See also: last week's Distributions page.

Distributions

News and Editorials

ALT Linux. This week we are happy to spotlight ALT Linux. ALT Linux developer Michael Shigorin was kind enough to fill out an LWN Distribution survey for us. You can find the full results here and also linked from the new entry in the LWN Distributions List (under General Purpose). It started as the Linux-Mandrake Russian Edition, created by the IPLabs Linux Team. But not all the significant changes found their way back to Mandrake, and the team went on to create ALT Linux. There are several branches now, all using the ALT Linux Master tree. ALT Linux uses RPM4 plus APT (Conectiva apt/rpm port) for package management. English, Russian, Belarussian, Ukrainian, French, and German are supported, with a special emphasis on a correct implementation of The Free Standards Group's Linux Internationalization Initiative Li18nux.

Sisyphus is the current unstable branch of ALT Linux. Here is the Freshmeat page for version 20020507 of Sisyphus.

The recently released ALT Linux 2.0 Master can be downloaded from the FTP site, or purchased as a boxed set with 6 CDs, installation, administrator's and user's manuals, as well as a manual on OpenOffice.org, and lots of extras, including some music in Ogg Vorbis format.

The Castle branch has been on the LWN List for some time. It's a secured, RSBAC-enabled, server distribution.

There is also ALT Linux Junior, a single-disk distribution for home computers, designed especially for beginners, easy to install and use; and ALT Linux MSI Edition, a specialized OEM distribution for MicroStar, with a large set of multimedia applications, OpenOffice and games.

New Distributions

Aleph ARM Linux returns. This is one of those not-at-all-new distributions that simply got lost. Aleph One provides well-documented Linux distributions for various ARM-based systems. There is an official Debian ARM release based on Debian 2.2; and they are working on Psion and Compaq iPaq and other RISC architectures as well. Wookey at Aleph One filled out an LWN distribution survey on February 6, 2000, which somehow managed to get lost until we got another copy this week.

Distribution News

Debian Weekly News. The Debian Weekly News for May 8 covers hardware detection libraries, Bruce Perens's open standards efforts, the new Debian Developers Reference, and several other topics.

Kernel Cousin Debian Hurd #118. Issue #118 of Kernel Cousin Debian Hurd looks at GCC bugs, boot messages and logging, building the parted store modules with Autotools, and more.

Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter - Issue #42. The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for May 8, 2002 is available. This week's issue has news about Incident-based Support Packs at MandrakeStore; the latest MandrakeClub activities; KDE3 Packages for 8.2 PPC; errata updates for 8.2 x86 & PPC; and much more.

Red Hat Linux. Red Hat bug fix advisories for this week:

• A few bugs, including one in ext3 that could cause a kernel panic on SMP systems, are fixed in this kernel errata for Red Hat Linux 7.3 - athlon, i386, i586, i686, noarch..
• Updated packages are available for Red Hat Linux 7.3 - i386 Evolution which fix a vulnerability in the mime parsing component.

Slackware Linux. Here is this week's slice of the Slackware-current changelog.

Minor Distribution updates

2-Disk Xwindow System. The 2-Disk Xwindow System has released v1.4rc11 with fixes to chimera (SSL tracing fixes), an "obfuscation reimpedimentation" in the SOCKS transport layer, and table cleanups.

Astaro Security Linux. Astaro Security Linux has released v2.024 with minor security fixes.

BasicLinux. BasicLinux has released v1.7 with major feature enhancements.

ELX. ELX, Everyone's Linux, is getting ready for its global launch. "The soft launch is scheduled to take place during the third week of May all across the United States and North America. By the first week of June the product would find its way into Europe, Latin America, South Africa, Australia and the rest of the world."

EnGarde Secure Linux. EnGarde Secure Linux bug fix advisories for this week:

• Some defaults in /etc/php.ini changed in our last PHP update (ESA-20020301-006). In particular file_uploads and register_globals were disabled. This update changes these defaults back to what they were before the update.

• An issue was found with the swatch audit logs and the resulting daily summary. Under some circumstances the daily summary would report slightly inaccurate data for SSH logins.

EvilEntity Linux. EvilEntity Linux has released DR-0.2.4f with minor bug fixes.

Gentoo Linux. Gentoo Linux has some important Portage/rsync news.

Edmonds Enterprises has Gentoo Linux 1.1a CDs available for $0.99 USD (plus $1.50 for shipping).

Kondara MNU/Linux. Kondara MNU/Linux has updates available for several packages. There is also a change in the FTP tree and how Errata Packages are provided.

LEAF (Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall). LEAF has released Shorewall 1.2.13. The changes in this release include SuSE RPM support, white-listing, and the addition of TCP connection rate limiting.

PXES Linux Thin Client. PXES Linux Thin Client has released 0.4-Beta2 with minor feature enhancements.

Distribution Reviews

Aschwin Marsman upgrades to Red Hat 7.3. Aschwin Marsman of aYniK Software Solutions has updated his review of Red Hat Linux 7.3.

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:
LWN List
DistroWatch
ibiblio
Linux.com
LinuxLinks
LDP English-language GNU/Linux distributions on CD-ROM
Woven Goods

Next: Development