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DistributionsNews and Editorials gNewSense makes senseA relatively new Linux distribution has emerged whose mission is to provide a completely free and open source Linux distribution. gNewSense (originally known as gnubuntu and Gnuiscance) is designed for those who just want to use free software for everything in their operating system. Based on Ubuntu, the gNewSense Linux distribution is officially supported by the Free Software Foundation. Even though gNewSense is based on Ubuntu, it stands out from other Linux distributions since it does not focus on having numerous features; its goal is to produce a completely free distribution--in every aspect.gNewSense was created by Paul O'Malley and Brian Brazil, two Irish FOSS (free and open source software) advocates. The distribution was born because neither Ubuntu nor Debian meets O'Malley and Brazil's definition of a completely free distribution. Builder, a program that was developed in-house, was created to assemble gNewSense and it also aids the creation of a new GNU/Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake. It requires that a large amount of disk space be reserved, since it downloads over 25 gigabytes of data. Builder not only configures most of the distribution but it also creates a Live CD of the newly created Linux distro. The gNewSense distribution differs from its parents in many ways, primarily in the removal of some non-free firmware from the Linux kernel. Furthermore it includes several software development tools such as gcc, make, and GNU Emacs which it installs by default, and it only runs on the x86 platform. To cater to hackers, bsdgames and nethack are also installed. The gNewSense community's beliefs on kernel firmware are stricter than Fedora's so that gNewSense users can be one hundred percent free of proprietary software. The second major difference between it and Ubuntu is gNewSense's repository changes. The "multiverse" repository is disabled and the "restricted" repository was removed entirely. gNewSense encourages users to download free and open source software by enabling the "universe" and "main" repositories. Although most software in the "universe" repository is free and open source, the gNewSense team has been forced to remove several packages that were not completely free due to licensing issues, such as nvidia-xconfig (a package to configure non-free drivers) and gstreamer-0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse (which allows gstreamer applications to play a myriad of closed-source codecs). In the kernel, over 115 files that are in Ubuntu that did not comply with gNewSense's free software beliefs were removed from project since its 1.1 release earlier this month. Recently, gNewSense has been making some changes and considering others. The community recently set up a forum and although gNewSense provides its users with full security updates, they are also planning a community-managed software repository, with some of the same principles of the Fedora community (which maintains livna.org). The community managed repository would be for software that gNewSense will not distribute. Some users have also proposed a new distribution logo which combines the aspects of the Ubuntu and GNU logos. The results look promising. Some potential users may be discouraged by a question that was raised about the frequency of gNewSense package updates. Brian Brazil responded "7 months isn't old, it's actually very new. 10 years is old. Stability is important, and it's a lot easier to track LTS which has major changes once every 3 years, rather than every 6 months. Thus far, noone [sic] has put any effort into working on the non-LTS releases." This could be one disadvantage to using gNewSense over Fedora. gNewSense is a great example of what a completely free Linux distribution should be. It allows its users to free themselves from proprietary clutches with ease of the apt package manager, while giving it the stability and speed of Ubuntu and Debian. This project has a promising future.
New Releases Foresight Linux 1.0 goes gold (DesktopLinux.com)DesktopLinux.com carries an announcement of the Foresight Linux 1.0 release. "Project maintainer Ken VanDine on Jan. 28 announced the release of Foresight Linux 1.0, the first stable release of the rPath-based desktop Linux distribution after nearly two years of development. It sports a new 2.6.19.2 kernel and the GNOME desktop environment."
LFS LiveCD 6.2-5 releasedA new stable version of the Linux From Scratch LiveCD, v6.2-5, has been released. This version has features a 2.6.16.38 kernel, and several bug fixes.
openSUSE 10.2 Live DVD availableopenSUSE 10.2 Live DVD image is available. "The Live DVD image has a size of 1.7 GB and can be used on every x86 compatible system with at least 512 MB of memory. It contains a base desktop system (KDE and Gnome) with applications for office, multimedia and internet usage."
Trustix Secure Linux 3.0.5 RC 1The first release candidate for Trustix Secure Linux 3.0.5 is available for testing. This release features a 2.6.19.2 kernel, MySQL 5.0.27 plus lots of security and bug fixes.
Distribution News Ubuntu Live: Call for Participation is OpenUbuntu Live is the first official conference dedicated to Ubuntu users. "Program chairs are building an event that will offer expert-led tutorials, big-picture plenary gatherings, focused sessions, and a lively "hallway track" to bring participants face to face with the worldwide Ubuntu community." Ubuntu Live is happening July 22-24, 2007 in Portland, Oregon, right alongside the O'Reilly 2007 Open Source Convention (OSCON). Proposals are due by February 14, 2007.
openSUSE-community.orgA new website for the openSUSE community has been unveiled. openSUSE-Community.org. "We invite all openSUSE users to contribute and use the pages on the website there, and hope that with the help of the entire community we can make it a truly valuable and unified resource, along with openSUSE.org."
SUSE Style Guides Open to the CommunityThe style guidelines of SUSE documentation and program texts have been released as an openSUSE project hosted by Novell Forge. "These guides should apply to both internal and external openSUSE projects, so your participation can influence the future of texts in YaST and the official manuals, among other things. The guides are licensed under the GFDL to allow other projects to take advantage them."
New openSUSE Mailinglists - networking/usabilityThe openSUSE project has two new mailing lists available, one for networking and the other for usability discussions. Click below for subscription information.
Metisse: you thought you knew what 3D was...Mandriva has announced plans to integrate the Metisse window system into its next distribution and unveils this technology in a Live CD. "Metisse is a window management tool in 3D developed by two French researchers from the In Situ project, available under the GPL license, for Linux only. Contrary to a 3D graphical environment (a "cube"), Metisse offers an innovative way to manage windows: only the windows move, making the possible variations endless. Metisse is not a 3D desktop but a Human-Computer Interface (HCI) technology."
Commercial DVR Software Comes to Desktop LinuxLinspire, Inc. and SageTV have announced the availability of SageTV Media Center Version 6 for users of the Linspire and Freespire desktop Linux operating system.
Smolt: Fedora Hardware ProfilerSmolt is a hardware profiler for Fedora. The Fedora folks would like to get a better idea of what type of hardware is out there in the Fedora universe. It's still in beta but those of you running FC6 or newer (rawhide) can participate.
Congratulations and thank youMatthew Szulik, Chairman and CEO of Red Hat, has sent out this open letter. "On behalf of all Red Hat associates, I want to thank all members of the worldwide open source community for committing their time, skill and intellect in creating a free and open source success - the Fedora OS."
D-I RC2 kick-off (or: bits from the D-I team)Frans Pop has some bits from the Debian Installer team. "With the upload of the new kernel for Etch, we can now start seriously preparing the RC2 release of Debian Installer. As you all know, this is one of the main remaining things that needs to happen before Etch can be released."
New Distributions NimbleXNimbleX is a small but versatile operating system which is able to boot from a small CD, from flash memory like USB pens or MP3 players and even from the network. Because it runs entirely from a CD, USB or network it doesn't require installation or even much hardware. NimbleX is based on Slackware with the use of linux-live scripts. NimbleX 2007 is the current version. TuxMachines has this review of NimbleX 2007. (Thanks to Stefan Grigorescu)
Distribution Newsletters Debian Weekly NewsThe Debian Weekly News for January 30, 2007 covers an interview with Anthony Towns on Dunc Tank, status of the Alpha port, standards for how applications organize data and configuration files, a proposed Social Committe for Debian, a request for translation updates, a Debian-Installer Loader for win32, a new UTF-8 Migration Wizard, Debian at the Chemnitzer Linux-Tage 2007, and several other topics.
Fedora Weekly News Issue 75The Fedora Weekly News for January 29, 2007 has articles on Fedora 7 Test 1 Freeze, Fedora 7 Test 1 Approaching, Plymouth: The next generation RHGB, The Top Ten Reasons to Attend SCALE, Amanda 2.5.1p2 RPMS are available for Fedora Core 6, and much more.
Gentoo Weekly NewsletterThe Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for January 22, 2007 covers the release of Flash Player 9, Adopt-a-dev update, end of KBase and much more.
Ubuntu Weekly News: Issue #29The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for January 27, 2007 covers the new Ubuntu Scribes team, the Ubuntu Support Team, Ubuntu IRC Channels Statistics, LoCo News, Weekly Quiz Update, Changes in Feisty, OSDL Survey Says: Ubuntu most popular Linux Distro, Canonical named in top 20, and several other topics.
Minor distribution updates Source Mage Stable Grimoire 0.6 ReleasedSource Mage GNU/Linux has a new version of the Grimoire. "Users of stable merely need to run 'sorcery system-update'. Spells listed on the release wiki were tested and qualified to have no known defects of "gating" severity at the time of this release."
Package updates Debian Packages for 2.0.8 of Linux-HADebian packages of the recent Linux-HA (High Availability) 2.0.8 release are available for Debian Sarge (2.0.8-0bpo0 backports.org) and Sid/Etch (2.0.8-1 at debian.org).
Fedora updatesUpdates for Fedora Core 6: spamassassin (annoying typo fix), squirrelmail (clean up .orig files), systemtap (development refresh), crontabs (rebuilt), xorg-x11-drv-trident (update to 1.2.3), cman (synched to the latest RHEL5 cman package), enscript (bug fix), policycoreutils (update to upstream), xorg-x11-drv-mouse (update to 1.2.1), hsqldb (updgrade to 1.8.0.7), nautilus (fix crash), glib2 (update to 2.12.9), gtk2 (update to 2.10.8), gfs2-utils (new upstream sources), xorg-x11-drv-mga (mga-1.4.5-no-hal-advertising.patch), gnome-python2-extras (correct a packaging error), autofs (unspecified), pinfo (bug fixes), gnome-screensaver (bug fix), emacs (update to 21.4-17.3), dvgrab (new upstream release v2.1), PyQt (update to 3.17), sip (update to PyQt-3.17/sip-4.5), fetchmail (bug fix), libdv (new upstream release), netpbm (bug fixes), autofs (not specified), traceroute (bug fixes).Updates for Fedora Core 5: squirrelmail (clean up .orig files), gcc (update from gcc-4_1-branch), enscript (bug fix), gphoto2 (bug fix), spamassassin (annoying typo fix), pinfo (bug fixes), PyQt (update to PyQt-3.17/sip-4.5), fetchmail (bug fix), netpbm (bug fixes), sip (update to PyQt-3.17/sip-4.5).
rPath updatesUpdates for rPath Linux 1: conary, conary-build, conary-repository (Conary 1.1.16 maintenance release).
Ubuntu updatesUpdates for Ubuntu 6.10: app-install-data-commercial (added channels/opera.desktop and channels/realplayer.desktop), app-install-data-commercial (fix edgy-commercial channel description), xubuntu-system-tools (add debian/patches), lvm2 (fix dev_is_md check on big endian machines), system-tools-backends (no-change upload to edgy-updates), gnome-applets (no-change upload to edgy-updates), gnome-system-tools (no-change upload to edgy-updates), xubuntu-system-tools (no-change upload to edgy-updates), gnome-netstatus (no-change upload to edgy-updates), app-install-data-commercial (new opera/realplayer packages added), gnome-panel (no-change upload to edgy-updates), lvm2 (backport endian fix for dev_is_md from upstream), digikam (bug fixes), foo2zjs (bug fixes), udev (no-change upload to edgy-updates), azureus (bug fixes), python-imaging (backport of missing ${shlibs:Depends}), nautilus (debian patches), python-apt (protect against not-parsable strings sent from dpkg), epiphany-browser (debian patches).Updates for Ubuntu 6.06 LTS: app-install-data-commercial (added sugarcrm), synaptic (bug fix), app-install-data-commercial (fix capitalisation/description of sugarcrm and dapper-commercial.eula), glibc (bug fixes), lvm2 (fix dev_is_md check on big endian machines), lvm2 (backport endian fix for dev_is_md from upstream), mousepad (address issues raised by QA Team), apt (bug fixes), python-apt (protect against not-parsable strings sent from dpkg).
Newsletters and articles of interest Debian ARM accelerates via EABI port (LinuxDevices)LinuxDevices looks at Debian's ARM port. "Embedded system specialist Applied Data Systems (ADS) has contributed an experimental new root filesystem for the ARM architecture to the Debian project. Comprised of 9,877 packages and growing, the ADS-contributed filesystem offers greatly improved floating point performance, thanks to support for ARM's EABI (embedded application binary interface)." For more information on the ARM EABI see the wiki page. (Thanks to Lennert Buytenhek)
Expert shares secrets to saving thousands with K12LTSP (Linux.com)Linux.com looks at the K12 Linux Terminal Server Project. "The K12 Linux Terminal Server Project (K12LTSP) is a thin client distribution designed for use in schools. Recently, I was invited by Robert Arkiletian, a K12LTSP contributor, to see the software in action in his computer lab at Eric Hamber Secondary School in Vancouver, Canada. We talked about the system requirements for a K12LTSP installation, investigated the available software, and discussed the success of Arkiletian's own lab, which has saved his school thousands of dollars in hardware costs."
Inside PC-BSD 1.3 (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet has an interview with three members of the PC-BSD release engineering team: Kris Moore, Director of PC-BSD, Andrei Kolu, PC-BSD Quality Manager and Charles Landemaine, translation coordinator.
Distribution reviews BSD goes live with FreeSBIE 2.0 (NewsForge)NewsForge reviews FreeSBIE. "Last year the Italian FreeBSD user group, GUFI, rekindled the FreeSBIE project to develop a live CD based on the FreeBSD operating system. After more than four months of development, and an equal number of beta releases, the project released FreesBIE 2.0 this month. Codenamed Clint Eastwood, the live CD is based on the recent FreeBSD 6.2 release, and is an ideal platform to experience BSD and learn how things are done in BSD land."
E is for elegant with Elive live CD (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews Elive. "Elive is a live CD Linux distribution based on Debian that uses the Enlightenment window manager. Elive aims to provide an aesthetically pleasing environment with a full suite of desktop applications that runs efficiently on older systems. Its developers aren't finished yet, but they've come a long way with Elive since the release of 0.3 more than a year ago. This CD shows how beautiful distributions can become without being bloated."
Ubuntu Christmas Edition and Linux Mint Review (OSWeekly)OSWeekly reviews Linux Mint and the Ubuntu Christmas Edition. Both projects strive to make it easier for users to install proprietary applications. "[It's] Ubuntu's perceived openness that both helped propel its adoption as well as hinder it. It's an interesting double edged sword as a large number of us from the Linux community have dropped our previous distributions in favor of using Ubuntu, but at the same time, we see people from the Windows world showing little patience with it when they discover that much of the things that they need to successfully make the switch are not included with this particular distribution."
Lesser known "mini" Linux runs from RAM (Linux Devices)Linux Devices covers the release of Mustang Linux 2.3.1. "Mustang Linux, a fork of Buffalo Linux and a newcomer to the "mini" Linux distribution field, achieved a v2.3.1 release earlier this month. The lightweight distro, which can run entirely from RAM, is based on a 2.6.16 kernel and offers a choice of desktops, the project team said. Like some other "mini" Linux distros, such as Puppy, Mustang boots from the CD and loads the base operating system into RAM, without requiring a hard drive. It occupies 168MB of RAMDISK and requires a system having a 586 (or greater) processor and at least 256MB of total RAM."
Pardus gives Linux a custom lift (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews Pardus 2007. "Apart from a KDE desktop and applications, the developers of the Pardus 2007 Linux distribution have built an entire distribution from scratch. Pardus, released last month, has its own multilingual installer, custom dependency-resolving package manager, and an INIT system that slashes boot times by several seconds. The distribution has come a long way since its first release in 2005, when it was based on Gentoo and lacked a package manager. Thanks to its custom tools, it's one of the easiest Linux distribution to run and manage."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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