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Debian Lenny and the Eee PC?

The ASUS Eee PC, a subnotebook computer, was first introduced at at COMPUTEX Taipei 2007. The first models came with a modified version of the Xandros operating system. Xandros has roots in Debian, and strives to be easy-to-use for first time Linux users and Windows-centric businesses. The company has never been afraid of using proprietary components to make that happen, which has made it less popular with free software fans.

The little PCs, meanwhile, proved to be very popular. According to Wikipedia, ASUS sold over 300,000 units in 2007. Microsoft must have felt left out, so the next generation of the little notebooks were available with a modified version of XP. At the 2008 COMPUTEX DistroWatch noted that "not all was well at the ASUS stand. As a visitor interested in Linux, I was disappointed to find just one of the products on display running the open source operating system. Even worse was the fact that the entire area was plastered with advertisements displaying large Windows and Microsoft logos. The only flyer available at the stand was a Microsoft one entitled "It's better with Windows"."

Naturally, the free software community has been working on free Linux variants to run on these small boxes. The most notable projects are EeeDora, a Fedora based variant and the DebianEeePC project.

Now it seems the Debian effort may have a chance at becoming an official OS for the 2009 Eee PC. In a recent post to the Debian-eeepc-devel mailing list, Ben Armstrong says, "I just received an encouraging note from Ellis Wang of Asus in Taiwan following up on Martin Michlmayr's suggestions to Asus about how they could work more closely with the Debian community. Ellis has assigned Robert Huang the task of putting a working relationship in place between Asus and Debian, with backup provided by five other Asus employees."

It would be great if ASUS would make pre-installed Debian Eee PC models. But even if they don't, free software enthusiasts can install their choice of EeeDora or custom Debian for themselves.

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New Releases

openSUSE 11.0 GM released

The openSUSE 11.0 GM release is available. "The 11.0 release of openSUSE includes more than 200 new features specific to openSUSE, a redesigned installer that makes openSUSE even easier to install, faster package management thanks to major updates in the ZYpp stack, KDE 4, GNOME 2.22, and much more." See this page for some of the highlights from this release.

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CentOS 5.2 released

CentOS 5.2 is out for the i386 and x86_64 architectures, with PowerPC, IA64, and Sparc to follow. "CentOS-5.2 is based on the upstream release EL 5.2.0, and includes packages from all variants including Server and Client. All upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with. And the option to further enable external repositories at install time is now available in the installer."

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BackTrack 3 Final has been released

BackTrack, a live CD for penetration testing, has released v3. "As usual, updated, sharpened, SVN'ed and armed to the teeth. This release we have some special features such as spoonwep, fastrack and other cool additions."

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Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

A report from the Debian Testing security team

The security team for the Debian Testing distribution has sent out a status report; it seems that there is now almost complete security update coverage for Testing. "The only remaining blocker for full security support at this point is the kernel. We are talking to the kernel security team about providing testing-security support, but at the moment this task lacks manpower. If you are willing to work on this, please feel free to contact us. Otherwise, in terms of security at this point we recommend using the stable kernel or if that is not an option, the unstable kernel."

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Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Council nominations are now closed

Gentoo Council nominations are closed and voting has begun. Click below for the list of nineteen candidates and other details.

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SUSE Linux and openSUSE

GNOME Helping Hands Project Launches

The openSUSE-GNOME Team has announced the launch of the Helping Hands Project. The first event will be the Helping Hands Grand Opening in the #opensuse-gnome channel on the FreeNode IRC network, June 27th. "The Helping Hands Project is designed to bring together experts from various areas of the GNOME environment with users who want to learn more about openSUSE-GNOME and applications that run in the GNOME environment. Helping Hands Experts will present on the topic of the week and then open the floor up for questions and answers from users."

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Other distributions

The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License

Better late than never: the NetBSD Foundation has moved to the simplified, two-clause license used by most other BSD-related projects. "We have seen organisations and people concerned about the old clause 3 (the advertising clause) in the license, to the extent where NetBSD code could not be used in commercial products; the new license means that these concerns are no longer valid." (Thanks to Rick Moen).

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Distribution Newsletters

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #96

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for June 21, 2008 covers how to run a Bug Jam, French Live CD derivative, new core developers, Jalapa (Nicaragua) government migrates to Ubuntu, Pennsylvania LoCo featured on local radio, Ubuntu in the Debian Packages Tracking System, Launchpod episode #4, new edition of the Official Ubuntu Book, and much more.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 258

The DistroWatch Weekly for June 23, 2008 is out. "openSUSE 11.0, Firefox 3.0, Red Hat Summit - these were the main events that kept the Linux news sites busy over the past week. The latest release of Novell's community distribution resulted in a large number of first-look reviews, the authors of which seemed to be impressed with the effort of the developers. Fast and pretty? Definitely. Bleeding-edge? Maybe. Unstable? Absolutely not. Despite the many experimental technologies, KDE 4 and other new features, openSUSE 11.0 appears to be a much improved, well-tested and meticulously designed operating system that should please even the most demanding desktop Linux user. In other news, Mandriva announces a release plan for its upcoming version 2009, Red Hat extends support for its enterprise distributions, Debian and ASUS cooperate on a new Debian solution for the Eee PC, and Ubuntu's Netbook Remix gets a thumbs up from a satisfied user. Finally, the DistroWatch's package database receives a number of new additions - read on for details."

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Distribution meetings

FUDCon report from the Fedora Project Leader (Red Hat Magazine)

Red Hat Magazine is carrying a report from FUDcon written by project leader Paul Frields. "Last night, Infrastructure team leader Mike McGrath announced a one-two punch of free software goodness for Fedora. First, our Fedora Account System is now an OpenID provider. This means that the identity you create in the Fedora Project can be used across thousands of web sites. The other big announcement was the new Fedora telephony system, 'Fedora Talk,' based on the juggernaut free software VoIP project Asterisk."

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