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DistributionsNews and Editorials Tiny Core Linux 2.1: Less is moreWhile most Linux distributions have been growing in the last years to the size of a DVD, others go in the other direction and try to minimize their footprint. Most Linux users will know Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux, but one of the more recent and even more minimalist projects is Tiny Core Linux, the brainchild of Robert Shingledecker who used to work on Damn Small Linux. Tiny Core Linux is a Linux distribution that aims to be a minimal but usable desktop operating system. The minimal system requirements are a 486DX processor and 48 MB RAM. Your author downloaded Tiny Core 2.1, which comes in a 11 MB iso file. Users can burn it on CD or install it to a USB pen drive. Unsurprisingly, the distribution boots very fast and shows a minimal desktop with a one-color background. There's no simple installer to write Tiny Core to the hard drive, but there is a step-by-step installation guide on how to partition a hard drive, copy Tiny Core and install the GRUB boot loader. Under the hood we see the Linux 2.6.29 kernel, Busybox, Tiny X, FLTK, and the not so flashy but useful JWM window manager. By clicking on the desktop the user gets a menu with access to the minimal set of applications. The wbar panel at the bottom gives access to the Aterm terminal, Tiny Core's control panel application "cpanel" with access to some system tools and the "appbrowser" for installing applications. 
From less to moreTiny Core's philosophy seems to be: start small and add programs only as needed. This means that the user doesn't get bothered with a bloated set of applications that are rarely used and has complete control over which applications or drivers (e.g. for an Atheros wireless card) are installed. Tiny Core is contained in a compressed cpio archive populating the initial ramdisk upon booting of the Linux kernel and runs entirely in RAM. Additional applications can reside in RAM or be installed into a storage drive. Tiny Core essentially has four "modes of operation", one volatile and three persistent ones:
Compressed applicationsAs mentioned above, applications can be installed in Tiny Core in two ways: as a TCE extension or as a TCZ extension. A TCE extension is basically a tar.gz archive with optional menu and/or icon, which gets loaded from the partition into RAM completely. In contrast, a TCZ extension consists of a cramfs or ziofs compressed mountable image of an application directory, that becomes mounted in /tmp/tcloop and symlinked into the root filesystem. For example, after installing alpine the alpine.tcz image is mounted in /tmp/tcloop/alpine and /usr/local/bin/alpine is a symlink to /tmp/tcloop/alpine/usr/local/bin/alpine. Therefore, a TCZ extension only uses RAM when the application is running. The user can mix and match both extension types, but some extensions are not available as a TCZ type. Installing packages can be done by clicking the Apps icons and choosing TCE or TCZ in the "Connect" menu item. This "appbrowser" program is a (too) basic package manager with dependency resolution. When the user has installed an application it gets an icon in the Apps menu on the desktop and maybe in the wbar panel. Tiny Core Linux has hundreds of applications, including Abiword, Audacious, Filezilla, Firefox, gFTP, Gimp, Java, MPlayer, Opera and X-Chat, and it is rather up-to-date as the inclusion of Firefox 3.5 shows. 
Just like Tiny Core has an option to make the downloaded applications persistent, there's also a boot option for a persistent home directory: home=hdXY. This will mount /dev/hdXY/tchome to /home/tc. Tiny Core also offers an encrypted home directory: the user first chooses "Make Crypto Home" from the Tools menu to create an encrypted loopback file with a chosen password. Once this is created, the boot option cryptohome=hdXY will make Tiny Core prompt for the password during boot. For the adventurous usersOn the project's wiki there's a guide for creating extensions and guidelines for extension submission. Even more, adventurous users can remaster Tiny Core and make their own distribution. This is easy as it comes down to copying the iso's contents and adding or removing files or integrating extensions. Then the directory is packed into an iso image. There's even documentation about using a custom kernel, for example if you need real-time performance. For the even more adventurous ones, there is Micro Core Linux, which is Tiny Core Linux without an X environment. The 7 MB iso file boots into a BusyBox prompt and extra applications can be downloaded and installed with the tce-wget command. Probably the best use case for Tiny Core Linux is a sort of portable environment that the user carries in his pocket on a USB pen drive. Tiny Core Linux isn't really beautiful or fancy, but it does what it has to do and has a fair amount of well-known software packages. That said, it still looks a bit too rough. One illustration of this is that there's no wireless support out-of-the-box, although the user can solve this problem simply by installing the wireless and wireless_tools extensions via a fixed network. Another problem is the package manager, which could use some work. Hopefully we'll soon see some spin-off distributions coming out of the Tiny Core community. At least one has been started already: NetbootCD, which allows the user to download and run several Linux netboot installers.
New Releases Slackware 13.0 RC1The first release candidate for Slackware 13.0 was announced in the slackware-current changelog. "Hi folks -- the TODO isn't entirely empty here, but it's pretty much down to minor nits, and so we're going to call this release candidate #1 and (mostly) freeze further updates unless they happen to fix problems. Regarding the kernel, 2.6.29.x has been well tested with this userspace and seems like the best choice to ship for production use." Note that the box hosting slackware.com has had some trouble recently. Click below for the relevant snippet of the changelog.
PC-BSD 7.1.1 ReleasedThe PC-BSD Team has announced the release of v7.1.1. "Version 7.1.1 contains a number of bugfixes and improvements from PC-BSD 7.1, including KDE 4.2.4, improvements to printing support, Xorg Server 1.6.1, and much more." See the release notes for more information.
FreeBSD 8.0-BETA1 AvailableThe first public test build of the FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE test cycle is now available. "People with the resources to do so (test machines...) are encouraged to give 8.0-BETA1 a try. At this point it is not quite ready for production systems but mostly because there is still some ongoing work in a few areas that may cause some changes in things like ABI/API. Debugging support (WITNESS, malloc debugging, etc.) are also still turned on and those tend to cause a performance hit. As far as we know there are no known issues that would cause data corruption or anything like that, just the issues with performance and potential for changes caused by ongoing work. If you find problems they can be reported through the normal Gnats based PR system or posted to the mailing lists."
Distribution News Fedora Pushing ahead (Grand Fallacy)Paul Frields notes in his weblog that Fedora 12 will have a shorter schedule. "We had so many features in the Fedora 11 release, some of them particularly extensive and complex, that we drove a slightly longer release cycle. To make up for that longer cycle, the Fedora 12 cycle is somewhat shorter. That truncation returns us to release dates close to the May Day/Halloween calendar we originally set up back around the Fedora 7 time frame."
Fedora Classroom helpers neededThe Fedora Classroom project is looking for helpers. Fedora Classroom provides IRC sessions on a variety of Fedora topics. The following positions are open: Instructor, Instructor Recruiters, Advertising/Marketing, Emcee and Wiki tender. Click below for details.
Gentoo Linux Gentoo Council Elections Results for term 2009/2010The Gentoo Council election results are available. The winners are Ned Ludd (solar), Petteri Räty (betelgeuse), Denis Dupeyron (calchan), Tobias Scherbaum (dertobi123), Ulrich Müller (ulm), Mart Raudsepp (leio), and Luca Barbato (lu_zero). Click below for details.
SUSE Linux and openSUSE openSUSE Board Meeting Minutes, June 3 2009The minutes of the June 3, 2009 meeting of the openSUSE board are available. Topics include Ambassador program, Foundation, Membership requests, open openSUSE Factory for contribution, openSUSE Board presence at the openSUSE conference, read and write access to news.openSUSE.org?, and Stephen Shaw replaces Federico Mena Quintero.
verify the root filesystem of an openSUSE installationThe first beta version of a brand new security tool: 'checkroot' is available. checkroot is a tool to retrieve fingerprint/gpg-pubkey updates online and therefore allows a trusted verification of your root file system roughly based on rpm --verify.
Ubuntu family Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Desktop Edition reaches end-of-lifeUbuntu 6.06 LTS Desktop Edition will reach its end-of-life on July 14, 2009. The Server Edition will be maintained until June 2011. "Ubuntu announced the release of 6.06 over three years ago, on June 1, 2006. At that time, Ubuntu committed to its first long-term support (LTS) cycle, with security and critical fixes for three years on the desktop and five years on the server. The desktop support period is now at its end, and Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Desktop will reach end of life on Tuesday, July 14, 2009. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for the Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Desktop." The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is via Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.
Minutes from the Technical Board meeting, 2009-06-30The minutes from the Ubuntu Technical Board meeting of June 30, 2009 are available. "The Technical Board is discussing the creation of a new governing body, the Developer Applications Board, to process new developer applications, separating this function from the Technical Board itself" and other topics.
Next karmic gdm upgrade WILL BREAK your systemThis is old news by now, but in case you've been bitten by this bug and haven't recovered yet, click below for some helpful information. gdm 2.26.1-0ubuntu3 or later fixes the major bugs.
New Distributions The Google Chrome OSThe Google Blog has the announcement for Google's upcoming new operating system, "Google Chrome OS". It's Linux-based, but, like Android, it appears that much of the software above the kernel will differ from a typical Linux distribution. "Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."
Distribution Newsletters Arch Linux Newsletter June 2009The June 2009 issue of the Arch Linux Newsletter is out. "Lately we have witnessed an increase in the popularity of Arch Linux. For one reason or another we seem to have drawn the media spotlight, even glorified in one article as the best Linux distribution for administrators. Finally, we take a look at a controversial situation that we the developers have been discussing for some time now. We have decided to share the situation with you, the community, so that all can voice their opinion on the forums through the newsletter discussion thread."
Arch Linux Newsletter July 2009The Arch Linux Newsletter for July 2009 is out. "This issue contains an interview with Andrea Scarpino, the KDE maintainer for the i686 architecture. Also, we are bringing all our kernel enthusiasts a tips and tricks section that should be of special interest. Finally, even though we went without a mention in the media this month, we provide an analysis as to why Arch Linux has been so prevalent in media coverage the last few months. And so, without further ado, the Newsletter Team proudly presents the July 2009 issue of the Arch Linux Newsletter. Please, enjoy!"
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 310The DistroWatch Weekly for July 6, 2009 is out. "The hottest debate in the Linux community right now is over whether or not Mono, Novell's implementation of .NET, should be included by default in Linux distributions. This week we look at decisions by Debian and Ubuntu, and the reactions by notable members of the FOSS community. In other news, Fedora announces their "Fit and Finish" product and Ksplice announces Uptrack for Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (9.04). Our feature this week is a review of CDLinux 0.9.2 Community Edition, a unique multilingual mini distribution from China. Finally, five new distributions are added to the DistroWatch waiting list. Have a great Monday and the rest of the week!"
Fedora Weekly News 183The Fedora Weekly News for July 5, 2009 is out. "Here are a few highlights from this week's issue. This week is a lighter issue as many of our writers are enjoying some vacation. In announcements, news that Josh Boyer has been appointed to the final Fedora Board seat. From the Fedora Planet, photo collections from the recent FUDCon Berlin, installing Fedora alongside Vista, and much more. In Quality Assurance news, details on the upcoming Fit and Finish project focusing on display configuration, more details on the AutoQA activities with rawhide, bugzappers weekly log, and more. In Design news, a new ticketed request system for Ambassadors' request to the design team, and details on a new custom blog aggregator, to create a .planet file just for the Art team. This week's issue completes with security advisory roundup for Fedora 9, 10, and 11. Enjoy this week's issue!"
Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #149The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for July 4, 2009 is out. "In this issue we cover: Canonical Delves Deeper into the Cloud - Launches Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services, Kubuntu Tutorials Day Spreads the Knowledge, Ubuntu Forums tutorial of the week, Login to Ubuntu Forums with Launchpad Open ID, Canonical Party Welcomes Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, Ohio Linuxfest Call for Presentations, Powerpets, Inc. Head Offices switch to Ubuntu, Full Circle Magazine: Issue #26, Vodcast: Dell's Ubuntu Linux Strategy, Team Meeting Reports, and much, much more!"
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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