Yeah, I know everyone is already talking about this, but… KDE 4 is delayed by 2 months. KDE 4 was a much expected major expected release of the KDE window manager. It will be interesting to see what the distros planning to include KDE 4 will do.
Hi! I am having some (lots) of blog issues. I had a post about skype, but I am having tons of issues with it.
Desktop Linux just finished a survey about (surprise!) Linux. The survey suggests a large growth in the use of Linux, although there are many factors that could influence this (and most likely did), few people would say that Linux use has not increased at least some.
Even if you don’t buy their increase in Linux use story, there are many interesting results about windows managers, Windows apps on Linux, and stuff.
A new Linux.com article explains what the deal is with Linux and Lightscribe and what is expected in the future. Lightscribe is a technology that prints a label on a CD or DVD. It does require both special hardware and software, although Lightscribe DVD drives are not very expensive.
Well, just about nothing happened today, as far as I can tell. I even saw a story about the iPhone on a Linux news site. Hmm… talk about slow news day.
Luckily, one thing did happen after all. OpenSUSE put out beta 2 of their 10.3 release. The list of improvements don’t look all that interesting except for one point:
“Bootloader-related improvements: openSUSE 10.3 will use “chainloader” if it detects additional installations’ bootloader code in other partitions, otherwise “configfile” sections will be used (see Call for Testing below!)”
Looks like openSUSE is going to start supporting multi-booters better. (I never tested it before, so I don’t know how it handled GRUB in the past.) I might have to take back what I said about Dreamlinux being the only distro that I have tried that handles multi-boot computers well. (PCLinuxOS does it fairly well.)
For those who do not know, GRUB is what is called a “boot loader”. Most Linux distros install GRUB into the mater boot record of the hard drive. This is where your computer looks on the HD to start up. In some cases, such as if you already have a working GRUB, you may want to install it to the same partition that the distro is installed to and “chainload”. Only a few distros make this easy. For more details Google “dual boot with grub” or something, but keep in mind there are many ways to dual boot and this is just one of them.
Adobe has released a new version of it’s flash player, with (for most operating systems) the most interesting new feature being the support for video in the H.264 encoding. There have been various reports of issues with the Linux flash player causing browser instability, so this update could also help with that.
Many new Linux users as well as older Linux users can get confused by the amazing number of distros (or distributions) avaliable. (Distrowatch reports 362 currently active distributions in their database.) Previously this blog has covered betas or popular distros, but with little explanation of what each of those distros was about and what to expect of the new version. This post will try to what just a few popular/unique distros are doing now, and what the plans are for the future.
Ubuntu: Ubuntu could well be the most well known distro, even non-Linux users know the name. It is also the standard recommendation for new users, and with good reason. It has tons of guides, documentation, users, as well as paid support by Canonical, the company that sponsors Ubuntu. The current release is 7.04 “Feisty Fawn”, with 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” coming in October of this year (2007). There are many new features expected in Gutsy, but a few that may be vary interesting to some are AppArmor (similar to SELinux included in Fedora, provides enhanced security), X.Org 7.3 with better support for multiple monitors and better fallback should X crash, and GNOME 2.20, the latest version, which includes tons of changes to almost everything. Check out the GNOME roadmap page for a good list of what GNOME 2.20 will bring.
Damn Small Linux (DSL): DSL is a very small (as in disk space) distro that is designed to run well on older computers. DSL is maintained by just a few people, in contrast to Ubuntu’s huge team. The current stable release is 3.4 and version 4.0 rc1 is also avaliable. Goals for version 4.0 include a newer kernel (although not the newest by far), an easier/more intuitive way to manage MyDSL (a way of customizing DSL), and other improvements.
Gentoo Linux: Gentoo’s reputation is of being hard to use, but very customizable. The current version is 2007.0, but I could not find any info on upcoming releases. You know you are looking at a very technical distro when you see something like this in their FAQ: “I’m trying to install this program (e.g. vim), and it keeps trying to install all these libraries (e.g. X, gnome) that I don’t want. What should I do? ” Vim is a command line text editor and X and GNOME are packages that provide a graphical interface. Translation: How do I install this without install a graphical interface?
Dream Linux: Dream Linux, currently on version 2.2 MMGL Edition, provides a cool looking desktop with the Engage and Beryl (though Beryl is not activated by default, and has now merged with Compiz to become Compiz Fusion) built in. In addition the MkDistro Live Remaster program is included so you can pop the CD in, customize it and make your customizations into your own distro. (Note that currently you can only do this from the live CD, not a hard drive install.) Another note, I boot many distros on my computer and so I am always careful to make sure whatever distro I am adding is not going to mess up my multi boot setup, and this is the first distro that makes it easy to tell that it will not mess up my current install, AND it claims to even be able to add its self to my bootloader. I did not know about this distro before, but it sounds COOL!
Links to distros mentioned above: Ubuntu DSL Gentoo Dream Linux
I know I only covered a very few distros, but if you like this post and want more like it, just leave a comment. In fact, let me know in general what you like and what you don’t, so I can adjust to what fits other peoples needs/wants.
Mandriva, Ubuntu, and OpenSUSE will all be releasing betas (or alphas in the case of Ubuntu) this coming week. The Mandriva final release is set for September 27th, the OpenSUSE release for October 4th, and the Ubuntu set for October 2007.
Phoronix reports that new Nvidia Linux drivers may be coming very soon. Phoronix suggests that these new drivers may fix issues with the GeForce 8 series, which has had a history of bugs in Linux (as well as some in Vista before).
A very short Linux Lookup article points out that Debian, the distro that Ubuntu and tons or others are based on, is now 14 years old. Wow.
Linux Loop News