See also: last week's Distributions page.

Distributions

News and Editorials

Sun Linux?. A recent announcement from Sun Microsystems said, in part, "... Sun announced it will ship a full implementation of the Linux operating system." Is this a hint that Sun Linux will be released, along with the next generation of Sun Cobalt appliances? Little actual information is available at this time, so all we have is wild speculation.

Of course this announcement could mean that Sun will encourage the major distribution vendors to release versions tailored to Sun hardware, just as IBM has done. There are many versions of Linux to choose from, including several good Sparc ports.

We will go out on a limb and predict that Sun Linux (or SolLinux) will be a unique distribution, with versions supporting the spectrum of Sun and Sun Cobalt hardware. It will favor a GNOME desktop, of course. It will be able to run Solaris applications.

The return of Halloween & DragonLinux. Two more "lost" distributions have been found by alert LWN readers. These two distributions are now back in the LWN List bringing the total number of "active" distributions to 228.

DragonLinux was found for us by Hans Lunsing, and has returned to our list under DOS/Windows install.

Halloween Linux was found for us by Kay Marquardt. Halloween is German localized version of Red Hat, so it's been added to the Country Specific category.

New Distributions

GenDist. GENDIST (the Linux Distribution Generator) allows you to create your own special mini-distribution. It creates a makefile-based build system for your distribution, and helps you to automate the following three tasks: maintaining your root filesystem, maintaining your "CD filesystem" (in case you create a bootable CD), and packaging everything on media. GENDIST 0.9.4 (Stable) was released February 10, 2002.

Securepoint Firewall & VPN Server. The Securepoint Firewall & VPN server is a high end firewall and VPN solution for protecting your Internet gateway. Securepoint can also be used with existing firewalls and to protect interconnected locations or divisions and lets you create and manage VPN tunnels.

Distribution News

Debian News. The Debian Weekly News for February 6 is out, with coverage of one more Debian 2.2 release, handling donations, getting fixes into testing, Debian Jr., and more.

Join the Woody Bug-Squashing Party, on the third weekend of February: Friday 15th to Sunday 17th.

Mandrake Linux News. Here's the Mandrake Linux Communtity Newsletter for February 6, 2002. This issue covers 8.2 Beta Articles at MandrakeForum; New Support Plans for IA64; Report from N.Y. LinuxWorld Expo; and much more.

A second ML 8.2 beta is available now. This MandrakeForum article has information about what needs testing and how to report problems.

MandrakeSoft has also announced the availability of a new support offering for IA-64.

MontaVista to Enhance Embedded Linux for Intel's Next-Generation Wireless Platform. MontaVista Software announced that MontaVista Linux 2.1 (formerly Hard Hat Linux), will support the new Intel(R) PXA 210 and Intel(R) PXA250 Applications Processors.

Red Hat. Red Hat has updated printing packages available to fix minor bugs.

Slackware. A bug was fixed in installpkg which caused it to not actually install packages if the -menu option was used. Pkgtool works again. See the changelog for more information.

Trustix Secure Linux. Trustix has issued several bug fix advisories for TSL 1.5. Package cleanup occurred in LPRng, vixie-cron, and rp-pppoe. There were also minor bugfixes in ncurses and initscripts.

Minor Distribution updates

ClumpOS. ClumpOS has released R5.0 on February 12, 2002. This version contains major feature enhancements including a kernel update to Linux 2.4.17 and MOSIX 1.5.7 for 2.4.17.

Familiar Linux Distribution. The Familiar Project has released v0.5.1. Situation dependent bootstraps are now provided in this release, dependencies were fixed in various packages, bootloader splash screen and buttons are supported on H3100, H3600, H3700, and H3800, and the included kernel was updated to 2.4.16-rmk1.

LinuxFromScratch. LinuxFromScratch has released development version 3.2-rc1.

Mindi-Linux. Mindi Linux released v0.58 on February 11, 2002. This is a minor bugfix release.

Rock Linux 1.5.13. A new version of Rock Linux is planned for release at the upcoming FOSDEM conference. Rock Linux guru Stefan Koerner will be present at FOSDEM.

Distribution Reviews

BSD operating systems: Perspective (ZDNet). This ZDNet article looks at the flavors of BSD operating systems. "BSD implementations have retained commonality but also diverged into over 100 different distributions, four of which are prominent."

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.

Distribution Lists:
LWN List
DistroWatch
ibiblio
Linux.com
LinuxLinks
Woven Goods

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