grml, a Debian-based Live-CD has released the first release candidate of grml 1.1. It includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for users of texttools and system administrators. grml provides automatic hardware detection. You can use grml for example as a rescue system, for analyzing systems/networks or as a working environment.
It is not necessary to install anything to a harddisk, you don't even need a harddisk to run it, unless you want to (use grml2hd for this). Due to on-the-fly decompression grml includes about 2.1GB of software and documentation on the CD.
The bootoption expert has been dropped. It is deprecated nowadays. The bootoption splash has been renamed into textsplash to avoid clashes with graphical bootsplashes.
Due to the new initial bootprocess (which is based on live-initramfs) some bootoptions might not work as expected or changed its behaviour. The grml team is working on merging outstanding features.
You can download this release at here.
Annvix, the Mandriva based distro and secure Linux distribution designed for servers has released Annvix 3.0. This release comes with several versions of new software. All of it can't possibly be listed, but the important ones to watch out for are listed. We highly recommend doing whatever backup you deem necessary in case anything goes wrong with the upgrade or your data isn't compatible with a new version of the software. Backup guidelines will be noted where applicable for particular pieces of software. The afterboot manpage also contains great information on backing up databases, etc.
Annvix 3.0-RELEASE (Freya) is now available! Today marks the fifth public release of the Annvix Linux distribution; this version is the fruit of almost a year's worth of hard work. We believe that 3.0-RELEASE is the best version of Annvix available. It is recommended that everyone using 2.0-RELEASE upgrade, as it is no longer supported.
Some of the new features include: 2.6.22.15 kernel with AppArmor support (RSBAC is no longer supported); updated services, including PHP 5.2.5, MySQL 5.0.51, PostgreSQL 8.2.5, Apache 2.2.6, and Samba 3.0.28; many other upgraded system packages, including glibc 2.6.1
After has released Vector Linux 5.9 Final Gold Edition, The VectorLinux team has announced the release of VectorLinux 5.9 LIVE CD beta1. This is the first Live release of 5.9. It is based on the just released 5.9 standard GOLD. The hard drive installer has been updated and works well. Includes Gparted for hard drive partitioning if wanting to make a permanent install.
The live CD demonstrates all that is making the 5.9 Vector release famous like browser plugins, seamonkey, firefox and opera. The newest xfce-4 desktop, Abiword and Gnumeric, vasm and vl-hot. The latest wireless drivers and configuration tools, support for read and write to ntfs via fuse and ntfs-3g. There are great graphics and lots of fun and games.
Download the ISO of this LiveCD at here.
Gnome Edition Release Manager of PCLinux OS has released PCLOS Gnome Edition 2.21.2. Featuring kernel 2.6.22.15, Gnome 2.21.2, Gnome office apps, Firefox 2.0.0.11, Frostwire, Azureus, Xmms, Flash, JRE, a ton of multimedia apps, and much more.
Complete package list here. Almost 2 gigs of software compressed on a single self bootable livecd that can be installed to your hard drive provided it is compatible with your system and you like the distribution. Over 7000+ additional packages available after hard drive install through its Synaptic Software Manager.
All new bootsplash, backgrounds, and really nice features, upgraded to a great looking operating system and the best out-of-the-box look, and user experience possible! I hope that you will be completely satisfied with this new PCLinuxOS Gnome!
Download the ISO at here.
Zenwalk 5.0 will be a major release, introducing several new systems. Firstly, version 5.0 is the first Zenwalk release to introduce the Freedesktop HAL system (Hardware Abstraction Layer). In the past Zenwalk had provided its own hardware hotplug system, but HAL has now been deemed mature enough to fit within Zenwalk's stability guidelines while giving unbelievable flexibility to hotplug and hardware detection in general.
Noticeable enhancements to Zenwalk found in version 5.0 are the numerous software updates including the latest Xorg 7.3 suite of X servers, drivers, fonts and other software packaged in a modular and easily manageable fashion. Other updates include the latest version of the Iceweasel web browser, the Icedove email client and hundreds more!
The modern and powerful Wicd wifi-browser and configure application replaces Wifi-radar, while the Intel' (TM) wireless device firmware is provided out of the box and is installed providing the user reads and accepts the Intel license, prompted at the end on the Zenwalk install process. This new licensing acceptance scheme allows users dependent on Non-FOSS drivers and firmware to fully support their hardware without need of searching as well as identifying Non-FOSS software for purists so that they may keep their system inline with their principles.
Following tradition Zenwalk's default desktop environment is XFCE and is now at version 4.4.2 sporting the legendary Zenwalk desktop layout with a completely new artwork design making Zenwalk 5.0 visually and functionally the most sober and elegant release to date.
If you are interested to be beta tester, you can download the ISO installer at here.
The Debian project has released the second update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename etch). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustment to serious problems.
Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away 4.0 CDs or DVDs but only to update against ftp.debian.org after an installation, in order to incorporate those late changes.
Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update.
New CD and DVD images containing updated packages and the regular installation media accompanied with the package archive respectively will be available soon at the regular locations.
The installer has been updated to use and support the updated kernels included in this release. This change causes old netboot and floppy images to stop working; updated versions are available from the regular locations.
Other changes include stability improvements in specific situations, improved serial console support when configuring grub, and added support for SGI O2 machines with 300MHz RM5200SC (Nevada) CPUs (mips).
Upgrading to this revision online is usually done by pointing the aptitude (or apt) package tool (see the sources.list(5) manual page) to one of Debian's many FTP or HTTP mirrors. A comprehensive list of mirrors is available at here.
Ubuntu-Women is a team functioning under Ubuntu to provide a platform and encouragement for women to contribute to Ubuntu-Linux, a Debian based free and open-source GNU/Linux software. Our main role will be along the lines of supplementing and being the stepping stone toward the larger Ubuntu-Linux world. Membership is open to all.
An EC funded study (2006) summarized in the Flosspols report, indicates that about 1.5% of FLOSS community members were female, compared with 28% in proprietary software. The Ubuntu Census Survey (June 2006) also reflects a similar female ratio with 2.4% women actively volunteering in the Ubuntu community.
Ubuntu-Women is the first step in trying to usher in change by increasing the visibility and contribution of women by providing mentoring and role models, and creating opportunities for collaboration with new and existing Ubuntu volunteers.
It aim to provide an opportunity for women who want to be involved in the Ubuntu community thereby increasing the diversity in Ubuntu-Linux by :
- Encouraging women to participate, for example, to learn to create new FLOSS software (or revamp existing software), not only to use GNU/Linux software, but to integrate backwards and learn more about it.
- Mentoring women in specific areas (such as technical, documentation, translation and communication) so they have the information and support necessary to take these new steps, to get through barriers or difficulties, and to keep learning and growing in the Ubuntu-Linux world.
- Providing opportunities by sponsoring women who wish to give technical presentations, or talk about their Ubuntu experience at International conferences and seminars.
- Organizing hack-fests, bar camps for women at Linux conferences.
- Increasing the number of women using Ubuntu-Linux in a country-specific manner by providing a platform for talks at local universities, LUGs and schools, which will encourage others to join.
- Openly discussing issues facing women and their involvement in Ubuntu (and Linux) and how to address them.
To achieve the above objectives we currently :
- have a Mentoring program along the lines of Each-One-Teach-One, which is a neat way of sharing knowledge and learning something from others in the community.
- run the mailing list for discussion of related issues.
- run an IRC channel #ubuntu-women at freenode.net
Source: Ubuntu Community
FreeNAS 0.686, a FreeBSD-based operating system which provides free Network-Attached Storage (NAS) services, has been released. It is FreeNAS 0.686 stable out. As said on its site, changes and bug fixes have done: Refactor port makefiles; upgrade netbsd-iscsi (iscsi-target) to 20071221, fusefs-ntfs to 1.1120; disable firmware upgrade via WebGUI for 'full' installations, use the 'full' upgrade mode from live CD instead.
Changed boot splash screen and WebGUI logo images; try to fix AFP Time Machine problem; fix bug in 'full' upgrade / install routine (live CD); do not delete log files during boot process on 'full' installations; it is not possible to format a SoftRAID disk with MSDOS FAT16/32; it is not possible to encrypt a disk partition, only complete disks are supported.
You can download this stable release at here.
A lot has changed since sidux 2007-04 got released, most importantly additional hardware support for concurrent graphics, DVB, ALSA and wireless LAN devices, which suggests to fresh up, while continuing the development for sidux 2008-01. Consequently sidux development team are now proud to announce the immediate availability of the sidux 2007-04.5 christmas special for amd64 and i686 systems, shipping in roughly ≈ 445 MB KDE lite flavours and a combined i386+amd64 release with ≈ 1430 MB KDE for kde-full.
For who don't know, sidux is a full featured Debian sid based live CD with a special focus on hard disk installations, a clean upgrade path within sid and additional hard- and software support. The ISO is completely based on Debian sid, enriched and stabilized with sidux' own packages and scripts.
This update release of sidux 2007-04.5 concentrates on additional hardware support and stability improvements for wireless and DVB devices, combined with newly available hardware support for various ATi graphics cards in interaction with the new X.org 7.3/ xrandr 1.2 based X detection.
A new feature is the combined DVD ISO for kde-full, which supports i386 and amd64 architectures and avoids the hard size limit of CD-R media while trying to retain a slick package list. Further efforts have been invested into consolidating classical and advanced USB installation methods, kernel stabilisation and the live persistency framework. Various updates, fixes and adaptions have been applied to large parts of the package list.
As a special Christmas present for non English/ German speaking users, sidux 2007-04.5 ships an xdelta to add initial localizations for all currently supported languages.
The release plan for sidux 2008-01 has been adapted slightly in response to this intermediate update and moved to early February 2008.
Btw, you can download this sidux special christmas at here.
Nvidia Linux Display Driver version 169.07 was released yesterday. If you own a GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS 512 or 8800M graphics card, you should know that this driver offers support for them.
The highlists of this release are: Added CUDA driver to .run file, Improved modesetting support on Quadro/GeForce 8 series GPUs. Fixed several X rendering issues, Fixed problems scrolling ARGB X drawables in Qt, Improved support for interlaced DVI, HDMI, and HDTV modesetting, Fixed stability problems with some GeForce 8 series GPUs, Fixed stability problems with some GeForce 6200/7200/7300 GPUs multi-core/SMP systems.
Improved hotkey switching support for some Lenovo notebooks. Fixed a problem with Compiz after VT-switching. Improved RENDER performance. Improved interaction with Barco and Chi Mei 56" DFPs, as well as with some Gateway 19" DFPs. Added an interface to monitor PowerMizer state information. Fixed rendering corruption in Maya's Graph Editor. Improved interaction between SLI AFR and swap groups on certain Quadro FX GPUs.
Fixed a bug that caused corruption with redirected XV on GPUs without TurboCache support. Improved display device detection on GeForce 8 series GPUs. Improved usability of NVIDIA-settings at lower resolutions like 1024x768 and 800x600. Improved GLX visual consolidation when using Xinerama with Quadro/GeForce 8 series and older GPUs. Added experimental support for running the X server at Depth 30 (10 bits per component) on Quadro G8x and later GPUs. Worked around a Linux kernel/toolchain bug that caused soft lockup errors when suspending on some Intel systems.
This is a a true Christmas present from Nvidia for Linux users. Now, you can download it at here or by visiting here.
Note: SUSE users should read this How-To for installing Nvidia driver.
A new version of the ATI/AMD Linux display driver was released, for both x86 and x86_64 platforms. This release includes support for openSUSE 10.3 or openSUSE Live and Red Flag DT 6.0 Linux distributions.
Some bugs resolved in this release are: A memory leak is no longer noticed when running OpenGL applications. Running X -configure no longer results in a segmentation fault in the fglrx driver. Fglrxinfo no longer reports OpenGL Render string: as Mesa GLX Indirect on systems containing an ATI Rialto AGP series of product.
Known issues of this release are: There is no support for video playback on the second head in dual head mode. Desktop corruption may be noticed when dragging the overlay/video using dual-display mode. A black screen may be observed on some hardware when switching to the console or leaving the X window system, using a Vesa framebuffer console driver. Corruption may be noticed in the lower right corner of the display after the system is running for a long period of time. Display flicker may be noticed when the gnome screen-saver starts. Diagonal tearing may be noticed when playing a video file using a video player that utilizes the XVideo extension. Video playback may look blocky when playing a video file using a video player that utilizes the XVideo extension. Video Playback may display wrong colors and additional shadow images when cropping or expanding a video file using a video player that utilizes the XVideo extension. Connecting a display device that supports 1680x1050 to a system running Linux may result in a maximum display resolution of 1280x1024 only being available. Custom mode lines in xorg.conf may be ignored by the fglrx driver. Building RPM packages for Mandriva may fail.
In order to gain the best performance and ease of use, ATI/AMD recommends the following:
- Kernel module build environment – should include the following: Kernel source code: either the Kernel Source or Kernel Headers packages.
- ISSE Support enabled in your Linux Kernel (applies to Intel Pentium III and later CPUs only; enabled by default on version 2.4 and later kernels).
- The rpm utility should be installed and configured correctly on your system, if you intend to install it via RPM packages.
- XOrg 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2 or 7.3
- Linux kernel 2.6 or higher
- glibc version 2.2 or 2.3
- POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) support is required for 3D applications.
Supported operating systems: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, Ubuntu 7.10, Red Flag DT 6.0 and openSUSE 10.3.
More info, detail and download of this new driver can be reach by visiting here.
Linpus Technologies has released Linpus Linux 9.4 "Lite", a specialist distribution designed for low-cost computers, such as Intel Classmate PC or Samsung UMPC.
Linpus Linux Lite is our latest OS development for low-cost PCs like UMPC, OLPC, Classmate PC, MID and other consumer mobile devices. This new version of Linpus Linux distribution is designed to run smoothly and reliably on a lower-end hardware with processing power as low as 500 MHz, 128MB of DRAM and 512MB of storage space. With Linpus Linux Lite, you can surf the web, edit documents and photos, read e-book and email, play the music and games, enjoy the GPS navigation and VoIP service, etc.
Linpus Linux is a commercial, Fedora-based distribution developed by Linpus Technologies, a Linux company with headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan and a development office in Shanghai, China. The product's main features are support for both traditional and simplified Chinese, LSB 2.0 certification, support for Unicode character sets, friendly KDE desktop, and compatibility with a wide range of computer hardware.
You can get it by visit here.
After release Sabayon Linux 1.1 Professional Edition and Sabayon miniEdition, the Sabayon development team has released first beta of Sabayon Linux 3.5 on this Christmas. The features of ths release are new theme, new logo, new ideas, new stuff.
Introducing Entropy binary package management infrastructure, featuring Equo package manager; installer has been completely rewritten and polished to work with Entropy.
Linux Kernel 2.6.23.12 featuring extended wireless and laptop support, Ext4, Unionfs and Aufs support; both architectures are now based on GCC 4.2 and Python 2.5; X.Org 7.3 release featuring NVIDIA 169.07 and AMD 8.42.3; enhanced desktop featuring CompizFusion 0.6.2 using AIGLX an more..
Repositories now contain "only" 4000 packages. But will grow up to 10000 by the end of the 3.5 development cycle. Equo client is at your service: equo --help - be advised it is a working beta release! Installer has been completely rewritten and polished to work with Entropy and an inner "Update installer" button has been added. Installer can now virtually update any Gentoo-based system using Entropy. You want to switch to Sabayon? Do it!
Linux Kernel 2.6.23.12 featuring extended wireless and laptop support, Ext4, UnionFS and AUFS support. Both architectures are now based on GCC 4.2 and Python 2.5. x86 architecture has been completely recompiled with i686 optimizations.
X.Org 7.3 release featuring NVIDIA 169.07 and AMD 8.42.3 (see known issues below for the latter). Enhanced Desktop featuring Compiz Fusion 0.6.2 using AIGLX (on by default where available)
Gaming! Sauerbraten, Warsow, Dangerdeep, Nexuiz included as top-tier 3D games! GeeXboX 1.1 to transform your PC into a full Media Center. KDE updated to 3.5.8 also featuring KDE 4.0 RC2 Games! Full KDE 4.0 RC2 and XFCE 4.4 availabe in our Entropy repository!
GNOME updated to 2.20.1. Improved reliability of NetworkManager stack (including updated nm-applet and KNetworkManager). Introducing NetworkSettings tool to graphically configure your network cards settings
At shut down, Live system will now eject the DVD before halting. ISOLINUX has been updated to 3.51 featuring a new theme
And more ..
Download this First Beta Release of Sabayon 3.5 at here.
DeVeDe is a program to create video DVDs and CDs (VCD, sVCD or CVD), suitables for home players, from any number of video files, in any of the formats supported by Mplayer.
The big advantage over other utilites is that it only needs Mplayer, Mencoder, DVDAuthor, VCDImager and MKisofs (well, and Python, PyGTK and PyGlade), so its dependencies are really small.
The current version now is DeVeDe 3.6, you can get it by downloading here.
After more than half a year without a new SAM disk, the development team of SAM Linux are happy to give you a nice Xmas present: SAM 2008 "claw" Release Candidate 1.
What´s new:SAM uses the newest XFce 4.4.2 as default desktop
SAM now supports around 60 languages out of the box
SAM comes with proprietary Ati and Nvidia drivers on the live cd, and compiz fusion pre-installed
many packages are updated to their newest versions available at the PCLinuxOS repos
OpenOffice was replaced by Gnome-Office (Abiword+Gnumeric) because of disc space limitations
SAM has a new start menu, a "hacked" menu from LinuxMint
the deskbar applet in combination with the tracker search tool gives you a powerful desktop search
Note: if you have problems with non-starting SAM menu and deskbar-applet (after killing X or installing the 3rd party video drivers), run "restart XFce4-panel" from the "system" menu.
Beside all this, the biggest change is unquestionable the introduction of our own package repositories, basically a slimmed down copy of the PCLinuxOS software source (thanx to Texstar for uncomplicated permission!), enhanced with some new built and some SAM-patched packages.
This gives us the possibility to avoid conflicts with PCLOS releated software (i.e. theme packs) and also to make it a bit more easy for normal persons to "not destroy" their SAM desktop by installing the wrong programs (i.e. Nautilus, KDE stuff...).
Advanced users who wanna have all the PCLinuxOS packages available still can use the PCLinuxOS software repositories, but wont get full support by our team (because WE use our own sources too).
Now, you can get it by download at here.
The long-awaited final release of SimplyMEPIS 7.0 has been available now. MEPIS has released SimplyMEPIS 7.0. Some of the important packages included with the 7.0 release are: an updated and security-patched 2.6.22.14 kernel, X.Org 7.1, KDE 3.5.8, OpenOffice.org 2.3.0, Firefox 2.0.0.11, Thunderbird 2.0.0.6, Digikam 0.9.2, Sun Java 6, Amarok 1.4.7, MPlayer 1.0rc1.
Some of the additional packages in the MEPIS 7.0 pool include: Acrobat Reader 7.0.9, Evolution 2.10.3, NVIDIA driver 100.14.19, ATI driver 8.43.2, Compiz 0.6.3.
This release contains a new desktop theme and a detailed user manual, both developed and contributed by the MEPIS community.
As you know, MEPIS Linux is a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution designed for both personal and business purposes. It includes cutting-edge features such as a live, installation and recovery CD, automatic hardware configuration, NTFS partition resizing, ACPI power management, WiFi support, anti-aliased TrueType fonts, a personal firewall, KDE, and much more.
For 32 bit version you can get here, and here for 64 bit.
The development team of VectorLinux have announced the release of VectorLinux 5.9 Final GOLD edition. This is the fruit that has resulted from several months of coding, debugging and testing by the core development team and the Vector community.
This release follows our legendary tradition of stability (inherited from SlackWare-12), blazing speed on even modest hardware and simplicity of design and function.
This release features fully working browser plugins including Flash, java, mp3, real media, Windows media, pdf and Quick time. Additional features include: X.org 7.3, Linux kernel 2.6.22.14, fully customized Xfce 4.4.2, Fluxbox, Jwm, SeaMonkey Internet Suite 1.1.7, Firefox 2.0.0.11 and Opera 9.5.0 beta1 (so you'll be sure to have your favorite browser!). Abiword and Gnumeric for your office tasks.
We include our own suite of GUI configuration and support tools such as Vasm, Vwifi and Gslapt. There is a full set of the latest wireless drivers and configuration tools, support for read and write to ntfs via fuse and ntfs-3g.
We have games lots of games. Printers, scanners and cameras are supported as well. Popular programs like Amarok, OpenOffice, kde-3.5.8 and many others are available in our repository which currently boasts well over a thousand of the most popular linux applications and support software.
Other news with this release is VLpackager, an easy way to package source code into usable binary packages and at long last a GUI control center dubbed VasmCC. We also have a modified version of cruxports for those wishing to easily build software that may not have made it to the repository yet.
For who don't know Vector Linux, it is a small, fast, Intel based Linux operating system for PC style computers. The creators of Vector Linux had a single credo: keep it simple, keep it small and let the end user decide what their operating system is going to be. What has evolved from this concept is perhaps the best little Linux operating system available anywhere.
For the casual computer user you have a lightening fast desktop with graphical programs to handle your daily activities from web surfing, sending and receiving email, chatting on ICQ or IRC to running an ftp server.
The power user will be pleased because all the tools are there to compile their own programs, use the system as a server or perhaps the gateway for their home or office computer network. Administrators will be equally as pleased because the small size and memory requirements of the operating system can be deployed on older machines maybe long forgotten.
Btw, you can download the ISO of this final release at here.
The Ubuntu develoment team announced the second alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) on late night of Dec 21 GMT.
The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. Hardy Heron Alpha 2 is the second alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features.
Pre-releases of Hardy are not encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.
Alpha 2 is the second in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Hardy development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Hardy.
The latest Xorg is available in Hardy, Xorg 7.3, with an emphasis on better autoconfiguration without config files.
Alpha 2 includes the 2.6.24-2.4 (2.6.24-rc5-based) kernel. This brings in significant enhancements and fixes that have been merged in the last few months into the mainline kernel. Among these is the introduction of dynticks support for amd64, bringing the same power savings already available on 32-bit systems to 64-bit laptops and desktops.
Alpha 2 includes PulseAudio enabled by default. Some non-GNOME applications still need to be changed to output to pulse/esd by default and the volume control tools are still not integrated.
You can download it here.
Btw, this is still an alpha release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released in April 2008.
A special edition of Zenwalk Linux named ZenEdu Live Christmas has been released and now is available for download. This live CD based on Zenwalk snapshot and majoring on educational & fun contents which can be used independently by educational institutions, families, students & children alike.
Along with the legendary speed, lightness & full multimedia support you can expect from a Zenwalk derived production, key features include the famed educational suite Gcompris, the universal OpenOffice suite & the indispensable over-the-network teaching & viewing tool iTALC, already pre-configured with teacher/student parameters.
"Thanks to lzma compression, we were able to include educational programs ranging from Astronomy, chemistry, languages, math, music, etc... all the way to simple programming.
In fact since we wanted to offer you even more than a mere CD-ROM could physically contain, we have set up a dedicated repo with ready-made modules which once downloaded can be used on the fly or else used for an easy CD-ROM or USB-Pen re-mastering. Most of this re-mastering can be done straight from the file manager's right-click menu (Courtesy of Goblinx technology)" said the development team.
ZenEdu Live Manual has already been translated in a few languages, & in it, you will find details on each included programs as well as instructions for easy customization of this new toy.
We hope you will enjoy this Special Edition of ZenEdu live & we wish you all the very best on this happy occasion.
Download this live CD ISO at here.
As said on my last post, Musix GNU+Linux is a Free Operating system intended for musicians and users in general. Musix is based on Knoppix and Debian/Stable. Musix GNU+Linux also contains an enormous collection of free programs.
The system will boot from your CD/DVD drive, with no need to install anything on your hard disk. The programs currently support the English and Spanish languages.
Here are some key features of Musix GNU Linux:
- Master for CD
- Publish musical scores
- Print musical scores
- Create MIDI Instruments
- Record and reproduce Audio and MIDI
- Edit and mix Audio and MIDI tracks with Multitrack Sequencers/Editors
- Perform noise-reduction to recover recordings
- Use effects in real time with any device (microphone, line, etc.)
- Connect a keyboard or another MIDI device and control the available software synthesizers
1.0 R3 Test3 solves several Musix 1.0 R2's problems, among them, the “Inconsistent Filesystem Structure” bug after an improper shutdown, and it tries to solve the SATA HD installation bug so.English is now the default boot language and new functionalities were added, for instance: automount of CDs, DVDs and USB memories, or the "install" boot argument. Now you can install Musix by typing "english install" or "knoppix lang=en install" or "xorgmusix lang=en install" at the first "boot:" screen. Also, Kdesktop can be used from IceWm if you want a "Windows like" desktop.
Video edition and graphic design applications have been moved towards the Live-DVD version that will be out in a few days.
Fundamental programs have been updated since Musix 1.0 R2: Ardour 2.1, Jackd 0,103, Solfege 3.6.4, Musixcontrol 1.5, etc. New packages were added: Firefox 2.0.0.3 (iceweasel) aMSN 0.97rc1, Musixstarter or Gnumeric, turning Musix into a friendlier system for general users.
Its software repository now contains LMMS 0.3.1, which can handle native VST plugins.
You can download this last release at here.
Firefox 3 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 28 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues.
Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.
Firefox 3 Beta 2 includes approximately 900 improvements over the previous beta, including fixes for stability, performance, memory usage, platform enhancements and user interface improvements. Many of these improvements were based on community feedback from the previous beta.
Improved Performance
- Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.
- Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in Beta 2, and will show further gains in future Beta releases.
- Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation. Beta 2 includes over 30 more memory leak fixes, and 11 improvements to our memory footprint.
Easier to Use
- Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
- Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
- New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and displays where a file came from.
- Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
- Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images.
- Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
- Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
- Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
- Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
- Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
- Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
- Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
- Integration with Vista: Firefox's menus now display using Vista's native theme.
- Integration with the Mac: Firefox now uses the OS X spellchecker and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.
- Integration with Linux: Firefox's default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.
- Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
- Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
- Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you're looking for.
- Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.
- Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.
- Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
- Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.
You can download this second beta release of Firefox at here.
With the KDE 4 release date approaching fast, the developers of Kubuntu have joined openSUSE and Debian GNU/Linux in providing a live CD featuring the latest release candidates of the popular desktop environment."The second release candidate of KDE 4 has been released and packages are available for Kubuntu 7.10. If you want to test KDE 4 without installing packages download the live CD (466MB). This CD includes a preview of the Konqueror Webkit engine." said the Kubuntu development team.
The latest KDE 4.0 release candidate looks considerably more polished than the betas; if you'd like to take a peek, you can download the Kubuntu live CD from here.
ChurchPup is a Puppy Linux derivative for Christians. It focuses on Bible study, office applications, Internet, and email, but also includes applications for multimedia presentation, audio and video editing, and musical notation.
ChurchPup is based on Puppy 3.01 and the development team involved in the project acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Barry Kauler and all the members of the Puppy Linux community for doing all the really hard work.
They first expressed a desire to work on a Christian Puppy derivative that focuses on Bible study, office applications, internet, and email, but also includes applications for multimedia presentations, audio and video editing, and musical notation. It is based on an unleashed puppy 3.01 but many packages were left out to simplify the menu and save space. (It's a BIG Puppy!)
ChurchPup contains many linux apps like the other distros such as Gimp, OpenOffice, Firefox with Bible Fox Theme, and Procon Latte for content filter, Thunderbird, Acrobat Reader, Audacity, Denemo, Kino, MPlayer, CDmio, XTris, Timidity, plus Bible Desktop 1.0.8, a front end for Jsword, a very versatile Bible study tool written in Java. You can also have four HTML Bibles, the King James Bible, the American Standard Bible, the NET Bible, and the WEB Bible.
Btw, you can download ChurchPup at here.
The NetBSD Project team has released version 4.0 of the NetBSD operating system and now is available. NetBSD is a free, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system available for many platforms, from 64-bit Opteron machines and desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices.
Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent in both production and research environments, and it is user-supported with complete source. Many applications are easily available through pkgsrc, the NetBSD Packages Collection.
Major achievements in NetBSD 4.0 include support for version 3 of the Xen virtual machine monitor, Bluetooth, many new device drivers and embedded platforms based on ARM, PowerPC and MIPS CPUs. New network services include iSCSI target (server) code and an implementation of the Common Address Redundancy Protocol. Also, system security was further enhanced with restrictions of protect to enforce W^X policies, the Kernel Authorization framework, and improvements of the Veriexec file integrity subsystem, which can be used to harden the system against trojan horses and virus attacks.
NetBSD 4.0 runs on 54 different system architectures featuring 17 machine architectures across 17 distinct CPU families, and is being ported to more. The NetBSD 4.0 release contains complete binary releases for 51 different machine types, with the platforms amigappc, bebox and ews4800mips released in source form only.
Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 4.0 are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, SUP, and other services is provided at the end of this announcement; the latest list of available download sites may also be found at here. And if you like to download the torrent, you can get it here.
The final release of Damn Small Linux 4.2 has been available now. Compare with previous versions, here are the changes:
- New mtpaint replaces xpaint.
- New black/blue theme with "Fractal Movements" background.
- New folder for better support of Visual Styles for JWM .jwmrc-theme and downloadable themes.
- New setTheme.lua, drag-n-drop or double click application style.
- New folder for better support of backgrounds, downloadable "DSL Classics"
- New generic folder.xpm link for easier themeing of folders.
- Updated wallpaper.lua, drag-n-drop or double click application style.
- Improved support for JWM keybindings with .jwmrc-keys
- Improved support for battey names in torsmo, fetched from /proc
- Improved handling of multline menu items as MyDSL folder application shortcut icons.
- Improved cleanup of shortcuts upon normal shutdown.
- Fixed bug so that /cdrom/mydsl is not processed twice.
- Fixed "?" icon to open "Getting Started"
- Updated iconViwer for mtpaint change.
- Many icons have been changed, updated, or replaced.
- Updated /opt/.dfmext with more associations.
- Cleanup of xmms when started from dfm icon.
- Cleanup of usused files, modules, and directories (pnp,xfs, hfs,hfsplus,bfs,befs,adfs,ujs,minix,efs)
Btw, you can download the ISO of this final release, only 48MB, at here.
Mandriva development team has announced the availability of the first alpha release of Mandriva Linux 2008.1.
Kicking off the 2008 Spring development cycle in earnest, the first alpha is here.
This alpha features X.org 7.3, KDE 3.5.8, KDE 4.0 RC2 (in /contrib), GNOME 2.21, kernel 2.6.24, OpenOffice.org 2.3, new NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers, PulseAudio by default and more."Despite being a first alpha, it is also in a fairly stable and reliable state, though as always, we do not suggest you use it in a production environment. It is available in Free and One editions, with i586 and x86-64 DVDs for the Free edition and an i586, KDE-based CD for the One edition. As far as testing goes, for this pre-release we are particularly interested in testing PulseAudio and hardware detection." said the Mandriva development team on its release.
Major new features in this first pre-release include:
PulseAudio; The PulseAudio sound server is now the default for all installations. Using PulseAudio should allow you easily to control playback from various different applications on various different sound devices in all graphical environments; The full X.org 7.3 version is used in this pre-release, including X.org server 1.4. This has several implications for some drivers and also for input methods; The latest release candidate of KDE 4.0 is available for this pre-release. It is not currently included on the discs, but is available from the Cooker repositories (which are the appropriate repositories to use with Mandriva pre-releases); Kernel 2.6.24 RC5 and UUID-based drive mounting.
You can download this Alpha release at here.
The CentOS development team is pleased to announce the release of CentOS 4.6 for i386, x86_64, s390, s390x and ia64. This release corresponds to the upstream vendor 4.6 release. Also released in the updates repository for CentOS 4.6 are all updates through December 15th, 2007.
Major changes for this version are: Samba has been updated to version 3.0.25b, Autofs5 is included in this release as a Technology Preview, it resolves several long-standing interoperability issues in multi-vendor environments, there is a technology preview of OpenOffice.org 2.0 included in the updates directory, a new yum included in CentOS 4.6 requires the installation of a metadata parser for yum.
You can download the ISO at here. If you want to upgrade your previous CentOS version to this release, you can type this command: yum update.
This version of Elive includes even more stability and usability of the livecd mode, especially when you install applications or do a lot of stuff on it.
It have also switched to a newer 2.6.23.9 kernel while it wait the final release of 2.6.24 that Elive is going to use.
The installer includes many useful and innovative new features that permit you to convert any Linux OS to a Elive system. If you have another linux installation on the partition where you want to install Elive, Elive automates the process by saving all your users, files, passwords, and minor system configurations. Note that this feature at the moment only works on systems that use a separate /home partition.
For who don't know, Elive, or Enlightenment live CD, is a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution and live CD featuring the Enlightenment window manager. Besides being pre-configured and ready for daily desktop use, it also includes "Elpanel" - a control centre for easy system and desktop administration.
As Elive development team said, this release is a DEVELOPMENT version, and specially that serie it is not ready for a end-use, on one hand the menus are not customized! but on the other hand remember that the E17 is updated to day from the CVS.
Btw, you can try this new development release by downloading the ISO at here.
KompoZer is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs.
Now there's no need to pay a little fortune for a program to create and edit great-looking web pages, including powerful and easy to use CSS capabilities. Like the other web authoring softwares that run in Linux, such as Quanta and Aptana, KompoZer is OpenSource and free.
KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding.
KompoZer is based on Gecko, the layout engine inside Mozilla; it's a super-fast, very reliable, standards conformant engine maintained on a daily basis by a wide community of developers. Its remarkable support of XML, CSS and JavaScript offers the best authoring platform on the market. Its architecture based on XUL makes it the most extensible editing tool ever.
KompoZer is a stand-alone tool; hence its small size and fast speed
Those who are familiar with the DreamWeaver interface will feel right at home with KompoZer:
- WYSIWYG editing of pages, making web creation as easy as typing a letter with your word processor.
- Integrated file management via FTP. Simply login to your web site and navigate through your files, editing web pages on the fly, directly from your site.
- Reliable HTML code creation that will work with all of today's most popular browsers.
- Jump between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML using tabs.
- Tabbed editing to make working on multiple pages a snap.
- Powerful support for forms, tables, and templates.
- The easiest-to-use, most powerful Web Authoring System available for Desktop Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh users.
You can download this opensource software at here.
Listen, rip, organize and burn with Banshee. Banshee is a music player with many advanced features. One of the most important is iPod synchronization, which is now available simple and easy on Linux.
On top of that Banshee does a great job as a music player - importing/ripping CDs, organizing music, creating and managing playlists - and of course it is able to burn selected tracks back to CDs for "offline" listening.
Like many other music players on the market - Banshee also supports podcasting. And did I forget to mention that Banshee of course also is able to synchronize with other portable media players such as Creative Nomads, Dell DJs and more.
Banshee also has support for podcasting, smart playlists, music recommendations, and much more. You can download the last version of Banshee at here.
ImageMagick® is a software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images. It can read, convert and write images in a variety of formats (over 100) including DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF. Use ImageMagick to translate, flip, mirror, rotate, scale, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bézier curves.
The functionality of ImageMagick is typically utilized from the command line or you can use the features from programs written in your favorite programming language. Choose from these interfaces: G2F (Ada), MagickCore (C), MagickWand (C), ChMagick (Ch), ImageMagickObject (COM+), Magick++ (C++), JMagick (Java), L-Magick (Lisp), NMagick (Neko/haXe), MagickNet (.NET), PascalMagick (Pascal), PerlMagick (Perl), MagickWand for PHP (PHP), IMagick (PHP), PythonMagick (Python), RMagick (Ruby), or TclMagick (Tcl/TK). With a language interface, use ImageMagick to modify or create images dynamically and automagically.
ImageMagick is free software delivered as a ready-to-run binary distribution or as source code that you may freely use, copy, modify, and distribute. Its license is compatible with the GPL. It runs on all major operating systems including Linux.
You can download this useful software at here.
Mandriva will switch to using PulseAudio as its default sound server for all desktops in the next release. Several other distros have announced plans to do this, and Fedora has been doing it since Fedora 8, but it’s rather more complex for Mandriva as we support both KDE and GNOME desktops. However, testing indicates that we can manage a good KDE implementation, so we’re going to go with it.
For anyone who hasn’t yet come across PulseAudio, it’s a sound server. This means it sits between applications and your actual hardware sound output devices, accepting audio from applications and mixing it together and potentially processing it in other ways before sending it out to the device(s).
At its most basic level, this allows for software mixing of audio from various applications, allowing them all to play audio together. This is nothing new; the existing servers, esd for GNOME and arts for KDE, do this already (more or less…), and so (in a slightly different way) does the ‘dmix’ component of ALSA itself.
However, PulseAudio has rather more potential than any of these. It is also able to easily and universally configure default input and output devices, a common bugbear on Linux, and increasingly so as more and more people have more than one audio device on their system. It can move a stream from one output device to another while it’s playing, which is very useful. It can adjust volume for different streams independently. It can also be used over a network (and supports Zeroconf), so you can even move output streams around between different machines.
In simple practical terms, too, it just tends to work rather better than esd, arts or dmix do alone; for instance, I’ve only ever been able to reliably get sound output from Flash working using Pulse.
As you can probably tell, I personally like Pulse a lot and am very happy to see this change: it should reduce the audio configuration headaches in future Mandriva releases massively.
It’s worth noting that Pulse has actually been in Mandriva for many releases now (in older releases, under its old name of PolypAudio); it just hasn’t been used by default. If you want to try it out on an existing Mandriva release, just install all the available Pulse packages (and libflashsupport, if it’s available - you need that for Flash) and then follow the PulseAudio perfect setup guide.
To actually start Pulse, if you use GNOME you can rename /usr/bin/esd to /usr/bin/esdbak and rename /usr/bin/esdcompat to /usr/bin/esd , if you’re on KDE you’ll probably have to start it manually with each session. To control it, it’s probably easiest to have ‘padevchooser’ running permanently, it’s a panel icon you can use to launch the other control applications. “Volume Control” is the most useful one, it lets you monitor and move about the currently playing audio streams.
Source: adamw’s very own blog
The first testing release of Parsix GNU/Linux 1.0r0 code name `Ramon` has been released. This version brings lots of improvements and new features integrated with the latest open source technologies right to your laptop and desktop computers.
Parsix GNU/Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution designed for desktop and laptop computers. It can be used as a live CD too. Parsix GNU/Linux is based Debian and derived from KANOTIX. Parsix GNU/Linux contains the most common and needed applications for desktop/laptop users.
The main highlights are: Improved live system with new startup and shutdown scripts, new live structure, new SquashFS+LZMA compression system, brand new 2.6.23.1 kernel with CFS, CK, TuxOnIce, Iwlwifi and more patches, Parsix specific GNOME 2.20.2, lots of updated packages including OpenOffice.org 2.2.1, GNU Iceweasel 2.0.0.8, GIMP 2.4.1, glibc 2.7, Pidgin 2.2.2, Exaile 0.2.10 and more, all packages have been synchronized with Debian testing repository as December 12, 2007, new GUI X.Org configuration tool ported from Ubuntu, new attractive blackish look and feel and more.
This is a well tested system and there is not any critical breakage, but we need the community help to test sections like kernel, hardware detection, GNOME desktop, other OSes detection system on the installer and included software packages.
Now, you can download Parsix at here for 32bit and here for 64bit versions.
ZXMameCD is a Linux Live CD, based on Slax with SDLMAME (Arcade), RAINE (Arcade),STELLA (Atari VCS Emulator) and ZSNES (SNES Emulator) on Board. This Live CD's heart contains Kernel 2.6.21.1, KDE 3.5.6, QT 4.3 and QMC2. It could be used to play MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) arcade roms directly from CD/DVD or USB-Stick.
For more info and download the ISO of ZXMameCD for 32 bit and 64 bit versions, you can visit the developer's site. You can also download some free legal MAME Games ROM's and drivers for NVidia and ATI and Compiz module at there.
You want to build your own Ubuntu based livecd, having the complete control over the installed software but you don't know where to start? Minibuntu is here to help you!
Minibuntu is a fully working Ubuntu livecd containing only the minimal set of software to make the system work. Minibuntu ISO image is only 138 MB.
After downloading minibuntu you can use Ubuntu Customization Kit, Reconstructor or any other tool to remaster the ISO and add the software or configurations you want, building your own Ubuntu based Live CD.
Minibuntu is an idea by CreaLabs and is not recognized, supported or sponsored in any way by Ubuntu and Canonical. This means that this is not an official Ubuntu project.
Btw, you can download minibuntu at here.
Mythbuntu is an Ubuntu-based distribution and live CD focused upon setting up a standalone MythTV system similar to KnoppMyth or Mythdora. It can be used to install a standalone frontend, backend, or combination machines. Mythbuntu uses Xfce as its default desktop and provides a graphical Control Centre to configure the system.
Mythbuntu is an Ubuntu derivative focused upon setting up a standalone MythTV system similar to Knoppmyth or Mythdora. Currently, it is a recognized as a community supported project by Canonical. Mythbuntu can be used to install a stand alone Frontend, Backend, or combination machines. Unlike similar projects, Mythbuntu keeps close ties with Ubuntu and all development is given back to the Ubuntu Community. This allows easy conversions from a standard desktop to a Mythbuntu machine and vice versa. The development cycle of Mythbuntu closely follows that of Ubuntu, releasing every six months shortly after Ubuntu releases.
Mythbuntu uses the XFCE4 desktop. All unnecessary applications such as OpenOffice, Evolution, and a full Gnome desktop are not installed for a Mythbuntu installation. At any time, a user may choose to install ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, or xubuntu-desktop and add a full desktop onto their installation. This is done via the Mythbuntu Control Centre.
The Mythbuntu Control Centre is a GUI used to configure the system. From here you can select what kind of system (Backend, Frontend, Both) you want. You can also install different desktops such as ubuntu-desktop and kubuntu-desktop. Install Plugins, configure MySQL, set passwords, install proprietary drivers, proprietary codecs, setup remote controls, and a range of other bells and whistles all from one convenient program.
A Mythbuntu CD can also be used as a live frontend. This is great if you want to turn a laptop or desktop into a quick frontend or quickly test hardware compatibility. The live frontend provides a GUI to mount network shares, configure a remote, hostname, location of your master backend and a place to save settings. All settings can be saved directly back to a flash drive for easy portability.
Now, release of Mythbuntu 7.10 has been released. This release is based upon Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). You can download it at here.
Features of this release:
- Frontend can be run from the Live CD
- Complete installations(Backend, Frontend, Backend/Frontend, etc)
- Xfce4 Desktop Environment
- Easily upgrade from Ubuntu Gutsy to Mythbuntu
- Custom Mythbuntu MythTV theme
- GUI setup of LIRC
- Setup MythTV optimizations through MCC
For the storages, 80 GB of disk space allows approx 70 GB of usable space for media. However with HD Format it is recommended to use 160 GB HDD or larger.
Although nVidia is recommended for graphic adapter, ATI, VIA, or Intel graphics cards are supported and will work. Currently, nVidia provides a higher level of support. Also the graphics recommendation is based on HDTV capable output processing.
