Debian 3.1 has finally been released. It took over two years to get from Debian’s last release (Woody) to the current one. My experiences with Woody could be summed up as “stable, but really old”, so hopefully this new release will breathe some life back into the Debian user community.
Get it:
via ftp
Debian main site:
http://www.debian.org/
The KDE Project has released KDE 3.4.1. They’re calling it a ‘maintenance’ release because it’s mostly bugfixes and small alterations. Despite this, the release has some much needed changes. One of the bugs that it solves has been slowing down my work all week.
The KDE Project emphasized fixes in its 50 translations in the official release, but they also listed a page full of bugfixes at their changelog.
Some of the excellent ones:
I’ll be installing it as soon as it appears on the Gentoo servers.
A lot of websites make money off of selling T-shirts with their logo or something funny on them. I’ve seen this around for a while and it wasn’t until today that I realized the Linux community needs more stupid t-shirts. Really, I think it does.
I’m starting some sketches for a T-shirt that isn’t particularly related to this website but used the phrase ‘Certified Distro Jockey’ or something else equally nerdy. I’d totally wear it and I was wondering if anybody else was interested. I don’t expect a lot of comments on this, but if there’s a couple of people who would be interested in a shirt I’ll go ahead and make the design. All of the revenue from the shirt would be given to the favorite distro of the readers of this site (decided by poll). If anybody has ideas for the best online service to use for the shirt (I only know of CafePress) that’d be really handy.
I just head that Acer is starting sales on a Linux laptop. This is awesome news.
As far as I can tell they’re only selling it in Thailand so far. You can check out the specs for yourself at the Acer Aspire 3000 webpage. Down at the bottom - second from the end - you can see where it says ‘Linpus Linux BE.’ Linpus is not a GPL distro - it’s in the real of Xandros, Linspire, etc. Still, it appears to be a decent OS for new users doing email, movies, office stuff and other basic productivity things. All of the non-GPL, entry-level Linux distros are going to be short on configurability, but that’s to be expected.
This is a great step forward for those of us who want to see Linux become a standard OS for regular users. It’s finally become good enough that Acer expects people to want to save a few bucks and go with a non-free Linux. Maybe the next step is they’ll realize that Mandriva is even more user-friendly and they’ll go with an entirely free distro. I sure hope it doesn’t take long.
Even though this laptop is not running my ideal (at the moment) Linux distro, at least it’s cheap. Even if I bought it with Windows on it I’d just reformat it - so I’d be happy with a cheaper license no matter what software it has.
GCC, the heart of the GNU software movement, has just been released in version 4.0.
When Linux was just beginning it was nothing more than a tiny kernel created by Linus Torvalds. The GNU project is the movement that created all of KDE, Gnome, X11, and the other billions of free and open source programs that Linux users come across every day. There is one program, however, that is truly more important than all of the others.
The GNU project would never have gotten off the ground if they hadn’t deliberately made a compiler to make their code into useable systems. They couldn’t just take an existing compiler, they had to make one from scratch. The started with a very rudimentary thing called GCC which then forked until GCC 2.0 was made out of one of the highly-developed forks. It continued until now we’ve got version 4 as of yesterday or so.
What’s so great about GCC? Well, I’ll only name two things; one old and one brand new:
The Linux Blog reports on Microsoft’s announcement that the Microsoft Server 2005 will run on other operating systems besides Windows Server. This is huge news and I imagine it’s indicative of Microsoft feeling a change in the winds regarding their share of the server market.
Clete Blackwell of The Linux Blog writes:
…what Linux user would buy a Microsoft product to run on their Linux server machine? Sounds like another way to get more money. If they make a tiny profit off of it, they will keep it. It also makes them sound good. “Hey, I hear Microsoft is not so competetive anymore. They are making stuff for Linux too.”
The success of Open Office is partially due to it’s ability to run on Windows and not just on the open-source favorite Linux. I think MS is making an excellent move not to reclaim a monopoly but to avoid losing the market altogether.
Just today, actually my boss informed me that he’d like to use Microsoft Exchange Server to manage some parts of the business. All of our business hardware is running Linux so I had to tell him we’ll need to look for alternatives.
Well, Microsoft, it’s been a long time coming… but welcome to Linux.
In case you haven’t heard there’s a new Firefox for Linux released. This is, like the last two, largely a security patch that applies to Firefox and Mozilla (especially the parts of Mozilla that were introduced from Firefox).
You can find it at GetFirefox if you’re currently using a Linux browser, otherwise you can find it here:
All Platforms Firefox Release
Pure Hacking hosts a new Linux distribution. While that’s not very newsworthy in itself, this distribution is the smallest I’ve ever heard of and it has a very useful twist.
CHAOS is a tiny (6Mbyte) Linux distribution, that will boot any 586/Pentium (or better) computer into a working openMosix node, without disturbing (or even touching) the contents of the local hard disk.
CHAOS aims to be the fastest, most compact, secure and straight-forward openMosix cluster platform available.
The creator of CHAOS needed a way to similate a hacker going to work on a password file. A hacker would have a couple of months to crack the file but security companies need to be able to show clients in a live demonstration how easy their system is to crack. This is now going to be accomplished by running CHAOS on many office computers during non-working hours. The bootable CD allows the computational program to run without any access to the hard drive.
6MB linux distro? That’s really cool.
Mandrake and Connectiva became the same company a little while ago. Today Mandrake soft announced that it is now calling itself Mandriva.
Connectiva gained support as an excellent español- and português-based distribution. Mandrake became popular because of wide hardware support, ease of installation, and the incorporation of KDE (the reason it split from RedHat).
I’m hoping for good things from Mandriva. I think it’s an excellent step toward a universal, non-lethally hard distribution of Linux.
Australian IT writes:
THE Linux operating system is beginning to loosen the proprietary software industry’s hold on the Australian government software market.
The NSW government said it had established Australia’s the first whole-of-government panel to supply open source software and services to its departments and agencies.
This is an excellent example of the power of Linux and open source. It’s able not only to perform well as a server and as a desktop, but it’s dependable enough to power a whole government’s resources. This is still just the beginning, eventually all the world’s most popular software will be open source and there will just be a few niche apps (and in-house company-specific applications) that remain commercial.
For any real info on this topic I recommend you read the comments on the SlashDot post about this event.
Microsoft has finished preparations to release their 64-bit Windows OS. This is great news for anyone who already owns a 64-bit processor or who has been waiting for the right time to buy one.
Andre Da Costa writes:
The 64-bit operating system has been long awaited by both Intel and especially Advanced Micro Devices, whose 64-bit Athlon and Opteron microprocessors have been forced to run on beta versions of the operating system. Linux distribution vendors, on the other hand, have offered 64-bit versions for months.
This is very significant for the Linux community. The architecture that Windows supports will (for a few years at least) dictate what the majority of Linux users can use. It’s always the most affordable computing experience to follow mainstream hardware. Now that Microsoft has supported 64-bit processing there will be desktop and laptop systems developed by major manufacturers (Dell, Acer, Toshiba, Sony, HP, etc.) running 64-bit. This means a greater selection for 64-bit Linux systems.
This is also a great example of the power of open source development. Microsoft has just finished their first release of Windows 64-bit but Linux has had support since 2003 (maybe earlier).
Ahead Software has announced that it’s releasing a version of Nero Burning ROM for Linux.
As Antrix writes “I don’t see any reason for K3b users to switch to this because there’s nothing new by way of functionality” but this is still a significant move.
Each time a major Windows software company develops an app for Linux it is a step toward a more widely used Linux. And that’s good.
Novell has officially announced that Suse 9.3 will be shipping in April of this year. They’ve also announced what improvements there will be in the new release.
useful improvements
There are several software and driver updates that will make this release of Suse Linux an excellent upgrade.
serious improvements:
I didn’t realize how major the difference between Suse 9.2 and Suse 9.3 was going to be. There are some huge pieces of software innovation to be built into this release.
I’m really, really excited about Xen. I don’t have the cash for a VMWare licence and I’m huge on experimenting with different operating systems (as you can probably tell by my Distro Installs category). If anyone has used Xen before, please leave a comment and describe how it went.
I don’t know if there will be a Suse 9.3 torrent available, but I’m definitely installing Suse 9.3 the day it’s released.
Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel and founding father of the GNU/Linux revolution, has switched his computer to an apple.
My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 ( aka PowerPC 970 ) - it’s physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don’t think you can call it a Mac any more ; )
Oh, and part of it is that I got the machine for free. I’m really a technology whore.
So there’s the catch that Linus isn’t running apple’s OSX along with the computer. He claims that he’s interested in trying a new processor architecture for kernel work.
Linus started work on the Linux kernel nearly two decades ago and intended for it to only run on x86 (Pentium/Athlon) architecture. Now he’s experimenting with another.
I’ve heard several people tell me they’ve removed OSX from their apple so they could install a Linux distribution that they preferred. Lucky for them Linux has wide support for different platforms. In fact, Linus added:
And don’t read anything really deep into that - Linux supports 20+ architectures, and the fact that I personally think that two of them are more likely to be the most relevant really doesn’t mean all that much. It’s just a personal quirk of mine.
Linus Torvalds now lives in Portland, OR and continues work on improving the Linux kernel.
According to InfoWorld.com Novell is preparing a new version of Suse Linux. Version 9.3 is a response to Novells belief that many Linux users have now switched to Suse and are desiring more technical and more updated software packages.
Version 9.3, expected to be available through retail stories in the United States and online by mid-April, contains about 1,000 open source applications aimed at more technical users in both the business and home markets. It also contains previews of upcoming Linux-based server technologies including the XEN virtualization environment and a more intuitive search engine
We’ll be anticipating the release of Suse 9.3 in April of this year, hopefully it will have increased support for wifi cards and will include KDE 3.4
BSSteph at The Internet Hammer Enterprise has provided us with some beautiful screencaptures and video captures of the cutting edge of KDE 3.4. I’ve always been a little jealous of Apple computers with excellent graphic rendering and a very pretty GUI, but it looks like that’s all over now. Check out the KDE eye candy
In this round of eye candy, the active window (i.e., the one I’m working in) is drawn normally, but the other windows, which you can faintly see, are transparent. This is an experimental feature for an experimental feature, so it’s more than a bit buggy, but it’s fun to play with.
The video captures of the newest KDE (KDE 3.4) in use are also also available on The Internet Hammer Enterprise. There are versions with both Xvid and MPEG.
I can’t wait to use the next release of KDE.