14 DAY TRIAL // Welcome to the 44th issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly!
This week's editorial talks about the new name and features of the Ubuntu Muslim Edition. Last week we had an in-depth preview of the release candidate version of the upcoming Linux Mint 7 (Gloria). In the Linux distribution announcement section you will find the following releases: Linux Mint 7 RC1 and Parted Magic 4.1. In other news: Transmission for Linux reaches version 1.6.0 and the KDE Project released the third maintenance version of KDE 4.2. We've also prepared two new and helpful tutorials for all Ubuntu 9.04 users out there. The weekly ends with the video clip of the week, the latest Linux distributions released/updated last week and the development releases.
Summary:
Editorial: Ubuntu Muslim Edition Is Now Known as Sabily - by Daniel Pop-Silaghi
· Among a sea of "generic" distros, it's great to see one that aims to cover specific needs and really helps the category of people for whom it was built. So, we're happy to announce that the dedicated team of developers behind the Ubuntu Muslim Edition project released today a new version of their Linux distribution. And with the new Jaunty Jackalope base comes a new name: Sabily, codename Taibah.
If you are curious to know why the project name has changed, it was because an inconsistency between it and Canonical's trademark policy regarding the names of distributions that use Ubuntu's base. "Sabily" means "my way" and comes from the verse 108 from Surat Yusuf: "This is my way; I invite unto Allah with sure knowledge, I and whosoever follows me..." – also Sabily's new slogan.
Sabily 9.04 "Taibah" is available in three versions: a small 935 MB DVD, the Full version containing extra multimedia and education packages and the Full version with offline access to Quran recitations. All these versions are complete with Live environments, so users can test them before touching existing partitions. An 184 MB CD is also available containing the packages needed to conveniently transform an Ubuntu 9.04 installation to Sabily.
Sabily 9.04 has full support for both English and Arabic languages and comes with customized artwork including Usplash, GDM and Metacity themes, cursors and wallpapers. One of the most important applications for Muslims has to be the Minbar, a prayer time app especially useful for those unable to hear the Azaan. Moreover, monajat will pop up Islamic prayers at specified times and Firefox-praytimes will display prayer times directly into the Firefox web browser. The Islamic calendar is available through hijra and there is also an Othman Quran Browser in the form of mus-haf Othman. Zekr is another great Quran study tool that you can find in Sabily 9.04. The powerful DansGuardian web content filtering tool is installed and can easily be configured through the frontend provided by Webstrict.
The language-pack-ar, language-pack-gnome-ar and mozilla-firefox-locale-ar packages bring a fully translated Arabic desktop and Internet browser. Aspell was updated with an Arabic dictionary and bidirectional text display is supported through the bicon console.
Sabily 9.04 has quite an impressive suite of educational applications: KTurtle, KHangman, Atomix, Stellarium, Celestia, TuxMath, TuxPaint are only some of the included ones that will surely keep children entertained, while continuously involved in learning new, interesting things. The full version also comes loaded with all kinds of codecs and players for a complete multimedia experience: VLC, GStreamer, w32codecs, libdvdcss2, libdvdread3, Adobe Flash Plugin, LAME, etc. Useful utilities like CompizConfig Settings Manager, Fusion Icon, Nautilus Open Terminal, Wallpaper Tray, Ubuntu Tweak, GParted and many others are also available in the DVD.
Of course, Ubuntu's regular selection of apps is there too: OpenOffice.org, GIMP Image Editor, Evolution Email Client, Pidgin Instant Messaging Client. But Sabily 9.04 also features more advanced tools like the Dia Diagram Editor, the QCad CAD system, Scribus and a fractal zoomer - Xaos.
All in all, Sabily 9.04 is a very enjoyable, complete operating system. It's clear that a lot of effort has been put into providing a better computing experience for Muslims all over the world and the initiative has to be applauded. Even if you're not a Muslim, Sabily is worth trying.
First Look: Linux Mint 7 Release Candidate
From the article: About 10 minutes later, Linux Mint 7 RC prompted me to restart the system and remove the CD from the tray. Another minute later and I was greeted with what instantly became my favorite login screen ever. The default theme in Gloria (including the login screen) is Shiki-Mint, quite similar to the great New Wave one. That, combined with the awesome Gnome Colors icon set and the atmospheric Mint-Dew wallpaper, makes for some high-placed first impressions. Though I wanted to stare at that login screen for another couple of minutes, I snapped out of it and typed in my credentials.
As you probably realized, I absolutely enjoyed every minute spent with Linux Mint 7 Release Candidate and I'm seriously thinking about using it as my main OS when the final version comes out. I have no doubts that Gloria will be a glorious release!
Read the full article here.
Linux distributions announced last week:
On April 5th, Clement Lefebvre and the community behind the Linux Mint project proudly announced the immediate availability of the first release candidate of Linux Mint 7 (Gloria) operating system. This first RC is based on the recently released Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and it is powered by Linux kernel 2.6.28. The good news is that the 7th release of Linux Mint will include a brand new artwork, updated applications and many, many new breathtaking features. Don't forget to check out, later tonight, our first look at the new Linux Mint 7 operating system.
Highlights of Linux Mint 7:
· Linux kernel 2.6.28; · X.Org 7.4; · GNOME 2.26.1; · New artwork; · Improved boot speed; · Improved mintMenu; · Improved mintInstall; · Improved mintUpdate; · Improved mintUpload; · Added mintWelcome; · Added apt version, inxi and rtfm command-line tools; · Moonlight/Silverlight support; · Xchat-Gnome was replaced by XChat; · Meta and virtual packages.
Download Linux Mint 7 Release Candidate right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is an unstable release and it should not be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only!
On April 8th, Patrick Verner announced the release of Parted Magic 4.1, his Slackware-based Linux distribution that was created to help users partition their hard disks or perform recovery tasks. This new version fixes several bugs, but also brings new features and applications. Parted Magic 4.1 resolves a scripting error that caused deb files to not load in certain scenarios. Also, to prevent overwriting of the new fstab by a "Save Session" one, mkfstab will load later in the boot sequence.
New packages in Parted Magic 4.1:
· Wipe 2.2.0 · Dmidecode 2.10 · mg text editor · Reiser4 kernel patch · boot_info_script · Chinese fonts · Removepkg · UnARJ 2.65 · Hardinfo 0.5.1
Download Parted Magic 4.1 right now from Softpedia.
· All BitTorrent users will be happy to hear that a new version of the popular Transmission client has been released on April 5th, for both Linux and Mac platforms. Transmission 1.6.0 brings a beta client for the Qt framework as well as important new features and improvements. Read more about it here.
· The KDE community proudly announced on April 6th the immediate availability of the third maintenance release of KDE 4.2. The new version brings lots of bug fixes, especially for applications such as Kate, KRunner, Kephal, KSysguarda, KScreensaver, Kalzium, Konquest, JuK, KAlarm, KMail, KGpg, Ark and of course the KHTML engine. Among the major features brought by KDE 4.2.3 we can notice that the default mail client, KMail, received improvements to the "online IMAP filtering" function and the system tray icon. Read more about it here.
Tutorial of the Week: Installing Ubuntu 9.04
· Ubuntu 9.04, also known as the Jaunty Jackalope, arrived exactly on April 23rd, 2009 and is the tenth release of Ubuntu OS. We've created the following tutorial to teach Linux newcomers how to install the Ubuntu 9.04 operating system on their personal computer. Therefore it is 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. However, the tutorial will make things very simple for you!
Read the full tutorial here.
Tutorial of the Week: How to Install OpenOffice.org 3.1 on Ubuntu 9.04
· After our famous "How to Install OpenOffice.org 3.0 on Ubuntu 8.10" guide and because the final versions of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and OpenOffice.org 3.1.0 have been out for some time now, we decided to create a new tutorial, about how to install the fresh and improved OpenOffice.org 3.1.0 on Ubuntu 9.04. However, it will also work for Ubuntu 8.10 and Ubuntu 8.04, but we haven't tested it!
Read the full tutorial here.
Linux Mint 7 Appearance
· Being a week full of Linux Mint 7-related news, we decided to present a few videos that showcase the appearance, login screen and other new features of the upcoming Linux Mint 7 (Gloria) operating system. The clips were posted by beginusinglinux. Enjoy!
· Chaox 2009-04-17-18-05 · Lin-X 1.1
Distributions Updated Last Week:
· KDE 4 Live CD 1.2.3 · paldo 1.18 · LinHES 6.00.08 · Bauer-Puntu Linux 9.04 · Tiny Core Linux 1.4.2 · R.I.P. 8.5
· Nexenta OS 2.0 RC2 · Caixa Magica 14 RC1 · Kongoni 1.12.2 Alpha · Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.2-11 · ClarkConnect 5.0 Beta 3
See you again next Monday, April 18th, for another issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly.
The Softpedia Linux Editorial Team.