The weekly roundup for Linux users

Feb 22, 2010 15:04 GMT  ·  By

Welcome to the 85th issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly!

The following Linux-based operating systems were announced last week: Calculate Linux 10.2, SimplyMEPIS 8.5 Beta 5, OpenSuSE 11.3 Milestone 2 and PC/OS 10.1 Beta 2. In other news: Canonical launches the Ubuntu Single Sign On service, and Phoronix Media releases Phoronix Test Suite 2.4.1. The weekly ends with the video clip of the week, the latest Linux distributions released/updated and the development releases.

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Summary:

dots CalculateOn February 14th, Alexander Tratsevskiy proudly announced the availability of Calculate Linux 10.2, including Calculate Linux Desktop, Calculate Linux Server, Calculate Linux Scratch and Calculate Linux XFCE. As usual, new features, new applications and lots of improvements or bugfixes are present in this release of Calculate Linux, a distribution 100% compatible with the versatile Gentoo operating system.

Highlights of Calculate Linux 10.2:

· Linux kernel 2.6.32.8; · X.Org 7.4; · Ability to create Live USB systems; · Ability to build binary kernel packages from sources; · Added the --set-scheduler and --set-uuid options for new installations; · The RAM requirements were reduced for new installations; · Added Oxygen style and a spell-checking dictionary to Mozilla Firefox (Desktop edition only); · Added FBReader, an e-book reader (available in Desktop and XFCE editions); · Added a thumbnail plugin for OpenOffice.org (Desktop edition only); · Added 2 TB limit share for the Samba server (Server edition only); · Added the cl-kernel utility, to easily compile kernels; · Support for Canon printers; · Support for 16-bit PCMCIA modem or serial cards; · Support for Ricoh SD/MMC host controller; · OpenOffice.org 3.1.1; · Mozilla Firefox 3.6; · Samba 3.4.5; · OpenLDAP 2.4.19; · Postfix 2.6.5; · Bind 9.6.1-P3; · ProFTPD 1.3.2b; · Calculate-server 2.1.6; · Calculate-client 2.1.10.

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Calculate Linux - Image courtesy of Alexander Tratsevskiy

Download Calculate Linux Desktop 10.2 KDE right now from Softpedia.

Download Calculate Linux Desktop 10.2 XFCE right now from Softpedia.

Download Calculate Linux Directory Server 10.2 right now from Softpedia.

Download Calculate Linux Scratch 10.2 right now from Softpedia.

dots SimplyMEPISOn February 15th, Warren Woodford proudly announced the fifth Beta release of the upcoming SimplyMEPIS 8.5, as a way to celebrate Presidents Day. With Beta 5, the MEPIS team approaches a final and stable SimplyMEPIS 8.5 release. Updates to important packages such as Linux kernel or Mozilla Firefox are also present in this development version.

Highlights of SimplyMEPIS 8.5 Beta 5:

· Linux kernel 2.6.32.8; · Support for EXT4 filesystems; · KDE SC 4.3.4; · Mozilla Firefox 3.5.6-2; · OpenOffice.org 3.1.1-12; · K3b 1.70.0 Beta 1; · Kdenlive 0.7.6; · Synaptic 0.63.1; · Gdebi 0.5.9; · BIND 9.6.1-P3; · GTK+ 2.18.3-1.

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SimplyMEPIS 8.5 Beta

Download SimplyMEPIS 8.5 Beta 5 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a beta release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only.

dots openSUSEOn February 17th, Henne Vogelsang announced the immediate availability for testing of the openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2 operating system. In the new release, we can find bleeding-edge components, such as Linux kernel 2.6.33, KDE Software Compilation 4.4.0, GNOME 2.30 Beta 1, OpenOffice.org 3.2.0, lots of improvements over the first milestone release, and many bugs squashed! As usual, Live CDs with KDE SC 4.4 and GNOME 2.30 Beta are available for everyone who wants to test the new development release of the upcoming openSUSE 11.3.

Highlights of openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2:

· Linux kernel 2.6.33; · GNOME 2.29.90; · KDE SC 4.4.0; · OpenOffice.org 3.2.0.5; · Digikam 1.1.0; · VirtualBox OSE 3.1.4; · Ghostscript 8.70; · HWinfo 16.12; · GnuTLS 2.8.5; · Libgphoto2 2.4.8; · NetworkManager 0.7.999; · ModemManager 0.3; · aria2 1.8.1; · fetchmail 6.3.14; · Mono 2.6; · MonoDevelop 2.2; · bootchart 2.0.0.9; · kiwi 4.16; · GCC 4.5.0.

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openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2 GNOME Live CD

Download openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a development release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only.

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PC/OSOn February 19th, Roberto Dohnert announced the immediate availability for testing of the PC/OS 10.1 Beta 2 operating system. In the new release, this latest beta brings only several bug fixes and updates though there are still a couple of known issues, which are still pending a fix. First off, the biggest change in 10.1 is that it's now based on the latest Ubuntu 9.10, bringing it in line with the main distro in terms of codebase and main packages.

PC/OS 10.1 Beta 2 reverts to GDM 2.20, as the newer 2.28 was deemed too buggy and unstable. The beta also comes with Broadcom drivers, and Firefox 3.5.8 has been chosen as the default browser in place of Google Chrome, though the developers aren't giving up on the Google browser and the final version may ship with both of them. The team announced that a KDE-based version of PC/OS 10.1 would be coming to complement the existing one, which uses the GTK-based XFCE desktop environment.

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PC/OS 10.1 Beta 2

Download PC/OS 10.1 Beta 2 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a beta release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only.

dots Other NewsOther News:

· On Februrary 16th, Canonical announced the Ubuntu Single Sign On service. Its purpose is to gather all the login services provided by Canonical, such as Launchpad, the ShipIt service, Ubuntu One, and others. Besides the fact that the login process will be simplified, it will also offer a more convenient way for all the users and developers to access information or to easily communicate with each other. The actual Launchpad login service will be soon replaced by the brand-new Ubuntu single sign on service and the existing Launchpad account will be supported! Read more about it here.

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· On Februrary 18th, Michael Larabel announced the immediate availability of Phoronix Test Suite 2.4.1, which includes lots of bug fixes and various improvements over previous releases. The new release also includes updates for the Phoromatic client module. Phoronix Test Suite 2.4.1 is available for download for the Linux, OpenSolaris, BSD and Mac OS X platforms. It is also available in the repositories of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) Alpha! Read more about it here.

dots Video Clip of the WeekVideo Clip of the Week: Plymouth On Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

· For this week, we've posted a 720p High Definition video clip that shows you Red Hat's Plymouth graphical boot manager on the alpha version of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. The video has 29 seconds and it was posted by phoronix. Enjoy!

Download from SoftpediaNew Distributions:

· TEENpup Mini 2010 Beta · Dime 65 TSG Desktop 0.0.1 · Tritech Service System Community Edition 1.3 · Shackbox Air

Download from SoftpediaDistributions Updated Last Week:

· MilaX 0.5 · PLoP Linux 4.0.3 · CacheGuard OS 5.5.4 · Viper OS 2.0 · Tin Hat 20100219 · GParted LiveCD 0.5.1-3 · Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.4-3 · PaiPix Linux 10.2.19 · Webconverger 6.1 · Clonezilla LiveCD 1.2.3-37 · EeeMC 1.01

Download from SoftpediaDevelopment Releases:

· aLinux 12.9 Beta Build 98 · Tiny Core Linux 2.9 RC4 · Arch Linux 2010.02-1 (unofficial) · Nexenta OS 3.0 Alpha 5 · PC/OS 10.1 Beta 2 · Vine Linux 5.1 RC6 · SliTaz GNU/Linux 20100221 · Frugalware Linux 1.2 RC2

See you again next Monday, March 1st, for another issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly.