Distributions

Ubucon Boulder

An Ubucon is an informal, lightly structured gathering of "Ubunteros" - users of Ubuntu and its derivatives. Ubucon-Boulder was held on Saturday June 2 in your editor's home town of Boulder, Colorado, so I decided to check it out.

This Ubucon was organized by Neal McBurnett and Mitch Mahan from the Ubuntu Colorado Local Team. Google's Boulder office kindly hosted this event and provided a conference room with WiFi and a projector for demonstrations.

The idea behind this Ubucon was to see what people do with Ubuntu. To that end many of us kept a Synaptic session open on our laptops to install various applications and play with them during the demonstrations. I had intended to write about the various applications that were demoed during the day, but Neal already did a fine write up based on the notes he made on the wiki in real time.

I do have a few things to add to Neal's coverage. Joey Stanford is a Canonical employee who carefully did not talk about some of the not-ready-for-release things that he is working on currently. However he did mention that the collaborative text-editor Gobby is used by the global community of Ubuntu Weekly News editors to put together the news each week. Joey also mentioned the somewhat announced Ubuntu Landscape, a paid service, much like Red Hat Network. He also said that Canonical does intend for all of Launchpad, the suite of tools used by Ubuntu developers, to be released as open source. Some of Launchpad is already open source, but some of these tools remain proprietary - and there is no time-table for when we might see that happen. Canonical is carefully balancing its need to make a profit and pay its developers with the concept that software strives to be free.

All in all, it seems that a good time was had by all attendees of Ubucon-Boulder. One does not need to be a developer, or fluent in any programming language to get involved in a community group of this kind. There are Local Teams of Ubuntu enthusiasts all over the world. So find a Local Team in your area and check it out, or if there isn't one in your area you can create one. It looks like at least some of the Colorado team will be helping out at the Edubuntu booth at the Technology in Education Conference in Copper Mountain, Colorado, June 19 - 22, 2007.

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Fedora 7 (Moonshine) released

Fedora 7 is out. "Howdy, cousins! Welcome to our little Fedora hollow, where we've brewed up some mighty, mighty Fedora 7 Moonshine for your enjoyment. Here, I'll help you pour that ... and some for me ... *cough, cough* Smoooooth ... sure does taste good. It's been sitting here in the jug for almost a whole month now!" Click below for more on this theme.

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Foresight Linux 1.3 Released

Version 1.3 of Foresight Linux has been announced. "Timed to be released with GNOME 2.18.2, the Foresight Linux team is happy and proud to announce the release of Foresight Linux 1.3. Foresight Linux continues to build on it's success of releasing a stable Linux distribution with the latest software, including GNOME and applications such as Banshee for music management, F-Spot for photo management, Pidgin and Ekiga for internet communication and OpenOffice.org for productivity and office applications. Providing the latest versions of applications gives our users access to the latest bug fixes, and the use of Conary as a package manager makes it easy for users to update the software on their desktop."

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debian-volatile: Service Update

Andreas Barth covers recent improvements to the debian-volatile service. "We finally had the time to add a suite for Etch to volatile. During these changes, we also archived woody, and upgraded to a newer version of the archive scripts. If you notice some small hiccups, please just warn us (best by mail to debian-volatile@lists.debian.org) so that we can fix them. The changes include a different archive signing key, and separate keys per suite." debian-volatile allows stable Debian users to get updates for fast moving targets such as spam filtering and virus scanning.

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A Fedora 7 FAQ

For people looking at installing Fedora 7, there is now a Fedora 7 FAQ available with answers to questions which have come up so far.

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More Fedora 7 news

Max Spevack has a few words about Fedora 7 (sent just before the final release). "It's the middle of the night in the main Red Hat offices in Raleigh and Westford, but I amm in Berlin this week for LinuxTag, which is the largest Linux conference in Europe (10,000 visitors over 4 days). We have a great looking Fedora booth, and we are holding a FUDCon (Fedora Users and Developers Conference) here today during which we have a conference hall that probably seats 150 people all to ourselves."

The Cooperative Bug Isolation Project (CBI) is now available for Fedora 7. "CBI (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/cbi/) is an ongoing research effort to find and fix bugs in the real world. We distribute specially modified versions of popular open source software packages. These special versions monitor their own behavior while they run, and report back how they work (or how they fail to work) in the hands of real users like you. Even if you've never written a line of code in your life, you can help make things better for everyone simply by using our special bug-hunting packages."

Freshrpms has announced that all freshrpms add-on packages are now available for Fedora 7.

ATrpms has officially launched Fedora 7 support for i386, x86_64 and PPC.

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The Fedora 8 release schedule

The Fedora folks are not wasting any time; there is already a posted release schedule for Fedora 8. It's a short (five-month) development cycle this time, with the final release due on October 31. One can already imagine the Halloween-themed release announcement.

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Discounts on Red Hat training for Fedora folks

Red Hat is offering special discounts to Fedora contributors who register for upcoming Red Hat training courses. "We have two separate offers, valid in multiple regions. The details vary slightly depending on region (read on below), and the offer is valid for classes that are offered directly by Red Hat (not by Red Hat's training partners)."

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Mandriva opens Linux development center in Russia (CNews)

CNews reports on Mandriva's opening of a Russian office. "Mandriva, the official producer of Linux distribution has opened an office in St. Petersburg. One of the main tasks of the company’s representation is to help its Russian users avoid claims on behalf of the governing bodies which not always know the peculiarities of Linux OS licensing. Meanwhile, Linux might be introduced in many of St. Petersburg schools."

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Survey on commercial software for openSUSE distribution

openSUSE is running a survey on the use of commercial/proprietary software by openSUSE users. The survey will run until June 12. There's an added note about the appearance of non-proprietary TeXLive on the survey.

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Ubuntu news

The first Tribe CD, a testing milestone of Gutsy Gibbon, should be available on June 7, 2007.

Matt Zimmerman has announced that, thanks to a joint effort of Launchpad and Ubuntu developers, you can now close bugs in Launchpad automatically when you upload a source package.

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Fedora Weekly News Issue 90

The Fedora Weekly News for June 2, 2007 looks at the release of Fedora 7 (Moonshine), Freshrpms for Fedora 7, ATrpms for Fedora 7, A Few Words About Fedora 7, Discounts on Red Hat training for Fedora folks, Fedora is now an open source project, Interview of Max Spevack, Interview of Mike McGrath, Kernel hacking for laptops, fedoraproject.org promos, Some comments on Fedora 7, Fedora 7 "Moonshine": Freedom vs. Ease-of-Use (Part 1), and much more.

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Foresight Linux Newsletter Volume 1, Issue 3

The Foresight Linux Newsletter for May 2007 covers the release of Foresight Linux 1.3, GNOME 2.18.2 Live Media, installation and package updates, documentation updates, and more.

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Mandriva Linux Community Newsletter Issue # 126

The Mandriva Linux Community Newsletter for June 1, 2007 looks at Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring released, Mandriva Flash 4GB released, Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring Reviews, Erratum - Correction to promotional e-mail regarding Mastering Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring, and Mandriva Security - Better, stronger, faster.

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Ubuntu Weekly News: Issue #43

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for June 2, 2007 covers an interview with Mark Shuttleworth, newly approved Ubuntu Core Developer Sarah Hobbs, the new batch of Ubuntu Members, an interview with Daniel Holbach, and much much more.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 205

The DistroWatch Weekly for June 4, 2007 is out. "The release of Fedora 7 last week has been the dominant topic on many Linux web sites and DistroWatch is no exception; we'll comment on the release, bring you a first-look review, and present details about the project's upcoming version 8, scheduled for release at the end of October. In other news, Turbolinux introduces the world to a media player and portable operating system called Wizpy, Mandriva seeks solutions for its current financial troubles, Gentoo founder comments on SabayonLinux, and Debian updates its "volatile" infrastructure. Finally, as DistroWatch celebrates its 6th birthday, we are pleased to announce that the May 2007 donation was awarded to VectorLinux."

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DebConf7 Schedule available

The schedule for DebConf7 is available. DebConf7 takes place in Scotland June 17 - 23, 2007.

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Music 101: The Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring song recipe

Adam Williamson has written an article on using audio tools in Mandriva Spring. "Recently I was asked to write a small article talking about some of the tools related to audio in Mandriva Spring. I realized that writing a few things about the tools would be just the same as articles you can find in many websites and magazines. But instructions on creating music step from step from scratch, picking the right ingredients for "the song recipe", are rarely to be found. So I decided to try and make a song with only the tools I had available on Mandriva Spring, and write down how to do it."

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Zenwalk 4.6 mini Linux boasts latest Xfce desktop (DesktopLinux)

DesktopLinux covers the release of Zenwalk Linux 4.6. "The Zenwalk project today released Zenwalk Linux 4.6 (code-named Red Pill). The lightweight distribution utilizes a cutting-edge 2.6.21.3 Linux kernel with KVM support, along with the relatively new Xfce 4.4.1 desktop environment."

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New HowtoForge tutorials

Now available from HowtoForge:

• The Perfect Desktop - Fedora 7
• The Perfect Server - CentOS 4.5 (32-bit)
• The Perfect Xen 3.1.0 Setup For Debian Etch (i386)

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Review: Fedora 7 (Linux.com)

Linux.com has a review of Fedora 7. "Fedora 7 was released last week, a little bit behind schedule, with a spate of new features, updates, and live CD installable "spins" of Fedora in KDE and GNOME flavors. I found a lot of good in this release, but a bug in the FireWire stack that attacked my external backup drive made this release just a little shy of perfect."

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Fedora 7 "Moonshine": Freedom vs. Ease-of-Use (TuxMachines)

TuxMachines reviews Fedora 7 "Moonshine". "In my opinion, the entire issue of free vs. proprietary and patent-protected vs. patent-free is the biggest one facing Linux as a whole right now. I certainly understand and respect Red Hat's wishes to be free of all the legal repercussions that could arise if they were to be sued; after all, they've got a business to run, and Fedora doesn't earn them any money. I also respect and understand the open-source philosophy. Meanwhile, I want to listen to my MP3s, and watch my movies and YouTube clips, like anyone else."

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Business vs Community: Xandros and PCLinuxOS compared (Polishlinux.org)

Polishlinux.org compares Xandros Desktop with the more community-friendly PCLinuxOS.

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Sidux vs. Mint: Can You Live the Pure Open Source Life? (TuxMachines)

TuxMachines compares Debian-Sid-based Sidux with Ubuntu-based Linux Mint. "Sidux and Linux Mint are similar in some fundamental ways. Primarily, they are both Debian derivations, although technically one is based on Ubuntu Linux. Both are delivered as one ~700 MB liveCD image. Both have hard drive installers, proprietary graphic driver installers, and a well rounded selection of starter applications. However, they are different in some significant ways as well."

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