PLD is an independent, RPM-based distribution using an advance package manager called “Poldek” and designed for users who aren’t afraid of the command line. The new stable release provides a choice between kernels 2.4.34.2 and 2.6.16.45 with built-in virtualisation support (Linux VServer), together with over 13,000 RPM packages, including X.Org 6.9.0, KDE 3.5.6, GNOME 2.14, Xfce 4.4.0, OpenOffice.org 2.1.0, etc.

Source

“Our latest development release (1.3.0) is the very first to be based on a stable release of Debian, the recent Etch release. This means that users should be able to add any packages they need from official Debian mirrors, including security updates, without breaking their systems. The forthcoming 64 Studio 2.0 release will retain compatibility with Etch, to create a long-lived and stable creative desktop. New packages in this release include Ardour 2 beta 12 and Xara. The serious bug with sample rate setting for USB audio interfaces in the 1.2.0 release has been fixed”, 64 Studio’s team says.

DistroWatch - 64 Studio

“Ubuntu is the award-winning Linux distribution for the desktop, laptop, thin client and server which brings together the best of open source software every 6 months. Ubuntu 7.04 desktop edition includes a ground-breaking Windows migration assistant, excellent wireless networking support and improved multimedia support,” the press release says.

“In the coming months, many individuals and businesses will be making the decision to upgrade their existing computer systems and their operating systems,” said Jane Silber, director of Operations, Canonical Ltd. “With added features to both the desktop and server editions, Ubuntu 7.04 is the most user-friendly version to date and is ideally suited to anyone who wants to make the switch to Linux and join the community of Ubuntu users. In fact, with this version of Ubuntu, it is easier than ever to move away from proprietary platforms.”

At the same time as Ubuntu, the project also will release new versions of Kubuntu and Edubuntu, specialized versions of Ubuntu which include the KDE desktop environment and educational applications, respectively.

You can get the latest Ubuntu 7.04 via its web-site.

Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring, which is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, integrates the latest innovations in the fields of office suite applications, Internet, multimedia and virtualization technologies, according to Manriva’s team.

It includes WengoPhone, an open source software developed by OpenWengo that uses the open SIP protocol to provide competitive and high quality phone calls; Google Picasa, an application for organizing and editing digital photos, and Google Earth, the famous virtual globe; Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring is compatible with the Wii™ remote. Users can therefore use it instead of a regular joystick on Linux games; Drakvirt, a Mandriva-developed configuration tool to help users configure virtualization; as well as updated and improved versions of the Mandriva configuration tools.

Metisse is not a 3D desktop…

However, the key innovation of Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring is Metisse, the unconventional new window environment developed by the French In Situ project. Metisse is designed to implement highly innovative features which improve the usability of the desktop, giving you completely new ways to interact with your system! Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring also provides the newest versions of the Compiz and Beryl 3D-accelerated desktops. Together, Metisse, Compiz and Beryl - with the convenient Mandriva configuration tool - make Mandriva Linux the must-have distribution for cutting-edge graphical technologies.

Join the FON community with Mandriva!

Mandriva and FON, the largest WiFi community in the world, have teamed up to develop DrakFON. This application allows Mandriva users to easily install the FON firmware on any compatible WiFi router and convert it into a FONspot, thus enabling the user to share his/her WiFi with the FON Community and in return to connect for free to more than 100,000 FONspots around the world. DrakFON can also be downloaded for free on FON’s website.

Four virtualization technologies

With Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring, users can manage their IT infrastructure by running many virtualized Linux and Windows® operating systems simultaneously on a single physical machine powered by Mandriva Linux. 2007 Spring integrates four major virtualization technologies: VirtualBox, VMware, Xen and QEMU with KVM.

Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring provides users with all the latest key open source desktop environments and applications such as X.org 7.2, KDE 3.5.6, GNOME 2.18, OpenOffice.org 2.1, Mozilla Firefox 2.0, Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0

Also, 2007 Spring has a special focus on notebook power management, featuring new graphical desktop applets (KPowersave and GNOME Power Manager), better frequency scaling (frequency is adjusted on demand), new suspend tools framework (from freedesktop.org), bootsplash support when hibernating and intensive hardware testing to improve support on a wide range of laptops.

Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring is available in five editions: Free (the purely free Mandriva Linux), One (the live/install CD), Discovery (for Linux beginners), Powerpack (for advanced users) and Powerpack+ (for small businesses).

Mandriva

Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 includes a number of updated software packages from previous version, such as the K Desktop Environment 3.5.5a (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.14, the Xfce 4.4 desktop environment, the GNUstep desktop 5.2 and X.Org 7.1.

There are also new OpenOffice.org 2.0.4a, GIMP 2.2.13, Iceweasel (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3), Icedove (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5), Iceape (an unbranded version of Mozilla Seamonkey 1.0.8), PostgreSQL 8.1.8, MySQL 5.0.32, GNU Compiler Collection 4.1.1, Linux kernel version 2.6.18, Apache 2.2.3, Samba 3.0.24, Python 2.4.4 and 2.5, Perl 5.8.8, PHP 4.4.4 and 5.2.0 and Asterisk 1.2.13.

This free Linux distribution now comes with “out-of-the-box support for encrypted partitions”, as well as with a newly developed graphical front-end to the installation system translated to 58 languages.

Also beginning with Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, the package management system has been improved regarding security and efficiency, the Debian Project team says.

You can get Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 download information here.

CentOS is built by recompiling source packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

You can download it here and read its release notes here.

The Voodoo ISO images for i686 and x86_64 are ready for download at Arch Linux download page.

Arch Linux team has also announced that this Linux distribution is changing its name to Ark Linux.

Changelog of Arch Linux 0.8 ISO (compared to 0.7.2 install iso):

- to boot the ISO 96 MB RAM are recommended,
it breaks somewhere between 80 - 90 MB RAM.
(calculated like this: kernel image + initrd size + decompressed initrd)
- dropped install floppy support
- switched from busybox to archboot usage
- Updated packages (including linux 2.6.20.4)
- Full mkinitcpio support
- Installation on PATA and IDE possible (PATA is default now)
ide-legacy option included for old IDE subsystem
- All parameters initcpio understands, new ISO does understand
- Usb devices (keyboards/cd/dvd) should now work as they should
- Usage of hwdetect/udev autodetection during boot
- added memtest86+ to iso
- added installation support on cciss devices
- pacman is included to allow installation of any other needed package
in install environment.
- added /etc/rc.d/ and /etc/rc.conf support
- added arch network support, including ssh,telnet and portmap services
- added vpn support
- added framebuffer modules to install environment
- added cpufreq support
- added iptables support
- added grub and lilo to install environment
- custom config files support:
any media with /config directory and files will be copied to /etc/
install environment
- loading packages as addons during boot:
any media with /packages directory including pacman packages will be
installed during bootup.
- links and naim included to be able to communicate over the internet.
- added kexec support

Changelog of new setup (compared to 0.7.2 setup):

- added some information dialogs
- added some confirmation dialogs
- added set root password
- removed all kernel24 stuff
- switched to initcpio only support
- added locale-gen file for editing
- only show devices that are usefull in mountpoints selection,
partitioning and network
- possibility to select dm and md devices from setup
(creation of lvm and md still needs to be done by hand!)
- mkinitcpio autoconfiguration. This includes HOOKS autoconfiguration
and hostcontroller configuration: ide/scsi/sata modules are put into
MODULES= in mkinitcpio.conf to ensure right loading order and avoid
device-swapping
- network modules are put in the MODULES=() in rc.conf - again, this is
done to avoid random swapping of multiple network interfaces
- added http:// net install support

This release of the AMD Catalyst Linux Graphics Driver software suite, aimed for ATI Radeon, ATI Mobility Radeon, ATI FireGL, and ATI Mobility FireGL GPUs, introduces the Beta version of the AMD Catalyst Control Centre: Linux Edition to replace the FireGL Control panel.

It resolves the issue found on certain notebooks using AMD ATI GPUs.

“The screen no longer turns black if the X-Server is terminated from the text console. This condition was known to occur only on certain laptop configurations,” according to Release Notes.

Download ATI Proprietary Linux x86_64 Display Driver 8.35.5 - For Intel EM64T and AMD64 Platform Architecture

Sabayon Linux 3.3 - New Features and Improvements

• Sabayon Linux kernel sources based on 2.6.20 featuring wireless-dev, unionfs, squashfs 3.0, Afatech 9005 support, MacTel enhanced support
• Both systems completely recompiled with new LDFLAGS that give an extra performance boost and reactivity
• Featuring both software raid support and dmraid 1.0
• GeeXbox has been updated to 1.1rc1 waiting for the upcoming 2.0 release.
• Gentoo Portage import freeze was on the 20th of January, 2007
• Complete artwork redesign to meet the new marketing strategy
• Faster boot time thanks to massive startup optimizations
• Created the basis to the yet highly experimental eINIT support trough the selection of the accelerated init system using (accel_init=/sbin/einit)
• Featuring HAL 0.5.9 and D-Bus 1.0.2 for an out-of-the-box laptop experience
• X.Org 7.2 featuring AIGLX and Composite support
• Beryl 0.2.0r2 supporting XGL, AIGLX and NVIDIA Composite extension
• NVIDIA Drivers 9755 and 9631 (legacy - automatically triggered - to disable append nvidia=disablelegacy to the boot prompt. To force 9631, append nvidia=forcefail instead) sporting our runtime linking feature
• Support for the latest NVIDIA GPUs like GeForce 8800 GTX
• ATI Drivers 8.34.8 sporting our runtime linking feature
• ATI GPU detection improved for X600, X700, X8xx video cards
• Metisse 0.4 Technology Preview ONLY for GNOME and KDE desktops
• Outstanding wireless support thanks to the drivers imported from the wireless-dev linux kernel git tree (sporting the cutting edge DeviceScape IEEE802xx stack) and to a much more integrated NetworkManager stack
• Outstanding NTFS support in read/write mode thanks to NTFS-3G 1.0
• Fonts rendering highly improved on all the Desktop Environments (fonts look sharp and clean now)
• The award winning Acceleration Manager has been rewritten using Qt 4.2 and it’s 2x times faster than the old one (latest release is 1.3.2)
• KDE 3.5.6 with Sabayon Linux integration patches
• GNOME 2.16.2 with a highly improved Sabayon Linux integration
• New Games on the DVD! (removed Quake4 and added Sauerbraten - aka Cube 2 - and Battle of Wesnoth)
• Get Live Help extended to the shell using irssi (you can run “get-live-help” without X.Org, chat with us and get helped, LIVE!)
• New Virtualization Support stack featuring: KVM-12 (fully supported), libvirt and Virt-Manager GUI (Technology Preview ONLY)
• Music Edition is now enabled by default (you’ll hear a nice music made by Tryad on Jamendo.org during the Live boot - CC License)
• Sabayon Linux Installer is now about 25% faster on fresh installations and 10% faster on upgrades
• 6th Sense Install upgrades now could be considered much more ironed out and tested but still EXPERIMENTAL
• New users creation after install will have the new Sabayon Linux default look
• Automatic and out-of-the-box video card auto-reconfiguration after install: if you’ll upgrade your PC to a new video card, the system will auto-reconfigure X.Org automatically
• Finally we have a LVM Management GUI imported from RH - system-config-lvm
• Language Configuration Helpers have been rewritten and ironed out
• Mozilla applications language autoconfiguration now works nicely
• Added Safe Internet Browsing Helpers to easily enable/disable Tor/Privoxy stack after install on GNOME, Ephipany, KDE, Konqueror, Mozilla applications and Opera. See /sbin/safe-browsing-setup
• Netscape Flash now works out-of-the-box on Firefox, Konqueror and Opera browsers
• Tons of stability fixes.

Sabayon Linux 3.3

“A short and incomplete list of changes since 0.6rc2:

* Linux 2.6.20.3
* We are proud to be one of the first distributions to ship the stable GNOME 2.18
* Fixed a few bugs in XDM

If you didn’t follow the changes during the pre/rc releases, here are the most important changes since 0.5:

* Up to date base system: Glibc 2.5, Binutils 2.17.50.0.6 with DT_GNU_HASH support, DBUS 1.0 and Python 2.5
* Up to date desktop packages: KDE 3.5.6, XFCE 4.4, Beryl 0.2.0, OpenOffice 2.1, Firefox 2.0.0.2 and GNOME 2.18
* All installed-by-default packages using Java are now built using gcj/ecj, the original binary javac is only provided as an alternate compiler.
* Setup: speed improvements, support for more custom action, tftp installs and usb sticks are now supported.
* Full support for Xgl/Beryl in KDE
* Documentation: it is more than two times longer than it was until now.”

Frugalware Download Page

“The new version of the definitive burning application for Linux OS added Blu-Ray and HD DVD data recording support as well as an improved graphical user interface (GUI) that is similar to the current Nero Burning ROM 7 edition. In addition to Blu-ray and HD DVD burning capabilities, Nero Linux 3 will also natively support 64-bit systems, as well as Unicode in all languages currently supported in Nero 7. Many Linux distributions will be supported in the new upgrade including Red Hat Enterprises, Fedora Core, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Linspire,” and Mandriva After Dawn reports.

A beta version of Nero Linux 3 is expected to be available at the end of March 2007.

After Dawn

NVIDIA’s latest Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T) Display Driver supports both desktop and notebook-use video cards. You can download the driver at company’s official webiste.

Some of the highlights are freebsd-update, which provides officially supported binary updates for security fixes and errata patches, experimental support for CAPP security event auditing, OpenBSM audit command line tool suite and library, KDE updated to 3.5.4, GNOME updated to 2.16.1, csup integrated cvsup client now included, disk integrity protection and authentication added to gel, and many driver updates.

FreeBSD 6.2 is available for different 64-bit and 32-bit platforms.

More info and download: http://www.freebsd.org/where.html

The 64-bit version of SimplyMEPIS offer the same advanced hardware autodetection, multimedia integration, and easy-to-use installer that is included with the 32-bit edition, the company claims.

“We have tried to make the 64-bit edition of SimplyMEPIS look, feel and function the same as the 32-bit edition,” said distribution founder and chief maintainer Warren Woodford.

But there are also a few differences, such as lack of some extra multimedia codecs that are not yet available in 64-bit versions.

The ISO image is available for download in the ‘testing’ subdirectory at the MEPIS Subscriber’s Site and at MEPIS public mirrors.

MEPIS

Technalign has partnered directly with Canonical and is using Kubuntu/Ubuntu as the base. Pioneer is a derivative of Ubuntu and not a fork.

The commercial versions have minor differences between the free version. Individuals may choose from either the free version or a boxed set available from the over 600 Technalign partners in the US and Canada. The boxed set, of course, comes with support while the free version is supported via the community on the TaPioneer website. CrossOver Office is included with several of the boxed sets allowing the end-user the ability to run their favorite Windows applications.

Pioneer EX, or Extended, will be available in the next several weeks as a beta. Plans for Pioneer on Apple G3, G4, and G5 processors is expected shortly as well.

TaFusion

The company says users currently must use 32-bit Flash Player in 32-bit browser to view Flash content on a 64-bit operating system. In 64-bit Windows Vista both 64-bit and emulated 32-bit Internet Explorer are installed by default. Linux users must install 32-bit browser and 32-bit Flash Player plug-in on their 64-bit operating systems.

Since 64-bit Linux users downgrade their browsers for years in order to use Flash, and since Microsoft’s 64-bit Vista (retail) and Apple’s 64-bit Mac OS X Leopard operating systems are scheduled to ship in January and spring 2007 respectively, we hope that 64-bit Flash will be released by then.

The benchmarks were done on a budget configuration, featuring AMD Sempron 2800+ processor, Asus K8U-X motherboard, and 512MB of DDR memory. We have benchmarked with Sempron clocked at default 1.6GHz, as same as with 30% overclocked CPU using JumperFree configuration in motherboard’s BIOS.

The results are in seconds. Lower is better.

Using Zlib and AMD Sempron processor at default 1.6GHz, a 64MB of data was compressed for 4,28 seconds in 64-bit mode, which is for 21,4 percent faster than the same operation in 32-bit environment. After overcocking, the 64-bit Zlib test was done for 3,27 sec, which is faster than 32-bit compression for 23 percent.

The MD5 sum for 312MB of data in 32-bit Ubuntu was generated for 6,69 and 5,4 seconds at 1.6GHz and 2.08GHz clock speed, respectively. It’s faster than the same operation in 64-bit environment for 18,9 and 19,3 percent.

Blowfish benchmark shows 32-bit’s advantage compared to 64-bit for 4.2 percent at both processor clock speeds.

We made these Ubuntu 6.10 Linux 64-bit vs 32-bit benchmarks using the simple Hardinfo application, which can be easily obtained via Synaptic Package Manager. The Hardinfo also provides CPU Fibonacci and SHA1 benchmarks, but on our machine Fibonacci showed 0.00 result on both 64 and 32-bit Ubuntu, while the application crashed during the SHA1 test in 64-bit.

Novell YES Certification demonstrates the highest level of compatibility and interoperability with Novell products, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The certification assures users that systems powered by AMD processors are compatible with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and backed by support offerings from both Novell and AMD.

Chron.com | (BW) AMD Receives Novell YES Certification for AMD64 Processor-Based Systems; YES Certification Assures Compatibility With SUSE Linux

The easiest thing to do is to install a 32-bit browser inside a “chroot jail” — a minimalistic 32-bit system, including just the browser and the support libraries it needs to run (in this case, including specifically the 32-bit plugins and codecs), isolated from the rest of the system in a directory sealed off via the chroot command. You can launch the 32-bit browser from the 64-bit environment and it will connect and browse the Web like normal, but it will not be able to access resources on your machine installed outside of the chroot jail.

For normal browsing and viewing embedded media, this setup works like a charm. You can install plugins and media codecs directly from within the browser, in most cases. You can even install the 32-bit version of your distro’s package management application and keep everything up-to-date at little to no extra effort.

NewsForge | 32-bit browsing in a 64-bit system