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Fedora Core 6 (Zod) makes a bid for world domination

Fedora Core 6, also called Zod, is out and ready to take over the world. Of course General Zod tried to take over the world in the movie Superman II, and more recently made another bid for world domination in the TV series Smallville, but in both appearances he was defeated by Superman (or young Clark Kent). If Zod is out can Superman be far behind? Where do they come up with these names? Jesse Keating talks about Fedora naming in this Red Hat Magazine article. For those put off by the Fedora announcement, the Red Hat press release is less fun and contains more market-speak.

Fedora Core 6 is available for x86, x86_64 and PPC and it has a new theme from the Fedora Artwork Project. The DejaVu font is now the default font and Compiz is managing the windows, for the best effects using the AIGLX framework. The system-config-printer tool has been rewritten with several new features. For the desktop, both GNOME 2.16 and KDE 3.5.4 are provided. Dogtail, a GUI test tool and automation framework written in Python, is included with features that aid in the automation and testing of desktop applications. Totem has replaced Helix Player as the default media player. All applications have been rebuilt using DT_GNU_HASH for improved performance. For more performance enhancements see this page, which also lists those packages which were dropped due to license issues. Anaconda, the Fedora installer, now allows the user to specify third-party repositories, and if the install is network-aware, Fedora can reach out to those repositories and pull in additional packages. There's a new graphical Virtual Machine Manager for managing virtual machines and a graphical SELinux Trouble Shooting Tool. For more information, tours, screenshots and other useful links see Fedora Core 6 Release Summary.

Some of the main Fedora sites seem to be a bit busy right now, but there are other torrent sites and mirrors available. Also the rpm.livna.org team has announced the rpm.livna.org repository with complete support for the 6th release of Fedora Core and Fedora Extras. The Fedora Unity Project has announced the initial release of several Fedora Core 6 Live-Spin CD and DVD ISO images. These Live-Spins are based on the October 24 release of Fedora Core 6. They are available for the i386 and x86_64 architectures via BitTorrent immediately. ATrpms has also officially launched Fedora Core 6 support for i386, x86_64 and PPC. If that's not enough, freshrpms.net is ready to go with support for Fedora Core and Fedora Extras on all architectures.

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New Releases

Announcing the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 6.10

The first release candidate for Ubuntu 6.10 is available for testing. "The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Release Candidate for version 6.10 of Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu - codenamed "Edgy Eft". The Release Candidate includes installable live Desktop CDs, server images, alternate text-mode installation CDs and an upgrade wizard for users of the current stable release. We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable and suitable for testing by any user. The final release of version 6.10 is scheduled for 26 October 2006 and will be supported for 18 months on both desktops and servers."

Update: In addition to release candidates for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu, the Xubuntu release candidate is also available.

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Novell Ships SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time

Novell, Inc. has announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time. "SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time offers support for 32-bit and 64-bit processor architectures (including AMD Opteron* and Intel Xeon*), predictable interrupt response time of less than 30 microseconds, high-resolution timer support for enhanced scheduling, user-level control of simultaneous multithreading, and processor shielding. The proven real-time technology eliminates spikes in latency, ensuring consistent performance and stability. The solution is already being used in trading floor and market data servers in financial services, advanced imaging in patient healthcare, and enterprise data centers with time-critical requirements."

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Distribution News

Debian announcements

The DebConf6 video team has announced the availability of DebConf6 DVDs. "They include all formal sessions from Debian Day and DebConf, plus the group photos, the video team BoF, and some documentary videos made by Gabriella Coleman."

A server dedicated to Debian internationalization activities is publicly available. The server is hosted by the Junta de Extremadura datacenter, in Badajoz, Spain and will be used to build the Debian internationalization infrastructure.

A call for testing for the Debian Installer is out. The main focus is testing installation on various architectures.

alioth.debian.org and its related services will be stopped on Friday October 27, 2006 at 15:00 UTC. "Soon after we will do the final rsync between the current hosts (costa.d.o, haydn.d.o) and the new one (a Xen host on wagner.debian.org featuring 1TB of disk, 16GB of RAM and a bi-opteron). The rsync process will last around 4 hours. After that we will upgrade the Gforge to version 4.5. If all goes well, the services should be available again at 22:00 UTC."

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Ubuntu 5.04 reaches end-of-life on 31 October 2006

Ubuntu 5.04, "the Hoary Hedgehog" will not be supported after October 31, 2006. The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 5.04 is via Ubuntu 5.10. Read the instructions and caveats first.

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UbuntuBugDay: Testing installations

The next Ubuntu Hug Day will concentrate on downloading the installer and testing it on various machines. Or upgrading from an existing Dapper installation into an Edgy one.

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Distribution Newsletters

Fedora Weekly News Issue 63

The Fedora Weekly News for October 23, 2006 has articles on Fedora Core 6 Tours, Fedora Infrastructure Team - Help Wanted, Calling for Desktop Environment Artists, Neat Things for Fedora Core 6, Fedora Reloaded 6 Podcast Available, ATI Fedora Core 6 How-To, Flash Player 9 Update for Linux Released, Yet another online Linux distro chooser, and several other topics.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for October 16, 2006 looks at a stable new Java system, KDE 3.5.5, mailing list summaries and several other topics.

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Ubuntu Weekly News #18

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for October 14, 2006 covers KDE turning 10, Matt Zimmerman telling all, new Edgy apps and much more.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 174

The DistroWatch Weekly for October 23, 2006 is out. "On the eve of several major new releases, such as Firefox 2.0, Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu 6.10, this week's DistroWatch Weekly takes a brief look at some of the new products, comments on the new Fedora 6 release, and asks whether Firefox has lost some of its former glory. In the meantime, Xandros Corporation is rumoured to be under a "reorganisation", while Munich continues its march towards a successful switch of thousands of its desktop and server computers to LiMux, a Debian-based distribution that recently reached version 1.0. Also in this issue: a reader recommends BeaFanatIX, a light-weight and user-friendly distribution that attempts to revive the concepts of the BeatrIX project, while the "First Looks" section introduces the new Xen Demo CD 3.0.3."

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Package updates

Fedora updates

Updates for Fedora Core 5: libvirt (rebuilt against xen-3.0.2-4.FC5), xen (update for new kernel-xen), libsepol (upgrade to latest NSA version), xscreensaver (move manpages to section 6x), nautilus-cd-burner (add gnome-mount support), checkpolicy (update to latest from upstream), perl-String-CRC32 (bug fix), autofs (bug fixes), xsane (bug fix), frysk (new upstream version), iscsi-initiator-utils (based on open-iscsi svn 2.0-711), autofs (bug fixes), xsane (fix typo in scriptlet), gpart (compiled with large file support).

Updates for Fedora Core 6: gpart (compiled with large file support).

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Mandriva updates

Updates for Mandriva Linux 2007.0: subversion (bug fix), xinetd (initscript bug fix), coreutils (correct a build problem), bootsplash (bug fix).

Updates for Mandriva Corporate Server 3.0: sshd-monitor (corrects a timing issue).

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rPath updates

Updates for rPath Linux 1: anaconda, anaconda-utils, anaconda-images, anaconda-templates (updates for software appliances and derived distributions), glibc, glibc-utils, nscd (Xen support, bug fixes), chkconfig, ntsysv (bug fixes)

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Ubuntu updates

Updates for Ubuntu 6.06 LTS: dpkg 1.13.11ubuntu7~proposed (bug fixes).

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Newsletters and articles of interest

Updating Slackware using Swaret (Linux.com)

Linux.com looks at one way of keeping Slackware systems up to date. "Now that Slackware 11.0 is out, you may wonder what is the best way to update the distribution. Swaret is an open source project that aims to keep various versions of Slackware up-to-date. I use Swaret and some cron scripts to keep my servers current automatically."

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The Perfect Xen 3.0.3 Setup For Debian Sarge (HowtoForge)

HowtoForge sets up Xen on a Debian Sarge system. "This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen (version 3.0.3) on a Debian Sarge (3.1) system. Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called "virtual machines" or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other (e.g. a virtual machine for a mail server, a virtual machine for a high-traffic web site, another virtual machine that serves your customers' web sites, a virtual machine for DNS, etc.), but still use the same hardware. This saves money, and what is even more important, it's more secure. If the virtual machine of your DNS server gets hacked, it has no effect on your other virtual machines. Plus, you can move virtual machines from one Xen server to the next one."

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Distribution reviews

OpenSolaris Options Show Promise (eWeek)

eWeek reviews three OpenSolaris live CD distributions. "eWEEK Labs recently scoped out the current OpenSolaris environment, spinning up three LiveCD-based OpenSolaris x86 distributions: NexentaOS Alpha 5, Belenix 0.5 and Schillix 0.5.2. We found that none of these systems is ready for production use but that they certainly represent burgeoning development diversity for Solaris. What's more, these distributions point to intriguing new directions for Solaris, particularly in the case of NexentaOS."

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Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
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