Debian 8 and Mageia 5 RC Released Over the Weekend
What an exciting weekend that just passed. First up, the long-awaited Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 "Jessie" was released in live and traditional installation media. Elsewhere, Mageia 5 Release Candidate was released with UEFI support and other installation improvements. In addition, LibreOffice 4.3.7 was released Saturday as well.
Debian 8.0 is here after nearly two years of work. Debian is one of the oldest distributions and is the basis for many other distros as well. Debian 8 brings systemd, improved UEFI support, and updated supporting services. Included are Linux 3.16.7, Xorg 1.16.4, and GCC 4.9.2. GNOME 3.14 (default), KDE 4.11.13, and Xfce 4.10 are among the desktops and LibreOffice 4.3.3, Iceweasel 31.6.0esr, and GIMP 2.8.14 are some of the applications. New live and installation media are available in CD and DVD as well as USB stick support in about a dozen architectures including pre-built OpenStack images. The live images come in your choice of KDE, Cinnamon, GNOME, LXDE, MATE, and Xfce desktops. Debian 8 "Jessie" will be supported for five years thanks to the Debian Long Term Support team.
Debian 8 KDE Live
Following the announcement, Niels Thykier posted a couple tidbits to the developers' mailing list. He said that the first point release should be out in about a month to correct any bugs cropping up. The next major release of Debian will be codenamed Stretch, the purple rubber stretchy octopus in Toy Story 3. Release parties have begun all over the world, but some aren't scheduled until tonight and the coming days, so check for your locale. The most interesting party was probably Microsoft's celebration of Debian 8 at LinuxFest NorthWest this weekend. In related news, First Jessie based Debian Edu beta released.
Mageia 5 RC KDE Welcome
Rémi Verschelde announced the release of Mageia 5 RC yesterday saying, "All things come to those who wait." This RC was hard-fought but the announcement said that Mageia 5 now supports UEFI "for real." Besides that, the installer has been under major construction and things like "RAID support, GRUB 2 integration, graphical issues linked to GTK+ 3 evolutions, more logging and debugging features" have been greatly improved. Check the Errata for known issues and workarounds before downloading and testing.
Mageia 5 Welcome Popular Application Installation
The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 4.3.7, "the suggested version of the software for large deployments in the enterprise and for conservative users." This release brings over 100 bug and security fixes. Download your fresh copy from www.libreoffice.org.
Some other interesting things to read today include:
* First impressions of Ubuntu 15.04
* Redesign of spins.fedoraproject.org