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 Latest News and Updates |
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| A d v e r t i s e m e n t |
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| 2010-03-10 |
NEW • Distribution Release: VortexBox 1.2 |
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Andrew Gillis has announced the release of VortexBox 1.2, a Fedora-based Linux distribution with the goal of turning an unused computer into an easy-to-use music server or jukebox: "VortexBox 1.2 released. The VortexBox community has been working hard on this release. We have added a lot of new features to make VortexBox the best NAS for SqueezeBox. These include adding the new SqueezeBox Server 7.4.2 and fixing some critical bugs in VortexBox Player. VortexBox Player is now the highest resolutions (192/24) player available that is compatible with SqueezeBox Server (SBS). The new package manager allows new software packages to be installed from the GUI. The Sonos web GUI can now be installed from the GUI making VortexBox the best NAS for Sonos players. We have fixed the MP3 encoding with better support for genre and cover art that works well in all applications." Consult the complete release announcement for additional information. Download (MD5): vortexbox-1.2.iso (537MB). |
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| 2010-03-10 |
NEW • Development Release: Unity Linux 2010 RC1 |
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Matthew Dawkins has announced the availability of the first release candidate for Unity Linux 2010, a minimalist distribution and live CD based on Mandriva Linux: "The Unity Linux project is pleased to announce its first candidate for release, 2010 RC1. We have taken the last nine weeks to provide many needed fixes and continual updates to the core offering of our software. Changelog: updated X.Org to 1.7.5; new kernel version 2.6.31.12; filetriggers and other minor bugs were fixed for rpm5; Smart 1.3 and the addition of smart-utils for mirror automation. The repositories now contain many up-to-date desktop environments which can be installed with the use of the 'task' meta-packages. Recent additions include KDE 4.4.1, GNOME 2.28.1, Openbox 3.4.11, Xfce 4.6.1, Enlightenment 0.16.999.063." Read the rest of the release announcement for additional notes. Download: Unity32-2010-RC1.iso (238MB, MD5), Unity64-2010-RC1.iso (238MB, MD5). |
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| 2010-03-09 |
NEW • Development Release: Fedora 13 Alpha |
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Jesse Keating has announced the availability of the first alpha release of Fedora 13: "The Fedora 13 'Goddard' alpha release is available. Among the top features for end users, we have: automatic print driver installation so when you plug in a USB printer, Fedora will automatically offer to install drivers for it if needed; automatic installation of language packs; redesigned user management interface; color management to better set and control your colors for displays, printers, and scanners; NetworkManager improvements include CLI; experimental 3D extended to free Nouveau driver for NVIDIA cards." See the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download (torrents): F13-Alpha-i686-Live.iso (835MB, SHA256, torrent), F13-Alpha-i686-Live-KDE.iso (714MB, SHA256, torrent), F13-Alpha-x86_64-Live.iso (842MB, SHA256, torrent), F13-Alpha-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso (705MB, SHA256, torrent). |
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| 2010-03-09 |
NEW • Development Release: MCNLive Kris Beta 1 |
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MCNLive, a Mandriva-based distribution and live CD, has been resurrected by the members of the Dutch Mandriva Club. The first beta of the brand-new MCNLive Kris, is now available for download: "After a few years of silence around MCNLive, here we are again with a brand new MCNLive release, based on Mandriva 2010.0. It won't have all the nice features you might remember from MCNLive, but the most important things are there. Copy2ram is present, remastering on-the-fly is possible again and even booting from USB is no problem at all. MCNLive Kris is based upon a fully updated Mandriva 2010.0 release, with KDE SC 4.3 as desktop environment. SMPlayer is added for your multimedia needs and since we do have a 'remaster' option, we added K3b to enable you to burn the remastered image directly. Firefox is the default web browser but you can use Konqueror from the menu if you wish." Here is the full release announcement with a screenshot. Download: mcnlive-kris-beta1.iso (377MB, MD5). |
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| 2010-03-09 |
NEW • Development Release: PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta 1 |
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The first beta build of PCLinuxOS 2010 has been released: "PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta 1 features 2.6.32.8 kernel using the BFS scheduler for maximum desktop performance on i686 computers. This kernel supports up to 4 GB of memory. A PAE kernel is available from the Synaptic package manager providing up to 64 GB of memory support. In addition, ext4 support is also available. A nicely customized KDE 4.4.1 desktop that is both beautiful and very fast with the latest KDE applications. A unified KDE/GTK+ theme included to provide a consistent look and feel between KDE and GTK+ applications. Firefox also uses KDE dialogs. Reworked menu system with less subcategories to make it easy and fast to find your applications. Plymouth bootsplash available on installed system for cool graphic effects. Additional themes available from the software repository." Read the rest of the release announcement for a complete list of new features and download links. Get the installable live CD image from here: pclinuxos-2010-beta1.iso (694MB, MD5). |
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| 2010-03-08 |
NEW • Development Release: SME Server 8.0 Beta 5 |
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Ian Wells has announced the availability of the fifth beta release of SME Server 8.0, a CentOS-based server distribution: "The SME Server development team is pleased to announce the release of SME Server 8.0beta5 which is based on CentOS 5.4 and will be the next major release of SME Server. Major changes in beta 5. The policy is to stick with upstream updates unless there are compelling reasons not to. The number of customers unable to run the software they want because of the Samba and PHP versions constituted a compelling reason. Samba 3.4.3 - has been updated from sources provided by ClearOS. This version of Samba provides support for Windows 7 domain logins. PHP 5.2.10 - is provided by the Red Hat Application Stack v2. 5.2 is needed by recent web applications such as OScommerce." Read the complete release announcement for a detailed list of changes. Download: smeserver-8.0beta5-i386.iso (643MB, MD5). Also released today was the first release candidate for SME Server 7.5. |
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| 2010-03-08 |
NEW • Distribution Release: Frugalware Linux 1.2 |
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Miklós Vajna has announced the release of Frugalware Linux 1.2, a general-purpose, community-built distribution for intermediate Linux users: "The Frugalware developer team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.2, our twelfth stable release. No new features have been added since 1.2rc2, but 62 changes have been made to fix minor bugs. If you didn't follow the changes during the pre-releases, here are the most important changes since 1.1: up to date packages - Linux kernel 2.6.32.8, GNU C library 2.11.1, X.Org 7.5, GNOME 2.28, KDE 4.3.5; KMS (Kernel Mode-Setting) is now enabled by default for Intel and Radeon cards; PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) is now part of the base system; introduced devtmpfs - you can now exclude /dev from backups, along with /proc and /sys; upgraded KDE (and related) packages to the 4.x branch...." See the full release announcement for further information. Download (SHA1): frugalware-1.2-i686-dvd1.iso (4,283MB, torrent), frugalware-1.2-x86_64-dvd1.iso (4,290MB, torrent). |
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| 2010-03-07 |
NEW • Distribution Release: NuTyX 2009.3 |
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Thierry Nuttens has announced the release of NuTyX 2009.3, a French desktop Linux distribution with custom package management. This is the fourth update in the 2009 series; while the base system, the C library and the compiler remains unchanged throughout the 2009.x releases, a number of small problems have been corrected. For example the Mozilla browser is now in French and the Xfce, GNOME (2.28.2) and KDE (4.4.1) desktops have all been updated to their latest versions. Other important package updates include OpenOffice.org 3.2.0, KOffice 2.1.1, Pidgin 2.6.6 and CUPS 1.4.2. The default Linux kernel has also been upgraded to version 2.6.33. Read the rest of the release announcement (in French) for further details. Quick download links to the four desktop-oriented editions: NuTyX_i686-2009.3-LXDE.iso (336MB, MD5), NuTyX_i686-2009.3-XFCE.iso (483MB, MD5), NuTyX_i686-2009.3-GNOME.iso (592MB, MD5), NuTyX_i686-2009.3-KDE.iso (631MB, MD5). |
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| 2010-03-06 |
NEW • Development Release: Nexenta Core Platform 3.0 Beta 1 |
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Anil Gulecha has announced the availability of the first beta release of Nexenta Core Platform 3.0, a free and open-source operating system combining the OpenSolaris kernel with GNU application userland, Debian utilities and Ubuntu software packages: "On behalf of the Nexenta project, I'd like to announce the availability of Nexenta Core Platform (NCP) 3.0 Beta 1, the sixth release in the NCP 3 cycle. The main changes over the alpha 5 release include: move from OpenSolaris b133 to b134; nexenta-on-source changes; bug-fix list (libm.a is missing; libusb, libuuid missing a pkg-config file; profile.dpkg-dist leftover after installation; rsync daemon enabled by default; problem with libgcc1 version mismatch; libsunw-perl short description typo; keyboard layout not set; user created during install is member of group 'staff'; Squid fails to install; 3.0a4 - installation fails on unpartitioned USB stick; cupsys init script tries to load Linux kernel module 'lp'....)." Here is the complete release announcement. Download (MD5): nexenta_3.0-b134-beta1_x86.iso.zip (526MB). |
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| 2010-03-05 |
NEW • Development Release: SimplyMEPIS 8.5 RC2 |
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The second release candidate for SimplyMEPIS 8.5, a beginner-friendly, Debian-based desktop Linux distribution, is ready for download and testing: "Warren Woodford has released SimplyMEPIS 8.4.99, RC2 of MEPIS 8.5, now available from MEPIS and public mirrors. Warren reported: 'In the past week, we've fixed some bugs reported by the community and updated the MEPIS assistants. And we've updated some packages containing bug fixes - Digikam 1.1.0, ghostscript 8.71, kdebase-workspace 4.3.4-5 and wl-modules 5.60.48.36. The community is hard at work on translations, updated manual, and a couple of new utilities. I expect RC3 to be ready in a week or so. It should be the last RC before we go final with 8.5.' ISO images of MEPIS community releases are published to the 'released' subdirectory at the MEPIS Subscriber's Site and at MEPIS public mirrors." Read the full release announcement for more details. Download: SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.99-rc2_32.iso (696MB, MD5), SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.99-rc2_64.iso (693MB, MD5). |
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| 2010-03-04 |
NEW • Distribution Release: Elive 2.0 |
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After a long development period lasting more than two years, Samuel Baggen announced today the release of Elive 2.0, a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution featuring an optimised Enlightenment 17 window manager with plenty of desktop eye candy: "The Elive team is proud to announce the release of the Stable version 2.0 Codename Topaz. The new stable version of Elive has a huge list of improvements. Its ease of use makes it suitable for any kind of user along with a totally new Linux experience for those who have not tried Elive before. Changelog: autolaunchers - entirely rewritten with better stability and more features; user configurators - many user configurators added to configure anything; drivers - Linux kernel 2.6.30.9 with support for special hardware and other features like TuxOnIce (hibernation), Reiser4FS, ext4...." Visit the distribution's updated home page and read the detailed changelog for further information. Download: elive_2.0_Topaz_new-kernel.iso (690MB, MD5). |
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| 2010-03-04 |
NEW • Development Release: FreeBSD 7.3-RC2 |
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Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 7.3: "The third and what should be last of the test builds for the 7.3-RELEASE cycle, 7.3-RC2, is available for amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. The target schedule, as well as the current status of the release is available here. The schedule has slipped by a bit over a week so the actual target for the release announcement is really about a week and a half from now. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or on the freebsd-stable mailing list. There are known issues with the Radeon video driver that have caused some people problems. The problems have been nebulous enough that we have decided to not hold up the release due to that specific issue." Read the rest of the release announcement for additional notes. Download: FreeBSD-7.3-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,927MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.3-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,998MB, SHA256). |
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| March 2010 |
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At one point or another gamers can hit the wall when using other OS systems such as Linux and Mac, as Windows has always been renowned as the OS of choice for the gaming community. In a lot of cases this has changed somewhat over the last few years with the use of virtualization software that helps to bridge that gap, and it can be quite successful to a point. Of course, when you virtualize another OS you can lose some of the performance, than say running a game natively, and with slowdowns and bugs comes frustration. We have listed a few resources that we think are worth a mention for different types of gamers, both online multiplayer and single player, see what you think:
- World of Goo. This is a great puzzle game that will keep you busy for hours, there's also a free playable demo version.
- If you're a online poker enthusiast we can recommend you check out the pokerlistings.com Linux poker page, it has a list of poker apps that are compatible with your OS.
- For the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) crowds you could always take a look at Vendetta online, "thousands of people can play together, at the same time, in a single, persistent universe", sounds great!
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