NEW • Development Release: Gentoo Linux 10.0 Test

Matthew Summers has announced a testing release of Gentoo Linux 10.0, a special 10-year anniversary Gentoo live DVD: "In honor of Gentoo's 10th birthday, we are producing a new live DVD. We need you to test it on as many x86 and x86_64 machines as you can and post bugs. The x86-x86_64 live DVD will work on x86 or x86_64 processors. If your architecture is x86 boot with the default 'gentoo'. If your architecture is amd64 boot with gentoo64. The AMD64 live DVD is for amd64 only. So give us a hand by testing like crazy and posting bugs and we'll have the greatest live DVD ever." The very brief release announcement contains no technical information, but the live DVD comes with Linux kernel 2.6.30, glibc 2.9 and GCC 4.3.2, and boots into KDE 4.3.1 by default (GNOME 2.24 and Xfce 4.6.1 are also available). It can be installed to a hard disk. Interested testers can download the DVD images from here: livedvd-x86-x86_64-10.0.iso (1,849MB, MD5), livedvd-x86-amd64-10.0.iso (1,899MB, MD5).

NEW • Distribution Release: Absolute Linux 13.0.2

Paul Sherman has announced the release of Absolute Linux 13.0.2, a new update of the lightweight distribution based on Slackware Linux: "Absolute Linux 13.0.2 released. GTK+ themes engines included along with customized theme changing utility (gtk-chtheme) that calls script that changes IceWM theme, PCMan File Manager desktop background and ROX-Filer background. Makes our lightweight interface more cohesive, but if any setting should fail it does so silently so you can hack away changing stuff and it will not mess up your system. Brasero has replaced K3b. KDE libraries, KDE Multimedia and Arts have all been removed. If you want KDE, you can safely drop in the entire Slackware KDE packages, but for the UI-stay-out-of-my-way types, we've eliminated more overhead. Updates include: Firefox, SeaMonkey, Flash plugin, IceWM and a number of scripts in the a/etc package." Here is the full release announcement. Download (MD5): absolute-13.0.2.iso (685MB).

NEW • Distribution Release: NuTyX 2009

2009-09-14

Thierry Nuttens has announced the release of NuTyX 2009, a distribution based on Linux From Scratch and CRUX, designed primarily for French-speaking intermediate Linux users. The release is built of top of a brand new Linux kernel 2.6.31 and includes GCC 4.4.1, glibc 2.10.1, X.Org Server 1.6.1, KDE 4.3.1, Xfce 4.6.1, OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 and Firefox 3.5.3, just to name a few of the more popular software packages. Five bootable ISO images are available for download: the "Mini" edition (a 11 MB network installation image), the "Base" edition (a 172 MB base system without X window), and three editions with the choice of LXDE, Xfce or KDE as the preferred desktop. For users who have installed the second release candidate or an earlier development release, a fresh installation is recommended. Please refer to the release announcement (in French) for additional details and installation instructions. Download: NuTyX2009-i686-LXDE.iso (278MB MD5), NuTyX2009-i686-XFCE.iso (529MB MD5), NuTyX2009-i686-KDE.iso (701MB MD5).

NEW • Distribution Release: Linux Mint 7 "Xfce"

2009-09-13

Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of Linux Mint 7 "Xfce", a community edition of Linux Mint featuring the Xfce desktop: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 7 'Gloria' Xfce. Based on Xubuntu 9.04, Linux kernel 2.6.28, Xfce 4.6 and X.Org 7.4, Linux Mint 7 Xfce features many improvements and the latest software from the open source world. What's new? mintInstall improvements - featured applications, pre-filled information, seamless screenshots downloads, improved GUI layout; mintUpdate improvements - changelogs, package sizes, usability; mintUpload improvements - ads-free, GUI improvements, graphical service manager, SCP/SFTP support; mintWelcome welcome screen; command line goodies - APT version, RTFM; new artwork; Moonlight plugin and support for Silverlight 1.x, signed repositories...." Read the release announcement and release notes for a detailed list of all improvements. Download: LinuxMint-7-XFCE.iso (694MB MD5, torrent).

NEW • Distribution Release: Bluewhite64 Linux 13.0

2009-09-09

Attila Crăciun has announced the release of Bluewhite64 Linux 13.0, an unofficial 64-bit port of Slackware Linux 13.0 with up-to-date KDE: "Bluewhite64 Linux 13.0 is released. This new version of Bluewhite64 brings many new and interesting features, improvements and packages updates. The first major change is a new and improved package format, we have switched to the LZMA compression algorithm to reduce the packages size and to improve the decompression speed. We have updated the X.Org Server to version 1.6.3, along with the drivers, libraries and utilities. Other important changes include a new generic Linux kernel 2.6.30.5 with more modules enabled; the new KDE 4.3.1 and Xfce 4.6.1 desktop environments; the Mozilla products (the latest versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey)...." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download: Bluewhite64-13.0-DVD.iso (4,068MB, MD5).

PostgreSQL 2009-09-09 Security Update

Posted by press@postgresql.org

The PostgreSQL Project today released minor versions updating all active branches of the PostgreSQL object-relational database system, including versions 8.4.1, 8.3.8, 8.2.14, 8.1.18, 8.0.22, and 7.4.26. This release fixes one moderate-risk and two low-risk security issues: an authentication issue, a denial of service issue, and a privilege-escalation exploit. All users should upgrade their database installations as soon as reasonably possible.

This update release also fixes the "could not reattach shared memory" issue which has plagued many Windows PostgreSQL users, and updates time zone files for several countries. There are 23 other minor fixes, many of them affecting only version 8.4. See the release notes for full details.

As with other minor releases, users are not required to dump and reload their database in order to apply this update release; you may simply shut down PostgreSQL and update its binaries. Users skipping more than one update may need to check the release notes for extra, post-update steps.

Release Notes
Installation Packages
Source Code
Details of Security Issues

Distribution Release: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4

2009-09-02

Red Hat has announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.4: "Red Hat is pleased to announce the availability of the latest update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, release 5.4. New in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 is a reorganization of the release note material; now the release notes are a condensed set of major release highlights. The following list summarizes improvements in this release: hardware - 10 GigE drivers with GRO support, FCoE support on standard NICs, SR I/OV support; system - kernel tracepoints for systemtap use; per process I/O accounting, FIEMAP support; virtualization - hypervisor scalability to 192 CPUs, additional hypervisor - Kernel Based Virtual Machine (KVM)." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 is available either via the usual update mechanism or as a set of ISO images for new installation (Red Hat Networks subscribers only). An unsupported 30-day evaluation edition can be requested here.

Distribution Release: Slackware Linux 13.0

2009-08-28

Patrick Volkerding has announced the release of Slackware Linux 13.0, a major update of the world's oldest surviving Linux distribution: "After one of the most intensive periods of development in Slackware's history, the long-awaited stable release of Slackware 13.0 is ready. This release brings with it many major changes since Slackware 12.2, including a completely reworked collection of X packages (a configuration file for X is no longer needed in most cases), major upgrades to the desktop environments (KDE 4.2.4 and Xfce 4.6.1), a new .txz package format with much better compression, and other upgrades all around -- to the development system, network services, libraries, and major applications like Firefox and Thunderbird. We think you'll agree that this version of Slackware was worth the wait. Also, this is the first release of Slackware with native support for the 64-bit x86_64 architecture!" See the release announcement and release notes for more information. Download (torrents) the installation DVD images from here: slackware-13.0-install-dvd.iso (3,739MB, MD5, torrent), slackware64-13.0-install-dvd.iso (3,762MB, MD5, torrent).