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See also: last week's Distributions page.

Lists of Distributions
distrowatch
ibiblio
Kernelnotes
Linux.com
LinuxLinks
Woven Goods

Embedded Distributions:
3ilinux
Bifrost

BluePoint Embedded
Compact Linux
Coollinux
DSPLinux
ELinOS
ELKS
Embedded Debian
Embedix
Etlinux
FlightLinux
Hard Hat Linux
Jailbait
Linux/Coldfire
LEM
Midori
NeoLinux
OnCore Systems
PeeWeeLinux
RedBlue Linux
RedIce-Linux
Royal Linux
RTLinux
Tynux
uClinux
White Dwarf Linux

Handhelds/PDAs
Agenda-VR
Familiar (iPAQ)
Intimate (iPAQ)
Linux DA
PocketLinux
PsiLinux

Special Purpose/Mini
2-Disk Xwindow System
Mindi Linux
SmoothWall

Floppy-based
Brutalware
BYLD
Coyote Linux
DLX
Fd Linux
Fli4l (Floppy ISDN/DSL)
floppyfw
Floppix
FREESCO
Linux in a Pillbox (LIAP)
Linux Router Project
LOAF
muLinux
Nuclinux
Proxyfloppy
ShareTheNet
Small Linux
Tomsrtbt
Viralinux_II

CD-based
BasicLinux
BBLCD Toolkit
CDLinux
Crash Recovery Kit
DemoLinux
Devil-Linux
Finnix
Gibraltar
innominate Bootable Business Card
Linuxcare Bootable Business Card
LNX-BBC
MkCDrec
RunOnCD
Sentry Firewall
SuperRescue
Timo's Rescue CD
Ututo
Virtual Linux

Zip disk-based
NBROK
ZipSlack

Small Disk
hal91
MicroLinux
--> Peanut Linux
PKLinux
Relax Linux
TA-Linux
Tomukas
ttylinux
VectorLinux

Wireless
Bambi Linux
Flying Linux

Hardware-specific
(ARM)
ARM Linux
(Beowulf)
Scyld Beowulf
(IBM)
Think Blue Linux
(Oracle's NIC)
NIC Linux
(PA-RISC)
PA-RISC Linux
(Playstation)
Runix
(PowerPC)
Black Lab Linux
LinuxPPC
MkLinux
Yellow Dog
(Sparc)
Splack
UltraLinux
(Older Intel)
ClarkConnect
Monkey Linux
TINY

DOS/Windows install
Armed Linux
DragonLinux
Phat Linux

Diskless Terminal
GNU/Linux TerminalServer for Schools
K12LTSP
LTSP
Pygmy
Xdenu

Distributions


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

News and Editorials

REDICE-Linux from REDSonic. REDICE-Linux is not actually a Linux distribution; it is, instead, another entrant into the field of real-time Linux kernels. REDICE-Linux is based on the RED Linux project, an academic project out of the University of California at Irvine. Professor Kwei-Jay Lin brought his work out of academia and joined with Dr. Kwei-Jay Lin to form REDSonic in July of this year. As you might expect, REDSonic is based in Orange County, California.

REDSonic is clearly a new entrant into the ranks of embedded Linux providers, such as Lineo, MontaVista, etc. From their website, likely sources of revenue will be programming services, support and training. They currently have classes listed as available for real-time development, Linux device drivers, REDICE-Linux internals and, of course, building embedded applications with REDICE-Linux. Given their origins in academia, their ability to provide quality classes after such a short time in business is understandable.

REDICE-Linux 1.0 provided real-time services on the user level. However, REDICE-Linux 2.0 was introduced in September and has integrated RTAI to provide both user-level and kernel-level real-time support. A small amount of additional information on REDICE-Linux can be found in these LinuxDevices.com articles:

There are no plans to expand REDICE-Linux from a kernel to a full distribution. "We didn't want to duplicate the work of other distributors. REDICE is designed to make sure you can still run your standard Linux applications on top of it", commented REDSonic's Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Chen.

By the way, in case you're curious about another "Red" distribution, the use of "RED" in the names is actually derived from "Real-time Embedded".

FlyingLinux. What fun! Thanks to Gerhard Fiedler, we got a chance to take a look at Flying Linux, a new Linux distribution that was built as part of a project to support DHCP-based wireless services for the student labs at the IT-University in Kista, Sweden. (The IT-University KTH-Kista was established by the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden in 1999).

The Flying Linux distribution uses MobileIP for IPv4, Kerberos, Arla (an AFS-clone), OpenSSH and the Wireless Extensions for Linux to support the Flying Linux environment, a well-organized and flexible structure containing public, private and mobile networks.

The Flying Linux distribution takes its core from another distribution new to our list, Bambi Linux. Bambi, in turn, is based on Red Hat, but includes Kerberos, IPv6, MobileIP and native support for WaveLAN cards from the startup.

Monkey business. Monkey Linux is another small Linux distribution with DOS/FAT32 installation support. The site hasn't been updated since 1997, so when they claim to use the "latest Linux kernel", take that information in context. Nonetheless, the distribution is still available for download and was recently recommended for use on old 486 machines on the BLUG mailing list (Boulder, Colorado, USA) by Dana J. Hall.

General-Purpose Distributions

Caldera OpenLinux News. Caldera has now licensed Java technology from Sun to include in their OpenLinux distribution. They announced this week that their developer preview now ships with Java HotSpot. It also ships with a 2.4beta kernel (though it doesn't say which one), glibc 2.1.91, and a developer snapshot of KDE 2.0 (hopefully replaced with the real thing, soon!). Again, "developer preview" means just that -- don't pick this thing up to play with unless you know what to do when it breaks on you.

Meanwhile, those of you wanting to learn more about Caldera and OpenLinux may want to look for the Linux/UNIX Power Solutions Tour [Fall 2000], starting in Canada and then winging its way south.

Debian News. The Debian project announced that it has been invited and will be part of the LinuxPark at Systems 2000, November 5th through the 11th in Munich, Germany. Of course, that conference is mostly over now, but if you're in the area, you may want to stop by to catch the last few days.

Recent additions to Debian's "unstable" development tree are discussed in this week's Debian Weekly News. They include XFree86 4.0.1 (thanks to the work of Branden Robinson), perl 5.6 and dpkg 1.7.0. As a result, "unstable" is living up to its name -- definitely intended only for the brave and adventurous.

DWN also talks a bit more about Progeny Linux, a relatively new commercial version of Debian from Ian Murdock's new company. It released its first beta last week and more details on the beta were discussed on debian-devel this week. It uses many packages from Debian's "unstable" tree, more hardware auto-detection and boot support via GRUB instead of LILO, among other features. Work done by Progeny will be made available back to maintainers in Debian for consideration for inclusion into Debian.

On a more administrative note, Debian's votes on a couple of proposed amendments to the Debian constitution dealing with how to handle "non-free" software have expired. Apparently, discussion raged for a few weeks, then died out without the vote being moved forward. There was also concern about the ballot wording, which seemed to be causing a lot of confusion. Now they'll all been thrown out. We'll have to wait to see if the proposals get revived. For more information on the issue, check the October 12th Distributions Summary.

Still want more Debian News? Check out the November 2nd issue of Debian Kernel Cousin, more news from the debian-devel mailing list.

Slackware News. A version of Qt not linked with Mesa has been made available, due to conflicts seen by people using the NVidia OpenGL libraries. For security reasons, pine has also been upgraded, along with IMAP. Check the Slackware Current Changelog for more details.

Storm Linux News. LinuxOrbit has run this review of Storm Linux 2000. "Storm Linux being based on Debian, comes with full and complete Debian compatibility (current version 2.20 Potato). All packages can be installed through the apt-get (console based Debian package retrieval system) or the Storm Linux Package Manager (stormpkg). "

SuSE Linux News. SuSE 7.0 has a "clean installation" and "upgrades smoothly" according to this review in FreeOS. "Since I was already running SuSE 6.4 on my system I first tried the upgrade. That went off smoothly enough and I was soon running SuSE 7. All packages were detected and upgraded. Next, I tried a clean installation which went off smoothly as well. I chose the default with office install which is just the default installation with StarOffice on top. No problems here either."

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh


November 9, 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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