Linux Shorts: Sabayon 13.04, Korora 18, and SythOS

This week brought a monthly update release from Sabayon with experimental systemd and production ready UEFI. Korora is back after the project restructure with a fresh release. And Joel Leclerc has proposed an "experimental collaborative OS."

Sabayon 13.04 brings Secure Boot and systemd

Sabayon 13.04, the fourth monthly update release of 2013, was released Tuesday. It features Linux 3.8.8, KDE 4.10.2, GNOME 3.6.3, LibreOffice 4.0.1, Xorg X Server 1.13.3, and GCC 4.7.2. Fabio Erculiani et al. also have UEFI with Secure Boot support "production ready" this release.

On top of that, the team also implemented systemd as an experimental option for the bravest of brave. Erculiani said, "systemd is going to replace openrc as the default init system in the following months, this however doesn't mean that OpenRC will be abandoned. We do believe however that it's time to move on, and leave the 90s and VHS once and for all."

The new updated ISOs can be downloaded from here or pick your favorite mirror here.

Korora 18 - It's Aliiive

Ian Firns, Korora developer, announced the first release of Korora based on Fedora 18. Korora 18 follows Kororaa Linux 17 by 10 months and Fedora 18 by three. The announcement stated, "We have decided to make the existing beta release of Korora (Flo) 18 the final version, as the beta period did not reveal any major issues which warranted a new build."

In addition, Firns said, "this release comes with the usual Korora extras out of the box." These include:

* Adobe Flash Plugin
* Experimental support for Valve’s Steam client
* unburden-home-dir, which moves cache files (like in Firefox profiles) onto RAMFS at login
* undistract-me, which pops up a GUI notification when a terminal command has completed
* Tweaked KDE and GNOME base systems
* Experimental support for Cinnamon desktop in GNOME
* Third party repositories (Chrome, RPMFusion, VirtualBox)
* Firefox as the default web browser (with integration theme for KDE)
* Firefox extensions enabled (Adblock Plus, DownThemAll, Flashblock, Xclear)
* Instant messaging client (Kopete for KDE, Empathy for GNOME)
* Microblogging client (Choqok for KDE, Gwibber for GNOME)
* Full multimedia support (excluding Flash, see next)
* Jockey device manager to handle drivers such as ATI and NVIDIA
* Video editor (Kdenlive for KDE, OpenShot for GNOME)
* VLC as the default media player
* SELinux enabled (particularly worthwhile for Flash)
* and more..

Visit the Korora Project download page to try it out or current users can upgrade using FedUP.

"SythOS – An experimental collaborative OS"

Joel Leclerc, Linux hacker, recently blogged about a new operating system he's cooking. "The name is actually based on two words, Synergy and Lithosphere. Lithosphere was used as a creative way to say 'ground', because it’s not cloud-based and it’s also designed to be 'down to the ground' with you. Instead of you adapting to the OS, the OS adapts to you."

Leclerc states the goals of SythOS to be:

* Help the user to become more productive within it
* Extremely intuitive
* Extremely easy to collaborate on anything
* Extremely customizable
* Fun

Some of its features include:

* 3D virtual world
* Windows mapped to the world
* MMO-like online presence
* World is Minecraft-like
* Different tools and blocks (inspired by minecraft)
* Whitelist, Blacklist and “Asklist” for everything
* Chat
* Quake-like terminal with multiple tabs

Leclerc is asking folks if that sounds like something they'd be interested in. Go let him know what you think.