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Ubuntu to get Edgy

Now that the Dapper beta freeze has begun, it is time to start thinking about what comes next. According to the Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu will get Edgy.

The Dapper Drake, due out June 1st, will be supported for five years. It will still be nice and fresh, if a bit staid and stable for those who need stability. It is the perfect time to launch the Edgy Eft, the cutting edge, youthful newt of a distribution. Edgy is ready to take risks and explore new territory, even if that means getting a little bloody. Look for Xen, Xgl/AIGLX, SELinux and other new technologies to show up in Edgy.

Now is the time to get your "out there" ideas in. The Launchpad spec tracker is where this flood of new technology will be managed. The list is already full of ideas like Beagle integration, better Bluetooth support, Debian patch feeding, cluster installation management, embedded Ubuntu, thin clients and much more. What would you like to see in Edgy?

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New Releases

SUSE Linux 10.1 RC1 released

The OpenSUSE project has announced the first SUSE Linux 10.1 release candidate. There does not seem to be a set of release notes available, but a most annoying bugs page exists. Click below for the announcement and download pointers. Here is an update on known issues.

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Aurora Sparc Linux Build-2.0

The Aurora SPARC Linux Project has announced (click below) the release of Aurora SPARC Linux Build 2.0. The Aurora SPARC Project is an effort to support SPARC (32 and 64 bit) hardware on Linux. This release is a full tree of sparc packages that match up pretty closely to Fedora Core 3.

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Debian GNU/Linux 3.1r2 released

The second update to Debian "sarge" is out. It contains a long list of security updates and a shorter list of important bug fixes.

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Open SUSE Linux virtual image CD launched

Strategiy reports that ValueSYS and Loghat Al-Asr Magazine have made available an OpenSUSE live CD localized in Egyptian.

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Distribution News

A draft schedule for Fedora Core 6

The draft schedule for the Fedora Core 6 release has been posted. The consensus of the Fedora developers seems to be that the nine-month schedule used with FC5 did not help make a better release, so FC6 will be a six-month release. The current plan calls for the first development freeze in early June and the final release on September 20.

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Fedora Project Board Update

Here's a quick update on the Fedora Project Board. Click below for the wiki links to see who is on the board, when they will be meeting, and a summary of the first board meeting at FUDCon.

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Debian news

Steve Langasek covers the X11R7, AKA Xorg 7.0, transition in unstable. "While the XSF are busily working through the bugs that are properly their own, I'll take a moment to let the rest of you know what the implications are for other packages, now that things have settled somewhat and we have a clear idea of where things stand and where they're going."

Anthony Towns covers the status of the AMD64 port in etch. "The amd64 architecture has been added to etch, and over the next few weeks (particularly as the X.org changes get worked out) should become fairly complete. amd64 in etch should be debootstrapable at this point, and usable in some situations, but is obviously pretty limited while it doesn't have X. Hopefully this will improve pretty rapidly."

It's Bug-Squashing Party time. "For long-lasting delight, we will be squashing bugs from Thursday (April 20th) to Sunday (April 23rd), in all timezones. Coordination will, as usual, happen through the #debian-bugs channel on irc.debian.org. For real interaction, if you are attending FISL, look for us at the Debian booth; it should not be hard to find. Make sure you stop by for an hour at least, and feel free to spend your whole weekend working with us, as there are lots of things you can have fun with. If you are not a Debian Developer, do not be afraid; there is much you can do to help, such as triaging bugs and writing or testing patches that fix problems so a developer can prepare a maintainer or non-maintainer upload."

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Distribution Newsletters

Debian Weekly News

The April 18 issue of the Debian Weekly News is out; it looks at the project leader election, the newly-formed python modules team, the X11R7 transition, and several other topics.

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Fedora Weekly News Issue 42

This edition of the Fedora Weekly News covers Fedora Project Board Update, Fedora Reloaded 5 Podcast, FUDConBoston 2006 Videos, Users at LinuxWorld talk up security, LinuxWorld Boston 2006 Wrap-Up, Red Hat keeps its grip on Fedora, FUDCon and folding the Fedora Foundation, plus FC5 reviews and more.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of April 17, 2006 covers LWE Boston, Python 2.4.3 in Portage, old-style PHP packages going away, Forums internationalization effort, and several other topics.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 147

The DistroWatch Weekly for April 17, 2006 is out. "As usual, we'll start with re-visiting some of the interesting news events of the past week, including the release of SUSE Linux 10.1 RC1, the election of Anthony Towns as the new Debian Project Leader, and the announcement about a new 64-bit edition of Arch Linux. This is followed by links to a handful of interesting articles: an interview with Bruce Perens about reviving UserLinux, a new review of the latest alpha release of Ubuntu, and a useful tutorial about keeping a FreeBSD server farm up-to-date. Finally, a special report from Japan analyses the current state of Linux adoption in the country."

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Package updates

Fedora updates

Updates for Fedora Core 5: netpbm (bug fixes), bind (bug fixes), at-spi (documentation improvements, new locales), librsvg2 (bug fixes), atk (enhanced documentation), dasher (update to 4.0.2), sound-juicer (bug fixes), glib2 (update to 2.10.2), gtk2 (update to 2.8.17), pango (update to 1.12.1), beagle (update to 0.2.4), metacity (bug fixes), gnome-terminal (update to 2.14.1), gtk-doc (update to 1.6), yelp (bug fixes), nautilus-cd-burner (update to 2.14.2), gnome-desktop (update to 2.14.1), gnome-session (update to 2.14.1), libgtop2 (updated translations), gnome-system-monitor (update to 2.14.1), libwnck (bug fixes), gnopernicus (update to 1.0.4), gnome-screensaver (update to 2.14.1), gnome-games (update to 2.14.1), gnome-applets (update to 2.14.1), gnome-panel (update to 2.14.1), gtkhtml3 (update to 3.10.1), gnome-user-docs (update to 2.14.2), gedit (bug fixes), gnome-desktop (update to 2.14.1.1), evolution (update to 2.6.1), eog (update to 2.14.1), epiphany (update to 2.14.1), libgnome (update to 2.14.1), libgnomeui (update to 2.14.1), file-roller (update to 2.14.1), eel2 (update to 2.14.1), gnome-power-manager (bug fixes), xorg-x11-server (bug fixes), gtksourceview (update to 1.6.1), gnome-utils (update to zenity 2.14.1), nautilus (update to 2.14.1), evolution-data-server (update to 1.6.1), evolution-connector (update to 2.6.1), libsoup (update to 2.2.92), control-center (bug fixes), kde-i18n (fix file conflict), gnome-pilot-conduits (rebuilt against pilot-link-0.11.8), arts (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdelibs (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdebase (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeaccessibility (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeaddons (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeadmin (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeartwork (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdebindings (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeedu (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdegames (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdegraphics (update to KDE 3.5.2), kde-i18n (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdemultimedia (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdenetwork (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdepim (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdesdk (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeutils (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdevelop (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdewebdev (update to KDE 3.5.2), gnome-pilot (rebuilt against pilot-link-0.11.8), jpilot (rebuilt against pilot-link-0.11.8), libvirt (upstream release update), pilot-link (rebuilt), util-linux (bug fixes), psmisc (rebuilt), gnupg (patched), perl-DBD-Pg (upgrade to upstream version 1.48), perl-XML-Dumper (upgrade to 0.81), jwhois (update), m2crypto (fix SSL.Connection.accept), firefox (fix broken language packs).

Updates for Fedora Core 4: netpbm (bug fixes), bind (bug fix), evolution (rebuilt against the latest pilot-link), arts (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeaccessibility (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeaddons (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeadmin (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeartwork (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdebase (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdebindings (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeedu (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdegames (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdegraphics (update to KDE 3.5.2), kde-i18n (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdelibs (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdemultimedia (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdenetwork (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdepim (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdesdk (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdeutils (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdevelop (update to KDE 3.5.2), kdewebdev (update to KDE 3.5.2), jpilot (rebuilt against pilot-link-0.11.8), gnome-pilot (rebuilt against pilot-link-0.11.8), gnome-pilot-conduits (rebuilt against pilot-link-0.11.8), pilot-link (rebuilt).

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Newsletters and articles of interest

Bruce Perens talks UserLinux and Ubuntu (Linux Format)

Linux Format talks with Bruce Perens about UserLinux. "The problem for me with UserLinux was that when I started it I was an independent entrepreneur; I had a one-person consulting company. So I had to go and make enough sales so that I made a living every month, I had to be an open source leader, and I had to run a number of projects. There simply wasn't room for all of that, and at some point... no one was paying me to work on UserLinux, and supporting my family came first."

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Building a FreeBSD Build System (O'ReillyNet)

O'ReillyNet covers setting up a build system for FreeBSD. "To set up a FreeBSD build system, you need three components. A build server is the first requirement. It should be either a fairly beefy uniprocessor or a lesser SMP-based machine. The second component is a staging server, which is basically a test machine where you can test the build without potentially destroying a production box. This doesn't have to be a machine with much fanfare, but it should be as close as possible to the rest of your machines to ensure an accurate test platform. The third component, called the build set, consists of all the clients to which you want to install the updates. These are your production machines."

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The Perfect Setup - Fedora Core 5 (64-bit) (HowtoForge)

HowtoForge details the process of setting up a Fedora Core 5 server on a 64-bit system. "This is a detailed description how to set up a Fedora Core 5 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (web server (SSL-capable), mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS!), DNS server, FTP server, MySQL server, POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.). This tutorial is written for the 64-bit version of Fedora Core 5, but should apply to the 32-bit version with very little modifications as well."

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Stunning Linux Distro Continues Development (LXer)

The folks at Lobby4Linux.com take a look at Elive and interview the developer. "Lobby4Linux.com has been active in an attempt to not only simplify Linux, but to incorporate an easier menu and help system. We have described what this "Linux on Training Wheels" or "Linux-Lite" would look like. In our search for such a distro, we stumbled across Elive. Elive is a Debian-based distro that incorporates both the E-16 and E-17 Enlightenment environments."

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Distribution reviews

Looking Ahead: Ubuntu Linux 6.06 (Mad Penguin)

Mad Penguin reviews Ubuntu's Dapper Drake Flight 5 (alpha). "Performance with this release was very good. It's been a while since I reviewed Ubuntu 5.10, but it feels faster to me. Call me crazy. It definitely outperformed Fedora Core 5 on the same machine. Hands down. This is good news for Ubuntu I suppose, since Fedora 5 is the "big thing" right now in distroland. When Ubuntu Dapper comes to fruition, it is going to be something to contend with on the desktop."

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Fedora Core 5: Shape Shifter (eWeek)

eWeek reviews Fedora Core 5. "Fedora 5 ships with an updated version of the open-source Xen hypervisor project, which first appeared in Fedora in Version 4. We noticed right away that the Fedora team has smoothed out some of the under-the-hood wrinkles that had marred Fedora's previous Xen implementation. For instance, Xen requires particular modifications to a system's C library to avoid a specific performance hit; with earlier Fedora versions, this called for some hackery to get Xen working properly."

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My desktop OS: Frugalware (NewsForge)

Here's a quick look at Frugalware. "Frugalware is in a good niche between Slackware and ArchLinux. Frugalware's philosophy is similar to that of ArchLinux -- make the system simple and logical so you don't have to rely on a GUI to use it. The thing I like most about Frugalware is that, unlike ArchLinux, it provides a full stable branch in addition to the current one, which is updated every six months."

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Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
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