 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 14, 8 September 2003 |
Re-thinking the "distribution" model
Traditionally, September is a good month for releasing new versions of Linux distribution. The big commercial trio of Mandrake, Red Hat and SuSE have always considered this month to be vital for their profit margins as this is about the right time to get the boxed versions out to big chain stores ahead of the Christmas shopping season in Europe and North America. These have always been the major sources of income for the Linux companies.
But times have changed. The three largest distributions are no longer dependant on sales of boxed products to generate revenue. In fact, the box sets are often seen as too much hard work to get it produced and shipped to stores just to have profits eaten away by all the middlemen and service companies. Red Hat has already indicated that it will no longer deliver their distribution to stores in a box, concentrating their resources on attracting big customers who are more likely to provide the company with a steady revenue for years to come. Similarly, Mandrake's product have not been particularly visible on the shelves in recent years; instead they encourage all their fans to join the Mandrake Club. This seems to be working fairly well, thanks to the fact that the company has succeeded in creating a large user base of loyal fans and followers. This leaves SuSE as the only one of the big three pursuing the traditional model of "distributing" their distribution. But even SuSE has been actively courting the big business, income from which surely has to be a lot more interesting than the few euros earned from those heavy boxes full of thick Linux manuals.
Perhaps a better model is to distribute the CDs as part of a "magazine". The idea was pioneered by Aurox Linux, which has done exactly that, getting their distribution to a substantial number of software stores, book stores and even supermarkets in large parts of Europe. This is a great way of getting Linux exposed and tempt impulsive buyers who rarely venture into big software stores, but might be attracted by a low-cost Linux distribution found in a local grocery store. Of course, the fact the producer of Aurox Linux is actually a large publishing house with years of experience, plenty of contacts and delivery channels certainly helps. Still, it takes some effort to get the infrastructure in place, to get the magazine translated into many languages and, most importantly, to get it to places where Linux has never been before.
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| Released Last Week |
ByzantineOS 20030901
The ByzantineOS project announced a release of a new ByzantineOS ISO image and buildsystem. From the changelog: "Changes for byzantine-i586-20030901.iso.gz: kernel 2.4.21, alsa-driver-0.9.6, metacity-2.5.3, xmms-1.2.8-pre1, bug fixes (mplayer, sound). Changes for byzgl-buildsystem-4.1-r2.iso.gz: based on LFS-4.1, kernel 2.4.21..." See the full changelog for a more complete list of changes.
Onebase Linux 1.2
Onebase Linux released two quick bug fix versions of the earlier 1.0 release: "The CD-device selection has been avoided making the installation easier and this also resolves issues with certain CD device nodes. Other than this it contains minor fixes and improves the stability of 1.0. For those who had problems with 1.1, download or buy 1.2. Unfortunately this happens to be the third 1.x release in as many days. With this we may be closing the 1.x branch and start development with the 2.x." The announcement, changelog and system requirements. Onebase Linux is a new source-based Linux distribution with a web-based package management.
Damn Small Linux 0.4.6
Damn Small Linux 0.4.6 was released. From the changelog: "Dillo with more patches! Andreas Kemnade was kind enough to modify his SSL patch to make it compatible with Frank de Lange's frames and tabs patch. The binary is only 337k! Also, I added traceroute, fixed a rendering problem with netcardconfig, and modified startx so that it will save your selected settings for the next X session -- run 'xsetup.sh' as root if you want to change it."
MEPIS 2003.08
MEPIS is a new desktop Linux distribution based on Debian/Knoppix, with a fresh release announced yesterday: "Today, MEPIS LLC announced the release of MEPIS Linux 2003.08 for Pentium processors. MEPIS Linux is a desktop Linux that is designed for both personal and business purposes. MEPIS Linux offers a live/installation/recovery CD, automatic hardware configuration, NTFS partition resizing, ACPI power management, WiFi support, anti-aliased truetype fonts, personal firewall, KDE 3.1.3, OpenOffice 1.1, and much more." See the rest of the detailed announcement. MEPIX LLC has also become the newest sponsor of DistroWatch.com
Development Releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Eagle Linux 3.0
Eagle has announced that its 3.0 release planned for August this year will be dealyed: "Due to the recent SCO Unix happenings, Eagle Linux 3.0 will not be released until October 2003. Being a non-revenue generating product, it was not in our interest to continue development until it was assured that no negative effects would result in any fashion. Development has resumed, and we look forward to producing a product which is comparable to the previous versions of Eagle Linux."
Aurox Linux 9.1
Aurox Linux 9.1 will be released on 15 September: "Next version of Aurox Linux -- 9.1 (Fire) will be available from 15 September. Aurox will be attached to Aurox Linux Magazine. The magazine is issued in 5 language versions (Polish, Czech, German, Spanish, French). You can buy it in 12 countries, or via Internet. Aurox is free, GPL licenced distribution, you can download Aurox via FTP. The distribution is on 7 CDs: binary packages on CDs 1 - 4, sources on CDs 4 - 7. CD no. 4 includes binaries, sources and extras (nVidia drivers, Flash plug-in, J2RE, partitioning tool)."
SuSE Linux 9.0
It seems that the next release of SuSE Linux will be version 9.0. How do we know? Take a look at this NVIDIA installer HOWTO, which makes references to "SuSE Linux 9.0 (Preview/Beta)". SuSE does of course have beta versions of their releases, but the company claims that there is no evidence that a large-scale public beta testing of its product would result in a better quality distribution than the current closed beta testing, and it has never offered the beta releases to public.
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| Web Site News |
Page Hit Ranking time span options
New in the way Page Hit Ranking statistics are presented on the main page is the ability to choose a time span for the data. Currently there are options to select the data collected during the most recent 1, 3, 6 or 12 months, as well as the data for the entire year 2002. The data collection has now been completely automated, although it still needs some more testing.
Serbian and Rumanian translations
Many thanks to Andrej Lukács for his effort to translate the site's navigation system and introduction into Serbian. Those of you who are visiting from Rumania will notice that many parts of the site have been translated into your language - this is thanks to the enthusiasm of Ghita G. Serban and Adrian Belciug. Great work!
New additions
- EduLinux. Based on Mandrake Linux 9.1, EduLinux is a specialized distribution for education and office use. It is aimed at the general public as well as educational and community environments. It was developed and compiled at the Université de Sherbrooke's Faculty of Engineering and is intended to be easy to use and perfectly adapted to Quebec's linguistic environment.
- Quantian. A Knoppix/Debian variant tailored to numerical and quantitative analysis, Quantian is a remastering of Knoppix, the self-configuring and directly bootable CDROM that turns any PC or laptop (provided it can boot from CDROM) into a full-featured Linux workstation. The most recent version is based on clusterKnoppix and adds support for openMosix, including remote booting of light clients in an openMosix terminal server context. Quantian is an extension of Knoppix and clusterKnoppix from which it takes its base system of about 2GB of software, along with fully automatic hardware detection and configuration. However, Quantian differs from Knoppix by adding a set of programs of interest to applied or theoretical workers in quantitative or data-driven fields.
- MEPIS Linux. MEPIS Linux is a desktop Linux system that is also easy to configure as a dedicated server. It is designed for both personal and business purposes. It includes cutting-edge features such as a live/installation/recovery CD, automatic hardware configuration, NTFS partition resizing, ACPI power management, WiFi support, anti-aliased TrueType fonts, a personal firewall, KDE, and much more.
New on the waiting list
- ZENIX is a new LFS based Linux Distribution. It was built directly from scratch, to stand for a reliable Server-OS.
- Shark Linux is a powerful Linux-based operating system designed for simplicity, security, and functionality.
- WOMP, a micro linux distribution focused on multimedia, it takes only 13 - 18 MB on a bootable CD and allows playing multimedia files (video/audio/image) without installing any software on the computer's hard drive.
DistroWatch database summary
- Number of distributions in the database: 172
- Number of discontinued distributions: 24
- Number of distributions on the waiting list: 63
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| Reader Feedback |
- "Given the large number of inquiries showing up on newsgroups from people wanting to install linux on a 486 or Pentium 90, etc. it might be helpful to add a 'distros for old hardware' selection at the top of the page..."
This sounds like an excellent idea. However, I am going to need some help in drawing the "old hardware" line. Is anything older than Pentium II considered "old hardware"? Or should we go still further back in history? The next question is of course how we deal with the X Window System. Apart from the latest versions of Red Hat Linux which will not install on anything with less than 128MB of RAM, most other distributions, like Slackware or Debian will be quite happy on a Pentium 90 - if you don't care much for a clickable interface, that is. But including all distributions which will run in text mode will probably result in a huge page which would kill the objective of providing a list of distributions designed to run on old hardware. These are just some of the dilemmas; as always your suggestions and a possible list of included distributions are more than welcome.
- From DebianPlanet.org: "Although Distrowatch is currently carrying an article about installing a Debian from a new user's perspective, I recommend you skip this and go straight to the much more comprehensive and factually correct Debian Install Manual which is (hopefully) available in your native language and in whatever format you wish."
Robert Storey's Debian GNU/Linux - Not Just Another Pretty Face article we published last week was generally well received, with one exception - DebianPlanet.org. This was a little disappointing at first, but luckily, the author of the above post has since exchanged emails with Robert, detailing all inaccuracies in the article. The promised second part of the Debian review should be up shortly and it will have all the corrections from Part I, as well as further talk about Debian. But this episode has made us realise a simple truth - writing a review of a geek distribution is a lot harder than writing about distributions designed for non-technical users. No wonder we rarely see reviews of Debian or Slackware in the mainstream Linux media!
That's all for this week, keep well and see you next Monday :-)
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
F.I.R.E.
FIRE was a portable bootable CD-based distribution with the goal of providing an immediate environment to perform forensic analysis, incident response, data recovery, virus scanning and vulnerability assessment. It also provides necessary tools for live forensics/analysis on win32, Solaris, SPARC and x86 Linux hosts just by mounting the CDROM and using trusted static binaries available in /statbins. In other words, FIRE was a Linux distribution with lots of useful security tools and a fine menu system which makes it very easy to use. Nothing on your computer was modified, so you can try it out safely.
Status: Discontinued
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