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Roundup of Upcoming Distribution Releases
For many Linux distributions and BSD projects, the end of summer in the Northern Hemisphere traditionally signals the beginning of an intensive new testing and release process. What can we look forward to in the upcoming months?Let's start with SUSE Linux. The third beta release of SUSE 10.0 should be out by the time you read this, with the final release expected around the middle of September. After years of being developed behind closed doors, SUSE is about to become one of the most open Linux projects, complete with public participation and available as a free download as soon as the testing process is finished. The response by the Linux community has been overwhelmingly positive so far and SUSE's newly established Bugzilla and mailing lists are buzzing with interest. Judging by the first two betas, SUSE 10.0 will be a solid release, perhaps lacking major new features, but it should come with many updated packages, a more consumer-friendly installer and plenty of eye candy. The 'apt' package management utility will be included for the first time. And its Xen virtualization technology and Beagle desktop search tool are likely to be a lot more mature than in SUSE 9.3.
Mandriva Linux 2006 has been in beta testing since the end of July and the final release should be out before September is over. As has become tradition in the Mandriva development labs, the beta releases are published behind schedule, but the company has been hard at work replacing all references to Mandrake with Mandriva and revamping most of the their web sites. Mandriva 2006 will be the first release under the company's new annual release cycle. Many users hoped that it would incorporate some of the technologies from its recent acquisitions of Conectiva and Lycoris, but there have been few signs of those in the three betas released so far, with 'urpmi' still remaining the distribution's preferred package management tool. One interesting update is that Mandriva's latest beta is the first distribution shipping with a cvs version of the upcoming X.Org 7.0.
The developers of Ubuntu Linux have had their hands full with a new version 5.10, code name "Breezy Badger", scheduled for release on October 13th. As with previous versions, there will be a preview release immediately after GNOME 2.12 is declared stable on September 7th, followed by a release candidate a week before the final Ubuntu 5.10. Breezy will ship with a large number of new features, including a graphical installer, improved support for laptops through LaptopMission, thin client integration, application launch pads, complete sound infrastructure including audio CD burning, and the usual updates to artwork, sound events and branding. The release will be accompanied by Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE) and also Edubuntu, a distribution specifically designed for classroom use. Besides all the coding, much effort has been put into promotion of Ubuntu (and Linux in general) - a 12-day Ubuntu conference will be held in early October in Montreal, Canada and Ubuntu is also part of a task force to formulate South Africa's national strategy on open source - an initiative that Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth believes could foster international cooperation and increased adoption of open source software by governments and the private sector across the globe.
September should also see the final release of FreeBSD 6.0. It has been delayed by more than a month due to several show stopper bugs in the core system resulting in instability and kernel panics. At the time of writing, the FreeBSD 6.0 development page lists six critical bugs and one required feature that has yet to be completed. It is not yet clear whether FreeBSD 6.0 will be considered "production quality" or just an "early adopter's preview", as was the case with FreeBSD 5.0. On a related note, new versions of both OpenBSD (version 3.8, currently in beta) and NetBSD (version 3.0) are scheduled for release in October.
Slackware Linux is another project that will release a new version of its distribution within the next couple of months. Patrick Volkerding has already indicated that version 10.2 will enter a beta testing phase shortly and since its "current" tree looks in a reasonably good shape, the testing process will probably be very short. Slackware 10.2 will remain on the conservative side of things, with the maintainer still giving clear preference to the tried and tested Linux 2.4 as the distribution's default kernel. And although many packages in Slackware's "current" branch have been updated to their latest versions, Slackware 10.2 will ship without GNOME - for the first time since Slackware 4.0!
Also for the first time in years, the fans and beta testers of Fedora Core (and Red Hat Linux before) will be deprived of the adrenaline that used to accompany the highly intensive testing process of their favorite distribution. That's because the developers of Fedora Core have agreed to extend the distribution's release cycle from six to nine months, with the expected release of Fedora Core 5 now scheduled for the middle of February 2006. That said, the first two test releases should appear before Christmas, so there will be some beta testing to deal with, but the usual rush to complete testing before a certain pre-Christmas deadline will be absent this year. The extended release cycle should be a welcome relief for the Fedora developers, especially since Core 5 will likely form the basis of the all-important Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, possibly coming out in the second half of 2006.
Among other major distributions, the Gentoo Linux project has recently completed its second release of the year and there won't be any new one until early 2006. Debian GNU/Linux is currently in a major transition course towards X.Org, glibc 2.3.5, GCC 4.0 and apt 0.6 so it will take time before there is any talk about releasing "etch" (Debian's next version). Similarly, the many Debian derivatives that have been, until recently, happy to base their releases on the more up-to-date unstable ("sid") branch of the pre-sarge period are now forced to postpone any new releases until "sid" completes its current transition. In the meantime, the developers of MEPIS Linux have been concentrating on building various specialist editions of MEPIS Linux, all based on Debian "sarge" and, if tradition is kept alive at Xandros, we might perhaps see a new release of Xandros Desktop before the end of the year.
New Releases
Ubuntu Breezy Badger "Colony 3" now available
The Ubuntu developers have announced the release of the "Colony CD 3", the third test release of the upcoming "Breezy Badger" release. A number of improvements have been added since the previous "Colony"; see the announcement for the details.
Distribution News
Dissertation: Three ethical moments in Debian
Biella Coleman is an anthropology graduate student who has been working for years with the Debian community as part of her dissertation work. That dissertation has now been accepted, and one chapter of it, entitled "Three ethical moments in Debian: the making of an ethical hacker part III" has been posted on the net. Click below for Biella's announcement and description of the work; the (80-page) chapter is available as a 2MB PDF file. (Thanks to Adam Heath).GNU Classpath distro DevJam
The GNU Classpath DevJam is a developer and packager meeting around coordinating and improving the state of packaging of large scale applications written in the java programming language using the GNU Classpath, gcj and other free java-like VMs tool chain for the various GNU/Linux distributions. "We hope to get together a group of (20 till 30) people wanting to do some hands on hacking to show the state of the art in packaging. Resulting in the availability of several new packages, improvements to the free tool chains and cross-distribution packaging conventions quickly after the meeting."
Fedora news
The Fedora Project is recruiting documentation authors, with a current focus on the FC5 release notes.The Fedora Project has announced an updated Guide to Managing Software with Yum. This documentation is for Fedora Core 3 and Fedora Core 4.
New Distributions
Freespire
Freespire is made from the freely available source code of the Linspire operating system, and other Linux distributions. All the proprietary components and trademarks have been removed. The initial release is a live CD / proof of concept, for i386 and AMD64.Underground Desktop
Underground Desktop is a GNU/Linux distribution targeted to the desktop user, featuring a graphical installation (using Anaconda for Debian by Progeny). It is based on Debian 'unstable', optimized for i686, with a KDE desktop.You can find reviews of Underground Desktop on NewsForge and Linux.com.
Distribution Newsletters
Debian Weekly News
The Debian Weekly News for August 23, 2005 is out. This week: the DPL delegates the authority to make a decision regarding the use of the Debian trademark to Don Armstrong, a howto on installing Debian on the Sun Blade 150, a look at kernel version dependency, using LSB init scripts, and several other topics.Fedora Weekly News Issue 10
The latest issue of the Fedora Weekly News has the meeting minutes for Fedora Documentation, meeting minutes for Fedora Marketing, more speakers needed for FUDCon London 2005, and several other topics.Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of August 22, 2005 is out, with a report from Linux World Expo San Francisco, a look at some user projects like car console and MythTV, and more.Mandriva Linux Community Newsletter #107
The Mandriva Linux Community Newsletter for August 22, 2005 looks at the new Mandriva Club site, the changing domain names and other topics.Red Hat Magazine Issue 10
The latest issue of Red Hat Magazine is online, with a look at debugging code with strace, CVS is out, Subversion is in, Fedora Extras Focus, Red Hat Summit 2006: Goin' country, creating vector graphics with Inkscape, building the Fedora Foundation: Goals established, and more.DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 114
The DistroWatch Weekly for August 22, 2005 is out. "The long awaited KNOPPIX 4.0 live DVD was finally released last week - with a large collection of great software, but also with a few nasty bugs. In the meanwhile, the openSUSE project continues its fast-paced beta testing process of SUSE Linux 10.0 with more great software and an easy way to upgrade to the latest version. Our featured project of the week is aLinux - a distribution with amazing eye candy, unparallelled multimedia support, and many bleeding edge software packages."
Minor distribution updates
New Quantian torrent at tlm-project
The Quantian project has lost a server, but gained a torrent at the Linux Mirror Project. "As I mentioned recently on quantian-general and in my blog, the machine hosting Quantian at University of Washington is no more. I am indebted to Tony, Eric and U W for the service and bandwidth they have provided. It really helped."
Ports: Fedora Core support on the way for GNU-Darwin
The GNU-Darwin project will be adding Fedora Core support to the ports tree. "For the purists, Debian support was added to CVS last year. In other news, sales and donations continue to provide for the growth and development of the Distribution. We are providing internet services, email, webpages, Office discs, Package discs, and bootable OS installer discs; all bone fide free software. We are clearly the most free, active, and lucrative Darwin-based project."
Package updates
Fedora updates
Fedora Core 4 updates: system-config-netboot (bug fixes), doxygen (update to 1.4.4), kdbg (update to 2.0.0), system-config-bind (bug fixes), tar (silence newer option), gstreamer-plugins (bug fixes), vnc (bug fix), metacity (bug fix), pygtk2 (update to bugfix version 2.6.2), shadow-utils (bug fixes), evolution (update to 1.6.5), MyODBC (bug fix), xpdf (update to 3.01), libgal2 (bug fix), dhcpv6 (bug fixes), system-config-netboot (bug fixes), diskdumputils (updated source), bind (bug fixes), glibc (bug fixes and rebuilt with gcc-4.0.1-4.fc4), eject (update 2.1.1).Fedora Core 3 updates: kdbg (update to 2.0.0), system-config-bind (bug fixes), pcre (add symlinks for header files), MyODBC (bug fix), doxygen (update to 1.4.4), xpdf (update to 3.01), dhcpv6 (bug fixes), system-config-netboot (bug fixes), kdebase (Bluecurve theme for KDM), hwdata (fix MegaRAID controller mapping), eject (update to 2.1.1).
Mandriva MDKA-2005:039
Mandriva has updated indexhtml with the new URLs for the various Mandriva domain names.
Distribution reviews
Linux wireless freedom with OpenWrt (NewsForge)
NewsForge reviews OpenWrt. "You can turn your blue Linksys router into a Linux box with OpenWrt, an embedded Linux distribution for Linksys WRT54G and WRT54GS routers. This tiny distribution exceeds the default firmware functionality in many useful ways. Instead of having only a Web-controlled wireless access point, OpenWrt provides you with a fully interactive Linux system. Some notable features are the ability to telnet/SSH to your router, install software such as Snort, Mini-Sendmail, and Asterisk, and create and control VLANs for every Ethernet port on the device."
Suse Linux Professional 9.3 64bit (Personal Computer World)
Personal Computer World has a review of SUSE Linux. "It turns out that Suse Linux is an excellent platform for 64bit computing. On our Intel EM64T system, everything worked more or less immediately, including USB, Intel Hi-definition audio, and the Nvidia Geforce 5900 PCI Express graphics. We could compile and run 64bit applications, while 32bit applications such as Open Office ran fine as well."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
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