rPath Linux 2 Beta 1 Has Been Released

The first beta test snapshot toward rPath Linux 2 has been released. rPath Linux is a Linux distribution built with the new Conary distributed software management system.

Conary is designed, based on many years of Linux software packaging and distribution development experience, to automate many of the tasks that have made it difficult to build Linux distributions. rPath's mission is to provide system software that is easily tailored to suit unique application needs.

rPath Linux, built with the Conary distributed software management system, is not only a distribution in its own right, but also a base technology explicitly designed to enable you to create purpose-built operating system images using the rBuilder Online technology.

rPath Linux 2 will be an appliance operating system. In keeping with this focus, the installer ISO images for rPath Linux 2 Beta 1 are intended primarily for testing the installer, and secondarily as a platform for testing appliance development. This is not a general purpose operating system.

Migrating appliances from an rPath Linux 1 base to an rPath Linux 2 Beta base has been only minimally tested so far. Please test migrations, but assume that they may break in ways that make it inconvenient or even impractical to recover the test system. Most of our internal appliance testing so far has been of creating working systems based on rPath Linux 2 Beta, not of migrating.

This new release contains:

• VMware support integrated into the default kernel; open-vm-tools included in vmware group flavors.
• The group-appliance superclass is available as group-appliance=conary.rpath.com@rpl:2-qa to enable porting appliances from rPath Linux 1 to rPath Linux 2. (We recommend doing this in parallel testing branches until rPath Linux 2 is released.)
• SYSLINUX's EXTLINUX is the default bootloader, though grub continues to be available.
• Conary 2.0 is included, which provides several optimizations and improvements.
• Short group flavors (no more need to specify flavor elements that are really irrelevant to your appliance when you cook groups). This is enabled by the move to Conary 2.0
• Appliance Installer ISO images (fast, lower memory requirements, no package selection available) for 32-bit and 64-bit systems
• Installable ISO images (slower, larger memory requirements, package selection available) for 32-bit and 64-bit systems
• Appliance Installer ISO images for 32-bit and 64-bit Xen dom0

The Third Alpha of Foresight 2.0

Foresight Linux is a rPath-based Linux distribution for your desktop that features a rolling release schedule that always keeps your desktop up to date, with Conary, the latest GNOME desktop environment and an innovative set of excellent, up to date packages.

Foresight is the first distribution to ship with GNOME 2.20 and be the basis for the GNOME Live Media available at this GNome Torrent Site.

Foresight includes innovative applications that make using your computer easy, including Banshee for music management, F-Spot for photo management, as well as vibrant user and developer community.

The Foresight 2.0 alpha series features a new tar-based installer, that should install in less than 10 minutes, including formatting a 200 GB hard drive. Foresight is also developing new editions including KDE and XFCE in addition to GNOME available for x86 and x86_64 processors. Foresight is proud to be the first distribution to ship with:

• PackageKit to help users update their system and add and remove software
• Syslinux, a new bootloader to replace GRUB.
• GNOME-Do: GNOME Do allows you to quickly search for many items
• present in your GNOME desktop environment (applications, Evolution contacts, Firefox bookmarks, files, artists and albums in Rhythmbox, Pidgin buddies, etc.) and perform commonly used actions on those items (Run, Open, Email, Chat, Play, etc.).

Users should also find it much easier to use binary video card drivers from Nvidia and ATI than in Foresight 1.x. Transmission is also included as the default Bittorrent application.

Btw, you can download this 3rd alpha release of Foresight Linux at here.