GNU Spotlight June 2023

Twelve new GNU releases in the last month (as of June 27, 2023):

• a2ps-4.15.5: GNU a2ps converts almost anything to a PostScript file, ready for printing. It accomplishes this by being able to delegate files to external handlers, such as Groff and Gzip. It handles as many steps as is necessary to produce a pretty-printed file. It also includes some extra abilities for special cases, such as pretty-printing `--help' output.
• freeipmi-1.6.11: GNU FreeIPMI is a collection of in-band and out-of-band IPMI software in accordance with the IPMI v1.5/2.0 specification. These programs provide a set of interfaces for platform management. Common functionality includes sensor monitoring, system event monitoring, power control and serial-over-LAN.
• gcc-11.4.0: GCC is the GNU Compiler Collection. It provides compiler front-ends for several languages, including C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, Ada, and Go. It also includes runtime support libraries for these languages.
• gettext-0.22: GNU Gettext is a package providing a framework for translating the textual output of programs into multiple languages. It provides translators with the means to create message catalogs, as well as an Emacs mode to work with them, and a runtime library to load translated messages from the catalogs. Nearly all GNU packages use Gettext.
• gnupg-2.4.2: The GNU Privacy Guard is a complete implementation of the OpenPGP standard. It is used to encrypt and sign data and communication. It features powerful key management and the ability to access public key servers. It includes several libraries: libassuan (IPC between GnuPG components), libgpg-error (centralized GnuPG error values), and libskba (working with X.509 certificates and CMS data).
• linux-libre-6.4-gnu: GNU Linux-Libre is a free (as in freedom) variant of the kernel Linux. It has been modified to remove all non-free binary blobs.
• nettle-3.9.1: GNU Nettle is a low-level cryptographic library. It is designed to fit in easily in almost any context. It can be easily included in cryptographic toolkits for object-oriented languages or in applications themselves.
• parallel-20230622: GNU Parallel is a tool for executing shell jobs in parallel using one or more computers. Jobs can consist of single commands or of scripts and they are executed on lists of files, hosts, users or other items.
• r-4.3.1: R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. It provides a variety of statistical techniques, such as linear and nonlinear modeling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification and clustering. It also provides robust support for producing publication-quality data plots. A large amount of 3rd-party packages are available, greatly increasing its breadth and scope.
• shepherd-0.10.1: The GNU Shepherd is a daemon-managing daemon, meaning that it supervises the execution of system services, replacing similar functionality found in typical init systems. It provides dependency-handling through a convenient interface and is based on GNU Guile.
• unifont-15.0.06: GNU Unifont is a bitmap font covering essentially all of Unicode's Basic Multilingual Plane. The package also includes utilities to ease adding new glyphs to the font.
• xorriso-1.5.6.pl02: GNU Xorriso is a tool for copying files to and from ISO 9660 Rock Ridge, a.k.a. Compact Disc File System, filesystems and it allows session-wise manipulation of them. It features a formatter and burner for CD, DVD and BD. It can operate on existing ISO images or it can create new ones. xorriso can then be used to copy files directly into or out of ISO files.

For announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu.

To download: nearly all GNU software is available most reliably from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/. Optionally, you may find faster download speeds at a mirror geographically close to you by choosing from the list of mirrors published at https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html, or you may use https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

This month, we welcome GNU Chief Webmaster Jason Self who officially joins Alexandre Oliva as co-maintainer of linux-libre. Many thanks Jason (and Alex) for all your work on GNU Linux-libre!

A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance. Please see https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint if you'd like to help. The general page on how to help GNU is at https://www.gnu.org/help/help.html.

If you have a working or partly working program that you'd like to offer to the GNU project as a GNU package, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.

As always, please feel free to write to me, bandali@gnu.org, with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.