Gecko Brings It, Mageia 6 Delayed, New FSF Laptop

Jack Germain test drove new openSUSE-based GeckoLinux that "provides advantages over openSUSE." Speaking of openSUSE, Dominique Leuenberger posted his weekly Tumbleweed update today. The first development snapshot for Mageia 6 has been delayed until after Christmas due to "large influx of new software." Matthias Klumpp said the next Tanglu is delay as well due mainly to GCC 5 and the Free Software Foundation is ready to recommend another laptop.

Jack Germain spoke to the lead for GeckoLinux who said, "I personally have always liked openSUSE, but I've never felt comfortable recommending it to a beginner or even experienced Linux user due to the lack of polish and weird idiosyncratic SUSE way of doing certain things. So I finally broke down and created a custom spin." Germain said he always felt like that himself and liked the way GeckoLinux smoothed over the rough edges. He said Gecko provides proprietary codecs, Packman repos, no forced package installs, complete uninstalls, and more relaxed Polkit. After his test drive, Germain concluded of the Cinnamon and Budgie editions, "Both put smiles on my face."

Dominique Leuenberger reported today that this last week in Tumbleweed wasn't its best. He said, "Not a single snapshot could be published." Some issue in the build service prevented successful builds. Though resolved now, the problems have delayed development. Leuenberger said next week should be different if not better. They will either get a new snapshot or have to fix a lot of errors found by openQA.

Speaking of delays, Donald "schultz" Stewart today posted on the Mageia blog that the first developmental snapshot in the Mageia 6 cycle has been delayed because of "the large influx of new software overheating Cauldron." He said they'd get the snapshot out after Christmas when the new code has stabilized some. Stewart added that the snapshot should be ready around January 10 when Snapshot 2 was originally scheduled. Betas were scheduled for February 7 and March 6 with Mageia 6 Final scheduled for April 17. No official word yet on how much of the schedule will slip because of this delay.

Debian-based Tanglu 4 has also been delayed due to "the GCC 5 transition." Tanglu 4 was due any day now, but Matthias Klumpp today wrote that it will probably be delayed until February or March of next year. He said the biggest problem is "manpower," or a lack thereof. Klumpp outlined some of the areas needing attention in the distro and outside. He needs help with the software and website as well as being open to donations.

The Libreboot T400 has been certified by the Free Software Foundation to "respect freedom and privacy." All proprietary software was banished and replaced with Free and Open Source software. Trisquel GNU/Linux replaced Windows and boot is handled via Libreboot and GRUB 2. The Libreboot T400 joins the Libreboot X60 and Libreboot X200 in the FSF recommended line-up.

And finally today, Jamie Watson posted Part Six in his series on customizing Linux desktops. Today's desktop is LXDE on Debian.