1. News in The LDP world

• Checking for inactive maintainers
  

  Machtelt Garrels, newly appointed Review Coordinator, took a dive into the HOWTO collection. All authors of inactive documents (not updated this year) were contacted and asked if they planned to update their documents any time soon. The results of the effort are available. In case you can get in touch with any of the inactive document authors and maintainers of the documents that you use often, please send in the information to the <feedback@en.tldp.org> address.

2. Discussions on The LDP lists

• Modernizing TLDP:
  

  August was a busy month on the <discuss@en.tldp.org> mailinglist. The pros and cons of a wiki for TLDP were discussed, and finally it was decided that it wouldn't be a bad idea to have wiki pages for those HOWTOs that seem abandoned. Pradeep Padala and jdd made a summary of the discussion.

• HOWTOs for Hardware
  

  While on the discussion about the demo page that was setup by jdd at http://dodin.org/~tldp/mw/index.php/Main_Page, Saqib Ali said that TLDP as it currently exist should now retire as most of the HOWTOs (including ones authored by him) are not needed anymore, since the linux distros and other opensource apps have started producing excellent documentation. David Lawyer responded saying "There is more need than ever for HOWTOs covering hardware. The apps seldom cover hardware and if they do, may not cover it adequately. One problem is that there is a lot of hardware that doesn't work with Linux due to Windows-only drivers. In other cases the hardware will work under Linux but doesn't have all its features supported by the Linux driver. Also, some hardware is defective in design, but will still work if the driver has a workaround. Currently, there's only limited coverage of hardware by HOWTOs and much of it is out-of-date."

3. New documents @ The LDP

• Gaurav Prasad described the installation procedures of Oracle 9i on Fedora Core 3.
• The Linux Laptop HOWTO was archived and replaced with Werner Heuser's Linux on the Road or Linux Mobile guide. Though there are laptop, notebook, PDA and mobile phone related HOWTOs available already, this guide contains a concise survey of documents related to mobile computer devices. Also Linux features, such as installation methods for laptops, notebooks and PDAs as well as configurations for different (network) environments are described. And though there are some caveats, Linux is a good choice for mobile computing devices than most other operating systems because it supports numerous installation methods, works in many heterogeneous environments and needs fewer resources.

4. Documents submitted for review

• Nicolas Dufour submitted the Linux Aviation HOWTO, containing a summary of useful software for pilots and navigators.
• Review is ongoing for the MP3 HOWTO by Phil Kerr.
• A new maintainer was found for the Security Quick-Start HOWTO for Red Hat Linux, the Security Quick-Start HOWTO for Linux and the The X Window User HOWTO; these are currently being reviewed.

5. New document proposals

• Stuart Ellis proposed an SSH HOWTO and got the go-ahead.
• Kave Aryan had to write a filesystem as part of his final project at the University of Teheran and wants to contribute his documentation about this.
• Nishant Sharma wants to write something about the Sierra Wireless PC-Card which is offered country-wide by an Indian ISP.

6. Updated HOWTOs, FAQs and Guides

• Steven Pritchard: Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO
• Nils Radtke: Ethernet Bridge + netfilter Howto
• AJ Lewis: LVM HOWTO
• Avi Alkalay: Optimal Use of Fonts on Linux
• Bryan Henderson: Linux Loadable Kernel Module HOWTO
• Lars Wirzenius, Joanna Oja, Stephen Stafford, and Alex Weeks: The Linux System Administrators' Guide
• Daniel Nofftz: Athlon Powersaving HOWTO
• Werner Heuser: Linux Ecology-HOWTO
• Ian Ward: Debian and Windows Shared Printing mini-HOWTO
• Chr. Clemens Lee: Debian Binary Package Building HOWTO
• David S.Lawyer: Plug-and-Play-HOWTO
• Thomas Chiverton: CompaqT1500-Linux HOWTO
• Jean-Philippe Gerard: Online Troubleshooting Resources: HOWTO
• Mendel Cooper: Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
• Machtelt Garrels: Bash Beginner's Guide
• John Eikenberry: GNU/Linux AI & Alife HOWTO
• Ram Samudrala: Linux Cluster HOWTO
• Machtelt Garrels: Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

7. Mirror information update

The following are the latest additions to our list of mirrors:

• http://www.linuxadm.com/LDP maintained by Tony Escujuri in Mesa, Arizona, USA.
• http://slugphils.homelinux.org/LDP maintained by Michael Balcos in Quezon City, Metro Manila, The Philippines.
• http://www.bangladesh-linux-info.org/ maintained by Tom Sonsuwan in Texas, USA.
• http://tldp.ugm.ac.id maintained by Taufik Suryawan Edyna in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
• http://ldp.oslookup.org maintained by Constantinos Laitsas in Frankfurt, Germany.
• http://legion.besove.org/ldp/ maintained by Peio Popov in Sofia, Bulgaria.
• http://www.linux-diary.net/LDP maintained in Frederick, Maryland, USA.
• http://ldp.lug.md/ maintained by Grigore Raileanu in Chisinau, Moldavia.

8. The LDP/LDPWN mini-HOWTO

The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) is working on developing free, high quality documentation for the GNU/Linux operating system. If you want to help TLDP, consider joining <discuss-subscribe@en.tldp.org> (a low volume discussion mailing list). You can also send your suggestions to <feedback@en.tldp.org>.

The LDP Weekly News is compiled, edited and published by Machtelt Garrels (Tille) and Y Giridhar Appaji Nag (Giri) with help from several other people. To receive this newsletter weekly in your mailbox, subscribe to the <news-subscribe@en.tldp.org> mailing list. Back issues are available at http://tldp.org/ldpwn

Help us create this newsletter. We need volunteers who follow the community (mailing lists, newsgroups, web channels) and report events related to free software documentation. Write to us at <feedback@en.tldp.org>.