Mageia 6 dev1, Ubuntu Tablet Pre-Orders, OSS vs FOSS
Today in Linux news Mageia 6 is on its way with the release of the first developmental milestone Sunday. A lot of buzz surrounded the pre-orders of the Ubuntu M10 Tablet today and Bruce Byfield discussed why it's important. Elsewhere, Debian Project Leader elections approacheth and Christine Hall said Open Source Software isn't always Free and Open Source Software.
"Good things come to those who wait…," said Donald Stewart when announcing Mageia 6 dev1, or the first milestone in Mageia 6 development. One could probably think of it as an alpha. The live media isn't ready yet, but installable 64 and 32 bit versions are up. The alpha shipped with Plasma 5.5.95 and GNOME 3.19.2 but Plasma 5.6.0 and GNOME 3.20.0 are available in repositories for upgrades. This release also includes Linux 4.4.5, Firefox 45, and LibreOffice 5.1.1.3. Mageia 6 is planned to feature DNF, Fedora's new package manager as an alternative to urpmi. It's 80% complete, so it should be ready for version 6. The release schedule is still empty with only TBD for dates. It does say developmental snapshot 2 may be skipped altogether. It appears two betas or "stabilization snapshots" are planned with one release candidate before final.
The Debian Project Leader election is fast approaching with the campaigning period coming to an end this weekend. Voting will take place from April 3 to April 16, but why when there is only one man running. Current lead, Neil McGovern isn't running for re-elections, so developers will have to vote for "the only candidate Mehdi Dogguy or None Of The Above." If None of The Above wins, they'll repeat the election until Dogguy gets it. He came in a close second last year behind McGovern, so he'll probably beat None of The Above first try.
Serdar Yegulalp today covered the first public release of stali, a Linux distribution designed to be small and fast and, most importantly, to "suckless." Software that sucks less means it's simple and function without bloat and hopefully all the bugs associated with bloat. The main methodology of small and fast is by statically linking binaries to their libraries. Yegulalp noted that the first download of stali OS was 34MB. The FAQ addresses their philosophy on statically vs dynamically linked executables, but basically states that statically linked exes are smaller, faster, and less buggy. Other interesting notes on stali include the exclusion of systemd, which they say "sucks;" ignoring the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard because, you guessed it, it "sucks;" and "upgrade/install using git, no package manager needed" (I assume because they suck too). He didn't review the public release saying it "amounts to a kind of proof-of-concept for breaking from long-standing Linux traditions and avoiding current fashions in Linux."
In other news:
* Lunduke Interviews Fedora's Matthew Miller, Part 2
* You Can Pre-Order The Ubuntu M10 Tablet Right Now