14 DAY TRIAL // Welcome to the 119th issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly!
The following Linux-based operating systems have been announced last week: Super OS 10.10, SystemRescueCd 1.6.2, Parted Magic 5.6, Ubuntu Privacy Remix 10.04r1 and Tiny Core Linux 3.2. In other news: The Ambiance and Radiance themes for Google Chrome were updated for the Ubuntu 10.10 release; Oracle released VirtualBox 3.2.10; Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition gestures with multi-touch demonstration by Canonical. For this week we've prepared an interesting review for the Google Picasa 3.0 Beta application and a nice tutorial about how to install the new Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system. The weekly ends with the video clip of the week, the latest updated Linux distributions, and the development releases.
Summary:
On October 11th, hacktolive.org announced the immediate availability of the Super OS 10.10 operating system, based on the newly released Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). Super OS' main touted advantage is ease of use, meaning more bundled software like codecs and other binary packages.
Super OS 10.10 continues the trend by adding the possibility to install some drivers in offline mode. Nvidia, ATI graphics card drivers and Broadcom wireless network card drivers are now available for install right on the DVD ISO.
This will enable users to activate these drivers via the "Additional Drivers" tool, a very useful feature if you don't have access to an Internet connection.
Download Super OS 10.10 now from Softpedia.
Also on Ocrober 11th, François Dupoux announced yet another maintenance release of his popular SystemRescueCd Linux-based operating system for rescue and recovery tasks. Besides the usual bug fixes, the new SystemRescueCd 1.6.2 Live CD includes the latest stable version of the Linux kernel, an updated version of the XOrg Server, and more fonts.
Highlights of SystemRescueCd 1.6.2:
· Updated the alternative Linux kernel packages to version 2.6.35.6 (with altker32 and altker64); · Updated the standard Linux kernel packages to version 2.6.32.23 (with rescuecd and rescue64); · Updated Gparted to version 0.6.4, which fixes the "partition was 1 MiB larger than requested" bug; · Updated the NTFS-3G to version 2010.10.2 - read-write driver for NTFS filesystems; · FSArchiver 0.6.10 was patched to make it compatible with the Btrfs filesystems; · XOrg Server was updated to version 1.9.0.901; · The xf86-video-nv Nvidia driver was updated to version 2.1.18; · The following new fonts have been added: font-adobe-75dpi, font-bh-type1, font-bh-ttf.
Download SystemRescueCd 1.6.2 right now from Softpedia.
On Ocrober 13th, Patrick Verner announced the immediate availability of Parted Magic 5.6, an operating system for partitioning tasks. The sixth maintenance version of Parted Magic 5 comes with the newly released GParted 0.6.4 application and the latest stable version of the Linux kernel.
The following applications were updated in Parted Magic 5.6:
· Linux kernel 2.6.35.7; · GParted 0.6.4; · GDisk 0.6.11; · hdparm 9.33; · stress 1.0.4; · Unetbootin 490; · NTFS-3G 2010.10.2; · Busybox 1.17.3; · udev 163.
Download Parted Magic 5.6 right now from Softpedia.
On October 14th, Andreas Heinlein announced the release of Ubuntu Privacy Remix 10.04r1, the first stable version of the Ubuntu-based distro. Ubuntu Privacy Remix (UPR) is a specialized Linux distribution for handling highly sensitive data. The latest release comes with several updated packages as well as some custom software.
Ubuntu Privacy Remix 10.04r1 is based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS as the team wanted to stick with more stable releases. It also comes with Linux kernel 2.6.32.23. Hardware requirements should be the same as before.
TrueCrypt, arguably the most important application in Ubuntu Privacy Remix, has been updated to TrueCrypt 6.3a. While TrueCrypt 7.0 is available, several changes in the latest version of the encryption software have made the developers hold back on upgrading.
Specifically, the team found no documentation on some of the changes to the container format so it will not be deployed until a full review has been completed.
Download Ubuntu Privacy Remix 10.04r1 right now from Softpedia.
Also on October 14th, Robert Shingledecker announced the immediate availability for download of Tiny Core Linux 3.2, one month after the previous release. The minimalistic Linux distro comes with an updated BusyBox and a number of changes and improvements to the highly-customized environment. Most of the changes are under the hood.
Highlights of Tiny Core Linux 3.2:
· BusyBox 1.17.2; · Better localization support in Appsaudit, Wallpaper, and Swapfile; · Updated AppBrowser and System Stats, all tabs now allow mouse "select for copy"; · Eliminated trailing null item in FLTK browser widget in Appsaudit and Appbrowser; · tce-load now handles case of missing dependency file; · filetool.sh got a "-d" switch for a dry run, compare restore boot code and improved encrypted backup; · Filetool GUI gets support for None/Backup/Safe options; · Moved 'protect' and 'secure' after extension loading to support alternate layout keyboards in tc-config; · No reboot required anymore to move from OnBoot to OnDemand; · Ondemand script added selection and removal of freedesktop items, improved pathing and support to handle freedesktop while also using wbar; · Inittab-save updated with askfirst for tty3-6 for memory savings when using multivt boot code; · Fixed inconsistency with X-FullPathIcon in .desktop-tinycore items; · Removed stats.txt from /opt/.xfiletool.lst; · Added ondemand directory to PATH.
Download Tiny Core Linux 3.2 right now from Softpedia.
· On October 12th, Softpedia announced that the Ambiance and Radiance themes for Google Chrome web browser were updated fo r the recently released Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system. The light-weight Google Chrome makes a good fit for Linux, but desktop integration is not its strong point. If you're running the very latest Ubuntu 10.10 and enjoy having a single visual theme across all your apps. Read more about it here.
· On October 11th, Oracle released VM VirtualBox 3.2.10. The update is a small release focusing on bug-fixing. However, the latest update brings support for a couple of the most popular and the most recent Linux distributions available, Ubuntu 10.10 and Fedora 14. Read more about it here.
· Gerry Carr posted on October 14th a very cool demonstration of the interaction between the new Unity shell and the uTouch gesture and multi-touch stack, on the Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) Netbook Edition operating system. At this moment, there are very few touch-enabled devices out there. However, Canonical decided to test the Unity - uTouch interaction on a Dell device. Read more about it here.
Review of the Week: Google Picasa 3.0 Beta
· With a name that puts Picasa in the Google family tree, this photo management software creates a lot of expectations among Linux users even before it's tested. So let's see how this software helps users organize their image collection, edit photos and shared them on the web.
Of course, the line between software complexity and fruitless variety can be a very thin one. Particularly when there are a number of alternatives capable of doing operations that Picasa also supports. But the paring between Picasa's surprising variety of options (face recognition, passport photo creation, easy adding of watermarks to groups of files, red eye correction etc.) and its ability to sync to Picasa Web makes this application an inviting playground for image collection owners.
Read the full review here.
Tutorial of the Week: Installing Ubuntu 10.10
· This tutorial is also addressed to people who have just heard about Ubuntu, those who have never installed Ubuntu before and want to test it, but don't know how!
The tutorial will make things very simple for you, but if you get stuck somewhere in the middle of the installation and you need help, do not hesitate to use our commenting system at the end of the article!
Read the entire tutorial here.
Video Clip of the Week: uTouch on Unity
· For this week we've posted a video clip that shows a demonstration of how the new Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition user interface, Unity, can interact with the uTouch gesture and multi-touch stack. The video has 1 minute and 17 seconds, and it was posted by Ubuntu Developers. Enjoy!
· Linux MintPPC 9 · 3MX Ultra3
Distributions Updated Last Week:
· R.I.P. 11.0 · Tor-ramdisk 20101011 · Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.6-32 · Sabayon Linux CoreCDX 5.4 · Sabayon Linux SpinBase 5.4 · openSUSE Medical 0.0.2 · Ubuntu Tutik Remix 10.10 · Smeegol 1.0.3 Build 10.3 · GParted LiveCD 0.6.4-1 · ttylinux 12.1
· Fusion Linux 14 Beta · Frugalware Linux 1.4 Pre1
See you again next Monday, October 25th, for another issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly.