The weekly newsletter for Linux users.

Dec 15, 2008 11:50 GMT  ·  By

Welcome to the 24th issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly!

Last week was a really busy one, as it brought us many new distributions and applications that had been expected for years, such as Amarok 2.0. The weekly starts with the improvements/bugfixes brought by the new version of Clonezilla LiveCD, announced by Steven Shiau. Guardian Digital presents its latest release of the EnGarde Secure Community 3.0 operating system. Marcos Guglielmetti released a new revision of the Musix GNU/Linux, a Linux distribution that is used daily in music schools. The weekly continues with the latest drivers for ATI Radeon video cards released by AMD, which introduce support for Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). After two years of development, the Amarok team proudly announced the immediate availability of Amarok 2.0. The KOffice project announced the fourth beta of the upcoming KOffice 2.0 open source office suite. Patrick Volkerding presents the latest and greatest version of the popular Slackware Linux. Last but not least, even if it's not a Linux distribution, the PC-BSD operating system is a pretty cool OS, and is worth a mention in our weekly. And, as usual, we conclude the weekly with the video clip of the week, the latest Linux distributions released/updated last week and the development releases, at the end of the article!

Summary:

Clonezilla LiveCDOn December 9th, Steven Shiau announced the immediate availability of Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.1-23, a Linux-based minimal operating system that can help you clone systems. The new release is a stable one, it is based on Debian Lenny, and is powered by a new Linux kernel. Without any further introduction, let's have a look at the main changes:

· Updated Linux kernel to version 2.6.26-11; · Now based on Debian Lenny repository (12/08/2008); · The cryptsetup and hexedit packages were added; · gPXE was updated to version 0.9.6; · English typos were fixed; · When savings parts, the serial number of the disk is shown; · custom-ocs can now be used with an image that was included in ocs-iso and ocs-live-dev; · The restoring mode of Clonezilla gets a new option (-b); · Fixed bug when the reboot/shutdown/none option appeared twice if someone wanted to create recovery iso/zip with "ocs-sr -x"; · The locales list without comma bug, in ocs-live-hook.conf, was fixed; · ocs_pre_run will be used at boot from now on.

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Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.1-23 - Boot loader

Download Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.1-23 right now from Softpedia.

EnGarde Secure CommunityOn December 10th, Guardian Digital announced the 22nd maintenance release of the EnGarde Secure Community 3.0 Linux distribution, an open source server operating system. EnGarde Secure Community 3.0.22 comes, as usual, with many bug fixes, updated packages and improvements, such as:

· Fixed the "Kernel Panic" issue; · Fixed the support for Xen Guest; · Fixed Dell's megaraid_sas driver; · Fixed XEN support; · Fixed the "Boot State" bug; · Fixed the spamassassin issue. The spamassassin package failed to install without amavisd-new. · WebTool's Backup and Restore module received various improvements. For example, a help page was added, the layout was greatly improved for easy usage, and the "Perform Backup Now" function will now run in background and it will send an email notification when it finishes the job; · Added support for USB serial devices, like the Keyspan USB serial adapter.

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EnGarde Secure Community 3.0 - Courtesy of Guardian Digital

Download EnGarde Secure Community 3.0.22 right now from Softpedia.

Musix GNU/LinuxOn December 10th, Marcos Guglielmetti announced the sixth revision of the Musix GNU/Linux operating system designed for music producers, video editors and graphic designers, as well as for general users. One of the most important additions in Musix GNU/Linux 1.0R6 is the inclusion of an older Linux kernel, version 2.6.16 from Musix GNU/Linux 0.99, in order to support old hardware. Moreover, the fonts for the Knoppix installer were repaired and they look good now. Last but definitely not least, the following applications were backported: Ardour, Rosegarden, Linux MultiMedia Studio, MScore and Jack Audio Connection Kit.

What can you do with Musix GNU/Linux? You can...

· Master CDs; · Publish musical scores; · Print musical scores; · Create MIDI instruments; · Record and reproduce audio and MIDI tracks; · Edit and mix audio and MIDI tracks with Multitrack Sequencers/Editors; · Perform noise reduction to recover old recordings; · Use effects in real time with any input device, such as microphone, line, etc.; · Connect a keyboard or another MIDI device, and control the available software synthesizers.

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Musix GNU/Linux - Courtesy of the Musix Project

Download Musix GNU/Linux 1.0R6 right now from Softpedia.

ATI/AMDAlso on December 10th, ATI/AMD announced a new version of their Linux display driver, for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. ATI Catalyst 8.12 introduces early support for the Ubuntu 8.10 operating system, support SurroundView and support for ATI Stream Computing. Among other enhancements, we can notice two new features in the Linux edition of the Catalyst Control Center, such as "Bus bandwidth" and "Memory bandwidth" information. The following issues have been resolved in this release:

· Fixed the issue with the Catalyst Control Center, when it failed to identify the correct display type; · Fixed the issue with GLXGears that could cause a system crash; · Resolved the issue with ATI Radeon HD 3200 video cards, which caused a system crash when running many OpenGL applications; · Fixed the issue when the primary display device remained blank after the switch between virtual terminals, with a dual display configuration running in Single Independent mode; · Resolved the issue with the 1600x1200 resolution on the 32-bit edition of SUSE 10.3; · Resolved the issue with CRT monitors screen corruption on the 32-bit edition of SUSE 10.3, which occurred when the user tried to set vertical and horizontal sync ranges; · Fixed X11Perf benchmark segmentation fault issue; · Fixed an issue with the Nexuiz game that occurred when the user wanted to quit the game; · Fixed the issue for systems with more than three graphics adaptors, which caused a segmentation fault when enabling the BIOS version; · Resolved an issue when the CrossFire logo was not displayed in full screen mode, when running 3D applications, on 64-bit Linux distributions; · Resolved a desktop corruption issue that could occur when the user tried to switch between multiple X windows.

Download ATI Catalyst 8.12 right now from Softpedia.

Amarok 2.0December 11th brought us Amarok 2.0, one of the best, iTunes-like media players for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows systems. After more than two hard years of development, the new release of Amarok brings a revamped and more intuitive graphical user interface, new features, integration with popular online music services, and... we bet that you'll rediscover your favorite music with it! Main features of Amarok 2.0:

· Scripts · Dynamic Playlists · Context View · PopUp Dropper · Multiple Language Translations · Cross Platform · Collection Management · Database Importing · Scriptable Services

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Amarok 2.0 - Courtesy of the Amarok Project

Download Amarok 2.0 right now from Softpedia.

KOfficeOn December 11th, the KOffice team announced the fourth development release of the open source KOffice office suite. KOffice 2.0 Beta 4 introduces various stability and usability enhancements and compelling bug fixes, in all of its components, such as Karbon, Krita, KPlato, KPresenter, KSpread, KWord, the KOffice libraries, translations and plug-ins. It also fixes the support for loading OpenOffice.org Presentation's text styles, and it is possible (again) to insert images in a text document and paint on mask in Krita.

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KOffice 2.0 Beta 2 - Courtesy of the KOffice Project

Download KOffice 2.0 Beta 4 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a beta release and it should not be used on production machines. It is intended to be used only for testing purposes.

Slackware 12.2December 11th also brought us one the most expected Linux operating systems, Slackware 12.2, now powered by version 2.6.27.7 of the Linux kernel, which offers features such as encrypted and journaling filesystems, support for RAID (ATA and S-ATA) volumes, Software RAID, support for S-ATA drives and LVM (Logical Volume Manager). Even if Slackware 12.2 does not use the highly acclaimed KDE 4 desktop environment, it still offers two of the most easy to use, fast and powerful desktops on the market: XFCE 4.4.3 and KDE 3.5.10. The included version of the K Desktop Environment comes with KOffice, Amarok, K3b, KDevelop, Konqueror, networking utilities, lots of games, and much more.

Highlights of Slackware 12.2:

· KDE (K Desktop Environment) 3.5.10 · Xfce 4.4.3 · Pidgin 2.5.2 · Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 · Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 · SeaMonkey 1.1.13 · XChat 2.8.6 · The GIMP 2.4.7 · GXine 0.5.903 · XSane 0.996 · Pan News Reader 0.133 · GKrellM 2.3.2 · GCC 4.2.4 · Apache 2.2.10 (with support for SSL and Dynamic Shared Object) · PHP 5.2.8 · Perl 5.10.0 · Python 2.5.2 · Ruby 1.8.7-p72 · Subversion 1.5.4 · GIT 1.6.0.3 · Mercurial 1.0.2 · KDevelop 3.5

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Slackware 12.2

Download Slackware 12.2 right now from Softpedia.

PC-BSD 7.0.2On December 12th, Kris Moore from the PC-BSD development team announced the immediate availability of the second maintenance release of PC-BSD 7.0 (Fibonacci Edition). PC-BSD 7.0.2 includes KDE 4.1.3, improved support for NTFS partitions, better desktop performance for owners of Nvidia video cards, enhancements and fixes to HAL, bug fixes to the installation. Below are the changes since PC-BSD 7.0.1:

· Updated KDE to version 4.1.3; · Updated HAL to version 0.5.11_8 (fixes an issue when trying to eject a CD/DVD in KDE4, and offers enhanced NTFS-3G support); · Resolved an issue with the scanner permissions that prevented users to scan; · Resolved an issue with PBI updates; · Fixed knotify4 bug, which made the computer hang at shutdown sometimes; · Better Online Updater utility, which now supports proxy servers and allows the use of TMPDIR; · The sound-detect script was updated to support various new cards; · Nvidia cards owners have now a new script (automatically activated on startup), which improves the desktop performance (lag and compositing effects); · Fixed some empty hard drive installation issues; · Resolved three System Manager bugs.

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PC-BSD 7.0 - Courtesy of the PC-BSD Project

Download PC-BSD 7.0.2 right now from Softpedia.

Mandriva Flash 2009Now, here's a special Christmas present for all of you Linux enthusiasts out there, as Mandriva just launched a new version of its portable USB Mandriva Flash Drive. The new edition is based on the KDE4 Edition of the Mandriva Linux 2009 distribution (released on October 9th, 2008), and is available as an 8 GB key.

Think of Mandriva Flash 2009 as your personal and private mobile desktop, which empowers you to do your daily computer tasks from anywhere. Mandriva Flash 2009 offers a fully protected and secure environment that allows you to store your personal data. No software will be installed on the PC, everything works off the USB flash drive.

Mandriva Flash 2009 includes the powerful Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird applications for a safe and secure web browsing and effective e-mail communication, respectively. With Mandriva Flash 2009, Windows users will be able to migrate their documents and parameters to Linux. Moreover, your bookmarks and e-mails will be available on both Microsoft Windows and Mandriva Linux operating systems.

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Mandriva Flash 2009 - Courtesy of Mandriva

Read more about it here.

Video Clip of the WeekVideo Clip of the Week:

· For this week, we decided to present a powerful and professional video commercial produced by Red Hat, Inc. Enjoy.

Download from SoftpediaDistributions Released Last Week:

· Omega 10 Preview · Tor-ramdisk 20081115

Download from SoftpediaDistributions Updated Last Week:

· Privatix Live-System 8.12.08 · Cooperation IWS 0.7.0 · Local Area Security 0.5-210 · TinyMe 2008.1 · ASPLinux 14 · Vibuntu 1.2 · SLAX 6.0.9 · KaufKauf Slim Linux 2.3 · ttylinux 8.0

Download from SoftpediaDevelopment Releases:

· Parted Magic 3.3 RC1 · SimplyMEPIS 8.0 Beta 6 · Absolute Linux 12.2.0 RC1 · CRUX 2.5 RC2 · Kiwi Linux 8.12 RC1 · sidux 2008-04 Pre 1