14 DAY TRIAL // 4MLinux, a mini Linux distribution that is focused on the 4Ms of computing, Maintenance (system rescue Live CD), Multimedia (e.g., playing video DVDs), Miniserver (using the inetd daemon), and Mystery (Linux games), has advanced to version 9.0 Beta.
4MLinux is one of the smallest distributions in the world that are still able to provide users with a desktop environment and a number of applications that can make this OS something to be used on a daily basis.
Most of the minimalistic Linux operating systems don't usually provide such a plethora of applications right from the start, especially if we keep in mind that the distro only weighs a little over 55MB.
“The main features in this release are maintenance (MBR and GPT partitioning software, 4MLinux Backup Scripts 9.0, ClamAV 0.98.3), multimedia (MPlayer SVN-r37146, FFMpeg Git-2014-04-10), a mini server (FTP, HTTP, SSH, SFTP), and mystery (a set of small games).”
“The X Window System is based on X.Org Server 1.15.1, Mesa 10.1.3, JWM 2.2.2, and the FOX toolkit 1.6.49. Fully automatic installation of the ‘vanilla’ versions of LibreOffice 4.2.4, Java RE 7u55, and VirtualBox 4.3.12 is also supported. The size of the ISO image is about 55 MB,” said the developer on his blog.
As you can see, most of the packages provided are very new, like VirtualBox, LibreOffice, Mesa, Ffmpeg, ClamAV, and so on. If you have any doubts about this release, you can always start it in a virtual machine and take it for a spin.
What's interesting is the fact that users can stop the booting process right before the X Server kicks in and use the system in command line, which is actually a nice change of pace.
The developer will now start to release all the other distributions that he is building around this major update, like Allinone, Gaming, Server, Media, Rescue, and so on. Keep in mind that you can install any of these Linux distros from the main launcher with the help of a very simple piece of software.
Users will also find that most of the applications that you need are available in the repositories and that the 4MLinux distro can be turned into any of the flavors mentioned above just by downloading the appropriate packages.
A complete list of changes and updates can be found in the official announcement. You can download 4MLinux 9.0 Beta right now from Softpedia.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.