14 DAY TRIAL // Welcome to the 111th issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly!
The following Linux-based operating systems have been announced last week: Trinity Rescue Kit 3.4, Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS, Parted Magic 5.3, Lunar Linux 1.6.5 and Frugalware 1.3. In other news: Canonical announced that Ubuntu 10.10 will support gestures with multi-touch; the Debian Project celebrated its 17th birthday; the KDE Project announced the KDE Plasma Mobile Tablet edition; Mark Shuttleworth announced Ubuntu 11.04 a.k.a. Natty Narwhal; the GNOME Project released the first beta version of the upcoming GNOME 2.32.0 desktop environment; Canonical uploaded the Ubuntu 11.04 release schedule; Google launched Linux video and voice chat plugin for GMail; RHEL 3 gets three-year optional support program. The weekly ends with the video clip of the week, the latest updated Linux distributions, and the development releases.
Summary:
On August 16th, Tom Kerremans announced the release of Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) 3.4, after more than a year of development. TRK is a Live CD distro aimed at rescue and repair tasks on both Windows and Linux PCs. Trinity Rescue Kit 3.4 comes with the latest Linux kernel 2.6.35 and quite a number of new features.
Highlights of Trinity Rescue Kit 3.4:
· Linux kernel 2.6.35; · the new menu system for selecting many of the tasks available in TRK 3.4; · a rewritten virusscan tool with five scanning engines under the hood - ClamAV, F-prot, BitDefender, Vexira and now Avast, as well; · a rewritten winpass tool to reset Windows passwords which prevents users from breaking their installs by disabling SYSKEY; · a new winclean script which deletes temporary and unused files from temp folders, IE-cache, javacache, hanging printerjobs, uninstall files from Windows update patches, dllcache and recycle bins; · complete manpages for all of the custom utilities; · updated as well as new packages.
Download Trinity Rescue Kit 3.4 right now from Softpedia.
On August 18th, Robbie Williamson announced the first maintenance release of the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) operating system, which incorporates numerous security fixes and updates. Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS fixes some installation bugs, various upgrade issues, improves support for many hardware components, and fixes annoying desktop bugs.
This first maintenance release brings to its dedicated users a lot of security updates and corrections, all with a single goal: to keep Ubuntu 10.04 LTS a stable and reliable Linux distribution! The 10.04.1 release is available for Ubuntu desktop/server users, and Kubuntu desktop and netbook users (see download links at the end of the article).
Ubuntu 10.04.1 (Lucid Lynx) is a Long Term Support (LTS) distribution, supported with maintenance updates and security fixes until April 2013 on desktops, and April 2015 on servers.
Download Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS now from Softpedia.
On August 21st, Patrick Verner announced the release of Parted Magic 5.3, which comes with several updated packages, but also brings some changes. Parted Magic is no longer released as a USB Zip file version and a GRUB4DOS ISO is no longer being made available.
Highlights of Parted Magic 5.3:
· Linux kernel 2.6.34.5; · Busybox 1.17.1; · NTFS-3G 2010.8.8; · UNetbootin 471; · TrueCrypt 7.0; · G4L 34a; · FreeType 2.4.2; · udev 161; · LXTerminal 0.1.8.
Download Parted Magic 5.3 now from Softpedia.
On August 22nd, Stefan Wold announced the immediate availability of the Lunar Linux 1.6.5 operating system. The new release brings a new Linux kernel and support for the EXT4 filesystem as well as hybrid ISO.
Highlights of Lunar Linux 1.6.5:
· Linux kernel 2.6.35.3; · Glibc 2.11.2; · support for the EXT4 filesystem; · Isolinux updated; · all modules updated; · Grub2 available as an optional manual install; · new packages: Yasm, gperf, libusb-compat, usbutils, XZ, GMP, MPFR, cron-common, logrotate, Rsyslog, Screen, Slang and MC.
Download Lunar Linux 1.6.5 now from Softpedia.
On August 23rd, Miklós Vajna proudly announced the release of the Frugalware 1.3 Linux distribution. The latest version comes with updated packages, but it also implements several changes like new configuration options for X.Org replacing the old monolithic config.
Highlights of Frugalware Linux 1.3:
· Linux kernel 2.6.35; · X.Org Server 1.8; · GNOME 2.30; · KDE SC 4.4.5.
Download Frugalware 1.3 now from Softpedia.
· Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth proudly announced on August 16th that the upcoming Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system will have support for gestures, with multi-touch. This is possible via Ubuntu's uTouch 1.0 gesture and multi-touch stack. Read more about it here.
· On August 16th, the Debian Project has just celebrated its 17th birthday. That would make it a teenager in human years, but in IT, it makes it more of a grandfather. Given the number of Linux distros it has spawned over the years and how many still rely on it, the title is fitting. Read more about it here.
· Tablets are all the rage right now, thanks in no small part to the success of the Apple iPad. With a number of tablets slated for launch, Linux is not falling behind with several projects aimed at taking advantage of the capabilities of tablets and other touch input devices. The KDE Plasma Mobile Tablet edition is one of those projects. Read more about it here.
· Mark Shuttleworth, father of the popular Ubuntu operating system, proudly announced on August 17th the name and the goals for the next version of Ubuntu. Yes, we are talking about Ubuntu 11.04, dubbed Natty Narwhal and scheduled for release on April 28th, 2011. Read more about it here.
· On August 19th, the first beta of the upcoming GNOME 2.32 has landed to give early adopters, distro builders, developers and generally curious people a taste of things to come. GNOME 2.32 Beta 1, technically GNOME 2.31.90, is somewhat of a new development since the next release of the popular desktop environment was supposed to be the all-powerful GNOME 3.0. Read more about it here.
· On August 20th, Softpedia announced the release schedule for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal). The distribution will be released at the end of April 2011. For Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), the Ubuntu developers decided to change the release schedule again, to 5 Alpha versions, a single Beta release, and a Release Candidate. Read more about it here.
· To support voice and video chat on Linux systems, Google announced on August 19th a browser plugin which has now been finally made available for Linux desktops as well. An Linux version of the plugin was the top user request, but it wasn't a trivial task for Google engineers. Google says it had to develop an all-new video rendering method for the in-browser video chat feature. Read more about it here.
· On August 19th, Red Hat announced the launch of the Extended Life Cycle Support program for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system. This means that customers using versions of RHEL for which regular support is about to expire can ensure that they'll receive updates for three more years by purchasing the optional support offering. Read more about it here.
Video Clip of the Week: Gmail voice and video chat
· For this week we've posted a video clip to showcase the new voice and video chat plugin from Google, which allows you to talk face to face right in GMail with free, high quality video and audio. The video has 1 minute and 8 seconds, and it was posted by Google. Enjoy!
Distributions Updated Last Week:
· GParted LiveCD 0.6.2-2 · MMourcebuntu GNU/Linux 10.04.1 · Ubuntu Server 10.04.1 LTS · Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04 LTS · Kubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04.1 LTS · Kubuntu 10.04.1 LTS · Astaro Security Gateway 8.001 · Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.6-8 · Mandriva Linux One Xfce 2010.1 · Greenie Linux 7.1L · Pinguy OS 10.04.1
· Zenwalk Live 6.4 RC · SME Server 8.0 Beta 6 · Momonga Linux 7 Beta 1 · TinyMe 2010 RC2010.08.20 · CRUX 2.7 RC2
See you again next Monday, August 30th, for another issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly.