Distros: What is here and what will be soon
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.
