Distributions

Specialized Distributions

A question that comes up from time to time is, 'Why are there so many Linux distributions?' Distributions are created for many reasons. There are probably almost as many reasons as there are distributions. Some are created as school projects, allowing a student to explore the internals of an operating system. Many more are created to serve a particular purpose. Older hardware and limited disk space? No problem. Want something that boots from a floppy or CD-ROM? Several are available. Some want the functionality provided by proprietary products, while others want their system to be completely composed of free software. There are firewalls and security enhanced versions, servers and desktops, multimedia and clustering distributions, seemingly something for everyone. Except that not everyone agrees on just what it is that makes a distribution perfect.

Thanks to the GNU GPL anyone can download a Linux kernel, some GNU packages and libraries and create their vision of the perfect OS. Of course it also takes some knowledge of computers and programming, some hardware, and of course plenty of time. Still, LWN announces a new distribution almost every week. Some have been in existence for a while, only new to LWN. Others are fledgling distributions, created to fill a perceived void in existing systems. Some are built from scratch, but many start with an existing distribution and add or subtract software to create that perfect distribution. Today's crop contains old and new but they were all created to meet a specific need.

• RUNT (ResNet USB Network Tester) is Slackware Linux designed to run off of a 128 MB USB pen drive. It consists of a boot floppy image and a zip file, similar to zipslack. It is intended to be a fairly complete Linux installation for use as a testing tool capable of booting on any x86 computer with a USB port and a bootable floppy drive. The initial version is RUNT 0.92.

• BBIagent.Net provides a suite of applications to create the software for booting a computer as a broadband router and firewall. Based on the hardware configurations and connection type, you can download your own boot file which is written into a single 1.44MB diskette. Router software can be downloaded to the same diskette to complete the system. This is a Linux based system which uses Java tools to create a bootable floppy with router software. The software utilites provided by BBIagent.Net are free to use. Version 1.5.0 was released November 7, 2002.

• The folks at NPACI offer the Rocks Cluster Distribution. This special purpose distribution starts with Red Hat Linux 7.3 and adds tools to make clusters easy to manage, configurable and secure.

• LinuxMedNews reports on the first demo CD for GnuMed. This project is based on KNOPPIX, in cooperation with Debian-Med.

Comments (2 posted)

Debian GNU/Linux

The Debian Weekly News for December 3, 2002 is available. This week, read about the recent Bug Squashing Party for sarge in which several release critical bugs were fixed; and much more.

In last week's LWN we had no status report of the Debian services qa.debian.org and non-us.debian.org. In fact qa.debian.org was restored within hours after the fire. Non-us has also been restored.

Also last week's LWN was published too early to include Debian Weekly News for November 26, 2002. This issue looks at a study going on in Japan which asks the questions, "Is Free Software suited for governmental use? Can it replace the systems currently used?"

There is a new Debian User Worldmap showing the location of Debian developers around the world.

Translation of debconf templates is in progress. Here is a status report.

Branden Robinson discusses the GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.2 and its compatibility with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

Comments (1 posted)

Mandrake Linux

MandrakeSoft has launched an operation called "Operating System Refugee Offer". This enables anyone who purchased a commercial license of any operating system to get access to Mandrake Linux at a very low price.

The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for November 28, 2002 is available. This week: MandrakeSoft welcomes new CEO; product special on MYSQL products & services; Mandrake 9.0 speeds into the installation lead; and much more.

The Mandrake Team looks at the first year of MandrakeClub. "MandrakeClub.com is turning into a major multilingual news and discussion forum for everything related to MandrakeSoft and Mandrake Linux"

The everybuddy package released with Mandrake Linux 9.0 had broken support for the MSN and Yahoo protocols. This update fixes those problems, as well as some other minor bugs that caused random crashes.

A bug in the lm_sensors scripts prevented lm_sensors from loading all required modules. This off-by-one error would load all modules less one module, resulting in problems. This update corrects the problem.

A bug exists in the galeon web browser when using it with EHWM -compliant window managers such as metacity. When galeon is in fullscreen mode, the GNOME panel is below the fullscreen window and is not readable. This update fixes the problem.

Comments (none posted)

Red Hat Linux

Red Hat has issued a couple of press releases from Enterprise Linux Forum Conference & Expo. This announcement says Red Hat plans to extend support for carrier-grade Linux applications on Red Hat Linux Advanced Server, the company's high end distribution designed for mission critical workloads. The company also announced a new enterprise workstation offering to be released early next year. This article in the Register also covers these announcments.

Use Perl notes that Red Hat Linux 8.0 comes with Perl 5.8.0. "Nice that even a mostly Python shop like Red Hat is keeping up."

Comments (none posted)

SCO Linux 4.0, Powered by UnitedLinux

Here's a press release from the SCO Group announcing the planned implementation of SCO Linux 4.0, powered by UnitedLinux, in 325 stores of Pearle in Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy.

Comments (none posted)

Slackware Linux

Slackware Linux has another round of upgrades and fixes in the slackware-current branch. See the change log for full details.

Comments (none posted)

MoviX

MoviX has released v0.7.0 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: The MoviX package has been now split in two different projects: eMoviX and MoviX. eMoviX is a micro Linux distro to be embedded in a CD and able to boot from CD and automatically play any audi/video file you put inside [DivX, avi, mpg, mp3, ogg and so on]. MoviX is a mini-Linux distro that loads in RAM a small Linux distro able to play through a simple configurable console menu DVD, VCD, Audio CD, DivX, Avi, Mpg, Mp3, Ogg, network streams if you have a NIC and also TV if you have a TV card."

Comments (none posted)

PXES Linux Thin Client

PXES Linux Thin Client has released v0.5.1-12 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: ICA session support was (almost) finished, and the remote configuration was changed and improved."

Comments (none posted)

RxLinux

RxLinux has released v1.1.0 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: Support has been added for USB mice, USB mass storage (tested with Zip-250), and PCMCIA wireless network cards (tested with Cisco Aironet 340). vncviewer and rdesktop thin clients have been added for remote access to Unix and Windows NT/XP. Smbmount was missing from the Samba package. Packages can now be deployed from a local HD. A new command line (pkgtool) has been added for package management. Software in RAMdisk can be installed and removed on the fly. There are a couple of bugfixes regarding HD support for data (/var). The base system still fits in 25 MB."

Comments (none posted)

uClinux

uClinux has released v2.5.50-uc0 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This is the latest 2.5 merge, with some cleanups."

Comments (none posted)

Langa Letter: Lindows: Beyond Windows, Before Linux (TechWeb)

Fred Langa test-drives the latest version of Lindows in this TechWeb article. "Lindows version 3.0 offers the same level of compatibility as previous versions, but you'd almost not know it because the issue has been played down so significantly. Now, instead of encouraging users to install their native Windows applications under Lindows, the operating system tries to steer users to install and use native Linux applications that offer file-level compatibility with Windows applications."

Comments (1 posted)