[I liked the #newinwheezy effort for the last Debian release, so I tipped Mika off about it again this time] A short post about what is #newinjessie, Debian's new 8.0 Jessie release. See Mika's debian-devel post for more information. For this release cycle, I have uploaded two new packages:

• dtv-scan-tables - Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) initial scan files
  • This is a new package which splits out the DVB initial scan files from linux-dvb-apps (see below). This is designed to make updating of the scan files easier.
• git-remote-hg - bidirectional bridge between Git and Mercurial
  • This is a new package which allows a Git client to read and write to Mercurial repositories. Previously provided as an example in the Git package until removed by upstream.

I've also have taken over as (co-)maintainer of some existing packages during this release cycle:

• linuxtv-dvb-apps - Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) applications
  • New upstream snapshot, split out DVB initial scan files into dtv-scan-files package (see above), enable hardened buildflags.

I've updated nearly all of my existing packages during this release cycle:

• dhex - ncurses based hex editor with diff mode
  • New upstream release, various packaging fixes.
• lcd4linux - Grabs information and displays it on an external lcd
  • New upstream snapshot, add systemd service file, install dummy config file which resolves issues on certain upgrades.
• libconfig - Parsing and manipulation of structured configuration files
  • New upstream release, various packaging fixes.
• nyancat - nyancat is a program to display an animated poptart cat in your terminal
  • New upstream release; Nyancat now resizes to fix the terminal!
• transmission-remote-cli - ncurses interface for the Transmission BitTorrent daemon
  • New upstream release, support new versions of Transmission, various bug and packaging fixes.
• wavemon - Wireless Device Monitoring Application
  • New upstream release, various bug and packaging fixes, fix FTBFS on arm64.

The following package received no updates during this release cycle due to a combination of no upstream releases and the existing package already being in good shape:

• figlet - Make large character ASCII banners out of ordinary text

I hope you find them useful. Enjoy!

If you follow upstream Git development closely, you may have noticed that the Mercurial and Bazaar remote helpers (use git to interact with hg and bzr repos) no longer live in the main Git tree. They have been split out into their own repositories, here and here. git-remote-bzr had been packaged (as git-bzr) for Debian since March 2013, but was removed in May 2014 when the remote helpers were removed upstream. There had been a wishlist bug report open since Mar 2013 to get git-remote-hg packaged, and I had submitted a patch, but it was never applied. Splitting out of these remote helpers upstream has allowed Vagrant Cascadian and myself to pick up these packages and both are now available in Debian.

apt-get install git-remote-hg git-remote-bzr

HP recently announced that they are no longer offering free firmware updates for their ProLiant line of servers. I have a HP ProLiant G7 N36L MicroServer at home (running Debian stable, naturally) which I got back in early 2011. While it has, and continues, to serve me well, I'll have to reconsider my options when I go looking for a replacement. This is a pity because I really like the MicroServer form factor. As recently as November 2013, HP released a BIOS update to fix random lockups when installing Windows 8.1/2012 R2 on a MicroServer (I'd never ever be running these operating systems, but the point still stands). I'd be worried if I couldn't upgrade my system for fear of uncovering a bug in firmware that I couldn't get an update for. Non-free firmware is bad, but in certain circumstances, it can be tolerated. Non-free firmware behind a paywall is worse, and can never be tolerated.

Just a quick post to say thanks to Valve Corporation for generously offering free Valve game subscriptions to Debian Developers. Also thanks to Neil, Jo and everyone else at Collabora for making this happen. Much appreciated.

The Debian Ireland User Group will be meeting for festive drinks this Thursday, 19th Dec 2013, at 20:00 in The Long Stone, Townsend Street, Dublin 2. All welcome. For more information, please see the mailing list or contact us via IRC.

Having used GNU/Linux systems for some time now, and having submitted patches to a fair number of open source projects, it is nice to finally get a patch accepted into the biggest open source project of them all, the Linux kernel. While I did submit a kernel patch to OpenWrt back in 2011, it is maintained as a rebased patchset, and was never upstreamed to Linus' tree. That changed today though, when a small patch I (had forgotten I had) sent to the linux-media mailinglist back in October 2013, was just pulled by Linus Torvalds into his tree for the Linux 3.13-rc4 release; so I'm now proud to be able to call myself a contributor to the Linux Kernel.

Given that Debian 7.0 Wheezy will be released in a few hours, I thought it would be a good time to take part in Michael Prokop's #newinwheezy effort to publicise the new packages that have uploaded to Debian as part of Wheezy. I have introduced two new packages to Debian for this release:

• nyancat - nyancat is a program to display an animated poptart cat in your terminal
• transmission-remote-cli - ncurses interface for the Transmission BitTorrent daemon

I've also have become (co-)maintainer of the following packages, updating them for this release:

• dhex - ncurses based hex editor with diff mode
• figlet - Make large character ASCII banners out of ordinary text
• lcd4linux - Grabs information and displays it on an external lcd
• libconfig - Parsing and manipulation of structured configuration files
• wavemon - Wireless Device Monitoring Application

I hope you find them useful. Enjoy!