Frugalware Linux News Latest news of Frugalware Linux. http://frugalware.org/ Frugalware 1.7pre1 (Gaia) released http://www.frugalware.org/news/231 http://www.frugalware.org/news/231#top The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.7pre1, the first technical preview of the upcoming 1.7 stable release. Here are some of the major improvements, fixes and updates since 1.6: Package updates: Kernel 3.3 KDE 4.8.1 LibreOffice 3.5.1 Firefox 11.0, Thunderbird 11.0, Seamonkey 2.8 New features: Kernel modules are now compressed with XZ GRUB2 has replaced GRUB1 Text installer can now install to GPT labels pm-radeon for setting radeon KMS power management at startup phc package family brings experimental CPU undervolting Please refer to the Frugalware Testing ChangeLog for more information. Download for x86_64: See our mirror list. Don't forget to check the integrity of the install images before burning! NOTE: Click here to read more about what media you need for the installation. announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.7pre1, the first technical preview of the upcoming 1.7 stable release.

Here are some of the major improvements, fixes and updates since 1.6:

  • Package updates:
    • Kernel 3.3
    • KDE 4.8.1
    • LibreOffice 3.5.1
    • Firefox 11.0, Thunderbird 11.0, Seamonkey 2.8
  • New features:
    • Kernel modules are now compressed with XZ
    • GRUB2 has replaced GRUB1
    • Text installer can now install to GPT labels
    • pm-radeon for setting radeon KMS power management at startup
    • phc package family brings experimental CPU undervolting
Please refer to the Frugalware Testing ChangeLog for more information.
Download for x86_64: See our mirror list. Don't forget to check the integrity of the install images before burning!
NOTE: Click here to read more about what media you need for the installation.
]]> Mon, 09 Apr 2012 06:46:03 +0200 The Seldon Plan #2 http://www.frugalware.org/news/230 http://www.frugalware.org/news/230#top The Seldon Plan issue 2 out now! In this issue : News FlightGear 2.6 0.A.D Alpha 9 Crosswords :) And more! Download (english version PDF)
  • In this issue :
    • News
    • FlightGear 2.6
    • 0.A.D Alpha 9
    • Crosswords :)
    • And more!


Download (english version PDF)
]]> Mon, 02 Apr 2012 02:51:58 +0200 powerpc (ppc) arch powering down http://www.frugalware.org/news/229 http://www.frugalware.org/news/229#top This architecture has been removed and will no longer be supported. We lost our buildserver for it and no longer possess the means to support it, as no developers are left to care for it as well. So, powerpc is being powered down. If you possess such hardware, we are sorry, but there is no other choice for us. x86/x86_64 support will continue to be supported indefinitely, as they are much easier to support. Please join us there if you can. possess the means to support it, as no developers are left to care for it as well. So, powerpc is being powered down.
If you possess such hardware, we are sorry, but there is no other choice for us. x86/x86_64 support will continue to be
supported indefinitely, as they are much easier to support. Please join us there if you can.
]]> Sun, 18 Mar 2012 18:55:57 +0100 The Seldon Plan #1 http://www.frugalware.org/news/228 http://www.frugalware.org/news/228#top The Seldon Plan is the fresh new magazine of Frugalware community users replacing the legacy newsletter. In this issue : Frugalware 1.6 Fermus released last Minute news GNOME 3.4 beta tested Crosswords :) Desktop screenshots of users Download (english version PDF)
  • In this issue :
    • Frugalware 1.6 Fermus released
    • last Minute news
    • GNOME 3.4 beta tested
    • Crosswords :)
    • Desktop screenshots of users


Download (english version PDF)
]]> Sun, 11 Mar 2012 22:48:58 +0100 GRUB2 upgrade in current http://www.frugalware.org/news/227 http://www.frugalware.org/news/227#top The upgrade to GRUB2 has been merged into current recently. This upgrade will not automatically break your system, because it must be done manually by the user. GRUB1 will no longer be supported from now on, so you should proceed with the upgrade as instructed here. because it must be done manually by the user. GRUB1 will no longer be supported from now on, so you should proceed
with the upgrade as instructed here.
]]> Sat, 03 Mar 2012 12:12:28 +0100 systemd in current http://www.frugalware.org/news/226 http://www.frugalware.org/news/226#top There has been an update to current in regards to systemd. During testing, there was discovered to be some issues with reboots and shutdowns appearing to 'hang'. Further inspection revealed that the behavior was caused by display-manager.service refusing to shutdown in a timely manner, by systemd's definition. The process still works out in the end, provided you wait long enough for the effected service to be forced to terminate by timeout. This is a public announcement, in the event you experience a 'hang' during reboot or shutdown, that you should try waiting it out. The default timeout per service is 90 seconds, so it may take awhile. If you want more details as to what is going on during this 'hang', you should boot without the 'splash' and 'quiet' boot arguments. Thank you. Further inspection revealed that the behavior was caused by display-manager.service refusing to shutdown in a timely manner, by systemd's definition. The process
still works out in the end, provided you wait long enough for the effected service to be forced to terminate by timeout. This is a public announcement, in the
event you experience a 'hang' during reboot or shutdown, that you should try waiting it out. The default timeout per service is 90 seconds, so it may take awhile.
If you want more details as to what is going on during this 'hang', you should boot without the 'splash' and 'quiet' boot arguments. Thank you.
]]> Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:01:34 +0100 Frugalware 1.6 (Fermus) released http://www.frugalware.org/news/225 http://www.frugalware.org/news/225#top The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.6, our sixteenth stable release. No new features have been added since 1.6rc2, but 93 changes have been made to fix minor bugs. If you didn't follow the changes during the pre/rc releases, here are the most important changes since 1.5 in no particular order: Updated packages: Linux kernel 3.1.10, XOrg server 1.11.2, GNOME 3.2, KDE SC 4.7, LibreOffice 3.4.5.2, Mozilla Firefox 10.0 to name a few major components. i686 and x86_64 ISOs are now hybrid. We no longer build separate USB images for these arches. cpupower can be used to configure your CPU power management, and is now our recommended method for doing so. UEFI/EFI support has been removed from i686. This is because it is rare on i686. UUIDs are now used by the installer when generating the /etc/fstab for new installs. fw32, which maintains an i686 chroot on x86_64, is now more mature and usable. If you find it lacking, make a request. HAL has been deprecated in favor of udisks i686 and x86_64 now use an initrd. See installation documentation for instructions on how to properly upgrade this. Cinnamon desktop is included now. fwlive is more mature and usable now. Please refer to the Frugalware Fermus ChangeLog for more information. Download for i686, x86_64, ppc and arm: See our mirror list. Don't forget to check the integrity of the install images before burning! NOTE: Click here to read more about what media you need for the installation. If you are upgrading to Fermus from our previous stable release (Mores), please read the upgrade part of our documentation. Frugalware 1.6 Fermus is released !
The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.6, our sixteenth stable release.
No new features have been added since 1.6rc2, but 93 changes have been made to fix minor bugs. If you didn't follow the changes during the pre/rc releases, here are the most important changes since 1.5 in no particular order:
  • Updated packages: Linux kernel 3.1.10, XOrg server 1.11.2, GNOME 3.2, KDE SC 4.7, LibreOffice 3.4.5.2, Mozilla Firefox 10.0 to name a few major components.
  • i686 and x86_64 ISOs are now hybrid. We no longer build separate USB images for these arches.
  • cpupower can be used to configure your CPU power management, and is now our recommended method for doing so.
  • UEFI/EFI support has been removed from i686. This is because it is rare on i686.
  • UUIDs are now used by the installer when generating the /etc/fstab for new installs.
  • fw32, which maintains an i686 chroot on x86_64, is now more mature and usable. If you find it lacking, make a request.
  • HAL has been deprecated in favor of udisks
  • i686 and x86_64 now use an initrd. See installation documentation for instructions on how to properly upgrade this.
  • Cinnamon desktop is included now.
  • fwlive is more mature and usable now.
Please refer to the Frugalware Fermus ChangeLog for more information.
Download for i686, x86_64, ppc and arm: See our mirror list. Don't forget to check the integrity of the install images before burning!
NOTE: Click here to read more about what media you need for the installation.
If you are upgrading to Fermus from our previous stable release (Mores), please read the upgrade part of our documentation.
]]> Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:01:34 +0100 Frugalware 1.6rc2 (Fermus) released http://www.frugalware.org/news/224 http://www.frugalware.org/news/224#top The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.6rc2, the second technical preview of the upcoming 1.6 stable release. Here are some of the major improvements, fixes and updates since 1.6rc1: Package updates: Linux kernel 3.1.10 LibreOffice 3.4.5 ~100 updated packages 27 new packages New features: New cpupower (LWN article) and perf packages kmod replaced module-init-tools Fixes: The installer now handles network timeout errors Documentation updates Please refer to the Frugalware Testing ChangeLog for more information. Download for i686: See our mirror list. Don't forget to check the integrity of the install images before burning! NOTE: Click here to read more about what media you need for the installation. announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.6rc2, the second technical preview of the upcoming 1.6 stable release.

Here are some of the major improvements, fixes and updates since 1.6rc1:

  • Package updates:
    • Linux kernel 3.1.10
    • LibreOffice 3.4.5
    • ~100 updated packages
    • 27 new packages
  • New features:
    • New cpupower (LWN article) and perf packages
    • kmod replaced module-init-tools
  • Fixes:
    • The installer now handles network timeout errors
    • Documentation updates
Please refer to the Frugalware Testing ChangeLog for more information.
Download for i686: See our mirror list. Don't forget to check the integrity of the install images before burning!
NOTE: Click here to read more about what media you need for the installation.
]]> Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:00:57 +0100 Review of 2011 http://www.frugalware.org/news/223 http://www.frugalware.org/news/223#top Before too much of the new year goes past we wanted to take the opportunity to review the achievements of 2011 and look ahead to what's planned for 2012. It's an exciting period in Frugalware's development with the development team making progress in many areas. This article highlights some of the major achievements and planned projects but not all of them. If you are interested in following the progress of any particular project, subscribe to the appropriate mailing list: frugalware-devel if you're interested in development discussion of all Frugalware projects, and frugalware-git-commits if you want to track individual commits. First on the list is the two scheduled releases: 1.4 and 1.5, both of which were released on time. Long-time users of Frugalware have become familiar with the twice-a-year release of stable editions. These don't happen by magic but instead are the result of the development team's hard work. The number of packages available in the repository continues to increase and so does the workload of maintaining them. Many thanks to all the development team, both old and new (in terms of their time on the development team, not their ages. :P ). Each of last years' releases had significant improvements and the highlights were: 1.4 The Java development kit was changed from the binary Java SDK provided by Oracle to OpenJDK. This was in fact a great change because later in the year, Oracle changed the distribution licence which required all distributions to remove it from their repositories. Oracle's future JDKs will be based on OpenJDK anyway. LibreOffice was forked from OpenOffice and available almost immediately after it was publicly released. Of course it helps that Frugalware's leader - VMiklos - is also a LibreOffice developer. :D fwife, the GUI Frugalware installer developed by Elentir, was available as part of the default installation. 1.5 Frugalware was available for the ARM architecture, exciting all those who had one, maybe even two or more ARMs. (Sorry, I couldn't resist such a bad English-language joke). systemd was introduced as the new init system, which meant we had a more reliable, faster init system. Although a lot of discussion about systemd has been focused on boot-up time, that was not the only focus of its design. There were also significant improvements in other areas: FWLive FWlive, the Frugalware live CD was resurrected by Baste after a few years without any development. The project was not entirely abandoned but none of the active developers had enough time to devote to it. Thankfully Baste made great progress and a beta release is already available. Having a live CD available is great because it means that anyone interested in trying Frugalware can do so without changing or possibly harming their PC or laptop. Artwork The default themeing applied to all desktop environments continues to improve, mainly thanks to Devil505. Themeing includes a custom desktop background, icons theme, window manager theme, GUI widgets theme, mouse cursor theme, and login manager theme. Together they give they make the default desktop of all desktop environments look fantastic. The result is so good that it was mentioned by the Linux Outlaws podcast when they mentioned Frugalware 1.4's release. Games, games, games Over 20 new puzzles, strategy, board and FPS games were added to the repository, including: Megaglest, 0 A.D., Bos Wars, Frogatto, Widelands and Red Eclipse. Just when you thought you might get something productive done, a developer packages a new game. :D New Bug Tracker With a lot of effort from Xarkam, the old Flyspray bug tracker was replaced with a shiny, new deployment of Trac. Amazingly he exported the existing data from Flyspray into the new BTS. Since requests and bugs are both tracked in the BTS, it's an important part of the Frugalware infrastructure. Farewell to Carl We said farewell to Carl Andersen, who had been providing Danish translation for all Frugalware projects over several years. He moved on to using another Linux distribution and we wished him well. One of Frugalware's aim is to be accessible to as many people as possible, so translations such as those provided by Carl are vital. It may not be exciting work, nor bring fame, but it without many people simply wouldn't be able to use Frugalware at all. New Developers 2011 was a great year for the development team, with several new members and some returning after a break. Priorities and circumstances change over time for everyone so the team will never stay the same all the time. It's important that we have new members joining, with fresh ideas and enthusiasm. I'm not saying that the existing developers are getting old but time marches on for us all. Cedynamix and Jercel returned from a break and we were excited to have them return. New members to the development team included: Melko, Slown, Baste, Centuri0. What's planned for 2012? Although 2011 was a busy year, 2012 is sure to be exciting too. There are several projects already underway which will probably be completed during the year. FWLive will continue and hopefully become part a new option for each release. Bouleetbil is continuing to work on pyfpm, a GUI package manager developed in Python. Although we already have a GUI package manager it's no longer being maintained or developed. Now is a great time to get involved in Frugalware's development, helping package management, translation, documentation, testing or anything else you would like to do. If you're interested, post a message in the forums and one of the development team will help you get started. There's no minimum level of technical knowledge or experience required because there are many non-technical tasks which you can help with. Let's make 2012 a year to remember!
First on the list is the two scheduled releases: 1.4 and 1.5, both of which were released on time. Long-time users of Frugalware have become familiar with the twice-a-year release of stable editions. These don't happen by magic but instead are the result of the development team's hard work. The number of packages available in the repository continues to increase and so does the workload of maintaining them. Many thanks to all the development team, both old and new (in terms of their time on the development team, not their ages. :P ). Each of last years' releases had significant improvements and the highlights were:

1.4
  • The Java development kit was changed from the binary Java SDK provided by Oracle to OpenJDK. This was in fact a great change because later in the year, Oracle changed the distribution licence which required all distributions to remove it from their repositories. Oracle's future JDKs will be based on OpenJDK anyway.
  • LibreOffice was forked from OpenOffice and available almost immediately after it was publicly released. Of course it helps that Frugalware's leader - VMiklos - is also a LibreOffice developer. :D
  • fwife, the GUI Frugalware installer developed by Elentir, was available as part of the default installation.
1.5
  • Frugalware was available for the ARM architecture, exciting all those who had one, maybe even two or more ARMs. (Sorry, I couldn't resist such a bad English-language joke).
  • systemd was introduced as the new init system, which meant we had a more reliable, faster init system. Although a lot of discussion about systemd has been focused on boot-up time, that was not the only focus of its design.
There were also significant improvements in other areas:

FWLive

FWlive, the Frugalware live CD was resurrected by Baste after a few years without any development. The project was not entirely abandoned but none of the active developers had enough time to devote to it. Thankfully Baste made great progress and a beta release is already available. Having a live CD available is great because it means that anyone interested in trying Frugalware can do so without changing or possibly harming their PC or laptop.

Artwork

The default themeing applied to all desktop environments continues to improve, mainly thanks to Devil505. Themeing includes a custom desktop background, icons theme, window manager theme, GUI widgets theme, mouse cursor theme, and login manager theme. Together they give they make the default desktop of all desktop environments look fantastic. The result is so good that it was mentioned by the Linux Outlaws podcast when they mentioned Frugalware 1.4's release.

Games, games, games

Over 20 new puzzles, strategy, board and FPS games were added to the repository, including: Megaglest, 0 A.D., Bos Wars, Frogatto, Widelands and Red Eclipse. Just when you thought you might get something productive done, a developer packages a new game. :D

New Bug Tracker

With a lot of effort from Xarkam, the old Flyspray bug tracker was replaced with a shiny, new deployment of Trac. Amazingly he exported the existing data from Flyspray into the new BTS. Since requests and bugs are both tracked in the BTS, it's an important part of the Frugalware infrastructure.

Farewell to Carl

We said farewell to Carl Andersen, who had been providing Danish translation for all Frugalware projects over several years. He moved on to using another Linux distribution and we wished him well. One of Frugalware's aim is to be accessible to as many people as possible, so translations such as those provided by Carl are vital. It may not be exciting work, nor bring fame, but it without many people simply wouldn't be able to use Frugalware at all.

New Developers

2011 was a great year for the development team, with several new members and some returning after a break. Priorities and circumstances change over time for everyone so the team will never stay the same all the time. It's important that we have new members joining, with fresh ideas and enthusiasm. I'm not saying that the existing developers are getting old but time marches on for us all. Cedynamix and Jercel returned from a break and we were excited to have them return. New members to the development team included: Melko, Slown, Baste, Centuri0.

What's planned for 2012?

Although 2011 was a busy year, 2012 is sure to be exciting too. There are several projects already underway which will probably be completed during the year. FWLive will continue and hopefully become part a new option for each release. Bouleetbil is continuing to work on pyfpm, a GUI package manager developed in Python. Although we already have a GUI package manager it's no longer being maintained or developed.

Now is a great time to get involved in Frugalware's development, helping package management, translation, documentation, testing or anything else you would like to do. If you're interested, post a message in the forums and one of the development team will help you get started. There's no minimum level of technical knowledge or experience required because there are many non-technical tasks which you can help with. Let's make 2012 a year to remember!]]> Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:07:14 +0100 Frugalware 1.6rc1 (Fermus) released http://www.frugalware.org/news/222 http://www.frugalware.org/news/222#top The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.6rc1, the second technical preview of the upcoming 1.6 stable release. Here are some of the major improvements, fixes and updates since 1.6pre2: Package updates: Linux kernel 3.1.8 Systemd 38 Firefox 9.0.1 383 updated packages 121 new packages 8 replaced packages New features: After being away for 6 releases, Fwlive is back on the scene! Cinnamon Desktop is available as package. Please refer to the Frugalware Testing ChangeLog for more information. Download for i686: See our mirror list. Don't forget to check the integrity of the install images before burning! NOTE: Click here to read more about what media you need for the installation. announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.6rc1, the second technical preview of the upcoming 1.6 stable release.

Here are some of the major improvements, fixes and updates since 1.6pre2:

  • Package updates:
    • Linux kernel 3.1.8
    • Systemd 38
    • Firefox 9.0.1
    • 383 updated packages
    • 121 new packages
    • 8 replaced packages
  • New features:
    • After being away for 6 releases, Fwlive is back on the scene!
    • Cinnamon Desktop is available as package.
Please refer to the Frugalware Testing ChangeLog for more information.
Download for i686: See our mirror list. Don't forget to check the integrity of the install images before burning!
NOTE: Click here to read more about what media you need for the installation.
]]> Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:00:45 +0100