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 Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page All in one big page See also: last week's Distributions page. |
DistributionsPlease note that security updates from the various distributions are covered in the security section. MandrakeSoft frees the Bochs x86 emulator. MandrakeSoft, parent of the Linux-Mandrake distribution, has announced their purchase of the Bochs x86 emulator and its subsequent release under the LGPL. In addition, Kevin Lawton, lead developer for both Bochs and the Plex86 project, a free alternative to VMWare, has joined the MandrakeSoft team. He will be continuing to move forward with the development of Plex86, now with access to the code base for Bochs to speed his team's implementation. "MandrakeSoft recognizes the value brought to our Linux users, by offering them an open source way to concurrently run Windows or other PC operating systems", commented Jacques Le Marois, President of MandrakeSoft. This is certainly a wonderful example of a commercial interest paving the way for the "Right Thing" to happen. It could also be done without money, but in this case, it will happen faster and more easily with the commercial support. In the end, we will all benefit from another free software application with extensive potential uses. Chinese Linux Extension 0.9 released. Version 0.9 of the Chinese GNU/Linux Extension has been released. This patch brings Chinese language capabilities to much of the Linux system, including GNOME and KDE; the latest version adds a lot of stuff, see the announcement for details. (Thanks to Chih-Wei Huang). CLE is a GPL'd project, currently optimized for Red Hat and using RPM, but with a Debian port underway. Although not a distribution in and of itself, at least not yet, CLE is included in some Chinese distributions to provide full Chinese support right out of the box. Along that same lines, Donovan Software has announced its own 64-bit Chinese Linux Distribution, covered in this (Singapore) Business Times article. The new distribution will be called the Chinese Penguin64. A website for the distribution was not provided, though it is supposed to be available for download from http://www.penguin64.org. Although it is not specified in the article, it seems likely that the Chinese Penguin64 distribution is for the UltraSparc platform, as opposed to the Alpha platform or other 64bit systems. This is a conjecture based the information on the website. Rick Collette starts deepLinux. Rick Collette, formerly the guy behind the SPIRO-Linux distribution, has announced the launch of his new venture, deepLinux. DeepLinux will be primarily focusing on the OEM market, but will include embedded projects involving game systems and network appliances. ZipSpeak, a Talking Linux Distribution. ZipSpeak, an "Easy-to-Use, Talking Linux Distribution", has been announced. "ZipSpeak is a talking mini-distribution of Linux for blind and visually impaired people, based on version 7.0 of the ZipSlack distribution and version 0.08 of the Speakup screen reader. ZipSpeak is designed to be easily installed on an existing MS-DOS or Windows system, so that the user can start using a talking Linux system with a minimum of difficulty." When The Big Boys Come To Town (MacDiscussion). Here's a MacDiscussion column about the arrival of new distributions for the PowerPC. "Both Debian Linux and SuSE Linux have in the works distributions that will run on all PCI or better powermacs and various other selected PPC machines. This is where things get interesting. You see, Linux PPC and Yellow Dog Linux are relatively new upstart companies when it comes to the Linux world, and they just do not have the corporate power and user base that both Debian and SuSE boast." Of course, using the word "corporate power" in conjunction with the volunteer Debian project may seem a bit strange, but given that VA Linux, SGI and O'Reilly have issued joint Debian CDs, it is actually accurate. It will be interesting to see if distributions that are tied to a specific non-Intel platform will continue to thrive as the larger distributions expand their platform support. Note that they very well may continue to survive ... the availability of more manpower to support applications on their platform will help them and companies that heavily depend on a particular hardware platform may find they get better support from a company that also uses their platform exclusively. LinuxWars: Distribution War III.2 (AboutLinux). AboutLinux has updated its Distribution War article to include Corel's distribution. Bastille LinuxBastille Linux update. Bastille Linux 1.0.4.pre4 has been released. This contains only minor fixes for this security hardening script for Red Hat Linux. We also noticed that we missed the opportunity to announce Spiro-Bastille, a similar script for Spiro Linux adapted from Bastille Linux.Caldera OpenLinuxOpenLinux e-Desktop Preceeds Caldera IPO (TechWeb). According to this TechWeb article Caldera e-Desktop 2.4 is supposed to have hit the shelves yesterday. "The latest operating system product to ship from the Provo, Utah-based Linux developer packages a browser-based administration utility, office productivity applications, Internet configuration tools, MetaFrame client capabilities, and beefed-up security." (Thanks to "jhb").Check out the Commerce Page for more coverage of the Caldera IPO. Debian GNU/LinuxSun donates Sparc system to Debian. The Debian Project has received a donation of an UltraSparc 60 dual-CPU system from Sun, accompanied by a large storage array. Linux-MandrakeMacmillan ships Linux-Mandrake Secure Server 7.0. Macmillan has announced that Linux-Mandrake Secure Server 7.0 is now shipping.Red Hat LinuxRed Hat 6.2 beta (piglet). A lot of people are having fun playing around with the ISO image for the beta version of Red Hat 6.2, available from several different sites, including sunsite.unc.edu. If you decide to check it out, remember, this is beta software and definitely has bugs! You should also subscribe to the piglet mailing list to report problems and get help with this distribution. To subscribe, send an email message to "piglet-list-request@redhat.com" with the subject "Subscribe", then send your messages to "piglet-list@redhat.com".Slackware LinuxSlackware Devel forum. Slackware has added a new forum to their website: Slackware Devel. " Drop in and give us your two cents on what you'd like to see in Slackware, see what kind of progress we're making on various projects, and generally feed us lots of input. We like input."New -current version. Courtesy of the new developer forum, we have an announcement of another slackware-current update. "The big one this time is a glibc 2.1.3 package". SuSE LinuxSuSE Linux 6.4 release coming early April. SuSE has announced that version 6.4 of its distribution will be released on April 3 in Germany, and "approximately two weeks later" elsewhere. SuSE claims great improvements in its YaST administration tool. 6.4 will also include XFree86 4.0 as an optional package for those who want to play with it. Eye2Eye: Dirk Hohndel of SuSE Linux, Part II (ZDNet). ZDNet UK continues its talk with SuSE's Dirk Hohndel. "I see Windows 2000 as a big chance. If you look at the administration interface, everything changes. Many old applications don't work anymore. So, if a company is considering moving to Windows 2000, they're considering retraining their staff... moving to new applications. That is the point in time when we need to talk to them." TrinuxNot dead, just in a coma .... Matthew Franz posted a note explaining the quiet period in Trinux development and offering updated and new packages for Nmap, Ngrep, Zombie Zapper and Nstreams.TurboLinuxTurboLinux releases IA-64 distribution. TurboLinux announces that an early-release version of its IA-64 distribution is available for download. TurboLinux unveils system for Intel's Itanium chip (News.com). News.com reports on TurboLinux's IA-64 distribution. "Even Microsoft is paying attention; it was one of the companies that downloaded the TurboLinux OS, said Lonn Johnston, TurboLinux vice president of corporate communications." WinLinuxWinLinux 2000 ships. WinLinux 2000 is now shipping. WinLinux is a distribution which can run on top of Windows. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
March 23, 2000
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