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EasyLinux is a new distribution from Germany due to be released first quarter of 1999. As the title implies, EasyLinux is specifically aimed at non-technical users, attempting to provide a GUI-based installation from the beginning, a tiered installation process scaling from novices to gurus with many decisions and programs pre-chosen for the user. Obviously, this is not an installation for the experienced Linux user that prefers total control over their installation and already knows exactly what programs they want installed.

Caldera

Troy Will released an RPM for Caldera which contains a trouble-shooting script to help diagnose printing problems under COL 1.3. It is now available from his Printing Support web-page.

Debian

Debian has a new leader! Wichert Akkerman replaces Ian Jackson as the Debian Project Leader. He begins his two year term today. Specific election results and candidate platforms are available, though the page had not been updated to reflect the vote as of 20:00 MT Februrary 3rd.

Here is a status report on XFree86 3.3.2.3a in slink. Five steps remain before it will be declared ready for release.

On a lighter note, Debian has opened a logo contest, to choose a new Debian logo. The Debian logo-team has been created to select the best logos in preparation for a developer vote.

Debian packages for gnome-apt are now available.

In response to a question about what distinguishes Debian security from other distributions, Stephane Bortzmeyer replied with a nice, succint list.

Alpha users will want to know more about the egcs issues that are holding up the Debian Alpha effort. They will require the recompilation of a large number of Alpha packages now that repaired egcs debian packages are in place. In addition, anyone developing on a Debian alpha system will want to upgrade to the new egcs packages as soon as possible to prevent compatibility problems with other Linux-Alpha systems.

Red Hat

As many of you are probably aware, Red Hat moved its offices in Durham, North Carolina, on Friday, January 29th. Estimated downtime for the two mile move was two hours, but unfortunately equipment problems kept all the Red Hat sites off the Internet for over 26 hours initially. Back up on Saturday morning, they went back off Saturday evening and remained down until around 10:30am ET. Fixing these problems required new equipment in both cases, the first time equipment borrowed from UUNET, requiring one technician to drive to Richmond, VA, and the second time equipment was air shipped in. Unfortunately, the sites went back down on Wednesday, February 3rd. This time, the problem was traced to a bad port on a UUNET router, potentially the cause of the other incidents. Red Hat is back (along with Freshmeat and other sites) and hopefully will get a chance to remain up this time.

It seems likely that Red Hat will be investing in a backup link to the Internet in the near future ...

We were able to get to the Red Hat Errata pages earlier this week, so we can tell you that updated versions of dump, perl and Xconfigurator were posted there on Februrary 2nd. The dump update is only needed for the Sparc platform. The perl update addresses some problems with Majordomo and various cgi-bin scripts. The new version of Xconfigurator was released to work with the new XFree86 3.3.3.1. None of these updates appear to be security related.

Slackware

A package browser for Slackware is now available. The information is updated daily and allows you to browse, download, see what a package does, check version information, etc.

The Slackware Propaganda page has been updated. Now you, too, can create your own Slackware logo, which they will display and distribute.

SuSE

No word yet on when the U.S. version of SuSE will be shipping, but it has been added to the on-line order form at the U.S. SuSE site, so you can put your order in now and presumably already be in line for the upcoming CD shipments.

February 4, 1999

Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.

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