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Distributions

News and Editorials

Sorcerer != Sorcerer GNU/Linux (or does it?). On March 28 this column followed the birth of two forks of Sorcerer GNU/Linux (SGL) as the parent seemed to self-destruct. At that time SGL founder Kyle Sallee was lying low, not getting involved with either branch. Now he's back and there is once again a distribution at the old web site, this time called Sorcerer (dropping the GL). Sorcerer is not backward compatible with older releases of SGL. An initial version was made available for download and public testing on April 14, 2002.

Meanwhile, the fork previously identified as Sorcery is currently using the Sorcerer GNU/Linux moniker. There's a vote for a new name in progress. This young distribution, currently at version 0.1.3, has released spells for KDE 3.0 beta.

The third branch of this sorcerous triangle, originally identified as Lunar-Penguin, has also undergone a name change. It seems that Lunar-Penguin is actually a development group. Lunar-Linux is the group's first product. The latest ISO (codename: PETRO) was released April 9, 2002.

Distribution News

Bdale Garbee is the new Debian Leader. The election for the Debian Project Leader is over, and, according to the results page, the winner is Bdale Garbee. For those curious about what this could mean for Debian, here is Bdale's campaign platform.

Candidate Raphael Hertzog has posted a concession message congratulating Bdale and proposing moving forward on a number of his campaign issues anyway. It's an ambitious list of projects.

More Debian News. The Debian Weekly News for April 10 is out; covered topics include the Project Leader election, Woody boot floppy status, Debian Conference 2, the Woody release (scheduled now for May 1), the free status of the FDL, and more.

There has been a bit of a snag in the Woody release process. The "move postgresql from non-US to main" part of the "crypto-in-main" transition was harder than expected due to a library package rename. It's mostly done now, though.

Debian SID packages are available for the Midgard Application Server.

Debian-Med is an internal Debian project to support people in medical care. The goal of Debian-Med is to build a complete system for all tasks in medical care, using only free software. The latest Debian-Med news introduces the new web site, along with a German translation, and mentions some of the project's goals for the near future.

Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter - Issue #38. The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for April 10, 2002 looks at Mandrake in the news; the latest activities at MandrakeClub and contains 8.2 software updates; among other things.

For an informative update on Mandrake's participation in CeBIT read "MandrakeSoft at CeBIT - the REAL story". "Now, believe it or not, in spite of all the the "liquid" and "two-legged" temptations, we really got a lot of work done in Hanover!"

Red Hat Linux Bug Fixes. Red Hat has released a bug fix for the GNU C Library. Updated packages are available which fix several bugs that have been discovered in glibc.

Slackware-current 8.1-Beta2 !!. A new version of Slackware Linux is under way. The announcement for Slackware-current 8.1-Beta2 slipped out quietly in the change log, and was subsequently announced on UserLocal.com. There is a lengthy list of changes for this week, including a big GNOME update leading to the beta2 announcement.

LinuxQuestions.org launches Slackware Forum. LinuxQuestions.org has announced a new Slackware Forum.

Unofficial SuSE FAQ. The Unofficial SuSE FAQ is compiled from the SuSE Linux English language mailing list and tries to provide answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). This is an unofficial document, maintained voluntarily. It has been recently revised to include KDE related lists.

Turbolinux Releases Second Linux Server OS for IBM eServer iSeries. Turbolinux, Inc. announced a Turbolinux 7 Server for IBM eServer iSeries, a fully supported Linux distribution for iSeries. This latest release is based on the 64-bit kernel and also includes IBM's Java 1.3.1 and an ODBC driver for connectivity to OS/400's DB2/400 database.

Minor Distribution updates

2-Disk Xwindow System. The 2-Disk Xwindow System has released v1.4rc09 with minor bug fixes.

Blue Linux. Blue Linux (or BlueEDU) has released v1.0RC2 with minor bug fixes.

CRUX. CRUX has released v0.9.3 with major feature enhancements.

Embedded Coyote Linux. The Fury IP Load Balancer, the next product that will use the Embedded Coyote Linux core has been branched off of the base ECL tree. This project's goal is to design and implement an IP load balancing solution as an alternative to products such as Cisco's Local Director or F5's BIG-IP. More information will be posted on the product homepage.

A new authentication system known as CLAD (Coyote Linux Authentication Daemon) has been written to provide a more robust authentication system from Embedded Coyote Linux products. Currently, the PPTP support in Wolverine is being used to test this new authentication facility.

Gibraltar. Gibraltar has released v0.99.3a with minor feature enhancements.

Mindi Linux. Mindi Linux has released v0.62 with minor feature enhancements.

Vine Linux 2.5 released. Version 2.5 of Vine Linux has been released. "Project Vine officially released the latest version of their Red Hat based stability-oriented Japanese distribution, Vine Linux 2.5, which is their first major release including 2.4 (2.4.18) kernel." (Thanks to Maya Tamiya.)

Distribution Reviews

Red Hat 7.3 beta: A Product Review (Linux Journal). Linux Journal reviews the beta version of Red Hat Linux version 7.3 (Skipjack). "My personal interest in Skipjack arose mainly because this release includes a test version of KDE 2.99, which is really KDE 3.0 Release Candidate 3. I was so excited about this release because there have been claims of great performance improvements. In fact, the final version of KDE 3.0 was announced on April 3."

Review of Gentoo Linux 1.0 (OS News). OS News checks out Gentoo, a source based Linux distribution. "After the basic configuration had finished, I rebooted and, with a single command "emerge kde", Gentoo fetched off the web KDE and all its dependancies (XFree, assosiated libraries etc). And then, I left the machine compiling everything from source (with the optimization flags on), and I went to sleep. The time was already 1 AM. Next morning, the compilation had finished and I was ready to really use the machine as a workstation."

Linux for the masses (MSNBC). MSNBC reviews the Lycoris Desktop/LX. "I found one of the OS's most interesting features is Lycoris' network browser. It's a browser operated version of Windows' network mapping, a great idea for any Linux distribution that's trying to appeal to users of the world's most popular operating system. It also doesn't hurt that to delete unwanted items you move them to a 'trash can'. Everyone can relate to that."

Redmond Linux (RadSoft.net). RadSoft.net is running a short letter praising Lycoris Desktop/LX. "Grand total: 26 minutes. She installed an operating system and an office suite, patched them, learned the basics of the GUI, and was able to start using the office suite in less than half an hour."

OEone HomeBase Offers Computing, Simplified (Open For Business). Here is a review of the OEone Homebase distribution. "For the most part, OEone erred on the side of stability by including older, better tested versions of its key packages such as XFree86 (4.0.3) and Mozilla (0.9.3). On the other hand, HomeBase uses the recent Linux 2.4.17 kernel, which was a very good choice considering some of the problems with the early 2.4-series kernels."

The future of Xandros: Installation is nice, more features expected (NewsForge). NewsForge test drives Xandros Desktop 1.0. "The hardware support was particularly impressive, figuring out the identity of all the off-brand equipment on my test box on the very first try. Up until that moment, the only other operating system that was able to pull that off was Windows. If the installer is as reliable at detecting name brand hardware as it was with my bargain basement system, then Linux users will have a good option for hardware detection, which was once a Linux pipe dream."

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.

Distribution Lists:
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