Distributions

News and Editorials

Linux Standards Base Certification for many distributions

The Free Standards Group announced "that every major Linux distribution vendor has now applied for and passed Linux Standards Base Certification." We would amend that statement to read "every major RPM-based distribution vendor". Notably missing from the list of LSB-certified distributions are Slackware and Debian.

For now at least, RPM is the standard, and that's unlikely to change any time soon. Chapter 16 (Software Installation) of the LSB 1.3 begins, "Applications should be provided in the RPM packaging format as defined in this specification."

It's a reasonable standard given its wide use. Other distributions may have a "better way", but they are not as widely implemented as RPM.

Debian is LSB compliant in most respects. Though packaging is done with dpkg rather than RPM, support for the RPM format is supplied. Debian also includes a "lsb" package that sets up most of what is needed for LSB compliance. What Debian lacks, in particular, is a company that can deal with the paperwork, pay the required fees. Debian is a group of volunteers with no legal existence to sign all the paperwork. These are the issues that will prevent Debian from gaining LSB certification in the near future, even when it has achieved LSB compliance.

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Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

The Debian Weekly News for January 21, 2003 is out. This week covers the EFF award nomimations; a Debian swirl seen from space; and much more.

The Debian Project will be represented at events in Australia, USA and Germany.

Raphael Hertzog provides an update on the Package Tracking System and the DebianEdu subproject.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter -- Volume 2, Issue 3

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for January 20, 2003 is out. This week, a sneak peek at the next release of Gentoo Linux (1.4_rc3) and a Gentoo PPC developer presentation at MIT.

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Lindows Offers Educational Package (TechWeb)

TechWeb looks at an educational package from Lindows. "Software maker Lindows.com Inc. is selling its desktop version of open-source Linux at a special rate to schools. The San Diego company will sell the Lindows operating system for an unlimited number of computers for $500 a year. The OS will come with educational software, Web-browsing, e-mail, and other basic programs."

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Mandrake Linux

The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for January 16 is out. It looks at the Mandrake Linux 9.1 beta, RPM Voting, and several other topics - but there is no mention of the bankruptcy filing.

A number of bugs have been fixed in new sane and sane-related packages. A number of new models of scanners are now supported, and a serious bug was fixed with the Epson Perfection 1260 support, which in older versions of sane could potentially physically damage the scanner. A new library is also provided (libieee1284) which provides additional support for parallel port scanners.

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Slackware Linux

Slackware Linux has seen a number of changes in slackware-current. Extras such as docbook have been added, along with new non-English word lists for Aspell. There were several security fixes this week as well. You can find more about the security fixes in this week's security section. Visit the change log for complete details.

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SuSE Linux

SuSE Linux annnounced the availability of the SuSE Linux Office Desktop, which combines SuSE Linux 8.1 with Codeweavers CrossOver Office 1.3.1 to provide users a system for the office desktop.

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Minor distribution updates

2-Disk Xwindow embedded Linux

2-Disk Xwindow embedded Linux has released 1disk1.0 final with major bugfixes. "Changes: This release actually works now, and includes various new features and bugfixes."

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Astaro Security Linux

Astaro Security Linux has released v3.215 with major security fixes, quickly followed by 3.216 with additional bugfixes. "Changes: This Up2Date fixes security issues in the DHCP server, DHCP client, and HTTP Proxy. Some small improvements and changes are included too."

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Aurora SPARC Linux Project

The Aurora SPARC Linux Project announced Build 1.0 (Ansel). This is the first "STABLE" build of Aurora.

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GNU-Darwin revs!

The GNU-Darwin project is in stable production status, and some key web pages have been updated..

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KNOPPIX

KNOPPIX has released v3.1-2003-01-20 with major bugfixes. "Changes: This version includes lots of updates and bugfixes, including fixes for the checkroot.sh script (it now adds the correct / entry after a HD install), better support in isdn-config for non-hisax ISDN cards, and more KDE menu reordering."

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Lycoris Desktop/LX

Lycoris and Transgaming Technologies unveiled the GamePak gaming suite for Desktop/LX. The GamePak gaming suite includes 5 games, plus access to WineX, TransGaming's cross platform gaming software that gives users the ability to play over 150 Windows games on Desktop/LX.

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NSA Security Enhanced Linux

NSA Security Enhanced Linux has released v2003011510 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: The base 2.5 kernel version has been updated to 2.5.58. The base 2.4 kernel version remains at 2.4.20, but the LSM patch and the SELinux module for 2.4 have changed since the last release. New contributed policy analysis and policy management tools have been added to the provided tools and utilities. Hooks for xattr operations were added to 2.4. Inode security initialization has been reworked using the d_instantiate hook. The nfsd private file bug in 2.4 has been fixed and the task_kill bug in 2.5 has been fixed."

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OpenPKG 1.2 released

Version 1.2 of the OpenPKG "cross-platform software packaging facility" has been announced. This release contains 361 packages wrapped up in a "roll your own distribution" packaging and build system.

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RxLinux

RxLinux has released v1.2.7 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: The kernel was updated to 2.4.20. A PPTP connection dropping problem was fixed. The lvs patch was updated to 1.0.7. Support for PCMCIA network devices was added. Support for serial console was added. The missing libpam library was added. PPP dial-on-demand is now working."

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Scyld Beowulf

AMD has announced that Scyld Computing Corporation is developing a 64-bit version of Scyld Beowulf, a clustering OS operating system, for systems based on the upcoming AMD Opteron processors.

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ttylinux

ttylinux has released v2.7 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release updates dhcpcd, modutils, util-linux, and tinylogin to their latest versions and adds ipmasqadm."

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xbox-linux

xbox-linux has released v11-01-2003 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: Ed's ISO 0.0.10 is available with support for v1.1 XBoxes. Note that the included bootloader is erroneous, so you have to download the postinstall images separately. Presentations and documents have been added."

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Zool Linux

Zool Linux has released v3 which adds networking support.

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Distribution reviews

Review of Mandrake Linux 9.1 Beta 2 (DistroWatch)

The second beta release of Mandrake Linux 9.1 is reviewed on DistroWatch. "So, is this beta 2 a significant improvement in relation to beta 1? My answer is yes, without any doubt. This beta 2 is still not for Linux beginners, it still has a few annoying bugs (but no show-stoppers) and quirks, and some essential packages are still missing (where is my kernel source?). But if MandrakeSoft can keep up with this rate of development, by beta 3 or 4 they could start concentrating on the eye-candy and their final 9.1 release would then be terrific."

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Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
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