Distributions

ALT Linux

ALT Linux is well-known in Russia, but less well-known in other parts of the world. Up until recently the web site has only been available in Russian, but now more parts of the wiki have been translated to English.

ALT Linux got its start years ago as a Russian localization of the pre-Mandriva Mandrake Linux. The last release before forking away from those roots was the Linux-Mandrake Russian Edition Spring 2001. After that the ALT Linux team created Sisyphus, the development tree from which stable releases are now branched.

Sisyphus is the heart of ALT. It's an APT-enabled RPM package repository with some unique tools, available with git. Developed by an international team of developers, Sisyphus supports x86 and x86-64 architectures with ports to ARM and PowerPC underway.

Some the tools in Sisyphus include: hasher, a tool for building packages in safe and repeatable manner; gear, a tool for building RPM packages from git repositories; and Alterator, a system configuration framework.

Sisyphus is regularly branched to create a family of stable distributions which are supported by the Russian company ALT Linux Ltd. The company now has an office in Brazil as well. Stable distributions are available for servers, development platforms, personal and business desktops, terminal servers for schools, and more.

Russian schools started deploying ALT's Free Software Suite (FSS) in 2008 in over 1000 schools within three pilot regions. Other schools from outside those regions also participated so that more than 2000 schools now use some form of ALT Linux. The ALT Linux Software Developer Kit is available to help educational facilities customize their distributions.

Alexey Rusakov, the current project manager of ALT Linux. In this February 2009 interview in How Software is Built, he talks about ALT's roots, and Free Software in Russia.

ALT Linux seems to be well poised to become a definitive free software solution in Russia and beyond. Its foothold in Russian schools could pave its way into the Russian government. Translations into other languages, first English and then Brazilian Portuguese will help ALT expand into a global market.

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Debian GNU/Linux updated

The Debian Project has announced a revision to the old stable distribution Debian 4.0 (etch), now at 4.0r8.

The current stable version (5.0 lenny) has also been updated to v5.0.1. Note the new versioning scheme for revisions.

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Fedora 11 Snapshot 1

A snapshot of Fedora 11 is available for testing. This snapshot is the the penultimate testing release, to be followed by the preview release later this month. "Lots of work has gone into the storage code of Anaconda since the Beta release, please do re-test with these images if you had difficulty installing the Beta."

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Kubuntu Jaunty KDE 3 Remix Beta

Kubuntu has announced a remix of Kubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) with KDE 3.5, currently available as a beta. See the release notes for more information.

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PC-BSD 7.1

iXsystems has announced the release of PC-BSD 7.1, Galileo Edition. "PC-BSD 7.1 is built upon the FreeBSD 7.1-STABLE operating system. FreeBSD is a UNIX-based operating system that provides a high level of security and stability. The Galileo Edition of PC-BSD includes updated versions of KDE (4.2.2) and Xorg (7.4). The latest version of KDE includes new window effects, screen savers, and better 3D Acceleration. PC-BSD exclusively features the Push Button Installer (PBI), a push-button software installation wizard with a wide range of applications. The latest version of the Push Button Installer improves PBI self-containment to increase reliability."

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Untangle 6.1 Hits the Streets

Untangle has announced the release of version 6.1 of its Debian Lenny based gateway distribution. "The highlight of the release is our new app, Commtouch Spam Booster, but there are several other significant upgrades and enhancements as well. Please see the 6.1 changelog for a comprehensive list of everything new and shiny."

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Fixstars Launches Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux v6.1 for Cell

Fixstars has announced the release of Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux (YDEL) v6.1. "This release introduces important performance improvements as well as new features for the world's only Linux OS built specifically for the Cell Broadband Engine. In addition to providing continued support for Fixstars GigaAccel 180 and IBM QS2x blades, YDEL v6.1 now offers support for the Sony PlayStation3 and IBM JS2x series blades."

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Steve McIntyre is re-elected as Debian project leader

Current Debian project leader Steve McIntyre will also be the new project leader starting on April 17th. McIntyre was declared the winner over the other candidate, Stefano Zacchiroli, using the Condorcet voting method. More information can be found on the voting page as well as by clicking below.

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Bits from the Debian Installer team

The Debian Installer team had two meetings to discuss the future, organization and technical challenges for the Lenny->Squeeze release cycle. "This "Bits from the D-I team" post represents the minutes of these two meetings and will summarise decisions and discussions that happened during the meetings."

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DebConf8 final report / deadline reminders

The organizers of last year's DebConf8 in Argentina have put the finishing touches on the final report. The DebConf9 deadline for visa assistance is April 30, 2009. DebConf9 will be in Cáceres, Spain, July 24-30, 2009.

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Fedora Board Meeting Recap 2009-04-07

Click below for a brief recap of the April 7, 2009 meeting of the Fedora Advisory Board. Topics include QA briefing and some questions & answers.

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Initial summary for Gentoo Council meeting

The Gentoo Council met on April 9, 2009; click below for a summary. Topics include Migration of KEYWORDS out of ebuilds, EAPI 3 features block and EAPI 3 updates.

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Smolt in Mandriva (Frederik's Blog)

Smolt, a hardware profiling tool developed for Fedora, is now in Mandriva Cooker (development branch). "On the smolts.org website, people can view all hardware entries and indicate which one is working OK for them. The database is also coupled with a wiki, where extra instructions can be written to get the hardware working. Smolt is used by default already for some time in Fedora and also in OpenSUSE." (Thanks to Rahul Sundaram)

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openSUSE Board Meeting Minutes, March 25

Click below for a look at the minutes for the openSUSE Board meeting for March 25, 2009. Topics include Trademark guide lines, Improvement of IRC cloak and email address handling, openSUSE conference, openSUSE Foundation and more.

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Ubunchu! An Ubuntu Manga

Ubunchu! is a Japanese manga (comic) by Hiroshi Seo. The story follows three students in a system administration club as they try out Ubuntu. The manga is now available in English, as well as Spanish and Korean. There is also a Launchpad project for collaboration.

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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #137

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for the week ending April 11, 2009 is out. "In this issue we cover: Archive frozen in preparation of Ubuntu 9.04, Ubuntu 7.10 reaches EOL April 18th, Ubuntu Open Week, QA Team: Next Testing Day, LoCo Team news(New York, Florida, Nebraska, Australia, and Tunisia), Updating the PPA Docs, Meet Gavin Panella, Expanding the Forum Council, New Staff in Town, apt URLs now available on the Ubuntu Wiki, More Easter eggs in Ubuntu, Bookmarkftp update, Running Ubuntu: literally, Ubunchu the Ubuntu Manga is now in English, Ubuntu Server Team meeting minutes, and much, much more!"

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OpenSUSE Weekly News/67

This edition of the OpenSUSE Weekly News covers: OBS will be added to LDN, People of openSUSE: Sascha Manns, Jigish Gohil: Most efficient Ways to Download, polishlinux: KDE 4.3 - early preview, tuxmachines.org: We're Linux" Video Contest Winners, and several other topics.

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Fedora Weekly News #171

The Fedora Weekly News for the week ending April 12, 2009 is out. "Our latest issue includes important Announcements about Fedora 11 and freeze statuses. Ambassadors celebrates the way "Italians Fete Document Freedom Day" and "LinuxFest Northwest Ramps Up". Developments relays some fraught conversations about "Emacs, Glibc, Malloc and i586" and cautions that "Mono Breakage on PPC May Cause Reversion". Translations keys us in to the "Fedora 11 Release Notes Discussion". Artwork provides insight into "Finishing the Artwork for Fedora 11". Virtualization reports on the "Virtualization Technology Preview Repo.""

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 298

The DistroWatch Weekly for April 13, 2009 is out. "Recently the latest version of perhaps the world's most friendly BSD distribution was released. PC-BSD 7.1 is based off FreeBSD and we take a first look at this interesting operating system. In the news, Novell's Online Build Service, recently added to the Linux Foundation's Developer Network, gains support for the ARM processor, Moblin sets its sight on a 2-second boot, Fedora re-issues 64-bit images of its recent beta release of version 11, FreeBSD hits 20,000 packages in its ports directory, Debian announces the final results of the project leader elections, and Kubuntu releases a KDE 3 remix of its 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope beta. Finally, don't miss the first episode of "Ubunchu!" the world's first open source manga featuring Ubuntu Linux. Happy reading!"

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FUDCon Berlin 2009 & LinuxTag 2009

FUDCon Berlin and LinuxTag are about 2 months away. The FUDCon will be co-located with LinuxTag. Click below for the FUDCon schedule.

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April tribute to the Fedora Project art team (Linux Graphics Users.com)

In the Linux Graphics Users forum, there is an interview with the Fedora art team, which looks at graphics tools as well as how the art team operates. It also gives some advice that would be useful for others who want to put together such a team for their project. "Nicu Buculei- The general community is contributing indirectly: we try to do everything in the open, publishing the progress of our work and asking for the feedback from the larger community and then using the feedback to improve the graphics. [...] As an example, for Fedora 11 Máirín Duffy conducted an informal survey on her blog and learned that a lot of users prefer a photo realistic wallpaper, so we are trying such an approach for the next release. Since the graphics are included in the Beta release, we are eagerly awaiting for the post-Beta feedback in a few days."

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SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Is (Almost) All Things to All Companies (eWeek)

eWeek reviews SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11. "[Sites] upgrading to SLES 11 from SLES 10 should be pleasantly surprised at the software management system that graces the new version--it performs much better than the framework that shipped with Version 10. The newer system is still based on RPM, but now includes the back-end tool zypper, which, across a few years of OpenSUSE releases, had the opportunity to mature into a very effective software management tool."

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Portable Ubuntu: The Easy New Way To Try Linux (bMighty)

bMighty takes a look at Portable Ubuntu. "Portable Ubuntu is actually based on another Linux distro, known as Cooperative Linux or coLinux. The coLinux distro is designed to allow a LInux kernel and Windows to run simultaneously on the same system. As a result, coLinux has spawned some projects similar to Portable Ubuntu that run other distros; TopologiLinux, for example, runs Slackware, a popular community-supported Linux distro."

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