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DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world


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DistroWatch Weekly
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 280, 1 December 2008
Welcome to this year's 47th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! This week's DWW feature story looks at the global economic crisis and its impact on Linux distributions and businesses. It turns out that the release of Fedora 10 isn't the only good news for Red Hat as a major Wall Street analyst sees a bright future for the company. Meanwhile Mandriva is struggling financially and a well-known and well-respected member of the Linux community was axed by the Paris-based company sparking a truly harsh reaction. Novell took a step to address community concerns by changing the openSUSE license. In other news, Phoronix published the results of benchmark tests comparing the performance of the newly released Fedora 10 with Ubuntu 8.10, a new distribution called Glendix brings Plan 9 to Linux, a detailed case study examines Pardus Linux, and the new graphical installer in VectorLinux 6.0 Beta 1 gets a close look. Finally, we get a progress update on FreeBSD 7.1 and some tantalizing hints about the release of Slackware 12.2. Happy reading!


Content:


👁 Image


Feature Story


No matter where you are in the world, it's pretty much impossible to look at the news of the day without hearing or reading about the global economic crisis: financial markets in turmoil, bank failures, companies reducing their workforce, and so on. If we look at the businesses that support the major Linux distributions and even the funding that many smaller distributions depend on, we see that the impact of troubled times on Linux can't be talked about in a general way. Some Linux companies and Linux distributions are still doing well while others have serious and obvious problems.

A CNET News article published on Wednesday shows that Red Hat continues to fare well. Despite a tumbling stock price, Matt Asay's article points to a leading analyst, Mark Murphy of Piper Jaffray, recommending buying Red Hat stock. Jaffray is optimistic about Red Hat's future, noting that "Red Hat's billings have grown at an average rate of 31% - representing clear market share gains." Asay goes on to point out that Red Hat's open source business model may be ideally suited to the current economic climate: "Red Hat has shown no signs of slowing, with its subscription model able to weather the current recession: even if it doesn't sell any new subscriptions, it can tread water and/or grow with its existing customer base, something that license-revenue driven companies simply can't afford to do."

Mandriva, on the other hand, continues to struggle financially. This week, new CEO Hervé Yahi decided that the contracts of most remote employees would be terminated in what appears to be a cost cutting measure. The news was originally broken by Vincent Danen in his Linsec blog. The post was later amended to report that Danen would be retained by Mandriva, but Adam Williamson was not so fortunate. "Well, I was rather expecting this after reading Vincent’s blog this morning (and to be honest, doing some basic mental arithmetic on our recent financial results), but I have been told that as of December 31st, I’ll no longer be working for Mandriva, as all external contractors are being canned."

Reaction across the Linux blogosphere and in the Mandriva community forums was quick and, with the notable exception of a couple of posts in the comments section of last week's DistroWatch Weekly, nearly unanimous in support of Adam Williamson and critical of Hervé Yahi. Perhaps the harshest and most colorful criticism of Yahi came from Planète Béranger who responded to Vincent Danen's original post by saying "Hervé Yahi, le couillon du siècle. (Translation: Hervé Yahi, the schmuck of the century.) To the revised news that Vincent Danen was staying but Adam Williamson was out, Béranger added: "Hervé Yahi, le plus couillon de tous les couillons du monde. (Translation: Hervé Yahi, the biggest schmuck of all the schmucks in the world.) While others were more temperate in their comments, the sentiment was essentially the same.

Adam Williamson moderates the Mandriva community forum and has effectively been the voice of the company and the distribution for the English speaking world. He posts regularly to the comments section of DistroWatch Weekly. Adam frequently explained the rationale behind what was included in the distribution and staunchly defended Mandriva in response to critics, always doing so in a polite, respectful, and informed manner. Mandriva's relationship with the Linux community will definitely suffer with Adam's departure at the end of the year.

Finally, Novell, which has been successfully building its own Linux business, took an important step to answer at least one of the concerns frequently voiced in the community. A Wednesday announcement on the openSUSE Spotlight web site reported the death of the EULA (End User License Agreement). Beginning with version 11.1, openSUSE will have the same license as Fedora. Many in the Linux community objected to the click-through EULA which is structured like and reminiscent of a commercial, proprietary software license. This move is undoubtedly designed to allay the suspicions many in the Linux community still have regarding Novell and their commitment to FLOSS software. In light of the current economic turmoil, mending fences with the Linux community and building as many bridges as possible is definitely in Novell's interest.

Miscellaneous News


👁 Fedora
On Friday Phoronix published an article by Michael Larabel detailing the results of detailed benchmark testing, comparing the newly release Fedora 10 and Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). The results: "In past distribution comparisons at Phoronix, the performance differences have been larger than what we experienced with Fedora 10 and Ubuntu 8.10. Both the x86 and x86_64 editions had performed nearly identical. In fact, the results are so close that it's hard to call a winner in any of the benchmarks."

👁 Fedora


Fedora 10 - with a new graphical boot system
(full image size: 1,047kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)


* * * * *

OS News published a story about a new distribution, Glendix, which promises to be truly different from any distro released to date. What makes Glendix unique is the incorporation of Plan 9, developed at Bell Labs, to be a replacement for UNIX. "Plan 9 was written from scratch, and made many radical departures from standard UNIX conventions. For instance, in Plan 9, everything really is a file; even the window a program is running in is represented as a file in a hierarchical file system. Every program in Plan 9 sees every possible resource as a file. Plan 9 is also fully distributed so that parts of the operating system can run on different machines."

Glendix, when released, will be Linux without GNU. The article quotes the developers: "In this project, we decouple Linux from GNU utilities, and port Plan 9 user-space applications to run on the Linux kernel. In summary, we are combining the Plan 9 user-space with the Linux kernel-space - resulting in a hybrid operating system."

Glendix has not had a public beta as yet but those who are curious and sufficiently technically-minded can examine the source code.

* * * * *

👁 Pardus Linux
A detailed case study of Pardus Linux was published at OSOR.eu last Tuesday, providing an interesting look at the Turkish distribution. Pardus Linux began in March 2004 and its developers are sponsored by the Turkish National Research Institute for Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE), an affiliate of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). While Pardus Linux clearly has a worldwide following, it was originally conceived as a Turkish national project and Turkish speakers were the original intended audience. Pardus Linux is funded by the Turkish government. According to the study, initial implementation costs were €5,000,000 - 10,000,000 and annual costs are in the range of €1,000,000 - 5,000,000.

The study describes the impact of Pardus Linux: "Pardus provides a very important public good to be used by the whole FLOSS community, in Turkey and abroad. The Pardus Linux operating system is being deployed and used in many government and other public services, including the Turkish military and defense sector, in radio and telecommunication, health and education, as well as private vendors. The use of Pardus in all these sectors and institutions will save several millions of euros in taxpayers' money."

* * * * *

👁 VectorLinux
On Friday, Scottish Linux blogger Steve Lawson took a detailed look at the brand new graphical installer in VectorLinux Standard 6.0 Beta 1, which was released two days earlier. Unfortunately for Lawson, a self-described "big fan of VectorLinux," the admittedly early beta version of the installer did not work well. The LILO bootloader failed to install properly and he was unable to boot into the OS, according to the report in his Red Devil's Blog. Others, as reported in the VectorLinux forum, have successfully installed the beta and have found the GUI installer to be problem free. It should be noted that this week's DistroWatch Weekly was written on a machine running VectorLinux Standard 6.0 Beta 1.

Lawson took the failure in stride and believes that "...possibly the only thing - which may have held this distribution back from a regular top 10 spot on the DistroWatch rankings might be its lack of a GUI (Graphical User Interface) installer."

Released Last Week
Linux From Scratch 6.4

Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a free book that provides instructions for compiling a basic Linux operating system from scratch, offered primarily as an educational tool for those who wish to learn more about Linux internals. A brand new version was released today: "The Linux From Scratch community is pleased to announce the release of LFS version 6.4. This release includes numerous changes to LFS 6.3, including update to Linux kernel 2.6.27.4, GCC 4.3.2, glibc 2.8, and security fixes. It also includes a large amount of editorial work on the explanatory material throughout the book, improving both the clarity and accuracy of the text." Visit the project's news page to read the brief release announcement.


Greenie Linux 4I

Greenie Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution customized for Slovak and Czech users. A new version, now based on "Intrepid Ibex", was announced earlier today: "A new version of Greenie Linux, based on Ubuntu 8.10 'Intrepid Ibex' is here! Main changes: Greenie is now based on Ubuntu 8.10, with new versions of the included applications and improved hardware support. Greenport has been re-written, it's easier to use even for beginners. Also, Bash aliases have been updated. Tutorials and drivers for most common modems from LinuxOS.sk are also included. Two Greenie extra menus, called 'Green apple' (experimental) and 'Red apple' (root) now work better and have new functions. Some of the popular programs in Greenie include: MPlayer, VLC, Audacious, Banshee, Firefox, Opera, Inkscape, GColors, WINE and many others, all in their newest versions." Visit the project's news page to read the complete release announcement.


👁 Greenie Linux


Greenie Linux 4I - now based on Ubuntu 8.10 'Intrepid Ibex'
(full image size: 1,911kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)


Fedora 10

The Fedora project has announced the release of Fedora 10: "The Fedora Project, a Red Hat sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration project, today announced the availability of Fedora 10, the latest version of its free, open source operating system distribution. This release includes the premiere of a new graphical boot system called Plymouth, designed to speed up the boot process by taking advantage of a new kernel mode setting feature. Fedora 10 also features increased hardware support for a vast array of webcams, and better handling of printers via both direct physical connections and networks. Further, PackageKit, a software management tool that originally debuted in Fedora 9, has been extended in this release to provide on-demand codec software installation." Read the press release and check out the detailed release notes for more information.


Caos Linux NSA 1.0

Greg Kurtzer has announced the release of Caos Linux NSA 1.0, a light-weight, stable and secure distribution of Linux for servers, compute nodes and network appliances: "span class="Quote">The Caos team of developers and contributors from Infiscale are proud to announce the public release of Caos Linux NSA version 1. Caos Linux is a community-managed and openly-maintained distribution of Linux focusing on areas where Linux naturally leads and excels: high performance computation (HPC), servers (especially LAMP and general web), and custom appliances (such as file servers and firewalls). This release identifies the stabilization and validation of the core operating system, fully tested on some of the world's fastest public and private systems and architectures. Careful tweaking and optimizations have resulted in a very streamlined, light-weight operating system still suitable for a large spectrum of uses, from simple desktops to petaflop supercomputers." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.


Poseidon Linux 3.1

Poseidon Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution with a good collection of academic and scientific applications for GIS/maps, numerical modeling, 2D/3D/4D visualization, statistics and graphics. An updated version 3.1 was released yesterday. What's new? "Based on Ubuntu 8.04.1 with security updates until 2008-10-17; for the first time Poseidon Linux comes in 32-bit and 64-bit editions; updated packages - Firefox 3.0.3, WINE 1.0, GRASS 6.3, R 2.7.2, Spring 5.0 in English, MB System 5.1.1 beta 23; new additions - VirtualBox OSE, Open Universe Simulator, Gwyddion, SagCAD, Emacs (with support for Prolog and Gri), Maxima, Prolog, Xetex, ghemical, Fontforge, Hugin panorama editor, Gnumeric, Bluefish, Avidemux, Audacity; Terraview is not included in the 64-bit edition." Visit the distribution's home page (in Portuguese) to read the release announcement (a changelog in English is available here).


CrunchBang Linux 8.10.01

Philip Newborough has announced the release of CrunchBang Linux 8.10.01, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the light-weight Openbox window manager and GTK+ applications: "The final build of CrunchBang Linux 8.10.01 is now available. This is the third release of the distribution and as the version number suggests, it is based on Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. As with previous releases, 8.10.01 has been built from scratch using the Ubuntu minimal CD. What's new? As well as being based on the latest version Ubuntu, this release sees a number of changes: a new darker theme; tablaunch has been removed; dmenu has been included; some additional default shortcut keys added, including main menu, logout and dmenu; OpenOffice.org replaced by AbiWord and Gnumeric; AcidRip removed; Twitux replaced by Gwibber; Mirage replaced by GPicView; VLC removed in favour of Totem, VLC is now a Qt 4 application; GNOME Power Manager enabled by default." Read the release announcement and release notes for more information.


FreeBSD 6.4

FreeBSD 6.4, a new stable version of the project's legacy 6.x branch, has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE. At this time 6.4-RELEASE is expected to be the last of the 6-STABLE releases. Some of the highlights: new and much-improved NFS Lock Manager (NLM) client; support for the Camellia cipher; boot loader changes allow, among other things, booting from USB devices and booting from GPT-labeled devices with GPT-enabled BIOSes; DVD install ISO images for amd64 and i386; KDE updated to 3.5.10, GNOME updated to 2.22.3; updates for BIND, Sendmail, OpenPAM, and other packages." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information.


GParted LiveCD 0.3.9-13

A new stable version of GParted LiveCD, a Debian-based specialist distribution with a collection of hard disk management utilities, has been released. What's new? "This release is a bug-fix release with some minor updates; based on Debian 'Lenny' on 2008-11-27, Linux kernel 2.6.26; a program called MC_HxEd was added; package cryptsetup was added; instead of entering X window automatically, we can choose to configure xorg.conf first; new mechanism to start GParted LiveCD; two more boot parameters gl_numlk and gl_capslk were added to control numlock and scrlock; ifupdown and dhcp3-client were added; bug fixed - PartImage was missing." See the release notes for more details. At the same time, the project has also announced a new testing release of GParted LiveCD 0.4.0-1, with the newly released GParted 0.4.0 and Linux kernel 2.6.26.


Parted Magic 3.2

Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 3.2, the latest version of another distribution specializing in hard disk partitioning: "Parted Magic 3.2. This is mostly a bug-fix release for the 3.x series with a few new features. Some of the new updates include GParted 0.4.0, Linux kernel 2.6.27.7, Xarchiver 0.5.1, dc3dd 6.12.2, and hdparm 9.2. Jason fixed the disk wiping program and some other issues were addressed as well. The newest and most powerful new feature is 'installpkg' from Slackware Linux. You can now add programs to Parted Magic by simply adding them to the pmodules directory and booting the machine. Parted Magic automatically installs them at boot. There are several tested TGZ packages available in the forum for download. Make sure you change the tmpfs_size= boot parameter to allow more RAM for your additional packages." See the release announcement and changelog for additional information.


* * * * *

Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
Upcoming Releases and Announcements


👁 FreeBSD
On Friday Ken Smith posted a status update on the upcoming FreeBSD 7.1 release to the FreeBSD mailing list. "As far as the 7.1-REL process goes two issues that got classified as show-stoppers got worked out right around the time work on a security advisory came along. Progress on both releases got unblocked at the same time so some work has been done with 7.1 (some folks have already noticed the branch was done) but we focused a bit more on finishing 6.4. We expect to get the 7.1-RC1 builds started Sunday. If testing doesn't turn up any more show-stoppers, 7.1-RC2 will be done about 1.5 weeks after RC1, and 7.1-REL will be done about 1.5 weeks after RC2."

* * * * *



👁 Slackware
For the past 10 days, there have been tantalizing tidbits indicating that the release of Slackware 12.2 will happen sooner rather than later. The first, written by Patrick Volkerding himself, turned up in the Slackware current changelog: "These are some of the more important updates for X.Org. For the last several days we have been building and testing the very newest X updates, and it seems that the more intrusive updates are probably best left to develop until sometimes after the coming stable Slackware 12.2 release." A similar, but less authoritative hint came from SlackBuilds.org this week. Of course only Patrick Volkerding knows when the new release will debut for certain, but Slackware users should feel encouraged by these notes.

* * * * *

Summary of expected upcoming releases
DistroWatch.com News
November 2008 donation: Dillo receives €115.00

We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the November 2008 DistroWatch.com donation is Dillo, a small, fast and light-weight web browser.

Although Dillo is unlikely to ever break into the big league of leading web browsers -- mainly due to its lack of support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and other modern web technologies -- its extremely modest memory requirements are a blessing for anybody using an older, underpowered computer. Furthermore, its speed makes it an ideal browser for perusing locally stored documentation or simple HTML web pages. The recently released version 2.0 marks a major upgrade, now based on Fast Light Toolkit (FLTK) 2.0, rather than GTK+ 1.x. A large number of other improvements are documented in the project's changelog.

👁 Dillo


Dillo - a simple, but lightning-fast web browser, perfect for underpowered computers
(full image size: 68kB, screen resolution: 788x613 pixels)


The Dillo project has not acknowledged the DistroWatch donation by the time of publishing this week's DistroWatch Weekly.

As always, this monthly donations program is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. These vendors contributed US$50.00 each towards this month's donation to Dillo.

Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the program (figures in US dollars): Since the launch of the Donations Program in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$19,583 to various open source software projects.

* * * * *

New distributions added to database
  • Wifislax. Wifislax is a Slackware-based live CD containing a variety of security and forensics tools. The distribution's main claim to fame is the integration of various unofficial network drivers into the Linux kernel, thus providing out-of-the-box support for a large number of wired and wireless network cards.

* * * * *

New distributions added to waiting list
  • 4bak. 4bak is a Slax-based live USB image with a collection of forensics tools, backup and recovery applications. The desktop is a mix of Fluxbox and Rox. The 4bak live USB image is configured to dual boot with DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke), an application that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers.

  • Zorin OS. Zorin OS is the latest addition to the ever growing family of Ubuntu-based distributions. The project's inaugural release is expected in early January 2009.

* * * * *

DistroWatch database summary


* * * * *

And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next installment will be published on Monday, 8 December 2008 when I will once again be filling in. Until next week,

Caitlyn Martin


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Archives
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Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME
Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support
Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels
Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media
Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report
Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories
Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools
Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support
Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository
Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release
Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued
Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life
Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage
Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor
Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating
Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35
Full list of all issues

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Questions and answers: Tweaking X.Org drivers for better Intel graphics support
Questions and answers: Mounting network shares at boot
Tips and tricks: Copying a VCD
Questions and answers: What happens when a Linux system runs out of memory, terminating processes after a set time
Tips and tricks: Combining commands in the shell
Myths and misunderstandings: ZFS
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