| DistroWatch Weekly |
| A d v e r t i s e m e n t |
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| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 110, 25 July 2005 |
Welcome to this year's 30th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. It is "shoulder season" in the distribution land. Apart from several minor distribution releases, it was a slow week, with only the launch of the Utnubu initiative and a new beta release from Mandriva providing some excitement. Prompted by a satisfied user, we have taken a closer look at StartCom MultiMedia Edition, an interesting distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Apart from these topics, we have all the usual columns, complemented by a quick tip for using digital cameras, mobile phones and music players under Linux. Happy reading!
Content:
Utnubu, Mandriva 2006 0.1.1, why FreeBSD, Planner
 Utnubu is a new Debian initiative that examines Ubuntu patches and applications missing from Debian in order to merge some of Ubuntu's ideas back into Debian: "I invite everyone interested to join the Utnubu Team. Utnubu stands for doing what Ubuntu does, just the other way around: we want to take the things Ubuntu does and that are missing in Debian, and - where applicable - put them in Debian." More information about Utnubu is available in this mailing list post.
 A new beta version of Mandriva Linux 2006 appeared on the mirrors over the weekend. Like the first one a week ago, the new beta release, labelled as 2006 0.1.1, has not yet been officially announced, but the good news is that the mirroring problems we mentioned in last week's DistroWatch Weekly have been solved and the new release is now available from the usual Mandriva mirror sites. The differences between the two betas seem to be minor: a few package upgrades and bug fixes, but no apparent new features.
 Why FreeBSD? If you are a Linux user wondering about that other big open source operating system, then this article, published by IBM developerWorks, provides some answers: "The FreeBSD operating system is the unknown giant among free operating systems. Starting out from the 386BSD project, it is an extremely fast UNIX-like operating system mostly for the Intel chip and its clones. In many ways, FreeBSD has always been the operating system that GNU/Linux-based operating systems should have been. It runs on out-of-date Intel machines and 64-bit AMD chips, and it serves terabytes of files a day on some of the largest file servers on earth."
 The July issue of Red Hat Magazine was published last week. Brimming with well-written and to-the-point articles, Red Hat Magazine is a truly valuable productivity resource - and not only for Red Hat or Fedora users. Take this article on Planner, a project management application: "Project management software is a useful tool in planning and scheduling a project. Planner is an application that attempts to make project planning easier by presenting your information in easy-to-read charts and tables." The excellent article provides a step-by-step guide about creating and managing a project, accompanied by a number of screenshots.
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| Featured distribution of the week: StartCom MultiMedia Edition |
StartCom MultiMedia Edition
Last week, a reader sent us an enthusiastic email: "Just wondering why StartCom isn't in the [top 100 page hit ranking] list? This distro rocks over SUSE and Mandriva! I actually like it better than Ubuntu also. StartCom deserves to be known about as they are better than many other distributions!" As always, this is just a personal opinion of one user, but it still prompted us to download and install the recently released StartCom Linux 4.0.4 MultiMedia Edition, code name "Raam". Is it possible that a true gem is hiding behind a seemingly unimaginative name "StartCom Linux"?
First, a little bit of history. StartCom Linux is a relatively new Linux distribution, barely one-year old. It is developed primarily by Eddy Nigg, a coder from Eilat (אילת), which is the southernmost city of Israel. Initially, Eddy's idea was to create a "free" edition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) by recompiling its source RPMs, thus duplicating the effort of CentOS, White Box and other similar projects. However, the difference between these and StartCom is that Eddy has also built several specialist editions, which further extend the capabilities of RHEL. Of these, the MultiMedia Edition is probably the most interesting.
We asked Eddy about the key differences between RHEL and StartCom Multimedia Edition and here is his answer:
"The base is exactly the same. We kept all the server and development tools, which we used to remove from previous StartCom MultiMedia versions. Many users complained about that previously, so we left all intact. However there are many additions we made to our MultiMedia Edition:
- Media applications: Xine, MPlayer (with full MP3 and DVD playback)
- File sharing tools: BitTorrent, aMule
- Extra Office applications: AbiWord, Dia, QCad
- Special software for recording purposes: there is a whole recording studio with mixers, recorders, sequencers, synthesisers and many, many related effect tools and other stuff you need to run a production studio. This section is rather big, but well-integrated into the distribution.
- Other popular applications missing from RHEL: Blender, Kino
For more information about StartCom MultiMedia Edition, please visit the project's home and features pages. CD and DVD ISO images are available for free download from the distributions many mirror sites.
StartCom MultiMedia Edition with Audacity, BEAST, Kino, MPlayer, Sound Juicer, Rosegarden, Xine and other software for audio/video enthusiasts.
(full image size: 237kB)
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| Released Last Week |
Puppy Linux 1.0.4
A new version of Puppy Linux is out: "Puppy Linux version 1.0.4 is released. The great news for this release is the Puppy live CD now has Gnumeric, the premier Linux spreadsheet editor. This is version 1.4.3 and includes the full set of plugins. MUT (Media Utility Tool) version 0.0.5 is now in Puppy. This is a greatly enhanced drive mount/unmount alternative to Pmount. Printing support has been improved, with a patched AFPL Ghostscript version 8.51 and a patched AbiWord version 2.2.7...." Visit the project's news page to read more about the changes in Puppy Linux 1.0.4.
SLAX 5.0.6
SLAX 5.0.6, complete with KDE 3.4.1 and KOffice 1.4.0, has been released: "It's my pleasure to let you know that SLAX 5.0.6 is available for download, together with all the special editions. The most important changes include: added Linux Kernel 2.6.12.2 with ALSA sound drivers 1.0.9b; added better default GTK2 theme, so all GTK2 applications will look nicer; module extension (.mo) is now integrated into KDE context menu; removed 15MB of pcf fonts, this drops Chinese support; fixed bug in configsave / websave, which caused each even session to be wrong. Many bugs have been fixed in Unionfs filesystem so I hope it will be more stable then before...." Read the rest of the changelog for more details.
Berry Linux 0.60
A brand new version of the Berry Linux live CD has been released. This is the first release based on Fedora Core 4, but with several updates, including kernel 2.6.12 with SMP support + devfs + bootsplash, and KDE 3.4.1. Other interesting package upgrades include K3B 0.12, GIMP 2.2.8, and MPlayer 1.0pre7. Besides a development version of OpenOffice.org 2, the distribution now also ships with the free editions of the TextMaker word processor and PlanMaker spreadsheet. See the complete changelog for more details.
Berry Linux 0.60 - the first Berry live CD based on Fedora Core 4
(full image size: 841kB)
StartCom AS-4.0.0 and ML-4.0.4 Update One
An updated set of ISO images of StartCom AS-4.0.0 (Enterprise Linux) and ML-4.0.4 (MultiMedia Edition) have been released: "StartCom released today updated versions of its newest operating systems StartCom Enterprise Linux (AS-4.0.0 Barak) and StartCom MultiMedia Edition (ML-4.0.4 Raam). These releases include security and bug fixes of over 170 updated packages each, including the latest updates of the kernel, OpenSSL and Kerberos. The updates include the very latest security and bug fixes including important security updates to ensure the best possible reliability." Find more information in the formal press release.
Devil-Linux 1.2.6
A new version of Devil-Linux, a Linux live CD designed for firewalls, routers and servers, has been released: "I'm proud to announce v1.2.6 of Devil-Linux. The changes include Kernel 2.4.31, various program updates and the addition of missing netfilter modules. See changelog for details." Many other packages have been upgraded to their newest versions; these include PHP 4.4.0, Postfix 2.2.4, MySQL 4.1.12, PostgreSQL 7.4.8, OpenLDAP 2.2.26 and OpenSSH 4.1p1, just to name a few. Read the release announcement and changelog for more information.
AnNyung LInux 1.2
AnNyung LInux is an i686-optimised Korean server distribution, originally based on Red Hat Linux 7.2. Despite its relatively old code base, the distribution includes many updated packages and provides timely security updates. Version 1.2 was released today. The main changes are: updated kernel 2.4.31; support for SATA drives; support for remote network boot via PXE; new boot splash screen. Besides the update kernel, the new version also comes with the latest OpenSSH (4.1p1) and PHP (5.0.4). Read the full release announcement (in Korean) for further information.
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Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Minislack, Rubyx renamed
The developers of Minislack have announced a new name of the project, which will come into effect with the upcoming new release: "A new version of the distribution is under testing at the moment. Many packages were updated (more than 100), as the current changelog shows. A new hardware discovery service has been added, along with GNOME System Tools and CUPS configurator. We've decided to change the name of the project, many thanks all fair users that contributed to this difficult choice. The name and new release will be announced at the same time." Read more in this announcement.
A reader has also informed us that the source-based distribution formerly known as Rubyx now operates under a new name - Heretix. The project's new web site can be found at h-e-r-e-t-i-x.org.
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Web Site News |
New distribution additions
DistroWatch database summary
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| Tips and tricks |
Digital cameras, mobile phones and music players under Linux
These days, if you buy a digital camera, mobile phone or a digital music player, it is likely to come with a CD containing applications that make it easier for your new device to interact with a personal computer. Invariably, though, the software can only be installed on a system running a recent version of Microsoft Windows and, in case of a few broader-minded companies, on a Macintosh. But what about us, Linux users?
Luckily, we can still use many of these gadgets. That's because they often act as ordinary USB storage devices, which means that you can simply plug them into the USB port, then mount them to browse the directories, photo images, media files, etc. If you are using one of the recent distributions with hotplug and udev, this is a very simple process - first create a new directory, then mount the device like this:
mkdir /mnt/usb
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb
Now you can browse the content of the mounted device in Konqueror, Nautilus or any other file manager you prefer.
Some distributions make things much easier. For example, the latest Linspire will detect a digital camera in your USB port and will automatically launch Lphoto, an application designed for managing digital photographs. Besides Lphoto, there are several other image viewers, including the GTK+-based GQview (this is our favourite, with great zoom options and configurable slide shows) or the QT-based KView, among many other choices.
That's all for today. We hope that you enjoyed this week's DistroWatch Weekly!
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Archives |
| • Issue 340 (2010-02-08): Interview with Kris Moore, FreeBSD history, Fedora newbie guide, backups |
| • Issue 339 (2010-02-01): GNOBSD, end of Sun, Ubuntu Yahoo deal, converting ext3 to ext4 |
| • Issue 338 (2010-01-25): Hymera and commercial Linux, Lubuntu and Qimo 4 Kids updates, Linux on Mac hardware |
| • Issue 337 (2010-01-18): First look at Jibbed, Fedora Community Remix, better applications, online CD sales |
| • Issue 336 (2010-01-11): Examining SliTaz, Debian installer changes, restoring GRUB |
| • Issue 335 (2010-01-04): Look at MINIX 3, 2009 PHR statistics, optimising 64-bit distributions |
| • Issue 334 (2009-12-21): SheevaPlug as Debian MythTV server, Canonical management changes, Mandriva "InstantOn", LSB |
| • Issue 333 (2009-12-14): Look at LinuxConsole 1.0.2009, KDE-centric distros, Archiso-live, Katana security suite |
| • Issue 332 (2009-12-07): Look at FreeBSD 8.0, Fedora 12 LXDE, ClearOS for small business, FreeNAS switch, 32-bit vs 64-bit |
| • Issue 331 (2009-11-30): Look at Kubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, FreeBSD 8.0 features, Mandriva community spins, office suites |
| • Issue 330 (2009-11-23): Look at Fedora 12, Chromium OS source code, updating FreeBSD, Qimo 4 Kids interview |
| • Issue 329 (2009-11-16): Look at openSUSE 11.2, Fedora 12 goes gold, five years of pfSense |
| • Issue 328 (2009-11-09): Look at Mandriva 2010, Ubuntu media coverage, real-time kernels |
| • Issue 327 (2009-11-02): Overview of Ubuntu variants, upgrading openSUSE and Mandriva development builds |
| • Issue 326 (2009-10-26): Review of GNOME SlackBuild, Ubuntu and Mandriva nearing release, Funtoo "fork" |
| • Issue 325 (2009-10-19): Look at iMagic OS 2009.9, Arch Linux Handbook, Linux Mint 8 Update |
| • Issue 324 (2009-10-12): Sabayon Linux 5.0 review, Debian develops kFreeBSD port, Mandriva re-introduces itself |
| • Issue 323 (2009-10-05): Slackware 13.0 review, updating openSUSE with "zypper", Red Hat vs software patents |
| • Issue 322 (2009-09-28): First look at HP Mini 110, netbook news roundup, Slackware package management |
| • Issue 321 (2009-09-21): Security basics - authentication, openSLES, Ubuntu "Lucid Lynx", Linux Mint plans |
| • Issue 320 (2009-09-14): Distro Odyssey part 2 - Arch Linux, Solaris and OpenSolaris updates, Ubuntu artwork |
| • Issue 319 (2009-09-07): Look at xPUD, Lubuntu test images, DesktopBSD 1.7, RHEL 5.4 features |
| • Issue 318 (2009-08-31): Look at Colibri, Slackware 13.0 features, ClarkConnect becomes ClearOS |
| • Issue 317 (2009-08-24): Look at Puppy Linux 4.2.1, openSUSE and KDE, Mandriva and Sabayon updates |
| • Issue 316 (2009-08-17): Status of Intel video drivers, running "Rawhide", Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface update |
| • Issue 315 (2009-08-10): Look at Pardus 2009, KDE 4.3 in distributions, Mandriva "Cooker" and Sabayon 5.0 updates |
| • Issue 314 (2009-08-03): Look at Slax 6.1.1 "Core", open letter to CentOS co-founder, Debian's time-based freezes |
| • Issue 313 (2009-07-27): Distro odyssey, ten years of Gentoo, paper on FreeBSD engineering |
| • Issue 312 (2009-07-20): Installing CentOS 5.3 on a Netbook, Mandriva products, distro and upstream relationship |
| • Issue 311 (2009-07-13): Great Linux distributions that did not survive, Google announces Chrome OS |
| • Issue 310 (2009-07-06): CDLinux 0.9.2 Community Edition, Debian and Ubuntu say Mono is no threat, "Fit and Finish" |
| • Issue 309 (2009-06-29): LinuxTag 2009, kernel 2.6.30 for "Lenny", Slackware user guide |
| • Issue 308 (2009-06-22): Interview with Robert Lange, VectorLinux, One Hundred Paper Cuts |
| • Issue 307 (2009-06-15): Fedora 11 review, custom FreeBSD images, sidux and non-free firmware |
| • Issue 306 (2009-06-08): Look at Absolute Linux, Fedora prepares "Leonidas", Mandriva Community Ideas |
| • Issue 305 (2009-06-01): Look at Debris Linux, running openSUSE "Factory", OpenSolaris 2009.06, Ubuntu User magazine |
| • Issue 304 (2009-05-25): First look at Mandriva 2009.1, Slackware64, Archlive-iso, Mobile Linux round-up |
| • Issue 303 (2009-05-18): Running Slackware "Current", Fedora 12 features, Ubuntu One, Debian "Lenny" with KDE 4 |
| • Issue 302 (2009-05-11): Future of Moblin, running "Cooker", Debian and eglibc, Slackware's new TXZ packages |
| • Issue 301 (2009-05-04): Minimal Xubuntu, Mandriva updates, BSD release galore, Arch Linux magazine |
| • Issue 300 (2009-04-27): Xubuntu 9.04 vs Debian 5.0 Xfce, Jaunty Jackalope, Fedora 10 re-spins |
| • Issue 299 (2009-04-20): Central bug tracker, reverting to older Ubuntu kernel, ShipIt 9.04, Easy Peasy updates |
| • Issue 298 (2009-04-13): First look at PC-BSD 7.1, Novell's Online Build Service, FreeBSD's 20,00 ports, Ubunchu! |
| • Issue 297 (2009-04-06): Review of Parted Magic 4.0, Linux Foundation to control Moblin, GNOME 3.0 |
| • Issue 296 (2009-03-30): First look at Tiny Core Linux 1.2, PCLinuxOS troubles, Fedora tests Nouveau |
| • Issue 295 (2009-03-23): Interview with Robert Shingledecker, Tiny Core Linux, Ubuntu 9.04 beta freeze |
| • Issue 294 (2009-03-16): Installing Linux with LVM, KDE 4 in Slackware current, ext4 and data loss |
| • Issue 293 (2009-03-09): Introduction to LVM, openSUSE and Ubuntu release plans, ULTILEX |
| • Issue 292 (2009-03-02): First look at SimplyMEPIS 8.0, openSUSE system upgrades with Zypper, Red Hat and the desktop |
| • Issue 291 (2009-02-23): Minimalist openSUSE 11.1, Ubuntu "Karmic Koala", VirtualBSD, Linux companies in recession |
| • Issue 290 (2009-02-16): Look at Debian "Lenny" live and netinst CDs, OpenSolaris Bible, Nova |
| • Issue 289 (2009-02-09): First look at Moblin, from Puppy to Woof, Mandriva Assembly, SlackFind.net |
| • Issue 288 (2009-02-02): Interview with Linus Torvalds, KDE 4.2 in Fedora, Easy Peasy and Moblin |
| • Issue 287 (2009-01-26): Linux.conf.au 2009, ext4 in Fedora and Ubuntu, ex-Mandriva developers move to Red Hat |
| • Issue 286 (2009-01-19): Arch Linux in review, Debian on Android, mini distros |
| • Issue 285 (2009-01-12): Interview with Paul Sherman, Absolute Linux, new Debian and openSUSE CD images |
| • Issue 284 (2009-01-05): Linux and distributions through years, 2008 PHR stats, Debian clears Lenny firmware holdup |
| • List of all DWW issues |
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