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See also: last week's Distributions page.

Lists of Distributions
distrowatch
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Distributions


Please note that security updates from the various distributions are covered in the security section.

Vine Linux 2.0. Maya Tamiya, editor of ChangeLog.net, a Japanese site that provides a translated version of LWN.net material, kindly provided us with more details on Vine Linux and their recent 2.0 release. Vine Linux is a community-based project. "Vine Linux is probably the most popular community-based distribution in Japan. There was even a paper magazine's readers poll which showed the number of the Vine users was the largest of all the other Japanese distributions users including commercial ones. Project Vine claims to have distributed, via CD-ROM, at least one million copies of their previous version over about a year."

For the gory details, note that Vine Linux 2.0 is based on RedHat Linux 6.1, kernel-2.2.14, glibc-2.1.2 + locale-ja and XFree86-3.3.6 + xtt. (Thanks to Toshiyuki Nakata.)

Plamo Linux 2.0. Maya Tamiya also provided us with information on Plamo Linux 2.0, another community-based distribution in Japan, originally based on Slackware. Plamo is famous for the quality of their laptop support, among other features. "Plamo Linux was originally called "Plagiaware" since they borrowed many packages from other distributions, but the name gave too bad impression so they renamed it to "Plamo", short for "plastic models" in Japanese, in the hope that the distribution would grow to be a system that people can change and improve the software by themselves as they like easily."

Linux From Scratch. Here's an announcement for a different sort of distribution. LinuxFromScratch is a running distribution that you put together yourself from source. The "distribution" as such consists mostly of a large, online book describing how to build the whole thing; what finally ends up on your system is up to you. An interesting resource for those who want to see how it's done, or who have never been able to find a distribution they actually liked.

Blue Point Linux

Bluepoint, Intel establish Chinese support center. Bluepoint Linux Software Corp. has announced a deal with Intel to establish a technical support center in Shenzhen, China. According to the announcement, Intel will contribute "technology and equipment" to the center; it's not clear that Intel's involvement goes beyond that.

Corel Linux

Corel quarterly report. Corel has filed its latest quarterly report. It gives the gory details on its recent performance, and talks about the other challenges the company faces, including a suit filed on April 17 attempting to block the merger with Inprise.

Debian GNU/Linux

First European Debian Meeting. The first European Debian Meetingwill be held in Bordeaux (France), from July 5th to July 9th 2000, invited by the French-speaking Debian developers and the Libre Software Meeting organizers (in French).

The conjunction of this meeting with the Libre Software Meeting will provide a low-cost locale for the event and the opportunity for Debian developers to interact with developers from other free software projects.

Debian Weekly News. A brief Debian Weekly News for this week covers the European Debian Meeting, package dependencies, Perl 5.6, and more.

KRUD

April KRUD. The last Red Hat 6.1-based release of KRUD, their April KRUD CD, is now available. This contains Red Hat 6.1, all updates and many fun extras, including "FreeCIV" and "PySol". KRUD 6.2 is in development and expected to be the basis of the May KRUD release.

Linux-Mandrake

Linux-Mandrake 7.1beta available. Linux-Mandrake 7.1 beta is now available for download. It is a beta version, so all the usual warnings apply. Among other things, this release includes the Helix GNOME release, XFree86 4.0, and ReiserFS.

Red Hat Linux

Red Hat begins shipping Motif 2.1. Red Hat has moved a little further away from its "all open source, all the time" approach with this announcement that it will be shipping Metro Link Motif with its "Enterprise Edition."

Slackware Linux

New additions to the slackware-current tree this week: XFree86 4.0, teTeX-1.0.7, teTeX-texmf-1.0.2 and GNU grep-2.4.2, in addition to the security-related additions mentioned in the Security Summary. Grep was upgraded in response to a user report of problems with the version previously included.

Possibly in response to last week's announcement of the FHS 2.1 (File System Hierarchy), a discussion began in the Slackware devel forum arguing against the possible adoption of the System V init script structure over the BSD structure. Some people did not care, but others felt strongly that the loss of the BSD init script structure would alter Slackware too much, lose a valuable feature of Slackware and make it too much like every other distribution. No official response was included, but if the opinions in this thread hold, Slackware is unlikely to ever being FHS (and therefore LSB) compliant.

SuSE Linux

SuSE 6.4 evaluation ISO. SuSE has released an ISO for their SuSE 6.4 evaluation CD. This is one CD out of the normal 6 CD set and obviously comes without documentation or support, but if you want to take SuSE for a test run, this should have everything you need. "As usual, it ships with KDE, Netscape and a lot of additional goodies like the new YaST2 installation and configuration tool."

SuSE performs mind-share control (Upside). This Upside article looks at the challenges faced by SuSE in the U.S. "Then there's the fact that SuSE avoided the recent Linux IPO frenzy and has had to build its market share with less money and less attention from the wealth-obsessed tech media machine."

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh


April 27, 2000

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


Leading
Caldera OpenLinux
Debian GNU/Linux
Linux-Mandrake
Red Hat
Slackware
SuSE
TurboLinux

Also well-known
ASPLinux
Best Linux
Conectiva Linux
e-smith

Progeny
Rock Linux

Non-technical desktop
easyLinux
Icepack Linux
Independence
LibraNet
Redmond Linux
WinSlack

Education
Boston University
kmLinux
LinuxFromScratch
OpenClassroom
Red Escolar

General Purpose
Alzza Linux
aXon Linux
Bad Penguin Linux
BearOps
Black Cat Linux
BluePoint Linux
BYO Linux
CAEN Linux
Cafe Linux
ChainSaw Linux
Circle MUDLinux
cLIeNUX
Complete Linux
Console Linux
Corel Linux
CRUX
Darkstar Linux
DLite
easyLinux
Elfstone Linux
ESware Linux
Eurielec Linux
eXecutive Linux
Fried Chicken
FTOSX
FullPliant
Gentoo
Go!Linux
HA Linux
Halloween Linux
HispaFuentes
IceLinux
Ivrix
ix86 Linux
J-LINUX
JBLinux
Jurix
KRUD
KSI-Linux
Lanthan Linux
Laonux
LASER5
Leetnux
Linpus Linux
Linux Cyrillic Edition
Linux MLD
LinuxOne OS
LinuxPPP
Linux Pro Plus
Linux-SIS
LNX System
LoopLinux
LSD
Lute Linux
MageNet
Mastodon
MaxOS
minilinux
MSC.Linux

NoMad Linux
Omoikane GNU/Linux
PingOO Linux
Plamo Linux
PLD
Project Ballantain
PROSA
Rabid Squirrel
Repairlix
Root Linux
Scrudgeware
Serial Terminal
Sorcerer
spyLinux
Stampede
Stataboware
TechLinux
TimeSys Linux/RT
Tom Linux
Trinux
Turkuaz
Ute-Linux
VA-enhanced Red Hat
Vine Linux
Virtual Linux
WholeLinux
WinLinux 2000
XTeamLinux
ZipSpeak

Country-specific
Argentina
GNU/Linux Ututo
Britain
Definite Linux
Eridani
China
COSIX
Red Flag
France
Linux/MNIS
Italy
LinuxEspresso
Madeinlinux
Vedova
Spain
Linux Esware
Thailand
Kaiwal Linux
Thai Linux Extension

Related Projects
Chinese Linux Extension

Historical (Non-active)
Dualix
Gentus
Giotto
MCC Interim Linux
OS2000
Storm Linux


 

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