory is a GPL licensed Eiffel compiler.
  
  But SmartEiffel does not and will not implement the recently published Eiffel ECMA standardization (roumors has it that they fork the Eiffel language in some essential parts caused by some technical and/or personal missunderstandings between Bertrand Meyer and the leader of the development team of SmartEiffel, they know each other from earlier).

Except from some fundamental programs like Gobo Eiffel or the Eiffel Wrapper Generator (they support both all three compilers), nearly all programs are written according to the current Eiffel specifcation. So there is no real alternative to the proprietary EiffelStudio. Beeing binary-only is a major drawback too: EiffelStudio on Linux/powerpc is dynamically compiled against glibc-2.3.5, but Sarge has glibc-2.3.4. So one needs a backport of glibc, which taints the system in an unneccessary and stupid way. Please: Eiffel Software, if you are reading this, open the sources of EiffelStudio now and turn it into free software, for the greater good of us all. Make additional ports to other architectures possible and allow us, the packagers and upstreams of Eiffel programs, to drop the cumbersome support for other ancient Eiffel compilers. Let's focus us to one, single implementation and improve it.

I recieved the following strange telephone call from a German boy:

  Me: Daniel Baumann? [that is normal to announce oneself]
  He: Who are you? Is Debian there?
  Me: Daniel Baumann... aeh... yes?
  He: I want to participate.
  Me: What, to Debian?
  He: Yes.
  Me: And what do you like to do?
  He: I want to take the full procedure...
  Me: I suggest you read www.debian.org/devel/join...
  He: I'm from Germany.
  Me: ...or write me an e-mail. That is cheaper than telephone calls to
      Switzerland, and more efficient too.
  He: Ok.
  Me: Just curious... where did you get my number from?
  He: From the website... at debian.com.
  Me: Debian is at debian.org anyway... write me an e-mail.
  He: Ok, bye.
  Me: Bye.

Note: The transcription of the dialog is uncut, it was really that short.

I recieved the following strange telephone call from a German boy:

  Me: Daniel Baumann? [that is normal to announce oneself]
  He: Who are you? Is Debian there?
  Me: Daniel Baumann... aeh... yes?
  He: I want to participate.
  Me: What, to Debian?
  He: Yes.
  Me: And what do you like to do?
  He: I want to take the full procedure...
  Me: I suggest you read www.debian.org/devel/join...
  He: I'm from Germany.
  Me: ...or write me an e-mail. That is cheaper than telephone calls to
      Switzerland, and more efficient too.
  He: Ok.
  Me: Just curious... where did you get my number from?
  He: From the website... at debian.com.
  Me: Debian is debian.org anyway... write me an e-mail.
  He: Ok, bye.
  Me: Bye.

Note: The transcription of the call is uncut, it was really that short.

I got my own hackergotchi. It is made by Rhonda (aka Alfie) from a picture taken by youam while manning last years Debian booth at LinuxTag. I'm feeling really modern now ;) Thanks a lot, Rhonda *knuddel*

I needed to create a repository from cdrom images without having Internet, so I wrote this script. It is not perfect, but it works, and I don't know if there are already similar scripts (didn't found any).

I uploaded Xfce to Debian Backports. After having a small problem, it works perfectly now. Thanks to nobse, formorer, and Ganneff for providing the service.

It often takes some time before I adapt to new (social) trends. Today, the last day of the year 2005, I started a blog. I'm feeling quite modern now :) Thanks to hggh, myon, and youam for helping tame my apache.