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diff --git a/_posts/2024-01-22-new-year.md b/_posts/2024-01-22-new-year.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a32263e --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/2024-01-22-new-year.md @@ -0,0 +1,219 @@ +--- +title: '2023 in retrospect & happy new year 2024!' +--- + +<img align="right" height="100" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2024/2024.png" alt="Gentoo Fireworks"> +A Happy New Year 2024 to all of you! We hope you enjoyed the fireworks; we tried to contribute +to these too with the binary package news just before new year! That's not the only thing in Gentoo that +was new in 2023 though; as in the previous years, let's look back and <a href="https://www.gentoo.org/news/2024/01/22/new-year.html">give it a review</a>. + +<!--more--> + +## Gentoo in numbers + +**The number of commits to the [main ::gentoo repository](https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/) +has remained at an overall high level in 2023**, only slightly lower from *126682* to *121000*. +The number of commits by external contributors has actually increased from *10492* to *10708*, +now across *404* unique external authors. + +**[GURU, our user-curated repository with a trusted user +model](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:GURU), is still attracting a lot of potential developers.** +We have had *5045* commits in 2023, a slight decrease from *5751* in 2022. +The number of contributors to GURU has increased clearly however, from *134* in +2022 to *158* in 2023. Please join us there and help packaging the latest and +greatest software. That's the ideal preparation for becoming a Gentoo developer! + +On **the [Gentoo bugtracker bugs.gentoo.org](https://bugs.gentoo.org/)**, we've had *24795* bug reports +created in 2023, compared to *26362* in 2022. The number of resolved bugs shows a similar +trend, with *22779* in 2023 compared to *24681* in 2022. Many of these bugs are stabilization +requests; a possible interpretation is that stable Gentoo is becoming more and more current, +catching up with new software releases. + + +## New developers + +In 2023 we have gained **3 new Gentoo developers**. They are in chronological order: + +1. **[Arsen Arsenović (arsen)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Arsen)**: + <img align="right" height="45" style="margin-left: 30px;" + src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/799095f570d33bcd8bc80df98ce1a4b0?s=45&d=retro"> + Arsen joined up as a developer right at the start of the year in January from Belgrade, Serbia. + He's a computer science student + interested in both maths and music, active in many different free software projects, and has already + made his impression, e.g., in our emacs and toolchain projects. + +2. **[Paul Fox (ris)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Ris)**: + After already being very active in our Wiki for some time, Paul joined in March as developer from France. + Activity on our wiki and documentation quality will certainly grow much further with his help. + +3. **[Petr Vaněk (arkamar)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Arkamar)**: + <img align="right" height="45" style="margin-left: 30px;" + src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/0b4f038d0a09bb9378ab900dbd40399a?s=45&d=retro"> + Petr Vaněk, from Prague, Czech Republic, joined the ranks of our developers in November. + Gentoo user since 2009, craft beer enthusiast, and Linux kernel contributor, he has already been + active in very diverse corners of Gentoo. + + +## Featured changes and news + +Let's now look at the major improvements and news of 2023 in Gentoo. + + +### Distribution-wide Initiatives + +- <img align="right" height="95" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2023/larry-packages.png"> + <b>Binary package hosting</b>: Gentoo shockingly now also <a href="https://www.gentoo.org/news/2023/12/29/Gentoo-binary.html">provides + binary packages</a>, for easier and faster installation! For <b>amd64 and arm64</b>, we’ve got + a stunning >20 GByte of packages on our mirrors, from LibreOffice + to KDE Plasma and from Gnome to Docker. + Also, would you think 9-year old <b>x86-64-v3</b> is still experimental? + <a href="https://gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/amd64/binpackages/17.1/x86-64-v3/">We have it already + on our mirrors!</a> For all other architectures and ABIs, the binary package files used for building the + installation stages (including the build tool chain) are available for download. + +- **New 23.0 profiles in preparation**: + A new profile version, i.e. a collection of presets and configurations, is at the moment + undergoing internal preparation and testing for all architectures. + It's not ready yet, but will integrate more toolchain hardening by default, as well as fix a + lot of internal inconsistencies. Stay tuned for an announcement with more details in the near future. + +- <b>Modern C</b>: Work continues on porting Gentoo, and the Linux userland at large, + to [Modern C](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Modern_C_porting). This is a real marathon effort + rather than a sprint (just see our [tracker bug](https://bugs.gentoo.org/870412) for it). Our + efforts together with the same project ongoing in Fedora have already helped many upstreams, + which have accepted patches in preparation for GCC 14 (that starts to enforce the + modern language usage). + +- <img align="right" height="40" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2024/logo-froscon.png"> + <b>Event presence</b>: At the <a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/">Free and Open Source + Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM) 2023</a>, the <a href="https://froscon.org/en/">Free and Open Source Software + Conference (FrOSCon) 2023</a>, and the <a href="https://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2023/en/">Chemnitzer + Linux-Tage (CLT) 2023</a>, Gentoo had a booth with mugs, stickers, t-shirts, and of course the famous + self-compiled buttons. + +- <img align="right" height="100" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2022/logo-gsoc.png"> + <b>Google Summer of Code</b>: In 2023 Gentoo had another successful year participating in the + <a href="https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/">Google Summer of Code</a>. We had three contributors + completing their projects; you can find out more about them by visiting the + <a href="https://blogs.gentoo.org/gsoc/">Gentoo GSoC blog</a>. We thank our contributors Catcream, LabBrat, and + Listout, and also all the developers who took the time to mentor them. + +- <b>Online workshops</b>: Our German support, <a href="https://gentoo-ev.org/">Gentoo e.V.</a>, organized + this year <a href="https://gentoo-ev.org/news/online-workshops-2023/">6 online workshops on building + and improving ebuilds</a>. This will be continued every two months in the upcoming year. + +- <img align="right" height="130" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://wiki.gentoo.org/images/b/b3/Larry-hi.png"> + <b>Documentation on wiki.gentoo.org</b> has been making great progress as + always. This past year the <a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_Wiki:Contributor%27s_guide">contributor's + guide</a>, <a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_Wiki:Guidelines">article writing guidelines</a>, and + <a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Help:Contents">help pages</a> were updated to + give the best possible start to anyone ready to lend a hand. The Gentoo Handbook got updates, + and a new changelog. Of course much documentation was fixed, extended, or updated, and quite + a few new pages were created. We hope to see even more activity in the new year, and hopefully + some new contributors - editing documentation is a particularly easy area to + start contributing to Gentoo in, <a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_Wiki:Contributor%27s_guide">please + give it a try!</a> + +### Architectures + +- <img align="right" height="75" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2024/alpha-logo.png"> + <b>Alpha</b>: Support for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alpha">DEC Alpha + architecture</a> was revived, with a massive keywording effort going on. While not perfectly + complete yet, we are very close to a fully consistent dependency tree and package set for alpha again. + +- <img align="right" height="75" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2022/logo-musl.png"> + <b>musl</b>: Support for the <a href="https://musl.libc.org/">lightweight musl libc</a> has + been added to the architectures <a href="https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/#mips">MIPS (o32)</a> and <a + href="https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/#m68k">m68k</a>, with corresponding profiles in the Gentoo + repository and corresponding installation stages and binary packages available for download. Enjoy! + +### Packages + +- <img align="right" height="75" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2024/dotNET-logo.png"> + <b>.NET</b>: The <a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Dotnet">Gentoo Dotnet project</a> + has <a href="https://xgqt.gitlab.io//blog/posts/2023/12/17/-net-in-gentoo-in-2023/">significantly + improved</a> support for building + .NET-based software, using the nuget, dotnet-pkg-base, and dotnet-pkg eclasses. + Now we're ready for packages depending on the .NET ecosystem and for + developers using dotnet-sdk on Gentoo. New software requiring .NET is constantly + being added to the main Gentoo tree. Recent additions include PowerShell for Linux, + Denaro (a finance application), Pinta (a graphics program), Ryujinx (a NS emulator) + and many other aimed straight at developing .NET projects. + +- <img align="right" height="75" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2023/logo-java.png"> + <b>Java</b>: OpenJDK 21 has been introduced for amd64, arm64, ppc64, and x86! + +- <b><a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Python">Python</a>:</b> + In the meantime the default Python version in Gentoo has reached Python 3.11. Additionally we have + also Python 3.12 available stable - again we're fully up to date with upstream. + +- <img align="right" height="75" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2024/pypy-logo.png"> + <b>PyPy3 compatibility for scientific Python</b>: + While some packages (numexpr, pandas, xarray) are at the moment still undergoing upstream bug fixing, + more and more scientific Python packages have been adapted in Gentoo and upstream for + the speed-optimized Python variant PyPy. This can provide a nice performance boost for + numerical data analysis... + +- <b>Signed kernel modules and (unified) kernel images</b>: We now support signing of + both in-tree and out-of-tree kernel modules and kernel images. This is useful for those + who would like the extra bit of verification offered by Secure Boot, which is now easier + than ever to set up on Gentoo systems! Additionally, our kernel install scripts and eclasses + are now fully compatible with + <a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Unified_kernel_image">Unified Kernel Images</a> and our + prebuilt gentoo-kernel-bin can now optionally install an experimental pregenerated generic + Unified Kernel Image. + +- <img align="right" height="75" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2024/logo-gap4.png"> + <b>The GAP System</b>: + A new dev-gap package category has arrived with about sixty packages. + <a href="https://www.gap-system.org/">GAP</a> is a popular system for computational + discrete algebra, with particular emphasis on Computational Group + Theory. GAP consists of a programming language, a library of thousands + of functions implementing algebraic algorithms written in the GAP + language, and large data libraries of algebraic objects. It has + <a href="https://www.gap-system.org/Packages/packages.html">its own + package ecosystem</a>, mostly written in the GAP language with a few C components. + +### Physical and Software Infrastructure + +- <img align="right" height="75" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2024/gentoo-package.png"> + <b>Portage improvements</b>: A significant amount of work went into enhancing our + package manager, Portage, to better support binary package deployment. Users building + their own binary packages and setting up their own infrastructure will certainly benefit + from it too. + +- <b>packages.gentoo.org</b>: The development of Gentoo's package database website, + <a href="https://packages.gentoo.org">packages.gentoo.org</a>, has picked up speed, with new features for maintainer, category, + and arch pages, and <a href="https://repology.org/">Repology</a> integration. Many optimization were + done for the backend database queries and the website should now feel faster to use. + +- <img align="right" height="75" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2024/bugs.png"> + <b>pkgdev bugs</b>: A new developer tool called <i>pkgdev bugs</i> enables us now to + simplify the procedure for filing new stable requests bugs a lot. By just giving it + version lists (which can be generated by other tools), + <i>pkgdev bugs</i> can be used to compute dependencies, cycles, merges, and will file + the bugs for the architecture teams / testers. This allows us to step ahead much faster + with package stabilizations. + +### Finances of the Gentoo Foundation + +- <img align="right" height="75" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2023/dollar.jpg"> + <b>Income</b>: The Gentoo Foundation took in approximately $18,500 in fiscal year 2023; + the majority (over 80%) were individual cash donations from the community. + +- <b>Expenses</b>: Our expenses in 2023 were, as split into the usual three categories, + *operating expenses* (for services, fees, ...) $6,000, only minor *capital expenses* (for bought + assets), and *depreciation expenses* (value loss of existing assets) $20,000. + +- <b>Balance</b>: We have about $101,000 in the bank as of July 1, 2023 (which is when + our fiscal year 2023 ends for accounting purposes). The draft finanical report + for 2023 is [available on the Gentoo Wiki](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Foundation:Gentoo_Foundation_Finances_FY2023). + +## Thank you! + +Obviously this is not all Gentoo development that happened in 2023. From KDE to GNOME, from +kernels to scientific software, you can find much more if you look at the details. +**As every year, we would like to thank all Gentoo developers and all who have submitted contributions +for their relentless everyday Gentoo work.** As a volunteer project, Gentoo could not exist +without them. And if you are interested and would like to contribute, please join us and +help us make Gentoo even better! |