Mar 29, 2011 21:01 GMT  ·  By

Welcome to the 142nd issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly!

The following Linux-based operating systems have been announced last week: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 Beta, Gparted Live 0.8.0-5, Trisquel 4.5, Zenwalk Linux 7.0 and Foresight Linux 2.5.0. In other news: The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 3.3.2 open source office suite; Canonical announced that Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 11.10 will support multiarch; Canonical reveals the new wallpapers from the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 operating system; the GNOME Project releases the first and second Release Candidate of the upcoming GNOME 3 desktop environment; the OpenSuSE project announced EOL for openSUSE 11.2; Canonical announced EOL for Ubuntu 9.10. The weekly ends with the video clip of the week, the new and updated Linux distributions, and the development releases.

dots Summary:

dots RHELOn March 22nd, Red Hat announced the beta of the first minor update to the recently released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 is here. RHEL 6.1 Beta comes with a number of bug fixes, security and stability improvements, but also some performance optimizations and a couple of other tweaks, building on top of RHEL 6 and providing a more polished experience overall.

One of the big improvements in the upcoming update is better performance for virtualized environments. With virtualization being one of the biggest trends in the enterprise space, it's no wonder that Red Hat is focusing on this aspect the most. Specifically, RHEL 6.1 Beta includes network latency improvements since the functionality has been pushed to the kernel routines. Ioeventfd improves disk read/write latency. Metadata caching of qcow2 images further improves I/O overhead.

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RHEL 6 - Image courtesy of DistroWatch

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 Beta ISO images can be downloaded by all existing RHEL subscribers via the Red Hat Networks service. Remember that this is a beta release and it should not be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.

dots GPartedOn March 21st, Steven Shiau announced the release of GParted Live 0.8.0-5 operating system, bringing an updated kernel, a newer OS base and updated packages. GParted Live 0.8.0-5 is now based on a very recent snapshot of Debian Sid and runs a cutting edge Linux kernel 2.6.38-1.

Highlights of GParted Live 0.8.0-5:

· The underlying GNU/Linux operating system is based on the Debian Sid repository (as of 2011/Mar/21). · The linux kernel has been updated to 2.6.38-1. · Package ssh was added in this release. - By default ssh service is not started, and if you want to start it, make sure you have change the password and the file /etc/hosts.deny. · Bug fixed: a workaround was added to make setxkbmap work.

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GParted Live 0.8.0-5

Download GParted Live 0.8.0-5 now from Softpedia.

dots TrisquelOn March 24th, Rubén Rodríguez proudly announced the release of the Trisquel 4.5 "Slaine" operating system. Trisquel 4.5 is based on Ubuntu 10.10 and comes with plenty of updated packages, on top of the improvements from the upstream distro, along with several changes and new features. The new release comes with a brand new boot manager useful for the live images, newly introduced packages like the Remmina remote desktop client and the Gwibber social networking client, from Ubuntu.

Highlights of Trisquel 4.5:

· Linux-libre 2.6.35; · Xorg 7.5; · GNOME 2.32; · Mozilla based web browser 3.6.15; · OpenOffice.org 3.2.

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Trisquel 4.5

Download Trisquel 4.5 now from Softpedia.

dots ZenwalkOn March 25th, Jean-Philippe Guillemin proudly announced the immediate availability of the Zenwalk Linux 7.0 operating system. The biggest or at least the most visible change in Zenwalk 7.0 is the updated desktop environment. Zenwalk Linux 7.0 sports the very latest XFCE 4.8.1 which, after two years of development, brings quite a few improvements over the previous XFCE 4.6, a revamped panel with true transparency support, GVFS support in Thunar and plenty others.

Highlights of Zenwalk Linux 7.0:

· Linux Kernel 2.6.37.4 - with BFS scheduler and performance tweaks; · LibreOffice 3.3.1; · XFCE 4.8.1; · Icecat 3.6.15; · Icedove 3.0.4.

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Zenwalk Linux 7.0 - Image courtesy of DistroWatch

Download Zenwalk Linux 7.0 now from Softpedia.

dots ForesightOn March 27th, Og Maciel announced the release of Foresight Linux 2.5.0. The latest release of the Linux distro features three desktop environments to choose from, the three most popular Linux desktops, as opposed to just GNOME as before. Given that Foresight was created mostly to showcase GNOME, it's a big change of direction for the project. Along with the latest stable versions of GNOME, KDE SC and XFCE, Foresight 2.5.0 also includes a recent LTS Linux kernel 2.6.35.11.

Foresight Linux 2.5.0 features the bleeding edge, though stable versions of the three desktop environments it supports. Since it's designed to be a rolling release distro, the newest packages should always be available as updates, soon after they're launched. It uses the Conary package manager that updates only changed files in packages rather than the entire application and libraries.

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Foresight Linux - Image courtesy of DistroWatch

Download Foresight Linux 2.5.0 right now from Softpedia.

dots Other NewsOther News:

· On March 22nd, The Document Foundation company launched the second maintenance release of the LibreOfficeb 3.3 open source office suite for Linux, Windows and Macintosh platforms. The next major release, LibreOffice 3.4 will be released in mid May, 2011. LibreOffice 3.3.2 is available now (see download links at the end of the article), for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. The new release fixes some important bugs, updates several translations. Overall it is much stable than the previous release and everyone is encourage to update. Read more about it here.

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· On March 22nd, Steve Langasek proudly announced last evening, March 22nd, that it is now possible to install library packages of different architectures on your Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system via multiarch. In other words, Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 11.10 will support multiarch. This is great news for all Ubuntu developers and users alike, because it means that commands such as the one below can now be easily configured to work in an x86_64 chroot: sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer:i386. Read more about it here.

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· On March 24th, Canonical introduced the new wallpapers that will be part of the final release of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system. The default wallpaper for Ubuntu 11.04 has also been reveled! There are seventeen new wallpapers in total, for the new Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) release. The default wallpaper (the last one) is very similar to the Ubuntu 10.10 wallpaper. These wallpapers are created by community memebers. Read more about it here.

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· On March 23rd, the GNOME 3 Release Candidate was released indicating that the final release is very close now. It's been a very long time in the making, but the next generation GNOME desktop is almost here. GNOME 3 RC is as close as it's going to get to the final build, so there's probably little reason to hold back and not take GNOME 3 for a spin. Read more about it here.

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· On March 24th, the openSUSE project announced the end-of-life for openSUSE 11.2, on May 12th, 2011. With regrets, the openSUSE developers, through Marcus Meissner, said that there will be no more updates coming for theopenSUSE 11.2 Linux distribution, starting with May 12th, 2011. Support for openSUSE 11.2 will be officially droped, which means that starting with May 12th, 2011, the openSUSE project will stop "feeding" the openSUSE 11.2 operating system with security or critical fixes, and software updates. Read more about it here.

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· On March 29th, Canonical announced the end-of-life for Ubuntu 9.10, on April 29th, 2011. Starting with that date, Canonical will stop "feeding" the Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) operating system with security or critical fixes, and software updates. Therefore, we strongly recommend upgrading your Ubuntu 9.10 machine(s) to the current version, Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). Read more about it here.

dots Video Clip of the WeekVideo Clip of the Week: Ubuntu 11.04 (Pre Beta)

· For this week we've posted an 720p high-definition video clip that shows a nice preview of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Beta 1 release. The video has 6 minutes and 13 seconds, and it was posted by novelldesktop. Enjoy!

Download from SoftpediaNew Distributions:

· Dream Studio 10.10 · Ryll Education Slax (RELAX) 1.0 · WhirlWind 1 · Momonga Live CD 7 · BootMed 1

Download from SoftpediaDistributions Updated Last Week:

· iQunix OS 10.10 · VESTA 1.11 · 4MLinux Media Edition 2.1 · PocketWriter OS Salix 13.1.2 · Bodhi 1.0.0 · Foresight Linux Xfce 2.5.0 · R.I.P. 11.8 · Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.8-23 · IPFire 2.9 Core 48 · openSUSE Edu Li-f-e 11.4.1

Download from SoftpediaDevelopment Releases:

· Slackware 13.37 RC3 · Tiny Core Linux 3.6 RC1 · BlankOn Sajadah 7.0 Alpha 2 · 64 Studio 3.0 Beta 3 · SimplyMEPIS 11.0 RC1 · SliTaz GNU/Linux 20110329 · VectorLinux 7.0 Beta 2.1

See you again on April 4th for another issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly.