SuSE 10.1 Alpha 1 was recently announced even before 10.0 was even released. Those SuSE folks don't waste any time. No vacation for those boys! Poor fellars. And indeed they already have their plate full. They have begun to implement a few new features as well as using some beta software and they even broke a few things. I love alphas - seriously.

Featherweight Linux is a livecd based on Feather Linux. I reviewed Feather briefly a little while back and ended up rating it a 4.4 out of 5. It came with Fluxbox and a nice selection of applications. When I heard Featherweight 1.3 was released, which is a remaster with a "light" version of KDE, I was a bit excited to try it. That feeling didn't last too long.

Myah is a simple and easy to use livecd for standard Intel or AMD powered computers. They state, "Our goal is to bring you the best free Operating System and to inform PC owners they don't have to spend their money on Windows or OS X." I don't know if it's the best, but it's certainly a pretty darn good one.

MCNLive is a 179MB livecd based upon Mandriva Linux, and latest release Jordaan is built from a recent freeze of Mandriva Cooker, which is the development branch. Its main features are the Xfce4 desktop environment and uses ad-free Opera 8.5 as its browser. This distro can be burnt onto a regular cdr/cdrw or even booted from a USB memory stick. Due to motherboard limitations I couldn't test the USB option, but I did take a look at the system on cdr. What did I find?

Taprobane GNU/Linux 0.4.1 was recently released as announced on DistroWatch. It was stated that "Taprobane is an ancient name for the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka and a Debian-based Linux live CD built by a group of developers at the Lanka Linux User Group (LKLUG). The new version 0.4.1 is the project's first public release. What's in it? "X.Org 6.8.2; official NVIDIA driver support out of the box; KDE 3.4.1; OpenOffice.org 2; Linux 2.6.12.4; SquashFS and Unionfs; Apache, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Zope, started and stopped from the K-menu; excellent hotplug support; saving data to persistent media; educational software such as Stellarium and Octave."" Tuxmachines took a look and unfortunately can only report mixed results.

A new distribution is in our midst and it clearly deserves some attention. Wolvix is a Linux distribution livecd based on Slax and is available as a 456M download. The site says, "It's a desktop oriented distribution made to fit the needs from regular to advanced desktop users." When the head developer wrote and asked me to take a look, I said, "sure." But I sure wasn't expecting quite what I found.

It's no secret that Slackware 10.2 was released yesterday. This was big news and headlined many sites as well as being announced on DistroWatch with the links to download torrents. Slackware puts out a new release once or maybe twice a year if the community is lucky, so when they do release a new version, it's big news. I, like many of you, have been on pins and needles for several weeks now since hints of a impending new release leaked out. Then anticipation grew when the changelog of last week made the press announcing 10.2 was almost ready and should be out maybe by Tuesday. Torrents were made public yesterday and I grabbed my place in line. Excitement overwhelmed me as I booted the install disk. I was not disappointed in what I found.

As we continue our coverage of the Mandriva 2006 development cycle, this time we test the upgrade procedure. In addition we also test the newer "isos on the disk" install method. Introduced last release (10.2/2005) this newest install feature is quite exciting. It didn't function in one of the first betas, but does it work this time? And how did the upgrade go? Did all my data get lost? Am I plagued with crashes and lost configurations? And was anything new to behold?

To quote the site, "Edubuntu is a version of the Ubuntu operating system suitable for classroom use. As an educator you'll be able to set up a computer lab, or establish an online learning environment, in an hour or less -- then administer that environment without having to become a fully-fledged Linux geek." New version Development Release: Edubuntu 5.10 Preview was announced on September 12, and this gave me the opportunity to look at Ubuntu - with a twist. As an educator I could evaluate edubuntu not as an operating system, but as a classroom tool. How effectively does edubuntu fit that role?

Development Release: rPath Linux 0.51 (Alpha) was announced by DistroWatch yesterday, and I was a bit curious. After my first glance, I was a bit taken aback. rPath doesn't seem to be targetting desktop users. Although it ships with KDE and Gnome, they aren't the most up-to-date versions, nor are they dressed up or enhanced in any manner distinguishable. In my humble opinion, I think rPath is probably a developer's platform, ...a conary developer's platform.

SUPER is a project to optimize SuSE for speed and performance. In looking for an idea for my next article, I thought this project's lastest effort might make an interesting review. It's based on OpenSuSE's latest release, which is 10.0 RC1. Being concerned with speed and performance, this review could not help but compare SUPER's times with that of OpenSuSE's. However, there was another kink in the armor. I'd already compared OpenSuSE with Mandriva. I got to thinking, is SUPER really faster than other two contenders?

What an exciting passed couple of days we've had. Mandriva 2006 RC1 and OpenSuSE 10.0 RC1 both hitting the mirrors right about the same time. They are running neck and neck. Who will get their final to the market first? Mandrake has a history of missing release dates to fix last minute bugs and OpenSuSE seems to be meeting their projected plans. In fact, OpenSuSE 10.0 RC1 actually hit the mirrors a little ahead of schedule this time. Their roadmap stated to expect RC1 on Sept 9, while the isos are dated Sept 7. Their dedicated work is showing in the mass of bug fixes, patches and updated versions. There is no new eyecandy or features this release. So, how is it progressing?

Mandriva 2006rc1 quietly hit the mirrors yesterday and as we continue our coverage of this upcoming milestone release we find some new features and as always, many many bug fixes. Mandriva's been through a lot of changes in the past year and the world waits with bated breath to see how all will effect their popular operating system. So what's new?

In continuing with my Linux From Scratch series with Part 3, I present my adventures in setting up a more productive desktop system. Up until this point I have concentrated on just getting the basic underlying system in place and later installing X and a window manager. Today we strike out on our own some as we venture out of the docbook to go beyond Beyond Linux from Scratch.

Apparently BLFS-6.1 was released well over a week ago and the time had finally come to finish up my LFS desktop. Unlike the LFS-html docbook, it's not laid out exactly in a linear manner. I had the basic LFS 6.1 install in place and I was hoping I only needed to pick up from there.