14 DAY TRIAL // Welcome to the 84th issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly!
The following Linux-based operating systems were announced last week: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 Beta, Fedora 12 Re-Spin, Linux Mint 8 Fluxbox Community Edition and Linux Mint 8 KDE64 Community Edition. In other news: the KDE community project launches the highly anticipated release of KDE Software Compilation 4.4.0. For this week, we've also prepared a very nice and in-depth tutorial about how to install KDE SC 4.4.0 in the Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) operating system. The weekly ends with the video clip of the week, the latest Linux distributions released/updated and the development releases.
Summary:
On February 10th, Red Hat announced the immediate availability of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 Beta operating system. Besides the usual updates, improvements or bugfixes, this first development release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 is powered by a 2.6.18-186.EL5 Linux kernel and it is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.
Highlights of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 Beta:
· Linux kernel 2.6.18-186.EL5; · Anaconda enhancements; · Kickstart improvements; · Support for new hardware components (PMC Sierra MaxRAID Controller Adapters, Power6 Virtual FC devices, etc); · KVM guests run-time memory allocation support; · Improved PCI passthrough; · Support for new Intel platforms (Boxboro-EX, Boxboro-MC); · Support for new AMD platforms (Magny-Cours); · Support for the Power 7 processor from IBM; · New kernel features; · New kernel tracepoints; · New device drivers (hpilo, i2c, mlx4); · New drivers for network devices (iwlwifi, rt2x00, ath9k); · New drivers for storage devices (qla2xxx, hptiop, lpfc, mpt2sas, mptque, megaraid_sas); · Storage and filesystem management; · Added GFS2 mount option; · Updated CIFS; · OpenOffice.org and Metacity updates; · FreeRADIUS 2.0; · Samba 3; · Valgrind 3.5.0; · and many more!
On February 11th, the Fedora Unity Project proudly launched the first Re-Spin DVDs for the Fedora 12 (Constantine) operating system. The Fedora 12 Re-Spin 20100202 ISO images are based on the official Fedora 12 installation media, including all the updates (about 437 MB of updates) released as of February 2nd, 2010. It is compatible with both the i386 and x86_64 architectures!
The Fedora Unity Re-Spins are created to provide users with a fresh and up-to-date installation of the current stable Fedora Linux distribution. Fedora Unity is a community project, created for and by the Fedora community, therefore anyone can contribute to it. If you want to perform a fresh installation of Fedora 12, we suggest to grab these ISO images, as they will save you time and bandwidth!
Download Fedora 12 Re-Spin 20100202 right now from Softpedia.
On February 12th, Clement Lefebvre and the hard working people behind the Linux Mint community announced the immediate availability of two new editions for the Helena release: Linux Mint 8 Fluxbox and Linux Mint 8 KDE64! While the latter contains exactly the same amount of new features like the Linux Mint 8 KDE Community Edition, but compiled especially for 64-bit processors, such as Intel Core 2 Quad, Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon X2 64, the Fluxbox edition is brand-new and it is powered by Linux 2.6.31, X.Org 7.4 and Fluxbox 1.1.1.
The Linux Mint 8 Fluxbox Community Edition offers a lightweight desktop experience for low-end computers. Therefore, it can be easily installed on a machine with about 256 MB of RAM. At the moment, only 32-bit processors are supported! Linux Mint 8 Fluxbox also includes new artwork based on Minty Leaf by mickyz.
Download Linux Mint 8 Fluxbox Community Edition right now from Softpedia. Download Linux Mint 8 KDE64 Community Edition right now from Softpedia.
· On Februrary 9th, the wonderful developers behind the KDE project announced the final and stable release of the highly anticipated KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC) 4.4.0. Dubbed Caikaku, KDE SC 4.4.0 is the next major release with over 7,000 bugs squashed, over 1,400 new features, new applications, new effects, and much more! KDE SC 4.4.0 is composed of the KDE Plasma Workspace, the KDE Applications and the KDE Development Platform. It introduces window tabbing, netbook interface, authentication framework and social networking support. Read more about it here.
Tutorial of the Week: How to Install KDE SC 4.4 on Ubuntu 9.10
· After another six months of hard work, the famous KDE Software Compilation (SC) suite reached version 4.4.0 on February 9th, 2010. With over 7,000 bugs squashed, over 1,400 new features, new applications, new effects, the KDE SC 4.4.0 is composed of the KDE Plasma Workspace, the KDE Applications and the KDE Development Platform and it introduces window tabbing, netbook interface, authentication framework and social networking support. With this said, the KDE SC 4.4.0 is still the most beautiful and modern desktop environment to date!
This tutorial is for those of you who don't want to wait until late April for the Kubuntu 10.04 (Karmic Koala) release, which will include a KDE SC 4.4.0 installation. With it, we will teach you, step by step, how to install the brand-new KDE SC 4.4.0 on your existing Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) installation.
Read the complete tutorial here.
Video Clip of the Week: KDE 4.4
· For this week, we've posted a 720p High-Definition video clip just to show you how awesome is the brand-new KDE Software Compilation 4.4.0. The video has 2 minutes and 33 seconds, and it was posted by lovinglinux. Enjoy!
Distributions Updated Last Week:
· Nexradix 1.18 · Bauer-Puntu Linux 9.10 R2 · Privatix Live-System 10.02.07 · MINIX 3.1.6 · Fermi Linux 5.4 · PC/OS (OpenServer) 8.5 · paldo 1.21 · Skolelinux 5.0 · Comal-Linux 0231 · Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.3-37 · EeeMC 1.01
· Yoper 2010 RC1 · Tiny Core Linux 2.9 RC3 · Vine Linux 5.1 RC3
See you again next Monday, February 22nd, for another issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly.