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A couple of additional Linux-based router mini-Linux projects (other than the Linux Router Project) were brought to our attention over the past two weeks, including ShareTheNet, Project Ballantain and the planned replacement for Project Ballantain, currently only in screen-shots, Project Freesco.

ShareTheNet, from author John Lombardo, is designed to run on a single floppy and is targeted for the home office market. It is, in fact, a for-sale product intended to be downloaded and used without requiring any knowledge of Linux (just a computer to run it on). It provides basic gateway functionality in a reasonably secure manner. A free version of the product is also downloadable and can be set up easily by anyone already running Linux.

Project Ballantain is concisely described on its web site as a "Single floppy router modem-ethernet, IPmasquerad + diald + dhcpd". Although bug-fix support is still available, it is a closed project, with no on-going development work. Instead, Project Freesco, from the same author, appears to be in the planning stages.

Many thanks to all the people who've been sending me pointers to Linux distributions I was missing on our comprehensive list! Mea culpa that I got behind and didn't get appropriate credit out for entries for the last few weeks. Meanwhile, many thanks to Neal Richter who wins the prize this week for the largest number of reported "new" distributions.

Debian

Quake issues with Debian can now be discussed on a new mailing list created just for that purpose.

Green Frog

Described by the developer as a "a small compact Linux Distribution that is made by a Japanese/American High School student with way too much time on his hands", Green Frog Linux is a small, compact distribution intended to be a starting point for people who want to "home-brew" most or all of their Linux distribution. It weighs in at 36MB and comes with Linux 2.2.8+devfs v99, egcs 1.1.2, glibc 2.1, ncurses 4.2 and Perl 5.005.

LinuxGT

The first release of LinuxGT server edition has been announced. This is a beta release of this new distribution - nobody should be putting it into production environments at this point. The developers are looking for bug reports and comments, of course.

Note that the download site listed in the announcement has been shutdown in favor of mirror sites. Check nj.greysite.com or metalab instead.

LinuxPPC

LinuxPPC 5.0 has been released. The new version, now known as LinuxPPC 1999, features a new installer designed for maximum ease of installation (Red Hat's installer is also available), special theme support to let you choose to make your machine look like a MacIntosh, etc., plus glibc2 and more.

Reports cropped up about an AutoStart virus on the R5 CDs. Although confirmed, it seems that the virus is inert, not actually transmissible. For more information, check out the original report and followups at MacInTouch. It was also mention in this article in MacWeek.com about the new release.

Mandrake

The Mandrake 6.0 PowerPack has been announced. It should be in the hands of distributors as we speak. It comes with 5 CDs, the 2.2.9 kernel and more .

MkLinux

News from the MkLinux community was provided to us for the first time in this report from Larry Kollar. Top of the list was a mention of the new mklinux.org website, a community-based alternative to Apple's MkLinux page, which is no longer updated regularly.

QuadLinux

The Quad Xeon server now has its own, customized Linux distribution, QuadLinux, based on Red Hat, but with all RPMs compiled for the Xeon processor and SMP utilities and applications included. At $299, it may also be the most expensive Linux distribution out there currently. Of course, compared to the actual price of a Quad Xeon server ...

Red Hat

A collection of bug reports on Red Hat's bugzilla have been wrapped up as a result of their release of a new utempter package. It seems that a bug in utempter caused a number of programs to fail to exit properly when a user logged out, including xterm, rxvt and screen. If you're interested in the details, check out the full Bugzilla report.

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

June 17, 1999

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

Known Distributions:
Apokalypse
Bastille Linux
Caldera OpenLinux
CCLinux
Conectiva Linux (Brazilian)
Debian GNU/Linux
Definite Linux
DragonLinux
easyLinux
Easylinux-kr
Enoch
e-smith server and gateway
Green Frog Linux
Independence
Kha0s Linux
LinuxGT
Linux MLD (Japanese)
LinuxPPC
Linux Router Project
LOAF
Mandrake
MkLinux
muLinux
PLD
Project Ballantain
PROSA Debian GNU/Linux
QuadLinux
Red Hat
ShareTheNet
Slackware
Stampede
SuSE
Tomsrtbt
Trinux
TurboLinux
uClinux
UltraPenguin
XTeamLinux
Yellow Dog Linux

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