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rPath Linux 2.0 available
http://blogs.conary.com/index.php/conarynews/2008/05/09/r... rPath is pleased to announce that rPath Linux 2 is now available and recommended for general use as an appliance platform. rPath Linux is a base operating system platform on which you easily build customized virtual or software appliances, or even an entire operating system of your own. Building on the rPath Linux foundation, use rPath's tools to create and maintain your own minimal operating system stack, with "Just Enough OS" to support the applications and services you include. What's new? rPath Linux 2 is the next step in the evolution of the rPath Linux platform. In addition to a technology refresh (new versions of included packages), rPath Linux 2 is better tuned as a platform to show off your work. o Just Enough OS: rPath Linux 2 is smaller than rPath Linux 1. The group-appliance-platform recommended base software set is approximately half as large in rPath Linux 2 as rPath Linux 1, and the kernel is approximately a third smaller. o Brandable Boot Splash: rPath Linux 2 implements a graphical boot process which is easy to customize to look the way you want. It does not require that your appliance include the X Window System, and thus uses very little disk space. o Additional security mechanisms: several additional runtime security measures have been added to most packages ("stack protector" and "FORTIFY_SOURCE") and are enabled by default when you build your own software on the rPath Linux 2 platform. o More robust system boot: The syslinux boot loader is now the default bootloader. This well-maintained boot loader is highly extensible, easily branded, and most importantly can be automatically updated safely and reliably. The syslinux boot loader has been the most common boot loader for ISO images for most Linux distributions for years; now it is the most capable system boot loader as well. o The new Appliance Installer option installs your appliance software on systems in only a few minutes, requiring less memory than the earlier package-based installation mechanism. (It is still possible to use the slower package-based installation mechanism if you need to do so, but all the images we are building for the core OS at this time use the faster appliance installer.) rPath Linux Images ================== rPath has built three sets of images for rPath Linux 2. Each set is based on a different group which defines the included software set: o group-dist: A developer tool consisting of a large installation intended for developing Conary-based appliances, particularly for using Conary to discover a wide range of potential build requirements for packages, and for experimenting with the contents of the rPath Linux 2 operating system. (Remember that rPath Linux 2 is not a general-purpose desktop operating system; although X is included in this image, it is not an X desktop!) o group-text-devel: A developer tool consisting of core text-mode-only development tools, useful primarily as a platform for running the rMake build tool to build packages. o group-appliance-platform: A developer tool which contains only core software recommended to be on all normal Conary-based appliances. This is not intended to be useful itself. Instead, you can install this image and then migrate to a group that you have built using the group-appliance superclass during testing, before you create any images. You can also use it as a "vanilla" base installation on which to install software during the process of experimenting with defining an appliance. After installing appliance-specific software in an image installed from group-appliance-platform, the command conary updateall --items will show you group-appliance-platform plus the software you have installed, which you can then compare to the group recipe you define when following the step-by-step instructions for building appliances rPath Linux 2 is the software in the Conary repository; these images are merely snapshots of some of the contents of the repository. http://www.rpath.com/rbuilder/project/rpath/release?id=6071 Updates, Bugs, And Features =========================== rPath Linux 1 and rPath Linux 2 will be updated in parallel while rPath Linux 1 is maintained (at least until November 2008). Because rPath Linux 2 is an appliance operating system rather than a desktop operating system, rPath recommends that users of rPath Linux 1 update to an appropriate Conary-based operating system for their needs. Foresight Linux is the most widely-used and actively-developed Conary-based desktop operating system. Many purpose-built server appliances are maintained on rBuilder Online for various services. If none of them meet your needs, consider building your own purpose-built server appliance on rBuilder Online. It is easy to do, and step-by-step instructions teach the process easily. http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Application_to_Appliance rPath Linux update advisories, both for security and maintenance updates, are published in several ways: o To receive only security updates but not maintenance updates, subscribe to security-announce@lists.rpath.com at http://lists.rpath.com/mailman/listinfo/security-announce o To receive both security and maintenance updates, as well as summaries of changes by group version, subscribe to update-announce@lists.rpath.com at http://lists.rpath.com/mailman/listinfo/update-announce or subscribe to http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Advisories:rPath_Linux_2_Changes Please help us make rPath Linux better! Create issues to report bugs or ask for new features in rPath Linux. Visit the rPath Issue Tracking System at https://issues.rpath.com/ and use the "rPath Linux" project to file your request. Thanks ====== rPath would like to thank everyone who helped test the software that has become rPath Linux 2. Special thanks go to Foresight Linux (http://www.foresightlinux.org/) for building Foresight Linux 2 based on rPath Linux 2 betas. Conary made it possible for the Foresight developers to test the software on Foresight development and QA branches before publishing updates tested as part of Foresight to Foresight users. (Log in to post comments)
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