See also: last week's Distributions page.

Note: The list of Linux distributions has moved to its own page.

Distributions

New Distributions

BRaiLleSPEAK. BRaiLleSPEAK has been around since Tuesday, November 20th 2001. It is a mini (UMSDOS) Linux distribution, with braille and speech support built in. It comes with a pre-configuration tool, and an auto-compiler function for the Braille driver, so it can be easily installed and run by blind users. This is one of those "born fully formed" distributions, already at 7.0-1. BRaiLleSPEAK is also available from its mirror site.

OpenNA Linux. OpenNA Inc. announced BETA1 of OpenNA Linux, a highly secure and fast Linux operating system for servers.

Distribution News

Debian News. The Debian Weekly News for November 21 looks at bug searches in source packages, spell checked package descriptions, Debian on OS X, and much more.

Anthony Towns is trying to get the new libsdl1.2debian packages into woody, so expect some packages to disappear from woody in the next few days.

For more information about the Woody freeze, here's the November 29 freeze update.

Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter. The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for November 27 is now available. The top story this week is about the MandrakeSoft Business Survey.

Slackware Linux. Slackware has some new updates to the -current tree on the FTP site, including KDE-2.2.2, OpenSSH-3.0.1p1, and more. See the changelog for more details.

SuSE Linux 7.3 for SPARC. SuSE has announced the release of its 7.3 distribution for the SPARC architecture.

Minor Distribution updates

Devil-Linux. Devil-Linux 0.5 Beta 4 has been released. Lots of additions and changes in this release.

Redmond Linux. Redmond Linux announced build 42, RC3; the last Release Candidate, with more bug fixes and a ton of improvements. The final release is scheduled for December 1.

Sorcerer GNU/Linux. Sorcerer GNU/Linux 20011128 has been released. Changes include an update to Linux 2.4.16, default support in Sorcery for simultaneous downloading and casting, and improved detection and fixing of broken installed spells.

Distribution Reviews

Conectiva Linux 7.0 (Duke of URL). Here's a good review of Conectiva Linux 7.0. "Conectiva also shares much in common with several other distributions, such as Red Hat, which it is based upon. Still, with version 7.0 we are starting to see the emergence of a unique distribution that has its own characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. With this release Conectiva is definitely poised to stand on their own."

Mandrake 8.1 offers superior server platform (ZDNet). Mandrake Linux 8.1 receives a favorable review on ZDNet. "If Linux is to make serious inroads in mission-critical server environments, it must offer journalized file system (JFS) support. A JFS is important for mission-critical business environments, as it provides a high level of data integrity and helps to reduce downtime due to data corruption or hardware failure. While other vendors of Linux operating systems have been slow to adopt journalized file systems, Mandrake 8.1 supports several, including Ext3, ReiserFS, XFS and JFS. Such support gives IT managers who are evaluating Mandrake versus other Linux OSes (or Windows) an additional reason to chose Mandrake as a mission-critical server OS."

Linux rivalry heats up (InfoWorld). This article compares Red Hat 7.2 to SuSE 7.3. They liked both.

If your business relies on Linux servers to perform important tasks and you're concerned about minimizing downtime (who isn't?), then Red Hat Linux 7.2 may be just what you've been looking for. The new release contains a plethora of new features designed to provide faster performance, greater reliability, and less downtime.

...

Linux may have earned its reputation as a mysterious, arcane OS reserved only for technical masterminds, but if SuSE 7.3 is any indication, the penguin is quickly becoming housebroken.

Online Only: Locked Down Out of the Box (Network Computing). Here's a look at some secure Linux distributions. "Although these efforts have gone a long way toward improving the security of Linux, most mainstream vendors still don't address the needs of those who require a high level of security or need a bulletproof server at installation time. Enter security-enhanced distributions. Of the many vendors offering this type of secure solution, two offerings, Engarde Secure Linux and Immunix, caught our favor as the most polished and ready for prime time."

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol

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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