Sections:
Main page
Linux in the news
Security
Kernel
Distributions
Development
Commerce
Announcements
Back page
All in one big page

Distributions

Linux-Mandrake and BeroLinux are merging. Bucking the trend of a new distribution every week, the Linux-Mandrake and BeroLinux distributions are becoming one. Gael Duval sent us this note which describes the merger. Basically, they reviewed their goals and found them to be nearly identical. As a result, the next official Linux-Mandrake distribution will contain new ideas and features from BeroLinux. On a side note, they also plan to open up development of the Linux-Mandrake distribution to allow users to contribute as well. All good news!

Conectiva Linux 3.0is an RPM-based distribution for both x86 and Alpha platforms from Brazil.

Caldera

Andrew McRory's HackPak directory has been updated again, as noted by Erik Ratcliffe, who comments, "For those who just tuned in, the "HackPak" directory contains all the RPM packages necessary to upgrade an OpenLinux 1.3 system to the point where it can run 2.2.x Linux kernels." He also calls Andrew "a man who deserves his own religion", which drew a smiling protest from Andrew ...

Some unofficial RPMS for OpenLinux 1.3 have been made available by Marc Christiansen, including RPMS for glibc-1.2.0, gtk+-1.2.0 and apache-1.3.4. He also noted some dependencies in the packages.

Caldera will be out in force at Brainshare, to be held March 21st through the 23rd in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Their press release indicates that they plan on premiering OpenLinux 2.2, demonstrated the Helius satellite router based on OpenLinux and more. Ransom Love and several of the Caldera V.P.'s will be attending as well.

Debian

Problems are few and far between for people upgrading to Debian 2.1. At least, very few problem reports were seen and those were relatively minor. This is a good indication of the stability of the latest release. On the other hand, the development version of Debian (dubbed "potato") is highly unstable as glibc 2.1, perl 5.005 and other major package updates are being dropped in.

This Week's Debian Weekly News is out.

MkLinux

GENERIC #07 is now available. David A. Gatwood's announcement covers the major changes in this release. Kensington device support is also available, but only through a modified kernel. Reports so far indicate that GENERIC-07 has fixed previously reported IP-Masquerading problems.

Slackware

The latest, on-line version of Slackware has had a number of updates in the last week, including updates to TeX-related packages, support for APM shutdowns with the new 2.2.x kernels, samba 2.0.3, egcs-1.1.2, apache_1.3.4, Netscape 4.51, and many other miscellaneous updates. None appear to be security related, so upgrading should not need to be an urgent priority. For more information, check out the Slackware-current changelog file.

SuSE

SuSE 6.1 has been announced. The German version of SuSE 6.1 will ship April 12th. It includes the Linux 2.2 kernel and KDE 1.1. The International version is scheduled to ship in May.

Trinux

The Trinux IRC Channels have been changed over to Dalnet. Read this posting for more details.

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

March 18, 1999

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

Next: Development