Distributions

DebXO for the XO laptop

The XO laptop was developed for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Two weeks ago the XO Software Release 8.2.0 was announced. This week the DebXO project has taken off, with the goal of providing a Debian-based alternative for the XO laptop. Work has been in progress for at least a couple of months, but versions 0.2 and 0.3 were announced this week.

As of this writing, Andres "dilinger" Salomon has released three versions, the debxo-latest symlink points to the latest release. According to the version 0.2 announcement DebXO has EXT3 images for booting from USB and/or SD; and while DebXO 0.1 only had a GNOME desktop, 0.2 includes KDE, LXDE, Sugar, Awesome and GNOME desktops. Version 0.3 provides some important bug fixes for problems found in 0.2.

This project is obviously still in its infancy, but it seems like a good start on an alternative for the XO laptop. If you have an XO and are interested in helping out you could start by testing the current versions. There is a git repository with the code, which has a web interface, or just use git clone to grab the code.

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Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 updated

The Debian project has announced the fifth update of it's stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename etch). "This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustment to serious problems. Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away 4.0 CDs or DVDs but only to update via an up-to-date Debian mirror after an installation, to cause any out of date packages to be updated."

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Fedora 10 Snapshot 3

Fedora has released the final snapshot before the devel freeze and subsequent preview release. It's available by torrent with only one known bug listed in the announcement (click below). Check it out and report any bugs you find.

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Ubuntu 8.10 release candidate available

The release candidate for the Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" release is available. "We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable, and suitable for testing by any user." Final release is scheduled for October 30, so now would be a good time to try things out and find the remaining bugs.

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Fedora moves the X server

Testers of the Fedora 10 beta (or Rawhide) have recently noticed that the X server has been moved from its traditional home on virtual terminal 7 to VT1. This move, which has spawned a lengthy flame war (OK, two lengthy flame wars) is motivated by a desire to speed the boot process by avoiding the VT switch. It seems like a relatively small change, but our community has a strong sense of tradition, apparently.

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Gentoo Council meeting summary

Click below for a summary of the Gentoo Council meeting for October 23, 2008. There's a look at open bugs included in the summary.

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International Mandriva Linux 2009 Install Fest

Mandriva is co-ordinating an international Install Fest for the new Mandriva Linux 2009 release, on November 22, 2008. If you are involved with a LUG or other community group and would be interested in running a local event as part of the Install Fest, Mandriva will provide professionally pressed One CDs and other material. Visit the Wiki page for details of how to organize an event in your area. There is also a list of confirmed events, so look for one in your area.

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Results of the 1st openSUSE Board Election

The results are in for the first community election of the openSUSE board. "The new board members are, from the Non-Novell side of the community Pascal Bleser and Bryen Yunashko and from the Novell side we have Henne Vogelsang and Federico Mena-Quintero. We are proud to announce that Michael Loeffler has been appointed by Novell as chairman of the new board." Click below for more information on the election, including the turnout (178 of 237 or 75%).

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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #114

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for October 25, 2008 covers: Ubuntu 8.10 RC released, Intrepid Release Parties, Intrepid bug fixes, Pre-order Intrepid CDs, Spread Ubuntu Alpha 0.1, MOTU News, German UbuCon 2008, Ubuntu Maryland: New team website, BugJam Berlin, Interview with Dustin Kirkland, Ubuntu Podcast #10, Firefox removes license agreement from Ubuntu, Dell's Mini Issues Getting Bigger?, Interview with Jon Ramvi of the Ubuntu Eee project, Obama Ubuntu? Or a Hoax?, Team Meeting Summaries, Club-Ubuntu, and much more.

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OpenSUSE Weekly News/43

This issue of the OpenSUSE Weekly News looks at openSUSE Build Service Webclient Survey Started, Development Release: openSUSE 11.1 Beta 3 Now Available, We want YOU - for openSUSE Weekly Newsletter, People of openSUSE: Henne Vogelsang, and much more.

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Fedora Weekly News #149

This issue of the Fedora Weekly News covers Fedora 10: Features & Final Development Freeze, Planet Fedora articles Events & Trip Reports and Tech Tidbits, developments in R, libtool, the Livna migration to RPM Fusion, and much more.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 276

The DistroWatch Weekly for October 27, 2008 is out. "One of the busiest and most exciting periods of the year for most Linux distribution watchers is here. Yes, it's the Ubuntu release week! For many, this will likely mean unreachable web sites, busy download servers, overworked BitTorrent clients, and hundreds of first-look reviews and screenshot tours all over the Internet. Stay tuned as we bring you all the exciting announcements. In the news section, Fedora finalises the feature list for the upcoming release of version 10, openSUSE explains the complexities of its distribution's release process, Mandriva announces plans for a worldwide install party, and DesktopBSD ponders an upgrade to KDE 4. And speaking about KDE 4, what is your opinion about the quality, stability and features of the popular desktop's latest version? Some people love it, while others can't stand it, but one thing is sure - thanks to the variety of distributions on the market, we can always find that perfect solution for our needs."

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Interview: Fedora 10's Better Startup (Fedora Magazine)

Fedora Magazine has an interview with Adam Jackson and Ray Strode about the cleaner graphical booting that is coming in Fedora 10. "Not only is X not especially fast to initialize on its own (although better now than it was), but due to the design of rhgb, all of init would pause until X came up. For F9 we tried to fix this by launching X sort of in parallel with the rest of init and queueing up console messages until the vte widget was ready. This never really worked right either, partly because it's just too hard to get all the corner cases right, fsck failing and so forth. We also kept running into race conditions with the tty layer where the kernel would deadlock between the rhgb X server coming down and the gdm X server coming up. Eventually we just punted, reverted back to more or less the rhgb we shipped in F8, and resolved to drop it from F10." (Thanks to Rahul Sundaram).

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First look: OpenSUSE 11.1 beta 3 very promising (Ars Technica)

Ars Technica has a review of openSUSE 11.1 beta 3. "Although OpenSUSE doesn't provide quite the same level of polish and simplicity as Ubuntu, it does offer some compelling advantages. OpenSUSE's unbeatable Mono integration is a big win for many software developers, and the distribution also has great support for desktop search integration via the Beagle indexing system. The OpenSUSE KDE environment is among the best, which is why we have typically used OpenSUSE as our reference platform for KDE testing. The 11.1 release is looking really sharp and continues to play to those strengths."

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