14 DAY TRIAL // Welcome to our first issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly! In this edition:
The first public release of Ubuntu MID Edition 8.04 was announced on June 24th. Entitled as a developer's release, this version is based on the Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop Edition and it is a project developed by the hard working team behind the Ubuntu Mobile & Embedded community and sponsored by Canonical in collaboration with the Intel Moblin community. The goal of Ubuntu MID is to take full advantage of the Mobile Internet Devices' "heart", the Intel Atom Processor! Ubuntu MID 8.04 comes packed with free applications for everyone, from an extremely useful web browser, with zoom abilities for a better Internet surfing experience and powered by the Gecko engine (the one behind the powerful Mozilla Firefox), to an indispensable e-mail client, address book software, document reading, calendar, audio and video player.
A bit later than its official release date, the first alpha version of the upcoming Ubuntu 8.10 (codename Intrepid Ibex) was announced on June 27th, and we have a HOT screenshot tour. Even if there aren't big changes compared to the final version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, released on April 24th, 2008, the Alpha 1 of Intrepid brings a brand new theme, completely redesigned, which in time will become what everyone was expecting. Among the new features, we could notice a brand new 2.6.26 Linux kernel, GNOME 2.23.4, Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Final, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, The GIMP 2.4.6 and Pidgin 2.4.2. However, the second alpha release of Ubuntu 8.10 is expected this Thursday, July 10th!
An amazing deal has happened on June 30th, probably one of the most important company acquisitions in the Linux world: Linspire was bought by Xandros. It appears that the event took place on June 19th, and the cost of the acquisition was kept secret from the media. Xandros decided to keep the most important aspects of Linspire, so employees from engineering, support and sales will still have their jobs. Linspire's CEO, Larry Kettle, will join the Xandros executive team as Vice-President of Business Development.
First of July brings us a brand new and stable update of the breathtaking Sabayon Linux. Dubbed "Ibex Poacher", Sabayon Linux 3.5 is available for x86 and x86_64 architectures, featuring:
? Linux kernel 2.6.25.9 with extended wireless, laptop and filesystem (including unionfs, aufs, squashfs, ext4 and NTFS-3g) support ? KDE 3.5.9 (KDE 4.0.5 available for download) ? GNOME 2.22.2 ? XFCE 4.4.2 ? OpenOffice 2.4 ? Firefox 3.0 ? Wine 1.1.0 ? Adobe Flash Player 9 ? Java Runtime Environment 1.6 (IcedTea) ? VirtualBox 1.5 ? aMule 2.2.0 ? ATI/AMD Catalyst 8.6 ? NVIDIA Video Driver 173.14.05, 96.43.05 and 71.86.04 (automatic selection) ? X.Org Server 1.4.2 (7.3) (with automatic input devices configuration through HAL)
On Wednesday, OpenMoko announced that it would start selling its Linux-based touch phone, Neo FreeRunner, in the US. The device comes with a limited number of applications for calling and text messages, but software can be created or installed for free without paying other taxes (and it has a large community behind it, so you will surely get your hands on the apps you might need). The Neo FreeRunner phone comes with:
? 2.8" VGA Touch Screen ? ARM9 @ 400 MHz CPU ? 802.11g WiFi capabilities ? 256MB of flash for storage ? 2D/3D Graphics Acceleration ? Bluetooth 2.0 ? GPRS (2.5G not EDGE) ? Tri band 850/1800/1900 MHz or 900/1800/1900 MHz ? assisted GPS (AGPS) ? an accelerometer that makes the device responsive to motion (3axis Motion Sensors).
The storage can be extended, as the product features a microSD slot. Its 128 of RAM and ARM 9 processor at 400 MHz allow it to multi task and also offers 2D/3D graphics acceleration. Read more about it or buy the new Neo FreeRunner here.
Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS was just released on Friday and it is the first maintenance version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), which (in case you forgot) is supported with maintenance updates and security fixes until 2011 on desktops and 2013 on servers. This release brings to its users a lot of security updates and corrections (over 200), all with a single goal: to keep Ubuntu 8.04 LTS a stable and reliable Linux distribution!
After a long time in development, Gentoo Linux 2008.0 was finally released yesterday and it seems that its developers gave it a funny code name ? "It's got what plants crave" ? as Donnie Berkholz announced on the official Gentoo site. It features:
? An improved installer; ? Better hardware support; ? The profiles were completely reworked; ? Xfce replaces GNOME on the Live CD edition; ? The x86 and amd64 architectures no longer have a Live DVD edition; ? Many updated packages: Portage 2.1.4.4, Linux kernel 2.6.24, Xfce 4.4.2, GCC 4.1.2 and Glibc 2.6.1.
Daniel Voicu brings another wonderful review for Softpedia Linux. This time it is for the nice GNOME MPlayer application, a simple, easy-to-use, Graphical User Interface for MPlayer, based heavily on the mplayerplug-in source code and which can be seen as a standalone version of that. Read this comprehensive review of GNOME MPlayer here.
Distributions Released Last Week:
? Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Kubuntu KDE4/Xubuntu/Edubuntu/Ubuntu Studio/Ubuntu JeOS/Gobuntu/MythBuntu 8.04.1 LTS (Hardy Heron) ? Schillix 0.6.7 ? Clonezilla-SysRescCD 2.6.0 ? Slamd64 12.1 ? Foresight Linux 2.0.3 ? GoblinX 2.7 Micro Editio ? Greenie Linux 3.0.4H ? Caixa M?gica 12 Live ? Elive 1.7.9 ? Ikki Boot 1.7 ? Gentoo Linux 2008.0 + Gentoo Linux 2008.0 Live CD Editon