03.29.14

Distro News: Makulu, Zorin OS, Pisi, Black Lab, OpenMandriva, Mageia

Posted in News Roundup at 3:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Makulu

• Makulu Makeover May Give Your Linux Life a Lift

  MakuluLinux was already a solidly performing distro, but the latest version, released last month, takes Makulu to the next level of usability and maturity.

• Makulu, Ubuntu, and Red Hat

• Hands-on with Makulu Linux 5 Xfce: The most fun you can have with Linux?

  So here’s the summary. Makulu Linux is the distribution a lot of us think we would like to create, if we had the time, energy and especially the talent to do it. I don’t know anyone in the development team, so this is all speculation on my part, but I would say that it is a group of people who just don’t know when to stop — and I mean that as a compliment, and a very good thing.

• Red Hat on the Rise, Fun Fun Makulu, and Whazzup Kernel

  Today’s news search turned up quite a bit of data. Red Hat released their quarterly earnings this afternoon and while observers expected good news, some are now reporting not so much. ZDNet.com has two stories of interest today, the first is from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reporting on the Linux Collaboration Summit and the other is Jamie Watson’s hands-on review of Makulu Linux 5 Xfce. He said it was the most fun as one could have with Linux!

Zorin OS

• Zorin OS 8 Makes Learning Linfastic

  Zorin OS 8 installs smartly and runs without glitches. It is a solid choice for hassle-free computing, even if you ignore the education bundle. However, educators with access to computer stations in the classroom can benefit from using Zorin’s Education Edition rather than the Core release. Because it offers all the power of Ubuntu without the Unity interface, you can not go wrong with Zorin OS 8.

• Hands-On: Zorin OS 8 Linux

  If you choose the free version, you will then be offered a choice between the latest release (currently Zorin OS 8.1), which is based on Ubuntu 13.10, or the current Long Term Support (LTS) release (Zorin OS 6.4), which is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Furthermore, both the current and LTS releases have three versions: Core, Educational and Gaming. That’s quite a variety of versions to choose from — and there might even be a “Lite” version coming with LXDE!

Pisi

• Pisi Linux 1.0 RC2 Erdinc (Release Candidate 2) is finally finished.

  When it became apparent early in 2012 that for political/financial reasons, Pardus was to be abandoned, a small group of Turkish volunteers came together to preserve the unique features of Pardus. The name of this project is Anka (Turkish for Phoenix). Initially the Anka-Team believed the fork could be named Pardus-Anka. Ultimately this was not possible – hence re-branding to Pisi Linux as a reference to Pardus and its package system PiSi (Pisi is Turkish for kitty).

• Pisi Linux 1.0 RC2 Is Based on Pardus and It’s Now About Cats

  “Pisi GNU/Linux is built from scratch but it is a stable base. On top of that, we keep core user applications, such as Firefox, VLC, etc, up to date as much as we can. To ease the use of Pisi GNU/Linux many codecs are preinstalled allowing MP3 & DVD playback, Flash Player support,” reads the official website.

Black Lab

• Black Lab Linux 5.0 Beta 2 Is Based on Bleeding Edge Xfce 4.11

  “Today we are pleased to announce the beta 2 release of Black Lab Linux 5. This will be the last Beta for Black Lab Linux 5 until the final release. While it contains all the functionality that will be released in the gold release in May, right now we are working on stability. With that, lets go over what has changed with Black Lab Linux 5,” reads the official announcement.

• Black Lab Linux 5.0 Beta 2 released

• Black Lab Linux Education 4.2.5 and Black Lab Professional Desktop 4.2.5 released

  So what changes have been made? There have been quite a few changes to these distributions in terms of updates and functionality. First, we have focused more on the desktop computing spectrum. While we will continue to offer Black Lab Linux + Server Extensions Pak on our server hardware and the Server Extensions Pak as an additional download, we have decided to stick with what we do the best. Which is the desktop systems. We have heard from customers and users that those are the best releases we do, and while we arent totally lost on the server, we feel we have alot of contributions on the desktop.

OpenMandriva

• OpenMandriva Beta out now

• OpenMandriva Lx 2014 Beta Is a Breath of Fresh Air with a KDE Soul

  The first Beta version of OpenMandriva Lx 2014, a fully-featured Linux desktop and server sponsored by the OpenMandriva Association, has been released and can now be tested by users.

• OpenMandriva Lx 2014.0 Beta Released

• OpenMandriva Lx 2014.0 Beta is here!

  The 2014.0 beta is a fantastic sneak-peek at what will become the final release of OpenMandriva Lx 2014.0. That being said, it is a beta, and as such you may encounter issues that prevent you from using the system normally.

Mageia

• Multiboot Laptop Update

  When I bought the ZaReason Strata Laptop, I asked them to pre-load Mageia 4 to it. However, I knew that I was going to add more distros to the hard drive as soon as I can, to make it feel like the pentaboot HP Pavilion that died on me.

  To begin, I wiped the original install and re-installed Mageia. Then, I tried to put PCLinuxOS into the hard drive, but the distro had problems with the display. As I could not achieve a decent display, I decided to do some research and try with PCLinuxOS later.

Misc.

• Simplicity Linux 14.4 Beta Is a Lightweight Distro Based on Puppy and LXDE

  Simplicity Linux, a Linux distribution based on Puppy that uses the LXDE desktop, is now at version 14.4 Beta and brings a buckload of changes and improvements.

• Smallest Full Linux Distro in the World, Tiny Core, Gets a New Version

  Robert Shingledecker has announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the Tiny Core 5.3 RC1 Linux operating system, one of the smallest full operating systems in the world.

• MX-14 “Symbiosis” Linux OS Wants to Resurrect Your Old Computer

  “‘Symbiosis’ is a special version of antiX developed in full collaboration with the Mepis Community and using the best tools and talents from each distro. It is a mid-weight OS designed to combine an elegant and efficient desktop with simple configuration, high stability, solid performance and medium-sized footprint.”

• Trying Out The Latest Wayland Linux Desktops With RBOS

  With last weekend marking an update to the most commonly used Wayland Live CD, I decided to try it out and the different desktop environments that it ships using all the latest code, including the latest development code of Wayland/Weston and the various tool-kits.

• Clonezilla Live 2.2.2-29 Distro for Backup Features Linux Kernel 3.13.6-1

• SparkyLinux 3.3.1 Base is out

  The new installer had to be fixed, due to some, small changes between system base of Sparky and LMDE. The network connection did not work after installation the live system on a hard drive (Base Edition 3.3 only).

• BBQLinux and OS for Android developers and Arch enthusiasts

  BBQLinux is an user-friendly Linux distribution made for Android Developers and for enthusiasts who want to test a bit of Arch Linux. It has everything on board to build AOSP or AOSP-based Distributions like OmniROM or CyanogenMod. It’s based on Arch Linux and uses Rolling Release system. BBQLinux uses Arch repositories so its a direct Arch derivative, for example Manjaro is based on Arch but uses their own repositories.

• Hands-on: My new laptop and two more Linux flavours

  Absolutely everything in it works with Linux, with the caveat that at least for the moment, you have to create a one-line file to get the wireless networking. All of the auxiliary functions work as well, such as Suspend/Resume and the Fn-keys for Sleep, Display Brightness up/down/off, and Volume up/down/off (mute).

• Nixed, Seniors, and Networking Basics

  While perusing the news this evening I saw a review on NixOS 13.10 by Jesse Smith. Sandra Henry-Stocker wrote a tutorial on “networking basics for the beginner.” LinuxInsider’s blog safari targeted buzz on “Linux for the senior set” and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports OpenStack’s top operating system is Ubuntu. Finally, a new Debian Project News was posted.

• Inside Linux Lite – An interview with Jerry Bezencon

  Linux Lite was created to dispel myths that a linux based operating system is hard to use.

  We’re passionate about informing people that there are alternatives to proprietary operating systems.

  The free software and open source world is a place from which you can take, but you must give back. This is a chance for people on our team to give something back.

• [Beta] OpenELEC 4.0 Beta 2 released

• Tor-ramdisk updated

  Tor-ramdisk, a tor server distro, was recently updated. Linux kernel, tor binary was updated and haveged was used as entropy generator.

• Fat Dog unleashed on ARM

  FatDogArm, a relatively new distro was released recently for ARM based computers. It is a small operating system targeted for desktop-style operations. FatDogArm achieved a new milestone with its first beta release. The distribution is quite small in size (less than 300MB). The logic behind the FatDog name is explained on the FatDog64′s site

• Linpus Lite 2.1 review

  The distribution is published by Linpus Technologies, Inc., a Linux/Android software solutions outfit based in Taiwan. This is about the only Linux provider that does not have a defined release schedule. Whether that’s a good or bad practice is not something I’m going to address here.

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