Distributions
News and Editorials
New special purpose distributions - Firmware Linux and NSLU2-Linux
Two highly specialized Linux distribution projects were added to our Distribution List over the holidays and they are worth a closer look. These aren't your typical desktop distributions, or LAMP server distributions, but they do scratch a particular itch.
The first one we'll cover is Firmware Linux. It was
introduced in this comment as an example of
a Linux system that does not rely on GNU software, although it's not quite
there yet. "Currently, building it still requires four gnu packages
(gcc, binutils, make, and bash), but replacements for all four are in the
works. (The replacement for gcc/binutils is tcc, which still needs some
work, and I'm writing my own shell and when that's ready, my own make.) If
your final system doesn't need to be a development environment, then it
doesn't have to have any gnu code in it at all.
"
Firmware Linux is designed to be a build system that produces a bootable single file Linux system for various hardware platforms. Along the way, the build produces a relocatable cross compiler for the target hardware, and also a native build environment. This is a very young project, with only a few months of development so far, however, according to the news page as of changeset 68 it does build a native build environment with a working toolchain.
The second project is a bit more mature and has a family of Linux systems in development. The NSLU2-Linux project exists to discuss, develop and modify the firmware and hardware of the Linksys NSLU2, the Synology DS101, the Iomega NAS100d, the D-Link DSMG600, and other ixp4xx-based devices with large attached storage. SlugOS is the collective name for a group of firmware distributions which are derived from a common source base. The post to the NSLU2 mailing list summarizes the current state of the project. Here are some highlights:
- Unslung - a distribution which is targeted to those who wish to continue using the vendor firmware, but add the ability to install Optware packages. Unslung is stable at version 6.8.
- Optware - the ever growing set of packages available to users of Unslung and SlugOS.
- SlugOS - a distribution based on OpenEmbedded, which completely replaces the vendor firmware with custom firmware and packages designed from the ground up for devices with limited memory and storage. The current stable version is 3.10 and work progresses on SlugOS 4.
- NSLU2 is also a fully supported target for Debian Etch.
- OpenWRT - work is underway to provide support for the NSLU2, NAS100d, DSMG600 and FSG3 in OpenWRT kamikaze.
- Improved infrastructure with a move to OSUOSL for the main project server machine.
- Look for NSLU2-Linux at the Fifth Annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 5x).
LinuxDevices covered the Debian etch support in is this November
article: "Now, the newly available RC1 release of
debian-installer for Etch makes installing Linux on the Slug much easier,
according to Debian ARM hacker Martin Michlmayr. For one thing, the generic
IXP4xx kernel in Debian ARM now appears to support the device.
"
There's also an article on SmallNetBuilder, Hacking the Linksys NSLU2 - Debian and more with a look at the project's history.
New Releases
BLAG-60000 (puente) Beta Released
BLAG Linux and GNU has announced the first beta of BLAG 60000, a new series based on Fedora Core 6, with many new applications. Since September 3rd, 2006, over 50 alpha versions of BLAG-60000 have been spun. Now the first beta is ready for testing.Announcing the Fedora 6 Zod live CD and live CD tools
The first official Fedora live CD has been announced. This live CD is based on packages from the Fedora Core 6 (codenamed "Zod") and Fedora Extras package collections and is such 100% free software. The live CD is currently only available for i386 architectures. Support for other architectures including ppc and x86_64 is planned. Click below for download information.Kate OS Linux rev adds graphical package manager (DesktopLinux)
DesktopLinux takes a look at the recent release of KateOS 3.2. "The KateOS project team, which maintains a full-featured Linux distribution derived from Slackware Linux, last week released an installation version. KateOS version 3.2 features a 2.6.18 kernel, Xfce as its default desktop, and native support for the KDE and GNOME desktop environments. The latest release also boasts a new graphical package management tool, KatePKG, said to enable easy and intuitive installation, removal, and updating of packages."
KNOPPIX 5.1 released
Version 5.1 of the Debian-based KNOPPIX live CD and DVD is available. It features a 2.6.19 kernel, ntfs-3g and beryl. See the release notes for more information. (Thanks to Phil Lewis)Musix 0.79 released
Musix GNU+Linux has released version 0.79. Musix is a free multimedia operating system for music production, graphic design, audio and video edition, and more.Trustix Secure Linux 3.0.5 Beta 3
Trustix Secure Linux 3.0.5 Beta 3 is available. "Thanks to many reports and suggestions, this release contains some critical fixes and improvements in the installer and other software."
Amulet launches Japanese Yellow Dog Linux v5.0 for PS3
Terra Soft Solutions and The Research and Development Department of AMULET, Inc (Chiyoda-ku Tokyo) have announced the launch of Japanese Language Package of Yellow Dog Linux v5.0J for the Sony Computer Entertainment PLAYSTATION3, slated to ship January 4, 2007.
Distribution News
Debian 'etch' release update - main blockers for release
While it does look like the Debian stable 'etch' release will not happen this year, it is getting closer. Here's an update from Andreas Barth. "There are a few items to resolve so that we could actually release. We need your help there - in whichever area you want to help us, please do so. Please remember: Releasing of Debian is a common effort of the whole community."
Fedora Legacy shutting down
Here's an official announcement from the Fedora Legacy project. "In case any of you are not aware, the Fedora Legacy project is in the process of shutting down. The current model for supporting maintenance distributions is being re-examined. In the meantime, we are unable to extend support to older Fedora Core releases as we had planned. As of now, Fedora Core 4 and earlier distributions are no longer being maintained."
OpenPKG Project Policy Changes for Contributions
The OpenPKG project has made some changes to its policies on contributions and asks contributors to explicitly agree to the new OpenPKG Contributor Agreement (OCA) document.openSUSE @ FOSDEM 2007 call for papers/speakers/participants
The openSUSE project has a "devroom" at the Free Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) taking place February 24 - 25, 2007 in Brussels (Belgium). "For 2007, we dare to challenge all of us, the community, to play a much more active role in making FOSDEM 2007 a great success. Therefore we would like to open a "call for papers" and encourage everyone to send proposals to the opensuse-project@opensuse.org mailing list. Proposals should be submitted by January 15, 2007."
Distribution Newsletters
Debian Weekly News
The Debian Weekly News for December 26, 2006 covers the 400,000th bug report, a call for participation in the Debian mini-conf at linux.conf.au, 20,000 submitters for popularity contest, five years of debianforum.de, ARM is now the third most-popular Debian Architecture, installing Debian without a CD-ROM, an Etch-CD with KDE as the default desktop, Etch frozen, Debian powers Australia's largest satellite network, Debian Package of the Day, and much more.Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for December 18, 2006 looks at EFIKA overlay opens, Quickstart 0.3 and several other topics.DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 183
The DistroWatch Weekly for January 1, 2007 is out. "With another exciting year safely behind us, we'll start the first issue of DistroWatch Weekly in 2007 with a statistical look at the popularity of Linux distributions and other interesting data collected here during the past year. The news section will then bring a varied collection of happenings from the distro world, including news about the latest beta release of SimplyMEPIS, updates about the forthcoming Fedora 7, information about the release blockers delaying Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, links to interviews with the developers of Ulteo and SabayonLinux, and alerts to articles of interest to users of PCLinuxOS, openSUSE and Yellow Dog Linux. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the December 2006 DistroWatch donation goes to SabayonLinux."
Package updates
Fedora updates
Updates for Fedora Core 6: frysk (split to several rpms), wget (bug fixes), jpackage-utils (update to latest jpackage-utils), htdig (fixed htfuzzy's sigfaults), gtk2 (bug fixes), evince (fix a copy-and-paste error in the %post script), gnome-applets (bug fix), desktop-printing (bug fix), selinux-policy (bug fix), dvd+rw-tools (bug fix), poppler (solve conflict with xpdf-utils), gnome-python2-extras (rebuild against firefox), scim (bug fixes), frysk (new upstream version), dbus-glib (bug fixes), autofs (bug fixes), xen (update to xen-3.0.3-8.rhel5), libvirt (new upstream release), kernel (update to 2.6.18.6 final), gtk2 (bug fixes), virt-manager (bug fixes), python-virtinst (bug fixes), less (bug fixes), cups (bug fixes), logwatch (bug fixes), m17n-db (bug fix), gphoto2 (update to 2.3.1), hal (bug fix), libgnomeprint22 (bug fix), smartmontools (bug fix), eclipse-cdt (update autotools plug-in to 0.0.6).Updates for Fedora Core 5: frysk (split to several rpms), dvd+rw-tools (bug fix), frysk (new upstream version), xen (add vmxassist fix), less (bug fixes), gphoto2 (update to 2.3.1).
Mandriva updates
Updates for Mandriva Linux 2007.0: lsb (bug fix).rPath updates
Updates for rPath Linux 1: httpd, mod_ssl (MIME type and path corrections).Trustix updates
Updates for Trustix Secure Linux 2.2 & 3.0: hwdata, mysql (various bug fixes).Ubuntu updates
Updates for Ubuntu 6.10: control-center (upload to edgy-updates).
Newsletters and articles of interest
Red Hat's next Linux due before March (ZDNet)
ZDNet covers the release schedule for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 had been scheduled to ship by the end of 2006. However, the company began giving itself scheduling wiggle room in September, when Red Hat released the first RHEL 5 beta. A second beta arrived in November. Now Red Hat is being more definitive. "I'm sure we will ship a gold (version) on February 28," Chief Executive Matthew Szulik, referring to the final version, said in an interview after the company reported its quarterly financial results."
How To Compile A Kernel - The Debian (Sarge) Way (HowtoForge)
HowtoForge builds a custom kernel on a Debian Sarge system. "Each distribution has some specific tools to build a custom kernel from the sources. This article is about compiling a kernel on Debian Sarge systems. It describes how to build a custom kernel using the latest unmodified kernel sources from www.kernel.org (vanilla kernel) so that you are independent from the kernels supplied by your distribution. It also shows how to patch the kernel sources if you need features that are not in there."
Sabayon Linux Interview (KnoLinux)
KnoLinux has an interview with Sabayon Linux developer Christopher Villareal. "Knolinux: Hello Chris, Why did you start working on a new Linux distro? Chris: Let's see, my gnu/linux experience started about 6 years ago when I started out with the major binary distributions. Since then, I got agitated by the fact that I didn't have as much control over the system as I wanted. Then I came to gentoo after trying out some other source distros due to the tools that were available to me. As such, I was doing some searching and found a distro called RR4/RR64 which looked extremely promising. So on Dec. of '05 I joined the forums and started making post. Soon, I got used to helping others and really enjoyed the RR experience and had the pleasure to speak with the Lead on occasion. 6 monthes of hard work, I threw the idea to Fabio (lxnay) to become his co-lead and I really liked the fact of helping people come to an excellent distro. Its all about the community effort, and I wanted to help. Currently I am helping maintain the main chroot environment, our custom overlay, and just managing bugs and interacting with the users through irc, the forums, and jabber."
OpenVZ On Debian Etch For Webservers (HowtoForge)
HowtoForge sets up OpenVZ on a Debian etch system. "This guide is written during an install of a Supermicro machine with 2 dual-core opterons (64-bit), 2 identical disks (for RAID) and a load of memory. Why OpenVZ and not XEN or the recent KVM kernel module? Well, XEN is not very stable for 64-bit architectures (yet), and it comes with quite a bit of overhead (every VM runs its own kernel) due to its complexity. KVM is very simple but restricts you to run a kernel as one process, so the VM cannot benefit from multi core systems."
Distribution reviews
Review: VectorLinux 5.8 (Linux.com)
Linux.com has a review of VectorLinux 5.8. "VectorLinux, a lightweight, fast Linux distribution for the x86 platform, just released its new version 5.8 this week. This user-friendly distribution makes the average computer user's life easy by supplying office software, Web browsing, photo editing, and archiving on top of a fast, clean Xfce window manager."
The well-tempered Debian desktop (DesktopLinux)
Rick Lehrbaum reviews a Debian Etch install on an old Thinkpad. "I began by downloading RC1 of the Debian "testing" net-install CD (aka "etch RC1") iso file from here. It's a quick download, being a 100-150MB file. I like that. After burning the CD from the iso, I popped it into the Thinkpad, and booted it up."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
Next page:
Development>>