Distributions

Ulteo Linux Sirius Alpha

In July of 1998 Gaël Duval sent LWN an announcement for a new distribution called Linux-Mandrake. It was based on Red Hat Linux 5.1 and KDE 1.0. The current Mandriva Linux is a much evolved descendant of Linux-Mandrake with influences from the acquisitions of Conectiva and Lycoris. Duval continued to work on the distribution until Last March, when he was laid off from Mandriva. Since then he's been working on a new distribution, Ulteo.

Like its predecessor Ulteo strives to be an easy to use desktop distribution. The initial release of Ulteo Sirius Alpha 1 features KDE 3.5.2. GNOME and XFCE desktops will be available for the final release according to the roadmap.

Ulteo has borrowed heavily on Ubuntu/Kubuntu and Debian for this first release. The Ulteo-kde "Sirius" Alpha1 download is a single live CD with an install option, like Ubuntu. The website contains a A community forum and wiki and general discussion mailing lists are available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Polish. The development list is English only, so far.

From the About Ulteo page:

After an afternoon of playing around on the live CD this distribution shows quite a bit of potential. Congratulations to the Ulteo team for a great first release.

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OpenPKG Enterprise 1 for Business Customers

OpenPKG GmbH has announced the availability of OpenPKG Enterprise 1 to business customers. "Supported are all common hardware architectures with ix86, AMD64 und SPARC processors and Unix derivates including FreeBSD, GNU/Linux distributions und Sun Solaris. OpenPKG Enterprise 1 ships with nearly 600 software packages, which especially contain the latest versions of popular Open-Source Software components - including Apache, GCC, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Samba, Perl, PHP, Python and many more."

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Release of openSUSE 10.2

Last week we announced that openSUSE 10.2 was done. This announcement (click below) looks at download information and where to get box sets.

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pure:dyne EXTENDED PLAY 2.3.6 is out

pure:dyne is a community effort maintained by media artists for media artists. It is a customization of the dyne:II core for realtime audio and video processing. It comes optimized for software such as Jack, SuperCollider, Csound, Fluxus and of course Pure Data with a great collection of externals (PDP, PiDiP, Gem, GridFlow, RRadical, PixelTango...).

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Ulteo Sirius Alpha 1 available

Ulteo is the mysterious project being pursued by Gaël Duval since he left Mandriva. This project has just announced its first alpha release. It appears to be a Debian-based distribution with an emphasis on easy and automatic administration. "What this means is that for the next alpha release version, no installation will be needed. Simply rebooting the system will be enough to get the new features and bug fixes." The download mirror appear to not be up to the current level of traffic, so waiting a while might be in order.

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Debian Etch frozen

The announcement has gone out: the distribution which will become Debian "Etch" has been frozen. At this point, only fixes for bugs will be allowed in as Etch gets closer to its release.

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Terra Soft Ships YDL v5.0 DVD Set

Terra Soft has announced shipment of Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 DVD sets for Playstation3. "Available now from the Terra Soft online Store, the 2 DVD set includes more than 2000 packages for a complete desktop, development, and server solution; a printed Guide to Installation, YDL sticker, and flexible flier."

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New mailing list: ubuntu-devel-discuss

The ubuntu-devel mailing list is being split into two lists, ubuntu-devel and ubuntu-devel-discuss. If you are subscribed to ubuntu-devel today, you probably also want to subscribe to ubuntu-devel-discuss. Click below for details.

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Ubuntu-based Pioneer Linux hits the net (DesktopLinux)

DesktopLinux.com covers the inaugural release of Pioneer Linux. "Pioneer Linux targets both new and experienced Linux users, the project team said in the release announcement. The product comes in two editions: as a freely downloadable live and installation CD; and as a commercial boxed edition that includes CrossOver Office and technical support."

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Fedora Weekly News Issue 70

The Fedora Weekly News for December 11, 2006 covers Help Needed: Integration of Fedora Directory Server, Fedora 7 Theme Needs Your Help!, Mozilla Corp. to work more closely with Linux distributors, Zod LiveCD Beta Available, Linux For You December 2006 Articles, Fedora Ambassador's Day Daily Blogs and several other topics.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of December 4, 2006 covers Gentoo Linux on Playstation 3, SCALE 5X open registration, new user representative elected and several other topics.

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Ubuntu Weekly News #24

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for December 3, 2006 covers Ubuntu Open Week's smashing success, Technalign and Ubuntu, LoCo news, upcoming meetings (including the recently scheduled Community Council Meeting), the Kurdish Ubuntu investigation, several X server-related specifications, and much more.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 181

The DistroWatch Weekly for December 11, 2006 is out. "As hinted earlier, the new openSUSE 10.2 was released on time. One of the most popular Linux distributions on the market, the latest release appears solid and reasonably bug-free, at least compared to version 10.1. We'll take a brief look at the new release, comment on the project's association with Novell, and provide a few handy resources for extending the product. Also in this week's issue: Debian delays Etch, Ulteo releases Sirius, Mandriva prepares a cooker snapshot, and PC-BSD reaches the final round of testing before its updated stable release. Finally, don't miss the new commercial distribution by Technalign: Pioneer Linux."

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Fedora updates

Updates for Fedora Core 6: autofs (bug fixes), autofs (rebuild due to buildsystem failure), m17n-db (bug fix), bind (bug fixes), dhcp (upgrade to ISC dhcp-3.0.5), freeradius (bug fix), openssh (bug fixes), swig (update to 1.3.31), vino (don't cause high cpu load), pygtk2 (bug fix), pycairo (update to 1.2.6), gnome-pilot (update to 2.0.15), gnome-pilot-conduits (update to 2.0.15), nautilus-cd-burner (bug fixes), beagle (update to 0.2.13), screen (new version from upstream with IPv6 patch), at (daylight-savings fix), perl-Crypt-SSLeay (bug fixes), xorg-x11-drv-tdfx (update to 1.3.0), xorg-x11-drv-s3 (update to 0.5.0), xorg-x11-server (bug fix), grep (bug fixes), parted (upgrade to GNU parted-1.8.1), pyparted (upgrade to pyparted-1.8.1), rdesktop (update to 1.5.0), vte (update to 0.14.1), ghostscript (update to 8.15.3), squid (update to the latest upstream).

Updates for Fedora Core 5: nfs-utils (bug fix), swig (update to 1.3.31), quagga (bug fix), perl-DBD-MySQL (update to latest upstream version), parted (upgrade to GNU parted-1.8.1), pyparted (upgrade to pyparted-1.8.1).

Updates for Fedora Extras [5,6,devel]: ssmtp (security bugs fixed).

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Mandriva updates

Updates for Mandriva Linux 2007.0: powermanga (bug fix), tomboy (bug fix for gnome-sharp2 on x86_64).

Updates for Mandriva Corporate Server 4.0: phpmyadmin (update fixes bugs and security issues), php-eaccelerator (upgrade to 0.9.5 final), logrotate (bug fixes), glibc (sync kernel and userspace tools, x86_64 bug fix).

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rPath updates

Updates for rPath Linux 1: setup (add programs to /etc/shells), rmake (bug fixes and enhancements).

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Trustix updates

Updates for Trustix Secure Linux 3.0: kernel (new upstream version).

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Ubuntu updates

Updates for Ubuntu 6.10: openoffice.org (bug fixes), gnome-vfs2 (monitor loop patch), xorg (upload to edgy-updates), gnome-system-tools (crasher fix), gimp (gettext domain patch), gtk+2.0 (grid_lines fix), gnome-games (fix to mahjong difficult mode score storing), libgnomeprintui (translation fix), wlassistant (bug fixes), kdebase (upload to edgy-updates), vino (fix password free patch), vino (work with nokia 770 patch), udev (include firmware_helper in initramfs), control-center (bug fixes), mdadm (bug fixes), kopete (bug fix).

Updates for Ubuntu 6.06 LTS: gcl (bug fix), maxima (upload to dapper-updates).

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Making a distribution secure (Linux.com)

Linux.com looks at securing a distribution. "There's no dearth of Linux distributions to choose from. With so many to choose from, one might think it's as easy as picking up the Linux kernel, throwing in a few applications, setting up repositories, making ISOs and you've got a shiny new Linux distro. Well, there's more to a Linux distro than assembling applications and making sure everything works. A lot of time and effort, at least for major distros, is spent on making the distribution secure and getting updates out in a timely fashion."

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tuXlab Linux release targets education (tectonic)

tectonic covers tuXlab GNU/Linux, a new distribution based on Edubuntu and Xubuntu, from Inkululeko Technologies. "Inkululeko's Jonathon Carter says "the goal of the tuXlab operating system is to provide a user friendly, support friendly, localised, feature rich environment for schools. It forms part of the tuXlab model, which aims to develop a sustainable open source ICT model for the education- and development sector." tuXlab has been used extensively in the Shuttleworth-backed schools Linux project originating in the Western Cape but until now has not been available as a product. Carter says that it was the Foundation's policy not to fund software development internally, but that it is now possible to release and support tuXlab software since it is managed by Inkululeko Technologies, which provides Linux services to the education, development and commercial sectors."

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Installing Gentoo Linux on the Playstation 3 (DesktopLinux.com)

DesktopLinux.com looks at the Gentoo PS3 Linux installation procedure. "Gentoo Linux's project team has published information -- contained in its weekly online newsletter -- on how to load and use its popular distro on the new Sony Playstation 3, which is all the rage among gamers at the moment." A full set of instructions and general compatibility notes, is available here.

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Ben Collins (behind ubuntu)

Behind Ubuntu interviews Ben Collins. "What are you working on for feisty? In regards to the kernel, I'm working to improve our hardware support and stability. We're finally ramping up our kernel team, and I'm hoping this gives me more time to work on bugs and new features."

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OpenSUSE 10.2 goes gold (DesktopLinux)

DesktopLinux takes a look at openSUSE 10.2. "This latest community Linux distribution from Novell, SUSE, and friends is based on a 2.6.18.2 Linux kernel. Users can choose between the KDE 3.5.5 or GNOME 2.16.1 desktop environments, both of which run on top of the X.Org 7.2rc2 windowing system."

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Review: Mandriva Flash delivers Linux to go (Linux.com)

Linux.com reviews Mandriva Flash. "Mandriva Flash is a 2GB Dane-Elec USB key loaded with Mandriva Linux 2007. It gets points for style: the key is an attractive deep blue surrounded by a sturdy metal fence that leaves room on both ends to attach the key to a lanyard or keychain. The release notes say that the operating system and related files only take up half the space on the USB drive, leaving 1GB for my own files. This little powerhouse packs a lot of punch, once you get it up and running."

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openSUSE 10.2: the best Linux desktop yet? (Linux.com)

Linux.com reviews openSUSE 10.2. "First impressions are important, and openSUSE 10.2 made a strong enough impression with me that I may be making openSUSE 10.2 my new desktop OS. I installed openSUSE 10.2 RC1 soon after its release in late November, and I've been kicking the tires on the final release since it was made public last Thursday. Here's my report."

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