Fedora 9 Alpha Has Been Released

Fedora 9 Alpha release provides the first opportunity for the wider community to become involved with the testing of Rawhide: representing a sanitised snapshot of Fedora's development branch, which sees rapid changes and will become the next major release, it should boot on the majority of systems, providing both an opportunity to get a look at what new features will be included in the next release and also an opportunity to provide feedback and bug reports to help ensure that the next release is as good as possible.

This new release features Linux kernel 2.6.24, support for resizing ext2, ext3 and NTFS partitions in the Anaconda installer, faster X window system; GNOME 2.21 with GVFS and GIO as a replacement for GNOME VFS, KDE 4.0 as the default KDE with compatibility packages to ensure applications not yet ported to KDE 4 will continue to work, Firefox 3 Beta 2 with desktop integration, the new Places replacement for bookmarks and a re-worked address bar, PackageKit - a cross-distribution package management solution with a complete yum backend, and a number of other improvements.

Fedora 9 Alpha Highlights:

• GNOME 2.21 Development Release
• KDE 4.0
• Firefox 3 Beta 2
• Support for resizing ext2, ext3 and NTFS partitions during install
• Support for creating and installing to encrypted filesystems
• PackageKit
• Kernel 2.6.24
• And numerous other improvements and enhancements.

More info can be reached on its release notes, and links for download can be found by visiting here.

Linpus Linux Lite 9.4

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.

BLAG Linux, a Mini Fedora Linux

BLAG is a Linux distribution based on Fedora Core and reduced to one CD. It includes useful applications missing from Fedora Core (e.g. mp3, p2p, apt, etc...), as well as a suite of graphics, Internet, audio, video, office, and peer-to-peer file sharing applications. BLAG is up-to-date with all Fedora errata fixes at time of release and uses synaptic for easy upgrades. The name stands for Brixton Linux Action Group, which works to overthrow corporate control of information and technology through community action and to spread Free Software.

BLAG is a 100% Free Software distribution with all the tools you want from a desktop computer, plus more. It comes on a single CD, is easily installed, and user friendly. Power users have the resources of a repository that combines bits from Fedora, freshrpms, Dries, ATrpms, livna, Planet CCRMA, and our own special brews.

BLAG 70000 (sugarwater) is a new series with a new base (F7) and many new applications. It is released under the GNU GPL v3.

Featuring all of the applications below on JUST ONE CD. Burn copies and hand them out! It's got it all. Did I mention it's all on just one CD?

inkscape
enabled with inkboard so you can collaboratively work on drawings with other users via the Internet using jabber!

Audio players
"listen", is a cool app that integrates playlists, album covers automatically, lyrics, wikipedia lookups, group playlists, everything. Audacious replaces xmms.

mplayer & xine
Two top-notch video players, plus mencoder to re-encode audio and video

DVD Ripping
Well, that's what it does. Thoggen! So easy to use, straight to theora format. For CDs, there's the venerable grip.

audacity
Edit soundfiles with a lean, easy to use, but powerful sound editor.

Pidgin
Handles jabber, AOL, MSN, IRC, ICQ, Yahoo, and other Instant messaging networks--all in one program. Includes encryption and "off the record" plugins for privacy.

Firefox
The famous web browser, of course

Thunderbird
Nice email client

streamtuner
Tune into streaming radio stations on the 'net! Plus with streamripper, you can record 'em.

MuSE
Or instead of just listening, broadcast your own station with MuSE and icecast! Free music is even included.

kiax
Make VoIP (IAX2) phone calls and play with BLASTERISK.

Miro
Very cool Internet TV program. Download high-quality shows straight to your hard drive. Don't settle for little windows in a web browser! :)

Package/Application Management
Both yum and apt are available with pirut and synaptic GUIs. Download from our repo of over 9,000 free packages.

Gnome
User friendly yet powerful, Gnome is the main desktop that BLAG is built upon. Fluxbox is on the CD too....

games
A few of those even....

GIMP
Edit photos & images, put Bush's head on anything you want, have at it...

Peer-to-peer
Bittorrent and a gnutella client, sitting right there on the CD waitin' for you.

Blogs
Get blog or any other RSS feeds with liferea, gpodder for audio blogs, and gnome-blog for uploading your own blog posts.

gnome-translate
Conveniently translate text or websites.

Document Layout
scribus for anything from pamphlets to long books!

Office slock
abiword a lightweight word processor, gnumeric lightweight yet powerful spread sheet, and glabels does its job so well.

GCC

Server bits
apache for webserving, vsftp ftp server, and postfix for SMTP. Openssh's server is included, along with a dhcpd server and xinetd.

kernel
CD has kernel-2.6.22.9-91.fc7. BLAG 70k is compatible with i686 (~Pentium II or greater) processors. BLAG disables SELinux by passing selinux=0 to the kernel boot line. :)

So freakin' much
And even more in the online repository. Thousands of more applications are available with a few clicks. No cost, yo.

Yes, all this is on one CD! 700 megs of Free Software.

For installation instructions you can view at this wiki, and the ISO of BLAG can be downloaded at here.

Put in the CD, hit enter at the boot: prompt, and answer the few questions. :)

Alternately, if you want to ERASE EVERTYHING on your hard drive and do an automated install, you can type: blagblagblag at the boot: prompt of the initial screen of the CDROM. This makes installation fast and easy for computer labs, recycling centers, etc.

Enjoy !

Fedora 8 RC 3 Released on the Torrent site

Fedora 8 Release Candidate 3 has been released on the torrent site. Both DVD and Live images have been provided. Getting them now is actually an excellent way of beating the release rush on Thursday; as pointed out by Max Spevack, these RC3 images are as good as final - at least in terms of configuration of package repositories. That's because until Thursday, users running the RC3 builds will still receive updates from the "rawhide" directory, but as soon as Fedora 8 is out, they will be automatically and seamlessly redirected to the stable tree. Just a little user-friendly touch by the Fedora development team.

Unless something goes terribly wrong, these will be the same bits (modulo gpg signed SHA1SUM files) that will go to the mirrors for the final Fedora 8 release.

As the Fedora 8 Release Candidates have come out in the past few days, Jesse made the change to fedora-release to have it point to the /releases/8/ directory instead of /development/ because that is how it has to look for the final release of Fedora 8.

That /releases/8/ directory isn't active yet, because Fedora 8 hasn't been released yet. But our mirrors currently have a redirect that points over to Rawhide. On Thursday, it is a trivial operation for Jesse to take that redirect away. Then the Fedora 8 directory is active -- people can install, we can push updates, etc. Separately, Rawhide can then be opened back up for Fedora 9 development, and a new fedora-release package that configures yum to look back at Rawhide will be placed in it. People who want Rawhide can install that package or tweak their yum repository files and be off and running.

What's the point of all of this?

It makes the upgrade path as hands-off as possible. Chances are that if you installed a Test release of Fedora or a Release Candidate, you want the final version of the release when it is available -- you don't want to stick on Rawhide.

By altering the default settings in fedora-release at the right time, and also by using redirects, the Release Engineering team can achieve this affect without requiring the user to change anything.

So if you have installed one of the Test versions of Fedora, you are already all set up the way you need to be. Your machine will "become" Fedora 8 at the right time.

Compared to the project's previous release, Fedora 8 feels like a relatively minor upgrade, but it does ship with a few interesting features up its sleeve. One of them is PulseAudio, a new sound server:

"PulseAudio is a next generation sound server for Linux, making all sorts of 'ear-candy' possible: from dynamically changing the volume of individual applications to hot-plugging support for many different devices. Fedora 8 is going to be the first distribution to ship and enable PulseAudio by default and with this in mind we talked to Lennart Poettering who is the upstream and Fedora developer of PulseAudio and Avahi about the work he has put into this."

MythDora: If MythTV meets Fedora

MythDora is a Fedora Core and MythTV "All-In-One" CD/DVD. The install will load a preconfigured Fedora Core 6 installation on your computer as well as install and configure MythTV-0.20-1.

There are extras included with MythDora such as MythArchive, MediaMVP and MythStreamTV for some extra fun. Enjoy!

The new and much improved MythDora 4.0 is finally ready. As you will see, things have improved greatly. Jarod and I have worked hard on this and I can safely say that this is the best version yet. This couldn't have been done without all the help from you beta testers. This was the best response I've gotten so far and I really appreciate all your help. Your help found issues that we never could have seen.

MythDora has undergone almost a total revamp. Things are in different places and paths so be sure to read the changelog. Some things to expect that are a little different is that the recommended install is a custom install. This will allow you the best choices and customization for your install. The auto install feature is still there but it's not on the menu ;-).

For newbies this maybe the easiest way to set things up. Just put in the disk, and at the prompt type auto. This WILL wipe out your 1st hard drive but not any others, so you have been warned. Jarod has customized the Anaconda installer to make a custom install even easier. Just be sure to look through the menus choices to install any drivers and/or packages you might need.

MythDora does not support the Epia cx700 series boards.
PVR-350 users that want to use TV-out will need to install the ivtv_xdriver and video4linux packages during install.
PVR-x50/500 users may experience problems with ivtv if video4linux is installed. Do not install this unless you need it for DVB or TV-out for the 350.

Highlights of Lastest Versions:

• Fedora Core 6
• MythDora is now being built using Pungi. This will help greatly in future releases and upgrades.
• kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6
• New MythTV 0.20.1 fixes release, with default settings customized for MythDora
• Numerous DVB/V4L kernel patches for improved capture card autodetection
• New install process, featuring the anaconda installer GUI, heavily customized for MythDora.
• Firstboot customizations for MythDora, with new GUI menu setup partially integrated.
• Both DVD and CD install disks, as well as a network-installable tree and yum repositories
• A very nice database backup module in MythDora Tools
• Preferred install is custom but auto still works. The custom install is still very easy and you can customize your system the way you want it.
• Four window managers are included - Gnome, KDE, XfCE4, and Ratpoison, with Gnome being the default
• Ability to start with MythWelcome, normal frontend or nothing at login time.
• 16 different game emulators (Don't ask us how to use them)
• Latest Nvidia 9755 & 9631 Legacy drivers, with 8776 and 7184 legacy drivers available via custom package selection.
• Latest ATI 8.36.5 & Legacy 8.28.8 video drivers(with accelerated video)
• Latest ivtv 0.10.1
• Support for AverMedia M150/AverTV MCE-1500
• Support for Hauppauge HVR series tuner cards

Btw, you can get MythDora at here.

StartCom MultiMedia Edition ML-5.0.6 (Kassem) Update RC2 released

After the first release candidate of ML-5.0.6 which was released last week, Startcom today publish this second release candidate. This is the last build before the official release.

What's New?

This time we published ML-5.0.6 also for the x86_64 architecture. The historical Mozilla browser packages were dropped for good and GAIM was replaced with Pidgin. Some disturbing file conflicts when installing in other languages than English are fixed with this release. A few other improvements and some polishing was also done and the StartCom MultiMedia Edition 5 looks better than ever. Visit Startcom's screen shot section to get a glimpse about how impressing StartCom Linux is today.

Download for 32 bit version here, and the 64 bit here.

VirtualBox USB Setting on Ubuntu and Fedora

Setting up USB on Ubuntu

After I had a taken a look into the insides of Ubuntu 7.04, I managed to get VirtualBox's USB-Support working there in such a way that the user only needs to be a member of a group called usbusers. This howto describes how I did it.

Basically, you just have to tell Ubuntu that a group called usbusers should have read and write access to all usb devices.


Create a group called usbusers
Add yourself to this group
Edit the file /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules (for this, you must have administrative privileges)

Search for the following lines
# USB devices (usbfs replacement) SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", MODE="0664"
Change them to the following
# USB devices (usbfs replacement) SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", GROUP="usbusers", MODE="0664"

Restart your PC

You should now have write access to all USB devices.


How to setup USB with udev on Fedora

This is how I resolved my VirtualBox USB issues on FC6 which uses udev.

First decide what group usb devices will be in and add yourself to that group. I chose usb (if you choose something else, be sure to update the chgrp commands below).

Add /etc/udev/rules.d/51-usb-group.rules:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", RUN="/etc/udev/scripts/set-usb-group '%c'"

Add /etc/udev/scripts/set-usb-group:

#! /bin/sh
ret=false
if [ "$1" != "" ]; then
if [ -f /proc/$1 ]; then
chgrp usb /proc/$1 && \
chmod g+rw /proc/$1 && \
logger udev/set-usb-group: `ls -l /proc/$1`
ret=true
fi


if [ -e /dev/$1 ]; then
chgrp usb /dev/$1 && \
chmod g+rw /dev/$1 && \
logger udev/set-usb-group: `ls -l /dev/$1`
ret=true
fi
else
logger udev/set-usb-group: Called without device arg
exit 0
fi


if ! $ret; then
logger udev/set-usb-group: Setting permissions on device $1 failed
fi

And then, Reboot your machine. Done!


Revel in how much faster VirtualBox is than VMPlayer.

Linux with having VISTA interface: VIXTA Linux

Xivta, Amazing Linux distro that having similar interface like Windows Vista. Actually VIXTA is develop from Fedora based Linux Distribution and KDE desktop environment. It have resembles Microsoft Windows Vista with all the user friendly & eye catching features on Vixta GUI interfaces. Some example like Vista Gadget and vista start menu and taskbar interfaces.

Well the aim of Vixta is pretty much simple, and this is how it reads :

Vixta is a Fedora-based Linux distribution designed to be user-friendly and eye-catching, similar in look and feel to Windows Vista. Trying to bring linux to the “masses”, not just sysadmins.

if you thinking to run windows application, you might require to turn on the wine windows API to run windows application. But basically Vixta linux distro has bundle application with Konqueror instead of Explorer, OpenOffice instead of Office, and Firefox which is sufficient for novices user.

However, Using the name ” vixta ” and similarity of interfaces perhaps will bring lawsuit from microsoft. Just don’t know whether the vixta linux distro project will be continue for long periods or not ?

StartCom Multimedia Edition: a Fedora distro based

The StartCom Linux operating systems, are based on the RedHat Enterprise and Fedora source code each modified with reliability, security and efficiency in mind, to fit the tasks assigned to each flavor of StartCom Linux.

The new release candidate of version ML-5.0.6 of the StartCom MultiMedia Edition codenamed "Kessem". This is the first update of the ML-5 series which introduces a few changes and additions compared to the previous release.

The current version supports the largest commodity-architecture servers with up to 16 CPUs and 64GB (on x86 systems) of main memory, Global File System - for highly scalable, high performance data sharing in multi-system configurations.

Included in this distribution is a comprehensive collection of open source server applications like mail, file (SMB/NFS), DNS, web, FTP, and a complete desktop environment.

Included are the newest packages of OpenOffice version 2.3. We added VideoLAN and its VLC Media Player. There is an interesting article about VLC at the web log of StartCom founder Eddy Nigg.

Also new for ML-5 is the inclusion of the latest Compiz-Fusion packages which allows for the cool OpenGL driven 3D desktop effects.

Another image file contained in the images/ directory is diskboot.img. This file is designed for use with USB pen drives (or other bootable media with a capacity larger than a diskette drive). Use the dd command to write the image.

Note:
The ability to use this image file with a USB pen drive depends on the ability of your system's BIOS to boot from a USB device.

Download it from here.

What New in Fedora 8

Fedora 8 Test 3 Release Announcement The Fedora Project is a Red Hat sponsored and community supported open source project. Its goal is the rapid progress of free and open source software and content.

The Fedora Project makes use of public forums, open processes, rapid innovation, meritocracy, and transparency in pursuit of the best operating system and platform that free and open source software can provide. This is the last test release before the development freeze and a great time to test all those packages that you know and love. Test 3 is for beta users. This is the time when we must have full community participation. Without this participation both hardware and software functionality suffers.

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join.

Whats New :

• Online Desktop provides a desktop experience designed around online services. A preview of Online Desktop is provided via BigBoard, which is a optional sidebar in GNOME.

• KDE 3.5.7 is available in the KDE Live image as well as the regular DVD. The KDE 4 (Beta) Development Environment is available in the repository.

• Live installations are faster and require a smaller root filesystem. The file system layout has also changed somewhat. System files for the Live images are now under LiveOS/, and a new README file has been provided as a short introduction to the live image.

• Package management now features much better performance via yum and friends.

• The completely free and open source Java environment called IcedTea is installed by default. IcedTea is derived from OpenJDK, includes a browser plugin based on GCJ, and is available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. GCJ is still the default on PPC architecture.

• CodecBuddy is now included, and promotes free, superior quality, open formats to end users trying to play multimedia content under patent encumbered or proprietary formats.

• Bluetooth devices and tools now have better graphical and system integration.
• Laptop users benefit from the "quirks" features in HAL, including better suspend/resume and multimedia keyboard support.

• There is now improved power management thanks to both a tickless kernel in x86 and x86_64 architectures, and a reduction in unnecessary processor wakeups via powertop.

• Eclipse 3.3 (Europa), a new release of the great IDE and development platform, is available as part of this release.

• The pam_console module has been removed in favor of access control via HAL, which modernizes the desktop.

• NetworkManager 0.7 provides improved wireless network management support. It includes support for multiple devices and provides the capability of system-wide configuration, among many other enhancements. This transition may induce some regressions temporarily, and more testing and feedback is appreciated.

• Secure remote management capability is now provided for Xen, KVM, and QEMU virtualization.
• Transifex provides a web-based translation interface to allow users to contribute translation work for Fedora hosted projects as well as being able to provide translations to upstream directly to any upstream project.
• Integration of unique build IDs into Fedora's software building infrastructure now provide enhanced debugging capabilities and core dumps.

• Fedora now offers easier rebranding of Fedora derivatives via a generic-logos software package. Changes in Fedora's mirror structure also make creation of derivatives easier.

• Fedora now includes support for Nepali Language, extending its reach to many more users.

You can get Fedora 8 Test 3 in here.

Another Linux Mini Distro: Berry Linux

Berry Linux, which based in Japanese, but it provides English version too, is a bootable CD that features, automatic hardware detection. It supports many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI, USB, and other peripherals. If you have network devices, DHCP is auto-configured so you can use the Internet. You can enjoy OpenOffice, the MS Office compatible office suite. The GIMP can be used to edit pictures and is included in Berry Linux.

Berry Linux can be used as a Linux demo, Educational CD, or a rescue system. Because it is a bootable CD, you can try it out without touching your hard drive. If you like it, there is an option to install Berry Linux on your hard disk. (It needs 1.7GB of free space. Using the Berry Linux Installer). Berry Linux is based on Red Hat Fedora.

Features of Berry:

You can listen to mp3 using BMP/XMMS, and play DVD/DivX
using MPlayer, XINE and Xaffeine.
You can edit files of Microsoft Word, Excel by OpenOffice(TM).
Minimum Linux enviroment is available by using Berry Linux Mini.
Its file size is very small. (148.0MB)
It uses the Window Manager, Fluxbox or Rasp-ui.
You can enjoy comfortable Linux enviroment.
Support for Kernel-2.6. ALSA, ACPI, and SElinux.
Overlay Filesystem Support.
AIGLX and 3D Desktop, support.
Berry Linux is not necessary to install. It works as a LiveCD as well as and installer
It can install on Windows without making a separate patition to use Setup.exe
or install.bat. (Using squashfs/cloop/loopback device)
It can install to your hard disk on Linux. (Use Berry Linux Installer or Copy
under /BERRY/, and set up LILO or grub)
Berry Linux can boot from USB drive.
Berry Linux uses WHIZ, a very sharp Kana-Kanji conversion system. (WHIZ Project)
It supports writing to NTFS partitions by ntfs-3g.
If you push the windows key, the K-Menu is displayed, (like Windows).
Automatically recognizes USB storage.
Berry Linux uses free Japanese True Type Fonts.
Berry Linux has a bootsplash.
Berry Linux uses DHCP to connect the Network. (If you'd like to use PPPoE,
you should setting up it on the Terminal)
It's possible to save personal setting.
It is compatible with Fedora Core packages.

You can download Berry Linux here, and here for Berry Linux Mini version.