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The 'New Releases' Season is Upon Us...

[This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar]

It is that time of the year when commercial Linux companies are readying their new boxes full of the latest and greatest Linux software. While their programmers do the last minute debugging and marketing departments prepare for the grand product launches, for the consumers among us it's time to face the usual decisions: to upgrade or not to upgrade? And should we stick with the existing choice or try a different distribution? Let's take a look at what we can expect to come our ways within the next few weeks.

Slackware Linux, the oldest surviving Linux distribution, is the first one to grace us with a new release this season. What's new in 9.0? This question is best answered by this little dialog I noted on a public forum discussing one of the Slackware release candidates. The question: "What has Slackware accomplished? Red Hat has given us plenty of useful utilities, SuSE has developed YaST, Mandrake has drakconf, but what about Slackware? All they do is compile packages that others develop and put them on a CD, nothing extra, no major accomplishment." And this was one reader's reply: "Thank you, Slackware, for not putting anything extra into your distribution. This is why you develop the most stable, dependable and bug-free Linux distribution on earth!"

Yes, Slackware is like a medieval city surrounded by modern skyscrapers, a stark contrast of an installer and package management tools developed in mid-nineties, together with the most up-to-date software found in any distribution. The result is highly appealing as demonstrated by Slackware's continuing popularity as the tool of choice for many seasoned Linux users and administrators. Suggest that they switch to something else and they'll laugh at you...

MandrakeSoft will launch Mandrake Linux 9.1 shortly. Users who have tested the release candidates have reportedly been impressed with the product's stability and lack of major bugs as well as some of the new features. What can we expect? One of the main new features is the inclusion of a NTFS partition resizing tool, which makes Mandrake only the second distribution, after Xandros Desktop, offering this feature. A new theme called "Galaxy", running under both KDE and GNOME desktop environments, has been revealed to make the user interface more consistent. Another new and long overdue feature is "zeroconf" which promises to make network configuration as easy as plugging the cables into your network's workstations and servers. All this, together with the fact that the applications on offer were chosen by their users, the MandrakeClub members, and you seemingly have a winner.

Of course, there is a big question that has to be answered sooner or later. Will 9.1 be the MandrakeSoft's last release in its present form? Or will the company survive their financial woes and come out as strong as before? MandrakeSoft's practice of releasing a new version to the FTP servers at the same time it goes to the manufacturer allows many people to download the release before the boxed sets are available. This practice has pleased Mandrake users, but it also cuts into Mandrake sales. Their customer support was reported to be far from top-notch. Producing a quality distribution is the first priority, but there is much more to generating revenue. Mandrakesoft has a thin line to walk to generate the revenue they need to survive, while keeping their customers happy with cutting edge software that is freely available. If they can do that, we will likely see many more Mandrake releases in the years to come.

SuSE Linux AG has announced that a new release, version 8.2, will be available on April 3 in Europe and on April 14 in North America. Besides all the latest software, the new release claims to be the first distribution shipping a professional video editing application called MainActor. The release also provides improved wireless networking support, tools for automatic network reconfiguration for mobile computer users as well as further improvements to the YaST configuration utility and enhanced security. Certainly a very tempting bunch of features.

Other major distributions will no doubt follow soon. Red Hat, which traditionally does not pre-announce final releases, has produced three betas of its upcoming Red Hat Linux 8.1 and even the Debian developers have started talking about a package freeze of their testing branch called "Sarge". The next two months will be highly interesting for the industry while all the major players try their best to please the consumers. We will be watching the competition with great interest.

Of course it's not just the major players that are announcing new releases. Below we have new release announcements from Immunix and Yellow Dog Linux. Who knows, maybe even the long awaited Gentoo Linux 1.4 will be out soon.

Comments (3 posted)

Distribution News

Slackware 9.0 released

Slackware has quietly announced the release of Slackware Linux 9.0 in a change log entry. "Tue Mar 18 01:44:41 PST 2003
Slackware 9.0 is released... happy release day!"

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Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 released

Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 has been released; it includes all the latest software, of course, along with improved Apple hardware and "Mac-on-Linux" support.

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Immunix Secured Linux 7+ Released

WireX Communications has announced the release of Immunix Secured Linux 7+. Based on Red Hat Linux 7.0, Immunix includes security updates for dozens of vulnerabilities, compiled with WireX's StackGuard and FormatGuard modifications. The 2.2.19 Linux kernel is extended with several Openwall technologies as well as WireX's SubDomain mandatory access control technologies.

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Mandrake Linux 9.0 for AMD 64-bit technology is available.

MandrakeSoft announced the release of Mandrake Linux 9.0 for Opteron® processors based on AMD 64-bit technology. "This development will lead to a planned release in April 2003 of the 'Mandrake Linux Corporate Server 2.1' for AMD Opteron®, a product dedicated to server deployment in medium to large accounts. Later in June 2003, MandrakeSoft will release 'MandrakeClustering' for Opteron®, an easy-to-use clustering solution designed to answer needs in the intensive calculation area that will greatly benefit from the power of AMD 64-bit technology."

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Debian GNU/Linux

The Debian Weekly News for March 18, 2003 is available. This issue covers the work of the French chapter of the Free Software Foundation Europe, and others, have been doing to have Free Software classified as an intangible world cultural heritage term by the UNESCO. Also DPL elections, Debian Project at CeBIT and OOoCon, and more.

Debian Planet reports that KDE 3.1 is now (finally) complete in 'sid'. Uploads of the missing pieces, kdenetwork and kdepim have been accepted into the archive.

Linux Orbit installs Debian Gnu/Linux on a Rebel NetWinder 3100 and provides a description of the process.

This Debian Planet article points to three Debian-based live-cd projects: KNOPPIX, GNOPPIX (in German), and Morphix. We've added another one, see TrX in the 'New Distributions' section, below.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter -- Volume 2, Issue 11

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for March 17, 2003 is available. This week's issue contains an update from the Game Developers Conference; GWN is looking for contributors; rsync.gentoo.org shows signs of strain as Gentoo Linux continues to grow; Gentoo Linux launches a "hardened Gentoo" effort; and new items at the Gentoo Store.

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"Learning Red Hat Linux, Third Edition" Released by O'Reilly

O'Reilly has released Learning Red Hat Linux, Third Edition. "The third edition of "Learning Red Hat Linux" eases newcomers into the world of Linux, guiding them through the process of installing and running Red Hat Linux on their PCs. Written in a friendly, easy-to-understand style, this book contains all that readers will need to get started, including the complete Red Hat 8.0 distribution on CDs. With new tutorials covering OpenOffice Tools and the desktop, this book is ideal for first-time Linux users who want to install the operating system on a new PC or convert an existing system to Linux. Throughout the book, the author addresses security issues on a level appropriate for a beginning user."

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New Distributions

TrustedDebian beta release

As reported on DebianPlanet, the first TrustedDebian beta release is now available. TrustedDebian is an upgrade to Debian 3.0 which adds stack protection, address space layout randomization, FreeS/WAN, and some recent security packages. Future releases will include RSBAC mandatory access controls (which distinguishes this project from other secure Debian efforts, which are using SE-Linux).

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TrX

TrX is a project that aims to produce a Debian GNU/Linux-based desktop router and firewall package based on Knoppix. This Turkish distribution boots directly from CD-ROM, so there is no hard disk installation necessary. The initial Freshmeat release of TrX, version 3.2, was made available March 12, 2003.

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freevix

freevix is a tiny GNU/Linux distribution designed to provide a complete but small foot print environment for people wanting to build a media player system with Freevo. Initial version 0.2 was released March 12, 2003.

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Minor distribution updates

Ark Linux

Ark Linux has released v1.0-0.alpha7.1. Ark Linux is designed especially for desktop use, primarily for people without prior Linux experience.

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MoviX

MoviX has released v0.8.0pre2 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: Menu entries to play all audio/video files of a CD/DVD drive or hard drive partition have been added. TV-out support has been improved. Many SCSI and USB modules and DHCP support have been introduced. Hardware auto-detection and audio card support has been greatly improved." MoviX v0.8.0pre3 is also available.

eMoviX is another branch of the MoviX project. This micro (7MB) Linux distribution is meant to be embedded in a CD together with all video/audio files you want. eMoviX version 0.8.0pre6 was released March 13, 2003.

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Server optimized Linux

Server optimized Linux has released v16.00 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This release contains recent packages such as the Linux kernel 2.4.20, Apache 1.3.27, Sendmail 8.12.8, OpenSSL 0.9.7a, MySQL 3.23.55, etc. There is also an update system now available."

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Trustix Secure Linux

Trustix Secure Linux has released bug fixes to file, tcpdump and man.

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Distribution reviews

Who Wins the Shootout? (OfB.biz)

Open for Business concludes the Penguin Shootout and announces the winner. "In our series, we've looked at Xandros Desktop Deluxe 1.0, Mandrake Linux 9.0, Red Hat Linux 8.0, SuSE Linux 8.1, and Lindows OS 3.0. Additionally, several distributions that did not receive a full review this time around but were also considered for the top spot include Lycoris Desktop/LX Amethyst, Knoppix 3.1, and Ark Linux Alpha 6 (the former two of those will join us in the next shootout)."

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The state of SuSE (Register)

Robin "Roblimo" Miller interviews SuSE U.S. representative Holger Dyroff, about SuSE's new products, trends in Linux desktop/consumer use, and more. "The new announced SuSE Linux 8.2 will not be a successor of the SuSE Linux Office Desktop but a new version of our successfull Personal and Professional series!"

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UnitedLinux Operating System (ZDNet)

ZDNet carries an in-depth look at UnitedLinux, from Gartner. " UnitedLinux is scalable to handle server configurations with increased processors, tasks, threads and users. As such, it supports asynchronous input/output for busy systems and methods to enhance process scheduling on symmetric multiprocessors (SMPs) and can be used to build server farms for workload management. For high availability, UnitedLinux supports Posix-compliant event logging and notification, dynamic probes for profiling and debugging, hot-plug PCI support, and record- and event-tracing mechanisms. It also provides a variety of security features, such as Kerberos network authentication and basic firewall configuration. At the foundation of UnitedLinux is a core set of components, including the Linux kernel 2.4.19, GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 3.2, glibc 2.2.5, K Desktop Environment (KDE) 3.0 and XFree86 4.2. The 2.4.19 Linux kernel includes several hundred patches."

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