Final Testing Slackware Live, Mint Removes Codecs
Closing out the week Eric Hameleers today announced the final testing release of Slackware Live dubbed 0.9.0. In other news, Clement Lefebvre said today he was reducing the workload over there and axing OEM and NoCodec images, instead shipping no codecs for anyone. gNewSense 4 was recently released based on "a solid Debian" and the Hectic Geek compares and contrasts several flavors of Ubuntu.
With Slackware 14.2 just around the bend Eric "AlienBob" Hameleers has been polishing up Slackware Live. Today he posted his gut is telling him he'll be announcing a stable release soon. Slackware-current is still being updated even after its second release candidate receiving a new kernel just yesterday. Nevertheless, everyone watching believes 14.2, on which Slackware Live is/will be based, will be announced any day now. Hameleers said his Slackware Live is looking good and "no bugs have surfaced for a while." This release brings new PXE server, fixed VirtualBox support, MATE 1.14, and rearranged Xfce stack (adding more tools and removing some entertainment). Hameleers said this is our last chance to test and report bugs before final release.
In today's Mint Monthly News, Clement Lefebvre said he's ceasing production of OEM installation disks and NoCodec images. Instead he going to release all versions without codecs like other distributions. He said this will "reduce our release cycle to 4 separate events and the production and testing of 12 ISO images." Users should be able to tick a box to enable the option to include them during installation and an install script will be easily accessible from either the Welcome Screen or main menu afterwards. Lefebvre also discussed the new base, Ubuntu 16.04, saying things are looking pretty good so far. There are changes in store for version 18 themes with the introduction of new Mint-Y, a flat theme designed to favor Arc and Moka. A Mint 18 beta is planned for June, but beyond that Clem said they'll release when ready.
Sam Geeraerts announced the release of new gNewSense 4.0 earlier this week. He said, "It's based on a solid Debian, modified to respect the Free Software Foundation's [guidelines] and is available for 3 architectures: i386, amd64 and mipsel." The site is having issues currently throwing internal server errors and timing out when trying to access the Release Notes. Distrowatch.com listed some of the new goodies as Linux 3.2.57, Firefox 31.5.0, GIMP 2.8.2, GNOME 3.4.2, GTK+ 3.4.2, and Xorg X Server 1.12.4. Hopefully, the download page will be back up soon, but the link Ladislav provided works.
In other news:
* Brazil: Free and Open Source Culture Is Economics, Not Politics
* Ubuntu LTS Flavors Comparison: Ubuntu 16.04 vs Kubuntu 16.04 vs Ubuntu GNOME 16.04