See also: last week's Distributions page.

Note: The list of Linux distributions has moved to its own page.

Distributions

News and Editorials

Ranking distributions (DistroWatch). Last week we looked at the popularity of distributions, based on statistics compiled at Linux Counter. The top five distributions were Red Hat, Debian, Mandrake, Slackware, and SuSE; in that order. Since then DistroWatch has come up with another method of ranking the distributions; based on the number of page hits each individual distribution gets on their site. They list forty distributions in order, by number of page hits. Their top five: Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, Slackware. No one should be surprised that the same five show up in slightly different order.

Also found at DistoWatch is The Linux Distribution Game, a guide to picking a Linux distribution. It covers the top five and another seven as well. Among the lesser known distributions we found Beehive Linux, not new exactly, but new to our list. Read more about Beehive below.

New Distributions

Beehive Linux. The creators of Beehive Linux wanted a fast, simple, secure i686 optimized Linux distribution without all the cruft and clutter. This distribution is lean and mean and has native ReiserFS support built in. This is a distribution made by system administrators, for system administrators. Beehive has been around since January 1, 2001.

ClumpOS. ClumpOS is a CD-based Linux/MOSIX mini-distribution designed to allow you to quickly, or temporarily, add nodes to a MOSIX cluster. The initial release, R3, came out November 12.

Linux for Windows 9X. Linux for Windows 9X is a Windows 9X friendly version of Linux. It installs on a Windows 9X disk and allows for two way exchange of files between both Linux and Win9X. Monkey Linux was the prototype for this distribution, which is now at version 0.2.

Distribution News

Debian. Look for the Debian Project at Hispalinux Congress 2001 in Spain, and at Linux Kongress in the Netherlands.

LynuxWorks unveils BlueCat 4.0. LynuxWorks has released BlueCat Linux 4.0, the latest version of its embedded distribution. Pricing starts at $2700. Also from LynuxWorks is this announcement of a forthcoming hard real-time version of BlueCat Linux, based on RTLinux.

Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter. The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for November  is out. Covered topics include replacing NT primary domain controllers with Mandrake Linux, a new menu-driven rescue mode, and the business case of the week.

Red Hat. The Red Hat German development team has created a rescue CD for Red Hat Linux 7.2 that fits on a credit-card sized CD. Now available for download at ftp://ftp.redhat.de/pub/rh-addons/rescue-cd/

Diskcheck is a small utility supplied with Red Hat Linux 7.2 that is used to optionally notify the System Administrator when disk space on one or more partitions drops below a pre-defined level. The version that shipped with RH 7.2 has some problems, so Red Hat has made a new diskcheck program available.

SuSE Enterprise Server 7 for the S/390. SuSE announced that its Enterprise Server 7 distribution is now available for the S/390 mainframe architecture.

SuSE Linux to discontinue 6.3 version. SuSE Linux 6.3 will no longer be supported after Monday, December 10th 2001, after a lifespan of two years. If you haven't upgraded your SuSE box in a while, maybe it's time.

Minor Distribution updates

2-Disk Xwindow Linux System. The 2-Disk Xwindow Linux System released 1.2.01 beta with major feature enhancements on November 12. Minor enhancements went into 1.2.01, released November 14.

BasicLinux. BasicLinux version 1.5 has been released. BasicLinux is a mini-version of Linux that boots from HD, FD or CDrom and runs in a 4meg ramdisk.

floppyfw. floppyfw is a router and simple firewall on one single floppy. Stable version 1.0.12 contains a DHCP server and DNS cache. Also this version uses the 2.2.20 kernel.

kmLinux. kmLinux is a complete Linux distribution for schools. kmLinux-2.1.2 contains kernel-2.4.12, XFree-4.1.0, KDE-2.2.1 and lots of other good stuff. See the announcement in English. The web site is in German.

Mindi-Linux. Mindi-Linux uses a skeleton ramdisk and your kernel, modules, and tools to build a boot/root disk set. Version 0.45 has been released.

Sorcerer GNU Linux. Sorcerer GNU Linux is a source-based ix86 Linux distribution designed for advanced Linux administration. A kernel update to 2.4.14 and minor feature enhancements went into version 20011106.

ttylinux. ttylinux is a minimalistic Linux distribution that can fit in 4 MB of disk space. Version 1.15 of ttylinux has been released.

Distribution Reviews

SuSE Linux Professional 7.3 (KillerTux). There is a review of SuSE Linux Professional 7.3 on the KillerTux site. "At this point we were stuck and couldn't get to a prompt. We thought this would be an excellent opportunity to try the ext3 file system. Therefore, we powered off the unit. Sadly, we lost the partition. The system was never able to boot into Linux again. Instructions on the screen were to manually run fsck. Nothing we tried helped. Our new setup is using ReiserFS." Despite that, it's actually quite a positive review: "In our opinion, SuSE Linux Professional 7.3 is an excellent product."

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol

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

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