14 DAY TRIAL // Welcome to the 26th issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly!
Happy Holidays! This is the last weekly for 2008 and we want to wish everyone a Happy New Year! The week started with the new release from sidux, powered by Linux kernel 2.6.27.10, announced by Stefan Lippers-Hollmann. The Mandriva team decided to release the first alpha version of the upcoming Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring, after a one-week delay. Linus "almost Santa" Torvalds brought a very nice Christmas gift for all you Linux enthusiasts out there, Linux kernel 2.6.28, with support for the highly expected ext4 file systems. On Christmas Eve, Fabio Erculiani came with another present: Sabayon Linux 4. The weekly continues with two more Christmas gifts (read: tutorials) from our staff here at the Softpedia Labs and it concludes, as usual, with the video clip of the week, the newly-released and updated Linux distributions, and the development releases. Happy 2009!
Summary:
On December 23rd, Stefan Lippers-Hollmann announced the immediate availability of the fourth release, and probably the last with the 2008 tag, of their Linux distribution. sidux 2008-04 is more than a bug fix release for previous versions; it is based on Debian Sid and includes all updates released as of December 22nd, 2008. Moreover, KDE 3.5.10, X.Org 7.3 and the Linux kernel 2.6.27.10 (with SMP and hard preemption) power this new release of sidux Linux, dubbed Πόντος.
sidux is a full featured Live CD based on Debian Sid, with a special focus on hard disk installations, a clean upgrade path within Sid and supplementary hardware and software support. The new version of the Linux kernel included in sidux 2008-04 improves hardware support for new devices, such as IPW5xxx and Atheros AR9xxx 802.11 draft-n wireless chipsets. Also, so as to reorder and optimize the sysv init scripts that are used during the boot process, sidux 2008-04 includes now "insserv," which also improves the boot times a lot. And last but not least, the installer received some attention from the developers and it is now more optimized.
Download sidux 2008-04 right now from Softpedia.
Also on December 23rd, the first alpha version of Mandriva Linux 2009.1 (a.k.a. Spring), which was originally scheduled for release on December 17th, was announced on the official Mandriva blog. Mandriva 2009.1 Alpha 1 brings the current development versions of the KDE, GNOME and Xfce desktop environments, a Linux kernel based on the eighth release candidate of 2.6.28 and a few other bleeding-edge technologies. Among the highlights of Mandriva Linux 2009.1 Alpha 1 we can notice:
· Linux kernel 2.6.28 RC8 · KDE 4.2 Beta 2 · GNOME 2.25.2 · Xfce 4.6 Beta 2 · X.org server 1.5 · Tcl/Tk 8.6
Download Mandriva 2009.1 Alpha 1 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is an alpha release and it should not be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.
On December 24th Linus Torvalds brought a nice Christmas present for all Linux users, developers, fanboys out there, the final release of Linux kernel 2.6.28. The new version offers stable support for the highly-expected Ext4, brings lots of new drivers, includes support for many DVB devices and other interesting features listed below:
· Ext4, the Fourth Extended File System · The GEM Memory Manager for GPU memory · "Ultra Wide Band" (UWB), UWB-IP and Wireless USB Support · Memory management Scalability improvements · Container freezer · Boot tracer · Disk Shock Protection · Phonet Network Protocol · Network: Transparent proxying, DSA, new drivers... · Tracepoints · -staging drivers · IO CPU affinity · FIEMAP
Download Linux kernel 2.6.28 right now from Softpedia.
On December 25th, Fabio Erculiani announced the immediate availability of Sabayon Linux 4, which includes features such as the latest Linux kernel (with support for Ext4, AUFS, NTFS and UnionFS filesystems), KDE 4.1.3, OpenOffice.org 3.0, Adobe Flash Player 10, boot speed improvements and many more, listed below:
· KDE 3.5.10 · GNOME 2.24.2 · XFCE 4.4.3 · LXDE 0.3.2.1 · Openbox 3.4.8 RC1 · Fluxbox 1.1.1 · Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 · Wine 1.1.10 · VirtualBox 2.0.6 · Google Earth 4.3.7284.3916 · Picasa 2.7.3736.15 · aMule 2.2.2 · Sun Microsystems Java 1.6.0.11 · IcedTea6 · GeeXbox 1.2 · Elisa Media Center 0.3.5 · Boot speed improvements, 25% gain · Entropy Package Manager 0.24.6 · Ext4, AUFS, NTFS and UnionFS support · Input devices and HAL-based GPU detection · Support for AMD Catalyst Drivers 8.11 and Open Source RadeonHD video drivers · Support for Nvidia 180.11, 173.14.12, 96.43.09 and 71.86.07 video drivers · One-click 3D desktop effects.
Download Sabayon Linux 4 x86 right now from Softpedia. Download Sabayon Linux 4 x86_64 right now from Softpedia.
On December 27th, the Lunar Linux team proudly announced the immediate availability of the Lunar Linux 1.6.4, dubbed Lacus Autumni. The new release was developed for about two years, it is more polished, faster, and it is now powered by Linux kernel 2.6.27.10. Moreover, the isolinux was updated, all the modules were refreshed, the installer was greatly improved and it is now able to skip the "swap file" step if a SWAP partition was already added, lsb-release was added and, sadly, the support for USB modems was removed, because they need firmware images that the Lunar Linux team doesn't supply.
Highlights of Lunar Linux 1.6.4:
· Linux kernel 2.6.27 · Software RAID configuration · Better language selection · Installable from USB or other removable media · Support for XFS, ReiserFS and JFS file systems
Download Lunar Linux 1.6.4 right now from Softpedia.
Tutorial of the Week: Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop Customization Guide
· Initially released at the beginning of the week, in the 25th issue of our weekly newsletter, as a Christmas present, we proudly present a new tutorial about how to customize your Ubuntu 8.10 desktop with the newest eye-candy dock from AWN, desktop screenlets and state-of-the-art icons. Why? Because many people complained a lot about the looks of the new Ubuntu OS and other major Linux distributions, and how they wanted a more eye-candy, professional desktop, and we thought that this tutorial would be a nice Christmas Gift for all of you Linux enthusiasts out there.
Read the full tutorial here.
Tutorial of the Week: Installing Yellow Dog Linux 6.1 on PS3
· We decided to create another tutorial for people who want to install a good Linux distribution on their PS3 gaming consoles and we've chosen the Yellow Dog Linux 6.1 operating system for SONY's PlayStation 3, Apple PowerPC G4/G5, IBM Power Systems and YDL PowerStation. Yellow Dog Linux 6.1 (codename Pyxis) is an operating system for the PPC64 architecture, CELL processor, and it is based on the CentOS Linux distribution, a RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) derivative. The tutorial will guide you, step-by-step, through the whole installation process.
Read the full tutorial here.
Linux on the iPhone
· The following video clip shows a little demonstration of a very basic Linux installation on Apple's iPhone. The video has 3:33 minutes and it was posted by belditdotcom. Enjoy!
Distributions Updated Last Week:
· Debian GNU/Linux 4.0r6 · Slack Mini Server 1.4.1 · Linux LiveCD Router 2.0.40 · GParted LiveCD 0.4.1-2
· MEPIS AntiX 8.0 Test 1 · MythBuntu 9.04 Alpha 2 · moonOS Main Edition 2 RC1 · Zenwalk 5.4 Beta 1 · Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.1-29 · GoblinX Micro Edition 3.0 Beta 1 · SimplyMEPIS 8.0 RC1 · Parsix Linux 2.0 Test 1