The Debian project has been working in removing non-free firmware from the Linux kernel shipped with Debian for the past two release cycles. At the time of the releases of Debian 4.0 "Etch" and 5.0 "Lenny", however, it was not yet possible to ship Linux kernels stripped of all non-free firmware bits.

There is always myths that surround the Veterans Affairs (VA) VistA Electronic Health Record. I have not found a compendium of these myths and the facts so I wrote this list. As well I was partially inspired by Fred Trotter's recent 'Antiquated or Proven?' response to a detractor of VistA. Please feel free to add to this list by replying below.

"The Debian project made a splash on Sunday with the announcement that two new “architectures” had been added to the Debian FTP archive. Debian has always supported a wide range of processors, though; these architectures are different and noteworthy because instead of providing Debian on different hardware, they build the OS on a completely different kernel: FreeBSD’s.

You may have seen that the Debian project (my particular GNU/Linux distribution of choice) has decided to schedule fixed time-based releases in future. This has come as a surprise to many - including possibly some Debian developers - largely because of Debian's long-standing "we ship when it's ready" policy. So what caused this change of heart and is it a good idea.

The Debian Release Team is pleased to announce that it sees the port of the Debian system to the FreeBSD kernel fit to be handled equal with the other release ports. The upcoming release codenamed 'Squeeze' is planned to be the first Debian distribution to be released with Linux and FreeBSD kernels.

Finally announced during the annual Debian Developer Conference "Debconf10" in New York that Debian "Squeeze" has now been frozen. In consequence this means that no more new features will be added and all work will now be concentrated on polishing Debian "Squeeze" to achieve the quality Debian stable releases are known for.

The Debian release team recently announced the current status of the next Debian release Squeeze. Based on past experiences there will be at least 4 months needed after the freeze to release the next stable version.

At DebConf 9 this week, the Debian release team proposed a new approach to Debian’s release cycle, which was then announced on the Debian web site. Both the Debconf presentation and the announcement were quite clear, but a number of news articles and blog posts on the subject seem to have misinterpreted them.

The Debian release team are sounding the alarm: With only one month left before the planned release freeze, the number of critical bugs in Debian 6.0 Squeeze is still far too high to freeze development.