 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 214, 6 August 2007 |
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Welcome to this year's 32nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The late Sunday release of Arch Linux 2007.08 provided some excitement on the otherwise quiet distribution release week, during which both Fedora and Mandriva failed to deliver the promised first development builds of their upcoming products. But on the distro news front, things were a lot more exciting: MEPIS has announced that it will switch to a Debian base before its next stable release, Ubuntu has published a detailed analysis of Automatix, Kevin Carmony has announced resignation from Linspire, a Swedish manufacturer has unveiled the world's cheapest laptop (running Fedora), and Ian Murdock has given some hints about Sun Microsystems Project Indiana in an interview. We also take a quick look at the current status of KNOPPIX and Gentoo and publish some interesting statistical data about the DistroWatch readership in Latin America and the Caribbean. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the July 2007 DistroWatch donation is the FreeNAS project. Happy reading!
Content:
- Reviews: GParted LiveCD vs Parted Magic
- Statistics: DistroWatch in Latin America and the Caribbean
- News: MEPIS returns to Debian roots, Ubuntu dismisses Automatix, Carmony leaves Linspire, Medison Celebrity offers low-cost notebook with Fedora, Murdock explains future of Solaris
- Released last week: Arch Linux 2007.08, Puppy Linux 2.17.1
- Upcoming releases: Asianux 3.0, Foresight Linux 2.0
- Donations: FreeNAS receives US$350
- New additions: Webconverger
- New distributions: CPX mini, FreevoLive, JUXlala, Klikit-Linux, OSWA-Assistant
- Reader comments
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Featured Story |
GParted LiveCD vs Parted Magic
Following the recent announcement by GParted that its specialist live CD for disk partitioning tasks might be discontinued unless a new maintainer steps in to take over the work, I decided to take a look at one of its competitors - Parted Magic. This offered a good opportunity to compare the two distributions; although both claim to be free, intuitive hard disk partitioning utilities, there are a number of differences between them. Below is a brief summary of my tests, followed by a tabular comparison of their main features.
 GParted LiveCD is a project developed by the maintainers of GParted, an advanced graphical front-end to GNU Parted. I downloaded the 49 MB ISO image and booted it on my test machine; the initial GRUB menu offered a number of boot options - mostly related to the graphical subsystem of the computer, but also providing an option to boot from an external USB CD-ROM drive and another one for MacBook users. The default option, called "auto-configuration", unfortunately failed to set up X.Org correctly and I found myself looking at a terminal window instead. Nevertheless, after running the "Forcevideo" script, as suggested by a console message, I was able to configure X.Org by providing information about the graphics card and screen resolution. Executing "startx" then brought up the Fluxbox window manager and opened GParted. Besides the main partitioning utility, a number of other applications were also on the CD; these included an X terminal (Xterm), Vim, and a few file utilities, such as Midnight Commander, TestDisk and PartImage. The CD contained no help files or other documentation.
GParted LiveCD 0.3.4-8
(full image size: 256kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
 Like GParted LiveCD, the 36 MB Parted Magic CD also booted into a GRUB menu, but the options were limited to choices based on the available system memory. The default option worked fine and soon after choosing it I was looking at a pretty Xfce desktop (the auto-configuration script correctly detected the monitor's maximum screen resolution). Besides GParted, the neatly arranged menus provided a number of file and disk utilities, including a CD burner (Xfburn), an archive manager (Xarchiver), TestDisk, a light-weight system monitor (Conky) and several other utilities. Other popular disk tools, such as dd and ddrescue, were available from the command line. Unlike GParted LiveCD, the developers of Parted Magic have added excellent, comprehensive documentation and FAQs covering GParted and TestDisk.
Parted Magic 1.8
(full image size: 391kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Here is a comparative list of some of the features of GParted LiveCD 0.3.4-8 and Parted Magic 1.8 in a tabular format:
| Feature |
GParted LiveCD
0.3.4-8 |
Parted Magic
1.8 |
| ISO image size |
49 MB |
36 MB |
| Based on |
Gentoo Linux |
Linux From Scratch |
| Hands-off booting |
No |
Yes |
| Desktop |
Fluxbox 1.0rc3 |
Xfce 4.4.0 |
| Kernel version |
2.6.21 |
2.6.22 |
| GNU Parted version |
1.7.1 |
1.8.7 |
| GParted version |
0.3.4svn |
0.3.4svn |
| Networking |
No |
No |
| File manager |
Midnight Commander |
Thunar |
| Keyboard layout selection |
Yes |
US and French only |
| Available tools |
mc, PartImage, TestDisk |
Conky, Leafpad, PartImage, TestDisk, Xarchiver, Xfburner... |
| Documentation |
No |
Yes |
| Support for MacBooks |
Yes |
No |
|
Despite its smaller image size, Parted Magic comfortably beats GParted LiveCD in terms of available software tools, including not just GParted for disk partitioning, but a number of other useful utilities, as well as impressive documentation. On the other hand, GParted LiveCD is capable of booting on the MacBooks and offers a comprehensive choice of keyboard layouts during system boot. However, with the future of GParted LiveCD far from certain, Parted Magic gets my recommendation as a useful utility that every computer user should keep handy.
For more information:
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| Statistics |
DistroWatch in Latin America and the Caribbean
A reader from Mexico asked if we could provide statistics of visitors to DistroWatch.com from Latin American countries, similar to the ones published in last week's DistroWatch Weekly. The reader's wish has been granted - below you'll find a year-on-year tabular comparison of interest in DistroWatch among the residents of the major countries and territories of Latin America and the Caribbean, plus USA and Canada. The figures in the 2006 and 2007 columns represent the total number of visits on the DistroWatch.com index page from each country or territory during the first seven months of each of the two years. (Only countries and territories with more than 1,000 visits during the months of January to July of 2007 are listed in the table.)
| Rank |
Country |
2006 |
2007 |
% Change |
| 1 |
Brazil (BR) |
178,303 |
268,821 |
+50.8% |
| 2 |
Mexico (MX) |
92,430 |
114,682 |
+24.1% |
| 3 |
Argentina (AR) |
84,965 |
100,836 |
+18.7% |
| 4 |
Venezuela (VE) |
29,936 |
37,878 |
+26.5% |
| 5 |
Chile (CL) |
29,123 |
37,439 |
+28.6% |
| 6 |
Puerto Rico (PR) |
24,043 |
27,819 |
+15.7% |
| 7 |
Colombia (CO) |
18,858 |
26,158 |
+38.7% |
| 8 |
Peru (PE) |
15,517 |
15,569 |
+0.3% |
| 9 |
Guatemala (GT) |
7,881 |
11,887 |
+50.8% |
| 10 |
Uruguay (UY) |
9,672 |
11,790 |
+21.9% |
| 11 |
Dominican Republic (DO) |
10,732 |
11,734 |
+9.3% |
| 12 |
Costa Rica (CR) |
15,343 |
9,912 |
-35.4% |
| 13 |
El Salvador (SV) |
7,412 |
7,233 |
-2.4% |
| 14 |
Ecuador (EC) |
4,529 |
7,158 |
+58.0% |
| 15 |
Panama (PA) |
5,376 |
6,718 |
+25.0% |
| 16 |
Trinidad and Tobago (TT) |
4,564 |
5,784 |
+26.7% |
| 17 |
Jamaica (JM) |
2,362 |
3,728 |
+57.8% |
| 18 |
Bolivia (BO) |
3,133 |
3,565 |
+13.8% |
| 19 |
Honduras (HN) |
875 |
3,554 |
+306.2% |
| 20 |
Barbados (BB) |
2,687 |
3,469 |
+29.1% |
| 21 |
Cuba (CU) |
2,623 |
2,077 |
-12.8% |
| 22 |
Belize (BZ) |
1,841 |
1,765 |
-4.1% |
| 23 |
Nicaragua (NI) |
862 |
1,713 |
+98.7% |
| 24 |
Saint Lucia (LC) |
495 |
1,514 |
+205.8% |
| 25 |
Bahamas (BS) |
1,716 |
1,425 |
-17.0% |
| 26 |
Netherlands Antilles (AN) |
1,188 |
1,375 |
+15.7% |
| 27 |
US Virgin Islands (VI) |
153 |
1,236 |
+707.8% |
| 28 |
Antigua and Barbuda (AG) |
1,050 |
1,226 |
+16.8% |
| 29 |
Suriname (SR) |
407 |
1,106 |
+171.7% |
| Total |
Latin America, Caribbean |
558,076 |
719,171 |
+28.9% |
| |
|
|
|
|
| -- |
USA (US) |
6,045,984 |
7,135,032 |
+18.0% |
| -- |
Canada (CA) |
848,510 |
980,280 |
+15.5% |
|
|
| Miscellaneous News |
MEPIS returns to Debian roots, Ubuntu dismisses Automatix, Carmony leaves Linspire, Medison Celebrity offers low-cost notebook with Fedora, Murdock explains future of Solaris
 Let's start this week's news section with an announcement from MEPIS. Following an experiment during which the successful desktop distribution used Ubuntu as the base for its SimplyMEPIS line of products, MEPIS has announced that it will return to its original base - Debian GNU/Linux. Warren Woodford explained the reasons in this interview at DesktopLinux.com. He argued that basing a distribution on Ubuntu made it harder for the SimplyMEPIS developers to provide seamless, incremental updates to newer versions: "Ubuntu is almost a whole new distro each time it's released. By using the experimental code each and every time, the Ubuntu code tree is inherently less stable than the Debian code tree, which contains additional levels of testing and vetting and fixing of code. ... For the next release of MEPIS, we are using a common core based on Debian. As usual, we will have a MEPIS kernel optimized for performance and out-of-the-box hardware compatibility." The first pre-beta release of SimplyMEPIS 7.0, based on Debian 4.0 "Etch", has now been released for testing.
* * * * *
 In the meanwhile, Ubuntu's Matthew Garrett has created a stir when he published the findings about Automatix, a popular third-party software utility that significantly extends the capabilities of a desktop Ubuntu system. The report concludes that Automatix is "actively dangerous to Ubuntu." The report provides a very long list of issues found in the Automatix code, ranging from cosmetic ones, such as missing man-pages, to serious problems, such as lack of dependency management or potential race conditions that could seriously damage the installed system. The author has found that Automatix is not only unsupportable in its present state, the design of the software package makes it impossible to fix its problems. Nevertheless, the report also suggests that the functionality provided by Automatix could still be implemented: "A more reasonable method of integrating Automatix's functionality into Ubuntu would be for the Automatix team to provide deb files to act as installers for the software currently provided. These could then be installed through the existing package manager interfaces."
* * * * *
 Kevin Carmony has resigned from his position as CEO of Linspire, Linux-Watch reports. The controversial executive has been a big fan of desktop Linux and had worked hard to bring a quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution to the masses, but despite steering Linspire for years, the company's products failed to achieve any notable market share. In recent years, he has attracted attention in the media by announcing a number of headline-grabbing products and initiatives, including the community-built Freespire distribution with licensed proprietary media codecs and the CNR software installation infrastructure for a number of competing distributions, but the prolonged development of these products and some controversial changes to the way Freespire was developed alienated many members of the Freespire community. The recent Intellectual Property protection deal with Microsoft has also contributed towards the general suspicion as to the company's intentions. According to the above-mentioned article, the development of both Linspire and Freespire will continue despite Carmony's resignation."
* * * * *
 Don't you miss the good old days when a new version of KNOPPIX was released on a more or less monthly basis? Back in its early days -- around the year 2003 -- the impressive live CD with revolutionary hardware detection was a darling of reviewers and responsible for a rapid spread of desktop Linux. These days, however, we are lucky if we get one or two new KNOPPIX versions in a year, prompting some users to question the future of the project. Although many of us would like to see more frequent KNOPPIX releases, the truth is that the distribution is no longer as exciting and indispensable as it was a few years ago. Since then, just about every Linux distribution has developed a live variant and many specialist live CDs have sprung all over the Internet. As such, the future of KNOPPIX does not look particularly promising; its creator's enthusiasm seems to have shifted towards ADRIANE and, as a result of this, KNOPPIX has moved into the background. Still, am I the only one who feels nostalgic about the golden days of this innovative product?
* * * * *
 Gentoo Linux has been through a fair amount of bad press, including some harsh criticism from this web site. But maybe the amount of negative publicity has prompted those responsible for the future of the source distribution to take some action and to turn things around; at least that's what the founder of Gentoo, Daniel Robbins, seems to believe: "For the past several days I've been pretty pumped about the future of Gentoo. There seems to be a great interest among the larger Gentoo community (beyond the 'official' project) for a more open, flatter, more distributed development model that will allow for good, capable leadership, rapid innovation and result in delivering great stuff to users. And all this can be accomplished without forcing anything upon the main Gentoo organization." Also contributing to the upbeat mood at Gentoo, Donnie Berkholz has outlined his own vision for improving the quality of the distribution. Better days for Gentoo ahead?
* * * * *
 After experimenting with blue colours on its desktop, openSUSE has returned to its original green with the release of its latest alpha build. The boot screen, the installer, and the default desktop theme have all been re-themed and redesigned, and the entire distribution has a new look and feel. Of course, the colours were not the primary focus of the new release; rather, users are encouraged to test the latest enhancement to the openSUSE package manager. openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 7 comes with the very latest kernel 2.6.22.1, X.Org 7.2, KDE 3.5.7 (with a few KDE 4 games thrown in for good measure), OpenOffice.org 2.3 beta and Firefox 2.0.0.5. This was the very last alpha build and openSUSE 10.3 will now move into a fast and furious beta testing stage, with the first beta scheduled for release later this week. openSUSE 10.3 final is expected on October 4th.
openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 7 - back to the green desktop
(full image size: 896kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
 For those readers who are interested in low-cost laptops, here is an exciting piece of news from Sweden: a US$150 Medison Celebrity laptop running Fedora. Dubbed as the cheapest laptop in the world, this machine has fairly decent specifications for its price: a 1.5 GHz Celeron processor, 256 MB of RAM, a 40 GB hard disk, a 14-inch display, and an Ethernet, as well as a wireless network card. Shipping is reportedly free and the laptop is available for online credit card orders through its US-based partner. Some customisation, e.g. addition of extra memory, can be arranged during check-out. Disappointingly, the company does not provide any physical address or phone numbers (so order at your own risk), but "whois medisoncelebrity.com" reveals that the domain is registered to an individual located in Huskvarna, Sweden. For more information please visit MedisonCelebrity.com.
* * * * *
 Recently, there has been quite some talk about desktop Solaris, especially after Sun Microsystems appointed ex-Debian's Ian Murdock to the position of Chief OS Platform Strategist and some leaked information about Project Indiana. But the new initiative is still clouded in mystery as Sun refuses to reveal any meaningful details. Last week, IT Jungle sat down with Ian Murdock and Marc Hamilton (a long-time executive at Sun Microsystems) to talk about their desktop Solaris vision. Ian Murdock, answering the question about the future direction of Solaris: "The one-line answer is that we are making Solaris into a distribution, too. And to the extent that you hear that Project Indiana aims to make Solaris more like Linux, that actually fundamentally misses the point. It is mostly taking the lesson that Linux has brought to the operating system and providing that for Solaris as well." Read the rest of the interview here.
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| Released Last Week |
Wolvix 1.1.0
Kenneth Granerud has announced the final release of Wolvix 1.1.0, a Slackware-based live CD featuring the Xfce desktop: "I'm pleased to announce the final release of Wolvix Cub and Wolvix Hunter version 1.1.0. This release marks a turning point in the Wolvix development as it's not longer a SLAX remaster, but now based on the stable Slackware releases and the Linux-Live scripts. New features in Wolvix 1.1.0 are: LZMA compressed modules, SMP support, NTFS write support, auto mounting through HAL, Xfce 4.4.1, and as always a full range of applications for office, graphics, multimedia and development use. Though this releases is based on Slackware 11.0 it comes with the 2.6.21.5 kernel and many other package upgrades." Read the rest of the release announcement.
Wolvix 1.1.0 - a Slackware-based live CD with Xfce
(full image size: 61kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Puppy Linux 2.17.1
Barry Kauler has announced the release of an updated version of Puppy Linux: "This is a bug-fix and minor-tweaks upgrade of Puppy 2.17." What's new? "# Enhanced dial-up: Puppy now has enhanced support for those who have to access the Internet by dial- up; for dial-up, there is a new GUI application called PupDial; enhanced printing: finally, Puppy has CUPS; Print-to-PDF: this is out-of-the-box setup for CUPS, with the 'CUPS-PDF printer' ready to go; MMC and SD cards: these are now fully automatically supported; mount image files: one-click mounting of .2fs, .3fs, .sfs and .iso files; hardware information: PupScan is my GUI application to view PCI and modules information; Pmount is a drive mounter, it has been totally revamped for 2.17; Boot from USB CD/DVD drive: the live CD will now boot from this, as well as the usual internal CD/DVD drive...." Read the release announcement and release notes for more details.
Arch Linux 2007.08
Tobias Powalowski has announced the release of Arch Linux 2007.08: "It's done, final 2007.08 'Don't Panic ISOs' for i686 and x86_64 are ready. It's mostly a 2.6.22.x ISO with some fixes to last Linuxtag ISOs. Changelog to last Duke-Linuxtag2007 installation ISO: kernel 2.6.22.1 usage; update mkinitcpio for new 2.6.22 firewire layout; update hwdetect for new rtc_sys and firewire stuff; memory requirements bumped to 128MB; serial console support in install environment; USB Keyboard issues fixed; fixed quotation marks around CONSOLEFONT and CONSOLEMAP; fixed DHCP rc.conf entry; fixed not generating glibc locales. I would like to thank you all, who assisted in testing and of course finding/fixing bugs. Happy installing and have fun." Here is the brief release announcement.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1-beta, the release announcement
- Damn Small Linux 4.0-alpha2, the changelog
- Vyatta 2.2-beta, the release announcement
- m0n0wall 1.3-beta3, the changelog
- openSUSE 10.3-alpha7, the release announcement
- SimplyMEPIS 7.0-prebeta, the release announcement
- VectorLinux 5.8.6-rc1, the release announcement
- Elive 0.9-beta "MacBook", the release notes
- Pioneer Explorer 1.0-rc1, the press release
- sidux 2007-03-pre3, the release notes
- Ekaaty 2
- Tilix 2.1-rc1
- Archie 2007.08-beta
- DragonFly BSD 1.10-RC1, 1.10-RC1
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Asianux 3.0
Asianux, an Asian Linux consortium consisting of China's Red Flag Linux, Japan's Miracle Linux and Korea's Haansoft Linux, has announced the upcoming release of Asianux 3.0 Server edition: "Asianux Server 3 is scheduled for simultaneous release in China, Japan and Korea on September 18, 2007. The Asianux consortium companies will release Asianux Server 3 as the successor to their previously available Linux server products. AXS3 will be available across four hardware platforms: IA-32, X86-64 (Intel/AMD), IA-64(IPF), and IBM p-Series. AXS3 is based on the 2.6.18 kernel." Read the full press release for further details.
Foresight Linux 2.0
The latest issue of the Foresight Linux newsletter has published preliminary release dates for the distribution's upcoming major new version: "As mentioned in the last few newsletters, work on the upcoming Foresight Linux 2.0 is happening in earnest. Foresight Linux 2.0 will be released with similar milestones to GNOME 2.20." Public testing of Foresight Linux 2.0 will start with an alpha release on August 15th and the final release is scheduled for September 19th. For full details please see the August issue of the Foresight Linux newsletter.
* * * * *
Summary of expected upcoming releases
|
| DistroWatch.com News |
July 2007 donation: FreeNAS receives US$350
 We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the July 2007 DistroWatch donation is the FreeNAS project. It receives US$350.00 in cash.
FreeNAS was suggested for a donation by an enthusiastic reader. FreeNAS is a specialist, FreeBSD-based NAS (Network-attached storage) server with support for CIFS (Samba), FTP, NFS, RSYNC, SSH, local user authentication, and software RAID (0, 1, 5). It comes with a powerful web interface and uses very little space on the hard drive - about 32 MB. If you'd like to learn more about FreeNAS, please take a look at these reviews by Linux.com and The Storage Forum, and check out this screenshot tutorial by HowtoForge.
As always, the monthly donations programme is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. These vendors contributed US$50.00 each towards this month's donation to FreeNAS.
Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme (figures in US dollars):
- 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
- 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NdisWrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
- 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a PowerPack competition), digiKam ($408) and SabayonLinux ($450)
- 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350)
Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$14,090 to various open source software projects.
* * * * *
Translations of Top Ten Distributions page
Many thanks to Georgi Marinov who has translated the Top Ten Distributions page into Bulgarian, and to Mohammed Farouk and Abdulrahman Essam who have contributed the Arabic translation. The article is now available in 13 languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish. Translations to other languages are most welcome - if you'd like to help, please email your work to distro at distrowatch dot com (preferably in plain text format using UTF-8 encoding).
* * * * *
New distributions added to database
- Webconverger. Webconverger is a live, Debian-based web kiosk. It is designed for deployments in places like offices or Internet cafés where only web applications are used.
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- CPX mini. CPX mini is a KANOTIX-based distribution designed for USB storage devices (248MB).
- FreevoLive. FreevoLive is a Mandriva-based live CD with Freevo pre-installed. It is designed for home theatre personal computers.
- JUXlala. JUXlala is a German-language, KNOPPIX-based Linux distribution designed for children.
- Klikit-Linux. Klikit-Linux is a Kubuntu-based community distribution with the goal of developing an easy-to-use Linux desktop with applications for common daily tasks.
- OSWA-Assistant. OSWA-Assistant is a self-contained, freely downloadable, wireless-auditing toolkit for both IT security professionals and end users alike.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 13 August 2007.
Ladislav Bodnar
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| • Issue 789 (2018-11-12): Fedora 29 Workstation and Silverblue, Haiku recovering from server outage, Fedora turns 15, Debian publishes updated media |
| • Issue 788 (2018-11-05): Clu Linux Live 6.0, examining RAM consumpion, finding support for older CPUs, more Steam support for running Windows games on Linux, update from Solus team |
| • Issue 787 (2018-10-29): Lubuntu 18.10, limiting application access to specific users, Haiku hardware compatibility list, IBM purchasing Red Hat |
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| • Issue 778 (2018-08-27): GuixSD 0.15.0, ReactOS 0.4.9, Steam supports Windows games on Linux, Haiku plans for beta, merging disk partitions |
| • Issue 777 (2018-08-20): YunoHost 3.0.0.1, limiting process resource usage, converting file systems on Fedora, Debian turns 25, Lubuntu migrating to Wayland |
| • Issue 776 (2018-08-13): NomadBSD 1.1, Maximum storage limits on Linux, openSUSE extends life for 42.3, updates to the Librem 5 phone interface |
| • Issue 775 (2018-08-06): Secure-K OS 18.5, Linux is about choice, Korora tests community spin, elementary OS hires developer, ReactOS boots on Btrfs |
| • Issue 774 (2018-07-30): Ubuntu MATE & Ubuntu Budgie 18.04, upgrading software from source, Lubuntu shifts focus, NetBSD changes support policy |
| • Issue 773 (2018-07-23): Peppermint OS 9, types of security used by different projects, Mint reacts to bugs in core packages, Slackware turns 25 |
| • Issue 772 (2018-07-16): Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre 0.2.4, UBports running desktop applications, OpenBSD auto-joins wi-fi networks, boot environments and zedenv |
| • Issue 771 (2018-07-09): Linux Lite 4.0, checking CPUs for bugs, configuring GRUB, Mint upgrade instructions, SUSE acquired by EQT |
| • Issue 770 (2018-07-02): Linux Mint 19, Solus polishes desktop experience, MintBox Mini 2, changes to Fedora's installer |
| • Issue 769 (2018-06-25): BunsenLabs Helium, counting Ubuntu users, UBports upgrading to 16.04, Fedora CoreOS, FreeBSD turns 25 |
| • Issue 768 (2018-06-18): Devuan 2.0.0, using pkgsrc to manage software, the NOVA filesystem, OpenBSD handles successful cron output |
| • Issue 767 (2018-06-11): Android-x86 7.1-r1, transferring files over OpenSSH with pipes, LFS with Debian package management, Haiku ports LibreOffice |
| • Issue 766 (2018-06-04): openSUSE 15, overview of file system links, Manjaro updates Pamac, ReactOS builds itself, Bodhi closes forums |
| • Issue 765 (2018-05-28): Pop!_OS 18.04, gathering system information, Haiku unifying ARM builds, Solus resumes control of Budgie |
| • Issue 764 (2018-05-21): DragonFly BSD 5.2.0, Tails works on persistent packages, Ubuntu plans new features, finding services affected by an update |
| • Issue 763 (2018-05-14): Fedora 28, Debian compatibility coming to Chrome OS, malware found in some Snaps, Debian's many flavours |
| • Issue 762 (2018-05-07): TrueOS 18.03, live upgrading Raspbian, Mint plans future releases, HardenedBSD to switch back to OpenSSL |
| • Issue 761 (2018-04-30): Ubuntu 18.04, accessing ZFS snapshots, UBports to run on Librem 5 phones, Slackware makes PulseAudio optional |
| • Issue 760 (2018-04-23): Chakra 2017.10, using systemd to hide files, Netrunner's ARM edition, Debian 10 roadmap, Microsoft develops Linux-based OS |
| • Issue 759 (2018-04-16): Neptune 5.0, building containers with Red Hat, antiX introduces Sid edition, fixing filenames on the command line |
| • Issue 758 (2018-04-09): Sortix 1.0, openSUSE's Transactional Updates, Fedora phasing out Python 2, locating portable packages |
| • Issue 757 (2018-04-02): Gatter Linux 0.8, the UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, Red Hat turns 25, super long term support kernels |
| • Issue 756 (2018-03-26): NuTyX 10.0, Neptune supplies Debian users with Plasma 5.12, SolydXK on a Raspberry Pi, SysV init development |
| • Issue 755 (2018-03-19): Learning with ArchMerge and Linux Academy, Librem 5 runs Plasma Mobile, Cinnamon gets performance boost |
| • Issue 754 (2018-03-12): Reviewing Sabayon and Antergos, the growing Linux kernel, BSDs getting CPU bug fixes, Manjaro builds for ARM devices |
| • Issue 753 (2018-03-05): Enso OS 0.2, KDE Plasma 5.12 features, MX Linux prepares new features, interview with MidnightBSD's founder |
| • Issue 752 (2018-02-26): OviOS 2.31, performing off-line upgrades, elementary OS's new installer, UBports gets test devices, Redcore team improves security |
| • Issue 751 (2018-02-19): DietPi 6.1, testing KDE's Plasma Mobile, Nitrux packages AppImage in default install, Solus experiments with Wayland |
| • Issue 750 (2018-02-12): Solus 3, getting Deb packages upstream to Debian, NetBSD security update, elementary OS explores AppCentre changes |
| • Issue 749 (2018-02-05): Freespire 3 and Linspire 7.0, misunderstandings about Wayland, Xorg and Mir, Korora slows release schedule, Red Hat purchases CoreOS |
| • Issue 748 (2018-01-29): siduction 2018.1.0, SolydXK 32-bit editions, building an Ubuntu robot, desktop-friendly Debian options |
| • Issue 747 (2018-01-22): Ubuntu MATE 17.10, recovering open files, creating a new distribution, KDE focusing on Wayland features |
| • Issue 746 (2018-01-15): deepin 15.5, openSUSE's YaST improvements, new Ubuntu 17.10 media, details on Spectre and Meltdown bugs |
| • Issue 745 (2018-01-08): GhostBSD 11.1, Linspire and Freespire return, wide-spread CPU bugs patched, adding AppImage launchers to the application menu |
| • Issue 744 (2018-01-01): MX Linux 17, Ubuntu pulls media over BIOS bug, PureOS gets endorsed by the FSF, openSUSE plays with kernel boot splash screens |
| • Issue 743 (2017-12-18): Daphile 17.09, tools for rescuing files, Fedora Modular Server delayed, Sparky adds ARM support, Slax to better support wireless networking |
| • Issue 742 (2017-12-11): heads 0.3.1, improvements coming to Tails, Void tutorials, Ubuntu phasing out Python 2, manipulating images from the command line |
| • Issue 741 (2017-12-04): Pop!_OS 17.10, openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots, installing Q4OS on a Windows partition, using the at command |
| • Issue 740 (2017-11-27): Artix Linux, Unity spin of Ubuntu, Nitrux swaps Snaps for AppImage, getting better battery life on Linux |
| • Issue 739 (2017-11-20): Fedora 27, cross-distro software ports, Ubuntu on Samsung phones, Red Hat supports ARM, Parabola continues 32-bit support |
| • Issue 738 (2017-11-13): SparkyLinux 5.1, rumours about spyware, Slax considers init software, Arch drops 32-bit packages, overview of LineageOS |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Random Distribution | 
Vital Data Forensic or Rescue Kit (FoRK)
The team at Vital Data have been in development to adapt the Knoppix live CD for use as a forensic imaging and previewing tool. They have previously been using the Penguin Sleuth Kit to obtain images in the field, but wanted something more user-friendly for their staff and colleagues to be able to use efficiently without requiring a high level of Linux knowledge.
Status: Discontinued
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