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First Look at SUSE Linux 10.0

The users and fans of SUSE Linux had a reason to rejoice earlier this week. After almost a decade of being developed behind closed doors, their favorite distribution has finally opened up to outside participation - in the form of openSUSE. You'll find more about this on the Front page of this edition. Now let's take a look at the first openSUSE beta.

Early reports indicate that the result of the openSUSE development will be known as "SUSE Linux". It will be available as a free download immediately after the release, in a fashion similar to Fedora Core. However, a retail product will also be provided; this will be labeled as "SUSE Linux Pro" and, together with the printed documentation, it will include the usual non-free and commercial applications that many SUSE customers have come to expect with their boxed sets. Also, Novell is reportedly planning to give away a large number of SUSE CD/DVD sets during various conferences, user group meetings and other IT gatherings. It seems that some of the ideas behind the openSUSE initiative were borrowed from the highly successful Ubuntu project which has already created a large user and developer base despite its comparatively young age.

The first beta of SUSE Linux 10.0 for was released earlier this week. There are editions for the i386 and x86_64 architectures, both of which come in the form of four 700 MB ISO images. Additional packages are made available via FTP/HTTP on the project's main server and its mirrors. Besides the "SL-10.0-OSS-beta1" directory there is also a directory called "SL-OSS-current" which looks like a placeholder for the current development tree. At the time of writing this is just a symbolic link to the beta1 directory, but it is possible that it will eventually become a development repository of SUSE packages, similar to Red Hat's "rawhide", Mandriva's "cooker" or Debian's "sid", with daily updates.

We spent an afternoon investigating the first beta of SUSE Linux 10.0. Compared to SUSE 9.3, the installation program has been subjected to some visible changes, mostly cosmetic, but some of them indicate the direction this novice-friendly SUSE is likely to take in the future. As an example, in the desktop selection dialog users can select either GNOME or KDE, but not both, unless they opt for the advanced packages selection utility. This is in line with the installer in Novell Linux Desktop 9. The package installation step is now hidden from view, replaced by a slide show introducing SUSE Linux to users, and a vertical progress bar. The background of the GRUB boot screen is a breathtaking image of the Prague castle, while the desktop wallpaper in KDE is a detailed close-up photo of a magnificent gecko lizard. Users log in through a beautified KDM dialog. Many of these changes are clearly designed to entice novice Linux users with some eye candy, while hiding the more technical stuff behind "advanced" dialogs and tabs.

The first beta of SUSE 10.0 comes with kernel 2.6.13-rc5, X.Org 6.8.2, GCC 4.0.1, KDE 3.4.2 and a current development release of GNOME 2.11. The first impressions by users on various forums indicate that the release is fairly stable, especially the KDE desktop, but GNOME is considerably less polished (which is probably not SUSE's fault). Our experiences were similar - even as the first beta it is a lot more usable than the first test release of Fedora Core 4. Java packages, and everything that requires them, including OpenOffice.org, are not available on the CDs, but can be installed separately. The YaST Control Center has also undergone some cosmetic changes.

According to the roadmap, the first beta of SUSE 10.0 will be followed by three more beta releases and one release candidate, roughly in weekly intervals. The final release is scheduled for the middle of September. At first glance, the stated goal of "beginner-friendliness" is still some distance away, especially when comparing this release to the latest versions of Xandros Desktop or Linspire, so it will be interesting to watch the development process to see what new ideas the Novell management and SUSE development team come up with. Given the limited amount of time available to complete the process, don't expect many exciting new features. SUSE Linux 10.0 seems like a test run to establish good communication and bug reporting resources between the developers and testers, rather than a break-through release with universal appeal.

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New Releases

Novell launches openSUSE.org

The Novell sponsored openSUSE.org project is a community program providing free, easy access to SUSE Linux and a chance to join in its development. SUSE Linux 10.0 Beta 1 (code name: Prague), "an unsupported, open source only, preliminary edition of SUSE Linux that contains bleeding-edge packages and represents the latest development snapshot" is available for download. The final release of 10.0 is scheduled for September 28, 2005.

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Distribution News

Red Hat: Fedora Foundation moving forward

Red Hat has published a press release describing progress in the creation of the Fedora Foundation. "Organizational aspects of establishing the Fedora Foundation are progressing rapidly. Bylaws leading to the incorporation of the Foundation have been drafted and initial board members are being selected. Fedora Projects also continue with strong community involvement. The launch of the Foundation is expected to accelerate these projects." The Foundation is also apparently intended to accumulate a patent pool of its own.

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The Debian Core Consortium launches

The much-rumored Debian Core Consortium has finally announced its existence. "Founding members of the Alliance include credativ, KNOPPIX, LinEx, Linspire, MEPIS, Progeny, Sun Wah, UserLinux, and Xandros. The initial release of the Debian Common Core, expected in the September time frame, will be based on Debian 3.1 ('Sarge') and certified to LSB. The common core will be the basis for future releases of each member's Linux products, and the DCC Alliance will serve as a single point of contact for software and hardware vendors who want to ensure that their products will work with Debian."

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Debian Project mourns the loss of Jens Schmalzing

The Debian Project has lost a member of its community. Jens Schmalzing died on July 30th in a workplace accident in Munich. "Jens was involved in Debian as a maintainer of several packages, as supporter of the PowerPC port, as a member of the kernel team, and was instrumental in taking the PowerPC kernel package to version 2.6. He also maintained the Mac-on-Linux emulator and its kernel modules, helped with the installer and with local Munich activities. The kernel team dedicates the 2.6.12-2 release to him."

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Debian - Removing packages from testing (FAQ)

The testing branch is due for some weeding. Packages that have release critical bugs may be weeded out of etch if those bugs aren't fixed soon. "During the Bug Squashing Party happening last weekend the release team also hinted a lot of packages for removal from testing. Since this is something that can happen to all maintainers at any point of the release process, we want to refresh why and how testing removals happen. (Attached to the mail you can also find a list of all packages removed from testing during the weekend)"

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The Perfect Setup - Mandrake/Mandriva 10.2

Falko Timme has published a how-to article with detailed information on setting up a server on a Mandriva 10.2 system. "This is a detailed description about the steps to be taken to setup a Mandrake 10.2 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (web server (SSL-capable), mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS!), DNS server, FTP server, MySQL server, POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.). In addition to that I will show how to use Debian's package manager apt on an rpm-based system because it takes care of package dependencies automagically which can save a lot of trouble."

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New Distributions

New cdmedic live CD 6.2 version (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews covers the release of version 6.2 of the CDMEDIC live CD. CDMEDIC is a Knoppix-based live CD with software appropriate for radiologists, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy physicians and MDs, neurologists and neurosurgeons and also other branches related to medical imaging.

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Distribution Newsletters

Debian Weekly News

The Debian Weekly News for August 9, 2005 looks at release critical bugs in etch, assessing the risk of a package upload, GNUstep in Debian, the Debian Core Consortium, a MySQL upgrade, GNOME in etch, the new debian-science mailing list, and more.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of August 8, 2005 is out. This edition covers the first Gentoo installer, blocking Tor users from the forums, and several other topics.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 112

DistroWatch Weekly for August 8, 2005 is out. This edition looks at openSUSE, the Slackware code freeze, a VidaLinux feature, an interview with Robert Lange of VectorLinux, tips and tricks with Konqueror and Kate and more.

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Package updates

Fedora updates

Fedora Core 4 updates: readahead (fix inverted free memory test), yaboot (eliminate unneeded check), ttmkfdir (includes Asian TrueType fonts), selinux-policy-targeted (bump for FC4).

Fedora Core 3 updates: ttmkfdir (includes Asian TrueType fonts).

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Slackware updates

Slackware has a few updates this week, including some ham radio package updates. Click below for a look at this week's change log.

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Trustix TSL-2005-0039

Trustix has updated several packages for TSL 2.2 & 3.0. Click below for details on bug fixes in fetchmail, iptables, mod_fastcgi, mysql, php, postfix, ppp, setup and sqlgrey.

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Distribution reviews

Damn Small Linux 1.4 Review (GNUman.com)

GNUman.com reviews Damn Small Linux 1.4. "Fluxbox is the window manager, chosen for size, speed and functionality, it is a nice desktop to work with; although it has a 'taskbar' at the bottom of the screen, to open the menu you should right-click on the desktop. Of course there are shorcuts to the most popular programs on the desktop to save you time looking for them, but at some point you will want to see what else this tiny operating system can do. DSL comes loaded with software; from the popular Mozilla Firefox web-browser and Axyftp, Nirc and Naim for communication, and xmms for music, right up to sshd, ftpd,Damn Small Linux default startup the 'monkey' httpd and even smb4k to allow access to and from network file shares; allowing you to set up a fully (multi) functional server straight from the cd."

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SymphonyOS - Act II (Alpha 4) (tuxmachines.org)

tuxmachines.org reviews SymphonyOS Alpha4. "Overall Alpha 4 is an exciting development release. It shows wonderful improvement and future promise. Although a few problems were encountered, it performed very well for an alpha/development product. It just makes one even more anxious for a production quality release."

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Review: Slax 5.0.6 (Linux.com)

Linux.com reviews Slax. "The first time I used it, Slax restored my faith in my old clunker of a Toshiba laptop. The distribution ran (and even booted) faster from the CD-ROM drive than Windows did from the hard disk. But as I began to get a feel for Slax and use it to browse the Web, listen to music, and the like, I didn't feel like Slax had sacrificed usability for agility. This fine balance alone would make Slax an interesting and noteworthy distro, but it has even more tricks up its sleeve."

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Mandrake Revisited: A Lycoris user revisits the OS he left years earlier (DesktopOS.com)

DesktopOS.com has a review of Mandrake 10.2 Limited Edition. "Several years ago, Linux desktops were not very refined. Mandrake seemed to be the best of the bunch, with a nearly usable desktop. I held out hope that it would become the best desktop Linux, since it seemed so far ahead of the competition. But as time went on, they kept releasing buggy software, and by version 8.2, the system I had was clunky and slow; the menu was cluttered with broken programs. Overall I found it to be unstable and unusable. I gave up on Mandrake and chose Lycoris DLX instead, as it seemed a better, more functional desktop environment with more promise."

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Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
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