ReactOS, openSUSE Reports, Miller on Fedora
With Tumbleweed back up and running, Dominique Leuenberger is back with another weekly update while Neil Rickert test drove new Argon and Krypton. Tecmint.com said ReacOS is the "perfect Windows alternative" and LinuxInsider.com said RebeccaBlackOS is a "class act." Fedora's Matthew Miller spoke to PCWorld's Chris Hoffman about what's brewing at the blue hat and Riccardo Padovani video interviewed Mark Shuttleworth in tonight's Linux news.
Last night we covered Tumbleweed's return to full production and tonight Dominique Leuenberger reports of a new icky bug. He said Linux kernel 4.4.2, KDE Discover (Software center using appdata), and openLDAP2 with password policy check are some of the goodies in staging. The nasty bug showed when updating and the xdm package causes X to restart, halting the upgrade process and everything else tied to the GUI. It's currently being addressed and likely to be fixed soon.
Speaking of openSUSE, Neil Rickert testdrove Argon and Krypton recently and said that Krypton is nice for previewing what may be in the works, but it isn't something he's likely to use daily. Right now, both editions are quite unstable but Rickert was able to test both and install the version of his choice. Despite being unstable and having glitches he had to overcome, Rickert said they worked fairly well overall.
Chris Hoffman recently spoke with Fedora project leader Matthew Miller about what's on the plate for Fedora in 2016. Miller credits the Fedora.next project for reversing the distro's downward popularity spiral and is hoping to convert more and more Windows (and Mac) developers to Linux. Miller told Hoffman there is to be "a big conversation" about making proprietary drivers and codecs easier to install. This "new attitude" stems initially from the wish to provide Chromium with included bundled libraries. Guidelines were changed to allow for it. Miller is also hoping to make it easier for developers to contribute to Fedora.
Jesse Afolabi got a little over-enthused by ReactOS saying it's "the perfect Windows alternate." ReactOS began about a decade (or more) ago trying to develop a free clone of Windows 98. It's still in alpha. Afolabi provided complete installation screenshots and recounted his experiences before dubbing it "the perfect Windows alternate." A full review is promised in the near future, which I'm anxious to read if he still believes that.
In other news:
* The Value of ‘Freedom’ in the Open Source Space
* A talk about the future of Ubuntu with Mark Shuttleworth, with John Kourentis
* RebeccaBlackOS Is a Class Act