Distributions

How Debian packages a number

Debian developer Josselin Mouette recently posted an intent to package notification for a useful-seeming library package:

Now, it's hard to argue with centralizing access to useful resources, and one would think that the creation of such a package would be a simple task. The response from the Debian community makes it clear that even simple-seeming tasks can be difficult, though.

For starters, what happens when upstream releases a new version of the number? It appears necessary to add a separate version number to the library name. Another helpful developer pointed out the need for a command-line utility to obtain the number from scripts and such. Then there's the matter of bindings for Ruby, Perl, Python, and Lua, each of which would need a separate package. Even that's not enough, though, since the number in question is seen to be architecture-independent, and thus requiring a package separate from the library which uses it. Others pointed out that, now that Java is free, a Java binding will be required as well.

Then there's the matter of GUI tools for GNOME, KDE, and XFCE.

As of this writing, the Debian developers were beginning to grapple with the need for a full set of translations and setting up a special internationalization mailing list for this package. All of this attention to detail and universal support demonstrates how Debian has become such a comprehensive, well-integrated distribution. Look for the upcoming "Lenny" release to have the best l33t h4x0r numb3r of any distributor out there.

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64 Studio 1.3.0 released

Release 1.3.0 "Let Me Take You to the Beach" of 64 Studio is out. "64 Studio is a GNU/Linux distribution tailor-made for digital content creation, including audio, video, graphics and publishing tools. A remix of Debian testing, it comes in both AMD64/Intel64 and 32-bit flavours, to run on nearly all PC hardware. Our latest development release (1.3.0) is the very first to be based on a stable release of Debian, the recent Etch release." The release also includes the final Beta of the recently released Ardour 2 digital audio workstation software.

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EnGarde Secure Linux, Community Edition

EnGarde Secure Linux, Community Edition has been released. "EnGarde is the only enterprise-class, Linux-based secure platform for managing a complete Internet presence featuring Web-based management flexibility and SELinux functionality." Download information, a feature list, and screen shots can be found on the EnGarde web page; note that registration and explicit mailing list opt-out are required to download the distribution.

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Gentoo Linux 2007.0 released

Gentoo Linux 2007.0 ("Secret Sauce") has been announced. "This release includes a completely rewritten version of the Gentoo Linux Installer on the AMD64 and x86 LiveCD and LiveDVD images. It also includes GNOME 2.16.2, KDE 3.5.5, Xfce 4.4, Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3, OpenOffice.org 2.1.0, and the 2.6.19 Linux kernel." Download information is over here.

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Gentoo debuts a new installer

The Gentoo Linux installer team has launched version 0.5 of GLI, which promises to change the way Gentoo systems are set up. "The major change is that the installer is now interactive, so instead of configuring everything and then letting the install go, it acts more like every other installer that has ever existed."

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Slax Tools 070501

Slax Tools has released v070501. Slax Tools are graphical applications that simplify the process of generating custom versions of the live distribution Slax.

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Fedora Core 5 end of life is 2007-06-29

The Fedora Project has announced the end of support for Fedora Core 5 as of June 29, 2007. Fedora 7 is due to be released on May 24, 2007, so FC5 users may upgrade to FC6 or F7 for continued security and critical bug fix support.

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Fedora 7 -- what, when, and why

Fedora 7 is due to be released on May 24, 2007. Max Spevack takes a look how Fedora 7 is different from previous Fedora releases. "In one sentence: "Fedora 7 has been about improving the manner in which all future Fedora releases will be made.""

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Seth Vidal and Toshio Kuratomi joining Red Hat

Seth Vidal and Toshio Kuratomi have accepted jobs at Red Hat. Both are well-established Fedora contributors who will now work for Fedora full time, with a Red Hat paycheck. Congratulations.

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openSUSE survey results now online

The results of the openSUSE survey are available (PDF). "The survey was live for almost 3 months and more than 27,000 user participated. Thank you all for your participation. With your input we all are able to make openSUSE better and better." DesktopLinux also takes a look at the results.

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openSUSE 10.3 Roadmap

The final openSUSE 10.3 roadmap has been posted. Planned features include a single-CD installation process, external repository integration, GNOME 2.20, a KDE4 preview, and more. The next alpha release is due on May 16, with the final 10.3 release happening on October 4.

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Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition

The Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project has been announced. "We will start more detailed planning at the Ubuntu Developer Summit next week in Seville and the first release of this edition will be in October with Ubuntu 7.10. If you are interested in the project, please get involved. We will be working through our normal development processes on Launchpad, the developer mailing lists and IRC."

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Fedora Weekly News Issue 86

Fedora Weekly News for May 5, 2007 looks at Fedora Core 5 End of Life, CD Bootloader Change, Status of the merge, Rawhide 20070502 Live Images, Fedora 7 Test 4 ISOs for IA64 Available, Announcing New Fedora-php-devel-list, highlights from Planet Fedora and much more.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for April 23, 2007 covers a thank you note from the GWN staff, Developer of the Week (jokey), and more.

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for April 30, 2007 covers Ant 1.7.0 going stable, Apache 1.x being removed, Italian translation team seeking help and other topics.

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Ubuntu Weekly News: Issue #39

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for May 5, 2007 covers the new Mobile and Embedded Initiative, Launchpad's new mentoring framework, and Lo``Cos involved in conferences and installfests, and several other topics.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 201

The DistroWatch Weekly for May 7, 2007 is out. "The biggest news of the past week was the joint announcement by Dell and Canonical which promises to usher in a new era in the way we choose our systems in online computer stores - a brief analysis of the announcement and what it means for us follows. In other news, the Fedora project finally merges its two package repositories, Ian Murdock announces the end of Progeny, and NimbleX offers a never-seen-before web-based way of generating a custom Slackware-based live CD. Also in this issue: a featured article that presents two excellent resources for those who are interested in becoming more proficient in Linux and open source software. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the April 2007 DistroWatch donation is the LyX project."

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Call for keys for keysigning in Edinburgh during DebConf7

Here's some necessary information for people who wish to participate in DebConf7 keysignings in Edinburgh.

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What’s new in SELinux for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5? (Red Hat Magazine)

Red Hat Magazine is running an article about SELinux improvements in RHEL5. "In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, 15 services in system space had confined SELinux domains defined. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, over 200 processes are confined by SELinux. The improved SELinux policy is much more precise in how it governs the operation of these services. It’s far less likely that a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 system space process will be compromised or encounter an error caused by an SELinux policy not handling the specific requirements (e.g., file or directory access) of a service." In addition, the "setroubleshoot" tool looks like a big improvement.

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What's what with openSUSE, ZENworks, YaST (Linux-Watch)

Linux-Watch looks at package management in openSUSE 10.3 and for Novell's enterprise SUSE Linux operating systems. "SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 will also include the well-known graphical interfaces [YAST] for software management," concluded [Novell PR director Bruce] Lowry. The result will be that the current ZENworks components will be changed by Novell's engineers to work better in the commercial versions of Linux. In the meantime, openSUSE will continue its work with Zypper, openSUSE-updater, and YaST. Zypp will stay in both, as the core package update component."

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Impi Linux 7.05 released (Tectonic)

Tectonic covers the release of Impi Linux 7.05 and talks with Impi Linux MD, Gary Fortuin. "Tectonic: Can you give us an idea of some of the features and capabilities that make up this release of Impi? GF: It is based on Ubuntu 7.04, which is modern, user-friendly and "just works". Secondly it is focused on business. File and email encryption, desktop search, groupware-enabled email and directory (LDAP) authentication work out of the box. We have enhanced support for iPods as well as support for NTFS. It also has support for all 11 official languages. Thanks to Translate.org.za for this."

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Comodo Releases Zero Touch Linux (Webhosting.info)

Webhosting.info covers the release of Zero Touch Linux. "Comodo, a provider of Identity and Trust Assurance Management solutions, today announced the launch of Red Hat and CentOS-based versions of their back office server suite, Zero Touch Linux. According to the company an installation of ZTL brings in file server, print server, domain controller, dns, mail server, web mail, database server, web server, proxy server, DHCP server, content filtering server and a firewall. The package overcomes the difficulties of deploying a Linux infrastructure by reducing the setup of multiple server types to a one time installation and configuration."

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The Perfect Desktop (HowtoForge)

HowtoForge sets up a desktop computer with Ubuntu 7.04 - Feisty Fawn and Debian 4.0 - Etch. "In this tutorial I will show people who are willing to switch to Linux how they can set up a Linux desktop that fully replaces their Windows desktop, i.e. that has all software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops."

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Digipup: A Linux live CD for amateur radio (Linux.com)

Linux.com reviews Digipup, a derivation of the Puppy Linux live CD that is geared toward amateur radio applications. "Digipup contains three of Dave Freese's (W1HKJ) most popular free software offerings for amateur radio: Fldigi, which does a great job on digital sound card modes like PSK, RTTY, MFSK, and others; Fl_logbook, a small, fast, efficient logging program to record your contacts; and Geoid, which computes the bearing and distance between sites using either latitude and longitude or Maidenhead grid locators."

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Mandriva 2007 Spring packs a punch (Linux.com)

Linux.com reviews Mandriva 2007 Spring. "Mandriva recently released its first distro of the year, dubbed Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring. Like previous releases, Spring is available in five editions, two of which can be freely downloaded. I installed and worked with the $76 Powerpack edition, which includes support and several gigabytes of packages. Not only does Powerpack score over other multiple CD/DVD free-of-cost distros, it also makes competing non-free distros eat dust."

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Lastest Xandros Linux server targets Windows admins (Linux-Watch)

Linux-Watch looks at Xandros Server Standard Edition 2. "The latest Xandros server is meant for use by small and midsize businesses. In particular, the company is aiming it at Windows administrators who want to minimize down-time and cut support costs, according to the company. The new Xandros Linux server is compatible with existing Windows domain and networking topologies. It provides an alternative for Windows administrators looking to replace older versions of Windows server, and it offers the ability to remotely manage Linux servers even from a Windows desktop, through the all-graphical xMC (Xandros Management Console)."

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