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DistributionsNews and Editorials A look at Progeny Debian BetaThe Progeny Debian 2.0 Developer Edition beta has been out for a little while now, long enough for this writer to whip it onto a laptop and take it for a spin.There's a lot to like in the latest release. Though it's not quite bug free, it is looking much more polished, and good enough for day to day usage if one doesn't mind a few rough edges. For example, the installer set the mouse pointer to "/dev/input/mice" rather than "/dev/psaux" -- which caused X to come to an abrupt halt until this was corrected. Sound was not detected or correctly configured, though my wireless network card was automatically recognized. Users are given the choice of desktop, workstation, server or custom installation. While the installer worked flawlessly, it seemed to take quite a long while to copy over packages. This isn't a major issue, but one hopes that the installation will be optimized by a final release for users who have to perform multiple installs. In all, the install closely resembles a Fedora Core install, so users who have some experience with Anaconda will feel right at home. By default, this release installs the 2.6.6 Linux kernel. A 2.4 kernel is available as a component -- though some components are non-functional in the beta, so it's not entirely clear whether the 2.4 kernel component can be installed. Speaking of components, it would be negligent not to mention that this release is "a showcase of Progeny's Componentized Linux technology," and not just any Linux distribution. (Interested users can find the entire list of available components here.) From the end user's perspective, it's nice to be able to install a single package rather than picking a slew of packages that are necessary to run a program. Even with apt's wonderful dependency system, it is often necessary to install several packages to arrive at one functional program. Unfortunately, the beta's "sources.list" is strictly for loading packages off of CD-ROM. Users who have become used to using apt to install packages anywhere they happen to have a network connection will not be pleased with needing to cart CDs with them. It's not immediately obvious how to add Progeny's componentized package lists to the "sources.list," which has confused a number of the beta testers. Of course, packages from Debian testing seem to work quite well in absence of a Progeny network package source. In all, the release shows a lot of promise. While it's not quite yet ready for prime time, the Progeny folks have made a lot of progress since the alpha release back in April.
Distribution News New Xandros Desktop OS Version 2.5 Now ShippingXandros has announced the release of version 2.5 of the Xandros Desktop OS, with CrossOver Office 3.0.1, Linux kernel 2.4.24 and version 1.6 of the Mozilla communications suite.
Debian GNU/LinuxThe Debian Weekly News for July 27, 2004 is out. This issue looks at a Debian 11th birthday party in Brazil; the Dictator Test for new licenses; a Java in Main update; the continuing AMD64 saga; debtags become an Alioth Project; and more.Steve Langasek reports on the status of the sarge release. A hard-freeze of base+standard is now scheduled for July 31, 2004.
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 30The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of July 26, 2004 covers the retirement of .net-www; a call for volunteers to help organize a meeting in the UK; meet Stephen Becker, the featured Developer of the Week; and more.
Fedora LegacyFedora Legacy has announced that support for Red Hat Linux 7.2 and 8.0 has been dropped due to a lack of community participation. (Thanks to Troels Arvin)
OpenPKG support for 1.x endedOpenPKG has announced that older versions of the distribution (OpenPKG 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3) are no longer maintained. Security advisories and updated SRPMs will be provided for OpenPKG 2.0 and 2.1.
Linux Netwosix Bugzilla - Bugtracking SystemLinux Netwosix has announced that a Bugzilla software bugtracking system is now available for Netwosix users.
Turbolinux First to Bundle Commercial DVD Player for LinuxHere's a press release from Turbolinux and CyberLink Corp. announcing the inclusion of CyberLink's PowerDVD player with the multimedia version of Turbolinux 10D.
Fedora CoreFedora Core 2 updates:
MandrakelinuxMandrakelinux has updated libneon packages that fix issues with the compression interface.
Slackware LinuxThe slackware-current changelog shows a variety of updates this week. Upgrades include koffice-1.3.2, xsane-0.94, gimp-2.0.3, totem-0.99.15.1, xfce-4.0.6, xine-lib-1-rc5, xine-ui-0.99.2, getmail-4.0.0, gtk+-2.4.4, glib-2.4.4, doxygen-1.3.8, distcc-2.16, gimp-print-4.2.7, xchat-2.0.10, ImageMagick-6.0.3-5, ncftp-3.1.8, getmail-4.0.1, dnsmasq-2.10, galeon-1.3.16 and perl-5.8.5. PHP 5.0.0 and gcc 3.4.1 are in testing.
New Distributions Catux-USBCatux-USB is a distribution created by the GNU/LINUX User Association from central Catalonia, that boots and runs from USB devices such as Pendrives. It is useful with Pendrives with 128 MB or 256 MB, but it can be resized to other capacities. It is Debian-based, with Knoppix scripts to autodetect hardware. It includes XFree86, some email clients, Web clients, etc., but using apt-get you can install or remove packages. It uses the e2compr patch to write to Pendrives more efficiently. The initial release of Catux-USB, version 0.0.1, is dated July 23, 2004.
PHP Solutions LivePHP Solutions Live is a bootable Linux distribution, created for people who want to run and test scripts in a new environment without modifying the current platform. PHP Solutions Live joins the list at version 1.2.0 released July 23, 2004.
Minor distribution updates Astaro Security LinuxAstaro Security Linux has released v5.016 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: This Up2Date fixes two bugs in the transparent POP3 Proxy that occurred on malformed email messages."
Compact Flash Linux ProjectCompact Flash Linux Project has released v0.1.4 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: The SNMP daemon now runs as the unprivileged "snmp" user. The rp-l2tp and poptop packages have been added to cflinux."
Coyote LinuxCoyote Linux has released v2.12 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release adds some new statistics output and configuration options to the Web administrator."
Damn Small LinuxDamn Small Linux has released v0.7.3 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release boots directly into an enhanced X desktop at 1024x768x32 and the mouse is auto-detected when the default video mode is used. New boot time options were implemented along with the ability to mount and umount the .ci extensions via the myDSL button. cardmgr was updated to 3.2.2, nfs-common was removed from startup, a .wgetrc was added, and permissions on /dev/cdrom were corrected to let users play audio CDs."
Feather LinuxFeather Linux has released v0.5.4 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release adds a script to download Apache, MySQL, and PHP4, includes lrzsz and rdesktop, and fixes various bugs involving permissions, readability, and corrupted files. The XFCE script is now also more economical with memory usage."
Hiweed GNU/LinuxHiweed GNU/Linux has released v0.3 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: This version fixed a root-path-loosing bug, added gcc and make, added three Debian documents (the Debian reference, apt-howto, and dselect beginner's guide). removed unrar and zip, and upgraded all packages to Debian sid's last version."
Linux LiveLinux Live has released v4.2.0 with major bugfixes. "Changes: This release modifies the dir2img script to properly handle a third parameter. The size of initrd has changed to 9999 KB. Non-existing EXT3, NTFS, or ReiserFS kernel modules no longer cause fatal errors (during livecd_create)."
SLAX-Live CDSLAX-Live CD has released v4.1.3 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This release adds kernel 2.4.27-pre3 with SATA support, aslax-install script, and a "GUI" boot option to skip textmode login and autostart X with KDE. There is also a DEVELOPMENT module, allowing sourcecode to be compiled. XFree was replaced by X.org."
Distribution reviews Review: OpenBSD 3.5 (NewsForge)NewsForge reviews OpenBSD 3.5. "OpenBSD is secure by default; that means that it does not start any services or daemons without your telling it to. It installs nothing secretly and does not leave any opening for a local or remote attack. The downside to this cautious approach is that you must configure and enable all of the features and services that you need. This is an ideal learning opportunity for beginners who are learning how to configure a server, and a more secure approach than that of most operating systems, which enable a lot of services and servers by default and then expect administrators to disable what isn't needed. While hotshot sysadmins might prefer the latter method to get a server set up more quickly, less experienced people will derive much more benefit from the result of the secure by default philosophy. This is not to imply that OpenBSD is meant only for beginners, but it is designed so that you don't need to be a security expert to properly administer your system."
Novell eyes lean, mean Linux (Register)The Register reports that Novell plans to release a slimmed-down version SUSE Linux. "SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional, the latest version of the desktop OS, comes with 3,000 packages and seven web browsers, according to Novell. Steve Brown, Novell's European VP, said there was a danger of the OS becoming too "top heavy". In response, Novell is working a version of SuSE Linux occupying a smaller footprint and supporting only one Web browser. This approach would make it easier to roll out standardised Linux deployments across an enterprise. With a simpler, less diverse set-up companies would benefit from a lower variety of support questions, or so the idea goes."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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