Recent Linux Happenings: Elive, Fedora 18, Slax

I've been out of commission for a few days and there have been several exciting Linux happenings in that time. Elive is discovered to be still alive, and I'm not the only one who thinks it is looking great. Fedora 18 is actually released and Slax got a couple more updates.

Elive 2.1.23 (Unstable)

It was quite exciting news to discover that Elive was still in development. Although no disbanding news had leaked out of the project, it'd been a while since the last release. This lead some to wonder if they'd ever release again. Well, wonder no more. Elive is alive and with the focus on E17, it's looking better than ever. I took Elive 2.1.23 for a little spin yesterday and it is impressively fast and responsive. And with the new E17, it is looking better than ever as well.

All the features of E17 show very well on Elive and I am looking forward to following this cycle. This developmental release features Linux 3.2, Xorg X Server 1.12.4, and GCC 4.7.2. It ships with a few applications such as LibreOffice, Skype, Chromium, and VLC, but is set up to draw from Debian Wheezy repositories. Mandriva Linux Chronicles has a bit of a look see here. Download yours here.

Fedora 18 Finally Released

Someone joked a couple of weeks ago that Fedora should just give up on 18 and just concentrate on releasing 19 on time in May. While I thought it sounded quite reasonable, it sure did ruffle some feathers. And today proved why as Fedora 18 was finally released, even if two months late.

I've written of the Fedora 18 features so many times since it was so late, that I just can't do it again. But for those that somehow missed it, H-Online has a nice round-up and Jamie Watson took it for a spin. Get your copy here.

Slax 7.0.4

When we last checked in on Slax it had released its first edition in two and half years then quickly followed it up with two updates. Well, it has received two more since then, both primarily bug fix releases but a couple of new features have gone in there as well. "Probably the most interesting feature is PXE boot support and improved X auto-detection."

Read about 7.0.3 here and 7.0.4 here.