14 DAY TRIAL // Welcome to our 3rd issue of Softpedia Linux Weekly! In this edition:
After no more than 87 days from the last stable release of the Linux kernel, Sunday evening Linus Torvalds announced the immediate availability of the Linux kernel 2.6.26, a version expected by many of you ? and a version that brings support for read-only bind mounts, x86 Page Attribute Tables (PAT), improved webcam support with the help of a driver for UVC devices, and many other improvements. Below is a list with the new features to be found in Linux kernel 2.6.26:
? Read-only bind mounts ? KVM ported to IA64, PPC and S390 ? Improved webcam support ? Wireless mesh networking (802.11s) draft support ? x86 PAT support ? Per-process securebits ? KGDB ? Device whitelist on cgroups ? Memtest ? Export BDI attributes in sysfs ? /proc/pid/mountinfo ? Generic semaphores
Download Linux kernel 2.6.26 sources and compile your own customized kernel right now from Softpedia.
On Tuesday, Canonical announced an Ubuntu security notice regarding some more Linux kernel vulnerabilities found in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, 7.10, 7.04 and 6.06 LTS distributions (also applies to Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu). The kernel vulnerabilities could lead to DoS (Denial of Service) attacks and loss of privacy, therefore you are strongly advised to upgrade your Ubuntu distribution right now. Don't forget to reboot the computer after this upgrade, otherwise the changes will not be made!
The release candidate of KDE 4.1 was announced on Tuesday by the KDE Community. KDE 4.1 RC1 was released for testing purposes only and for finding the remaining bugs, so that KDE 4.1 be ready for production use (available at the end of this month, on the 29th).
Would you like to see KDE 4 in action? Download the openSUSE-based KDE 4 Live CD based on this development release right now from Softpedia.
MontaVista Software announced on Tuesday that its Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) 5.0 Linux distribution was compliant with the Linux Foundation's Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 4.0 specification. It has also earned Linux Standard Base (LSB) 3.0 certification, and is Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) logo certified. At the moment, there are no other carrier grade Linux distributions that have all these three specifications. Dan Cauchy, senior director of market development, carrier and mobile platforms, MontaVista Software said: "As the provider of the world?s most widely-deployed carrier grade Linux, MontaVista is committed to supplying network equipment providers (NEPs) with the highest quality operating system. Our compliance and certification is another demonstration of our leadership in upholding the standards set by the Linux community by providing superior Linux solutions to our customers." Read more about it here.
French developer Yann Le Doar? announced the immediate availability of his Linux distribution, LinuxConsole 1.0.2008, a version which has been created from a brand new toolchain that's based on GCC 4.2.2 and Glibc 2.7. Moreover, the 2.4 Linux kernel was taken out from this release and replaced with version 2.6.25.4 (patched with squashfs and aufs).
In LinuxConsole 1.0.2008, you will find:
? GNOME 2.20 ? MPlayer 1.0 RC2 (with built-in DVD navigation support) ? The GIMP 2.4.3 ? Firefox 2.0.0.14 with Flash and mozplugin ? Thunderbird 2 ? X.Org 7.3 ? Abiword 2.4 ? NTFS-3G 1.1120 ? Extreme Tux Racer ? Foobillard ? Frozen Bubble ? Wormux
Download LinuxConsole 1.0.2008 right now from Softpedia.
With Fedora 9 as its basis and a huge number of applications, released under the GNU GPL v3, BLAG Linux 90000 made its appearance into the Linux world Tuesday evening. Being a 100% free distribution with all the tools needed for a desktop computer, this release is based on a Linux-libre kernel, a Linux kernel with non-free software removed!
BLAG 90000 comes on a single CD, it is very easy to install, being also user friendly. It includes a repository that combines parts from Fedora, FreshRPMS, Dries, ATrpms, Livna, Planet CCRMA and its own specific packages.
BLAG 90000 brings you:
? Linux Kernel Libre 2.6.25.9 ? GNOME 2.22.2 ? Pulse Audio Sound Server ? The GIMP 2.4.6 - Image editor ? Mozilla Firefox 3.0 - Web browser ? gFTP 2.0.18 - FTP client ? Pidgin 2.4.2 - Multi-protocol instant messenger ? Liferea 1.4.15 - RSS feed reader ? Audacity 1.3.2 Beta - Audio editor ? gLabels 2.2.2 - Label and business card creation software ? ...and much more!
Download BLAG 90000 right now from Softpedia.
SliTaz Cooking, a development edition of the SliTaz Linux, which includes many bug fixes and new features, was released on Tuesday. If you're wondering what's new in this version, let us tell you that SliTaz Linux now has the ability to boot from the Internet using the gPXE project, a network bootloader. It includes a versatile MPlayer multimedia player, the Notecase notes manager and built-in support for XFS filesystem into the Linux kernel.
Believe it or not, SliTaz Linux provides a lot of applications, nice desktop effects and even a ready-to-use web server in no more than 28.6 MB ISO image! Moreover, at this size, SliTaz is extremely fast and light! Among its features, we can notice:
? Openbox window manager; ? Ready to use Web server powered by LightTPD with PHP and CGI support; ? Sound support provided by Alsa mixer, audio player and CD ripper/encoder; ? Chat, mail and FTP clients; ? SSH client and server powered by Dropbear; ? Database engine with SQLite; ? Tools to create, edit or burn CD or DVD images; ? Home made graphical boxes to command line utilities; ? More than 440 packages easily installable from the mirror; ? Active and friendly community.
Download SliTaz Linux right now from Softpedia.
On Thursday, Rene Mayrhofer announced version 2.6 of the Gibraltar Firewall, a Linux firewall distribution based on Debian. According to the developers, this will be the last release that will use Linux kernel 2.4, as the next Gibraltar versions will use Linux kernel 2.6.
Gibraltar Firewall 2.6 offers improved traffic shaping performance (the iptables marking rules were re-ordered and the pre-defined traffic classes were improved), allows SSL Explorer plugins to be installed, has support for Snort 2.7.0, full integration of the Puresight Enterprise edition for user-based authorization and reporting, a web interface module (created to configure Snort as IDS), and a brand new SpamAssassin module for language classification, which can be configured through the web interface, just like the others. Read more about Gibraltar Firewall 2.6 here.
Download Gibraltar Firewall 2.6 right now from Softpedia.
The CentOS development team proudly announced, on Thursday, the Live CD edition of CentOS 5.2 (for i386 architectures). This edition is based on the CentOS 5.2 i386 Linux distribution, and it offers the possibility to perform a network-based installation, thanks to the "Network Install" option. Among the included software, we can notice:
? OpenOffice.org 2.3.0 ? Mozilla Firefox 3.0 ? Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0 ? Pidgin 2.3.1 ? Scribus 1.3.3.2 ? Xchat 2.6.6 ? K3b 0.12.17 ? The GIMP 2.2.13 ? QTParted 0.4 ? Nmap 4 and NMapFE 4.1 ? Samba 3.0.28 ? memtest86+-1.65 ? Traceroute
Download CentOS 5.2 Live CD Edition right now from Softpedia.
Another week, another review made by Daniel Voicu for Softpedia Linux. This time, it?s for the Almanah Diary application, a small and easy to use personal diary manager with basic linking and editing abilities, database encryption, printing and search support. Read this comprehensive review of Almanah Diary 0.4.0 here.
Distributions Released Last Week:
? Freezy Linux 1.4.2 ? GNUstep Live CD 1.9 ? Incognito Live CD/USB 20080109.1 ? Toorox 07.2008 + Toorox 07.2008-KDE4 ? m0n0wall 1.3 Beta 13 ? KDE 4.0 Live CD 1.0.98 ? nUbuntu 8.04 Alpha ? TFM Linux 3.2 Server + TFM Linux 3.2 Workstation ? Vixta.org 9.03 ? Linux Mint Xfce Community Edition 5.0 RC1 ? Puppy Linux 4.1 Alpha 4 ? ClarkConnect 4.3 RC2 ? BeleniX 0.7.1 ? Absolute Linux 12.1.04